Work Text:
The War of Marineford takes place at day, with light glaring down every corner of the battlefield. It falls on the enemy forces, glistens on their sweat and blood, a tyranny of sunrays.
The three Admirals, as tall and broad as towers, are the Navy’s last line of defense before the execution platform. Borsalino’s gaze sweeps lazily across the tumult. Some bursts of color on the field confirm the worst suspicions: Jozu’s diamonds, phoenix Marco’s blue flames, sabres shining as the multitude of pirates clamors to the sky…Whitebeard and his commanders have made it onto the half-moon bay.
They…are angry. Oh-so-angry. They slash through the Marines' formation, staining "Justice"-marked coats red and gray. Their goal is the podium…or, more precisely, the poor sap about to be executed on it, by now possibly clinging to his last desperate threads of hope.
A game of flag with the world's highest stakes. Borsalino smile as if remembering an old joke.
"Concentrate," Sakazuki grunts. Everything in him is rigid: his square jaw, his crossed arms, his suit still untouched by the disarray of battle. Behind their backs, layers upon layers of buildings creak and exhale clouds of debris, the residues of Whitebeard's earthquakes.
"Ah, of co~ourse, Sakazuki…" Borsalino says, swaying on his feet. "Though concentrating will not close that gap on the wall, hmm…?"
He feels Sakazuki's glare without needing to see it, scalding fire on his skin. In this tense, sober situation, sarcasm is a punishable offense…for anybody else. But Borsalino has been his comrade for thirty years, and should the Red Dog ask him if he's incapable of taking anything seriously, the answer will still, always, be maybe.
Borsalino's Devil Fruit lifted the weight of the world from his shoulders a long, long time ago. Even in the midst of battle, he's simply not wired to worry.
Sakazuki is the very opposite, a soldier as solid as the earth under their feet. His pursuit of justice is the one passion that boils deep inside him, that shapes him like magma shapes the Earth's crust. Judging from the steely look in his eyes, he's thinking of the next tactic; accounting for the terrain, the numbers, the enemy's high spirits. He was never very good with people. He prefers the things he can predict.
Sounds of artillery rattle the island. The smell of powder and gunfire tinges the air.
"I think we will avoid so~ome problems if we, ah… incapacitate that one first…" Borsalino waves an open palm toward the distance, where Marco the Phoenix's wings flame mighty against Momonga's sword. A pang of haki has the latter tumbling back. "A healer, you see…?"
"Yes," Sakazuki admits, "but I won't leave this place unprotected again. Kuzan?"
Borsalino scratches a sideburn, shrugs his shoulders. If he were to soar now and take a look over the masses, he would see Admiral Aokiji's ice crystals cutting past the infantry to confront Whitebeard.
Their mutual friend only seems to want to get this over fast. He has been showing all his cards from the start, fleeing forward, not from the war but from its consequences. Poor Kuzan… the thing he wants to avoid doesn't exist anywhere but in his guilty conscience.
"That idiot," Sakazuki puts it bluntly. For him, the point is not bringing an end to this war. It is victory.
Borsalino purses his lips. "I'll take care of it…" he says, his body already itching to scatter.
Without looking back at him, Sakazuki says, "Dragon's brat. Don't forget him. Hurting him is hurting their morale."
Then Borsalino is gone. He has vanished into sparkles, every last atom moving in a frenzy.
His shape reassembles over the battlefield and leaps forward mid-air, the world reverberating slo-o-owly around him. He's in a half-material state, glowing from the tips of his moccasins to the folds of his pinstriped suit.
In a span of seconds he's taken in the positions of pirates, and Marines, and Pacifistas, and the Warlords' puppeteered and undead soldiers too. The Moby Dick grins into the battlefield, its presence emboldening Whitebeard's commanders to advance and to destroy whatever they find. They cheer now…but that late appearance was the Moby Dick's swan song.
From above, all the actions and reactions seem to be happening in slow motion, and it’s easy to get distracted. For a battle in the name of order, the sight is surely very chaotic…
Borsalino's dispassionate eyes land on the group of silhouettes behind a settling cloud of dust. The distance makes them small like tabletop figurines. A group of Marines, no coats, are having little luck in their battle against some taller pirates leading an incursion at the left flank of the plaza's center.
No higher ranks around…? Borsalino curiously spots Vice Admirals Momonga and Dalmatian a few feet away, but they’re busy with…
Ah. With the Strawhat boy.
The one that got away.
His brightness announces that he's landing across from the tallest pirate. His light blinds, hurts, and gives the young Marines a split-second to evacuate.
"Ca~areful…" Borsalino points over the enemy's shoulders.
The flare from his finger is dynamite, blasting unconscious bodies in all directions. Fire glints on his aviators, on the golden buttons of his suit.
And he’s gone again, soon sparkling solid behind Onigumo and Momonga, the latter having pivoted from that raging rubber boy to watch tge attack unfold.
“Sir,” Onigumo grumbles solemnly under his iron helm, “thank you, you’re a he--”
“Don’t worry, don’t worry,” Borsalino waves a hand in mock humbleness. Not that he minds hearing his praises sung… but later, in the public statements, and the retellings for the nobles, and all that.
“The vanguard is there… Don’t leave Marco out of sight, will yo~ou…?” Borsalino nods toward the haze of blue fire they see through the dust, approaching the goalpost, the execution platform. The stakes are high, so is the level of risk… a light man knows that many small windows of opportunity will blink open to close again the next second. “Let's try to… ah, catch them with their guard down, shall we…?”
The helmet nods without hesitation. Momonga simply looks up at Borsalino, weary with battle…with duty and remorse.
He’s one of the people who like to spend their time debating with themselves…but, at his rank, he has to know that no big changes will come. That every last Marine acts at the Government's behest, and that winning requires destruction.
Borsalino doesn't do mental gymnastics. Many hold the misconception that his methods stand somewhere between Sakazuki's rigor and Kuzan's flexibility. He doesn't live between two justices, but above them; instead of adapting to a code of conduct, he has chosen a code that adapts to him, to his flights of fancy and his whims. As long as he follows the orders he's given, he has room to play. Anything can be rewritten and deemed as the right thing to do.
The good guys always win—because it is the winner that writes history.
Which reminds him…
Borsalino scatters in the air again, weightless. The rubber boy is not difficult to spot again: his aura rages with determination. He's a mosquito in the darkness, a nuisance that blinks in and out of sight but will never quite leave until you've swatted it.
But there's a madness in him, too… something that keeps him punching, dodging, growling, pushing against the Marines' resistance even though he's at his last.
Borsalino's feet find land. The city's foundaments tremble.
Luffy screams. “Ace!”
The Admiral hums and takes aim. What an impossible determination… ah, to be young again…
He sends light running to his fingertips, the spark growing to a beam.
Borsalino, himself, was that way once. Young, of course… but a dreamer, too. Back then, he still had to turn a lamp on to cast light on the books he devoured, eyes full of wonder for the world…
Eventually, reality always hits like a sledgehammer. Or a bullet.
Fire.
The sound is sharp, then explosive, his attack blowing up between the boy’s feet and sweeping him away. He slams into the ground limply, his head at level with Borsalino’s golden-white shoes.
“It’s going to take more than tenacity and bravery, Strawhat Luffy…” He pouts. Two-thirds taunt, one-third advice. Then swings a leg forward to slam into the boy's stomach, his body not even twitching. This is as significant as squashing a rubber ball in his office to kill time. Luffy is so exerted, he won’t even put up a fight… won’t even make it fun.
Garp’s glare stabs into him from the platform above. He returns the look boredly. What was he expecting…? , he wonders. Your grandson should have picked sides better, shouldn't he, Sir…?
But there is no confrontation, because the common enemy is nearby. Whitebeard has advanced to the front and caught the Strawhat in one of his massive hands, wincing at him. Borsalino lets out a noise of sarcastic surprise, sinking his hands in his pockets.
“Oh…for a man of your stature to make such an error in judgment…” he says. The Emperor is drenched in sweat. He knows that this is not an empty provocation, but a truth he must have heard from his allies before. “To let…this trash lead the vanguard…”
The fight stands still, tension rising like the clouds of smoke around them. Pairs of eyes rise toward Whitebeard for guidance. Borsalino knows that the pirates sense an impending loss in the air. Their so-called father can make a wrong call. He can hesitate. He can bleed.
Hurt the boy, hurt their morale. Ah… Sakazuki can be brilliant, when he puts it to something.
And, speaking of the devil…
The two other Admirals are approaching, tightening the circle around Whitebeard. When Sakazuki steps up for a direct confrontation, his aura weighs down on all the present with its relentless, smoldering heat; only Kuzan's own ice crystals, shattering and rearranging near him, offer any solace from it.
“Now’s the time to get the commanders,” Kuzan mutters over Borsalino’s shoulder.
“Ah…good that you two agree for o~once…"
But he is only met with frosty resignation. The elements have gathered to do what they must, to bring this fight to its logical conclusion. To do it together, if perhaps for the last time.
When Sakazuki seizes the opportunity and thrusts his fist through the Emperor, he's not hurting a man, but a symbol. Every single man who has sailed under a Jolly Roger will feel that pain, every last one of them the pirates who crumbled Sakazuki's world, who turned him into this impassive revenge machine.
Borsalino watches his jaw, his expression between the columns of smoke that of a dog clamping his fangs around prey. The smell of burning flesh joins the already dense atmosphere.
Now. Borsalino peels his attention away from Sakazukj and into the window of opportunity, open at last…
He blinks in and out of land, shooting his hand up to signal Onigumo.
At once the commanders are checkmated. Blue phoenix wings dim down; Marco's vain flames cannot dance around Borsalino's beams anymore. In the distance, Kuzan attacks Jozu in an explosion of shattered ice and diamond, the clamor of victory turning to grief.
Borsalino releases air from his lungs, hums and smiles. He wipes a fleck of ash away from the fold of his suit.
It was not hard to guess that the war would end this way, was it…?
After all…the good guys always win.