Work Text:
Devotion
That’s such an easy word for it. Don’t go where I can’t follow , don’t leave me behind, I don’t want to exist without you you. I don’t know how. I think I knew once. When I was younger and living for a ghost. Living purely for an ambition that only I was allowed to call ridiculous. Impossible. But you didn’t laugh. Or well, you did, but that’s because the joy of finding someone with a dream nearly as big as your own spilled out from you, like you never learned to fear the edges of the world. Like they couldn’t cut you down even when they tried.
I followed you out of that courtyard and then I promised my victory to you, bowed my head so that my life would would pay the price for yours and then threw my pride down right after it so that I could stand beside you again. So that I could stand as your equal.
We never did test out which of us is stronger did we? But that doesn’t matter either. I decided to follow you a long time ago. The only reason that I am a pirate is so that I could be yours, and we both know it. No one else could have earned my loyalty like you did. Your my captain and I’m your swordsman, your first mate. I would follow none but you, and you I will follow until the very end. Till we found the one piece or died trying. Cause that’s the deal isn’t it? That’s what we’ve always been. So I’ll follow your orders and remind you of your position and I will lay my victories down at your feet. I’ll lay down every single one them until I can call myself the greatest swordsman in the world.
That’s what the king of the pirates deserves after all.