Steel and Salt

The first time Kira Ashwood drew against Roronoa Zoro, she lost in thirty seconds. She'd tracked the Straw Hats to a nameless island off Alabasta's coast, where the market smelled of cumin and rust and the sun pressed down like a thumb. Her orders were surveillance only, but he'd spotted her before she spotted him — which told her everything she needed to know about how this conversation would go. "You've been following us since Water Seven," he said. Not a question. "You're wanted men." "Woman." He tilted his head at her swords. "Three-blade school?" "Two. I'm not an idiot." He looked like he might smile at that. He didn't. He just drew Wado Ichimonji, and for thirty seconds she learned exactly how much she didn't know. She landed on her back in the market dust with his blade at her throat and the embarrassing awareness that she'd been holding her breath since he moved. "Come back when you're better," he said, and sheathed the sword and walked away. She was back in six weeks. --- Skypeia was wrong for this. Too white, too quiet, the ruined temples making every footstep feel like sacrilege. But the Straw Hats had stopped there to resupply, and Kira had learned by now that where Zoro stopped was where her feet took her. She found him in the old amphitheater, practicing katas so slowly they looked like breathing. This time she lasted four minutes. When she was sitting in the grass afterward, cataloguing her bruises, he sat down a few feet away and said nothing for so long she thought he'd fallen asleep. Then: "Your left guard opens when you commit to an overhead." "I know." "So fix it." "I'm working on it." She turned to look at him. The afternoon light was doing something complicated to the scar over his eye. "Why are you telling me?" He shrugged. It was the least informative shrug she'd ever seen on a human being. "Come back when you've fixed it," he said. She did. --- The third island was Dressrosa, after everything, when the dust of the Donquixote family had barely settled and the streets were still learning what celebration looked like. Kira wasn't there on orders. She'd taken personal leave — a first, in eight years of service — and told herself it was sightseeing. She found him at a bar at the edge of town, working through a bottle of sake with the single-minded focus he brought to everything. She sat down across from him without asking. "You fixed it," he said, without looking up. "Took long enough." She stole his cup. He let her. "How did you know?" "The way you walked in." He refilled the cup she was holding and finally looked at her. "Your footing's different." It was, she realized. Six months of drilling that one correction had changed how she stood, how she moved, how she came through a door. He'd seen it in three seconds. She thought about what that meant. A man who watched that closely. "I came here for a rematch," she said. "Figured." He leaned back. "Not tonight." "Why not?" For the first time she could remember, something behind his eyes shifted — not the flat evaluating look he usually wore, but something less defended. "Because," he said, "if I fight you tonight I'll either win and you'll leave, or you'll win and you'll leave. Either way you leave." The bar was loud around them. Someone was singing badly about a woman named Carmela. Kira turned the cup in her hands. "That's the most words I've ever heard you say at once," she said. "Don't get used to it." "You want me to stay." He didn't answer. He refilled her cup again, which was answer enough. She stayed. They sat there until the bar closed and the street outside went quiet and the moon over Dressrosa turned the cobblestones to something like silver. He didn't say much more — he never did — but his shoulder was warm against hers, and once, when she dozed off mid-sentence, she woke to find he'd shoved a rolled-up jacket behind her head without any comment or ceremony, like it was nothing, like it was obvious. "I'm still going to beat you," she said, to the ceiling. "I know." "Tomorrow." "Sure." She didn't fight him tomorrow. She fought him the day after, and lost again, but barely — and when she was flat on her back in the practice yard and he was standing over her with dawn light behind him, he held out a hand. She took it. He didn't let go right away. Neither did she. "You're getting close," he said. "I know," she said. It was the first time she'd borrowed his line. He almost smiled. This time she was certain.