10. Opening Chords
He's eaten and drunk, danced and laughed in Moria's ruined castle, but now the party noise recedes in his mind as he sits down at the piano and starts to play that song. The fingers leap over the keys, the notes all coming down where they should.
But Mr Luffy tells him of meeting Laboon and it's too much; his playing grinds to a halt, the heart he doesn't have too flooded with emotions. The past reaches out to him and he's there, lost again in those long-gone moments.
– In his past, he's a young man at 18, ready to join his country's army; then a pirate at 36, approaching the Reverse Mountain and the Grand Line –
He shouldn't let the song stop, but he can't go on alone. So he reaches into his skull and takes out the sound dial, letting his old crew's singing fill the air. Distantly he hears Miss Lola, Mr Luffy and others joining in. They are here in this now. But he is drifting from several nows, only the beat of the song holding him together.
– In his future, he stands on a stage before a vast audience, holding a guitar rather than a violin, ready to play them his soul music one last time –
And the fifty years are nowhere, they're nothing; they have no place in this room, in this song. Here there are only old promises, old grief, old joy, and new life. All crowded together. No emptiness.
– Far far away on the other side of the world, a whale is still faithfully waiting –
He is so very happy to be alive.
The song stops, for now. He puts the sound dial back into his skull. It will remain there till the day he's fulfilled his promise.
And then there is no more waiting: he asks the request, and the captain answers. His captain, now.
And his future is ready to start happening.