Disclaimer: I emphatically do not own "One Piece."

notes: I was reading Hans Christian Andersen's "The Snow Queen" the other day, and this idea sprang up suddenly. The prologue below does not follow "The Snow Queen," but as it is necessary, please bear with it! And please let me know if it is too mawkish/heavily written. I don't often use this style and I almost never write character deaths, so CC would be appreciated.

"Snow Queen: A Journey in Seven Stories"
Prologue

In this way and that, ten years passed.

One: Luffy found himself once again facing Crocodile, who had gone quite mad. For any of the strange coincidences that seemed to gravitate toward the rubber boy, everyone was there: Ace and Shanks and Smoker and of course his own crew. When it was over, Crocodile was dead and Luffy was only just alive. Ace caught him as he fell, a rueful smile on his freckled face, and said dryly, All hail the Pirate King. Because Ace said it, the name stuck. Soon the entire world was calling Luffy the Pirate King, and then it was not such a surprise when they really began to believe he was a sort of king, and wanted him to do some kinging. They wanted a guild, and a formal legal code, and recognition from the World Government, and they wanted Luffy to be in charge of all that.

Luffy ran away instead, the rest of the Straw Hat crew hot on his heels. They had found the One Piece, and Luffy was the Pirate King (though, as he said with some alarm, the wrong sort of Pirate King), but All Blue was still waiting. And if they had not found All Blue, that meant Nami had not yet seen all the world to make her map. Besides, Chopper had not formed a theory for his medical research yet, and Robin still had some ideas about the Lost History she wanted to prove, and Zoro had not had his duel with Mihawk. The only person who could claim to have reached his goal was Usopp, as "Brave Warrior of the Sea" was a dream vaguely defined.

For a very lovely and brief while, it was just like old times, until after they'd found All Blue, and Nami had seen all the world there was to see, and Chopper had had a brainstorm, and Usopp had learned to face death with a calm heart, and they'd looked up one day to see Mihawk, his cold eyes searching for just one of them.

Go, Zoro said, and Luffy obeyed. They'd both known from the beginning that this was something Zoro had to do alone and completely alone. They all kept their eyes upon the green-haired figure as they sailed away. The last they saw of Zoro before he and Mihawk slipped over the horizon out of sight, their swordsman was tying his bandana around his head.

We'll see him back at Water Seven, said Luffy.

If he doesn't get lost, you mean, replied Sanji wryly, and they all laughed. Somehow, they knew that Zoro would not lose his way. Much, anyway. It might take a few weeks, but sooner rather than later they would see him swagger through the doors, that infuriating smirk upon his face. And then they would have a party and get falling down drunk.

The third day after the Straw Hats arrived back at Luffy's offices (imposed on him amid great protest), a messenger from the Marines arrived with news of Zoro. After it was over, the messenger said, Mihawk was dead and so was Roronoa Zoro.

As one, they all said flatly, You're lying.

Captain Smoker's fleet found the body, said the messenger fearfully, and they checked it. Everyone checked it, to make sure. Then Captain Smoker ordered a burial at sea, and said to give you this. He held out the familiar black bandana.

Luffy took it silently. Then he went to his room and shut the door and would speak to no one for days. The Straw Hats left him alone. When outsiders - not Shanks and not Ace, but just about everybody else in the world - came to offer their condolences, they turned them away, sometimes forcibly. Their own grief seemed like dull aches, a throbbing in the bones that could still be ignored in favor of protecting their boy-captain. At night, when they thought Luffy must be sleeping, they wept.

When he came out again, the change was not obvious. Luffy still laughed and made pranks, but his eyes were slightly dazed, as if his soul was somewhere very far away. He was not in denial. When Usopp asked him, hesitantly, Luffy replied, I miss him. Luffy had no fear of death, and Zoro had had no great attachment to life. Zoro's death was no great thing. It was the reality of Zoro's absence, the lack of Zoro where Luffy thought there would always be Zoro, that undid him.

So sometimes Luffy cried, and when that happened Nami stayed with him. She held his hand and kissed his brow and stroked the damp black hair from his face. Nami cried too, and this seemed to comfort Luffy, because he knew they grieved for the same thing: when it was all over, it had seemed right that there would be the three of them, together and always together; only now one of them was gone, and he had been the one Luffy loved best.

Two: The year turned while they were still grieving. Luffy was astonished to find that not only the calendar, but everything and everyone that lived had a way of moving forward. In a way it was good to enter back into the swirl and hubbub of life. Someone - or several someones - had drawn up a formal code of pirate conduct which was awaiting Luffy's signature and enforcement. He was not sure he wanted to sign it, because he was not sure he wanted to follow all its rules. But it could be ignored for now, until Nami started bugging him about it. More important were his friends, especially Sanji, who handled most of Luffy's immediate, food-related concerns.

In the evenings they talked. That was the second astonishing thing. They'd fulfilled their life dreams, yet it felt like like was just beginning. Now they wanted to do more, and found that their dreams were no longer dreams but possibilities, and that everything now lay in themselves to make those possibilities into reality. Sanji talked of expanding the Baratie, of entering the spice trade business. Nami pointed out the nagivation lines on her half-finished world map, her eyes bright as she imagined the whole world connected by ship and seatrain. Usopp had sketches for fantastical new inventions using dials, and the way his eyes wandered to the Galley La shipyard, visible from the window, it was clear he was thinking Maybe, maybe, I really will have 80 thousand men one day. And so one by one they bid Luffy affectionate farewells, and this time he let them go. Nami stayed the longest, because Nami could be good like that. She stayed for six long years, and during that time Luffy grew into manhood while Nami grew into womanhood, and Luffy learned about the burdens of kingship.

Five: Nami and Luffy did not pass their years at Water Seven alone, because Luffy was not the kind of person who stood for being alone. Iceburg and the Galley-La were there, of course, as were Frankie and his Family. Any of them were good for a day of playing hooky or making Nami turn red with fury. Too, sometimes Usopp's boat sailed in, or Robin's, or Sanji's, or Chopper's, or the royal ships of Alabasta carrying Vivi, and those were the best times of all. At first they talked of Zoro in hushed voices, but as the months and years went by they found it easier to say his name and tell his stories. Sometimes they even forgot themselves, and called out Remember when Zoro... right in the middle of a party, and everyone would break into uproarious laughter as if the swordsman were in the room with them.

Luffy spent more and more time away from his offices. In a way he was glad, because he hated sitting still. But often he got on a ship only to head not for adventure, but for a meeting with some boring head of state or a conference. If Nami accompanied him on these trips, that was all right, but sometimes Nami had meetings of her own to attend and people to utterly manipulate to her own ends. But often he saw Smoker or Shanks or Ace (or very occasionally, all three) at these meetings, so his trips were never completely wasted.

More than sometimes, when Luffy got back from a meeting or sneaking off from a meeting to have adventures, he would find a boat bearing Baratie's insigna docked in the harbor, and he would burst through the doors of the house he shared with Nami to smell the fragrance of smoke and hear Sanji fixing something delicious in the kitchen. Then Sanji himself poked his head out and said things to make Luffy laugh. They were often the kinds of things he used to say back on the Going Merry - I love Nami even when her eyes are red from exhaustion! and Goddess of the Sea, how you refresh my weary soul! But more and more often, he said I found that brand of ink you like, or God it's been a hell of a week. Who knew training new wait staff was so hard? Nami laughed and took his hand, and they went together to sit on the veranda.

Luffy noticed, distractedly, that sometimes Nami let Sanji kiss her during these visits and sometimes she did not. Sometimes Sanji asked her to go back with him, and always she said No, you haven't said the right thing yet. Luffy wondered when all this change had taken place.

Seven: Zeff died in the spring. An infection from his artificial leg had taken root and would not go. Sanji had not sent for Chopper; Zeff had asked him not to. You stopped beating yourself up over me and found All Blue, you little eggplant, Zeff had said. So I have no regrets about this life. Now I'm going to go and see this All Blue for myself and leave you with the dirty dishes and the shit waiters. Got the last laugh, eh?

Luffy and Nami were asked to the funeral. Luffy was persuaded into all-black attire, but he insisted on wearing his hat. Zeff would have wanted him to, he said. The smile that Sanji threw his way as he and Nami stepped onto the deck of the Baratie proved him right. Nami's black silk was expensive, but the coat she wore over it was old, a gift from a 147-year-old doctorine. Sanji broke away from the crowd and came over to them. He took Nami in his arms and gathered her close with a long shuddering sigh. Nami stroked the blonde hair and smoothed his tense shoulders. I love you, Nami, Sanji said very quietly, and her voice was tender as she replied, I love you too, sweetheart.

Luffy knew he should have felt sad then, since this meant Sanji had finally said the right thing and Nami was now going to leave Luffy. But instead he just felt glad to see life growing in a place where everyone was dressed for death. It made him feel better about Zoro too, and wonder at the way he could miss someone without feeling incomplete, at how even the loss of that person had not undone the greater part of his soul.

As Luffy thought, Nami left him soon after that, though she never quite settled at the Baratie. Luffy returned to Water Seven and the by-now familiar routine of visiting and being visited. He grew used to life lived alone but not alone, to having the people dearest to him flung far away and seen only occasionally.

So, in this way and that, ten years passed. And then something Happened.

Vivi, Princess of Alabasta, sat at her office desk and chewed her lip in worry. There was something she had not told Luffy, something she'd been keeping secret for the past six years, something which owing to a series of mysterious and alarming events she would now have to tell the Pirate King:

Zoro was alive.

---------to be continuednotes: Oh my god I hate writing without dialogue. But there had to be no real dialogue and no real action or else this would have turned into a fic on its own. I assure you, the rest will not read like a monstrous flashback. And no, Usopp, Chopper, and Robin will not be left in the lurch. pets