Chapter Text
Suffering. Pain. Loss. Sadness. Forgetfulness. Numbness. Loneliness. Clarity. Relief. Peace. All of these were present in isolation. All of these are simple reactions to being completely alone, and that’s what he was: alone. Alone within himself and his mind.
Hanahaki. The word that put him and many others through a pain that he didn't think possible until he had heard it being applied to his counterpart.
Dead. The word that now described his best friend.
Alone. The word that described him.
Zoro had been diagnosed with Hanahaki disease several weeks before. The Hanahaki had slowly weakened his body over time, and with it, everyone's hopes that he'd beat it. Chopper had fought him with medical treatments as everyone else fought it with prayers. Zoro had refused the surgery, a look in his eyes that would haunt Sanji forever. He’d rather die than forget his love.
And now, he’d broken his promise to Luffy to never lose again until he was the World’s Greatest Swordsman. He had lost the fight to his own damned heart.
Zoro was gone and Sanji was alone.
Even his death made Sanji angry .
"I signed the form, you know." Zoro managed to whisper. “When I go, Chopper can’t do the surgery.”
Sanji turned to look straight at him. The swordsman’s skin tone was so pale, it matched the color of the sheets and pillows that surrounded his thin frame. It was too pale for skin that should have been a glowing tan. His messy green hair was dull and flat due to the different treatments Chopper had tried and his once bright eyes were dull and broken after enduring so much pain. Every breath he took sounded like a rasp as his lungs struggled to work around the flowers growing within them.
He was dying and both knew it. He wouldn't make it through this time.
Up until a few seconds ago, they had been talking about the crew’s most recent fight. It was right before Zoro took a turn for the worst. They had fought back to back, Zoro’s menacing laughter accompanying the sounds of clashing steel and the thud of heavy kicks hitting their marks. It was after that fight that they had clasped hands in a draw, both having felled an equal number of foes. Sanji had been laughing at Zoro’s insistence that he’d cut them more, so he’d won when he watched him pause mid-sentence, choking and coughing painfully until a full rosebloom erupted from his mouth, thorns dragging flesh with them on their way out.
He’d been rushed to the med-bay where the entire crew had begged him to do the surgery — twice — to no avail. He was insistent that they leave the damned flowers and his memories in place.
Now it was just Zoro and Sanji alone in the med-bay. The crew was still singing music on deck, but neither was paying attention to it now. They were only focused on each other.
Zoro hadn’t needed to specify which form he’d signed, they both knew he meant the "Do Not Resuscitate" medical release form. He had signed it a few days ago, and Sanji had been there glaring at him when he had.
"I know," he managed to whisper as his own throat was choked up. Zoro’s rasp was thick and heavy as the air barely made it in and out of his lungs as the bushes were full and vibrant within him. They both knew that this was it. "Do you want me to go…"
He cut him off with two simple words. "Don't go."
Sanji simply nodded and took his hand. "If you just told the person, moss—”
"I can’t," Zoro smiled sadly as he squeezed his hand back. "Can't say it now, when it’d only leave them with regrets."
They simply stared at each other for a few minutes, allowing a peaceful silence to engulf them.
Zoro smiled, "It's been a good ride though…I have to say that I don't regret a minute of it."
"But what about…?"
“I don’t regret any of it.”
With one look at the smile on his face, Sanji felt the tears coming to his eyes as he felt a fist clamp around his heart as he felt a lump clogging his throat, making his own breath come out wheezing.
He smiled at him and closed his eyes. "It really was a good fight, wasn't it?" he heard himself whisper.
He didn't receive an answer.
Sanji sat with him as his breathing slowed and until the hand he held went cold, and then he stood. He noticed that his crew had joined him in his room, but ignored them.
Sanji knew the others wanted to say their farewells, so he stood and backed up towards the door, never breaking his line of vision of him. He only averted his eyes from the bed when he turned to run out of the open doorway and out of the medical ward, through his galley, and out to the back of the ship where he knew he could be alone for a minute.
He always came here when he wanted to escape. When Zoro had been originally diagnosed, he cried here, angry the swordsman loved someone enough to die for them, more than stay alive for the crew. When he had fallen during that last fight, Sanji had come here to escape again but hadn't cried. When he had gone into the med-ward to stay this last time, he came here to pray. Now he was here, and it was because this is where his feet had taken him.
He didn't know how long he had been standing there leaning against the railing until the floorboard creaked right behind him. He jumped and spun around, throwing himself off-balance on his shaking knees. The perpetrator, Nami, tried to steady him, but it resulted with Sanji dragging her down with him as he slipped.
"Are you ok?" he asked as soon as they had disentangled themselves.
"No," she snapped at him. "I lost my best friend, decided to check on you instead of going off on my own, and then I got a heart attack when you mauled me."
He ignored her jabs and persisted, "I meant, are you physically alright, mellorine? Your ankle looked like it twisted funny."
As soon as he mentioned it, she hissed in pain, giving him the answer he was looking for. He nodded and got up. She simply watched as he opened the door to the galley, grabbed the nearby bandage medkit for Usopp and Luffy’s minor fishing injuries, and then quickly returned. She watched in silence as he bandaged her up.
She spoke only when he had finished. "Now, how are you holding up?"
Deciding that he should be honest with her since they had just lost the Moss, he opened up.
"I’m… I’m angry Nami,” he confessed, forgoing honorifics and choking on the sob he refused to let out in the face of needing to get his feelings out. “Why him ? He didn't do anything wrong. What did he do to deserve this?" he begged for an answer, knowing there really wasn’t one.
"Death is something that happens to everyone, it just turned out that God wanted him back a bit sooner than the rest of us," she replied as calmly as she could.
"But why him ? Especially to such a stupid… Why couldn’t he just tell the idiot he loved? Or get the damned surgery?"
"…I don't know. I tried to convince him."
“Did he… Nami do you know who he—”
Her silence spoke volumes as she averted her gaze.
“Wh—”
“I’m really sorry Sanji, but I can’t.”
Suddenly, a million tiny moments flashed before Sanji’s eyes. Nami and Zoro through the years. They’d been on the same crew before he’d ever met them. She was lovely and soft and cared for the crew just like a slightly-annoyed big sister. Zoro always kept the crew together in adversity. It made sense… If Zoro was to fall for anyone since Kuina, it’d probably be her.
And Nami was gay… The disease required a romantic reciprocation, if she couldn’t love him back… Sanji felt the clog in his throat swell as if he couldn’t breathe.
After a few minutes of silence, he was able to swallow enough to whisper, "…I'm scared that we'll forget him."
"We could never forget him," she whispered back, tears now freely running down her face. “We couldn’t.”
"I just c-can't believe he's really gone," he choked out as a single stray tear finally glazed his vision before rolling down his cheek.
Her hands were immediately on either side of his face as she moved him to face her. "He's not gone. Not really… Not as long as he remains with us here," she told him, her hands resting on his chest over his heart.
For some reason, this cliché moment was what caused him to give in and break down into tears for the first time since the swordsman had been diagnosed.
As sobs ripped through his chest, he bent over and buried his face in her lap. She didn't shove him away as he had expected, instead, she pulled him closer as he grieved, wrapping him in her soft arms. He reacted by burying his face in her lap and wrapped his own arms around herself. She made shushing noises as she rubbed his back, attempting to calm him as he let out his pain, fear, and sadness in the form of salty water droplets running down his face. After about ten minutes, he realized that he wasn't the only one who was crying deeply as she bent forward to release her own tears into his shoulder.
Connected by their common grief, the two friends comforted each other as they honored the memory of their brother and friend with tears of mourning until Sanji couldn’t breathe from it.
Sanji felt that lump climbing his throat and choked on it, his sobs continuing for a new reason. It hurt .
He ripped himself away from Nami to cough violently, trying to clear the knot in his throat. After a minute of struggling, his throat cleared and he was left with a single petal in his palm.