-Redefinition-
He is dying.
The sea smiles unapologetically like a friend that stops caring at the time you need it most. Its waves fall forever, its hands scraping at the beach. It keeps him awake. What do you do, you sea, that you always pull at the shore yet never make it to dry land? You hands, you scrape like nails, you arms that never tire?
Three days fall to three nights on a lonely patch of grass watching the lonelier sea. The sand is black, the sky too pink, the trees an unnatural shade of blue. He forgets his colours; all he can do is remember. There soon comes a point where he is not sure what is memory and what is just wishful thinking, so he gives up and just cries.
He can't cry to bring them back. For the first time in his life, he feels utterly and truly defeated. Lost. Without a direction. There were others who got lost, but that was different than simply having no way to go anymore.
His body is being uncooperative. He tries to tell it that he'd rather starve than die of loneliness but it won't listen. He wonders what it tastes like to die of loneliness.
He supposes he'll find out soon.
Up, up to the place I was before; standing up on the bare feet of a groundless pirate, his head swims and he dangles like a puppet with an unskilled hand to wield it. If he's going to die of loneliness he's going to need to eat, and after he eats he'll explore the island until he can explore no more. Time moves too slowly without anyone to move with you.
The island that dared to defeat him is gently sloping towards its centre, sparsely forested with mostly flat plains and occasional trees. Flat plains give birth to the gentle lacy flowers of wild carrot and onion- when you open your ears, you learn these things. He captures his vegetable prey and enjoys it as much as he cannot with an accompanying side of stank water collected in the depression of an ugly rock.
It leaves the strangest burning sensation in his mouth. He is used to having food that was both nutritious and edible.
He stumbles on towards the apex of the island, willing footfall after painful footwill as if telling his feet to move will give them the strength they lack. There is a circular mountain there, a volcano that spews pink sky and candy clouds; they swirl around it as if the sky has a place to call home.
Perhaps then the sky is not free. Once upon a time someone whispered that to him- birds, the birds are free, but who regrets freedom more than the bird with no olive branch to rest its weary wings? Maybe freedom is having a home to come back to. Maybe those with no place to go are lost.
He cries for that which he has lost, tears which eat away at his skin and mind and aching body.
I
I just want it back
Give it back to me
His hand is on his head again, the filthy and knotted mop of hair coated with sand and blood; he recalls a promise long remembered, quickly demolished. He hasn't heard from Shanks in a long time. Maybe the man is dead.
Nobody is dead.
He has no memory of them dying. Zoro would be mad if he found out that Luffy ate all the starfish. Maybe Nami had fun, too, when she was falling from the sky. He laughs and the laughs turn to coughs and the coughs to retches and he wonders if he's dead yet. He turns to the sea with nothing to say. The sea and the sky compete for attention.
He's never felt this kind of loneliness, and it's a feeling he'll never forget once he gets out of here and wakes up and everyone laughs at him for being so dumb as to think they could die.
I'm sorry Shanks
I promised…
I promised I would give it back
Shanks…
You said
Hey
You told me you'd be there for me
At the end
One day
I'm a great pirate now
Where are you
Where is everyone
You all promised me
You'd be here at the end
You promised…
"YOU PROMISED ME!"
He's been in many caves before, and yet they still give him the strangest feeling of forgetfulness. Of hurt, the kind of hurt that everybody tries to heal yet no-one tries enough to. The roots hanging from nature's ceiling tickle his face and cry for the water he has not; oh, you flowers that try too hard, you push for your life until you reach the pits of Hell.
Come, then. He takes the lost roots and snaps them off their hosts in a gesture that is neither kind nor cruel. There is an old song playing on the air; he heard it once, a long time ago, from a woman he knows well enough to have forgotten.
Remember
I will still be here
As long as you hold me
In your memory
Remembering shines on his face forever and he supposes there will come a time when he has no energy and can remember no more. Until then, he pushes deeper into the tiny cave set into the circular mountain in the middle of the island at the end of his world.
And the song continues no matter how much he asks it to stop, because he can't muster the energy to be polite.
With a sigh he considers his own stupidity. Those roots he cast aside- they could be food if he was just a bit more dying. Dying here. Dying at the end of the world, where only edges of maps wait to consume you.
Don't throw away your roots. You just might end up dead with nothing to hold you back.
The path he snakes through is long, boring, and reminds him of dragons thousands of years old who spoke to young girls who whispered. He can smell treasure. The kind that smells of blood and nothing else, the worst kind of money. Nami always cleaned her coins. Zoro always fought. Usopp always lied. Sanji always cooked. Chopper always smiled and Robin always knew-
He screams out, threatening to throw his pale brow into the stone wall of the cavern hall, and the memories dissipate like flies on a battlefield. His worst enemy is his head, and it hurts to be in prison again. After running without memory, he comes out of the tunnel prison into a dome-shaped empty ending.
Gold Roger is dead, and his life is here.
It is as though the centre of the lost island is a volcano that has not eaten for centuries. What should be the blood of the earth was instead a lifetime of the late Pirate King's wealth- mountains and mountains of treasure. Stolen. Lifeless. He can smell the tears of men and women again, his own blood mingling with the scent of gold. Gold smells sad.
And he's back in the galley again. It smells of sweet perfume, ink and aged paper by the table where he waits for dinner; served with a backdrop of exotic spice and clean aftershave. His cook and his compass point towards the lost evening air where the scent of true lies and false truth and deadly chemicals mixes with fur and sweat and love on an island that was too cold to have a heart. On the deck books touch flowers and forgotten regrets like a woman too young and too old. Ah, and at night when the nightmares came again he would grip the hammock like he could never let go and find himself in the arms of the sweetest blood and sweat to ever touch a blade. No more nightmares until you all die-
He's crying, canyons of emotion reverberating off the dome walls. The memories are the only things alive now and they are killing everything but the last Pirate King's useless treasure. Gold, silver, blood and tears. He shouldn't be here. He should be back home on his way to the place where his dreams began- where the sunrise forgot, where he walked up and down on the edge of the water and the edge of land and the edge of reason.
I
I just want it back
He can't ever leave this place- can't sail away without a ship, but it doesn't matter because he doesn't have nakama to complete the circle in the first place. No laughing. No singing. No love and happiness and fights and anything.
Always together, fighting and winning.
Inseparable.
Family.
One piece of something bigger--
Everything stops singing for the sweetest moment.
His sobs turn to screams and his stomach heaves again, and all he can do is wail and choke and gasp and sink to his knees on the useless treasure and cry to whatever God missed the moon for what he's lost- his nakama were his One Piece, and here he is at the end of the world with nothing but nothing.
/redefinition
/kanthia notes
ha, only like two months late. procrastination wins.
And now Raftel is that little place in a lot of hearts again, sing forever like the sea. Can we see the end of eternity, where the sky touches the earth? It can only be a reunion, a reunion, coming home to the last place you want to be.