Third time's the charm. It was light when Zoro awoke again. From the way his head was pounding, he must have drunk an awful damn lot the night before. Enough that he couldn't remember any of it. Well, that was no fun.

He put his hand to his head as he sat up, and felt cloth, a bandage wrapped around the back of his head that rewarded his touch with a lance of pain through his skull. Wincing, he made a mental note not to do that again. What was that, anyway, felt like he had been whacked with a baseball bat--

No, the boom. Zoro groaned as he slumped back, gingerly until he ascertained there was a pillow to drop his head on. Stupid storm; stupid ship, beating up her crew. You didn't expect blows from what was supposed to be an ally.

The sunlight gleaming in the bottom of the eastern window proved it was much too early in the morning to be up, but those rays were more welcome than storm clouds. The sea was still choppy, rocking the ship back and forth, unless his head hadn't quite settled yet. He was considering going back to sleep until it had, when he realized his swords weren't at his side.

Rolling over, he reached down his arm and felt the floor below, a rug, even, but no scabbards. He tried sitting up again, more carefully this time, and scanned the cabin, spotting three things amiss. The first were his three swords, laying haphazard in one corner as if they had simply been discarded there.

The second was that this was, in fact, Nami's cabin, and Zoro was lying on her largest chest, converted to a makeshift cot with a bundle of blankets and pillows. Which might have surprised him, if he hadn't been entirely distracted by Sanji. Asleep. In Nami's bed.

After staring for several moments, a bit of memory trickled in. Nami kissing Sanji...no, that had been a dream.

Either that, or along with the storm there had been one hell of a party after all.

Shame he couldn't remember it, in that case.

"Oi, Sanji."

Sanji didn't move. Actually, Zoro reflected, odd as his location was, it was nearly as odd that the cook was still asleep. While Zoro was usually the last to arise, he was pretty sure Sanji was the first of them up most mornings. He had to be, considering all the times he had served Nami breakfast in bed, or at least attempted to. She could be unforgiving about intrusions to her domicile too early, and loud about it, which was why Zoro knew at all. Though even otherwise, when he thought it over, Zoro couldn't recall ever waking up before the cook.

"Hey, Sanji, isn't it time for breakfast yet?"

At that, Sanji came awake with a jerk, his eyes snapping open to study Zoro with sleep-dazed incomprehension.

Then he inhaled sharply, and Zoro could have sworn that his face, which was already on the wan side, went even whiter. The blankets piled on top of him heaved up as he rolled over and pulled them closer around himself, until all Zoro could see of the cook were a few strands of blond hair.

Frowning, the swordsman slid his feet onto the floor and stood. Testing his balance and finding it adequate--that spinning could very well be the ship turning with the waves--he began to cross to his swords, when the door swung open and Usopp barged in, stopping short before Zoro. "Oh, you're up!" he said brightly.

Zoro didn't bother dignifying that with a reply. He took two more steps and then found Usopp between him and his objective.

"You're still looking a bit peaked," Usopp observed. "Maybe you should sleep a little more?"

"Take a piss, breakfast, then nap," Zoro explained. Swords first of all, but that went without saying. He didn't do anything without a blade or three on hand. He was uneasy enough without them now, even though they were in plain sight.

"I can get you breakfast," Usopp said, "I just finished making--"

"The hell are you cooking for?"

"Because--" Usopp's eyes slid to the bed and Sanji buried there, then skipped back to Zoro, and the swordsman could almost see the lie falling in place over them, like a special pair of goggles. "I have this wonderful recipe I've always wanted to try, and since Sanji's sleeping in, I thought it was the perfect chance for the Tuna and Eggs Supreme taught to me by--"

"Hey."

His crewmate jumped, several inches at least.

"Get out of my way."

"A-ah--of course." Usopp hastily ducked aside, so Zoro could go and retrieve his swords. Crouching didn't significantly increase his dizziness, and the weight of the weapons hanging from his belt was a better painkiller than any healer's potion. But when he started for the door, Usopp was there again, looking inexplicably more nervous than usual.

"What?" Zoro asked him, genuinely puzzled.

"You--why don't you wait here I'll bring you breakfast will be great okay?" Usopp babbled, the words running together into a mess.

"Usopp."

"Yes?" he squeaked, and Zoro was surprised to see his glance dart nervously to the sheathed swords.

"Nami probably doesn't want me in here any longer than necessary," Zoro pointed out. In fact the thought was making him a bit nervous himself.

"She won't mind," Usopp hastened to assure. "One of the windows gave way in the main cabin, it's a mess. And Sanji needed to be warm--well, Nami's busy plotting our course anyway, we should get out of here before another storm comes, but--" He shut himself up abruptly.

"But?" It was quiet with the cessation of Usopp's chatter. He could hear the creaking of the frame and the waves splashing against the hull, and outside the door the shrieks of gulls, returned already from the storm. He was used to waking to the sounds of clattering pots and pans, but Sanji was still in bed. Nami was probably sunning on the deck as she went over the charts, and Luffy would be on the figurehead, if he wasn't looking for land in the crow's nest or raiding the icebox--

Something nagged at him, like a bug bite he couldn't scratch because he couldn't figure out where he had been bitten. And Usopp had backed against the door as if he were trying to barricade it with his skinny frame.

He was sure it would all make sense if his head weren't killing him. Food would help. Coffee. Though without Sanji in the kitchen that wasn't as appealing; annoying as their cook could be, he was the one man Zoro had ever met who could brew a decent pot at sea.

Reaching for the doorknob, his hand was bumped aside by Usopp, in what could have been an accident, given Usopp's hasty apology, except that his crewmate followed it up with, "I'll get you breakfast, no big deal, you're probably still tired you could--"

Torn between irritation and bafflement, Zoro blinked at him. "Are you actually trying to stop me from going out?"

"No, no! Well. Maybe. Only--"

It wasn't that Usopp was deliberately opposing him, though usually the man had a healthy respect for his swords. But there was a falseness to his hyperactivity that Zoro couldn't recall seeing before. For all his lies, Usopp was terrible at concealing his cowardice, even though he could be counted on in a pinch. But his nervousness now seemed as great a lie as any of the fibs he regularly churned out, as if he were only pretending for Zoro's sake.

Taking Usopp's arm, he pulled his crewmate out of his way, not overly roughly. "First Sanji, now you. What are you doing? Has everyone on this boat gone crazy?"

"I--no." Usopp's mobile face went still. Even his long nose seemed to be drooping. "Not everyone..."

"I asked him to." Before Zoro could turn the handle, the door swung open and Nami entered. "You shouldn't be up unless you're better. How's your head?"

"The head's fine." As long as he didn't move too quickly or look toward the light or touch the bump, the dull roar was tolerable. "I just want breakfast."

"Zoro..." Standing in the doorway with her shoulders curled in like that, Nami looked unnaturally small, dwarfed by the ship's solid wood beams, and her hands were clasped at her waist, something clutched between them.

Zoro frowned at her. Whatever was wrong was wrong here as well. With her head canted down he couldn't see her expression, but he remembered her voice last night, could hear that same darkness in it now, a stillness as dangerous as the Calm Belt's placidity. And in her hands...

It occurred to him, unexpectedly, that there was something else amiss, when he thought back to the previous night. As a swordsman his instincts were always active; asleep, unconscious, or dead drunk, he was still aware to some degree what was happening around him, who was there, if they presented a danger. There was one presence, however, which he rarely if ever bothered to acknowledge, because it was no threat to him, a presence that allowed him to relax, even to let that alertness subside for a bit, knowing it was safe to do so.

Luffy was almost never there when he revived from an injury; Luffy trusted him to survive a fight intact. But there would always be the knowledge that he had been around, a lingering sense memory when he awoke, of his captain's voice needling a doctor or teasing him, or the odd weight of his silent observation.

But when Zoro cast his mind back now, to last night's haze and darkness, there was nothing.

And Nami held a battered, round straw hat, crumpling the brim in her tight grip.

"Why do you have that?" Zoro asked. Subliminally he registered Usopp taking a step back, didn't question it. He didn't recognize his own voice, quite; it sounded harder than he intended, for all it was quiet. "Why are you holding that, Nami?"

Nami's head came up. The darkness he was expecting in her eyes would not have been nearly as bad as the blankness he saw there now. "It floats," she said, simply, as if she were explaining to a child.

"I know it floats," Zoro snapped. It was the only part of Luffy that did--

"It floated by this morning. Right off the port side. I got it with Usopp's fishing rod. Isn't that lucky? I thought it was...lost in the storm."

"Why the hell do you have it?" He grabbed her shoulders--her arms were so thin his hands wrapped all the way around her biceps, and the bones underneath could be snapped like matchsticks--and gave her a shake. "It's not yours, why--"

Nami wrenched away, a sharp twist to free herself, steadying herself with a little stagger. Then Usopp pushed between her and Zoro, his hands raised placatingly. "We shouldn't--"

"He went overboard in the typhoon," Nami said. "Luffy. You don't remember, do you, Zoro. Right before you were hit, after the ship lurched. That big wave washed him over."

"And that's how he lost it?" Zoro demanded. "That's how he lost his hat--"

"Sanji-kun's the only one who saw him go over--and you, probably. I didn't see any of it, in the rain, and Usopp only saw you get knocked down, and by the time he had dragged you into the cabin..."

"My fault."

When they looked back, Sanji had sat up in the bed, hunched over with the blankets drawn around his shoulders. His cheeks were so pallid they seemed blue, blond hair dark against his white skin. "It was my fault," he said hoarsely.

"No, Sanji-kun," Nami said, impatiently flicking something from her eye. "It wasn't."

"What kind of idiot things are you talking about?" Zoro snapped. "Luffy's gone overboard before. He pulls himself out, or one of us gets him. The guy's a hammer, but he doesn't sink so fast--"

"Zoro, you saw the typhoon!" Nami's cool shattered like crystal dropped on stone, her voice rising almost to a shriek. "You saw those waves--the way we were getting tossed about, by the time he hit the water we were fifty feet away, and he might've splashed down so hard he--he couldn't...he didn't..." Like a kettle running out of steam she trailed into silence.

In the following quiet, Zoro couldn't hear himself breathe. The waves lapping against the hull were like blows; he could feel the ship rock as each one hit. "You mean he's not--you let him--why didn't you go after him?"

"What do you think happened to Sanji-kun?" Nami cried.

"He's right, Nami-san." Sanji's voice was ragged, raspy. "He's right, I should've--"

"Damn straight you should've!"

"Should have what, Sanji-kun? Should have--drowned--" Nami suddenly spun away on her heel, slammed her palms against the wall and dropped her head down between her braced arms. Zoro could see her shoulders quivering, saw her suck in her breath to stop them. The straw hat hung before her, brim caught under her fingers.

"Nami-san--" Sanji sounded mortified. The mattress springs creaked as he struggled out of the enfolding blankets, but before he could rise Usopp had stopped him. "You're supposed to be resting," he murmured to the cook. "At least until you're some color other than gray."

Zoro stared at them, turned back to scowl at Nami's back. "What the hell is wrong with all of you?" he asked, and heard the words come like he was drawing one of his swords, measured and deadly. "You're acting like the guy's gone."

Ironically, Usopp was the first to dare cross that blade. "He went overboard, Zoro. Into the sea. The typhoon--"

"It was just a damn storm," Zoro growled. "Some wind, some rain. That's all." Reaching out, he took Nami's shoulder. She still was trembling a little, and he tightened his hand until he felt her stiffen, gathering herself. Giving her a little shake, he said, "Don't. This is Luffy we're talking about. This is the guy who beat Arlong, right?"

He looked back at Usopp and Sanji, and grinned, fierce as he would in a fight. "Don Krieg couldn't take him. That Captain Kuro bastard was nothing. And how many platoons of marines has he smashed? Come on. You really think a little wind and a couple waves stopped the man who'll be the Pirate King?"

Usopp's eyes widened. "But--but how--"

"How the hell should I know? I don't get half the things that happen around that guy. But you were there in Loguetown, Sanji. You saw what happened on the execution platform."

A little color came into the cook's blanched face. "That..."

Nami lowered her arms slowly, the hat still in her hands, but she didn't turn around, her auburn head still down. "There's no islands for miles," she said dully. "There was no other ship that might have picked him up. We didn't even lose a board or a barrel. And the typhoon--"

"I'm telling you, the typhoon doesn't matter. The sea, it's nothing."

"Maybe there was a floating island!" Usopp cried. "Or one of those flying ships people have said they've seen, the ones shaped like saucers. There could be anything!"

"But--" Nami looked at her crewmates, spread her hands in confusion. "How is it..."

"It's possible, Nami-san," Sanji said, his hoarse voice barely carrying across the room. "It's got to be possible, right?"

"What should we do, Zoro?" Usopp asked expectantly. "If it was something crazy--"

"We go back." Zoro shrugged. "We look around until we figure it out."

"Figure what out?" Nami inquired, but not angrily. With her head raised, he could see the glimmer of something in her eyes, more than the reflection of the sunlight.

"No idea," he answered. "We'll know when we find him." Faint as that glimmer was, he recognized it. Since he had started traveling with Luffy, he had become familiar with all the different shades of hope.


to be continued...

So I'm not the only one who enjoys a little angst amid the comedy! Good thing to know. Hope y'all keep enjoying.