Chapter Text
The scent of Onigashima is familiar. He can’t put his finger on what it is under the thick odor of blood and wet debris, both earthy and stony, but the unique ocean spray was a greater source of comfort than he could ever fathom. With the way the sea laps up to where he stands, he can only assume that he’s familiar to it, too.
He isn’t bestowed the privilege of basking in it, though, his attention more occupied by the living, breathing threat of tanned skin, leathery wings, and flames; he may be acutely aware of things, but never once distracted by them. So, when a low buzz rubs up against his abdomen and up his spine, he’s not happy about it.
“Since when do I have a transponder snail?” The comment is intended to be inward, but the caller answers anyway.
“ I stuck it in your belly band, just in case you died in a ditch somewhere. ” It’s clearly not what Sanji’s concerned about right now, his voice faraway even underneath the muffling static of the receiver.
“Stupid Cook, I don’t need your help, I didn’t ask for it.” He grumbles, strained as he parries hits that would kill a lesser man.
“ Just listen, I’ll be quick. ” Zoro won’t ever admit it, but he quiets obediently–partly because Sanji is speaking quietly, and partly because he wants to hear what he needs to say. “ We’re gonna beat the Beast Pirates real soon. ”
His obedience, of course, has its limits. “You think I don’t know that?”
Sanji, never surprised by his outbursts, continues: “But after it’s all said and done–...i-if I’m not in my right mind… I want you to kill me. ”
Zoro’s world turns upside down, and he can’t do a damn thing about it.
“Huh?” He grunts dumbly, the heat of King’s swooping hits draping and soothing his nerve-induced goosebumps. Something in his ear rings, but everything is bleeding at this point, so he doesn’t count out the possibility of a burst eardrum. Shaking himself out of his stupor with a firm slap against his head, he mumbles: “Alright, fine. I’ll kill you, just like you asked-–whatever that’s supposed to mean.”
Sanji doesn’t answer him, so he continues, the fear that perhaps he’s already died boiling right underneath his heart.
“At least I have something to look forward to now,” He jokes, trying to pull a laugh, a huff– anything from his best friend. More seriously, he continues: “Don’t die before then.”
“ Thanks, ” He hears Sanji breathe, but Zoro can’t pin his tone (or his conviction) before he hangs up.
-
He beats King. Exhaustion seeps from his bones and coaxes his joints to failure, but he refuses to fall, trudging to the sizable hole from which a long-necked dinosaur was ejected shortly before.
He doesn’t need to look for anyone. The silhouette that approaches him is unforgettable, even if its attitude doesn’t match the person to whom it belongs; its steps are robotic and uncaring, stepping over the body of a woman with little more than a scuff of its heel. Its iris, as far as he can tell, is black. This is not the person he knows.
Zoro lunges first.
They move in a blur; Sanji is much quicker than Zoro normally would be, more so when he’s as tired as he is. He refuses to back down, though, and dips into his meditation–he senses the life of the rubble humming around them, and the ragged breaths of the barely-standing pillars, but not of the one he’s trying to locate. As far as his ability is concerned, he isn’t alive; not human nor object.
He does seem to be more predictable now, however, which works nicely in Zoro’s favor. Sanji’s unpredictability was the main factor of his combat, aside from his speed and relentlessness, and the lack of it made him easy to track. Pinning him down was a different story.
Sanji swings his leg down on the junction of Zoro’s neck and shoulder mercilessly, hooking it tightly to bring him down to the ground. In the movement, he has to support himself with his hands, his legs busy keeping Zoro in place and pummeling his heel into the swordsman’s side respectively. Even where his head is crushed against gravel with the thickness of Sanji’s thigh, Zoro notices the defenseless extremities. He takes his chance when a heel hammers into his kidney without remorse, taking Wado’s hilt (he couldn’t bear the thought of using her blade) and slamming her down firmly on the back of Sanji’s right hand.
Despite it taking an unseemly amount of bravery, it was all for naught. The man pays his hand little mind, taking his weight off of it but only to twist his body to face downwards. In the movement, Sanji knees the very base of Zoro’s skull with uncanny precision, knocking his head firmly against the ground. The fact that he doesn’t succumb to unconsciousness is a miracle within itself, but scrambling from Sanji’s pin is even more so. As he slides on the gravel, he grabs the man’s ankle with conviction—when he throws him bodily, he doesn’t hear a sound out of him.
Sanji allows himself to be handled violently, rebounding like a wound up coil with the perseverance of a wild animal. The more they fight, the clearer it becomes that Sanji is indifferent to his own harm; he fights like a machine, paying no regard to the blood that spills from his mouth nor to the dents that are being made against his steel-thick skin.
He fights selflessly, as though his body is just a means to get what he wants.
“Sanji,” Zoro says abruptly, courage baring its claws in the form of his teeth. Sanji pauses, but only briefly; if anything, it’s a stutter in his movements, and he comes back more violent than before. He doesn’t take it kindly. “Sanji. Sanji. Sanji, Sanji, Sanji! ”
It certainly becomes less effective the more he says it, the consecutive chant morphing into a demand where it was once a strangled plea. It’s poorly received, if Sanji’s pristine shoes swiping at his face are any indication.
When Zoro ditches his swordsmanship in favor of palming Sanji firmly above the liver (or where his liver would be, if he had one) is when things spiral downwards. Before he can make contact, Sanji twists himself out of the way, and his shoulders stiffen as he brings the entirety of his fist down onto the space between Zoro’s nose and eye socket.
Zoro skids. He gets up. He tries again. And again, and again, and again .
He tries until the sun peeks over the horizon, the story of their treachery under its watchful eye. Sanji’s endurance has long since proven itself to be monstrous—but not more than he, not more than Enma.
Bone-tired and on the brink of collapsing, he lunges again, only this time with closure.
The blade that he lodges in the cavity of Sanji’s chest is his greatest pride, glistening white and innocent where Enma hums with adrenaline, abandoned at his side.
He can’t bear to look at Sanji, at first. He hears a gasp and a choke, but in the face of struggle, he supports her hilt with his free hand and pushes, twists. He hears Sanji’s bones crunch and his sheet skin creak, and he can’t help but feel as though he’s puncturing a machine; even still, the blood that squeezes out of him, the breaths that they share—they are every bit human.
He gives in and he looks.
What he sees will haunt him forever.
His best friend’s face is torn between pain, anger, and confusion, but he knows Sanji still isn’t all there. He’s powering down, his limbs limp at his sides, and Zoro is powerless to falling to his knees in kind. The gravel digs into their knees, but Zoro doubts Sanji can feel it; whether he can feel anything is still up in the air, for all Zoro knows. He doesn’t know what expression he wears, but he can feel his jaw tense.
They face each other in the morning sun with dawn’s dew in their eyes, and when black irises dilate to blue, agony lays itself across his seizing lungs.
A trembling hand fights to clamp Zoro’s bicep, but it’s not hostile. This he knows for certain, the blackened roots of Sanji’s hair retreating to his skull.
“ Sanji ,” He breathes, and this time he gets a weak smile in return. A sudden horror strikes him where he sits, and he looks frantically at Sanji’s reddening center, his hands too clumsy and too large to do anything about the delicate, lethal precision of the wound. “ Sanji! ”
The cook doesn’t respond verbally, but he shakes his head, leading Zoro’s hands away from his abdomen. Granted, it doesn’t take much effort—both of them beyond muscle failure—for Zoro’s hands to disobey and persist, pulling at his suit and his collar.
“You gotta let me help you,” He says, and it’s the only reason he notices his tears lodged in his throat. Sanji, again, denies him that mercy, his lips kind even as his teeth are stained a deep shade of red. Zoro pushes on, the fear of losing his other half becoming more personal than it was before, when he had Wado to guard his heart, when the man he was fighting wasn’t his cook. This one was, and she was buried in his gut, and he was dying . “Let me help you. Hey, hey, stay with me. No. Don’t—don’t close your eyes. No. ”
Sanji breathes still, but his strength seeps from his form with every exhale. Zoro can feel it as much as Sanji can, his form hunching and shrinking exponentially where he’s poised in Zoro’s arms. With the sword between them, he can’t get any closer.
He clutches the cook’s head and neck, and when Sanji drops forward to bump foreheads, he sobs.
“Thank you.” It’s quiet and so, so simple, but Zoro swears he can hear the undercurrent of the sea with it. Sanji’s last breath is the sound of the All Blue’s pulling tide.
Before Zoro can scream, he’s met with the skeletal, gaunt shadow of a hooded figure. Unbelievably ashamed that he hadn’t sensed them, he’s instantly defensive, holding Sanji’s limp form tightly and glaring at them as though it’d warn them off. Before he can demand their identity, he notices the scythe; the skull, the lack of feet and structure.
A reaper.
He doesn’t know who it’s here for, but the delusion of being able to avoid it is too great for Zoro not to succumb to it, bracing himself for a duel. It’s at that moment that he realizes that he has no control of his muscles or joints, and that he’s powerless to the downward swing of the Reaper’s scythe.
He collapses, and that’s where the story ends.
✧
The swordsman and the captain wake weeks after the fight on Onigashima, but at separate times; Luffy shoots up before Zoro has consciously gathered his bearings, his limbs twitching as he rests. Luffy doesn’t mind it, though, only pouting when he realizes Zoro should remain unconscious and unbothered.
Meat is his first priority regardless.
“What do I have to do to get some food around here?” He whines from where he sits, his initial awakening already done and celebrated. Yamato sits to his left and Hiyori to his right, just across from Zoro’s limp body. The rest of the crew is scattered about, Momonosuke, Hiyori and the rest of the samurai among them. “I’m hungry.”
“There’ll be a grand feast soon just like Momonosuke said, don’t worry, Luffy!” Yamato says, and Luffy knows his excitement to be contagious, but his head pounds. He loosely slaps a hand down on the man’s face, silencing whatever more he has to say.
“That’s great and all,” He starts, and that’s about as tame as he's ever been about a feast, “but I’m hungry now .”
He feels Yamato’s lips attempt to move under his palm, but he pays him no mind, instead turning his attention to Nami, who’d been flitting around Chopper’s side the entire morning.
“Hey, Nami!” He calls, and she doesn’t face him, but does turn a cheek to indicate she can hear him. “Where’s Sanji?”
She doesn’t respond. In fact, nobody does, stiffening with an awkwardness that Luffy can’t put his finger on. Nami turns completely away from him, and when she reaches to place a gentle hand in between Chopper’s shoulder blades, he notices that hers have hunched. Everybody’s have.
“Nami?” He asks again, his trailed-off laugh the embodiment of lame. He feels like he’s 9 again, asking Sabo and Ace what the punchline is as they resolutely look away. “Hey, what’s going on? Don’t ignore me, I don’t like it.”
“Captain,” Jinbe says in his appeasing baritone, as though he knew Luffy wouldn’t like or wouldn’t want to hear what he was about to be told. “While you were on the roof, there was a situation.”
Happening only weeks ago, Luffy is forced to remember Whole Cake. An abrupt rage and worry tickles at his throat. If Sanji had left again, it’d mean the circumstances were worse, it’d mean that Germa had actually gathered their scant resources to make his life hell after everything Sanji had let go. It’d mean that, after pouring his heart out to Luffy in the dead of night, he still didn’t understand.
“Where is he?” He demands bluntly, his tone teetering precariously on the edge of concern and anger. He struggled to stand, but he stood nonetheless, his entire body tender. “Where is he, Jinbe? I don’t care how far it is. We’re going for him. He’s not gonna do this again.”
When he first spoke, the crew wore looks of grief and horror, but as he continued, they evolved into expressions of pity. There was something he wasn’t understanding, but nobody was telling him.
“Where is he?” He demands again, this time in a shout. The flare of conqueror’s haki that emanated from him is subconscious, and he pulls it back in a show of apology. Still, his question remains unanswered. “ Where the fuck is he? ”
“He’s dead.” Yamato’s voice is harder for Luffy to pin down, unfamiliar to him, but he does eventually. In his confusion, he hasn’t processed the man’s words immediately.
When he does, his blood runs cold.
“What?” Luffy asks tentatively, laughing awkwardly again. Denial runs deep in his bones, and it’s made its home on his tongue. He lightly kicks one of Yamato’s knees where they’re crossed, his brows furrowing. “That’s not funny, Yamato.”
“Sanji’s dead.” Yamato says again, his tone completely serious. He doesn’t look as distraught as the rest of the crew, but there’s an air of respect and grief about him. He adjusts himself to sit on his knees, his palms flat on his thighs–as formal as ever. “I’m sorry, Captain.”
“I’m sorry,” Nami continues for Yamato, her throat thick with tears. She’s trying not to sob, and Luffy knows it, but he feels far away from his body. She comes to him quickly, her hands trembling as they attempt to provide comfort. “I’m sorry, Luffy, I’m sorry.”
It’s as though a dam has been broken, and the majority of the crew crowd him with sobbed platitudes and unintelligible explanations between sniffles and cries. Jinbe remains at the side, watching Luffy carefully.
He’s witnessed him break once. He’s making sure it won’t happen again.
Luffy, where he stands, struggles to make sense of the things that go on around him. It’s different than Ace’s death; his grief is contained in a weak, pitiful structure just behind his diaphragm, and it threatens to burst with every shallow breath he takes. Rayleigh and Jinbe have trained him cruelly for this day, and his coping skills are choppy and barely-learned. His tears are nowhere to be seen, not yet.
He doesn’t move. In fact, he doesn’t turn from where he’s looking straight ahead, his mind racing to make sense of whatever it was he was and is being told. A crewmate is dead. The crewmate is Sanji. Sanji was his–
“Where is he?” Luffy asks again, and he finds that his voice is quiet and vulnerable, like a child speaking for themselves for the very first time. He definitely feels that way, a deep, mixed sense of loneliness and anxiety making its home in the hollow of his gut. He’s not sure if anyone’s heard him at all, if he’s actually said it or if it was only a fragment of his imagination. He’s trying his damndest to keep it together. “I need to see him.”
Right as Usopp makes his way to lead Luffy where he’s requested, Nami takes hold of his other arm, her grip firm.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” She says tentatively, her gaze flicking from Usopp to Luffy directly, then back again. She knows his eyes are unseeing, as much as he tries to disguise it. “It’s too soon, you just woke up, you just… you just went through all that shit, Luffy, this isn’t the right time.”
Her gaze on Usopp seeks agreement, but he’s hesitant to give it to her. “I don’t think–”
Luffy does not like to be discussed without his consideration. “I need to see him,” He repeats. “It’s my right to see him. I want to see him. I don’t give a fuck about anything else, Nami, I can walk.”
“That wasn’t my concern.” Nami replies sternly, breaching the motherly protectiveness just beyond her pity and heartache. “It’s too much mentally. I know you’re capable physically; I’m not saying you’re not. But Gear 5 fucked with you, Luffy, you know it did. We know it did.”
For a second, Luffy tunes her out, his mind returning to the mania that his recently-discovered ability induced. He remembers how good it made him feel–ironically a jarring contrast to the agony he felt now–and how everything, including his violence, felt light and inconsequential. He finds himself missing it.
“Just leave it for a few days, yeah?” Luffy hears Nami say, her voice muffled but placating. He knows she confused his dissociation for complacency. “It’s not the right time.”
He twists his arm out of her grip like she burnt him, and steps closer to Usopp.
“Take me to him.” He demands, ignoring her completely.
The travel is short. At least, it feels that way, his thoughts and perception of time muddled with countless irrational possibilities and regrets. He should’ve stayed by Sanji’s side, he should’ve known something was going to go wrong, he should’ve kept him close after the disaster that he’d lived through only days before returning to full-blown war for Luffy’s sake. It didn’t matter that all of those things were out of his character; he should’ve made exceptions.
The palace’s hallways and wooden-paneled floorboards led to a neater, cleaner sliding door than before and Luffy knew.
Even the scent here was different, the crispness of morning dew and the saltiness of the ocean’s spray morphing together in a palpable, deathly oxidation, stale and uncomfortable altogether. The scent of death clung to the frames, beckoning Luffy forwards as opposed to demanding exit.
He can’t bring himself to open it. Seemingly knowing as much. Usopp does it on his behalf, using the movement as an excuse to put himself to the side. Luffy doesn’t know if the sniper’s afraid; he usually is, so perhaps it isn’t the right question to have, but it’s unbeknownst to him whether or not it’s guilt or pity that seizes his heart.
When Luffy lifts his gaze, something cracks.
His cook is lovely. He can tell as much even from where he stands in the doorway, meters away—subconsciously, he moves forward, desperate to get a better look at the man lying still.
Sanji has been laid neatly on a bed of flowers; what they mean, Luffy has no idea, but he thinks Robin might. (He’ll ask her later.) Amidst the chaos and disarray that was the country, he assumes they hadn’t gotten the chance to dress him the way he might’ve preferred; even still, the white kimono that he’s clad in is sufficient, if not a little oversized. It’s folded and tied in the opposite direction Luffy’s seen the residents wear, but he thinks it may be intended that way.
It was like his brain was attempting to protect his sanity throughout his observation. Maybe fate was in kahoots with it, too, because the silk wrapping of the sword’s hilt had blended with the fabric the man wore, even its golden accent pairing nicely with the strands of spun sunlight that billowed around a new, stiff pillow. (If only they knew Sanji preferred two.)
A pause. Then, a double-take.
A sword with ivory, silken wrapping and golden accents. A pale face of calm, unobstructed, forgiving peace.
His reaction is inexplicable.
A scream perches right beneath his jaw and he can feel it flutter, but he dares not to release it. Instead, he releases something much more cruel. A devastating pulse of fury washes through his surroundings as soon as he pieces the evidence together, and Luffy can’t tell how far it reaches. He doesn’t notice, but Usopp’s knees buckle and he’s knocked back some; the samurai escorting them have a weaker will and collapse entirely, thumping to the floor with as much grace as is to be expected.
A thick blanket of unease drapes over the entire country, and yet only a few know why.
“Luffy,” He hears the sniper choke, but he’s left unheard. As quickly as he’s laid eyes on Sanji, Luffy is out of the room and across the palace, instinct leading him exactly where he needed to be at inhuman speeds. Rubber bounds through the hallways with little more than a foreboding squeak and a gust of air, but he’s distantly aware of the fact that his conqueror’s is more than enough to alert anyone of where he is and what might be happening.
Ergo, it’s not really a surprise when he bursts through the confines of the room he was in before. He doesn’t have the mind or time to see what the reactions of his crew are—he can feel their surprise, their fear on his back, all more terrified than astonished. Jinbe doesn’t move to touch him this time, and it has nothing to do with the steam curling up from Luffy’s skin.
He stops above the man who remains mostly idle, twitching and jerking in his sleep with whispered grunts. His movements cease when Luffy gets closer, his haki thick and merciless when it pulses from him.
The man isn’t unconscious for much longer, and when his eye snaps open in alarm, Luffy is nose-to-nose with him, his own eyes open wide unblinking. They share the same ragged breaths, and the shadow Luffy casts on him is long and gaunt.
“ What did you do? ”
He can’t recognize his own voice.
✧
It’s not the most mild-mannered way he’s been woken up, but it’s far from the least surprising. What keeps him from groaning about the lack of decorum is the fact that something is undoubtedly wrong—if his captain’s grim expression and suffocating aura are any indication.
It doesn’t take a genius to realize that he himself is the subject, the sole recipient of Luffy’s ire, and he fights through disorientation and a pounding head to gather reasons why he might be so angry.
“What did you do ?” Luffy repeats again, and this time, in the right mind, Zoro processes it fully.
His mouth is unbelievably dry. He can feel it when he attempts to form any word or haw, his tongue struggling to keep up with the film of his memory. He remembers hell, and the reaper he was met with, but all of it is convoluted.
Hiyori speaks for him, quipping at his side with a gentle hand on the meat of his shoulder.
“Luffy, you must allow him to resocialize. He isn’t completely aware now,” And he isn’t, but he doesn’t need her defense. She, of course, doesn’t share the same ideology, because she sounds proud of her mistaken success. “Besides, there must’ve been circumstances that neither you nor I understand. You must allow him the time to properly explain.”
It isn’t particularly astounding that Luffy moves to hit the princess, but it is when he stops himself. Still, the resulting fear and shock is enough to ward Hiyori off a meter or two, shuffling backwards on her hands. The cook wouldn’t have appreciated it if he had.
The cook.
His heart seizes.
“It’s none of your business, Eeyore,” Luffy spits, not even sparing the attention to get her name right. Zoro doesn’t find himself caring, either, thinking of her insertion as disrespectful. “No one’s talking to you.”
She quiets per his request, but her distaste is clear when she storms out of the room a minute later and slams the door behind her. Finding it an ample opportunity, Momonosuke silently follows shortly thereafter, the Samurai in tow. The crew is alone now.
Zoro feels overwhelmed by the amalgamation of emotions that make themselves known as a cluster in his battered ribcage, and he’s sure they flit across his face with every trembling inhale and exhale he makes. His memories come to him in poorly illuminated still-images, some consecutive and some not. Nevertheless, he’s aware of the picture it paints, of the responsibility he shoulders.
Luffy doesn’t appreciate his silence.
“I’m talking to you.” His captain says unkindly, slapping Zoro without much force. Still, it’s enough to move his head to the side, bringing the swordsman back to the present when he’s forced to right it. He’s sneering now, surely sleuthing the guilt that Zoro feels binding the fibers of his muscles. “Answer me.”
“I killed him.” He replies, his voice rough with lack of use and water. It’s a quiet admission, only cracked loudly enough for him and Luffy to hear.
“Say it again.” Luffy demands, the hand on his jaw making bone creak. Zoro doesn’t feel threatened, not yet. It’s a response he expected.
“I killed him.” He complies, louder than before. This time, the crew can hear him. He’s not sure what their reactions are.
Luffy releases him from his hold, his face carefully blank. This is what confuses Zoro, a deep furrow forming between his brows.
He isn’t given much time to contemplate it before Luffy’s fist comes down on his face hard , the firm thud of meat and bone as clear as day.
It hurts like he’d been shot by a pistol point-blank, and his groan is instinctual. Still, he doesn’t complain, only raises a hand to clutch at the arm Luffy didn’t hit him with.
“I killed him,” He repeats, and so does Luffy, raising his fist and bringing it down in the same manner as before. He does it again before Zoro can speak.
And again, and again, and again .
Soon, he’s pummeling whatever structure Zoro might’ve healed in the past few weeks, shaking the swordsman’s hand from his bicep and utilizing both extremities to convey his rage and his hurt. It’s a macabre cadence of flesh pounding flesh, and Zoro can’t tell which way is up amidst all of it, but that’s to be expected. His eye swells within minutes and blood clouds whatever thought he may have, dulling every sense he’d finally come to grasp. It pours from his nose and trickles generously down into his ears and his mouth, onto his neck and into the hollow of his throat. He practically bathes in it, the tacky cleanliness of sponge baths tainted by what could only be a modicum of Luffy’s wrath.
Distantly, he can hear the uproar of disagreement and horror from his crewmates, but only a few try to pull Luffy from him in earnest. None of them are successful in their endeavors, but the attempts remain, petals billowing from the ground where Robin claws at Luffy’s limbs with a variety of her own and a splash of seawater wetting them both on behalf of Jinbe. It does very little to dampen the flames of what Luffy feels, and what Zoro is receiving.
It reminds him of Thriller Bark, and he realizes that it is nothing in comparison to what Luffy might be nurturing now. The only difference is that Zoro is just as hurt.
The revelation is what fuels him to rise to a sitting position, resisting the violent onslaught to the best of his ability. Endurance was a skill he prided himself in, and he wasn’t about to shame himself in front of his Captain. He hears Nami shriek at the two of them, but he can’t decipher exactly what she’s saying–if it’s due to his blood-clogged ears or her voice thick with emotion, he doesn’t know.
He takes hold of Luffy’s fists before they collide with his face. Both of them are still for no more than two beats, their breaths labored and on the precipice of a scream.
“He asked me to.” Zoro clarifies, and though he didn’t think it possible, his voice is more wrecked than before. He sounds as though he’d just endured a war on his own, and it might be true, Luffy’s disdain amounting to that of thousands of men. He feels his lungs collapsing, and he belatedly registers that Luffy hadn’t only stricken his face. He spits a combination of blood, teeth, and mucus to the side before continuing, his gaze as steady as it can be on Luffy’s.
“He knew something wasn’t right. He wasn’t himself.” It takes him more effort than he’d like to admit to get words out, losing breath, but he perseveres. “I wasn’t there with you guys. At–at the wedding, or–or whatever it was. I wasn’t. But I know his family… His family did something to him. Something about-about stupid science. I didn’t ask.”
He can feel Luffy’s fists tremble as he holds them, unbridled rage making any point of stability bend to its will. Even the floorboards burst underneath his captain’s feet, his haki becoming more and more potent. Zoro knows he’s blaming himself, and he’s tempted to do the same, but he knows better.
Sanji wouldn’t have wanted that.
“He came to me because he knew you wouldn’t…” He wheezes. “He knew you’d never kill him. Even if he wasn’t himself.”
“Of course I wouldn’t!” Luffy says finally, his voice nearly giving out around his yell. Tears line his eyes and obstruct his throat, and Zoro can hear them. Everyone can; his emotion is palpable, if not all-consuming, and they fall into tenuous silence.
Luffy grabs at the wrists that hold him, and without preamble, he throws his first mate into the nearest wall. The only reason he isn’t ejected from one to the next is because it led outside, and both Robin and Nami catch him through a net of arms and a tangible cloud respectively on the other side of the plaster. He can’t say his thank you’s now, but he’s grateful regardless.
The attention on Luffy is tense, like he’s a coil that hasn’t sprung completely; like a pile of gunpowder, left unattended and open to the elements.
“I wouldn’t have fucking killed him!” Luffy screams, disregarding the possibility of losing his voice. He claws at his chest as though in an attempt to carve out his heart and reopen the scarring of his skin, desperate for relief. “He was my cook! I would’ve helped him! He was my cook! Mine, Zoro, he was mine !”
The majority of the crew fails to grasp the severity of his words, but Zoro doesn’t. He never broached the topic explicitly, but he was more than aware of the relationship shared between the cook and their captain, hushed assurances and gentle touches disguised as simple companionship. They were different from the rest, and he knew it. Still, his heart ached.
“He was ours, too!” He finally yells back from where he sits, already having slid from the net and cloud. He can’t move. “He didn’t want to be with us any differently. He didn’t want to live if it meant not feeling. You would’ve taken that away from him.”
At his words, Luffy screams as though he’s been wounded, torn between emotions. He’s reverting to his old process of grief; it only becomes clearer when he jerks his head up at Zoro not unlike a man crazed.
He lunges, completely silent and intent on killing, but Franky’s fist around his arm and Jinbe’s firm hit across his jugular render him unconscious.
Before Zoro can come to terms with having felt terror at the sight of his captain, he succumbs to darkness as well.