Chapter 1: Nami
It is a five day sea-train ride to get to the Water 7 the city that three members of his pirate family now call home. Nami has a comfortable chateau, and a painfully profitable position as Minister of Trade in that end of the Grand Line. And while Zoro is fairly certain that Nami would insist that Sanji have some kind of personal living space, he probably spends most of his time either cooking or fawning over her. As for the cyborg, the swordsman hadn't heard much in the way of news, but it wouldn't be too difficult to track him down. Irritating fights and bursts of emotions aside, the swordsman thinks it best to go to someone with a practical mind and two x chromosomes.
So Nami is the obvious first choice. And when her smug secretary informs him that Nami's schedule is fully booked for the next twelve days, Zoro is surprisingly pleased to see the expression wiped from her face when he drops his name.
The woman in the bun and pin-striped suit pulls out a mini Denden-mushi and the call goes through. After a minute of frantic whispers, she escorts him through the minister's maze of a house and waves him past a small door, all smiles.
The walls of this room are covered from floor to ceiling in neatly pinned sheets of paper. The northwest corner is covered in maps, the southeast in figures, charts and graphs of expenses, trade agreements and current global news. A plush leather seat is turned towards the sun. It swivels, and Nami comes into view.
Zoro is shocked to see the worry lines that now crease her face. Her shoulders are tight, and her expression tighter. It loosens, a bit, when she sees him. "I had Shari escort you. I was worried you'd get lost." A teasing ghost of a smile wafts across her face.
He snorts. "Anyone would get lost. How can you live like this?"
The once-navigator stretches, cat-like over her desk. "It has its perks." She looks over at him, and his little boy-bundle. "Is that--?" The question hangs in the air.
Nami studies Zoro's face as the comfortable ease slides off it with alarming speed. When the swordsman doesn't respond, she follows up with a too-quick reply to an unasked question. "I heard from Nee-san once you left her island."
Following a sniffle and a sneeze, a thin cry bursts out of tiny lungs. Loosening the ties on his back, the swordsman turned impromptu father pulls the baby out from his little makeshift baby backpack. Holding his small body up against his own muscled shoulder, he pats the child's back hesitantly. "Hora, hora." The wails persist.
Nami lets out a polite cough. "In my experience, they only burp after feeding, so that probably won't do anything." When the frustrated outburst she expects doesn't come, she looks a bit perturbed.
Zoro only sighs, expertly spinning a bottle of milk around before he pops it into the baby's mouth. The sounds of cheerful suckling fills the room. "You'd think I'd figure something like that out after a week and a half," Zoro says with a wry bark of a laugh.
She looks more worried than amused. "What are you going to do with him? Her?"
"Him. And -- I'm not sure. That woman wouldn't give me a straight answer when I asked, so--"
"So you came to me instead?" Nami is flattered, and a bit embarassed by his reply. "I'm not exactly known for my maternal instincts." She absently buffs her fingers against the fabric of her suit before blowing on them, when a familiar sparkle enters her eyes. "Also, I'll charge 200% markup with 30% interest on everything you don't immediately pay off on top for consulting fees."
Zoro coughs and splutters as he attempts to find an appropriate expletive that doesn't rhyme with witch. He does his best not to drop the child in his arms. When Nami reaches out for him, the swordsman passes the baby to her wordlessly, heart in his throat.
"But I suppose that my maternal instincts are better than whatever's available in your meager parental skill set," Nami says, thoughtful, as she takes a better look at the boy. A thin line of milky white drool dribbles down his mouth, and onto his chin. Nami catches it with a glossy fingernail, and wipes it away, face surprisingly tender. She turns on her expensive 20,000 beli designer heels and glares at him. "Really, what were you thinking? Were you thinking? This is another living being, you know!"
He can feel, in the distance, the growing tidal wave of his anger approach the shore of his consciousness.
"Don't you glare at me, Zoro!" The shrill screech is accompanied by her usual pointy teeth and fists of fury, and Zoro finds himself sporting three sizable lumps on his head. In the confusion, the bottle pops out of the baby's mouth and rolls across the floor. Outwardly calm, Zoro stares at the boy with eyes that are marginally wider than they are accustomed to, and only starts to breathe again when the baby's eyes close as his mouth makes a small o of a yawn. Nami doesn't notice. She turns to the window again and asks the question she's been dying to voice since she first heard him walk into her office. "Where did you get him anyway? And when are you going to introduce me to his mother?"
Zoro chokes on his spit. It is a sensation that is getting entirely too familar to him. "She didn't--"
"No, just that you'd be bringing him." Her face pales. His negative response sets off a chain reaction of horrible hypothetical situations in her mind. "You haven't--" He waits for her to finish her sentence, expression grim.
"You haven't kidnapped him, have you?" Fury rises, and falls, and when she turns again to face him, her eyes are infernos of indignant rage -- promptly extinguished and followed by a calm, self-reassuring, "No, you're far too stupid for that." She begins to wave her arms around as her mind panics further "...Oh my God, is he actually -- is his mother a prostitute? Roronoa Zoro, I told you time and time again that drinking that much alcohol would --"
"EH???" His mind reminds him to swallow first, breathe out, and then speak. And he does. "I haven't kidnapped him, his mother is not a prostitute, and I do not drink too much!" That last bit was a touch on the defensive side, even to his own ears.
"Leaving your obvious signs of alcoholism aside, is he even yours?"
"He-- I--"
Nami blinks. "Where are his parents?"
It would be so easy to lie. 'I found him,' 'He was being raised by monkeys,' 'He fell from the sky,' but lies weren't exactly in his nature, and Zoro can't bring himself to reply. "I--" He closes his mouth, and pauses, hunting for the right words. "I'm responsible for him now."
He is relieved when Nami does not press the issue. "If he doesn't have any relatives to speak of, you can always try adoption. Water 7, in particular, has high-end facilities... You know, even Franky managed to find two good families." Her own faint laughter at her attempted joke sounds feeble and weak. "Plus, he's a baby, and they're always high in demand. He won't even -- I mean, at that age, I didn't even -- He could be happy."
"I'm responsible for him now."
"But Zoro, do you even have a set income? I mean, for God's sake, your bounty hasn't cleared -- If I didn't put the fear of God into Shari, she would've rung the World Government the second you said your name. And how are you going to feed him, or keep him clothed, and do you even know how to change a diaper? What if he's colicky, or sick? Medication is expensive. Hell, CHILDREN are expensive--" She pauses a moment, as old numbers crunch in her head. "And YOU still owe me thirty million belli!"
He cuts her off with a sudden wordless motion, and he pulls the baby from her arms. She is too alarmed to react, let alone respond. Rocking the boy in his muscled left arm, he puts a callused finger to his lips. It is then that she sees the panicked look in his eyes. "You shouldn't wake him. He's got the lungs the size of a Cow Sea King."
The pair watch his tiny body rise and fall with each teeny, tiny breath. Zoro counts thirty before he allows himself to relax.
The swordsman's breath of release is cut short by the sound of the door behind him slamming open. "NAMI-SWAAAAAAN, Shari-chan told me there is a dangerous individual skulking about, and so your WHITE KNIGHT HAS COME TO SAVE YOUUUUU." An all-too familiar blonde pirouettes into the room, accompanied by a constant rainfall of pink and red hearts.
A network of veins on Zoro's forehead and throat, which he half-affectionately named his Sanji alarm system, begins to throb and pulse with startling ferocity. And then the wail erupts.
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AN: Whew. My first chapter fic on ffnet! :D /glee.
Well, to be honest, I'm not too happy with this, since I'm not quite sure where it's going. Or even if I'll like where it's going, but-- meh. We'll see. :)