Sensitivity of a Sword

by Ikana

Wielding a sword requires countless skills. Utterly comprehending what is in your hands is one of them. And it is not only required for mastering your katana, it's also needed to harmonise with people you lay your hands on. What Zoro learned from listening to his weapons was also to listen to someone he got closer to. Zoro x Sanji -not beta read & written while sick-

1. Prologue

Things don't develop at first sight. That is not how things work with our kind. Casual rules of life never applied to us to begin with.

Starving to death after several days? Bleeding out from our guts hanging out and our bones being smashed to smithereens and getting cut up from the inside as well?

It is nothing to us. It is what it is to us. What we agreed to in order to catch up with our dreams that got so much ahead of us… That is it what it is.

It's plain normal. We keep it simple. We just don't die.

…But that does not mean that it does not hurt.

When life and destiny meet and try to stomp you down, it is alright, because you know yourself. What you are capable of. You can feel your own life slowly come to an end when things get critical. You can guess your end and it is okay because when you feel everything, there is nothing to worry left. Only knowledge. And enough time to prepare.

That is not what it is like when your nakama get hurt. You don't know how much life is left in them. You cannot feel it for them. You cannot prepare yourself.

Loss comes suddenly. And it hits you harder than a cannonball.

This is what it makes so harsh. Being a pirate… There is pain that goes beyond our wildest experiences.

The sea fits us though.

Erratic. Indomitable. Vast. Merciless. And so full of life.

Elegant and sometimes gracious too.

Without the sea, we would never have met. None of us.

Even though it had started with me thinking of them as irredeemable fools, I am now one of them. One of those whose greatest worry is if we will all make it. Without exception.

So when I watched one of those fools who I disliked at first sight getting sliced open by a person I have never met before, I could not believe my eyes. That very moment I felt so much sympathy, so much hatred towards this recklessness that I could not forgive. Getting close with reckless people, I told myself it would not do me good. It was already too much when he fell, his guts hanging out grossly and giving us all a clear view of his intestines. How could I trust people who would die without a worry when they have friends around them, their hearts clinging to the very person who is about to fall forever? Back then I screamed that letting go of his ambitions would be a better idea than dying half assed for them but also in vain.

This man. He is everything. But not half assed at all.