She knows. The boys don't think that she does, but she knows. This time around, she could even hear them through the open portals.
"Why is she so quiet?"
She makes Usopp nervous, Usopp who was used to either wild anger or gentle amusement from women. He didn't understand her, with her quiet smile and hidden laugh; the knowledge that she was dangerous made him wary of being alone with her.
How long since I laughed for a long time out loud?
Standing at the stern, she watches the world disappear in the distance, watches it slip easily into yesterday. It reminds her of father. He loved history.
Father had had a huge laugh. It boomed from his chest and shook him from head to toe. As a child, she'd cling to him, his feet planted on the stern, while his laughter shook them both. She'd laugh with him, and he said, "God carries our laughter and makes flowers grow." She remembers tousled hair under his big hand, his smiling down at her. Her mother would appear from below decks, her fingers stained with ink, her hair pulled tight, and a smudge on her cheek. She'd smile, pulling off her glasses and holding out her arms, and Robin would run to her, the scent of the sea and ink, her mother's woodsy perfume lingering in her nose, even as the world disappeared just beyond them.
"Just leave her alone." The green-haired boy defends her. She doesn't know why. The captain she understands; he sees a lot of things. He is a man of D. But the green-haired boy catches her interest.
Everyone except the captain thinks he does nothing but sleep, eat, and fight. But he pays attention, fine, minute attention to them. When someone is sad or lonely, he finds a reason to be near and take their mind off the problem. He reminds her of Reth, that hopeless romantic, with his grand ideas of honor and life. What did those ideals ever win him? What did they finally cost her?
The green-haired boy watches the crew and pulls his weight quietly, a strong backbone to a ship that would capsize without him, the emotional ballast.
He doesn't trust her, she knows, but he notices she mostly keeps to herself. She pulls her weight and does her best. This was, after all, a ship like so many others she'd been on before.
But the captain doesn't allow it to be like other ships. He sometimes makes her play silly games, making her smile. He tended to lose with a laugh and usually a long string of "Warii, Warii!"
He makes her smile easily, something no one has done in a long time. Usually, she is just an observer, and it is her distance that, most of all, makes the wee doctor and Usopp nervous.
The cook is blissfully oblivious to the lukewarm reception she gives the crew, plying her with food and drink. She wonders if he honestly thinks the easiest and quickest way to a woman's heart is through her stomach.
Patently ridiculous. It is reaching under the rib cage.
The ship lurches suddenly, shaking her from her thoughts. She can hear a fight break out between the navigator and the green-haired boy. The navigator calls him names and commands Usopp to take the helm, since Zoro is too thick-headed to take it for very long, his lousy sense of direction making it virtually impossible for him to keep the ship pointing in the right direction.
The green-haired boy growls a bit but leaves the room. She hears his swearing and heavy footsteps as he approaches one of his favorite afternoon spots at the stern.
She sprouts an eye on the rail, small and hidden, and watches him approach. He stretches, pulling his arms over his head. The muscles along his chest and arms pull tightly as he tugs his neck muscles to and fro.
He pauses mid-stretch when he sees her facing west, watching the world disappear into the sea.
Annoyance plays across his face, and she thinks, such a boy. He can't hide his emotions very well.
He schools his face and moves towards her, unaware she is watching. He falls in beside her and she makes the eye disappear, a discarded petal.
"Oi, are you okay?"
Brusque. So young, so hurried. Niceties, a pleasant play of tongue in cheek, fangs hidden in sheathes for the right moment; honesty, a forgotten body at the bottom of the sea.
She smiles faintly, the pleasant smile she generally keeps on her face. It makes her look pretty and much less deadly than she was trained to be. Quietly, quietly.
"I'm fine, thank you." A pleasant lie. A quiet lie. A faint untruth.
His eyes narrow, a dog scenting prey.
Seeing this, she pulls up her walls, gathering them to her, all mortar and bricks, cold but familiar. Quietly, she thinks, quietly.
"You don't look okay."
His words bruise; in bruising, she wants to cry out, but she has learned. She swallows it.
"It's been a while since I've been out to sea," she says. A truth. The snuffling slows, his eyes watch for betrayal.
"Has it? Didn't you travel to Whiskey Peak and around the Grand Line for Crocodile?"
The sound of that hateful name burns in her chest. He had stabbed her, made her bleed. Not new, the bleeding, but it had felt like the end. One more deceitful man. One more to despise and think no more on.
Smile. "I traveled on something much faster than a ship."
He frowns, still truth. "Oh, that huge turtle."
He remembers. She's unaccountably pleased. Unaccountably, she cares.
"It was very fast," she says, more genuine. A safe topic, her mouth moves. "It can travel several knots in one day."
"Oh." Brick wall. Tension. "So, you're enjoying the view?" An attempt to talk. To parlay.
"I was remembering." Pause. The truth lies on her tongue, a dry unused thing, bitter in taste. She tries to swallow it, despair, grief. So many years, how can a boy know?
She swallows. "It's nothing," she says with her smile.
The boy, because he is a boy, watches her with dark eyes. The bitter scent tickles, tickles.
"I see." He turns to the horizon, the sun blinding on the water. The light flashes: yesterdays pile up and collide in her head. Mocking her, they shatter across the waves, defying the horizon.
Suddenly old, she asks, "Why is there so much joy on this ship? How can there be so much joy in one place?"
He weighs his answer. She feels it, a balance of pluses and minuses, of gold and stones. His eyes (Boy's eyes? She corrects herself. A man's eyes.) tally and he demands the price for his words, "Why are you here?"
Unused to such brutal honesty, she chokes, scalding anger lodging in her throat. She spits, "The captain owes me. He saved me from my exhaustion. He wouldn't let me rest."
He blinks, long lashes fanning over rugged cheeks, still fresh with youth. A face still free of nature's crow feet patterns.
"Then you have the answer," he says, the words in some small way crueler than anything said before.
"You don't understand," she sighs, turning away from his open eyes. "Joy is something precious. It should not be wasted and used daily. It should be savored and kept for special occasions."
He looks out over the horizon, noting the world disappearing, seeing the sun sliding into place to say good-night. He remembers nights when the sky was so filled with whispered dreams, they obscured the stars. Nights when he took his heart and soul, and locked them in a white sword so tightly that no one could pry them loose.
He remembers Nami's pain, the hope she carried with her as she tried to save those she loved. Usopp's tears of sorrow when no one in his village believed him. He remembers the look in Luffy's eyes each time he confronted them, each time he made them face their pasts and its sorrows. Each time he took them by the hand and forced them to walk past it into their future.
He smirks into his chest and says, "If you keep joy locked up for later, what if that later never comes?"
She turns and regards the green-haired boy, the steadiness of his eyes reassuring, the confident smile meant to be comforting. She tastes the honesty, so new and different, like honey on a fresh slice of orange, bursting on her tongue and lulling her into belief.
"Maybe," she says slowly, turning away from the disappearing world. "Maybe I'll go sit with the captain for a while and watch the world come at us."
The green-haired boy, who was really a good man, smiles encouragement. He yawns and takes a seat on the deck. "Sounds good to me. I think I'll take a nap." Sprawled against the rail, he sleeps.
Robin stands and watches the young man, smiling. He does have a job, and maybe it's the hardest job of all.
Still smiling, she walks away.