PAGE TWO: It's okay, you guys can request again!
ONE PIECE FAN-FOR-ALL
Or, free-for-all-fic, or fic free-for-all, or fic-for-all, whatever phrasing floats your boat.
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Filled | Unfilled (BOTH posts updated to about half of page three, updated Sept 21, 11-something pm, GMT -5 ( Read more... )
1.
One stray bullet, that's all. The Marine behind the trigger isn't even looking their way. But somehow, he misfires, and in the middle of just another skirmish, Zoro is dead, and his captain and crew can't even take revenge.
***
Luffy doesn't like the idea of burial at sea. Maybe it's a devil fruit user's horror of the depths. Maybe not. "I don't want to leave him alone under all that cold water," he tells the rest. "We'll bury him on land."
He can be meat for the worms instead.
Nami hits him for voicing that, then apologises as he blinks confusion at her.
They evade the Marines and double back. The island is quiet and peaceful, green and lush. There's plenty of dirt to choose from.
Luffy chooses a gnarled old tree near the crest of a tree-dotted slope. There's no other marker for the grave, nothing to say 'Here Lies Roronoa Zoro'; if there were, Marines or bounty hunters might dig it up. But they'll know where to find it again later, when they return after all their travels. Not a one of them will ever forget the afternoon they stand on that hillside, the skies blue save for the odd fluffy cloud and the lush surroundings comprehensively failing to match their mood.
After they've said their words and made their peace, they peel off from the graveside one by one. Eventually there is only the Navigator and the Captain left, and finally she leaves with a parting squeeze of her hands upon his, and there is only Luffy.
Luffy, Zoro's swords, a tree for a grave marker and an empty hillside.
The daylight starts to fade and still the captain doesn't come down. The crew-minus-one leave him be. Let him have his time to say goodbye.
Had they known, they would have gone back up there and dragged him down by force.
***
He sits there as the light fades; him alone -- and Wadou, Kitetsu and Shuusui, who just now feel like a presence of their own. He's barely registered the way that Chopper couldn't stop crying, or the grief on all his nakama's faces. He doesn't even remember the words he spoke for all of them, as captain, to bid Zoro on his way. When he holds the swords it seems almost as if they are grieving too.
He is trying to decide whether he will leave them with Zoro -- Nami said that that was best. Brook doesn't want them... he claims his own skills would shame them... and none of the others can use them at all.
Nami has more experience with death than he does. Luffy deals in life. Death is just... final. That's that, and nothing more to say, and he doesn't know how to put niceties on it. So he should listen to Nami, who is better at those things.
He'll miss Zoro.
He can't imagine what things will be like without him. The swordsman was the first he chose. He's always been there, such a unique piece he really doesn't know how the others will shift around to fill his place. There's no target for his rage, and no focus for this blank emptiness that he feels when he thinks of Zoro being dead.
He doesn't even know if Zoro has family he needs to tell. If there are, they must be in East Blue, and he cannot go back from halfway around the Grand Line. That will be a task for later... if he himself lives to be Pirate King.
Luffy doesn't often think about failure. But it's a thought that preys heavily on his mind at the moment.
***
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"Not a chance! Damn it, Luffy, just leave those alone."
Zoro's fingers stroke the grip of that sword like he's caressing a friend's face, and Luffy understands there is a boundary here he cannot cross.
Sitting cross-legged by the shallow mound of newly turned-over earth, three swords across his lap, memories playing across his mind, he starts to feel bad about the plan to leave them. They might've been as good as an extension of himself, but Zoro also loved his swords like nakama, and they were wielded by other hands before him. They're tools of battle, needing the clash of steel and taste of blood. They should be wielded by other hands still, not left to rust with a man who'll never use them again. Zoro, he's sure, wouldn't want that.
Luffy makes his decision. He will not leave the swords. Rather, he will find them a new master or masters. "You hear that, Zoro?" He pats the ground, like knocking for the sleeping swordsman's attention. "I'm going to take them away, but I'll find them all a place, even if one of them is cursed and tricky. I hope that's what you'd have wanted."
He waits, a little bit expectantly, but there is no sign of approval or otherwise from the silent dirt. He looks down at the sword both his hands are wrapped around. Wadou, Zoro's favourite. The one he's always been apprehensive about, even more than Kitetsu, down to the general feeling that, nakama, captain or not, he'd die quickly and efficiently if he messed with it.
It's both curiosity and reverence that drive him to partially draw the blade from its sheath.
The sense of unfulfilled longing and foiled desire sweeps through him. It feels as though he's pinned by a gaze staring out at him from the shimmer of light that catches on the polished blade. He doesn't hear the words, but he feels them in every fibre of his being:
"I need you to finish it for me."
And for the second time in the space of a day, nothing will ever be the same again.
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