Smokeless War - One Piece

(18)

I held a hand over my quickened pulse and looked to find Orion highlighted by a stream of moonlight hauntingly.

"No, pardon me. It appears it is my own fault. Excuse me." Turning to leave, he stopped me gently.

"Wait!" He sighed for a moment, letting go of my wrist. "I must know, did he..tell you?"

"Yes. Why?" I inquired gently and it never occurred to me that there was a reason Orion wasn't openly around the others, much less that he knew them beforehand. "It doesn't change the way I see you, even if I don't understand the reasons."

"That's one of the good and bad things about him, always cutting to the chase. I bet he told you I murdered her heartlessly, right? Well, pardon my expression, but he's dead wrong." He sat down on a rock and fiddled with something. "She was..going to do bad things to get what she wanted. I used to tell her the only thing that mattered was her happiness and she obsessed over it but I didn't know she had gotten.."

"I hope you understand why I can't take sides in this." Climbing up a tree with more difficulty than I'd have liked, I squinted my eyes to make sense of the shapes in the night before deciding to hold onto the trunk of the tree. "But I don't mind listening because you're a friend, albeit a strange one."

"I appreciate that..? Erm, it's a long story. Let's hope I don't bore you to death." He chuckled dryly and sighed. "My father is the Captain of the Fireside pirates. He started it when my mother was pregnant with me and she chose to stay on an island he frequented rather than become a pirate herself so I was raised in the northern sea on Rubeck Island. I met Krystal when my father came back from sea one day and we were best friends that gradually grew into more. I..won the devil fruit from a bet from a drunkard I thought was selling rotten fruit but me, I was also drunk that night. Then.."

"It's okay if you don't wish to say," I paused, a pounding filling my head and an ache running through my veins suddenly that almost swept me off the branch. "Anymore. If it's too painful."

"No no, I'm sorry I'm such a selfish man. I can't imagine how it was for Jack. When I awoke and found I could turn into the darkness itself I was terrified of myself. But Krystal only saw opportunity, and I still shudder when I think of that look on her face when she wanted to use to me sell..mermaids and fish men. Even just whatever soul I could. When I told her other wise..."

Seven years ago, Eastern Sea.

"Baby, Aren't we happy here? I can make swords for a living, I'm known in the grand line already! I can give you whatever you wish, without using this power to hurt people."

"No that's just your weak mindset. We can be so much more, we could aim for one of the warlord seats! This is my ticket to wealth and fame beyond the imagination and you're invincible. You're thinking too close minded, didn't you say my happiness means everything to you?" She'd stated with a happy smile, her arms around his body for a now soulless hug.

He opened his mouth to say something but this time his father returned and she turned into the perfect angel he'd known her to be. How could he have been so blind?

"I'd like you to come along this time, son. You can sell your best swords on the grand line, I'll take you and Krystal there safely, how about it?" Jones had asked with a wide smile to which he couldn't find the strength to say no to.

Then that night, the crashing thunder and lightning filled the seas more monstrously then usual and that fateful night she demanded once again to convince him to give into her.

"My love, I know you love your mother. I wouldn't mind."

"Mind what..?" He dreaded her words but inquired anyways and was stunned silent at the answer.

"I'll kill her for you of course. So you won't have anymore reason to stay on that stupid island."

His blood ran cold for a moment, then something snapped inside of him. The icy sensation turning into red hot fury that he couldn't control.

"Shut up. You don't know anything, your happiness means nothing to me if my mother is dead because of you."

"You...you don't love me? I gave my life to you! Just apologize and I'll be a good wife, and you can be a powerful husband." She'd gotten angry and calmed herself down so quickly he got whiplash from the sensation. This..this was his wife-to-be right? The little girl he grew up with, her mannerisms were all the same but she said such twisted things with no remorse.

"Get out, I can't stand the sight of you anymore."

"This is our room, honey. I promise you'll feel different in the morning! Come on, aren't you my best friend too?" She playfully and willfully discarded his words and he couldn't stand it anymore as he walked out onto the deck, the storm whipping the sails and his hair harshly.

"Wait! Is it your father? I know they can exist without him, we can get rid of him too!" She murmured in his ear as she followed him out the door and he whipped around with murderous intent, so much so she stood back from the look in his eyes. "My father will be a great captain, but I don't care where we go if I can be with you."

He eyed her for a moment before throwing away all attachment to only one person, her.

"We're done. I can't take it anymore." He painfully shouted at her, his own heart hurting every word. "I never want to see you again."

"You can't do this to me! I love you!" She desperately pleaded before a startled shriek filled his ears as the ship tilted to one side at the sea's merciless barrage. "Help!"

As he slid to catch her hand she found herself hanging on the side of the rails, barely holding on as he stood on the deck firmly with the help of the darkness.

Something more startling than her terrified shriek happened then, her emotionless laughter. He held onto her hands anyways but as she ripped them out of his grasp he could only watch as she was hellbent on dying in the sea.

"I hope you like being branded a murderer, my love. If I can't have you, no one will." And she screamed until she couldn't anymore, his devastated from slumping onto the ground as he looked up into the crows nest to see the haunted eyes of her father.

(end of long flashback, sry!)

"It was my fault. I should have saved her, or died with her. And she did make me angry I did want to hurt her in that moment but I never wanted that for her." He finished hollowly.

My mind spun with the story, I struggled to process her thinking, what was she thinking? What money was worth your life?

Struggling to find an answer, sweat ran down my back which made me reach out to feel my forehead and realize I was burning with sickness, sweat glistening on my skin in the moonlight. The familiarity of Bella's symptoms hitting me like a ton of bricks.

"Oh, I'm sorry in advance, I think Mihawk will be mad at me." I slurred all at once before I lost all the strength to keep myself upright and found myself falling off the tree, a panicked Orion vaguely in the back of my mind before strong arms caught me and I breathed a now familiar and comforting scent.