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You’ve never been much of a poet.
In fact, you’ve never been much of an intellectual in general. You couldn’t care less about old books and scrolls and whatever kind of sage wisdom they may hold; honing your swordsmanship has always taken precedence in your mind. Everyone who has known you for longer than an hour tends to pick up on this pretty quickly.
(The witch, swatting the back of your head in exasperated annoyance, chiding, You got lost again? Idiot! The shit cook, shoving you out of his kitchen disgruntledly, shouting, Don’t sit on my countertops after working out, dumbass! You’re contaminating my work space with your disgusting marimo sweat!
A tiny slip of a girl, so small and yet looming over you in both height and victory. Fool, she said, but the word was not pronounced cruelly. Instead, it was wry. She was the strongest opponent you had ever met in all your eight years of life, but she sounded as though there was another layer of meaning in her voice as she asked, Can’t you see that you are weak?)
Nevermind poetry—you’re also a terrible storyteller. The stories your ship’s resident liar tells are more tall tales than anything else, but his are still head and shoulders better than yours. Words don’t fall from your tongue as easily they do his, and your dry brevity saps the anticipation from even the most exciting tale.
That’s why, when the newer members of the crew ask and even the older ones turn to look at you, curious because even they've never heard this one before, you can’t quite find the words to tell the story of how you and your captain first met. Your first attempt of I was crucified in a Marine base for a few days without food or water, and he gave me an onigiri he picked up off the floor, had them shouting with incredulity and the curly brow cook furiously preparing a proper plate of onigiri, not at all sugary, with fillings alternating between umeboshi and sea king meat and beef—the ones with meat, your captain steals, snickering.
You don't really try to explain the circumstances that brought you to your captain’s crew again, after that. You don't know how to say it in words that aren't It was fate, or There is no universe with me and him in it with a me that has not met him, but if I ever have the chance to see him—that version of me, without him—I would kill him myself to put him out of his misery, which reveal far too much for your liking.
But if you really, truly had to tell it, if only to yourself, you would tell it like this:
(Your shoulders ached; muscles were never meant to stay in such an unnatural angle for so long, and your arms protested their positioning with a burning pain that you could feel in your fucking neck. Your mouth tasted terrible; like something died in it, excretions and decomposition included, and you tried to wash out the taste with muddy puddle water you found on the side of a road. You kept licking your lips, to no effect—there’s no saliva in your mouth to wet them with. Your stomach felt like it was trying to cannibalize itself, and your head pounded in time with your sluggish heartbeat. You’d taken to letting your head fall forwards onto your chest; it was exhausting, holding your weight up on this cross that was too short for your legs, and after the seventh day, not even your pride was enough to keep your body in a dignified position.
Something broke through your meditation: voices. Your eyebrow twitched as you tried to refocus on reaching inner peace. You managed a single moment of quiet before it was shattered by more shouting. You exhaled heavily, licking your lips only to taste the iron tang of your split lip. After the first week, the villagers had stopped peeking over the wall, either put off by their fear or eventually losing their interest with the fact that you really did nothing but hang from this thrice damned cross all day, so it couldn’t be them.
You picked up your head and looked to the source of the noise through slitted eyes. Two figures, one a head taller than the other, staring at you. They were far enough that you couldn’t quite make out their faces, your vision blurring with fatigue. But still, your hackles raised—never mind the malnutrition and dehydration and physical discomfort, the worst part of this was probably the humiliation. What were you, a fucking museum exhibit?
“Hey, you guys,” you rasped as loudly as you can manage, voice hoarse with disuse. You fixed them with a piercing glare. “You’re an eyesore. Get lost.”
The smaller guy—Pink Hair—flailed and cowered into his friend, who turned to him and listened to what he was saying with no discernible change in expression. Then, another head popped up over the fence; this time, it was one you recognized.
The little girl—Rika, you thought her mother called her—easily slipped down a rope with one hand, the other holding something to her chest. Dismayed, you watched her scamper her way across the yard to you and come to a stop in front of your cross with a smile.
“What,” you said flatly, hoping to discourage her.
“You must be hungry!” She smiled easily, completely undeterred. Children were so fucking bizarre. “I made you onigiri!”
Your eyes flicked up to the sun. You’d picked up a trick a few years back when you started bounty hunting: approximating the time by the sun’s position in the sky. It shone brightly above your head, and the cross’ shadow was short—well into the afternoon, and right about the time that daddy’s boy visited to kick you down while you refused to fight back.
“Do you wanna die, kid? Scram,” you said, vocal chords straining.
Rika continued to beam up at you. “You haven’t eaten this whole time, have you, onii-chan? Here! It’s the first I’ve ever made onigiri, but I hope you like them.”
You faltered. Were all children this stubborn? You ignored the irony of you, of all the people, asking this question; when you were her age, you had already challenged Kuina for a two thousandth duel.
“I’m… not hungry!” In your peripheral vision, you saw movement; in response, your voice grew harsher. “Now go the hell back home and take that stuff with you!”
Rika looked disheartened. “But…”
“I don’t want ‘em!” you shouted. “Get out of here before I stomp you to death!”
You were too late. There was the sound of the gates creaking open, then approaching footsteps. Fuck.
“You shouldn’t pick on little girls,” said the guy you’ve been fantasizing about disemboweling the past week, a curl of a contemptuous sneer in his voice. “You look surprisingly well, Roronoa Zoro.”
No thanks to him. Your mild headache intensified to the point that you felt like your eyeballs would pop out of your skull if you blinked hard enough, just by his reappearance.
You scoffed. “Well, if it isn’t the prodigal son, living off his daddy’s wealth.”
“Was that an insult?” He cupped his ear, like he thought he was hearing things. He wasn’t. “A man in your position should guard his tongue… or he could lose it!”
You didn’t need a tongue to become the greatest swordsman in the world, so you dismissed his threat easily. You watched warily as he sauntered closer and snatched one of the girl’s rice balls, raising it up to his eyes to consider it.
“Little girl, did you bring these rice balls for me?” he asked, a nasty grin on his face. “How thoughtful!”
He popped it into his mouth, ignoring Rika’s shout of protest, and his face twisted into an unsightly expression as he coughed, sending half chewed grains of rice flying into the air. “Disgusting! It’s sweet! There’s sugar in it!” he spits. “Onigiri is supposed to be seasoned with salt! Not sugar!”
“B-But I like sweets, so I figured they’d taste better with sugar in them,” Rika said uncertainly.
“These are completely inedible!” he snarled, slapping the remaining onigiri out of her hands and into the dirt. He stomped repeatedly on it, unheeding of Rika’s cries for him to stop, and grinded his heel into the now flat lump of dirtied rice for an unnecessarily long moment before lifting his foot away.
She raised her trembling hands over the remains of the food she’d spent so much heart and effort in creating, and fat tears spilled over her cheeks. “And I worked so hard to make these,” she hiccuped, crying in the heart-wrenching way only a guileless, anguished child could.
And you were the one picking on little girls? He continued to speak, saying something in that irritating, grating voice of his that did no favors to your pulsing headache. Fucking hell, did this guy ever shut up? Why couldn’t he just leave you to crucifixion in peace, goddamn.
Your eyes refocused just in time to see Rika thrown over the wall, but there was no shriek of pain as she landed. She must’ve been caught by one of the observers.
“You…” you hissed through gritted teeth.
The spoiled brat just laughed that obnoxious laugh of his. “My, aren’t you a stubborn one.”
“That’s right. I’ll last out the entire month! You just keep your end of the bargain.”
He laughed again; it sounded like the braying of a donkey. “I wouldn’t dream of breaking my word. But remember, it’s only if you reach the end of the month that I’ll let you go!”
Your head dipped back down to rest against your chest, agitation stirring in your chest. Fuck, sitting idle for a month? In all your years of bounty hunting to get by, you’d never stayed at an island longer than a week. After all, the only thing that could’ve made the places you visited notable was if Hawk Eyes had been there.
A month wouldn’t have meant much if it weren’t for the recovery period that you’ll need after it. A month of starvation and fatigue would mean a loss of strength—possibly even muscle atrophy. You couldn’t challenge Hawk Eyes while being in such an unsightly state. It would disgrace both you and him, to dare to even try.
You picked your head up at the sound of sandals scuffing against dirt. A man stood before you—no, it would be more accurate to call him a boy than a man. He looked to be about your age, a straw hat on his head, wearing a red vest and a pair of blue shorts and an air of nearly palpable confidence. His spine was straight, unbending as he stared directly into your eyes—smiling. You’d met men twice his age and triple his size who could not claim to have done the same.
“You still here?” you asked. “Better not let that guy’s father catch you here.”
“Hey, I’m looking for good men to join my pirate crew,” he said, that bright grin still on his face.
“Pirate crew?” you repeated. “You think I’d lower myself to that level? No thanks.”
For the first time in this conversation, he frowned. “Becoming a pirate’s my dream. What’s wrong with it?”
“You think if you untie me, I’m going to join your crew?”
“I haven’t decided if I’ll ask you yet,” he told you, that smile slipping back onto his face. You got the feeling he smiled a lot more than he didn't. “You’ve got a pretty bad reputation, you know?”
“A bad reputation, huh?” you mused. You’d heard the rumors: a bloodthirsty stray hound that cut down even the worst of pirates with his swords, more beast than man. Well, it wasn’t as if they were unfounded. “Anyway, I don’t go for that kind of deal. I’ve got my own plans for the future. I don’t need your help—I can get out of here on my own. All I have to do is last for a month here, and I’m a free man! Captain Morgan’s idiot son promised me.”
He made a thoughtful sound, placing a hand on top of his hat as he made his way closer to you. There was no fear in him. You wondered if it was stupidity or naivete or complete confidence in himself that made him that way. “If it were me, I probably would’ve starved to death in three days!” he said, a laugh in his voice.
“I’ve got more spirit than you,” you replied, and you grinned, a smile so full of teeth that it felt more like a baring of your teeth. “I will live through this. I swear it.”
“Ehh, what a weird guy!” he said, but he was grinning as he turned around, waving a hand over his shoulder in farewell.
“Wait a second,” you called, and he stopped, looking back at you again. You turned your gaze down to the flattened onigiri on the ground. “Pick that up for me.”
“You’re gonna eat this?” He crouched and obligingly picked it up, saying dubiously, “It’s more dirt than rice, now. I know you’re hungry, but this—”
“Shut up!” you snapped. You didn’t need anyone telling you that what you were about to do wasn’t ridiculously laughable; you already knew. “Just feed it to me already!”
He looked at you with clear eyes as he stood up and leaned in closer, tossing the onigiri into your open mouth. It tasted like sugar and dirt, and its texture was all strange—mushy from the overcooked rice being beaten and gravelly with small rocks, it took a moment for you to swallow. You coughed harshly when you were done.
The first meal you’d had in over a week, and it was seventy percent made of filth from the ground. Ha.
“Told you so,” he said. “It really was mostly dirt. You wanna kill yourself?”
“It was delicious,” you said, ignoring him.
“Hm?” He swayed into your space, peering up at you with round eyes.
“It was good,” you repeated. “Tell her that. Tell her that I ate it all.”
The boy looked at you, beaten and bleeding and disgusting with a week’s worth of filth as you were, with eyes that said what he saw pleased him immensely. His smile widened, becoming impossibly more luminous, until it was a blinding beam of mirth on his face. His eyes crinkled into something fond, something resolute—like he’d made a decision and was just waiting for you to keep up. He laughed, loud and bright, and stepped away, making his way back to the wall with a lackadaisical wave.
It was only a few hours later when he came back, hopping over the fence with a hup! of effort.
“Hey!” he said, raising his hand in greeting.
“You again,” you said with a sigh. You didn’t know it was possible for a person to be so incessantly smiley. “If this is about me joining your pirate crew, the answer is still no.”
“Call me Luffy!” he said, blatantly ignoring you. “I’ll untie you if you join my crew, okay?”
“You really don’t listen, huh?” You had to marvel a little at how masterful his selective hearing was. “I’ve got my own mission, and it doesn’t involve being a damned pirate.”
“You’re too good to be a pirate? You, a bounty hunter who everyone thinks is a demon?”
“I don’t care what anyone thinks. I have never done anything I regret, and I don’t intend to in the future,” you explained, “which is why I’ll never become a pirate!”
“Sorry, but I’ve made up my mind!” Luffy said with a smile, clearly not sorry at all. “You’re gonna join my crew!”
“Don’t go deciding things like that on your own!” you shouted. What was with this guy?
“I’ve heard you can use a sword,” he said, ignoring you again, arms crossed in thought.
You’d dedicated your life and death to the blade. You would sure hope you could use a sword. “Yeah, but that stupid guy took my stuff,” you said, instead.
“I’ll go get it back for you!” Luffy decided.
“What?!”
“So if you want your sword, you have to join my crew!” he crowed, laughing goodnaturedly.
“You little rat!”
But it was too late. He was already running off towards the base, that wide, wide smile stretched across his face.
This guy, you decided, was the dumbest pirate you’d ever seen.
A few moments later, you saw Pink Hair scrambling down the wall. His legs swung in the air a little before he let go, landing on his feet with an ungainly stumble. He whirled around, breathing heavily, but managed to run over to you.
“Z-Zoro-san! Do you know where Luffy-san is?!” He was panting. You’d thought that he was terrified of you, but he’d apparently forgotten his fear in favor of his worry.
“That guy?” You almost had to laugh. “He went inside.”
“Inside?” he said blankly.
You inclined your head towards the massive, towering building to your left. His eyes grew huge.
“What?! Luffy-san went into the fortress?!” He looked dismayed, but not shocked. “Why is he so reckless?”
To you, it looked less like recklessness and more like a bold personality enabled by a complete lack of impulse control. Though, it could be that you were wrong and it was both. That was likely too.
Pink Hair stepped closer, fingers working at the ropes around your right arm. The movement agitated your chafed skin, but you didn’t pay any attention to it.
“Hey!” You tried to jerk away, but couldn’t, due to obvious reasons. “Now you’re being reckless. If they catch you freeing me, they’ll kill you!”
“And they imprisoned you unfairly!” he snapped back. So he did have a spine. “I can’t stand to see the Navy acting so improperly.” A determined expression settled on his face. “After all, I’m going to be a Marine—just like Luffy’s going to be the King of Pirates!”
“What?” King of Pirates? Was that kid fucking insane? “Does he know what that means?”
He laughed, clearly finding validation in your response. “I was shocked when he told me for the first time, too. But he’ll succeed or die trying! That’s just how he is!”
There was a thunderous boom of sound—gunshot, your mind immediately cataloged; Pink Hair flinched away from your bonds, and his glasses were knocked cleanly off his face as he jerked backwards. Red began to bloom on the white of his shirt, and he screamed in agony.
“I’ve been shot!” he cried. “Blood! I’m bleeding!! I’m going to die!!”
You watched him writhe on the floor and sighed with relief. In your experience, if he could still scream, then he was just fine. “Good. You’re alive.” You turned your head to the side at the sound of marching footsteps. “Now get out of here! They’re on their way down.”
He was breathing heavily, hair sticking to his face with sweat, tears of pain trickling down his cheeks. “But… I haven’t…” A heave of air. “Untied you… yet…”
“Don’t worry about me. I just have to survive the month and they’ll let me go,” you said brusquely. “So just run for—”
“They’re not going to let you go!” he shouted, sitting up with visible difficulty. “You’re going to be executed three days from now!”
What?
“What are you saying?” you demanded. “That idiot promised me! I survive here for a month, and I’ll be set free!”
“He never intended to keep that promise! That’s why Luffy punched Helmeppo! Because he found out that he lied to you!”
That fucking bastard. You’d known that he was a spoiled daddy’s boy uncomprehending of the concept of consequences, but you hadn’t thought he’d be an honorless one.
“The Navy is your enemy now! Please,” he pleaded, “if I untie you, will you help Luffy-san? He saved my life! I won’t ask you to become a pirate, but…”
You said nothing, watching this boy beg on his knees, determination shining in his eyes. You really did underestimate him, didn’t you?
“Luffy’s really strong and so are you,” he continued. “If you team up, you can surely escape from here! Please, help him!”
Before you could make your choice, the marines arrived, pointing their rifles at you both. “Stay where you are!” one ordered sharply. “Captain Morgan has ordered your immediate execution!”
“Roronoa Zoro! Peasants and pirates may tremble at your name, but you’re no match for the Great One!” the man himself proclaimed, capitalization audible in his pompous tone of voice. “You may be a barracuda… but I’m a great white shark!”
You didn’t even know what a barracuda was. You stared blankly at him, managing to forget for a moment that there were over a dozen guns trained on you, ready to riddle you with holes until you looked more like a bloody block of swiss cheese than a man.
You were brought back to your mind when Morgan shouted, “Men! Take aim!” You heard the sound of over fifteen officers cocking their rifles in unison, and you stared down the barrel of the gun closest to you.
You couldn’t die. Not here, not now, not dead to something other than another swordsman’s blade. What a pathetic death that would be. You were certain Kuina would laugh at you once you reached the afterlife, if you died to a gun while proclaiming yourself to be a worthwhile swordsman. You knew it because it was what you would have done, if she had gone out the same way. You knew it because you had laughed until you cried at her death belonging to a flight of fucking stairs, because there was no hesitation in your knowledge that had you both had the option to choose how you would die, you and Kuina would have chosen to die by the sword of a masterful swordsman.
You could not die without having accomplished your shared dream and kept your promise to her. You were many things: a murderer, a swordsman who lived for the sensation of your blades carving through whatever obstructed their paths, a foolish dreamer whose honor meant more to him than his life. But you were never an oathbreaker. You were many, many things—but never that.
A blur of motion, red and blue, falling from the sky, and suddenly there was Luffy, back turned to you as he stood in front of you; his arms outstretched, he shielded you from a hail of gunfire with his body spread as wide as his slight stature would allow.
Your breath caught in your throat, and you froze, expecting the bullets to rip through his body and reach you both anyway, splattering you with his blood.
Then: a rubber twang, and Luffy’s skin stretched, stretched, stretched impossibly until it reached a point where it couldn’t handle it anymore and the slugs rebounded back into the crowd of Marines, who all scrambled away from the ricocheting bullets, screaming.
He laughed uproariously, and proclaimed, “Bullets can’t hurt me!”
“What are you?” you asked in disbelief.
He turned to look at you, and the expression on his face was one that you would become intimately familiar with in the future. The set of his brows was so determined, the curve of his sun-lit smile so utterly certain, that you couldn’t help but believe him as he proclaimed, “I’m the man who will become King of the Pirates!”
Your words died in your mouth, and you stared, struck by the intense feeling of knowing that wracked through you. This was a man who held the same sort of will you did; savage and unwavering, held in his fist like a dare and in his mouth like a promise. For the first time in your life, you’d met someone who was exactly the kind of person that you were: a fucking idiot who’d fulfill his dream or die trying, and didn’t know how to half-ass anything he’d set his mind to accomplish.
You knew it then, and you know it now. There was no answer you could have given but a yes.
And when you had your swords again and used them to block eight cutlasses from cutting you down, you told your new captain, “I’ll become a pirate. I gave you my word. I’m officially a criminal, now that I’ve fought the Navy. But hear this: I’m only going to fulfill my ambition!”
“Ambition?” he asked, voice quizzical, eyes knowing.
“I’m going to become the world’s greatest swordsman! All I have left is my destiny! My name may be infamous, but it will be one that will shake the world!” you declared to all who bore witness. “But you’re making me become a pirate. So, if I have to abandon my dream for any reason… I’ll have you commit harakiri in repentance!”
Your captain laughed brightly in delight, undeterred by the threat to his life. “The world’s greatest swordsman? That’s great! And fitting, considering your captain is going to be the King of Pirates. Anything less would make me look bad!”
You smiled around the hilt of Kuina’s sword. You had no plans on disgracing your new captain with a subpar swordsman.
And that was that.)
How ignorant you’d been. You hadn’t known what kind of captain you’d sworn yourself to, or what kind of person you yourself would become under his light.
If Roronoa Zoro before—or even during—Shells Town could see you now, he’d be insulted at what he would become. If I have to abandon my dream for any reason, I’ll have you commit harakiri in repentance, was it? What a fucking moron.
Now, you know that you’d put his dream before yours. His life before your own. His wishes above all others. He’d hate that, if he knew, you think with humor.
(For him, there is no boundary you won’t break, no burden you’re unwilling to shoulder, no war you wouldn’t wage. If he asked you to sever your own hands, you’d lop them off, easy as can be. If he asked you to cut open your stomach, you’d only request to use Sandai Kitetsu—she’d be happy to drink her fill, the insatiable thing, and you would never disgrace Wado Ichimonji that way. If he asked you to lay down your swords forever, you’d set them down with a heavy heart and probably die a dog’s death, but you’d give them up, nonetheless.
You’d do all those things and more. But here’s the thing: he would never ask that of you.
And that is why you follow him.)
Now, you strive to be the greatest; not just for yourself and that girl you shared a dream with, the way you did for years and years, but for him. He, who is to be Pirate King, deserves the best in all things, and you are his right hand: you will deliver or die trying. And you do not plan on dying anywhere but on your feet, facing the sun, your back turned to your captain.
This devotion will rip you apart, burn you to ash, and remake you in fire. It already has, you think. You don’t mind.
Anyway, the person you used to be wouldn’t understand why you’ve given all that you have for your captain; compared to your own, his conviction is woefully lacking. He wouldn’t understand that your captain and your dream have become one and the same.
He wouldn’t understand that—
(Your back bowed, you told a Warlord to take your head instead of your captain’s. You taste a lick of his pain, and it feels like the worst agony you’ve ever felt—fire bubbling like acid in your veins and racing like burning lightning, stacked on top of your own injuries, you can hardly even breathe under the onslaught.
You wheezed, clawing at your chest for breath, and dimly realized that you'd fallen to the floor. After taking a moment to relearn how to breathe, you stumbled to your feet and walked as far as you could on your shaky legs. You didn’t want the others to witness this.
You took his death and made it your own, taking drop by every last excruciating drop of his suffering until it hurt so much that it felt numb instead and you could drink it in by the gallon, for what felt like hours. Your wounds ripped open, pouring blood profusely—half by the struggle of your body straining to bear the pain of injuries it didn’t suffer, and half by your own fingers digging into your skin in search of a buoy to hold onto and help you keep your head above the water in the overwhelming tidal wave of agony.
You did not scream.
You woke three days later to Chopper’s sobbing in your ear, fatigue and lingering sparks of pain weighing your body down like cement blocks tied to your feet, and you did not regret a thing.)
For him—
(You were weak.
Your captain was grieving, an entire ocean’s distance separating you, and there was nothing you could do about it.
God. He was alone. If there was one thing that you knew, it was that he hated being alone. And now he was somewhere out there, none of the others there to guide him back to the Sunny, without you by his side—brotherless.
His brother—the man who had entrusted your captain’s safety and happiness to you and your crew—was dead. As much as you would have liked to take Akainu’s head and drop it at your captain’s feet, you’d recently learned that admirals were still far beyond the range of your swords.
You were just as unprepared to take the title of the world’s greatest swordsman as the first time you attempted it, all that time ago at the Baratie. How could you be the world’s greatest when you couldn’t fulfill your duty? When you couldn’t protect your crew or cut down all those who obstructed your captain’s path?
Your swordsmanship was not up to par—your blades struck too slowly, and you received wounds more severely than you’d dealt them. You’d been forced to make a liar of yourself—before you took your title, you were defeated so soundly that every muscle in your body protested as you sank down to your knees.
You kneeled and pressed your forehead into the cold stone floor, baring the nape of your neck in a gesture of supplication, and you entreated the man you intend to cut down one day to train you to be great. His disdain cut deeper than even Yoru ever had, but you kept your head to the ground. You needed strength more than anything. As you were now, you were unworthy to stand at the side of your captain and dare to call yourself his swordsman, and nothing chafed harder than the thought that you would slow him down on his journey to the peak.
“Why?” Hawk Eyes demanded. “Why is it that you would prostrate yourself to a mortal enemy and beg him to instruct you?”
Finally, you raised your head, unable to tamp down your defiance any longer as you revealed your bared teeth. “To surpass you!”
And he leaned back in his chair, threw his head back, and laughed and laughed and laughed.)
Your pride is nothing.
But really, there’s no need to entertain the thought of what a version of you with no loyalty to anyone besides a ghost and a sword might think of you. There is no room for the past on your captain’s ship full of fools who live in the present and dream of the future.
You’d fall on your own sword for him. But his voice is unbending steel, as he says, Zoro. You are not allowed to die.
So that’s that. Captain’s orders. The world spins on its axis, you are going to be the world’s greatest swordsman, fate snaps over Monkey D. Luffy’s knee like a particularly brittle and pathetic stick, and you are not allowed to die.
You can’t let Death claim you when your life belongs to your captain, after all. So you stand, again and again and again, mindless of the wounds you carry and the exhaustion weighing down your bones, swords held in your hands and mouth, and you fight.
How far you have fallen. How high you have flown.
Your captain speaks in whens and never ifs. There is no uncertainty in him; that is what first drew you to him. He says, Be a part of my crew! like he already knows your answer will be an acquiescence before you even say it. It would be intimidating, if you were the type of man to be intimidated; but you are not, so your face twists in derision despite your bone-deep fatigue, and you spit a denial. He laughs in your face like he finds you hilarious.
He is unshakable, his conviction unfaltering in his every step, in his every unblinking stare. He laughs like a dare and smiles like audacity given form, unashamed in his daring to dream of reaching the precipice of the world.
The earth trembles underneath his planted feet, the skies break open and shatter at his say, and the sun was created to shine upon his face. He is inexorable and unstoppable, all smiles that take up half his face and unrepentant joy and devastating force. He upends your world like a natural disaster in the shape of a man, and by the time you determine which side is right-side up again, you're willing to die for him.
It’s not nearly as immediate a process as you make it sound. Or at least, it wasn’t for you; you can’t speak for the others. But personally speaking, your loyalty was a slow, blooming thing in your chest watered by every broad grin and unhesitant declaration of faith in your resolve and ability, cultivated for weeks on end; even you didn’t even notice that you were his until you were nearly cut in half by the greatest swordsman in the world, and holding your sword in the air, vowed to him your life and unbroken victory.
Perhaps it should frighten you, how this devotion that’s consumed you has crept into your life and taken over it so completely that you wouldn’t be the same person if you ripped it out. But then again, you never have held much of a capacity to fear the things that you should.
So when he calls your name with unprecedented familiarity, when he introduces you to other people as my swordsman, Roronoa Zoro, you’re not even that surprised at the want that curls in your stomach at his casual possessiveness. Of course it would turn out like this. You have always been attracted to dangerous things, and Monkey D. Luffy is the most dangerous man you’ve met in your entire life.
(It’s like this. You want to follow him to Laugh Tale, cut down all those who wish to keep him from his crown, and see him to his coronation. You want to sit at the foot of his throne and rest your head against his knee. You want to worship him with your hands and mouth and body; kiss every scar and trace the one on his chest with your tongue; memorize every version of his laugh, his smile, the look of glowing contentment in his eyes as he gazes down at you and sighs, Zoro.
It’s all rather simple, really. You just want him so badly that sometimes, you can’t help but ache with it.)
Even your enemies seem to have noticed it. One day, during a routine attack from the Marines, the guy you’re fighting sneers at you as he pulls the hammer on his gun back. Roronoa Zoro, he hisses, they call you that bastard Straw Hat’s first mate, but stopping when he tells you to heel, biting when he tells you to attack… You’re really just his dog, aren’t you?
You stop to consider it for a moment, turning the idea over in your mind. Luffy’s dog?
Hm.
Zooorooo! you hear your captain call, over the commotion of battle. You turn to look at him, and he’s hanging loosely from the Thousand Sunny’s main mast with an elastic arm and leg wrapped several times around it, his other hand sitting disapprovingly on his hip. Stop holding back already and come over here!
You look back at the Marine. Because you know no one will ever believe him, you stare him dead in the eye, and flatly, you say, Woof.
Then you cut through the barrel of his gun, splitting it perfectly down the middle. After a second of consideration, you lop off one of his hands too, for insulting your captain. You turn and leave him howling on the ground, felling the ten Marines that had been surrounding you with a single, masterful strike, and you lope back to your captain.
Well, you muse, it’s not as if he’s terribly wrong. You don’t trail behind your captain’s heels as the Marine had implied, but you would follow him to hell and back. You don’t follow him mindlessly; you’re here to remind him to never falter and set his eyes unwaveringly to the horizon, not to be his yes man, but those occasions that he needs you to set him straight are so rare and seldom necessary that you don’t see the harm in obeying whatever commands he gives you.
There’s a certain pleasure, even, in having someone to tell you what to do. It tugs at the part of your brain that relishes in the simple things: a full stomach of food and a chilled mug of beer; the sun warming your face as you drift into a catnap on the Sunny’s deck, lively voices in your ears drowned away by unconsciousness; the picturesque way something stays perfectly still, seemingly unmoved by the bite of your blades, before falling neatly into pieces. It itches a scratch you didn’t even know you had before meeting him.
So, you can’t find offense in that Marine’s words. The implication that you bowed to a lesser man—that, you may have found disrespect in, had it not been that Luffy was not lesser than you. You and your captain are equals; it’s with conscious knowledge of this that you kneel anyway. Belonging to Luffy is not an insult; it has only ever been a blessing.
(The weight of your captain’s claim wraps around your throat like a collar; its presence is felt with every breath you take, its pressure reassuring against your vulnerable pulse. It’s a bit impossible to describe, how it makes you feel. You’d intended to live alone and rule alone and die alone, and yet here you were, your name inextricably intertwined with your captain’s in the mouths of anyone who dares address you.
A tie, in every definition of the word. A ribbon around your wrist, to lead you home when roads stray from under your feet, to bring you back to him.
It feels like belonging.)
You’ve never been one for subtlety, so if a no-name Marine can tell that there’s virtually nothing you would not be willing to do for him, there’s no way that your captain—sharp and discerning in reading people and in little else—can’t. You love him; you know it, he knows it, and you know he knows it. You’ve never really discussed it aloud, but you can read it in the consideration in his gaze, the glimmer in his eyes when he tests the line, pressing himself flush against your chest, so close that your field of vision is filled by only his grinning face, and you only set the beer bottle in your hand to the side and part your legs to give him more room to maneuver.
He doesn’t mean to be cruel. You don’t think he owns a malicious bone in his body, for all that he’s plenty brutal in a fight. It’s just that he regards your devotion to him the same way he views most things in life: he turns it over in his hands, curious and searching, without any particular sense of covetousness.
It’s fine. You only need him to hold your heart, not to give you his own. You’ve never expected him to look at you the way you do him—he loves you too, in as much he possibly can, and you know that. It may be in the same way you love him, and it may not be. It doesn’t matter nearly as much as the cook’s florid romance novels say. As long as he has this faith in you, this unfaltering belief in your strength and ability to protect his crew, and you can both see each other’s unwavering resolve, you’re not in want of anything else.
This is enough.