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]

34. Safe

Alright, first of all, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone!

Late, but better late than never.

Second, I must confess to an (unintended) lie. I said that this would be the last chapter of the Water Seven/Enies Lobby arc, but it's actually not, for the simple reason that I was reaching 60k words and STILL wasn't done with my chapter and I just wanted to update already, so I ended up cutting the chapter in two (also to spare the last remains of my sanity the two or three days of doing nothing but editing, eating and sleeping that would have awaited me otherwise).

The bounty posters aren't there, but Garp and Ace are, so I guess that counts? I hope you still enjoy the chapter either way!

Trigger Warning for some traumas from Enies Lobby being addressed. I don't think there's anything very explicit, but just in case :)

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

Safe

Wounds are like secrets.

They might be better off hidden behind bandages and your silence,

but when it comes to the people who already hold your heart

does telling and showing really mean breaking the secret,

reopening the wound?

Won't those hands bear the weight with yours,

and help you wrap the new bandage at the end of the day?

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

"Why didn't you tell me?"

Chopper's voice is quiet, but the genuine distress in it is loud, and it draws the attention of everyone in the room.

The confusion, too.

"... Chopper?" Nami eventually voices out.

But the reindeer's hooves only tighten into half-fists.

"Answer me, Franky!" He snaps, anger all the more startling considering how rarely it rises.

The cyborg —who came to get some written requests concerning their future ship and then ended up being shoved into a couch to have a drink with them— pauses in the middle of guzzling down a bottle of cola that looks strangely tiny in his large hands, tipping his chin down to stare at Chopper over his sunglasses.

He stays silent, though, and it only thickens the tension weighing down the air in the room.

When it's clear that he doesn't intend to talk, Zoro sighs from where he was sitting on the floor curling weights, gently sets the barbells down, and rises to his feet, silently cursing the fact that neither his Captain nor his First Mate are there to take care of whatever this is.

"Alright. What the hell is this about, Chopper?" He asks bluntly, crossing his arms over his chest.

"Are Luffy and Elynna alright?" Usopp follows up with a worried frown, the end of his late breakfast forgotten.

Chopper's glare immediately loses any effect as his eyes fill with tears, startling the rest of the crew into sharp awareness of the utter silence coming from the room he just exited, where the two members of their crew who have yet to wake up are still resting.

It's normal.

It's normal that two sleeping people don't make any noise loud enough to filter through the solid wood of that door.

But suddenly it doesn't feel like it.

Franky's sigh thrums through the tension as if it's brittle glass.

"Don't look so worried. They're both fine."

None of the Straw Hats acknowledge him, though, only looking at their doctor as they wait for his assessment.

Chopper slumps, anger falling out of him like an armour breaking to pieces.

"Yes." He confirms with a sniffle. "They should wake up soon. But Elynna—"

He cuts himself off, mouth twisting and blue nose scrunching to stop the incoming tears, and Nami abruptly stands up, nails digging into the wood of the table.

"Chopper, you're scaring me! What's happening?!"

But the little reindeer doesn't seem able to get the words out, and eventually it's Franky who drops the weight of them on their shoulders.

"Sis was tortured." He says simply, and the last word falls so heavily it's like any possible response is crushed under it, all the pirates just sitting there and staring at him in stunned silence.

Usopp looks at the bowl of rice he just finished like he might just puke it all back out at any moment.

"... What?" Robin eventually forces out, voice faint and skin blanching.

It draws Sanji's attention to her.

Her, and the yellowing bruises on her that are almost invisible, under her clothes and the olive tone of her skin.

(The bruises he's seen the brainless gorilla stare at sometimes, and then march out to take out his anger on some poor tree because the man responsible for them is already dead and burned to ashes.

The bruises Nami-chan can't seem to be able to look at for too long without closing her eyes because they're brimming with tears and memories.

The bruises he can't look at without remembering a time when he was just as powerless even if not cuffed, and could only endure the violence of people his old man has already told him were worth so much less than him

—but it never feels like he can say it enough to make Sanji forget all the times he was told that strength is worth and worth is strength—

because there's something about this kind of bruises that stays in you so much longer than the time it takes them to heal.)

It's only when something digs painfully into his palm that he looks down to find the pen he was using to brainstorm some new recipes snapped in two in his fist.

He watches the ink drip on the blank page and dampen it into something crumpled and fragile, thoughts running empty like the words being lost to the widening spot of ink on the other side of the page.

(How many of the bruises he saw on her face will stay embedded under her skin?

How much of all the blood that dyed her skin was lost to a violence so similar to the kind that still haunts some of his nights?

Did the dripping of her blood on the floor of the place where it was shed look like this?

Even if the contrast was really this stark, was there even someone who cared enough in that room to notice, Elynna-chan included?

…

Why didn't he see anything, if those bruises are so different from the ones they're all still nursing since they came back from Enies Lobby?)

Zoro thinks of the way her face looked when he took off that cap, how she kept the conversation short and probably was trying to avoid it altogether, and his mouth twists into a sudden snarl.

He's had to deal with every one of his crewmates going on at him about how injured he gets during pretty much every serious fight they've been involved in and how he should be more careful, but this isn't about carefulness.

He enters every fight knowing perfectly well how dangerous it is, and that's exactly why he gives it everything he has until he either wins or dies.

The only reason why he comes out of some of them this injured is because he's still too weak.

That's all there is to it.

But Lynn?

He remembers the bruises around her neck in Cocoyashi and Usopp telling him about how she took an explosive fist from Mr. 5 to give Luffy an opening on Little Garden, remembers how she knelt on the floor in one of Jaya's seedy bars and I'm clearly the most self-destructive member of this crew.

(There's a pattern there, one that he hates enough to make his fingers twitch with the urge to grab his First Mate and not let go until she finally gets it.

He gives a fight everything he has precisely because he values his existence and his dream enough to live both to the fullest of his ability and risk everything for it.

But Lynn gives away her pride and her blood and her flesh as if they're the information she utilises to design strategies or manipulate people, as if they're the environment or the weapons she uses when she fights.

She only gives her existence and her body as much regard as she gives anything else that can be useful to her like there's nothing more to either, and—

How long until she treats her actual life the exact same way?

Being a pirate crew's First Mate means being the first wall of defense because you're responsible for every crew member, including the Captain, but—

Like hell it means he'll let her die first because she can't get it through her head that every member of their crew is essential, her dumb ass included.)

He promptly decides that they're going to have a talk, and she better not give him some bullshit excuse like it was part of the plan, or he will—

"How did you know?" Nami suddenly asks, voice flat enough to sound like an order rather than a question.

Chopper just stares at the floor.

The gritting of Nami's teeth as her jaw clenches hard enough to uncover them tells them all that she's this close to losing her temper, close enough for her to disregard how difficult it clearly is for Chopper to talk about… whatever he can't seem to manage telling them.

"Chopper. Answer me. How did you know she was—"

Because it can't be the bruises.

It can't be the blood.

It can't be everything they already saw on that Marine ship, because regardless of his skill Chopper is a doctor in heart first, no matter how injured he is.

He would have noticed, if it was anything that could be noticed at the time.

But Chopper just looks at her helplessly, so she turns to the cyborg who was the one who first took care of their First Mate's injuries on that same ship.

Franky looks at her, then at Chopper and back at her again.

"It's probably her hand."

"What. About. Her. Hand." Nami bites out, seething and way beyond patience or understanding.

"She's down two nails. Someone tore them off."

For a second, Usopp's mind is blank.

Then the images creep down his spine from his brain to tie knots in his stomach like blood clots, and he heaves, launching himself out of his chair and towards the bathroom.

The sounds of his retching jolt Robin back into the room, and she rises slowly to go take care of him, one hand clenched around the top of the table against the dizziness that threatens to make her fall right back into her chair, because—

This is what it means, for people to think that she can want to live.

Because if thinking that Nico Robin can want to live and acting on it means going against the Buster Call of all those who think she can't, means exhaustion so bad you could close your eyes to never open them again and nails being ripped away from your fingers and bleeding out in your own body from the sheer strain of your own power—

Then maybe it's normal that telling herself she has to live has meant surviving and surviving alone for two decades.

(Maybe she shouldn't have expected so many people to help her.

Maybe lies and betrayal were really the best way for her to keep going during all those years, and not just the curse of someone who doesn't know how to be loved and doesn't deserve to be.)

Nami stares at Usopp's empty bowl, and then swipes it off the table with a hiss of anger, in a move so sudden it comes this close to throwing it in a wall instead before she marches to the sink and proceeds to wash it, the stream of water splashing against the porcelain the only sound in the otherwise silent room.

When the bowl clinks against the counter, she finally shuts off the water and slams her hands down on the edge of the sink, startling Chopper and earning a wary glance from Franky.

"Why… Why didn't she say anything?"

Zoro scoffs, clearly just as frustrated.

"It's Lynn. What the hell else did you expect?"

Sanji scowls, but it's more tired than angry.

"Don't be stupid. We didn't have a lot of time to talk, and she probably didn't want Robin-chan to feel—"

"That's no excuse!" Nami snaps as she whirls around, scowl fierce and furious enough to make the cook fall instantly silent. "Robin knew what we were risking better than anyone else —it's the reason why she tried to keep us out of her business in the first place! And Zoro literally asked Lynna what happened! She could have—"

"None of you are looking at this right." Franky interrupts them pensively as he squints to make sure that there's really no cola left in his bottle.

"I don't remember asking for your opinion!" Nami bristles, offended. "And don't think I forgot that you didn't say anything either!"

"Nami-chan—"

"Fuck off." Zoro tacks on much less politely. "This is none of your business, and you don't know her—"

"I don't need to. And it's definitely my business if she's blaming me for it, too." He adds with a jab of his thumb towards the navigator.

Zoro grimaces, but stays silent, Chopper now looking more dejected and horrified than anything else from where he stands not far from the swordsman.

When Nami's mouth opens to spit out more of her anger, Sanji's hand on her shoulder cuts the wind out of her sails before she even starts, and she crosses her arms instead with a defiant glare.

Franky sighs at the sight and leans forward, settling down his empty bottle before he leans back in the couch, flicking his sunglasses up in his blue hair to look all four pirates in the eyes one by one.

"You're talking about it like she's your crewmate."

"She is—" Chopper immediately starts to protest as Nami's eyes turn positively thunderous.

"She is." Franky cuts him off. "But before being your crewmate, she's your First Mate."

He throws another glance at the other three, but neither the cook nor the navigator seem to quite get the point, and the swordsman seems all too adamant about ignoring the point, so Franky takes it upon himself to hammer it in.

"Know what that means? It means that she's your superior."

The girl's shoulders curl inwards a bit more as the blond boy bites down on his cigarette with the grit of his teeth.

"Hierarchically, you and her aren't on the same level, and there's things that she has to take into account when she makes a decision. Being a leader isn't just about giving orders and bossing others around, even if a lot of people only see that part. For real leaders, it's also about being at the service of the people who work under you so they can do their job properly, and putting the group's interests first before your own. What would you have done, if she hadn't hidden the cause of her injuries?" He asks, and then shoves the answer in their hands when none of them seems willing to admit to the truth. "You would have gotten angry and lost focus like you did just now. Maybe you would have even tried to go back and find the few trainees she didn't kill. But even if you hadn't, losing focus when we were surrounded by the warships of the Buster Call could have jeopardised our entire escape —and we already got out by the skin of our teeth as it was. As a leader, she wasn't just within her right to hide the information, it was pretty much her duty."

The explanation only gets clenched jaws and tight lips and averted glares in response, so he sighs again and gets to his feet, grabbing the empty bottle as he makes his way out of the room.

"I might not know her," he throws over his shoulder when he stops one last time on the doorstep, "and maybe Sis had other motivations for hiding this from you. But at least take that into consideration before you start a fight when she wakes up."

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

At first, Elynna doesn't really know why she wakes up, but it's the first time her head feels clear since she jumped down into that bunker back on Enies Lobby.

For a long moment she just lays there, breathing until the dizziness of being awake settles and her vision sharpens more fully.

Then she turns her head, and finds Luffy sitting in the chair next to her bed, staring unblinkingly at where her hands rest over the blanket.

Eyes roving slowly over the bandages that still cover most of his body apart from his face, she tries out a flex of her fingers as she catalogues the set of his jaw and the lines around his eyes above it.

Her mouth tightens.

"Who did that." Luffy asks suddenly, gaze still set on her bandaged fingers.

She watches his fists tighten on his knees, and then looks back at his face.

"... A dead man." She eventually says, voice a bit hoarse from all the time she spent sleeping.

Then she lifts her bad hand slowly, the weight of it heavy at the end of her arm even as her elbow still rests on the bed.

Luffy tilts further forward, meeting her half-way until the tips of her fingers trail across his forehead to gently press along the frown lines there.

Her bandaged fingers still throb, but not nearly as much as she remembers them doing the last time she was awake.

His lips press together, and then twist.

"... I should have been there."

"And I should have been more deserving of your trust."

His lips twist further with the scowl that overtakes his entire face.

"No."

She hums, patiently running her fingers along the lines of his scowl.

"No?"

He shakes his head fiercely, and then blinks repeatedly.

"I knew we would win. All of us. But… No one's ever been this hurt before."

"Fang's been injured worse during his fight with Hawkeye. Hawk was probably beaten up longer than me the other day, and Hebi couldn't even get up when he joined us at the bridge. You're not back on your feet, either. We…" She pauses. "We don't know everything Rain and Sophia went through before we met them."

"But I'm never going to hurt them like that."

The way I let you get hurt.

"No. You're not."

"It's not the same as Zoro and the others."

Her fingers trail down his face, and then her wrist twists as she opens her hand, palm up towards the ceiling.

He lets his forehead fall there with a sigh.

"It kind of is, Sea King. I couldn't leave Sophia with that man any longer than I had to, and I promised I would do my best to get out alive. So I did my best, but I had to take risks. Like you with your new techniques."

She can feel him scowl again in her palm.

"... It's not the same."

"Not quite, but they are dangerous, aren't they?"

He sighs again against her fingers, and then lifts his head to prop his chin on her palm instead, scowl softened into a frown.

"Being the best Captain is kinda hard sometimes."

"I know." She murmurs, because it takes all she has to make her trust win over her worry when letting her crewmates out of her sight and out of her reach during the worst fights, and she doesn't think she'll ever be able to trust herself and others half as much as he does. "Do you want to stop?"

"Nah." He says immediately with a vaguely horrified look. "Being a pirate with everyone is fun. If it's not fun, I don't want it."

"Then that's why I'm here, isn't it?"

Maybe it's not why she was brought here, but it's why she wants to be here.

It's why she stayed here.

He gives her a sudden grin that makes her mouth twitch into a half-smile of her own despite the twinge of pain that the movement causes in her left cheek, knowing he's thinking about it too.

(The words shared on the edge of a whirlpool, on a day where there was just them in a little boat, floating on the blue of the sea under the blue of the sky and the glare of the sun.

Worry for me, and I'll decide for you.)

"Yeah. It's 'cause the best Captain has to have the best First Mate and the best crew to have the best adventures."

"That's right. But you should go back to your bed, Sea King." She says quietly, noting the way his eyes don't quite follow hers as she tilts her head deeper into the pillow. "Hebi won't be happy to see you left it."

Luffy blinks down at her slowly, and then lets his weight fall forward slowly until his head thumps softly against her chest.

"No." He protests drowsily. "I wanna sleep here."

She huffs out a breath of amusement.

"My breasts are pretty great."

"Yeah." He mumbles absently, nuzzling himself further into her as he settles fully on the bed and wriggles about to wrap his limbs around her just the way he likes.

She chuckles.

"Stop laughing, Ann. I wanna sleep."

"Sorry, Sea King. Sleep well." She smiles, threading her fingers into his hair and scraping her nails against his scalp until he goes fully lax against her.

(It hurts, but less than failure would.)

"Ann?"

"Yeah?"

"I want Franky as our shipwright."

"... No complaints from me there. Annoying him is fun."

The vibrations of his laughter against her heart is the last sound she remembers before falling asleep.

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

The next time she wakes up, Luffy isn't with her, her hands are under the blankets, and Robin is the one sitting in the chair.

The older woman seems fully engrossed in the book splayed open in her lap, but that doesn't stop her from noticing Elynna's eyes on her as she looks up to meet her gaze.

"Elynna." She smiles. "Welcome back."

The corners of Elynna's own mouth quirk up in return.

"I'm home." She says, only half-jokingly.

Amusement dyes Robin's smile into a deeper curve as she carefully marks her page, before closing her book to give Elynna her full attention.

"How are you feeling?"

"Like I spent two weeks sleeping."

"One, rather." The archaeologist corrects with good humour.

"Oh, good. How is everyone?"

"... Quite well, although Luffy is still resting."

A glance to her other side lets her glimpse the lump of blankets that hides their Captain from view.

"He should be up and about soon. We were talking… well, I would guess it was last night." She informs her crewmate, putting to rest the slight concern lining Robin's eyes.

"Is that so? I'm glad to hear it. I'll be sure to tell Chopper and the others."

Elynna hums.

"If I knew we just had to get rid of some assholes to get you to call us by our actual names… Well actually, it probably wouldn't have changed much. Everyone was pretty determined to kick their asses, anyway. Should I do the same to get a hug?"

Another smile, just a tad stiff this time.

"There's really no need. I would… rather not, in fact."

Elynna winces a bit as she sits up slowly, rearranging the pillows behind her and waving away Robin's help before she settles down and looks back at the historian.

"I know."

The glance the older woman gives her through her smile is confused.

"I'm… sorry. It's not a sensation that makes me… comfortable."

"Alright."

"... I know you rather like them."

"Only if the other person does, too." She clarifies, holding out a hand. "Can I hold your hand?"

The lack of hesitation in the way Robin reaches out to place her own hand in Elynna's feels perhaps even warmer than the actual heat of her skin against her own.

Slowly, she closes her fingers around Robin's hand to squeeze.

"Good?"

"... Yes."

Elynna hums, dropping both their hands on the bed and shifting to interlace their fingers, careful to keep her hold loose.

"And now?"

Robin breathes deeply, staring down at their joined hands, olive against white.

"Yes. This is alright, too."

"Hm. And if I kiss your hand?"

Eyes flicker up to hers, crystal blue and unblinking.

"... Perhaps. No one has ever done it, but I was under the impression it constitutes more of a… romantic gesture."

Elynna shrugs with a little smile at that.

"It shows affection. I like to show my affection, and I have rather affectionate feelings for you. Does that mean I can try?"

"You have unusual views on love, Elynna." Robin eventually comments with just a hint of laughter in her voice and loosening shoulders. "Very well."

Elynna's mouth quirks up again, and she lifts their hands, keeping her eyes on the older woman for any sign of discomfort.

She finds nothing, and presses her lips against the back of Robin's hand for the span of a heartbeat before releasing it.

The archaeologist takes back her hand slowly, observing it with an almost clinical look.

"Where I come from," Elynna muses as she looks away and towards where light is flowing through a window to fall on the mess of blankets and limbs that is their Captain, "people often greet each other with a kiss on the cheek rather than a hug."

"That… would be agreeable."

"Yeah?"

"I believe so, yes."

"It'd be nice." She murmurs before turning back to her crewmate. "See, there's no need for hugs. Anyway, anything interesting happened during the week?"

Robin relaxes more fully into her seat at the change of subject, which falls more familiarly within the boundaries of their usual conversations.

"Franky came to tell us that he used our money to buy exceptionally resilient wood. He wants to build one last ship, and he offered to entrust it to us. We would have liked to wait for the both of you —and especially the Captain— to wake up before giving our answer, but I doubt the Marines will take long to come look for us here, and we'll need a ship when the time comes, so we took the initiative of saying yes."

Elynna nods, implicitly dismissing the silent apology.

"Not a problem. The newspapers?"

"The Enies Lobby Incident is still making the headlines, but there's more hypotheses and rumours than concrete elements in the newspapers as of now. I would guess that the World Government is probably still dealing with the resulting internal strife between the different factions and choosing what, exactly, they will tell the world."

"Huh. Your estimation?"

Robin hums pensively, fingers curling around her chin as she looks away for a moment.

"... I would say one, two weeks at most for us to recover and gather what we need before we'll have to set sail. The island has been declared closed to outsiders while reconstruction is underway, which is the usual procedure, so I doubt it's considered suspicious yet —unless word has already gotten out about our presence through telecommunication. There isn't any new face among the crowd of journalists still trying to talk to us, however, so I believe the situation is under control for now."

Elynna nods again, this time in satisfaction.

"I do so love working with you, Sophia. Now, does my presence help you think only when I'm unconscious, or is there something you want to talk to me about?"

Robin blinks down at her with that unreadable smile of hers.

"I'm not sure I understand what you're talking about."

"That book." Elynna states with a vague gesture of her hand towards the book the other woman put on the nightstand a few minutes before. "You were already half-way through it when we first reached Water Seven. I find it hard to believe you haven't finished it yet."

"... This is very flattering, but I only woke up two days ago, and my interest was caught by other books yesterday."

"I'm sure, Sophia. But you were staring at that page when I woke up, not reading it."

Robin looks at her for a moment longer before closing her eyes with a chuckle, the sound more fond than really amused.

"You're really quite observant, for someone who is still recovering."

"Thanks."

A long, quiet pause before—

"I… have been thinking."

Elynna reaches towards the nightstand to pour herself a glass of water, thanking Robin when the older woman gets up to help her before she starts sipping it slowly.

"... What about?"

"The cost of being allowed to live." Robin eventually answers softly.

The clear, clear blue of her eyes trails from Elynna's face and down her arms until it reaches her hands, and then drifts towards the other bed of the room.

Ah.

"I always thought that being allowed to live must feel like freedom." The historian goes on, so quiet that it hardly disturbs the otherwise quiet room. "Something light, or even a lack of weight altogether. For the longest time, it has been… Well, not quite a dream, but more of an impossibility I tried not to think about. Perhaps that's why I imagined it to be so… weightless. Thinking that my life is worth more than all the exhaustion and pain shouldered by my… my nakama in the last few days is—"

She stops.

Exhales.

"Reality feels heavier than I thought."

"... I doubt most people feel the weight of their life so fully, Sophia."

"Probably not." Robin concedes with a chuckle that isn't really humoured at all. "And I hope you know that… it isn't exactly that I regret asking everyone to save me, but—"

She pauses again, mouth twisting delicately.

"But you thought it would be easier?"

"... Quite. One does not simply stop being a public enemy, I suppose."

"And ties are a strength as much as they are a weakness." Elynna adds with a smile that is a curve but has no humour as she sinks deeper into the pillows.

Robin meets her eyes, expression mirroring hers.

(Because when you care, you can hurt from so many more wounds than your body can hold.

Because when you care, death can't be the easy way out anymore.

It's a weight as much as it's a joy, takes away relief as much as it gives warmth.)

"... Elynna?"

"Yeah?"

"Do you still think I have the right to live?"

Elynna closes her eyes for a moment.

"Enies Lobby wasn't the end."

"No." Robin agrees. "I have learned… I've learned a long, long time ago that it will probably never end for as long as I live. Even if I stopped looking for more to know, what I already know—"

That earns her a look that says what we know, and she smiles, both sad and pleased that she has someone to share knowledge and taboos with, even if it's not exactly a colleague.

"... Well. It's enough."

Enough to have me killed.

Enough to have you hurt.

Enough to burn the world down the same way my home was, once.

She falls silent again, looking both decades older than the smoothness of her face and as small and scared as the child Elynna never got to meet.

"I think it's not really the right question." She eventually says. "I want you to live, but the World Government doesn't, and in the end their opinion is the only one that matters when it comes to rights. Besides, questions like these are interesting when you want to put your brain through the wringer, but they're not really useful practically speaking."

A quirk of Robin's lips, even as she looks away.

"A sound argument. Ethics are most often too slow to keep up with what humans do and decide on a daily basis."

Elynna doesn't smile back, simply looking at her.

"We're already alive and outlaws, Sophia. Asking whether we should be or not is pointless in that sense. The world will just have to deal with it."

Robin looks back from the window to her, considering her for a moment before she stands up to pick her book back up as well as the one Elynna was reading before they reached Water Seven, handing it to her First Mate, who shuffles over to the far side of the bed after taking it.

After a moment of hesitation, Robin sits next to her, stretching her long legs over the covers of the bed and pressing her shoulder gently against Elynna's as she cracks her book open again.

"Quite the Straw Hat way of seeing it." She murmurs with a smile before they both fall into the quiet, sunny silence of the room, which lays uninterrupted for the next two hours except for the weird noises Luffy makes when his dream adventures reach their peak.

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

Sanji hums pensively as he tastes the batter.

"You should add more sugar."

He chuckles.

"Those lemons already aren't very sour, Elynna-chan. Adding sugar would defeat the whole point of a lemon pi—"

He chokes, startled.

"Elynna-chan?!"

"Yo." The girl in question confirms nonchalantly, half-sprawled over the counter right next to him, arm bent at the elbow and chin propped on her good hand. "Sorry. I thought you noticed me."

Sanji gapes down at her some more, and then abruptly takes hold of her shoulders to gently but firmly guide her towards the nearest chair.

"Everything alright, Sanji? We heard screami—"

Usopp doesn't finish his question as he and the rest of the crew barge into the kitchen, only to stop and stare at their First Mate, except for Robin —who sends her a light smile instead as she joins the others.

"Hey." Elynna greets them with a peace sign, eyes scanning over them carefully. "You guys okay?"

Nami's eyes immediately narrow, but Zoro speaks up before she can.

"Yeah, we're all good. What about you?"

A shrug.

"Mostly okay, really. Hebi patched me up real good."

Then she turns to Sanji before anyone can say anything else, and—

"By the way, is it okay if I eat stuff that isn't too hard to cut for a few days? I can if I need to, but I'd rather take it easy. My hand isn't completely up to working normally yet."

The silence that follows her question is as loud as Luffy's absence in the room as almost all her crewmates give her wide-eyed looks, making her wince as she directs her gaze to Chopper.

"You didn't tell them? Shit, I should've asked you before talking about it—"

"Because you were going to?" Nami blurts out.

Her First Mate blinks at her.

"... What?"

"Talk about it. You weren't going to hide it?" The navigator asks with a finger pointed at the hand where she saw two fingers bandaged the last time she visited her in the room-turned-sick-bay of the house that was lent to them.

Now it's Elynna's turn to give them a confused look.

"Why would I want to hide it? That's stupid. I might have mostly gotten beaten up, but Hebi is one hell of a doctor, so there's no way I could hide losing nails from him —or that he could think it comes from anything else than torture. Besides, I know there's some stuff I have trouble talking about, but it's not like telling you about this could result in you doing something stupid now that we're out of Enies Lobby."

Nami exchanges a look with Zoro and Sanji at that, and the latter lets out a chuckle of pure relief rather than amusement as he drops into another chair right next to his First Mate, rubbing a hand down his face as the navigator of the crew pinches the bridge of her nose between two fingers with a sigh.

"I can't believe this…"

"Yeah, I can't believe this either." Elynna drawls blandly. "I might not be perfect on that front, but I thought I advocated communication enough. To think that my own nakama take me for a hypocrite. I'm hurt. For real."

Zoro rolls his eyes hard, and Chopper seems torn between annoyance and sheer happiness.

"Yeah, well I've had enough drama for the rest of the day and my blood pressure can't take it, so be hurt later." Usopp mutters as he makes a beeline for the fridge.

"There's freshly ground coffee on the upper shelf." Sanji tells him, standing up to prepare something for his First Mate.

"You're a genius!"

"Luffy mentioned it."

"Yeah, but it's worth more when The Great Usopp says it."

"We really need to talk about your consumption of coffee, Usopp." Chopper tells the sniper with a worried frown that keeps flickering back to Elynna.

"I think that you can safely use the word addiction at this point, Chopper." Robin comments with a soft chuckle, and even Nami starts to smile at the way Usopp's face falls with the realisation that the doctor was in the room to see him hold up the pot of coffee like a gift from the gods.

Elynna nods along.

"Yeah, definitely time to talk."

"You can start, then." Zoro tells her, eyes still set on her uncovered and now mostly-healed injury. "You said you were mostly beaten up. Anything else we need to know?"

Elynna winces a bit, rolling her shoulders as if to shrug off a weight and the bad shivers it causes all the way to the back of her neck like nails against a blackboard.

"No." She answers eventually, shuffling to sit cross-legged and shoulders curving inward slightly as she leans both elbows on her knees. "They only got to my nails because I was too disoriented to answer their questions in time."

"And when you still didn't answer?"

There's a pause where her eyes are on him but not quite looking at him.

Then she blinks, and it's gone, and she leans a smile into the palm of her bad hand.

"I did." She replies without looking away. "With a lie, but I did. Not that they were in a state to take it out on me after that."

Usopp winces, and freezes in the middle of an attempt to refill his cup when Chopper's frown deepens.

Zoro stares back at her for a moment more before he nods in acceptance, making Nami's shoulders drop in response as she sighs, deciding to stop there before she can get any angrier when there's no one worth her resentment to take it out on.

"Is there anything else we can do to help?" She asks instead.

Elynna thanks Sanji as he hands her a plate of food, the others slowly settling around the table as well while the dish in the oven finishes cooking.

"I don't really know for now." She muses after swallowing her first bite, the corner of her mouth ticking unconsciously as she readjusts her hold on her fork under Chopper's attentive eyes while her other crewmates exchange glances. "The physical part was easy, but trauma is more unpredictable. I guess I might be sensitive about people getting too close in the streets, or my hand being restrained, but it's hard to say what could set me off."

"We could go out for a walk, if you want." Robin offers with a gentle smile. "People won't be working anymore unless they're part of the reconstruction efforts, but given the damage caused by the Aqua Laguna, a lot of them tend to eat in restaurants and the like. A few areas are quite crowded, but it will still be easy to find a quiet spot quickly if needed."

Sanji winces worriedly at the idea, frowning a bit when he spots the displeased tightening of Nami's lips and Chopper's unsure eyes.

"Isn't that a bit… Are you sure, Elynna-chan? There's no need for you to go that far."

Elynna wrinkles her nose, but sighs.

"I guess I'd rather know what I'm up for rather than have it sprung on me. And the quicker the better."

Nami scowls a bit more, but eventually sighs, knowing how much Elynna hates uncertainty just as well as Robin even if she can't relate quite as much.

"Alright, but only if you're really sure, okay? And get out as soon as you need to."

"And don't go too far from Robin." Chopper adds, having apparently come to the same conclusion —and probably more willing to let the whole thing happen because it's their two most reasonable members who are involved.

"Will do."

"I think our hands are about the same size, too, so I can lend you some gloves if you need." Usopp switches gears with a questioning glance directed at the doctor, who nods.

"It's alright if it helps now that the wounds have mostly healed, but don't wear them all the time."

Elynna hums with a nod.

"Don't think I'll need them here anyway. Hey Hermes, could you come with Sophia and me? I'd rather play it safe in case there ends up being a problem in the middle of a crowd."

"Of course." Sanji confirms without any hesitation, mentally going over the easy and quick recipes he can do for the others with the foodstuff left in the fridge. "Come get me whenever you're ready to go."

"... Yeah, that'll probably be never, so I'll stick to coming to find you when Sophia says we're going."

That gets her more frowns than anything else, so she makes a note to herself to tone down the jokes on the subject for now.

"Also I want lots of hugs."

Usopp sniffles, and gives her a dry look.

"... That's no different from what you usually want."

"Well I want more."

"I'm going to have to change your totem animal from dog to koala at this rate."

"No, the dog is fine." Nami comments.

"Yeah, dogs are cuddly too."

"I was talking more about the fact that dogs can be trained to kill people and still be cute. Koalas don't do murder. They're too cute for that."

Usopp takes one look at Elynna, and—

"Okay, fair point." He says, earning himself a suspicious look from his First Mate.

"You just thought that I'm not cute enough to be a dog either, didn't you?"

"Why are we talking about this." Zoro hisses quietly, glaring mildly at Robin when she just laughs at his suffering.

"I didn't say anything."

"Technically, you said 'fair point'. And you thought it loudly enough."

"So what about training?" Usopp promptly evades the conversation. "Maybe we should take a break for at least a week, right?"

Both his First Mate and the swordsman give him a blank look.

"Why a week? My nails have pretty much regrown, and I'm going to use my hands more now, so they shouldn't be sensitive anymore in two or three days at most."

"I didn't mean it physically." The sharpshooter mumbles.

"Oh, that. Nah, should be fine. It's you and Fang, and besides the mindset is really not the same between a training session where I expect to be hit and someone accidentally getting too close or something in the street. I haven't had trouble with that since the first few weeks after I started training."

"I know, but there's a difference between the injuries you sometimes get in a fight and what happened this time."

"She'll try with me first, then." Zoro shrugs.

Elynna nods idly in agreement.

"Alright, guess that pretty much covers it for now. Anyone else wants to talk?" She asks, focusing on her plate rather than her crewmates.

Silence answers her.

"... I'm not addicted to coffee, I just really like it." Usopp grumbles weakly after a few seconds of awkwardness.

"The bags under your eyes from your shitty sleep schedule disagree." Nami mentions wryly.

"I don't trust you." Chopper adds bluntly in a tone that says I'm watching you, and I won't hesitate to take care of you, so fear me.

"Why, you fiend—"

"No fighting at my table, guys." Sanji reminds them as he sets a large dish of lasagna —half with meat and half without— in the middle of the table. "If you're going to open your mouths, it better be to eat and not say stupid stuff."

"No fighting? Were you too blind to see Luffy start a fight during every meal for the past months, or is your memory just that short, cook?"

"My memory is perfectly fine, unlike your sense of direction."

"You—"

"But since Luffy isn't here to be a menace to good table manners, I might as well enjoy a meal without seeing my food get almost splattered on the walls —or actually splattered on his face."

Nami wrinkles her nose at the memories brought on by the comment.

"He's still sleeping?"

"Yep." Elynna confirms.

"And eating at the same time." Sanji sighs.

"I'm sure he still loves your food, Sanji!" Chopper says brightly.

"Yeah," Usopp snickers while patting the cook on the shoulder, "he just hasn't figured out how to talk while sleeping to tell you that yet. Eating was number one on the priority list."

"I'd wager he'll be up soon, though." Robin states, the crystal blue of her eyes glinting with light-hearted amusement. "Elynna told me he woke up for several minutes last night."

"Took him long enough." Zoro grumbles without heat.

Elynna clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth, but keeps her tsundere comment to herself and helps herself to some lasagna instead.

Bunch of hypocrites, the whole lot of them.

Just for this, she's going to make it her long-term goal to put in place a let's-talk-about-potential-trauma protocol after every fight.

She's sure she can rope Chopper into it, too.

She'll stick to more subtle tactics in the meantime.

Those are more her style, anyway.

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

It's hardly unexpected when Chopper tells Elynna to follow him to his room for a check-up at the end of the meal.

Joints cracking after a week of not moving despite Chopper's efforts to avoid this particular problem, she follows the doctor through the suite Iceburg lended them for the duration of their recovery.

Designed to host political guests for short stays or employees when a particularly important task means they spend most of their time at work, it's a mostly bare building in terms of decoration, where the common spaces take up most of the space, which left the rest of the crew to separate in groups of two to occupy most of the other rooms after Elynna and Luffy were put in the largest one, that became a temporary infirmary as a result.

Chopper and Usopp took the next biggest room, both needing the space to work on their respective products —and Sanji being most of the time very adamant about not letting either of them experiment right next to him in the kitchen while he's making meals.

Stepping into the bedroom behind the reindeer, she makes her way to the examination table that was brought there from the infirmary to preserve the privacy of her check-up in case Luffy woke up, sitting down and watching the seemingly permanent frown scrunching up Chopper's face as he takes out his notes from previous check-ups and starts to go through the examination process.

"You're angry." She eventually points out when the silence keeps going, too hard to accommodate the stretch of time comfortably.

"... I'm not." Chopper refutes after a moment, frowning a bit more.

She cocks her head, watching him and the way he's not looking her in the eyes.

"I only took three pills, you know. I promise."

He suddenly stops pressing along her previously fractured ribs, finally looking up to glare at her as he draws himself to his full but small height.

"'Only'?!" He repeats heatedly, sounding almost offended. "It's not 'only', Elynna! You took all three! I'm not angry, I'm worried! You can't take three pills just like that! It… They cover every signal your body might send that it needs to rest, like adrenaline! It wears down your body and slows down the healing process—"

"... But it's not 'just like that' either." She interrupts him with a mild frown, because she's not that reckless or that stupid, thank you very much. "Enies Lobby isn't exactly the same as the usual skirmishes we get involved in."

"I know." He says, teeth clenched so hard he bares them at her for a moment when he speaks. "But… things are going to get harder the further we go, right?"

She doesn't answer, but he doesn't need her too, anger leaving him as suddenly as it came in favour of slumped shoulders and teary eyes.

(He looks defeated.

Like he can already see her corpse when looking at her.)

"I just… Even if you stay within the limits of three pills, taking them too often would—"

She cuts him off again before he can say out loud what she already knows.

(She… is not made for this life.

If they don't find a better solution, there is a chance that she will never get to see her nakama fulfill their dreams.)

"Are you asking me to leave the crew, Hebi?"

His eyes widen, and he almost falls out of his chair in his panicked fumbling to stand up on it.

"What?! No! I'm just scared for you, and—"

He interrupts himself, seemingly at a loss for the words that will express what he wants to say, but she smiles anyway, reaching out to straighten his hat and brush a hand through his fur.

"I know. And I appreciate it. But even if I quitted piracy for civilian life or didn't have this condition, I'd never be completely safe."

Yes, she has a disadvantage.

But all it takes is the wrong enemy or a disease or even an accident.

They're all at risk, and they all have a pain threshold past which they can't function.

It's just that in her case, she feels more pain than others would in the same situation, and —if her theory is closer to the truth over Kureha's— sustaining too much damage compared to what the body she used to have would be able to bear might kill her.

Although, the risks are probably much lower than what they were when she first landed in the East Blue, after more than a year to settle in her new body.

"But I'm… I'm your doctor. I should be able to help you more." Chopper chokes out, his doctor guilt and his absurdly big heart not leaving nearly enough space for him to breathe normally.

"You can't heal stubbornness, Hebi." She says, knowing that he'll never learn to not put himself in charge and in responsibility of anyone and everyone's health. "We all make our choices. Hawk went up against the Franky Family knowing he had little chance to win, and Sea King knows how dangerous his new techniques are. It didn't stop them, either."

He winces, clearly not much happier than she is about Luffy needing to use his power in such a double-edged manner.

"But everyone knows about it." He whispers after a moment, looking up to meet her eyes. "You can't keep hiding it from them, Elynna. They deserve to know, and I… I can't—"

I can't be the one who has to say it, because the only situation where I would be allowed to is one where your body wouldn't have been able to keep up with the pain.

She closes her eyes to escape the fear in his for a moment, and swallows.

"... You're right. You don't deserve that, either."

"They'll never hate you." He rushes to add, both eager to get something more substantial out of her than a simple I'll think about it and aware of the main reason why she still hasn't told the rest of the crew about her condition. "And you're still our First Mate. I know, and I trust you."

"I know." She says simply, staring at Usopp's bed rather than at him.

He groans, mostly frustrated and a bit desperate at his inability to get her to say what he wants.

"Then stop looking like Luffy's already kicked you out—"

"I think I would look a bit more devastated."

"—because it won't happen." Chopper finishes, glaring at her and her inability to face serious discussions and situations without making a joke out of them.

Which he mentioned to her.

Repeatedly.

She studiously ignores him.

"We need you." He adds eventually with a sigh.

Of course they need her.

Even if the news managed to spark in his nakama an anger strong enough to outweigh their love for her, trying to imagine the Straw Hats without Elynna or any other member —trying to imagine them expelling her from the crew— is like trying to convince himself that Luffy won't be King of the Pirates.

It just…

It doesn't make sense.

It doesn't make sense, and it would mean that Luffy's brother would be the last reason for her to keep herself alive.

The possibility feels too tenuous and painful to consider.

Elynna smiles at his words with something half-soft and half-sad to it, as if she both knows it and doubts it.

"... Well." She murmurs eventually, looking back at him. "Maybe. Or maybe not. But I'll try. Just… once I've taken care of a few things."

And he knows that really, she means a few people, because it's Elynna and she'll always put her crew first and of course she already knows that they've all come back a bit bruised from the temple of a justice that never deserved the name—

And yet.

(And yet.

He hates the way she says it like she's tying loose ends and packing her stuff before leaving.

The way she doesn't trust the others to love her past her secret and her handicap.)

"Fine." He eventually agrees, and jabs one hoof in her direction as a warning. "But I'll start nagging you if you take too long!"

She blinks down at him a couple of times.

"That's… not exactly a deterrent, actually. Pissing people off is pretty fun, and you also look cute when you're scolding people, so it's just another reason to procrastinate, really—"

"Elynna!"

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

"Say, Miss. Would you happen to know who made that roulé?"

"Ah… It's me." The waitress, who looks enough like the owner of the restaurant to be quite clearly related to him, says tentatively.

Sanji's smile widens at that, his attempt at breaking the ice suddenly turning into a particularly strong common point.

"Well, I'm impressed. I'm a cook myself, but I can't seem to recognise this spice—"

"Blue pepper!" The girl interrupts him, countenance brightening suddenly at his interest. "I'm so glad someone noticed! I managed to get some from West Blue merchants who passed through a month ago. It's quite rare!"

"Ah, that explains it. I didn't often get to work with West Blue ingredients back at the restaurant. Still, your recipe in itself is just as worthy of praise. I'm more partial to combining flavours myself, but there's something to be said about simplicity—"

"How is it that my therapy trip turned into Hermes' flirting trip?" Elynna wonders idly as she watches the conversation devolve into some kind of culinary debate —punctuated by ridiculously grandiose and ridiculously sincere compliments from the cook.

"Sanji is a smart man. I'm sure he can multitask." Robin replies, raising her eyes from the book she was reading at her side to observe the duo with amused eyes.

"Oh yeah. It feels like there's three of him in the kitchen with everything he manages to cook even when he's alone. And the worst is that he keeps saying Zeff-san is still better than him." Elynna pauses for a moment, trying to imagine what he could do if he got better, and shrugs. "All the better for future us, I guess."

"It is impressive." Robin smiles.

"What is?" Sanji asks with a bright smile as he comes back to their table with their drinks.

"Your cooking, of course. And my competence kink."

Said drinks almost end up on the floor.

"Elynna-chan!"

Robin laughs behind her hand, the sound unable to be heard even for Elynna with the voices of the dozens of people crammed into the restaurant and spilling onto the streets of its entrance, most of them Galley-La workers and volunteers of Water Seven's reconstruction coming to relax after a hard day of work.

"Look on the bright side, Sanji. She seems to be doing fine enough to crack jokes."

Elynna shrugs at the questioning gaze the cook turns to her.

It's pretty much true.

She's not exactly at ease, but even before making herself at home in a group of wanted criminals, loud spaces filled with people have never been her kind of place.

It only takes a power cut a few minutes later to change the situation, however.

There has been one already at dinner after she woke up, which in the end is quite normal after something like the Aqua Laguna, especially one of such magnitude.

But the first one hardly fazed her, even though the dark meant that a giant-form Chopper stepped on her feet while feeling his way back to the table.

Here, with Robin's warmth next to her and Sanji's muttered cursing in her ears but the feel of strangers moving about around them and shouts of people she doesn't know, it's—

"Maybe not so fine, actually." She mutters tightly, hands flinching around her lack of weapons as glass breaks on the floor, the way it did when her face was smashed into a framed picture and then dragged against a wall.

The man who loses his balance, stumbles into her to the point that his weight knocks her into the table she's sitting at, and then grips her arm as he gets back to his feet doesn't know how close he comes to getting the skewer from the brochette she just ate stabbed into either an eye or his stomach, slurring out a few apologies and walking away with Robin assuring him that it's no problem, one hand on Elynna's thigh and several others working to relax her grip around the skewer.

Sanji's arm wraps gently but firmly around her shoulders to pull her into his side, hold too familiar to be threatening.

They don't move her towards the entrance, the path littered with the risk of similar encounters, staying there instead with senses stretching to prevent a repeat of the same situation, her muscles and breaths contracting under their hold with too-loud voices and too-close presences even as she steadily relaxes the longer Sanji keeps going with a commentary on the different drinks he's sampled so far while Robin's other hand hesitantly starts brushing through her hair.

Then the staff of the place starts going around the room to light candles, and eventually the skewer clinks against the table as she reaches up to wipe the cold sweat off her face, her breathing evening out into a heavy sigh.

She slumps forward onto the table.

"Ugh. I need a shower."

"You need to eat." Sanji replies with a worried frown at her twitching fingers as he pushes a plate of small potato pancakes in her direction.

She groans, but lifts herself up enough to comply with his implied request.

At least it's not the music.

That would definitely suck.

Sudden dark being a trigger is a problem she'll have to deal with so it doesn't become a potential weakness in a fight, but she has a track record of strongly rejecting any contact from people whose touch and presence she isn't already familiar with after severe injuries, especially in the areas where she suffered said injuries —just like Usopp and Nami tend to have nightmares but are mostly fine during the day.

She knows how to deal with it.

(Not how to get it to go away entirely, and really she's not even sure she wants to,

because being too relaxed is the same as being careless and being careless too often equals being dead.

She's not careless, and she promised to do her best to stay alive.)

"Was it… dark?" Sanji asks carefully, switching to English in consideration of the lack of privacy that comes with their current environment.

"... Yeah. Well, I'm the one who made it like that, but I wasn't exactly in full control of the situation, so."

The music might have been more reassuring than disturbing for her, but the darkness and then the unstable lighting were hardly more comfortable for her than for the CP9 trainees she fought in that bunker.

"Did that girl tell you about any of her other recipes, Sanji?" Robin asks the cook when it becomes obvious that her First Mate doesn't intend to linger on the subject right there and then. "They're probably worth trying."

"You're right! I'll go order so—"

Elynna blinks at a waiter that is cleaning another table a few feet away from him.

The thought comes to her mouth unbidden, but it takes three more breaths before she lets it pass her lips.

"I had hair like that."

Sanji freezes.

Robin follows where her finger is pointing.

"Before." She adds, and Sanji breathes in sharply as he settles back at their table slowly.

I'm not even supposed to look like this—

"... You mean curly?"

Sanji's voice is so quiet —almost as afraid to ask the question as she is to broach the topic considering where it can lead— that she barely hears him.

"No. Brown."

Sanji tilts his head, staring at the waiter pensively.

"Were there other differences?" Robin follows up with glinting, attentive eyes. "Usopp and I have been wondering about it."

Elynna shrugs.

"You can tell the others, if you want. Other differences… Brown eyes and tan skin, but morphologically speaking I didn't change."

Same face.

Same body shape, although more than a year of living as a pirate (with Zoro) has changed that.

Sanji squints, but eventually shakes his head.

"... Nah, I can't picture it." He blurts out, and then winces with an apologetic look at her. "Sorry, Elynna-chan."

But she waves his words away.

"Don't worry about it. I couldn't recognise myself in the mirror either, at first."

Just like she spoke the universal language, but didn't know it.

Just like she knew the people she came to love, even when they were still strangers.

"And now?" Robin inquires as they get up to leave, Sanji putting the money needed to cover the cost of their meal on the table.

Elynna looks down at her hands as she follows Robin towards the exit.

Her white, callused hands that are undeniably her own all the same.

Because she bought the weapons that put the calluses there.

Because she felt the pains that scarred them in places.

Because Robin is holding one of them, and she knows that warmth.

"... I'd feel the same if I went back to how I looked before, I guess."

"I'd recognise you." Sanji tells her firmly, barely letting a pause stretch between them.

"We all would, I think." Robin adds with a smile in her voice.

Elynna nods at a waiter, and then they step out back out onto the streets, which are large enough for her to curl her hand around Sanji's arm.

"I know." She smiles faintly, and wonders if the people she's known for eighteen years would recognise her too, whether in this body or the one she used to have.

It's a fully awake Luffy who opens the door when they come back to their suite, smile wide and bright and arm already stretching to drag them inside so they can celebrate the entire crew's return to Water Seven.

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

"Seriously, Luffy. Next time, give Makino a warning. The old hag and her have been hounding me since they read the first newspapers."

"Oops." Luffy laughs. "Sorry, Ace!"

"... You're smiling, aren't you."

"Yeah, he is. Don't give people false hopes, Sea King. It's rude."

"Okay!"

"I don't trust you." Ace states as he stares down at his Den Den Mushi.

"Wise decision. Don't worry, I'll make a note to include a 'call any and all loved ones outside of the crew before blowing the World Government sky-high' step in any future plan."

"I trust you even less," is all Ace answers to that.

"Rude. I did it."

"Did you even call anyone other than me?"

"Nope, that's exactly what I'm saying."

"... Whatever. I'll tell Makino she can call you, Luffy."

"Alright!"

There's a pause, and then Elynna's voice filters through again.

"Don't look at me like that, Sea King. Why would I waste my time thinking of good excuses when you'll put your foot in your mouth the first chance you get? Besides, watching you get scolded will be a lot more fun."

Ace doesn't need to see it to know that his little brother is slumping and pouting.

He only smirks, and—

"Record those?"

"Sure thing, Ignis."

"Hey! You guys are mean!"

Ace snorts.

"I'm your brother. It's part of the job. Anyway, are you doing alright now?"

"Yep! Chopper is the best doctor!"

"I'll tell Marco that." He replies, mouth slipping into a grin at the distant squeak that gets him from who he guesses is the reindeer he met in Alabasta even as his brother screams something like bring it on, Chopper will definitely win!

"Just asking, but if I say no, is there any chance that you'll drop by to check on us—"

"I'll take that as a yes."

"That doesn't answer my question."

"Yeah, she's totally fine— Ow! Why did you pinch me?!"

"I really wonder." Elynna says dryly. "Now, back to what I was saying—"

"I think there's a problem with my Den Den Mushi."

"At least choose a better excuse, would you? I feel insulted right now."

"No, really." Ace says as he frowns down at the little snail in front of him. "His expression keeps switching. Never happened before. 'S he sick or something?"

The snail rolls his eyes, and at that moment Ace really can't tell if it's Elynna doing it or the snail himself.

"Really? You don't even give him a name and you wonder why he's acting weird? It's a rebellion, Ignis, a rebellion."

There's a loud scoff.

"You called ours Heart, Brain, Liver and Lung. Don't lecture people about this."

"Hey, I was reviewing the anatomy diagrams Hebi gave me at the time, okay? Sue me."

"Yeah." The swordsman snorts. "Someone really should."

"Someone should sue you both." The sharpshooter's voice cuts in. "For horrible naming sense and for treating people like katanas."

"You should be honoured. We only do that with people we love."

"Well I'm not."

"Will you drop that shit already—"

"Oh, you mean like you dropped me in the path of that giraffe guy's attacks?!"

"How intriguing." A much calmer voice drifts over the ensuing cacophony. "Aren't those vital points as well?"

"They sure are."

"Don't laugh, Robin!" The reindeer-doctor squeaks with a shocked gasp. "Why would you call them that, Elynna?! That's dehumanisation!"

"Okay, first of all, it would be desnailisation. Second of all, they're the vital points for one of the most important parts of my job. This is a mark of respect, so don't judge."

"Since when is liver a vital point?"

"Don't take yourself as a reference for vital points, Zoro. Or Luffy."

"Since poison exists, Fang."

"The he—"

"So a very long time, shitty swordsman. But I doubt your pea-sized brain can comprehend that."

"Oh yeah? Well how about we see if livers are also a vital point with a katana?"

"Lynna. Do you… have anything to confess?"

"... Well actually, now that we're talking about it, I had that dream where—"

"No, but really." Ace starts, barely holding in his laughter at the sheer amount of absurdity he's hearing. "How do you take care of sick Den Den Mushi?"

Because he really, really needs his to be healthy.

Not even to hunt down Teach, but because he doesn't want to worry his crew or Elynna more than they already are.

And he especially doesn't want to go back to the first weeks of his chase.

(The weeks before El.

The weeks of real, seastone-hard loneliness, before she manhandled him into talking with her and then everyone back home.

It made being away harder.

It made being away so much more bearable.)

"He's not sick." The navigator sighs, apparently taking pity on him. "Lynna and Luffy have just been pushing each other to get in front of the Den Den Mushi, so yours is probably having trouble knowing whose expression he's supposed to convey."

He stares down at the little snail.

"You're kidding."

"I wish." Nami drawls.

"You so do not." Elynna replies.

"Yeah! You don't! We're the best Captain and the best First Mate! Ann said so!"

"I'm gonna have to disagree with that." Ace notes, more for the fun of it than anything else. "Whitebeard and Marco are the best."

His Den Den Mushi's jaw drops, low and offended.

"No way! I can eat a lot more meat than mustache guy!"

"Not exactly an argument, shithead—"

"And Marco doesn't come anywhere close to my chest size." Elynna cuts in, interrupting her crewmate who promptly chokes.

"Elynna-chan! You have so many other qualities—"

"No way. Have you seen those boobs?"

"No, he hasn't." The navigator comments dryly as Ace realises that this might have been a bad idea. "It'd be dangerous for his health."

"Well they're great. Right, Sea King?"

Ace hears at least two other people scoffing apart from him at the idea that Luffy—

"Yeah, they are!" His little brother answers cheerfully.

The silence falls so abruptly it feels like even the sea around the Striker has turned soundless from one second to the next.

Ace just stares at it, brain running empty over a general feeling of what the absolute fuck?

"... Why are you guys looking at me funny?"

"Yeah, didn't you know that we sleep together?"

"Don't be silly, Ann. Of course they know, we do it all the time!"

"Right, right. So silly of me."

The silence just gets more horrified on all fronts.

"Stop being weird already!" Luffy eventually huffs.

"Maybe they just don't agree with you."

"Well, they're stupid."

"Uh huh. Should we take a nap right now to show them?"

The flatlining thought of what the hell was he thinking entrusting Luffy to her when she gave him The Talk for fun crashes to a stop all at once.

A nap.

A freaking nap.

She just fucking said—

Then there's a soft laugh from the woman he assumes is Nico Robin, a heavy, metallic sound followed by loud swearing, and it's over the sound of the swordsman cursing Elynna to hell and back after apparently dropping his barbell on his foot that Ace's brain finally reboots, or at least enough to recognise the ghost of a shit-eating grin floating just under the surface of his otherwise blank-faced Den Den Mushi and realise that that damn woman did it on purpose—

"I'm going to kill you." He announces flatly as the rest of the Straw Hats suddenly return to life and immediately devolve into a screaming match.

"Flattering." Elynna says idly, not paying any attention to the screams —most of which are directed at her. "I'd like to see you try and do that from wherever you are at the moment. Also, I'd like to see you in general."

"Rookies shouldn't get so cocky." He sneers back playfully, skipping over the last part entirely because there's no way he's letting her go (or win) so easily after the prank she just pulled —and months of being subjected to that particular attack of hers. "You're done for once I've dealt with Teach."

She smirks in a way that reminds him that he still doesn't know what she got up to in Enies Lobby, but that the newspapers keep talking about the indisputable defeat of both the CP9 and a Buster Call fleet at the hands of a tiny crew of mostly unknown rookies.

(And that he knows enough about the shit she's been up to since they met to not need the details.

Whatever it was she did, he already knows that it was a crazy stroke of genius.)

"All that time to prepare and I'm the one who's cocky? You're going down, Fire Fist."

"You wish." He smirks right back, flames flickering to life in the palm of his hand before he chokes them into the tightening of his fist.

"As if I'd be content with just that."

"You'll have to, since you can't touch me. But try hard enough and I might just let you get one hit in."

Her smirk slips wider and sharper at that.

"I'll take you up on it." She says, and he couldn't stop the bark of laughter from coming out of him even if he tried.

Of course she wouldn't care about honour or fair-play or even pride.

"Don't think you're not 'cut out for this job anymore?"

"Your pep talk moved me. I decided to embrace the 'fuck up stupid people and stupid rules for breakfast, lunch and dinner' part of me."

"I was talking more about the pirate part of you."

"Same difference." She dismisses lightly, voice laughter-bright behind the half-feral curve of her mouth.

He can't hold back his own from widening into a full-on grin, chest tight and warm with both longing and joy at the background noise that sounds so much like what he would hear on the Moby Dick, knowing that both his little brother and Elynna found the same thing he did.

"You're unbelievable."

"Come get punched and you'll see how real I am."

The offer is… ridiculously tempting, actually, but no way is he going to tell her that.

She might actually convince him to stop hunting Teach, and if Luffy smiles that dumbass smile on top of it—

He owes Thatch more than that.

"It works just as well if I'm the one punching you, though."

"Good point." She concedes, his snail awkwardly imitating what looks like a shrug. "Well, as long as I get to see you, it's fine by me."

Ace rolls his eyes, and wonders if she's actually trying to make him pay them a visit or if she's saying it for the sake of saying it —which is already more than he knows how to deal with.

(The fact that she's told him several variations of this more often in the few months he's known her than he has heard it in the twenty-one years he's been alive is so huge that it leaves him breathless sometimes.

There's no one he'd rather have at Luffy's side.)

"Uh huh. I'll be sure to remind you of that when you wake up from being knocked out."

"Fight?!" His little brother suddenly inserts himself back into the conversation after being thoroughly —and most probably ineffectively— scolded by other members of the crew. "I wanna fight, too! I'm sure I can win!"

Ace scoffs, but really he's just itching for a good friendly brawl, now.

He might be stronger and more experienced, but between Luffy's unpredictability and Elynna's brains, he's sure to get one hell of a challenge.

"Looks like I'll get to put two rookies back in their place, then."

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

Usopp slides into an approximation of Luffy's fighting stance as soon as the door closes.

Robin laughs at the sight, but Elynna gives him a dull look.

"What are you doing."

"What am I doing?" He sputters. "What are you doing! I have every right to be worried!"

"... I just locked us in a room."

"Precisely! Everything about this is suspicious, especially the part where you're the one doing it!"

Elynna rolls her eyes, more amused than exasperated as Robin lets out another chuckle.

"The lock is more to keep the others out than to keep you in, Hawk."

Usopp pauses, eyes shifting between his two crewmates as he realises who Elynna brought into the room and which of her many notebooks she shoved in his hands when she dragged him there after breakfast.

Then he sits down abruptly on the closest chair.

"Ah."

"Indeed." Robin comments amusedly as she smiles in thanks at Elynna when the younger girl brings her the chair that was next to Luffy's currently empty bed.

"Right. Now that we've established that I'm not out to prank you all the time—"

"Yeah, but most of the time, you are." Usopp mutters under his breath.

"—let's just get down to business."

"Fine. What did you want to talk about?"

"This." Elynna says, pointer finger tapping against the patch of scars on her left cheek.

She didn't notice until she went to shower after finally getting out of bed, and the room was too dark for her fragmented memory to tell for sure, but one of the CP9 trainees probably had some kind of ring with a cut stone on it given the dozen little marks left in her skin from the encounter.

"... Oh." Usopp eventually says, more a strange, strangled sound than an actual word as his eyes finally drift away from her own to land on the spot he studiously tried not to look at until now. "Well… Um, are you— okay?"

"No, I'm not."

He squirms.

"That kind of scar on a civilian might look suspicious to a Marine, so we have to go over all the backstories we made to make sure I have a good excuse in case anyone asks the question —and get rid of the identities whose credibility might be threatened. And when I say a good excuse, I obviously also mean a badass one—"

Usopp gapes at her, and then slams the notebook open on the table in front of him Elynna brought to her room after waking up, takes out a pen from one of his pockets, and proceeds to write, muttering furiously all the while.

"Tripped on nothing and fell face-first on the splinter-full floor—"

"What the fuck."

"—squeezed a kitten to death and got clawed at as a reward—"

"We don't have the same definition of badass. Also, kittens are cute. I'd never do that."

"I believe Usopp was simply worried for you."

"I would hope so, because you can definitely worry for my chances at survival if I go around saying that kinda stuff in a Marine base."

"I just didn't want to make you uncomfortable!"

"... Nah, it's fine."

"It's definitely not!"

"Just pretend I'm Fang."

Usopp finally looks up at her to give her a deadpan glare.

"I really can't."

Elynna raises an eyebrow.

"I see how it is. It's all cool when Fang gets a scar that spans half his body, but when I get just a bit of scarring—"

"It's not the same!"

"I call discrimination."

"Don't twist my words!"

"Senseless discrimination, too, because I assure you, I use my breasts a lot more than my face when I'm trying to seduce someone—"

"Save me, Robin!" The sharpshooter pleads loudly as he whips up his hands to flatten them against his ears.

"—and some people might actually really be into the scar thing—"

"I don't think he's hearing you, Elynna."

Elynna looks.

Usopp glares back.

Elynna gestures for him to uncover his ears.

Usopp shakes his head vehemently, glare taking on a fierceness that, in substance, comes out as something like fat fucking chance.

And then he blanches as his First Mate stretches a hand towards her notebook, not at all stopped by his clumsy attempt at fighting her off with his elbows and very much helped by Robin's multiple hands.

He closes his eyes before she can even write the first word of what she meant to say.

There's a few moments where he doesn't hear anything, not even muffled words or the even more muffled scratch of pen on paper.

He's about to chance a peak when a weight suddenly tackles him to the floor.

That definitely makes him wrench his hands away and open his eyes as he yelps, barely getting out of Elynna's loose hold thanks to some intense squirming.

He immediately starts to run, screaming as she chases him around the room.

"This is an abuse of position!"

"I'm your Padawan—"

"Exactly, I'm the one who's supposed to hunt you down!"

"—and your First Mate!"

"Abuse of position, that's what I said! I'm throwing my lawyer at you once they're done with Zoro!"

"Don't mind it if they're eye-candy!"

Usopp abruptly stops on one side of the table next to Robin, chest heaving as he glares at where Elynna is smirking on the opposite side of said table.

"I'm picking… the ugliest one… just for that."

Elynna just stares and keeps smiling.

So Usopp goes for a feint, stumbles when he realises that there's two hands growing from the table and holding his wrists, and then screams when Elynna vaults over the table to land them both back on the floor.

"The food chain has been justly restored." His First Mate comments smugly, warding off his attempts at escaping with the help of Robin's additional limbs.

"Robin! She's going to eat me!"

"Don't worry," the older woman smiles down at him without lifting a finger, "animals are killed before being cooked, so you're quite lucky in that aspect."

"Noooooooo—"

"I might be amenable to bribery in the form of information on why you want to sue Fang."

Usopp pauses.

Survival or loyalty…

He frowns.

Nope, the Great Usopp is above this.

Getting bullied more by his crewmates or trash talking Zoro with his two crewmates—

Ah hah.

When you put it like that…

"Deal!" He grins.

"I think this is a conversation that can very well be had at the table." Robin reminds them.

Elynna looks down at Usopp, deems him satisfyingly less hesitant to look her in the eyes, and hums.

"... Guess so."

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

Two days after she wakes up, her nails barely give a twinge when she presses down on them.

"Alright, let's go train." Zoro tells her as soon as she announces the good news to the late breakfast team.

"Oh my god, hide your thirst for a sec, would you."

The look the swordsman gives her tells her that if she was hoping for him to go easy on her before, she definitely shouldn't hope for it now.

"Masochist." Usopp mutters under his breath.

"No can do," Nami intervenes firmly. "Today is a girls' day out, and I'm not waiting for that insanity you call training to be done. Knowing you two, it'll take at least three hours, and that's the low estimate where you actually take into account the fact that Lynna was still down for the count two days ago —and you were still down for the count five days ago."

"Hey, that sounds fun!" Luffy beams as he looks up from his own breakfast, excitement written all over his face. "Alright, let's go!"

Usopp and Nami both give him a weird look in the silence that follows, and Sanji blinks down at him, looking distinctly bewildered.

Elynna and Robin just seem amused, and Zoro mutters something like idiot.

"I said girls' day out, Luffy."

Luffy blinks at his navigator, and then bursts out laughing.

"It's fine, it's fine! Let's say I'm a girl today, I wanna come!"

Sanji's jaw falls.

Nami closes her eyes and lets out a deep, deep sigh.

"Winning argument right there. He should get to come just for that. Or she, I guess." Elynna snickers.

"Shut up, Lynna. Luffy's got you wrapped around his finger, you don't get to decide."

"Still an idiot." Zoro comments as he watches Chopper enter the kitchen and take in the idiocy of their crewmates with a completely confused look.

"Alright, let me rephrase." Nami says firmly, glaring at the puppy eyes that her Captain is now trying to pull off. "This is a Robin, Lynna and I day out, so you're staying here anyway. And don't follow us!"

Then she grabs Elynna by the arm, hauls her out of her chair, and marches towards where the historian is waiting for them.

"Usopp!" She throws over her shoulder. "Keep Luffy busy and I'll give you a discount on your next loan!"

"Right away, ma'am!"

"But— I'm the Captain!"

"Sorry, Captain. Money doesn't buy happiness, but it'll buy me a new stock of extra-special supplies to experiment with, and that comes pretty damn close."

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

"So." Elynna starts as she sips on a glass of lemonade. "Am I just here to carry the bags, or…?"

"Of course not." Nami replies with a flip of her hair and a smile brightened by the two hours of clothes shopping they just came out of. "You're also here to admire me and Robin while we try on things."

"... Okay, that's a good wage. Better than money, actually."

"Besides, I got some things for you and the boys, too —and we'll be going to the library once we're done." The navigator adds, raising her hand to gesture at a waiter of the sidewalk café they stopped at for a glass of water to go with her grenadine and soda.

"... Yeah, that just means more bags. Your first argument was better."

That earns Elynna a light kick from the tangerine-haired girl and a chuckle from Robin.

"Knowledge does weigh its weight." She comments lightly, clear eyes sweeping over the bags gathered around their table and mentally going over their content. "That being said… Any reason why you suddenly had the urge to buy such fancy clothes, Nami? Those don't really suit everyone's habitual style, apart from Sanji and maybe the two of us."

The navigator leans back to let the waiter set down her order, thanking him with a smile before she turns to her crewmate.

"I heard when I was out the other day that the mayor usually throws a bit of an event every year after the Aqua Laguna to cheer people up, but this time around it's apparently going to be a really big party."

"Because the Aqua Laguna was unusually violent?" Robin guesses with a raised eyebrow.

Nami grins.

"That too, but mostly to celebrate the fact that he got out alive of an assassination attempt and thank us before we leave. It's in a few days, and I haven't had the opportunity to dress up everyone in forever, so there's no way I'll let Usopp show up in his 'experiment overalls' —or Zoro in his training shirt."

"Fair enough," the older woman chuckles. "We can't in good conscience leave such a bad impression before departing."

"Well I'm never gonna say no to seeing everyone dressed up," Elynna hums, "but still. You managed to find quite a lot of stuff considering all the shops that probably lost part of their stock."

"I browsed a few windows while you were resting, so I had some places in mind already."

"And a few owners easy to rip off, I'm sure."

Nami muffles a chortle in her hand.

"Hey, I was nice. I only mildly ripped them off."

"Very generous of you." Robin comments with a smile before she raises her glass of iced tea to her mouth.

"Besides," the younger girl goes on with a frown that is almost completely taken over by her grin, "I barely had to say anything. Most of them were already about to give me a discount just for being part of the crew. And I bet you that it'll be the same here."

"Not betting with our treasurer, thanks."

"I'll pass as well, I believe."

Nami pouts, but that just makes Robin chuckle as Elynna drops her chin in the palm of her hand to give her a pensive look.

"Did you have plans for this afternoon, though? You said girls' day, but at most we'll get out of the library for a late lunch."

Nami looks up at her, slurping on the last of her drink through her straw until it only makes noise and not much else, the way she and Nojiko used to do with their morning tangerine juice to annoy Bellemere.

Then she releases it, elbow slipping further on the table until she's half-sprawled over it and propping her cheek on her fist, mouth slipping into a smile that is just excited enough to make Elynna pause.

"I'm going to a tattoo parlor."

Elynna's eyes flicker to where her skin is already inked, and her lips quirk up into a smile of her own, just a bit lopsided due to the stiff scar tissue on her left cheek.

"You're getting a new one?"

"Yep!"

"Will you have the time to get it done entirely before we leave?" Robin inquires curiously.

"I think so, yeah. I was talking with Mozu and Kiwi about it in case they knew a good address, and they mentioned a tattoo artist who owes Franky a favour from a few years back. They've been offering him a free tattoo, but Franky isn't interested. I checked out the place, and their style fits pretty well with what I want, so Franky told me I could get it in his place. It should get me some slots pretty soon. No harm in trying, anyway."

"I see. It really does help to know Franky and his friends around here."

"Or it puts you in loads of trouble, depending on who you talk to." Elynna replies. "What are you going to ask for, then?"

Nami's grin widens, and she fishes a piece of paper out of her purse, flattening it with her palm before she pushes it on the table.

Her two crewmates lean a little closer.

"That looks familiar…"

"An island you've been to before I joined, then?" Robin offers as she studies the cartographic representation of a somewhat L-shaped island under their eyes —although a simplified one compared to all the details Nami usually includes in her maps.

"Probably one of the firsts, then. My memory sucks with maps, so I would need to have seen it lying around for a long time for it to ring a bell."

Nami's smile turns warmer even as she lets out a little laugh.

"It's the map of the island where I met Luffy, you and Zoro."

Robin hums.

"A very good choice, if I may say so."

"Yeah." Elynna confirms, smile inching wider as she gives the drawing one last look before giving it back to the navigator. "Not the Conomi Islands?"

Nami shakes her head.

"I don't want to risk drawing the Marines' attention there. Besides, I've got this." She adds, tapping with one finger the arm where ink the same colour as Nojiko's tattoos traces both the pinwheel Genzo once put on to cheer her up and the tangerine of her mother's grove.

That gets her smiles from both her crewmates.

"Where did you want to have it done?"

Nami grins at Robin's question, and then twists to show them her back, fingers drawing the curve of her shoulder where it heads towards her neck, on the side opposite to the one where she already has a tattoo.

"Did you get the idea recently?" Elynna follows up as Robin catches the attention of a passing waitress to request the bill. "You told me you wanted to get your ears pierced, but you never talked about a new tattoo."

"Nojiko got a new one," Nami explains with a shrug. "She told me about it the last time I called home, and I guess it got me thinking. But I did want to get the piercings today, too. Zoro got his not long before he joined the crew, so he answered pretty much all my questions, and Sanji-kun helped me find what I wanted the other day."

"No recommendations from Franky?" Robin asks idly.

"A few of his men and the girls had some, but two of them are closed while they're being relocated to less damaged areas, and the earrings I really want are in the shop of a girl they told me was a crook."

Robin and Elynna exchange a glance, eyes glinting with the same amusement.

"I take it that's why you wanted to go during girls' day?" The archaeologist guesses with a raised eyebrow.

Nami grins back.

"It's more fun with you two."

"Now we're talking." Elynna hums as she stands up, heaving two bags on her shoulder and taking hold of three others with her free hand in the same motion. "It's a date, babe. Let's go get 'em."

"You could just say that 'it's a deal' like normal people."

"As if Sea King harasses normal people into joining his crew."

"She does have a point, I'm afraid."

"Whatever, let's just go to the library first. We've got some research to do."

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

Momo watches her new customer show her choice of piercings to the two other girls, and decides that she's in luck.

Probably the only piercing parlour that will have a customer in the day, and while they're not naive tourists, she should still be able to… get a good deal out of it.

Two of them are part of the Straw Hats, including her actual customer, so they've probably gotten used to the whole town giving them discounts as thanks for saving the mayor.

Her customer doesn't look like much in terms of fighting abilities —doesn't even have a bounty, actually— and Nico Robin's bounty hasn't changed since she got it at eight years old, which hints more at her ability to run away and survive than an increased level of danger.

As for the third girl, Momo doesn't remember seeing her in the newspapers accusing the Straw Hats a few days before, so she not even be a pirate, but whether she is or not, Momo hasn't survived as a crook amidst Water Seven's criminals for the last two years purely through luck.

If worse comes to worse… Well, she's not above some brawling herself, and even better at running away when the situation calls for it.

So she smiles, answers the redhead's questions, does her job well and gives all the instructions for the days to come to her client, and when said client asks for her price she only asks for a smidgeon more —just enough to keep it credible.

Somehow, the chick's smile becomes even prettier.

Somehow, it makes Momo's fight or flight instinct suddenly wake up —and lean strongly towards 'flight'.

"That's more pricey than I expected." She says, almost cheerfully.

Momo shrugs, glancing at the other two who —fortunately— don't really seem interested in the conversation, too busy browsing her shelves separately in spots that —unfortunately— will make accessing the main entrance or her backdoor a bit difficult.

"Sorry, Miss. Happens every year with the Aqua Laguna, y' know."

"Ah, yes, of course!"

Ugh, she even laughs pretty. Some people really have it all.

"Hey, Lynna." Her customer calls out as she twists her upper body to face the shortest girl of their trio. "Think it's worth the price?"

The girl in question hums, coming closer to curl her fingers around the chin the redhead tilts towards her and twisting her head gently, bending down slightly to inspect the two tiny rings of pure gold from which dangle a fake golden coin on the left and a miniature compass on the right.

"Looks good."

The redhead's smile takes on an edge that seems almost more pleased than Momo herself feels —until she hears the other girl's next words.

"Better than what I expected from the girl everyone told you was a crook. She should really think about registering this place."

Momo coughs.

"I don't know what you've heard about me and my parlour, but I assure you that my name is definitely in the commercial registry of Water Seven, and all the legal procedures have been don—"

"Nah." The girl interrupts her idly, not even looking at her as she straightens up and rounds the redhead's chair, fingers drifting to her cheek and off her skin in the process as Momo's customer turns back to her. "I meant in Franky's register. Crook, you know."

"I did not—"

"What's the gold rate these days again?" Lynna interrupts her once more, making her shoulders tighten.

The redhead chirps out the answer with that same fucking smile on her face, and suddenly Nico Robin is right there too, leaning against the corner of the desk that the third member of their trio isn't stepping around and rattling off the details of how the costs of the products Momo sells are calculated, the redhead computing the numbers faster than Momo can even realise that adding the maximum margin she's allowed to give herself to the result will give a lower price than what she offered.

She abruptly stands up from her chair.

"Now look here—"

Hands appear on the armrests of her chair in a shower of petals, grabbing her firmly enough to nullify any chance at running off.

That's what the Hana Hana no Mi does? She just thought it was about making bunches of flowers come out!

Then a hand lands firmly on her shoulder as Lynna reaches her chair, clasping tight and setting her right back on her ass.

The redhead's smile doesn't waver one bit, and Momo swallows in what suddenly seems like a too-tight throat.

She… may have bitten off more than she could chew on that one.

"I already told you." She attempts, squirming as the hand leaves her shoulder only for the girl behind her to lean her weight on the backrest of the chair —not close enough to touch but close enough to let Momo subtly feel the pressure of her presence right behind her. "The Aqua Laguna was barely a week ago. You're foreigners, so you might not know, but prices always go up while our economy recovers."

"Oh, I'm sure." Lynna comments, the sudden sound of her voice behind her startling Momo almost as much as the accompanying sound of the chick flipping through the pages of what she fears might just be her accounting book, because she can't see it in the spot where she last put it. "But I have good news for you. See, in the newspapers from three days ago, there was that article explaining that the mayor will be using the funds reserved exclusively for the Aqua Laguna from yesterday onwards to keep everyone afloat. For a shop of your category, I believe it's about a month worth of solid monetary support. But you already know that, surely, since that fund was put in place five years ago."

Momo's eyes flicker between the two smiling women in front of her.

Her shoulders slump, the tanned hands holding her disappearing when she raises her own hands in defeat.

"Alright. I give."

"Great! I'm glad we could come to an agreement!" The redhead says, cheerfully enough that Momo almost forgets the two other women's more threatening behaviour as her customer slaps a handful of bank notes on her desk with a smile somehow both sharper and brighter. "I trust you'll agree with this price, then!"

Her mouth curls down at the sight of what is barely enough to cover her actual cost.

"... Yes."

"Really? How nice! It was great doing business with you, then!"

"On that note, we'll be wishing you a good day." Nico Robin adds, smile thin and soft as the third girl finally steps far away enough to let Momo breathe normally.

"Sure—" She grumbles, and then chokes when she realises that Lynna is taking her accounting book with her. "Hey, give that back!"

The redhead laughs sunnily as she whirls around, waving at her as she walks backwards towards the door and brand new earrings shining almost as bright and sharp as her smile.

"One of Franky's men will bring it back, don't worry! Be sure to play by his rules from now on, okay?"

Momo's hand falls back limply on her desk.

Shit.

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

"Isn't it nice to solve problems without resorting to violence from time to time?" Nami grins as she stretches her arms above her head.

"The Monster Trio isn't here to hear you, you know." Elynna comments, shrugging off the baggy denim jacket she put on to better hide her musculature and the tessen strapped to her forearms, the price tag still dangling from the collar when she passes it to Robin for her to put back in the bag from the corresponding shop.

"You two are basically honorary members. We should call you the Monster Quintet."

"Says one of the people who took out the most soldiers in Enies Lobby."

Robin hums in agreement.

"I'm quite sure Sanji and Zoro are below you on that list."

Elynna smirks a bit, patting the now increasingly frowning navigator on the shoulder with the hand that isn't fiddling with her necklace.

"Congratulations, Rain. A bit more effort and you might just outdo Sea King."

Nami blanches at the idea.

"This is Usopp's fault. He's just too much of a genius at this making weapons thing."

"Don't tell him that. His self-esteem can still use some work."

"Besides," Robin adds, "I'm sure the Marines will be quick to dismiss a young woman as one of the biggest threats during that particular battle."

"That too. They can't really dismiss Sophia, and it's probably one woman too many for most of them already."

"It better be the case." The navigator huffs. "If sexism is going to keep existing, it might as well spare me from dealing with a bounty poster."

Robin laughs softly, before pointing at a small shop a few feet away from them.

"Well, I don't know about that, but in the meantime, I think we've found the place you were talking about for your tattoo."

"Oh. Yeah, that's the one. Alright, let's just hope he can get me an appointment soon. You coming, Lynna?"

"Nope." Elynna decides, gazing pensively at another shop further down the street that lost most of its tiles as well as its door and its windows but still bears an 'open' sign. "I'll join you later."

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

She stares blankly at the building in front of her.

"That… wasn't part of the girls' day program."

She can hear the bright, bright smile in Nami's voice when she answers from behind her.

"It was! I just neglected to talk to you about it."

"... Neglected."

"An unfortunate mistake." Robin tacks on, clearly having way too much fun with this.

Elynna stares some more at the doors of the dance school standing in front of her, the upbeat music drifting through the doors making her fingers twitch.

"I'd rather spend the day with y—"

"Nope!"

"At least let me finish, I didn't even get to the begging part."

"Tempting, but still no."

"From what I understand, you used to dance with a group rather than solo, even during shows. It would be a shame to neglect this opportunity, wouldn't it? I'm sure you must miss it." Robin tells her softly as she steps up to her side.

Her fingers twitch again, and she groans.

"But people."

"Yes, yes." Nami says as she places both hands on her shoulders and starts pushing her towards the door. "But you told me that your mindset during training or in a fight is the same as when you're dancing, so you shouldn't be triggered. The parlour isn't far anyway, and Robin will keep an eye and an ear on you while we're there. Literally. Now stop being a baby and—"

"What are you three doing?"

They all look up to find a tall, slim woman with her arms crossed over her chest and one eyebrow raised high enough to disappear under the electric violet hair that falls onto one side of her forehead.

"Hi!" Nami promptly takes over. "We just wanted to take a look inside! Is that possible?"

"Sure is. We're rehearsing for the party right now, though."

Elynna sighs, leaning her weight harder into Nami's hands.

The navigator and the historian exchange a glance.

"The party, you say? Do you mean the annual party?"

"Yeah. Wouldn't want to reveal the whole thing to two of the guests of honour, if you see what I mean."

The second glance that passes between the two pirates is distinctly more confused.

"Two?"

"You two." The dancer clarifies, pointing her finger at Nami and Robin and giving Elynna a look of passing curiosity. "You're part of the Straw Hat crew, right?"

Both women give their First Mate a puzzled look for only a moment before they realise that she was never involved in the events that lead the Straw Hats to be seen as a threat in Water Seven.

"The three of us are, actually." Nami smiles, twice as bright and entirely careless of how Elynna slumps against her in defeat even as she pushes back to shove her further forward. "But she used to be a dancer!"

The woman's eyes settle more firmly on Elynna with a curiosity more akin to interest.

"Oh?"

There's surprise there, too, but it's not entirely unexpected to Nami. Out of the three of them, Elynna is probably the one who fits the standards of female dancers the least.

"Not really." The pirate in question corrects. "I've never been a professional."

The dancer only hums in answer, eyes scanning her form carefully from her wide shoulders and down what she can see of the firm muscles thickening her arms, under the fans strapped to her forearms and the short, ample sleeves of her purple t-shirt that twists into a knot above her toned stomach.

Then her gaze drops lower and stops on her thighs, and Nami's grin widens, because even after months of training with Zoro and Usopp, she's ready to bet that the muscle structure she already had before and that was most visible there is still mostly the same, and definitely fits the standards of high-level dancers.

"... How many years have you practiced?"

Elynna shrugs.

"Thirteen? Fourteen? Something like that."

Nami throws her weight against her best friend's back, wrapping her arms around her shoulders to keep herself there as she beams up at the woman, launching all her charm at her with practiced ease.

The dancer blinks.

"See? Not a professional, but she's still really good!"

"I… would imagine, after practicing for this long. What does that have to do with visiting the place?"

Nami exchanges a smile with Robin.

"We were thinking that Elynna here could perhaps take part in your show? We've never had the opportunity to see her dance with other people so far, and we're quite curious."

The violet-haired woman raises an eyebrow, gaze drifting back to Elynna.

"Well, we aren't in the habit of saying no to anyone who comes in here to dance, no matter their level —and I'm sure no one will mind the challenge of adapting our choreographies to another member if needed. But do you want to dance?"

Elynna tilts her head, listening for a moment to the faint echoes of music drifting from inside the building.

"I didn't know we would be coming here, so it depends on what kind of style you're going for, I guess."

"Huh. Come on up, then. I'm Na Yung, by the way. You two will have to stay out, though. To keep the suspense, you know."

"That's no trouble. We have other things planned. See you later, Elynna."

"Thanks, Na Yung! Have fun, Lynna!" Nami adds, shoving a bag in her best friend's arms before following Robin with a wave of her hand and one last smile.

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

"By the way," Na Yung tells her as she leads her through a hallway, something guarded in her voice making Elynna pay attention. "This place was created to make it easier for Kankol people to fit into the life of Water Seven. We're open to everyone, but most of the members are still Kankol. If you've got a problem with that, you know where the door is."

Elynna smiles a bit, slightly amused that the woman is threatening her when they both know who the threat is between the two of them.

"I don't care." She replies anyway.

"... Good." The dancer says gruffly after throwing an assessing glance at her over her shoulder.

Then she pushes the door of one of the rooms used for dancing classes and walks in.

"Guys, we've got a new recruit for the show!"

"Man, they're late to the party!" A male voice replies, and then yelps.

"One more lame joke from you and I'll be stepping on your toes during every transition." Another girl hisses out as Elynna comes in.

"Also, she's one of the pirates." Na Yung adds at the same time.

That gets her a long silence and wide-eyed stares from the twenty or so people in the room and the other club members peering in through the doors on both sides of the room that lead to other training rooms.

Elynna stares back.

"Name's Elynna. I only kill assholes."

The laughs that come out at that are either genuine or nervous as fuck.

She turns to Na Yung.

"So. How does that show work, exactly?"

"We're sharing the stage with two other groups. There is a kind of dance contest at the end where we each present a big performance, but mostly it's just everyone taking turns with group choreographies —around five or six people."

"Two other groups, as in clubs?"

The violet-haired woman winces, rubbing the back of her neck before she answers.

"... Not exactly. One of them is the other dance school of Water Seven, yeah, but the last one is… well, Franky's fan club, I guess."

"Franky." She repeats dully. "As in, major crime lord Franky."

Na Yung winces again.

"Yeah, him. Set a bunch of near-delinquent brats back on the straight and narrow and they decided to become his… propaganda team? I don't know exactly, but they do some pretty impressive stuff on the stage, and that's all we care about, really."

Elynna blinks at her blankly, and then shrugs.

She's only half-surprised, really.

It's Franky.

Somehow, he's the type to make that kind of thing happen.

"Good point, I guess."

"Anyway, you can warm up and take a look at what we do for now to see if there's anything you'd like to work on." Na Yung offers, clapping her hands together and raising her voice once she gets a nod of agreement. "Alright guys, back to work!"

"I protest." Another girl hisses as she crosses her arms, her long, braided ponytail of dark grey hair falling off her shoulder when she raises her chin defiantly. "We're more girls than guys here. Majority rule says you should be saying 'alright girls, back to work'."

"Well, yeah, but then it's not fair for me and the other guys," the man whose voice fits the one that greeted her jokingly replies, his long hair black but with the same square jaw and brown eyes as the grey-haired girl.

Said girl glares at him, eyes sharp behind the round glasses she wears in a way that doesn't fit the delicate curve of her mouth, punctuated by a beauty spot.

"Don't talk to me about fairness until you have lived your whole life under the burden of matriarchy!"

"... I'm literally the only guy at home! And bullying me is your favourite hobby!"

"Don't flatter yourself. Your tears aren't worth that high a position."

"An eye for an eye and the whole world goes blind." Another girl cuts in, idly curling a strand of pale blond hair around one finger.

"Did I ask for your two-bit quotes?!"

"Back to work, I said!" Na Yung intervenes with a tone that clearly says that this is far from a rare situation.

She points Elynna towards the changing room, and then goes to join her own group.

After switching her outfit in favour of the training clothes Nami put in her bag along with her Dials and doing most of the warm-up exercises she needs, Elynna takes her things with her, preferring to keep an eye on them, and goes back to the dance rooms proper, sticking close to the walls while she watches different groups perform different styles of dances.

The one she watches from start to finish is executed by a good fifteen people, which makes her deduce that it's the one from the dance contest.

The first member of the group to notice her is also one of its leaders, a girl with a bob cut of wine red hair, who wipes away a mix of sweat and the water she just poured on her face and then grins at her.

"Wanna join?"

"... Yeah, actually."

The girl props both fists on her hips, eyes drifting to the ceiling in thought as more members of the group notice her, including the girl and the boy who seem to be related.

"Well… We'd need to see you dance to be sure you can keep up first since it's our contest performance, but I don't see the problem with it. It wouldn't be too hard to include one more person at this point." The red-haired one muses, glancing at the rest of the group and receiving shrugs and nods in return before grinning back at her. "I'm Hayan, by the way."

"Fair enough." Elynna agrees, mentally looking for a song that will give a similar enough vibes to the two they work with.

"Hey, Hyelin, look!" The boy from earlier chirps as he crouches down next to where she put down her belongings and lifts one of her tessen for his friends to see. "She uses fans to dance! Wouldn't it be cool to integrate tha—"

"You might want to let go before losing a few fingers." Elynna tells him without looking at him.

There's a yelp and the loud sound of her fan hitting the hardwood floor, making her sigh.

"The hell?!"

"Those are bladed fans." She explains. "Better not touch them if you don't know how to handle them."

The boy's sister-slash-cousin-slash-whatever, whose name is apparently Hyelin, immediately marches up to him to drag him away from Elynna's things by the collar, looking sorely tempted to strangle him with it.

"Juyeon, you idiot—"

"Is that the Dials we've been hearing about?" Another girl asks, carefully pointing a finger rather than stepping closer to where Juyeon was.

"Yeah. The songs I use are recorded on them."

"That's awesome!"

"How does it work?"

"How many songs can you put on these things?!"

Elynna blinks at the barrage of questions, thinks of Chopper and how Robin is probably listening to them somewhere to look out for her, and picks up the Dial that fits the vibe of a party the most to show the group how to pick a specific song.

"... Wait, is that Kankol?!" Juyeon sputters as the voices start to filter through.

"It's weird, I don't think I've ever heard this song, even though it's exactly my type."

Elynna shrugs idly.

"I'm not from the Low Lands, but we don't speak the universal language back home. There's some Kankol communities, so we have a few groups using Kankol for their songs."

"I'm doing something with that one." One of the girls decides, pointing decidedly at the Dial.

"Do you have some in your language? We try to promote non-universal artists in general, so…"

"Adding fans could be cool, though." Hayan muses, apparently still stuck on the idea.

"We're way too close for most of the dance," Hyelin retorts with a frown, "and hand movements are our speciality."

"Well, we don't have to all use fans."

"And it's not like the two other groups will use fans," Juyeon tacks on, "so we can still stick out that way!"

"You could always throw in another part." Elynna adds, gaining half-excited and half-nervous looks in return, one of the dancers face-palming even before Hayan's grin returns in full force.

"I like a challenge, Elynna. Now get on stage. Show me that you don't just have nice ideas but that you can also dance 'em."

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

She comes out three hours later to pick up Nami and Robin at the tattoo parlor, and the three of them make their way back to their temporary accommodation at an easy pace.

They've barely taken three steps past the gates before they stop, Usopp standing tall and grinning and already preparing a shot just a few feet in front of them.

"Beware, my young Padawan! The time for training has come!"

Elynna blinks at him, already feeling Nami and Robin's presence slinking away behind her with all their purchases.

"... I don't want to?"

"Does it look like we give a damn?" Zoro replies as he stops next to the sharpshooter, hands already on a katana and sliding into a half-crouch.

Her eyes flicker back and forth between the two of them.

"So what are we training, exactly?"

Zoro's smirk turns somewhat feral.

"Why, your evasion skills, my dear disciple!" Usopp announces grandly.

Elynna stares at them.

Opens her mouth.

Closes it.

And then whirls around to run for her fucking life.

"Come back here!" Usopp screams.

"Thanks but no thanks!" She yells back without slowing down, running up a tree trunk and jumping off it right before one of Zoro's two remaining katanas stabs through it.

He avoids the kick she aims at his head even before landing, and she twists around, propelling herself back into a run.

"I just want to talk!"

Three shots whizz past her.

"More like your slingshot wants to talk!"

A fourth one hits her in the back when she gets up from sliding under another of Zoro's attacks, and sends her falling forward.

"Kabuto is but an extension of me!"

She tucks herself into a roll, launches both legs above her head until her feet land on either side of her face to avoid another shot and then unfolds herself back up, stopping halfway through when a katana slashes horizontally through the air and then dropping back down on her hands to aim a knee at Zoro's stomach instead, launching him over her and between her and Usopp's next shot in the process.

"That's some deep attachment issues you've got going on!" She grins as Zoro lands on his feet and surges back forward, the tip of his katana nicking the skin just above her hip when she turns to meet him blow for blow.

"Would you two focus?!" Zoro snaps between two attempts at skewering her.

She spins, sidestepping another slash and bringing herself too close inside his guard for his katanas to do much in the same move, and then slams her skull into his chin hard, half-laughing even as he grabs her by the elbow.

"Take off your shirt and it'll be easier!"

"For the love of Elbaf, don't!"

He throws her into a tree with an exasperated noise, and just in time for one of Usopp's Egg Stars to hit her.

"This really—" She coughs at the strong smell of rotten eggs and whips out one tessen to redirect a few Tabasco Stars away from her. "—isn't what I had in mind when I talked about a threesome the other day!"

"Too bad for you!" Zoro snarls as he closes in on her again —and launches a flying blade in Usopp's direction before attacking her.

The sharpshooter yelps, barely avoiding the thing and prompting yells of warning from Sanji and Nami when the attack almost damages the house instead.

"Better a building than me! And you! Don't attack me! I didn't say anything, and we're supposed to be working together!"

"You shot at me first, dumbass." Zoro replies, in the middle of gauging Elynna after another round of close fighting. "Besides, you need to work on your evasion skills too, and we only agreed to attack her together. It's not like I can't take the two of you on, anyway."

"Zoro, you traitor! You'll regret making a mockery out of the Great Usopp!"

"What an impressive lung capacity." Robin comments to the two other quieter members of the Smart Quintet, who are both also reading their own book on the wooden terrace under the porch, their drink of choice freshly made by Sanji.

"Did Zoro just trick Usopp?" Nami says at the same time, looking just a bit horrified. "He's spending way too much time with Lynna."

"Is he going to attack me, too?" Chopper asks as he stares at the training-session-slash-instant-prank-war going on in front of him, clearly worried.

Nami pats him on the head with a wide smile.

"No Chopper, don't worry. You just have to not be an idiot like Usopp. And if Zoro bothers you, just come see me. I'll take care of it."

When Elynna joins them an hour later after her shower, Nami is in the middle of explaining to an envious Usopp how she granted a picture to a journalist of the local fashion magazine while she was shopping for swimsuits for the Galley-La employees' swimming pool the day before.

She raises an eyebrow at the new piece of information that she didn't come across the previous evening, having spent most of it helping Sanji after she stumbled upon him baking a few things for Usopp, who came to see the cook and Luffy, worried that Chopper was spending way too much time trying to research the form he took on in Enies Lobby to better control it and wanting to distract him before the lack of sleep —and the guilt at almost hurting some members of the crew while in that form— might tempt the reindeer to do something stupid.

Like, experimenting on himself without proper safety measures kind of stupid.

When she meets Robin's eyes, the older woman nods with an amused smile.

Ah.

Well, at least she'll look damn good on it.

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

Eyes glued to her newest map she's been working on since she came back from the girls' outing two days before, Nami blindly reaches for her mug of tea once more, and groans when she realises that the thing is empty.

"I'll take care of that." Elynna says, having just come back from borrowing one of Robin's books to read in her own room, where Nami holed herself up when Sanji started mumbling about different ideas of recipes in the one she shares with him —which is definitely distracting because she can't help but picture the food in question.

"Thanks."

Her best friend swipes the mug off the desk Nami settled at and walks out of the room, leaving Nami to lean back to assess the quality of her work so far and decide which details she can still add without undermining the map's legibility, one hand rubbing absently at her left shoulder.

"Still sore?"

Startled, she knocks her knee into the underside of the desk, letting out a curse as she finally looks away from her work to give Elynna a wide-eyed look.

"Don't do that! You know I lose awareness when I'm working!"

"Sorry." Elynna says, head tilted to the side and staring unblinkingly at her. "So?"

"So what?"

Her First Mate's eyes flicker down to her shoulder.

"Your bullet wound."

"... It was a Shigan, actually." Nami eventually lets out stiffly, hand dropping back to her lap.

Elynna just hums.

"You know you can talk to Hebi about it if you need to, right?"

"Yeah, of course. But it's fine," she shrugs, knowing better than to lie when her best friend will probably pick up on it somehow. "He already took care of it."

She's trying to figure out how to change the topic instead when the whistling sound of the kettle reaches them and Elynna finally blinks, pushing herself off the doorframe to go finish Nami's tea.

The navigator sighs in relief, running a hand through her freshly-cut hair and picking up her fountain pen again to draw a few stylised Aqua Laguna waves around Water Seven until a newly filled mug appears in the corner of her vision, prompting her to look up with a smile.

"Thanks, Lynna."

Elynna doesn't smile back, and doesn't go back to her reading either.

Instead she leans one hip against Nami's desk, crosses her arms, and—

"So if it's not the wound, what's got you doing that all the time?"

Nami blinks at her in confusion, knowing perfectly well that the attempt is pretty much doomed from the start.

"Doing what?"

Elynna reaches out, one finger hooking into the neckline of her t-shirt, pausing for a moment and then slowly starting to peel it away from her skin and off her left shoulder when Nami doesn't move, exposing the reddened skin where she has taken to rubbing the skin almost raw.

The navigator winces, and knows from the way her First Mate is looking at her that she probably suspects other patches of skin to be just as red under the rest of her clothes.

She wouldn't be wrong.

"I have to admit, that wasn't how I envisioned you taking off my shirt for the first time."

"Not the first time." Elynna replies, but she's not looking away and she's not smiling, so the tentative joke falls flat.

Nami huffs, crossing her arms and glaring, now plain offended at how worried her best friend is over a few rashes of all things.

Her crewmates of all people should know better than to think her that weak.

"Don't be so damn dramatic, Lynna. You're our nurse. You should know it's not serious."

"Not yet." Elynna says, not reacting to the anger in her tone and simply tilting her head further to look down at her face in consideration. "Spanda offered Kalifa and Kaku a Devil Fruit when they brought Sophia to him. What was Kalifa's?"

Nami snarls at the name, reaching up instinctively to dig into the skin of her shoulder.

There's no pain whatsoever, her nails clawing at the back of Elynna's hand instead where it covers the irritated patch of skin, making it itch worse and soothing the skin-crawling feeling Nami can't seem to get rid off at the same time.

"I don't want to talk about her." She spits out sharply.

"Pity." Her First Mate blinks, apparently set on pissing her off, and takes her hand off Nami's skin. "She seems to be the cause of what's making me worry about you, so either prove me wrong on that or talk. To me or someone else, I don't care."

Nami glares as she readjusts her shirt.

"No."

"Like Hermes, for example. He's worried, too. He came to talk to me about how you've been in a bad mood every time you come out of your shower for breakfast since we came back here. You eat less, and he doesn't know what to do to help."

Nami winces at that, and then scowls up at Elynna, annoyance fusing her jaws together with how hard she clenches her teeth.

"Can't you just give it up?"

The look she receives in response says this is a stupid question, and I'm only going to answer because it's you.

"Obviously not. We're talking about the health of someone I love. It's not like you would give up either."

"What happened to letting people talk things out when they're ready?"

"You've been blowing off Hermes' offers to help, and you haven't gone to see Hebi about this like you did for your nightmares. I'm trying a new approach before you actually scratch deep enough to make yourself bleed. Better take care of it when it's not serious."

Nami stares at Elynna, more than a little bit miffed.

Elynna stares back, blank but leaning down into her space in a way that is both careful and caring, like when she wasn't sure yet whether Nami wanted touch or space after a nightmare.

It makes Nami's shoulders unwind before she can even think about it, and she sighs to try and rein in the fondness that wants to tug the corners of her mouth upwards.

"... I can't tell if you're trying to soften me up or piss me off."

This time her best friend does seem a touch amused, the curve in the line of her mouth so tiny it's more an impression of a smile than an actual smile.

"Maybe a little bit of both."

And now Nami's the one smiling, slumping forward on her desk to rest her forehead on her hands so as to not scratch herself again.

"... It's stupid." She eventually says softly when Elynna's fingers slip into her hair to rake gently through the strands.

"It's hurting you."

She thinks of the worried crease in Sanji's forehead at breakfast that morning, and sighs.

"Soap." She caves in, forcing out more words when Elynna's ministrations pause for a moment, reflecting her confusion at the seeming non-sequitur. "Her Devil Fruit has to do with soap."

"... That's stupid alright."

"I know, right? I can't believe there's a stupid fruit out there that can make rubber or soap dangerous."

Elynna just hums.

Nami focuses on the sound of her breathing and the feel of her fingers and the close-up sight of the desk, because closing her eyes will just make the itch worse.

"One of her techniques, it…" She cuts herself off, scowling down at the wooden surface she's resting on at the memory of finding herself in limbs so weak it was like being a child again, when the only thing she knew how to do was say hurtful words to the wrong people, be protected by others at their own risk and cry. "I was drained. Completely helpless. I couldn't even walk correctly without slipping, and every time I shower it's like I can't rinse it off and it's still—"

(—still clinging to her skin.

Like Bellemere's blood on her hands and Arlong's laughter in her ears when she sleeps, sometimes.

There's not enough child left in her to think those will ever completely go away.

Whether good or bad, there are some things that build you up throughout your life.

Cutting them out would be like unmaking yourself.)

Elynna stays silent for several minutes, thoughtful where Nami half-expects more prodding after all that work to get her to talk.

"Have you tried changing soap?" Her best friend asks instead, having apparently skipped right over to the 'concrete solutions' part of the process.

"No way." Nami tells her firmly while glaring down at her desk. "I'm not running away from her."

"You already won, Rain. Besides, it's a tactical retreat, not running away."

Nami elbows her hard in the thigh without looking, but Elynna just takes it and keeps going, undeterred.

"Just try it out for a bit. You can always come back to your usual later on, but there's no need to stick to it when everything's still recent."

Grumbling, Nami rights herself up to better scowl at her First Mate, shoulders set and argument ready.

Like hell she's backing down and letting this goddamn feeling win.

"Chopper said it's important to face your fears." She says, even though it has less to do with fear and more with unease but whatever.

She's not about to let anyone make her feel small ever again, and especially not her own damn mind.

"He was talking mostly to Hawk and you know it." Elynna rebukes her, and Nami curses the fact that the two people who are the most worried about her on this are also two of the smartest members of the crew who will never be convinced to let go of the topic by half-assed arguments. "He told you that getting angry doesn't always help you as much as you think it does."

The navigator scowls even more at that.

"How do you even know about that?"

"You ranted to me about it."

There's a I love you but you're kind of stupid there that is usually directed at Luffy or Zoro, which only makes her more offended as she slumps in her chair and crosses her arms over her chest with a huff.

"... I don't see how it would change anything. It's not the smell that bothers me or anything, it's the feel of it."

That just gets her another unimpressed look.

"Exactly." Elynna says, shifting away from the desk before moving to the door. "Wait a sec."

Nami tips her head back, staring up at the white ceiling as she curiously listens to her First Mate taking a few steps in the hallway before exchanging a few words with someone else.

"Why were you talking to Zoro of all people?" She asks as soon as her best friend steps back into the room.

"Because we both use shower gel, but he uses actual soap. It leaves a completely different feeling when you rinse it off, so it would probably be more helpful. I asked him just to make sure, but it is Hebi who makes it for him, so you'll get to make him all happy by asking him to make some for you as well."

And on that note, Elynna grabs her hand and drags her out of her chair and towards the door.

"Wait—" Nami sputters as she fumbles to not lose her balance. "Now?!"

"Of course, now." Her First Mate carelessly throws over her shoulder. "As if I'd let you think up some more arguments."

She knocks at the door of Chopper and Usopp's room just to be sure that she's not going to startle one or both of them —but especially Usopp— in the middle of some experiment, and opens when Chopper's answer filters through the panel of the door, Nami stepping in behind her and closing the door because really, running away would just be ridiculous.

Besides, Chopper is extra-cute when he gets that big smile at the idea of being trusted to help someone.

She doesn't give away anything, simply asking for some soap because her own shower gel bottle is reaching its end and she hasn't found her usual brand in town.

Both Usopp and Chopper still look at her in a way that makes her suspect that Sanji and Elynna weren't the only ones who noticed there was a problem, but neither comment on her request.

The reindeer simply accepts happily, informing them in the process that Usopp is usually the one making the soap even if Chopper is the one who came up with the formula initially.

The sharpshooter, for his part, just stares at her intensely until she raises an eyebrow at him, prompting him to cross the distance between them to set both hands on her shoulders.

"Nami." He says gravely, looking somehow both giddy and relieved to the point of near-tears. "Your blessed arrival could not possibly make me happier, you fair, bold lady."

Nami blinks.

"I know, but why?"

"Because Zoro." Usopp answers sharply, shaking her a bit as if she needs the extra flair of it to understand how much frustration the swordsman can provoke in people (she really doesn't). "That tasteless, boring man has no morals and no respect for my artistic skills! He always asks for the same scent! It doesn't even qualify as a scent! It's the most neutral stuff you can get when using natural ingredients!"

"What's wrong with that?" Elynna asks, whose shower gel is scentless as well.

That gets her twin horrified looks from the other two which clearly spell out that everything is wrong with that.

"Don't be mean, Usopp! I told you it's not his fault!" Chopper tries to tamper his best friend's dramatic outburst.

If it wasn't Chopper, Nami would be convinced he's actually making fun of Zoro himself.

"—not even one comment of appreciation towards the quality of the ingredients I buy!" Usopp goes on without a single moment of pause until he suddenly stops shaking her. "Save me from this misery, I beg of you."

"Usopp." Nami says, feeling a vicious smile take over her face at the sheer amount of possibilities.

"Yes, fairest lady of this crew?"

Her smile takes on an edge of manic glee.

"We're going shopping."

The glint in Usopp's eyes matches hers perfectly before the word is even out of her mouth.

"Oh, thank god."

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

"I might have created a monster." Elynna comments, not all that regretful as she watches both of her crewmates march out of the room as if they're going to war against Zoro's 'boring tastes'.

And hers as a result, apparently.

Chopper wacks her in the shin.

"Don't be silly, Elynna. It's going to be fine." He frowns up at her.

Then the expression melts off his face under the force of the beaming smile that replaces it.

"Robin asked me for help to sleep better, you know!"

She smiles back and joins him at his workstation, knowing that the doctor has been trying to get Robin to rely on him pretty much since she joined the crew.

"I'm glad she did. Is that what you're working on?"

"No, I'm almost done restocking, so I wanted to finish that first. I already asked her for the details of her insomnia. I have a few solid ideas of things to try, and she told me she didn't mind if you helped."

"Sure." She hums as she takes the clipboard offered to her by Chopper. "That one's similar to Rain's, right? I should be able to do most of it on my own."

"That's what I was thinking, too. We're missing some ingredients for option three, but we should manage to make a first batch for the two others before the party."

Elynna nods, and stands up to gather the ingredients necessary while Chopper goes back to watching over his anti-infection salve.

By the time she's set up her own workstation the preparation is fully ready, so she helps him store it correctly before heading for the door.

"Elynna? Where are you going?"

"Offer Sophia to join us. Might make it easier for her if she sees what we're doing exactly and can ask questions."

"Right!" He grins, waving at her. "Good idea!"

It barely takes her five minutes to come out of Zoro and Robin's room with the historian in tow, but she finds Chopper peeking into the living room instead of in his own room down the hall.

"Hebi?"

Startled, the reindeer turns back to them with wide eyes.

"You would need to hide behind the wall to not be seen, Chopper. Not next to it." Robin comments, amused.

They both step closer, and find themselves looking at where Nami and Usopp have set up their own equipment and purchases on the living room's table and are now gleefully mixing ingredients while exchanging ideas for future batches, heads bobbing in time with the Sing movie soundtrack.

"I think you might have been right, Elynna." Chopper whispers.

That earns her a curious look from Robin.

"About having created a monster."

"We need to keep Zoro away." The reindeer adds, looking a bit scared about what the duo in front of them might be capable of —though Elynna can't really tell if it's in relation to the chemical procedure they're in the middle of or a possible confrontation with the swordsman.

"We really don't." She says either way. "It's probably going to be the funniest part of the whole thing."

Robin chuckles at that, but Chopper gives her a horrified look, suddenly shifting into his biggest form to drag her away before she can be tempted to go look for Zoro herself.

"Let's just get to work!"

"Would it be possible to have music as well while you two work?"

"Sure, but the feel-good Dial is already taken."

"Not that one!" Chopper protests, frowning down at her for even suggesting to play something so attention-grabbing when they're about to work. "The nice one!"

"So the nap-in-the-sun one. Got it."

"A very good choice, Chopper." Robin approves with a smile.

"... Don't think you can flatter me so easily, human! I'm really not pleased!"

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

They're eating dinner that evening when something catches the light in the corner of Luffy's vision, drawing his attention away from the last piece of fried chicken left.

Usopp's triumphant scream as snatches it for himself makes him pout, but then his eyes find what he was looking for and—

He beams, jumps to stand on his chair, and hurls himself over the table before Nami and Sanji are even done asking him what he's doing and my fried chicken is worth fighting for but don't you dare put your feet anywhere near my table if you want to taste it ever again, shithead—

He lands right on Elynna's lap, her chair falling backward under the impact until Zoro catches it from where he's sitting on her right, righting them back up.

"Oops." Luffy giggles, just a bit breathless with what he's seeing. "Sorry, Zoro."

"I'm not the one who nearly cracked their skull on the floor. Be more careful, dumbass."

"I will!" He promises as he wraps himself more properly around his First Mate.

Elynna loops an arm around him easily in return, not tense in the slightest from the near-fall and —if anything— looking a touch amused when she looks back at him.

"What was that for?"

He beams wider.

"I love you!"

The declaration gathers a blink at most.

"I love you too."

"I know!"

"Good to know. I still want to say it."

"Really?! That's cool! I love it when you say it!"

"This is great and all, but when are you going to explain what brought this on?" Usopp grouches somewhere behind him.

Luffy just grins wider as he twists his head around to look at him in a way that makes both Nami and Sanji wince.

Blindly, he reaches for the hand tangled in his hair, chest feeling a bit as if sunlight is about to burst through the space between his ribs, and brandishes it triumphantly towards the rest of his crew to show off his First Mate's ring finger.

Or rather, the golden signet ring on said finger.

With their Jolly Roger on it.

"Look! This is so cool, right?!"

"Oh. Is that what you were doing while Nami and I were at the parlour, Elynna?"

"Yep. I figured it was worth a try."

"Don't pull so hard, Luffy! You're going to dislocate her shoulder!" Chopper tells him, somehow managing to both scowl at him and smile excitedly at the sight of the ring, which just makes Luffy laugh.

"Yeah, shithead." Sanji tacks on, eyes bright and just a bit wet. "Don't think I'll forgive you if you hurt Elynna-chan."

"Welp." Usopp grins, crossing his arms with an appreciative nod. "Should have known you would take the whole 'being married to your work' thing a step further than anyone else."

"I live to impress."

"... It's 'live to please'."

"I live to annoy the shit out of you."

The sharpshooter throws his hands in the air in exasperation, drawing an almost sympathetic look from Zoro as Robin chuckles.

"Well, all the same, this seems to be a work of good quality."

"I would hope so." Elynna replies, the hum of her voice in her chest thrumming along Luffy's sternum in a way that tickles. "I don't want to have to choose between keeping it in good condition and punching people."

Zoro rolls his eyes, but his mouth is curving up in a way that fools no one.

"What's with that favouritism?" Nami huffs, arms crossed and looking more than a bit miffed.

Luffy tilts his head, confused.

He thought he did everything right, just like Makino told him.

"Why're you jealous? Your earrings are cool! And I already said that your new tattoo is great!"

But his navigator's face just gets more thunderous, so he ends up turning back around to give his First Mate a bewildered blink.

"Her tattoo is a map of the island where we met her." She explains.

Luffy blinks again.

The smile that overtakes his face feels like the way his heart is expanding to near-bursting, and he twists around again to launch a hand towards his suddenly startled navigator.

"I love you too!"

Nami's only response is a strangled ack as her weight hurtles into him.

"Why am I here." Zoro hisses from where his face is pretty much smashed into Luffy's shoulder.

"I don't know, but get your stupid gorilla biceps out of my face, you shitty swordsman!"

"Guys!" Chopper wails, half-crying and half-smiling wide enough to give Luffy a run for his money. "I love you too!"

Usopp just wheezes.

Luffy giggles, beaming a loud thanks! at Robin when her hands appear to stop the chair from falling again.

She smiles back, an additional hand blooming close enough to pat his head gently even as she stays in her own chair.

"So… Not that I don't love this, but I think something might be burning—"

"Shit!" Sanji realises as he promptly starts wriggling and kicking his way out of the group hug. "The cake!"

"—and Hawk's kind of dying."

"I… will remember this." The sharpshooter groans as he crawls out after Sanji, collapsing on the ground as dramatically as possible —which puts the bar pretty damn high coming from him. "Me! Less… important than cake!"

"It's Hermes' chocolate cake, Hawk. No one is more important than Hermes' chocolate cake apart from Hermes himself. It's better to just face it. All wounds heal with time."

"Shut… up. 'M killing you… next training. Just you… wait!"

"Usopp! Call a doctor!"

"You're the doctor, idiot!" The sharpshooter manages to bark.

Luffy just bursts into laughter all over again.

Being a pirate is the best thing ever.

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

When Nami walks into the kitchen the next morning, Sanji looks up, the corners of his mouth rising hopefully when he spots her relaxed features.

"Nami-chan. How are you doing?"

"Great!" She grins brightly. "Thank you, Sanji-kun."

The cook's smile widens into a full-blown version of the previously tentative curve, and if the grateful words are more heartfelt than a simple everyday question warrants, or if the navigator hugs both him and Elynna for longer than she usually would for a morning greeting, then Usopp doesn't comment, content to know the previous afternoon wasn't just fun but also helpful as he focuses on cutting thin slices of cheese the way Sanji asked.

"What kind of cheese is that?" Nami asks with a curious look at the vivid orange colour of it and a hand held out to him.

He finishes his current slice, switches the knife to his other hand to high-five her, and offers a slice with a grin.

"Sanji called it mimolette. It's pretty good!"

She hums, popping the piece in her mouth and nodding thoughtfully.

"So…" Usopp starts with a nudge of his elbow. "Orange blossom?"

Nami grins.

"We're definitely right to have taken that scent as a base for a few."

Usopp's own grin widens.

It takes time to make soap and then a few weeks before being able to actually use it, but it seemed important, so he encouraged her to buy a few different ones while they were out to last her until she can use their handmade ones —and to test a few different scents while she's at it.

"Soap? Maybe I should join you next time I run out of mine…" Sanji muses, sliding a cup of coffee in front of Nami.

Usopp is quick to agree.

Zoro? Boring tastes.

Sanji? Much, much better.

"You definitely can. Plus we're using soda, it's fun!"

That earns him a disapproving frown from the cook.

"You better have been careful with that. I could hear the music from our room."

"I'll have you know that I make my own munitions—"

"Of course I know."

"—and Chopper is my best friend!" Usopp goes on with an offended sniff. "Of course we took all the safety measures necessary! The last thing I want is to be lectured about safety by a member of the Monster Trio."

Nami huffs out a laugh.

"He's kind of right on that, Sanji-kun."

"I'm completely right." Usopp corrects smugly, making Sanji's chagrined frown turn into a scowl.

"Just go get me some milk, shithead."

A staring contest ensues, but Usopp quickly gives up.

Challenging Sanji when you're a guy —and not Chopper— means risking your favourite dish of the next meal.

Most often, it's not worth it.

"Is there anything I can help with, Nami-chan?" Sanji asks as soon as the door closes behind the sharpshooter

The navigator smiles again.

"No, it's fine."

Both his shoulders and smile slump down, and then rise again hopefully.

"Not even with a tangerine charlotte from Bellemere's recipe?"

She blinks at him, then at Elynna whose face says if you don't say yes, I will, and then grins.

"You know I can't say no to that. You're the best, Sanji-kun."

His whole face brightens at her answer, and he immediately gets to work on checking that he has all the ingredients needed.

Nami watches him do so fondly for a moment before looking away, sipping at her coffee and piling a few breakfast foods into her plate at the same time until her eyes meet Elynna's.

She looks at the cook again, then back at Elynna, and figures that the timing is as good as it can get.

"... Sanji-kun?"

"Yes, Nami-chan?" He hums without turning around from whatever he's doing at the kitchen counter.

"That woman from CP9…" She starts, pausing when she sees him freeze before resuming. "You said she looked like someone you knew."

There's no reply.

He doesn't move, either.

"You don't have to tell us who." Elynna eventually adds. "We just want to know if that's why you couldn't fight her."

There's a long stretch of silence that makes Nami's appetite dwindle the longer it goes on until she's ready to gesture at Elynna to crack a joke and move the conversation back to safer topics when Sanji slowly starts moving again.

"My… mother was—" He cuts himself off for a moment, and in that time she remembers all the nights she cried herself to sleep in fear of the nightmares to come and how long it took her to use the past tense when talking about her own mother. "—is one of the most beautiful people I've ever gotten to know. But my father never saw that. He never respected her. He was…"

Whatever he's about to say, Sanji seems to think better of it, because his next words are tight with unsaid things and unshed tears.

"He hurt her."

And then—

"I just… I never want to be like him."

Nami stares at his back that suddenly seems so very frail with fear around the steel backbone of his oath, and decides that no one has the right to criticise his extreme stance on fighting women anymore.

"Okay." She says softly, signalling the end of their inquiry unless he wants to keep going.

"Let me take care of that for a sec." Elynna tacks on, already by his side and gently hip-checking him away from his task. "I don't fancy a blood sauce with the lasagna at lunch."

"Nonsense, Elynna-chan. I could do this with my eyes closed."

"Don't care." She dismisses, waving the hand that isn't holding a knife towards the door. "Out."

So Nami gets up, having poured herself another coffee and filled a second mug with tea, and goes to wrap an arm around the cook's to herd him towards the same door.

"Come on, Sanji-kun. Tea tastes better with good company. And let's handle female opponents like we did Kalifa from now on. You come to me or Lynna if you ever have to face one, and we'll deal with her—"

She opens the door, and steps into a warzone.

"Meat!" Luffy screams.

"Vegetables!" Chopper screams back over where a very awkward-looking Usopp is standing in the middle of the hallway between the both of them.

"I'm the Captain!"

"Sanji said I could choose what we eat today! And you need to eat more vegetables!"

"Well I don't wanna!"

"Then cook something on your own!"

Startled badly enough at the words to almost send his pack of milk cartons flying out of his arms, Usopp gives the doctor a horrified look.

"What?! No!"

"I'm afraid I have to agree with Usopp, Chopper." Robin finally steps in, although given the amusement plainly visible on her face, Nami isn't sure she should trust her to handle the whole thing. "He'd set the place on fire and cook us along with it."

"Exactly—" Usopp starts, and then blanches when he computes the rest of the sentence. "Don't say it like that, damnit!"

"Yeah! I would!" Luffy confirms loudly.

"Don't sound so proud, moron." Zoro mutters exasperatedly.

"Meat!" Luffy yells again without showing any sign of having heard —let alone listened to— him.

"Vegetables!"

"Meat!"

"Vegetables!"

"Meat!"

"Meat!" Usopp interjects.

"Vegetables!" Both Chopper and Luffy screams, prompting the sharpshooter to point a victorious finger at his Captain.

"Ha! You sided with Chopper, so the vegetables win!"

Luffy gasps, looking horrified by his own mouth's betrayal.

"What?! No way!"

"You're the best, Usopp!" Chopper giggles with starry eyes set on his best friend, who immediately strikes a pose, the milk cartons balanced precariously over one shoulder.

"Ah," Robin cuts in again with a tone that only reinforces Nami's bad feeling, "but you sided with the meat option yourself, Usopp, so isn't it really the meat that wins?"

This time it's Usopp and Chopper's turn to look horrified.

"Why would you do that, Robin?!"

"Well, I'm more partial to vegetables myself, so if there's any way to have a bigger portion…"

Luffy props both fists on his hips and bursts out laughing, looking much more proud than he's justified in feeling.

"Yeah! The meat wins!"

"No!" Chopper protests, jumping up and down to better convey his disagreement. "I already told Sanji what I wanted—"

"Enough already!" The cook in question barks, making the three main actors of the mess jump, allowing him to go on at a more normal volume. "There's no meat, anyway."

Luffy looks at him like he just said to sit still for two hours and not go on an adventure the next time an occasion comes up in favour of taking the more careful option and keeping his head down.

Uncomprehending, and a little like someone who can actually feel blunt blows being slapped in the face with Laboon.

"No meat?! What do you mean, 'no meat'?!"

"I told Chopper he could choose lunch today and I knew he wouldn't ask for it, so I wasn't going to go out and buy meat when there's already a grocery run planned this afternoon."

"But—"

Sanji levels him with a narrow-eyed look.

"Are you telling me that I can't make a vegetarian dish good enough for you to like it?"

Luffy lets his fist fall into his palm.

"Oh, you're right."

Sanji huffs in a that's what I thought way, and then guides Nami through the little group even as the navigator looks over her shoulder to glance meaningfully at Elynna, who is in charge of the grocery run in question.

Emergency.

Find meat at all costs.

I'll put it on Luffy's debt.

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

"It's me! Helmeppo! The spoiled rich brat who tried to get you both executed!"

Coby rubs the back of his head, laughter coming out of his mouth a bit awkward at the way his friend is spilling out all his past —and frankly bad— deeds almost as if it's something to be proud of.

He steals a glance at the people gathered behind his superior and watching the conversation, more than a few faces screaming something along the lines of who the hell is that loser?

He wonders if all these people are part of his first friend's crew —and where the only other member of the Straw Hats he knows might be.

Luffy tilts his head, frowning hard for a second.

"Nah, it's no good. I don't remember you. What about you, Zoro?"

The other pirate grunts dismissively with a shrug that makes Helmeppo's twitching smile turn into a full-blown grimace.

"You're kidding, right?"

"You coming, Coby? We have lots to catch up on! Man, you've become strong since we last saw each other!" Luffy laughs as he turns around to walk back to his house.

There's the same carelessness in his laughter and the way he completely ignores all the Marines crowding his front yard that he had when Coby met him, and it melts away the awkwardness in Coby's smile even as he almost coughs out a lung and faceplants in the grass when Zoro slaps him in the back to encourage him forward.

He hesitantly looks over his shoulder towards his friend, and finds him looking this close to choking on his own outrage when movement in the crowd of his fellow soldiers draws his attention to the girl making her way through the group with a plastic bag in each hand, muttering something like 'scuse me, food delivery to his colleagues, who obligingly step aside to let her pass.

Between the fact that he has been idly searching for her since he arrived and that the Straw Hats' First Mate certainly looks striking even if not attractive by most people's standards, Coby recognises her instantly.

Helmeppo evidently does as well, because he immediately whirls around, kukris screeching out of their sheaths as he lunges, apparently having decided to get some payback for the humiliatingly quick defeat Zoro inflicted on him.

Some of the Marines abruptly back away, calling out to their superior in confusion even as Coby holds out a hand, ready to use Soru to stop his friend.

"Helmeppo!"

But then he notices two things.

Next to him, Luffy and Zoro don't move a finger to help.

Don't even seem worried enough to consider helping.

And Elynna—

"I…"

She steps forward instead of backward with the lack of hesitation of someone who's fought to the death enough to wield risk and danger like another weapon, bringing herself deep enough inside his range that it hinders Helmeppo's attack rather than facilitates it, his forearm blocked from slashing through the air by her stomach.

"said…"

She doesn't even flinch at the brutal impact of it, swinging one bag straight into Helmeppo's face instead.

Coby winces at the heavy, solid sound that follows as his friend hits the ground rolling, a thin trail of blood dripping down his face from his temple when he springs back to his feet.

This time he covers the distance between the two of them faster, barely giving the pirate the time to drop her bag on the ground with a sigh along with one of Helmeppo's kukris, which Coby didn't even see her take in the first place.

"food—"

When he swings, Elynna grabs his forearm with one hand and his face with the other.

Then she wrenches him into bending backward with the grip she has on his head until she flips him over her rising knee, in a move that could break his spine if done with any more strength.

"delivery!"

Helmeppo lands hard on his stomach, one foot pressing down between his shoulder blades to keep him there and his wrist still held up in Elynna's hand at an angle that probably stops just shy of popping his shoulder out of its socket.

There's a beat of silence where Helmeppo spits out grass and the rest of the Marines stare at the situation with even more confusion.

Then Zoro's smirk twitches wider, Luffy starts to laugh, and Coby follows awkwardly in between strings of apologies that he doesn't quite know who to direct at in priority.

Some of his colleagues are quick to regain their footing, though, and immediately point their weapons in Elynna's direction.

"Release Helmeppo-san immediately!"

"And put your hands in the air!" Another soldier screams. "We'll be taking you into custody for assault on a Marine officer and suspicious behaviour!"

"Ah, no—" Coby stutters, only to be interrupted when Elynna cuts him off with a raised eyebrow and no indication that she'll release his friend any time soon.

"That's rude. Do you know what kind of creep you can meet when you work in food delivery? Of course I'd learn some self-defense moves. You can check my name with the biggest company in town if you want, it's Riza." She adds, forging ahead without any regard for the bewildered noise that comes out of Coby's mouth. "Like, did you know that two weeks ago I delivered food to a flat and the dudes who ordered greeted me by pointing their guns at my face? Bunch of total thugs, I tell you."

Now Coby's fellow soldiers are back to looking very puzzled, apart from a few of them who look somewhat angry and disgusted for her about the whole thing, nodding along with aggressive agreement.

Coby feels the most puzzled of them all, until he hears sputtered laughter behind him and risks a glance to see pretty much all the people who were in the building visibly trying to hold back their laughter.

"Food delivery—" A very pretty girl with flamboyant hair chokes as she crouches down to hide her laughter-induced tears in one hand.

"To thugs. She really said food delivery to thugs." A lanky boy with tan skin and a long nose repeats, staring up at the sky like it can stop the twitching of his lips and help him ignore the little reindeer who has given up on standing entirely, too busy letting out bursts of giggles anytime he draws in a breath, the sound covered by a tall, blue-haired man's loud guffaws.

That's when Coby does the math, realises that two weeks ago was when the Straw Hats were storming one of the Marines' most hallowed spots, and promptly chokes on his own spit.

Next to him, Zoro snorts in clear amusement.

"Don't worry about it, it's just Luffy's grandpa visiting."

Elynna blinks at him, and then shrugs, seemingly giving up any kind of pretence along with it.

"Oh well. 'Kay."

"I hope this isn't damaged, Elynna-chan." A blond, elegantly dressed boy chides her lightly with more affectionate amusement than anything else as he points at the bag she used to bash Coby's best friend in the face and that is still resting on the ground.

"Nah, this is the canned goods." She replies nonchalantly, raising the bag she's still holding in the air and letting go of Helmeppo's wrist at the same time. "This is the fragile stuff."

"Perfect. Were you able to find everything?"

"Yep. Whole list's crossed off."

"And my money?" The tangerine-haired girl calls out.

"There was just enough. Your calculations were perfect as always."

"Shoot. No special offer?"

A shrug.

"Maybe. Don't have the brain energy to look for them."

"... I'm never letting you do the groceries alone again."

Elynna shrugs again, and bends to pick up the first bag before heaving herself up to step off Helmeppo's back, making him hack under her weight for a second.

She meets the blond boy halfway through the distance between them to hand him both bags, and then walks closer to where Coby is standing between Zoro and Luffy.

Her eyes meet Coby's, and that's when he realises that he's still rudely gaping at her.

He hurriedly closes his mouth, but can't quite stop his wide-eyed stare from singling out every little difference between the girl walking towards him and the girl he remembers meeting.

The girl he met had the same fear and muscles wrapped in the same soft, yielding flesh he used to see in the mirror, walked with a kind of grace but fumbled in the middle of a fight or stepped back because letting others handle it was the best she could do.

The girl in front of him shows no sign of even noticing the bruise that is probably spreading across the skin of her abdomen, has only clothes left to cover the coiling of tight, solid muscles under the sunless white of her skin, and took down one of Garp The Fist's personal apprentices in five seconds flat.

There's scars on her cheek, a look in her eyes that feels like he's being analysed so much more thoroughly than he was when they first saw each other, and a distinct lack of politeness in the way she dismisses him from her sight to look at her crewmates instead that he knows wasn't there before.

Because in truth, he used to feel more at ease talking with her than Luffy, simply due to the fact that she followed the rules and conventions of polite conversation and small talk when Luffy did with conversation what he did with pretty much everything else —whatever he felt like in a given moment.

The boy in question makes grabby hands for Helmeppo's kukri that she picked up along with her bag as soon as she's close enough, and she negligently hands it over.

"Wow! His are super big, right Ann?!"

The girl hums distractedly, propping one forearm on Zoro's sheathed katanas and leaning her weight against the swordsman so she can bend down and stuff the frayed, untied laces of one of her shoes back into it.

"Probably trying to compensate for something."

Coby flushes, then chokes again, and flushes even redder when Luffy points a finger at him and starts laughing loudly.

Zoro just lets out a light scoff.

"You should replace those."

"I know, but I forgot. I'll just go with Rain later. Maybe she'll find her precious discount there."

"That witch never has enough discounts."

"Fair point."

"Look, Ann!" Luffy smiles brightly with a jab of his finger at Coby, who smiles hesitantly when Elynna's dark, black-blue eyes meet his again. "Coby came to visit!"

"... Coby-san." She acknowledges with a nod, and—

(The difference is blatant.

When they met more than a year ago, she joked and talked more with Luffy-san, which made sense, because humour has never been Coby's speciality, and they were Captain and First Mate anyway.

But even then, even through the jokes and the light chiding, there was a sense of distance and deference between the two of them that Luffy-san crossed as if it wasn't there and whose boundary Elynna-san never seemed to step out of.

Something different but not unlike the politeness she showed him.

As if Luffy-san saw her as a friend, and Elynna-san saw him as her Captain.

A superior she got along well with, well enough to joke and point out his mistakes, but a superior all the same.

He didn't see her interact with Zoro-san much, but what little he remembers was similar to that: Zoro-san and Luffy-san almost immediately clicking into the easy companionship of two strong, fearless people who know what they want and mostly agree on their view of life, and Elynna-san drifting somewhere on the edge of them, present but distant.

As if she was on their little boat the same way Coby was on Alvida's ship —part of the crew but not really a pirate whether in ability or in mindset and painfully aware of it all.

Now?

Now the only distance between them is physical, and she crosses it with the same ease as Luffy-san.

Now the difference is blatant and blatantly shown, between the way she looks at Zoro-san or Luffy-san and the way she looks at him

—as if she wants to look at her crewmates but only gives him her attention because she has to—

Now there's no space left to doubt that Luffy-san and Zoro-san might consider him a friend despite how short the time they spent together was and how different their choices are, but that to Elynna-san he's never been anything more than an acquaintance.)

"He— Hello, Elynna-san!"

She doesn't make any effort to keep the conversation going, and in the end Zoro is the one who saves Coby from his own awkwardness by pointing at Helmeppo.

"So do you remember that guy?"

"Him? Oh, yeah. He's the guy who tried to blow my brains up —and stomped all over the meal that little girl made for you when we met."

"... Oh yeah. Him." Both Zoro and Luffy say, hit by the realisation at the same time.

"My condolences for remembering him."

"It's your fault." The swordsman points out dryly.

"I know." Elynna replies, smirking a bit when he glares in response.

"Wait a minute!" Kyle screams from behind the first ranks of Coby's fellow Marines. "I thought you were a delivery girl! Why are you talking so casually with those pirates?! Explain yourself!"

Helmeppo rolls his eyes as he attempts to brush his uniform clean, making a face at the traces of grass and dirt still left in the fabric at the end.

"Don't you guys get it yet? She's—"

The Straw Hats' First Mate barely spares them a glance as she speaks over him.

"Obviously, I lied. That kind of job still sucks, mind you."

"Lying to representatives of the Marines about your identity is a punishable crime! State your real name, right now!"

Now there's definitely a smirk on Elynna's face even as long-suffering but somewhat amused exasperation crumples Zoro's features into something that looks like here we go again.

"Oh no, Riza is my name… for the people I sleep with. Anyone interested?"

"Not with a damn pirate!" Most of Coby's colleagues bark out, the rest of them too busy gaping at her with the same flustered shock that makes his own jaw drop again.

"Shame. And here I wanted to see how far the stamina from a Marine's training can go."

"If you lose, no meal for a week." Their superior's voice booms loudly across the lawn from where he's apparently just woken up from his latest bout of narcoleptic sleep.

Bogard tips his hat low over his face, and takes one step away from the debacle as if it will convince anyone that he really doesn't know any of them.

"Don't side with her!"

Garp laughs again, raucous and boisterous as he crosses the distance separating him from the space where the pirates and the Marines are facing off.

"Don't be so high-strung! Being a Marine is a hard job, you'll die before you're thirty with all that stress, and I didn't spend so much time training you for you to kick the bucket that early. You should learn to take a joke."

"Half of our stress is your fault." Helmeppo grumbles under his breath, now close enough to Coby for him to hear it —and anxiously check to see whether his superior heard the comment— and Luffy to vigorously nod in agreement.

"I wasn't really joking." Elynna deadpans, and now Coby's jaw is fully unhinged because oh god, she was supposed to be the careful one and how is he supposed to not worry about his pirate friends if the one person he thought would keep them out of the biggest trouble behaves like this in the presence of one of the most feared Marines?!

"See?!" A few of his colleagues yell with a finger pointed straight at her.

But his superior just laughs again, reaching out to pat the girl on the head.

"You're funny, girlie! I like your spunk."

The girl in question stares up at him blankly.

"I think I just found a new definition of 'heavy petting'." She announces loudly enough to be heard by the entirety of their audience, most of which are Marines who are promptly reduced to complete silence because they're either embarrassed or offended to death.

Luffy and the little girl with green, braided pigtails both blink in confusion.

The woman who is obviously the little girl's grandma whistles.

"Is she flirting with him?! Do I have to stage a fake break-up?!" The pretty girl's voice hisses somewhere behind where Coby is busy wanting to die just a little because he's never going to be able to look at his superior ever again—

"It does tend to be hard to tell with her, doesn't it?" A smoother, softer voice answers, more amused than the horrified tone of the first woman and is that Nico Robin he just heard?!

"I just want to clarify that I am not part of this group." The curly-haired boy starts to say, having taken several steps away from everyone else to make his point clearer. "I'm just here for the, uh, newspaper delivery—"

"Stop lying and come put these inside with me, you idiot." The blond man interrupts him as he passes him by and snatches the back of his t-shirt to drag him towards the house, somehow managing to roll his eyes in exasperation even through the heavy flush on his face.

Bogard takes yet another step away from the steadily worsening disaster in front of him.

Garp bursts out laughing once more at the stupefied faces of his troops.

"Sto— Stop laughing, Vice-Admiral! Such disrespect—"

But the man in question just waves away his subordinates' protests, grinning down at the girl in front of him.

"Youngsters these days have a big mouth. Hope you can take responsibility for it, girlie."

"... Probably not, but if I'm gonna be a criminal, I might as well be a rude one. Going out with a bang and all that, you know."

His grin widens.

"Nice spirit you got there."

And then the hand that was patting her closes into a fist.

Luffy's quick reaction is the only thing that saves her from getting knocked down right then and there as he stretches an arm to drag her to him.

The ground fractures under his grandfather's Fist of Love at the same time as his First Mate's weight bowls him over.

"... Dude." Elynna says after a moment of silence where they can hear the Galley-La employees guarding the gates of the property screaming something about an earthquake. "The impact play is on another level around her—"

She raises her hand just in time to catch the apple thrown hard and fast through what appears to be the kitchen window by the curly-haired boy, the smack of it loud enough against her skin that it makes Coby wince even through his embarrassment.

"That's enough out of you!" The boy in question yells, half-hanging out of the window and shaking another apple in his fist in what appears to be a threat. "Have some self-preservation for once!"

"You should listen to the lad, brat." Garp suggests with a toothy grin and a fist still curled tightly.

Elynna opens her mouth to answer, but even Luffy seems wary of what might come out of it, because he promptly slaps a hand over it and proceeds to drag her after the rest of their little group as the tangerine-haired girl starts bossing everyone around about repairing the wall Coby's superior smashed into when he decided to 'say hello to his ungrateful grandson'.

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

"So, Luffy! I heard that you met your dad a few months ago."

"My dad? I have a dad?"

"A dad is questionable, but at least a father. Probably."

"Nah, Elynna. That's questionable, too." Usopp says solemnly. "I bet he just came bouncing into the world the exact same Luffy as he is now. Just, you know, tinier."

That earns him a concerned glance from Chopper.

"Usopp? You… know how human babies are made, right?"

"Obviously! But Luffy being human is also questionable, actually—"

"He clearly doesn't. We should give him The Talk, Hebi."

"Hush." Nami tells the three of them as Garp's raucous laughter dies down. "I'm curious."

"You mean he didn't tell you?"

"No. Who's my dad?"

"His name's Dragon. Monkey D. Dragon, from the Revolutionary Army."

And then he goes right back to hammering nails into wooden planks, heedless of the gobsmacked silence resulting from his metaphorical bomb.

Luffy blinks at the shock splattered across everyone's face, and then blinks again at the screams that echo through the room in the next moment, coming from both the Marines and his crew, as well as Franky and the others.

(It's loud, but it does nothing to hide the amusement stretching across Ann's mouth, so he figures it's nothing too bad.)

"Robin?" He asks as the noise dies down.

"How to explain this… The World Government and pirates can be considered enemies, but in truth Marines are most often chasing pirates. Pirates themselves, on the other end, rarely attack the Marines on purpose —let alone the World Government itself. However, there is a… third power, let's say, which has been directly attacking the World Government and all of its representatives. That's the Revolutionary Army. I don't think it's necessary to delve into the details of their ideology right now, but it has been spreading especially fast in the last few years. Right now, there are dozens of countries which have gone through, are currently in or on the verge of a civil war because of it. To put it simply, the Revolutionaries aim to topple the current world order, and the man at the head of that organisation is Dragon. He's been declared public enemy number one by the Marines, but to my knowledge no one has ever found any kind of personal information about him." She finishes as she turns to face her First Mate, switching to English as she goes on. "Which makes even more interesting the fact that you don't seem surprised at all."

"Who, me? It's just that I was there when the Captain met him. Dragon's face is plastered on the newspapers at least once a week, so I knew who he was. Sea King might look more like his grandpa, but it's hard to not see the resemblance with his dad when they're right next to each other."

"Why didn't you say anything, you idiot?!" Nami and Usopp yell at the same time.

She shrugs, prompting an exasperated sigh from Zoro.

"I asked Sea King, but he wasn't interested in knowing who his father is, so there was no point telling the rest of you. Besides," she goes on with a little smirk, "it hasn't proved useful yet."

Nami and Sanji exchange a vaguely worried glance as Robin hums in amusement.

Yep.

Someone's going to get tricked into doing what she wants somewhere down the line.

"Huh." Garp says pensively as the realisation suddenly hits him. "As I thought, I shouldn't have said that."

"No kidding!" Those of his soldiers who have recovered enough to talk bark out.

"Well, just forget I said anything, then!"

"As if we could!"

Elynna is about to return to her own share of the work while Garp's soldiers scold their superior when Usopp and Chopper sidle up to her, Nami knocking her shoulder gently into hers on her other side to get her attention.

"Yeah?"

"Just wanted to mention something." The navigator says.

She hums.

"From before you arrived." Chopper adds.

"Luffy was sleeping when his grandpa barged in." Usopp explains. "So that guy hit him to wake him up. And it actually hurt him."

"He hit him a lot actually."

"Even when he was a kid." Chopper goes on with enough worry to match Nami's scowl. "And he talked about leaving him alone in a forest to train him as a Marine and—"

"I got it." Elynna sighs.

The worst is, she can't even decide he's wrong, resent him for how he treated Sea King and just be done with it.

Because if he didn't do that for both Ace and Luffy, whether or not he really thought he could make Marines out of them or was just fooling himself, both of these morons would be entirely capable of going out on the sea anyway.

If he didn't do that, they would be dead.

But the line is thin between training and abuse, and she doesn't exactly trust someone like Garp to tell the difference.

"I'll keep an eye on them."

Her three crewmates sigh in relief, thanking her before both boys go back to their own task.

She finishes her own quickly, and then goes to sit right next to Luffy under the pretext that he's botching his job —which he is, but Usopp or Franky and his sisters would do a much better job at correcting him than her— so she can stick as close to him as possible.

Franky does come to help at some point, though, working efficiently to fix Luffy's mess.

"So, Franky. Heard you had a fan club?"

That gets her raised eyebrows from her and his sisters.

"That he does!"

"A super one!"

"How'd you know that?" The cyborg asks over his sunglasses.

"Na Yung-san."

His smirk takes on a somewhat competitive edge as he understands the implication of her answer.

"You taking part in the show, Sis?"

"Sure am."

"Bet you won't be half as impressive as my fan club."

"Hey! Ann is great, take that back!"

She grabs Luffy's wrist where he's pointing a finger at Franky's face, tugging his arm down and out of her line of sight, and smirks right back at the older man.

"Deal."

His smirk widens, and he leaves with Mozu and Kiwi not long after that.

She stays with Luffy through his and Coby's fanboying over going to the New World and all the way until Garp tells all his soldiers apart from Coby and Helmeppo to pack their things.

"Well," he says as he turns to Luffy. "I'll be leaving."

"Sure." Luffy says easily with a wave of his hand. "See ya!"

Garp pauses, and then suddenly whirls around.

It's all the time she gets to snatch the rubber boy by the arm and tug him out of reach of the Vice-Admiral's fist.

Luffy immediately latches onto her, half-hiding behind her as she crosses her arms over her chest.

"Let's not resort to that, Garp-san."

"Yeah! What was that for, Gramps?!"

"What do you think, you ungrateful brat?! At least try to look a little bit sad when your grandpa is leaving!"

"But we're gonna see each other again, so why would I be sad?! Makino just said to return goodbyes to people, not to look sad doing it!"

"Well, I'm sad! It's normal to want my grandson to miss me!"

"You could have started by saying that instead of hitting him, you know." Elynna points out. "Not exactly self-explanatory."

Both members of the Monkey D. family blink at her, and then stare at each other, looking a bit lost about the break in their usual rhythm while the rest of the Straw Hats watch them do so.

"I have reached enlightenment." Usopp mutters suddenly. "This is why Elynna can't deal with normal people. She was just born to deal with that crazy family."

Sanji blinks at him.

Then he looks back at the sight in front of him, thinks of what he's seen of his First Mate's interactions with Luffy's brother, and—

"You know what? You might actually be right."

"I'm leaving! Reports to read and all that." Garp eventually grumbles as the staredown with both his grandson and said grandson's friend finally breaks.

"Sure. Enjoy that reading, Garp-san." Elynna replies, prompting a highly entertained smile from Robin and a failed attempt at looking inside her mind from Usopp.

"And don't forget about your training, brat! You're not even half-ready for the New World yet!"

Luffy laughs, waving at the Marine's back.

"See you there, Gramps! Have fun on your next mission!"

"Welp. I'm heading out too. Rehearsals to be at and all that." Elynna states as she untangles herself from her Captain's hold.

Nami raises both eyebrows at her.

"Isn't it a bit too soon?"

"There's some things I need to work on a bit more."

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

"So." Elynna manages the next morning, out of breath and more than a bit sore. "Any reason why you dragged me out for training an hour earlier than usual?"

The way Zoro looks at her tells her very plainly how stupid he thinks her question is.

"To train more, obviously."

"And I wish I could sleep more. We don't get everything we want in life, so don't do that again. I need my sleep like Hawk needs his caffeine."

The swordsman doesn't pay any attention to her grumbling, inspecting his two katanas instead to determine whether they need cleaning or sharpening.

"You were slower than usual." He eventually says, eyes flickering back to her and the shallow cuts on her skin from the times she wasn't able to evade his attacks in time.

She raises herself up just enough to stare pointedly at the bruises on his skin, which are also more numerous than usual due to his lagging reflexes, and then lays right back down on the lawn to stare at the sky when her abdominal muscles protest the movement.

"Get that scowl off your face before you go in to take breakfast." She settles with. "Hebi will get scared."

"They should all be training." Zoro hisses back.

She doesn't need to look up again to know that he's wincing again from the pull of his overstrained muscles.

Idly, she calculates that he's started training again a week before.

It's not rare for him to reach the point where his whole body rebels against the continuous strain his determination puts it under, but it… shouldn't be happening so fast.

For a moment she wonders how much longer he kept training, after she got a glimpse of him the night before when she was heading to sleep.

Then she decides it doesn't matter.

She's putting her goddamn foot down anyway.

"The hell brought that on?"

The weight of his gaze on her feels incredulous as she sits up fully.

"I almost lost. You, Luffy and Chopper almost died." He says, a bit too tightly to be matter-of-fact.

She stays silent as she looks at the clench of his jaw and the slight, unfocused haze in his eyes from lack of sleep.

Then she sighs.

"... Whatever. I need a shower."

She hauls herself up to her feet, just a bit too fast, and her balance falters.

Zoro's hand is on her arm to keep her grounded before the swaying has the chance to transition into outright falling.

She looks at his hand, and then at his face.

"Thanks."

"Be more careful, dumbass." He simply says as he releases her.

He doesn't even have the time to look surprised when she grabs his hand.

The next moment his back lands hard on the ground, her entire weight pinning him down as she sits on his torso and starts working on his arm, fingers pressing their way from his wrist to his elbow the way she's taken to doing sometimes since she asked Chopper to teach her some techniques to relieve strained muscles a few months before.

"What the f—" Zoro grunts under her. "Get off—"

"Nope."

"I wasn't asking." He seethes with a glare.

She doesn't look up from her task.

"Still don't feel like it."

That prompts a few half-hearted attempts to get out of the grip of her thighs on him, but she's learned long ago how to pin down stronger people than her effectively even if not perfectly, the way her knees bracket his ribs tightly making even stillness slightly uncomfortable in a silent promise that said ribs might not get out intact of a more violent effort to throw off her hold.

Eventually, he gives up and lets her work, scowling at the morning sky all the while.

"You're a shitty nurse, Lynn." He tells her eventually.

"Haven't signed that written oath Hebi shoved in my hands on the first day of nurse training yet, so I have no obligation to be." She fires back absently, monitoring the way his sides expand with his breathing between her thighs as she reaches his shoulders and neck, which are often particularly sore. "And you're a shitty patient."

"The hell I am!"

This time she does look at him, pausing for a second and raising a dubious eyebrow.

"Hate to break it to you, Fang, but you definitely are. How many times have you heard about the importance of rest from me or Hebi? I'm pretty sure I could have avoided like three more blows if I'd had a bit more sleep. And you would have avoided at least seven more."

He flinches as she picks up his other arm and starts working on a particularly sore spot, but stubbornly keeps on glaring at her.

"As if the Marines would wait for you to take a nap before a fight."

"Not the point and you know it." She smiles threateningly down at him in a way that says keep playing dumb with me and I'll waste that good sake you bought to clean every cut I made on you instead of using Hebi's no-stinging-garanteed disinfectant. "You won. You from two months ago might have lost, and if you fought Kaku before Alabasta, you'd just be dead, full stop. And in case you forgot, he's probably been one of the World Government's best assassins longer than you've been away from your island. He's not supposed to be easy to best in a fight. Get yourself some damn perspective and stop making my job that much harder. Or my beauty sleep, for that matter."

His jaw clenches harder at that, but she just keeps staring and smiling.

Eventually, he relaxes entirely under her and looks away, conceding at least temporarily.

"... Annoying woman." He mutters under his breath.

Her smile shifts into something more of a smirk.

"Himbo." She replies.

She feels him jerk as the word registers, and smirks all the wider for it even before he turns an incredulous gaze on her.

"Did you just—"

"I did, actually."

His eyes immediately narrow into yet another glare that she simply raises an eyebrow at in a what are you gonna do about it? way.

He bares his teeth in response, and punches her in the face with his good arm.

A short but intense scuffle ensues, resulting in a few more bruises for the both of them.

It ends with his face in the dirt as she straddles his back and starts working on relaxing his back muscles with a vengeance.

"We agreed on the 'not the face' part, goddamnit," she mutters as she cups her bruising cheekbone with one hand, working her jaw a few times just to be sure. "You're lucky I have to put on make-up for the party."

Zoro just wipes the dirt off his face while cursing her out, face twitching in both annoyance and pain when she reaches one of the bigger knots of muscles in his back.

The sound of a Cameko's shutter release that they hear at that moment may or may not have something to do with why the both of them gang up on Usopp during their last training session before the party instead of making Elynna run around with the two others on her tail as usual.

And if Usopp keeps sending Elynna betrayed looks for at least two hours after said session, then he really should have known better than thinking that her asking for prints of the pictures he took would prevent her from throwing him under the metaphorical bus.

The whole predator/prey idea isn't really her thing, but doing the hunting is definitely the more appealing option if she has to choose.

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

"Have you eaten anything yet?"

"I'll go after the next dance, I think. We have the stage for the next several slots and I didn't get to see much of what the others were working on since I had my own stuff to learn." Elynna answers, breathing slowing down to its usual rhythm before she swallows another mouthful of water. "Anything particularly good?"

Nami gives her a flat look.

"Sanji's food, of course. Though the fit of his new jacket is very good, too."

"You'll get other opportunities to dress us up, you know." Elynna muses with an amused glance at the navigator's pout.

But Nami just huffs, still miffed that Luffy decided to throw a party just hours before the town-wide post-Aqua Laguna celebration was supposed to start, dragging the whole town into it as a result and giving her no time to get all her crewmates into their new outfits.

She just knows that Usopp and Zoro planned this, and no one can convince her otherwise.

"Hey, don't look at me like that. I made an effort, you know."

"Only because you're dancing."

"Still made an effort."

The navigator's mouth twists, doubtful and appeased at the same time because the black trouser suit Elynna is currently wearing over a mint green shirt isn't exactly as fancy as what she planned for her, but well—

Definitely an upgrade from what she usually wears as far as Nami is concerned.

And she looks good in it.

"Fine, you did." She concedes, smile winning over as she watches Elynna dip some water into her hand to splash it over her face. "And you look great."

Her best friend blinks at her, and then rakes the few strands that came loose from her low bun back before putting her black fedora hat back on, shooting her a little smirk from under the brim.

"I know." She says, and suddenly Nami is laughing, dropping onto the crate next to the one Elynna is sitting on.

"I liked your last dance."

"Of course you did. You love Billie Eilish." Elynna comments, amused.

And she's always worked pretty well with that vibe.

"The songs from her you have, yeah. Hey, who was the guy leading, by the way?"

"Euntae, why?" Elynna asks idly as she watches the audience start to clap at Juyeon's honestly musical-worthy performance on Uptown Funk.

Which is a very good introduction for the four-people group taking the stage next —that can definitely give Franky's fan-club a run for their money when it comes to entertaining an audience enough that they don't think about the technical difficulty of what they're seeing— also chose a song from Bruno Mars.

"You should tell him to get another girlfriend."

That gets her attention, and she turns to blink blankly at the navigator.

"Where does that come from?"

"From all the snide comments his girlfriend managed to cram within the time you three spent on stage." Nami grumbles, seemingly back to the mullish mood she was in when she first joined her. "He's not the one I was staring at! Honestly, do I have to get another tattoo on my forehead that says 'lesbian icon here'?!"

"Well, did you try just telling her first?"

"Yes! She's convinced I'm lying!"

Elynna snorts, which earns her a punch in the arm.

"Don't laugh at me! She should really learn to chill with her insecurities!"

"You can't just 'chill with your insecurities', Rain."

"Stop being reasonable. I'm ranting, here." The Straw Hats' treasurer mutters. "And I can't just tone down my good looks."

"Definitely not."

Nami pouts, propping her chin on her palm as she stares grumpily towards the stage and the audience around it, where Luffy and Usopp are cheering loud enough to challenge the rest of the crowd —despite all the food crammed in the former's mouth.

Elynna watches her, smiling for a moment before she holds out a hand.

"Fake girlfriend time?"

The pout slips into a beaming smile as Nami high-fives her.

"Hell yeah!"

"It's a shame we won't be able to take pictures this time around. The ones we got when you helped me out the last two times were pretty damn funny."

"No, it's a good thing. I forked out the money for the Cameko because your told me it was for work, you kno— Maybe that's a bit too much, Lynna."

Jacket and hat already off and in the middle of undoing the buttons of her shirt, Elynna snickers.

"Making out is never too much, but I wasn't going for that. What's mine is yours and all that, you know? Besides, they set the stage up pretty far from the bonfire. You guys must be getting a bit cold by now just standing around." She comments as she throws her shirt at Nami before bending down to pick up her jacket and put it back on over her sports bra.

The navigator's eyes go from her to the green shirt in her hand, then back to her again.

And then she grins, putting on the shirt and tying it into a knot under her chest to emphasise the short, flowy silver top worn under.

"How is it?" She asks, striking a pose and fluttering her eyelashes for good measure, barely keeping in her laughter.

Elynna looks.

"Magazine-worthy."

"Not bad." Nami smiles in satisfaction.

Her best friend holds out a hand, and then blinks at her when Nami just smiles and holds out her arms instead.

"Carry me."

"Where's the 'please' in there?"

"Nowhere, since I'm ordering you."

That just gets her an amused sound as Elynna sweeps her into a hug and then off her feet.

"Good?"

Nami hums in confirmation after settling into Elynna's hold and cuddling herself closer.

"You should ask Sanji-kun for tips. He's a lot smoother."

The dancer snorts as she navigates the two of them towards where Nami was sitting before.

"I didn't exactly have the muscle mass for this before."

"Don't worry." Nami grins mischievously, patting her on the shoulder as she straightens up and steals her hat for herself. "You're very comfortable."

"Sure. I'll need that back to throw it during the next dance, though."

But Nami just hums in faux consideration until Elynna sets her down in her seat.

"Fine. But you're paying for our next date."

"Yes, yes. Hey, lend me some of that lipstick?"

Nami arches an eyebrow.

"Lipstick? You? I don't even have it on me."

"Sure you do." Her best friend replies easily, eyes glinting as she points at her own mouth. "Right there."

Nami slaps a hand over her mouth to stop the giggle that wants to come out as she works out the words unsaid, placing Elynna's hat back on her head and using it to beckon her best friend closer, pressing her own mouth against the cheek that isn't scarred and smearing the vivid red print left behind with a swipe of her thumb as laughter finally spills out of her lips.

"Good?"

"Perfect."

"Pretty sure it wasn't necessary." She muses with a wide smile.

"No, but it definitely was fun." Elynna smirks back as she steps away with a two-finger salute.

Nami waves back, still half-laughing and busy enjoying the gobsmacked —and slightly guilty— look on her target's face.

Maybe she should have gone back for the Cameko, after all.

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

Elynna usually joins either Robin or Zoro when she wants to take a break from something that most often involves noise or people, so he's not particularly surprised when she drops into the chair next to his after a dance.

In fact, he was counting on it.

"Having fun?"

"Uh huh. Don't know if I'm gonna last long enough to see whether Hawk breaks his record of the 'Songs to Honour the Great Captain Usopp'. What is it again? 471?"

"You're the only one who bothers to keep track of that." He scoffs.

"Not true. Hebi does, too."

"Because he's his best friend." He points out dryly. "You're just waiting for him to get drunk enough that he starts to sing about Kaya instead so you can record it and blackmail him with it."

Her smirk is entirely unrepentant.

He takes a swig from his latest jug of sake, muttering a damn witch under his breath that just makes her look more pleased.

"Whatever." He eventually decides, because their sniper should really know better by now. "You're dancing with a bigger group at some point, right?"

"Yeah, why?"

"How well could you perceive their movements when you were working with them?"

She looks pensively towards where another group of girls is dancing, undoing the top buttons of her shirt to put the still-cold glass of the bottle of lemonade she took from Sanji there to ward off the heat of the giant bonfire at the centre of the festivities.

"It's not precise or anything, but I still have an inkling, so a lot better than before I became a pirate, if that's what you're asking."

He nods.

"How many are you?"

"... Around fifteen? Something like that." She answers with a shrug after giving it some thought.

"And how many are you aware of?"

"Pretty much everyone, but it can blur when we're all switching positions. I'd say anyone who was in front of me or directly surrounded me before I joined the crew."

He nods again, looking at her.

"Good job."

She shuffles, changing positions to put her feet back on the ground, but eventually just shrugs.

"Thanks."

His eyes drift away, checking again that no one is close enough to hear them over the din of the party.

"Did you use that in Enies Lobby?"

One corner of her mouth lifts the slightest bit as she throws one leg over his to better face him.

"Funny you would ask that now. Everyone looks pretty excited, huh?"

He stops just short of gulping down more sake as her words register, not getting the point.

"... It's a party."

"True." She says simply, propping her elbow on the back of her chair and her scarred cheek on her fist as she observes him. "And what do people use all the time when there's a party?"

The answer thrums so loud in his bones he can almost dismiss it.

"You used music?"

Her eyes glint, the light of the fire bright and steady enough from here to show the blue in them.

"Only mood-altering substance I had on hand. Although, I went more with the horror story vibe than the party vibe. But yeah, being able to sense their presence helped a bit, since it was pretty dark."

He looks at her, back at the crowd several feet away from them, and—

"Not enough to stop them from getting you, though."

"... I wouldn't know." Elynna eventually says after a beat of silence. "It was part of the plan, so I let them."

—and Zoro stills.

Lets go of the bottle still dangling from his fingers so it doesn't break in the sudden tightening of his fist.

Stares at his First Mate as she leans down to grab it, the hand whose fingers were still bandaged a week before pressing around his knee to balance her weight.

If she says something, he doesn't hear it and doesn't care to hear it over the loud music and the crackling of the fire and the sight of her scars when his hand snaps through the distance between them to grab the collar of her shirt and wrench her back towards him.

"—can't blame me this time if people misunderstand—"

"Shut your damn mouth for once and listen, Lynn." He cuts her off, fist curling tighter in the green fabric until he can feel her swallow against his knuckles.

Her mouth closes.

He's too angry to feel anything other than vicious satisfaction at the anxious tremble in her next breath or the knowledge that she loves him too much to actually talk back to him when he's this angry.

"I don't care how you do it, but you better not use that kind of plan again. Ever."

Her mouth twitches into a barely-there wince as she looks down, fingers loose around his forearm, but a slight shake is enough to get her eyes back on his as he leans a bit closer.

"I'm not giving you a choice, here. Why the hell should I trust you on your own during a fight if you don't give a damn about yourself—"

"So what?"

He bares his teeth at her careless words, but her fingers abruptly tighten into his skin.

"What did you just say?"

"You heard me. So. Fucking. What." She hisses through clenched teeth as she shoves him back into his own chair and leans towards him instead. "What does it matter if I don't give a damn about myself? What is it? Are you afraid I'll throw myself off the nearest cliff as soon as you're not looking?"

He breathes in so sharp it almost hurts as his free hand snatches her wrist, the clench of her grip steady and her heartbeat strong under his fingers.

(He breathes in so full it's like he breathed in the ghosts of all the times she looked so elsewhere she might as well have left them with just her corpse at the same time,

and he can only remember how the hand she tried to scar the face she didn't feel she belonged in with quivered in his hold when he stopped her, how fragile her heart was that day—)

"Do you even hear yourself?" He growls, one more stupid word away from actually slugging her in the face and finishing the conversation with his fists.

"Yeah. I do. You're the one who's not fucking listening." She tells him, eerily calm and now hovering close in a way he would take as an attempt to threaten him from anyone but her, too familiar with having her in his space to be bothered by it. "Do you love me, Fang?"

"That's a stupid question—"

Her fingers tighten again.

"I said, do you love me?"

"Obviously." He snarls.

"Well, so do the others. And I love you, just like I love them."

She sighs, features softening and grip slackening until his own grip is the only thing keeping her from falling.

"If you won't trust me to take care of myself, then trust that, at least. You don't want me to die, and you don't want me to get hurt if it can be helped, so I'll do my best to not let that happen as long as I have you guys to go back to. And just so you know, I don't particularly like pain, either. Do you understand?"

His jaw clenches.

No.

No, he doesn't understand, and he doesn't want to.

It's fucked up, and he has no intention of ever letting his own pride fall that low.

But he can try to respect it, and at least accept it.

For now.

At the very least, he will trust it enough to let her fight on her own.

"So… Are you guys about to snog or kill each other? No, because some of the cops would probably lock me up for the murder as soon as they know I'm Kankol, so I'd rather not be there when it happens."

Elynna stares at him and he stares back, face falling with annoyance.

"... Snog?"

"Kill." He snaps at the same time without looking at where the voice is coming from.

His First Mate looks in that direction and then back at him, and this time he full-on glares.

She turns back to the man.

"Snog and then kill each other."

"Like hell." Zoro scoffs, pushing her back enough to set her entire weight back on her feet.

"Great, I don't have to find an alibi, then. Hurry up, Elynna, the dance fight is starting."

"Already?"

"Don't ask me, man. Apparently one of the groups can't hold back their enthusiasm and some people said we weren't being impressive enough. I'll fucking show them impressive—"

"Sure, sure. I'll be there in a sec."

"Whatever you say, but just know that if you're not there in five minutes, Hyelin will be coming for you."

Elynna waves him away distractedly, eyes still set on Zoro.

Then the man is gone, and her full attention is back on him.

"So. Are we good?"

He clicks his tongue, but slouches a bit more, letting go of the tension that kept his spine stiff and nudging her with his knee where she's now standing between his legs.

"Whatever. Yeah, we are. But don't think we're done." He warns her, narrowing his eyes in her direction to make sure she knows he means it. "I want to know what happened."

If she got pushed into using that fucking plan despite trying her best not to, then he wants to know how it happened to train her accordingly.

Her jaw clenches faintly, but she nods.

"Fine. Just… don't go telling the others."

He rolls his eyes.

"As if I would. I'm not an idiot."

"... Well, it really depends what we're talking abou—"

He glares, raising a booted foot to shove her away from him.

"Shut up. Just… go win that contest or something."

"You can't win when it comes to art, Fang. Unless you cheat and beat up the other contestants beforehand or something."

He rolls his eyes at the vicious direction her mind immediately takes.

"Don't traumatise the whole town."

"I would never." His First Mate smiles. "Don't worry. You guys are the only ones I will show the worst parts of me to and let live."

And then she's gone with a wave over her shoulder, leaving him to pick up his bottle with a sigh.

Fuck, why did he decide to care about this again?

He needs a damn drink.

Or three.

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

Nami squints.

It can't be the first group.

Rap music really isn't Lynna's style, and neither is the dance.

The synchronisation was impressive, but it was all more aggressive than her best friend's go-to style, and with much more work going into facial expressions than Elynna will ever be willing to do.

Not the second group either. Franky would never let her enter his fan club after the bet they made. Besides, there were only male dancers.

And again, not her style. She would love the acrobatics, but she doesn't dance to make people laugh.

But this group?

Definitely her style.

The music is half-way between a prayer and a call to war, the choreography almost martial in speed and precision if not for the purely artistic flair coating it.

But there's too many of them, dressed in the same silky, swirling fabric with their hair dyed the same and white make-up on their skin, moving too much and too fast for Nami to find the one person she's looking for, even though there's no way pulling out the damn fans doesn't have Elynna written all over it.

"Couldn't we do something like this with a trail of fabric?" Usopp mutters to Zoro from where they're sitting in front of her and watching the whole thing closely. "It could be a diversion tactic."

"The bullshit that can come out of her mouth is enough of a 'diversion tactic'." The swordsman scoffs in response. "Besides, if you tie something to her tessen, she can't slit people's throats with them. And she needs to be able to open and close them easily."

"Fine, fine. I should have known someone from the Monster Trio would be more interested in gore than artistic tricks—"

"Wait, you two!" Nami interrupts them before Zoro can glare at the sniper. "You can see where Lynna is?!"

"Obviously. She's right there." They both answer at the same time, pointing at one of the dancers.

But Nami barely has the time to recognise the line of Elynna's shoulders before the group moves again and she loses sight of her.

"Where? Where?!" Chopper frets, perched on Zoro's shoulders and twisting this way and that to try and spot their First Mate.

"This is awesome!" Luffy laughs, clearly too busy fanboying over the whole thing to help.

"Stop clapping, you idiot! You're way off beat, it's ruining my experience!" Sanji finally snaps at his side, even more upset with his inability to spot Elynna when his three crewmates can clearly see her.

"The Great Usopp's sight is second to none! Come closer, friends, and I shall share my secrets! Robin-kun, how would you like to learn from the Great and Esteemed Usopp?"

"No, thank you. I have my ways."

"You're cheating!" Nami protests. "How many eyes do you even have around the stage?!"

"Ah, but I cannot bet on quality like Usopp, so I have to compensate with quantity."

"Stop fighting, guys! You're in the way!" Luffy protests as he pushes Sanji and Nami out of his line of sight.

Chopper deflates a few moments later when the dance ends without him spotting Elynna, but he claps enthusiastically anyway.

"How are they going to choose the winner?" He asks curiously over the applause around them.

"A vote?" Usopp offers.

"We're voting for Elynna-chan, of course." Sanji states firmly with a tone that says there's no debate to be had over it.

"I don't know…" Luffy says anyway, forehead scrunching in thought. "The robot dance was really fun!"

"The first group was great, too!" Nami tacks on, earning herself a betrayed look from the cook. "The girl who challenged the others was really cool!"

"You guys are idiots. You can't pick a winner with styles this different." Usopp sniffs with all the righteousness his status of Artist of the Crew allows him.

"So Elynna-chan's group wins by virtue of having Elynna-chan in it."

"That's not how it works—"

"I quite agree with Usopp," Robin smiles, "and I believe the organisers do as well, seeing as this isn't an actual contest."

"Huh? What do you mean, Robin?" Chopper asks, frowning in confusion.

"There is no winner. This event is designed to let all three clubs show off their work together, since they usually have their own events the rest of the year."

"What?! So there's no meat for the winner?!"

"Why would you even think that?! You're not dancing, anyway!"

"And I spent half of my time feeding you meat so you don't drool over the grill."

"Yeah, but they made me hungry! Come on, Sanji, let's go!"

"Don't jump on me, shithead—"

Nami watches them go, sigh mostly exasperated but smile mostly fond.

"Sometimes I feel like we have a talking stomach instead of a Captain."

Chopper giggles at the picture that forms in his head as he jumps down from Zoro's back, brightly thanking Robin when one of her hands blooms from the ground to catch him when he stumbles.

"Well, Sanji's food is very good." The historian hums with a smile at the reindeer. "Speaking of, I'm sure Elynna is starting to get hungry."

"I know, I was going to get her something!"

Chopper perks up at the words, trotting after her and calling out an I'm going with you! that makes Nami lean to the side so he can jump and catch her hand before heaving him into her arms while he waves at Robin over the navigator's shoulder for the both of them.

The historian waves back with a smile, idly listening to Zoro and Usopp's conversation.

Oh dear.

Elynna is not going to like her next training sessions.

And the boys are not going to like the way she will no doubt retaliate.

It's all going to be quite entertaining, really.

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

"Tell me, Nico Robin. Do you think you've found a home?"

Shuddering from the cold that seeps into her back, Robin looks at the fire looming tall over the party, the wind taking away the smell of burning meat that she took refuge from in this little nook.

It doesn't cover Luffy and Zoro's laughter or Sanji and Usopp's bickering, and she thinks the flames seem to dance as joyously as Chopper and Nami are on that table.

"Yes." She says.

She has a home, and she won't let him burn it down or ice it out forever.

But Aokiji just sighs.

"Well, then. It seems I have my answer. Live with as much resolve as you've survived so far, Nico Robin. Prove me he was right —and that I was right to indulge him."

Then there's the shuffle of feet against grass, and then nothing.

Nothing but the dripping of thawing ice on the other side of that wall.

And before Robin can run to confront the man whose shadow has edged her nightmares and her steps all this time, Elynna is suddenly in front of her, catching the glass of champagne that just slipped from her fingers and watching her, cheeks flushed with dancing rather than drinking.

"You good, Sophia?"

Robin just stares at her, memories tumbling through her mind and danger whispering adrenaline through her veins.

The light of the fire flickers across Elynna's face, making it impossible to tell how sharp her smile is and whether she's here by chance or because she noticed something.

But it's been seventeen seconds and Aokiji still isn't there, nor can Robin feel the cold at her back.

So she breathes, and smiles, and leans back against the wall.

"Yes." She answers. "I'm fine."

Her First Mate looks at her for a moment, but seems to accept her words as she gives her back her flute of champagne.

"Good."

She turns to lean against the wall next to Robin, sipping on her own drink and eyes unfocused the way they often are when they both take a break from a party and her mind goes elsewhere.

"Thank you." Robin finds herself saying without really deciding it.

But she wants to say it, and her First Mate deserves to hear it.

Despite the party going on around them, their little spot is private enough that when Elynna tilts her head in her direction, it feels like she's the only one who can hear her.

"For not granting my wish." She clarifies.

(Her throat resting its frailty and all the weight of her existence against the curve of a blade and the hand holding it.

The grasp of her fingers, tight like a last hope and begging

—begging for the blade again,

but sharper, colder,

until she's as cold as the bloodless, lifeless metal of it—

And Elynna's hand against her eyes, warm like her own tears and careful like it matters that someone on death row could shatter with every next breath.

Do you… think my death has any chance of being painless, Elynna?)

"You're welcome."

When she glances to her left, Elynna still looks elsewhere, and more understanding than Robin ever wants her or any of her nakama to be.

"I almost made a mistake, you know." Her First Mate eventually says. "When I believed that things could only go one way and that you would forget me, too. I just wanted to make sure you wouldn't make that mistake. And I really didn't want to kill you, either."

Robin swallows, and breathes, feeling like her heart and her lungs crumple for a moment from the loss of air.

(Swallows the implied confirmation that if it came to it, Elynna really would have granted her death.

It's a thought so soft it hurts, like pressing on a healing bruise

or a dream you once got close enough to touch and realise it was never more than an illusion, and her heart aches with—)

"Say, Sophia."

"... Yes?"

"Is this the life you want to live?" Elynna asks her as she finally turns to meet her gaze.

I want to live—

And Robin thinks that if she said no, her First Mate would find a way to sneak her out of the island right there and then so she could build the life she wanted.

(—and her heart aches with the thought that being loved by Elynna might mean that Elynna can die without her and get hurt for her and die or live for her and kill for her

But she'll let her go if only Robin asks,

will let her go and take her heart away with her and help her carve it out, even.

—and that's the line where love holds instead of chokes,

the line where you're loved and not owned—

and Robin loves her so, so much for stopping at that line, when it would be so easy not to, with everything love means to her and everyone she has already lost.)

"Yes." She tells her First Mate, and she's sure of this like she hasn't been sure of anything since the day she decided to become an archaeologist, not just for her mother but for herself, too. "I want to stay— I want to live with all of you."

Elynna looks at her, then at the drink swirling in her glass along the twist of her wrist, and takes a mouthful of it to swallow as if it will drown the relief of her next exhale.

"Really? I'm glad, then."

"Elynna." Robin calls out before the younger girl can switch topics, lightly grabbing her wrist for good measure.

The quick glance Elynna gives to Robin's skin on her own is awfully young, but then she gives her all her attention and a questioning look that sounds like a set all your problems down on my shoulders and sleep easy.

So Robin cradles the back of her head with her own hand, and bends down to press her lips against her First Mate's forehead.

(Will you help me?

'Course I will.

A promise, sealed by casual words and lips on her forehead, slick with blood and warm with love.

This is just another promise.)

"Please know that I love you very much as well."

She presses the words right there into the skin, breathes in another heartbeat that stretches the moment into the longest contact she thinks she's had with another person since Saul carried her to safety and loneliness all at once, and steps back.

Elynna looks back at her blankly, and then—

"I didn't need any more motivation to kill the assholes who messed up your life, but okay. Actually, you know what? I'll go kill some more right now. Gimme some names and hold my beer for a sec, I gotta go get my weapons."

Robin looks down at the glass being jerkily held out towards her.

"… This is a fruit juice cocktail."

The wave of Elynna's hand sounds a lot like a details.

"I know, but 'hold my fruit juice cocktail' sounds a lot less cool. I blame the alcohol worship inherent to human culture as a whole—"

"It seems to me that I heard Chopper tell you to stop using humour —however dark it may be— to deflect the conversation whenever it gets too emotionally intense for you." Robin interrupts her, now plainly amused by the turn of the conversation.

"But… My primary coping mechanism—" The younger girl tries, but Robin just watches her with a smile, and so she gives up quickly. "Fine, just kiss me again, then."

Reaching out, the historian tucks a few stray strands of hair behind Elynna's ear, palm brushing carefully against the patch of scars on her cheek with a fond smile.

"Is that a way to compensate for the loss?"

"Nah. Touch just ties with humour in first place of my coping mechanisms ranking."

Robin hums.

"The former seems much healthier to me, though."

"I don't know what you're talking about. Smiling is very healthy."

The fond smile turns more frank, crystalline eyes glinting with the unconcealed, silent laughter that makes the Devil Child's shoulders shake.

"Hm. I do believe I remember you smiling over Spandam's corpse."

Elynna's mouth quirks up in response as she shrugs.

"Murder is a close second. Combining it with a number one can get real deadly for my issues."

Her smile widens with satisfaction at the laugh it gets her, and she holds out a hand.

"Hey, you speak Kankol, right? Can you come with me for a sec? Franky's fan-club has been chatting for some time and I'm curious."

Robin gives her a curious look, before following her gaze towards the group of boys in question.

"Do you think they're talking about you?"

"... Well if they are, I'll just have to plan my revenge, but no. I was hoping to get some blackm— I mean, some information about Franky."

Robin doesn't think she needs to get any closer to the fire with how warm she feels already, but she takes her First Mate's hand and follows her anyway, somewhat awed by how little smiling strains her muscles these days.

Even through the warmth and the awe and what she thinks might just be happiness, however, she's still that woman who survived the worst odds for twenty years, and so she hardly misses the feeling of being watched.

It's not Aokiji's eyes, she's certain of it.

But all the same, it feels powerful.

Powerful, and not particularly benevolent.

But when she chances a discreet glance over her shoulder, none of the groups of people around them seem particularly attentive to either her or her crewmate, not even Na Yung and the three other dancers who are currently conversing with a few older people.

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

"So, how do you like it? Her dancing with others."

Robin hummed, not looking away from where Elynna introduced the first choreography she was part of by launching her weight above where her hands were planted on the ground, once and then twice, body curving smooth and slow enough to look like she was floating.

"It's nice to see. Different, but nice."

Na Yung didn't say anything to that for a long moment, content to let the whole dance pass them by without saying anything before she finally broached the topic that brought her there as another school took the stage.

"I'm… not saying this to create problems. I like Elynna well enough, and I don't think she's a bad person. I just thought you guys should know, and from what I've heard you're pretty much the only person to have come to the Low Lands in the last decade to ask questions about us out of genuine curiosity."

Robin finally turned to her, raising a mildly curious eyebrow and already quite certain of what the conversation was about.

"A lot of the songs we're using tonight come from Elynna's repertoire, but… None of us have ever heard of those in Kankol. It's like— like a bunch of us somehow got to her homeland, created their own style there and never bothered to contact their homeland again. And the ones in her language… I don't know what it is, and I don't speak Portan or Neerleg, but my grandfather was pretty important in cross-communities relations. I've heard both often enough that I can tell it's neither of those."

The dancer stopped there, clearly not wanting to actually formulate any kind of accusation.

"I know." Robin answered simply.

She spoke both of those languages, after all.

And it was impossible for herself and Nami —or even Chopper— to have literally never heard of Elynna's homeland given some of the details she'd mentioned.

She was hiding something, and they all knew it.

In fact, she wasn't even hiding it, per se. Their First Mate wasn't making a lot of efforts to conceal the silent, large gap of empty space that was her civilian life, random little facts about the place she'd used to live in and anecdotes about the people she'd loved long before she'd met them floating there and emphasising the things unsaid rather than filling the silence.

She was just… not talking about it.

And that was fine.

Robin knew the pain of losing home better than most.

More than that, she knew Elynna.

Trusted her.

And that was exactly why she didn't need to know everything about her First Mate —especially the things she couldn't bring herself to talk about.

She felt Na Yung's curious eyes on her, waiting for more explanation, or some proof that Elynna really wasn't lying with harmful intentions.

Robin just smiled.

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

Song of the day: If You Go Away by Imany. It's an English remake of Ne me quitte pas from Jacques Brel that I thought of during the party scene with Robin and Elynna, but also Imany just has a super nice voice to listen to!

#FTSFact14: When you reach the middle of an episode. (Song: Paint it, Black played by Wednesday Addams, the first 8 seconds.)

The ship shakes with the waves it rides, and a necklace falls off a shelf in slow motion through the lens of a spyglass.

The blade of a kukri threads through the loop of its chain and stops the necklace in its fall as it stabs into the wall, thrown by Elynna, who is leaning back on the hind legs of her chair and staring at the ceiling of her room in thought, her other hand fanning her face with one of her tessen, signet ring stamped with the Straw Hats' Jolly Roger glinting on her ring finger.

#FTSFact15: Opening Seven 〜 An island, empty of enemies but not empty of adventures, and the Merry riding the waves towards it.

Nami ropes Chopper into going shopping with her, and Robin follows them with a smile.

Usopp and Luffy go from stall to stall, oh-ing and ah-ing at anything and everything under Sanji's distracted supervision as the cook flirts with a local.

Zoro finds the nearest bench and promptly goes to sleep until the rest of the crew is done.

Elynna slips into an alley, hair blond and baby Cameko hidden in one pocket.

The Straw Hats together, watching with varying degrees of wariness as their Captain rushes to jump into the sea, because there's no way that rubber ring is going to stay on until the end.

The Straw Hats together, setting up the lunch area while Sanji cooks and Usopp bosses them around and Luffy pisses off the local animals.

The Straw Hats together, climbing the local mountain where Usopp finds a bird to draw that Sanji and Chopper distract with words and food while Zoro is still climbing, giant bag with everyone's things on his back and so heavy that he doesn't notice that Elynna and Nami are now hitching a ride on top of said bag.

The people they look forward to, so strong that they can be alone on the most dangerous sea of the world. Mihawk. Ace. Shanks.

But it's more fun together, so the Straw Hats fight together too, even if they don't always need to and end up walking all over each other's toes instead.

The Straw Hats together, ending their stay with a shallow water lunch for Sanji, Nami and Robin, a ball game for the rest of the boys and a nice soak in the sun next to them for Elynna.

The dinosaur who wants to join them comes a bit out of nowhere.

Nami, Chopper and Usopp are not receptive to the idea.

Now for the party scene, here are some videos I had in mind, with obviously some K-pop songs because the Korean singers I know otherwise are vocalists. You don't dance to their songs. You just listen in a trance and stare at them in awe if you're watching the video/are lucky enough to actually be there for a concert. Anyway.

First group: Journey of the lab on the world of dance 2018 - watch?v=V26OYKivmCQ&list=PLBPTyr5BEnlLYAZqwaMhA19_6qMdBvYgo&index=28&pp=gAQBiAQB with their second dance for the contest.

Second group: THE KINGS all dance performances in World Of Dance❤ - watch?v=KYEizBw8Fjo&list=PLBPTyr5BEnlLYAZqwaMhA19_6qMdBvYgo&index=29&pp=gAQBiAQB with their second dance for the contest. And before you protest, I know it's neither in English nor in Korean, but look me in the eyes and tell me that this performance isn't Super Franky-like. I dare you.

Third group (with Elynna): SABRINA | 2nd Place World Division | World of Dance Finals 2023 | #WODFINALS23 - https: slashslash www dot youtube dot com slash watch?v=bIaGjfOgyjQ&list=PLBPTyr5BEnlLYAZqwaMhA19_6qMdBvYgo&index=139&pp=gAQBiAQB for the contest, plus a few others here because I couldn't find anything else from that group.

Sabrina Carpenter - Looking at Me : JayJin Choreography - https: slashslash www dot youtube dot com slashwatch?v=U4_nwxNNNzs

Uptown Funk - Mark Ronson ft. Bruno Mars / Junsun Yoo Choreography - https: slashslash www dot youtube dot com slashwatch?v=5zKAAjQgETk

Runaway Baby - Bruno Mars / AssAll Crew Choreography - https: slashslash www dot youtube dot com slashwatch?v=o22lOnMY2wM

1M Special | AMAZON (the first part) - https: slashslash www dot youtube dot com slashwatch?v=EvowM18pN7M

BLACKPINK - DDU-DU DDU-DU (Remix) / Hyeyeon Choreography - https: slashslash www dot youtube dot com slashwatch?v=eopdCYW5IUQ&list=PLBPTyr5BEnlL2gdFSR1jc71hxBaVE0aOc&index=359

BLACKPINK 블랙핑크 - Pink Venom Dance | Choreography by 김미주 MIJU | LJ DANCE STUDIO - https: slashslash www dot youtube dot com slashwatch?v=Sg4YV8G6mIc&list=PLBPTyr5BEnlL2gdFSR1jc71hxBaVE0aOc&index=336

KARD - RED MOON | ENNA & MAZYO choreography - https: slashslash www dot youtube dot com slash watch?v=GsO3kHMoBTw

Stray Kids - MANIAC / Woomin Jang Choreography - https: slashslash www dot youtube dot com slashwatch?v=RC0CXH9vy98&list=PLBPTyr5BEnlL2gdFSR1jc71hxBaVE0aOc&index=321

Billie Eilish - Therefore I Am / Koosung Jung Choreography - https: slashslash www dot youtube dot com slashwatch?v=l2DnnwffEQI&list=PLBPTyr5BEnlL2gdFSR1jc71hxBaVE0aOc&index=323