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In hindsight, it made sense, but in the moment, Kuzan hadn’t expected to see a young man on the verge of a break, thoughts rattling in his skull and thundering so loudly, he almost expected them to come pouring out and crashing across the plaza.
To drop that level of upset like a bomb on the proceedings would have been funny—at the very least, the testing might be canceled and he’d get to relax the rest of the day instead of sitting around stiffly, trying to oversee it all. But then what would happen to the poor asshole getting ready to pull his hair out on the steps?
“Hey, kid.”
The head topped in shaggy grey hair snapped his way, hackles raised as the young man bristled—unwilling, or perhaps unable to rein himself in.
“Leave me the hell alone. I—”
“You here for the exams?”
From his place a few steps down, Kuzan smiled. He let the other hold the high ground. It wasn’t often, after all, that he had to look up to others instead of the other way around.
Something in the young man popped and fizzled out, though anxiety still ran roughshod just beneath the surface. “…yeah. What’s it to you?”
Kuzan took a seat, giving the other his back as he reached into a pocket and produced a pack of cigarettes from it. He cast a glance back over his shoulder, “Want a smoke?”
Brows furrowed and briefly anger flashed again hot before it ebbed back. It might be a fuel issue, Kuzan reasoned. Staying mad took so much energy. Better to just relax and pick things apart that way.
The young man stared mutely as he debated the question, and after deliberation a bit too long, Kuzan flicked one out for himself and pocketed the rest.
“Hey!”
“Snooze, you lose,” he grinned calmly. With a strike of a match, he lit up and took a drag.
With a sigh, defeated for the time being, the young man descended one step, then two, and slumped to sit, deflating with a strained exhale. “Yeah,” he admitted, “I’m here for the exams.” When he began to fidget, picking at his nails one-handed, Kuzan offered him the cigarette from his lips.
“Looks like you could use it more than me.”
The young man eyed the offer with suspicion, then snorted. Somewhere buried deep, there was a little grin hidden inside the guy. Kuzan found it cute. “I’m supposed to be quitting.”
“Oh?” Kuzan cocked an eyebrow, “How’s that working for you? You gonna stick to it?” He held his ground, neither pushing nor rescinding. He didn’t want to step on any toes.
“Probably not.” He took the cigarette with a curt laugh and Kuzan mirrored it with one a little less high-strung.
“Talk to me,” another offer, wide open without an ounce of judgment. “You got a name?”
Again, the young man settled into terse silence. This time however, he came up for air sooner. “Smoker.”
Well, that was a self-fulfilling prophecy if he'd ever heard one, but he kept that to himself. Kuzan nodded though, letting the hopeful’s exhale curl around him when blown.
Smoker stuck out a leg, uncurling enough to bump the other’s hip with the tread of his boot. “So what's yours, then?”
Lax, he shrugged, “Just a nobody.”
“Yeah,” Smoker’s nearly-grin tried a little harder. “You look like one. Some geezer-ass nobody.”
“S-sure.” A choked laugh shook it’s way from Kuzan, “That sounds about right.” Whoever the guy was, apparently his aspirations didn't extend to learning anything about naval hierarchy, but that suited Kuzan just fine. He preferred it when people weren't trying to spitshine his shoes with their own rank-lust.
“So, Smoker—” Kuzan watched him stamp the smoldering butt of the cigarette on a step. “What's got you all fired up?”
Not the prettiest swirl of emotion—Smoker twisted back into shades of anger and dread, but he seemed to take it on easier than when Kuzan first found him.
“This is my last chance.” Smoker’s hands clenched into fists as he stared holes into the toes of his shoes. “I’m not gonna just sit on my ass and do nothing. I was—” He cut himself off, gritting his teeth, locking down. Kuzan could practically see the guy seal himself up. “I was there when we killed Roger.”
“We?” Kuzan leaned back across a few steps, weight on his elbows. It gave him a clearer vantage of the other. “Interesting choice of words.”
“I'm out of Loguetown. And I wanna be a Marine. We.” Fair. Smoker continued, “I saw what happens when pirates run rampant.”
Ah, Kuzan noted the snarl trying to curl up where that nice half-grin once lived. Smoker spoke with the experience of a person who’d lost something of import, or at the least, came close to it.
“But when I enlisted, I…” Smoker grumbled softly, “…three days in and I got thrown out.”
Kuzan whistled. “Killed somebody? You would have had to done something drastic to get booted from bootcamp.”
“They said I was ‘incompatible with taking orders’.”
Craning his head back, Kuzan shot a look toward the massive double doors behind them. “So the exams, then—”
“If I can't get in as a goddamn grunt, the only other way is fast-tracked as an officer. But I can't afford to get into the military academy. I could barely afford to get here to take the tests,” he hissed. “I have to get in, but I need that fucking scholarship for that.” Something began to crack, starting as a hairline fracture in the young man’s voice, trembling with fury directed squarely at himself, “—but I dropped out of school years ago. I don't know shit about anything, I—”
Kuzan raised a hand. “Chill.” It was neither a dismissal nor an order. It was an invitation. “You know your shortcomings. That's a lot more self-awareness than most people here have. Trust me. I've seen a lot of shit.” He offered a hand. “Take a walk with me. I'll show you a little trick.”
Oh, now that earned a huge red streak of suspicion.
Flaring to life again, Smoker slapped his hand away. “Oh, fuck no. That's the first thing they teach you in the city as a kid. I'm not going off to some fucking secondary location with some creep on the stairs.”
He looked primed and loaded with more, but any words fell of deaf ears as Kuzan doubled over, sinking to his knees as he shook with laughter. Somewhere around the time he resorted to raising his hands in submission, wordlessly begging for a reprieve as he wheezed, Smoker eased back into mild confusion and embarrassment.
“...not a creep, huh? Sorry about that,” he grunted, side-eyeing a pack of test-takers as they hurried up the steps. “You…understand though, right?”
Of course, as one of the last stops in the East on the way to the Grand Line, without a constant military presence, it would be childsplay to overrun the city. Even kept stable as it stood now, the lurking threat of kidnapping and violence likely remained on the minds of many—especially those like Smoker, who’d lived through the last words of the inflammatory Pirate King himself.
Wiping his eyes as he caught his breath, Kuzan took a seat down from Smoker—close as he could without sitting on him. He folded his legs up and Smoker followed suit.
“I wanted—” Maybe he still hadn't fully settled yet. Smoker’s bold-faced audacity still flashed hot in his mind. “I wanted to teach you to meditate!”
Smoker swallowed, firmly refusing to apologize (and to his merit, he had a good reason for his reaction!) but unsettled enough to keep himself from bouncing back.
“Here,” Already mirroring one another, Kuzan took Smoker’s hands and set them upon the young man's knees, palms down. “Like this.”
“I…thought it was hands up. You only ever see folks chanting with weird hand signs, but it's palms up.”
Gods, Smoker really didn’t know shit for shit outside his own insulated little world—of all the thousands of permutations of the same broadly-defined things, each painted a shade off from one another by a thousand different experiences. But lacking the usual pompous head-assery that too-often accompanied the ladder-climbers of the military world—faced with a man aware of his own crap, but willing to try…it was actually kind of adorable.
“Not my way,” he corrected smoothly, “This is a balancing act. When you shut off one of the senses, sometimes the others get weird about it.” Kuzan tugged his sleep mask down and settled himself into position as well. “See? Mine are shut first. Gonna run this honor system style.”
“Okay.” Though he sounded unconvinced, Smoker complied. “Eyes shut. Why am I hands down?”
“I'm gonna walk you through and you might feel a little wobbly. If you do, we can pause. You can lock up nice and easy in that position til the feeling passes. Then we continue.”
Relative silence met him. There was the distant chatter of people moving about their daily lives, and others excitedly nattering about academy life, nearly within reach. Songbirds trilled, a breeze blew, and across from him, Smoker tried with mixed results to even his breathing.
Kuzan set the stage and began with a cool, even tempo.
“Forget the cement grinding your ass. Forget anyone else—hell, anything else out here past the two of us.”
A deep breath in, held, then exhaled. He waited for Smoker to mirror the same, then continued.
“It’s cold out, freezing even. It’s water as far as you can see and nothing else. And you…you’re nothing. You’re a literal drop in the sea. Visualize that for me.”
Softly, under breath, “I can.”
“It’s shit weather. Choppy. White caps build and crash everywhere. And every time you try to beat it up the back of a wave, reaching and straining for something—anything…it tumbles out from beneath you and tugs you down sharp, sending you back into that black, swirling abyss. You with me?”
Almost meekly, a little breathless And far more reserved than Kuzan ever expected to hear from him, “Yeah.”
“Every time it pushes you under, everything that surrounds you—it’s knives, that cold. And you fight back to the surface, you get a lick more of that biting chill in the air.” Exhaling, he let a wisp of power escape with his breath, and for that, heard Smoker shiver. “Everything is tumultuous, chaotic…but there’s an ally here.”
When he caught Smoker holding his breath, Kuzan nudged the other’s knees with his own. Like opening a dam, it came out in a rush.
“Breathe,” Kuzan chuckled. “You holding up?”
Smoker made a sound of uncertainty. “Little chilly out here for mid-May…”
Kuzan nodded, the sight lost on both of them. “That’s because we’re in the middle of the North. It’s cold, it’s miserable, it’s stormy—but you’re water. It’s your ally.” He’s seen it, felt it a hundred thousand times over. Explaining the sensation comes easier than breathing. “If you can’t afford to be small, change and grow. If you can’t afford to be pummeled and knocked around, build that stability.
“It crystallizes, crackling out like fireworks frozen in time—it’s freezing fractals branching out, bading stillness into everything it touches.”
“Ice,” Smoker murmured.
“One little drop of water in the ocean becomes two as it reaches out, adopting that chill instead of struggling against it. Two becomes four, becomes eight. Slowly…you can feel edges where before all you had was curves.
“Those waves are tough though, enough to make the strongest stomachs turn.” Reaching blind, he found Smoker’s calves, then his knees, “Here—” and found nails dug into dirty denim. “Lay ‘em flat.” He coaxed the other to relax, his thumbs rubbing careful circles into the meaty part of Smoker’s palms. “You reach. Feel that cold in your core and push it down your arms, into your hands, out your fingers. Spread.”
The temperature around them backslid, dipping slowly as the heat of the afternoon became an afterthought. Already acquainted with the varied expressions of Smoker’s anger, Kuzan found it easy to imagine the younger man’s faces of concentration as he felt the hand atop his bare palms stretch.
“It’s not easy. The waves still flip you like you’re nothing. But you have a plan. You keep going—forcing that raw edge further, another inch, another droplet—”
Balanced with him, Smoker began to sway in little motions, easy to miss by sight, but easy to catch by touch.
“I got you. Need to stop?”
Breathing deeply, Smoker grumbled, but steadied himself by the other’s touch. “No.”
Kuzan smiled. “Good. Keep reaching.”
Where before, he’d sat with a delinquent, he now had a man obedient, listening readily and participating when left free enough to choose his path and never once forced down it.
“The further you get, the thicker the floe grows. Nothing can crack you. You’re sturdy.” He pushed another chill into the air and with the minute twitch he felt through the other’s hands, wondered if Smoker’s arms had pricked up in gooseflesh—a sensation Kuzan could no longer experience.
“The storm reaches a peak and the grey sky turns black.” This time, he noted, there was no extended hold, only quiet even breathes In time with his own. “It pitches you again, but the waves strain and groan as they try to flip you. Once more—that’s all they’ve got left in them, then that’s it…you rock, you coast, sliding down their backs, but you never sink.”
A sigh of relief.
“You reach.”
Smoker pressed down against his palms, fingertips glancing against his wrists.
“The sea quiets, the darkness of it slowly changing. It’s a beautiful blue, it’s white, it’s soft colors twisted and curled as you set your roots and grow down deep. The winds still. Everything—far as the eye can see…it’s you. It’s peace. Inhale deep. Hold. And let it go.” Pulling his hands back, he pushed up his mask in time to watch Smoker’s eyes open. They’re an earthy dark sort of red, not unlike wet clay. “Feel a little cooler-headed?”
Smoker’s expression hovered in neutrality until he noticed a warm puff of breath come off him. He chuckled, “You’ve got a devil fruit?”
Kuzan tilted his head toward Smoker, his smile a little quieter, a little more private than before. “Something like that. So…?”
Bumped on track again, Smoker nodded, “Yeah. Thanks.” He rubbed his hands together, seeking warmth.
Rising to full height Kuzan offered his hand once more. Smoker took it and hauled himself up.
He led Smoker to the doors, and paused just shy of opening them. “Don’t be intimidated by the stacks of paper they give you. A chunk of that’s just paperwork to get you into the system. A lot of the rest is just written aptitude tests. There’s practical stuff too, so don’t sweat it. Keep a calm head under pressure and you’ll go a lot farther than some guy next to you with years of private education, but an itchy trigger finger.”
Silent, Smoker digested it. Inhale, hold, exhale. Then looking up, “See you around?”
When Kuzan grinned, it brought out Smoker’s in full and fuck that was nice. Gripping the handle, Kuzan hauled one of the doors back and Smoker stepped onto the threshold.
“Yeah. Yeah, I will.”
Off Smoker went. In the broad open entrance hall, a young woman seethed as she dashed forward to grab him by the sleeve, and without waiting for a response, hauled ass.
“Have you been outside this whole time? Are you insane hanging back like that? Everything is about to start! Move!”
Did they know one another? Kuzan couldn’t tell and it really didn’t bother him either way. Smoker seemed surprised as hell over the fuss she made, so maybe not. And as she dragged Smoker off into one of the testing rooms, Kuzan rolled his shoulders. Right. He had proctors to oversee. Well, the world wasn’t ending, so it was time for business, then...