Archive of Our Own ^beta

[ DAY 1. PARTY or BOOKS. ]

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He still didn’t trust her.

She was smart, resourceful, she had fallen into the crew’s pace effortlessly, and yet he still couldn’t bring himself to extend to her the implicit sense of companionship one felt for their crewmates.

She hid something, a secret for each strand of ebony hair sitting on her head.

For all that he had always considered himself a lone wolf, Zoro prided himself on his ability to read people: such a skill was fundamental at sea, it helped determining whether a newcomer was a friend, an enemy or a bystander, leading to dramatically different outcomes and reactions, and it had saved him in more than one occasion.

When in doubt, he listened to it.

Nico Robin hid something, that much was obvious. From the way she avoided eye-contact to her tendency to spend her nights on deck, constantly on the lookout for threats, he couldn’t figure out what her deal was, and that bothered him relentlessly. Everyone else on the ship, they were crystal clear, almost transparent, they wore their heart on their sleeve and he had never once second-guessed their actions.

Where the woman was concerned, however, he navigated uncharted territory. She was older, more experienced than any of them in the ways of the sea and, it appeared, rather accustomed to changing sides and looking out for number one.

Not that he didn’t respect that on a personal level, but the first mate felt it was his responsibility to protect the others as they all fell under her spell.

It just didn’t make no sense.

Did a pirate ship even need an archaeologist of all things?

From the way Crocodile had kept her close until the very end of his Alabastan venture, it would have seemed that yes, such a figure did have its uses.

But then why didn’t she leave as soon as they were out of the Navy’s reach?

Luffy had been strangely tight-lipped on what transpired between them in the desert, so maybe there was a perfectly rational explanation for it which he just didn’t know about (yet), but even then, why would have someone like her joined a group of what were basically rookies?

People outside the crew tended to disregard their dreams of grandeur, dismiss their claim that they one day would find the one piece and crown their captain the Pirate King.

Not much was required to be a Straw-Hat, just that one, stubborn belief, so either Luffy had instilled that upon her through unknown means, or she was faking it. Nico Robin had so easily carved herself a place in their routines, made herself so irreplaceable, he tended towards the second option.

No one was that perfect au naturel.

Thus, he didn’t trust her.

For all that every night Zoro laid down on his hammock and told himself to just trust his captain instead, the same way he had done up until that point and without much of a fuss, he still couldn’t be placated when it came to the newest addition to their crew.

Luffy didn’t seem to hold a grudge for what had happened in Alabasta, and Nami had been readily bought off with some stolen gems and the knowledge she wouldn’t have been the only woman aboard the Going Merry anymore.

Dart-brow had already been a lost cause all the way back in Whiskey Peak, when Nico Robin had sashayed aboard their ship the first time – once again, uninvited – and neutralized them all with a mere flick of her wrist.

The poor fool couldn’t say No to a woman to save his life and, unfortunately, this one was rather easy on the eyes.

(Even he had to admit that.)

Chopper seemed rather fond of her, finding every little excuse he could to spend time in her company, or simply napping on her lap, and the resident sniper hadn’t been that hard to sway in the end, even though Usopp had been the one to share his grievances at first.

As the last man still standing, the swordsman found it hard to give up.

A genuine person wouldn’t have constantly watched her back, after all, they would have trusted their comrades to do so for them. Yet Nico Robin didn’t.

Maybe that was all there was to it, he couldn’t bring himself to trust her because he knew that she didn’t trust them, and yet Koushirou’s words from over a decade before looped fiercely in the back of his mind.

Beware of a woman with too many books.

At first, he had not thought too much of this one piece of advice, almost forgetting about it, and then he had left the village and seen a bit of the world outside of it, thus convincing himself that the man had been likely drunk during that conversation and making a poor attempt at comforting him after his umpteenth loss at his own daughter’s hands. Now he was merely grateful Kuina hadn’t been around when his sensei shared the recommendation with him, for he knew she would have felt offended and dismissed by it, and rightfully so, but at the same time he couldn’t stop thinking that there was perhaps a speckle of truth in those words, at least as far as the archaeologist was concerned.

She had so many books.

Lining up every shelf aboard Merry or neatly imprinted in her long-term memory, Nico Robin was the closest thing to an encyclopaedia he had ever come across. It terrified him just as much as it amazed him.

Her vast knowledge was something the Straw-Hats were already benefiting from, but it didn’t feel safe to depend on it, yet. Not when she still acted as if she could disappear from their sight at any given moment.

Her nose tucked behind a book nine times out of ten, Nico Robin still avoided most of the crew’s questions or supplied vague answers for them; even though he wasn’t one of the people asking and refrained from interacting with the woman as he was still making up his mind about her, it was impossible not to notice her elusiveness.

She had a way to mud the waters with her words, allusive and deliberately ambiguous; she never took too hard or precise of a stance and tended to keep as far away from the spotlight as she could, a force acting from the inside out, whose agenda was yet to be revealed.

She was a dangerous woman. A dangerous woman with too many books.

Someone had to keep an eye on her.

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He had looked, stared, glared, burnt his gaze on every inch of her body, and yet his feelings towards the woman were still ambivalent: on the one hand the passing of days had made it so he could access an inner layer of her personality, if only by reflection, and peek over the edge of the bottomless pit of her loneliness, but on the other it had only fortified the feeling that Nico Robin wasn’t meant to last. She didn’t mean to last.

Thus, he couldn’t trust her.

His grey eyes were on her even as the Straw-Hats got separated, and for the first time he was personally grateful for her presence as she set off confidently through the woods.

There was no telling how far he would have been stranded if he explored this side of Skypiea all by himself, after all, and the circumstances of their adventure on the sky-island suggested that he really did not want to find out.

Zoro could feel the tension rolling off her shoulders and stiff neck as she preceded him down the forest’s path, resisting the urge to watch the sensitive space behind her shoulders and seemingly struggling more with each step she took, but he pretended not to notice.

He had been far from quiet in his reticence and perplexities about her, so much so that she had grown even more guarded around him, as if she could sense that he was onto her, eager to unveil all the secrets she kept stored so close to her chest.

If the woman was honest, he was a jerk, but if she wasn’t, well, then he was the one messing up her plans.

It didn’t surprise him that he was far from her favourite crewperson.
 
When the pair stopped under an ancient oak to eat, the first thing she took out of her backpack was a book, behind which she immediately hid her face.  

Zoro’s mouth instinctively curled up in a smirk. “Oi”, he grunted.

“What are you reading?”

He still wasn’t sure whether those books she loved so much were her weapon or her shield, or maybe an odd mixture of the two, born out of necessity, but they were clearly the fastest road to her soul.

She looked realer when immersed in one of her tomes, more alive, as if every fibre of her being sparkled with anticipation when she got down to the endless job of acquiring new (or improved) knowledge.

It was a rather dazzling sight, but not as unsettling as the surprise she showed upon hearing his voice.

Dark, feathery eyebrows dipped low on the archaeologist’s forehead, her sapphire eyes unfocused as she weighed the approach in her mind; her lips were slightly parted, like words were stuck at the back of her throat and he had interrupted just as she was about to spell them out.

However, her astonishment lasted but a second. The woman heaved a deep breath and soon enough her usual quiet smile was staring back at him, every trace of shock and curiosity meticulously wiped away from her face.

She was such a consumed actress, he couldn’t help it but wonder whether she was still true to some parts of herself, or she had lost them all as she built her character. Every pirate worthy of the name needed one, something to build the eventual legend upon.

“This?”

Robin closed the book and turned it around in her hands so that the title printed on the hard cover was facing him, albeit faded and now unreadable.

Even though the man was rather and painfully aware of his limits, and that he was hardly the brainy one in the bunch, her consternation still offended him: sure, he would have rather spent his day training, meditating and looking after his swords than inside a library, but it didn’t mean that he couldn’t read, or that he wasn’t equipped for serious conversation.

From the way she caressed the back of the book with a trembling finger and hesitated next, her mask faltering, perhaps it was not his ability to understand what she was going to say next which she questioned, but rather the vulnerable spot it put her in.

“It’s an old collection of children’s tales,” She explained, an odd twinkle in her eyes as she appraised his face more thoughtfully than ever before.

Then, her arm twitching in protest, Robin handed him the tome and added, “My mother used to read these to me at night. Well, she read from a different book, but that was a lifetime ago. It’s my most prized possession”.  

With that in mind, it felt weird to hold such a significant item in his hands.

Birth families weren’t a topic which pirates were particularly fond of, or eager to discuss.

They were either on the run from them or had left them behind to answer the call of the sea, but whichever was the case it was rare for one to retire at some point in their life and still have people to return to, people who hadn’t forgotten them as the years went by.

For the woman to share something so tender and private, it didn’t match the gruesome colours he had painted her with in his mind. Perhaps she wasn’t meant to stay, either by chance or choice, and there was still that aura of danger around her he still couldn’t quite put his finger on, but she most definitely bore the Straw-Hats no ill-intent.

And that was enough.

Zoro still couldn’t trust her, but she was welcome. (And she could bring along how many books she fancied.)