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rainsometimesReady to post chapter 2 of the dark heavy deathfic. (Chapter 3 will take quite a bit longer to get ready, though.)
Edit in Feb. 2010: Title change./edit
Title:Fine Absence, chapter 2
Rating: PG in this chapter; PG-13 in Chapter 1
Pairing: None
Characters: All the Strawhats
Spoilers/setting: I think of this as taking place some time in the future, after the current arc (Impel Down). As such it contains speculation on future events.
Genre: Serious angst; deathfic
Betaed: Bytonko and ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
wendytigges and so very much the better for it! (You’re awesome, guys.) Any remaining mistakes are my own darned fault. As always, concrit is very welcome on large points and small.
Summary: From a prompt onop_fanforall asking for angstfic in which Luffy has to deal with Usopp being dead.
Continued from Chapter One.
Absence, part two
The days passed, but nothing seemed to change. The ship sailed on at the course that the log pose indicated, the crew listlessly following orders from an equally listless Nami. Zoro didn’t do half as much training as usual, nor did he sleep much. He went around actively looking for chores instead. But he didn’t find a lot. All of them seemed to have the same idea; trying to make their hands do something, keep moving, afraid of what would happen if they stopped.
Each of them tried their best to do their part in what was needed on ship, trying to be strong for the others. Each of them forced themselves to hold together in order to do that much, scared that if one link broke down it would tear all of them up, part of them resentful and part of them grateful that they couldn’t allow themselves to mourn now, not yet, not yet...
Nami and Chopper were the ones least successful at holding back the tears. That didn’t mean those two didn’t have to control themselves most of the time. Nami had her ever-present responsibility of day-to-day sailing business, now with no idea where the log pose would take them next. And Chopper, in addition to his medical duties, now had to try and try to keep his chin up and smile bravely. Chopper had always been lousy at hiding his feelings, but still he took part in as many of Luffy’s games as he was able to bear. Occasionally Luffy succeeded in coaxing a genuine smile out of him, though not very often. That made Chopper feel a conflicting mix of emotions: on the one hand, pride at making his captain happy; on the other, a heavy shame at forgetting his grief even just of the moment. And then he couldn’t help crying, however much he tried to be strong. But Luffy would act as if nothing had happened, staring towards the horizon with a glassy look and a fixed grin.
Maybe it was because Nami and Chopper would cry more often that the other five tended to find themselves near them – not so much to offer comfort (what comfort could they offer, really?) but for more selfish reasons. In some sense, it was like those two were crying for everyone, because the rest of them, even Brook and Franky, couldn’t allow themselves to.
None of them could face holding a big meeting to talk things over with everyone. They talked when they had the strength for it, usually just one on one in whatever corner of the ship they might find themselves in; at most three of them together. It was that way, bit by bit, they all heard Nami’s account of how it happened; and it was also how they realised that no-one but Luffy could have torn down Sogeking’s wanted poster in the boys’ cabin, even if no-one had seen him doing it.
That had been unexpected. There had been no other indication of Luffy realising the identity of the King of Snipers. But it wasn’t as if any of them really understood what went on in Luffy’s mind these days. Maybe he’d just acted on instinct. Or maybe it was only because Sogeking was supposed to be Usopp’s friend especially, and somehow Luffy couldn’t bear that particular reminder.
After a day or two had passed, they’d all pretty much put aside Brook’s initial advice and made themselves talk about Usopp within the captain’s hearing. Hesitantly and obliquely at first, they soon spoke more and more directly, always with a cautious, apprehensive glance in Luffy’s direction. But the manner in which they spoke didn’t seem to make any difference. Luffy just acted as if he hadn’t heard a thing, or as if they’d been talking in a wholly different language that he couldn’t be expected to understand. He’d simply look away as if waiting for them to talk about other things again. Or he’d saunter off slowly, humming a tune or mumbling something they couldn’t hear, leaving them staring after him helplessly.
*
"Luffy? You, uh, okay up there?"
Luffy looked down from his perch on Sunny’ figurehead on Franky in surprise. Of course he was okay! Why wouldn’t he be?
“Hiya, Franky! Sure, it’s fine! I’m always fine!!” he said, grinning widely.
“Oh. Well, that’s good,” said Franky, stepping closer. Even Franky was weird and over-gloomy these days, thought Luffy. He wasn’t posing or laughing or playing his guitar half as much as he should. Then again he wasn’t really crying much either.
Franky coughed. “I… I kinda thought it sounded like you were talking to someone, just now,” he said, looking both a little nervous and a little hopeful.
“I was talking to Sunny!” Luffy explained brightly. He patted the lion’s head below him. “He’s such a great ship!”
Franky brightened, smiling in a better and righter way than most of the crew did these days. “He is, isn’t he? My pride and joy! Don’t worry, he’ll bear us all a long way yet.” He knocked on the railing, striking what looked like a carpenter-ish kind of pose, as if holding a hammer high.
Luffy nodded. “We’ll go all the way to One Piece!!”
“Right, and then back around the world,” said Franky, sighing in a half-proud, half-sad way. Why did there have to be a “half-sad” in there as well? Luffy didn’t like it.
He frowned, but then brightened again as he said, “We’re sure lucky we met you, back in Water 7! And that you wanted to build it for us, right when we were looking for a shipwright too!”
Franky shrugged a bit. “Well, uh, what else could I do…” he mumbled, and then said something about having taken some money but that just sounded weird to Luffy, who couldn’t remember anything like that. Instead, Luffy turned his head and looked out at the water, and at the clouds far away which they were sailing towards.
“Sometimes it even feels as if we’ve sailed with Sunny even before that,” he said, almost to himself.
“Huh?” Franky sounded pretty surprised. “What do you mean by that?”
“Well, I know we had a ship before that, of course, but I can’t really remember much about it,” Luffy explained. After all, there must have been one, else how could they have gone so far, to Whiskey Peak and Little Garden, Drum Island and Alabasta and Skypiea and everywhere else? Luffy couldn’t really remember what that ship had been like, though. “But I’m sure it worked well enough, or we wouldn’t have gotten that far,” he added.
He heard Franky inhale sharply below him, and then the shipwright said, “I can’t believe you forgot – ” but then he went on to make one of those gibberish sounds that didn’t make any sense, that just slid around in Luffy’s head, so Luffy just zoned him out. You couldn’t talk to your crewmates when they insisted on not making sense like that.
He patted the wood next to him instead. It felt reliable and comradely under his touch in the warm sun. “Don’t worry, Sunny, we’ll take good care of you,” he mumbled, then leaned back as he heard the sound of Franky’s bare feet retreating. Franky was a great guy and all, but somehow things felt just a little safer now that they were alone again, him and Sunny.
He hummed a little tune under his breath, then mumbled, “It’s all right, it’s all right, it’s all a lie, I’ll protect them.” If someone had asked him, he wouldn’t have been able to explain what he meant by those words. He simply felt better for saying them. Anyway, there was nobody there to ask him.
*
“There’s something that bothers me,” murmurs Zoro. “One thing in particular, I mean. I don’t know, but maybe… could be maybe that’s what bothers Luffy too, so much that he won’t remember.”
Sanji lights a cigarette and puts his hands in his pocket, giving Zoro a bleak, tired look as he leans back in his chair. They are sitting in the galley. It’s a bright sunny day outside, and no-one else is here at the moment.
“What is it?” he says, also in a fairly low voice, although there is no real reason to be quiet. Except, perhaps, to not scare your thoughts away.
"It bothers me,” Zoro repeats quietly, running a finger along the sheath of Wadou Ichimonji, “that I don’t know if he went out like he would have wanted to. Yeah, okay, I know he really didn’t want to go at all. He wanted to go on and see Luffy find the One Piece and go back to his village and… and all of that…” Zoro’s voice falters, just a bit, his hand opening and closing uselessly.
“I know. Go on,” mumbles Sanji tonelessly, looking down. Zoro swallows, takes a deep draught of the glass of wine in front of him that Sanji has just poured him, then clears his throat and continues, still very quietly.
“But… if he had to go… he’d have wanted it to be in a way that would have made his dream come true. The way… the way a brave warrior of the sea would go. Now… now, you know…” Zoro looks away a bit at this, his voice growing harder, “…as far as I’m concerned, he did. He was only in danger because he was sailing with us in the first place, and he made that decision himself. And the last we know he was running into danger, not away from it.”
Sanji gets up and pours Zoro some more wine, then some for himself. “I know.” Then, as Zoro goes quiet again he adds, “What’s your point?” in a voice harsher than he’d intended.
“Point is, maybe that’s how I see it and how you see it, but would he have seen it like that? You know what he’s… what he was like. He’d probably dream of some great glorious sacrifice, you know? If he couldn’t do a thing against that Seaking – and he might not have gotten the chance to, it sure was a big and nasty piece of work – well, maybe, maybe Luffy would also think…” His voice dies down, and he sits still, looking at nothing.
“Would think he didn’t go in the right way after all?” Sanji finishes for him. “That he didn’t reach his dream?”
“Just a thought,” mutters Zoro, shrugging awkwardly, his movements a lot tenser and clumsier than usual. His face looks drawn and weary.
“Maybe,” says Sanji, drinking deeply. He really has no idea. After all, none of them have known before this how Luffy would react if any one of them was irretrievably gone. A dream gone unfulfilled might be what tips him over the edge into safe oblivion. After all, Luffy can’t become a brave warrior of the sea for Usopp. He already is.
“Maybe that’s why,” murmurs Sanji. “Or maybe there’s something else, something we don’t know about. Or maybe he just can’t…” He closes his eyes tightly for a moment, part of him deeply tired, another part just numb and blank. He keeps going around wanting to start screaming, sometimes trembling with the effort of not doing so.
“I’d’ve thought he was stronger than this.” Zoro’s voice has shrunk down to something like a hoarse whisper, almost sounding ashamed of what he says. That is so strange and unlike him that one would think it would startle Sanji. But it doesn’t, not at all.
“He doesn’t remember Merry either, you know,” Sanji says, blowing out smoke, trying to hide the tension from his voice. “Franky told me.”
Zoro nods. “Already noticed,” he mutters. “Same deal. He just blocks the name out.”
None of them say, “we can’t keep on sailing like this”. But the thought is there, hanging unspoken in the air between them.
“Nami-baby keeps saying she doesn’t know if he fell into the sea or not,” Sanji says tentatively. But Zoro doesn’t seem to be listening, or if he does he won’t catch the hint in Sanji’s words. Not yet, at least.
They sit and drink in silence, instead.
*
One day Luffy and Chopper and Brook are all sitting by the railing fishing. Chopper and Brook are mostly silent, but Luffy chats a lot about everything and nothing – what it would be like to be a fish, some of the fishes they’ve seen, compared to some of the people they’ve met on various islands, what kind of fish he’d most like to be and to eat, and so on, his thoughts seemingly jumping from one point to the other like leaping fish on the surface of the sea. Chopper is content to just hum or go “Maybe” or “I don’t think so” or “Right” now and then, although sometimes he’s swept along with the weird current of Luffy’s mind and can only widen his eyes and go, “Do you really think so? That would be pretty cool!” forgetting for a moment the usual cold, twisted feeling in his stomach these days. Brook does much the same at the other side of Luffy, sometimes injecting a word or two often having to do with mermaids or other pretty
ladies. It’s a hot day, but they’re sitting in the shade, and the breeze feels pretty nice.
Chopper has just started to feel that maybe today will be one of the not-terribly-bad-days, when Luffy lets out a sudden, surprised laughter, as if just thinking of something. He looks down at Chopper, his eyes glittering, but with that faint glassy, slightly sweaty look on his face that makes Chopper’s heart hurt.
"Maybe… maybe we’ll get something real big this time!” Luffy exclaims. “Like… like the time when I caught an army of fishmen on just one hook! You should have seen it, it was so awesome! I don’t know why they were all standing so tight together they got caught into one another, but they sure got grumpy enough when I pulled them up! I had to fight them off, of course, you can’t really eat fishmen, not that it was any trouble for me!! After all, I had 8 000 men behind me!”
He laughs a bit again, apparently ignoring the way Chopper stares at him, frozen, or maybe taking it for stunned admiration. Brook makes a small startled sound, looking at both of them for one very long moment. Then he swings himself around, stands up, walks over to Chopper and holds out one long bony hand to steady the reindeer.
“Are you all right, Mr. Chopper?” he asks in a rather loud whisper.
Chopper is not all right, not at all, but he’s grateful for Brook’s help in getting down from the railing. He mumbles weakly, “I think I have to go now,” before running away to his study, ashamed at his leaving Brook alone with the duty of captain-watching but knowing he wouldn’t be any good at it right then. Later, maybe. It didn’t use to feel like a duty at all, back in the old days when everything was fine.
When Usopp was still alive.
Chopper makes himself think the thought through to the end without flinching. A pirate and a doctor needs to be able to see the truth for what it was, even when you can hardly breathe for the heavy, burning sobs that make your body shake. Part of him wishes he could deny it all like his captain does, but he knows that would only cause his crewmates more pain.
They can’t go on like this.
***
Luffy hums a little tune, swinging his legs around as he sits there on the railing, tugging on the brim of his hat. “It’s all right, it will be all right, I’ll protect them,” he murmurs in a sing-song rhythm. “It’s all right, it’s all a lie, tomorrow will be a peaceful day in the village…”
Then he blinks a bit, wondering what made him mumble those words in particular. What village? There’s no village around, just open sea as far as the eye sees. What’s so special about tomorrow? Besides, pirates don’t want peacefulness, that’s just boring! They want adventure!
Yet the words had sounded right when he’d said them, had felt right on his tongue.
He shrugs and moves his fishing rod a bit, looking at the glittering waves, humming some more. There’s a hard, sharp and heavy feeling in his chest that seems to be there all the time these days, but he’s grown so used to it he hardly notices it any more.
Other than that, he feels fine.
- end of Part Two
Continued in Chapter 3.
Edit in Feb. 2010: Title change./edit
Title:
Rating: PG in this chapter; PG-13 in Chapter 1
Pairing: None
Characters: All the Strawhats
Spoilers/setting: I think of this as taking place some time in the future, after the current arc (Impel Down). As such it contains speculation on future events.
Genre: Serious angst; deathfic
Betaed: By
tonko and wendytigges and so very much the better for it! (You’re awesome, guys.) Any remaining mistakes are my own darned fault. As always, concrit is very welcome on large points and small.Summary: From a prompt on
op_fanforall asking for angstfic in which Luffy has to deal with Usopp being dead.Continued from Chapter One.
Absence, part two
The days passed, but nothing seemed to change. The ship sailed on at the course that the log pose indicated, the crew listlessly following orders from an equally listless Nami. Zoro didn’t do half as much training as usual, nor did he sleep much. He went around actively looking for chores instead. But he didn’t find a lot. All of them seemed to have the same idea; trying to make their hands do something, keep moving, afraid of what would happen if they stopped.
Each of them tried their best to do their part in what was needed on ship, trying to be strong for the others. Each of them forced themselves to hold together in order to do that much, scared that if one link broke down it would tear all of them up, part of them resentful and part of them grateful that they couldn’t allow themselves to mourn now, not yet, not yet...
Nami and Chopper were the ones least successful at holding back the tears. That didn’t mean those two didn’t have to control themselves most of the time. Nami had her ever-present responsibility of day-to-day sailing business, now with no idea where the log pose would take them next. And Chopper, in addition to his medical duties, now had to try and try to keep his chin up and smile bravely. Chopper had always been lousy at hiding his feelings, but still he took part in as many of Luffy’s games as he was able to bear. Occasionally Luffy succeeded in coaxing a genuine smile out of him, though not very often. That made Chopper feel a conflicting mix of emotions: on the one hand, pride at making his captain happy; on the other, a heavy shame at forgetting his grief even just of the moment. And then he couldn’t help crying, however much he tried to be strong. But Luffy would act as if nothing had happened, staring towards the horizon with a glassy look and a fixed grin.
Maybe it was because Nami and Chopper would cry more often that the other five tended to find themselves near them – not so much to offer comfort (what comfort could they offer, really?) but for more selfish reasons. In some sense, it was like those two were crying for everyone, because the rest of them, even Brook and Franky, couldn’t allow themselves to.
None of them could face holding a big meeting to talk things over with everyone. They talked when they had the strength for it, usually just one on one in whatever corner of the ship they might find themselves in; at most three of them together. It was that way, bit by bit, they all heard Nami’s account of how it happened; and it was also how they realised that no-one but Luffy could have torn down Sogeking’s wanted poster in the boys’ cabin, even if no-one had seen him doing it.
That had been unexpected. There had been no other indication of Luffy realising the identity of the King of Snipers. But it wasn’t as if any of them really understood what went on in Luffy’s mind these days. Maybe he’d just acted on instinct. Or maybe it was only because Sogeking was supposed to be Usopp’s friend especially, and somehow Luffy couldn’t bear that particular reminder.
After a day or two had passed, they’d all pretty much put aside Brook’s initial advice and made themselves talk about Usopp within the captain’s hearing. Hesitantly and obliquely at first, they soon spoke more and more directly, always with a cautious, apprehensive glance in Luffy’s direction. But the manner in which they spoke didn’t seem to make any difference. Luffy just acted as if he hadn’t heard a thing, or as if they’d been talking in a wholly different language that he couldn’t be expected to understand. He’d simply look away as if waiting for them to talk about other things again. Or he’d saunter off slowly, humming a tune or mumbling something they couldn’t hear, leaving them staring after him helplessly.
*
"Luffy? You, uh, okay up there?"
Luffy looked down from his perch on Sunny’ figurehead on Franky in surprise. Of course he was okay! Why wouldn’t he be?
“Hiya, Franky! Sure, it’s fine! I’m always fine!!” he said, grinning widely.
“Oh. Well, that’s good,” said Franky, stepping closer. Even Franky was weird and over-gloomy these days, thought Luffy. He wasn’t posing or laughing or playing his guitar half as much as he should. Then again he wasn’t really crying much either.
Franky coughed. “I… I kinda thought it sounded like you were talking to someone, just now,” he said, looking both a little nervous and a little hopeful.
“I was talking to Sunny!” Luffy explained brightly. He patted the lion’s head below him. “He’s such a great ship!”
Franky brightened, smiling in a better and righter way than most of the crew did these days. “He is, isn’t he? My pride and joy! Don’t worry, he’ll bear us all a long way yet.” He knocked on the railing, striking what looked like a carpenter-ish kind of pose, as if holding a hammer high.
Luffy nodded. “We’ll go all the way to One Piece!!”
“Right, and then back around the world,” said Franky, sighing in a half-proud, half-sad way. Why did there have to be a “half-sad” in there as well? Luffy didn’t like it.
He frowned, but then brightened again as he said, “We’re sure lucky we met you, back in Water 7! And that you wanted to build it for us, right when we were looking for a shipwright too!”
Franky shrugged a bit. “Well, uh, what else could I do…” he mumbled, and then said something about having taken some money but that just sounded weird to Luffy, who couldn’t remember anything like that. Instead, Luffy turned his head and looked out at the water, and at the clouds far away which they were sailing towards.
“Sometimes it even feels as if we’ve sailed with Sunny even before that,” he said, almost to himself.
“Huh?” Franky sounded pretty surprised. “What do you mean by that?”
“Well, I know we had a ship before that, of course, but I can’t really remember much about it,” Luffy explained. After all, there must have been one, else how could they have gone so far, to Whiskey Peak and Little Garden, Drum Island and Alabasta and Skypiea and everywhere else? Luffy couldn’t really remember what that ship had been like, though. “But I’m sure it worked well enough, or we wouldn’t have gotten that far,” he added.
He heard Franky inhale sharply below him, and then the shipwright said, “I can’t believe you forgot – ” but then he went on to make one of those gibberish sounds that didn’t make any sense, that just slid around in Luffy’s head, so Luffy just zoned him out. You couldn’t talk to your crewmates when they insisted on not making sense like that.
He patted the wood next to him instead. It felt reliable and comradely under his touch in the warm sun. “Don’t worry, Sunny, we’ll take good care of you,” he mumbled, then leaned back as he heard the sound of Franky’s bare feet retreating. Franky was a great guy and all, but somehow things felt just a little safer now that they were alone again, him and Sunny.
He hummed a little tune under his breath, then mumbled, “It’s all right, it’s all right, it’s all a lie, I’ll protect them.” If someone had asked him, he wouldn’t have been able to explain what he meant by those words. He simply felt better for saying them. Anyway, there was nobody there to ask him.
*
“There’s something that bothers me,” murmurs Zoro. “One thing in particular, I mean. I don’t know, but maybe… could be maybe that’s what bothers Luffy too, so much that he won’t remember.”
Sanji lights a cigarette and puts his hands in his pocket, giving Zoro a bleak, tired look as he leans back in his chair. They are sitting in the galley. It’s a bright sunny day outside, and no-one else is here at the moment.
“What is it?” he says, also in a fairly low voice, although there is no real reason to be quiet. Except, perhaps, to not scare your thoughts away.
"It bothers me,” Zoro repeats quietly, running a finger along the sheath of Wadou Ichimonji, “that I don’t know if he went out like he would have wanted to. Yeah, okay, I know he really didn’t want to go at all. He wanted to go on and see Luffy find the One Piece and go back to his village and… and all of that…” Zoro’s voice falters, just a bit, his hand opening and closing uselessly.
“I know. Go on,” mumbles Sanji tonelessly, looking down. Zoro swallows, takes a deep draught of the glass of wine in front of him that Sanji has just poured him, then clears his throat and continues, still very quietly.
“But… if he had to go… he’d have wanted it to be in a way that would have made his dream come true. The way… the way a brave warrior of the sea would go. Now… now, you know…” Zoro looks away a bit at this, his voice growing harder, “…as far as I’m concerned, he did. He was only in danger because he was sailing with us in the first place, and he made that decision himself. And the last we know he was running into danger, not away from it.”
Sanji gets up and pours Zoro some more wine, then some for himself. “I know.” Then, as Zoro goes quiet again he adds, “What’s your point?” in a voice harsher than he’d intended.
“Point is, maybe that’s how I see it and how you see it, but would he have seen it like that? You know what he’s… what he was like. He’d probably dream of some great glorious sacrifice, you know? If he couldn’t do a thing against that Seaking – and he might not have gotten the chance to, it sure was a big and nasty piece of work – well, maybe, maybe Luffy would also think…” His voice dies down, and he sits still, looking at nothing.
“Would think he didn’t go in the right way after all?” Sanji finishes for him. “That he didn’t reach his dream?”
“Just a thought,” mutters Zoro, shrugging awkwardly, his movements a lot tenser and clumsier than usual. His face looks drawn and weary.
“Maybe,” says Sanji, drinking deeply. He really has no idea. After all, none of them have known before this how Luffy would react if any one of them was irretrievably gone. A dream gone unfulfilled might be what tips him over the edge into safe oblivion. After all, Luffy can’t become a brave warrior of the sea for Usopp. He already is.
“Maybe that’s why,” murmurs Sanji. “Or maybe there’s something else, something we don’t know about. Or maybe he just can’t…” He closes his eyes tightly for a moment, part of him deeply tired, another part just numb and blank. He keeps going around wanting to start screaming, sometimes trembling with the effort of not doing so.
“I’d’ve thought he was stronger than this.” Zoro’s voice has shrunk down to something like a hoarse whisper, almost sounding ashamed of what he says. That is so strange and unlike him that one would think it would startle Sanji. But it doesn’t, not at all.
“He doesn’t remember Merry either, you know,” Sanji says, blowing out smoke, trying to hide the tension from his voice. “Franky told me.”
Zoro nods. “Already noticed,” he mutters. “Same deal. He just blocks the name out.”
None of them say, “we can’t keep on sailing like this”. But the thought is there, hanging unspoken in the air between them.
“Nami-baby keeps saying she doesn’t know if he fell into the sea or not,” Sanji says tentatively. But Zoro doesn’t seem to be listening, or if he does he won’t catch the hint in Sanji’s words. Not yet, at least.
They sit and drink in silence, instead.
*
One day Luffy and Chopper and Brook are all sitting by the railing fishing. Chopper and Brook are mostly silent, but Luffy chats a lot about everything and nothing – what it would be like to be a fish, some of the fishes they’ve seen, compared to some of the people they’ve met on various islands, what kind of fish he’d most like to be and to eat, and so on, his thoughts seemingly jumping from one point to the other like leaping fish on the surface of the sea. Chopper is content to just hum or go “Maybe” or “I don’t think so” or “Right” now and then, although sometimes he’s swept along with the weird current of Luffy’s mind and can only widen his eyes and go, “Do you really think so? That would be pretty cool!” forgetting for a moment the usual cold, twisted feeling in his stomach these days. Brook does much the same at the other side of Luffy, sometimes injecting a word or two often having to do with mermaids or other pretty
ladies. It’s a hot day, but they’re sitting in the shade, and the breeze feels pretty nice.
Chopper has just started to feel that maybe today will be one of the not-terribly-bad-days, when Luffy lets out a sudden, surprised laughter, as if just thinking of something. He looks down at Chopper, his eyes glittering, but with that faint glassy, slightly sweaty look on his face that makes Chopper’s heart hurt.
"Maybe… maybe we’ll get something real big this time!” Luffy exclaims. “Like… like the time when I caught an army of fishmen on just one hook! You should have seen it, it was so awesome! I don’t know why they were all standing so tight together they got caught into one another, but they sure got grumpy enough when I pulled them up! I had to fight them off, of course, you can’t really eat fishmen, not that it was any trouble for me!! After all, I had 8 000 men behind me!”
He laughs a bit again, apparently ignoring the way Chopper stares at him, frozen, or maybe taking it for stunned admiration. Brook makes a small startled sound, looking at both of them for one very long moment. Then he swings himself around, stands up, walks over to Chopper and holds out one long bony hand to steady the reindeer.
“Are you all right, Mr. Chopper?” he asks in a rather loud whisper.
Chopper is not all right, not at all, but he’s grateful for Brook’s help in getting down from the railing. He mumbles weakly, “I think I have to go now,” before running away to his study, ashamed at his leaving Brook alone with the duty of captain-watching but knowing he wouldn’t be any good at it right then. Later, maybe. It didn’t use to feel like a duty at all, back in the old days when everything was fine.
When Usopp was still alive.
Chopper makes himself think the thought through to the end without flinching. A pirate and a doctor needs to be able to see the truth for what it was, even when you can hardly breathe for the heavy, burning sobs that make your body shake. Part of him wishes he could deny it all like his captain does, but he knows that would only cause his crewmates more pain.
They can’t go on like this.
***
Luffy hums a little tune, swinging his legs around as he sits there on the railing, tugging on the brim of his hat. “It’s all right, it will be all right, I’ll protect them,” he murmurs in a sing-song rhythm. “It’s all right, it’s all a lie, tomorrow will be a peaceful day in the village…”
Then he blinks a bit, wondering what made him mumble those words in particular. What village? There’s no village around, just open sea as far as the eye sees. What’s so special about tomorrow? Besides, pirates don’t want peacefulness, that’s just boring! They want adventure!
Yet the words had sounded right when he’d said them, had felt right on his tongue.
He shrugs and moves his fishing rod a bit, looking at the glittering waves, humming some more. There’s a hard, sharp and heavy feeling in his chest that seems to be there all the time these days, but he’s grown so used to it he hardly notices it any more.
Other than that, he feels fine.
- end of Part Two
Continued in Chapter 3.
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Date: 2009-03-20 07:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-21 12:20 pm (UTC)...that's a great icon, btw.
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Date: 2009-03-21 05:39 pm (UTC)I agree with this statement!
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Date: 2009-03-20 10:15 am (UTC)I'm still completely in the dark about where you're taking this (which makes it exciting!) but the second to last sentence gives me hope.
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Date: 2009-03-21 12:18 pm (UTC)Yeah, even in this blocked-off state Luffy still feels pain, though he doesn't express it (because he thinks he has to cheer everyone else up... or something like that).
I will keep on trying my best for this one.
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Date: 2010-03-19 02:18 am (UTC)I loved…this whole chapter. Fascinating development from multiple directions, moved along but didn't wander…just great. You really feel sorry for everyone and puzzle right along about Luffy with them.
Personally, I wonder about having it so that Luffy remembers the Merry. It would change quite a bit in this chapter, but, it might make things seem more "canon." Maybe? And it could be just as confusing to everyone that he remembers one nakama that "died" and not the other.
…hmm, anyway just a random thought of an alternative curiosity. Never mind me, really. >< I don't know what it is with me and AUs. I have a special weakness for them in Naruto fanfic too.…
No nitpicks about this chapter, although I am also curious about the change from past to present tense at the Sanji and Zoro scene, only to shift back at the beginning of chapter 3…it seems intentional, given that there are also shifts in Chapter 3. I don't mind it, but I kinda wonder about it… It's a perspective/POV thing, right? Why'd you choose to do that; was it just a natural thing? And how did you ever keep yourself consistent? XD
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Date: 2010-03-19 01:46 pm (UTC)I think that if Merry wasn't so wound up with Usopp from beginning to end, Luffy would remember her(/him/it, whatever). But his mind is already contorting itself enough as it is with trying to write Usopp out of his past and ignore all the ways the past won't fit that way. Not remembering even what his old ship looks like might look like too big a gap, but I felt that remembering Merry but not Usopp would be even more implausible and untenable for Luffy. (He wouldn't know where they got the ship, who gave it to them and why; nor who patched her up or tried his best to when she was smashed up; nor who insisted he'd seen some mysterious stranger repair it in Skypiea. He'd think no-one had objected to them abandoning her in Water 7, and he wouldn't have remembered who heard her inner voice first and told Robin to toss Luffy into the sea so they could escape Enies Lobby. Of course, the flipside of this is that here Luffy has no real idea of how they escaped Enies Lobby in the end... But he probably assumes he passed out and they were rescued by friends in the last second.)
...sorry for that over-wordy tangent. It's just my interpretation, though: and I may well be wrong.
As the past vs present thing. Er... I think they things Sanji and Zoro were saying, and how they were saying it, just seemed to work better in present than in past. Maybe to make a switch from the steady telling of how it was (past) to something more immediate and (possibly) more atmospheric? Maybe to make readers slow down a bit, I'm not sure. It might also be the case that it was quite unnecessary and would have worked just as well as past tense, I don't know! ^_^ For the small bits in Chapter 3 it was more deliberately done, to contrast the outer discussion with the inner states of some of the participants.
It was hardly consistent in the first draft, though! :D But I polished and rewrote it and then got excellent help from my betas, who are treasures indeed!
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Date: 2010-03-19 02:34 pm (UTC)