there's a lot to say here

reference

progress photos

yeah the base sketch is actually painful on the eyes. the universe was speaking to me or sthin

-

He realizes that Zoro isn't aware of his follower in the middle of the fight with dumb old Morgan and then again when they set off on Koby's dinghy which is now his and Zoro's dinghy because Koby stays behind to become a marine.

And then Luffy realizes that only he's able to see the girl because when she reappears and curls up next to Zoro, Zoro just continues to doze off.

He's thought about bringing it up, but that sounds like way more trouble than it's worth. And he doesn't want his very first crewmate to decide to up and leave because his new captain's a weirdo. That'd just make Luffy really sad.

So he doesn't mention a thing, and he goes about his time as they sail the way he always does: complaining about needing food.

But Luffy's attention drifts to the side, where the girl curls herself around Zoro, around his white katana. He tries not to do it often, especially when he catches Zoro turning his head to follow his line of sight. But it's kinda distracting.

As the days go by, painfully slow and with not a single bit of adventure, he starts to notice a couple of things: the girl's skin is cracking, like porcelain or something equally delicate that's been mishandled but not enough to have it shatter on the spot. The cracks look like black veins, black lightning running up and down her arm, cutting down one of her eyes.

"What the hell do you keep looking at?" Zoro asks, his brow furrowed and his gray eyes shifting to his side. "S'there a damn bug on me or something?"

Luffy laughs, leaning back so his head can rest against the dinghy's hull. "Nah, no bug. I'm just so hungry, Zoro. I'm going to die in the next three minutes if I don't eat."

Zoro rolls his eyes and scoffs, but a twitch of a smirk pulls at the corner of his mouth. "You're not gonna die, dumbass."

His own stomach starts to growl and Zoro hunches his shoulders. "Damn, but I just might."

This is why Luffy really likes Zoro and really enjoys his company. Out there, everyone sees him as a menace, people truly fear him and the mere mention of his name. And it's true and all, Luffy's seen him back up all his titles and all the stories about him. But the thing is that Zoro's also a complete loser and it's so funny.

Like right now: would someone really think that the infamous Demon of the East would be hunched over, nursing his empty belly and moaning about how hungry he is? Not really.

It's so funny.

Luffy swallows his laugh, but he does sprawl himself right next to his new friend. The dinghy shakes and shift with his movements, but when they're sprawled side by side, elbows and knees and toes of their feet touching, he thinks this is gonna be the biggest, most awesomest adventure ever.

The nameless girl stays in place, not moving, not breathing, not seeing. She's curled up on Zoro's other side, pressed against the white katana.

Whatever, she can join them too, Luffy supposes.

First though: food.

-

For a moment, he thinks that Nami sees the girl too.

She doesn't. She just thinks Zoro's out of his mind and can't help but look at him with that same scandalized expression no matter what Zoro does.

Luffy's smile is wide, slow, easy as he looks at his new friends. He seriously can't believe his dream is happening: he's a pirate, he's at sea and he has two---count 'em---two crewmates. It's the best thing ever.

Even with Zoro's two for one thing he's got going on.

Luffy squints as he looks around. Zoro's shadow isn't around them. This happens sometime, he's noticed. He's only really witnessed it about two and a half times now but sometimes she falls behind because she moves at such a slow pace. But she never wavers. She keeps walking steady and quiet and kinda creepy. Always set to follow Zoro. Always behind him no matter how near or how far.

She must still be back near where dumb old Buggy's shenanigans happened. She'll catch up by the time they leave.

Luffy wrinkles his nose, looking off into the distance. What the hell is the story here, he wonders?

But Luffy will never ask. If Zoro wants to tell him, he will, and if he never does then it's not something Luffy's supposed to know. Simple as that.

-

By the time they meet Sanji on the sailing restaurant, the girl is starting to decay.

It's a mind-blowing experience to see his friends sitting at a booth in the dining area and kinda see the same girl with pieces of flesh falling off her. It's disgusting but fascinating. Like a shipwreck: you can't look away.

No one sees the flesh on the floor, of course. There'd be so much more screaming if they did.

Luffy's eyes are on it, on the pristine carpeted floor, a hunk of human meat, spoiled all black and blue and with maggots. They wriggle as they dig into the flesh. Luffy likes to think he's a man of impenetrable will but in that moment, seeing the maggots like that makes him want to claw his eyes out.

His dark eyes lift to look at the rest of the girl: she's missing a couple of chunks here and there. Mostly small pieces, mostly skin but some actual flesh too that leaves the inner mechanics of the human body exposed. Tendons and veins and shriveled circulatory system that hasn't pumped any blood in... probably a long time.

And then, after inspecting her, Luffy turns his full attention to his friends. He walks to them with a skip in his step, adjusting his straw-hat as he goes.

"Way to betray me in the worst way possible," he claims, pout on his lips. "Eating without me? You know I'm starving!"

"If it makes you feel any better, the blond guy's triple charging me and Zoro but says Nami eats for free," Usopp laments. He stabs his fork into the tender grilled chicken breast in front of him. "I can't believe I've been betrayed by my gender."

Luffy digs his pinky finger into his nose as he listens to them talk. In his defense, the whole cannonball ordeal was not his fault. Yet here he is, taking one for the team, becoming a chore boy, his life of piracy and debauchery being threatened by an old man with a peg leg and the coolest moustache Luffy's ever seen.

He flicks his booger into the glass of water Zoro's grabbing and about to bring to his mouth. Oh, this is gonna be so good, he snickers and shares a look with the dead girl.

Her filmy eyes have turned more opaque. Now only the shape of the iris is visible, but the sclera seems to have spread all over the eye so they're pure white. Milky, even.

"Drink this, you little shit," Zoro growls as he forces the water down Luffy's throat.

No!

There goes his funny joke.

-

Luffy connects the dots when he's looking at the girl's teeth through a nasty hole on her cheek. Funny, he thinks that since she's dead and has no control over her body, her jaw would hang open at all times. Instead, her jaw seems to be hinged shut, her molars resting against each other. For now, he supposes, since her gums are turning black. They'll fall off soon.

So this is the friend that Zoro made a promise to. Or was it they made a pact? Luffy knows how important this is to Zoro, so it's important to him too. He just can't figure out the wording. The wording is very nuanced and changes the whole thing depending on how it's said. Luffy'd hate to fuck it up by being careless in how he says it.

Still, anyway.

Anyway.

This is her.

The girl he's going to become the world's greatest for. Other than himself. For the both of them.

His expression sours for just a brief moment at his own careless handling of the promise that's so important to Zoro. He's his best friend! Luffy needs to lock in.

Then, his expression grows a little sober, taking in how young the girl is, how he's never really noticed the funny way her neck is set. Pretty sure necks shouldn't be bent that way. Why'd he never noticed?

He thinks back to when he first noticed her, then all the times afterwards. No, he noticed, he just didn't realize. He'd always assumed the head tilt was purposeful. Or as purposeful as a dead body can be.

Now he's realizing that her head is just set that way. A bulge sticks out from the right side of her neck, no doubt a bone that broke, severing her spinal cord or something.

Luffy remembers Shanks and the others talking about stuff like that at Makino's bar. Neck injuries don't always kill you, but sometimes something that isn't supposed to break or snap does and that's what makes you a goner.

Damn, he thinks. What a fucked up way for this little girl to have died.

She looks like she's only a few years younger than him, he takes note. Some of the skin near her chin starts to droop and hang off her.

"What're you lookin' at?" Zoro asks as he drops from the crow's nest. His boots land with a heavy thunk, his knees bent for the impact before he lifts himself back to his full height.

Luffy blinks his eyes.

He turns to him and grins, always excited to hangout with his friends. "Dumb Zoro. Always asking me that; I'm practicing looking mysterious."

Zoro rolls his eyes. "Right. Sure. You're the farthest thing of an enigma, captain."

"Shishishishi." Luffy laughs because it's true. What's the point of hiding behind walls and stuff? Luffy leaves himself out in the open, an open book as Sanji says. He wants the whole world to know who he is, no speculation needed. "Wanna fish?"

Zoro purses his lips and looks at the horizon, pops a finger in his mouth and then lifts said finger up to test the winds. He shrugs. "Sure."

"Hey, Usopp," Luffy yells, ignoring the girl as he turns to face int he general direction his long-nosed friend tends to hang out at. "Me and Zoro are gonna fish, you in?!"

"Comin'!"

-

Sometimes, the girl still curls herself against Zoro.

Luffy watches the way black blood and rotten flesh falls on Zoro, maggots squirming up and down his best friend's tanned limbs, tangling in his funny green hair.

He knows it's not actually happening. Zoro doesn't react to any of it because worms aren't actually on him, flesh isn't actually dropping onto his white henley and blood isn't actually leaking onto his skin.

But, man, if it isn't morbid to watch.

Luffy entertains himself by balancing chopsticks in between his nostrils and his lower lip.

-

"Don't go near the damn trees," Sanji screeches when Zoro's making a random turn. He snatches at the back of Zoro's shirt and drags him back to the group.

Luffy laughs, head thrown back and all.

The girl, who he figures he'll never know the name of, is walking near the trees, dragging a foot that's more bones than flesh, jaw finally hanging open, patches of her scalp missing and leaving her cranium exposed.

Maybe whenever Zoro's wandering in the wrong direction he's just subconsciously heading wherever she is? Luffy's never noticed or paid attention to that. He doubts it though; she seems to be tethered to him not the other way around.

His eyes follows a tooth that falls to the ground.

"Lemme go, cook. Who are you, my mother?!"

"As if, moss for brains," Sanji growls, pulling his cigarette out his teeth so he can properly yell. "That poor woman had the patience of a saint to have had to deal with you!"

"Oh shut up," Zoro yells back. "Why don't you go make me a sandwich or something?"

"Why I aughta---"

Luffy tilts his head to see the start of one of Zoro's and Sanji's fights. They're so silly, he thinks fondly as Zoro swings his katana without any ounce of deadly intent and Sanji blocks it with a kick that lacks any actual force.

She's fallen behind, Luffy notes. She'll catch up, though.

She always does.

-

This continues on for all their travels.

She's in Whiskey Peak, she's in Little Garden. She's in Drum Island. She's in Arabasta, she's in Long Ring Long Land island and Luffy almost wants to tell Splithead that he can have her instead of Chopper during those fun games.

Each time, she's decayed more and more. It's slow, it's gradual, but it's steady and consistent. Where there once was flesh there's tendons and circulatory system. Some places have them hanging like ribbons, showing skeleton and the darkness inside where her organs should be.

Luffy feels like he's become desensitized over it. If he ever really was sensitive over it. He tends to just observe her, morbidly taking in all that's happening to her body, watching her always find Zoro no matter what chaos is happening around them.

She doesn't do anything.

She doesn't reach for him unless it's when they're camping or on the Merry and she curls into him, into his white katana. But usually, she just hovers, she just stands near him.

Maybe she wants to be on this journey, too, to be here when Zoro becomes the greatest.

Luffy doesn't know but he accidentally tallies her as a crewmate one day and the others look at him like they did that time he showed them he could kinda tie his neck in a bow.

"Wait, wait," Usopp says, shaking a hand in the air. " Me and Nami and Robin, that's three. Zoro and Sanji, that's five. Chopper's six. You're seven, technically." He's tallying everyone up on his fingers. "Who's the eighth? Vivi?"

Luffy opens his mouth, trying to think about what to say. His instinct is to just tell them that there's a dead girl following Zoro around all the time and she might as well be the eighth crewmate. But how crazy would that make him sound?

So he lets out a weird croaky noise from the back of his throat before he nods. "Sure, yeah. It's Vivi."

Nami and Zoro look at him with narrowed eyes, clearly not believing him. Robin and Sanji's stares are unreadable and very eerie. He pretends not to notice and laughs with Usopp and Chopper who choose to believe him.

-

"Oh, hello," Brook whispers when he sees her.

Her face doesn't have skin anymore. It's jarring to see the perfectly round eyeballs still connected to the nerves, the empty space where her nose should be, all her teeth. Or what's left of them.

Funny, how Brook who's an actual skeleton doesn't elicit this kind of reaction out of him. But maybe it's because Brook's all skeleton and isn't in different stages of decay the way the girl is.

She stands by Zoro's prone body. Vigilant, her black blood mixing with all of Zoro's red one. This moment kinda feels like they're in the same space, as close as they can be after all these years.

Chopper says Zoro was clinically dead for at least two minutes if not three. Luffy wonders if he saw her. He wonders if they've chat.

He doesn't say anything and he's a bit more on the sober side from his usual antics and mischief. It's not every day that your best friend almost dies; this must be what Zoro's felt like.

He sighs, proposing that soon he'll go find a barrel of booze to bring to Zoro. Maybe that'll wake him up. it's been two and a half days and counting.

He watches Franky walk through the girl as he comes to take his watch. They've settled to taking turns on staying with Zoro, in case he stops breathing, in case he hopefully wakes up.

Brook sits near Luffy, playing his violin. It's shifted to a sad tune filled with wonder and all the hope one could ever have for someone else.

"He's in capable hands, my dear," he says thinking it's soft enough that Luffy, the closest spectator, won't hear. "We will take care of him."