"The greatest and most powerful revolutions often start very quietly, hidden in the shadows. Always remember that my dear." -Law's mother to his father.
The capital of the immortal world exploded into chaos with the same effect of a stone dropped in a calm pond. Suddenly, among streets of wonders and magic, gods fighted against gods with powers never seen before, brothers were killed at the hands of fathers, fairies and slaves tried to run away from the massacre as the whole power of the divine world seemed to finally unleash in a final outburst. The holy land trembled, the sky obscured under angry clouds, fires ignited, and winds and vegetation crawled over each other trying to claim their victims.
The capital shattered. The god's millennial rule crumbled. The universe cried.
And among it all there was the beautiful and terrible queen seated on her throne of nightmares and galaxies. Laughter escaped from her mouth between her perfect white teeth, joy shone vivid in her beautiful violet eyes as her children died in front of her, as her court went to war against itself and her whole world seemed to come to and end.
Robin, immortal queen of everything and everywhere, rejoiced.
Because this was what she remembered and what she had longed for: the power. The thrill of battle, the screams of panic, people crawling at her feet covered in blood and viscera, the haunted looks, that horrified certainty in the eyes of people about to die...oh dear, how much she had missed it. How much had she missed Zoro, her little deadly warrior with his raw absolute power, he had always known how to wake her from the brokenness of her eternal life and make the world vivid with the beautiful red of blood.
She clapped with her hands when her little boy tore apart another of her children with a mere flick of his finger, the body falling to his fet with a scream of agony, and crumbling into dust as if dried out. Robin sighed seeing him advance to another victim, so strong and handsome with his armor covered in red and his eyes intent, so calm and confident in his victory. He had always been so powerful, so beautiful, and loyal, at least until the darkness had claimed him and made him leave her side.
Robin's smile faded as she saw his beautiful son turn away from the delightful masacre to help the beast of red hair still chained on the floor. The boy that had been condemned by her court for betraying her and falling in love with a human. Kidd had always been handsome and beautiful too despite not being one of the first generation. Robin had been able to see the potential in him, the rage, rebellion and thirst of blood. She had waited so much from him too.
But he had also abandoned her for a mortal.
Fire roared fed by a desert wind, plants crawled over the walls strangling their victims and devouring their bodies, rocks twisted to be shaped anew on the floor and walls, the throne room changing and changing again with the power of her children and their gift. Kidd and Zoro stood in the middle of the chaos, clapping each others arm like old friends, and smiling at one another...then they both turned towards her, handsome, perfect, powerful and with a hate in their eyes that made her blood stop in her veins from sadness.
Robin stood up from her dark throne, her posture regal, ancient, beautiful, and so, so sad. Still, no one seemed to pay attention to her besides her dear little boys who tensed. Everybody kept fighting their battles in this old palace. Fire, winds, vines. Wrecking, destroying, changing.
She had wanted to prevent this. She had wanted to watch her beautiful sons and daughters grew and mature under her care, she had given all to them, her love, wisdom, and power, expecting them to be happy and love her back. She had sacrificed for them what no mother would have sacrificed for a son: centuries, races, empires have fallen for them, trying to protect them from the humans. Clearly, it hadn't been enough.
Now she had to kill them.
Zoro and Kidd had been corrupted by the humans, too corrupted now to see reason. Robin had tried to save them, give them a chance to gain her love back, to come back to their senses, but it was now clear that they would have to die for the sake of their brothers. Robin would not tolerate the illness to spread, she would not allow humans to contaminate her lovely family.
She was a mother ready to kill her children. Her two most beloved sons. The monsters they had turned into. It was a sad thing, a horrible thing no mother should ever need to do, but still she couldn't feel anything. No mourning, no pain, nothing grew in her chest as she approached her beloved warrior pair. It made her stop for a little second confused. She loved Zoro, she loved Kidd, they were her most beautiful children and still...nothing?
Her two boys approached her, distracting her thoughts. Their powers were intact despite the illness spreading in this land, leaving her other children useless. Their swords were at the ready, shining with her face on the sharp edge, deadly weapons in her warriors' hands. And their eyes were hateful, with no regret, no shame, no sorrow for raising against their creator.
Robin raised a hand. The decision taken.
Darkness covered the world. The stars on her palace spread over each corner, galaxies seemed to coalesce around her, plunging the rest of the world into a deep empty darkness. The universe trembled. Her sons stopped fighting turning towards her horrified.
Robin closed her eyes and breathed pure power, her veins filled with the light of supernovas, her skin glowing with the radiance of a thousand suns. She was the goddess of all gods. The queen of immortals. This world was hers to command, to change, to correct.
Shadows spread on her dark world, blackness and coldness filling every corner of the city and making every little creature cry in fear and the knowledge of a certain death. She opened her eyes and looked at their sons with eyes that looked into two worlds at the same time, this one and the one beyond. The calm, cold, and peaceful world beyond.
She was the queen of queens for a very simple reason, a reason that had made her enemies tremble and the world kneel at her presence: she was the end of all things, the goddess of death, the mother of all the rest.
She was Anguta, absolute and whole.
"I am sorry for what I must do" she said with a voice that was not a voice but a whisper of things that had once been "But it needs to be done".
She released the power in her veins, and screams filled the world.
...oOo…
Law plunged his old long dagger into the eye of another soldier and turned to face the last mercenary clad in royal purple as the man's body fell to the ground. Several corpses lay around him on the ground, decapitated, stabbed, maimed and now, growing cold. Their blood kept staining the wooden floors and carpets turning the fight slippery and complicated, but Law persisted. He had fought under worse situations after all.
The alarm had been raised a few moments ago, angry shouts on the corridor as a man ran away from the room, and the horn calling to arms sounding clean and deep in the foggy Inverness night, but Law didn't care. Below him, on the lower parts of the castle, Shanks, Luffy and hundreds of men would be trying to get into the palace, fighting the city guards and the armies from Doflamingo in a strike that might change the shape of the world.
Still, the rest of the castle would be busy trying to fend off the attack from Shanks, no one else was going to come save Doflamingo from his fate. The guards he had gathered to attack Law had been perishing one after another. Doors had been locked, servants bribed, stairs collapsed. There was no way in and no way out. Doflamingo was going to answer to him and he was going to pay for his crimes now and forever.
The last man standing, the mercenary wearing purple, looked at him with care, his eyes scanning every little movement Law made, every breath, every flinch. He was scared, Law could see it in the sweat on his forehead and in the little tremble of his fingers on the sword. Law had killed a dozen of trained soldiers with a mere dagger and now was coming for him. Still, that fear made the mercenary dangerous, since a corralled man could fight with the strength of thousands in his desperation.
Law also eyed Doflamingo pressed against the desk and away from the fighting. His face was now pale, the fight taking place between him and the door not allowing him to escape, obliging him to see the killing. His lips were now pressed in a thin line as his eyes fixed on a body, his clothes were stained red from the blood on the floor, even his knuckles were white from gripping the table.
The mercenary attacked. A strange desperation on his eyes as he threw himself at Law with the sword raised point first. Law drew back, grabbed Vergo's head from the floor and threw it at the man. The man shrieked in fear and tried to get away from the trajectory of the head, but Law was there, anticipating the move and plunging the knife deep between the man's ribs.
The body fell to his feet, gurgling blood and not moving again, a grimace of surprise fixed forever on his face.
Law breathed, the concentration and thrill from the fight flying away and leaving him numb, covered in blood and feeling so, so dirty and stained. Still, he knelt in the puddle of blood on the floor and cleaned his dagger on the man's clothes before sheathing it and turning to face the man who still tormented his nightmares.
Doflamingo looked at him intently, pale and breathing hard, with sweat covering his regal handsome features, but, like always, hiding his fear and disbelief under and amused and arrogant smirk. He knew Law was going to kill him. The bodies of his guards a testimony to this, but he still glared at him as if Law was a stain on this world as if Law needed to kill himself for the sake of this world.
"You lost" Law proclaimed, his voice empty of all feelings. Numb, he felt so very numb. "The citizens, church and even the nobles now repudiate your reign of darkness and corruption. You won't live to see the sun rise again, his majesty"
The sounds of the battle were growing, the warm light of fires illuminating the room from the window as the riots growed outside. Swords clashing echoed in the room, screams and anger now clear in the air as the smell of burned things reached the tower where they were. Still Doflamingo just grasped his hands behind himself in a regal pose and smiled at him with confidence.
"Is that so?" he asked amused.
Law frowned, clenching his fist, wanting to draw the dagger again and finish this for once. Doflamingo chuckled watching him, a false frustrated laugh that soon changed into a grimace of disgust. He turned slightly and grabbed a bottle of whiskey from the desk removing the cork of and throwing it away.
He walked to the window drinking the whole thing with a strange necessity, the fire illuminating his pale bloodied ropes and making him look like one of those kings from the old stories of the creation of the world. Savage beasts that bathed in blood.
"She knew this would happen. That's why she ordered me to kill you. I understand it now. That stupid goddess!" he said with his voice hoarse from the whiskey, smashing the bottle on the floor with a loud creak "The moment I let you run away from the palace unharmed I knew I had made a mistake"
He turned again to face Law. Anger in every line of his body. This wasn't a man who had been defeated. This was a mean ready to strike the killing blow. Law frowned confused as Doflamingo advanced towards him with a dark glint in is eyes, his smile now cruel and final.
"Do you know why I have always hated you so much, Law?" he asked, walking around him like a tiger ready to attack his prey, his feet splashing in the blood from the ground, the burning city and cries of terror turning his pacing macabre.
"Cos you are a psycho?" Law commented, his hand again on the hilt of his dagger, ready for any trick.
Doflamingo growled. Then he approached and invaded Law's personal space, his breath smelling of alcohol, his eyes remembering Law of thousands of beatings, of blood and cries for help from an innocent boy who couldn't understand what was happening.
Doflamingo smiled. Knowing his thoughts with the same precision as Law. Exploiting his fears and terrors. Law's blood froze in his veins unable to help it. He was no child, not anymore. He clenched his fist and glared back at the man, trying to calm himself.
"Do you know who your parents were, Law? Do you even know who you are?" Doflamingo whispered against his mouth smiling cruelly, his voice a caress of delight and love, like that of a caring parent for his child.
Law felt his whole body tremble, fear, and the insecurities from an orphan boy growing up in the streets rising again. How many times had he asked himself that question? How much had he feared the answer? Then came the anger. Hot and warm, a feeling so intense that made him clench his teeth from the power of it.
He grabbed Doflamingo by a shoulder and smashed a fist against his smirking face. The man fell to the floor and Law went with him, straddling his hips and punching his face as the blond man started to laugh like crazy.
"You don't know anything" Doflamingo laughed again, his face bloody, his nose broken, and blood, so much blood everywhere "Always such a stupid boy, so manipulable and naive, but always so hard to kill!"
"Shut up!" Law answered him, not stopping punching him "Shut up!"
Doflamingo tried to fight him off between laughs, trying to defend himself, but he was a king and no warrior, so Law just punched him again, his head making an ugly sound as it hit the floor again and again. Doflamingo groaned, his eyes turning dizzy, but he still smiled.
Law breathed after a while, his pulse a quick rhythm in his ears, his fist bloodied and breath ragged. He felt numb, so fucking numb, as if he was stopping to exist, as if he was disappearing into numbness.
They both stared at each other.
A hate that had lasted decades now raw in their eyes. Law's walls completely lowered down, his soul and body feeling raw and tender in the numbness. His friends, the loneliness, the fear, the pain of decades of abuse, now itching against the scars under his tattoos, the only way he had found to hide the horror.
"Your mother looked at me with the same eyes" Doflamingo whispered suddenly "No matter what I said or did, she always refused and despised me. Unlike your father she didn't insult me or cried the night I raped her and killed the two of them, and took their place as the sovereign of this city"
Law closed his eyes. He breathed. In. Out. Deep.
...oOo...
Zoro ran. He had been running for what seemed like hours but could have been minutes. Time felt weird right now, as if some moments were stretching too much and others drawing short. The whole world now shimmering in black looked weird too, the silence too deep, the cries traumatizing, the panic in his blood increasing, and so, he kept running.
He could feel Kidd behind him, and Ace, and Boa, and Nami, all of them running too, trying to get away from the palace and into the streets of the city. Away from her and her terrible deadly power, but he knew they would be found eventually, she was absolute, perfection, the world her playground. Nothing could escape death. No one could escape from her gaze, he could feel it now, on the back of his neck, hateful and intent.
Minutes passed. Darkness increased. The screams grew louder. She was so close. They were all going to die, she would murder them slowly, they would...
Zoro stopped running suddenly. Something inside him suddenly snapping in anger. He stopped gasping for breath next to the destroyed house of a dead god, the rest of the group stopping next to him confused.
Zoro looked at them, and then, for the first time since they had gotten out of the palace, he looked around.
The city wasn't there anymore, as if suddenly devoured by darkness it had disappeared leaving nothing behind. The sky, the ground, the same air seemed to have disappeared and been substituted by blackness. Groups of people ran together in the darkness trying to survive, gods, fae, all together, trying to fight the shadows that appeared from nothingness and devoured them in seconds. And above them all, hight in the middle of that deep nightmare a figure rose. Brighter than the stars and a hundred suns, she observed them all with eyes that were inhuman, immortal, cruel.
The end.
Zoro looked at his brothers around him. Kidd, Nami, Ace...the ones that had been fighting in the throne room now looking defeated or terrified. Nami's arm was now black, a grimace on her face as she gripped it and the skin and fingers crumpled away like burned ash. Ace kept looking behind him seeming to be looking for someone, a terror on his face that Zoro knew pretty well. Kidd on the other hand was carrying Killer on his shoulders with a determined look on his face...
Zoro looked again at the desolated place that had been once a place of wonders. He looked at his defeated family, at the darkness surrounding everything but a figure, at the stupid lost and chaos... At the world ending, and them all dying with it.
Like they deserved it.
Nami whimpered next to him and Zoro tensed. No, that was not true. They deserved to live too, not all of them were evil, some of them were still wonders, beautiful and strong. He could see it in Kidd's will to fight for a lost cause, in Ace' look of desperation as he looked for his lost lover of blond hair, at Nami's wound she had taken to protect a child, in Boa's tight lips of anger. Some of them deserved to live. Like the humans. Like a man of golden eyes and black hair that had once given him his heart only to have it frozen in a room under the deep blue ocean.
Zoro dropped his sword. He won't run again.
Walking slowly, he jumped into a piece of blackness that could have been a column once, a rock or the roof of a house. He fixed his mother with a glare and raising his voice he proclaimed what was burning in his chest.
"This is your fault" he said to the monster that had once been his mother, the monster that now stood in darkness killing her children "You have brought the end of our race, mother, this is only your fault"
His voice boomed over the darkness, carrying away in the emptiness like a wave of the sea, making the faces of every god and fae still alive focus on him with a surprised face. Making the haunting eyes of a monster of light and cruelty focus on him with a sense of victory.
Zoro was too angry and frustrated to feel terrified.
"In you fear of them you separated our worlds, the human and immortal one. You destroyed the source of our power and reason, you have killed our family" he accused in the darkness, at the end of his immortal life, facing death with courage and resolution.
Zoro had known from the start that they couldn't run away, not from her. If they were to win this war, they could only fight.
"Lies" the sound of her voice sounded inside his mind, too powerful and vast to stand, to ancient and dark to bear.
Whimpers filled the sudden silence, his brothers looking at him terrified, sure of his ending. Zoro didn't care, he just didn't give a fuck anymore. He hadn't given a damn about his life since his heart had died with that of a mortal.
"It's true!" Zoro repeated "Why do you think Kidd and I are the only ones with our power still intact? Who are the only ones who had have contact with mortals for the last five eons? We need the mortals, breaking us apart from them only killed us!"
"Lies!"her mother screamed.
Shadows rose around him trying to engulf him, trying to silence him for eternity. His mother was killing him. Zoro closed his eyes. Memories and feelings of an immortal life filled his mind. His mother giving him his first sword and teaching him how to fight in a field of white little flowers. His mother braiding Nami's hair under a willow tree. His mother hugging him as he returned from his first battle covered in blood from his family, pride in her eyes. His mother on her throne listening to the words of a girl who could see a dark future. His mother killing mortals with a hateful look in her eyes. Her mother closing the borders and not listening to his advice. His mother's pleas for him to come back...His mother discovering his secret and his lover.
Blood. Sadness. Ice under the ocean.
The deep sad knowledge.
Zoro summoned his own power. The power he hadn't used since he had met a mortal that had kissed him as if he was the water he needed to drink. The power that had only kept growing and evolving since that horrible day as if gifted by his beloved.
The darkness retreated as ice so cold it burned, closed around it. Water started to bubble from the ground, higher and higher, drowning the blackness in seconds, erasing it and cleaning the world, engulfing each living thing that was still standing.
Zoro breathed deep, feeling alive for the first time in eons. The coolness of the ocean and the creatures living in it, calming a burn that had persisted way to long. It was time to end this. It was time to die, to free the ocean, to free the soul of a mother he no longer recognized.
It was time to met with Mihawk again.
His mother screamed looking at him and launching herself at him with the force of colliding stars and planets on her hands, a viciousness in her immortal shining eyes that made Zoro want to cry in mourning.
He smashed her to the seas below with a little flick of his power.
People all around them gasped surprised. Shocked. Mother was absolute, indestructible. He was just a god. How could he even hit her? The monster looked at him confused too, she looked at the sea now circling around her surprised, as if she couldn't understand how he had been able to punch her.
"I said the truth mother" he explained, his voice now clear like water from the lakes up in the mountains "Mortals give us power. I have met them, I have loved them and I have lost them. You haven't. For longer than I can remember you haven't even glimpsed in their direction"
He raised a hand and her mother fell to her knees with lightning escaping from a bloodied lip.
"I am stronger than you now" he said.
The gazed of the people around them shifted. Glee, understanding and horror drawing on their faces. The evidence now clear, unrefusable. Soon their expressions quickly changed into something else suddenly. Rage. Anger. All towards their dear ancient mother.
'This is your fault' Zoro thought sadly 'You have pushed us into this. You have brought the end with your paranoia. I will miss you dearly, mother'