Last time, Izou reveals some of Marco and Luffy's past until Luffy himself arrives at Zou.
Marco doesn't often sleep peacefully, but he's always been a morning person. As a child, he'd set sail on the Moby at the ripe age of eleven, and his days have been so color-filled since then that the inky loneliness from before bleeds into his memories, making them a little fuzzy. So faded, Marco sometimes cannot recall them at all.
He wants to be up.
Wants to and needs to.
He has to go back; Marco cannot just let Izou hanging. His brother has been looking for him for almost a year. The phoenix has allowed everyone who cares about him to think him dead, uncaring the impact of such a thing. He'd been able to justify it before, but his excuses have peeled off, sunburned by the blinding spotlight on Marco's selfishness.
Often, he tries to get up before Luffy and most of the crew, enjoy a bit of the silence on deck and whoever's taking advantage of the misty morning. When the sunlight is cool, the first rays of daylight, that's Marco's favorite part of the day. Sometimes, he'll even make coffee. He rarely has breakfast, something that he knows bothered Luffy's cook, but Marco's been peckish all his life, and ever since he's been rescued, food makes him nauseous in the mornings. (He also cannot starve, so there's that.)
(It's a little surprising, the aching at Sanji's departure.)
Sometimes, he'll pluck some tangerines and watch as Sanji turns the fruits into innumerable recipes, from flower arrangements to garnishes to sauces. Nami always smiles brightest when her tangerines are used, even though she'll then threaten everyone on sight with outrageous prices...
But it's been two days, and Marco hasn't been able to crawl out of bed before noon.
Not that he sleeps.
He just twists and turns and closes his eyes and pleads because everything outside the bed seems too daunting to face. There's nothing concrete in the fear, not really, and staying in bed does not abate his panic. If anything, the unused energy spikes and clutches Marco's inside, rolling his stomach and making him feel like a stranger wearing his skin. Marco doesn't remember ever getting seasick or nauseous, not when his devil fruit has been with him forever but, he imagines by the way his stomach rebels and the hair on his skin stand on end that the experience is similar.
Marco stays in bed, wanting to leave, but doesn't move. Fear presses him down against the mattress, savagely ripping out all of Marco's air, but he cannot move, cannot run because everywhere feels equally tainted, everything just makes him so tired. Marco's dozing, a limbo in between his terrors, existing in a ditch between feeling fear, thinking fear, and confronting fear. It's a dark place.
Slowly, Marco acknowledges that there are creeping fingers climbing his calf. They are sure and unassuming, but the intent they smear on his skin is palpable.
They drag through Marco's blonde leg hair, stopping to pull at the little curls without much thought. Luffy, who barely has any body hair, is always a little fascinated by Marco's. Eventually, the palms tickle the back of his knees and sneak under the kimono Marco's sleeping in. By now, he's mostly awake, but he doesn't want to move. Sure and strong and real, the caress is giving him something to focus on, and Marco belatedly realizes he's been tense when he's shoulders drop naturally. The bed dips a little as Luffy moves to have better access, and Marco, laying on his stomach and cradling his pillow, thinks about opening his eyes. With his cheek pressed against the pillow, he should be able to catch a glimpse as Luffy hovers over him, but Luffy's hands skim past Marco's boxers to scratch at his spine, and Marco decides to let the pirate do as he pleases.
It's written all over Luffy's face: if Marco doesn't want to do this, he doesn't have to, but Marco does have to, and so he squeezes his hand twice for courage and then leaves for the deck. Luffy gives him one blinding smile before leaving the pair of former Whitebeard Pirates alone, going to nap in the figurehead by the leisure in his step. The rest of the ship is empty of its crew, the Straw Hats reuniting at the backs of the giant elephant.
It's been two days since Marco and Izou encountered each other on Zou, hardly enough for Marco to gather his bearings or have the hopes of concealing his broken pieces from someone who knows him so well. But Luffy needs to leave, and Marco's not letting him enter Big Mom territory without him.
So, he has to do this first, because leaving Izou behind without an explanation is beyond him.
His brother stares long and hard at him as they stand a couple feet apart, and then takes a few, careful steps to hug him. Marco stiffens, unused to unexpected touch, but apparently, Nami's lessons and Luffy's handsiness prove useful in keeping Marco rooted to the spot.
"I'm so glad you're alive, Marco," Izou croaks. The reflex answer of me too sticks in Marco's throat, and he has momentary panic when he realizes he'd be lying.
He hugs Izou back with all he has anyway and thinks he finds comfort there.
He can hear it as it calls for him. When was the last time Marco saw rain?
Listening to the rain had been one of his chosen pastimes back on the Moby Dick, one of his favorite things of living in a ship, really. The sound it made pelting against the side of the hull, contrasting with the starbursts of lightning that would wake Marco up through the night, they'd lulled him into a drifting dream where he'd be just awake enough to enjoy Mother Nature's cries and rest. Tonight, he's too agitated to lie in bed.
He steps out of the hut he and Luffy are staying in barefooted. The grass is black in the moonlight, but Marco's unmarred feet step through the clearing where the Straw Hats have been set up without much hesitation. After what he's been through, mud and moss are of little concern to him, but they are ice cold as he walks.
Calm rain at sea is almost unheard of, but this is the Grand Line, a place dissociated from the rest of reality's rules. Marco looks up at the waxing moon, so slim that he could almost sit down and count every star. It'd take him forever, and yet, the idea is compelling. One, two, three, four, five...
"I'm partial to the rain myself, but perhaps just standing there getting wet isn't very prudent." Robin's voice stems from the porch of her own hut, which if Marco remembers correctly, she shares with Nami. Theirs has an overreaching roof, and she sits just outside her door in a loose black dress. Her hair is pinned up, which baffles him for a moment after always seeing it long and loose.
"You don't actually catch colds from the rain, yoi." It's a myth he's been fighting for ages.
"Still," the archeologist insists, rearranging her legs to huddle closer into the chair. Robin looks softer in the middle of the night. Her knees are curled to her chest and slightly to the side, keeping her feet off the damp grass. She gestures to the companion chair on the other side of the hut's door, both dangerously close to the downpour despite their cover.
"Would it work if I tell you that I cannot get sick?" Her smile is the only answer he needs. He takes cover with her.
Robin doesn't seem curious about why the blonde is awake, but she's a smart woman; Marco has no doubt that she knows. She doesn't ask him about it, maybe because Marco has just as many questions about her.
"Luffy wakes up when I leave to wander, but he never stirs." He voices his thoughts, doubtful that he'll get an answer, but curious enough to give it a try. It's one of the things he counts stars about after all. Maybe if he gets them all, he'll find some wisdom to guide him through this second chance at life he's been granted but doesn't know what to do with. His talk with Izou has been like taking off the scab on a fresh wound, painful and possibly counterproductive. Marco's love for him burns fierce inside him, sparked by the embodiment of family, which had become so illusory lately. "I know he wakes up, but he never says anything… Why?"
Robin hums, looking out into the wilderness that extends before them, much beyond the tiny clearing and densely populated foliage surrounding them.
"The captain is a very complex person, though one would hardly think so when you meet him." The Marco, whose first impression of Monkey D. Luffy came via flying warship, would agree, but he's known better for a while. Ever since he saw grief and will cohabit an island, all wrapped up in desire and demand. "Luffy rescued me from Enies Lobby, did you know? After I betrayed his crew."
Marco's starting to see a pattern in how Luffy recruits his crew members. It's very different from how the Moby Dick's crew was formed, with orphans and adventurers begging to join Whitebeard at every port. Marco had been one of them once. Before going too far down memory lane, Nico Robin continues:
"It was an odd moment. The crew was facing off against a feared group of government agents, deep in the heart of the Island of Justice, all of them wanted criminals. The man who had captured me raged on and on, but Luffy only had eyes for me. He told me to say it." She gives Marco a look. It's a mixture of awe and frustration and kinship as if her eyes were asking his soul, you see, don't you? "I knew what he wanted to hear, but the words were stuck in my throat. I thought," at this, her voice heightens as if mimicking an emotion but regretting it half-way through "you're already here, might as well, maybe I can't just let it go." Her blue eyes are looking at him, but Marco doubts she's seeing him. "But that's not how Luffy works. He stood ramrod straight, declared war on the World Government," she breathes in deeply, somewhat focusing on the here and now, "but it wasn't until I asked for help, then, did he move."
"I think I heard something about Enies Lobby, yoi," Marco murmurs nonchalantly, not sure why he's pretending like Ace wouldn't shut up about it for weeks.
"Very few have not," Robin concurs, "About your question… I think that, at a certain level, Luffy is aware of the sway he has over others. It's a dangerous thing. He's always giving people the space to make the right choice."
"The right choice?"
"You're a smart man, Marco," Robin tells him. "You'll figure it out." Before Marco can question her, she changes the subject. "I hear that you'll be traveling with Luffy into Big Mom's territory."
"Argh," Marco looks away, trying to reason with himself as to why he thought it'd be a good idea, "don't remind me."
"Is it to avoid your brother?" she asks without preamble. Marco admires and dislikes her shameless, innate curiosity simultaneously.
"...A little," he admits out loud. Now that the big confrontation is over, Marco is actually happy to be in contact with Izou, but his vibrant brother is just… too much right now. Too much concern and memories and questions that Marco is trying to avoid.
"But," she picks on quickly on Marco's hesitation, "there's something else."
"Before Sanji… left, we had a… disagreement," he hesitates; after all, he hasn't even told Luffy this yet. He examines Robin, looking nothing like a woman on the run for over 25 years and everything like a librarian with a penchant for overworking. He's thought so before, but there is something truly soothing about her presence. "He was upset that I wasn't eating as much as he'd like, and I wasn't in the best of moods… but there was something more."
"Something more?"
"I think… I think there was something else Sanji wanted to tell me, and it's left me with the feeling that I have to know."
"Why not wait for when Luffy brings him back to ask?" She says when and not if.
"I… don't know," it has Marco up thinking in the wee hours of the night after all.
"You're a smart man, Marco," Robin repeats, now with the intonation of someone who's making at least a little fun of him. "You'll figure it out." Marco huffs in response but lets it go.
The phoenix could ask more questions, but instead, they sit in silence until the heavens run dry.
Ahh, this conversation with Robin has been in my Bucket List from this story from the beginning. What did you think?