Crimson Rose

Chapter 2

20 years.

20 years of betrayal.

20 years of pain.

20 years of loneliness.

20 years spent trying to achieve a impossible dream.

The number 20 repeats in Robin's mind as she lay awake staring into nothingness. She is a nocturnal creature by habit— having long forgotten the comfort of sleep.

She always prided herself for her intelligence. She takes no pride in it anymore, she has no right to when she has deluded herself beyond redemption, her alleged intellect has betrayed her just like the world has for 20 years.

She has learned soon enough after losing whatever faith she had that her presence is welcomed in this world long ago that emotions are a weakness that will lead to her demise and made a silent vow she will never succumb to it.

How ironic it is she thought her motivation all these years were calculated and rational when she was a emotional fool all along. It would have been only befitting if she had perished in the tomb a few days ago. A poetic end to a deluded fool who had countless sins down to the tip of her fingernails. All because she chose to be a deluded fool and didn't embrace the comfort of sleep.

She had secretly always in the back of her mind cherished the thought of closing her eyes and never opening it again as she tastes the bliss of eternal darkness. The darkness that isn't going consume her soul as it would cease to exist among it's infinite void.

That is at least what she desperately hopes. She doesn't know any better about what awaits the soul when it departs from the body. She is too exhausted to care.

Emotion. That dreaded inescapable 7 letter word. The 7 letter word that clouded her rationality to believe it is possible to escape it's clutch.

A emotionless intelligent person being guided by their intellect in neglect of their emotions?

Perhaps they do exist.

Perhaps there are those who are disgusted by the idea that their actions are dictated by emotions and vow to never yield to them by becoming true monsters who ceases all attachment to all that's human.

Perhaps there are those who intelligent enough to be certain that they are not lead astray by emotions or have at least some level of self awareness that they are indeed held hostage by emotion.

She had deceived herself for 20 years thinking she is a emotionless intelligent person who had been guided by intellect in neglect of her emotions.

When all this time she was emotionally guided by chasing the same foolish dream her mother chased, the same foolish dream that led the only people in the world she cared about to ruin.

She momentarily closes her eyes and questions again why she is still here in the enemy's ship, why she is still alive.

Her decision to join the strawhats is much of a sporadic decision as much as it is a logical one. As contradictory as it sounds.

A knive to her wrist, a cyanide pill or simply jumping into the cruel and unforgiving sea would have granted her the release that she begged for in the tomb; her corpse would simply decompose in the sands of Alabasta or at the bottom of the ocean as the world would eventually forget about her.

The alluring thought of embracing the sweet taste of perpetual sleep are her only refugee. She doesn't have the audacity nor possess the shamelessness to have thoughts about her dreadful dream— The only thoughts besides the thought of perishing that brought her comfort and the only reason her cherished urges has always been pushed back. Then why is she still here? Why is she continuing the cycle of suffering?