A/N:

Y'all my face HURTS. I have four holes in my mouth structure where all my wisdom was supposedly stored. It's all gone now, so this chapter is now your punishment. Reward. A punishing reward. It's something I hope you all enjoy for the rollercoaster of emotions it is. I'm back on my whip-lashing bullshit.

Don't buy the thin mints, guys. They probably taste like worms and the tears of baby aliens.

Aaaaah, also... ***Content warning for the beginning of the chapter? Slightly? There's a bit of a hint to self-harm.

Nami's been terrifyingly quiet, her calm almost as scary as her fury. Robin seems to be the only one who has even consistently spoken to her throughout the past week. Everyone else is terrified of what will happen if they try beyond small talk. The rest of the group hadn't even needed to be filled in on what they've dubbed The Sanji Incident. With silent unanimity, they have decided not to poke the hornet's nest.

Apparently, they could hear Nami screaming at Sanji to fuck off from two doors down, but were too afraid of getting their heads chopped off to investigate in person later.

Zoro is the unlucky one.

He wakes up alone— and really, that's the issue here. He just needs to stop waking the fuck up, because things keep happening when he does and it's pissing him off. But, alas, he wakes up, starfished on the bed after they'd all piled into one room for another impromptu movie night. They all refused to admit it was an attempt to break the ice and comfort Nami via distraction despite her suspicious looks.

One more issue with the waking up: he's not as alone as he'd first thought.

A flash of orange catches his eye and he almost goes into cardiac arrest until he realizes it's not Alvida. Which is a relief, until it's not. Right now, he's not so sure Nami is the safest option.

The very person they're all tiptoeing around is the only other person in the room with him.

Zoro wants to hate the others for dumping him in the lion's den and running off to do god only knows what, but he's almost glad they didn't try shaking him awake. Giving one of them a black eye is the last thing he wants to do.

He's a little terrified of being punched by Nami, though, for... fuck, he doesn't know. Maybe for existing in the same space as her when she's upset? Does that make sense? But it's there and it's real, a creeping, metallic taste on the back of his tongue and the phantom sensation of something around his throat. When has violence ever made too much sense?

So. Yes. Stark fucking terror. Nothing new for Zoro there. At least until his heartbeat slows down at the lack of imminent violence and he registers that Nami looks the furthest thing from exploding.

She's staring a hole in the table, face unnervingly blank, hands flexing intermittently.

Bless his dumb little heart, he decides to poke the bear. Hornet's nest. Lion? He hates his brain for using multiple metaphors. They're not even appropriate anymore. Nami doesn't look angry, she looks— numb? But that's not quite right.

Numb doesn't look like you just got the worst news of your life and the world keeps right on fucking going, because the world does not care. The world will be happy to show you just how goddamn much it does not care. But Nami does. That's what she looks like, staring at the table like— not even like it's her last hope. Like it just happens to be the least mobile thing to look at after her last hope has left.

Zoro is still not a huge fan of his brain, but it does get something right on occasion.

He clears his throat and immediately feels bad for making her jump. "How... how are you holding up?"

Fuck, he's pretty sure this is the first time he's ever talked to her one-on-one without the others there. He hopes nothing too stupid comes out of his mouth, but he thinks it might be too late. Nami is very obviously not fine, or she wouldn't be searching a table for answers.

"I don't know," she says, with a voice so completely monotone that Zoro wonders for a moment if she's awake, if she hadn't fallen asleep with her eyes open from staring at the table so long. "I don't know," she says again, gaining speed. "I don't know how I am. I don't know how any of us are. How we're going to be. What are we going to do about the hotel? What are we going to do for food?" she asks, him or the table or God or God-knows-who.

There's so much despair and pain in her voice that it drowns out the betrayal that's been taking up all the space since Sanji left. In this moment she looks— 'hopeless' isn't a strong enough word for what he sees in her right now.

She looks like Zoro feels when school lets out and he knows there's no escaping Alvida.

That metal taste of fear is back, because he knows what goes through his mind when he feels like that. And the thought of Nami feeling the same, thinking the same—

Scarred wrists flash through his mind and the only thing Zoro can think is 'Robin'. Robin has been Nami's anchor for the past week and he doesn't know why she isn't here now but she needs to be.

There is no possible way to do this that isn't painfully awkward, so Zoro just rips the bandage off. "I need to go somewhere for a minute, but I'm gonna be right back, so could you just— not move? Or, like, do… anything?" He doesn't even know if she realizes what he's actually asking her. If she realizes he's asked her anything at all through the haze she's steeped in.

But she says, "Sure," in that same terrible, lifeless voice as before.

And Zoro runs for Robin.

He doesn't even remember how he finds her, tucked away in a corner with a book as usual, but his heart is racing faster than should be possible when he skids to a stop.

She blinks at him, as though she can't quite process that he's suddenly in front of her. "You look like you've seen a ghost. What—"

"Nami," he spits out between harsh breaths. "Come on."

The name alone has her surging to her feet, nearly tumbling over in the process. Zoro's alarm hitches up a few more levels, because Robin is the most controlled person he's ever met. He doesn't have time to dwell on it before she's dragging him away by the wrist. Her nails pinch at his skin for one memory-sick moment, arm instinctively curling back until the grip loosens enough to be comfortable.

He doesn't check to see what kind of face she's making back at him, murmuring a sharp, "Go," at the floor.

The trip back to the room is as much a blur as rushing out of it.

Robin pauses at the door, eyes closed, panting and taking massive gulps of air until it sounds like she hasn't just run a marathon. Zoro wants to yell at her, ask why the fuck they're just— standing here instead of doing something. But, with one last inhale-exhale, she opens her eyes and twists the door handle.

Nami hasn't moved much, though she doesn't look any better than when he'd left her. She picks at the split-ends of a single orange hair, disturbingly hypnotized by it.

Robin takes careful steps toward her, face a screen of neutrality compared to the wild concern Zoro had seen as she pulled him along. She drags the other chair to sit next to Nami, grasping at her hand to stop the near-robotic motion.

"You're ruining your hair," Robin points out, tone delicate but steady.

Just like that, her behavior outside clicks into place for him. She can't be Nami's rock if she gets swept away by the current, too.

"Robin?" Nami asks, already more alert than when Zoro had tried to talk to her. But then she crumples, curling toward her best friend. "Robin, what are we supposed to do? We don't have enough left, and the plan is all ruined and fucked up because San—" she chokes on his name, face twisting in grief.

"It's okay," Robin soothes, rubbing at her arm. "We'll—"

"No, it's not!" That familiar anger slowly creeps back into her tone. "He always leaves when it gets tough, and I just don't know! I don't want everyone to st-starve because I can't... get my shit together, or— I don't know know why he doesn't get it, Robin, after all that crap when we were kids and—"

"Stop it." Robin grabs her by the shoulders, an immovable object in the path of Nami's panic. "Forget about him for now. We will figure this out. We have options and backup plans, or did you forget?"

"I mean." Nami softens in her grip, scowl smoothing away. "Yes, but..."

Robin very pointedly looks her in the eye, a slight smile making the attention less intense. "The plan is not ruined. Garp will be more than happy to give us more money."

At that, Nami wilts, shaking her head. "We can't ask for that much—"

"Do we have another choice?" Robin interjects.

"Let's just sell Usopp to the circus!" Nami groans, but her eyes are bright with humor, and Zoro knows she's back from wherever the hell she'd gone before.

Calling Robin in is one of the few good decisions he's ever made. She's a goddamn miracle worker. A walking cup of chamomile tea.

Robin huffs a laugh. "I know you don't like it, but it's what needs to happen. We'll call him tomorrow, okay?"

Zoro collapses back onto the bed, officially done. "Wake me whenever the fuck that's happening, I guess."

Nami rolls her eyes at him.

If he's fully honest, Zoro hadn't expected Nami to really pack up and leave. But she had, despite the bitterness in her puffy eyes. She herded them into Merry bright and fucking early the following morning, after having Garp wire them more money. She hasn't done much yelling or commanding since then, still a bit sullen, and it leaves Zoro feeling vaguely disappointed. He's gotten used to her forceful yet effective methods of keeping them in check.

In fact, he feels more pressured by her not pressuring them. It's no secret that she is the only person in their band of idiots who remembers The Very Important Things™ vital to their survival. But has stopped working properly, which spells doom for them all. He wishes he could find the reset button. He knows they must have forgotten something in the week she's been letting them do whatever the fuck they want. Maybe Robin will figure Nami out.

The week thus far has passed in a blur of awkward tension and unending stretches of road interrupted only for sleep. They were very boring roads. So boring that letting Luffy play with his fingers, bending them this way and that, has been one of Zoro's only forms of entertainment. Attempting to get his fingers out of the Chinese finger-knots he ties them into is one of the only other forms.

Robin and Nami are both asleep now, slumped against each other on a part of the seat. Lately, they've been attached at the hip. Usopp and Ace make a few really bad jokes in the background that he can't remember and hopes he never does. He's sure Franky will repeat them eventually, considering they had him in an uproar of laughter. Today's hell is only slightly more interesting due to the outside view.

Zoro stares in fascinated horror as they come across yet another cornfield. It has been two godforsaken green and yellow-filled hours of nothing but the same vegetable. He has seen no less than six separate fields of popcorn at its earliest stage of life.

He doesn't know where the fuck they are, honestly, but when does he ever?

('Location: Friggin' Iowa? Corn Time?' he scrawls on the wall-list, because he has decided to document his thought process after failing both geography and life itself.

Later, in wild chicken-scratch, there is: 'Zoro… Honey, No. Very Hard No. We Are in Yee-haw, Texas.'

'Don't Ever Call Me Honey Again, Usopp, You Absolute Motherfucker.')

Ace shares a confused look with him when Usopp makes a turn toward the corn, onto a desolate, sketchy-looking dirt road. This seems like a very, very bad idea. He glances toward Nami and Robin, the brains of the group, and laments the fact that they're asleep. God, does he want to wake them up. Really, he does. But he's more afraid of waking a mood-swingy Nami than getting lost in a field of tall vegetables.

"Why is there so much corn?" he asks, desperate for an explanation. "Who the hell has the time to maintain so much of it? I'm honestly getting scared."

It's closing in on them from all sides, and Usopp keeps taking more and more turns. He's starting to think they're traveling through a maze rather than a simple field. Oh, this is very, very bad. He bites his lip to keep from asking Usopp what the hell he thinks he's doing. Maybe it's a shortcut. (A shortcut to hell, his mind chimes in grimly.)

An indeterminate amount of time Zoro spends zoning out later, Ace turns to stare at the field with him — or what they can see presently. His expression is grave as he whispers, "Who the fuck is going to eat all that corn?"

Luffy shakes his head sadly. "No one likes vegetables." Chopper raises a finger in clear protest, brows knitted together. He opens his mouth to comment, but Luffy looks him dead in the eye and hisses, "No one."

Zoro snorts, laughter coming out more like a scoff. Luffy frowns at him.

"Whaaaat?" he whines, pouting in full force. "Why are you laughing at me? I'm not wrong. Chopper liking vegetables doesn't count because that's weird."

Chopper sighs, exasperated. "I don't really like them, Luffy. Some people do, though."

Zoro shrugs, attempting to explain it in a way that will satisfy all parties. "You should be happy that there are a bunch of people who like vegetables out there. The more people eating vegetables, the less people eating meat. That means there's more meat for you, Luffy."

Kind of. Only technically, but he decides that technicalities will suffice.

"You're right!" Luffy gasps, eyes lighting up, and he looks halfway to drooling at the thought. He turns back to Chopper, grinning apologetically. "Sorry. I guess it's okay that you're weird after all!"

Chopper's palm meets his forehead. "Have you ever seen me eat a single—"

"Hey!" Franky interrupts, squinting out the window as everyone turns to look at him. "Are we lost?"

No one answers.

(Yes, says that grim part of Zoro's mind. And we have been for going on… He glances at the van's clock, eyebrows shooting up. Three fucking hours now. You're only just now noticing?)

He pokes the back of their driver's neck. "Usopp, bro, where are you taking us?"

Usopp makes an uncomfortable squeaking noise. "Uh... well. It's a shortcut?"

(I TOLD you it was a shortcut to hell! Zoro forcibly silences the breakdown his brain is having without him.)

"Right." Ace clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth, the popping noise loud in the dead silence. The radio went fuzzy and cut out not too long ago. "So, we're lost."

"We're not lost!" Usopp insists, slamming his hands down on the wheel. "The GPS said to go this way!"

There's a collective groan from all five of them.

"Never fully trust the GPS. The GPS cannot be trusted," Chopper practically sobs. "Especially when it tells you to journey into a cornfield!"

Luffy flails his arms. "Even I know that!"

"Why is this my fault?! It's not like any of you spoke up about it until now! What's up with that, huh?"

"I'm sorry," Franky growls, "we were under the mistaken impression that YOU HAD SOME IDEA WHAT THE HELL YOU WERE DOING!"

"It really doesn't matter. Because we're fucked," Zoro whispers, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Oh, we are so fucking beyond fucked. Nami's going to be pissed when she wakes up."

A silence even deadlier than the last descends as they all imagine the pain that lay ahead of them.

"Hey, come on. It's probably fine," Ace soothes, and they turn to him in interest. He smirks. "I think I saw a UFO offering direction around the last corner."

Zoro scowls. "If they want someone to probe, I vote for Usopp."

Honestly, he'd have gone for Sanji, who would have volunteered him in turn, but—

Well.

He does not miss that noodle-ass, curly-browed motherfucker, okay?

Franky stares out the window. "What if crop circles don't mean aliens? What if the corn is just sentient?"

Chopper blanches. "That's too disturbing to consider, please stop."

Zoro only nods, very much considering it. "Fine. Usopp is the reason we're lost, so he's either the probe candidate or the one we feed to the corn monster."

"WE'RE NOT LOST!" Usopp roar-whispers, casting an anxious glance at Nami. "The GPS stopped working because we no longer have service out here, but WE. ARE. NOT. LOST!"

And that is precisely when Merry decides to die.

She sputters weakly as she rolls for a final time across the corn-ridden road, all of their souls crushed beneath her wheels.

Usopp lets his arms fall, dead weight, from the wheel. "...We are, however, out of gas."

There's one of those Very Important Things™ Zoro had feared.

It's even worse than he'd thought.

"Nami is actually going to kill us," Franky states what they're all thinking. "Like, for real, bros."

Zoro has a better idea. "I'm gonna kill myself before she can. With a corn stalk."

"Forget dying!" Luffy cries, sliding down to the floor. "No meat ever again!"

"Yeah, well..." Ace grabs the backpack behind his seat and pops his door open, jumping out and flashing them a peace sign. Just like that, he walks away. "Bye. I think I'll take my chances roughing it with the corn. I'll make a village..."

"Oh, hell no." Zoro heaves the backseat door open and falls into step with him. "I'm coming with you."

Luffy's dramatics abruptly stop as he tumbles out of the van after them. "Zoro! Ace! Wait, don't leave me with scary and weird people!"

He guesses that Chopper and Franky leave Usopp to his fate when they, too, come jogging up behind them a few moments later. Usopp mimes his panic, arms flailing, but he doesn't dare squawk in protest and risk waking Nami. Zoro wonders what kind of magnificent lie he'll come up with to save his own ass when she inevitably does.

("We took a detour to stop at a local landmark! Welcome to Corn Land! A tourist attraction, honest to god, devoted to the production and promotion of corn! We... uh, might have gotten a little separated from the tour group...")

A good chunk of time later, after winding haphazardly through the rows without any idea of where they'll end up, Zoro can reach out in literally any direction — left, right, behind, up, or what the fuck ever — and meet a stalk of corn.

He blindly tramples after Ace, not even noticing he's been holding Luffy's hand until the other wrenches them apart.

"Ugh, sweaty!" Luffy wrinkles his nose, wiping his hand on his shorts. Zoro can't help but grin to himself.

Ahead of them, Ace hacks uselessly at the stalks with his pocketknife as he screams at the sky. "The sun can suck my fucking dick! I don't need more freckles, you cancer-giving ball of radiation!"

Franky shouts in agreement, adjusting his glasses as he fiddles with his phone. "Yeah! I hate that giant yellow asshole, bro. Who does he think he is? All he does is roast me then come back for more the next day!"

Chopper stops humming long enough to heave a tremendous sigh. "You need to stop scrolling through Tumblr so much."

He yanks on the back of Franky's shirt, a wordless request. Without missing a beat, the giant squats down. Chopper clambers onto his shoulders, Franky holding his legs to his chest with an arm as he rises. He resumes his trek, not seeming to mind the way Chopper's thighs must be crushing his head.

One of the stalks falls to a battle-cry and a particularly vicious slash. It's become something of a waiting game whether Ace will chop a finger off instead. It's anyone's guess who the finger will belong to.

Luffy and Chopper have been alternating between the same two shitty pop songs for the past hundred rows of corn. Franky's head serves as a singular, mercifully soundless bongo. They're now remixing and screeching loud enough that even the plant itself recoils.

"Fuck!" For the umpteenth goddamn time, Franky complains about not being able to listen to his own music. The app supposedly hates him. "What the hell, man? Nature sucks."

Zoro might just throw himself on Ace's knife.

It's the next cry of 'fuck! What the hell, man?' that jump-starts Zoro's brain into remembering 'The GPS stopped working because we no longer have service out here.' The words echo ominously in his head like a prophecy saying the protagonists are all about to die.

'No longer have service out here'

'No longer have service.'

'No service.'

Zoro joins in on the next round. "FUCK! What the hell?!"

Hours of mindless trudging later, or what sure feels like hours, Zoro realizes a few important things that would have been beneficial to notice a bit earlier. These things make him want to fulfill his promise to impale himself on a corn stalk.

The brief version?

He's fucking lost. Alone. In a demonic cornfield.

"What the actual hell," he mutters, rubbing a hand across his sweaty forehead.

Jesus fucking Christ, his life is a joke. An old, beaten thing that's lost its humor.

Way too overheated to deal with this shit, he groans dramatically and deigns to sit between the stalks for what little shade they offer. They have to have some use since he can see fuck all over them. Honestly, he's just asking to be abducted by aliens at this point. Can't decide if that'd be preferable to being slaughtered by a corn monster, his corpse destined to become crow food. Yeah, he's probably going to die out here.

Alone, some devious part of him hisses.

Zoro actually, physically squirms in discomfort, panic setting in as he does so. Not over being lost. Not even over the thoughts of death. No, those are the common things here. But loneliness? He knows that, intimately. Roronoa Zoro is a loner. That is a fact of his existence. It always has been, but apparently Luffy and his friends are getting too fucking close. Close enough that he doesn't want to be alone anymore.

"Shut the fuck up!" he groans at himself, throwing his arms over his head as he flops backward.

And then he falls asleep.

Because it's dark and warm and of course he does. By the universe's extremely fucky logic, that is what should happen at this moment in his life.

The sun has almost completely set by the time he wakes up. It takes him a while to figure out where the fuck he is and do anything about his predicament at all.

Figuring he might as well let his friends and the aliens know where he is, he sucks in a breath so large he almost chokes. "LUFFY!"

His hoarse shout is met with the tail-end of an excited screech, followed by several yelps of, "ZORO!"

He jolts upright, scrambling to his feet. They don't sound far away at all. "Keep yelling!"

Following the continuous racket of idiocy (which sounds vaguely like the beat of "Take On Me") through the dark, Zoro almost cries when he spots Luffy's ratty hat. Luffy bounces all the way over to him, and Zoro is only mildly annoyed when he's shaken back and forth in greeting. The others scream at him for his (lack of) directional skills.

Once he's done yelling, Luffy grabs his hand and doesn't let go again. Even in this ridiculous situation, looking at their rag-tag group, something in Zoro's chest clicks back into place, a relieved sigh of safe chasing it. Loneliness may be comfortable but, right now, so is this.

He blinks, realizing why he can even see at all. Ace waves a makeshift torch in the form of an entire stalk, the ear of corn set aflame as the wick.

"How the fuck..." Zoro trails off, realizing he shouldn't even ask because it's Ace. And also because the pyromaniac is now grinning and clicking a pencil-sized torch at him.

He shoves it back into his pocket. "Butane torches are so convenient. I spend all my money on this shit."

"Yeah. Okay." Zoro slowly turns away from him towards the others.

He doesn't know how the fuck Franky can see with his sunglasses still firmly in place, but it only adds to the omnicity when he states, "We're officially the Children of the Corn now."

Chopper whimpers, clinging to the larger teen's leg. "Franky, noooo. I have some major problems with that analogy that I don't think I need to explain."

Ace only laughs. "Does that make me Ruth? 'Cause I kinda wanna set fire to the cornfield."

They all stare at him disapprovingly.

He sighs. "But I won't because then we'll all die. And, honestly, self-care is going into a cornfield at night to get abducted by aliens. It all depends on what you'd prefer."

"I say go for either one. We're all going to die anyway," Zoro states cynically. Before fully processing the words, he blurts out, "God, I fucking miss Nami."

The joking drops off into a hesitant sort of silence, but he's having a hard time caring about killing the mood. It's evident in their frowns that they all feel the same.

He has never wished for Nami's presence like he does now. Needs her to tell them what the fuck to do, get them out of this godforsaken cornfield. It's truly a lesson in never taking her tough love for granted, appreciating her unique intelligence when it comes to solving any problem that comes their way.

She's kind of like the stern parent Zoro never had, not in any of his foster homes. Alvida is pushy in all the wrong ways; she just loves to hurt. Nami isn't always gentle in her methods, but she loves them. She cares about what happens to all of them, even Zoro. He may be self-deprecating as fuck, but he isn't blind. Looking for the worst in people is his first instinct. The best and worst of Nami are so closely tied that he can't separate them.

"Fuck this shit." Zoro cups his hands around his mouth. "MARCO!"

"Polo!" Chopper shouts back from somewhere behind him.

"Pogo!" Franky says from a ways to the... right? He doesn't fucking know. It's dark again because the flaming corn has mysteriously disappeared within the past few minutes.

"PAULO!" Ace cries from way out ahead in the distance somewhere, which Zoro can't piece together in his brain, because how the fuck—

"Pistachio!" Usopp shouts, apparently just for the hell of it, then, "I'm by Merry!"

They go that way.

"Marco!"

"Pistachio!"

"Marco!"

"Pitiful, you guys, really?"

Oh, fuck, that's Nami's voice. And she sounds pissed. Just maybe, possibly, dying in the corn stalks isn't such a bad idea after all. He takes back what he said about missing her tough love. He's suffered enough tonight.

Nami watches them come through the stalks, arms crossed in standard I'm Disappointed position. Her brow furrows in a tremendous scowl, and Robin stands beside her with a contrasting smile. Usopp actually twitches in distress behind both of them. Zoro doesn't want to know what he's been through since their group moms woke up.

After looking at them for a few more seconds, Nami huffs and marches up to them. Zoro tenses at the rage in her eyes, fully expecting to get smacked for getting lost again. That's just how these things tend to go, because he's an idiot, and it's fine. It's familiar and justified and—

"Jesus, you absolute fucking brats." There it is. The phrase isn't usually plural, but it's there all the same. "I can't believe— actually, I can definitely believe this happened. But don't leave! Don't just— don't do that!" she snaps, and then— then she gathers them all up in her arms as best as she can and hugs them.

Hugs Zoro for fucking up.

He inhales sharply to quell the stinging behind his eyes. No, no, no, he is not tearing up over something as dumb as this. Not even a little bit. He's just got some corn in his eyes, that's all.

Today has officially been too much.

He squirms until she finally lets go. She regards him with an exasperated, knowing look, but somehow still makes it radiate fondness as she petulantly kicks the tips of his toes. She winds her leg back pretty far, but he hardly even feels it through his boots.

It makes him wonder if she ever actually kicks Sanji that hard, or if they both just play up the drama of it.

She steps away, back toward Robin, who only says, "Good job not getting eaten."

Zoro raises his eyebrows at Luffy, but the other simply laughs. He almost screams when he looks at Merry, Franky's hulking figure standing atop her as he surveys the area.

Usopp clears his throat. "Okay, so. Does anyone have any gas?"

Nami turns to look at him, incredulous. "Sure, we keep some spare gallons in our back pockets. ARE YOU STUPID?!"

"Can't you make fuel out of corn somehow? I'm pretty sure that's a thing."

"I'm pretty sure YOU'RE a Thing!"

Robin takes it upon herself to be the logical one and ask the important questions, as per usual. "Franky, what can you see from the roof?"

"Now don't go fainting in shock on me, bro, but I see... corn."

"No houses?"

"No food?"

"No meat?!"

They all send Luffy a Look.

"Nope. Just corn. Lots and loooots of corn. It's like Corn Land out there."

Corn Land outside the van, Nuts Land inside. Soon to all fall under the domain of Pain Land and they are so very screwed, aren't they?

Zoro wonders absently if corn can be made into headstones. His chance to say anything is stolen by something crashing through the line of corn stalks at the side of the road.

It's Ace. With armfuls of chopped down stalks nearly obscuring his entire person.

"Time to get lit, fam!"

"Hell yeah, bro! Lit AF!" Franky cheers, jumping straight off of the fucking roof instead of taking the ladder. He lands heavily yet flawlessly.

Zoro can't even say anything without sounding like a hypocrite. He jumped out of the van while it was moving.

Chopper sighs with a tiredness that Zoro feels in his bones. "Can we please drop the terrible slang?"

Ace shrugs, not looking up from where he appears to be constructing a corn stalk tipi in the center of the road. "It's only appropriate for the situation."

Chopper watches warily. "The situation?"

"Welcome to Camp Devil Corn!" Ace yells, throwing his hands up toward the sky before gesturing wildly around them. "Where every fucking thing is made of corn. Including the firewood! Today's experiment will decide whether we can survive off of popped corn until someone— or something, can't exclude the aliens — comes to save us."

Usopp stares into the distance, putting a hand on his chest. "I was a camp leader once. The children loved me. They were like my own personal army of small and impressionable—"

Ignoring him for once, Chopper shouts, "We are not setting the corn on fire, Ace!"

"Actually," Robin interjects, "that might be best. Otherwise, we may freeze to death by morning. Just don't make the fire too tall or we'll die anyway."

Ace pouts, kicking his tipi over before he begins to re-stack it much more simply.

"We're going to need more corn." Nami sighs. "Bust out the sleeping bags."

"It doesn't even pop the corn! It just fucking burns it!" Ace screams, hurtling an ear of corn into more of its kind. "My entire life is a lie!"

Robin leans toward Zoro to whisper, "This is so much better than just telling him the truth."

A smile sneaks out of him before he can stop it, surprised by her joyful mischief at something so simple. "The truth?"

Robin's own smile turns sly. "Popcorn relies on heat rather than flame. It never would have worked anyway."

Zoro grins as he shakes his head.

Usopp stumbles out from the... corn-line? (It's not a tree-line, obviously, and Zoro's not sure what else to call it.)

"Guys. Guys!"

"What? We don't want details on your bathroom break."

"I think I just saw kids." He hesitates, face twisting. "With black eyes?"

Zoro squints at him. "You think you saw beat-up children in the middle of a cornfield?"

"Not those kinds of black eyes! Pitch black! Like— like leviathans or something!"

Oh, wow. Zoro sighs, exchanging a disbelieving look with Nami. Of course.

"Okay, sure. I get what this is. I will give you Bigfoot—"

"Even though apparently we aren't granted the same grace," Robin snaps, still miffed over her failed Polaroid.

"Exactly, but I draw my line at believing evangelical TV show stuff,l Zoro declares, firmly denying all memory of having literally walked into a cartoon just weeks ago.

"Not actual leviathans!" Usopp groans. "I don't think? Maybe."

"Pick a lie and stick with it," Nami suggests. "You're supposed to be good at this."

"I mean…" Usopp shrugs, wandering closer to the fire and his previous spot. "I guess it wasn't that weird. She— they— it wanted to sell me thin mints?"

Like the words are a personal dog-whistle, Chopper springs up from his sleeping bag and shakes the life out of him. "And you didn't take them?!"

Franky pulls him away by the back of his shirt. "Sorry, he doesn't know when we'll return to civil society for sugar and he's running on one m&m."

Everyone nods in sympathy, and— what the fuck has Zoro's life come to that they're discussing this?

Once he stops choking, Usopp says, "Next time I see maybe-monsters selling girl scout cookies, I will remember to book you for some. And make sure I sell your soul instead of mine."

Chopper sniffles, slightly mollified. "I'll write you a note that verifies you're allowed to sell my soul for cookies."

"Babe, no," Franky protests, but the gooey puppy-eyes of doom get turned on him and he immediately gets overthrown. "We'll sell my soul for your cookies."

"That's true love right there," Ace sighs, dragging the shoe-lace he'd pulled from its loops through the dirt like some kind of— "Aglet snake, guide me to my soulmate."

Yes, that, apparently. Zoro assumes it's a more fun activity than it seems, given his solemn hypnosis.

"I want thin mints," Robin clicks her flashlight, rising from her sleeping bag. "Ace?"

With a blink, the dirty shoelace is abandoned as Ace darts a few steps toward the corn-line. "Yes."

"No!" Nami stamps her foot even while sitting down, clutching Robin's ankle. "We are NOT leaving the fire safety circle."

Ace glances back and forth intensely. "Hmm. Demon children selling my favorite cookies, or fire, my number one beloved?"

Nami barely pauses. "I'll let you burn the sheep-head windchime. I will let you pick something from my own goddamn suitcase, just please sit down."

Ace full-on bows to her and then collapses back into his blanket pile. "Yes, ma'am."

"Um," Franky intones, "should we burn something potentially haunted in the middle of Corn Demon Scouts, USA?"

"Oh my god, you're right. What if they come for me in the night?" Usopp rasps, as though the thought has drained a thousand years' worth of healthy moisture from his body. "I don't think I could fight them off. What if they're kin to the sheep heads and work for the Men in Black?"

"I didn't see them at orientation," Robin says breezily, sitting back down.

Usopp stares her dead in the face. "Why do I… believe you?"

"Because you have halfway decent instincts, and yet not enough courage to be swayed into action."

He shudders. "Don't just— call me out like that, what the hell."

"I bet I could take them," Zoro says, with not a brain cell in his head awake enough to protest challenging the universe.

"Can I watch?" Luffy hums. "Or help?"

Nami throws a stick at them. "No. Bad. No fighting the strange children."

"How good could they be? They're just creepy little assholes."

Luffy nods. "What if I just went— feral on them?" He hisses, fingers poised in either tickle-fight mode or what's supposed to be claws. It's more oh-god-adorable to Zoro than threatening. "Punches, bites, the whole thing."

Ace eyes him critically. "How's your war cry?"

Not a single moment of forethought precedes Luffy screeching like a banshee into Zoro's eardrum.

"That'll work," he mumbles, or thinks he mumbles because he has now contracted hearing loss and he doesn't know why he likes these people at all. "It's perfect, fuck you very much."

Nami rolls her eyes. "Counter consideration: they were actual girl scouts and happened to be in this field camping and Usopp, our secondary chronic idiot, thought their eyes looked black because, one, it's dark, and two, he's our second chronic idiot."

Zoro hums skeptically. "...okay, I will give you that as a possibility, however small—"

"Small?" she sputters, hands flying to gesture toward the corn as though she can prove it. "Isn't that the more likely, logical conclusion?"

"But," Zoro stresses, "consider instead, our luck, and that Bigfoot's name is fucking Fred."

Nami stares blankly at him for a moment, then crosses her arms. "I retract my statement, but maintain it's a bad idea to fight the demon-children."

That said, nobody actively goes looking for their demise, which Zoro finds boring.

Less boring is Nami actually retrieving the cursed sheep-chime from Merry's rearview mirror. Ace gleefully chucks it into their bonfire, squatting down to watch its slow death.

(Zoro also thinks Chopper may have slipped Ace several candy wrappers in hopes that they will summon at least one cookie-toting demon.

"I stole these from that shop we got Mariana and felt weird throwing them out. Don't tell Zoro!"

Zoro makes pointed eye contact with him, raising an eyebrow.

Chopper's smile goes velvety soft as if to say, 'I am small and innocent and you bastards can't prove anything.')

The night ends with Ace pouting and Usopp's sleeping bag catching on fire. Not because of Ace, incidentally. An ember from their collection of charred vegetables/haunted objects goes flying, and sleeping bags happen to be very flammable. Like most things.

Zoro thinks it's karma at work, and he carries an unconscious Chopper into the van when the rest of the group can no longer keep their eyes open. Nami doesn't want to risk waking up to a dead body, so she decides it's better to sleep inside at Robin's reassurance that it should be fine.

Ace, of course, fights tooth and nail to remain by the fire.

"So I might get a little burned," he argues. "Or taken by demons. So what? That's standard procedure. You clearly don't understand my values in life."

Nami drags him to Merry's door in his cocoon of a sleeping bag. "You won't have a life if we let you stay out here."

The others don't dare argue, quickly settling down inside Merry, after she starts wrapping the bungee cords around Ace for extra security. Franky carries him into the van like a sack of potatoes before settling into his own sleeping bag on the roof, piled with twice as many blankets as usual.

("I'll knock thrice if I see any demons wearing Girl Scouts as second-skins!"

"Don't fucking say it like that, Franky, what the actual fuck—")

There's nothing but the sound of breathing until Ace whispers, "Do you guys wanna hear something super ironic?"

Usopp groans. "No."

"Okay, cool." Another heartbeat of silence. "Go grab my phone."

Curiosity winning out, Luffy grants his request. "Got it. Now what?"

"Open my Spotify, and play—" Choked laughter escapes him before he can continue. "Play the song at the top of the list."

A piercing guitar and spacey drum beat crashes into the silence, instantly familiar to Zoro and—

Oh, fuck, not this song.

He wants to clap his hands over his ears. He has half a mind to rip the phone out of Luffy's hold, but then the artist's name hits him like a train.

"Oh my god, really?"

Ace explodes into laughter as the song goes on, shouting, "We're listening to Korn in a cornfield!"

And then Zoro can't even hear the song over the combined cackling of Usopp, Franky, and Luffy— always ones to enjoy a pun. Franky's laughter is slightly muffled by Merry's roof. Zoro isn't sure how he knows what's so funny. Is the roof that thin?

"Why do you have to make it worse?" Nami moans, arms thrown over her eyes. "Haven't we had enough misery for one day?"

"I promise, I had to!" Ace insists, wiggling impatiently in his sleeping bag prison. "Freak on a Leash is literally the only song I had downloaded before we left, and the irony was just too damn good."

Robin notices Zoro's glare, offering a wise statement once again. "You should have sacrificed him to the cornfield variation of Slenderman when you had the chance."

He scoffs. "Don't I fucking know it."

Ace somehow escapes.

Zoro knows that because he wakes up to him shrieking. It's half-joyful and half-terrified. He really wishes he'd been up to see how the fuck Ace managed to get out with no less than ten bungee cords constricting him. Most of them now lay on Merry's floor.

No one else wakes up, despite the racket outside. Franky has migrated inside by then, propped along the wall rather than lying down. It surprises him that the others are so exhausted by just one semi-sleepless night. Then again, Zoro is almost disturbingly used to not getting a lot of rest. And although he's not at one hundred percent after the sun baked his brain yesterday, he's functional enough to go make sure Ace isn't dying.

In a zombie-like haze, he heaves the van door open. He steps out, closes the door again, and immediately frowns as his tired eyes struggle to follow the rapid movement they're greeted with.

Ace spastically rolls along the ground, and now Zoro is really confused about how he got outside. He's still burritoed in his sleeping bag, with a couple of bungee cords intact.

He's also on fucking fire, hence the rolling.

He decides not to theorize about how Ace started a fire with no free limbs.

An exasperated sigh leaves Zoro. He should probably be more concerned, but he isn't. He is tired. He wishes he was a fucking rock instead of a human being, at least then he could just be still. No more moving for Zoro. And he especially can't summon an ounce of alarm when Ace continues screaming and laughing like it's a goddamn amusement park ride. Not life or death. Nope. He rolls his eyes, then makes an executive decision to plant his foot on Ace's back next time the flaming lump comes screeching toward him.

Ignoring the immediate wiggling and protesting, Zoro throws handfuls of dirt on him.

"Ow!" Ace yowls. "You do know that your foot digs in every time you bend the fuck down, right?"

Zoro simply shrugs. "It's working."

And it is. The flames are quickly dying out in the face of large quantities of dirt. He waits until it's completely out before removing his foot, crossing his arms when Ace flops over to glare at him. It doesn't have much of an effect, since his hair has wrapped itself around his face like a sad mimicry of mummy bandages. All Zoro can see is the glinting of his eyes.

"I wanted to defeat it!"

"And I wanted to sleep. Looks like life just hates us all."

Yawning, Zoro turns back toward the van. His work here is done. He's pretty confident Ace will manage to get those cords off again without his help. He just wants to be warm and asleep and cuddling Luffy.

Wait. No. What? That last thing is not a thing he thought. It isn't. He's fucking delirious.

Ace interrupts his crisis with a frustrated groan. "I'm gonna have to do it again now that you ruined it!"

That almost implies Ace did it on purpose in the first place. It paints such a warped picture of sanity that Zoro really doesn't want to deal with right now. And yet, he still turns around again. No one can say he didn't try.

"No, no. Listen." He waves his hands in a vague motion, wishing he could portray this without having to speak. His brain is liquid and speaking is stupid. "Corn doesn't pop, it burns. You aren't corn, but guess what happens to a fleshy thing trapped in a body sock? Poof. Goodbye. Only bones. Where was I going with this?"

Ace stares at him incredulously, mouthing body sock. So fucking unhelpful. The bright thing in his peripheral vision gives him a clue. He blinks at it. Oh, right. Fire.

"Right. Don't be the corn. Leave the fire alone or Luffy will be sad."

With one last meaningful look toward Ace, he reopens Merry and immediately finds his spot. He plonks down, shivering once he settles in. It's gone cold now. That niggling thought from earlier resurfaces, only made that much more glaring by the warmth he feels at his side.

He sighs deeply. Fuck it. He did it once, he can do it again.

Zoro pulls Luffy into the circle of his arms, pressing him to his chest. The flush of warmth is immediate, partially due to embarrassment. Because it feels— nice. Good. It feels weirdly good to hold someone like this, and he hasn't imploded like he expected.

Hands curl loosely into his shirt. He tenses for a moment, but the fear is broken by a murmur of his name and Luffy's contented sigh as he presses closer. Franky's metallic whistle of a snore and Usopp's sleep-talk babble run on in the background. Two more solid reminders that he can't be there. Alvida can't be here. Those worlds don't mix.

He goes boneless with the realization, Luffy falling further into his hold because of it. He closes his eyes as that overwhelming feeling of safe floods his senses again.

*badly photoshopped pic of that one lady, you know her well* A wholesome chapter ending? In MY fic? It's more likely than you think.