"The Seventh Story: What Happened in the Castle and What Came of It" part 1

The walls of the castle were covered over with ice, great sheets of dull green ice that made the castle seem more like a cavern than a man-made thing. Sometimes the sun managed to peer through the open front door and turn the halls into a dazzling maze of reflected light, but more often than not it was the wind that came rushing through the halls instead, bringing piles of snow with it.

The castle was both familiar and alien to Zoro. He was quite sure he had never been inside it before. But he knew each room as soon as he entered. This room had a bed, and that was right; this room contained a laboratory of sorts, and that was right, too. When Zoro walked down the halls, trying to find his way back into one room or another, he thought there should be the sound of running feet. In one room at the top of a tower he found a cannon and stayed there for a while, listening for birdsong.

None came, just like no feet other than his ever sounded in the halls. The castle of ice and snow was quite empty. There was no one to work at the laboratory table, no one to lie in the bed. Zoro did not know why he expected to find other people walking the corridors of ice and snow. It was as if he had trespassed into someone else's story, one told to him, one that had happened long ago.

But most of the time Zoro did not wander the castle. There was a place in the Great Hall where there was a sort of pool. The surface of the pool was cracked into a thousand shards of ice, but to Zoro each shard seemed so beautiful that most of the time he just sat in the middle of the frozen lake, arranging and rearranging the pieces into complex shapes. There was one shape Zoro wanted to make more than all the others, but he could never seem to find exactly the right pieces. He wanted to make this shape for Kuina. She often sat with him in the middle of the pool, keeping him company, wrapping her arms around his shoulders to keep him warm. Zoro did not notice that where her fingers touched, his skin turned blue, almost black with cold. He just kept rearranging the ice patterns.

"Just this one thing," Kuina urged him. "Spell the word 'eternity' for me." She was always tall during these times; her eyes always ringed by long black lashes and her lips full and red like a woman's; Zoro thought she would have been this beautiful, her voice this deep and coaxing, had she lived to be nineteen and twenty-nine with him. When Kuina was tall like this, the castle seemed to grow quieter, the snows heavier, the marks on Zoro's arms blacker and slower to fade.

But Kuina did not always ask him to spell 'eternity'. Sometimes she whispered, "Spell 'freedom,' Zoro," and her voice was that of a child's, and Zoro would turn his head to find her as long-limbed and barefoot as the day he met her, as the day she died. "You must, Zoro. I don't want to stay here any longer."

Zoro arranged the pieces to spell a good many words, but he could never seem to put together either 'eternity' or 'freedom.' So he sat in the middle of the frozen pool until he felt like his head would burst, and then he would go for a walk around the empty castle, listening for footsteps.

One day someone sat down on the frozen pool beside him who was not Kuina. She was a woman but she was not Kuina. She was familiar but alien to him. He felt like he should know those dark eyes but he did not. He felt like he should respond when she called out his name but he did not. She felt like a part of that other story, the one that no longer seemed quite real.

Zoro looked back down at the ice.

And – suddenly – there was pain. Zoro cried out and did not recognize the hoarse sound coming out of his throat. Something liquid and warm was running down his right arm, the first warm thing he had felt since coming to the castle with Kuina. Zoro lifted it to see. Blood, bright red and steaming in the frigid air, was pouring forth from a gash just below the elbow running down to the wrist; Zoro hardly recognized it, could hardly connect the pain to the blood to something belonging to his own body. There was a blade. A naked blade with a smear of blood, already frozen over. The blade was being held barely aloft by the woman who was not Kuina. She looked frightened, and tired, and angry. Zoro did not know why.

Then, beside him, Kuina laughed loudly, making Zoro forget all about the woman. "You did it, Zoro!" Kuina cried. "You spelled it!"

"I did?" Zoro looked down at his ice puzzle. It didn't look like either 'freedom' or 'eternity' to him. The pieces lay where he had left them before the woman came, except now they were stained red with his blood.

"You did it," Kuina repeated. "You kept our promise. One of us beat the other. One of us became the best swordsman in the world."

"Who?"

Kuina grinned at him. "One of us."

And Zoro was eleven years old again, short and skinny, his brows already permanently furrowed into an anxious scowl, reaching up with a grubby hand to extract the promise which he thought would keep both him and Kuina alive forever and ever: one of them would be the best. The last fight would be the only one that mattered. Now Zoro was one day older and Kuina was dead, her time preserved forever at twelve years while Zoro had to go on alone; and though everyone around him had grief carved into their spirits his was the only world that seemed to be breaking; to keep it whole he asked for the only thing left of her - her sword, which would never completely be his sword but always a substitute, a talisman. Cheated of facing her, Zoro in his shattered-world haze vowed to face the final battle with her and so forgot as the years passed and his footsteps wandered ever further from the moonlit hillside that that was not the original promise.

Now one of them had won. Now there were no more rivals left to beat. Zoro moved his head just quickly enough to see Kuina step backwards onto the blood-stained ice - and then she was gone, and memories began to flood the void, all the memories of the last ten years which Zoro had worked so carefully to keep at bay; like a dam breaking, he let them pour forth in a howling wail that seemed to pierce the ice; the clouds; the air; the sun; until the heavens themselves shook with the force of Roronoa Zoro's grief.

- - - - -

"Zoro! Zoro, please don't cry!" Vivi took ahold of Zoro's shoulders and shook him as hard as she dared - which was not very hard - but it made no difference. Eventually Vivi gave up and turned her mind to other matters.

Now that Zoro was here, now that she knew he was solid bone and flesh and alive, Vivi's mind scrambled to gloss over this whole bizarre adventure and anchor it down in the real world of logic and practical explanations. Take, for example, the castle. Everything was covered in layers and layers of ice and snow, but it was easy enough to see why. When she lived there, Dr. Kureha had kept the front door open always, and she had not bothered to shut it when she moved house. Of course the elements rushed in to lay claim to the place.

She had found Zoro just inside the castle, in the Great Hall. Part of the ceiling had fallen in, no doubt from the weight of the snow, and years of precipitation had frozen over into a kind of pond in the middle of the hall. Zoro was kneeling down in the center of the pool, moving pieces of broken ice around. Vivi had rushed forward with a cry, hardly able to believe he was really there. But he was, and really it was as if he was the most solid thing in the castle. His hair was longer, true, but it wasn't very much longer, and he was thinner. But he did not look as if he had been in this castle of ice and snow for three weeks. Blue and black whiplashes from the cold covered his bare arms, but he did not look frostbitten; he was not so thin that he looked parched or famished. He could not have been in the castle for more than a few days. During the pinnacle of his strength Zoro had possessed nearly inhuman endurance, but even he was subject to basic survival needs.

Someone, at some point, had thrown a white fur cloak around Zoro's shoulders. Like everything around it, it was caked with snow and ice, but Zoro moved under it as if indifferent to the cloak's presence or usefulness. The sight of the cloak made Vivi feel better, somehow. Zoro had met someone during his travels who had been kind to him. He had not been whisked away. It was probably just as Chopper and Nico Robin and Dr. Kureha had said: Zoro had gotten lost in the snowstorm, wandered the Grand Line and, propelled by his infamous lack of directional sense, ended up at the castle, not even very many days before Vivi herself. He had been talking about it back at Alubarna Palace, just before he disappeared. Perhaps that had something to do with it.

What worried Vivi the most was the way Zoro went on shuffling ice around like someone possessed, neither looking up when she called his name nor reacting when she knelt down in front of him and shook him by the shoulder. It was as if she wasn't even there. Vivi's first thought was that there was something wrong with him, that his selective memory of the last six years had finally decided to delete itself for good. Her second thought was that maybe someone else was in the castle. Perhaps the person who had given Zoro the fur coat, and perhaps this person was really an enemy. She looked around nervously, but the shadowed hallways beyond the courtyard seemed quite empty. It was at this point that Vivi's worry passed over into annoyance. All right, so Zoro had lost his wits for good. So he'd been tromping around the Grand Line with who knows who. Even people under those conditions looked up when a stranger called their name! Vivi wasn't asking for much: just some acknowledgment of her trials, some sign that it had all been worth it.

The important thing was to get his attention. She was sick of kind and patient, and anyway, it was freezing. Zoro did not respond to her cajoling, nor to the light slap to the cheek. In her bewilderment, Vivi laid her hands on the only thing sure to get Zoro's attention, the only thing that remained of the old days: she reached out and grasped the hilt of the curious white sword called Wadou with both hands, and pulled.

The sword was heavy, as she'd expected, but not so heavy that after the initial tug Vivi didn't go tumbling back on her haunches, overbalanced, while the blade came slithering out of the sheaf with an alarming, metallic shi-ng and, even against Vivi's cry of consternation, drew a crisp line of red from Zoro's elbow to his wrist.

Zoro gave a cry of surprise and pain, the sound coming out hoarse and guttural from his throat as if he had not spoken for many days. He looked down at his arm as if he'd never seen blood before, then back up at Vivi as if he might almost know her, his brow furrowed in an all too familiar V over his eyes; despite her worry and guilt for having caused him injury Vivi was so relieved to see him looking even a ghost of his old self that she dropped the sword and scrambled forward to catch his hands in hers.

"Oh, Zoro!" she said happily. "You looked up after all!"

Zoro looked even more confused. "I did?"

"Yes, you did." Vivi gave him a shake, then stopped as the motion only splattered more drops of blood across the ice. "Now we must go before that person comes back."

"Who?"

"Well – I – I don't know," said Vivi, taken aback. "Someone must have given you this cloak, Zoro," and raised a hand to pluck at the stiff, frozen fur.

And then stopped, as if her hand were as frozen as the cloak. For one moment Vivi saw her: almost solid, the thick green ice slabs glowing opaquely through the foggy composition of her body; tall and sturdy and long-limbed, the ghost-child with the big, big eyes grinned with such heartbreaking, cocksure sweetness that it seemed to Vivi it was for this little girl's sake that Zoro had walked into the snowstorm in the first place.

Just for one moment – between one blink and the next she was gone, leaving Vivi to rub her eyes and tell herself uneasily that she was seeing things, that it was a trick of the light. Then Zoro threw back his head and began to sob, and Vivi forgot all about the little girl.

- - - - -

With more prodding and cajoling, Zoro eventually stopped his tears and even began to help Vivi with gathering the tattered cloak more tightly around his shoulders. Vivi kept up a constant chatter as she worked at stripping lengths of her own coat to bind Zoro's arm; wipe off the sword and replace it in its scabbard; rubbing his legs to get some feeling back into those frigid limbs.

"It's not as cold as it was, is it?" she said with forced casualness. "Zoro, do move your feet so I can see if you've got frostbite."

"Vivi."

Her body stiffened, though she tried to pretend otherwise. "Yes, Zoro."

"What are you doing here?"

That earned him a full-force punch to the head. "Well, honestly!" Vivi said, thoroughly exasperated. "That's a fine thing to say to someone who's been searching for you for the past three weeks! Don't you think a better question would be what you're doing here?"

Zoro looked up and around at the crumbling castle of ice. "All right," he said cautiously. "What am I doing here?"

Vivi sighed. Standing up, she held out a hand, which Zoro took to haul himself to his feet. "We'll talk about it later," she said tiredly. "Let's just get out of here, Mr. Bushido."

Without saying anything more, the princess and the swordsman walked out of the castle.

- - - - -

Chopper was waiting for them just outside the door. As Vivi and Zoro emerged back out into the world, blinking against the harsh glare of the sudden sun, Chopper dashed towards them at a gallop, only to transform into his usual half-and-half body and launch himself directly at Zoro, latching firmly onto the swordsman's head.

"Oh, Zoro!" the reindeer wailed. "How could you!"

"Oi, Chopper!" Zoro flapped his hands helplessly, unsure how to respond to the bundle of fur clinging to his head and pounding him around the shoulders with small fists. "Get off!"

"Where have you been?" Chopper went on aggrievedly, ignoring his pleas and clinging even tighter.

"I could tell you if you – oof – get off of me," Zoro said in a tone that was almost like his old growl, though his attempts to remove Chopper from his person seemed to Vivi to be half-hearted at best, though whether that was because he was happy to see his former crewmate or his supply of oxygen was being cut off, it wasn't entirely clear.

There was barely time for Vivi to reflect on how quickly it had taken Zoro to resemble something of his former self; Zoro had just managed to gasp out something about needing to breathe; and Chopper was taking a fifth or sixth swipe at Zoro's head when there was a horrible squeal of rusty metal and the unwieldy bulk of Drum Island's ropeway car settled at the top of the mountain in a ponderous cloud of snow.

The car door slammed open. Kureha stalked out, hardly taking notice of the knee-high accumulation, while Dalton and half a dozen curious townspeople crowded near the ropeway station, wanting to horn to say they played a part in the Alabastan princess's strange adventures, yet not liking to get too close while the Doctorine was on her warpath. Vivi, Chopper, and Zoro watched Kureha approach, all of them disoriented by the boisterous, chattering crowd after the silence of the castle.

Kureha stopped just in front of Vivi and poked at her with a long, thin finger. "Found him, did you?" the doctor bellowed triumphantly, as if she had been the one climbing mountains all day. "Well done, my girl!"

"Y-yes," Vivi stammered, still trying to readjust her mind after the silence of the ice castle. "Doctor," she began, "the Snow Queen was real, then? Is this what it means?"

Kureha snorted as Zoro looked back and forth between them in confusion. "Means?" she repeated, and jabbed at Vivi again. "It means, you foolish girl, that you climbed a mountain and found what you were looking for at the top of it. Speaking of which-" Kureha left off jabbing Vivi and rounded on Zoro, who accordingly took a wary step back.

"Oh, no you don't, boy," the doctor cackled. "You may well be too dense to catch a cold, if your shenanigans these past ten years are any judge, but I'll not let it be said that Doctor Kureha allowed a patient to leave her island without a proper examination." She hit Zoro with an audible smack on the forearm, causing him to wince as the force of the blow jarred his not-quite-healed wound. "Now get in that car."

"If I'd known this was waiting, I'd have stayed in that castle," Vivi heard Zoro mutter to Chopper as he stumped off obediently. The reindeer raised a hoof to cover a guilty giggle.

Dalton met them at the door. "It's good to see you alive, lad," he said to Zoro kindly.

Vivi could almost feel it, the tensing of Zoro's shoulders, the slight sag in his posture; it was Alubarna Palace all over again, and Vivi feared, even as her heart tightened back into the frightened, worried knot of the last six years, that Zoro would never shake the deadened calm, so like the snow; she was afraid she had only been chasing a ghost across the Grand Line.

Chopper, now sitting piggyback, was stroking Zoro's hair with a protective tenderness Vivi recognized as her own, and it broke her heart that she had not been able to present the swordsman whole and healed to the reindeer who had followed her so faithfully on this journey.

When Zoro spoke, it was in the quiet tone of one telling secrets. "I started to carry you up the mountain."

"Yes, lad." Dalton's voice was gentle.

"But the villagers told us to wait while they prepared a lift. They said it would be quicker that way."

"Aye." Behind him, the townspeople murmured assent. Yes, many of them had been part of that story.

"And at the top of the mountain," Vivi said dully, taking up her part of the narrative, "we met--"

"Kureha." Zoro furrowed his brow. "And Luffy. And Nami, and Sanji." He reached up with one hand to catch Chopper's hand. "And we took the sleigh down. All of us, and Chopper pulled it."

Vivi came up to them, scrubbing hard at her eyes with one hand. Without looking at her, Zoro took up her other one and squeezed, the pressure reminiscent of the strength he once possessed. "I always knew," he began hesitantly. "But I couldn't say it, not until--"

Vivi shook her head to stop him, afraid that if she spoke she really would break down in tears. Dalton stretched out two powerful arms and clapped each of them around the shoulders. "Enough," said the king. "There will be plenty of time for stories later. Let us return to the village and the comforts of a warm hearth. The Snow Queen is loosing her grip on our little country, but it's a foolish man who ignores her complete." So saying, he drew them with the townspeople into the car. Kureha, thoughtful and silent for once, entered last and closed the door against the still-swirling snow, and together they all went down the mountain.

- - tbc - - -

notes: (SPOILERS for Andersen's "The Snow Queen") 1. I tried to echo the emptiness and silence of the Snow Queen's palace as much as possible. At the same time, Zoro probably had Luffy, Sanji, and Nami's adventures in Drum Castle told to him, so I tried to work in a feeling of expectation. The frozen pool, of course, is straight out of the story.

2. In the original, the Snow Queen asks Kay to spell one word, but I changed it to two here because I thought otherwise Kuina would be too creepy.

3. Gerda fusses over Kay to make him 'human' again, and of course fussing comes easily to Vivi as well. She doesn't kiss him, though – as much as this is a love story, it's not a "kissing story", and blood seems to fit Zoro so much better, yeah?

4. For this chapter I thought a lot about mirrors, illusions and the circular nature of this story. Conversations mimic each other but it's not certain which ones are 'real', events echo each other but the players and circumstances are just a little different. So yes, I was definitely going back to Chapter 2, when Vivi and Zoro talked about the first time they were at Drum, and here they are on the mountain again, and repeating that conversation again, while acting out their own story…

Thank you so much if you made it to the end; this was a really long chapter D: There's only one more, I swear! As always, feedback is greatly appreciated :)