Archive of Our Own

“Eugh.”

Zoro looks down at the thick, green blood coating Kitetsu’s blade and then towards the ogre he’s just beheaded. Its stupid face is stuck in a shocked expression, yellow eyes wide and thick purple tongue out and pooling down the side of its face. Grimacing, Zoro flicks his wrist to get as much of the green blood off his blade as possible, the rest he resorts to wiping off on the ogre’s loincloth.

Golden hair appears in his peripheral as his annoying traveling companion leans over to inspect his handiwork. Sanji’s nose is wrinkled and now Zoro sees the bits of blood splattered across his pale face. He smirks, suddenly proud.

“Mind watching where you slice?” Sanji says, tucking wavy blond hair behind pointy ears. “This tunic is custom tailored and it’s not like I can go back to get another.”

Zoro rolls his eyes, grumbling under his breath and sheathing Kitetsu once he’s satisfied with its cleanliness. 

Trust a simple wrong turn to get him stuck in a ridiculous predicament such as escorting an annoying Elf across the country. 

How’s he supposed to know that Wano is in the South and he’d gone North instead?

Sighing through his nose, Zoro walks back to their makeshift campfire and kicks the little embers until they’re gone. He grabs his other swords and tucks them into his holster belt, turning to look at Sanji expectantly.

“Well?” he demands. “Get ready. We can’t stay here anymore.”

Sanji purses his thin lips, looking down at the berries he’d picked and then back at Zoro. Sighing, he grabs his cloak and dramatically buckles it around himself, lifting the hood over his head to shadow his features.

The setting sun still manages to get the gold cuffs secured around his wrists, visible only because the billowing sleeves of his tunic fall back at the raise of his arms.

“Fine,” Sanji sniffs, crouching to try and envelop the berries in giant tree leaves. “But I insist we make camp soon. We need to eat.”

Zoro opens his mouth to say something snarky but thinks better of it at the last moment. Sure, why not, he’s pretty damn tired anyway. 

The worst part of his current circumstances is not just the company, but the fact that said company is a runaway royalty and has a bounty over his head that rises in price by the day. Zoro loves a good fight, but he’s been killing trolls, ogres, bandits and all other species in between for close to a week now. 

A good nap will suffice, if a good meal is out of the question. And considering the fact that they’re on the run and in the middle of an enormous forest, he’s not getting anything heftier than berries any time soon.

Once satisfied that his charge is ready, he begins to lead the way, his worn down cloak fanning around him as he walks. His entire getup has seen better days; the orc he had a serious battle with two days ago practically broke his shoulder armor. This makes him frown, knowing he has no money for a new one.

“Mosshead—”

“I told you my name is Zoro,” he sneers, glaring at Sanji over his shoulder. “Stop talking. Your annoying voice is probably what’s helping these bastards find us.”

Sanji glares at him, crossing his arms in front of his chest, nose up in the air in snooty defiance. “That is absolutely ridiculous and you know it.”

Scoffing, Zoro continues to lead the way. Which apparently is the wrong thing to do because Sanji quickly makes an exasperated noise and picks up his pace, boots scuffing against the dirt in his haste.

They’re in the country of Germa, that’s what Sanji says.

It’s windy, the harsh air cold against Zoro’s tanned cheeks. The forest they’re making their way through has giant spruce trees stretching up to the sky, dwarfing anything in their vicinity, the needle-like leaves coloring the dirt ground an emerald green. 

His attention turns to Sanji, eyeing the bounce of his wavy blond hair with every step and fighting off a sneer. He knows about Elves, how their mere presence enchants and how at their whims they can kill with inhuman speed.

Sanji seems different, though. 

Truth be told, it’s why Zoro agreed to escort him. Because it’d been his decision through and through. Sanji doesn’t seem to enthrall him, and doesn't seem to try to either. It’s all so very strange, Zoro thinks, because he looks well built under his prissy tunic and cloak, but he seems incapable of defending himself whenever an attack happens.

It’s how they met.

Zoro’d been minding his business, tending to a small fire he’d started, cooking some fish he’d caught. At the time, he had not wanted to admit to himself that he’d lost his way and had not been getting any closer to Wano as he had when he started his journey from the East.

Sanji had jumped out through the thick forest, bleeding from the side of his head and looking afraid for his life. A small hoard of goblins had come after him, nasty looking with axes and mallets and the sort. Zoro’d disposed of them, annoyed that his dinner had been trampled over.

Soon after, he’d found out Sanji is a runaway Prince and his family would want him back dead or alive. Counterproductive, in Zoro’s opinion, but what does he know about Elven customs?

Not for the first time, Zoro’s eyes lower to where Sanji’s wrists should be, hidden in the billow of his cloak and sleeves. Those golden cuffs are not to adorn him, that’s for sure. He’s caught Sanji touching them with anger and pain in his expression when the Elf had thought he’d been asleep.

It must have something to do with his inability to fight.

Zoro rests a hand on the hilt of one of his swords, finger tracing the tsuba thoughtfully. He shakes his head, deciding he’s putting too much thought on something that has nothing to do with him.

He agreed to escort Sanji as far as Wano, where they’ll part ways and Zoro can make his way to his sister’s palace and Sanji can continue to… do whatever it is he’s doing.

“I still cannot believe you’ve been traveling without a horse,” Sanji says, breaking Zoro out of his thoughts and causing that simmer of annoyance to sizzle just under his skin. “A horse would have let you know you were traveling in the opposite direction of your destination.”

“Shut up, twirly.”

Sanji stiffens at the name, turning eyes so blue they look violet towards him. “Do not ever call me that.”

Smirking, Zoro lifts his unoccupied hand and makes a swirl in the air, over his eyebrow.

Sanji bares his teeth, all sharp and probably lethal. 

But surprisingly, Zoro is not in the mood to goad him any further. He’s tired, he’s hungry and he’s cold. Nightfall has shadowed the forest and he’s left to truly depend on Sanji’s inhuman abilities, following after the silver halo the moon casts over his hair.

He thinks of odd jobs he can do to gather money for a hot meal, or a warm bed. His exterior betrays none of his thoughts, quietly following after his charge, his hand on his swords.

***

Zoro breaks through the surface of the freezing river, another couple of fishes in hand. 

Sanji is crouched at the riverbed, scaling the previous fishes he’s caught as if it’s not the first time he does this. Zoro walks out of the river, dropping the fishes at the blond man’s feet and trying to not shiver so visibly. 

He runs a hand through his sopping wet green hair, slicking the dripping spikes back as he kicks his trousers off. This proves difficult, since they’re practically stuck to his skin. He huffs, hating how his lower lip quivers.

“Will you start a fire—oh!” There’s a surprised expression on Sanji’s face and, if he were anyone else, Zoro supposes the man would be blushing. Sanji averts his eyes, turning back to the fishes at his feet. “Didn’t realize you were, ah, indecent.”

“Indecent?” Zoro echoes with amusement. He looks down at himself, brown skin prickled with goosebumps, undressed save for his undergarments. 

Sanji puffs up with annoyance, his wrist flicking harder, scales flying everywhere.

Zoro lays his trousers out for the sun to dry up. It’s freezing, much like it always is in the country of Germa, so Sanji says. Zoro grabs his cloak and clasps it around himself, walking over to watch Sanji at work.

“Now how does a Prince know how to scale fishes?” he asks, arms crossed beneath the deep green of his cloak.

“I didn’t realize that a Prince is synonymous with useless,” Sanji sniffs but his words carry a weight to them that give Zoro pause.

Not for the first time, he wonders if he should demand some answers from the haughty Elf. He’d been hasty in accepting to escort him, if only because the sight of someone helpless has always left Zoro with a bad taste in his mouth.

But what exactly has he gotten himself into?

Why is he running away? Why is his family putting a bounty on his head, wanting him back dead or alive? And what are those cuffs around his wrists? Does he really have no magic?

Zoro purses his lips in annoyance with himself, turning away from Sanji and the fishes.

He supposes he can start a little fire, both for warmth and to cook the fishes once his highness finishes descaling them. He crouches down around the thin twigs and branches they’d gathered a little earlier, stacking them up messily.

“Where did you get that scar?” Sanji asks, but he doesn’t look away from his work.

Zoro looks up at him for a moment, his annoyance rising at being asked a question when he himself hasn’t asked any of the ones burning at the tip of his tongue. Still, it’s a habit to run the rough pads of his fingers down the long jagged scar bisecting his front, fingertips catching in some spots, where the scar tissue is thick. 

“My father,” he mutters, getting back to work on the fire. “Training.”

“Curious thing: fathers.” His tone is forcefully airy and Zoro looks over in time to catch Sanji’s attention on his own wrist. 

Zoro opens his mouth, but snaps it shut when he has difficulty voicing his questions. Instead he says, “Mihawk’s the greatest swordsman in the world. It’s an honor to be his son.”

Sanji dips his head a bit in what can only be a nod. Zoro studies him, the intricate braids woven in his hair like golden circlets, the neatly trimmed goatee, the sharp jaw and sharper teeth hidden behind his thin lips. 

There aren’t Elves in the East. But his adoptive father once traveled the lands before settling down to raise two orphans in Kuraigana, taking over as Lord at the behest of Lady Kuina of Shimotsuki. Mihawk had told Zoro little stories here and there of the vast species he’s encountered: Elves, Tree Folk, Dwarves and the Gifted. 

Sanji isn’t like the Elves Mihawk described; the gray skin, the needle-like teeth and black gums that hold them, the claws and piercing eyes. Sanji is… Zoro narrows his eyes. He’s beautiful, actually, and he wonders if enchantment has been happening this entire time and he hadn’t been smart enough to notice.

“Why can’t you defend yourself?” he blurts out, feeling his face grow hot for the first time in weeks. Gathering his wits about him, he juts his chin out in Sanji’s direction. “You look like you train.”

He doesn’t get an answer right away, though he knows Sanji’s heard him. The other man refuses to look up, the wind caressing his blond hair, his hands expertly occupied with the last of the fish. When Sanji has no other choice but to turn to him, scaled, gutted and cut fishes in hand, his expression is carefully blank.

Sore spot, then, Zoro thinks.

He’s known there’s more than meets the eye when it comes to his charge, but the weight and depth of it is lost to him. Sanji easily engages in mindless bickering, in throwing names at each other or, hypocritically, asking Zoro personal questions. But the second Zoro asks one back, he shuts down completely.

“Curious,” he finally says, voice smooth and low, “that you ask that. You’d be out of a job if I were able to defend myself, don’t you think?”

“I didn’t realize this is a job,” Zoro counters, piercing twigs into the fishes so they can cook over the tiny fire he’s made. “That suggests payment.”

Sanji’s smirk is sharp and lazy, violet-blue eyes sparkling with amusement.

“Isn’t it payment enough to get you to your destination in one piece, mosshead?” He laughs, sharp and tinkly like windchimes. “Who is whose escort, indeed?”

“Fine,” Zoro says easily enough, shrugging a shoulder and sitting back to wait for their meal to cook. “Then you don’t mind me sitting back when the next beast comes for your head, right, twirly?”

He leans against one of the massive tree roots jutting out from the dirt, legs spread out in front of him and his arms crossed behind his head, eyes closed. Zoro can’t see, but he’s sure he can feel Sanji’s indignation. The very thought makes him smile crookedly.

The sigh that Sanji lets out is incisive. Zoro doesn’t move from his relaxed slouch, but he listens at the rustle of the other man’s movements. For a moment, he gets lost in the thought that any sound Zoro hears is because Sanji allows it, and wants it that way.

“I suppose some information is due,” he acquiesces. “If we’re going to travel together, then we should know each other a little, hm?”

Zoro opens an eye and stares at him where he sits across the small fire. He looks worn down but in an elegant way. He doesn’t know how that’s possible, but Sanji still looks well put together, save for the slight creases under his eyes.

“I’m sure,” Sanji continues, looking at the fire, “you’ve taken note of these charming things?” He lifts an arm up so his sleeve falls back and his pale wrist is in view as is the golden cuff around it. “My father forced these on me some time ago. It cuts off my offensive magic and, quite honestly, most of my magic in general. Aside from some frivolous little things I can still do, anyway.”

Curious thing: fathers.

Ah, that comment makes sense now. No, absolutely not; Mihawk may have been a hard mentor but he can’t ever see his adoptive father being cruel to either of his children for the simple sake of being cruel. 

Zoro looks down at his lap, feeling his teeth grind in the horror of what Sanji must have gone through. But he has appearances to keep and a boundary to maintain so he hides it behind a mask of indifference. He looks up only when he feels like he’s hidden his anger well.

“Mihawk didn’t do this to me on purpose,” he says, opening the flaps of his cloak to show his scar. “I’d been distracted. I was arrogant and wasn’t paying attention like I should’ve been.” 

He looks up at Sanji, sees the blankness in his expression. Zoro shakes his head, dropping that train of thought in defense of his father. He feels like it’d just pour salt to Sanji’s wounds anyway.

“Mihawk,” Sanji drawls after a long moment of silence. He’s moved closer to the fire, moving the sticks with the fishes so they’re evenly cooked. “Your father. What is he like?”

Zoro is caught off guard by the question. 

Mihawk is a strange man, liking to read and drink wine as much if not more than Zoro likes to drink sake. He likes to garden and isn’t fond of politics whatsoever, though he’s good at it. He refuses to admit he shed a tear when Perona got married and he’s encouraged Zoro’s wanderlust more than a father should, he thinks.

But he doesn’t want to tell Sanji this. 

So he shrugs a shoulder and mutters, “He’s fine.”

There’s amusement in Sanji’s eyes when he looks up at him. 

The wind that blows causes the long branches of the willow tree they’re against to dance in the air, dropping leaves like snowflakes around them. They’ve left the giant spruce trees behind for now, swapped out by giant weeping willows and sycamore trees instead. 

The river is loud as the current rushes downstream. So loud that Zoro almost doesn’t hear Sanji say, “Right then, a question a day.”

***

A light blanket of snow interweaves with the grass, like cotton. It’s smattered with dirt in some places, the blinding white colored muddy. Zoro looks up at the canopy of branches hunched down by the weight of the earlier snowfall, spruce leaves like claws as they hold it all up.

It doesn’t snow in Kuraigana, though it rains often enough. He supposes this is the first time he’s ever seen it; he’s not impressed in the least. His breath is visible in front of him as he exhales, a hand rising up to catch little snowflakes that melt before he can catch their intricate shapes.

“Like it?” Sanji asks as he slows his pace to walk next to him with an arm’s length between them.

Zoro drops his hand and wrinkles his nose in distaste. “Can’t say I do."

“Ah,” Sanji says with a light chuckle. “Something we can agree on, then.”

They’re walking through the dense, expansive forest that separates the kingdom of Germa from the plebian towns and villages. Sanji’s words, and they held a tone of mockery and disdain for such views. It’s why they haven’t seen any travelers, since they are keeping away from the main roads, he says.

Zoro has traveled, when he was part of the guard with Kuina, then captain of guard for Kuina and then for his father when Kuina passed. He’s used to the monotony of travel, though his least favorite parts of it is the lack of a warm food and warmer bed. 

He can’t say he remembers ever traveling so close to the north, though. All campaigns he’s been a part of have been for the central lands and the south and, when negotiations of alliances began, across the sea to Wano.

A slow trickle of snow begins again and Zoro thinks that, yes, he quite dislikes it.

“What form of magic do you have?” he asks, looking up at the trees that stretch impossibly high. The sky is a lifeless gray above. “When you can use it.”

Sanji hums, curled into the warmth of his cloak but still managing to look tall and elegant. He shifts from playfulness to melancholy and downright anger like fickle skies. He seems to be in the melancholic part of his cycle, Zoro notes.

“Is that your question of the day?” he asks, voice forcefully light. 

Zoro pauses for a second, thinks of the endless questions he has and tries to sort them by importance. He’s not very good at these kinds of games, having always been straightforward to the point of rudeness. But Sanji is evasive and tight-lipped. This seems to be the only way he can get answers.

And he supposes he should butter the annoying Elf up before he asks the more… invasive questions. If they can be considered such.

“Yeah,” he finally says and he shrugs to add to his nonchalance. Just so the other man won’t latch onto his curiosity and make fun of it.

Like whiplash, Sanji’s demeanor changes and his stride picks up speed and even a skip. He spins around so he’s walking backwards, his hands behind his back as he looks at Zoro with mischief, thin lips curved in devious delight.

“Guess,” he says, his tone light and sing-song like. 

Zoro narrows his eyes as he continues to walk, proud that he only pauses for a millisecond before continuing to walk. “This isn’t how the game goes.”

Sanji definitely laughs now, his mouth falling open in his mirth, showing his sharp canines. Weird, Zoro thinks — the other times he’s caught sight of Sanji’s teeth, when he’s throwing infuriatingly haughty smiles at him at Zoro’s expense, they’ve all been sharp. Not needle-like, but sharp.

Another question to add to the list, then.

Zoro crosses his arms in front of his chest to keep warm, the slow snowfall still falling around them, adding to the blanket of white on the ground, to the weight the spruce branches have to carry.

“Come now, mosshead,” Sanji coos. “Let’s make this a little fun!”

Sighing long and loud to show how aggrieved he is by the Elf’s antics, Zoro truly thinks about it. Sanji has given little to nothing away about himself. When they’re attacked, it’s not that he cowers but he has enough self preservation to duck and try to hide. 

Then, he tries to think of the magic he knows about. And then he studies Sanji, his lithe and wiry frame and that temper that Zoro guesses he’s only caught a glimpse of.

“Water magic,” he says but it comes out as a question and at the very brief way Sanji’s facial expression falters, he wonders what the hell he did to misstep.

“Ah,” Sanji finally says when he manages to reel it all back in. “How kind of you, mosshead. But no, not water.” He sighs and falls back into step next to Zoro, facing forward once again. “Water magic is healing and kind. It is as destructive as all other magic, of course. But I have always considered it to be gentle.” He turns to spare Zoro a glance, his eyes glinting more violet than blue under the gloomy lighting. “It was my mother’s magic.”

Oh.

Well.

Zoro feels awkward, not knowing what to say to that. He’s not the consoling type. That’s always been his sister, backhanded as it tends to be, it’s better than Zoro’s inability to act on the fragments of empathy he has.

“Fire,” Sanji says after a pregnant pause. “My magic is fire. There aren’t many of us.” He says the last part with a sigh. “It’s why my father has gifted these to me.” He waves his hands up in the air, cloak and sleeves falling back to show the ever present gold cuffs. “Since I’m prone to running away and all. Can’t let my magic be helpful to anyone else, can he?”

Without thinking, Zoro snatches Sanji’s hand to look at the cuff. His hand is freezing cold in his, but smooth and soft. He has claws where regular nails should be, and they nip at Zoro’s skin. 

The gold cuff itself is nothing fancy, nothing special. It’s a thick gold band circling Sanji’s wrist, from wrist-bone halfway up to his forearm. Zoro twists Sanji’s arm this way and that, trying to find a clasp or something of that nature. There isn’t any.

Sanji snatches his hand back, glaring at him with something like a pout on his lips. He rubs at the cuff, at his hand, and looks away. “The only ones that can remove these are in Germa.”

“We are in Germa,” Zoro says.

Sanji smiles wryly at him but the conversation proves to be too much for him and he remains quiet for so long after that, Zoro forgets there’s someone traveling with him.

***

A yell escapes past his lips as Zoro collides with a tree.

He drops to the snowy ground with a grunt, his vision fuzzy around the edges as he tries to gather his wits about him. He’s breathing hard, Yubashiri thrown across the grounds to his right. Staggering to his feet, he shakes his head to try and get his vision to clear.

The orc is grinning wickedly as it comes for him, yellow teeth out on display and thick saliva dripping in rivulets to the ground.

“Ain’t it funny,” it rasps, tilting its small head to the side. “A human protectin’ an Elf.”

Zoro doesn’t dignify it with a response, reaching for Wado at his hip. He feels a little off kilter, used to having Wado’s weight at his side when he’s got Yubashiri and Kitetsu in his hands. Still, Zoro huffs as he moves, pushing past the nauseating feeling in his stomach to block the spiked mallet that the orc tries to pummel him with.

He feels something slither down the side of his face, knowing its blood without needing to touch it. He hit that tree pretty damn hard, his vision blurs and clears with every blink. But he has to push through; what’s the point of taking up the job of protecting Sanji if he can’t do much protecting?

Baring his teeth, Zoro pushes forward until the deadlock is broken and the orc stumbles back a bit. He spins, crossing his arms in front of him to make an x and slashing his swords. He makes mark — Zoro always makes mark. But orcs have thick hide and though he cuts through, by the time his blades dig into flesh, the momentum’s lost to make much damage.

The orc yells in pain though and Zoro keeps his onslaught going. 

He kicks a leg out to collide with the orc’s abdomen, kicking hard to dislodge his swords from its hide and gather momentum to flip himself in the air. He swings his swords in a horizontal arc, aiming for the orc’s side and grinning viciously when the blades cut through.

“Pathetic human,” it screeches, swinging its mallet through its pain.

Zoro ducks, rolling on the ground and having to pause when his vision goes black. He whispers, “Fuck.”

“Mosshead!”

He turns to the side, catching Sanji running out from where he’d hidden, lunging for Yubashiri, pulling it out of the snow with a hand around the black handle. He spins around, his blue eyes wide as he watches the orc near Zoro, mallet raised to kill him.

And he’ll kill him, Zoro knows. He’s too dizzy. He might have a damn concussion. He feels his heart pulse in his head, hears a ringing so acute, it’s disorienting. 

“Hey, bastard,” Sanji calls to the orc. “I’m right here!”

The orc pauses and turns to him, gleaming beady eyes filled with unadulterated hate and malice. It turns towards Sanji, steps picking up speed.

“Fuck,” Zoro repeats, pressing his palm to his forehead and clenching his eyes shut. “Get it together.”

As if a goddamn orc will be the end of him. He rises to his feet, unsteady but pushing through it. He looks up with glassy eyes as Sanji raises Yubashiri, poised to either block or duck and attack. Looks like he knows how to fight with a sword, that bastard’s never said anything.

Laughing a little, Zoro runs after the orc and jumps into the air to come down on it from behind. He slashes the side of its thick neck with Wado and pierces the back of it with Kitetsu. At the same time, Sanji swings Yubashiri and slashes the other side of its neck. 

“Right then,” Sanji grunts, teeth clenched. “Harder, mosshead.”

Zoro growls under his breath as he pierces deeper with one sword, slashes further with the other at the same time Sanji does.

The head pops off with a mighty, disgusting spray of green blood. Its body slumps down to its knees and Zoro rolls to the side to keep from dropping onto it and onto Sanji.

“You’re hurt,” he hears Sanji’s soft voice.

Zoro’s eyes are clenched shut, breathing hard as he tries to keep his brain from oozing out his ears. Perhaps it's because he’s had concussions before, but this one proves difficult to push aside. He grunts when he feels arms wrap around his middle, uselessly lying limp as they drag him away.

“You’re heavy,” Sanji chuckles, breathless.

“You’ll get blood on your prissy clothes,” Zoro mutters. His head is resting on Sanji’s lap.

At this, the Elf laughs. His hands rest on Zoro’s shoulders and part of him wants to request he collects his swords rather than become a pillow for him. He says nothing though, feeling himself float in and out of consciousness.

“Hey now,” Sanji murmurs. “Stay awake, hm?”

“You know how to wield a sword,” Zoro mutters. 

“It’s… It’s complicated,” Sanji evades. He stays quiet for a moment before he taps at Zoro. “You owe me two answers. I didn’t ask you anything yesterday, don’t think I don’t remember.”

Zoro hums.

Sanji’s presence is staticky, like he’s stressed. What did he expect, Zoro wonders, the voice of his conscience small and sleepy. He’s bound to get hurt at some point in all this. Ridiculous circumstances, indeed. The corner of his lip twitches.

“What do you like to eat?” Sanji asks and if he could Zoro would laugh.

“Sea-king and rice,” he mumbles. “Onigiri. Sake.”

Sanji does laugh at this, quiet but hearty. Zoro furrows his brow at being unable to see the way his blank expression shifts to amusement. 

“Don’t like sweets,” he adds, voice soft. “Hate honey. No chocolate.”

“What a plain palate you have.” He says something else but Zoro finds himself drifting closer to darkness. He wishes for a warm bed, this is close enough, he supposes. “Hey? Mosshead! I have one more question, you can’t go to sleep until I ask it!”

Zoro grunts.

Sanji starts cursing but Zoro just lets himself drift into sleep.

***

When he wakes up, he’s in bed and a warm fire crackles to the left. The room is dim and the snow is heavier out the small window. He’s also not alone, Zoro takes note.

There’s a reindeer on the far desk, wearing a woven pink hat, worrying over some medicines or other on the surface of the table. Zoro looks around the room again, looking for Sanji but realizing he’s nowhere in sight. 

There’s a plate of… Is that sea-king? On a bed of rice?

Zoro groans as he sits up, a hand shooting up to press against his forehead as a pounding headache makes a home out of his head. 

“Oh!”

Zoro opens an eye and watches the little reindeer hop off his seat and scurry closer. His eyes are round and brown and filled with concern as he comes to his bedside. Zoro isn’t afraid, but he’s definitely curious.

He’s seen a couple of Minks before.

“You shouldn’t move too much.” Definitely never met a Mink doctor though. “You’ve been asleep for an entire day, not counting the evening when you arrived.” He shuffles around, pulling the blankets back to check the bandages around his ribs that Zoro hadn’t realized were there. 

“Never met a Mink doctor,” Zoro mumbles, his attention going back to the hot plate of sea-king and rice at his bedside. 

“I am not a Mink!” The reindeer looks indignant. He’d be pouting now if it weren’t for his snout. “I’m a reindeer!”

Zoro raises an eyebrow.

“Sorry,” he says, if only because the little guy amuses him. “Never met a reindeer doctor.”

This seems to appease him, a smile twitching his muzzle. He huffs and puffs, moving around the bed and tucking Zoro in as best he can. Thankfully he leaves his arms out of the nest he’s making of the thick blankets, and the pillows he fluffs behind him are soft enough to put him to sleep but also sturdy enough to keep him up in a sitting position.

“You have cracked ribs,” the little doctor says. “You need to rest while I work on this potion to help you. Your friend says you can’t stay long.”

“Twirly?” Zoro pauses for a second, clears his throat. “Sanji? He’s here?”

“Mhmm!” The little doctor hands him his bowl of rice and sea-king meat. Zoro hasn’t had this since he left home weeks ago. “He’s helping in the kitchens of the tavern downstairs.”

At the confused look on his face, the little doctor laughs behind his hooves. He studies him for a moment longer, as if trying to see if his patient is comfortable and if he’s close to choking on his food with the way he’s inhaling it.

Zoro is unabashed as he shoves spoonful after spoonful of rice, studying the little doctor in turn.

“My name is Chopper!” he says, smiling wide. “I’m studying to be a witch doctor! Oh… But I’m not supposed to say that. I’m just studying to be a doctor!”

Zoro laughs, setting his now empty bowl on the counter and groaning when the way he stretches causes an acute pain to his side. Chopper wails a little as he scurries close again, grabbing the bowl before it falls over and quickly pushing Zoro back.

“Stop that!”

“Sorry, doc,” Zoro wheezes. “Thanks for taking care of me.”

Chopper blinks his eyes before he tries valiantly to hide behind his hooves. “T-that doesn’t make me happy… you jerk!” He vibrates and wiggles with happiness.

Zoro grins, but there’s a knock on the door before he can say anything. Both he and Chopper turn to watch Sanji poke his head in, a deep blue scarf wrapped around his head and contrasting against his pale hair. He has a bowl in one hand and a glass of water in the other.

“Figured you would like seconds,” he teases as he comes close. 

The shake of his head is subtle, not that it’s needed since Chopper hops back to the potions he’s working on. Zoro studies the scarf around Sanji’s head, covering his ears expertly while also having it look like it’s a fashion statement. 

“Any way I can get some sake with this?” Zoro asks, because what he really wants to ask shouldn’t be done so with an audience. 

Both Sanji and Chopper glare at him and yell, “No!”

Wincing, Zoro looks down at his food and grumbles.

***

Time passes and Zoro’s waking up from a sleep he hadn’t realized he’d fallen into. The room is dimmer than it’d been earlier and the gray sky outside has turned a milky indigo. Snow lines the window pane outside, the glass frozen more from the cold than the ice itself.

Zoro slowly sits up, looking around the room at the shadows that keep him company. He sees Sanji sitting on the same chair Chopper occupied earlier, his attention down on a wooden pipe as he fiddles with it.

“They can’t know,” he says without looking up. “That's why I’m wearing this. They’ll think my father will be down to wreak havoc if they see me.” He gives him a bland smile over his shoulder. “They don’t know I’m different, after all.”

“Different how?” Zoro asks but Sanji just sucks at his teeth.

“You can’t ask questions until I catch up,” he says teasingly. He shifts in the chair so he’s facing towards Zoro, crossing a leg over the other at the knee, pipe in his hands. It’s shaped like a mermaid, the bowl where the tobacco is supposed to be packed into is on her back, like an urn.

Sanji wiggles the pipe when he notices Zoro’s attention on it. “A gift from a patron. Whittled it himself. Charming old man.” He looks up from the pipe and at Zoro. His eyes are more violet in the darkness, sharp and preternatural. “Right then! Shall I ask my next question?”

Zoro makes a gesture that suggests he gets a move on.

“Three swords, hm?” Sanji asks, tilting his head in the direction where, earlier, Zoro’d taken note his swords were propped. “I have many questions about that, mosshead.”

“Too bad you can only ask one, twirly.” Zoro smirks at him, the smile growing when Sanji looks annoyed at the nickname.

He sets the pipe down on the table, his long, thin fingers grazing it fondly before he lifts that same hand to touch the ends of his hair. “Okay: why?”

“‘Why’?”

“Yes,” Sanji continues, flicking his wrist in the air in an airy hand flip. “Why three swords? Something must have made you think up such a ludicrous idea.”

Zoro bites at the inside of his cheek, eyes drifting down to the blankets that cover him. It’s not a loaded question, not really. The answer is pretty straightforward, it always has been until five years ago. Then it got heavy; heavy and loaded are different things, right?

“Kuina…” Zoro frowns, brow furrowing. He clears his throat, “Lady Kuina. Of Shimotsuki. We grew up together, before she had to accept her duties as ruler. She was a swordsman too and she was better than me. Could never beat her. So I developed the three sword style on my own, so that I can work on finally defeating her.” Zoro smiles regretfully. “Then she died.”

He hears Sanji suck in air, humming softly in a way that’s probably sympathetic rather than pitying. Zoro avoids looking at him, not wanting to see if there’s a softness in Sanji’s features that he isn’t ready to associate with the Elf.

“She thought it was funny,” Zoro says. “But we were unstoppable on the battlefield. We were in the guard together; the youngest to ever be. And she was captain. Before I took over when she became Lady. But it was the one thing I could do that she couldn’t: three sword style.” Damn. He misses her. “But if she was still better than me, did it even matter?”

Silence falls around them and there’s a faint buzzing in Zoro’s ears. He’s not sure if it’s from the head injury or because he’s visiting emotions and memories he tries to keep locked away.

“I’m—mosshead—Zoro.” Sanji’s voice sounds thick with some kind of emotion. But he thankfully clears his throat to get rid of it rather than have it settle between them like bandages. Or a warm blanket. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know—”

Zoro scoffs, shrugging a shoulder to show that it’s not that big of a deal. “Isn’t that the point? To find out? Now, shut up. It’s my turn. I didn’t get a question yesterday or today.”

“Ah-ah.” Sanji waggles a clawed finger in the air. “If that’s the case, I still have one more question. See, I’ve asked the two you owed me, but you were asleep for an entire day, hm?”

“You’re a cheat, twirly,” Zoro says with a slight laugh. “Fine. Whatever. Ask.”

“You're the captain of guard?”

Zoro shakes his head. “Not anymore. I left when Kuina died.” And he’d been so angry because he’s always been incapable of channeling his grief like a normal person. “Spent some time in Wano to get away.”

“And you’re a… Prince? A lord?”

“No way, twirly, you’ve asked your fill.” He listens to Sanji’s windchime laugh and finds himself grinning. He quickly swipes the smile off his face, checking to see if Sanji’s noticed. 

He isn’t looking at him, Zoro notes. Sanji’s smiling though, soft around the edges, eyes closed in amusement and a hand lost in his hair as he keeps his head upright, elbow on the desk. It’s the first time Zoro’s seen him be this candid and comfortable. 

Isn’t that interesting, Zoro thinks as he stares at him.

***

The snowy village is three days behind them now. After all, Zoro and Sanji have to keep moving before word of their presence spreads and hunters come their way.

Chopper finished his potion some time into that night of questions, bursting through the door and doing the same little wiggle dance at Sanji’s praises. Now, Zoro is in tip-top shape again, carrying four more flasks of said potion in the pack the little reindeer so graciously gave to them. There’s some jerky and bread and cheese in there that, though not the amazing meal Zoro managed to have when he’d woken up from his concussion-induced sleep, can preserve well in their travels.

Sanji not only knows how to cook, he seems to really enjoy it. There’d been a pleased look on his face as he’d spoken about feeling at home in a kitchen, listing some dishes he’s fond of cooking and regrets not being able to make.

Unsurprisingly, he’d gone quiet when Zoro’d asked who taught him the art.

Now, Sanji leads them while smoking out of the mermaid-shaped pipe. There’s a skip in his step that hadn’t been there in the days before their stop at the village. His cloak sways with his movements, boots cuffing the snowy ground as he goes.

“How much longer until we leave Germa, cook?” he asks, satisfied when he notices Sanji’s annoyed reaction to not only Zoro’s voice, but the new name.

“I’ve told you,” Sanji sneers. Interestingly enough, there is no fire behind that sneer. “I am a chef, not a cook.” Then, as if remembering what Zoro’s actual question is, he unhelpfully adds, “Soon, though.”

Soon, he says. Zoro rolls his eyes.

In the three days that have passed, Zoro has asked inconsequential questions. Sanji’s favorite color: blue. He knows how to wield a sword, does he have training: yes. This one interests Zoro a lot, but much like how he’s been maneuvering around this strange partnership, he has to play his cards right or risk the dumb Elf growing skittish.

“Tired of the snow?” Sanji asks lightly, smoke curling out his mouth and up in the air before it disappears completely.

“Is that your question of the day?” Zoro asks and smirks when Sanji gives him a scathing look over his shoulder.

“You learn fast for a creature made of moss,” he mutters, turning his head with a snap, the low tail of his hair whipping in the air. “Fine, I take my question back for further brainstorming.”

Zoro snickers to himself, resting a hand on his swords as he walks. 

Brainstorming, he says. Yet Zoro’s noticed all of Sanji’s questions are on the lighter side, not counting his question about his swords, a story that is carefully woven with the memory of Kuina. 

“Mihawk has an Elven friend,” Zoro starts, feeling a little giddy about asking about one of the things he’s most curious about. “They send letters all the time, it’s annoying. Once, to frighten me he mentioned—”

“Glamour?”

Zoro looks at him, brow furrowed.

Sanji laughs and shrugs a shoulder. “I’m surprised it’s taken so long for you to mention it. It’s the thing that both terrifies and fascinates humans the most.”

“Glamour,” Zoro repeats, testing the word on his tongue. “What is it?”

“What it sounds like,” Sanji says. “It hides our true nature.”

Zoro licks his bottom lip as he bounces those words in his head. Mihawk’s always said his friend Shanks is simply vain and wants to appear handsome when he’s really a brute. Zoro looks at Sanji, the waves of his hair contained in a neat ponytail tied at the nape of his neck with a thin ribbon, those thin, intricate braids woven into his hair on one side. His eyes are blue, his skin pale, his lips pink.

“What do you look like?”

Sanji raises his curly eyebrows, the lip of his pipe in between his teeth. “You can’t ask two questions!”

“I’m not!” Zoro crosses his arms in front of his chest, frowning to hide how curious he actually is. “It’s the same question—actually, no, I didn't even ask my question! I was giving a backstory for the question I wanted to ask and that’s what my question is: what do you look like?”

Narrowing his eyes, Sanji stops walking and fully turns to face him. His hands are on his hips, one hand still holding the pipe. “Are you blind? You’re looking at me right now!”

Zoro rolls his eyes, “Cook—”

“Fine,” Sanji scoffs, looking put out as he tucks the pipe into the pack Chopper gifted them. 

Well, Zoro thinks, that didn’t take much convincing. But he knows he can’t look a gift horse in the mouth, so he bites his tongue from making any snide remark. He keeps his arms crossed in front of his chest, making sure he looks nonchalant and not eager at all.

One blink: Sanji is blond, blue eyed, pale skin. Fair and wiry, sharp shoulders and tapered waist.

In the next blink: Sanji has grown taller, skin a clay-gray, eyes like fire pits, hair like charcoal. His claws have grown sharper and darker, and when he opens his mouth his teeth are like needles.

“Satisfied?” he asks, his eyes blazing. Not out of anger, but simply because that’s what they are: blazing fire. 

Zoro blinks once more and the glamour is back, coloring Sanji pale and blond and blue. Isn’t that fascinating, he thinks with wonderment. He blinks again, expecting to see the other Sanji, but the normal one is the one staring back at him, gaze assessing.

Zoro blinks once more, shaking his head.

“Hm,” Sanji hums. “Looks like despite your brute strength you’re still fairly human. The dizziness will subside soon enough.”

***

He’s a little miffed at being called ‘fairly human’. Not that it’s an incorrect assessment but Zoro likes to believe his discipline and training regimen have made him just as mentally powerful as it’s done so physically. He refuses to admit he’s pouting, though. 

After the glamour moment, Sanji goes on a bit of a tangent. Mostly set off by Zoro asking if glamour is magic, and if it’s similar to the fae people. No, glamour is not magic, rather, a part of oneself.

As for the fae question, well. Sanji’s face had colored for the first time since they met. Not even the freezing cold has shifted his fair complexion but the mention of the fae had set him off.

“The fae wish they can conjure glamour as easily as us,” he’d spat, flailing his arms in the air. “Theirs is a poor imitation, mosshead. Everything about them is just a tragic attempt at being like us.”

Zoro’d been amused for a good part of the day’s trek.

Nightfall shadows them now. The trees are sparse as they finally get close to the border of Germa and Arabasta. Sanji’d insisted that they stop to eat and rest only for a moment before continuing their travel well into the night.

Zoro looks up at the sky and the splatter of stars that spread over the never-ending expanse. The moon is in its first quarter, something his sister taught him during the period in which Perona wanted to travel with the guard as a guard. Having to deal with Perona and Kuina had been a nightmare.

He smirks at the memory, shifting his attention to Sanji where he walks a few steps ahead of him. He wonders if he has a sibling too. He’ll add that to the roster of questions he wants to ask.

“In our short time traveling together, I’ve realized,” Sanji says, unknowing to the attention Zoro’d already been giving him, “that you’re a directionless buffoon. I say that with a tad of fondness, surprisingly enough—”

Zoro opens his mouth to snap back at him, but Sanji lifts a clawed finger up. 

“—still, I find it important to tell you our traveling strategies.” Sanji tucks a stray strand of gold hair behind a pointed ear. “We’ll be leaving Germa in the next hour or so. The forest will wane into the limestone spring terraces. Beautiful sight, mosshead, it’ll fry your last remaining brain cell from the sheer beauty—”

“You’re pushing it with the insults, cook,” Zoro growls, stomping closer so he can… well, do something. He hasn’t thought about it. Maybe kick him or something of the sort. 

Sanji chuckles, his smile showing his sharp teeth but still managing to look a little soft at the edges. “The terraces will lead into the town of Yuba. We can rest there, replenish our rations.”

The cook had managed to earn some coins while Zoro recuperated back in the sleepy snowy village. It’s probably his enchanting beauty that convinced patrons to leave their money behind with Sanji.

“You talk like you’ve been here before,” Zoro observes, resting his forearm on his swords. 

Sanji shrugs a shoulder in a coy way. “I might have.”

“Right,” Zoro drawls, “this isn’t your first time running away, is it?”

“No.”

They fall into silence and Zoro’s surprised by how comfortable it is. It’s infuriating, the way Sanji makes Zoro feel out of character. He’s always been someone that minds his business, cares for little and only lends an ear when asked. But with Sanji, his curiosity is insatiable; how many times exactly has he run away from Germa? What’s brought him back? What is so terrible about an Elven kingdom that sends him running?

Pressing his lips together, Zoro pushes all of it out of his mind. He chooses to focus on listening to their surroundings, the snap of a twig, the rustle of shrubs, their boots scuffing on the dirt. This is what he’s supposed to be doing anyway.

***

He’ll admit, the limestone spring terraces were breath-taking.

The white and beige calcite rocks practically glowed under the burning lilac sky as the sun began to rise. Steam curled and swayed in a hypnotizing dance, the springs clear and pure.

Of course, terraces were like mazes and Zoro’d ended up somewhere where Sanji had not been. There were springs and height between them, steaming and menacing, and Sanji had stared at him with violet-blue eyes alight with both annoyance and amusement.

“How have you managed this,” he’d asked, hands on his hips as he looked down at him from where he stood.

Zoro hadn’t been sure, but his bet had been that the terraces played tricks on him. He refused to voice this and simply tried to find his way back to the cook, taking a couple of wrong turns that Sanji screeched bloody murder about.

Now, they duck into the busy streets of Yuba, heads lowered and faces shadowed by the hood of their cloaks. This proves rather difficult, considering it’s around noon and the sun is up at its highest point and blazing warm.

A contrast to Germa’s wintery winds.

The townsfolk they pass wear headdresses to shield them from the sun, loose clothes to accommodate the desert weather throughout the day. Zoro’s not surprised that they stick out like sore thumbs, grunting with disdain when Sanji bullies him into a tavern called Whiskey Peak.

A little cooler than outside, that’s for sure. They head to an empty table in the back, sliding into their seats and making little to no eye contact with the few around them. 

Zoro thrums with the prospect of some sake so close. In the snowy village, Sanji and Chopper had seriously kept through with their initial denial of him having any booze. It’d been so torturous. Zoro looks at Sanji, unimpressed at the Elf’s attention drifting to the barmaids zig-zagging around the mismatching tables. 

“Cook,” he says, “gimme booze.”

Sanji turns to him, nose wrinkling in distaste. “Don’t be ridiculous, why would I get you anything? Get it yourself.”

Without a moment to lose, Zoro extends a hand out, palm up, and expectant. Sanji looks down at it, sour expression intensifying. A beat, then two, and Sanji is grumbling to himself as he digs into their gifted pack for some of the coins he’d earned in the sleepy village. Sneering, he throws a few into Zoro’s awaiting hand and shoos him away with a flick of his wrist.

Grinning impishly, Zoro walks to the bar. 

The place is quiet, even the little buzz of conversation is low. The other patrons are ruffians, playing cards or exchanging stories of fights or encounters with some of the beasts that lurk in the less populated locations. Zoro rolls his eyes, knowing that half of the tales are exaggerated and fake based on the ludicrous descriptions.

Zoro’s battled orcs, goblins and ogres even before traveling with Sanji. On his days in the Guard with Kuina, they had to save the towns and villages that her family reigned over. Beasts always attacked the land of Men because of the misconstrued idea that they’re defenseless for being mere Men. 

These fools would cower against an army of orcs, he thinks with a sharp smirk. 

The woman behind the bar has thick dark curls and her top, if it can even be called that, covers her bust and nothing else. She smiles at him, red lips full and smile slow. He orders two tankards of ale, not knowing if Sanji drinks and if he does if it’s anything high class or not. Either way, Zoro can finish both if the idiot Elf rejects it.

“There you go, sweetheart,” the woman coos as she slides the two tankards towards him.

Zoro ignores the flirtatious tone and gives a curt nod. Turning to walk back to the table he and Sanji claimed as theirs, he pauses when he realizes there are two others sitting with the Elf. He furrows his brow, walking over and analyzing the scene before him. They’re two women, dressed like the barmaids in low rising, long flowy skirts made of chiffon and tops that cut off just under the bust. 

One of them wears a headdress and the other seems to be a half-Mink with cat ears and a tail that sways from side to side with mischief. 

“Oh, hello, Zoro,” Sanji says with a little hitch of a laugh in his tone. “We, ah, we have visitors.”

Zoro tries to gauge why the hell the idiot is acting strange. Is he intimidated in the presence of skimpy-clad women? His face is actually colored pink, strangely enough, eyes glassy. Then, he looks at the woman sitting next to his empty seat, her dark eyes too innocent looking to be genuine.

The one next to Sanji is… Ah. The glint of a blade grabs his attention. That explains it.

Confused as to why Sanji doesn’t try and defend himself, Zoro slips into his seat and sets one of the tankards in front of the Elf. The half-cat Mink snatches it with her unoccupied hand and gulps down half. Zoro narrows his eyes.

“Hi, Zoro,” she says, her smile feline. “Thanks for the beer!”

“The way you drink beer is so magnificent,” Sanji sighs, batting his eyelashes.

Zoro can’t believe this. Is he actually incapable of getting himself out of such a position because the one holding a blade to his side is a woman? Zoro wants to throttle the damn fool. Fighting the urge to run his hand down the length of his face in exasperation, Zoro grabs his own tankard of beer and takes a generous gulp.

“Are you both just passing through?” the woman sitting next to him asks conversationally, as if her companion isn’t pressing a blade to his.

“Perhaps,” Zoro responds, shifting to better face her.

“What a coincidence,” she says, smiling bright. “So are we!” She bats her eyelashes in a similar way Sanji had just moments ago. It does not affect Zoro in the way she’s hoping it does. “We should travel together.”

“Oh, yes!” Sanji gasps. “What a lovely plan—”

“No,” Zoro cuts in.

Sanji lets out a bit of a squeak and Zoro assumes the blade has just been pressed harder into his side. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Zoro decides they need to find a way to get those gold cuffs off.

“We’re on our way to Alubarna,” the woman next to him continues. “You’ll pass by on your journey.”

“And how do you know that?” Zoro asks and Sanji gives him an incredulous look. 

The woman shrugs one of her bare shoulders. “Call it a hunch, is all. We won’t be much of a bother, honest. Won’t you agree, Mister Swordsman?”

“Yeah,” says the other woman, her orange hair bright in the beige background of the tavern, “won’t you agree, Mister Swordsman?”

Sanji looks at him pleadingly.

Zoro sighs.

***

Nami, the half-Mink, leads the way. She twirls a bō-staff around as she walks, overall pleased with herself and the haul she and Vivi have managed. 

Zoro scowls as he walks, annoyed that Sanji thinks he has to travel next to him to prevent him from “making a poor, directionless turn”, all while still fawning over both women and every little thing they do. Like breathing. The way they do it is divine, apparently. 

Vivi is much quieter than Nami is, though she laughs and smiles and blushes at everything she says or does. She’s skittish about speaking of herself in a way that’s similar to Sanji. Or, actually, not like Sanji. The cook is evasive, finding ways to shift the attention to something or someone else rather than himself. 

Vivi is more like… Like Perona, when she had to hide her pink hair during her days in the Guard with him and Kuina. Or Kuina herself when she had to hide half of her face. Or even Zoro when he was forced to hide his green hair and his signature three swords. Those days were torture; the helmet had been annoying to account for when it came to moving while fighting.

“Why are you heading to Alubarna?” he asks, analyzing her physical reactions.

Naturally, she stiffens a bit but then quickly gathers herself. She clasps her hands and tries to look coy and airheaded. It doesn’t suit her; she seems too calculative for that.

“I live there!” She smiles at him. 

It’s the truth, Zoro notes. He doesn’t know why he’d been expecting her to lie.

They’ve headed out of Yuba and have begun to walk through the golden expanse of the Sandora Desert. Sanji has bullied him into giving his cloak to Vivi, and the cook has given his own to Nami, though not before finding another scarf to wrap around his head.

Despite it being a desert they’re trekking through now, there’s a hot breeze that disrupts the sand, pinching and prickling them where they slap against their skin. Zoro glowers, exasperated with what his life has become.

Sanji is showing the girls his mermaid pipe, blind to Nami’s shiny eyes and slow swaying tail. Zoro rests his arm on his swords, the pad of his forefinger tracing Wado’s tsuba as he follows after the others. 

It’s slow and boring, especially since his and Sanji’s game has wordlessly been put into a pause now that they have more travelers with them. He thinks about all he’s learned of his charge: an Elven Prince, a runaway, incapable of using his powers due to some enchanted bracelets. He likes to cook and… Zoro pauses.

It’d been a fleeting memory, considering he’d been out of it. But Sanji had used Yubashiri to help him behead that orc in the Germa Forest. He rifles through his thoughts, trying to remember the moment: the way his nose wrinkled in his snarl, his clawed grip holding Yubashiri’s hilt.

Blinking, he glances at Sanji.

He knows Sanji’s well built; the fact is attached to one of the questions he’s still burning to ask. Swords are generally not heavy, but they tend to deceive the holder about that because of the mass extended from the hilt. Someone unaccustomed to holding a sword can barely swing it, let alone behead an orc with thick hide.

Zoro hums to himself. 

The Cook knows how to wield a sword, then.

He tucks that realization away for later. He’s distracted though, it’s uncharacteristic of him and he hates to have to admit to both things. When the attack comes, he manages to both dodge and pull Nami away from it.

“They’re here for me,” both Sanji and Vivi yell. 

They both turn to look at each other, identical looks of surprise and confusion on their faces. They’re stunned for half a second before they both roll out of the way of the rapier that’s thrust where Vivi had just stood. 

Sanji whirls in place, lifting a leg up and aiming a kick at the slender hand holding the thin-bladed sword. He curses under his breath, tripping over himself and doing a showy hand-stand to break his fall.

The wielder of the rapier is a woman.

Zoro rolls his eyes, slashing at the bandit in front of him and working his way towards where the real action is. It’s clear the rapier-woman is the leader. But these stupid bandits keep getting in the way; Zoro slashes his way through them, cutting through their dark robes and turning away from them before they hit the ground.

“Why would she be after you, Vivi my love?” Sanji asks, holding both women to him, though Nami puts up a fight to swing her staff. She parries various strikes, a feat that’s difficult to do with a weapon aimed to thrust, not slash.

Vivi opens her mouth but Nami does a thing in which she tucks one end of her staff under Vivi’s chin and then guides her mouth closed again. It’s a quick gesture but she manages to make it look gentle. “Don’t say anything.”

“Pardon?” Sanji asks, incredulous. Then, blinking, he repeats it as an actual apology: “pardon.”

“I should’ve known better,” Vivi bemoans, flinching away from a bandit that Nami quickly knocks out with her weapon. “They’d find me. I thought you two would be good guards!”

Zoro rolls his eyes again, grabbing the fool he’s just cut by their robes and throwing him towards the leader-woman. When he makes mark, she grunts, her headdress and facial coverings falling off.

Vivi gasps, “Is that the barmaid?”

“She’s beautiful,” Sanji sighs. Then collects himself, clearing his throat and kicking a bandit in their throat.

Zoro is perplexed.

Maybe that’s why he needs an escort. He’s a damn fool, easily distracted by women and unable to defend himself from them to boot. Zoro starts to make his way to the fallen woman but she gathers her wits about her faster than he’d anticipated. She snatches her rapier with one hand, a bandit’s falchion with the other. She looks menacingly at Vivi, licking her red lips.

“Miss Doublefinger…”

“Miss what?” Zoro asks, wondering how often he can be sent into a stupor in less than an hour.

“Less talking,” Nami orders, swinging her staff to knock a bandit down, “more fighting!”

He supposes she’s right. Zoro gives Sanji a glare, for deceiving him yet again about his fighting skills, before he launches into battle against Miss Doublefinger. Like with Nami and her staff, it’s a difficult fight, considering that Zoro slashes with his swords and Miss Doublefinger stabs.

For what feels like a long time, they continuously parry each other, knocking their swords this way and that before they can cut or stab each other. Behind him, Vivi and Sanji have joined Nami in fighting the rest of the nameless, faceless bandits. 

Vivi swings her arms, wires attached to her fingers on one end and sharp discs on the other slashing bandits, ruthlessly cutting some and even beheading others. Zoro’s surprised at how impressed he is; why exactly did they need him and Sanji to ‘guard’ them?

“This is of no importance to you,” Miss Doublefinger sneers, her lipstick smeared and blending with the blood trickling from her nose. “Stand aside and give me the Princess!”

What the fuck, Zoro thinks.

Does everyone just not mention their royal lineage nowadays? Zoro gets incredibly annoyed at this, strengthening his moves and quickening his speed. Miss Doublefinger manages to stab Zoro on the thigh, but he cuts her arm off in return.

Miss Doublefinger screeches at the stump, her dark eyes wide and glassy with tears that quickly begin to spill down her cheeks. Zoro feels no sympathy, though he limps a little as he moves closer to her.

He yanks at her thick curly hair, his sword’s edge pressed to her exposed throat. He looks up at Nami then Vivi, both breathless and exhausted as they stare but give encouraging nods to do it.

She chokes on her own blood after he slits her throat, letting her drop to the ground to join the rest of the bandits they’d disposed of. It’s the longest and shortest fight he’s had, one of calculation and parrying until someone manages to get through and break the distance.

Pressing his lips together as he walks, he grows annoyed when Sanji grabs his arm and guides it around his shoulder so Zoro can lean his weight into him. 

***

There’s a crag they stumble into to rest and wait the night out. The girls are asleep, further into the bluff while Zoro and Sanji stay closer to the mouth, where they stand between any late night murderer and the women.

Vivi is the crown Princess of Arabasta and she’s been in hiding per the orders of her father and his retinue. Miss Doublefinger’s one of the many she’s had to deal with, part of an organization that wants to usurp the seat of power by regicide and force.

But her father has grown very ill, unable to move without the help of a wheelchair, unable to defend himself. Vivi has made the call for her own now, deciding to return home, take over as queen and fight Baroque Works with the aid of her queensguard and her people.

Very noble, Zoro supposes. 

Sanji had fawned and droodled and wiggled at her story. He even offered himself up to help her cause and only deflated when Zoro reminded him he did not have any leg to stand on when it came to ‘help’.

Vivi had agreed with him, unknowing of Zoro’s reasoning but giving her own. She didn’t want outsiders to die for her country and cause rifts with potential allies. Zoro isn’t very good at politics—hell, his entire journey is because of his inability to be rational and political. But he does think Vivi will make a powerful queen.

Though he keeps this to himself.

Now, as the night is merciless, cold in a way Germa hadn’t been, Zoro glowers at the cliffside in front of him. There’s many things to be exasperated with: Vivi’s situation, Sanji’s evasiveness, the dull yet persistent pain of his stab wound.

Zoro’s empathy is… different than most, though he still feels it. With what little he’s learned of her, he thinks Vivi is mentally and emotionally powerful but it does not pacify the desire to help her in the only way he can: fight. But he’d been serious about Sanji’s inability to do much, and Vivi’s reasonings are solid in the grand, messy scheme of things.

He sincerely doubts Mihawk will ever want to ally himself with a kingdom that got his only son killed, after all.

Still, it doesn’t mean Zoro likes it.

“I would say if you keep that expression on, your face will stay like that,” Sanji drawls, cutting through Zoro’s thoughts. “But you already look like an ogre most of the time.”

Zoro feels his lips curl in a sneer. 

This bastard…

Sanji seems to pick up on the animosity, setting down the hand that holds the mermaid pipe and staring at him from under his lashes. “What? What are you upset about?”

Zoro runs a hand through his shaggy green hair, pushing the spikes to slick back. He spares the sleeping girls a glance, taking note they’re still asleep and they’re still curled into each other. He looks back at Sanji.

He’s fixed himself after their fight with Miss Doublefinger. His hair is neatly pulled back, those same thin and intricate braids on one side of his head. His tunic has definitely seen better days, but he still looks well put together, even with dirt and muck coating his boots. 

“You haven’t been honest,” he finally says, voice low and soft to keep the conversation as private as possible. “Or was I seeing things earlier today?”

Sanji stares at him, thin lips slightly parted as he connects the missing dots. His curly eyebrows furrow in concentration and then rise in recognition and then furrow again in something like sheepish guilt. He shifts, also sparing the girls a glance as he does so.

“It’s—”

“Complicated,” Zoro bites out, rolling his eyes. “Yes. You’ve mentioned. Countless times.”

Sanji leans closer to him, like reading his facial features and trying to find something. Whether he does so or not, Zoro isn’t sure, but the Elf leans back with a sigh nonetheless. “I very rarely admit my mistakes, since I rarely make any, but I believe you’re right. I haven’t been forthright.”

What’s the point of the game they’ve been playing for days now, Zoro wants to ask but literally bites his tongue from doing so. He won’t like to hear himself sound so impudent. 

“Here,” Sanji continues, scooting closer so they’re sitting side by side rather than face to face. “I’ll give you a freebie. Go on, ask me.”

Zoro grits his teeth, giving more attention than needed to the action of shifting his injured thigh to keep it from touching Sanji’s. “What were those kicks?”

The sigh Sanji exhales is slow and weary. He fidgets with the mermaid pipe, tapping at the bowl and flicking at burnt pieces of tobacco. He looks like he’s picking his words carefully and Zoro’s about to tell him to just forget it when he finally starts.

“Blackleg Style. I developed it myself.” He looks up from the pipe, to the clear sky and the brilliant stars and full moon. “It’s… It’s definitely complicated, mosshead. But I am not thoroughly incapacitated as it is. It’s just impossible for me to fight off every villain after my head with my Blackleg Style and no fire to give it more power. At least for the beasts. Humans are much easier.”

Zoro takes this all in, thinking that Sanji isn’t being deceitful but he’s definitely selling himself short. He moves like flames themselves, kicks capable of breaking necks. 

“Blackleg Style,” he mimes.

“Indeed,” Sanji continues, sighing again. “I’ve also tried to avoid fighting because there are… certain bastards I’m trying to keep from finding me. If someone mentions a dashing Elf such as myself kicking creatures to death left and right, they’ll have a much easier time locating me.”

This also Zoro takes his time to take in, rolling his eyes at Sanji’s egotistic comment about himself. Just this simple conversation is giving light to a lot of things, to a lot of Sanji’s decisions and actions. Zoro rolls his shoulder, relaxing his posture now that he doesn’t have to force himself to keep from throttling the fool.

“So how did you develop this Blackleg style?” he asks, tilting his head so he can look at Sanji from the corner of his eye.

Sanji smirks, like he’s falling into a memory. “To explain that, I suppose I need to explain my origins.”

“I told you mine, didn’t I?”

“That you did,” Sanji sighs, looking up at the indigo sky again. “That you did, mosshead.” He clears his throat, looking over his shoulder again when there’s a rustle, but it’s just one of the girls shifting in their sleep. “Right, so the basic gist: I’ve been a failure in the eyes of my father since the day I was born. Because of that, he allowed me to be tormented, abused and locked away more often than should be allowed for a child. On one of the very few times I was allowed out of my prison, I met this…. Stubborn old geezer. Crazy bastard, he is.”

His expression turns fond and sad. Pained, even, Zoro notes before he looks away in fear of being caught staring. 

“He was a chef; we’d spend time in the kitchen after the castle had gone to sleep. He taught me to cook. He taught me that a chef’s most precious treasure is their hands, so I need to protect mine. So, he also trained me to fight with my legs. And that’s how I developed the Blackleg Style.”

“Where’s this old geezer now?” Zoro asks, though he thinks he knows.

Sanji sighs once more, his sharp shoulders slouching with an invisible weight. He looks down at his hands, at his pipe that he twirls around in his grip. He remains quiet for long enough that Zoro actually believes this light in Sanji’s darkness has passed and the hurt he must be pushing through to satiate Zoro’s questions is insurmountable. 

But then, Sanji turns to him, his expression blank for one second. And then his violet-blue eyes grow shiny, his lips stretching into a handsome smile. He looks alight as he asks, “Have you heard of the All Blue?”

***

Traveling with Nami and Vivi turns into a buzz after that night.

There’s something in Zoro’s mind, growing like vines around his brain. It makes his ears ring and his breastbone vibrate with the intensity of his heartbeat.

Burned behind his eyelids is the vision of Sanji smiling so candidly, it’d made his breath hitch when the force of it turned to him directly. Sanji’s beautiful, as sure as the sun is hot and the sea is wet. It’s not something Zoro doubted or questioned; he’s beautiful because all Elven folk are beautiful.

But unlike the Elven folk, who enchant with their magic, who lie and confuse to gain the upperhand. Sanji is beautiful because he just is and Zoro knows this because he isn’t blind and because he’s observant.

But that moment, and the moment that followed after as Sanji went on a tangent about the mythical sea All Blue, to Zoro, he’d become beautiful because he felt it. Like thunder in his veins, and ants just under his skin, something ridiculous in his stomach that stretched up to his heart.

He grows quiet, only half-heartedly responding to Sanji’s name-calling and not even noticing him fall over for the girls. He keeps to himself, grunting annoyingly when his arm is snatched to pull him in the right direction when he’s just about to make an unexpected turn.

The Sandora Desert is vast and an arduous trek. There are oases scattered around with small towns to provide food and hydration for travelers. They make quick pitstops, never long enough to give assailants chances to attack. They just rest, replenish their rations and keep moving.

It isn’t long before they reach the Sandora River.

They’re sweaty, skin rough from the thin layer of sand that coats them. 

Zoro lets out a huff of air, arm resting over his swords as he stares at the width of the river. Now how exactly are they going to cross that, he wonders? He looks around, taking in their surroundings, the muddy red dirt at the riverbank. There are docks that are empty, the wood rotten, but there are no boats of any type anywhere.

“Can we swim it?” he asks.

Vivi shakes her head, lowering her headdress to show her blue hair. “No, there’s predators in there.” She worries at her lower lip, dark eyes scanning. “We should split up.”

Zoro quirks up a brow while Sanji and Nami come closer to listen to Vivi’s plan.

“Nami and I can go west and see if we bump into anyone,” she says, already crouching and taking off the two waterskins, untangling them and handing one to Sanji. “You two go east and do the same. We will meet back here.”

“Preferably before nightfall,” Nami chimes in, arms crossed in front of her chest. “There’s nothing to shield us from the cold climate. We need to find someone to take us across or we’ll have to go back to the previous stop.”

Before Zoro can agree or disagree, Sanji takes out their food rations from his pack and hands it to them, fluttering his lashes and insisting both girls take all of it, to keep them well and safe.

Nami’s laughing when she unclasps her staff and stabs it onto the dirt and Vivi ties her headdress so it hangs like a sad flag. She turns to them, smiling that friendly smile. “So we won’t get lost.”

And that is how Zoro finds himself traveling alone with Sanji again. 

“I can’t believe you gave my food away,” he mutters, glaring at the river as he walks.

“You’ll be fine,” Sanji dismisses, flapping a wrist in the air. “And it serves you right anyway. Your silence has been both a pleasure and a dread.”

Zoro rolls his eyes and, to further annoy him, grows quiet again.

Sanji begins to hum to himself to fill the silence but he very quickly outgrows that idea. So he huffs and puffs and scoffs. He turns to look at Zoro, scowls, looks away and then repeats. 

The silence is irking him, Zoro notes with amusement. Sanji’s pulling out his pipe now, taking quick puffs to show how annoyed he actually is. 

The sun is merciless as it reaches its peak. Walking so close to the river, though, has a steady breeze blowing their way. It’s just that it’s warm and adds to the heat’s discomfort rather than aid in cooling them. 

Zoro looks out to the river again, catching the surface’s calm interrupted by a fin or a head popping out, leaving ripples behind. 

“I’ve heard swordsmen name their swords,” Sanji says, finally having enough of the silence. 

Zoro grunts.

“Did you name yours?”

Reflexively, Zoro rests his arm over his swords. They’re a constant weight at his side, tucked into the holster-belt he has buckled around his hips. There’s a lot about swords that most don’t realize, let alone believe. No one believes that swords have wills of their own, that they can reject a wielder just as surely as they can accept them, that there’s bits of the swordsman in them, like an extension, like a bond. 

“The one you grabbed,” he drawls, wondering if unsheathing the swords would be easier but deciding that it’s too much work. “Is named Yubashiri.”

“The black one,” Sanji says, like a statement rather than a question.

Zoro grunts again. “This one is Sandai Kitetsu.”

He unsheathes Kitetsu, holding it out in front of him so Sanji can see. It has a moderately curved blade and a round, cross-like golden tsuba. He tosses it up in the air, extending his arm out and watching as it twirls on its descent.

“It’s a cursed blade. Has cut every swordsman that’s tried to wield it.” Kitetsu misses his arm, like it always does. He grabs its hilt before it hits the ground and sheathes it again. “Except me.”

“Show off,” Sanji mutters under his breath. Surprisingly, he lets Zoro gloat for a brief moment, his thin lips curved into something like a smile as they walk. 

So far, there’s no hut or shed or cottage or the sort. And with that, there’s no docks with boats tied to them either. Zoro looks up at the sky, eyes narrowing to fight against the glare. They should turn back soon, if they want to get to the meeting point before dark.

“And the white one?” Sanji asks when the moment sobers up.

Blindly, effortlessly, Zoro’s hand finds her. Kitetsu is like a problem child, a menace, a demon. And Yubashiri, as his oldest sword, has so much of Zoro, they’re one and the same. But Wado…

“Wado Ichimonji,” he says, his voice growing soft without his notice. “She was Kuina’s.”

“Ah,” Sanji says, nodding understandingly. “It explains a lot.”

Zoro raises a brow and looks at him. There’s a smudge of dirt on Sanji’s cheek that’s pretty funny, his hair is mussed and, if he’d been human, he’d look haggard right about now. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Zoro asks when Sanji doesn’t elaborate.

“You’re very careful with that one,” Sanji says, tapping at the bowl of his pipe. “I think I’ve only seen you unsheathe it during that fight with the orc.”

Truthfully, Zoro’s never thought about it let alone taken notice. Wado’s important to him, because Kuina’d been important to him and he unsheathes her when he feels he needs help the most. It’s like having Kuina battling with him at his side again.

He can’t find it in him to respond to that, not understanding why Sanji noticing something like that has him feeling strange in his own skin. So he stays quiet and follows along.

***

Koza and his sailboat get them across the river.

He’s a tall man, with sandy hair, broad shoulders and a scar over one of his brow. He and Vivi hit it off, bantering about the Arabasta from long ago before Baroque Work began their terror. 

Zoro finds it amusing seeing them interact because it makes Sanji pouty, wilting like a dehydrated plant. Vivi has insisted that they no longer need to help her make it to Alubarna, since Koza has pledged himself to her cause upon taking note of her blue hair. Apparently, a trademark of the royal family.

It leaves a sour taste in his mouth, feeling like he’s leaving something incomplete. He feels like he should help Vivi and her people because he’s capable, but knows how sensitive politics is and so just follows her lead.

Nami tosses them a map, obviously hand drawn, her neat curvy writing labeling each country, each village and town and city. “Won’t be needing this anymore,” she says, her smile feline and mischievous. 

Soon enough, and after much convincing, they part ways from the girls and, now, Koza. But not before Vivi demands Nami give back the bag of coins she’d swiped from Sanji’s pack, whispering something into Nami’s ear that makes the half-Mink hand over the money quicker than a thieving cat normally would.

“Little Garden,” Sanji says after ten minutes of parting ways with the others. “That’s our next stop.”

It’s all the same for Zoro.

The sooner they get out of the desert and the heat, the better. That’s one thing he misses about Kuraigana: the weather. Not cold and not hot, but in between. Gray and gloomy on the regular and clear and sunny with a cool breeze when they’re lucky. 

He rolls his shoulders, feeling the droplets of sweat dribbling down the line of his spine. The first river or lake they come across, and he’s going to just go in head first. He exhales through his nose as he follows Sanji, running a hand through his green hair to muss it up and get it to unstick from his forehead and scalp.

Sanji has his hair in a neat braid resting against the nape of his neck. A parting gift from Nami, which had him sniffing as if trying to reel back in a nosebleed triggered by her close proximity. His trousers and tunic are less refined than when they first met, smeared with dirt and mud and muck.

Before he can reel the intrusive thought in, Zoro kicks a foot out and trips him. 

Sanji splutters as he trips and tries to regain his balance. When he whirls around to face him, his eyes are wide and disbelieving, “How dare you!”

“What’s wrong, cook? Can’t walk on your own two feet?” Zoro asks, grinning. “Your reflexes are shit, too. How did you not sense that coming?”

“Excuse me for believing we are simply traveling!” he snaps, brushing his shoulders and chest as if that will help his appearance look more pristine. “Didn’t realize the moss spore I’m traveling with is going deranged.”

“Deranged, but I can still kick your ass.”

Sanji scoffs. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Okay,” Zoro says, smile growing to the point he just knows that stupid cheek dimple Perona teases him for is out and about. “Spar with me.”

Sanji scoffs again, turning away and resuming their pace. He crosses his arms in front of his chest but there’s a static-like twitch about him. Like he’s trying to keep control of the reigns. It makes Zoro’s smile stretch wider, crooked as it is. 

He knew it. There’s nothing princely about the idiot Elf; he’s a power-scaling idiot just like anyone else. He just hides it behind the prissy facade. This makes Zoro practically vibrate out of his skin and he aims to trip him again.

But Sanji is ready and he swiftly moves away, spinning himself in place on the toes of one boot while the other leg kicks out and aims to hit Zoro’s ribs.

Yubashiri is out instantly. 

They clash, the blunt side of his sword blocking Sanji’s kick. They stay in the deadlock for a moment, their eyes on each other, their grins similarly feral. And then they push away, skidding against the dried mud. 

This is so thrilling, Zoro thinks as he pulls Kitetsu out. He’s never felt this way while fighting, playful sparring as it may be. It’s different from when he’d do it with Kuina; this is exhilarating, his adrenaline almost too much.

He jumps in the air, knees bent back for the momentum, swords up and crossed like an x. Sanji meets him full force, pulling a move that Zoro can’t even begin to understand, leg whirling with a speed that Zoro is proud he can actually match.

Damn, he wonders what it’d be like to fight against him at his full capacity, his magic restored, those flames coating his legs like armor.

They don’t stop, meeting each other blow for blow. This feeling in Zoro’s chest only grows in intensity at the pleased look on Sanji’s face. Concentration steeling his features, the same thrill Zoro feels resting at the edges of Sanji’s mouth as he grins, sharp teeth out and flashing.

They don’t stop, not until Sanji falls on his ass and Zoro’s swords fly out his grip as he falls back as well. They’re heaving, sweatier than they’d been before the start of their fight.

Zoro lifts his head up and looks at Sanji who’s already looking at him. He’s breathing from his opened mouth, forelocks falling over one blue eye.

And then Sanji laughs.

***

Little Garden is a jungle. The cacao trees that grow aren’t as big as the spruce trees in the Germa forest, but they’re huge nonetheless with cacao fruit as big as Zoro’s head. Thick vines zig-zag and criss-cross just under the canopy of big, leathery leaves that vary in colors of green and red.

At least the weather’s a little more bearable here, Zoro thinks as he swats a fallen vine away from his face. Still too warm for his tastes, but at least the trees bring shade.

As usual, Sanji leads the way. There’s a spring in his steps that only started after they’d fought each other days ago. Currently, he’s going on about the different chocolate dishes he can make with cacao, waving a hand in the air and smoking the last of the tobacco in his mermaid-pipe.

“I don’t like chocolate,” Zoro drawls when Sanji’s getting into the details of baking.

He looks at him, then, the pipe in between his lips. He holds the inhale for a moment before letting the smoke out through his nostrils. “Yes, I know you don’t. But I’m sure there’s something I can make that can develop that simple palate of yours.”

Zoro raises an eyebrow but doesn’t respond.

Lately, a lot of the cook’s stupid comments have been making the back of his neck grow warm. This is one of them. 

So he grumbles to himself, resting his arm on his swords as he walks. They haven’t been attacked in days, since the fight with Miss Doublefinger. He’s not too sure how long ago that’d been, if he’s honest. But he’s not trusting of the lack of orcs and goblins and ogres. They’re the most greedy for coins, after all.

They continue to walk, Sanji continuing his tirade of recipes, Zoro listening more intently than he’ll ever like to admit. Soon enough, banana trees start to appear and Sanji grows delighted. He wanders over to one, grabbing at a banana he deems ready for picking and peeling it open.

“Mm!” He gushes as he chews, eyes clear and bright as he turns to Zoro, guiding the banana to Zoro’s mouth.

Zoro feels his face grow hot, staring at the fruit and then at Sanji. The cook doesn’t seem to think he’s doing anything wrong, which only adds to Zoro’s embarrassment.

“What?” Sanji asks. “You don’t like bananas either?”

Well, now he just has something to prove. Zoro tries to compose himself, ignoring the heat that’s searing his cheekbones as he leans closer, mouth opening to take a bite. His gray eyes lock with Sanji’s as he bites into the banana, slowly pulling away.

He sees the realization in Sanji’s eyes the moment it dawns on him. Zoro can’t help but smirk when the Elf quickly looks away, clearing his throat as he takes a few steps away.

“Idiot,” he hears him mutter.

Zoro smirks, chewing and feeling proud of himself. It doesn’t happen often but when it does, Sanji growing flustered is pretty hilarious.

They both kneel at the bank of the lake they’ve found. They’re dressed down to their underclothes, washing their trousers and tunics as best they can with what little they have. 

Zoro’s just surprised that Sanji knows how to do that. Since he’s a Prince and all; but then the thought evaporates when he remembers that though Sanji’s born into royalty, his upbringing had been anything but regal.

He sneaks a glance at the Elf, admiring the concentration in the furrow of his curly brow, the frown on his thin lips and the glint in his violet-blue eyes. Zoro looks away quickly; he’s never really taken much notice of things like that on anyone before.

He stands up, walking to a nearby tree to hang his clothes to dry. His shoulder harness hangs from a branch too, clean but cracked. He knows that once he gets to Wano his sister will see his clothes and scoff, ordering new pieces for him to represent his status as a lord’s son.

Sanji’s splaying his clothes on a nearby rock, his gold cuffs glinting under the sun’s intense glare. His hair is loose, waves of gold reaching just past his pale shoulders. Zoro’d been right in his assessment; Sanji may be lean and slender, but he has wiry muscles, taut and defined.

Damn, Zoro thinks with annoyance. He’s getting distracted by this idiot.

He stomps across the clearing and into the lake, submerging himself and staying there until he can no longer go without air. Breaking the surface, he gasps for air, shaking his head to rid the excess water from his hair. Sanji dives into the water just as Zoro runs a hand down the length of his face.

“Watch it, idiot,” he sneers, getting splashed by the water.

Sanji’s already laughing when he resurfaces, throwing his head back to move his sopping hair away from his face. He falls back, doing backstrokes to swim a circle around Zoro. Without hesitation, Zoro dunks him in and laughs when he catches Sanji’s surprised gasp just before he goes under.

“Bastard!” Sanji screeches when he resurfaces, slapping his hair away from his face. He lunges forward and tackles Zoro into the water. 

They both surface at the same time and Zoro wastes no time in grabbing Sanji in a headlock. This is a scandalous move to the Elf, who elbows Zoro’s stomach and flips them over. This time, when Zoro resurfaces, it’s with a fish in his hand that he throws at Sanji’s face.

“I will end you,” Sanji sneers. Then pauses, eyes narrowed. He looks down at the water, clear enough to see some freshwater fishes swimming away from the disturbance their roughhousing is causing. “I bet I can catch more fish than you.”

Zoro narrows his eyes into slits. “Don’t be stupid.”

“I don’t hear you denying it,” Sanji sing-songs. “Are you admitting that your fish catching skills are subpar compared to mine?”

“I caught us fishes in Germa,” Zoro reminds him, growing annoyed both because of Sanji being an idiot and because Zoro’s falling for the bait. “Not only will I catch more fish than you, cook, but mine will be bigger.”

Sanji simply smiles at him, sharp teeth on display. Zoro wants to punch him.

They spend the early afternoon in the lake, shoving and dunking each other as a means to one-up the other in their challenge. Of course, fishes are harder to catch by hand than one would think. They’re evasive little jerks, after all. 

It’s during one of his resurfaces that Zoro notices an eye staring at them.

He tenses, brow furrowing as he tries to distinguish what it is but that’s all it is: an eye. It’s on a rock, lashes thick and dark, iris a light shade of brown, pupil wide so the iris itself is a thin ring around it. When it notices Zoro’s stopped moving and is staring right at it, it poofs out of existence.

Saying nothing more, Zoro starts to do a combination of swimming and running out of the lake, fishes be damned. 

“What?” Sanji asks, a trout in his grip. “What is it? Mosshead?”

Zoro doesn’t respond to him, running to his clothes and shoving them on, not caring that his underclothes are soaked and his tunic and trousers are damp at best. He’s shoving his boots on when Sanji emerges, trout safe in the waters.

“Well are you going to talk? Or have you finally lost it?” He slips his tunic on, adjusting the sleeves so they cover his golden cuffs.

“I saw something,” Zoro says as a means of an explanation.

“Fascinating,” Sanji sneers. “Wild. A moss observes his surroundings.”

Zoro smacks Sanji’s arm with Yubashiri’s sheath as he slips his swords into his holster belt. “It was an eye.”

“What, like attached to a face? Like a person?” Sanji asks, buttoning his trousers. Have his legs always looked that long and muscled? Zoro looks away. “Did you see a person?”

“No. Just an eye.” 

“That’s ridiculous,” Sanji scoffs again. 

Nonetheless, he follows Zoro when he starts to move. 

Little Garden is a jungle, receiving its name thousands of years ago by the giants that roamed the lands in those times. To a giant, a jungle like this looked exactly like a little garden.

Zoro moves branches and giant leaves, searching. For what exactly, he doesn’t even know. All he’s sure of is that he saw an eye watching them and that eye must belong to someone or something. 

Behind him, Sanji huffs and puffs, annoyed at not understanding what is going on. Zoro doesn’t get why; he already told him he saw something. They keep going like this, moving branches, moving leaves, walking through and around thick bushes. And unsurprisingly, it’s Sanji that catches sight of the hut first.

It's a humble thing, with a straw roof. Smoke curls out of a window, the yellow bamboo door shut. Zoro and Sanji look at each other for a brief moment, eyebrows raised as they have a silent conversation.

Zoro unsheathes Yubashiri and leads the way. Sanji’s his charge, after all. 

Naturally, Sanji doesn’t like this and bullies his way to walk right next to Zoro. Ignoring him, Zoro kicks the door open, sword poised to slash. 

On the other side of the door sits a woman behind a table. She has a leg crossed over the other, a pair of hands clasped around a chipped teacup, another set of arms sprouting from her shoulder pouring tea into said teacup. She seems unbothered by their intrusion, dark forelocks shadowing her eyes, head tilted down.

“Oh,” Sanji is quick to gush, clapping his hands, fingers lacing together as he wiggles in excitement. “A beautiful lady!”

Zoro shoves him away. 

The woman looks up, eyes on them. They’re the same shade of brown as the eye he’d seen at the lake. Her pupils are wide, her lashes thick and dark. Her lips curve into a smile, one hand rising up to support her chin.

“Greetings,” she says. “Did I interrupt your fun?”

Before Zoro can respond, Sanji shoves him away and smiles at her, “Absolutely not!”

“Ah,” she exhales in a fake gasp. “Royalty.” She dips her head in a salute. “A Vinsmoke Prince.”

This causes Sanji to sober up. He doesn’t correct her or lash out, though he grows tense, shoulders squared. He gives her a rigid bow, bending at his middle, one hand behind his back, the other over his heart. 

Zoro still doesn’t sheath Yubashiri.

The woman’s attention shifts to him, quirking an eyebrow. “And Lord Dracule Mihawk’s son. Future Lord of Kuraigana.”

Zoro’s frown deepens.

Sanji turns to him, curly eyebrows furrowing in both confusion and annoyance. Zoro chooses to ignore it as he shifts his grip on his sword. He is not going to be Kuraigana’s Lord. That’s the whole point of this trip!

“Alright, alright,” he spits. “Thanks for the introductions, but you’ve failed to name yourself.”

“Don’t talk to her like that!” Sanji hisses, stomping on Zoro’s foot. He turns back to her, “I apologize on behalf of my companion, my dear. He has no manners, try as I might to teach him.”

She laughs behind a hand. Not one of her actual hands, but one of the ones from her sprouted limbs. A new set of arms appear at the table, hands reaching to push the extra chairs as a means to offer them a seat. None of the chairs match and neither does the table. 

This is a witch’s hut, Zoro surmises. 

There are dried flowers and herbs hanging off the ceiling, jars stuffed with different liquids and things on the counters and shelves. There’s a rather convincing skeleton sitting on one corner, a voluminous head of hair sprouting from its skull and a crack on its forehead.

“I’m Nico Robin,” she finally introduces. “Please, have a seat. I don’t bite.” There’s a twinkle in her eyes. “Unless I’m hungry.”

“Mosshead, put that sword away,” Sanji whispers as he starts to walk further into the hut. 

Zoro wants to stop him, not trusting a witch much less a witch that’s also one of the Gifted. Still, he keeps his protests to himself and sheathes Yubashiri but keeps his hand hovering over his swords. 

The chairs creak when they sit down and Robin’s smile grows wider when they settle down. Her disembodied hands serve them tea. Zoro isn’t sure he wants to have any. Noticing his dismissal, Robin lifts her teacup and takes a sip. Ah, she’s showing him it's not poisoned.

But she could just as well be immune to all of her poisons.

Sanji takes a sip too and Zoro, not for the first time during their travels, wants to throttle him not. But he doesn’t keel over or begin to foam at the mouth. Still, Zoro refuses to take the tea.

“How do you know all that?” he asks, dodging Sanji’s elbow. “Who we are.”

Robin hums behind the lip of her chipped teacup, her eyes practically sparkling with something that’s close to mischief. The disembodied arms on the table poof out of existence, but the ones on her shoulders simply rest their hands over her head.

“What’s worse than a witch?” she asks, her forelocks shifting when she blinks. “Well, honestly. A lot of things. Once, I witnessed a goblin devour a group of travelers. It was gruesome.”

Zoro narrows his eyes. This can’t be real.

“But what’s worse than a witch, is a Gifted witch.” An eye sprouts on the table, closer to Zoro than Sanji. It winks before it disappears. “I can see and hear things far and wide.” Her smile turns secretive. “I also happen to dabble a little in history tomes.”

“You are so wise,” Sanji sighs.

Robin turns her smile at him but she pauses at the sight of Sanji’s golden cuffs. He’s clasped his hands together again and in doing so his billowy sleeves have fallen back to expose them. Her eyes are calculative, losing their playful twinkle. A hand grows right in front of Sanji, extended towards him, like a request.

“May I?” Robin asks and for a long moment Zoro thinks Sanji will decline.

He’s stiff, his hands just out of reach, his eyes staring at Robin’s disembodied hand. And then he slips his into hers, flinching a little when a second hand appears to touch the gold cuff. Robin hums as she studies it, her brow furrowing.

“Can you take them off?” Zoro finds himself asking before he can put a filter on his thoughts. He blinks, looking away when Sanji turns to look at him with a questioning look. 

“Elven magic is intricate,” Robin begins, a finger gliding down the length of the thick gold band. “But it isn’t invincible.” 

She continues to study the bands and Zoro wonders what she’s able to see that he isn’t. To him, they look like gold cuffs and nothing more. Still, he looks at Sanji's wrist and at Robin's thoughtful expression, anticipating what she’ll say next.

“Whoever enchanted these is filled with so much hate,” she murmurs.

Sanji’s bark of laughter is sharp, nothing like the windchime laughter Zoro’s heard throughout their travels. 

“That sounds about right,” he says with amusement that doesn’t reach his eyes and makes his features look serrated, like the features his glamour hides. “Judge is a hateful bastard.” Then, as if realizing who he’s talking to, he adds, “Pardon my language, my sweet.”

Robin hums but remains quiet for a long moment, still touching the gold bands. Zoro takes this time to look around the hut again, noticing the tomes stacked in different parts of the huts, the skeleton on the ground that’s now facing them. Zoro pauses, narrowing his eyes. He’s pretty sure that skeleton was facing away earlier.

He stares at it for a moment longer, waiting for it to move or something but nothing really happening. Idiot, Zoro thinks of himself as he looks away again. The inside of the hut looks much bigger than the hut does from outside.

There’s a bed made of hay on the farthest corner, silk sheets over the hay, homemade pillows over those sheets. Zoro looks away, feeling like he’s overstepping in looking at a woman’s sleeping arrangements. 

“I’ll take these off,” Robin finally says, disembodied hands poofing away. “It’ll take me a while.”

The look on Sanji’s face is close to pained. “We don’t have ‘a while’, my lady. We have to keep moving.”

“Naturally,” Robin agrees. “I can only assume Germa’s thirdborn Prince is in Little Garden against the King’s wishes.”

Thirdborn Prince?

Zoro furrows his brow. Well, that’s a question answered without him needing to ask. He looks at Sanji who’s avoiding his gaze, running a clawed hand through his damp blond hair. 

Robin looks at Sanji then at Zoro, her gaze ancient and all-knowing. It’s kind of eerie, Zoro thinks as he keeps his composure and meets her stare head on. Then, that slow smile curves her full lips.

“It can’t be helped, then,” she says. “I’ll travel with you as far as it is needed to undo this enchantment.”

“Traveling with us will be dangerous,” Sanji quickly says, curly eyebrows furrowed with worry. “We’ve been fighting orcs and ogres and goblins—”

“I’ve been fighting orcs and ogres and goblins,” Zoro corrects with a roll of his eyes. 

Robin laughs, her nerve-wracking eyes crinkling with her amusement. “It’s no problem. I have my own bodyguard.” She tilts her head to the side. “Brook, won’t you come join us?”

Zoro and Sanji both stand from their seats, swords out and legs poised to kick respectively. The skeleton in the corner of the hut rises up and up to stand so tall, his massive curls touch the straw roof. He towers over the other three to the point of dwarfing them.

He knew the bastard had been moving, Zoro thinks, wanting to kill the damn skeleton. Can a skeleton be killed?

“Robin,” Brook the skeleton starts. “I was having a lovely nap. You’ll have to show me your panties as compensation! Yohohoho!”

Sanji is scandalized and would be on his way to kick him if not for Zoro pulling him back to his seat. Robin is unfazed by Brook’s words though, chuckling to herself and watching her disembodied arms serve another teacup.

“Look, I’ve made you tea,” she says. “Come sit.”

Brook reaches them in one step, folding himself in his seat and turning head so his eye sockets can look from Sanji to Zoro and back. He then turns to the teacup Robin’s hands hold up for him, giving a nod of gratitude as he accepts it.

“I see we have guests,” he says as he takes a delicate sip. Zoro wonders where the tea goes if he has no stomach. “Or… I would, but I don’t have any eyes! Yohohoho!”

“I want to kill him,” Sanji mutters.

Zoro, for once, agrees. Except… He’s already dead…

***

Brook is a Gifted that died over fifty years ago.. His Gifted powers brought him back to life, except he’d already lost all his skin, muscles and arteries. He’d wandered the lands on his own until he met Robin. Now, they’ve formed a partnership to simply live in the jungle, conjuring potions and spells while learning the history of the world, a camaraderie built on their Gifted powers, different as they are but being similarly ostracized.

After the initial introductions and Zoro and Sanji having to keep each other from throttling the idiot skeleton and his skull jokes, Robin and Brook got to work in preparations for the long, arduous counter-spell to get rid of the golden cuffs. While they do this, Sanji and Zoro have wandered around and looked around the hut and all the weird and at times creepy things kept around. There human skulls and bird skulls and feline skulls scattered around. A moment ago, Sanji had tripped over a femur and Zoro had bumped his head against a dried out dead bat.

Now, they’re sprawled on the grassy ground outside the hut, looking up at the stars and trying to see who can count more than who without getting confused. The night is humid but the grass beneath them is dewey, moisture seeping in through their tunics and keeping them cool.

“Why did you ask Robin that?” Sanji asks when they grow silent after Zoro’s fifth attempt to count stars and giving up when he counts the same one six times. 

Zoro furrows his brow. “Ask her what?”

“If she can take my bracelets off,” Sanji elaborates. He shifts to his side, resting his cheek on a fist. 

Zoro mimics his movements so that they’re both staring at each other in the darkness. He knows Sanji can see him better in the darkness, since his sight isn’t bothered by the lack of light the way Zoro’s is. 

“Don’t you want them off?” he asks.

His gaze finds Sanji’s. In the darkness, his blue eyes always shine violet and in this moment it’s no different. His wavy forelocks swoop to fall over one eye, the other exposed by the thin, tiny,  intricate braids that pull his hair back like circlets fit for a Prince. Zoro feels that familiar warmth in the back of his neck, spreading up his throat, to his cheekbones.

“I suppose I do,” Sanji says. “I never thought it was a possibility.”

“You planned to meet up with your old geezer wearing those?” Zoro asks, and tilting his head in this position is a little hard. “How would you protect him if Germa found you?”

“The All Blue is hard to find, that's the whole point.”

“But what if they did?”

Sanji hesitates, his eyes breaking away from Zoro’s stare to look at the shadowed jungle around them. He licks his lips in thought, the movement slow and distracting. Zoro follows it before he catches himself doing so, turning his head to look at the hut instead.

“Zeff is a dwarven king,” Sanji finally says, his voice soft. “Or he was, before the kingdom of Baratie was taken over by Germa. It’s how he became a chef in the castle; he’d been a prisoner of war made part of the kitchen staff to humiliate him. But Zeff loved to cook so the joke was on Judge... Zeff would be able to protect himself.”

“Cook,” Zoro sighs, looking back at him. “You want them off or not?”

Sanji lifts up the arm that isn’t supporting his head. His hand is opened, fingers spread. The sleeve of his dark blue tunic falls back to his elbow, showing off the gold cuff. “I do.”

Zoro opens his mouth to say something, but Sanji adds, “I’d like to kick your ass with my full power.”

A shoving match ensues that has them wrestling on the ground. They hear Brook let out a scandalized gasp, his skull peeking out the window before quickly disappearing upon being caught. Zoro shoves Sanji one last time before he settles down.

“So thirdborn Prince, huh?”

“Ah, I knew you’d catch that,” Sanji sighs. He sits up and begins to gather his hair in one hand so he can tie it back with a ribbon. “Judge has five offspring. Only four are legitimate heirs.”

“Are you his illegitimate son?”

“I’m sure he wishes so,” Sanji laughs, tucking his forelocks behind his ear. “But I’m as legitimate as the others. I’m just not favored in the slightest.”

“But you have the strongest magic,” Zoro counters.

“He finds me weak,” Sanji explains. “And considers my fire magic wasted on me.”

“Sounds like a gem,” Zoro says, dripping sarcasm. “Sure you don’t want me to cut him down for you?”

Sanji laughs at this, that genuine windchime laugh that makes Zoro’s fingertips pulse with the urge to… to what? Touch him? Zoro swallows, slowly closing his unoccupied hand into a loose fist.

“And you?” Sanji drawls, settling his cheek back on his fist. “A Lord’s son, hm? And a future Lord himself. What a heavy secret you got there, mosshead.”

Zoro groans, throwing his head back and looking up at the sky. “It’s not like that.”

“Oh, now you’re copying me,” he pouts. There’s amusement in the crinkle at the corner of his eyes. Sanji lies back down on the grass, fingers laced and hands resting over his chest.

“I’m not going to be Lord of anything,” Zoro insists. “I’d hate to be tied down like that. I have to become the world’s greatest swordsman before my old man just dies and leaves the title free to grab.”

Sanji laughs at this. “You want to cut him down yourself?”

“Just beat him,” Zoro corrects. He shrugs a shoulder. “Can’t really hone my skills if I’m warming a damn throne all day every day. Perona would love that. S’why I’m gonna go get her in Wano.”

“Perona is your sister?”

“Unfortunately.”

“Don’t be rude to a lady,” Sanji warns. “What’s she doing in Wano?”

“She married the Princess there,” Zoro says and grunts when Sanji swats at him. “What? They’re not, like, in charge or anything! That’s Momo. They can come take over Kuraigana so Mihawk can take care of Shimotsuki.”

“Selfish prick,” Sanji mutters, shaking his head. “Leaving all the work to a lady so you can go and spread the world with your mold spores.”

Zoro rolls his eyes.

***

They resume their journey in the early afternoon two days later. Robin had Sanji take a concoction that had Zoro itching to pull Kitetsu out and slash her arm off. But Sanji has already decided to put all his trust in her. 

The potion is to work hand in hand with her spells, in which it’s going to wake his dormant powers on the inside while she works to unlock the binding spells on the cuffs from the outside.

It’s all a lot of information Zoro doesn’t understand, but he walks a little closer to Sanji nonetheless. After the initial chant she murmurs in a language unknown to him, Robin continues on their journey like normal. She’s sprouted arms on her shoulders again, said arms crossed, hands up and opened. Zoro assumes this is what keeps the spell going.

Brook is a swordsman too, so he says. His sword hides in the cane he carries, sharp and thin like a rapier. Part of Zoro wants to spar with him and see what his moves are like, but he refrains.

“Our next stop is Water 7,” Sanji says, pulling Nami’s map out as they walk. “If we continue without interruption, we’ll be there in no time.”

He doesn’t look different or sound different after drinking the potion. He isn’t tired or queasy either. Zoro studies him from the corner of his eye; there is no deathlike pallor, or anything really. 

“Little Garden has lots of goblins,” Robin provides, her voice soft and strong at the same time. Something about Robin unnerves him. “We will be fine on our travels during the day, but we must be careful at night when they come out.”

“They can’t climb trees,” Brook says, taking up the rear of their party. “But they can most definitely uproot one!”

Useless idiot, Zoro thinks with a roll of his eyes.

Robin talks a lot about history and Zoro can quietly admit he likes it. She makes it a little more interesting than the tutors in his childhood ever did, that’s for sure. She talks about the extinct race of giants that traveled from the lands of Elbaf, but no one knows where Elbaf is. She even says she met a giant, which isn’t as surprising as it should be; Witches, Elves, and the like live for hundreds and hundreds of years.

Come nightfall, they climb a cacao tree to hide behind the large leaves. The ground shakes as goblins walk to and fro, arguing amongst each other, swearing they smell fresh meat but not knowing where. 

The goblins are bigger than the ones Zoro’s fought in the East and the ones he fought in Germa. But they also seem to be just as stupid, not looking up at any moment and far too into their bickering.

“Ya think that Elf Prince gunna pass by here, eh?” One of the goblins asks, taking a big whiff of the air and looking around. “Haven’t had Elf meat in so long.”

“Where’d ya hear about an Elf Prince, eh?”

“I showed you the wanted poster!”

“Did not!”

“Did so!”

Zoro and Sanji lock eyes and Zoro can’t help but smirk at the eyeroll Sanji gives. The silence in the group goes on for the rest of the night, and Robin summons more arms to hold onto each of them in case they fall asleep and fall off the tree. The goblins keep their trek, complaining about the sun coming up soon and being unable to find any good meat. They’ll have to return to their lairs soon lest they turn into stone, but they suppose they’ll settle for some sabertooth meat to make due.

Not the strangest thing Zoro has witnessed. 

When dawn comes, the sleep they’ve gotten is minimal. Robin assures them that they can rest in Water 7, where goblins won’t roam so freely in the night.

The day is humid, but the canopy of trees keeps the sun from bearing down on them. Brook, who has mentioned he’d been a bard in his first life, sings for them. That quickly grows old for Zoro so he tunes it out, yawning every now and then since he didn’t sleep too well. 

He looks at Robin, at the second set of arms on her shoulders, still in the same pose as when they’d left her hut. He wonders how it’s going; he’s never minded his humanity until this very moment, where he’s unable to see what’s happening and if it's having any effect yet or if it’s still too early to say.

“Why were you so easy to agree to join us?” he asks her, facing her but tilting his head to watch Sanji and Brook. 

Robin looks at him, her expression serene. Her indigo skirt is long and tiered on one side with an armor plate over it and extending down her thigh, the other side of the skirt is short and ruffled, exposing her leg and knee-length boot. She hasn’t said or done anything to make him so unnerved but he supposes it's her Otherness that makes his hackles rise up.

“Why not?” she responds, smiling. And she laughs at the sour look Zoro throws her way. “Not everything is so black and white, swordsman. There’s always shades of gray; witches have such bad reputations, don’t they? I don’t blame your apprehension, if I heard of a species that cooks children while alive, I’d be on guard as well.”

“You’re really weird.”

She laughs again. “I suppose I don’t have a real, deep reason. I like to travel and learn.” Then she leans closer to Zoro and softly adds, “And I quite enjoyed your silent pining.”

Zoro does not speak to her again for the rest of the day.

Days and nights pass. They do the majority of their traveling during the day and hideout in the trees during the night. Goblins don’t come as near them as the first two had the first night but they hear their stomps and feel the earth shake with each step as they roam around, looking for food.

One day, they’re taking advantage of a pond with edible catfish, building a quick camp to rest and eat. They’re close to Water 7 now. The sky is less blue the closer they get to their next destination, the humidity turning to something cool and misty. 

Zoro’s crouched in front of a little fire he’s been tasked to start. Robin sits nearby, watching Brook and Sanji try to catch some catfish for them to eat. It’s a nice companionship they’ve all built in the near fourteen days they’ve traveled together. Brook even surprised the cook by informing him he brought some spices with him, since the idea of bland fish and wildlife sounds terrible to eat for the amount of time they’ll be journeying.

That had made Sanji laugh and warm up to the dumb, perverted skeleton.

With all that happening and the safety of their companionship softening their guard, naturally, it comes as a surprise when twigs snap and bushes ruffle as someone waltzes into their makeshift camp. 

“Ah,” the newcomer sighs. It sounds sarcastic and haughty and it grates at Zoro’s nerves. “There you are. For a failure, you were a little hard to find.”

Zoro turns his head to look over his shoulder. At the same time, he hears Sanji’s disconsolate exhale and Robin’s surprised hum.

In the center of the clearing is a tall man, shoulders sharp and head tilted back in an arrogant manner. His hair is the same shade of blond as Sanji, his eyes like electrical currents, blue and filled with so much hate. 

“Niji,” Sanji says as he walks away from the pond and closer to where Zoro and Robin are. 

It’s like he’s picking and choosing what his glamour changes. His hair reaches just under his pointed ears, parted to the side and spiking upwards. And he has the same curly eyebrows as Sanji; they’re raised right now in cruel amusement. 

Zoro thinks he may be imagining things, but he catches electricity crackling around him, especially near his cobalt eyes. Slowly, Zoro stands to his full height and inches closer to his swords, never taking his attention off the newcomer.

Niji, Sanji called him.

Sanji’s brother.

A Vinsmoke Prince.

“Ichiji and Yonji are going to be furious when they find out I found you,” Niji says with a vicious grin. “Father is itching to send you back to the dungeons. He’s even gotten Reiju to create new poisons. Just for you.”

Zoro feels his blood start to boil with fury.

Niji is the complete opposite of Sanji. He’s wicked and filled with so much malice; the prospect of his own brother, flesh and blood, getting tortured brings him a euphoric high. It disgusts Zoro, his vision going blurry and then white hot, his instincts taking over.

Yubashiri and Kitetsu sing when he unsheathes them.

Niji turns his nasty eyes towards him, a deep, ocean blue behind the thin electricity that pops and flashes around him. His smile grows wider at the sight of him.

“Are you challenging me, pathetic human?”

Zoro can guess what his magic is. He wishes he could say he’s afraid, but he isn’t. Not one bit.

“Moss—Zoro, stand down,” Sanji calls, moving closer to him. His tone sounds frightened, not of his brother but of what his brother can do to them all. He places a hand on Zoro's arm. “Please.”

Sanji never says please, a quiet side of Zoro notes.

Niji scoffs with disgust. “Are you pleading to a human? You make me sick, brother. You deserve everything Father has in store for you—”

Zoro launches himself, mentally sinking into the killing calm he hasn’t felt since Kuina died. She named this side of him, laughing when he would end up covered in the blood of his enemies but also pouting that he left nothing for the rest of them.

Niji unsheathes his blade and blocks Zoro’s strikes. That malicious smile grows when he summons electricity to his sword and literally shocks Zoro. Grunting, he pushes off him, skidding to a stop where he’d started.

Robin and Brook are now standing and fully alert, though they do nothing to intervene in his fight. Robin’s eyes are calculative, her brow furrowing with disdain. But she has to keep working on Sanji’s confinements, Zoro thinks. He can’t let her try and fight too.

“Zoro, we don’t always have to fight!” Sanji says, grabbing at Zoro’s arm again. His violet-blue eyes are frantic. What have those monsters done to make Sanji look like this now? What tortures has he been inflicted with? “We can run!”

“Running,” Zoro grunts, lips curling in his sneer. “Is for—”

“For what?” Sanji’s claws dig into his skin. “For cowards? If that’s what that’ll make us, then so be it. At least we’ll be alive.”

Niji throws his head back and laughs. “Once a failure, always a failure.”

Zoro yanks himself free, Sanji’s claws scratching long lines on his bicep, ripping his tunic. He launches again, this time ready for a fight.

Niji is fast and mocking. He sneers and even laughs as he blocks Zoro’s blows, twists away from a slash and parries a strike. He drops his glamour every other second, showing his gray skin and electric blue hair, his hate-filled eyes, his sharp teeth.

In the next moment, he’s back to blond hair and blue eyes, laughing when he notices Zoro’s moves become sluggish from the dizziness of being exposed to the glamour. 

Fuck no, Zoro thinks as he powers through it. He blinks hard, pulling Wado out and slipping her in between his teeth. He’s more than this, he’s more than the restraints of being a mere human in the face of pure, intense magic.

The sound of blades clashing is acute in his ears. He vaguely notices Niji landing in the pond before they’re back on each other, slashing and striking. Zoro’s skin is seared by the electricity but he can’t seem to feel it.

A particularly nasty slash is coming down on him in the brief moment Zoro takes to quickly look down at the burn that’s just appeared on the back of his left palm. An electrical current had just snapped at him, popping with static when it made contact with his skin. Zoro looks up, shifting Yubashiri in his grip but before he can block it, one of Sanji’s kicks comes and knocks Niji’s arm away from his target.

“Enough,” he says, turning to his brother. “You win. I’ll go back—”

“No,” Zoro interrupts, voice rough and furious.

If Sanji goes back, he’ll be tortured. If he goes back, all this was for nothing. They’re so close to reaching the Southern coast, so close to sailing to Wano and if Sanji goes back, Zoro will never get to see him again.

Niji rolls his eyes.

“I’m bored now,” he drawls. His posture has slackened for a brief moment and in the next instant he’s moving towards Sanji, his sword ready to strike him down. “I’m sure Father will understand.”

He wants to kill Sanji? Realization is heavy as it settles at the center of Zoro’s mind.

The next few moments happen in slow motion:

Somewhere behind him, he hears Robin and Brook’s screams of warning.

Zoro moves.

He shoves Sanji out of the way, raising Yubashiri to block the killing strike. The sound of Yubashiri’s blade shattering into pieces is deafening. Zoro has no time to react to his oldest sword being destroyed as Niji’s strike comes down on him, less intense and murderous after losing momentum by being obstructed.

The agonizing pain is like wildfire on his face. He doesn’t even scream; it’s lost somewhere, caught at the tip of his tongue. He drops Kitetsu and Wado as he feels the flow of blood down the side of his face. His vision is suddenly different, his depth perception is suddenly halved. 

Zoro falls to his knees.

He hears Sanji’s scream: “ZORO!”

And then everything bursts into flames.

***

The first thing he hears is the crackle of fire. It sizzles and pops, but the heat is just about nonexistent. Zoro feels his body’s ache next, burns on his arms and chest that react to the quickly evaporating high temperature around him.

He groans, scrunching his closed eyes and feeling a severe pain that makes him gasp. Back arched, he sits up and snaps his eyes open.

Eye.

One eye opens. None of the commands that he sends to his left eye gets his eyelids to part, to move. He gasps again, the pain making him groan with agony. He feels a hand on him, guiding him back down; Zoro flinches. He’s caught between feeling hysterical and feeling nothing at all, just the intense wave of pain.

“Zoro…”

That’s Sanji’s voice. Zoro shifts his head and searches for him. It’s dark around them, there’s embers everywhere; trees have been incinerated, the clearing around them smells burnt, the pond is steaming, dead fishes floating up in the surface.

“I—” His voice sounds awful. It’s a croak, words barely decipherable. “What happened?”

Brook is attending to a burn on Robin’s arm; she has cuts and bruises like she’d been in battle. Brook does too, his sword still unsheathed and lying next to him. They both look at him for a moment, like trying to reassure themselves that he’s come back from the deep endless void he’d been in.

“Wh—where is—”

“Shhh.” Sanji’s voice is wobbly, like he wants to cry. Like something’s wrong. Like he’s filled with regret. “Rest, Zoro.”

“Why are you calling me that?” Zoro asks, furrowing his brow. Only his right side moves. Sick and tired of this, he reaches up to touch his face. 

Sanji snatches his hand before he can touch his skin. “I’m so sorry, Zoro. I—this is all my fault. I should have never requested your protection. I should have never left Germa.”

They’d never have traveled together. If he’d never left Germa, they’d have never met.

Zoro doesn’t think he’d like to know what that alternative is like. To travel to Wano, never meeting Sanji, to live his life and never meeting someone that can anger him as much as he makes his insides feel soft. It sounds bleak and he hates the idea of it.

“Don’t be stupid, curly,” he says, reaching up to touch Sanji’s hair. He blames it on the pain, to indulge in these little things he wants to do, so little they usually disappear where he shoves them back into the farthest depths of his mind. Sanji’s hair is as soft as he’d quietly thought it’d be. “We’re almost there. I’ll be better soon. Give me another day.”

Sanji laughs, shaking his head. “You’re barbaric.” His expression is sad for just a second. “You’re so stupid. You shouldn’t have… Why did you…” He exhales, closing his eyes. “Thank you.”

Zoro drops his hand, but takes advantage of Sanji’s vulnerability and reaches to touch his own face again. On his left side are bandages, some parts soggy with what is probably blood, other parts both crisp and soft the way bandages tend to be.

“What happened to my face?”

Sanji’s expression crumbles. He’s sad for just another moment before fury takes over, his eyes like pits of flames. And then, in a blink of an eye, his features soften to one of regret. He seems to feel a lot, for an Elf. Did Mihawk say Elves are stoic and emotionless?

No, he doesn’t think so. He’s always complained about Shanks being loud and obnoxious.

Zoro looks at Sanji, thinking he’s obnoxious too. Maybe it’s an Elf thing, to be obnoxious. Sanji can get loud too, especially when he gets exasperated with Zoro making random turns when he shouldn’t, thinking North means up and West is synonymous with left.

Sanji exhales again, long and tired and sad. He folds himself, leaning forward until he can rest his forehead against Zoro’s middle. Like he’s tired or trying to repent. For what, Zoro doesn’t know. And he won’t accept any stupid apology.

He’d do it all over again if it means Sanji stays here with him.

***

Water 7 is a foggy place, surrounded by lakes, and waterways and canals in the city streets rather than roads. The buildings are elevated because floods happen so often and the cityfolk travel by boats pulled by seahorse-like creatures called Yagara bulls.

In the remaining days of traveling through the jungle, Zoro was in and out of consciousness, being carried by Brook most of the time and other times Robin’s hands moving him along and keeping up with their pace.

During those times, Zoro had either pieced things together on his own or was informed of bits and pieces by one of the others. 

There’s a new scar running down the top of his eyebrow, slicing down his eyelid and cutting his actual eye to the point that he can no longer use it. The scar ends just above his cheekbone. It’s still fresh and it hurts with every movement his facial muscles make, not to mention it bleeds very easily.

Niji, Sanji’s brother, is not dead. Unfortunately. But he’d been gravely injured by the fire magic Sanji let out at the sight of Zoro losing consciousness. This last part Robin’d mentioned with a sly smile. Zoro can’t stand her.

The battle continued even after he’d been taken down. Brook had gotten Zoro’s body out of the way, stepping in when Sanji’d frozen at the sight of his flames. While he grappled with the fact his powers were back, Brook and Robin’d engaged Niji in battle. 

They’d held their own, but Niji had been stronger. At the sight of everyone around him down, Sanji had lost his temper and attacked his brother with fervor. The clearing around them had been set ablaze at the use of fire and electricity. 

Despite their severe differences in worldviews, maturity and empathy, Niji and Sanji have similar fighting styles. They’d thrown kicks at each other, breaking and cracking limbs. Sanji effectively dodged most of the sword strikes Niji aimed his way and countered with his fire magic. He’d burnt Niji with his summoned flames and with his fire-enhanced Blackleg Style.

They’re free now, injured as they are. But the possibility of Sanji’s other brothers catching up and finding them looms over them like a storm.

Zoro looks out the window of the inn-room they’ve rented. His face hurts and it’s taking a bit to get used to the fact that his vision has been cut in half. He has an intense migraine that makes his skull pulse. He’s alone in the darkness, his other injuries recuperating at a natural pace. 

He’s not so upset about losing his eye, so much as having to adjust everything about himself to adapt to his new sight situation. Zoro is a swordsman, a warrior. Scars litter his body like freckles; one more won’t make much of a difference to him, even at the cost.

The door creaks open and by the silver-like glow of their hair, he knows it’s Sanji coming in. And by the smell, he’s brought food. Zoro can’t say he’s very hungry, but he can’t find it in him to say so.

Sanji’s been quiet for days now. As if his sarcasm and snark have gone dormant now that his flames have reawakened. Zoro knows this isn’t the reason, he knows that Sanji feels guilty for what’s happened and he absolutely hates it. 

Zoro has to turn his head to look at Sanji properly. He watches him hesitate to approach but then pushes through the initial instinct and takes the few steps necessary to come to his bedside. It’s a plate of sea-king over a bed of rice. 

His heart does a weird thing. These feelings that have formed and grown are driving him insane. He turns away from Sanji and looks out the window again.

“Robin and Brook are searching for a ship that’ll be scheduled to sail,” Sanji offers, voice soft and distant despite his proximity. “Hopefully we can hitch a ride.”

Zoro grunts.

Sanji looks awkward as he stands to the side of the bed, looking around in the dark as if searching for something to latch his attention on. It’s weird and so unlike him, it angers Zoro. Everything between them is so… tense. And all of a sudden, too. 

This isn’t what he wants.

“I’ve been—”

“Have they always talked like that?” Zoro asks. Up to this day, bits and pieces still keep coming back to him and recently he’s been remembering all the nasty things Niji said to Sanji, the catalyst to Zoro attacking him.

Sanji’s curly eyebrows furrow in question. But Sanji has always been too smart to not catch on quick enough. He exhales and looks away for a moment, giving Zoro a view of his sharp jaw.

“Yes,” he says, crossing his arms in front of his chest. “It’s always been like that. It doesn’t bother me anymore.”

Zoro wants to call bullshit, but he doesn’t. He wants to yell at the top of his lungs that he should have never had to endure that, until Sanji gets it through his thick head. But he doesn’t do that either. There’s a sense of restlessness prickling under his skin, like ants crawling up and down his veins. 

Something fragile’s cracked since that day with Niji. Something he hadn’t even known existed, something he hadn’t ever thought he could feel. But Sanji’s put up a thick wall, like he’s trying to hide his shame. As if he wants to hide the fact that he feels shame.

Zoro doesn’t know what to do. Empathy doesn’t come to him in the same way it does to anyone else. To him, feeling empathy is to go after those that have wronged the people he cares about. 

And that just makes him pause altogether.

To think it into actuality: Zoro cares about Sanji.

Zoro has feelings for Sanji.

He raises a hand up to press the heel of his palm on his good eye. It leaves white spots in his vision but it scratches an itch. Sanji’s staring at him, his expression carefully blank, his eyes more violet than blue in the gray room.

“I suppose I didn’t think about the possibility of us running into one of my brothers,” he says. It’s the most Sanji-like he’s heard him sound in days. “And I suppose I never considered you being gravely injured.”

“That’s stupid,” Zoro says. He has to turn his head again to be able to see Sanji.

The cook takes note of this and makes a pained noise in the back of his throat. He tries to play it off, but he walks around the bed so he can stand on Zoro’s good side. And he can’t find it in him to be angry at that, so he pretends not to notice.

“I’m supposed to protect you,” he continues, shifting to sit up on the bed and feeling his entire body protest. “Obviously I’m supposed to get hurt in the process of that.”

Sanji shakes his head. In disbelief, in denial.

It pisses Zoro off.

“Stop feeling sorry for yourself,” he sneers, hands fisting in the sheets. “And stop feeling sorry for me. I chose this.”

Sanji’s face shifts, warping into his own kind of fury. His teeth are sharp when he curls his lips in a snarl, throwing his arms up in the air in his exasperation. His sleeves fall back to his elbows.

There are no golden cuffs.

“Why would I want this?” He’s yelling now. “Why would I want you to lose an organ at my expense?!”

“What, you get your magic back and suddenly I’m too weak?” Zoro asks, aiming for cruelty now and somehow hating himself for it. “I was useful and expendable when you had no powers and now you want to play the thoughtful role because your powers are back?”

Sanji looks absolutely furious, his sharp teeth clenched, his clawed hands curled into fists. “Fuck you, Zoro.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Zoro sneers and looks away when the door slams shut again.

He sits in silence for a long time after that, wondering when that conversation got out of hand.

***

When he next wakes up, Brook is the one in the room with him. He’s acquired some new clothes, since his previous outfit was burnt in all places. It’s still gray out, but lighter than the day before. Zoro sits up, feeling his muscles protest less than yesterday. 

“Good morning,” Brook says. His tone is a lot more sober than it tends to be. 

Zoro grunts in response.

“Would you like me to fetch you breakfast?”

“I’m not an invalid,” Zoro snaps. And then regrets it. He’s doing that a lot, lashing out and regretting it right after. He sighs, closing his eye and hanging his head forward. “Sorry.”

“It’s alright,” Brook says. 

It’s hard to tell what Brook’s feeling because, well, he has no face. He’s a skeleton, with a skull set in a permanent lack of expression. But in this moment, Zoro swears Brook’s disappointed with him.

“You know,” Brook starts, tapping the little spoon against his teacup. “When I died, it’d been a lonely death. My friends long gone before me, their corpses my only company. We’d all contracted an illness, you see. And they died, one by one until I was the only one left. I didn’t even know I was a Gifted until I came back! Imagine returning to life and I’m nothing but bones!”

Zoro can’t imagine that. It’s never even been a thought. That’s the thing about the Gifted: each Gift from the world is different and unique. No two are the same. The only thing is that as the world has gifted them with strange powers, the sea rejects them. If a Gifted falls into the sea, then they drown. 

“When I came back, I was stuck on the same ship that’d become the mausoleum for my friends. I was devastated. I grew resentful with pain and regret.”

Survivor’s guilt.

Zoro’s dabbled a little in that. Though Kuina dying of an illness was something he couldn’t have fixed, let alone have been able to take it on himself in her place. 

“Why are you telling me this?” Zoro asks.

Brook turns to him, taking a sip of his tea. Zoro still wonders where the food and drink he ingests goes, if he has no stomach. Brook crosses a long bony leg over the other, his voluminous hair bouncing with the tilt of his head. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, especially since I have no ears. Yohohoho!”

Zoro groans, standing up from the bed and running a hand through his messy green hair. 

“But I did hear your and Sanji’s argument,” Brook confesses. “And it reminded me of that time on the ship. I feel the Prince had feared you’d died in his place.”

Pausing from starting to do some stretches, Zoro considers this. It makes the nasty words he’d said to Sanji sear his tongue with the residue of his misplaced outrage. He reaches up to untie the bandages around his eye, undoing them so his injury can get some air. 

“I need a shirt,” Zoro comments, bunching the soiled gauze up and throwing it in the bin. 

“Where are you going?” Brook asks as he hands him a dark blue tunic. 

Zoro grunts but doesn’t respond. He puts his boots on and then stands in the middle of the room, not knowing what to do next and stalling from going where he wants to go. If he knows the cook as well as he’s gotten to, then Sanji is in the kitchens. He runs agitated hands through his hair, relishes in the piercing sting of his eye-injury against the cool breeze in the room.

Brook is staring at him. Or, at least, Zoro thinks he is. He quietly lifts his teacup to his… mouth. Or grin. Or teeth. He isn’t sure what it is. His head is starting to hurt again, so he makes a displeased noise and leaves the room.

The inn is large and the halls seem to shift a lot so it impedes him from finding the kitchens as quickly as he could have in a normal inn with normal halls. In the end, a man named Paulie sends him in the right direction, emphasizing that he doesn’t need to make any turns.

Sanji is in fact in the kitchens, laughing with some of the cooks there and helping them with bread baking. His smile disappears at the sight of Zoro, though, and it squeezes something in his chest. Like heartburn or something. 

“What are you doing out of bed?” Sanji asks when he leads him out the kitchens so they don’t get underfoot while they talk. 

They’re outside on a balcony. The breeze is stronger here, but it’s interesting to see the canal down below and the boats being pulled by bulls.

“Robin managed to find a ship,” Sanji continues, pulling his pipe out and tapping at the bowl. “She’s out making sure everything is set straight. She’s as efficient as she is beautiful.” He sighs dreamily, smiling up at the sky. Then he turns back to Zoro, his curly eyebrows furrowed. “You took the bandages off. That scar is gruesome.”

Zoro groans and throws his head back, looking up at the gray sky and asking anyone that’d listen for some patience. 

“Cook…” Zoro runs a hand through his hair again. “I didn’t… What I said—it’s not how I really feel.”

Sanji leans onto the railings of the balcony, the wind caressing his hair enough to lift it and expose the pointy ears he’s trying to hide. “I know that.” He turns to look at Zoro, his eyes a clear blue. “I don’t know how, or why. But I do.”

Zoro feels the tension between them start to dissipate, the chokehold loosening. Sanji’s standing on his good side, so he looks at him for a moment longer, wondering when these feelings started to creep in.

A breeze blows, shifting Sanji’s hair and making Zoro’s earrings tinkle against each other. It grabs the cook’s attention, leaning forward so he can look at Zoro’s other side. 

“I always wondered why you had those,” he comments, a curly eyebrow raised. “Three earrings in the same ear? Three swords? Make it make sense.”

Zoro looks him in the eye, unable and unwilling to stop himself from saying, “Maybe I like the number three.”

It’s worth seeing Sanji grow flustered and storm back into the kitchens.

***

Usopp and Franky are self proclaimed master tinkerers. They’re also the owners of the ship that’ll sail them to Wano. There’s apparently two others they’re giving a ride to, something about a Gifted and a Fishman.

They’re the ones that they’re waiting for and the reason why Zoro’s getting his ear talked off by Usopp, the self-proclaimed captain. He’s currently giving a very exaggerated interpretation of a battle that probably didn’t happen with three-thousand men that probably don’t exist. This all happened because he caught sight of Zoro’s two swords.

He hasn’t really allowed himself to think about Yubashiri. 

There’s no real reason why Yubashiri was special to him. It’s just the memory of when he’d got him that made him close to the sword. It’d been at Loguetown in the East, he’d been with Mihawk, Perona and Kuina when they’d walked into the sword shop. That’s where he also got Kitetsu, Mihawk agreeing the blade had taken a liking to Zoro if it refused to cut him.

At the show of his bravery, and according to his sister and Kuina: his stupidity, the shop owner had bestowed Yubashiri to him. It felt amazing to receive a sword as a gift for simply being brave, for being chosen by a blade that disliked anyone that tried to wield it.

Now Yubashiri is gone. 

He exhales, nodding again at Usopp’s story but not really capturing anything the man says. Franky and his bright blue hair is having his own animated conversation with Brook and Robin, the latter who is smiling at him in a less creepy way than she’d smile at him or Sanji.

“Uh…” Usopp stammers. “So yeah. That’s how it ended. And that’s why I’m God Usopp.”

“Fascinating,” Zoro lies, looking around in search of Sanji. 

“So I’m… Uh. I’m gonna go check if the others are here yet so we can get a move on.” He squints his brown eyes up at the sky. “Looks like rain and we can hitch a ride on those winds.”

Zoro exhales as he watches him go. He’s just about to turn and go look for the cook when he appears on his other side.

“This is the farthest I’ve ever managed to get,” he comments, looking out at the harbor. He almost sounds giddy, though in typical Sanji fashion he tries to contain it. “I can’t believe it.”

“It’s the only time you’ve been smart enough to get a bodyguard,” Zoro responds and grunts when Sanji punches his arm. 

“Idiot,” the stupid Elf mutters. Then, he sobers up and looks anywhere but at Zoro. “I suppose our travels will end soon, hm?”

Zoro furrows his brow. “What do you mean?”

“Well, we’ll be arriving at Wano soon enough and that’s the end of the road for you, isn’t it? I still have to keep going onward in my search.” Sanji’s shrug is too forced to seem as nonchalant as he wants it to. “Maybe these guys will want to keep sailing with me.”

Zoro frowns but doesn’t respond. The thought of them parting ways hasn’t occurred to him in weeks and now it makes his chest feel like it’s going to cave in. There’s no alternative here, though: Sanji can’t stay with him and Zoro can’t go.

“What?” Sanji asks, expression worried. “You’re pale now, mosshead. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Zoro gruffly says and stalks away.

He needs to be alone for a moment, sort his feelings and thoughts out. He’s always thought romantic feelings were a nuisance and here are his own to prove him right. He paces back and forth at the stern, trying to keep himself from thinking and when that doesn’t work he tries to keep himself from thinking in circles. But that is futile too.

“Hey!” Sanji stalks over, his expression annoyed. “What the hell, idiot moss? What’s gotten into you all of a sudden?”

Sanji shoves at his chest and Zoro’s thoughts short-circuit when he stumbles back. Even with the golden cuffs, Sanji’d been strong. But now, without them, it’s like his strength has multiplied and he’s unaccustomed to it and keeps shoving and punching Zoro harder than playfulness allows.

“Nothing’s wrong with me, curly,” he mutters, standing still while Sanji sizes him up. His eye wound is still pretty fresh, though there’s an uneven and thick layer of scabbing in some parts. 

“Like hell,” Sanji says. “You’ve been acting weird since the inn. One minute you’re pissy, the next you’re apologetic, then you’re quiet and not long after you’re playful. Dare I say, it feels like you’re being flirtatious, even. What’s your problem—”

Zoro leans forward, stopping when there’s just a scant inch between their faces. His eye finds Sanji’s wide ones and he listens with satisfaction at the way Sanji’s breathing hitches.

“Nothing’s my problem,” Zoro reiterates as he pulls back. 

Sanji blinks out of his stupor, lifting a hand up to touch his mouth as if Zoro’d kissed him. His eyes never stray from looking into Zoro’s. His hair is tied back, intricate braids in place, his forelock’s waves falling over one eye. He’s stupidly distracting, Zoro thinks and again he wonders when these feelings crept up on him.

“Zoro,” Sanji breathes. And as a callback to the game that kept them company for the days and weeks and months they’ve traveled together, he asks, “What are you feeling?”

“Is that your question of the day?” 

“Yes.”

But before anything else can be said between them, any confessions or realizations, there’s noise on the other side of the ship and a massive whale-shark Fishman appears with another man’s arms stretching around him. The stretchy man catches sight of them and stretches his neck until his face is right in front of them.

The smile he gives them is wide and innocent. “Hey! I’m Monkey D. Luffy!”

“Curious,” Sanji murmurs. Then, louder, he says, “Hello, Monkey D. Luffy. I’m Sanji. And that moss over there is Roronoa Zoro.”

Luffy laughs, loud and almost mischievous. “I like you.”

And then he snaps his neck back into place. Before Sanji can turn back to him, Zoro walks towards the group. He’s never been a man of hesitance or avoidance; it goes against what he believes a swordsman should be.

What he’s doing now almost feels like he’s trying to make the blow of going their separate ways a little easier. 

***

Luffy is a Gifted. He’s a rubber man and he’s chaotic in the most innocent kind of way. He also has a bottomless pit for a stomach and tries to eat everyone’s food not out of malice but because boundaries seem to be nonexistent for someone as carefree as him.

He and Jinbei are going to Wano to visit some friends and then they’re going to travel further out to find the forbidden lands of Impel Down. According to Luffy, his brothers are there and he wants to meet up with them. Jinbei is close friends with Luffy’s eldest brother and, so, has joined him on his journey.

Adventure, Luffy calls it.

All this captures Robin’s attention and she asks if there’s room for two more on their quest, to which Luffy says anyone can come with them. So Brook and Robin will be leaving with them, once they make it to Wano and all go their separate ways.

Surprisingly, though, Franky decides to also join them. And he is blatant enough to say he’ll go wherever Robin goes, which has her smiling that weird smile of hers. Naturally Franky volunteering himself for the journey means Usopp has to go too. Which he is now making as clear as day he is not happy about.

“Imagine,” he continues to bemoan. “Imagine me in Impel Down?! I hear there are dragons and monsters out there!”

“I’m imagining it,” Robin says. “I see you becoming a dragon’s midday snack, since you’re not as lanky as Luffy but you’re also not as built as Zoro.”

Usopp deflates and scoots away from her.

“Hey,” Luffy chirps on the other side of the table in the ship’s galley. “Your ears are pointy, Sanji!”

“Luffy,” Jinbei sighs, his dark bushy eyebrows furrowing. 

Sanji, who’s in the middle of picking up the empty plates, pauses to look at him. “Have you never met an Elf before?”

Luffy throws his head back and laughs. “When I was a kid! He gave me my straw-hat.” He points at the hat on his head. “We promised we’d meet up when I got old enough to go on adventures on my own. But then Ace and Sabo disappeared so I gotta find them first.”

“Yow!” Franky strikes a pose. “Don’t you worry, little brother. We’ll find your big brothers in no time!”

Their mingling continues well into the night. Then, they all split to their little nooks on the ship, leaving Sanji and Zoro in the kitchen to do the dishes they’d dirty for dinner.

Sanji washes meticulously, the sleeves of his tunic rolled up to avoid the soapy water. His wrists are far paler than the rest of his arms, a line in the middle of his forearm where the darker parts of his skin meet the paler ones. 

Zoro dries the plates Sanji hands him.

It’s quiet and they find a rhythm together. There’s tension between them again, but it feels different than the previous one. Before, it’d felt frigid and hesitant, it felt anxious and confused. Now, it feels like a calm before a storm, like buzzing energy that doesn’t know where to rest. 

Sanji’s hand brushes Zoro’s when he hands him a rinsed plate and he sucks in air through his teeth. So Zoro does it again, and again and again.

“What’s your problem?”

“You’ve been asking me that a lot,” Zoro says with a snort. “What’s your problem?”

“You!”

Zoro grins, turning his body to fully face Sanji now. They’re evenly matched in height but Zoro finds a way to still loom over him if only to piss him off. And Sanji does in fact grow annoyed, pressing a soapy hand to Zoro’s chest and pushing.

“Back off, bastard,” he mutters but there’s no heat in his tone. 

Zoro chuckles but doesn’t budge, enjoying the way Sanji’s rapidly growing flustered again. He likes this new bit of their dynamic. He hadn’t realized how amusing it is to have Sanji lose his cool in other ways other than anger.

“Ask me a question,” Zoro starts, leaning against the counter.

Sanji looks at him, face carefully blank. But his jaw muscle twitches from how tightly he’s clenching his teeth. It gives him away and proves his nonchalance a farce.

“Come with me,” Sanji says.

Zoro freezes. Then: “That’s not a question.”

“Will you come with me?” Sanji rephrases.

He thinks about his father back in Kuraigana. About his sister in Wano with the Wano Princess. He thinks about how his entire quest had been to go to Wano to convince Perona to return home, wife and all, and take over Kuraigana in his stead. 

And if Perona says no? He’ll have to agree with Mihawk and take his place so his father can move to Shimotsuki.

“I can’t,” he breathes. 

The hurt Sanji tries to disguise behind his smile is like a blow to Zoro’s gut. But the cook nods and doesn’t mention it again in the fortnight it takes to get to Wano.

***

Zoro enjoys being in Wano. There’s something about this country that calls to him, like his blood feels rooted in Wano’s soil. Perhaps his biological family hails from these lands. Who knows? Zoro’d been a baby when his parents were killed by orcs.

Wano is beautiful with lush forests and massive waterfalls and rivers that circulate the country and flow out to the sea. The capital is located right in the center of the country, with all the other regions surrounding it; there are six in total, split by the rivers.

His sister lives in the capital, in the royal palace where Wano’s royal family live. That’s where he and Sanji head now while the others steer the ship around the country rather than across. 

“What is she like?” Sanji asks as they walk the main roads towards the Flower Capital.

After Kuina died and Zoro escaped to Wano in his attempts to run from his grief, he traveled all six regions, staying in each one for periods of time in each territory. His favorite had been Ringo and he’d gotten along well with Ringo’s ruling Lady, Kiku.

“Perona?” Zoro rubs at his jaw, thinking of the last time he saw his sister. “Loud and annoying. She nags a lot, especially when she doesn’t find things cute enough for her standards. And she yells a lot. At me, mostly.”

Sanji laughs, a full belly laugh that makes his smile wide and attractive. Zoro rolls his eye but grins, relishing in the sound of windchimes. 

“But you’re not related by blood, right?” Sanji asks when he sobers up from his laugh. 

“No,” Zoro agrees. “Perona was three and I was a baby when Mihawk adopted us from the same orphanage. So thankfully, we don’t look alike.”

Sanji snorts. “I wouldn’t want a beautiful lady to have to live with the torment of having your face.”

Zoro shoves him and Sanji squawks as he tries to find his footing. 

They travel for an entire day. Sanji marvelling at their surroundings, pausing to admire some of the wild vegetation, talking aloud of possible recipes he can incorporate them in. Zoro listens, his usual annoyance at constant chatter lost and replaced with fondness.

The worry and fear that usually has Sanji a little stiff and sharp around the edges melts, leaving softness in its place. He smiles and laughs and at one point shoves Zoro so hard, he stumbles into a bush.

That has Sanji laughing for miles and miles, having to pause at various points to try and compose himself.

Zoro can’t believe these are the last moments they’ll have together. That, once they reach the capital and the royal palace, they’ll go their separate ways and… never see each other. The realization puts Zoro in a foul mood. Not angry, but melancholic. 

They reach the outskirts of the Flower Capital well into the night, when the stars are out and the moon is bright. It’s in the crescent phase; Perona’s favorite. Zoro looks up at it, feeling a rare moment of affection for his crazy adoptive sister, wondering if she’s looking up at the moon too.

The red gates they cross are as massive and elegant as he remembers them and the streets are as lively too. Zoro pauses, looking around the masked dancers, the food stands and the musicians. 

“We should find an inn,” he proposes. 

Sanji furrows his brow  and stares at him. “Why? Aren’t we nearby now?”

“It’s late,” Zoro stresses. 

He can be selfish right now. He can have one more night, a couple more hours, with Sanji. Purposefully bicker with him, unabashedly stare at him as he talks, eat his cooked meals. 

Sanji purses his lips and gives a slow nod, looking around at the half-Minks and other species that intermingle with the humans. He makes a gesture to get Zoro to start moving and then thinks better of it, starting to lead the way and keeping his attention focused on finding an inn.

“Wano is lovely,” Sanji mumbles, turning his head every which way to get a view of all the festivities. 

Their knuckles bump as they walk down an especially busy street, fingers snagging against each other. Zoro feels his heartbeat escalate and he feels like a child, turning his head to hide his smile.

The room they rent is small, with cherry blossom printed shoji doors and futon beds at the center. It’s meant to just have the necessities for travelers: their bedding that’s been prepared by the inn maids, a lavatory and bathroom and a space for tea.

Sanji takes a seat on one of the zaisu, grabbing the teapot and pouring tea into two cups. Zoro sits across from him, exhaling softly and grunting in thanks when Sanji slides one of the teacups his way.

“I can clean your injury, if you like,” Sanji offers after a sip of his beverage. 

Zoro is selfish, so he agrees. 

He listens to Sanji rummage around the room for supplies that can be helpful for his new task. He turns to look at his swords, resting next to him. They’re due for a cleaning, he thinks. Zoro supposes he can do that once he gets to the palace. 

There’s a pang in his chest that reverberates up to his skull. Sanji appears with a bowl and a towelette in hand. He comes closer than Zoro’d been expecting and it makes his back go stiff, his eye following all his movements.

“Ready?” Sanji asks, his voice soft since he’s so close and so in his space.

Zoro can’t even answer.

The touch of the towelette against his eye injury is soft. It still stings, still hurts to the point of it pulsing pain to his remaining eye. Sanji’s too close and Zoro focuses on his proximity rather than the pain. His hair is disheveled, his goatee a little overgrown. This close, Zoro can see the color of his eyelashes: dark blond and his lower lashes are a bit curled.

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” Sanji asks and Zoro stares at the way his lips move. 

“About you,” Zoro says.

Sanji pauses, his eyes finding Zoro’s. “What about me?”

“No way, curly,” Zoro laughs. “You only get to ask one question. It’s my turn now.”

Sanji stares at him for a moment longer before he resumes cleaning Zoro’s scar. “Fine. Be that way. Ask your question then, mosshead.”

“I will,” Zoro scoffs, grinning when Sanji makes an annoyed noise. “What are you thinking?”

“Oh, you’re so original,” Sanji says, dripping sarcasm. He remains quiet for a long time, cleaning and washing and ringing the towelette. Soon, the warm water in the bowl is pink with Zoro’s blood. “About you.”

“What about—”

Sanji leans in, their noses touching. Zoro freezes, his eye fluttering shut. But if Sanji’s going to kiss him, it never comes and Zoro leans in closer, blindly searching. Their lips brush.

Zoro feels like it’ll never be enough.

***

“Zoro!”

Perona runs to him, her skirts gathered in her hands. Her pink curls bounce as she runs and her dark red lips are pulled into a wicked grin. One thing he and his sister share: their devious smiles.

She flings herself on him, arms wrapped around his neck so she can hang off him. Zoro finds himself wrapping his arms around her too, silently admitting that he’s missed her.

“What have you done to yourself,” Perona cries, placing a hand on his cheek to look at his scar.

“Got in a fight,” Zoro admits, setting her down and accepting his fate once she wraps her arms around his. “It’s fine.”

“That’s so like you,” Perona yells. “I can’t believe you! That scar is not cute at all, you know.”

Zoro rolls his eye, turning his head and catching Sanji staring at them at the same time he’s trying to look at his new surroundings. By the time he turns back to Perona, she’s noticed a lot.

She looks to his scar, to his swords, to Sanji and back. She narrows her dark eyes but she turns to Sanji and curtsies. “Hello, Prince Sanji. Pleasure of having you in our presence.”

Sanji comes close, bowing and taking her hand to press a kiss to it. “Pleasure is all mine, my dear.”

“I’ll talk to the King and Princess Hiyori, we can prepare a feast for your and my brother’s arrival.” 

“Ah, that won’t be necessary,” Sanji says with an apologetic chuckle. “I must depart by dusk. I have to meet up with the rest of my party. I’ve only come to drop Zoro off, or he’d be lost for days.”

Perona’s eyes glitter as she laughs behind her hand.

“At least allow us to give you fresh clothing and package you a meal, Your Highness,” Hiyori says as she and her brother come to meet with them. She curtsies and blushes when Sanji kisses the back of her hand. 

“I wouldn’t want to trouble a beautiful lady,” Sanji says, turning to Momo and giving him a bow as well. “Your Majesty.”

Without another word, Perona and Hiyori sequester them for a fitting, finding tunics and trousers and boots and even armor for Zoro. While all this happens, Perona interrogates him, both women gasping when he tells them Yubashiri has shattered. Though he does refrain from going too into detail about his fight with Niji.

“I have the perfect solution to this,” Hiyori says with a giggle in her voice, clapping her small hands together before she wanders off. 

“She does this a lot,” Momo says, looking the least bit affected by his younger sister’s antics. “What brings you to Wano, Zoro? Not that we aren’t glad to see you again. It’s been too long.”

“About that,” Zoro starts, rubbing at the back of his neck. He turns to Perona, who’s scrutinizing the forest green of his new tunic. “Mihawk wants me to take over Kuraigana.”

She looks at him, an eyebrow raised. She hands him a deep blue tunic and gestures for him to take his current one off. Apparently, this color will go better with his new breastplate.

“I think you should take over instead,” Zoro continues. He turns to Momo who’s already looking at him, his eyebrows raised. “Our families are already in alliance. This can only strengthen that.”

“And what will you do?” Perona asks, crossing her arms in front of her chest.

Zoro hesitates, refusing to look in Sanji’s direction to avoid his sister making any assumptions. Or not assumptions, since they’re partially true. 

“I don’t know,” he admits. “I just know that’s not what I want.”

Sanji clears his throat, stepping away from them to feign ignorance to their conversation by fixating on his reflection in the mirror. Zoro’s saved from staring at him and the deep purple tunic he now wears and how it makes his golden hair stand out more. The doors burst open and Hiyori strolls in, a familiar sword in her hands.

Her teal hair is up in an intricate updo, but her forelocks fall into her dark eyes as she looks up at Zoro, extending the sword to him. “Enma!” She grins. “Enma will serve you just as well as Yubashiri did. My father would have wanted it this way.”

Enma sings when he unsheathes it, a beast just like Kitetsu. He feels its energy pulse in his grip, riding up the length of his arm like a current. He looks at Hiyori, at Perona, at Momo. And then at Sanji. 

"Thank you," he murmurs, the words lost as both women grow excited and start to lead them all towards the dining halls. 

Goodbyes aren’t Zoro’s things. He’s wandered a lot, has always been away from home as soon as he’d been old enough to do so. Naturally, he waits for Perona to be distracted with her wife before he slips out of the palace, Enma at his hip with Wado and Kitetsu.

The sky turns pink and lilac as the sun begins to set. The cherry blossom trees at the front courtyard drop pale pink petals like snowflakes as he hurries towards the gates. Even from here he can hear Hiyori begin to play her shamisen and he smiles, knowing that she will placate his sister when she finds out Zoro’s left.

Out in the streets, Zoro turns his head from left to right before he makes a choice. He’s taken a couple of steps before he hears:

“Wrong way, idiot moss.”

Zoro whirls around to see Sanji staring at him. He looks beautiful in the fine tunic and trousers, the belt around his hip to store the new dagger Momo gifted him. Zoro takes the few steps it takes to stand by Sanji’s side.

"And where are you going?" Sanji asks, shifting his weight from one leg to the other, adjusting the pack Hiyori gave him.

Zoro doesn't respond. It should be obvious; it should have always been obvious to the both of them. He leans forward, his forehead pressed to Sanji's, their breaths intermingling, lips barely brushing. He closes his eye, feels like this is exactly what he's supposed to be doing.

He takes Sanji’s hand in his.