From The Sea - Dive rgence

by SugarFeather

A young, dreamless girl closes her eyes in the Mediterranean Sea, and opens them in the middle of East Blue. (How do you go on, when everything you have ever known and loved is gone, and everything left to love should be a paper-thin lie?) [cross-posted on AO3]

18. Sinking

Lol guess what guys I discovered that we actually have two kukris in my home. This is Fate, I tell you.

…

I shall henceforth be remembered as The Great One Who Somehow Managed To Write A Longer Chapter For Little Garden Than For Arlong Park.

Or The Great One for short.

(Fair warning, my ego also seems to have grown along with the size of said chapter.

Further experiments shall be conducted at a later date to determine more precisely the element of causation leading to this most curious phenomena.

But fear not.

After being knocked around by door frames every time I enter or exit a given place, The Great One's ego shall eventually be brought down to its usual level.)

I swear on everything that is true and good -like chocolate- that I'm not drunk.

Or high (except maybe on the excitement for my own story).

Or both.

For real.

Trigger warning: Heavy angst, as in tear-jerking material, get a box of tissues (and no I'm not paying for it, or for your ruined makeup) type of angst, mention of suicide, and spoilers on Sanji's past (though not too explicit, I think).

Disclaimer: I do not own One Piece, so anything that you see in this fic and that you can recognise as belonging to One Piece is not mine. If I did own it, I wouldn't have to write fanfiction. Duh. Also, I don't own the picture.

---

Part One - Dive|rgence

SEVENTEEN

She has three kinds of silence

There's the silence around her head

light and quick like the wind with the thoughts that fly inside her eyes

There's the silence that turns her eyes towards the sky

where the sun puts light into them

and the idle music of her daydreams reflect the clouds

Then there's the silence around her heart

the one that makes everything in her sluggish and slouched and tired

(silent)

the one that is tinted red like blood and dried-out eyes

It's the one he wishes she didn't let swell within her until she's

bursting with it

Because it puts life in her too

but it's not the kind of life he wishes for her

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

When everyone gathers for dinner in the kitchen, there's a bit more colour on the cheeks of Alabasta's Princess, and a warm blanket wrapped around her.

Still, she looks like a little girl who lost the hand that was guiding her through the crowd.

Elynna watches her quietly, huddled against a wall as she eats wordlessly, careless of the conversation flowing around her and Luffy's hand in her plate.

She wonders if any of them looked like that when they realised that she wasn't there anymore.

(She paradoxically wishes it's the case and that it's not

It's two different kinds of pain

then there's the pain of thinking that maybe her entire existence was wiped from their minds, and she's the only one left with the memories that have been ghosting in and out of her dreams during the night, like rays of sunlight that she can never quite look at

then there's the pain of thinking that maybe another soul replaced hers in the body of browns, the body that she doesn't see painted over her face when she looks in a mirror anymore

and then there's-)

She wonders if she looked like that, too, when she opened her eyes in the middle of a sea that she wasn't supposed to ever be in, everything (-everyone-) she knew ripped away.

(leaving her two-thirds of a person

a two-dimensional, paper-thin being with a hole in its chest and salty water to fill it

and not enough consciousness to do anything other than drown in the fear that compressed her stomach into a tiny, painful ball, dropping through her body and into her feet

-her feet that wavered over the edge-)

Her lips quirk up in faint, disillusioned amusement as she remembers how, despite the fact that she always preferred to read and daydream by herself without having to sustain a conversation with anyone, she always clutched so, so fearfully at her mother's handbag whenever they entered a crowded place (her mother who would look back to smile at her and make sure that she's still here -or glare at her exasperatedly when she inadvertently kicked her heels while walking).

How, even when she grew up, she would never stray far from her schoolmates or her family when left to explore on her own, too afraid to lose her way and be unable to meet up with them.

Too afraid that she isn't worth looking for in case it happens.

It's quite funny, really.

She keeps saying that she doesn't like people, keeps standing on the sidelines, waiting for someone to reach out so that she doesn't have to risk offering herself and being rejected, when really she needs people who love her so badly it might just be downright unhealthy.

Perhaps she knows that she doesn't have what it takes to keep going on her own, to live without people who want her around, who give her help and warmth when she has enough of living in her own mind.

(She doesn't particularly want to be alive

and mostly she thinks that existing is a pretty pointless endeavour

But she doesn't particularly want to die either

And when she remembers the proud praises of her parents when she managed to be accepted into that school she never went to

when she remembers the rare moments her sister respected her enough to knock at her door and spill all her frustrations and doubts to her

when she remembers how her best friend squealed every time she got a gift from her, washing away all the doubts that threaded themselves through her mind like flexible needles about whether or not she did a passable job at being a friend

when she remembers her ex-boyfriend roping her into training for his salsa choreographies, the way his chest vibrated against hers when she slumped into him at the end of it and made them both fall on his bed, how his hands would settle in the supple skin of her waist, just over the bruises of the previous night, never letting go throughout the entirety of their nap

when she remembers Rain's laughter in her ears, and sitting next to Hawk as they wrote another story for their Captain, and Hermes allowing her to help out in the kitchen and clean everything with her fingers, and the memory of Fang's hands correcting her stance guiding her through every battle, and Sea King's hugs-

She thinks that she'd like to live just a little bit more to touch more of those moments that make life taste like something

And if she can make those people just a tiny bit more happy than they would be without her,

then it might be enough to turn her existence into a positive thing)

She nonchalantly reaches for another forkful of food, and blinks when a yelp answers her gesture, dragging her mind back to the world it is anchored in.

She looks down to see that she almost stabbed Luffy's hand.

"Annnnnn!" He whines, snatching his hand back to his chest and inspecting it like he's still not quite sure it made it out safe. "That was mean!"

"I told you you could take a bit of my food. Not that you could leave me with nothing to eat but water." She deadpans in return.

The rubber boy pouts, opening his mouth to protest, only to let out a yelp as he suddenly bends down to rub at his feet.

"Do you want the rest of my share, Elynna-san?" Sanji offers with a smile.

"It's fine. I have enough with what's left on my plate."

She doesn't want Sanji's cooking to go to waste on her, because it's not like she can really taste what's in her mouth when her taste buds are already assaulted by the taste of the lemon tart her father used to make with her and her sister's help.

(and the bitter saltiness of the tears that tell her she will never taste it again-)

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

Even with all the antics of the strange pirates who took her in, Vivi can't quite manage to distract herself enough to squeeze more than a few forkfuls of food past the tightness in her throat.

Still, she makes sure to voice out a faint 'thank you' to the blond cook before letting herself be dragged away by Nami.

The navigator leads her to what she remembers to be the girls' cabin, and when they enter they find the crew's First Mate straightening the covers of one of the two beds.

"You can sleep here while you stay with us. Lynna changed the bedding." Nami explains with a wave of her hand towards the bed next to the one her crewmate is now sitting on, head tilted and dark eyes watching Vivi unblikingly.

(Her eyes are too big and too dark in her face

and with the white of her skin as pale as the white of her eyes

they look like shadowed holes trying to eat her up, calling to the darkness in Vivi's mind she is struggling not to listen to every second of every day

She wonders if her soul has been tainted as dark as those eyes with all the sins she committed to save her people)

Vivi looks away, unnerved.

Her eyes fall on the remaining bed, and she frowns.

"But then one of you won't have a bed!" She protests. "I'm already imposing on you all, you don't have to do that. I can just sleep on the floor if you give me a few blankets."

The very idea of stealing yet another thing that she doesn't deserve only makes the smell of burning wood still stuck in her nose stronger (-and is it just her or is there also the hissing stench of sizzling flesh?-), only makes her more sick with the idea that she has failed all of Igaram's efforts to make a good Princess out of her.

Nami frowns at her, as if she can sense the acidic bile surging up Vivi's throat to pool into her mouth, and waves her protests away imperiously.

"It's fine, it's fine! We mostly end up sleeping on the same bed anyway."

Vivi's eyes bounce between Nami's grin at Elynna and the quiet 'yup' that pops out of the shorter girl's plump lips.

It still takes her a few seconds to piece things together -though in her defence she's pretty sure the First Mate made comments that could be considered flirting towards all the members of her crew in the space of the two days she spent with them.

She suddenly feels her cheeks heat up with the embarassed realisation, and she shuffles on her feet, unable to decide whether she should say something or bolt out of the room.

Most of the people who were close to her when she grew up were single, and she's never met a same-sex couple.

The idea leaves her unbalanced and out of her depth as her eyes flit around the cabin, because staring at them while blushing would be rude, right?

"I'm- I'm so sorry! I didn't know you were- that you were together! I'll just sleep in the kitchen, it's fine!"

There's a moment of silence as she turns away, and then hysterical giggles fill the room, startling her.

When she finally gathers the courage to look back around, the gorgeous navigator has plopped herself on the bed behind her ink-haired crewmate, leaning into her back with her arms loosely wrapped around her waist, the First Mate flipping through the pages of a notebook as if the other girl wasn't chortling against the naked skin of her shoulder left bare by the wide collar of her t-shirt.

"Wha-"

"Sorry, sorry, I just wasn't expecting you to say that." Nami cuts her off with twitching lips and sparkling eyes. "We just like cuddling, we're not together."

"Yeah, last time I checked I was dating Fang." Elynna adds without looking up from her notes, earning herself a light, lazy slap against her forearm from the taller girl.

"Stop joking, you're just going to confuse her. And if Zoro hears someone call you his girlfriend again he's going to blow a gasket and try to skewer you -again. Leave him alone for now." The navigator admonishes her slightly.

Then she grins slyly, wickedly.

"You can start again in a few days."

Elynna's smile is vague like the outline of an island behind layers of fog, amusement lining it like a faint shadow.

"Fine, fine. The world isn't ready for our love, anyway. Guess I'll just have to keep my hands to myself."

"The shame." Nami drawls with a fake gasp echoed by her friend's bland voice.

"The horror."

"The agony."

"The tragedy."

The navigator laughs again, leaning in a bit more to brush her lips against Elynna's full cheek, and Vivi shuffles nervously from one foot to the other, still feeling distinctly like what she's seeing goes beyond the boundaries of friendship.

Then again, how can she claim to know what qualifies as friendship and what doesn't?

No matter how much she gets along with the staff of the palace, they're still her subjects.

The daughters of the other Kings and Emperors she met regularly during official events often have no sway on the decisions that are mostly taken by the men of their families, and their friendship is dependent on diplomatic relations and calculated interests.

(She remembers a time where she used to run around with boys whose skin was like the desert and whose voice put blues and reds and greens in a place where everything was the colour of the sand

But being friends with them meant running through the markets while playing tag and capturing scorpions to inspect them and playing wars like only little kids ignorant of what war means can

-ignorant of the way her ears shuttered and refused to let in the world as a guard tried to explain that another group of refugees came pouring into the capital because the desert ate away another village,

ignorant of how there was too much horror for her heart to contain, so it seeped out and froze her from the inside out despite the midday heat as she watched guards rush out to prevent a palace maid from being lapidated by enraged, despairing, dying subjects,

ignorant of how many meals she puked after each assassination mission she had to carry out to rise in the ranks fast enough-

She knows better now)

"Vivi?"

She blinks, shoulders stiffening for a moment before she realises it was Nami's hands resting there, and that there was only a worried frown on her face.

(No glassy eyes telling her it'syoufaultit'syourfaultit'syourfault

-they're right-

No shining blade and smile greasy with the cruelty coating it, hungry for any chip in her defense to take her down and make her scream-)

She smiles as best as she can.

She doesn't need to burden them with more problems than she already gave them.

"Sorry-"

"Stop apologising and just take the damn bed." Nami huffs with an amused roll of her eyes.

And she pushes Vivi slightly towards the bed, beaming in satisfaction when she sees her finally sit on the mattress.

Then she stops smiling, and the words that come out of her mouth knock into Vivi's chest like a splintered piece of burning ship.

"Wanna talk?"

Vivi's mouth falls open before she can decide what she wants to do.

But nothing comes out of it.

So she closes it to try again, but it doesn't-

It just doesn't work-

(The pain is huge

like she swallowed the explosion of the man whose hand guided her during those months away from home and her father's warm but always tired smile and the brutal heat and the people she loved and the easiness of a life that allowed her to keep her morals

And yet she can't find the words to express it

can't find the words to express the loss of someone who was such a fundamental part of her being she still feels like she'll see him if she turns around, because it's just not possible for her world to exist without him

can't find the words because the pain is growing and swelling and settling everywhere like a heavy, heavy silence that she doesn't want to break,

because breaking it would mean that everything is real-)

Nami sits down on the bed next to her, and takes Vivi's hands between hers.

"He was a good guy."

Was.

Not is.

Never again.

Vivi remembers Miss All-Sunday's beautiful, cruel little smile and the beautiful, cruel flames that licked at the sea and blew to ashes a part of her heart along with yet another victim of that man, with someone she loved-

Her cheeks are already wet when the first sob is pushed out of her with enough strength to shake her whole body.

She puts her face in her hands (-because she promised herself she would be strong for him, and she's already failing, because without him she's just a weak little princess-), and cries.

Wails for everything she did but didn't want to do to get here, for the Vivi she lost on the way and who seemed so much better (but so much more stupid-).

Wails for all those who kept suffering and dying because she couldn't go fast enough, because she wasn't strong enough to take down the man who hurt them and killed them and smiled at them while doing it.

(and she can't understand how power can be worth more than the happiness of those people, why that man wants to rip power from her father's hands when he already has so much-)

Wails for the man who saved her so many times she lost count, and who died before she could even start to repay her debts, to say goodbye.

It's only when the door of the bathroom opens to let in the other female Straw Hat that Vivi realises she's clutching at Nami like the lost (helpless) little girl she is.

Elynna blinks those dark, dark eyes that seem to take everything in and let nothing out at her, and turns around to exit the cabin with a notebook in hand.

Without a word.

Suddenly, Vivi feels like every one of her tears-clogged breaths is too loud, and she shuffles away from Nami's arms.

(she hasn't been held by anyone since she left her home, and suddenly she wants nothing more than to hear her father's calm heartbeat against her temple and smell the scent of the shampoo he's been using for as long as she can remember)

"Hey."

Pitiful little sniffs escape her as she struggles to put herself together again, reaching for the pieces of Miss Wednesday's bitchy composure and dabbing frantically at her eyes that refuse to cooperate and are still shedding tears-

"Vivi." Nami calls out louder as she firmly turns her face to force her puffy eyes to meet her own. "You can keep crying if you want. Whatever you might think, Lynna didn't mean to make you feel uncomfortable about being sad."

Vivi pinches her lips together.

"I spent a lot of time crying when my adoptive mother died."

Her whole body clenches around the aching memories in her heart, but her lips loosen.

"Does it- Does it ever get better?"

The hand on her back pauses in its ministrations.

"It depends. Sometimes, I can think and talk about her like anyone else, because it feels like she's still alive and laughing in my memories, and I'm just… grateful for everything she did for me. And then there are days where I can only think about- about how she died, and everything I could've done to prevent it. But no matter what kind of day it is, I don't want to spend it all in a past I can't change -and she wouldn't want me to either. I love Bellemere-san, but I have my own life to live, and a lot of people who love me and are alive. I want to focus on that, because focusing on the past will only make me feel helpless." Her eyes come back to Vivi's from whichever memory they were focused on, and she smiles a smile that feels like a hug. "It doesn't mean I don't want to cry sometimes though."

Vivi sniffles again, and falls back into Nami's arms, hoping that one day she'll be able to be mature enough (that the pain will have feasted on enough of her tears) to be there for someone else like this.

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

Elynna sheds her clothes until only her swimming suit is left, and leaves them on the deck before she gathers the rope system Usopp created, and dives into the sea.

It's the Grand Line, so she takes care not to swim too far from the Merry.

She swims slowly, trying to summon every piece of advice her best friend ever gave her on her swimming technique when Elynna would join her for her training sessions and tattoo them in the bones of this body.

(This body in which she's stuck

Because it's time she stops thinking that she was undoubtedly brought here from another world by someone for something simply because it's easier to accept that there was a reason for what happened to her

that she can be brought back if she does whatever she's supposed to do

no one needs her that badly

Because it's time she swallows the truth rather than gulp down stupid, honeyed dreams to forget the choking ache,

no matter the fact that accepting means letting go of the insubstantial hand she has been holding onto so foolishly

She absolutely hates doing anything foolish

when the only thing she has been consistently praised for in her life is being smarter than average

She has other hands to hold onto here, so it's fine, damnit)

She sighs in the form of air bubbles, before stopping and turning on her back, letting the rope around her guide her drifting form.

She frowns up at the sky, hoping that she didn't make things awkward for the Princess.

It seems that the experience she gained in comforting Nami or Usopp is only valid for them, because seeing their temporary companion's tears made her feel just as awkward and uncomfortable as any other strong display of emotion, unbalanced like someone put her on top of a high, tiny platform and is forcing her to look down.

She knows that talking to Usopp about all the times she thought she was going to fail (die) during a fight -and how the number of times dwindled over the weeks- helps with the self-deprecation that plays hide and seek in his voice every time he launches into a grand tale of his imaginary exploits.

She knows (thanks every deity she can think of) that Nami likes her hug-and-blunt-opinions approach.

But what is she supposed to say to anyone else?

Sorry?

What good does it do when she has nothing to do with their pain and can't even claim to understand it?

(She understands too well Vivi's pain now

and wishes that she was clueless)

Saying blunt words feels like kicking someone who is already down and might just jump for her neck in retaliation.

Sorry or silence sound like the safest options.

She clenched her teeth in frustration, and then forced her body to relax and sink into the bed.

Then she gave a tentative tug at the thin blanket for the second time, and was rewarded by her little sister's absolute refusal to give away any more inch of the fabric.

There was no one to tell her off within the darkness of the room, so she allowed herself to roll her eyes for all she was worth, and let go of the blanket.

She really didn't feel like wasting the time she could spend sleeping or thinking about more important things on this-

(A few years before, when she had been young enough that her memories of who she was were blurry and not completely credible, she would have initiated some kind of silent fight for ownership of a reasonable part of the blanket

but even then she was pretty sure her sister had been more headstrong and ambitious than her, and in the end she would have given up the blanket to that little shit all the same

Now though, she doesn't even have the energy to so much as consider fighting a fight already lost, when even hurdles she's almost guaranteed to overcome make her want to do nothing more than hide under her blanket and sleep-)

Her sister gave another harsh tug, and she suddenly found herself exposed to the night air down to her mid-thighs.

This was why she disliked sleeping in a hotel with her family. She always ended up sleeping in the same bed as her sister.

Well, it was summer.

The chill breezing over her skin would settle soon enough if she curled in on herself for a few minutes.

But she could feel the mattress trembling under her body with her sister's silent laughter.

And in that moment the frustration fell on top of all the leftover stress and exhaustion of the school year, during which she put herself through the ringer (more than she needed to, like the anxious mess of low self-esteem she was, she knew, but she couldn't-) trying to juggle getting the best grades she could for her high-school degree, getting her driving license, and sitting the national exam for one of the country's most prestigious schools with less than a ten percent passing rate.

And in that moment she kind of wanted to cry.

Instead, she sighed, and made it extra loud, because keeping her voice polite but her voice loud enough to alert her parents had always been her technique when she had enough of dealing with a kid who wouldn't take 'no' for an answer, be reasonable and leave her the fuck alone.

Except it appeared that at the moment her parents didn't really give a damn about their daughters fighting as long as they had silence, so they snapped at her instead.

The mattress trembled under her ribs again.

Oh well. It couldn't always work out in her favour. Or maybe it would have if she had pushed a bit more, but she didn't want them still being annoyed in the morning.

She curled in on herself, and tried to focus on forgetting where she was to force her frustration into fizzling out so as to let sleep in.

"Ann."

The sob shudders out of her rattling chest like a silent sigh.

Because her Captain's voice sounds more tangible than the heat radiating from her little sister's body and warming up the goosebumps on her skin.

And it hurts.

(She wants to thank him for breaking the illusion

because it's unhealthy

and dangling a dream just out of her reach is more painful than slamming the reality of things into her face

But she wants to punch him too

because she would go along with her sister's whims without protest and try her best to not put anything else than a smile on her parents' faces if it could mean seeing them for just a few minutes

because she wanted to dream just a little bit longer-)

"Ann, stop sleeping and come here."

She cracks one eye open.

Yep, he's pouting.

Slowly, achingly, she tears herself out of the well of memories she was trying to drown in, and climbs back along the hull to join Luffy on the deck.

She barely has the time to sit down before he lets himself flop backwards, careless of her drenched skin as he burrows himself in the pillow of her plushy but muscled thighs with a satisfied grin.

She blinks slowly to chase away the memory of herself doing the same with her best friend, and sinks her fingers into the black softness of his hair to keep herself grounded.

(If her grip is a bit tighter than usual, he says nothing.)

They stay like this for a few minutes, until Luffy seems to remember that he's actually here for something else, and his grin morphs into a scowl as he reaches up to poke her in the forehead.

"What was that for?"

"For doing stupid things when you're supposed to be the smart one."

And just like that, everything seems to freeze inside of her, as if all her energy is being rerouted to her brain as she scrambles to find the moment where she failed, where she let him and everyone else down, where she let her lie be exposed for the world to see, see that she has no business being among people this strong and this great-

"I… I'm sorry." She whispers through the chattering of her teeth and the drops of sea water that fall from her face and onto his like tears.

(The faint, frantic clicking of her teeth comes less from the cold water of her impromptu bath and more from the terror that is clawing away at her stomach and strangling her lungs

so cold it's burning as she awaits the verdict, the punishment

no one needs a dead weight who can't even do their job right on the Grand Line

Especially not the future King of Pirates)

Apologising is worth even less when she doesn't know what she's apologising for.

But he has to know how sorry she is.

For not being enough.

For taking so much and yet being unable to repay even half of it, no matter how much she tries-

"So why did you come between Zoro and me?"

Her mind stops so abruptly and her lungs are freed so suddenly that she slouches forwards violently in relief.

It's just that.

She can explain that.

It's okay.

Everything is okay.

"I just thought that you needed a shock to stop trying to kill each other."

Besides, she knew that they were going to stop in time.

She wouldn't trust her family or her friends to know their strength or control their body so well, but she knows, better and deeper than anyone else, how much this world's bodies are different from those of the world she was born in, especially for people like Zoro and Luffy.

And if the hesitation she would normally feel at putting herself in harm's way like this was dulled into the same grey as her apathetic grief to the point that she couldn't recognise it at the time, then he doesn't need to know it, because she still calculated the risks, so it's fine, right?

(In fact, her mind was even more in control, so wasn't it better?)

But her Captain frowns harder instead of laughing, and her fingers tremble in his hair as her stomach clenches again, because she doesn't understand-

"We could've hurt you!"

"But you didn't. And you were about to hurt each other."

She might just be a sidekick in this storyline, but main characters can't have a monopoly on painful moments.

She doesn't want them to.

Because she cares.

And even if this is all a dream, even if she's ruining her mind and her heart with every moment she spends laughing with them and hugging them and teasing them and getting so annoyed at their antics she wants to slam her head against the table, they're not characters anymore.

Not to her.

"I don't care!" Luffy pouts furiously with a flick of his fingers against her forehead. "Next time, just throw a stone at us or ask Nami to hit us, but don't do this again!"

She winces.

She shouldn't have accepted to be his First Mate.

She knew she was going to make mistakes, knew she could never keep up with Zoro's natural disposition for it, knew she would hate having so much responsibility piled onto her sowhatwasshethinking-

"I can step down, if you want." She offers hurriedly, because if she makes amends fast enough, maybe he'll forgive her- "Or I can leave."

Luffy just stares at her.

So she goes on, while the pain and the panic still leave her with enough breath to speak.

"I mean, I know that I don't bring much to the crew, so if you'd prefer Zoro to assist you-"

She doesn't know how, but somehow she finds herself lying on her back with Luffy straddling her hips as he reaches out to grab her collar, dragging her up so fast their foreheads slam against each other.

Even through the black and white dots in her eyes, he looks furious.

"Don't you dare say that again! I'll hit you!" He shouts, startling her so bad that her forehead knocks into his again.

No one has ever screamed at her like that.

Usually saying sorry and doing her best to keep her useless self out of the person's sight for at least a few hours is enough to defuse the tension and avoid an outright conflict.

She just wanted him not to get too angry at her, because what is she good for if she can't even keep those she loves happy?

But she just made him more angry, and she doesn't know why or how or where she did something wrong-

"I don't- I don't understand-"

"Do you want to leave?!" Luffy asks fiercely, and his voice is lower than before, but there's so much tension it somehow seems louder instead.

He shakes her, hard, making the answer gasp out of her when she takes too much time to reply.

"No!"

Of course she doesn't want to leave.

But before, when she just liked them and was hoping to be able to go back (because she was so, so stupid-), she could bear with her selfishness and impose on them and drag them down.

How can she still do that when she loves them and her brain has finally gotten through her stupid, foolish little heart that hoping would just make her suffer more?

She knows they like her, because if they didn't they would have never allowed her to stay by their side for so long.

But they have no reason to love her the way she loves them.

She's weak and slow, has nothing in terms of intelligence that other members don't have, has no particular ambition or skill to help them, and even when she jokes she manages to be a bitch about it.

She's just...

Not like them.

Not made to be a main character, not likeable enough to be one (let alone loveable).

It's a miracle they already let her so close, and she can be satisfied with it.

(She can learn to

Even if every memory will be yet another fracture in the armour that enables her not to care about how she never has enough to be a full person like them

Even if she doesn't have a home to go back to like the others

Even if she doesn't think she'll be able to start loving from scratch for the third time,

that she might just

break-)

"Well no one wants you to leave!"

He lets her collar go, but she doesn't even feel it when her back hits the deck.

He stares down at her with a scowl, so hard it looks sculpted into his face by his anger, with the lights and shadows of the moon and the clouds that play on his face.

She blinks back.

And blinks again.

But Luffy's voice still loops through her ears, and it just sounds so real.

But he's not the type of person who lies to comfort people, so why is he-

"Sanji is still waiting to know your favourite dish because you're the only one who didn't tell him, and Usopp said that he and Nami and you formed a club, and Nami always says that she would go crazy and kill us if you weren't there! Zoro is way too lazy to be my First Mate, he doesn't want to do it, and I'm the Captain anyway so I'm the one who decides who gets to leave, and I don't want you to, because you're the best First Mate ever and a nicer doctor than the one from Nami's village and you're funny and your hugs are great and Usopp said you're gonna become even more cool than you already are and it would suck without you, so I can't become the King of Pirates if you or the others leave! Besides, Zoro said you're a dog, and Makino always says that dogs are the most loyal animals, so you can't want to leave either! Got it?"

She thinks she nods, but she's not quite sure because her brain is too busy processing what the hell kind of argument is this and the fact that he just gave her a reason not to care that she has nowhere to go back to, because-

"So don't put yourself in danger like that to stop a fight next time!"

Because she doesn't need to leave.

Because they don't want her to leave.

(because they

love

her?)

"And promise you won't leave!"

Oh.

She does.

And reaches up to bring his face into the crook of his neck, because she can never stop herself from crying when people are looking at her.

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

Luffy indulges her, and when she hugs him harder and louder than the thank you she manages to cram past her teeth without sounding too wobbly, he slips his own arms around her shoulders and under her neck, and squeezes back just as hard.

(He still has a lot of work to do, because his dummy of a First Mate still thinks that she's not supposed to cry in front of him

which is even dumber with how smart she is

-Ace had an excuse since he's just as dumb as Luffy is-

But at least she's not fleeing inside her own mind like she was during dinner, her own silence so thick and loud around her it made her deaf to him and the others and blind to all the things she noticed usually

And at least she's using him as a weight to pressure the tears into place

instead of crossing her arms to keep everything inside and everyone outside like his big brother -the dumb one- did

or used to do, which means that there's still hope for her since she's smarter than him and Ace put together

Sometimes, he wonders what things would've been like if Ann grew up with them

who she would've gotten along with best between Sabo and Ace, because she's so much like them and so different all at once

if Ace would've started smiling instead of just smirking earlier, would've already started offering hugs instead of just receiving them

if she would still look at the ocean as if it stole something from her that Luffy can't give her back even if he conquers all the seas of this world

if Sabo would still be alive-)

"You're really dumb sometimes, Ann." Luffy says when the heart under his stops jumping against his chest like loud sobs that never make it though his First Mate's throat.

He grins in her hair when he feels her nod in the crook of his neck.

"It's fine, though. Sabo did really dumb things too, sometimes!"

"... Like when?"

Her voice is so tight and small he almost doesn't recognise it, as if there's something compressing it from all sides and preventing it from unfurling into the smooth, neutral tone that patiently explains things to him and vibrates along his spine and makes him feel all nice and sleepy like when she rakes her fingernails down his back.

(He knows it's tears that are compressing her voice

because even after Ace promised him that he would never die

it took him some time to stop wanting to cry everytime he thought about Sabo

So he doesn't say anything

because he hated it when anyone told him it was okay to cry while he was trying to get strong enough that he would never have a reason to cry ever again-

She doesn't ask who Sabo is, and he doesn't say anything more, because she barely looks able to bear the weight of her own tragedy.)

He squirms and nuzzles himself into her more comfortably, stretching his legs between her and kicking them absentmindedly through their air as he launched into the tale of when his big brother found what he thought was a treasure map (it really, really wasn't) and made a super complicated plan for them to steal said treasure.

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

When she wakes up the morning after, there's too much sunlight filtering through the window for her to not be late to her usual training session.

But she already slept in a few times before, so it's fine.

(No one will be worried

And if they care as much as she does

then she has to do everything she can not to let them know that she's spent every night since Loguetown skinning her mind raw and bloody against the splintered ends of her memories

whether it's the moments she won't get to taste anymore

or the things she did or didn't do and won't get to make up for either way

They hurt all the same)

So she burrows herself harder into the body beside her, and lets the warm, slightly sweaty skin, and the tickling breath against her neck and the scent of citrus and ink and coins warp around her like a blanket that weighs her mind inside her body and hammers it into the world she's living in now.

When she feels as close to ready as she can, she starts squirming her way out of Nami's embrace inch by inch.

The navigator still wakes up, light sleeper that she is, and moves just enough to place a sleepy kiss against Elynna's cheek with a yawned out mornin' before she lets her head fall back on the mattress, and goes right back to sleep.

It's sufficiently different from how she used to be greeted by some of the people who are too present in her head and not enough outside of it that she smiles instead of cries.

She gets up, and slowly stretches to work out the knots in her muscles and shake off the remnants of the gauzy memories reaching out for her from the bed like clawed illusions.

She carefully makes her exit so as to not step on the additional belongings their guest brought with her, and pads her way quietly towards the kitchen.

Sanji is already there, somehow managing to prepare different types of breakfast for all of them with only two hands.

"Elynna-san." He greets quietly, his smile as warm as the cup of hot cocoa he places in front of one of the chairs.

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

Sanji knows the morning habits of all of his crewmates by now -even that dumb swordsman, and so he's not surprised when his First Mate waves in return with a small smile.

He knows that she's always more silent in the mornings even though she's perfectly awake, just like he knows that Nami always eats her breakfast warm because she takes a cold shower to wake herself up fully before coming to the kitchen, and that he has to watch out when Usopp enters, because the sniper is either still half-asleep or already engineering three different gadgets at the same time in his head.

(Sanji has gotten quite adept at guessing what amount of caffeine to give him depending on the situation.

After a few failed experiments.)

He waits for a bit until Elynna's posture mellows into something more relaxed as she curls her hands around the mug while savouring the drink, and then asks her what she would like for breakfast.

It changes often, and there seems to be no pattern other than the fact that she always starts by asking what is already prepared.

He still hasn't managed to convince her that it would only be a pleasure for him to prepare something solely for her.

She goes for scrambled eggs and a bit of fruit salad this time. He's quick to fill her plate, make sure that the stoves are switched off, and sits down in the chair opposite to hers, nervously but silently fiddling with his lighter as he flips it expertly between his long fingers.

His Captain and Usopp will probably sleep off their night watch until late in the morning, and the cactus head won't stop strengthening his muscles and emptying his brain for at least another hour.

It's the best moment.

She hasn't even finished her first bite that her eyes lock with his, as deep and dark and unreadable as usual, and she stares at him for a long moment before going back to her meal.

He has her attention.

Whether he speaks up or not, what he wants to say and how he wants to say it is up to him.

"I thought… about what you told me the other day."

He stops then, trying to find the words that he suddenly forgot.

His eyes roam through the kitchen, falling back on her when her fork and her knife chime against her plate before she pushes it aside.

She doesn't take the bowl of fruit salad, and instead leans her elbows on the table and her chin in her hand.

She's not smiling or frowning.

Just looking at him.

He doesn't know if he breathes easier for it or not.

"I want you to know that... I never meant to make you or Nami-san feel like I didn't respect your choice to be a pirate."

The two people who first taught him that even someone as weak and useless and worthless as him can have love and attention, the two people who first taught him that fighting to protect is so much harder than fighting to hurt, were women.

He will never be able to repay his mother for hiding her pain in favour of wasting her energy on his greedy wishes for the warmth of her arms and smiles, or his sister for risking the life and the position and the power she worked and bled for in the shadows -where no one but the transparent him could see that she wasn't born into it- just so he could run away with all the strength in his weak weak weak little legs.

But disrespect is the furthest thing from his mind when it comes to women who want to fight.

"We already knew that. I just wanted you to be aware of how your actions could be felt, even knowing that you didn't mean them that way. You can't be expected to know everything that is going on in our heads."

He kind of wishes he could, sometimes.

(Because despite the fact that the pull from her dark eyes in her pale face becomes almost a different field of gravity with the intensity and the complexity of her mind reaching out through them to grasp at the world

he can never tell what she is thinking before it comes out of her mouth

can't read her the way he learned to read people like recipe books as a child so he could know when to run away from the blows and when to shut his mind down and away from the fist-like words

He's met people whose bodies were quiet before, fingers twitching rather than clenching and mouth ticking rather than scowling

but for the first time it doesn't make him tense and try to always keep said person within the reach of his senses just in case he didn't pick up on their hurtful intent before

Instead, it makes him frustrated at his inability to pick up on what Elynna-san likes and dislikes

because she has a smile that makes her eyes look young and alive like she's supposed to be instead of ageless stones

He likes her smile.)

He spins his lighter between his fingers once again, and gulps.

He's used to people getting angry at him for his mistakes.

Not…

Not this.

But he has to keep going.

Because he has been hurting his two female teammates.

Unknowingly or not, he has to make up for it -before it's too late.

"I never... thought of you as weak, or meant to make you weak so I could protect you either."

The thought kept him awake an entire night following his conversation with his First Mate.

What if, instead of bleeding the weakness out of himself to leave only the strength necessary to help people the way he was never able to when it came to his mother and his sister, he made people weak to have an excuse to fight in their place, to make himself more worthy than he actually is?

(The gnawing, retching emptiness of his stomach he felt at the idea was as painful as when he was standing on that piece of rock lost in the beautiful, cruel sea with no help and no food and no hope-)

The only reassurance he was able to find in the face of that question was that if he did do that, he did not mean to.

It was a reassurance as stick thin and flimsy as the body of the starving child he used to be.

"I just… don't want you to have to protect yourselves."

Doesn't want them to feel threatened enough to think that they must learn how to fight in order to live, to survive-

(He's lived a great part of his life fleeing mindlessly towards survival

with fear tripping him up on the way

again and again and again

and it was so terrible that he's not even sure he would wish it on those responsible for the pain that dripped through the cracks of his life when it should only exist in nightmares)

Elynna breathes out a bit louder.

"Of course you didn't make us weak. We already were -at least when it comes to fighting."

The thought of his female crewmates being weak is so foreign that it fails to fit into the shape of his mind, and Sanji feels it distort his face instead.

(Because no matter how many times Nami-san steps behind his back when there are too many enemies or she doesn't feel like fighting,

he thinks that no one on the most dangerous sea of the world but the strongest would be able to bear the pain she kept going and fighting in spite of

-after all, he fled, didn't he?-

And no matter how many times her or Usopp lament that their First Mate has been contaminated by the Monster Trio,

he can't imagine Elynna-san being anywhere else than with him and the other two shitheads during a fight

whether she's leaning her back against his own -and trusting him to guard hers

or sliding and rolling across the deck and tripping people up as she goes so they can't fire at the stupid swordsman while he's taking care of others

or catching their flying idiot of a Captain and spinning to launch him right back at another group, and using the momentum to elbow some savage trying to attack her from behind in the face while grinning in response to the crazy laughter of their crazy rubber boy)

"It's hard, isn't it?"

He blinks.

She's not looking at him anymore, head laid sideways on her crossed arms as the words slip quietly, pensively from her lips.

"When you love people, it's normal to want to protect them from all the pain you can prevent. But there's a fine line between protecting someone and suffocating them."

The lighter trembles in the clenched grip of his fist, hidden under the table.

She shouldn't try to make excuses for what he did.

Shouldn't look at him with those calm, dark eyes when he spent the last few nights remembering how he disregarded so many women's right to stand up for themselves if they so choose, how he disregarded the squirming, unsure smile of so many women who leaned back away from him (and really, why would they do anything else?) and whose hand he kept holding-

(even though he knows how it feels

to be locked behind rows of bars and feel the possessive, choking hand of being someone's thing around his throat,

to suffocate under the weight of steel and the dizzying fear of his own breath making his head all fuzzy-)

"It doesn't excuse anything I did."

He counts how many of her slow, slow breathing cycles pass by to distract himself from the silence.

Fourteen come and go before she opens her mouth again.

"I guess not. And I can't speak for anyone else when I say that I forgive you. But it makes you human."

He looks at her for a long moment, before lighting a cigarette to further register the release of the pressure from his memories in his mind, taking care not to breathe the smoke into her face as he exhales slowly.

(If she's nice enough to forgive him,

he'll just have to resent himself twice as hard

and hope that he has enough time left in his life to rid himself of that glaring flaw that stiched itself into the lines of his suits without his knowledge

that he'll manage to do as much good as he did harm in the future)

"I'll make mistakes."

An undercurrent of amusement makes her voice sparkle, but neither her lips nor her eyes follow.

"I would hope so. If you could change a lifetime habit instantly, I would feel desperately inadequate."

Somehow, he feels like it's not simply a joke.

He wonders how long it will take her to understand that he always means the compliments he gives to anyone.

That they're not simply compliments, but what he feels to be the truth.

Maybe when she does, he can tell her that their shithead of a Captain and that stupid swordsman wouldn't accept a civilian like her as their First Mate if she wasn't this good at her job -at slowing them all down when they're going too fast and picking them all up when they feel down.

And maybe she'll believe him.

(Maybe she'll really grin or raise a brow and say I know with her usual sass

instead of looking away with the uncomfortable smile of someone who thinks they're receiving more than they deserve

-the smile his face knows too intimately not to recognise-)

"I'll miss being a knight in shining armour, though." He goes on with another smoky breath and a contrite smile.

He'll miss feeling like his existence is worth something.

Her nose scrunches up in a way that says ew and makes his lips quirk up, until she stops and tilts her head on the side.

He tenses up again, and thinks that fighting against someone like their Captain must feel pretty close to conversing with his First Mate.

Just like that rubber shithead is probably a genius when it comes to on-the-fly strategy and fighting instinct, picking up on the flaws and openings of his enemies faster than he should considering how much of an idiot he can be outside of a battle, the girl in front of him picks up on words and gestures and puts them together until she has the story of what a situation or a person is like. Granted, with more hypotheses than details, but somehow accurate enough to grasp others' thoughts and feelings like it's written all over their faces.

It scares him.

"Not needing you as a... 'knight in shining armour', as you say, doesn't mean we don't need you at all."

He raises a puzzled brow.

What can he bring to her and Nami-san, or even their crew in general, other than his cooking?

If that even counts for something.

(because he might be the best of the best in the East Blue, but they're not in his territory anymore, and maybe-)

"We need you as a crewmate, Hermes. An equal. Someone who's next to us rather than in front of us. Because objectively, our lives are worth the same, even if subjectively you feel that yours is worth less than mine while I feel the reverse. Isn't that right?"

No, it's not right.

It's not right at all for her to place his life above hers.

But he keeps his mouth shut, because he just knows that she would oppose any of his protests with a then why is it right for you to do the same for me or others?

It's not a question he wants to answer.

(because whenever he tries to speak his past it feels like it's pouring down his throat and into his lungs and leaving no space for air or sound

and he doesn't want anyone on this crew to know how lowly he is compared to them -and that he still found enough selfishness and audacity in him to dare accept their hands rather than tell them the truth)

"Hey, Hermes?"

"Yes?"

"... Have you ever made a tarte bigoudène?"

The words sound strange, with harsher sounds than the language she's teaching them.

They also sound entirely unknown, and he feels his stomach gnaw at itself with the desperate hunger to rectify this mistake, because if he can't keep her or anyone else happy when it comes to food, then how can he ever hope to-

"I don't think I've heard of it… What is it?"

"Oh, nevermind." She whispers with a smile.

(except it looks off,

like it was broken first and then she put the pieces back together just for him)

His teeth clench so hard around his cigarette he can taste hot ashes on his tongue.

"What are you two talking about?" Nami mumbles curiously as she suddenly enters the room, one hand messing up her short, flamboyant hair and the other hiding a wide yawn, before she rolls her shoulders to ride out a chill and reaches for the coffee pot.

"The conversation I had with Hermes a few days ago."

"Uh."

Nami piles a few pieces of toast on her plate, grabs the bottle of honey and her second cup of coffee, and goes to sit next to Elynna, grinning easily at Sanji.

"And how is it going?"

Sanji frowns in confusion, feeling off-balanced with how little anger the two girls are showing.

"I… am trying to come up with a way to not scare women anymore."

"When you flirt with them?" The navigator asks with a thoughtful frown as she takes a sip of her coffee. "It's not that hard. If you see that they're uncomfortable, you just say sorry and leave them alone."

"But… I don't want them to feel any discomfort at all."

Her smile melts into something warmer, and much softer than the ones the gorgeous, fiery woman usually comes up with.

(and if his legs could move, he would bow down on his knees right now

though even that wouldn't quite express how grateful he for having the chance to see such a rare sight despite what he did)

"That's not possible, silly. You can't read their minds or see the future and know immediately whether they'll appreciate your attention or not. I mean, it also happened to me, when I thought that a girl really liked me and actually she wasn't attracted to me. Besides, it doesn't depend only on you."

"It… doesn't?"

She hums, stabbing a piece of toast with her fork and running it across her plate to slather it in the honey that dripped onto the plate.

"This is also about how society is, you know. Mentally, most women know that a male stranger who comes to them in the street doesn't necessarily mean any harm. And inversely, I would guess that men don't necessarily mean to look that way when they ask for the time or whatever, but they just don't understand that sometimes, it's the first possibility that comes to mind, because even though they don't have to agree to it, they were still born and raised in a society where they get benefits for being what they are. So even if you become the most considerate man in the world, chances are there will always be a girl who'll get anxious at the possibility that you might not be as nice as you look."

She pauses for a moment to stare pensively at the ceiling, and then shoves the last piece of toast in her mouth before pointing the fork at him with an amused grin.

"Maybe you could try wearing a sign around your neck that says 'I like flirting with women, but please feel free to say no'. But that might just look creepy to some people. And it kind of clashes with your sense of fashion, which is seriously one of your best selling points -with the cooking."

The smile slips out before his mind can catch up, and he gets up to put the finishing touches to Usopp's breakfast.

(He can't quite forgive himself for how long he takes after that to notice that his First Mate fell silent as soon as someone else entered the room to sustain the conversation

or that she slipped out just as quietly in the middle of the usual ruckus that comes with every breakfast)

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

"'and then I grilled him barbecue-style…' Really?"

Usopp yells, jumping so high in the air that he's convinced he heard the chair groan under his weight on the way back down.

He reflexively grasps at his chest in an attempt to pacify the poor, poor heart that has been so mistreated since they reached the Grand Line.

Or since he left his hometown, really. He has the kind of Captain who can somehow put them all in life or death situations at least once a day, even in the weakest of the four seas, and he would very much like to become a brave warrior of the seas, like right now, thanks.

Nami snickers from where she's leaning over his shoulder, and he shoots her a glare that only makes her smirk wider.

"You only write details about facts that interest you, like those weird clouds in Somara. I'm doing you a favour by adding a bit of excitement to all this. The King of Pirates' Logbook can't be that boring, it would be a disgrace." He sniffs pompously as he waves towards the journal they've both been working on since he joined the crew.

"Uh? Whose work are you calling boring, you punk?" Nami growls with a punch to his arm, looking somehow both miffed and amused.

"Who are you calling a punk, you witch?" He snaps back as he rubs the throbbing area.

He promptly pushes his chair away as she smirks, as if he can escape that taunting words he just knows are coming.

"You're right." She concedes with what is clearly fake kindness, as she lets herself fall into another chair of the kitchen. "I guess that Loverboy was a better idea, after all."

He shudders (and no, he's not being dramatic) at the reminder of that dreaded night.

"What does that even have to do with anything?"

She grins, pretty and savage, and reaches for the Logbook, flipping to the next page of it.

"'We came out of those battles victorious and bruised, but with a reward a hundred times better than any coffer of gold in the world: smiles. As well as, for me, the pride of knowing that I was one step closer to becoming a brave warrior of the sea with my victory over as strong and fearsome an enemy as a Fish-Man, one coming all the way from the Grand Line, when I was but a normal village boy from East Blue (albeit one with better than average vision and great shooting skill, passed down by the very best -none other than the sniper of one of the Four Emperors)." She snaps the book shut, and grins even wider. "You're totally planning to make a copy of this so you girlf- I mean, so Kaya can read allllll about your heroics, right?"

Usopp groans aloud, feeling torn between wanting to chuck the bottle of ink at her face and smashing his own against something.

Preferably something hard enough to knock him out so as to avoid him further embarassment, and give him a slight case of amnesia spanning the last few seconds.

"Can't you two ever stop? Seriously, when it's not one it's always the other…"

Her cackling is suddenly cut short, and the silence turns heavy enough for him to taste it in two seconds flat.

He looks back at Nami to find her frowning hard at a spot on the table, and sighs.

"She's still not talking?"

The navigator shakes her head.

"I think she spoke with Sanji for a bit two days ago, but…"

Usopp feels his own eyebrows scrunch together, as if trying to press through the line of worry etched between them.

This is the third day since they left Whiskey Peak, and according to Nami Little Garden is less than a day away from their current position.

Their First Mate has spent most of their trip to Little Garden either lying in her bed or in the sea, staring at things that none of them can see and needing at least three calls of her name before realising that they're talking to her.

She's never been particularly energetic, but at least usually she moves from time to time to train with Zoro or help Sanji in the kitchen, and even when she's lying or sitting somewhere she has at least a book or someone by her side -even if to share only silence.

She's never been particularly loud either, but she used to joke around and laugh and indulge Luffy with all the weird topics of conversation he can come up with.

(But now her hands and her mouth are as empty as her eyes,

and outside of meals they mostly see her when she's disappearing behind a corner or a door

There when she's needed to man the ship or as a First Mate, but soft and quiet like a passing cloud

and her mind absent the rest of the time)

And he can only hope that what he pulled two all-nighters for will help at least a bit.

(Because after all, she's the one he went to when talking with Nami or joking with Sanji or the memory of Luffy taking him in like it was an evidence or Zoro's appreciative smirks weren't enough anymore

when there was nothing left in his stomach for him to retch after some nightmare or another

the nightmares that he's learned not to scream after, even though the idea of taking that bullet to the head, or having that mace come anywhere near his knee again, or hearing Kaya and his crewmates tell him how they don't need a lying, coward of a weakling like him for real make him really,

really want to scream

-no, please-)

And as far as he's concerned, being a brave warrior of the sea also means being able to support those whose names he wears proudly on his heart.

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

The sea laps at her skin, each wave a new invitation towards another memory or another illusion of the life and the safety and the people she can't have anymore.

Her body is heavy with too much sleep haunted by too many ghosts, and no matter how many time she bites at the forearms or claws at the waist under her clothes, the tears behind her eyes and the screams in her mouth can't seem to fuck off-

So instead she's taken to keeping her mouth shut and her eyes off of anyone alive.

(anything that reminds her that they're as good as dead-)

The ocean is her only ally, drowning out the world (the smell of cooking and the sounds of harsh breathing and scratching and hammering and laughter-) and cooling the burning in her eyes.

(it makes the mantra in her head louder

but when she's so full of I can't go back, can't see them ever again and get your shit together and stop shutting out good people like some dumb bitch, you pathetic mess she wants to explode,

at least she can cry a few tears

Because after she can say it's just the salt,

and it should be fine as long as she doesn't bother anyone right?

She's tried harder to be strong and dependable in the last few months than in her whole life

just to not hold them back too much

But she's just so, so

tired-)

"Elynna, get up here! The Great Usopp has a gift just for you!"

She sinks further into the sea until she's sure Usopp can't see her face, and rubs furiously at her face in an attempt to put herself together.

(She tries to avoid them

but she can't push them away

doesn't even try, really

because if she couldn't do it when they were just charismatic people whose realness didn't register in her mind half of the time

how is she supposed to do it now?)

She climbs back on the ship, puts on one of her oversized shirts over the tight shorts she kept in the water, and follows after Usopp, careless of the wet trail she leaves on the deck after them.

He leads her to the room where the water-drawing machine was placed. The small reserve of dry foodstuff they usually stock there was moved, and several panels of varying length and thickness were hanging from the walls and the ceilings.

"We'll use the larger and softer targets first, so you can focus on getting the correct stance without having to worry about the accuracy or power of your throws. But first!"

He spins around, almost knocking into her, and whips out the various things she asked him to make from the bag in his hand.

He first shows her how to fasten and adjust the buckles tied to the sheaths of black leather he made for her tensen, which he designed to be put either on the outside or the inside of her forearms for ease of access, and because her habit of wearing clothes too large for her can actually hide her weapons and provide her with the advantage of surprise.

He keeps babbling as she puts on the leather belt to which he stitched the sheaths of her kukris so that they are crossed at her lower back, once again likely to be hidden under the low and loose hem of her shirts most of the time -though less well given their strange shape and impressive length.

Then he takes out both of her long, curved knives, and holds them out to her.

"I'm not sure yet what material to use for the last item you asked for, but you won't use any of those until you're comfortable with them, which is going to take time since you also want to use your non-dominant hand, so it's fine, right?"

Her shoulders roll into a shrug, and she distantly registers the pull tugging at the corner of her lips to form a faint, lopsided smile.

It's half-bitter and half-sweet like dark chocolate melted inside her mouth, fused with the cobwebs of silenced cries hidden there and coated over the chapped flesh of her lips.

Of course she's shitty enough to revel in the knowledge that someone pays enough attention to her to be able to tell what she thinks even before asking a question, even though her own behaviour in the last few days would warrant giving her the cold shoulder at best.

Usopp beams right back, seemingly happy enough to have managed to get some form of expression out of her to not question too much where it comes from.

(-and here she thought she couldn't feel any shittier-)

"So!" The curly-haired boy starts with a loud, suddenly enthusiastic clap of his hand. "You said you're not good at shooting. But what do you mean by that?"

"I practiced shooting mostly when playing ball sports, and I guess that shooting while being on the move was too much for my brain, especially since I pretty much suck at estimating distances." (-unlike her grandfather-) "And my first reaction when a ball flies towards me is more along the lines of getting away from it as far as possible, so…" She adds a bit louder to cover the noise and colour of her thoughts -though it fails to keep away the memory of that one day when she went to see her sister play soccer and somehow managed to receive a flying ball straight into her face.

"I see… Is there anything close to shooting that you weren't an absolute disaster at?"

"I… guess I wasn't so bad at archery, but I didn't practice much, and I was a kid, so I probably shot from not too far since I didn't have much strength." She explains, eyelid ticking in an attempt to scatter the piecemeal memories of sunny afternoons spent in the family garden with her sister.

"Did you have a professional teach you archery?"

"No. It was just a hobby."

(her sister who was so much better at sports than her unless it came to dancing,

but who still lost to her when it came to archery, if only because Elynna has more patience and is more of a perfectionist

-or a sore loser

same difference, really-)

Usopp is silent for a moment, pacing through the relatively small room.

"I see, I see. You probably have pretty good hand-eye coordination if you managed to get decent results in archery without actual lessons, though it's to be expected from a dancer as good as you. But if you have a problem estimating distance, then having to learn how to throw a ball to a precise target and in a specific way while on the move, even though you hadn't learned anything before… It probably confused your brain more than anything. This was all done in the wrong order." He grumbles, voice devolving into incomprehensible muttering.

Her lips twitch as she imagines her various sport teachers standing in the room with them -and looking particularly offended, carefully skimming over the fact that most of her classmates never had as much difficulty with the exercise compared to her.

(and that she wishes on none of them to suddenly find themselves trapped here the way she did

She has no words for how thankful she is that the Straw Hats came into her life

but not even them can make up for the loss)

Usopp claps his hands again.

"Okay! You'll have to learn how to do it while moving eventually, but we'll start with mastering various throws with both hands just standing. It's been a long time since I used knives, 'cause I pretty much only used my slingshot after I first tried it, but I should be able to remember most of what I was taught as I do it."

She blinks, and watches him explain and show the correct, standard stance for knife throwing, docilely letting him correct a few details after she tries to imitate him.

Then he tries a few half-spin throws -which are apparently the easiest to do- for himself.

The first one lands a bit outside of the target's center, but the second embeds itself right into it.

"Not bad, if I do say so myself." Usopp grins proudly with both fists on his hips, before he turns to her. "From what you told me of your plan, you don't have to try and get perfect accuracy, or experiment with all possible stances and distances to find the one that feels best, since you'll be using your kukris on the move. But for now we'll do it like this, just time for you to get used to the exercise and gain a bit of ease with estimating distances and shooting in general. Oh, and here, I got you some gloves. Can't have you losing fingers, these knives are real sharp."

Then he steps back to give her his place.

"Now come on, young Padawan! Show me what you got!" He proclaims loudly, crossing his arms in front of his chest with a gigantic, ridiculous grin.

…

She knew it was a bad idea to recount the whole Star Wars saga to him.

What starts as a laugh in her stomach dies halfway through and comes out as little more than a huff of vague amusement.

But she knows how much he needs the boost of confidence, so she lets music play into her brain and tries as much as she can to drag her brain out of its selfish, annoying bout of self-pity and into the pool of clear focus she created for herself over the years.

(She's not sure how long she can hold onto it

but she'll try her best to force her sluggish body to match his excitement

to make her flimsy mind bear the disappointment that will inevitably spread over his face like ink on paper

and maybe one day,

when she's not streched so thin and ready to snap,

she'll manage to turn this disappointment into something more positive)

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

Nami hurriedly steps into her room, reaching down to take off her shirt even before the door is fully closed.

A high-pitched squeak makes her look up to where Vivi has hastily turned around, and she chuckles.

"Nami!"

"Sorry, sorry."

In her defence, she usually only has one roommate, and said roommate is more likely to check her out than cover her eyes. And of all the boys, Luffy is the only one who doesn't knock before entering (despite all the books she chucked at his face), but he wouldn't blink either.

"Where are you going?"

"Swimming."

Vivi frowns worriedly at the wall she keeps staring at, like the sweet, sweet girl she is.

(as sweet and sad and anxious as she used to be arrogant and mocking and cruel

like Nami is as free and hopeful as she used to be bitter and desperate

though she's the only one of the both of them to know why they clicked and fell together into mutual understanding so easily

because she kind of wants Vivi to look at her with that spark of wonder for just a little bit longer)

"Don't you want to sleep?"

"It's fine."

It's not fine.

And she can't sleep.

Not when, for the first time since she joined the Straw Hats, Elynna spent the night watch she had with her not by her side but in the sea.

Floating listlessly like a lost package, and looking so absent from her body that if there wasn't a rope tying her to the ship, she would probably drift away and not even realise it.

(and even then Nami kept checking, because it was just so silent-)

So even if she was to lie down in her bed, she wouldn't be able to sleep knowing that her best friend is still out there, that maybe the salty wetness on her face isn't just sea water-

(because for how stupidly mature she is,

Lynna is also so painfully unsure

so she probably manages to think she'll bother them with her tears while knowing that she shouldn't be ashamed of them, that idiot-

…

Luffy is right, she's a smart idiot who thinks too much)

"Can I… come with you?"

Nami waves her hand towards her collection of swimming suits with a distracted hum of agreement, before finishing to tie the knot of her dark brown swimming suit behind her neck.

"Lynna! How's the water?" She calls out once she reaches the railing at the stern of the ship.

The plump, white arm seems to be fighting the weight of a whole world as it lifts itself out of its glassy, liquid coffin just long enough to give her a thumbs up.

She can make out the faded outline of a smile on Elynna's face, but it looks mindless, like an automatic response to her voice more than anything else.

(and she hates that she doesn't find it only heartbreaking)

Vivi joins her after a few minutes, carefully climbing down to the water with the rope dangling along the hull.

"Hello, Elynna-san!" She calls out quietly, before she lets herself fall into the sea, and immediately swims back to the surface with a whispered, shivering oh my god!

Nami can't quite help the bout of laughter that overtakes her at the stunned look on the other girl's face.

Vivi pouts at her, and idly splashes water towards her face, which unfortunately for her quickly devolves into an all-out fight.

"I wrote down what you asked me and left the notes in the kitchen." The Princess eventually gasps when she has enough of being dunked into the water -the navigator's chokeholds are seriously hard to evade when she's in the water.

"Oh, thanks!" Nami smiles, a bit breathless.

Though she didn't actually need all this information on what the sea is like around the coast of Alabasta (only needs her ears and her eyes and the sea under the Merry, really), but it was the only thing she could think about to distract the former Baroque Works agent from the newspaper they received that morning.

Thankfully, the very disbelieving raise of Zoro's eyebrow also went unseen.

That half-witted asshole.

She only realises she has been grumbling creative death threats aloud when Vivi tells her that she's going to swim a few laps around the ship so as to not catch a cold, and then slinks away a bit too fast.

Oops.

She sighs, and turns around to try and get a few words out of her First Mate-

Except she's not there.

Except Nami saw her dive a few moments ago while her playfight with Vivi was still going on, and Elynna still hasn't come back up.

She dives before the scream and the terror in her throat can steal and tear apart the breath in her lungs.

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

Elynna knows that what she's doing is based more on desperation than rational thought even before she starts doing it.

But even if the chances it works are so low they would be laughable if she had the strength to actually remember how to laugh, she has to try.

Just to be sure that she has tried everything, has done her best.

Just to kill every damn last shred of hope, because she can't keep doing this.

So she lets herself sink below the surface just like that day.

Lets every muscle go limp just like that day.

Watches bubble after bubble leave her mouth just like that day.

Closes her eyes, and tries to reach for the same feeling of liquid light and lukewarm muteness -just like that day.

And then she waits.

Waits for a sign, a feeling, for anything that would tell her that she's back, because she's too scared to open her eyes before that.

And for every second that passes the remnants of her hope sink lower into the acid of her stomach.

And for every second her lungs grow a bit tighter and a bit hotter, but she wants to wait just a little more, just-

Long nails dig harshly into the skin of her forearm, and a hand brutally drags her back to the surface.

Her lungs bloom with relief, and her cheek burns with the palm that strikes it.

She opens her eyes, and it's the gorgeous, furious, and terrified face of Nami that greets her.

(She doesn't know which part of herself she hates the most

between the one that is disappointed and the one that is relieved-)

"What were you doing?!"

Nami's voice is low and harsh like rocks.

There's distrust there too, reluctance to immediately put faith in the answer that Elynna will give.

It hurts far, far worse than her slap, or even the cold veneer of rejection she once threw in their faces -too thick to be anything other than a lie after the rawness of her laughter.

"I-"

But Nami doesn't wait for her to answer, shaking her brutally instead, and Elynna isn't sure whether she's actually being shaken, or if the hands on her shoulders are just trembling so badly that it's making her shake too.

"You- You were about to die, Lynna!" She interrupts her, low voice breaking into a high-pitched whimper without any kind of transition. "You were drowning and you weren't moving and why would you do that?!"

The smells and the sounds and the colours of this world hit her like a second slap.

It feels more real than anything has in the past few days.

And then Elynna realises that yes, she can actually treat those she loves worse than she has already treated them in the last week.

That she can actually stop thinking and disregard completely the fact that her best friend was right there and of course it would look like that to her-

(-and if she did manage to leave she would've disappeared without a trace, without a word-)

All for her own tiny, stupid, selfish hope.

Well, she wouldn't expect the kindest person in the world to be entirely selfless, let alone herself, but she thought she could at least be a decent friend.

Turns out she can't.

Not with the standards of this world.

She should've expected it, really.

She will never be up to those standards.

This is why she loathes emotions, sometimes.

(-and she wants to break her own mind with her fists and cut her fingers on the shards

wants to throw it in the bin because what's the point of being smart if she can't even tell when she's starting to do stupid things and hurting those she never wants to hurt?

But she only has one mind,

and it's telling her that love is also about caring for herself

even if only for those who love her enough to want her to be happy

And besides, the damage she did to others deserves her attention much more than the damage she wants to do to herself)

She reaches out, fingers loose as they curl around Nami's arms between them.

"Rain."

It takes four tries before her gorgeous, gorgeous friend falls silent, breathing like she ran ten miles at full speed to take her hand and then another dozen to touch Elynna's mind, and her hands are clenched so tight there will probably be bruises on her skin later.

(She doesn't mind.)

She stares into the eyes that are almost as dark as hers until they stare back with something else than mindless fear.

"I was not trying to commit suicide."

Nami shudders so hard under her hands that she almost swallows a mouthful of sea water, and Elynna decides to bring the both of them back to the rope resting against the hull, because trying to keep themselves afloat in this situation takes a bit too much focus.

Their movements are made awkward by their mutual, absolute refusal to let go of each other, but they make it, and both reluctantly wrap one hand around the rope.

Silence.

How is she supposed to do this?

"You… really weren't?"

She really wasn't.

(She didn't die to come here, so what would be the point of killing herself?)

"I said my dream was to die not too painfully. Drowning is pretty painful, so no, I wasn't."

Coffee-coloured eyes narrow at her as thin fingers somehow clench and claw harder at her arms, not seeming to appreciate her attempt at levity.

She always sucked at being light anyway, whether physically or mentally.

"Does that mean you'll try less painful ways?"

"No. I don't want to die. I was just…"

She breathes in, looks her in the eyes, and does what she has been doing every day since coming here.

She lies.

(My name is Elynna.

My injuries? Oh, they're fine now.

I received a letter back from my parents. Want me to read it to you, since it's not in English?

She's a walking, breathing, living lie.

But she doesn't know or understand the truth -only the pain and the joy it brings her

And some of the lies are starting to feel more real -true- than they should)

"I just… haven't been sleeping well these days. I was very tired, so it just- took me a while to realise that I had stopped moving and didn't have any air left. But I was going to swim back, okay? I wasn't trying to kill myself. I promise."

And then she goes on, just in case her sudden boost of energy doesn't last long enough and her mouth snaps shut again.

She hopes it won't, even if only because she doesn't want to let it happen.

She has a lot to make up for.

"And I'm sorry I treated you and everyone else like that lately. I've been… more of a bitch than usual, I guess. None of you did anything to deserve it. I just-"

"You prefer to process things on your own first. We know."

"That doesn't excuse anything. I'm still sorry." Elynna repeats, because this feels like she's getting off way too easily.

And really, she's so, so sorry.

Sorry that people like them ended up with someone like her.

Sorry that she knows their worth but can't seem to act accordingly.

She watches Nami watch her, watches her reach out to caress the shadows under her eyes -she's pretty sure they must be purple now- with her thumb, lightly, obsessively.

"I wasn't, Rain."

Still Nami stares.

And then lets her head fall on Elynna's shoulder so very gently, like the gentle glow of the morning sun and the kisses she places on her cheek sometimes.

Her arm winds around Elynna's waist, and she docilely lets herself be brought closer, until it almost feels like it's her chest that is letting out such a heavy, fear-laddened sigh.

"Good. We need you, stupid."

They don't -though in that moment she agrees that she's very stupid and very much hates the sensation.

But keeping that bitter, mocking (painful) truth to herself is just another lie by omission.

She stopped counting a long time ago.

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

Nami wonders when she became the one who needed rassurance.

Then again, she wasn't the one who sank (drowned, because it was so silent-) into what looked too close to what she thinks depression can be like, and then disapppeared into the sea as if she-

She shuts the thought down.

The idea of Elynna not being… there (dead) is so enourmous that she just doesn't have the space in herself to host it.

As if the concept of her absence just cannot coexist with the sheer size of her presence in Nami's heart.

"Is- Is everything alright?"

Vivi probably knows it isn't when asking that, because there's no way she didn't hear their voices while swimming.

In fact, that's probably why she didn't make a whole lap around the ship. She didn't want to intrude.

Nami is grateful for it, because even if she didn't see how polite and fidgety Elynna is around the other girl, the way she stiffens against her right then is enough for Nami to know.

Elynna doesn't trust Vivi.

Or at the very least, she's not comfortable enough around her to be alright with Vivi seeing her like this -or being made aware of what just transpired.

(it makes her ridiculously proud to know that she has that trust)

So she straightens up, hides Elynna's face in the crook of her own neck, and smiles.

"All good!"

And it will be.

(as long as Lynna will be there when she'll wake up from the nightmares she's definitely going to have

as long as this bullshit doesn't happen again

because Nami is not an idiot, doesn't think that it's possible for someone to accidentally disregard their every survival instinct and fall asleep in the freaking ocean

But she lets that one go

because as much as Lynna lied on this, she didn't lie everytime she told her I don't want to die)

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

Zoro takes a step back to avoid a fist, but she spins on herself, her other fist lashing out with her arm straight to give herself a range just a little longer, and he winces as her knuckles dig brutally into his shoulder, numbing the area for a moment.

Elynna's war fans have been discarded a few minutes ago, because there's no way he'll let her lose her touch on her hand-to-hand, and it's not like an enemy will give her time to get her weapons back if they somehow get knocked out of her hands during a fight.

He frowns, panting around the hilt of his katana.

There's been something strange with Elynna's fighting in the last few days, and it's becoming clearer.

Usually, it's the smoothness of her movements that make them disconcerting, because each move flows too easily into the following one to be able to really predict them, everything improvised but looking like a polished choreography.

But now it's unpredictable because it quickens and then slows down and then stops, switching between offense and defense without a care for the actual flow of a fight, to the point that she once stopped dead when his unsheathed blade was heading straight for her arm, and then instead of avoiding it she kicked her foot up, taking his leg along for the ride.

It's such a mess that he can't even tell anymore which limb she's going to attack with, and when she hits she hits hard.

But it feels more like she's trying to break her own bones than his.

And it reminds him of how he trained after Kuina's death, at first.

(of how he trained and trained and trained

so hard that the days and the nights were blurry in his mind

of how he only ate when his stomach growled so loud it pierced through the enraged fog of his mind,

only slept when his body hit the ground in absolute exhaustion

until his mentor tied him to a rock and let him rant all he wanted, then explained to him how neglecting his body would not make him stronger once he finally shut up

he's learned his lesson,

-but he still believes that his mind rules his body, and that the latter will keep going as long as the former wants, not matter the state it's in-)

But if training herself harder than she needs to is what it takes to put some life in her eyes and for her not to walk around like a fucking ghost

-even if she still doesn't talk-

then so be it.

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

"-unchbox!"

She forces her eyes to open blearily at the loud voice, and wonders when exactly she fell asleep.

It's not really a surprise, though, even if she usually never sleeps in the morning once she's up.

She doesn't need to be a doctor to know that her (lack of) sleeping schedule these days is anything but healthy, and that at some point in the near future she'll have to do something about those nightmares.

Because there's no way it won't affect her in a fight, and there are a lot of them coming up.

(But nightmares are the closest thing she gets to talking with her family and her friends

there's something about dreams that make them much more alive than memories

And she wants to take advantage of it just a little bit more

before she shreds apart the hope that grew like ivy in the shadows of her mind while she wasn't looking)

"Ann! We're at Little Garden!" Luffy yells gleefully as he barges in the room.

"How's it?" She mumbles through another yawn.

"It smells like adventure! I'm gonna explore with Vivi, and you're coming!"

She blinks and frowns, trying to remember if she agreed to that.

(Maybe she did

The last few days are mostly covered in the same fog that surrounded Whiskey Peak, like she never quite left that island

and she doesn't remember everything of what she said during those days)

"I am?"

"Yep! You'll see, adventure will make you feel better!" He says as he throws some clothes at her, careless of all the plump, white flesh she shows him since she slipped out of most of her training clothes before her impromptu nap.

She blinks again, fondness waving through her limp body like a spiderweb of sun rays to support it and fuel it, and she flows out of her bed and to her feet, muscles stretching and bones cracking to wake herself up more efficiently and shake off as much lethargy as she can.

She puts on the clothes, and lets him grab her hand to drag her outside.

Sanji is already waiting with food for the three of them and Karoo.

Luffy lets go of her hand to secure his backpack, and then takes a hold of hers, opens it, rummages through it for a moment, and finally pulls out the first half of one of her sandwiches, which he promptly shoves into her mouth while lecturing her about how missing a meal basically amounts to a sacrilege.

She doesn't protest.

Her consciousness isn't present enough in her mouth to taste anything or in her stomach to feel hunger, but maybe eating will give her enough energy to smile so that she can smooth away Sanji's worried frown.

So she nibbles quietly on the food she holds in one hand, and reaches out for Luffy's hand with the other, because she doesn't know how long her focus will last before she won't be able to remember her path anymore.

She's already quite certain that she doesn't want to get lost on this island, and that no one will be here to help her if she does.

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

Walking feels good.

Their path is tortuous enough that she has to concentrate a bit to not trip with every step, and the air moves around freely rather than sits and lets itself be soaked through with her heavy, insipid sadness.

Luffy's gleeful giggles as he drags her from tree to rock while babbling excitedly at every new thing that meets his eyes make the I can't go back to them she has been looping in the back of her mind during the last few days a bit more bearable, as she attempts to make her heart speed through the five stages of grief.

(Most of the sounds she's been hearing lately come from her own head

loud enough to drown the rest of the world like she's drunk on them

and yet distant, always too far

But the hot, humid wind is brushing through her mind and bogging down those voices inside to take them with it

and Sea King's laughter is bright and loud enough to take all the place like a little sun)

"Hey, Ann, look! There's a clam that looks like a squid!" Luffy laughs excitedly, almost shoving the 'clam-squid' in her face.

She blinks.

Ah, shit.

"That looks like an ammonite…" Vivi frowns as she stops beside them.

She did think this looked a bit too much like the picture books from her dinosaur-fanatic period when she was a kid.

"Vivi-san."

"Yes?"

"Is it possible for a Grand Line island to be stuck in the same climate for millenia?"

"I would guess so, since the magnetic fields kept people from going between islands for a long time, so they each developed a very specific culture, and it tends to influence the weather as well. Why?"

Elynna points at the diplodocus munching on tree leaves above their heads.

(It's almost funny how her heart is so bogged down in the stale swamp of her rotten tears that even fear can't get through.

Almost.

Because laughter can't get through either.)

"Why is there a Sea King on land?" Luffy frowns.

"It's- It's a dinosaur!" Vivi gapes.

Elynna muses that at least they're meeting a vegetarian first -though one big enough for the three of them to be squashed like flies.

They're off to a better start than Jurassic Park.

Slightly.

"Elynna-san!"

"Hm?"

"Luffy's climbing the dinosaur!"

"It's fine." She shrugs absently as she tilts her head back, squinting to ward off the sunlight and watch her Captain swing himself from diplodocus to diplodocus.

Height isn't a problem for someone with a rubber body, and if he survived the giant tigers and snakes from his childhood he told her about, then he can survive this.

She wonders if her heart would jump as high as Luffy, if she could feel it.

But if she started to feel the pain, she would probably start doing stupid things to (stupidly) try and escape it. Again.

Numbing it with distractions and exhaustion and Ican'tgobackIcan'tgobackIcan'tgoback sounds like a marginally better alternative.

Luffy misses his next move, and gets swallowed by one of the dinosaurs.

"Ah." Elynna comments, waiting to see the place where an extendable fist would stretch the dark green skin.

"It's not fine!" Vivi yells next to her, hugging the life out of her duck, who looks about to pass out (from the fear or the hug, Elynna doesn't know).

Then she yells again, because an armoured Giant just cut off the dinosaur's neck, grabbing the rubber boy who was falling out of it in his free hand.

"Uh. That explains the name of the island."

"That's what you focus on?!"

Elynna shrugs.

"I like logical things."

They're easier to accept.

Easier than finding herself in a world that only exists on paper and in someone's head without any kind of warning.

"How is a Giant being here supposed to be logical?!"

"I said the island's name was logical. Not a Giant being here. Though they're more likely to survive than humans."

"I haven't had guests in a while! Come on, little human, I'm inviting you to my place! And your friends, too!"

She thought that Luffy had a loud voice, and that his grandfather's took enough space to feel like he was right next to her while she was calling him.

But a Giant's voice is on a whole other level, a level that sounds closer to a Buggy Ball exploding, so loud that it takes her a moment to separate and process the sounds into words.

She reaches up to rub at her right ear.

"He- He spotted us…" Vivi whimpers quietly from where she fell to her knees, Karoo frothing at the mouth next to her. "We're going to get eaten…"

Elynna crouches down to poke the duck awake with a confused glance towards the Princess, trying to understand why a Giant would be interested in eating three measly humans when there's at least a dozen times more meat even on just the head of the diplodocus that Dorry cut off.

Nah, she doesn't get it.

It may be a Grand Line thing, but somehow she can't help but remember how Miss Wednesday scornfully mocked Nami for trusting anything but the Log Pose on their first day towards Whiskey Peak, and she frowns, filing away the thought for later.

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

Elynna munches on her meal, and watches quietly as her Captain proceeds to devour a piece of dinosaur meat twenty times bigger than him while talking to a Giant like he's an old friend.

She watches, and reflects on her possible insanity for thinking that this is more real than the dreams that drift through her mind, made transparent by sunlight or moonlight.

She pauses.

Maybe not.

After all, it's not because these things don't exist in the world of her dreams that they automatically cannot be real.

And insanity certainly is not absent from the world she comes from.

Besides, no one in their right mind can ever say that the smile Luffy shoots her way at that moment is not real.

She tunes back into the conversation when the Giant starts explaining his presence on the island rather than in his home village.

It sounds like the kind of things Usopp would want to hear about.

They're interrupted by the sound of a volcano exploding, though, and soon Vivi sits back down next to her with a frustrated huff, tearing off and throwing a fistful of grass away from her.

"Why would two people keep trying to kill each other after a hundred years for pride? This doesn't make any sense!"

Elynna steals a glance at the trembling hands tearing carelessly through long, sky blue hair, and vaguely remembers something the Giant mentioned about Log Poses.

"It doesn't have to." She says quietly.

"What? Why?" The Alabasta Princess asks as she turns to her, latching onto the distraction with desperation rather than curiosity.

"Isn't it fine as long as it makes sense to those who are fighting?"

"Wars should never be 'fine'." Vivi mutters at the dirt under her fingernails like it's blood or the ashes of her subjects' corpses.

She's kind of stretching the scope of the conversation, because wars and honour duels the like of which is booming through the whole island like showers of thunderbolts and forests of volcanoes are very different as far as Elynna is concerned, but war must shorten the other girl's nights as much as mourning is shortening hers, so she keeps her mouth shut.

Even on a good day, Elynna wouldn't feel at ease enough to engage the Princess into a discussion that feels so much like a field of mines.

She's not having a good day.

"Well, while I understand the principles of this kind of philosophy, I can't say I'm able to relate to them. And it annoys me that they call it a 'man's fight'."

Vivi snorts, and for a moment she looks like Miss Wednesday again.

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

Dorry comes back with barrels of rum gifted to his rival by Usopp and Nami.

Which means that Usopp probably heard first-hand about Elbaf, and that Elynna is curious to hear how the two people she knows were planning to stay on the ship, even though she was half-aware when she was leaving the Merry, found themselves invited to Broggy's home.

Then the Giant and Luffy proceed to undo what little work she did to keep the younger girl from descending into a panic attack as they start joking about how there's little chance they would manage to reach Alabasta in time.

And then things manage to get worse, because the barrel of rum coming from their ship and that Dorry is happily gulping down explodes.

The ground that shakes as the Giant collapses and her own shock keep her glued to her seat instead of pushing her to her feet like her two companions, who scream at their host in worry, and then at each other.

Until she sighs, stands up, and shoves the remains of her sandwich in Luffy's mouth.

"That's enough, you two. Sea King, I know you like Dorry-san, but you don't have to yell at Vivi-sama for suspecting the only person on this island she never met. Vivi-sama, you don't have to agree with their ideology of honour, but it doesn't mean you should discard it when it's such an important part of their personality. Dorry-san's rival cares just as much about honour, and didn't change his mind for a hundred years. He is unlikely to have played that kind of card against someone he's known and respected for so long."

"But it's not the others either!"

"Of course it's not! No one in my crew would do that!"

"Why are you looking for a complicated answer? If it's not Broggy-san or us, then someone else is here, and I would bet on Baroque Works. At least four of them."

Luffy frowns.

Vivi gapes.

"What? Did you see them?"

"If she did she would've told us, dummy!"

Unfortunately, Dorry doesn't seem to agree with her theory when he regains consciousness, and seems pretty hell-bent on killing them instead.

Vivi and her duck take a step back simultaneously, looking ready to bolt.

Except Luffy isn't exactly of the same mind, and holds out his hat for Elynna to take, which she does with another sigh as she gestures for the Princess to join her further away from the two.

She did add a string to his hat so it wouldn't be stolen too easily after her Captain's fight with Buggy the Clown, but if it takes a hit from a Giant, she's not sure plot armour is going to be enough.

"Wha- You can't let him fight a Giant! The size difference is too much, it's completely insane!"

"Funny, that just happens to be his middle name. And I agree with Sea King. Running away from someone with legs that tall and with someone as loud as the Captain doesn't sound like a great chance at survival either. He's better at fighting, anyway."

Luffy still ends up buried into the ground twice, though, and when the volcano explodes for the second time that day the Giant stands up again, despite all the damage he took.

He now seems to believe that the exploding rum is a sign sent by the Giants' God.

So when her Captain tries to stop him from going to a duel that was interfered with, Dorry puts his freaking house on Luffy to keep him in check. Of course.

She doesn't even have the time to recover from that one before Usopp comes running in the clearing, trips, falls face first on a rock, and then announces that Nami was eaten by a dinosaur.

Both boys egg each other on until they're just basically screaming, and this time Vivi is the one who stops worrying about the disappearnce of her duck, and steps in to explain that no, just because you couldn't see her and heard her scream doesn't mean that she was eaten since, you know, you couldn't see her.

Then she turns back to Elynna.

"You said that there are probably Baroque Works agents here. Do you have any idea who?" She asks, ignoring the sniper's wildly confused look.

Elynna stares at the sky for a moment with narrowed eyes, then looks back at them and raises one finger.

"Mr. 5 and Miss Valentine obviously take pride in being officer agents, but they were humiliated by Fang and Sea King in Whiskey Peak. Even if it wasn't part of their mission, they would probably hunt us down to take revenge. Besides, Mr. 5 deals with explosions, and we just received explosive wine." A second finger comes up. "Miss Valentine's power would also make it easier to implement that plan since she can fly, and people rarely look above their heads all the time."

"And... The others?"

She shrugs, hand falling back to her side.

"Dunno, but these two are too prideful -or stupid- to come up with anything else than fighting others head on, so someone else is probably here to have invented this plan. In any case, we're in trouble."

"No kidding." Usopp snorts, before muttering something that sounds a lot like as usual.

She tends to agree with him, and he doesn't even know half of it -yet. Not that she does either, since most of what they lived through up till now is mostly unfamiliar to her.

"No, I mean, Giants aren't really the most discrete ever, and Miss Valentine's power is perfect for spying if someone does think to use it that way, so they probably know our positions by now while we don't know theirs. We don't know the identity of the person who came up with this plan either, and they're probably an officer agent with Devil Fruit powers, and thus likely to have brought their partner with them. It's also safe to assume Vivi-san's duck and Rain were taken by them, and so they've probably gone after Fang as well since they have both of their pictures. Hermes might be safe, because they don't have his, or Hawk's or mine, but I'd say we don't have much time before they come after you two," she says while pointing at both Luffy and Vivi, "and our main fighter is pretty much already down."

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

The First Mate closes her mouth, looking entirely detached from all the problems she just enumerated, and Vivi forces her eyes to come back to their normal size.

It sounds so logical now that she finds herself wondering how she could miss all of this.

It's like she was looking at scattered pieces before, and someone just handed her a picture of what the puzzle is supposed to look like.

(she wonders if things could have been stopped sooner, if someone like that saw Crocodile's smile for what it was)

And suddenly, she understands a bit better why this girl is the First Mate rather than Nami or the swordsman, even though she's barely present physically -and even less mentally.

Despite the fact that her hair is a mess, that she's so pale Vivi wouldn't even be surprised to learn that she has no blood in her veins, and that her eyes look like they haven't seen a pillow in weeks, she's smart.

Smart enough to understand the situation and yet stay more composed than all of them here, even though things took a turn for the worse in less than an hour, even though a fountain of blood sprays red into the sky and her Captain is slamming his head against the ground and screaming for the agents to come fight him.

(but even if they manage to make it better, Vivi will have the choice between waiting a year for the Log Pose to reset or wandering the seas and praying

and this is probably karma for all the bad things she did to try and make thousand of lives better)

"Then I'll be the one to deal with them! I can't let those bastards get away with interfering in a duel of honour like that!" The sniper suddenly proclaims as he jumps to his feet, having apparently been explained what happened by his Captain.

"I'll go with you!"

She might not care for those two Giants, and she still finds it stupid how they have been willingly fighting someone they obviously like to the death for so long (-when she'll have to go against the childhood friend who wants to kill her if she wants to save everyone, and she can't-), but this happened to them because she brought Baroque Works here.

And she can't give up on Carue (not when he's the only one who left Alabasta with her and lived to still stand by her).

"That's stupid." The First Mate says, so blunt that Vivi jumps.

"What?!" Usopp protests.

"They might have seemed weak against Sea King or Fang, but there's a reason they're so prideful in the first place. None of us here has the ability to beat them without a shit ton of luck-"

"But we can't just stay here like this!" Vivi finds herself protesting, the need to do something wriggling just under her skin like a needle, because she feels useless enough as it is, and she can't take more of it.

(she can't rely on luck after everything she gave up on to get here-)

"I wasn't finished. We can't beat them in a fair fight, but…" And then she turns to Usopp. "I know you want to become someone like those giants, Hawk, but since they played dirty first, you won't mind doing the same, right?"

The sniper blinks, and then they suddenly exchange a smirk while their Captain giggles.

It makes the ground feel a bit more stable under Vivi's feet.

She remembers the way the curly-haired boy was cackling while preparing explosives and stink bombs with breakfast leftovers in the kitchen two days before, remembers the 'colleague' who went to try and seduce the First Mate -and never came back to fight the swordsman with the other bounty hunters.

She would almost pity their enemies.

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

When Mr. 5 and his partner step into the clearing, only Vivi and Luffy are there, both because only their faces were drawn and communicated by the Unluckies from what Nami told Elynna, and so they can act as a distraction.

Elynna swears when they throw a clearly injured Karoo at the Princess' feet, but the younger girl seems to remember the plan just in time, and freezes in her steps to throw insults at the two instead.

Once they're sure that the two agents' attention is focused on her, Elynna watches as Usopp shoots a tabasco star right into Mr. 5's mouth, which he chose after Elynna told him what she remembered and deduced from when she saw the man fight.

After all, it was unlikely that a normal bullet would affect someone who ate the Bomu Bomu no Mi much.

Vivi springs to her feet and towards the officer agent who is now rolling on the ground with a face as red as his long overcoat, not caring about the fact that Miss Valentine is heading towards Karoo and Luffy, presumably to threaten her into stopping.

She doesn't have to care, really, since that's exactly what Elynna is here for.

She jumps out of her hiding place in the trees, running as fast as possible towards the blonde woman, and definitely glad that she was able to shake herself out of her stupor enough that morning to train with Zoro and work out the salt that incrusted itself in her body after hours spent lying around being useless and hurtful.

Still, she has to be as quick as possible, because she doesn't have as much energy as usual, and they still have to dig Luffy out and go help the rest of their crewmates, who more than probably landed themselves in more trouble than should be possible.

But.

Even against strong people like Zoro and Luffy, that Miss Valentine used exactly the same technique.

So… There are high chances that she doesn't actually have another technique, or thought about the possibility of regulating the weight of her fists and feet to give them more speed or power.

And if that's the case…

She speeds up, and reaches out for the handle of Miss Valentine's umbrella sticking out from under the woman's elbow, and which seemed to be necessary for her to control her weight once she reduced it to a certain point -and thus necessary for her entire attack pattern.

She tugs harshly at the item, and at the same time kicks the woman forward on her lower back.

The agent turns back just in time to see Elynna slam the umbrella on her rising knee, breaking the thin pole in two and damaging the fabric-covered structure for good.

She enjoys it just a tiny bit.

(Okay, she enjoys it a lot.

The woman seemed to think that she was suddenly stronger than Sea King now that she could beat him to a pulp while he was stuck under a goddamned building

it pissed Elynna the fuck off)

She probably should have expected the woman to be faster than a normal person given her job, though, but she reacts a bit too late, and her face jerks to the right under the impact of the fist that crashes into it.

She lets herself fall to the side, opposite leg rising and lashing out.

The woman manages to stumble back fast enough to avoid her kick despite the surprise, but it gives Elynna the time to straighten up after a cartwheel and cross both arms in front of herself, where Miss Valentine's fist lands just a second after.

Elynna skids back a bit.

Miss Valentine lets out a choked cry, folded in two over the hand cradled between her undamaged fingers.

She just knew that tying her tensen to the outside rather than the inside of her forearms would pay off.

Although Hawk had her train for at least an hour with each hand to make sure that she wouldn't just drop them while trying to unsheathe them in the middle of a fight like a klutz.

A pronounced flick of her wrist is enough to dislodge the tensen of her right hand, and it slides along the back of her hand, until it almost falls and she twists her fingers to curl them around the war fan's handle.

She keeps it folded as she quickly closes in on the other woman, who suddenly straightens up to punch her away.

But Elynna has already slid to the ground and past her, smashing the steel guard of the fan into the woman's knee.

She comes right back to her feet and glances towards Mr. 5, careless of the way her opponent crumples to the ground.

Her own fight lasted a minute at most, and in that time frame it seems that Usopp has gone out of tabasco munitions to fire at the Bomb Human, because the man is now holding Vivi by the throat, and clearly intending to have a go at Luffy.

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

"And me? What am I supposed to do?" Luffy whines at Usopp from where he's still stuck under the Giant's house.

"Uhhh… I guess that you can help distract them with Vivi?"

"What?! That's boring! I don't wanna!"

"Well it's not like we have the time to dig you out of here before they come."

Luffy pouts, and turns to Elynna, who shrugs.

"Hawk is right. That being said, your arms are still free. But you'll probably only have one shot at this before even idiots like them will find a way to block your arms, so it has to be a winning strike, okay?"

He beams, nodding enthusiastically.

Usopp throws a long-suffering glance at her.

She blinks innocently.

Okay, so actually someone as strong and stubborn as him might have more than just one shot at this.

But he will totally waste it if he thinks he has more when it's not even sure, so she had to find a way to make him at least a bit more cautious.

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

Her Captain is getting too angry, but if he tries to hit the man now when his range of movement is so limited he can basically only send his fist straight forward, Mr. 5 is more than capable of avoiding it.

So they need a distraction long enough, and it's up to her or Usopp.

Her hands quiver.

She doesn't want to do this.

Her feet don't want to move.

But it's her or Hawk, and she's already hurt them enough lately, keeps hurting them with the lies that will inevitably come to light someday and destroy all the trust they placed in her.

So she digs her fingernails into her palms hard enough to bleed herself into moving.

She runs.

Throws one of her knives as a distraction, because she doesn't have enough training -or luck- under her belt to do this properly right now.

And barrels right into the man, forcing him to let go of the Princess with the impact.

"You little- You have got to be an idiot to try fighting hand-to-hand with me."

And you have got to be a bloody imbecile to think that people wouldn't have an ulterior motive to try and fight you in close quarters when they know what you can do.

She doesn't have the time to say that before he punches her in the stomach, though.

And she lets him, because if the guy gets off on kicking a duck around, then he's definitely going to focus on her long enough for her Captain to act.

She knew it would hurt.

This is basically a bomb blowing up just next to her, after all.

But she thought the resilience of this body would help a bit.

It doesn't feel like it.

It feels like her every cell being blown apart by the shock and the pain, the pain that is too high, too much to be encompassed by the outline of her self-

(-and she thinks she feels some pieces hit the ground or maybe a person

but she can't tell which pieces it is or what is a person or where the ground is supposed to be, and she can't see-)

The pain sears and spears and roars its way through her, until she can't differentiate between the parts of herself because they're all being razed to the ground, until she can't hear her own heartbeat or make sense of her own thoughts.

It wipes her mind clean of anything but a pain so high it feels like a blazing, unreachable numbness, and cuts right through the string of her consciousness.

(She wakes up with a body wracked through with pain and not enough breath to gasp or scream

hacking silently

body straining and convulsing around rippling fire and trobbing thunder and emptiness

half-asleep and half-drowning mind struggling to remember how to

breathe-)

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

There's a moment of blank silence that stretches on and on.

Most of them don't expect Elynna to not even raise her arms to parry Mr. 5's blow.

None of them expect her to just…

fall.

She drops to the ground so suddenly it takes a moment for Usopp to realise it, and it doesn't make sense-

It doesn't make sense, because Usopp knows his First Mate much better than this Baroque Works bastard, and the guy is completely wrong about her being weak.

Elynna is tough.

No inexperinced civilian can keep up with the Monster Trio's craziness and not be tough.

Sure, she doesn't usually go for the big shots, but she won against a Fish-Man, and Usopp sees her walk around with the bruises and cuts from her training with Zoro and fight with them everyday.

Zoro might go easy on Elynna for now, but he's much stronger than Explosive Man over there.

And yet there's still no sound coming from her.

And yet she still hasn't moved.

It's Luffy's scream of rage as he punches Mr. 5 straight in the face that snaps Usopp out of the incomprehension that froze him into place, before he hastily drops down from the branch he was perched on to run to his crewmate.

And he curses himself for not being able to remember what Kaya told him when she would suddenly come alive with all the things she read in medicine books, because Elynna's eyes are closed and he can't hear her breathe over his own heart beating and she's not moving-

"Vivi, get me out of here! Usopp! How is Ann?!"

Usopp jumps.

He licks his lips anxiously for a moment, suddenly empathising more than he ever wanted to with his First Mate for getting stuck with the job of being their nurse, and reaches out with trembling hands to carefully put Elynna on her back.

He peels up her shirt just enough to see her stomach, and winces at the motley patchwork of red and yellow and darker blisters on the white, smooth skin.

But when he calms down enough to check her pulse and her breathing, he finds both to be stable, although maybe a bit slower than his own.

She's just… not waking up.

And he's pretty sure it's not normal, because whenever he steps within a few metres of wherever Elynna is sleeping, she always wakes up.

"Usopp!"

"I think her stomach will be fine after we treat it, she's probably just out of it!"

Or at least he really, really hopes so, because if what he's about to do doesn't work out, then he's really, really going to freak out.

Gulping, he reaches out, and shakes his First Mate by the shoulder.

She blinks her eyes open just like that, even if it's slightly too sluggish to be entirely comforting.

And for a moment she looks right through him as if she can see nothing of the world, and after that she looks at him but there's nothing on her face, and it feels like his heart and his lungs dropping out of his ribcage and right into the acidic juices of his digestive system.

Then her mouth opens to choke on air and her hand finds his to clutch at it desperately.

(the way he clutched at her once after a nightmare)

He pulls her to her knees and gathers the long, blue-green darkness of her hair in his hand just in time to keep them away from her mouth as she proceeds to puke everything she ate in the last few hours.

He rubs her back until she stops retching, and slowly, carefully carries her away and closer to their Captain, lending her his flask of water when they sit down again.

She thanks him with a nod, turning to the side to spit out the foul taste in her mouth.

"Ann! Are you alright?!"

"'ll be fine." Elynna waves off the rubber boy's long-distance fretting sluggishly.

"I'm glad." Vivi smiles in relief from where she's shoveling dirt with her hands to give Luffy enough space to slip out from under the house.

"Why did you do that, you idiot?! I was already going to hit him, and I told you not to put yourself in danger like this!"

"Needed a distraction to win."

And right then, even though Elynna was the one who turned to him first to come up with a plan not an hour before, Usopp finds himself thinking that maybe she's better than him when it comes to strategy, in some ways.

Because he's heard enough from the chess club members back in his village to know that you have to make sacrifices to win.

But it takes a certain kind of ruthlessness to apply that to people's health and lives -and to include one's own life among the 'pieces'.

Elynna could try to just talk the man into focusing on her long enough for Luffy to act, but words are easier to ignore, and the guy was frankly kind of obsessed with their Captain even before coming here.

She could try to use her knives, but she wasn't comfortable enough with them yet, and Usopp was out of munitions that would take more than a split-second of his attention.

They didn't have time to prepare something more sophisticated like a tree trunk to swing into his face either.

So she just deduced that capitalising on his sadistic tendencies was the best way to go, and went through with it herself with little to no hesitation.

(it makes Usopp want to steal her to himself until she masters the technique she wants to create

because she's too ruthless with herself

and he doesn't want to see her drop -dead- like that ever again)

"The agents?" Elynna rasps at him as she hands him back his flask, sounding like all the smoke from the bomb is still stuck into her lungs.

Usopp feels his lips purse, and he stands up to go check on them as she slowly crawls her way to their Captain to help the Princess get him out.

The agents… are clearly out of commission, and Usopp winces around the shiver that slithers up his back when he spots Miss Valentine's messed up fingers and the way her right knee is clearly bending the wrong way, or how Mr. 5 was punched so hard in the face it looks like his broken glasses were incrusted into it.

"They won't wake up for a while, and even then I doubt they'll be able to come at us, but I tied them up just in case." Usopp announces when he comes back. "Also Elynna, please stop being such a perfect fit for Luffy, or I'll have to yeet you out of our club. Violence is the criteria for the Monster Trio, you know."

Vivi blinks confusedly at him.

Elynna rolls her eyes.

Luffy beams proudly at his First Mate like Usopp just told him that he has a great instinct when it comes to recruiting people.

He obviously does, since he recruited Usopp.

"A club? I wanna join!"

"Absolutely not. You already are part of one, and they're mutually exclusive. No merging will ever be possible, I'm afraid." Usopp sniffs.

Luffy whines loudly, face dropping to the ground in dejection.

Elynna mutters something that sounds an awful lot like Romeo and Juliet.

Usopp shudders dramatically at the dreaded name, and chucks a fistful of grass at her.

She blows the few blades that landed on her face away, and goes back to her work without bothering to take care of the grass in her hair, which Luffy sets out to clean up carefully, tongue sticking out of his mouth and brows furrowed in concentration.

"I'm sorry." Their First Mate blurts out from nowhere after a few minutes, and they blink at her in confusion.

"For the last few days." She adds by way of explanation.

"Nami already told us you were sorry."

"Maybe, but I didn't."

"You said sorry to Sanji and Zoro, too?" Usopp asks, because he kind of wishes he can see that.

"Yeah. Told Hermes at breakfast, and Fang after I punched him in the face this morning."

"... Aren't you supposed to say sorry for punching him in the face?"

She shrugs.

"Nah, he looked pretty proud actually."

Usopp gives up on commenting about that (he'll never understand their relationship, and he doesn't want to), and shrugs instead, assuring her that it's fine right after Luffy, because she didn't avoid them when they told her it was important or needed her to man the ship, and she never lashed out at them either.

(and she clearly had Things to Deal with

but if it lasted longer than a week, he, Sanji and Nami had a plan to tie her to a chair and tickle the answers out of her if necessary

evil, but for her own good

Everyone on this crew is stubborn as hell about solving their problems on their own, but they're all more than stubborn enough to make the others understand they're here for them

-and promptly ignore that it's also valid the other way around-

Somehow, though, it works

and it's beautiful and warm like liquid fireworks in his veins every day he wakes up on the Merry)

"Alright!" Luffy proclaims once he gets out, carelessly brushing part of the dirt off of his clothes, and then grabbing Elynna's hand, since she still looked a bit wobbly when standing. "Let's go kick their asses!"

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

All three of her male companions are so enthusiastic that they burst right through the clearing everyone else is in and crash into the trees on the other end of it.

As quickly and silently as they can, she and Vivi make their way around the place through the trees bordering it to join them, trying to make sense of the situation.

There's a man and a little girl standing with their backs to her, whom she guesses she can safely assume to be Mr. 3 and his partner, considering the hairdo of the former -which is frankly impressive in both how well it's apparently managing to keep its shape throughout the day and how ugly it is.

Dorry seems to be down for the count -if not dead (she doesn't know how much blood loss is too much for a Giant), and his duelling opponent is shackled and stabbed through with some kind of white matter.

Her crewmates are apparently trapped on a tall sculpture made of the same material, and on top of which candles are turning and spreading a thin white mist onto the three of them.

Considering the design of the whole thing and how generous Mr. 5 was in giving them information while bragging, it's not hard to guess what all the white stuff is.

She clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth, and stops not too far from where Usopp, Karoo and Luffy are standing. The longer she can conceal her presence the better, after all.

What a mess.

But at least Sanji isn't there either, and as long as there isn't another woman somewhere on the island to distract him, she's pretty sure he has exactly the kind of smarts to avoid falling into Mr. 3's trap and figure out at least broadly what's going on.

She half-sits and half-falls down, each straining breath stretching the blistering skin of her stomach.

The walk here helped even though most of her weight was actually being carried by Usopp or Luffy, but she still feels distinctly as if her lungs are on fire and smoke is grilling her skin and her organs all the way to her mouth, everything hot and grating and bubbling in a way that makes her head a bit fuzzy and blurs the details out of her vision.

(But her feet on the ground don't feel like the wreckage of a ship in the middle of a storm anymore

and she's pretty sure that the pain that obliterated the world and locked her outside of it didn't last as long as her initial reaction used to

If the ability to do so wasn't wrung out of her in the last few days, she would hope that her mind is finally starting to adapt to this new body

because otherwise she knows she won't survive the Grand Line

and she's not sure she can force her body to stop trembling and move the next time she's faced with the possibility of knowing that kind of pain again

It looks like even ignorance can be useful sometimes, for cowards like her)

And Zoro really is not helping her stabilise her breathing when she hears that he almost cut off his legs to free himself (what even), with apparently the belief that he would still be able to keep fighting afterwards (sure, if he has the zombie gene, but that would make him a lot less nice to look at if the stories she read are true).

Somehow, she half-believes in the possibility that he would actually make it work anyway.

She doesn't really listen to the customary exchange of threats and insults (though her Captain doesn't seem to realise that his comments on Mr. 3's hairdo are being taken as insults, but that guy seriously needed someone to tell him), mostly because her ears are still blazing with the sound of her sizzling flesh and the distant white noise of what might have been death.

So she closes her eyes to focus on her breathing and the feel of the ground under her hands as she tries to expand her hearing into the present and the outside, because if she doesn't she thinks she might just puke -again.

"Elynna? You alright?"

She nods in answer to Usopp's whisper.

"Not trying to become a 'whole new Usopp'?"

"Shut up," he huffs, and she doesn't need to open her eyes to know that he's blushing. "I'm supporting our Captain from the back line."

"Don't."

She feels him settle back next to her from where he was rising, and she opens her eyes to see that he's still staring at what is happening in the clearing.

She takes a peek herself, but the yelling she heard was enough to deduce most of the situation -and that Luffy's first attempt to destroy the wax sculpture failed.

Her jaw clenches at the sight the almost entirely white figures Zoro and Nami cut, gradually fading in with the sculpture behind them, and her fingers curl to dig into the earth, grabbing fistfuls of grass and soil and gravels that dig into the skin of her palms in an attempt to counteract the fear that is contracting her stomach until it's as if the molten skin of her insides is being peeled off as her organs form a tight, hard ball of anxiety that feels like a rock and weighs like lead.

(She has never hated white so much

and that tiny, acidic lake of fury towards the pointless cruelty of the man that is pooling in the back of her mouth is enough to dissolve the tears and the screams that want to come out

amidst the savagely cathartic visions that show him being stabbed to his own service set and struggle until he can no longer move and his heart no longer beats)

"We still don't know how this fight is going to go. The others have even less time left for now, and that girl hasn't used her powers yet. If we have to help him, we better use the fact that we haven't been noticed yet. It worked once, after all, and that Mr. 3 guy looks just as full of himself."

He nods, and she blinks, half-expecting protests about her callousness and refusals to go along with her idea, especially after what happened with the two Giants.

Usopp intercepts her gaze, and cocks an eyebrow at her.

"Why are you looking at me like that? I want to win this fight no matter what, and we all know that you and Zoro are the ones who stay the most logical in this situation, so listening to you is my best bet."

"Oh my god." She groaned as she covered her eyes with her hands, sinking into the sofa and wishing it would suck the image of the man on the screen entering a bar out of her brain.

Her mother tsked exasperatedly on her right, and slapped her arm with a roll of her eyes.

"Stop being so dramatic."

"Yeah," her sister added as she turned around from the armchair she was seated in. "He just lost the woman he loved. It's normal that he wants to get drunk."

No, really? She scoffed inside her own mind.

She knew that. It didn't mean she had to like the fact that a guy who was supposed to be smart was suddenly acting like a fucking moron.

She kept her mouth shut, as usual in this kind of situation. Speaking up wasn't worth the annoyance that would rattle her sister's voice or her mother's face.

"You'd do the same, anyway." Her sister eventually huffed before turning back to the movie.

Unfortunately, she was rather sure it was true.

Though she dared to hope it wouldn't happen while being a criminal. She was someone who followed the rules by nature even if she found them stupid, if only to avoid problems.

It's the first time someone outright tells her something positive about her efforts to distance herself from what someone or something makes her feel, and another weight falls on her shoulders where all the expectations are already piling.

But she thinks it almost feels like a blanket too.

(and that maybe they need her as much as she needs them

just like they apparently love her as much as she loves them)

She reaches out just in time to muffle Usopp and Vivi''s yells of victory when their Captain sends Mr. 3 flying, and the sniper struggles only until he hears Luffy suddenly say that he's not in the mood to save his crewmates anymore.

His shoulders slouch as he grumbles something from behind her hand that is probably cursing the rubber boy for forcing him to fight, before he takes a big breath.

Then another.

"Okay. Okay. The brave warrior Usopp and his three sidekicks are going to kick ass and save the day." And then he turns to her. "Analysis?"

She hums for a moment.

"Just destroying this service set or whatever won't work, since the others already have wax in and on their bodies, and the knives keeping Broggy-san down are way too big, so we have to do it another way... Also, wax melts." She arches a brow at him, lips twitching involuntarily. "Plan?"

He stares off into the distance as she watches Nami manage to take Luffy out of a trap, only for him to fall right into another, and start laughing so hard it's a wonder he's still standing.

(But his fists are clenched,

and it doesn't sound like his real laugh

She hates it)

Usopp frowns grimly at the sight next to her as he rummages through his sling bag.

He takes out a bottle of oil, a bout of rope, and a lighter.

She blinks.

He points towards Karoo.

The duck tilts his head on the side.

Elynna's eyes bounce between his hands and Karoo.

And she smirks.

A mirror of it streches Usopp's thick mouth, proud and mischievous and just a tiny bit excited despite the situation.

"Vivi-sama and I will take care of that girl-"

He snaps his fingers towards her.

"-so Luffy can take out the wax weirdo for good-"

"-because there's no way someone so high-ranked can be out with just one hit."

"Right."

He holds out his closed fist, and she bumps hers into it before they both highfive Karoo's extended wings, and then his mistress' hands -though she looks mostly confused as to what is happening.

"We're geniuses, I tell you."

"Totally."

"In fact, I think we should be the Genius Trio, because the Monster Trio are clearly idiots most of the time."

"Great naming sense, Hawk."

"Well, someone has to compensate for your quite frankly horrible one. I still resent being given the same nickname as a monster like that crazy strong swordsman, by the way."

She smiles wider.

"Oh? Would you rather I go back to Loverboy? Because-"

"Please have mercy."

"Then shut your mouth and get to work."

Being the First Mate has got to come with a few benefits.

"Hm… What is the plan?" Vivi asks hesitantly once the sniper is gone.

Elynna grins as much as she can in her current state.

"Don't worry. Hawk doesn't need us for that. And we have a job to do, anyway." She adds with a jerk of her head towards Luffy, who is still laughing.

"I can…" Thin, light blue brows set with the same determination as Miss Wednesday. "I can do it, if you want." She offers with a glance at Elynna's stomach.

Elynna tilts her head, and tries to ignore the reminder that when it comes to pain resilience, she might never be able to catch up to this world's average citizen, let alone her crewmates.

"Do you think you can do it?"

Vivi stares at her for a moment, and nods.

"If Usopp-san takes care of Nami and Mister Bushidō, then yes."

"Okay, then. Tell Sea King to go after Mr. 3 for me. I'll back you up if necessary."

Elynna thinks it will be, because there has been a clear difference of strength between the Princess and officer agents so far.

But Mr. 3's partner doesn't seem so keen on direct confrontation, so the heiress might be right in her self-assessment.

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

Zoro smirks as much as he can without his hardening skin crackling.

First, because the candle weirdo wants faces of despair for his statues, and he'll be damned if he gives this kind of sick fucker anything.

Second, because Luffy and Usopp came crashing in just a few moments ago, which means that the others are probably fine too.

Well, okay, he's still on his way to becoming a statue or dying of blood loss (after getting trapped way too easily and no one is ever going to talk about this if they want to stay alive), and his Captain is losing because he's a simple-minded idiot going up against mind tricks.

But the Princess, Usopp and his First Mate haven't come out yet, and the former might have information on the kid's weakness, while both of the latter are good with plans and mind tricks, so he's not too worried.

(and it's too late for that anyway, because he got rid of the fear of death a long time ago, and it's not something he can get back -or wants to get back)

He's proved right when the former Miss Wednesday comes out and brushes her hand against the back of Luffy's shirt, erasing the yellow symbol on it.

His idiot of a Captain stops rolling around in laughter, and gets to his feet, panting and glaring.

"Now you're really gonna get it, you dumb-dumb-head!"

"... Seriously?" Nami mutters.

If Zoro could facepalm, he would.

"Luffy-san," the Princess interrupts him in the middle of his attack. "Let me take care of her and just go after Mr. 3."

"But I gotta-"

"Elynna-san told me to ask you that."

"Oh. Okay, then." Luffy shrugs, before running off in the direction he launched the man in earlier.

"Ugh, come on! We're still stuck, here!" Nami groans.

"Don't worry, Nami! Usopp-san is taking care of that!" The Princess yells back.

She fares relatively well against the officer agent, avoiding the sprays of paint and seemingly somehow knowing that looking at the red isn't safe.

So even if none of her own attacks hit the other girl, they're at least drawing a tie.

Until Vivi steps on the green symbol hidden in the grass and suddenly finds herself enjoying a cup of tea on the blanket set up by her opponent, that is.

"I'll go take care of your other friends while Mr. 3 finishes things with your Captain -can't have them saving these two before they're dead, but why not have a cup of tea before that? My 'Calming Green' is quite relaxing, isn't it?" The Baroque Works agent asks as she prepares another cup on the opposite corner of the blanket next to where the tea set was placed.

"Not really. Actually, it kind of freaks me out. This controlling emotions stuff sounds like the beginning of a dystopia." Zoro's First Mate answers from where she's crouching next to her, having inserted herself into the younger girl's personal space so naturally -like she belonged there- that her instincts completely dismissed Elynna's presence.

(or maybe it's the unstable weakness of her breath that Zoro can hear from where he is

and the pain tightening her usually round features and leaking out of her,

screaming that she posed no threat to anyone in her state

Somehow, though, she looks more alive and present than at any moment during the last few days)

Elynna smiles at the gaping agent.

And then she grabs the back of her head and slams her face first into the nearest tree trunk.

Then she does it a second time for good measure, and unceremoniously lets the now bloody face hit the ground while she sits down more properly.

"You just imitated that weird woman, admit it." Zoro calls out after a moment of silence.

Elynna shrugs, not bothering to deny anything.

"So what? Miss All Sunday's entrance was pretty cool. And clearly it works, since even you didn't sense her at first."

Zoro rolls his eyes, but lets the teasing slide this once, because his jaws are starting to feel stiff.

(and she was hurting too much to talk, let alone tease anyone up till now)

"Lynna… Did you have to do that to that little girl? Wasn't it a bit too much?" Nami calls out hesitantly from next to him.

"Why?"

"Because she was just a child! Maybe she didn't really want to do this, maybe she didn't really understand what she was doing or- or-"

"You know, Rain. Mr. 3 and the two others are humans, too." Elynna answers flatly.

"... What does that have to do with anything?"

"They might be adults, but they were also kids at some point. Kids who maybe were threatened into doing things like this at first, kids who maybe were taught that making others suffer is funny. You can think what you want, but as far as I'm concerned I can't forgive what people do simply on the basis that if their life was different they might not have done it. Besides, Crocodile doesn't strike me as the type to take in kids who aren't already pretty set in their ways. And it doesn't even matter, because she was preventing Sea King from saving you guys. I didn't enjoy hurting her, and I didn't want to do it either. But she was in the way of you and Fang's safety. I don't fucking care that she's a kid. Between her and you, my crew will always come first. Even if it means that you hate me."

If he could, Zoro would smirk just a bit wider.

He expects nothing less than this level of dedication and mental resilience from the First Mate he serves under. The job is not just about making them all happy, after all.

(He'll just have to make sure she doesn't sacrifice too much of herself for them when someone else could do the job

because Lynn is such a perfectionist -could never have improved so fast otherwise no matter how much he helps her- that she might just end up taking the job more seriously than even he or Luffy would want)

"Don't be stupid." He huffs with a roll of his eyes. "How long are we going to stay stuck on this thing, anyway? We're dying here, you know?"

"You said Usopp was doing something about this, little one?" Broggy struggles to ask Vivi his question from where he's still pinned to the ground, face almost entirely white and pressed into the dirt.

It's Elynna who answers, pointing towards the back of the sculpture Zoro and Nami are trapped on.

"Oh, he's working on it."

She smiles, then.

"It's gonna get a bit hot, though."

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

She closes the door of the room she uses for training with Usopp quietly.

Somehow, she managed to get the night to herself.

Though she'll probably have to thank Zoro for taking the night watch with her and then going to the crow's nest on his own, once everyone else went to sleep after Nami checked that they were still going in the good direction -despite the Giants' rather original way to get them out of Little Garden- and everyone was patched up to the best of her capabilities and fed by Sanji.

She loves Luffy, for holding her hand and giving her an anchor named I love you to hold onto through the grief that is swamping her and the memories and the regrets trying to drag her away from reality, stealing her mind and taking over her life for minutes and hours.

She loves Sanji, for paying attention to the health of her body when she's too busy feeling the aching absence of the one she doesn't live in anymore.

She loves Usopp, for somehow managing to talk in a way that keeps her attention on him, for including her without making it necessary for her to speak, because some days her throat is so tight and tense (-a straining and creaking dam-) she feels like it might break if she speaks too much or too loud.

She loves Nami, for being so constantly there that her warmth has seeped and settled into her own body like it's hers, making her skin a bit less numb and the outside world a bit more real, until she's temporarily too drunk on that warmth to think about the chilly fingers of their absence brushing down her back.

Even though none of it is really enough, these days.

But she loves Zoro, too, for turning away when the gears of her face are too rusted by the salt of her tears to work well and giving her the time to set the latter on fire and vaporise them into non-existence, for allowing her to bleed the thoughts and the feelings that are too raw to be dealt with efficiently through stinging knuckles and burning muscles and scratched skin and sweat-drenched bruises.

She leans back against the door, and takes a deep breath.

Or tries to.

But the tide has risen since she last did this, and only half of her lungs are available.

Her shoulders sag.

She wishes she could control herself better.

But she's human.

Of course her feelings will win in the end.

And she tried.

Tried for months to think about getting her life back only when the thought flitted through her mind without her permission, to focus everything (what little) she has and is on her crewmates, because they don't deserve anything less than the entirety of her person -even if she's as dull and flimsy next to them as clouds unraveling to make way for rays of sunshine.

(But aren't her family and her friends worth the entirety of her person and more too?

Aren't they worth her grief and her tears and her pain?

Aren't they worth so much of those it should destroy her,

if she wasn't such a pathetic excuse of a person who can't feel half as much as she should even when it comes to this?)

Tried putting the truth on a loop in the back of her mind to get used to it.

Tried writing all their names and crossing them out in her notebook over and over and over, because maybe if she did it enough it would stop hurting so damn much she would feel like stabbing the pen in her chest instead.

But the tide is still rising and accumulating and festering.

She's running out of ideas, but-

But.

She spends so much energy and time holding back in front of others and herself because no matter how much she knows that crying and raging is healthy, it feels ridiculous to let everything go whenever she feels like it when her life is so much better than just about everyone else's.

No one hit her on a daily basis.

No one placed so much expectations on her it left no place for enough breath in her lungs to laugh freely.

No one (except perhaps herself) webbed words through her mind and etched them onto her skin until the ground was ripped from under her feet and any kind of self-esteem was torn away from her body like one might be skinned alive.

She faced little to no discrimination, or if she did she doesn't even remember it.

She didn't suffer from poverty or disease or disability in a world where her weak (scared), little cowardly self would have given up on the odds of such a life before even trying to face it.

She didn't grow up in the middle of a war or with no freedom to speak of.

But.

But as far as she's concerned, all those who made her into the girl whose name sounds more and more like a stranger's with every day that passes are little better than dead now.

All of them.

Gone in a second.

And isn't that enough?

She should be able to rest without feeling guilty now, right?

Because her shoulders are trembling under the weight, and she has no nails or skin on her red and white fingers to keep holding onto the edge of the cliff.

She breathes in quickly, and bats her eyes slowly so that the tears slip out and down her cheeks instead of being crushed into faint moisture.

Then she flips out her phone, and leaves it on the floor to play the song that might just push her through the walls she built herself and doesn't know how to get over anymore.

(I can fake a smile

I can force a laugh

I can dance and play the part

If that's what you ask

Give you all I am

I can turn it on

Be a good machine

I can hold the weight of worlds

If that's what you need

Be your everything)

At first, she manages to control her body, to make everything smooth and slow and still even in the air, because for now there's just tears.

(and in her head her cousin and her ex are there to give her instructions and throw out ideas of what her next movement could be,

and her sister and her best friend are clapping and cheering with enough force to fill an entire room,

and her parents and grandparents and the rest of her family look so proud, the way she wishes they looked in the darkness everytime she went on stage

-they're all here)

And then she wipes them out from the room (from the future in her mind), and in the confines of that room she explodes into shrapnels for the second time that day.

(I can do it

I can do it

I can do it

But I'm only human

And I bleed when I fall down

I'm only human

And I crash and I break down

Your words in my head, knives in my heart

You build me up and then I fall apart

'Cause I'm only human)

She jumps as high as she can so that her feet hit the floor as hard as possible.

She bends her body as far and as fast as possible so she can hear her bones crack like a fist against a rock.

(and she wants them to break like her mind and her heart-)

Once and for all, while she's not bothering anyone and not endangering herself, she lets the pain edge the music along like a spear of glassy shards in her body, lets it twist her face and drown her eyes (her blurry, blind eyes that can't see where she's going-) and tear her body apart.

She jumps and runs and flings her arms and spins spins spins (like she's trying to soar and fly away, but she's bound to crash because she's got no wings) to throw her hope and her pain away.

To let the girl who closed her eyes for a single goddamned second in the Mediterannean Sea crash and break in waves of foamy tears against the stone of reality.

(the reality of a world that shouldn't exist but does,

of a life that wasn't hers but now is,

of people who shouldn't want her but somehow do)

In the end, when there's not enough left of her to tear away from her person, she allows her knees to hit the ground for good, and bends down to rest her forehead against the floorboards, curving in on herself in an attempt to keep the scream coming to her lips within the limits drawn by her body.

It hitches out so high-pitched and off and unhinged that she wants to shut it down and forget everything.

But it's too late.

So she bites down on her arm hard enough to draw out red tears, and she whimpers and gasps and sobs.

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

Nami isn't woken up when the door clicks softly open and then shut, because she wasn't asleep.

She's not stupid.

Zoro hates taking the first night shift because he prefers to sleep off his meal first so that his awareness doesn't waver during his watch.

He told her and Luffy to take care of Lynn before shit goes down, but they all know that their First Mate prefers to deal with her problems like Zoro: alone and in silence.

So that idiot of a swordsman probably got annoyed on her behalf with how they've all been fussing over her in the last few days, and wanted to give her a break.

(and fear probably isn't keeping him awake,

because he didn't see the dilated, obsessively fixated darkness of Lynna's eyes when she was looking at the ocean that day

as if she wanted it to swallow her whole and leave nothing behind

as if she wanted to disappear-)

She knows that Vivi is a pretty heavy sleeper, so she doesn't hesitate to sit up and call out to her best friend softly.

"Rain." Elynna whispers back, and even with that volume her voice sounds hoarse and raw and torn (missing pieces lost in the night air), as if every breath she takes in and every word that comes out scrapes a bit more off the bleeding walls of her throat.

She must not be used to what little light pierces into the room yet (or maybe her eyes are just too swollen and blurry), because she doesn't stop quick enough, and her knees hit the end of the bed.

It's not even that hard.

So Nami doesn't expect her to stumble and crash almost silently (a choked cry) on the bed.

Slowly, Elynna sits up, hair falling limply around her like drapes from a funeral and dead limbs, almost hiding the quivering of her fingers and the trembling of her arms and the way her head hangs low under the weight of her own mind.

"Rain." She exhales again as if she has no breath (no hope and no life-) left.

And suddenly Nami can't quite swallow no matter how much she tries, as if the heavy, heavy pain and the terrible exhaustion drenching the air from the girl in front of her seeped into her own body and is drowning her from the inside.

(It works a hundred times better with how much she loves her.)

"I'm here." She whispers right back, scrambling to come closer to Elynna as she frantically reaches out for the two white hands spread on the white sheet.

She cradles the long, thick fingers between hers and lifts them, taking half of her best friend's weight with her to press her lips against the back of those hands, long enough that maybe she can pass on some of her own strength, no matter how silly it might seem.

For the first time since Elynna entered, Nami manages to take a glimpse at her face.

The red of her eyes and her cheeks is like a sunburn made glossy with the remaining tears that painfully drag themselves out and down the parched trenches of her skin.

The bruised, bloodshot blue of her eyes seems even blacker than usual, like dark quicksand and whirlpools and the gaping mouth of a beast eager to gulp Nami down and trap her into its own, mad little hell of a cell.

Her mouth falls open, empty and dark except for the dried red that paints her lips and her teeth and matches the pretty, angry, broken shards of the little crescents in the flesh of her arm.

Then it clicks shut.

Opens again.

But only the same word comes out of it for the third time, dull and tired like it's the only thought familiar enough to make it to her lips -but not enough to make sense.

It's the second time Nami sees the girl at a loss for words.

(but the first time it was the emptiness that stole her voice away from them,

and now it feels like it's pain that is corroding the words,

too harrowing to fit in and be expressed by a human mouth even if her best friend wanted to)

Her eyes are wiped blank of the complex, articulated intelligence and analytical awareness that could pick up and understand people and situations like books and chess boards all at the same time or talk even Luffy into using common sense.

(In that moment, Nami hates whatever or whoever stole that brilliant, brilliant mind away from them.)

And then Elynna gives up.

Lets her weight fall into Nami, forehead bumping against her collarbones and temple brushing against her throat.

Nami tilts back under the sudden increase of weight at first, then clenches her teeth like a dam against the tears that want to slip out of her grip, and winds her arms around the girl speared through with tremors, dragging her closer to her like she can make the pain print itself onto her own skin and leave her best friend the hell alone.

"We're here, okay?" She whispers into dark, knotted, sea scented hair as she rakes and brushes her fingers through them carefully.

She doesn't care if Elynna wants to talk to her or another of their crewmates or if she doesn't want to talk at all.

She just wants her to be happy.

Just wants to be able to hear her laugh and see her smile again without it being an echo ready to slip off and fade away when she blinks.

(just wants her to be happy with them

because she's been selfless enough for three lives

and being a Straw Hat is all about freedom, so why should she shackle and compress her heart into the mould of duty the way she used to?)

So when she feels Elynna's jaws flex and then snapt shut once more against her skin without being able to speak, she says nothing and just rocks the two of them back and forth, fingers unfastening the knots of her hair like every one of them is a piece of Elynna's pain and lips brushing like feathers over the painfully dry and salty skin of her eyes and cheeks.

(and her lungs throb and rattle with every silent, silent tear that slides over the skin of her chest

throb and rattle with the little girl she didn't have the time to be, the child who was lonely and scared and hurt

and who wanted so, so bad to cry and scream and rage at the world for making her and everyone else she loved suffer)

And she holds on until the trembles wracking through her First Mate are smoothed out and there's not even enough energy left for her fingers to clutch at Nami's clothes.

"I don't hate you, Lynna. It's okay."

Because isn't she the same?

For the villagers she grew up with, she lied and stole and betrayed and hit the little kids who came to avenge their parents until they gave up and crumpled to the ground with so many tears some stayed stuck in their throats and made them gasp like wounded animals.

Maybe she likes children more than Elynna, but she's just as capable of hurting them for a goal she considers more important.

Maybe Elynna's actions are already growing into the ruthlessness she looked at the world with for as long as Nami has known her, and maybe it scares her to see what her best friend will become (will become for them), but she knows with as much certainty as she knows all the ways to pick a lock that ruthlessness and cruelty aren't the same thing, and Elynna takes no pleasure in bringing pain to others.

"I love you. I love you."

And she keeps going, hoping that if she says it enough times her best friend will stop whispering I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry even in her sleep.

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

#FTSFact5: So you know that story about Sabo being very intelligent but also very stupid? With the treasure map? Yeah?

Well it wasn't a treasure map.

More exactly, it was a map from a newbie of another gang of mountain bandits, a newbie who thought that the group's toilet zone really ought to be located precisely, because he didn't want to ever stock himself up on water flowing downwards from there.

Yes, Sabo came up with a Plan to raid what he thought was a heavily guarded treasure room.

Yes, Luffy and Ace made fun of him for at least two whole weeks after that.

And yes, they told the story In Great Detail to Dadan and her men -AND Makino.

Also yes, at some point Sabo had enough, and this is what led to what was called The Hundred Days (Prank) War. Those who lived to tell the tale still shiver to this day.

Anyway.

… So was the angst satisfying for the budding saddists who were asking for it?

1) Yup.

2) Hell yes!

3) Who the hell are you calling a saddist when you're the one who wrote it, you psycho?!

4) I'm not a budding saddist, I'm a full-blown one, thank you very much.

5) *sniffles, and grabs yet another tissue* You angst-lovers are all out of your damn mind and I want the fluff back. Pretty please.

Personally, I would answer 6).

(6) I'm building an altar to your greatness. If there isn't a cult dedicated to you that I can join, I can also create one.)

And yes, the lack of a negative answer is intended.

Megalomania aside, I thought this chapter was gonna be super easy because to be honest I don't have much of an interest in it, but at first I had literally no idea of where to put Elynna, because I couldn't really whip out an OC from nowhere when Baroque Works has a very specific way of functioning once officer agents get involved.

And then I had too many ideas and not one that was more satisfying than the others.

So I just wrote everything that happened before and after Little Garden, but then I realised I was already at 15k+ words and I was like whoops 0_0

About the scene with Sanji: I want to thank AJPJweallluvJJ (from AO3) for giving me a link towards a short but very insightful web post analysing Sanji's character in a few scenes. It was very helpful to put the finishing touches to that particular scene!

For anyone interested, here's the source: Sunny's Thousand Tales tumblr blog / Crossed wires: mis-performed infatuation vs. true perversion

Also here's the choreography I used for the dance at the end: s: / / www. youtube watch?v=YKedeF57oqo - Jonathan Lutwyche is only human | Semi-Final 5 | Britain's Got Talent 2015.

And Usopp with Elynna! As I see it, someone smart who observes and analayses things and people a lot like Elynna is bound to be one of the best in the crew when it comes to analytical intelligence. At the same time, Usopp is pretty good at creative strategic thinking. Conclusion: they obviously make a great team, since Elynna can give him good material to base his plans on, and point out possible flaws so he can find a solution to them if possible.

Sorry for these long A/Ns. I'm trying to compensate for all the angst in the actual chapter with a bit of humour.