I really can't believe this … I meant to only write a single One Piece fanfiction and then be done with it! And now, here's another one … and two others on the way …
Well, can't be helped. Basicaly the same 'warnings' as in Home – I don't know what twists have happened in the manga/anime storylines so I'm classifying this as AU (BUT NOT THE SAME AU AS HOME!!). It's also written so as to be a bit neutral.
Summary – Dreams had held them together and it was dreams that their captain always held onto.
Disclaimer – I don't own One Piece – heck I don't even read/watch it!
Dreams
The adventure had started a long, long time ago. His persistence and his determination won him his crew, person by person. They had all been young and full of dreams, grudgingly agreeing to follow him in pursuit of lofty dreams.
The captain was their captain; the leader of the merry little band. Everything he was, everything he still is … everything he changed will forever be remembered by them. Never to be forgotten. He had loved them all with a depth that none had really understood, but one that they would never forget.
He had found his dream, untarnished and as gleaming as the day he had first envisioned it. It was after that that slowly, so very slowly, his crew began to follow different paths; paths that diverged from each other. They had left with different goals and with different dreams then when they first arrived. They left years older then when they first stepped onto their captain's ship. One by one they left, and their place had been filled with another.
Their captain always held their dreams in his heart and one by one he worked to see them become true, just as they had once done for him. Years passed with this separation. His love for them did not diminish.
The death of the cook … of his cook …
The funeral was short and at its end his crew, his crew, stood around the marker. It was the first time they had all been in the same place in many, many years. They were silent as the sun began to drop from its zenith. There was nothing to say.
Separate ships prepared to leave the small harbor. Their captain understood.
In the silence he pulled his old, battered straw hat over his eyes, casting a dark shadow over them. "I'm gonna find it."
None of his crew had to ask what he meant. They knew.
None offered to join him. He didn't need them to; they're place was no longer at his side, though he would always guard a place for them. He loved them all.
His ship was the first to leave, his crew standing together and watching it sail away.
Their captain stood in the bow, one hand holding his hat onto his head and his eyes fixed on the horizon. It didn't matter that his hair was shorter and streaked with grey, that the black eyes were filled with age or that his stature wasn't as straight as it had been, as they watched him sail in search of the final crewmember's dream, they saw the cheerful, energetic, annoying boy that had been their captain … not the great, powerful Pirate King he had become.
They never found out if he found the legendary ocean that he had set out for and kept that promise to find the dream of their departed crewmate.
That day he sailed out of the harbor after the funeral was the last any of them saw of him.
The End
There it is. Not as long as Home, but I like it better this way.
I hope you liked it.
I'd enjoy reviews if you would be so inclined to give them to me!