Inversion

Concept: Take one of each Straw Hats' key strengths or characteristics and invert it into a weakness.

The room was small, only just big enough for the five of them to stay in comfortably. Don't think there was no extra space at all, because there certainly was — enough for the doctors to pass between the beds, for the model human skeleton in the corner, for the stack of books Robin wanted to read, for Sanji's wheelchair to sit next to his cot, and for the two extra cots that were never taken.

Sometimes Sanji wondered if the arrangement would ever change. He couldn't remember how long he'd been there himself, and neither could he remember seeing anyone new brought in, or anyone leaving, either. It had always been him, Nami, Robin, Usopp, and the moss head. It never changed.

He wasn't sure whether he wanted it to or not.

However, it seemed he didn't have the choice.

The day was completely unremarkable.

Of course, no one expects the day their life changes to be a remarkable day — not before the change, anyhow. It was only afterwards that things became noteworthy.

The day, as expected, was positively average. No large amount of attention was brought to the change, not immediately, though it was silently acknowledged. The change itself was nearly as silent as their acknowledgement of it.

When the doctors lead him into the room, the boy had made a few protestations that he 'didn't need to be here,' but he'd been pushed into one of the extra cots and fell quiet since.

The cot he'd been placed in was the one directly next to Sanji's. Sanji took the opportunity — as the other stared blankly at the door, as if awaiting something — to get a good look at him.

The boy had knotted black hair and dark blue eyes with bags underneath them. He was ridiculously skinny, and the baggy clothes he wore made him seem even skinnier. His skin was pale and dry looking, and his eyes were unfocused.

He didn't talk again for a long time.

They learnt a week later that his name was Luffy.

The moss head didn't talk because he couldn't. Luffy didn't talk because he didn't want to.

The concept was fairly easy to grasp for the others. They could still communicate with the moss head just fine, even if they still didn't know his name, and in this place, one could have many a reason to not want to speak. It didn't bother them.

What bothered them was that he didn't eat, either.

At first, they hadn't though much of him trying to pawn off his vegetables onto one or another of them; it was perfectly natural of a teenager to give away food they didn't want to eat. It wasn't until they noticed that he would do so with every little thing on his plate that things changed.

They tried just plain not accepting his food from him, hoping he would eat it himself, but the attempt was fruitless. When he realised they wouldn't take his food anymore, Luffy stood up and dumped his tray out the window.

This, of course, earned him a lecture about wasting food from Sanji, who then proceeded to place himself in charge of Luffy's diet.

Cooking was something Sanji had always liked doing, second only to soccer.

Before he'd been paralysed from the waist down, he'd been a star player on his school's team. But that was years ago. Or was it? Time was a difficult thing in these walls. It made him wonder, if he hadn't been in the car that day, where would he be now?

They wouldn't let him cook, here. It was a shame, because it was the only one of his two passions that he could still do somewhat competently. Still, he paid close attention to the eating habits of his current 'roommates'.

Nami didn't overly care what she was eating, so long as it was well made, she wasn't picky. She would ignore everything else so that she could concentrate on eating and then take a nap as soon as she was done.

Robin had a fondness for rich, savoury foods, he'd noticed. She'd always give a hum or smile of appreciation more than usual when she was given something savoury. She enjoyed tea as well, though the moss head always had to be careful that it wasn't too hot when he helped her drink it.

The moss head was taken to a different room at a different time of day for his meals. Feeding him was a more complicated process than feeding them, his jaw being the way it was. During their mealtimes, he would instead help Robin eat, as she would have had a much harder time doing it by herself.

Usopp liked foods that had a strong flavour. If Sanji had to guess why, he'd say it was because Usopp needed more than most people to get a distinct flavour out of things. He also liked seafood of all kinds, and he seemed to like things with a creamy texture.

And Luffy…

It was a struggle, but he'd managed to force a handful of peas down Luffy's throat once. He hadn't missed the expression of guilt, shame, and fear on the younger's face as it went down.

Later that night, Luffy spent a suspicious amount of time in the bathroom, and came back with his mouth smelling of mint toothpaste overlaying something sharply unpleasant.

That was about the time Sanji gave up trying to make Luffy eat as a lost cause. He would probably only make things worse, anyway.

Usopp liked to tell fantastic stories.

Some of them were hard to believe, but all of them were true. He had a scar to prove nearly every one.

The scars varied in sizes, from the little pockmarks on his leg from the time he'd gotten on the bad side of a particularly vicious chicken, to the diagonal cut all the way across the back of his hand from when he'd gone fishing with his father and gotten a fish hook stuck through his skin.

But the most noticeable scar he had by far, and also the one he was being treated for, came along with his most enthralling story.

His father was apparently in a very dangerous field — one where he'd made enemies — as Usopp had been kidnapped and taken hostage. He didn't give them many details, but they knew two things that came out of the incident; the kidnappers had cut off Usopp's nose at some point, and it ended with Usopp's father taking a bullet to the head.

The head doctor had a young grandson named Chopper who loved hearing Usopp's stories, though he wouldn't ever admit it. Chopper, as it seemed, was either incapable of growing hair, or a cancer patient. However, Robin heard he was being treated in the psychiatric ward for a mental disorder of some kind.

Whichever possibility it was a result of, Chopper didn't get to visit them very often. They saw him less than they saw Franky, a former patient of their eclectic ward who still came by for monthly follow-ups, even after almost a decade had passed. Usopp theorised he still came despite being cleared simply for the nostalgia.

According to Franky, the skeleton in the corner was named 'Brook,' after a kindly, eccentric musician who used to come in and play for the patients, but died at about the same time they decided to put a model skeleton in the room.

The six of them would later swear they heard violin music faintly that night.

Luffy slowly became more open to talking to them.

With that, came the discovery that Luffy wasn't exactly very bright — or at least not very vocally capable. After all, Nami had a similar problem carrying out conversations, yet she was probably the smartest out of all of them, save Robin. So they thought that maybe Luffy just had a problem with his speech.

Then they gave him some simple math problems, and effectively busted that theory.

In the past, the one thing that bonded the patients of their ward together was that none of them had any family in the world.

Sanji lost his last relative, his adoptive father, in the same accident that cost him his legs.

Robin's mother died in childbirth, and her father abandoned her.

Nami's mother had been murdered, and her sister died in the same storm that had Nami committed to the ward.

Usopp's mother died of illness, and his father was lost in the hostage incident.

The moss head's family was as lost to them as the rest of his story was.

Whatever the case was, the patients of their little ward had that one fact true invariably.

Until Luffy, that is.

Granted, he only had a single half-brother, and that half-brother spent a large amount of time in the hospital himself, but still, it was more family than the rest of them had.

The first time he met Luffy's brother, Sanji couldn't help but notice how cold he was when they shook hands, and how he used wristbands to cover most of his arms.

"You know, I get myself stuck in the hospital all the time," Luffy's brother, Ace, had remarked jovially. "Maybe next time, I'll ask them to put me here with you guys to recover."

Ace was true to his word. A month later, he was brought in and lain upon the second extra cot — though, really, it was the only extra cot by that point — on Luffy's other side.

"You tried again?"

"Yeah."

The two had an exchange to a similar effect every time Ace was brought in. The rest weren't sure exactly what they meant by it, but they had their theories.

"Still trying?"

"Of course. You know I don't give up."

"Again?"

"Yes, again."

"You keep trying, and you keep failing."

"Oh, come on! I know I'll get it next time."

"Please, Ace… Don't."

Ace only ever stayed for a few days at a time. After the fourth time he left, recuperated once again only to be back in a month's time, Luffy broke down.

He told them everything about why Ace kept coming in for 'visits.' He told them how his brother had been trying to off himself for years; how he hated himself to the core and thought he shouldn't have been born. How Luffy desperately didn't want him to succeed, how he couldn't even say anything about it or try to talk Ace out of the self-hatred because it would make him the biggest hypocrite on the planet.

Sanji went to bed that night with a whole new perspective on Luffy's eating disorder.

The day she was born, Robin's father had looked between his deformed daughter and dead wife, left alone, and never came back.

Robin was left to be raised in the ward. She couldn't be turned over to an orphanage, as no local orphanage was equipped for a girl with no arms.

The doctors wanted to give her artificial limbs — it was no impossibility in this day and age. However, the hospital was a small one with no large amount of funding; they simply didn't have enough money for it.

So Robin was left without any hands with which to read her precious books. Luckily, there was always someone willing to turn the pages for her. Whether it be one of the doctors or one of her friends, she was ever grateful for it.

Sometimes the doctors would come and take Nami somewhere else. It never lasted for too long, but they still worried. She never told them where they took her or why, just that it was a safe place.

They still worried.

Even though Nami distanced herself, she was still one of them. And if she weren't going to tell them why when was taken away for separate treatment, then they would worry about what she could possibly be keeping from them.

Even though she was irritable, forgetful, and distant, even though she sometimes couldn't hear them for the ringing in her ears, slept half the day and was awake half the night, they still cared about her. She was just as troubled as the rest of them.

And although she wouldn't say it out loud, that care went both ways.

So when she was awake and alert one night, and a doctor came in to give Luffy an injection while he slept, she was understandably pissed. Why would the doctors inject him with some strange substance without his awareness? Had he given his consent to this?

But the doctor assured her that everything was fine; Luffy got the same shot every night. It was simply because he still wouldn't eat, so they gave him vital nutritions intravenously to keep his health from getting out of hand. It was simply the best they could do.

Nami wasn't sure whether she should be more or less worried about Luffy.

"Monkey-san? It's about your brother."

The moss head's real name was Zoro, though only Luffy ever bothered to learn that.

In fact, Luffy was the only one who bothered to learn a lot of things about him. Luffy was the only person who knew that he used to live on the streets, that he was a swordsman, and that his most important sword used to belong to his deceased sister. Only Luffy knew that he was admitted to the hospital after getting himself involved in a particularly vicious gang fight, in which an opponent tore off his entire lower jaw.

He learnt these things because of all the time they spent together, and the odd bond they shared. Most of their time together was used wandering the halls at night — how they didn't get caught, they'd never know, but that hospital had never been a very good one.

On that specific night, they found themselves in a kitchen.

In return for Luffy learning so many private things about Zoro, Zoro got to learn about Luffy in a way no one else did. Zoro knew every detail of the abusive home environment Luffy had been taken from; he knew about the blood that made Ace hate himself, he knew about how their grandfather had never let them go to school, and he knew about their long-dead third brother.

Zoro also knew about the time Luffy ate something he really shouldn't have; a certain fruit that sparked a chain of events that resulted in the death of his idol. He knew about the different ways Luffy's grandfather would punish him, one of which being withholding food for days at a time. He knew how it gave Luffy the idea to punish himself, until the starvation was so ingrained on him that eating at all wasn't even a consideration.

And most of all, Zoro knew how their grandfather's unpleasant method of raising children affected Ace and Luffy's sense of self.

"I don't deserve to eat."

Luffy tore from a slice of bread with his teeth. He chewed it angrily and Zoro could see just how pained he was by it.

With a frustrated growl, Luffy spat the mush in his mouth into the sink and threw the rest of the bread across the room.

"Maybe I don't deserve to live, either."

Zoro was silent.

Of course, he always was, but what was different about this time was that in his silence, he walked forward and slapped Luffy across the face.

Luffy smiled grimly and thanked him.

Their group stood out quite a bit on the day they attended the funeral.

The absence of Robin's upper limbs would have drawn plenty of attention alone, but the bandages around Zoro and Usopp's faces along with Sanji's wheelchair made them a sight to see. Luffy looked closest to 'normal' out of all of them, even with his unnatural thinness, dry skin, and bloodshot eyes.

Nami looked almost healthy, her only outward signs of injury being the bracelet-shaped burn scar on her arm, but she had opted to stay behind. The weather forecast told of thunderstorms, and she had heard somewhere that people who had been hit by lightning were more likely to be struck again. They weren't sure how much they believed that, but if it made her feel safer then they were willing to play along.

A few doctors accompanied them, and there were otherwise only two guests outside their group — Marco and Thatch — who introduced themselves as friends of Ace.

The funeral was close-casket, which they were glad for, since Luffy looked ready to throw himself on the coffin as it was. If he could see his brother's still form inside, they didn't think he'd even want to keep himself under control.

As Ace was lowered into the grave, Zoro couldn't help but notice that the next tombstone over was engraved with the name 'Sabo.'

Luffy descended into sobs.

He stopped talking again. He stopped listening, too. It became impossible to communicate with him.

He started hiding out at night, as if he were trying to avoid the shots they gave him. He'd come back from the bathroom every once in a while smelling like the day Sanji made him swallow a handful of peas. He became impossible to predict, restless, and irritable. He'd snap at random times only to sob and give silent, frantic apologies later. He would lie in bed all day, as if trying to sleep, but never actually getting there. He downed headache pills like they were candy but still groaned of the pain. His health plummeted drastically.

The doctors recognised the classic signs of depression and told them that Luffy needed time to grieve.

They eventually got him back on track — however reluctantly — but he was still irrevocably scarred by the loss of his brother. Even if they could make him physically healthy again, he never quite recovered psychologically.

The doctors painstakingly monitored every object that came within arm's reach of Luffy in an attempt to prevent him from hurting himself, but no one ever thought he could be so creative with a telephone.

They found him with the cord wrapped twice around his neck.

The room was small, only just big enough for the group of patients inside it. Don't think there was no extra space at all, because there certainly was — enough for the doctors and for Brook, enough for Robin's books and Sanji's wheelchair, and enough for the two extra cots that were once taken.

Sometimes Sanji wondered why things had to change. He couldn't remember how long he'd been there himself, but already he'd seen two people leave in the most tragic way. Only him, Nami, Robin, Usopp, and the moss head were left. The cot next to Sanji's was distressingly empty, and they couldn't help but avert their eyes from it as it made them think of the three brothers' graves, lined up all in a row.

He wished things were different. He wished things would change.

But he didn't have the choice.

A/N: I... Wow. I didn't have a plan for this when I sat down to write and I can honestly say I wasn't expecting that. I just took the concept and wrote whatever came, so... I feel like I should apologise. Sorry. Anyway, I'd love to hear your thoughts.