Archive of Our Own ^beta

The blindfold comes off, and bright, stabbing light hits Goro’s eyes.

He blinks hard, biting back a frustrated little noise as his eyes slowly adjust. It takes him a moment to take stock of the situation: there’s a dead body on the ground next to him (the man who’d kidnapped him), there’s cups on a rock (flat enough to be a table), the man Goro had briefly seen following them is standing in front of him, and the blindfold in his gloved hands. 

The stranger is dressed entirely in black, save for his white domino mask. As Goro squints against the sunlight he repositions himself slightly to block it, an amused light dances in his eyes even as the rest of his expression stays blank. 

Those eyes are dark, too, a deep silver that hits Goro with the sharp stab of a memory of callused hands and the smell of leather and straw. He shakes the sense-memory out of his head. Thinking about Akira right now is about as counterproductive as Goro thinks he could get.

This man isn’t Akira. Goro doesn’t think Akira would have casually tricked a man into killing himself the way this man had. From the amused light in his eyes, Goro doesn’t think he feels particularly bad about it, either. 

Is he having fun? What sort of sick game is this to him?

“Who are you?” Goro asks. It comes out sharp, annoyed. The stranger smiles. 

“Why don’t we get out of here, Highness,” he says in lieu of answering Goro’s question. 

He unties Goro’s wrists and helps him up from the rock he’d been sitting on, and Goro curses internally as he wobbles slightly. 

There’s no time to recenter himself, though, as the stranger takes off, still holding on to Goro’s hand. Goro has no choice but to run after him or get dragged. 

The ground is made up of scrubby grass and bushes, and rocks jutting up in consistently inconsistent places, and cliffs Goro can see in the distance. Beyond that he knows is the ocean, because he couldn’t have gotten too far away from it in the span of the morning, but he can’t see it. Goro thinks he might have appreciated the landscape more if he got to actually see it; as it stands, it all passes in a blur as he focuses on not getting tripped up by the rocks underfoot or by the pace the stranger sets. 

This day—days, now, he guesses—just keeps getting better, he thinks bitterly. Quite frankly, he’s sick of it.

From behind, Goro can’t glean much more about the stranger than he could from the front. He can see the very ends of black hair that curls up over his head covering, and the barest sliver of his pale neck, but that’s it. 

He’s strong. Much stronger than he looks like he should be, though Goro supposes he did climb after them on the cliffs and that didn’t look particularly easy.

They run for long enough that Goro is starting to struggle to keep up, and then the stranger brings them to an abrupt stop under an outcropping. He spins Goro around and pushes him toward a flat rock, and Goro drops onto it. 

“We’ll take a moment to rest,” the stranger says, “And then we’re going to keep moving. I’d rather not linger out here longer than necessary.” 

Frustration bubbles in Goro’s chest. He stands up. 

“No, that’s enough,” Goro says. “I want answers. What do you want? If you’re after a war like the last—”

The stranger laughs, cutting Goro off. His eye twitches.

“Oh, no, Highness, nothing of the sort,” he says.

“Then what? Who are you?”

The laughter hasn’t left the stranger’s eyes, and the cocky little smirk hasn’t left his lips. Goro feels like the power has shifted, anyway, and he’s not sure what ticked him off.

“Why don’t you make your best guess?” The stranger’s eyes glitter, mirth and self-assurance swirling together into something that makes the hair on the back of Goro’s neck stand on end. “Who am I?”

Followed them in the dark over the water. Climbed up the cliffs. Defeated each challenge thrown his way. He’s clever, relentless, and dangerous. There’s not many men with the sort of reputation necessary to demand someone guess and the skills to back that reputation up.

“You’re the Dread Pirate Roberts,” Goro guesses, and the man—the pirate—breaks into a grin.

“Ding ding ding!” Roberts holds out his arms as though for an audience. “We have a winner!”

The Dread Pirate Roberts.

The same Dread Pirate Roberts who doesn’t take prisoners, who took Akira away from him, who’s sure to kill Goro as soon as they’re back on the water. Goro should be terrified, by all accounts.

For the most part, though, Goro is just incensed.

“You must think you’re rather special, then, don’t you?” Goro snips, and Roberts’s eyes light up.

“I don’t think,” Roberts corrects with his smug little smirk. “I’m flattered you do, though! Come on, your dear fiancée can’t be very far behind us by now.”

It won’t be Haru coming to get him, Goro knows. Haru’s just as trapped in this whole thing as he is. It’ll be her father, of course, coming to save the boy he’d picked out of a crowd and chosen to rise to a much higher station, as though Goro should be grateful for it. Goro knows what it really is; a man coming to reclaim his ticket to a legacy. 

He likes Haru plenty, honestly, and if things had been different, if he weren’t expected to love her, he probably wouldn’t resent her as much. As things stand, though, it’s hard not to feel bitter toward her.

He doesn’t correct Roberts. He gets the feeling that Roberts wouldn’t particularly care about the distinction, and besides, Goro’s life is still up in the air. 

Roberts pulls Goro up, and they’re off again, rushing through the scrubby mountainside towards who-knows-where. Likely, wherever Roberts’s ship is anchored.

The next time they stop, Goro spins on Roberts.

“You know,” Goro says, “If my sword hadn’t been taken from me, I would run you through with it right now.”

Roberts’s eyes sparkle with amusement, mouth curling up into a smug little smile.

“Oh?” Roberts asks. “And what have I done to earn your wrath, Highness?”

The words get trapped, for just a moment.

“You killed my only love,” Goro says. He glares at Roberts. “Not that I expect someone as cold-blooded as you to remember.”

“Ah,” Roberts says. “No, you’re likely correct, I wouldn’t remember one person among hundreds. Tell me, what was your love like? Another underhanded politician? A cheating merchant, perhaps?”

Rage boils up in Goro’s chest. Akira was none of those things. Akira was honest, and caring, and so unerringly devoted to his beliefs that he shone with it. Akira was everything Goro couldn’t be and more. Even now, Goro barely understands how Akira fell just as deeply in love with him as Goro had. 

It doesn’t matter now how honest or devoted or caring Akira was, though. Akira’s gone.

“He was the best man you’d ever met,” Goro says sharply. “He was a farmhand. He was poor. He was my world, and you—”

The words choke on anger in his throat. His jaw feels tight with it, his chest feels like it’s constricting. Roberts looks at him blankly, eyes sharp and focused. The smile is still on his face, but it feels plastered-on, just an act. He just watches Goro like that for a stretched-out moment.

“I think I may remember him,” Roberts says. He stands and walks around to face Goro, hands on his hips. “Now that I think of it, I do believe he told me about you.”

Roberts’s face is impossible to read behind his mask, eyes hard, smirk still present, revealing nothing. Goro turns to watch him circle leisurely. 

“He told me that he couldn’t die,” Roberts says, “Because he had to get back to somebody. The most loyal man in the world, he’d told me. That was really what I took away from him; not how beautiful you were, or how kind, but how loyal. How devoted.”

Roberts stops, turning on Goro.

“I wonder if he’d be disappointed to see what good your devotion went to,” he says. 

Rage floods Goro’s chest.

“You have no right,” Goro growls. Roberts shrugs, spreading his arms.

“Highness, to me, it looks like you abandoned him!” Roberts takes a step toward Goro. “Gave up and chose to love another, for no reason but power. Is that right?”

“I do not love Okumura,” Goro says, hands balling into fists at his sides. “I never will. I don’t care about power.”

“Oh, I’m sure,” Roberts says. “Why else would you marry her?”

Goro punches him.

He doesn’t really recall thinking, I’m going to punch him, much less the actual action. There’s simply a moment where Goro is standing there, and one where Goro feels his fist crash into Roberts’s nose. 

Roberts reels slightly, staring at Goro with wide eyes. Then, he breaks into a grin.

“So you do have some fight in you,” Roberts says. Goro glares. 

“I simply wish you’d die,” Goro hisses, and this time his attack actually has thought. He shoves his shoulder into Roberts’s chest and watches as his foot slips on the grass. There’s a moment of surprise in his eyes, real surprise, and then he topples down the steep hill.

And Goro, of course, Goro hears it clear as day as Roberts tumbles, drawn-out and impact-warped:

“As you wish.”

Goro covers his mouth.

Oh my God, he thinks.

“Oh my God,” he repeats aloud, rushed and quiet. “Akira.”

There’s no careful way to get down the hill to where he can see Roberts—Akira, God, what he’d said to him—laying dazed at the bottom, but he certainly tries.

He ends up tumbling just the same, descent uncontrolled and painful as he comes to a stop at the bottom of the hill. He shoves himself upright and throws himself at Akira, pinning his shoulders to the ground.

His mask fell away in his fall, as did his head covering; Goro can see his face, clear as day, and it nearly knocks the breath from his lungs the same way rolling down the hill did.

“You piece of shit,” Goro laughs, and Akira looks up at him and grins. 

“You meant it,” Akira says. “About not loving Okumura?”

“You’re a moron if you really think I’d marry her for power,” Goro says. “You’re a moron anyway. How are you…”

Alive, firstly; the Dread Pirate Roberts, secondly, because as far as Goro knows, that’s an entirely different person, and Akira only left five years ago.

“I’ll tell you on the way,” Akira promises, reaching up to cup Goro’s face. “It’s—I didn’t think I’d see you again.”

“I thought you’d died,” Goro says. 

“True love finds a way,” Akira says, and leans up to kiss him.

And nothing else in the world matters.