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There is nothing I've got when I die that I keep
It's amazing
The moment he turns around to open his front to Mihawk’s sword, his mind wanders to what he’s leaving behind. He mentally sifts through the things he has - his worldly possessions, any living relatives he can think of, Johnny and Yosaku, his master. He has a dream, or had, he supposes, since if he moves from this spot, he won’t have that either way. But when you die, your dream dies with you, Zoro thinks, so that doesn’t really count.
He goes through these things like a laundry list while he awaits his gruesome death. It’s short and bittersweet. Kuina and his swords appear at the top, but Kuina is already dead, so Zoro figures he’ll be seeing her soon. When he kicks it, there will be little left of him still haunting the East Blue, and even less of her.
He sorts through the list like a chore – he’s sorry Johnny and Yosaku had to see this, he’s sorry he failed Kuina and his master, he’s this and that about such and such. At the bottom of his list is Luffy and the crew, and it startles Zoro so much he almost forgets he’s banging on death’s door with both fists. He effectively just met these people, but they sit firmly on the list, winking at him like it’s a secret he just learned.
Zoro should have known, really – he did just pledge his allegiance to this kid made of rubber who says he’ll be the pirate king. Realistically, he and this kid are probably already what he would consider “good friends”. Maybe even, dare he think it, best friends.
He can’t lie about being fond of the crew, too, even if “the crew” is his captain and Usopp and a witch who just stole all their shit. (He might be a little bit more than fond of his captain). Honestly, his everything has become this kid and this crew. This is what his life has come to. And this is what it’ll end to too, he supposes. Luffy is watching this, after all.
Mihawk’s sword rips open everything holding him together.
So this is death, he thinks as he falls into the sea, you keep nothing and leave everything. He’s sinking, and the ocean swallows his body and his consciousness. Everything is black.
When he comes to, he’s alive.
There’s blood pouring out of his chest in a disgusting and unstoppable way. His breathing is ragged and stuttered and he just got slashed open with all of his guts and dreams spilling out by Dracule Mihawk, and Zoro doesn’t even have the decency to thank God he’s alive. He can only narrow in on one thought, the end of the laundry list – his captain and his crew. A straw hat.
He raises his sword.
When Zoro offers his life to Kuma on a silver platter, head down, he thinks he was right as he sank at the Baratie.
When he dies – soon, he thinks – he’ll be leaving behind everything he’s ever had. He’ll be leaving behind a family, a group of people he never would have believed he’d be emotionally tied to, but here he is. Their smiles, their laughs, their presence. People he considers some of the most amazing he’s ever known, the strongest, the bravest, the closest. They no longer occupy an afterthought at the end of the laundry list.
He’ll be leaving behind his dream, lost like a whisper in the wind. Just another swordsman aiming for the top. Kuina’s dream will flow through him and then flow up and into the air, gone, a wisp. It’s a wonder it didn’t become a thread in the wind at the Baratie. Her dream didn’t die with her death, but it will certainly die with his. If his eyes weren’t plastered to the concrete beneath him, he would glance one last time at Wado.
He’ll be leaving behind Luffy, a man with a dream that must weigh as much as the world. Luffy, who means everything to the crew and will easily mean as much to a thousand others in the future, means all the world to Zoro and all the weight of it too. Luffy, who will live on from this moment, who will sail a million miles and then some, who will take the grand line and the new world by storm, who will become an emperor and a king and a legend. Zoro knows this as well as he knows his own conviction, knows it like its been tattooed on his bones.
And all this, he thinks, is why he doesn’t feel all that bad about leaving things behind. Because even if he goes down here and now, Luffy will go on, and he will continue to carry the dreams and smiles and lives of the people on his ship. His ascension and theirs will be possible because of this, and as Zoro reflects one last time before Kuma delivers his verdict, he thinks maybe he was wrong.
He can’t keep them, he can’t keep it, he can’t keep him. Could never hold down or immobilize any Straw Hat, really. But he lived, and it mattered, and they can keep his memory. They can keep Zoro, and he can let them live in his heart and his spirit, at least for a few minutes longer.
It makes his bones ache, his heart weep, to think of what he’s leaving. The feeling is foreign to him, these seconds unlike his last moments in East Blue with a sword aimed at his chest. But his resolve is unbreakable – for them, for him? Anything.
Somebody said it's unspeakable love
Sanji finds himself pacing. And pacing. And pacing some more, for good measure. He’s blowing through cigarettes like they’re nothing, dammit, and he can’t stop himself from dragging a hand across his face. That idiot.
He can feel the weight of what he knows yanking him down, threatening to pull him through the boards of the Sunny and down to the sea floor. He wonders if this is what Devil Fruit users feel like the second they touch the ocean – a complete loss of control, a suffocating weight, a heavy heart. Feeling like a boulder, sinking down and down with nothing but the inevitable bottom to stop them. Watching as the light fades with the depths, a cocoon of darkness.
The reality of what he tried to do puts pressure on the weight. It was foolish, really, and a bit fleeting, all that shit he said. He knows this only now, looking back and wincing. To speak of glory, of an honorable death – it stings. I’m sorry, but you’ll have to find another cook. It feels like lipservice as he looks back, clenching his fists. Stupid. He knows glory and grandiose gestures never crossed the swordsman’s mind, couldn’t in those moments where he so openly gave up his life.
This, he thinks, is the simple difference between them in that moment. Sanji knows he was acting out in desperation, in self-sacrifice and dramatics. Zoro had accepted his death before he had even spoken the words.
Again, a simple welcoming of death, just like at the Baratie. And Sanji had said the same thing – what happens to ambition when you die? Wouldn’t you rather give up your dream to live, to carry on? Wouldn’t you rather live, to achieve your dream? If you die, what’ll happen…?!
It doesn’t matter now. He has already seen the standing lifeless body of Roronoa Zoro.
His mind swirls, twitches in a swarm of conflict. As far as he knows, he’s the only one who saw the stunt Zoro pulled. Judging by the confusion of the other crew members, he’s the only one with the faculties to tell Luffy, aside from Zoro himself. It makes him shake with irritation, makes him reach for another cigarette. To speak or to stay silent - it torments him. The thousand potentials for how Luffy could react are all a bit monumentous and heavy, all playing out a bit too darkly in his head.
Zoro won’t want anyone to find out, to hear of the most unsettling deed any of this crew has ever committed for their captain. Sanji can’t decide if Luffy has the God given right to hear the complete and total truth or not. He thinks he probably does, but feels deep in his heart it’s possible he never will.
Sanji finds himself at the rail of the ship, shaking out of his reverie and looking down at his hands and then out at the vast expanse of the sea.
It hits him, then.
That he knows in his soul anyone in this crew would go to great lengths to help their captain, to save their captain, to live for their captain. We have all been prepared to make this sacrifice. He has saved each and every one of them in every way possible. Someone who promises you your dream and then some, who boldly claims to be the next pirate king. Luffy is…the man who will become the Pirate King! They all love him and have proven it time and time again.
This, though, Sanji thinks, is different. He wonders if he could have ever truly gone through with his idiotic spiel, to do…whatever it was Zoro did that got him covered in blood and on the brink of death. Give me a glorious death! He remembers the look in Zoro’s eyes as he knocked him out, the same look still flickering in a dead man when he found his statue of a corpse.
Sanji puffs smoke out onto the water. Unspeakable love. That’s the only explanation he can bring himself to find.
Somebody said it's unspeakable love
When Mihawk sees Roronoa Zoro on his dreary island, he isn’t entirely surprised.
When he tells the swordsman the news from Marineford, he sees the fiery everpresent spark in his eyes dim for the first time. He sees the crushing of a soul, the breaking down of a granite wall.
When he gives him a boat and tells him to go, he feels nothing. When he sees the boat destroyed, a distraught Zoro threatening to swim across a thousand oceans to see his captain, he feels something. When he invites him back to the castle, he feels gracious. When Zoro rejects his offer, he feels indifference.
When Zoro comes to the castle later, standing in front of Mihawk like he didn’t just tell him to fuck off, Mihawk feels distaste. To not even defeat a single humandril and show his face here - it’s humiliating. When he finds out he defeated all of them in his barely living state, he feels surprised.
When he watches Roronoa Zoro ask him to train him, head to the floor, Mihawk feels rage.
To beg, with his head on the ground. It’s disgusting, Mihawk thinks. It’s outrageous. To beg, with his hands on the ground. This is not the Roronoa Zoro he remembers from the floating restaurant in East Blue. To beg, with his knees on the ground. Whatever brought him to them must be heavier than the weight of his three swords, the weight of the dream imbued in his soul.
Mihawk suddenly remembers a boy in a straw hat, flying at him in a rage. He remembers a sword raised in the air and a promise. He can hear Zoro’s panicked desperation to get to sea on the banks of his own Kuraigana in his ears.
When he says It seems you have found an ambition greater than your own, it shocks he and Zoro both, it seems. He wonders how someone could intertwine their dream with someone else’s, to weave it together, to take on the hopes and loves of another like this and not even notice. When he thinks men like Zoro will only choose for the sake of another, abandon their pride for the sake of another, the surprise is gone. He knows exactly what kind of man Roronoa Zoro is, and it makes his chest twinge a bit. Men like that don’t often achieve their dreams.
When you’ve dedicated yourself to a someone instead of a something, everything tends to get a bit too messy. Too many blurred lines.
He feels himself desperate to grasp what exactly it is that Zoro exudes, the quality that brought him to his knees, to ask a man to train his murderer. He sees Zoro’s face at the mention of his captain in his mind.
Undying devotion, complete and utter faith, unspeakable love, thinks Mihawk. That’s what this is.
Well, you don't believe I can speak well at all
You're a maze to me
“Oi, oi,” Zoro grouses, crossing his arms like he really means it. “What’re you loitering in my nap spot for?”
Luffy, sitting crosslegged and looking very much up to something, has the audacity to look offended. “YOUR spot? I don’t see your name on it, Zoro, and quite frankly, what makes you think you can own part of the deck? Eh?” He narrows his eyes and acts like he just gave Zoro a good old fashioned telling off for good measure - crossed arms, pout and all.
Zoro tries as hard as he can not to smirk. Overly defensive and mean? DEFINITELY bitter he was caught in the act of waiting around for Zoro to get tired and come over here to conk out. Checkmate, captain.
“Fine, fine,” He puts his hands up in defeat. “Not my spot. But I came here to nap, so that’s what I’m gonna do.”
He makes a show of shoving Luffy aside with his foot (with some effort), ignoring his grumbling and bitching. He fwumps down with as much force as possible and puts his arms behind his head, closing his eyes. Feigning sleep is one of Zoro’s many talents, thank you very much.
It only takes a few minutes for Luffy to get fidgety and restless, tapping his fingers on the deck and bouncing his knee rather obnoxiously on Zoro’s leg. Zoro can feel his captain glancing at him and glancing away, his eyes flitting back and forth before finally boring a hole in his skull with their gaze. The message of Wake up and talk to me you idiot I was staking out this spot so you would is practically being screamed at him.
Zoro cracks an eye open and looks at Luffy. “Hmm? Did you need something, captain?”
Luffy tries his best to school his expression into neutrality, but the flash of irritation that zips across his face doesn’t go unnoticed. Damn Zoro, that perceptive asshole. “I was wondering,” he pauses, letting it linger, “if you wanted to get dinner on the island tonight. Just us.” He looks a little too smug the second he’s done speaking.
“Uhh,” Zoro says, very intelligently. Damn Luffy, he’d been able to read his captain this whole time and he still managed to surprise him. His brain tries desperately to catch up with his mouth, but it doesn’t whir fast enough. “Uhmmm…..buh,” he sputters. Wow Zoro, very smooth. Truly greatest swordsman material right here.
The smirk on Luffy’s face is one of unbridled triumph, that bitch. “Gee Zoro, you can’t speak very well at all, can you?”
“Shut up,” Zoro hisses, narrowing his eyes. “Yeah. I mean, yes, I would like to get dinner. Tonight. With you.” He chokes out, restraining the urge to drag a hand down his face. No doubt it’s 10 degrees hotter than the rest of him.
Luffy hums, having won the not-battle they were having. “Great! You better be ready on time, and don’t sleep through it!” He ceremoniously swivels, laying down and using Zoro’s thigh as a pillow and smiling deviously. “Speaking of sleep –,”
The second Luffy gets his head on Zoro’s thigh, he gets a solid flick in the forehead. Ignoring his offended “Hey!”, Zoro crosses his arms. “I don’t remember turning into a pillow at any point today. In fact, I don’t remember ever being a pillow, not even in a past life.”
Luffy swats at him, pouting. “Oh, sorry, I guess you missed my captain’s order earlier. It was that Zoro has to be my pillow, whenever I want, wherever I want, forever, and he can just deal with it, because I said so,” he declares without even a hint of shame. He looks like he’s more proud of himself for coming up with that than he is of anything he’s ever done. Bastard. He’s practically glowing.
Zoro can’t help it – he laughs long and loud until both of them are smiling. Fuck it. He can’t argue with that. He settles back against the rail and rests his hand in Luffy’s hair, because he can.
“Aye, captain.”
First of a thousand to write on the wall
It's only beginning, it's swallowing us
It hits Zoro then, as Bartolomeo and the others are spouting off and pledging allegiances, that he was the very first member in a fleet that now, technically, numbers more than 5000.
Suddenly Zoro is in a small bar in Shells town and asking Luffy how many crew members he has and where his ship is. He’s hearing that he’s the first, looking out the window and seeing Luffy’s pathetic dinghy and losing it for a moment. He’s belting out a laugh, and he’s agreeing to be part of this rubberman’s crew. He’s calling him captain like he’s been saying it for years.
The beginnings of their now sizable crew crash into Zoro like a ton of bricks. He almost feels dizzy at the revelation, at the shock – not that he’d ever doubted Luffy and his boisterous claims for a second, but the fact that they’re on their way to achieving his goal is. Well. It’s astounding. There aren’t words to describe the sudden overwhelming feeling that Luffy’s dream isn’t just a speck of light at the end of a neverending tunnel.
It’s still only the start of all of this, and he knows it, but it stirs a weird feeling in him nonetheless. It makes him giddy in his bones, vibrating with energy and impatience. At the same time, it causes a cold wash of apprehension to soak through him, tinged with a small bit of fear. Their bullheaded captain and way of going about their business could end up swallowing them whole, Luffy’s dream a gaping maw closing on them.
He can’t help it – he brings it up, later. On the deck of their own ship, the privacy and safety of the Sunny, of home.
“Luffy.” It comes out softer than he intends, a whisper of what he’s feeling.
His captain turns, cocking his head in acknowledgement.
“We’re really on our way,” he says, “You’re on your way to being the pirate king, with a whole crew and everything.”
It’s almost disturbing, the way Luffy already knows what he means and is getting at and was pondering earlier. It’s like Zoro didn’t even need to speak, to say what his heart is singing. The thousand watt smile Luffy beams in his direction collects like a warm hearth in his chest. Simmers under his skin - a pleasant feeling.
“Of course!” He says with a laugh. “And you were the first. It’s only the beginning, Zoro.”
He wonders if his young 19-year-old self that spent almost a month mostly dead and forcibly rescued by Luffy knew what he was getting himself into. He wonders what kind of force could cause him to call someone “captain” so quickly and effortlessly. He thinks it’s impossible that he could have ever known the extent of the madness, the fervor that he was signing up for. But he also feels like some part of him, deep down, knew he was about to become part of something great.
He also wonders what this young and reckless Zoro would say if someone told him this is the man he would fall in love with. He thinks he wouldn’t be surprised.
Somebody said it's unspeakable love
It's amazing
When Nami sees a man with green hair bleeding out of his side from a stab wound and gripping the bars of Luffy’s cage, about to hoist it, she thinks he’s gone crazy. Maybe he drank a bunch of sea water, or ate a weird plant, or hit his head really hard. She won’t find out that Zoro is just Like That until later, after sharing a small boat with him and the rubberman.
Her next thought is that of wonder - what kind of devotion and commitment, some sort of pure and honest trust. To see anyone trust like that so open and raw makes Nami's fingers twitch. It’s a luxury she thinks even they can't afford, even pirates who have a crew of two and do whatever they please.
She watches in awe as he does, indeed, pick up the cage and start walking with it, blood staining his white shirt and haramaki and growing more gruesome by the second. Nami can't help but cover her mouth and glance away. It's disgusting, really, to be spilling your guts all over the place like this, literally and figuratively.
As they escape from Buggy and his crew, she thinks that these two must have known each other for ages. The history has to be there for this to make sense in her mind - she supposes even pirates can have history, can have sweet memories from months on the sea instead of sweet memories from years amongst fruit trees.
Pirates don’t deserve to have bonds like this, and Nami feels her skin crawl with want. To be envious of pirates makes her sick, the way they treat her with kindness makes her nauseous. The way they are together causes the deepest ache. Zoro is bleeding all over himself and the ground and this town but he still has a look on his face like he’d bleed on a hundred more if Luffy so much as asked him to. She wonders if she might, too, if she sailed the world with someone like him.
Her heart clenches – painfully so. She wants to surround herself with these two, their bond, their energy, their kindness, their freedom. She knows they would easily and willingly extend their closeness to her, wrapping her in it and tugging her along with them on their journey to the grand line, floating in their dinghy all the way there. Letting her guide them, letting her feel the wind and waves in ways they can’t.
When she finds out they've known each other for maybe a week, she's floored. It makes no sense. These idiots must have fallen in
--
Usopp first meets them as a pair, quoting a legendary pirate he hasn't heard the name of in a long time. They do it seamlessly, like they've rehearsed it, and yet Usopp knows they haven't.
He isn't sure why he knows that until he sees them fight against Klahadore and his crew, putting their all into protecting his village.
He knows it in the way they communicate unspoken, two halves of the same whole. Glances that carry a thousand words but none of them are said, just understood. He knows it in the determination in their eyes - it's the same, the look, like a mirror between them. He knows it in the smirk Zoro wears when Luffy does something unexpected and outrageous; while Usopp and the others are gaping and confused, he has already parsed Luffy’s intentions ten times over.
Usopp tells his crew about these two – a fearsome dynamic duo, warriors of the sea who have fought together for years, so in sync they don’t need words and can strike down just about anyone. He’s not even really sure he’s telling a lie – as far as he knows, his tale is totally plausible, but something inside of him is telling him it’s just like every other story he tells. It makes his wrists itch, to lie when it looks exactly like the truth, to lie on accident.
When Zoro picks Usopp up and books it for the forest, he suddenly remembers a small booth and a nice meal with the ragtag pirate crew. He remembers seeing Luffy scarf his food like a rabid animal and thinking, this kid wouldn't share his food if his life depended on it. And yet he sees it, in his mind, the extension of a rubber hand to Zoro, a look on his face that says here, this is your favorite, the gentle smile on Zoro's that says his thanks, and Usopp blanches.
Oh, he thinks. Maybe he wasn’t totally lying to his crew. They're in
--
Sanji is barely acquainted with Zoro when he watches him almost be slaughtered, and he thinks he's an idiot.
To die like that, young and reckless, is foolish. Sanji thinks it's silly to die like this, rather than give up a dream. You can’t achieve a dream when you’re dead, and life should take precedence over delusions of grandeur. He staunchly ignores the memory of a child holding a knife who never should have been fighting and saying I won't die here! I'm going to find the All Blue!
He puffs out some smoke. Jeez. To be young.
Sanji is barely acquainted with Zoro, but he thinks the chore boy must be some kind of special to him, maybe even vice versa, for him to stand here and watch what is evidently going to be a bloodbath. To watch and clench his hands on the railing, to stop anyone from interfering, but staying in his place all the same. To let Zoro do this, to let him go out there and make a fool and a half of himself, just to prove something.
The faith this straw hat kid has in the swordsman is staggering.
Mihawk’s blow hits hard, hits deep, hits unsurprisingly. The chore boy’s rage, his raw and panicked scream, his instant extension across the wreckage for vengeance without thinking rattles Sanji. He just saw Mihawk’s power, the extent of his prowess and his skill, and still he launched himself right into danger without a shred of fear in his eyes. Anger is all Sanji saw before he disappeared across the sea, clouding the boy’s eyes like cataracts.
He thinks he hears Dracule Mihawk, terrifying dark schichibukai, declare them a good pair. He feels inclined to agree.
When he sees Zoro, bloody and sobbing in the shipwreck with the life seeping out of him, raising his sword and - loudly - proclaiming his promise, even going so far as to call the chore boy the future pirate king, something in Sanji's chest clenches. A devotion to a captain like that in a crew of three others, one of which he's pretty sure just stole their boat and mutinied, is unthinkable. To join them, he thinks, seems startlingly thinkable.
Sanji wonders what would compel a dying man to strain himself to shout sweet nothings across the ocean. He thinks it has to be
--
Chopper swears up and down Zoro has a 6th sense for when Luffy falls overboard. After the initial shout and splash, there's never more than 30 seconds that pass before he hears the clang of katanas being shed and another subsequent body plopping into the ocean.
It happens today, of course, with the sun high in the sky and most crew members holing up inside.
Chopper quickly gathers everything he'll need to treat a waterlogged Luffy - including some bandages, because dammit, Luffy, those shouldn't be getting wet - and hustles out onto the deck. He's just in time to see Zoro heaving his captain over the rail, supporting the rubberman with his arms. He crouches down, gently laying Luffy on his side and rubbing small circles on his back as he hacks up water.
Chopper had thought Zoro was half asleep and inattentive when he had advised him on what to do (medically) in situations like these. As he watches Zoro give his ministrations perfectly, he realizes this is far from the truth. He ought to know better by now – any and all information about keeping the captain safe, alive, and unscathed is Zoro’s forte.
Zoro moves to hold Luffy up in a sitting position as he continues to cough, hand still drawing shapes on his back. This is all well and good, but Chopper is ready to start reapplying bandages and is about to say so when he stops at his captain's voice.
"Thank you, Zoro, always," he whispers, voice hoarse and smile watery and weak. The softness in Zoro's eyes makes Chopper look away.
"Any time, Luffy, you know that," and suddenly Chopper feels like he shouldn't be here, seeing this.
It feels like a moment between
--
Robin is just as perceptive as everyone seems to think she is. This may or may not be aided and abetted by her Devil Fruit power, but that’s neither here nor there.
Her notorious ability to notice things allows her to quickly and accurately clock the swordsman as the devout Straw Hat he is, and then some. The relationship between him and their captain is one of the most natural in world, Robin thinks, and surely she isn’t the only one to notice, but she thinks she might be the most…intrigued. She feels like she can almost see it, a tangible sort of thing.
She sees it in the way Zoro can be easily swayed and become obliging under Luffy’s persistence, almost allergic to saying no to him. She sees it in the softness of his eyes when he observes his captain, even if all his other features are schooled into a scowl. She sees it in the waking breaths the swordsman takes while feigning sleep as Luffy curls into him for a nap, presumably under the impression that Zoro is still out cold. She sees it in the slope of his shoulders, the rigidity of his posture, the intensity of his training – it practically screams I will get stronger…for myself, but also for you.
She hears it in the way Zoro’s grumbling about being bothered is barely ever even half-hearted at best. She hears it in the way Luffy and captain roll off his tongue like they belong there, like they’re divine and important. She hears it in the clang of his swords as they fight, a sound of resonating devotion and promise. She hears it in his threats that drown in Luffy’s laughter after a mishap, tinged with annoyance but never intent.
The simplicity of the duo, the easy and comfortable existence they make together stirs something warm in Robin’s heart. To see Zoro, normally so crass and grumpy, show kindness to the crew is always a sight to see. To watch him melt for Luffy like a candle is just as heartwarming.
Robin smiles quietly to herself as she pretends to read, opting instead to watch the two in question argue about something or other. Ah, young
--
Franky is totally manly. He doesn’t cry about newborn babies, or weddings, or friendships, or holidays, and he especially doesn’t cry about love.
And to be fair, Franky knows love. He’s basically an expert. It’s not always starry eyes and kissy faces, you know. There’s much more to it than that. Sometimes there’s sparring, and wrestling, and punching. Sometimes there’s competition, and fighting, and bloody knuckles and bruised ribs and dark eyes. Wait, he thinks…maybe that’s hate.
As Franky watches quietly from his place on the deck, he thinks it might not always be hate. He watches Luffy and Zoro go at it, all flashes of glinting metal and blurs of rubber fists and feet. He can’t find any animosity in the air, in their eyes, in their strikes if he tries. The fight reeks of a desire for betterment, for a challenge, for learning, but not a desire for bloodshed.
Franky thinks that’s just super. If you can’t duke it out with your pal, your buddy, your bestie, what’s the point?
When the match comes to an end, both parties exhausted and breathing like they’ve just run across the earth and ended up back here, they collapse into panting balls on the deck. He can see blood trickling down Luffy’s arm, his hands, a small spot on his forehead. He can see bruises and swelling covering Zoro, a small line of blood on his upper arm, a bloody nose.
He watches Zoro pull a small box over to his side that he hadn’t seen before. The swordsman pulls gauze and disinfectant towels from it, motions Luffy closer, wipes down his own hands with a cloth. Sticks tissue into his nose to staunch the bleeding. Immediately gets to work tending to Luffy’s wounds.
He wipes them with disinfectant wipes, gentle, murmuring what Franky can only assume are encouraging words as Luffy’s face contorts at the pain. Wraps the slice on Luffy’s arm, careful and steady, moving to inspect the rest of his body. Grabs his hands, soft, wipes them down and brushes a thumb over them. Brushes his hair out of his face to tend to his forehead scrape. Gives Luffy one more onceover before nodding, moving to examine his own injuries.
Luffy reaches out, snatching the wipes and saying something that makes Zoro frown. Rolls up the sleeve on Zoro’s shirt to reach his wound, returning the favor. Gets Zoro new tissue for his nose. Pulls out an ice pack and places it gently on his swelling face, motioning for him to hold it there. Brings Zoro’s other hand up to the pack as well after seeing his raw palms. Small smiles and soft eyes.
Franky sniffles. He can’t help it. The considerate care, the compassion, the kindness…all of that just got in his eye.
He’s not crying, okay? He doesn’t cry about
--
Most of the kind pirates who saved his life (afterlife?) have been knocked unconscious, but Brook is fortunate enough to still be awake. He quickly realizes he might be more like unfortunate.
He sees Kuma, watches him lift the Straw Hat captain with ease. Picks him up like a ragdoll toy. Sees Zoro make a valiant effort, landing an attack even in a sorry state like that. Sees the power of a pacifista, something he’s never seen in all his time sentient and kicking. Sees Zoro crumple, sees him sit up and speak.
“I’ll give you someone’s head.”
Brook wonders how this boy managed to recruit the most strong-willed people in the world.
“If you think of it as the head of the man who will become the greatest swordsman, there shouldn’t be any problem.”
Brook wonders how someone with a dream like that became willing to follow the boy in the straw hat, to die for him.
“If I can’t protect my captain, then my ambition means nothing.”
Brook wonders if dying is really considered protecting, if ambition might also mean nothing if you’re dead.
“Luffy is the man who will become the pirate king!”
Brook wonders if this man knows his words betray that his ambition is laced together with his captain’s.
He watches the swordsman knock the cook unconscious. The squabble reinforces his earlier thoughts about strong-willed pirates and their overabundance in this crew.
He watches Kuma handle Luffy once more, hands still larger than his thin and wounded body. Sees him push the bubble out of him, hand splayed on the kid’s chest. Brook puts his head back, face down on the concrete – too much energy to keep it up, too terrified of what could possibly happen next.
Brook knows his last time playing Bink's Sake with his crew was an act of undying devotion, something that wrenched at his heart and took everything he had left in him. He thinks that this might be the same sort of thing as soon as he hears the screams.
In his 88 years on this earth, alive and dead, he doesn’t think he’s ever seen a more all-consuming love.
You lift that burden off of me
The worst part about Kuma having Zoro absorb all of Luffy’s pain instead of just killing him outright, Zoro thinks, is that he can’t forget it.
He can’t forget the feeling of wounds opening, reopening, being torn open for the first time. He can’t forget the blood that seeped into his shirt, poured down his face, into his eyes, his nose, suffocating him with its stench. He can’t forget the screams that ripped themselves out of his throat, clawing and scraping and raw. He can’t forget his shirt getting ripped to tatters, sliced and sluiced and torn.
He can’t forget the pain.
Zoro and pain were well acquainted, he thought. The life of a swordsman and a Straw Hat and all that. He has the scars to prove it a thousand times over, the history and the bloodshed to back it up. He knows pain intimately, like an old friend, something that doesn’t quite phase him like it used to.
This, though.
This was another beast entirely. He never thought anything could sting and ache and burn more than his slash from Mihawk, than slitting his ankles on Skypiea, than Kuro’s claws or Buggy’s knife or any of the thousand cuts and burns and bruises that have spilled his blood over his lifetime. It felt like being torn apart, shredded, crushed, destroyed, lit on fire, a million other verbs and adjectives that can’t spin any more metaphors as they get lost to the white noise in his mind.
Not only was it pain, but fatigue as well – a sense of exhaustion, tiredness seeping into his bones and weighing him down. It rooted him to the spot, the weariness. Sucked the life right out of him, almost brought him to his knees.
The worst part, he knows, is the memory. The imprint it left on his mind of all the suffering his captain endured. Because really, it wasn’t just pain. It was Luffy’s pain. And those are two very, very different things.
The knowledge of just how much Luffy got hurt, just how horrible it felt, just how utterly exhausted he’d been, just how he probably feels during every single fight stalks Zoro like a shadow. Every moment of agony is etched into his memory now, and it terrifies him, because Zoro knows it can only result in what he would call weakness.
It pricks his mind any time Luffy is in danger, any time Luffy is hurling himself into a fight, any time Luffy is throwing his fists and body around like they don’t matter, any time Luffy is up against someone who could easily crush him, any time Luffy so much as stubs his toe. It’s there, demanding to be heard. It’s there, demanding to protect. It’s there, demanding to coddle.
Zoro hates it. It haunts him, follows him and whispers insidiously in his ears. Begs him to alter his fighting style so he’ll take most of the hit, to block more attacks then he really needs to, to always fight at Luffy’s side. It screams, sometimes, to run to his side, to pick him up and carry him as far away as possible. It growls, sometimes, to stop his captain from executing an especially hazardous plan, to stop him from putting himself in harm’s way so blatantly.
He can ignore it. Every time he does, his grip tightens on his swords involuntarily.
When he finally woke up after Thriller Bark and saw his captain bouncing around without a single ache or pain, bright smile adorning his face, Zoro selfishly thought it was worth it.
You lift that burden off of me
It’s easy.
To become a pirate. To let “captain” sing from his mouth. To save his life. To climb into that small dinghy and set sail.
It’s easy.
To raise his sword and let his conviction tear through his throat. To vow and swear and promise, to commit and grow and set his jaw in determination. To bleed out his failure, to cry out his frustration, to sob out his devotion.
It’s easy.
To bother with Nami. To bother with getting back a crewmember that screwed them over and told them to leave her the fuck alone, thanks. To bother with Arlong Park, with Arlong, with pirates ten times stronger and ten times more experienced.
It’s easy.
To throw his hand over the side and scream for Luffy to grab on. To dive into the salty churning waves and bring him back. To keep the only thing standing in a pirate’s way at bay, keeping him just out of reach of her swirling, clinging arms.
It’s easy.
To save a marine he has no opinion of at best and holds disdain for at worst. To do so because Luffy asked. To do so because Luffy demanded it.
It’s easy.
To be beaten, to be spat on, to be bloodied and bruised by pirates that mean nothing in a bar that means nothing. To be ridiculed, to be mocked, to be jeered at, with Luffy standing next to him. To be hated, to be kicked, to be threatened, with Luffy’s resolve blanketing him like a shield.
It’s easy.
To carry a sleeping Luffy from the deck to his hammock, to place him gently. To purposefully eat a bit slower, to leave bits of food on the outskirts of his plate. To bend to whims, to explore the things no one else is willing to, that no one else wants to expend the energy on. To catch a straw hat if the wind should try to take it away. To have an arm around his neck slinging him across the world. To fight for causes that might mean nothing to him at first.
It’s easy.
To hold the weight of the title in his hands, to rest it on his shoulders, to place it on his back, to lift it with his arms, to bear the sky for even just a moment. To take and take and take even when Luffy isn’t giving. To lessen the load of a dream that could easily swallow the world and all its seas.
It’s easy.
To cut an entire train in half when Luffy says, “Zoro! Cut it!”
It’s easy.
To say words he knows are harsh. To say words he knows hurt. To say words he’s not even sure he means. To say words that dig and bite and sting. To remind them all who their captain is. To remind him what that means. To understand his burden.
It’s easy.
To protect the crew when he cannot. To love the crew even when he can. To help hold all their dreams together, to carry them as he carries them. To fight off danger, to fight off demons, to fight off the ghosts that follow them.
It’s easy.
To make the sacrifice at Thriller Bark. To offer himself up to Kuma in an instant. To give up his life, his everything, his very being. His ambition is nothing if Luffy isn’t part of it. He isn’t a pirate if Luffy isn’t his captain. He isn’t living if Luffy isn’t.
It’s easy.
To set his head on the ground in front of Dracule Mihawk. To be on his hands and knees in front of Dracule Mihawk. To be wrapped a thousand times over in bandages and wrapped a thousand times over in emotion in front of Dracule Mihawk. To scrape his knees and palms and forehead on the concrete in front of Dracule Mihawk. To beg, to plead, to pray to Dracule Mihawk.
It’s hard.
When Zoro reads the paper, hears the words drip from Mihawk’s mouth,
it’s hard.
He thinks it’s one of the hardest things he’s been through, to read the words and parse them, to understand what happened but to not have been there. To have been absent. To have been dawdling on this shithole island, to have been away for the most traumatic moment of his captain’s life. To have been bandaged and bruised and wasting away on this rock, to not have been able to help. To be there. To do a single thing. To not be able to reach out, to convey even a simple message, to say I’m here, to say I’m sorry, to hold or hug or empathize.
It consumes, eats at him, gnaws on his ribs and his hands and his heart. It aches, roots him to the ground and drains the life out of it. It kills, punches him in the gut as he throws up a thousand feelings and thoughts and words that cannot be expressed over the expanse of the oceans and the world.
It’s easy.
When Zoro sees his family and his home for the first time in two years, to bask in the glory of all that he missed and all that he will enjoy, it’s easy. When he sees Luffy’s shining face, seeing a smile where Zoro could have only imagined there had been tears and strain and agony, it’s easy. When he can’t help but wrap his arms around his captain in a fit of giddiness, stoicism be damned, it’s easy.
You lift that burden off of me
"Zoro,” Luffy says, hoarse, like it’s the first word he’s ever spoken.
Luffy sets his hand on Zoro’s shoulder - not quite a warning, more like a reassurance. It says We have all the time in the world, it says You don’t have to run yourself ragged. It says If you train yourself to death, it will have been for nothing. Zoro sets down the weights and sets aside his training regime for the day. He understands.
Chopper huffs a small sigh, his nose twitching. “Out of all of you, I feel like I see Zoro the most in this bed. In this room, under my hooves.” Luffy knows.
Luffy settles his hand on Zoro’s shoulder, squeezing lightly. His soaked hand dampens the shirt, dampens the deck, dampens Zoro. It says Please don’t worry about me, it says I promise I can take care of myself. It says Not everything is on you. The tight stress in Zoro’s shoulders slowly drains, and he sighs lightly. He understands.
“You can’t keep doing this,” Luffy pleads, hands fisted in the sheets of Zoro’s infirmary bed. His tears plop pathetically onto Zoro’s chest as it rises and falls with the steady rhythm of sleep.
Luffy places his palms over and under Zoro’s hand, encasing it as he stares at Wado with sadness in his eyes. It says You’ll achieve your dream, it says She would be proud. It says I believe in you. Zoro’s eyes clear and he places his free hand over Luffy’s. He understands.
"Please tell me you value your life,” he whispers into the darkness, “Please tell me you want to live, because you don’t act like it.” It doesn’t respond.
Luffy leans his head on Zoro’s shoulder, staring out at the sea. His eyes are distant, a thousand-yard stare to nowhere. It says I’m here for you, it says Please don’t carry more than you need to. It says My burden does not always have to be yours. Yours can be mine. Zoro stops staring and pulls him closer, nuzzles his face into his hair. He understands.
Luffy bites his tongue while Chopper grimaces at Zoro’s ankles. He feels like he heard the word amputation, heard the word infected, heard the word lucky.
Luffy slings his arm around Zoro’s neck, merry and drunk with celebration. It says I trust you more than you know, it says Never forget how important you are. It says We need you. Zoro grins wide and unruly, raising his mug and throwing his other arm back around Luffy. He understands.
Zoro coughs pitifully as Chopper works, bandaging and wrapping and fixing. Luffy watches in silence.
Luffy grips Zoro’s arm with enough force to be insistent, but not enough to hurt. It says You need to stop being reckless, it says Putting yourself in danger for me hurts. Putting yourself in danger for us hurts. It says I do not matter more than you. Our lives are equal. Zoro’s eyes are hard and determined, his chin up. It says I made a promise.
Luffy feels his vision blur, his throat dry with the words he hasn’t been able to say to a conscious Zoro. They coat his mouth, heavy and insistent. They say Please.
Zoro warms, softens, relaxes at the sight of tears. He thumbs them away, his face less defiant. Luffy’s grip on his arm tightens.
“You know I never doubt you. I trust you,” he says quietly, letting the wind carry it out onto the water.
“I know,” Luffy whispers.
“You know why I do it. I made a promise,” he says lowly, letting the words fall into the open.
“I know,” Luffy whispers.
“I know I need to be more careful. I owe you,” he says to Luffy’s eyes, letting them widen with the meaning of it.
“I know,” Luffy whispers.
“I’m sorry. My dream is yours, now. I guess I got carried away by it.” He says to Luffy’s hands, letting them hold the admission.
He understands.
“I love you,” he says, eyes lax and smile lazy, all sunshine and warmth. “Forever.”
“Forever,” Zoro parrots, placing a kiss on Luffy’s forehead. “I’m not going anywhere.”