Fic: Deep Blue Sea (Chapter Four)
Posted against my better judgement.
Previous Chapters:
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Interlude
Title: Deep Blue Sea (Chapter Four)
Fandom: One Piece (c) Eiichiro Oda
Rating: PG-15 for language, violence, and mature themes
Summary: AU Warning. Myths and legends are reborn, men and monsters are set on conflicting paths, and all for the love of the Sea.
Chapter Four:
It was the shriek that revived him. Blood curdling and inhuman, it was the howl of the storm that haunted the Flying Dutchman, refined into a single, anguish-drenched voice. Thunder rolled overhead, and lightning struck the deck, but the wood was too saturated to catch fire. The Sea screamed, a sound of rage and pain that resonated in every drop of his blood and reminded him -as if he could forget-that he belonged to her. He was not of her, like the Bastard who captained the ship, and he was not for her, like the seamen Arlong hunted, but she owned him all the same. Her mark was branded on his soul, a sign for “beloved” for the gift he accepted or “despised” for the treasure he stole. Given his situation, he was inclined to believe in “despised”.
The sun never shone on the Dutchman. The deck was always cold and damp, but it never rotted. No wave could drag the damned ship under. He had seen some monsters in his time, walls of water as high as mountains and spinning whirlpools with hearts of jagged rock. Yet Arlong, and by extension, the Dutchman, were unbowed before the Sea’s might. If anything, her wrath seemed to spur him onto new and viler atrocities.
On that long ago day when Arlong tired to press the pirate who kicked things, he would have sworn the Sea would have destroyed them all. And when that seamaster washed up on deck…
Seamasters. It was always the merfolk. The Children of the Deep Blue Sea were forever falling into his life and making a bloody mess of things. The memory came unbidden of the pale, golden creature lying on the deck, opening eyes as timeless as the Sea and gazing back at him with shock and curiosity. The pulse of power beneath his hands synching with his own heartbeat as he lifted the sleek body in his arms…
His eyes flew open to escape that phantom, and tossed him from a tempting fever-dream into a nightmare. Fully conscious once more, he could hear the subtle, secret language of the Sea, though subtlety was lost on the Dutchman. She spat curses as old as the world and screamed in a language from the time before words.
It seemed Arlong had captured another of her Children.
The shrieking redheaded woman currently fending off the untoward advances of some of the crew on the middle deck had all the fury of her mother, clawing at one man’s eyes and kicking another in the crotch. Arlong watched with perverse amusement as the spitfire tried to break past the lusty crew and retreat to the Sea.
“Get the hell away from me!” She snarled, visibly tiring but too stubborn to submit. He could tell by the storm’s echo in her voice that she was a siren, and he vaguely remembered someone nearly gutting him to get to the helm before he was knocked unconscious.
Her song must have lured them, he realized, but the Bastard sprung his own trap when they got close.
The heavy chains that bound him to the bridge deck were long enough that he could easily storm down to the “party” below, though they rattled loudly so that his otherwise silent steps were marked well before he was close enough to break into their circle.
“Finally stepping off your pedestal to join us, eh, swordsman?” A rodent-faced sailor grinned maliciously. “Oh, sorry, I forgot; you can’t be a swordsman without a-“
Lightning flashed appropriately in the same instant that the would-be swordsman threw the slack of his chains around the offender’s throat and pulled. The sharp crack of bones shattering caused the rest of the crew to pause.
“Was that really necessary, Roronoa?” Arlong chuckled. “Another outburst like that, and we’ll have to shorten your leash again. Can’t have you thinning out the crew too much.”
Roronoa Zoro spat on the corpse of the man he just killed and glared at the Bastard with cold, dark eyes like the midnight zone of the Sea that he had never seen, but knew all the same.
“That would be you, if I had my swords.” He growled. Arlong just laughed.
“The Sea has your swords now, boy.” He sneered. “Why not ask for them back? See if my dear old mother will hear your pitiful pleas.”
Zoro was well accustomed to Arlong’s taunts and had long ago learned to weather them in the same way that the Dutchman weathered the tempest. It would be pointless, he knew, to lunge and attack the captain without his long-lost swords. Even if he could reach the Bastard - which, he knew from experience, he could not - he wasn’t strong enough to win unarmed. Especially unarmed.
“It looks like Roronoa has a problem with the hospitality we’re offering the lady, boys.” Arlong’s shark-like grin made Zoro want to stab things, Arlong being first and foremost on the list. “Put her in the grand cabin while we convince him of our intentions.”
The siren screamed as three of the crewmen grabbed her, and Zoro spun around to block them, but the captain was suddenly behind him, lifting him off his feet in a powerful, strangling grip.
“Not this time, boy.” He said, shaking his prisoner so that the chains rattled loudly. “You’ve cheated me out of pretty prey before, but she’s mine. Just like you.”
“You own nothing.” Zoro choked, lashing out only to have the Bastard catch and crush his attacking leg. “Not the seamaster, not the siren, and not me. We belong to the Sea.”
“She’ll be mine.” Arlong corrupted the Sea’s speech like oil on water, toxic and tainting everything it touched. “I’ll carve that faithless whore’s heart from her chest and you will watch. You and every one of her precious Children will be powerless to stop me.” He twisted Zoro’s broken leg and dropped the former swordsman to the deck. “Bolt his chains down to three feet.” He ordered, ducking into the grand cabin and leaving the beaten warrior to the crew.
With only three feet of freedom to his name, Zoro’s temperament matched the near-hurricane around them. The crew steered clear of the helm, leaving the former swordsman to his pressed position in solitude. Only Arlong ever challenged him for control of the ship’s heading, turning away from land and any reefs the captured man could use to run them aground, or towards ships to raid, and usually doing significant collateral damage to Zoro in the process.
He didn’t hear any more of the siren until a week later, when, after engaging and taking a 30-gun frigate, the debris was washed from the deck to reveal a crack into the cabin below.
The sigh of relief that he heard when waves rolled over the wood and leaked inside caused him to pause, for he hadn’t heard the ocean’s tongue in it’s proper form from anything but the Sea herself in ages.
“Still alive, then.” He muttered, a shade too loudly since the siren apparently heard him.
“Hey up there,” her honeyed, sultry voice floated up through the crack. “If you let me out, I’ll grant you your heart’s desire.” It was a tempting offer, to be sure, fully backed by the Sea’s irresistible call. Anyone else would have fallen over himself in order to run down and free her. Zoro merely rolled his eyes.
“Witch,” he growled back, “don’t you think that if I could move, I’d have gotten off this floating hell before now?”
The siren’s startled gasp told him that no one had ever responded to her lure in such a blatantly disinterested way, and the tide-against-the-reef curse that followed said what she thought of him.
“No one’s that flexible,” he snorted. “And keep it down. If they figure out there’s a leak, the Bastard will have that crack sealed.”
“You… understand Sea Speech? Who are you?” The wonderment in her voice gave way to a more tense tone bordering but not quite becoming fear. “What are you?”
His reply came in the form of a sigh, a nearly silent sound of the sunset kissing the waves on the horizon. The wind carried it away before anyone else could hear it, because it was a word with power of its own belonging only to the Sea, her children, and their lovers.
In his memory, he recalled his youth: training to be the greatest swordsman, being the champion of his school, beating opponents far larger, older, and more experienced than himself. He was undefeated… until that girl.
She appeared one morning before the mist burned off, carrying a pearl-white sword that was almost too long for her. There was a certain sway to her step that he would many years later come to recognize as the rhythm of the tide.
“I’m looking for a swordsman.” She said to Sensei. “He has wronged my mother. I will defeat him to restore her honor.”
Sensei looked at her with wise eyes, a look Zoro respected immensely because it was the look of a man playing out bouts, battles, and wars in the space of a heartbeat.
“I know of the man,” he said, “and I know that what you perceive to be his sin was a gift. Come, tell me your story.”
Zoro was the only student present in the dojo at the time, so only he was surprised when Sensei took the girl aside and spoke with her at great length. Later, Sensei introduced her to the class as his daughter, Kuina, and his cool, pointed look at young Zoro told him not to challenge the statement.
Kuina was to study with them for a while before returning to her mother. It was a test of her swordsmanship, Sensei said. The other students laughed to themselves, thinking her a novice and an easy win. That was before she soundly beat them.
She was good. Very good. She beat the entire beginner class in five minutes, and then the intermediate class in ten. She worked her way through the advanced class, and Zoro watched as one by one his classmates were defeated. He calculated, marked moves and noted techniques, gauged speed and strength, and determined not to lose to a girl who’d simply showed up out of the blue.
Then he’d lost.
Two thousand times.
He ended up challenging her to a duel. They met under the moonlight, Zoro’s twin blades shining like silver and Kuina’s pearl-white sword reflecting like the ocean. All of his strength, all of his power, every ounce of his skill and technique went into that battle.
Two thousand and one.
It frustrated him, to be beaten by a girl, and he said as much. She replied that she was frustrated by Sensei, who told her she’d never be able to beat the man who wronged her mother; she’d never grow up to be a master swordsman. Zoro said that was ridiculous; she could grow up to beat anyone, and it was unfair to his dream of beating her to imply otherwise.
Then she pointed out that, in the time since she first came to the school, only she had not grown at all. And Zoro, for the first time, realized that she was right. He was nearly a man, and Kuina was still just a girl. This thought confused him and frustrated him further, but he had little time to dwell on it.
They crossed paths with a man with a black blade on their return to the school. Kuina immediately drew her sword and proclaimed that, for his crime against the Sea (here Zoro was lost, because hadn’t she said it was her mother who was wronged?), she would have his life.
The man with the black blade stared at her for a moment before unsheathing his own sword and telling her he’d give her no quarter. Zoro kept silent, watching the battle with grim fascination. The man’s eyes had an unusual quality to them, sharp and deadly, and glittering like gold beneath the sea…
It ended with a flash of the black blade. Kuina fell to her knees, one hand clutching her sword and the other her most likely mortal wound.
“Contemplate eternity,” the black-bladed swordsman said. “Eternity with naught but the gift of one who loved you, more than life, more than eternity. Perhaps you are too young to understand.”
Zoro, temper enflamed by seeing his rival challenged and fall, challenged him.
The black blade cut a bloody trench from shoulder to hip - the greatest and last of his scars.
“Come back when you know what you’re fighting for and are willing to die for it.” The swordsman said. Zoro didn’t understand at the time, but then again, he was in too much pain for philosophy.
Kuina was in poor shape, pale and shaking and bleeding something that didn’t quite seem like blood. Zoro wasn’t in much better condition, but he crawled to her side anyway.
“I wish I could see the Sea,” she whispered with a deep, unfathomable longing in her voice that sent shivers down his spine.
He didn’t remember where he found the strength to stand, or to lift her, let alone carry her all the way down to the beach, though he had a vague recollection of the black-bladed swordsman handing him the white sword before vanishing at some point. It was just something he had to do, so he did it.
He remembered the sound of crying, and of words that more resembled the sound of the ocean than any language he’d ever heard. He remembered waking in the morning, whole and hale but for the scar on his chest and the tide washing over him and nearly drowning him. He remembered the white sword, clutched in his hands where Kuina had been carried, and he remembered the pearls that adorned its grip and guard. He remembered the Sea, whispering to him in a single word filled with both love and hate, “Undying”.
Afterwards, as he journeyed to find the black-bladed swordsman, he discovered that was what he was. No wound could kill him. No disease afflicted him. He no longer aged. If he was injured, all it took was a splash of seawater and he was healed as cleanly as if he had not been hurt at all.
Arlong found it incredibly amusing, when he first captured the Undying swordsman, to subject him to various forms of torture. The Sea would wash the gruesome picture from the canvas of his skin, and then the Bastard would start anew. They chained him to the helm to keep him from escaping, since he alone of the pressed crew could probably survive the tempest. It kept him away from the majority of the crewmen, who were usually the victims of his frustration if they were too close to him.
One day, he’d break free of the heavy chains and resume his hunt for the black-bladed swordsman. For now, he cast his gaze back to the crack in the deck and said, “I’m the man who’s going to be the swordsman whose name shakes the heavens.”
To Be Continued...
Author's Note: It may be a while between chapters from here on out, seeing as how my fic book is getting perilously full and I've got severe writer's block from this point onwards, but Chibi's threatened to keelhaul me if I quit. I know it sounds amateurish, but please comment if you're reading. It's how I know that there's an audience and I'm not wasting my time, and it really does make me write faster.
Previous Chapters:
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Interlude
Title: Deep Blue Sea (Chapter Four)
Fandom: One Piece (c) Eiichiro Oda
Rating: PG-15 for language, violence, and mature themes
Summary: AU Warning. Myths and legends are reborn, men and monsters are set on conflicting paths, and all for the love of the Sea.
Chapter Four:
It was the shriek that revived him. Blood curdling and inhuman, it was the howl of the storm that haunted the Flying Dutchman, refined into a single, anguish-drenched voice. Thunder rolled overhead, and lightning struck the deck, but the wood was too saturated to catch fire. The Sea screamed, a sound of rage and pain that resonated in every drop of his blood and reminded him -as if he could forget-that he belonged to her. He was not of her, like the Bastard who captained the ship, and he was not for her, like the seamen Arlong hunted, but she owned him all the same. Her mark was branded on his soul, a sign for “beloved” for the gift he accepted or “despised” for the treasure he stole. Given his situation, he was inclined to believe in “despised”.
The sun never shone on the Dutchman. The deck was always cold and damp, but it never rotted. No wave could drag the damned ship under. He had seen some monsters in his time, walls of water as high as mountains and spinning whirlpools with hearts of jagged rock. Yet Arlong, and by extension, the Dutchman, were unbowed before the Sea’s might. If anything, her wrath seemed to spur him onto new and viler atrocities.
On that long ago day when Arlong tired to press the pirate who kicked things, he would have sworn the Sea would have destroyed them all. And when that seamaster washed up on deck…
Seamasters. It was always the merfolk. The Children of the Deep Blue Sea were forever falling into his life and making a bloody mess of things. The memory came unbidden of the pale, golden creature lying on the deck, opening eyes as timeless as the Sea and gazing back at him with shock and curiosity. The pulse of power beneath his hands synching with his own heartbeat as he lifted the sleek body in his arms…
His eyes flew open to escape that phantom, and tossed him from a tempting fever-dream into a nightmare. Fully conscious once more, he could hear the subtle, secret language of the Sea, though subtlety was lost on the Dutchman. She spat curses as old as the world and screamed in a language from the time before words.
It seemed Arlong had captured another of her Children.
The shrieking redheaded woman currently fending off the untoward advances of some of the crew on the middle deck had all the fury of her mother, clawing at one man’s eyes and kicking another in the crotch. Arlong watched with perverse amusement as the spitfire tried to break past the lusty crew and retreat to the Sea.
“Get the hell away from me!” She snarled, visibly tiring but too stubborn to submit. He could tell by the storm’s echo in her voice that she was a siren, and he vaguely remembered someone nearly gutting him to get to the helm before he was knocked unconscious.
Her song must have lured them, he realized, but the Bastard sprung his own trap when they got close.
The heavy chains that bound him to the bridge deck were long enough that he could easily storm down to the “party” below, though they rattled loudly so that his otherwise silent steps were marked well before he was close enough to break into their circle.
“Finally stepping off your pedestal to join us, eh, swordsman?” A rodent-faced sailor grinned maliciously. “Oh, sorry, I forgot; you can’t be a swordsman without a-“
Lightning flashed appropriately in the same instant that the would-be swordsman threw the slack of his chains around the offender’s throat and pulled. The sharp crack of bones shattering caused the rest of the crew to pause.
“Was that really necessary, Roronoa?” Arlong chuckled. “Another outburst like that, and we’ll have to shorten your leash again. Can’t have you thinning out the crew too much.”
Roronoa Zoro spat on the corpse of the man he just killed and glared at the Bastard with cold, dark eyes like the midnight zone of the Sea that he had never seen, but knew all the same.
“That would be you, if I had my swords.” He growled. Arlong just laughed.
“The Sea has your swords now, boy.” He sneered. “Why not ask for them back? See if my dear old mother will hear your pitiful pleas.”
Zoro was well accustomed to Arlong’s taunts and had long ago learned to weather them in the same way that the Dutchman weathered the tempest. It would be pointless, he knew, to lunge and attack the captain without his long-lost swords. Even if he could reach the Bastard - which, he knew from experience, he could not - he wasn’t strong enough to win unarmed. Especially unarmed.
“It looks like Roronoa has a problem with the hospitality we’re offering the lady, boys.” Arlong’s shark-like grin made Zoro want to stab things, Arlong being first and foremost on the list. “Put her in the grand cabin while we convince him of our intentions.”
The siren screamed as three of the crewmen grabbed her, and Zoro spun around to block them, but the captain was suddenly behind him, lifting him off his feet in a powerful, strangling grip.
“Not this time, boy.” He said, shaking his prisoner so that the chains rattled loudly. “You’ve cheated me out of pretty prey before, but she’s mine. Just like you.”
“You own nothing.” Zoro choked, lashing out only to have the Bastard catch and crush his attacking leg. “Not the seamaster, not the siren, and not me. We belong to the Sea.”
“She’ll be mine.” Arlong corrupted the Sea’s speech like oil on water, toxic and tainting everything it touched. “I’ll carve that faithless whore’s heart from her chest and you will watch. You and every one of her precious Children will be powerless to stop me.” He twisted Zoro’s broken leg and dropped the former swordsman to the deck. “Bolt his chains down to three feet.” He ordered, ducking into the grand cabin and leaving the beaten warrior to the crew.
With only three feet of freedom to his name, Zoro’s temperament matched the near-hurricane around them. The crew steered clear of the helm, leaving the former swordsman to his pressed position in solitude. Only Arlong ever challenged him for control of the ship’s heading, turning away from land and any reefs the captured man could use to run them aground, or towards ships to raid, and usually doing significant collateral damage to Zoro in the process.
He didn’t hear any more of the siren until a week later, when, after engaging and taking a 30-gun frigate, the debris was washed from the deck to reveal a crack into the cabin below.
The sigh of relief that he heard when waves rolled over the wood and leaked inside caused him to pause, for he hadn’t heard the ocean’s tongue in it’s proper form from anything but the Sea herself in ages.
“Still alive, then.” He muttered, a shade too loudly since the siren apparently heard him.
“Hey up there,” her honeyed, sultry voice floated up through the crack. “If you let me out, I’ll grant you your heart’s desire.” It was a tempting offer, to be sure, fully backed by the Sea’s irresistible call. Anyone else would have fallen over himself in order to run down and free her. Zoro merely rolled his eyes.
“Witch,” he growled back, “don’t you think that if I could move, I’d have gotten off this floating hell before now?”
The siren’s startled gasp told him that no one had ever responded to her lure in such a blatantly disinterested way, and the tide-against-the-reef curse that followed said what she thought of him.
“No one’s that flexible,” he snorted. “And keep it down. If they figure out there’s a leak, the Bastard will have that crack sealed.”
“You… understand Sea Speech? Who are you?” The wonderment in her voice gave way to a more tense tone bordering but not quite becoming fear. “What are you?”
His reply came in the form of a sigh, a nearly silent sound of the sunset kissing the waves on the horizon. The wind carried it away before anyone else could hear it, because it was a word with power of its own belonging only to the Sea, her children, and their lovers.
In his memory, he recalled his youth: training to be the greatest swordsman, being the champion of his school, beating opponents far larger, older, and more experienced than himself. He was undefeated… until that girl.
She appeared one morning before the mist burned off, carrying a pearl-white sword that was almost too long for her. There was a certain sway to her step that he would many years later come to recognize as the rhythm of the tide.
“I’m looking for a swordsman.” She said to Sensei. “He has wronged my mother. I will defeat him to restore her honor.”
Sensei looked at her with wise eyes, a look Zoro respected immensely because it was the look of a man playing out bouts, battles, and wars in the space of a heartbeat.
“I know of the man,” he said, “and I know that what you perceive to be his sin was a gift. Come, tell me your story.”
Zoro was the only student present in the dojo at the time, so only he was surprised when Sensei took the girl aside and spoke with her at great length. Later, Sensei introduced her to the class as his daughter, Kuina, and his cool, pointed look at young Zoro told him not to challenge the statement.
Kuina was to study with them for a while before returning to her mother. It was a test of her swordsmanship, Sensei said. The other students laughed to themselves, thinking her a novice and an easy win. That was before she soundly beat them.
She was good. Very good. She beat the entire beginner class in five minutes, and then the intermediate class in ten. She worked her way through the advanced class, and Zoro watched as one by one his classmates were defeated. He calculated, marked moves and noted techniques, gauged speed and strength, and determined not to lose to a girl who’d simply showed up out of the blue.
Then he’d lost.
Two thousand times.
He ended up challenging her to a duel. They met under the moonlight, Zoro’s twin blades shining like silver and Kuina’s pearl-white sword reflecting like the ocean. All of his strength, all of his power, every ounce of his skill and technique went into that battle.
Two thousand and one.
It frustrated him, to be beaten by a girl, and he said as much. She replied that she was frustrated by Sensei, who told her she’d never be able to beat the man who wronged her mother; she’d never grow up to be a master swordsman. Zoro said that was ridiculous; she could grow up to beat anyone, and it was unfair to his dream of beating her to imply otherwise.
Then she pointed out that, in the time since she first came to the school, only she had not grown at all. And Zoro, for the first time, realized that she was right. He was nearly a man, and Kuina was still just a girl. This thought confused him and frustrated him further, but he had little time to dwell on it.
They crossed paths with a man with a black blade on their return to the school. Kuina immediately drew her sword and proclaimed that, for his crime against the Sea (here Zoro was lost, because hadn’t she said it was her mother who was wronged?), she would have his life.
The man with the black blade stared at her for a moment before unsheathing his own sword and telling her he’d give her no quarter. Zoro kept silent, watching the battle with grim fascination. The man’s eyes had an unusual quality to them, sharp and deadly, and glittering like gold beneath the sea…
It ended with a flash of the black blade. Kuina fell to her knees, one hand clutching her sword and the other her most likely mortal wound.
“Contemplate eternity,” the black-bladed swordsman said. “Eternity with naught but the gift of one who loved you, more than life, more than eternity. Perhaps you are too young to understand.”
Zoro, temper enflamed by seeing his rival challenged and fall, challenged him.
The black blade cut a bloody trench from shoulder to hip - the greatest and last of his scars.
“Come back when you know what you’re fighting for and are willing to die for it.” The swordsman said. Zoro didn’t understand at the time, but then again, he was in too much pain for philosophy.
Kuina was in poor shape, pale and shaking and bleeding something that didn’t quite seem like blood. Zoro wasn’t in much better condition, but he crawled to her side anyway.
“I wish I could see the Sea,” she whispered with a deep, unfathomable longing in her voice that sent shivers down his spine.
He didn’t remember where he found the strength to stand, or to lift her, let alone carry her all the way down to the beach, though he had a vague recollection of the black-bladed swordsman handing him the white sword before vanishing at some point. It was just something he had to do, so he did it.
He remembered the sound of crying, and of words that more resembled the sound of the ocean than any language he’d ever heard. He remembered waking in the morning, whole and hale but for the scar on his chest and the tide washing over him and nearly drowning him. He remembered the white sword, clutched in his hands where Kuina had been carried, and he remembered the pearls that adorned its grip and guard. He remembered the Sea, whispering to him in a single word filled with both love and hate, “Undying”.
Afterwards, as he journeyed to find the black-bladed swordsman, he discovered that was what he was. No wound could kill him. No disease afflicted him. He no longer aged. If he was injured, all it took was a splash of seawater and he was healed as cleanly as if he had not been hurt at all.
Arlong found it incredibly amusing, when he first captured the Undying swordsman, to subject him to various forms of torture. The Sea would wash the gruesome picture from the canvas of his skin, and then the Bastard would start anew. They chained him to the helm to keep him from escaping, since he alone of the pressed crew could probably survive the tempest. It kept him away from the majority of the crewmen, who were usually the victims of his frustration if they were too close to him.
One day, he’d break free of the heavy chains and resume his hunt for the black-bladed swordsman. For now, he cast his gaze back to the crack in the deck and said, “I’m the man who’s going to be the swordsman whose name shakes the heavens.”
To Be Continued...
Author's Note: It may be a while between chapters from here on out, seeing as how my fic book is getting perilously full and I've got severe writer's block from this point onwards, but Chibi's threatened to keelhaul me if I quit. I know it sounds amateurish, but please comment if you're reading. It's how I know that there's an audience and I'm not wasting my time, and it really does make me write faster.