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Zoro thought he was prepared for this.
He’s a pirate in the middle of the New World, after all. Even if he weren’t, his dream begins and ends with bloodshed — someone else’s, or his own. Zoro has stared down both the barrel of a loaded gun and the sharp edge of a blade without so much of a flinch — he’s not afraid, and he is prepared. He is. He really is.
But —
The infirmary door swings open.
Chopper stands at the doorway. In his Heavy Point form, the slump of his shoulders is much more apparent, the gravity of the situation seems to weigh him down physically. Zoro feels his heart seize up beneath his ribcages at the sight.
Brook is the first one to find his voice. “How is it?”
Chopper bows his head, eyes avoiding everyone’s gaze. “I’m not sure,” he says after a moment, voice faint. “I’ve done everything I could. The next two days are going to be critical, and if he doesn’t wake up after a week, I don’t think…”
Chopper trails off, but Zoro hears the words unsaid. I don’t think he ever will.
A sharp ache burns in Zoro's chest at the thought, and he nearly chokes on it. He thinks of Sanji, lying on the infirmary bed, eyes closed forever and never waking up, and it makes Zoro’s throat tight and the back of his mouth sour. His nakama, his equal, his partner in crime, his lover —
“Can I see him,” someone requests, and it takes Zoro a moment to realize that the voice was his own.
Chopper looks torn. “He’s mostly stable for now, but…” his eyes dart a concerned glance at the infirmary before returning to Zoro. “I…”
Chopper’s voice quivers, and he looks like he’s a few syllables away from a breakdown. Zoro takes a good look at him for the first time since they found Sanji, and he notices how pale the doctor is, dark shadows under his eyes and his fur now a frizzled mess. It’s nice, in a messed-up kind of way, that someone here looks as fucked up as Zoro feels.
Thankfully for Chopper, he doesn’t have to make the decisions as Luffy says, “you should go in, Zoro.”
Zoro turns to their captain. He can’t see Luffy’s expression, the brim of his straw hat tipped low. “Can I?”
“You want to see Sanji, right? And he’s right there.” Luffy says, like everything is that simple. Maybe it is. “I don’t see why you shouldn’t.”
Zoro nods. “Thanks.”
“Okay,” Chopper acquiesces. He steps to the side, giving way to Zoro. “Just don’t touch anything, okay? All those machines are there to help Sanji recover. If something happens — anything — don’t try to fix it by yourself. I’ll be right in front of the door.”
“Of course,” Zoro agrees quickly. “There’s no one else I’d trust the Cook with more than you.”
“That doesn’t make me happy at all, bastard,” Chopper says, but Zoro can see some of the tension seeping from his shoulders.
For a moment Zoro remembers the last time he saw Sanji — bloodied and battered and barely, barely alive — and he tries his best to shake the image from his thought as he pushes the infirmary door open.
There are machines. A lot of them.
He has seen them before, of course. Littered around Chopper’s work room. The doctor occasionally talks about them, even tried to explain what they are used for once, though Zoro had dozed off in the middle of that conversation. But Zoro has never seen all these machines used at once, on one person, cables and tubes bypassing one another, forming intricate coils, and — Sanji, in the middle of it all.
He expected the room to be quiet; no one else but himself and the unconscious cook, after all. But the room is filled with noises, the low hum from the machines and there’s a steady beep, coming from what he recognizes to be the heart monitor. And Sanji…
Even unconscious, Sanji’s muscles are tense with pain. His breathing is a collection of ragged gasps, short and desperate. Sometimes, the gasps would devolve into coughs, violent enough to send tremors through his body.
Zoro strokes one hand through Sanji’s sweat-soaked hair, gently, and Sanji lets out a distressed whine at the gesture.
Zoro takes a seat beside the bed, and waits.
The Cook wakes up on the third day. That’s the good news.
The bad news is everything else. The way the Cook’s eyes glaze, unseeing, before slipping back into unconsciousness. The way his vitals stubbornly refuse to stabilize. The way Chopper flips through pages and pages of data on Sanji, his voice trembling as he says, I know I’ve said two days, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.
Zoro doesn’t think he’s looking for apologies. Definitely not from Chopper, who’s clearly doing his best. Every time he catches sight of Sanji’s arms, he thinks he’s not looking for apologies from the ones who did this to the Cook, either.
Someone has clearly bound Sanji by the wrists. Something strong enough that the Cook couldn’t just break through — sea-stone, probably. Zoro can still see the faint impressions of the chains on Sanji’s skin, a stretch of darkening bruises around the wrists. At one point, Sanji must’ve broken his left arm fighting the restraint, and it was healing at a bad angle before Chopper and Robin managed to rebreak and set it right. Sanji screamed when they did it, a choked, pained howl, and Zoro thinks he can still hear it whenever he closes his eyes.
His legs aren’t faring any better. Those people who got him must have known that they were his weapons, and dealt with them accordingly. His entire legs are swollen, littered with bruises, and there are stab wounds on the base of both of his feet. Chopper suspected something has pierced through them; Robin was sure it was an attempt to bolt the Cook’s feet to a surface, effectively debilitating him.
Neither his hands nor his feet have any nails left. They have all been pulled out, clean.
Zoro still remembers the taste of the bile at the back of his throat when he first saw them.
Now the wounds aren’t visible after Chopper tended to them, but they have all been scarred onto Zoro’s mind. His eyes fall onto Sanji’s arms again, and he still sees the way it was twisted unnaturally, the broken bone tearing through the skin and jutting out painfully.
Sanji talks about it, sometimes. How important his hands are to him, as a chef.
Zoro looks at Sanji’s bandaged arms, and knows that he’s past the point of apologies. Kitetsu rattles inside its sheath, calling.
“Those wounds on his hands,” Robin tells him on the fifth day, when she catches him staring at Sanji’s arms again, “they aren’t the worst of it all.”
Zoro stares at her incredulously. “You know how important they are to the Cook.”
“Yes, but…” Robin pauses, clearly picking her words carefully. “Those wounds wouldn’t have killed him. But here…” she reaches over the bed, hand hovering right above Sanji’s bandaged neck. “Here, it could’ve been lethal.”
“I thought you said they weren’t planning to kill him,” Zoro says. He still remembers — doesn’t think he can ever forget — how Robin took one look at Sanji and immediately recognized the signs of torture. The objective was to maim, not kill.
“They weren’t,” Robin agrees, but still shakes her head. “But it still could’ve killed him.”
“What is it,” he asks, and his voice is low, almost a growl. The bandage around Sanji’s neck is wrapped neatly, never showing what’s underneath. Zoro simply assumed it was a light wound, something from a stray hit to the neck. “What is that wound.”
Robin’s hand falls to her side. “It’s a knife wound.”
Zoro suddenly feels sick because he knows where this is going. “They stabbed him in the neck?”
“It’s a cut,” Robin explains, and shakes her head grimly. “it should’ve killed him, but someone has made sure that it didn’t.”
Zoro thinks he can imagine what’s underneath the bandages now — an ugly, jagged scar across the Cook’s throat. The way it mirrors the serrated edge of a knife as it pressed onto the skin. He remembers the way Sanji curled into himself when they found him, hands desperately grasping onto his neck, and Zoro wonders how long have they left him like that, bleeding out, choking on his own blood, drowning —
“Zoro,” Robin says, and Zoro snaps out of his thought.
His swords clatter against his hips. When he looks down, he finds his right hand gripping on a hilt, tight enough that his knuckles start to whiten.
Robin watches him, but doesn’t say anything.
Zoro thought he was prepared for this.
But then Sanji coughs, voice hoarse and damp with blood, body trembling as he struggles to find his breathing again — and Zoro realizes that no matter how much he was prepared for himself, he was never ready to see it happen to Sanji.
Zoro picks up Kitetsu. He brings Shusui too, just in case, but it’s still tucked inside its scabbard. He won’t unsheathe it unless he has to.
He leaves Wado behind, leaning at the side of Sanji’s bed.
They just found out who did it. A fracture from the remains of Big Mom Pirates, driven by nothing but revenge to the crew who destroyed them. They must’ve heard of the Straw Hats — of Luffy — but the face of the wedding has been Sanji, and that’s who they put the blame on, too.
Zoro doesn’t know what he’s going to do. Zoro doesn’t even know how he’s going to find them on this island, doesn’t know if they still haven’t sailed away, but he knows there’s an itch under his skin that is bone deep, a loud rumble in his ears that won’t go away unless he does something.
Luffy is at the deck when he walks out, perched on the railing. Nami is standing near, observing the two of them.
“Captain,” he says, and his voice sounds foreign, even to him. “Permission to leave the ship for a day.”
Luffy tilts his head, regarding him. His straw hat slides to the side of his head, and for once, Luffy ignores it.
“Luffy,” he repeats.
Luffy crosses his arms. He stares at Zoro, and Zoro feels like he’s looking into Zoro, deconstructing him. “Where are you going?” He asks.
“There’s something I need to do.”
“Don’t do anything you’ll regret,” Luffy says. And then, “will you come back?”
Zoro thinks of Sanji. He thinks of the Cook he knows, the one with the smile that stretches across his face, who’s filled with so much love and kindness that he’s bursting at the seams with it, who always has his back in a fight. Zoro misses him with a solid ache, and says, “yes.”
It's apparently enough for Luffy, because he nods. “Okay.”
And that is all the permission he needs. He finally, finally lets himself feel the anger, the one that’s been tucked alongside and wrapped around the ache of Sanji’s wounds. It’s like opening the Pandora box — Zoro can feel it spread, a suffocating weight in his chest, and it bounces around his ribcages, echoing and reverberating until it comes back with sharper edges.
He lets the darkness overtakes him.
They don’t call him the Demon of East Blue for nothing.