Chapter 04 - Shigure
He'd have to dive again, soon.
They always asked the smallest, first, and Behr was one of the smallest (thus were the trials of being ten.) He could get in between the columns of the reefs, and wedge himself in to the cracks in the seabed. He was nimble, too. Like a porpoise. His scrawniness would one day become a swimmer's build, whether he liked it or not.
Behr hated that. He hated it almost as much as he hated the water.
He hated the way that the waves knocked the wind out of him. He hated the way that the tide tried to tug him down and eat him. The sea wanted him. He wished it didn't. He hated the way that it chilled his flesh, and made his skin feel slimy, as if he were an eel or something even more subhuman. He hated the way that the fish would stare at him, never blinking, as if they were some sort of alien creatures that had no right to be living on the great red earth. He hated the way that the world went all muddy (even worse than the brown-green-grey of the village) when he put his dive goggles on, and the way that the stale air tasted in his throat as he sucked it down the breathing hose. He hated going down there. And he hated that he had to.
Behr was a particularly precocious ten, when it came to the development of grudges. Boredom and depression could do that to a boy.
But he would dive today, regardless. It was certain. He could sense it. The square was half-empty, and he could feel the moisture in the air as the grey sky frowned upon him. They'd want another dive before it started raining.
That was how things always happened.
Behr ducked beneath the canopy, and decided to wait out the dawn. The baker would be up first - Behr could get some fresh bread before all of the greedigut hoarders showed. He'd take it back to Mum and Da. And then he'd try to make himself as scarce as humanly possibly. Everyone understood why he didn't love what he was diving for, but no one understood how he hated the dive. In this village, they were water people.
Behr hoped for a miracle. A distraction. A hero to save him. Whatever. He was not set in his ways yet - he could afford to be flexible. The only bad habit he had was wishing for ways to stop them all from having to dive. Mum said that he had to dash that nonsense right out of his head, elsewise the currents would do it for him, and they all had a living to make from diving.
Bad habits were hard to break.
Behr's heart skipped a beat, and he stood for a second.
Nothing.
He pulled his cap down lower, shoved his hands deep into his pockets, and resolved to go about his business with a massive sulk.
They he saw the Lady in the Door.
***
They'd stopped traveling nearly two years ago, but Tashigi swore that, if she concentrated, she could still feel the ground rocking back and forth beneath her feet. She'd spent nearly her whole life in and out of boats.
Granted, she wasn't all that old yet.
Sometimes she missed the sea. The travel hadn't been boring at all. There were a million dangerous ways to hang off of ropes or play with hooks on a passenger ship. And the sailors... they'd had all sorts of interesting things! Guns and axes and sometimes even swords, real-live honest-to-gosh-swords, that they'd let her mess around with! She knew that they usually only did it so that they could laugh at her, or so that she'd put in a good word for them with her mother, but she hadn't cared. Those had been fun games. They had been nice men. It made her sad that, invariably, every year, one or two of them would be gone because of the pirates, and she'd have to get to know their replacements all over again. She missed them, too. They were the closest thing she had to uncles. Why couldn't pirates leave people alone?
Tashigi missed them even more now that Mom and her didn't do yearly rounds at all. She had no way of knowing if they were even alive.
And. There was nothing nearly as fun to play with in this boring old city. All of the Marine swords were uniform and uninteresting, and they thought she was joking when she wanted to borrow them. That wasn't any fun at all! Neither was her school. Mom had stopped playing in the smaller villages and gotten a permanent gig in one of the city clubs, because Tashigi was apparently getting old enough that she needed to get an education. But everything that they taught in school was so boring! Why did she need to learn any of this? Tashigi tried her hardest, but she couldn't help it if she didn't care about music or literature or dancing (especially dancing.) She didn't understand why they couldn't read history about battlefields rather than poetry about landscapes, or learn accuracy through archery rather than needlepoint. Those things didn't involve having big arms to tie knots or steer rudders at all. They could be for girls too.
Tashigi had the sneaking suspicion that, while they'd been traveling, Mom had forgotten to teach her how to be a girl, and was now trying to make up for lost time. Tashigi wished she wouldn't bother. All of the girls she met at school liked really lame things.
Tashigi unlocked the door to their cramped rowhouse, and dropped her bookbag haphazardly by the door before toeing off her patent-leather Mary-Janes. Tashigi knew that her mother worked very hard to support them, and therefore treated most of the clothing she hated (including: school uniform complete with skirt, trendy/bland black-and-white frock dresses, and all of her barrettes except for the ones with the ponies on them) with a grudging respect. But the Mary-Janes were singled out for a special heel-destroying ire. Those dumb shoes had no grip. She was sure that that was why she had started slipping so much lately. She'd started getting taller too, and Mom had begun to make threatening noises about buying her a bra, but Tashigi liked to ignore that and blame the footwear. A few more months and she'd be consigned to dancing singing needle-pointing girldom forever, with no hope for a stay of execution whatsoever. It was too awful to contemplate. So she didn't.
"MOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMM!!! I'M HOOOOOOOMMMMME!" Tashigi yelled, kicking her schoolbooks out of the way and into their sitting-room/dining-room/kitchen.
There was no answer.
"MOM!!!?"
Still no answer. The door creaked shut.
Tashigi smiled. Then she bolted up the stairs.
The only thing that made up for having to live in the boring city, and that was having her very own room to hide things in. She had a futon, and a window, and a shelf, and a dresser too. There were lots of dresses in the dresser. She never wore the dresses, so it was easy to shove things she wasn't supposed to have under them. Tashigi felt really guilty about keeping things from her mother there, but... she tried really hard at school and followed all the rules, because respecting the rules was important, so it was a fair trade, right? She wasn't going against her mother's wishes. She was only not telling her what she was doing! Yeah! That was completely different.
Or at least that was what she told herself. Anyway, she shouldn't spend so much time thinking about being guilty about it. She could do that at school, or when Mom was home. This was a golden opportunity to get some reading done. Tashigi couldn't wait! It had been a whole four days and if she didn't finish that last chapter soon she would explode.
Tashigi made a hairpin turn at the top of the stairs, and slammed open the door to her room. It looked exactly like the door to her Mom's room, except it had a paper with her name and a picture of a sea monster taped to it. Sea monsters were cool, except when they ate people. Tashigi had decided, however, that her sea monster was a good sea monster, so it only ate bad sea monsters and sometimes fish.
"I
found these in your dresser," a quiet voice broke her reverie.
Mom was in her room.
She had opened the door, and Mom was in her room.
And her dresser was open, her dresses all pulled out, frilly girly boring pastels that her mother called 'classy' tossed around the room like they'd been caught in a small tornado.
Mom was in her room, and had rumpled up all of the dresses she loved, and she was holding Tashigi's books, and this was all very very wrong.
Tashigi froze. The bottom dropped out of her stomach. There was a bird on the streetlamp outside her window. If she did not look at her mother, then she could meet its eyes.
"Tashigi?" her mother snapped, quivering with rage. Her hand pointed to a small stack of books scattered on Tashigi's futon. Her mother's nails were long, and blood-red, to go with the pretty yellow-and-crimson-and-orange embroidered dress she wore for the Thursday show. In the half-light of late afternoon, they looked like claws.
"Young lady, you look at me when I am talking to you," the claw reached down and grabbed her chin, forcing Tashigi to look up at the force of nature looming over her. "Where did you get these!?"
"I bought them," Tashigi steeled her jaw, and struggled to remain calm. She would take her punishment like a sailor, or a swordsman. She wasn't going to try and doe-eye her way out of this, like a girl. "From the bookshop on Oleander Street."
"With what bellies?" her mother spat.
"I sweep up, and dust the shelves in the evening after lessons," Tashigi's voice was beginning to shake. "Miss Blackburne gives me books in exchange."
The girl's face was released, as her mother turned back to the offending material.
" Named Swords of the South Blue? He Who Cuts Last Cuts Best: A Guide to Coping with Multi-Sword Attacks?" Tashigi's mother Tashigi's books up one by one, scanned the titles, and then hurled them to the floor. "Learn to Handle a Cutlass in Thirty Days? A Bladespotter's Handbook? This is not appropriate reading material for a young lady!!!"
"Miss Blackburne says it's fine! It's not dirty or violent or anything! I just read... I haven't touched a weapon, I swear!" Tashigi protested desperately.
"Miss Blackburne is not your mother! What is this? What do you think you're doing?" the words caught in her mother's throat. Like they had to tear their way out. Like she was tearing up. "How could you think you could hide these from me?"
"I thought... I didn't think you'd be so angry," Tashigi backed away, into the doorway. What she'd thought was that she'd read up on everything until she got really good at knowing things about swords, and then she'd teach herself how to use one, and impress Mom with how good she was, so then Mom wouldn't be mad at her and would instead let her take lessons at the local dojo, and they'd both be really happy and Mom would be so proud. But Tashigi didn't think. She never did. She had known that Mom hated everything to do with stuff like weapons. And now she'd ruined everything. "You spend so much time with the show. And you've paid for lessons, but I'm no good at singing or dancing or painting or anything. I like reading."
"Don't you make me feel guilty about my job. I spend all time with the show to keep you fed! To give you opportunities! To keep you SAFE! Don't you EVER forget that!"
There was silence, before her blood roared to her ears. Tashigi could feel her face stinging.
Her mother had slapped her.
Her mother had never slapped her before.
Was Mom crying?
She was. Mom was crying. And Tashigi hadn't meant... oh, she was so messed up, she wasn't a proper girl at all, and it was all her fault, boyfriends came and went but she was all Mom had, and Mom was all she had, and how did Tashigi repay her? By messing everything up. By not being good at anything she was supposed to be good at.
The bird on the streetlamp had flown away, but Tashigi could no longer see it. She'd taken off her glasses in order to wipe her eyes.
By the time Tashigi was sure that she could speak without sobbing, her mother had left.
***
Tashigi stumbled, and caught herself before she fell to the ground - though her bowlegged attempt at stability was far from graceful. She closed her eyes and willed the world to stop spinning, all the while wondering at the nausea creeping up from her gut. What was this? Her falls weren't like this.
The sky was grey and pregnant with rain. She was standing on a porch or a stoop of some kind, in a village all of wood, that stretched out in all directions over the water of a great bay. The buildings and walkways themselves were all held up by stilts, like a large and intricate dock. Some kid was staring at her from a walkway, his jaw hanging wide open.
Tashigi knew the feeling. She was confused too. Hell, her mental state had moved on to a place beyond mere confusion. She didn't know exactly what or where that place was, mind you... but that was kind of to be expected in a beyond-confusing situation. This was all very surreal.
Tashigi became even more confused when the boy started grinning.
***
"Mom... " Tashigi tiptoed down the hall, as if her silence could somehow make everything calm back down again.
"Mom?" she opened the door to her mother's room by a crack. When the sky did not proceed to fall in on her, she edged her way carefully inside. "I'll... I'll throw them all away. I promise. If it'll make you feel better."
"It's not your fault, sweetie," Mom was sitting at her vanity, as she stared unseeing into her large mirror. Her hands picked idly at tubes of makeup and strings of fake pearls she'd strewn around the vanity's surface. "I know that I'm not being fair."
Her
mother stayed out late alot. That was what singers did, and that was what
boyfriends did too. But her mother never ran out of energy - she thrived
on her work. So Tashigi could not understand why her mother sounded dead
tired at five in the afternoon.
"So I can keep them?" Her mother still wouldn't look at her, but Tashigi couldn't help being hopeful anyway. Maybe... maybe Mom was only tired. Then it would be easier to put things right. Tashigi had to make her pitch now, or never. "I promise, they won't get in the way. I only read them when I'm not in school or lessons and I'll take really good care of them and I've memorized half of them anyway, so we could throw them out and only keep the others, and they wouldn't even take up much room. Give me a chance. I'll make it okay. .... Please?"
Her mother sighed. Her eyes, staring at Tashigi from the mirror, were flat, and dripped black mascara. Her smile was small and bitter, its lining smudged coral-red. "You really can't help being like him, can you?"
Who...?
Oh.
"I don't want to be. I'm not trying to be," Tashigi struggled to explain. She was crying again, so it was hard for her to make her voice clear. It was lonely, standing by the doorway. It made her feel small. "I don't know him, and I hope I never do! He hurt you so much you had to leave him. I don't want to be someone who you can't love. I wish... I wish I didn't have to have a father! I don't even need one!"
"No. No... shhhh, sweetie, it's alright," suddenly life returned to Tashigi's mother, who knelt to the floor and hugged her. Her voice was low and soft, and her shoulder was too, so it was easy for Tashigi to sob into it. Tashigi's hands clutched at the back of her mother's dress. "I didn't mean it that way. You don't have to hate him. It's not your fault. I'm just... upset. I received some bad news in a letter from your father today, and I took it out on you. I've known about those books for months. I was hoping you'd grow out of them."
Her mother was hugging her tighter, like she was afraid that Tashigi was going to try and escape. Tashigi had sniffed back her tears, and was about to speak, before her mother continued.
"When I left your father, I had to leave something with him that was very precious to me," said Tashigi's mother, her voice raw and distant. Like she was faded. Failing. "The only thing in this world as valuable to me as you are. It wouldn't have been fair to take the both of you from him."
"But he lost it," her mother's voice faltered. She was running a hand through Tashigi's hair. Tashigi's scalp was beginning to hurt. She didn't know what her mother was talking about, but she did know better than to ask.
"That bastard let it BREAK."
***
Behr couldn't believe it... the Lady in the Door had just appeared, like they were in a story! It must be for a reason! She'd appeared and she stood there - her clothes so bright, her sword all shining in the sunrise, looking pensive and heroic and completely out of place in his drab brown village full of fish guts and rickety diving boats. The light from the oil lamps in the store behind her gave her a slight gold halo. That was a katana she had, wasn't it? A katana! And treasure! Like a knight errant, or a samurai; world-weary and wise.
Behr bet that knights and samurai NEVER had to go in the water.
"You came," Behr said. "You really, really came!"
***
"Sit right there," Tashigi's mother released her, and set her up on the vanity stool. "I have something for you."
Tashigi was still not sure if she should speak.
"When I left your father, I had to let him keep something of mine that I valued. So he let me keep something he valued, too," Mom opened her wardrobe, and dropped to her knees so that she could rummage around behind all of the sequined skirts and feather boas. "I want you to have it."
From the deep dark recesses of the cabinet, under a jungle's worth of brightly-colored silks, a dirty-looking bundle of brown sackcloth emerged. That was... as confusing as most of this day had been. Tashigi couldn't imagine her mother even touching something like that, let alone wearing it.
When the bundle was placed in her lap, it became apparent that this was not something a person would wear. It was too heavy.
"Unwrap it," Mom leaned against a wall, drew a cigarette from the pack on her desk, and looked at it as though it were mana from heaven. The sigh of relief was audible when she lit up.
Tashigi carefully drew back the covers, and time seemed to slow down as she caught a glint of steel under the earth-dull packaging. It was silver - flowed like water. It tapered to an edge so fine it could cut the stars out of the sky.
The girl heard herself gasp.
"It has a name. It's called Shigure."
"It's beautiful," Tashigi wondered, not daring to take her eyes off of the gorgeous thing that Mom had placed in her lap. She was almost afraid to touch it. If she did, it might disappear in a flash of light or a puff of smoke. That was the kind of thing that happened with dreams, or mirages. Named swords were sort of like... devil fruits, or Sea Lords. Everyone knew that they existed, but it seemed crazy to imagine them anywhere outside of storybooks. "Why would you..."
"When I left your father, he got to keep something of mine. So I got to keep something precious to him, too. Like I told you," her mother sighed, a sigh larger than normal life-sized sigh. Larger than life. It was wry and bitter and angry and sad all at the same time. Mom really was fit for the stage - you could see the point she was getting at from any seat in the house. "He had two. That was the style he practiced, you know - two swords. But he stopped fighting in order to teach, after you were born. So he didn't need them anymore."
She laughed grimly, and exhaled a smoke ring, "He was never much of a fighter anyway."
"I thought you might turn out like me, but it didn't take. I can't keep denying that any longer. I have to stop before it's too late," Tashigi's mother stabbed her cigarette out in the crystal ashtray, and walked over to sit on the edge of the vanity. Tashigi didn't notice. She was still staring at the sword. "Sweetie, I want you to do whatever you like with this. And if that means that you want to start learning how to use it, then I won't be angry with you. I didn't leave your father because he was a swordsman. And I would never have trusted him with anything I cared about, if I thought he was a bad man. I left him... because he wanted me to stop singing, and stay home to be the proper sensei's wife. That was a role I just couldn't play."
A hand intruded Tashigi's line of vision, and she look up, startled. Mom smiled down at her.
"I'm not going to ask you to make the same choice that I had to make. You'll never be someone who I can't love."
"Really?" Tashigi gathered to courage to run her finger along the edge of the blade. It felt like steel, and cold, and perfect. If there was such a thing as that.
"Really truly," Tashigi's mother ruffled her hair, and then gently pushed her out of the makeup stool. Tashigi cradled the swaddled sword in her arms, as if it would shatter. "Now why don't you go put those books on your shelf, hmm? I have to pull myself together for rehearsal tonight. You can hand me the powder on your way out."
And then Mom was a whirlwind of activity, wiping her face off and putting a new face on, curling her eyelashes and pinning up her hair and all doing all of the things Tashigi usually thought of as boring mom-stuff in an impossible ten minutes.
The moment was over, but a new era had begun.
***
Tashigi blinked. By this point she was too worn out physically and emotionally to be susceptible to panic.
"Um, sure. Okay. Hey!" she tried to keep the fatigue out of her voice. "Can you tell me where this is?"
"The Devil's Garden," the boy replied. "But you knew that. And I won't have to dive today. 'Cause you're like a samurai! With a katana! that sword is SO AMAZING... the only things we have her are stupid fish harpoons."
....
Hooboy.
Weren't these the sorts of things that ought to happen to Captain Smoker? He was good at defeating things, and confusion was against his religion (or at least, if he had a religion, then it would be.)
Tashigi just wanted to go to bed.
***
Tashigi had looked up Her Shigure in her brand-new copy of A Bladespotter's Handbook, and it was a named sword! It was! It was in the BOOK, and it had a NAME, and it was a SWORD, and it was SO PERFECT, it made her giddy just to hold it.
She'd already cut her hand once. She hoped that Mom had the money to buy a scabbard.
Tashigi dashed back over to her mother's room (Tashigi, being an energetic child, was rarely out of full-throttle motion) to share the joy. Mom needed cheering up because her valuable heirloom broke. Luckily swords didn't break, or else Tashigi might have to be sad too! Except she wasn't, so she could cheer Mom up, and then everyone would be happy and it would be so great! Then they could go to dinner and buy a scabbard and after work Mom would help Tashigi decide what sword style she wanted to learn how to use! Not that Mom knew anything about sword styles, but Tashigi had no one else to talk to about it, and the idea that she, TASHIGI, might practice a real SWORD STYLE was so incredibly mind-blowingly amazing that if she didn't talk about to someone she knew she'd probably have to start accosting strangers on the street about it.
Mom looked great. Her cheeks were rosy with powder. Even her eyes had been artificially brightened, with a touch of white liner.
It was amazing, what you could do with makeup. Tashigi knew that her mother was faking it. If she'd really been all that happy, then she would have already been out the door and preparing for the night's show. Mom loved her work.
"I know how to cheer you up!" Tashigi chirped. She had had an epiphany.
"Sweetie?" her mother was playing with a string of beads, and staring at stuff again. Tashigi was beginning to worry about the blank staring. That wasn't like Mom.
"I was worried, but now I'm not," Tashigi flounced in, trying - and failing - to hold Her Shigure in only one hand. When her strength failed her, she leaned it up against the wall. Hopefully it wouldn't cut the hardwood and get her in trouble.
Tashigi's hands met Tashigi's hips, and she made her pronouncement. "I'm not going to be like my father at all! I'm not going to hide in some dumb dojo telling people what to do for no good reason. A sword like Shigure is too beautiful to keep hidden away! It's meant to be used and appreciated! I could never forgive someone who would wrong a sword like this, by not letting it reach its full potential."
Tashigi's mother had stopped looking depressed, and started looking leery. Well, at least her pupils were moving. That was progress! Tashigi took the signs of life as leave to continue.
"That's why, when I'm old enough... I'm going to join the Marines!"
"You're going to WHAT!?!" her mother squawked, dropping her string of beads and clutching at her hear like she's been stricken with an arrow. Silly Mom!
"Tashigi, sweetie, I know you're excited, but don't make any rash decisions," her mother babbled, "You'll... you'll be surrounded by strange crude men and dangerous pirates! And there are storms at sea, and horrid monsters - terrible things you'll never see here in Redline. Surely you can't be serious!"
Oh. Okay. Tashigi got it now. Mom shouldn't be so sensitive and nervous. Tashigi was a person who could take care of herself, not some heirloom Mom had left her father! ... Tashigi guessed that worrying was just a Mom thing to do.
"Don't worry Mom. You won't have to be sad again."
Tashigi stepped to pick Her Shigure back up, when suddenly a crack in the floor mysteriously rose to trip her into the wall. Her head met the edge of the wardrobe with a sickening crack.
The girl lay sprawled on the floor, a trickle of blood wending its way down her temple. She was still as death.
Her mother shrieked.
And then, ignoring the pain, the girl struggled up into a crouch, and grinned. She brushed her hair away from her temple, and took a speculative lick at the blood on her hands.
"See? I'm different. I won't break. I'll be stronger."
-TBC-
***
Author's Note: Ah, yes. The inevitable Kuina Issue chapter. As is obvious by this point, I'm a firm subscriber to the Twin Theory of their relationship. Tashigi just... isn't Kuina, personality-wise. Frankly, I think she (and, by extension, the Zoro/Tashigi rivalry) would be much less interesting if she was Kuina. Plus it'd kind of trash Zoro's character motivations.
Gah. This was entirely too sappy. . It's just that Shigure is a big part of the story, so that had to be explained, and it's hard to write a main character who has no defined backstory to refer to. So I needed to make one up.
The final line is something that I've had in my head for weeks, and the primary (but not sole) inspiration for the title of this fic.
Next up: Zen Smoker, Tashigi gets some sleep, and another Oda-created character is added to the cast (hint: it's not Shanks. Or a Straw Hat Pirate. Or, uh, anyone who's dead.)
