“Exhaustion, right? It's normal, isn't it?”
As Luffy's eyes slowly fluttered open, he found himself lying down in bed, wearing a warm pajama.
He inhaled deeply, feeling his organs react to him being fully awake.
“Hard to tell? What's that supposed to mean? Aren't you supposed to know?”
As he awoke, he heard Zoro's voice echo from nearby.
His body shivered while the coldness settled into it, as a consequence of how wet his hair still was.
“He's awake, now.”
The boy's chest began to rise as Zoro sat down beside him, gently holding onto his hand.
"Hey, are you okay?"
The Swordsman asked, staring at his Captain with worry.
Luffy sleepily nodded his head at him, hardly able to keep his eyes open before feeling them close, again.
“Huh? Yeah. Yeah, I'll keep you updated. Thank you.”
Placing his snail transponder aside, Zoro stared at Luffy again, carefully observing his behavior.
"Torao told me that you most likely fainted because of the blood loss from the surgery..."
He explained, feeling stressed out while he reached down to grab onto Luffy's hands, warming them up with his own.
"Are you okay? Are you hurt?"
He asked while he witnessed the way that Luffy was trembling due to how cold he felt.
Seeing the young man shiver made him appear fragile to Zoro.
He wanted nothing more than to cradle him in his arms, so he did.
Handling the boy with care, slowly but surely, Zoro rested beside him, pulling the sheets over both of them.
As the night caved in and the temperature dropped outside of the vast ocean that surrounded the Sunny, Luffy nestled his head into Zoro's arm, seeking his warmth.
He couldn't move around freely because of how sore his body was, and how stiff his hip bones still felt, so he settled for a position that he was comfortable with and rested his tired eyes.
"Zoro..." He mentioned Zoro's name, yawning towards the end of his sentence.
"Yeah?"
The Swordsman responded from nearby, standing up from the bed to turn the lights off.
Luffy waited for him to climb back into the bed to reveal his answer to the man.
"All set."
Zoro stretched his muscles out, getting back into the bed, making little to no movement against the mattress beneath him so that Luffy's body wouldn't shift from side to side.
"What were you saying?" He asked, reverting his attention to Luffy.
The shorter turned his head at the older male and stared at him.
"Night night."
He responded in a sweet voice that made Zoro's heart flutter, feeling defeated by the Captain's purity.
The man leaned closer towards him and left a tender kiss against his head, and another on his cheek.
"Sleep well. If you have to use the bathroom later on, call me. If I'm asleep, wake me up. Don't try doing it on your own, okay?"
Perhaps the rules he set up for his Captain made the Swordsman seem overly protective, but he did it to keep Luffy safe.
Knowing how spontaneous and unpredictable his Captain was, he might be tempted to challenge his body to stand up on his own and harm himself along the way, which is precisely what Zoro was trying to prevent.
"Okay."
The younger agreed, responding to Zoro in a lower tone of voice.
As his voice started to fade away, so did his mind while he entered a state of somnolence.
With his body feeling weightless as it remained unmoved in his comfortable bed, Luffy's head sank deeper against his pillow, once he was no longer awake or aware of his surroundings.
All that he could hear were occasional footsteps coming from one of the rooms within the Sunny, as a sign that a crew mate had gotten up to use the restroom.
The last thing that he remembers listening to was the sound of a few raindrops creating a ripple effect above the ocean that the Sunny was slowly sailing through.
The rain reminded him of the shower that he had, before going to bed.
How peaceful it felt when the lukewarm water caressed his skin, and how sleepy he ended up, seconds after he was done showering.
With that relaxing experience in mind, the Captain descended into a long, silent slumber.
Zoro would wake up, from time to time, to check on him, and would sometimes even take a walk outside of the Captain's bedroom, scouting the area to make sure that there was no suspicious activity going on that he and the rest of the crewmates were unaware of.
Soon, he gave in to the exhaustion that he felt and obtained the rest that he was craving.
"Cute..."
He thought to himself after Luffy wrapped his arm around his own, snuggling up to the Swordsman.
From that point on, Zoro slept the rest of the night, with no further interruptions.
Luffy, on the other hand... What started off as sleep, turned into a long dream that was now evolving into a nightmare which he had yet to awaken from.
~12:14 a.m.~
"A camera?"
Looking down at a camera that he found lying beside his feet, Luffy picked it up and brought it up to his face.
At first glance, the small device appeared seemingly normal and had no photos or videos saved on it.
But as Luffy's thumb started to work its way around the silver buttons on it, he managed to find but a single video.
Pressing the 'play' button, the footage from the video had a strange start: Nothing but a grayish background could be seen, covering the screen.
Staring into the screen for a while longer, the boy's efforts to find something useful in the recording finally appeared in the form of a hand.
The hand repositioned the camera on top of a bathroom sink.
There was no voice or even a hint of who could have left the camera there, so Luffy was clueless for a while.
The bathroom light was on and the camera was focused on three things: A round bathtub that was filled halfway with water, a man with long hair and a scar on his face, and an infant who was standing in the tub.
Squinting his eyes at the screen, Luffy held the device closer towards his face and made a new discovery: He recognized the man and the baby.
"That's me. Me and... My dad?"
~~~
