Disclaimer: I don't own the One Piece universe.

Characters: Luffy, Zoro, Usopp, Sanji, Nami, Vivi, Chopper, Robin, Franky, Brook, Jinbe
Rating: T
Contains: Non-Graphic Character Death
Summary: Until the very end, Luffy was theirs.
Prompt: #095 "Ends" for 100 Men
Word Count: 1,229

Notes: Updated to include Jinbe. Will be updated for all future crew members.

I Said "I Love You" and I Swear I Still Do

I. Straw Hat

He wasn't supposed to have made it. Seventeen-year-old nobodies didn't set out in barrels with nothing more than a straw hat and a dream and make it. It defied logic. But he had, and he'd defied every notion of logic along the way. Found a whole crew of nakama who defied all logic and common sense. And it had been effortless, as natural as breathing. As if he'd known no other way to be. All of it had been for his crew.

For his nakama he loved, the world learned, he would do anything. Even die, painfully, slowly.

II. Pirate Hunter

He had never actually hunted pirates. Not the way people assumed. For the most part, he couldn't have cared less about bounties unless they paid of his bar tabs. Still, he wasn't the kind of person that people expected to become a pirate. In truth, he hadn't expected it either. If it weren't for the little boy who found him in the marine yard, he wouldn't have been.

It had been the first him he trusted anyone and he kept trusting and trusting, trusting them. Forever, until it was all pulled out from under him.

III. Sniper King

He had always dreamed of the seas and pirating and adventure. But, he wasn't cut out to be an actual pirate. If there had ever been a time when he was terrified of everything, he couldn't remember it. They'd taken him anyway, and his slingshot. Taken him because he'd wanted to be brave. And his aim was good and true, at the very least. Deadly even with just a slingshot.

They hadn't ever pushed him to be braver but he would be eventually. When faced with death, he didn't run and hide like he should have, wanted to, years later.

IV. Black Leg

He had been a cook. Who happened to flirt too much and chain smoke and have legs powerful enough to kill. Even with them, he'd been primarily a cook. Pirates had to fight though, and he'd always refused to use his hands. To protect them, he'd beaten his legs bloody and broken. So bad that his legs had been black with all the blood. Sometimes, he thought his legs would never work again from the abuse they had to take for his nakama.

It hadn't bothered him, ever, that he could lose his legs. For them, he'd lose his hands.

V. Cat Burglar

She was the last person anyone expected to become a pirate. A broken little girl who'd lost everything to them. Then they'd been there. Children on the brink of manhood (or maybe the other way around). All legs and steel and gunpowder and fists, tangled curls and rough cotton and smooth silk and soft skin. Promising her everything and nothing all at once. The four of them had destroyed her childhood monsters, annihilated them until she could do nothing but cry.

And she'd loved them, every minute of every day. Years later, she'd wonder how she could ever let go.

VI. Princess

She had always had her future laid out before her. One day, she would be their queen. Before that, she'd been their princess, their savior. Never a pirate. Except that, in the dark, secret part of her darkest wishes, she knew she was one. Of course it was ridiculous, they'd only been together for a month maybe. But when he held out her hand for her, she knew that she was one of them. Her heart had never stopped aching.

If she ever them again, she knew she wouldn't be able to let them go. The next time she didn't.

VII. Cotton-Candy Lover

He had wanted it so badly. For someone to not to care about his blue nose. Not care that he was somewhere between human and reindeer. At night, he would cry himself to sleep for the want of it. And then they'd crashed into his life (more or less literally). Clinging so desperately to each other despite their oddities. Clung to him despite his. They joked with him and kissed his nose and cuddled him and respected his opinion as a doctor.

And no one treated him differently for the low bounty. It was always low, they never did care.

VIII. Demon Woman

She had been eight when it all came crashing down around her ears. The next twenty years were spent traveling from pirate crew to pirate crew, through West Blue and the Grand Line. Always seeking for a home. When she found it, she'd been nearly dead. Survived because he told her she wasn't allowed to die. Screamed it at her over and over. Until she'd reached for him, curled into his arms and theirs. When she believed it herself, wanted it all.

His crew had wanted nothing from her, unlike the others. But she'd given it all to them anyway.

IX. Cyborg

He was more machine than man. The consequence of taking a train head on and rebuilding himself out of scrap metal. Most of the legitimate world was afraid of it. And the criminal world was in awe of it. They could have cared less, though. On a crew full of oddities, being half metal was completely normal. All of them were monsters, by their own admission, it would be hypocritical to think him out of the ordinary.

That crew was his third family, and the hardest for him to let go. He'd had to, though, like the two families before.

X. Dead Bones

He had been a captain once. Many, many years before he met them, decades even. The position had been his because of the Grand Line's cruelty. And he had lost it because of the Grand Line's cruelty. At the time, he'd watched his nakama die because it was his duty. No matter how much it hurt. Honestly, he'd never thought that he would be part of another crew. But they hadn't cared what he thought or wanted. They had wanted him.

Years later, he learned he'd still outlive them. He'd been there when they died, prayed for his own death.

XI. First Son of the Sea

He loved his captain. That had been the only thing in his life that had never been taken away. Even when everything else had crashed and burned around him, he had lived content in that knowledge. It had been the only thing that had not, that could not be changed on the treacherous sea. Even when the sea had taken from him his beloved captain, and thrust a new one on him like waves on a rock.

No matter what they did or said to him now, he loved his captain and his crew. That could never be stolen away.

XII. Pirate King

The marines had an agreement with him. His nakama were to live out their lives untouched by the marines and in return he'd offer his own head on a silver platter. He was supposed to order them to stay away from the execution. But they'd shown anyway. Everyone had expected them to. They watched, scattered in the crowd, as their captain slowly raised his fist into the air. So everyone could see his mark tattooed to his wrist.

One by one, his nakama raised their fists, too, even as their captain was run through. And he'd died, slowly and painfully.