Archive of Our Own ^beta

Thus Mithridates, who had experienced the most varied and remarkable fortune, had not even an ordinary end to his life. For he desired to die, albeit unwillingly, and though eager to kill himself was unable to do so; [only] partly by poison and partly by the sword he was at once self-slain. Cassius Dio (Book 37, 13.4)

“In his treatise on tiryaq (theriac), Averroes… cautioned against prolonged use of the [mithridate], warning that it could actually transform human nature [itself] into a kind of poison.” (Mayor, Living Like A King)

-x-x-x-

The left side of his face hits Kuraigana’s wet dirt, grinding grit into Perona’s terrible stitches, and Zoro knows that this will not kill him. Not the pain—because pain is easy—and not the humiliation of another defeat, because every defeat takes longer for Mihawk to touch. Still, his bare skin burns raw on the rocky ground and his chest aches like something essential has been gouged out as he heaves, gagging stomach acid onto the ground—

And Mihawk just barks, “Again!”

It echoes off the courtyard’s crumbling stone, and Zoro must look really fucking pathetic, because even Perona says, “Seriously?” with something that skirts just a little too close to honesty. Almost like she’s concerned for him, which would be embarrassing for them both.

“M’fine,” Zoro slurs, fingernails digging into the mud as he readjusts his grip on Shusui and Kitetsu still half-held in his palms. Then he curses. Pushes up. Stands—or tries to and stumbles, one knee buckling—and reminds himself that he will someday kill this man. It is the only consolation he has on the days when Mihawk decides to do this.

“On your feet, Roronoa, or answer my question,” Mihawk says. “If you cannot do either, you will have been a waste of my time.” It is not the voice of the man who’d shown them how to inspect the leaves of a fledgling cabbage but the man who’d hunted a fleet halfway across the world for fun. It is Warlord and Pirate. It is The World’s Greatest Swordsman and it is an order, and Zoro only takes orders from one man.

“Fuck off,” Zoro spits in a wad of phlegm and split-lip blood, and this time he does make it upright. The world wobbles but Kitetsu and Shusui stay steady, because they are extensions of himself and he is strong. Strong.

Perona cringes—throws her arms up, furious at them both. Huffs, “I’m not going to watch this,” like either of them are listening and turns away, floating back toward the castle in a flurry of pink and fabric.

Mihawk doesn’t even blink, just holds his shitty little dagger aloft. “I will not tolerate lost causes,” he says, and it’s not a threat—it’s a statement. Matter-of-fact and filled with curdling disdain. Disoriented, Zoro’s only reply is a wordless growl, lips curling angry and sick as he plants his feet—but Mihawk looks down at him like he’s still a heap in the dirt and sneers, “You’re so convinced of your own potential and yet here you are, broken in and trained. The Great do not bend the knee.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Zoro barks. He levels Kitetsu through the red lens of blood from his temple and wants to gnash his teeth, to scream. The courtyard spins. “Shut the fuck up.”

Mihawk stares, unimpressed. Words are part of the fight, too, and Zoro is losing.

“You are a stubborn fool,” Mihawk replies, “and naive. That was war. I have seen better men collapse for less. I have killed men with stronger convictions.” He eyes Zoro but still doesn’t make a move, even as Zoro seethes, teeth grinding for want of a third sword. In the distance, Kuraigana’s coasts roar. “That boy will grow into a broken man, and you will have pinned your own legacy to failure.”

“You don’t know shit about Luffy, and you don’t know shit about me,” Zoro snarls and lunges—lunges like he hasn’t been here a year already and this isn’t the half-dozenth time Mihawk has gone too far with his cruelty in the name of training—has done so without warning, disappearing for days at a time only to return with steel in his bird-eyes, to slice open the doors of Zoro’s room and throw him out. To hurt him for the sake of pain.

Zoro lunges like it isn’t a wide-open move, and like it isn’t a mistake.

Mihawk doesn’t even use his blade, just drives the hilt of his dagger into a stitched-up wound in the soft meat between Zoro’s neck and collarbone and—and Zoro goes down in agony, all dead weight and pain. Mihawk scoffs. “I know enough,” he says. “I have seen—” he steps back, finished “—enough.”

Through a smear of blood and tears, Zoro sees him sheathe his shitty little dagger and Zoro spits again, this time aiming right for his grimy leather boots. But with half the world a nonexistent nothing, Zoro overcompensates—misses—realizes he’s let his observation haki slip again and curses, “Shut the fuck up.”

Mihawk just raises an eyebrow and continues, more disdainful than before. “I watched you bleed into the sea and swear never to lose again—yet here you are, on my doorstep, at my feet.” Then he kicks Zoro swift and hard in the gut, not a dirty move but a calculated blow to the diaphragm and Zoro wheezes. Mihawk pushes him with one leg, rolling him onto his back so it’s twice-difficult to breathe and doesn’t back off—just grinds him into the dirt with his heel. “Answer me,” Mihawk says. “What would you do if you returned, only to find a shadow in the place of your Captain?”

Blood fills his mouth again—he’s fucked up a tooth—and Zoro gurgles, “Fuck you. Luffy’s—going—to be—”   

And Mihawk face twists. “I do not train dogs for kings,” he snarls, leaning harder, making it impossible to breathe. “Whether he succeeds or not—no matter what he becomes—you must be prepared to follow your own conviction to the end, whatever the cost. If you falter, the cost itself is worthless.”

Then Mihawk steps away and turns on his heel to go, and Zoro’s pride won’t let him—would (and has) ignored a thousand personal insults, but never this—and Zoro shoves, fights, loses, loses, loses, quickly and easily. Again.

They have had this argument before (because it is an argument, more than anything) and this will not be its last iteration. Zoro still can’t tell if it’s real or a test for Mihawk’s ego, and he doesn’t wonder at the layers of what Mihawk had to leave behind because it doesn’t matter. Zoro knows he will reach his goal, because Luffy will be the Pirate King, and he will be the World’s Greatest Swordsman, and there is no future wherein that does not happen.

And yet—

That night, lost along the pitch-black halls and bloated with stolen wine, the truth of it buries sharp nails deep in the growing tear in his heart and gouges. Reckless touches and easy laughter and the certainty that they could fight anything and win—gone. Gone for two years and maybe gone for good, too, if they return foundationally the same but extrinsically changed. Because that is the raw edge, the broken-glass thing lodged in his chest—

The realization that had he followed his Captain, had he fumbled his way to the ocean on bleeding hands and knees and swam if need be—made it to Impel Down and Marineford like he’d wanted, like he’d have given the meat of his body for—he would have been a liability. A weight.

Mihawk hasn’t told him much and much of what he has has been cryptic bullshit—both because he’d only been on the surface of the battle and because he’s a bastard—but Zoro knows, knows, knows (hates) that Mihawk is right and Luffy only survived because he is Luffy. Luffy. Monkey D. Fucking Luffy—but not unscathed.

There will be scars. They will both have them. Their soft parts will be calloused and their wounds will leave angry channels in their skin and they will be changed.

Perona finds him as she always does, phasing through the floor with a snide remark about the time and the place—and she ushers him up, grumbling about making his own way back even as she snags the bottle and swigs. Swigs again. Floats alongside him regardless. Says nothing meaningful but puts words into the silence so he doesn’t have to think too hard—and when they end up by the wine cellar door, it’s only half an accident.

She is the better thief by far, and they drink their fill of rich, heady rum and expensive whiskey and the night never ends because Zoro is convinced—convinced—that time moves slowly on Kuraigana. Because how could a year feel like ten, fifty, a lifetime, if not for Grand Line bullshit he doesn’t understand.

They wander the halls and aren’t lost but find a dozen new rooms anyway, this ever-growing creature of a house constantly accumulating corners in a way that makes Zoro feel like the world is too big, makes him miss the crowded crush of Merry and the way Sunny felt like every curve was carved with his body in mind. Still, Perona and her ghosts relish in it, spinning through the fine moth-eaten silks of canopy bed covers and rifling through molding dresser drawers and laughing under rows of peeling, dust-caked portraits anyway.

And she says, “I wonder if this is all his stuff and he just won’t tell us,” drunk and suspicious, running spirits through the strings of an old half-broken harp. “Like, what if he’s not a freeloader and this is his castle and everyone in his kingdom killed each other, and now he’s here brooding,” and Zoro rolls his eye, because whatever the stick up Mihawk’s ass is it’s not that.

“I think he’s just an asshole,” he says, and she sticks her tongue out at him like a toddler. He shrugs. “A lonely, antisocial asshole.”

Perona scowls. “Lame,” she says. “Or he’s a vampire.”

And when they find a peeling old ballroom, she says, “You haven’t run into anything yet, so I guess that means your haki’s getting better,” as she skips along a pattern in the marble, further into the maze. One of her ghosts materializes with another bottle—green glass and wine-y—and Perona takes it. She pats the spirit on its head, and Zoro grunts, distracted just long enough for the insult to fly over his head.

“Oi—” By the time he remembers to throw his middle finger at her back, she’s already disappeared around another corner with the rest of their alcohol.   

And when they’ve walked themselves to wobbling boredom, they sit on the plush hallway carpet, and she says, “I think it would’ve been better if he’d died,” contemplative, tired—looking right at him—and through the smeary haze of more booze than he’s had in a year, Zoro does not immediately realize— “Straw Hat, I mean.”

And then he does, and he’s on his feet, Kitetsu pressed to her throat, blade coated with a solid layer of armament haki (fuck you, Mihawk) and—

“Fuck you,” Zoro says. “Fuck you.” His mind reels, because how could she—

Perona glares at him from the floor, cheeks and nose flaring, and sniffs, “Forget it—fuck you!” and she stares up at him wide-eyed and wet because she’s crying—crying angry tears that Zoro can’t quite follow.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he snaps, because she’s a crybaby but she’s never sincere, and right now—

Perona fumbles for one of the bottles spilling on the floor and he lowers Kitetsu, stares down at her, waiting. “I just meant—ugh!” she sniffs again, drinks. “I just meant if he were dead, maybe you wouldn’t hurt so much,” she says. ”There’d be a thing to get over instead of all this, like, temporary angst.” There’s an authority in her voice even as it wavers, and he realizes suddenly, belatedly, furiously that she’s wasted enough to play nice.

“Doesn’t look like it hurts any less for you,” he snaps, sheathing his sword, and Perona flinches like she’s been struck, and Zoro—

Zoro cringes, because he’s never been good with words. And as much as he’s glad Moria is rotting in the ground, Perona isn’t Moria—just a pain in the ass. And it’s true, too, that they’d both lost something to a war they’d been too weak far away to fight.

Perona curls around her bottle, miserable, and in the crush of silence Zoro wonders what context he’s missed, wonders if he’s let something important slip by without realizing it. The hallway tilts and he slumps on the floor across from her, back pressed against the opposite wall, wrists balanced on his knees, his own bottle held in one hand by the neck. She doesn’t move.

He can’t decide if he’s still angry or not. “Anyway.” He doesn’t apologize. Neither of them do. “It’s different.”

She just shakes her head. “Captains are Captains,” Perona mumbles, then she lifts her wine and drinks—and still refuses to look at him.

“No,” he says. “Luffy’s different—Luffy’s—” Zoro swallows. Something hurts. “Different.”

Perona scoffs, wet and wretched. “You only think that ‘cause you’re in love with him,” she says, and he wonders if his stitches have come undone. “Every captain’s the same—they’ll use you up and leave you behind.”

And Zoro tilts his head back, presses the base of his skull hard against the splintering paint, and sighs out through his nose—ignores the way the room spins, soft and warm and fuzzy at the edges—ignores the pain, because pain is easy, he’s done it before, he’ll do it again—take it all—and gladly, too. Again and again and again. For Luffy. And says, “That’s fine. He can do whatever he wants.”

It feels like bleeding out.

-x-x-x-

Neptune’s palace is a decadent, dazzling thing—filled in every seam with jewels and scales and wonder—but through an undiluted stream of rich Fishman Island rum it’s barely a smear of lights and sounds. Zoro feels coiled, compressed like a clenched fist—full of a pressure he thought would disappear with Saobody’s grass under his boots but hasn’t, not even so many days and battles and victories later. It’s been building for two years and then some, but no matter how hard he twists—no matter how much he grasps at fleeting, grounded touches—he can't release the valve.

As he stares at the massive undersea pool through the kaleidoscope glass of his bottle, Nami laughs loud and free, twirling with a pretty yellow-haired mermaid through the water. Along the rocky edge, Usopp spreads his arms wide, pantomiming his victory for a group of fishman kids—ostensibly babysitting the Cook, too, alongside Chopper. Franky sits half-submerged, leaning against the edge and listening (star-struck in a way only Franky could be) to whatever discussion Brook and Robin are having—gesturing, deep in debate.

And opposite them all, Luffy beams—laughing, shrieking atop Jinbei’s shoulders, held above the waterline while Camie splashes and Shirahoshi sits submerged to her eyes, watching him. Awed. Entranced. Glittering through the gaze anyone with eyes has—ought to have—when they look at Luffy at all, Zoro thinks. And yet—

And yet, none of them—none of them—can look at him. Not really. Not when—

Luffy doesn’t close his shirts anymore, which is a double-edged sword. There’s so much of him, and Zoro wonders if he could learn not to blink—to keep his last eye open always, so he’ll never lose sight of Luffy again, of the man he’s grown into, gangly confidence burned out and replaced with the pride of a king. He’s soft because he’ll always be soft, but Mihawk had been right: his softness has gone—every inch of him honed, not a weapon but something greater, something Zoro doesn’t have words for.

And yet—

His gaze slides away to Jinbei for the thousandth time. Jinbei—bright-eyed and bellowing, handling Luffy like it’s nothing, like it’s not a gift, a miracle. Jinbei and the scar carved in his side, scales deformed and melted, flesh rippled underneath. Everywhere Zoro turns, there is a new piece of the misery.

Luffy doesn’t close his shirts anymore, and Zoro cannot look at him without seeing it. Without seeing Ace, Ace, Ace—and without seeing the man in the newspaper who looked like the hollowed-out shell of his Captain, still smoldering, embers inside still glowing. Without wanting to curl around Luffy’s ankles and beg at his feet, to apologize for the weakness that earned him two years as punishment.

Camie yelps and the sound startles Shirahoshi, who shifts—her weight forming ripples the size of waves in the water—and Zoro is on his feet, and the Cook is on his feet, and—

And Luffy is fine, shouting at Shirahoshi through peals of laughter that don’t sound quite the same because his voice—his voice is different, too—as he’s held aloft even higher and Jinbei howls at them all.

From across the pool, Zoro hears Chopper yell at Sanji, startled and angry with Usopp at his heels—and when Zoro turns, he finds Franky staring, eyebrows raised over his sunglasses. Robin and Brook have stopped as well; are watching him (but Luffy, too—always Luffy) as Franky calls, “You okay, bro?” and Zoro just waves him off with the bottle of rum still clutched in his hand.

Zoro does not look up as he flops back down at the water’s edge—refuses to look anywhere near Sanji because he can still hear his voice (near-total immunity, traumatic overexposure) and returns every saturated atom of his body to the task of staring at Luffy until his eye bleeds, drinking in the hurt.

Later, he will leave Sunny long after (most of) the crew has fallen asleep, will cross through the palace halls in the dead of the night, counting his steps more than the direction—until he finds Jinbei sitting alone, cross-legged and content, blowing smoke from his pipe into the inner courtyard. Zoro will stare at him and Jinbei will grin back, and then Zoro will get on his knees—will lay his swords in front of him, will press his head into the dirt and curl his palms into the wet, algae-thick soil, and will say nothing—because, Thank you, thank you for protecting my Captain when I could not, thank you, thank you, feels too small.

Luffy doesn’t close his shirts anymore, and Zoro makes his choice.

-x-x-x-

Zoro is a man made piecemeal of one part body, three parts dream—and to excise even one would be to saw out some load-bearing aspect of himself, to replace it with the emptiness of an aching, animal wound.

When Sanji rasps ten years, it is—

Inevitable.

-x-x-x-

They hit the cyclone halfway to Punk Hazard and it’s not the first storm they’ve faced but it’s the worst so far, and they’re only half-prepared. Above the surface, in the throes of the New World, the sea is a meaner, angrier beast hell-bent on killing them all, and no one wants to admit that two years is enough to forget—that things have changed. They’ve been left with muscle memory, and the motions don’t quite make sense anymore.

From the upper deck, Nami hollers orders, watching the horizon and the wind and listening to a language that none of them can speak. Chopper grits his teeth at the helm in his man-form, large hands holding them steady, while—pressed against the lower rail—Robin keeps a watchful eye on the ship itself, offering hands as Sanji and Usopp and Franky skid through Sunny’s grass. Out of sight, Brook and Luffy have scaled the masts, are the lightest and most limber among them, manning the sails’ upper ropes—two devil fruit eaters whipped through the air, dangling over the sea.

And Zoro—

Zoro is unbalanced. Even as he plants his feet and holds Sunny’s lines steady, he feels as though he’s fighting her as much as he’s fighting the storm—vaguely, perpetually nauseous in a way he’s growing accustomed to, two layers of dizziness superimposed atop each other. The cyclone’s unnatural darkness, the beating roar, the pitch and yaw. For the first time since ten years, ten years, ten years he doesn’t just feel ill—he feels unmoored.

It is weakness.

It is unacceptable.

As black clouds block out the sun and the wind screams, Franky and Sanji stumble against each other, barely holding their positions. Sanji snaps, cursing at him through the storm—

And something slips. A winch creaks, and there’s the whirring burn of unraveling, and Usopp is yelling, diving across the deck after the tail-end of a rope as it skitters away too fast, too fast even for their sniper. From the helm, Chopper yells something—Nami yells something—but it’s too late.

From above, the mast groans, a cascade of knots creaking as the mainsail—

The wave hits.

The sea tears at him, latching on to his coat and ripping him across the grass while he claws for purchase—before his lower back slams against Sunny’s rail, the only thing keeping him aboard. Agony shoots up his spine and the blow knocks every ounce of air from his lungs—but he doesn’t have time for it, because what the fuck, what the fuck—

“Everybody okay?” Usopp calls, waterlogged, as Franky yells, Somebody get that fucking rope!

Around them all, amidst the confusion, Sunny creaks—a low moan that reverberates through Zoro’s chest from the balls of his feet, and then Sanji shouts, “Fuck! Where’s—?”

“Robin!” Nami rushes for her—Robin, who’s soaking wet, seaweed tangled in her coat, only two arms left clinging to the upper deck (except—hadn’t she just—) and Zoro grips the banister and shoves out his observation haki—searching when he shouldn’t have to because he should have been more diligent, more observant, more more more—

And Robin screams something into the wind, wide-eyed against the downpour, hair plastered against her teeth. There is a dissonance on deck. A wrongness. A fundamental tilt to the world—

And Nami tears for the rail, half-sliding through the rain—pushing past Robin even as someone yells—and she doesn’t even flinch, just—

Throws herself overboard into the storm.

Chaos erupts—Chopper shrieks and Usopp shouts, “What the fuck!” as Brook lands next to Robin, gliding from the rigging on ghost-light bones; Franky rushes for the upper deck, the helm—and Sanji freezes—freezes—

And Zoro launches after her, more force than grace as he hauls himself overboard, spitting curses through clenched teeth and the heart in his throat. He hears the Cook holler something, but it’s swallowed up the moment Zoro hits the ocean’s unforgiving surface.

The water is fuck-off cold but he forces his eye open against the burn, more pointless pain than anything in the pitch-black storm with only half his vision. But—it helps, a brutal bite to the system that’s as much the jagged teeth of the sea as the adrenaline in his skull. The slime of sickness shifts, and he is (at last) present.

He floats there, suspended underneath the roiling waves where the current is strong and steady, untouched by the wind. Calm, almost.

Silent.

And below, the gaping maw of an endless nothing looms, open ocean too wide and too deep and too dark to fathom. Something greater than hell—bigger, even, than life and loyalty. The immensurable pit reminds him, somehow, of staring at Luffy. There, in the mouth of the world, his lungs burn and for one suffocating moment he can breathe—

And at the edge of his haki, he feels them.

Zoro doesn’t even try to orient himself, just kicks hard and follows his instincts, clawing at the water like it’s an animal with eyes to gouge until he breaks back into the waves and gasps—

Just as Nami surfaces in the distance, already yelling as she hauls Luffy’s head above water. “What are you—Robin’s fine. I said she’s fine!” Zoro feels the release in his chest like a dying man when Luffy makes some kind of pitiful, waterlogged noise in response, and Nami must—must—feel it too, because her strangled, “At least try, asshole! Fuck—!” cuts through the storm, high-pitched, bouncing between the scales of elation and sheer panic.

And then another wave swallows them whole.

Zoro dives and the sea rips at him, dragging him back, iron chains around his ankles pulling him down, down, down and for a moment the roar of the abyss sounds like—

He resurfaces the same moment Nami breaks back above water, heaving and screaming—somehow angrier than before as she hoists Luffy up by the armpits. “Zoro!” She doesn’t even look for him, might not even be able to, but she still barks into the howling wind like she knows he’s there. “Zoro!”

(Because of course he’s there. Of course. Fuck, fuck, of course.)

In her arms, Luffy starts to slip, and his pathetic, “Sorry, Nami—” carries as she yanks him up again.

Closer, now, Zoro can see them both—can see how hard Nami’s straining to keep them afloat because Luffy is worse than dead weight in the water—and if he felt more human, Zoro might laugh. Nami spits Luffy’s hair out of her mouth around another fuck and shouts, “You should b—!” just as they’re slammed by another wave—

But it’s fine. They’re fine, because Zoro is there, grasping for them—and Nami coughs icy water directly into his face. It is not, Zoro suspects, accidental.

Though they’ve only been overboard a moment they’re freezing—but Nami refuses to loosen the iron grip she has on Luffy’s shirt, fist bunched up under his chin and nearly strangling him at the collar. Zoro doesn’t blame her and Luffy doesn’t complain.

More than that, Luffy is delighted. As Zoro takes the bulk of his weight, he giggles, “Hi, Zoro!” soggy and limp and beaming against the raging sea and the screaming winds and the thing below that Zoro doesn’t have a name for yet, in the voice that Zoro is starting to recognize again; all joy, stupidity, and the axis on which his whole world tilts. Unconcerned. The asshole.

Zoro could drown himself, could kill something with relief.

Instead, he shifts Nami to his back and hisses, “What the fuck were you thinking?” and Nami says—

“I will double the liquor budget if you swim faster,” shaking.

-x-x-x-

Luffy corners him in the crow’s nest and there’s only one exit and Zoro would rather die than turn down a challenge from his Captain. It’s intentional—Zoro knows that. He knows that because he knows Luffy (or did, once) as well as he knows himself, and Luffy’s favorite thing in the world (underneath food and friends) is absolutely fucking with people.

“Spar with me,” Luffy says, already wadding up his shirt and tossing it, already cracking his knuckles like Zoro’s predictable enough to say yes. Which he is, but—it’s the principle of the thing.

“No.” Zoro doesn’t break his stride, keeps moving through the motions of his exercise with Kitetsu, ignoring the way the edge of his vision sways. It is the first pre-dawn of a new dose from the Cook, and he’s still—adjusting. He feels vaguely like he’s going to puke, and wonders if a fight will fix him. Wonders if a fight will remind him that Luffy is alive.

Luffy just pouts, sags, whines, “Zoro!”

And Zoro lashes out, Kitetsu flashing in the moonlight—reflecting back the stars in Luffy’s eyes as he blocks, one arm covered in the coiling strength of his armament haki—and Zoro watches the tendons in his wrist flex, watches the muscle ripple on a firm path from bicep to chest, watches Luffy grin, wide and delighted, at the resistance.

Zoro bares his teeth right back and reaches for Shusui.

Luffy laughs, jerks back but keeps his arm up—pressing against Kitetsu even as stretches—then whips elastic force into his other side. In the span of a blink, Luffy has Zoro’s right bicep in an iron grip, Shusui only half-drawn as he holds both swords in place. He giggles, mean and triumphant, like he’s won.

So Zoro twists his wrist, lets Shusui start to slide back into her saya, and uses Luffy’s own pliability against him: Zoro grips his arm and yanks. It’s the counterintuitive move, pulling an enemy closer, and Luffy’s eyes widen—pupils blown out with a pleased kind of surprise—and Zoro wants to bite him. Intends to kick him square in the chest to send him ricocheting back. Does neither.

Instead, Luffy crashes against his chest, expecting—something if the way he squawks is any indication, and Zoro—

Just feels Luffy for a moment. Feels the crush of him; the strange, malleable warmth of his skin; the sticky, rough press of sweat on sweat—the beautiful, constant, transcendental beating of his heart.

Ten years.

Zoro wants to bury his face in the crook of Luffy’s neck and press his cheek to the pulse and live there forever, and Luffy says, “I knew it—Zoro’s been acting weird,” all trace of playfulness gone. Luffy doesn’t move, doesn’t step away, but Zoro feels it all the same—the distance. The canyon. The cost of Greatness.

Luffy’s power, unpredictable before, is something dark and immeasurable, the abyss between them a jagged, bottomless pit that Zoro knows in some deep, animal part of his soul he’ll never cross—but fuck—fuck he’ll try. The cook won’t, self-hating misery that he is—strong as he is—but Zoro will. He must.

Someone has to. Someone has to be—

Because—

“Have not,” Zoro grunts back, and he lets go, reaches for Shusui again—

But Luffy doesn’t let him, just holds him there with his eyes and says, “Have too,” like they’re five years old. Like this is a challenge, too, and Zoro is losing.

“Have not,” Zoro insists. He yanks his left arm free. “Fuck off.”

And Luffy doesn’t flinch, not really, but there’s a—hurt in him. Obvious and unguarded, because Luffy’s never once tried to hide any part of himself from anyone. Zoro just watches the column of his throat so he doesn’t have to look at his eyes or his chest.

“Well, you’re acting weird,” Luffy repeats. It is an unspoken question that Zoro doesn’t answer. They both know that he would, if Luffy asked. Luffy could have anything—could say Let me eat your heart and Zoro would carve it out with Wado and hand it over gladly, would hold death by the throat and stay alive long enough to see the taste, to make sure he’d satisfied his Captain.

But Luffy does not ask.

Instead, Zoro fills the pause, says, “I’m just tired. Franky snores twice as loud as before,” and shrugs. This time, Luffy lets him shake off the rest of his grip. His glare is like a physical weight, and Zoro realizes, quietly—suddenly—terribly—what he has done. Again.

It is worse, possibly, than the truth.

“I don’t believe you,” Luffy says, then he turns on his heel and leaps through the hatch. He returns with Chopper but doesn’t force Zoro to say anything honest, even though they both know he could.

-x-x-x-

Luffy’s mid-sentence (mouth full of stew and still rambling to the kids they’ve rescued from Caesar’s lab) when Law grabs his chin with one haki-coated glove and scowls.

Zoro's fingers twitch toward Kitetsu’s hilt, a reflex—but Luffy just squints up at the other captain, the corners of his eyes squished into the smile hidden by Law’s hand, and there’s nothing Zoro can do. There’s nothing for Zoro to do, not as Law tilts Luffy’s head to the side, inspecting his neck—gaze piercing, not unfocused but focused on the wrong thing. Zoro wonders what the fuck he can see with his powers. (What he’s looking for. What he’s found.)

Then Law sighs, frustrated and exhausted, close to some kind of limit, and pulls his hand back.

When Luffy laughs again—at Law’s face, maybe—his voice cracks, a sudden, breaking thing, rough and scratched at the higher edges. It’s not the first time Zoro’s heard it, but like every new scar it’s something they haven’t acknowledged, can’t acknowledge, except—

“You sound pubescent, Straw Hat,” Law bites, and that sends Luffy into another fit of giggles. It’s impossible to tell whether he thinks the word is funny or understands the jab (and simply doesn’t care). Law pauses, maybe waiting for some kind of response, but it doesn’t come—and Zoro can see the familiar gleam in Luffy’s eyes. The mean look. Zoro’s look. The start of a game.

In the distance, a child laughs. Someone yells. The ice groans.

Law’s composure breaks quick and easy and Zoro wants to scream.

“I pity your doctor,” Law says, burying his face to the nose in the collar of his stupid boot-length coat. His voice emerges muffled—all bark and biteless.

Luffy just laughs again, because he’s always laughing. “Nah, Tra-Guy! I’m a great patient! Chopper says—”

“No,” Law shoots back. “You’re a pain in the ass—”

And in the distance, Chopper shouts, Did you call me, Luffy? because they’re always listening, always ready to answer if he needs something, anything—and Luffy hollers back, “No!” with a wave—

Law scoffs, and Zoro wonders how much of his annoyance is about being ignored on principle and how much is about being ignored by Luffy. It would be funny, Zoro thinks, if he weren’t so used to watching the Cook bleed out for a morsel from afar—if he weren’t constantly doing the same thing himself, rolling on his back to be pet. It’s too late for Law; likely has been for a while, whether he’s realized it or not.

There’s a snapping sound and the ear-popping pressure of Law’s powers, and on instinct (again) Zoro reaches for his swords (again) and—

A pebble hits Luffy’s forehead, swapped with a snowflake mid-air. Wordlessly, Luffy whines, but he turns back anyway as Law scowls. Some small, petty part of Zoro wants to tell him that he’s only gotten Luffy’s attention because Luffy wants to give it. He relaxes his grip on Kitetsu but keeps one hand on her hilt anyway.

“I told you to take care of it,” Law gripes, “and you didn’t.” He glares once, hard, and Luffy rolls his eyes in response—and Zoro drinks to bite his tongue. And then Law turns away, back to the Marines, his other allies, their enemies. Luffy’s gaze follows after, eager. Taunting. Law pauses like he can feel it on his back and adds, “Not that I give a shit if you healed or not,” and the words hit the snow with a limp thud, lame and embarrassing for all of them.

Luffy just pouts and leans forward, almost spilling stew into the fire—before he notices in the last second and slurps the edge like an animal. Law flinches in disgust and Zoro knows—knows—Luffy is doing it on purpose and resents that, too. He hides a grimace in the mouth of his bottle, but can’t take any consolation in Law’s discomfort because Luffy’s already whining right back, “But that would have been so boring!” as he tilts his head to the side, wide-eyed and licking his lips. At Law.

Zoro drinks again—

As Law scoffs, “You were there by yourself for nearly two years. It couldn’t have been that hard to shut the fuck up.”

—and then he—chokes.

“Breathe, Zoro-ya,” Law snaps, and Zoro throws the middle finger at him in return and absolutely cannot breathe, because every new thing he learns is worse than the last. So he swallows the gasp down with more truly atrocious Naval beer and does not look at Luffy. And Luffy does not look at Zoro either, because he’s too busy scarfing down the last of his food (and Zoro’s, set aside half-eaten, and Law’s, left unguarded).

Then (mouth full) Luffy rolls his eyes, hell-bent on defending his ability not to do as he’s told, and declares, “There were the animals!” like that makes any difference, “And I talked to myself.”

It works because of course it works, and Luffy reels Law back into his orbit without even trying, right before Zoro’s eye. Law is a doctor, a captain with pride—an easy mark. Zoro feels like he’s going to vomit and doesn’t, because he’s better than that.

“Catastrophic vocal damage takes work,” Law snaps. “I rebuilt you. At least have some respect.”

Luffy just sticks his tongue out like a child, petulant and unimpressed. “So what?” he says, “I can still fight.”

And as Law takes a step forward, Zoro’s not even sure he’s aware of it—aware of just how much he’s being drawn into Luffy’s space. Into Luffy. “That’s not the point,” Law seethes. “The point is—”

The point is that Luffy picks fights with people he likes because he thinks they’re fun. The point is that Law needs them and Luffy has decided they’ll help. The point is that Law is here, without his crew, and—

Luffy shrugs, picking his nose.

“It was better than feeling alone,” he says.

-x-x-x-

When they’re done and settled, Zoro finds the Cook and demands more and ignores the way he flinches and—

-x-x-x-

Kuina slams her seventh empty rice bowl on the dojo floor and grins as she leans forward into his personal space, energetic like she’s not two-thirds food. Zoro nearly gags around his chopsticks over the fifth portion he’s taken—still only half-eaten. He must look like he’s about to throw up all over them both, because Kuina laughs, mean and loud, right in his face. “I win again!”

“Nu-uh!” Zoro snaps, more burp than word, and he swallows it down—then keeps shoveling food in his mouth. As long as he hasn’t puked, he hasn’t lost.

It’s a half-decent day, with a breeze nice enough that the shoji have all been thrown open, and the cool weather is helping, Zoro thinks. Fate is on his side. This is going to be the day he beats her—he can feel it. For real this time. Really.

From the busy, exposed training yard, another student (long-finished with his own lunch) moans, “C’mon, Kuina. Seriously?” and as they pass along the outer walkway, two of the dojo’s aids exchange a grin. In the far corner, a group of village elders—old men who don’t do anything but drink sake and smoke tobacco and complain—heckle each other like they’re not watching, too, and the older student supervising the last dregs of their meal (ostensibly in charge of preventing this exact scenario) looks like he wants to die.

Zoro ignores them all—as does his Eternal Sworn Rival Forever (The Future Second Greatest Swordsman), who just declares, “Don’t even try!” as she leans back and crosses her arms—smug. Zoro decides that he hates her. It is mostly on principle.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” he bites back—and he slams down his bowl, empty. Five down. Before it’s even stopped spinning against the floor, he’s already picked it up again—is already scrabbling up toward the communal pot for another.

He can feel her eyeroll against the back of his neck and doesn’t rise to the bait, doesn’t turn, even when she calls, “If you eat any more, your guts will explode,” around nasty laughter.

“Then I’ll never be full ‘cause my food’ll just fall out and then I’ll be able to eat way more than you!" he shouts, throwing a middle finger over his shoulder. That makes her laugh more for some reason, so he vows to eat the entire pot of rice just to show her she’s stupid and hollers, “Shut up!” as he grabs a fresh helping. His stomach roils. He ignores it.

The kid on duty starts to say something, forcing a weak, “You’re not sup—” before he glances over Zoro’s shoulder and withers. His jaw clicks audibly closed and he swallows, cowed by whatever he sees. Zoro decides he is a wimp, a coward. Kuina isn’t scary. She just sucks.

And then, just before Zoro’s skids back into his place on the floor, mouth already full of rice, one of the old men pipes up, “You’re both a disgrace—a combined disgrace,” as he blows smoke through the open shoji.

At once, his companions groan, one grumbling, “For fuck’s sake—” while the third drinks directly from the gourd Zoro knows isn’t filled with water. The first plows ahead anyway, and the angry authority in his voice stops Zoro in his tracks. It feels like the whole room turns to listen, too.

“Koushirou ought to’ve taught you some modicum of discipline!” He waves one end of his pipe in their general direction and scowls at Kuina, and Zoro sees Kuina refuse to look, red and suddenly so, so angry. “You’ll never be samurai. What self-respecting master would have you? And you, girl—what lord would—”

“Who gives a shit!” Kuina spits through clenched teeth, fists balled at her sides. “I’m not gonna answer to anyone—I’ll be the strongest and it won’t matter!”

The man glares, face splotchy as he barks back, “Watch your tongue—”

And Zoro tries to cut over them both and claim that he’s going to be the strongest, but swallowing and shouting are extremely hard to do at once so he just chokes instead, words cut off in a gag—and Kuina slaps him on the back hard and loud enough to dislodge the wad of rice in his throat.

(He doesn’t puke, though, so he still hasn’t lost—which is obviously the most important part.)

In the corner, the old asshole laughs. He says something, but Zoro’s too busy gasping for air (and also trying to eat more, because if he loses momentum it’s over) to hear it. Then one of the other elders sloshes his sake gourd and gripes, “Oh, shut it, Kozaburo!” with all the patience of a man who’s heard the same argument a thousand times before. “That ain’t how the world works anymore and you know it—”

And the second chuckles, “And Roronoa’s gonna be sick,” elbowing the third—who just rolls his eyes. “Look at him go. If that’s not discipline, I dunno what is.”

Kozaburo huffs. Frowns. Glares out at them all, and Zoro—

Doesn’t hurl until he’s halfway through his next bowl.

Kuina laughs at him while he vomits in the grass, relishing her victory, and Zoro tries to aim for her shoes. It earns him a smack to the back of the head mid-heave, and he snorts bile up the back of his nose, and he’s fairly sure another student has already run to get Koushirou and they’ll be punished. Again.

Zoro’s eyes water and Kuina giggles and he decides it was probably worth it. He almost made it to seven this time.

“Don’t wanna be a samurai,” Zoro burps. It tastes sour and also a little bit like victory. “Havin’ a master sounds stupid.”

As Kuina struggles to catch her breath, she gasps, “No way,” wiping one teary eye with the back of her hand, grinning against the sunlight as it filters through the trees. “The Greatest Swordsman in the World shouldn’t bow to anyone. That’s the point of being the strongest. There’s no one else—just me at the top! Just me!”

“Hey!” Zoro tries to stand, but his head spins and Kuina just laughs again, throwing her head back into the breeze.   

“Besides, I won’t have time for a lord anyway,” she shouts, wild and happy and on the verge of getting them both in trouble. “When I’m the Best, I’ll be too busy defending my title from you!”

Zoro starts to yell something, to throw the first insult he can think of, to declare that she’ll never get rid of him, but he gags again—and only later, much later, will he realize it’s the closest she’ll ever come to calling him strong with something like joy.

-x-x-x-

Through the oil slick of Punk Hazard’s aftermath (of seizing on the crow’s nest floor, disgraced) she is a ten-year-old, black-haired smear sitting on the ship’s figurehead, facing out into the sea—and then she’s gone. Instead, there is Luffy—Luffy, astride Sunny’s mane, swaying. Warm and content in the sunshine, humming some off-key shanty Zoro’s never heard.

Chopper’s, He doesn't even know it and you're hurting him now, sticks like gum in his ears and Zoro can taste it in the air—can taste the ocean, the abyss, oblivion. The thing that follows Luffy, that aches for him after so many brushes, that would watch happily while he bit the head off the world and did it bloody, with teeth and violence, to get what he wants.

Death.

Luffy turns and sees him and beams, “Hi, Zoro!” and Zoro almost goes to his knees.

-x-x-x-

The Cook gets himself chased off and Dressrosa is a mess. Law loses an entire arm for at least an hour, and Luffy fights in the Colosseum without him, and Zoro feels more alive than he has in weeks, and also Sabo is there. They’re still missing half their crew and their ship, and they’ve fucked up enough Shit on Law’s suggestion to guarantee some kind of consequence—and some of these things are more important than others, but the booze is good and victory is rich, if temporary.

It is a reprieve.

As Luffy sleeps, Zoro leans against his cot, presses the back of his head into the sheets—drinks sweet wines and keeps watch over the crew. And when Luffy’s well enough to start pissing people off again, Zoro watches them, too—the idiots kneeling, pledging their loyalty to the boy-king in bandages.

Zoro realizes he will have to be stronger, still, to stand at the summit of the world.

-x-x-x-

Zou is—not great, really.

The Cook has (apparently) done worse than get himself chased off and Nami is paying for it in guilt and Luffy has to clean up his mess, and Zoro decides enough is enough—this is what happens when someone else does the vice-captain’s job. Sanji has derailed the plan they were barely sticking to in the first place (which isn’t terrible, but it is—again—the principle of the thing) and forced Luffy into the wrong Emperor’s eye (not that hadn’t done that already with the bullshit he’d pulled on Fishman Island) and also—

What stings the most is the lack of trust. The lack of trust in him, in the crew, in Luffy.

Only when they’ve resolved the Minks’ major issues into some kind of party (one of Luffy’s greatest talents), does Zoro have the chance to sit with his own clear head and stew. And that in and of itself is half the problem. Sanji hasn’t been (loathe as he is to admit it) helping him train in weeks, and he’s gotten complacent—satisfied, or some measure of it, in their victories though they’re still only halfway to their goals.

He can’t ask Chopper because he still can’t get the sound of crying out of his head, and because he knows it wouldn’t take much for Chopper to tell Luffy anyway. So he does what he’d resolved to do in the first place, the contingency if Sanji turned him down: Zoro tries to kill himself the old-fashioned way.

Despite her size, Zunesha is a lush, fruit-rich jungle, and he has his pick of the lot. While the crew (mostly) reunites and Luffy hollers through the trees with their (new) new allies, Zoro wanders. Picks anything that seems particularly evil. Skewers snakes, too—and colorful lizards and frogs with eye-watering smells and mushrooms that lean into his touch. Everything that’s been deemed dangerous in the wake of Jack’s poison gas—he eats it all and then some, no matter the taste. It’s a plan that couldn’t possibly fail, and yet—

He doesn’t die.

Unfortunately.

In fact, he feels so fucking fine that he starts to question whether he should have actually (augh) talked to the Cook—asked more questions, at least, about whatever the hell he’d been eating.

Except. He hadn’t felt the need to—had trusted Sanji to take care of it—and Sanji had. Which only proves that Sanji should’ve trusted them in return. Whatever the issue, they’d have hit the problem hard—would’ve obliterated it, no matter what, because he’d asked. Because they’re crew.

Zoro sighs. Drinks, because the closest he can seem to get is attempted alcohol poisoning and even that isn’t working—and kicks his bare feet against the grass. Through Nekomamushi’s open walls behind him, the last day of the last party before their departure rages, and he’s fairly sure more than half the minks have been drunk or high or some combination of both since they set foot on the island. He likes them. A lot.

As he listens to Nami laugh and Usopp yell and Brook serenade them all, Zoro wishes they could have met under better circumstances. The Minks are Luffy’s people, so they’re their people, so they’re his people, too. He drinks again, and he’s halfway through a plan to pilfer whatever the hell Nekomamushi’s been smoking (walk up and ask, probably) when Law finds him.

Long legs and tank top and haughty condescension, Law stares down at him—expression unreadable—and says, “Should I inform Straw Hat that he’s harboring a second suicide risk, or is your entire crew like this?”

Zoro squints right back, mostly a glare—buzzed and irritated for at least twelve different reasons—but this is Law. Law isn’t Sanji, but he’s something. “Hah?” Law is violently unimpressed when Zoro doesn’t continue, and that’s half the fun of playing stupid in the first place. As before (and always), Law breaks first.

“My navigator watched you hunt a pit viper,” Law bites, forced out through gritted teeth like just being here grates on his bones, and Zoro just raises an eyebrow back at him. He is aware of the pit viper, having done the hunting—and the eating—himself. Law scowls. “You are fine,” Law says, a statement, and Zoro drinks.

“Yep,” he replies. Does not elaborate. Stares.

And Law rolls his eyes, spine springboard-tight, somehow more anxious than before when by all rights he should be the calmest of them all. Zoro wonders if he might need old Cat Viper’s weed instead. Poor bastard. At length, Law says, “Do you—” and he looks like he’s going to die, “enjoy eating things that can otherwise kill you?”

Zoro grins, leans forward, dangles the bottle loosely in his grip as he rests his wrists on his knees, and repeats, “Yep,” and wonders if Law is having some kind of post-catharsis crisis underneath all those layers of steely control. Luffy has that effect on people.

Zoro gets a glare in return, and after a moment Law looks like he wants to say something else but realizes (maybe) he’s being played and just hisses, “Fine,” and turns to go—then turns back. Pauses. Pinches the bridge of his nose. Inhales. Says, “I can excuse your Captain for his devil fruit and I am being extremely fucking professional about the reanimated skeleton, but I would just like to know if anyone on your fucking crew is normal.”

And it’s so horrified, so absolutely baffled coming from the Surgeon Of Death Who Sent A Hundred Live Hearts To The Marines (or whatever) that Zoro snorts sticky fruit-wine up the back of his nose and laughs—and nearly loses Law in the process as he pivots with a curse that Zoro doesn’t catch.

“I’m surprised Chopper’s not on the list,” Zoro snickers, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, and Law stops again, hunched. He’s easy to mess with the same way the Cook is easy to mess with—he always has to get the last word in; he always has to be right. Zoro can’t help but respect a man who’d check on him because a crew-mate asked, because he might be hurt, whether Law himself cares or not.

Doesn’t mean he’ll let Law off easy, though.

“My navigator is a polar bear,” Law snaps like he’s stupid. “A reindeer with credentials is hardly a revelation. However, rest of my crew isn’t actively trying to off themselves—”

And the insult is right on the tip of Zoro's tongue, a retort about pots and kettles and Law’s own intentions not to come back from Dressrosa, an easy mark because he’s still mostly pissed and pissed about Sanji doing the same goddamn thing, specifically—

But Nami—still in one of Wanda’s dresses, close to tipsy in a way Zoro rarely sees because she’s the only one who’s ever been able to match him—stumbles out against the outer doorway, pale, and says, “What,” all cold steel and heartbreak. “You’re doing what?”

And Zoro flinches.

Then she turns and glares Law down into the dirt, and Zoro can’t blame him for grimacing too. Even listing to the side, she’s clear-eyed and livid. Through the music and laughter and wine, she is the girl who gave up eight years for her village, and she is strong enough to hold a devil fruit eater above water, and she is carrying the weeks here around her eyes.

“I’m training,” Zoro says, “against poison.”

Law mutters, “Oh, for the love of god,” and Nami gapes and Zoro realizes it is the first time he’s said it aloud.

-x-x-x-

Zou’s heavy humidity feels thick and sticky against Zoro’s skin, and the jungle hums a constant buzz even after dark. It is Little Garden, where an insect none of them saw almost kills her. It is Skypiea, where she’s been taken by Enel and Luffy wants to know why he’s failed. It is here, now, this.

Law has fled back into the party, maybe to rat them out to Luffy or maybe to abandon the whole ordeal and return to his crew, and Nami is—something beyond furious, the raw accumulation of the Minks’ massacre and Sanji’s fuck-up and the danger ahead pouring out of her like blood.

She paces through the grass, seething on bare feet, and spits, “I can’t fucking believe—” cheeks splotched red, tiny broken blood vessels a tangle of spiderwebs across her skin. She crosses, uncrosses, crosses her arms. “What about the rest of us?” And she turns on him, then. “What about me?”

“You’ll be fine,” he replies, frowning, watching her. He has not seen her this angry in years—not since Jaya, maybe. “By the time it matters, you won’t need me anymore.”

“Bullshit—” she hisses, full of visceral, gummy rage. “When would it ever—”

“At the end.” He nods, satisfied with himself. It sounds right. “That’s my job. To get you—all of you—to the end.”

“No, it’s not. I’m the fucking navigator.” Her voice cracks, a raspy kind of quiet.

“Can’t navigate shit if everyone’s dead,” he says, and he drinks—dislikes the cloying sweetness. It’s the truth. It’s the truth.

She seethes. “So that’s what this is about.” He can see her grasping for something to rile him. “You think we’re weak.” She stops pacing, plants her feet, stares him down. Glares. “You think we can’t take care of ourselves—”

“No, I think you shouldn’t have to.” He gestures toward her with his bottle, needing her to understand. “You’re the navigator,” he says.

“And I can’t navigate shit if everyone’s dead!” she explodes, raw, throwing his own words back at him—a slap to the face. “You and Sanji and—” there is a hiccup, a break, “and Luffy—you’re so fucking willing to throw yourselves in front of bullets for other people, but nobody ever thinks about what it’s like to be the person left behind! The person who has to live!”

She’s not quite yelling, not yet—but there’s an edge that carries and Zoro doesn’t want them noticed because this is a stupid argument, so he snaps, “I’m not gonna die,” scowling at her—and Nami blinks back, stunned. Stunned like she shouldn’t be, because of anyone she ought to know him better than that. She watched him carry the cage. She watched him bleed. “The whole point is not fucking dying. Luffy’s been poisoned six times—”

Derailed for a moment, Nami sniffs, “Four,” with only a little hesitation.

“Six,” he insists. “And it’ll happen again, because he’s an idiot. And things are going to get harder and eventually one of us will have to deal with it, too—and when that happens, it’s going to be me, so nobody else has to. And I’m not gonna die.”

Nami stares at him. “That’s not how that works,” she says.

“Has Luffy died?”

“Well—” she inhales, regaining momentum. “No. But you’re not Luffy—”

“Obviously.”

“—and you can’t guarantee that you’ll be the one facing it next time we’re forced to—”

“So Luffy should do it, then,” Zoro says, blunt and scowling, and she hisses air out through her teeth but doesn’t respond. “You’re saying Luffy should always be the one to do it.”

Nami’s silence is—deafening.

Still, she meets his gaze head-on, steady and simmering—a furious mess in ribbons and silk, the muscular outline of her figure defined along the edge of her bare arms and the holes in Wanda’s dress—two words from killing him if he weren’t already actively doing it himself. Zoro glowers right back.

She’s always been strong and she’s stronger now—of course she is—but there’s something else, too. Her hair is longer, and tomorrow she’ll set sail for the heart of an Emperor’s territory by her own request. She isn’t the Cook and she isn’t Chopper; she isn’t Luffy and she isn’t even Kuina. Nami has and always will be, in some way, his equal. He thinks of Captain’s Lunches and he thinks of Nami jumping into the sea. He thinks, I’m a body and three swords, and he thinks of Nami crying into Luffy’s shoulder, apologizing on Sanji’s behalf—apologizing that she couldn’t stop him.

He wants to tell her she’s missed the point somehow, just like Sanji had. It hurts, maybe.

He drinks, and still she doesn’t answer.

Instead, after a moment, she barks, “Does Luffy know?” like that would make any kind of difference.

“No.” Zoro glares. “No. And he doesn’t fucking need to.” He wants to shake her. “Luffy is going to be the Pirate King and I’ll be the Greatest and you’ll have a map of the world. I’ll drag his ass to the end and you’ll show us where to go.” He gestures broadly around them, bottle still in-hand. “I have to be stronger to do it. I have to be the strongest.”

“This,” Nami hisses, “is not a prerequisite for the World’s Greatest Swordsman. And it’s sure as fuck not a prerequisite for us.”

“Someone has to.” He feels like he’s been here before. “It can’t always be Luffy.”

Nami just looks at him, wet, incredulous, pissed to hell—then lets out a strangled, “But Luffy is Luffy! And you’re—” as she throws her arms out, cutting herself off. “Why do you always fucking do this? At what fucking cost?”

And Zoro scoffs—drunk and offended, genuinely offended that she would ever fucking assume—

“I’m not you, witch,” he says, and it’s meaner than he means because Kuraigana’s habits die hard. “It doesn’t cost anything. You’re crew.”

And Nami doesn’t reply, not immediately; just makes a wordless, terrible noise that sounds like something precious smashing in two, then she spits, “Fuck you—” through a choked, broken rage. “Fucking—pirates. You’re all so goddamn selfish.” Then something in her expression twists, and she is—standing alone, barefoot in the grass, arms wrapped around herself as she wails, “What about me? What about me?”

And Zoro doesn’t have an answer because he doesn’t get it—doesn’t know how that was the wrong answer, aside from maybe the insult—so he decides to blame the Cook’s bullshit self-sacrifice for this, too.

-x-x-x-

When Brook finds them, Nami has curled up against him, drunk and sad and having sobbed herself into something like sleep. She smells like wet dog and rotting fruit, and Zoro can’t help but rub the matted strands of her greasy hair, half-buzzed and concentrating on the sensation like he can absorb her pain through his fingers. He wonders if he should tell her that he can braid—that Perona had said it would improve his fine motor skills and he’d learned because they’d both been lonely and unable to admit it.

Tomorrow, things will be better. Under new dawn, they always are.

As Brook peers down, a nightmare in Mink robes and beads, he says, “I hope someday she will forgive me for staying Wanda’s hand,” and passes Zoro a bottle. Another one, because they’re pirates and all they do is drink and fight and drink again—and will still, long after they’re gone, if Brook is any indication.

Zoro nods his thanks but frowns anyway, inspecting the liquor. It’s clear and pungent, something far removed from the sticky fruit-ferments he’s been drinking like water—the kind of alcohol he’s been dying to drown in. “It was the right call,” Zoro says without looking up, “for the situation. The situation itself just sucked. Where did you get this?”

Brook chuckles. “It is an apology from Pedro on behalf of the canines,” he replies, bending forward, steepling his long fingers. Soul Solid rests in the crook of his boney elbow and Zoro is glad, distantly, that the sword finally has a name. It feels alive. It feels like crew, the same way Kitetsu and Shusui and Wado and Black Kabuto are crew; the same way Yubashiri will always be, too. “They call it moonshine,” Brook says. “Supposedly it is as strong as the elusive Sulong, though I haven’t quite parsed the meaning of that yet.”

When Zoro raises an eyebrow at him, Brook just shrugs—so Zoro drinks, and hisses, and blinks away the burn behind his eye, and says, “Holy shit.”

Brook laughs again, lighter, easier. “Excellent,” he says, standing straight. “It was a bit much for me, I’m afraid.”

“Lightweight.”

“Indeed! Because I’m only bones!” Brook laughs, and Zoro rolls his eye—hides his smile behind the mouth of the bottle.

There’s silence, then—comfortable, because Zoro has never been inclined to start a conversation and Brook will always suffer from a contemplative streak. The moonshine burns hard and good and Zoro wonders, idly, how much he can shove on the Polar Tang before Law starts removing limbs—then wonders if Law would do it anyway (the limb removal) just so he could see how hard it would be to fight. Starting with the feet, maybe. A glimpse into what it would’ve been like to have succeeded on Little Garden; training in case he’s ever encased again. Nami huffs in her sleep, and he wonders if she might like to take some with her, too—the moonshine—to drink for herself or to poison the Cook with, maybe. He almost laughs.

Almost.

Then Brook clears his throat (though he does not have one) and says, “I confess, I do have an ulterior motive; consider that a bribe, if you must,” like they’re still in the midst of a conversation. And Zoro wonders, too, if Brook is ever aware when he’s gotten lost or if it simply happens—a blink (though he does not have eyelids) and the world has shifted slightly.

Then Zoro grimaces, realizing he’d likely heard the argument. “Yeah?”

Brook leans forward, body full of motion again as he sways back and forth, and splays his hands out, boney palms up. “Would you mind showing me the vivre card?” he asks, not hushed but something like it, and Zoro blinks, frowns, because—

Oh.

“’Course,” he says, and he sets the bottle down in the grass, careful not to disturb Nami as he reaches for Shusui, for the little piece of paper he’s tucked underneath the woven cord on her saya, her scabbard. There hadn’t been a discussion in Dressrosa; Sabo had given it to him, after all, and after they’d distributed scraps to their fleet (their fleet—it sounds ridiculous) he’d simply kept it. Luffy’s own hat might be the only safer place, but he’d already taken his own portion and this is theirs.

Carefully, reverently Brook takes it, pinching the soft paper-fabric between his thumb and forefinger as he holds it up to the glittering lights of Nekomamushi’s lanterns. The edges are irreverently frayed and its an awkward, jagged size, but there’s a physical weight to it. A pressure. Something fundamentally Luffy. It looks like nothing, Zoro thinks. It looks like the world.

“Incredible,” Brook says, tilting it in his hands to marvel at every angle. “What a gift. What a truly heartbreaking invention.” Then he bends to return it, expression unreadable (because it’s never readable, no skin—no muscle) and Zoro—squints. Purses his lips. Says nothing and tucks the card back in its place as Brook stands. Zoro waits to see if Brook is going to get lost again—but he doesn’t. Not for long.

“I wished so, so desperately for one of my Captain’s,” he says, and the way the title comes tumbling out of his teeth is like listening to Zoro’s own voice played back on a tone dial. He pivots slightly, and it’s suddenly impossible to know what he’s looking at (though he does not have eyes) and impossible to know what he’s seeing. “I needed to know if he’d survived the Calm Belt. Later, it was simply a gift to believe that he had.“

Zoro reaches for the moonshine and buries the fingers of his free hand into the tangled ends of Nami’s hair. She doesn’t stir. He drinks. “Could’ve lived,” Zoro says, “Could still be alive,” but no part of him believes it. No part of him wants to, even, for the implication—

“No,” Brook says, shaking his head. His tone is—simple. Matter-of-fact. He folds his hands behind his back. “He has passed, whether when we parted ways or whilst I was alone,” (he does not say Florian Triangle; he does not say Thriller Bark) “or sometime in the interim between then and now.” Then he nods decisively and shifts his weight from foot to foot, always in motion—always doing something (a hum, a joke, a laugh, a song) because to move, Zoro thinks, is to be alive.   

“Yeah?”

“Indeed,” Brook nods again. Then his voice shifts to something like relief. “I spent two years on every poster in the world. Do you not think he would have come if he could?” And oh, Zoro thinks. Oh. “No, I am a first mate without a Captain, and a captain without a Crew—and I am Luffy’s Musician, and that, moreso than life itself, is a gift.”

A gift, a gift, a gift. And Zoro says, “Yeah.” Because. Yeah.

And Brook rocks gently, murmurs, “When it is his time, I would like to go into the sea with him. I think, perhaps, that would be a gift too,” weightless and soft, and Zoro can tell, then, that Brook is looking right at him. Nami shifts and the beads in her hair dig into the sun-weathered scar on his chest and he barely feels it, because it’s such a small pain. A drop of sweat in the sea.

“What about Laboon?” Zoro asks, and Brook hums—

“A whale’s lifespan is rarely longer than, oh, seventy years,” tilting his head to the side, curling white-bone fingers through the darkness in a vague gesture toward Zunesha’s horizon. “I will cherish my time with Laboon, but in the grand scheme of an endless death, the years he has left are so very small.”

Zoro watches him, bleached body almost reflective even in the dim moonlight, and not for the first time (or the tenth time, or the hundredth time) Zoro is struck full-force with the incomprehensible horror of Brook’s strength. More than any of them, he is an immovable force. Untethered (and who could blame him) but still here.

“Fifteen at most, then,” Zoro replies, “give or take,” and Brook tilts his head the opposite direction, a learned courtesy to show he’s listening.

“Optimistically, yes,” Brook replies. His voice is light, carefree like always. “Whatever I am given, I will take. It’s more time than I spent half a century believing I had, after all.”

“We’ll all still be alive.”

“And quite spry, in fact.” Brook nods. “When Laboon passes, I will not be alone—not again. Not yet.”

“Not yet,” Zoro grunts back, blunt as ever, and as he shrugs a wordless yohoho! floats up between them. If Kuina has been dead for half of Zoro's life, Brook has survived more than twice what he’s lived. He can’t wrap his head around the depth of it.

Then he realizes what he’s said and grimaces again.   

Brook laughs, unbothered. “I find it funny that people so rarely talk to me of death.”

Zoro snorts. “You’re always talking about death.”

“Oh, indeed. But one man does not a conversation make.” Brook chuckles, then—quick. Bright. “I would know!”

It’s hard not to feel his own lips pull into some kind of involuntary smile, even as his brain processes what’s been said. Brook is just so—Brook. Not for the first time, Zoro marvels at him.

Still, though—

“Maybe it’s ‘cause you do that,” Zoro says. “The jokes and shit.”

And Brook throws his head back—his arms out—and laughs. Laughs loud enough to wake Nami but doesn’t, somehow (which is a good thing and also a terrible thing; Zoro wonders how long it’s been since she properly slept, waiting for them here, waiting for Luffy to come and fix things). Still, he mutters, “Oi,” and Brook twists his bony neck to look down at him—grinning. Always grinning. Physically incapable of anything else.

“Oh, but that’s the point!” Brook says, absolutely delighted. “I’m a musician!”

Zoro feels his own eyebrows raise, but Brook is Brook is Brook—so he just grunts, “I don’t follow.”

And animated in his own strange, manic little moment of glee, Brook sways, spinning once across the grass and slipping out of his coat in the dance—before he folds smoothly into a crouch in front of them both. Without missing a beat, he gently, gently drapes the thick fabric across Nami (and across Zoro’s legs, too) and says, “My job is joy.”

“Joy.” It’s a statement and a question in one.

Brook simply nods, standing straight again. In the moonlight, his bones shine. “Death is an inevitable part of life, and if I can make you fear it just a bit less—make you laugh just a bit more when you think of it because you think of me, then I have served my purpose,” Brook says. “We are pirates! We are surrounded by death—seeped in it—but death is proof we are alive. All things need some mirrored opposite so their best qualities can shine in juxtaposition. Without death, what is life! And what is life if not laughter and music and companionship!”

Zoro watches him, bursting forth with a half-coherent rambling into the night, and doesn’t get it. And that’s fine, he thinks; he doesn’t have to. Still, though—

“Maybe it's good for the others, but I’m not afraid of dying,” Zoro bites, more defensive than he means. It has been—a day. “I’m not afraid of shit.”

With easy acquiescence, Brook nods. “Of course,” he says like a breeze. “I believe that’s part of what our dear Navigator has taken issue with—and one could argue that’s part of the issue at hand. But, I must say—if anything, this is proof that you do still fear death. Fundamentally different.”

Zoro swallows. He’d heard, then. All of the argument, or at least enough to matter. “Oi—”

“It’s not a weakness!” Brook says, shaking his head. “Or if it is, I’m quite spineless myself—oh, but I do have a spine! You can see it right here—” he poses, distracting himself, giggling against the sky as Zoro frowns.

“Doesn’t seem any different to me,” Zoro grunts. “And also—I don’t.”

“Everyone has a spine, Zoro—even if you can’t—”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it,” Zoro grumbles—but it’s around the twitched lips of a suppressed laugh, because of course—

And then Brook says, “You do indeed. You fear our Captain’s death more than anything, anything in the world, though you know better than anyone but me, perhaps, that it will come.” He nods, matter-of-fact. “It will.”

And that’s—

That’s—

-x-x-x-

The Polar Tang is cramped and metal and awful, and Zoro wonders when they’ll finally get their shit together because he’d give anything for a nap on Sunny’s deck. It’s been weeks since he’s felt home under his boots and it’ll be weeks more until he can—and that’s if things go according to plan. Which they won’t, he suspects, because Law’s plan is fucking boring.

He is, unfortunately, alone in his misery.

The submarine itself is enough to keep Franky awed and occupied, glued to Hakugan’s side, while Usopp and Ikkaku form some kind of lifelong bond. Robin has her hands full grilling Kin'emon and Kanjuro—establishing and preparing for their roles undercover—and the rest of the Heart Pirates are fine. Bepo is a pushover in a pillowcase, and Shachi and Penguin remind him so much of Johnny and Yosaku it’s almost criminally easy to get along with them, but they’re all at ease underwater in a way Zoro fundamentally is not.

He can’t imagine Luffy welcoming the claustrophobia, either—the feeling that he couldn’t go all out, even if he needed to. The ship’s fragility. It unnerves him, just a little, and makes him miss Sunny all the more.

In some strange, vaguely predictable way, Law proves the most interesting part of the journey. By the end of the second week, the Heart Pirates have stopped goading Zoro into cards and drinking games—not out of malice but realizing, maybe, that he’s not an easy mark. For all his mass, Bepo is no Nami, and even Jean Bart can’t match him in a test of strength—so once they’ve hazed the Straw Hats to their satisfaction, the Heart Pirates settle back into something like routine. And for the first time, Zoro sees Law for what he really is: a captain. Not just some guy with plans and powers that they all owe an unspoken debt to, but a fully-formed leader in his element—a pirate with his ship and his crew.

And even though it shouldn’t come as a surprise, his crew—they love him. They love him the way the Straw Hats love Luffy, lighting up the moment Law enters any room, turning—quieting—every time his voice carries over the intercom system, a space already made for him in everything they do. The Polar Tang’s joy is soft, ever-present, palpable after so long without their captain, and it is—a familiar ache, and a familiar relief. They had been banished to Zou for their own safety, a terrible kindness, and Zoro can’t help but think of Kuraigana’s wet soil.

He misses Luffy.

It’s not a revelation, really, but—

He misses Luffy.

And as he watches the Heart Pirates, as he thinks of Brook, as he looks at reflections of himself in the Polar Tang’s metallic walls, he decides Perona might be right—it’s just the nature of Captains to take. To take and take and take, whether they realize it or not.

He wonders, though—if he’s not the only one. If it’s the nature of Crew to give, too. To give and give and give until there’s nothing left. Maybe that’s just how love works for everyone.

Maybe it’s meant to hurt.

-x-x-x-

He’s not looking for the operating theater. Intentionally, at least—because it would be a lie to say he hasn’t thought of searching. For better or worse, though, a ship is a ship is a ship, and there are only so many places a man can wander—and even fewer he can get extremely fucking lost.

When he does find it, he doesn’t realize (at first) where he’s emerged, because (like everything else on the submarine) the room is—small. Cramped. A sterile, meticulously-organized mess of machines and wires. And yet—there’s a lived-in heaviness to the recycled air that’s like walking face-first into a wall.

He steps inside.

It would be weak, Zoro thinks, to do anything less.

Around him, the Polar Tang groans.

Zoro doesn’t know (or care to know) the specifics of Chopper and Law’s specialties, but at a glance the difference itself is clear. Chopper’s territory is a soft, bright burrow lined floor to ceiling with liquids and powders, plants and bugs and animal parts, a hundred books and a hundred more filled with notes—and this has a drain in the floor, fluorescents wired to the ceiling, framed on all sides by a grid of uniform cabinets and shelves, each stacked rows-deep with a sterile collection of materials and equipment. If Chopper’s infirmary is safety and the certainty that because he’s made it there, he’ll be fine, Law’s surgery is a warning. To arrive on Law’s doorstep is to have suffered something terrible. Something horrific.

And in the center—its heart: the hinged, metal expanse of the surgical table.

It is—

Zoro’s bootsteps echo off the walls and he’s there, staring down at the distorted length of it—his own reflection blurred back in the scuffed stainless steel surface.

It is—

For two years, he pressed his eyes to the same mud-stained newsprint, cataloged every smudge of ink, the only photo taken because during the War Luffy had been no one—nothing—too small and unexpected to warrant a second glance. Only later, after, too late did anyone seem to realize his significance. Ace, hollowed-out and bloody and alone and dead. Luffy, bandaged and clean, reverent and grieving and quiet. Between them—a void.

And Zoro has tried—has tried—has tried to imagine the aftermath. The pain. To feel it under his own skin, in his own bones and muscles. At night, in Kuraigana’s dark halls, he dreamt of it—what it would be like to do it again, to take Luffy’s suffering and swim in it, too little too late but something. To peel away the bandages and bury himself there, in the burning pull of his too-hot muscles, the gasping ache of his blown-out heart, the horrific press of his overstretched bones.

To carry, just for a moment, some portion of Greatness. To touch the cost. To let Luffy, Luffy, Luffy—the man who will be the Pirate King but who will drag them all kicking and screaming to their own dreams, too—rest.

Because if he cannot rest, he will die.

And if he dies—

Something creaks, the low moan of industrial strain, and Law says, “Let go of my table, Zoro-ya, or I’ll send your Navigator an invoice for the damages.”

And Zoro—

Doesn’t step back, doesn’t startle, but he releases the furious, involuntary grip—the full strength of his body ground into its metal edges—and something else, too. And when he bites, “The fuck are you doing here?” his voice is strong and steady as always, because he can never be anything less.

From the doorway, Law snorts, “I know everything that happens on my ship,” and Zoro turns to see him leaned against the frame, cross-legged at the knees, the very portrait of nonchalance. Kikoku isn’t with him—hasn’t been for much of their journey—and it’s still bizarre to see him (Trafalgar D. “Stick Up His Ass” Water Fucking Law) relaxed. Or at least partially disarmed.

Zoro’s own swords haven’t left his side, even in sleep.

“Freak,” Zoro grunts, but Law just scowls—

“Was there something you needed, or did you just stumble in to vandalize?” and then he. Waits. Doesn’t throw Zoro out, just—waits.

The question shouldn’t come as a surprise—not as much as it does—but after so much it’s easy to forget that Law is, first and foremost, a doctor. And Zoro, in pain, has stepped into his infirmary.

How fucking embarrassing.

Zoro snorts, rolls his shoulders, stands straight—glances around like he doesn’t give a shit, like every scuff, every scratch of this room won’t be imprinted in his brain until the day he dies—and says, “Can’t do shit the normal way so long as the Cook’s fucked off to get hitched, but I figured you’ve probably got something worse here than what I could find on Zou.”

And Law sighs, breathing impatience out into the room. “I’m not poisoning you,” he says. It’s almost disappointed. It’s mostly tired.

Zoro does step away from the table, then, and crosses his arms. “Didn’t ask you to,” he says, and he lets his gaze wander back to the cabinets, even though all he can see is the thing welded to the center of the room. “I can do it myself just fine.”

“Clearly not,” Law drawls, “since you’re still standing.”   

Zoro doesn’t concede the point, just quietly hates the fact that Law isn’t technically wrong and says, “You’re the Surgeon of Death,” lazy, goading. “Seems right up your alley.”

Law clicks his tongue and doesn’t rise to the bait. “As much as I’d relish the opportunity to push your frankly baffling capacity for survival to its limit, I’m fully aware that if I kill you, your Captain kills me,” he replies, brow furrowed as he waves one hand vaguely between them, like Luffy is standing there. Zoro is almost impressed by his ability to look both absolutely put-out and somehow utterly apathetic all at once. “And then Kaido stays an obstacle for all of us.”

“You’re not denying Luffy could kill you,” Zoro scoffs, glaring right back, “And—I wouldn’t fucking die. That’s the whole goddamn point—not dying. Why is everyone so convinced I’m going to die?”

“Oh, my mistake—of course.” Law rolls his eyes, recrossing his arms as he leans his weight back against the open door-frame. Zoro scowls. “By the order of things, though, you sound more convinced of your Captain’s lethality than your own resilience.”

“Fuck you.”

“Eloquent.”

“And fuck your stupid hat, too,”

“Wha—fuck you!” Law snaps, straightening, and Zoro wins a split-second of satisfaction. Still, Law continues, “And I’ve never denied it,” almost defensive. “I’m a pragmatist. What Straw Hat-ya lacks in self-preservation he makes up for in brute force and stupidity. Kaido isn’t an enemy conquerable with anything less.” He doesn’t acknowledge whether he is, too, but there’s an unspoken something in the air that’s answer enough.

Zoro snorts. “Sounds like you admire him,” he says, “stupidity and all,” and Law doesn’t deny that, either—just stares back, scowling and immovable, and Zoro’s starting to think it’s the only expression his face can make.

Then (by way of response) Law lifts his left hand—fingers splayed—and Zoro feels the fucked up, unnatural buzz of Law’s power blanket the room, a thousand tiny pinpricks to his senses. He’s halfway through a curse when Law snaps—and suddenly there, in the center of the cold stainless steel surgical table, is a jar.

It’s clinical, perfectly clear and etched along the sides with measurements that mean nothing—that do nothing to hide the purple-red, viscous thing filled halfway to the top. There’s an illness to the color that’s not just oxidation but something worse, maybe—because Zoro knows blood. Knows it intimately, deeply, fanatically—knows it better than sweat and sake and seawater, and that—

“What the fuck,” he says. It is all-encompassing.

“By the time he reached me,” Law replies, matter-of-fact, “his body had absorbed so much through the Revolutionary’s influence that removing the poison without ounces of him became a medical impossibility.”

And Zoro realizes, then, that this is not Sanji. Not Chopper. Not even Nami or Brook or—any of them, really.

This is Law.

Law, whose first impression of Straw Hat Luffy was the crushed facial bones of a Celestial Dragon and a platoon of downed Marines. Law, who dragged him from a war zone and brought him back to life. Law, who never met the boy in the dinghy, never watched him—scrawny and small and strong enough to kill god—take ten people by the hand and say, I pick you, when no one else would’ve bet on any of them.

Law, who never watched an entire Blue gasp at the insanity of his power, never swore on a nobody, never trekked jungles and climbed mountains and crossed deserts on his order, never flew through the sky and watched him touch the sun, never stood at his side while he carried the weight of his responsibility in bleeding hands, never watched the home they shared burn as a mercy—who never died, never died, never died for him.

Who does not—cannot—understand the thing that keeps them from confronting Marineford, Ace, the scar, all of it directly.

Who can just talk about it, because to Law, it’s simply a part of Luffy, not the weight of all his failures.

Zoro stares and stares and stares at the jar, and Law says, “It’s astounding, honestly. Ivankov’s treatment only worked as well as it did because Straw Hat-ya’s body is already constantly engaging his devil fruit abilities,” like they’re discussing—anything but this. “He’s had it since he was a child—half the age even I was.”

Law snaps again, then, and the jar is gone—and Zoro feels—

“He never learned to be human.” Law shrugs. “He burns twice the energy just to cross the deck that a normal body would ever need. Nothing stays in his system long, even what’s designed to linger. A typical diet would cripple him because he’d simply starve to death, but the reverse—the things meant to kill him from the inside out—Straw Hat-ya is the only person on the planet other than Magellan himself, maybe—or Caesar Clown—who would ever have a chance withstanding that much poison. Certainly the only paramecia. The damage he’s capable of processing is frankly astou—”

“Shut the fuck up,” Zoro says, and his voice sounds like something less than animal—because that. That. Zoro knows. Knows to the core of his marrow. Knows to the edge of his skin. Knows to the depths of his psyche.

And Law, for all his knives and needles, does not.

Law eyes him, not caught off-guard but something close—wary—and then he finally, finally concedes. Backs down. Realizes, maybe, that he’s gone too far; that he’s crossed some kind of line. “Apologies, Zoro-ya,” he says, and it’s almost sincere. “I thought you, of all people, would understand.”

Zoro feels his teeth grind together and wonders what he would see if Law removed his heart. “Understand what?” he snaps.

And without blinking, without hesitation, Law replies, “How remarkable he is. How incredible,” like it’s some kind of universal truth. (Which it is, Zoro thinks—but for Law to say it—) “You asked me if I admired him,” Law continues, but he’s not looking at Zoro anymore. Instead, he’s half-there, staring out into some middle distance, and it’s clear, then—some part of him will stay lost in Dressrosa’s rubble long after their wounds have healed. “I admire him like sailors admire the ocean. As a scientist I find him enthralling.” Zoro scoffs, but Law just shakes his head like he hasn’t heard. “As a pirate? Straw Hat-ya is an idiot and a pain in the ass, but on some ineffaceable level he is awe-inspiring.”

And it’s true—it’s true, but—

“So you kept his blood,” Zoro says, because he can’t keep his eyes from dragging back to the empty table. “You kept his blood for two years like some kind of fucked-up rabbit’s foot.”

“I kept more than that, and not for luck,” Law replies. “But two years is a long time, and storage space on a submarine is inherently limited.” He shrugs. “Like I said—pragmatist.”

And Zoro snarls, “You studied him,” so loud and so raw it almost catches them both off guard. Almost.

“Do you think I’m stupid enough to form an alliance with someone I hadn’t analyzed?” Law snaps in return, standing straight—in control and not backing down, Zoro knows, because Law is a captain. And this is his ship. “And do you think he, of all people, would care?” Law asks, and—

Zoro grits his teeth, silenced, because no, actually. Which is part of the problem.

He knows full-well Luffy wouldn’t give a single shit, thanks to his unwavering trust in Law (probably there, Zoro knows, from the moment the Polar Tang surfaced next to Marineford’s battlefield—maybe earlier) and his own ability to punch harder than whatever weakness unrestrained study of his physiology might reveal. And Zoro has no doubt he could, really. Punch harder.

“This is the New World, Zoro-ya, and that is a valuable resource,” Law says, nearly offended when Zoro doesn’t respond. “The opportunity to study something so potent only rarely—if ever—surfaces. The opportunity to study something resistant to it—well.” Law scowls again, and Zoro hears the metal edge of the surgical table creak under his own grip—realizes he’s reached for it again, one hand on the edge and the other on Kitetsu’s hilt. It’s unclear which he’s grabbed for balance. Law remains unimpressed. “Really, Zoro-ya, you’re being dramatic,” he scoffs. “It’s hardly any different from what you’ve been doing.”

“Fuck you,” Zoro sneers back, and—

Law blinks at him, then—baffled, like Zoro’s the one who’s lost his mind, a single crack in the facade that’s gone as quickly as it arrived. “It’s just basic strategy,” Law says plainly. “Gouging out a weakness.”

And—

For the first time—for the first time—since he started this whole fucking thing, since Fishman Island, since ten years; months of arguments and accumulation and vomiting over the side of the ship and worse, too—someone finally, finally fucking gets it.

But the answer feels—wrong.

-x-x-x-

The first morning after Kuina’s funeral, Zoro sits at the lakeside and digs the white sword’s beautiful hilt down into the mud. Dirt sticks in the grooves, grinding up against the pristine cord, caking in its seams and staining everything it touches. It’s terrible and irreverent and if anyone important saw, they’d thrash him for the mess—or maybe not, because this is his sword now. He can do whatever he wants, and there’s no one left who matters, and it will be like this forever.

The destruction feels good and gross at the same time, sort of like his insides. He knows he’ll have to clean it later—to wash and rewind and sharpen and oil and all of it—but he smears the sword deeper anyway. Buries it, almost, until all that’s left is a strip of white against the murky expanse that’s more bog than beach.

The exercise will be good practice. He can pretend the muck is blood. He’ll have to do it over and over and over again when he’s older, because there’s no way he’ll ever be the Greatest Swordsman in the World if he doesn’t get used to the idea of killing. It’s probably for the best that he gets used to this, too.

Gritty silt digs under his fingernails and burns in the cuts on his hands, and his training pants are soaked through and grimy from all the kneeling. No one comes to find him. It will be like this forever.

They wouldn’t let him pick out her bones. They wrapped her up and walked her across the village and burned her, and he followed the whole way with the sword in his arms, but they wouldn’t let him pick out her bones. He knows she’s important—that her family is important—because they’ve got the same name as the village, but he still doesn’t think it’s fair. He wanted so, so badly to bury his hands in her ashes and feel all the tiny little pieces, broken up and burned, that made her—but they wouldn’t let him. And they used chopsticks, anyway. Boring.

He takes one finger and pushes the sword further down into the mud and there’s a wet, sucking sound that he mimics back at the lake without even thinking, puffing out his cheeks and spitting a raspberry around his tongue like a reflex. Call and response. Because it’s a weird noise and weird noises are meant to be made. He doesn't laugh but it does make him feel better. Also, it will be like this forever.

Kuina is dead and that means he’s won. He’s going to be the Greatest Swordsman, and he’s ten years old, and he’s never thought much about dying before this. It happened to his parents and Kuina’s old grandfather, and it used to make him nauseous. Now, though, it doesn’t feel like anything. Kuina is (was) the strongest person in the whole world forever (except for him) and she died falling down the stairs, which means—

If Death is strong enough to take Kuina from their basement, there’s nothing he can do about it. Death will come whether he’s cautious or stupid, young or old, good or bad. The only thing he ever had to worry about is gone now. Because—Kuina is dead and that means he’s won, he’s going to stand at the top, he just has to get there, and that will be hard but not impossible.

It’s like burying the sword in the mud. Good and gross. He isn’t sure anyone else would get it, but that’s fine, Kuina’s just going to be pissed when she finds out she’s lost and—

Oh, it will be like this forever.

-x-x-x-

He cannot stop thinking about the jar. It’s like a parasite, like a rat that’s buried fangs in his brain—a violent thing, eating the little moments between conversations, meals, naps. Always in the back of his mind, biting.

It’s unpleasant. It’s aggravating. It takes him three days to find the infirmary again, and he spends every one of them mildly pissed off about at least five separate things. Usopp calls him out on it (the bastard) and Robin isn’t far behind, but it’s a commiserating kind of jab. They’re Sunny’s crew, after all. No one says it outright, but so long submerged has worn on them all.

He makes the most progress after dark, wandering around the ship’s cavernous halls while the Heart Pirates sleep and the Straw Hats struggle. The quiet gives him room to think, for better or worse—but it doesn’t help, because the moment he's standing in the surgery doorway in the middle of the night, he has to admit that he has no fucking clue what he’s supposed to do. What he’s going to do. And that’s the most annoying part of all.

Mostly, he just wants to see it again. To hold it, maybe, even though he can’t quite articulate why. When he finds it, though—he knows things will make sense. It is fundamentally a part of Luffy, after all, and Luffy is Luffy. All he has to do is find it again.

Which is—harder than anticipated.

Law’s surgery is meticulously organized, lined on every metal side with an unbroken wall of uniform, glass-covered shelves and carefully-stocked drawers. Rows and rows of identical glassware peer out into the room, labeled clear-cut and careful with whatever is stored inside—in a language Zoro doesn’t recognize. One jar in a sea of hundreds isn’t impossible, even if it isn’t easy. The real challenge comes in finding it without royally pissing off the captain—and by extension, royally pissing off his Captain.

Because that’s the second catch. He can’t fuck up the surgery looking for it, then steal the damn thing. This isn’t just another captain’s ship, this is the inner sanctum of a captain Luffy has chosen. Not crew, but something close by Luffy’s authority. To betray Law, even in this, would be a betrayal of Luffy’s trust—a shame in his absence on behalf of his Vice-Captain. And to betray Law, even in this, would be an insult to the role—a Vice-Captain’s betrayal against the man who saved his Captain’s life. And to betray Law, even in this, would be—unacceptable, because (like Jinbei), Law was there when Zoro was not.

And yet—

It is Luffy, it is proof of what he endured, proof of what he (did not) survive, proof of what it cost to fail, proof of everything Zoro is trying to achieve theirs.

And it’s a liability too, of course; an open invitation to study the map of Luffy—a danger to his Captain and a danger to them all.

As he opens cabinet after cabinet and stares blankly into the expanse, a world so far removed from cut things, get stronger, repeat it leaves him lost even standing still, he wonders if he’ll be able to feel it—to know, the same way he knows to turn left, right, right (around those trees, over that fence, through that building) when Luffy is doing something stupid. Something wonderful. The indescribable him, him, him that’s more the break of dawn than any north star worth finding, something all-encompassing and inevitable. The thing that burns Zoro up from the inside and makes him want to sever the heads of armies—of kings—just so he can have something to lay like a gift at Luffy’s feet. The thing that makes him want to Conquer (though he doesn’t know it yet—will not, still, for weeks).

(He cannot sense the jar. He does not know how that makes him feel.)

Then Law says, “You have a problem, Zoro-ya,” and for the second time, Zoro does not jump. Instead, he just quietly despises however the hell they’ve rigged the room so that Law can teleport where he’s needed.

Thoroughly caught, Zoro crosses his arms—and just keeps staring ahead, inspecting Law’s supplies like he’s there with purpose. “Yeah,” he says. “It’s your fucking filing system.”

Law doesn’t even give him the dignity of a scoff, just drawls, “I’m still shocked you can read,” and Zoro gets halfway through a curse, halfway through a turn—

—and falters, just for a moment.

And Law does snort, then; derisive. He’s standing in the doorway again, lounging with one shoulder on the metal frame like they’d never left. Zoro wants to glare back, but he can’t keep his eye from the thing in Law’s hand. Law tosses the jar up and catches it, and Zoro doesn’t move—just stands straighter and doesn’t know why.

“I spoke with Tony-ya before we departed,” Law says, “and I have my own observations.” He waves one hand vaguely in Zoro’s direction. “You don’t have any need for this. Your Chef did a frankly disturbing job on his own, building up your tolerance. He had to have monitored every single thing you consumed for months down to the milligram, just to make sure he didn’t kill you.” He eyes Zoro, then, and Zoro feels exposed. Like Law can see under his skin, through his bones.

Maybe he can.

“Still not strong enough,” Zoro says.

“And yet you’ve excised the point of disadvantage,” Law replies. “I could go down the list—tetrodotoxins, chlorotoxins, conotoxins. He inured you against hemotoxins, too—and the inorganics, and the semi-organics.” Law shakes his head, then—and something shifts. The condescension slips, and for a moment (a moment) he just looks tired. Then it’s gone and he bites, “He’s already sentenced you to an early grave,” like Zoro isn’t aware. “No matter what kills you, Black Leg-ya has taken old age off the list and replaced it with himself—”

“Bullshit,” Zoro snarls, suddenly furious, because, “It’s my responsibility,” and Sanji—

“Fascinating. Does he believe that?” Law’s disdain is back in full-force. “Do any of them?”

“It’s for the good of my crew.”

Law tosses the jar up again and the thing inside purls, soft and thick, purple-red wine tears streaked against the glass. “I believe that,” Law says. “I’m simply pointing out the collateral damage.”

“Did you consider collateral damage when you left your crew?” Zoro snaps, and he knows it’s a redirect—he knows he’s avoiding the accusation and the truth therein; knows he’s proving Law’s own point just by asking—but he’s seen them. He’s seen the Heart Pirates, and he’s seen himself reflected back in the way they watch Law when he isn’t looking—like he could disappear any moment, could walk away and keep going forever.

And he knows, too, that they’ll never bring it up, just like they’ve never brought up how much two years hurt.

It’s hitting back at a bystander in revenge, cruel even as it satisfies, and Law pales, rigid and still and scowling. He looks like there’s something frozen under the surface of his skin, and he glares. “I should swap you with a fish outside for that. Drown you.”

Zoro snorts—because the thing that’s keeping him from outright angering Law is the same reason Law can’t. “Try it,” Zoro says. “You need Luffy.”

“Then I’ll vivisect you into fifteen pieces,” Law shoots back, “and cram you into corners. You’d arrive in Wano intact and Straw Hat-ya can’t say shit.” He’s squeezing the jar in his hand like it’s Kikoku’s massive hilt, a weapon and a grounding force all at once.

Zoro rolls his eye. “Then you’d never get rid of me. I’d be in fifteen different places, all over the ship.” Idiot.

And Law audibly hisses out through his teeth. “Fine!” He stands (finally) then the hair on the back of Zoro’s arms itches and—there it is, dead center at the edge of the surgical table. “Fuck! I hate you all,” he says, but Zoro barely hears him. “Do it yourself—I don’t care.”

Zoro can’t stop staring, glued to it, drawn to it like a man at the mouth of hell. “The fuck are you talking about.” It doesn’t come out like a question. He already knows, maybe—just needs Law to say it out loud. He can't tear his eye away.

“You’re a masochist, Zoro-ya, not stupid. Don’t insult me,” Law says. “You want poison? That’s the most lethal thing on this ship.” He doesn’t wait—just turns on his heel, done whether Zoro is or not. “Just know I won’t fix your vocal chords when you shred them out screaming.”

And then he’s gone, vanished into thin air and disappointment, and Zoro (a hypocrite) is so fucking tired of learning everything from everyone but Luffy.

-x-x-x-

It is Impel Down encased in glass, and it tastes like—

-x-x-x-

He knows exactly where to hit between the vertebrae, how much force to put in the swing, how to tilt the angle of the blade to decapitate someone. He knows it in theory and in practice, too, because he’s done it before—done it to pirates and as a pirate. He also knows it is impossible to decapitate oneself.

The jar isn’t empty but close, and he can feel Luffy burning on his tongue, down his throat—on the skin of his lips—something inhuman and unnatural. Underneath him, the room tilts, shifting like Zoro has come unstuck from the ship, and what’s left at the bottom of the glass glistens in the dark. It is not Thriller Bark but it is something and Zoro wants to press his face to the new scars on Luffy’s chest and dig his nails into the soft rubber of his sides and weep. To sink his teeth into Luffy for leaving him behind; to press his tongue to the pulse in Luffy’s neck as thanks for staying alive. Because Luffy is alive. Luffy is alive. Luffy is alive.

And Zoro is—not alone.

Across the empty surgery, Kuina watches him, cross-legged and silent, as Zoro drinks the rest of Luffy’s Magellan’s poison. It has been no time at all. It has been a hundred years here, waiting for something to happen.

Then he is sitting, his back against the column of the operating table—and he wonders if he could pry open the scar on his chest and see the vow written there on the underside of his skin, next to his heart—over the scar tissue left by another promise, intertwined forever. The thing that defines him, body and soul.

Whether he ever truly believed he could beat her is irrelevant, because she’s dead. She’s dead and all he’s done is prove her right; has proven that a man is destined to be the World’s Greatest Swordsman. And in turn, as punishment, she’s doomed him to a life of loneliness. No matter what, she would always be there—biting at his heels for the title, or he would be biting at hers—and without her, emptiness. To find someone who understood the rage inside of him, the fervor, the something—and then to lose her—it is cruel. It is the cost.

Without her, there will never be a dispute. Zoro will be alone, unchallenged, at the top. The World’s Greatest Swordsman. The only one.

Except—

Zoro is a pirate. And pirates are greedy—and Zoro is stubborn—and he’s got enough debt wracked up to Nami, anyway. He does not want to pay. He wants to have it all. He wants Greatness, and he wants to stand alongside Greatness too. He doesn’t want to be alone—

And he doesn’t want Luffy to be alone. He doesn’t want Luffy to pay the price of standing at the summit.

Luffy, Luffy, Luffy—who would rend the earth with his bare hands for the pursuit of a dream—his, or anyone he’s claimed. Luffy, who found Zoro in stagnation and chose him, grinning and right, whether Zoro wanted it or not. Luffy, who smiles like the break of day over clear waters and who laughs like life itself—who has already crossed the canyon. Who is already standing on the other side. Who is still walking further and further from the edge, increasing the distance between himself and the rest of the world as he strides toward his future.

And Zoro will follow.

He must.

Because if his vow has always been To Stand At The Top, it has always been equal parts With You, too, and he would kill for it. Would die for it, right up until the end, the same way Luffy would die fighting for his own dream. To fight eternally for the Title, to be the Pirate King’s Sword. They are so, so different—they are exactly the same.

And then he’s laying down, earrings digging against the soft edge of his jawbone. The room gleams and the floor burns cold-hot against his clammy skin and he doesn’t curl around his swords but it’s something close, an embrace, a threat. Kuina blinks, waiting, and he wants to vomit but can’t—won’t—because to reject proof of Luffy’s will—to reject Luffy—would be apostasy. Would be going back on his own vows, would be splitting his own bowels over a bowl with Wado then plunging it into his throat.

He wants to feel it all, a fraction of every burden Luffy’s held for them—held in his bare hands and bloody fists. He wants to feel it crawling under his skin, searing in his veins. He wants the ache in his bones to be the creaking weight of Luffy, Luffy, Luffy because he’s taken some but not enough, and he needs to be stronger—the strongest. Not able to carry the load of ten dreams and his own but something close—enough to let Luffy rest, just for a moment. Because if Luffy cannot turn and say, Zoro, handle it, with confidence that he will then Zoro has failed, failed, failed even if he’s the Greatest in the world.

Something blisters against his chest and it’s his heart bleeding out and it’s Shusui screaming and it’s something real, too—something smoldering in the cord.

Death turns away.

And Zoro—

Pries it out, the burning paper, and it is worse, maybe, than Kuraigana. The room slips to the side and he crawls, pushing himself up on hands and knees even as his stomach roils, and he does not let go—lets it scorch his palm even as he feels the paper eating itself. The plan has gone wrong (because of course it’s gone wrong) and Luffy is fighting and what the fuck is the Cook doing and Zoro has failed again, because he’s here and not there—

And he thinks this is a terrible gift, even as he drags himself across the slick floor, sweat against steel, swords scraping loud in the silence that roars like the maw of the sea in his ears. He is here, the vanguard to Wano, and Luffy is—defeating an army? Biting pieces from an Emperor? Waging the battles of both Captain and Vice-Captain and dying, dying, dying because Zoro isn’t there to carry the weight—again.

Death steps over him and he wants to claw at her ankles and say, I’m not finished yet, but she’s nothing. She is dead and she’s real and she’s poison and she’s Brook and she’s gone, and Zoro hauls himself up and the Polar Tang moans and the halls are a labyrinth and Death has left him to find Luffy and somewhere Law’s voice burbles through the ether, What the fuck are you doing, Zoro-ya—fuck, fuck—Hakugan I’m bringing us—

And it’s the middle of the night and there’s the sea and there’s the air and he’s on his knees and he can’t go any further because there’s the ship’s rail, and beyond that—the endless expanse of the New World—and Death is gone and the vivre card’s fire held in his cupped hands is burning away, brighter than the full moon overhead, a dying star—

And Robin is there, pressed against his side, still and silent. And Usopp is there, trembling with him, fist buried in his coat. And Franky is there, enveloping them at their backs, an immovable wall of iron.

They wait, and they hold each other, and they watch until the sun rises again.

Because it will. Of course it will.

It always does.

In his chest, there is a heartbeat; thunder raging, calling out to the drums of Greatness in the distance. The end of the world is coming. Zoro will be alive to see it.

-x-x-x-

When his sandal hits the barren wastes of Wano, his spine is straight and he doesn’t look back at the Flower Capital, doesn’t look back at Usopp or Robin or Franky—still inside the city, cover intact because he’s chosen exile over hiding. Outside the gates, there is a village of longhouses, dark and dry in the night—deserted, almost, if it weren’t for the bizarre hour. His footsteps and swords thunder through the silence, but nothing stirs as he crosses toward the empty horizon.

Then—when he passes the last room of the last building, there is a creak, the rough shifting of old fabric, and a wide, wide, wide grin peering out through the crack of a half-opened door. “Stranger,” someone hisses. In the low moonlight, everything is a smear of dark on dark; Zoro can’t make out more than the shine of their teeth. “Stranger, it’s not worth your life. Everything the water touches—the animals, the plants—it’ll make you sick. It’s poisoned.” The voice sounds sad, almost. Desperate and resigned, like this isn’t the first time they’ve said it; like Zoro isn’t the first to brave the wastes. Still, they don’t stop smiling.

“I’ll be fine,” Zoro grunts back, low and serious. He tries to sound reassuring, but it comes out blunt like always. He isn’t sure why they care, or why it feels important to him that they know he’ll survive.

And the person sighs, unsurprised. “The next region is days away by foot,” they say. “Please—” then they disappear, and Zoro is left standing, waiting, trying to work out whether he should worry about misnavigating his way back into the Flower Capital knowing his own track record. Then in a blink, they’re back, holding something out to him through the slim doorway. “Take this,” they say, soft.

It is a handful of rice, days-old and dried, and a tuft of something yellow-green—a bundle half the size of his palm, turned over with so much gravity. Treasure.

Zoro tilts his head, a minute bow—but enough. “Thank you,” he says as he tucks it into the folds of his yukata. It would be an indignity to do anything less. The person closes their door without a word, and the world stills again, and Zoro continues into the abyss.

It is not the dead courtyard of a tiny Marine base two Seas away but the land of gods and Emperors, and still, the ground feels exactly the same underfoot.

Luffy will be here soon. Zoro will be ready.