(A/n) Hello, everyone..! Again I must apologize for the extended break... It's been a difficult couple of months. Good news is, things are really starting to look up for me. I won't make promises but I have high hopes for updating more frequently. A quick note on this chapter. You'll notice, as you read, that the atmosphere is very, very different from the previous chapters. This is completely intentional. This seemingly inconsequential time period is actually quite big for the Straw Hats... in many ways. So I hope that, even though it is very different from what you've all loved so far, you all can still appreciate that this chapter is both appropriate and necessary, for both the characters, and the story. Thank you and enjoy!

* 24 *

It's so cold. Luffy can't feel his nose. Not his hands, nor his feet. His tries to move his arms but his muscles twitch and fail. He curls tighter around himself, his body burning, it's so cold, burning and aching and freezing.

Crick crick crick the ice crackles as it creeps over his skin and he can only shiver and listen in the darkness as his elastic skin solidifies, sizzling with a numbness that hurts, it's so cold, and he can't move.

He tries to call out for someone - Zoro - Nami - Usopp - maybe Sanji - or Chopper, surely - Robin…! But his jaw is tight and he can taste the ice, sharp on his tongue, cutting and searing with chill.

Where are they?! He's really shaking now, freezing in the darkness, and he can't feel them, he can't feel anything, just burning numbness, a knot building in his throat, closing up tight, and oh so cold, why is it so cold -

He coughs, gasps for breath - there is ice in his nose, in his lungs, too, scalding him, freezing him from the inside out - he sobs, one sound, so loud in the silence and yet swallowed up by the blackness, all alone and lost - all alone - no…!

He strains against the ice binding him tighter, tighter, constricting, so cold - his chest is seizing - he coughs again, sucks in a desperate breath -

The darkness weighs on his eyes - why is he fighting again...? Wouldn't it be easier to close his eyes, to lay his head back down, to sleep?

Maybe when he wakes...

Luffy!

Ice snaps and flakes off his eyelashes - why is it so dark - he pushes against the ice with renewed energy, as the echoes of that voice reverberate in the blackness, warming his ears, and his mind, with the wide grin he imagines on his friend's face, lips curled in comic smugness under a long upturned nose.

But then, again: Luffy? wavering through the murk, questioning, fading fast - is he trapped in this night too, freezing, dying -

Luffy? What are you doing! Sharp, now, with an urgency that stokes Luffy's own sputtering strength. Still fading, a cold hollow ghost of that warm voice, too far to reach.

Hurry! Luffy!

Usopp! He wants to shout, but the call sticks in his throat, choking, burning, and Usopp is gone, leaving Luffy colder still. He shivers, quakes - he cries, but he can't feel the tears through the ice crackling over his cheeks...

Another voice rises out of the ringing silence, strange and yet chilling with familiarity, deep and slow and lazy like the ice crawling, hissing, across his flesh.

It won't be long before you all realize what a troublesome woman she really is.

Plik plik plik, the ice creeps ever further up his face. His tears crack and calve away.

Somewhere close, beyond the dark, a woman gasps, No...! I'm - ! but her cry cuts off, the high desperation ringing to his frostbitten ears even as she, too, disappears.

His skin splits. Ice crackles. Even his blood is cold. Robin! A scream builds in his throat with nowhere to escape. His eyes have frozen shut. The ice presses down on him, and it is like the ocean, heavy, down, down, is there ever a bottom - ?

That deep voice again, right at his ear, biting colder even than his icy bonds.

The world... is better off without that woman.

No! He's falling apart. Blood flows sluggish, frigid, from peeling flesh, as the ice snaps and crumbles, his body with it. But if the ice breaks - maybe - he struggles again - even if his body is in pieces, he'll fight beyond his last breath - for her, for them - he has to protect them - he has to keep them -

Nico Robin was born with a brutal personality...

A trapped roar shakes him from deep inside. He feels it in his chest, in his throat, vibrating out, fighting for release.

Frost sizzles, chips.

You will not be able to change that.

His teeth shatter as his jaws fracture open, a gasp swallowing his scream with a breath that is all lung-freezing frost and slivers of bone.

Taking that woman on board your ship... is a great danger!

His chest splinters. His arms crack, skin blistering off, rubber bones fragmenting, falling away. It doesn't matter - no matter how many pieces - he'll still..!

Monkey D. -

"Luffy!"

A hissed whisper, but so close he feels it against his ear, a warm, wet breath.

A hand grabs his arm - his arm? - a body presses against his shoulder - his shoulder? - the contact sends a shock through his frostbitten system, so warm -

"Oi, Luffy - oi, don't - ! Auuggh I can't breathe - "

A rough, calloused hand shoves at his face. Luffy blinks.

"Zoro?"

"Yeah! Idiot, get offa me." Zoro pushes again, adds a knee in Luffy's side for good measure.

Luffy unwraps himself from around Zoro.

Not frozen. Not breaking.

Not alone.

He's shivering, though. Cold sweat glistens on his bare arms, runs in rivulets down the side of his nose and jaw to drip off his chin.

Cold. So cold.

He's reaching for Zoro again but his swordsman presses him down to the mattress, keeps him there with a wrestler's hold.

Not alone, Luffy reminds himself, counting to ten, his breath puffing hard, whiffling the longer hairs hanging just over Zoro's hairline. Zoro squints down at him through the flickering lantern light. Ten isn't enough so he counts again, backwards, but loses count as he watches the light glint off Zoro's earrings swaying from his earlobe.

"Y'alright, Cap'n?" His words whisper across Luffy's cheek. Quiet, steady, prickling with warmth. Zoro's brow creases. "You were tossin' an' moanin'."

"Y - " Luffy shivers and swallows, blinking hard. "Y-yeah, I just... need to... to pee," he says after a second of thought.

"Ch. What're you waitin' for then? And keep it down. You'll wake the others."

The others.

Luffy twists around.

Sprawled across the two mattresses pushed together are his nakama. He's counting heads before he even realizes: Sanji, on the far side, his back politely turned but firmly against Robin's; Robin and Nami nestled against each other, a lump of fur curled on top of the blankets between their hips, identifiable by the bright pink hat.

A lump lodges in his throat.

"Where's Usopp?!"

"Shh! Idiot, he took over Chopper's watch. Oi, y'sure you're alright?"

Luffy turns wide eyes back to Zoro. His swordsman frowns. "You're kinda pale. Are you sweating? In this cold?"

"N-no, I'm fine, just - just cold, y'know, s'all."

"I can wake Chopper if you want," Zoro says, low, with offhand emphasis on the want.

Luffy clambers to his feet and wobbles off the mattress before Zoro can try. "N-no, just gonna - just gonna take a leak."

"Don't leave the door open," he grumps after to him, sounding half-asleep already.

Luffy steps out of the lounge, into a wall of frigid wet fog. He gasps and as he blinks through the misty night, the pulsing blackness behind his eyelids transports him back to the icy darkness of his dream.

He shivers and doesn't waste any time getting to the water closet.

It's not until he's on his way back up the stairway, rubbing his aching eyes and tripping over his own feet, that he hears the murmuring.

He pauses, a loose plank creaking under his bare foot.

He turns, stares through the thick, silvery haze. Had he imagined it? The quiet words are muffled by the fog, almost tiptoeing through the night like they fear waking another. But who...?

Luffy stands still, cups his hands around his ears, trying to pinpoint the voice. His breath puffs in clouds that mix with the fog, not quite warm enough to return some feeling to his quickly-numbing nose.

The bow?

He narrows his eyes toward the front of the ship, looking beyond the eery dense glow of the crawling murk.

"... so just hang in there a little longer, okay?" the voice rises a little, chased through the clouds by hollow remnants of the words, spoken so gently, in that attempted nonchalance that Chopper always tries (but never quite succeeds) to use when he's dabbing antiseptic on scrapes or stitching Zoro's wounds shut.

Usopp. Who else could it have been? Luffy relaxes, puts a hand on the banister at his side to steady himself as his muscles tremble a little. He shakes himself and rolls his shoulders.

Really, what's he so worried about anyway?

"W-we can count on Luffy," his sniper babbles on, his voice wavering out of the fog like a ghost scared by its own reflection. Luffy feels a smile tug at the corner of his mouth, but it fades as he realizes the quivering in Usopp's words is not the fog.

"He'll protect you," Usopp promises, softer, almost lost to the muffled shush shush plunk of the ocean against Merry's hull.

There's a knot between Luffy's eyebrows. His stomach clenches up tight like he hasn't eaten all day and he hunches over on reflex, holding in a moan because he needs to listen.

"And I'll find you a shipwright," Usopp says, words rising out of the swirling fog with brittle conviction, "and not just any shipwright, of course! He has to be the world's finest shipwright."

Merry.

The handrail is rough under his tightening fingers, split wood prickling, stinging.

"F-f-five meters tall, at least. Too big, you think? With massive hands, yeah. And he'll fix you up as good as new."

The haze thins a little as a bone-chilling breeze sends the dense clouds rolling, and a shape emerges through the bleary glow, a dark shape lying against bright pale wood, feet swinging in the air despite the foggy bite.

Usopp lies sprawled over Luffy's favorite seat, his arms wrapped around Merry's figurehead. Mumbling words of encouragement into the weathered ram's head.

Encouragement for Merry? Or for himself?

"Any day now," Usopp whispers, "as soon as the others are well again."

He almost can't hear him now, the rush of blood roaring in his ears like water plunging off a cliff. Is it the ship shaking, or him? His stomach tightens, it's hard to breath -

His hand reaches out, like he can stretch right through this wall of fog and pull Usopp to him - but he can! - the disturbed fog twining around his splayed fingers - he can! - but he doesn't.

"I'll take care of you until then," his sniper says, not softer but more muffled, rebounding, like he's speaking into wood, "so keep it together, Merry, just a little longer, okay?"

Luffy sits down, hard, smacking his tailbone on the step above. He grips the bannister pole at his side, slumps against the wood, rubs at his chest, breath billowing in his face.

"Just a little longer," Usopp repeats, fainter still.

Luffy swallows, stares off the starboard side, counts to ten for the third time that night, maybe a little too fast, so he starts over, taking measured breaths as Usopp mutters something too quiet for him to make out.

The moon peeks through the clouds for a moment, silver light flashing across the swelling fog. A wind picks up a misty plume, sends it undulating across the deck like a fat lazy snake.

He shakes his head, heart pounding a steadier beat now. Usopp is humming something, a wordless tune Luffy's heard before - on slow evenings when Usopp's bent over at his workshop, or long afternoons devoted to wearied planks and a tireless hammer.

The hum bobs through the fog, slow and quivery and off-key.

His mouth twitches up. He fishes the picture dial out of his pants, even though his hands are shaking and the lighting isn't very good. But with the moon still shining through the fog, the night is almost bright. He's even humming along with Usopp, a little bouncing in his throat as he looks through the wobbling dial at the blurry shadow of Usopp beyond the haze.

The click of the shutter is loud in the muted fizz and shush of the night, but Usopp's humming bobs along. Luffy lowers the dial and blows out a lungful of air, watching the hot mist of his breath spiral up into the fog.

He shivers. Now that his pulse isn't chugging in his ears, his skin prickles and rises in goosebumps. His nose is numb, his fingers and toes tingling. It's a little too like - no, he shakes himself, tucking the dial into his waistband. He rubs his arms, puffs another breath just to watch it whirl away into the shining night.

He's not freezing.

It's just a little cold, is all.

"Merry," he murmurs, sliding a hand up the bannister pole by his side, splinters pricking his fingers. His chest hurts again but he continues, "Usopp's right. Hang in there a little longer. We'll get you fixed up and take you all the way to Raftel." He gulps a bitter cold lungful of night.

"I promise."

The ship doesn't reply. It rocks on the sea, creaking, moaning, as if in pain. The ache intensifies, clenching tight like a fist. I can't even...

He swallows, hunches in on himself, willing the fist to relax.

I can't even protect this ship.

His eyes burn. His shoulders shake. He refuses to gasp, to let that burning free. His teeth chatter. Still, he can't bring himself to rise, to return to bed - to take his eyes off the fading shadow of Usopp at the prow, feet still swinging through the mist.

Something heavy and soft falls over his shoulders, and Robin eases down onto the step beside him, silent as an owl on the wing.

"Captain-san," she says, her voice as smooth as the blanket she shares with him. Her lips curve up in a smile that catches her dark eyes like the fog reflects the moonlight, a quiet luminescence that makes his chest clench and unwind at the same time.

Her eyes crinkle a little at the corners. "If you sit in the cold too long, you'll catch pneumonia and die."

The ache flutters and a laugh burbles past his lips. "Oh," he says, "Chopper would be pretty upset, I guess..." He pulls the blanket over his arms and chest, tucking his legs up into the pocket of her warmth.

"It's a lovely night, isn't it?" She lifts her chin in the direction of the starboard gunwale, to the ocean, where the waves slap and swash against each other, smacking like wet kisses against Merry's battered hull and flashing with fleet glances from between the lazy coils of fog, fractured moonlight on the sea, as if the sky is winking at them from beyond its icy covers.

Her arm brushes his, smooth sleeve over smoother skin. A hand settles in the middle of his back, fingers unfurling, pressing and loosening muscles he hadn't realized were so tense.

She's so warm, radiating like the sun on Merry's deck, with the heat of beds, of blankets and embraces and nakama.

His chilled nose wrinkles with his grin. Maybe it's not so cold after all.

"Yeah," he says. "It is nice, huh?"

She hums in agreement. Her fingers patter down his spine like a tap-dancing spider, fingernails tickling. He squirms and giggles.

"Fufufu. Shall we return to the others?"

"Ah..." His brow knots again as his gaze goes back to his sniper's crooning shadow. "But, Usopp..."

Robin chuckles. "Never you mind about Longnose-kun."

Luffy frowns at her, but doesn't resist when she pulls him to his feet. Her hand is small in his, long and silky but heavy with skillful muscle. He lets her lead him up the stairs, and doesn't even realize that the blanket is gone until petals float down through the fog, and Usopp yelps from the bow.

Luffy glances over his shoulder, heart in his throat, nearly trips over the last stair - but then he hears the merry tinkle of her laugh, and he knows.

The air in the lounge is thick with body heat and vibrates with the sounds of his sleeping nakama: hems and sighs, Zoro's sawing breath, Nami's purring snore. The overhead lantern caresses their slack, flushed faces with guttering fingers, winking like the sly moon far above.

"Captain-san."

Luffy blinks. Robin's already settled back between Sanji and Nami, Chopper snuggled between the two women.

"Come, now," she whispers, and Luffy's feet rasp forward across the boards.

He crawls under the blankets, into the wide space between Nami and Zoro, space left by Usopp's absence. The mattress has gone cold while he was out but Nami is close, her body breathing homey warmth. He turns into her, folds his knees behind hers, cold toes rubbing toasty calves.

He wiggles his arms under hers, tucks his icy fingers into the cozy fold under her breasts. She's so soft. He pulls her closer until her back snugs up against his chest, and tucks his nose against her neck.

She grumbles, "Id... iot." An elbow glances off his arm. She's purring again before she's even realized she missed her target (his frosty ear).

His titter is muffled against her neck.

Behind him, Zoro mumbles something incoherent and rolls over, arm thumping deadweight over Luffy's hip (and Nami's too).

Zoro's huffed sigh tickles the hairs on the back of his neck.

In seconds, he's alone again.

No.

The room thrums with their breathing, a murmur of safety, of comfort, of...

Home.

And even if he lies there awake until the morning's first rays wiggle their chilly pink fingers through the fog pressing against the window, thinking about the ice crackling over his skin, through his bones, stopping his heart... (Can I protect you, can I protect any of you?) He holds his family in his arms, and is held in return.

And he knows he is not alone.

-x-

WWCN Prompts: "Fractured moonlight on the sea," "Daybreak or Nightfall"