Disclaimer: One Piece and all related characters belong to Eichiro Oda. I make no profit off this work.

notes: This is a companion piece to my other AU fic, "Another Romantic Dawn", and follows events before and during that fic. It should read ok as a standalone work, too, though.

The Swordsman and the Clown

By the time Zoro caught up with them - circling and doubling back and running forward when sounds of shouting made their way to his ears by some stroke of luck - the situation was already exasperatingly dire. Luffy in a metal cage set against a tree, one of the circus's prop cannons inexplicably resting beside it. Nami clutching a gun in her hands. Buggy beside her, gripping her none too gently by one shoulder. And around them in a ragged ring in the forest clearing gathered the circus, some cheering, some jeering, all of them slavering for a show. The ground was littered with debris: empty bottles and wadded-up plastic wrappers, cheap Styrofoam plates, the odd fork or knife, paper, poker cards, loose coins, tissue streamers - all the remnants of a good party.

Zoro climbed into the branches of a nearby tree.

"You want me to...kill him?" Nami was saying. Zoro could hear none of the usual bravado in her voice.

"Aye." Buggy pulled her in closer, looking for all the world like a man dispensing some fatherly advice, the effect slightly ruined by the way he fingered, with his free hand, the throwing knives hanging from his belt. "There is one thing I do not tolerate in my circus, one thing I do not tolerate at all." He said the last two words slowly, emphasizing them. "And that is disloyalty. I will never have it said that I didn't let a man walk free when he had a mind to. But it is one thing - and I'm sure you must agree, my dear - to give your proper two week's notice and quite another to announce your intention to break with this fine company of men by taking one of my most treasured possessions. I am not a creative man. I have only one way of dealing with traitors. It's a tad on the simple side, but it is very, very effective. And since you were the one to return the traitor to us, my dear, you shall have the pleasure of shooting him." His thick, red-painted lips parted in an imitation of a conspiratorial grin, though from Zoro's angle it looked closer to a leer.

Nami laughed nervously. "Surely it doesn't have to come to that!" she said. "Luffy's probably really sorry for what he did. Aren't you, Luffy?" she turned to the caged boy pointedly.

Luffy didn't say anything.

"Luffy?"

When it became apparent that Luffy had no special interest in clearing his name, Nami appealed to Buggy again. "Oh, let's just forget about that loser!" she said, overly bright. "We can drink some more and have fun!"

Buggy's smile grew broader. Zoro quietly began to loose his own knives. Nothing good ever happened when Buggy smiled.

"Do it," the circus master said. "This is my idea of fun." He let go of Nami's shoulder. "And to show how much I trust you," he added nastily, "I'm going to have myself a rest. Apprehending criminals is hard work, you know." He turned around and retreated to the stamping, cheering throng of his men. They parted briefly, just enough to reveal a rock conveniently located in a shady bit of the clearing, away from the uncomfortable rays of the autumn sun, and Buggy sat down like a king to entertainment.

Now it was Nami with her back to Zoro, and Luffy with his back against a tree, locked in a cage.

"You're starting to shake real bad, huh," Luffy said.

"I'm sort of entitled, don't you think?" Nami said. Her voice had taken on that flinty tight edge.

"Serves you right." Luffy grinned maniacally. The circus had gone quiet, always eager for a show, always interested to hear what their demented rubber boy had to say. "Pirates never go to sea unprepared."

Nami let out a noise like a snarl, small and strangled. "Not willing to kill someone at the drop of a hat? That's your idea of unprepared?"

Her voice was growing higher and harsher. Zoro did not have to see her face to know its expression: full of incensed frustration. It would be the same face she wore after a bad day at Arlong's. Zoro tensed on the branch.

"Nah," Luffy said. He leaned as far forward as the bars of the cage would allow. For a moment, the world stopped spinning and quivered in place, hanging on at Luffy's word.

"It's not being willing to sacrifice your own life."

Just one moment.

Then Zoro exhaled. Nami began to step backwards. The world shook itself and continued on its rotation. One of the clowns darted forth and snatched the revolver from her hands.

"Ain't never fired a gun before, girl?" he asked with nasty joviality. "Here, I'll show you. Jus' cock it back like - ungh!"

He doubled over, clutching at his stomach. The gun fell to the forest floor with a thud. Zoro grinned. That's my girl. Nami stood over the moaning body, gun suddenly replaced by a slender length of lead pipe. Cleverly joined in three sections by hooks and notches, the pipe collapsed in and out like a telescope. Nami kept it under her skirt, strapped tight to her thigh for easy access; she liked to play it sweet and pretty, but when she went into that crouch and swept that club in that warning arc against her attackers, she proved to be anything but sweet.

"Anybody else?" she shouted, and cracked the pipe against the clown's ribs as he tried to get up. He collapsed again, groaning louder. The rest of the circus shuffled on the edge of her range, muttering and fingering their own knives but unwilling to attack. They let the joke get away from them, Zoro thought. Nobody knows if they're supposed to scare her or kill her. Just like they didn't know if Luffy was really supposed to get shot.

"What's the matter with you!" Buggy screamed from his rock, sending the circus jumping a nervous step forward and Nami a wary step back. "How many grown men does it take to bring down a bitch, anyway!" His roar was met with an answering roar, and suddenly they were rushing forward, knives flashing. The man down on the ground forgot his aching gut for a minute and stretched out his arm for the gun. Nami wavered frightenedly for a moment, torn between flight and fight, then dove towards the ground.

Back exposed.

No time to think, only to trust instinct and knee-jerk reaction propelling him out of the tree and into the clearing. Jarring scrape of steel on steel; straining of muscles, then digging of heels into the dirt as everyone backed off with shouts of surprise.

"How many clowns does it take to bring down one girl, eh?" he snarled, and kept the knives in his hands upraised. The men didn't answer, just circled around warily in the grass, glass and paper crunching beneath the soles of their shoes. Most everyone in Buggy's Circus knew his way around a knife; Zoro knew his way around three, and was currently employing two - seven inches of sharpened blade in one fist, seven in the other. Rare was the time when anyone had gone up against him in the circus, and no one wanted to challenge him now, not when there was still a chance this was all some joke concocted by Buggy's maddened brain.

"You hurt?" he asked without looking at her, though she was crouched almost directly beneath him.

"N-no," she stammered, and got to her feet. "But Zoro - what on earth are you doing here?"

"Would you rather I be back in New York?" he snapped. "And anyway, I could ask the same about you! This is your idea of 'going to the circus'?"

Luckily, Luffy cut in before Nami could reply. "Zoro!" he called. "You're here, how great! Get me out, will ya?"

Zoro was about to run over to him to try when a scream split the air, cutting through the confused mutterings of the circus. "Roronoa!" Buggy had gotten over the initial shock of seeing his former star sword-swallower burst out of the foliage, and was now jumping up and down in rage. "I speak of traitors and find not one, but two in my midst! You filthy dog, you ass's behind, you skirt-sniffing turncoat -"

"I gave you two weeks' notice," Zoro returned. "And the only sword I took was my own."

"I gave you a home, a shelter, food!" Buggy shrieked, not yet finished, flecks of spittle flying out everywhere as he continued his tirade. "I took you in when you were a starving rag-mutt on the streets of New York! And this is how you repay me? By raising your hand against your brothers and siding with a thieving rat of a traitor! And for what? A woman! I have never, never seen anything so shameful as a man willing to break with his sworn brothers for a bit of skirt, you base dog, you pig incapable of reason, you slattern given male form!" His voice rose higher and higher until it seemed the whole mountainside must crack in agony under the pressure of Buggy's enraged frenzy. A great rustle started up in the trees as birds took to the skies, adding their own frightened cries to the confusion, and among the midst of flapping wings something hurtled its way at Zoro: a disembodied hand clutching a knife, aimed at his heart.

But Zoro was expecting it and moved quicker, stabbing at the fist while it was still in midair and driving his arm downward, pinning the limb to the grass. The circus hissed. Zoro looked up. Buggy stood on top of his rock, looking for all appearances as if he'd ripped off his own hand at the wrist and used it as a projectile missile. A projectile missile with a built-in boomerang capability, no less. Zoro swore as Buggy twitched his handless arm and the wayward appendage jerked back into the air and back to its rightful anatomical place, reattaching to his body with Zoro's knife still thrust clear through the palm.

"Oh my God. What is he?" gasped Nami, who'd had the good sense to take shelter by the cage while Buggy was raving.

"Aw, it's just a trick," Luffy said in a dismissive tone. "Buggy always does that when he gets mad at us."

"This is more than 'getting mad'!" Nami shouted. "He's going to kill us all!"

"Zoro can take him. And if he can't, I can. Well, I could if I weren't in this cage, but..."

"Luffy!"

A shout was all Zoro could manage; he was quick to recover but Buggy was quicker and already a second knife was mowing down the air, and in his desperate scrabble to somehow snatch it away as it flew Zoro lost his footing on the grass and fell to one knee. But he had forgotten about Luffy. There was the expected thunk of a steel blade hitting something solid, and the cheer of the circus; but the noise slowly died away as it became apparent that the knife, quivering from the force of its collision, was embedded not in a human body but in the tree behind the cage. Luffy's back was flat against one side of the cage, arms and hands splayed out along the roof, and he was doubled over, nose pressing up against the fabric of his shorts. His signature straw hat was squashed up so tightly against the sides of the cage as to be nearly flattened. Luffy D. Monkey, the Amazing Rubber Boy, miraculously still alive by living up to his name. At the sight of him, body so contorted outside of the circus ring and leaning away from death by a hairsbreadth, Zoro felt the old, sick feeling rising in his gorge and, still crouched on the ground, he simply sagged, letting the wave of nausea pound through his gullet. It was fine. Luffy was fine. He just had to let the feeling pass and everything would be all right. As the nausea traveled downwards and hit his gut, so did the knife.

Nami and Luffy were screaming his name; Zoro heard them but could not quite lift his head to let them know he was ok, because he was not at all sure he was ok. Pain was blossoming in red blotches behind his eyes just as, he imagined, it was doing over his midsection. He looked down. Yup, there was his own knife, the tip of the blade protruding a clear half-inch from his front. The unbalanced weight at his back meant that Buggy's hand was still hanging onto the hilt. Zoro reached backwards with his left hand, and felt Buggy recoil the appendage as he groped around to pull the knife out.

"Thanks for the loan, Roronoa," Buggy cackled, which prompted a nervous round of laughter from the circus, reminding Zoro of why he'd left in the first place. The mood of these clowns was always cowardly and mercurial, quick to scatter at the first sign of trouble, quicker to rally behind their ringleader if he was in a killing mood and blood was already in the water.

Zoro pulled out the knife with a wrench, wincing as the awkward angle made the blade slice apart more flesh on its way out. It didn't feel like the knife had hit any organs, at least. The wound was serious enough, but it wasn't critical. Zoro couldn't afford critical. With some effort, Zoro stood up. He began scraping backwards as the circus started to advance through the clearing toward him. They would spring when he reached the cage.

"Got a match?" he said to Nami over his shoulder.

She was moving uneasily around the front of the cage, fingering her pipe nervously. "Y-yes," she answered. "But, Zoro-"

"Light the cannon."

"What?"

"Do it!"

In front of him, the line of circusmen wavered like desert mirage. "Hey, Boss," a juggler cum pickpocket started apprehensively even as he pinwheeled back against the pushing bodies of his more eager cohort, "We didn't clean out the cannon from last time and-"

"Zoro, duck!"

He was already moving, diving into a roll – with a groan as the delicate film of coagulated blood was ripped apart and his wound began gushing anew – straight into the brittle yellowing grass and coming up just short of the tree beneath which Luffy, in his cage, was cheering and clapping his hands as if he really were being entertained at a circus performance. The cannon went off a moment later in a great cloud of grease and smoke; men yelled and scrambled to get out of the way of the crude lead cannonball which, though hollow inside, could still knock a man senseless, or worse. Seeing his hitherto band of cutthroats scattering like pigeons, Buggy jumped and screamed and lay about with his knives, flinging limbs everywhere to rope his wayward men back in.

"Roronoa!" the red-nosed madman screeched, "I might have known! Getting a woman to do your work, you apron-clad pansy! Using my own cannon against me! I should have dumped your carcass in the river an age ago, you-"

Ignoring Buggy's ranting, Zoro gripped the bars of the cage and gave an experimental tug. It was lighter than he'd expected: just some hard plastic painted over to resemble metal, after all.

"We running, Zoro?" asked Luffy, grinning at him like a loon.

"Yup." With a grunt, Zoro dug one hand under the base of the cage and hefted the whole thing up to shoulder-height, and stumbled as the combined weight of the cage and Luffy's wiry body in it threatened to drive him to his knees anyway. Then he felt the pressure lighten somewhat; Nami had taken up the other end of the cage.

"Head east," her voice came floating to him.

East. How the hell was he supposed to know what that meant? Zoro picked a direction at random and set off.

"East, Zoro!" Nami snapped. "Turn left!"

Zoro bit back a growl and turned left. Confusion still reigned over the clearing in a greasy cloud. Anxious to leave it as far behind them as possible, Zoro broke into a run.

- - - - -

They ran until Zoro thought his wound might burst forth and simply dump his guts all over the forest floor. That was, if his head didn't explode first from the bickering being carried out jerkily behind him. He thought, sourly, that it must be nice for Nami and Luffy to have so much breath to argue while he, the injured one, had to do all the huffing and puffing, not to mention the bleeding.

"What the hell is wrong with you two?"

It was not a question. It was a mere query, just to see if they too could spot everything that was wrong with three people stranded in the Catskill mountains, one wounded, one a near-murderer, one stuck in a cage, and all being pursued by a band of morally corrupt circus freaks. Speaking took Zoro's mind off the blood which in its gummy, congealing state was feeling uncomfortably like the soft squishy parts of his anatomy which usually resided sight unseen in his body and which Zoro hoped fervently would continue to do so by the end of this preposterous, surreal afternoon - speaking took his mind off all that and Zoro didn't really want an answer, and was annoyed when Nami gave one anyway.

"It's his own fault!"

Zoro gritted his teeth and let go of the cage. It dropped to the ground and flipped sideways.

Luffy turned with it, seemingly not bothered by the jolt. "No it's not! You tied me up!"

"You're the one who got in the way!"

"You're the one who told me to hold the map so I'd get my fingerprints on it. You already had a plan!"

"I only thought up the plan after you got in the way!"

"You were the one stealing stuff in the first place!"

"That's really rich coming from you, Mr. I'm-Gonna-Be-A-Pirate!"

"Oi. Where are we?" There was a house. A house in the woods. With a covered porch. Zoro staggered over and slumped against one of the supporting beams. A dog laying on the porch got up and trotted over to him. Zoro raised the hand less covered in blood to pet it.

"I am gonna be a pirate!" Luffy was thumping the bars of the cage in agitation. "Oh, hey, a dog!"

"Forget the dog! Do you even have any idea what pirates do?"

"Yeah! They have adventures!"

"No, they don't! They blackmail you, and trick you, and murder the people you love, and make you work for them like slaves!"

"Isn't that the Mob?"

"Shut up, Zoro!

"Well, not me! I'm gonna be a real pirate. And I'm gonna get a ship and sail around the world and kick all those other pirates' asses!"

Luffy was thin and wiry with large hands and feet. He had flyaway black hair and glittering black eyes. He was the perfect fey-child, the foundling left mysteriously, magically on the doorstep, and for some reason you could not help but bring him inside and fall under his spell.

The anger drained from Nami in one, long sigh. "Anyway," she said only half-heartedly, as if no longer very much interested in the argument, "it's not even as if you have a ship. I think we're near a town," she added, apparently at random. "Didn't you want to know where we were, Zoro? If there's a house here, there must be more nearby. Lucky you followed a path."

"Maybe not," Zoro replied tiredly. "Makes it easier for Buggy to find us."

Nami shrugged. "Better than wandering around in the woods." She reached into a pocket and took out something small and shiny. "Let's get you out of that cage, anyway."

"You had the key?" Zoro asked exasperatedly. "Why didn't you use it earlier?"

"Stupid," Nami retorted, "of course I didn't have it to begin with. Why do you think I was talking to Buggy for so long? For my health?"

"Probably not for your health," Luffy said brightly. "Since he almost killed you an' all." He whistled and waggled an arm between two bars coaxingly. "Here, Dog. Stop giving Zoro your gross dog germs; he's injured."

The dog left off licking Zoro's hand and obligingly went over to the cage, just as Nami was crouching down to fit the key into the lock of the tilted-over cage while Luffy made encouraging noises. Before Nami had fully registered the animal's presence, before Luffy could give a swipe with his arm or Zoro could call a warning, the dog thrust its large, black nose into Nami's hand and with a single motion of its doggy jaws jerked the key out of her grasp.

And swallowed.

Nami started to scream, then clapped a hand to her mouth, looking around fearfully as if Buggy's men would burst out from the trees at any moment. Not nearly as prudent, Luffy yelled and began hurling abuses at the dog, which was looking simultaneously enormously proud of itself and sick. Zoro simply groaned. There was simply no way he was hauling that cage all the way into town, no matter how near Nami said it was.

"Hey! You three!"

Hazily, Zoro looked up from watching Luffy attempt to reach the dog scampering in circles around the cage, and was confronted by the sight of a oldish man, bespectacled and clearly irritated, stumping toward them from a path downhill. "What are you three doing here?" the man repeated.

"Who are you?" Zoro asked warily. Nami had already stood up and was edging in front of the cage, her fingers straying to the hem of her skirt.

The dog bounded over to the man, who managed to give it a good rub on the head and glare at Zoro at the same time. "The mayor of Port Town," he replied shortly. "You haven't answered my question, boy."

"We're from the circus!" Luffy said cheerfully from behind Nami, who kicked the bottom of the cage as a warning to shut up.

"Buggy's circus?" The man's voice, if anything, grew darker. Zoro's heart sank accordingly.

"He's from the circus," Nami amended hastily, flapping a hand at the imprisoned boy in a disparaging manner. "We just happened to be caught up with those hoodlums, quite by accident" - no one could accuse Nami of an honest tongue - "and as you can see, my boyfriend's injured."

It was a good diversion, even if the crease starting in Nami's brow meant her worry was real. "Injured?" The Mayor stumped quickly over to Zoro and knelt down. "By Buggy and his gang of good-for-nothings? My God, boy, this wound is serious! What kind of business are you kids caught up in, anyway?" He twisted back to look at Luffy and Nami reprovingly, his frown only deepening at the sight of Luffy sitting cross-legged in the fake-iron cage.

"Never mind that," Nami said tightly. "Can you call a doctor for us?"

"And get me out of this cage?" added Luffy.

"Ain't no doctor for these parts," the man grunted. "Our town's too small. Ain't no telephone in the cabin, anyway. That's why I built it out here, see – for the weekends. You, girl, I can give you directions in'ta town and you get someone to come out with a car. We'll give your young man a lift to the hospital."

Zoro shook his head. "I just want some sleep."

The Mayor fixed him with a knowing eye. "Sleep, eh? Well, why not. Do you good to get some strength back up whiles your girl fetches someone to come. Come in, if you can stand."

Silently, Zoro pulled himself into a crouch, then into a standing position, only slightly hunched over in deference to his injury. He avoided looking at Luffy and Nami, though he was well aware of their anxious eyes following his every move. He just wanted some sleep.

The inside of the cabin was simply but amply furnished, with a woven rug and a cooler in addition to the usual desk, chair, and – most welcome of all – a sturdily built bed. Zoro only dimly took note of the hunting guns hung on the wall and the dish of dog food by the cooler as he walked, not stumbling very much, to the bed and lay down.

"At least let me dress that for you, boy," the Mayor said gruffly, pulling up the chair and a bottle of drinking water.

Zoro closed his eyes. "It'll be fine if I sleep."

"Well, ain't you the tough guy." The Mayor's voice was coming from a long way off now. "'Suppose it's lucky your girl's got better sense than you."

"Yeah." Don't be fooled by appearances, old man. He wasn't sure if the words managed to get past his brain. The last thing Zoro heard, before he slipped for good into the sleeping world, was the sound of birds calling.

- - - - -

tbc