Part 1 of 5
Sep. 3rd, 2008 06:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dethoratsTitle: Convergence
Rating: G for this part
Pairing: LuZoLu
Word Count: 2164
Topic: Nudging/patting/brushing
Wind belled out the Going Merry’s sails, sent the small caravel skipping across the waves with a speed it had never attained before. It was as if, Usopp had said with a smile that curved his generous mouth in a perfect parabola of joy, the boat itself knew what lay before them and couldn’t bear to wait any more either. Luffy had liked that idea, the captain laughing aloud from his perch on the figurehead as he leaned down to give the painted wood a quick squeeze. The sound was bright and infectious and the rest of the crew hadn’t been able to resist joining in.
‘It was impossible not to laugh,’ Zoro thought as he leaned against a sturdy rail and watched the last of the millennial dragons vanish into the clouds. They had seen the improbable already, right there in East Blue, and they were headed towards what would only be even more unlikely, even more impossible, into the very stuff of tales and legends. The Grand Line waited and there were five excited and mostly fearless teenagers anxious to see how far their dreams and their strengths and their ties as nakama would take them. And the Going Merry was the brave and sturdy craft that would carry them over inscrutable and turbulent seas.
A final flicker of a green-tipped white tail marked the farewell of the dragons and around the swordsman his nakama slowly scattered, off to find other pursuits to fill the hours before they arrived at the Reverse Mountain. The idiot cook disappeared into the galley with a punch-drunk sort of twirl, warbling about whipping up some sort of concoction for “his goddess of geography” as Nami declared her intentions to add the dragons’ island to her charts. Zoro weighed making a pointed comment but decided against it. If the chef went to all the trouble to make something special for the navigator, it likely meant the rest of them would grudgingly get a treat as well. And the swordsman was hungry enough that the risk of missing out stilled his tongue.
Usopp left the deck as well; following Nami down the ladder with a glint in his eye that Zoro had come to know meant the sniper would be wearing smudges of charcoal on his face and paint under his fingernails at dinnertime. Luffy had draped himself over the figurehead with that boneless way he had, the curve of his spine as it meshed with the ram’s rounded head making Zoro’s back twinge in unnecessary sympathy. The captain held his hat close to his breast and he was staring up at the sky with a small smile playing about his lips as he absently named cloud formations aloud to himself. Most of them ended up being varieties of meat and Zoro couldn’t keep from grinning and shaking his head as he listened. No surprise there, that Luffy would occupy himself with thoughts of food. And it seemed inevitable in a way that he follow suit and fall into his usual patterns as he settled cross-legged on Merry’s warm planking.
Her sword came first, the steel gleaming and true as he inspected it in the sunlight. He had been worried; that chain he’d cut through had at first glance seemed like solid steel and he’d been surprised (and admittedly proud of himself) when his blade had split the links. But it had been old and only only a well-applied coat of paint had hid the rust and damage that years of exposure to salt water had caused. They had cut through steel, he and his blades, but it may as well have been wood for all the strength it had actually held. Wadou was none the worse for the experience and indeed the blade seemed to hum with potential as he stared at it. Real steel, real iron made even stronger by heat and care and tempering, was out of his reach at the moment but it wouldn’t be forever. His swords had a taste for it now and he could feel an idea germinating in the back of his mind, words his master had said that held the key to the ability to cut through whatever he wished. Satisfied, Zoro slid Kuina’s pristine blade back inside its sheath and gently set it aside.
Yubashiri came next and its bright edge winked and shone in the light. Lighter than hers by a few grams, the sword had performed well. It suited him, reminded him in a way of the calligraphy brush he’d been reluctant to take up but that had fit in his hand as if it had been molded there. Yubashiri was a good sword, even-tempered and even a little playful and Zoro mentally thanked the henpecked merchant in Loguetown once again for the precious gift. Sandei Kitetsu he eased more carefully from its sheath. Even in the direct rays of the sun, shadows seemed to flicker on the honed edge of the blade. But the yearning for battle, for the smooth bite of flesh and the hot copper taste of blood, was quiescent, banked by the light and sated still from the meal of corrupt navy flesh it had consumed earlier. This was a dangerous sword, but a part of him - even as he recognized the threat to his spirit - welcomed the risk. Sandei Kitetsu would force him to grow or be subsumed and Zoro would not lose.
Zoro set aside his third blade and nearly startled as his attention turned outward. A slim shadow had fallen over him outside of his notice and he looked directly up into a battered straw brim and brown eyes. Luffy pulled his finger out of his nostril, inspecting it for a moment before flicking whatever it was that he’d excavated over his shoulder, still leaning close over the swordsman. “They’re good swords, eh Zoro?”
Zoro nodded, a hand straying to finger three hilts in turn even as Luffy plopped down on the deck next to him. The captain was skin-warm, sun-warm, as his bare arm brushed against the swordsman’s and their knees met as Luffy stretched out his legs, his feet moving in time to some internal rhythm. Luffy was close and it would have constituted an invasion of his personal space had it been anyone aside from the captain. But it was Luffy and he’d been too close since the very beginning. Zoro uncurled one leg, laid it out alongside the other boy’s. The tread of his boot reached further than the scuffed sole of Luffy’s sandal but only by a little bit and the swordsman didn’t move as tanned skin shifted to meet black fabric. “Yeah,” Zoro said, leaning back against the rail only to be followed by a deceptively skinny shoulder aligning with his. “They’re good.”
Luffy grinned and relaxed a bit further into Zoro’s side. “Thought so,” was all the captain said, and an easy silence fell over them as Zoro contemplated the paler hints of skin beneath the dark lines of sandal straps that peeked out with every flex and wiggle of Luffy’s toes.
It was true, Zoro reflected, that Luffy had always made a habit of invading his space. He had stood far too close in the Navy yard, his breath hot and fragrant with the then tempting scent of food as he studied the way Zoro had been bound, the picture he made in that desolate place. He had driven a hard bargain, one that had left Zoro more than a little astounded at its audacity, but Luffy had never given him a real chance to regret making their deal. That very same night, alone together in a rowboat, Luffy had flopped down next to him and their shared body heat had made some of the chill that came from traveling without blankets or other protection disappear. But lately it felt like there was something more than just a friendly exchange behind the contact and Zoro suspected he knew why.
Their captain was exuberant and full of life and he seemed impossibly fearless, even to Zoro who had seen more of the world than his nakama and knew how to move in it with easy confidence. Only once could he remember Luffy sounding truly afraid and that had been his fault. No one had ever said his name with that much desperate hope, as if the strength of yearning alone could save him. With salt water, an ebbing pulse, and a distinct sense of failure all throbbing through his head, at first he hadn’t really heard. But as he’d bobbed back to the surface, hauled there by the arms of familiar friends, Luffy’s voice had been clear. And it had held a note of something, some emotion that Zoro had eventually named as fear. In that moment, with Mihawk’s challenge hanging in the air and his loss spilling out of his body in hot scarlet spasms with every heartbeat, it had been the captain he had had to answer to first.
An apology and another vow, one that meant as much as the one he’d made with Kuina, the burden he carried and the dream he had placed in her white blade; he could not – would not – lose to another swordsman until he had defeated the Hawk Eyes and assumed the mantle of the Greatest Swordsman in the World. It would be a difficult promise to keep, nearly as difficult as finding and facing down Mihawk once more, but for Luffy, for his captain, Zoro was determined to manage. Thus far he hadn’t broken his word nor even had to bend it a little with a successful rematch. He had defeated a six-armed octopus swordsman without a single cut or scrape from his six blades. For Luffy, to give him time, he’d managed ten more seconds against Arlong while his guts threatened to spill from his body. It was the most intense pain Zoro had ever felt but he had survived and come out stronger for it. Nonetheless, it had been a very close call and he had woken up several times on the way to Loguetown, pain wracking his body, to catch a glimpse of wide eyes staring at him in the dark. Luffy still didn’t know how to properly fake a snore.
Since they had left Nami’s village behind, Zoro had noticed that Luffy had found more reasons to be near him. It was casual, almost deceptive, but for a person who had been alone as often as the swordsman had, the sudden increase in touching had been impossible to miss. Pats on the back, a swift brush of a foot against his leg under the dinner table, skinny arms wrapped around his neck with the demands for a piggyback just a beat too slow, and that wasn’t even counting all the times Zoro had woken from a nap to find Luffy curled at his back or brazenly using his stomach as a pillow – it all added up to only one thing in the swordsman’s mind. Luffy needed concrete reassurance, proof that he was still whole and hale and alive.
That was sentiment Zoro could understand. Three times he’d jolted awake from the nightmare, the feeling of rain soaking his clothes and streaming down his face ghosting across his skin. The thinnest of margins had saved Monkey D. Luffy from an execution on the most notorious spot in the Blues. If the lightning had been a second slower or that idiot clown Buggy a second faster, it would have been blood washing across the flagstones in Loguetown’s plaza rather than static blue bolts of electricity. There had been a wide grin on Luffy’s face, an expression that held no regrets or fear, and it was only the chef who could have told Zoro that it had matched the sharp grin he wore as Mihawk’s black sword descended a final time.
But nature or providence or something had intervened and Luffy had lived, survived unscathed. The flight from the White Hunter through the blinding storm had been confused and their escape sudden and it was only once they were back on the Going Merry that Zoro remembered to drop Luffy’s arm again. So he could understand his captain’s need for touch, to feel the reality rather than just see with oft-deceptive eyes. Besides, Luffy was often unobtrusive about it and he was warm and solid.
And, Zoro thought with private smile as he came back from his thoughts and glanced down at the hat-bearing head settled on his shoulder, the captain’s true sleeping state was marked by steady, gentle breathing. It was a lulling sort of sound, an invitation, and Zoro stretched out his other leg and slumped back further against the rails, taking care not to dislodge his companion. The sun felt good against his eyelids and it was only a few minutes later that the swordsman’s cheek found its own pillow atop Luffy’s head.
Rating: G for this part
Pairing: LuZoLu
Word Count: 2164
Topic: Nudging/patting/brushing
Wind belled out the Going Merry’s sails, sent the small caravel skipping across the waves with a speed it had never attained before. It was as if, Usopp had said with a smile that curved his generous mouth in a perfect parabola of joy, the boat itself knew what lay before them and couldn’t bear to wait any more either. Luffy had liked that idea, the captain laughing aloud from his perch on the figurehead as he leaned down to give the painted wood a quick squeeze. The sound was bright and infectious and the rest of the crew hadn’t been able to resist joining in.
‘It was impossible not to laugh,’ Zoro thought as he leaned against a sturdy rail and watched the last of the millennial dragons vanish into the clouds. They had seen the improbable already, right there in East Blue, and they were headed towards what would only be even more unlikely, even more impossible, into the very stuff of tales and legends. The Grand Line waited and there were five excited and mostly fearless teenagers anxious to see how far their dreams and their strengths and their ties as nakama would take them. And the Going Merry was the brave and sturdy craft that would carry them over inscrutable and turbulent seas.
A final flicker of a green-tipped white tail marked the farewell of the dragons and around the swordsman his nakama slowly scattered, off to find other pursuits to fill the hours before they arrived at the Reverse Mountain. The idiot cook disappeared into the galley with a punch-drunk sort of twirl, warbling about whipping up some sort of concoction for “his goddess of geography” as Nami declared her intentions to add the dragons’ island to her charts. Zoro weighed making a pointed comment but decided against it. If the chef went to all the trouble to make something special for the navigator, it likely meant the rest of them would grudgingly get a treat as well. And the swordsman was hungry enough that the risk of missing out stilled his tongue.
Usopp left the deck as well; following Nami down the ladder with a glint in his eye that Zoro had come to know meant the sniper would be wearing smudges of charcoal on his face and paint under his fingernails at dinnertime. Luffy had draped himself over the figurehead with that boneless way he had, the curve of his spine as it meshed with the ram’s rounded head making Zoro’s back twinge in unnecessary sympathy. The captain held his hat close to his breast and he was staring up at the sky with a small smile playing about his lips as he absently named cloud formations aloud to himself. Most of them ended up being varieties of meat and Zoro couldn’t keep from grinning and shaking his head as he listened. No surprise there, that Luffy would occupy himself with thoughts of food. And it seemed inevitable in a way that he follow suit and fall into his usual patterns as he settled cross-legged on Merry’s warm planking.
Her sword came first, the steel gleaming and true as he inspected it in the sunlight. He had been worried; that chain he’d cut through had at first glance seemed like solid steel and he’d been surprised (and admittedly proud of himself) when his blade had split the links. But it had been old and only only a well-applied coat of paint had hid the rust and damage that years of exposure to salt water had caused. They had cut through steel, he and his blades, but it may as well have been wood for all the strength it had actually held. Wadou was none the worse for the experience and indeed the blade seemed to hum with potential as he stared at it. Real steel, real iron made even stronger by heat and care and tempering, was out of his reach at the moment but it wouldn’t be forever. His swords had a taste for it now and he could feel an idea germinating in the back of his mind, words his master had said that held the key to the ability to cut through whatever he wished. Satisfied, Zoro slid Kuina’s pristine blade back inside its sheath and gently set it aside.
Yubashiri came next and its bright edge winked and shone in the light. Lighter than hers by a few grams, the sword had performed well. It suited him, reminded him in a way of the calligraphy brush he’d been reluctant to take up but that had fit in his hand as if it had been molded there. Yubashiri was a good sword, even-tempered and even a little playful and Zoro mentally thanked the henpecked merchant in Loguetown once again for the precious gift. Sandei Kitetsu he eased more carefully from its sheath. Even in the direct rays of the sun, shadows seemed to flicker on the honed edge of the blade. But the yearning for battle, for the smooth bite of flesh and the hot copper taste of blood, was quiescent, banked by the light and sated still from the meal of corrupt navy flesh it had consumed earlier. This was a dangerous sword, but a part of him - even as he recognized the threat to his spirit - welcomed the risk. Sandei Kitetsu would force him to grow or be subsumed and Zoro would not lose.
Zoro set aside his third blade and nearly startled as his attention turned outward. A slim shadow had fallen over him outside of his notice and he looked directly up into a battered straw brim and brown eyes. Luffy pulled his finger out of his nostril, inspecting it for a moment before flicking whatever it was that he’d excavated over his shoulder, still leaning close over the swordsman. “They’re good swords, eh Zoro?”
Zoro nodded, a hand straying to finger three hilts in turn even as Luffy plopped down on the deck next to him. The captain was skin-warm, sun-warm, as his bare arm brushed against the swordsman’s and their knees met as Luffy stretched out his legs, his feet moving in time to some internal rhythm. Luffy was close and it would have constituted an invasion of his personal space had it been anyone aside from the captain. But it was Luffy and he’d been too close since the very beginning. Zoro uncurled one leg, laid it out alongside the other boy’s. The tread of his boot reached further than the scuffed sole of Luffy’s sandal but only by a little bit and the swordsman didn’t move as tanned skin shifted to meet black fabric. “Yeah,” Zoro said, leaning back against the rail only to be followed by a deceptively skinny shoulder aligning with his. “They’re good.”
Luffy grinned and relaxed a bit further into Zoro’s side. “Thought so,” was all the captain said, and an easy silence fell over them as Zoro contemplated the paler hints of skin beneath the dark lines of sandal straps that peeked out with every flex and wiggle of Luffy’s toes.
It was true, Zoro reflected, that Luffy had always made a habit of invading his space. He had stood far too close in the Navy yard, his breath hot and fragrant with the then tempting scent of food as he studied the way Zoro had been bound, the picture he made in that desolate place. He had driven a hard bargain, one that had left Zoro more than a little astounded at its audacity, but Luffy had never given him a real chance to regret making their deal. That very same night, alone together in a rowboat, Luffy had flopped down next to him and their shared body heat had made some of the chill that came from traveling without blankets or other protection disappear. But lately it felt like there was something more than just a friendly exchange behind the contact and Zoro suspected he knew why.
Their captain was exuberant and full of life and he seemed impossibly fearless, even to Zoro who had seen more of the world than his nakama and knew how to move in it with easy confidence. Only once could he remember Luffy sounding truly afraid and that had been his fault. No one had ever said his name with that much desperate hope, as if the strength of yearning alone could save him. With salt water, an ebbing pulse, and a distinct sense of failure all throbbing through his head, at first he hadn’t really heard. But as he’d bobbed back to the surface, hauled there by the arms of familiar friends, Luffy’s voice had been clear. And it had held a note of something, some emotion that Zoro had eventually named as fear. In that moment, with Mihawk’s challenge hanging in the air and his loss spilling out of his body in hot scarlet spasms with every heartbeat, it had been the captain he had had to answer to first.
An apology and another vow, one that meant as much as the one he’d made with Kuina, the burden he carried and the dream he had placed in her white blade; he could not – would not – lose to another swordsman until he had defeated the Hawk Eyes and assumed the mantle of the Greatest Swordsman in the World. It would be a difficult promise to keep, nearly as difficult as finding and facing down Mihawk once more, but for Luffy, for his captain, Zoro was determined to manage. Thus far he hadn’t broken his word nor even had to bend it a little with a successful rematch. He had defeated a six-armed octopus swordsman without a single cut or scrape from his six blades. For Luffy, to give him time, he’d managed ten more seconds against Arlong while his guts threatened to spill from his body. It was the most intense pain Zoro had ever felt but he had survived and come out stronger for it. Nonetheless, it had been a very close call and he had woken up several times on the way to Loguetown, pain wracking his body, to catch a glimpse of wide eyes staring at him in the dark. Luffy still didn’t know how to properly fake a snore.
Since they had left Nami’s village behind, Zoro had noticed that Luffy had found more reasons to be near him. It was casual, almost deceptive, but for a person who had been alone as often as the swordsman had, the sudden increase in touching had been impossible to miss. Pats on the back, a swift brush of a foot against his leg under the dinner table, skinny arms wrapped around his neck with the demands for a piggyback just a beat too slow, and that wasn’t even counting all the times Zoro had woken from a nap to find Luffy curled at his back or brazenly using his stomach as a pillow – it all added up to only one thing in the swordsman’s mind. Luffy needed concrete reassurance, proof that he was still whole and hale and alive.
That was sentiment Zoro could understand. Three times he’d jolted awake from the nightmare, the feeling of rain soaking his clothes and streaming down his face ghosting across his skin. The thinnest of margins had saved Monkey D. Luffy from an execution on the most notorious spot in the Blues. If the lightning had been a second slower or that idiot clown Buggy a second faster, it would have been blood washing across the flagstones in Loguetown’s plaza rather than static blue bolts of electricity. There had been a wide grin on Luffy’s face, an expression that held no regrets or fear, and it was only the chef who could have told Zoro that it had matched the sharp grin he wore as Mihawk’s black sword descended a final time.
But nature or providence or something had intervened and Luffy had lived, survived unscathed. The flight from the White Hunter through the blinding storm had been confused and their escape sudden and it was only once they were back on the Going Merry that Zoro remembered to drop Luffy’s arm again. So he could understand his captain’s need for touch, to feel the reality rather than just see with oft-deceptive eyes. Besides, Luffy was often unobtrusive about it and he was warm and solid.
And, Zoro thought with private smile as he came back from his thoughts and glanced down at the hat-bearing head settled on his shoulder, the captain’s true sleeping state was marked by steady, gentle breathing. It was a lulling sort of sound, an invitation, and Zoro stretched out his other leg and slumped back further against the rails, taking care not to dislodge his companion. The sun felt good against his eyelids and it was only a few minutes later that the swordsman’s cheek found its own pillow atop Luffy’s head.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-09-03 07:50 pm (UTC)Second, the rest of this fic was like being bathed in warm sunshine. It was quite and introspective and beautiful, and you don't know how happy it makes me to see this as a part 1 of 5.
I'm eagerly awaiting more.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-15 08:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-19 08:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-27 07:40 am (UTC)(yes, I'm reading through all your old LuZo stuff
to begin withand liking it very much ^_^ )no subject
Date: 2012-02-28 12:04 am (UTC)And I apologize as the LuZo section isn't terribly big. I got distracted by ZoSopp and Shanks and Ben.
no subject
Date: 2012-02-28 12:14 am (UTC)