moe81 | OP Fic: What do you believe in?

Title: What do you believe in?

Rating: PG for swearing

Words: 335

Pairing: Zoro/Sanji

Summary: Memories of Skypeia lends itself to THAT particular conversation promised in Loguetown.

They had all been brought up to believe in a divine entity, a ruler over their world: protecting, loving, knowledgeable. If that was true, said entity was doing a piss-poor job of it. All the death and hatred that people offered in this age could attest to that.

Zoro had no belief in a being that couldn’t prove its worth. He believed in following what he could touch, taste, see and smell. That was a big part of the reason he followed Luffy. He had proven himself time and again to be someone Zoro could count on.

This whole train of thought wasn’t a naturally occurring phenomenon in Zoro’s brain but he’d been asked the question, so he felt it only right to answer. If he was being honest with himself, he had been expecting it a lot sooner, a promise of conversation from the beginning of this strange journey.

The cook had been curious and he had been in an obliging mood, the feeling of kicking the idiot’s ass not present in the circumstances. Did he believe in God?

Simple answer? No.

Complex answer? Still no.

It wasn’t hard to understand, that what he did believe in was what surrounded him; what made him feel alive; what gave him a reason to keep living.

The answer used to be the dream and promise of a friend, yet to be fulfilled and that still applied but slowly it had begun to evolve, until he could no longer determine whose dream, whose promise, he was really following.

What was solid kept him going. What left a mark – physical, emotional, hell even spiritual if he wanted to look that deep. His belief lived in eight other idiots, co-habiting on one ship, traveling unknown waters in an undiscovered world.

It lived in a trash-talking, cigarette-wielding, smart-ass who couldn’t hold a conversation with a woman if – well, anything – depended on it.

No. He had no need to believe in God. He had his nakama and he had the Love-Cook.