I think Zoro and Chopper nakamaship is a requirement at least once for anything regarding either of them, right?
Title: Rising
Theme: #3: Dawn
Claim: Zoro
(Words:) 1,755
Rating: PG
Warnings: Set only a few days after the Drum Island arc. A few bad words (Zoro's fault)
Disclaimer(s): I do not own, or pretend to own, One Piece or any of its subsequent characters, plots or other ideas. That right belongs solely to Eiichiro Oda. I do not own the prompts either—those are assigned by 30_OnePiece.
Zoro was not a fan of the sunrise.
Oh, one could tell him all day long about how it was pretty or symbolic or or poetic or a host of other things, but he'd never listen. Zoro always found dawn obnoxious, especially when he'd been stuck sleeping outdoors before he met Luffy, or whenever he was stuck on morning watch on the Merry. To him, the dawn and the sunrise meant little more than a sudden and obnoxiously rude awakening from a perfectly sound sleep, and Zoro did not like his sleep interrupted, especially after a long battle when he needed his rest.
He didn't buy into all that dawn-associated crap anyway. He'd heard all manner of ridiculous stories—that dawn was supposed to symbolize a new beginning, or a fresh start, or hope, or whatever. He figured it was stupid to have to rely on something as completely routine and uncaring as the sun coming up to bolster your spirits—a real person would find strength within themselves, not rely on the outside world like that.
He'd heard half a dozen religious reasons for respecting the dawn too, full of light-bringing deities and the moment prayers began. But he didn't believe in gods and religions either, which meant those stories were just as useless to him as the symbols. And he didn't care in the least for poetry, or all the ways dawn wriggled its way into songs and stories like some insistent little snake. Hell, executions traditionally happened at dawn too, and Zoro didn't hear anybody singing about those.
So Zoro had no use for dawn or its obnoxious tendency to make things bright when things had been comfortably dark. And he sure as hell didn't see what the big deal about it was, or why people liked it so much.
But the newest member of the crew certainly gave him a little more insight on the matter.
They had only recently left Drum Island in the company of their newest member, the reindeer-doctor Tony Tony Chopper. What with all the rushing about and the witch's pushing for a speedy journey to Alabasta, Zoro still hadn't had much of a chance to interact with him. He hadn't been around much for the whole debacle at Drum Island, and knew little about Chopper other than the fact that he was a reindeer (not just a deer), and that he'd eaten a Devil Fruit at some point that gave him human qualities. In the three days since that they'd been sailing he'd only really seen the little guy at mealtimes, and he had the impression the doctor was nervous around him for who only knew what reason. He was pretty used to it (Usopp had been rather terrified of him too, at first), and just let the reindeer be for now. Chopper would get used to him eventually.
The third day after leaving Drum Island Zoro was on early-morning watch duty, having been brutally awoken by a very surly cook at midnight to swap, and he was not pleased with the job. It was still cold outside (although that jacket he'd stolen made things much warmer), but it still made it a bit difficult to get comfortable and enjoy a good doze. He was just finally relaxing back against the mast when the first traces of gray flickered over the horizon, and Zoro scowled in disgust at the hints of light in the distance. It just figured that the damned sun would arrive when he was finally starting to get comfortable, just to piss him off even more. At this rate he was never going to get a good nap in.
"I dare you to rise," he growled at nothing in particular as he glared in the direction of the gray hints of light. "I just fucking dare you to piss me off."
The sun didn't respond, but Zoro did hear a startled squeak from behind him, in the direction of the boy's cabin. He looked over his shoulder around the thick mast and was a little surprised to find Chopper staring back at him through the dim pre-dawn light. The reindeer squeaked again and immediately ducked behind a barrel, hiding the wrong way as he watched Zoro nervously.
Zoro raised an eyebrow, but he'd seen the doctor's odd reverse-peek by now, and it wasn't quite as strange anymore. "Something wrong?" he asked. "Couldn't sleep? Well, neither can I." He gave the now lighter shades of gray in the distance an irritable look.
"I...u-um...no, I could sleep fine," Chopper offered timidly. He seemed to decide Zoro wasn't going to leap around the mast and eat him, because he tentatively sidled away from the barrel and added, "I just w-wanted to watch the sunrise, but I'll g-go away if you don't want me to annoy you..."
Zoro snorted a little. Why wake up from a perfectly comfortable sleep in a nice, relaxing hammock to watch something as annoying and uninteresting as the sunrise? But he kept his thoughts to himself, and since he didn't want his crew members walking on eggshells around him (or at least, not this one—curly-brow could stand to learn a little respect), he said, "It's your ship too. If you want to watch the sunrise, go ahead and do it."
"I...um...okay," the reindeer finally agreed, after fidgeting a moment. He gave Zoro another nervous look, as if he wasn't really sure what to make of the swordsman. But then he trotted over to one of the rails and clambered up to sit on its edge with a look of practiced familiarity, to wait for the grays in the distance to transform into color.
Zoro was intrigued despite himself, and since the sun was conspiring against his nap anyway and he had nothing else better to do, he decided to get a little more familiar with the newest crew mate. He stood up from his place against the mast, stretched, and walked over to put his elbows on the rail beside the reindeer, commenting, "Looks like you've done this before."
Chopper let out a high-pitched shriek and toppled forward with a startled look. Zoro caught him absently by one horn and pulled him back up on the rail with a roll of his eyes—he'd had enough of hauling Luffy out of the water without having to deal with this new hammer sinking too. "Calm down! I just asked a question."
"You just surprised me is all!" Chopper said breathlessly. Zoro kept a hold on one antler until the reindeer calmed down enough to secure his seat once more, and when he let go the doctor added a little more calmly, "But you're right, I've been watching it every morning since we left Drum Kingdom."
"Homesick?" Zoro guessed absently, as he glared at the first edges of pale red on the horizon.
"No—well, I mean, a little, but that's not why I watch," Chopper said. He hesitated, gave Zoro a partially nervous glance, and then explained slowly, "It's just, when I was back on the island, I used to watch the sun rise all the time with Doctor."
He clammed up for a moment, but Zoro knew better than to mock him for something that was clearly so important to him and just waited patiently. A little more confident, Chopper added more enthusiastically, "The sunrise would do amazing things to all the snow on the island. For just a few moments all the trees and the ground and the rooftops...everything would turn pink, like cherry blossoms, just like the Doctor wanted."
"Like the snow when we left," Zoro observed. He supposed the unexpected pink snowfall made a little more sense now.
"Yes, just like that!" Chopper said excitedly. "And Doctor said that's what we were trying to discover, a way to bottle that up and make it last so that everyone on the island could see it, and that the sunrise would always remind us what we were trying to achieve. And when I started learning from Doctorine it kept reminding me of that too—that I can find a cure for anything, and that it all exists somewhere, in some way, even if it's only for a few moments."
"Okay," Zoro said, "That makes sense I guess, but there's no snow out here, just...water."
Chopper grinned, and Zoro was a little satisfied to see that the kid was at least getting over his fear of being near him. "Well, I thought that too, at first," he explained, "But I watched it the first morning that I was on the Going Merry with you guys, and it's just...it's amazing. On Drum Island it was beautiful to see all the snow turned pink, but on the ocean it's like the water is even more alive. Look, there it goes now!"
He pointed with one hoof excitedly just as the first edges of the sun began to drift above the watery horizon in the distance. The dull water seemed to light up all at once, blazing like fire as it reflected the sky's reds, oranges, golds and pinks with blinding brilliance. It was like the whole ocean was made of molten gold for just a few brief moments while the sky above burned with a shimmering array of colors, and Chopper wriggled excitedly on the rail as he watched those colors shimmer and change with the rising sun. Zoro had to admit, he'd never really watched the sun rise before, and Chopper's enthusiasm for it was sort of catching; it looked far more impressive than he initially would have thought. Deciding he might as well enjoy it while he was there (and finding Chopper's excitement and awe rather amusing, not that he'd ever admit it), he settled himself along the rail a little more comfortably and set to watching the rest of the sunrise with his new crew mate.
Zoro didn't much mind the sunrise after that. He still didn't buy into the load of poetic and mythological crap that people usually associated with the dawn, of course, and he still didn't like it when his naps were interrupted. But he could see how happy the dawn made at least one crew mate, and that was something real and close that he could comprehend, and that was what mattered.
Besides, Zoro thought, sunrise sort of wasn't so bad when you watched it with a friend.
While I love Zoro and Chopper nakamaship now, it really puzzled me at first...especially since Zoro does pretty much nothing in the Drum Island arc, and Chopper doesn't even meet him until the very end, so I was like, where did this attachment ever come from? Nami or Sanji would have made more sense 'cause they were there. So here's an attempt at starting to explain that lol.
~VelkynKarma