Hey! This is the first time I'm uploading something here, and it just had to be a ZoRobin story. I don't know how long this is gonna get, but hopefully I can write it till the very end - I'm not the best at ending things, haha. Anyway, hope you like it!
White Lilies
Chapter 1
Zoro woke up to the sound of an annoying, high-pitched voice.
"Sir? Are you awake, sir? We're finally done, you should come see it. She looks so cute with it."
"Huh? I must have dozed off…" He scratched his head and checked his surroundings. He was sitting on a pink footstool that was far too small for him and gave him a butt ache. The room was all decorated in pastel colors and smelled like one of those fancy shops that Nami loved. Oh, great, he was still in the wedding dress shop. But, as fancy as it was, it kinda looked like a battlefield –headless mannequins surrounded the place, lifeless forms wearing different types of white dresses - before that day, he thought all wedding dresses looked the same, and now he was sure of it. They were all expensive-looking, big and white.
"Zoro?" a known voice called from somewhere further inside the store.
He followed the irritating shop assistant, who didn't stop babbling about how the dress she picked up was perfect, how it fitted her so well, how lovely she looked with it and a bunch of other things he really didn't care about. Fortunately, she stopped talking once they reached the large dressing rooms.
He saw her image reflected on the mirror, inspecting herself with that insecure face she always did whenever she was trying something she felt was a little too provoking or too classy for her. The shop assistant, however, was right; Tashigi looked stunning in the dress. It still kinda looked like an exact copy of the dresses he saw at the front of the store, but it was different seeing it worn by a real human rather than a mannequin. It matched well her complexion and, even though she was not wearing any make up and had her hair up in a lazy bum, she looked ready to wed.
"Did you like it? It looks like a wedding cake"
"Quit it, darling, you look amazing" the shop assistant said in her shriek of a voice.
"Yeah, you look beautiful" Zoro allowed a smile to show up on his face, which made her blush, but seemed to cheer her up a bit. Tashigi was always so fierce about certain things, but when it came to her looks, she was a little unconfident for no apparent reason – she was a very beautiful girl. She looked at her image in the mirror again and smiled at Zoro's reflex, looking at her from a distance.
"I'll have the adjustments done by July at most, ok, honey?" The woman said, smiling to both of them. "When's gonna be the wedding?"
"September" Tashigi said, in contained excitement. Zoro, on the other hand, was taken by surprise. It's not that he didn't know the date of his own wedding; it's just that, when someone else said it out loud, the idea actually seemed so… real. And it was also so close… They were already in May, and hell, the thought of getting married in only four months still seemed kinda strange for him. He knew that was just stupid, because he was pretty much living a married life with Tashigi already – they had been living in her house for 3 years and been doing everything a married couple does, like… well, having dinner together? He actually had no idea about the daily life activities of a wife and husband, but he imagined it was pretty much like his daily life with her. But actually getting married suddenly seemed like a heavy responsibility - maybe that was just because he was bad at commitments.
Tashigi seemed to perceive he was sterner that usual on their way out of the store.
"Something wrong, Zoro?"
"Huh? Nothing. I was just thinking it feels weird when you enter a store in daylight and leave it after it's already dark" although that wasn't what was really bothering him, it wasn't a lie, either. It sure felt weird.
"Sorry, I lost track of time in there, that shop assistant showed me dress after dress… But it looks like you slept through most of it" she chuckled.
"Sorry, I know I'm a bad companion"
"I love your companion" she gave him a smile and held his hand.
"Wanna grab dinner at Sanji's restaurant?"
"I'm working onboard tonight, remember? You even said you were going to Luffy's house" Tashigi was a Marine Officer ever since they met, but he could never memorize her work schedule really well. There were times when she'd have to stay at the headquarters overnight, and there were also times when she'd work onboard for a week. Zoro was a natural loner, but for some reason he didn't really enjoy being alone in their house. It was too big and too boring, and he'd rather just go to the dojo or one of his friend's house to chill.
"I always forget your schedule, it's always changing," he said with a grunt "I guess I'll walk you home and give him a call, then"
"There's no need to go with me, really," she said in her light but assertive tone, indicating she didn't want him to go. "The things is… Smoker's waiting to pick me up there. I'll just go and get some stuff before I leave"
The green haired boy frowned to that, as she expected. Zoro never really liked Smoker, ever since they met, and the feeling was certainly reciprocated. Tashigi's superior was a rude and blunt man, but she seemed to like him as a person and respect him in the hierarchy of work. When they had just started dating, Zoro was a little jealous of him, especially when he discovered that Tashigi had felt more than only sympathy and respect for him when she had just joined the Marines, but he learned to cope with the man. He was not good with words, so he almost never asked her about what she felt towards Smoker nowadays, and the few times he did, she reassured him he was just a friend to whom she felt respect and gratitude for everything he'd done for her, but Zoro was never so sure about that. It was all over her eyes, her expression, the way she talked – she became another woman when she was with Smoker. Zoro had no doubt that his girlfriend – fiancée, he corrected in his mind, still not used to the word – loved him very much, but he could never shake away the feeling that she still had an attraction to Smoker. The thought used to bother him a lot before, but for some reason, it didn't anymore. He had his own ghosts to be bothered with, and his side of the story was way uglier than Tashigi's.
"I'll be back in the morning, ok? Don't overdrink and be sure to find your way home, you know how you always get lost" she laughed at his frown and embraced his whole body with her thin limbs. He gave her a smile and a goodbye kiss. Still in his embrace, she looked up at him with an eager, happy look that reminded him of her old self, the innocent shorthaired girl wearing big glasses, with an uncommon taste for swords, much like himself, and who reminded him of his dear, deceased friend. The harshness of her job, the things she had been through (most of them being his own fault) and life, in general, had transformed that demure little girl into the fierce, capable woman held in his arms, but the face she was making triggered memories of those old, unpreoccupied days, when she was just a friend, he was still with someone else and life was much easier.
"I'm so excited for our wedding. It's gonna be great" in her eyes, he could almost see her thoughts reflected, but somehow he couldn't join in their happiness. He was probably just tired; it had been a long day.
"Yeah, it will" he hoped his voice didn't betray the confused thoughts running through his mind, and he kissed her forehead to reassure her. Damn, he hated thinking too much about anything. It was a pain in the ass and had no purpose at all. He was a man of action, not thinking.
Still bearing that excited gleam in her expression, Tashigi gave him a small kiss on the lips and walked away, waving goodbye. He waved back and, when she was no longer visible, he sighed, his breath turning to smoke in the chilly air of the night. That part of the town was full of life, surrounded by people passing by, chatting or making their ways to the bars and restaurants that crammed the streets. Hell, he had to clear up his mind with some food and a little drinking. Even though the bars would normally be a good temptation – warm enough to escape the cold of the town and cheap booze to fill up his soul – he needed somewhere calmer that night, away from all the noise and neon lights of the downtown streets. Sanji's restaurant was just across the street. Even though he was constantly fighting with the stupid blond guy, they were actually really good friends, and even though he would never admit it, Sanji was very sensible when it came to his talks. They could start screaming at each other in the middle of some conversations, it was true, but Sanji was a pretty reliable guy to talk to about serious things. But Zeff was back in town for the week, and he'd probably be stuck in the kitchen under his strict surveillance, so Zoro was probably not gonna be able to talk to him and, more importantly, get some free food.
He flipped up his phone and ran through the contacts. Luffy was the first on the list, probably because that monkey was always sending him so many trash messages and filling up his message box. Not that he cared to clean it, anyway. But Luffy was probably not the best choice that day - not because of him, but because Nami knew Tashigi was having the wedding dress try on, and she would certainly flood him with a bunch of pain in the ass questions about the wedding, which he was certainly not in the mood to answer.
The second name on his list, however, he tried to ignore. He had been trying for a long time, but no matter how hard he did, the image of that person was always crawling back to his mind. It would come in flashbacks, small pieces of her that tried to hang on to his skin – he would sometimes have visions of her deep raven hair, smart eyes and, above everything else, that mischievous smile, which mocked him for so long, but which would sometimes turn to a sincere, simple smile, one that he found very comforting. In other circumstances, she'd be the first person to cross his mind, and he remembered calling her at random occasions – whether he just wanted to chill out, when he had problems - even if most of them were related to their very relationship, or when he was just missing her voice. Fuck, to be completely true, she was still the one he wanted to call now that his mind was so heavy and his thoughts, so twisted, and he wanted to slap himself for that. He swore to Tashigi so many times that he had forgotten that damn woman – and he tried really hard to do that. By that time, he swore to himself he didn't long for her as a woman, but in the end, he still missed her as a friend. Zoro was a lost and unreliable guy, and she was the one to put some sense into his thick head – but at the same time, she also drove him crazy sometimes. He found his eyes glued to the screen, staring at that name, such a simple name yet one that evoked so many memories. Nine letters that he spoke so many times in his mind, but so frantically tried to repress.
Yet when he turned his face away from the phone screen, he had the urge to kick destiny in the ass. Coming to his direction in the same sidewalk, wearing that mischievous smile, was the owner of the name he was making so much effort to forget:
Nico Robin.
