He knew it would be dark, and he knew it would be cold, but it was the pressure that was the worst, the weight of all that water weighing down his limbs, crushing his lungs in his chest. He couldn't breathe, couldn't move, could only sink, down and down, until the last light vanished, even the gleaming eyes and shining teeth of the fish in the deepest sea. But there was something in the blackness, a pale, ethereal glow, cold as the moon on ice.

Luffy's head was bent, forced down by those fathoms of water, driven to his knees by that immense pressure, but as Zoro drew closer he looked up, raising his head with slow, mechanical effort. The currents dragged his hair across his face, black streaks over his blue-white skin, illuminated by that unreal shimmer. His face was bloated, a drowned man's, and his eyes were closed.

His mouth moved in the deep. "I can't find it, Zoro," he said, and the water distorted his voice like a tunnel, deadened all the life it once had. "I can't find it by myself, and there's no one else down here..."

Zoro looked up, and found he was staring at blue sky.

With a curse, he threw his arm across his face to block the sunlight. His temples throbbed dully with a hangover and his neck ached from sleeping at that awkward angle. Kneading the sore muscles with one hand, he climbed to his feet. The deck was level, hardly moving with the quiet waves of a bay, so he wasn't surprised when he looked past the figurehead and saw green leaves.

Nami's island was small, from what he could see, an uninhabited crescent of sand and emerald foliage, an oasis in the ocean's desert, rising to a single precipitous peak. They must have only just arrived; Usopp and Sanji were busy furling the sails, Nami calling instruction. Zoro jumped down to the main deck and Nami glanced at him, looked away before their eyes met. "If you're up," she said, "you can drop the anchor."

"Yeah," he grunted, and went to do so. When he returned to the main deck Sanji and Usopp were down from the mast, both converged to Nami, their three heads together.

"What's for breakfast?" he asked, when his footsteps didn't disturb their conversation.

They stopped talking, but none of them would look him in the eye. It was tremendously irritating. Last night he thought he and Sanji had reached an understanding of a sort, but the cook was hiding behind his blond mop and cigarette smoke now. Nami almost looked ashamed, if he was correctly interpreting how she bit her lip, and Usopp--that wasn't fear, something that cut much deeper than cowardice. Grief.

It all made him want to hack something to pieces with his swords. He wondered if there were any suitable monsters on this island.

"I'll have breakfast done in a bit, Nami-san," Sanji said quietly, and headed toward the mess, leaning as he passed Zoro so that their shoulders didn't bump.

Maybe it would be easier if he went back to sleep and pretended he had never been awake at all. He had slept for most of the night and still was tired. After they ate Nami didn't have any pressing directives, so he stretched out on the stern, but the familiar boards were atypically uncomfortable and he found himself shifting position irritably, rolling back and forth and failing to fall asleep, even with the warm sun beating down.

Sanji disembarked onto the island to see what could be found in the way of supplies, while Nami and Usopp went over the Going Merry from figurehead to stern, making adjustments and repairs. At last Usopp sat himself on the main deck with a needle and stiff string to sew up a tear in the aft sail, and Nami spread out a chart, weighing the corners down with a couple mugs from the kitchen.

Their voices drifted up to Zoro on the quarterdeck. He wondered if they would be talking as loudly if they knew he were awake. "It's crazy, anyway, going to the Grand Line," Nami said.

"It's not crazy," Usopp argued back, though without spirit. "It's courageous. It's daring. It's what a real pirate would do."

"So you still want to go?"

There was a long pause before Usopp said, almost too quietly for Zoro to hear, "Maybe I'm not really meant to be a pirate."

He heard the slap clearly, however, and Usopp's yelp, and then Nami, her voice quivering just the slightest bit as she said, "Don't say that. You're on this ship, aren't you? You made it this far."

"You're the one saying it's crazy, wanting to go to the Grand Line."

"Because it is. But that doesn't mean...we shouldn't..."

"I still want to go," Usopp said. "Even if it scares me. But...I want to see my village again. I want to see Kaya."

"I know."

"There were all these stories--there's stories already, there's things I want to tell her, and I won't have to make them up, now. But I was looking forward to having so many more--in the Grand Line, that's where the really good stories will be, the really exciting ones. When I thought about that, I knew I could do it. Anyone you've ever heard of from the Grand Line, they're a hero--or a villain, but that's almost as good. They're famous, everyone. Even me, if I were there.

"But it's not the same. Not anymore. I can still become a pirate, I can still become a hero, like I always dreamed. But when I think about it now, what I'd actually be...in my mind, whenever I was telling Kaya the stories, they were always beginning, 'when me and the crew'..."

Nami was a long time speaking, and when she did it wasn't to answer. Instead she murmured, "I should hate making maps."

"What?" Usopp sounded as confused as Zoro.

"Cartography. I should hate it, after all the maps I drew for Arlong. Those maps I made, I'm glad they're destroyed. I'm glad he destroyed them. But I never regretted drawing them. I'm much better at mapmaking for the practice, and I'm proud of that. And I still love to do it.

"But maps aren't much good anyway, are they, if there's no one to go to the places they show. If no one's following them, a map's just a bunch of lines on parchment."

"We can still go to Grand Line," Usopp said. "There's nothing stopping us. Is there?"

"If it's what a pirate would do."

"There." Zoro heard the sail flap, oiled canvas clapping against the deck as Usopp shook it out. "It's mended."

"Looks good as new," Nami said.

Usopp's boots thumped a few steps, then stopped. "She didn't give this ship to me," he said abruptly. "She gave it to him, and you know what? I never really minded that. Before."

"Usopp..."

"I'm fine," he said, but his voice was thick, and that honking sound could only be him trying to clear that long nose as he sniffled. "I just...I want to see Kaya again."

Nami's heels on the deck, and then there was nothing but the sound of the waves against the shoreline, and the rustle of the breeze through the orange trees. Zoro sat up, craned his neck around the cabin to look at the main deck below. He could see the back of Usopp's head, olive bandana and frizzled black hair, cradled by Nami's hand, his face tucked against her shoulder. His shoulders were shaking, and Nami wasn't saying anything, her eyes closed and her chin tilted back, so Zoro could see her cheeks glitter in the sun.

"It won't be the same, will it," she said, finally. "No matter where we go. It can't be..."

Zoro turned away, went to the stern and watched out over the horizon as the sun descended into the sea. Sanji returned and dinner was prepared; Zoro smelled the meat and spices, but didn't go when the cook called.

Presently he heard footsteps behind him, Nami's light tread. When she wished she could move silent as a ghost, as suited a thief. "Zoro."

He didn't look back, and she didn't wait for him to. "We're going to have a...on the beach. Not really a funeral, since there's no... Just something. Sanji-kun's made meat, he found deer on the island. Fresh venison. It'll be really good, we're going to eat, and talk, and...we need to, Zoro, you know we need to. You have to be there, too. It has to be all of us, it wouldn't be right otherwise...to say goodbye."

She stood there for a moment longer, then turned away.

He listened as they climbed down from the ship, Sanji reprimanding Usopp for how he was holding some dish or other, Nami scolding them both for getting in her way, Usopp protesting her standing on his head...he listened, and tried to pretend it was like it always was, but when he opened his mouth to laugh nothing came out.

They were mostly done eating when he joined them on the shore, sitting on the sand around a flickering fire. They had left a place for him, but he didn't sit down. As he stood there, they all got up as well, climbing to their feet in silence.

As Nami stood, Zoro noticed she had retrieved the hat from its safe place with her parchments, was holding it loosely between her fingers, with its tattered brim and the frayed red ribbon.

She didn't have time to pull the hat back before he grabbed it. That was understandable; he had taken it before he realized himself that he had moved. Sanji said something, most likely berating his lack of courtesy; Zoro couldn't really hear him over the pounding of the surf in his ears. The water was navy edged in silver and gold in the twilight, too damn loud as it threw itself upon the sand. He turned his back on it and walked away.

The foliage wasn't thick enough to block his path. He headed up, setting himself against the steepening slope of the rock ridge that was the island's backbone. Behind him he heard voices, Sanji's and Usopp's raised, in anger or something else, and then Nami's, at once soft as snow and hard as diamond, silenced them both. None followed him.

He stopped when he ran out of cliff to climb, finding himself on the highest crest of the isle, under a pair of palm trees, grown together into a spiny knot. The moon was low on the horizon, a white half-circle hanging over the ocean, and the breeze sighing through the drooping fronds was salt-scented.

His hand clutching the hat was shaking, as if he were shivering in that slight breeze. The bent straw weave crushed in his fist dug into the flesh of his palm.

He was speaking before he realized he remembered how. "Something should have changed. Something should be different, but there's nothing. Except we're here, and we don't know where we're going when we leave. And we've always known where we were going. You wouldn't allow us to forget--why wouldn't you let us, if you were going to quit?

"We haven't even laid eyes on the Grand Line yet," and he had to lift his voice over the rising wind. "We didn't even make it that far. Where's the adventure we're supposed to have? Where's the map we're supposed to draw? Where's the sea we're supposed to find?"

There was no answer in the rustling leaves. "You took them," he growled. "We gave them to you. All our dreams. Everything we wanted, everything we looked toward."

Just a battered straw hat, but it was the only crown fit for a king. Except he would never wear it now. Zoro's voice was hoarse as he shouted over the surrounding water, "Where'd you go? You're no coward or thief, so how could you run away with all of that? How could you forget everything, and just leave this behind?"

He flung the hat out, off the cliff, but the wind caught it, sent it tumbling back to him. Quicker than thought, Zoro pulled his white katana. "Your dream was so big, we trusted you with all of ours--nothing we would want could be as great as what you absolutely were going to do. If you could get the One Piece, then anything was possible. Everything was possible!

"How could you fail?" He raised his sword, both hands curled around the hilt. "How could you fail us, Pirate King!!"

When he brought the katana down, the wind screamed as the blade cleaved the very air, plunging toward the drifting hat, to slice that abandoned crown--

Only subconsciously did he register the presence behind him. Then a hand had wrapped around his wrist and yanked him back, an instant before his sword shredded the hat to so much straw, and a voice he knew too well cried, "What are you doing, Zoro?!"


to be continued...

Zoro is, possibly, my favorite character, but it's a tough call...I love the whole crew. But Zoro amused me writing this, because he so flatly refuses to angst--"He's dead, Zoro." "No he isn't." "Er, but--" "Urusee!" Lizalou42, mm, yes, I enjoy writing "male dialogue", conversations that are emotional more in what's implied than what's actually stated, tho' I'm never sure myself how much of that is realistic, and how much is just what I like to write!