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What happened was all Luffy’s fault. He was the one who insisted on docking, though Usopp pointed out they probably wouldn’t stumble upon the shipwright they were in urgent need of by taking a detour to a deserted-looking tropical island. And he was right, of course. Instead they stumbled upon a garden of translucent-winged butterflies that looked cool at first, less so when they started swarming thick as a fog. Nami’s clima-tact did little more than buffet them with puffs of air; Zoro batted ineffectually at the onslaught with his swords; Sanji shrieked when a butterfly landed on his nose and tripped over his own two feet trying to get it off. Once again it was up to Usopp to save the day by slinging an explosive Flame Star that ate through the cloud of butterflies and sent them all up in smoke.
“Wow, Usopp, you’re a genius,” said Nami, clapping her hands in awe.
“I owe you my life,” said Sanji, bowing before him on his knees.
“Can you give me sharpshooting tips sometime?” said Zoro. “Maybe it’s time I tried a new weapon.”
Luffy took off his straw hat and placed it on Usopp’s head and said, “You’re our captain now.”
They lifted Usopp up on their shoulders and started parading him back to the Merry, chanting his name the whole way: “Usopp! Usopp! Usopp—”
“That’s not what happened, is it?” says Chopper.
Usopp blinks. The lurch of the Merry. He’s sitting up in bed, propped up on a pillow. Hold on—bed? The one reserved for sick patients? Why isn’t he in his hammock?
“What?” Usopp says. “What happened? Did I get knocked out?”
Chopper gives him a pitying look from his bedside. “You really don’t remember?”
Usopp tries to think about it. He really does. But there’s a persistent ache throbbing in his skull, scattering his thoughts, and he can’t hold onto any of them. “Am I injured?”
“You’ll be just fine.”
That’s a relief. Usopp slumps back onto his pillow, knowing he’s in good hands, in the safety of the Merry. He wonders why he’s missed returning to the ship and setting sail from the island. How long it’s been.
“Where are we now?” he asks.
“We left the island not too long ago. You can go up and see for yourself. The others will be there, too.”
“Okay,” Usopp says. “Thanks, Chopper.” He reaches out with the intent to pat him on the head—or hat, rather—but stops halfway, distracted by the sight of his own palms. They’re all scratched up, as if he’s been doing cartwheels in a thicket of thorns. Actually, looking closer, the scratches extend all the way up his arms, too. He winces.
“Killer butterflies, huh?” Usopp says. “You’d have to see it to believe it.”
It isn’t until he’s already left the room that he considers the scratches on his hands again. Strange that Chopper hasn’t bandaged them; strange, too, now that he’s thinking about it, that Chopper’s let him get halfway out of bed without a strict explanation of his condition and a thorough examination of his symptoms and the traditional warning to come find Chopper if they don’t wear off after the expected amount of time. Strange that they don’t hurt at all. Nothing does, really, but for the pulse of pain in his skull.
Usopp looks up. He’s on the deck of the Merry. At some point night has fallen and blanketed the ship with a heavy fog. He has to squint to try and make out the details of what he knows is there: the clustered trees of Nami’s grove, the curly-horned figurehead branching from the bow, the flutter of their flag. The blank shapes fill themselves out as he watches, as if one of his own sketches inventing itself on the page. Everything in its place. Almost.
Where is everyone?
Usopp looks behind him, for some reason. Nothing there.
He takes a few steps forward and squints harder through the fog. Looks for his crewmates, and finds them easily, where he expects. Nami is tending to her trees, of course, while Sanji flits at her shoulder with a tall glass of iced tea. Robin is reading a book by lantern light. Zoro snores from where he’s leant up against the side of the ship, arms crossed over his chest, head lolling. In the distance: the shadow seated on his usual perch.
“Ah, there you are, Usopp,” says Robin. She dog-ears the corner of her page and closes the book. “Did you have a good rest?”
“Yes, I’m perfectly fine,” Usopp says. “It was a little touch-and-go there for a while, you know, on account of my dashing and heroic rescue of the entire crew today, but I persevered and pulled through like any brave warrior would do.” He salutes her with a grin, ignoring the headache still nagging at him. “Anyway, you made the right choice to stay on the ship with Chopper, those butterflies were real creepy... but I guess you’re kind of into things like that, huh, Robin?”
Robin smiles at him, chin propped up in her palm. “I guess I am, aren’t I?”
Pale moths dart back and forth around the lantern on the table, blotting out its light. Usopp shudders, remembering the butterflies, the crash of their glass wingbeats like windchimes. He usually finds insects fascinating and has even been known to collect them, to Sanji’s horror and Nami’s disgust and Luffy’s delight, but he thinks he’s had enough of them for a while.
“Why’s everyone still up?” Usopp asks. “It’s the middle of the night. Did I miss a party or something?”
Robin tilts her head. “A party? Is that what you wanted?”
“You mean, in honour of how I saved us all today?” Usopp scratches the back of his head. Something about the situation still doesn’t quite line up right—when did they all get back to the Merry, exactly?—but a celebratory banquet does sound appealing after the harrowing day they’ve had. Not to mention he’s starving, and his crew throws the best parties: tables piled high with meat, ale splashing from mugs filled to the brim, the ruckus of wild laughter and song. But his head still hurts, and considering the haste with which they no doubt left the island earlier, they probably don’t have the necessary supplies. “Well, everyone’s gratitude is very much appreciated, but humility is an important trait for a hero, too! Probably! Right? And we do need to get to a shipwright as soon as possible to take a proper look at the Merry, and—”
Usopp glances up and does a double take. Robin is hanging onto his every word, her eyes sharpened by a keen interest, the kind she’s only ever reserved for ancient ruins and morbid facts and Poneglyphs. He’d be flattered, but his attention snags on something else, something that makes even less sense: the table Robin’s sitting at has suddenly lengthened to accommodate a feast, exactly the way he pictured it. Every way he pictured it. All around them, the deck of the Merry that was silent just a moment ago is now crowded with strangers; in the flicker of the lantern light he sees the faces of the villagers from Cocoyasi, the Skypieans and the Shandians, the citizens of Alabasta. Flashes of his crew. Sanji setting down a gigantic platter of meat, turning to snap at Zoro, refilling Nami’s glass. Chopper laughing at Luffy with chopsticks up his nose, hopping up on the table to dance, blushing bright pink at compliments. Luffy’s arm stretching to shovel all the plates into his mouth, clapping Usopp on the back from across the table, opening his mouth and saying, “Oi, Usopp!” Saying, “Your dad’s Yasopp, right?” Saying, “We’re nakama now, aren’t we?”
“...What’s happening?” Usopp says.
Robin is still watching him with that intensity he could almost mistake for hunger. It’s funny. He could have sworn she has blue eyes, but her gaze is clear as water.
“What do you remember?” she asks.
A wind picks up, blowing open her book on the table. Every page is blank. And as Usopp watches, the pages fan out, tear from the spine to descend upon him in a storm like pale gossamer wings.
He wakes up gasping for breath. Flat on his back on the ground. Hot itch of sun on his face. The buzzing whisper of tall grasses at his ear.
The wind.
“You’re kidding me,” Usopp says, to an unbroken ocean of white flowers stretching as far as he can see in every direction. The flowers, being flowers, don’t respond.
He’s still on the island. They never left. They—where are they?
The viselike crush of his headache is making it hard to think. To remember. Usopp sits up, wincing at the blinding sunlight, and digs in his satchel for his binoculars. At least the butterflies appear to be long gone, but there’s no sign of the others, either. Did he somehow get knocked unconscious while wiping out the butterflies? Did the others get carried away by the swarm and was he the only one to escape with his quick wits? Is it all up to him to rescue them now? Again?
When he peers through the lenses, he spots a familiar figure approaching from the distance. The resounding wave of relief nearly bowls him over. It’s a little embarrassing. He must have been more shaken up than he realized.
“Oi!” Usopp yells, waving an arm frantically. “Over here!”
He gets to his feet, freshly reinvigorated, and starts walking. Soon the tall grass thickens enough that he has to wade through the sea of flowers blooming impenetrable as a labyrinth. They’re not like any flowers Usopp’s seen before; their stamens loll long and winding from their open faces like tongues and he shivers every time they brush against his skin. He thought they were white at first, but he can now see the hint of delicate silken colour bleeding pale through the veins of their petals. It feels kind of like walking through a greenhouse. A prism of compressed heat and light, the lushness of leaves, that hazy glasslike shimmer to the world out of the corner of his eye, whichever way he turns—
Out of the overgrowth comes Sanji: slouch and scowl.
“There you are,” Usopp says, short of breath for some reason. He feels like he’s been walking forever. “Finally. Where’re the others?”
Sanji levels him a flat look. “You don’t remember?”
“Hey, c’mon. Not my fault I was knocked out by such a formidable foe, after striking the decisive victory blow in such a gruelling battle... anyway, is that really any way to speak to someone with a traumatic brain injury?”
Sanji snorts. “You’ll be fine.”
“I think I have a concussion,” Usopp complains, cradling his head in his palms; he’s milking it for sure, but shouldn’t he get to, after the day he’s had? “Why, I don’t know if I can go on like this... you’re gonna have to carry me, Sanji... pass on my final message... tell the Merry… she’s the finest ship in the world… urkk…”
“Keep dreaming,” Sanji says, and Usopp coughs exaggeratedly to cover up his snicker.
After a moment, though, his grin slowly wipes off his face.
“You really haven’t seen the others?” he asks.
Sanji shrugs, like the thought hasn’t occurred to him. “What’s the last thing you remember?”
Good question. Something about a party, Usopp thinks. But the pounding in his skull returns with a vengeance when he tries to pin down the memory, so he lets it go with a wince. “They’re probably waiting for us back at the ship. Let’s go, then.”
“You know the way?”
“How hard can it be? We just gotta get out of this field, then find the coast, then follow it.”
Sanji doesn’t argue, doesn’t mutter something contrary under his breath. Doesn’t even go for a cigarette. Just trails after Usopp at a companionable pace, hands in his pockets, and Usopp can’t help but squint at him as they trudge through the field. He’s acting different, and not even different in any of his usual ways, like when he didn’t sleep a wink for ages after leaving the Baratie but he pretended to, playing dead as a stone in his hammock so it was a whole week before anyone found out that he drooled in his sleep; or how sulky he can get when Nami loses her temper and snaps at him or Zoro gets the better of him in a fight, almost shamed. Melancholy sometimes, after dinner, leant against the railing still in his dishwater-stained apron, smoking a cigarette as the night unravels around them. This is something new, a quiet blankness slackening the angles of Sanji’s face, and it strikes a chill of real unease in the swelter of the midday heat.
“Oi,” Usopp says, trying for tact. “Did something happen?”
“Like what?” Sanji says, around his cigarette.
“Like, I don’t know... You didn’t get injured or anything in the fight, did you? Hey, hold on. When did you start smoking that?”
Sanji raises his eyebrow. “I’ve always been?”
It’s easy enough to believe—when isn’t Sanji smoking, after all? But Usopp could’ve sworn his hands were empty a second ago, and wouldn’t he have heard the flick of the lighter? Then again, he’s heard it a thousand times, by now. Probably he’s started to unconsciously tune out the sound.
“Just... be careful. You could start a fire with that thing, with all this dry grass around.”
It’s up to their shoulders, now. They’ve been walking for a while and the field still doesn’t seem to have an end in sight. There aren’t even any trees to break up the monotony of flowers, nothing Usopp can use as a benchmark for how far they’ve gotten, how much farther is left. There’s no way they’re walking in a circle, right? He looks back, behind them. Nothing there, of course.
“I was thinking,” Usopp starts.
“About what?”
“I was thinking, if only Robin were here, she’d probably know something about this island, since she’s always...” He pauses. Frowns. “She’s... hm. You know how she is.”
“I do,” Sanji agrees.
“No, I mean...” Usopp’s brow furrows. “What was I talking about?”
Sanji’s gaze flicks at him. A mosquito landing leisurely on skin.
“Robin,” Sanji says. “You were talking about Robin.”
“Right, that’s right! How she’s always reading books, and she knows everything. I bet she’s heard of this island before. She probably knows its name. She’d be all, Oh, how fascinating, this is Killer Butterfly Flower Purgatory Island and it’s built on the bones of centuries of explorers who walked into its trap and died horrible agonizing deaths of starvation and thirst after wandering endlessly in its fields... I hear the flowers are beautiful here this time of year.” Usopp shudders. “With a smile, too! And then she’d get us out of here with a ladder of hands, probably. Or maybe she could grow a single giant hand that could just scoop us up and plop us back down on the ship. Wouldn’t that be cool?”
“Very.”
Usopp’s startled into casting Sanji a sidelong look. “What? No flowery compliments for Robin-chwan?”
But Sanji’s expression has already fallen into its usual lovelorn shamelessness; Usopp’s disgusted to feel faintly comforted by its reliable familiarity. “Of course Robin-chan is a paragon of wisdom and beauty, but the longer we’re stuck here, the longer we’re apart from her. From the others...”
The others. A spike of pain digs determined into his temple. The rustling of the grass feels unnaturally loud in the silence, an insistent drone that smothers the sounds of his footsteps, his ragged breathing. Sanji only ever one steady pace behind him, close as the cling of a shadow.
The others, wherever they are...
“Nami’s probably freaking out right now,” Usopp says aloud, forging onward with sluggish steps. “Actually, she’s probably chewing out Luffy for deciding to come here in the first place. She’s gotta be back at the ship by now, right? She’s the navigator, after all, it’d be pretty embarrassing for her if we beat her there.”
“It would, wouldn’t it?”
“Wait, don’t tell her I said that, though—I still owe her money and I don’t need to give her another reason to come collect, you know how she gets...”
“That I do.”
“Oh crap! Zoro’s probably lost in this field too, he’s got no hope of making it out of here with his backwards sense of direction. We gotta look for him along the way.”
“Sure.”
Usopp stops dead in his tracks. He swivels, slowly, on his heel. Sanji is still puffing away at his cigarette, eyes shadowed beneath the blond hair fallen limp across his face, and he grinds to a halt as if generously indulging one of Usopp’s inexplicable whims.
“What did you say?” Usopp says.
“You don’t remember?”
“No, I do, I just...” Usopp squints at Sanji some more, until his eyes burn. “Did you hit your head, too? You seriously agreed we should look for Zoro? You?”
It’s Sanji’s turn to squint at Usopp. “No? I said that bastard should stay lost and die.”
“Haha, that’s what I thought you said,” Usopp says weakly. Maybe he does have a concussion after all. He needs to get back to the ship as soon as possible, so that Chopper can take a look at him... so that Chopper...
He’s losing track of his thoughts. They keep scattering away from him as if insects scared skittish by his clumsiness. Why have they stopped walking? They need to get back to the...
“The ship,” Usopp says.
“What about it?” Sanji asks.
They’re up to their necks now. Waxy flower petals bat at his chin and throat, radiant with their greedy sheen, and their prickly leaves graze his shoulders, leave scratches all down his arms, his hands.
“I think Zoro’s back at the ship, actually,” Usopp says, between heavy breaths. “He probably made it there faster than us because he just razed everything in his path.”
“Hm.”
“Yeah. He’s real efficient like that.”
“Sure is.”
“Dumb as a brick sometimes, but he’s got his methods.”
“He does.”
“Strongest fighter of all of us, too.”
“That’s right.”
Usopp reaches into his satchel and pulls out his slingshot. Lines up the pellet. Yanks the elastic taut. His hand shakes but his aim doesn’t falter, trained squarely on Sanji’s unblinking face.
“You’re not him,” Usopp says.
Sanji drops his cigarette butt in the grass, stomps it out under his shoe. The ashes smoke slightly but don’t catch.
“That so,” he says.
The flowers sway in Usopp’s vision. It’s all he can do to stay afloat. To keep his aim steady.
“He’d never say that. You’re not him. He wouldn’t—”
“He wouldn’t, would he?” Sanji says with nothing more than a mild interest, studying Usopp intently. “You lied.”
“I—it wasn’t a lie, I set you up, and it worked, didn’t it?” Usopp blusters.
This close, through the tall grass, he can see something shift in Sanji’s eyes, the flicker-fast many-winged movement of something recalibrating. His face is blank, until it isn’t. It collapses into livid fury, mouth tight and teeth bared, the exact comically overblown red-faced rage for which Usopp takes great joy in making relentless fun of him.
“Oi, longnose, who are you calling the strongest fighter? All that dumbass can do is wave some sticks around, obviously I’m way stronger than him. What, you wanna find out for yourself?”
Silence.
The strain of the elastic cutting into Usopp’s fingers.
Sanji’s face smooths back out. He pulls the box from his breast pocket, plucks out another cigarette. Lifts the lighter to his mouth and flicks the flame the way he always does, the way he always has, all the times before.
“So,” Sanji says. Puff of smoke. Flash of teeth. Petals blooming at the neat line of his lapel. “Now that that’s settled.”
The thrashing of the grass, the flowers, the wings.
“Is there anything else you want to tell me?”
What happened was all Zoro and Sanji’s fault. They were the ones who got into some typical run-of-the-mill to-the-death pissing contest in the middle of a blown-out battle, going for each other’s throats even as the butterflies swarmed them thick as a fog. “Is this really the time?” Nami shouted, frantically waving her clima-tact in the air. Luffy just laughed. Once again it was up to Usopp to save the day by slinging a cleverly-timed Smoke Star that broke up the butterflies and sent them spinning in every dazed direction.
Zoro and Sanji emerged from the smoke, looking equally sheepish.
“I guess you won that one, Usopp,” said Sanji. “Or, as I should call you, O Great and Revered One.”
Zoro offered up his sword, gleaming white balanced on both palms. “Here. It’s yours. You’ve earned it.”
“You’ve definitely paid back every debt plus interest,” Nami said. “Wait, I think I owe you now?”
Luffy took off his straw hat. He placed it on Usopp’s head and said—
“That’s not what happened, is it?” says Nami.
Usopp blinks. The call of a gull. They’re standing at the shore; Zoro, too, a few paces away, toeing the sand with his boot, a distinctly dissatisfied air about him. So they made it back to the ship after all. Here it is, rising out of the waters, right where they left it. The figurehead’s same old smile, patient and painless. Looks like the tide’s coming in.
He cranes his neck to look behind him.
“What?” says Nami. “What’re you looking for?”
Nothing at all.
“Thought there was,” Usopp begins. “Wasn’t there someone with me?”
Nami toys with the log pose on her wrist as if adjusting the strap. “The others are all on the ship already. We’ve been waiting for you.”
Right. And how’d that happen, anyway, Usopp means to ask, but his head is killing him. He lifts a hand to shade his eyes from the sun, and has to pause to wince at the sight of the scratches running down his arms, the lines of his palms.
“Killer butterflies, huh,” Usopp says. “You’d have to see it to believe it.”
Zoro turns his head toward him. He doesn’t say anything.
Usopp lowers his hand. Lifts it again to scratch his nose. “Hey, Zoro, how’re your swords after that fight?”
Zoro’s gaze goes blank. “They’re fine.”
Usopp rolls his eyes. “Yeah, you always say that, then the next thing we know your blade threatens to crack mid-battle when I haven’t got my special top-secret formula sword oils with me... C’mon, let me check Wado at least.” He holds out an expectant hand.
Zoro hands him Wado Ichimonji.
The sword unsheathes easily in his sweaty grip. He fusses over the clean edge, careful not to cut himself. Even jabs it around in the air a few times. Hey, Zoro, this isn’t half hard, Usopp thinks, somewhat hysterically; even I can do it. He’d say it just for the look on his face. Maybe he will. The wind whistles past the metal of the blade. A bead of sweat trickles down the back of his neck. He sheathes the sword very carefully.
“All right, everything seems to be in working order,” Usopp says. “I guess you get a pass this time.” He tosses the sword in Zoro’s direction. Zoro catches it easily with one hand, doesn’t even blink. Probably hasn’t this entire time.
Usopp turns away from his stonelike stare, turns to Nami. “Oh, hey, before we leave, did you take any of the flowers?”
“What for?” Nami asks.
“What do you mean, what for?” Usopp snorts. “What, you didn’t like them? I thought they looked kinda cool, and you’re always collecting exotic plants from the islands we visit for your garden, right? I still think it’s kinda risky, but I guess no invasive species have strangled your beloved mikan trees yet...”
Nami glances distantly over Usopp’s shoulder, then back at him. “Of course I took some,” she says, and it’s true; she’s even got one in her hair, tucked neatly behind her ear. A pale star-shaped blossom, every single colour when he tilts his head at a certain angle under the sun, so really no colour at all. She sighs, rubbing at her forehead; a sliver of her tattoo peeks out from under the sleeve of her T-shirt. “At least this trip to this island wasn’t a total waste, right?”
“Ooh, very good,” Usopp says. “You’re getting better.”
“Better at what?”
“See, that there,” Usopp says, pointing at her bemused frown. “That expression. You really do look just like them. Could’ve fooled me. Too bad.”
Zoro and Nami exchange a look. “What are you talking about?” says Nami. “Did you hit your head or something?”
“Probably,” Usopp admits. “I think I have a concussion, I should really get that checked out. But I also have a theory. Wanna hear it?”
Nami crosses her arms. “This better be good, Usopp.”
“My theory is that you guys aren’t Zoro and Nami at all. You’re who you think Zoro and Nami are, based on all the information you’ve been not-so-subtly fishing from me. But guess what! I’ve been feeding you lies! See, the trick is to use something that seems believable, that’s tangential to something that’s actually real, close enough to get away with. But Nami doesn’t collect plants and she isn’t a gardener. That’s not why she keeps that grove.” Usopp points an accusing finger at Zoro. “And like hell Zoro would ever let me touch his swords, let alone oil them—I almost fainted holding Wado just now, you know! But then I remembered it isn’t really Wado either... probably? Because Wado’s with the real Zoro. Right?”
Zoro doesn’t rise to the bait. Doesn’t say anything at all. Just keeps eyeing Usopp like he’s a real interesting thought experiment. It’s not a look he’s used to from Zoro, even if it isn’t really Zoro. Usopp clears his throat and steamrolls on.
“Because there’s no way Zoro would’ve ever surrendered the real Wado, not as long as he’s alive—ah... well. What I mean to say is. All of this, all of you—you guys are just poor imitations of the real thing. It’s sad, really. And you walked right into my immaculately laid trap! Pfft... face it, you’re obviously no match for my genius, nor for the rest of my crew.”
The needles of Nami’s log pose are deathly still.
“...Why are you trying to imitate them, anyway?” Usopp says, and even as he’s saying it, he’s distinctly aware that maybe he shouldn’t. Maybe it’s not really a question he wants answered. Surely now that the jig is up, all he needs to do is get out of here and find the others. But where is here, exactly? Is this even the... the ship? And what have they done with the others?
“We’re hungry,” Zoro says.
Usopp immediately rounds on him. “What’s that got to do with anything—you’re not my real crewmates, and besides, do I look like Sanji to you—”
He stops.
Crash of the tide against the shore. It feels like an explosion, rattling in his skull. Feels fatal.
“Sanji,” Usopp says, testing out the name. The way it rolls so easily off his tongue.
Who...
Twist of the knob. The burst of a stovetop burner coming aflame; a hot circle of blue. We’re having fish for dinner tonight, Usopp crowed, dizzy with triumph after a week of dry seas and stagnant fishing lines. Fish for dinner! sang Luffy. Fish for dinner! echoed Chopper. Everyone shut up and get out of my kitchen, Sanji said, but as Usopp left he could hear him humming, just slightly, under his breath.
“You asked,” says Zoro.
“What?” Usopp shakes his head, winces; what was he thinking about? “What did I—”
“You asked why we would do this,” says Nami, from beside him. He jerks back reflexively, but she doesn’t attack him or anything, and he’s not even sure what that would look like—is she going to zap him with a thundercloud? Knock him out with the clima-tact? Or maybe she’ll give up the facade and turn into—what, a cloud of stinging butterflies? Well, Usopp’s got tricks, too. He reaches into his satchel for ammo.
“Look, it doesn’t matter,” Usopp says. “I can beat you, I’ve beaten you before. I’m Captain Usopp, leader of eighty million pirates, brave warrior of the sea, and I’ve never once lost a fight, and I’m not scared of anything.”
Nami doesn’t reach for her weapon, doesn’t sprout wings and fly. Only leans forward, the flower not moving a single pristine inch out of place in her hair, and smiles.
“Liar,” she says.
The needles of her log pose are all pointing straight at him.
“What?” Usopp says. His head is pounding. He can’t... “W-wait a second. Hold on...”
“So we can’t take what you say,” Nami says. Her teeth are very white. It’s all the same—the playful glint in her eyes, the splash of freckles across her suntanned cheeks, the tip of her tongue sticking out of her grin, the one she uses on unsuspecting marks and scumbag pirates and marines, the one that means she’s won. “That’s fine. You’re much more honest when it comes to what you believe.”
“What I... of course. That’s it. You’re not just creepy soul-sucking clones, you’re telepathic creepy soul-sucking clones.”
“You still don’t remember, do you?” It’s uncanny, really, how close they’ve got the likeness by now, down to the pitying tone in her voice. Too slow, Usopp; I took your wallet, your pocket change, the last bite of your lunch. Aw, c’mon, Nami, you couldn’t have left me with anything? Now why would I do that?
“Remember what?”
“You already lost.”
Usopp snorts. “No, that was you, remember? I blew up all the butterflies. Saved the day.”
“Yeah?” That’s from Zoro, still watching him with an intent so honed it’s familiar, almost. But it’s wrong—Usopp’s never had that gaze trained on him before. What all of Zoro’s opponents have had to face, one way or another: the inevitability of their own defeat. “Who’d you save?”
“Everyone,” Usopp starts. Stops.
Zoro cocks his head. Smirking as if through the clamp of a sword between his teeth. “Who’d you save, Usopp?” he repeats.
“Oh, Usopp,” Nami says. The petals in her hair wave lazily in the wind. “You just can’t help yourself, can you?”
She leans in closer.
“Tell me. Usopp. What’s the name of the ship?”
Usopp’s gaze goes up, past her, past Zoro, to the benign smile of the figurehead towering above. His mouth opens. Closes. Opens again.
“That’s what I thought,” sighs Nami dreamily, the way she gets when she’s counting her coins or gazing out at the unmapped line of the horizon or after she’s just had a delicious, filling meal.
Crash of the waves, again. It sounds just like the sharp snap of jaws.
What happened was all Usopp’s fault. He was the one who wandered off into the flower field alone, sour and sullen and resentful of this detour to a deserted-looking tropical island when they were urgently in need of a shipwright. The irony, of course, was that he only delayed them further when the others had to search for him through the butterflies that swarmed thick as a fog. But when they cleared there was still no sign of Usopp.
“Usopp! Where are you?” called Sanji, hands cupped around his mouth.
“Can you hear us?” shouted Nami. “If you’re lost, follow the sound of our voices!”
“You still alive?” called Zoro; Nami smacked him on the back of the head.
Luffy took off his straw hat briefly to scratch his head, then placed it back on. “Maybe he already found his own way back,” he said.
They left and started back for the Merry, calling his name the whole way: “Usopp! Usopp! Usopp—”
“That’s not what happened, is it?” says Kaya.
He’s sitting on a branch of a tall, study tree, looking into a window, sash thrown, curtains bared.
“No,” Usopp says. “Not this. I can’t—”
“Why not?” Kaya looks at him curiously. Pale and open-faced, chin cradled in her fingers. Leant dangerously over the sill.
No. He tugs his gaze away from the window, turns his head over his shoulder, looks back. There’s gotta be something else—anything at all—
“You said you’d tell me everything when you got back. All of it.”
“But I’m not back,” isn’t what Usopp means to say. He doesn’t mean to turn back around, either. He should be whipping out his slingshot to burn all of this down: tree, window, the wisp of a girl watching him through it. But it’s true. He isn’t back. He isn’t done. Whatever ending she wants to hear, he hasn’t earned it yet.
“What,” Kaya says. “Are you keeping secrets from me now?” She laughs, and it hurts like she’s reached out and plucked something straight from his ribs, some underripe fruit or flower that snags on the stem. He hasn’t heard that laugh in— “Come on. What is there you haven’t told me? What’s left?”
“There’s so much,” Usopp says; he shouldn’t speak to her honestly like she’s real, like she’s anything at all. His blabbermouth’s gonna be the death of him. He’s always known it, everyone’s always known it. “You don’t even know. You won’t. I’m not gonna just give it all up.”
“You already are,” Kaya says. Head tilted at him through the window. Her eyes shine like an oil slick, deep enough to fall into. “Don’t you want to at least tell it how you want?”
“How I want?”
“Yeah. You know, how you remember it.” She smiles at him. “How you like it.”
“That’s not how I...”
“Love, even,” Kaya suggests. “It’s so much sweeter that way.”
And then she does something she’s never done, in all their years spent just like this, huddled over the same branch of the tree: she takes his hand in hers.
Usopp looks down at his hand, bruised and scratched-up in her own. The callouses on his palm from when he grips his slingshot, climbs the rigging, hoists the sails. Hauls someone out of hell and high water: the stalwart brick shithouse that is their resident swordsman bleeding out all over him again, an overextended ball of fur and antlers and hooves clinging so tightly to his neck he may as well be strangling him, his catatonic captain drooling seawater and spit on his shoulder as he swims the both of them back to the ship. He’s never had to tell anyone the stories behind these marks, because everyone he has to tell them to has the exact same ones, the hard-earned everyday evidence of being part of a crew. Not the blatant thing like the skull and crossbones, the legends they leave in their wake. Just the rest of it.
He looks back up at Kaya, at the look in her eyes, just the same as when a girl in a window had wiped her eyes and laughed at his lies and when he was finished asked for more. But it’s not something of his own making, this time. He understands, he thinks. What’s hunger if not longing.
“I liked that one,” Kaya says. She squeezes his hand. “Tell me another.”
Another?
He tells her everything. What they last ate for breakfast, what happened when he accidentally dropped the swordsman’s bandana over the side of the ship when he was putting up clotheslines on laundry duty the other day, what the man who’s going to become the Pirate King sounds like when he snores. What he swears he saw in the fog that night. What it’s like to face down a false god and live to tell the tale, he’s telling it now. What shape a promise takes upon the backs of their wrists. What the first rainfall in three years smelled like when it first hit dry earth and bones and blood. What colour the cherry blossoms made in the snow. What the giants dreamed of, which was only what anyone else ever dreamed of. What was sung to the whale and what it sounded like. What the lightning struck in Loguetown. What face she made when she drove the knife in, the slightest crease of her brow as she clasped him tight in her lie, so close only he could see the truth, the proof that it hurt. What astonished him, watching, far more than the mess of blood and tears and snot streaming down his face, which was the laughter that shook his shoulders as he lay in the embrace of his own defeat like an old friend and pledged his life and didn’t die. What he looked at them like when they blew the roof off his restaurant, hovering over their table half disgusted and half amazed, half disbelieving and half not, and was that what Usopp had looked like, too? What his captain was to him before he was his captain, some strange scrawny boy who floated up out of the blue with nothing at all to his name, who fell for his tricks and laughed when he found out and what he said then. What he said then.
He tells her things he doesn’t even know he remembers. His lack of sea legs, early on, and how they laughed at him whenever he fell out of his hammock in the middle of the night or wobbled while walking on deck or ran green-faced for the railing of the ship, said he’d get used to it. How he got used to it. That he threw up on the cook’s shoes one time when he got carried away and drank too much at a pub and pretended to forget in the morning, and then really did forget after a while. The cost of the first bet he lost—fifty beli forked over into the navigator's waiting hand, because the swordsman never noticed the scribbles drawn on his own face after he woke up from his afternoon nap. How he screamed when he dropped a plate on dish duty and a hand sprouted out of the ground to catch it in midair. What he wrote in the first letter he sent home; the second, third, tenth. The first time he saw his captain swallow a whole plateful of food, stretch his arms and legs and puff up like a balloon, level an empire to the ground. Telling a princess jokes by the campfire to try and make her smile; he did better than that. She laughed.
Can you believe that? he says.
I can, she says.
He tells her, and she drinks it in, and they can both see it before them in living detail and definition, and the world gets a little fuller, and so does she. And he’s still got more to tell, as if pulling from a bag of tricks, a handful of caltrops, a tabasco star, here’s the perfect ammunition for the perfect shot you don’t even know you’ve lined up yet, you don’t even know what it’s for. What it’s for hasn’t been invented yet. And you’ll never reach into that bag and find it empty. He’ll never reach in and find himself—
Oh, and how could he forget? He tells her about their ship, good and beautiful and strong, all the places it’s taken them through, all the places it’s left behind. He tells her all their dreams braided into the single rope that flies their flag aloft. He tells her that telltale sign in the sky you can see from sea, from land, from miles away. Everyone: pirates are coming.
He tells her that he has so much. That he’s about to lose it all.
She’s still got his hand in hers. Held so tight he couldn’t shake her off if he tried. And what is he if not something she dug out of the silt to hold up to the light, pearl pried from the shell.
She’s smiling like she’s happy, like she’s capable of it. But something’s wrong: the world seems suddenly wobbly in a way it wasn’t a minute ago. Flimsy as paper.
“I really wanted more,” Kaya says, eyes starry.
“Me too,” Usopp says, right before the tree, the window, and the girl shred like confetti.
“Usopp!”
“Oi, Usopp, wake up already!”
“I think he’s waking up, his eyebrow twitched, did you see that?”
“We don’t know what they did to him, we should take him back to Chopper right now—”
“Hey, he’s moving!”
“Usopp?”
He blinks. Flat on his back on the ground. Hot itch of sun on his face. The buzzing whisper of tall grasses at his ear.
“No way,” Usopp says, or tries to. What comes out is a hoarse wheeze that turns into a coughing fit. His throat feels sandpapered raw.
“Hey, Usopp, are you okay?”
Luffy’s face is looming directly over his own, eyes cartoonishly huge at this angle. Gross—Usopp can see up his nose. He bats him away, struggles to sit up. Where—
The others are all gathered around him, looking various levels of concerned, kneeling or standing in the tall grass. He finds himself overwhelmed. Everything hurts just a little, like his skin’s come off, left him unpeeled. He doesn’t—
“Whuh,” Usopp manages. “What happened?”
Everyone starts speaking at once.
“Killer butterflies—”
“—killer, tch, more like we killed them—”
“—couldn’t find you—”
“—wouldn’t wake up—”
“—had to tear out the flowers growing out of you—”
“Wait, what?” Usopp says. One of those things was not like the others. He looks down at himself, at the scratches winding across his hands, arms, shoulders—do they go all the way up his neck? But they’re only scratches, right?
Awareness returns to him in a slow crawl. He’s lying in a patch of flattened grass. Scattered around him, as if he were the centre of a blast radius, are the mangled remains of familiar-looking flowers. But instead of a tangle of roots at the end of each long stem, there’s a curved coil like a claw, or a hook. And their petals aren’t white at all, could never be mistaken for it. They’re every shade of every colour Usopp can think of, so bright they burn his eyes with tears.
He looks away, back at his crew.
“Growing out of me?” he repeats.
Luffy nods vigorously. “The butterflies were all over you, too!”
“Drinking from the flowers,” Sanji says.
“From Usopp, more like,” Zoro says.
Nami shudders. “Ugh, that’s disgusting!”
“Don’t worry!” Luffy pipes up. “We killed them all.”
Something catches Usopp’s eye. He plucks from his knee one delicate half of a translucent wing. It crumbles between his fingertips into nothing.
“So you’re okay, right?” Luffy says.
“Never better,” Usopp says weakly.
“Would’ve found you a lot sooner without a certain idiot trying to wander off all the time and get himself hopelessly lost,” Sanji mutters.
“Whaddya mean, I was helping search for him!”
“We thought you were a goner,” sighs Nami. She reaches out and squeezes Usopp’s hand—it’s all he can do to keep himself from recoiling at her touch. “I’m just glad we finally found you. I still don’t get why those butterflies went for you, of all people...”
The smile feels stiff on his face. “Well, obviously they know who’s the biggest threat! They must have heard all about the daring exploits of Usopp, brave warrior of the sea—”
“You really don’t remember anything?” Nami interrupts.
Usopp darts his gaze at her, but she doesn’t look pitying, or blank. Only concerned. Slight bite to her lip.
“Nah,” Usopp says. “Nothing important.”
“Let’s go, then,” Luffy says, and he holds out a hand, and Usopp takes it, pulls himself up to his feet.
On the way, picking through the tall grass, he forges forward ahead of the others. Comes up behind Luffy.
“Luffy,” Usopp says, quietly enough that it can’t be picked up by anyone else.
“Yeah?”
“It wasn’t my fault, was it?”
“What was?”
“This.”
Luffy turns to stare at him, face twisted up in confusion, mouth downturned with the effort of trying to understand. “What’re you talking about?”
“What happened?”
Luffy taps his chin to show how hard he’s thinking about this. “Well, if you don’t remember. There were cool flowers so I said Hey, cool flowers, and then Hey, cool butterflies, but the butterflies turned out to be bad. Very bad. And they hid you away somewhere after you blew a bunch of them up in a really awesome explosion, so we had to beat them all up and get you back. So we did. Also Sanji screamed really loud when one of the butterflies landed on his face one time. Umm, that’s it, don’t think I missed anything important.”
“I gave it all up,” Usopp says.
“Hah?”
Usopp swallows. “Nothing. Never mind.”
Luffy is still staring at him, eyes curious and round.
“You said you’re okay,” Luffy says slowly.
Usopp lets out a breath loud enough to be a laugh. His lungs feel too big for his ribs. Chest scraped tight. “Of course I’m okay. Who do you think I am?”
“You’re Usopp.”
“That’s right.” He puffs out his chest. “Gonna take more than some butterflies to get to me. I’m the bravest warrior of the sea, after all!”
Luffy looks at him. Straw hat on his head. Face blank. He’s going to see straight through him. He’s going to see everything he did, everything he said, the way he folded like so much paper. Like nothing at all. And he’s going to say—
“Good,” Luffy says, and laughs, like he believes him.
The wind.
“Right.” Usopp turns away. “Let’s get back to the Merry—c’mon, I can see it from here.”
And he does, in the distance: the shoreline, the ship waiting patiently for them there.
“Nice! Let’s go!” Luffy starts waving his arms in the air. “Oi! Chopper! Robin! We’re back!”
“They can’t hear you from this far, idiot!”
“Or see you, for that matter.”
“What about now?” Luffy’s arms start stretching real long; a clamour breaks out as everyone realizes his arms are wrapping around them and shooting for the ship.
Usopp just laughs, lets himself be swept up in the commotion, flung relentlessly forward.
But he can’t help himself from looking back.