Thrice Prophesized - Zoro x Reader

Chapter 16: Snowed

Your fingers slide along the edge of the portal as your palm flattens against it. Realization sunk into you and those on the other side of the portal at the same time. Putting your hands on either side of the portal you give your Lord and Lady your best smile.

"It's okay!" You assure them. "It's... there's something I need to do here. Someone from our world set it up centuries ago, and so I should – I need to – honor..." You shake your head, you didn't have much time, you needed to be honest. "I'm sorry My Lord, but I must resign from my position. I can no longer be a knight of Winternight. Thank you, thank you for trying to bring me back home, but..." Your last words are soft, hardly more than the motion of your lips and you aren't entirely sure the Lord and Lady even hear them. "I already am."

You're resolved. You wanted to stay. At some point in the back of your mind you wanted to stay, and wasting time and energy trying to deny it any further was only going to cause pain for the people you cared for back home. You could see the sorrow and understanding cross the generally stoic faces of Lucaren and Elizabeth.

"(Y/N), something over here is looking for you. After this, you must avoid winter magic. Another portal may bring only danger." Lucaren explains swiftly. "I release you from your service to my house, may the choices you make honor yourself first and that world second."

May the choices you make honor yourself first, and the law second. That was how it usually went, the idea being that upstanding knights who were retired with honors would uphold the laws of a land by the standards of their own personal honor, unless those laws became truly unjust.

You were being bid farewell with honors.

You snapped to attention. "As dawn follows the coldest blizzard, they shall."

With those words you were no longer a knight.

The portal fades, snapping out of existence as the tension shatters in your own body and you collapse to your knees in the snow. That was that. You were here. You didn't know why you couldn't pass through the portal, and you hadn't had enough time to try and figure it out, even if all of Winternight had come to help.

Perhaps you should simply be grateful the winter magic didn't feedback into your body and tear you apart for trying.

You made your choice, and it wasn't regret that had you crumpled into the snow, it was simply sorrow. Grief at the loss of everything that you had decided to leave behind. Just because you had made the choice it didn't make the sense of loss any easier.

You barely heard the soft crunch of snow as he approached you. Everyone walked different, and you could always tell in the snow. There, or here. Besides, you had spent the last few days hearing nothing but the tailored steps of everyone crunching in the snow. Even Brook's light steps had become cadence in your mind.

A stern face and a single eye found you, kneeling in front of you before you could look up or say anything. You weren't even sure what it was you wanted to say.

"It's okay." He says quietly. Zoro moves smoothly, taking your arms and putting them around his neck as he pulls you into his chest and stands up. You were asleep the last time you were in this position, but it was comfortable, and right now, it was comforting.

The walk back to the Sunny was silent. In a way it felt as if the crew was mourning with you, the soft, persistent, crunch of snow was the only sound, a steady ode to a land they only knew through you. A beautiful song, broken by the quiet lyrics of the tears that slipped down your cheeks, and disappeared into the fluffy coat collar of a not-quite-demonic swordsman.

A/N - it was a short chapter, but the next one isn't going to be, so I didn't want to just separate this from the start of that with a chapter break.

Wrist is a lot better too, swelling's down and the pretty colors are starting to fade ♥