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Gecko Moria leaned his head back against the stone wall of his cell, eyes cracked open but unseeing. His mouth tasted like copper, swimming with warm blood mixed saliva that he should have spat out or swallowed by now but couldn’t find the energy to.
They’d offered to bandage the long slash on his back, mocking though the offer may have been he was still “Blackbeard’s guest”, but he refused. So now it stung horribly, the ragged edges of his cape balled up and pressed haphazardly against it in a poor attempt to ebb the flow of blood.
Somehow, Moria willed himself to keep breathing. It felt like running a marathon, and it was not because of the few wounds he’d received at Shiryu and Devon’s grimy hands.
Absalom was dead.
It shouldn’t have hurt this much, he’d prepared himself for the eventuality before he’d docked at Fullalead! Had been reminded a week before by Hogback that Blackbeard was an Emperor and a ruthless one at that. But he had been hoping for it not to be true. Because Gecko Moria never learned his goddamn lesson!
Fighting back the wave of self loathing with another slow breath, Moria relaxed his muscles. It wasn’t his fault. It was Blackbeard’s. Blackbeard and his sick crew that likely threw Absalom’s helpless corpse into a heap as soon as Moria was jailed.
Righteous fury was a better feeling, he decided, and he leaned into it even if he still felt helpless.
That foolish Teach had offered for Moria to join his crew, he even seemed excited to have him. After his multiple failures over the past two years it almost felt nice to be considered worth having on another crew, and under other circumstances, Moria might have said yes just to survive. He felt like a cockroach just thinking about it, but being a pirate meant fighting for life and your dreams and joining Blackbeard would have brought him closer to that goal! Perhaps in time he could have used Blackbeard’s might and influence to defeat Kaido. (Don’t think about Kaido. Don’t think about them.)
But these were not those circumstances. Because Absalom was dead, had been mocked and had his Devil Fruit stolen from him. To accept the offer to join Blackbeard’s crew would be a betrayal of everything Moria still believed in!
Moria winced when another wave of pain shot through his back. It was disconcerting to know that Absalom’s fruit was being used by another man. He wondered idly, because his mind needed to continue down the treacherous path of anger and self-pity, whether he would have been able to sense Shiryu coming if his Observation Haki was still working. Considering Absalom had been caught, perhaps he might have. Of course that wasn’t really worth speculating because his Haki had died with the image of his old crew lying forever still in the snow.
The giant man shook his head slowly, shifting his gaze to look from the ceiling down to the bars across from him.
How long would Blackbeard give him to think over his “proposition” before he gave up and decided it was easier to kill him and take his fruit? The man was smart enough to know just how proficient and inventive Moria was at using the Kage Kage no Mi, so perhaps a few days more? Weeks even?
Lifting his head, he ran his tongue along the spikes of his teeth. There was no way in Hell he was going to work under Blackbeard.
His cuffs were seastone yes, but Moria was bigger than most and willing to bite and claw his way off the island if he had to.
So… so he couldn't stop breathing, no matter how much he wanted to just give up.
Just like after the loss of his first crew, he knew he had to keep going. Even when the act of breathing was like climbing an endless mountain and his mind went numb with cold! Even when the thought of losing someone again made his skin crawl with invisible spiders and his throat clog with endless self-loathing! Even if, in the end, he died anyway, he wanted to go out fighting!
Moria clenched his hand into a fist, digging his nails into his palm in a bid to wake himself up.
Resolve, that was all he needed! Though it hurt to slide his back up the wall, Moria sat up straighter, considering his options. He couldn’t break through the bars, nor use his shadow to scout his surroundings, but he assured himself that an opening would show itself eventually.
“Moria Sama!”
He would recognize that voice anywhere! The spiders crawled up his skin as he turned to face the small pink haired woman he’d thought he’d never see again, peering through the bars with a big smile and wide owl eyes.
Moria was pretty sure he’d stopped breathing.