Archive of Our Own

Every Next Time Hereafter 

“I have an invitation for you here,” Capone Bege said, holding out a card with Big Mom’s jolly roger stamped across the back. His thick fingers held it like it was already decided, like Zoro reaching for it or refusing it would make no difference at all. “For Mama’s Tea Party, you see. The main event this time is a wedding. The groom is Vinsmoke Sanji, third son of the Vinsmoke family. The bride, Pudding, thirty-fifth daughter of the Charlotte family.”

Zoro sat across the table from Bege with a confused furrow to his brow. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Behind him, Brook, Nami, and Chopper gasped and started talking over one another, chains clinking as they shifted. Zoro tuned most of it out. He kept his eyes on Bege, waiting for the part where this began making sense.

Everyone still had a gun on them, or else they wouldn’t even be in this predicament. Zoro could cut plenty of them down. But they were packed inside Bege’s space, surrounded on all sides, with Nami, Chopper, and Brook chained behind him. He could move first. He couldn’t guarantee he’d move fast enough. That was the only reason they were sitting in Bege’s castle instead of leaving pieces of the Fire Tank Pirates across Zou’s dirt, and it grated at Zoro so hard his teeth hurt. 

Capone Bege had eaten the Castle Castle Fruit, which turned his body into a fortress that could house people who shrank automatically when they reached the door. He’d been full of Fire Tank Pirates who’d poured out and surrounded Zoro and Brook before Zoro had known how many pirates he was really facing. Then Nami and Chopper had gotten captured, and Caesar, too – though Zoro couldn’t make himself care about Caesar except as a possible problem – and they’d been forced inside Bege’s castle for a talk. 

Now Zoro sat in an overdone dining room with polished wood, heavy chairs, gaudy chandeliers, and armed men pressed along the walls. He was being told that Sanji was getting married. And considering Zoro was currently occupying Sanji’s body – the same body he knew by touch, by breath, by the way Sanji curled toward warmth in his sleep and kicked like a bastard when startled – this whole thing was fucked up. 

Zoro’s hand tightened on the edge of the table. Sanji would never agree to marry someone else. Not after the way he looked at Zoro when he thought Zoro wasn’t paying attention. Not after the way he curled a hand into Zoro’s shirt after a bad fight and acted irritated when Zoro noticed. If someone was talking about a wedding, then someone had found a way to make Sanji’s answer stop mattering.

The worst part was that Sanji wasn’t even here to hear it. His name, his family, his body, his future – all of it laid out across Bege’s table like paperwork. Zoro sat in Sanji’s body and had to answer for him. 

He still hadn’t gotten used to the body. It was too light in the wrong places, strong in different ones, balanced for legs first instead of sword first. His center sat wrong. His reach felt wrong. His hands looked wrong around Wado’s hilt. The cigarette smell clung to the jacket and shirt, and every time he moved, Sanji’s hair slid annoyingly into his vision. Now some asshole was looking at him like he was Sanji, talking about Sanji’s family, Sanji’s marriage, Sanji’s obligation. 

“Your family, the Vinsmokes, arranged the marriage with the Charlottes,” Bege said. “And once that happens, the Straw Hats will come under Big Mom’s control.” 

“Like hell we will.” Zoro slammed his hand down on the table hard enough to rattle it. “Luffy’s going to become King of the Pirates, and the Straw Hats are never going to be part of Big Mom’s crew. You can take your invitation and stuff it up your ass.” 

A few of Bege’s men stiffened. One of the guns shifted toward Zoro. 

Bege didn’t even blink. He set the invitation on the table between them, then drew out a cigar as calmly as if Zoro hadn’t just threatened him in his own body. “It seems you have the wrong idea.” 

“I don’t.”

“You think you have an option.” Bege lit the cigar, the end glowing orange. Smoke curled from his mouth. “You’re already captured. And I control what happens in here.”

The tablecloth in front of Zoro snapped up like a living thing and wrapped around his throat.

Zoro moved on instinct. Wado cleared its sheath, white hilt solid in his hand. He sliced the cloth in half before it could tighten properly, then kicked his chair back and started to rise.

Behind him, Nami screamed.

Zoro turned.

The floor beneath her had opened. It was pulling her down, swallowing her legs, her hips, then her waist. Chopper lunged toward her and got yanked short by his own chains. Brook shouted her name, bones rattling hard enough to scrape.

“Let her go!” Zoro demanded.

“I would suggest sheathing that sword of yours, Mr. Vinsmoke,” Bege said coolly.

The name hit like a hand to the back of Zoro’s head. 

Mr. Vinsmoke.

Sanji’s body went tight around him. Or maybe that was just Zoro. He couldn’t tell anymore. His fingers flexed around Wado’s hilt, every part of him ready to cut the room open and deal with the consequences afterward.

Nami sank another inch. Zoro ground his teeth until his jaw ached, then slid Wado back into its sheath.

The floor pushed Nami up again. She landed on solid wood, breathing hard, hair mussed, eyes wide with fury and fear.

Zoro sat back down slowly. His hands curled into fists on his knees.

Bege inclined his head. “See? That wasn’t so difficult.”

Zoro looked back once. Nami was shaken, but unharmed. Chopper had both hooves on her arm. Brook sat rigid beside them, skull tilted toward Zoro in silent warning. Zoro faced Bege again. Every person in the room was still breathing because Zoro’s crew was behind him.

“No matter how much you struggle, you can’t escape this invitation,” Bege said.

“Indeed,” one of the other Fire Tank Pirates said. Vito, Zoro remembered. Long tongue. Tattoo on his forehead. A creepy way of moving too close.

“If you get an invitation to Big Mom’s Tea Party-lelo, it’s an absolute summons,” Vito said. “As they say, even the demons in hell dare not miss Mama’s Tea Party.”

“I’m not a demon,” Zoro said. “And I don’t go where I’m told.”

Vito smiled wider. It looked worse than if he’d gotten angry. He leaned closer to Zoro, close enough that Zoro could smell his breath. Zoro’s hand twitched toward his sword again.

“You are free not to go, natural-lolelo,” Vito whispered. “However…” His tongue flicked over his teeth. “Mama will remove the head of someone you know should you refuse. Perhaps Miss Camie-lelo. Or Miss Conis. Or someone from Momoiro Kingdom. Mama’s reach is long-lelo.”

Zoro went still. The room narrowed. Camie, laughing too loud and too easy. Conis, standing on Skypiea with the wind in her hair. Momoiro meant nothing to him, but the way Vito said it made his skin prickle. Another name Sanji would know. Another place Big Mom had no business reaching. People who had helped them. People who weren’t here. People who wouldn’t even know why death had come for them.

Fuck.

He didn’t doubt Vito’s words. Big Mom was an Emperor. If she wanted someone dead, distance wouldn’t matter much. Territory wouldn’t matter much. A threat like that wasn’t meant to be fair. It was meant to make refusing cost more than obedience.

There was no way Zoro could refuse and live with himself. Sanji couldn’t either. Luffy wouldn’t. Any of them would walk into the trap before letting someone else lose their head over a tea party invitation.

“You let them go,” Zoro said, voice low, “and I’ll come with you without any problems.”

Nami sucked in a breath behind him.

Bege smiled across the table. “You believe you can make demands?”

Zoro moved before the last word finished. The chair went over behind him. He crossed the space in a blink, grabbed Caesar by the front of his clothes, and shoved him back hard enough that the scientist yelped. Wado came free and pressed against Caesar’s neck. The blade kissed pale skin just below his jaw.

The room erupted. Guns cocked from every direction. Men shouted. Chopper called his name and caught himself halfway through. Nami swore. Caesar made a thin, pathetic sound in his throat and tried to lift his hands without touching the blade.

Zoro held steady. Sanji’s body was different, but a throat was still a throat. A hostage was still a hostage. And Caesar, unfortunately for everyone else in the room, mattered.

“You need this one alive or Big Mom’s gonna be pissed, right?” Zoro said. “I’ll take his head off before you kill us, and then you’ll be the one who pays.”

Caesar trembled against the edge of Wado. “Don’t drag me into this!”

“Shut up,” Zoro said.

Bege’s expression hardened. Smoke spilled from his cigar in a slow, angry stream. For a few seconds, nobody moved. Zoro could feel the guns on him. He could feel every line of fire, every possible first shot, every body behind him he had to keep breathing. 

Then Bege lifted one hand. The guns lowered.

“Very clever, Mr. Vinsmoke,” Bege said.

Zoro’s lip curled.

“Very well. You come willingly, and I’ll release your crewmates.”

“Zor– Sanji!” Nami shouted. “What are you doing?”

Zoro didn’t look back right away. He couldn’t. If he looked at them too long, Chopper would look scared and Brook would look guilty and Nami would look like he was being stupid while trying to calculate a way out that didn’t exist. 

“Making sure you guys are safe,” Zoro said, keeping the blade against Caesar’s throat. “Tell Luffy I’ll catch up as soon as I deal with this shit. And make sure Zoro doesn’t do anything stupid.”

Zoro glanced back. Nami’s face was pale, but her eyes were sharp. She knew what he meant. Sanji, in Zoro’s body, with Zoro taken and Big Mom involved, would burn through caution fast. Chopper looked like he might cry and fight every gun in the room at the same time. Brook’s hands were clenched, though he couldn’t do anything with the chains still on him.

“Now let them go,” Zoro said, turning back to Bege. He pressed Wado a fraction closer to Caesar’s neck. A thin line of red appeared under the blade. “Or this clown gets a lot shorter.” 

Caesar whimpered louder. Bege stared at him. Zoro stared back. Finally, Bege nodded. “A deal is a deal.”

The floor beneath Nami, Chopper, and Brook opened all at once.

Zoro’s heart kicked hard before he realized they weren’t being swallowed deeper into the castle. They were launched outward instead, shoved through an opening in Bege’s fortress body and out into the dirt beyond. For one brief second, Zoro caught sight of daylight, churned ground, and the huge shape of Nekomamushi waiting outside.

Nami hit first, rolling. Chopper bounced, then scrambled upright. Brook landed in a long-limbed sprawl and popped back up with a rattle. Nekomamushi’s fur bristled, and his mouth opened in a roar Zoro couldn’t hear from inside.

The opening sealed. Zoro breathed once through his nose. Safe. For now. He kept Wado at Caesar’s throat until Bege spoke again.

“I’ve kept my end,” Bege said. “Now keep yours.”

Zoro’s fingers tightened around the hilt. Every part of him wanted to cut Caesar anyway. Cut Bege. Cut through the walls and find his way out by force. He’d done stupider things and survived them. But Camie’s face sat behind his eyes. Conis, too. Nami on the floor, halfway swallowed. Chopper chained and helpless. Brook with guns on him.

He sheathed Wado. The sound of the blade sliding home felt like losing ground. It wasn’t surrender, he told himself. It was choosing the next fight.

“I’ll come,” Zoro said. “But I’m not marrying anyone.”

Bege chuckled. “We shall see.”

“No,” Zoro said. “You won’t.”

For the first time, Bege’s smile thinned a little. “Vito,” Bege said, still watching Zoro. “Show our guest to a room until we reach the ship.”

“Very well-elo.” Vito gestured sharply. “Come along, Vinsmoke.”

Zoro stood. Sanji’s legs moved under him, long and narrow and too ready to kick instead of brace. He forced himself to walk instead of lunging. The Fire Tank Pirates watched him. Guns followed him. Caesar rubbed his throat and glared like any of this had been unfair to him personally. Zoro ignored him. 

Vinsmoke.

The name stayed in his head as he followed Vito out of the dining room and into the narrow passage beyond. It didn’t fit Sanji. It didn’t fit the man who cooked for them, yelled at them, fed them, starved himself before he let anyone else go hungry. Sanji had never mentioned it. Never said he had another father. Never said there was a family out there with enough reach to arrange a marriage with an Emperor.

Zoro had thought Zeff was his father. Apparently, that was wrong. Or maybe it wasn’t. Blood and family weren’t always the same thing. Zoro knew that well enough. But Sanji had hidden this. From all of them. From Luffy.

From him.

What other secrets had Sanji been hiding? 

Zoro’s jaw tightened. That last part pissed him off more than it should have. But now was not the time for hurt feelings. He shoved them down because they weren’t useful. Later, when he was back in his own body, when Sanji was in front of him and not trapped somewhere else unaware that his name had just dragged Zoro toward Big Mom, then Zoro could decide whether to punch him, yell at him, or ask why the hell he’d kept this buried.

For now, he had Sanji’s body, Sanji’s name, Sanji’s unwanted marriage, and a threat aimed at people the Straw Hats had once protected. Zoro could play his part and keep everyone safe. He’d keep Sanji breathing, keep Sanji out of Big Mom’s hands, and when he got back to the idiot cook, he was going to demand every answer Sanji had been stupid enough to keep from him. 

But he sure as hell wasn’t getting married.

Law was an asshole.

The sail between Punk Hazard and Dressrosa was long enough for injuries to close, plans to get argued into something halfway workable, and everyone to rest before the next island tried to kill them. In Zoro’s and Sanji’s case, it also gave them a few stretches of private time. Private being the important word. 

Law kept walking in on them.

The first time, Sanji had thrown a shoe at his head and yelled something about knocking. The second time, Zoro had reached for a sword before remembering he was naked and the sword was on the other side of the room. The third time, Law had stood there with the same dead-eyed expression he turned on everyone and told them other people wanted to use the bath.

The fourth time, he apparently decided patience was a virtue he no longer possessed and switched their bodies.

One second, Zoro was himself. The next, the room lurched, his weight shifted wrong, his hair fell over one eye, and Sanji’s voice came out of his mouth when he cursed. Sanji, meanwhile, stood in Zoro’s body, staring down at himself with an expression caught somewhere between outrage and fascination.

Zoro became Sanji. Sanji became Zoro.

At first, it wasn’t much of a problem. They did what any two horny twenty-one-year-old men in a relationship would do after getting shoved into each other’s bodies: they locked the door properly and tested the situation.

The answer was mostly that sex was still sex. Good, distracting, messy, familiar in the parts that mattered and strange in the parts that didn’t. Zoro was still Zoro, even if he was lankier, lighter, and dealing with a different dick. Sanji was still Sanji, even with Zoro’s shoulders and scars and the ridiculous smugness he developed once he realized Zoro could hear exactly what he sounded like from the outside.

Sanji spent a lot of time with Zoro’s chest, which wasn’t usual. Zoro didn’t complain. He could have gone the rest of his life without hearing his own voice wrecked and breathless in the throes of passion, but Sanji seemed to enjoy that part so much that Zoro decided the humiliation was worth it.

For a while, it was funny. Annoying, but funny.

Then they arrived at Dressrosa, and Luffy launched half of them off the ship before Law could change them back.

After that, everything went to hell the usual way. Shusui got stolen by a fairy. Zoro got separated from the group. Dressrosa turned into too many streets, too many stairs, and a stupid amount of running. Sanji’s legs were fast once Zoro got them moving right. They ate up cobblestones in long, sharp strides, better at kicking off walls and cutting through crowds than Zoro wanted to admit. His lungs were shit, though.

Zoro got Shusui back, found out enough about Doflamingo’s plot to know the island was rotten all the way through, and eventually ran into Sanji and Kin’emon. Seeing his own body across the street, moving with Sanji’s temper and Sanji’s hands and Sanji’s stupid worried mouth, made the whole thing feel wrong all over again. But they didn’t have time to deal with it.

It was decided that Zoro would go to the Sunny while Kin’emon and Sanji went to rescue Luffy from the Colosseum. Zoro didn’t like splitting up again while they were still switched, but nobody had the time or space to stand around arguing about bodies when Doflamingo had the entire island rigged like a trap.

Shit kept moving. Fast. Zoro ended up leaving with the group on the Sunny for Zou. Still in Sanji’s body. Still wearing Sanji’s face. Still unable to fight his best.

Sanji was strong. Zoro had always known that. He knew it better now, stuck inside the body that could kick through stone, spring off bad footing, twist midair, and keep moving after hits that would put weaker men flat on the ground. But strength wasn’t the same as fit. Sanji’s body had been built by Sanji’s training, Sanji’s habits, Sanji’s fights. It wasn’t built for Zoro’s.

He didn’t have the jaw for three-sword style. Holding Wado between Sanji’s teeth felt unstable and wrong, the bite pressure off, the neck support wrong, the angle bad enough to make every strike feel weaker than it should. He didn’t have Zoro’s upper body muscle or the same reach through the shoulders. He could still use his katanas – two of them, mostly – but the rhythm fought him. Muscle memory tried to drag him into movements Sanji’s body couldn’t complete. Training that should have been automatic turned into calculation – footing, grip, balance, breath, adjust. Every fight took more thought than it should have.

They still made it to Zou. They still helped the Minks. They still did what Straw Hats did when they found people hurt and a place half-destroyed: they got involved, fixed what they could, and waited for the rest of the crew to catch up.

Zoro had almost convinced himself the worst of the body-swap mess would wait until Luffy arrived and Law could finally undo it. Then Capone Bege showed up, and everything went to hell again.

Totto Land was a series of islands in a cluster made up of nothing but sweets. Chopper would have loved it. Zoro felt like his teeth were rotting out of his head just from breathing.

The trip took about a week. Zoro spent most of it in a fancy stateroom with heavy curtains, too much polished furniture, and Caesar locked in the cell in the corner complaining like a man who hadn’t gotten exactly what he deserved. Zoro was allowed on deck, got to keep his swords, and used every spare hour to practice with Sanji’s body. It helped. Some.

Sanji’s legs learned fast, or maybe Zoro was finally learning how to use them without trying to make them work like his own. He could draw smoothly now. Cut faster. Brace better before a strike. He still missed the weight in his shoulders, the bite of Wado between his teeth, the simple fact of his own body answering before he had to think. But he could fight. If anyone tried to take the swords from him, they’d find that out fast.

He’d also been given a picture of Charlotte Pudding. The stupid ero-cook would’ve gone heart-eyed over her in half a second. Sanji was serious about their relationship. Zoro knew that. He knew Sanji’s loyalty in the way Sanji came back to him after every fight, in the way Sanji always found him afterward even when he acted like it was by accident, in the way Sanji could flirt with a woman and still know exactly where Zoro was standing. Sanji was loyal. He was also a slobbering idiot when it came to women.

Zoro wasn’t jealous. Jealousy required thinking Sanji would actually choose someone else, and Zoro had never been that stupid. The problem was that Sanji would see big eyes, a pretty face, and boobs, and his brain would fall straight out of his head. Which meant Zoro had to be suspicious enough for both of them.

Vito filled the rest of the trip with talk about some comic strip about the evil army of Germa, which was apparently based on the Vinsmoke family. He talked like he expected Zoro to be impressed. Or proud. Or at least interested. 

Zoro couldn’t connect Sanji with any of it. The armies. The science. The conquest. The cruelty Vito kept dressing up like a story kids were supposed to enjoy. Sanji could be ferocious in a fight. He could be mean, sharp-mouthed, vain, and impossible. But he wasn’t cruel. He fed hungry people. He protected strangers who hadn’t earned it. He put himself between danger and anyone weaker before he stopped to think.

Maybe that was why Sanji had never mentioned them. But thinking about it wouldn’t get him anywhere. So Zoro shoved it aside again and worked through more katas. 

By the time they reached Cacao Island, he was already sick of sweets, sick of being watched, and sick of everyone talking about marriage like he’d agreed to anything.

The island was made of chocolate. Chocolate streets, chocolate walls, chocolate roofs, chocolate signs, chocolate fountains, chocolate everything. The air smelled thick and sugary, and the ground looked like it would melt under the wrong weather. Zoro stood there with his swords at his hip, Sanji’s hair in his eye, and Pudding cooing at him like he was supposed to be moved by it.

“I know this isn’t what either of us wanted, but we can make the best of it,” she said, big eyes watery as she tried to clasp Zoro’s hands. 

Zoro took another step back. “Not happening. I’m not going to marry you.”

Pudding’s eyes narrowed slightly, anger flashing through the tears before she covered it with a sob. “If only that were true and we could both be free!”

Zoro stared at her in horror. “Why are you crying? Stop that.”

“I can’t help it! I’m so distraught!” Pudding threw herself at him, clamping her arms around his middle and getting snot on Sanji’s shirt. “Mama is insistent this marriage will go through. She wants the Vinsmokes to become part of the family.”

“Gah! Get off me.” Zoro tried to shove her away without sending her clear across the room. He’d never hear the end of it if he hurt her.

Pudding clung harder. “We need to work together. Be united.”

“I’m not uniting anything with you.” Zoro planted a hand on her teary face and pushed her away with less gentleness than Sanji would have used and more restraint than Zoro wanted to use. Sanji would just have to deal.

Pudding sniffed loudly, finally releasing him and stepping back. “A true gentleman would support his intended in her time of need.”

Zoro snorted. “I’m no gentleman, and we’re not getting married.”

More tears spilled from Pudding’s eyes. “If you can put a stop to it, I would be forever grateful! But if you can’t, surely you can see we could be good for one another. I am a baker. You are a chef. We could create the perfect kitchen together.”

Zoro wanted to gag. “Someone else is already in my kitchen, and I have no plans on changing that.”

“Oh.” Pudding’s mouth wobbled. “I’m so happy for you.”

She burst into sobs again and tried to fling herself at him.

This time, Zoro dodged. Pudding flopped onto the chocolate-shaving grass with an ooof.

“Okay, we’re done,” Zoro said. He turned toward the shoreline, where Vito and Gotti waited. They’d thought this sneak peek at Pudding would entice him, which meant they were idiots. The cook might have fallen for her tears. Zoro could tell it was a ruse. She wanted something from him. He didn’t plan on finding out what.

Vito and Gotti escorted him back aboard the Fire Tank Pirates’ ship, and they continued the journey to Lake Aprico, off Whole Cake Island.

Whole Cake Island was, unsurprisingly, made mostly of cake with a lot of garish frosting. The floating kingdom behind it was harder to ignore.

Germa Kingdom rose out of the water like someone had taken a child’s storybook castle, made it military, and set it on top of a floating fortress. White stone walls stretched across the sea, broad and high, with round gunports cut into the lower levels and dark seams where the structure met the water. Turrets crowded behind the walls in uneven ranks, their pointed roofs striped and tiled, flags snapping from the towers. The largest castle sat in the center, pale and oversized, with a skull emblem on the main tower and the number sixty-six flying above it in black.

The longer Zoro looked, the less it felt like a castle and the more it felt like a weapon pretending to be one. The walls were too clean. The towers had too many sightlines. The whole thing sat on the water with the cold confidence of something that could move, surround, and crush whatever it wanted. 

Capone Bege himself escorted Zoro onto the dock connecting the kingdom to the shore. A line of identical soldiers in black uniforms stood at attention on either side, faces blank, posture matched so closely they barely looked like separate men.

“I bid you good luck, Mr. Vinsmoke,” Bege said, doffing his hat. “And happy nuptials.”

“Not getting married,” Zoro said.

Bege only smirked and departed.

Zoro thought about turning on his heel and getting out of there. The dock was open behind him. The ship was still close enough. He had his swords, Sanji’s legs, and a strong urge to cut things. 

Then he thought about Conis and Camie.

He squared his shoulders and marched ahead.

Sanji greeted him in front of the main castle. 

Except it wasn’t Sanji because Zoro was Sanji right now, but the guy wore Sanji’s face. He was broader through the shoulders, thicker with muscle, and his hair was a harsh, bright green that made the resemblance look worse somehow. The eyebrows curled the wrong direction. He was missing Sanji’s sharp little goatee, the one the vain idiot kept trimmed like it mattered to the entire world. But the slant of the nose was the same. The cheekbones Zoro had spent hours touching were the same. The mouth had the same thin shape, curved into a smirk Zoro had seen on Sanji a hundred times. 

It bothered Zoro – a lot.

“Hey, failure,” the green-haired Sanji sneered. “Welcome back. Father’s finally found a use for your useless self.” 

Zoro didn’t know who this asshole was yet, but he knew he didn’t like him. He especially didn’t like him wearing Sanji’s face. “What do you want?” 

“Aw, didn’t you miss your little brother?” The smirk widened. Zoro wanted to punch it off him and see if the face looked less wrong afterward. “We had such good times together.” 

“Uh-huh.” Zoro didn’t believe that for a second. Nothing about this place looked like it had ever given Sanji a good time. “Again, what do you want?” 

“I’m to escort you to your room until Father has time to talk to you.” Green Sanji turned and started walking like Zoro was supposed to follow on command. “We tried to talk him into sticking you back in the dungeon, but we’ve been told to play nice until the wedding.” 

Every fiber of Zoro’s body went tight. “The dungeon,” he repeated.

Green Sanji chuckled, low and mean. “Everything’s the same as you left it down there, waiting for your return. Even your little eighth-birthday drawing you stuck on the wall. Thought Father had gone soft in the head for letting you leave, but he said you were a waste of resources as well as space.” He glanced back, eyes bright with cruel amusement. “Guess a waste of space can be put to use sometimes, eh?” 

All the air left Zoro’s lungs.

Eighth birthday.

Sanji had spent his eighth birthday in a dungeon.

Zoro settled a hand on Wado’s hilt. He could draw before Green Sanji took another breath. He could cut through him, through the soldiers, through the steps, through the front of this castle if he had to. He could start with the face and keep going until nothing in this kingdom looked like Sanji anymore.

Think of Camie. His grip tightened. Think of Conis.

Zoro forced his hand away from the sword and put one foot in front of the other.

Green Sanji led him inside the castle. The interior was worse than the outside. The place had size and money, but none of the warmth that should have come with rooms people actually lived in. The walls were pale stone and hard angles. The floors were polished enough to reflect boots and banners, but the shine only made everything colder. Identical soldiers stood at intervals along the hall, black uniforms pressed sharp, faces blank, hands still at their sides. Germa flags hung between portraits of conquest: ships burning, armies kneeling, kings dragged down under a man in a metal helmet.

Sanji had grown up with this on the walls.

Zoro kept walking. They climbed one curving staircase, then another. The higher they went, the more the sounds changed. Less water. More boots. More distant orders. Somewhere outside, men shouted in formation, and metal struck metal in a rhythm too perfect to be a real fight. 

Green Sanji brought him down a long hall to an iron door that looked more like a cell entrance than a bedroom door. He opened it and gave Zoro an exaggerated little gesture inside. “Home sweet home.”

Zoro stepped past him. The room was a large bedchamber, dressed up like comfort had been assigned by someone who had only heard about it. There was a king-sized bed under heavy drapery, a writing desk, a wardrobe, a sitting area, and enough expensive fabric to smother a smaller room. Open glass doors led out to a balcony overlooking the courtyard. Through them, Zoro could hear soldiers drilling below, boots striking in unison, commands snapping up from the ground.

A woman sat in one of the fancy chairs beneath a portrait of a large man standing on the severed heads of four kings. She had pink hair, curled eyebrows, and a ruffled white dress that looked too soft for the room around her. Her face had the same family shape as the others. Sanji’s nose. Sanji’s cheekbones. The same narrow mouth, though hers held itself with more control. Her eyes moved over him carefully.

There were also ten handmaidens in the room, dressed the same, though they, at least, all looked different in the body and face. Zoro ignored them. 

“Here you go, Reiju,” Green Sanji said. “He’s here all in one piece.”

Reiju shifted in the chair. “It’s nice to see you can obey the smallest of orders, Yonji.”

Green Sanji – Yonji, then – sneered at her. “I don’t have to do anything you say.”

“And yet, you did.” Reiju smiled. It was not nice. “Now run off and go play with the soldiers or something. I’d like to talk to Sanji alone.”

Yonji folded his arms, scowling like a child with too much muscle and too little sense. “Don’t boss me around.” 

“It was merely a suggestion,” Reiju said, examining her nails. “Unless you’d like to stay and visit with our long-lost brother.”

“Tch. Not if I can’t punch his face in.”

Zoro’s hand twitched again. Yonji noticed. His grin came back.

Reiju’s eyes flicked briefly to the hand, then to Yonji. “Leave.”

For a second, Yonji looked like he might argue. Then he rolled his shoulders and turned for the door. “Have fun catching up. Try not to cry too much, failure.”

He left, leaving the bedchamber door open behind him.

Reiju rose to her feet. “It’s good to see you, little brother. Thirteen years is a long time.”

Zoro fixed his expression into something dark and flat. “I have no interest in catching up.” Not with people who locked a kid in a dungeon and talked about it like an old family joke. 

“No,” Reiju said, smoothing one hand down the front of her dress. “I suppose you don’t.” 

She crossed the room with the light, careful steps. Her gaze moved over him again, too sharp to be simple curiosity. Hair. Face. Hands. Swords. The way he stood. Zoro held still and let her look. If she noticed anything wrong, she didn’t say it. 

“Though I don’t understand why you bother skulking under the radar with that little pirate band,” Reiju said, “when you could be taking advantage of your royal blood and enjoying your life.” 

Zoro’s eyes narrowed. “That little pirate band is my crew.” 

“You’re royalty, brother,” she said, dismissing the point with a small turn of her wrist. “Let soldiers do the fighting. Let servants handle the work. You have no money to worry over, no need to scrape by in kitchens, no reason to keep chasing trouble across the sea. The Vinsmokes have earned that right through sheer power over generations, and you have that blood in your veins.” 

Royalty. Sanji was royalty. 

Another fact about Sanji’s life that he hadn’t shared. Another piece of him sitting in plain sight for everyone except the people who actually loved him. Though Zoro was getting a very clear picture as to why Sanji had cut this place out of himself and left the wound covered. 

He looked around the room again. The portrait. The polished furniture. The soldiers drilling beyond the balcony. The iron door. “What sort of royal family sticks one of their own in a dungeon as a kid?”

Reiju’s expression changed, only for a second. Pain moved through her face before she folded it away, fast and practiced, into a pleasant smile that made Zoro trust her even less. “You’re here now, and that’s what matters. And you’re getting married. Isn’t that wonderful?”

Zoro ground his teeth. “I’m not getting married.” 

“Are you still complaining, boy?”

The voice came from behind him, deep and booming, the kind of voice that expected soldiers, civilians, and children to obey.

Zoro turned. A tall, imposing man stood in the doorway. He wore a military general’s uniform, broad and severe, with armor worked into it. A mask covered half his face. His mustache pointed upward, ridiculous and sharp, and a thick mane of blond hair fell down his back like a second cape. 

Zoro knew who he was before anyone said his name. Sanji’s father. The blood one. Not the one Sanji claimed.

“My son,” the man said, stepping into the room. “You will be getting married the day after tomorrow, and that is the end of it.” 

Zoro’s hand flexed toward his swords. So this was the bastard who’d built the dungeon. The man who had kept Sanji locked away on his eighth birthday. The man Sanji had carried around in his blood without ever saying the name. “No, I’m not. This whole thing is stupid. You can’t force people to get married.”

The man’s mouth curved. It was worse than Yonji’s smirk because it had patience in it. Confidence. He wasn’t baiting Zoro for fun. He was applying pressure exactly where he thought it would work.

“Perhaps we should call that chef in the East Blue and ask his opinion.”

Zoro went very still. Vinsmoke noticed.

“Or perhaps he’d like an extended stay in the dungeon,” Vinsmoke said. “I already have a ship stationed near that floating restaurant. Baratie, was it?” His smile sharpened. “It’s been a while since I tortured a man properly.”

Zoro’s blood went cold. Zeff. Sanji’s real father, whatever blood said. The old man who’d given Sanji food, work, a dream, a name worth keeping. The man Sanji shouted about, complained about, respected, and loved so hard he pretended most of it was irritation. 

“You wouldn’t,” Zoro said.

Vinsmoke’s smile widened. “You already know I will if you don’t cooperate.”

Shit. He was serious. Zoro could hear it. See it. This wasn’t a bluff thrown out to make Sanji flinch. This was a man who had done worse and slept fine afterward. If Zoro pushed too hard here, Zeff would pay for it. There was no way Zoro could do that to Sanji. He wasn’t going to trade another man’s life for his pride, either.

For the first time since Bege’s invitation landed on the table, the thought hit with real weight.

He might actually have to get married.

Vinsmoke read his silence and took it for obedience. His smugness settled over the room like another locked door.

“I thought you’d see clearly.” He turned his head. “Reiju.”

“Yes, Father.”

Reiju stepped around Zoro. She had two gold bracelets in her hands. Zoro saw them and stepped back before she could touch him. 

“Sanji,” Vinsmoke said, voice low with warning. “It only takes one call.”

Zoro’s jaw clenched so hard it hurt. He extended his wrists. Reiju snapped a bracelet around each one. The metal closed with two soft, final clicks. “What are these?” Zoro asked.

Vinsmoke’s terrible smile returned. “Insurance. If you try to leave the island, they’ll explode. Modified slave collars, fitted for the wrists.” 

Zoro’s first instinct was to tear them off. He got two fingers under the edge of one bracelet and pulled. A sharp beep sounded from the metal.

Reiju’s hand caught his wrist, fast and tight. “Don’t.”

Zoro went still.

Vinsmoke smiled coldly. “Only Big Mom has the key to remove them.”

Zoro stared at the bracelets. Gold. Polished. Heavy enough to feel. Tight enough to remind him every time his hands moved. 

“Behave yourself as a proper Vinsmoke,” Vinsmoke said, “and perhaps you'll be allowed to keep your hands.”

Zoro’s breath caught.

“It’ll be difficult to cook without them,” Vinsmoke added. “And that’s still your disgusting, menial passion, no?”

The room tilted under Zoro’s feet.

His hands. Sanji’s hands.

The hands that made food out of almost nothing. The hands that lit cigarettes, tied ties, sharpened knives, shoved plates at starving people, and curled warm around Zoro’s wrist when Sanji wanted him to stay without saying it out loud. The hands Sanji protected more fiercely than almost anything else. Zoro had put them in danger. 

He looked down at the bracelets, horror moving through him so fast he almost missed Vinsmoke turning for the door.

“There will be an engagement bruncheon tomorrow,” Vinsmoke said. “I expect you to be prepared.”

Then he left.

Reiju looked briefly apologetic. “I’m sorry that it came to this. Just cooperate, and everything will be fine. No one will get hurt.”

With that, she left as well. 

Zoro stood there with his arms slightly raised, staring at the gold around Sanji’s wrists. A polite cough drew his attention. The handmaids were still present, lined up along the side of the room. “Get out,” he said, not caring how he sounded. 

The handmaids curtsied in a rush and hurried from the room. The door clicked shut behind them.

Alone, Zoro closed his eye. He bit the inside of his cheek hard enough to taste blood and fought the tremor trying to move through Sanji’s hands. Hands he had endangered.

“Fuck,” he breathed into the empty room.

He went to the nearest chair and sank down on the edge of it. The fancy wood creaked under him. He pressed the heel of one palm to his forehead, then stopped because the bracelet knocked lightly against his skin and made his stomach turn.

This was bad.

Big Mom had Camie and Conis hanging over him. Vinsmoke had Zeff. Bege had delivered him here like cargo. Sanji’s hands were strapped with explosives. The crew was split. Luffy was somewhere behind him, possibly in Dressrosa, possibly in Zou, possibly on the way to Wano with the alliance. Sanji was in Zoro’s body, and Zoro didn’t even know if he’d heard yet.

He imagined Sanji here. Actually here. Sanji standing in this room with Big Mom’s threat over his friends, Zeff’s life in his father’s hands, and explosive cuffs locked around his wrists. Sanji hearing dungeon jokes from a brother with his face. Sanji looking at the man who had hurt him as a child and being told to smile for a wedding.

Zoro had only caught a glimpse of it, and it gutted him.

Sanji would have been beside himself with fear for everyone else. He would have hidden it under insults and cigarettes and that brittle, fake kind of calm he used when he was ready to bleed for people. That self-sacrificial streak of his would have taken over fast. He would let them drag him to the altar if it meant Zeff lived, if it meant Camie and Conis kept their heads, if it meant the crew stayed out of the blast.

Zoro would have done the same. It was why they fit. Their values. The trust. The knowledge that, no matter what, they had each other’s backs. And Zoro had Sanji’s now. 

The fact that Zoro was here in Sanji’s place was a fluke. A stupid, Law-made, inconvenient, miserable fluke. And for the first time, Zoro thought he might thank the bastard for it. 

Because Sanji didn’t have to stand in this room. Sanji didn’t have to hear Yonji laugh about the dungeon. Sanji didn’t have to look down and see his own hands rigged to explode. Zoro was the one here instead, with Sanji’s body, Sanji’s name, and Sanji’s back, even if he had no idea how to get them out yet. 

There were two more brothers wearing Sanji’s face.

Zoro had been summoned to a family dinner, given dress clothes to wear, and instructions to be on time. He’d thought about making himself dirtier, but that would be petulant. So he washed up, put on the white shirt and black trousers, fixed his swords back at his side, then followed a waiting handmaid down to the dining room.

The dining hall was a large formal chamber with high walls, polished floors, and heavy Germa 66 banners hanging behind the main table. The central emblem showed the winged skull crest with the number sixty-six beneath it. Long dining tables were arranged across the floor, with a raised seat or throne-like chair positioned at the head of the room. Large maps stood near the walls, and uniformed soldiers were posted around the chamber. The décor was symmetrical and militaristic, with flags, drapery, rank-like spacing, and formal seating instead of family-style warmth.

Vinsmoke sat on the throne at the head of the room. Reiju, Yonji, and two more men with Sanji’s face sat around the dining table in numbered, half-ball-shaped chairs. Zoro’s chair had a three on the back. Once he heard the other two called Ichiji and Niji, it took him a second to understand the pattern. Ichi, Ni, San, Yon. One, two, three, four. They hadn’t just been assigned seats. They’d been named like inventory. 

The brothers started in on Sanji immediately. Zoro kept his head down, at the food placed in front of him, and reminded himself what was at stake. 

“So,” Yonji said, leaning back in his chair. “How long did you last on the sea before someone beat you bloody? A week?”

Niji snorted. “Generous.”

Ichiji picked up his glass. He had red hair, the same face, and the calmest expression at the table. “He joined a pirate crew. I assume getting beaten bloody was the point.”

“Maybe he liked it,” Niji said. “He always did spend more time on the floor than standing.”

Yonji laughed. “That’s true. Remember we’d tried to figure out which ditch we’d find him dead in?”

“And which end would be the most entertaining to us,” Niji said with a smirk.

Zoro cut into the food in front of him because if he looked up, he’d look at their throats. “You guys talk a lot.”

Niji’s smile sharpened. “That almost sounded brave.”

Yonji laughed. “He’s been gone too long. Forgot what happens when he opens his mouth.”

“He’ll remember,” Niji said. “They always do.”

Ichiji set his glass down with a quiet click. “In any case, Father found a use for you. That is more than anyone expected.”

Yonji grinned. “We’d all given up.”

“A Charlotte marriage,” Ichiji said. “Political value does have its uses, even when the material is defective.”

Zoro chewed once. Swallowed. Slowly. 

Material. 

Across the table, Reiju’s eyes flicked toward him, then away again.

Niji’s gaze dropped to the swords at Zoro’s side, and his mouth curled. “You brought swords to dinner?”

“Maybe he’s trying to look like a real fighter,” Yonji said.

“He could barely hold one properly,” Niji said. “Now he needs three?”

Ichiji’s eyes moved over the hilts with mild disinterest. “Three blades to compensate for one weak body.”

Yonji barked a laugh. “Still wouldn’t be enough.”

“It never was,” Niji said.

Zoro set his fork down carefully. He had to remind himself it wasn’t worth it. Camie. Conis. Zeff. Sanji’s hands.

Niji leaned forward, elbows on the table. “What, no comeback? Did the pirates teach you manners?”

“Maybe they taught him to know when he’s outmatched,” Yonji said.

“That would be new,” Ichiji said. “He never learned it as a child.”

Vinsmoke sat above them on the throne, eating without much interest in what was being said. The soldiers at the walls stayed still. The servants moved between plates and glasses with their heads bowed. Everything in the room kept running like this was normal. 

Zoro picked up his fork again.

The food was good. Sanji would have noticed the seasoning, the cut, the way the servants carried the trays, the way none of the people at the table seemed to care about the work that went into any of it. 

The meal dragged on. Ichiji spoke rarely, but every time he did, it landed sharp. Yonji filled the spaces with ugly laughter and easy insults. Niji kept circling back to weakness, to uselessness, to the old days like he was proud of every bruise he’d ever left.

Zoro kept eating. He didn’t argue. He didn’t rise to it. He didn’t draw his swords and cut every one of their tongues out like he wanted. 

By the end, every plate but Niji’s had been cleaned. Niji pushed his chair back slightly and looked down at his half-finished food with a curl of disgust. “This was awful.” 

Zoro looked at the plate. The food was barely touched. “Don’t waste food,” he said.

The table went quiet for half a second. Then Niji looked at him. “What?”

Zoro’s jaw tightened. “Don’t waste food.”

Niji glanced down at the plate again, then back at Zoro with slow, bright amusement. “It’s gross. It should go in the trash.”

“If you don’t want it,” Zoro said, “I’ll eat it.”

Yonji stared at him. Then he started laughing.

Niji’s smile spread. “You’ll eat it?”

Zoro held his gaze. “Yeah.”

Niji picked up the plate. Reiju’s hand tightened around her glass. Zoro saw it. He also saw Vinsmoke watching from the throne, expression flat and cold, waiting to see what Sanji would do. 

Niji turned the plate over. Food hit the polished floor in a wet, ugly slap. “Go ahead, dog.”

The room went silent.

Zoro stared at the food on the floor. For one second, every part of him went hot and still. He could slice off Niji’s wrist before anyone in the room moved. He could drive him through the table. He could make him swallow every word he’d said since Zoro walked in. 

Then the bracelets sat heavy on Sanji’s wrists. Zeff. Camie. Conis. Sanji’s hands. Sanji’s voice in his head, sharp and furious: Food isn’t something you throw away because you’re bored.

Zoro stood.

Yonji’s laughter cut off, then came back louder when he realized what Zoro was doing. Zoro stepped around the table, crouched, and picked up the food from the floor.

The first bite tasted like dirt, polish, and humiliation. He swallowed it anyway.

Niji laughed. Yonji slapped a hand on the table. “Look at him. He really is doing it.”

“Some things don’t change,” Ichiji said calmly. “He always belonged on the floor.”

Zoro picked up another piece. He didn’t look at them. He ate because Sanji would. Because Sanji had starved before. Because wasting food meant something in Sanji’s bones, and Zoro was standing there in Sanji’s body with Sanji’s hands locked in gold and Sanji’s past sitting around the table laughing. 

So Zoro let them laugh. Let them think they’d put Sanji where he belonged. He knew better. This wasn’t surrender. This was the line Sanji would never cross, and Zoro wouldn’t cross it for him. He swallowed his pride and ate the food off the floor.

Niji stood first. His chair scraped back. As he passed, he kicked Zoro hard in the side.

Zoro caught himself on his forearm and knee, keeping Sanji’s hand curled clear of the floor. The bracelet knocked against the polished surface with a small metallic sound. A sharp pain ran up Sanji’s ribs, but Zoro kept his head down. 

“Careful,” Niji said. “Dogs shouldn’t bite.”

Yonji laughed as he got up. “Welcome home again, Sanji.” 

Ichiji rose last. He looked down at Zoro with the same measured disinterest he’d worn all through dinner. “You look better there,” he said. “It suits you.”

Reiju stood, too. For one brief second, her eyes met Zoro’s. Whatever was in her face stayed locked behind her mouth. Then she left silently.

Vinsmoke remained on the throne.

Zoro stayed crouched on the floor, food still in his hand, because standing too fast would mean doing something he couldn’t take back.

“You see?” Vinsmoke said at last. “This is why I do not claim you as my child.”

Zoro’s hand closed around the food until it crushed between his fingers.

“My blood was wasted on you,” Vinsmoke continued. “You are only useful as a sacrifice. A pathetic display. A necessary offering for Germa’s future.” 

Zoro lifted his eyes. Vinsmoke looked down at him without a trace of shame. “Remember that, Sanji,” he said. “Your value begins and ends with this marriage.”

Then he rose from the throne and left the dining hall, soldiers falling into formation behind him.

Zoro stayed on the floor until the doors closed.

Then he swallowed the last bite.

Being with Sanji was the hardest and easiest thing Zoro had ever chosen. Hard because Sanji made everything difficult. Easy because Zoro had never once wanted to choose anything else. 

It happened after Water 7, after Enies Lobby, after they got Robin back, said goodbye to the Merry, and were waiting around for Franky to finish building their new ship. Sanji had been prepping dinner, sleeves rolled up, cigarette tucked into the corner of his mouth while he worked. Zoro sat nearby with a beer in hand, close enough to be in the way if Sanji decided to complain about it. The others were out and about in town, which meant the kitchen was quieter than usual. Just the scrape of Sanji’s knife, the clink of Zoro’s bottle against the table, and the distant noise of the shipyard outside. 

“Don’t think I’m going to forget you were worried about me,” Sanji said, cigarette tucked into the corner of his smirk. He said it like an insult. Like something he was going to hold over Zoro’s head. Like something Zoro should’ve been embarrassed about, considering how quickly he’d shut that down on the train.

But Zoro remembered hearing about CP-9. Remembered being told Sanji had been vastly outnumbered. Remembered the sick feeling it had put in his stomach, sharp and low and harder to ignore than pain. It hadn’t been worry. Worry was smaller. Easier to shove aside. This went much deeper than that. “I wasn’t there to watch your back.”

Sanji paused mid-grate with a block of cheese in his hand. His smirk faded by half an inch. “You know I can handle myself.”

“Yeah.” Zoro looked over at him. “But I still wasn’t there.”

Trust was a precious thing to Zoro. He didn’t do it easily. He trusted that Sanji could take care of himself. He trusted that Sanji would protect the others. He trusted that Sanji would be there if Zoro needed him. 

But if Sanji had needed him instead, Zoro wouldn't have been there.

Sanji stared at him for a long second. Then his eyes dropped back to the cutting board, though he didn’t start moving again. Smoke drifted around his face as he took several silent drags from his cigarette. The ash grew longer. Sanji didn’t flick it away.

“You’ll be there next time,” he eventually said, glancing up again, voice low and rough.

“I will.” Zoro met his gaze squarely, because looking away now would make it sound like less than a promise. “For every next time hereafter.”

Sanji’s mouth opened, then closed again. “You mean until Luffy finds the One Piece.”

“No,” Zoro said. “From hereafter, cook.”

The kitchen went quiet.

Zoro took a drink from his beer because there was nothing else to do with his hands. It was out there, and what Sanji did with it was up to him. Zoro could fight plenty of things. He couldn’t fight Sanji into wanting him back. He wouldn’t have wanted that anyway. 

Sanji turned back to the food after a moment, movements sharper than before. “Idiot swordsman.”

Zoro let that stand.

It took Sanji until Thriller Bark to answer. And his answer came with a kick to Zoro’s already aching head. “Hereafter isn’t supposed to end already, dipshit.” 

Zoro blinked up at him through the hurt.

Then Sanji kissed him. Hard. Furious. Alive.

Then he kicked Zoro again, less hard that time, and went off to cook because that was what Sanji did.

And Zoro had loved him ever since.

Zoro was back in the bedroom when steel cracked somewhere below. He lifted his head from where he’d been sitting on the edge of the bed, one hand near the bracelets and the other near Wado. At first, he thought it was a blade hitting armor. Then it came again, sharper this time, followed by laughter.

Zoro crossed to the open balcony doors. The courtyard below had been lit for evening drills. Lamps threw hard light over packed stone, training posts, and rows of identical soldiers moving through formations. Niji stood near the center with his jacket open and his hands loose at his sides, looking bored while a soldier came at him with a sword.

Niji didn’t dodge. The blade struck his shoulder and snapped. The soldier staggered back with half a sword in his hand. Niji laughed and kicked him across the courtyard hard enough to send him skidding over the stone.

Zoro’s fingers tightened on the balcony rail.

Another soldier rushed Yonji from the side. Yonji lifted his forearm. Steel hit skin, rang, bent, and broke at the edge. Yonji grinned, grabbed the soldier by the front of his uniform, and threw him into two others.

Zoro stared down at them. Sanji knew about this. He had to. These were his brothers. This was what he’d grown up around: bodies that broke blades, soldiers who kept attacking because they’d been ordered to, and laughter when someone hit the ground.

Hearing about Germa from Vito had been one thing. Watching a sword break against Niji’s shoulder was something else.

Zoro looked back into the room, where his swords waited within reach. He could cut steel. He’d cut worse than steel. But he wasn’t in his own body, and these weren’t training blades he could afford to lose proving a point. Sanji’s hands were cuffed with explosives. Zeff had a ship near him. Camie and Conis were still under Big Mom’s threat. A straight fight was a bad bet.

Below, Niji looked up. For a second, their eyes met across the courtyard.

Niji smiled, held out one hand, and let another soldier swing at him. The blade hit his palm. He closed his fingers around it, and the steel cracked in his grip.

Zoro’s jaw tightened. He understood the show now. The swords at dinner, the comments about needing three, the way Niji kept his eyes on him while the broken steel hit the courtyard stones. They wanted him to know exactly how useless they thought his blades were.

Yonji looked up, too, and laughed.

Zoro stepped back from the balcony before he did something stupid.

He didn’t sleep much that night. He rarely slept much at night anyway. Usually he trained, took watch, or dozed off somewhere inconvenient until someone yelled at him. But this time, he stayed awake because he was waiting for the brothers to show up, to take another turn with Sanji as their punching bag.

Part of him hoped they would come. He wanted the excuse. He wanted to put them in their place, to show them that Sanji was far above their level, even with Zoro pretending to be him. It was the truth anyway. Sanji could beat them without dropping the cigarette from his mouth.

But the bracelets sat heavy on Sanji’s wrists, and every time Zoro’s temper moved toward his swords, the gold reminded him what was at stake. So did the sound of steel breaking against Niji’s skin.

He spent most of the night smoking. It was terrible, but necessary if he wanted to avoid Sanji’s body going through withdrawal on top of everything else. He ran through katas and drills in the bedroom, careful with the furniture, careful with the balcony doors, careful with Sanji’s hands. He took light naps in the chair with one eye on the door and his swords within reach.

The brothers never came. Apparently, Zoro choosing Sanji over pride had given them enough humiliation to enjoy for the night.

They left for brunch at ten in a black carriage pulled by Germa battle cats. Zoro wore a white suit, along with a red cloak that matched the brothers’. The clothes fit Sanji’s body too well and made Zoro want to start cutting seams open just to breathe easier. He settled into the corner of the carriage with his swords tucked by his shoulder, the bracelets hidden under his cuffs and heavy against his wrists.

Niji sat across from him and smiled. “We’ll have to let Big Mom know to serve Sanji in a dog dish,” he said.

Yonji laughed. Ichiji looked bored. 

“I expect this to go well,” Vinsmoke intoned from the front of the carriage. “This is the final meeting before the wedding. I will tolerate nothing that threatens this arrangement. Least of all you.”

He leveled a look at Zoro across the cabin. Zoro resisted the urge to flick him off. 

“Your majesty,” the driver said. “Something is approaching.”

A rustling, thudding sound grew louder in the distance. At first, Zoro thought it was soldiers moving through the trees. Then branches snapped in a hard, uneven rhythm, leaves shook loose from the canopy, and something large crashed through the forest toward the road.

The battle cats slowed, ears flattening. One of them hissed and dug its claws into the dirt. The carriage rocked as the driver hauled back on the reins.

Zoro turned toward the noise, hand already moving toward his swords. Then his eyes widened. 

A large, topped tree with a mustache came running out of the forest. Roots slapped the ground like feet. Branches flailed. Its mouth was open in panic or effort, and three people were riding on the flat top.

“What the hell?” Ichiji said.

Luffy’s voice exploded from the top of the tree. “ZOROOOO– OWW!” 

There was a beat of silence, then louder, “SAANNNNJIIIIII!”

“Sanji!” Nami called from the top of the tree, waving wildly. “Thank goodness we made it in time!”

There was a third figure standing on the running tree, arms folded, green hair glinting under the sun.

Zoro’s chest surged. Sanji.

For a second, everything else in the carriage fell away. Vinsmoke. The brothers. The bracelets. The threat. The stupid wedding. Zoro saw his own body standing there with Sanji’s posture held inside it, stiff with worry and fury and the kind of control Sanji only used when he was close to losing it. 

It hit hard. That was Zoro’s face. Zoro’s shoulders. Zoro’s scars hidden under Zoro’s clothes. But Sanji was in there, looking at him with Zoro’s eye, and somehow Zoro could still tell exactly where Sanji ended and the borrowed body began.

Yonji and Niji went heart-eyed at the sight of Nami. One of them started salivating. Zoro made a sound of derision. Even if they were utter assholes, they were definitely related to Sanji. 

“So that is Straw Hat Luffy,” Vinsmoke said flatly.

Luffy launched himself from the top of the tree at the carriage. He hit the side and draped himself over it, elbows hooked on the open window like he’d arrived for a casual visit instead of crashing into enemy territory. “We came to get you Sanji!”

“Hey! Get off, you!” The carriage rocked as it came to a halt. Soldiers on horseback began galloping forward, guns aimed at Luffy. “You’re going to tip the calicoach over!”

“C’mon, Sanji,” Luffy said. “Let’s go.” 

“Get away, you!” One of the soldiers shouted. “Get back or we’ll shoot.”

Bullets would do nothing to Luffy, and both he and Zoro ignored the threat. Vinsmoke didn’t.

“Deal with this,” Vinsmoke said, displeased, “or there will be consequences.”

“I’ll handle it,” Yonji said, moving to stand.

“No. I got it.” Zoro happily shoved Yonji back into his seat and pushed out of the carriage before anyone could stop him.  

Luffy swung on the door, then hopped off as Zoro stepped down. “We gotta get Chopper, Carrot, Brook and Pedro, then we can go– hey!” 

After sliding his katanas into the loops at his side, Zoro grabbed Luffy by the ear and began dragging him away from the carriage, over to the tree where Nami and Sanji had gotten down. Luffy snapped into place beside him when his ear pulled too far. 

“Owie,” Luffy said, rubbing his ear, even though Zoro knew it hadn’t hurt.

Nami started toward him first, but Zoro’s attention caught on the figure behind her. Sanji stood there in Zoro’s body, green hair bright under the sun, every line of him held too still. He looked furious and scared and relieved all at once, and Zoro had to look past his own shoulders, his own scars, and the familiar shape of his own face to find Sanji inside it. 

“Marimo,” Sanji said. His voice was rough in Zoro’s register. Lower than Sanji’s real voice, heavier, strange around the edges. His hand twitched toward Zoro, stopped, then curled at his side.

Zoro’s heart hit hard under his ribs. “Cook.”

Then Sanji’s expression changed, and finding him got easier. Zoro had seen Sanji worried before. Angry. Scared, even, although Sanji hated letting anyone notice. But seeing it on his own face made the feeling land sideways. Zoro knew his own features as something blunt and hard to read. Sanji had somehow made them bare. His mouth pressed tight. His eye too sharp. His whole borrowed body angled toward Zoro like he was one breath away from reaching for him.

Zoro wanted to close the distance. He wanted to pull Sanji to him and hold him tight until Sanji stopped looking like that. He wanted to put a hand to the back of Sanji’s neck, tuck him in close, feel him even if the body was wrong. He wanted to give Sanji comfort like he’d been the one here this whole time. He wanted to say he was sorry Sanji had ever had to know this place. 

He wanted Sanji back in his own body, too. He wanted Sanji’s face back on Sanji. Wanted Sanji’s real voice, Sanji’s real hands, Sanji’s real weight against him. Looking at himself while Sanji’s emotions moved through him made Zoro feel like the world had been knocked a few inches out of place. 

But if Sanji was in his own body, he would be the one wearing the bracelets. He would be the one Vinsmoke threatened with Zeff. He would be the one standing in front of those brothers with every old wound reopened for their entertainment. Zoro felt stupidly grateful toward Law all over again. He’d have to get Law a fruit basket. Or a basket full of bread, because he was still an asshole. 

Zoro didn’t reach for Sanji, and Sanji didn’t reach back. The space between them stayed open, tense and ugly and necessary. Zoro wouldn’t give the Vinsmokes any more fuel. He wouldn’t let them see what Sanji was to him, or what he was to Sanji, and twist it into another weapon. Sanji understood because Sanji had lived with these people. He knew exactly what they did with anything soft enough to bruise. 

Nami hugged Zoro briefly instead. “We were worried we wouldn’t see you again.”

Zoro let her. It was quick, tight, and gone before the Vinsmokes could make much of it. They were far enough from the carriage that Zoro felt he could speak freely, but he still kept one eye on Vinsmoke and the brothers. “I can’t believe you guys are here.”

“Where else would we be, dummy?” Nami smacked him with the side of her fist against his chest. “We’re not just going to abandon you.”

“Can we go now?” Luffy asked, rubbing a finger in his ear. “I’m hungry.” 

“Can’t,” Zoro said, frustration sitting heavy in his chest. “First, I have to go to the Tea Party to make sure Big Mom doesn’t cut off someone’s head.”

“We were told about that,” Nami said. Her face tightened. “You just need to show up, right? Then it’s fine after that?”

“That’s what Capone Bege said.”

“So you don’t actually have to get married?”

Zoro kept his gaze on Sanji. “The Vinsmokes are holding Zeff over my head to ensure the marriage goes through.”

Sanji inhaled sharply, eye widening in Zoro’s face. “What?”

“That’s not all.” Zoro pushed up one sleeve, revealing the gold bracelet. “I can’t leave the island. If I do, these’ll explode.”

Sanji made a strangled sound. Nami gasped, one hand flying to her mouth. Luffy’s expression sharpened, all the easy impatience gone from his face.

“Take them off,” Luffy said.

“Can’t,” Zoro said. “That’s the problem.”

Sanji stepped closer before stopping himself, hand half-lifted like he meant to grab Zoro’s wrist and couldn’t. His own wrist. His own hands. Zoro saw the moment Sanji remembered that touching the bracelet wouldn’t make it any less locked around him. His free hand twitched toward where his cigarette should have been, then curled into the haramaki instead, restless and useless without smoke or knives or something to do. 

Sanji stared at the gold cuff like it had been fastened around him instead. In a way, it had. Zoro could see the horror move through him. The recognition. The sick understanding of what that threat meant, not just to his hands but to everything he had built after leaving this place.

“I haven’t been able to come up with a way to get out of this,” Zoro said. “At best, I could kill Vinsmoke, which might eliminate one of the threats, but there are still four more siblings and not being in my own body I’m at a disadvantage.”

“They’re enhanced,” Sanji said, voice tight. “Exoskeletons, special powers.”

“I saw,” Zoro said. 

Sanji’s face – Zoro’s face – tightened further. 

“Have they been– are you–” Sanji’s fingers curled, and now Zoro knew what he looked like when he was distraught. “Did they–”

“Nothing I can’t handle, cook,” Zoro interrupted.

That was a lie in the important ways and true in the practical ones. He could handle it because he had to. Because Sanji was looking at him like the idea of Zoro standing in his place hurt worse than any punch from his brothers could have.

Zoro caught the hand Sanji was borrowing. The grip was wrong. Too broad. Too familiar in the wrong direction. Zoro knew that hand from the inside, knew the calluses and weight of it, but Sanji was the one holding him through it. He squeezed once, hard enough to say what he couldn’t say out loud, then let go. 

“You figure out how to make sure I don’t marry anyone but you,” Zoro said. “I’ll take care of them.” 

Sanji went very still.

For half a second, the forest noise, the soldiers, the carriage, all of it seemed to pull back. Zoro knew his own face, but he’d never seen that expression on it before: startled, open, too afraid to believe what he’d heard. Sanji stared at him through Zoro’s features, eye wide, mouth slightly parted, borrowed shoulders held stiff like he’d taken a hit and hadn’t decided whether to fall over or swing back.

“Did you just propose?” Sanji asked. His voice came out rougher than the line deserved. 

“Shishishi!” Luffy cackled, delighted at once.

Nami’s worry broke just long enough for a wide grin to spread across her face. “That sounded like a proposal to me.”

Heat slammed into Zoro’s face. “No,” he sputtered.

Sanji’s eye narrowed.

Zoro looked away first, which was annoying as hell because it was technically his own face winning. “But maybe.”

A bright blush appeared on Sanji’s cheeks and ears.

On Zoro’s cheeks and ears.

Zoro stared at it in pure offense. He hadn’t wanted to know what he looked like when he was blushing, either. It was mortifying. Sanji looked just as startled by it, which made it worse, because now they were both standing there in the wrong bodies, embarrassed in the wrong directions, while Luffy laughed like this was the best rescue mission he’d ever been on.

Sounds behind them made all four glance back. Boots shifted on the road, and the carriage door creaked wider. Yonji, Niji, and Ichiji stood outside now, close enough to intervene and clearly looking for a reason. Behind them, Vinsmoke watched through the side window, his impatience sharp and fixed on Zoro like the remote was already in his hand. 

“I need to get back before this becomes a thing,” Zoro said.

“I’d like to make it a thing,” Luffy said cheerily, while cracking his knuckles.

Zoro shook his head. He wanted to protect Sanji from interacting with the Vinsmokes at all. From seeing them, hearing them, standing close enough for them to get their hands on him, even with Zoro’s body around him. It was stupid because Sanji knew them already. It was also the only thing Zoro wanted with any clarity. 

He glanced at Nami. “Figure something out,” he said. “I’ll meet you guys here later tonight, after dark.”

Nami nodded. “We’ll find you when you get lost.”

Zoro gave her a look, but then turned his attention to Sanji. The blush had faded. The distraught expression had returned. Zoro still hated seeing it on his own face. Hated that Sanji’s pain could sit there where Zoro usually kept everything locked down. “Take care of them,” Zoro said.

The rest of it went unspoken, but it was clear between them. While I take care of you.

Sanji took a deep breath, then released it with a nod. “I will.”

Zoro glanced at Luffy. “If you start something, we need to win it before anyone can act.”

Luffy adjusted his hat on his head. “They’ll regret thinking they could take Sanji away.”

Zoro met Sanji’s eye again. “Yeah, they will.”

Sanji pressed his lips together, then motioned with his chin. “You’d better get back. They’re looking annoyed.”

Zoro held Sanji’s gaze a moment longer with silent promise. Then he turned and headed back to the carriage.

The walk back felt longer than it was. He could feel Sanji watching him. Could feel Luffy’s impatience behind him, Nami’s worry, the brothers’ interest sharpening now that they’d seen exactly where his attention had gone. Zoro kept his shoulders loose and his hands away from his swords.

“Will there be a problem?” Vinsmoke said as Zoro reached them.

“No,” Zoro said. Not right now, anyway.

Vinsmoke’s eyes narrowed. His gaze moved past Zoro toward the others, then returned with colder focus. “Ichiji, Niji, Yonji – make sure of it.”

The brothers shifted at once.

“Aren’t we already late?” Zoro said quickly, before any of them could move.

Vinsmoke’s frown deepened. For a second, Zoro thought he might push it anyway. Then Vinsmoke motioned sharply toward the carriage. “Back inside. All of you.”

“Aw, but I wanted to get my hands on that redhead,” Niji said.

Yonji shoved him. “She’s mine.”

“As if she’d look at you,” Niji snapped back, shoving him harder.

They started fighting right there beside the carriage, elbows and shoulders knocking, teeth bared like dogs over scraps. Ichiji stepped around them with mild irritation, not bothering to help.

“Enough,” Vinsmoke said sharply.

Niji and Yonji stopped at once. The brothers got into the carriage, Ichiji first with the same bored expression, then Niji and Yonji still glaring at each other. Zoro stepped in last, tucking his katanas against his shoulder again. 

He glanced out the window. Luffy, Nami, and Sanji still stood near the sentient tree. Sanji watched the carriage with Zoro’s face, Zoro’s eye, Zoro’s mouth pressed into a line that belonged entirely to Sanji.

Zoro kept looking until the carriage started moving, until the road curved, until they were out of sight.

The carriage hadn’t gone far before the road ahead filled with noise. At first it was only a distant rumble, which could’ve been traffic or another procession somewhere deeper in Sweet City. Then it grew louder. Voices. Footsteps. Wheels. The strange rushing crackle of cloud homies moving fast overhead.

One of the soldiers riding alongside the carriage looked up sharply. “Mama’s forces are on the move.”

Zoro shifted toward the window. They crossed an open stretch of road where the candy-colored buildings gave way to a broader avenue, and from there he could see it clearly. Sweet City had erupted into motion. Homies and soldiers poured through the streets in a thick wave, all moving in the same direction. Zeus and Prometheus roared overhead with other storm and fire homies trailing after them, while mounted fighters and armed foot soldiers flooded below. Shouts carried through the air from every direction, urgent and excited and eager for violence.

“Make way! Make way!”

“The forces of rage are passing through!”

“The army of vengeance for Master Cracker has come together!”

“They’re going after Straw Hat,” one of the escorting soldiers said.

Niji leaned across the seat to look out, his grin widening. “Looks like they’ve decided to deal with your captain now.”

Yonji snorted. “Too bad the idiot came with your little pirate friends. He might’ve lived longer if he’d stayed away.”

“They’ll wipe them out,” Niji said. “Straw Hat, the chick, and that green-headed idiot, too.”

Zoro kept his face still. Inside, his pulse gave one hard kick. Every part of him wanted to turn around, cut his way out of the carriage, and get back to Luffy’s side. To Sanji’s side. To the fight.

But Sanji was already there. He was in Zoro’s body, and that body didn’t know his kicks or his timing. Zoro knew better than anyone how much that mattered. But Sanji was still Sanji, and skill didn’t disappear just because the body was wrong. 

Luffy had made it this far. Nami was with them, too. Whatever Big Mom had thrown into the street, they’d handle it. 

Zoro settled back against the seat. “They’ll be fine.”

Niji looked at him. “Confident.”

“Not hard,” Zoro said.

Yonji laughed. “You really are stupid.”

Maybe. But Zoro knew Luffy. He knew what happened when people got between that idiot and someone he’d come to take back. And he knew Sanji. Whatever body he was wearing, Sanji would protect the people beside him and fight like hell doing it.

So Zoro stayed where he was and let the army thunder past.

The procession thickened the closer they got to Whole Cake Chateau. The castle rose ahead of them in tiers of pale cake and thick swirls of frosting, wedding decorations draped across the front in ribbons and flowers. The carriage rolled beneath the shadow of the massive confection and came to a stop at the main approach, where more soldiers waited in formation.

“Out,” Vinsmoke said.

Zoro stepped down with the others and was immediately surrounded by escorts. The brothers fell in around him, red cloaks shifting in the breeze, while soldiers led them through the entrance and into the castle.

The inside was all polished excess. Frosted walls, gilded trim, pastel pillars, servants moving quickly with lowered heads. They passed through a series of halls and up a broad stair before being directed toward a bright indoor conservatory set up for tea.

The room opened wide under a high glass ceiling that let the afternoon light pour in. Trees and flowering hedges had been arranged around the edges in careful clusters, with white columns and trimmed arches breaking up the space. At the center sat a long formal table dressed in white linen and loaded with tea service, tiered sweets, and delicate plates. Half the tableware was alive. Cups blinked from their saucers, spoons shifted when hands reached for them, and a frosted cake hummed softly beside the knives. Zoro stared for one second, decided he wanted nothing to do with any of it, and looked away. Tall-backed carved chairs lined either side. 

Big Mom waited at the head of it all. She filled her place at the table like a siege engine in polka dots and pink, massive and smiling with all her teeth. Pudding sat nearby in a pale dress, hands folded prettily in her lap, every inch the picture of a bride-to-be. The whole setting had the polished look of a formal garden party, if garden parties came with an Emperor at the table and enough sugar to bury a town.

“Haaaa ha ha ha! Ma ma ma ma ma!” Big Mom laughed as they entered. “Welcome, Germa 66! So sorry about the wait!”

Pudding turned toward them with wide, delicate eyes. “We had a little problem, but it’s all sorted now.”

Zoro doubted that.

Vinsmoke bowed his head with stiff courtesy. “As long as my interests and yours align, all is well.”

“As long as my interests and yours align, all is well!” Big Mom echoed, then laughed like it was the funniest thing anyone had ever said. “Of course, of course! It’s a political marriage!”

Zoro was shown to a chair across from Pudding.

Pudding leaned forward. “Prince Sanji, I’m so glad you made it safely.”

Zoro stared at her.

She smiled at him, small and trembling. “I was worried after yesterday.”

“You got snot on me,” Zoro said.

Pudding’s smile faltered for half a second. Niji coughed into his hand, badly hiding a laugh. Yonji didn’t bother hiding his.

Big Mom’s eyes curved with amusement. “Ma ma ma ma! Young love can be awkward at first.”

“It’s not love,” Zoro said.

The room went very still.

Vinsmoke’s gaze cut toward him. Zoro felt it before he looked. He could almost hear the gold around Sanji’s wrists. 

Pudding’s eyes went wider, and her mouth trembled.

Zoro corrected himself through his teeth. “It’s an arrangement.”

Big Mom’s smile returned. “That’s right! That’s right! But arrangements can become love. Isn’t that better than children being unhappy?”

“Indeed,” Vinsmoke said. “There is nothing better than children being happy.”

Zoro’s hand tightened under the table.

Pudding looked between them, then lowered her lashes. “I’ll do my best to make Prince Sanji happy.”

Zoro didn’t answer.

Vinsmoke’s voice sharpened. “Sanji.”

Zoro forced his jaw loose. He looked at Pudding again. She was still smiling at him, sweet as frosting and just as fake. He thought of the flash of anger in her eyes on Cacao Island before she started crying. The way she had thrown herself at him. The way she was performing now in front of Big Mom.

“I’ll show up,” he said.

Pudding blinked.

Big Mom laughed again. “A shy groom! How cute!”

“I’m not shy,” Zoro muttered.

“Sanji,” Vinsmoke said again, lower this time.

Zoro looked over at him. Vinsmoke’s expression didn’t change much, but the warning was clear. Behave. Smile. Play the part. Or Zeff paid. Or Sanji’s hands did.

He looked back at Pudding and gave her the smallest smile he could manage without wanting to tear his own face off. On Sanji’s mouth, it probably looked wrong. 

Pudding’s eyes flicked over his face. Whatever she saw there, she covered it fast, clasping her hands together with a pretty little smile. “I’m happy, too.”

Big Mom lifted her teacup. “Good! Good! Then tomorrow will be a fine wedding!”

Vinsmoke raised his cup. “To the alliance.”

Big Mom’s grin widened. “To Germa and the Charlotte family!”

The others lifted their cups. Zoro looked down at his. Tea. He almost laughed. After everything, after threats and cuffs and armies in the street, they expected him to sit here and drink tea. He picked up the cup anyway.

Across the table, Pudding watched him over the rim of her own, eyes shining with practiced sweetness. To his left, Vinsmoke watched with cold satisfaction. Around them, the Vinsmokes drank like this was business, Big Mom laughed like it was entertainment, and the whole room pretended this was a normal meeting before a normal wedding.

Zoro took one bitter sip. Then he set the cup down and kept his hands where he could see them.

The rest of the brunch was dull. Zoro did not eat, no matter how much the food begged. Sanji would just have to deal. Vinsmoke and Big Mom reaffirmed the details of the marriage negotiation – Germa’s clone soldiers in exchange for funds and the Emperor's name behind Germa’s endeavors. Apparently, Vinsmoke wanted to re-conquer the North Blue. Zoro had no clue as to the history of Germa, outside of Vito’s comic-book ramblings, and didn’t care, either. What he did know was that Sanji somehow escaped this ugly, abusive family and buried that fact deep.

Zoro didn’t blame him. He didn’t even want an explanation any more. He just wanted to get out of here, without anyone getting hurt or married. He didn’t want to become one of Big Mom’s crew even temporarily, especially since they had an alliance going to move on Kaidou. Taking on Big Mom directly would be a mistake, even though she knew Luffy was here. Hopefully, between Nami and Sanji, they could figure out a way to end this.

Pudding attempted to get him alone after brunch, but Zoro wasn’t having it. He stayed with the Vinsmokes and Big Mom through a tour of her library of horror: living creatures and actual people captured inside the pages of books. Zoro kept his face blank and made a note to tell Luffy that, after they dealt with Kaidou, they were getting rid of her next. 

The Vinsmokes were staying at Whole Cake Chateau overnight. After the tour, Zoro was escorted to a suite on a separate floor, kept close at hand for the wedding the following day. That suited him fine. Same building or not, a few floors and closed doors between him and Sanji’s blood relatives were better than sitting through another meal with them. It would be easier to sneak out of this ridiculous cake-chateau once night fell, too. 

The suite had a kitchen, which was good, because he was starving. He wasn’t a chef like Sanji, but he could keep himself fed. Thankfully, nothing in the fridge spoke to him. Zoro considered that a win, made a quick meal, and ate it standing at the counter. After that, he decided to catch up on some sleep. 

Sleep was interrupted by a fitting for a wedding suit, which was something he never wanted to do again, even for his own wedding. The thought stopped him halfway through glaring at a tailor. 

He’d pretty much proposed to Sanji earlier. Or at least made it clear that was where they were heading, which was close enough to make heat creep up his neck again. Yes, he loved Sanji. Yes, he wasn’t leaving Sanji’s side when everything was said and done. But they had a few other things to get through before standing at an altar. Like getting their bodies back.

Besides, if Zoro had his way, he’d drag Sanji in front of an officiant without suits, cake, grand ceremony, or anyone making a speech. Getting married was something he wanted to share with Sanji and nobody else. 

The wedding suit was white on white with gold woven within the fabric, and Sanji’s body, in the mirror, looked good in it. It was also terribly impractical. One fight, and the whole thing would be bloody. If he had to put it on tomorrow, Zoro was certain it’d be dirty before he even reached the ceremony. He might do it on purpose.

No one else visited him as the afternoon turned into evening. Zoro fed himself again, trained with his swords, lifted the furniture in the suite as makeshift weights, and rinsed off in the ensuite. He thought about Sanji out there fighting an army in his body. Thought about how Sanji’s fighting style would move through a bigger frame, with more upper-body strength and heavier balance. Zoro’s body probably looked ridiculous spinning on its hands and flipping around. He was glad he wasn’t there to witness it. 

He looked out the balcony window as the sun dipped past the horizon. He’d give it another couple of hours before he ventured out. He knew the road led to the spot where he’d met up with Sanji, Luffy, and Nami earlier. All he had to do was find it, and he’d find them. 

Zoro left through the balcony window, hopped down to the portico, and followed it along the wide ledge beneath other windows. He still wore the frilly white shirt and black trousers from that morning, but he’d ditched the red cape. His swords sat properly at his side. He felt like he hadn’t used them in too long. Monet had been barely worth the effort to draw them, and Law had stepped in before Zoro could finish the fight with Doflamingo. He’d had a few minor skirmishes with other Donquixote pirates and on Zou, but nothing that made him break a sweat. Part of him hoped the others were still fighting Big Mom’s army, just so he could join in. 

Moonlight provided enough illumination for him to see by. It had rained earlier, but it had stopped now, leaving the candy rock slick beneath his shoes and the frosting ridges glossy in the dark. Most of the windows he passed were closed, some lights on behind drawn curtains. Music and voices drifted faintly from lower floors, muffled by glass and cake walls and the stupid size of the chateau. 

He heard voices ahead, though, closer than the rest, drifting from an open balcony. It sounded like Pudding. Zoro slowed, unwilling to get caught outside her room like some pervert. Or worse, have her drag him in.

“Ah-ha-ha! You’ve got to be dreaming. Me marry that stupid idiot?” Pudding’s voice carried clearly. “Of course not. I’m Mama’s favorite, especially when it comes to acting. Only my family knows what I’m really like.”

Zoro frowned, moving quietly past the window, then stopping on the other side.

Pudding laughed again. “You’re so naive. What do you call yourselves? An ‘army of evil.’ Pft. Stay in your fantasy world, you fools.”

“What a sweetheart you turned out to be.”

It sounded like Reiju. Zoro leaned back against the wall, folded his arms, and kept listening.

“Big Mom’s target is Germa’s army of clone soldiers. Your scientific power,” Pudding said. “The entirety of the Germa Kingdom is currently within our borders. We wafted out the sweet scent of a political marriage, and you roaming flies took the bait, just like Mama planned.”

Zoro snorted quietly. There was the catch. There was probably the reason Pudding kept up that act with the tears, too.

Then Pudding said something that chilled him.

“At tomorrow’s wedding, the entire Vinsmoke family will be put to death!” Pudding cackled again. “Aha-ha-ha-hah! Tomorrow the six Vinsmokes are getting pumped full of lead. The wedding will be dyed red with blood!”

Zoro held his breath and listened carefully as Pudding went on about a special bullet coating that could penetrate Vinsmoke skin. A gun fired inside the room, startling him. He pushed off the wall and peeked in. Reiju sat on a couch across from Pudding. Pudding held a gun in one hand. Reiju’s leg was bleeding.

“Ooh, I can’t wait for tomorrow,” Pudding went on gleefully. “The look on Sanji’s face when he has a gun pointed between his eyes will be a sweet delight, especially after how he treated me. Then bam! No more pathetic prince. Aha-ha-ha-hah!”

Zoro had heard enough. He backed away from the window, then finished crossing the portico to the opposite end, where he used the cake tiers to jump down to the ground.

He couldn’t imagine what would have happened if Sanji had been here, not him. With Sanji’s deference to women and his need to keep everyone alive, he might have bought into Pudding’s attempts to make nice early on. Zoro knew Sanji’s heart belonged to him, but if Sanji thought he was alone, if he thought there was no way out, he would have tried to make Pudding happy. 

And she would’ve shot him in the face.

It infuriated Zoro. More than the Vinsmokes yanking Sanji into their mess. More than even the threats against Zeff and Sanji’s hands. Sanji could be an idiot, but he was all kindness and heart, and this would’ve devastated him. He might’ve even blamed himself for it. Stupid cook. 

Zoro’s stupid cook. 

It took him a while to find the road. Whole Cake Chateau was worse from the outside at night. Everything had too many curves, too many tiers, too many paths that looked like they ought to lead somewhere and instead curved around into terraces or sugar gardens or guarded side doors. He doubled back twice, cut across a lower roof once, and nearly stepped into a fountain full of living cream before he found the main road again.

From there, it was easier. He followed the road toward the place where he’d met Luffy, Nami, and Sanji earlier. The night air still carried the smell of sugar and rain, but under it was something sharper now. Broken wood. Scorched candy. Trampled grass. Gunpowder.

Then he saw the first bodies. A soldier lay sprawled half in the road with his helmet cracked sideways. Another hung upside down from a bent licorice tree, groaning faintly. Farther along, a cluster of homies had been knocked into a ditch, their faces dazed and their limbs tangled together. Broken spears, dented shields, and torn banners littered the road. A cannon had tipped into a frosting bank, wheels still spinning slowly.

Zoro kept walking. The farther he went, the thicker it got. Bodies in uniforms. Candy soldiers folded over each other. Chess-piece fighters scattered across the grass like someone had kicked over a board. A huge armored man was face-down in the mud, snoring through a cracked visor. Part of the road had been torn up, and several trees had been knocked sideways, roots exposed and branches snapped.

Zoro’s mouth curled slightly despite himself. By the time he reached the spot where he’d left them, the road opened into a wreck of trampled grass and broken candy trees. The mustached tree lay felled nearby, its eyes spinning and its leaves scattered around it. Soldiers and homies were strewn across the clearing in uneven piles, groaning, twitching, or lying flat with their weapons kicked out of reach.

Luffy, Nami, and Sanji were waiting beside the fallen tree. Jinbe was there, too, which was a surprise.

“Zoro, you found us,” Nami said, sounding surprised. She stood with her clima-tact in hand, her hair damp from the earlier rain. “We were going to wait another half hour before going to look for you.”

Ignoring Nami, Zoro didn’t hesitate this time. He walked right up to Sanji, seized his cheeks, and kissed him hard on the mouth. Sanji made a startled sound. Then his hands curled into Zoro’s shirt, and he kissed him back.

Luffy laughed softly. Jinbe said, “Oh, my.”

Nami sighed with exasperation. “We don’t have time for this!”

Zoro broke away and rested his forehead against Sanji’s. “You need to cook Law his favorite meal and make it the best he’s ever tasted.”

Sanji huffed a short, confused laugh. “Okay…”

Zoro bumped Sanji’s forehead lightly with his own before stepping back and turning to the others. “The wedding is really an assassination. Big Mom plans to kill all the Vinsmokes at the ceremony.” He flicked his eyes to Sanji and away again. “Including Sanji.”

Sanji cursed, and Luffy frowned deeply.

Nami put her hands on her hips. “Well, we’re not going to let them kill Sanji – or you, wearing Sanji. But otherwise… who cares? Let them. Zeff will be safe and we can get out of here.”

“Think you’re forgetting about these,” Zoro said, holding up his wrists where the bracelets were.

“Oh, those are easy.” Luffy reached for Zoro’s arm, frowned at the bracelet for a second, then broke it off. He tossed it away. It landed in the grass a short distance off. Zoro waited for the explosion.

Nothing happened.

He frowned, then looked at the other bracelet as Luffy broke it off, too. Luffy tossed that one away beside the first. Again, nothing.

“Did you crush the explosive or something?” Zoro asked.

Luffy shook his head. “These are just bracelets.”

Zoro blinked. “What?”

Luffy shrugged. “That’s what they are.”

Zoro looked down at his hands – Sanji’s hands – which he’d thought were under threat. The bracelets had been fakes. His fingers curled. Fury moved through him fresh and hot. It wasn’t a relief that Sanji’s hands were never in danger. It was more infuriating that he’d let himself be controlled like a puppet with fakes.

“I… don’t want them to die.”

Sanji drew Zoro’s attention. He stood with his arms crossed, looking pensively out into the distance. It looked strange on Zoro’s face. Too soft around the mouth. Too much pain in the eye.

“I don’t even think of those people as family,” Sanji said. “But I can’t just let them die.”

Luffy laughed. “Of course you can’t. That’s not who you are.”

Zoro thought it was stupid, but he agreed. “You wouldn’t be you if you didn’t care.”

Nami groaned. “So we’re not going to take the easy road.”

“That’s no fun anyway,” Luffy said with a wide grin. “Let’s go and crash a wedding!”

“Or we could just tell my family tonight, so they can leave,” Sanji pointed out.

“Or we could do that,” Nami said quickly. “Let’s do that.”

“I can assist for a time longer, if needed,” Jinbe spoke up. “Though tomorrow I shall have to tender my resignation officially to remove myself and the Sun Pirates from Big Mom’s crew.”

“We still need to get Chopper, Carrot, Pedro, and Brook,” Sanji said.

“Nami, you and Jinbe go do that,” Luffy said. “I’ll go with Sanji and Zoro to tell Sanji’s family to leave, and then Sanji can cook me a big midnight snack.”

“Sanji should go with Nami,” Zoro said. He didn’t want Sanji anywhere near the Vinsmokes. Ever. “They might need help, even with Jinbe.”

“Aw, but I wanted a snack.”

“I can get you a snack,” Zoro said. 

Sanji studied him under the moonlight. Zoro could see a war going on behind his face – or Zoro’s own face. But Zoro wasn’t going to budge on this, and he said so silently with a tilt of his chin. 

Sanji finally nodded. “It’s probably for the best,” he said. “Once we have everyone, we’ll meet back at the Sunny.”

Zoro looked at Jinbe. “Do you know if Big Mom will follow through with her threat to behead someone if I don’t show at the Tea Party tomorrow?”

Jinbe shrugged. “Possibly not. From what I have gathered, she seemed less concerned about attendance and more interested in eating wedding cake.”

Zoro would have to think about whether he wanted to chance it or not. He’d talk it over with Luffy. 

“Let’s go find a mirror big enough for us,” Nami said. “We’ll see you two at the Sunny.”

With that, they split up. Zoro gave Sanji one last nod before he and Luffy left together for Whole Cake Chateau, while Nami, Jinbe, and Sanji headed for Sweet City. 

Zoro remembered the floor the Vinsmokes were on, which made it easier. Most of the chateau had settled into its late-night quiet. The corridors were dimmer than they had been earlier, lamps glowing low along frosting-pale walls and polished floors, and the few guards still roaming were easy enough to avoid. He and Luffy spotted a cluster of guards outside a particular suite and exchanged looks.

Luffy grinned. Zoro grinned back. They charged into the corridor together. Luffy hit first, knocking two guards’ heads together with a dull crack while Zoro drew two swords and cut through the rest before they understood what was happening. The chess-piece-dressed guards folded fast, bodies hitting the floor in a messy spread of helmets, spears, and black-and-white uniforms. None of them lasted long enough to raise an alarm.

Zoro sheathed his katanas and turned to the door. “Let’s get this over with.”

The door had a face. Its eyes blinked blearily at them from the wood, and its mouth tightened like it was about to argue. “Visitors are not permitted at this hour,” it said.

Luffy punched it off its hinges. “Eh-heh,” he chuckled as the door crashed onto the floor inside the suite.

Between the fight and that, it was a wonder more guards didn’t come running. Maybe the hour helped. Maybe the chateau was too big for every crash to matter. Maybe people were too afraid of Big Mom to run toward trouble unless ordered. Zoro wasn’t afraid of her, but he also didn’t want a confrontation with an Emperor in the middle of the night, inside her own castle, while half the crew was still scattered. Plus, they were going after Kaidou as soon as they left, and Zoro was still against picking fights with two Emperors on top of each other.

The Vinsmokes, save Reiju, were gathered around a table inside the suite. Several tapped kegs sat open, and empty steins littered the polished floor. The room was large, with a central living area and several bedrooms branching off it. Barmaids were passed out around the edges, sprawled beside trays and overturned stools, their empty mugs where they had fallen. 

Vinsmoke looked annoyed when Zoro and Luffy entered. The brothers looked surprised, then amused.

Yonji grinned. “Look who crawled back.”

Niji leaned back in his chair, cup dangling from his hand. “Missed us already, Sanji?”

Ichiji only watched, expression cool over the rim of his drink.

“What are you doing here?” Vinsmoke said.

“Saving your asses,” Zoro said. “Big Mom plans to assassinate you at the wedding.”

For a moment, nobody spoke. Then Niji laughed. Yonji followed, louder and meaner. Ichiji gave a soft sound of derision.

Vinsmoke narrowed his eyes. “This attempt to avoid the wedding is pathetic. Need I remind you what is at stake?”

“I’m aware,” Zoro said. “That’s why I’m here. I’m telling the truth. You need to leave now.”

“Leave?” Vinsmoke rose partway from his chair, outrage stiffening his shoulders. “When we are about to seal the deal that will lead to my triumph over the North Blue? You are not clever, boy. Return to your suite and be prepared for tomorrow’s ceremony. It will go forward, or your friends at the Baratie will suffer greatly.”

Zoro should have figured this would happen. This family hated Sanji enough to dismiss anything that came out of his mouth on principle. He could tell them their hair was on fire while smoke curled off their scalps, and they would insult him for mentioning it.

“Pudding shot Reiju in the leg,” Zoro said. “Don’t believe me, ask her.”

Ichiji’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Impossible. Our skin is bulletproof.”

“They have bullets designed to take you out,” Zoro said. “I heard Pudding say it.”

Niji rolled his eyes. “This is getting more pathetic by the second.”

“You expect us to believe Charlotte Pudding confessed the assassination plan to you?” Ichiji said.

“She wasn’t talking to me,” Zoro said. “She was talking to Reiju.”

Yonji barked a laugh. “And you were spying outside women’s rooms now? How pathetic.”

Zoro’s jaw clenched. “I’m trying to save your damned lives.” 

“Sanji doesn’t want you to die,” Luffy spoke up from where he’d been standing near the doorway. “Which means you need to leave.”

Vinsmoke’s eyes sharpened. He motioned toward Ichiji. “Contact our man in the East Blue.” 

Fuck. Zoro’s hand flexed at his side. “Don’t.”

“Then stop this ridiculousness,” Vinsmoke said. “Niji, Yonji, escort your brother back to his room. We do not want him getting lost along the way.”

Niji stood with a pleased smile. Yonji cracked his knuckles.

“Our pleasure,” Niji said.

“I don’t need an escort,” Zoro said. “I’m going.”

“Oh, I insist,” Vinsmoke said.

Zoro held his stare for a second longer, then turned away. He could kill Vinsmoke here. Maybe. He could try. But they were still in Big Mom’s castle, Zeff was still within reach of Germa, and starting the fight on Vinsmoke’s terms was stupid. 

He left the suite. Luffy followed without a word. Niji and Yonji came after them into the hall, laughing under their breath. Zoro heard the broken door shifting behind them, the soft groan of one chess guard still conscious enough to regret it, and the scrape of Yonji’s boots as he got too close. Zoro kept walking toward the stairs. His hands stayed away from his swords, though his fingers wanted the hilts.

He remembered the blades breaking in the courtyard. He remembered Niji looking up at him while steel cracked in his grip. If this turned ugly, he had to fight smart.

The attack came in the stairwell. Zoro felt it a breath before they moved: the shift in the air behind him, the sudden silence from Niji, the scrape of Yonji’s foot against stone. He shoved forward enough to clear Luffy’s path and turned as Niji launched from the upper landing, blue electricity snapping around his leg.

Zoro got one blade half-drawn before the balcony demonstration flashed through his head. Steel breaking against Niji’s palm. Yonji laughing. He snapped the sword back into the sheath and crossed his forearms instead.

Niji’s kick hit him hard enough to drive him into the wall. Electricity jolted through Sanji’s body where Niji made contact, sharp and hot, locking his muscles for one ugly second.

Niji grinned close to his face. “Still slow.”

Luffy’s arm shot past Zoro’s shoulder and slammed into Niji from the side. Niji flew down the stairwell, smashed through the wooden railing, and hit the landing below hard enough to split stone. Luffy went after him.

Zoro shook his head hard until Sanji’s nerves stopped buzzing.

Yonji’s grappler shot toward him before he had fully straightened. Zoro dropped under it. The metal claw punched into the stairwell wall behind him and ripped away a chunk of stone as Yonji yanked it back. Dust burst into the air. Broken plaster and cake-brick scattered across the steps.

“There you go,” Yonji said, rolling his shoulders as he came down the stairs toward him. “Back where you belong.”

Zoro straightened. Sanji’s forearms ached where Niji’s kick had landed. Luffy and Niji crashed into each other, rubber limbs and electric strikes filling the lower stairwell with impacts, wood splintering, and stone cracking. Zoro kept one ear on them, but his focus narrowed to Yonji.

Yonji was bigger than Sanji, thicker through the shoulders, wearing that familiar face with a stupid grin spread across it. Zoro hated looking at him. Hated the slant of the mouth, the shape of the nose, the bones Sanji shared with him, all arranged into the kind of cruelty Sanji had refused to become.

Yonji lunged. Zoro slipped inside the first swing and drove an elbow into his ribs. The strike landed solidly. It should have folded him at least a little. Instead, pain jarred up Zoro’s arm like he’d hit iron wrapped in skin.

Yonji barely shifted. He grinned wider. “That it? You have a bounty and that’s all you’ve got?”

Zoro ducked the next punch. Yonji’s fist blew a crater into the wall where Zoro’s head had been. Stone fragments cut across Sanji’s cheek. Zoro drove a knee into Yonji’s stomach on instinct, hard and fast. Pain shot through Sanji’s knee.

Yonji rocked back half a step and laughed. “You still hit like a failure.”

Zoro’s eye narrowed. “You talk too much.”

Yonji swung again, faster this time. Zoro leaned back from the first punch, caught Yonji’s wrist on the second, and used the momentum to drag him into the stair rail. That worked better. The rail cracked under Yonji’s weight, and Yonji’s shoulder hit stone hard enough to dent it. Yonji shoved off the wall and came back immediately, shoulders low, brute force and ugly confidence, like he’d never once had to learn what happened when strength met someone better. 

Zoro’s hand twitched toward Wado. 

No.

He could cut. He knew he could cut. Armament might even keep the edge from breaking. But he wasn’t in his own body, the angle was off, and if Yonji caught the blade wrong, if that exoskeleton cracked the edge, Zoro would never forgive himself. The bracelets were fake, but that didn’t mean Zoro got to be careless with his swords. Wado, Sandai Kitetsu, and Shusui were not props for proving a point to Sanji’s asshole brother.

So he changed the fight. No swords. No direct blows unless he had to. Yonji’s body was too hard, and Zoro wasn’t Luffy. He couldn’t stand there and trade punches with metal skin until something gave. The only thing that would give first was Sanji’s knuckles, Sanji’s wrists, Sanji’s fingers, and Zoro wasn’t letting that happen. 

Yonji came in again with the grappler, aiming to pin him against the inner wall. Zoro stepped onto the stair rail, used it for height, and kicked off. Sanji’s legs answered better than they had days ago. Lighter than Zoro’s, fast in the turn, built for movement even if they didn’t know Zoro’s rhythm. He twisted over Yonji’s shoulder, landed behind him, and drove a heel into the back of Yonji’s knee.

Yonji staggered. Only a little. But it was the first time he had moved the way Zoro wanted.

Zoro moved again. Space, balance, timing, the stairwell itself. Yonji was stronger, and his body was harder to damage, but he was sloppy. He depended on being difficult to hurt. He didn’t guard properly, didn’t adjust fast enough, didn’t think beyond the next hit.

Zoro could work with that.

Yonji’s fist came for his face. Zoro shifted outside it and drove his forearm into Yonji’s arm, trying to knock the punch wider. Pain snapped up to his elbow. Yonji’s arm barely moved.

Zoro stopped trying to move him with impact alone. The next punch came in hard. Zoro turned with it instead of catching it, letting Yonji’s own weight carry him too far down the steps. Yonji corrected fast, but not cleanly. Zoro hooked a foot behind his ankle, drove his shoulder into Yonji’s chest, and pushed with his whole body.

The impact hurt. It barely dented Yonji. But Yonji’s balance broke. He slammed into the wall. The stone cracked.

Below, Niji cursed. A massive crash followed, and Niji went down another flight of stairs, taking half the railing with him. Yonji used the noise to charge. Zoro planted his feet, drew a breath, and let Yonji come. At the last second, he stepped in instead of away. Yonji’s shoulder clipped him hard enough to bruise, but Zoro caught the angle, turned with it, and swept his leg out from under him. He used his shoulder and forearm only to guide the fall, keeping Sanji’s hands tucked close and out of the impact.

Yonji hit the stairs, bounced, and rolled. Zoro followed fast, using Sanji’s legs to close the distance before Yonji could rise. Yonji threw a punch from one knee. Zoro avoided it by inches, then brought both hands down in a hard, focused strike against Yonji’s shoulder as he came up.

No Sword Style.

Energy moved through the strike the way it should have moved through a blade. Intent, force, timing. Yonji’s exoskeleton took the damage, but the force still moved him. His eyes widened a fraction before the impact took him off his feet.

He flew up the stairwell instead of down it, smashed into the wall above the landing, and left a crater deep enough to spiderweb the stone around him.

Zoro didn’t wait for him to fall. He struck again. The second No Sword Style hit the cracked wall around Yonji rather than Yonji himself. Stone, plaster, and cake-brick gave way all at once. A section of the stairwell collapsed over him, burying him beneath broken masonry with only one boot and part of a green sleeve visible. The rubble shifted once, then stopped.

Zoro stood there breathing hard, Sanji’s body buzzing from Niji’s electricity, Yonji’s hits, and the stupid choice to strike metal skin at all. His forearms ached. His shoulder throbbed. His knee complained from the one instinctive hit he shouldn’t have thrown. Sanji’s hands were fine, though. Zoro checked them once, careful and quick, then tucked them safely out of the way again. 

Yonji was probably fine under there. Comfortable, even. But he was down, pinned, and out of the way for the moment.

A final crash sounded below. Luffy came back up the stairs with dust in his hair and his hat hanging down his back. Niji was sprawled across the lower landing, face-first in broken railing, one leg twitching faintly. Luffy’s rubber body had made the electricity useless, and Niji had apparently hated learning that.

Luffy looked at Niji, then toward the rubble covering Yonji. His mouth pulled into a hard line Zoro didn’t see on him often. “I don’t like them,” Luffy said.

“Me, either,” Zoro said. His hand settled briefly against Wado’s hilt. “C’mon. Let’s go back to my room.”

Zoro knew the floor number, and once they got close, it was easy to figure out which room he’d been given by the guards outside it. They were alert enough to aim their pikes at him, which meant someone had noticed he was gone. They were not alert enough to survive Luffy and Zoro already irritated from the stairwell.

A few thumps later, the guards were down.

The door didn’t give them trouble, other than to say, “You were supposed to already be inside.”

“I got lost,” Zoro said, and went in.

Once inside, Luffy raided the small kitchen while Zoro stood in the middle of the suite and scowled at nothing. “I’m going to have to go to this stupid wedding tomorrow, aren’t I?” 

“We can try to knock them all out and take them to their ship,” Luffy suggested between bites.

Zoro shook his head. “We’re still in Big Mom’s chateau. Bad enough we fought two of them. If she catches on, things could get worse fast.”

“So what do you want to do?” Luffy asked.

“I want this to be over with already so we can get out of here.” Zoro rubbed a tired hand over his face. Sanji’s muscles still held a faint aftershock from Niji’s electricity. His cheek stung where the stone fragments had caught him. But it was Sanji’s body taking the hits, and Zoro felt every bruise like a promise he was supposed to keep better. “We need to talk to the others. Tell them the wedding’s still on.”

“They’re probably in the mirror,” Luffy said, motioning to the one on the wall.

Zoro stared at him. “In the mirror?”

“Yeah. Chopper and Carrot captured the mirror lady, and now they can go through mirrors to get to places.” Luffy went over to the mirror, both hands holding cold meat from the fridge. He banged on the mirror with the side of one fist. “Hey! Chopper! Carrot! Can you hear me?”

Zoro briefly thought Luffy was going loopy from hunger, but a few seconds later, Luffy’s reflection went wavery. Then Chopper was standing there instead. He spotted Zoro standing behind Luffy. “Zoro! You’re alright! They said you were, but I’ve been worried anyway.”

“I’m good, Chopper,” Zoro said. A little crisped and bruised from the fight, but Chopper didn’t need to know that. “Where are you?”

“Inside Mirror World,” Chopper said. “It’s a series of rooms and stairs that lead to mirrors all over Totto Land.”

“Is Nami there?”

Chopper nodded. “Want me to get her?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. Be right back.”

Chopper disappeared from the mirror, and it smoothed over, reflecting Luffy and Zoro again. Luffy went back to the kitchen for more food. Zoro waited, flexing Sanji’s hands once before forcing them still. The mirror wavered again, and then Nami was standing there.

“Is it done?” she asked. “Are they leaving and we can go now?”

Zoro shook his head. “They don’t believe me.”

“Did you even try to persuade them?”

“I told them about Reiju getting shot. I told them about the bullets. Unless they go to check, it didn’t do any good,” Zoro said. “Vinsmoke wants this marriage to go through. Threatened Zeff again. I don’t want to chance something happening by pushing.”

“No, I suppose not,” Nami said.

“I’m going to have to go to this wedding tomorrow and try to save them there.”

“We might have some unexpected help,” Nami said. “We found out Capone Bege is planning a coup during the wedding.”

“Why can’t he do it before the wedding and save everyone a headache?”

“Don’t know,” Nami said. “But we do know that Pudding shooting you in the head is the signal to attack.”

“Great.” Zoro gave her a flat look. “Let’s just wait for that, then.”

“We could still just leave,” Nami said. “Pretend Sanji’s family listened.”

“No.” Zoro rejected it immediately. “Sanji doesn’t want them dead, so they’re going to stay alive whether they deserve it or not.”

“I thought you’d say that.” Nami tapped a finger against her hip. “Let me talk to the others and see if we can figure something out. Can you keep Luffy entertained?”

Zoro glanced over at Luffy, whose ass was hanging out of the freezer as he ate something inside it. “Yeah. I have food. He’ll be good for a while.”

“Okay. I’ll be back.”

The mirror smoothed out, and Zoro was the only one reflected there. Sanji’s face looked annoyed in the glass. Zoro stared at the cook, even though it was himself inside the body, and wanted the swap over so badly his chest hurt. He wanted Sanji back in his own skin. Wanted his own face back. Wanted to stop seeing Sanji’s mouth move with his thoughts behind it and Zoro’s expressions crossing Sanji’s face. 

He turned away from the mirror and headed for the kitchen. “You better have left me something.”

Nami got back to Zoro with a plan about an hour later. The plan sucked, in Zoro’s opinion.

“But I don’t want to get married to her.” He could hear the whine in his borrowed voice.

“It’s just until she shoots you,” Nami said.

Zoro stared at her through the mirror. Nami stared back like that was a perfectly normal sentence to say to a crewmate.

“This plan sucks,” he said.

“But it’s what we’ve got,” Nami said. “We found the mirrors where the wedding is being held. We’re going to try to move one closer to the table already marked for the Vinsmokes. Nice of them to have place cards out already.” 

Zoro gave her a flat look. “Yes. Nice.” 

She ignored him. “Then, when Capone Bege attacks, we’ll jump out and get the Vinsmokes to safety through the mirror. All you’ve got to do is not actually get shot in the face.”

“Is that all?” Sarcasm dripped from his tone.

“I think Sanji would like it if you didn’t hurt Pudding, either.”

Zoro sighed. “Yeah. Figures.”

Sanji would. Sanji had every reason to hate her and still wouldn’t want her hurt. It was annoying. It was also one of the things Zoro loved about him, which made it more annoying. Zoro folded his arms. “Sure we can’t just grab them all into the mirrors tonight?”

Nami shook her head. “Sanji said they probably won’t believe it until they have guns in their faces, too. And with Zeff’s life on the line…”

“I get it,” Zoro said. If he pushed too hard and Vinsmoke panicked, Zeff could pay for it before they even reached the wedding. If they waited too long, Big Mom’s people could put bullets through all six Vinsmokes. If they misjudged Pudding, Zoro could get shot in Sanji’s face. “Guess I’m getting married tomorrow, after all.”

Nami had the grace to look apologetic. “Maybe she’ll try to shoot you before the officiant finishes the ceremony.”

Zoro just gave her a look. 

Nami sighed. “Yeah. Just don’t die, okay? Sanji’s beside himself, which looks weird in your body. He looks like he’s about to smoke five packs in a row.”

“Don’t you dare let him smoke,” Zoro said. Bad enough he had to do it in this body. Sanji didn’t need to start wearing down Zoro’s lungs, either. 

“I already confiscated the pack you keep in your coat pocket for him when we arrived,” Nami said. 

Zoro nodded once. Sanji would hate it, but Sanji would live.

Nami’s expression stayed serious. Her gaze dropped briefly to the cuffs, then returned to his face. She held his gaze for a moment. “Keeping yourself safe is more important than them.”

Zoro looked away from the mirror for a second. He understood what she meant. He even agreed, in the part of him that put crew first and everything else behind it. But Sanji had asked them not to let the Vinsmokes die, and Zoro had Sanji’s back. 

“Yeah,” Zoro said at last. “I know.”

Nami studied him like she didn’t quite believe him, but let it go. “We’ll keep adjusting if something changes. For now, you go to the wedding, stay alive, and try not to actually marry the enemy.”

Zoro nodded. “Guess I’ll see you guys at the wedding.”

“Yeah. Toss Luffy in. We still need to grab Brook.”

Zoro turned toward the couch, where Luffy had sprawled out after filling his belly with everything edible in the kitchen and a few things Zoro suspected had only looked edible. His captain was dead asleep, one arm hanging off the cushions, mouth open, crumbs on his shirt. Zoro picked him up by the back of the vest and dragged him over. Luffy snored. Zoro pushed his sleeping captain through the mirror. 

Nami waited a moment longer, her face still framed in the glass. “Zoro.”

He looked back at her.

“I mean it,” she said. “Don’t make Sanji watch you die in his body.”

Zoro’s jaw tightened. “Yeah. I won’t.”

Nami nodded once, then disappeared. The reflection went smooth again, showing Zoro alone.

Zoro blew out a frustrated breath. He hated the plan. Hated the wedding. Hated Pudding’s fake tears and Big Mom’s smiling teeth and Vinsmoke talking about hurting people like it was nothing. Hated that the best option they had involved him standing at an altar, waiting for a woman to point a gun at his face, and trusting everyone else to move fast once it happened. But no one had come up with anything better, so he’d follow through. 

The only good part was that it was him, not Sanji, standing at that altar come morning. He’d take Pudding aiming between his eyes over Sanji having to stand there and hear vows built out of threats. Not that he was going to get shot – that was a given.

With another sigh, Zoro went to clean up and catch what sleep he could before the ceremony. 

Vinsmoke showed up as Zoro was getting dressed in the white suit, less than an hour before the wedding. The attendants had already fussed with the cuffs, the collar, the tie, and the stupid fall of the fabric until Zoro was ready to bite somebody. He stood in front of the mirror with Sanji’s hair brushed neatly over one eye and Sanji’s body wrapped in white like a prize being delivered. 

“I see you haven’t done anything foolish,” Vinsmoke said from the doorway.

“Nah, I’m leaving that up to you,” Zoro said.

Vinsmoke bristled. “You seem to have grown a backbone. Too bad you’re still too soft when it comes to others.”

“Rather be soft than a jackass,” Zoro said pointedly. 

Vinsmoke’s eyes narrowed. “Play your part, and your chef will live to see tomorrow.”

Zoro turned from the mirror just enough to look at him. “Don’t be a dick when the time comes, and so will you.” 

Vinsmoke stared at him for a long moment. Zoro stared back. He could see the calculation there, the irritation, the same cold arrogance that had sat at the dinner table while Sanji’s brothers laughed at food on the floor. Then Vinsmoke swept out of the room like he was above answering. Zoro sneered at his back, then finished dressing. 

Sanji looked good in the suit when Zoro looked in the mirror. He wanted to burn it immediately. The white on white, the gold woven through the fabric, the polished shoes, the smart lines of the jacket, all of it sat too well on Sanji’s body. Too much like this could have been real. Too much like someone had planned for Sanji to stand there, dressed up and cornered, while strangers called it a wedding. 

The thought sat heavy in Zoro’s gut. If Law hadn’t been an asshole, Sanji would have been the one in this suit. Sanji would have had to stand in front of Pudding, Big Mom, Vinsmoke, and all those staring guests with Zeff held over his head and a gun waiting behind a veil. He would have tried to hold himself together. He would have smiled wrong and smoked too much and blamed himself for every person under threat.

Zoro was very glad they didn’t have to find out what that would have done to him. 

An attendant gathered him shortly before the ceremony was to begin. The man tried to take Zoro’s swords, and Zoro advised him that he’d lose a hand. The attendant went pale and stepped back. The three swords stayed tucked tightly into the belt he wore with the suit. It wasn’t comfortable, and it sure as hell didn’t look right, but they weren’t going anywhere. 

He was taken to a room on another floor where Pudding waited. She looked exactly like she was supposed to look. Soft dress. Sweet smile. Bouquet nearby. Big watery eyes already prepared for whatever performance she thought would work on him. There were documents laid out on a table, neat stacks of paper with ribbons and seals, and two pens waiting beside them.

Zoro looked at the papers and refused before anyone even finished explaining. “Not until after the ceremony,” he growled when pressed.

“But things will go much more smoothly if we get the boring paperwork out of the way first,” Pudding cajoled, turning those big watery eyes on him. “Then only the officiant has to sign while we go off and celebrate – tee-hee.”

Zoro glowered at her. “Not happening. Get over it.”

Anger flashed across her face before she hid it. Fast, but still too slow. Zoro had been watching for it. Pudding put on another smile and attempted to hook her arm with his. He sidestepped. 

“Just think,” she said, undeterred, “soon we will be husband and wife. Doesn’t that sound wonderful?”

“Like jock itch,” Zoro said flatly. 

Pudding’s lips pursed. Then she tittered again, bright and false. “You are a funny one!” 

Zoro picked a wall to lean against, folded his arms, and shut his eyes. “Let me know when we’re starting. Otherwise, leave me alone.”

“Hmph!”

Eventually, they were ushered onto the rooftop of Whole Cake Chateau, where the wedding had been set up beneath the open sky. A giant tiered cake stood at the center of the roof, with guests gathered around its base and decorations arranged everywhere in bright, sugary excess. Zoro stood beside Pudding with a scowl on his face and annoyance in his eyes as they were guided into a waiting teacup. As it lifted, carrying them toward the top tier where the ceremony would take place, he scanned the rooftop. 

The wedding was ridiculous. Tiered cake, bright decorations, rows of guests, smiling homies, and more armed people than any wedding needed unless everybody already knew it was a trap. He spotted the Vinsmokes at one table. He caught sight of a mirror set into the side of the lowest cake tier like decoration. At least that part had gone to plan. 

The teacup reached the top. Zoro stepped down with Pudding and stood in front of the officiant. The man was big, with hair that stood out around his head and formal robes hanging over his frame. The guests gathered below fell into a hush as he began. 

“Welcome, honored guests of Big Mom, to her Tea Party and the wedding of her thirty-fifth daughter, Charlotte Pudding, to the third son of the Vinsmokes, Sanji.”

Zoro tuned out. He was positioned partially facing Pudding. He knew she had a gun on her, either in the bouquet or under her gown. She’d be slower to draw if she had to reach under her gown. The bouquet, then. Big enough to hold a concealed weapon and already in hand. 

He planned to knock it aside when the time came. Let her get off a shot, but not at him. Then Big Mom would make her move, Capone Bege would do the same, and the Straw Hats could grab the Vinsmokes and finally get out of here. 

“And do you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold, in sickness and in health, for richer and poorer, to love and to cherish, until death do you part?” 

A sharp kick to his shin pulled his attention back to the ceremony.

He glared at Pudding. She smiled prettily through clenched teeth and hissed, “Answer the question.”

“Does it matter?” Zoro intoned, looking between her and the officiant.

The officiant made a pained face, but continued on. “Then you may lift the veil and kiss the bride.”

Zoro reached forward and flipped the veil off Pudding’s face. He wished she would just shoot him already. Like hell did he want to kiss her. 

Pudding’s face twisted. The sweet softness vanished, and something cruel opened under it. A third eye appeared on her forehead, staring straight at him. 

Zoro arched his brow. “That supposed to scare me or something?” 

Pudding blinked at him with all three eyes. “You’re not scared? Or disgusted?”

“Tch. It’s just an eye. You have one more, I have one less. So what?”

All three eyes welled with tears. “Huh?”

Zoro’s patience snapped thin. He didn’t know if this was real or another act, and he didn’t care. “Listen–”

His observation haki flared.

Zoro saw the shot before it reached him. His hand moved on instinct, and a katana cleared its sheath in a flash. Steel rang as he deflected the bullet aimed for his head, sending it off course instead of through Sanji’s skull.

A hush cracked through the room. Zoro glared down toward the floor, where one of Big Mom’s sons was staring at him in shock.

That was the signal. 

Chaos descended upon the wedding almost instantly.

Big Mom’s people surrounded the Vinsmokes before the smoke from the first shot had cleared. Charlotte soldiers closed in around their table in a hard ring, pistols and rifles lifted, every barrel aimed at Vinsmoke blood. Perospero stood near the edge of the formation, tongue out and smile stretched wide, one hand raised as glossy candy poured over the Vinsmokes’ chairs and hardened in thick, shining bands around their arms, legs, and torsos. 

“What’s the meaning of this?!” Vinsmoke roared, straining against the candy. The coating only creaked. It didn’t break.

Capone Bege’s Fire Tank Pirates burst through doors, over ledges, and out of every hidden angle they’d managed to take. Men in dark suits opened fire with tommy guns and pistols, muzzle flashes lighting the rooftop in rapid bursts. Bullets tore through decorations, punched holes through tablecloths, shattered glasses, and sent whole trays of sweets flying. Bege’s men moved with efficiency, laying down fire across the wedding like they’d been waiting all day to ruin it. 

Guests screamed. Some ran for the exits, ducking under tables or tripping over fallen chairs. Others pulled swords, pistols, axes, and other weapons before they joined the fight. Homies shrieked and scattered. The wedding cake shuddered as bullets tore through frosting and sugar flowers, one whole side of decoration sloughing down in a sticky slide, but the main structure held. 

Big Mom bellowed, “My cake!” 

Zoro glanced down long enough to see her turn toward the damage with horror, both huge hands hovering near the ruined frosting like nothing else around her mattered. Not the gunfire. Not the betrayal. Not the Vinsmokes pinned at the table. Her eyes had gone wide and wet over the cake. 

The mirror set into the lowest tier flashed.

Luffy came through first, launching himself straight into a group of Charlotte fighters moving toward the Vinsmoke table. Nami followed, clima-tact already in hand. Chopper tumbled out after her and immediately shifted bigger, blocking a line of sight from the nearest gunmen. Brook emerged with his cane sword drawn, thin and fast, cutting through the space between tables. Jinbe stepped through with a calm that made the chaos around him look louder, then drove a Fish-Man karate strike through a cluster of armed guards before they could fire.

Sanji came last, in Zoro’s body. Zoro saw him for half a second through the smoke and movement. Green hair. Three earrings. Zoro’s face set in Sanji’s fury. Then Sanji moved, driving into the fight with Zoro’s strength and Sanji’s timing, awkward in the wrong places but dangerous anyway. 

Two tables stood between the mirror and the Vinsmokes. Both were packed with Charlottes, armed guests, and overturned chairs. The Straw Hats hit that space hard, not trying to win the whole battle, only to break the ring of guns aimed at the trapped Vinsmokes. Luffy slammed one fighter through a table. Jinbe took another line of shooters off their feet. Nami brought lightning down over the closest cluster, and Brook cut the barrels off two rifles before the men holding them realized he’d moved. 

Pudding dropped to her knees at the top of the cake. “Damn it! I’m going to kill you!”

“Maybe next time,” Zoro said.

The officiant pulled a gun from inside his robes. Zoro struck him down with the back of a blade before he could aim. The man went down hard, robes tangling under him as he collapsed across the top tier. 

Another shot cracked from below. Zoro’s haki flared again. He twisted, brought one sword up, and deflected the bullet meant for his ribs. A second came right after it. He knocked that one away, too, then moved before the next shooter could correct his aim.

He leapt off the side of the cake, using the tiers to get down fast. Frosting crushed under his shoes. Sugar flowers snapped. A bullet sliced past his shoulder. Another struck the cake beside his head and sent chunks of white icing into his hair. Zoro hit the next tier, pushed off, and dropped lower, separate from the main fight, keeping his path straight and direct. 

Zoro landed on the Vinsmoke table hard. The Charlottes surrounding it swung their guns toward him at once. Zoro drew his second sword and moved before they fired. He knocked three barrels aside with the flat of one blade, kicked one gunman in the chest, and deflected another shot up into the air. The bullet tore through a hanging decoration instead of Sanji’s body.

Then he leveled one sword at Vinsmoke. “You are done calling the shots. You’ll leave the Baratie alone, leave Sanji alone forever, and maybe I’ll help you out.”

He’d slipped up on the name, but Vinsmoke was too furious to notice. “You!” Vinsmoke snarled, still trapped in candy. “This is all your fault!” 

“No,” Zoro said. “It’s yours for missing the obvious trap. I warned you, and now look. You’re stuck at Big Mom’s table with guns in your face.” He angled the sword closer. “Or mine, considering I can cut you loose.” 

“It’s too late to complain now, Father,” Ichiji said calmly. Candy held him rigid in his chair, but his expression stayed almost bored. “There’s no hope for us. This candy has fixed us in place.”

“They took our weapons at the entrance,” Yonji said, straining uselessly. “Even our raid suits.”

“Looks like we aimed for the top and fell hard,” Niji said, then laughed. “Hahaha!”

“What’s so funny about this?” Vinsmoke roared.

The brothers looked more amused than afraid, like dying at a wedding after being outmaneuvered was only an interesting inconvenience. Zoro didn’t understand them and didn’t care to. Around the table, fighting raged close enough that blood, frosting, and broken glass scattered across the floor. The Straw Hats had forced the Charlottes back from the first table, but more were pushing in from the sides. A line of gunmen tried to reform near the Vinsmoke table. 

Brook cut across their path. Chopper slammed into another group. Nami shouted something Zoro couldn’t hear and lightning cracked white across the rooftop.

Zoro kept his sword on Vinsmoke. “I’m waiting.”

Vinsmoke stared at him with naked hatred.

Another bullet came from Zoro’s left. He deflected it without looking away.

Vinsmoke’s mouth tightened. “Consider that man in the East Blue safe,” he said at last. “You have my word.”

Zoro thought Vinsmoke’s word was worth shit, but it would do for now. He wasted no more time. Armament haki ran dark over both blades. Zoro crossed the swords and cut down through the hardened candy holding the table. The coating resisted for a breath, then shattered like glassy sugar. Chunks skidded across the table and dropped to the rooftop.

“Get to the mirror,” Zoro said, pointing with one sword. “That’s our way out.” 

The Vinsmokes didn’t need to be told twice. They broke from the table as soon as they could move, shoving through the gap the Straw Hats had opened. Ichiji went first, then Niji and Yonji, all three moving fast despite the chaos. Vinsmoke followed, furious and stiff-backed, like being rescued offended him more than the assassination attempt. Reiju went through last. 

Zoro jumped off the table toward Nami, who was holding the path to the mirror with Chopper beside her. Another wave of Charlotte fighters tried to cut across the lower tier. Zoro intercepted one with the back of a blade, drove another down with a kick, and sent a third stumbling into Brook’s range. 

The wedding cake wobbled as more gunfire tore through the decorations. A whole section of frosting trim collapsed onto the rooftop, burying a guest up to his waist. Big Mom shoved aside a fleeing homie, grabbed a torn chunk of cake, and stuffed it into her mouth with a wounded, furious sound.

“My cake,” she moaned around the bite.

Nami looked up at that, went pale, then shouted, “They’re clear!”

Brook disengaged first, sliding into Chopper’s place with a sweep of his cane sword as Chopper jumped through the mirror. Nami followed him. Brook cut down one last homie lunging for the frame, then vanished into the glass after her. Zoro kept the way clear.

Sanji grabbed Luffy by the collar mid-punch and dragged him backward toward the mirror. “Jinbe! We’re going!” Luffy shouted.

Jinbe lifted one hand. “I shall join you in Wano as soon as I am able!” Then he turned and delivered a Fish-Man karate strike that sent his opponent flying through two chairs and into a frosting column. 

Sanji flung Luffy through the mirror, then turned to Zoro. He looked strange and right at the same time, wearing Zoro’s body with Sanji’s urgency written across it. “Ready to go?”

“Hell, yes.”

Together, they jumped into the mirror as the chaos continued behind them.

They dumped the Vinsmokes out through the mirror closest to Lake Aprico. Nami didn’t hesitate to boss them through Mirror World, voice sharp as she directed them across the patterned tile floors and past walls packed with mirrors of every shape and size. The Vinsmokes didn’t like taking orders from her.

Zoro kept himself between them and Sanji, shoulder angled to block any line of sight that lingered too long. Sanji was anxious enough without having to talk to them or hear their shit, standing there in Zoro’s body with his arms folded too tightly and his face set in an expression Zoro had never known it could make. His fingers twitched toward his mouth once, searching for a cigarette that wasn’t there, before he shoved the hand back under his arm. It made Zoro want to pull him close and hold him until the look went away, which was disconcerting, since it was his own face doing it. 

The Straw Hats, plus Carrot and Pedro, went out a different mirror. They landed in the middle of the Seducing Woods, where the earlier fight had left the whole place torn up: broken homie trees, splintered branches, biscuit crumbs ground into the dirt, boot tracks, scorch marks, and the remains of doppelgangers scattered across the path. Zoro could see where Luffy, Nami, and Sanji had been pushed hard, even if no one stopped to explain it. They ran for the Sunny anchored off the coast, cutting through the wreckage and past groaning homies that wisely stayed down. Once aboard, they dropped the sails, and Nami shouted directions from the deck as the ship got underway. 

The Sunny tacked around the coastline, sails snapping as Nami shouted corrections from the deck. Whole Cake Island slid farther behind them, its cake towers and frosting cliffs shrinking through the haze, though the smell of sugar still clung to the air like they hadn’t left fast enough.

“I hope Jinbe’s okay,” Chopper said worriedly, gripping the rail as he looked back toward the chateau.

“He’s strong,” Luffy said. His voice was easy, but his eyes stayed on the water behind them for a moment longer. “He’ll be fine.”

The Sunny came around the edge of the coast, and Germa loomed ahead.

The kingdom was already breaking apart. The giant snail ships shifted and separated, walls and towers pulling away from one another as the floating fortress became a fleet again. Soldiers hurried across decks and along connecting bridges, formation neat even in retreat. Flags snapped hard in the wind. The whole thing moved with cold efficiency, like nearly being assassinated at a wedding was only a delay in the schedule. 

A figure in red shot into the sky from one of the ships.

Sanji tensed beside Zoro.

Zoro was moving before Ichiji landed. The red-haired brother touched down on the Sunny’s deck with a sharp click of boots, sunglasses hiding his eyes and that same faint sneer on his mouth. Zoro crossed the distance in three hard strides, one hand already on a hilt. “What do you want?” he growled.

Ichiji looked at him through dark sunglasses, expression barely shifting. “Came to pay our debt.” 

“Didn’t know you people understood debts.”

Ichiji reached into his coat and took out a black canister with the number three marked on the side. He held it out between two fingers like it was an unpleasant obligation. “A raid suit. For you. Take it, and consider us even for getting us away from Big Mom.”

Zoro snatched the canister from him. He didn’t like the weight of it. Didn’t like the number on it. Didn’t like that it had been made for Sanji by people who had never deserved to put anything in Sanji’s hands.

“Whatever.” Zoro shoved it into his belt because dropping it overboard would probably start an argument Sanji didn’t need. “Just make sure you leave the Baratie alone, or you’re going to have an enemy that puts Big Mom to shame.” 

Ichiji stared flatly at him. Zoro stared back. For a second, the deck held still around them. Then Ichiji turned, launched himself into the air, and flew back toward Germa without another word.

Vinsmoke, however, had words. Too many of them. None worth hearing.

The Sunny passed close enough to one of the snail ships for his voice to carry. He stood high on a parapet, cape shifting behind him, looking down at them like the distance gave him back any authority he’d lost at the wedding.

“I’m certain you are to blame for this fiasco, brat,” Vinsmoke sneered. “You weren’t good enough even as a sacrifice. You had one chance to finally make yourself useful, and you ruined that, too.”

The deck went quiet.

Sanji curled in on himself. Shoulders hunched. Arms wrapped around his middle. He stood in Zoro’s body, broad and scarred and strong, but the words still punched through him like he was small again. Like Vinsmoke could still reach inside and put him back in that hell by talking.

Zoro’s grip tightened on Wado.

“I regret not putting you to death instead of the dungeon,” Vinsmoke said.

Fury burned through Zoro so fast his vision sharpened. The other Straw Hats stared in horror. Chopper’s mouth fell open. Nami went pale with rage. Brook’s hand tightened on his cane. Sanji didn’t look up.

Vinsmoke kept going. “And you, Straw Hat,” he called, turning his attention to Luffy. “What worth does he even have to you? His skin has no armor. He busies himself with menial cooking. He has no pride. He’s swayed by pointless emotion and exposes himself to danger for the sake of the weak. He is mentally soft. He is flawed as a soldier. He is a failure in every way.”

Luffy picked his nose. “Ne,” he said, looking genuinely confused. “Why is he listing all the good stuff about Sanji?” 

Vinsmoke stopped.

Luffy flicked whatever he’d found over the side and grinned. “He can’t have Sanji back. I can’t become the Pirate King without him.”

Sanji made a sound using Zoro’s throat, part laugh, part sob, and covered his borrowed face with one hand like he hated how much it hit him. “Thanks, Captain,” he whispered.

Zoro had heard enough. He leapt up onto the side rail, the wind snapping the wedding suit coat around him. Three swords came free in one smooth motion. Wado between his teeth, Sandai Kitetsu and Shusui in his hands, all three blades catching the light.

Sanji’s jaw protested at once. The bite was wrong, the balance worse, every line of the stance dragging against a body built for kicks instead of blades. Zoro forced it steady anyway. For one strike, it would hold.

Vinsmoke’s eyes narrowed from the parapet.

Zoro growled around Wado. “1080 Pound Cannon!”

The air blast tore across the water with a roar. It struck the Germa ship high, cutting through the parapet beneath Vinsmoke’s feet and ripping apart the stone and metal around him. The wall shattered. Blocks broke loose. The banner behind him split clean down the middle.

Vinsmoke’s eyes went wide a second before the force blasted him backward into the wreckage.

The parapet crumbled in a hard cascade of rubble, dust, and broken Germa stone.

Luffy laughed and lifted one arm. “Goodbye!”

“Brook,” Nami said, still glaring toward the Germa ship, “steer us away from these losers.”

“With pleasure,” Brook said.

Zoro sheathed his swords and hopped down from the rail as the Sunny drew away from the snail ship. His blood was still hot, and part of him wanted to turn back and cut another section off the damn kingdom. Instead, he crossed the deck to where Sanji stood too still, gaze lowered, one hand still clenched at his side.

Zoro took him by the arm and steered him toward the galley. “I’m hungry. Make me something.”

Sanji blinked, then looked at him. The words did what Zoro wanted them to do. Sanji’s shoulders loosened by a fraction. His focus shifted. His hands moved, smoothing down the front of Zoro’s shirt like he was remembering what to do with himself.

“Have you had anything decent to eat since you got here?” Sanji asked.

“No. The food talked. It weirded me out.”

“It talked?” Sanji’s expression twisted in offense and disgust. “That’s disturbing on several levels.”

“Yeah. So cook.”

Sanji huffed, but the sound was steadier. “Bossy bastard.”

Zoro followed him into the galley and let the door swing shut behind them.

The moment they had privacy from the others, Zoro caught Sanji by the arm and pulled him into an embrace. It still felt weird, hugging a bigger body, fitting his hands around broader shoulders and feeling his own chest under Sanji’s grip, but he didn’t let go. He tucked his face near Sanji’s ear and held him there, tight enough to make the point. 

“You are not one of them,” he murmured against Sanji’s ear. “And anything they said to you in the past is a lie. You’re worth a billion times more than the air they even breathe.”

Sanji made a quiet sound in his throat. His arms tightened around Zoro, hard and sudden, like he’d been holding himself upright by sheer spite and finally found something solid enough to lean on. “You’re a sap,” he said roughly. 

“I don’t say what I don’t mean. You know that.” Zoro pressed a kiss near his ear, earrings jingling softly against Sanji’s borrowed jaw. He loved Sanji, all of him. The temper. The kindness. The stupid chivalry. The bad habit of putting himself last. The way he kept choosing to care even when caring hurt him. The imperfect messiness of him. “Now make me food. I wasn’t kidding about being hungry.” 

Sanji huffed against him, half laugh and half breath. “Can’t have a hungry moss.”

He pulled back and brushed a hand quickly beneath one eye. Zoro pretended he didn’t see it.

“We restocked on Cacao Island when we got here,” Sanji said, turning toward the kitchen like movement gave him somewhere to put himself. “Luffy’ll be demanding food soon, probably a feast to celebrate getting you back.” 

Zoro settled at the breakfast bar splitting the kitchen from dining area, as Sanji went to the refrigerator. “Should be a feast to celebrate my not getting hitched to that woman.”

“I’m sure she was beautiful and lovely and would have made a wonderful wife.”

“She wanted to shoot me in the face.”

“Understandable,” Sanji said with a flash of a grin.

Zoro gave him a look, but he was pleased Sanji could joke about it. Even more pleased that the joke sounded like Sanji, no matter whose voice he was using. 

Sanji cooked, and Zoro watched. The scents of fried meat filled the air, rich enough to make his stomach rumble. Oil hissed in a pan. A knife tapped steadily against the cutting board. Outside the galley portholes, he could hear Luffy and Chopper’s laughter and the strains of Brook’s violin, with Nami’s voice cutting in now and then from the deck. 

Sanji’s shoulders slowly tightened as he cooked. Zoro noticed. He kept quiet and let him get there on his own.

Eventually, Sanji said, “What did they say to you, about me?”

“Nothing that matters,” Zoro said, which was the truth. Zoro would’ve preferred not to be blindsided by Sanji’s royal bloodline, but he understood why Sanji had buried the Vinsmokes and left them there. He might have done the same in Sanji’s place. 

Sanji concentrated on the food, gaze lowered, mouth tight. “I should’ve told you there was something,” he said.

“Yeah,” Zoro said. “You should’ve.”

Sanji’s hand tightened on the knife.

“I get why you didn’t,” Zoro added. “Doesn’t mean I liked finding out from them.”

Sanji swallowed and turned the knife in his hand, setting the blade flat against the board. 

“If you ever need to talk about it, I’ll listen,” Zoro said. “But who you are now is what’s important to me, not your past. And you know everyone else on this crew feels the same. Luffy just said he couldn’t become Pirate King without you. That’s how valuable you are.”

Sanji’s knife paused again, but this time his mouth softened by a fraction. His voice was gruff when he said, “Good to know.” 

Which part he meant didn’t matter. Zoro would keep making sure Sanji understood how much he meant to him and the crew, and not just because he could cook or fight. Sanji mattered because he was Sanji. It should have been obvious. Apparently, some idiots needed it beaten into them. 

Sanji worked quietly for a while after that. He moved through the kitchen in Zoro’s body like he still belonged behind the stove, and Zoro found himself relaxing despite the strangeness of watching his own hands cook for him. After a few minutes, Sanji looked less like he was holding himself together with wire and more like he was deciding how to be annoying again. 

Sanji plated something just for him, slid it across the bar, then flicked his gaze up. “Want to screw around later?”

Zoro grinned, anticipation tightening low and immediate. “Hell, yes.” 

Luffy barged into the galley with a bang of the door. “Saannnji! I’m hungry! We should have a feast!”

“Already cooking,” Sanji said with a twitch of a smile at Zoro. That expression, Zoro didn’t mind seeing on his own face. 

Later, locked in the crow’s nest, he found he minded even less. He’d seen his own face angry plenty of times. Bruised, bloody, bored, pissed off. 

He liked it better looking well-loved and content. 

End