In Zou, Luffy suddenly says, “Hey,” while they’re waiting for the rest of the provisions to be loaded onto the ship.

The minks have graciously offered to provide both manpower and food, so they’re doing their best to be gracious in turn, delaying their departure so they don’t overwork their generous hosts. Zoro doesn’t mind the wait, really. He has reservations about where they’re headed and isn’t certain that Luffy wants to hear it. “Hm?”

“Once I bring Sanji back, we’ll kick Kaido’s ass. So don’t worry, okay?”

Is he that transparent? Zoro scoffs, shrugging one shoulder as he leans deeper into the shade, trying for nonchalant. “Who’s worried?”

If anything, he’s simply offended that any of the crew would dare think themselves replaceable. He has no idea what to expect from the Animal Kingdom pirates, and things could be thornier than they seem in Big Mom’s territory. Zoro doesn’t like the odds of Luffy pulling off his retrieval plan without getting into a knock-down drag-out fight, either. Stealth is really not his style.

He resigns himself to the low-grade worry that always comes of the crew being too far separated. It’s not like he’d want to leave the cook to his fate, anyway, even if any of them had been open to considering it. “Just don’t take too long.”

“Don’t have fun without me in Wano. I’ll catch up before you know it.” So saying, Luffy offers his hand, to seal it as a promise.

“Aye, captain.” They shake on it, and Zoro laughs.

They huddle together with the Heart Pirates crew that first night, sharing a meal and plans for what’s to come. Obviously, Kin’emon and Law do most of the work, but Usopp and Robin pitch in too. Strategy is not his forte, so Zoro remains close at hand and listens in, claiming the corner of a bench by a porthole.

The truth is, this place makes him uneasy. Polar Tang is a ship whose narrow corridors offer nothing but barked shins and quiet closets when he tries to explore. It feels like a tomb, with its crowded mess hall and dim, dank hallways. If he could, he’d stay above deck; but they’re submerged, so that’s off-limits. Zoro has no choice but to endure the press of bodies and noise until they arrive at their destination.

Worse, he has to do it while somehow managing to maintain his façade of calm. He’s no strategist, doesn’t expect to be asked for his input, but he’s still Luffy’s first mate. Part of being in an alliance is supporting his Captain’s decisions. For now, that means giving Law the respect and support he’d give Luffy, if he were here.

Nobody really bothers him that night. He listens, drifting in and out of a cat nap, awake enough to repeat back what he’s told and affirm his understanding of the plan. For the rest of the week, he ends up acting as primary liaison between his crew and Law’s, if for no other reason than his status as the only Straw Hat ready to hand. Usopp and Robin work tirelessly with Kin’emon to get acquainted with the social mores of Wano. Meanwhile, Franky wheedles his way into the engine room, where he remains for the duration of the trip, tinkering away.

That leaves only Zoro to answer the kinds of questions that rival crews want to ask each other. It’s all stupid stuff, like, ‘where’s your captain going?’ and ‘didn’t you have two eyes?’ and ‘will the cook guy come back?’ or most comically, ‘who would win if our Captain and your Captain got in a fight?’ He answers only the last one, with a pointed grin and a shrug of his shoulder. The lot of them erupt into a frenzy of shouting and squawking, defending their captain’s honor. Pingu- or whatever-the-fuck his name is- pulls him into a headlock while the others boo, demanding he ‘take it back’.

If it weren’t for the everything else, he’d enjoy the company. The Heart Pirates are softer than they come across at first blush, much like their captain, and they seem to like him. As it stands, they’re the one good thing about being cooped up here.

When he’s alone with his thoughts, his blood boils with restless energy. It’s not right, being trapped belowdecks, idle till they reach their destination. It’s not his natural state. His skin starts itching with the need to see the sky, a week in. If anybody realizes how close he comes to cutting a hole in the hull so he can swim to the surface, they have the good grace not to mention it.

Zoro’s had a headache since day two. He resolves never to travel by submarine again.

Eventually, one of the Heart Pirates calls over the intercom: “Land ho! All hands to stations!” Zoro is a guest, not crew, so he’s left to wait while everyone else bustles about, rushing to attend their duties. As he paces the halls, he catches sight of several gigantic, glimmering fish swimming past one of the portholes. The Polar Tang trails along in their wake, following them right up to the edge of Wano’s impenetrable mountain coast.

“Everybody hold on!” The speaker squawks over the intercom, and Zoro realizes that he’s got nothing to grab hold of a second too late to find a better place to be. With a judder and rumble, they begin to ascend the waterfall. Zoro spreads his feet to brace himself instead, with one hand out for balance and the other on Wado Ichimonji’s hilt at his hip. It’s slow going, but not rough, beyond the initial creaking protests as the ship changed angle and began pushing itself against the current. This is why Franky was working round the clock on the Polar Tang’s engine, upgrading it to handle the strain of lifting itself over an otherwise impossible obstacle.

Around a hundred meters up, the whole ship lurches on its side, like it’s thinking about doing a somersault. Despite keeping his feet under him, Zoro’s stomach drops toward his toes. The feeling is unpleasantly familiar. Not scary, so much. Scary was being shot into the clouds without knowing Skypiea would be there to greet them. But he feels disquieted, to be sure.

They know quite a bit about what’s waiting for them in Wano. That’s what makes the air taste so different, when he finally gets to go up on deck. Zoro takes in a deep breath, reveling in the way it fills his lungs, and lets it out slowly through his nose. They’re lucky to have arrived during the day. It’s been too long since they saw the sun.

Law appears beside him on the deck, using his devil fruit to handily avoid everyone currently fighting each other to get up the stairs first. Zoro, having won the proverbial (well, no, it was literal) game of king of the ladder, is currently preventing- Pangon? whatever- from following him up with a smug foot planted over the hatch. He’ll let them up in a minute. Probably. There’s another hatch on the other side of the deck where Bepo has already climbed out. It’s not like they need to use this one.

With a raised eyebrow and a hint of playful meanness, the Heart Pirates’ captain ignores the plight of his crew, allowing Zoro’s prank to pass.

“So this is Wano, huh?”

“Mm. Should make landfall soon.” Law lifts his chin as if resigning himself to his fate, glaring out over the inland sea.

“Took long enough.”

Unlike Zoro, the Heart Pirate Captain spends a great deal of time lost in his head, planning for contingencies, worrying about things like supply lines and who to send on scouting teams. He turns a cryptic frown on Zoro. “Just try to stick to Kin’emon’s plan. We don’t want to draw attention to ourselves early.”

“Of course.” The implicit distrust in his ability to be patient is unwarranted but he doesn’t take it personally. Honestly, this is a significant improvement on the attitude Law brought to their first meeting. The man is at least two full orders of magnitude less irritable since they left Dressrosa.

“Do you remember the plan?”

He levels a wry look at Law, raising his eyebrows to get the point across. They’ve only gone over said plan three times a day for the last two weeks, like a call-and-response where Zoro has been prompted again and again to recite ‘I’m a ronin wandering the Capitol. No killing, no maiming, no starting shit. Yes booze if I find it, and introduce myself as Zorojuro if anybody asks. Report back to Robin once a week and otherwise, no contact with the rest.’ Does he remember the plan? What a pointless question. If Law were smart, he’d ask if Zoro respected the plan. And he does.

Enough.

...for now.

The malcontent twitch of Law’s lips as he visibly chooses not to waste his energy on getting upset over Zoro’s non-answer is something of a victory. He can see the effort it takes to extend him that trust and let the matter go. “Just be ready to disembark in ten minutes. We’ll be close to the coast, but you might have to swim.”

“Sure.” Zoro decides to call Law’s bluff, stepping away from the hatch and making for the rail at the edge of the deck. “Been thinking I might take a dip.”

Before his errant host can stop him, he suits actions to words, leaping over the side into the wonderful, warm embrace of the landlocked Wano sea. It’s fucking glorious. He almost wants to laugh, giddy to be back out in the open and under the sky, where he belongs. It’s not too far a distance to shore, either. Might take an hour or two to paddle all the way there, but he could definitely do it. So he might as w-

“-m!” Zoro drops to the deck of the Polar Tang with a grunt, landing face-first on his stomach. “Wait until we reach land, you idiot.”

Ah, how boring. This is going to be so boring if they have to do it Law’s way. Zoro sighs, folding his elbows under his chin and resting it in the cradle of his forearms. “Yeah, yeah. Whatever you say.”

As Law stomps off to confer with his navigator, Zoro picks himself up, moving to the foredeck to get a better look at where he’s going. A mountain rises from the center of Wano’s clustered islands, huge and dark, an ominous presence in the distance that looms impossibly high. Here and there birds are playing in the waves around them, unbothered by the Polar Tang’s wake, and greenery dapples the coastline. Amidst the forested hills, he spots twisted pine trees not unlike the ones that grow back home, and columns of stone. Those stretch higher than the rest, artificial in construction, a design he doesn’t think he’s seen before. They form great, gray buildings, thin towers with smokestacks sticking out top. Pipes that look like grimy fingers claw the clouds, exuding a stream of noxious, black smoke in billowing whorls. The smoke is pervasive, and the air takes on an acrid, metallic stink as they near the shore.

Zoro wrings out his shirt, resigning himself to the reality of living here for the next however-long. At least all he has to do is stick to the plan.

Stick to the plan, he reminds himself, when the magistrate spills a drink on him in the bar. It’ll be like Mock Town, maybe, and Zoro doesn’t like the idea, but he can handle it. Suffering a few pointless jabs in tolerant, disapproving silence should be a breeze. After all, he’s only been here a few days. If his first check in with Robin includes the words ‘I blew our cover, sorry’ he’ll definitely get scolded.

Maybe he scowls a little, maybe he shifts in his seat to better intimidate the sweaty, overconfident magistrate, maybe he rests a hand on Wado Ichimonji’s hilt. Whatever it is, something draws the man’s attention mid-tirade to his swords, and the magistrate chokes on his tongue.

“Something wrong?” Zoro is pointedly sipping his own cup of sake, pretending there isn’t wine dripping down the side of his skull. What a waste of perfectly good booze. The magistrate stammers, eyes going wide with recognition even as Zoro deepens his frown.

“That- That’s the legendary blade! Shusui!!”

Heads turn, a hundred gazes suddenly skewering him where he sits, all burning with self-important, righteous fury. Well, fuck. This is not his fault, but it may not be possible to defuse the situation peaceably. Still, he tries. He drawls in boredom, “So?”

Stick to the plan. Momo may just be a snot-nosed kid, but he begged for everyone’s help, earnest and desperate. The least Zoro can do is honor his promise and show the kid, and his samurai, some respect. So he lets the magistrate’s men drag him out of the bar, though he might’ve accidentally broken a few noses along the way, magistrate included. Hopefully the fight won’t be spoken of too publicly, since there’s supposed to be a moratorium on fighting guys around here, and Zoro is fairly certain he’s even, maybe, especially not supposed to have been fighting these specific guys, too.

Shit. He wishes Luffy were here. He never gets into trouble like this with Luffy.

Stick to the plan, he tells himself, as accusations fly about theft and assault and he’s locked, in short order, in a holding cell to await trial, separated from his swords. He wishes he could punch the magistrate in the face again. He should have, but he was holding back. The last time Zoro was locked up by a government official, he wasn’t even a pirate. There’s nothing pleasant about revisiting the scenario, especially since he wasn’t really free to fight back as he knows he could have. It chafes his ego. He endures.

This plan is stupid, but his cover’s not blown- not yet. So he sets his jaw and crosses his arms over his chest and waits for the magistrate to decide what to do with him, pacing the length and breadth of his tiny cell in measured, even steps. It takes three days for the bastard to come back to him; three days without food or drink, and even Zoro can’t get by very long without water.

He knows less about the politics of Wano than his crew, at this point, but he understands the basics. This is one of the usurper-shogun’s watchdogs, a magistrate working for Orochi and the absolute worst possible person to show their hand to at this early juncture. Nobody had explicitly told him to consider contingencies for if something like this should happen, but Zoro can connect the dots enough to assume a general course of action.

If it’s at all possible to do without dying, he’s supposed to let this bastard win. For now.

The magistrate is a mean-looking tryhard, and quivers in fear when Zoro looks directly at him. He snivels and simpers, even to his prisoner, even when he has the upper hand and has stolen Zoro’s swords, anyway. It’s infuriating to look at him, carrying them like a prize. He fondles Shusui with self-satisfaction, like he’s gotten away with something.

Disgusting asshole.

“So, Zorojuro,” says the magistrate, parading back and forth before the cell doors with an air of self-importance. “You are a ronin, and a thief. Where did you come across the black blade?”

He narrows his eye and says the truth, not that he expects to be believed. “I won it fair and square in a duel. I’m not a thief.”

Both magistrate and guard scoff, sharing a laugh at his expense.

“Let me out of here and duel me yourself,” Zoro says, because he’s hungry and his hands are starting to tremor with dehydration and the plan is really not working for him, right now, but he’s trying to bend it to suit him, anyway. “See for yourself if I’m telling the truth.”

“Me? Duel a lowly ronin?” As if he can’t decide whether to laugh or be offended, the magistrate swoons, sweeping a dramatic hand over his brow. Zoro isn’t fooled. The asshole is just a coward. “The sheer audacity of even asking for such a thing! No, fool. I’ve recovered our nation’s sacred treasure. I don’t care how you got it, only that it’s been returned.”

It seems to Zoro that the man is likely planning to keep said treasure for himself, but it doesn’t bear mentioning, since they’re both perfectly aware of what kind of man the magistrate is. Instead, he waits for the silence to bother the man, letting his enemy’s anxiety do the inquiring for him. His unspoken question is simple: what will the magistrate do with him, then?

“I’ve looked into you, Zorojuro. I thought surely a man of your wicked talents would have a long history of thievery across the land. Yet you’ve committed no other crimes, and nobody seems to have heard ill of you in the other provinces. You hail from Ringo, do you not?”

Having no idea what that is, Zoro simply rolls with it, narrowing his eye and giving a nod with confidence to sell his lie. The magistrate looks pleased with himself, and puffs up his chest.

“Predictable. The land of wandering trash! I suppose you’re only a product of your upbringing.”

He knows an insult when he hears one, but he’s trying to stick to the plan, and this is starting to look like a way out of the cell. His throat is so dry. He bites his tongue, keeping his expression neutral and meeting the magistrate’s gaze evenly, without challenge. The man’s simpering smile turns uneasy. Zoro does not flinch first.

“Hah! Well! You know, I’m almost of a mind to grant you a pardon, after receiving such an unexpected gift!”

Zoro holds his peace. He has no intention of letting Shusui go in the long-term, but a pardon would mean staying out of trouble, for now. This is the magistrate’s game, so Zoro plays along, prompting “Almost?”

“Yes! Yes, I think- I think I have an idea,” says the magistrate, motioning for the guard to step forward from where he’d been waiting oh-so-dutifully at the door. It had escaped Zoro’s notice, before, but the guard has a plate in one hand, porcelain white and painted with faint blue birds. An unfamiliar, overripe fruit sits on it, its skin vibrant red and marred in patches with sickly yellow bumps, uneven and irregular. They stick out on the fruit’s otherwise smooth skin, and there’s a bite taken out of the back. It doesn’t quite look like an apple. It doesn’t quite look like a devil fruit, either, though Zoro’s only ever seen illustrations of them, and wasn’t particularly interested to memorize their morphology.

In spite of his best efforts, the sight of the damn thing makes him hungry. Whatever else it might be, it’s definitely food. Galling, to be so weak after only three days. He’s withstood worse before with less complaint.

The magistrate smiles, looking at the fruit because he’s still so damn scared of Zoro. He says, “I’ve made up my mind! I’ll offer you a deal. All you have to do is eat this fruit, Zorojuro. And when you do...we will consider your guilt absolved.”

He’s wary, of course. Sycophants like this don’t understand the first thing about honor. If he were free to act as he pleased, he thinks he would refuse on principle and then burn the building down. It chafes to bow his head, to even allow himself to be held in this prison cell, pretending at humility and shame he doesn’t feel.

But.

If this will ‘absolve’ him, he can lick his wounds once they’ve let him out. Pride won’t serve him here.

He picks up the fruit and steels himself, biting into the mealy, sickly white flesh of it. Repulsive though it might be, he is hungry, so in a way this so-called punishment is a bit of a blessing. He forces himself to keep going, swallowing down bite after bite until the whole sickly sweet, sugar-tasting thing is in his gullet.

It’s hard to keep down, but he does. The magistrate seems pleased, the air between them filled with anticipation, tension. Zoro meets his eye when the fruit is gone, cracks a smile, says, “Your move, verily,” with a huff of barely contained laughter.

The answering smile on that man’s face is twisted. He doesn’t deserve Zoro’s restraint, but he benefits from it (for now), because Zoro lets him leave without a further word, watching him walk away while every instinct whispers hungrily to spill this bastard’s blood.

At first, he doesn’t realize he’s changed.

It’s like having a cough. It’s almost, almost fine, almost unnoticeable. It’s a constant lingering twitch in the corners of his mouth, makes him think he’s about to sneeze. At any moment it could just, it could crest over into wheezing, and then his lungs will seize and the reflex takes hold and he’ll laugh.

There’s no reason to worry about it, though. This is nothing. He’s had worse.

When they change the rules on him and force him to show his hand after all, he does it with a smile. The magistrate won’t die of his wound, but he will remember it, whenever the cold aches his scar, for the rest of his life. Zoro makes sure of that. He decides that Kin’emon will just have to forgive him for breaking cover, later, and fights his way out of town. Shusui has been stolen, but Zoro reclaims Wado Ichimonji and Sandai Kitetsu in the fracas that follows.

Easy. Laughably easy. He chuckles as he dispatches the last of his pursuers and wanders out the city gate. He should probably linger a while, go check in with Robin, but sees no point. What would he say? ‘Sorry, I couldn’t stand that guy’s face anymore.’

‘Sorry, I know it was important. Just didn’t want to die.’

‘Sorry, I should’ve just trusted my gut and kicked their asses back at the bar, but how was I supposed to know it was going to get this bad?’

He laughs, hand to his head, and crouches down by the river, out of breath. Robin and the others can remain in position so long as they have no contact with him, but meeting up would endanger things further. To some degree, he’s sure they all expected this to happen. No plan has ever survived contact with Luffy in the first place, and he’s more than a little alike to his captain.

“Sorry,” he says aloud, and bursts into a fit of laughter so intense it leaves him wheezing for breath.

Fuck. Maybe it’ll wear off, in a bit. He decides to disappear from the capitol, and makes himself scarce, instead.

How long has he been out here?

He lies alone under the stars, hungry and lost – he can admit that to himself, at least – and tries to meditate. This is just like Thriller Bark, he thinks, and so he can’t make it Luffy’s problem. There’s enough problems in Wano without that.

Zoro has always been a quiet person. The hyena cackle of his own breathing feels like a loss of self, so noisy, so distracting. He can hardly stop it from bubbling up, after a while; he can’t even grimace, just grins up at the sky, helpless to do anything but laugh and laugh.

Meditation has come easily to Zoro since he was quite small. It’s not that he considers himself especially intelligent – he knows what he needs to know and that’s enough – but he is very intuitive. He finds the process of following the flow of his breath and his thoughts to be as simple as admiring the lull of ocean waves, or the crackling of a fire. Even now he has the discipline necessary to still that tremor in his diaphragm, at least for a little while: it’s just that the longer he suppresses the sensation, the stronger it becomes. He stills himself, sits up by the fire, hands on his knees and head tipped back, and he makes it to thirty four unimpeded breaths before a titter jars him out of his rhythm. It starts soft, almost strangled, and runs away with him, turning into uncontrollable giggles, a coughing chuckle, a roaring laugh that seems as though it’ll never stop, his chest aching for breath. He laughs until there are tears of frustration in his eye, until he’s exhausted.

He tries to sleep, telling himself he’ll figure it out in the morning.

But when he wakes to the sound of his own breathing, huffing with faint, frenzied laughter, an overwhelming dread takes root in his chest.

The water out here tastes wrong. It’s an ashy aftertaste, silty and thick, sticky in the mouth. It makes him gag, but he can ignore it, more or less. He’s well aware that he’ll die if he avoids the water entirely. So he drinks deeply and well for the sake of survival and tries not to think about why certain sections of the river are milky and gray. He catches and eats the fish he spies, sluggishly struggling through the shallows, but those taste wrong too.

Maybe it’s simply that he’s used to that shit cook’s cooking, by now. He tries to tell himself that’s all it is.

Zoro half-imagines the sludgy water might be making his symptoms worse, as he cups a handful to his mouth and drinks. The fruit- whatever it was- must have been the original cause. He’s sure the magistrate knew it would do this to him, rob him of his dignity. How frustrating that it’s too late to go back and kill the bastard now.

His cheeks twitch, weary from the effort of making this near-permanent grin. He’s been trying to fight it. Day after day he practices meditative breathing even as he lets his face stretch in a smile of its own making. Then he forces a frown even as he lets his hah haha ha breath run ragged, noisome and offensive to his ears. Frowning is very difficult, like he’s losing the muscle control to do it. He’s wringing himself out, weakening his body by trying to resist the impulse.

At least it’s not a total loss of self-control. He can still starve himself or feast as he pleases, still fight and still stop his sword. He can still hear the world breathing. It’s just his own ability to breathe that’s been compromised.

With nothing to do but wait and hope, he travels. Wano is not the biggest country they’ve ever visited, but it’s up there, and the land is quite diverse, and beautiful. He enjoys the snowy lowlands, the steppes, the densely forested coast. There’s a wasteland of a desert he can see below the ruins of this old, lonely castle on the hill. There’s the factories, with their ominous smokestacks, everywhere he looks. He can’t help but notice that this is a nation occupied.

Occasionally, he meets people in trouble as he wanders. He helps them, cutting down the monsters that prey on the poor- not because he’s nice or a hero or anything misguided like that. Rather, it’s good practice. More than that, he’d feel conflicted about his plans to reclaim and keep Shusui if he didn’t defend the common people of her homeland. That’s the bargain he’s struck in his head with himself, anyway. It feels necessary to appeal to his own sense of honor, trying to counter the tiny part of him that insists he didn’t really earn Shusui because he wasn’t really fighting Ryuuma, that day.

Those people call him a ronin, a wandering blade with no master, and he sees the sense in it. Luffy is not yet here, and so for the time being, that appellation is more or less accurate. They also never ask about his grin. They give him pitying looks. The only ones whose company he endures for more than the time it takes to protect them are those whose faces look just like his, masklike, ghoulishly grinning even when there’s no reason for it at all.

Eventually, he has to admit that trying to suppress the urge is only making it worse. What constantly twitches in the back of his throat as a half-laugh when he doesn’t concentrate on stifling it becomes a belly-aching guffaw before long. It’s hard to breathe, it interrupts katas and makes him useless with his swords. He has to train himself to hold a sword in his teeth again, wheezing around the hilt with a meandering giggle. For the time being, he decides not to worry about it. It’s not like he has a third anyway.

Maybe his condition will wear off by the time Shusui is reclaimed. It takes everything he has to choke back a snicker, throat seizing as he tries to lock it away. By contrast, when Zoro simply lets it bubble out of him, ebbing and flowing with exertion and nothing else, it’s not so bad.

Or so he thinks, until he liberates some liquor from bandits outside of a place called Kuri, and someone familiar appears in this unfamiliar land.

“Is that Zoro?!”

“Luffy!!” he calls out, and for the first time in weeks the expression on his face sits right. He’s genuinely happy to see his captain, relieved, exultant- it doesn’t even matter that he can’t stop smiling after they’ve collided in what no self-respecting warrior would admit is a bear-hug (most of which done by Luffy, who damn well knows his own strength but is also endearingly excitable).

They talk a little, enough, but Zoro keeps to himself, holds onto that careful ebb and flow, hopes it’s not too strange. When the little girl Tama is suddenly snagged up by smile users, he can’t contain a wicked chuckle at the thought of what he’ll do to those bastards. He catches Luffy sending him a puzzled look, as if trying to recalculate his thoughts on his first mate. The best-case scenario will be him interpreting all this as ‘Zoro’s exceptionally bloodthirsty today’.

Zoro doesn’t have high hopes for how this will go. He leaps onto the lion-dog’s back and fortunately, Luffy doesn’t say anything.

All he can think to himself is good and I have to get ahead of him or something so he doesn’t hear me and the searing pull of his throat working against him spurs him onward. ‘Rescuing Tama’ becomes ‘Breaking into Bakura town’ and ‘Kicking a sumo’s ass’ and then ‘stealing a food barge’ and somehow, while things are in the middle of getting out of hand, they meet up with a samurai named Kiku and Trafalgar Law. On the way back to Kuri, things are animated, people are busy. They drop off the food there and the townsfolk are so relieved to have something safe to eat that Zoro manages to avoid talking much. Naturally, Law is pissed, though he’s needlessly quick to blame Zoro for what was obviously Luffy’s idea. It’s almost like the high-strung Heart Pirate captain had expected some kind of restraining effect on Luffy via Zoro’s wisdom or judgment or whatever. Which is laughable. Nobody can stop Luffy from doing what he wants to do anyway.

Kind of like the rumbling laughter building up in Zoro’s chest.

As they start to head for the ruins of Oden castle, Zoro climbs astride a tiger, thinking this must be Komainu. Whatever the lion is that the others are riding, it looks crowded over there. The two great beasts run side by side, and Zoro catches the sound of Luffy pulling Law closer to ask him a question and ah. He’s frowning at Zoro. They both are. Come to think of it, he’d gotten a strange look from Law when they collided in the middle of Bakura town earlier. He’d been avoiding close contact with the man, certain a doctor would immediately clock his odd behavior.

He doesn’t listen to their conversation. It’s hushed enough, and they’re out in the open air and he’s far enough ahead, that the words would not be easy to hear, anyway. The tiger veers to the side of a bush, and down a hill, and it’s weird how the lion doesn’t do the same. Maybe this is a short cut.

Or maybe this time it’s not so much an accident that Zoro lets himself get lost. He needs time to think, time to practice.

He can’t have Luffy worrying about him right now.

He finds himself eventually in a port town, bustling with little fisher boats and travelers and locals mingling together. The air is filled with a general sense of contentment that is lacking in most of the country, which he suspects means the food here is safe to eat. That means it’s good enough for Zoro, because while he can endure the pain and indigestion that comes of eating poisoned food, it’s not his preference, generally speaking.

This place isn’t remotely where he was trying to go, though; he can’t seem to sight the mountain the castle was on, either, despite scanning the horizon as best he can. Lot of water in the one direction, and just hills in the other. The country of Wano is a place of strange extremes: beautiful and despoiled in alternating patches, like a checkerboard. Zoro follows his stomach to the tavern, since this place at least is less despoiled than some, and sits down for a drink while he’s at it.

The meal is warm and fresh, the booze an unusual ricewine that hits his belly right, sour and strong. It doesn’t feel quite so odd, drinking booze with his face twisted in this rigor mortis grin. Same way it felt right to smile at the sight of Luffy, or when the little kid was laughing and eating her fill.

Zoro has enough money on him to pay for a few mugs, before he catches the eye of someone who thinks he’s a sucker. The asshole invites him to the betting table in the back, where they’re playing some kind of tile-based game he doesn’t know. With his coinpurse this light, Zoro considers the invitation kismet, and accepts.

They make the mistake of welcoming him to their table and try to explain the rules. There’s dice and tiles and...fuck if he knows what any of it is about. He rolls as told and wins the pot in three turns, hardly aware of it himself. “Beginner’s luck!” sneers the guy who came to grab him, drawing a knife. “Or you’re a dirty cheat!”

As one, the table turns on him. They’re idiots, all seven of them, and small fry to boot. Zoro takes actual pleasure in collecting their coin after he takes them down, allows himself to boil over with a sick, hacking laugh at their bloodied and bruised bodies. He hasn’t taken their lives; they should be grateful. It would be a simple matter to dispose of the lot of them, less so to keep a low profile with the rest of the tavern if he did. As it is there’s fear in the barkeep’s eye, and Zoro doesn’t really want to fight the port’s entire guard force, so he excuses himself from the scene.

Outside the tavern, he’s called to by a short, smiling man who introduces himself as Tonoyasu and asks to travel together.

Zoro favors him with a smirk. “Oh? You saw me handle those morons and you still want to ask that?”

“Absolutely! Oh, yes, of course! Why,” Yasu claps and shakes his hips, caroling with laughter. “I sensed in you a kindred spirit! I absolutely must show you the way!”

With a grin, (not that he has a choice), Zoro accepts.

Yasu makes for talkative company. The sound of his voice is a pleasant distraction from the heavy wheeze of Zoro’s own incurable laughter. He buys takoyaki from a street vendor before they head out of town, gives Zoro the lion’s share ‘for the excellent show!’, and has a good head for directions. Perhaps most notably, though, he wears the same endless smile that Zoro does.

So he stays in step with Yasu, following along and huffing with laughter now and then as they crest a hill. From there, they begin winding their way down toward an unfamiliar, dusty town nestled in close to the capital.

Yasu almost never stops dancing about, joyfully leading the way. Unlike Zoro, he seems to have embraced his enforced happiness, and it makes the pressure easier to bear, somehow. Nevermind how the giddiness in his voice is nearly hysteric: at least he isn’t at war with himself. All the same, Zoro is plagued by the stray thought, the question that would be better left unasked: Is this a mirror of his future? The thought fills him with panic, pushes a chattering chuckle out of his chest, louder than the raspy wheezing he’s allowed himself thus far.

“Oh!” With a spin on one heel and an over-exaggerated double-take, Yasu beams up at him. “Did you just laugh, good ronin? Ahh, but I thought my jokes were boring you! I’m glad to see you cheering up!”

He feels murderous. Terrified. Nothing even close to what Yasu is describing, and yet-

And yet, he is oddly more at ease in Yasu’s presence than he had been for a month prior. It’s strange: A filter of false cheer warps his words; and when he speaks, it comes out boisterous; even so, he almost doesn’t mind, because they share this affliction. He hadn’t realized how alone he felt until today.

He says, “I was thinking that our faces look the same.”

Yasu’s eyes speak for him, even as his grin turns wider still. He wears the weariness of years of degradation, years of hunger and illness that have worn him down to nearly nothing. Even so, he has determination, a warrior’s passion that Zoro finds admirable. “So they do, so they do. And yet I know you must not hail from Ebisu! Even though you surely have the smile for it, after all.”

“That’s what it was, right? Smile fruit.” Zoro thinks back to Punk Hazard, when first they heard about this stuff. In retrospect, he wonders if Law knew. The alliance he’d proposed always was to bring down Kaido, in the end. If he hadn’t known, he must at least have suspected.

“Ahh, yes! You’ve eaten some as well, I see.” Yasu dances about, cackling like mad. The sound is too much like sorrow, and Zoro’s skin prickles with chills. “You didn’t know what would happen?”

“I had doubts,” Zoro allows, “But there was no choice.”

With a canny look and a sympathetic chuckle, Yasu lapses into silence for the first time since he appeared in the port town. For a short time, their muffled steps in the dust and the low whine of the wind are the only voices to be heard. This part of the country is desolate and still, no wildlife to speak of, no vegetation.

Given his easy acceptance and ready understanding of the situation, Yasu must have seen more than just Zoro and himself beset by this affliction.

“Is that common?”

“For Orochi’s men to feed the destitute with their leftover smiles?” Yasu wonders. Zoro nods, and he gives a weak chuckle. “Oh, yes. I’m afraid it’s all too common in the town of Ebisu, my unfortunate friend! How could we do anything but eat what we were offered, in our desperation?”

“There is no choice,” Zoro agrees, and Yasu seems earnestly delighted to be understood.

“Right!”

It hasn’t been spelled out for him in so many words, but Zoro can connect the dots. Smile fruits- artificially produced and shipped here by that piece of shit Caesar and Doflamingo’s operation in Dressrosa- must be the same as what that pathetic magistrate made him eat. He had wondered about the bite taken out of it, before. But if it was a smile fruit, then it must’ve been the bite for the actual user. Robin told him once that devil fruits are like that: only the first bite has any power in it, and the rest of the fruit doesn’t do anything. So then the magistrate had had a leftover smile fruit from someone in Kaido’s operation, and wanted to use it to poison Zoro, to punish him.

Maybe, he thinks, Doflamingo named them ‘smile’ for this.

“Everyone that’s eaten it is like this?” He feels the unnatural stretch of his smile more keenly now, as if admitting the problem exists has made it worse, somehow. Or maybe it’s just that he’s struggling to control his breathing again, self-conscious despite the fact that Yasu, at least, understands exactly how he feels.

“Mm,” Yasu nods. “You have to hold onto life when you can. No soldier ever won a war against his own empty belly!”

In Ebisu town, Zoro sleeps well for the first time since he took the magistrate’s bargain, and doesn’t worry about who might catch him dreaming with a rictus grin on his face.

They have almost nothing, but they laugh. They’re sick and dying, but they laugh. They feel the isolation of the usurper’s cruelty, and they laugh. They look at Zoro with recognition and friendship, and they laugh.

This is not a place of safety, too close to the flower capitol for such a distinction. After one night’s stay, he thanks them and bids them farewell. He has never felt so at home in a village in his life, not even in childhood. Yasu waves farewell to him, and wishes him a safe journey, and Zoro thanks him.

In the grim predawn, he tries to make his way to the Oden castle ruins a second time.

Something must have turned him around. He passes through vaguely familiar city streets, the only figure moving in this sleepy prelude to morning. It smells faintly of cherry blossoms, and under that, piss and sake.

Ah. The capitol.

Something possesses him, some fury that tells him now is the time to take back the sword. After all, he won the Shusui by dint of honorable combat. That much has not changed. He makes his way to where the magistrate had put the blade on display when last he was here, doesn’t question how sure his feet are when he knows, he knows, he’s never been able to navigate without going the long way round. If pressed for an explanation, he would only say that the sword is calling to him.

As it turns out, not only him. He arrives second, in time to watch a massive, dark shadow of a man crash through the wall and dash away with the Shusui and several other fine weapons strapped to his back.

With a rib-cracking cackle, he lunges after the weapon-thief in hot pursuit, as fast as his feet can carry him.

Ringo is cold.

Zoro doesn’t quite have the affinity for snowy weather that Chopper does, but he prefers it to the heat. There’s a bracing sharpness to every breath that, usually, he relishes. It’s as though each and every gasp for air is proof that he’s still alive. Only now, each breath is harder won than it was before, as if he were having some allergic reaction to his own existence. His rhythm shudders and jumps with endless, wavering laughter. Even when he’s simply breathing heavily, it haunts him, puts his hackles up. He’s already well and truly in a foul mood by the time he comes upon the weapon-thief, a strange, huge man who guards an unknown bridge.

He lets himself ease into the role of callous swordsman, moved that way by the weapon-thief’s very hasty judgment of him. He lets himself cackle when he breaks the stranger’s guard. He would even let himself kill today, he’s had such a terrible week, but fate has other plans. The only reason things change is the woman’s scream and, under it, the distant sound of childish laughter.

Familiar. Not this child in particular, he doesn’t know her, but the boiling of it, bubbling and frothing out of her in panicked waves, Zoro knows that sound too intimately. He forgets himself. He turns around to look.

The weapon-thief tries to slip under his guard. (He’d never allow a wound to his back over something so foolish, so underhanded.) “Back off!” he hollers, howling with laughter. “Don’t you have eyes?”

“What do they matter? We have not finished our duel!”

Zoro bites down on a giggle, almost shrieking, and grins, gritting his teeth against the sound until it burns in his throat. He wells up like a fresh wound with the intent to cut, to chastise. He kisses Wado Ichimonji’s edge to the thief’s cheek, chiding him, voice gone rough with glee. “Be patient. I’ll be back before you know it!”

He doesn’t give the thief another glance. Dashing across the snow, a feral fury lights in his chest at the sight of a man in pursuit of the woman and child. The woman calls out for help, and Zoro gleefully accepts her request, asking for food and drink if they all survive.

Then his blades connect with the other man’s, and a shock of recognition stings the back of his throat, as if he’d been run through.

“You! Haahahaha- you too!!” He breaks the man’s guard- what’s his name, Kidd pirate’s first mate- and comes close enough to see the mirror image anguish in those wild, wild eyes. “Why are you here, though? Heh! Hhhh with Kaido?”

The Kidd pirates were supposed to be in an alliance with that stodgy asshole, Hawkins. Zoro remembers clashing with him before losing sight of the others. And Hawkins is definitely working here under the Animal pirates, so Zoro can assume that this means they’re all in the same boat, doesn’t it?

Probably, he would, if he didn’t know that sound so intimately.

This one- what was his name?- has a wheezing, weeping sort of laugh. He looks as though he’s been driven into a frenzy, like he’s forgotten himself in the flow of it all. His body twitches, painful spasms wracking his chest even as he spins his scythes and lunges forward. A treacherous little licking flame of bloodlust curls in his ribs, hot as a forge. Zoro hasn’t killed in ages, but he wants to, tonight. They both do, don’t they? It’s freeing, in a way. The Kidd pirate fights tooth and nail to cut through Zoro and disembowel the woman and child. Maybe it would be a mercy for Zoro to return that intent, but he’s not certain yet. He forces himself to defend, breath uneven ha HHHhh, hard to breathe, hahaha heh! Hehehehehihh his heart is pounding and if they’re coming from the capitol, then can he really be sure this is not simply a twisted reflection of what the magistrate had intended to do with him, when all was said and done?

“Haha! Are you?” he demands, because he wants to know if he’s been understood.

He doesn’t get an answer. The man’s too lost, disassociating or brainwashed, Zoro can’t tell. He wails and he laughs and he attacks too fiercely for Zoro not to grant him full focus. He loses himself to the fight, launching into the air to interrupt his opponent’s attacks. Of the two of them, he is slightly slower over land. The world narrows to Wado Ichimonji, Sandai Kitetsu, Zoro, the scythes in his enemy’s hands. His ears are roaring. The air crackles with unexpressed intent, all the hairs standing up on end along his arms and legs as he feels the nearness of something tremendous. Where is that coming from? Is it the Kidd pirate? No, wait, is it him?

In that moment, the weapon-thief lunges after Zoro’s unguarded flank and Zoro has to twist to the side so he doesn’t take a spear through his back.

It nicks his throat instead, and in the same instant the Kidd pirate punches through his shoulder with a scythe. Agony. Zoro rapidly comes to the conclusion that he has only seconds to pull out of this, staggering to the side, all senses draining into the narrow point of focus that is the enemy in front.

He hasn’t trained with a blade in his mouth since the first attempt left him gasping for breath, laughing over Wado Ichimonji in the dirt. He loves his swords too much to disrespect them by risking the same thing will happen twice, but he has to win this, he has no choice. It’s not only his life on the line. So he opens his jaw, like a wolf, like a dragon, and roars with laughter, hissing and chuckling and wrenching the scythe from his enemy’s grip as he spins out of range of the weapons-thief, too. Let the bridge be a problem for later. For now, Zoro has a third blade, and it’s no sword but it will have to do.

The scythe is too heavy, not weighted well. Still better than nothing. Blood seeps from his shoulder, his neck is warm and slick with it. Each breath gurgles, bubbles uncomfortably. He throws everything into a rush, attacking full force. It doesn’t have to be perfect, just enough: enough to drive his opponent off, enough to wound, enough to delay. Enough to ensure that there’s only the thief left to contend with, when the sparks fade and the clash ends.

It works.

It works, but Zoro’s body collapses after, leaving him a mess of blood and wheezing chuckles in the snow.

Ringo is cold.

Dreams of a childhood winter blanket his mind. He has not thought of mother consciously in years, but her image is there: the softness of the garden she kept; the sharpness of the sword she wielded after father died; and the lines of pain on her face. Last time this sight was in his mind, he hadn’t yet set out to sea. He remembers thinking that those frown lines aged her, made her look invincibly strong, mature, unstoppable. Here in this strange half-memory, he realizes how young she was. I’ll soon have outlived her, crosses his mind. There’s a pain to the thought that has nothing to do with the feverish heat in his neck and shoulder.

In this hazy, half-recalled time, they walk home from the market, Zoro carrying the sack of rice while mother handles the radishes and a bottle of vinegar. She might be speaking, might not. Her hands are callused and strong. One comes to rest on his shoulder heavily, making the pain throb and twitch, getting hotter. He understands, subconsciously, that he must bear it. Maybe there is a selfish part of him that yearns to stay here, in this foggy memory, and soak up the comfort he has not sought in such a very long time.

Something shifts- sound outside, as of a ladle clanking against the edge of a pot- and a smile breaks over his face.

“Are you hungry?” It’s been too long by far to remember the timbre of her voice. His mind supplies intent without sound, but he understands that this is mother, looking after him.

He nods. He had never been a very talkative person, even then. Her white-hot grip on his shoulder eases and he feels almost dizzy. Relief rolls in in the wake of pain.

“All right, let’s wash up. Oh, and bring your swords, I’ll show you how to clean them.”

His stomach swoops in desperation. His swords? No, wait. They’re not- Where are they? Shusui is still missing, and Wado Ichimonji is- Where-?

He bolts awake, grabbing blindly. My- “-swords!”

Not home. Winter, though. He realizes he’s been bandaged when the gauze pulls painfully on fresh scabs. Someone has applied them directly to his skin, no poultice; must not understand how to care for wounds. This presents a small problem, as Zoro will have to tear off the bandages (and probably the scab that glued itself to them as his blood dried), then clean the wounds anew, applying things properly. He hasn’t got the energy to do it right now, though, much less be annoyed about it. Whoever helped him meant well. After all, they’re still here. Who-?

Oh. The woman.

The child, too, tittering anxiously. He’d almost forgotten, in the moment, the way his breath answers hers, that same disrupted rhythm. To his relief, the woman points out his swords without further prompting. Both have been carefully cleaned and laid at his side. It hurts to sit up, but he does so, checks the blades to be sure the cleaning was done properly.

Well. (He laughs, unknowingly. It seems to put the child at ease.) She may not understand how to wrap a wound, but at least the woman understands swords. And as she makes good on her promise to pay him with food and booze, Zoro is not too proud to give her thanks.

He worries about the child. He still wonders if the affliction gets worse the more of smile you eat. Is the constant birdsong of her nervous tittering simply stress? He thinks of Ebisu town. He asks if that’s where the child is from and she says yes, laughing in a facsimile of delight, agitated by his agitation, her voice climbing higher, shrill with anxiety that is entirely his fault. After that, Zoro puts more effort into radiating calm, letting the ebb and flow of his breath ease through his chest so he doesn’t frighten her.

It’s still possible for him to breathe silently. He can feel the microscopic hitches of his laughter even then, but sound he can conceal, with concentration. Toko is not so. She is a constant stream of uneasy, forced giggles, fingers twitching and dancing on the knees of her little kimono, as though she can hardly stand to sit still. It has to have affected her more severely. Children, through no fault of their own, are weaker than adults. And smile fruits are related to devil fruits, aren’t they? Zoro wonders if there are other symptoms, hidden ones, that she is suffering in (jovial) silence. Maybe it is not her size or constitution, though, maybe the severity he’s witnessing here is only the progression of this poison, toward its final stage. Maybe Zoro, too, will find himself restlessly fidgeting in place, his voice louder and more frenzied. Maybe it will become more difficult to ignore or suppress these symptoms or maybe, worst of all, it will become so normal to him he no longer realizes that something is wrong-

HHHhhhhh! His breath burns, and he tries and tries for air but nothing gets in until he lets his jaw loosen enough to spit the jackal-laugh out Heheheh- he’s panicking. Stupid.

He needs to find his center again. Toko responds to his little outburst with a peal of ringing laughter, and the woman tries to soothe her while Zoro grits his teeth, wrestling himself back under some semblance of control. Even when she isn’t doing it consciously, he notices how Toko’s eyes flick back to him again and again: not the wary glances from when he first awoke, anymore, but the sort of look a child gives a parent, trying to gauge how they should react. If he is calm, she can be calm. If he is tense, she will be tense. He doesn’t deserve this role, this trust, but it was for the child that he acted so quickly, out there in the snow. Maybe he doesn’t get to decide how she feels about it.

After feeding him, the woman prizes out of him his affiliation with the samurai, all too eager to know the truth of his cause. If it weren’t for Toko he wouldn’t trust her enough to speak of it, but he admits some things, knowing Kin’emon, and then the woman tells him of their own plight, why they fled the city, who she is, who her father was.

“Momo’s sister, then,” he grins, and she is too pleased to be recognized, forgets to complain about his lack of manners. Preferable, really. Zoro has never been well-mannered even once in his life, and he has no intention to change.

Toko tells the joke about her name at least twice more, and when Zoro laughs at her joke each time (is this different from tolerating Brook’s skull jokes? Not even slightly), the tension palpably leaves the air. It’s like being around Chopper while he’s trying not to worry the little deer about some scrape that isn’t that serious. This is a skill Zoro has practiced before, gives him a way to steady himself. Food and drink and information, all for a nick in his throat and a bite in his shoulder. Not bad.

He tries to stay alert after he’s filled his belly, but the low spike of pain and the spreading warmth of satiation both make him sleepy. He doesn’t even consciously recall lying down, but he drowsily marks the sudden appearance of a small, child-sized warmth against his side as he’s drifting toward sleep, and lets a wry chuckle pass his lips. What a presumptuous child.

He wonders if there is a way to remove the toxin from her body, like the children from Punk Hazard. The idea of seeking out a cure for this malady had not even crossed his mind till now, as if he’d simply assumed there is no way to come back from what’s done. After all, a devil-fruit user is only parted from their gifts and curse by death, but, well. It isn’t as though he actually ate a devil fruit, is it? His own complacency in this matter disgusts him.

Under the disgust, however, he finds the fear that motivates his cowardice. To ask Chopper about a cure for such an affliction, presuming he can even find the little deer, would be to admit the problem exists at all.

But for this child’s sake, maybe he can swallow his pride. He resolves, as sleep creeps over him in earnest, to ask the doctor about a cure, should the opportunity arise.

Brook notices right away. (Is he getting worse at hiding it, or did Luffy simply not say anything?) He only tilts his skull at a curious angle, and says Zoro’s name- doesn’t breach the subject while in the presence of Hiyori and Toko- but that is because Zoro gives a minute shake of his head, no.

The discovery that Tonoyasu is slated for execution, that he was the one giving out gifts of food and money to the poor, is only slightly more of a shock than Toko’s joyous, terrified scream That’s my daddy!!! as she tears away into the snow, faster on little legs than she has any right to be. Zoro is an endurance runner, better at long distances over time than sprinting; Brook is light on his feet, but the snow is so thick he loses his advantage, unable to skate across it the same way he can water.

It’s shocking, how close they were to the capitol.

Zoro hasn’t witnessed an execution in a long, long time. It’s as awful as he remembers. It wells up in his gut, horror, fury, and escapes him in a wheezing, painful haa- as the smile cracks over his face, and around him the people of Ebisu wail with teary giggles, and Toko shrieks with gales of it, daddy! DADDY! While Hiyori sobs into Zoro’s shirt. It’s his second, helpless laugh that finally makes her realize what he’d been trying to conceal.

He doesn’t need her to explain to him why the people of Ebisu are smiling as they mourn. He knows.

He knows.

It’s paralyzing, until they threaten to kill the child. For her, he can claw his way out of his disbelief, his shock. Zoro resolves in that moment that he will kill the usurper, and keep Toko safe. Tonoyasu’s honor demands it.

(The former, he is denied for now. The latter, well, he is not the only one in the capitol at that moment, so he is able to see it through, passing the miserable child off to the shitty cook.) He doesn’t miss the worried, almost furious look that crosses his crewmate’s face at the sight of Zoro’s bloodthirsty (uncontrolled) smirk, but he doesn’t correct the assumption being made about him either.

Somehow, he ends up guarding the woman. Somehow, they find their way to a secluded cabin in the forest behind the castle, chased by assassins who recognized her face. This knowledge does them no good in death. Zoro hasn’t killed this many people in a long, long time, but well, the circumstances demand it.

It’s been quiet for hours by the time sunset brings the peace of twilight to them. Exhausted and in pain, he finally sits on the engawa, haunted by Yasu’s absence. Hiyori brings him sake again, and sits beside him.

The sake is good.

His hand isn’t steady, little twitches of pain shooting down his arm from his wounded shoulder, but he brings the bottle to his lips anyway, allowing himself one dusty snicker as he drinks and tries not to notice how uncomfortably close she is.

“I’ll avenge him,” he declares, to her, to Brook, to the world. His grin feels full of rust. “That Yasu.”

Morning comes, and with it, the feverish heat of an infection in his wound. The woman gets flustered at first, seeing how sweaty and sluggish he is, but she calms when he explains that the bandages have not been changed, that they need to clean the wound and apply a poultice before they bandage it anew.

He must have picked up some things from all the times he’s sat through Chopper’s explanations of this process. He is able to identify some helpful herbs- maybe not all that he could, he’s struggling to keep his eye from blurring with fatigue at this point- and he walks her through the use of mortar and pestle, collecting oil and powder into an ointment to apply with the back of a wooden spoon, so her fingers won’t stain. He explains the process of cleaning the wound, too. They’ll need to flush it out with something sterilized- boiled water, a tiny bit of soap. She’ll have to daub away the pus. She looks uneasy at the prospect, but Zoro doesn’t budge on this. He can smell it now; there will definitely be pus, and if they’re lucky that’ll be all.

What he does for her is soak the bandages with a wet cloth, hissing and flinching, hee! Heeheeheee as he does his damnedest to ignore the sound of his own manic voice. What he does for her is unravel them, peel them off of the scab, eye rolling at the pain when his skin tears. The world sways, but he manages to stay up.

What he does for her is talk her through the process of cleaning it. After, he has her stoke the fire. Then he heats Wado Ichimonji’s tip until it’s softly hissing, and seals it up.

Cauterizing his own wounds is something he hasn’t had to do since they met back up at Sabãody, but he grins and bears it, voice breaking as he walks her through the application of ointment. For his own sanity, he has her slather it over the pad of make-shift gauze they’ve created. This cabin hasn’t got Chopper’s neatly organized supplies, but the assassins’ clothing was easy enough to tear, and once the strips of cloth were boiled and dried, they were sterile enough to use. Ointment on cloth, cloth pressed to wound, and finally bandages to hold it in place, wrapped gentle but tight. The ointment is slick and cool against the heat of the wound, and Zoro snickers in relief without quite meaning to.

“That’s better?” She asks, her voice shaking with the effort to remain stable for him, to fight the natural urge to break out into panicky tears. He can tell she’s warring with humiliation at her own prior efforts, worry for his safety, and worry for herself; his head spins, and he tries to reassure her at least about one of those things, words slurring together as he repeats it back to her, exhausted beyond belief.

“Yeah, s’better.” He wants to sleep for a year, but there’s no time. “I need to get back t’that. Bridge.”

Her hand on his wrist- the uninjured arm this time, thankfully- stops him. “Wait! Why?”

He tells her; about Shusui and how it was stolen from him. Perhaps he rambles on a bit more than he meant to, bleary and cantankerous as he recounts the events. How he won the sword fair and square after dueling the zombie of Ryuuma on the high seas, how his crew set the zombies of that place to rest with their actions that day, even how he isn’t quite complete with only two, anymore.

He laughs; he hadn’t meant to say that last part at all. But she doesn’t draw attention to it, asking him to consider something else. That she will give him a different blade, if only he’ll help her assure that Shusui is returned from the thief to the gravestone of Ryuuma from which it had been stolen in the past.

Zoro had had no intention to listen to her. He isn’t a hero, he’s a pirate, and he doesn’t want to share the swords or his booze. But, well, the promise of another sword of similar caliber has a certain fascination for him, a pull on his belly that makes him curious what she has up her sleeves.

“As long as it’s a fine sword, you won’t mind which you wield, isn’t that so?” she coaxes, and this is true, so he blows out a laughing, rueful sigh of defeat, and agrees.

Zoro meets Enma for the first time in Amigasa but it doesn’t happen right away.

First, they go to the bridge. There they find the thief, weapons, a ‘kappa’ (a fishman, but Zoro is certain he has his reasons and doesn’t question them). They make plans to aid the upcoming attack by bringing the weapons along with them. Quite the boon to discover so many hoarded away now, when they have such a large number of unarmed samurai imprisoned, desperately in need. Zoro doesn’t question this either.

He does wonder about the little fox that looks just like the thief, and smirks when it hisses at him, obvious in its discontent. Sore loser.

“I’ve agreed to leave Shusui here, so calm down. I’m not here for anything of yours,” he drawls, daring it to make another underhanded attack. This time, at least, it declines, turning on its heel and scuffing the ground as if to kick the dirt over him in dismissal.

Zoro kicks some snow right back at it, amused when it yelps in dismay, and scolds it.

“I’m a guest, aren’t I? Have some manners.”

The little fox lashes its tail and circles the kappa but holds its peace. Its face looks put out and sulky, if a fox even can sulk. Just a bit, it reminds him of the cook, which makes him laugh for real.

Though the weapons are many, they have a sled for the excess, and willing bodies to pull it to Amigasa. It’s a simple task, even a wounded man can do it: so Zoro does, walking beside the woman and the fishman, doing his fair share. His shoulder is inflamed, but he doesn’t realize how faint he feels until they reach their destination. His thoughts have ranged out far beyond the borders of Wano when they arrive at the bridge that connects to Amigasa, and he is gazing unseeing out over the rushing river below.

Up ahead, several of their allies are gathered together, socializing as they unpack some perishable supplies. Toko notices them first. Suddenly, the air is split with the sound of her squealing laughter (Zoro flinches) as she dashes out from the settlement, making a beeline for them. He remembers their mad rush to the capitol through the snow and can hardly find it in himself to be surprised by how fast she is on her feet. His head is clouded with fatigue, and he numbly watches her approach without really seeing any cause for alarm.

Nami follows close behind, and further back he spots Franky, Momo, even that damn cook. None of them can match Toko’s speed, which is almost funny, until she comes round the bend too fast, sliding on her woodblock sandals and the slippery bridge.

She has time to shriek “Oiran!!” before she skates right off the edge and into open air.

Of course, she drops beneath the water immediately, too small to handle the strong current. And later, perhaps, he’ll kick himself for not noticing- not realizing, not assuming the worst- but in the moment, he doesn’t see any similarities between the way she goes so limp so quickly and the way devil fruit users do.

He doesn’t think; or if he does, it’s no more than ‘not his daughter, too’. He just drops the weapons he was carrying on the bridge right there, and jumps in after her.

The water swallowing him up is like being picked on by Perona, but worse. It’s like his soul has been ripped out of his spine in an instant, and even though there’s no pain the experience is excruciating. Zoro can admit to himself in the privacy of his own mind that he struggles with telling which way is which even at the best of times, but this is that magnified a thousand fold. Vertigo wars with enervated, self-hating surrender.

As he sinks, he’s so surprised he lets out some air in a strangled chuckle. What a stupid way this will be to die.

To be hated by the sea is so strange as to be indescribable. Mentally, he has given up. He makes no conscious effort to resist; he can’t, or doesn’t realize he should, or has forgotten that he wants to, maybe. Reflexively, his muscles try to make him surface, remembering how it’s done from years and years of practice. His fingers move, limbs curving toward the light above only through a half-arc before they are suddenly leaden, heavy and limp and weak.

Later, he will overhear an argument between the cook and Nami and realize that they hadn’t known, had waited for almost a minute before jumping in after him because of course, they had expected Zoro had it covered. For now, though, he drifts, and every second feels like years.

Luckily, Toko doesn’t drown.

Zoro doesn’t either: hands wrap around him, warm and strong, and cruelly yank on his injured arm- probably an accident- before shifting his weight to someone thicker in frame, better able to support his deadweight. The cook, perhaps. He won’t ask for clarification later and he’s in no shape to really be aware of it, now. All that parses in Zoro’s mind is the reality that between one endless eon of suffocation and the next, his body breaks from the water and the will to live comes crashing back into him like a sea-train.

When they’ve levered him out of the water and got him on the grassy ground beside the bridge, someone with a huge, cold hand pushes (not unkindly, but not gently) once, hard against his diaphragm, forcing him to retch up the water he swallowed. He groans, curling on his side as he gasps for air, coughing, hacking, laughing, with pain-tears in his eye and too many people standing over him. Franky kneels beside him, the cook is holding Nami steady and Nami has Toko in her arms, giggling and weeping just as much as Zoro, as she buries her face in Nami’s shoulder.

Ah. Ah, there’s no hiding it, is there?

Electric panic washes over him, leaves his body trembling with tiny spasms even after his lungs are clear. Zoro lies on his side, convulses, wheezes, smile plastered unwanted over his face and secret made plain. And none of them are talking.

Hiyori speaks up first, softly and only to Toko, saying, “I’m so glad you’re all right!”

He doesn’t lift his head, doesn’t want to look, to see any of it right now. With a few slow, measured breaths- wavering despite his best efforts- he’s able to master his breathing, more or less. Still tittering, he asks, “Is Luffy- hee! Heheheh- is he here yet?”

“No, not yet.” Nami’s voice is flat. He can’t read the emotion there; something very cold, indeed. His vision swims with exhaustion.

As Zoro sits up, Franky asks the obvious question: “When did you eat it, Zoro-bro?”

“I was framed by that magistrate, heh,” his shoulder burns from pulling too hard and getting soaked and trying and failing to swim and the world is still swaying about so Zoro shuts his eye, forcing the smile to look even, almost intentional. “He said I’d, hah!, be off the hook for execution. Changed his mind after.”

“No wonder you-” Nami remembers that Toko is present, and doesn’t say what Zoro did to the magistrate, which is for the best. “Zoro, you didn’t-”

“No,” he can feel it building in him, worse and worse the more agitated he gets. His shoulders shake with it. He grinds his teeth. “No, it had a bite out of it already. Thought it would be harmless, hah!”

None of them know what to do with this revelation. The danger has passed, so Zoro decides to stand. He doesn’t acknowledge that Franky’s supporting him, or that his legs are still like noodles under him, the lingering press of the water making his skin crawl with unease. He’s grateful, though. So, so grateful.

“A meal and some time to think would do us all a lot of good,” Nami decides, and he doesn’t expect the soft, heartfelt Nami-swan from the cook. There’s a story there. Come to think of it, what even happened in Big Mom’s territory? Luffy hadn’t had a chance to tell him, and Zoro’s not seen hide nor hair of the others except in situations that discouraged idle chatter since then. “Come on, let’s get you four dried off and we’ll eat.” Toko’s tremulous cheer at the promise of food keeps him steady almost as much as Franky’s massive, metal hands. He follows in the wake of the others, and focuses on his breathing, and tries not to notice their faces twisting in horror when ever they catch sight of his smile.

“Could you give us some privacy while we catch up?” Nami asks their hosts most graciously. “We haven’t had a chance to just sit and talk together in months!”

“Of course. There’s much to discuss, so please, take your time!” So saying, the Tengu-masked man gently guides Hiyori toward a room that she and Toko can share. The samurai are talking too, and Momo is practicing the blade, and as the door closes all the other sounds out, the room grows still around him. Zoro continues to eat, trying to keep his breath as quiet as possible.

It’s much louder than he’d thought. Outside, sound dissipates more quickly.

“Zoro, how did this happen? When?!”

“No, before you answer that- why the hell did you agree? You had to know the risks!”

Zoro clicks his tongue, baring his teeth at the cook. At least he can still sneer. That feels good. “Oh? Hahaha! You really think I’d have jumped in the fucking river if I realized?”

“Asshole-”

“Stop it!” Nami’s furious still, looking at Zoro like she wants to be mad at him instead of frightened for him, but he knows her too well, and her expression melts into something that’s a lot more telling than she probably means it to be. He’d offer comfort if he thought it would help. He’s sure it wouldn’t. “How long ago?”

He shrugs, rolling a roasted nut along his plate with one finger. “After we, heh, separated. Not long.”

Silence meets that, because Franky and Robin and Usopp are realizing exactly what the timeframe was. They had to have seen the posters announcing it: the criminal ronin, Zorojuro, who had stolen Shusui and cut the magistrate down at his own slated execution. It had been plastered all over the flower capitol even when he ventured back (purely by accident), the papers worn by then with wind and rain.

It was almost two months ago. All three of them are looking at him, stern and grim.

“Aren’t there more important things to talk about?” he asks, trying to keep the edge out of his voice. He certainly doesn’t want to talk about this. There’s nothing worth saying. He diverts his attention briefly to the cook. “Weren’t you meeting a girl?”

Bad bluff, to pretend at interest in that asshole’s love life, but it helps that it’s a reasonable question, even if- judging from the expression on curly-brow’s face- it’s also a sore spot. Zoro is surprised to find that he’s genuinely curious. He doesn’t know what happened, except that Luffy must have talked some sense into the cook, because he’s here, now. Maybe his point will get across: ‘you’re here, I’m here, we’re all going to do this. That’s what matters.’ He even thinks about saying it, only the tickle in his chest is especially bad tonight.

None of them speak. Not even Usopp, though he’s wrinkling his nose and trying to come up with some way to defuse the room and return them all to normalcy.

“Well, fine.” Zoro shrugs, sitting back, folding his arms over himself like he’ll hold the tremors of his treacherous lungs in. “Ask. Hehehh-! Don’t know why it matters, anyway.”

“You know, I thought you’d just finally gone crazy,” snarls the cook, looking like he’s hurt, the bastard. It makes something uncomfortable turn over in Zoro’s throat. He gives them all a cursory glance, and finds reflections of that same sentiment in each. They’re worried for him. They’re upset he didn’t- what? It’s not like there’s anything they can do about it. “Luffy said something weird when you wandered off before, too, you know? About hoping you weren’t having too much fun. Only who the hell would think this place is fun?”

His teeth ache, he’s smiling so hard. He hisses, “Nobody,” and the cook snaps ‘this is the same shit you always pull, you goddamn martyr-’ and Robin has to physically restrain him before he kicks Zoro- who had no intention of dodging it- in the face.

Probably not doing much to dispel thoughts of martyrdom, come to think of it, but he’s averse to drawing steel in such close quarters.

“Zoro is right,” Robin says calmly, tone a touch too light. “There are lots of matters to discuss, and nothing to be done until a doctor arrives. Perhaps the Heart Pirates captain might lend Chopper a second pair of eyes, once they do.”

It takes more than a few moments before the room collectively, silently accedes to the wisdom of her words. Conversation gradually rekindles, and turns to their plans of war: then comes discussion of the weapons brought here; then food and ships and distribution of it all; what’s left to do and what’s only a matter of waiting; and Zoro can’t relax, can’t relax, can’t relax. There’s an uproarious fit just seething in him, ready to break out of his chest the moment he lets his guard down.

He gets up to take a walk when the talking is done, to get some air, to get out of earshot before anybody can individually seek him out to ‘talk’ some more.

He sleeps alone on the roof of one of the tree houses of Amigasa. In the middle of the night, someone prods him sharply in the side and he jolts awake with a wheezy, hostile chuckle, Wado Ichimonji in hand. He nearly cuts his assailant’s throat before realizing it’s only Usopp.

Fuck.

Zoro lets his head fall back to the wooden roof with a soft thunk! and lowers his sword. He keeps her drawn, a warning that he can end the conversation at any time, for any reason.

Their sniper is a lot more fearless than he used to be, though.

“So, I asked around to learn a little more about how smile works,” he says casually, as if Zoro had asked him to do this. What a horrible thought: there might be more to worry about, even worse than he’s already seen. And as he’s often worried, this might be a progressive condition, rotting his self-control till he’s utterly lost.

His stomach burns as he involuntarily cackles louder, raspier, but they’re both ignoring the sound of it. Usopp is a good friend. He doesn’t ask if Zoro is all right, just waits till that spike of anxiety passes, fading back to a simmering boil. Then he tips his head back to gaze at the sky.

“I haven’t had a chance to ask an actual doctor or anything, but I learned some things. It’s not contagious, that’s good. Anybody who eats a smile fruit faces the risk, even if you split it among a bunch of people, which is. Awful. And the samurai said pretty much what you’d expect: most people end up with uncontrollable laughter, obviously. Um. They did say it’s common for the muscle spasms to interrupt your sleep, too. A lot of people end up kind of insomniac because of it. Might make it hard to keep up your energy. And. Well, you know. I guess even if you don’t get powers from it, water and sea-prism stone affects you like a devil-fruit user.”

“Tell me yesterday,” Zoro chuckles, rolling his eye. He is well aware of all of these problems by now; he’s sleepy and irritable and his stomach and chest are sore from being constantly overworked. Everything’s sore, lately. It’s exhausting. This is all so damn exhausting.

“Well, yeah, I know you know now! But I didn’t know! It was a big surprise, man!”

“Hah, hah,” he grunts, on purpose this time, though the instant he stops controlling his breathing it’s right back to hehh! hehehehhh!

Usopp punches him playfully in the shoulder, trying to pretend everything’s as it should be. It doesn’t quite work, but things feel less oppressive than they have, with Usopp nearby.

It’s been...lonely, here. Wano is a lonely sort of country.

He’s been without this for quite a while, really: the familiarity and safety of his crew. He’s acutely aware of the subtle shift in his own breathing, as it finally hits him how much he’s missed them all. Zoro’s stomach aches, he laughs so hard. The sound is noisier than he likes, a hollow thing, like a wailer at a funeral. Hahaaa! Aaa, ha! Aaa! He shudders, scrubbing at his eye and gritting his teeth. He pretends the tacky flow of something warm and wet down his face is unnoticeable in the gathered dark.

Confronted with the weight of his mistake, back in the Capitol, he can only hate that he is this weak, that something so small would bring him so low. He’s damn well not going to admit how distracting, how tiring, how painful it is, not like this. He still has his pride, and if Usopp says anything pitying right now, well. Wado is drawn for a reason. Zoro turns her blade just a bit to make that threat clear.

But Usopp, who is better at reading people than almost anyone, has the good grace to say nothing about it at all.

“I talked to Toko about it, too. Kids are so honest, you know?” A fond sorrow softens Usopp’s eyes, and Zoro knows it matches his own expression right now- the part that he can control, anyway. “She told me it hurts a lot because her stomach’s always cramping. But it made her stronger? Which seemed weird. Using your muscles all the time like that, though, I guess it would kind of have to.”

Zoro laughs, this time in disbelief. He keeps quantifying them in his mind to try to separate the ones that are ‘his’ from the noise, because that means he’s still himself, underneath it all. Wado’s tip wavers, dropping lower.

“She said it’s not as bad when you’re with people you can trust. Uh, people who make you feel comfortable laughing.” Usopp sounds hopeful, even as he shifts so he can lay back on the roof. He settles there like this is an ordinary night, just crew beside crew, shooting the shit and watching the stars. Without anything left to defend from, Zoro rests Wado Ichimonji over himself like a shield, instead.

“Yeah,” Zoro croaks, and sucks in a steadying breath. “Hey- tell me a- ha!- tell me a joke.”

“A j-? Oh!” Usopp talks with his hands, a clear sign he’s making something up on the spot. “Yeah, okay! Uh, did you hear about the giant navigator? It’s hilarious! He kept mixing up Fore and Elbaph-t!”

It’s one of the worst jokes he’s ever heard, but that doesn’t matter. Zoro lets out the thick, sobbing peals of laughter that have been burning in his lungs all night. He laughs till he’s coughing, like Usopp’s the funniest man alive. He laughs so much he can hardly breathe, till for a few, blessed moments he’s too wrung out to laugh, just lays there choking on it.

And somehow, despite the fact that he’s said a hundred times over that Zoro’s laughter is too scary, too intimidating, Usopp joins in. Usopp lays there on the roof and laughs beside him, unbothered and unafraid.

The next day, Hiyori gifts him her father’s sword.

Enma screams the instant he touches it. It’s no surprise, in retrospect. This is a blade who was burned and then left to suffer in isolation for twenty years. He’s heard the tale. Later, he will swear that Enma shivers in horrified anticipation when he cares for Sandai Kitetsu and Wado Ichimonji, still poignantly oversensitive to the smell of oil for years to come.

There’s no doubt in his mind that Enma is deadly, powerful and potent, capable of withstanding even the strongest will. Privately, he worries whether he’s worthy to wield it. The raid will be in less than a week, hardly any time to get to know each other. It’s a risky move, with a serious chance of failure, but he can’t afford to falter. In the end, he draws the blade to test its balance, and let it test him.

It immediately tries to eat him alive.

When Enma lashes out, it’s like a starving child, greedily sucking his haki all the way up his arm, then over his shoulder. He has the sensation of being dragged down into a clinging bog as sweat breaks out along his spine, under his knees, tingling cold where it stands. Not yet. Zoro widens his stance with a frustrated growl, tries to find his center, to stabilize his breathing.

It pulls from his chest next, the line of haki coolly sinking toward his gut, his core. His ribs ache, straining to expand. His throat is raw, as if he’d been screaming in a desert for hours, and his lungs burn. He has enough self-discipline not to panic, but something is wrong.

Vision blurring, he staggers and sinks as sweat runs down his face, into his eye. Enma has brought him to his knees.

Fuck.

“Zorojuro!” Hiyori cries, her voice distant to him. The cool, dark aura of death approaches. He bows his head to it, raggedly sucking in each new breath out of sheer, bullheaded stubbornness. Now Enma is like a rabid wolf biting down on his neck. He’s not certain how to survive this. The only option seems to be to endure it.

All three of them are watching- Hiyori, the tengu-masked man and the cook -but no one interferes. That must be the cook’s work, and Zoro is almost pathetically grateful to him. There’s nothing they could do for him if they tried; he will master this blade or he will lose himself to it.

Even suffocating, with lungs encased in the iron reflection of his own haki, he can’t stop laughing. In a way, this is both problem and solution. He had entered into this match of wills assuming he would find a comfortable familiarity in it, some stability not possible for his body as he exists here and now. Instead, his only hope will be to do as Tonoyasu taught him and let himself give in.

He unclenches his jaw with considerable effort, allowing himself to spit out ‘hehhheheh, no you don’t’ and bite Enma back just as viciously. His hand shakes, but his grip on the hilt remains effortless and true, a thing drilled deeper even than muscle memory. The haki is his to command, this is his domain. A yawning, fathomless hunger unwinds from his spine, and-

Enma’s blazing drive is banked to ash and ember in an instant. On his knees before the assembled, Zoro is left breathless, dazed, and undeniably victorious.

Even after the danger has vanished, his ears roar with blood, head spinning. He keeps his eye screwed shut, willing himself steady till he slowly regains his bearings. It feels like it takes all of his strength just to lift his forearm to his face, wiping away the gathered sweat.

When his head clears, the first thing he sees is the curious shape of the cook, one arm still extended to hold Hiyori back. She’s fussing, he concludes blearily; she doesn’t realize it’s over, still thinks the sword may best him. Foolish, but she means well. It’s hardly her fault none of the samurai thought to teach her the art of the sword.

What heartens him is that the cook trusted him not to die.

Zoro lurches moodily to his feet, trying not to notice his own harsh breathing. A pleasant breeze sails in off the river, carrying with it the scent of coming rain as it cools his face. He chastises the blade for its impertinence, grumbles don’t be a brat, hee hee hee! and Enma does not cower, precisely, but it sulks. He can’t help but coo softly at that: the desire to be used, not simply measured, is one he understands.

There’s a single sapling tree twenty paces back. Zoro turns toward it, forces their shared focus narrow and clean. He can feel how Enma wants to reach out past the tree to take the whole cliffside, greedy and vicious and wild. He tells it, ‘no. Only this.’ and, reluctantly, it complies. With a single, almost gentle slash of the blade, the tree is split in twain. As it slowly topples to the ground, he checks to be sure he’s not coated the blade with sap, nor dulled it. Enma preens at the attention, showing off its flawless polish with pleasure.

“Zorojuro!” Hiyori cries again, and he huffs, amused in spite of himself. Silly to complain now, when all the danger is past. The cook lowers his arm in acknowledgment of that, allowing Hiyori to take one halting step toward him. Zoro ignores her.

“Impressive,” says the Tengu-masked man, fingers twitching as if he would prefer to confiscate the sword even now. Zoro ignores him, too. It is not his to give or take away, and the princess gave her word.

“Are you all right?” She asks. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t-”

“Hhhh! Hah, don’t be.” Zoro is not looking at her; his focus is on his hands as he carefully sheathes the blade, well aware it could slip the leash he made at any time. Enma sputters and sparks, petulant to be put away so quickly, but doesn’t try to bite him again. (He’s certain it will, eventually.) “It’s good, thanks.”

“I- oh! But your- I mean. Are you certain?”

“Hehehh! I am.”

Before either of them can continue their fretting any further, the cook steps in, complaining loudly and convincingly, “Ugh, I can’t believe you’ve tricked a literal princess into giving you something so priceless, mosshead.”

“What trick,” Zoro protests, and the cook blows smoke in his face, like this is just one of their myriad fights, nothing has changed between them, and all is well. His hand creeps to Wado’s hilt as he grins in challenge, happy to escalate the situation and blow off some steam. In the end, it isn’t to be: Toko appears, followed by Nami and a throng of samurai. Clamoring, the group hems and haws about how they are curious when lunch will be ready, asking if the cook needs any assistance preparing it. No one admits to their hungry bellies- the warriors have too much pride, and even Toko is doing her best- but they’re all hopeless liars.

Wano is a place of hardship and of patience. Her people are not well practiced in asking for help, and loathe to make even a request of their allies. This is, at least partly, why it’s so important that Luffy brought the cook back to them: because he’s crew. Because the cook believes, as Luffy does (as they all do), that everyone deserves to eat. Ideological differences on other matters aside, Zoro respects that about him. So, he lifts his hand from Wado’s hilt, and the cook straightens his spine, rising to the challenge. They turn their combined attention to dinner and leave their bickering for another day.

It’s comparable to losing his eye, in retrospect.

In those first few instants after Mihawk’s sword scored his face, it was unbearable: pain like that overloads the mind, confuses it. He remembers his stomach twisting with nausea, tears burning in the fresh wound, autonomic responses that only made it worse. It was so sharp and so intense he wasn’t able to really parse it, for a moment. He remembers being more cognizant of the strangely warped sound of his own, shocked scream, echoing in his ears; that, and the way his fingers were suddenly trembling, hands hovering in front of his own face. The blood welled up so quickly, pouring out of him like it was willfully trying to escape his body. Closing the eye hurt; keeping it open hurt. In that moment, Zoro had felt sure he would never get used to it, never recover.

Now, though, it’s nothing. Sometimes it aches. That’s just the way things are. There are even times when he could believe he never had a second eye. It’s the same with this. He can’t remember how his body feels when he isn’t laughing, anymore. The constant push of that pressure in him burns his throat, lingers: sore stomach, sore shoulders.

Maybe someday it will be nothing, but right now he’s losing himself, changing. He stays to wash the dishes because everyone else has gone outside except the cook, and being forced to talk to anyone right now sounds like torture.

Every so often, the cook glances over at him pointedly, saying nothing. That one visible eye is unreadable past shaggy blond hair and a thoughtful frown, and Zoro wants to scream. (He cackles, the pitch climbing higher in tandem with his blood pressure.)

What he’s expecting, he isn’t sure. Not a sigh and the sound of crinkling paper, anyway. Not the sudden presence of a single cigarette, carefully held out unlit, in silent offering.

Back home, there were plenty of people who smoked; pipes, usually, and the herb of choice was a different one, something that could make you loose-limbed and relaxed and pleasantly numb. It had a much more acrid smell than the stuff the cook uses, less like burning paper and more like burning silk. Zoro has always taken issue with the burning part of the scent, not especially fond of it, but he sets down the spoon he was scrubbing, and dries his hands.

When he accepts, the cook motions with a nod for Zoro to follow him, and they both head out of the temporary kitchen. There’s a path that leads to the village’s graveyard. The cook takes the lead and Zoro follows, getting more out of the walk than he suspects he will from smoking. He swallows that sentiment down, appreciating the effort, all the same.

The trees are sparser by the graveyard, but the cook finds one to lean against, pulling out his lighter and another cigarette for himself, lighting up with the casual ease of long practice. Zoro watches him: the way he holds it between his teeth, the way he cups the flame so gently to his face, the way he waits for the embers to take before he tries to pull air through it. It looks simple, an act of routine and calm.

He accepts the lighter when it’s offered him, but he can’t figure out how to get the damn thing to turn on, struggling four, no, five times before the cook takes pity on him and (laughingly) reaches out to take it back. It takes only a single flick of his wrist to get the flame going oh-so-elegantly, and Zoro seriously considers starting a fight with him over it.

“Hold still,” he holds out the cigarette instead, pinched carefully between forefinger and thumb, waiting until the end is glowing red before he pulls it back, brings it to his lips, and tries to take a pull. His lungs start a rebellion instantly, shuddering in protest, and he coughs his surprise, wheezing out with helpless, giddy laughter as his body decides he needs to double over, because this is fucking mutiny.

“Ah, damn,” the cook doesn’t even sound that sorry. There’s a click of the lighter being put away, and he offers Zoro a hand up- not that it’s needed. “Never smoked before, huh?”

“Heh! Fu-” He coughs miserably, thinking this is even worse. “Ghh. Fuck. Obviously not.”

The cook shrugs, blowing out a smoke ring, which is something Zoro hasn’t even seen him do before. It’s as if the realization that this is something he’s better at than Zoro has suddenly made him want to show off. “The trick is to hold it in your throat. You’re not trying to breathe it in.”

“Could’ve fooled me,” Zoro rasps, laughing in spite of himself. He gives it another shot, struggling with the repulsive smell and the burn, trying to inhale without exactly breathing. The heat of it sears his already raw throat, unpleasant but not so intense it spurs another coughing fit. He exhales, and his tongue tastes like ash.

“Better.” That almost sounds like a compliment.

“Can’t believe you like this shit,” he counters, grinning at the smoking tip of the cigarette he’s been loaned, as if it has offended him. (It kind of has. His mouth is slimy with smoke.) “It’s vile.”

It would be a good opener for an argument, if they were doing that right now. Zoro can see the twitch out of the corner of his eye, the way the cook wants to snarl in defense of his precious, precious habit, but there’s a softness to the moment that makes him let it pass.

For the next ten minutes, the only sound that passes between them is the low, almost peaceful ramble of Zoro’s continuous laughter. He tries two more tokes before giving it up, dropping the cigarette on a stone and grinding it out with his heel. The cook doesn’t protest; finishes his own at a languid pace, unbothered and unhurried. A heavy wind comes in off the river, stirring their hair. Zoro says, earnestly, “Glad you’re sorted.”

“Luffy would never give up on crew,” answers the cook, and it almost breaks him.

When there are only two days remaining till the planned raid on Onigashima, the rest of the crew finally arrives.

Things have been tense but better, after talking with Usopp. Zoro isn’t willing to discuss his problem with the others- what’s the point, when there’s nothing to be done about it? The battle with Kaido looms so close in the future that they can’t afford to get distracted, fussing about things that won’t change. He has, somewhat grudgingly, yielded to Usopp’s suggestion of sticking around at least one of the crew at all times, in the meanwhile.

Brook joins him when he completes his katas, early in the day. He washes dishes for the cook, finds Robin before his naps, so he can drowse with her nearby. He runs errands with Nami, and they sit and talk, sometimes. (Well, mostly Nami talks, and he just listens, but it’s not so bad.) Each night after the first, Usopp sleeps beside him, up on the roof. And all of it helps, in some unquantifiable way that doesn’t solve his problem at all, but lessens the burden of carrying it.

He’s still not ready when Luffy barrels into Amigasa’s central kitchen to demand a meal, with Chopper running after him.

“Sanji!” Chopper calls in delight, “Zoro!” He greets Zoro in particular with a strong hug in his semi-humanoid form. Zoro doesn’t drop the soapy bowl in his hands, but he does stumble under the force of impact. For the first few breaths, it probably seems normal that he’s laughing through his reciprocal ‘hello’.

“MEAT!!” Luffy, being Luffy, throws himself across the room. He lands next to Zoro at the sink, arms in the air, and attacks the cook with a melodramatic wail. “Sanjiiii, I’m starving.”

“It’ll be an hour,” the cook answers in faux-boredom, brushing Luffy’s grabbing hands away from the seasoned but as-yet uncooked strips of gamefowl they’re grilling for tonight’s dinner. “Wait till then.”

Under his breath, Luffy mutters stingy!, but even their captain knows better than to argue with the cook over such things. He turns to his right, then, asking, “Oi, Zoro! Why’re you on dishes? I thought you two would be fighting!”

Zoro’s already grinning, of course- he has no choice in the matter- but he tries to cover how unnatural it is with a laugh, saying, “Who says we’re not, Captain?” at the same time the cook sneers, ‘just you try, marimo-!’

“Huh? Zoro’s breathing sounds funny...” Chopper presses his ear to the middle of Zoro’s back, jabbing him with an antler unthinkingly as Luffy stills. His captain is round-eyed, brow furrowed, a slight frown on his lips. Luffy has never turned this look on Zoro before; even when they were outside Baratie they were equals. Oh, he may have grimaced and strained with the urge to intervene but in the end he had trusted Zoro to handle himself (accepted that Zoro would lose and believed that he would live to learn from it), and let him fight Mihawk his own way.

Dread drips down his throat, a cool, implacable feeling that’s almost worse than just having it over with, finally. The normal thing to do here would be to scowl, Zoro thinks, maybe throw the bowl at the cook’s head and draw his sword. But he hasn’t been able to keep his lips from curling up since arriving in Amigasa. All he can do is grin, his breath twisted into an anxious laugh that climbs higher and higher in the sudden, oppressive silence.

In the interest of avoiding any dropped crockery, Zoro sets the bowl down into the soapy water, ignoring the sting of Chopper’s antler jabbing his neck. His shoulder throbs, bandages hidden under his robe. Can Luffy tell? Not that Chopper won’t discover it in short order anyway. Hah! He stands as tall as he can, trying to look unbothered, like the smile rests on his face by choice, like he isn’t sweating with the effort of reining it in nonstop, day and night.

“Are you feeling all right?” Chopper murmurs. The little doctor is oblivious enough not to notice, but his voice and the continuous carol of Zoro’s unwilling laughter are the only sounds in the room. The cook steps back, opening his mouth to speak up in Zoro’s favor, but Zoro shakes his head.

“Fine,” he lies through his teeth. “Never- heheh! Never better.”

Now the only sound is him, hee hee heee, as Chopper startles away like he’s been burned. The room is too small, too cramped. He tries not to breathe at all, but he can only hold his breath so long.

“Zoro,” Luffy says, like he’s so, so disappointed, and Zoro shuts his mouth, hissing at the implicit reprimand. He’s glad he set down the bowl, but now there’s nothing in his hands. He clenches them into fists, white-knuckles his way through the silent conversation that passes between the cook and his captain, before the former nods and turns to leave. Chopper looks between them, wide-eyed and confused when the Cook grabs him by the shoulder and drags him along to the door. (Eh? Ehh?? What is it?!) It should be a relief, not to have witnesses for what will happen next, but all Zoro can feel is panic.

He faces Luffy head on, swears to him, “I can still fight.”

“I know you can.” It’s like a gut punch. Zoro laughs in disbelief, suddenly woozy. He should have known that his Captain would not be so easily deterred. “What happened?”

Zoro tells him all of it. Afterward, he looks almost wounded.

“You didn’t tell me in Bakura town.” Not a question, just a fact.

“Doesn’t matter,” Zoro tries to say, but Luffy actually scowls at him. No further reprimand is needed; he can read his captain’s displeasure, loud and clear. He giggles, helplessly, then bites his tongue, hard. Anything to stop that hateful sound. His mouth fills with blood and his tongue stings, throbbing sharply with his pulse. The taste is thick and rotting. Worst of all, it doesn’t even work very well. Zoro continues to laugh, clenching his jaw and squaring his shoulders.

“Is it hurting you?”

“Hah!” He hates the sound of his own voice, strained and weak, but lying to Luffy is useless, here. He tries again, desperate, pleading, “Captain.”

Luffy’s mouth twitches into an even deeper frown, but he listens.

“I can still fight.”

If he has to get down and beg for it, he will. But anything, anything would be better than sitting out this battle, knowing all these people are risking their lives while Zoro waits on the sidelines, denied the chance to stand beside them in their bid for freedom. He can’t stand the thought of it. He swore he’d avenge Tonoyasu, and he meant it. He wants to be there.

Luffy sighs a gusty sigh, deflating till he’s slumped in simple, earnest worry.

“Did you talk to Traffy about it?”

“No.” He hadn’t wanted to bother anyone. This does remind him that he’d thought about it: Because he’s not the only one with this affliction, because Toko deserves to be able to grieve her father’s loss with actual tears, because the people of Wano shouldn’t have to labor under this affliction for the rest of their lives.

“Will you? Him and Chopper.”

There’s no way they’ll be able to solve this problem before the raid, but after- he nods, acceding to Luffy’s request as if it were an order. His captain wouldn’t force him, he knows, but it would wear on them both if Zoro refused, here. That’s why Luffy had to ask.

“That’s good,” Luffy says, like the problem is solved. And it’s not, but the air feels less oppressive, too, and when his captain slings an arm around his shoulder and demands Zoro show him ‘the new sword’, things are almost normal, again.

Onigashima is a graveyard, will be a graveyard, was always a graveyard. (They cross in silence, somber, taking on the disguises Kin’emon has made for them. Will Kanjuro have killed Momonosuke? There’s only one way to find out.) Clad in the enemy’s colors and silently scuttling through Kaido’s island lair, they converge on the performance hall in greater numbers than any of them had dreamed would be possible, when first they began to conceive this plan, those many months ago.

Killer of the Kidd pirates is beside him on the right, Luffy on his left, and Zoro can’t help but wonder if his fellow first mate can be trusted. When last they crossed paths, Zoro had thought him a cautionary tale, too fargone to return from smile-induced mania. Perhaps he has something of a personal stake in their mutual survival, though he doesn’t want to look at that too closely.

Part of him, too, doubts the allegiance of the Kidd pirates to this unwieldy alliance they’ve forged, between samurai, ninja, mink, and pirate. It’s not unthinkable that they may have spies in their midst, especially now. Have they routed all the turncoats from their ranks with Kanjuro? Have they anticipated all the players on the field, tonight? What of Hawkins, or X-Drake?

He eyes his counterpart in open challenge, sizing up the changes from their battle at the bridge to now. At a glance, things are markedly improved. Gone are the bandages, which had surely bared more than the blond ever planned to share; gone is the berserk frenzy, replaced with a focused battle lust that Zoro better understands. Killer walks calmly at his captain’s side, to all appearances in high spirits. Only the occasional wheezing laugh escapes through his helm.

“You good?” Zoro grins, giving a pointed look at the chest wound he knows he left there.

With one big hand, Killer grips Zoro’s still-healing shoulder, and he can imagine the hellfire smile behind the man’s mask. He bares his teeth at the pain, refuses to make a sound, refuses to flinch. Killer squeezes tighter, daring him to break.

All Zoro does is laugh.

“Never better, fwa fwa fwa!” Killer is hard to read; he’s a strange, lumbering hulk of a man, always ready to dog his captain’s heels.

That simple, stray thought clicks into place for him, and suddenly the difference between then and now is clear: the change in his demeanor has nothing to do with the smile fruit’s lingering sting. Without Luffy, Zoro had still been Zoro. Not so, Killer and Kidd. The stink of molten metal hangs around them both, acrid enough to make Zoro’s nose itch. They might as well be two halves of the same man.

Each of them does devotion differently, he decides.

“What about you, Roronoa Zoro?”

“Having a great time!” He lets himself grin as wide as his body wants to, toothy, eager for the excuse to fight to his heart’s content. His shoulder throbs in five tender pinpoints where Killer’s fingers are digging in. “Keep your nose clean, huh?”

“Fwa fwa-” Killer lets go and backs off, mollified. “Same to you.”

When they reach the performance hall, they’re greeted by the gruesome sight of Momonosuke, strung up and awaiting execution, high above the first floor. For all that he may lack in manners, a kid is a kid, and it’s nauseating to see him in such a battered state, paraded before his enemies and doubtless feeling utterly alone. Zoro seethes. He wants to go to the kid’s side, to start the fight then and there. He’s held back only by the knowledge that acting early, here, might well cost the kid his life.

Not yet, not yet, not yet, he tells himself, as Kaido’s cronies play through their whole grand charade. They’re torturing the kid, trying to get him to renounce himself, his identity, his family, his name. He’s so, so young, too young, and Zoro and Luffy hold back as much as they can, taking their cues from the samurai. It’s hard. His teeth ache, he’s grinning like a knife, and every opportunity to step out of line along the way is one he cherishes.

The fever pitch of upcoming battle settles over his skin, blistering by the time it begins in earnest. None of the fighting down here will matter, though. They must make their way after Kaido to accept his invitation up to the roof. Of course they have no plans to steal the glory from the Akazaya Nine, but they can’t leave those warriors to stand alone against the enemy, either. Between them and their destination are Kaido’s assembled loyalists, nearly thirty thousand strong.

Poor odds for the enemy.

Not yet, not yet, he keeps telling himself, as he barrels through the crowd, cutting down small fry without so much as thinking of them, every part of him focused on the fight he knows is happening up there, somewhere he can’t see.

Not-Wait.

Where’s Luffy?

They’ve gotten separated, in the chaos. As all the assembled allies of the samurai finally break cover and start fighting, Zoro catches flashes of Luffy and Jinbei and the rest pushing out and up, while he finds himself pinned down in the main hall, fending off soldiers, then ice oni. Of all the times to get lost-!

Battle rages around him between people fighting back against the infected, the infected themselves, and some of Kaido’s goons, taking advantage of the confusion and pressing it, even though Queen has turned on them. Their willingness to die for men who don’t even respect them is baffling to him, and this chaotic mess is a waste of his time. Here is not where he needs to be. The instant the opportunity presents itself, Zoro secures the antidote for Chopper and passage for himself to the roof. That’s where Luffy is, he can sense his captain’s voice up there, right alongside the dreadful force of what must be Kaido and...is that Big Mom?

Zoro feels more alive than he has in months. Two Emperors of the Sea stand against them and for the sake of the samurai who called them here, they are united with their rivals, ready to tear down the past with their bare hands. It’s invigorating, seeing the way their enemies move and fight together, tasting the raw, shivering power that dances on the air when Kaido and Big Mom attack as one. Even when he takes that hit, even when his spine strikes stone and his head snaps back, ribs crunching with alarming volume, he feels incandescently, undeniably alive. He laughs. He wheezes, coughing up blood and staggering to his knees, and he is so alive and he is having so much fun that almost, he tries to get up again.

‘Stay down,’ that’s not Luffy’s voice, ‘you’re gravely wounded.’ Must be Law, he thinks, in the instant before he’s forcibly teleported to someone who can help him, as if all he was good for in this fight is shielding his stupid captain from one bad hit and reminding Luffy to stay focused. (He’s in such a state that it takes him several, painful gasps before he realizes he’s with the cook.)

Stay down? Stay put? Zoro is terrible at following directions, even from his own captain, so he certainly doesn’t plan to do it for Law. The only thing that stops him racing right back up there is blacking out in pain as he coughs up blood and his ears ring. His own voice takes on a distinct, dizzy note of drowsiness that makes him feel as though his soul is sliding out of his skin. He could swear he observes his own body go limp in the cook’s arms from outside of it, even as he feels an immutable connection to that broken, bleeding shell.

The cook is unusually reticent about handling him, curses under his breath. Slinging one of Zoro’s arms around his shoulders, he continues up the narrow hallway, checking every door as if in search of someone.

Damn it, there’s no time for this. He needs to be up there, not benched for the duration of the fight.

“I’m still up,” he mumbles wetly, when he realizes his head is hanging on the cook’s shoulder. Blood smears from his lips onto that smart maroon silk, and Zoro has the wherewithal to wonder if it will stain as he tries to stand on his own. Speaking costs him. His lungs convulse on a laugh that turns into a breathless whimper of agony.

“Traffy said you’ve got a few dozen broken bones,” the cook says, further away than Zoro remembered him being, and oh, he’s been laid down on something. Table maybe. His vision grays. “Shut up while I splint you or I’ll knock you out myself.”

Vitriol bubbles up, churning his gut, but he doesn’t have the energy to protest the cook’s questionable-utility ministrations. Overhead he can still feel Luffy, the flash and bang of Luffy’s haki that says the fight is going well- or well enough- and not to worry. “Just get me to Chopper,” Zoro finally complains, a compromise on the insult he’d initially conceived.

Instead of arguing, the cook pauses in the middle of trying to turn him into a fucking mummy to give him an exasperated look. “Obviously, mosshead! I can’t move you to him like this, so hold still.” Ah. Is that the problem?

That’s                     enough.

For an instant, Zoro blinks. When he opens his eyes again he can’t move a muscle, he’s been bundled up so securely by the cook’s shitty bandaging job. The world seems to have shifted from one moment to the next, because they’re no longer in that hallway. He gurgles in complaint, vision spotting, and the cook jostles him to get him to shut up.

He blinks again, and he’s on the damned first floor again, surrounded by the minks and Chopper. Oh, good. The little doctor’s voice comes to his ears all garbled, as if heard from underwater. What? What’s he saying? Zoro’s eyelid feels heavy, each breath a costly battle on its own.

“Jus’ do it,” he slurs, delirious, because it sounds like Chopper’s having one of those panicky doctor debates with himself that happen when things get especially grisly. Chopper is smart as hell and Zoro trusts him not only with Zoro’s life, but the lives of the rest of the crew, which are arguably more important. Debate not necessary.

If Chopper has a solution, any solution, Zoro will take it.

“But Zoro-”

“Heheheheeeeenngh!” He needs to speak, but it’s hard to break through the laughter, even when it leaves him feeling like someone is actively punching him right in his shattered ribs. Concentration slipping, he tries to project confidence, calm. Whatever it takes to convince Chopper that he will ultimately be fine, and the risk is worth taking.

Chopper insists on explaining the medicine and its side effects and Zoro doesn’t have the energy to tell him it doesn’t matter. One last push. He sucks in a whistling breath, throat thick with blood and teeth bared in a lopsided smile.

“C’mon, Chopper. No time t’be playin’ around!”

And there really, really isn’t, because Luffy’s suddenly far away and he shouldn’t be. What the hell is happening up there? Queen and King are wreaking havoc on the performance hall around them, while the cook fends them off singlehandedly like the self-sacrificing fool he is and now now now, Chopper’s assistants plunge a needle deep into his arm. He cackles shrilly, till he’s out of breath, till the medicine kicks in and now, now, his bones aren’t healed but he can’t feel them, isn’t that it? He can move and he’s distantly aware that his blood is roaring in his ears and his heart is pounding too fast, and he can’t feel a thing except the fever, the will to fight, hee hee hee hee HEEE!

Zoro is back on his feet, but he shouldn’t be.

NOW!

He has always lived most earnestly, most truthfully, on the razor’s edge between life and death. He can tell each breath should feel like plunging knives into his own chest, but they don’t, and the adrenaline surges in him, powerful enough to blanket him in sheer bloodthirsty joy. He’s full of energy, enough to press the fight, hacking and coughing, laughing and laughing, face stretched like leather tanning in the heat of the sun. Zoro can feel his teeth, can imagine how they shine starkly under the flash and flare of King’s fiery attacks, a skull’s grin for a dead man walking.

‘King’. What a pretentious name. I could be King if I wanted, he thinks, and Enma kisses his hand with flames of pure, coppery green. If a sword can moan, Enma moans; urges him onward, even as he breaks himself to pieces. From a well of self-assured strength that Zoro hadn’t fully realized he possessed, it draws him out, mantling like a great, green bird in his grip, adorned in the flames of his haki. If it was up to Enma, and perhaps it can be, then Zoro’s thought would be made reality. He bellows with laughter, delighted, delirious.

Now.

There’s a moment, as he regards King with absolute calm, with certainty that he can win this fight after all, when he can’t seem to breathe. Just a moment, and then his heart slams back into motion as he hisses with satisfaction, driving the fight back out of the castle and into the open air.

Not yet, not yet, not yet-

The first thing he has to do is figure out how to stop a man who believes himself to be unstoppable. Then he has to keep fighting, force himself to be faster while his head pounds and the adrenaline starts to puddle in him, fight or flight, Zoro’s not going anywhere HAAAA ha ha HAHahahahah but the medicine will wear off in minutes, less, he can feel it in his own rapid heartbeat, in the sweat that clings and crawls down his face, like a precognition of the blood that will come pooling from his lips in just a few minutes more.

This is his domain, his kingdom, his place of power, this twilight space where Zoro is alive, dead, undying, Asura. He has always bled himself to win. He bleeds himself now, his actual lifeblood and his haki and his laughter, peppering the cool night air as King’s mask splits and Enma howls, ferocious and joyous.

Not yet, not yet-

King is fast, but Zoro is faster. In terms of skill there is no contest.

Zoro fights King and wins.

Not yet-

His heart struggles for that final moment, while he’s falling to the earth. It feels like there’s a bird trapped in his chest, fluttering so desperately to be free. Then time is up and Zoro is down and there is nothing, nothing, nothing he can do but surrender.

Move, he tells his body.

Nothing moves.

Hahaha! What a fun way to go. What a good fight! What a worthy death.

(wait)

Move! he senses danger, tries to open his eye. There’s a chill to the air like Brook has run his fingers over Zoro’s spine. For the moment, his injuries are silent, his pain so remote that he can’t even touch it, let alone realize the magnitude of it.

A specter of mist and clinging robes is gathering in the corner of his vision, blurry and indistinct. Zoro’s voice begins to slip from wheezy, measured laughter into a manic, lilting rhythm of terror. He can’t even twitch his fingers. “Hee hee! Heh- HAH! Ahaha! Heheh heheheee!”

Zoro has never been this close to the edge before, never come this far. He sucks down a defiant gulp of air, groaning through the torturous stab of it on his lacerated windpipe.

He’s never seen Death, before today.

“Fuh-,” he starts, and one of his ribs shifts in protest, collapsing his right lung mid-sentence. “Ffffuck! HEH! Hehehehee, ah! Aah! HEH heh hehhhhh-!”

Death looks positively austere.

It doesn’t, despite all his expectations to the contrary, resemble Mihawk, or Kuina, or any human at all.

It speaks to him in a resonating voice that makes his mind want to blank out, soul quailing at the thought of putting up any more fight. It says, in a ringing moan of static,

I                  see.

Zoro wills his body to move a third time, a fourth. He remembers the old superstition, that the number four invites in death, and wonders why there’s never any folk wisdom about how to send death packing. He’s not ready to die. He’s paralyzed, entire body broken, but he’s still not ready, not willing to let go.

Death wields a scythe like a farmer in a field, like he is one of millions of unwilling souls that have been cut down to size. Death is huge and dark like the primal terror of a moonless sky. Death is bearing down on him, a crushing, unavoidable feeling of melancholy roiling in its wake. Death closes the distance.

“Ohh-hoho nooo,” Zoro wheezes, dismayed, convulsing so hard it makes his vision swirl with photo-negative imprints of the skull faced phantom looming over his body. His entire being is saturated with a pervasive, paralytic horror, but it’s not the only thing he feels. He smiles at Death, because they match, and throws back his head, and laughs. “I can’t! Heheheh heh heh hhhhhh! Ehehh heh HA HA! I! I, HAAH! I ha- ha! hahaha, have to- have to get back-”

No.

Death does not sound like anything, or anyone. He had always imagined that if there was such a thing as a figment of death, a psychopomp, if you will, that it would be kind. In his darkest moments as a child he had hoped, perhaps, that Death wears the face of a friend, when it comes to take the souls of the fallen. What a disappointment. He wails with laughter, drowning in fear; he lies there, utterly helpless to stay Death’s hand.

Not even one of his fingers will move.

Left with nothing but desire, he pleads, “Let me- haa, aa! Please- let me-!”

No,                you               may                  not.

Everything disappears, suddenly: the pervasive choking taste of his own blood and bile, the mind-numbing pain, the sounds of battle (distant but soothing, somehow), the chill of the dirt he’s fallen into; all of it’s gone. He can’t see.

For the first time in months, he can’t hear the sound of his own breathing.

What a devastating silence it is.

It            is             time             to                  go.

( f u c k )

HEY,

ZORO!

(what is that?)

He

   can

      hear something.

Like people dancing and laughing by a bonfire.

Like

drums,

rolling

drums,

joyous,

boneshaking

drums.

HEY!!

ZORO!

(Luffy?)

shishishi!

Who else!

(Oh, yeah. Who else?)

HEY!!!

ZORO!!!

WAKE

UP!!  

He jolts up, slurring Luffy’s name in a delirious haze. He tilts his head toward the roof even though he doesn’t know it. Everything hurts too much to even try to categorize. It’s easy to get lost in the dizzying sensation of blacking out again, until he shudders back to consciousness with familiar laughter ringing in his ears (not his, for once, what a relief).

Chopper’s here? He thinks? Though, Chopper’s not the only figure looming over him.

Where the fuck are they?

His lungs feel thick with smoke, his eye waters with the oven-like heat on the air. Too much. He comes dangerously close to drowsing off again. It’s a strain to stay present for more than half-a-second, but he tries to focus. What’s happening? He can’t really tell, can hardly make sense of what he’s seeing.

Chopper is trying to talk to him, mouth moving, but there’s no sound.

Or, no, there’s sound, but for some reason his ears aren’t registering anything other than the laborious, haggard strain of his own attempts to breathe: Hhhhh! Hhhhhh! Hhhhhhhh!

Despite how abysmally terrible an idea it is, he strains to rise. Without batting an eye, Law puts a tattooed hand on his shoulder to keep him in place. Oh. So that’s who the other figure is. Zoro doesn’t hear the wounded, whimpering noise he makes in subconscious protest to even that light contact, but he feels at capacity for all sensation, right now. Too much. No more. He has to take a moment to adjust.

Being held down would probably act as an effective deterrent for most patients. Not him, though. Zoro is just stubborn enough to want to sit up out of sheer spite. Only reason he doesn’t is that his body refuses him, everything cramped and aching, everything overworked. He needs time to mend. At the point of contact between those bony fingers and his uninjured shoulder, anesthesia begins to spread through him, leaving him blessedly numb.

Fuck. No fighting it now. But he can talk at least, rasp out short, blunt questions before he gives up the ghost again. If they’ve got time to be looking after him, it must mean the fight is over, right? “We won?”

That gets a prideful nod from both doctors, which makes the smile curling his face feel more natural again. Zoro chuckles, pleased to hear it. Chuckling sucks, though. Kind of feels like gargling broken glass.

“Crew?”

Chopper tries to answer, mouth moving, but Zoro still can’t hear him. Soon enough, he gives up speech, pacing about in a little circle. After a brief pause, he gives a hoofs-up, which Zoro has to assume is the same as a thumbs-up, in this context.

That’s good. The crew’s all right, he’s glad. Not that Zoro doubts their ability, but the enemy they’d arrayed themselves against this time is the most formidable they’ve fought to date.

This just leaves one more question.

“’n captain?” Because this is the worst Zoro’s ever been injured, bar none, and he wasn’t even fighting Kaido directly. Because Law may be acting tough, but he looks like a stiff breeze could send him to the grave. Because there’s a strange rhythm sounding in his ears that feels like a memory from a dream. Because he’s sure he heard Luffy say ‘WAKE UP!’

When Law answers this time, it’s with a decisive thumbs up and a pointing finger at Zoro himself. Zoro understands instantly. Something like, ‘He’s alive, and just as bad off as you. Idiot. Now go the fuck to sleep.’

They don’t have to tell him twice. He starts to say, “Thanks-” but passes out somewhere in the middle.

Being awake for this part is overrated, anyway.

He’s thirsty.

Ha ha haaa ha haha sounds in the background of this filmy place that’s not quite dreaming. Zoro is alert but not awake. Cool touch of a hoof to his throat, checking his pulse.

“Do you think it’s possible to cure?”

They’re not in Onigashima anymore. Smells like lacquered wood, like dusty pillows. Haaaa hahaha his arm is lifted, and someone jabs a needle into the join of his elbow. Feels uncomfortable.

“The smile poisoning?” His arm is set down. Heavy silence. He strains to listen, but the pause lasts so long his mind starts to drift. “It might be possible. I hadn’t considered it.”

His fingers ache to reach out and ruffle Chopper’s fur, or pat the little reindeer on his head. Anything to comfort, to reassure. It’s not so bad, he wants to say, even as Chopper’s trembling voice puts the lie to that thought: “I don’t know how to operate like this! The muscles won’t relax- it has to be slowing his healing. It’s not usually this bad when he gets hurt!”

“You’re probably right.”

“Ohhh! I hate that Caesar jerk so much. Everything about him is just so- so horrible.” Chopper stifles a sniffle, sounding downright miserable. “I didn’t realize!”

They really should’ve considered offing that fucking Caesar guy, to be honest. He was a piece of work. Heheheh.

“It’s not your fault he didn’t say anything.” More sniffling from Chopper. Law adds, gently, “I’m sure he’ll adapt, Tony. Don’t give up on him.”

“Yeah,” Chopper’s tearful voice is accompanied by a fresh touch of that cool anesthesia feeling. It quiets his mind like meditation, narrows his focus down to the whisper of their voices, back and forth. Everything is wonderfully soft, like flower petals and summer rain. He finds their voices oddly comforting. “Zoro will beat it. Zoro is strong!”

“So he is.”

A sigh cuts through the room like rustling leaves in a forest. Zoro can imagine them conferring by the door, a few steps away. One side of his face feels warmer than the other; sunlight streams in over him, perhaps, from an unseen window.

Maybe he ought to get up. Certainly, he’d like to move if he could, ease the pressure on his chest- why does each breath feel like he’s fighting against something heavy?- but gradually, the discomfort grows faint. Pleasant numb nothingness fills his body, turning all worldly concerns into a distant dream.

As if from far away, he hears papers turning, soft murmurs, distant footsteps, the bark of a chair. Time has no meaning to him.

He isn’t awake. He isn’t asleep. But even like this, he can hear his breathing, ha ha.

He barely perceives the pressure of Chopper checking his pulse again.

Fuck, he’s tired. And so, so thirsty.

“Good to see you again.”

How or why Zoro got here is not important, probably. It feels like the bar out at Whiskey Peak. Bodies are strewn every which way like a nightmare landscape of gore, except there’s no viscera, just a lot of people where objects should be. Silent and still, they’re woven together with hands clasping hands and their eyes closed; the floor, the ceiling, the tables, the chairs. He thinks of Robin, but the number of hands and feet and heads and things seems to match the number of people whose bodies have been bent to make this place.

He is sitting uncomfortably in a chair made of the backs of several people- slumping might be a better descriptor for his posture, but who’s going to correct him- and across from him is Tonoyasu, bleeding from several bullet wounds. There’s a table between them made of crying faces, and on it rests the cracked cup from that cramped little house in Ebisu town, filled with cool, pure water. Fuck, but he’s thirsty, enough that he tries to find the strength to lean forward and take the cup in hand. Tonoyasu drums his fingers on his crossed knee, watching Zoro’s struggle with a sorrowful smile.

His damn body won’t move, which is a shame. Tired and parched and puzzled, he blinks at Tonoyasu, and remembers: “Aren’t you dead?”

“Aren’t you dying?”

He blinks, then catches himself unaware with a giddy peal of laughter. “Shit!” he giggles, chest aflame with pain. He’d almost managed to forget it. “Oh, fuck you!”

“Now there’s the spirit!” With a hearty guffaw, Tonoyasu throws back his head, clapping his hand against his knee. “Things have been finished for a bit, now, friend! But you keep lingering here. It’s not healthy. Not your place!”

“Not my place,” Zoro echoes back, trying to make sense of that. “Wano?”

“Unless you want it to be, I suppose?”

Zoro doesn’t follow.

His confusion must be plain, because Tonoyasu graciously clarifies, “are you planning to die here?”

“Nope,” he declares, confidence rushing back over him. What a ridiculous question to ask! He snickers. As if he’d be ready to die so soon. Tonoyasu looks pleased, warmth in his eyes, and he nods his head in acceptance. It’s as though the refusal was expected, but not guaranteed.

“Good! I’ll wait for you, then. I’ve got Toko to stick around for, anyway, and she’d better not die before you!”

Of course not. He would never let that happen.

“But don’t be in a hurry to follow me around, either. Hear me?”

Zoro snorts, grinning cockily. “Wait all you like, I’m not going. Ha!”

Someone beside him stifles a giggle, sounding delighted. He’s so used to their presence that he hadn’t even noticed them there until now. “Zoro! Good answer. That’s what I said!”

Zoro has never wanted to turn his head so badly in his life. He knows that voice like he knows tomorrow will be a good day. His eye moves, but his head won’t. Cracking a grin, he names the voice, since he can’t see it. Too dark in here anyway. “Captain!”

“Did you miss me?” Luffy’s laughter bounces around, as manic as Zoro’s, somehow. It booms and crashes like waves turning over. It casts light in this weird dark corner, and now he can see properly, Zoro’s relieved to realize he’d been imagining things. They’re not in a bizarre building made of bodies, they’re on the deck of the Sunny. The cup has been knocked on its side, and Yasu has gone, now. The air tastes sharp and clean, like the open sea.

How nostalgic.

“Shishishi! I guess not.”

“How could I miss you?” he snorts. “You didn’t go anywhere!”

“Hmm, I wonder. Did Zoro really not notice? But that’s fine, you were busy, too!”

“Busy?” Zoro grumbles, trying to move again. His mouth is so damn dry. If he could just get down to the mess hall he’s sure he could find something to slake his thirst. “I was just taking a nap.”

Ba-dum-boing! There it is again, that strangely invigorating rhythm. It bounces like Luffy’s laughter, like a dance, like a drum. He can’t help snickering at the sound, and Luffy does too. “Napping, huh? Are you still tired?”

“Nah.”

“Good!” Luffy grabs his face with both hands in a firm grip, and shakes him roughly. “Then WAKE UP!!”

Zoro lurches out of a dead sleep, screaming “BOOZE!”

He doesn’t even realize he’s not alone until he’s downed a full tankard of sake. Then and only then he parses Luffy, mid-bite on a ham hock, right there beside him.

All the hairs raise on his forearms, his neck, and he’s too big for his skin, he’s electric, he wants to leap to his feet and roar, because they’re alive! It must hit Luffy too. Suddenly they’re trading face-splitting grins and howling for the celebration to begin in perfect sync: Because Wano is finally free.

Sometime on the third night of the festivities, Nami finds him. He’s still stiff and sore as he moves about, but he has his range of motion back and is mending pretty nicely, he thinks. Just the same, he doesn’t plan to tell Chopper about his wandering, if he can help it. Of all the celebrants in the city, Zoro alone has been forbidden to do more than sit in an opulent pile of cushions on the engawa, reduced to sending people like servants out to bring him anything he might need.

Ridiculous! As if he could stand that. As if he would agree. Bedrest, ha! It’s not like his legs were broken, and besides, he won’t go far.

“I’m going to tell on you,” Nami carols as she dances up to his side. Zoro thinks fondly that she certainly might, even as he turns to scoff at her threat, content at the prospect of her company. She looks a lot happier than she had in Amigasa. They all do, don’t they?

They stop mid-bridge, where Zoro had been crossing from one quadrant of the city to another, and he lets himself laugh at her. He leans back against the railing, casting his gaze up to the night sky. Above them, stars twinkle and shine, like so many jewels of joy and hope strewn out across that great, dark, unknowable sea.

“Ah, come on,” he protests, not especially worried. “It’s a party, isn’t it? Heheh!”

Nami of them all has adjusted best to the grin plastered (maybe forever) over his face, barely flinching when he gives an involuntary chuckle or smiles too wide for comfort. Almost, it feels like an ordinary night, with the two of them huddled here on the bridge against the growing chill as they talk together. For that alone, he’ll always be grateful to her. Everyone else has been on edge about him, after the initial excitement died down.

“Are you really here to play warden?”

“Well, I was. For a price, you could buy my silence.”

“HA ha ha! Like you don’t own everything on the ship by now. What could I even have to offer you?”

He raises his half-full cup to her and they toast together. It goes down smoothly, this stuff. It’s not the pleasant-bitter sake he’s been drinking down like water, this, but some kind of peach wine. It tingles on his tongue, makes his cheeks flush faster than he’s used to. It reminds him of a tangerine brandy they shared, half a world away and two lifetimes ago, in the revelry at Cocoyasi.

Nami tosses her hair over her shoulder, fluttering her eyelashes at him, and oh, fuck, she actually wants something from him? He’d thought she was joking. “Sate a girl’s curiosity?”

“About?”

“I heard from Hiyori that the sword she gave you was her father’s.”

Is this even a real question? After going through such lengths to get the sword (or Shusui, but it amounts to the same thing in the end as far as he’s concerned), Zoro feels prickly at the thought of someone trying to weasel it away from him again. Besides, Enma is a problem child. Nami wouldn’t even like it.

He settles more comfortably against the railing, waiting for her to get to the point. “Yeah? So?”

“But doesn’t it look a lot like your white sword?” Her brow furrows as she tries to remember the name, working not to butcher the pronunciation. He doesn’t think most of the crew has bothered to learn them- Robin and Franky surely know, and Brook of course- but especially not Nami, who has never been even slightly interested in swords the entire time he’s known her. “Wado... Ichimashi?”

“Ichimonji,” he corrects, giving her a lop-sided grin for the effort all the same. He’s frankly humbled that she would bother to try. “Yeah. They were made by the same man.”

“Now that sounds like an interesting story.”

Overhead, a flash and bang! of a firework flowers across the sky. The initial burst becomes a gently sinking rune of red and white, with golden streaks like stalks connecting the puffball blooms of it to one another. They both look up in silence, enjoying the vision till its last flickers dissipate into smoke and shadow.

“Tell me about him!” Nami decides, moving close enough to prod him in the middle of his forehead with one teasing finger. “That’s my price.”

So he does; he tells her of his village (not just the dojo) for the first time, because for once, the past doesn’t feel like such a bad thing to share. He tells her of the man that his village was named for, Shimotsuki, a samurai who’d left Wano in Brook’s time. He tells her of the village through his own eyes, an ungrateful, feckless child who’d pestered the old man because he didn’t have many friends, and even fewer role models. He reveals the nature of the swords’ siblinghood. How Enma and Wado Ichimonji were born of the same steady hands, and in the process probably reveals his own nature, too.

Well, they’ve known each other for a few years, now. If she hadn’t figured him out long hence, he’d be surprised.

He thinks it would chafe him to tell this story, any other time; but here on the bridge, Nami listens, wide-eyed and fascinated, to all appearances delighted. He doesn’t quite understand what the appeal is, but he doesn’t mind, either. When Nami offers to top off his drink in the middle of the telling, he minds even less.

“So how did you come to be in possession of it, anyway? I don’t mean Enma. I know that part.”

“Not sure I’m in the mood to tell that one,” Zoro muses, though he finds himself nudging at the memory, interested to see if it hurts a little less than it used to. He was all muddled, back when it happened; barely ten and all alone for the third time in his life. He hadn’t handled it well. “Why d’you wanna know, anyway?”

If she’s about to make a joke about trying to sell his swords, he’s going to be very unimpressed with her. She doesn’t, though. Shakes her head and avoids his gaze, suddenly, saying, “No, I don’t know. I just thought it’d be interesting.”

Now he’s sure she’s lying, but before he can press further, a sudden, shrill voice- ah, Chopper- rings out behind him, yelling his name in potent, doctoral fury. Nami’s face splits into a self-satisfied smile, and he realizes that he wasn’t being shrewd enough in his line of questioning. Maybe she really did just want to hear about it, maybe not- the point of her distraction was never the answer, it was to keep him from wandering further away until the little doctor could catch up.

He laughs at himself, a mellow calm spreading warm through his belly. Nami always has been a strategist at heart. He can’t find it in himself to even pretend at being mad.

Following a brief lecture about his responsibilities as a member of the crew and a little guilt trip for giving the poor doctor an anxiety attack, Chopper drags him by force back to the nearest teahouse. Once there he’s made to sit down, then put under the strict guard of Robin and Chopper both, to ensure that he doesn’t ‘wander off’ again. He can read between the lines that they want to keep him company, and he’s touched by the offer enough to accede to Chopper’s strident demands.

The three of them play a series of word-games, Robin makes shadow puppets with her powers that are frankly astonishing, and somehow, the hours slide pleasantly by without once being boring at all.

Wano country begins to heal the way that wounded people do: now that the weapons which cut the land so deeply are removed, the people bleed tears and grief and frustration and joy, in desperate need of the respite. Momonosuke declares a lengthy celebration at the Flower Capitol, ongoing as long as his people need, wearing a fresh face he hasn’t had time to grow into. People who have been hungry their whole lives eat well and every day for the first time, and even someone as comically gluttonous as Luffy is able to hold back, to make sure that there is enough for everyone to eat as much as they want.

Those grievous wounds, left festering for so long, are flushed out with the careful support of the entire alliance, so that none who are in need of shelter, care, food, hope, are forced to go without any longer. As each dawn comes and the dream persists, it becomes possible even for those who doubt their good fortune to see that this is reality: the wounds begin to scab over as the people are able to lay their dead to rest.

They continue to mourn and celebrate, and the samurai and daimyo meet and discuss next steps, begin plans to reform the education of the country’s youth, who are as confused by the festival as they are overjoyed to experience it. Again and again they marvel in shock that the dreaded, cowardly Kozuki clan has toppled their beloved shogun; without meaning to, they insult their saviors, and trouble Hiyori and Momonosuke with undeserved mistrust, and fear.

Years from now, when the scabs have turned to scar tissue, these people will look on the lord of their land and hopefully be able to smile at the sight of him. Not because they have no choice; not because they are beaten till they break; but because Momonosuke and Hiyori will be good to them, and their livelihood will recover.

Luffy finds him curled up in the boughs of the great curved cherry blossom tree that overlooks the city.

It’s restful, quiet and removed. Zoro has been sitting here for the better part of an afternoon and he’s running out of booze, so Luffy’s timing is good. It was no easy feat to get up here. He still aches from the climb, might not have the energy to find his way back down. Even so, as with everything else, he has no regrets about making this journey.

"Captain," he says by way of greeting, as Luffy approaches from his blind side. He motions without looking to show there's plenty of room to sit, and in short order has a rubbery shoulder pressed against his side. Luffy is warm and sturdy, and unusually quiet. Zoro’s been letting himself just quake with the jittery, unending tremors of his laughter, but something about the contact makes it worse- like he’s finally noticing how intensely his diaphragm burns. He takes a measured sip from the dregs of his bottle and doesn’t turn his head. "Hahaha- ah! Hhh. How is it down there?"

Of course, Luffy laughs with him. It sounds less out of place when he isn’t alone in the act, which is oddly comforting. His teeth chatter. He feels, more than sees, Luffy shift and turn, lining up so his back is against Zoro’s side, more solidly connected. "Shishishi! Messy. But happy, now.”

"Heheheh! Good." They do seem happier, don’t they? More genuine. The same can’t be said for him. Zoro has wrestled with himself over this all day, trying to find the will to suppress it without success. Pervasive melancholy curdles in his throat, sinks in his gut, leeches into his bones till he feels heavy and hopeless. Now is a time where they’re meant to be happy, sure, but he has no choice in his happiness. It isn’t real. It doesn’t stop. Without relief, it becomes a constant, unrelenting pressure, twisting him from the core of his person into something strange.

It’s stupid. They won, they lived. He should be down there, with them, part of them. He should be celebrating. He just doesn’t-

He doesn’t fucking feel like it.

Luffy leans back heavily against him, as if settling in for a nap. The sudden shove leaves Zoro off-balance, but he corrects for the difference, bracing himself with a hand on the smooth, dark trunk of the tree. That aggressive point of contact between their bodies makes him feel as though he’s being cornered, exposed. It’s no secret what ails him, but there’s no guarantee there will ever be a cure. It wouldn’t be so bad, he thinks, if he didn’t have to live with it constantly. It can almost feel manageable, at times, and then he’ll lose his grip and it tears out of his throat, and leaves him feeling like he’s become a completely different person.

He just misses silence. The kind of calm he could draw from absolute stillness, as he listened to the world around him and held his breath. Right now, silence means sitting here as far from others as he can get, where that loathsome sound he can’t escape is carried away on the wind so quickly he almost doesn’t hear it.

He hadn’t been permitted to climb the sibling to this tree, in Zou. It occurs to him belatedly that he should have checked, before coming, if jaunts up this particular tree were permitted. He doesn’t want to commit some grave offense against their hosts, after such generous hospitality. That would be ironic, wouldn’t it? One final mistake made in Wano as a bookend to his first, fucking up the goodwill they’ve earned with their allies, here.

“Zoro should be allowed to be happy too,” Luffy says, cutting through those thoughts as if he had heard them.

“Ha!” He coughs, suddenly aware of how precarious his perch on sanity has become. Zoro isn’t frightened of death, doesn’t think he’ll slip and fall, doesn’t even worry that Luffy is about to abandon him- and how funny is that, to have finally come to trust that he is wanted, that he has a place, after so long without- but if he has to look down the barrel of the future with a smile for the rest of his life, he thinks he’ll break.

Weak. He’s so weak. Zoro chokes on it.

“Luffy,” he gasps, trying not to let his voice waver. They’ve always been equals, men of resolve and confidence. He hates that he needs this. He hates that he can’t do it alone. “Ha, I can’t, I can’t stand it.”

His captain is as steady as bedrock. Says, “What do you need?”

Zoro moans, in pain. He can’t find the words to answer.

After they’ve come down and Zoro feels wrung out and empty and too tired to complain, Luffy tells him they’ll handle it. He can’t help but believe his Captain, and he doesn’t know what that will mean for him, but when he sleeps that night (with Chopper’s help, in the form of a bitter little drink that makes him too tired to wake himself laughing) he trusts that tomorrow will be better.

It is, strangely enough. Luffy just has that sort of effect on things. It’s not fixed, but he comes out of his groggy morning drowse to the chorus of three voices arguing back and forth above him. Chopper notices first, and tells him with obvious excitement that Luffy went to both Marco the Phoenix and Law, formally requesting they aid Chopper in his efforts to develop a cure. He doesn’t know how to respond, a bit dazed by how readily both men seem to have agreed; in the end, he thanks them, trying to manage the hope that starts budding in his chest.

They ask him for several things. Blood samples, physical examinations, tests of his breath control, muscle control, the list goes on and soon enough Zoro finds himself on a schedule of daily doctor visits. It’s inconvenient, but he can’t say he minds. The intrusive prodding and poking are part and parcel of the process of discovery, he figures, so it wouldn’t do to be a recalcitrant patient.

It’s still a time of celebration, so Luffy walks among the Flower Capitol’s people, dancing in delight, trying every street vendor’s wares and admiring every joyous song, no matter how hoarse or off-key. The cook and Franky have their hands full helping to distribute goods- mostly food- to the people each day, while Robin sits in on the meetings of the daimyo, to offer assistance in coordinating their efforts, and the occasional piece of sound advice.

Nami counts their supplies, stocks the ship with help from Brook and Jinbei. And today, Usopp lingers here in the training yard with Zoro, watching the samurai hone their skill. Zoro is starting to work his way back into a training regimen, too, but he’s got to be careful not to push himself. Even if he wasn’t fighting to keep his breathing under control, his wounds are taking longer than usual to heal. It’s a little frustrating, watching the others return to their practice and knowing he can’t compete.

At the moment, they aren’t the only outlanders in the yard; several Kidd pirates and Shachi of the Heart are here too, running through their own exercises and sparring for fun. A healthy spirit of competition burns in the back of his throat, though he isn’t up to a duel of his own, just yet. Maybe he can delegate. Between Luffy and the doctors’ efforts, he’s almost feeling himself, today, and he knows he can count on Usopp anytime for a bit of shenanigans.

He sends Usopp a sidelong glance, then pointedly turns toward their rivals, across the yard, showing off and butting heads. It’s bad form if the first officer can’t keep his counsel, and they are still tentatively allied with their rivals, but Usopp... Usopp might be in the clear to play a trick or two.

All he says aloud is, “What do you think?”

Usopp snickers, reading him loud and clear. “Bet I can knock off Shachi’s hat from here.”

He grins in answer, enough to bare tooth, but hesitates. He can’t in good conscience condemn Usopp to the outrage of their allies. The fight would be decidedly one-sided, since the four Kidd pirates present and Shachi alike are close combat specialists, and Usopp- for all that he has grown- is a distance-fighter. Zoro can’t provide any real protection in his current state, so it won’t do to to be too obvious.

Besides, that’s too easy a shot for ‘Sniper King’ on its own. He can do better.

With affected boredom, Zoro surveys the yard for possible ancillary targets, zeroing in on a couple of Kidd pirates currently locking swords with Kin’emon. They’re within a step or two of Shachi’s training dummy. That should do nicely.

Usopp waits patiently, looking for all the world like he’s deeply invested in fixing one of the tethering teeth in his kabuto sling. He waggles his eyebrows as Zoro starts to laugh louder, his mind made up.

He points with his chin, so as not to draw attention to himself. “Make it look like his fault. The big guy with the scars.”

“Oo. Heat?”

With a thoughtful squint, Usopp shifts position subtly closer to Zoro, adjusting his angle of attack. He’s always been a talented shot, but he moves now with the same careful control in his motions as Zoro expects from an expert swordsman. No excess, no overdramatics. He just quietly loads a pellet of hard-packed dirt and draws the shot. Clever, Zoro thinks, because the dirt will disperse on impact, leaving the ‘how’ of their prank a mystery.

“If he moves a little closer to Kin’emon- perfect,” and Usopp releases the shot with a subtle flick of his fingers, quickly adjusting his hold on his weapon to stifle the recoil. Then he pulls out a cleaning cloth and some resin, artfully concealing his involvement by immediately settling in to polish the wooden haft of the sling, for all the world as if he’d been doing it for several minutes before this point.

Across the yard, Shachi’s hat goes flying, just a moment after Heat breaks his swords from Kin’emon’s guard, swiping them carelessly in Shachi’s direction. From where they sit (and out of the corner of his eye), Zoro watches the whole thing flare up into a good-natured, thunderously loud argument about courtesy between training partners. Usopp manages to stifle his giggles, but Zoro can’t. It feels good to be a bit of a shithead, once in a while.

“Nice shot.” He keeps his voice to an undertone, but the compliment is richly deserved.

“That’s me! Best in the Grand Line.” Flashing a sunny smile, Usopp gets to his feet, motioning for Zoro to join him as he quits the yard. He hadn’t been quite ready to give up for the day, but he’s too weary to push the issue. They might as well go do something else.

Though that begs the question: “Where to?”

“Just reminded me, is all! It’s time for you to see Chopper, isn’t it?” Usopp’s tone is light, his expression earnest. “Since he’s meeting with Traffy and Marco again today.”

“Right,” he sighs, more openly bitter than he’d meant to be. Usopp raises an eyebrow, silently asking if he’s all right, and he sucks on his teeth, smile turning brittle and annoyed. It’s reasonable to worry- he hates this, hates the plastic feel of his own face, hates being pitied, too- but he’s grateful. It’s just- tiring, not to know what to expect, not to be sure that there even is a cure waiting for him at the end of this. “Chopper mentioned moving to a bigger room for today. I’m not sure where they’re meeting.”

“Yeah! The castle library, he said. I can show you how to get there, it’s not far!”

“Great. Thanks.”

He tries to keep pace as they start walking, but he was out of breath already from his earlier exertions. Even the short distance from the yard to the dining hall is taxing. By the time they reach the bottom of the stairs, he’s fallen several paces behind.

Fuck.

Before Zoro can steel himself for the daunting task ahead- and he would, probably, have just tried to charge upstairs out of sheer obstinacy, had he been left to his own devices- Usopp makes a sudden, melodramatic moue of pain.

“SHIT!! Oh owwww, ow ow ow ow! My leg!” He stamps his foot twice, then walks in a tight little circle, daintily favoring his right leg like he’s somehow managed to trip over a rock in the middle of this unadorned, empty hallway. Then he sits down on the stairs, blocking the way so Zoro has no choice but to rest.

Meddlesome asshole. Zoro thinks with unmitigated fondness. What an obvious lie.

“Ah mannnn, it’s all cramped up!” Usopp whines, and ignores Zoro’s raised eyebrow of disbelief.

He says nothing, wheezing heh heheheh! as quietly as he can while he starts to catch his breath. This doesn’t deter Usopp at all: he doesn’t miss a beat, continuing his one-man-conversation as if he’d gotten an actual answer.

“Ugh, yeah. It’s super bad. Sorry, Zoro!”

“Sure it is.” Zoro refuses to sit, but he does rest his hip against the banister at the foot of the stairs, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Yeah. Hey, let’s take a break so I can limber up, okay? Just for a little while. I’m gonna do my mind-body-healing stretches- you ever hear of those? They’re amazing! A lost art of the lion-people from ancient times of yore.”

“Really.”

“Really! They improve the blood flow of cramping muscles a thousand fold!”

It isn’t as though Zoro has the stamina right now to force his way past Usopp and insist on taking the stairs right away. He huffs in half-hearted complaint, acceding to Usopp’s demands with a shrug.

“Cool. Then I’ll just do those until it feels better, okay? We can keep going after!”

So saying, Usopp gets back up. He makes a great show of going through a series of increasingly ridiculous stretches: he starts by cracking his spine, then wiggles his whole body back and forth; he balances on one leg, then the other; finally, he performs some strange pose with one leg lifted and both arms bent over his head, groaning at the strain of holding that pose. Zoro watches him go through the motions placidly, letting him work away his unconvincing imaginary leg cramps with his unconvincing imaginary stretches.

By the time he’s done, Zoro’s breathing has recovered to a resting rate, the sweat cooling on his skin as he leans there. They resume their journey at a much more meandering pace, taking frequent breaks so that Usopp can loudly proclaim his interest in every tiny architectural feature they encounter. The journey takes them nearly a full hour, but they arrive in relatively good condition, with Zoro only slightly out of breath.

“Want me to stay?” Usopp asks, even as Chopper notices them in the doorway and squeals a delighted greeting. He and Law seem to be fussing with equipment they’ve brought over from the Polar Tang, and Marco motions for Zoro to step inside so they can hook it up to him.

“Nah,” Zoro drawls, trying not to balk at the idea of being hooked up to anything. “This could be a while.”

“All right then!” Usopp replies, flashing him two thumbs up as they part ways. “Just give me a holler if you need anything.”

He receives a blood filtration treatment that probably should have killed him, involving the full removal of all blood from his body for two extremely weird, deeply uncomfortable minutes. Law’s ‘operating room’ will haunt him for months. Zoro has rarely felt so completely helpless in a space, and just because it doesn’t hurt doesn’t mean he comes away without a healthy sense of horror regarding the abilities of the op-op fruit.

In the same vein, Chopper tries a few medicines made to work on relaxing the muscles that keep involuntarily clenching, forcing the laughter, forcing the smile. He’s coming from a place of simply stopping the response of the muscles, he says, which Zoro only partially understands, but it means paralytics and opiates, and Zoro spends a good six hours lost in a fugue state, quietly and tiredly giggling as he becomes deeply acquainted with the motions of his fingers through time and space.

“Oh noooo,” Chopper frets when Zoro is vomiting, afterwards, his entire body rioting like he’s eaten something spoiled. “I didn’t think you’d have such a low tolerance!”

They try to isolate what they initially think is a toxin from the smile fruit, only to end up convinced that it’s a byproduct of the effect instead. Law compares his blood samples to some from Franky, since they’re the same phenotype, but nothing noteworthy comes to light. Marco has him sit across from him at a table, and lightly holds his hands, conducting phoenix flame across the pads of their fingertips and into the nerves that run up his arms, flooding his body with energy that, for one instant, burns so hot it feels like it will melt him from the inside out.

Then Marco frowns, rolling his head this way and that, as if looking around at something interesting. He asks Zoro to do basic, simple things- lift your arm, nod your head, say something, and so on- and maintains that contact, monitoring each response through means beyond Zoro’s ken.

When all is said and done, he shakes his head, saying only “Everything scanned completely normal. Sorry, Roronoa.”

They’re at lunch three days later- Zoro resting reluctantly on a medical bed as he takes his meal, for lack of energy to walk downstairs and back- when Chopper sighs dejectedly, “I wish we could ask Dr. Vegapunk. He’s the world’s greatest genius! I bet he’d have solved this on the first day.”

Law gives a dry chuckle at that and Zoro rolls his eye, but curiously, Marco sits up straighter, pointing a finger at Chopper as his face splits in an incredulous smile.

“That’s a good idea, Mr. Reindeer! I mean, I’ve never met him personally, but he’s pretty close by!”

Chopper blinks. “What?”

Law, with the particular blanched disbelief that he most commonly reserves for Luffy, adds, “What?”

“Ha ha- HA, He works for the government, doesn’t he?”

“Oh, yeah,” Chopper sighs, wilting with dismay. “He might totally be a bad person. Like Dr. Moria.”

“Perona’s guy?”

“Who’s Perona?”

“I guess it’s been a couple years since you would’ve seen her.” Zoro cracks his neck, and settles where he’s seated a bit more comfortably. “Ghost girl? Anyway. She was always talking about Moria. Real pissed he died.”

“Wait.”

At Law’s terse interjection, they all pause, giving Marco time to grab the pitcher and pour himself a fresh cup of tea. Zoro declines, stuffing a dumpling in his mouth so it won’t get cold, and Chopper gives Law his full attention, politely dropping the matter of Moria- for now.

“Marco, are you saying you know where Egghead Island is? Isn’t that a hidden island?”

Marco shrugs, unfazed. “I’m a pirate. I know lots of things I’m not supposed to know.”

“...fair point.”

“More importantly, I know for a fact that Vegapunk never leaves the place, these days. There’s a lot of government activity near the island, so it might be a bit of a risk to go there, but if anybody would be able to synthesize an effective treatment for smile fruit quickly, Vegapunk would be your best bet.”

As Marco sips his tea, Law’s mouth flattens into a thin, angry line. “Aside from the fact that he works for the government.”

“Didn’t you do that for a while?” Marco muses with a playful smile.

“Oh yeah! Traffy was a warlord of the sea, huh?”

Zoro, who enjoys the apoplectic, impotent fury on Law’s face, just laughs.

“Besides, we’re pirates too,” Chopper adds with a proud little flourish, looking downright devious, for once. “If he won’t work with us by choice...then we’ll steal what we need! Marco, Marco- do you know which way we go from here?”

“Yep! I’ll help your navigator plan for it, if that’s all right by your captain.”

They pass the rest of the meal in high spirits, invigorated by the possibility that Vegapunk will have tools or knowledge they lack, or some ability to break through the challenges that have stumped them, so far. Even Chopper seems to doubt the man will be interested in helping a group of strangers with a medical mystery, but the possibility still comes up once or twice. Chopper says, bright-eyed and optimistic, ‘Maybe he’ll be really nice!’ and no one has the heart to disagree.

Even Law warms up to the idea once he’s eaten and had a few minutes to compose himself, admitting in an undertone, “We really haven’t made any headway, here, so I like your idea, Tony. I just can’t commit to sailing with you when we leave. The alliance was only ever supposed to last until we defeated Kaido.”

“Aw,” Chopper whines, tears welling in his eyes. “Really?! No! I forgot about that...”

Amidst Law’s stammers of dismay, Marco chimes in, “I’m planning to head home soon, myself.”

“But- but our doctor trio!”

“Tony, we have responsibilities-” Law full on winces when Chopper turns his dewy eyes on the Heart Pirates captain, and Zoro almost takes pity on him. Almost.

“We can’t stay in Wano forever, Mr. Reindeer.” Marco pushes his teacup round on the table, rolling it back and forth precariously, while keeping it from spilling over. “But you can find me back on Sphinx Island anytime you want to swing by. Worst comes to worst, come to me there and we’ll try again. Okay?”

“Yeah! Okay!”

The Heart and Kidd pirates aren’t planning to sail for several more days, so they help with loading the Sunny, in the spirit of the alliance. Law and Robin have made the trip to Wano’s poneglyph, so they share what they’ve collected with Kidd, too, and posture and puff about who will reach Laugh Tale first.

It’s not till they’re out to sea that they finally have a chance to catch up on the news.

There’s a short article about trouble at the reverie, though no details are yet forthcoming. They’re left to wonder about the safety of the friends they’ve made who were meant to be in attendance, for now. Certainly Vivi, Shirahoshi and Viola were invited, so there’s worried talk among them all as they wonder whether the ‘disruption’ vaguely described in the article was violent in nature. Stranger still, and despite the fact that Luffy is apparently now an emperor of the sea, the government has apparently dissolved the warlord system.

“They’ll be okay,” Luffy says thoughtfully, glancing to Zoro for confirmation. “I mean, they’re strong, right?”

It’s strange to think about the government moving on Kuraigana and routing Mihawk, now that the protections he’s enjoyed are nullified. Zoro doesn’t suspect the navy stands a fighting chance, but he can only shrug it off, admitting the possibility that there might be more at play than they can see. “Who knows?”

“I just hope Vivi’s all right,” Nami says, fretfully biting her thumb. “Maybe we’ll find out more next week.”

Part of him was homesick, all this time. That’s why he can’t stop restlessly shifting about, now that they’re back aboard the Sunny. It’s where they’re meant to be, where he’s meant to be, and aside from a too-brief jaunt to the shores of Onigashima, he’d been apart from her since Zou. It’s not like he’s alone, either. Nami comes out on the deck to tend her grove, then happily joins Robin in the library. Less than an hour later, the two of them are snacking with the cook and Usopp in the mess, while Chopper and Franky rile each other up with increasing excitement about what Vegapunk might be like when they meet. Jinbei is the calmest of the lot of them, while Brook is just as bad as Zoro himself, clambering up to the crow’s nest, down into the men’s cabin, out on deck, into the mess hall, even passing through the aquarium just to appreciate each particular view.

Within the first few hours back at sea everyone else starts to settle, but Zoro finds himself unable to stay any one place for more than a catnap. They’re home and he’s glad, and it feels good to be in these places that are his. It feels natural to be here, feels right, but.

How keenly he is aware of the wrongness within him, now. He can’t imagine how any of the people of Ebisu town could bear this curse, not for years, not forever. Again and again, Zoro wakes himself with his own voice, startled out of what should have been a peaceable silence and struggling to circle back to the brief sense of respite only the Sunny could offer him.

When night has fallen and they’re well out of sight of land, Luffy calls, “Hey, Zoro.”

Zoro is currently pacing the deck, limbs trembling with excess energy and voice rumbling in waves of giggles, cresting and falling with his path across the ship. He draws up short, quivering in place, and then can’t help but start to move again, ignoring his Captain as he passes him by, circling and circling, agitated, aching. He can’t even pretend he notices it, anymore. They notice, the way his laughter spikes and dips with his moods, and they react. But for how long? Eventually it will be something they expect, just part of who he is.

He clenches his hands, unclenches them, imagines ripping out his own lungs to give himself some peace. Not that it would be the right kind. It would be better than the disconnected, glassy sensation that had come part and parcel with Chopper’s ‘calming tincture’, though. He’d absolutely hated that.

“Zoro,” Luffy’s voice is a bit more urgent, and he is closer than Zoro had expected, this time, right behind him when he turns. He grabs Zoro’s face between his soft cool hands and squeezes his cheeks, pushing them together till his first mate growls at him in irritation, lips crushing into his teeth. “Spar with me.”

“What?” That really does cut through his gathered angst, leaving pure, unadulterated surprise in its wake. They’ve never sparred before. He assumed they couldn’t, because their fighting disciplines are so radically different. Doesn’t mean he hasn’t craved it, imagining how perfectly they’d counterbalance each other, wondering whether he’d make first blood before Luffy slipped his guard. He tries to pull back for a better look at Luffy’s expression, but his captain has a very strong grip. Luffy keeps him still, waiting for his response, demanding his undivided attention. “Here? But there’s no room t-”

“Sure there is.” A secretive smile crosses Luffy’s face, and he lifts his gaze skyward, as if to check that it’s still a moonless night. It’s almost black as pitch, aside from the ship’s lanterns. Luffy seems shadowed and mischievous in the gloom, the human embodiment of trickery. “There’s plenty of room. I’ll protect the ship, Zoro. Let’s spar.”

He tries to read his captain, uncertain how exactly Luffy would propose to do that when his punches can shatter literal dragonscale and Zoro can cut through flames. The Thousand Sunny is an astonishingly well-built, beautiful ship, and he loves her. She would also crumple under the weight of an all-out brawl, even if it wasn’t them doing the fighting. She’s a home, not a training field.

So what is Luffy up to?

“For real?” Zoro finally breathes, because he’s all out of ideas on how to rid himself of this excess energy anyway, and it would be a relief to go all out until he’s too tired to stand anymore.

Haki the color of Luffy’s eyes, black-brown like dried blood and red like fresh, crackles over his captain from head to toe. Luffy’s clothes and hair begin to steam, clouding over with it until they’ve turned white, faintly billowing in a wind of their own.

Luffy smiles at him like everything in the world is so fucking funny, and says, “Shishishi! Yeah! For real!”

The world breathes around them, and Zoro listens. Wood creaks softly from beneath his feet as Sunny shifts and settles, and the waves slosh to and fro, forever in a matching waltz with the distant moon. He can hear the soft and even patterns of his crew: Luffy, right here, breathing roughly, agitated with excitement at this fantastic idea he’s had. Further distant, Chopper’s faint little snores and Robin’s slow, noisy breathing and Nami’s deathlike silence, always too quiet. Brook, softly plucking at his violin while the cook makes him a late night cup of tea; Usopp mumbling half-sentences, mid-dream and Jinbei in the library, turning a page as he continues to read. He hears it all, and under that, Zoro’s head clamors with the sound of his death-dreams, a heartbeat that is also a call to celebration, a polyrhythm so erratic it drowns out all the rest.

The drums.

He looks on his captain in undisguised wonder, hardly even realizing his hands are in motion, pulling his bandana off his arm, drawing his swords in barely suppressed glee. To fight- to really fight solely for the joy of it, for the sake of testing the sharpness of their respective skills- is something Zoro hadn’t even thought he was permitted to request. He lives for this. He would die for this. Once he has Sandai Kitetsu and Enma out, he pauses, because Luffy is still holding his face, watching him so intently with those suddenly-red, faintly glowing eyes. It’s a searching sort of gaze, but not judgmental. Luffy has always looked on him with friendship and respect.

Zoro huffs, almost embarrassed, and his mouth pulls up into a wider grin, all teeth. He closes his eye, turning into the warmth of Luffy’s hands, lets out a laugh when Luffy bullies him, pulling his cheeks out just to prove that he can.

It’s jarring to suddenly be made of rubber. He keeps expecting the stretch to reach its limit well before it does, and when Luffy finally lets go, Zoro’s cheeks snap back into place. His whole head wobbles from the force of the motion and he thinks, ‘oh, that must be what Luffy meant when he said he could protect the ship’.

“Okay.” Zoro is glad of the time they spent resting in Wano, glad that his wounds have mended enough that they only lightly ache. He probably can’t give Luffy his absolute best tonight but he’s so excited he doesn’t care. He has so many questions. He wants to try so many tactics to see if he can even get close to landing a good hit. But if they’re showing off, then Zoro has a trick of his own to try, and Enma is all but snarling for the chance to peacock, too.

When Luffy lets him go, he leaps back, testing the springy give of the deck beneath his feet.

Then he takes a bracing breath, ignoring the involuntary spasms in his core, and concentrates on loosing the deathgrip he’s kept on his haki ever since his fight with King. Enma flares to life, shining and singing under the cool night air, its length aglow with ghostly green flames. He directs it down Sandai Kitetsu as well, feeding both hungry blades with the same strength.

“Whooaaa!!! Zoro! So cool, so cool!” Luffy goggles, cheering at the top of his lungs and bouncing on the deck in unbridled excitement. Zoro can’t help but beam with pride.

“’Course I am,” he says, shifting into a defensive stance. He’s determined to prevent Luffy from knocking him out too quickly. It’ll be embarrassing if he can’t give his Captain a half-decent fight.

They start with a simple clash; Luffy unfurls his will, exerting it in a snap of his whiplike arms as lightning streaks the ship, sparking and hissing, pure conqueror’s haki. He shoots his hands out like bludgeons, aiming for the bone of Zoro’s wrists, to deaden nerves and force him to drop his weapons. Luffy is fast and light, too quick to evade entirely, and Zoro takes one hit hard to his temple while the other flies harmlessly past his face.

While it’s still in range, Zoro flips his wrist, smacking Luffy’s hand down to the deck with Kitetsu. Before it can recoil back to its usual length, he pins the arm in place a foot planted firmly on the back of Luffy’s hand, trapping it there.

“OH!” Luffy squawks, caroling with laughter like bells on the wind, delighted. He smiles meanly, using the stabilizing point of Zoro’s foot to snap himself forward, and uses his head like a hammer, slamming into the hollow of Zoro’s throat with force enough to choke. They follow the steps of this weird, wobbling dance from there, Zoro swinging backwards with one shoulder to evade the next headbutt and then lifting his foot to let Luffy fly up into the mast, where he bangs his head against the wood with a GONK! that may or may not wake up some of their crewmates, it’s so loud.

Zoro doesn’t care about any of that. Zoro is burning with static, green-gold popping and sparking as the flames rise up his arms from both swords. He’s so alive in that moment that it doesn’t matter if he’s laughing. He wants to laugh, to bellow, using all of his chest because he’s ecstatic, exhilarated to be here, right here, in this exact moment and place.

His throat aches and his head is ringing from the hits he took, but Luffy splatters down like a literal human puddle after rebounding off the mast, wobbling and groaning, his eyes rolling like dice. It’s so bizarre it’s funny, startling an honest to goodness guffaw out of him.

“Think fast!” he warns, pressing the attack in a swift arc that neatly accounts for the way Luffy is about to bounce up like a spring and twist ‘round to punch where he was expecting Zoro’s gut to be. He slaps his captain on the back with the flat of Enma’s blade, teasingly, and fails to predict Luffy’s hand creeping under his right leg to grab his ankle. With a smug little cackle, his Captain pulls his whole leg out from under him. “Shit-”

His head connects with the deck, but there’s an unnatural give to the wood, courtesy Luffy’s power. It’s not enough to really prevent him from rattling his brain around, but prevents the hit from hurting as badly as it could have. He groans, disoriented, and sweeps his legs out in a move he’s definitely stealing from the cook, trying to drive Luffy away so he can flip his weight and get back to his feet.

As soon as he’s got his balance again, he brings up Enma and Kitetsu in a cross guard, keeping lower to the deck, using his heavier weight and gravity to counteract any attempts Luffy might make to grab and throw him a second time.

“Hmmm, but not enough. Zoro should take me seriously,” Luffy warns, in the instant before he zips across the (very small) distance between them and suddenly inflates to thrice his size, turning his left foot into a massive, be-sandaled hammer and stomping Zoro flat into the deck like an actual pancake.

Being rubber is extremely weird. For a moment, he’s flattened to the width of a sheet of paper; then the deck snaps back, popping up and sending him flying into the air, and Zoro is returned to his original form but he has no control over his trajectory, which is shooting him out over the ocean-

FUCK, the OCEAN-

He tucks into a spin, trying to compensate for the lack of lift by throwing both arms out wide and feeding his haki down the length of his blades to make great, flaming wings. With a few beats of his arms-as-wings and a lot of luck, he’s able to glide back over to the Sunny before he hits the water. A sudden wave of weakness crashes over him and extinguishes his haki with an unceremonious pop! from the vanishing flames. He drops the last several meters headfirst in a free fall, barely managing to twist at the last second and land on his shoulder instead. To his relief, Luffy has the good grace to keep the ship soft and malleable, so Zoro bounces instead of breaking something. When he’s dispersed his momentum, he flops limply to the deck, swords clattering free from his nerveless fingers and resting by his sides. He’s almost nauseous with fatigue. Disoriented, he presses his cheek harder into the wet of the grass and groans.

“Hey, hey!” Luffy grabs his shoulders, shaking him lightly. Understandably, he sounds confused. “Why did Zoro fall? What happened?”

“Too much haki too fast,” he wheezes, embarrassed to admit it. “M’still pretty- haaa, hahaha fuck! Pretty new to this.”

“Oohh.” He can sense, more than see, when Luffy shifts back, releasing that strange, frenetic energy into the night around them like so much fluff and nonsense. For a moment Luffy is wheezing, too, but he recovers faster than Zoro does. “Too bad. But you’ll fight me again later, yeah?”

“Sure,” it takes most of his energy to lever himself up, sliding about ungainly as he does his best to sheathe first Sandai Kitetsu, then Enma, so he can rest. Enma fights him a little, annoyed to be put away so soon. Kitetsu, at least, knows better by now. Luffy offers him a hand and when he clasps it, helps him to his feet. “Pretty cool trick, though, Captain.”

“Shishishi! Isn’t it good?”

“It is.” He hesitates, and decides he’d better tell Luffy directly, in case nobody thought to mention it to him, before. “You need to know I can’t swim, anymore, either.”

Luffy’s jaw drops, eyes bugging out in comical overreaction, as if he thinks Zoro is playing a trick on him. “Huh?! Of course you can??”

“Heh- hehh, heheh, no. The smile fruit is like devil fruit.”

Now that he’s dismissed his gleaming, aetherial powers, Luffy’s eyes don’t glow: but Zoro can feel them on his face in the starlight, searching for signs that he’s playing a trick, or lying. “Didn’t know.”

“Yeah,” so he’d figured. “Not your fault.”

“Didn’t think it was,” he can hear his Captain’s poorly-stifled frustration, aimless and impossible to reroute. “Zoro can’t swim anymore?”

“Yeah.”

“And after we ask that Punk guy for help?”

“If there’s a cure, maybe. If not, then.” He shrugs, trying not to sound as troubled by the prospect as he feels.

Luffy’s expression is tense, angry, like he wishes he could go back and beat the snot out of Kaido a second time. He settles for punching the mast, lightly and without haki, his mouth twisted into a pout. “Man. Sorry, Zoro. That’s dumb.”

Zoro is about to agree- because, really, it is- when a great, echoing screech pierces the water beneath them, booming as the soundwaves warble and warp upon entering the air. All around them the Sunny shudders, and the rest of the crew spills out on deck, joining them as they rush to the edge to try to figure out where the sound is coming from.

“Is it a sea king?!” Nami yells, dashing to the bow. “Usopp! Hard to port!”

Jinbei joins Usopp at the helm, while Franky rushes down to prepare a coup de burst, just in case. In the distance, under the second roar, there’s a separate sound, as of someone screaming. Brook looks around for the source, climbing the mast to try to get a better view.

“Is someone out there?”

“Yohohoho! I can hear it- a voice, crying for help!” A wave of anxiety sweeps the lot of them, as their musician adds with somber dread, “It sounds like a child lost at sea!”

“Sanji! Jinbei! Be ready to jump in if we see them!” Luffy snaps, rushing the deck as a deep, dark gloom spreads beneath the Sunny, dwarfing her easily.

“Everybody grab onto something!” Nami yells, looping her arm through the railing and hugging herself to it. “Here it comes!!”

The sea king surfaces, course correcting at the last second as if trying to avoid eating them whole. It still noses Sunny with enough force to send her skidding across the sea, thrown at a forty five degree angle and spinning as she goes. Zoro digs in his heels to the rigging, throws out a hand to catch Chopper when he inevitably loses his purchase on the slick deck, hooves more hindrance than help. The sea king gives chase, bellowing challenge.

With a groan the Sunny settles back into place, sending up a splash that barely halves the size of the monstrous sea king now circling their ship. It’s a shark type, but something is wrong about it, some irregularity in its profile that makes its movements seem unpredictable. In the hollow night void, it’s hard to even tell how close it is to the ship. As one, they pick themselves up, Brook popping his skull back into place as he returns to his position half-way up the mast and looks out over the shadowed waves once more. They’re still trying to regroup as a second sea king appears, then a third, and the childlike wailing comes louder as the shark looms closer, its mouth open in a dreadful roar.

“There!” Jinbei cries, in shock. “I see the child! It’s- eaten her?!”

Zoro follows Jinbei’s glance and nods to himself, setting down Chopper. The massive shark jumps out of the water, surging forth with its mouth wide open. If they can’t interrupt its trajectory, it’ll surely bite down on the Sunny and rip her in two. There’s no time to delay; he doesn’t think about it, just draws his swords and leaps, aiming to meet the shark at its closer eye.

“ZORO!” That’s Luffy’s voice but there’s no time to be distracted, now, as the shark tries to twist mid-air, the great, gray gloom of its eye focusing in on him, following his path. Maybe it can sense his killing intent. He’d like to think so. That initial push off the deck of the Sunny wouldn’t carry him on its own, so he lets his haki flow again, ignoring the way it makes his whole body ache. The only way forward is to give himself lift, and he thrusts his will onto the beast, a prelude to the stabbing strike he’ll make when he makes contact.

It’s only seconds before they meet mid-air, and Zoro’s shoulders burn as he brings together Enma and Kitetsu in a digging point. With the force of his own forward motion, he drives deep, deep into the jelly-like depths of the creature’s eye, slicing smoothly through. He has just enough inertia to reach the cartilage of its eye-socket, landing on the edge of it, his balance precarious in the extreme.

A flood of- for lack of a better term, eye goop -pours from the two deep cuts he made, rushing past him in a waist-high deluge of slime. He gets a stomach-turning whiff of the stuff before he manages to free Enma, then Kitetsu from their sticking point, flicking them clear and slicing up what’s left of the shark’s eye-nerves and tissue. A beast this big doesn’t always perceive pain immediately, and the shark is no different. He takes advantage of the delay to try to steady himself, bracing his forearm against the slick upper ridge of the eye socket for balance.

The eye-watering stench of rancid flesh is so overpowering his stomach threatens to riot. For a moment it’s all he can do to battle the urge to hurl. He hangs his head and tries to breathe through his open mouth, haaa, haaa, haa, but that only makes it worse.

He needs to focus. The child is somewhere in this vicinity- aren’t they?- and if Jinbei saw signs of the poor thing in this creature’s mouth, then there’s no time to waste.

Before he can start his search in earnest, the sea king bucks and screams, as the pain signal finally reaches its brain. An ear-splitting wail of protest fills the air like a solid wall of sound, surrounding him and rattling his skull. Head ringing, he staggers backward from the ruined eye in disoriented reflex, slipping as his right foot comes down on nothing.

“Ahh, ha- fu- FUCK-”

The beast whips its head to the side, catching him in a glancing blow with its nose by pure chance, and only reflex saves him. He whips Enma in a wide arc, jams the blade deep like a piton through the shark’s nose, carving a line down its face in an effort to hang on. As the shark drops back down to the water’s surface, it drags him with it in a rush beneath the waves.

In a second, all the strength leaves his body. He tries to gasp for breath too late, and saltwater scalds his throat as he sinks and sinks and sinks, head still throbbing from the sea king’s scream. Through sheer tenacity, he manages to keep his hold on both blades, though he knows it won’t last.

Webbed hands grab hold of him only seconds later, throwing him easily over a broad shoulder. One arm locks ‘round his waist, keeping him in place. The current swirls around them. He hangs limply from that iron grip, all thoughts of making an effort to rise or help his rescuer summarily countered by the ennui of the sea. Even after they surface and he’s tossed back aboard the Sunny like a sack of grain, that will-sapping weakness lingers. He can hear the rest of the crew, yelling back and forth, but can’t parse what they’re saying.

He’s just finished coughing up seawater when Robin’s hands lift him, conveying him quickly across several dozen pairs of the same hands to send him from the prow of the ship to the mast, where Robin is waiting. She wordlessly helps him find his feet again, offering a shoulder to lean on as he gathers his wits. Wobbling, still dizzy, Zoro takes stock of himself. All swords present, thankfully, though his hands are trembling with the strain, curled clawlike ‘round Kitetstu and Enma’s hilts. His pride is damaged, but aside from his ringing ears he doesn’t think he’s been wounded.

“Can you still fight?” Robin asks, looking intently into his eye with obvious concern. He has trouble focusing on her, but manages a nod. He can’t see any sign of the shark from before, but it was certainly not the only sea king out there, last he checked. “Brook was able to catch the child before she fell to sea, but we need to give him an opening to bring her aboard! I’m going to give you a boost over to them, all right?”

“Yeah,” he blinks hard to get his bearings. A pointing finger sprouts from the mast beside his head to help him spot the target, and he follows it without question. There is Brook, running across the water as only he can, with a weeping bundle of child cradled to his chest. Behind them swims a spike-finned eel, its fans spread in a display of aggression as it begins closing the gap between itself and its prey.

Zoro nods again to signal that he’s ready, braces himself, and Robin manifests one of her gigante fleur hands around him, so that he is nestled within her palm. The hand lifts, draws back like a catapult, and launches him Brook’s way in a perfect throw. As soon as he’s aloft, he draws his swords again, this time aiming for a clean cut through the eel’s neck. He’ll have to overshoot his target- bad for him, since it puts him even further from the ship and safety on deck once this attack is over- but good for Brook, because the damn eel won’t stop coming till it’s dead, if experience is any indicator.

Laughing like a wild beast and bleeding from his ears, Zoro sweeps Enma and Kitetsu clean through the eel’s neck when he arrives, landing just behind its skull. Just like that, it’s over: the head severs from the body a split second later, spewing an atrocious spray of noxious blood. He lands on the jutting bone of the dead eel’s spine with relative grace, stumbling a step or two forward before his forward momentum eases up. Flicking the blood off of his swords with practiced calm, he sheathes them in one, smooth motion.

For an instant everything seems like it might work out. Brook continues running toward the Sunny, and off the other side of the ship, he can just make out Jinbei and Luffy taking out the shark one in perfect synch. He can’t see scale nor fang of the last one, at the moment. Maybe it swam off. He’s just starting to catch his breath when the eel neck, on whose severed vertebra he’s been standing, begins to sink. “Ha ha haa shit, again?”

A massive upswell surges off his blind side. He only notices after, when a giant robot breaches the waves with a tremendous splash, narrowly missing his rapidly disappearing perch. He cranes his head back in shock, gawping at the machine as it ratchets a clamp-hand the size of a house onto the eel body. At first he thinks it must be something Franky built, some new masterwork he was waiting to reveal at the perfect moment for maximum appeal.

Then high voltage current surges down the thing’s clamp-hand and into the sea king’s body, heedless of Zoro’s presence, and the world goes so bright he can’t see for the pain.

When Zoro comes to, his everything feels lightly singed. Convinced that his fingertips are still smoking, he takes stock of himself with a wince as he tries to raise his head. Aside from the ache of being electrocuted, he’s relatively uninjured. He’s also back aboard the Sunny, laying in a heap on deck, which suggests that they survived and escaped the sea king attack. Two things are off, though. One: he can only sense Brook nearby, which begs the question of where everyone else has gone. Two: the ship is completely stationary.

He doesn’t like it. Disembarking to gather supplies or search for help from the locals could account for the absence of the crew, but the Sunny should still be bobbing in the waves, gently tugging her anchor while she waits for the rest to return. With a groan, he clambers to his feet. He goes a little too fast, teetering as his head swims in protest of the sudden shift in position. It takes most of his concentration not to slump right back down. After a few breaths to steel himself for more, he reaches up for the railing, clawing at them for balance so he can lever himself up. There’s another thing bothering him about this place, too. Something’s up with the sky.

What greets him is a fluffy bank of clouds beneath the Sunny, dotted here and there with tropical trees growing around them in an improbable grove. Beyond where they’re beached, a metallic monstrosity of a building stands in the nearby distance. Projected behind that is a neon-bright grid, etched in pink and blue lasers, with a black background that could be metal or could just be the night sky, if the rest of the domed ceiling- is this a ceiling?- weren’t painted a pale, bird’s-egg blue. At the top of the laser grid, massive letters spell the words PUNK RECORDS.

He supposes they must have found Vegapunk while he was out.

Far below, on the island proper, he can see a strange city, populated by distant figures that move among shining, silver buildings arranged in a massive grid. It really does seem to be a domed ceiling, because beyond the limits of the city are the familiar shapes of docks, barricaded at the outer edge by a wall painted that same pale-blue color.

If this is Egghead island and Vegapunk is here, he can’t help wondering why he was left behind. His memory of the fight is fuzzy at the end: The giant robot had attacked after the sea king was down, hadn’t it? The possibility remains that Vegapunk started a fight with, or worse, captured them. The only thing suggesting that all may be well is Brook’s faint presence, somewhere in the ship. Not the library, closer than that. The men’s quarters?

Zoro’s just about to go and look for him- try to get up to speed- when a sharp kick lands solidly in his gut. He coughs, dropping to his knees, and looks up to find a pistol pointed between his eyes.

(Or so he assumes. He only has the one eye, but that’s how it looks from where he’s sitting.)

The woman wielding it looks...familiar, somehow, though he can’t quite place why that would be. Blond hair, tall. Seems human. There’s smear of cheese and grease on her right cheek that she probably didn’t notice was there. It’s impressive that she was able to sneak aboard without him sensing any presence at all, and worrisome, since that means she’s a capable enough fighter to have taken out Brook, too.

“Don’t I know you?” he asks, even as the woman grinds her teeth and glares at him. She keeps looking over her shoulder as if she’s expecting someone or something to appear.

“Technically, sure you do, but I don’t owe you a single thing.”

It’s her voice that jogs his memory, though he never learned her name. She was big into pizza, wasn’t she? When they’d met, he was wandering the streets and- something to do with a gun. Not hers, though. What happened there? He was tackled to the ground, which had hurt, and then covered in ketchup, for some reason?

Hm.

That particular stretch of time is always hazy for him, but he’s confident he grasped the salient detail. “We met in Sabãody?”

“And I saved your life, what of it?” she snaps, without vitriol. Interesting. Whatever happened to the crew, he’s certain this woman is not the reason they’ve left the ship. “You were just raring to cut down that celestial dragon like a moron. Your captain’s as dumb as you are.”

“Hah! You’re not wrong, hahahaha!” They’ve both been called worse things. Even more untrue ones, really. Zoro leans back, just to get a little space between his forehead and the barrel of her gun, sizing her up as a possible threat. There’s something about her demeanor that reminds him of Trafalgar Law, the first few times they’d met him. In other words, she seems hostile now, but he gives it at best a day, maybe two, before Luffy cracks her shell like he does with everyone and the two are fast friends. He is nothing if not assured of his Captain’s irresistible charm. “Did you run into Brook?”

“Who?” She scowls, startling a second later with wrinkle of her nose. “Wait, do you mean that- that creepy skeleton?!”

“Yeah.”

“He has a name?”

“Most of us do,” Zoro says helpfully, laughing at the look of dismay on her face. “What’s yours?”

“No, what’s yours, you stupid swordsman!?”

He raises an eyebrow at her and smirks, daring her to pretend she doesn’t damn well know. His fingers itch to move to the hilts of his swords, but he pushes down the urge. There’s no need to fight, especially when he’s not entirely mended from the last one. After a brief battle of wills she sighs and yields, looking even more put out than before.

“Fine. I do know who you are. But I’m a captain, you know! It’s rude not to remember. I’m Jewelry Bonney!”

“Bonney,” he repeats, glad for a name to the face. “Hahaha! You didn’t knock Brook around too badly?”

Looking at him like he’s sprouted a second head, Bonney slowly starts lowering her gun, as if she doesn’t know what to do with a prisoner who finds her so totally unthreatening. “What’s wrong with you?” she scowls, trying to mask her unease with disgust. “What’s so funny?”

“Smile fruit.” He waits for her to holster the gun entirely before trying to move at all. After a brief period of indecision, she finally does, and he takes the opportunity to climb shakily to his feet. Bonney offers him a hand up without thinking. He accepts, mentally upgrading her likelihood of being charmed by Luffy from two days to one with a light-hearted chuckle. “So Brook’s all right?”

“I didn’t hurt your stupid skeleton!” She snaps. “I just de-aged him into a baby skeleton. Which- was a weird experience for both of us. He’s probably still trying to figure that out.”

Zoro files this information away with a vague sense of curiosity. If she’s speaking so casually about it, he can only assume Bonney’s devil-fruit powers don’t have a permanent effect. The question is, would being de-aged change anything about a person’s current physicality on reversal? Could wounds be healed, or life restored, using such a power? If Brook was simply changed into a smaller skeleton, though, probably not. “Hahaha! Probably.”

“Why are you laughing like that? Cut it out!”

“Can’t,” he grins, rolling his head till his neck cracks. The longer he’s awake, the less he wants to stand around, out of the loop and uncertain of the state of his crew. He glances out across the cloud bank to the building in the distance. It seems easier to get there than to descend to the city below. “That’s why we came looking, hehh! See if Vegapunk can cure it.”

“Wow. You really are an idiot.”

“Oh?”

“That bastard’s as evil as they come,” Bonney declares, voice cracking. She clears her throat, sniffs, and crosses her arms over her chest, trying for stoicism. “He wouldn’t bother helping you. Don’t know why you thought he wouldn’t just be another government lapdog, sorry to burst your bubble.”

Zoro’s never been especially interested in Vegapunk. The man makes the kind of weapons that just complicate Zoro’s day; beams and robots and swords that turn into animals, Pacifistas, and the like. While he doesn’t doubt the man’s craft and can appreciate the excitement of high-technology gadgets as much as the next guy, he doesn’t have a lot of use for any of it. Chopper and the other doctors’ excited brainstorm regarding the man’s expertise had mostly gone over his head, devolving into theoretical assessment and testing methods that might be employed to isolate the inner workings of the smile fruit. He’d come away from their speculation with a vague notion that Chopper, at least, believed Vegapunk could cure him: thus, asking is at least worth a try.

But Chopper has never met Dr. Vegapunk. Bonney’s disdain, by comparison, carries a personal note, which makes her opinion considerably more valuable to him at the moment (sorry, Chopper). If she’s not also a science-type, that would make her the first person who’s badmouthed the so-called genius without being a jealous rival in the field.

He decides to ask. “Hahaha! Well, then why are you hee- here? Hhh. Don’t seem like a researcher.”

“Shut up! I don’t have to answer you!” Which means she almost certainly isn’t, as expected. Still, if she’s holding a grudge, there’s a small chance things could get complicated, later. He didn’t have any plans to assassinate a world-famous genius today; wouldn’t want to be forced to fight Bonney on behalf of said genius, either.

“Suit yourself. Are you done waving that gun around?”

“Sure. Fine. For now, anyway.”

“Good.” He starts to walk past her and Bonney grabs his arm with a hiss, digging her fingers in till they bruise. Freezing mid-step, he glares right back at her. “HAa, aa- what’s your problem?”

“Where do you think you’re going?”

Maybe ordinarily he’d try to handle her directly, break out of her hold and bring her down so there’s no risk of her following. But with the others off doing who-knows-what and in possible danger, depending on what kind of person Vegapunk is, Zoro can’t help preferring minimal conflict in the moment. He shrugs her off, ignoring the way it throws his balance, and keeps his voice as even as he can, around the laughter. “Checking on Brook before we look for Vegapunk. You can come with.”

Bonney’s expression hardens, and she shakes her head in disapproval. If she’d rather charge off ahead, Zoro won’t stop her, but she doesn’t. When he continues walking toward the aquarium, she falls into step, keeping close behind.

It’s a strange arrangement, but as hostage situations go, Zoro figures he’s been in worse.

Brook seems fully in control of his faculties when Zoro finds him, toddling about the aquarium with his violin hugged to his chest. He graciously requests that they help clean and put away his instrument so the strings won’t snap, and Zoro hasn’t ever really handled a violin before, but he carefully carries it over to its case and follows Brook’s instructions without complaint. Wilder still is the fact that Bonney lets him, lingering in the doorway with an impatient pout on her face.

When the violin is safely stowed in its velvet-lined case and Brook is satisfied, Zoro asks after the others. It turns out that the rest of the crew did, in fact, travel to Vegapunk’s “Lab-O-Phase” (whatever the fuck that is), about two hours prior. The implications aren’t completely worrisome- two hours isn’t an especially long time to go between check-ins when they’re exploring a new island, and nobody had reason to assume Brook was in trouble here, after all- but Zoro is equally dismayed and alarmed that getting fried had knocked him out for so long.

They’re in the middle of debating whether Brook’s afro is actually bigger or only looks like it’s gotten bigger because he is proportionally smaller than it, now, when Bonney stomps her foot and punches the wall, demanding they hurry up already.

At this point, he also realizes that she’s drawn her gun again, and decides not to push his luck.

“Guess I’m going with her to explore,” Zoro tells Brook, waving to him without any outward concern. “See you.”

“Yohohoho! See you, Zoro!”

Ordinarily, he wouldn’t roll over so readily for a stranger, but they’re at a disadvantage and Zoro hasn’t written Bonney off as a potential ally, yet, either. Their casual acceptance of her power seems to bother her, which is worrisome in and of itself. Is it a fight she wants? Will she lash out when she doesn’t get it, or is this saving Zoro from taking a bullet in the back?

She produces a length of rope, tells him to hold out his wrists, and binds them together with a tight, skillful knot. When he accepts it with no more than a raised eyebrow, she flushes through, saying I’m not stupid! I don’t want you pulling your swords on me if you have a change of heart!

Zoro is almost offended that she thinks such a thing would stop him. Only almost, though. He’s still not at his best and Brook is brain-point sized right now, so he lets himself laugh, complying with Bonney’s posturing to keep the peace.

They disembark, stumbling once or twice on the bouncy cloudbank before they acclimatize. If he had his way, Zoro would try to make a straight shot to the building looming nearby. Since he’s being walked at gunpoint, however, he follows Bonney’s terse directions, turning left (your other left) and entering the domed wall directly via a side door that Zoro hadn’t even realized was there, painted to look the same as the rest of the walls that surround this strange island. He has to trust that there’s a method to her movements. The last thing they need to do right now is get lost.

When the side door opens into the midst of a series of nondescript corridors, he gets the bad feeling that they might manage it anyway. They walk in tense silence, pausing every so often to pry open doors at Bonney’s behest, checking for signs of Vegapunk within. They discover several labs, some of which house massive, empty tanks of a viscous fluid that fills the air with a static taste of ozone. There’s no sign of personnel in here at all, which starts to make his teeth feel like they’ll crawl out of his skull, after a while. This whole place feels like a prison.

“So what do you owe Vegapunk?” he asks, when they’ve been wandering down identical-looking walkways and through varying numbered doors in silence for the better part of an hour. Not for the first time, he wishes he carried a transponder snail on him. “What’d heh heh hehhh! Hhhhh! What’d he do to you?”

Bonney misses a step. He wonders if he wasn’t supposed to interpret her obvious animosity toward the man for what it is, but then she lifts her chin and squares her shoulders. Her voice trembles with a raw, wounded fury, and it feels too revealing, too vulnerable a thing to share. “He took my father away.”

“Ah,” Zoro says. He remembers losing his parents in that muffled, distant way of old pain, blurred with time. It began with a pirate attack, which conveniently gave him something to hate. Zoro has already been down the road that Bonney’s walking. He won’t tell her that revenge doesn’t fix things, because he knows he wouldn’t have listened if their roles were reversed. The loss of a loved one is a unique and unbearable kind of pain. Who knows what might bring her relief?

Once again, he’s failed to meet her expectations, accepting a truth she likely hasn’t shared much till now. She doesn’t seem to know what to do with that. Her face crumples. “I’m going to kill him for it.”

It feels almost invasive to hear her speak of it, because what she means is, ‘I’m going to punish him.’

At the very least, it ought to be something she shares with her crew, not a relative stranger. Still, he respects her honesty. That’s why he keeps walking beside her, ignoring the chafing of his wrists. She didn’t claim to want revenge, which would imply she’s after justice, or some high-minded nonsense like that. Zoro knows intimately what it is to be oathbound, but has never believed in justice. Such a concept necessitates the surrender of control, of trust, to authority outside the self. This is why he suspects that he and Jewelry Bonney are two of a kind. After all, he killed a lot of pirates before it lost its appeal.

Another of the myriad doors nestled away in these mazelike corridors manifests on the left side of the hall, and Bonney’s steps slow. He follows suit, assuming she’ll want to check it like all the rest, but Bonney leans against the metal portal, pressing her hands to it as if she’s about to collapse.

“What is it?”

She sniffles, shoulders shaking, and leans her forehead into the door. “It- I don’t know,” she complains, through a hiccuping sob, wiping again and again at her overflowing eyes. “I hear something, maybe? A voice, but it’s. It’s all wobbly. Distorted.”

Uneasy laughter bubbles up his throat, boiling over as his disquiet grows. Zoro is no coward, however. He sets his teeth together. “What’s it saying?”

“Not that kind of voice.” Bonney shakes her head, pulling back from the door to smear the rest of her snot and tears from her face. She points her pistol at the control panel for the lock and shoots it, just as she’s done for the last twelve, saying, “It’s like a memory. Like someone I haven’t heard since I was- oh!!”

This door, unlike the others, bounces half-way open on its own in response to the lock’s failure, emitting a quiet, electronic whine when it gets stuck there. Undeterred, Bonney wedges a shoulder between the two halves, forcing it the rest of the way open and stumbling through.

Zoro trails after her, bracing himself for the stink of the chemical vats they’ve uncovered so far, only to be greeted by a sight he hasn’t revisited in years.

“Daddy?!” Bonney cries, rushing for the paw-shaped bubble hovering ominously in the middle of the room, her hands outstretched to touch it. Unnerved, he lunges forward to stop her, bodily slamming her out of the way. They tumble together, falling ass over end to the ground in a heap.

It’s as if he can feel it, the memory licking up the back of his spine like spreading flames; it pulses with malicious energy, a monument to someone’s pain and suffering, locked away here- of all places- in the back rooms of Vegapunk’s lab. Was it someone they experimented on? One of the now-many who they’ve encountered in their travels with a broken spirit and healthy hatred for the world government? Or was it some poor idiot like Luffy without a matching fool to take his pain on, to eviscerate themselves in service of devotion to whoever-it-was?

Bonney has managed to sit up and shoves him hard enough to spill him to the floor on his back. His head strikes the steel plating with force, because he’s distracted, not compensating for anything, just trying to wriggle free, trying to get a hand on his sword until she pins his wrists to the floor with a heeled boot to his right forearm. Zoro barely registers the motion- sure, it hurts- because he’s busy trying to remember how to breathe.

“Bartho-HAHAHAHA!! HAHAHaa aha! HA! Hhheheh heh heh hehhhhh- aaa, ah! Ah!” He yanks his hands free, and she only stumbles a little, keeping her gun trained on him like he’s the danger, here.

“STOP IT!” she shrieks. “What’s wrong with you?!”

“Is your father Kuma? Warlord Kuma?!”

Bonney’s eyes go wide, then fill with tears, as the tip of her pistol trembles and sinks. She nods.

“Then don’t touch it,” Zoro gasps, wracked with laughter so intense he feels sick. “You HAA! Hahaha- have, have to know it could kill you!”

“What do you know?!” She tricks to kick him in the face, and he barely has the presence of mind to dodge the blow, pulling back and raising his hands in reflex, trembling as he tries to back away from that thing and cover his head at the same time. “Do you know my father? Do you know what this,” she heaves for breath, lets loose a heartfelt sob, “MONSTER did to him?”

“I HHHhhahahaha! I don’t,” Zoro gasps, staying low, bound hands up in supplication, head bent in surrender. “I don’t know! Hhhhehehehh I don’t know him! When I HAA! Hahahahahaa when I met him hee he was already-!”

He becomes aware, somewhat late, of the tears streaming down his face, even as he coughs for breath and retches when he can’t quite calm his heart. There’s a soft thud, as Bonney collapses to her knees beside him, wailing softly for her father, as if he could hear her all the way out here. There’s a clatter, too, of the gun dropping to the floor, and Zoro slumps with relief, no longer in danger of a flesh wound or worse for the immediate moment. He can’t relax, though, with one of Kuma’s bubbles so nearby. He hasn’t even thought about it, let alone talked about it, since the crew was reunited in Sabãody. It never occurred to him that he might need to.

Fuck. If Kuma is here, then the others might be in trouble. He tries to rein in his reflexive terror, taking slow, trembling breaths through his open mouth till his muscles stop locking up and he can look her in the eye.

“I met him,” Zoro slurs, in the mutual, numb catharsis that follows, while Bonney watches him with reddened eyes and a runny nose, quietly waiting for him to tell her everything. “He heeee- was already a cyborg, but he. Haa. He was after Luffy. Orders.”

Bonney looks questioningly at the bubble, and Zoro resolutely looks at her, instead.

“We made a deal,” he croaks, kneeling there on the floor with his hands in his lap, exhausted and mortified to have lost his shit so badly. It’s draining to speak of it, but he does it anyway. “Me instead. So he repelled Luffy’s pain into a bubble like that one.”

“It didn’t kill you,” Bonney says, looking indignant for a moment, as if she thinks he’s lying. He’s too tired to be annoyed with her for that; just shrugs.

“It was supposed to.” Then, very quietly, because he didn’t even tell Perona about this, “It made me wish it had.”

He feels lightheaded. He doesn’t know what else to tell her, doesn’t have the energy to stop her when she dashes her tears, and stands back up. Just watches, in a daze, as she turns slowly to face the bubble again, hands balled into fists at her sides.

“Bonney,” he rasps, trying to warn her off, knowing she won’t listen.

“I can hear his voice when I look at this,” she says, and her voice is still whiny and wobbly, but she doesn’t look back. “I need to know what it is.”

Dread drops into his gut like a stone, and Zoro laughs, watching her creep toward that awful thing like a sleepwalker, reaching out to be enveloped by it. He can’t tell how long it takes her, sinking through it. It might be seconds, or days; he feels disconnected and strange, fixed in place.

He’s grateful that she doesn’t scream.

And when she comes out of the far side of the bubble, a crash! Sounds behind him, in the hall, followed by a chorus of familiar, welcome voices shouting his name. It takes too much energy to turn his head; he’s barely registered the pounding of feet approaching when they reach him, Robin’s hands gently lifting him and Luffy curling around his side, holding him while Nami cuts the ropes on his wrists and they ask in urgent undertones if Zoro is okay.

Bonney is standing alone on the far side of the room, her arms wrapped about herself, weeping, smiling, like she’s been given a bittersweet gift.

He answers, honestly, “I don’t know.”

They move to a lounge, and there’s a great deal of talking between the Straw Hats and Bonney (who Luffy befriends immediately, true to form) while Robin and the cook help Zoro sit on a couch in the middle of the room, bringing him tea and asking him softly what happened. It occurs to him, after he’s had half the cup, that they’re keeping Luffy away from him, occupying the captain with Bonney and the weird, robotic figures wandering about the place that he supposes must work for Vegapunk.

Did they know? About Kuma’s deal? He looks searchingly into the cook’s eyes, and meets guarded concern. Huh. Maybe he’s worse at keeping secrets than he’d thought.

“I’m not hurt,” he says, when Robin starts massaging a cool, pungent cream into the rope burns on his wrists. “She didn’t hurt me.”

“I know she didn’t,” Robin says lightly, offering him a sunny smile. “If she had, I would’ve cut her fingers off.”

Weirdly, he finds that comforting. He nods, still laughing roughly, even though he’s feeling much more calm. He hasn’t been able to stop since seeing the damn bubble, and if Luffy somehow hasn’t realized that something’s wrong with him, Zoro will frankly be in shock.

“Which one is Vegapunk?” he wonders, instead of trying to convey any of that. The cook frowns, making a vague gesture with one hand that seems to indicate the whole room.

“Apparently, all of them,” Robin fills him in. “It seems Doctor Vegapunk split into these bodies so he can continue his research.”

Sounds freaky. Zoro glances toward the biggest one, who’s currently snoring away like she’s competing for a title in napping, and back to the pair that are talking with Luffy and Bonney. “He didn’t try anything with you guys?”

“Not yet. He said he wasn’t interested in curing smile, but obviously Luffy wasn’t about to take ‘no’ for an answer,” the cook smirks. “And neither was Chopper. They’ve been going at it for hours, now.”

There’s an unspoken offer on the air, from both of them. A promise to listen, if he wants to talk about it, if he needs to share what he hasn’t, all this time. He’s touched, even humbled, but it just doesn’t sound appealing. Part of him is still anxiously waiting for Bonney to be hit by some delayed-action version of the bubble, exploding into blood and gore without warning. He can’t relax enough to consider how worrying his own behavior might be.

“Didn’t say he couldn’t though,” Zoro muses, dropping his attention to his cooling tea cup and the dregs swirling there. “So it’s still possible.”

“Possible- maybe,” interjects a walking, talking robotic head that happens to be passing by the sofa he’s seated on. “But to what purpose? Of course a doctor will eventually discover a cure for the affliction. Just be patient!”

If the others notice the spike in his laughter, they’re too polite to say. He finishes his tea and tries to bear it, even though he feels like something’s coming loose, like it’s too much to hold, anymore. The cook refills his cup without asking, and Robin fills him in on what he’d missed between fighting the sea kings and now. He remembers, very late, to ask if they’ve checked in on Brook, and Robin laughs, delightedly relating how tiny he was when they found him. Brook has, apparently, reverted to his normal age since then, and is now guarding the Sunny with Usopp and Jinbei. Franky is trying to learn as much as he can from Vegapunk’s many selves, and the rest of them are focused on the goal of seeking a cure.

Just be patient. What a laugh. He tries to make peace with the fact that he probably won’t get better. He’ll get used to it, instead. No point giving up on everything after coming this far.

“Well what if I do it, then?” Bonney’s voice starts getting shrill again, cutting over the background chatter in her frustration. “You have a Pacifista here that used his bloodline, don’t you?”

“Of course I do. Doesn’t mean I’m going to trust you with it,” says the smirky, battle-ready looking Vegapunk. Beside her, the placid, masked Vegapunk interjects, “What would you suggest?”

“Let me borrow him!” Bonney drops her fist into her palm, puffed up to her full height. “If I can repel the ‘smile’ out, he’ll be cured, right? You have to let me try!”

It’s impossible to read the expressions on the robotic assistants, but they share a glance as if they were living, breathing people. The masked one answers, “I can’t spare defensive resources for any involved amount of time. There are troubling events afoot, if your report on the Reverie is to be believed. I need to make preparations to evacuate.”

“Stingy!” Luffy accuses, clearly already angry about the prior conversation. With an exasperated sigh, Bonney tries a different tack.

“I don’t need him for long. An hour or two, tops. All right? I know how to use the paw-paw fruit. I saw it in his memories.”

Memories?

Zoro doesn’t even notice his nerveless fingers losing grip on his cup. Before it can fall, Robin catches it mid-air, setting it aside on the nearby table.

“It won’t- haa! It won’t work,” he whispers, forgetting that Robin and the cook are both close enough to hear him.

“What?”

“Why not?”

It wasn’t even something he’d meant to say aloud, because how damning is it, to know? But he shakes his head and tries to stand, needing Robin’s support to make it before his legs start to steady beneath him. He doesn’t feel well. It takes most of his strength to raise his voice enough to be heard, across even that short distance, above the noise. “It has to go somewhere, Bonney, it won’t work.”

“Zoro?” Luffy brightens, though there’s a furrow in his brow. Even as he smiles, his captain doesn't seem happy to see him in such a state. “Chopper said rest.”

“I can’t.” He wishes he could physically force his face into any other expression, the laugh burning at the back of his throat between every word, ready to catch him if he forgets to brace himself. “It has to go somewhere, and I haaa! Hhh. I’m not going to put this on anybody else.”

In an instant, Luffy growls in fury at him across the room. “Is that what you want? We shouldn’t cure it?”

“No!” He wishes they weren’t surrounded by fucking Vegapunk, who he doesn’t trust as far as he can throw; he hates the pitying look in Robin’s eyes, the gentle one in the cook’s, and he hates that he can’t stop, now that he’s started, even though he knows it’s too revealing, too much emotion, too much pain. “HAHAHAH! Not if it means this for you!”

He finds himself face to face with his captain and for a few, bewildered breaths can’t tell which of them moved to close the distance. Then he registers his hands, fisted in Luffy’s vest and hauling him up, and thinks oh, I need to stop, but he can’t even slow down.

“Nobody should feel this, Luffy! HA, aah- I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy!!” he’s lost it, he realizes, laughing like Toko had, standing under Yasuei’s broken body: breathless, terrified giggles that wring him out. It would have been nice to have his breakdown in a slightly less public venue but there’s nothing left for it but to laugh, clinging to Luffy, hanging from his grip. Luffy remains motionless before him, implacable and incandescently angry in a way he’s only ever been with Zoro once before.

“Does Zoro think it’s fun to see him hurting?” Luffy asks in such a low, low voice that it feels like they’re alone. Zoro shakes his head miserably, doesn’t even try to defend when Luffy grabs his wrists, almost crushing them with his strength. “Then what? Tell me what you want.”

He shudders, flinching away what little he can move, and rushes the nearest wall, slamming Luffy’s back against the metal with a dull thud that he can feel all the way up his arms. Luffy doesn’t budge, doesn’t even wince. And Zoro comes undone with a gasp, dropping his head to his captain’s shoulder.

He’s never been forced into a corner like this. He feels like he’s been ripped apart and only the grotesque, bloodsoaked core of him is left, praying for kindness he doesn’t believe he deserves.

“Please,” he begs. “It’s too much.”

“Will you let me take it from you?” Luffy asks, letting go, bringing his arms around Zoro to pull him into a bonecrushing hug. It’s as much a way to steady him on his feet as it is an embrace, but it feels safe, and he’s pathetically grateful for it. “Is that okay?”

Zoro thinks of Luffy’s smile, of the sound of his laughter, of how much it comforts him, shishishi, a steady reminder that his Captain is alive and well. He doesn’t want those to become hateful things.

He buries his face in Luffy’s shoulder a few moments longer, fighting himself to the very last.

“You’re sure?”

Remarkably, despite all the built up tempest, all the rage that had been flaring between them before, Luffy laughs, squeezing his arms tighter. Everything about what his Captain offers is so tantalizing, so tempting, that he feels like weeping. It’s a kindness Zoro's sure he hasn't earned. He still feels guilty for even asking. “Shishishi. Zoro’s hurting right? So let me help.”

Zoro gives in, and says, “Okay.”

For her part, Bonney doesn’t draw any attention to the great big mess she’d walked into, all-business as she resumes negotiations with the Vegapunks. Luffy backs her up, and Zoro stays by the wall in a daze until someone- ah, the cook- fetches him. He’s led back to the couch to sit and wait for the Kuma-Pacifista to arrive.

So he sits and he laughs, too tired not to, leaning against the solid warmth of Nami beside him without fully realizing she’s there. She tells him something about how it’s good to ask when you need things, and could he please be a little less stupid about it next time, but he doesn’t really hear it. Luffy sits on the other side, propping him up like he can’t manage to sit on his own. Maybe he can’t.

He’s past caring about how it looks, anymore. He barely has the energy to tense up when he sees how close the Kuma look-alike has come.

“Now,” Bonney says, patting her not-father on the shoulder with a glassy-eyed cheer that’s as fake as Zoro’s smile. “Give me just a minute, and I’ll get you taken care of, okay? Least I can do to say thanks for- Uh. Yeah.”

Zoro would tell her she doesn’t owe him anything, but then Kuma’s paw-printed hand is touching him, and a curious feeling of emptiness overtakes his entire being. He doesn’t lose consciousness, precisely, but there’s an out-of-body quality to what follows that’s excruciatingly disorienting. Something leaves him, some influence that flickers in his awareness bruise-black and sickly. It’s not meant to be part of him, but when it leaves, it takes with it all the tension that had been keeping him awake. Thankfully, whoever is in charge of things has the foresight to help Zoro’s body lay down, catching him mid-collapse and arranging him over the couch so gently.

He tunes back in to the feeling of someone tightly holding his hand.

“Luffy,” he croaks, and cracks his eye open, drawing a breath so deep his lungs ache. It feels good. Easy. His eye waters even at that, and he coughs once, breath caught in a shuddering sigh. He has that lingering weakness of someone recovering from a fever, and feels hungrier than he has since this began.

Someone had the decency to cover him with a blanket, in the interim. It’s heavy, dyed green, a woolen thing too hot for the climate in here. Whoever it was has draped the blanket over his body from the shoulders down, leaving his arms free; his left hand has been positioned on his stomach, resting there limply even though the angle is uncomfortable for his elbow. His right is resting higher up, on his chest, fingers entwined with rubber ones in a comfortable, loose grip.

It takes him longer than he cares to admit to recognize that his head is resting in Luffy’s lap, his captain’s free hand gently playing with his earrings while he waits for Zoro to come to his senses. A whisper, soft enough almost to be ignored, tickles in the back of his mind, the sonorous shishishi of Luffy’s laughter.

He squeezes Luffy’s hand so hard that his bones would creak, if he weren’t made of rubber.

“Zoro’s feeling better?”

“Mm.” Even though his lungs and stomach still feel like they’ve been dashed on a rocky shore to tenderize them, he does feel better. The price, however, is fresh and heavy on his mind. “You okay?”

“Me? Shishishi! Doing fine, so far. Don’t I smile a lot already?” Luffy pokes his cheek, right beneath the apple, snickering at his grumble of soft complaint. “And I already can’t swim. And now we’re even.”

Ah, he thinks, with a flash of shame. He knows?

“Zoro kept his secret for so long,” Luffy muses, going back to playing with Zoro’s earrings. He can’t quite see the expression his Captain is wearing from here, but his voice sounds light, even genuinely happy. “But, you know, I figured it out a long time ago.”

He starts to sit up, and Luffy pushes down with their linked hands, against his chest, saying stay?

Zoro stays.

“I-” He flounders. “Fuck. Didn’t mean to keep it from you, I just-”

“It’s okay.” Slowly, as if to be sure he won’t use it as an excuse to get up, Luffy untangles their fingers and frees up his hand. He reaches down to cup Zoro’s cheek, and turns his head just a bit, so they can speak eye to eye. “’Cause we’re even, now, right?”

“Yeah,” Zoro breathes, “We are.”

If the laugh that bubbles out of his chest is a bit watery, he doesn’t notice or care, and Luffy doesn’t call him on it. He laughs till his ribs ache, till Luffy is pressing their foreheads together, grinning against his cheek. It’s the happiest he’s been since they parted ways in Zou. He laughs, just an earnest sort of sound, and Luffy laughs along with him, taking comfort in the temporary peace.

They’re gathered on the deck of the Sunny, in midst of reading the (incredibly stressful) news the next morning, when the lights for the entire dome suddenly go out. The sudden dark is followed by a distant crash and scattered screaming. An alarm starts to blare, emergency lighting clicking to life and strobing through the dark mega-lab in an elliptical pattern, as if searching for a saboteur.

Nami, who had been fretting over Vivi, leaps to the fore; Franky flicks on his nipple-lights, and Robin reports that the Vegapunks have sent a distress call over the private snail transponder they left with the ship the night before.

All thoughts of rescuing Sabo or defending his honor (or whatever it was Luffy was laughing and shouting about in a frenzy, moments before) are cast aside as he cracks his knuckles, and shoots Zoro a smile in challenge.

“Zoro! Let’s go kick some ass!”

“Aye, captain!” They disembark, and Zoro laughs.