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Zoro never really cared about the sea.
He grew up on the far side of an island he can hardly remember the name of with the ocean right at their feet and he just never really cared. Zoro only ever had one thing in mind and it was his swords- his power and his goals. Things like the water, or the earth were so far away. Not far away like his ambition to beat Kuina, far away like whatever distant sun there was in the sky that he would never hear of. He was and would always be simple like that.
He blinks and the small boat he is currently on sways with a rough wave. Zoro feels the rough bark of wood dig into his back- he wonders if its uncomfortable, if it should be. It should right? His eyes glance up at the barely made of a man boy sitting on the front of the ship, his back to him. Shells Town is a distance away behind them and Zoro has no idea where they’re headed by now.
They’ve been sailing for some couple of hours, barely a word shared between them. Zoro doesn’t mind. He’s known shared silences- between unwilling companions on some forgotten wagon heading to nowhere, between severed heads worth his meals for the week and the frightened people who collected them, and now between him and his new captain. His first captain. This shared empty space is infinitely different- it isn’t filled with some catatonic waiting game of who’s going to scream first when they notice the blood on his hands or on his swords. This silence feels like what he believes serenity to be- a medley of this, that, everything and understanding.
“Do you have any idea where we’re going?” Zoro decides to break the silence- comfort as it was even if he already knows the answer. He knows he does, somewhere in his gut. Zoro asks because he wants to. Because he wants to know if there’s nothing up there in Luffy’s head or if there’s too much there’s no point in thinking anymore.
Somehow, he’s fine with both and nothing at all.
Luffy doesn’t even turn around- only continues to sway his legs over the side of the boat. The sea is cold and fickle but they don’t feel the chill, for some reason or another. Luffy- his captain, his captain- shrugs his shoulders like there isn’t weight over them, like the wind isn’t freezing, like the wood from their ship isn’t rough under skin and that maybe they should be uncomfortable.
“Does it really matter?” And maybe Zoro should have expected him to say something related to food, related to something supposedly ridiculous but he doesn’t have those types of expectations. From the moment he saw Luffy standing on those execution grounds he knew to not expect anything but what is and what would be. He has a feeling Luffy lives the same way too. It’s a good thing.
He doesn’t choke down his chuckle, he doesn’t want to. “You tell me, captain? Should I be worried?”
Luffy’s head does spin at that, a grin stretching across his face surely, though his eyes are the only thing visible above his shoulder. They’re mischievous and something close to amused and Zoro thinks they reflect his own in some type of manner. “You don’t seem the type to be worried about that stuff. Too much of a meathead moron I think.”
Zoro wants to smack his captain beside the head like no other but the laugh bubbling deep in his throat allows him only the opportunity to briefly snarl at the comment. Zoro is going to be the greatest swordsman in the world and he’ll be damned if he lets his brat of a captain make him break his patience. He does however mutter under his breath “I’m definitely going to get you once we get off this damn boat, you idiot rubber bastard...”
Luffy definitely hears him, what with the way his laugh resonates across the small boat and into the ocean as he turns back to the horizon. It’s boisterous and cheeky and everything the brat he is and Zoro thinks the laugh could make the ocean vibrate with its sound. He doesn’t know much about seas or oceans or any other too big stretch of water he just might have to swim across one day but he thinks the water around them and the sound of Luffy’s laugh pair unbelievably well. The laugh settles across the water much like moonlight over skin and Zoro can only settle further against the wood and its should be uncomfortable nature.
“But really,” Luffy begins, his boyish voice uncaring and carefree and all the way in the clouds Zoro doesn’t think he can ever reach there. It’s fine, he thinks. Some people weren’t meant for the clouds like others but Zoro’s not all that sure where he belongs. “We’re gonna head for the Grand Line that’s for sure but right now who knows and who really cares?”
Luffy and Zoro made a deal that whatever they do, Luffy will not interfere with his dream. They made that promise fleeting and simple on an execution ground between navy men and a city that shouldn’t mean anything but it does- it means a lot down the line he doesn’t see yet, the one he can’t even fathom. They made that promise and Zoro doesn’t swear on things lightly- he knows he doesn’t and yet- something stirs when he watches Luffy. He knows Luffy doesn’t swear on things lightly as well.
“So we’re drifters,” he comments, both eyes set to the sky and its infinite stars are all staring right back at him- the waves still shift and the wood is still pressed against his back. He almost wants to ask if while they’re drifting what if their dreams- different and separate as they are- drift from them as well. However, Zoro has never been one for what ifs and probability and questions that scream inside people’s head until they’re too afraid of taking a single step forward. He doesn’t ask because it doesn’t matter and because he will not stray. That’s the honesty he has given himself and the ambition he has given his captain. Luffy doesn’t seem to care about the unknown as much as he does and he feels something close to lucky.
“We’re pirates. You should get used to saying that,” Luffy corrects, and he can hear the smile on his voice. A breath of silence stretches across them and the distance is jarring- both unstoppably close and immeasurably far. Luffy just has that effect on people. Him and his inescapable aura. “We’re pirates and even if I can’t really do it- I’m going to swim in all these oceans and I’ll have my dream too.”
Zoro doesn’t ask for any clarifications, doesn’t think it’ll matter in the long run of whatever wayward journey they’ve embarked on. His old master would say things like that- things he didn’t really understand yet and he would say as much. That man spoke in riddles as though simple language wasn’t made for a swordsman. He would say things like how god was the self. Maybe this man, maybe this Luffy is god. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t care.
Luffy doesn’t look like he cares about much. Doesn’t care about treasure- or about having the biggest boat, which is obvious- the wood still presses in all its should be uncomfortable nature. He doesn’t care about how strong he looks or how much strength he has to breathe life into things, how much life he has to give away. Luffy already looks freer than anyone he’s ever heard of.
For a fleeting moment, Zoro wonders if this is what giving your life to someone feels like. Zoro’s given his life to this man- with a wayward promise that sits strangely on his conscious with every passing second in his young, flighty aura. Zoro’s hand settles on Wado for a taste of the past- a bittersweet desire that he can’t do anything about- not that he would want to. The ocean is unfamiliar, unfamiliar beyond his years of training by the seaside with an ambition for power for the sake of power. It’s his ambition and if it’s selfish who’s going to hate him for it that matters? Luffy knows his dream and he promised- and yet it still sits strangely in the back of his throat, the depths of his mind and deeply in his gut.
“You don’t look like you’re afraid of anything.” It comes out of his mouth before he knows. It was definitely sitting there since he first met him- how could it not? Not many people take out the tyrannical captain of a marine town just for the chance at having someone on their crew. Then again there hadn’t been a moment Zoro thought of Luffy like just anyone. Zoro spits it out, wind rocking deeply on the unfamiliar water and he doesn’t really matter beneath the sky- that’s what most people would think of themselves.
Luffy twists his head at this impossible angle, only he could manage to do it with that rubber body of his. Perched on his spot, he’s almost like an owl with enough blankness to compete but too damn dark and too damn intense to do so in the same breath. He giggles something frightful and all his features light up because that sort of thing is easy for him. Life being an endless assortment of amusement- at whose expense? Does it really matter to him?
He thinks, it doesn’t.
“What’s there to be scared of? Luffy bites back, like the answer titters on his tongue as naturally as his never ending laugh and Zoro kind of admires him for it. His own lips tilt to the side with something of a grin. It felt nice to be joined up with someone without fear. The thing is, a lot of people are afraid to be fearful. Even more people are afraid to not fear anything. Something about the disconnect of humanness or whatever it is he would overhear. Zoro doesn’t really see how their humanness matters at all.
Zoro is someone who people would call fearless. He’s not really sure- doesn’t actually think about it. Who has the time for that? He has a dream to conquer, who has the time to contemplate their own mortal desires and fallings? There’s money to be made, booze to be stolen and people to be killed. Existentialism isn’t really on the list. One could say Zoro would fear not losing himself on his journey but there’s that feeling in the weird part of his gut- the one he doesn’t doubt, the one he refuses to. That part lets him know it would never happen. He’s doesn’t fear losing himself- whoever he becomes and whoever Luffy becomes somewhere down their immeasurable line is whoever they will be and that’s simply the way of their history. He doesn’t fear dying along the way, either. He’s fine with it honestly.
His eyes fall back on Luffy’s profile and the ever wanderlust living in his too big eyes and thinks maybe he has one fear- one fear that will grow and Zoro does not see a way of stopping it- doesn’t want to.
Zoro has his swords, his dreams and his resolve. Luffy chuckles, his hand on that straw hat of his and his eyes on the horizon that sits on all sides like it’s the only place they can ever go.
“We’re gonna do it all, Zoro!” Luffy exclaims, with no hesitance, no fear, and no cowardice. Zoro leans back on their small nothing of a boat- on their everything of a boat and watches the moon set the ocean black and gleaming. The wind picks up and Zoro’s heart feels.
He thinks he has his loyalty too.
Zoro’s eyes dart between the endless sky and its millions upon millions of glowing staring eyes, the vast unending sea, and the infinity in Luffy’s too wide eyes. Maybe he’s looking for the answer to something in the shards of all these phenomena and the way they surround him so carelessly and so familiarly the wood pressed against his back feels right. He is nineteen and this kid is about to make him see the whole fucking world. Zoro can feel it, somewhere in that part of his gut that knows he’s going to be the greatest swordsman in the world, that place that Zoro doesn’t doubt because there isn’t reason to. Zoro trusts Luffy- weirdly and strangely entirely. Maybe this is what they mean by once in a lifetime. He doesn’t really get it. He doesn’t really care.
“We’re definitely gonna burn the world down.” He’s calling it now. Fondness sings in his heart at the way Luffy laughs and somehow outshines the sun and the moon and all those staring down eyes they call stars. The sea is cold and fickle like fate’s blind idiot self and they don’t feel the chill- because they’re made up of all the same and different things that people fear in themselves and others. They're made up from the same cruelty in their bones, the simplicity in their hearts and the drive in their souls. A mingling of all that is pure and impure. Zoro believes his old master would call them history.
Zoro can remember, if just barely, some story he used to hear about frogs and wells and the way the world was built too big to believe. He doesn’t remember it well- another riddle among the rest- and he doesn’t think he ever really understood it.
They’re going to go everywhere. He can feel it. There’s no other way. Maybe Zoro already gave his life somewhere between his beginning and now- it was easy in the end when facing someone as endless as him. The moon gives shape to Luffy’s silhouette and the wind almost moves with his will as do the waves to their everything of a boat.
Zoro has never really cared for the ocean- maybe because he’s spent all his time in puddles. He wonders why people ever take to the sea.
Luffy’s eyes are like shards of infinity from every heavenly path the universe has left behind.
Wherever Luffy’s wanderlust eyes look to, Zoro will follow. He knows that down those paths with an unexpected infinity of a boy at his side, he’ll be the Greatest and Luffy will be King of Everything.
Down those paths, maybe Zoro will understand why people love the sea.