Archive of Our Own

Don't freak out. Don't freak out. Don't freak out.

"I don't get it," Usopp's muttering, "I mean, I get why they're smaller, but why can’t they remember anything about us?"

Nami wills her beating heart to calm the fuck down, the corner of her lips twitching. "Maybe it's like a facet of Bonney's power," she fumbles for an excuse, "like Torao and his surgery tricks, his, his gamma thing and the shot thing- maybe that's her thing. Fuck with memories as well as age."

Luffy's stomach grumbles, and Sanji- little, fourteen year old Sanji, seems to hear it all the way from across the deck, his fingers digging into a mikan.

"You got a kitchen here? I may just be an apprentice, but I'm a damn good one."

Just an apprentice.

Nami wants to cry. She does, she really does. Zoro must be somewhere around here, sleeping his confusion off. Their cook and their swordsman, vital parts of this crew, reduced to puzzled little fleshbags of youthful hormones and lanky arms.

Luffy's happy enough yanking Sanji off towards the kitchen with a mischievous grin. She’d have to have Usopp monitor the rubber nuisance. He’d most likely go on a kitchen raid now that Sanji had no notion of the terror that was his stomach.

"So," Nami reasons, "we find Bonney, we convince her to fix this- why in all the hells she would even try and pull a stunt like this-"

Her anger begins to bleed back into her ears, and Usopp's got his hands up in a calming motion. "She probably just freaked out, y'know, spur of the moment attack. It's not like she hurt them or anything. It could’ve been worse.”

No, she didn’t hurt them, she just turned two-fucking-thirds of the monster trio into children. Usopp chimes in once more, ever the reasonable voice. ”They were only teenagers when they first joined too, we all were. How bad can it be?"

"Guy, guys," Luffy's cackling from the kitchen door, "Sanji can't reach the spices, it's funny as hell!"

Nami does cry then.

Sanji's face is softer, rounder, and obviously utterly hairless. She'd like to say he was lanky, but in all reality he was still lean with this mysterious lethality to him, and it made her question what he'd gone through in life up until this point. While he still adored women, he was a bit more tame about it, smiling wide and big every time Robin threw a kind word his way.

It seems like it might be okay for a bit, that they might just survive this disaster- until dinner.

Zoro comes in, hair messy and eyes just as sharp as ever. He was nowhere near the gorilla he'd been at 21, or even 19, but there was evidence of his early bouts of determination in the slick muscle of his stomach and the touches of shape in his arms.

She's not the only one that notices the kinder edges of his face, the smoothed corners of his smirks- less lethal, more playful.

"Smells good," he’s saying, instead of his habitual grunt. Luffy is agreeing happily enough, relieved that his cook had been taken from him only in body, and not in talent.

But that's not what irks her, no, it's the way Sanji flushes, sliding the late-comer his plate.

Usopp pauses mid-bite as well, though no one else seems bothered. She finds the sniper later, the two of them crouched in the mikan trees with urgent, hushed whispers.

"Totally weird, right?"

"Where did his late policy go? I mean, like yeah he doesn't know he has to kick Zoro awake, but he should've retained some of his earlier attitude, right? He’d for sure been a snob about punctual meals way before we’d ever met him.”

Nami agrees whole heartedly. Usopp sighs with a helpless shrug then.

"Maybe he was a shy kid?"

She deigns to watch their little cook a bit more.

While it had been a bit hard to convince Zoro and Sanji of the situation, the crew’s extensive knowledge of the two (and their quirks) had proved useful in winning them over. There was still a stiffness to the both of them though, and Nami wonders if they simply found comfort in each other, being subjected to the same situation as they were.

Sanji struggles with his dress shirts, smart enough to abandon the jackets lest he make a fool of himself. Nami helps him fold back the arms, scopes for some bathing trunks for him to tie about his waist instead of his usual buttoned pants. Zoro’s swimming in his old workout shirts, sweats hung low as he growls and grumbles every time he has to retie them.

They’re having lunch out on deck, the grass tickling their shins as Zoro stabs his steak with a fork and starts to bite at it. Sanji twitches. He’ll kick him, Nami knows, or hit him or screech or stretch his cheeks wide enough to burn.

Instead he huffs, and pushes himself up, wandering over so as to hover about the swordsman, leaning in to help him cut the meat.

Now, Franky does notice this, alongside Nami and Usopp- and perhaps Robin does too, smiling into her bites. Chopper and Luffy continue to gorge themselves, Brook unreadable.

“Honestly,” Sanji does berate, “eat it like you appreciate it.”

Zoro leans back into the other a bit, brow furrowed. “That is how I appreciate it. If I had to cut it up into all these itty bitty pieces then it’d take even longer to eat.”

Sanji sighs, handing the silverware back to him. “Here, enjoy it this way. It’ll help with digestion too.”

Zoro complies easily enough, speaking through a mouthful then, “So, what kind of guy was I?”

“Super strong,” Franky laughs, Luffy cheering, “you were big too, little bro, with this mean scar on your eye.”

Zoro seems to like the idea of it, a pleased twitch to his lips. “And the cook,” he asks, Sanji tensing up into a straighter position, chewing slowly.

“Cook bro was strong too, with these crazy kicks that were so hot they’d burst into flames!”

Chopper cheers with Luffy, and Sanji grins (Nami likes that childish grin, his cheeks rounding up).

“Yeah?” Zoro hums, “So who was stronger, me or him?”

Sanji glowers then, though Nami could see the curiosity in his flickering gaze.

“Well,” Franky considers it, “you guys were like a team, I guess, can’t really say who was stronger. Sword bro always handled other sword bros, and cook bro got the rest of them?”

“Just the rest of them,” Zoro seems to tease, “not very specific. So he handled the ones I didn’t have time for?”

There it was. Sanji lunges at him, his ears red, and Robin deftly moves her plate out of the way, smiling all the while. If Nami squinted a bit, she could confidently say nothing had changed.

“You take that back,” Sanji screeches, higher than his usual bellow- but Zoro’s laughing, nothing malicious to him as he lays there defeated on the ground, Sanji near ready to cave his face in.

“I’m kidding, I’m kidding! Calm down!”

He’s got a comforting hand to Sanji’s arm, completely lax.

Oh?

Usopp’s got this look to his face, like he’s just figured something out as Sanji scrambles off, Zoro still laughing. Nami chews her salad carefully, thoughts drowning out the absurd cawing of her captain.

Zoro follows Sanji later, drying every plate passed his way.

“You know what they always say about children?”

They’re crouched outside the window of the door, peering in stealthily. Nami waits for Usopp to continue.

“They’re more honest. Kid’s can be brutally honest, right?”

That’s true.

“But,” she swallows, Sanji quietly handing Zoro another plate, “they’re different people too. A lot can happen in the five years between this Sanji and Zoro and the ones we’d first met.”

They duck when Zoro shifts away.

“I’m just saying,” Usopp finalizes, “that maybe this is how they feel, under all the macho-ness. Maybe, if they still had the honesty of children, they’d behave like they felt. Maybe, just maybe, they’ve simply developed new ways to express themselves.”

Feel? And what were they feeling exactly? What was she seeing right now?

Usopp leaves for his watch soon enough, but Nami hangs about, listening intently. Would Zoro notice the cracked door? He’d always had a knack for sensing shadows. 

“My bounty’s higher than yours,” Zoro comments, Sanji huffing. “But,” Zoro starts, “why does yours say only alive?”

Sanji’s shoulders straighten out and, oh yeah, this was before anyone had found out about his screwy family.

This was before they’d stolen him away from an arranged marriage with a beautiful woman and a prospectively prosperous future. A future Sanji hadn't wanted.

She wants to tell him it’s okay, that they’d handled that, that he doesn’t need to fear anymore. But she stills herself, because this Sanji wouldn’t be around for much longer, so there was no need to privy him to everything that had happened.

"Who knows,” Sanji mutters, “maybe I pissed someone important off. Or maybe I broke too many hearts.”

Zoro scoffs, but doesn’t retaliate.

Had those years not changed them, but instead buried them in temper and steel?

Or, maybe, this was how they really were, but in their own way. Maybe this is what their fighting looked like to them. Perhaps the kids had adopted a kinder version, but if that was true then the implications-

No, she clutches at her head, she needed to stop looking so far into this.

Usopp was just messing with her.

"Seems like we didn't get along well."

She picks her head back up, ears perked.

Zoro grunts. "Why do you say that?"

Sanji huffs out a laugh. It's no longer scratchy, but smooth and gentle. It was amazing, wasn't it, Bonney's powers? Were they immortality itself, or were his lungs still wrecked behind that soft voice?

"It's obvious, isn't it? I can't even act civil around you without someone giving me a funny look. I asked the doctor about it, and he kinda just wiggled about and said something about being 'friends underneath it all'."

"Well there you go," Zoro says, the water running once more, "we were friends."

"Underneath it all," Sanji comments.

What an odd conversation.

"I mean, you are annoying," Sanji snorts.

It's quiet. The silence stretches along unbearably and so she peeks over her shoulder into the sliver of open door, Sanji scrubbing at a billowing pot. She shifts her head just a bit further.

Zoro is watching him.

She stops breathing, because that's not a look she's ever seen on Zoro, except it is, it's something she sees all the time but never like this. There’s a heat to it, a heat no longer hidden behind booze and malice.

That very same heat she sees every time they banter and squabble.

She scrambles away, retreating into the girls’ room and throwing their shared blanket over her body, hiding into Robin's side as the older woman reaches over sleepily to cradle her.

"Something wrong, miss navigator," she mumbles.

"Nothing," Nami brisks, "nothing's wrong."

Sanji gives her a cheery grin and a plateful of eggs, asking after the lovely ladies and she pats his head because he's kinda adorable like this, looking up at her and imitating his bow still yet. She glances at Zoro, but he doesn't seem to mind, shoveling the food down with happy grumbles.

"Hey cook," he's holding his plate up, "more."

Sanji tuts, but grabs it anyways, rolling his eyes when Luffy's arm stretches around the table to plop his on top with a clatter, mimicking the first mate loudly. "More!"

It had taken them some getting used to, Sanji and Zoro, what with Chopper's tendency to monster out, Franky's bulbous arms, and Luffy's liquid bones.

"Eat it with some salsa, it's better," Sanji says.

Chopper examines them later, poking and prodding and cooing over the abnormalities of time.

Nami brings in some clean laundry, folding it quietly within his office as Chopper rubs his stethoscope along Zoro’s torso.

“You’re such a healthy kid,” Chopper laughs, “you should be careful though, working such a young body so hard.”

“Chopper,” Nami warns softly, “you know what Robin said. Don’t try to change their habits too much. Zoro didn’t have you back then, and he’s still fine today, though he could do with a few more brain cells.”

Zoro glowers and Sanji snickers behind his hand.

“Ah,” Nami suddenly considers, “but what about their diets then? Should Sanji really be introducing him to all these new foods?”

Chopper sighs, spinning about in his chair thoughtfully.

“We don’t know. She just cranked back their age, but we have no idea if it actually affects the past them or not. Their bodies might be in stasis as compared to time, or they might be flowing against it. But then that would give her powers a whole new, and dangerous, dimension. They could be our Sanji and Zoro but just physically reversed, or they could be the Sanji and Zoro from back then, and that’s why their memories are limited- agh!”

Chopper rubs at his hat and antlers as Nami was oft to do with her hair, squealing in aggravation. “Agh, I don’t know!”

“What did you eat on your island,” Sanji speaks up finally.

Zoro shows him later, in the kitchen, though he’s not very good at it. Sanji seems to understand well enough though, mimicking him with detailed handiwork.

“Do you think Sanji had always known how to make Zoro’s kind of food,” Usopp whispers, “or did he learn just for him?”

Nami had never considered that. The cook had always seemed to harbor an innate knowledge about everything- but perhaps, just as he was now, he had once taught himself how to mold rice just right, just for Zoro.

“Hey hey,” Usopp suddenly waves off, “should we really be this involved in their relationship?”

Perhaps not, but if they really were a more honest window to how their Sanji and Zoro felt, well, she was hard pressed to just pass it by.

“I wonder if they’ll remember anything,” Nami murmurs, crawling away from the door with Usopp, “once this is all over.”

Usopp’s shaking his head, the two of them hunkering along. Suddenly a shadow cools them off from above.

“Miss navigator,” Robin smiles down at them, “mister sniper, what are you doing on the floor?”

Nami leaps up, laughing nervously. “Just checking out some things.”

She considers it then, the situation at hand and Robin with her heavy books and clever thoughts. “Say, what do you think about it? Sanji and Zoro. Their relationship’s gone a total one-eighty, huh?”

Robin blinks at her, before chuckling softly. “Whatever do you mean? It hasn’t changed a bit.”

She wanders along past them, leaving them alone there on deck. Nami watches the calm ocean with searching eyes.

So it was true.

This was them. Which means, when they came back, Nami would no longer be able to ignore the implications of their fights, of their invested interest in one another.

She’d knock some damn sense into them- there are other ways to show affection!

“Eh,” Usopp gives in, “anyway, it’s weird to see them like this. I hope we can find Bonney soon, I feel like we’re seeing something private here, something we’re not supposed to see.”

Huh.

She hadn’t thought of it that way. Perhaps this really wasn’t any of her business. They seemed to get along just fine, didn’t they? So what if they showed their hopeless attraction through a few cuts and bruises.

As long as they understood each other and the horrid language they’d concocted through insults.

She has to wonder, however, if they do understand each other. Little Zoro and Sanji get into fights sometimes, not as often, surely, but still they go at it all the same.

Zoro must’ve said something about Sanji’s poster, something about the kid being a perv and Sanji’s having none of it. He swipes his legs along the grass, catching Zoro off balance and clambering atop him.

Nami wonders if she should go and call Luffy or Chopper. Robin is in their room, Usopp up in the nest.

“My my,” Brook says from beside her, and Nami screams, dropping her ice tea.

Sanji takes notice, still atop Zoro as he diverts his attention towards the broken glass. “Ah! Nami! Don’t move, I’ll get it!”

She doesn’t miss Zoro’s look, the way his eyes drink the other in. Sanji doesn't catch it, pushing off of him as Zoro lays there still. Nami watches him from around the cook’s form, the boy carefully picking up the bigger shards and cradling them in his hand.

Zoro, she wonders, Zoro, had you been the first?

Had you been the first to realize?

These were the popular theories. Usopp helpfully chalks them up on the board, the crew sitting about obediently.

1. Zoro and Sanji have merely been physically reverted to a smaller size, and therefore their memories have shrunk to proportion. They are still current Zoro and Sanji in essence.
2. Zoro and Sanji have been reverted to their past selves, which better explains the memory loss phenomenon. However, their dual presence here while purposed to exist elsewhere in their own time is troubling.
3. Some mumbo jumbo about time-travel and wormholes, via Luffy.

“The first option is the least dangerous,” Chopper considers, “that means no matter what we do, we can’t really damage them. The second one however. . . “

“The second one,” Robin agrees, “means we should be careful. Too much exposure to a future they have yet to experience could be dangerous. If they retain memories from now and drag them back into their past then it could very well not only change the outcome, but change them.”

Franky furrows his brow. “Where are they, anyway?”

“Chopper sent them to bed,” Usopp says, “gave them some sedatives to rest better. They’ve been having trouble getting sleep.”

“Perhaps because their bodies aren’t used to the environment yet,” Robin mutters, a tad too dark for Nami’s liking.

Nami doesn’t like all this serious talk either. It’ll be fine. They just needed to find Bonney.

She comes across Zoro in the bathroom later that night, puking with his hand clutching at his stomach.

“Not used to the rocking yet,” the boy mumbles dismissively, panting into the toilet.

That’s not good, she knows, because it means that he might very well be the Zoro from a past that she’s supposed to have no part in.

“Luffy,” she stops the captain before bed, the moon high and the lights low, “Luffy, we need to find Bonney.”

The captain nods silently, understanding just as well what needed to be done. “Until then,” Nami reasons, convincing herself of the notion, “we need to keep them separate, Zoro and Sanji. In fact, I,” she wets her lips, “I think we should isolate them. We can keep one in the aquarium, the other in the nest.”

She knows it might be cruel, caging them in like that, but she can’t risk losing the nakama she’d come to love. For better or for worse.

Luffy agrees quietly, and they coax Sanji into the blue room, the groggy boy plopping onto the couch and rolling back into sleep.

“Change can be good sometimes though, can’t it,” Usopp points out, “that’s why we call it growth.”

“Time is not something you want to change,” Robin states, “and though I do agree that they’re merely going along with the motions, that they are still our cook and swordsman, I have to agree with Nami. This might be best for now.”

Nami is pleasantly surprised by the motion. She pulls Robin aside later, holding her hand. It’s a sunny day, a good day. Maybe they’ll find some luck?

“You didn’t seem too concerned about their relationship before. Why the sudden change in mood?”

Robin hums thoughtfully.

“While I believe them to be the same, kids can often be more brash and unconcerned with the consequences of their choices. I wouldn’t want them to do anything that our cook and swordsman have yet to partake or authorize. It might be bad for them to jump the gun on things they can’t quite understand yet.”

Nami, despite herself, quietly voices the hidden meaning that pillowed Robin’s words.

“You’re afraid that they’re falling too fast for each other.”

Robin tucks a strand of dark hair behind her ear, swinging their joined hands together just barely. A breeze rocks the ship, and she wonders if Zoro is watching them from up there in that nest.

“I think kids are more quick to try and discover themselves. At this rate, they’ll have gone far beyond what the cook and swordsman are comfortable with. They have their own pace set, and nothing good ever comes from rushing. We need to keep those two separate, for now.”

Nami agrees. Those two had been a great insight into the inner workings of her nakama, but it needed to stop now, before they went beyond the developments of their own Sanji and Zoro.

“Bonney,” Nami states.

“Bonney,” Robin agrees.

It’s not as easy as they’d thought.

Nami catches Sanji out there at night, staring up at the nest. She’s not sure how he’d gotten out, and a bit hurt he’d broken his word.

“He’s all alone up there,” Sanji whispers, “why can’t he come down?”

“He’s not all alone,” Nami pats his back, “I was just about to go up there for my watch, and then Franky will come, and Brook. It’s you I feel bad about, keeping you away from the kitchen and all, locking you up in that room.”

Sanji shrugs, and Nami eventually ushers him back to his room with a promise that he won’t leave again, turning the curiously loose lock. When she manages up into the nest she finds Zoro staring out the window, chin propped up onto his hand.

“What is it you guys are so afraid of,” the boy murmurs, watching where Sanji had been once before.

Nami sighs, pulling the rest of her body up and tapping the trap door closed.

“Things you two can’t possibly understand yet.”

Zoro’s gaze is intent on her, startlingly invasive in the moonlight. It makes her still, utterly unmoving. “Does this have soemthing to do with the Sanji and Zoro you guys remember?”

She swallows, nodding.

“I don’t care if I’m him or if I’ll become him someday, whichever. But I know either way what I want, and what I will want.”

Nami wills herself to get up, a small smile to her then. “That’s what we’re afraid of, Zoro. You’re crossing into territory that no longer belongs to you. If our Zoro really does fancy Sanji, then we need to let him sort it out, not you, whichever you you may be. They need to figure out whatever this thing between them is, without the clarity you might harbor now. I wouldn’t want to take away that kind of journey from them.”

Zoro snorts, unamused.

“Then you better hurry, because I’m growing impatient.”

“If we try and calculate the time,” Robin muses, “between how fast those two had fallen for each other, and how slow our two are admitting it, then when do you estimate the first kiss?”

She’s clearly teasing right now, but Nami doesn’t find it at all funny.

Zoro had broken the latch. He’d been in there in the aquarium with Sanji, the two of them not saying much though the electricity had been heavy in the air.

“They’re not slow,” Nami grumbles, “they’re just stubborn and stupid. They don’t have half the guts these two idiots have.”

She’d shoved Zoro back up into the nest, giving Sanji her best disappointed look. His expression had nearly broken her heart, but she had to remind herself that she was doing this for their sake.

"We need to find that witch,” Nami says, “and we need to find her fast. Zoro has no obligation to Luffy as is, so there’s no guarantee that he’ll listen to us.”

Robin leans back further into the lawn chair, enjoying the cool shade of the umbrella. “Yes, he’s quite the feisty child, isn’t he?”

Nami delivers Sanji’s food later, who mutters bitterly in turn about the cold center of the reheated sausage.

“Sanji,” Nami asks before leaving, a thought striking her suddenly, “when was it, when had it first struck you?”

He seems to understand, sheepishly poking at the meal.

“After him but before I'd known better.”

She wonders if that was a universal truth.

They find Bonney out on a winter island chewing on a baked rabbit. They wave a white flag about, enticing her with a basket of baked bread and an apple spread.

“Listen,” Nami coaxes sweetly, though she knew her expression to be harboring dark edges, “we need you to fix that bit of mess you created last time.”

Bonney glares up at her from her child-like form, before giving in with a humph.

Sanji is hesitant at first, backing up into the couch with worried eyes.

“They’ll forget everything,” Bonney says through a mouthful, “it’ll be like this had never happened.”

Nami blanches. Oh.

“You mean, anything they’d have done up until now wouldn’t have affected them later?”

Bonney cocks a brow at her, clearly unimpressed.

“No, why would it? Look, let’s say you got this banana, right, and every inch that you peel is a new segment of a person’s life, well then, all I did was cover some of it back up. But, I mean, like, it’s already peeled, there’s no changing that. I can’t really revert the banana back to its unpeeled form. I can’t actually revert them back to children, I can just imitate what they’d have been like. The real Roronoa and Blackleg are in there, just hidden. All I gotta do is peel it back once more and they’ll be reverted back to the point in which I’d first altered them, whole and bare. Whatever had happened, didn’t actually exist. It was entirely self-contained.”

Nami decides not to tell Zoro that, even if he won’t, apparently, remember it.

Sanji kicks Zoro awake. There’s a scuffle.

Nami has to agree with that little, boyish Zoro that remained in her thoughts.

She was growing impatient as well.