I lied...this isn't the last chapter after all. The epilogue turned out a bit longer than expected; I'll be posting it in the next couple days.

Zoro woke early, but despite his efforts, it was past noon before they set sail, and by then it was too late. The ship caught up with them when they were barely out of the bay.

It was a schooner, not any larger than the Going Merry, but sleeker, swiftly modern, and it slid up through their wake like a porpoise. The main sail was a deep indigo, stitched with swirling white patterns. Robin's brow furrowed as she watched its approach. "That almost looks like a stylized variation of a script I'm familiar with, but I didn't think that cult had made it this far east."

"I don't see any cannons," Usopp pointed out. "D'you think they're going to attack?"

"Doubt it," Zoro said grimly. He might not be able to read those patterns, but he recognized them well enough, from too many hours staring at the temple ceilings. "Where's Sanji?"

"In the main cabin, with Chopper," Nami said. "Zoro, who are--"

"Ahoy!" Zoro didn't recognize the man hailing them from the deck of the other ship, but his blue robes left little doubt as to what he was.

Before he could say anything, Luffy, standing on the figurehead, waved back, hollering, "Hello! Are you going to attack us?"

"No, sir!" The schooner glided up alongside them. "We were hoping you'd join us in our feast!"

"Feast?" Four meters away, Zoro could see Luffy's eyes widen. The captain sprang to the deck, leaned over the railing to shout over, "Where?"

"Here!" and the man waved down at the ship, now sailed close enough that they could see over the rails onto the main deck. A table was spread there, piled high with platters of meat and fruit and bread.

There were dozens of people crowded around it, a brilliant, festive collection of blue and gold and white robes. As they came into view, the gathering all raised glasses to them, and cheered.

Usopp blinked, flipping up his goggles. "I still don't see any cannons," he offered over their noise.

It was quite an elaborate table for the ocean; a chance storm would smash all that china--but then, he supposed they'd have warning about that. "Come if you'd like!" called the priest on the upper deck. "Your crew's all invited!"

"What's their game?" Nami asked in an undertone. "More bounty hunters?"

"But they had three days to catch us already," Usopp muttered back. "Unless this has something to do with..."

They both glanced back to Zoro, questioningly, as if he might know anything more about these lunatics' intentions than they did.

"Those are religious vestments," Robin said. "This may be a ceremonial feast." She was also watching him like she was expecting some kind of answer.

He recognized some of those celebrating faces. Inste wasn't in sight, nor the kids, but there was the skinny acolyte boy who had gotten him out of the tower, and the old woman from the kitchen. And the high priest's bearded presence, off to the side, and the priestess, obvious, as small as she was, because of the bubble of space the others left around her.

"Zoro." Luffy had one sandal on the railing, posed to vault over it, but there he stopped, tore his eyes away from the steaming roasts to look back at the swordsman. "Should we eat with them?"

"You're asking now? You're already halfway overboard." Sanji climbed up on deck, Chopper at his heels muttering urgently.

Zoro glanced his crewmate, a quick, pointed assessment. Back in his usual suit, and there was some color back in his face, but shadows over his eyes still, and he leaned on the railing a little too heavily to be casual. Something was missing in that image, incomplete. But better. The asshole cook, not that pale mostly-dead thing Zoro had dragged from the water, and his sardonic drawl to Luffy was irritatingly, reassuringly familiar. "You heard Robin-chan, they're priests. They aren't going to poison us. Chopper's not going to let me cook lunch anyway, so just get over there and eat."

By all rights Luffy should be drooling enough to drown them all--the scents carried on the sea breeze were enough to make Zoro's own mouth water--but he didn't turn away yet, looked from Sanji back to Zoro, something odd and sharp in his eyes. "Should we?" he asked again.

The priests' cheering had died away when Sanji had come up to the railing, all eyes on him in that sudden, respectful silence. Sanji didn't look at the schooner at all, his gaze on the horizon instead.

Zoro's hand was curled around the white katana's hilt, though he didn't recall reaching for the sword. All he would have to say was that they were the ones. Not what, or why, or any of that; Luffy wouldn't listen anyway, wouldn't care. They could probably sink that elegant ship in under a minute, just the two of them.

He could feel his crewmates watching, tense and baffled, but Luffy was waiting with unnatural patience. Then Sanji's mouth moved--unvoiced, and he didn't look away from those distant waves, but his lips shaped the simple request. "Don't."

Zoro shrugged, let his hand drop from the katana. "You're the captain, aren't you? You decide."

"Then..." Luffy took a deep breath. "Let's eat!!" and he bounced over the railing to the schooner, diving for the table with a base hunger to match the most greedy plunderer.

Whatever misgivings Nami and the others might have had were lost in the usual mad rush to get a share of the bounty before their captain finished it off. The priests, pitifully ignorant of the terror they had invited upon themselves, could hardly do more than stare as the pirates descended on them.

Sanji was the last to board, clambering after Zoro down the ropes to the schooner's deck. Chopper and Nami made room for him at the table, the priests falling back with a deference like that offered the priestess. None seemed willing to meet his eyes, but that was scarcely conspicuous, in the chaos of Luffy's appetite.

Zoro didn't take a seat himself, just leaned against the ship's painted hull and watched, not trying to make sense of the conversations gradually growing around the table. First it was a quiet question from Robin and an equally quiet answer from a gray-haired priest, and then a curious inquiry about Chopper which Nami neatly deflected, and then the youthful acolyte made the mistake of asking Usopp where they came from, and after that it was just rising noise. The voices of the priests grated, but his crewmates' laughter was a comfortable cacophony. Sanji was even grinning--going easy on the rich food, per Chopper's strict instruction, but partaking fully of the conversation, even flirting with a couple of the women, as if just the day before they hadn't been watching him--

It didn't make sense to Zoro, and he might have started questioning his own sanity, except watching the cook, he could see that faint stiffness to his usually smooth motion, and moments when Sanji's expression would subtly shift, that crucial self-assurance slipping for an instant to leave him bereft. But he caught himself each time before anyone noticed, and the priests' sociable addresses were as if to a stranger--might as well be; none of them had actually talked to him before, as far as Zoro knew, except the high priest.

But the high priest wasn't at the table now, nor the priestess. Zoro frowned. There was no one watching the Going Merry--the ship was right there, roped to the schooner, and they would notice anything seriously amiss, but all the same...

With a glance back at his feasting crewmates, he climbed up to the quarterdeck, only to stop before boarding their ship. The priest who had been manning the wheel had tied it to join the feast, but, wise to the Grand Line's capricious currents, they hadn't left the ship unattended. The high priest was keeping watch, studying the sails and waves with the savvy of an experienced seaman.

He nodded to Zoro, as courteous as ever. "Thank you," he said, baritone muted, its resonance lost on the open sea. "For joining our feast."

"It wasn't my decision," Zoro said. "I'm not captain."

"All the same." His voice might lose some of its power here, but not the incisive focus of his gray eyes.

"Is that why you followed us out here? To make sure we didn't miss the party?"

"We came at the priestess's request. She wanted to see him."

"The priestess," he repeated. "Your daughter asked? Or the goddess?"

"I don't know," said the high priest. "I rarely do."

"You didn't have to bring--all of that," and Zoro jerked his head toward the main deck, the cheerful clamor.

"But it's traditional to break a fast with celebration. And we've never had the opportunity for this feast before."

He didn't want to talk to the man. He wanted to get off this ship now, wanted to sail away from this damn island--only he had to ask, and the bastard knew, was standing there waiting so politely for it. "He's really the first one. To make it."

"Yes. You are."

"How many?" Zoro demanded. "How many times have you--"

"This was my third," the high priest said. "Before this, it concerned the priestess who preceded Lonlin. The man was a native to this island, and his sin was not as...inadvertent. He was troubled as a youth, and what he became when older...and she was younger even than Lonlin at the time. It was nearly a day before she was found--he didn't survive third death. She was never the same, afterwards; she left this island shortly after the moon goddess renounced her.

"As for the first time--it was before I became high priest." The man looked out across the water, to the points of the island's dark peaks over the waves. "You were not the first pirates to come here, nor the first to make that mistake.

"A hurricane blew the ship into Satva's port, and the crew was given leave in the town. They were warned by their captain, who had come before. But there were a couple mates new to the ship, rowdy young men. And the priestess then--it was only a short while before she became the moon goddess's. She was growing up, but a child still, a playful child, and she often visited the taverns, had met pirates before. They ignored the warnings of their crewmates, danced with her, and she teased them, and it might have been nothing more than to teach her a lesson, that he kissed her.

"Their captain had warned them; he had no sympathy, and he knew he needed the goddess's approval, if he wished his ship to safely sail these waters. He ordered the men to the temple, the sinner, and his crewmate who had also danced with her to be attendant. They obeyed, at first, until the fourth death, and then they ran. But their ship had already sailed, and they were captured again and put in a chamber with locked doors.

"They weren't especially close, the sinner and his attendant--crewmates, they'd sailed together for a few months, and they hailed from the same island, but they'd always been rivals--they'd even been fighting over the right to dance with her. She wasn't so much younger than them, old enough you could see she was going to be beautiful. And she cried, when she came to bring the sinner to fifth death, not that her tears meant anything. He survived it, though--sixth death as well, though the attendant nearly didn't. He had known his friend valued his skill in carving--knifework, and he had killed men before, but it was the wood he loved working with most, and to believe his hands were lost...the attendant tried to tell him the truth, and his friend struck out at him, furiously, blindly.

"But they lived. It was the seventh--I didn't see it; I wasn't allowed to attend the ceremonies. They brought his body back from the mountains, gave him a funeral as they'd give one of their own. And--the attendant, he was never told how it happened, not by any of the priests, nor the priestess, though she and him spoke of many other things. Waiting for his ship, he learned more of the island, the city, the people the goddesses protect, until when the ship did finally come, he chose to stay. He became an acolyte himself, in time, and more.

"Eventually he learned the mysteries of the ceremony, and understood...he didn't drown, that sinner, his friend. There are not many who have it, who yet find reason to struggle and fight for life, when both past and future have died..."

The wind over the waves was cool and quiet and salt-thick, nothing like the fresh, freezing chill that blew through those mountains on the horizon. Zoro followed the high priest's gaze to their shadows. "I wasn't supposed to be there," he said. "That wasn't part of the ceremony."

"No," the high priest said.

"It could've screwed the whole thing up. Your damn goddess could've refused it."

"You were too far away to do anything--that's why the attendant is forbidden; no one can interfere with the sinner's death. He must be hers, and hers alone. But you could only watch from there. By the time you pulled him from the water, the ceremony had already ended."

"If he hadn't dived--"

"He would have died, as he believed himself to be. There was nothing you could have done for him, even if you had stood on that stone beside him. There was nothing the goddess could object to."

"Why," Zoro asked, "why'd you--"

"Because I've come to love this place," the high priest said, "these people, the peace of this island. And I love the goddesses, for allowing that peace, but I know them. You should understand, as a pirate yourself, as a sailor. I also loved the sea; even if I rarely sail her now, I still do, and always will. But the ocean is cruel and merciless as she is beautiful and giving; she brought us here, and he died here, and I'll always hate her, too."

The sun shone warm on Zoro's face; he stood still, facing that light, letting the creaking of the ship and the lapping of the waves reply with whatever answer was needed. Presently a burst of laughter sounded from the main deck, and the high priest said, "You should be with them. Your crewmates."

"They'll be almost done anyway." Or more likely finished some time ago. This ship's stores could only be so big. Zoro started for the stairs, hesitated. "Where is the priestess? I haven't seen her since we boarded."

"In the hold," the high priest said. "Once she had seen him for herself--she thought it best not to be present."

On the one hand he could appreciate the thought. The last thing they needed was a repeat of this whole damn catastrophe, if she accidentally bumped into another of his crewmates. On the other...he remembered the cook, shivering on that river bank, asking for her. "He'd like to see her. Probably. After every damn thing he did for her."

"I might tell her so," said the high priest, "but she may not believe me."

Zoro sighed, entertaining a brief but enjoyably vivid thought of drawing his swords and applying them indiscriminately on the man. Instead he only asked, "Where's the hold?"

The high priest pointed the way.

She was sitting on a barrel in the storeroom's cramped confines, arms around her legs and chin on her knees. An old woman sat on a chair beside her, a web of yarn and needles tangled around her gnarled fingers. When Zoro entered, the lady placidly lifted her head from her knitting, and the priestess scrambled to her feet--not to try to hide, but to bow, a deep curtsey.

"They're almost done with that feast," Zoro told her. "And then we're leaving, so you should get out there."

She shook her head hard. "I--I can't--"

"Come on," Zoro said impatiently. "It'll be all right. He's all right."

"I know." She ducked her head, twisted her fingers together. She was wearing gloves, he noticed, a white pair beaded in silver, and why the hell hadn't she had those on a couple days ago? "Like you promised."

"But if he'd not sure you're all right, he'll give me crap about it. So come on."

She asked her lady to stay, and obediently followed him up the ladder out to the deck. From the sugary residue in the empty bowls scattered across the tables, dessert had already come and gone. Luffy was laughing, Usopp and Chopper and several acolytes with him, and even Robin was smiling her quiet smile. But Sanji spotted Zoro and the girl beside him, and rose from the table--too fast, and he still was too pale, but he was the image of suave manners, standing respectfully at the priestess's entrance.

"He-hello," she whispered, looking as if she wished she were behind Zoro rather than in front of him. "Was--was it a good feast?"

Sanji nodded, said, "Very good."

"It was great!" Luffy confirmed, then asked, "Who's this?" bounding over the table to get a better look at her.

The priestess shied back, and Sanji grabbed Luffy by the collar of his red shirt and yanked him out of reach. "Don't scare her. If you guys are done stuffing your faces you can get back to the ship, leave these people alone--if you'd care to return, Nami-san, Robin-chan."

"We should, if we want to make time before nightfall," Nami agreed, but she was watching Sanji, thoughtfully, as she spoke.

"Thank you for sharing your banquet with us," Robin told the priests with grave courtesy, and Usopp, Luffy, and Chopper echoed the sentiments after Nami had reminded them of their manners with a boxing to the ears. The priests replied with appropriate civilities and leave-takings, and crowded with them up to the quarterdeck and the ladder back to the Going Merry.

Zoro stayed on the main deck, watching Sanji talk to the girl--a common sight, except the girl wasn't usually so young, and usually the cook didn't look so awkward, even as he tried to cover it with his typical cool demeanor. Rocked back in a casual slouch, hands in his pockets, but though he smiled reassuringly at the priestess, there was still something missing.

After a moment Zoro realized what it was. He dug a hand in his pocket, felt around for it. "Oi, cook."

"Hm?" Sanji looked over, and Zoro tossed him the cigarette case. The blond caught it in one hand, blinked at it, and a quicksilver grin crossed his face, more believable than any he had given the priests or the priestess. "Thanks."

Zoro shrugged. Sanji took out a cigarette and slipped the case into his breast pocket, crouched on one knee to look the priestess in the eye. Whatever he said was too quiet for Zoro to hear over the waves, but it made the girl shake her head again, put her hands to her cheeks like she might cry. Then Sanji straightened up. "Goodbye, Lonlin-chan," he said, and waited for the priestess's almost inaudible whispered response before he walked away. He strode past Zoro, jerked his head toward their ship. "Come on, Zoro. Don't want to keep Nami-san waiting."

Zoro looked up. The high priest had returned the wheel to one of the other priests and was at the quarterdeck railing, gazing down at them. He had left them alone with her, Zoro realized, both of them with his so-precious daughter. Lunatics, all of them.

He started after Sanji, only to be stopped by fingers curling around his wrist. "Wait, please, Zoro," she said softly, and he swung back around.

"That's the second time you've used my name," he began, "how come--"

And stopped. Not the little girl, but a young woman stood before him, her long dark hair tangled in the wind. A slender woman, in not acolyte robes but the blue and white of the priestess's, though the glitter in her hair was not a beaded cap but a fragile crown of spun silver threads.

It was so quiet he could hear the slow thump of his heartbeat. He could tear his arm away hard enough to break those thin fingers, but he didn't. Instead he just stared, and she silently gazed back. Brown eyes, not the priestess's blue, and her face looked so ordinary, a round plain face, not the terrible beauty he would have expected.

"You," he said finally.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"Sorry? I should kill you. I'm sure as hell not going to forgive you."

She shook her head, a quick twisting gesture very like the priestess's. "I'm not asking for that. But I still wanted you to know that I am."

"You're telling the wrong one. You didn't do a damn thing to me."

"But he would forgive me even if I don't."

"He's an idiot." One might expect her hands to be warm, but her fingers were cool around his wrist--not like the ice she melted, but like a real woman's. "But you didn't get him, and you're not going near him again. Or I will kill you."

"I won't," she said. "That was never the reason. Not him. It's for the sake of the priestess, it always has been. Since I first began to speak to them--they must be young, young enough to learn to listen. But can you understand, giving a child that responsibility, can you imagine what kind of men might try to use her, what they might do to a child with that power? I could never let them, I couldn't bear that, not one of my own."

"You'd rather have her be killed?"

"They never have," she told him. "Not once have they chose that way. But I can only speak through the priestess, so there can be no exceptions, nothing to allow for interpretation of my word. My sister can be more lenient, but when the priestess is only a child... There's so much they might do to her. The rule must be absolute, if it's to guard the girl."

"If she's so important," Zoro said, "maybe you should pay more attention to her--when she was crying these last few days, it wasn't because of what he did."

"No," she said, and her voice wavered, for all her gaze was steady on him. "It wasn't. Even if I couldn't speak to her, I still heard her. Then, and now." Her grip tightened around his wrist. "Forgive her. Please. That much I do ask of you."

"I don't blame her," Zoro said. "You can tell her that. He doesn't, and neither do I. At least she tried."

"Thank you." She bowed her head to him, which would have struck Zoro as an impropriety, had he actually cared. "With that, and his life, she may even come to forgive me, eventually..."

"I don't give a damn about that."

"No," she said. "You have no reason. You owe nothing--neither of you. Ours is the entire debt."

"Forget it," Zoro said. "It wasn't for you; we don't want a damn thing from you." Then he growled, "But protect her. All of them. After all this you better."

"Yes," she said, lifting her head to meet his eyes. "I will." Ordinary-seeming brown eyes, but there was something in them that wasn't human, if they watched you long enough, piercing to the core. "And you, protect him, and all of them."

He glared, and she smiled slightly. "But I don't need to tell you that."

"Zoro!"

Her hand slipped from his wrist, and there was a rushing in his ears, like a sudden wind--the splash of waves, which he realized had gone silent, now returned. Over that noise Sanji's annoyed voice rang out, "Move it, swordsman!"

Zoro looked up. The cook was leaning over the Going Merry's bow, gesturing to him impatiently with his lit cigarette.

He looked back down at the little priestess beside him, her face tilted up toward him, her eyes wide and intent and disturbingly seeing. Her hand was still outstretched, having just released his arm--

Her bare hand, he saw, the glove pulled off, clutched in her other hand.

Reflexively he yanked back his arm, rocked back at step, much too late, of course. "Dammit," he hissed, staring around wildly--no priests on the deck, and from that angle Sanji couldn't have seen. But when he glanced up, the high priest was still at the quarterdeck railing, staring down at them.

And yet the man said nothing, didn't move, even when Zoro met his eyes, his expression tight and focused.

"Zoro-san," the priestess said, in that small voice that was hardly more than a whisper. When he looked back, she was smiling. "It's all right," she told him, "she says it's all right. She says..." and her head tilted, as if she were listening to a distant melody, "she says that because a mistake has been made before does not mean it will be again."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

The priestess shrugged, giggled, a silly little girl's noise. "I don't know! She says there's a lot of things she must tell me, that we're going to have to do. I'm going to have to be strong, now. But that's for later," and she sobered, matured ten years in that instant. "Now, you should go. You've got so much to do, and they're waiting for you."

"Yeah," he said. The high priest was still watching, was still doing nothing, but best not to push their luck. And it was about damn time they were away from here. Seven times too long.

"So long," he told the priestess. And then, because he could see that telltale glitter in her eyes, he said, "Don't worry. You'll be strong enough."

Her eyes opened so wide it dried the tears. "Thank you," she whispered, and then, "Goodbye," and she didn't say anything else as he mounted the steps and boarded the Going Merry. But as they sailed away, he looked back and saw her beside her father on the prow, stretched up on her toes and waving with both hands.

Sanji raised his arm in return. Zoro, standing next him on the stern, did not, even when the cook glared at him, but he kept watching. She continued waving until she was too far away to see, and finally the schooner with its blue sails and the island behind it slipped over the horizon and vanished back into the vast, uncharted waters of the Grand Line.

to be concluded...

For honest, this time. This story, anyway...