The unearthly wall between the Thousand Sunny and the ship Zoro clung to was a painful shock of light in the stormy, rushing dark. It struck his eyes jaggedly, beams of light somehow broken like sticks, at angles that hurt his mind to see, and it grew more opaque with each passing moment. The headsplitting hum of its flickering surface surged and ebbed along with the waves.

He clung to the other ship's rigging as Sunny grew harder and harder to see, barely feeling the bite of wet ropes in his hands through the thick, prickling pins-and-needles sensation across his entire body. The ship he was on rocked and surged with the heaving of the waves.

He could just make them out, beyond the wall, Luffy's hazy shape half over the railing with Sanji and Robin and Usopp and Franky trying to hold him back, Chopper and Brook and Nami and all of them staring helplessly at him, at the ship he was clinging to, at the people on it...

Zoro shouted back towards Sunny through the curtains of rain and the thrumming barrier and the fading of his vision. "HOLD HIM!" he bellowed at Sanji, at Robin, at everyone there who was fighting to keep their captain from following. Could they hear even him when he could barely hear himself? If Luffy hit that wall, and if he fell into the raging waters between the ships - the light-wall flashed a sheet of blue-white. There was a tearing, snapping sound that vibrated through him, and the air, and the rigging he lay against - and then the searing light went out.

The wall was gone. The wind and rain had ceased, and the sea was calm. All of it over as suddenly and impossibly as the storm had started, ended like it had never happened at all.

Stretched before him there were only gentle waves, and nothing else. Just like the first time they'd seen it, from afar, a storm flickering into existence and out again, like the fishermen at the last island had said, warning them to stay clear, telling tales of ships coming out smashed, or empty, of people returning... different.

There'd been strange lights, not lightning, to Nami's curiosity. Six hours later, it had happened again. They'd gotten close, had been moving in a slow arc around the first storm's approximate location. Waiting to see.

The storm had obliged, and that time they'd been close enough. Too close.

He tried to hitch his barely responsive body higher in the rigging of this other ship, staring down at a lawn deck below that was the same as Sunny's. He'd seen the figurehead as the other ship had struck theirs - like staring at a storm-surging mirror.

But this couldn't be Sunny. And there below him were people that weren't Sunny's crew.

But - but - his eyes stuck on blue-black hair and a white sword sheath before the edges of his vision darkened again. None of this - it didn't - he lost his grip and slid, felt a lasso of rope hitch under slackening arms, tighten, and then everything was gone.

He came back to himself for just a moment, blinking slowly at clouds above him, at the silhouettes of the people staring down at him. That one shape that was utterly strange and yet not was farther back, too far to see clearly, and he couldn't so much as try to focus before it all went away again.

When he woke, he stared up at the familiar wood grain of the ceiling of Chopper's infirmary, and for a moment he was relieved, until the cadence of breathing at his bedside registered in his mind. Not any of the right people. Not Chopper, quicker than anyone else's, or Sanji, with his faint smoker's rasp, or Robin, smooth and serene...

Different. Strained and controlled at once. False calm. It felt familiar, but not.

He let himself blink once more, slowly, and turned his head.

A woman sat there in a chair that wasn't Chopper's, in this room that was shaped like Chopper's infirmary but was full of unfamiliar items. Different books, desk, medicine bottles...

It all matched the Thousand Sunny too well, too much (lawn deck, room dimensions, figurehead, paint and wood and mikan trees)... but it was notSunny (wrong people, wrong things, wrong sail.).

Not Sunny, and not Sunny's crew. He stared at the woman and she stared back, dark eyes below dark hair. Her face was still, but the frown on her forehead matched his own, the sense of straining incredulity and impossible recognition when their eyes met...

"Storm," he said, saw her eyes widen at the sound of his voice. "The storm..." Luffy. Everyone.

"It's over." She shook her head, saw understanding as a heart-clenching surge of pointless urgency seized up in his chest. "The other Sun - the other ship is gone." Her voice dealt ringing blow of recognition, clear but distant memory. No longer a child's voice, but unmistakeable.

"Sunny," he said. "It's Sunny." The sight of the lion figurehead and utterly different flag heaving out of the unnatural storm-dark to collide with them was burned into his mind. The other Sunny, she'd been going to say.

It felt oddly calming to have his senses vindicated, for all that it was an impossible thing.

But it wasn't the only name he'd already known, or the only impossible thing.

He studied the woman, and she sat and let him, having done her share while he was asleep, he supposed.

This wasn't at all like seeing that strange, clumsy (sometimes not) marine ensign, the one who'd looked... so much...

Like her.

This woman, Zoro felt, as true as the sea was wet and that this ship was not his Sunny - but it was a Sunny - this woman was not like her.

She was... she was...

And something rose in his chest, fought past the prickling daze still clinging to him. He sat up, still watching her and she him.

She had Wadou across her knees - but it wasn't.

The sheath, yes. He'd know it anywhere. But the hilt - the bindings were different, the cloth lying perfect and tight, but not quite the way it did on his.

She moved, at last, reached to one side without looking. He followed her hand - Shusui, Kitetsu, both leaned there. Between them, Wadou, the real - no. The one that was his. She took it and set it across her knees, next to... the other one.

Two ships, the same, but one certainly not the one that was his home. Two swords, one... not his.

"K-" he started, and cut off the name before he could finish. "You-"

"You-," she said.

"-died." Their voices sounded together in the small room.

She shook her head in disbelief only slightly less acute than his, not much lessened from her time watching him until he woke. Slight movement pulled his eyes down, her thumb, stroking over the hilt of the - the other Wadou.

He swung his legs over, crushing lingering weakness and making himself stand straight. She rose as well.

He was taller than her, by a few inches. Bulkier. He was a man - she was a woman, both of them of a common frame and build, and he was bigger than her, now.

But the strength in her was just strength. It didn't care what the outside looked like.

She held his Wadou up for him, and he took it.

"Three swords," she said. "You would, wouldn't you."

"You only ever needed one," he replied, looking at the single loop on her belt. No sign of any others.

She stepped back, looked him up and down.

"Zoro," she said, and it sent a weird shivering thrill down his spine to hear his name from her lips, after all this time.

He swallowed. "Kuina," he said, and saw gathering and release of tension in her body when he said it.

The infirmary door opened, and they both looked up at the same time.

A slender woman with pale blond hair tied in a ponytail, and pale eyes. He'd seen her before, but she was different; the hair was still light, sun-bleached even paler than he remembered, but her skin was tanned from the sun, cheeks carrying more colour and body more tone than she'd ever had as a sickly girl back on Usopp's island. There was a boomerang in a sheath on her hip.

"Oh, our guest is awake," Kaya said, and gave him a little smile, kind, but devoid of recognition, and slightly wary. She glanced at the sword he held, at the other two he hadn't retaken yet, and then at Kuina who only returned a nod and a level look. That seemed to satisfy Kaya, and she relaxed into a clinical attention to him that somehow recalled both Chopper and that wrinkled old woman doctor, while being entirely different. "I'm Kaya. I'm a doctor, and I'd like to take a look at you, if you'll allow me."

"Sure."

She made him sit down again, asking with an expectation that he would simply comply. He did, then endured a barrage of questions and examinations that he was sure Chopper would have entirely approved of. "Pardon us for re-dressing you, your clothing was soaked through. It's drying now," she told him, and he grunted in acknowledgment, looking down at himself. He hadn't even noticed. The only thing of his that he wore now was his haramaki, damp as it still was. Better than carrying his swords under his arm, though.

By the door, Kuina leaned against the wall to watch him, and his own eyes were drawn continuously back to her. It was easier now, with Kaya moving and murmuring in front of him, to look at her, the tension broken by the doctor's requests for him to breath, and could he feel this, and she'd like to take his blood pressure now.

Kuina was a woman, not a girl anymore, and he'd never forgotten her lament. It had enraged him at the time, when she'd told him the changes in her body were what would defeat her, robbing him of any honourable win. And yes, there were curves on her body now, structure and balance that made it visibly different from his own. But the muscle, lean as it was compared to his, and the sense of resting power there were both so familiar.

He'd seen, since joining Luffy, strength in the strangest shapes, held in the smallest blade and dug out of the most despairing minds. That Kuina had never gotten to see the same had only driven him harder.

Kuina's was the least strange kind of strength he cold conceive of, after all that. Even when he'd grown older than she'd been when she'd died, aware that, by then, his strength had indeed surpassed hers, he'd never gotten to feel her blade give ground to his, and his mind had never lost the memory of that skinny girl's body wielding a sword better than he had. It made even less sense now to imagine that it would have stopped her doing anything.

"I suppose I have to say you're well," Kaya said, sitting back, eyeing him with a slight frown. "Please do watch for any side-effects from the... whatever all of that was."

"Right." He nodded once, stood again. His boots were on the floor, and he pulled them back on, then paused. This was not his ship, no matter how unnervingly familiar.

Kuina reached for the door handle next to her. That one led to the galley. "Come on," she said, and he followed her. Kaya came last, closing the door quietly behind her.

This was the galley, yes. Not the pervert-cook's galley though. He'd scrubbed every pot there enough times to know them all, and the ones he could see hanging on the wall and drying in the sink now weren't Sanji's. The tablecloth was the wrong colour. There weren't any of Luffy's teeth marks on the counter. A discarded blanket, wadded up on the couch against the wall, was one he'd never seen in anyone's laundry.

And the people sitting at the table had never been on this ship.

Never been on his ship. His Sunny.

Luffy's brother sat in one chair, the same hat Zoro remembered from Alabasta hanging down his back over an open-fronted yellow shirt.

But he was... too young. The man Zoro had met, three years older than Luffy by Luffy's own description, was not this man. His face was younger. More open, less cocksure. Ace was sitting forward, elbows on his knees and fingers pressed together, watching Zoro with unconcealed curiosity. No wariness there.

On the other side of the table was a woman with purple hair, bound up in a braided bun from which loose, wavy lengths had escaped, and bearing curving and curling tattooed lines in a full sleeve down one arm. Nami's sister - Nojiko, from Cocoyashi. The massive heavy-duty shotgun she had the other arm around looked well-maintained, and she was watching him closely.

The others, the ones he'd seen from the rigging, were elsewhere, now. Just as well. These two alone threw him enough that it was an effort to keep his face still.

"Captain," Kuina said, as Kaya went to take a seat at the table herself. Captain. Ace, not Luffy.

Kaya instead of Usopp. Nojiko rather than Nami. And the rest... There was a pattern to it.

Ace sat up straight, rose to his feet. "My name is Ace. This is Nojiko. Welcome aboard the Thousand Sunny," he said, faultlessly polite, and Zoro had to bow in return, and give his own name, even though their nods of acknowledgement seemed to indicate Kuina had already said something to them. "The other ship..." Ace began, then paused.

"Thousand Sunny," Zoro confirmed, and Ace shook his head, looking off in the direction of the bow, where the ships had struck each other in a glancing but boneshaking blow. Hadn't seemed to damage each other at all, though the impact had been enough to throw someone trying to tie up a sail clear off the yardarm.

"I thought I saw-" Nojiko began, and Zoro looked at her. She fell silent a moment, frowning. "I thought I saw..."

"Nami," he finished for her, and watched her arms cross, one hand rubbing once up and down her tattoos.

"She's home now, she came home." Nojiko shook her head. Then she sat up straight. "You knew who I meant. How could you know that?"

"I've met you," he said, the bare truth, even if it wasn't, here. "And you two," he looked at Kaya and Ace. "And your shipwright and that okama outside." He looked at Kuina, met her eyes, because he couldn't do otherwise. "And her," he added, hearing himself go slightly hoarse.

"But you didn't." Nojiko protested.

"Not... here," he said.

"It happened differently," Kuina said, voice low but still clear. The sound and the shape of her, every time he heard or looked, it caught him, held him.

"Usopp used to imagine this," Kaya said, and in his peripheral vision Zoro saw her looking at him and Kuina in turn, then at Nojiko. "That there was some place where things happened in a way they didn't happen here. Where someone would take the west road instead of the east road and have a different life. Stay home instead of leave."

Live instead of die.

"Different Sunny," Ace said, sitting heavily in his chair again. "And... I know that was him, I heard him-"

"Different captain," Zoro confirmed. "Makes a different crew."

"Same family?" Ace mused, but his eyes were too sharp, and the casualness of the question was poorly pretended, not at all like his easygoing, almost careless attitude in Nanohana.

"You made us promise to take care of your little brother, when we met you in Alabasta," Zoro told him.

That was more of a surprise than Zoro had expected. "Little?" Ace repeated in consternation, and Zoro realized this younger Ace didn't necessarily mean there was a younger-still Luffy back on whatever island they'd come from. Elder brother Luffy, then? The idea... wasn't so ill-suited, he thought.

"You gave him a bit of paper, said he could find you with it." The scrap Luffy had been given had been damaged somehow, but he'd insisted there was no worry. Zoro had put it out of his mind until now. Ace's hand rose to pull at his hat cord, tugged it around to look inside the crown, tapped his finger on something.

"Yeah... See you at the top," Ace murmured, smiling a little. "I did...? He did. Same and different." He looked between Zoro and Kuina. "Looks like we both found swordmasters," he remarked, putting the hat on his head.

"Not a master yet," came from Zoro and Kuina in unison. Ace gave an amazed laugh at that, but it trailed off.

"I'd like to give your captain his swordsman back," he said with a slightly unfocused, inward-looking grim expression. "I don't like losing people. And if he's - if he's like the Luffy I know, neither does he."

Zoro snorted slightly. That was a perfectly accurate understatement. "No, he doesn't."

"Well... how long was it between the first storm we saw, and the one that dumped Roronoa on our ship?" Ace looked at Nojiko.

"Six hours, nearly. It's only appeared twice that we've seen, though, can we be sure it's a regular interval?" She was frowning.

"They're they only points of data we have so far," Kaya said. "It's not certain either way - but more reason to think it will return, than not, I would say."

"We'll know that in just under five hours, then." Kuina looked to one side, out one of the porthole windows at the soft, overcast daylight. Dimmer now than he remembered from when the light-wall had vanished, taking his own Sunny with it. Evening was coming. "Unless it happens sooner," she added. Zoro felt that weight crawling into his chest again, felt his skin tighten with a kind of urgency that wasn't to do at all with getting back to Luffy and everyone else.

Silence hung for a few moments after that, as Zoro found himself staring at Kuina again, and she staring right back.

There was a soft tap on the door that led out to the deck. Kaya jumped. "Yeah!" Ace answered. The door opened and a short, round figure entered, stubby-limbed and just short of plump. It was white and sleekly furry, wearing a dark green neckerchief with a bowtie knot and a kilt with cargo pockets. It had soft-looking rabbit ears draping down and the paws were tipped with distinct claws.

"I'll need to start supper soon," the rabbit said in a high but probably masculine voice with a hint of gravel, revealing a predator's canines, and not a normal rabbit's long front teeth. He eyed Zoro uncertainly. Not fearful, more like unsure how to address him

"I'd never stand in the way of food," Ace replied, tipping his hat at the rabbit-person. "You're welcome to join us," Ace told Zoro, the unspoken limbo of his presence ignored for now.

Chopper Zoro thought. Here was his counterpart, surely? A rabbit - no, Zoro realized. Claws and teeth like those? Lapahn. From the same island, another animal had eaten the fruit instead of a little blue-nosed reindeer.

"This is Lucky Jumper," Ace indicated the lapahn, and the introduction seemed to mollify his distrust. "He cooks!" Ace added enthusiastically. "Reallywell."

The lapahn tilted his head in gracious modesty, bowed at Zoro, and trotted to the kitchen area, revealing black patches of fur in a pattern like four clover leaves on his lower back. He eyed the refrigerator, seemed to decide something, and started choosing pans. He changed when he got between the counters, growing taller, though not to Chopper's human height, and gangly instead of bulky, like an adolescent in a growth spurt. He was still covered in white fur, denser-looking now, and the rabbit ears gone in favour of human-shaped ones. Claws were replaced by hands with fingers. The clover-leaf marks remained, low on his back. Weren't lapahns normally all white?

"Fried noodles with water chestnuts, celery, bok choy and bamboo shoots," the lapahn was saying, answering a question from Nojiko. "Most cast-iron pans are cast from a single piece of metal," he added, apparently apropos of nothing as he pulled out a cutting board and tied on an apron. The forest-green neckerchief seemed familiar, or the colour did at least, and when the lapahn turned around again, Zoro noticed the mark on the pointed corner down the lapahn's back, half-concealed in the folds of fabric. A white ring evenly divided by four brown bars laying across it, pointing towards the center. On Chopper's island, Dalton had worn that mark on his chest.

A black-patched lapahn instead of a reindeer-taken in by Dalton, instead of that doctor-witch-woman?

The differences here were piling up, making the similarities seem unnatural instead. Watching a skinny rabbit-man in Sanji's kitchen - but not at all Sanji's kitchen - seeing Ace years younger than Zoro knew he was...

He pulled his eyes back to Kuina again. She was the one part of this he could truly say he wanted to look at. She was already watching him, and frowned consideringly when he met her eyes. "Come on," she said, and headed for the door out to the deck. Zoro cast a glance back at Ace, who nodded and waved him off, apparently unconcerned.

"Lu-ckyyyyy, could you perhaps possibly be making ice cream for dessert?" The door closed behind Zoro on Ace's cajoling, and Zoro felt an odd lurch of recognition at the tone, if not the words.

"All do~ne!" came a nasal holler from overhead, and Zoro looked up. The main sail had been tied up, and there was Bon Clay, though not quite - of course - as Zoro remembered him. Black ballet shoes, pinstriped suit pants and a pink shirt with a swan motif, here. Zoro did see, when Bon Clay swung gracefully down the rigging to walk along the railing and jump down in front of them, that he still wore his makeup, neatly applied in loud colours. "Hello, handsome," he shone a huge grin on Zoro, winked broadly, and then, after a glance at Kuina, put his hands quite deliberately behind his back. "Well well, don't let little old me get in your way, honey," he said to her.

"Shove off, Bentham," she growled, with no actual heat, and he bowed with a flourish before wandering around them towards the galley, a low chuckle coming from him as he moved away.

Footsteps behind him made him turn; someone was coming from the aft deck. Pink hair and black-and-white stripes - he started to reach for his swords, feet sliding into position to - "It's fine," Kuina's voice cut through the surge of reactive hostility, and Zoro stopped moving, staring at the equally still Perona. A single ghost, barely visible in daylight, arched up over her shoulder in a defensive motion, but only hung there. She looked surprised, if not particularly cowed.

"Now now," she said, tilting her head with a little frown. Zoro frowned too, not sure if he was being mocked, but forced himself to relax, displeased with himself for his overreaction. Perona smiled, tossed her long pigtails, and stalked onward to the rigging, ascending to the lookout, ghost drifting up alongside her.

New voices drew Zoro's attention beyond the mast. "So how is it?" The shouted words could just be made out from up on the foredeck of the ship. A swarthy, sharp-faced man with dark hair - familiar, Zoro realized, and squinted, trying to place him - was perched on the figurehead, leaning down to look at where Zoro knew the two Sunnys had struck each other.

It was too easy to picture Sanji or Usopp leaning down just like that to ask Franky the same question.

A fainter voice, also familiar, floated up from over the side. "S'fine, it is Adam wood, you know. Paint's scratched, is about all. Green-hair did more damage to the rigging than that hull did to ours."

"Too bad we don't have anyone around that knows anything about rigging, then," the man called down, friendly mockery.

The answer was a bark of indignant amusement. "I'll rig you upside down to the rudder, Gin!" Gin, yes. Krieg's man. But somehow not, or perhaps notanymore, here.

Hands appeared on the rope leading over the side, and Paulie pulled himself back on deck with a grin. He twitched at the rope he'd been hanging by, pulling it back to hide up the sleeve of his denim jacket. As Zoro followed Kuina down the steps to the lawn deck, the two men up front sat down, Paulie dealing cards between them. Neither looked towards Zoro or Kuina, but Zoro was quite sure they were keeping an eye on him. Fine by him. This was their territory, after all.

He looked upward. With the main sail furled, he couldn't see the huge mark that had jarred him so much when it had appeared heaving out of the storm. But, like on his Sunny, smaller black flags flew over the crow's nest on the foremast and at the top of the main mast. Here, they were flapping slowly in the breeze that moved over the ship, and that unfamiliar Jolly Roger was easy to make out: white skull over a red spade, crowned with the same medallions as on Ace's hat, flames crowning them in turn.

He shook his head and turned around, staring out over the water, listening to the slap of the waves on the hull and feeling the slight, constant motion of the deck under his feet. Those were the same as always.

He put his hands on the rail. That was familiar too. He tightened his grip, felt the edges dig into this fingers and palms. He wanted to be angry, now, to be able to stand here and be infuriated by that calm ocean. He should be struggling with that gutted sensation that had struck him when Sunny - his Sunny - had vanished along with that storm.

And it was all there, all of that, but out beyond some perimeter, as if he was meditating or concentrating and pushing it back. It was neither of those that kept it all at bay, though.

Kuina stood next to him, forearms on the railing, hands folded together, watching him instead of the sea.

"You meet Mihawk?" he asked her.

"At the sea restaurant." Her hands tightened to fists, and he watched the tendons in her wrists flex with the movement, the muscles of her forearms tighten.

"Yeah," he muttered. He had lost two swords that day, and been nearly split open right afterwards. That scar was hidden under his loaned shirt, now. He glanced over, eyeing Kuina's similarly functional grey shirt. Couldn't tell, until he raised his eyes to hers, saw the corner of her mouth pull slightly down. "Yeah," he said again.

He turned his back on the water and drew Wadou, holding it loosely out in front of him. From the corner of his eye he saw Paulie rise to his feet, and Gin catch his arm. When Kuina turned around as well, Paulie sat back down. Neither of them pretended to be playing cards anymore.

Kuina drew her own Wadou, holding it parallel to his, and the identical blades glinted dully under the dimming sky.

Zoro looked at her sidelong, felt that weight in his chest again as she met his eyes, and nodded once.

They lowered the tips of their swords, and moved forward, Kuina a few steps farther before she turned and faced him.

The lawn deck nearly faded from awareness, memories of the dojo rising around him.

They bowed, shallow but polite. He felt himself smile slightly as he straightened, and raised his blade again. "Ready?" he asked. Formal tone, like when starting sparring matches between the students.

Kuina's mouth turned up at the corners. "Begin," she answered.

No rushing charges here. The tips of the swords brushed barely past each other at first as their feet settled into slow circling. Two-handed grips on one sword. One sword - this was her refined skill, not his.

He struck first, and the distant memory of his childhood frustration surfaced at the solidity which which she turned aside his blow.

He'd have given anything to feel that again.

He struck again, harder, and again, fiercer, and the consistency of her defence filled him with a painful and thrilled recognition. The clash and scrape of metal on metal was all he heard as he tried and failed to push her back, the two of them locking and him springing away again the best he was able. Her grin, when they came together, blades sliding until they were hilt to hilt, made his own spread wide.

She was only playing with him now. He couldn't move her - each inch she gave was her own decision, drawing out his technique and showing him some of hers.

He fairly bounced off her when she countered a strike with a foreshortened lunge, taking his momentum and sending it back, and they both sprang apart that time, landing with muffled thuds against the lawn deck. Neither of them was breathing hard yet.

She raised her chin to get his attention, then lowered her sword and waited.

Zoro sheathed Wadou, drew Kitetsu and Shusui. Kuina's eyes ran along Kitetsu's length before she raised her Wadou again.

"Ready?" she asked.

He settled his grip on each hilt. "Begin." He went for her, and she angled her sword to meet both of his.

Two was better for him - he was starting to make her work, now, and he was getting a more complete feel for how she handled her single blade, sensing how his greater weight and height was offset by a more lithe agility than he'd ever been able to achieve.

She soon stopped simply holding her ground or fending him off and started to push back. No longer waiting and watching and reacting to his attacks, she came to him, forcing him to parry with both blades together as her forms seemed almost to twist around his. The repeated ring of steel on steel shivered in the air as they circled and struck, prodding at each others' blocks, teasing out the limits of reach and taking it in turns to lunge, lock, and be thrown back or turned aside. Her grin had gone in favour of concentration, but the satisfaction in her face when their gazes crossed was better still.

She put a decisive thrust between his blades - he caught it and sent it to one side, turning and forcing her to follow - but she forced him instead, switching the position of her dominant hand and then carrying the motion of his swords along so smoothly he didn't realize until it was too late.

They both stopped before they buried three swords deep into Sunny's lawn deck and the wood beneath, points brushing the grass instead, and they straightened together.

"You got so much better," she said, smiling slightly again.

"Not just me," he replied, wondering if the shadow in her eyes was the same old, old grief seeping into her as well. Because, really - she wasn't his Kuina, and he wasn't the Zoro she had known.

They each were evidence that those people would have - could have - and hadn't. And never would. Almost like losing her all over again, and the thought was more vicious than ever - such a stupid, useless, pointless waste - but it was a pain he would not give up for anything.

"So what's the third one for?" came a call from the deck in front of the galley door, and they both looked up. Ace was there, leaning on the rail, Nojiko and Kaya on one side, Bentham on the other, the lapahn on his shoulders.

Ace grimaced through an apologetic grin at Zoro and Kuina's combined stare, Kaya retreated slightly behind Nojiko, who was suddenly studying the sky overhead, and Bentham just shifted his elbows where they rested on the railing, and waited.

"Don't you have supper waiting?" Kuina asked.

"Oh, there's no worry, it will keep," Lucky told her, though one large foot curved over the other in his self-consciousness. Bentham reached one hand up to pat him reassuringly. Kaya peered curiously around Nojiko's shoulder, and Ace grinned and shrugged, then gestured for them to continue.

"Ignore them, I always do," Kuina muttered. But the affection underlying the words gave him a moment of utter heartsickness - what if I can't-? - before he crushed it. It was hours yet before he'd need to address that particular problem.

"I know the feeling," was all he said, and, despite himself, appreciated the flicker of compassion in her face at that. It smoothed away, though, and he appreciated that just as much.

He flipped his grip on Kitetsu, holding it point down so he could draw Wadou with the same hand, and Kuina stepped away from him. They retook their original starting places, and he set Wadou between his teeth, rolling his shoulders as he turned Kitetsu the right way again. Balanced, now.

Kuina's eyebrows had risen. "Only you," she said. "Only you." Then that shadow settled her eyes again, and he didn't want to see that anymore, didn't want to feel its echo in him, the prickle in his eyes, the thickening in his throat. He frowned, felt his eyebrows lower and his jaw clench. He watched her take in a breath, let it out, and raise her sword again.

This time her eyes were sharp, her body poised and ready.

He pushed off with one foot, feinted, and then struck - or tried to. Kuina's speed was excellent. Her sword turned Shusui aside with one blow only to leap back to counter Kitetsu as she ducked too low for Wadou to do anything but sail over her head. She bolted back, angled her Wadou, and darted in again. The sound of his swords blocking hers filling Zoro's ears.

He shoved her back and she landed lightly, and they went for each other again. She was swift, fluid, but not always. Trying to predict her made him need to adjust to block instead, as her strikes turned from smooth to sharp and abrupt, so he had to pull in or be hit, and make a steel wall against her single blade.

The weight of her strikes was astonishing now, and an aching joy started moving outward in him as his focus squeezed the grief out for the moment. Never mind spectators, never mind the strange flags flying above him now. There was just her, and him, and between them, steel.

He charged, landed with his swords held back by hers, and she tipped back, shoved him off; he jumped with it, over her head - only for her to have her Wadou pressing against his three before he could go for her again.

Kuina let herself be pushed when he flung his arms apart, landing neatly in more than enough time to ready herself for his next charge. He saw her eyes brighten when he collided with her again, forcing her back across the lawn. She swept her sword along an altered angle, trying to lock against two of his, and he pulled back just enough to force her to adjust her balance before bearing down again.

This was... not like sparring with the cook, for all the valuable practice that offered. Not like making his way through ranks of marine cannon fodder. More like that stupid square-nosed giraffe, but better... so much better, because it was her.

The light faded from the sky until everything was blurred in shadow but the faint reflections of steel, and her eyes.

They were at opposite sides of the deck now, having pushed each other apart in midair. Zoro was breathing hard, could feel the sweat on him, sliding down his temples and his belly under his shirt, and he could see Kuina's chest and shoulders moving with her own exertion. But her sword was steady, and so were his.

He raised his hands, started the spin with both swords. The deck didn't offer as much space to gain momentum as he'd like, but there was enough. Kuina's blade seemed to darken, the aura of it licking up, shedding feathery little shapes that were swallowed by the night. Zoro sprinted at her and she dashed at him.

Shusui and Kitetsu whirled, and Wadou slashed - Kuina's sword wove between the pair and locked onto them, pinning them still and away from her-but Wadou's edge came to brush her throat, the blade angled under her jaw, and they both froze. Zoro watched her across the inches of Wadou that gleamed faintly between them.

She was watching him just as sharply. She let out a breath, and then Zoro felt the edge resting along his own throat as she changed her grip just enough to let the flat of the blade touch him, cool in the dark.

The blades shifted ever so slightly with their gradually slowing panting. Zoro held his breath a moment, long enough to offset from Kuina's rhythm so that he could just feel the bite of her Wadou under the corner of his jaw the next time he breathed in.

Her eyes darted to where he'd cut himself, then returned to meet his, and one side of her mouth curled just a bit. He held perfectly still as she tilted her head, barely, just enough to open her skin against his Wadou's edge.

There was a flare of yellow-orange light from in front of the galley, draping both of them in the warm glow, edging their steel with gold.

As the light of Ace's flame subsided to a paler, glass-shielded lantern-light, they disengaged. Slowly, carefully, they stepped apart, and there was a tsking sound from the side. "You've hurt each other!" Kaya exclaimed. "Honestly," she muttered, just audibly. "Swordspeople"

Zoro sheathed his swords. He could see the small trail of blood down Kuina's neck from the little cut under her jaw, and raised his fingertips to the nearly matching one on his. It barely registered as discomfort, let alone injury.

"It's fine." Kuina looked at Kaya, forestalling her descent down the steps towards them. Zoro swiped his thumb across his cut, digging in slightly to feel the sting from it.

Lucky coughed politely. "I would invite you all to come and eat, now that the show's concluded," he said, slipping off Bentham's shoulders to thump softly down on the deck. "Time of course allowed for sword maintenance," he added, and Zoro closed his mouth on the request he'd been about to make.

"This way," Kuina beckoned him, and he followed her towards the cabins. Gin and Paulie passed them on the way, Paulie slightly wide-eyed, and Gin with a restrained expression of satisfaction.

"What were the bets?" Kuina asked as they went by.

Gin only shrugged, then raised a small sheaf of bills, grin going wide. "Tie, of course."

Paulie growled. "Smug," he muttered.

"Better judgement," Gin said, tucking his money away.

"So, crewmate, which one of us did you bet against?" Kuina tossed knowingly over her shoulder. Zoro looked back as well, and snorted in amusement to see Paulie hunch guiltily and walk slightly faster towards the galley.

Supper was as good as anything Zoro could've asked for. The food was different than how Sanji made it, of course, but Zoro couldn't find grounds for complaint. He just didn't feel that hungry.

He'd first sat down to variously hesitant and curious queries about his own ship, the disbelief in each face recalling his own from before quite well when he named their counterpart. He didn't invite more conversation, though, and they didn't press much, as he preferred. His nakama had their own stories that weren't for him to tell.

The table conversation drifted around him and away after that, moving on to a well-worn rhythm that was very different from what he was used to. No rubber limbs snatching at no-those-aren't-leftovers-so-hands-off, no idiot chef serving the women before anyone else, no Usopp trying to surruptitiously get mushrooms off his plate and onto anyone else's.

It all seemed very calm at first, especially when Ace fell asleep, chopsticks in hand, sliding slowly down in his chair until Perona giggled and Bentham leaned over to pull him up and hitch an arm over so he wouldn't fall off again.

As Ace snored quietly and Zoro worked through the amount of food he knew he ought to require, Gin decided to advertise his winnings on the sword match, sending Nojiko off into surprisingly raucous mirth (and Bentham into unsurprisingly raucous mirth). Paulie grumbled his way into a huffing sulk. Lucky tried to placate the shipwright and Kaya managed somehow to ignore it all, leafing through a volume on combat-related pressure points she'd brought to the table with her.

Kuina leaned over to catch the mug Paulie tossed in the air in agitation before it could land on Kaya's book - and lobbed it back at Paulie, catching him in the side of the head. He sputtered, Ace woke up, and Kaya looked up, asking with Usopp-caliber false sincerity whether Paulie needed that bump seen to.

"I know it's ugly to look at, Kaya, but it's just his face," Gin said.

"Don't listen to him, Paulie, you're a fine specimen, noooo kidding," Bentham cooed at him mirthfully. Paulie hid his face in his hands while simultaneously giving the finger - with both hands - to the table at large.

Swallowing his last mouthful of beer through a stabbing sense of startling isolation, Zoro shifted his attention to his plate, lifting it to chin height to clean off the final scraps. He set it down and stood up. "Thank you for the meal," he said to Lucky, whose skinny shape - reminiscent of Sanji, but all in white - was hovering to refill plates and mugs.

The lapahn blinked and ducked a nod, and Zoro ignored the silence that fell over the rest of the table and the weight of all their eyes on him as he left the galley. He exited onto the deck outside with relief that unnerved him with its intensity, only to vanish within seconds into a hard knot of tension that almost made him wish he hadn't eaten at all.

This was worse than being merely separated from his own crewmates. The shape of the ship taunted the corner of his eye with familiar fittings and angles no matter what he looked at to remind himself that this was not his Sunny. The dragging worry of whether there was a way back or not, held off all this time, was starting to tear into the thresholds of his calm. He gripped at the railing, glaring down at the lawn deck.

The door behind him opened, closed, and footsteps that had already become familiar crossed the deck to stand beside him. He took a breath, forcing it to be even and slow, felt the way so much of himself reoriented towards her. Without the others there, it happened so easily, even with the inescapable presence of the ship surrounding them.

He looked at her. That was its own relief. She was edged with the light coming from the galley windows and he let the fall of her hair, the curve of her shoulder and the line of the muscle of her arm sink into his memory. There was a sudden utter reversal of everything that had driven him out of there, a stricken dread at the thought leaving her, at the end of this. Seeing her alive in daylight and in the dark, locking eyes and swords with her - once he was back where he belonged, none of it would ever happen again.

She made no mention of how he'd fled - there was no other description for it - from the galley, only let him stare for a little while, doing a bit of that herself. Eventually, she glanced over beyond the galley. "Should have a bath," she said.

Zoro couldn't deny that. They'd certainly gotten sweaty enough during their sparring. "Yeah."

Kuina left him there long enough to go to the cabins and return with his clothes, now dry, and another set of her own, and then he followed her through the library, up the ladder and into the bathroom's entry area.

She set the clean things on a shelf, unbuckled the heavy-duty leather belt that carried her sword while he pulled his free from the loop on his haramaki, then pulled that off in turn.

Boots were next, then he peeled off the shirt he'd been loaned, but paused after he pulled it over his head, the tangle of cloth wrapped around his wrists in front of his stomach. Kuina was studying his chest. He looked down at the huge raggedly-healed scar across it, and all the fainter ones from older and newer injuries.

Self-conscious of it suddenly, in a way he'd never ever been, Zoro went still under her regard. She came forward to tug the shirt the rest of the way off his wrists, freeing his arms to fall properly to his sides and revealing the whole of the scar, its path from left shoulder to above the right hip. The rough stitches had scarred even worse in the spots it where they'd torn during the fight with Arlong.

"The same," she said, tossing the shirt aside, her fingers going to rest on her own midsection, tracing a little way, then both hands went to the hem of her shirt, and she pulled it off. He had a brief view of part of a scar across her belly before her arms crossed in front of her again to remove the underwear still over her chest. She dropped it on the floor, shaking her hair out for a moment and he studied her right back.

Not exactly the same. Her scar was neater, he could see that right away. Well, yes - of course. Kaya had been there, then. They'd had a doctor. But Mihawk's mark was too deep not to have remained, and, like his, it crossed from her shoulder to hip, a line slanting between her breasts and across the muscles of her stomach. As with him, it wasn't the only mark on her, but it was the biggest.

He reached out before he realized, and stopped short, feeling the rare sensation of a blush heating his ears.

It wasn't just him, he realized, looking up at Kuina's face. Colour had risen in her cheeks, was spreading across her chest, and she returned the query in his rising eyebrows with a twitch of one of her own. She put out a hand herself, putting her fingertips against his scar, like she had on her own, and dragged along it, leaving warm trails in their wake. The scar itself had healed mostly numb, but the skin around it certainly wasn't.

Alright then.

Her fingers on him paused when he touched her, but he barely noticed, focused on feeling along a nearly smooth line, though there were uneven places that made him sure it had torn, like his.

His knuckles brushed along one breast as he traced the scar's path between them, and then his fingers followed the line over the upper curve of the other one, and there he stopped and lightly pressed, exploratory, pushing at the soft layer over the muscle beneath.

"Didn't stop you," he said, "did it?" he cupped his hand, slid it under to feel the weight of her breast on his palm. He'd seen her move, felt it through the contact between their swords. Her balance was flawless, just her center was different from his. Kuina shrugged, the motion sliding the smooth skin against his fingers. You're lucky you were born a boy, Zoro, she'd told him then. But she was perfect like this.

She didn't seem concerned about it now. Her fingers were moving slowly on his chest again, coming to a stop when she found his free hand, lifting it so she could look at hers flat against it. Narrower palm, thinner fingers. She pushed against him and he pushed back, seeing the minor effort in the muscle of her bicep, well aware of all the power that she wasn't using. He turned his palm enough to lace his fingers between hers, and their grips interlocked, each pushing a harder for a few seconds, until she laughed a little, sadly. The sound made him swallow thickly, and they both stopped, joined hands dropping between them. He blinked eyes that had gone blurry and tightened his fingers on hers before he let go.

She reached for him, hands resting flat on his sides, like she was taking a measure of him, but then she pressed slightly with her fingertips so that he took the half step forward to meet her.

Kuina was warm against his front, soft and hard at the same time. There was a tension in her that he could feel wherever they touched, and in the way her hands didn't quite let up their pressure. It held him there as surely as if she'd pinned him bodily. Not that Zoro needed to be pinned or even held, to stay just as he was, right now.

He settled his hands on her hips, resisting the rising urge to hold tight, clutch at her. Her forehead was at his cheek and he bent his head slightly, closed his eyes, and breathed unsteadily in through her hair, catching the ever-present scent of salt air that clung to anyone on a ship, and then the tang of sweat and steel and the underlying warm smell that was just her.

He could feel her breathing too, as unevenly as he was. It felt hot in this little room now; he was hot too, on the surface and within... and he wasn't restraining his body's reactions, letting them do what they would to push aside the irreconcilable currents of emotion that were takings turns to batter at his mind. He could feel his erection, confined under cloth - knew she did too, she'd rested her hip against it - but he let it be, for now.

One of her hands came to the back of his head, rubbed through his hair like she was learning the feel of it, drawing him down enough to press her cheek to his. Her fingers went around the edge of his ear, brushed at his earrings once, then again after the first faint metallic sounds.

Her other hand went to the waist of his pants, slipped fingers in, keeping them close together from thighs to chest. His hands left her hips and slid up to find the edges of her shoulder blades. He drew his fingers down the line of her spine, stopping at the waistband of her pants and going up again more slowly, exploring her back, the muscle and bone under her skin while her fingers made similar forays, until suddenly her fists clenched and then her arms tightened around him.

She held on to him and he couldn't fight his own impulse anymore. He responded in kind, wrapping his arms around her, breathing out through a sudden prickle of tears and rush of relief at the... permission? Excuse? Whatever it was, he felt some of the tension in her fade while he committed the shape of her to memory.

The knot in his throat loosened, perhaps. A little.

Zoro relaxed the embrace when Kuina's fists opened. He watched her as she drew back, let go with difficulty. Her eyes were dark, wet, and she didn't hide the expression when she looked at him

"Come on," she said roughly. He nodded, hands going to undo his fly and finish undressing as she stripped her own pants off.

He followed her into the bathing room proper, bracing for it... when she lit the lamp near the door, he saw familiar tile, fixtures, of course, but no temporarily papered-over broken window pane from an errant stretching limb during one of Luffy and Usopp's recent baths. Different stools and buckets. But next to her, it didn't quite matter, at least for now.

He closed the door behind him and reached for her, caught at her shoulder with his fingers before she stepped too far away. She paused and he came close behind her. "Just..." He put a hand at her waist and lowered his head to put his mouth on the place where her neck became her shoulder. Rested there for just a second, then opened his mouth to taste her skin. Ocean salt, sweat, all that was there, before she washed it away. He closed his eyes and sucked gently, chasing the flavours up the side of her neck. What he was doing... he had no idea, but arousal was blurring all the rest, towering anxiety and exhumed grief and all of it, and he wanted that. It was her, in his hands, against his mouth. He wanted her.

She leaned her head back on his shoulder, baring her neck to his mouth. She found his hand and lifted it to her breast, pressing her hand over it, fingers over his as a guide to what she wanted him to do, how she wanted him to touch her. Her nipple tightened under the slide of his palm and he felt a hungry animal thrill as she arched against his hand.

Zoro lifted the other hand to her other breast, and then Kuina went still, both her hands over his, holding him close against her, but unmoving. He opened his eyes and lifted his head, uncertain confusion wedging into the ripples of heat that he felt where she was fitted against him. She only leaned back, pushing him the few steps back towards the wall with her shoulders, still holding both his hands. She hung her head forward and he stared at the dark hair parted over the back of her neck. "H-hey," he said, voice a whispery rasp.

She released his left hand, but only after pressing against it so he didn't let it fall when she let go. She took his other hand in both of hers, turned it slowly, slid her thumb across the width of his palm, over calluses that matched hers. He couldn't see if she was looking or doing it by feel alone, when she repeated what she'd done before, fitting her palm to his.

No, not like before. Not mirrored from being face to face, this time. it was her right to his right, as with a handshake. Or a hand clasp. Their hands moved together until they fit, and he did let go with his other hand then, because she turned to face him, the grip of their promise - to other people - suddenly between them.

This was the same, that night had to have been the same. It was the next day when things had gone forever differently. Stupid, she'd said that night, laughing through tears, you're the one who just lost to me.

But she'd promised and so had he. One of us must become the best.

"I will," she told him, the steely glint in her eyes and the smile daring him and the world to deny that. Exhilarating to picture her making her promise true, wielding her skills against greater and greater foes. Her grip had turned crushing.

"I will." He grinned, returning the white-knuckle grip. "All the way to heaven."

She held his eyes, and he drank in her expression. Would have, could have, hadn't... but she had. Here, where he hadn't, she had. "To heaven," she agreed.

The moment lingered, until Kuina let out a slow breath. She pushed their joined hands towards him so she could stretch out a couple of fingers and touch his scar again. Her hand relaxed, and so did his.

He let go, tugged at her hip, bent towards her neck again to breath her in. He liked that, could feel her pulse against his lips, his tongue. He traced his fingers around the outside of her breast, up to her collarbone, then her throat, on the other side of where his mouth worked at her warm skin. He found the little raised scab with his fingertips, where she'd cut herself on his sword. His own cut stung suddenly, a sharp phantom pain that he welcomed.

When she exhaled impatiently and pulled his hand to her breast again, he didn't resist, though he felt a frown of protest start when she drew away from his mouth on her neck. But she met him with her mouth instead, and he stopped caring. She startled him with a lick across his lips that drew a sound from the back of his throat, half surprise, half willing response, and he opened for her without thought. The wetness - the feel of it and the sound of it in the air, pulled another heated noise out of him. It would sweep him along, if he let it.

Kuina made a noise of her own when Zoro pressed her to him with a hand splayed at the small of her back. That trapped his cock between their stomachs. He could feel where precome slicked against their skin, rocked against the sliding heat before thought caught up to lust. The feel of someone else... so different from his own hand, it drew him along and upward so much better - Kuina pushed a hand between their bodies, wrapped it around him, firm, stroked down as he pushed up.

She - her grip was - he had to - he had to stop kissing her, had to yank himself back from mounting lust, jaw tight. He let himself move once more into her hand, kept it slow with what seemed like a towering exertion of control, and heard his breath shudder from the effort of concentration.

Her hand stilled, but didn't let go. "So, show me," she said against his mouth, and, yes, he could do that. He covered her hand with his and, after a long pause to be sure of himself, took a few slow strokes to make himself used to it, to be able to feel her do that without succumbing, just yet.

He let his head fall forward, nudged along her jaw again, palmed her breast slowly. She shifted up against him, but then a little to the side, pushing a knee between his, pushing herself even closer so that he felt soft-rough curls against his thigh, hers warm on either side. She rubbed herself against him, along with her smooth strokes of his cock, and he couldn't resist, reaching down, finding short curls, warm, damp, and then wet.

"Nnh," Kuina grunted, shifting her heels on the floor so her thighs parted a little more and his fingers could slide easily over that wet heat, curl into it.

"Show me," he said, and lifted his head from her neck to look. She was staring down between them, past her hand under his around his cock to where his other hand had slid free of her, fingertips shiny.

She grabbed his wrist to stop him getting any farther away, drew him between her legs again, and he slipped his fingers back to where they'd only just been, tips stroking into the warm, slick folds. She reached down to touch herself there as well, her fingers dipping to find his, then back forward, spreading herself a little open to rub. Her hips were moving now, against the motion of her own fingers, and he cupped his palm over them, tracking the rhythm by touch, started to add a little pressure himself, until she squirmed down against his fingers, making them sink deeper into her.

That made his eyes widen, even though he saw nothing, only felt... everything. He sucked in air at the reaction to just his fingers, there. Kuina growled at his lapse in attention, let go of his cock to hook her arm up around his neck. Leverage. Yes. Zoro grabbed at her waist, then lower, keeping her close, so she could move.

He put all his weight against the wall behind him, and then, after a few moments, just slid down, and she came with him, until he sat, cross-legged, and she straddled his lap. He barely noticed the cold floor. Her breasts were level with his face, and she sank down on his fingers, eyes half-lidded and attention directed inward at what their hands were doing to her, in her.

Leaning forward just a little made her arm tighten around his neck and let him nose at her chest, at the scarred line slanted between her breasts. The skin was shiny now, new sweat sliding over it, and he licked at it, over the scar, then followed the faint ridge of it up over her heart. He could feet the beat against his mouth, there, and feel the swell of the softer skin over the muscle.

Kuina's body tightened, and she sucked air between her teeth. She shoved down on his fingers, seeking pressure, and he gave it. He could feel her fingers sliding and rubbing between his palm and that spot, the one that was most important. She made a determined, hungry noise, and suddenly he felt her tighten slightly around his fingers - and again - a few times, before she relaxed, panting, and pushed at his hand until he carefully slipped out of her, fingers abruptly cool, exposed to the air again. "...Good," she breathed.

She was flushed, eyes nearly closed, and she slid the arm around his neck over to rub through his hair. She leaned down to kiss him slowly, intently, and she reached for his cock again, grasping him like she'd done under his hand before, stroked once, slow and even, and waited. He replaced his hand over hers. She didn't seem to want anything more than that confirmation, fingers resettling surer and tighter and - he let go of her, reached up and pulled her other hand down from his head to go rather lower, curved her hand around his sac, closing it just enough that his breath caught with the feeling. The pleasure saturated him, felt heavy and hot. But she was strong.

Her hands - yes. He meant to keep kissing her, until she started to move at last, one hand tight around him, the other softer under his leading fingers, and then he could only let his head fall back against the wall and breathe.

Zoro let himself be swept, pushed, carried along, and this part so often felt unnervingly vulnerable when he was alone, losing himself, senses all turned so completely inward. But there was none of that now. Just her, with him, her weight across his thighs and her hands on him as his arousal surged with each stroke, gone airy and blinding; closer - nearly - and pleasure struck a height that washed out everything else for long, long seconds.

Warmth settled against his chest as his breathing eased into a normal rhythm. Kuina rested against him and he kept his eyes closed, drifting, for a little while. Didn't try to hold on to the feeling - the effort would make it fade faster.

It ebbed away, the distant press of worry returning to the edges of his mind, his senses telling him more and more - cold tile under him, sticky places between them - until he had to gingerly tug her hands away from what was now all too sensitive to any touch or pressure.

He sighed when she leaned back, sitting upright. Opened his eyes to the familiar-but-not room, to Kuina's dark eyes, blinking back to her own full awareness. He watched her look down, heard her less-than-enamoured noise at the sight of his semen slowly drying on her hand and stomach

Well, they were in the right place then, at least. She seemed to be thinking along the same lines, pulling a slight grimace when she looked back up at him. She stood up in a smooth motion, reached down to help him stand. "Bath," she told him firmly.

The soap was different than what he was used to, smelled like... some other flower or plant than whatever Nami and Robin kept buying, but hot water was hot water, and after he'd washed he sank into the tub with no hesitation. Kuina had finished first, and sat, one elbow on the side of the tub, chin in her hand, watching him. Her hair was wet and even darker than normal. He'd washed her back for her, and she'd returned the favour. It had been an oddly normal exchange, considering everything, and somehow reassuring in its ordinariness.

Neither of them spoke, just sat in a companionable silence. Not as relaxed a bath ought to be, not with the itch of awareness that Nojiko's estimated deadline was drawing closer with each second that went by.

For the moment he ignored that as best he could - it would happen or it wouldn't regardless of his wishes. He instead just tried to commit Kuina to memory again, now with the yellow light of the lamp reflecting in her eyes and her wet hair, the way that hair lay flat, clinging to her neck.

The hand that wasn't supporting her chin was dangling fingertips in the water, moving along the surface, making small ripples through the larger ones caused by the rocking of the ship.

Drops of water were dripping intermittently from her hair, sliding down in little trails over her throat and her chest, catching for the slightest pause on the scar before disappearing into the bathwater. Damp skin over resting muscle, solemn face, hands trained to wield one sword that, alone, matched his three.

He did speak, eventually, when the water cooled, and they stood to dry off and dress again. "You grew up," he said.

She looked up at him, raised one hand to brush the top of his head and smiled a little. "You did too."

Even with the sail already furled, the suddenly heaving sea shook and tossed the ship, Sunny rose and dropped under sheets of cold rain, crashing through walls of towering waves. That was enough, Zoro thought, shaking water from his hair and tying off a rope. Without a sail full of storm, at least they weren't on that headlong, chaotic rush again.

Struggling up the sudden slope of the lawn deck as the ship listed hard to starboard, Zoro held onto the railing, peered out into the storm. Kuina pulled herself up beside him.

"Ship to port!" came Lucky's piping voice from the loudspeaker, and another roll of the ocean brought it into sight. Sunny, again, his Sunny, sails likewise tied. On the bow, even through the blurring rain, he could see where red and yellow paint had scraped away.

Zoro felt a dizzying, choking relief at the sight.

"CHANNEL ZERO," Gin bawled out, and Zoro felt the ship rumble under his feet as the paddle wheels were activated, their best chance at navigating - the ship hit a trough in the waves and fell with a boneshaking impact when it landed - as long as they could keep in contact with the surface.

"Not much time!" Nojiko's shout was urgent.

"Get up there!" Kuina told him. She grabbed his arm, hauled him towards the rigging, and swung up onto it, hauling him alongside to stand on the railing, balanced by the taut, wet ropes.

His Sunny was coming, closer and closer in a careening swerve that would take the twin ships alongside each other, and Zoro could see more than just the ship out now - Sanji was perched on the figurehead, a skinny black-clad shape, easy to make out against Sunny's yellow mane. Zoro saw him point, then leap back out of sight again.

A wave rose under them, tipping the ship under Zoro's feet so he was staring in to the sky for a moment. A lashing of rain blew over his eyes, he wiped it away and saw pinpricks of light - of light?

The ship swung upright, and his Sunny was nearly there. So close. "Hurry," he growled through a sudden knot in his throat, at no one and everyone on this ship and the other, too low to be heard, but they didn't need his words to hasten their actions.

A burning-white streak of light split the stormy space between them, breaking at an angle before it struck the ocean. Another one descended, and another, and urgency skirted dangerously close to panic.

"They're coming," Kuina told him, head gently bumping his as she leaned close to him. His Sunny swayed ever nearer beyond the reforming light-wall. It was almost like before, Luffy hanging over the railing while the rest held him back, until Zoro saw Usopp grab his head to yell into his ear. Luffy stumbled a few steps clear of the railing, drew back his arm, and then reached.

Kuina's hand tightened on Zoro's arm. He twisted to look at her, had one instant of her looking back, wide-eyed, lit by the strange broken light. A rubbery arm looped around him, hand fisting in his sodden shirt.

He couldn't help the grin that started to spread, at the same time as something sharp throbbed in his chest. He saw her start to smile too, and then the slack in Luffy's reach snapped back and Zoro was yanked off the railing and out of her grip, clutching at his swords with one hand and Luffy's rain-slicked arm with the other. Raindrops struck like knives with the speed of his flight. There was water in his eyes, and the other ship blurred and receded.

A sharp tingling pressure, prickling like needles, washed over him and suddenly the other Sunny was beyond that wall of cracked and broken light. Kuina on the rigging was a silhouette, through curtains of windswept rain and a flickering, coalescing haze.

Zoro slammed into Luffy, and they crashed to the deck together, skidding back halfway across before he managed to get upright and back to the railing.

He could just make her out, bright-edged for a moment in a single burst of flame that lit up the other Sunny and the people on its deck like a firework. The haze was growing between the beams of light, the hum of its strange vibration increasing. Just like before.

"Usopp! Shoot something!" Luffy's voice was eager, and Zoro heard the snap of slingshot elastic and then the CRACK of detonation overhead There was a brilliant red-orange flash of their own light, in reply.

The air was thickening with the hum of the barrier, the noise building and building, so heavily it felt like it was pressing the air down over everything. Zoro stood, arm up against the torrent of rain, and squinted against the piercing near-blinding light until it flashed silver-white, like sheet lightning. A ripping crackle tore through the air, and then it all ceased so cleanly that the silence descended like a blow.

Through the afterimage and the ringing in his ears, there was just calm sea again, unthreatening cloud cover overhead, as far as he could see. They were gone.

They were days beyond the Mystery Storm, as Luffy had predictably dubbed it. The sun was low in the sky behind them, and Zoro was at the railing, by the rigging, watching the sunset colours on the water.

He'd been asked, of course, and he'd told them.

"Kaya was at sea?" Giddy amazement, and a rush off for a sketchbook.

"Shitty guy is better off." Said with a headshake, and then a long look out over the water. "It's where he wanted to go, anyway."

"Ah, so then..." Bony fingertips steepled thoughtfully. "Did you... happen to see the colour of her panties?"

"Black patches? They would have driven him out for sure with bad camouflage like that!" Tearful sympathy.

"Yeahhh... He ain't me, a'course, but Dum-burg hired him, so..." A grudging smile, then a slow nod.

"She used to ask for stories about traveling, before." Fingers pressed over a much smaller tattoo.

"Hmm. He takes friendships very seriously, you know." A melancholy smile, tinged with approval.

Luffy hadn't said much of anything. He'd recognized the fire, and seemed neither bothered nor overly fascinated by the whole idea.

But now he came over, hitching his arms over the rail next to Zoro and looking at the waves. He tugged on his own fingers, stretching them idly. "So," he said after a while, "is there another other Sunny somewhere too? With a different captain again?" The question was a strange one, and Zoro didn't have an answer. Two ships that were the-same-but-not had been more than enough for him.

"Three Sunnys?" he said. How many different ways could things happen? "Sure, why not."

"Coooool." Luffy pulled his hands in to hold onto the railing, looked down at it and traced a sinuous shape against the wood. He leaned into Zoro's shoulder a moment, as he kept doing, ever since he'd pulled him back through the storm, and wandered off again.

Zoro crossed his arms and leaned on them, unfocused his eyes and stopped seeing the gold-tipped waves and sunset light on the clouds. He lifted one hand, pushed his fingertips against the underside of his jaw, found that slight raised line, a new scar.

She was still clear in his mind. He wouldn't let her fade. He never had.