Zoro leaned back against the bars of the cage into which he's spent the night. He could practically feel the puffy rings under his eyes, but that was a drop into the bucket compared to the gaping stomach wound he couldn't ignore.
Cabaji the acrobat may have been generous enough to keep him from bleeding to death during the night with a cheap styptic, but he had otherwise been a terrible nursemaid. The medicine had been just enough to staunch the bleeding. A single strenuous motion would undo all the good it had done.
Zoro had been understandably distraught that he had pledged himself to an idiot who could have very easily avoided dying and dragging him down with her by actually waiting to engage the enemy. He had also been troubled by the dirty trick that had ultimately pushed him at the same disadvantage as a king facing captured pieces on a Shogi board.
So, it went without saying that Cabaji's quiet, lilting laughter at his glowering face, regular comments about his abject failure to protect himself and others, his periodic kicking of the cage, and dozing off only to awaken suddenly and complain about his shitty luck in having guard duty instead of sleeping in his bed, well…
...it inspired a mental montage of all the ways he could silence the acrobat.
To add literal insult to equally literal injury, Cabaji was currently stroking Wado Ichimonji, his fingers smudging his prize less than six yards away.
It wasn't until Buggy the Clown proceeded to exit the bar with his ginger-haired lackey and a bloody, battered straw hat clutched in his left hand that he snapped back into reality. He had hoped, on some level, that Luffy had been psyching him out like the first time she'd lain motionless on the ground. The hat might as well have been her severed head for the punch in the gut that it engendered.
He didn't have time for any sentiment, but it lingered, muted by the pain. It drowned out whatever Buggy was saying to his (again, literally) captive audience. A quick glance revealed about seventy civilians penned in by armed pirates had come to watch him get shot by a cannon.
To be fair, it was an impressive cannon in terms of size and power, though the paint job was as tacky as the man about to execute him. If he thought that was bad, he soon learned the ammunition was even more obnoxious. Still, Zoro had heard its call the day before, and witnessed the terrible damage these armaments left in their wake.
Zoro, ever-stoic, wouldn't make a move to announce the incredible rage pushing him to struggle until he thought he had the strength to burst his bonds. Unfortunately, time was not his ally. Buggy had ceased to simply speak and was now using his hands to show off his weaponry and motion to his victim.
He wanted to hold his breath as the red-headed woman was handed a lighter and made eye contact with him. He returned it with a gaze that willed her to burst into a pile of ash on the spot. If he had wanted to kill Cabaji, the violence paled in comparison to what he would do the vile creature before him. For what she had done he would burn her into nothing, destroying her name and the very memory of her on the earth. Granted, Luffy shared the blame for the crime because she had put herself in the situation, but her punishment had already been meted, and no matter how much Zoro wanted to his captain to come back to life so he could kill her himself, that wasn't how life worked. Only the living could be judged in the mortal realm. It was in the name.
However, he would voluntarily die here if it meant he could drag both women down with him for the worse crime of turning his death into a humiliating publicity stunt.
His would-be executioner's eyes did not defy him. They were oddly blank, as if her soul had left her body. The husk that had been his enemy walked to the fuse and knelt down before it before stopping in its tracks to simply breathe.
The seconds dragged into years as Zoro's rage turned to puzzlement. There was no hiss of ignition.
Eventually, the hand with the lighter began to move, producing a small flame.
The delays in Nami's actions were not earning her any favor with her crewmates, but as the action itself seemed to elevate tensions, Buggy seemed content to allow it… to a point. As even his smile began to fall, he barked something, and Cabaji sheathed his stolen trophy to shove Nami aside, taking the lighter from her hands.
It approached the fuse. Then, all hell broke loose.
A rapid, crimson-tinged streak crashed into both of his executioners. Zoro's eyes widened at the familiar elastic snap that followed. A familiar figure rose to her feet and let out an intense bellow that elicited his hair to stand on end.
"..Luffy?" He called out cautiously. This… thing… was clearly Luffy. Pale, bruised, and shoddily bandaged, but still his captain. At the same time, it gave him the creeps. Its shadow was too long, and staring at her directly for too long strained his eyes. There was no joy for her in this reunion. Her eyes were glazed over and her movement calculated as she stole the lighter and jammed it into her pocket. She proceeded to take advantage of Cabaji's lack of preparation and used the same fist to devastating effect, ignoring the orange-haireded woman entirely and leaving Zoro's words hanging in the air.
Buggy and his cronies would not allow the attack to continue. The shock value that the thing had capitalized on had allowed her to damage the acrobat and forestall demise, but this was still a far different idea of the fight against Buggy than Zoro had in mind.
Cabaji didn't get back up, and the ginger woman backed as far away as possible from the unwavering creature.
A straw hat hit the ground, now unattended.
The woman dodged a knife attack from a floating limb and proceeded to use the heads of Buggy's men as a transportation method with improbably perfect timing. She leapt, threw and kicked with the energy of someone who hadn't been in brutal combat the day before. The attacks left afterimages that defied common knowledge about optical illusions.
Though Luffy would normally be considered anything but graceful, the ensuing destruction looked like a choreographed dance, with the woman dodging every single seemingly random attack from the clown pirate while still taking his men out in swaths. The latter act wasn't quite as impressive, as most were fresh from dealing with her the day before, but the former kept Zoro's attention locked on whatever his friend happened to be at the moment.
When Quasi-Luffy had reached her ultimate target, Zoro sensed something flying at his face. He could feel its presence before he saw it, and latched onto it with his jaws on instinct. Kuina's legacy had come home, and a glance confirmed that the woman he had thought his friend's murderer could be better described as a deliverer.
He cut his own bonds, but was still relegated to the role of spectator due to his own inability to affect metal bars.
"You had better be worth it." Luffy's accomplice said resolutely, finally staring at him with the soul she'd reclaimed. The swordsman felt uncomfortably like he was being sized up like a cut of meat by a chef. He wasn't a person to this woman. He was a tool.
He narrowed his eyes at her. He didn't need to dignify her quip with a response.
Their interaction was quickly interrupted by Buggy's predictable, desperate posturing.
"C-crazy woman! If you don't stop your puny attacks now, I'll give the command to have the crowd below killed in the blink of an eye!"
The thing borrowing Luffy's fists hovered in the air for a moment as Buggy flinched away from her assault. He began the process of splitting apart and materializing behind her.
"Luffy!" Zoro shouted, panic filling his chest despite the fact that he should have been too upset with the madness of their situation to care. From the outside looking in, watching someone subject themselves to horrific injury for someone else's sake was incredibly nerve-wracking. Saga's sacrifice had been hard enough to deal with. No, this thing was wrong because it wasn't like the woman he knew.
It didn't react.
Unlike the bullets that hadn't penetrated Luffy's skin even once, he could see where the dagger went in her back. He could see the blood it pulled from her and the fact she didn't flinch as the process began again. She didn't betray surprise or pain.
Zoro seriously considered throwing Wado at the clown, if only to buy the almost-Luffy a couple of moments. His survival still depended on it.
The double agent grabbed her scarred staff and launched herself off of the railings and into the crowd below, crushing an armed pirate guard in charge of a portion of the hostages.
"If you value your lives, then FIGHT!"
A resolute elderly man immediately stepped forward to take the cutlass from the fallen pirate, and the rest of the crowd followed his example of defiance in mere moments. Watching the same spectacle as he had, Zoro could sense the crowd's rage matched his own. They had been primed and ready for this moment. It was rather like watching a dry field catch fire. There was gunfire, but it was sporadic and brief.
Buggy's sputtering indicated that his Luffy-shaped opponent had resumed her assault, and judging by the miniature earthquake that followed, Zoro had picked a bad time to look away.
Buggy's head and torso emerged from a small crater. They showed all the signs of having been crushed by a falling boulder, and Zoro's bewilderment was only increased by the fact he hadn't seen what the hell had done such a thorough job of clobbering the pirate.
The clown was still in the fight, though; and he was getting desperate.
He sent his dagger-wielding right hand straight at Zoro's ribcage. Zoro might not have had much room to evade the attack, but between the lagging speed of the attack and his own considerable combat experience, this proved no problem. He grabbed onto the floating hand by the knuckles and thrust it into the bottom of his cage with the hilt of his katana and watched it flop like a fish, bemused.
Zoro recognized his comrade's shouts of rage and indignation at Buggy's newest underhanded attack and found a smile had crept onto his face. Maybe quasi-Luffy had more of the real thing in her than he though.
Without his right hand, Buggy was easy to pin down. Luffy systematically captured the remaining limbs and proceeded to shove them into her jumper as a means of capturing them. This process was aided by the fact her jumper was no longer on her, and Buggy had to deal with the fact that the pirate had chosen to strip in combat. His gaping face was soon jammed into the improvised bag with the rest of him.
Zoro couldn't peel his eyes away. Sure, her shirtless body wasn't something he hadn't seen before. The damage criss-crossing her skin and seeping blood through shoddy bandages were, however. As was a small, black spiral weeping through the skin on her back, sucking light in from around it.
It vanished only moments after his looking at it, but he knew what he saw.
Luffy dragged the wriggling jumper with her like a bag and proceeded to Zoro's cage. Eyes still unfocused and staring through him rather than at him, she snatched Buggy's hand out from Zoro's hold and proceeded to shove it into its prison.
Zoro looked on, confused, as she strode purposefully back to the cannon selected to end his life. She produced the lighter she'd appropriated from Cabaji and lit the fuse before calmly walking directly in front of it, holding the bag in front of her.
"DUMBASS!" Zoro shrieked at her. Even if she had a humanoid shield, the cannon was going to hit her dead-on. On top of that, if she killed or lost their mark, they could kiss their bounty money good-bye.
The ginger woman had clambered up the stairs back to the platform and had managed to scream the same word at the same time.
Luffy was unswayed. However, she did dodge out of the way of the cannonball at the last possible second in an incredible feat of timing, leaving Buggy as the only one who was launched into the sky and out of sight. His screams tapered away in the atmosphere.
The crowd below had clearly finished their own battle. Zoro nearly winced at their eruption of cheers. Luffy continued to stand close to the cannon, eyes staring at nothing for several more seconds before she staggered and shook her head.
Her accomplice walked over to steady her before Zoro could say a word. In a matter of moments, the almost- Luffy had returned to herself completely, laughing and muttering something that caused the other woman to smack her futilely in the side of the head.
Her eyes found Zoro's, focused and intense. All of his rage, worry, and pain seemed to fade away as she reformed formed another smile he knew was directed at him, and him alone. He felt the apology inside it, unsaid. On some level, he was still annoyed that she'd managed to nearly get him killed, but in all honesty, it was mostly relief that coursed through his bones, leaving warmth in its wake.
Luffy approached the cage and collapsed into a sitting position.
"Welcome back, Captain." Zoro greeted casually.
"Hey, Zoro." she replied, wiping a trickle of blood away from her lower lip. "Rough night?" she asked, smiling and tilting her head to the left.
He felt an eyebrow twitch. "Nah. Nothing to report. Just the usual,"
Luffy opened her mouth as if she were about to say something, but was interrupted by a shirt plastering itself to her face.
"Oh, for the love of-! Put some goddamned clothes on, Luffy." her accomplice demanded, looming over both of them like a shadow.
Said captain rolled her eyes and complied, pulling a loose yellow garment over her bleeding torso. She was rewarded with her hat being pushed onto her head with more affection that Zoro had expected.
The celebrating crowd continued to roar.
"Zoro, this is Nami. She's going to be our navigator from now on." Luffy stated, gesturing to the ginger-haired woman. Zoro felt an objection rising in his throat almost instantly, though he failed to give it voice. Nami reeked of ulterior motives and could hide her allegiance at a moment's notice. What would guarantee her allegiance to their cause?
Nami snorted. "You're not going to let that one go, are you?"
"Nope." Luffy admitted instantly. "I said what I was going to do, and you obeyed my orders. So, clearly, you agreed to last night's offer."
Nami's face became smooth and impassive. "Well, I don't see what you're talking about. You changed plans." She inhaled. "And even if you hadn't, you didn't really get me to agree to anything."
Zoro cleared his throat, as if trying to remind the two that he was there. However, the two women ignored him, intent in their conversation.
"What are you talking about, Nami?" Luffy asked, blood leaking out of the side of her mouth with more persistence than before.
"You said that you were going to set Zoro after Cabaji, remember? You were going to take out Buggy, Zoro was to fight the acrobat, and I was to start the riot." She cleared her throat. "-and you never said that my engaging in your scheme meant I had to join you."
Luffy's eyebrows furrowed. "N-no… I don't…, I mean- I didn't… What?"
What had been utter confidence moments prior cracked with an unfamiliar desperation.
Zoro let out a low laugh. Being dragged along by his captain was one thing, but he hadn't really fought back when she'd more or less forced him to join him via a penchant for gambling. Nami, however, had a fighting chance.
Luffy shot him a look of betrayal.
Nami sighed. "Besides, what I'm after is money. And it doesn't look like you're getting any bounties after that stunt you pulled."
"Then just steal from Buggy. Geez." Luffy quipped, irritated. "I mean, what's the point of being a pirate if you can't steal from other pirates?!"
Nami regarded Luffy coolly. "That treasure happens to be mine."
Zoro's couldn't help but interject his own snort to this. "Yours? I don't see you bleeding for it. I also don't see it in your hands."
The ginger-haired woman balled a hand into a fist. "I can't help being distracted, now, can I? After your captain's expert guilt-tripping?"
That had Zoro's attention. What was Nami talking about?
"Hm? What guilt-trip?" Luffy didn't seem to follow, either.
Nami growled. "You know full well what I mean."
Zoro sure as hell didn't, but was pretty sure he could see a slight uptick to Luffy's mouth than Nami couldn't.
"Look, if you're going to get some of Boogie's-"
"Buggy's," Nami and Zoro corrected at the same time, though not angrily.
"-treasure, that's fine, Nami. I mean, you can take a cut." With that, Luffy paused, breathing heavily.
"Keep talking," the orange-haired woman urged.
"You get a third, right? I mean, that's just basic math"
Nami glowered. "How much were your freaking lives worth to you?! Without my help, you'd both be dead. If I'm going with you, I'm taking at least half of the booty. In fact, let's go with sixty percent."
After a breath, Nami added. "-and I'm not going to become a pirate. Let's just say I'm sticking around with you as a business transaction."
Zoro's blood boiled. "Now, who gave you the right to-," he started to stammer, only to be interrupted by Luffy's graceful acquiescence.
"Agreed."
"Then we have a deal, Captain Luffy." Nami flashed the smile of a merchant who'd ripped off a customer and proceeded to shake Luffy's hand.
The swordsman stared at his captain as if she'd grown a second head. Then, without skipping a beat, he regained his composure. This was ultimately his decision, and if it didn't get them both killed, all the better. On that note, he had been watching Luffy's health deteriorate from her comeback through this entire conversation, and it wasn't getting any better now. Neither was he out of his cage. It was time to switch priorities.
He prodded his captain through the bars and pointed to the sturdy locking mechanism keeping him in place, pointedly ignoring his newest "comrade". Luffy, upon understanding the unspoken request, had no such qualms.
"Nami… Do you know where the keys are?" the smaller woman asked. "Sorry, Zoro. I guess I forgot about that part."
Nami slapped a palm to her face in frustration, but produced a key nevertheless.
Luffy acted like this was the most natural thing in the world, but there was no way her first mate was going to let that one slide.
"You could have gotten me out the entire time?!" He bellowed. "-and you didn't consider setting me free?"
Nami calmly placed the key in the padlock. "Now, now, Roronoa. I had no guarantee you wouldn't kill me. Besides, I had thought I would need further… leverage… to bargain my share with your captain."
Zoro seethed and made his way out of captivity at last. He stood as rigidly as possible, making himself taller than Nami. He'd work with her, and it would be unfair to claim she hadn't saved the lives of both his captain and himself, but he didn't have to trust or like her. She needed to know where she stood: entirely to close to Luffy.
He didn't like her, and judging by the way that Nami kept her confident posture and squared herself against him, she didn't like him either. He practically pushed past her to take his sheath back from Cabaji's unconscious form, among other things. As a bounty hunter, Roronoa Zoro was wise enough to know that you don't leave insensate foes behind you fully armed. In fact, it wasn't wise to leave enemies behind you at all. Between the motivation to guard his crew from reprisal and the fact he really wanted to finish what his imagination had begun, he prepared to finish Cabaji off, only to feel waves of disdain welling up behind him.
He stopped and looked back at the pale, copiously bleeding Luffy. For someone so weakened, her inner flame was burning as brightly as ever, and it had a will to exert.
Briefly, the thought popped into his head that he should be alarmed. Nami was one thing, but in terms of women with secrets ruling his life, Luffy was clearly the larger threat. He had bonded to her immediately, and it had nearly cost him everything, and he couldn't bring himself to hold her responsible for it.
He could swear he felt something fueling his obedience aside from loyalty. Aside from affection.. or maybe even love. These things were probable motivations, but there was something else...
Something dark. Something that he could feel digging metaphorical nails into his back.
He couldn't grasp it, and he hoped to anything listening that Luffy couldn't, either.
For better or for worse, neither his misgivings or his sword could stay in place.
Nami groaned. "Please tell me you two intend to talk with actual words when we blow this joint."
Luffy's laughter wasn't truly an answer to her request, but Zoro wagered it was the most she was going to get out of either of them, as simply telling her 'no' outright like a spoiled brat felt unnecessary.
A/N: The plot thickens.