A/N: For the lovely lady responsible for the Ask ZoTash blog on tumblr. She's impossibly amazing and endlessly entertaining. She asked for romance/angst, so, I guess this is how it goes. I must insist you not read if you are uncomfortable with the topic of miscarriage or character death.
I own nothing.
Tashigi has a hard time coming to a final conclusion when she asks herself if he's lucky he doesn't cry so easily. Given the circumstances, given her job, given his position, given every other useless comparison she makes in between being a superior and realizing rank doesn't have much to do with anything. Not anymore. Once upon a time justice was only achieved by climbing higher, ensuring her a position to be able to do more.
Once upon a time, death wasn't something blanketing her own fall into its always open arms. But Zoro isn't the type to think about things like that. He doesn't have to worry about having someone else putting their life on the line for his. His genius is in sweeping past impending ends. If he sheds tears, he probably does so to make room in his body for something of more use.
Though what use they are to each other is something she imagines they're both unsure of. He's stupid. And she is…well, she's not as cold as she was. He just so happens to be one of the only people who can appreciate that.
All he's good for is kindling. Pressed three inches into sheets and the smell of coitus, and that's all she's going to give him. He does it right.
"Bet this helped a ton," he grunts in her ear, fisting her black hair, casually implying her vanity played in getting her a promotion, and rolling her roughly onto her stomach. She cries out, but it's defiant and vengeful. This is a volley, and she will return it if she's given the chance. And then he's torrential friction and she forgets her own name.
She tries cutting in with a sharp comeback to no avail; every time she opens her mouth he's there to shove his tongue in and remind her she's human. She's nothing special with him. Being a woman isn't a handicap or a privilege. It's just what she is. She can be molten and disgusting, she can be cold and brutal, she can be whatever she has to be to get there.
And when they eventually do get 'there', she's red and quivering like the skin's been peeled from her face and shoulders, and he's muttering something that seems far away.
Nothing tips off anyone already intensely preoccupied. Tashigi has men to keep alive. Zoro is right hand to one of the most notorious threats on the sea. She can't really regret what she did, but it doesn't mean she isn't working twice as hard, glaring twice as fiercely, holding tighter to what's supposed to be enough. But at night, she realizes it isn't, and that's why she did it.
Then, one day, the waves have a fullness to them she can't remember appreciating so well. The way the white caps curl over the blue is satisfying. Noticing there is enough oxygen to constantly sustain her is satisfying. Smoker's habits are suddenly detestable. She moves to the hall when he's speaking to her and the chief petty officer. It's unbearable.
And then night brings night terrors and an intense pain in her gut.
She didn't know it was possible to feel this shelled. That was the only way to describe it. Completely devoid of ceremony or warning that this is how fragile something like this is.
But it's there. It's red, and you don't want to think about the crushing weight you would feel if you knew…if you had known…
Her hands fold over her eyes, legs naked and sprawled to the tiles of the bathroom floor. They come away warm and wet, flattening down beside her thighs to reassure herself she hasn't floated off. She's still on Earth. Life hasn't stopped to observe this horrendous mar. It's almost insulting.
She knows life better than that, though, and she figures if it's this easily taken away without knowledge, she can't judge it for picking itself up and dusting itself off to continue on without her.
An echo reverberates over her throat, down her lungs, off her stomach, reminding her that she could be less empty than she is right now. She feels cavernous, like something large and reverent left to ruin.
She sobs abruptly, knowing it would've been a boy.
When she emerges, shaking and tear streaked, Smoker is sitting on her bed. He is unlit, grey with the moon spilling through her window, and his face is unfractured, even as she's breaking down again at his feet.
She gets through twenty-two years gripping her sword and hardening her heart. Smoker lets her do as she sees fit. Roronoa Zoro achieves, she shows up as a foil. In her version, she probably considers herself a foil as well. Service to be done, respect to maintain, things to prove…all of these constructed reasons to let blade taste blade.
'One foil to another', she thinks the final time, Smoker bloody and watching her tear over the field like a charm tucked into burial bandages—
"—one last time…" It was only once he'd said it, but she needs solidarity. If she could be selfish one last time…
Men fall with smoke pouring from bursting, bloody chests. The disgusting sound of chaos covered by soup thick fog and madness nearly overtakes her multiple times in her dash towards 'there'. He is 'there'. He is the 'there' she has always strived for.
The navigator's flaming hair whips in a way that catches her attention, body snapping back in half with a gun shot wound that tears open the right side of her torso. Tashigi sobs, watching her fall, knowing they're all just mice running around in the same trap, now.
Maybe the government hadn't liked their conduct. Maybe it didn't matter. They were all shit, as Smoker had touched on so many years ago. She would follow him another twenty years if she had claim to another life and had the choice.
"—Ro…"
Death deafens, but her lips curl over her teeth. Salt. She remembers salt. She remembers salt and sheets and something like what the other girl's talked about having while she'd been busy training.
"Zo—"
Flailing through huddled bodies and the sticky spray of bodily fluids and puddles and what would be a merciful rain.
She finds him on his knees, bowed over the sprawled, always too large limbs of Mugiwara no Luffy, a gash in his captain's neck large enough to hope death had taken him quickly. And then he pulls her with his eyes, like he always did, green hair pulled back and out of the way.
Her heart falls, his far away request forcing her to finally embrace a harsh reality she'd been denying herself. That duty has always been a cover. Somewhere, there has always been a desire to someday…just maybe…
But this was his life. He is bowed to the only number one he's ever had. And she chokes a wail while he gives her the kindest eyes he's ever shown her and mutters, "Stand behind me."
There is more meaning to it than he'll ever know, she knows. She is his second. It is both meaningful to acknowledge, and heart wrenching. This is the extent of the trust he can offer her. And perhaps they had always known this is where it would come to.
There.
He is soundless, Ichimonji disappearing under his stomach flesh. He might as well be a magician. Her lip is bleeding with the force it takes to repress her emotions; she can't ruin this. No matter what she had to say before. She will not fuck up here.
"Never falter."
She swears this is his last jab at her pride, the rush of shame and anguish coming up to move her sword. His head falls from his shoulders and she now sees the hopelessness of the human front.
All these years of floating above her own life, living as if she had left it all behind when she'd lost something she hadn't even known she could want so badly. It was infuriating. It was natural. He'd tell her to suck it up.
They called her a poltergeist for generations after, saying her heart, having been wrenched from her kind, womanly chest, kept beating after its detachment, and her sword kept killing as the blood gushed over the ice. She would be admired for her assistance in the upheaval of cruel government policy beside her colleague, White Fang Smoker. Her accomplishments would be held as a standard for all women hoping for respect and acknowledgement while keeping their own design of justice close.
She hears all of it from a far away place, brushing fingers with a man who whispers and tells her they're
there.