Chopper dipped the thin white cloth in the bowl of water and placed it on the captain's forehead. He sighed and went back to mixing some ingredients in his mortar. If Luffy's fever didn't go down soon, there was a big risk that Chopper wouldn't be able to do much for him. Not in the bad surroundings of the cold and damp prison in the Marine Headquarters, anyway.
The doctor remembered vaguely that the King of Alabasta had said that the poison was out of Luffy's system, but as he watched the man lying there on the plank bed with his cheeks flushed and his skin grey and lifeless, he wasn't sure if that was really true. He didn't even know where the poison could have come from – no one had told him about that. If he had known what kind of poison it was, it would have been easier to treat the symptoms.
After all, who knew what kind of strange creature could have stung Luffy in the desert city?
Chopper stopped grinding his herbs and looked at the small table he was working by. He didn't have close to all the ingredients he needed, but this was all he had been granted to use.
In fact, he had been lucky that he had been allowed to look after his captain in the first place.
Sighing once more, he reached out for a small bowl on the table, poured some hot water from the thermos jug into it and sprinkled the ground herbs over the water. Within a few seconds, the water shifted to a dark red color and smelled faintly of cinnamon. Chopper smiled faintly and jumped down from his chair.
Reaching up to take the bowl from the table, he glanced over at Luffy, who was shifting uneasily where he was lying on his back under the dusty blue blanket. The captain's left arm was dangling over the edge of the bed, his knuckles brushing the cold, grimy floor, and the blue blanket had almost slipped off his feet when he had turned around in his sleep earlier.
Putting down the medicine next to the bowl of water on the table next to the head of the plank bed, Chopper silently moved to wrap the blanket around Luffy's feet again. He also took the captain's pulse before he tucked Luffy's arm back under the covers. It was still a bit irregular, but Chopper was just relieved that it wasn't getting weaker.
Chopper sighed and removed the white towel from Luffy's forehead before he dipped it in the water again. The water was cold, and he shivered as the chilly liquid covered his hooves. He didn't mind cold weather, but cold water was something completely different. After he placed the towel on Luffy's forehead again, he shook his hooves to rid them of some of the water that had gathered in his fur.
Almost as if the cold from the cloth triggered something within him, Luffy turned his head towards the wall with a pained expression on his face. Chopper could hear him mumble something under his breath and couldn't keep his curiosity at bay, so he leaned in closer to listen.
"Shanks… take me with you… I want to become a pirate… I'll be the King of Pirates, Shanks… Shanks, please…"
Leaning back, Chopper wondered who this 'Shanks' could be. He also wondered if Luffy would be offended if he asked about it.
For as long as he had been a part of the Straw Hat clan, no one had asked him anything about his past. He had assumed that Nami knew a little, since he had heard her mention him when she had been talking with the Doctorine. How else could she have known that he was a doctor?
Shaking his head, he changed his appearance from his small and fluffy form to the tall, muscular and more human-like mix between human and reindeer. Even though he did feel more comfortable in his small form, and the fact that his large form was sort of clumsy at times, he did enjoy being tall sometimes.
Kneeling by the plank bed, he carefully lifted the captain's head from the flat pillow folded from Luffy's red vest and reached for the small bowl of medicine on the bedside table. Putting the bowl to Luffy's lips and tipping it so that the warm liquid dripped into his mouth, Chopper was glad to notice that the captain managed to swallow the herbal medicine without choking. When he took the almost empty bowl from the man's lips and carefully put his head back onto the pillow, Luffy's eyes fluttered open, and he looked dazedly up at Chopper. The scar under his left eye was awfully white against the red in his cheeks.
"Chopper… where are the others? Are they sleeping? Why does my head hurt?"
Chopper smiled weakly, fighting the tears. The fogged gaze in the captain's eyes told him that Luffy was still almost sleeping, and was probably not going to remember anything when he got better. So he nodded.
"Yes, they are sleeping, Luffy. You should go back to sleep as well."
He could feel the lie slip off his tongue, and he was pretty amazed over how easy it was to lie like that. Because of that, he decided to ask Usopp if all the stories he had told really were true. The rest of the crew always told him that he shouldn't believe everything Usopp said, especially if it sounded very exaggerated or dangerous. But they had already been through dangerous adventures that he would never had believed were possible, so how was he supposed to know when Usopp was telling the truth?
Then he noticed that Luffy was looking at him with a strange, almost piercing look in his fogged eyes, and Chopper wondered how long he could have been absorbed in his own thoughts. For a few more seconds, Luffy looked at him without saying a word, and then he closed them and nodded feebly.
"I'll do that. Tell Sanji that I want lots of meat for breakfast."
"I'll remember to tell him that," Chopper promised his friend.
When Luffy had fallen into a deep sleep again, Chopper changed from his large man-beast form back to his normal body and walked up to the bars of their cell. He didn't touch them, since he knew all too well that Seastone would drain all his strength in a matter of seconds. Just standing next to them made him feel strangely dizzy, but it wasn't something he couldn't handle. At the moment, he couldn't do anything but hope that the medicine would make Luffy's fever go down, and he started to feel quite restless.
There was so little he knew about his captain, and he wondered if the rest of the crew knew more than he did, or if they just hadn't bothered asking, just as they hadn't asked him anything about himself yet.
But maybe 'bothered' was the wrong choice of word. Maybe they didn't need to know. Maybe that was the reason why the crew seemed to be so close to each other - because they trusted one another and felt comfortable around each other without asking too many questions. Maybe they could all sense that their different personalities and goals were exactly the things that made them stand proud together, wielding perhaps the strongest power in the world.
The power of friendship, undying loyalty and the love of a family. The kind of power that made them laugh together and gave them the strength and the courage to go on, even in the darkest times.
Chopper sniffled. He wondered why he was part of such a powerful clan. He wasn't brave like the others; he was just a reindeer with a blue nose who dabbled in medicine. Sure, he had fought against Wapol and his servants on Drum Island together with Luffy and Sanji, and he had defeated Mr.4 and Miss Merry Christmas in Alabasta along with Usopp, but both times, he had also been fighting his instincts to run away from the danger. Surely, that wasn't courage: he had just been protecting the things and people who meant the most to him. Doctor Hilruk's flag, Drum Island, Vivi and her country…
He thought for a while, wiping his nose on the sleeve of his torn cloak. Maybe that was a type of courage, after all. To do something you thought you were too afraid to do… Maybe even reindeers could be brave, then? And somehow, Luffy had known that. Why would he otherwise have invited him to go with them? Of course, they needed his knowledge when it came to medicine, and Luffy had said that he had never seen a cooler reindeer with seven forms in his life. Chopper had for a moment contemplated how many other reindeers with seven forms Luffy could have seen, but then they had celebrated their victory and all his worries and problems had vanished.
This time, they weren't celebrating their victory, even though their enemy had been the toughest one so far. Chopper didn't even know where the rest of the crew was, but he wished that they had been locked in the same room as him and Luffy. There were five empty cages in the room that the others could have been locked inside. Chopper wished that he could hear Usopp telling an amazing story, that Nami would tell him not to believe the marksman's stories and that Sanji and Zoro would fight. Then everything would almost be back to normal, and he wouldn't have had to lie about them being asleep.
Chopper could feel the tears burning behind his eyelids, and he wished that his captain would get better and wake up so that he didn't have to be alone in the dark, empty cellblock. He didn't want to cry, but the tears came anyway, first in silent sobs but he was soon on the verge of crying out loud. As the tears trickled down his cheeks, everything he was feeling and worrying about seemed to become more distant and less painful.
After a few minutes, he had calmed down a bit and wiped his nose on his sleeve again. He felt a bit ashamed that he had been standing there, crying his eyes out like a baby when he really should have been checking how his captain was doing.
He was jerked back to reality by a faint moaning coming from the other side of the cage. Flinching, the reindeer hesitated for a moment before he scurried over to the plank bed where Luffy was tossing and turning under his blanket.
"Oh no!" Chopper squeaked, putting a hoof on Luffy's forehead to check his temperature, even though the captain's pained facial expression and the increased flush in his cheeks told him exactly what the temperature did. The fever was rising quickly again, in spite of the medicine.
Chopper suddenly felt completely cold, as if the temperature had dropped with more than ten degrees, and he glanced towards the table where the dried herbs still lay in small, neat piles. What if he had put the wrong herbs in the medicine? One of the first things Doctorine had taught him was that if he was to put only one herb or ingredient of the wrong kind in the medicine, it could be lethal to the patient.
He could feel the panic creeping up on him. What if he just had made the same mistake Doctor Hilruk had made so many times in his life? He didn't know what to do; he felt so small and scared, like an animal in a cage. A part of his panicked mind reminded him a moment later that he was an animal and that he was in a cage. This made him laugh a little, but the laughter was false and echoed hollowly between the walls, so he stopped.
Looking at Luffy with fear in his round eyes, Chopper felt that he was afraid. Afraid that he was responsible for the fever rising again, afraid that the Marines would come back and take Luffy or both of them away… But most of all, he was afraid that the captain could die before they got out from the cell - if they ever got out in the first place.
He could feel the tears welling up again, but this time, he fought them and hurried to pick up the thin white towel that had fallen to the floor and tried to cool Luffy's brow to ease his pain. Chopper didn't dare to mix any more medicine, as he didn't know if there were more herbs on that table that wasn't supposed to be in the medicine.
"Damn it, Luffy," he heard himself mutter as he tried to keep Luffy from moving around too much. "You're not going to die! Not in a cold dump of a Marine base and definitely not like this!"
Chapter three is done. This is my first real fan fiction, and I'm having the time of my life D
Umi – You know, I was actually worried about the crew myself X3 so you're not the only one. There's going to be more chapters coming, and I hope that I can keep them all in character.
