Chapter Text
The first time Zoro dies, he stands right back up, picks his heart up from where it was thrown on the ground, and pushes it back into the hole in his chest. Blood gushes down his chest, soaking his shirt, and his broken ribs grind and grate together. He doesn’t think anything ever hurt this bad. Not taking on all of Luffy’s pain on Thriller Bark, not standing in front of Mihawk and knowing, deep down, he wasn't strong enough. Still, he stands on his feet. The grim reaper stands in front of him, scythe gleaming in the sun and a decaying hand extended towards him, but Zoro looks under Death’s hood, into the bitten, rotting holes where eyes should be, and says: “Not yet, you ugly bastard.”
Dying is not an option for Zoro. He has to see his captain crowned King of the Pirates, after all. He still has to get stronger, to one day be finally able to fight Mihawk, truly fight him as equals, and not like a stubborn novice trying to challenge a champion.
In the end, no matter how much he prides himself in being a selfish person, Zoro has never been good at living for himself. He’s not a particularly ambitious person, despite what others would think. But he finds it especially easy to dream for others, to hold other people’s hopes, and if there’s something he is, is stubborn to a fault, so if Death wants to try its hand at shooting him down before he thinks his time has come, well.
He thinks he passes out, for quite some time too, because when he opens his eyes again, the sky is several shades lighter.
He looks around himself, and curses. Naturally, he has no idea where he is, so he picks a direction and sticks with it, hoping he won’t get lost any more than he already is.
He follows the sound of the fight, and after taking several wrong turns and having to backtrack each time, he finally finds his way back to the fight, which by the looks of it, seems to just have ended.
Luffy stands over their downed enemy, triumphant but so, so tired. He’s covered in bruises and cuts, and his overheated skin is so hot it’s smoking in the cold air. He stumbles, but Zoro is there to catch him before he falls, and the moment Luffy recognizes him, he throws him a grin before allowing himself to pass out, exhausted.
One thing Zoro has noticed in the time under Luffy’s command, is that the younger is extremely light, probably as an aftereffect of his devil fruit, so picking him up is no struggle for Zoro, even beaten and broken as he is. He slides one arm under Luffy’s legs and winds the other around his back, lifting him up so that his head is resting in the crook where his shoulder and neck meet. Mindful not to jostle both of their wounds further, Zoro walks up to where the rest of the crew is gathered, beaten black and blue but breathing and so, so alive.
For the entire walk back to the ship, Nami and Sanji (and Robin, who limits herself to a couple unhelpful remarks) make fun of him for getting lost once again, up until when, finally back on the Sunny, he lays Luffy on the grassy deck to rest. He’s grateful for the respite from the jokes, right until he realizes it’s because they’re now all too busy fretting over the amount of blood (and some fleshy bits) coating his front. Chopper panics for a good fifteen seconds, zooming around the deck calling for a medic before finally realizing he’s the doctor, and ordering Zoro to remove his shirt.
He cleans the blood off him, but as he goes to assess the wound, he only finds smooth, pink skin, unmarred save for the single white line that marks his first and worst defeat.
(“Huh,” he says, just as surprised as everyone else. “Must’ve been a good nap.” He gets a slap on the head and a ‘That's not how it works, idiot!’ from both Nami and Chopper.)
After that, the lines get a little blurry, between what might be a painful wound and a deadly one. He’s aware of it, knows no man would survive some of the things he has, but he doesn’t really acknowledge it.
He ignores a hit to the head that should be just a little too close to skull-breaking to ignore, he walks off one too many stabs at vital organs like he’s not tripping on his own intestine, he lives when he should be dead, but he doesn’t pay attention to it, because that’s just how it’s like if he wants to see the Crown of the Seas resting on the head of the only person worth it.
Then one day, in the middle of the battle, he looks to the side to see Usopp sit up and something’s wrong wrongwrong- oh. His neck is facing in the wrong direction, that’s what. There’s a pained look on his face, but his eyes burn bright, angry and determined as he slaps a hand on each side of his head and yanks it back into place. He gets up, picks his slingshot from the ground, and goes back to shooting round after round. Zoro goes back to slicing marines up.
(That night, they don’t sleep. Sitting in the dark of the crow’s nest, Zoro imagines a ring of mottled purples and blacks around Usopp’s neck that he knows isn't there. “Death looks really scary,” the younger says.
“I’m not really fond of the eye-socket maggots myself,” Zoro answers, but they both know that’s not what Usopp is talking about.
They don’t talk about the fact that they’ve both cheated death itself, not for themselves, but for a boy with a wide smile and a bigger heart. Neither of them says that there was no option but to live, even when they died, because it’s redundant. They all know)
They’re still as human as the next person, as mortal as anyone else, for all their power and might. But as human as they are, death has never met a group of people stubborn enough to tell it to fuck off as many times as they have.
Sanji, body torn in half by a marine taller than the sky and stronger than a mountain, drags his mangled torso to where his legs lay in the rubble, and wills the broken pieces to mend together.
Brook, whose bones are nothing more than fine powder in his ragged suit. But he’s already dead, after all. The Grim Reaper is not a new face to him. And if a man has already died once, how can he die again? So he tips his hat off to the dark figure, who he wouldn’t call an old friend, but an acquaintance perhaps, and continues on his way.
Franky, whose metal body is as damning as a devil fruit in high water, thrown overboard, bound and unconscious. He walks the seafloor with marine critter as his sole company, and finds his crew back at port, skin freezing and lungs full of salt, but still so stubbornly alive.
Nami is missing a good chunk of her left side, when Zoro sees her again after they’ve been separated for the nth time, and she’s holding her detached arm in her right hand. She walks up to Chopper, his face white even under the fur, and holds out the limb towards him. “Can you put this back?” She asks him with a steel in her voice, and he only nods, grim faced. Zoro would never believe that, had it been anyone else saying that. But he’s seen Chopper stop his own head from rolling off a bridge, pick it up, and sew it back to his neck. He can do it just fine.
Robin gets taken by the marine again, while they’re taking a day rest on land, the time needed for the log pose to recalibrate just long enough for them to explore the island. As far as they are from the Headquarters, and as small and unimportant as this island is, the marine base is unequipped to hold a devil fruit user, let alone one of the caliber of Devil Child Nico Robin.
What they lack in equipment, though, they make up for in sheer depravity, and Robin finds herself slammed into a cold cell, all her limbs snapped, pristine white bone jutting out of her skin.
But Robin is long past the days of longing for death like a faraway friend. She’s wanted to die for most of her life, since she was barely a toddler, watching her mother leave her behind, since she was eight-year-old and sporting a bounty higher than any other in her corner of the world just for the crime of existing.
Now, as she clutches her broken arm, and wills it to straighten itself, she doesn’t even register the dark figure standing in a corner of her cell. She stands up, and she does the only thing she can do: she lives. A smile, bigger than life and brighter than the sun, powers her movements. He’s gifted her the will to live, and she’s going to grasp it with both her hands, if not for herself, then for her captain.
As she escapes imprisonment, she’s unaware that she’s left on the floor more blood than there is in her veins, but Robin is a scholar, not a scientist, and how can she die, if she’s not aware she’s supposed to?
She leaves a trail of bodies in her wake, unwilling to let anyone else be put through the same.
At some point, the Marine is clued in to their refusal to die, and all of their bounties shoot up a good half a billion Berry each, because there’s quite a difference between being surprisingly hard to kill and being stubborn enough that you just won’t die, no matter how many times they kill you.
But what’s truly surprising is that the Marine issues a flee on sight order for all soldiers below the rank of vice-admiral. Considering the usual approach the marine has taken with them, Zoro would have thought them more than happy to send thousands of foot soldiers to die as cannon fodder in an attempt to take them down, but he’s not going to be the one to complain.
Despite what one might think, death does not make them kinder. It only does the opposite really, because now that they’ve all felt it on their skin, they know some people deserve way worse. Now, Usopp’s sling shots don’t stun and confuse anymore, instead burning through skin and bone like a lit matchstick in a barrel of gasoline. Nami’s baton leaves a trail of bodies that still twitch for hours after they’ve cooled to the touch, electricity cursing trough them. Sanji’s kicks cave skulls in, and Robin’s blooming arms snap spines like toothpicks. Zoro, too, doesn’t find it in himself to question whether this particular marine has a family, before slicing them in two clean halves
But out of all of them, Death doesn’t come for their captain. He’s too bright, too good. (Monkey D. Luffy is many things, but a good man is not what most people would call him. He does good, undoubtedly, but he’s still a pirate. He steals and robs, he hurts and kills, and he will never apologize for it. But to his crew, to Zoro, who’s made his captain his lifeline, Luffy is untouched by death not because of his monstrous strength but because of his shining soul.)
Still, Luffy lives. They might joke about him being dumb, but the boy is not unobservant. They try to hide it, because they know how hard it would be on the young captain, to know just how much they go through for his sake, but Zoro knows they’re not as successful as they wish. He realizes that not only is Luffy aware of something being wrong, but that he know just how wrong things are, when he’s woken by a trembling hand to his temple.
It's the middle of the night, the sleeping quarters shrouded in absolute darkness. Zoro’s hammock sways gently with the waves, and a light, shaking touch rouses him from sleep. Fingers graze at his hairline over his right ear, right where he’d recently taken, of all things, an icepick to the head.
Seemingly comforted by the smoothness of the skin, by the absence of blood and gore and pieces of skull, the owner of the hand releases a tremulous breath, like they could not breathe until now.
Gently, Zoro takes the hand in his, immediately recognizing it. Thanks to the devil fruit, Luffy’s hands are still soft and free of callouses, even after such a long time at sea.
“I’m ok,” he whispers, and brings the still shaking hand to rest above his heart. “See? I’m alive.” Luffy presses softly on his chest, like he’s finding it hard to believe him. After a second more of silence, Zoro sighs, and tugs at Luffy’s arm. “Come on.”
“What?” Luffy asks, speaking for the first time, and unlike Zoro, his voice is not hoarse from sleep, like he might have been awake all this time, repeating bloody images in his head, over and over again.
“Get in the hammock, captain,” he repeats with another gentle tug, and after a second of hesitancy, Luffy climbs in. He settles in quickly, head resting on Zoro’s chest and his hand back to his temple. When Luffy’s shaking doesn’t subside, Zoro throws his arm around him, and draws slow circles into his back with his thumb.
Under Luffy’s ear, the steady beat of Zoro’s heart, and the rhythmic rising of his chest lull him to sleep.
(Zoro doesn’t enjoy physical contact itself. On most occasions, it either meant pain or unwanted attention. But here, on this ship, he can enjoy not the touches themselves but what they mean. A bump of fists, a joking slap on the shoulder. A hand on his temple, desperate to not le him slip away. So he lays there, and feels Luffy’s heart beating against his side slow from its jackrabbit pace. They’re both alive, still, and that’s all that matters.)
So, despite how hard they’ve tried to shelter the captain from the truth, Luffy still knows. Apologetically, the crew lets him cling on them a second longer, and they don’t say anything when they catch him staring a bit too hard, a stormy look in his eyes. After each fight, he stands guard outside the infirmary room, and instead of admonishing him, they bring him food, or a warm blanket, or they simply keep him company.
Zoro realizes, then, that without realizing, he’s put Luffy up on a pedestal, at some point. He’s never seen the younger afraid, before. He’s seen him mad, or enraged. He’s seen him determined to do what it takes to end the madness, or to exact revenge for those who’ve been hurt. But Luffy is just a boy (Zoro is not much older, still a teenager, but he refuses to acknowledge that he, too, is just a boy in a sea of monsters), and he gets scared, when the people he loves, his friends, his family, suffer. His face twists, and his eyes turn pained and so, so guilty.
It takes some time to convince Luffy that they are ok, really, even when they’re not, because if Luffy loses conviction, if Luffy starts thinking his dream is not worth all this pain, they might just fall apart definitely. Zoro’s lived through unspeakable things, but he doesn’t think he would survive seeing Luffy abandon hope.
So he smiles at his captain, hiding bloodied teeth, and reassures him that everything is fine. Because it is, even when his body’s been light on fire and his bones have been grind to dust. Things are truly fine, more than fine, reallyd, because Zoro has his crew on his side, wilder than the sea, and he has his captain, the beacon his heart will never lose sight of.
Luffy believes them, of course, because his faith in them is even stronger than that he holds for himself, unshakeable and just as undying as them. He still worries, and he still rages at their pain, but he doesn’t fear, because his trust that they will overcome today’s struggles is stronger than Death could even be.