This story is completely unplanned, and was written fairly quickly. It has not been beta-read, and it is - at least in my opinion - the weirdest thing that I've ever written. It's not my usual style of writing, but then again, I've never actually managed to write a death-fic before (at least not one where a character actually dies...). I'm not sure why I upload this one, but I don't want to delete it from my computer. So, here it is.
I do not own One Piece, and I wouldn't want to own it anyway. Odatchi makes the storyline over a trillion times better than I ever could have done. No, I stick to writing fanfiction until the day comes when I create my own manga.
It was a day like any other aboard the pirate ship 'Going Merry'. Luffy was trying to convince an increasingly annoyed Zoro to play tag while Nami tried to read her newspaper at the other end of the ship. Sanji just finished doing the dishes after dinner when Usopp called out "Land Ho!" to announce that they had reached the island Nami had pointed out should be there. The Straw Hat Pirates were getting closer and closer to their preliminary goal before the Grand Line, Logue Town.
The island was small and rocky, nothing more than a pile of stone sticking up over the surface of the ocean. But it was enough for the crew to get off the boat to stretch their legs a little after their journey.
They never saw the pirate ship that had been following them ever since dawn that day, and when they noticed the attacking pirates, it was too late and they were surrounded. With the injuries they had sustained in Arlong Park less than a week earlier not yet healed properly, they soon found themselves in a serious pinch.
None of the pirate crews knew of it yet, but no one would leave the little island to find new adventure. What began as a raid to steal treasure would end in carnage. And so it did.
---
"Oi, cook… Oi, Sanji."
His head lolled heavily to the side, unfocused eyes searching for the source of the deep hoarse voice cutting through the silence. There hadn't been a single sound since the last bodiless moan died out, except for the soft howl of the wind blowing past the dark scene. The pale moonlight increased the contrast between light and shadow, which made it even harder for him to see.
In front of him, only a little more than a meter away, he spotted a blur of black, white and something that seemed to be deep red. He closed his eyes for a moment, a short, soft chuckle slipping past his lips.
"I should have guessed… that they hadn't finished you off," he said, forcing his tongue and broken jaw to move despite the sharp pain that it caused him. "Are you… badly hurt?"
"Nah…" came the tired reply after a short pause. "It's just a flesh wound. Nothing I can't handle. You?"
He let out another light chuckle and sank further back against the rock behind him. The stone was cold against the back of his head, and he welcomed the cold that eased the blinding pain in his skull.
"What about the others?" he asked instead of answering, still not opening his eyes. He preferred the darkness behind his eyelids over the blurred images he received in the pale moonlight.
"Over there," was the calm reply he received.
He didn't open his eyes to follow the direction he was given, but moved his aching arms towards the inner pocket of his jacket. Slowly, and with hands that trembled from exertion, he pulled out a lighter and a pack of cigarettes, but then, it was as if all his strength left his arms and he felt them falling limply to his sides. The lighter and the cigarettes slipped from his limp fingers and clattered against the rocky ground until they came to rest by the place where his feet would have been, had the situation been different.
"They didn't make it," he said, and he felt the question transform into a statement as he said it.
"No. Usopp was shot in the head, Luffy's heart was pierced by a dagger and Nami was ripped in two by the explosion you tried to save her from. Merry was reduced to splinters - all that's left is her head and the flag. The good news is," he added grimly. "…That none of the other pirates survived either."
Sanji could feel a cold, sticky feeling wash over him as he clenched his aching jaw, fighting to hold back the tears he knew had already been streaming down his face for a good half hour. After all, he hadn't heard the others' voices in a long while now. He hadn't heard a single sound in what felt like over a year.
"You know…" he choked out. "After all that with the shithead Krieg andeverythingin Arlong Park, I thought he was immortal sometimes… That we were all immortal."
"Tell me about it… But humans die, including him, you, Usopp and your precious Nami… And me."
Sanji could feel someone moving next to him, and he opened his eyes just as Zoro slid down to sit to his left with his back against the large rock. His vision waved in and out of focus until it stabilized. What he saw made his already empty stomach churn. Numerous deep slashes ran crisscrossing over his body, fusing with a few ugly wounds that looked a lot like gunshot-holes in his stomach and chest.
"Oh, shit…" was all he could say. He was met by a pale smile that was hardly anything but a light curl of one of the corners of the swordsman's mouth.
"You don't look that good either, Love Cook," Zoro countered tiredly.
Sanji mirrored his smile and leaned his head back against the stone. He was aware of the state his body was in, but to tell the truth, he wasn't feeling any pain except for the pounding in his head and the throbbing in his broken arms.
To think that it didn't hurt to have a large part of your body taken away…
"It feels like they're still there. As if I could kick that stupid head of yours off when I wanted to." He blinked as new tears threatened to spill over his cheeks. "Who would come out of the Grand Line, target us - a band of unknown pirates - and use grenades and mines in battle? I just don't get it…"
"Here."
The sound of a liquid slapping against the inside of a glass bottle reached his ears and Sanji turned towards it. He lifted one heavy, aching hand, wrapped his protesting fingers around the cork-less bottle of rum to take it from Zoro and drank without hesitating or asking questions.
"How much longer do you think it'll be?" he said, grimacing as the burning aftertaste stung in the back of his throat, and he handed the bottle back to Zoro.
"I don't know," Zoro said calmly, looking at the bottle before drinking. "From the looks of it, about thirty minutes for me, probably less for you."
Taking the bottle back, Sanji snorted feebly and peered into it.
"Figures that you would outlive me. Well, the rum isn't going to last that long…"
His smile widened a little as Zoro held up another bottle in the air in front of his face. To drink until the end, that had to be the way for a pirate to go. He turned his eyes towards the body of his captain, who was still wearing his precious straw hat on his head, and raised his bottle as a salute.
"It's a shame, we never reached the Grand Line…" he said, throwing his head back and emptying the bottle without pausing to breathe.
---
Twenty minutes later, when his breath was the only thing that was heard, Lolonoa Zoro gathered his strength and opposed the voice in his head that told him that he really didn't have the energy to move. He took the empty bottle from the cook's limp hand and hurled it across the island together with the one he had in his own hand before standing up slowly.
Carefully, he carried the three others back to Sanji, and placed them with their backs against the large rock. Then, he slid down to sit by his captain's side to wait.
Death was failure, he knew that, but they had at least failed together.
"I'm sorry, Luffy," Zoro mumbled, using up his last breath of air as the boy's straw hat-clad head lolled to the side and ended up leaning against his shoulder. "I couldn't keep my promise…"
---
At the same time, a new pack of wanted posters were delivered all over the four oceans, where the topmost flyer announced the bounty of thirty million Belli for the capture of the up till now unknown pirate Monkey D. Luffy and his crew. Bounty hunters all over East Blue began their search for this now infamous pirate clan, but would never find them. In a few months time, people would assume that they had left East Blue for the Grand Line, and after a year of inactivity, the Marines would decide to withdraw any troops they had sent out to capture the Straw Hat Pirates.
The only ones whose heartslearned of the fate of Monkey D. Luffy and his crew were two well-known pirates deep in the Grand Line.
In a bar somewhere east of the kingdom of Alabasta, a one-armed man drank himself unconscious for no apparent reason and had to be carried to his ship by his crew. He explained to the slightly shocked bar-keeper the following morning, that this unexplainable despair had come over him, and he had found no other way to rid himself of it than to drown it. The Red-Hair Pirates left the town the same day, once again for no apparent reason.
The same night,a series of mysterious fires raged all over an island northwest of Drum Island one night. Several eyewitnesses claimed to have seen a man in the midst of the flames, but as the remains of each building was searched, there was no evidence that proved that anyone had been in there. The reason to the mysterious fires was never discovered, but the Marines were convinced that someone with the power of a Devil's Fruit was behind the catastrophe. No one realized that the path of the fires, when seen from above, formed a word. The word brother had reached for the skies; the roar from the fourteen meter high flames drowning out even the pained screams of Whitebeard's first mate.
Portgas D. Ace never really understood why he had done it, but from that day, there was a cold, empty place inside him that ached each time he stayed in a town longer than he had planned, just to assure himself that his brother hadn't recieved his message this time either. In his pocket, he kept an increasingly crumpled-up piece of paper, just in case they would stumble upon each other somewhere in the Grand Line...
Told you it was weird, didn't I? Anyway, I've been feeling odd lately, so I guess it's not that strange that I produce a story like this... Neh, now I'm going to go to bed and try to sleep. I'm tired and a bit skiddish from watching 'The Ring'. -shudders- Now I remember why I don't watch horror movies. x-x;