Chapter Text
The stars disappeared when they’d entered the gray and choppy sea surrounding Isla de Ratones. The Sunny, a young ship that was well-preserved during their two-year disbandment, creaked and popped like she was centuries old. The air was so thick with humidity that it was impossible for anyone to take a deep breath. The labored breathing of his shipmates was all he could hear at times. Zoro wasn’t a superstitious man, but everything in his body had told him that something awful was going to happen.
But it was a port town. The cook was low on dry staples, Chopper was in dire need of an assortment of medicinal powders, and Usopp had been on the hunt for a specific part since Wano. Still, Zoro’d considered saying something. A delusional part of him thinks that he has one ‘Luffy I can’t explain it, just trust me’ in the bank. In the end he’d decided today wasn’t the right time to invoke it. Not for something as mundane as ‘bad energy’. So he’d sat through a miserable breakfast and shrugged at Law’s raised eyebrow when Zoro inattentively neglected to pass him the second serving of the cezve.
As Zoro wipes the blood off of Wado, he considers that it’s because Isla de Ratones reminds him of Kuraigana. The cloud coverage is so dense that it tints the sky the same shade of indigo and renders the mid-afternoon shadows weak. The town itself is as dreary as its atmosphere; most of the masonry is built with the black stones that make up the beach. The locals all seemed to wear drab natural fibers and were suspecting of strangers. No doubt they’d been raided by New World pirates countless times.
Zoro wouldn’t mind another round of violence to take his mind off of things. Or, at the very least, more of the mulled cider he’d been enjoying. But he resists the temptation. The same thing that would grant him the leeway to wander back into the pub he’d found – the lack of a crewmate harping to him about the latest disaster – is what propels him towards the stony shore.
Zoro figures that the quickest way back to the ship is to cut through the woods, down to the beach, and then follow the coast until he gets to the Sunny. Annoyed, he climbs onto the roof of an “inn” and scales a wall to make it into the woods. Though he tries to keep his pace brisk, he struggles with the terrain. Zoro finds himself sliding around in muddy patches, dirtying his coat and hands, and dodging low-hanging branches that are somehow also covered in mud.
When he finally emerges from the treeline, he easily spots the crew gathered beneath the bow of a beached ship. Massive and once regal, it looks like it washed ashore during the void century. He can see where the wood has rotted even from a distance. The paint has faded away entirely, leaving the ship as monochrome as everything else on Isla de Ratones.
Well, almost everything else. His vibrantly dressed crewmates don’t notice his approach, engrossed in a conversation he can’t hear quite yet. He can hear their harried tones, though, so he quickens his steps.
“Don’t worry, Nami-swan, that meathead is probably drowning himself in a pub as we speak.”
“Oi,” Zoro greets by way of correction. Half of them startle, and all but one turn from the half-circle they’ve formed to stare at him with shocked expressions.
“Zoro,” Robin says. She has the vestige of a bloody nose but looks otherwise unharmed. She opens her mouth to speak, sighs, and then turns her attention back to the ship. Before Zoro can really contemplate this, Nami blocks his approach.
“Where have you been?” Her face is red, which could be from an upset or exertion from a fight. Her fair skin reddens at every little thing. “I mean it, Zoro. Why were you in the woods?”
Just to make a point, Zoro grabs her by her biceps, picks her up, and deposits her just out of his way. She snags his elbow instead of complaining. “Wait.”
Zoro does wait. Though he looks to Luffy, the only person who hasn’t turned around, for explanation. Their captain holds Law’s stupid hat in a vice grip, his own straw one hanging low over his eyes.
Zoro snatches his elbow away from Nami and checks the center of their circle for the surgeon.
“Okay, wait,” the cook says. There’s a wild look in his eye. An unlit cigarette dangles from his lips, and a second one is clutched between his fingers. “Ah fuck, we’re going to sound like lunatics.”
“That’s because it’s ridiculous!” Nami snaps.
“Is he dead or not?” Zoro asks. Robin, Nami, and the cook all sigh. Zoro turns to Jinbe, who looks away with a grimace. “Brook.”
“Why me?” The swordsman whines.
“Brook,” Zoro presses. The strain in his own voice startles him.
Luffy suddenly jerks to life. “Traffy turned into a cat.”
He knocks his hat onto his shoulders and scratches his chin. “We can't figure out how to fix him.”
Zoro attempts to digest this.
“You’re going to make it worse,” Nami shrieks. “Zoro, listen, it's not-”
“But his earrings!” Luffy argues, taking a step forward. “Why would they put earrings on a cat!”
“Because they’re evil!” Usopp yells.
“It’s too elaborate,” Robin says.
“Evil people can do elaborate things.”
“The longer we stand here arguing about this, the more time they have to get away,” the cook says. “Tracking down this idiot was going to take up most of the afternoon. Now that he’s here, let’s go find these guys and get Traffy back.”
“Traffy is right here, Bro. If we rush after them, we risk another one of us getting turned too. Forget about them, Chopper can get this fixed right up.”
“No, we must pursue them to find a way to reverse the effects.”
“Jinbe, not you too?!”
“Anything is possible in the Grand Line.”
“I’m telling you, I’ve read about every devil fruit there is. There is no ‘turn other people into cats’ fruit,” the cook asserts. “This is definitely not Traffy.”
“Maybe it’s a rare one, right, Robin?” Luffy asks.
“Perhaps, and with our new-found knowledge of awakenings…”
“Robin, please, we don’t have time for this.” “If it’s not a fruit, then it’s a disease, which means I can cure him. We might not need to track down the evil pirates.” “If I may, it seems that we will be pursuing these pirates either way. Perhaps it’s best that we grab this cat, whether it be our friend or not, and get back to the Sunny?” “But if it isn’t Traffy we just have a mean cat on the ship. Having a mean cat is better than risking leaving him behind. Or the cat is a spy why would it be a spy i said they were evil didnt i how would it report back the cat would be with us it could learn our weaknesses easily and attack dont be ridiculous it’s just a normal cat no itstraffywecantleavehimhere
Zoro feels every single one of the capillaries in his face explode. “ What cat? ”
“You don’t see it?” Brook points a bony finger into the shadow of the ship.
“ Him , it’s Traffy!” Luffy asserts.
“Or it’s a ghost cat!”
This sets off another chorus of lunacy that Zoro tunes out. He follows the line of Brook’s finger and still sees nothing. He squats down and, sure enough, crouched among the rocks, is a trembling ball of black fur. Zoro stands up and loses sight of it. He sighs and bends backwards until he sees the cat again. Alongside a metallic glint. When he stands straight, the cat is gone.
For a fraction of a second, Zoro expects Law to invade his personal space to whisper what it is exactly about having one eye that is causing the cat to disappear. Under normal circumstances he’d probably creepily suggest (for the dozenth time) that Zoro let him put someone else’s eye in as a replacement.
“Why would they put earrings in a cat? Who has the time?” Zoro starts with the easiest bit to chew on.
“It’s been an hour!”
“What? No, I just left them. It’s been 15 minutes max.”
“No, Zoro, what?” Nami asks. “How have you been in the woods for 15 minutes? Why were you in the woods ?”
“I was looking for the Sunny.”
“You were looking for our ship in the woods ?”
“No,” Zoro begins to explain, but senses that he’ll lose the fight regardless. “Anyway, those guys are in town and they didn’t have Traffy.”
“Zoro, the enemy pirates have retreated via their ship already. I think you were in a completely unrelated fight.” Robin’s probably right, despite the odds, so Zoro concedes this round if only because there are more important things to focus on.
“So why have you been standing around for an hour?” And why didn't anyone come get me?
“Chopper, Traffy, and I were on our way back from our shopping trip when we were quite literally ran into by a group of pirates. They’d attempted to raid The Sunny, but Jinbe and Brook chased them off. In this new scuffle, it appears one of them managed to transform the doctor. We’ve spent a large part of the hour attempting to corral our feline friend. He keeps running in and out of that ship.”
“And you saw them leave?” Zoro asks.
“Their second retreat was intercepted by our captain and Sanji.”
Zoro turns to the cook to bitch at him just for the sake of blowing off steam, but Luffy cuts Zoro off at the pass, “If we’d known that there was a reason to keep them on the island, we would’ve.”
Zoro feels very naked and predictable.
“What’s the plan?” He asks Nami. A navigator’s job duties don’t explicitly include ‘coordinate by sea pursuits of enemies headed to an unknown destination’ but it feels in her wheelhouse. It’s certainly not Zoro’s job.
Nami shows Zoro her wrist, where the three prongs of her log pose twitch wildly. “They’re limited by the log pose, same as the rest of us. We pick one of three, go there, and see if they’ve landed. If they haven’t, we switch back here, reset the log pose, and try the next one.”
This is a terrible plan.
“If it’s the third island-”
“There’s only three islands that they can go to from there. It’ll take a while if we’re horribly unlucky but…”
Zoro sighs and squats down to look at Law. He’s grown still beneath the ship, where he peers at Zoro with baleful gold eyes. Zoro knows that they’re thinking the same thing: Law is as unlucky as a man can get without being dead.
“I don’t care how long it takes, we’re saving Traffy. The Poneglyphs can wait.” Luffy twists Law’s spotted hat as he says this. The statement is so definitive, and so unnecessary, that it can only be for Law’s benefit. Of course Luffy’s willing to drop everything to help his friend. Law should know this, but the odds are high that he’s convinced himself otherwise.
“What about a cure?” Zoro asks Chopper. Law’s going to lose his mind if it’s a disease.
“Well, we don’t know for sure what caused this. I’ll need to run some tests-”
Zoro did not realize cats can growl.
“Which brings us full circle, Mosshead.”
“What?”
“Go and catch him.” The cook makes a gesture towards Law.
“Why me?”
“Well, you’re so good with animals,” Robin says. Zoro wouldn’t say that was a top ten trait of his and it must show on his face.
“You guys get along so well,” Nami offers.
“He’s Luffy’s friend.”
“He’s scratched the rest of us,” Brook says.
“You don’t have any skin.”
“He still scratched me! You’re being very mean to me today.”
Zoro sighs and takes a few steps forward. Law scrambles backwards, making that same growling sound as before.
“Marimo,” the cook says quietly. He steps closer, his next words clearly meant only for Zoro. “If that was actually Law, why would he run from us?”
The cook finally lights one of his cigarettes as Zoro holds all the pieces of this debacle in his hands, turning each one over and over. He can see the cook’s perspective, and doesn’t begrudge him his skepticism. He does have an inexplicably encyclopedic knowledge of Devil Fruits. If he’s never seen a fruit that could do this, then it’s either too rare for record or it doesn’t exist. That must be where the disease theory comes into play.
It’s also possible that the enemy crew raided The Sunny at random, not realizing that it was a Yonko’s ship. Maybe they naively underestimated Luffy. But these are both guesses based off of a version of reality that might not exist either. What if they grabbed him, ripped out his earrings, and stuck it in some poor cat? There was a notable amount of street cats on Isla de Ratones, any one of them would do. What if they wanted Law, specifically? What if they already had the earrings?
Law’d told Zoro that they were an unremarkable impulse purchase over ten years ago, that their sentimental value came from how long he’d had them. Any bastard could buy four gold hoops and stick them in a distressed cat. So many possibilities to consider and run with. They needed to be smart. That’s all the cook was asking of Zoro.
But Zoro knows that it’s Law. The same way he’d known that Isla de Ratones was going to be a nightmare. Just a gut feeling. One so sure that it tests Zoro’s belief system, but a gut feeling nonetheless.
“It’s him.”
The cook seems to be the last hold out, so he gives a resigned shrug. They’ve all been out voted before, forced to shed their own world view to adjust to the whims of the new world. Only Luffy’s voice is loud enough to shout above a consensus, above the improbable. Under normal circumstances, if the cook ended up being right, he’d be serving crow for weeks. As it stands, Zoro commits to retrieving Law.
Who darts into the ship the second Zoro advances towards him. Zoro, taken aback, licks his lips.
“What are you going to do? Sail away?” Zoro calls after him, not exactly expecting a response. Still, he gives an irritable shout, “Whatever, stay here until we get back with a cure!”
“We’ve already tried that method,” Robin says.
“What?”
“Brother, she even warned him about the perils of hawks,” say Franky. It appears he has given himself cat ears in solidarity with Law.
The ‘ we’re leaving without you ’ method probably won’t work with Luffy announcing a pause on his quest to be Pirate King anyways. Law will listen to Luffy before the rest of them – to his own detriment in this case.
Zoro turns to Luffy, “Let’s call his crew. He doesn’t want our help.”
“No,” Luffy says. “We already talked about this while Zoro was lost in the woods.”
“I was not lost!”
Nami steps in, “Don’t start that now. You totally were! Anyways, we made good time since our trade-off with Traffy’s crew. We probably won’t be able to reach them in the sub-marine canyon they're exploring. Even if we could, they're two weeks into their crawl and at least two weeks out from this island. If they run into storms or sea kings once they surface they can be delayed by weeks. By that time the other crew will be untraceable.”
They’re practically untraceable now.
“Has he said anything to you, Chopper?” Zoro asks.
“No,” Chopper sniffles. Then he yells, “Law, please try to respond to us so we know if it’s you and not a stranger cat that doesn’t want to be friends anymore! We’re sorry we let you get turned into a cat, please don’t make us call your crew. We can fix it before they get back from the poneglyph we swear!”
“Yeah Traffy, c’mon!” Luffy yells.
A dome of blue light encircles the ship, but blinks out just as quickly as it formed. There’s a crash within the ship. Robin crosses her arms in front of her. They all watch in silence as she searches for Law. She turns to Luffy when she’s done. “It would seem that the exertion from the use of his devil fruit has caused our feline compatriot to pass out.”
“Well that’s that problem solved, good job everybody. Now Zoro you just pop in, grab him, and we’ll be on our way.” It’s remarkable how much pride Usopp can acquire from telling Zoro what to do.
Zoro sighs and gets off of the ground. He holds a hand out at the cook. “Lighter.”
“Say please, jackass.”
“You wanna crawl into the creepy bug infested ship and get him?” Maybe Zoro can't see Law, but he can see right through Nami and the cook. The cook hums and tosses the lighter over. Zoro turns to Robin, “What’s your excuse?”
“We’re quite cross with each other right now.” Robin rolls up her sleeves to reveal rows of pink scratches. “Be careful, he also bites.”
Lighter in hand, Zoro pokes around the only hole in the ship his size. It leads into a collapsed room that only Chopper would be able to squeeze through. Judging by the little hoof print in the sand, he’s already tried. Zoro begins to grow frustrated with Law as he looks up at the ship. He’s going to have to work his way down because Law wants to play hide and seek. But he can’t think of another person to pawn his quest onto, so Zoro leaps onto the deck.
And immediately crashes through it.
“You idiot!” Nami’s screech is muffled by the timber.
Zoro groans, despite himself. He’d been stabbed in his abdomen in his earlier fight, but the wound was so minor he hadn’t given it much thought until hitting it against a support beam. He rolls onto his back and gingerly taps at it. It’s bleeding enough that it wets his fingers through his layers. Zoro tightens his sash in hopes that it’ll slow the bleeding down.
He pats around the fuzzy slime he landed in (he didn’t even know slime could be fuzzy) for the lighter. The lighter makes for a pretty lousy torch but it’ll have to do. Using his observation haki for something so fine-tuned as ‘deeply observe the contents of a rotting ship’ isn’t Zoro’s ideal scenario. It wasn’t necessarily a finite resource, but he found himself exhausted after using it in battle to guard his blind spot. He’s not getting a migraine over this, not when there’s more to their day.
He’s landed in a small storage room, meant for projectiles that are long gone. The orange light glints off a curious pair of eyes that flower from a precariously perched plank above Zoro’s head. Zoro waves at Robin, who winks before disappearing. The sudden change in weight causes the plank to tumble straight towards Zoro, who swats it to the side.
Frustrated, Zoro carefully picks his way towards the center of the ship. There should be a set of stairs, or a ladder, that leads to the bottom deck. His boots sink into a disgusting carpet with each step that he takes. Thankfully there are still windows on this level of the ship, which illuminate his path and free up the lighter for burning at the patches of cobwebs harboring eager spiders.
It’s clear that this ship has been raided multiple times. Every door Zoro comes across has been kicked down or torn off of the hinges, and anything of value has been removed from the mostly empty rooms.
Just as his annoyance is starting to set in, Zoro hears scratching.
“Law,” he says. “Let’s go.”
He has to move a door to step into a bedchamber. Like the other rooms he’s passed by, it’s been plucked mostly clean. He runs his fingers over a portrait that had been slashed through with a blade. A now faceless man posed with a woman and a young girl, whose white dress is streaked with oxidized blood. The fibers of the canvas shed beneath his fingers. It’s possible this ship ended up here because of pirates in the first place.
Law makes a sound behind a dresser sitting in the corner. He must've got wedged behind it while using his room ability.
“I can’t believe you knocked yourself out,” Zoro teases. Law responds by scratching around like a dick. Zoro grabs the dresser and hauls it away from the wall in one smooth motion. Dozens of rats pour out. He drops it. The floor groans. Zoro, the aforementioned dozens of rats, and the dresser crash through the rotten floor.
He allows himself two seconds of panic as the rug from the bed chambers lands on top of Zoro and his new friends, who are already attempting to gnaw through his clothes. He takes a deep breath, closes his eye, and rolls out from underneath the rug. He’s in the hold, judging by the many crates and barrels, which were clearly housing the rat society that currently occupies this ship.
“Law!?” Hands shaking, he inspects the debris and furniture that he fell with to make sure it hadn’t crushed Law. Rats crawl up his boots and pants. He grabs a few and tosses them away. “Fuck off.”
“Law, let’s go!” Zoro resorts to using Wado’s saya to wack at the rats. His oldest and most coveted possession downgraded to a bat, but she’s got the least ornate scabbard which makes her the easiest to clean signs of animal abuse off of. It’d be really handy to have Kikoku to create some distance right, instead. Though the anguished sword was likely to wail in his ears given the circumstances. “Law, if you’re awake, make any kind of sound. I cannot see the ground past these things.”
Zoro makes an attempt to jump onto a crate, which collapses under his weight. Zoro acknowledges that it’s entirely possible that Law has been eaten by rats. Outside someone yells but it’s impossible to hear them over the scurrying. Zoro carefully combs through the room, climbing on any surface that will get him away from the rats. No wonder he kept returning to the beach .
“LAW!” Zoro shouts again. Law vocalizes up ahead, though it sounds nothing like a meow. It doesn’t matter. It’s far enough ahead that Zoro starts hurling crates and barrels at the swarm of rats that’s behind him. Nascent hysteria convinces him that there’s far more rats than there can possibly be behind him.
Zoro hates this island.
Law’s on the other side of a collapsed wall that Zoro has to crawl on the ground – where the rats are – to get past. There are even more rats in here, seemingly attracted by all the commotion. That or they wanted to eat the unconscious cat. To his credit, the Warlord is making a noble stand. He hops vigorously around on a desk, swatting away the rats which crawl up the legs to reach him. Zoro swings Wado’s scabbard at the largest and seemingly most persistent one before it can take another bite out of Law’s bleeding leg. It hits the far wall with a shriek.
Instead of thanking him, Law lunges at Zoro and plants two sets of claws into his skull. There’s a blue glow as Law attempts to make a Room.
“Stop, I have a plan.” He sees a pair of eyes watching from the wall he just crawled through. “Move, Robin.”
Now that he doesn’t have to worry about hurting Law, Zoro cuts through it in a clean slice. He sprints back through the hold and hauls ass towards the stern, kicking rats as he goes. Law digs his claws deeper into Zoro’s forehead. Once he’s confident that cutting a hole in the ship isn’t going to bring the mast down on the other Strawhats waiting outside, he does just that.
As soon as they’re outside the confines of the ship Law, the bastard, detaches from Zoro’s face and darts for the treeline. Zoro yanks free the knot of his sash and chases after Law while slipping off his coat. His possessions fly everywhere. He has to dive onto his stomach to get the coat on top of the retreating pirate captain. Twenty pairs of arms sprout from the ground and hold the edges down.
Now that he can’t scratch her all to hell, Robin uses her limbs to get to work securing him. Law attempts to escape through a sleeve, and Zoro dives into the fray to push him back down. He bites Zoro on his fingers, razor sharp teeth digging into the open bite marks left by the rats. Law resorts to wailing. Rocks fly everywhere as Zoro and Robin secure the coat into a little pouch.
Once the coat is tied off Robin’s arms disappear in a flurry of petals. Law keeps up the good fight. Zoro, on his knees and with his arms hanging impotently at his sides, watches in abject disbelief as Law inches towards the treeline while wrapped inside the coat. For a second, Zoro wants to take it all back. They hadn’t done this to Law, but rather to some stranger cat that doesn’t want to be friends anymore.
“You’ll drown in the mud in there,” Zoro warns.
“What is wrong with you?!” Nami, the first to reach them, shrieks.
“Zoro you’re bleeding!” Chopper declares.
“I’m sure.”
“Zoro,” Chopper whines. Zoro, who is still on his knees, lets Chopper peel down his haramaki. “This isn’t from the ship, when did you get this?”
“It doesn’t hurt.”
“Zoro it needs stitches.”
“This was more important.” Zoro stands up, out of Chopper’s reach. Chopper, as he often does when he’s this upset, forgets about his human form and leaves Zoro alone. Zoro tosses the approaching cook his lighter.
“Why’d you cut it in half?” The cook asks, lighting another cigarette immediately.
“Rats.”
“Since when are you afraid of rats?”
Zoro shrugs.
“Seriously, Marimo, what happened?”
“The rats on this island are reportedly so large that they can take down livestock,” Robin, ever in possession of a freaky tidbit, informs them.
“Whoa, that’s so cool,” Luffy says.
“No it’s not, what is wrong with you people?” Usopp asks.
“Did Zoro see rats the size of livestock in the ship?” Luffy asks. Zoro shakes his head.
Usopp goes to correct him, “No, Luffy, they can fight livestock. They’re not actually that- ow what was that for?”
Nami hisses something that Zoro misses. He can barely hear anything. Law squirms around in his little prison. Zoro feels nauseous, so he walks away. The others talk in low voices as Zoro gathers his possessions from the beach. He’s completely demolished the starboard of the ship, splintered planks and beams are strewn all along the shore. The rats scramble for cover, squeaking and shrieking, their cries mixing with the waves and obscuring whatever Franky says to him. Franky repeats himself, but Zoro’s concentrating on tying his sash. His hands are gray too, now.
He’s just secured his last sword into his haramaki when Nami, who now cradles the bundle of Law to her chest, asks, “Can he breathe in this?”
Zoro observes himself reaching into his boot for his hunting knife and cutting a hole into his coat. If Law wants to use it, he can. If he wants to keep hiding under Nami’s breasts, he can do that too.
“How many blades do you need?” The cook asks.
Zoro doesn’t look at him, he doesn’t look at any of them. He wants to leave, to create some distance and clear his head in peace, but Zoro has no idea where they’ve moved the ship. If he leaves first, he’ll wind up going in the wrong direction.
He should’ve suggested that they skip this island. At least then he could have a taste of what Usopp feels when he goes on and on about how ‘ I said we shouldn’t have come here, I was right ’. He should’ve passed Law the second half of the cezve this morning, and he definitely should’ve accepted his suggestion to wait on the ship.
Law didn’t need that much from town, they could’ve gone to the bar together when he got back like Law wanted to. At least Zoro could’ve contributed to the fight if he’d been there. He was normally the one to stay on The Sunny anyways, he’s not one for tourism. What was his issue with this island, really? That it made him homesick for a place he’d never wanted to be in the first place? A feeling ? He’s not a superstitious man. Not like Law, who is probably praying to a god he lost faith in a long time ago.
When Robin turns to go, Zoro does too. Sure enough, he was almost headed in the wrong direction.
༺♡༻
Law dashes away the second they let him out of his bundle. Chopper runs after him with a sob.
“Well, at least he doesn’t hate us enough to abandon ship.” Zoro says once he’s out of ear shot, and then reaches for the deck hatch. His spine pops in protest at the movement.
“Why would he hate us? And where are you going?” Nami asks, irritated.
“Ship inspection.” He drops straight down, using the leather band to slam the hatch as he goes.
It takes Zoro longer than he’d like to inspect each room of the ship for stowaways. Now that his adrenaline is gone, he feels completely sapped of energy and his irritated mood has his paranoia levels high. He checks every rotation of the solider dock system. An act that makes him feel doubly anxious because he knows he’ll be unable to justify it to any witness should one walk in. Thankfully, no one does. Vaguely, he recalls that half of the crew had split away from the group but he’d missed why.
Zoro doesn’t feel ‘better’ until he’s standing exactly at the hatch again, having made a full sweep. Usopp’s already messing around in the crow’s nest, which saves Zoro the trip. He tilts towards the galley instead. The cook’s in a pretty bad mood himself. He might give Zoro some sake just because he doesn’t feel like dealing with him. He turns to leave once he sees that it’s Nami who was making the raucous.
“Wait,” she says. “C’mere.”
Zoro follows the first order, but not the second.
“Zoro,” she sighs. “C’mon, before Sanji gets back.”
Zoro complies, enthusiastic about any opportunity to participate in something that the cook won’t like. He maintains his distance while he peers into the pot. He’s beyond filthy and is half-surprised Nami hasn’t commented on it.
“You were at the Creaking Stool?” Nami asks.
“Yeah,” Zoro says. No doubt she’d heard about it from one of the locals, like he had. They seemed to be pretty proud of the joint. For good reason, too. For such a miserable island, the Creaking Stool had been warm and cozy. Built to keep the humidity out, with warm red wall paper and multiple fireplaces. It’s such a shame that pirates have bad manners.
“I was excited to try their cider. Bellemere used to make something like it. Well, with spiced rum and our mikans. I heard her tell Genzo – that’s the man with the pinwheel, you remember him – that she’d learned her recipe from a local in the Grand Line. I don’t think she ever made it to the New World, not before she left to take care of me and Nojiko, but maybe she did. I dunno, it's…” Nami is quiet for so long that Zoro offers her an out.
“Grief is like that.” When people die, they take innocuous things with them. Not only are you left with the nagging thought of who they could’ve become, but also with questions about who they already were.
“Yeah.” They’re silent as Nami stirs the rum. “Sanji, Luffy, Robin, and Chopper are back in the city. Sanji wanted to get some stuff to accommodate a cat’s special diet, and Chopper wants to get you and Traffy rabies vaccines.”
“They just have those lying around?” Zoro examines his gnawed on fingers.
“Apparently the rats are a big problem. That’s why they have walls up around the city and tell people to, I dunno, stay out of the woods .” Nami says. He can feel her eyes on him but he doesn’t look up. She turns the stove top off and pours the bulk of the pot into a soup bowl for Zoro and the remaining portion into a teacup for herself. They clumsily toast and then drink.
Nami clears her throat. He vaguely recalls her offering to be their cook back in the East Blue. No doubt for a fee. He would die before he admits it, but he’s glad the cook became the cook instead. There was never anything offensive about Nami’s cooking, it wouldn’t poison them and it wasn’t ever burnt, but she wasn’t so good with spices. Given that this was a spiced rum…
“I should’ve let Sanji make this.”
“It’s good,” Zoro says. It’s fine.
Well, it’s passable.
“You’ll drink anything with booze in it.” She drums her nails on the delicate ceramic mug. It’s a fine bit of craftsmanship, painted with a tiny and ornate pattern. Something they’d never buy, but would gladly take. “It’s funny. When I first saw that ship I was worried you were going to cut it in half when you found out he’d died. Then he was okay, but you went and did it anyways.”
Zoro really wants to circle back to his potential rabies.
“It’s just a ship.” A shitty one at that.
“It was important,” Nami scoffs. “You cut it in half.”
Zoro shrugs. How the fuck was he supposed to know?
“All I’m saying is that when someone like you loses their cool, it’s scary. I know you fancy yourself our guard dog, but freak accidents happen-”
“–Nami, he’s Luffy’s only formal ally-”
“-just because you weren’t there–
“-anyone looking to become a Yonko is–”
“-doesn’t mean you could’ve kept it from happening–”
“-headed here first, we can’t–”
“-lighten up, for Chopper’s sake at least. He was there and he did everything he could.” She dumps the rest of her rum into his bowl and makes for the exit. “Take a shower, you reek like a swamp.”
“I’m not cleaning this up!”
“Then you better be in the shower when Sanji gets back,” Nami says.
Alone, Zoro downs the whole bowl.
༺♡༻
Zoro spends a long enough time under the shower head that the others return and set sail without him. Somehow, he’d managed to completely clear his mind. It has the downside of leaving him vulnerable to startling, when the trap door slams open and Chopper lets out a rattling sob.
“Traffy if you’re in here I wanted to say ‘I’m sorry and I don’t want to run any tests because your cortisol levels are probably too high anyways’ but you were bleeding a lot and you need a rabies shot. So please respect my authority as this ship’s doctor and meet me in the sick bay soon.” There’s a hint of a stern posture, even though his voice trembles.
“He’s uh, he’s not…”
Chopper pokes his head around the door. “Why don’t you have the shower on?”
Zoro doesn’t remember turning it off. “I was done. Why are you crying?”
“We can’t find Traffy. Don’t-worry-nobody-saw-him-leave-the-ship ! He’s just hiding. And he doesn’t hate us.”
“Of course he doesn’t hate us, Chopper. Come here, you have mud in your fur.”
Chopper sniffles and begins to remove his layers. Zoro turns the shower head back on and tugs over a stool while he waits. Zoro’d gone over Chopper’s coat with a tiny pair of scissors and a comb two days ago, so it’s quick work to rinse the mud off. He grabs Law’s soap and works it through Chopper’s fur.
“I’m using Traffy’s so you’ll smell like him. Maybe he’ll come out for you.” Zoro isn’t quite sure if that’s how cats work. The tilt to Chopper’s head says that it’s not but he doesn’t correct Zoro either, which is sort of a victory.
Law’s not one of them. At least not in a real, practical way. He certainly feels like Nakama when Luffy gives him orders, which inevitably causes an argument. He feels like one of them when they’re in battle, at each other’s backs, when he’s flinging one of them around their environment. To the high ground, to the low ground, away from danger. He feels like them at the dining table, where he’s learned to hide at the end, far away from Luffy’s sticky fingers. (And especially now that he’s learned that it’s okay to stab Luffy with a fork.)
But he’s only with them for seven weeks. Robin had found a poneglyph with a story about descended twin poneglyphs. After a week or so of useless study, she’d called Law on the snail to ask him his thoughts. Together they’d concluded, somehow, that one twin was in an undersea canyon and one was in a… regular, normal? ...land canyon. Nami, Robin, Bepo, and Law poured over their combined libraries until Nami found two canyons with the same name. The little brain trust they’d formed made him feel like one of them, too.
Since the two crews were physically together, Luffy was able to wrap himself like a boa constrictor around Law, until the captain, thoroughly harangued, relented and agree to accompany the Strawhats on their seven-week voyage to the Regular Canyon. He’d only done so under decree that, if they’re wrong about the locations, or that the twins were poneglyphs at all, he’s staying with his own crew on the next trip. Luffy was welcomed to join them on the Polar Tang, but Law said it ‘ wasn’t fair’ that his crew kept getting left without command.
Zoro’d let him know how childish he sounded, talking about fairness like that, and earned a Shambles into the sea.
While on this trip, Robin was meant to be teaching Law how to read poneglyphs. They’d spent a large part of the last two weeks crammed together in the library. This exchanging of knowledge made him feel like crew too. It was a huge advantage they were giving him.
He said he had no interest in being Pirate King and Luffy trusted him at his word. Of course Luffy trusted him. Luffy trusted too easily. But the rest of them trusted him too. Somewhere along the way he’d earned all of their trust. Zoro’d thought it was mutual, that Law trusted them just as much. Enough to tell them all his full name. Enough to tell Zoro about Flevance and Lami and Cora-san and the Junker on Swallow Island. Zoro was foolish enough to think that the Strawhats had become woven in tapestry of his life. The intricate and ornate details told the story of both tragedy and triumph. Weren’t they a part of it?
No matter how much he felt like theirs , he wasn’t. He didn’t trust them enough to actually help him.
“Zoro?” Chopper asks.
Zoro’s fingers have stilled in his fur, half of the lather still in it. Chopper is not the correct audience for Zoro’s morbid and uncontrolled thoughts, so he grunts in lieu of an apology and gets back to work.
“I’ll be a willing patient to make up for it,” Zoro offers, admittedly out of nowhere.
Chopper sniffles, “You mean it?”
“I won’t complain once.” That the little doctor hadn’t chased him down spoke volumes of the severity of Law’s state.
“We were having such a nice day,” he sobs. “I don’t even know what happened and he won’t say.”
“I don’t think he knows how to meow.” Zoro’s mind drifts to the awful sounds Law had made, sounds that a cat can make but shouldn’t.
With something to focus on, Chopper’s frame stops trembling. His ears twitch as he thinks this through. He does better when there’s a puzzle to solve, something to grab onto. Otherwise, the little reindeer drowns in his emotions. “Do you think I could teach him?”
“Do you know how to meow?”
Chopper gives it an honest shot, and then dissolves into a fit of giggles.
“What are cortisol levels?” Zoro asks once he’s sobered up.
“It has to do with adrenaline. Basically he’s probably too upset for me to run any useful tests, nothing will be accurate. So we should wait at least a week. Though Nami says that telling him it’s going to be over a week probably upsets him more.”
“He knows that it’ll be more than a week.” Law always operates under the assumption that the worst case scenario is already in effect. No doubt he’s calculating how he can take care of his crew as a cat.
Chopper sniffs again.
“How soon does he need to get his rabies shot?” Zoro asks.
“As soon as possible, otherwise I would let him hide. I know what it’s like to be a scared animal.” A declaration like that feels like it should be a stunning admission, but it’s not. Chopper blows his nose into his hooves to clean out his sinuses using the steam from the shower. Just like Zoro taught him so long ago on the ship ride out of Alabasta, when they both felt congested with sand and the pain of losing Vivi.
“Did you get any good blows in during the fight?” Zoro asks.
“Oh, actually, I was able to throw one of the guys into a wagon full of barrels! I was hoping the liquid would go everywhere but it didn’t. Franky said it was still cool though.”
“Sure sounds cool.” He finishes rinsing off Chopper as he eagerly regales the entire afternoon to him. He brightens up, if only a little, as he describes their trip into the port city. They’d visited a handful of bookshops and medical supply hubs. Robin had even bought him gelato. Zoro wraps him in a towel and ferries him to the sick bay once the story reaches the part where Law goes missing.
The second Zoro’s on the examination table Chopper complains about the stab wound in Zoro’s abdomen that is, admittedly, a little deeper than Zoro remembers it being. The entire left side of his torso is stamped with red and violet bruises and a plum line runs perpendicular with the stab wound. It must be from the edge of the support beam he slammed into when he fell through the deck (the first time). Honestly, it looks worse than it feels, but Chopper doesn’t believe him when he says that.
“This is a lot of internal and external bleeding. You need to eat and rest.”
“I will.”
Chopper is delighted by his promised compliance.
Switching to his human form, he pulls a container of the rabies shots from the little icebox that he keeps in the sick bay. Enthusiastically, he shows Zoro how his doses are labeled green and Law’s are yellow. They’ll need four rounds to complete the treatment, and lists a bunch of (in Zoro’s opinion) implausible side effects. Chopper assures Zoro that, while it’s important that they get the vaccine, it’s unlikely that they’ll contract the virus. They exterminate all animals on the island when there’s an outbreak.
What a lovely place. Zoro can’t wait to return over and over again.
Vaccine administered, Chopper gets to work on stitching Zoro together. As he works, Zoro tells him about his own bar fight, which Chopper thinks was cooler than his own fight. If Zoro was better at these sorts of things, he’d assure Chopper that the other crew sounded like a shit-show, so of course the fight was lame. It had nothing to do with Chopper’s personal performance. The idiots climbed onto a freshly anointed Yonko’s ship, got their asses kicked, retreated, got a lucky shot in on Law, retreated again, and were deemed unworthy of note, in the moment at least, by Luffy.
The way Zoro would phrase all of this would only make Chopper feel bad. Less accomplished, probably, but also worse for letting Law get transformed, even though that’s not his fault either. So Zoro lets Chopper think that his bar brawl is cooler than it was, even though Zoro walked away with a gaping wound and drained haki. It was better to feel like a dick than to actually be one.
“What’s this?” Chopper asks. He prods his hoof on a set of stitches taking up space on half of Zoro’s inner thigh.
“Oh,” Zoro pokes it. It barely hurts anymore. “It’s from last week, Traffy did it.”
“The stitches are interesting.” They’re tiny, way too small for the size of the wound, and he’d left careful gaps in some places. Whatever he’d been attempting he’d been pleased with, though it’d taken all afternoon.
“Yeah, it, I’m not sure what he did exactly. Just said it was something he wanted to try out. See right there? He messed up. I think.”
“Oh, I see. He must’ve wanted you to maintain full flexibility, so he switched patterns near the seams of your muscles.” Chopper doesn’t sound sure of his assessment, but Zoro hadn’t been able to follow Law’s explanation either.
“Maybe? You’ll have to ask him once you teach him to meow.” Freed, Zoro grabs his pants and pulls them on. Chopper switches back to his tiny hybrid form and spins in his seat. After the third rotation, Zoro asks, “What’s wrong?”
“Do you like it when Traffy is your doctor more?”
“No,” Zoro answers honestly. “I just don’t mind letting him experiment on me. You could too, if you wanted to.”
Chopper, bless him, believes Zoro and gives him a relieved smile.
They’re still in the waters of Isla de Ratones when Zoro and Chopper return to the deck. With nothing better to do, Zoro follows Chopper into the aquarium and listens as Chopper gives his rehearsed speech to the seemingly empty room.
It’s the coldest room on the ship, and in the waters of an autumn island it’s even chillier. Without the lanterns lit the only light comes from the soft glow of the aquarium. There’s an overabundance of fish in the tank. Luffy had provoked Law into a fishing contest just yesterday, and the two captains were unable to relent when their egos were at stake. By sheer probability, they hadn’t caught enough predatory fish. Which meant everything in the tank, at least, was copacetic.
When Chopper moves on with his search Zoro decides to stay behind. He finds his normal position, slightly indented from his countless naps stretched out on the leather sofa. It’s not a bad spot though. If he adjusts his head just right his vision is subsumed by the tank and the fish within it.
It’s so packed in there that it reminds Zoro of a chilly night on the observation deck of the Polar Tang. He’d stumbled upon Law, temple leaned against the glass, engrossed by a school of fish. For whatever reason, the captain confessed immediately to causing a delay to their trip by requesting that the engines be slowed to a crawl. Without the sound, without the speed, by using only the fin-like rudder, the Polar Tang could join a shoal.
Apparently, each species of fish was too stupid to tell each other apart, let alone detect that the Polar Tang wasn’t some kind of whale. They’d stood there for hours in silence as Law watched the fish until he couldn’t keep his eyes open.
The cook kicks the sofa, startling Zoro.
“Don’t miss dinner, asshole.”
“I’m going to tell Franky.”
“Whatever,” the cook says. “I can’t believe you didn’t help the girls look for Traffy.”
“Nobody told me to,” Zoro says.
“You shouldn’t need to be told to find him.” The cook kicks the sofa again. “Get up, you’re not skipping dinner just because you got scared of a few rats.”
“If he wants to hide, I say let him. What’s he going to do? Disembark?” Zoro ignores the rat comment. Denying it will make it worse but ignoring the allegations will drive the cook crazy eventually.
“Aren’t you two the best of friends? What if he gets rabies?”
“I’ll make sure he bites you first.”
“Get the fuck up.” The cook kicks the couch again .
“Franky works really hard.” Zoro says, developing a new principle on the spot. “What if he blow torched your tongs?”
“I’d make sure he rips out your other eye with them.” The cook seizes Zoro by his shirt and hauls him off the couch. Zoro lets himself be dragged out of the aquarium, up the stairs, and shoved into the galley.
“I found him moping in the aquarium.”
“Nobody told me I was on hunting duties.”
“You should take initiative, the girls looked for him all afternoon!”
“You and Usopp have haki.”
“He’s using his to hide!”
Zoro dismisses him with a shrug and takes his normal place next to Brook. The other’s have already started eating so he grabs his own serving of white fish and gets to work. Nami chides someone about being disgusting. It’s probably Luffy, but it could very well be him. He doesn’t look up to check.
“When do we leave the waters of this island, Nami?” Usopp asks.
“It should only be another hour or two at most. We’re sailing against the wind this time.”
“Did we just pick the island at random?” Zoro asks.
“No,” Nami says. “While you and Chopper were in the shower, we pitched in the direction that they escaped in. It eliminated one of the islands all together and then we chose the island with the least amount of movement on the log pose.”
“Boring,” Luffy whines.
“That’s precisely the point, Captain.” Robin interjects. “Perhaps Law’s assailants would choose the calmer island, as well, in the interest of lying low.”
This is a better plan than the one he’d heard on the beach. Not that he’d had any alternative methods to offer. Still, his stomach tightens. He sets the fish bone he’d been gnawing on aside and considers how long it’ll take to save Law. Would his crew come back, take him away, and try and find a solution themselves?
“Do we have their Jolly Roger?” Zoro asks.
“Yeah, I drew it and gave it to Robin.” Luffy says and then shoves an entire mackerel into his mouth. Zoro searches for the cook’s eye, who gives him a microscopic nod to confirm that he’s drawn it as well.
“You’d know all these things if you weren’t wasting away in the shower,” the cook sneers. “You know you’re supposed to spread those out and not get a month’s worth in at once, right?”
“Oi Franky, lover boy over here kicked your couch three times,” Zoro says.
Franky, still adorning his cat ears, grumbles around the pile of food in his mouth.
“Only because you were catatonic.”
“Heh, cat atonic,” Brook chuckles.
“I was wide awake,” Zoro says. “Either way that’s no excuse, right Franky?”
“It’s not,” Franky confirms. Suspicious, for some reason, he narrows his eyes at Zoro. Then he smacks Luffy’s hand away from his swordfish steak. “Captain…not cool.”
“I’m hungry,” Luffy whines.
“Then eat off your own plate!” Nami snaps.
Zoro, on the other hand, appears to have lost his appetite. He downs a glass of water and silently offers his vegetables to Brook who takes them without complaint. He downs another glass of water. He pretends to be occupied by Jinbe’s conversation with Chopper about their abilities to talk to various sea creatures. Luffy relieves him of the rest of his unguarded fish. This was a trick that he’d learned from watching Law.
It was a miracle that he’d agreed to part ways with his crew and beloved ship, however temporarily, to accompany the Strawhats on this little voyage.
And they’d let him down. Well, Zoro had let him down. On multiple fronts. He should’ve been on the ship. Perhaps it was ruthless, but Zoro wasn’t one to show mercy and simply allow someone to retreat from attacking the Sunny. He should’ve been using his haki to know that something was happening on the beach, instead of looking out for his own back in a pub. He shouldn’t have been a dick to Law this morning for no particular reason.
“Zoro-kun?”
“Hm?”
“Did you hear Chopper?” Brook asks.
Zoro looks over at Chopper and shakes his head.
“Way to be rude, Marimo.” The cook says, though there’s a distinct lack of heat to it.
Which only annoys Zoro.
Before he can do something about it, Chopper interjects, “I asked how your symptoms were.”
“Nothing I can’t sleep off.” Zoro uses the opportunity to excuse himself and escape back to the aquarium. He vaguely hears the cook mention rats from the other side of the swinging door.
Zoro barely makes it back to the sofa without throwing up his fish. His throat is so sore it can only be artificial, an illness brought on by the vaccination. Still he clears his throat to speak.
“I didn’t even know what rabies were until we entered the Grand Line. Apparently Usopp was already vaccinated for it. He has a sweetheart back in the East, her family was loaded. I guess they got him sorted. It’s crazy. I’ve been harassing any animal I can poke my whole life, and the entire time one of them could’ve got pissed off and given me an incurable disease. I wouldn’t have known that if I hadn’t become a pirate. Not that it’s stopped me. I bet Chopper can cure rabies too, if he wanted to. I’m sure he’s already trying. What with the way you’re hiding from him and the way those rats have infested that entire island.”
Zoro clears his throat again but it doesn’t do him any good. He gives up on watching the fish and rolls onto his side, but rolls back when the new position causes his stomach to seize.
“Damn,” he says and squeezes his eye shut.
He wakes to the sound of Law’s failed attempt to leap onto the couch. He plays like he’s asleep and allows Law to try again with dignity. Zoro feels the Room before he opens his eye.
It’d probably taken him, cumulatively, over a dozen of hours to get a feel for it. He’d studied the feeling when they’d docked and sparred on the beach, where Zoro was permitted by their own self-enforced rules to use all three swords and Law his devil fruit abilities. Zoro’d gone as far as inserting himself into the blue bubbles while Law worked on other things, much to the surgeon’s genuine annoyance. Annoying, yes, and revealing a level of distrust that made Zoro a hypocrite, but undeniably worth it in this moment.
Zoro sits up and launches himself across the couch, away from Law. The miniscule room that Law created fizzles out. Zoro clears his throat and wipes the sweat off of his upper lip. They engage in a silent stare down. Zoro doesn’t bother to hide that he’s running a fever, clearing his throat and running a hand across the swollen gland in his neck. What had Law called it once, a lymph node? Regardless, every part of his body aches.
Law himself looks like he’s been through the wringer. He’s still covered in dirt and dust and cobwebs. There are open wounds on his body and what has started to heal has scabbed with fur clumped in.
Zoro can’t sleep this one off out of sight, and Law can’t retreat and regroup and return with his dignity intact. Law seems to reach this same conclusion and his tiny shoulders functionally sag in resignation. Tentatively Zoro gets up and goes to stand next to Law. Standing taller than someone with such a Presence feels wrong. He reaches one hand out and lets Law glare at it, leery. When he makes no objection Zoro reaches under his chest and picks him up.
Law makes a throaty and displeased sound. Zoro brings him closer to his own chest and allows Law the opportunity to step all over his many bruises and cuts, twisting every which way in an attempt to get comfortable. Once he’s settled, Zoro heads for the men’s bunk.
Luffy has curled himself into Chopper’s bed, the little reindeer snuggled against his bare chest. Zoro gently shakes the wooden hammock, knocking it out of sync with the sea. Both Chopper and Luffy stir immediately, though it’s unclear if Luffy was even asleep to begin with. The four of them take each other in. Zoro turns without confirmation, and heads for the sick bay.
Once they're on the deck Luffy, who still holds Chopper close to his own chest, asks, “Where’d you find him?”
“Just ran into him.”
“Mmm.”
Zoro deposits Law on the table in the sick bay and lays back on the bed himself. Luffy dives into Chopper’s rolling chair, immediately slamming it into the opposite wall. Law and Chopper both glare at him, but Zoro smiles back when Luffy, snickering, looks over.
Chopper digs around in his little ice box and brings out the box which holds their vaccines. “Traffy, the vaccine should only give you swelling at the administration site. You might get a fever-”
Law vocalizes, making the same horrible garbled sound that he had on the ship.
“Okay, we won’t check as long as you don’t collapse.”
“Do you have to put the thermometer up his butt?” Luffy laughs. Law makes more of that terrible sound.
“ Luuuufffy ,” Chopper complains.
“That’s not good for his throat,” Zoro says.
“It’s not,” Chopper agrees. “Traffy, I can teach you to meow.”
Law says nothing to this.
“Reindeers don’t meow,” Luffy says, pointing out the obvious. “Chopper, what sounds do reindeer make?”
Chopper hesitates.
“Don’t wake Robin up,” Zoro says. Which translates to that’s too loud , in the simplest terms. “You’ve heard him before Luff.”
“I need to put it in your tail. Please don’t look at me like that.” Then, sterner, “ Don’t bite me. ”
Zoro does not take his gaze off of the ceiling as Luffy snaps his arm out and rolls himself and his chair back across the room with a calamitous CLUNK .
“Don’t be mean to Chopper, Traffy.” The order is soft, almost pleading, but the action itself speaks volumes. “We just want to help. Right Zoro?”
“I just wanted a ginger chew.”
“Does your stomach hurt?” Chopper asks. “Never mind. Traffy please, it has to be your tail. I can’t put it in your shoulders, not without a full examination of your weight and hydration levels.”
It turns out that cats can sigh, too.
“Okay great, it’ll be really fast. See, it’s their smallest needle so they don’t have to calculate for muscle mass. They have a really robust clinical system on their island, I think you’d be impressed.” Chopper begins to clean up the mess. “Okay, we need to give you both vaccinations on the third day, the seventh, and the two-week mark. After that you’re good to go. The symptoms are the same for both of you. Loss of appetite, nausea, lethargy, maybe a mild fever – Zoro – but nothing else. You both have to monitor yourselves if you’re going to keep hiding away from me. If you experience anything that I didn’t list come to me immediately – Zoro – because it’s probably an allergic reaction. And you both need to rest. Zoro, did you hear me? I said you need to rest .”
“I heard,” Zoro says, halfway back to dozing already.
“What about his cuts?” Luffy asks.
Chopper sighs, “I said I’d hold off on a medical examination if that was what it’d take for him to come take the vaccine. When cats experience stress they can get sick. It’s not worth making it worse.”
“I guess street cats are usually fine after they get into fights” Luffy says, pleased with that resolution. Then he immediately ruins it. “Well, what about a bath?”
Zoro sits up just in time to see Law throw his entire little body against the sick bay door. He slams against the outside wall with a thump and then there’s another distant thud when he takes a corner too fast. Zoro can’t help but laugh at this as well.
Luffy joins him with a wicked snicker, but Chopper just shakes his head. He puts a thermometer in Zoro’s mouth and digs in the cabinet. Hopefully for that requested ginger chew.
Chopper takes the thermometer and shrugs. “It’s just a mild fever. Make sure you eat breakfast, even if you don’t feel like it. Please don’t work out tomorrow either.”
“It’s not a real fever though,” Zoro objects.
“What? Yes it is,” Chopper says.
“No, it’s from the vaccine. It’s not like I’m actually sick.”
“Zoro, a vaccine gets you sick to make you better.”
“What? That doesn’t make sense.” Luffy says, and comes to sit on the bed next to Zoro. “Can I have a lollipop.”
“I’m out,” Chopper says. He’s probably lying. “It does make sense. A vaccine introduces a neutral strain of the disease into your body, so your body learns how to fight it on its own. So when, or if, you’re actually infected it knows how to prevent you from actually getting sick. It’s like, uh, sparring?”
Zoro and Luffy look at each other, and then shrug.
“Sure,” they say. Luffy bumps his knee against Zoro’s, amused by their tandem acquiescence. Chopper hands Zoro his clump of ginger.
“Does that taste good?” Luffy asks. Chopper hands him his own clump.
Luffy immediately makes a hacking sound, as if he has a hairball stuck in his throat. He wrings his own neck to force the chew to go down, dropping his forehead against his ankle in the process. Chopper looks horrified and begins to whine. Zoro’s laughter explodes from his chest.
Luffy, still contorted, elbows him in the ribs. His neck retracts with a snap.
“You’re going to wake up Robin,” Luffy says. This makes them both dissolve into laughter again.
“I’m going to bed,” Chopper sniffs, feigning an air of indignity. It’s hard to take him seriously. Robin has put him in his duck onesie tonight.
“I’ll be there in a minute,” Luffy calls after him.
Zoro takes his time with his ginger. Luffy seems content with the idea of waiting. He begins to sway back and forth. Then his patience runs out.
“Zoro’s not afraid of rats.”
“I’m not.”
“Then why’d Zoro blow the ship up?”
“We were below deck. How else was I supposed to get away from thousands of rats?”
“They escaped from their island on that ship a hundred years ago,” Luffy says.
“Nobody told me that. Why didn’t anyone tell me that before I got sent in there?”
“Dunno,” Luffy says. He gets up and digs around Chopper’s office for candy. “The explosion scared Nami.”
Normally, Zoro would sidestep this and call Nami a coward. But Luffy won’t buy it, not from Zoro who knows how far she’s come and how hard she tries to be brave.
“She’ll get over it,” Zoro says instead.
“Will you?” Luffy finds a lollipop and immediately shoves it into his mouth.
“I’m not the one who is upset because of that ship,” Zoro defends.
“Just what was in it.’
“I’m not afraid of rats!” Zoro hops up, though he doesn't know why. It's not like he's going to swing at Luffy.
“I believe you.”
Zoro watches in silence as Luffy takes his time with his sugary midnight snack.
“I think the other pirates went to the more interesting island because they knew we’d go to the less interesting island to look for them first,” Luffy says eventually. It’s possible that he’s given up on Zoro deciphering whatever it is he’s trying to say. When the dismissal starts to sting, Zoro soothes it by reminding himself that he has a fever and it’s too late for riddles. Plus, the guy who’s administering the riddle is Luffy.
“It’s possible.” Zoro scratches his head and lays back down. Luffy tosses the thin linen sheet over Zoro and sits down at the foot of the bed as he finishes his candy.
“It doesn’t matter if I’m right, anyways. Nami says this will work. It’s how the navy finds people too. That’s why they always know where we are eventually.”
“Really?”
Luffy loses his patience and bites down on his lollipop. If it was anyone else their teeth would shatter. “Yeah and I bet Traffy knows that too. It’s why he hasn’t asked what the plan is.”
“Are you sure he even knows how to speak?”
“He told Chopper not to shove a thermometer up his butt, shishishishi . He’ll be fine, he’s just embarrassed. He’s smarter than street cats, tougher too.” Luffy drops the stick into the trashcan in the corner. “But he can’t smell like one if he wants to hang out in the bunk room with us. G’night.”
Zoro pulls the linen up to his chin. Distantly, he realizes that he’s somehow still in the infirmary but he’s too tired to do anything about it.