Prologue

Some days it was just smarter to stay in bed. Some days one should definitely avoid getting up. On such days it was best to bury the head beneath the pillow and continue to sleep.

As he stared at the sky, he realized that today was probably such a day. As he looked at the clouds in the otherwise clear blue sky, he remembered the distant morning. He had overslept, that was nothing uncommon, something that happened to him more often than he would admit.

He had stayed up longer than usual because he had not wanted to interrupt his training session. When he had finally left the lookout, the galley had already been brightly illuminated. The annoying dart brow had already begun to prepare breakfast. On the dark horizon he had already been able to recognize the first silver stripes of a new morning, so it had been no surprise that he had overslept.

He watched rising leaves in the wind and remembered the unnerved face of the cook when he had woken him up with a powerful kick into the pit of his stomach; he had missed breakfast, and no one had thought about waking him up. This had been no surprise as well, after all, it had not been the first time that he had overslept and it had not been the first time that the cook had saved him some leftovers, which was never an easy task considering who their captain was.

Actually, nothing had been unusual that morning, nothing had should have been avoided by staying in bed, nothing he should have been hiding from. After all, he was Roronoa Zoro and would never hide from anything.

The clouds passed by, leaving behind a bright blue sky, already marked by the approaching night. Quite different from the sky in his dream, in his dream of despair, responsibility, and fear. Such dreams were unknown to him and therefore he should have been aware that he should have stayed in bed.

The bright, setting sun dazzled him. No, today luck had certainly not been on his side, not today.

It had already started with him oversleeping and being woken up by the stupid cook at the horrific pinnacle of his nightmare.

Then he had destroyed a window of the lookout during the usual morning training. The shards had flown over the half of deck, almost injuring the others. Franky, Nami, and Sanji had yelled at him for a variety of reasons, and he had spent the rest of the morning crawling across the deck with a small bucket and picking up the shards, always accompanied by his annoying captain, who had spoken to him so differently than in his dream.

Of course, he had ended up cutting himself on a shard after Brook had slipped off the swing and had fallen on top of him. It really hadn't been his day.

His left hand had bled like crazy, and Chopper had theatrically dragged him across half the ship into the sickbay. He had probably also bled over half the dining room including a tablecloth, at least given the cook's annoying banter about it. By that time at the latest, he should have been aware that he should have been hiding somewhere as quickly as possible.

But, of course, he hadn't done that, and of course he hadn't been aware of it.

In the afternoon they had reached an island, some godforsaken island somewhere in the middle of nowhere. He had wanted to stay on board, for training or taking a nap, but before he had even arranged his thoughts, his idiot of a captain had grabbed his wrist and pulled him ashore.

He heard distant calls as he continued to stare at the sky. Until just now it had been so idyllic, not like he cared about such things, but somehow he had enjoyed the peace, had felt one with nature, as he usually did during meditation.

Why had he argued with the cook?

He didn't even recall what it had been about, why they had been arguing. It was often like that between them. Their mockeries contained neither sense nor intellect and, despite their harsh demeanor, were mostly without any seriousness.

Just like this time, as they had climbed the steep mountain. All but Franky and Usopp, who had remained on board for some minor repairs, had embarked on the demanding march, more or less voluntarily.

In the beginning, Brook's cheerful violin play, accompanied by Luffy's offkey but cheerful song about marching through the woods, had drowned their dispute, but by the time they had reached the end of the forest, they had almost started fighting, but Nami had made some punchy arguments to settle their dispute.

The calls came closer, someone seemed to be with him, but his surrounding slowly grew dark, only now he noticed the pain that his body had to endure.

When they had reached the narrow pass behind the forest and had been only a short walk from the top, he had remembered his dream. His eyes had lingered on the small, already distant scheme of his captain, who had been running ahead with Chopper and Brook and had been nothing more than a loud laughing shadow in the setting sun.

For a brief moment he had been distracted, had been frozen while walking. Long enough for the cook to bump into him. They had argued for a second before he had even known what had happened.

Suddenly everything had gone very fast, his feet had lost their secure stance, he had been inattentive. One could say his own stupidity had been at fault.

He recalled the rather surprised expression in the blue eyes of his crew member, the half outstretched hand. He recalled how their fingertips briefly grazed each other and how the cook had whispered his name.

It had been strange. Just then he had realized that something had been wrong. When the cook was actually calling him by his name, the world was usually at the verge of chaos.

He remembered a rough rock face he had tried to hold on to, remembering hands out of nowhere trying to hold him.

He remembered his fingers drilling in grey stone but unable to find a hold. He recalled the disgusting cracking of the arms that wanted to hold him, and also remembered a painful outcry that had not been his.

And then there had been nothing but the bright blue sky. For a short eternity, he had stared into the sky and wondered if he could fly.

Then finally there had been the stretched arm reaching for him, longer than humanely possible. He had extended his hand after his captain's and then he had hit rock bottom!

For a moment all the air had been squeezed out of his lungs, for a brief moment he had been filled with pain, but only for a fraction of a second.

The sky above him became dark, and the voices that called for him grew softer. He wanted to laugh at the thought of how ridiculous he had to look, what the others had to think seeing him lying there, he had to look pathetic.

He should have stayed in bed this morning. He shouldn't have gotten up, he should have just kept sleeping.

The world around him became dark and silent.

Yes, he should have just kept sleeping. He just wanted to sleep. He closed his eyes and allowed himself to sleep. Maybe tomorrow would be a better day.

Hey everybody,

Thank you for joining me on this little journey. This is actually an older story of mine, I just appearently never posted it. So as I've just finished updating 'worth a life' and am currently working on the last part of 'maybe it was fate, maybe just bad luck' I thought it would be nice to bridge the time with this little story and keep me in my posting rhythm (I need consistency^^').
I'm actually totally excited to finally share this story with you guys, there were probably reasons I didn't earlier. This story has several moments I'm very fond of (even though the topics are not always easygoing), so I hope you will enjoy it.

Usually I try to update between Friday evening and Saturday noon (depending on how early I get off work), so see you next weekend ;-)

Have a great week^^

P.S.: I'm a huge fan of concrit as I'm always trying to improve and become a better writter (and better in tagging, I'm still not used to that, sorry^^'), so don't be shy with me and feel free to point things out ;-)