They held a council of war the next morning, the three sane of them left. Well, himself and Nami-san; Sanji was never quite sure about Usopp, but they needed to stick together. They met in the bilges, where Zoro on the bow would be unlikely to hear, and if that damp environment was unsuited to Nami-san's grace, she said nothing of it, and looked at him as if he had grown a second head when he offered to spread his coat over the puddles.

Usopp measured the several inches of water on the floor, shook his head as he stood as well as he was able in the cramped quarters. "We're not taking it in fast, but we're taking it in," he said. "I can't find the leaks like this, we need to be anchored on calm water."

"I tried talking to him again this morning." Nami's fists clenched. "He won't listen."

"He could be right, you know," Usopp said quietly. "It's Luffy we're talking about."

"Just because he's so sure--just because we want him to be right, more than anything--doesn't mean he is." In the candlelight Nami's hair shone red-gold, a burnished copper curtain over her eyes. "Even forgetting about another typhoon--we can't keep doing this. Pretending like this. Or else what's going to happen when we have to face the truth?"

Sanji felt that question like the words pierced his heart, and it wasn't because they were spoken in Nami's exquisite voice. It hurt, as much as the gasp he wasn't quite able to stifle, which sent a pang from his cracked rib shooting through his chest. He covered his wince as fast as he was able. Nami-san didn't need to be worrying about him; Zoro was already worrying her enough. Her anger with the swordsman and his ludicrous stubbornness wasn't quite able to hide her concern. The jerk had no right to do this to her. Or any of them.

Luffy had no right to do this to them. Sanji had already vowed to stamp their captain's rubber face into the deck, when they found him, for making Nami-san cry--he hadn't seen the tears, but he remembered hearing them, that first night. Half-conscious, he hadn't been able to do anything about it then, and she hadn't cried since. Unless it was at night, alone in her cabin. He hoped not. A beautiful woman shouldn't cry at all, but certainly not alone.

And not over Luffy, who, even if he had gone overboard, could not possibly have the temerity to...not when he had gotten them all together, and dragged them this far, not so close to the Grand Line...

With his hands shaking as they were it took him a couple tries to light his cigarette, but before he could inhale Nami had plucked it from his lips and dropped it into the water at their feet. "You already had one this morning, Sanji-kun," she reminded him. "Please go easy on them."

"I'm sorry," he apologized, having sincerely forgotten. Putting his hands in the pockets of his slacks to avoid the temptation of the cigarette pack crinkling in his breast pocket, he said, "Why are we staying, then, Nami-san, if you think it's better we go to an island?"

"Zoro won't agree," Usopp said. He glanced at Nami. "We already tried changing course, but he noticed what we were up to. Even if the three of us agree...we have the majority, but..."

Nami shook her head. "This is ridiculous. Can we really be held hostage on our own ship, by one of our own crew?"

"Actually, yes, we can," Usopp pointed out. "Since he's the one with the swords."

"He's not even the strongest swordsman," Sanji said. "If we catch him off-guard--"

"No." Nami raised her hands. "We're not going to attack one of our own crewmates. Besides, you're still hurt, Sanji-kun. And Usopp, you'd really go up against Zoro?"

"I would." Usopp was offended. "If I had to. If there were no other way. Absolutely no other way. At all. --Maybe we could steal his swords?"

Nami considered it. "We could wait until he's sleeping. Except he hasn't been."

Sanji considered this, realizing Zoro, usually flopped in his hammock by the time Sanji retired and still snoring when he got up, had not been in the cabin at all that he recalled, and his days had been spent standing on the bow, watching the water. "He has to sleep sometime."

"I dunno," Usopp said glumly. "The way he naps, he's probably saved up enough to stay awake for the next year."

"We might induce him to get some rest," Sanji mused. "If we can't convince him otherwise today."

Which was why that evening, after dinner, Usopp was assigned to the dishes, while Sanji followed Zoro to the bow with a couple bottles in hand. He didn't bother to walk quietly, and Zoro glanced over when he heard the glass clink, then turned back to the sea with a grunt.

Sanji shrugged, expertly popped the cork and poured a generous amount. "Here," he said, holding out the glass so that the last rays of the sun glinted through the amber liquor. "Nami-san says it'll be cold tonight. This'll take the edge off."

Zoro's brow furrowed suspiciously, but he took the glass, and Sanji poured another, not quite as full, raised it to Zoro's. "To--absent friends," he said, then thought he might have been better off not speaking. But brandy this fine deserved a toast, and Zoro obligingly tapped his glass to Sanji's before downing it, in a single draught that left Sanji raising an eyebrow. The least the man could do was taste it...but he couldn't forget that this was at Nami-san's request. Taking a sip himself, he rolled it around his tongue in appreciation--truly Zeff's best; one would never guess how high the proof was from that delicate flavor.

He had more cause to regret the waste when a couple hours later, after both bottles had been emptied, he brought out the cheap rum and Zoro showed no sign that he noticed the difference, or indeed any sign that he had drunk the brandy at all. Sanji, still cautiously nursing his third glass, the last of the brandy, watched Zoro take a swig straight from the flask. He was sitting, at least, leaning back against the railing, his swords resting in the crook of his arm and his head turned toward the open sea, but his hand was rock-steady as he set the bottle on the deck without even a clink.

Sanji had several times tried to start up a conversation, or an argument, at least. They had never had any difficulties managing one of those before, but Zoro made no reply to remarks about his appreciation of fine liquor or lack thereof, or even a barb about the compensation complexes of a man who not only had three swords but needed them with him at all times. Actually that one might have gone right over his green head, but usually Zoro would respond to his tone anyway.

The one argument Sanji knew would get an answer, he didn't make, not sure if he was up to it himself. He found he couldn't watch the water for very long; the rise and fall of the dark waves made him ill, not seasick but a different ache, deeper in his gut.

The memory was all too clear, diving into that rushing blackness, the salt stinging his eyes and the cold burning his skin. He had hardly been able to see a thing, but he reached through the water, every second expecting to touch a hand, an arm, a leg, something he could have grabbed and pulled them both to the surface. That was the way it had to be; he didn't even consider that something else might happen, it was just a matter of swimming deep enough, until his ears were ringing and black spots pressed against his eyes, but Luffy had to be there somewhere, just out of reach--

How had there been nothing? He should have found him, pulled him up, and then they would have shrieked until they realized Luffy was sleeping, and everyone would have laughed, at their captain's idiocy, out of relief. Instead there had been nothing, only darkness, until the water crowded into his lungs--he didn't remember inhaling, just fighting not to, but it had rushed in anyway. And not laughter but Nami crying when he awoke.

At the time it hadn't even occurred to him that he had failed her, any more than he had realized that someone must have saved him. All he had grasped, with sickening clairvoyance, was that there were only four of them on the Going Merry, as somehow as he lay there half-conscious he saw the entire ship at once, and knew no one else had succeeded where he had failed.

For a single instant then he had a delirious hope. That moment when the ship rocked, before the tsunami hit, he had thought he saw something in the water, darker still than the ocean's blackness, moving contrary to the waves, the something that had knocked the ship aside and loosened Luffy's grip. Clinging to the mast, he had tried shouting to the others to look out for more than the storm--and then the wave had hit, and Luffy had washed over. The water was stronger than him, the curse to balance the awesome gift of the devil fruit. But he might well be stronger than anything else in the East Blue, and if whatever Sanji had seen had been his opponent instead, Luffy might win against it...

By morning Sanji had realized the futility of this; even if Luffy had defeated some sea monster, he still would have been left stranded on the empty ocean. It might have been an even worse cruelty, to survive the storm only to drown out there alone, without them. But it had likely been a hallucination anyway. They had been sailing here for three days without seeing anything of the kind. He must have imagined it.

He took a quick gulp of brandy to wash away those visions, just as Zoro said, "Hey."

Startled by the address, he choked on the drink. Zoro whacked him lightly on the back as he coughed. "Didn't mean to make you jump."

"It's nothing," Sanji wheezed, clearing his throat and internally bemoaning the waste of the brandy. "What?"

"Would you really go back to Baratie?"

Sanji studied Zoro's profile, dark against the dark sky. "I guess. I planned to anyway, eventually."

"And All Blue?"

He pushed his hair out of his eye. "That's supposed to be a myth, you know. It doesn't make any logical sense, a sea where anything can swim." 'Have you ever heard of All Blue?' And Luffy had laughed, delighted as him by the prospect...

"Makes as much sense as the One Piece. All of the Pirate King's wealth and power--how could one of anything hold all that? But he doesn't think about what it could be, or whether it could be at all. He knows it's there, so he reaches for it." Zoro took a long pull from the bottle, the liquid gurgling as the flask was tipped up.

"I suppose becoming the world's best swordsman is a little better," Sanji said, not sure if his tone was actually bitter or that was just how it rang in his ears. "At least it's possible. Someone has to be the best."

"Easier to make a map of the world. Or become a great warrior. But I'll do it. I'll find Mihawk again, and I'll prove it. I promised her."

"Her?" Sanji echoed, more surprised than he could have said. He knew there was a reason for Zoro's determination; he just had never heard what that reason was. That it could be for something as obvious and comprehensible as a woman...

Zoro glanced at him, something forbidding in his expression, but he said, "A friend, from a long time ago. We made a vow. But I'm the only one alive now to keep it."

Unexpectedly he drew his white sword, the blade singing against the sheath as he pulled it free and extended it toward the clouded sky. Moonlight shone silver down its length, the point so still a coin could have been balanced on its edge.

"You know," Zoro said, as if he were addressing the katana, "I never meant to become a bounty hunter. Pirate hunter Roronoa Zoro," and he pronounced the syllables like it was a foreign name he had never heard before. "It wasn't ever something I set out to be. I didn't mean to become a pirate, either. All I ever intended since I left that place was to become the best."

It occurred to Sanji that Zoro must be at least a little drunk, to be talking about himself at all. "That's not really a vocation, is it," he remarked, thoughtfully. "The world's greatest swordsman. It's more of who you are than a calling. That Mihawk's a bounty hunter or something, right?"

"And I'm a pirate," Zoro said. "A pirate who's a swordsman. And you're a pirate who's a cook." He sheathed the sword, smoothly sliding it back into the wooden scabbard. "And one day you'll go back to that restaurant, and Usopp will go back to his village, and Nami to her mandarin orange grove. Or maybe you'll start your own restaurant, and Nami can make her maps for everyone with the money to buy 'em, and Usopp will become a captain of his own ship. Maybe this one, if no one else sails on it anymore."

Sanji swallowed the last brandy, wishing there was more. He wished the cigarette pack in his pocket wasn't empty. "It's not what I want," he said. "Not yet, I mean. Maybe someday. But now..."

"The One Piece is still on the Grand Line," Zoro said. "No one's gotten it yet. If we don't, maybe no one will."

"But none of us want to be the Pirate King." Sanji realized his hand was tightening around the empty glass, relaxed his fingers and set it down on the deck before he shattered it. "Even Usopp doesn't want that much."

Zoro upended the flask, swallowed, then drew back his arm and threw it in a broad arc over the prow. A distant splash marked the ocean devouring the empty bottle. "Does it matter?" he said. "That's why we're here, isn't it? That's where we're going. Nothing can change that now. Even if he's gone, we're still his nakama."

In his mind's eye Sanji could see the black water, the wave crashing over them. "I should've--"

"You should've. I should've. Or Usopp, or Nami--we didn't. You all think it's too late, now."

"That's not--not because we want it to be."

"Never thought you wanted that. But you don't get it. It would change something, it would have to. He's the one who's supposed to be rubber, but the whole damn world bends around him. If he really were...something should be different. Everything. But nothing's changed."

"Someone will get the One Piece, someday," Sanji said. "That's why it's there." And maybe it should still be them...maybe it had to be. He had decided to come on this journey, but he wondered if he had ever really had a choice. Wondered if he minded that at all.

"Don't want to be Pirate King. But I never meant to be anything at all, except the best," Zoro said, and his lips curved up in something almost entirely unlike a smile. "I thought once I proved that, I'd go and tell her myself. Show her that I did it. I was looking forward to it, sometimes, seeing her again. Always liked sword-fighting, but it's too painful when you're bad, and too easy when you're good. And I got tired too damn fast of being that demon pirate hunter." He snorted. "Never would've guessed that I'd like being a pirate more than anything else. Even more than I ever wanted that."

He fell silent. Maybe he was waiting for Sanji to say something, but Sanji had no reply. If only the green-haired bastard hadn't polished off the rum by himself. He needed something to drink; his throat was too parched for speech. He couldn't look at the water, couldn't look at the ship and the sails billowing in the wind. Instead he tipped his head back against the wooden railing and stared at the sky, the few stars visible through a rent in the clouds.

"Sanji-kun?" He jerked at Nami's whisper, knocking over the glass, which rolled along the deck. Grabbing it before it could fall off the edge, he jumped to his feet.

Zoro stayed sitting, his knees drawn up with his arms crossed over them and his head down. As Sanji listened, he heard a soft snore.

Nami's head was poking up over the cabin roof, the night breeze blowing her short hair into lovely disarray. "Sanji-kun?" she asked again.

"He's asleep," Sanji said, deliberately loud, his voice carrying across the water. Zoro didn't stir.

Nami climbed the steps, gazed over at the comatose swordsman with her arms crossed. "Good," she said, finally. She regarded the swords for a moment, tucked securely in the crook of his elbow, then shook her head. "If we leave him alone, maybe we'll get there before he wakes up."

"What do you want me to do, Nami-san?"

"Help Usopp with the sails, if you don't mind, Sanji-kun. And try to be quiet about it. Though it probably doesn't matter, after how much he drank."

"Nami-san," Sanji asked, a little hesitantly, "did you hear us talking?"

"I was in the crow's nest with Usopp for most it," Nami said. "You can't hear anything but the wind up there." Though there was a momentary pause before she said it, long enough to allow for an instant of doubt, until Sanji shook his head and reminded himself that this was Nami-san, and one does not suspect a lady of lying, except perhaps about her age.

"I'm going to make sure we're on course," she said, and disappeared back down the steps.

Sanji picked up the two empty bottles and glasses and started after her, only to be stopped by a quiet question behind him. "How far away is Nami's island?"

Sanji looked back. Zoro's head was still down, but he could see the gleam of the swordsman's open eyes in the moonlight.

"We should be there by morning," Sanji said.

Over the waves he heard Zoro's breath catch, or maybe it was just a grunt as he shifted position. "Fine," he said, and shut his eyes again.


to be continued...

It plays on. Great to see folks are still interested! (A note to those of you (*cough*Kaeera) who have mentioned you like seeing a certain blond cook in pain...my next story, er..might as well be subtitled the Sanji-torture fic...)