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He could still hear it, the sound of drums. That sounds that beats louder than the sound of his own heart. He could hear how effortlessly those drums tear through the side of mountains and explode in the depth of valleys.
When those drums sound, trees and homes catch fire and he could hear screaming. The sound of so many people screaming. He can’t catch his breath, the drums are everywhere. They fire one by one from the ship that brought him there. Each explosion the boom of a drumstick hitting the earth and ending lives.
He can still feel the cold as it tries to overtake his body. It is him and not him. He is the cold, but that cold person that scouts the land searching for runaways, that is not me. It can’t be him.
He cannot recognize the man who scans the island, taking long strides and freezing everything in his path. His jacket flies in the wind, everything he sees turns to ice. He does not have to lift a finger, the cold moves at his command every time he so much as touches someone else.
It’s cold and the screaming won’t stop. The burning won’t stop. The agony won’t stop.
These are the times he remembers a child and it feels like his heart will fall right out of my chest. She is such a tiny thing. Her small head can barely reach my knees and cold tears fall from ice blue eyes. The people of this land, they say that this girl is a monster.
“Is this your definition of justice?”
He doesn’t want to remember that voice, that laugh, that man. That man who used to be his, but now fights for her. That little girl with raven dark hair and big blue eyes. She is supposed to die.
He shakes now at this point of the dream. This is where he tries to fight this memory. In his dreams, he kills this child, he does his duty and her blood spills in rivers like the blood of the thousands that form the sea around this island.
He can’t breathe like this, he can’t breathe. He sees himself kneeling at the edge of the island, kneeling where that little boat should be.
The sea craft is covered in blood but not mine. He wishes it was his. He can’t stand, he can’t think. He hates it. He needs- h-help. Someone- Someone!
But who would? Who would help a murderer?
He sees Akainu standing before him, looking down on him as he remained knelt in the reddened mud. Have his brilliant red eyes always looked upon him with so much judgement?
Is he a monster too?
His hand reaches out covered in flames and this is when Kuzan’s mind gives way.
Finally Aokiji’s eyes snap open, finally he can breathe, fearing himself from the memory of screams and his heart beats faster and faster. He can’t stop shaking. His hands won’t stop shaking and he pulls the sleeping mask from his face, panting heavily as he pushes to a sitting position in bed.
A nightmare. It’s always the same. Of Ohara, Saul, those people….. That girl.
Aokiji stood shakily, going for a short stroll. Perhaps the air, the nights air would soothe his fear of the uneasy memory of a face that would forever haunt him. Even awake he could still hear her soft cries, he could still see the fear on her face when she looked at him.
Of course, of course such a little girl looked at him that way.
Perhaps it should be uplifting that a girl branded as a monster would fear him on sight, but he felt sick just thinking about it.
Once he was dressed her got walking. He didn’t care where he was going, he just needed to move.
At times like this, when stuff got too hard, he could always go to Saul. Saul had been his drinking buddy, they’d sit together and chat about the highs and lows of their days, knocking their cups together as they toasted another successful day of bringing justice to the world.
Saul was dead now. Frozen to death.
Aokiji started to walk faster. The cold was catching up to him even out here.
Then Garp san. But he never talked to Garp about his problem with the Marines, nor really. Garp had his own problems with his rebellious family. Perhaps Garp would not understand, or perhaps he would…and that would make Aokiji feel worse.
He walked faster and faster until he was running. It was so stupid for an Admiral to run through his own base. That’s right. He was an admiral now. He’d climbed the ranks of the Marines. He and Akainu-
Akainu.
Akainu would never be an option. Akainu would never understand.
Aokiji was losing his mind as he finally got to the shed where he kept his bicycle. He could just ride for a minute. For a minute it would clear his head.
The open sea was before him and he took off, the ice moving on instinct under him as he sped to outrun the cold, outrun the screaming and the boom of the drums. Faster and faster his legs moved, pushing him further out into the sea until his breathing began to calm.
The memories began to fade, the drums were harder to hear. Now the only sound that resounded in the quiet night was his panting and the sound of the night.
The Ice Admiral took in deep breaths, his eyes opening slowly was his realization that he’d closed them in the first place. His hands still shook but most of the memories had faded now. Still, it was so embarrassing for an admiral to be haunted by the Ghosts of Ohara.
Aokiji sighed his head up as he stared at the small light of the moon. In the darkness it was just his lone figure in his dressing robe, the ends of it flapping in the wind as he stared up on that icy water.
It was peaceful away from Marineford. Like those terrible sounds could only haunt him when he was there. Only when he tried to relax after a difficult meeting. That was so rude of those spirits, but he sighed as his mind drifted to other matters.
Nico Robin.
The girl….he’d spared by accident….but perhaps out of spite. It had shaken him when Akainu erased the evacuation boat, ending the chance of any possible refugees. The fire that consumed the town had taken everything until no one would ever remember that Ohara existed. Only those who took part in the Buster Call and….
The one and only survivor.
The weariness of that thought made him want to sink back into bed and pull the covers over his head. He felt so tired.
That girl was not supposed to exist. She was a detriment on this world like a bomb ticking and waiting to explode. If Akainu learnt that he’d not only let her go on purpose but also aided her escape, he wouldn’t let him off so easily. A girl like that was too dangerous to live in this filthy world. Yet he’d spared her.
He’d done it because Saul asked. He had no choice in that kind of situation, how could he deny his friend his only request in death? Saul that shouldn’t have died. That girl should have died instead. But Saul died. And she was alive.
Did it count as alive? Her existence right now? That tiny girl that had spent all of her life running everywhere because she was not allowed to live.
It was unfair.
Life was always unfair. She wasn’t the first, she wouldn’t be the last. Stop it was unfair. Unfair that she was born, unfair that he hadn’t been kind enough to end her life before it became worse. Unfair that he could t escape her in waking or sleep.
This was unbecoming of an admiral but he could stop the shaking in his hands after all. The shaking in his hands, the cold in is heart, the dark in his thoughts.
He’d ridden out to the middle of the sea like this. Out here, there was nothing but him and the vastness of the water around him. There was a place he could go where those nightmares could not chase him anymore-
No! That kind of thinking, it was stupid. What sort of Marine turned tailed on Justice?
But if all he’d been was loyal to Justice all of his life, then why would she torture him this way? Why Justice?! I’ve followed your orders and dedicated my life to he your slave. Is it not you I follow? Why are you dragging me out of bed? Why are you haunting my thoughts?
In his despair, the ice underneath him started to melt.
But what was alright right? Perhaps this was justice’s judgement. Out here, in the middle of nowhere, no one would know what would happen. He would disappear, just like Ohara, and his guilt and regrets would go with him to the bottom of the sea.
Let the guilt be someone else’s problem, let someone else handle the consequences of the bomb he unleashed on the world. The bomb that could activate a thousand monsters. He could just close his eyes and-
“Kuzan.”
Feet light as a feather, landing on his small icy path, snapped his eyes open. As well as a voice calling out his name.
The dark haired Admiral turned in surprise, his curls pulled by the icy wind and his eyes widened to see a man casually standing behind him. A very familiar man in yellow stripped pajamas, fluffy yellow slippers and a lazy smile on his face.
“Sleeep walking agaaain?” the man teased and slowly Kuzan turned, unable to believe what he was seeing.
“Borsalino san.” Like a light in the darkness his colleague had come.
For a moment, Kuzan was embarrassed. He did not know how to approach the matter, how to explain why he was here. It was silly, humiliating. He’d been attempting a few seconds ago and-
“You rode out pretty far this tiiime,” the light man sighed, looking around at the melting ice and he giggled. “Man, if I hadn’t followed you, you’d sink to the bottom of the sea, Kuzaaaan. That’s dangerous, you knoooow? A Marine Admiral shouldn’t act in this sort of waaaay.”
“Borsalino san…”
Was he going to keep acting like the ice admiral had sleep walked his way here?
Kuzan was speechless. For a moment he had nothing to say, just staring at the man ahead of him, speechless at being caught.
And yet something inside of his heart ached to see him here.
That’s right. They’d joined the Marines together. Sworn on justice together. Although Borsalino had not been on Ohara….
He wanted to ask him the meaning of justice, wanted to ask if what they were fighting for was truly worth it. He wanted to say so many things as he stared at that lone figure illuminated by the light of the moon.
“I’m sorry,” Kuzan said his voice choking on the word and the Light Man stepped forward immediately. Long arms wrapped around him suddenly and Kuzan could barely hold back his tears as he pressed his face into that chest, shaking in those arms.
At the end of the day, he was pathetic. A man who was supposed to stand as a pillar of justice, weeping because someone had noticed…. Someone had come.
“Now, now, you’re so much more emotional about this than I expected of you,” Borsalino laughed as he patted his head. “This is why Sakazuki scolds your drinking all the tiiime.”
Those words, those fake words that kindly did not address the issue but provided comfort anyway. Kuzan held on to those words as he shook, gasping when he was suddenly raised and carried bridal style by his fellow admiral. The bicycle he hooked on his arm.
Kuzan flushed.
“Oi,” the ice man protested but the light man just laughed.
“At the end of the day, you’re just like you were during training,” Borsalino teased.
Soft, Kuzan. You were always so soft….in a way.
“Let’s stop all this foolishness and go back nooow.”
Back to the prison that they called home, but at least they would return together. They were soldiers, fighting a war that was not easy and making sacrifices more than other people could bear. They took the lives of few to protect the lives of the many. They obeyed the orders that would make weaker men cave. It was hard, unforgiving, cold.
But in those arms that gave off a light glow as they carried him back to the icy white palace and strict halls, Kuzan did not feel alone. He did not feel lonely or stranded.
Their lives were hell, but it was at least a hell that they did not have to face alone.
They flew in together faster than anyone would know that they were gone. Without a word, Borsalino returned Kuzan to his room, but this time he stayed by his side, laughing that his room was too hot anyway.
Sakazuki watched them come in together and said nothing. Instead, he stayed at the balcony a little longer, staring out at the sea that stretched endlessly before him.
On that sea, in the moonlight, he’d seen a lone bicycle rider unmoving and staring up at the moon.
That moment, something strange had grabbed his heart tight and stopped the air in his throat. He didn’t know what it was that made him fetch Borsalino, mumbling that Kuzan was sleep riding. He didn’t want to even dissect why the other Admiral had believed him.
But now that they’d both returned, the goosebumps had begun to fade from his flesh and he took a long drag from his smoky cigar.
“Baka,” the admiral mumbled before puffing out the flames of his smoke and then heading inside to face the cold and lonely night .… that had nearly taken something from him. Something that he could not name.