Just to warn you, there is implied sexual content in the last scene of this chapter. I was very careful write it in a PG-13 sort of way, but I will remind you that this was written from the perspective of a twenty-one-year-old boy confronted with the possibility of having sex with his girlfriend. Just a heads up.
Rooster's ship kind of explains a lot, to be honest. Lucy's not exactly sure how she became Rooster's…she doesn't even know if she has a corollary relationship to compare it to…but whatever it is, it's flattering. And also convenient, since Rooster's offering their ship for passage.
Lucy chooses not to think about the fact that he and six others offered her a lot more, because it still kind of pisses her off.
(She pushes the whole thing aside, because it's not really something she has much control over at this point. Besides—frustrated as she might be, she's never been one to hold other people's choices against them, unless it hurts her friends.)
It's not long after they've settled in for the journey to Zou that Lucy notices something…off about Torao. He barely speaks. Every time someone tries to draw him into the group he finds a way to slink off and be alone. It's odd, and not quite what she expected from him now that 'Mingo's gone.
Lucy knows sometimes people need to be alone. It's why she has her special seat and Zoro has his weights and Nami her Mikan. And maybe, if she thought that's what Torao needed, she'd leave him alone.
But that's not what Torao needs. She knows, because Torao keeps letting himself get dragged into things without complaint, and he wouldn't be doing that if he didn't want to be around them.
So that first afternoon on Rooster's ship, when she finds him staring out over the water with tension in his shoulders and a more-frowny-than-usual frown on his face, Lucy decides to check on her friend.
"Torao!" Lucy calls, bounding over to him and just barely managing to hit the brakes before pitching herself into the sea. Zoro would be mad at her if he had to interrupt a nap to fish her out of the water. Again.
"Straw Hat-ya," Torao greets. He sounds a little annoyed with her sudden appearance, but Lucy isn't bothered by that. "Still hungover?"
Lucy wrinkles her nose, annoyed, because she drank too much last night at the celebration on the big blonde guy's ship. "Alcohol's supposed to be gross, not sweet," Lucy complains.
"That's why you're not supposed to drink the punch at parties, Straw Hat-ya."
Lucy huffs, irritated. "Well did you drink the punch?"
"…I had a mug. Singular."
Lucy snickers. "You're a lightweight, huh?"
Torao turns to her a little, and Lucy is deeply gratified to see an eyebrow twitch. "You shouldn't be talking, you know," he grouches, and then continues a little softer. "And I'm not. I just don't get drunk."
There's a heaviness to his words that sobers Lucy, just a little. A past she doesn't know, doesn't need to know. There's lots of reasons to not get drunk. Lucy rarely does herself, because she doesn't like hangovers and too much alcohol makes her tired before the party's over. Sometimes people act different when they're drunk, too, and Torao's enough of a control freak to dislike it on those grounds alone.
"You had fun though, right?" Lucy pries. "At the party. And kicking 'Mingo's ass."
Torao gives her a look she's grown well used to—a confirmation that she was, in fact, serious about what she just said, and then disbelief, and then resignation. Or apprehension, from strangers. "Yeah, fine. Whatever."
There's a note in his voice that speaks of something buried though, something unsure and new. Frowning, Lucy hops up on the ship's rail and balances on her sandals, the sea at her back as she inspects Torao.
Torao looks vaguely uncomfortable with her staring. After a few seconds of quiet he snaps a defensive "What?" in her direction.
Lucy squints, not answering right away. Something's weird about Torao. Something different but not bad, necessarily. Haki whispers of relief, of uncertainty, of a stumbling climb from the depths of a cave into sunlight. It reminds her of when she fought 'Mingo with her Haki, of peeling back layers to chains she didn't know were there. But it's weird with Torao, different, because instead of exposing purpose and will it seems like—
Oh.
Oh.
"You finished your dream, Torao!" Lucy declares excitedly, her arms pinwheeling wildly. Her feet nearly slip from the polished rail, but Lucy's always been good with balance. Torao blinks in shock at the sudden topic change, and Lucy doesn't let him regain footing before shoving a finger in his face, excited. "That's why you've been so weird!"
Torao bats her finger away, irritated. "Well what would you do if you became Pirate King today?"
Lucy hums, uncertain, and then realizes it's not that complicated after all. "Eat meat, probably." She shrugs. "Then I'd find a new dream." She slides off the railing, her sandals clicking hard against the tarred deck. "You can't be a pirate without a dream, ya know?"
Torao huffs, annoyed. "That so?"
Lucy nods, authoritative. "Yup. And it's gotta be a good one."
Torao looks away, his eyes casting out to sea. "I don't have one."
Lucy hums, a little sympathetic. "Better find one soon." But Lucy can't help him with that, so she pokes him in his right bicep, right over the bandage peeking out under his sleeve. "Let me see your arm."
"Don't touch me, Straw Hat-ya," he grouses, his left hand coming up to protect his arm defensively. Lucy feels a stab of guilt and then gets over it.
"C'mon, let me see," she goads, making impatient grabbing motions with her hand.
"Why."
"Let me see."
"Will you leave me alone after that?"
Lucy thinks about that for a second. "…Nah."
"Will you leave me alone for today?"
Lucy shrugs. "Not if Torao needs a friend."
Torao hands over his arm.
She grabs him by the wrist, not at all gentle, and bends his thumb back, but not far enough to hurt.
"Done yet?"
Lucy ignores him. "It works and everything, right? Does it poop?"
Torao looks both confused and vaguely disgusted. "Why the fuck would my arm poop?"
"I dunno. Gotta ask though." She turns his hand over and draws the arm out to the side so she can see the bandage properly. It needs changing. "Chopper will want to see your arm."
Torao doesn't react outwardly, but the internal howl of revulsion is clear through her Haki. "It's fine. I'm a doctor. I can tell."
Lucy isn't sure why he's so hesitant, but she's going to have words with Torao if he thinks something's wrong with her doctor. "Chopper's better."
Now Torao looks a little insulted. "What makes you say that?"
"Chopper's the best."
Torao lets out a soft huff of air, and Lucy thinks that might be a laugh. "You're impossible." There's a pause, and Lucy guesses Torao's getting more and more uncomfortable the longer she inspects his hand. "And your boyfriend's going to get jealous."
Lucy isn't that concerned about Zoro getting jealous. More disappointing is the fact that, sewed on or not, Torao's hand is just a hand, and therefore isn't that interesting. "Why?"
"He's glaring."
Lucy looks over her shoulder at Zoro, who's been napping on the deck in the same spot for an hour now. He is looking over at them, but he doesn't look jealous or angry or anything. Actually, he looks amused. Zoro always did have a weird appreciation for Lucy screwing with other people.
"That's just his face," She tells Torao, completely honest.
"He's going to get jealous," Torao warns, trying to yank his hand back.
Lucy doesn't let him and bends his middle finger back in mild retribution. "No, he's not. 'Cuz I'm getting a tattoo."
Torao jerks away, muffling a yelp of pain. This time she lets him. "Huh?"
Torao should pay more attention. "I'm not telling you what it is."
"I wasn't—gah, you make no sense." Torao sounds frustrated and annoyed, but not uncertain anymore, which is good.
Lucy shrugs. "Eh."
Torao just sighs. He sounds very tired, so Lucy pats his shoulder sympathetically.
"Hey, Torao," Lucy asks, cocking her head to the side. "What's your favorite color?"
Torao blinks once, a little surprised, and then finally replies.
"Red," He admits. He sounds a bit shocked at himself. "It's red."
Lucy grins as widely as she can. She knew he'd come around eventually.
Evening finds Lucy sitting below a figurehead of her own likeness, knees tucked close to her chest. The clouds are thick and grey, leaving the deck dark and unlit this late at night. The moon is a day shy of full, and the pale light shines in vain behind the cloud cover.
Nami would know what type of clouds they are. Nami can rant for hours about the formation of different cloud types, and such speeches have only gotten more frequent since her stint with the weather mages.
Lucy likes listening to Nami talk about the weather and her maps and navigation. Her eyes light up and she gets really happy. Lucy always likes it when her nakama are happy.
Lucy drops her forehead to her knees and wraps her arms around her legs. She's tired of having her nakama all split up like this. It feels like she's leaving them. Or like they're leaving her. Which isn't fair, but she can't quite keep the thought away when Sabo just—
Her fingers leave bruises in her calves, her body taut and muscles aching.
An hour ago, Lucy made her nakama tell her about Sabo. They didn't fight it or anything, were clear and concise and sympathetic about the situation and his brief appearance. Lucy pulled away not long after they finished, leaving them to the warmth of the gathering below deck in favor of the murky dark and salt-damp air of the sea, the ocean still and devoid of relief-bringing wind.
In all honesty, Lucy isn't sure how she's supposed to feel about Sabo's up and leaving again. She's never been good about this, about letting people leave without hurting and taking it personally. But she's so relieved, so terribly happy to have him alive again, even as she grieves the decade and change she missed with him, that the memory of seeing him again feels more like a fever-dream than anything.
He ate Ace's fruit. He protected her from Burgess. He gave Zoro the Vivre card, the one he keeps folded in the wrappings of Wado's silken hilt. Usopp offered to sew it in more securely, and in a show of trust that warmed her even through the uncertain shock of her nakama's story, Zoro let him.
Lucy can't decide if she wishes he'd given her a Vivre card for him or not. It would be nice to know he's alive, to know she could go help him if he gets into trouble.
It would also be the worst case of déjà vu in history.
A square of orange light appears on the other side of the deck as the door to the galley slides back. A familiar silhouette cuts through the light, and the deck creaks under the weight of his boots.
It's Zoro, of course. Zoro's the only one who'd approach her after a conversation like that.
He doesn't make any bones about his intentions, either, his gait sure as he moves over the tarred boards of Rooster's ship. He stops right in front of her, but it's so dark and the light so faint that she can't even see his face from a few feet away.
She blinks at him, and then musters a weak smile. "Hey."
Zoro lets out a sigh, and turns to sit beside her, his movements graceless and deft. Lucy wonders if he settles on her right to give her the illusion of more privacy, placing her in his blind spot. He's close, but doesn't make any move to touch her, to pull her against his side, and Lucy can't decide if she should be grateful or faintly amused at how well he knows her, or vaguely annoyed at the same fact.
In times like this, Lucy usually wants privacy. But she almost never wants to be alone. Zoro kind of solves that issue for her.
The gratitude adds to the sick pit in her stomach, and she kind of wants to cry a little, but she doesn't feel the tears come.
She's so unsure of what she's feeling, is the thing. There are too many things swirling in her head to settle on one, and the confusing mess only begets more frustration. She's sad and she's angry and she's annoyed but she's also amused and relieved and so, so happy.
"Well yeah," Zoro says, sounding a bit confused. "I'd assume so."
It's only then Lucy realizes she said that last bit out loud. Zoro's too goddamn easy to talk to, sometimes.
"It's just—" Lucy trembles a bit, can't quite suppress it. "—I miss him."
There's a pang of pure, unadulterated sympathy from Zoro, something she feels through senses too keen and too raw for her head to handle at the moment. But it comes across so strong, so easy and kind, and that it sends her over the edge, and suddenly she's crying. She's crying a lot.
She's always been a quiet crier, which surprises everyone who knows her. It was something that freaked Ace and Sabo out a lot, actually, claiming that the only thing worse than a crybaby little sister was a crybaby little sister who cries quietly. But Lucy can't quite help it, has never really wanted to voice her pain to the world, because it feels too much like admitting defeat. There's no way Zoro doesn't know she's crying right now, there would never be a way to hide it from him, but she doesn't mind crying in front of Zoro, so it doesn't stop her from breaking down like it normally would.
She wishes she knew if she's crying because she's happy, or if she's crying because she's sad. It must be a bit of both, because the more she cries the more her emotions churn, peaking between highs and lows and the volatility of it makes her want to be sick. She feels grief for a childhood they'll never now know, renewed anxiety for family lost to the sea and waves on the wings of their dreams, and so much fury directed at the Dragon that masked his life from her, that masked her and Ace from him. She feels giddy to have a brother again, thrilled to meet him on the seas as the three of them promised they would, and adoring in a way only a little sister who has spent her life chasing her older brothers' backs can. She feels a profound sort of agony over the fact that Ace died thinking Sabo was dead, that he never gets to see their brother grown. There's a strange, nagging question that she's never felt the need to ask, the one that breathes why couldn't Dragon have taken me, too? And at the same time a gratitude so crippling that Lucy could scream it from rooftops and rafters, a cry of thank you, thank you, thank you for saving him.
It's a heady mix, and for the first time since the ecstasy of discovering that her long-dead brother is alive, she lets it out, the tears washing the jagged edges of emotion away like rain culls leaves from a tree.
It takes a while, but eventually it stops. The rain peters out and the land and sky and sea reach equilibrium again. When she looks up the deck is still dark but the moon peaks out over a break in the clouds, and a smattering of starlight spills over beside it. Beside her Zoro is still, his breath even and his right arm behind his neck as he leans against the smooth back of the figurehead, as if bored. He can't fool her though—she can feel his attention on her, buzzing like a second skin, but not intrusive. His eye is sharp even as he doesn't look at her, glowing silver-white as a moonbeam glances across his face, and Lucy feels a soft pang of regret for the loss of his left eye, because Zoro's eyes are beautiful.
(The loss of his eye doesn't make him less, of course. When she thinks of it, the scar makes something curl up at the base of her spine, something almost too fierce to be mere pride at her swordsman's prowess, at his strength and willingness to sacrifice for victory.)
Lucy lets out a slow, calming breath, and unfurls a little from the ball she's squished herself into. She leans back against the figurehead, her shoulder brushing Zoro's, and stretches out her legs. She wipes the few remaining tears away with the back of her hand, and then folds her hands across her stomach, looking up at the stars seeking passage through the cloud cover.
Zoro is still quiet, but he feels like a bonfire beside her, warm and essential and full of the kindness that led him to save and suffer for a little girl in a middle-of-nowhere village in East Blue and eat her dirt-packed rice ball when that same girl brought him food as thanks. Zoro has always reminded her of the sun-baked stones in the desert of Alabasta, stubborn in the face of eons of grit against their surfaces, and warm to the touch.
And marimos, of course. He'd be furious over the comparison if she told him, but even with the scant moonlight bleaching his hair, there's an uncanny resemblance.
The thought makes her lips turn up and something light and airy lifts her from stasis, the emotional change steady and minute, this time.
Zoro must sense the shift, because he finally turns to look at her, an eyebrow raised in question. Lucy offers him a smile—a small one, but a smile—and adjusts her hat so it doesn't get squished behind her shoulder blade.
"He seemed like he cared," Zoro offers after a moment. Like he's a little unsure of sending her spiraling into another crying jag, but too honorable to withhold such vital information.
The thought makes her smile a little wider, and she nods. "I know."
The moonlight casts heavy shadows across his face, but she sees his expression soften, and feels the warm glow of his affection, and comfort rises soft and loamy within her.
They're both quiet after that, the way people sometimes are when there's nothing and yet too much to say. The clouds are clearing a little, the stars peeking out in patches between cotton-like reams of vapor.
Below the deck, Rooster's crew and hers are partying, passing beer back and forth and playing cards. Usopp's Voice sounds a little like a harmonica, and even from here she can hear the faint tones of his voice as it rises and falls around the contours of a story.
Lucy wonders, a little, what that story is. She wonders if he'll tell her later. It won't be the same, but that's alright. Usopp's tales get grander with every telling.
"When Ace died, there wasn't a lot I could reassure myself with," Lucy tells Zoro. It's weird how calm she feels, speaking of this. She hasn't spoken about it to anyone, yet. "I did think it was nice, that they were together. In wherever 'after' is."
Zoro turns to her, something like compassion and pride and determination in his eyes. There's no pity though. No pity at all, and she's glad for that. Lucy's pretty sure she could never handle pity from Zoro, not for as long as she lives.
"Sabo said he thinks Ace jogged his memories," Zoro reminds her. He mentioned it before. "He thinks Ace didn't want you to be alone."
Sounds like Ace, of course. Something old and painful spikes in her chest, but the scar is calcified, even if an older one has been lanced open.
"What do you think?" Lucy asks, leaning against him a little heavier.
Zoro waits a beat before replying. "I think there is no 'after,'" Zoro admits, blunt as always. "And I think you're not alone."
Then he looks at her, and there's a fierce intensity in his face, the kind of look that carries an oath, a promise, a vow, the kind that speaks of devotion Lucy's certain no one on this earth deserves from him.
Lucy will take it though, because Lucy is selfish that way, selfish of Zoro and selfish because that look is Zoro promising and you'll never be alone, because I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, and I'll always stand beside you.
Lucy wants to promise him things in return, but she's already given him all she has—a place on her crew and the whole of her heart and their dreams to pursue. Only children promise to defeat the reaper, and so she has nothing to return his devotion with but her own, nothing but the open sea and the wind at their backs and uncertainty and mystery ahead, all of which are prizes he's already claimed. She can promise to fight harder than anyone to keep them all together, to keep him at her side, and she can promise to win.
Zoro's taken that oath already too, and Lucy has already made it once, the vow to never give up. She doesn't mind making it again, and so with a soft exhale she breathes between them, "Me too."
For a moment she thinks he's going to kiss her, because the look in his eye is like fire, makes it feel like his gaze leaves a trail across her face. But then he leans away and his face turns up, back to the sky, and he speaks again. "About there being no 'after?'"
Lucy blinks, almost having lost the thread of their conversation. But she soon catches up, and shoves him a little for being deliberately obtuse. "No. I dunno about that."
A smirk quirks at Zoro's mouth, and Lucy wishes the shadows weren't quite so thick, so she could see the dimple that sometimes shows when he's smug. "What's to know?"
Lucy shrugs, thinking of the little mission at the base of Mt Cuvo, just a small stone hut and nothing more. The missionary who lived there ministered in Grey Terminal, gave out food and clothing and always brought tetanus shots, and he preached to those who wanted to hear as he treated and fed the poor and reasoned with gang leaders. When Lucy asked, he said he came when he heard of the fire, when he heard of what Goa had done. He claimed it was a blasphemy against God, and he hoped to reach even the hearts of the Goa nobles one day. He claimed there was a lot to know. That there was a plan for the universe and a savior and an end of days and a life after death. He claimed there was justice to be found and punishment for the wicked, and that kindness was important and that God could bring a person peace.
Ace always thought he was a quack. He didn't like him, didn't like it when Lucy waved hello to him. He never explained why, but Lucy thinks it might have been because the priest always talked about respecting one's parents and Ace hated Roger.
Lucy thought a lot of what he claimed was kind of weird, but she also thought he must be lonely, living in that hut all by himself. She went to see him sometimes, when Ace left and she was lonely too. He was a nice old man, and his stories were funny, even if they were a bit weird.
"I don't know. I'm not that smart," Lucy tells him, shrugging. "I don't know anything about stuff like that. It's nice to think people watch over us from 'after,' but it sounds pretty boring when you get there, too."
Zoro huffs a laugh. "Only you would be worried about entertainment in the afterlife."
Lucy grins a little. "I'm not cut out for eternal choir." Lucy watches the moonlight spread across the deck as clouds shift away from its nearly-full face again. "Ace thought like you do."
She feels Zoro turn toward her, and feels his surprise as an almost tangible wave in the air. "Yeah?"
Lucy nods. "Yeah."
It's nice to talk about him, Lucy realizes. Once it would have felt like ripping stitches out of her still-healing heart. Now it feels…good. Kind of warm. And she knows Zoro will guard the memory of her brother with jealous determination, knows it's safe to tell him anything. Zoro is always safe.
She's in that post-cry mood where everything feels raw but nothing feels untouchable, the dregs of old emotion rising up to be examined and evaluated. Thinking of Ace brings her back to Marineford, eventually, because two years down the line she still gets assaulted with the memories sometimes. Ice and snow stained red, gore so thick she could drown in it, blood that was not hers flaking off her skin, and burgeoning senses screaming danger from every angle because the path to her brother was woven through the blades and fists of the truly strong, the ones with their full potential unlocked.
"Doflamingo was at Marineford," Lucy remembers, and she feels Zoro's attention sharpen. "I couldn't touch him then." Zoro doesn't say anything, just waits for her to finish, and she looks up at him with something painful in her throat as she realizes— "I beat him. And I know I could have saved him now."
She knew that before, of course. She knew it the day Rayleigh complimented her Armament, the day he mentioned the sheer potential of her Conqueror's. She knew it when she defeated the beasts on the island, and she knew it that day in Sabaody when she embraced her nakama again.
And yet it's different, seeing her efforts come to fruition like this. Doflamingo was an obstacle on the battlefield she didn't have to face at the time, because others occupied him on her behalf. One she couldn't have faced, one she couldn't have touched.
But she beat him, not a weak ago. She beat him she beat him she beat him—
Zoro looks down at her, a little line of confusion tugging at his lips. "Well…yeah? Of course you did."
Lucy feels the happy tears bead at the corners of her eyes as relief and flattered, embarrassed affection flush through her. "I didn't do it alone. Torao got a good hit. And you kept him busy."
Zoro shrugs in that one-shouldered way he sometimes does when she's leaning on him, like he's worried she'll move away if he disturbs her at all, like she wouldn't just hold on tighter next time. "I promised to be stronger too."
There's a flash of something hot and self-directed in his face before it's smothered by brash, casual pride, and Lucy softens.
She wonders if there was ever a time when she didn't understand Zoro as well as she does. She can't imagine such a period, where Zoro was nearby and yet a stranger, but it must have occurred, no matter how brief.
"It wasn't your fault, back then," Lucy tells him, trying to alleviate the guilt even knowing it's futile.
"It was, if it was anyone's," Zoro replies, his voice gruff. He's tense, too, and the rising wind makes the heaviness of his voice more painful.
"It wasn't," Lucy insists. She reaches over, and trails her fingers across the inside of his forearm, gentle pressure encouraging him to relax the fist he's made. "If it was anyone's, then it was mine. I punched the Noble Asshole."
Zoro's hand loosens enough for Lucy to slot her fingers between his, her hand swallowed by his heavy knuckles and broad palm.
"If you hadn't, I would've," Zoro reminds her. There's a short pause, and then his voice is soft, like he can't believe he's saying this aloud. "It's my job to protect the crew. And I didn't."
For a bizarre second, Lucy kind of wants to punch him, but it passes quickly, to be replaced by fond affection tinged with exasperation. "It's mine, too. My job to take on the biggest threat." She lets out a slow breath that catches a little on the way out, because she can remember the moment Kizaru nearly killed Zoro too well. "And I didn't."
Zoro's thumb caresses the back of her hand, utterly sympathetic, but not absolving. It's the truth, after all.
"None of us could have done it, then," Lucy admits, and it's still painful to say. "Sabaody…and Ace…what happened then taught me that."
A lesson burned into her with shame and blood and death, with loneliness and brutal training and a thousand nightmares, a lifetime of pain, an ache she will never be rid of. An innocence lost she thought long since gone, and faith she will never reclaim. She learned they were not ready.
"Yeah," Zoro agrees, but there's a note in his voice that's one step shy of pure agreement. "I know."
Inexplicably, Lucy thinks of a conversation with Smokey, and the idle thought that maybe her selfishness had finally pissed Zoro off for real.
"Zoro…" Lucy hedges, unsure if she wants the answer. "Are—" She hesitates, because she knows Zoro would have told her by now if he still… "were you mad at me, when you figured out what I was…"
Zoro releases a slow breath through his nose. "…At first," he admits. "It wasn't rational. I understood. I agreed." His head thunks against the wood at their backs. "It was…personal."
I wanted to be with you, he's saying. I wanted to see you. I couldn't stand the idea of two years apart. I wanted to do something. Anything at all.
Emotion wells up in Lucy, gathers somewhere in her chest so tightly it hurts. "I didn't want to," Lucy promises, and he must understand because he already knows her so well. "But we needed to." They'd be dead already if they hadn't, if Lucy had ignored Rayleigh that day on Amazon Lily, if she had given in to the need to see her crew, to break down with the eight of them safely around her and grieve with Zoro at her side and healing properly under Chopper's care.
"I know," Zoro says, a little softer this time. There's warmth in his voice, affection and pride, and Lucy almost cries again when he squeezes her hand.
Above their heads the sky is nearly clear, the moon bright enough to wash the deck in a faint glow, to reach even the two of them, huddled as they are in the shadows of the figurehead and the mast that looms before them as a sentinel. Below them their allies and nakama grow rowdier, their laughter warming the ship, and around them the sea ripples gently with the clear, cool breeze that rises across the water.
"I haven't had a nightmare since before Dressrosa," Lucy says, suddenly realizing the bizarre truth of the statement. "I don't think they'll be so bad now."
Thank God the sky is clear enough to see by, because the look on Zoro's face is something Lucy wants to treasure, something that hooks her by the navel and pulls. He looks at her like she's something precious, like she's answered questions he's been asking since birth. He looks at her with so much emotion it hurts, chokes her up, and Lucy can almost feel the percussive force of his heartbeat as it whispers over and over and over again that he loves her, that he's not going anywhere, that with him she's finally found someone whose dreams will be aligned with hers no matter where their journeys take them.
She knows all that. She sometimes thinks she's known it from the day they met. But sometimes she can see it in his eyes, and it takes her apart in ways she doesn't know how to deal with, in ways she'll never be accustomed to.
"Yeah," Zoro agrees, his voice too heavy, full of something unrelated to nightmares, like they're speaking of something else entirely. "I think it's the same for me."
It's moments like this that Lucy realizes there's something about Zoro that answers something in her, like a lighthouse calling to a ship, like the echo of some great, ancient secret built into their very blood, like a key and lock she never thought to rattle before Zoro.
She wonders if he feels it too.
"Lean down for a second," Lucy orders him, a little breathless. "And close your eyes."
Zoro gives her a look, confused, but after a moment he complies, correctly guessing she wants access to his face. Lucy acts the moment he's in striking range and presses her lips to his cheek. He freezes in surprise at the gesture, and with something else when she moves to breathe a soft I love you, Roronoa Zoro, in his ear, teeth tapping his golden earrings as she pulls away.
The look he gives her when she pulls back—his eye gleaming silver fire and blazing, boring into her face with a carnal brand of the violent determination she's always admired—tells her in no uncertain terms that he feels it too.
But tonight…tonight is not the night for that. Not with tear tracks still drying on her face and her emotions so high she can barely think.
Not tonight. But soon.
"We could go grab a beer, maybe," Lucy offers. "I bet there's plenty left."
Zoro lets out a slow breath, and closes his eyes. Then he leans over until his forehead is pressed against hers, and she can feel his breath against her face, warm and vaguely alcoholic, the metallic scents of blood and steel strong with something strong and masculine and Zoro mixed between. Like this she's trapped between him and the figurehead, and it feels, oddly, like a more intimate version of a hug.
"In a minute," he agrees, his voice quiet and rough. He squeezes her hand once. "Just a minute."
Lucy feels something flutter in her stomach, and she's sure her eyes are the size of dinner plates when she whispers back a soft, "Okay."
(They stay until the moon sets.)
When the newspaper comes the next morning, it brings new bounties for the entire crew.
Of course, none of them knew that until Rooster showed them the shrine in his bedroom, where he had not only the new wanted posters mounted on the wall, but also each and every one of their old ones.
"Okay," Usopp said after a moment, just taking it all in. "This is a bit weird."
Zoro can't help but agree. His own face stares back at him in triplicate. Lucy grins down beatifically from five separate locations. Around them is a bunch of paraphernalia that all looks sort of familiar-but-off. A ridiculously good replica of Yuubashiri sits in an honored place above the bed, with a frayed straw hat hanging below it. There are little figures of various people they've met, like Vivi and Carue, and the dude on Jaya who told them about the treasure, and the entire cadre of Galley-Law. A picture of Camie and Papagu and Hachi in the latter's shop rests on a big chest shaped like a ram's head, and nearby is a picture of the destroyed human shop where Camie was nearly sold and Hachi nearly killed.
It's like someone tried to cram the entire history of the crew into one room, and it's just a little disconcerting, considering how much information this guy has clearly uncovered.
"I dunno, it's kind of cool," Franky says, picking up the Iceberg figurine. "Did you have to clear out a bunch of storage areas to give us all rooms?"
It is kind of cramped in here. And Rooster's face goes a bit pink at the statement. "Well…"
Robin looks around with a slightly wary look in her eye, but then relaxes when she apparently doesn't find anything to worry over, and plucks a purple hat off a stand, admiring it.
Zoro's just glad the guy didn't collect anything relating to Marineford or Impel Down.
Lucy, of course, is curious about the whole thing. She keeps looking at the shrine to Nami's Clima Tact, where Rooster's collected a replica of every model, so far as Zoro can tell.
"…I feel like we should be getting a cut of the profits for this merch," Usopp admits, looking a little overwhelmed with his hands on his hips. Then he grimaces. "I'm starting to sound like Nami."
"Ordinarily we would be legally entitled to a percentage of the earnings, since they're using our names and faces," Franky starts, posing on the other side of the room with a cardboard cut-out of himself. Zoro kind of forgot what Franky used to look like. Weird. "Pirate merch is a ludicrously big industry."
"It's very lucrative for the sellers," Robin chimes in, donning the purple cowboy hat again. She somehow doesn't look like an idiot. "The trade laws preclude people with bounties on their heads from earning money legally, and lose all copyright and identity protections normally afforded to citizens."
Usopp wrinkles his nose. "That sounds…shady."
"Yes," Robin agrees easily, a terrifying smile on her face. It's times like these where Zoro remembers she used to kill for money.
"Oh hey, we got bigger bounties!" Lucy realizes, bounding over to the wall where their newest wanted posters hang proudly.
"Yes, Lucy-Dono," Rooster exclaims, "I wanted to show you! Even the members of your crew that you sent ahead have had their bounties raised!"
"Cool!" Lucy chirps, peering at all the updated photos. The others come around to inspect them as well, curiosity getting the better of them all. Zoro follows suit.
A few strides and he's across the room, standing next to Lucy, who has a fist over her mouth to cover up the giggles she's trying to desperately suppress.
"…What's funny," he asks, ducking easily under Franky's arm as the cyborg takes a good look at his own photo.
Lucy hiccups a little, and points to his own picture. "You look so annoyed."
Zoro squints. He does look kind of peeved. There's a few flecks of blood on his face but there aren't any wounds in sight, unlike his previous one. And he doesn't look beat to hell. They got a good image of the scar, too, so he won't be able to use the missing eye to fly under the radar, now.
"He looks angry, Lucy," Usopp complains. "I bet Sanji's off-camera."
"Yeah, totally."
"That seems likely."
Zoro rolls his eyes at his nakama, and promptly ignores them.
Nami is probably going to be upset about the new picture, having fallen for the same trick twice. Zoro has no sympathy, because she can't have that many people coming up to her and asking for photographs. Robin's looks as mysterious as her previous one, but her hair is pulled back. They straight up used a photo of General Franky instead of the guy's actual face, and Usopp looks nearly dead in his. The Love Cook and Brook both got actual photos of themselves, although Curly Brow has a stupid expression on his face that probably means it was taken back on Fishman Island. Chopper's bounty doubled, but that didn't say much considering it was only fifty beri before. And Lucy…
Lucy looks older, in this photo. He's grown used to the gleeful expression of mischief from her old posters. The new one doesn't look that different, but it is more…mature, somehow. There's something adult in her face that wasn't there before, and seeing the two pictures compared side by side only emphasizes how much she's changed. How much they've all changed, really.
"Why does Sanji's poster say 'Only Alive?'" Usopp asks suddenly, and Zoro turns his attention to the poster in question.
Huh. Weird.
Lucy echoes the sentiment. "That's weird!" Then she points wildly. "And his bounty went up a lot too!"
Zoro checks it, and yeah, it did go up a lot considering where it was after Enies Lobby. "Still not as much as me, though," he adds, smug.
"Or me," Usopp laments. The sniper looks like he's going to be sick.
"It's okay, Usopp!" Lucy cheers. "It just means you're cool!"
Usopp does not look very cheered by this, and Zoro can't quite help quirking a grin when Robin and Franky laugh and Lucy just looks on, mildly confused.
Zoro is careful when he twists open the hatch to the deck. He normally doesn't give much of a damn about making noise, but everyone on board is pretty tired due to a sudden storm that passed through earlier, and Zoro's not an asshole, usually. Thankfully, the hatch opens with barely a creak, the hinges well-oiled and the metal maintained. His and Usopp's "room" on the ship is a converted storage area, just barely big enough for the two of them to have cots laid side by side and about six inches to walk between.
Franky has his own storage compartment below the deck, because his sheer width makes sharing with anyone an impossibility. Robin and Law and the Samurai all found bunks in the Barto-Club's regular barracks, and Lucy was afforded an actual bed in a room to herself, meant for important guests on the ship.
Which, for Rooster, Zoro thinks as he hauls himself silently out of the little cabin, there's probably no guest on the planet more important to him than Lucy.
The iron hatch drops down softly, and Zoro rocks back on his heels, taking a deep breath in the salt-soaked air.
The water is still and quiet, the earlier storm leaving no trace of its presence in the waves. For once, dire weather does not bead and gather in the distance, and so there is nothing but the sea kissing the star-studded horizon in every direction. The sky this night is especially clear, like the furthest reaches of the universe—a realm known only to the gods and creatures not bound by the ties of feet to earth and ships—could be grasped if one were to simply reach out. The heavens look like the diamond-crusted bodice of noblewoman, the great arc of pale nebulae a sash across the fabric, and amid it all, the full moon makes its slow way across the expanse.
He heard once that some of the stars are so far away, they still make light even though they died before the earth began, before water filled the Blues and the continent cooled. Zoro wonders how many stars above him are dead, and if they obscure other, smaller stars still living.
It's a good night to practice his kendo. He hasn't gotten the chance since Dressrosa, with the excitement of their escape and his wounds still healing. Meditation and rest and help from Law has addressed the latter issue, and with the island two days behind them, the former is no longer a concern.
Zoro drops easily into a seiza and withdraws Wado, balancing the katana across his palms. Silver metal glows softly in the starlight, and the edge of the blade is millimeters from biting flesh, the white satin stark against the dark of the night and a high, clear tone rings present-and-not from the guard. It reminds him, inexplicably, of the last time he fought Kuina, when Wado was nearly as long as both of them.
A deep breath. The silent draw of Kitetsu, and a sweep up into the first position. He circles low, blades locked in steady form, and he takes Wado between his teeth in the same moment he draws Shusui, the black blade a low hum, a yawning void fit to match the fire of its partners.
When he was a child, he practiced the basic forms day in, day out, until his hands and feet bled and his muscles burned and his legs could not hold him up as he heaved and tottered through the motions. As he grew he adapted the forms to suit his developing style, changed positions and motions and sequences until he had a kata repertoire all his own, suited to three blades rather than one, and a physique that could handle more demanding movements.
It has been years since he practiced the original forms, but the endless repetitions he did as a child have burned them into sinew and bone, and it is the originals he performs now.
Something about the echoing dance of the stars and the shimmering of moonlight against the sea begs for tribute to the past—an honoring of ancestors he has and will never know, of those who came before. An offering to the things as timeless and ancient as the stars themselves.
The moves come slow at first, his body unused to the old motions, and his careful efforts to keep the boards beneath his boots from creaking make some positions awkward. But by the third repetition, muscle memory kicks in, and then Zoro is free.
He closes his eyes, lets his senses range out and deep, until he is the soft groan of wood as the ship bobs gently in still water, until he is the infinite droplets of the sea, the salt that cakes the hull and froths the waves. He is the quiet ripple of the red and green flag, the laughing starlight, the stars themselves who beg eternal curiosity from beings that will never reach their ethereal plane.
It is a moving meditation, the steps to the kata ingrained in him, though dredged up from the fog of long-buried memory. Zoro's blades wail in harmony, the edges carving the very air, the makers of truth and gifters of either death or life, depending on his inclinations. Every motion sinks him deeper into the orchestra of the turning earth, the restless currents of the sea, the eternal sameness and ceaseless change of the sky above, and the crystalline ring of the heavens. It is an homage, a tribute, and the universe itself seems to welcome it.
These katas are almost like a dance—a deadly, partner-less dance. In them there is motion and exertion and fierce, fatal beauty as he practices parting bone from marrow and severing heads from shoulders and the art of sliding a blade between vertebrae to paralyze and agonize at once. Every step brings his mind farther from the ship and waves and deeper into the motion of celestial bodies and the clean splatter of blood against a concrete wall, until it's like his breath is synchronized with the beating heart of the universe itself. This far into the practice he is both alone and infinite, internally focused in the most outward way possible.
And then it comes grinding to a halt.
At first Zoro doesn't even realize what's happened. Kitetsu just shudders against an implacable resistance, and when Zoro opens his eyes it's—
Lucy, in nothing but a pair of cotton shorts and a tank top that doesn't reach her navel, and grinning at him with fire and starlight in her eyes. Her forearm is raised, shining black with Haki, and Kitetsu's razor edge is caught against the block.
"Hey, Zoro," Lucy asks, and her voice is quiet, but her face is sharp with something heavy enough to make heat curl up his spine and ancient enough to answer the stars themselves. "Want to spar?"
Zoro, still a little disoriented from the strange sensation that he is something too large and boundless for the meager body he's suddenly found himself constrained within, just replies dumbly, "I'm training."
Lucy does not look deterred, and Zoro finds himself deflecting a punch to his spleen on reflex, Lucy's bare feet dancing back out of range just as quickly. "Train with me," she whines, but something serious shadows her eyes when she adds, "You were too far away before."
Zoro isn't entirely sure what she means, but thinks of how he didn't notice her arrival, of the strange, singular connection to the universe's grand march, and thinks maybe she has a point.
"Okay," he agrees, and Lucy beams, wisps of hair framing her grin messily and something old in Zoro wants. "First to draw blood?"
"First to win," Lucy corrects.
"Well yeah, that's what I'm trying to—"
But Zoro doesn't get the chance to finish the thought, because Lucy ducks, spins, and a heel snaps out at Zoro's knees. Lucy's grin is broad and fierce and Zoro feels something in him rise up and answer, and so the game is on.
Immediately the spar is a brutal, wild thing, an instant melee of motion faster than eyes can follow and an onslaught of blades and fists meeting over and over as the ship itself bobs from the sheer force of their occasional impacts. They are not gentle, could not offer each other anything less than their best if the stars fell from the sky or the sea swallowed them whole, as anything else would be an insult between them.
It is exhilarating, to meet an opponent who offers a challenge, who fights with such abandon. There is an unspoken agreement, a pact to refrain from using any of their more advanced moves, the ones they use to level cities and bring down gods. It is a spar in the most original of terms, based in good faith and skill, just fists against swords and the occasional use of Haki, special attacks tabled for when they have more room, for when fun and testing their limits is not the clear goal.
Lucy is agile, but Zoro is persistent, and every time she dodges one of his blades he counters with another. Every missed opportunity is met with a glint of challenge in their smiles and every hit is met with laughter or a breathless do it again. They do not shy away from force, intent upon displaying all their prowess to one another. They litter bruises and shallow cuts across each other's bodies, and take joy in the display of strength, of an opponent evenly matched.
There is a current that runs deep between them, something old and glowing with the same eternal pulse as the stars and the sea itself. It is fed by want, awe, the desire to win. It takes trust to do this kind of sparring, unfathomable, irrational trust, but Zoro does not have it in him to doubt her. The spar is almost like a dance, like something from the past, done around a fire with a hundred kin to clap and stomp in time with drums and feet. They are partners in this spar as much as opponents, and Zoro would wonder who is leading, but he is far past asking such pointless trivialities.
Lucy throws her right fist at Zoro's head, and Zoro ducks easily out of the way, but slams her arm right above the elbow with Shusui's hilt, and rushes forward to take advantage of the opening. But Lucy is a rush of kinetic energy, as comfortable riding wind as strolling along the coast, and sways out of his attack with the motion of her arm. She rises behind him by kicking off a crate, manic glee in her face as she comes at him with Haki gleaming off her skin.
She manages to punch him in the nose—still better than letting her punch him in the teeth, where his jaw would probably fracture around Wado's hilt—and there's a beat where Zoro checks for fractures (not broken, just bleeding a lot) where he and Lucy just stare at one another, breathing heavily, and Zoro's sure his eyes are just as wide as hers.
He wonders if his want is just as plain to her as hers is to him.
"You looked really good, earlier," Lucy tells him as he presses blunt fingers to cartilage. He meets her gaze, and feels something old and predatory rising up to match the same thing in her, and Lucy must sense it because she continues, encouraged. "And it was pretty, but it didn't look like it was meant to be done alone."
Which is both true and not, of course. The katas themselves are a solitary practice, but kendo is meant to be used, to be practiced against and in tandem with others.
"Sparring's fun," he agrees, and he's sure his smile looks truly terrible with the blood smeared across his face and the katana in his mouth, but Lucy's eyes flash with that same heavy thing which is this time something close to a demand, and Zoro flies forward in answer.
It continues from there, the two of them inextricably locked together in a dance both deadly and ruthlessly controlled, swords flashing in the moonlight and Lucy's laughter bright and tinkling across the water. They spar until they are both exhausted, until their bodies shake and Zoro feels the burn of muscles that haven't been properly exerted in a week, feels the heavy rise and fall of his chest as he finally traps Lucy against the rail of the ship, her back to the water and three of his blades paused a few inches from her heart, just shy of her heaving chest and her sweat-soaked skin to match his own, glistening even in the moonlight.
Of course, Zoro doesn't doubt her ability to get out of it, if she wanted to. She's too fast to really be pinned, too agile to be caught with so many exit strategies available. But something shimmers in the air, the heaviness between them morphing into want and soon to need, and somehow Zoro knows the spar is over when he looks in Lucy's eyes and sees nothing there but frank desire strong enough to match his own.
This is only confirmed when Lucy reaches out, heedless of the blades still poised at her breast, and holds her palm out expectantly below Wado's hilt.
If it were anyone else, he would shove the blades into her heart, would snarl in warning or cut the hand off. But it's Lucy, and Lucy is Lucy, and so he gives her a subtle nod, and she reaches out to take the blade from between his teeth. Her fingers brush the skin around his mouth and leaving hot trails in their wake.
Wado looks strange in Lucy's hand, her fingers far more delicate than his for all that her knuckles are bloodied and bruised from the spar. But he finds no protest from any of his blades, indeed no sound at all.
Lucy takes a step forward, closer to Zoro, and he is forced to react quickly in order to prevent her from impaling herself on Kitetsu and Shusui, narrowing the angle of the blades, widening his arms. Something keeps the blades aloft, a certainty that simple acquiescence, that surrender, is not what either of them want.
Lucy's eyes are locked with Zoro's, and she carefully, in an unpracticed but traditionally correct motion, slides Wado home in the pearlescent sheath. She reaches for Kitetsu's hilt next, her fingers gentle as they slowly pry his own free from the hilt. Zoro only resists as long as he does because the heat that lingers on his skin from brushing hers burns higher and higher with every second, that heavy current between them deepening and making itself undeniable and known. It only seems emphasized in the sudden quiet, the only sounds the soft rock of the ship in the waves, and their heavy breathing, which Zoro knows is not just from the exertion of the spar anymore.
Kitetsu slides home easily, and Zoro wonders if Lucy notices that his lips follows the path of hers as she turns to Shusui next, their bodies nearly flush with one blade between them. It feels, strangely, too close, too intimate, and yet like there is an infinity between them.
Her fingers are warm as they cover his, and this time she does not push him away. Instead she helps his hand along, guides the whole blade down to its sheath with his fingers still wrapped around the ebony hilt, their eyes still locked together, and it takes a second for Zoro to realize they're close enough that their breaths mix and the heat from her skin is palpable.
The pads of her fingers linger on the back of his hand, but he's not fast enough to catch her as she pulls her hand away, and his head is too addled to notice the glint of mischief in her eyes as she takes a step back. Zoro follows, his step matching hers, helplessly tugged along by something too powerful to name, something dark and intrinsic to human experience and tonight commanded entirely by the girl before him.
There are maybe six inches between them, and with one more half step backward, Lucy's hips hit the railing, her hands spread wide to grip the wood and lean back almost challengingly. Zoro does not reach out and pull her flush to him the way he aches to, because something about the electricity that saturates the air around them makes him think of the spar, about how contact had to be done with the utmost care. That old and predatory thing from before guides him as he lurches forward and grips the railing on either side of her hips, trapping her in place and leveling their eyes.
He hears Lucy's breath catch, sees her pupils dilate further, and feels something equal rise in him, more demanding than before. The scent of her is too close, too present—salt from her sweat and sharp, woody anise and seawater and sunlight—and the familiarity makes him ache.
The moon is full and halos Lucy's head, and the cloud of stardust and genesis that halves the sky is fading as the night passes the midpoint to morning. The black of the sky is met by the lacquered sea, so still it should be glass even as the luminary clock above offers an unearthly glow to the water. She looks fey, nymph-like, as if she belongs among the stars that laugh their gentle, irreverent song as they dance along in the absolute march of time.
Zoro wonders if he and Lucy will be like the dead stars above them, if they will still shine into eternity even after they're gone. He likes to think so. He knows Lucy will.
They still breathe too heavily, anticipation making their blood demand more air, and they are close, so close that the magnetic pull that begs him to touch is powerful enough to overwhelm him.
And Lucy, too, it seems, because her eyes are almost swallowed by her pupils when she arcs chin down in offering and she whispers his name, so quiet he barely hears even this close.
"Zoro," she whispers again, and then continues, demanding. "Zoro, kiss me."
And then Zoro understands—the game is still on, still thrumming between them, and now it is as it has always been—a question of who will admit their needs first, who will be the first to surrender. And Zoro is willing to play, has always been bored by things that happen easily, and so leans into her slowly, refusing to touch her yet, but unable to ignore such a request.
His lips meet hers, and it is a chaste thing—or would be if not for the fire in his body, the trembling restraint they both exert to keep from pulling together in a more desperate way. He kisses her softly, just a barely-there press of their lips, but the want is like electricity and is quickly turning to need, and so it takes a terrible amount of control to pull back once again, the loss of contact feeling as profound as the halving of his very soul.
He can only bring himself to back off a few centimeters, and Lucy makes a noise of protest that goes straight to his core, that he would echo if he wasn't so focused on teasing this out as long as possible, if he wasn't so distracted by the fact that Lucy's eyes are still closed and that her lips followed his.
"Z-Zoro…" she complains, and he doesn't look away from her face, but he still feels her left hand release the railing and then return, and his own grip on the polished wood turns white-knuckled as he fights for his restraint.
He leans in again, his nose pressing into the flesh beneath her cheekbone as he seals his mouth to hers, just a little firmer and longer than before, a promise and a plea at once, though Zoro is not entirely sure what for. Electricity burns him, need present and plain and mutual, and only his competitive nature keeps him from indulging in the feeling, in feeding the heat that pools in his stomach and arcs up his spine until only embers remain.
He pulls back once more, but can't bring himself to stop touching her, his nose and forehead pressed into hers, desperate, and this time it is him that keeps his eyes closed, because he knows if he looked at her he would be gone.
But Lucy, it seems, is already there.
Her left hand snakes out, fisting in the front of Zoro's shirt with the sort of desperation that sets Zoro's blood to fire, and a whine in her throat to match, and then Lucy's body is pressed against his, her hips and chest flush with him as she shoves her tongue into his mouth and wraps her arms around his neck.
Zoro has never been able to deny Lucy easily, and he doesn't want to now.
He responds to her boldness by matching it with his own, restraint gone and smashed to dust. He crowds her against the rail, feels her gasp into his mouth when his hips pin her against the ship, but it is met with nothing but eager approval as she moves to wrap a leg around his waist and arcs into him suggestively enough that Zoro's hands fist in the cotton of her tank top, desperate and wanting. He wonders, in the tiny portion of his brain not consumed with Lucy and seeking out the warmth in her that calls to him, if this all means he won.
It feels different, this time, from similar occasions before. The desperate edge to their hands and mouths and the single-minded way in which they pursue each other does not feel motivated by fear of separation. She did not appear here with nightmares in her eyes, and he was not practicing to lay his demons to rest. Tonight their needs feel untainted by fear and anxiety and doubt. Instead there is impulse and long-banked desire and simple joy at receiving and giving to each other. Above them, the laughing heavens spin on into eternity and all around them the sea that stretches into its own infinity, but nothing seems truer or more important than the heat of their bodies and the need to be close and close and closer.
Lucy seems to agree because when she pulls back for air and guides his mouth to her throat like she can't bear even that small loss of contact, she whimpers his name and then, "we should…my room…"
Maybe once upon a time he would have shied away, would have doubted, but he can't when Lucy holds him like she's going to fly apart if she lets go, and he can only feel affection and want and a reciprocal need to touch blazing in his mind.
So he nods, mouth still latched to Lucy's neck as he lifts her up and starts to stumble across the deck, his coordination a mess when her teeth are sinking into the juncture of his neck and shoulder hard enough to draw blood, and decides that maybe, for at least one night, there are no bad stars.
Lol, when the riff you were planning to write about melancholy and the contradictions of grief in the face of good news mutates into a riff on ASL Marineford angst which then boils down into sexual tension as your characters hash out issues you didn't know they still had.
"the luminary clock above," is a reference to one of my favorite poems, written by Robert Frost. It's called "Acquainted with the Night." I highly recommend reading it. My penname on AO3 is also derived from it. I just didn't want to take credit for prose that isn't mine.
Lucy and Zoro, pursuing a sexual relationship in emotionally healthy ways. I'm proud of the children, man. So proud.
Sorry the chapter is so long. The Law scene was supposed to go in the previous chapter, but Law was being uncooperative. Let me know what you think!
PS: Sorry if I didn't reply to your review last week. I think I've gotten everyone, but it was a busy week. Please know that I really appreciate all your feedback, and it was not my intention to snub anyone.