Work Text:
It was not so much an open secret as it was the accepted reality that Brook was insane.
Not that it mattered to any of them– for one thing, they were pirates, and being unusual was par for the course. For another, Luffy had chosen Brook, and so obviously the rest of them had chosen him, too.
Zoro wasn’t sure that Luffy even understood just how broken Brook’s mind was. It was difficult, sometimes, to know just how Luffy perceived the world– if he even realized just how many parts of Brook were missing, just how much he was completely contrary to what people were supposed to be.
Having been raised very traditionally in the dojo, Zoro had a pretty clear understanding of what people were supposed to be– or at least, understood that pretty much all of them fell short– but he also generally considered the many eccentricities of his crewmates to be some of his favorite things about them.
So it wasn’t a problem that Brook was crazy, but it also wasn’t really a matter of debate.
He went through long periods of silence and vacancy, just staring emptily into nothing. Given that he had no eyes, it was difficult to tell if he was sleeping or in thought or just gone, disconnected from the world in a way none of them could really fathom. And soon, in no time at all, Brook would be up with Luffy or Usopp or Chopper, almost literally laughing his head off, euphoric and practically manic.
And then, of course, there were the ghosts.
Sometimes, Zoro would catch Brook speaking to nobody. It wasn’t prayer, in the way his old sensei had sometimes spoken to the picture of his father hung in the dojo. It was more like a conversation. Brook would laugh, pause as if listening to somebody, tilt his head and devote all his attention to empty space.
Zoro had asked him once if his Devil Fruit actually allowed him to speak to dead people, but Brook had merely laughed his shrill laugh and said that his fifty years alone would have been a lot less lonely if could.
But even that was nothing compared to how empty Brook was.
It was more unsettling than seeing Brook completely still and vacant, more disturbing than seeing him talk to nothing and nobody. It was evident in every part of him, that something so fundamental in Brook was broken that it was almost like he wasn’t even real anymore.
‘Sad’ was too simple of a word. Zoro didn’t even know if there were words that could describe it. Brook walked around like he was the last survivor of an extinct species. He acted like he was separated from everything around him by a thin but ever-present sheet of glass. He was just… foggy, distant. It was like his mind was always somewhere else, and it just so happened that his physical form was aboard the Sunny-Go.
Something, at some point in his life, had scooped up something very important deep inside of him and taken it away, and he’d never really gotten it back. (Zoro remembered sitting with Brook in front of a mass grave on Thriller Bark, a hundred skulls buried beneath their feet, and had a pretty good idea of just what that thing had been.) Just about the only thing that could bring Brook into sharp clarity, make him seem like he really existed, was Luffy.
But Zoro understood that. Sometimes he felt that way too, that he was only real when Luffy was looking at him. And he could say with absolute certainty that he would be far less sane than Brook if he ended up the only surviving member of their crew.
So it didn’t really matter what Brook was or what he wasn’t. If he was strange or out of time or had a completely indecipherable sense of comedic timing– if he laughed at jokes none of them understood or walked past them sometimes like he wasn’t truly seeing them, if he was insane.
It only mattered if he was one of them.
And he was.
*
They anchored the Sunny just offshore of a spring island, and took the Mini-Merry ashore. The air was just a little brisk, a lot damp– in the tree line, the view was obscured by mist. The sand of the beach was so pristine, it was almost white; the grass was so dark a green it was almost blue.
It was a pleasant morning. Luffy and Usopp walked around picking up rocks and sticks, looking for slugs and beetles. Chopper trailed behind them, pretending to be excited but pulling his hat over his eyes every time they unearthed something small and squiggly.
Nami and Franky had the Mini-Merry upside down on the beach, and were digging through its inner workings. Closer to the water, Sanji sat with his feet buried in the sand, dress shoes and socks peeled off and set aside. He was talking to Robin in a low voice, face solemn. Zoro didn’t feel the need to intrude.
Next to him, on one of the beach chairs that they’d carted ashore, Brook sat in that funny way he had, with his back straight and legs crossed, arms folded neatly in his lap.
Zoro was relaxed, lounging next to him– or as relaxed as he ever got in the New World. Ostensibly lazing around, just a moment from sleep, and in reality ever-aware of the movements of his crew.
It was his job, after all. To protect them.
It was a long while before Brook finally moved, bones clacking together as he did. Zoro had sort of figured that he’d fallen into another one of his longer periods of vacancy, and knew better than to try and shake him out of it. But evidently the man had just been in deep thought, because he stood now and spread his arms like he had muscles to stretch.
“I think I’ll go for a stroll,” he hummed, leaning on his cane-sword. His empty sockets were fixed on the misty forest. “I want to try to find the cliff we saw from the ship.”
Zoro hummed, looking up at him with a sleepy eye. He recalled seeing a cliff earlier, but he was pretty sure it had been on a different island that they had passed altogether. Still, if Brook wanted to look for a cliff, that was his prerogative. “Want company?” he asked.
“No,” Brook said simply.
Zoro didn’t take offense, and he didn’t worry. Brook was well practiced at keeping himself company, and had grown as much as the rest of them had in their two years away. He could handle a solo hike.
“Be back for lunch!” Sanji yelled from the water, apparently having been listening in like the overbearing bastard he was.
“But of course,” Brook laughed. “I can’t imagine choosing to miss out on your cuisine, dear Sanji.”
From across the beach, Luffy laughed, coming to a stop suddenly enough that he sent Usopp tripping face-first into the sand in an effort to avoid him. “Sanji’s lunches are the best!”
“Hmph,” Sanji said, turning back to Robin, but Zoro could see the way his mouth tilted upwards in a smile.
Zoro rolled his eye, and Usopp and Luffy fell into a wrestling match, and Brook ambled off into the trees.
It was a good day.
*
By the time Zoro gave thought to Brook again, the scent of sweet-glazed brisket had begun to permeate the air. Luffy had been drooling for the past five minutes.
Franky and Sanji stood watch over the grill together, each with their arms crossed and with steely eyes fixed on the meat.
They had some sort of passive aggressive agreement about the grill. As far as Zoro could tell, both of them would prefer to have full custody over it, but they settled for trying to micromanage the other’s usage of it.
If Zoro was especially lucky, the two would break into a physical fight. That was always entertaining, but it didn’t happen often, because Nami had little to no patience for it.
Suddenly, Chopper appeared by Zoro’s knees. His brow was knitted in obvious worry, and Zoro could feel himself honing in on their youngest crew member with vicious protectiveness.
“What’s wrong?”
“Brook’s not back yet,” Chopper said. He was staring off into the misty woods. “He said he’d be back for lunch.”
Zoro considered this. It was always possible that Brook had gotten into some kind of trouble– but with Luffy still here on the beach, the odds of that were significantly lower than they could’ve been. It was also possible that Brook had just gotten distracted and lost track of time.
But Chopper looked worried, so Zoro got to his feet. “I’ll go find him.”
“No!” Chopper said, looking up at him with panicked eyes. “You shouldn’t go!”
Zoro frowned. “Why not?”
“Because then we’ll have to find you, too,” Chopper said, earnest and adorable enough that Zoro had to forgive him for his lack of faith. “We should ask Robin to look for him, with her eyes.”
Zoro conceded this with a nod. The island was small enough that Robin would have no trouble spawning an entire body double on the opposite side of it– a few eyes would be no trouble.
But before he could take more than a step in Robin’s direction, his eye caught on a figure coming out of the woods.
“Look, Chopper,” he said. “He’s right there.”
And sure enough, as the person emerged from the mist, Zoro could see that they had the exact height and build as Brook, and the same iconic ‘fro.
But something was wrong, and Zoro had his hand on the hilt of Shusui before he’d even realized what it was.
In response to his tension, the rest of the crew came sharply to attention.
The approaching figure wasn’t Brook at all, because where Brook had sun-bleached bones and an empty skull, this stranger had ebony skin with wrinkles around his eyes and mouth. Admittedly, he wore a familiar suit, and he carried a cane-sword, and he even had the same familiar smile.
But he couldn’t be Brook, because with one look at his dark eyes, Zoro could tell that he was something that Brook was not. This was a man who had never really lost anything.
After a long moment of confusion, Zoro noticed the other person.
Where the first man was eerie in his many similarities to Brook, this other man was a relief in that he was a complete and utter stranger.
He wore a wide-brim hat, and a dark teal coat. He had chin-length blond hair. The skin around his eyes, like not-Brook’s, was crinkled in a way that meant he smiled often. Standing out starkly on his face were two tattoos, one on his cheek and the other on his chin.
It was him who spoke first.
“Hello!” the man called cheerfully. “I didn’t realize this island had any other visitors, but it’s lovely to meet you!”
For a moment, none of the Straw Hats spoke. When Zoro risked a glance, he saw that Luffy was staring at the strangers in the wide-eyed way he had– strangely solemn and strangely striking.
And then Robin stepped forward.
“Hello,” she said calmly. “We didn’t realize this island was inhabited, either. We didn’t see that it had any other beaches. Where is your ship docked?”
“Somewhere back through there,” the man said cheerfully, waving a hand, and then gave an exaggerated sniff of the air. “Whoo! Something smells good. I don’t suppose you all were about to sit down for lunch?”
“We were,” Robin said, and then after a glance at Sanji: “Were you hoping to join us?”
Zoro frowned. He, personally, would not have offered such a thing.
“That’s very friendly of you,” the man said, beaming. “We would be glad to accept.” He glanced wryly at his friend. “And we won’t tell the rest of our crew about this, so you don’t have to worry about being overrun.”
“Yo-ho-ho,” his friend chuckled, and Zoro straightened like he’d been struck. “I daresay we’d manage to eat you out of ship and home.”
Zoro was up in the imposter’s face in half a second. “Who are you,” he demanded.
The imposter raised his eyebrows and leaned away, and Zoro knew it was an imposter, because Brook didn’t have eyebrows, but what he couldn’t figure out was what the hell the man was playing at.
“My name is Brook,” the man said. And then he grinned wickedly, hauntingly familiar. “Or, if you recognize me from my bounty poster, I suppose it would be Humming Brook.”
The imposter’s friend laughed, throwing his head back. “Never thought I’d see the day when you were recognized before me, eh, Brook?” His grin didn’t slip even a millimeter as he turned back to them. “Does this mean lunch is off the table?”
And then in between blinks Luffy was suddenly there, shoving Zoro out of the way and getting up in the imposter’s face.
“You’re Brook?” he asked, nearly vibrating. “I also have a Brook!”
“Luffy,” Sanji said, frowning and taking a puff of his cigarette as he stepped up to Zoro’s side. “Something’s not right.”
When Luffy looked back at them, confused, Usopp hissed: “He looks just like our Brook, Luffy– if he had skin.”
Robin came up on Zoro’s other side. Her eyes were narrowed, and she was watching the strangers closely.
“What is your name?” she asked the unfamiliar man.
He grinned at her, tilting the brim of his hat forward. “It’s Calico Yorki. Captain of the Rumbar Pirates.”
Nami gasped, gripping her own forearms in a self-hug. “You don’t think…”
“Pardon my asking,” Robin said, “but would you mind telling us what year it is?”
“What an odd question,” not-Brook noted. His dark eyes gleamed with intelligence and the familiar thrill of adventure.
And then he told them what year he thought it was, and Zoro scoffed. “Even I know that’s not right,” he said.
“No, it isn’t,” Robin agreed. “You’re almost sixty years early,” she informed the two strangers, whose eyebrows rose in synchronicity.
“Sorry?” Yorki asked.
“Would you mind telling me where you think we are?” she asked them, ignoring the question.
“An uncharted island in the West Blue,” said Yorki. He and not-Brook both looked as casual and relaxed as could be, but they betrayed their tension when Usopp shifted on his feet. Immediately, Yorki’s eyes snapped over to him, and the imposter’s hand fell to the curve of his cane-sword.
“Ah,” said Robin, as implacable as ever. “I see. Can I assume that you have heard legends of the unexplainable things that can happen on the Grandline?”
“Sure,” Yorki said, and then grinned his brightest smile yet. “That’s where we’re headed in a few years, once we’ve gathered up the best musicians in this sea!” As he spoke, not-Brook glanced at him, something deeply tender in his gaze.
“Well,” said Robin. “I suppose you can consider this a preview of things to come.”
“Whatever do you mean?” not-Brook asked, tapping the end of his sword-cane against his shoe.
“I mean that we are currently in the second half of the Grandline,” Robin said calmly. “At least, that is where we came across this island. If I had to guess, I would assume that it is a place where space and time are more likely to bend, which is why you come from one time and place, and we come from another.”
Zoro didn’t take his hand off his sword, but his eye lingered on not-Brook. What Robin was saying sounded impossible– but it was Robin saying it, so it was obviously true. But what she seemed to be implying… was it possible that–
“You mean that really is Brook?” Chopper asked, eyes wide.
“Well, not our Brook,” said Robin. “But yes. I believe when our Brook went into the forest, it decided to send a different version of him out to meet us.”
Not-Brook– or, Zoro supposed, just Brook– did not look at all convinced by this. His fingers drummed on the handle of his cane, and his eyes were narrowed in suspicion.
Zoro wondered if their Brook would make expressions like that, if he were still capable of it.
Yorki, in contrast, looked delighted by this information. “You mean we’ve traveled in time?” he asked them, beaming. “To the future? And you all know Brook?”
“Brook’s a member of my crew,” Luffy told him, intense and straight-faced.
Immediately, Brook’s nose wrinkled in distaste. “That is not possible,” he said.
Luffy looked at him. “It’s true, though.”
Brook shook his head. “I would never join another crew. I will only ever follow one man.”
Yorki placed his hand in the crook of Brook’s arm, a rueful grin on his face. “Brook, it’s sixty years in the future. Things have to have changed.”
Brook’s face contorted in what almost looked like anger. It was surreal to watch. The Brook that Zoro knew was eternally blank-faced, inscrutable and without emotion by virtue of having nothing to emote with. “I don’t find this amusing,” he said to Luffy, ignoring Yorki. “I find your implication that I would ever allow anything to stop me from following my captain to be deeply insulting. I would rather you try to cut me down with steel than continue this charade.”
Luffy, of course, did not appear affected by this in any way. He just grinned. “You haven't changed at all, Brook!”
Zoro raised an eyebrow, and found himself exchanging a glance with Sanji. Luffy might have been the only one of them who thought so.
Yorki knocked his shoulder against Brook’s. With the two of them standing in front of Luffy, it was obvious just how tall they both were– Brook towered over the average man, and Yorki was only a few inches shy of him.
“Brook,” he said again, voice still amused. “In sixty years, I would hope our journey has been long since over.” He brightened again, turning back to face them. “Say, I bet you’ve heard of us, haven’t you? Since you know Brook? Or maybe everyone’s heard of us by now! Tell me, are the Rumbar Pirates known as the best band of musicians to ever sail the seas?”
“Yes,” somebody said, and it took Zoro a moment to realize that it was himself who had spoken. He floundered for a moment as everyone turned to stare at him, and then cleared his throat and tried again. “We’ve heard of you.” Yorki was leaning forward in eager anticipation, and once again Brook was staring at the man, the line of his mouth wavering like he was struggling to hold onto his anger in the face of Yorki’s joy. “The Rumbar Pirates are known as the bravest musicians to have ever sailed the five seas. Each of them had the talent and passion of a hundred men.”
He could feel the way that Franky and Robin and Sanji were looking at him. They, at least, remembered enough to know that the words were not his own. They were Brook’s words: the ones he had painstakingly carved into mossy stone back on Thriller Bark, refusing any help and forsaking any company. Zoro didn’t think he could ever forget them. That epitaph marked the final resting place of not only the Rumbar Pirates, but also of Yubashiri. He and Brook had mourned there together.
Yorki beamed like the words were the best thing he’d ever heard. “Of course we are!” He spun on his heel, arms splaying out and coat flaring wide. “The most passionate– that’s my crew!”
“Captain, you can’t believe this,” Brook said, standing so stiffly that his spine was almost straight. The perfect posture had always looked normal on the Brook that was a skeleton, but on a real person it seemed slightly unnatural. “It’s a fairytale.”
“Come on, Brook,” said Yorki, going up on his toes to settle his chin on Brook’s shoulder. He directed large pleading eyes up at him, and Zoro watched as Brook visibly melted. “How is this different from the stories of those Devil Fruits? Magical powers, impossible feats– that’s why you ate one, right? Because a part of you, no matter how small, wondered if it might be real!”
“But alas,” said Brook, though he was smiling now, “I have yet to die, so we still have no proof that Devil Fruits are anything other than fiction.”
Yorki made a face. “My friend, if that’s the proof you are waiting for, you can expect to keep waiting until the end of your natural lifespan. There’s no escaping this journey we’ve set upon so easily!”
Brook laughed his same old laugh. “I would never want to, my dear.”
“Oh boy,” Sanji muttered next to him, blowing out a cloud of smoke. Simultaneously, Robin was raising her eyebrows with a look of dawning realization. Franky had the weepy expression he made whenever he saw something sappy and sweet.
Zoro raised an eyebrow at Sanji, hoping for an explanation, but the other man just scoffed. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand,” he muttered, keeping his eyes diverted from where Brook and Yorki stood.
Luffy, having grown bored of the conversation, finally moved away from the two men. “Sanji!” he cried. “Lunch?”
“Yeah, shitty Captain,” Sanji said, moving back over to the grill. “Just give me a second.” Franky’s expression did a one-eighty from weepy to stony, and he turned to follow after Sanji with an urgency like an alarm was going off inside his head. And maybe there really was, Zoro thought. He wouldn’t put it past the other man to have built a proximity alarm into the grill, or something like that.
The rest of them began to follow, as easily distracted as ever by the promise of Sanji’s cooking.
“Well?” Nami asked, looking over Brook and Yorki with a raised brow. “Are you coming?”
Yorki practically glowed. “Yes!” Without needing further invitation, he latched onto Brook’s arm and began to drag him along.
Zoro had never given much thought to Brook’s former captain. As far as he was concerned, Luffy was the only captain that was worth paying any attention to.
But if he had, he knew that he never would've guessed the sheer extent to which Yorki took up space. He observed the other man quietly as everyone settled around the picnic table that Nami and Usopp had set up. Every word Yorki spoke brimmed with intensity and resolve. He positively exuded energy and motion. He seemed so alive.
And no matter what Luffy saw, to Zoro’s eye Brook was almost a different person around his old captain. He visibly hung on the man’s every word, leaned into the spaces that Yorki left behind, filling his silences with an ease that was like second nature. It was as though this Brook existed just to fit himself against Yorki’s edges. He reminded Zoro, in a deeply uncomfortable way, of himself.
And even stranger was that Zoro could see exactly how this Brook would one day turn into the Brook that he knew. If this Brook and Yorki fit together to form a unified whole, then the Brook that Zoro knew was a lonely half. He was the negative image of his past self in every possible way: bleached bone where there was once dark skin; an expressionless skull where there was once emotion in every meaningful glance; something terribly empty in a space that had once been filled by devotion and love.
And worst of all was that, as Zoro watched him, he could feel his perception of Brook changing. Whereas he had first looked at this Brook and found him to be too full of life, too strange and out of place, he was now starting to think that he was exactly what he should be.
It was Zoro’s Brook that was out of place, an unfulfilled husk, merely a pale copy of his former self that had latched on to the Straw Hats in a fruitless attempt to replace what he’d lost.
And Zoro didn’t want to think that way. He knew, or he’d known only a few minutes ago, that it wasn’t true.
As he watched, Yorki and Brook settled next to each other at the table and linked their arms together.
Sanji began to set out the food, and the Straw Hats began to serve themselves as quickly as they always did. Nami and Usopp, who were sitting next to Luffy, elbowed him without reserve whenever his hands strayed too close to their plates. They all had a lot of practice at that. But where they were engaged in the evergreen task of forcing Luffy to keep his hands to himself, Yorki and Brook were engaged in their own ritual.
They had each served themselves a little bit of everything that had been placed on the table, their plates identical to each other. But just as Sanji and Franky finally sat to join them, Zoro watched Yorki reach out with his fork to spear the green beans on Brook’s plate. A few seconds later, when a particularly violent jerk of Nami’s arm sent Luffy colliding into Usopp, Brook reached out to snag one of Yorki’s potato wedges.
Throughout the meal, Zoro watched with climbing eyebrows as the green beans on Brook’s plate– a food that he had never known the other man to enjoy– were slowly eaten by Yorki. When there were no more potato wedges on either Brook or Yorki’s plates, Yorki reached out to serve himself some more– and it was Brook who continued to eat them.
It was domestic. It wasn’t just domestic, it was lovey-dovey. And it was a little embarrassing to watch, Zoro finally realized, and when he finally tore his gaze away it was to see Franky staring at him with clear amusement. Zoro scowled, reached into his glass, and threw an ice cube at the man. It bounced off of Franky’s shoulder with a metallic tink. Franky just smirked at him.
“So, Captain Yorki,” Robin said, smoothly cutting through the typical chaos of a Straw Hat meal.
Yorki looked up at her expectantly.
“Do you mind if I ask you a few questions about how you came to be here?” Robin said, sipping at a cup of tea. “I’m trying to figure out where our Brook might have ended up.” Zoro looked up, attention caught.
“Do you think he could be with our crew right now?” Brook said. His mouth twisted to one side as he thought. For obvious reasons, it was not a habit that Zoro had noticed before.
“It’s possible,” Robin said. “But not certain.”
“Well, ask away,” Yorki said. “We’re open books.”
Robin smiled. “When I asked you earlier about where you’d come ashore, you only said you’d come through the forest. When we circled this island on our ship this morning, we weren’t able to locate any other beaches. Are you able to be more specific?”
“Hmm,” Yorki said, his brows scrunching. “Well, let’s see. We were on our ship with our crew earlier today, I remember that. And then…” He paused, and then laughed sheepishly. “Well, we must have come ashore at some point. I guess when you’ve been sailing for so long, it all blends together.”
“And you?” Robin asked Brook. “What do you remember?”
“Nothing more specific,” Brook said, drumming his fingers on the table. That habit, at least, was one Zoro was familiar with. “It’s strange. I normally find that I have a very keen memory, even when Yorki’s might fail.”
“A kind way of calling me forgetful, my friend,” Yorki said, putting his elbow up on the table with a hangdog expression.
“Well, in this instance, I suspect it’s not your fault,” Robin said. “I’ve never heard stories of time travel like this, where people from different places and times swap in a seemingly arbitrary fashion. But I have heard many stories of illusions, and memories coming to life, and interactions with people who shouldn’t have existed.”
Brook’s mouth fell open. “Are you suggesting that we don’t really exist?”
“It seems likely,” said Robin. “If I had to guess, the two of you are a projection from our Brook’s memories, shown to us by the innate magic of the forest. It would explain why you don’t have any memories of actually arriving here, and why none of our past selves have shown up. Only Brook entered the forest. And I imagine you would disappear as soon as you tried to leave the island, because it is the forest that is enabling you to exist at all.”
“The forest is reading Brook’s mind?” said Usopp, looking creeped out.
“That’s my theory,” said Robin, calmly stirring her tea.
Yorki looked down at his hands. “If we’re illusions, then why do I feel real?”
Nami leaned closer to him with narrowed eyes. “Well, as far as we know, you don’t feel anything. The forest is just making you say that so you seem more real to us.”
Yorki’s expression was slowly skewing towards panic. “Oh my god. Am I really real? What if I just exist to fool myself?”
There was a moment of tense silence, and then Brook chuckled his familiar laugh. “That doesn’t make any sense,” he said, grinning. “And anyway, who cares if we truly exist. I feel real, and that’s all that matters.”
“Whoa,” Chopper said, starry-eyed. He was sitting on the picnic table in order to be eye-level with the rest of them. “That was so smart, Brook!”
“I agree,” said Yorki, smiling. “Very wise.”
“It’s weird seeing Brook as a calming presence,” Sanji said, blowing smoke out of the side of his mouth. It was pretty much exactly what Zoro had been thinking.
“Oh?” Brook hummed. “Am I less grounded in my old age?”
“You could say that,” Usopp muttered somewhat hysterically, and by his subsequent wince Zoro could tell that Sanji had kicked him. Those steel-toed shoes were no joke.
“Well,” said Nami loudly, glancing away in what Zoro knew to be her tell for when she was obscuring the truth, “you know how old people can be. They become much more concerned with enjoying the time they have left.”
“I can’t imagine myself as an old man,” Brook said with a frown. And then he suddenly gasped in horror. “Has my hair turned gray?”
“No way, bro,” Franky said, slightly bitter. “You’ve got super genes or something, I don’t know how you do it. I’m so jealous.”
Zoro stifled an amused snort. When it came to body image, Franky had little in common with other people. But his hair, at least, was one of the few things he could still be vain about. There had been many one-sided arguments on the Sunny-Go in which Franky demanded to know how Brook’s hair hadn’t rotted away with the rest of his physical form, and Brook would just laugh and repeat the same vague sentiments about having good genes. Zoro met Usopp’s expression from across the table, and they both quickly looked away before either of them burst into laughter.
“And what about Yorki?” Brook suddenly asked. “If I travel with you, then you at least must have met Yorki. Has he gone gray?”
“I think it’s inevitable for me,” Yorki said, answering before any of them could try to fumble their way into a lie. He held a strand of his blond hair in front of his eyes, and looked at it mournfully. “Dad went gray before he turned forty.”
Brook laughed, and placed a hand on top of Yorki’s hat. “You poor white man.”
Zoro breathed a sigh of relief. That line of questioning probably wouldn’t have ended well. It was an honest-to-God miracle that Luffy hadn’t said anything stupid yet– though it was always possible that he still hadn’t connected the dots about who Yorki was. At least he couldn’t talk while shoveling food into his mouth. Sanji, perhaps thinking along the same lines as Zoro, suddenly leaped up to get Luffy another serving of food.
“I feel that,” Usopp lamented to Brook. “Surrounded by all these pale losers. None of them do anything fun with their hair, ever.” And then, seconds before Nami’s fist impacted with his arm: “Except for Nami. Ow! Hey, I said except for you!”
Brook laughed. “Ah, I can see that. Do you do your own hair?”
“Sure do,” Usopp said proudly. His hair was currently braided tightly against his skull.
“Is that your ship?” Yorki suddenly asked, pointing to where the Sunny-Go bobbed just offshore. “She’s a beauty.”
“Super eye!” Franky beamed. “That’s the Thousand Sunny, my pride and joy. I guess Robin said you can’t leave the island, but we could get a little closer, if you wanted?”
“Ah, Brook should go in my place,” Yorki deferred. “I don’t think I’m quite finished eating.”
Brook turned to him with a raised brow. “Captain?”
“Take notes, my friend,” was all Yorki said, smiling up at him. “In the event that we really do exist, we’ll eventually have to get ourselves a bigger ship before we head to the Grandline.”
Brook stared at him for a moment, and then tilted his head in acquiescence. “Very true.”
He stood up and allowed himself to be led away by Franky, and Usopp and Chopper scrambled up to follow. They were heading towards where the Mini-Merry was still overturned in the sand. Nami took one look and went after them, yelling about how they better not be planning to mess with the sensitivity on the throttle.
Yorki watched them go for a minute, and then turned back to the rest of them.
“May I infer that you wanted to talk to us alone?” Robin asked, raising an eyebrow. Across from Zoro, Luffy had finally finished eating, and was occupying himself by playing with a splinter sticking out of the table.
Sanji stood and began to put away the dishes. He was absolutely still within earshot, but he was at least plausibly not listening in. Zoro, in contrast, didn’t even pretend to consider moving away.
“Yes,” Yorki said, and when he smiled it was much smaller than any of his others had been. “I think Brook knows what I’m about to ask you, but he doesn’t want to know the answer.”
“And what is it that you intend to ask me?” Robin said.
“Am I dead?” Yorki said.
There was a pause.
“Yes,” Luffy said, and finally looked up.
So, he had known who Yorki was. Zoro shouldn’t have been surprised.
“I thought I must be,” Yorki said. He looked out into the forest, his gaze far away. “If Brook is a part of your crew…” He shook his head. “Sixty years has always seemed like a very long time to me. How strange that now it seems so short.”
The sad truth of the matter was that Yorki had much less time than he knew. Brook had spent fifty years alone in the Florian Triangle, and if Zoro recalled correctly, Yorki had left Brook as acting-captain well before even then.
None of them said anything to correct him.
“I don’t want you to tell me how it happens,” Yorki said, and then smiled in a very distant way. “I suppose I don’t even really exist, so it wouldn’t matter. But the only thing I want to know is…” He looked straight at Luffy, then. “Is he happy with you?”
This, of course, was what Zoro had been steadily becoming less and less sure of over the course of the afternoon. He didn’t honestly care if Brook had only joined them in some desperate attempt to fill an emptiness inside him. The only thing Zoro truly cared about was whether Brook was glad he had done it.
The obvious answer was yes. Of course Brook was happy. It was rare that even an hour passed on the Sunny-Go without his echoing laugh filling the air. It should have been so easy to say. But after seeing Brook like this for the first time, with the man he had set out to sea for to begin with…
Luffy didn’t even hesitate. “Of course he is.”
Yorki smiled. It was a very relieved expression. “Thank you.”
There was another pause, broken by the occasional exclamation from the group messing with the Mini-Merry and the sound of dishes clanking together as Sanji scraped food off of them.
“I’m going to become the King of the Pirates,” Luffy said suddenly, leaning forward with his eyes alight.
Yorki was clearly surprised by this. “That is quite the heavy title.”
Zoro realized with a strange shock that Yorki didn’t even know who Gold Roger was.
“I’m going to do it,” Luffy insisted.
Yorki smiled. “I’ll admit, that is not a goal I had ever considered when I set out to sea.”
Luffy nodded. “You have a different one.”
“Yes.” Yorki’s eyes went distant again. “I just want to travel the world with people who love music. And I would love… to make children smile.”
“Kids should be happy,” Luffy said, his own voice going a bit distant.
Zoro exchanged a glance with Robin. They never talked about Ace, ever– but all of them wondered.
“Yeah,” Yorki said. And then he grinned. “I’m glad that it’s different, with you.”
Luffy tilted his head. “Brook would never want to live your dream with anybody else.”
Yorki laughed. “That obvious, am I? Ah, no. I mean that I’m glad that Brook has something new. I’m glad he’s not just living for my ghost.”
Robin closed her eyes and brought her cup tea back up to her lips. “That is very wise,” she said quietly.
“That’s kind of you to say,” Yorki said, and this time when he looked away he was looking at Brook. The man currently sat in the sand, laughing as Nami and Franky bickered about something. Usopp crouched next to him, probably providing sly commentary. Chopper was perched in his lap. “But it’s actually purely selfish of me.”
“I see,” said Robin. “Yes, love can feel that way.”
Zoro blinked with surprise, and then realization. He looked around to catch Sanji’s eye. The other man just smirked at him, and Zoro narrowed his eye in return. Why hadn’t the shitty cook just said they were in love when Zoro had asked?
“You know, in a strange way, I’m glad,” Yorki said, and Zoro refocused on him.
“That you’re dead?” Luffy asked. He’d started messing with the splinter in the table again, and Zoro watched him wearily. If he kept that up, Chopper was going to be picking wood chips out of his fingers.
“Yeah, that I’m dead,” Yorki said. “I asked Brook to become a pirate with me, and he abandoned everything to follow me as I chased my stupid dream. I’m glad that at some point, even sixty years from now, he’ll be free to make his own choices again.”
“You were right,” Zoro said. “That is selfish of you.”
Yorki looked at him in shock. “What?”
Zoro rolled his eye. “You’re an idiot if you don’t think he’s been making his own choices all along, and you’re an asshole if you just can’t respect them.”
“Marimo,” Sanji hissed at him, probably offended that he’d cursed in Robin’s presence, but Zoro ignored him.
“He chose to follow you,” Zoro said. “He abandoned everything for it, but that was his decision. And I know for a fact that he doesn’t regret it.” He thought of Brook, alone on a ship with his crew’s corpses for half a century, having to live with the fact that he was all that was left of his captain’s dream. It pretty much sounded like Zoro’s worst nightmare. “Your stupid dream is his stupid dream, too. And if you told him right now that you thought you had trapped him into following you, I can guarantee that he would try to stab you. I mean, weren’t you listening to his little speech earlier? He said that he would never allow anything to stop him from following his captain. That’s you, isn’t it?”
Yorki couldn’t have looked more stunned if Zoro had slapped him.
Zoro shook his head. “You say that you love him, but you’re so self-absorbed that you haven’t even thought about the fact that he loves you too.”
Robin smiled a secret little smile into her cup of tea. Behind her, Sanji scoffed something inaudible under his breath.
Zoro looked away, and accidentally caught his captain’s gaze. Luffy was looking right back at him, and his eyes were gleaming.
*
It wasn’t much longer before Yorki and Brook left.
After Zoro’s impromptu speech, Yorki had smiled at him and stood, and went to sit with Brook in the sand.
The Straw Hats had left them alone for a while, but eventually the pair rejoined the group, hand in hand.
“We’re going to try to get back to our ship,” Yorki said, smiling at them all. “Even if we don’t exist– better to try something then to try nothing, isn’t it?”
Luffy laughed. “You’re funny.”
Yorki grinned. “So are all of you.”
“Thank you for lunch,” Brook said to them, and insisted on shaking all of their hands. When it was Zoro’s turn, he tried his hardest to commit the man’s face to memory. Covered in skin or just a skeleton, it was still Brook, but it had been a special opportunity to see the man in a way he’d probably never see again. “It was a pleasure to meet you, although… I suppose I’ll be meeting you all again soon enough! Yo-ho-ho!”
“Eventually,” Usopp agreed, smiling.
“Stay safe!” Chopper said, hooves on his hips. “Don’t trip on a tree root in all that mist.”
“And say hi to Laboon for us!” Nami said. Yorki asked her what she meant by that, but she refused to explain.
The Straw Hats watched them disappear into the mist, and even once they were gone nobody moved.
Luffy was perched on a piece of driftwood that was lodged in the sand, his elbows resting on his knees and staring intently into the forest. They could all tell that he had something important to tell them, and that he was just building up it.
“No one is going to tell Brook about this,” he finally said. Nobody protested, but Luffy continued anyway, as if to justify himself: “It isn’t fair that we got to see Yorki and Brook didn’t. But he doesn’t have to live with it, because we don’t have to tell him.”
He still didn’t look at any of them, almost like he was expecting somebody to reprimand him for something.
But of course, that didn’t happen.
Sanji just nodded, and began to roll up his sleeves. “I’ll go warm up some of the leftovers from lunch, so he’ll have something warm to eat when he gets back.”
Franky straightened up as soon as Sanji was out of earshot, his mechanical joints creaking like old bones. “I’d better put the grill away.” Zoro smirked.
Chopper sprung upwards. “Ooh, I meant to grab some of the herbs that Usopp and I found earlier. I think I recognized some of them from the Torino Kingdom.”
Robin smiled down at him. “I’ll go with you.”
Nami clapped her hands together. “Come on, Usopp, let’s put the picnic table away.” Without waiting for his agreement, she grabbed his shoulder and began hauling him back towards the ship.
Usopp flailed behind her, sputtering and trying to plant his feet. “Nami! Let me walk!” And then, as he gained his footing– “I think we should make Zoro do it. We’re the ones who got it out!”
“If you beat me in a fight, I’ll do it,” Zoro called after him.
“Um, never mind,” Usopp said, and then began to bluster about how he was the king of moving tables and he didn’t want Zoro’s help anyway because it would be an insult to his craft.
Zoro scoffed. When he looked back at Luffy, his captain was smiling up at him.
“Zoro cares about us,” Luffy said, grinning like he’d caught Zoro doing something embarrassing.
“Stupid captain,” Zoro said, and quickly looked away again.
“It’s good,” Luffy said, and was quiet for a moment. “How Brook cared about Yorki was good too.”
Zoro raised an eyebrow. “You think I care about the crew like Brook cared about Yorki?”
Luffy giggled. “No. Zoro only cares about me in that kind of way.”
Zoro’s cheeks flamed, but he did not deny it. Luffy beamed up at him.
“And the way Brook cares about us is good,” Luffy said suddenly, quieter again.
“Yeah,” Zoro said, because he knew that it was true. Maybe Brook had lost a lot of things, and maybe those things could never be replaced. But he’d gained things, too. And Zoro wasn’t stupid enough to try and tell himself that Brook wasn’t happy as a Straw Hat, or that he wouldn’t fight to keep his new life among them. He’d been fighting to keep his new life all along, ever since Zoro had met him.
Even back on Thriller Bark– Zoro had known he would like Brook as soon as he’d begun to talk about his endless attempts at defeating Moria. Brook had known he would probably die trying, and had even warned them away from trying to help him, but he’d been determined to keep fighting anyway.
His captain and crew were dead, and he hadn’t been a Straw Hat yet. But Brook had still wanted his shadow back. He’d still wanted to live.
Suddenly, carried to them on the wind and ever-so-faint, Zoro could hear the high, howling laughter of their missing member. There was a familiar lilt to his voice as he spoke to someone who wasn’t really there at all. It was coming closer every second.
Zoro smiled, because Brook was coming home.