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dethoratsTitle: Coming Snow
Rating: PG
Pairing: ZoSopp (mmm, ZoSopp)
Word Count: 2,594
There were several hackneyed old chestnuts regarding the changeability of weather on the Grand Line. If he’d been of the mind, he could have listed all of them and even added a few that he’d made up himself; each one growing coarser and ruder as his own language had. Something about the salt air just necessitated salty language. After all, look at Sanji. The cook spent his whole life at sea and he couldn’t go more than two sentences (excluding, of course, the times he was speaking to the ladies) without at least one uttered curse. As it was, a choice ‘shit, it’s getting colder’ had just passed his own chapping lips as he shivered up in the crow’s nest.
Usopp spared a brief moment of thought for the calendar with its bikini clad women hanging behind the bar in the men’s room, reflected that at home the air would still have been warm. Early fall meant pie and changing leaves and one last hurrah from an Indian summer that would have led his little crew to play hooky from school in order to splash about in the ocean with him before the water grew too cold. On the Grand Line, the seasons meant very little. Somewhere it was always autumn or spring or winter. The progression of the year in the Blues meant only that the degree of severity of weather types changed.
Somewhere there were spring islands, places where the weather was always decent, if a bit soggy at times. And there would be autumn islands too, filled with fruit and vegetables and the kind of moons that glow big and orange and luminous in the fog at night. They’d never stopped at either yet. Only a winter island and a summer island and he was thankful that it hadn’t actually been summer in Alabasta or he never would have made it across the desert. But now they were nearing another winter island and the chill in the air reached them even now, at least a day before the place was due to be visible on the horizon. Unconsciously Usopp huddled deeper into his coat, one hand rubbing at the aches that had started to sprout in his face nearly two days prior.
In the growing twilight (and the scientist part of his brain wondered how it was possible for weather AND light to shift constantly in the Grand Line) his breath was visible, short puffs of white steam that vanished as quickly as he could blink. What little he could smell through wool and the end of his reddened nose heralded snow. His stomach gurgled at him and he had to remind himself that dinner was still at least an hour off. Schedules couldn’t always adjust as quickly as bodies wanted to changing rhythms, and Sanji would only have just started cooking. This meant that he had at least another two hours of watch up in the air, and he mentally cursed his misfortune at having traded dish duty with Luffy last week. If only Robin hadn’t said the area was dangerous, then Nami wouldn’t have ordered twenty-four hour watches and he wouldn’t have been stuck up in the crow’s nest freezing. At least, and it was a paltry comfort at the moment, he didn’t have any night watches for the rest of the week.
His wrist hurt and his jaw and nose were throbbing as he wound his scarf more tightly around his face and ears. The action muffled the noises from the deck and he started, as mere moments after he’d completed his task and begun to take in the new warmth, when a hand fell on his shoulder. Said hand gripped him tightly and kept him from jumping away as a pair of black boots stepped solidly over the top of the crow’s nest. Zoro wasn’t even wearing a jacket yet even though his breath wreathed his face in cloudy white. He had a mug clasped firmly in his free hand, steam rising visibly from it to trail off into the air like smoke from a mini-chimney.
“Z-Zoro?”
“I brought you some tea.”
He must have looked dubious, for the swordsman scowled and thrust the mug forward.
“Don’t worry. I didn’t actually make it. That shitty chef did. Drink it, it’s good for you.”
“Thanks.”
And it was good; hot and smooth going down, he could feel it slide all the way from his throat to his stomach. It tasted of mint and lemon and something else he couldn’t quite identify. Zoro watched him through slitted eyes, sitting on the edge of the crow’s nest with an air that said he wasn’t budging until every last drop had been drunk. He obliged him, trying to hurry. But the tea was thick and it took him longer than he might have liked. Over top of his tan, Zoro’s skin slowly began turn redden from wind chafing and from the cold. Still, the swordsman made no move to warm himself, just sat there either watching him drink or staring out over the gray sea.
Finally he was finished and he handed the mug back wordlessly. Zoro took it, glancing in to make sure it was all truly gone. There was a sharp, almost medicinal, taste lingering at the back of his throat, and Usopp wondered what it was. He hadn’t tasted anything going down, but now it was unmistakable. When he swallowed loudly, trying to rid himself of the flavor, Zoro looked at him sharply. For a moment their eyes were locked and Usopp stared into opaque green. The swordsman was as unreadable as always and not for the first time Usopp found himself resisting the urge to run his fingertips over his lips. Four times now he had been kissed and each was as mysterious as the man giving them. Whatever went on in Zoro’s head, he never had cared before to reveal to the sharpshooter. It left him puzzled and confused and yet it had also warmed him the same way the tea had.
“How’s your nose?”
The question was gruff and unexpected. He had expected the man to disappear back down to the deck as quietly as he had come, but Zoro, it seemed, had a different idea. As for his nose, it was cold and sore but it no longer ached the way it had earlier. Neither, for that matter, did his jaw or his wrist or his ribs nor any of the other places that had suddenly started to make themselves known as they ventured closer to the winter island.
“Good actually. Was there something in the tea?”
The swordsman nodded, studying him as he patted at his body. He felt much better now, the pain that had throbbed deep in his bones seeming to lie dormant under the heat that had suffused his body when he drank the tea.
“It’s this herb I had Chopper give me. I know cold weather can really make places where you’ve broken or dislocated bones hurt. It’s supposed help with wounds and arthritis as well.”
“Ah. Well the Great Captain Usopp is feeling fitter than a fiddle now, not that he wasn’t already able to face down a horde of rampaging sea monsters anyway.” Usopp posed dramatically for a second, glad that he actually COULD seeing as how his poor nose had been painful to touch earlier. “I guess you’ve been familiar with this herb for a while then.”
“I don’t use it.” Zoro frowned as he said the words and let his eyes become fixed over Usopp’s shoulder. “I don’t get cold and I don’t let old injuries bother me. Besides, I haven’t broken that many bones. You and the shitty cook on the other hand…”
“I thought you said it helped with wounds too.” Usopp gave Zoro a quick once-over. “And you have more than enough of those. If nothing else, your ankles and your chest have got to be feeling this weather.”
“If they were, then it’s just something else to overcome. If I let something like the temperature and few minor aches and pains get to me, how can I expect to push myself? To be the best means being able to withstand almost anything.”
With those words, the swordsman rose. The scowl that was so often a fixture on his face was back and Usopp quailed a bit inside at the sight of it. As Zoro turned, ready to climb back down, Usopp reached out a mittened hand and caught him lightly.
”Doesn’t?” he asked quietly. “Doesn’t the fact that you already have lasted this long mean anything? Isn’t that proof enough? What about taking care of your body and making sure it’s in the right kind of shape to meet new threats? And what about finding things out now, when you CAN still take the pain? What if this stuff isn’t good for bullet or sword wounds? What are you going to do when you’re old and it’s cold and you’re hurting? Better to find out now if you need to find a different remedy.”
Zoro was still under his hold for one long moment before he turned back to face him. He freed himself with a quick shake and his eyes, when he finally looked at Usopp, were sad and tender.
“I don’t expect to live long enough to find out. Most swordsmen don’t grow old and most definitely not the world’s greatest.”
All at once the warmth that had spread through him vanished and he felt his heart slow, stutter in the ice that had suddenly surrounded it.
“What do you mean? Of course you’re going to live!”
“Usopp,” and he never wanted to hear his name said that way again. “When I finally fight Mihawk again, it’s almost certain that one of two things will happen. Either he’ll defeat me and I’ll die or I’ll beat him and he’ll die. I’d rather it be the latter. And it’s not like I WANT to kill him. That’s just the way things tend to work. You don’t retire from being the world’s greatest swordsman. It doesn’t work that way.”
“All right f-fine! So you’ll win. That doesn’t mean you won’t live to be old.”
Zoro sighed and gently brought his thumb up to swipe away the moisture that had gathered in the corners of Usopp’s eyes without him noticing.
“If I’m skilled enough and lucky enough I’ll have five, ten, maybe as many as twenty years. But it’s inevitable that I’ll age and someone younger and faster will come along to challenge me and that will be the end of my time. And just like when I fight Mihawk, they probably won’t want to kill me and I won’t want to kill them. But I refuse to give anything less than my best and that means being met with their best. In a duel, that means lethal force.”
Usopp tore himself away and wished he was anywhere but up in the sky. He had nowhere to run to, no pillow or couch or shoulder to hide his face against to shut out Zoro’s words. It wasn’t fair! Strong arms wrapped around him from behind and he struggled against them uselessly before sagging back into them.
“Why,” and the word was murmured in his ear as Zoro leaned down to work his lips past the thick scarf. “Do you think I don’t have any long-term goals? Nami wants to map the world and Chopper wants to be the best doctor. Both of those things could take them their entire lives. As for the bastard cook, once he finds his ocean he can move on to opening the best restaurant. I don’t entirely know about the other woman, but I’m sure she’d be happy spending all of her time reading and writing away. And you, you’ll go back to Kaya with your own fleet perhaps. Or maybe you’ll invent something new or devote yourself to art. I don’t know what it will be, but you’ll find something to live for. Only Luffy could share my fate. Pirate kings don’t have that long of a life span either. And I don’t know exactly what they do, once they become king. But Luffy is Luffy and he could decide that adventure is all he needs to live for and spend all his days in search of it.”
“Couldn’t you…couldn’t you become a teacher like your old master? Or just sail with Luffy from one adventure to the next? Or with me? Or with all of us if we decide that we can become the best doctors and mapmakers and cooks and pirates simply by staying with Luffy? You can’t just give up like that!”
“It’s not giving up. It’s acknowledging reality. And someone would have to come and challenge me and I’d have to lose someday. “
“Yes, but…” He turned in Zoro’s arms, hands coming up to grip the stubborn man’s shirt. “But what if you do live? Because you will. You’ve lived through everything else so far and if you had another dream I think you would be obstinate enough to live for that once you were no longer the world’s greatest. I mean, wouldn’t you like to pass down the three-sword style? Or train someone else to beat whoever defeated you? You could even make a goal that doesn’t involve swords if you wanted. And what about that spiritual stuff and that meditation that you do? Isn’t that important too? Couldn’t you devote yourself to that?”
This time when he met Zoro’s eyes, fingers unclenching from white cotton as if they suddenly realized just whom they were touching, it was confusion that clouded green. Zoro gazed down at him as if such thoughts had never crossed his mind, as if his training and his goal left no room to think of a future. The swordsman looked young all of a sudden, and Usopp was reminded that, for all of his bravado and stern attitude, Zoro was only two years older than himself. This time, when he raised himself up slightly on his toes to press his chapped and partially wool-shrouded lips to ones that were becoming tinged with blue, he knew exactly what he was doing. It was Zoro’s turn to be confronted with a mystery.
He pulled away slowly, smile hidden by the scarf he began to unwind. It would be chilly without it, but he only had another hour to go and Zoro needed it more. He wrapped around the unprotesting swordsman’s neck and used it to tug the man over to the side of the crow’s nest.
“Just think about it, okay? And get yourself some of that tea to find out if it works. Robin says there’s danger coming and even me and my skills that can take out three hundred marines in less that ten seconds can always use a little back up.”
At that, Zoro finally seemed to come back to himself, fingering the scarf with a small frown of annoyance. But he left it on as he slung one leg over the side and then the other to begin the climb down. Usopp observed him as he reached the deck and made his way over to the inviting warmth of the galley. Once the door had closed and Zoro had disappeared inside, he leaned back and studied the sky. The first star was just coming out and he whispered his wish to the wind and watched as his steaming breath carried it towards the heavens.
Rating: PG
Pairing: ZoSopp (mmm, ZoSopp)
Word Count: 2,594
There were several hackneyed old chestnuts regarding the changeability of weather on the Grand Line. If he’d been of the mind, he could have listed all of them and even added a few that he’d made up himself; each one growing coarser and ruder as his own language had. Something about the salt air just necessitated salty language. After all, look at Sanji. The cook spent his whole life at sea and he couldn’t go more than two sentences (excluding, of course, the times he was speaking to the ladies) without at least one uttered curse. As it was, a choice ‘shit, it’s getting colder’ had just passed his own chapping lips as he shivered up in the crow’s nest.
Usopp spared a brief moment of thought for the calendar with its bikini clad women hanging behind the bar in the men’s room, reflected that at home the air would still have been warm. Early fall meant pie and changing leaves and one last hurrah from an Indian summer that would have led his little crew to play hooky from school in order to splash about in the ocean with him before the water grew too cold. On the Grand Line, the seasons meant very little. Somewhere it was always autumn or spring or winter. The progression of the year in the Blues meant only that the degree of severity of weather types changed.
Somewhere there were spring islands, places where the weather was always decent, if a bit soggy at times. And there would be autumn islands too, filled with fruit and vegetables and the kind of moons that glow big and orange and luminous in the fog at night. They’d never stopped at either yet. Only a winter island and a summer island and he was thankful that it hadn’t actually been summer in Alabasta or he never would have made it across the desert. But now they were nearing another winter island and the chill in the air reached them even now, at least a day before the place was due to be visible on the horizon. Unconsciously Usopp huddled deeper into his coat, one hand rubbing at the aches that had started to sprout in his face nearly two days prior.
In the growing twilight (and the scientist part of his brain wondered how it was possible for weather AND light to shift constantly in the Grand Line) his breath was visible, short puffs of white steam that vanished as quickly as he could blink. What little he could smell through wool and the end of his reddened nose heralded snow. His stomach gurgled at him and he had to remind himself that dinner was still at least an hour off. Schedules couldn’t always adjust as quickly as bodies wanted to changing rhythms, and Sanji would only have just started cooking. This meant that he had at least another two hours of watch up in the air, and he mentally cursed his misfortune at having traded dish duty with Luffy last week. If only Robin hadn’t said the area was dangerous, then Nami wouldn’t have ordered twenty-four hour watches and he wouldn’t have been stuck up in the crow’s nest freezing. At least, and it was a paltry comfort at the moment, he didn’t have any night watches for the rest of the week.
His wrist hurt and his jaw and nose were throbbing as he wound his scarf more tightly around his face and ears. The action muffled the noises from the deck and he started, as mere moments after he’d completed his task and begun to take in the new warmth, when a hand fell on his shoulder. Said hand gripped him tightly and kept him from jumping away as a pair of black boots stepped solidly over the top of the crow’s nest. Zoro wasn’t even wearing a jacket yet even though his breath wreathed his face in cloudy white. He had a mug clasped firmly in his free hand, steam rising visibly from it to trail off into the air like smoke from a mini-chimney.
“Z-Zoro?”
“I brought you some tea.”
He must have looked dubious, for the swordsman scowled and thrust the mug forward.
“Don’t worry. I didn’t actually make it. That shitty chef did. Drink it, it’s good for you.”
“Thanks.”
And it was good; hot and smooth going down, he could feel it slide all the way from his throat to his stomach. It tasted of mint and lemon and something else he couldn’t quite identify. Zoro watched him through slitted eyes, sitting on the edge of the crow’s nest with an air that said he wasn’t budging until every last drop had been drunk. He obliged him, trying to hurry. But the tea was thick and it took him longer than he might have liked. Over top of his tan, Zoro’s skin slowly began turn redden from wind chafing and from the cold. Still, the swordsman made no move to warm himself, just sat there either watching him drink or staring out over the gray sea.
Finally he was finished and he handed the mug back wordlessly. Zoro took it, glancing in to make sure it was all truly gone. There was a sharp, almost medicinal, taste lingering at the back of his throat, and Usopp wondered what it was. He hadn’t tasted anything going down, but now it was unmistakable. When he swallowed loudly, trying to rid himself of the flavor, Zoro looked at him sharply. For a moment their eyes were locked and Usopp stared into opaque green. The swordsman was as unreadable as always and not for the first time Usopp found himself resisting the urge to run his fingertips over his lips. Four times now he had been kissed and each was as mysterious as the man giving them. Whatever went on in Zoro’s head, he never had cared before to reveal to the sharpshooter. It left him puzzled and confused and yet it had also warmed him the same way the tea had.
“How’s your nose?”
The question was gruff and unexpected. He had expected the man to disappear back down to the deck as quietly as he had come, but Zoro, it seemed, had a different idea. As for his nose, it was cold and sore but it no longer ached the way it had earlier. Neither, for that matter, did his jaw or his wrist or his ribs nor any of the other places that had suddenly started to make themselves known as they ventured closer to the winter island.
“Good actually. Was there something in the tea?”
The swordsman nodded, studying him as he patted at his body. He felt much better now, the pain that had throbbed deep in his bones seeming to lie dormant under the heat that had suffused his body when he drank the tea.
“It’s this herb I had Chopper give me. I know cold weather can really make places where you’ve broken or dislocated bones hurt. It’s supposed help with wounds and arthritis as well.”
“Ah. Well the Great Captain Usopp is feeling fitter than a fiddle now, not that he wasn’t already able to face down a horde of rampaging sea monsters anyway.” Usopp posed dramatically for a second, glad that he actually COULD seeing as how his poor nose had been painful to touch earlier. “I guess you’ve been familiar with this herb for a while then.”
“I don’t use it.” Zoro frowned as he said the words and let his eyes become fixed over Usopp’s shoulder. “I don’t get cold and I don’t let old injuries bother me. Besides, I haven’t broken that many bones. You and the shitty cook on the other hand…”
“I thought you said it helped with wounds too.” Usopp gave Zoro a quick once-over. “And you have more than enough of those. If nothing else, your ankles and your chest have got to be feeling this weather.”
“If they were, then it’s just something else to overcome. If I let something like the temperature and few minor aches and pains get to me, how can I expect to push myself? To be the best means being able to withstand almost anything.”
With those words, the swordsman rose. The scowl that was so often a fixture on his face was back and Usopp quailed a bit inside at the sight of it. As Zoro turned, ready to climb back down, Usopp reached out a mittened hand and caught him lightly.
”Doesn’t?” he asked quietly. “Doesn’t the fact that you already have lasted this long mean anything? Isn’t that proof enough? What about taking care of your body and making sure it’s in the right kind of shape to meet new threats? And what about finding things out now, when you CAN still take the pain? What if this stuff isn’t good for bullet or sword wounds? What are you going to do when you’re old and it’s cold and you’re hurting? Better to find out now if you need to find a different remedy.”
Zoro was still under his hold for one long moment before he turned back to face him. He freed himself with a quick shake and his eyes, when he finally looked at Usopp, were sad and tender.
“I don’t expect to live long enough to find out. Most swordsmen don’t grow old and most definitely not the world’s greatest.”
All at once the warmth that had spread through him vanished and he felt his heart slow, stutter in the ice that had suddenly surrounded it.
“What do you mean? Of course you’re going to live!”
“Usopp,” and he never wanted to hear his name said that way again. “When I finally fight Mihawk again, it’s almost certain that one of two things will happen. Either he’ll defeat me and I’ll die or I’ll beat him and he’ll die. I’d rather it be the latter. And it’s not like I WANT to kill him. That’s just the way things tend to work. You don’t retire from being the world’s greatest swordsman. It doesn’t work that way.”
“All right f-fine! So you’ll win. That doesn’t mean you won’t live to be old.”
Zoro sighed and gently brought his thumb up to swipe away the moisture that had gathered in the corners of Usopp’s eyes without him noticing.
“If I’m skilled enough and lucky enough I’ll have five, ten, maybe as many as twenty years. But it’s inevitable that I’ll age and someone younger and faster will come along to challenge me and that will be the end of my time. And just like when I fight Mihawk, they probably won’t want to kill me and I won’t want to kill them. But I refuse to give anything less than my best and that means being met with their best. In a duel, that means lethal force.”
Usopp tore himself away and wished he was anywhere but up in the sky. He had nowhere to run to, no pillow or couch or shoulder to hide his face against to shut out Zoro’s words. It wasn’t fair! Strong arms wrapped around him from behind and he struggled against them uselessly before sagging back into them.
“Why,” and the word was murmured in his ear as Zoro leaned down to work his lips past the thick scarf. “Do you think I don’t have any long-term goals? Nami wants to map the world and Chopper wants to be the best doctor. Both of those things could take them their entire lives. As for the bastard cook, once he finds his ocean he can move on to opening the best restaurant. I don’t entirely know about the other woman, but I’m sure she’d be happy spending all of her time reading and writing away. And you, you’ll go back to Kaya with your own fleet perhaps. Or maybe you’ll invent something new or devote yourself to art. I don’t know what it will be, but you’ll find something to live for. Only Luffy could share my fate. Pirate kings don’t have that long of a life span either. And I don’t know exactly what they do, once they become king. But Luffy is Luffy and he could decide that adventure is all he needs to live for and spend all his days in search of it.”
“Couldn’t you…couldn’t you become a teacher like your old master? Or just sail with Luffy from one adventure to the next? Or with me? Or with all of us if we decide that we can become the best doctors and mapmakers and cooks and pirates simply by staying with Luffy? You can’t just give up like that!”
“It’s not giving up. It’s acknowledging reality. And someone would have to come and challenge me and I’d have to lose someday. “
“Yes, but…” He turned in Zoro’s arms, hands coming up to grip the stubborn man’s shirt. “But what if you do live? Because you will. You’ve lived through everything else so far and if you had another dream I think you would be obstinate enough to live for that once you were no longer the world’s greatest. I mean, wouldn’t you like to pass down the three-sword style? Or train someone else to beat whoever defeated you? You could even make a goal that doesn’t involve swords if you wanted. And what about that spiritual stuff and that meditation that you do? Isn’t that important too? Couldn’t you devote yourself to that?”
This time when he met Zoro’s eyes, fingers unclenching from white cotton as if they suddenly realized just whom they were touching, it was confusion that clouded green. Zoro gazed down at him as if such thoughts had never crossed his mind, as if his training and his goal left no room to think of a future. The swordsman looked young all of a sudden, and Usopp was reminded that, for all of his bravado and stern attitude, Zoro was only two years older than himself. This time, when he raised himself up slightly on his toes to press his chapped and partially wool-shrouded lips to ones that were becoming tinged with blue, he knew exactly what he was doing. It was Zoro’s turn to be confronted with a mystery.
He pulled away slowly, smile hidden by the scarf he began to unwind. It would be chilly without it, but he only had another hour to go and Zoro needed it more. He wrapped around the unprotesting swordsman’s neck and used it to tug the man over to the side of the crow’s nest.
“Just think about it, okay? And get yourself some of that tea to find out if it works. Robin says there’s danger coming and even me and my skills that can take out three hundred marines in less that ten seconds can always use a little back up.”
At that, Zoro finally seemed to come back to himself, fingering the scarf with a small frown of annoyance. But he left it on as he slung one leg over the side and then the other to begin the climb down. Usopp observed him as he reached the deck and made his way over to the inviting warmth of the galley. Once the door had closed and Zoro had disappeared inside, he leaned back and studied the sky. The first star was just coming out and he whispered his wish to the wind and watched as his steaming breath carried it towards the heavens.
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Date: 2005-10-11 07:07 pm (UTC)