Our Hearts Are One At Sea [One Piece/Zoro]

CH 44: The Truth(Edited)

Fujimoto never enjoyed the presence of people. The only person he allowed into his heart's home was Kikyo but Lexie was a stray cat that sat outside his home. He refused to let this stray in despite feeding it and he hated when someone else tried patting her with love while he refused to touch her. So, when someone like Bellemere, a woman who loved strays, slapped him and called him a bastard for not doing more for her now that hurt even more.

"This whole time you have been here you have been such an ass to that poor little girl and at first I thought it was because that's who you are but then she told me." Bellemere released a humorless laugh.

"What did she tell you?" Fujimoto asked, kneeling to clean up the broken pieces of glass that he was drying before she hit him.

"She told me about how she would hurt herself, and how the villages hurt her along with the 'bad men' who were going to crucify her!" Her voice rose but she tried lowering it remembering the girls in the other rooms.

"Was that all she told you?"

Bellemere's eyes dug into his, "She told me she killed her mother...Kikyo is her mother isn't she?" Fujimoto remained silent not finding the need to voice a question that already had an answer. Bellemere's body trembled at the truth. Her friend was dead but she didn't know how because she didn't believe Lexie would do something like that. She was just a child after all. "How did it happen?"

"It's like the beast said, she killed her." Fujimoto not missing a beat just like Bellemere when she landed another smack to his other cheek while grabbing him by the front of his collar.

"Don't say that!"

"It's the truth." He says without a blink. "Bellemere do you remember what it is that we priest and priestess are tasked to do by the government?" she slowly nods at this. "We are here to keep the demons from causing havoc onto our world, but they never told us what to do if one were kept like a stray cat."

"I-I don't understand what are you saying-"

"You must have heard the stories of Kuruma Kasai, the man who sailed at Gol D. Roger's side. Unusual man with the natural power to create the hottest but most beautiful flames saviors would say." Fujimoto's fists were tightening while Bellemere's was loosening as she was growing frustrated.

"What does this have to do with Kikyo?"

"A beast they would call him, or was it a demon, no it was Devil." Fujimoto continues, ignoring her. "A devil, a charmer, a tricker, who's one goal was to plague this world and cause a riff between the human and demon world once again."

"But he died." She said in a puzzled tone. "Records showed that when the Pirate King was captured Kuruma Kasai was lost at sea, labeled dead."

"Lost things can be found Bellemere, and Kikyo was always the best at finding them." Fujimoto tsks at the memories that were now flowing back into him. "We all knew what he was and what our job was when we ever saw a demon. To kill it on the spot, to purify it before it destroyed our lands before in the 100 year gap. That's why to some demons are just myths to scare children to bed, but they were once at the top of the food chain before a treaty was made saying no demon is to step foot into our world." Fujimoto frowns, "Yet one's like Kuruma were the exception."

"Why was he an exception?"

"His strength, one of the strongest demons to ever live. He could have set the world on fire with the snap of his fingers." Fujimoto's eyes saw red but not in anger, just the fiend's hair. "Kikyo knew this and when found him he was weakened by the holy priest that wounded him. Yet instead of killing him, she healed him, feed him, sheltered him and grew too attached to him." He wraps his fingers around Bellemere's wrist, who's hand still gripped his collar and stared her dead in the eyes. "No one stole me away from Kikyo, someone stole her from me."