Welcome back everyone!
I cannot express how shocked I was with how many people responded after posting the last chapter! Like wow :D

There is a moment, standing before that shichibukai in a kingdom of nightmares, that Asura stills.

It is only afterwards (after days of lying in his cot, wrecked with the memories of pain that no amount of sake can relieve) that he even realizes. He hadn't noticed then, faced with a terrible choice and an unknown outcome before a man they were not ready to face. Asura's rage had faded in that moment leaving Zoro alone with his decision, with his suffering (his captain's suffering).

In those days lying in his cot with nothing else to do besides drink, sleep, or think, he remembers that man and that choice. And his decision. He remembers how easy it was to choose, how instinctual.

(He remembers the forever-promise Asura had inscribed on his heart and his ribs and his fleshy insides. A promise he'd made in the dark with a girl and then with a demon and then with a boy. Asura had kept him alive well beyond what he should have lived. Past days of being lost at sea. Past starvation and dehydration and too many bleeding cuts and even Hawkeye's scar that would have killed a lesser man. A lesser demon.

He remembers how easy it was to throw it all away in that moment.)

Asura is quiet in the days after.

Zoro knows because he sleeps. He sleeps for hours, dreamless periods of grogginess that leave him confused. Chopper tells him he slept the day away and Zoro stares. He has spent more of his life than not sleeping in short, spastic intervals lead by the demon's whims. Asura disdains inactivity. Zoro does too.

Sitting still for too long causes his skin to crawl, causes Asura to crawl under his skin. He grows restless until finally the demon jerks inside of him, leaving him breathless and nauseous and desperate for movement. It is that feeling of foreign slithering on his guts and bones that keeps him choosing the midnight watch shifts more often than not, that keeps him going when he trains and is dead tired but that tearingtoomuch burn in his muscles is better than the feeling of claws against his lungs.

But he sleeps, nonetheless.

For a day, according to Chopper.

He can still feel that weightless pit in his stomach, under layers of innards and muscles and skin and bandages. He can still feel Asura. But the demon is dormant.

No.

The demon is stagnant. Static. Motionless.

Asura is awake and aware but unwilling to much more than simply exist and Zoro feels an ironic sort of resent. What he wouldn't have given, what he wouldn't have done to have the hellspawn simply stop. Now, the damn serpent beast is quiet and Zoro feels a chilling sense of dread.

There is power in calling on demons, calling on gods or mystic power. There is a price, too, but Zoro pays that every day. The power is the important part, the reason why, what makes the heavy burden worth it. And Zoro has never been ungrateful towards Asura. He has power, has strength and skill that only something other could give him.

And suddenly he doesn't.

So far, Asura has remained silent. Hopefully as his wounds heal, the pitbeast will come back around. Perhaps their next stop will grant them reprieve.

(He ignores the dread-chill in his bones at the thought. It isn't Asura projecting, not when Asura is a dead-nothingness pit in between his stomach and sternum. It is a dread-chill that grapples what parts of him are still human.

He thinks Sabaody and shivers.)

Well that was ominous...

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