How Odd

by. homeostatis

Disclaimer: No own.

A/N: Just a quick drabble to help me break into the One Piece section. I've got longer stories coming up. Hopefully.

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Once, Robin wouldn't have believed that spending such a short amount of time with such an odd, small group would be the one bright spot in her entire life. Indeed, it sometimes scared her knowing how close she'd suddenly gotten to all of them. Her nights just weren't the same without spending them in the kitchen trying to dissuade their childish captain from his most recent flight of fancy. Her days filled with Zoro's suspicious gaze and Sanji's insistent, love struck chatter meant so much more to her than the past 20 years of hiding and secrecy. It was strange and sad but Robin wouldn't have it any other way. The laughter left a bittersweet taste in her mouth but, in the end, it was all worth it for that brief moment of happiness.

What a foreign sensation, this sudden happiness.

But of course, she'd been exposed to a whole new mess of "foreign sensations" since arriving on the Going Merry. Inexplicable games of sardines, for one; Captain's orders regarding his digesting disgusting amounts of meat, for another.

Robin really had no automated response to these things, certainly not as she usually did. So she'd smile and nod and go along with everything no matter how strange and foreign everything got. Just as the laughter of little children could spark the warmth in anyone's heart, so did the laughter of her new found nakama.

Sometimes she wished that forever meant long afternoons on the Going Merry. She wished so desperately that heaven sounded like Luffy's badgering and Zoro's muttering; that it sounded like Nami's pen scratching out a new map and Usopp's loud stories; that it was something like the aroma of Sanji's cooking (and the sounds of him physically beating Luffy away from the kitchen), and the sterile smell Chopper carried with him all over the ship.

For once she knew what it meant to want to live on; it was another new feeling she had to get used to.

Surprisingly, that wasn't very hard to do surrounded by her new friends.