𝐋𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐥𝐲 𝐅𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫 ➳ 𝐋𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐀𝐭 𝐒𝐞𝐚 (one piece fanfic)

Chapter 43 ✨✨

"You can't hide here forever," he gently said, walking through her room with careful steps. Everywhere he glanced at, there were red papers. There was no bed, no furniture, only a simple oval window that gave a glimpse into the infinite ocean.

Seeing as she wasn't going to answer, he laid down next to her, on the floor. He put aside his saber and tried to decipher what she was staring at.

"Who is that?" He pointed to the man formed out of papers, smiling at them from the ceiling. Images formed and deformed gradually, showing hazy pictures of a forest, children training, smiling. And then, the images stopped as if blocked by something and rewinded, stuck in an eternal loop of happiness.

Konan didn't answer, as the images stopped and zoomed in to the faceless child. He had spiky orange hair, a metal headband with four straight lines, but no face. She didn't, couldn't remember what he looked like. She knew he had orange hair, sharp eyes, and a kind voice, but the memories slipped through her fingers like sand. It was frustrating, to know she could never see his face again, hear his voice, it was forever gone, left in another world she couldn't reach.

"His name was Yahiko. From Amegakure," her voice was barely above a whisper, raspy from a lack of hydration.

The red-head beside her kept silent, feeling the invisible line drawn between him and the woman beside him. Despite being a breath away from him, he knew her mind was somewhere else.

He would be lying to say he wasn't curious about the past of such a mysterious woman, who appeared one day and who despite her powers managed to stay hidden, unnoticed. He wanted to know why she appeared so old in a body so young, why—when she thought no one was looking—she appeared so weary and tired.

The images finally changed to show three grown friends. They were all dressed in the cape he usually saw her in, black with red clouds. This time, there was no smile on their faces, they were surrounded by people with weapons. They spit water or fire out of their mouths, and he knew he had never heard of such devil fruits.

The scene stopped mid-fight before flashing forward to show Yahiko bleeding to his death, and once again the papers turned back red. If he wasn't carefully watching, he might have missed the scene.

"He sacrificed himself to save me."

He frowned hearing her cold and detached tone, she was distancing herself but he could see in the way the images moved, she wasn't left totally fine by the event. She simply suppressed the trauma, pushing it down. However, that was bound to resurface all at once someday.

"After he died, Nagato and I continued to fight." That period was in black and white, there were no colors, no joy, only endless fighting, death, and pain.

As the images flashed by, they were silent, there was nothing to say, they both knew what was happening. The Konan showed was emotionless, stoic, silent, but she was never alone.

As he saw the images of war and her killing as easily as she breathed, he started to piece things together.

As a long-term pirate, he wasn't foreign to killing but what he was seeing was on another level altogether. It was war, a perpetual state of fighting, where she could never truly sleep or rest. Decades of conflict and tension.

He finally understood where her constant weariness came from. It was the kind of tiredness from which one never truly recovered. It drained people mentally and physically.

"What happened after that?" He asked carefully, threading the line.

Konan closed her eyes as if to remember, like the scene wasn't burned in her brain, "The Akatsuki disbanded, most died, I fought one last time before dying too." There was a hint of bitterness in her voice as she remembered her last battle, she could have saved thousands of lives if she had won.

"Wait for a second, what do you mean, you died?" He pushed himself up to better look at her. Though he had some theories, that one was the last one on his mind.

That made her smile slightly before she also sat up, "I lost, and died. Simple as that." Seeing his bewildered face, she fully got up, and commented sarcastically "What, want me to recreate the scene for you, Shanks?"

He shook his head sharply as he also got up, "I'll pass on that, probably wasn't pretty."

She neither confirmed not denied.

"After my death, I met a God who gave me a second life and that's how I landed here." She looked up at the ceiling before continuing her story, "I thought I was going crazy with these memories no one else remembered," her voice dropped to a low point. "I couldn't bear being all alone in a totally foreign world so I repressed the memories, sealed them if you prefer."

She leaned against the wall, not looking directly at Shanks. "Sometimes they would slip through, through the cracks, like a silent whisper reminding me, of how alone I was, telling me how undeserving of this life I was." She chuckled with empty eyes. "But I liked it, I took it as a warning, and a reminder, to not get too ahead of myself."

Shanks was scowling at this point, he wanted to tell her, to shout at her that she did deserve a chance at happiness, at rest, but he knew that if he did that, she would just take it as pity and brush it off.

How long had she been fighting for? Keeping these memories, that pain to herself, holding it tight, not daring to let it show, struggling against her own poisonous thoughts. He couldn't begin to imagine how tiresome it must have been, to keep pretending as if everything was okay as if she wasn't slowly falling apart inside with each passing second.

"I felt empty, everything that made me as a person, as Konan, had disappeared. But at the same time, I took it as an opportunity, I thought I could change for the better here, help in any ways I could, and I did!" She paused, hands fiddling nervously with an origami, "... but not for long, not always."

When she looked up at him, she was smiling, but not the kind he was happy to see, it was more of a hollow and bitter tilt of her lips, accompanied with slanted eyes that hid any emotions she was feeling. He knew what she meant by her tone and the noticeable number of red papers laying around the room.

"I almost killed another man and his innocent crew for knowing something he wasn't supposed to." She tightly gripped her arms, digging her nails in her skin. There was disgust in her voice, self-loathing, at knowing she hadn't truly changed. "I'm not at war, not anymore, yet I can't help but feel like I'm stuck there. Always suspicious of everything, never sleeping in fear of an enemy creeping on me."

Even if Law revealed anything, it wouldn't have mattered, she was an independent entity perfectly capable of functioning alone, no one but herself would have been endangered, yet when the words slipped past his mouth, she only had one thought in mind, get rid of the threat. "And even now, every fiber of my being is itching to silence him."

"Don't worry, I'll stop you," he smiled in a reassuring manner. He finally knew why she went to find him a week ago, and he wasn't in the slightest happy about it. He was frustrated and angry at himself for never noticing, never caring enough to question her sometimes forlorn looks. But he was mostly frustrated because he could see she was still sinking in a void of darkness and all he could do was listen to what she wanted to tell him. 

He had no idea what else to do to help her. He might have been one of the most powerful men in the world, but faced with her, but he was rendered powerless.

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I don't think that's what the ones who wanted to see Shanks again envisioned but oh well  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯