A brand new story because someone requested more ZoNa and this came out instead of a drabble.

Strange Behaviour and Inexplicable Compassion

Zoro muttered every profanity he knew under his breath as he hacked at the tangerine bushes. The stupid sea-witch had roped him into trimming her precious tangerine bushes waking him from his nap to do so. It was days like these that Zoro wished he had never borrowed money from the demon lady to begin with, he didn't like being in debt to anyone and Nami had to be the worst person to be indebted to in the entire universe.

Not only was he napping he had been napping because it was brutally hot out. The sun beat down on his bare shoulders and Zoro cursed some more. This was ridiculous, her stupid bushes could have waited another few hours for the sun to set some but no she had demanded he do them now and for every minute he refused she would double his debt.

"Watch it Zoro! You nearly took off a good branch. If you ruin any of my precious trees I will raise your debt so much that all the treasure in the world wouldn't cover it."

"Oi! It's too hot out why can't I just do it later."

"Because I said so."

"Witch"

Nami glared daggers at him and he knew he was treading on thin ice here, Nami didn't need much of a reason to slap on more debts and he was handing them out to her carelessly. Yet she didn't so much as mention an increase in the ridiculous amount of beli he currently owed her. Instead she simply spun on her heel and disappeared into her map room. With a shrug Zoro went back to pruning the trees.

Nami didn't come back out and bother him the rest of the time.



When he finished Zoro stretched out under the shade of the mast and went to sleep without further thought about Nami or her demands. She didn't cross his mind again until dinner when he ended up sitting across from her at the table. Sanji was flitting around her and Robin as usual and Zoro ignored it focusing on his meal and eating the food before Luffy had a chance to steal it. He wasn't paying attention to the rest of the members of their small crew and nearly bit his tongue when he felt a soft nudge against his leg. He looked over to his side but Chopper was beside him and definitely couldn't reach his feet. Then another nudge came, this one harder, more of a kick really and he turned to see Nami staring at him pointedly.

"What?" he snapped.

"Thank you for doing the tangerines." She said softly.

Before Zoro could react she had turned and asked Sanji for some more tea. Zoro couldn't help but notice a hint of something different in her voice as she calmly thanked the twirling cook. There was an underlying edge that he could just barely pick up on; intrigued he spent the rest of the dinner surreptitiously watching her. He began to notice little things like how she pushed her food around on her plate more than eating it allowing Luffy to continuously steal tidbits from it. She also seemed slightly dazed and Robin would often have to repeat things and she would only give short non-committal responses. Then he remembered her lack of vigilance throughout his chore and he began to worry about her.

The thought of her being sick or something along those lines bothered him and he felt an inexplicable compassion for the navigator welling up inside of him. This struck him as the oddest of all. Since when did he care that much about her? Sure she was his nakama and he wanted her safe and healthy but there was a difference between that and noticing all these little inconspicuous things that were off.

Something was wrong and Zoro didn't like it one bit.