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No Parking On The Battleground
a challenge, loud and clear
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When Luffy says, "Sogeking. Shoot down that flag," there is not an ounce of hesitation as he draws back the string.
Those words settle in his bones and fill him up. They steady his heart, his hand, and his nerves, and if he has anything else in him in that single, quiet moment when he takes a breath, and shifts his stance, and waits for one heartbeat, it is faith. He knows what those words mean and he is still willing to follow Luffy's order, willing to believe that things will work out for the best, that it will be worth it, because Luffy is not an idiot, to risk their lives with empty words or threats. He has seen Luffy take on opponents twice his age, his size, his experience - with the weight of everything on his shoulders, against the most unimaginable odds - and win against them all without fail, every time, because he has to.
He risks losing everything in those fights, he risks losing his friends, and that is not a bargain that Luffy takes lightly. There is no middle ground. There is victory or the grave. There is something that goes wrong and a way to fix it, someone that needs help and a way to save them, and Luffy is all instinct, from the soles of his feet to the ends of his hair. He has a knack for seeing what it is, exactly, that someone needs. He knows what you have to give and there is no give in him once he makes up his mind. There is no going back. There is no giving up. Luffy sacrifices endlessly for his friends - his family, his crew - regardless of what it costs him in the end.
Without them he is just one man alone in a boat, with his dreams and his drive and his boundless love. Luffy can love a person instantly, but his love does not come cheap or easy, by any means, and it is the heaviest, free-est, most encompassing feeling in the world. For every member of his crew, he has paid a price, because he wanted to and they needed him. Because he is the only one that could. A set of swords for Zoro, (a village for himself), a restaurant for Sanji, a room for Nami, a flag for Chopper, a kingdom for Vivi - a promise for each of them - and now a challenge, loud and clear, to the rest of the world for Robin.
It says something for the crew that they don't say anything at all. They all love and trust Luffy with their lives; they have left them in his hands before and he has never let them down. Where the captain goes, the crew will follow, because Luffy is the one constant between them. Nami isn't calling him rash or stupid, swinging a fist in his direction; Sanji isn't insisting that he think this one through; Chopper isn't inquiring or raising a panic; and nothing is expected from Zoro, regardless, because if Luffy is the heart of the crew, then Zoro is the backbone and he may bend every now and then, but he is just as unlikely to break.
They all understand. They know what this is - what burning that flag will mean - and they are all so steady and sure, and maybe it says something about himself, as well, that he is standing here with them (and not with them, not really) and he is not afraid. Maybe it says something (despite this), that he is the one that delivers the blow and burns the flag on the Tower of Law, at the end of the world. Maybe he's listening, really listening, and maybe he hopes that Robin hears it, too, because they're giving everything for her.
Maybe he knows this, most of all, because he very nearly lost it:
That all they have is each other. And their Love.
And what is the World, compared to that?
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(A/n) Too many Enies Lobby feels!
-BobTAC