Archive of Our Own

There is an air of promise weaving through the people of Wano. It flits through the frantic beats of shoes and bare feet in the plazas; scatters high around wish-filled lanterns and fireworks. It lifts, lilts, lays at the ground near Zoro’s feet, and he has the gut-curdling urge to kick it back to the sea. For the first time in over two years, he is left staggering against the weight of a promise.

Case in point: Wano’s been saved, a party has been thrown, and Zoro’s come back from hell to kill Sanji.

“Ah, nevermind,” Sanji’d said. “It’s good now.”

And Zoro knows that tone of voice: used it himself when he had stared bleary-eyed and toeing death within the thralls of Thriller Bark. It is quiet in its acceptance—almost scraping the edge of giving up, sliding along the ragged blade of willing defeat, and it was such an insult to not just Zoro, but to Sanji, that he’d done the only thing he could think of: got right up in the cook’s painfully blank face and sneered.

He sits now with his back pressed against the rough bark of a cypress, Nami next to him with a thin bottle of sake between her fingers. She pours him a cup, and he pours hers, and together they watch Wano ignite in celebration. 

Citizens of all ages dance and shout, and Zoro can see Luffy flung among them cackling. Franky is spinning Robin with a gentleness he didn’t know the man was capable of; Usopp throws Chopper on to his shoulders to get a better look at the whorls of fire painting the sky. Brook flings himself into the fray with an odd gracefulness, and Jinbe claps and wolf whistles when the skeleton breaks out his violin.

Sanji, despite every corner of the city being covered head to toe in food and stalls and music, is nowhere to be found.

It isn’t right, and that knowledge alone blooms an itch underneath Zoro’s skin.

Nami follows his gaze, her smile widening a fraction at each familiar face her eyes land on before, inevitably, falling. Zoro sighs through his nose and keeps his eyes locked on his drink when she turns towards him. “So that’s why you look like someone pissed in your drink,” she says, and for once, her voice lacks its usual teasing. She looks—sullen, is the only word he really has for it, and Zoro finds himself leaning sideways until his shoulder bumps hers.

“You’re heavy,” Nami grumbles, but she’s smiling again, so Zoro doesn’t move. 

For a while, they only sit there, trading off drinks and off-handed comments as Luffy flings himself through dancers left and right, and as Chopper and Robin have created a little shuffle for just the two of them. It’s almost perfect. Almost. The contentment Zoro feels begins to sour at the lack of a grin every time someone eats, of a laugh edged with a slight rasp whenever Usopp regards one of his many tales, of a challenging tilt of a head reserved for Zoro and Zoro alone—of Sanji, Sanji, Sanji.

Nami shifts as if she can sense his darkening mood. “You know,” she begins, hands wringing together and voice quiet enough that Zoro strains to hear, “I was so—so, angry with him, Zoro. Beyond angry. I couldn’t… couldn’t understand why he left, despite the fact that I had done the same thing all those years ago. Or maybe I did, and I was pissed that he didn’t learn anything from it. But that’s the thing. That’s the fucking thing. He knows, and he understands, and I know he does, but he’s got it in his head that he’s—exempt from the same fate I was, or Robin, or Usopp. From that love Luffy gives so freely.”

Her shoulders slump, and Zoro curls a hand over where she’s begun to dig her nails into her palms. Nami rests her head against his. “His family wanted him dead,” she says after a long moment. “And—I can’t say more than that, I won’t, because it isn’t my story to tell, but—” She sucks a breath in through her teeth. “Do you remember what age Sanji met Zeff at?” 

Zoro clenches his jaw. Takes a breath to cool the growing anger crashing against his chest. “Curly said he was eight or so,” he says after a long moment. 

“Then he was seven when he ran from Germa,” Nami spits out, knocking the back of her head against the cypress. “Seven, and they wanted him dead. At any cost. And he went back there to try and save all of us, even if he—” A click of her throat. “Even if he died.

“I was so angry with him, Zoro,” she repeats, a little softer this time, a little more pained, “and I had every right to be. I had every fucking right. But I’ll be damned if I don’t regret it just a little.” 

For a split second, Zoro wishes he’d gone to Whole Cake if only just to cut Judge to pieces. 

There’s a sudden, heavy weight against his shoulder, and Zoro blinks when he finds he’s halfway to standing with his fingers gripped tight on Wado; Nami’s weight the only thing keeping him from stalking off. He could shake her off. He doesn’t, instead settling back down and shifting when Nami makes to get more comfortable. 

“I’m gonna ask you this once, and I’m not going to repeat it, so listen up,” Nami says, and she has to clear her throat when her voice comes out rasped. “When you all helped me from Arlong—saved me, really—after I had gone off without looking back, did I immediately spring back afterwards? Did Robin, after trying to sacrifice herself in Enies Lobby?”

Of course not. Zoro could count the amount of times he’d seen Nami cry on one hand, and that included Arlong Park, but he remembers the nightmares she was plagued with. How she’d wake up heaving and clawing at her own chest, each crew member’s name spilling from her lips panicked as she lay stuck in a world where they really let her go, left her by herself.

That one haunts him sometimes. Sanji had burst into the room, hand like a damned brand on his shoulder as he shook him awake, and told him Nami was having a nightmare and he couldn’t wake her up. As Zoro shot up, he saw Sanji hurry to wake Usopp and Luffy both after. None of them had left her alone that night, despite her sniffled complaints of how they all smelled.

They’d all woken to the sweet smell of a fresh baked tart, decorated with fresh whipped cream and candied tangerines, with a majority of it placed gently in front of Nami. When she began to shake, asked how, Zoro could only watch as Sanji talked of Nojiko, quiet and soothing even as Nami flung herself into his arms. They rocked together. Zoro didn’t move from Nami’s side, and Luffy lay plastered across her back while Usopp curled his fingers through her own. 

We’d never give you up, Nami-san, Sanji had said gently, and the wail that was torn from Nami still echoes in Zoro’s ears sometimes. You’re important to us.

Then there was Robin, who was awake when Zoro fell asleep and up when he woke. She was like Sanji in that way. Working late into the night and already on deck when it was time to lift the anchor. There was one night only a week or so after Enies Lobby where Zoro didn’t retire back to the boy’s cabin. Merry had died, and though the Sunny was beautiful and far more expansive than Merry could’ve been, he was restless every time he tried to climb into his bunk.

He was in the middle of brooding—having weeped into Nami’s shoulder earlier (the pain always hit him a little later than most) and hugged Usopp tight enough the man complained he was dying (though Zoro could feel him grinning, could feel the fabric of his shirt become tear-stained)—when Robin stumbled out into the night. He’d almost gotten up—because, shit, at this point she was nakama, wasn’t she?—when Sanji beat him to the punch.

Zoro knows firsthand the near silent way Sanji moves. He thinks this was the first time Robin really understood how easily their cook could slip through the ship soundlessly, remembering clearly the way she’d startled when Sanji laid a blanket over her shoulders with barely an exhale. How invisible could you make yourself, Zoro wonders now, brief and fleeting, to escape the notice of a woman finding people doing just that?

Either Sanji hadn’t noticed, or he simply didn’t comment on it. Sleep, he’d murmured, gentle and sweet in the way he always stupidly is, I’ll wake you if there are any more. 

The man didn’t even doze off or twirl once when Robin finally slumped against him with a quiet: Thank you. Maybe that was the first sign Sanji wasn’t all he seemed to be—the flirting a mask, the winks and grins covering the truth. But then again, Zoro always knew that, didn’t he? He knew it from the moment he met Sanji in the Baratie: the way he’d keep a keen eye for danger in a restaurant he claimed to despise, and the way he had called for Zeff with a broken voice when they’d left, those walls briefly crumbling to allow—something. 

Something.

And by the Blues, Zoro can’t fathom what that is other than good.

For a man who will wear blood-soaked dress shoes like his father’s namesake, and light a cigarette over top miles of bodies, Sanji is kind. 

Apparently satisfied with whatever Zoro’s face is doing, Nami settles back down and tips her now-empty cup to the skyline. “Good,” she says, “you aren’t completely helpless, then.” 

“Oi.”

She waves him off. “He’ll tell you when he’s ready. Sanji, I mean. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ask,” and if Zoro were anyone else, he might’ve not noticed the way her knuckles have turned white against the stem of her glass or how her jaw clicked as it clenched shut. She looks as if she’s ready to tear the entirety of the Grand Line down, and it isn’t often that Zoro sees her like this—itching with a rage that threatens to consume Nami whole, if she lets it.

He doesn’t stop her.

I need you to promise me something, Marimo, Sanji had said.

No one else will, and his voice rung dull with acceptance. Zoro hadn’t known what he was talking about, not really—Sanji and he were monsters to begin with. You couldn’t be the wings of the future King of the Pirates without bearing that title like a crown of your own. Except now, with Nami’s words still hanging stagnant against the lightness of Wano’s celebration, everything starts to click into place.

I don’t get it, Chopper once said out of the blue, back when Zoro was still bound to the infirmary after Thriller Bark and when Sanji held vigil at his bedside each night when he thought Zoro was still asleep, you shouldn’t have healed that quickly. You shouldn’t even be standing on that leg, Sanji, let alone run as fast as you did.

Then there was Luffy, who had immediately latched onto Zoro’s bicep shortly after they’d reunited and whispered, Sanji’s scared. And of course he understood, that glimmer of seriousness and anger and fire that Luffy had inherited from his brothers passing to Zoro like a torch. Of course he did. So Zoro kept the cook in the corner of his eye and back of his mind no matter where they went. 

Except—now. 

Zoro presses the heel of his palm against his good eye. Of course. Sanji, who did not speak of his biological family if he could help it, because Zeff was the one who wrapped him in his own coat and gave him a future. Sanji, who cradled lost and scared children close and gave them his own food without a second thought. Sanji, who could be consumed in flame and spark without burning. Zoro might have not known the events of Whole Cake Island, but he was an idiot for assuming the worst of Sanji to begin with.

“Where is he?” Zoro asks, because if there was anyone who knew where Sanji disappeared to, it was Robin and by extension Nami. She doesn’t look surprised, instead rolling her shoulders back before getting to her feet. 

“He’s with Yamato,” she says, offering him a hand. Zoro takes it, and he lets Nami drag him up and into the crowds of Wano, bottle of sake now passing between them like stories. “They had some stuff they wanted to talk about, so for the love of the All Blue, do not show up with the face you’re making right now.”

“I wasn’t even doing anything,” Zoro complains, and Nami rolls her eyes with a quick retort of: “You’re being territorial is what you’re doing—you looked about three seconds away from combusting. Pipe down, boy. Yamato’s our friend.” 

Zoro is suddenly struck with the petty urge to stick his tongue out at her and decidedly does exactly that. “You’re saying that the cook disappearing without a word after trying to sacrifice himself, again, only to be with someone we barely know doesn’t bother you.” Nami scoffs, but her grip has gone tight around the neck of the sake bottle again. “Exactly,” Zoro says, triumphant.

Nami grumbles something along the lines of “having a problem” and “needing help” before shoving Zoro onto one of Wano’s beaches. He stumbles, arms pinwheeling frantically as he tries to catch himself, only to land face first on the ground anyway. “I hate you,” Zoro says, then splutters because he only succeeds in getting a mouthful of sand for his trouble.

He gets to his feet with little fanfare, glaring at her all the while. She kicks at his ankles. “Go, Zoro,” Nami says, and so he does—although not without giving her the finger as he leaves.

Wano’s beautiful. It's not the first time he's thought this, and Zoro's certain it won't be his last, but there's something about the way the ocean glitters orange and pink that steals his breath away. Each color splashes against the waves like paint, and Zoro really must be spending too much time with Robin if he's comparing life to art again. It doesn't help that the slightest flash of gold draws him in fish to hook; if Zoro weren’t already moving, he'd have abandoned any conversation and any stand just to be by the cook's side again.

Sanji is wading down the surf, laughing quietly as a pair of kids talk animatedly around him. Yamato sits in the sand, cackling and jeering when Sanji spins and splashes the kids with a light spray, and Zoro quietly makes his way over. He doesn't take his eyes off of the cook. Can't, really, not when he's grinning like everything he's ever wished for has been placed in his hands. Like he's finally, gloriously found the All Blue.

I miss you, Zoro thinks helplessly. Come back home; I miss you.

“Zoro!” Yamato says cheerfully, pulling him back to reality. His white hair is a beacon in and of itself against the sunset hue of his horns—if that were the light Zoro was looking for. Even still, he finds himself lifting a hand in greeting as Yamato waves in the excited way he does where his arm looks like it might fall off with how fast he moves it. “That is you, yeah? I can’t tell if your hair is green or a really weird shade of blue right now, but Sanji says I need glasses.”

Despite himself, Zoro huffs out a laugh. Answers, amused: “Yeah, it’s me.”

Yamato brightens again with a smile large enough to rival Luffy’s. “C’mere!” he shouts, and the noise manages to draw Sanji’s attention back to where Zoro stands. 

There’s a flash of light, and a thrill zips down his spine as Sanji’s brown eye meets his, his other blue hidden underneath his hair. Heterochromia, he’d explained only shortly after Sabaody when Usopp and Nami asked, a condition where the color of your eyes differ. Zoro doesn’t particularly care what color Sanji’s eyes are—not when each hue of brown and blue reminds him of both the Sunny and the cook’s mystical ocean. They beckon him like the push and pull of the tide, the back and forth rock of the deck during a storm, and Zoro is a pirate for a reason: land and sea conjoined in a home he’ll come back to.

Then Sanji blinks, and Zoro is left reeling with the realization that it’s him he’s utterly entranced with—the cook in his entirety.

He blames it on the alcohol. Zoro notes the gloves wedged at Yamato’s side almost protectively, and carefully, he eases down next to him to avoid spraying them with sand. “Surprised you’re not with Luffy,” he comments. “I sorta assumed parties like this were your thing, too.” 

“They are,” Yamato responds brightly, “but Sanji wanted to talk, and Akemi and Hinata were trying to find a quieter place—they don’t like the fireworks, you know? Too loud. I think they were feeling a little left out, too, but Sanji was kind enough to ask them if they wanted to play.” He laughs. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen those two light up like that before, but to be fair, I don’t think a wing of the future King of the Pirates has ever offered to play hide-and-seek with them, either.” 

Zoro snorts. “The cook’s like that,” he agrees, resting his chin on his fist. Sanji’s lifting a kid with blinding red hair—Hinata, Yamato tells him when Zoro asks—up and off his shoulders when Akemi, he concludes, starts tugging on his pant leg for her turn. He scoops her up with little fanfare, though she whoops the moment she’s settled, and the two of them chase Hinata up the shore, cackling. 

And oh, Zoro thinks, breath quieting in his lungs—maybe it isn’t the alcohol. There’s this warm feeling slipping around his shoulders slow and honey-thick with promise. He feels loose with contentment, and in this moment, Zoro knows that anything could happen to him and he would not be able to tear his eyes away from the cook. But he’s known that for a while now, hasn’t he?

The thought should scare him, and in a way: it does. 

Zoro’s life started with Kuina’s death, and in his mind’s eye, it has always ended with his chest meeting the hilt of a sword. Now, as Sanji’s bandages slip from his shoulders like swirls of their own, Zoro’s met with the lingering image of his own hands rewrapping the fabric across pale skin. A wave of want crashes into him unexpectedly, harsh and unyielding, and if Zoro weren’t already breathless, he’d be gasping for air. It’s terrifying. It is exhilarating. 

“You know,” Yamato starts after a moment, wide eyes watching Zoro curiously, “he talked about you a lot. All of you—your crew, and others like Vivi, Ace, and Bon Clay—but you especially.” 

“Really,” and he tries to sound uninterested against the storm whirling in his chest, but Zoro sounds soft even to his own ears. The Blues know Sanji probably just complained about his manners anyway.

But Yamato furrows his brows, confused, and asks: “Aren’t you his best friend? I could’ve sworn that’s what Sanji said. It was buried behind a lot of cursing, sure, but he said it loud and clear.” A pause, and Zoro is starting to become under the impression that he never woke up and that this is all a fever dream. “Well, he said it really quietly, actually, but I know I heard it. You didn’t know?”

“No,” Zoro breathes, and later—much later—guilt will gnaw its needled teeth into him for how he gets to his feet without another thought in order to go to Sanji. 

The cook is as magnetic as Kid, it seems, when it comes to attracting attention. Zoro’s helpless to his pull, and though it hasn’t been long since he’s put name to the hurricane of emotions thudding in his chest, he’s accepted it with open arms. Sanji skids in his tracks, having been running from both Hinata and Akemi now, and his smile is for once carefree as he stares down at Zoro.

“Marimo,” he lilts, dragging out the o in a soft melody, “don’t tell me you got lost looking for booze.” 

“Wasn’t lookin’ for booze,” Zoro murmurs, and he feels complacent underneath Sanji’s warm gaze. He doesn’t remember the last time it was meant for him and him alone. “You find yourself some fans, curly?” 

Sanji jolts, glancing back to where Hinata and Akemi peek at Zoro from behind his legs. The sight has Zoro struggling not to crumble piece by piece and lay his heart at the cook’s feet. “Ah!” Sanji exclaims, leaning down to ruffle the kids’ hair like he’ll do with Chopper. “Hinata, Akemi, this is Zoro. Marimo, this is Hinata and Akemi.”

"Hi,” Hinata squeaks when Zoro’s eyes sweep over to him. The boy’s cropped red hair sticks up and around a patterned bandanna like an odd dandelion puff, and it’s a direct contrast to the neat ponytail that dons Akemi’s head. Who, when Zoro offers a small wave, glares with enough suppressed rage that he’s mildly surprised his head doesn’t explode like a melon.

“You,” she says, pointing until her finger barely skims the top of his stomach, “be nice to Sanji.”

Sanji and Zoro blink. For once, Sanji looks almost sheepish, and Yamato’s words of He talked about you a lot comes swinging around to smack him in the face. They must’ve overheard Sanji’s usual complaints and deemed Zoro a brand spankin’ new target to protect him from. 

Which is fine. It’s a little cute. 

Just a little. 

“She has your eyes,” Zoro comments after thinking of three different reasons not to. He’s unable to keep a straight face when Sanji gives him a look that would cause any lesser man to wither. “Never thought I’d meet a tinier, less annoying version of you—Oi!”

Zoro buckles underneath the force of two separate kicks against the back of his knees, wincing. One expectedly comes from Sanji, but Zoro wasn’t counting on Akemi’s pointed foot to dig into the joint with a vengeance. “I told you to be nice to Sanji,” the girl huffs, crossing her arms tight across her chest as Zoro is forced to pick himself up for the second time in one night. Hinata conceals a poorly suppressed giggle behind his hand.

Before he can even consider wrestling a twelve-year-old kid in the middle of Wano, Sanji snorts out a laugh. His lips part to reveal a grin that lights him up top to bottom, and the only thing that’s missing is a cigarette between them. It doesn’t matter. Zoro, barely up on his feet, is floored by the sheer joy of it.

He doesn’t get to see Sanji like this much anymore. 

“You look stupid,” Sanji says, smile wide and crooked. “There’s sand dusting your grass, mossy.”

Usually, here’s the time he’d retort with something similar. But he can’t. Zoro’s tongue is caught between his teeth, the insults refusing to roll off, because Sanji’s—gorgeous. He always is, but here, in the light of revolution and cheer, Zoro wants nothing more than to kiss him.

He opens his mouth to ask to do just that—he’s never been one to shy away from his feelings before—when three things happen in quick succession: 

1. Yamato shouts, hoarse and indecipherable, and Zoro whips around to see sand flying as the man scrambles upwards. He isn’t looking at them, though, and a shriek erupts a little further down the beach as Franky—or, at least, who Zoro assumes to be Franky—giving a thumbs up to someone who has the startled, deer-like demeanor of Usopp. That is to say, panicked.

2. An explosion rocks the beach, and a burst of light bright enough to burn Zoro’s single working retina scatters and paints the sky in hundreds of different colors. He’d be impressed if he were expecting it. Instead, Zoro—Wado drawn and hand itching towards Kietsu—steps forward, back to Hinata and Akemi while Sanji does the same, right leg ignited. 

It’s a split second too late, the realization that it’s only a firework. 

3. Zoro doesn’t have time to dwell on it, though—his blood and nerves having long since gotten used to the tune of battle at any moment—because Hinata cries out sharply, and it’s Sanji who stumbles. A little hand has clasped around the other man’s wrist, palm suddenly glowing brighter by the second, and Zoro doesn’t think before he’s trying to pry the kid off of Sanji.

Akemi screeches at him, and it’s the first time Zoro’s heard her voice laced with so much fear. He isn’t going to hurt the kid, he wouldn’t dare, but the moment his own hand so much as brushes against Sanji’s in his rush to get to Hinata, the light condenses and—implodes.

The impact sends Zoro flying. Distantly, he can hear the dull crash of Sanji’s body hitting the sand a little ways away and a quiet groan, which is good. It means neither of them are dead. 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Hinata wails, and Zoro blinks at the sudden onslaught that is the face of a tear-filled child. “I didn’t mean to, I didn’t—I wasn’t going to, I thought it was safe—”

Zoro’s chest feels all funny. He needs to get to the cook. “S’okay, kid,” he murmurs, laying a lead-heavy hand on red curls, and though it isn’t needed, he lets Hinata help him up. “Where’s—”

His eyes land on where Yamato is doing the same to Sanji. The tugging in his chest gets harder and harder to ignore, and he can hear Hinata chattering nervously to him as well as Akemi’s shouts of help getting more and more distant, but he can’t sparse out the words. It’s hard when his head is chanting a litany of Sanji, Sanji, Sanji on loop and his entire body is trembling like it’s been struck by lightning. 

He might need Chopper. Zoro can’t stop stumbling towards where the cook is rubbing at his chest, frowning. 

Then Sanji looks up, and something within him sings.

“Cook,” comes spilling from his lips in a choked, hoarse whisper. Hinata has started making a frantic no motion with his hands, but it’s too late—Sanji’s body goes ramrod straight, and like the pull of a magnet, wrestles his way out of Yamato’s grip. Despite Yamato’s sharp stop and you don’t understand, Sanji doesn’t look back, and the singing gets louder. Fiercer. Zoro doesn’t realize he’s running until he’s forced to skid to a stop, arms flinging themselves wide as Sanji’s full weight barrels into him.

Everything—clicks.

It’s just as a puzzle piece sliding home. Sanji has his nose buried in Zoro’s hair and Zoro rests his head, content, in the crook of the blonde’s neck. They’ve never been this close, not like this, but he can’t bring himself to care. The odd feeling swirling within his chest has begun to dissipate bit by bit, and the relief it brings is practically staggering. 

“Marimo,” Sanji murmurs, and distantly, Zoro can feel Yamato trying to tug him back, and Hinata’s weak voice saying that it’s too late, now—whatever that means. “Marimo, something’s wrong,” but Sanji is clinging tighter, holding him closer, and it feels right, which is probably exactly what Sanji’s getting at. Zoro’s heartbeat has begun to thrum in his ears and pulse underneath the pads of his fingers, and the joy welling up in his throat at the matched beat-for-beat of their hearts has him dizzy.

“Yeah, probably,” Zoro mumbles, and even to his own ears he sounds drunk and sleepy. He doesn’t remember the last time he’d drank himself into a stupor. Probably in Mihawk’s manor, those first months away from his crew hitting him sharper than Merry’s quiet sorrow as she sank beneath the waves. Fuzziness tingles through his skin. 

Vaguely, Zoro registers one of Sanji’s hands clasped in his, pressed almost uncomfortably tight between them while his other is splayed across Zoro’s back. Safe, a pleased part of him hums, safe.

He’s reminded of warm sunsets slipping beyond the horizon as sake warms his chest, the now-soothing smell of cigarette smoke wafting through the sea spray. Shimotsuki’s heavy monsoons bringing humidity as small plates of onigiri were shared back and forth between he and Kuina; the bow of the Merry bobbing, Vivi by their sides as they lifted her sails towards a new future.

He’s reminded of home. 

Sanji’s hand starts going lax, body falling backwards, and Zoro, true to his nature, follows. 

The next thing he knows, his eye has slipped shut with his head pillowed on Sanji’s chest. An ocean’s tide has started rising, only a matter of time before it crashes and drags him under, and Zoro, in a split second decision, laces his fingers through the cook’s. Yes, there’s something wrong, he knows that in the back of his mind, but he’ll be damned if he doesn’t try and keep Sanji’s treasure safe.

He must’ve said it aloud—his attention has fallen way to everything but the man he lays on—because Sanji stiffens. But then a heavy arm drapes over Zoro’s upper back, and both Sanji’s legs come up to cross over Zoro’s hips, effectively pinning him in place. Not that Zoro would want to move if he could. Even if he had control over any of his limbs, he’s comfortable enough to not move for several hours. 

Except, “I’m sorry,” comes tumbling out of Sanji’s mouth, slurred, and Zoro is suddenly struggling to keep himself awake. 

“‘S okay, cook. Not your fault.” 

“No,” Sanji mumbles, and the wave has begun to crest, “no, but it will be.” 

And Zoro tries to cling on, he really does, but the tide has grasped his ankles like an old blade of a friend, and Zoro is pulled under before he can even gather the words to tell Sanji otherwise.

~+~

When Zoro wakes, Wano does not greet him.

The cries of celebration now ring silent and absent. The sky—or, Zoro realizes as he peers upwards, the ceiling—is suffocatingly dark. Damp, too, and if there were stars, he thinks they would drown in the sheer vastness above.

Sanji would hate it here, and the thought comes unbidden as the man stretches. Memories flit by—the cook’s precious hands clasped between his own and warmth curved around Zoro’s chest; Sanji’s smile as the sun set behind him, fireworks blending in their own colors at the fading sky; his murmur of “something’s not right,” as they tumbled to the ground, heaving for breath. 

The reminder has Zoro jerking forward, eye flinging open with the reminder. The cook. Of course. He’s well acquainted with waking up in places he was unaware of falling asleep at, but losing any of the crew in the process—losing Sanji, despite knowing the cook can handle himself easily—has Zoro fully awake with gritted teeth. Something about this place and Sanji doesn’t mix. Danger pings off of each of his senses, rapid-fire.

Where the darkness parts for small slithers of light, Zoro manages to catch the brief glimmer of steel bars in front of him, behind him, on all sides. He’s surrounded by cells within cells, and when he turns, tense and frowning, he instinctively recoils at the sight he’s met with. For the first time in waking in this wasteland, Zoro’s thankful for the lack of sun.

It’s by far not the first time he’s seen a body. He has cut down marines and pirates alike, has watched them drown and choke if his captain calls the order or if any one member of his family buckles under the weight. He’s done it, and he’ll do it again without question. There is blood on his hands, and maybe sometimes he’s haunted by the amounts, maybe he struggles to keep afloat under partial guilt, but he has never hesitated nor flinched when his name is called upon.

This is different.

This is beyond—

He cannot see where the people begin and the rot ends. 

They’re slumped together in heaps. Some are open—cavernous maws for both maggots and roaches, faceless, the end of bloat—and others peer glassy-eyed as rats begin to nibble on their cooling flesh. Limbs, where they haven’t rotted away from the rest of a body, are twisted in odd, mismatched shapes, and though many sockets have long since lost the grip on the eyes they held dear, Zoro can’t shake the feeling he’s being watched. By them. By any of them.

Is this what Brook looked like, before, he wonders.

A sharp sway of floor beneath him sends Zoro hurtling back towards the present with the realization he’s on a ship following closely behind. Of course he is. It’s the only thing that makes sense: the lack of light, the steady drip of water, the slow, creaking sway of jawbones that have yet to collapse.

That, and it reeks. Sea brine and decay mix and twine together like a well-made knot, almost suffocating with the intensity of it. He suppresses a shudder as he inches further down the halls, as he passes more and more cells that are piled high inside and straining against the constant-tumbling weight, as that stench seems to grow stronger with each click of his boots against stone. 

There’s nowhere to go but forward.

Memories of Thriller Bark threaten to slip around his shoulders in caress. Phantom pain twinges at his shoulders, his hips. No, he hasn’t seen anything like this before, but he has felt it. Still feels it from time to time when dream becomes stronger than reality and booze becomes a much needed painkiller.

Then he hears the sound of crying.

In here, with darkness infesting every corner and death following close behind, the sound is like a gunshot. Zoro picks up the pace. He’s practically running by the time the cells have begun to thin and empty to leave behind the crouched and huddled form of a child in a helmet.

“What the fuck,” Zoro hisses. The child doesn’t move. Doesn’t stop their quiet, hiccupped sobs as they claw uselessly at the slippery metal surrounding their head. Fingernails bloodied or missing, bruises sprouting like weeds from the gaps in the rags the child wears, and the fucking—helmet. Scratched to hell and back like it’s repeatedly been banged against the stone.

“No,” comes from inside the helmet, pitiful and cracked, “no, no, no, no, no—”

A light cracks open back where he once woke, and Zoro throws himself at the cell bars before he can think twice about it. 

He passes through like a ghost.

Zoro stumbles. The kid doesn’t notice—because they are a kid, and even with all the death surrounding him, this is what has Zoro sick. Instead, they curl further into the wall, heaving for breath at the growing telltale sound of laughter.

Fucking laughter.

It grows closer. The kid’s head lifts and really, Zoro should’ve seen it coming. The way he claws at the metal rather than hair, how his hands are pristine other than his nails, and now the curled eyebrow that furrows with each sob. Tattered blonde hair. A blue eye that’s filled with fear and hatred and that is shocking in its intensity, and before Zoro realizes what he’s doing—he reaches.

Sanji, Zoro thinks maddeningly, Sanji, Sanji, Sanji.

His hand falls just as flashes of red, blue, and green make their way down, and Sanji skyrockets forward as if he’s been burned. For the first time since finding his way through this hellhole, Sanji is looking at him. Younger, yes, but here, and the relief that crashes into Zoro is almost enough to have him stumble. 

“Marimo?”

It’s frayed at the edges. Cracked and soft. Zoro’s hand is heavy on Sanji’s shoulder, and it’s strange how tall Zoro feels now. Usually the cook towers a few good inches above him. “Hey, Curly,” Zoro whispers. 

Horrifyingly, Sanji’s visible eye fills with fresh tears. “Zoro,” he chokes, his small, unblemished hands suddenly gripping bruises , on the flesh of Zoro’s arm. “I don’t understand, I don’t—I can’t—I can’t do this again, please, please, please—I can’t—I can’t, Moss, I can’t do this again, I can’t go through all of this again—please—”

The lock clicks, rattling, and Zoro might not have lived this, but with each tightening press of Sanji’s hands against Zoro’s arms, he’s filled with overwhelming fear, with sorrow, with the bone-rattling knowledge that no one is coming for him, no one that won’t hurt him, but at least he is here, at least he’ll be here, at least this time he won’t be left bleeding all alone—

A fist collides with Sanji’s side, and but it’s Zoro who falls.

~+~

Kuina stands above him when Zoro blinks awake, sword stilted against his chest, and he cannot breathe. Not again, he thinks, he pleads, he prays to the gods he does not believe in. Not again. I can’t do this again.

They argue, because of course they do—this will be something he will fight until the nightmares leave him, until there comes a day he wakes to her coming back alive and not crooked down the steps. Kuina hisses of womanhood and weakness, and Zoro says bullshit and roars that she will be great just as he will be. Being a woman does not mean she is not strong, being a man does not mean he will surpass her because of something as measly as a difference in sex.

(“I promised her,” Zoro tells Luffy one night, when the sea crashes gently against Merry’s hull and Luffy spoke of a man who inspired him more than anything else, than anybody else. “Well. We promised each other. That—no matter what, we’d compete to be the greatest swordsman in the world.”

(“She sounds awesome!” And though Luffy still grins, carefree and bright, what’s unsaid is more than obvious.

(Zoro huffs out a laugh, relaxing. “She was,” he says softly. “She really was.”)

Kuina smiles, and it is a watery thing. Zoro, both now and then, feel the undeniable urge to keep that smile safe. And he knows, broken-hearted and stiff in the recesses of his mind, that he will fail. 

She’s going to go get a real sword, she tells him, already running off, and she’ll show him how the best really acts. She does not come back.

Sanji arrives in her stead.

He’s no longer the kid in the helmet Zoro had saw him in, but then again it’s not like Zoro was ten years old again with the future knowledge he was twenty minutes away from finding the body of his best friend and only family. Rather, Sanji’s in the same red suit he was in during the battle of Wano. The only stark differences were that his gloves have been tossed and he’s pulled the back of his hair in a small ponytail.

Zoro can almost hear Nami telling him, exasperated, that he has a problem if this is where most his attention is focused on. He silently tells her to can it. He’s stressed. Zoro thinks he’s personally allowed to stare right now.

“Kuina?” And of course it’s Sanji who snaps Zoro’s attention back to the present. At his silence, the man shuffles. Kneels beside him. “You—said her name a lot, back when you were unconscious. During Thriller Bark,” Sanji mutters. “So I assumed.”

The memory shifts, though only slightly. Zoro knows he sits here until sun-up, waiting like a damned dog for its owner, and however long he has is enough for the grip on his limbs to relax. “Yeah,” he rasps after a long moment, jaw clicking with each movement, limbs jerking with a lightness he’d forgotten how to use, “that’s her.”

It’s then that Sanji’s words sink in. That he was there long enough to hear Zoro’s mumbled ramblings, to hear them often, to know the name of the woman who still haunts Zoro to the ends of the Grand Line and back. It twists something silly on his heart, hard enough that he ends up blurting out: “She would’ve liked you.” 

Sanji huffs out a surprised laugh. “Really?” He asks, but it’s not disbelieving. Shocked. Curious. 

For the first time since getting into this mess, Zoro smiles of his own volition. “Yeah, Curly,” he says. “She would’ve ripped you a new one for all your stupid doting, but I think you would’ve grown on her.” 

“Like moss.” 

An olive branch, Zoro supposes. Sanji isn’t stupid after all, and for all he jokes about it, Zoro knows it. Even though he may not know exactly what happens to Kuina—though Zoro has a feeling he will soon enough—Sanji can draw his own, unfortunately correct, conclusions.

Zoro sighs. Takes it. 

“Like me,” he agrees softly. Like me.

~+~

He isn’t sure for how long they sit there. It could’ve been minutes or hours, but the next thing Zoro knew, he had opened his eyes to little Sanji running.

The helmet has forgone his shoulders, and he stumbles with the freedom that follows. Reiju—her name fresh on Zoro’s tongue despite never hearing it before—stands only a slight distance away. Her hand is outstretched. She drops it the moment Sanji turns around, eyes bright with fresh tears, and a plea spilling from his lips.

“Come with me,” he begs. “We can leave together. We can leave. Please, Reiju.”

Her voice is soft and weary as she shakes her head: “This is the only way I know how to keep you safe, little brother.”

And so Sanji runs. 

The memory twists and turns, pulling invisible strings just to make Sanji dance as the man’s breathing becomes erratic. Zoro gets it now. Knows why Sanji was hysterical—forced to be a prisoner in his own body as the visions that have haunted him for years come back to life. He can only stand beside him and wait for the next stagnant fog to take place.

The two of them pieced together as much as they were able to in the time allowed. Hinata had a devil fruit of some kind, something that had thrown them back in the recesses of their minds while their physical bodies lay dormant somewhere back in Wano. What that was exactly, neither of them could figure out. Zoro could only hope that Yamato had gotten them somewhere safe, or, at the very least, grabbed Luffy.

Regardless, the fruit pulled the two of them through memories like puppets on strings. If Zoro were stuck—motions vividly repeated and words he knows all too well spilling from his lips without stopping—Sanji was forced beside him, watching, and vice versa. The cards they held closest to their chest yanked out on full display.

It was only when the memories themselves fogged that they could speak to one another or move freely. Where things blurred; when the moment became fuzzy and dark before eventually, inevitably, sending Zoro and Sanji tumbling again.

Whether things would stay that way was irritably up for debate.

For now, though, Zoro would tackle what he knew—which admittedly wasn’t much in this situation—rather than waiting for the other shoe to drop. And this, watching with a narrowed gaze as Sanji runs head first into his biological father, is him doing exactly that. Because Zoro does not need to know that this is just a memory, that it’s a mere ghost, in order to be unwavering in his confidence that the cook will be alright.

Little Sanji spits at Judge’s feet and tosses the Vinsmoke name far behind him; the rage in his eyes far from fresh yet just as scalding.

Good, Zoro thinks, though he knows the road ahead will be less than easy, will leave Sanji stranded and starved and scared. But he will live. He will live, and he will cook, and he will find his father—his real one—before Luffy will crash in with wild arms and convince him to join his crew.

Good, and when Sanji turns with his head held high, Zoro follows.

~+~

Unfortunately, the memories decide to drag Zoro ass backwards into his old body before either of them get the chance to talk to one another again. And this time, as thunder shudders and the rain grows loud, Zoro does not see Sanji.

There’s black hair in front of him instead of blonde. Straight, bushy eyebrows rather than ones that curled, and a neck that is undeniably crooked despite the doctor’s best try at straightening it for the funeral. Zoro can’t tear his eyes away. Still can’t, despite it feeling like hours since he relived finding Kuina’s body, limbs twisted and eyes glassy, and the funeral procession happening around him as if he were the one dead and ghastly and not his best friend. 

It’s not as if he can fault Koushirou. He hadn’t then, and he doesn’t now. The man had lost his only daughter—he did not have time to grieve as well as take care of Zoro. Still, though, watching as the man numbly, gently collects Kuina’s ashes from beside him sends a violent pang through Zoro’s heart to where Wado now rests between his fingers.

He’d shouted, back when the dojo got too much too quickly, of their shared dream. He’d promised. Hoped, briefly, that if Kuina were somehow still there she’d at least know she wasn’t all alone. 

Zoro hadn’t feared death, after all. Kuina had.

She’d shared it with him once. Right after she’d knocked him on his ass for the nth time in a night and offered him a hand. Told him that she’d do just about anything to explore, to disappear, but that didn’t change the fact that she didn’t want to die. 

“But then again,” she had laughed, small and all too young, “does anyone?”

Sometimes, Zoro’d almost said. The word stuck itself within his throat, though, choking and keeping him quiet. It wasn’t even true, really. Zoro never entertained the idea of running himself through—he trained, forced himself to get better, to be better—but there would be times his mind would wander in the lulls and wonder, What if? 

And, of course, there were the dreams.

Zoro remembers briefly that they get worse after this. The dreams. That he’d go for days and days without deeply sleeping because of them, because sleeping wasn’t training, he was getting worse, he was falling behind, if he were better then maybe he could’ve saved her. Maybe he could’ve caught her, or gotten help, or anything than just sit and wait for hours until he had to go and find her gone and be left behind again—

But he’s doing better now. The Blues know he pisses Nami off with his napping on the deck. 

It doesn’t stop the grief from burrowing its fiberglass teeth into his flesh and bones, eating at him from the inside out. Starving him. Kuina’s memory had and will always stick with him, and more often than not he’ll face it with alcohol and their dream, but this—this is reliving it. Reliving everything. The grief, the rage, the loathing, and Zoro can only flounder against the pain like the rise and crash of tides.

He can’t—do this. He needs to continue and find Sanji and make sure he’s okay and then get them out of this place. Zoro cannot afford to be on the verge of breaking down because of a fucking memory—

“Marimo,” comes a gentle rasp, and Zoro isn’t proud of the way his head whips up like a dog, but he relaxes a little when his eyes land on Sanji. 

Sanji, who lays on a rock with the teeth of his ribs threatening to swallow the sky. There’s hunger. Overwhelming, gnawing hunger, and it ebbs and flows with the fresh wounds of Zoro’s grief. Sanji turns, cheeks sallow and eyes glazed, but he’s looking at Zoro and when he reaches, Zoro’s there to grab at an all-too bony hand.

“Marimo,” Sanji murmurs, barely audible against the roaring in Zoro’s ears, “you’re hurting yourself.”

Zoro swallows. “I don’t—”

“You’ve always been a shitty liar, moss; don’t start now,” Sanji laughs. It turns into a brittle cough that racks his entire frame, and Zoro makes a helpless noise in the back of his throat. He shouldn’t be hurting. Then there are jagged nails digging into the back of his hand, weak yet sharp, making Zoro wince. Sanji looks at him, bemused and tired.

“You’re hurting yourself,” Sanji repeats, and Zoro wheezes out in response: “That’s rich coming from you, curls.”

Sanji’s grin is weary. “Yeah,” he murmurs. “It is.”

Zoro inches closer. As close as he’s able to, anyway—his knees are still planted in the grass of Shimotsuki, and Sanji lay starving on a rock in the middle of nowhere. They bleed into one another. “I should’ve been more careful,” he rasps after a long moment. Sanji’s hand twitches in his. 

“You were a kid, moss,” Sanji murmurs, and Zoro must close his eyes against the weight that gets gently shouldered off of him. “You were just a kid. And if there’s one thing I’m learning, it’s that no matter what, what happened back then isn’t your fault.”

A beat passes. Zoro presses his forehead to where their hands interlink. He thinks about Sanji asking him to kill him, about how he accepted, and about how this will be the first promise he’ll have to break. 

No more words pass between them. They brave the storm together.

~+~

Things go a little faster after that.

Sanji flits to and from the Baratie; Zoro leaves Shimotsuki for greater things. More often than not, the echoes now begin to harmonize with one another. The creaky floor of old inns meshes with the smooth wood of Sanji’s childhood room; the Baratie’s tiled floor blends into the sand of Shells Town. They learn more than they ever thought possible about the other. Zoro now knows that Patty can’t cook for shit but knows how to decorate deserts better than anyone, and that Carne works best with others by his side but can perfect a dish in minutes. He knows that Zeff is kindest at his core, even if he yells and argues with the ones he’s closest to.

In turn, Sanji learns of Johnny and Yosaku. How the both of them were bound at the hip since childhood and that their dreams are shared—that they hope they can build a place where kids from all kinds of places are welcome. The kinds of places none of them had. He learns that Johnny picked Zoro up off the street after a drunken brawl gone wrong, and that Yosaku was the one who patched him up and made sure he healed quickly. Sanji discovers how they wormed their ways into his life relentlessly, and that no matter what Zoro will say: he’s grateful for them.

They saved his life in more ways than one.

And yet, it is only when their memories coincide that they’re able to talk to one another again.

More than that: talk outside the confines of their own bodies.

"You saved my life," Zoro says. He's an apparition in his own right: tethered to his body but not confined in it as the memory stretches. Sanji stands next to him in the same way, hands twitching, foot knocking against Zoro's ankle every so often. "I didn't know."

"Not like you asked," Sanji mutters. He hasn’t looked away from where his ghost—because that’s what it was, wasn’t it?—methodically pulls the thread tighter. How long had he had to have done this, Zoro wonders, to have gotten good enough to echo Chopper? "And technically it was my old man. I just did the stitches."

“Your ‘old man’ threw a fish on my chest.” 

Finally, he’s rewarded with the up-tick of a smile. “Yeah,” Sanji agrees quietly. For a moment, that’s where Zoro expects the conversation to end as the silence stretches between them, comfortable yet heavy. Then, Sanji sighs, just as white begins to slip through the edges of Zoro’s vision, “I miss the bastard.”

Zoro hums, “You’ll see him again, Curly.” Predictably, Sanji does not answer. Not out loud, anyway—Zoro catches the way he glances out of the corner of his eye, that smile growing a little larger, a little softer.

Then the cook’s ghost stretches with a small noise, back cracking, and Zoro would worry if he hadn’t bore witness to this several minutes before. Instead, he watches as the man gives his body a once over. Almost appreciative. More frustrated than anything. Zoro knows the feeling well.

“Roronoa Zoro,” Sanji’s ghost mutters, curled eyebrow raised, and Zoro’s Sanji makes a disgruntled, strangled nosie. “You better survive after all this. You have a dream to follow, you know.”

When Zoro looks at Sanji, his Sanji here and now, side by side, he does not look him in the eye.

“You do, too,” Zoro says anyway. He leaves no room for argument in his voice, and when Sanji startles, he crosses his arms behind his head and leans back, watching with a narrowed eye. “Best remember that, shit-cook.”

For once, Sanji doesn’t argue.

~+~

It seems to be a trade off, most times. Where Sanji will see Zoro and Nami conversing under the stars after Arabasta—Nami slumped and weeping for Vivi as Zoro wraps his arms around her without another thought—Zoro watches as Sanji goes after Robin with nothing more than the clothes on his back and a familiar worry in Enies Lobby.

“You remind me of someone,” Sanji’s ghost says now, whisper-quiet as he sits across from Robin in the galley. He’s drunk, Zoro thinks. The cook’s cheeks are tinged red and the bags under his eyes are far more pronounced than usual. “My sister.”

“I wasn’t aware you had a sister,” Robin murmurs. She sips the tea that is gently placed in front of her, watching when Sanji sits down wearily. “I knew of your father: Zeff, was it? And the Baratie?”

A soft laugh. “Ah, yeah. Old man isn’t my biological dad, but he’s one all the same.” Then, all at once like the flip of a switch, Sanji slumps over, resting his head on folded arms. “No, my sister is—well, I don’t know. She saved my life at risk of her own. She’s quiet. Always watching, no matter where you are or who you’re with, she always has a pair of eyes on you. The resemblance is uncanny.”

Robin hums, but Zoro can see how she softens. “But?”

Sanji smiles. It’s a sad, crestfallen thing, but it is also one tinged with acceptance. “You’re kind,” he rasps, and really, there’s no more to be said after that. Robin slips out of her chair to sit next to him, to place a comforting hand on his head. The memory plays out in silence. 

Zoro glances to the man next to him. He doesn’t say what he’s thinking: You could’ve told us. You could’ve told us like you did her. We would’ve kept you safe. But when Sanji meets his eyes instead of his ghost’s, Zoro realizes he might as well have. 

“We all have our demons, moss,” he mutters. “I didn’t want them to define me.”

He huffs. “You’re entitled to your secrets,” Zoro points out, just as quiet. Somehow, the idea of raising his voice doesn’t feel right in this moment, not when Sanji looks so haunted still. “No one blames you for it. But you need to get it through your skull, no, shut up,” he continues when Sanji makes an offended noise, leg already raised, “listen to me, for fucks sake. I’m not trying to fight.”

The usual thrum of an oncoming fight is dulled in this realm of dreams, but Zoro feels it nonetheless when Sanji doesn’t back down. But slowly, slowly, his leg falls and his shoulders fall. He’s still looking at Zoro like he’s just claimed to be colorblind, but Zoro relaxes all the same. 

“You aren’t alone with this anymore,” Zoro states simply, and he narrows his good eye when Sanji jerks back like he’d been struck anyway. If he ever saw Judge, he silently swears to cut the bastard’s hands off one by one.

“Well isn’t that rich,” Sanji hisses, low and angry, and Zoro’s eyebrow twitches before he can stop himself. “When you try and carry everyone’s fucking problems on your shoulders without ever thinking about yourself, or do you think you can just exempt yourself from that? Right? That just because you’re Roronoa Zoro and not a goddamn failure, you get to throw yourself to the wolves without another thought because at least then you’ll be missed—”

“Cook—”

“You don’t get to fucking preach to me about how I’m not alone with this, when you don’t know what “this” means,” Sanji yells, voice growing louder and louder with each word. “You think I chose to let you see all of that? You think I wanted you to have more on your fucking shoulders when you try and kill yourself every goddamn day with training so you won’t fuck up? When you forget to eat because you train to the point of exhaustion, or when you don’t even deign to sleep because you won’t stop—”

“Curly, stop—”

“But I’m not alone in this, right? I can dump all of my shit on your shoulders, or Luffy’s, or Nami’s, or anyone’s and walk away right? Because I’m so fucking weak I can’t bear to hold my own weight and I have to burden everyone else—”

Zoro grabs the fabric of Sanji’s shirt, twists once, and slams his forehead into the blonde’s with a sickening crack. Sanji roars, and Zoro winces at the feeling of nails raking themselves down his arms, gouging and carving themselves forever into his skin, but he stalks forward until Sanji’s pressed against the wall, writhing and trying his damnedest to take a bite out of Zoro’s cheek. Zoro has to shove his entire weight forward to keep him from pushing back, forcing a forearm under his chin and against his throat and leaning forward until his breath tickles the cook’s ear.

“Sanji,” Zoro murmurs, low, and like a puppet with its strings cut, Sanji crumples. 

He swallows. Rearranges them until Sanji’s tucked against him and Zoro has to stretch up in order to put his chin on top of the other man’s head. “Idiot,” he mutters. “Leaning on me—on any of us—doesn’t make you weak. It never has.”

Sanji pokes him harshly in the side in retaliation. “Has the moss decided to take roots up there, stupid swordsman?” He grumbles, muffled, “Or did you manage to miss everything I just said?”

Hands twitching, Zoro resists the urge to pull the cook closer into his space. Either to smother him until they managed to somehow mesh into one, or until both their ribs broke, Zoro wasn’t sure. Because under all of it—beneath the fight and Sanji’s howls and Zoro wanting to bash his skull in to show him just how much he was loved by him and by them all—Sanji was right.

"I heard you,” he says, whisper-soft. 

"Then answer me, bastard,” and Zoro pretends not to hear the way Sanji’s voice shakes, pretends not to feel the way his nails have started digging into the muscle of his back. “Marimo.” 

He shuts his eye. Sanji’s seen the beginning—the beginning that matters—but he doesn’t know where else to start. Judging by the way Sanji waits, however, quiet and tense, Zoro doesn’t think it matters.

“Her name was Kuina.”

And slowly, the weight begins to lift.

~+~

Everything twists.

Not just with he and Sanji—though it was definitely a surprise when Sanji let him lean on his shoulder without so much as a huff. It’d been shortly after he told the other about Perona and Mihawk, the pains of Thriller Bark and his failure at Sabaody weighing heavily on him still.

Then Sanji told him to get his head out of his ass and kicked him, and they scuffled until Sanji got Zoro in a headlock before he promptly gave up to slump against him. 

“You’re like a cat,” he’d muttered, but Zoro hadn’t missed the smile Sanji was fighting valiantly to put down. “Always annoyed at the world around you until you want something. Like booze. Or pets.” Nimble fingers had scratched at the base of Zoro’s neck, which was the exact thing he had been trying to get Sanji to do, and added: “Fluffy Marimo. Stupid, annoying, fluffy Marimo.”

He supposed he deserved it, but, well. Zoro had been oddly comfortable. Sanji’s grumbling seemed minimal in comparison to the way Zoro’d been close to falling asleep. 

Then comes Thriller Bark.

Sanji—Zoro’s Sanji, alive and whole and unharmed—stands rigid and silent as the both of them watch his ghost fall to his knees, to the ground, to safety. A spark of pain lances up Zoro’s side, and he flinches, hissing. Not quiet enough, though, if the way Sanji’s eyes slide towards him are any indication.

He smiles, and Zoro hates how defeated he looks. Hates the way he shrugs like it’s nothing, like this doesn’t haunt both their dreams on the nights the sea gets violent. “Hurts, doesn’t it?”

Still, he bites out: “I don’t know what you mean.” 

“Cut the shit, moss,” Sanji sighs. Cigarette-less fingers twirl through air. “I felt Chopper stitching you up. My pain is yours; yours is mine.”

No. “No.” Zoro’s felt panic before, felt it worm its way up in and around his lungs and heart, constricting and squeezing and leaving him with nothing but bloodied hands and broken blisters. He felt it when Kuina never came back; felt it the mere miliseconds before Mihawk cut him shoulder to hip; felt it when Sanji shoved his way forward and told Kuma to take his life instead, told Zoro to tell the others to find another cook.

No, he thinks now, breaths coming in fast and short, no, anything but this.

He would relive lifetimes of finding Kuina, of leaving his home, of being stranded on the streets penniless and hunting for bounties so he could at least have a decent meal—he’d relive it all if it meant relieving Sanji of this burden. 

And Sanji—

Sanji just nudges Zoro’s shoulder with his own. “I can handle it,” he says gently. “No need to worry that mossy green head of yours.”

Zoro wants to shake him and shout. He knows. He knows, and he’ll fucking worry his mossy green head of his whether Sanji likes it or not, because this was the one thing he could protect Sanji from, and suddenly he’s nineteen again and shaking so bad he has to turn everything off just to make sure Sanji’s safe because he’s terrified, he’s—

“Zoro,” Sanji says, soft yet firm. Kuma’s damn bubble is expanding right behind him, and he isn’t even looking, eye locked on Zoro and a hand fluttering between them. “Zoro, you need to breathe.”

He—can’t.

Sanji’s making these gentle shushing noises, murmuring sweet nothings, and staying close without explicitly touching him. Yet Zoro still hears the hitch of his breath when his own ghost stumbles. Can feel him shift foot to foot, ball to heel, the rise and fall of his chest getting heavier and faster. And he’s still—

He’s still stupidly making sure Zoro’s okay.

For the first time since Kuraigana, Zoro feels frustrated tears well up unbidden. Half to hide them and half to convince himself things will be fine, he lurches forward to wrap his arms around the cook and bury his nose in his shoulder. Sanji makes another soft noise, shaky hands coming up to run themselves through Zoro’s hair even as he slumps a little heavier against him.

That’s alright. Zoro can hold him. 

He peeks a watery look over the cook’s shoulder, arms locking themselves tighter when he locks eyes with Sanji’s ghost staggering into the clearing. A bolt of pain lances up through his leg and swirls tight around his middle, and though Zoro had only heard from Chopper in his scattered bits of consciousness, he never realized Sanji was walking with broken legs and a shattered leg. Zoro aches. He feels himself begin to shake anew. 

“Zoro,” tears itself from the ghost’s throat, hands fluttering and shaking as they reach but do not touch, and if it were any other circumstance, Zoro would be reveling in being called his own name. “Talk to me—no, hey, come on now—what happened, Zoro; talk to me. Please.”

Silence. 

“Zoro,” Sanji presses, voice going high and reedy with panic, and Zoro’s ghost collapses with a rasped: “Nothing happened. Nothing at all.”

They both tumble—he, unconscious, and Sanji unable to support them both with a leg broken to shards. His body lands heavily on Sanji’s legs, trapping him, and though Sanji hisses something foul, e lurches forward like a viper to its prey: torso covering Zoro’s own and newly bloodied, treasured hands pressing Zoro’s head against his chest.

Then, sudden enough that it has Zoro tensing, Sanji’s ghost screams raw and broken for Chopper, for Luffy, for anyone.

Sanji’s legs may have been trapped under him, Zoro realizes—jolting when he sees Sanji’s ghost coiled taut as if ready to spring—but he would’ve killed with his bare hands if anyone but crew crashed through that clearing.

And even then: Zoro watches stunned as Chopper—serious and stiff in the way he only ever is when there’s a patient in need—halts at the sight of Sanji’s wide, panicked eyes and locked limbs. 

“Luffy,” the little doctor starts quietly, as if to try and not spook a wild animal, never once looking away from where Sanji stares, “I think, right now, you’re the only person who can get through to him.”

“Wh—” and Nami inches forward, frowning, only to step back when Sanji swings his head towards her with a low noise. “What the hell is wrong with him?”

“Nothing,” Chopper says calmly, “but he’s going through a high influx of emotions currently—more than likely a panic attack. My guess is he found Zoro exactly as you see him now, and he’s terrified of both losing him and us taking him away, too.” At Nami’s surprised noise, Chopper adds, gentler: “He barely recognizes us right now. Sanji doesn’t know who’s here to help and who’s here to hurt.” 

Careful in a way Luffy rarely is, he kneels down and slowly—oh, so slowly—rests his hat on Sanji’s head. “Sanji’s scared,” he notes quietly.

For a moment, Sanji only regards Luffy warily. Then, hands shaking, he runs his fingers over the straw crowning his head. His throat clicks. “He’s dying,” Sanji whispers over Zoro’s ghost’s faint rasping. It’s as if the simple action of Luffy placing his straw hat upon his head had brought Sanji back to himself. Maybe it did. Or, maybe, it was because Luffy was too bright to hide from—too kind to do anything but look him straight in the eyes and trust him with everything you had. “I saw him. I saw—”

His grip on Zoro’s ghost tightens. Loosens. Zoro subconsciously mimics the action when he hears his Sanji wheeze. Then, in a voice so small and quiet that Zoro has to strain to hear, Sanji says: “I’m terrified he’s going to die the moment I let him go.”

“Zoro’s strong,” Luffy murmurs, “but he won’t heal unless Chopper looks at him.”

A beat. 

Luffy extends a hand, and Sanji lets go.

Chopper, as quick as he’s able to without startling Sanji, scoops up Zoro’s limp, barely-breathing body in heavy-point. A strangled sound escapes him, Sanji automatically reaching out, and Luffy doesn’t hesitate to wrap his arms around him and fill the void that was suddenly created. Nami follows, and so does Robin.

Zoro looks away from where Sanji’s ghost begins to shake anew. There are broken gasps, quiet murmurs from Robin to Breathe, Cook-san, and sweet nothings from Nami as she pulls a hand away from his hair. He hears Luffy say, Zoro will be okay, and so will Sanji, once but no less certain than if he said it over and over again.

He ends up trading one for another when he meets the pale face of his own Sanji, breathing rapid-quick and pulse fluttering underneath his fingers. He isn’t sure his growing panic is just an echo—not with the way the world around him narrows down to a finite point of curled brows and blonde hair, with the way his throat has constricted and his chest has tightened.

Chopper had told him his heart had stopped twice over after he’d awoken. Zoro vaguely remembered the feel of a hand on his, squeezing tight enough he was sure he’d have crescent scars decorating his skin. An anchor. 

Zoro knows now with aching certainty that it wasn’t Nami like he’d originally thought, but Sanji. 

His heart seizes, and it’s instinct that has Zoro clawing Sanji’s body closer; instinct that has him turning and pressing his forehead against the cook’s with enough force to hurt. Sanji makes a quiet noise, pained, and Zoro forces his eye shut with whispered pleas dancing on his tongue.

“Let me take it,” he says, not caring how desperate he sounds. There is no Chopper here—no doctor to check vitals and hook the very machines Zoro now knows Sanji despises into pliant skin. It is just him and his cook within the recess of a land neither of them understand. “Let me take the pain, let me share it. Come on now, Curly, you can’t fucking die here.”

You have people waiting for you, he almost says. A family; a real family. Zeff, Luffy, Robin, Nami, Usopp—the whole fucking crew and then some. 

You have me. 

He would crawl his way back to Hell if it meant having a sheer chance at getting Sanji back if he slipped into death; he’d ransack the very skies if it meant shaking him loose. Zoro whispers that in the air he and Sanji share. This is no different. This will be no different. 

But, gently and barely there, he hears Sanji laugh.

“Idiot marimo,” he murmurs, voice still rasped and wheezing, hand still limply cradling the back of Zoro’s head, “you are sharing it.” Sanji blinks open an eye, pained but viscerally clear, and Zoro finds himself breathing a bit steadier with the subconscious confirmation that Sanji is alive and here with him. “You aren’t alone with this anymore.”

The tears fall. 

“Fucker,” Zoro hisses vehemently, his own words coming back to hit him full front, and Sanji only smiles, only holds him that much closer. 

“Yeah, well,” he wheezes, “Wings of the Pirate King and all that, right?” 

It’s a simple sentence to anyone but them. They fly together. They share the weight, the pain, the joy, the anger, and their dreams—everything. They will live and die together side by side, and they will rip the other back from the depths of hell if need be. Together they will personally see Luffy achieve his dream, and they will see that the other achieves their own.

“I hate you.”

“If you hate me so much, let me go, you overgrown weed.”

Just to be a dick, Zoro digs his fist into Sanji’s side. He gets a vicious poke to the ribs in recompense. “No,” Zoro grumbles, and the lines of Sanji’s grin press achingly sweet into Zoro’s skin when he laughs—a hundred times lighter than it was before.

When Zoro looks up, he’s met with the sight of Sanji’s body sitting by his bedside. Chopper flits about, checking vitals and re-bandaging while Sanji silently, methodically cleans Zoro’s swords. Wado hums. Shusui shudders. Even Kietsu, who’s an annoyance on the best of days, stays still in the cook’s hands.

Important, they seem to say. Zoro can’t disagree.

Sabaody flits by in a whirl of colors. Kuma steals Zoro’s ghost away, then Sanji, and what is left in the wake of their absence is a split-dyed world of black and pink. There’s a faint mutter of something foul, and Zoro’s head spins only a little when Sanji pulls him back and knocks their foreheads together. At this point, the movement’s natural. What isn’t is when Sanji brings his hands up to cup Zoro’s face, thumb moving over the scar that bisects his eye.

His heart sings.

“Marimo,” Sanji says.

“Curly,” he responds. 

The cook’s hands are trembling. Barely, a tiny quiver that reaches from his fingertips to his palms, but it’s enough for Zoro to feel it. And so he reaches up slow and covers them with his own. Smooth skin meets the rough pads on his fingers, and he cannot help the shudder that racks through his body at the feeling.

“I feel like I’m getting whiplash,” Sanji sighs. “But—I’m not ashamed of this shit, alright?” And Zoro nods even though he isn’t sure what the fuck Sanji’s talking about—though, honestly, when does he ever? “I don’t care what you think—” Zoro notes that he does. Nods again. “So this—”

“Curly,” Zoro interrupts. Sanji’s hands twitch, and Zoro presses his forehead a bit firmer against the other’s. “Whatever it is, it won’t change anything. You know that. Luffy’s made of rubber; Robin can sprout limbs and finds humor in scaring the shit out of everyone; Franky’s a damn cyborg—and that’s not even including how Nami can swindle anyone within minutes or how Brook is a walking, talking, perverted skeleton of all things.” A rumble of a hum slips from Zoro’s chest as Sanji relaxes. It’s minute. It’s enough. 

“However,” Zoro adds, soft, because this is important and Sanji’s secrets are his own: “I won’t look if you don’t want me to.”

The result is instantaneous. Like a light switch, the tension pours off of Sanji’s shoulders in waves, relief practically palpable. Then he pulls away fast enough that Zoro has a split-second of panic he’d said something wrong only to see a laughing figure in pink flit into view, fairy-light, and Sanji’s small yet glowing smile.

At first he isn’t sure who he’s looking at. They’re beautiful, Zoro can’t deny that, but the way the person twirls and laughs behind a pale, nail-painted hand catches his attention more than any accessory would. That, and that when they turn, the curl of an eyebrow gleams stark against the orange hues of the sunset. 

Oh, he thinks, awed at the way Sanji spins at the grasp of a friend’s hand, pink dress floating airily with each twirl, oh.

It strikes him in a way he wasn’t expecting, that Sanji would trust him with this. That he’d show Zoro the way he looks completely and utterly free here, frilled pink dress and all. And Zoro can’t look away.

The dress Sanji wears is knee-length and wavy, cinched together with a black corset wrapped around the waist of it. Razor sharp heels match. Blond curls are loosely braided in a single strip down his back, pink ribbons twisted in, and there’s a dash of red coating his lips and eyelids. And he’s smiling. He’s smiling so wide it looks like it hurts.

“You look like your mother,” Zoro murmurs.

Zoro remembers the brief respites where Sanji’s ghost would slip away from Judge’s grasp or his brother’s sight and curl up beside his mother. Sora, Zoro remembers. Her golden hair swept over her eye, a quirk of her lips whenever Sanji brought her his tries of cooking, and a light laugh behind her hand. And even now, despite the slightest differences, the resemblance is uncanny.

When he turns, Sanji’s lower lip is wobbling. 

“Ah, shit—Curls—?” Zoro stumbles over his own feet in his way to get back to Sanji, not realizing he’d gone so far, gone too far. “Hey, look—look, however you want to dress, whatever you want to go by or if you want to transition, you’re crew. You’re nakama. You’re our cook. That won’t change. And I’m—”

“Shut up,” Sanji chokes out, tears streaming, but he’s laughing—he’s laughing, and Zoro’s guard falls at his feet like the damned and suddenly he’s laughing too. “Don’t you fucking apologize—since when have you—” A snort. “You’re fine, mossy, you just—thank you.” 

Zoro scoffs, incredulous. “Since when do you thank me?” 

“Fuck you!” Sanji cries out, giggling, but not before he throws himself against Zoro, arms wrapped tight across his shoulders. It’s whip-quick, fast enough that Zoro doesn’t have the time to return the hug before Sanji’s pulling away again, wiping at his eyes with a breathy little chuckle. He doesn’t need to explain; Zoro softens. 

“Idiot,” he says. Points at the scars lining the underneath of his chest. “Of course I know.”

There they stay. Sanji murmurs stories about his time at the Kambakka Kingdom and how Ivankov took him under their wing: how they dressed him up and curled his hair and something euphoric had swirled within his chest. He still doesn’t know, he tells Zoro quietly, but he wants to—eventually—let that part of himself free again, whatever it is. And Zoro had squeezed his hand and told him that Nami was going to need to put mousetraps outside of her closet.

He watches Sanji crumble when the news of Ace’s death comes around. It isn’t immediate by any means. But he’s washing the dishes one of the days where the sun is high and the wind is cool, and a type of grief begins to unwind and spiral in Zoro’s chest when a friend asks Sanji if he needs a hand. 

It’s strong. It is not all of it. 

“I loved him,” Sanji says as the scene unfolds—ghost sinking to his knees and shaking as the people around him flutter about, panicked and trying their best to comfort, “which is stupid, because we only knew him for a few days, but, well.” He shrugs, calm. Like he’s made his peace with it. “He was kind to me.” 

“Is that all it takes, love-cook?” Zoro asks. Sanji grins, no doubt feeling the little twinges of jealousy sparking upside Zoro’s skin. 

“Not anymore,” he responds, teasing. 

Likewise, where Zoro witnesses Sanji weep out of grief and joy, Sanji sees him work himself half to death under Mihawk’s care. Watches him lose an eye and then laughs himself to tears when it was due to a misstep and a baboon with a sword. 

Zoro fucking hates baboons. 

They both sober, however, when Mihawk kicks him to the ground, bandages him, and he sits as Zoro is roped in blankets in order to keep to rest. He has a book in one hand, a glass of wine in the other, and he’s looking down at Zoro’s ghost blankly while Perona shrieks at him to stop wiggling. 

“That’s a vampire,” Sanji comments. “Are you a vampire now? Did he turn you into a vampire after you lost both blood and braincells to an armed monkey? Moss. Mossy. Answer me. This is important information for blackmail.”

“I hate you.” 

“Sure.” 

“I do.” 

“And I said ‘sure’, are you fucking deaf? Now c’mon. Blackmail.” 

Zoro pretends not to hear him and forces himself not to wince at a stomp on the top of his foot.

Then Mihawk clears his throat, sharp and clear, and Perona and Zoro’s ghost both slowly swivel their heads like Mihawk is the bane of their existences. Sanji snorts. Zoro smacks the back of his head. “If you two would listen for once in your lives—”

“We’ve been here three months,” Perona deadpans.

“And you’ve not only destroyed half my furniture with your “makeovers,” but Roronoa here has lost an eye due to his carelessness,” Mihawk responds coolly, eyebrow raised. Out of the corner of Zoro’s eye, he can see Sanji dramatically mimicking the way Mihawk swirls his wine. He snorts. 

“Oi—”

“You’d do well to listen,” Mihawk continues as if neither of them had spoken. “I have a story for you.” 

Zoro’s ghost blinks. “You’re reading—is this a fucking bedtime story?” 

“Are you going to go to sleep?”

“I… no?” 

“Then, no, it is not a ‘bedtime story,’ Roronoa.” Mihawk sniffs. Perona giggles, high pitched and nasally, and Sanji snorts. “Consider it training of a different kind. The Blues know your mind needs it.” 

He’s about to protest, Zoro remembers, but then Perona hops next to him on the end of the bed, hits him over the head with a pillow, and turns to Mihawk pleadingly. “Ignore him,” she pleads. “It’s been boring watching him try and kill himself day after day. I need something different. I need it.” 

“Is your need for something different the reason you painted my table neon pink?”

Perona’s resulting glare could wither a lesser man. Or, at least, a man that was not used to living alone just to unintentionally adopt two kids that were dumped on his front lawn. “Yes.”

Mihawk’s lips twitch into the ghost of a smile. It disappears as fast as it comes. “Duly noted,” he says. Then, without anymore preamble, he sips his wine, crosses his legs, and gently, almost reverently, cracks the spine of the book in his hand.

Zoro remembers this story, though only barely. Mihawk spins a tale of a Devil Fruit that can weave the souls of two people together—it welds and mends, pulls and stretches, collapses and rebuilds. It is not fated. It is not chosen by some god or by the universe, but a simple, singular touch that can be as accidental as it can purposeful. Soulmates, if you wanted a name for it. 

Out of the corner of his eye, Sanji’s gone stiff. 

“Alright,” Zoro’s ghost mutters. “So what’s the point?” 

Mihawk frowns like Zoro’s a stalk of moldy, rotten grapes in his basket of perfectly crisp ones. “The point, Roronoa, is that there are some things in this world that you can’t account for. And that no matter how much you try, no matter how much you ache to believe you are above it, there will be things you are unable to avoid. You must learn to work with them.” He taps at the bandages wrapped around Zoro’s eye. “In this story, the pain of two is shared. The emotions of the two is shared. They can live without the other, they can abandon one another, but it lives to stand that they will never be able to rid themselves of their other. It is not a clean half. They are integrated into your very being, and to get rid of that is to get rid of you.”

Silence. 

Honestly, Zoro doesn’t think he’d ever heard Mihawk talk as much as he had before this. It ends, however, as all things do. 

Then his ghost says the kicker: “I don’t think that all came from the book, Mihawk.” 

When Mihawk leaves, the lights from the candles following him, he is clutching his arm. And that, Zoro supposes, is answer enough.

“So,” Sanji says, quiet in the same way the ocean is when becalmed, “soulmates, huh?”

And maybe this is where Zoro says, Of course you’re the type to believe in soulmates, love-cook—because Sanji is—or, We can forget about this, if you want—because Zoro would try, if it meant making Sanji happy. But he doesn’t. Because Sanji is looking at him, eyes shimmering with fucking hope behind all those walls he so carefully throws up, and the fact that Zoro can see that is all the reason he needs.

I love you, Zoro thinks.

“Yeah,” he says instead, something like lightning flooding through his veins when Sanji lights up like a fucking beacon, something like victory singing beneath his skin when those walls begin crumbling down before Zoro’s very eyes— “soulmates.

“But,” he adds, quietly, “only if you understand I chose you first. Before all of this.” 

It’s a strange feeling, being looked at like this. He remembers Robin reading him something, once, about how the ocean looked at the moon—loved with all of its being. Sanji’s laugh sounds like the smooth lap of waves on shore, like the splash of water against the prow of the Sunny. 

“Idiot,” he says, linking his pinkie with Zoro’s. “Of course I know.”

~+~

Sanji asks him not to look at Whole Cake. That’s a story he wants to tell himself, he says quietly, not one told through the flashes of memories without any explanation whatsoever. Zoro doesn’t ask. He holds Sanji’s hands close, waiting.

“I won’t watch,” Zoro tells him, and feels more than sees Sanji’s flinch. “Not if you don’t want me to.

“I don’t want you to see—them,” Sanji murmurs after a heartbeat. “I made a lot of mistakes in Whole Cake, Marimo, and I’ll own up to them for the rest of my days, but they are…” He stops. Swallows with a click. “They aren’t my family. They haven’t been my family since my mother died,” he finishes.

He closes his eye. “Okay.”

“But,” Sanji says, “if you—”

“Sanji,” Zoro murmurs, and when Sanji freezes at the use of his real name, he barrels on: “You said it yourself. They aren’t your family. Zeff is—all the folks are your old man’s shitty restaurant. We are, too.” He brings his head up, makes sure Sanji is looking at him, really, truly looking at him when he says: “I have seen your scars. I have seen what they have done to you, and what they have not done, and you have seen mine. If you want to leave that part of you behind forever, then you know we will respect that wish. Even if I do want to tear Judge’s head from his shoulders.”

A wet laugh tears itself from Sanji’s throat. “Thank you, Marimo,” he says quietly. And though Zoro teases, brief and adoring, that is that.

Then Wano takes its breath, and like a gust of fire, the world around them blazes by in an inferno. The closer they get to the beach, to where they both lie, the memories speed up and up and up and up—

Zoro wakes. Truly, viscerally wakes, the sky still glittering with the aftereffects of the fireworks and lanterns. It hasn’t been long, he realizes. Maybe a few minutes at most, but not hours. Not days. 

He blinks to Yamato staring down at him worriedly, wide eyes a little watery and hands clasped together, shaking. “Zoro,” he breathes out, and Zoro frowns as he remembers the smile that gleamed Sanji’s face when he was with the other, “oh, I am so relieved to see you—wait, wait, sit down—Sanji’s okay—wrong direction—please don’t cut that down, that’s not—okay—he’s up there.”

“Appreciate it,” Zoro grunts, sheathing Wado with a click and gliding past where Yamato sits, head in his hands. He’ll apologize later. Maybe. He just—

The singing is back. 

Faint, but there, tucked right next to where his heart resides. The closer he gets to the figure on the hill, it grows—grows louder, brighter, happier. This, he realizes, is what Mihawk truly means. There will always be a part of him drawn to the cook, but since when has there not been? Since when has Zoro ever felt at peace without that curly bastard by his side?

He doesn’t realize he’s at the top of the hill until Sanji turns, the ocean sweeping behind him, a cigarette between his teeth and a grin that rivals the light of the moon. 

“Marimo,” he greets. 

“Curly,” Zoro breathes. He doesn’t realize he’s inching closer and closer until his chest bumps Sanji’s own, until Sanji’s knuckles are brushing against his cheekbones and their noses brush. “Curly, Curls, Sanji—”

“Yeah,” Sanji agrees, whisper-soft. “Zoro.” 

Their lips meet, final chord struck, and the sky around them erupts in color. 

~+~

“Well?” Robin asks. 

Nami sighs, glaring over the rim of her glass to where Zoro and Sanji embrace under the stars, and hands Robin her share of coin. Yamato grumbles half-heartedly on the floor. “Only they would get their acts together after a life-altering accident caused by a couple of kids.” She raises an eyebrow to where Yamato sullenly pushes his bag of coin Robin’s way. “How are they doing, by the way?”

“Hinata and Akemi?” Yamato sighs. “They’re alright. Terrified at first that they ruined those two’s lives and Luffy’s chance at Pirate King, but the moment they saw them collide, well. They were relieved, to say the least.”

Nami huffs. “Yeah,” she says. “So were we.”

“It sure took them long enough,” Robin agrees, chuckling behind her hand. “Who knew that all they needed was a little push?” 

“You did.”

“Yes.” She smiles, pleased. “Yes, I did.” 

Despite it all, Nami finds herself laughing. Maybe it’s the drink. Maybe it’s the final high of the night. Or maybe it’s finally seeing her family smile, laugh, and relax after so long of pushing themselves to the brink. Whatever it is, she finds herself taking Yamato and Robin’s hands, leading them back to Wano’s plazas with renewed vigor. 

She grins, and, in a moment of weakness, subtracts a little off of Zoro’s debt.