"Are we going the right way?" Luffy asks his crewmates in general and Nami in particular, squinting at the storm clouds over the horizon, one hand held up over the brim of his hat more for effect than to actually shield from the sun. "Seems kinda dangerous."

"The stories say that Treasure Island is protected by an angry god. I wouldn't be surprised if those legends sprung up because the weather here just kind of sucks categorically," Nami, true to form, informs him from a ways behind. When Luffy looks over his shoulder, she's already packing up her maps, only pausing to nod to Treva. "This isn't going to be a problem, is it?"

Treva, who had been staring fixedly at the clouds ahead, startles. Her hand snakes under her scarf to pull at whatever it is she's always pulling at, and she blinks hugely at Nami. "No. No, this isn't a mistake. In timelines where the Merry sails into that storm, it always makes landfall easily anyway."

"That's good," Nami says, but her eyes narrow suspiciously at Treva's obvious nerves. She returns to her maps. Faux-casually, she goes on, "Why don't you help me gather these up and get inside?"

"That's a great idea!" declares Usopp, too cheerfully. Nami throws a pencil at him.

"Not you, you idiot! We need you out here!" she reprimands, with prejudice. Usopp yelps, but does catch the pencil.

Treva frowns, hunching over defensively. "I can help out here too. I know what to do, I've seen it already."

Nami's lips purse into a line. Usopp, thinking fast, raises both hands placatingly at Treva and cuts in with, "That's exactly why we need you to hold down the fort, Treva! You need to protect Nami's maps! Where would we be if the heavy wind threw a seagull into the helm room through the window and it ate them all?"

Treva crosses her arms. "That's not going to happen."

"I…" Usopp trails off, losing steam. Luffy laughs at him, but only a little bit. Usopp shoots Luffy a dirty look from the periphery.

Zoro, who had at some point wandered off to stand next to the mast, rolls his eyes. "Treva," he says, and when he has her attention, he smacks the wood of the mast with an open palm. "You can't even reach the halyards. You'll just be in the way."

Treva inhales sharply and rocks back on her heels, at the same time as Usopp squawks and Nami draws herself up in a right fury. Zoro is really good at getting those reactions specifically out of all of them, actually, it occurs to Luffy.

"You didn't have to say it like that!" Nami fumes.

Zoro raises an eyebrow. "It's true."

Nami opens her mouth, no doubt to fire back, but the racket of Treva half-climbing over the table to get to the cartography stuff on top of it interrupts her.

"I can't reach the halyards!" Treva proclaims. Her voice cracks partway through halyards, and what Luffy can see of her expression is scrunched up so as to imply she kind of wants to cry, but she manages to project just enough resolve that Nami is convinced to huff and let it go with one last disapproving squint aimed at Zoro.

With the aid of Usopp—who had only been able to look back and forth between Nami and Zoro in alarm—the girls hurry Nami's things indoors, Treva's gaze studiously trained on the deck. Luffy drifts over to where Zoro is; Zoro eyes him in a way that Luffy can't quite read, briefly, but otherwise doesn't react. That in and of itself is reaction enough, though, with Zoro, and Luffy inclines his head to him in prompt.

With a complicated slant to his mouth, Zoro turns his gaze elsewhere, to the clouds ahead.

"Were you going to say anything?" Zoro asks, finally, and Luffy blinks.

"Did you want me to?" he hazards, tilting his head further. Zoro, instead of answering, exhales. He turns back to Luffy, and though Luffy doesn't know him well enough yet to understand what he's thinking, Luffy doesn't get the sense that his own was a wrong answer.

"No," Zoro tells him, and that's good enough for Luffy.

XXX

Luffy can only guess that Nami, Zoro, and Usopp are unsurprised when the storm hits and he, perfectly unhelpfully, sits himself down on the Merry's ram's head to enjoy it. At the very least, none of them comment on it; Nami and Zoro get on wordlessly with the business of keeping their ship afloat, and Usopp gets on with that same business accompanied by heartfelt bemoanings of the terrible weather. Nami even seems to be having fun, Luffy notices, and that only serves to make him even more excited than he already was.

As far as Luffy can tell, Treva had been right: despite Usopp's worries, the Merry cuts across the windswept sea like a hot knife through butter, rocking violently this way and that but never quite tipping in any direction. He'd planned to take action if he was needed, or if Nami yelled at him to, but that doesn't appear to be the case.

Everything's coming up Strawhats.

Everything's coming up Strawhats, that is, until Treva comes barreling out of the helm room like a shot, levers herself up over the rail, and nearly tackles Luffy into the ocean.

"Treva?!" Luffy wheezes, and it's only instinct that keeps them both from plunging to their deaths. In freefall, one arm wraps tightly around Treva—who Luffy realizes distantly has latched onto the back of his shirt with both hands—and the other slings out to anchor to the mast.

It stretches, then contracts, and pulls Luffy and Treva along with him to safety. Usopp, who had been ordered by Nami to secure the halyards there, shrieks.

"Treva, what—" demands Nami, before she cuts herself off, curses, and barks out another set of orders that Luffy doesn't understand but that Usopp and Zoro hurry to follow. Usopp, naturally, looks like he'd seen a ghost, but so does Zoro, which is more disconcerting.

Treva, it registers to Luffy as he struggles to find his footing with the added handicap of an entire, quivering child attached to his midsection, is ugly-crying. Sobbing, even. He blinks down at her, and frowns, both from the effort and from a stirring of basic human compassion.

"What is it, Treva?" he asks her, as gently as he can over the gale. Later, Usopp will tell him that it sounded distinctly like someone asking a dog, what is it, boy?

Treva burbles something unintelligible and braces with her legs, trying to push off of the deck and drag Luffy in tow, toward the helm room. Luffy, surprised, nearly slips. His gut bottoms out for a moment with a familiar, I'm-about-to-fall-out-of-this-tree kind of panic, but he catches himself and rights them both, his hold on the mast as well as on Treva constricting in deliberate warning. Treva sucks in a wobbling, watery inhale and screams.

That's not pain, Luffy thinks, eyes narrowing. That's grief.

"What the hell is wrong with her?" Zoro demands from somewhere to Luffy's right. His panic, now, Luffy recognizes as something altogether different: the oh-god-I'm-too-young-to-be-a-parent kind. Much better than the sort he'd been working through a moment ago, which is a relief.

"I don't know!" Luffy calls back. "She must've seen something!"

Usopp, still the next-closest to the mast, shrieks again. "Treva! This is a really bad time to be throwing your first tantrum!"

And, well. Luffy can't exactly argue with that.

️XXX

"We're alive," Usopp exhales, equal parts disbelieving and grateful, and collapses with Nami into a pile on the shore's sand.

"Somehow," Nami concours, in much the same tones.

Zoro, standing beside them, squints at Luffy as he maneuvers himself and a still-crying Treva off the side of the Merry and onto the beach. Zoro doesn't say anything, but the air of, No thanks to this one, must be palpable. Zoro is at least self-aware enough to be certain of that much.

He, also, is self-aware enough to recognize that his mood really is much, much worse than Nami or Usopp's now. He tries not to think about it, but people really can drop dead for the stupidest, most arbitrary reasons.

"What was that about, Treva?" Luffy asks the girl, who has so far only been coaxed to move her arms from around Luffy's torso to around his neck, once his feet are on solid ground. The crying has gotten quieter, at least. Treva had calmed down exponentially once they'd gotten out of the rain.

She sniffs. Coughs. Clears her throat, almost self-consciously. "I won't let you die," she croaks, very pitifully, but with a confidence that almost makes Zoro want to box her ears the way he's seen Nami do to Luffy. "I'm very useful. I won't let it happen."

"I'm not gonna die so anticlimactically," Luffy reproaches, even more confident, and Nami's eyebrow twitches. Zoro really wishes their crew would stop putting him in a position where he's relating to Nami.

Anticlimactic. The word tries to stick in Zoro's head, so he promptly kicks it out.

"I saw it," Treva tells Luffy, insistent and wild-eyed, pulling back just enough so that her hands are braced on either of his shoulders and she can see his face. "I did."

Nami frowns. "In that storm?"

Treva bristles. "No…"

Emboldened, Nami sits up. Usopp, who had been leaning against her, falls back with a yelp.

"You said before that the likelihood of something happening in the future depends on the number of possible futures you see it happen in, statistically speaking," she goes on. Treva nods, and sniffs again. "How often have you seen Luffy go down in a storm?"

Treva hunches in on herself, not meeting anyone's eyes. "One time."

Nami gestures with her hand, a sort of see? type of motion. "There you have it, then."

"But… But—" Treva starts, but Zoro can't be having with that.

"The only way Luffy was dying in that storm is if you'd sent the both of you over the side of the ship," he tells Treva, because it's true. Neither Treva nor Luffy, after all, has a monopoly on their crew's ability to level premonitions with disquieting surety. Treva inhales sharply, Nami visibly grits her teeth, and Usopp puts a hand halfway into his mouth like he's going to fidget his jaw right off out of nerves. Luffy only considers them all with open interest. "Neither of you can swim, Treva. You'd've sunk like rocks."

Treva bows her head and fists her hands in Luffy's shirt. Zoro realizes that she has, bizarrely, managed to not get any snot on him.

"You're right. It's my own fault," she says, miserably, before Nami can bite Zoro's head off. Further: before Nami or Usopp can offer her any platitudes, she begins to flail, only stopping when Luffy puts her down. She nearly falls on her ass, but throws up both arms to steady herself. They remain thrown out on either side of her when she looks up at Luffy, puffy-eyed but determined, something about her expression edging on manic desperation. "I'm really sorry. It won't happen again, Captain."

It would have almost been an impressive declaration, if Treva didn't immediately have to screw her eyes shut and snuffle heartily. Luffy laughs and Zoro, for his part, huffs, vaguely amused despite himself, and choosing relief over any other emotions his brain chemicals might've otherwise dredged up. If nothing else, kids do tend to have an impressive amount of guts relative to their size.

Usopp produces a pack of tissues he offers to Treva that's only mostly soggy, and Nami pretends she's not fussing over Treva as she fusses over her, making sure she blows her nose properly. Whatever that means. As much as it makes Zoro want to roll his eyes, in a way, the return to form is a little comforting even to him; and Treva takes it in stride, gamely attempting to tackle the arcane puzzle of blowing her nose "properly." It's better, at any rate, than the gross sobbing.

Satisfied, Zoro yawns hugely.

"I'm tired," he declares, and lies down right there on the beach. "Nap time."

Nami yells at him, but that's no obstacle at all.

️XXX

Zoro's decision to exit stage left out of the day's plot, of course, is followed immediately by a slapstick comedy routine in which Luffy and the chest-man the remaining Strawhats run into, Gaimon, nearly fall into the sea entirely independently of Treva. In fact, Nami herself misses much of this slapstick because of Treva, and the sudden necessity of adult intervention in keeping the silly girl from getting carried off by the island's panda-bat.

In the present, Gaimon is reciting his backstory to Luffy, who is evidently enthralled by… probably how ridiculous it all is, if Nami had to guess. Nami and Usopp, meanwhile, have set up some paces away with a thermos of tea that Usopp's been forward-thinking enough to bring, watching Treva as she chases the island's strange animals with all the loving, overbearing enthusiasm of a small child that's just met a pony for the first time. You know, just in case one of them tries to eat her.

"The kids from my village would've loved it here," Usopp muses, wistfully fond. "She's kind of a weirdo, but I guess Treva really is just a normal kid who likes adventure stories and funny animals, huh?"

Nami hums noncommittally and takes a sip of her tea to avoid giving Usopp a real answer. He pins her with a look. Or, well. Pin is a strong word. Pokes her with a look, maybe.

He frowns. "Hey, uh… Treva hasn't… You know. Done anything really weird around you, has she?"

Nami raises a single eyebrow at Usopp. "Define weird."

"The Devil Fruit stuff doesn't count anymore," Usopp argues. "Luffy does his rubber thing around the ship all the time, that's old news."

Nami is unimpressed. "Something like that is still fundamentally weird, even if you get used to it."

"I guess." Usopp shifts his weight, fidgety. "Seriously, though. I mean it."

Nami sighs. In all honesty, she likes Usopp. She's found a certain kinship with him, so far, as the only other basically regular person on Luffy's so-called "crew." Maybe that's why she rolls her shoulders, feeling a touch fidgety herself, and allows, "Frankly, I don't really feel like I've got all that good of a read on any of them so far. Except Zoro, maybe."

"He's kind of scary, but I think he's a good guy," says Usopp, and Nami rolls her eyes. Zoro, as far as Nami can tell, is mostly just an asshole. A loyal asshole, but definitely and certifiably The Worst.

"If you say so," is all she tells Usopp on the matter. Her gaze slides over to Luffy, who is by all appearances entirely invested in whatever Gaimon is going on to him about now. "If you ask me, Luffy is the biggest mystery so far. He's an idiot, I'm sure of that much, but that's kind of all I'm sure about with him."

"I like Luffy," Usopp pronounces, so promptly and confidently that it takes Nami a little by surprise. She blinks at Usopp and he blinks back, suddenly sheepish. He rubs the back of his head with one hand, the other still holding the thermos. "I mean… he is kind of cool, isn't he?"

Nami shrugs. "If you say so," she repeats.

Off to the side, Treva falls flat on her face with an oof as the rooster-dog moves unexpectedly out of her reach, bounces to her feet, and gets right back to… playing? With Gaimon's veritable petting zoo like nothing ever happened.

Nami eyes her warily. "The open ocean really isn't any kind of place for a kid that young."

Usopp follows her line of sight. "Well, no, but…"

Nami nods to him. "What made you ask about Treva specifically?"

Usopp swallows. "It's probably nothing, but… So, alright, you know how Kaya was nice enough to include crayons for her with our supplies?"

"Oh, yeah." Nami smiles. "I saw those before we set sail, when I was taking stock. That was very sweet of Kaya."

Usopp also smiles, so obviously besotted with his girl back home that Nami nearly facepalms from second-hand embarrassment. "Right?" He shakes it off. "Wait, no, that's not the point. What I mean is, after barely touching her crayons, Treva came slinking over to me all guilty and asked to borrow a pencil."

Nami frowns. "Why would she do that?"

"She said the crayons were too messy. So then—I handed her the pencil, right? And she sits down to start drawing." Usopp inclines his head to Nami. "Have you gotten a look at anything Treva's drawn so far?"

Nami drums her fingers on the thermos lid, which she'd been drinking her tea out of. "Just nautical charts she says she copied from the future."

Usopp's eyes go wide. "Nautical—" He coughs. Clears his throat. Downs some more tea. "Nautical charts?"

Nami's frown deepens. "Yes? I mean, she can't read them, and I was already making nautical charts at that age, so…"

"No, no, I mean. Nami." Usopp grimaces. "Treva doesn't use a protractor. She doesn't even use a ruler."

Nami, now, does in fact pin Usopp with a look. Pin might not be a strong enough word, in this instance. "That doesn't make sense. Even I still use those, especially at sea."

"I do too, but Treva doesn't. And everything she draws is like that, it's all…" Usopp gestures widely with his free hand. "Weirdly realistic landscapes and portraits. Of real places and people, I'm pretty sure. With anatomically correct hearts around them, sometimes."

Nami's nose wrinkles. "That is weird."

"And she won't use the eraser either, even when I put it right next to her," Usopp goes on, gaining traction. "If the ship rocks and she gets a line wrong, she'll yell destruction of evidence, toss the whole page, and start over."

"Hm. I think I might've heard her do that, from the other room." Nami takes a sip of her tea. "You know, I think she's actually claustrophobic."

Usopp looks over at Treva. She is, as of the moment, trying to climb onto the pig-thing's back, and failing.

"What makes you say that?" Usopp asks Nami.

"I lock the hatch to the room me and her sleep in when we're not using it. That hasn't been an issue during the day, since she's been spending most of her time in the common areas, but…" Nami shakes her head. "The night after we set sail from Syrup Village, she woke me up at about… two or so in the morning, I think? Freaking out because she needed to go to the bathroom, tried the hatch, and then immediately assumed we'd been locked in when she couldn't get it to open. She wouldn't calm down until I showed her I had the key, and that it was the right key. I have to leave it out on the coffee table for her before I go to bed now."

Usopp's eyebrows knit together. "That kind of sounds like a kid that's used to being grounded."

"Grounded. I guess." Nami looks away, sips her tea, and very carefully does not project her own history with being locked into her quarters onto Treva. It would be inappropriate.

But. Still, Nami gets it. Lockpicking remains one of her most prized skills, and she really does always feel better knowing where the key is. Even if Treva's circumstances probably haven't been anywhere near as fucked as her own.

Nami hopes so, at any rate, whether or not it's any of her business.

"Grounded," Usopp repeats one more time, for good measure. He rubs at his shoulder with his free hand, on edge. "It doesn't sound like her granny's upsetting her when she calls, but I don't—"

"I don't know, Usopp," Nami interrupts, maybe just a touch more forcefully than might be warranted. It isn't any of her business. Ideally, if everything works out… If a ragtag collection of bumbling boys Nami refuses to bring herself to trust and a rubbery Devil Fruit are enough leverage for her to use to bring Arlong down, Nami will always have the option of dumping the girl on Noriko, who would never turn away a child in genuine need. But if the worst case scenario comes to pass instead, Nami has to be okay with shipping Treva off back home. She doesn't have the luxury of worrying about anything more than she already is, not right now. "Maybe Treva really is just an oddball kid with an uncreative streak. You'd have to be, right? What with the whole…"

"Seeing the future thing?" Usopp chuckles awkwardly, clearly uncomfortable. He follows Nami's lead and has some more tea. "You're probably right."

And then Zoro wanders over to the rest of the group, and they're all swept up in Luffy's antics with Gaimon, and Nami and Usopp suddenly have more pressing matters to attend to than gossip.

️XXX

"You could've told us there wasn't really any treasure on that island, Treva," Nami admonishes, once the Strawhats have sailed off. Zoro's wandered off somewhere, probably to knock right back out again and nap some more, but the rest of them are still watching Treasure Island grow progressively smaller in the distance from on top of the Merry's sterncastle.

Treva, who half-climbed over the top of the railing for a better look, blinks at Nami. "Gaimon told us, though." She grins, clearly very pleased with herself. "The real treasure was the animals we met along the way."

Nami facepalms.

"I thought you were a thief that only steals from pirates, Nami," Luffy reminds her.

Nami huffs and crosses her arms. "How rude! I have a conscience, you know."

Luffy just laughs, and Treva watches the exchange with saucer-huge, discomfitingly mesmerized bug-eyes. Usopp, for his part, is caught somewhere in the midpoint between a quiet laugh and a grimace.

"You know, I've been thinking, and I think Gaimon was getting at something similar too," he says abruptly, and the other three turn to him. He nods to Luffy. "Nobody really knows anything about the One Piece, right?"

"Does it matter?" Luffy asks Usopp, genuinely confused.

"Does it—" Usopp catches himself before he can face-fault. "Of course it matters! You want to find it, don't you?"

"Well." Luffy shrugs. "Yeah."

"And Treva can see the future," Usopp continues, and Treva perks up.

"I can!" she confirms, unnecessarily. Seeing the future, Usopp has been rapidly coming to realize, is 30% of Treva's personality.

"Right," he says anyway, because it's important to keep the morale of children up when possible. "So, Treva, can't you just… I don't know, take a peek into the future and tell us what and where the One Piece is?"

Luffy's expression shutters off, not exactly going blank, but certainly going petulant. "If you want to know, Usopp, that's one thing, but I don't."

"You…" Usopp blinks at him in incomprehension. "You don't?"

Luffy grins a grin to put Treva's earlier one to shame. "Nope!"

Usopp looks to Nami, but Nami, unimpressed, only gestures with one hand as if to say, What do you want me to do? Can't you see I've given up already?

And, well. Usopp thinks he really is starting to see where she's coming from.

Beside Nami, still latched onto the Merry's railing, Treva watches Luffy with wide, starry eyes. "Right," she says, full of boundless little-girl adoration. "Right, because everybody set out to sea without…" She looks away, as if buffering. "Without… Huh."

Treva trails off, hops down from the railing, and heaves her duffle bag over her head and onto the floor. She retrieves her book and, unceremoniously, begins leaking future-gunk.

"Treva?!" Usopp and Nami squawk at the same time, alarmed. Luffy, more productively, pokes her shoulder experimentally with his foot. Treva startles and snaps out of it.

She blinks up at them. "Yes?"

"Why are you, uh…" Usopp gestures vaguely to the book. "You know?"

"Oh." Treva blinks at Usopp specifically, more slowly, a few times. Then, she looks between him, her book, and Luffy, and back again for good measure. She brightens, and preens at Luffy. "It's spoilers!"

Luffy laughs. "Yeah, Usopp! It's spoilers!"

"Why do I get the feeling that you don't know what that word means?" Nami wonders to no one in particular.

Luffy shrugs, unbothered, and moves to sit on the railing with his back to the sea. "I know I don't want to go on a boring adventure. I'll find out when I find out, you know?"

"Right…" Usopp mulls it over. Actually, that does sound a lot cooler, doesn't it? The kind of thing a real pirate would say. He straightens his back, puffs out his chest, and crosses his arms. "Right! I feel the same way, obviously, I just wanted to make sure Treva wouldn't tell me by accident! You hear that, Treva?"

Treva makes a face at Usopp, visibly not buying it, and sets about putting her book away and slinging her duffle bag back over her shoulders.

"I couldn't tell you even if I wanted to," she informs him, and stands, and finds herself immediately distracted with the prospect of the One Piece. She beams up at Luffy. "The One Piece is special! If something's really far in the future, usually, I just won't find anything. But the One Piece…" She starts flailing around for emphasis. Usopp is enraptured, Luffy is amused, and Nami is politely curious. "What and where the One Piece is keeps changing! It's different every time, that never happens to me!"

"So… wait." Usopp rubs his chin. "What does that mean?"

"It means that something, or maybe someone, is messing with my future sight!" A beat. Something seems to occur to Treva, and she preens even more so than ever before, pumping a fist in the air. "My Devil Fruit ability! That I have! Because I can't swim!"

"I don't think that's how it works," Nami tries to tell her, at the same time as Luffy happily concurs, "Right!"

Nami shoots him a dirty look. Luffy either doesn't notice or doesn't care.

"Haki always wins against unawakened Devil Fruit abilities, so it could be Haki-related," Treva goes on, her arm falling back to her side, in reference to that mystery power-or-maybe-martial-art she'd been pestering Usopp—and Luffy and Zoro, he's pretty sure—about since they'd set sail. Usopp has no clue how you'd go about, implicitly, waking up a Devil Fruit. Without elaborating, Treva rocks back and forth on her heels, propelled by a nervous energy Usopp thinks he can relate to. "Anyway, it doesn't matter yet. We'll get there when we get there, we'll see it when we see it, and we'll find out when we find out! When it comes to the One Piece, there's only one thing we can be sure of!"

"What's that, Treva?" Luffy asks with a laugh in his voice, humoring her. Treva, suitably humored, scampers off some ways away so that she's standing and facing the three teenagers as if on stage.

"The One Piece…" she begins, dramatically, and raises a single finger skyward. She pauses for effect.

And then, at the top of her little lungs:

"IS REAL!"

Luffy immediately bursts into full-on laughter, but he does clap for her, obligingly. Usopp is sufficiently entertained to follow his lead of his own volition, and Nami feels compelled to golf clap along with them out of peer pressure.

Treva, radiating unsubstantiated pride, plants her fists on her hips, throws her head back, and laughs her smuggest laugh yet. Over the din of it all, Usopp thinks he might be able to hear Zoro snoring, wherever he'd ended up.

There may still be plenty that Usopp isn't quite sure about, but being a Strawhat Pirate, he thinks, isn't bad at all.

XXX

Note: The bad-end future Treva saw is a reference to a specific fanfic I came across once, but I haven't been able to find it again. Let me know if it rings a bell!