notes: hey ya'll. so, i haven't written any fanfiction since middle school *cringes*, but i figure i might as well make another attempt now that i'm older and my writing is slightly less terrible. anyway, this is the first of a series of ficlets, this is the first of a series of ficlets, centering on the lives of different characters during/after the three-arc disaster leading up to the timeskip. the title is taken from the song "A Series of Small Flames" by Land of Talk.
chronologically, this particular scene takes place about three months after Rayleigh has left Luffy to complete his training on Rusukaina; so, three months before the post-timeskip reunion.
general warnings for the series: canonical character death(s), violence/gore, various mental health issues (ptsd, anxiety, low self-esteem, and dissociation just to name a few), shameless headcanon-ing, etc. also, spoilers all the way through to the Return to Sabaody Arc.
exercises in futility
[or: the truth about winning and losing.]
He remembers, because he cannot afford to forget.
At least, that's what he tells himself. After all, it had been so easy to believe that he was strong enough until suddenly, he wasn't.
Isn't.
So Luffy remembers, in spatters of blues and greens, the way the wind had carried off with the screams of his nakama and thinned them into nothing, and the spaces that their bodies left where they had stood seconds before. He remembers, in flashes of reds and browns, the smell of blood when it sizzled and flesh when it fried, and the loudness of death where it filled the absence of his brother's heartbeat. And he's angry, because it frightens him in ways he doesn't understand, and he wants the memories to sleep for the night, but it's at least fifteen below outside and Rayleigh isn't here anymore. This is something Luffy has to do on his own.
(Alone.)
(No, no. That's not true. He knows that's not true, but—)
He shakes the thought from his head at its roots. There's no way he's getting hung up on stupid stuff like that again.
Luffy feeds the spark of flame in the fire pit with few handfuls of twigs and treebark, and with sustenance it outright flares. His eyes widen and he makes as if to jump back, but his hands still linger in the warmth a little longer than is strictly necessary.
(He should be resting. He should be training. He should be doing something. The nightmares hadn't been too frequent while Rayleigh was here, but now Rayleigh is gone and his nakama are gone and his brothers are gone and he's…)
"But I'm not." He tells himself firmly, voice scratched up from the smoke, because this self-pity stuff is bullshit. "Not really, I mean—everyone's waiting for me. Zoro and Nami and Usopp and Sanji and Chopper and Robin and Franky and Brook." He lists each name aloud, counting on his fingers because it makes everything seem less far away. He imagines that they all must've gotten a lot stronger by now. Stronger for each other. Stronger for him, too, even though he'd failed them so grievously before. Because their dreams are bigger than all of the sad stuff; his are, too, even if he sometimes forgets it.
It shouldn't be so easy to forget in the first place, though. And that's just one more reason to be angry, 'cause at this point he can't afford to have anything get in his way. He can't be weak like that again. He thinks back to when Rayleigh'd told him about all the different kinds of strength, and about learning to trust himself all over again because healing was a part of getting stronger, too. Luffy doesn't really know what any of that means, but he doesn't think he has the kind of strength that Rayleigh was talking about. He's good at punching things, sure, but all that thinky-stuff is best left to other people. Trust has always been a tricky thing, he knows, but at least he can trust his nakama to be strong where he's lacking, and to trust him for all the times he can't do it himself.
(Do you think you deserve to be trusted again?)
(And what about the times when trust isn't enough?)
No. This isn't helping anything. His hands shake, alarm bells blaring between his ears even though he tells himself over and over again that nothing's wrong. His eyes dart around in his skull, sweeping out from the pyre, and he tries to ignore how the tree branches knot together like the claws of monsters…and feels stupid for his fear because he is the man who has brought real monsters to their knees dozens of times over.
But all this thinking is starting to get to him, and he just can't untwist the nightmare from where it tangles in his vision; the glow of a demon's fist clenched full of molten rock, reaching and seeking and finding—and settling with a savage grin, because apparently any good flesh with bad blood is substitute enough. And it isn't even the fear that Luffy remembers the worst; it's that split-second where he saw his own death snatched away from him, as though it could be taken and given for the sake of convenience. As though he would not have payed it graciously so long as he could die as he'd lived.
But that? It felt wrong. It felt cheap.
(He wasn't the one you wanted.)
Inevitably, he looks again to the flames.
When Ace had fallen, all the loudness cut to silence. Even the wind stopped mid-blow. Everything, in equilibrium with the chaos of death, had unwoven and lain flat and grey and callous as the last flickers of light went out in his brother's eyes. He understands, now, in a way that he didn't in the throes of his mourning, what such a sacrifice meant. That he has no right to regret the life he'd been gifted, no choice now but to live even more ferociously for his dream. It's the least he can do.
So he remembers. He remembers because it is his burden to bear and his torch to carry. The truth about winning and losing, the smell of skin and sulfur, the way the cinders had burned when they landed in his eyes because he could not look away—
Luffy turns his back on the fire. He can't stand to watch it any longer, but he doesn't have the heart to snuff it out.
end notes: i'm pretty rusty, i know, but still! please let me know what you think/correct my typos/call me out on OOC-ness/etc.