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EPISODE 06 : THE CHEF & THE CHORE BOY ( Please Say Something )
ESTRELLA NARVÁEZ IS not much of a talker. She listens and she replies, but she doesn't speak unless she has to.
Now, she finds nothing more to do but to speak to Roronoa Zoro as his chest rises up and down silently.
The man looks different; Weathered. Zoro looks pained and too perfectly laid down against Nami's hammock-like bed, like a marionette of sorts.
Estrella hates sick people. They are far too frail, and easily broken. She especially hates a sick Roronoa Zoro, because his chest isn't meant to look so easily breakable, and his face isn't meant to look so gaunt and dead.
And above all, Roronoa Zoro isn't supposed to mean anything to Estrella Narváez. His ragged breaths and his sunken face shouldn't bring Estrella any turmoil because she shouldn't care for him the way she does — But they do. They tear her apart the way thoughts of Punto Alto rip her apart in her dreams and nightmares alike, and she does not wish to add another plague to her slumber.
The words arrive like a tsunami — Drawing back against her throat until they spill out tumultuously, without end. Estrella tells Zoro anything she can think up as she sits in an all too-hard chair; She tells the man about things she doesn't remember knowing.
Estrella tells him how much she hates him, for one. How his green hair pisses her off, and how she's the better bounty hunter.
( She ignores the tremors in her voice, because if she focuses enough, they're not truly there ).
The brunette tells him these words like she means it, but they hold no meaning behind them whatsoever. She does not hate Roronoa Zoro, but she hates the silence he takes along with every shallow breath in his broken body.
Estrella imagines the man grunting his half-hearted response, maybe even giving her a rough shove at her claims, but Zoro stays perfectly still, the only indication of life being the rise and fall of his breaths.
And Estrella hates it. She hates sitting there, talking to someone who cannot reply, because she hates being left alone with a man who looks closer to death than to the life that surrounds him.
Estrella finds that Roronoa Zoro resembles an empty vase. He has a pretty design on his exterior, even taking into account the newly stitched patterns against his flesh. On the inside, however, he is nothing but hollow porcelain or pottery, empty.
It has never been difficult to stomach the truth — Estrella learned quickly that no matter how much she ignored it, it would linger like a ravaging plague until it devoured her.
( Roronoa Zoro's truth is the hardest thing Estrella has to come to terms with, after losing her home and herself ).
When she stops talking, a cacophony of silence greets the room. She prays and — Although she has lost such a feeling over the cutthroat years — hopes that he is listening.
