Work Text:
Zoro was different. He had always felt it, a certain line separating him from those around him. When he was young, he couldn't help but feel as though something was missing from his life. It was almost like he was missing something, even though there was nothing to miss.
He was four years old when he discovered Kendo, and that feeling of missing had receded the moment he picked up his first bamboo sword. Not a day passed since then that he was seen without his sword.
Yet that feeling of missing something was still there.
Zoro was six years old when he was asked by someone at his orphanage why he always had a sword at his side. Zoro had merely stared at them dubiously and answered with a question of his own.
“Why wouldn't I have a sword at my side?”
Zoro was seven years old when an orange-haired girl barreled into him after school, sending both their bags flying and ending with them splayed out on the ground on top of each other. He groaned or maybe growled and definitely glared at the offending human whose face was buried in his chest, until she looked up and glared right back at him. Zoro’s eyes squinted slightly at the girl. She responded by snatching her bag and slipping behind him. Studying her, he slowly pulled his bag back onto his shoulder and made his way to his feet moments before they stood surrounded by a reasonably-sized group of grown, pissed off men.
Zoro sighed and pulled his sword from his bag as words tumbled from his lips.
“Really, Nami?”
He could feel her eyebrow twitch.
“Just beat them up already, Zoro.”
Zoro was eight years old when he defeated the master at his dojo. The fight was quick and clean, occurring after the other students and teachers had already gone home; so, nobody was there to notice his furrowed brow as he stared down at his sword. Nobody heard his murmur of confusion.
“Why am I only using one sword?”
Zoro was nine years old when he noticed that people had stopped challenging him. His two wooden swords that never left his side were wearing down and despite his caretakers' ceaseless efforts to take them away or at least have him use something that won't give him splinters he refused to let them out of his sight. His housemates whispered "Demon" and his classmates murmured "Monster" and his teachers groaned "Problem", but he knew that none of them mattered.
Then Nami shouted “idiot” so Zoro growled “witch” and for some reason it didn’t matter at the same time that it mattered more than anything he’d ever known. And somehow it felt like he had less missing and scattered pieces when she was around, but he kept both those thoughts to himself.
Zoro was ten years old when a blond haired boy with curly eyebrows joined his class. The boy looked like an idiot and had the face of a fool and flirted with anything that might someday have breasts and somehow, someway, managed to piss him off like nothing he’d ever seen. But he kept that to himself so nobody could see the curdling discomfort and anger boiling under his skin. None of them mattered and Zoro had better things to do than argue with a twig.
And then the day came when the boy who didn’t matter met Nami. And Zoro wasn’t certain if Nami mattered, either, and she was far more than capable of taking care of herself besides, but Zoro was sitting right there and something in the way the pervert moved or spoke or acted made him push his food forward and speak words that ached to form.
“Why don’t you mind your own business, ero-cook?”
Nami glanced towards him in some sort of surprise that wasn’t, and the cook shifted his attention from flirting to Zoro, and something in the eye contact and the anger-that-wasn’t-angry felt right in a way Zoro didn’t understand.
“Why don’t you piss off, shitty marimo?”
Then the bell rang and Nami looked between the two and sighed.
“I swear, if you two fight during class, I’m tripling both your debts.”
The fact that neither of them had ever borrowed money from Nami was something that Zoro left unsaid.
Zoro was eleven when he the cook got into their first actual fight. In some ways it felt strange and in others it felt right, and he kept getting split between wondering why the hell they fighting and why the hell it had taken so long for them to start.
(The answer was a certain orange haired girl from the year before, but one of them didn’t notice and the other refused to admit it)
He swept with his swords as the cook leaped with his kicks and though logically he knew it wasn’t a fair fight some other part of him whispered, “What’s logic? Can you eat it?” So Zoro grinned and put more weight into his swings as the cook followed suit, and it might have gone on for hours (it already had) had Nami not slipped besides the two and knocked their heads to the ground.
Zoro could tell she meant to say something, but the cook obviously hadn’t because he spoke first.
“Why are you only using two swords?”
Zoro was twelve when his class went on a field trip. It was boring and pointless. The only good part that he could find about it was seeing the cook get into trouble for bothering the girls there. And that might have been it if the cook didn’t look back at him and see his snicker, but he did. And so they slipped away from the group, exchanging unsaid insults and very obvious glares, to an unused part of the range. And that might have been it, too, had Zoro not gotten out his swords or Sanji raised his leg. And then they came at each other and hit a boy who just happened to get between them, and the two flinched.
““Sorry, Usopp.””
Zoro was also twelve when a classmate came up to him and the cook and asked a ridiculous question.
“Are you two twins?”
Needless to say, the answer was a resounding No. And afterwards, neither of them brought up their hesitation before saying so.
Zoro was thirteen when a little brown-haired boy bumped into him and fell down. He looked down to see the boy desperately holding back tears as he clutched some large books to his chest. A sound from a nearby alley made the boy jump up and hide behind Zoro’s legs. The amusing part about it was that the boy was hiding the wrong way. The unamusing part about it was the crowd of slightly larger kids with narrowed eyes and suspicious smiles and poorly-hidden rocks. A familiar feeling rose in his chest and Zoro couldn't stop the question leaving his mouth.
“What's wrong, Chopper?”
Minutes later there lay a pile of beat up kids, a smirking green haired teenager, and a beaming brown-haired little boy walking down the road.
“Thanks, Zoro!”
Zoro was fourteen when he and Sanji got caught fighting by a passing teacher.
It didn't go very well, and if Nami hadn't been passing by, it would have gone a lot worse. But they were still glaring at each other, and the teachers were about to do something that would help absolutely no one. At that moment, a lady with black hair and blue eyes stepped into the room, saying something about there being no one in the front so she came back here. Then she chuckled at the sight of the three teenagers and commented about how close they seemed, which resulted in a sound of outrage from all three of them.
“““We’re not close Robin!”””
By the time they had left the office in no more trouble than usual, Zoro realized that the emptiness was almost bearable when the four of them were in the same room. He kept that to himself, too. He found he was keeping a lot of things to himself lately. He also found, to his surprise, that he didn’t mind.
Zoro was fifteen and bored. He hadn’t stopped training, and the feeling of something missing had receded over the past couple years, but it was still there. He had accidentally mentioned it to the cook one day, and he was sure that the bastard would make fun of him for it, but instead the blond idiot had stared at Zoro in shock.
“You too?”
Zoro avoided him for a couple days after that.
He felt a bit lonely during those days. Zoro would never admit it, but that blond idiot was the only one his age that he cared about. Not that age mattered, anyway. Nami and Usopp and Chopper and Robin all mattered, and Zoro would defend them to his dying breath, but there was nothing really tying any one of them together.
He added the fear that they would go their separate ways to the list of things he would never tell, right after the mess of missing pieces still scattered around in his head.
Zoro was sixteen when he broke a wall.
In his defense, it wasn’t actually his fault. The cook was the one who was twirling around, and Nami, despite what most people tended to think, actually had a fair bit of muscle to her. Robin had done absolutely nothing to stop them, and expecting Chopper to get in front of Nami was like expecting him to give up sake, or...
...Regardless. The end result was a broken wall, and judging by the look on Usopp’s face, they were probably gonna end up in trouble Robin couldn’t talk their way out of.
Then the dust cleared and Zoro felt himself relax as a smile formed on his face and another piece of himself slotted into place.
“Yo, Franky. Mind fixing that?”
Zoro was seventeen when he got lost.
He was in a different city, on a trip with his orphanage that happened every year; but, this year they went someplace new.
He knew he was supposed to be at some important museum with a name he never bothered to remember, in an area of the city that was probably much nicer than the alley he found himself in—but trying to find it himself would likely just result in him getting even more lost (as he had been told countless times by the caretakers) so instead, he walked through a door in the alley with the intention of asking directions.
The first thing he noticed when he walked through the door was the smell of booze. The second thing he noticed was the overenthusiastic musician playing a piano exuberantly in an empty corner of the room. He had an insane afro and a ridiculous hat and glasses so black that Zoro doubted he could see through them, but the song was nostalgic despite it being the first time he ever heard it so Zoro walked up to him and waited for him to notice.
It took maybe a bit more time than Zoro would usually use on a person, but it also felt calming and happy and precious; and somehow, Zoro knew he wouldn't forgive himself if he left.
When the musician finished, he looked up and smiled even wider than he had been before. Zoro felt a grin tug at the edges of his lips.
“Been well, Brook?”
The musician smiled even wider.
“Yohohoho, it has been a while, Zoro-san!”
If Zoro waited maybe a bit longer before getting Brook to come with him to the museum where he was expected to be, then that was something that was kept between the two of them.
Zoro was eighteen when he graduated high school and was kicked out of the orphanage.
His friends (not that they were his friends, but try as he might, Zoro couldn't figure out what better to call them) had offered him a place to live with one of them, but he had refused.
The first thing he did was buy three real, metal swords.
The second was leave town.
He didn't say goodbye.
Zoro was nineteen when a local cop tried to arrest him for something he didn't do. He decided against killing the guy, as Zoro didn't want to dirty his swords, but this was bound to be a problem. He tried talking, but nothing was working.
Suddenly, a boy bounced in front of the cop, staring at Zoro.
A moment passed.
The boy smiled.
And that feeling that had been tying Zoro’s head in a knot, that feeling that something, someone was missing, fell away. The poor cop didn't matter, the fact that he was lost didn't matter, the fact that he was different and alone didn't matter.
Just the fact that Luffy was by his side, smiling, being Luffy, that was all that mattered, and Zoro smiled, and laughed the hardest laugh he was capable of.
The boy, Luffy, spoke up.
“Be my nakama!”
Zoro smiled the freest smile he ever had, and replied.
“Yes, Captain.”