Pointless ficcage
Nov. 6th, 2005 08:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dethoratsTitle: Bandanna
Rating: G
Pairing: Pre-slash ZoSopp
Word Count: An epic 3311 in which nothing happens
There were many mysteries on board the Going Merry. Most of them stemmed from the fact that certain of the straw hats simply didn’t talk about their past, or in some cases, really talk much at all. Usopp knew all about Nami from having listened to Nojiko and being there for the battle against Arlong. And he had a few vague ideas about Sanji; the cook sometimes talked in his sleep and his beyond anal-retentive need to make sure no food was wasted clearly indicated that something bad related to that had happened to him. Of course, everyone knew about Usopp and his father being a pirate and about Kaya and the Going Merry and what had happened with Kuro and the Black Cat pirates. For one thing, Luffy, Zoro, and Nami had been there. For another, Usopp never let anyone forget just who had given them the ship. It was important to him and talking about it all helped keep the memories fresh in his mind. When it came to the first two members of the Straw Hat pirates, though, Usopp was mostly in the dark. All he knew about was that the captain and his unofficial first mate were both particularly attached to specific items; i.e. Luffy’s hat and Zoro’s white sword.
Another mystery, one not nearly so…mysterious…as his companions’ pasts, also nagged at Usopp. He liked knowing things. Having information made it possible to make extrapolations and plans and helped him know when to adapt to changing circumstances and when to get the hell out of the way although his danger sense usually took good care of him whenever he really needed it. This was the mystery of the clothing. Usopp was well aware that he tended to wear the same overalls and boots and white sash day after day. However, it wasn’t like he didn’t have multiple pairs of the overalls. In fact, he had around eight, although three were in less than the best shape. Those were the ones he tended to wear when he was conducting experiments. Another stain or two wouldn’t hurt them very much. Nami, of course, changed outfits daily. And Sanji, too, varied his wardrobe even if he followed Usopp’s own tendency and had several copies of his dark suit jackets and striped shirts neatly stowed away in his footlocker. As for the swordsman and the captain…that was an entirely different matter. Truthfully, judging from the way Luffy smelled by the end of the week and his tendencies to run around naked, Usopp was fairly positive that Luffy didn’t own more than the one red shirt and pair of beat-up old shorts. Zoro appeared to be in the same boat. White shirt, haramaki, black pants – that had far too many faded spots of red on them when seen close up – Zoro’s wardrobe seemed to be as limited as the captain’s.
Of course, Nami had bought them all new clothes in Loguetown; something about the smell had motivated her to loosen her usually knotted purse strings. How she had managed to find clothing identical to what they both normally wore was yet another mystery, but given Nami’s strange female powers, Usopp had decided that this was one mystery he didn’t want to solve. Besides, he had a fairly good idea that it involved serious death threats and a harried tailor. Given the way Luffy and Zoro lived, their new clothes were soon seriously beaten up and worthless, good only for rags. Within days, Nami’s rare expenditure had been wasted and the smell was back. By now Usopp had gotten used to it. Heck, he had sort of missed it for the week or so it had been gone. But despite these clothing questions, there was another one that loomed even greater in his mind. It was the mystery of Zoro’s black bandanna.
Usopp owned many bandannas. Of course, he had several that he preferred to wear, but he owned a wide variety. It was a way of expressing himself given that the rest of his clothing tended to be the same day in and day out. In fact, he’d even designed a couple himself one year back before Luffy and company had shown up when he was experimenting with vegetable dyes. Besides being a fashion statement, the bandannas he wore served a very practical purpose. His hair was so curly and unruly and long that he had to restrain it. A simple ponytail wasn’t good enough. Strands would inevitably get free and then block his eyesight or manage to fall into his experiments and that just didn’t work. Cutting his hair was not an option. For one thing, it would fluff out everywhere if its own length didn’t weigh it down. For another, his mother had loved his hair and she herself had been the one to reluctantly trim it. Honoring her memory in his hair was one of Usopp’s own secrets. So, clearly he wore his bandannas for practical purposes. Zoro’s, however, seemed to be of a different nature.
The swordsman only used his bandanna for two purposes that Usopp could discern. One was to indicate that he was angry, serious, and that people were about to bleed. It was a warning. The black scrap of fabric tied tightly over the swordsman’s head somehow managed to shadow green eyes in a way that should have been physically impossible. And when Zoro’s eyes went unreadable, destruction quickly followed. Once his rage had been expended and the idiots foolish enough to face him lay bleeding at his feet, the bandanna came off and Zoro used it to wipe the blood off of his precious blades. It was the only time the swordsman touched his tools, his extensions of himself, with something other than his fingers or that white puffball thing that Usopp itched to examine or the oil-scented white cloth that polished the gleaming blades sometimes for hours. Otherwise the black bandanna just stayed simply knotted around Zoro’s upper arm and the swordsman didn’t even seem to notice he had it on.
Initially, Usopp had thought that maybe the swordsman was just particularly fastidious about his hair. Two things ruined that idea. One was that Zoro bathed almost as infrequently as Luffy despite his constant training. His hair got washed on those rare occasions he chose to take a shower or, and Usopp knew this only because he had excellent hearing not because he was eavesdropping, whenever he had to dive overboard to rescue their hapless hammer of a captain. The other was that Zoro apparently washed his bandanna even less than his own body or his few articles of clothing. After a battle, his hair was inevitably speckled with flecks of dried blood that had flaked off the black material. Certainly Zoro couldn’t have been vain about his hair in that regard.
Given the fact that Zoro also treated his swords better than he treated himself or any of his companions, Usopp knew that the bandanna wasn’t just there for wiping off the blood from his swords either. No doubt the swordsman would have used his own pants or the clothes of his fallen enemies if he didn’t have the black cloth available. And if he did keep something purely for the purpose of cleaning his blades, it would have been of higher quality than that ratty old scrap. So just what was the purpose of Zoro’s black bandanna? Usopp knew of some people who changed their personalities when they were in certain situations or dressed a certain way. Briefly he had considered this as a possibility for the swordsman. But Zoro was often angry and often serious. The green-haired man seemed to exist in a constant state of grumpiness that was tempered only by his incessant training, by booze, or occasionally by Luffy’s antics. Certainly his overall character didn’t change when he covered his head with bloodstained black; only his intensity did.
The next avenue of thought Usopp pursued had him thinking that the bandanna was like his hair or whatever was up with Zoro’s obsession with his white sword and becoming the greatest. Perhaps the bandanna had belonged to a precious person of Zoro’s and it was a memento. It seemed a bit odd to Usopp that an important memory could be used as a method of sopping up blood, but that was Zoro. The longer he mused over the matter, however, the less likely this idea seemed. For one thing, Zoro was completely focused on his white blade and on his goal. He pursued his dream relentlessly, weights lifted over and over, and his sweat soaked deep into the Going Merry’s deck from hours of push-ups. If the black bandanna had such a personal meaning to him, Usopp figured Zoro would have paid it more heed. As it was, he basically ignored the bit of cloth unless it came time for a major fight.
This puzzle of Zoro’s bandanna worried at the back of Usopp’s mind for a while. It was something to think about on long, boring night watches or when he couldn’t get to sleep. Eventually the sharpshooter even found himself thinking about that mysterious piece of black fabric during the day. He had noticed everything about it. He saw that the color was black only from a distance. Standing next to the swordsman it was more brown-ish, a result of all the blood it had absorbed. The cloth was surprisingly supple too, given its primary purposes, and the ends of it had a tendency to dance in the wind just like the golden drops that dangled from Zoro’s ear. The swordsman never failed to tie it perfectly back in the same spot. Long burned brown from the sun, underneath the bandanna his skin was pale in comparison, an olive-tan that was shades lighter than Usopp’s own. And the spot where Zoro knotted it was right in the middle of his bicep. The sharpshooter had taken to studying just how the muscle moved beneath the bandanna and how the black scrap emphasized the swordsman’s toned strength.
All of his bandanna scrutiny was beginning to spill over into general Zoro-watching. It wasn’t like that was a difficult task. Zoro basically did two things most days. He trained and he slept. Oh he ate too, and fought with Sanji and argued with Nami and even played a few games that Luffy could be trusted on to invent on a daily basis. But mostly the swordsman was either asleep or working on reaching his dream. Both of these things were typically accomplished out in the fresh air of the Going Merry’s deck. Seeing as Usopp himself spent most of his time either painting or conducting experiments, the rather pungent nature of his usual pastimes had led Nami to also all but banish him to the outside. It was of little consequence to peer over the top of his canvas at a sleeping, snoring body or to catch quick glimpses of a sweating, straining form out of the corner of his eye when he dug around in his bag for a necessary chemical. There were times too when he blatantly stared, sketching Zoro’s form with or without permission; all of it in the name of practice.
It was his intense focus that had started with the mystery of the bandanna that let Usopp discover the state the material had reached. They’d fought off a group of marines-turned-pirate, one of the more vicious gangs they’ve encountered in East Blue. The numbers and the violence – these men are already dead in the eyes of marine and pirate alike – made the battle last longer than normal, and Zoro’s bandanna had come off his arm and gone around his head shortly after the first of several different swordsman had boarded the Going Merry. In the stillness after the flurry of the fight, Zoro was cleaning his blades, soaking the black material once more in blood. Watching him from across the deck as he bent down to help Sanji throw another body overboard, Usopp could clearly see how the edges were badly frayed. When, as he’d absently kicked at a body that still happened to be moaning, he saw a large tear running through the fabric, the sharpshooter decided to see what other new things he could possibly learn about Zoro’s mysterious black bandanna.
Darkness had fallen, dinner was over, and for once Sanji had decided that Luffy could be trusted to help put away the dishes. Nami was ensconced in her room counting the treasure they’d taken. Usopp hesitated at the base of the main mast. He’d spent a good hour or two debating over just what he wanted to do. Finally, his decision made, he’d slipped a new bandanna into one of the pockets of his overalls. Now all that was left was to climb up to the crow’s nest. Zoro had drawn first watch and he was already up there. The fact that the crow’s nest afforded a bit of privacy was reassuring to the sharpshooter. On the other hand, it was a long way down if the swordsman decided to take offense. Usopp frowned, scowled, shuffled his feet. Twice already he had gotten started on the climb only to back off. Above him, just as he was ready to give up and go back below deck – Zoro would probably kill him after all and he would rather live to see another morning – a loud, exasperated sigh sounded.
“Oi, Long-nose! Either get up here or go away. Your constant fidgeting is getting on my nerves.”
Zoro’s voice was irritated, but Usopp nervously reminded himself that the swordsman always sounded annoyed and that his tone wasn’t nearly as harsh as it was when woken abruptly from a nap. A deep swallow later, and the sharpshooter began to climb, silently offering up a quick prayer to whatever gods happened to be listening to please spare his life for the fifth or sixth time that day. Finally he reached the crow’s nest. Zoro was hard to make out clearly in the darkness. Unlike Sanji, he didn’t have the faintest red glow from a cigarette to light his face. And Zoro wasn’t like Nami or Usopp himself. He didn’t read by lantern light. Instead he just sat in the darkness, still and quiet and only the shimmer of moonlight in his eyes clearly marked his face.
“Um, er…Z-Zoro…” Usopp stuttered and internally cursed as he felt his face flush unexpectedly.
For a moment, Zoro said nothing. Then he reached forward and yanked the sharpshooter’s sash so that Usopp was tipped off balance and had to sit down heavily.
“What is it you want Long-nose?” Zoro’s voice was flat but not angry. Usopp couldn’t quite figure out what to make of it and resorted, like always, to his usual bluster to cover up his sudden fear and embarrassment.
“Well, uh, you see, today, earlier, after I had defeated a bunch of those men single-handedly and was assisting Sanji in dumping them overboard, my amazingly keen, eagle eyes noticed something.” Usopp paused for breath and somehow his pause grew longer as he couldn’t force his teeth and tongue to cooperate and say what he needed to say next. Finally Zoro’s patience ran out and he growled softly.
“And? What does that have to do with you skulking around the deck?”
“I, that is…me and my super awesome eyesight noticed that yourbandannaisfallingapart.”
“What?”
“I said,” Usopp took a deep breath and tried to calm his galloping heartbeat. Zoro wouldn’t throw him over the side just for this. “Your bandanna is frayed and torn almost to pieces.”
“…”
Usopp took Zoro’s silence to be an indicator of the swordsman’s displeasure and began scrambling to his feet. He knew when to run away and now was certainly the time. Whatever attachment the green-haired man had to his bandanna, it was most definitely stronger than what Usopp had led himself to believe. Once again a calloused hand shot out and latched onto his clothing. He was pulled back down and the sharpshooter was afraid he was going to end up sprawled across the swordsman until another hand caught him squarely in the chest and tipped him back so that he fell onto his rear. Sitting again, Usopp gawked at Zoro and sent up yet another prayer. At the rate he’d been going since joining up with Luffy, his annual offering would be enough to bankrupt him.
“So…”Zoro’s voice rumbled and the sound of it wasn’t something that Usopp could quite place. The pitch and the timbre were off, outside of normal Zoro range. “You noticed that. Why? And why bother telling me?”
“I…I…” Usopp couldn’t seem to stop stammering and he closed his fingers tightly around the piece of black fabric he had folded up inside one pocket. He could do this. All he was doing was making a simple offer of a gift. Zoro would say yes or no and that would be the end of it. “I wear a lot of bandannas myself. And I had some spares. But none of them were black. Then I remembered there was some leftover material from when we made the flag. Sometimes I use it in projects or to clean up after an experiment. The stuff is pretty resilient. I took the liberty of cutting some out and hemming it for you.” The sharpshooter fumbled in his pocket, usually clever fingers nervously failing to get a proper grip on the square of cloth. Finally, hand trembling, he held out the new bandanna. “If you want to use it, you can.”
The darkness prevented him from seeing Zoro’s expression. But he could make out the swordsman reaching forward and Usopp braced himself for a punch or a smack. Instead all that happened was that the black folded material was plucked easily from his own nerveless fingers. Judging from the faint noises and the motion he could barely make out, the swordsman had unfolded the bandanna and was now running it through his hands, perhaps determining its length. And then there were more movements and more noises as Zoro untied his old, tattered bandanna and replaced it with the new one.
“Thanks.”
“Y-you’re welcome. It was no trouble.” This time when Usopp scrabbled away, the swordsman didn’t stop him. The sharpshooter went to bed early that night, the stress and tension from the fight and then dealing with his prickly nakama having exhausted him.
Perhaps as a result of his early bedtime, Usopp woke earlier than normal the next day. He was sitting quietly in between Nami’s mikans, just trying to wrap his mind over what had happened the night before, when the swordsman appeared on deck for his usual morning work out. First though, he stepped over to the rail and tossed a fluttering scrap of black over the side. As the brisk wind caught it and carried it farther away even as it sank towards the waves, Usopp could clearly make out the frayed edges and the jagged tear. Apparently his earlier conclusions about Zoro’s true state of attachment to the bandanna had been correct.
Later, after breakfast and sometime before Luffy began his usual plaintive questions about when it would be time for lunch, Usopp set up his chemistry set over on the aft deck. Zoro was dozing in the shade of the mikans and, as had become his custom, the sharpshooter let his eyes wander over the form of his nakama. They stopped to linger on the bit of cloth tied around one bicep. The mystery had in no way been solved, but Usopp felt refreshed and ready to tackle it once more. One day he would find out just why the swordsman chose to wear a black bandanna and then he would move on to solving the next puzzle that Zoro contained.
Rating: G
Pairing: Pre-slash ZoSopp
Word Count: An epic 3311 in which nothing happens
There were many mysteries on board the Going Merry. Most of them stemmed from the fact that certain of the straw hats simply didn’t talk about their past, or in some cases, really talk much at all. Usopp knew all about Nami from having listened to Nojiko and being there for the battle against Arlong. And he had a few vague ideas about Sanji; the cook sometimes talked in his sleep and his beyond anal-retentive need to make sure no food was wasted clearly indicated that something bad related to that had happened to him. Of course, everyone knew about Usopp and his father being a pirate and about Kaya and the Going Merry and what had happened with Kuro and the Black Cat pirates. For one thing, Luffy, Zoro, and Nami had been there. For another, Usopp never let anyone forget just who had given them the ship. It was important to him and talking about it all helped keep the memories fresh in his mind. When it came to the first two members of the Straw Hat pirates, though, Usopp was mostly in the dark. All he knew about was that the captain and his unofficial first mate were both particularly attached to specific items; i.e. Luffy’s hat and Zoro’s white sword.
Another mystery, one not nearly so…mysterious…as his companions’ pasts, also nagged at Usopp. He liked knowing things. Having information made it possible to make extrapolations and plans and helped him know when to adapt to changing circumstances and when to get the hell out of the way although his danger sense usually took good care of him whenever he really needed it. This was the mystery of the clothing. Usopp was well aware that he tended to wear the same overalls and boots and white sash day after day. However, it wasn’t like he didn’t have multiple pairs of the overalls. In fact, he had around eight, although three were in less than the best shape. Those were the ones he tended to wear when he was conducting experiments. Another stain or two wouldn’t hurt them very much. Nami, of course, changed outfits daily. And Sanji, too, varied his wardrobe even if he followed Usopp’s own tendency and had several copies of his dark suit jackets and striped shirts neatly stowed away in his footlocker. As for the swordsman and the captain…that was an entirely different matter. Truthfully, judging from the way Luffy smelled by the end of the week and his tendencies to run around naked, Usopp was fairly positive that Luffy didn’t own more than the one red shirt and pair of beat-up old shorts. Zoro appeared to be in the same boat. White shirt, haramaki, black pants – that had far too many faded spots of red on them when seen close up – Zoro’s wardrobe seemed to be as limited as the captain’s.
Of course, Nami had bought them all new clothes in Loguetown; something about the smell had motivated her to loosen her usually knotted purse strings. How she had managed to find clothing identical to what they both normally wore was yet another mystery, but given Nami’s strange female powers, Usopp had decided that this was one mystery he didn’t want to solve. Besides, he had a fairly good idea that it involved serious death threats and a harried tailor. Given the way Luffy and Zoro lived, their new clothes were soon seriously beaten up and worthless, good only for rags. Within days, Nami’s rare expenditure had been wasted and the smell was back. By now Usopp had gotten used to it. Heck, he had sort of missed it for the week or so it had been gone. But despite these clothing questions, there was another one that loomed even greater in his mind. It was the mystery of Zoro’s black bandanna.
Usopp owned many bandannas. Of course, he had several that he preferred to wear, but he owned a wide variety. It was a way of expressing himself given that the rest of his clothing tended to be the same day in and day out. In fact, he’d even designed a couple himself one year back before Luffy and company had shown up when he was experimenting with vegetable dyes. Besides being a fashion statement, the bandannas he wore served a very practical purpose. His hair was so curly and unruly and long that he had to restrain it. A simple ponytail wasn’t good enough. Strands would inevitably get free and then block his eyesight or manage to fall into his experiments and that just didn’t work. Cutting his hair was not an option. For one thing, it would fluff out everywhere if its own length didn’t weigh it down. For another, his mother had loved his hair and she herself had been the one to reluctantly trim it. Honoring her memory in his hair was one of Usopp’s own secrets. So, clearly he wore his bandannas for practical purposes. Zoro’s, however, seemed to be of a different nature.
The swordsman only used his bandanna for two purposes that Usopp could discern. One was to indicate that he was angry, serious, and that people were about to bleed. It was a warning. The black scrap of fabric tied tightly over the swordsman’s head somehow managed to shadow green eyes in a way that should have been physically impossible. And when Zoro’s eyes went unreadable, destruction quickly followed. Once his rage had been expended and the idiots foolish enough to face him lay bleeding at his feet, the bandanna came off and Zoro used it to wipe the blood off of his precious blades. It was the only time the swordsman touched his tools, his extensions of himself, with something other than his fingers or that white puffball thing that Usopp itched to examine or the oil-scented white cloth that polished the gleaming blades sometimes for hours. Otherwise the black bandanna just stayed simply knotted around Zoro’s upper arm and the swordsman didn’t even seem to notice he had it on.
Initially, Usopp had thought that maybe the swordsman was just particularly fastidious about his hair. Two things ruined that idea. One was that Zoro bathed almost as infrequently as Luffy despite his constant training. His hair got washed on those rare occasions he chose to take a shower or, and Usopp knew this only because he had excellent hearing not because he was eavesdropping, whenever he had to dive overboard to rescue their hapless hammer of a captain. The other was that Zoro apparently washed his bandanna even less than his own body or his few articles of clothing. After a battle, his hair was inevitably speckled with flecks of dried blood that had flaked off the black material. Certainly Zoro couldn’t have been vain about his hair in that regard.
Given the fact that Zoro also treated his swords better than he treated himself or any of his companions, Usopp knew that the bandanna wasn’t just there for wiping off the blood from his swords either. No doubt the swordsman would have used his own pants or the clothes of his fallen enemies if he didn’t have the black cloth available. And if he did keep something purely for the purpose of cleaning his blades, it would have been of higher quality than that ratty old scrap. So just what was the purpose of Zoro’s black bandanna? Usopp knew of some people who changed their personalities when they were in certain situations or dressed a certain way. Briefly he had considered this as a possibility for the swordsman. But Zoro was often angry and often serious. The green-haired man seemed to exist in a constant state of grumpiness that was tempered only by his incessant training, by booze, or occasionally by Luffy’s antics. Certainly his overall character didn’t change when he covered his head with bloodstained black; only his intensity did.
The next avenue of thought Usopp pursued had him thinking that the bandanna was like his hair or whatever was up with Zoro’s obsession with his white sword and becoming the greatest. Perhaps the bandanna had belonged to a precious person of Zoro’s and it was a memento. It seemed a bit odd to Usopp that an important memory could be used as a method of sopping up blood, but that was Zoro. The longer he mused over the matter, however, the less likely this idea seemed. For one thing, Zoro was completely focused on his white blade and on his goal. He pursued his dream relentlessly, weights lifted over and over, and his sweat soaked deep into the Going Merry’s deck from hours of push-ups. If the black bandanna had such a personal meaning to him, Usopp figured Zoro would have paid it more heed. As it was, he basically ignored the bit of cloth unless it came time for a major fight.
This puzzle of Zoro’s bandanna worried at the back of Usopp’s mind for a while. It was something to think about on long, boring night watches or when he couldn’t get to sleep. Eventually the sharpshooter even found himself thinking about that mysterious piece of black fabric during the day. He had noticed everything about it. He saw that the color was black only from a distance. Standing next to the swordsman it was more brown-ish, a result of all the blood it had absorbed. The cloth was surprisingly supple too, given its primary purposes, and the ends of it had a tendency to dance in the wind just like the golden drops that dangled from Zoro’s ear. The swordsman never failed to tie it perfectly back in the same spot. Long burned brown from the sun, underneath the bandanna his skin was pale in comparison, an olive-tan that was shades lighter than Usopp’s own. And the spot where Zoro knotted it was right in the middle of his bicep. The sharpshooter had taken to studying just how the muscle moved beneath the bandanna and how the black scrap emphasized the swordsman’s toned strength.
All of his bandanna scrutiny was beginning to spill over into general Zoro-watching. It wasn’t like that was a difficult task. Zoro basically did two things most days. He trained and he slept. Oh he ate too, and fought with Sanji and argued with Nami and even played a few games that Luffy could be trusted on to invent on a daily basis. But mostly the swordsman was either asleep or working on reaching his dream. Both of these things were typically accomplished out in the fresh air of the Going Merry’s deck. Seeing as Usopp himself spent most of his time either painting or conducting experiments, the rather pungent nature of his usual pastimes had led Nami to also all but banish him to the outside. It was of little consequence to peer over the top of his canvas at a sleeping, snoring body or to catch quick glimpses of a sweating, straining form out of the corner of his eye when he dug around in his bag for a necessary chemical. There were times too when he blatantly stared, sketching Zoro’s form with or without permission; all of it in the name of practice.
It was his intense focus that had started with the mystery of the bandanna that let Usopp discover the state the material had reached. They’d fought off a group of marines-turned-pirate, one of the more vicious gangs they’ve encountered in East Blue. The numbers and the violence – these men are already dead in the eyes of marine and pirate alike – made the battle last longer than normal, and Zoro’s bandanna had come off his arm and gone around his head shortly after the first of several different swordsman had boarded the Going Merry. In the stillness after the flurry of the fight, Zoro was cleaning his blades, soaking the black material once more in blood. Watching him from across the deck as he bent down to help Sanji throw another body overboard, Usopp could clearly see how the edges were badly frayed. When, as he’d absently kicked at a body that still happened to be moaning, he saw a large tear running through the fabric, the sharpshooter decided to see what other new things he could possibly learn about Zoro’s mysterious black bandanna.
Darkness had fallen, dinner was over, and for once Sanji had decided that Luffy could be trusted to help put away the dishes. Nami was ensconced in her room counting the treasure they’d taken. Usopp hesitated at the base of the main mast. He’d spent a good hour or two debating over just what he wanted to do. Finally, his decision made, he’d slipped a new bandanna into one of the pockets of his overalls. Now all that was left was to climb up to the crow’s nest. Zoro had drawn first watch and he was already up there. The fact that the crow’s nest afforded a bit of privacy was reassuring to the sharpshooter. On the other hand, it was a long way down if the swordsman decided to take offense. Usopp frowned, scowled, shuffled his feet. Twice already he had gotten started on the climb only to back off. Above him, just as he was ready to give up and go back below deck – Zoro would probably kill him after all and he would rather live to see another morning – a loud, exasperated sigh sounded.
“Oi, Long-nose! Either get up here or go away. Your constant fidgeting is getting on my nerves.”
Zoro’s voice was irritated, but Usopp nervously reminded himself that the swordsman always sounded annoyed and that his tone wasn’t nearly as harsh as it was when woken abruptly from a nap. A deep swallow later, and the sharpshooter began to climb, silently offering up a quick prayer to whatever gods happened to be listening to please spare his life for the fifth or sixth time that day. Finally he reached the crow’s nest. Zoro was hard to make out clearly in the darkness. Unlike Sanji, he didn’t have the faintest red glow from a cigarette to light his face. And Zoro wasn’t like Nami or Usopp himself. He didn’t read by lantern light. Instead he just sat in the darkness, still and quiet and only the shimmer of moonlight in his eyes clearly marked his face.
“Um, er…Z-Zoro…” Usopp stuttered and internally cursed as he felt his face flush unexpectedly.
For a moment, Zoro said nothing. Then he reached forward and yanked the sharpshooter’s sash so that Usopp was tipped off balance and had to sit down heavily.
“What is it you want Long-nose?” Zoro’s voice was flat but not angry. Usopp couldn’t quite figure out what to make of it and resorted, like always, to his usual bluster to cover up his sudden fear and embarrassment.
“Well, uh, you see, today, earlier, after I had defeated a bunch of those men single-handedly and was assisting Sanji in dumping them overboard, my amazingly keen, eagle eyes noticed something.” Usopp paused for breath and somehow his pause grew longer as he couldn’t force his teeth and tongue to cooperate and say what he needed to say next. Finally Zoro’s patience ran out and he growled softly.
“And? What does that have to do with you skulking around the deck?”
“I, that is…me and my super awesome eyesight noticed that yourbandannaisfallingapart.”
“What?”
“I said,” Usopp took a deep breath and tried to calm his galloping heartbeat. Zoro wouldn’t throw him over the side just for this. “Your bandanna is frayed and torn almost to pieces.”
“…”
Usopp took Zoro’s silence to be an indicator of the swordsman’s displeasure and began scrambling to his feet. He knew when to run away and now was certainly the time. Whatever attachment the green-haired man had to his bandanna, it was most definitely stronger than what Usopp had led himself to believe. Once again a calloused hand shot out and latched onto his clothing. He was pulled back down and the sharpshooter was afraid he was going to end up sprawled across the swordsman until another hand caught him squarely in the chest and tipped him back so that he fell onto his rear. Sitting again, Usopp gawked at Zoro and sent up yet another prayer. At the rate he’d been going since joining up with Luffy, his annual offering would be enough to bankrupt him.
“So…”Zoro’s voice rumbled and the sound of it wasn’t something that Usopp could quite place. The pitch and the timbre were off, outside of normal Zoro range. “You noticed that. Why? And why bother telling me?”
“I…I…” Usopp couldn’t seem to stop stammering and he closed his fingers tightly around the piece of black fabric he had folded up inside one pocket. He could do this. All he was doing was making a simple offer of a gift. Zoro would say yes or no and that would be the end of it. “I wear a lot of bandannas myself. And I had some spares. But none of them were black. Then I remembered there was some leftover material from when we made the flag. Sometimes I use it in projects or to clean up after an experiment. The stuff is pretty resilient. I took the liberty of cutting some out and hemming it for you.” The sharpshooter fumbled in his pocket, usually clever fingers nervously failing to get a proper grip on the square of cloth. Finally, hand trembling, he held out the new bandanna. “If you want to use it, you can.”
The darkness prevented him from seeing Zoro’s expression. But he could make out the swordsman reaching forward and Usopp braced himself for a punch or a smack. Instead all that happened was that the black folded material was plucked easily from his own nerveless fingers. Judging from the faint noises and the motion he could barely make out, the swordsman had unfolded the bandanna and was now running it through his hands, perhaps determining its length. And then there were more movements and more noises as Zoro untied his old, tattered bandanna and replaced it with the new one.
“Thanks.”
“Y-you’re welcome. It was no trouble.” This time when Usopp scrabbled away, the swordsman didn’t stop him. The sharpshooter went to bed early that night, the stress and tension from the fight and then dealing with his prickly nakama having exhausted him.
Perhaps as a result of his early bedtime, Usopp woke earlier than normal the next day. He was sitting quietly in between Nami’s mikans, just trying to wrap his mind over what had happened the night before, when the swordsman appeared on deck for his usual morning work out. First though, he stepped over to the rail and tossed a fluttering scrap of black over the side. As the brisk wind caught it and carried it farther away even as it sank towards the waves, Usopp could clearly make out the frayed edges and the jagged tear. Apparently his earlier conclusions about Zoro’s true state of attachment to the bandanna had been correct.
Later, after breakfast and sometime before Luffy began his usual plaintive questions about when it would be time for lunch, Usopp set up his chemistry set over on the aft deck. Zoro was dozing in the shade of the mikans and, as had become his custom, the sharpshooter let his eyes wander over the form of his nakama. They stopped to linger on the bit of cloth tied around one bicep. The mystery had in no way been solved, but Usopp felt refreshed and ready to tackle it once more. One day he would find out just why the swordsman chose to wear a black bandanna and then he would move on to solving the next puzzle that Zoro contained.
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Date: 2005-11-06 07:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-07 11:28 am (UTC)