Disclaimer: I don't own One Piece.
A/N: So hello there. I was dead… not really, I was just travelling more than I like. Then after a week I realized I hadn't checked my mail and then I realized oh my god I have to wake up and write the next chapter! Any way here it is now.
Doom
At first, she was only aware of the far away thudding… muffled by hazy curtains of drowned consciousness. Weak but steady, the thumping was somehow connected to her, but she could not find it. There was just the sea. Lapping sound against her ears, salt on her tongue, the smell of sea filling her congested nose, the cold, cold yet deceptively gentle rocking of the sea… and nothing but darkness overwhelming any sense of sight. It had taken her down into its depths. Into the warmth of its womb where some said humans had been born.
Then there was this weight on her chest. So, so heavy, it was crushing her, squeezing the breath out of her—which, she was surprised, she still felt in her consciousness. It was whispering something to her… like telling her to snap out, to go back and live. Odd notion. The pressure kept building up further until it was so unbearable, she wanted to scream. But all that came out was washed out gurgling that was probably the last bit of anything that had remained in her system. She coughed, a lost bout of air rushing back to her lungs.
When she gathered all her nerves to push against the heavy fatigued lids shrouding her sight in black, there was still nothing but darkness. Only a fleeting moment of haze when she thought she saw the Angel of Death frown at her. He whispered something.
Angel of Death.
Whispering.
"Oi, oi," she heard the voice again. Louder. Much louder. Almost as if he were shouting. "Pull it together, hey."
And with the voice, the uncomfortable jerking of her body held together only at the shoulders.
The voice.
The jerking.
The discomfort.
This time her eyes shot open and she jerked right up, her forehead bumped hard against something and there was a muffled groan. Unconsciously, her hands flew to the sides and clutched whatever she could hold onto. There was still the sea. Still the gentle, nauseating rocking. The lapping. The sickening churning in her stomach. There was the boat. And there was another presence.
"Holy fuc—" she paused as a seizure of coughs shook her, more water rushing out of her system. Pressing her hands to her temples, she waited for her eyes to adjust to the dim light that seemed to be coming from the only source—the stars that were scant, yet enough to make sense of things—given a bit of time she needed to straighten out her riddled mind.
"Easy…" came the voice and she turned apprehensively to look him in the eye. The guy she'd thought to be the Angel of Death for a brief second. He now frowned at her with one hand pressed against his forehead as if something had bashed it. Belatedly, the pain shot through her forehead and she realized his head was what she'd bashed against in her jerk out of the deathlike trance.
She was alive. Belated realization. But oddly comforting for a fleeting moment.
"You okay?" the man looked at her with apparent concern. He lit a flame in one hand and she wondered in amazement how he could do that so easily. The face was familiar. Quite familiar, making her feel uneasy for some reason. Where had she seen him before? Her brains felt like jell-o. Stomach rumbling angrily. Hands hurting with clutching onto the boat so hard. She didn't trust herself to let go of it even if her hands got paralyzed. She didn't trust the sea which rocked them gently, yet had the potential to get violent the moment she relaxed her hold. She felt vulnerable.
"I…" she gulped, growing uneasy under his considerate stare. "I… I'm alive."
"That's a relief," he sighed, and she wondered if the comment was genuine or sarcastic. Of course she was alive! "I almost regretted throwing you into the sea."
"Oh…" she was experiencing a very, very sloppy brain so slow on the uptake, she could have almost wanted to groan. "Wai—you threw me into the sea? You absolute bonkers, I was drowning. What if I had died?"
"But you're alive," he grinned, as if it was no longer an issue. "You just testified to that. Besides, if you can't swim, you should say that sooner."
"Like I had time," she shot back, her head heating up as her brains finally shifted gears and picked up the pace. "Before I knew it, I was tossed out like a fish."
"Well, sorry about that," he grinned again. "Didn't have time to think. You were in mess that was probably created by me, I suppose."
"You," she shuddered violently and for once her arms wrapped around her soaked body. "You were the man at the bar. Who dozed off in the middle of that stupid scuffle with the scums."
"Ah, did I?" he looked rather surprised. "Oh you're all soaked and cold, aren't you? Here have this," he held out his long coat to her revealing a nicely built lightly tanned upper half of a body with perfectly defined muscles. She was quick to assess things like that. He wore loose black shorts underneath and black boots that complimented his overall good looking build. Thankful to the dark concealing a little blush rising to her cheeks, she snatched the coat from his hand and without a word, turned around, her back to him and started taking off her shirt. If the fool had an ounce of respect, he wouldn't need to be told to turn around and not peep. None of the men she'd come across so far in her life had that though. But she was fine with it. Not like she had anything none of them had already seen before. Besides telling them off only seemed to make them more devilishly curious.
To her surprise, however, when she'd stripped down and shrugged on the oversized coat, she turned around to find him standing nonchalantly with his back to her as if it was the least of his interest. She suppressed a little smile as she spread her wet clothes against the side of the boat and cleared her throat a little.
Her attention caught on his back, however, before he turned around, on an elaborate tattoo fashioned all over his back—purple crossbones and a skull with a white upturned moustache.
"You…" she gasped, the hazy memory of those back alley posters suddenly sharp and vivid. How she'd failed to recognize this all too famous face that had ruled the wanted posters and created quiet, nervous murmurs was almost incredibly stupid and laughable. "You're… Whitebeard Pirates… Hiken no Ace. Bounty five hundred million belli."
In response, he smirked a little and bent down in an almost gentlemanly fashion. "Five hundred and fifty million belli."
"You're a pirate," her voice was almost breaking into shrieks now with panic underway. "Oh my god. You're a wanted pirate. You have a freakin' fortune to your head. This is crazy," the shrieks now gave way to a complete bout of hysterical hyperventilation as she backed away. "A pirate. This is insane. Why in the heavens am I stuck here in this wretched sea with a goddamned pirate. Heavens. What do you want from me, you scum, I have nothing of value—"
"Hey, hey," he moved swiftly to catch her by the arm as she all but tumbled back into the sea, trying to back off further and further to the edge of the boat which now rocked violently with its weight alignment disturbed. "Get a hold of yourself. I don't want anything from you. I just dutifully rescued you from a mess I started."
"Nobody needed your rescue," she glared at him, slapping away his hand and lowering herself into a sitting position as her dread of the rocking sea overpowered her hysteria and her hands flew to clutch at anything to hold her steady.
"You sure?" he sighed, shaking his head and sitting down in front of her, a little pity seeping into his gaze as the girl all but cowered at the sight of water. "Because you sure seemed like you needed help."
"Well, thanks a ton," she cried. Now that her assessment was complete and as her instincts rightly told her that although with a bounty as good as fortune, this man in front of her appeared rather harmless, anger overtook all her emotions and she convincingly put all blame for the messy situation on him. Anger was a good distraction.
"What is it you have against pirates?" he asked with an amused eyebrow raised.
"Don't get me started," she groaned, her face pinched as the boat rode another wave. Underlying the tone was a subtle aversion to say anything at all about pirates if she could help it. Inconsequential things of past that'd better lie buried where they were. However determined to not let another bout of hysterical madness overpower her lest she should throw herself at the mercy of the sea, she babbled on, convinced that it was the only thing that could distract her from the constant threat that whirled and churned under their little vessel. "Aside from all the goddamned scary things you pirates are, your love for the sea is so insane. I can't even begin to understand what it is that makes you crave for adventures in this scary shit when you could have content stable lives anywhere in the world. It's so shitty, so scary, this… this sea."
"Sea? It's not scary at all…" he tried for a little soothing smile. "Sea is freedom—"
"It's shit scary. I feel so sick," as if to support her claim, her stomach growled in agreement as she clung ever harder to the boat, a new dizziness claiming her. "Gods. I need to get away from here. I need to go back to my stable content little life."
"What you need right now, woman, is to get some food in there so your stomach would stop grumbling and embarrassing you—"
"I'm not embarrassed," she mumbled. "It's not food I need. It'll all come back right up. I'm just… so seasick. I'm pigshit scared of the sea, like, it literally kills my daylights out. And now you think I'm just talking godofted gibberish but I'm so senseless at my wits' end I'm all but going crazy."
"I can see that," he said, shaking his head a little at this sad little heap of a girl who just moments before on dry land had appeared as impressive a bar waitress as any he'd come across. Confident and tough with a presence of mind to take on three bandits, each twice her size. Apparently, though, her calculations had glitched somewhere. And now on the floor of the boat sitting so terrified was this girl with features almost too childlike. Without the impressive threats and twisted expressions she put up, she almost believably looked like a kid lost and separated from her parents on a sea voyage. Her physique, however was considerably womanly rather than girlish as he'd discerned from the brief glance he'd unintentionally been subjected to when she'd started changing out of her wet clothes without a warning or instruction to turn around. Short of stature, gray eyes wide and stormy with fear, a small mouth which gave an impish impression and a little runny nose made her a coinciding figure of a child and a woman altogether confusing him how to address her. Pity would've almost seeped into his gaze had it not been for the quiet dignity she held together even though looking rather tiny and lost in that oversized coat he'd given her. Courtesy of those glares and threats he'd seen her issue so undauntedly, he knew if he even tried to baby-talk her, she'd bite off his fingers before killing him off with death glares—better, death threats.
As he stood in front of her now sobbing form, she suddenly flung out and grabbed his hand pleading like a peasant to the lord: "Get us back to my village, Firefist, please, just somehow get me back there and I'll pay you back in whatever kind you'd like—"
"Okay, just calm down for a sec," he said, raising the one free hand she wasn't clutching so he could show her the log pose whose needle kept rotating without settling in any one direction. At this point, it was clearly no option to soothe her with calming words for her doomed expression was rather justified.
"It's… it's broken?" she breathed.
"Maybe," he said tipping back his hat and scratching his mass of wavy black hair now revealed and shining more fully. "Or maybe it just didn't set."
"That's… a disaster. I don't know a thing about log poses," she withdrew her hands and pulled them down over her ears, rocking back and forth against the boats natural rhythm. For a moment she glanced up with a wild look in her eyes that swept the boat searchingly end-to-end. "I don't know first thing about boats but… where are the oars supposed to be?"
"Now, here's the thing…" he squatted down in front of her, trying to phrase out the situation in a way that wouldn't shock her half to death which seemed more probable considering her fragile form that shook as she clearly tried to choke back sobs. The oars had gotten knocked away from the boat in the little scuffle and by the time he'd gotten rid of the bandits—which was fairly quick—he'd realized the woman was drowning and had to haul her out. By that time, the oars had floated far enough out of reach thanks to the huge splashes the bandits made as they hit the sea. And the time it took to revive her, getting all that water out, pressing, shaking yelling at her to hang on, he all but lost track of directions. He tried to make it sound more convincing but her disbelieving look told him she was considering it all but a heap of excuses.
"Why can't you swim?" she eyed him with sourness. "And you call yourself a pirate…"
To answer her, he merely held up his palm and produced a tiny flickering flame.
"Akuma no mi," she whispered to herself, pulling her hands over her ears and closing her eyes shut tight, suddenly aware of the impending doom. "We're lost at sea. And neither of us can swim."
A/N: I'm working on the next chapter already!
So I realized from Fanfiction, I'd actually started enjoying working on original stuff more. Maybe because it provides you that space to color it the way you like (in my case, the coloring is insane. Always.) So yeah, I would've totally published it on ficpress like normal people do but my imagination of the pirate kept ricocheting back to Ace every time I thought about him. (Maybe because I love Ace a little too much. There is no other pirate like him. Sensitive and sensible and yet those qualities don't deter that fun-loving pirate in him.)
Anyway, enough with my babble. But while I'm at it, I'd like to thank the wonderful people who took out their time to review the first chapter. That really motivated me! Thanks also for the favorites and follows. I'll keep trying hard to make this fanfic worthy of your likes.
