One Piece fic-PoSM, Chapter 2

[liashi]

Title: The Psychology of a Shattered Mind
Chapter Title: Undersea
Rating: PG-13 / T
Characters: Mostly Usopp and Luffy
Word Count: About 3.9k
Warnings: Disturbing imagery, implications of non-con/dub-con, and violence. Potential spoilers for entire series. Angsty Usopp and blatant excuse for nakama comfort. This will be intense. Possible spoilers for entire series. AU from Usopp being stuck on the Bowin Islands.



Can also be found at FF.net here. Comments very appreciated. Con Crit loved also.

Chapter links (on LJ): Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapter 12, Chapter 13, Chapter 14, Chapter 15

Nami is exhausted, but confident that she has not been followed, when she finally clambers onto the Thousand Sunny. She's glad to have the so-called Holy City behind her; she has seen enough of that giant whitewashed tomb to last her a lifetime. She knew the Celestial Dragons were cruel, cold, horrible people, but she didn't expect her opinion of them to drop so low that she can't see the human in them anymore than she saw it in Arlong. She had thought that perhaps there could be a few tolerable individuals among them, just as there are a few tolerable marines, but now she is certain that is not the case. With any luck, the damage they have done here in their quest to recover Usopp will keep Mariejoa from being a destination worth going to for the rest of their natural lives.

It is the very least that would appeal to a sense of justice.

Hurrying at once toward the sick bay door with a knot growing in her gut and one too many variations on the worst case scenario in her head, she jerks to a halt when she catches a glimpse of bright red on the grass of the lower deck. When she realizes what her idiot captain has not done and what he has done instead, her jaw clenches.

"Luffy!" The name is not shouted, it is screamed, and at once the object of her ire whips around with apprehension. She knocks him on the head before he can get in a word of justification. "Just what is Usopp laying out here in the grass for, idiot? Get him into the sick bay!"

Luffy rubs the newly formed lump under his hat, looking at Nami with that slightly pouty, kicked-puppy look he usually reserves for a thwarted mealtime. "But Nami," he whines, "He wanted to lie on the grass. He was afraid of the dark room." Luffy glances down at the marksman he is crouched beside, and the pout turns a little angry. "If you keep shouting, you'll wake him up."

Nami softens a little at this explanation, but she is still frowning as she puts her fists on her hips. Looking at Usopp, who has one hand clenched around grass, a few blades poking up from between his fingers, she can almost see a kind of logic in why Luffy didn't fight the sharpshooter on the request. Still, she knows that they need to get him inside and into a bed. They have to treat his wounds.

At this thought, she wishes for a few Celestial Dragons to zap with some more Thunder Tempos.

"Where's Chopper?" Luffy breaks her increasingly violent train of thought.

Nami puts a hand to her head, shoving back her orange locks. "I don't know. With Brook, last I saw. Everyone got split up. I just hope someone stayed with Zoro or he'll never get back here." She glances about at the giant tunnel shielding the ship from easy view of the city of Mariejoa. This really isn't that safe of a place to stay. It's only a matter of time before they're discovered here. Once they have Usopp in a bed in the sick bay, she decides, they'll head deeper into the tunnel again to wait for everyone else.

"C'mon Luffy, if he's asleep now, we better get him into a bed and do what we can until Chopper gets here. He won't know the difference if he's not awake, right?"

Luffy ponders this a moment, then gathers Usopp in his arms, leaping up to the sick bay door to the sound of his legs stretching and snapping back.

Nami takes the stairs.

Luffy has already laid Usopp out on the sick bay bed when she arrives, and is about to make a mess of Chopper's carefully arranged shelf of bandages. Nami intervenes by swatting his hand away. The good doctor would owe her for having to protect his valuables, like anyone else, but she's kind of owed him since the beginning of their relationship. Besides, who charges a reindeer money, anyway? "Touch them without permission and owe me a hundred thousand berry," she tells Luffy instead.

Rather than pout, Luffy-either in a rare show of wisdom or a state of distracted eagerness-asks what he can do, then. She sets him to fetching a bowl of clean water while she selects the appropriate amount of bandages.

"Where is he!"

Chopper comes bursting into the room, eyes bulging and chest heaving, and Nami ends up sending rolls of bandages all over the floor. Brook is ducking down at the doorway to stare after Chopper, but he does not enter. His gaze edges over to Usopp for a long moment, while Nami is berating Chopper for startling her and Chopper is fretting about "bandage sanitation." Luffy comes back from the kitchen with the assigned item and stands and stares blankly at them, all while chewing on a large slab of meat.

After gathering up the scattered rolls, Chopper takes the bowl of water from Luffy, carefully inspecting it for contamination. Then he shoos everyone from the room so he can work.

"Shoppa 'ill phickim uh ood," Luffy declares around the meat sticking from his mouth. He pushes it halfway down his throat with a hand and swallows, seeming disinclined to move from the front of the sick bay door. He is being unusually attentive, Nami thinks.

"How's Longnose-bro?" asks a worried voice. Franky has come up behind Nami and is tipping his shades up to his forehead.

"Chopper's treating him," Nami tells the cyborg, folding her arms. "We need to get this ship further into the tunnels, but we can't go back under the water until Robin's here."

Franky nods, letting his shades fall back down to his metal nose. "Leave it me and Channel Zero." He waves at Brook to follow him. "Help me out, Skeleton-bro?"

Brook straightens, seeming pleased at the request, and follows Franky below.

By time the ship is getting underway, Sanji has shown up, sporting a bloodied arm and a rumpled appearance-but in one piece otherwise. He sticks a cigarette into his mouth, but holds off on lighting it when Nami glares at him. She doesn't want to have any of his stupid cigarette smoke escaping the tunnel and somehow leading the marines back to them. "Poor Robin-chan got stuck with that sack of muscle, I think," he explains, "But at least she'll keep the idiot from going to the HQ building thirty times." Here he pauses, glancing at the sick bay door.

"Chopper's taking care of him," Nami says, wondering if she'll have to answer this question for the rest of the crew as well. It's annoying, but she doesn't want to leave until Chopper comes back out and gives them a full prognosis.

It's been six long months trying to pull this crew back together, and five of those were wasted just looking for him, she thinks to herself. He's delayed me and made me spend money on puttering around just because Luffy refused to continue without him. Of course I want to know. I want to know if, in the end, we've wasted all this time or not!

Funny enough, though, these thoughts lack the truly angry edge they should have, instead covering for something else more squirming and sinister.

Nami has a hard time not tapping her foot as she waits, especially when Luffy starts sticking a finger up his nose so far that she thinks he might be massaging his own brain. Zoro and Robin still have not returned-she's getting a little worried about them-when Chopper finally emerges, looking quite solemn.

There is only one question for that expression. "How bad, Chopper-kun?"

The doctor is pushing his hooves against each other as he talks, not meeting Nami's, Sanji's, or Luffy's eyes. "I'm going to have to re-break an arm and a leg so that they can set right. He's really weak, definitely malnourished. There's a lot of cuts and bruises, some of them infected, deep, or both. The only good news is that the ankle I thought might be shattered at first was just a bad sprain. But the thing I'm really worried about…" Chopper looks up then, eyes large and watery, "…it's that internal damage. On top of the other things, especially the infections and the malnutrition, I don't…I just don't know if…" Chopper looks down again, guilty and worried.

Sanji grunts harshly, dropping the never-lit cigarette and crushing it under one foot while he mutters something that sounds like it might be a string of swear words. He stops with a blink and then makes a disgusted and frustrated sound, picking the smashed cigarette back up and putting it into his mouth with a jerky, angry motion.

Luffy pops his finger from his nose and stares at Chopper, hunched over. "Oi, what're you saying?"

"He's saying Usopp might not make it, idiot!" Sanji snaps. He has one hand stuck in the pocket where his lighter is. It's moving around inside, as if he's fiddling with the object, barely keeping himself from pulling it out.

Luffy's brows turn inward, his voice growing harsh. "Don't say garbage like that! Of course he'll make it, because he's Usopp. Plus we have Chopper taking care of him."

Chopper looks somewhat encouraged, though not completely reassured, by this vote of confidence. Sanji snorts but makes no reply, having learned long ago that there's no sense in arguing with their captain when he's making that kind of face.

Pulling a folder paper from the pocket of his shorts, Chopper holds it up to Sanji. "Could you please make these soups and syrups? The sooner we can get nutrition into him, the better."

"Right," Sanji says, taking the paper and only pausing to silently ask permission to cut through the sick bay. After nodding, Chopper follows Sanji inside, and Luffy follows Chopper.

Leaning against the deck railing with a sigh, she looks up as a muffled explosion issues from somewhere above and dust and small stones rain down onto the ship. "If that stupid Mihawk wannabe doesn't get back here with Robin soon," she mutters, "I'm raising his interest again."

Their ship dives under the water, back down toward Fishman Island, after Zoro and Robin rush aboard warning that they're being followed. Although Robin says that the marines are quite far behind, there is no sense in tipping off the WG to a direct route from Fishman Island to Mariejoa if they don't have to. The fish-folk have gone to a great deal of trouble to keep the fact quiet, while, similarly, the Strawhats have gone to a lot of trouble to convince the fish-folk to allow them to employ the route in the first place.

Zoro complains that the whole business has been a big pain. He didn't get to cut down as many marines or Celestial Dragons as he would have liked.

Nami tells him to shut up and be grateful he got to cut down more than rest of them did. Sanji backs her up on the sentiment, starting a fight between himself and Zoro that Nami doesn't have the energy to do anything about except yell and bash them both over the head. Within a number of hours of leaving Mariejoa, they are docked at the beautiful underwater Fishman Island, colorful fish-folk and twisting seaweed visible in every direction. Nami looks out at the sights she had viewed with impatient hope before they set out for Mariejoa and wonders why all she feels now is bitter.

The ship is eerily quiet in comparison even to when they were looking for Usopp. Not even Luffy voices his demands for food as loudly as usual. It seems as if they are all waiting for Usopp to be on the upward climb of recovery before breathing again.

The crisis point comes three days into their time docked at the island. Chopper spends all day tending to a very feverish Usopp, and refuses to let anyone else touch him. The reindeer is clearly stung out and won't break for meals-as if doing either would spell doom for his patient. Zoro, after staring at Usopp for a good fifteen minutes that evening, declares his intent to stay up with the doctor the rest of the night. Chopper reluctantly agrees to it-which is the thing that disturbs Nami the most-but he insists that everyone else sleep, because they need rest a lot more than their power-napper swordsman.

Zoro, sitting on a stool pulled up to the bedside, frowning grimly, and resting one hand atop of Usopp's, is an image that troubles Nami all night. She ends up tossing and turning in her bed, but she forces herself to stay in it. There's nothing she can do for Usopp anyway. If she went down there, the only thing she would be is in the way The water outside is just beginning to brighten when she throws her covers off and heads to the sick bay in a shaky daze, knowing that sleep is a lost cause. There is no point in waiting to check now that the dawn has come.

Her stomach lurches in anticipation as she opens the door, but it quickly settles. The first sign that the crisis is over is Zoro hunched over in the corner, snoring. Chopper, wrapping clean bandages around one of Usopp's arms, looks over at her and smiles a watery, but wide and true smile for the first time in days.

"Fever broke," Chopper whispers, almost too quiet to hear.

Nami smiles also, blinking back tears and trying not to sink to the floor. "I wasn't worried about him," she says, pretending that she is scrubbing at sleepy eyes and not watery ones. "I just thought I'd stop by before breakfast, is all."

He is aware of sounds before touch. This seems out of order, but he is too comfortable to give it much thought. Every sensation is fuzzy and muted, which is far more pleasant than his last memory of what most sensations felt like.

Quiet conversation makes up most of what he hears. There are occasionally the sounds of movement, and always somewhere in the background there is a strange groaning which is not human, nor monster. He doesn't know what to make of the noise but he feels too relaxed to worry about it, even if worrying would be the proper thing to do. After that, he gets used to it. The sound belongs to this place, somehow.

Is he dead, or did they give him something "nice" again…?

Although he has been lying here barely aware of his surroundings, either of those two options are worthy of investigation, so he works on dragging his eyes open.

Opening them is much easier as an idea.

"Oh, had I known he was above us months ago, I would've gone up there and-and-" A squelching accompanies a nasal, strung-out sounding voice.

"We know. We know you would have. But regrets are useless, and it would have been suicidal to try going yourself. Just tell me you can see why it'd be best for us to stay docked here for a while."

"Don't worry, after everything that's happened … I'm sure you can stay as long as you need."

"Thanks for coming to see him."

"If it's all right, I'd like to come again."

"Of course. You're always welcome."

There is a smile, albeit a quiet one, in the last statement. These sound like voices he should know, so he tries harder to open his eyes. However, when he finally does, there is nothing in the room save for something that looks like a stuffed animal sitting at a desk, its back to him. He blinks, then licks dry lips and tries his voice. "Where-?"

The stuffed animal whirls around without warning, and his heart leaps a little farther than his body. He screams. The stuffed animal look-a-like does the same and tears from the room, a look of complete terror on its face. The door slams behind it.

His mouth claps shut and he feels sheepish. It seems the "stuffed animal" was more surprised than him…

He falls back to the pillow, worry over whether or not he is in danger overcome by a wave of dizziness. He is surprised to notice the absence of aches and bruises, and looking at himself, is doubly surprised by the swathes of bandages. He's been treated, in this room, even. The air smells of mint and antiseptic-a scent not altogether unpleasant-and he inhales deeply. There is a faint twinge in his chest, but nothing worse than that. He is not sure where he is or how he got here, but he should probably enjoy the peace while he can.

Maybe, since he stayed alive so long, the masters wanted him to fight longer…?

That's not how the Gray Ring works!

He shakes his head at his own thoughts, recalling a fuzzy memory of what he thought was a rescue. His first instinct is to discount it as an incredible dream, but if what he is experiencing now is to be believed, then rescue seems…possible.

Swallowing, he feels for his blade, throwing the covers off when he doesn't find it. A quick sweep of the bed doesn't turn up the impact dial, either. Alarmed, he stumbles out of bed and around the room, barely able to stand, but determined to find his weapons nevertheless. If he doesn't have them, he'll be defenseless, vulnerable, easy to kill-

The mere effort of standing is making his breathing harsh, and he looks forward to sitting down. The only useful item he finds is a box filled with strange tools, one of which is a short, but sharp, knife. He grabs the blade up in one hand and sags against the nearest wall. As soon as he gets his breath back, he thinks, he'll-

His support falls away and belatedly he realizes what he has leaned on is the door.

Stupid move! Stupid!

Panic flushes his body with new energy. He stumbles back intentionally then pivots, plunging the knife into whatever is behind him. The thing gives a choked cry. From somewhere else there is a high scream. He slams the other elbow back, twisting the knife as he whips it out of his target in a sweeping side cut. There is a thud. He whirls around fully and points his weapon at the thing that fell.

A long blade is at his throat. He freezes as suddenly as he moved

"Drop it." The command is dark and low, coming from a muscled man off to the side. He is holding the blade at the once-slave's throat. Two more hang from his belt.

"Zoro…m'alright." The person the once-slave stabbed waves a hand, the other pressed against his side.

With the sword at his throat the once-slave doesn't dare to move as the stabbed one gets to his feet, but his eyes sweep the boy's appearance. After a beat he connects this person with that boy and stiffens even more.

He just-just-

The knife clatters to the floor.

"Back up," says the man with the sword.

"Zoro-"

"Back up," the man insists over the boy's-no, Luffy's-voice. He hasn't taken his gaze off the once-slave for a moment.

"Zoro! You back up!" Luffy says, his voice raised and his face angry. "I'll be fine. You're scaring Usopp!"

Who's Usopp?

He doesn't dare look around to see who else is standing nearby, he simply backs up until he's inside the doorway again. His legs give out, but he keeps his eyes on the swordsman, who has returned the blade to the empty sheathe. The swordsman gives the once-slave an almost … concerned frown, which doesn't make sense, but he certainly isn't looking at Luffy. The expression cools to impassivity after that and the swordsman turns away.

The stuffed animal is back, fretting over Luffy's wound-it can talk, he notes dimly-but Luffy waves the creature aside and comes forward to stand in front of him. Luffy stares down with neither pleasure nor displeasure. It's that waiting again, he realizes, a waiting that is judging and expectant all at once. Luffy begins to lift a hand.

He cringes away, anticipating a blow or even death for what he's done, jolting when he feels the hand rest lightly on his head. It rubs a little, comforting, no hint of possible violence. "S'okay, Usopp," says Luffy. "I know you're just scared. But I told you, you don't have to be. We're gonna take care of you now," steely determination hardens Luffy's tone. "We're not gonna fail you again."

When it seems Luffy's hand might lift away, he grabs onto the boy's arm, willing him to stay. Something is breaking in his throat and he is shaking, steadied only by the arm. "S-s-sorry," he says, then sniffles back the liquid suddenly clogging his nose.

Luffy has not gotten angry, has not hurt him, even though he hurt Luffy. Where he doubted the boy before, he trusts him completely now, believing it when Luffy says he's going to protect him.

Luffy doesn't say anything. Instead he extracts his arm, then wraps it under the once-slave's arms, helping him up and back to the bed. A movement at the doorway draws his attention to the fact that the "stuffed animal" is attempting to hide behind the open door and peak at the going-ons at the same time.

Luffy grins, then motions the creature over. The creature points at himself, swallowing.

"C'mon, Chopper!" Luffy urges.

Straightening the large pink top hat he's wearing, the creature steels himself and clops over. The once-slave finds himself staring at the hooves.

"Usopp, this is Chopper," says Luffy, urging Chopper forward a little. The creature only meets the once-slave's eyes for a moment. "Chopper's our doctor and he's the one who's fixed you up. He's really good and has an ultra-cool blue nose."

"Idiot! Flattery for my nose isn't going to get you anywhere!" says Chopper, tone angry, though a grin is splitting his face and he's doing a small dance in place.

The once-slave stares, wondering if the nose has some sort of secret power that makes it worth mentioning.

"So," Luffy says, "If Chopper asks you to do something, don't fight him, because he's just doing it to help you get better. Okay?"

"Please don't hurt me," adds Chopper, holding his hand-hooves up prayerfully

Chopper is a short little thing and his voice sounds young. He can only imagine how frightening his sudden attack must have been, so he nods, dropping his head and murmuring another sorry. There is an odd silence.

"Nya, Usopp-" begins Luffy, scratching under his hat.

He looks around the room, and is puzzled by the apparent lack of anyone who could be called "Usopp."

"Who?"

"-N?" Luffy says, breaking off whatever he was going to say. "'Who?' what?"

He's not sure if it's a question he should be asking, as Luffy is giving him a puzzled look and Chopper is giving him a contemplative one. "Er-I mean-who-uh-"

Luffy nods, now looking interested in the question, so the once-slave continues. "Uh, who is Usopp?"

Luffy blinks at him a moment before answering, as if the question doesn't make sense. "Usopp…isn't that you?"

Continued in Chapter 3: Distance & Horizons