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If Zoro were to be honest with himself, he’d describe the sensation as liquid fire licking at his skin and leaving a trail of smoke and destruction behind, bringing him down to his knees. Weak. Powerless. Unable to do anything but breathe in and hope none of it shows on his face. Zoro exhales, fog slipping from his lips and his mind tells him he should be feeling the freezing cold that’s sent everyone to bed early, but Zoro feels none of it, his skin too warm under his clothes and no amount of snow can dampen the heat burning deep in his belly.
“I wasn’t there for this one.” Luffy says, or more precisely, whispers. So uncharacteristically quiet that Zoro opens his eye to check the expression on his captain’s face.
“You weren’t there for most of them.” It isn’t meant to be a jab, but Luffy frowns all the same and Zoro regrets saying it immediately.
Still, Luffy’s fingers keep tracing the scar that circles halfway around his ankle. There is no pressure behind his touch, so soft Zoro would compare it to a feather slowly moving with the breeze. But a feather wouldn’t make him writhe underneath skin and muscle and bone. A feather wouldn’t have Zoro’s heart speeding up as if he’s just reaching the climax of a battle. His blood singing, thirsting for that last slice that cut his enemy down to their will to stand up and fight.
“Do they still hurt?” It’s an innocent enough question that if this was anyone else, Zoro would probably just grunt and call them stupid, but this isn’t anyone else and Zoro knows Luffy well enough to detect the trace of something buried deep into his tone.
“Just one.” Zoro tells him, for once, choosing to just be honest. “It’s less pain and more… an awareness of it?” What he doesn’t say is how it stings, as if he’s been freshly wounded, carved by something sharper than a blade whenever he dares look at an enemy and think them too strong. Zoro isn’t one to doubt himself, but he’s knocked on Death’s door too many times not to accept that sometimes what he can do in the moment isn’t enough.
The scar that Mihawk left him, visible and ugly in how it contorts the skin, made worse by his poor job at mending it before a doctor could take a proper look, is there like a reminder that there is no such a thing as good enough. Zoro will stand up through will alone before he lets his incompetence take him.
He made a promise after all.
“Ahh, I’m jealous of Zoro.” Luffy says, falling to the side so he’s resting his head on Zoro’s thigh, his hand continuing its mapping of Zoro’s smaller scars as Luffy pulls his haramaki down to have access to his stomach and the marks of the countless battles he’s had since joining the crew.
“What are you talking about?” Zoro asks, focusing on Luffy’s words instead of the weight and heat of him that should be familiar by now but isn’t. No matter how many times Luffy drops himself on top of Zoro, how often he lies next to him to sleep at night, or sits by Zoro when Zoro’s napping, it’s fresh and new and an explosion of memories of that first lock of eyes and touch of skin in a boat that was too small, but not small enough.
Every time Luffy leaves his back open for Zoro to protect, it’s back to the very first ‘aye, captain’ and if Zoro doesn’t spend every minute of every hour craving that next order, that next show of trust and need, he doesn’t know what to do with himself.
It always starts like this: with a glance and a smile and before he knows it, they are falling back into this same exact pattern of Zoro sitting with his back against the railing as Luffy spends hours tracing his every scar, as if he can’t stop until he’s had them memorized. As if he wants to close his eyes and still be able to know every inch of Zoro as Zoro hopes to have the nerve to do the same one day.
And yet, every touch, every breath, every single glance is like the very first time with how it ignites Zoro from the inside and threatens to drown him in sensations that are far beyond his comprehension.
Luffy simply laughs, shaking his head just enough so his hair tickles Zoro’s stomach. “Nothing, nothing.”
“Bullshit.”
Luffy’s responding smile is all kinds of wrong. It’s not wide enough or bright as it usually is. If he hadn’t closed his eyes, Zoro suspects it wouldn’t have reached them either.
“Here.” Luffy says, grabbing his hand. Zoro goes without restraint, letting Luffy dictate his movements without so much as a thought. “What do you feel?”
Zoro looks down to find his hand resting on the expanse of Luffy’s chest, right in the middle of the ‘X’ that mars his skin. His first scar ever since becoming a rubber man.
Perhaps it’s Luffy’s seriousness or maybe it’s the fact that this is the first time ever since they reunited that Zoro is getting this close to something he’s only dreamed of doing, that his mind goes completely blank of any thought but Luffy. The closeness of their bodies; his head perfectly comfortable on Zoro’s leg; the smell of Luffy overwhelming as the salt that makes the ocean and so uniquely his that is all Zoro can do not to take a deep breath and take him in.
Still, he holds back. He looks at the scar and thinks it’s so funny how things happen. It had been almost instinctual the way his hand reached for Luffy’s scar when he saw him that day after two years apart and Zoro still doesn’t know how he managed to stop himself from taking that step further and satiating his curiosity. His need to touch and feel and know for certain that Luffy’s heart was still beating behind all that damage.
And now, “I feel…” hatred. A need to find the man who did this and slice him up until there’s nothing of him left to so much as be buried. “You.”
Fuck. That’s not what Zoro meant to say.
Shishishi. “Of course you do. It is me.” Luffy laughs. “Stupid Zoro.”
“Who are you calling stupid, idiot?”
With a sigh, Zoro closes his eye and just… feels. He lets his fingers roam, rough from training and fighting, rougher still than the scorched skin he’s touching.
It’s wrong. Its very existence is wrong, but more than that, Zoro can tell how frail Luffy’s chest has become, as if there’s nearly nothing between the world and his heart and just a gust of wind will be enough to take him apart. It makes something heavy settle in Zoro’s own chest. He realizes too late that he doesn’t want to be touching this part of Luffy. He doesn’t want confirmation that it’s real; that he wasn’t there to stop it from happening.
“What do you feel?” Luffy asks again quietly, Zoro’s wrist still safely locked in his hold.
“Death.” Zoro says.
“I don’t feel anything there anymore.” Luffy tells him, his grip on Zoro tightening. “Even your hand right now. I can’t feel it.”
“Wha—”
“I asked Rayleigh about it once.” Luffy continues, as if Zoro isn’t staring down at him in horror. As if Zoro’s world hasn’t come to a full stop so that the only thing he sees, hears, and feels is Luffy and the pain in Luffy’s eyes. A pain that Zoro would do anything, would kill anyone, himself included, to erase. “I told him that maybe… maybe part of me died with Ace.”
“Luffy…” Zoro starts, but what can he even say to that?
“I thought it would be nice to have scars. To have something to show how much you survived, ya know? But my scar just shows my failure.”
Zoro doesn’t know what to say. He’s always been useless when it comes to feelings, much less comforting people, but this is Luffy, the person he’s sworn his life to and whom he’s been with since the first day of this crazy dream of theirs and knowing what’s going on in each other’s mind has always been easy for the two of them. Zoro should be able to say something or convey something in the way they communicate, so in sync with each other they have no need for words or long explanations. But right now his mind is fogged by anger and guilt and a desperation that is so unlike himself it consumes all that he is until there’s nothing left but a bitter taste in his mouth and a lump in his throat that is too suffocating to be the tears he swore to never again share.
He hates that he failed Luffy when Luffy needed him the most and that Luffy would even think of himself as anything but the sun: bringing light and life to everyone he touches.
“Scars are there to show we survived, not that we failed.” Zoro tells him. “It shows your strength and will to go on and move forward. You said I have a lot of them. Do you think I failed all those times?”
“No!” Luffy nearly shouts. “Zoro is the best and one day will be the greatest. Of course I don’t think that.”
“Then why is yours any different?”
What Zoro doesn’t say is that Luffy shouldn’t have any scars at all to begin with. What Zoro holds behind his teeth is that Luffy, who is the center of the crew’s universe, who holds each and every one of their hearts into his hands to do with them as he wishes, shouldn’t go through the pain of a mark as great as the one marring his body.
What Zoro keeps underneath his tongue is that he’d tear his own body apart, take Luffy’s pain a thousand times over, and fight the world on his own if only Luffy would keep on smiling at him with no trace of a shadow behind it.
Luffy sighs, turning on his side to tuck his face into Zoro. He shivers, just enough to be perceptible, and Zoro pulls him closer, holding onto him with hopes that he never has to let go.
“Go to sleep, captain.” He says softly. “I’ll keep watch for you tonight.”
As I’ll keep watch over you , he promises. Always .