That morning had found Kaya leaving her home for the first time in going on a year now, to steal away to the pier of the little cove where the ship Merry had designed for her use some time ago is docked. She'd left a note for Merry, so that he and Usopp wouldn't worry, and steered clear of the beach on her way down.

Kaya peers, aimlessly, into the murky blue of the waves below, her legs dangling over the edge of the wooden planks the pier is constructed of. She sits there, as aimless as all her peering, and pulls her heavy overcoat tighter about her shoulders.

She feels—not angry, exactly, not anymore. Sad, maybe. Kaya is used to grief, but not for the living. Mostly, she just feels empty, mind lost to the back and forth and crash of the water.

It looks inviting, almost. It's been so long since she's gotten to swim, but she's far too weak—from her illness, and oh, Kaya is sick of being sick—to even consider trying it now. Far, far too weak, and yet, with the same dullness that's haunted her since Klaha… Kuro's confession, she feels a part of her fixate on the idea.

The fighting must have started by now, Kaya thinks. Maybe it's already over.

Disconnectedly, her thoughts continue to wander, with little motivation on her part to stop them. The water must not be too cold this time of year, if she remembers correctly. It might even be nice.

Kaya sighs.

I miss my parents.

"OOF!"

A sudden, approximately person-weighted thump sends Kaya jolting upright, head whipping back in the direction of the crash. There, at the base of the steep staircase carved into the curve of the cliff, stands Treva with her knees bent and her arms flung out in a way that implies she'd misstepped somehow on the last or second-to-last rung. She must have needed to catch herself.

"Treva?" Kaya questions, startled, and starts to move to go check on her, but Treva—whose first order of business had been to blink owlishly, shaken by the impact—only hurries to right her posture at the sight of Kaya. Treva dusts herself off and takes off at a sprint, Kaya-bound.

"Usopp and Merry're gonna be worried, even though you left a note and everything, so I— OOF!"

Perfectly predictably, Treva trips, skids, and very nearly tips ass over teakettle into the sea. Kaya shrieks, throwing her arms out wildly to grab the girl, and only through sheer dumb luck manages to pull the little monkey into her lap.

"Treva!" Kaya admonishes, riding the edge of a goddamn heart attack. "You have to be more careful! What if you fell in?"

"I would've died," Treva says, oddly confident and alarmingly blank, staring up at Kaya with huge, almost confused eyes. More child-shock, Kaya assumes. "I found out the other day. I can't swim."

Kaya exhales, bewildered. "How is that something you can not know?"

Treva breaks eye contact to study Kaya's arms around her curiously, before tentatively putting both of her little hands on the older girl's forearm. After a moment's quiet that Kaya isn't able to read, Treva looks back up again. "The bath at Gramma's house isn't big enough to swim in."

"Oh." Kaya swallows. What is she even supposed to say to that?

Unsympathetic to or unknowing of Kaya's plight, Treva's neck cranes so that she can watch the Merry. That blank quality doesn't entirely go away, but a scrunched-up, qualifying sort of air bleeds rapidly into it.

"Kaya?" Treva asks, still quite enthralled by the Merry.

"Yes?" Kaya hazards.

Treva tilts her head back into its previous position, to give Kaya her full attention. "If we lived in a future where the Going Merry got broken, would you be sad?"

Kaya frowns. Usopp had told her about Treva's… circumstances, but it was still a lot to digest. "It would certainly be a shame… Merry put so much love into designing it. I would hate to see all his hard work go to waste."

At that, Treva perks up. "Right! The Merry was designed for you, it was never meant to go to the Grand Line at all. If it goes, there isn't a future where it can make it the whole way, none at all that I've seen. None that are statistically significant, anyway." Treva nods to herself, like this makes any sense at all. To her, it must. After a moment, she deflates some. "Even though everyone loves the Merry, if it goes, it's going to get hurt."

Kaya frowns harder, trying to follow. "If the Merry goes where, Treva? To the Grand Line?"

Treva nods again. "In futures where the Strawhats save you from Kuro, you gift the Merry to Usopp."

Kaya's stomach drops. Her arms tighten around Treva, who startles, surprised.

"Oh," Kaya exhales. "Usopp is going to join a real pirate crew." Another breath, and her grip loosens, muscles slowly relaxing. She even feels herself smile, faintly. Rueful, but moreso, fond. "He's finally going to get to live his dream, isn't he?"

"That's what I don't know anymore," Treva huffs, which disquiets Kaya all over again.

"You don't know? What do you mean? Treva, I thought you could see the future!" Kaya doesn't quite bluster, because she is a lady, but she does find herself politely flustered at the utterly mortifying thought that Usopp had simply been lying about Treva seeing the future to make Kaya feel better. That Usopp had told another silly lie, and that Kaya had bought it completely.

"I can see it!" Treva insists. "I know things, very useful things! Right up until the other day, Usopp was always going to follow Luffy, in every timeline where Luffy goes to the Gecko Islands. There's just… some more factors to take into account now, and the odds won't be good enough for me to call it until they get narrowed back down again."

Kaya settles. Coughs, very primly, into one fist. "Ah. I… I see, yes." She coughs one more time for good measure, and lets her hand drop. Thinking over Treva's words, Kaya's eyebrows knit together. "What is it that's giving you trouble, then?" Her eyes harden. "Is someone going to try to stop Usopp?"

"Usopp might stop Usopp." Treva crosses her arms, resting them on top of Kaya's own arms, still folded around Treva's midsection. "He's not gonna go if he thinks you still need him, 'cause of everything that happened, and 'cause of how much it sucked."

Kaya's mouth falls open. "Because of me…?"

"Because of Usopp," Treva repeats, with the particular undertones of I told you this already that only young children can manage. She makes a frustrated, fussy kind of noise somewhere in the back of her throat. "If Usopp doesn't go, a lot of things are gonna be different, but..."

Treva squirms, so Kaya lets her go, and the girl promptly clambers to her feet and begins gesturing wildly.

"I can't tell Usopp to go! It would be selfish. Luffy could do it, 'cause he's the captain, and 'cause he's Luffy, but I'm not Luffy so it's not up to me. But I want Usopp to be there, but I don't want him to get hurt, and he won't get hurt if he stays." Treva reaches up to tug irritably at something under her scarf. "It's the same with the Merry. I know there's a right answer, but I can't…"

Treva trails off. Her eyes go huge, before narrowing, her face drawing up with determination.

"I'm gonna find it. The right answer, I mean. I am."

Kaya considers her. With mixed feelings, she guesses, "You're going to convince Usopp to come with you?"

"What?" Treva blinks, thrown. "No. I'm gonna come up with a backup plan." She brightens, puffs out her chest, and plants her fists on her hips. "After all, I am the strate—"

"But what about Usopp?" Kaya interjects, with some urgency. Treva gives her an annoyed look, but allows the interruption. "It's always been his dream to be a pirate. This might be his only chance."

"Probably," Treva agrees with bone-chilling certainty, casual in her confidence. "But this way, nobody's gonna beat him up, and the Merry won't break, and Usopp can't get mad about the Merry breaking if it doesn't break. It's a decision everybody's gotta make at some point, so in Usopp's case, it's not up to me." She leans back, hands still on her hips, so that she's looking up at the Merry. "They sell ships built for the Grand Line at Loguetown, so we should still be fine until we reach Water 7, so long as we get one of those. Nami should still be able to get us to the Baratie and Cocoyashi on time, even in the little boats, 'specially if I…"

Treva goes on babbling, but her stream of consciousness means nothing to Kaya, whose hands ball into fists in her own lap.

It's your dream, Usopp, she thinks, clear as a bell even through the hot tangle of emotion she feels herself gripped by. No matter how hard it's going to be, he can't just…

Kaya hiccups. "I can't just…"

"Kaya?" Treva squeaks, startled, at the same time as Usopp's voice calls a panicked, "Kaya?!" from the cliffside staircase. He takes the remaining steps three at a time and sprints the stretch of the pier between them. Perfectly predictably, he trips, falls on his face, and hurries back to be standing all before Kaya or Treva can comment.

"What happened?" he questions, directed at Kaya but with a bewildered look thrown Treva's way for good measure. Treva, for her part, only shakes her head rapidly in a panic. I didn't do it, the socially competent part of Kaya's brain deciphers that she's trying to convey.

The rest of Kaya inhales sharply, wipes roughly at her eyes, and rises resolutely to her full height. With all the authority she'd almost forgotten she holds, Kaya points unwaveringly to the Going Merry.

"You'll need a ship, Usopp," she says, and fortunately, Usopp and Treva are both too mystified to notice when her voice cracks. "Every good pirate does, after all."

"Huh?" Usopp exchanges another look with Treva. It's of little aid to him. "Kaya, what are you talking about?"

"You're going to join the Strawhat Pirates," she tells him, slowly, letting her arm lower back down. "This is your chance, Usopp. An opportunity like this doesn't mean anything if you don't take it."

"Kaya…" Usopp's expression falls, and it's only because Kaya knows him that she can recognize it to be conflicted rather than simply pitying. "I can't go, not like this. Not right now."

"But you have to!"

"And I will!" Usopp insists. Beside him, Treva looks from Kaya to him and back again like she's watching a ping-pong match. Distantly, Kaya remembers watching her mother and father's occasional disagreements unfold, and her heart aches. "I will. I haven't given up, okay?"

Kaya shakes her head. "I don't want to be your excuse not to go, Usopp. When am I going to be well enough for you to feel ready? For you to feel like it would be a safe bet? It's never going to happen if I let everyone keep coddling me."

She looks up to the Merry. If Usopp is here, then the fighting must all be over now. Today could almost be a normal day out—and, in the first place, why had Kaya been so hesitant about being outside the past year again? It's nice. She should have never let Kuro convince her otherwise.

"Even if it's riskier that way, you don't gain anything by staying put." She snorts. It must be the most undignified sound Usopp has ever heard her make. He and Treva are both visibly scandalized. "I should know."

Treva shifts her weight from foot to foot, restless, rabbit-round eyes boring imploringly into Kaya. "But the Merry will…"

Kaya doesn't waver. "Ships were built to sail, Treva. That's my answer."

Treva's mouth clicks shut and her eyes widen even further, with what Kaya hopes is misplaced wonder rather than the alternative of tears. Usopp, for his part, sheepishly rubs the back of his head. "You're… really serious about this, huh?"

Kaya smiles. "I am."

Usopp, uncertainly, smiles back. "I… I see." He laughs, nervously. "Of course! Of course." Usopp gulps. "I'm really doing this. I'm really—" More nervous laughter, louder this time, accompanied by the crossing of his arms and the throwing back of his head in played up pride. "The great Captain Usopp was already a real pirate, after all! Captaining a little caravel like this through the East Blue will be a piece of cake compared to that time I had to single-handedly maneuver a daring escape from nothing less than a marine admiral!"

"Luffy is the captain," Treva corrects, affronted. "And we're headed for the Grand Line, Usopp."

Usopp balks.

"We're what—?!" he starts, but quickly recovers, expertly picking his jaw up off the floor. "I mean, naturally! It's only natural that we'll be sailing through the East Blue for the express purpose of reaching the Grand Line! MWAHAHAHAHA!"

"Right!" Treva, mollified, agrees, smug as anything. "Ha! Ha! Ha!"

They go on in that way, laughing, and Kaya soon finds that she can't help but join them. Maybe it's just the relief of finally resolving to move forward, and maybe it's a touch of hysteria in the face of a future she wasn't blessed to see before it's upon her. Probably, it's both.

But, for now, and for the first time in what feels like a lifetime, Kaya laughs.

XXX

When nighttime once again falls on the Gecko Islands, it's with significantly less stress, at least for Nami. Kaya's promised the Strawhats a ship, and had invited them to make use of her guest rooms for the night; and that had just been the cherry on top, since Nami wasn't expecting it. Their operation had gone off mostly successfully, and the Black Cat Pirates were sent sailing off together with their former captain to turn themselves in. Jango had gone in a different direction, apparently to make something of himself. All's well that ends well.

Except, well. Their operation, while successful, had also gone completely off the rails on every front that hadn't been Nami's responsibility. She wouldn't normally be surprised, but the day's events did leave Nami with a few questions.

"Treva," Nami opens with, eyeing the back of Treva's head as she sees to the task of brushing Treva's hair for her. Nami is sat on her knees on a guest bed, and Treva is cross legged. Treva's hair is… in all honesty kind of unfortunate, brittle and hemp-like, but Nami hasn't gotten the sense that it's been badly taken care of. At least, not before Treva set out on her own. "Did everything today go the way you saw it would?"

"Yeah!" Treva says, perfectly happy. "Everything worked out."

"Right." Nami grimaces. "In the end."

"Yes!"

"And that is how you saw it go?"

Nami is between brush strokes, so Treva nods rapidly, proud of herself. Nami resists the urge to pinch the bridge of her nose, knowing it would send a… not wrong, but also not useful, message.

"Treva," Nami repeats, slowly. She keeps brushing, to try to keep Treva pacified. "Even if everything turns out well for us in the end, there's some situations where the process is going to matter too. In most situations, actually, I'd prefer it if our plans went to plan."

"That's statistically unrealistic," Treva says, still pacified, still happy, and like she's on about the weather. In a way, Nami supposes, it is a forecast.

"... And why is that?"

"Because Luffy's around." Treva, again, sounds proud, now of Luffy. Nami thinks about dribbling his empty, rubber head like a basketball. "Nothing ever happens the way other people thought it should, when Luffy's around. So I don't bother."

"So long as it all works out in the end."

"Right!" Treva nods once more, cheerful and obviously sure that Nami is on her same page. "No matter what else happens!"

Nami does pinch the bridge of her nose, then. She'll have to try again another time, maybe after yelling at Luffy about it.

She'll need to get this business sorted before they reach the Conomi Islands.

XXX

The new ship is nice, Zoro concludes, already well and settled for a nap off to one side of the front deck. Probably the nicest ship he'd ever been on, actually, even if that's not a very high bar to clear. Sturdy, lots of space to practice his swordsmanship, and Kaya had even been generous enough to load it up with some supplies for them; Zoro really can't imagine a more ideal scenario, though he's fairly certain he now knows at least one person who could.

Except, well. Imagine might not be the right word.

Restless, Zoro makes a face and rolls over so that his back is to the railing where Luffy, Nami, and Treva are overlooking the scene on the shore. One of Usopp's brats—the tall one with the stupid beanie, if Zoro recalls correctly—had attempted to smuggle himself along with the supplies, and from the sounds of it, Usopp, Kaya, and Merry-the-namesake are still in the process of wrangling him, while Usopp is still in the additional process of saying his goodbyes to his loved ones. That, Zoro takes no issue with. If anything, it's a good sign that his newest crewmate is the type who will be missed.

The thing is, is that Zoro is a straightforward kind of guy, and he's never had the patience for situations that insist on tying themselves up in knots. There's a saying, he's vaguely sure, about cutting those knots, and Zoro is nothing if not a swordsman. That's how he's always been, and how he's always faced the future: time, much like Zoro, has never in his experience moved in any direction but forward.

Right up until the other day, that is.

Despite his taking preventative measures and rolling over, as established, the chatter of conversation still washes over him from the railing.

"We should put up the flag soon, because the Merry is a pirate ship and it doesn't look right without the flag Usopp designed," Treva is babbling, audibly rocking back and forth between her heels and the balls of her feet. She jumps about, then, suggesting spirited pointing. "It's pretty much naked like this!"

Luffy laughs. Nami, dubiously, questions, "He designed one already?"

A series of thumps indicate that Treva's clambered half-over the rail for a better vantage point. "He will."

A loaded—on Nami's end, if not on Luffy's—quiet follows, though Treva evidently doesn't mind it much, quickly filling the dead air with her plans for the transponder snails, and how Usopp will offer to help her build the most wonderful enclosure for them in the storage room, and how the storage room itself will double just fine for a communications office until they can get a hold of some guy she only calls "Franky."

It's all nonsense to Zoro, but at the same time, it would be irresponsible to ignore her completely. At the very least, it's good to know in advance that he should try to keep an eye on the Merry, to keep whatever terrible thing Treva's predicted from happening to it. That much, if nothing else, is straightforward, and he can understand it. He's been forewarned and forearmed, and Zoro is three times as good at being armed as a regular person.

But he doesn't exactly know how he feels about the other things Treva knows, and especially the things she knows about him. He hasn't even told Luffy, his captain, about Kuina yet—though, from Treva's perspective, maybe he has and that's how she's gotten a hold of the information. He's a private person, and it's… disconcerting, even if it's not the kid's fault. Nami probably gets it, but Zoro isn't in the slightest comforted by having anything in common with that woman.

It's the kind of situation, Zoro suspects, where no one is really in the right or in the wrong. One of those situations that just kind of stinks. Sure, hypothetically, Treva could just never look into the future again, but—

Well.

If there had been someone to warn Kuina about that staircase in advance, his own privacy would have been the very last of Zoro's concerns. It's too late for that, now, and there's no use dwelling on it, but it still weighs on Zoro when he's not careful to keep his mind off of it.

He feels himself scowl, and contemplates giving up on that nap for now and picking up his swords to train. Before he can decide either way, though, little footsteps patter his way from behind, and a thump signals that Treva's plopped down to sit next to him. Nami's wary, warning look prickles on the back of his neck, but only briefly.

For almost two minutes, Treva doesn't prompt Zoro. Not deliberately, at any rate. She fidgets and shuffles and shifts her weight, radiating discomfort, but nonetheless remains put. It's unusual for her to seek him out, so on sheer novelty, Zoro eventually finds the motivation to roll onto his back and crack a querying eye open.

As soon as his one open eye meets her pair, Treva jolts, spooked, and stares back at Zoro like a rabbit left in water. His frown only deepens. What does this brat have against him, anyway?

"What do you want?" he asks her, straightforwardly. Hearing him, Nami, still at the railing, glares at Zoro over her shoulder. Of course, Nami has been glaring at him more or less since the first time he'd spoken to her, so Zoro ignores it.

Treva, for her part, only flounders for a beat before squaring her shoulders. Her hands ball into fists in her lap, but she meets Zoro's gaze levelly, if with still-evident distress bubbling just beneath the surface.

"A month from now," she starts. Stops. Mulls whatever it is she wants to communicate some more, and continues. "At the Baratie."

"Yeah?" Zoro prompts, in the spirit of good sportsmanship, even though he has no idea what a Baratie is.

Treva exhales and stills entirely, finally. Around the edges of her carefully contained and completely unwarranted, thank you very much, panic, that unnatural confidence Zoro has already come to associate with the girl's portents bleeds through.

It's with that very confidence that she prophesies, "Mihawk will be there too."

Oh, Zoro thinks, and blinks at Treva in dawning comprehension. For the first time since meeting her, he recognizes a very particular kind of understanding stretch between the two of them. She's apologizing for the other day.

It's all that manages to occur to Zoro before his world devolves into so much white noise.

Oh, he thinks again, but louder this time, and feels himself not so much smile as bare teeth.

"Mihawk will be there, huh?" he repeats, and settles more fully, more comfortably onto his back, eyes on the vast expanse of the sky above.

Treva perks up, now in her element. More brightly than anything prior she's ever said to Zoro, she confirms, "He will! And he'll fight you!"

Zoro can't help it. A single, giddy, almost cackling laugh bubbles out of him. From the corner of his line of sight, he catches Treva beaming at the sound, so he's clearly in good company.

"Why is he doing that?" asks what is distinctly Usopp's voice, from much closer than Zoro had last seen him. At that, Zoro sits up to see that his other three crewmates are all accounted for and facing himself and Treva, Luffy amused, Usopp nervous and hiding bodily behind Nami, and Nami shooing Usopp off of her only semi-effectively. Their new situation normal, Zoro concludes.

"Yeah!" Luffy agrees, and crosses his arms in a great show of indignation. "Let us in on the joke, Zoro!"

"Zoro's gonna—" Treva starts, but Zoro drops his palm on top of her head and gives her hair a good, thorough muss. Treva's eyes screw briefly shut in surprise and her hands shoot up to latch lightly onto either side of his wrist, but notably, she makes no attempt to stop him. When she blinks up at him in baffled askance, Zoro only grins a wild animal sort of grin back.

Turning that grin around on the others, he tells them, "You'll know it when you see it."

"That's not ominous at all," Nami complains, to rapid nodding from Usopp, who she must have given up on dislodging.

Luffy, however, only laughs. "I can't wait!"

Something about the way he says it, about how Luffy goes about saying most things, really, fills Zoro with a sure, steady warmth he can't quite identify. Something like pride, maybe. Zoro feels no need to question it, only takes it as assurance that he's made the right choice with Luffy. It's with this feeling buoying his mood that Zoro stands, and it doesn't diminish even when Treva darts away from him to join Usopp behind Nami.

We'll figure it out, he thinks, about all three of them, Usopp, Nami, and Treva. Even as Treva stares intently at him from around Nami's knees, even as Usopp considers him dubiously from around Nami's head, and even as Nami continues to be the most suspicious person Zoro's ever known. We're a crew now.

As if to prove his point, Nami sighs, reluctantly agreeing with Luffy. "I guess there's no real point in waiting. Luffy, are you going to get the anchor?"

"On it!" Obligingly, Luffy's arms slingshot out over the side of the ship.

Yeah, Zoro thinks, and nods, for no one's benefit but his own. Yeah, we're gonna be just fine.