Author's Note: Hello all of our faithful readers! That is, all of you who are actually still reading this. Couldn't be that many considering the wait I've put you through. Yes, me; NOT Kieri. She's done nothing but help, and is the reason this chapter could be posted tonight! But really, if you want anyone to blame, blame my computer. It went and denied me access to my word processor for a month. So even if I had wanted to write for you wonderful people, I couldn't have.

On top of that, I actually finished this chapter about three months ago, but it was total crap—as Kieri helped me see—because I wanted to get it posted so bad I just rushed through it. This is a second draft. Hope you all like it!

Now, enough about me! Please enjoy the fifth chapter of Nightmare, from the Companion's Series!

PS: Neither Kieri nor I own ANYTHING belonging to Oda-sama. Nope. Nothing. Unless she went and stole something without telling me….

Chapter Five

Despite the navigator's assurance that he would not find what he was looking for, Zeff ordered a search of the Going Merry. What the cooks found only managed to confuse and disturb them more than they already were.

The rotting remains of a beautiful fish—known to all of the cooks as a rare Elephant Tuna, as it was a dream of many cooks to prepare such a delicacy—were discovered half-stuffed into an icebox in the hull. The ice had since melted, and the fish was spoiled.

"Sanji would never let something like this happen!" the cooks protested to Zeff. "How could he have gotten ahold of such a treasure and let it go to waste?"

"Sanji isn't himself at the moment," Zeff growled, glaring out of the porthole in the kitchen door at the table that had been set up for the four pirates. "Or hadn't you noticed?"

The cooks closest to Zeff flinched.

"What's wrong with him, Zeff?" Carne asked.

Zeff continued to stare out the porthole. He could only see Sanji at a profile, and his hair was in the way, so he couldn't see his face, but he knew it probably matched the faces of his crewmates. They were all grim and drawn, as if they'd gone a long time without sleep.

"I don't know," Zeff said. "But I am going to find out."

Zeff stalked out to the table, ignoring the wary looks of the few customers who had chosen to stay and attempt—as the rest had not—to ignore the aura of utter despair and despondency that emanated from the table at which sat the four pirates. He took a seat across from Nami and next to Sanji; it was as far as he could get from the long-nosed liar, whose tears were drenching the tablecloth. At least he had been crying long enough that his voice had given out; Zeff didn't think his remaining customers would have been able to stand the painful sounds that resembled that of a badly played clarinet. The long-nose in question simply stared dejectedly at his place at the table with sunken eyes.

Zeff eyed each of the pirates in turn, trying to discern which he could get the most information from. He immediately ruled out the liar, followed at a close second by the swordsman. The green-haired man hadn't made a sound since they'd found him, and Zeff didn't expect him to say anything now. In any case, he looked distracted by something he had in his hands under the table.

That left Sanji and the girl. Zeff eyed the orange-haired navigator for a moment—she at least wasn't entirely unresponsive to the food that had been placed in front of the entire crew in an attempt to remedy the malnourishment they were clearly suffering from. But the movements that brought her fork to her mouth seemed eerily mechanical. She didn't taste it. Zeff was pretty sure they could have been feeding her sand and she wouldn't be able to tell. At last Zeff looked over at Sanji. Like the others, the blonde wouldn't meet his eyes, and seemed completely enveloped in his own thoughts.

Zeff was getting tired of this.

"What's going on here?" he grumbled. There was no response.

"Something isn't right," Zeff went on. "And I want to know what it is."

Again, no response.

"Where is that kid who ate so much?"

That got something—a visible ripple went through the group, making Sanji and Nami jump a little. The swordsman may have blinked, but Zeff wasn't sure. He was much too distracted by the renewed bawling of the long-nosed liar at the other end of the table.

So that was it. The rubber boy. Something had happened.

Zeff had decided that the time wasn't right to press questions on the pirates, and so left them alone after that. It wasn't long before Sanji found him on the decks of the Baratie. Zeff had been watching the sun set. The sound of metal and a familiar flash made him turn. Sanji was lighting a cigarette.

At least something's back to normal, Zeff thought with a little relief.

"I'm sorry," Sanji said.

"What for?" Zeff asked.

Sanji took a drag from the cigarette and blew out a long wisp of smoke. He took another clean breath in and Zeff thought he was going to reply. When he didn't, Zeff spoke instead.

"You don't have to say it if you don't want to."

There was another pause. Sanji took another drag off of his cigarette and let it out. Then he took a look at the cigarette, as if he was really seeing it. He watched as the tiny wave of fire crept up the cylinder. Ash dropped off the end and landed on the deck. Sanji put the cigarette between his fingers and flicked it out onto the water, then kicked the ash off of the deck with a casual swipe of his foot.

He didn't say anything.

By the time the crew of the Going Merry announced that they would be shipping out, most of the crew had made their assumptions about the absence of the rubber boy, but no one had the courage to actually ask the crew, and the crew made no attempts to confirm or deny anything. The result was an awkward silence as some of the cooks who had volunteered to help loaded supplies onto the boat. Usopp and Sanji worked hard enough so that little speech was expected of them, but the navigator and the swordsman were being constantly fixed with curious stares as the cooks passed with crates and barrels. Nami seemed to be able to ignore them for the most part, but every once in a while she would glance up and meet the gaze of one of the cooks. They would see the hardness of her gaze—the emptiness of it—and all thoughts of asking her would vanish. With Zoro, there was no such chance; someone said that he had climbed up to the crow's nest that morning while everyone was preparing to leave, but no one had the desire to climb up and check.

From the docks, Nami oversaw the supplies and kept her nose to the wind. Even in the depths of her mourning, she could not ignore her strong sense of the weather; especially when she still had to get everyone safely through it. They had a nice headwind that would carry them swiftly to Usopp's home in Syrup, and she knew they would encounter no difficulties on the way. There was no hint of a storm, but there was still a weight in the air—something not quite threatening, but eminent, nonetheless.

"That's the last of it," Carne trumped off of the boat, dusting his hands, with the other cooks at his heals. "Do you need anything else?"

"We don't have far to go," Nami said. "I'm sure that's more than enough. Thank you, Carne."

"No problem, Miss Navigator."

Then a silence fell between the two. The longer Carne stood there, the thicker the air seemed to get with his unasked question. Nami knew what he wanted to know. Knew what he—what all the members of the Baratie—deserved to know. But she didn't have the heart—no, the strength—to answer it. Before he had the chance to speak, Nami wove her way around him and over to one of the lines that held the Merry to the Baratie and began untying it. She wasn't halfway through before another pair of hands entered her range of vision to take the rope from her shaking fingers.

Nami looked up into Sanji's face, still half-shaded by that lock of blonde hair. His one eye looked right at her, and at first she couldn't tell his expression. His exhaustion was, of course, most apparent, but there were different shadows that graced his features as well. It was a somberness that she had very rarely seen in the cook, and it only made the whole world more painful. She had to bite her tongue to keep a sob from leaking out.

Sanji could see the stubborn gleam in Nami's tired eyes and it hurt him and elated him at the same time. There was a strength about Nami that would never be phased—not even by this. It was that strength that made him love her as much as he did. But it was that strength that would break her someday. She would keep taking in and taking in and never letting go; never sharing her burden with anyone else because she would feel that she had the strength to hold it on her own, only coming close to admitting that she couldn't when she was all alone.

Sanji couldn't bear the thought of Nami alone.

He knelt swiftly, taking the casting line from Nami's hands and catching them between his own.

"Nami-san," he gushed. "Will you stay here with me so that neither of us are alone ever again?"

Nami was stunned into silence. The swift and almost comical return of Sanji's old antics was not quite unwelcome, but certainly unexpected. She couldn't help the small smile that graced her lips as she finally let go of the breath she'd been holding. For a few moments, she held Sanji's eyes with her own. She knew that, despite his uncouth antics, the cook's request was serious. And it was with as much surety that she knew what her answer had to be.

Slowly, very slowly, Nami bowed and shook her head.

Sanji's lovesick grin faded a bit, but he didn't let the light in his eyes die—he would hold onto that for her, no matter what. He wouldn't let her see all of his disappointment; the deep-seeded knowledge that he himself still had trouble coming to terms with.

"I'm sorry, Sanji," Nami said. "But we have to go home."

Sanji forced another grin and nodded.

"Home," he agreed, then stood and offered her a hand to her feet.

It wasn't long afterwards that the three pirates had taken their places aboard the Going Merry—Usopp surprised everyone, coward that he was, by climbing up to the crow's nest to make sure Zoro was there—and were pulling away from the floating restaurant.

"Good bye!" called the crew of the Baratie. "Come back any time!"

Nami and Usopp waved from the deck, their smiles forced, but their well-wishes for the pirate cooks heartfelt.

"Thank you!"

When the Merry was halfway to the horizon, Sanji let his hand fall. A few moments later, his hand ducked into a pocked and pulled out a cigarette and lighter. Taking this as a subtle dismissal, the crew of the Baratie filed off of the dock and back into the kitchens. Sanji had gotten over halfway through the cigarette when Zeff spoke up.

"You handled that pretty well."

When Sanji looked over, Zeff quickly averted his gaze, as if he had been caught doing something he wasn't supposed to.

"Usually when a girl rejects you, you go all to pieces," he added quickly, trying to rectify himself.

Sanji grinned around the ashen cylinder in his mouth and turned back to the horizon. He took a drag and let the smoke out in a long, slow breath.

"I never had her to begin with."