Falaise

Au bord des falaises

The beginning of this chapter is the very first part of this fic I wrote before I had anything else fleshed out, I'm so happy to finally be sharing it with you!

I listened to the song Non-Breakable Space by Small Fires on repeat during the writing of this part, so though it might not exactly fit the mood of the scene, you can still listen to it if you want. I obsessed over this song for months, it's so good!! Enjoy!

Also I'm pissed to be working on the 1st of May, but happy to be publishing this chapter, so I've got this card of Buggy, Croc, and Mihawk sitting on my desk and I feel just like this meme of Homer Simpson and his cork board filled with pictures of his daughter with written "Do it for her" on it except it's three middle-aged fictional men.

As a heads up: this chapter contains mentions of suicide and suicide ideation, just thought you might want to know!

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The wind blew loudly, both pushing against his back and coming from below. Buggy stood on the edge of the cliff, eyes fixed on the white sand underneath. He couldn't see it, but he knew there were rocks there, too.

He heard the sound of the rising tide eating at the beach with each new wave. He could see it getting higher and higher by the minutes, but he lamented the fact that the sea had not yet reached the bottom of the cliff. He would have wished to let himself fall with the sea under him. The rocks would have been the one to kill him, but the sea would have taken his body. Nothing would have remained.

But he could see the white sand. And the jump now felt less tempting than it had been in his mind on his way here.

Should he wait for the high tide? But it would then defeat his own impulse. He wasn't sure he would still have the resolve if he was to wait for the sea to be at its highest point.

He turned back to look at his horse, the black stallion was peacefully grazing on the thick grass of the coast. It was his only thing left. He was about to be stripped of everything, but his horse. He really was nothing anymore. But he'd come to realise, ever since his father's death, that he'd never been anyone in the first place. He never had anything on his own.

Why was he surprised, then, to realise that the two men had never been on his side? That shouldn't have been a surprise. If anything, he should have seen it coming. They had never wanted to serve him, anyway.

But Buggy had been blinded. By pain or by attraction, it didn't matter. Crocodile and Mihawk would hand him over to Shanks the moment the red-hair would reach Falaise, and he would be locked in a basement forever. Or killed, maybe. Buggy wasn't quite sure what his brother had in mind. Despite his words in the letter, the blue-haired man wasn't sure he could trust Shanks to not hurt him. And to think that he had thought that they were on good terms. That they loved each other, even. It appeared that this affection had not been mutual.

Yeah, the bottom of the cliff wasn't that unappealing, finally. He dropped the lunge rein, giving the horse's neck a last caress. The animal barely reacted, unaware of the inner turmoil of the man in front of him.

Walking back to the edge of the cliff, he took off his hat, throwing it in the air, and watched it slowly descend to the beach below. Despite the conflicted airflows, the hat still ended up falling into the sea, too heavy to fly away.

Just like Buggy. People would say that he could have fled, but he had no reason to, and nowhere to go. His heart was too heavy for him to bear having to keep on walking.

There was no setting sun to look at, only grey clouds filling the horizon in a never-ending sky. But it wasn't raining, contrary to the usual weather of the area. People often said that the weather changed constantly on the coastline.