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“Happy birthday Aniki!” Yosaku screamed into Zoro’s face, as Johnny shoved a loosely wrapped package into Zoro’s arms. “We got you a shirt!”
“Not that we’re against your fashion sense or anything,” Johnny hastily added, “It’s just that, well...”
Zoro stared down. Yeah. Beneath the bloodstains, smudges of food, and caked-on dirt-but mostly bloodstains-he couldn’t even remember what the shirt’s original color was.
How had he gotten so close to these over-enthusiastic guys in the first place? Zoro wondered as he turned around to pull off his pathetic rags. They were basically just acquaintances in the same business; plus the one-sided, near-fanatical respect. Zoro was halfway through getting the shirt over his head when he heard an excited voice behind him.
"I didn't think you were into tattoos, Aniki!”
“I’m not. Never gotten one in my life.” He turned around to find Johnny and Yosaku staring at each other in shock.
“Then it’s-” Johnny gasped.
Yosaku nodded furiously. “Yeah. The soulmate thing.”
“Gotta be that.”
"Not just that; it's on his back!"
"What's so great about his back?”
"It's a swordsman's greatest pride, you dumbass!"
Zoro’s curiosity got the best of him. “The hell are you two muttering about?”
Johnny leaned forward, eyebrows comically high, and repeated the words he’d seen etched onto Zoro’s skin.
Zoro was not amused.
“So, you're gonna become a pirate, Aniki?"
“I’m not gonna become a pirate.”
“I don’t care! You’re gonna join me!”
“DON’T DECIDE FOR YOURSELF!”
Zoro felt something from the boy. Something heavier than the words of a fool.
Bent over from the weight of eight flimsy swords, he didn’t have the leisure to figure out what that something was.
"Nobody move."
He turned back toward the boy who hadn’t moved a step, and was regarding him just as carefully.
Either he was too scared to move, or too dumb to realize that he’d just set free the Demon of the East Blue.
“...If you do something to get in the way of my goal...”
Or there must have been something else. Something in the strength of that unrepentant stare zeroing in on him.
"I'll have you die on my sword."
For one foolish moment, he wanted to see just what this "soulmate" of his could do.
Looking back, that moment was his undoing.
Because Monkey D. Luffy smiled back.
“So,” Zoro said out of nowhere, relaxed by the bobbing of the small dinghy. “Soulmates.”
Luffy cocked his head in confusion.
“You know about that stuff, right?”
“Yep! Makino told me.”
Who the hell was Makino? “I always thought it was bullshit.”
“Hmm?”
“Being tied to someone you’ve never met.”
Luffy’s smirk was unexpected. “I don’t believe you.”
Zoro’s jaw twitched.
“I haven’t found One Piece, but I know it’s out there. And it’s the same for you.” It wasn’t a question.
Yeah. World’s greatest swordsman. In a way, Zoro could agree that he was tied up to his dream. He’d never thought he could spare the effort for anything else, let alone soulmates.
Yet he and Luffy didn’t have to be lovers, weren’t into romance; none of that bullshit. They were just foolish dreamers, cut from the same cloth.
Maybe this could work, after all.
“So,” Zoro leaned against the boat with a relieved grin, “where’s yours?”
“My what?”
“Your tattoo.”
“Don’t have one,” Luffy shrugged. He began splashing the surface of the ocean with his fingers, too busy to notice that he had left Zoro stunned.
Zoro had spent a year feeling some vague sense of dread for his upcoming birthday, shoving the idea into the neglected corners of his mind. If anything, his tattoo had just made him even more hostile against pirates.
Yet upon his first meeting with Luffy, without even trying to, Zoro had bought into the idea so wholeheartedly. So he had naturally assumed the soulmate thing went both ways.
Only to realize that nothing had changed. He was still just a man pursuing a far-off dream, something he could only accomplish by himself. Sure, he had a captain now, but that was all the kid was. A captain.
“What’s wrong, Zoro?” Luffy waved a hand in front of Zoro, flicking tiny droplets onto his face.
“Nothing.” Zoro brushed the water off with his palm, then covered his eyes.
“Are you sure? Cuz you seem mad.”
He wasn’t mad.
He wasn’t jealous.
He was too busy washing Chopper’s fur for stupid stuff like that.
Yeah, Zoro could admit that Nami was attractive enough to get a nosebleed over, as he watched Luffy and the other peeking idiots fall off the wall to the girls’ bath.
So what if Luffy had never shown interest in the opposite gender before?
So freaking what?
“Zoro?” Chopper’s voice interrupted his thoughts.
Zoro looked down. “Whoops.” He’d made a swaying afro of bubbles. He filled the nearby pan with water and gently poured it over Chopper’s head.
Just then, Sanji came back, wiping at his nosebleed with a satisfied grin. The smug pervert. He said in a conversational tone, “So all that talk about a wound on a swordsman’s back?”
Zoro ignored Sanji, preferring to watch Luffy try to splash water onto a yelping Usopp.
"It would be my greatest shame." Obviously.
“Liar." Sanji lightly rapped the small of Zoro’s back with his knuckles. "You just don't want that precious tattoo of yours injured."
Halfway through shouting back an insult, Zoro suddenly came to a realization. Then he stared at Sanji, like he was the idiot.
"It's the same thing."
It wasn’t the same.
“Let mine substitute his.”
Because the two of them weren’t the same.
“Let my life exchange for his! I beg of you!”
They may have had dreams that were bigger than life…
“If I can’t protect my captain’s dream...”
But there was a reason that one was the captain, and one was the crewmember, and not the other way around.
“...then whatever ambition I have is nothing but talk!”
He belonged to Luffy.
"Luffy will become the Pirate King!"
And the pirate king belonged to no one.
“I KNEW IT!”
Rayleigh looked up from his flask, to see his student staring at the palms of his hands. “Knew what?”
“Oh nothing,” Luffy sang back. He started heading toward the forest to punch some more things.
“You sure?” Rayleigh called out. “It’s almost nighttime.”
Too late; Luffy was already running, letting the foliage swipe at his body in the dark.
He’d been exhausted a moment before, yet now his hands were twitching with energy.
His fists were meant to fight. To protect.
And now they meant so much more, he thought, as he clenched them all the tighter.
“So Zoro, where did you end up?”
“Oh, you’ll never guess.” And Zoro began telling his story, as Luffy oohed and aahed and clapped in all the right places.
The other voices, the vibrant underwater seascape; for a moment, they all faded away. Ever since that day in the courtyard, whenever they found each other eye-to-eye, everything else just…
Yeah, the world still turned on its axis, and the ocean kept flowing. Yet nothing really mattered, aside from the two of them. Just that kind of feeling.
"Hey Zoro."
"Hm?"
"Shishi!" Luffy seemed to recall something very funny. "Can you come over here and untie me?"
Zoro looked his captain over, unamused. "You look fine to me."
"No, not that!" He splayed his palms out for Zoro to see.
"No way," Zoro breathed, something tugging at the corners of his mouth.
Luffy's only answer was a grin full of sunshine.