Authors Note: Just announcing, since I forgot to mention it last chapter, that Temporal Swashbuckler is now being beta'd by the very capable c2t2. Mistakes I hadn't even noticed have been corrected and, just in general, the quality of the last two chapters have shot up.

"And over here is a bird's nest, they've nested on top of the door so we can't close the doors without breaking it," Nami's new excitable guide said as they reached the entranceway to the isolated castle, "the castle's gotten pretty cold, not that I really notice, as a result."

Nami smiled down at the bouncing bundle of fur beside her as they looked at the nest. "I suppose you don't notice much, with your fur and all."

A miniscule stiffening of the shoulders was the only sign that Nami's words had caused the strange creature some harm. A second later she was left wondering if she'd imagined it as Chopper tilted his head up at her, eyes closed and a huge grin on his face. "Yeah, I guess being a reindeer has its uses."

Nami's hand came down to pat the reindeer on the top of his pink hat, a weird hat for a wonderfully weird being she supposed, and he flinched back with a start. Nami's smile tightened as Chopper covered up his shakiness with false claims of bravado.

It seems he too had had a hard life at the hand of another race.

Nami could empathise with that.

"Chopper," she said, kneeling down so they were face to face, "thanks again for taking care of me."

Chopper blushed, the darkened skin somehow shining through his thick fur, all false bravado gone. "It's not like I care about your gratitude, you shitty human." Had anyone else said that to her in response to her gratitude Nami would've been frothing at the mouth, but Chopper was different. She could tell he didn't mean it, not at all really. In fact it was sorta cute.

"I know, I know," Nami said, her gloved hands on her knees, "say, why don't you show me your office? I'm sure you have plenty of interesting things in there."

Chopper hummed and nodded. "Sure, it's near the top of the castle." His hoof shot out and grabbed hold of Nami's hand, tugging her after him as they walked.

The duo made mindless chatter as they approached the medical office (is being a navigator hard? What does a Devil Fruit taste like?), time flying by as they learned the ins and outs of the other. Nami learned that Chopper had been raised by another doctor on the island who had died after getting in a disagreement with the tyrant who used to rule Drum Kingdom, the name of the winter island she was on apparently, with an iron first. Sensing the morose turn the conversation had been about to take, Nami had started to talk about the crew's wacky hijinks.

About how Luffy had taken the misfits of society and bound them together in the blazing trail he left wherever he went, filling them with purpose and the need to protect. Taking broken people and slotting them together like jigsaw puzzles and, together, they were perfect.

Chopper looked up at her, eyes shining with stars, and she smiled back ruefully. Nami had a feeling that she may have just made a slight Luffy fanboy out of Chopper. "So you all trust each other to have your backs completely? That sounds so cool!" Chopper gushed, his little arms pumping in the air as he fought out imaginary battles.

Nami's reply of "damn right!" froze and died in her throat, her gloved hands absent-mindedly touching one of the jagged lines zig-zagging across her face. The simple fact was that she wouldn't, couldn't trust every single member of the Straw Hat Pirates. She thought she could, not anymore.

Not after Little Garden.

Usopp, Sanji...and Luffy. She'd die with a smile on her face for any one of them, she'd forsake her dream so they had a chance to experience theirs. And she'd consider it a life well spent, she wouldn't regret it a bit.

Especially Luffy.

And then there was the Pirate Hunter.

Even now, close to a week later, she couldn't think of her attacker as her friend Roronoa Zoro. Couldn't think of him as the man who had told her, with full confidence, that he would save her from Arlong as she had stolen Merry. No, the man who had put her to the sword was still the Pirate Hunter to her. The confused and dangerous green-haired man swathed in chains at Arlong Park who had stared up at her blankly, eye full of fire and with no recollection of Luffy.

A feral dog that would've bitten any outstretched hand, even one trying to feed it.

Nami had sensed that, deep down she had sensed just how dangerous the confused man could and would be, but she had squashed it down. The most she had done was half-heartedly ask Sanji and Usopp some questions about how Zoro had been acting, but Usopp had joined only a few days before they had met Sanji, and Sanji had literally no other experiences with Zoro besides that (except for when she had apparently missed a fight between Zoro and the World's Strongest which was just...what even in the world! Her boys got into the weirdest situations when she took her eyes off them), so of course he wouldn't be able to tell her if anything was wrong.

And yet Nami had considered the case over and done with after talking with them, moving on with her life after dealing with her niggling doubts and conscience. Not even bringing up her issues with Luffy, who by all rights she should have brought her concerns to in the first place. Nor had she considered going to the source itself: the Pirate Hunter. Well, she could argue that was a moot point anyway, because the Pirate Hunter was gone. He had been replaced by the confident and protective Roronoa Zoro, First Mate of the Straw Hat Pirates.

But she had seen the mask crack, seen the wounded animal behind the smile.

And there was a thought. Which was real and which was the mask? Was the scared yet furious Pirate Hunter she had first met at Arlong Park (and who had made her beg for death at Little Garden), the man she had heard whispers about through her travels as a thief, the real man? Or was the confident and composed man she had ran into in Orange Town the true man behind the mask? Was the Pirate Hunter just some twisted mental health problem of his? Some weird split personality he had came up with to cope with the blood-filled life he had led, something he had squashed down after meeting Luffy?

Nami hoped so because if the Pirate Hunter was the true persona and Roronoa Zoro was nothing but a carefully placed facade, if her entire friendship was built from the ground up on nothing but lies and deceit, then she wasn't sure what she would do. If the one that caused her so much pain (sharp steel slicing through her skin, biting down to the marrow, as she writhed and nerve endings screaming with her in absolute agony) and despair, the one who had nearly shattered both her mind and body, was the man behind the mask, it would taint each and every single memory and experience with the man she had called Roronoa Zoro.

And, feeling the coarse stitching criss-crossing as it ran through her body, Nami was having a hard enough time imagining forgiving Zoro as it is. And that's if the incident was somehow out of his control. But if it had been the Pirate Hunter behind everything...well then…

That was another thing altogether.

They rounded the corner to Chopper's office, Chopper mid-sentence (and now some of the villagers think I can fly!), when a pair of arms stretched out from the other end of the corridor and latched possessively around the small reindeer's waist. Chopper had just enough time to widen his eyes a fraction, confusion brimming in their brown depths, before the arms retracted with an elastic snap and, screaming all the way, Chopper shot down the corridor.

Nami snorted in spite of it all. It seemed that Luffy was well on the road to recovery, the echo of merry laughter bouncing off the stone walls only solidifying her opinion. "I should probably make sure Luffy doesn't break anything...or break Chopper for that matter."

"I doubt you have to worry about that, Luffy knows what he's doing. Most of the time, that is."

Nami's veins were liquid nitrogen. The voice rang mockingly though her mind, her brain pounding in her skull. Muscles tensed and coiled, ready to run at a moment's notice, time seemed to stutter and freeze. Slowly, fearfully, Nami turned around.

The green-haired man stood at the end of the stairway, where Nami had walked but moments ago, staring at her. Pirate Hunter or Roronoa Zoro? Pirate Hunter or Roronoa Zoro? Pirate Hunter or Roronoa Zoro? Hunter or Zoro? Hunter or Zoro? Was it the Hunter? Was it Zoro? The panicked and maddening thoughts shrieked through her head, a cacophony of fear chipping away at her brain. Nami took a step back, her eyes dilating, the paranoid mishmash of thoughts reaching a screaming crescendo as the green-haired man crossed his burly arms.

Danger, her mind screamed at her, just run for it, for god's sake!

Then the green-haired man's arms loosened, a tentative half-smile tugging at his lips, as a myriad of flashing emotions flickered through his good eye. The emotions went by too quickly for Nami to classify properly but she thought she'd caught guilt and sorrow.

Zoro. It was Zoro.

Her knees buckled out from underneath her in sickening sweet relief and she half-fell, half-sank, to the rough stone floor. Zoro had twitched towards her as she collapsed, conflicting emotions clearly warring in his visible eye, but had stayed where he was, obviously deciding that not making any sudden movements towards her right now was better for them both. Nami cupped her throat with one hand, it felt raw and swollen, as if the hole had shrunk from the size of a coin purse to that of a penny. Her eyes felt puffy and, her other hand's fingers confirming, her eyes were watering. Her voice was nearly guttural when she spoke, her voice so thick with emotion. "Zoro."

Zoro's face was ashen, his eye also shining. "Yeah, Nami," he choked out, "it's me."

And Nami was barreling towards the tall man, damn the small rational part of her mind (ever decreasing since she had met Luffy, Nami finds that it is a small price to pay to be a Straw Hat), her face flushed by large, soppy tear tracks as snot dribbled and bubbled down from her nose. She slammed full force into Zoro's chest, she swore she heard an oomph as the air was expelled from his lungs, her stick thin, at least compared to his, arms wrapping around his waist. "Zorooooooo."

Zoro looked down at her, his forehead scrunching together, as his arms slowly came around to loosely hold her in return. "Nami?" Zoro frowned as Nami burrowed her head deeper into his chest. "You're handling this...better than I expected?"

"It's you," she explained in glee, "it's really you."

Evidently that hadn't explained things well enough as Zoro's face tightened even more. "Do you not remember what happened or something?"

Nami shook her head from side to side. "No, I'm just glad. So glad."

A touch of alarm in Zoro's eye. "Glad?"

"That it's you," she said, finally breaking away from his chest to stare up at him with happy eyes even as tears flowed down her face and broke against the cold floor, "I was so worried that it would be the Pirate Hunter."

Zoro frowned at her as she finally let go and slipped out of her grasp to stand on her working, albeit unsteady, legs. "Pirate Hunter? Nami, what do you mean? Who's the Pirate Hunter?"

Nami took a deep breath and ran a gloved hand through her hair. How do break it to him? Blunty, she decided, with a little nod to herself, as she smiled up at him. "Well that's what I call him anyway, not sure what you call him. Y'know, your other personality."

Zoro went still.

Nami crowed to herself. She was right! "I knew it! At Arlong Park and L-little Garden, that was your other personality surfacing, wasn't it?" She was proud that she barely stuttered when mentioning Little Garden even as the blood haze rose behind her eyelids and her memories threatened to drag her, kicking and screaming, down into their horrid depths.

Zoro's adam's apple was obvious as he swallowed. "Y-yeah, you're right." Zoro's face seemed to grow even paler at his own admittance, Nami hadn't even known that Zoro could look that sickly. Then again, he had looked slightly sick from the get go.

Nami's smile finally slipped from her face, the memories swimming to the forefront of her mind. The maddening feeling of steel rending into flesh, the feeling of a boot crushing down on her windpipe. The absolute certainty that she would be driven insane and die on a godforsaken wax sculpture of all things. "Why, no, how did you lose control?"

"One of the Baroque Works agents had some sort of paints that can influence people mentally and I guess I just had an adverse reaction. Y'know, because of the underlying mental issue."

Nami squeezed his hand as a ball of emotions that she hadn't even known were there began to dissolve in her chest. "I think I get it, don't force yourself, thank you for trusting me with this information. I know it must be hard, Zoro."

Zoro slumped over, seeming to fold into himself even more, and his face grew even more gaunt. The relief he must be feeling for letting all his secrets out in the air was obvious. "And I guess the shock at losing to Mihawk at the Baratie and the bloody way I lost made my other self...Roronoa (that's what I call the other guy) come out."

Once again, and this conversation was breaking all sorts of records, Nami hugged Zoro. "Thank you," she said, more and more tears falling down her face as his arms wrapped around her in return, "it means so much to me that you were able to be so brave and honest with me. Thank you so much for trusting me."

And then they were both crying in the drafty corridor.

Even with the cable cars bringing them practically the entire way to the castle, the trek was still hell on earth to Sanji. Every step through the snow felt like he was moving a mile through a pool of honey, every limb was sluggish and took an extra two or three seconds to respond after he made a command. His vision was a blur and every sound muffled, like he was hearing it from underwater.

The villagers were spread out around him in a crude unofficial phalanx. As if Sanji was some sort of messiah worth protecting no matter what, no matter how high the cost. Some villagers orbited around the crude protective shield that was Vivi's and Usopp's presence, their eyes shining with reverence and awe as they mindlessly chattered away in Sanji's general direction. He hadn't responded to any of them in half an hour but they still pressed on, determined to assault his ears with everyday smalltalk.

Then again, Sanji supposed, that would be an after effect of utterly trouncing a tyrant they had lived in fear of for years, as said tyrant was just returning to his lands, wrenching away the freedom the people had become accustomed to.

A handful of salted nuts were thrust rather violently into his hand, he knew without looking that the perpetrator was Vivi, and he mechanically threw them back his throat without a sound. He felt Usopp clasp his shoulder from the other side, some show of support probably, but he managed to throw him off after a second or two. "G'reoff," he mumbled in the sniper's general direction.

"Sanji," Vivi said as he turned to look down at her, her blue eyes sparkling up at him in reprimand, "don't get angry at Usopp, he's just trying to help."

He grumbled something resembling an affirmative and shot a rather pale Usopp something that was meant to be a smile but probably came out closer to a sneer. A few rather tense seconds (or at least he thought they were seconds, he was having trouble judging time…) passed as the castle grew bigger and its details more defined as they got closer. Sanji blinked when he saw it, his baggy eyes struggling to reopen, as he took in what looked like something straight out of a storybook and, frankly, it took his breath away.

And then he had misjudged the distance between where he was aiming for and how long his legs were and ended up throwing himself in the snow. Instantly he was mobbed by a tidal wave of villagers as they worked together to lift him from the snow. "Wow, you really weigh next to nothing." One "helper" commented.

"Aye, he's a waif of a man," another laughed, a deep hearty sound that originating from the depths of his gut.

Sanji struggled another few steps towards the doors before Vivi latched onto his arm, pulling him close to her face. "You really have gotten no sleep, have you? This is going to sound weird but do you want to...collapse? I'm sure some of these men would be jumping for joy at the chance to carry you."

Sanji shook his head and pressed on, ignoring Vivi's pursed disapproving lips. He had to make sure Nami was safe and sound, or at least as much as she could be.

"Oi, guys!"

The obnoxiously happy yell came from the tallest rampart of the castle where Sanji could just about make out Luffy waving with one arm while holding a wriggling ball of fur in the crook of the other.

"How's Nami?" Sanji is shocked how assertive and strong he managed to make his voice sound, all things considered.

"Safe."

Sanji nodded sagely before promptly passing out.

Much to the villagers' great dismay, the Going Merry set sail that very same evening. Sanji had been tossed onto a bed in their new doctor's makeshift infirmary (Vivi had seen him through Mr. Bushido's memories, sure, but she was still blown away by just how cute Chopper was), though Sanji would be enraged when he realised the kitchen's storeroom no longer belonged solely to him.

Between Luffy's cheerful optimism and Nami's rather unsettling insistence that she and Zoro had talked and that she hadn't blamed him, Usopp had quickly folded away any argument that Zoro should be left behind. And their newest furry addition believed Nami's and, especially, Luffy's words were gospel, spending the evening dogging their heels, and had no trouble placing the green-haired man on a pedestal.

The crew, minus Sanji (it would take the apocalypse descending down upon them to wake the cook now), had partied long into the night. Luffy had dragged Usopp and Chopper into playing games and stuffing objects of various length and girth up their nostrils, something the rubber man naturally excelled in, while Nami and Mr. Bushido had drunk themselves silly in the corner. One by one, starting with Nami and ending with Luffy carrying a sleepy Chopper over his shoulders to the men's dorm, they went to sleep and left Vivi to stand watch over the small caravel as the glittering stars in the sky dimmed and the horizon was painted with brushes of violet and amber as the sun began to rise. The unmistakable salty spray that was iconic to life at sea was filling her flared nostrils and, for once, Vivi felt at peace.

The door to the men's dorm creaked open and, his demeanour akin to that of a half-drowned rat, Mr. Bushido slunk onto deck with his eye downcast. "Mr. Bushido," Vivi called out from her spot near the rudder, "over here."

The swordsman grunted in confirmation and walked with slumped shoulders in Vivi's direction, his hands in his pockets. Mr. Bushido sighed as he threw himself down in her general direction, his lower back bashing into the creaky railing, and his hands came up behind his head. "Vivi."

"I managed to save your sword in the madness of Little Garden," Vivi said, knowing that wasn't the real source of the man's distress but it couldn't hurt to try, "I stored it under a loose floorboard beneath my bed."

A glimmer of something in Mr. Bushido's eye as he jolted. "You did? Thanks, that sword….it means a lot to me."

"I know." The words slipped out of VIvi's mouth before she had a chance to consider them, a habit the desert princess thought she had curbed long ago, "I saw Kuina in the swor-no, your memories."

A moment of tense silence, broken by Mr. Bushido's bitter laugh. "Yeah, I suppose you would if you looked long enough."

They lapsed into silence again, Vivi running a hand along the wooden railing while Mr. Bushido stared off at the growing speck in the distance that was the rising sun. "Knowing you," Vivi finally said, "you're feeling guilty about Little Garden, right? I'm not saying it wasn't your fault, because maybe it was in a little way, but moping about isn't going to fix anything."

"It isn't that," the green-haired man said, his eye closed as he took in a particularly big breath, "I sorta came to terms with that while the body was sick."

It was always sorta surreal to hear Mr. Bushido refer to it as "the body" and not "his", but Vivi brushed that off to focus on his words. "Oh? Then what is it?"

"I feel like scum," Mr. Bushido confessed.

She paused, this was not what she had been expecting. "Oh?"

"Nami thinks I have some sort of mental problem, split personality or whatever, and I chickened out and pretended that was true." The swordsman's hands came from their resting spot behind his head to cup his face.

"I suppose," Vivi said slowly, weighing her words carefully, "that is sorta true, if you look at things from a certain perspective."

Mr. Bushido laughed again, the self-deprecating bitter sound that she was unfortunately starting to associate with the man. "Sorta true is basically just a fancier way of saying that you're still lying."

"Still..." Vivi trailed off, unsure of how to help him assuage his guilt.

"And you want to know what the kicker is?" Mr. Bushido's laughter took on a choked air, tinged with hysteria, and Vivi realised he was probably moments away from crying. "She hugged me after. Me. And thanked me with tears in her eyes for being honest with her. For being honest!"

And then he was crying, pale shaking hands muffling the choked heart-wrenching sounds.

Vivi ran her fingers through his cropped hair, following the faint memories she had of her mother doing the same to her in her very early childhood, and whispered faint nonsensical sounds of support as the proud warrior let down his guard and mental defences completely while they sat alone under the dawn's ray.

And, right there and then, Vivi made a decision that would drastically alter the rest of her life and that would send long lasting ripples in many, many others. Truth be told, it was a decision she had been contemplating since she had gotten Mr. Bushido's memories and learnt the fate of the Straw Hat Pirates. Her entire reason for staying behind at Alabasta, she guessed anyway, was that she was sure that larger than life Luffy would be perfectly fine on his own. The world would have no choice but to bow to his whims, his every whimsical fancy.

Evidently, that hadn't been the case.

The Straw Hat Pirates had needed her.

Mr. Bushido still did.

And she was more than willing to help. They'd save her kingdom, sure, but after...after Vivi couldn't see herself just settling down into the role of crown princess. Not while her friends needed help.

Nefeltari Vivi, princess of Alabasta, was going to be a Straw Hat Pirate.

The world could, and it probably would, descend into madness around her and she would still stick by her friends.

Stand beside Luffy and Mr. Bushido.

Until the end.