10. Cruise

"So how long is this gonna take?"

"We disrupted Subahu's control of the islet a little after noon yesterday. Presuming they worked in shifts and kept the island sailing constantly, it had been three solid days since Durga detached from Rig Maratha proper. Thus it should take us three days to get back, if I pilot the island nonstop."

"Nonstop?" Zoro asked incredulously. He and Robin were standing in the "bridge" area of Durga Islet, near the control console which was used to steer the islet over the seas, to and from Rig Maratha. Both looked refreshed, having plundered new clothes from the residential area of the mountain base: Zoro wore the forest-green longcoat which had been standard for the hunters, while Robin had found a stylish low-cut floral shirt with a long teal Dupatta skirthopef from Subahu's wardrobe.

"I did just get a full night's sleep, after all," Robin replied. "I should be fine."

After beating Subahu, they had checked the immediate area, finding a video Den Den Mushi system that showed the entire interior of the mountain. Once they had made sure that no able enemy hunters were left in the mountain complex, they soon discovered that there was a residential area a few stories above the "bridge." The residential area, a picturesque villa, was perched on the back of the mountain which, unlike the side the two pirates had ascended, made a mostly-sheer drop into the ocean below, which incidentally provided a clean way to dispose of their slain enemies. The two pirates had spent the night in Subahu's luxurious quarters, with Robin sleeping in the former Commander's bed and Zoro spending the night in a sitting position outside the bedroom door like a guard dog, albeit fast asleep. There had been no suggestion from Robin that he should join her in bed.

Snapping back to the present, Zoro glared at her. "Look, there's no reason to punish yourself. I'm worried about the others too, but they can handle themselves when push comes to shove. Hell, they probably beat that "Lord Sugriva" guy already."

"Perhaps," Robin agreed. "What did you have in mind?" she added.

Zoro cringed. He had had a hard time looking Robin in the eye ever since yesterday, still totally bemused by her sudden confession of love right before he had killed Subahu. He hadn't given her a response to that, and, to her credit, she had not asked for one.

"I dunno," Zoro said finally. "Should be safe to go wandering around this side of the mountain. We should take it easy, do whatever, stop at night to rest."

Some survivors from their attack on the mountain had fled to a port near the mountain, away from the route they had taken to get there. Those survivors had apparently put the fear of god into the raiders at the port, for Zoro and Robin had been able to witness smaller raiding ships at the port fleeing off into the sea, and now, on their fifth day on Durga, they were effectively alone on the islet.

"Then it would probably take closer to five days to get back."

"Like I said, there's no reason to rush and punish yourself."

"I suppose you're right," Robin said. "Though when you say "do whatever," whatever do you mean?"

There's that teasing tone again, Zoro thought. Robin had "gone easy on him" since yesterday, presumably to give him time to think over her confession. Apparently that grace period was over, but why?

Zoro rubbed the back of his head with one hand, again avoiding eye contact. "Go… walking or something," he said. He hadn't really thought of what that would entail. There wasn't much else to do on this island.

"That sounds fun," Robin said simply. "Just let me…" she crossed her arms again, and then a second Robin sprouted up at the complex control panel which guided the mechanisms that caused the islet to "sail" in the first place. The second Robin engaged the controls, starting the engine that would get the islet moving again.

"There we go," she said finally. She could, of course, control the clone directly, and spend all day piloting the island while she also spent all day with him. All day…

Zoro knew what he had to do, of course, but there was a large gap between knowing what needed to be done and actually doing it. He had never been a man to hesitate when the time for action arrived, at least never before this. It wasn't like he had anything to lose, either. He knew she loved him, so his hesitation was not even grounded in fear of rejection.

Zoro supposed it was because he had not really decided whether he loved Robin back. He felt strong feelings for her, that was for certain, but did those feelings really constitute love? What would that mean, if it were true?

So he hesitated, as they left the bridge area of Durga islet, moving upwards to the beautifully terraced gardens which surrounded the villa, perched on the back of the mountain and overlooking the sea. It was an easy place to get distracted in, beautifully maintained with smaller flora than the vast jungle below. For the first twenty minutes, an awkward silence hung between the swordsman and the archaeologist, as they simply walked through the gardens, feeling the cool breeze coming in off the sea.

Finally Zoro could postpone the inevitable no longer, and spoke. "So," he said as they walked through an arbor of some unknown breed of fruit tree, "you love me."

"Yes," Robin replied simply.

"Why?" This was the question that was most galling to him, the question that he felt needed answered before he could understand whether he loved her in turn.

Now Robin paused, both in voice and in motion, no longer walking forward. Zoro stopped alongside her. "I can't really say," she said.

"Typical," Zoro glowered, then realized he had spoken aloud.

Robin laughed softly. "I do mean it this time," she said. "As fun as it may be, I'm not withholding that information to torment you."

"So you do like teasing me!" Zoro exclaimed.

"From the beginning," Robin replied. "But that has nothing to do with why."

A pregnant silence followed, as Zoro looked at Robin's face, hoping that her eyes might betray some hint of her true mind.

"Why did I join the Straw Hats?" Robin asked instead.

"You said you wanted to die," Zoro said, after thinking a moment. "You wanted to die and Luffy didn't let you. So you said he had to take responsibility or something."

"Partially," Robin said. "The cynical explanation is that the Straw Hat pirates were the only group who could get me away from Alabasta without being captured."

"Barely," Zoro snorted, remembering their harrowing escape.

"But it was more than that," Robin continued. "The explanation I gave at the time was closer to the truth. The truth was that joining up with Luffy just… felt right. This does too. You feel right to me."

"Huh…" Zoro thought that over for a moment. Those were Robin's feelings, but she had just described, quite precisely, how he himself felt. "I thought you would understand it, of all people."

Robin shook her head.

"So we're in the same boat," Zoro continued. "I don't get it either, but I feel the same way about you. I guess…" he hesitated again, his face reddening, "I love you too."

"You guess?" Robin asked, in a tone of faux-shock.

"You know what I mean," Zoro groaned. Robin smiled, and started walking again, as if the matter was settled.

Zoro followed alongside her, reflecting on that. After a few minutes, he spoke again. "So what do we do now?"

"Nothing," Robin replied. Zoro turned and gave her a questioning look.

"Just because we're in love doesn't dictate that we have to follow some set of rules, like a script in a play. We are both adults, after all. We're pirates, too. Being a pirate is about being free."

"Nothing, just like that? Then what's the point of a relationship?"

"Anything might be a better word," Robin replied. She reached out and grabbed his hand in hers, prompting him to blush. "There's nothing we have to do now: we can do anything."

They continued walking, hand in hand, for some time, lost in their respective thoughts. Zoro was pondering Robin's earlier statement, "anything or nothing." The longer he thought about it, the more it bothered him. Of course she was right on the surface; they were both adults, and the fact that they were in love with each other and would apparently like to pursue a relationship did not mean they were required to do anything more than what they were doing right now; simply enjoying each other's company.

On the other hand, such a simple relationship felt incomplete. Zoro was no hopeless romantic, not like that damn ero-cook, but he had the feeling that he should express what he felt for Robin in some bolder way than just holding her hand. The fact that this relationship even existed was wild and impossible: it defied rationality. Why should their response to the relationship, then, be so rational? They were Straw Hat pirates, after all. Who would expect them to follow any kind of convention?

Suddenly a stray thought took center stage in Zoro's mind. "Hey," he said as they walked among some large bushes adorned with fragrant flowers. "How did that story with Odios and the witch end?"

Robin gave him a knowing smile before replying. "Niobe gave up her witchcraft and Odios gave up the spear, then they wed and lived peacefully with seven children, each one storied in Zeleian history."

"Huh," Zoro said. Well, that certainly wasn't a solution.

"Indeed. If you're looking for ideas, theirs is not the best solution."

Zoro cringed, and Robin giggled.

The day drew on, and the two pirates returned to the residential complex that sat between the gardens and the base proper. They ate lunch (food too was now plentiful from the plundered stores of Subahu and her minions), and then Robin went to focus her efforts on piloting the island, leaving Zoro alone with a germ of an idea which was beginning to sprout.

~0~

Evening drew on, and the sun once again began to set over Durga Islet as it steadily made its way back to Rig Maratha. The island was headed eastward, with the "bow" of the island being the side furthest from the mountain, while the mountain itself served as the stern.

Robin had sent Zoro a clone a few times in the course of the afternoon, just to reassure him that everything was going well. He had, of course, sensed these incursions before they occurred with Observation Haki, and had been careful to cultivate the impression that he had spent most of the afternoon napping under a shady tree just beyond the open-air dining area and patio of the residential compound.

Robin found him once again in this state of faux-sleep. "Would you like to join me for dinner, Zoro?" Half of her body, from the waist up, emerged from the trunk of the tree, as he opened one eye lazily and looked back up at her.

"Sure," he replied.

"Okay. I'll be up in a few minutes." The clone dissolved, and Zoro grinned in anticipation. He had spent the first few hours of the afternoon in deep in thought. He had then spent the latter half of the afternoon acting upon those thoughts, specifically in searching for something (which, being Zoro, did take him several hours). Now, however, Zoro made a beeline back to the patio.

There, in a barbecue pit, he had a large slab of beef shoulder (excavated from the villa's freezer, a place Luffy would have loved) slow-roasting over a fire. Near one of the picnic tables, he had a cask of ale (for his own enjoyment) as well as a fresh-brewed pot of coffee (Robin had found a particularly palatable flavor amongst the compound's stores). In the open dining patio under the setting sun, facing the sea, it was a strikingly romantic scene. This was not Zoro's plan, however, oh no. Zoro's plan was much more diabolical, multilayered, and sinister.

"Oh, you made dinner," Robin seemed pleasantly surprised by what she found.

Zoro, already eating a cut of beef, ignored her as she arrived. Once she sat down, he grabbed a plate with another cut of beef on it and handed it across to her without even opening his eye.

They ate in silence for a time, until Robin was midway through her first slice of beef. Then Zoro reached across the table again with a closed fist pointed towards Robin. It took her a few moments to notice the gesture, when she stopped eating and raised her head to look at him curiously. In response, Zoro opened his fist to reveal a ring: a golden ring with a fiery-red ruby set in the middle, which glistened almost with a life of its own in the golden-orange light of the sunset.

"Marry me," he said, meeting her gaze. It wasn't a question.

As previously stated, there are many moments that, measured in the span of linear time, are very short indeed but, in spite of that, can have a huge impact on a man's life. This moment was one which Roronoa Zoro would recall to the end of his days, not particularly for what was said or indeed how this shaped the course of his life, but rather for the rarest of sights that he bore witness to. For it was in that moment of the swordsman's blunt, moronically straightforward and yet stubbornly certain marriage proposal (more like a statement of fact than a proposal) that he saw something he had only seen once before.

Robin's eyes, beautiful, olive-shaped, cobalt-blue, widened in sudden shock. She swallowed what food was in her mouth, and then her jaw unhinged slightly. Then, beyond all that, Robin blushed.

Zoro smiled, a mirror image of one of Robin's teasing smiles, smiling for the fact that he had finally pulled one over on her after years of enduring her subtle torments (especially over the last few days). He remembered that moment as a moment of triumph, more than what came before, or what, almost inevitably, came after.

"Of course," Robin said, forcing herself to regain her composure in a way that was wholly transparent and only caused the swordsman to grin more. He reached out with his other arm, taking the ring up from his palm and placing it gently on the finger of her outstretched hand.

Sure, it didn't make sense, proposing marriage to a woman that he had only declared his love for a few hours before. But if Zoro had learned anything in his time with Robin on Durga, it was that it didn't have to make sense. Theirs was not some soppy story of star-crossed lovers like the legend of the Kalydon, of lovers like Odios and Niobe thrown together by destiny to feel a passionate, earth-shaking love. But neither was their romance something that they had to rationalize, justify, or explain. It simply was, and that was enough.

Zoro returned to his food after putting the ring on Robin's finger before he suddenly felt a very odd feeling on his back, and then something soft and wet on his cheek. He started, turning to see Robin's face near his own, but he could still see Robin too sitting at the table, drinking some of her coffee. In a second he realized the Robin that had just kissed his cheek was growing out of his back, before the cloned Robin kissed him full on the lips, obscuring his sight.

The clone Robin soon dissolved, and Zoro could now see that the original was now standing. "Shall we?" she offered.

Zoro did not need a lot of brain power to realize what she meant.

~0~

Roronoa Zoro stirred in the luxurious bed which had once belonged to Commander Subahu of Durga Islet. Clean light of a golden dawn filtered into the half-shaded windows of Subahu's master suite, striking the swordsman's eye as he lay trapped in a web of silken sheets and the warm embrace of Nico Robin.

"Good morning," Robin said cheerily.

"Morning," Zoro grunted. It certainly didn't feel like morning, given how long the night before had lasted.

"We're back underway," Robin said. "I've been awake for about an hour, and we're on course for Rig Maratha."

"Breakfast, then?" Zoro queried.

"In time," Robin replied. She tightened her embrace, kissing him on the cheek and beginning to run her hands over his battle-scarred frame. He could feel the warmth of her body, the softness of her breasts, the gentle heat of her breath. "Let's just enjoy our cruise."

For although the two of them faced no more threats, their adventures on Rig Maratha were not yet over. The objectives of their "explorations" had simply changed.

End.

Afterword: I will confess to lifting the proposal idea whole-cloth from ButterPie's story "A Surprising Turn Of Events." She (?) really encapsulated the exact way that Zoro would propose (for a certain extent of the word propose) to anyone, let alone Robin. I wanted to include a more extensive erotic scene, but it would just be filler at this point so I cut back for time and the avoidance of mere self-indulgence. Also had to point out what happened to Subahu, since she kind of died in a room that they were going to make extensive use of, so they couldn't just leave her there (or the other dead hunters, stinking up the mountain fortress). My guess is that one of the rough-and-tumble hunters under Subahu's command was a fairly skilled gardener, because she certainly wouldn't have the skill to maintain such a nice space on the backside of the mountain.

Some brief "development anecdotes":

1) The "plot bunny" that inspired this story was not, initially, related to "Numbers Game" at all (and even then, the relationship is only peripheral as it gave me a setting to work off of). The idea, originally, was a gag one-shot about Zoro getting lost and seeing Robin naked in the process (which we find as the centerpiece for chapter 5).

2) At the same time, I've wanted to tell "the definitive ZoRo story" ever since I started writing the pairing. While this story is much shorter than many I've written (like the more voluminous YoruSoi fics over in Bleach), this is the closest we're going to get to my ZoRo "magnum opus". So that plot bunny evolved into a plot that could take an adventure story, and pare it down to the bare bone parts that would focus on the evolution of the relationship, rather than having to tell "everything" that happened.

3) "Rig Maratha" is a nonsense jumble of Indian (Hindu) sounding words, much like how Oda names many islands (nonsense, but real word, names like Punk Hazard, or the Spanish-y sounding name Dressrosa). "Rig" is the prefix for a number of ancient texts foundational to Hinduism, like the Rig Veda. "Maratha" is named for the Maratha Empire, the last great Indian empire before the onset of the British Raj (taking the helm from the declining Moguls). Durga was a many-armed warrior goddess of sorts, a name I felt was appropriate. Subahu and Sugriva are both figures in Hindu mythology.

4) There is one moment in my head in which Robin blushed in canon, not counting any facial coloration during the whole "I want to live!" thing. It's a humorous scene, a favorite of mine, and Zoro was there to witness it, though others were the instigators. A cookie to those who can guess.

Enough of me prattling on. Read, review, critique (please critique? I like to learn of my own weaknesses and improve). Enjoy the story that was.