Where the Compass Points

The sea was almost too calm. The Sunny glided forward with that lazy, content sway that made the sails barely whisper. Up in the crow’s nest, Zoro sat cross-legged with Wado Ichimonji balanced across his thighs, a square of oiled cloth folded around his fingers. He moved with slow, even strokes, polishing along the blade’s clean line until his reflection came into view—faint and warped, but familiar. He held it steady anyway, listening to the creak of wood under the steady wind, letting the quiet settle in the spaces training couldn’t fill.

He set Wado down and reached for Sandai Kitetsu. It still sang when he cleaned it, that dark hum of a blade that courted trouble. He liked it for that. He liked knowing it would draw blood if he lost focus. His thumb ran carefully along the spine, feeling every nick he’d earned and repaired. Eager, dangerous—just like always. It fit his hand like something meant to test him.

Beyond the rail, the horizon was a long, clean line. He could see it in that faint haze that meant good weather. Good weather meant fewer distractions. He could train without interruption. He could build himself back up, again and again, until the path forward didn’t blur.

By the time he reached Shusui, the sun had shifted higher, heat building under the wrap of bandages Chopper had insisted he still keep for a little while longer. The stitches were out. The ache was not. He ignored it. The weight of the black blade settled across his palms like something heavy and certain. He traced a cloth down the curve where light slid like water. Even standing still, Shusui had presence. It spoke to his ambition the way the sea spoke to ships—this is the only way.

He put the cloth aside and rose in a single, smooth motion, breath deepening on habit. His hands tied his haramaki tighter without thinking. He drew all three swords and let the moment stretch before the first set. No rush. He grounded through his feet and leaned into the first forms, a measured cadence he never broke. Muscle memory wrapped around patience and turned it into precision.

The world narrowed. Three-Sword Style wasn’t a thought but a rhythm through his bones. He held back nothing, not with the sea so steady and the ship so sure beneath him. Each repetition burned a clean line through his doubts, and yet some days it didn’t feel like enough. Not today. Today, everything felt heavier. The title he chased hung above him like storm clouds that never rained, always out ahead, always testing his stride.

He exhaled through his nose, jaw clenched around Wado’s hilt. Cut. Pivot. Guard. Push. The air sliced around him and closed again, leaving him alone with the sound of his breath and the soft slap of sweat falling to the planks. His shoulder gave a protest that he smothered with the next turn. There was no room for softness. Mihawk’s eyes flashed through his memory like a knife point catching light. That calm, measured gaze didn’t haunt him. It dared him. It set the bar and left it untouched, waiting.

He took the pace higher until it bordered on reckless. The ship moved, wood popping a little as if to caution him. He adjusted his stance without losing tempo. Frames of motion stacked on each other: strike high, sweep low, roll the hip, block and return. He chased the perfect line the way a man chases the horizon even knowing it won’t be caught.

His hands were steady even when his lungs started to protest. He didn’t slow. The ache in his back spread like a slow, dull tide, and he let it. Pain told him where he was thin. Pain filled the places doubt tried to creep into when the crew was laughing and the sun was warm and he could almost forget how far he still had to climb.

A gull screamed overhead and then faded. Somewhere below, Usopp’s voice carried, excited and rambling about some new gadget. The sound reached him and slipped off like water. He focused on the next set, then the next. His shoulders burned. He watched the sweat slide along Shusui’s hamon and drip from the tip. Beautiful and ordinary. A sword didn’t care about who wielded it unless that person had the will to make it listen.

He pushed harder. His mind began to clear in the way it only did when he was right at the edge of what he could stand. Everything irrelevant fell away. He was breath, blade, and balance. He was the promise he’d made with the sky watching, the one that still pressed against him when nights were quiet and the crew slept safe around him. He would not be second. He would not be anything but the best.

When his grip finally trembled, he forced three more clean combinations. He refused the sloppiness that wanted to creep in, held on to the control that made every cut worth something. Then he stopped. He slid each sword home with care, a deliberate ritual meant to bring his heart rate down and his thoughts back from wherever they’d run to. He stood with his hands on the rail and breathed in slow, tasting salt and heat. The calm sea stretched around them as if it had never known a storm.

He sat again with Wado across his thighs and wiped a fresh line of oil along the blade. His chest still heaved, but the weight inside had shifted—heavier and somehow steadier. The ache in his back pulsed like a warning. He ignored it and wiped down the hilt. Duty first. Improvement next. Everything else after.

Wind curled up the mast, ruffling his hair and cooling the sweat on his skin. The sun climbed. The day waited. He rolled his shoulders, picked up the cloth again, and kept going.

The rope ladder thumped once against the mast, a careless rhythm that warned him a second before the inevitable.

“Zorooooo!”

He didn’t lift his eyes from Wado. “Use your inside voice or I’ll cut it out of you.”

A laugh drifted up with the wind. Then a head topped with a worn straw hat popped over the edge of the crow’s nest, followed by a gangly arm and a scuffed knee. Luffy swung himself in like he belonged there—which he did, somehow—landing with a thud that made the floorboards complain.

“It’s daytime. Inside voices are for night,” Luffy said with the gravity of a man delivering a rule he’d never once followed. He crouched, hat tipping back as he peered at the blade. “You’re still cleaning? You were doing that this morning.”

“I was training this morning.” Zoro’s cloth made another slow pass. “I’m cleaning now. One thing at a time.”

“Why can’t it be both?” Luffy edged closer, hand hovering. His fingers waggled like they were bored on their own. “Shiny. It’s the white one. Wado. Right?” Pride colored his words, like he’d gotten a quiz answer right.

Zoro shot him a sideways look he refused to let turn into a smile. “Don’t touch.”

Luffy froze, hand two inches from the blade, and then grinned brighter. “What happens if I touch?”

“You lose your fingers.”

“What if my fingers are stretchy?”

“You’ll still be annoying.”

Luffy rocked back onto his heels, unbothered. He shifted his weight around the small space like a restless breeze, picking up nothing, putting down nothing, letting his gaze snag on everything. “So what were you doing before? The spinny thing with all three. It looked cool. You were like fwoosh fwoosh—” He mimed slashes in the air, complete with sound effects, almost clocking the mast with his elbow.

Zoro caught his wrist without looking up and pushed it down. Warm skin. Familiar. He let go like he hadn’t noticed. “If you’re going to imitate me, at least do it right.”

“I can do it right,” Luffy declared, already getting it wrong. “What do you call it? The move.”

“Training.” He flipped the cloth, ran a fresh edge along the blade. “The names are mine. You don’t need them.”

“I want them.” Luffy knelt, cheek nearly on the floor as he squinted along the sword as if the name might be etched there. He was close enough that Zoro could see the faint smudge of soot on his cheekbone and the way the sea’s reflection danced in the black of his eyes. “You always look serious up here. Like you’re thinking so hard your head’s gonna pop.”

“Then stop interrupting me.”

“I’m not interrupting. I’m keeping you from getting too serious.” Luffy tipped his head sideways, hair brushing the edge of Wado’s guard. Zoro moved the sword out of range, a small shift. Luffy’s gaze followed it like a cat. “Why do you clean them so much if you’re just gonna get them dirty again?”

“Because they’re not toys.” He set Wado down, slid it into its sheath with a soft click that was always a little satisfying, then reached for Kitetsu. Luffy’s eyebrows rose when the dark red hilt came into view. His hand crept forward again.

“Don’t,” Zoro said, and this time there was just enough steel in it to cut through the play.

Luffy sat back on his heels, hands lifting in surrender. “Kitetsu bites.”

“Sometimes.” He brought the cloth over the unearthly gleam, careful, steady. “It doesn’t like idiots.”

Luffy beamed. “I like it.”

“Of course you do,” Zoro muttered. “It’s troublesome.”

“‘Troublesome’ like me?”

He didn’t answer. The corner of his mouth wanted to twitch. He refused to let it. The wind shifted, bringing the smell of salt and something frying below. Sanji must have started lunch early. Luffy’s nose twitched. It did that every time, like he was part hound. His attention tugged that way and then snapped back to Zoro, relentless in its own way.

“Show me the move again,” Luffy said, softer. “The one with the step.” He lifted his foot, awkwardly placing it where he assumed Zoro’s had been. “Like that?”

Zoro snorted. “If you stand like that, you’ll fall on your face.” He nudged Luffy’s ankle with his bare toes, easing it out, turning his knee. He didn’t think about it until after his foot left Luffy’s skin, and then he did think about it, because Luffy stilled, eyes flicking up to meet his.

“What about my hands?” Luffy asked, voice smooth again, as if there had been no small pause at all.

“You don’t hold swords, so your hands don’t matter.”

“They matter if I’m pretending,” Luffy said, and there was something in the tilt of his mouth that made Zoro look away first.

He set Kitetsu down and reached for Shusui. The heft settled him. He let the cloth pass over the hamon while he weighed whether to give Luffy anything. The captain waited, a patient that didn’t fit him, hat shadowing his face. Zoro sighed and stood, drawing Shusui and Wado in a slow, efficient movement.

“Watch,” he said, because this was familiar. This was easy.

He stepped into the basic form, not the full combination that would crowd the space. He moved the way he had thousands of times—shoulders loose, hips aligned, weight forward and then back, the rhythm steady and contained. Luffy watched every part, serious now. Zoro felt the gaze like heat on his skin, a pressure he knew and tolerated, a pressure he didn’t mind. He finished the set and slid the blades away, breath not even changed.

Luffy let out a low sound of appreciation that told Zoro he’d actually been paying attention. “That was cool,” he said, as if he hadn’t seen it countless times. “Do you think about Mihawk when you do that?”

Zoro didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. Luffy’s mouth pressed into a line, then eased.

“You’re gonna beat him,” Luffy said, like he was telling him the time of day. “You know that, right?”

Zoro rolled his shoulder, feeling the familiar pull of the healing muscle. “That’s the idea.”

Luffy reached out without thinking and poked lightly at Zoro’s bicep, as if testing the word “idea” for weight. Zoro let the touch land and fall away. It was nothing. It was something. It was the kind of nothing that had been part of their days for so long it had become its own comfort.

“Can I hold Wado?” Luffy asked suddenly, bright again.

“No.”

“Please?”

“No.”

“Just for a second?”

“Luffy.”

Luffy huffed and sprawled on his back, hat sliding to cover his eyes. He lay there, arms spread, taking up too much space in the small circle of the nest. After a beat, one hand crept toward where Zoro had set Wado, fingers inching like a crab.

Zoro set his sandal on Luffy’s knuckles without looking up from wrapping the cloth back around the oil. Luffy yelped and laughed, squirming. “You’re mean.”

“Good to know you can still feel your hands.” He lifted his foot. Luffy flexed his fingers and then folded them behind his head like he’d meant to rest anyway.

“Do you ever get bored?” Luffy asked the sky.

“Not when you’re around.”

Luffy’s head turned. His hat brim bumped Zoro’s hip. “Is that a compliment?”

“It’s a warning.” Zoro slid Wado into place and sat, legs out, arms crossed, letting the breeze cool the sweat on his neck. Luffy’s shoulder pressed against his calf, warm and solid, like he’d always fit there. Below, the ship made its content noises. Above, gulls circled. In the small world of the crow’s nest, time took its lazy stretch.

“What if I trained with you?” Luffy asked, voice lighter, teasing. “I can do the spinny thing. I’ll name it. Gum-Gum—”

“Don’t.”

“—Sword Swirl—”

“Absolutely not.”

“—Zoro Twirl.”

Zoro groaned, unable to keep the edge of laughter out of it. “Get out.”

Luffy sat up, bright again, his grin wide enough to split the sky. “Make me.”

He leaned in a fraction, and Zoro felt the tug toward that gravity like always. He shoved Luffy’s hat down over his eyes instead and stood, the motion easy, the routine intact. “Lunch,” he said.

“Meat,” Luffy agreed instantly, as if they’d rehearsed this, as if they always would. He bounced to his feet and, with one last quick, darting reach that missed the swords by a mile, vaulted over the edge and slid down the ladder, laughter trailing after him like a flag.

Zoro watched the hat disappear and let the quiet settle again. The weight inside him had softened, not lessened. He picked up the cloth, turned Shusui so its edge caught the light, and worked until the steel showed him a clear reflection. Only then did he follow.

Dinner was loud before it even started. Sanji had made something with too many little garnishes for Zoro to trust, a riot of color that drew oohs from Usopp and Brook and a serene smile from Robin. Nami made a pleased noise when she tasted the sauce. Luffy’s eyes were huge, a starved man at a banquet. He was already halfway across the table, mouth open like a cannon, when Sanji planted a fork in front of him like a barricade.

“Sit,” Sanji ordered. “Chew. Use utensils like a civilized human, captain or not.”

Luffy sat. He did not, in any universe, look civilized. “Sanji, it smells amazing,” he said, which in Luffy-language meant he was seconds from attempting to inhale the entire platter.

Zoro reached for the plate nearest him and dragged it closer. Sanji’s foot thumped his shin a second later, light but pointed. “Hands off, marimo. That one’s for Robin-chwan.”

Zoro moved it back with a lazy shove and took the plate intended for him. He could smell the butter and sear; his stomach answered with an eager pull. He took a bite. It was good. He wouldn’t say that out loud. He chewed, swallowed, and let his face settle into neutral.

Sanji watched him like a raptor. “Any words of praise rattling around in that empty head? Or does the subtlety go to waste on your barbarian tongue?”

Zoro took another bite and shrugged. “Edible.”

Forks paused. Sanji’s cigarette tilted. “Edible.”

Luffy laughed and reached over Zoro’s wrist with pure audacity, stealing the piece of meat midair and tossing it into his mouth. “Edible is good!” he declared, as if solving the argument. “More, please.”

Sanji’s heel found Zoro’s shin again, less polite this time. “Don’t encourage him.”

“I’m not the one stealing from my own plate.” Zoro speared another bite and held it higher, forcing Luffy to lean dangerously far over the table. Jinbe’s large hand anchored Luffy’s collar with practiced ease.

“Eat your own portion, Captain,” Jinbe said, patient affection smooth in his voice.

“My portion’s too small,” Luffy complained. “Zoro’s portion is bigger.”

“Because he doesn’t deserve delicate work,” Sanji snapped, slamming another dish down with enough force to rattle the cutlery. “He can’t appreciate it anyway. Might as well give him chunks and a rock.”

Zoro glanced at the arrangement—careful fans of sliced meat, drifts of herbs. He slid a finger through one little swirl of sauce just to be contrary. Sanji snarled like an affronted cat.

“Don’t smear it!”

Zoro licked the sauce off his finger and kept his expression bored. “Tastes like sauce.”

Nami sighed like she was watching toddlers fight over a toy. “Can you two not? I want to eat in peace for once.”

“Tell him to learn some manners,” Sanji said, pointing his cigarette at Zoro.

“Tell him to stop making food that needs a paintbrush,” Zoro countered.

Luffy, somehow under both their elbows, reached with octopus speed and liberated a piece from Sanji’s own plate. Sanji’s head snapped like a whip. “Captain!”

Luffy chomped, eyes closing in bliss. “Sanji, this is great. Zoro, your face looks funny when you chew.”

“I chew like a person,” Zoro argued, which only made Luffy giggle harder. He bumped Zoro’s shoulder with his own, a casual nudge that lingered a heartbeat longer than necessary before Luffy bounced away to try and steal from Nami. She stabbed him with her fork, daintily, as warning. He retreated, grinning, then reappeared at Zoro’s side as if drawn there.

Sanji set a bowl down in front of Luffy with a huff. “Fine. Extra for the idiot. Stay out of other plates.”

“Thanks!” Luffy said, already shoveling. He grabbed a bite from Zoro’s plate anyway on the way back. Zoro leaned in, elbowing him lightly in the ribs in a way that was more habit than admonishment.

“Eat your own,” he said, but he didn’t move his plate away.

Sanji caught the motion. His eyes narrowed. “Amazing. You growled at me for breathing near your sake last week, but you’ll let him eat off your plate like a raccoon.”

Zoro flicked him a look. “He’d take it either way.”

“That’s not the point.”

“What is the point?” Zoro asked, feigning innocence. He took his time cutting the next piece, then held it in midair, letting Luffy’s eyes track it like a cat again. He didn’t hand it over. Luffy made an impatient noise, cheeks puffed with his current mouthful, hand hovering halfway. The impulse to give in rose, hot and stupid. Zoro bit the piece himself.

Luffy groaned dramatically. “Rude.”

“Eat,” Zoro told him, voice softer. Luffy did.

Usopp tried to fill the air with a story about a fish that bit his slingshot. Chopper chimed in with something about bones being strong with calcium and kept glancing at Luffy, relieved each time he saw him eat. Robin watched with her quiet amusement, letting the edges of her smile hint that she saw more than she’d say.

Sanji wasn’t letting it go. He leaned on his palm, studying Zoro like he was trying to parse out a new enemy. “You could at least say thank you.”

“For what? Doing your job?” Zoro took a sip of water, unbothered.

“For not burning water today,” Sanji shot back.

Luffy laughed so hard he choked. Zoro thumped his back automatically. The warmth of contact was sudden and simple; it fired along nerves he didn’t have a name for. He pulled his hand back.

“Careful,” he muttered.

Luffy flashed him a quick, sticky grin and snatched a piece of bread from Sanji’s basket with audacity so pure Sanji didn’t even slap his hand in time.

“Hey!”

“You said extra for the idiot,” Luffy reminded him, already tearing it in half. He pushed the larger half against Zoro’s forearm. “Here. This is good with the sauce.”

Zoro stared at the bread a beat too long. He took it. Sanji made a noise like he’d bit down on a lemon.

“So he gets praise. He gets my food. He gets to ruin my plating. Anything else, marimo? Want to propose with a steak knife while you’re at it?”

Zoro’s eyebrow lifted. “You jealous of a plate now, cook?”

“Of your table manners? Never.”

Luffy blinked between them, ducking under the tension like it was a low beam he was used to walking under. He opened his mouth wide and, without shame, leaned toward Sanji’s plate.

“Don’t you—”

He succeeded anyway, triumphant. “Sanji, you put lemon on this one. Zoro, try it.”

“I have my own food,” Zoro said, but Luffy was already pressing the pilfered bite forward, expectant, eyes bright. It was ridiculous to let it hang there. Zoro leaned in and took it from Luffy’s fingers. Their knuckles brushed. Something small and sharp flashed through his chest. He chewed. “Too sour,” he said, to hide the feeling.

Luffy beamed like he’d won something anyway, then pivoted on a dime to reach for Nami’s glass. She swatted him. He yelped and laughed and stole from Brook instead, earning a musical scold. The room’s noise rose and fell around them, the normal chaotic tide of their lives.

Sanji lit a fresh cigarette with more violence than necessary, smoke coiling up around a face set in lines meant for Zoro but aimed at no one. Zoro pretended not to notice. He pretended not to track every time Luffy’s shoulder brushed his as Luffy leaned to reach, not to pay attention to the way Luffy’s laughter dropped into a low, pleased hum when Zoro pushed his plate a half inch closer to the center where Luffy could pick at it without crossing the table.

Nami finished her second glass and set it down with a measured clang. “If anyone flips this table, I’m docking allowances.”

Brook raised a hand. “May I have another—”

“No,” the crew said together.

Luffy leaned into Zoro again, warm and thoughtless, whispering around a mouthful, “Sanji gets weird about plates.” It wasn’t a secret. It was just an observation, delivered like the weather.

“Sanji gets weird about a lot of things,” Zoro replied, just loud enough to be heard.

“I heard that!” Sanji snapped.

“You were meant to,” Zoro said.

Luffy snorted and stole the last bite from Zoro’s plate without a shred of shame. Zoro let him. He told himself it was easier than fighting for it. He told himself it didn’t mean anything that Luffy’s fingers curled against his wrist for a second, quick and grounding, before Luffy was gone, hollering at Usopp about who would do the dishes.

Sanji collected plates with clipped motions, muttering about ungrateful swordsmen and their idiot captains. Zoro leaned back and watched Luffy dart and demand and laugh, the world bending around him as always. The undercurrent tugged at Zoro’s ankles, invisible and constant. He kept his expression neutral, the way he always had, and let the noise fill the space where words didn’t go.

Night on the Sunny settled like a blanket, the echo of dinner fading into the steady creak of wood and the hush of waves slipping under the hull. Lanterns burned low. Snoring threaded through the men's quarters, familiar and easy. Zoro stepped out into the cooler air with his swords where they belonged and the quiet that made the world manageable.

He made the usual round—decks, anchoring lines, the helm—steady feet on steady wood, the ship’s rhythm syncing with his breath. The sea stretched black and endless in every direction, moonlight cutting a pale path over it. He let his gaze sweep the dark and paused only when it snagged, as it always did, on the bow.

Luffy was sprawled over the lion figurehead like it was a pillow made for him. One leg slung off the edge, arms tucked loosely under his head, hat tipped forward to guard his face. He’d shoved his sandals off somewhere and lost one. His chest rose and fell in shallow, easy breaths. Every now and then he made a faint noise, half laugh, half sigh, as if stealing extra bites in a dream.

Zoro should have told him to sleep in a hammock like a normal person. He didn’t. He never did. He walked up to the prow and leaned against the railing a step away instead, the habit of it ingrained now. The sky arched out in an impossible sweep. The ocean whispered to itself. Luffy slept.

He looked small like this. He never looked small awake. Awake, he stretched to fill space, stretched to meet danger, stretched to meet hunger. Zoro had learned the shapes of those states. This one still caught him. It was the same every time; it still surprised him every time. It hit hard—fast, unfair—right through his ribs. Something hot and sharp that steadied into a quiet thrum. He named it the same thing he always named it: duty. Being first mate meant being a wall when Luffy forgot he needed one.

The wind lifted the brim of the hat, just enough to show the line of Luffy’s brow, soft in sleep, mouth relaxed. A strand of hair had stuck to his cheek. His hand twitched like he was reaching for something. Zoro’s fingers curled around the railing, resisting the stupid urge to brush it away.

He checked the horizon again. A thin line of cloud low in the east, silvered at the edge. Nothing close. The ship rode beautifully. Out here, it was easy to breathe.

The impulse to train rose, as steady as tide. He let it pass. The pull across his back ached when he inhaled too hard and reminded him of stitches and hands and too many eyes on him earlier. He shifted his stance instead and listened. He counted the heartbeats between each wave and let his thoughts line up behind each number and break like foam: enemies, weather, supplies, the route Nami wanted to take tomorrow, the way Luffy’s laugh had cut through Sanji’s griping tonight like it always did. He kept his jaw loose. He hadn’t realized his teeth were clenched.

A gull threw a pale shape across the deck and skittered away. Somewhere below, Franky turned in his sleep and a wrench fell, chiming once. Zoro cataloged it and moved on. He stepped closer to the figurehead, feet quiet. Luffy always made his weight feel like nothing; even asleep, he left gaps around himself that he expected the world to fill.

He could see the pulse at Luffy’s throat. He had to stop looking at that. He peeled his gaze away and pretended to examine the ropes.

“Meat,” Luffy mumbled, mouth barely moving. The hat slid further sideways. Zoro’s mouth tugged before he could stop it. He glanced back toward the galley, like there might be leftovers he could fetch and put under Luffy’s nose just to see him light up, even asleep. He didn’t move. That would be ridiculous.

The breeze shifted, cooler, drafting off a darker patch of water. Zoro looked up at the sky again and read it. The night was clean. The promise of calm didn’t loosen anything in his chest.

A few more steps and he could reach out and steady the hat without Luffy noticing. He told himself it was practical. If it blew off, they’d spend an hour at dawn listening to Luffy wail about it and Sanji complain as he fished it out. He reached, shoulders rolling to keep the tug from his scar easy, and pressed the brim down gently. His fingertips brushed Luffy’s temple, feather-light, leaving warmth behind. Luffy’s lashes fluttered. He quieted again, mouth curving faintly at one corner. Zoro’s hand froze in the air for one suspended heartbeat, then he drew it back. He kept the motion small, like any sudden jolt might crack something that seemed fragile only in this moment.

He settled back against the rail, one knee bent, posture loose. The scent out here was salt, old sun-baked wood, faint citrus from Nami’s latest cleaning spree. A thread of Luffy’s shampoo. He swallowed and shoved his attention outward again. The sea answered with its constant answer.

It would be easy to fall into the warmth of imagining them as they were a year ago, two years ago—less complicated, less aware. It would be easy to pretend that the surge he felt was only allegiance, only promise, only the thing he had spoken with both feet planted on the ground and both hands on his blades. He let himself pretend long enough to take a full breath. He released it, slow.

If someone boarded tonight, they would see an open ship, a captain sleeping out in the open like an offering. Their mistake. Zoro’s palm rested on Wado’s hilt, almost on its own. His swords bit cool into his hip, familiar and anchoring. He was ready. He was always ready, more so when Luffy lay stupidly still like this, all that force turned inward and quiet.

A wave slapped the hull harder. Luffy shifted, turning his face toward the sea and curling an arm under his chest. The hat teetered again. Zoro caught it this time and wedged it more securely against the lion’s carved mane. “Stay,” he told it, like it could listen. Luffy breathed out a soft little sound, almost a laugh. Zoro looked at him and told himself to keep watching the water.

He did. He counted the stars he could see through the thin clouds. He mapped the positions of every ship light that flickered faintly on the edge of the world and measured the distance to each. He listened for footsteps below and the telltale creak of someone else waking. Nothing moved but the sea.

The urge to sit on the figurehead, right at Luffy’s back, close enough that his warmth would brush Zoro’s knee, was ridiculous. He planted his feet and did not move. He let the heat settle in the base of his throat and called it adrenaline. Called it vigilance. Called it what it had to be.

He dragged his gaze back to Luffy one more time, just long enough to make sure nothing had changed, for his own stupid nerves. The line of his jaw, the open, trusting slackness of his hands. Zoro’s grip tightened around Wado’s hilt until his knuckles eased up, the spike of feeling finally smoothing out into something steady.

He was first mate. He had one job. He stood his watch and he watched his captain. The world could turn or stop; the sea could rise or flatten. As long as Luffy slept within arm’s reach, Zoro would keep the dark at the edges where it belonged. He told himself that had always been true. He refused to think about when it had started to feel necessary.

The ship breathed. The night held. Luffy slept. Zoro stayed.

The first warning was a taste in the air, metallic and sudden. Zoro lifted his head. The horizon had gone from clean black to a deeper shade he recognized, a line of shadow thickening where there shouldn’t be one. The wind shifted again, a fast, cold drop running along his skin. He straightened, every sense narrowing.

He waited for the next tell: the hush before a hit. It came. The ocean’s rhythm tripped. The hairs along his arms stood up.

“Dammit,” he muttered under his breath, already moving. The light on the water died as if someone had cupped a hand over the moon. The first gust came in sharp off the bow and hit hard enough to rattle a lantern against its hook. Clouds boiled, swallowing stars. He didn’t look away from Luffy.

The ship rolled. Not bad—yet. He braced, calculating angles, distance to the hatch, the time it would take to get from here to there if the next hit came sideways. He’d carry Luffy. He always had a map for this kind of thing in his head, a path through danger draped over their lives like a net. His hand closed over the edge of Luffy’s vest. Warm. Relaxed. Oblivious.

“Up,” he said, soft and firm, as if the word could sink through whatever easy dream held Luffy. “Captain. Wake up.”

A muttered noise. Barely a shift. The hat stayed stubbornly tipped. He could see the edge of Luffy’s mouth, parted, the faint sheen where he’d probably been drooling on the carved wood. Zoro’s jaw clicked.

The wind punched harder. He felt the pressure change in his ears, the threat under it. Somewhere aft, a rope cracked against a mast and a door slammed open below.

“Storm!” Franky’s voice bellowed from the galley hatch, too far and too late to be useful up here.

Zoro didn’t wait for the next announcement. He slid an arm under Luffy’s shoulders and another under his knees, lifting in one clean, practiced movement. Luffy was all fluttering lashes and a confused hum, head lolling against Zoro’s collarbone. Heat seeped through thin fabric and skin. He made a content sound, oblivious to the way the ship lurched on the next wave.

“Meat,” Luffy breathed into Zoro’s neck, soft and pleased, as if the world hadn’t tilted and the sky hadn’t opened its hand to strike.

“Not now,” Zoro said, breath tight. He adjusted his grip, keeping Luffy tucked in tight. The brim of the hat thumped against his chest. Zoro caught it with his chin and held it in place. One step back from the prow. The deck pitched, higher than before, the bow lifting too fast.

A wall of rain slammed into them, sudden and heavy, soaking them in one sheet. Cold tracked across his shoulders and down his back, the salt sting familiar even as his muscles locked to counterbalance the Sunny’s shift. He dug his heel into the groove of the deck planks he knew would catch and held on. Luffy’s fingers curled loosely in the fabric at Zoro’s ribs, clutching without awareness.

The next swell hit wrong, sideways. Water burst over the figurehead’s grin and grabbed for ankles. Zoro took it on his shin and moved anyway, turning his body so Luffy wasn’t the side that took the spray. The ship dipped; rain hammered. He bowed his head into it and made for the hatch.

Lantern light flickered weakly along the mast as the wind tried to tear it away. He felt the deck’s heartbeat change under his feet—from smooth to jittering, a skitter of strain along bolts and beams as the Sunny adjusted to the storm’s weight. The sails cracked like whips. Voices rose—Nami’s sharp orders from somewhere, Sanji hurling curses at the sky, Usopp yelping. The world narrowed to the narrow passage to the men’s quarters and the arms he refused to loosen.

“Zoro?” A breathy, confused question from the bundle in his arms. Luffy’s eyes slitted open, dark and unfocused. He blinked up at Zoro through wet lashes. “Cold.”

“Yeah.” He dropped his shoulder to bump the hatch with it and kicked it the rest of the way, the door banging inward. The warmth of the interior air hit his face like a small mercy.

He ducked through, careful with the hat, careful with the idiot attached to it. Luffy’s head lolled again, his nose brushing the side of Zoro’s throat. He could feel the ghost of a smile against his skin, absurd in this. “Meat,” Luffy mumbled again, plaintive, like a wish. “Sanji… gimme…”

“You’ll get your damn meat later,” Zoro said, voice rougher than he meant it to be. He edged around the hammocks, raised voices thudding faint through the walls as the storm smacked at the ship again. He set Luffy down on his usual spot with a care that felt dangerous, like it might show too much if anyone walked in and saw it. The hammock dipped gently, cradling. Luffy rolled toward the warmth automatically, reaching with a hand that caught Zoro’s haramaki and tugged once before it slid off.

Zoro pulled the thin blanket from the shelf and shook it out with one snap. He tucked it over Luffy’s shoulders, then stilled, fingers paused at the edge of his collarbone. Luffy’s face was open in sleep, the worry lines he wore awake smoothed out. The hat sat crooked over his hair. Zoro adjusted it, a firm push to settle it into the safe notch he’d used a hundred times, as if that could guard against anything but rain.

Another thump of water hit the hull. The ship groaned, then steadied. Zoro planted his palm briefly against the wood above Luffy’s head and let out a slow breath. He didn’t choose to; it escaped him. He looked down at the hands that could draw steel in the space between a heartbeat and settled on the blanket instead, dragging it higher. His thumb brushed a knuckle. He jerked it back like it had nerves of its own.

Luffy’s mouth moved around a faint smile, chasing whatever dream held him. “Z’ro,” he mumbled, voice small, half swallowed by the creak of the ship. The sound threaded through Zoro’s chest and tightened something he didn’t have time to examine.

He stepped back. The room felt smaller with him in it. He took one more second—two—watching the blanket rise and fall, the steady rhythm that had no right to feel like relief. He lifted his head. The storm outside hadn’t finished its temper. He was already turning toward the door.

“Stay,” he said to the idiot without meaning to, a breath of a word that wasn’t for the hat this time. Luffy didn’t hear. Maybe that was better.

Zoro left the men’s quarters and shouldered back into the wet and the wind. He pulled the door tight, feeling the give and the catch as it latched. The rain hit him full on again, loud and hard, fitting over his skin like an old, unwanted friend. He rolled his shoulder, felt the pull of old and new aches, and returned to the deck at a jog.

Nami’s shout snapped across the rain, pointing him to the starboard line. He grabbed it and leaned his weight, setting his feet as the Sunny fought and found her balance. The world was movement and dark and the burn of muscle. He kept one ear turned, as if he could still hear the soft, ridiculous murmur of “meat” above the chaos, anchored by it in a way that infuriated him and kept him steady.

He didn’t look back toward the hatch. He didn’t need to. Luffy would be there where he’d left him, out of the storm for once. Zoro gritted his teeth and held the line. The sea could throw whatever it wanted. He’d already done the only thing that mattered. He’d put his captain where the water couldn’t take him. The rest was just weather. He exhaled, rain running down his face like sweat, and braced for the next wave.