Chapter Text
Tashigi had no idea why they had started this, but in the beginning, she decided she didn’t want to know. All the captain wanted was to feel a warm skin on hers and the warmth of a body pressed against her chest. That's all she convinced herself of.
A stress relief, she called it. It seemed he also agreed with the name in a silent understanding. And Tashigi was okay with it—they'd meet on a random island; she'd find her way to him as usual or vice versa. Sometimes they'd duel with their swords and other times, with their bodies. After all, they were fighters; they'd fight over anything, anywhere.
Lately, it has been mostly on a bed, with sighs and moans painting the night. She didn’t know when that changed; no idea of when she started choosing to keep awake all night long with Roronoa between her legs instead of challenging him to a sword fight.
The irony of it all was that she was so close to finally catching up to him, which made her wonder how life could be full of surprises.
They started this some months ago, and she had never questioned it. Until now.
"What are we doing, Roronoa?" Tashigi was lying next to him, with his arms around her shoulders, in a half embrace.
"Sex," he answered sharply.
"But why?" She voiced the doubt that was nagging at her mind and consuming her in the past few weeks.
Do I really wanna know?
"Does anyone need a reason to have sex?" He glanced at her from out of the corner of his good eye. Wariness danced in it, making her doubt if she really wanted to know that answer.
"I believe so, yes."
"Well, I don’t." Zoro shrugged, and his hand loosened the half-embrace around her shoulders.
"You must have a reason, considering you're having sex with me." Tashigi turned her body completely to him so she could look directly into his eye. Where this boldness of facing him came from, she had no idea, but something told her this dancing around each other was becoming more dangerous with each encounter.
He looked at her, but Tashigi knew he was not seeing her.
He never answers her question.
—
Another meeting, another unfinished duel, and another night with all her clothes on the floor. This time, Zoro didn’t even care to fight her properly—the moment she clashed her blade with his, strong enough to make their arms tremble, a look into her eyes was all it took for him to disarm her, throw his three swords to the ground and pin her in the tree behind them.
She really tried to protest, but there was no fighting against Roronoa Zoro when he was kissing her with so much fierceness, melting her insides in the process, forcing her to yield.
He always has a way to make me surrender, one way or the other. How pathetic, Tashigi.
Then an inn, a messy bed, marks on her waist from his hands.
"Roronoa," she said with her voice muffled on his neck. They were still panting, completely out of breath, and still not wanting to get down from their high.
"Mm?" He answered after a while, his voice not shaking anymore.
"You never answered my question."
"Which one?"
"Why me?" She kept her face hidden, her lips brushing against his collarbone, inhaling his so-good smell.
"No reason in particular."
Another blunt answer. Empty.
"So the reason is that I was the only one who spread the legs for you?"
She slowly disentangled from his neck but remained straddling him. The memory of an anger was starting to bubble inside her veins.
He glared at her, and she defiantly held his gaze. There was a strong urge to shrink away, but Tashigi stood her ground. This was a whole other fight; no swords needed, but she preferred if she could use Shigure to cut this uncomfortable silence. Her heart was sinking at every second she stayed under his intense brown eye.
"That's not it," was his simple answer.
"You know this isn’t going anywhere, right?"
A lump appeared in her throat, and suddenly, she felt anxious.
"Yeah. Do you want to?"
"Do you?" She bit her lip, her heart beat in anticipation. This answer could change everything , and she knew that. But did she want it to change?
Zoro looked away and faced the window at his right, where the clear night sky was painted with so many stars. He frowned and twisted his mouth in slight annoyance; Tashigi continued to eye him like an eagle observing its prey, alert to any of his emotions.
"No," he looked back at her, and his eye screamed determination. There was no arguing with his answer.
She nodded and opened her mouth slightly. It didn’t make any sense to feel sad about it, but she did anyway. Tashigi knew what she had to do.
"Then I think this should end."
She got off of him, and the cold hit her like a truck. Tashigi was the one who decided to rip off the band-aid, so there was no turning back — the best decision was to get up and leave. Immediately. But Roronoa… Roronoa always managed to make her doubt her decisions. He grabbed her arm, forcing her to look at him.
"Do you want to?" If his eye was asking something of her, she couldn’t tell. She was only able to tell the scars that graced his skin and the spots he would squirm the most. But feelings… were not their thing.
"Does it matter?"
"No," he didn’t even blink before answering.
"I see."
Tashigi fetched her clothes and started dressing in front of him. After knowing each other's bodies for quite a while, she thought it was no use to still feel shy about it—he had already seen everything, every inch of her, and so had she.
"Then this is it?" He asked while she still had her back turned to him.
"Yeah."
"Okay."
The moment she walked out the door with the uncertainty of when they'd meet again, she knew she would really miss his body and lips, and that was an undeniable truth.
—
He missed her more than he should. Thought about her more than the healthy dosage. However, Zoro wasn’t a delusional man—he knew he didn’t love her and was quite sure she didn’t too. What they started was dangerous indeed, and it had no deeper meaning.
She had asked countless times the reason why she was the only one in his bed every time, and he had been honest, blunt, and straightforward—it had no particular reason. He told himself that maybe she was, in truth, the only one who had wanted to spread her legs to him without any second intentions, but when she was underneath him, pale skin and scars over such a slender body, Zoro actually felt like the truth was that he wanted to be between her legs.
Only her legs.
And after all this time they haven’t been together (and it has been quite some time now), for the first time, Zoro found himself wanting to just talk to her, to hear her voice and her opinions of everything. Even though he liked it to the bone, he wanted more than just to hear her gasps and his name ( always Roronoa, never Zoro) escaping from her lips. A simple wish but way harder than sword fighting.
They had met on some islands in the past few months, but she would only nod at him. No request for a duel, no harsh words thrown his way, no attempt at collecting his swords or his freedom. Tashigi would just pretend he wasn’t there and let him and his crew do whatever the hell they wanted. He had the impression she kept their presence to herself, Smoker might not even know about it.
But when she would just brush past him like they were complete strangers, like she had never been naked in front of him or had never laid in his arms, Zoro yearned to touch her. To grasp something from her, hold her arms and yank her back to him.
The problem is that he didn’t love her and was quite sure she didn’t too.
But it irked him to no end that she didn’t argue with him anymore, that she had just left without a word and refused to acknowledge him whenever they would meet each other. It irked him that she would just spare him the nonchalant nod and the hard gaze, sharp as the edge of Enma. In the end, they were complete strangers.
He didn’t love her, but sometimes when he was looking at the ceiling of the boys’ room, he wondered if it was actually his fault for making her leave. After all, she was the one who had made questions, and he was the one who had been too proud to answer them.
—
They met again, and she has always wondered if they were meant to bump into each other with so much easiness when the vast ocean, implicitly, should not allow. Sometimes she'd find him first and would just watch his large frame strolling around the city ( probably lost, yes, most likely very lost ) before he noticed her. Tashigi would only nod and be on her way. After all, they had nothing to talk about. They have never had in the first place.
The actual problem is that she loved him and was quite sure he did not.
How could he, anyway? Tashigi was the ghost of someone who could have been his future, someone who would always be a copycat in his eyes, a woman on the other side, one preaching the false justice of the Navy. Roronoa was a pirate and free. Why would he trade that for a complicated person like her?
She followed the same protocol once again—a nod, followed by a hard gaze and then getting out of his way. However, this time Roronoa disrupted the flow, and she lost her balance. He held her arm and made her stop on her heels. Her gaze didn’t meet his face; how could she? His eye had always been danger, and Tashigi thought it'd always be, even with his one-eye predicament.
"Hey."
"Hey."
"Working?"
"Yeah. You?"
"Log Pose. But we'll probably be staying for a few days."
She missed him and not just his body—his voice, his smell, his groans. Such a shame he probably didn’t miss her—not her body, nor her arms or her hair (he seemed to like to roam his hand through it). It was likely he didn’t even miss her lips.
"How are you doing?"
He was asking questions, and she felt like everything was out of place. He wasn’t one to enquire; he was the one to act. In the end, he has always been the hunter.
"Fine. You?"
"Same," he answered with casualness.
She pressed her mouth in a thin line and asked him, "Any particular reason for you bunch to be here on this island?"
"Nothing much."
"I see."
That wasn't good. She was there working, yes, but in two days Tashigi would be on vacation. Just a week or two at maximum; God knows how she didn’t like to stay away from work, but her days off would be on that exact island. It was a place known for its beautiful beaches and all nature-related activities.
She just wanted some time for herself in solitude. It's not that she liked to be lonely, though, but that's how she kind of has been her whole life.
"Tomorrow is my birthday, by the way," he informed nonchalantly, with his hand inside his pockets.
"Oh, really? Happy birthday, Roronoa."
Tashigi couldn’t fake her surprise. Telling things to her? That was new.
"You leaving tomorrow? Cause we'll be partying at some local bar. You're invited if you wish to come," Zoro said with a blank expression, his cool exterior betraying nothing.
A frown graced her features, and she couldn’t avoid being a little sceptical. Was this a setup? As far as she knew, Roronoa didn’t want more than her body and her company for a few hours. Which was fine at the beginning; she didn’t mind either—that was what she also wanted from him. But Tashigi had been the one to cave in, and that's where everything went downhill.
"Mmm, guess I'll pass. But I hope you have a nice party."
That's the correct decision, Tashigi.
She didn’t want to have anything to do with him anymore. It was for the best—in the end, they were still enemies.
"Well, the invitation is still open," he just shrugged in an aloof posture. Tashigi didn’t know what to say, so she just nodded. A short silence came right after, and she concluded that the conversation was over—which was good. The captain wanted to escape the moment his eye met hers anyway. So she opened her mouth to bid her goodbye, but he beat her to it.
"Hey, there's a festival downtown. Wanna check it out?"
Again, she opened her mouth slightly, but this time didn’t let the surprise creep up on her face. She considered denying right off the bat, but his eye was trying to tell her something. Tashigi wouldn’t be able to decipher, of course; in the end, they knew nothing about each other anyway.
Besides, she was already trapped—that’s why she didn’t want to look at him. But since she made the mistake, it was better to get this strange encounter over with. He nodded, and a smirk danced on his lips as if, for some reason, he was satisfied with himself.
He's weird today, but… who cares?
—
A sword shop was obviously where he’d find her with her glasses pushed up on her head and the same reverent glint in her eyes he saw in Loguetown when she told him the name of Wado Ichimonji.
Zoro wasn't looking for her, though, but as always, their paths seemed to cross whenever they were. He didn’t even notice the shop, but it startled him how he looked through the shop’s windowpane at the exact moment she was inspecting a sword close to it.
She didn’t feel him and didn’t look his way—probably too engrossed with so many different swords in front of her—and Zoro preferred it like that. It was wrong and didn’t make any sense, but that way he could watch her freely—look at her now grown and perfectly braided hair (it was almost reaching her hip) and concede that it fit her ; watch the way she would sheathe and unsheathe several swords like she was looking for a strong one (he had no idea Glasses was looking for a new one. Maybe she’ll be a Nintoryu user now? It also fits her ). He could contemplate how he knew the body underneath the flowery, loose dress she was wearing (and what a beautiful body it was, the body of a fighter) but didn’t know her heart.
Her heart. Her honest and kind heart.
Her heart reminded him of the festival they went to the day before and how it almost seemed like a date, but it definitely wasn’t, he kept telling himself. For some irony of destiny, it had been easy to walk beside her and bicker with her once more—making fun, hearing her huff, enjoying annoying her.
Until an old lady stopped right in front of them and mumbled a weird story of star-crossed lovers. That was like throwing cold water on him, and Zoro wanted to flee right away—which he did, the moment Tashigi thanked the lady, probably not believing a single word.
What bullshit.
Inside the shop, Tashigi seemed to have settled down with one particular sword, and Zoro blended in with the crowd when she walked out of the shop’s door. He decided then, in a sudden whim, to follow her. She swayed along the cramped street in a certain elegance he had never noticed. He was counting the seconds until she’d eventually trip, but the moment never came, and he was truly flabbergasted.
Maybe some things really changed in the time we didn’t see each other.
His eye was so fixated on her petite frame that Zoro didn’t care what her destination was. But the fact that he didn’t get lost did not go unnoticed by him. Suddenly, she stopped, and then the swordsman realised she was in front of the inn the whole crew was staying at.
Tashigi decided to sit on the bench right in front of the place and grabbed a piece of paper and a pen. Is it a gift? For whom? The swordswoman scribed something quickly and entered the building, but Zoro didn’t have the guts to follow her. He convinced himself he just didn’t want to argue with her before lunchtime.
So he waited, but it didn't take too long for him to see her leaving and continuing her path. He was a true controlled man, but the curiosity got the best of him; he needed to know who was the recipient. Was it for him? It was the only explanation—Zoro was the only one who wielded swords, unless there was someone else she knew there and maybe, who knows, had a thing with. But what were the odds of that happening?
Reluctance took over him because, well, it could be a gift for someone else, and he didn’t want to pry. Whoever she related herself to was none of his concern.
In the end, he forced himself to enter the inn, dreading to look into the receptionist’s eyes and listening to her saying there was something for him from a pretty lady. But he got in, crossed eyes with the woman sitting in the reception, and she just rejected his presence.
So the gift was not for him, and he swallowed hard.
Well, who cares.
All of a sudden, someone was calling for him (he assumed it was him; Zoro was the only “green-haired dude”). The owner of the place walked in his direction with a sword in hand, and his heart skipped a beat. Maybe two or three, he couldn’t tell.
“I’m sorry, sir, my wife forgot to inform you that a pretty lady left this sword for you and a note. My wife is a little airheaded, so accept my sincere apologies.”
The old man handed over the sword, and Zoro thought how stupid he was to grasp it with so much reverence in the same way as she does, as if the man was handing him Yoru itself.
“Mhm. Thanks, old man.”
The owner simply nodded and turned to leave; Zoro kept staring at the weapon. It was a gift from her to him. A sword, the thing that first linked her to him. Then he remembered the note and jumped like a madman to the piece of paper. There were just a few words written in a very delicate and beautiful calligraphy.
“As I wasn't sure if I’d be able to attend your party, I decided to buy this for you. Hope you like it. Yours truly, Tashigi.”
“Ooooh, hey guys, Zoro got a gift from that Navy lady!”
Zoro couldn’t even predict Luffy’s approach, and his whole body froze. Fuck .
“Mhmm, ‘yours truly, Tashigi’. Oh my, it’s from Tashigi-chan!” Robin said with a very knowing smile.
“Whaaat? Whyyy? Why did you receive a gift from the gorgeous Tashigi-chan?!? Damn you, Mosshead!” Sanji was whining and crying.
The swordsman found his voice again and exclaimed, completely annoyed, “Why don’t you all go to hell?” and then glanced at a weeping Sanji, “Don’t bother to come back though, Mr Nosebleed.”
Sanji jumped to his feet and seemed to find new curses for Zoro, but the green-haired man couldn't care less. The note and the sword in his hands were the only things hammering in his head and numbing his thoughts, muffling the mockery from his crewmates. His hold on the sword tightened, and he remembered the glint in her eyes while choosing it for him.
That also reminded Zoro of how Sandai remained by his side—the sword she found and how he trusted in her opinion so many years ago. In all honesty, he seemed to trust her for absolutely no reason, to the point of asking her to choose another one, but the shop owner decided otherwise. And now after so many years, she had finally made her choice and gave it to Zoro.
Did you remember?
Did you remember Loguetown?
It's because of you that I know Wado Ichimonji's name. Are you going to tell me the name of this one too, Glasses?