1.) Gotta Be Somebody
I don't own Bleach or One Piece. Renji-is-Zoro or vise versa.
—xXx—
The last thing Renji remembered was blinding pain, and Ichigo's fucking obnoxious orange hair at the edge of his vision. A hand reaching out towards him with a desperation he had never witnessed before in it's owner's eyes.
He might have heard a yell but he's not to sure because his world fell into black.
It had felt like an eternity had passed but at the same time it also felt like no time had passed at all.
He opened his eyes and his world erupted into pain.
He felt his body move on its own accord. His lungs expelling huge gulps of air before bellowing into full body screams. He was cold and wet. His whole body hurt and felt strange.
He felt hands touching his body, that were strangely too large, and then he was suddenly wrapped in cloth and there was an arm around him.
It took him an, embarrassingly enough, long while for him to take in his surroundings.
His body trembled and he cried without his own accord.
He knew what this was.
Every shinigami would know.
It was something talked about when lips where loosened and mind filters dissolved because of drinks. Mentioned by the grieving.
He'd died.
He'd been reincarnated.
What the heck happened?
All he remembers, which he shouldn't be, was taking a bad hit and then blackness. So he died then? But that hit hadn't been that bad. At least he hadn't thought it had been.
Evidently it had been worse.
He was dead now.
He had been reincarnated.
He'd never see everyone again.
He cried.
The world around him was new and different and would never be the same.
Oblivious to his sorrow the woman who was his new 'mother' cuddled him to her chest. He squirmed. He was little now. And this would be his mother.
This would take some time to get used to.
She cooed and he corrected himself..he'd probably never get used to this...
Pushing back his sorrow, which he had too much practice doing, he glanced up at the one that gave birth to him and blinked.
She had long neon green hair.
That was different.
Her eyes were brown and her face was curved in a slim manner. She had a scar in the middle of the bridge of her nose, extending under each eye.
She was speaking softly but she had an undertone of a raspy echo in her voice. As if she hadn't spoken in a very very long time.
"Aw it's okay my little baby boy. You're okay. I have you. You're my precious nino. I'll protect you. My precious little Zoro Roronoa."
Zoro Roronoa huh? Not as good as Renji Abarai but he supposed he could live with it.
She leaned down and cuddled him into the crook of her neck.
He never had a mother before...
..Maybe...maybe this wouldn't be as bad as he had thought it would be.
He was two when he discovered that where he and his mother lived was filled with people that hated her, thought of her as a demon because of her hair and her foreign looks and accent.
His mother, his sweet, forgiving, kind, accepting mother was regularly beaten by the other villagers.
He had been abhorred at their treatment of her. His mother was the kindest woman he had ever met. She was constantly trying to help the people that hated her and every time she was physically retaliated against because of it.
It was a month later that he put the pieces together as to why he didn't have a father. When he figured out why his mother silently cried when she thought he was asleep when he asked who his father was. Why she flinched when any male in the village got a little too close to her, how she would tremble when any of them made physical contact with her.
He hated them.
He hated himself.
He couldn't protect her. But he would. Give him a few years. Every single one of those villagers that ever laid a hand on his mother would get what was coming to them.
He'd make sure of it.
He'd protect her.
—(xXx)—
He couldn't protect her.
He was three when he picked up a sword again.
His mother had been out gathering herbs and mushrooms for food, he had snuck into town, putting to use the skills he obtained as a shinigami to go unnoticed.
Skills that had slowly been growing rusty from un-use.
He had snuck into a blacksmiths and stole a sword from a barrel the man left sitting carelessly at the edge of his store.
It was heavy, but he ignored the weight the best he could and forced himself to sneak away with it.
He practiced everyday, the best his smaller stature would allow.
—xXx—
He was four when he woke up to his mother slamming the door.
She looked at him and her face set into a grim determination he'd never seen on her face before.
She hurriedly crouched in front of him trying to hide her urgency and panic from 'her little nino'. "Zoro. You wanna play a game with Mommy? Yes let's play a game! How you play is we walk out of the house and run in two different directions not stopping. Once you get to the beach you have to stay there until Mommy finds you. Okay? It'll be fun." She avoided his eyes as she pulled him up, setting him on his feet.
Zoro knew what she was trying to do. It only made his worries and fears grow.
"But-"
"Zoro." She cut him off sharply and he found his mouth involuntarily snapping shut at her tone, she had never spoken like that before, to anyone.
He found himself nodding even when he didn't want to and following her orders.
Every instinct he had screamed. He wanted so badly to go back and find her, protect her, but another part of him kept him running. Ducking and weaving under and around branches and vines.
He made it to the beach. He stood there, at the edge of where the forest met the white sands and looked at his reflection as it appeared and disappeared with the tide.
He had a flash of nostalgia as his mind automatically flashed back to his behavior since he was born in this world.
What was wrong with him?
He had been acting different..
The thought faded from his mind completely, without his own violation, and he turned, running down the beach a ways before landing on his knees by the tree line.
He furiously brushed sand away, frantic, until he felt pain Spark in one of his fingers.
Blood swelled up from the cut, but he ignored it. He grabbed where he assumed the handle of his stolen sword would be and took off running once again, but this time back towards his and his mother's little hut.
Leaves and branches slapped his body, cutting the exposed skin as he ran. He panted from the exertion he was putting his untrained body through.
He wasn't sure how he could help when he could barely carry the stolen sword in his untrained four year old body, but he'd forever hate himself if he didn't try.
The wind whipped his face as he passed the hut he and his mother called home, and he kept running, pausing briefly to track which way his mother had taken, cursing himself for burying the sword at the beach.
He kept running and could feel an instinct saying he was close.
There was a clearing ahead and he froze.
He had been right, he had been close, but not close nor fast enough.
There were four people in the clearing, to Zoro seemingly standing frozen.
His heartbeat seemed to sluggishly pulse through he ears and the breeze moved the greenery around him slower than it should have been.
Three of the people where men he didn't recognize, and one of them had a sword. A sword that was coated in his mother's blood as it ran through her chest and put her back.
She was hunched over the sword, her eyes dead but peaceful, as he green hair spilled around her face. Her hands where bloody as one rested on the blade of the sword that impaled her, while the other must have been reaching out towards her murderer because it slowly swayed by her side.
He watched a trail of blood make its way down her arm, before droplets formed at the tip of her fingers.
Her blood started to drop from her hand and Zoro felt something inside him surge.
A familiar feeling of time slowing around him as he flew across the land surrounded him, but he didn't care, and ignored it. He didn't really notice it.
He jumped and saw the glint of metal in front of his eyes, before blood arced off the sword in his hands, he cut through flesh and heard a thump behind him as he turned of the next being with a pulse in the area.
He heard a scream and again blood arced.
It repeated once more, before the sword fell from his hands.
His vision sharpened from the rage fueled haze his mind has entered.
The men where dead around him and he was covered in their blood.
He didn't care, or notice, all his eyes trailed to was the still form of his mother.
He took two slow, staggered steps forward before he fell to his knees at her side.
He hand shook as it reached out to her, his hand froze before it touched her, afraid to do so. An irrational fear that if he didn't touch her she'd wake up, but if he did nothing would change.
"M-m-Ma-Ma.?" His voice shook and stuttered alongside his body's tremors.
He ignored the voice proclaiming her death in the back of his head.
"Mama?" His voice grew from frantic as tears leaked from his eyes and his hand flew to her shoulder, ignoring the irrational fear, shaking her vigorously and starting to grow hysterical. "Mama? Mama! Mama?! Mama Mama Mama!"
He sobbed before a scream ripped free. "MAMA!!!!"