FIC: Killing Blow (One Piece, 30_wounds #3)
30_wounds : prompt table
Luffyko fic. Serious rape theme. R rated, but only for the themes because nothing is described. 3000 words.
3. Killing Blow
Fight over, he's been lying there a while just waiting for one of the others to show up and drag him back to the Sunny. Girontin was tougher than he thought, or else he's weaker (but he prefers the first option) -- either way he had to break out Gear Second and use it til it all but drained him. It's boring, just lying there, but he's tired, so that's okay. He's starting to doze when someone finally turns his immovable body over. He's about to ask what took them so long, but it's not one of his nakama.
"Huh?" He blinks at the man. "Who're you?" He looks like a soldier, and he's wearing the same clothes as Girontin's men that they've been fighting, but Luffy doesn't recognise him in particular. He's not afraid, since those guys must know by now that they lost.
"So you're alive," is his only reply.
"Yeah." He keeps blinking, since he can do little else. "I can't move, though. I'm waiting for my friends. Can you see them anywhere? There's a swordsman with green hair, and a tall lady with a lot of hands, and a little furry one-- or he might be big--"
"I haven't seen them, but I can tell you now, there's nobody coming. No-one could have survived the explosion."
"Nah, of course they did! So they'll come for me." He does a double-take. "...Explosion?"
"Yeah, the... fortress blew up. You didn't notice?" The stranger leans over and wipes a splash of blood from Luffy's face with his sleeve. He's tall and broad, has pale hair straggling into a weathered face and a white, sweat-stained bandana under his cap. No sign of special weapons or a devil fruit. About an hour ago Luffy was throwing dozens of his fellows around like matchsticks.
"I was probably fighting. But it doesn't matter," he says fiercely, "because they're fine. No stupid explosion could kill my nakama."
"If you say so." The soldier smiles, and there's a pause while they both look down at the hand he's just rested on Luffy's chest.
"Aaah!" That surprised him, and he can't slap the hands away as they slide beneath his shirt. "What-what're you doing? Don't touch my body!" He doesn't touch those much if he can help it, since he got changed.
"You should be more careful," the stranger says. "Lying around here for just anyone to find. You know how they say -- 'finder's keepers', and since it looks like all the spoils of war that've come to us under Girontin are finished thanks to those pirates... can't blame me for making the most of the last chance of leftover pickings I might get." Luffy squeaks at an uncomfortable squeeze, but then the hands retreat.
He almost thanks the guy for stopping, until he takes out a knife and starts cutting Luffy's clothes.
"...HEY! That's my shirt. I need that!" Because people complain if you walk around without one when you have breasts, though he's still not completely sure why. "Dammit..." It's already ruined. The bits get flicked aside. Luffy's relieved that the cloth of his shorts is too thick to easily cut and the stranger starts pulling them down instead, because that means he's only going to get half killed by Nami when he has to come back half-naked. He grumbles as the stranger slides each limp, unresponsive leg free and then chucks the shorts behind him. The knife comes back out for his underwear. "Bastard," Luffy rages. "Idiot. Stupid..." Why the hell does this guy think he can just come along and ruin people's clothes like that? He's glad that Usopp's got his hat safe.
He realises then that he's naked and a man he doesn't even know is staring at his new body the way he might stare at a piece of meat, and he suddenly feels nervous, and really wants to move. But since he exhausted all his strength using Gear Second too much, he's stuck unable to even muster enough strength for a single punch.
For this guy, he'd only need that.
"You're pretty," the man says, and Luffy says, blankly, "No, I'm not," as the other shuffles forward to crouch between his legs, tugging at his own clothes.
The stranger slides an arm beneath his leg, lifting it from under the knee, pushing it with him as he leans forward. Luffy feels his hips roll upwards with the pull. He feels sweaty, warm fingers curl at his waist. Something brushes against the absence between his thighs.
Luffy might be dumb, but at that point he realises what's going on, and the shock of knowledge paralyses his voice with the rest of him. He opens his mouth, but somehow the words won't come to protest "But I'm a man" and "You don't want to do this" and "Don't".
"Don't look like that," the man says, as though he's done nothing more than jostle his elbow on the street. "Injured the way you are, you probably won't even feel anything."
He's a liar, but as he lowers his weight down and presses forward, Luffy almost wishes he was right.
***
He's lying looking up at a lonely carrion bird circling the sky while the stranger sits next to him with a stolen cigarette hanging from his lips and takes his time packing up all the other things he's stripped from Girontin's unconscious form.
All these people ever do is steal. Girontin -- he stole a whole island, but now he's defeated, he's nothing but pickings, too.
Spoils of war. Luffy shapes the words with his lips but doesn't speak them. His voice is still in hiding after all that effort to suppress the helpless noises his body wanted to make. There's a churning dark something inside him, both boiling hot and icy cold, and he can't remember ever feeling a fury like this. Nobody ever wronged him deeply enough before. Now he thinks he knows a little of how Nami felt when Arlong stole her home. Or Robin, when the World Government destroyed everything. It must be this feeling. He thinks at least for him it's involved no more than his one body.
Even this doesn't seem enough to force a body to move that's already been strained past its limit.
He doesn't much care that the bits of his shirt are pillowed under his head, and the guy curled his knees together and draped his shorts over him. It's like Arlong's jocular pleasantries with Nami, the way he called her 'nakama' after everything he took. Arlong... was a lot like Girontin and his soldiers, when he thinks about it
"Maybe I'll go on to Iskan." And there's that, too. The soldier keeps talking to him, as though conversation is okay. "About twenty miles down the coast. See if there's anything left. It's been a few years, but it was the place our ship first ran aground off the harbour. I've a general's insignia, in here--" He slaps his bulging pack. "Could be profitable, if they've not yet heard."
"I," Luffy licks his dry lips as his voice cracks, "don't like you. Don't talk to me."
If he had his strength, the fight this man could offer him would be a joke.
A soft snort. "I suppose not." He rises to his feet. "There's the boss lying right over there, and I didn't even get to see the Strawhat captain. Suppose he must've long gone. Suppose that's lucky for me." Luffy's mouth opens, then snaps shut, and the soldier notices. "Huh. So I guess you're one of his, then. Cabin girl, cook's assistant..." Luffy sets his face into a mask of stone. "What's a guy look like who's worth three hundred million?"
"Taller than you," Luffy says sullenly. "Almost as tall as a giant. And blond. He's got a really cool beard, like a... big haystack. And a huge curved sword with teeth. He'll gut you with it for what you've done."
The soldier laughs. He's ready to go, but he doesn't move. "I'm a humane guy. Maybe I should just kill you. Even if that crew are still out there to find you, it's not much of a life for you, like this."
"What?" Luffy yelps. His brain's working extra to make up for his body, because it pieces together other strange comments and offers up the idea that the soldier thinks his neck is broken. Why he also thinks that's a reason to give up and die, Luffy doesn't fully understand. But he realises, as he opens his mouth, that while he definitely doesn't want the guy to kill him -- he doesn't want him to know his neck isn't broken, either.
Letting this man walk away isn't enough. His body is paralysed and his brain has never had that many cards to play, but it's shuffling all of them around desperately now.
"I don't want to die," he says. His voice comes out small, because he's afraid, but that's good. It only sounds more real. "Take me with you. Please. I need a doctor. Maybe they can fix me. Please take me to a doctor in Iskan."
If he stays here, he knows his nakama would find him.
--Find him like this, stripped and left. To avoid that, there are a lot of things he's prepared to trade, and for the rest of what he wants, he'll trade more.
"...Oh?" The soldier sets down his pack and crouches down over Luffy again. His skin feels like it's trying to crawl away and hide from the man's touch, and he knows the trade-off starts now. "I didn't think you liked my company."
"I want to live more." His throat is tight. The other man is too close.
In reply, a short bark of laughter, and the soldier doesn't ask what he gets in return for carrying Luffy along. It's not like they struck a bargain, but he'll take it anyway.
Hands... hands on him again. He can't breathe properly. But as the hands grasp and rearrange his legs, he realises they're only dressing him. It doesn't make their touch easier to endure. His shorts go back on, then the soldier pulls his own shirt off, and having a t-shirt underneath, he puts the shirt over Luffy's shoulders and fastens the buttons, though his hands wander a lot on the way.
"What's your name?" he asks finally.
Luffy thinks he should lie, but his brain's exhausted from too much thinking already, so he can only mumble, "Luffy."
"That's a pretty name."
"It's not!" It comes out an outraged yowl, and the man, who doesn't know he's really a man too, hidden in this smaller, rounder body, laughs at him again as he turns to heft the pack of stolen things and swing it onto his shoulders. The man turns back to pick up Luffy. His head falls against a smelly chest, and the supporting arms seem to burn against his back and bare legs.
He tries to work out how many hours he'll need, but his focus has fled, and he can no longer tackle such complicated thoughts.
He already knows it will take him past nightfall.
***
The colours of the sky are creeping towards dawn by the time movement starts to return to him. He hasn't slept. The taste is still thick in his mouth and between his legs his body's outrage of intrusion is a fierce ache. He had no real idea of all the things that people do. What they can do in hours and hours alone that aren't a few hasty stolen minutes out on an open battlefield. Yet he chose this. He won't regret it. The damage was done the first time. The night was just a long echo.
The rise and fall of the chest his ear rests upon is steady and regular. Tucked close against a larger body, under a scruffy blanket beneath the stars, Luffy reaches up a trembling arm and watches his fingers open and close against the backdrop of greying sky. As before, his arms regained their movement first. He's not strong enough yet to do anything, though. So he waits, as the sky becomes greyer and starts to wash with a little pale yellow, and he's still not strong enough to be absolutely sure, but he doesn't want to go through that again either, and his victim is sleeping but won't be for much longer, so it's time.
He heaves himself up on knees that don't yet want to move, feels the man beneath shift and groan as he pulls out of the loop of his arm, and straddling the broad chest, Luffy closes his hand around the thick neck and leans his weight upon it, and says, "Wake up."
The soldier moves and wakes sluggishly, his big, sated body lazy and slow. It's nice, Luffy thinks with an unaccustomed sourness, that his body that couldn't move still had this one half-defeated already. The eyes blink open, dull and confused.
"You... You're not..."
His hand tightens reflexively and strangles off further words. That's no good, so even though it's difficult and they don't want to, he makes his fingers loosen again.
"I got better," whispers Luffy. The air's too thick and heavy to shout. "Tell me your name, now."
"Statten. Jerris..." He can see the fear rising out of the drowsy confusion. Realises that his legs are working better than he thought, because automatically, and helped somewhat by the pinning blanket, he's been using them to clamp Statten's arms to his sides since he started to struggle. He might even be able to stand.
"I don't like what you did to me, Statten. Not yesterday, and not last night. I know you knew I didn't want to." He breathes harshly and bares his teeth. "I'm angry, Statten. I didn't know before what it was like to be this angry. I bet you don't. I'd show you, if I could think of any way how. But since I can't, there's one other thing I have left to do."
Since he thinks he can stand, he does. He could hardly finish it, this way, anyway. Heaving up on his weak and shaking legs frees the larger man to scramble aside and lurch to his feet, too. His breathing is heavy, but full of relief -- and he's laughing. He laughs at Luffy, who's wavering on uncooperative legs. Laughs as he reaches for his knife.
"You're stupid," Luffy says. They're both standing, sort of, and that makes it a fight. That's all he wants.
He throws a punch. Distance doesn't matter. Statten hasn't seen his devil fruit, so wasn't expecting his reach. Strength doesn't matter. Statten doesn't know he has recoil and momentum to make up for the weakness in his limbs.
One punch. That's all he needs.
That's all he needed.
It lands with a crunch and the soldier goes down, unmoving. Luffy loses his balance and doesn't bother to get up, crossing to the limp body on his hands and knees.
Statten's neck is snapped, but he's not paralysed. He's just dead.
Luffy finds himself a little disappointed about that. But it's the only regret he feels.
***
There are things that Nami told him, when all this being-a-girl business began, that he remembers. About the new ways he had to take care of himself now he was in this body. They make more sense to him now.
Things always make more sense to him when he needs them to.
Luffy takes up Statten's pack and heads onward, since he's already pointed that way and he's not ready to face his nakama again just yet. When he reaches Iskan later that day, a girl in grubby shorts and an overlarge soldier's shirt shoving and pushing through the market square, people stare like they know. Then they stare like he's mad, when he climbs up on a statue shaped like Girontin and yells until they listen to him, holding up the broken gold seal from the fallen leader's fancy jacket that Statten stole with the rest, while he stamps his foot on the bastard's ugly stone head.
He makes sure they all know that Girontin is finished. If any other soldiers come to take what they can in the aftermath, they won't be able to trick the people here.
It's nice that they're happy, but he doesn't feel like being their celebrity, so as soon as he can he sneaks away. He finds a doctor that isn't Chopper, because he won't burden Chopper with this. When he stumbles over finding words to describe what happened and can't meet the old man's gaze, the doctor touches his hair with gentle, gnarled fingers and tells him none of it is unusual on this island. He's not alone.
Hearing that makes him feel hollow inside. Should make him feel better to know they did that to so many others, too?
But then it overtakes him in a rush. They beat Girontin and his army. Half an hour ago, he stood in the market square and told these people that they don't need to fear the soldiers any more. The numbness dragging at his limbs even after the paralysis wore off falls away, and then he's grinning and laughing even though his eyes are wet. Suddenly it means something... it means everything. He thinks back to the crowd, the way their faces cleared and looked free. The women whose eyes were damp, too, even though they weren't sad.
Luffy hugs the old doctor and makes him accept the money from Statten's pack even when he tries to refuse it.
He takes the rest to buy a shirt to replace Statten's and a lot of meat. Afterwards, he idles through the celebrations in the centre of the town. Among the shops still open he finds a carded iridescent beetle, some oilcloths for Usopp, a necklace that looks like gold for Nami. And then gets kicked out of a restaurant, because he was so excited when he smelled the cooking he forgot that by then he'd spent all the money already.
Maybe they would've recognised him and fed him if he'd kept the shirt or the seal or the grimness he walked in with, but they don't know him now. He's just a face in the crowd. He runs off, laughing about that.
It's still tricky and complicated and makes him ache to think too much about it, but he thinks that he's ready to return to his nakama.
END
I'm not sure I'm finished here so I'd be very interested in any concrit or comments. I'm thinking of working a longer story around it, with these events near the end.
I killed Luffy in Final Meeting and I wasn't interested in doing that again, so turned the prompt around to what could make Luffy the executioner.
I feel ever so clingy with this one. I keep wanting to edit it again. It got inside my head. *feels weird about posting*
Luffyko fic. Serious rape theme. R rated, but only for the themes because nothing is described. 3000 words.
3. Killing Blow
Fight over, he's been lying there a while just waiting for one of the others to show up and drag him back to the Sunny. Girontin was tougher than he thought, or else he's weaker (but he prefers the first option) -- either way he had to break out Gear Second and use it til it all but drained him. It's boring, just lying there, but he's tired, so that's okay. He's starting to doze when someone finally turns his immovable body over. He's about to ask what took them so long, but it's not one of his nakama.
"Huh?" He blinks at the man. "Who're you?" He looks like a soldier, and he's wearing the same clothes as Girontin's men that they've been fighting, but Luffy doesn't recognise him in particular. He's not afraid, since those guys must know by now that they lost.
"So you're alive," is his only reply.
"Yeah." He keeps blinking, since he can do little else. "I can't move, though. I'm waiting for my friends. Can you see them anywhere? There's a swordsman with green hair, and a tall lady with a lot of hands, and a little furry one-- or he might be big--"
"I haven't seen them, but I can tell you now, there's nobody coming. No-one could have survived the explosion."
"Nah, of course they did! So they'll come for me." He does a double-take. "...Explosion?"
"Yeah, the... fortress blew up. You didn't notice?" The stranger leans over and wipes a splash of blood from Luffy's face with his sleeve. He's tall and broad, has pale hair straggling into a weathered face and a white, sweat-stained bandana under his cap. No sign of special weapons or a devil fruit. About an hour ago Luffy was throwing dozens of his fellows around like matchsticks.
"I was probably fighting. But it doesn't matter," he says fiercely, "because they're fine. No stupid explosion could kill my nakama."
"If you say so." The soldier smiles, and there's a pause while they both look down at the hand he's just rested on Luffy's chest.
"Aaah!" That surprised him, and he can't slap the hands away as they slide beneath his shirt. "What-what're you doing? Don't touch my body!" He doesn't touch those much if he can help it, since he got changed.
"You should be more careful," the stranger says. "Lying around here for just anyone to find. You know how they say -- 'finder's keepers', and since it looks like all the spoils of war that've come to us under Girontin are finished thanks to those pirates... can't blame me for making the most of the last chance of leftover pickings I might get." Luffy squeaks at an uncomfortable squeeze, but then the hands retreat.
He almost thanks the guy for stopping, until he takes out a knife and starts cutting Luffy's clothes.
"...HEY! That's my shirt. I need that!" Because people complain if you walk around without one when you have breasts, though he's still not completely sure why. "Dammit..." It's already ruined. The bits get flicked aside. Luffy's relieved that the cloth of his shorts is too thick to easily cut and the stranger starts pulling them down instead, because that means he's only going to get half killed by Nami when he has to come back half-naked. He grumbles as the stranger slides each limp, unresponsive leg free and then chucks the shorts behind him. The knife comes back out for his underwear. "Bastard," Luffy rages. "Idiot. Stupid..." Why the hell does this guy think he can just come along and ruin people's clothes like that? He's glad that Usopp's got his hat safe.
He realises then that he's naked and a man he doesn't even know is staring at his new body the way he might stare at a piece of meat, and he suddenly feels nervous, and really wants to move. But since he exhausted all his strength using Gear Second too much, he's stuck unable to even muster enough strength for a single punch.
For this guy, he'd only need that.
"You're pretty," the man says, and Luffy says, blankly, "No, I'm not," as the other shuffles forward to crouch between his legs, tugging at his own clothes.
The stranger slides an arm beneath his leg, lifting it from under the knee, pushing it with him as he leans forward. Luffy feels his hips roll upwards with the pull. He feels sweaty, warm fingers curl at his waist. Something brushes against the absence between his thighs.
Luffy might be dumb, but at that point he realises what's going on, and the shock of knowledge paralyses his voice with the rest of him. He opens his mouth, but somehow the words won't come to protest "But I'm a man" and "You don't want to do this" and "Don't".
"Don't look like that," the man says, as though he's done nothing more than jostle his elbow on the street. "Injured the way you are, you probably won't even feel anything."
He's a liar, but as he lowers his weight down and presses forward, Luffy almost wishes he was right.
***
He's lying looking up at a lonely carrion bird circling the sky while the stranger sits next to him with a stolen cigarette hanging from his lips and takes his time packing up all the other things he's stripped from Girontin's unconscious form.
All these people ever do is steal. Girontin -- he stole a whole island, but now he's defeated, he's nothing but pickings, too.
Spoils of war. Luffy shapes the words with his lips but doesn't speak them. His voice is still in hiding after all that effort to suppress the helpless noises his body wanted to make. There's a churning dark something inside him, both boiling hot and icy cold, and he can't remember ever feeling a fury like this. Nobody ever wronged him deeply enough before. Now he thinks he knows a little of how Nami felt when Arlong stole her home. Or Robin, when the World Government destroyed everything. It must be this feeling. He thinks at least for him it's involved no more than his one body.
Even this doesn't seem enough to force a body to move that's already been strained past its limit.
He doesn't much care that the bits of his shirt are pillowed under his head, and the guy curled his knees together and draped his shorts over him. It's like Arlong's jocular pleasantries with Nami, the way he called her 'nakama' after everything he took. Arlong... was a lot like Girontin and his soldiers, when he thinks about it
"Maybe I'll go on to Iskan." And there's that, too. The soldier keeps talking to him, as though conversation is okay. "About twenty miles down the coast. See if there's anything left. It's been a few years, but it was the place our ship first ran aground off the harbour. I've a general's insignia, in here--" He slaps his bulging pack. "Could be profitable, if they've not yet heard."
"I," Luffy licks his dry lips as his voice cracks, "don't like you. Don't talk to me."
If he had his strength, the fight this man could offer him would be a joke.
A soft snort. "I suppose not." He rises to his feet. "There's the boss lying right over there, and I didn't even get to see the Strawhat captain. Suppose he must've long gone. Suppose that's lucky for me." Luffy's mouth opens, then snaps shut, and the soldier notices. "Huh. So I guess you're one of his, then. Cabin girl, cook's assistant..." Luffy sets his face into a mask of stone. "What's a guy look like who's worth three hundred million?"
"Taller than you," Luffy says sullenly. "Almost as tall as a giant. And blond. He's got a really cool beard, like a... big haystack. And a huge curved sword with teeth. He'll gut you with it for what you've done."
The soldier laughs. He's ready to go, but he doesn't move. "I'm a humane guy. Maybe I should just kill you. Even if that crew are still out there to find you, it's not much of a life for you, like this."
"What?" Luffy yelps. His brain's working extra to make up for his body, because it pieces together other strange comments and offers up the idea that the soldier thinks his neck is broken. Why he also thinks that's a reason to give up and die, Luffy doesn't fully understand. But he realises, as he opens his mouth, that while he definitely doesn't want the guy to kill him -- he doesn't want him to know his neck isn't broken, either.
Letting this man walk away isn't enough. His body is paralysed and his brain has never had that many cards to play, but it's shuffling all of them around desperately now.
"I don't want to die," he says. His voice comes out small, because he's afraid, but that's good. It only sounds more real. "Take me with you. Please. I need a doctor. Maybe they can fix me. Please take me to a doctor in Iskan."
If he stays here, he knows his nakama would find him.
--Find him like this, stripped and left. To avoid that, there are a lot of things he's prepared to trade, and for the rest of what he wants, he'll trade more.
"...Oh?" The soldier sets down his pack and crouches down over Luffy again. His skin feels like it's trying to crawl away and hide from the man's touch, and he knows the trade-off starts now. "I didn't think you liked my company."
"I want to live more." His throat is tight. The other man is too close.
In reply, a short bark of laughter, and the soldier doesn't ask what he gets in return for carrying Luffy along. It's not like they struck a bargain, but he'll take it anyway.
Hands... hands on him again. He can't breathe properly. But as the hands grasp and rearrange his legs, he realises they're only dressing him. It doesn't make their touch easier to endure. His shorts go back on, then the soldier pulls his own shirt off, and having a t-shirt underneath, he puts the shirt over Luffy's shoulders and fastens the buttons, though his hands wander a lot on the way.
"What's your name?" he asks finally.
Luffy thinks he should lie, but his brain's exhausted from too much thinking already, so he can only mumble, "Luffy."
"That's a pretty name."
"It's not!" It comes out an outraged yowl, and the man, who doesn't know he's really a man too, hidden in this smaller, rounder body, laughs at him again as he turns to heft the pack of stolen things and swing it onto his shoulders. The man turns back to pick up Luffy. His head falls against a smelly chest, and the supporting arms seem to burn against his back and bare legs.
He tries to work out how many hours he'll need, but his focus has fled, and he can no longer tackle such complicated thoughts.
He already knows it will take him past nightfall.
***
The colours of the sky are creeping towards dawn by the time movement starts to return to him. He hasn't slept. The taste is still thick in his mouth and between his legs his body's outrage of intrusion is a fierce ache. He had no real idea of all the things that people do. What they can do in hours and hours alone that aren't a few hasty stolen minutes out on an open battlefield. Yet he chose this. He won't regret it. The damage was done the first time. The night was just a long echo.
The rise and fall of the chest his ear rests upon is steady and regular. Tucked close against a larger body, under a scruffy blanket beneath the stars, Luffy reaches up a trembling arm and watches his fingers open and close against the backdrop of greying sky. As before, his arms regained their movement first. He's not strong enough yet to do anything, though. So he waits, as the sky becomes greyer and starts to wash with a little pale yellow, and he's still not strong enough to be absolutely sure, but he doesn't want to go through that again either, and his victim is sleeping but won't be for much longer, so it's time.
He heaves himself up on knees that don't yet want to move, feels the man beneath shift and groan as he pulls out of the loop of his arm, and straddling the broad chest, Luffy closes his hand around the thick neck and leans his weight upon it, and says, "Wake up."
The soldier moves and wakes sluggishly, his big, sated body lazy and slow. It's nice, Luffy thinks with an unaccustomed sourness, that his body that couldn't move still had this one half-defeated already. The eyes blink open, dull and confused.
"You... You're not..."
His hand tightens reflexively and strangles off further words. That's no good, so even though it's difficult and they don't want to, he makes his fingers loosen again.
"I got better," whispers Luffy. The air's too thick and heavy to shout. "Tell me your name, now."
"Statten. Jerris..." He can see the fear rising out of the drowsy confusion. Realises that his legs are working better than he thought, because automatically, and helped somewhat by the pinning blanket, he's been using them to clamp Statten's arms to his sides since he started to struggle. He might even be able to stand.
"I don't like what you did to me, Statten. Not yesterday, and not last night. I know you knew I didn't want to." He breathes harshly and bares his teeth. "I'm angry, Statten. I didn't know before what it was like to be this angry. I bet you don't. I'd show you, if I could think of any way how. But since I can't, there's one other thing I have left to do."
Since he thinks he can stand, he does. He could hardly finish it, this way, anyway. Heaving up on his weak and shaking legs frees the larger man to scramble aside and lurch to his feet, too. His breathing is heavy, but full of relief -- and he's laughing. He laughs at Luffy, who's wavering on uncooperative legs. Laughs as he reaches for his knife.
"You're stupid," Luffy says. They're both standing, sort of, and that makes it a fight. That's all he wants.
He throws a punch. Distance doesn't matter. Statten hasn't seen his devil fruit, so wasn't expecting his reach. Strength doesn't matter. Statten doesn't know he has recoil and momentum to make up for the weakness in his limbs.
One punch. That's all he needs.
That's all he needed.
It lands with a crunch and the soldier goes down, unmoving. Luffy loses his balance and doesn't bother to get up, crossing to the limp body on his hands and knees.
Statten's neck is snapped, but he's not paralysed. He's just dead.
Luffy finds himself a little disappointed about that. But it's the only regret he feels.
***
There are things that Nami told him, when all this being-a-girl business began, that he remembers. About the new ways he had to take care of himself now he was in this body. They make more sense to him now.
Things always make more sense to him when he needs them to.
Luffy takes up Statten's pack and heads onward, since he's already pointed that way and he's not ready to face his nakama again just yet. When he reaches Iskan later that day, a girl in grubby shorts and an overlarge soldier's shirt shoving and pushing through the market square, people stare like they know. Then they stare like he's mad, when he climbs up on a statue shaped like Girontin and yells until they listen to him, holding up the broken gold seal from the fallen leader's fancy jacket that Statten stole with the rest, while he stamps his foot on the bastard's ugly stone head.
He makes sure they all know that Girontin is finished. If any other soldiers come to take what they can in the aftermath, they won't be able to trick the people here.
It's nice that they're happy, but he doesn't feel like being their celebrity, so as soon as he can he sneaks away. He finds a doctor that isn't Chopper, because he won't burden Chopper with this. When he stumbles over finding words to describe what happened and can't meet the old man's gaze, the doctor touches his hair with gentle, gnarled fingers and tells him none of it is unusual on this island. He's not alone.
Hearing that makes him feel hollow inside. Should make him feel better to know they did that to so many others, too?
But then it overtakes him in a rush. They beat Girontin and his army. Half an hour ago, he stood in the market square and told these people that they don't need to fear the soldiers any more. The numbness dragging at his limbs even after the paralysis wore off falls away, and then he's grinning and laughing even though his eyes are wet. Suddenly it means something... it means everything. He thinks back to the crowd, the way their faces cleared and looked free. The women whose eyes were damp, too, even though they weren't sad.
Luffy hugs the old doctor and makes him accept the money from Statten's pack even when he tries to refuse it.
He takes the rest to buy a shirt to replace Statten's and a lot of meat. Afterwards, he idles through the celebrations in the centre of the town. Among the shops still open he finds a carded iridescent beetle, some oilcloths for Usopp, a necklace that looks like gold for Nami. And then gets kicked out of a restaurant, because he was so excited when he smelled the cooking he forgot that by then he'd spent all the money already.
Maybe they would've recognised him and fed him if he'd kept the shirt or the seal or the grimness he walked in with, but they don't know him now. He's just a face in the crowd. He runs off, laughing about that.
It's still tricky and complicated and makes him ache to think too much about it, but he thinks that he's ready to return to his nakama.
END
I'm not sure I'm finished here so I'd be very interested in any concrit or comments. I'm thinking of working a longer story around it, with these events near the end.
I killed Luffy in Final Meeting and I wasn't interested in doing that again, so turned the prompt around to what could make Luffy the executioner.
I feel ever so clingy with this one. I keep wanting to edit it again. It got inside my head. *feels weird about posting*