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Zoro sat up with a gasp, heart thundering in his chest, hands trembling with leftover adrenaline from... from what? A dream? He couldn’t remember what it had been about, not really. A glimpse of hazy darkness, danger all around, lunging for someone he had to protect-
Zoro shook his head and rolled to his feet. Johnny and Yosaku had gotten lost and vanished on him a few weeks back, and he'd thought that this place with its Marine base would be a good spot to pick up some new bounties, pirates strong enough to hone himself against, more stepping stones on the way to his goal. But all the bounties here were either too cheap to be worth his time or belonged to someone who didn't use swords. Both, in most cases. He'd go hunt one down when he needed more money, but he was good for now.
He did his morning katas, found a decently sized rock down by the shore to use for some weight training, took a dunk in the river to rinse off the sweat, and once he found the damn town again- seriously, why did nobody believe him when he said these things moved- he meandered up and down its labyrinthine streets until he located the bar that had good food. You could always tell, because it would be the only one with more than just the local drunks and sailors on shore leave at this hour. Also it usually smelled like food, rather than booze and piss.
A little girl, no more than seven or eight, showed him to a table as soon as he entered and very proudly rattled off their menu for the day. Zoro got an order of their house special onigiri, and a bottle of sake, and... something was wrong. He couldn't name it, could barely describe the feeling even in his own head, but something was wrong, a sense of familiar-but-not hanging over the pub. A blond man with a dumb haircut and dumber suit walked in, demanding a table, and the woman behind the bar came out to seat him as the girl returned with a tray.
Zoro kept a fraction of his attention on the idiot and the barkeep, but most of it was on his lunch. “Special spicy tuna onigiri.” she pointed at a plate with three of them, neatly formed and arranged in a row on a rectangular plate. “And this one's extra special, I made it myself!” the girl indicated the fourth onigiri, slightly lumpy with its dark filling poking out a bit at one corner, formed by hands too small and unpracticed to get the crisp, clean look of the others.
“That so, huh?” Zoro asked, picking it up by the rice paper strip which wrapped awkwardly around it instead of a piece of nori. He bit into it at the corner which showed a hint of filling, and it took every ounce of his Will to not make a face of utter disgust at the overwhelming sweetness which filled his mouth. He swallowed, coughed, and washed the taste out of his mouth with a swig of sake. “Maybe warn people before they try it that it's a dessert onigiri.” he managed, once the cloying sugar was out of his mouth. “What’s in that?”
“Plum jam!” Rika smiled. “I don’t like umeboshi, but I thought one made with jam and sugar would be nice!”
“It’s certainly sweet.” he said, and Rika beamed as she turned to skip back to collect the next tray of dishes. Zoro grabbed up one of the regular onigiri, took a bite, and frowned at it. It... didn’t taste right. Why didn’t it taste right? Was there something special that Sanji did, or-
Oh.
The latest petty tyrant in a long line of them, ranting about friendship and strength and loyalty. A face drawn tight with fear, not the utter terror which had struck at Sabaody but just as unsettling to see in a man so unshakably confident. A heavy pressure against his Will, the others vanishing from his awareness. A cry of fear, a spike of Danger, and then- and then he'd woken up here.
Zoro ate mechanically, even Rika's rice ball- it had almost tasted better when it was full of dirt, not that he'd tell the kid as much- and washed it all down with the sake, leaving a generous tip as he rose and headed out the doors. If he was here... and that had been Helmeppo, minus his rabid beast. Luffy wasn't due for weeks yet, nearly a month. Zoro found himself down at the docks, and sat on the edge of the nearest pier, staring out at the water as he thought. Dammit, he should've grabbed some booze to go.
Sandals slapped against the salt-stained wood, and Zoro looked over his shoulder. For a moment, the sight didn’t compute. Just a lanky scrap of a boy, sun-browned and scarred, with a cheap canvas vest and a battered straw hat shading dark, dark eyes. It was like a pressure behind his eyes, a whisper at the back of his mind to return to his thoughts, look back out at the sea. He was to be the World's Greatest Swordsman, that was the only thing worth thinking of.
Zoro shut his eyes, and pushed back against that strange pressure. His Will would not be bent and twisted to any whim but his own. He opened them, and rage kindled hot in his breast as he took in the sight again.
Luffy, his Captain, stood a few paces away. He was seventeen again, all lean muscle of hard living and lanky limbs of a not-quite-finished growth spurt. He wasn’t smiling, and that alone could've been reason to draw swords, but the look on his face was far worse than contemplation or anger or even fear. Luffy looked raw, as if he'd spent hours screaming, crying, pushed to every limit but physical. As if, Zoro realized with a jolt which was instantly echoed by a fresh flare of anger, he had already been made to do this before. That devil fruit had hit the whole crew, and to go and see them all again as they'd been before meeting...
Brook and Chopper so painfully alone, Robin guarded and secretive, Nami trapped and hurting and hating pirates. And him, indifferent to everything but his goals, with no time for a scrap of a boy who had done nothing for him. It fell together in a heartbeat, as he met Luffy's eyes. The bastard who'd trapped him in here, trapped them all in whatever freaky illusion this was, wanted to break Luffy. Wanted to hurt him in a way no haki or devil fruit could protect from. And if Zoro's own Will had been any less powerful, he just might have succeeded.
“Get lost on the way, Captain?” he grinned, and Luffy tackled him right off the dock, the two of them damn near hitting the shallow bottom of this little bay before Zoro got an arm around his favourite idiot and hauled Luffy back to shore. “Why is it- you always forget- you can't fucking swim?!”
Luffy just laughed, and Zoro decided that any saltwater on his Captain’s face must be from their dunk in the ocean. Any hoarseness to his voice a side effect of yet another near-drowning by his own stupidity. “Zoro is Zoro.”
“Course I am, Luffy.” he held out a hand for his Captain to latch onto, which Luffy did. “C’mon, let's get out of here. I miss our cook's food already.”
“Ah! Zoro knows how to get out of here?!” Luffy sat upright, arms wrapping around Zoro's like a pair of over-enthusiastic snakes.
“I managed to snap myself out of it a bit with sheer willpower.” Zoro shrugged. “You’re the one who actually got that shit trained while we were apart.”
“Ohhh, good idea!” Luffy laughed, his grip on Zoro's arm easing up but not unwinding in the slightest. A moment later, Luffy's haki filled the air, a comforting and familiar weight which, after a moment, set the very air around them trembling. Luffy exhaled hard through his nose, and the illusion fell apart completely, leaving them sitting in a dark room.
His body was stiff, like he'd been sitting still too long, but the swords at his hip were the correct ones, and he could sense the rest of the crew waking nearby. Luffy's breath hitched, and Zoro rested a hand on the back of his Captain’s head, fingers curling against coarsely woven straw and careful, almost invisible stitches of repair. “Permission to stab that bastard, Captain?”
Luffy giggled against his shoulder, hitching and uneven. “Okay. But only once! Then I get to kick his ass for messing with my crew.”
“Of course.” Zoro chuckled, and once Luffy's arms loosened he rose to his feet and drew Wadou from her saya. They had a fight to win.