Wow, look at this, a less-than-20k-words-long chapter!
Warning 1: If you're not in the mood for heavy angst, you might want to read this later, because Elynna isn't exactly in a good place, and she's not nice about it either.
Warning 2: One Piece isn't completely realistic in its depiction of violence considering, well, everything, but I've got no one breathing down my neck about content rating based on audience demographics. It's not gonna be a gore fest or anything, but from this arc onward the fights become harder and longer, so my descriptions will probably get more bloody too.
Disclaimer: I do not own One Piece, so anything that you see in this fic and that you can recognise as belonging to One Piece is not mine. If I did own it, I wouldn't have to write fanfiction. Duh. Also, I don't own the picture.
Part One - Dive|rgence
TWENTY
And she is close enough to touch, but worlds apart to understand
〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭
It takes some time once they reach Rainbase for Elynna to realise that the familiar, aching shadow of the body she used to have (the girl she used to be, the people she used to-) has started to seep through the pores of her skin and her bones again, filling every space with a distant, tired throbbing that makes her too heavy and tired to keep being angry and tense the way she was for the rest of their desert trek.
Fortunately, she recognises it for what it is (rather than the heat and the fearful tiredness and the gnashing, quiet seething-) and takes Chopper aside to get a new dose of Kureha's medicine.
It makes things much easier when they end up having to split up and run away from the Marines who somehow followed them here. Clearly, Smoker isn't called a dog for no reason.
She follows Nami and Usopp after Sanji stops to hold back their pursuers who are now a strange mix of Baroque Works' goons and Marines. All three of them rush headfirst into an alley, jumping over a row of stacked boxes that her crewmates simultaneously turn to kick into the Marines' way as she continues forward, not stopping when one of the Billions blocks the exit of the street, extending an arm instead to catch him throat first into the crook of her elbow and spinning, using the centrifugal force to throw him into the other men rushing to help him.
She's just done making sure that all four of Crocodile's men are down for the count when Nami and Usopp pass her by, and she falls into step beside them as they all follow Nami's directions towards Rainbase's casino.
They end up entering it with Zoro and Luffy, the latter of whom immediately starts screaming for Crocodile.
It attracts the customers' attention for all of three seconds, and Elynna once more finds herself impressed with the power of addiction as she quietly slinks away from the other four and towards the reception desk.
They'll get to Crocodile somehow anyway, but if it can be done without collateral damage for once…
Well, it doesn't hurt to try. It's not like they haven't been noticed already.
So she leans a forearm on the counter to keep an eye on her nakama, and nonchalantly flashes the Baroque Works pendant that she snatched from the man she played bowling with a few minutes before.
"Hey," she casually greets the man behind the counter like she's really supposed to be here. "I was told to go to Mr. Crocodile's office for a meeting, but I've just been promoted, so I don't know where it is. Can you help me, perhaps?"
She sucks at lying when put on the spot, but she's pretty good at pretending when she knows in advance the role she has to play.
(Just like she has no problem knowing what to say to people she doesn't know, until there's no niceties left and she ends up fumbling her way out of the thickening silence, trying not to stretch the nice-and-polite persona she presented.)
"A meeting with Mr. 0? I wasn't informed." The man grumbles suspiciously as he eyes the pendant in her hand to check its authenticity.
Mr. 0?
Her eyes rove over his form until they stop on the tattoo peeking out of the man's collar.
Oh.
Of course they would have some agents among the staff.
Her smile relaxes from polite to casual as she lowers her voice.
"Well, you know how they are with their control over information. Anyway, they're reorganising the whole Billions because of the losses we suffered, so a bunch of us are getting promoted. But hey, I'm sure you'll get your turn with how many people got taken down, man!" She finishes with a light slap against his shoulder.
"It better come fast, then." The agent grouches.
Otherwise I'll just have to take your place goes unsaid.
"They with you?" He goes on with a jab of his chin at the group of yelling dorks behind her.
She doesn't know why the casino staff didn't get most of their pictures yet.
Maybe Crocodile is confident that they won't get here, maybe he doesn't care if they do because he thinks he can deal with them.
It doesn't matter as long as she can exploit it.
"Nah. If I had teammates like that, I would've asked for a transfer or blown their brains out -whichever gets me teammates with actual manners first."
If she really was the subordinate of someone who cares about putting on the act of manners, that is.
Which she clearly isn't.
(It's almost scary how easily these people made her forget about the rules she clinged to like a lifeline for as long as she can remember.
She wonders which other parts of her she might forget the longer she stays.
Which other parts she has maybe already forgotten.)
"Hear, hear." He snorts, before proceeding to explain how to reach Crocodile's office.
She slips back into the crowd just as Smoker enters the building, prompting her crewmates to start running again, until they notice the two rows of saluting staff members inviting them into the hallway leading to the VIP room.
She darts between the different game tables, running in behind Smoker in case he tries to attack her Captain.
Unfortunately, that also means that she only sees the VIP and Pirates signs when everyone else has already fallen into the pit.
The doors are already closing, leaving her no time to think, and the next moment she's -rather stupidly- throwing herself past into the narrow opening.
〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭
It was definitely a stupid idea.
Not that she can do anything about it now that she's in a cage.
Tired of standing around and not sure that she wants to sit next to a brooding Smoker, she goes to lean her back against the bars of the cage, crossing her arms against her chest.
She blinks.
Ah.
So that's why she can barely hear the others' voices and the weight of her bag on her shoulders past the rushing crowd of whispers inside her skull.
She blinks, and then the back of her head is resting against the bars and her eyes are falling close.
(but she doesn't remember when or how, can't make the fingers she knows are hers move, can't feel anything move, and the murmur of the silence in her head is so loud-)
She jolts.
Luffy is next to her, gripping the bars as if to shake off the cage.
She blinks again, and watches lethargically as he sinks to the ground, mouth open to let out a weak whine that she only vaguely recognises to be his, everything in her too stuffy and distant to be hers.
(just like when she was a sick little girl, floating on the edge of consciousness and existence, wrapped in the drowsy torpor of medicine
reality like stilted flashes instead of a movie with no end in sight)
〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭
"This is seastone." Smoker says, as if he isn't alone in a cage with four pirates, the leader of whom he attacked and is currently holding down with the tip of his jutte.
Usopp freezes in the middle of his attempt to replicate a weird, indecisive mix between Elynna and Luffy's fighting stances.
The explanation is nice and all, but did the Marine have to give it by attacking Luffy?!
He's got a fragile heart, damnit.
"We don't know much about it, but this stone emits the same kind of energy as the sea, so it's used in the Marines' cells to keep Devil Fruit Users from escaping. Though I'm surprised you don't know that, since your friend here knows about it."
This time the end of his weapon is pointed towards Elynna.
She gives absolutely no reaction, face still tilted up and eyes still closed.
The silence stretches on and thickens as they all wait for an explanation that doesn't come.
Usopp gulps, his heartbeat echoing too loudly in the room.
"So, then-" Nami goes on, voice stilted as it stumbles over the silence unnaturally, her gaze still trained on their First Mate. "This cage is made of the same…"
"If it wasn't, I'd be long gone. After destroying all of you, of course."
Luffy can make little more than a vague, huffy noise of protest now that the end of the jutte is touching him again.
Zoro's already scowling face hardens as he grips his katana tighter.
Elynna cocks her head on the side and opens her eyes, just enough to look at Smoker through the slits of her lidded gaze.
Usopp finds himself taking a step back before he realises it.
Elynna's eyes might be dark, but they've always been clear and sharp.
(She's too smart, spends too much time dissecting the world and the people in it for her eyes to not be clear and sharp.)
The eyes set on Smoker might as well belong to a corpse, because there's no one looking back from behind the dull opacity of the abyss.
(The girl in Guiren had eyes too broken and lost to pay attention to Usopp or anyone else, but there was something and it was just a matter of repairing it
The girl who sailed to Little Garden with them had eyes that looked past them like they were ghosts, but at least they looked at something-
This isn't a girl
This is an empty husk whose stare will remain unchanged if his existence is erased in the next moment
who won't smile at his voice because if he dives in her eyes he will only find an endless gulf of nothing, every sensation stifled out of existence before it can be echoed and registered
timeless and unknowable)
Then she blinks, and the moment is almost gone.
"Why are you fighting when we're all here to get killed? At least wait to know if it's a painful death that you want to quicken." She comments, mild and mellow like tepid water.
Usopp takes another step back.
(Almost,
because this girl is too far gone to look at him and try to pass off her blunt remarks and pessimism as sarcastic jokes like she would if she noticed how scared he is, with his heart that beats to fast in his chest that is too hot and this cell that feels too tight no matter how big it is
-die?
He doesn't-
He doesn't want to-
like she would if she cared like she usually does)
"Cut it out. Why can't you all be friends?" A low, mocking voice slices through the silence, tall and wide and confident in a way that Usopp knows he will never be, even if he survives this.
〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭
"You're quite the feisty girl."
"What? If you have the time to make this kind of comment, use it to mourn the day you pissed off these guys, because once they get out, you're done for! Right, Luffy?"
"Yeah! Get ready, I'll kick your ass!"
For the nth time in the last ten minutes, Elynna blinks hard in an attempt to clear her vision that keeps blurrying into black.
"Your crewmates seem to place great trust in you, Straw-Hat Luffy. Trust…" Crocodile trails off, before barking out a sudden, sneering laugh. "The most useless thing in the entire world."
And suddenly Elynna finds herself opening her mouth to talk in an effort to keep her focus on the outside world, jerking her head slightly once more to try and break free from the grasp of the indecipherable gurgle of whispers rupturing through her mind.
Her eyes stay glued to the spot where the only bench of their cell is chained to the bars, as if magnetised and cemented there.
"If you really thought that, you wouldn't be carrying out this plan, though. After all, you wouldn't trust that your subordinates can do their job properly. And you wouldn't be eating this food that was prepared by someone else either, because you wouldn't trust that it's not poisoned, or that it's even edible. This is a bit hypocritical."
Silence.
And then-
"Oh?" Crocodile's voice slinks into something more amused than sneering. "What is someone like you doing on this crew? It's a shame. If we had met earlier, it would've been my pleasure to invite you to join me."
Head cocked on the side in consideration, she patiently, repeatedly works her jaw through the same motion, slowly chewing her way through the reality and the weight of her own flesh and bones, gulping down the realisation to digest it fully as she turns to lean sideways against the bars so she can see the man who calls himself Mr. 0.
"Unfortunately, I would have still said no. I have no interest in power. When humans are involved, power only means more problems, whether it's responsibilities or others' ambitions." She pauses with a pensive blink. "Unless you can kill enough people to make others understand that you want nothing to do with them, maybe."
Crocodile stares back at her for a moment, breathing out a long trail of smoke from between the lips parted by his cigar.
Even if he wasn't so much taller and larger than her, it would probably still look like he was looking down his nose at some insect.
Well, in terms of abilities, that's probably what she's worth.
"What a waste." He eventually says, lips twisting with even more disdain than the contempt already stamped onto his every feature.
It makes the scar running across his face ripple like it might rip itself open at any moment.
She shrugs.
"If you think that life is about exploiting your potential in some way, I guess so."
One moment he's sitting in his chair, and the next sand particles are coalescing to outline his shape right in front of her face on the other side of the bars, still staring at her.
He bends down, and blows some more smoke into her face.
She scrunches her nose at the heady, heavy smell that makes her head spin, that would make her fall if not for the support of the bars she's leaning against, because she only knows the thin, discrete scent of Sanji's luxurious cigarettes.
Crocodile sneers again, dripping with something sticky like satisfaction as if her very discomfort is a source of pleasure and a proof of his domination all at once.
"And what do you think life is about, little girl?"
She tilts her head a bit further as she surveys the wide, arrogant planes of his face, and wonders idly what kind of twist his lips would follow if all his limbs were broken and she had one hand poised to crush his throat and a blade on the cusp of plunging into his heart, his life literally in her hands.
Would his eyes dance with something else than this utter confidence in his own invulnerability?
Something shifts beneath her skin and inside her veins, approving and hungry and foreign.
She stays still, and stretches her lips into something as close to a smile as she can, even though she can't touch any of the feelings that are supposed to go with it.
"No idea. Rotting away little by little until you're six feet under and feeding trees?"
Whatever he wants to reply to that, he's cut off by Vivi's voice calling his name.
〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭
"Isn't it ironic? The desire of all of these people to protect your little Kingdom is the very thing that will destroy their beloved country."
"Stop it! Stop! Talking! How- How can you be such a monster?!"
Elynna's fingers stop in their absent raking through her untied hair.
She can't help it.
The sigh of laughter dribbles past her lips, unbidden and amused in an acrid sort of way.
How disgustingly easy it is for people to use this word when they don't want to recognise the similarities between them and the one stepping all over their bones and their heart and their so-called dignity.
(-when they don't want to know the possibility that they might see themselves in those eyes
see themselves when and if they stepped on others and passed them by-)
She wonders, briefly, how many people Alabasta's Princess has betrayed and hurt to get here, in this room, even knowing that her lips have never taken the same cruel path to a smile as Crocodile's have.
She watches listlessly as Nami and Usopp recoil away from her and the sound of her laughter, lips parted with something like the pain and the shock that come after a blow.
(That's when she realises that no matter how close these people sit and sleep next to her, no matter how often and how long their skin meet hers, no matter how scared and bloody they've seen her
-so much more than anyone else-
They've never come close to touching the white rot beneath the caving skin of her chest, the rot that churns in her stomach, that gripes the heavy, dense bones of her jaws and slithers between her teeth like forgotten food
-undigested and unforgettable with the dulling, half-dead taste it leaves behind-
that foams quietly, placidly through the planes of her thoughts until she has no energy for distractions, no energy to interact with anyone but her own self)
The awareness of Luffy and Zoro's stares burns hard into the skin of the clothed but bare back she trusted them with more times than she can count.
Is this it?
Has she pushed too far?
Is what she went through with them (-for them-) not enough to make even the heaviest parts of her an acceptable burden, unlike what she hoped for a few times, when the loneliness made her teeth ache and gnash against each other as her full stomach clenched around its own hollowness?
She's not really surprised.
Even she can't quite bear the weight and the dull acidity of her own putridity when it feasts on any vaguely pleasurable feeling and leaves behind anxiety or exhaustion or grim, overworn realisations, or nothing or all of the above, seeping like oil into the core of her every cell.
She's never expected anyone to want to deal with this along with their own decay.
Usopp and Nami look away from her still fixated gaze, and she lets her eyes slide towards the three people outside of the cage she's leaning against.
Crocodile is looking at her again, and the horror of betrayal is still carved and painted white into Vivi's features like an echo of her brief laughter.
"And you, little girl? What do you think of my plan?"
The corners of her lips quirk up into a sketch of a smile, slipping out of her hands like a ghost of wet silk.
Colourless and meaningless.
"It's impressive."
As far as James Bond villains go, anyway.
Vivi lurches forward as if the ties that keep her bound to the chain Crocodile sat her in are the only things keeping her from twisting her hands into Elynna's travel cloak or printing bruises beneath her skin.
The tears gliding down her cheeks and the fractured notes of her voice sound more hurt than angry, though.
(Or scared, maybe.)
"How- How dare you?! My people are dying because of him-"
"And since when," Elynna cuts her off, because she's seen bones sunken in sands like wrecked lives and Toto's feverish, torn-up hope just like Vivi, "are murder by proxy and the ability to think up brilliant strategies mutually exclusive?"
If you had thrown that type of thinking away at the very moment you caught a glimpse of the kind of enemy you were fighting, maybe you could've stopped this without taking so many desperate measures while your people kept on suffering.
But she has worked on assignments she didn't like with people she didn't like before, and Vivi is already at the end of her rope (perhaps has been for quite some time now), so she keeps that thought to herself.
Piracy and the Straw Hats might have taught her the value of loosening the muzzle around her mouth (relieved tension and false, adrenaline-tinted courage), but when it comes to cooperation, she's known the value of keeping some thoughts behind her teeth and her lips a long, long time ago.
Vivi knocks her chair to the floor along with herself, dragging herself against the ground under the tall shadow of Crocodile's mocking encouragement.
"We can stop you! We can still make it in time- If we can just reach Alubarna before the Rebels arrive…"
And Elynna watches her crawl on the floor, pathetic and pitiful in her waste of efforts that could be spent trying to devise an actual strategy to free the only people who do stand a chance against Crocodile and his strongest agents, instead of blabbing her backup plan to the very man she's fighting against.
"I pity you, little girl," Crocodile comments casually with a drag of his cigar. "You have the talent and mindset to not be constrained by legal and moral rules, and yet you're stuck with this team of buffoons."
She hums, meeting the pensive stare and pleasant smile of Miss All Sunday from where she's still standing at the top of the stairs.
"Guess it's a shame I've been raised in a home that frowns upon the ends and means you're going for, then."
"And where is that home of yours, exactly?"
〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭
The question has barely left Smoker's lips that Nami clenches her fists in an attempt to not lunge at the man to futilely try and punch him.
Elynna is good at hiding her important secrets precisely because she pretends they're not secrets.
But no matter how good she is, Nami has years of experience at acting on her, and Elynna sucks at lying when she's put on the spot.
(and she spends her most vulnerable hours pressed close enough to her that Nami can read her every heartbeat and fluttering breath when her own sleep fades into the moon rays like a dream
There might be too many lines in too many languages to read between and too many layers to decipher with what little light streams into their room, but she takes being Lynna's best friend seriously
After all, if there's one thing her idiot of a Captain has taught her, it would be that it's not because people tell you to leave them alone with their problems that you have to listen to them if you don't feel like it)
Elynna talks about her family and the life she had before them, and she has a Captain who cares little for the past and more for the now and what comes after.
But sometimes she speaks of the before as something from the past (something that isn't anymore now that she's left it) instead of something from another place in the present. She's given them news from the people who used to have her presence in their everyday life, but she has never let them read their letters.
And the home she's described is like a mirage and a house of cards.
If you look at it up close and poke at it, it's too loose to hold whole.
She mentions too many details too casually for it to be an imagined place. Yet, Nami has never heard of any island that fits the bill in the East Blue, nor seen it on any map.
She tells casual anecdotes about her friends or family from time to time, but somehow never seems quite able to speak their names.
It doesn't make what she has shared with them any less real, and this Marine who knows nothing of their First Mate has no right to open his mouth and ask her something that makes her entire body pause like he hit her and she can't breathe.
(That makes her look back at him, every feature drawn into her face with an exhaustion the same colour as her wide, mute eyes.)
"I beg your pardon?"
"I looked for information about your crew as soon as you left Loguetown, and received reports on previous sightings of most of you. But you… None of my contacts in any of the Marine bases of East Blue saw you before you joined the Straw Hats. Any idea why?"
Elynna stares unblinkingly at him.
Then the corners of her lips quiver.
Her shoulders.
Maybe even her entire body, as she throws her head back and laughs, loud and open and quivering like a broken vase put back together too messily and held too loosely for it not to slip and shatter once again.
(and maybe, just maybe, one time too many)
It stops as abruptly as it began, leaving ringing, stunned silence in Nami's ears as her body strains in two directions at the same time.
(She wants to catch Lynna before she crashes and smashes into pieces all over the floor of their cell.
And even though Smoker has never laughed like Arlong, can't know he's holding the knife and twisting it, she still wants him to hurt-)
And then Elynna smiles.
"No that I have any obligation to answer, but why are you looking for a complicated explanation?" She asks, looking genuinely amused, as if he just told her a very good joke instead of poking at the wound whose shape and depth even Nami doesn't know.
"If you can't find anything, then it just means that as far as the Marines are concerned, I don't exist. Doesn't it?"
〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭
The water is about to reach his ankles, and Luffy doesn't care.
He trusts that Sanji and Chopper can't have lost this easily, and he trusts that with their help Vivi will find a way to get them all out of this cell so he can finally kick Crocodile's ass before he can hurt Vivi or the old man from Yuba anymore.
But that's not what matters right now.
What matters is Ann.
Ann, who was doing better after they left Little Garden.
(Right before he had enough of seeing her look through him and the others at things that only seemed to hurt her
right before he made her spit out the name of whoever was doing that to his First Mate so he could go and kick them out of her life and out of her head.
Then again, it might have been her own name, because nothing is ever simple with Ann, and she's stupid like that.)
Ann, whose shoulders looked straighter and whose every smile seemed less slugish after they left Drum.
Ann, whose tension hasn't subsided since they reached Alabasta, who stared at the disappearing back of his brother and breathed out pure, trembling urgency like she wanted to run after him and chain herself to him.
Ann, who is being nicer to their enemies than to Vivi.
Ann, who is staring down at the rising water with that dilated, fixed stare she has when fear walls her in and out of the world so she can work it out, the same way Usopp burns his own fear down by being loud.
(It doesn't always work for either of them.)
He frowns, and marches up to her to poke her in the cheek in his habitual gesture to get her attention.
"Stop worrying. We're gonna get out of here and beat up those guys." He tells her once the dark opacity of her eyes settles on his face.
She cocks her head on the side like she can't quite understand what he's saying, face frozen with blank, mild interest.
And Luffy frowns harder, because that's not how her face looks like when she's afraid.
"I'm not really worried. I doubt the Millions are enough to stop Hermes and Hebi, whether in terms of quantity or quality." She replies absently, and he beams at that.
He's about to ask her what is making her so weird if she's not too worried when she goes on.
"Though if they don't arrive in time, I'll have to find another way to die. I heard drowning is very painful. Any idea what's the quickest between stabbing my heart or my throat? Or maybe I'll have to ask Fang if I can't do it myself… Then again, asking him that might be harder than doing it myself-"
And Luffy watches her, watches as she smiles the exact same smile she always has when she finds his antics funny or finds Usopp's disgust with her jokes funny or just because she's happy, that frank, half-laughing smile that shows her dimples and her crooked teeth, that smile that makes her look more like maybe one day most things will make her laugh instead of sigh-
Except she's not joking right now.
The next moment he's slamming her into the bars of the cell's door before he can think anything other than he has to make her stop now, and it takes him a moment to realise that she's shaking in his hold because his own hands are shaking no matter how hard they're gripping her clothes.
(He doesn't know if it's anger or fear that makes him shake the most.)
"Shut up!" He screams, and behind him the panicked rambling of Usopp that held the others' attention stops. "You're not doing any of that, so stop thinking about it! We're all going to get out of here and help Vivi! Captain's orders!"
She looks at him, and smiles again, reaching up to trace the scar under his eye so lightly that it's almost like her fingers aren't there, before they slip off his skin and fall back down limply.
It's more than enough time to feel the cold of her flesh.
"I've… made a lot of efforts to live up to the role you gave me." She whispers, nearly inaudible under the noise of the water pouring into the room, as if even in that moment she has to be the steadfast First Mate who keeps most of her problems a secret from her subordinates, as if it's the only way they can lean on her.
(even if Luffy knows that none of his crewmates need that to have faith in her)
"I've tried to be independent, to be a good leader when you weren't there, to help you in any fight even if I'm nowhere near a useful level most of the time, to accept that none of you would ever really be safe. But, you know…"
Her smile widens until her eyes are scrunched close, but Luffy still has the time to see the tears that disappear between her eyelashes.
"It's hard, for people like me who don't always have enough strength to keep going until the end. Really, it's almost a miracle that you found so many people like you." She laughs, brief and quiet and soft like it can hide the tight, wet sound inside her throat. "So I don't think I'll ever be as strong as any of you because, well, I'm just- I'm just not made for this."
And Luffy can't clench his fists any tighter in her collar, so he clenches his teeth instead, so hard that it feels like they might just break, because-
Can she really not see?
Can't she see that they don't need her to be strong like them because she already has her own strengths that they don't have? That he just needs her to keep doing her best like she has been since the beginning?
Can't she see how far she's come in the last five months, how no matter the damage she took and the times she had to hide or call for help because she couldn't win on her own, she's still strong enough to get out alive and is still here to have his back in every way? That this is all he asks of a crewmate?
Can't she see that even if she always lets the others decide when it comes to games and food, she always steps up when the situation is serious, because she fears danger and failure more than displeasing others? That even if she dislikes giving them, her advice and orders are usually good, because she's smart and puts the crew first?
So he cocks back an arm and clenches his fingers into a fist again, because that's how Gramps and Ace and Dadan taught him to solve things when someone is being an idiot.
Elynna's smile drops, and she looks at his fist and then back at him like it's too much of a hassle to try and stop him even if she still thinks she's right.
"Luffy, what are you-"
"Luffy, stop!"
What happens after is too fast for him to understand.
His fist meets the bars of the cell with a loud, clanging sound that is immediately followed by the familiar, nauseous weakness that dulls everything and leaves him standing unbalanced halfway into the void.
His other fist clenches close around nothing.
And Elynna falls to the ground outside of the cell, the water level already high enough that her body is entirely submerged.
Zoro's sharp intake of breath is almost covered by Nami's whimper.
The echo of the vibrating bars of the cell settles, and only the sound of the water remains.
His eyes are widened so large they hurt, but he can't close them, can't even blink, as if it would mean missing that one tiny little detail that will tell him that everything is alright-
But there's no movement, no noise, no nothing, and the blurred form of his First Mate is entirely still beneath the lapping body of liquid.
The silence falls inside of his chest like a rock of lead, the hopeful breath of air suspended in his lungs whooshing out upon impact.
(the fear that takes its place leaves no room for anything else as it clutches inside him very, very tight
ears buzzing like when they refused to hear that Sabo is dead, kid, I saw him-)
"... Ann?" He croaks.
There's no answer.
〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭
The light streaming in through what she thinks are her eyelids and the bipping noise are the first things she becomes conscious of, familiar in a way that doesn't seem quite experienced.
And then there's the voice.
"-and that reform is so stupid! I mean, you didn't know what you wanted to do at seventeen, so how am I supposed to pick my major 'in accordance with my life project' at sixteen?! Don't tell them, but Mom and Dad have been on my case to start looking for information even though it's still months away, and they've been super annoying about it. Well, you'd probably agree with them though, right? You always start things too early. You really gotta learn to relax, Chloé."
No answer.
She's pretty sure she knows that Chloé, though, and-
Chloé.
Chloé, Chloé, Chloé.
It wears itself clumsily on her tongue as if she's not used to speaking it, and yet it sounds so well-worn in her ears.
It's-
Oh.
It's her name.
It's her name, so why does it feel like a stranger?
She knows it's not a mistake.
This is the name she was called by when she had lighter hair and darker skin, when she had less friends but had a family, when she only knew violence on a screen and in her own head, when she stuck to the rules always because she didn't have a reason to break them that was worth the trouble yet.
It's her name, she's sure of it, the name she wore in another world, another life for other people.
It's the name that she never told anyone in the last five months.
Her brain sluggishly works to disentangle the realisation out of the realm of impossibility she relegated it to when she realised that she might as well be dead to the world she lived in for eighteen years.
The bipping noise jumps and runs, frantic and urgent like her efforts to find her own mouth and shove her own voice out of it.
There's a faint noise like something hitting the ground, and-
"... Chloé?" Her little sister calls out, voice a faint whisper that reminds her of all the nights spent at their grandparents' place, sleeping in the same room and trying to talk without drawing their parents' attention when it was past their curfew.
The bipping ramps up, the only response to make up for her failed attempts.
(Because for the most part, her senses are there, muted but there.
But that's all.
She's just a mind with sensations attached to it like chains and anchors.
She's always learned that sight is the most important sense to humans.
She will give up her sight in every world if it means she can feel the weight of her flesh, the expansion of her lungs to accomodate the growing volume of air, the texture of what she's sitting or standing or more probably lying on.
If it means she can touch them and be sure they're real, if only-)
"Mom, mom! Call the nurse! Where the fuck is the nurse?!"
"I already told you to let up on the swearing-"
"It's Chloé, her heartrate-"
"Oh my God-"
The voices become louder again, stumbling over each other like the sound of their footsteps.
Another set of footsteps that she recognises from having heard it coming down the stairs of home for years tells her that her dad has arrived before the nurse.
Somewhere, she thinks she feels vague, shapeless warmth, like the greyish light of those seconds before dawn on the horizon.
"Chloé, darling? Can you hear me? If you can hear me, sweetheart, please- Please just squeeze my hand, okay?"
And she hears him, louder and clearer than ever, louder and clearer than the shabby, muddled imitation her mind could come up with during all this time.
She doesn't think she's ever wanted to touch someone so bad in her life.
But she can't.
Because she can't feel her hand or his, doesn't know where her hand is, doesn't know if she even is in her body or just close to it because she can't see him, can't see any of the faces she's spent so much time looking at in her own head that the memories became blurry with tears and overuse.
And she wants to cry, but she can't do that either, because she has no mouth, no voice and no tears or even a throat for them to get stuck in.
She has little more than nothing, and too little to be anything.
The beeping stutters.
"Chloé? Chloé, please, come on, I know you're here-"
"Sweetheart-"
"No! I know she can hear us! She's just-" There's a laugh, stretched in the emptiness between laughter and heartbreak, a sound that belongs nowhere near her strong, optimistic sister. (A sound that she put there.) "She's just being a lazy bitch like when I try to make her get out of bed even though she's been awake for hours, but she's going to wake up because we're here and she has a great school to go to and a great life to live because she's young and super smart and Lucas and Naomi are waiting for her too and-"
"Elynna."
Water gasps into her lungs, or maybe her lungs gasp onto water, and she jerks awake.
〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭
Everything is blurry and spinning, and she lurches to the side, barely catching herself from falling as she kneels there on her hands and knees, hacking and retching in an attempt to expel the excess of sensations forced down her throat and sitting like gelatine in her too tight stomach.
The air in her chest is too hot, stretching her skin too tight and sweaty over her bones until she can do nothing but remember the unease of wearing a body that isn't hers too easily, and the water around her leg is cold and heavy like liquid lead, head pounding and breathing too loud, someone make it stop-
She freezes, and the rushing of water in her ears coalesces with that of her own blood, as she stares down at her hands.
Her white hands.
Not tanned skin.
White.
Everything in her goes hard and cold and distant and breaking like frostbite, and maybe-
"Fuck!"
Maybe that's why it takes her a moment to register the hoarse rush of expletives as her voice (and no matter how idiotic she knows it to be, she can't bring herself to care about the fact that she's speaking them in languages that shouldn't exist in front of Smoker, because it should be people who understand it in his place-), to recognise that it's her hand which rattled and scraped as it hit the stony floor beneath her, the water doing little to slow down her fist or protect her skin.
She clenches her teeth like bones she wants to break and grind into dust, water still dripping down her hair and face and clothes, hot like blood.
Or maybe she's just crying, and that's why everything is so blurry.
She tried so hard-
"God-"
Tried so hard to deal with it when she couldn't stuff it down and let it rot to nothing in silence anymore, to make peace with the fact that she would never go back, that she lost people she didn't give enough to for good-
Tried so hard to be happy with her life here without looking back too much, to make it different enough that it can never be second best (that they can never be second best, no matter how often memories of them as simply a figment of someone else's imagination blared white and black in her mind), to breathe a little easier as time went on and not feel too bitter about it, to not feel too guilty as the shards of her memories become a bit duller and the number of times where she finds herself suddenly unable to breathe slowly decrease month after month.
"-fucking-"
So why couldn't this happen earlier?
Why couldn't it happen when she was still scrambling and aching for the smallest crumbs of hope, when this would have slid down her throat like cool water trickling down a parched throat and a warm blanket in the thick of winter, instead of peeling her open and raw like a wound dressed in salt and sun, carving her alive out of the place she was settling in?
"-damnit!"
She breathes in a heaving, ragged scream of air, fist frozen somewhere near her face except for the blood and water weeping out of her mangled knuckles, torn patches of skin flimsily attached to the bones peeking out of the mess of red and pink and yellow.
(it would be like dawn if her new beginning didn't just get swept from under her feet to leave her drowning like a murdered sun in the ocean,
tainting it red with her pain and the leaking blood of the life she could have led if she stayed ignorant)
She sits (-falls-) back on her heels and lets her hand hit the water limply, soothing and torturing cool over distant, high-pitched sting.
She tilts her head all the way back, throat constrained in a way that lets her feel the breath going in and out of her lungs.
For the first time since they left Drum, she takes a moment to think about what she learned there with nothing else to distract her.
"He'd been brought for a specific mission, apparently, and the only thing I know about the one who brought him here is that it's a woman -though it might just be a group of people."
Her shredded hand twitches in the rising water that is reaching her ribs.
And then she thinks about the voice (voices?) that dragged her back here before she could give any kind of answer.
"Elynna."
"Ely-"
A raise of her other hand towards the cell is enough to silence Usopp.
She stays silent despite the uncertain shake of his voice, focusing on breathing in enough air to compress the hissing, crackling violence that is crawling inside her veins at the idea of hearing that name when the voice is still ringing in her ears.
She places her good hand over her eyes, ignoring the tremble of it, and drags it back down her face as she cracks her neck back into a more normal position.
Distantly, she thinks that she has been annoyed a lot in her life, especially when she was younger.
She's been genuinely angry much less, and more often than not in a disillusioned kind of way, except perhaps in this world, where the things that make her angry aren't simply things that she knows, but things that she experiences, bright and loud like a slap in the face.
But in that moment-
In that moment, when she becomes certain that someone brought her here on purpose, well-
She thinks that she finally understands what authors meant in the books she read.
The words murderous rage aren't a fancy metaphore.
Her hand falls away from her lower jaw, as if shrugged off by the twitch of her lips as they peel back over bared teeth that are half a snarl and half a laugh.
(because really, it's almost funny how long it took her to actually think about this enough to get angry)
And she laughs, but it's indistinguishable from sobbing, hoarse after the screams that tore through her throat and bleeding like her shredded knuckles as she sits there drenched in water that might as well be her tears.
〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭
If possible, Zoro tenses even further as Elynna's presence rolls and ripples across his skin like the chill of the morning fog.
But despite how small she is compared to the Bananawanis, none of them creeps any closer to her, eyeing her from a distance instead.
Uneasy.
And Zoro finds himself remembering his Master.
〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭
He pants, his body still unused to the added exertion of the new step in his trainng regimen, and glares up at the only adult in this dojo who can get the best of him.
"How did you know I was here?! You told me I mastered silencing my steps!" He yells, scowling harder at the idea that the older man might lie to him to make him feel better after losing to Kuina again.
He's not interested in that kind of bullshit.
He lost because she was strong and he was still too weak.
The only thing he's interested in is getting stronger-
Kuina's father smiles down at him, gentle like the touch of his wooden blade under Zoro's chin.
"Silencing your steps means nothing against some opponents if you don't silence your presence, Zoro."
His glare lessens, mouth working around the new concept in confusion.
"Silence my presence? What does that mean?"
His Master retracts his katana to let him sit up with a quiet hum of consideration, walking back to the dojo's training room to put back his training katana.
Zoro imitates him, before sitting down next to him as Kuina's father slides both hands into the opposite sleeve, recognising the position as the one the older man takes when he's looking for the best way to explain something.
"Others call it aura, or qi, and a number of other things, and there's a lot of debate about its definition, even from those who have experienced it. It's a very mysterious concept," he eventually starts.
"Everything in this world has a presence, although it's much harder to feel that of stones and water, or even plants, because their existence does not happen on the same plane of being as ours. When it comes to humans, our presence is made up of a lot of things, including our breathing, the way we move, how we are feeling in terms of health and emotions… All of this forms a signature that is unique to every individual, and which can give you information on the people whose signature you read. This is what happened when Tanaka-san's dog attacked Lee instead of you when you entered his territory, even though you were the closest to him. Tanaka-san told you that his dog smelled Lee's fear, while you were ready to fight back. Emotions, especially if they are intense, change the feel of our presence. Animals tend to have more developped senses and sharper instincts than us, which makes it easier for them to perceive auras."
"Then how can I do it? I already train my senses, but I can't sense Kuina at all."
"You would have to train your senses to a much higher level than what you are aiming for to perceive auras, although to be exact, this ability is actually a sixth sense achieved through the improvement of the five basic senses. There are also different levels of expertise to this ability: some might be better at reading strength levels based on auras while others might be better at reading emotions."
"Reading strength levels? Isn't that easy?" Zoro interrupts the man again with a confused frown. "Strong people have a strong aura, right?"
His Master's smile mellows a bit in amusement.
"As far as I'm aware, you're right. But that doesn't mean that everyone who has a strong presence is also a strong fighter. Someone who feels intense emotions usually has a strong signature too, and if you have in front of you a sick person and a healthy one, it is likely that the latter's presence will feel strong, regardless of their experience in the arts of war. For example, the daughter of the baker who comes here every week has a stronger presence than Kuina, because she has a strong life force and feels things very intensely, while Kuina's strength is akin to… how to say it… a sheathed blade. At first glance, her presence is less noticeable than Arisa-chan's."
Zoro looks down for a moment. This explains a lot of things that he confusedly experienced previously. It was true that when that Arisa girl came to visit once while he was sparring with Kuina, he had difficulty keeping his focus on Kuina's movements, and while it was mainly because the other girl was loud, it helped him to understand his Master's lecture much more than most of the complicated stuff Zoro ever heard him talk about.
(Still, he can't help but struggle with the idea that Kuina would ever feel like anything but strength.)
"So how can I silence my presence?"
"Well, keeping your emotions stable is a big part of it. Even excitement at the idea of landing a blow is enough to alter your aura. But I don't think your kind of strength can allow you to do anything more than that. You would be better off honing your presence into an intimidation factor."
Zoro scowls a bit, but shrugs it off easily enough.
He's not interested in hiding, anyway, so he doesn't need that kind of stuff.
"Are there people who can completely erase their presence?"
The curl of his teacher's mouth settles into a line, stern and a bit wistful.
"Only through death can someone's presence disappear entirely, Zoro."
〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭
Elynna's presence was always quiet to him, barely registering on his radar because his senses weren't developed enough to pick up the signatures of everyone around him outside of a fight. It didn't help that introspective people who are more present in their own head than outside of it and tend to internalise their emotions usually have a weaker signature than average.
Even in the middle of a fight, her aura has more or less stopped spiking with fear and adrenaline with her accumulated experience, which makes sense for someone whose fighting style works with a kind of internal focus like his, which differs from pure instinct.
But it's not spiking right now either. Simply settled on an entirely stronger level.
(Like killing intent and nothing like it.
It's being dunked head first in a lake in the middle of winter, water seeping everywhere too hollow to fight back, too fluid to be taken away but hard like ice, exploiting every weakness in a way that would be cruel if it wasn't so blatantly undiscriminating.)
Those crocodiles aren't wary because she has suddenly gotten stronger, simply because of how abrupt the change in her presence was and its magnitude, which is forcing them to err on the side of caution and reconsider how much of a threat his First Mate actually is.
But as far as he's concerned, if the situation wasn't this dire, he would almost smile.
Because this tastes like potential.
It tastes like what Elynna can be if she keeps molding the muddled weakness of her inexperience into this.
The aura seeping through his teeth like cold water in the desert (so cold it doesn't relieve but burns-) is whispering about a future that can almost make him forget his anticipation at the idea of fighting a Shichibukai and his goons.
(It speaks of ruthless efficiency clad tightly behind unassuming calm like teeth behind a flavourless smile.
Nonchalant power. A shark under the still surface, waiting.)
And then Elynna's mouth abruptly clicks shut, fingers threading through the water and emerging clenched around a small piece of rock from the previous attacks of Crocodile's pets.
With a sideways glance that glides over the cell like there's no one in it, she throws it through the bars and at Usopp's feet.
Zoro frowns.
What is she-
"Hey, Captain." She calls out as she gets to her feet, turning her back on them as she faces the group of huge animals who are apparently getting tired of being cautious.
In the corner of his vision, Zoro watches Luffy's shoulders hitch up higher towards his ears.
"... Yeah?"
"I'm gonna blow off some steam, before I end up hurting someone I actually like. From the voice, it wasn't Hermes getting a beating on the Den Den Mushi, so he should be here soon."
Luffy frowns hard, clearly unsure of whether it's a good idea to let her go off on her own in her current state, especially since they have no idea what caused it.
But it's Luffy, so Zoro knows what he's going to say before he opens his mouth.
"... Come back when you're done."
Her shoulders slouch just a tad, and none of them need her to turn around to know that there's a smile whispering at the edge of her lips, a bit of their own tension bleeding out of their bodies in response.
"I will. Ah. Ever made sand castles before?"
The question comes out of nowhere, and Luffy's frown is more confused than anything else at that point.
"Yeah, with Ace and- Why are you asking that?"
"Then you can definitely take down Crocodile. Hit him extra-hard for me, okay?"
"Lynna, they're about to attack-"
"Hawk, mind shooting the pebble at the wall against the entrance?"
Usopp blinks, but doesn't question her further as the Bananawanis start creeping forward, clearly having decided to keep Elynna into the 'prey' category.
The loud sound of the stone breaking upon impact with the wall up the stairs makes almost half of the creatures look towards the entrance to determine its origin.
That's when Elynna throws the other stone she picked up into the eye of one of them.
In the time it takes for it to stop howling and turn back around, she slips her foot under the block of stone from the broken stairs that was at her feet, thrusts it in the air, and spins around so she can kick it with enough force at the head of another alligator.
In less than ten seconds, just about the entire group is thrown into their version of a brawl, huge bodies twisting and hurtling against each other as their jaws snap and bite down on anything to fill their stomachs even as their own flesh is being torn away from their bones, mindless of the comparatively pint-sized human girl using their bodies to reach what is left of the stairs and disappear behind the doors.
Downstairs, Usopp gapes, suddenly very glad that he's in a cage that even the beasts' teeth can't break.
"Just so you know, this is all thanks to the Great Usopp's teaching." He comments, eyes closed because even after all the fights he took part in, seeing this much blood slashing through the air to splatter against the walls and the ceiling only to drip down and sink in the water is a bit too much.
Sanji and Vivi come in a few minutes later to find an escapee from a cell still closed, a few giant crocodiles dead, and pink water unable to dilute all the blood coming from a disemboweled one, its entrails still floating around like morbid renditions of seaweed.
〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭
"Say, Elynna…"
She hums in response, carefully labelling the decoctions Chopper prepared that morning with the herbs he took from Drum Island.
"Have you ever… killed someone?"
She stops in her task, putting her pen down to turn in her seat and face the small reindeer.
"Are you asking me that as a patient or as your First Mate?"
"… Both?"
She smiles fleetingly, amusement frank in the way her lips curl.
"I have. Two people, as far as I'm aware."
"As far as you're aware?"
"Both times happened during the first month or so I spent with Sea King and the others. I had barely started training but ended up having to fight anyway because there were too many people for Fang and Sea King to keep track of. I tripped the first one and she smashed her head on the corner of a table. The second time, I punched a guy in the throat too hard. His necklace ended up embedded in his throat and he choked on his blood. The East Blue might be the weakest sea, but because the Marines are less present and less strong there compared to the rest of the world, petty criminals tend to thrive. Most of the fights we got involved in when we were there were with other pirate crews or bandits, and it was usually more of a brawl than a fight because half of those involved didn't know what they were doing or were too drunk to know what they were doing. I was more focused on the next attack than what happened to people I had already gotten away from, so it's possible that others died because of me and I just didn't notice it."
Chopper frowns down at the sheet of paper on his desk, soft and serious, and the chair creaks under his weight as he changes form to one with more human hands so he can annotate his recipe.
"You don't regret it?"
She tilts her head at that, before sighing.
"I felt guilty. I'm not sure if I still do, though." She shrugs, not quite sure that she understands herself entirely but still trying to explain the vague nausea that stuck to her throat for days, impossible to swallow or ignore. "It's not like I wanted to kill them, and I didn't know enough about these people to hate them or even dislike them. I'm not even sure it would make me feel better about killing them. They probably had people who loved them somewhere, and-"
She pauses to forcefully blink away the memories of the people who were torn away from her.
"-their pain is on me, at least partially. But I don't know if you can say that I regret it."
"So… You don't wish you could have done better?"
"They died because I barely had enough skill to look after myself, let alone others. I was already doing my best. Usually, I try to take people out without hurting them too much or killing them, but I'm not strong or experienced enough to control my aim and my strike all the time during something as messy as a fight. If there are more than two or three people or I don't have a definite advantage over them, I'm not going to hold back and be careful with everything I do. It would be an embarassing way to die, and since I have an entire crew of batshit crazy people to take care of, I can't afford to let people kill me that easily."
Chopper nods, but she can't read his face from where she is, so she shrugs and goes back to work, not really caring why he asked her about this.
She doesn't tell him that the emotional afterimage of those she killed is but a whisper when that of people she left with debilitating injuries follows her in her dreams, sometimes, when she's too tired to make survival sound like anything less than a flimsy excuse, because in her head she can't remember equaling death with something else than a long-awaited nap in return for the grueling work people put into living.
〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭
Mr. 12 was very happy when he and his partner Miss Saturday were called to Rainbase.
After all, who didn't like being made aware of their boss' secret identity before their higher-ranked colleagues?
Besides, their respective tasks of guarding Crocodile's office and spying on the staff of the casino to ensure that none of its members were spies sent here to take advantage of the sudden surge in recruitment to reassure customers in the face of the country's situation was pretty much a paid vacation.
Who would try and break into the office of one of the Shichibukai and the country's hero, right?
The insane little bitch who just waltzed in and took down all fifteen of his subordinates, that's who.
Body ramrod straight with the constraining tension of fear closing in around him, he watches the girl standing in the middle of strewn bodies that groan and bleed, a fan in one hand and a knife almost as long as her forearm in the other.
He watches her watch one of his subordinates sit back up to try and get to his feet with the same vague interest one dedicates to an advertising board because there's nothing else to do.
Watches as she nudges the man's chin up with her toes, blinks, and slams his skull back against the wall.
Now he's definitely on his own.
He gulps, almost vibrating with the tension between taking a defensive position and staying put in an attempt to fade into the background.
The decision is taken out of his hand when she tilts her head back and her eyes slide to him.
Mr. 12 has been in the bounty hunter business for fifteen years, including eleven in the Grand Line. He's no slouch at what he does, and far from stupid.
But his skills lie in sniping, and at this distance he's not sure that he can take his pistols out in time.
It's humiliating.
This girl isn't even particularly strong.
She just read his subordinates' movements a bit faster than they did hers, was just a bit more precise in her hits to go for the places that hurt the most and incapacitate the easiest. He would know, his father was a doctor and he grew up surrounded by drawings of the human body.
(She's also twice as unpredictable, with limbs curled too loosely to guess their direction until it's too late and a rhythm that makes no fucking sense
and movements that seem to serve no purpose except to waste energy, that he tries to read the purpose of until he realises that they're just here to confuse him like smoke curtains.)
It's humiliating, but he's not stupid.
Her panting breath has already settled, and the deep gash in her thigh doesn't seem to faze her much.
Above all, the black of her eyes is dilated so far that he can't see the colour of her eyes, and the way they're tracking every tremor of his skin and every shift on his face doesn't make them seem any more human.
(He's also pretty sure that the way her teeth and jaws flex like a snarl barely contained beneath the thickness of her white skin means that she's angry.
When people like her really get angry, they're not sloppy.
They just have less patience.)
His eyes flicker to the bodies of his unconscious coworkers, and then to the hand of one of them that lies on the ground like a bizarre spider, the cut so clean that it barely seems strange for it to be so far from the arm it's supposed to be connected to.
But it's the only severe injury, and no one is dead.
His hands inch away from his pistols.
"P- Please let me go. I'll give you the key. I never wanted to be a part of this to begin with, but- I have a family to support, see?"
She stares at him for a long moment that feels like the blade of her fan is pressed against his throat, still sticky with the blood of his coworkers.
Then she smiles, mellow and polite as if she isn't still pressing her foot down on the head of a man twice as large as her and all muscles.
"Like most people in this country. But I guess I might've done the same."
He takes that as an authorisation when she only moves to put her foot back on the ground, and tosses her the key before slowly starting to inch his way past her.
He only turns his back to her once he's five steps away and she still hasn't moved, unable to keep the smirk off his face.
Sob stories always do work better than bragging when it comes to bluff.
He and Miss Saturday also specialise in infiltration and spying, after all.
Now he just has to lock her up once she's inside the office with the spare key he made in case he needed something on Crocodile to ensure his safety, and call the Boss, since he'll probably want to speak with her.
(Though he's not sure that what will happen will qualify as a conversation.)
Then he can get his reward for finding the spy when he shows him the Baroque Works pendant hanging from her neck, and get out of here before the Marines decide that Crocodile is more trouble than he's worth.
It's all perf-
He doesn't have the time to comprehend the whistling slicing through the air before something hard hits the back of his head.
The floor rushes up to meet his face.
〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭
There's a few gashes and scratches and a collection of bruises on her body.
Fighting more than a dozen people when you don't have the level for it tends to do that.
She knows that it should hurt more.
Or rather, she knows that it should hurt more in the world where the people she loves call her Chloé.
(She wishes it would hurt more.
At least she would be sure it would stop hurting eventually.)
If that's how everyone feels in this world…
Well, maybe that's why so many of them are so damn brave.
Because the pain should drag her feet against the ground, one more chain with every drop of blood that seeps out of her flesh.
But instead the breath whispering through her blood is airy like freedom.
(It tastes like power.
Too much for someone like her.
So much she could drown.)
Once she's stopped the blood flow of the guy whose hand she cut (the smell of blood and pain still never fails to make her stomach heave on itself in disgust, no matter how little of an aftertaste the accompanying sights leave in her mind) and the last man she knocked out is tied up with her travelling cloack, since he's the most likely to wake up and be in a good enough state to cause trouble, Elynna finally makes her way into Crocodile's office.
The door clicks shut behind her, leaving only her breathing and the thick silence of a soundproof room.
It's clean and tasteful, decorated with dark wood and discrete luxury in a way that says 'I am a rich criminal and I will wring you dry of everything you love before you can bring me to a competent judge'.
Typical.
Her eyes run over the expensive books on the expensive shelves, the expensive desk on the expensive carpet, the expensive paintings.
Crocodile likes costly things, and it's obvious.
…
What would he look like, if she tore everything here to shreds and burned it all down?
Her hands flex into almost-fists.
She brings them up to her neck, slips them under the collar of her top to touch between her shoulder blades.
Then she holds on her breath, digs her nails in hard enough to almost scratch, and drags them back out and around both sides of her neck, slowly, until they join again between her collarbones.
She breathes out.
The collar of stinging skin prickles on the edge of her consciousness, just loud enough to keep the bare, gnashing teeth of her rage muted.
She can't do that.
It's nowhere near enough.
Hitting him won't do either. Her Captain is already taking care of that, and she's too weak anyway, even if she knows one of his weaknesses.
No.
She screws the lines of her mouth close until they stop trembling, forcing her throat to gulp down the monstrous thing of grief and rage that is stuck there and threatening to shatter.
Right now, she feels less like choking on her tears and more like making someone else choke on theirs.
Preferably Crocodile.
He seems to enjoy tearing people to pieces along with any hope they have to put themselves back together.
It'd be a shame if he didn't get to taste that too.
So it's not enough that Luffy will knock him back to the ground.
Not for her.
She wants him to hit the ground, wants him to get back up and be ready to go back to the top.
(wants to see his face when the ground crumbles under his feet and he just keeps falling-
Just.
Like.
Her.)
She wants to drag him down to her level and then lower still, until she's looking down on him and stepping on his face, no matter how much larger and taller he is.
(Then maybe she can bathe in his loss and forget her own.)
Even if it doesn't work, she's wanted to crush him since the beginning anyway, and she's curious to know how much she can enjoy destroying someone she dislikes this much.
She pushes herself away from the door to browse through the shelves.
Think.
Crocodile is meticulous and distrustful, arrogant and sure of his victory.
So he's kept traces of any deal he's made to bind his partners, and he's hidden them in plain sight.
This is also the office of the alleged hero of the country.
She plops herself down on the luxurious desk chair a few minutes later and makes herself comfortable, one hand opening the first of several files to skim through while the other fishes through the bag she brought for their desert trek in search of the clothes at the bottom.
〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭
"Sir."
Dan jumps with a muffled curse, whirling around to come face-to-face with a female colleague.
"What are you doing here?" He scowls, slightly pissed that a clearly younger soldier got the jump on him. "Officer Tashigi said to head to Rain Dinners to find the Capt-"
He stops, eyes narrowing further into a suspicious glare.
Most of the soldiers who followed Captain Smoker are men.
He doesn't recognise this woman at all.
"... You. Show me your credentials."
Her lips press together like he's wasting her time, but there's no sign of nervousness on her face as she holds out her ID card.
The tension lining his shoulders settles even further when he takes a good look at her card. He hasn't been on guard duty for some time, but he's pretty sure Kaji Ryūko's information is real.
"Alright." He gives her back her card. "Why did you come here alone? Where's the rest of your regiment?"
"I was sent here alone as a spy." She shrugs. "My superior thought that something was off with the situation here. Anyway, I came to give you my info. It'll be better guarded than if I take it back alone, especially now that things are about to blow up. Also, please make copies just in case."
Dan grumbles as he catches the folders tied together with a strip of torn fabric. He doesn't need a brat to repeat the protocol that he already knows by heart-
He frowns down at the folder whose title he can read.
Taxation Report
What?
He frowns harder, noticing the seal that the Marines gave to the members of the Shichibukai stamped in a corner of the folder.
No, but seriously, what?
He might not like pirates, and he might not trust the Shichibukai farther than he can throw them, but Kuma and Crocodile are the only ones who actually do their job.
Crocodile even offered to protect the Founding Kingdom of Alabasta when the situation started to take a turn for the worse, but Dan wouldn't expect him to save the country on his own when there are so many things going to shit at the same time.
Especially since he's probably the weakest of the Shichibukai right now.
And he very much doubts that whatever is going on has anything to do with the tributes the guy pays to the World Government.
He shoots a dubious glance at the spy.
"How is this supposed to help us-"
"Look, just make sure to bring it to Smoker or his closest subordinate. If it's useless, you can always give it back to Crocodile later. Whatever floats your boat. But I'm not budging from here as long as I don't see those folders in your superior's hands."
"Watch your manners, brat." He spits back.
He might not be higher-ranked and spies might belong to an entirely different branch of the Marines, but he's still got years of experience on that kid, and if someone finds out he's let a little girl walk all over him, his reputation will be shot to hell for at least the next ten years.
He still turns back around to go and hand the folders to Tashigi, though, because the tense fluttering of the spy's muscles is enough to convince him that this is important.
Crocodile might be one of the most civilised of the bunch, but he's still a pirate. None of the higher-ups would blink an eye if he found a spy in his office and killed them, Marine or not.
The kid clearly isn't the type to risk her life for shit and giggles.
And if he can get a promotion out of this, well…
It's a win-win, right?
The way Tashigi gradually blanches further than he thought humanly possible as she skims through the documents of the first folder is enough to push back that particular thought process.
Clearly, they're going to have to deal with a lot of shit before he can enjoy a higher salary.
"Bring me that spy, Dan." His superior whispers with wide eyes and barely enough breath to be heard.
He turns on his heels to do just that and-
stops right there.
"Dan!" She repeats louder when he doesn't move.
"Uh- Not that I don't want to, Tashigi-san, but… She's not here anymore."
"What?!"
She whirls around, almost smacking Dan in the head with the sheathed katana clutched in her hand, but the spot the spy swore she wouldn't move from is still glaringly empty.
"Damnit… What did she look like?"
"Uh… Average size, and a bit plump. Or maybe it was her muscles? I couldn't see with her clothes. Very pale. Dark hair and eyes, but I couldn't tell the exact colour. Her papers were in order, name's Kaji Ryūko-"
He cuts himself off as Tashigi raises her hand, a soft furrow at the end of her brow showing that she was shuffling through her memory for something.
"Wait. Dan. Isn't that the description from that deserter's wanted poster? Alice something?"
"... Fuck. Sorry, Tashigi-san. The different name threw me off, and-"
"It's fine. I wouldn't have made the connection either with everything that is going on. At least we know that her information is somewhat reliable, considering her previous actions. Finish packing what is left with the others and let's go meet up with Smoker-san. He'll know what to do."
"Understood!"
〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭
Standing on one of the nearby roofs, Elynna looks down as the Marines quicken the pace of their activity.
After a few seconds, her gaze drifts to her right hand with a sort of blank curiosity.
She brushed her fingers against the seastone cuffs hanging from the belt of a soldier while he was looking elsewhere during her escape, but-
The whispers have stopped.
If the dizzying rush of sensations she can't compute is still there (like an added sense or another dimension to her existence that stretches her too thin to act on any), it's faint enough to be easily pushed aside.
The pull towards something isn't here anymore either.
Whatever happened, she's lost something in the process.
She turns around to leave in the direction of what is supposed to be Alubarna (if she read the map correctly, that is), lips quirked up into something sardonic and just a bit shattered.
(Losing something that she barely experienced is the least of her worries when she lost everything that kept her grounded for eighteen years.)
The sudden stiffness in her shoulders eases up as a drop of rain lands on her cheek.
It comes at just the right moment.
She needs at least a good downpour to relax, and it's too damn hot in here anyw-
Wait.
She almost trips with how suddenly she stops.
It's not-
It's not supposed to be raining in this country.
Staring unseeingly in front of her, she reaches up to drag a hand down her cheek.
She's not dreaming. It is wet.
Her tongue darts out.
Wet and salty.
She blinks, brain tripping itself into loops as she struggles to comprehend that another tear is gliding down her other cheek.
The bark of laughter that escapes her is unexpected, shakes her so hard she almost falls forward, the sound flat and incredulous and a kind of high-pitched that is just shy of glass breaking.
"Wha- What the fuck-"
Her mouth clicks shut, voice wobbling too hard and too tight to keep going-
(It sounds like herself,
but broken into tiny little pieces that reflect more broken pieces and form nothing coherent
because not all the pieces are here.)
It's never come without a warning before.
Her knees buckle as her shoulders start shaking harder, rocks caving in and collapsing into the rising pressure inside.
Nope.
Nonononono-
She doesn't have the time for that.
She has to find the others, and Sea King might need her help because she can bet that he's going to dive head first into this fight and it's the worst idea against someone this smart, and she can't stay here in the middle of Baroque Works' Headquarters when things are this messy and she can't hear anything over the sound of her breath and the beating of her heart, too fast and tooloudtooloudtoolou-
She paws and wipes at her cheeks in an attempt to keep up with the tears, but they come too fast and too many.
Hiccups heave up her throat in painful little gasps that struggle to make it past her forceful attempts to shove them down, emerging out of her mouth shredded and hurtful and pitiful like a panicked little child who has lost her parents' hands after hanging onto them for as long as she can remember.
She curls up on herself in a childish attempt to make the world around her disappear (it's the wrong world, wrongwrongwrong-), and sobs quietly into the hands cupped over her mouth to muffle any sound of weakness, alone and lost on that roof in the middle of a civil war.
〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭
Um... I did say that Alabasta would be one hell of a ride, but even I didn't know I'd end up with a chapter containing just about zero joke and a whole lotta angst.
Watch me be so impatient about my own fic that I end up foreshadowing all the badassery that is to come. Just to be clear, Zoro does not have Kenbunshoku Haki. He has trained his senses to be sharper than even the average person of his world, so he's more aware of his opponents' movements during a fight, and when he's close enough to someone emotionally or physically strong or whose emotions change suddenly, he can pick up on their presence. But he can't pinpoint their precise locations, sense intent enough to perfectly dodge attacks based on it or read emotional states based on it the way Kenbunshoku Haki users can. He's at the pre-beginner level lol.
Anyway.
Crocodile and Elynna ended up with a much better chemistry (and longer conversation) than I planned. She's still going to legally destroy him though. She takes petty to a whole new level XD
For those who don't remember since I only mentioned it once, Elynna is her second name, which is why her family called her Chloé. In short, she didn't tell Luffy her first name when he asked because she had just transmigrated and it would've felt a bit too real to give her actual name.
Since I'm very mean, I won't explain anything of what happened here that is related to the transmigration subplot, but feel free to throw your theories at me!
(... not literally, please)