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It’s early in the morning when Zoro walks into the kitchen. Sanji had been waiting. He’d been following the minutiae of prep work, crushing garlic and marinating various cuts of sea king.
The ocean had finally stilled after four nights of storms and winds strong enough to bend the masts. It had worn them all down, constantly being wet, bracing themselves as the ship tilted and rocked within white capped waves. Calm came with the evening and they all went their own ways to recover, only passing as the watch shifts changed hands.
Brook had walked by the kitchen door a while ago and in the minutes following, Zoro hadn’t and lately, Sanji thinks, it's becoming the same. Zoro takes longer and longer to come down from the deck. Stalling, needing the time, perhaps, the extra silence. Sanji’s really not sure. But he’s never able to stop worrying about him, not since they returned to Sabaody and he saw him again after so, so long and then, after Wano— Sanji has only held on tighter.
“Want something to eat?” Sanji asks, laying a slab of meat on the fry top. It pops and sizzles with a light, peppery scent. Zoro shakes his head, leaning down to unlace his boots and pauses the second his hip catches with his back. He doesn't acknowledge it, not a sound, he just habitually squeezes his side. And Sanji wonders, glancing back as Zoro slowly straightens, if anyone else has noticed that when Zoro thinks no one is watching, he moves that much more methodically, like he has calculated all his movements down to the shift of the smallest joint.
“You sure?” Sanji pushes, keeping his eyes on the meat in front of him and forcing himself not to flip it too early.
-
Zoro breathes, eye squeezing shut when he’s sure Sanji is turned away from him. Pepper and lemon thicken the air. It’s thick in his throat. It is making him nauseous.
”You sure?” he hears Sanji ask and Zoro is sure he already answered.
“Cook..” Zoro manages, his grip tightening on the counter. Sweat is rolling down his stomach and it feels like he’s just come out on the wrong end of a fight by just coming down the short flight of stairs. He tries to inhale slowly through his nose but with every breath, his ribs cave into his lungs.
“The sea king’s almost done. I can put it over rice. I just need to blanch the spinach.”
“Cook, somethin’s—”
The tips of his swords hit the floor first.
-
“He’s wearing his body down,” Chopper sighs, eyes watery with frustration, with guilt, but really it’s worry, the same as Sanji’s, because this can’t go on. Not anymore, not since Wano. He will suffer twice as much. It is all Sanji has thought about.
At first, they all thought he dodged the consequences of the medicine. Months had gone by since he’d risen unblemished before King and Queen and, still, he was strong, as sturdy as ever. The risk of fallout had to have passed but who really knew how much Zoro could hide? He did seem to walk slower, lagging behind on supply runs which, really, didn’t seem so off. Not for Zoro and the way he wanders. At least, that’s what Sanji told himself whenever he’d flick an eye behind him. But then, two weeks ago, in the heat of a spar, Sanji’s kick landed hard. It was a full rounded blow that sent Zoro to the floor of the crow’s nest. Sanji expected a block, for the blunt edge of a sword against the sole of his shoe.
As soon as Sanji’s feet touched back to the ground, he was running toward Zoro, doubled over and holding his stomach.
“What the fuck was that?!” Sanji spat, “Didn’t you see it?” he asked, dropping down next to him.
“I saw it,” Zoro gritted out, forehead dropping to the floorboards, “I just..” —couldn’t move fast enough.
Sanji peers into the infirmary where Zoro lays unconscious with a bag of fluid dripping into the crook of his arm.
“I don’t know what else I can say to get through to him,” Chopper says, voice wobbling as Sanji gently pulls his head into his thigh, “I— I knew there were risks. Miyagi said it would fundamentally alter his ability to heal.”
“Chopper..”
“It was a tradeoff, I tried to explain what one surge of strength could take away.”
Sanji tightens his arm around him in an attempt to reassure, to calm. Sanji is not calm. He knows as well as Chopper this is the tip of the iceberg.
-
His whole body hurts and it’s not like anything Zoro’s felt before. He’d gotten used to the delayed soreness in the days following a fight and the ache that is a constant rattle in his hips. This is different, more than the pull of stitches, deeper than bone weary. He hears a scrape across the floor.
“Zoro?”
His eye slits open.
“You’re awake,” Sanji breathes out, standing up from the chair positioned at the end of the infirmary bed, “I— fuck, Zoro,” he says and wipes at his eyes.
Zoro blinks, putting together his surroundings— low lights, the steady clicks and beeps, the dark circle ringing Sanji’s visible eye. “H— how long?” His voice comes thick and gravelly and for a second, he isn’t even sure he spoke.
“Love, it’s been four days,” Sanji says, a little wide eyed and far too serious for Zoro to manage so he tries to ignore it and focus on angling himself up. He’s too vulnerable laying here with Sanji standing over him and yet his limbs are too heavy to move.
“Don’t,” Sanji lightly pushes him back. It takes no effort.
“I gotta— fuck, it hurts.”
Sanji’s hand eases around Zoro’s shoulder as his body forces him to relent.
“I need to get Chopper, alright?”
“Wh— what time is it?”
Sanji looks around because it should be obvious, the only lights are dim, the windows dark, “Late.”
“Don’t wake him up,” Zoro says, clearing his throat, “Nothin’ for him to get worked up over right now.”
“That’s not how this is gonna work. Not in this situation.”
Zoro’s brow furrows, but barely, even that is too much of a strain.
“Be as stubborn as you want but don’t expect not to get that attitude right back.” Sanji sits back down.
“Thought you were gettin’ Chopper.”
“Look,” Sanji snaps, “You know what’s happening and you won’t give it a rest. I don’t give a shit about your pride or whatever. Everything is different. You heal slower and you have to get that. It’s not something you can train and it’s not some wound Chopper can just restitch and good grief,” he exhales, “you sure as hell aren’t gonna drink away whatever you’re feeling about it either.”
Zoro stares at him, his face near blank. Small red lines mar the white around his pupil. It’s dilated and glassy and Sanji wonders if Zoro is hearing any of this. “Fuck.. sorry, you just woke up, I— Zoro,” he whispers, eyes tracing down the thin tubes and lines of wire stuck across his pulse points, “this is scaring the shit out of me.”
Zoro starts to say something, wants to say this has nothing to do with Wano and the medicine he took there, that this is simply a fluke of strength, something he has overlooked in his training because he can’t say he knows, that he fears he is, now, truly, a liability. He can’t surface that awareness, it will only give away the little control he’s been able to hang onto and, already, the room is starting to distort around him.
It happens slowly at first then the walls, the ceiling, move in rippling waves. He opens and closes his eye, he thinks he hears his name, thinks Sanji is coming closer but his vision is closing to a pin. And at this point he’s too tired to even care if Sanji has caught on, that in three, maybe four, more breaths, he’s gonna pass out.
-
Chopper wrings his hooves together, looking at the faces of the crew sitting around him in the kitchen. They are all there, each of their expressions shifting to a deeper concern.
“You’re saying this is the effects of what he took in Wano?” Nami asks tentatively.
Guilt flares through Chopper’s body, “What I gave him, yes,” he corrects. “It alters his cellular turnover and slows it down exponentially,” Chopper says, trying to put an ounce of confidence into his words. The crew stares at him and Usopp looks to Robin.
“What Chopper means,” Robin says gently, “is that Zoro is healing two, possibly three times slower, depending on the injury or illness or even basic activity.”
Chopper nods, “His approach to recovery is rubbing sandpaper against his wounds and now with Enma and conquerors and the medicine staying in his body, overworking and no rest is both draining his reservoir of haki and also causing rapid tissue deterioration.”
Sanji stands at the stove, his back facing them. Broth simmers in a large pot, his hand tightens around the spoon handle.
“His last fight wasn’t that long ago,” Usopp pauses, anxiety passing over his face, none of them needed the reminder of Zoro’s body blasted into the ground. Robin touches his elbow.
“Chopper, we’ve been out of Wano for months,” Robin says, “You are certain the medicine is still in his system? Perhaps, it is entirely something else?”
“No, that was the one thing Miyagi was clear about. There’s no half-life, it remains in the system indefinitely. I tried to explain,” his voice pitches, “but there was just so much happening.”
Franky’s hand lands on Chopper’s shoulder, “It was Zoro’s choice.”
“He may not have understood the gravity of consequences,” Chopper says in a rush, “I was negligent, there should've been more research, more discussion.”
Brook’s bony fingers raise and Chopper quiets with tears brimming his eyes.
“It seems sudden,” Brook cautions, “how it’s turned.”
Sanji grits his teeth. The steam from the broth rises into his face.
“I think it was the storm. Storms have triggered his nerve pain in the past but this does seem like a more drastic shift.”
“It’s been bad,” Sanji blurts and all eyes turn toward him. “He can hide it, he— no, after his last fight, I started to put it together and I didn’t say anything. He wasn’t recovering. I thought.. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“It’s Zoro,” Chopper whispers through a shaky breath, “he always comes out okay.”
“Does he?” Sanji rounds, no longer willing to hide the pain across his face. “We all say but it’s Zoro like he’s immortal. None of you see what I see or you just keep choosing not to.”
“Sanji-kun..”
Sanji stiffens at the gentleness in Nami’s voice, the soft plea in her eyes, and waits for the tension to fall from his shoulders. “You don’t lay in bed with him every night,” he says, barely keeping his voice even, “Half the time he can’t sleep from pain. I told myself it wasn’t getting worse. I figured he was just going too hard training and not eating enough. It looked like the same damn trap he always slips into when he has nothing to focus on.”
“Bro,” Franky says, “don’t make this out to be your fault.”
“Isn’t it all of ours?” Sanji snaps.
“Zoro should have said something.”
Sanji’s eyes land hard on his captain and Luffy’s gaze is just as intent.
“Zoro should've told us if he felt strange,” Luffy repeats pointedly, “It’s his responsibility to do so.”
As a wing, Sanji thinks, as the first mate of an emperor.
Luffy stands from the table and walks toward the door. He says nothing and the door just swings shut behind him, leaving them in a silence that feels far too abrupt.
-
A while passes before Sanji leaves the kitchen. Nami was the first to go and the rest of the crew followed soon after. Not a single one of them lingered. It was clear enough that Sanji needed space, his kitchen, and the comfort only it could provide.
So he’s alone, thinking of the look Jinbei threw his way as he ducked his head under the doorframe. It was a soft, rueful smile. Nothing about it was reassuring and that made the weight of it all that much harder to sit with. It hadn’t been that long since they sat on the deck together and Sanji thanked him for snatching Zoro away from Rob Lucci. Jinbei had laid his heavy hand on Sanji’s shoulder and, now, standing here, back still pressed against the counter, a part of him wishes Jinbei stayed.
-
The light from the infirmary casts through the hall. Sanji expects him to be there. Luffy. He expects him to be sitting by Zoro but somehow it rattles to see it— Luffy cross-legged in the chair that has come to feel like his own, pulled close to the head of the bed while Sanji, with every injury, every sickness, has always sat at the end.
“He’s never said anything’s wrong,” Luffy says into the room. He doesn’t have to turn to know Sanji is hovering in the doorway with his hands shoved in his pockets.
“No,” Sanji says tentatively, taking a step in, “but neither have you.” It’s oppressive, with the stinging smells of all things meant to sanitize, cramped with the two of them at the side of the bed. He watches Luffy watching Zoro’s chest rise and fall as he sleeps. His breath is steadier than it was in the hours before and Sanji wonders if Luffy could really stomach the things he sees Zoro go through. He’s not sure Luffy can grasp the long term aftermath of horrific injury and the pains a rubber body will never hold on to.
“I didn’t know he was struggling. I mean, I can feel his haki but—”
“We have to keep moving,” Sanji finishes.
Luffy nods and for the first time, Sanji thinks he gets it, the thing in his captain he’s never been able to pin down, at least not in words. Constant movement is how he copes, with loss, pain, with failure. Yes, there’s his drive and the immense care for the world that is so much bigger than himself. But the pace also serves a welcomed distraction.
“I think Zoro is the same,” Luffy says.
“In some ways.”
Luffy looks up at Sanji, standing near him, above him, his leg just barely leaning against the infirmary bed.
“He’s going to move as quickly as you do. He will never do or give way to anything he thinks will hold you back or slow you down. At this point, I’m not sure any of us would.”
“Chopper needed more time in Wano to understand what Zoro took,” Luffy admits, “And Zoro needed rest.”
“Yeah, Luf,” Sanji breathes, “we all did.” He pauses, unsure if he can say what he needs to say to him. It’s hard to look at either of them. Luffy, waiting for him to go on, his face stripped of everything but concern. And Zoro. He’s so still. There’s no tremor to his muscles or flutter beneath his eyelid. It’s just quiet. It’s just the captain and his wings. “We can’t keep a pace like this,” Sanji whispers, “He’s destroying himself trying to keep up.”
Luffy fixes his gaze back on Zoro, his nakama, his first mate, that he has, lately, in this New World, seen only as a sword.
-
Chopper turns Zoro’s hand in his hooves, the one he grips Enma with, “What does it feel like when you flare your haki?”
Zoro really isn’t sure. It’s a feeling that comes in a wave that can either fill him with unfathomable strength or drain him of his very being. His weight feels heavier, the smallest exertion can leave his heart pounding against the walls of his chest. He thought it was his own losing battle with Enma.
The second he took the medicine, he forgot about it. All his focus honed on King. He can’t remember anything else that followed. Not the first clash nor the second. He doesn’t remember his body slamming into the rocky ground. What he remembers came later, the licks of black fire around him and Franky, from some distance high above him, screaming his name.
“I told you,” Zoro huffs, trying to pull back his hand.
“Stay still!”
Zoro squeezes his eye shut before shooting a look at Sanji, sitting at the edge of the bed. He shrugs.
Zoro drops his head back, “I don’t know. It’s harder, I guess. Takes more force.”
“But what does it feel like? I need to know where the strength of that sword ends and the consequences of the medicine begins. I need you to detail everything that comes up mentally and physically. Does it hurt? Do you feel tired? Is there an immediate or delayed reaction? Is it—”
“Chopper,” Sanji cuts in, “Slow down.”
“Sorry, sorry,” he says with a little nod, “Just really think about it, Zoro.”
“I mean, don’t ask too much of him.”
“Sanji!”
But it was worth it, that little jibe. Zoro’s mouth quirks up at Sanji, a quick look that passes over Chopper’s head and is just for them. It’s, for a single second, almost normal.
“Light headed,” Zoro says.
“When?” Chopper asks, grabbing his notepad.
“After flaring conquerors but I guess it’s most of the time.”
Sanji lets out a breath, “Most of the time?”
“I figured that was normal.”
Sanji is sure Chopper is about to combust. He makes a quick jot across the page and in some facsimile of composure sets down his pen, then, “Why would that be normal?!”
Zoro flinches and the slow, even click that has punctuated the infirmary for five days speeds up.
“We aren’t getting anywhere,” Sanji exhales as Chopper rushes to the other side of the bed, “Everyone needs to calm down.”
“I’m calm,” Chopper and Zoro snap in unison.
Sanji’s brow raises, “Right, both of you are pictures of serenity.”
“The more information I have,” Chopper goes on, pointedly ignoring Sanji’s comment, “the more effective I can be in my research. I need to be able to track the levels of symptoms and what triggers them. But Zoro,” a tone levels in his voice, the one reserved solely for doctor’s orders, Sanji hears it, wants to say it himself. “This really can only be managed by you. Resting more than you—”
“I don’t know what else you want to hear,” Zoro says, reaching his edge, “I feel tired and light headed. There’s not more to it. You can keep asking but the answer’s gonna be the same.”
“Okay,” Chopper relents quietly as he adjusts the new bag of fluids hanging above the bed, “okay.”
-
“Chopper’s gonna have a fit,” Sanji quips as he hangs his legs through the balustrades. It’s hours later, sometime in the middle of the night. Sanji had fallen asleep in the kitchen, cheek down in his recipe book. He woke when Zoro walked by, only as silent as his balance allowed. His swords clattered into the wall as he moved slowly against it.
Zoro watches the water. The moon is high and full and bright. It’s beautiful in the way it lays a path across the water. “Are you?”
Honestly, he wants to be mad but seeing him out here like this, in the fresh, sea air with his chin resting on his knees— Sanji scoots closer, “Not tonight.”
“I can’t take another second in that room,” Zoro says, “I don’t understand why this is all of a sudden a big deal. I feel fine now. There’s no point wasting time on this.”
“It’s not wasting time, it’s finding answers.”
“Answers to what? I get that Chopper’s worried about the stuff I took in Wano. The long term effects or whatever. But imagine if I didn’t, it could’ve been so much worse.”
“No one is saying it was the wrong choice,” Sanji says because he really believes that. They would have never made it past that corridor and the truth of it is, Zoro, himself, wouldn’t have either. “I thought when Law put you over my shoulder— I thought you were going to die. And then when King—”
“Well, I didn’t. And then you asked me to kill you so..”
Sanji sighs and leans back on his palms, “What are you trying to say? That we’re even or something?”
“I don’t know. Sorry. I just don’t want to think about Wano,” —about Hiyori, about Toko, her smile, her tears, about Tonoyasu. He doesn’t want to remember the fear nor the sheer resolve in Sanji’s voice.
“I don’t get it. You can sit and meditate for hours. You know how every muscle and tendon moves and what strain you can extend them through. Why do you constantly push past it? Can’t you see you’re making yourself weaker?”
“Cook, when are you going to get that I know.”
Sanji stares at him. He has never said anything like this. He’s never even acknowledged that he’s aware of it. But of course, of course, he knows because there is nothing he has honed more than his control over his physical self.
“I can’t stop,” Zoro continues, looking straight ahead and Sanji doesn’t know what to say. He’s too stunned and he can’t keep his eyes off him, wanting to catch any change in his expression, hoping to understand anything he’s thinking.
“Even when it hurts, I can’t. It’s just easier to ignore, less so now,” he admits.
“That’s—”
“Don’t. I already said I know.”
Sanji wants to shake him. For years, he’s tried to get through to him, begging him to take rest as seriously as he takes everything else. But, still, he could recover, not as easily nor as quickly as he should have but he always could. Now, Sanji can’t hold on to that. “You have to stop,” he says, completely unable to shake the plea from his voice. He’s looking right at Zoro and Zoro can’t look back.
“I’ve tried. I’ll sit up there in that crow’s nest, telling myself to just calm the fuck down.”
“And you can’t? Calm down, I mean.”
“No, I can’t sit with any of it.”
“Of what?”
Panic. Grief. Inadequacy. The fear of not being able to protect, of being the deadweight, the one that can’t keep up. Of losing himself first to Enma and then to it all, of losing the crew and losing him.
“Quit it with the fucking questions,” Zoro snaps, turning to Sanji. Tears run down his face, his voice raising against the quiet of the night, “You constantly tell me to stop and that’s it. Do you really think that helps? If you want to fucking help, then help me.” He doesn’t even bother to wipe away the wet on his cheeks, his eye stings and what’s worse than being seen like this, is seeing the look on Sanji’s face sink in.
Before he starts to stand, Sanji grabs his wrist, “Stay, okay? I can’t help you if you keep running from it and fighting me everytime I try to say anything past stop. Love, I don’t have a clue what to do anymore.”
“I.. I don’t know either.”
He looks worse. The spike of stress tanking his energy. Sanji can’t feel even a thread of his haki. He’s shaking and his hand is ice in Sanji’s.
Then, footsteps.
“Zoro? Sanji?”
Luffy. Zoro stiffens and Sanji thinks he’s lost him. He is absolutely shutting down in every effort to straighten his spine in front of his captain.
Luffy kneels down, leaving barely any distance between them. It is all too clear what’s going on.
“Zoro,” Luffy says gently, laying a hand on his back. His shoulders drop, sweat dampens the back of his neck. Luffy glances at Sanji and he can see the cue for what it is. As much as it hurts, as much as it makes sense after seeing Luffy sitting next to him in the infirmary, it’s clear the one that has a chance to get through to Zoro isn’t him.
Sanji doesn’t go far. He smokes near the door down to the cabins. He can’t hear them but he can see Zoro’s head in his hands, Luffy leaning toward him. A voice raises then quiets. He can hear fear and regret in the tone of the words he can’t make out. He can hear Zoro cry.
It's a long night. It feels like the morning just won’t come. Sanji sits on the step leading up to the second deck, a pile of cigarette butts lay crushed at his side. The sun has still not risen.
But it is quiet and maybe an hour ago, he should’ve gone to bed and left them alone, but since Luffy sat down, Sanji’s felt a light thread of haki holding him near.
“Sanji,” Luffy calls, snapping Sanji’s attention.
There’s a bit more of an ease to the air as Sanji lowers himself next to them.
“He can’t stand,” Luffy says softly and Zoro doesn’t retort. He’s leaning against the railing now, unable to hold his back upright but the edge, the tension has slipped off him.
“Will you take him back to the infirmary?” Luffy asks, “I’ll keep watch.” He crouches down once more, resting his hands on Zoro’s shoulders and then walks off toward Sunny’s figurehead. Sanji isn’t sure what to make of it but he hopes, no, he is sure when Zoro shakes his head to his questioning look that something significant has shifted.
“Alright, let’s get inside,” Sanji says, lifting Zoro onto his back.
The infirmary is how Zoro left it, sheets spilling to the floor, the monitors pushed back with the threads of wire and tubing hanging loose.
“Really made a mess, huh?” Sanji observes as he lays Zoro onto the bed.
“Can it, Chopper doesn’t have to know.”
“You think I know how to hook this all back up?”
Zoro chuckles lightly, keeping his eye shut to the light. Sanji turns it off and all that’s left is the soft blue glow from the monitors.
The chair Sanji has slept in each night since Zoro collapsed in the kitchen is off to the side. He doesn’t move it, not to the end of bed, not to the head. He climbs into the bed, curling himself around Zoro, still cold, still damp with sweat and sea spray.
“Our bed is more comfortable.”
Sanji snorts, “It’s definitely bigger.”
Zoro shifts, pushing his back deeper into Sanji’s chest.
“I’m trying,” he says after a few moments.
Sanji holds him closer, “You can come to me. Or to Luffy or Robin or any of us.”
Zoro doesn’t say anything and sometimes, Sanji thinks, that’s the clearest answer he can give, his silence, his contemplation. It is not a no, it’s—
“Okay,” he whispers.