"Alright, jokes aside. Why did you actually co aboard?"
Amon asked it straight. He knew enough of Robin's character to understand she didn't do things without reason, and boarding a stranger's ship on a whim wasn't sothing she was capable of.
"Who knows." Robin lay back in her chair with an easy smile. "Perhaps because you're different from everyone else I've encountered. Is that reason enough, Mr. Amon?"
He looked at her for a mont, then let it go.
"Fair enough."
He wasn't the type to pull a thread until it unraveled. And honestly, having only Lily on board for company had its limits. You needed at least three people to play cards properly. Beyond that, he didn't dislike Robin, and the ship had more than enough room. If she wanted to stay, she could stay.
"Then welco aboard," Robin said, covering her smile, and followed Lily up onto the deck. She had taken an imdiate interest in the girl and couldn't seem to stop finding excuses to pat her head.
"Oh, Mr. Amon, what would you like for lunch? I did say I'd handle the cooking."
She had made that offer when she boarded, and she intended to follow through on it. She wasn't entirely sure of her own ability in the kitchen, but she reasoned she had to be at least passable.
"Let's hold off on that for now. Co on, let show you to your room first."
Amon had seen enough of Robin's hands to know they were not hands that had spent much ti at a stove, and he had no particular desire to test that theory on an empty stomach.
"My room? Alright."
From the outside, the ship didn't look like a ship with much to offer in terms of space. Robin had already ford a rough picture in her head of what to expect. She went along mostly out of deference to the fact that this was, after all, his ship, and she was, for now, crew.
"This way."
Amon led her below without elaborating, and she followed.
She stopped walking the mont she stepped through the hatch.
"This is... enormous."
The interior of the ship bore no relationship to the exterior. The space that opened up below deck was staggering. A swimming pool. A sand beach. Recreational facilities she didn't have nas for yet, including one grassy area with small flags on thin poles that she couldn't identify but found visually interesting.
"How is this possible?"
"Trade secret. Co on, let's find you a room."
The quarters available were nurous, and Amon let her take her pick. In the end, the choice she made surprised him. Rather than claiming a room of her own, Robin chose to share with Lily, citing that it would save space on the ship.
Actually, she simply found Lily fascinating and wanted an excuse to be near her.
"Sister, juice!" Lily appeared at her elbow almost imdiately after the decision was made, pressing a cup into her hands with great satisfaction.
"You sweet thing." Robin accepted it with a warm laugh. "Oh, that reminds . Lily, where is the kitchen?"
"Over on the far end of the cabin."
"Good girl. Co on, let's go together."
She had no intention of sitting idle now that she was crew. She brought Lily along and made her way to the kitchen, while Amon remained up on deck with a fishing line trailing in the water. The waters around the island they had just left were too dry and too scarce to have offered much in the way of supplies, and their stores were running low.
Robin stepped into the kitchen and imdiately felt overwheld by what she found. The shelves were stocked with more ingredients and tools than she had ever seen assembled in one place.
"Master cooks very well," Lily offered, watching Robin's face as she took it all in. "Are you sure you want to try, Sister?"
"Of course. I'm not the type to eat without contributing."
She gave Lily a confident smile and got to work.
Her Devil Fruit hands were excellent for many things. Cooking turned out not to be among them. The vegetables ca out in mismatched chunks, nothing the sa size as anything else. The heat was either too much or too little. The finished product, when she set it out, had a color palette and texture that belonged more to an incident than a al.
Robin looked at it for a mont.
A rare flush of embarrassnt crossed her face.
"Ha. Let take over."
Amon had co down to check on things and taken one look at the plate before setting his fishing rod aside without further comnt. He wasn't cruel about it, but the food was simply beyond saving, and he was hungry.
He took the kitchen from her gently, and twenty minutes later the table held a spread that bore no resemblance to what had co before it. The sll alone was enough to make Robin feel the gap between them in this particular departnt with so clarity.
"Master's food is always delicious," Lily said helpfully, noting Robin's expression.
"Don't just stand there. Eat while it's warm."
Amon picked up his chopsticks. Robin reached for a fork and knife, which imdiately created its own small difficulty, since the food in front of her was almost entirely prepared in styles that made cutlery feel like the wrong tool entirely. She persevered with the fork for a while, then, when it beca clear that the food was suffering for it, quietly set it down and reached in with her fingers.
So things simply had to be eaten the right way.
Amon watched this with a private smile and said nothing.
Three days passed quietly on the water. By the end of them, Robin had mastered chopsticks, had fully accepted that cooking was not among her abilities, and had fallen into an easy rhythm of conversation with Amon that surprised her each ti she noticed it happening. The wariness that had defined every relationship for the past decade was still there, but it had shifted into sothing less sharp at the edges.
She was lying in the chair that had started all of this, letting the sea air move through her hair, when Amon sat up from where he had been dozing under Lily's attentive massage and looked out toward the horizon.
"That island ahead. That looks like Ohara."
Robin went still.
Then she sat up slowly, and her eyes found the shape rising from the water in the distance, and sothing in her chest tightened all the way to her throat.
Ohara.
She had left when she was eight years old, running and not looking back, and she had not returned in all the years since. She had not let herself think too much about returning. And now, barely a week aboard Amon's ship, the sea had simply brought her here.
"Robin. Let's go up and have a look."
Drum Island was still the destination, and Chopper was waiting sowhere in the cold. But passing Ohara without setting foot on it felt like sothing Amon wasn't willing to do, not with her standing right there.
Robin nodded, and didn't trust her voice enough to say much beyond that.
"Thank you," she managed, quietly.
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