Chapter Text
Zoro had grown used to the sound of coughing. It had blended in with the enviroment, like the gentle breeze of the wind through the trees or the endless buzzing of the cicadas in summer. The coughs. They tended to vary throughout the day: they were softer during the morning, lazy like the start of the new day, then as the hours passed the volume increased, they broke and filled with blood. At night their sound was muted as they tried to break through his mothers hands. He’d lie in the dark and facing the wall as she struggled to contain them behind him, muscles spasming with the effort.
‘I don’t mind hearing you cough at night’ he’d told her one morning. He’d thought that would’ve eased her worry, but her eyes had widened in surprise and she’d just smiled sadly. She’d pulled him to her side and had ran a hand through his hair.
‘My little man’ was the only thing she’d said.
Her mothers health had started to crumble long before the start of his earliest memory. It had apparently always been delicate even during the times the man she called his father had been in the picture, before he’d gone to get himself killed by pirates when he was barely a season old. Like the slow erosion of a rock by the stream the sickness had gradually drained the strength from her limbs. These last few weeks had been especially taxing on her, she’d barely been able to leave their little house on the outskirts of the village by herself, the few times she’d had Zoro had lost count of the times they’d had to stop so that she could catch her breath and drink from the pouch he carried for her.
‘That woman is too stubborn for her own good’ he’d heard the old hags say when he’d gone to pick up the mending for the week. Like most adults in the village, they spoke about him and his mother as if he wasn´t there, they’d look at him and sigh and tsk their tongues, muttering about ‘That fool of a man’ and how ‘He’d never thought of the consequences’.
‘Oh you know how those two always were’ replied another of the women gathered. Her name was Gusta, and Zoro sometimes wondered if she lived and slept on the porch of her house, since he’d always find her sitting there with two or more crones surrounding her, gossiping and whispering about the goings on of the village, of the marriages, and the deaths and the elopings. Of the pirate raids in the nearby islands and of how the marines would surely arrive one day and put an end to the peace of the village cause it hadn´t been written down on a certified document and had an official seal stamped into it.
‘I swear the reason that girls health is not getting any better is cause she insists on behaving like she isn’t sick at all’ Gusta was saying as she handed Zoro the clothes.
‘Oh don’t be so harsh. Just think about what she must be going through…’ said one of the crones, glancing nervously at Zoro.
‘Hmh! All I’m saying is that all that pride is meaningless if it doesn’t bring any food on the table’ said Gusta.
Zoro placed the clothes in the bag as the nervous crone tried to change the subject towards the increase in marine patrols on the island, the others gleefully jumping at the opportunity to complain about the navy. Zoro ignored them as he tied up his bag and strapped it onto his back, the weigh pushing down on his narrow shoulders. He turned to Gusta and extended his hand. She slammed a few bills onto it and continued her rant about how she was convinced some bigshot pirates must be hiding on a nearby island if the marines were showing more face than usual. Zoro pocketed the money and extended his hand towards her. Gusta glanced down at him and her rambling died down.
‘I already payed you boy’ she said.
‘Price increased’ said Zoro ‘helps bring food to the table’
Gusta raised her eyebrow and muttered something uninteligible as she dug through her purse. She slammed some more bills on Zoro’s small hand, which he pocketed again as he left without another word.
He made a few more stops to hand out and pick up the mendings, his back growing heavier and heavier each time. He raised the price in all instances, the decision met with growls and mumbles and muttering, though all aquiesced. His mothers health had limited their chances of gaining money significantly, their only current income was the mending and washing of clothes which they returned after a week at the same time they picked up the next batch. It was an unstable job that gained them just barely enough to keep them fed, Zoro was deeply aware that they were essentialy rellying on whatever scraps the village was willing to throw at them, mainly because some villagers would outright tell him so sometimes as he came to pick up the mendings, or they’d openly discuss it in front of him like Gusta had.
There weren’t that many houses he’d had to visit this time around, but the sun was high up in the sky when he’d finally collected the last of the clothes, shoulders complaining from the weight. He started making his way to the dojo. Like his house, the dojo was on the outskirts of the village at the top of a hill. His stomach was grumbling when he finally reached the start of the narrow path that lead upwards to it. Zoro looked up towards were the path climbed, took a deep breath and sprinted into it. He ran until he was gasping, the weight of the bag threatening to pull him down if he wasn´t careful. He looked down at his feet as he ran, watching them move, trying to distract himself from the burning in his lungs and shoulders; to drown out his pants he screamed until his lungs could take no more breath. The ground he was glaring down at suddenly changed into soft grass and he raised his head in surprise at the soft green cliff overlooking the ocean he found in front of him. There was an old man at the edge looking back at him while he smoked a pipe, no doubt having heard his screams as he ran, and they stared at each other for a beat before the old man sighed and turned back towards the sea. Zoro managed to catch his breath after a few moments, turned around and started running back down, screaming to drown out the complaints of his body.
After a few more attempts, he finally made it to the dojo. There were a few groups gathered in the large courtyard, practicing stances as they followed the lead of the older students at the front. Scattered between the groups other students dueled in pairs, the strike of their practice swords filling the courtyard with a steady thrum of noise. At night when zoro closed his eyes he swore he was able to fill the vibrations of that sound in his bones, softly enveloping him as he drifted off to sleep. He stepped into the courtyard decisively and with a glance spotted an advanced group practicing stances and headed towards it. A few of the students turned towards him as he walked and looked at him in the manner of someone who’s just spotted a different coloured tile on the floor. He ignored the stares and sat down on the floor next to the practicing group, his back to the wall lining the dojo. The older student glanced briefly at him, but they’d all grown used to his visits by that point and continued without comment.
As he slowly gained back the breath he’d lost from his sprint, Zoro stared at the instructor as he repeated the stances and swings. He looked at the position his feet started at, and how they moved as he went through the stances, how that movement traveled upwards through his waist and torso and ended up with his arms. Zoro could see the little corrections in the grip of the sword and how each swing easily morphed into the next one. Once he’d gotten the gist of the whole set, he turned to look at the students following along, and tried to find the differences between their exercise and the instructors. The foot work was mostly correct, but many lost the flow of it, with their swings suffering because of that; he saw a few wrong angles, a couple of incorrect timings, some of them put their strenght on the wrong movements. Time flowed on like this, Zoro alternating between looking at the instructor and looking at the students and trying to find any faults, his hunger long satiated. After a while, the effort started getting to some students, their arms unable to keep up as their swords wavered in their hold; a few of them glared at Zoro, who’d been staring for ages without blinking, but Zoro stared right back and the instructor barked at them to focus.
The constant chorus of wooden swords in the background suddenly gained a new noise, its melody rising above all the rest. Zoro quickly turned towards the sound of that quick succesion of precise strikes, one after the next, and saw a little group gathered on the other end of the courtyard watching a duel. One of the combatants was a boy many years older than Zoro, old enough to be an instructor, who was swinging his sword in increasinglingy desperate strikes, each one of them easily countered by his smaller opponent. Zoro, practice group forgotten, made his way across the courtyard towards the increasingly growing crowd. As he approached he realised with a start that the smaller combatant was a girl. The first girl he’d ever seen in the dojo.
Slightly taller than him, with short dark hair, the girl was easily countering every single strike from the older boy. Her foot work was sure and solid, her strikes decisive with not a single muscle out of place. Zoro gaped as the girl parried another blow, spun around and hit the boy on the back of his knees, making him stumble forward with a curse. He turned around and slashed at her, but only displaced the air where she’d been a moment prior. Zoro was unable to follow what she did next with her practice sword, and could only catch up at the end when the boy dropped his sword, which the girl stepped on as she pointed her own sword at him.
‘Looks like I can hold a sword better than you after all’ she said
The boys face turned several shades of red as the crowd started whispering around them, and Zoro could actually see a vein pop up on his forehead. The girl payed him no more mind and turned towards the dojo nonchallantly.
‘She’s better than most of the people here’ said Zoro. His comment made some of the students glance at him in distaste, though some of them muttered agreements. He was so focused on the girls retreating back the sudden shouts from the crowd startled him from his trance and he turned at the noise just in time to see the boy run up to the girl, practice sword already slashing down at her. In the time between a heartbeat and the next, and just as Zoro realised what was happening, the girl again moved faster than he could follow and disarmed the boy. Then, as surprise was just catching up to Zoro, she landed three blows on the boy; one on his chest and two on his face. The boy crashed onto the ground, stunned. She took a single step towards him, lifted her leg and kicked him so hard in the balls she knocked the breath right out of him. No reaction came this time from the crowd as it collectively held its breath, the only sound that could be heard the guttural whimpers from the curled up boy, till she said:
‘You wield a sword but you’re no swordsman!’ she claimed, her eyes bright with anger ‘Your pride is as absent as your spine!’
She then turned towards the crowd and glared at them. A few of the boys crossed one of leg in front of the other instictively.
‘Let this be a lesson to you idiots!’ she said ‘If you aim for the back of your opponent you might as well sell your sword next, since you’re so eager to have no honour! And if you allow a blemish on your back you better start praying you’ll become a swordsman on the next life, since you were never meant to be one on this one. Scars on the back are a swordsmans shame!’
She turned around and left without another word, head held high. The crowd resumed its muttering and started breaking off. After a while, only Zoro remained stuck in place, staring at the spot were the girl had dissapeared into the dojo.
‘That’s not right’ he thought ‘she’s actually better than everyone here’
The girl, he’d find out later, went by the name of Kuina.