daydream with me

“Zoro!” it’s Sanji that finally manages to drag Zoro upright, pinning him to the edge of the ship, shaking him by his shoulders, “what the hell are you doing?!”

“Her body!” Zoro shouts, shoving at Sanji’s rain-slick hands, “I have to find it —”

Nami has both arms wrapped around herself as she takes two steps forward, her bright hair stuck to her cheeks in tangerine streaks.

“Didn’t she say she’d show up at the last place she fell asleep?”

Zoro stares at her, wide-eyed, for three solid seconds before he scrambles out of Sanji’s grip and makes for the crow’s nest, taking the ladder three rungs at a time. He nearly rolls across the tiny crow’s nest as he forces his way through the trap door, his eyes whipping wildly from left to right, but there’s already a sharp, relentless dread ossifying in the marrow of his bones as he leans over the edge and shouts —

“She’s not here!”

It’s Usopp who answers, “What about your room?”

Zoro tumbles out of the crow’s nest, skidding down the length of the mast, but by the time he manages to get below decks, Nami’s already standing in his opened doorway, a hand pressed to her mouth.

Zoro races to her side and feels his breath freeze in his lungs.

Because you’re there, tucked into his hammock, your cheek pressed into his pillow, a blanket tucked around your shoulders, your eyelids fluttering as if they’d caught you in the middle of a particularly active dream.

In stumbling steps, Zoro makes his way to the edge of the bed, his shoulder bumping Nami’s as he inches by. He drops onto a wooden barrel and buries his face in his hands. Behind him, he hears Nami slump to her knees with a sound that’s caught halfway between a sob and a laugh.

Relief crackles through his veins like so much static electricity. Vaguely, he registers the sounds of the rest of the crew gathering by the door, Sanji helping Nami to her feet, Luffy making his way over to clap Zoro hard on the shoulder.

“Well, she’s for sure breathing!” he remarks, to which Usopp lets out a small, tinny laugh, and everyone follows suit. Zoro puffs out a breath and feels a saltwater sting in his throat.

He licks his lips and tastes the sea; when he blinks, his lashes come away wet.

It’s still relatively early in the day, so eventually, Sanji begs off to go make some lunch — for the recovering soul, he says. Luffy follows him, and a few minutes later, so does Usopp. Only Nami stays, her knees curled into her chest, her back against the wall, her eyes fixed on you as she counts your steady, drawn out breaths. But eventually, even she gets to her feet, reaching out to give Zoro’s shoulder a hard squeeze before ducking quietly out of the door.

Sometime in the late afternoon, Sanji comes to put a tray of food on a barrel by the bed. Zoro spares it a single glance, noting that Sanji’s included all your favorites as well as his own.

In the early evening, he reaches over for a riceball, and then another.

It isn’t till midnight that exhaustion finally takes over and he dozes into a shallow, fitful sleep.

— — —

You dream of dying.

Of falling down an endless ravine, of feeling your lungs fill and fill and fill with water. Of the sharp, silvering lick of a hungry blade, of fire as it burns slowly, creeping across your blushing skin.

You dream of terror, of your body fighting for a breath, a kick, a life, even as your mind resigns to the dull knowledge of impending death. You dream of peace, of lying down and falling asleep, of surrendering yourself to the warm, merciful dark and it’s wide, welcoming embrace.

You dream of Zoro, of the boy he used to be, of the raw hunger and determination in his eyes as he ran through his katas, of how wide he smiled when he was convinced no one else was looking. You dream of the man he is now, of the softness that had bled from him when he traced a hand along your cheek to press a strand of hair behind your ear. You dream of falling asleep next to him, of waking up to find yourself in his arms, of being cradled against his chest, of being laid gently in his hammock, of his body next to yours.

You dream.

You dream of falling, and falling, and falling. You dream of a voice, so deep it sounds like the underbelly of sound, grating out of the fathomless dark, reminding you of the bargain you weren’t even alive to make.

But your dreams always come back to dying, the act now so familiar to you that your body aches for it like a heart aches for company. You have died so many times the motion is braided into your muscles, inked into your skin, your lungs so used to giving up air that sometimes, you find yourself gasping out of a dream, clutching at your chest.

And that is how you wake — rocketing upright, fingers scrabbling at your throat, the phantom bite of Zoro’s blade lingering over your skin like the persistent itch of a healing wound.

It’s Zoro’s voice that pulls you back, his breathless, startled voice, your name tearing out of him like a curse, or a prayer.

“Y-you’re…” he seems unable to continue, the sight of you sitting up in his hammock, your eyes bright and a little glossy, your cheeks flushed with the remnants of your dreams, the early morning light pouring through his tiny window like so much pale gold, casting you in it’s relentless light.

Zoro blinks, feeling his muscles ache from the strange position he’d fallen asleep in, having roused himself so often during the night, if only to check that you’re still here, and still breathing.

“Zoro…” his name on your lips sounds like absolution, the final bit of proof he’d been waiting for before he jolts forward to pull you into his chest, pressing you to him so hard you yelp in surprise, the entire hammock swinging back with the force of his body.

He spears his fingers through your hair, cradling the back of your head, his nails scraping against your scalp as he clutches you close enough to count your heartbeats reverberating through his chest. Your hands fist in the front of his shirt as you bury your face in the side of his neck, your uneven breaths hot against his skin.

“Never,” he says, in a voice ribboned with fear and anger and regret, still holding you to his chest as if he might be able to meld your skins into one, “make me do that again.”

You let out a shattered little laugh, shaking your head as you burrow deeper into the crook of his neck.

“Yeah, I’ll make someone else do it next time.”

Zoro jerks back, his glare fierce as he narrows his eyes.

“I mean it,” he says, his fingers inching up to cup your cheeks, his thumbs pressing divots into your skin as he searches your eyes. You stare up at him, softening as you reach up to wrap your hands around his wrists.

“I’m sorry if I scared you — it was — that was the only thing I could think of to do —”

“Don’t be sorry — just promise.”

Your breath hitches in your chest as your gaze cuts away. Your hands drop but Zoro’s grip never wavers.

“I — I don’t —”

“I’ve already had to watch you die twice,” Zoro says, his fingers finally loosening as he leans down, his eyes flickering frantically over your face as if trying to commit every part of you to memory, “I’m not trying to go for a third.”

“Yeah, I know…” you reach up to smooth your thumbs over his furrowed brows, feeling them relax as you trace your fingers over and down the sides of his face. And for a moment, the pair of you are caught in the startling light of dawn, each unwilling to let go of the other, drinking each other in as if you might never get another chance.

“It’s just…” you find your gaze held still at his lips, at the way they’re parted ever so slightly, before you trace a line up the bridge of his nose to admire the skin there, kissed by a constellation of soft freckles.

Zoro grazes his fingers down to your jaw, tipping your head up, massaging at the knots at the junction of your neck and shoulders.

You let out a soft gasp that sends shivers wreathing through his body.

“Just?” he asks, almost surprised to find his own voice so husky as he swallows.

“I thought that if I were to die… yours is the last face I’d ever want to see.”

Its this admission that somehow simultaneously melts the tension in his muscles and also sets fire to his skin as if his whole body were made of nothing but kindling, your words the spark, your voice the wind that fans alive the flames.

He leans down to press his forehead to yours, letting his eyes flutter close as he tries to take a steadying breath even as the heat chases into the depth of his stomach and coils tight in his gut, making his knees feel weak.

“Fuck…” is the best he can manage, the pair of you still face to face, foreheads pressed, breaths mingling.

He feels you let out another laugh, and then — something warm and soft pressing to his lips. His eyes flash open just as you’re pulling away, looking deliciously bashful as you try to glance away. But Zoro chases after you with the determined precision of a hunter, pulling you back and melding your lips so smoothly it’s all you can do is let yourself be kissed.

And as he kisses you, you briefly wonder if this isn’t what all those deaths had been preparing you for. All those drownings just to make sure you were ready for a kiss like this — a kiss where you wouldn’t need or want to ever breathe again. A kiss that burns hotter than any fire, one that tears you open from the inside out and sews you back together again.

You can feel the force of it cracking open your ribs, his fingers digging into your flesh as if he could reach inside you and cup your heart in the palms of his hands. You almost want him to. You think it wouldn’t be such a terrible way to go.

When you finally pull apart for the first time, it’s you who chases after him, tugging him back down in an urgent, messy clash of teeth against teeth, mouths open, licking and eager and hungry.

Zoro grunts at the force of your kiss, at the wildfire burn of ravenous longing braiding through his blood, exploding in sparks of white behind his eyes till he’s reeling and dizzy from the light. And when you finally pull back for a half-drawn breath, it’s him that once again surges forward, but the hammock swings up too far, and the resulting downward momentum catapults you both onto the floor, his body cushioning your fall till his back is pressed against far wall, you half-straddling his lap, your hands on either side of his face to stop yourself from toppling further into him.

You let out a shocked laugh, even as he too finds himself chuckling. The ridiculousness of the situation finally settling in around the pair of you.

A second later, Sanji slams open the door, looking wildly around for a second before spotting you. His eyebrows jerk up as he takes in the scene, the tangle of blankets around your legs, Zoro’s hands on your hips, the clear high blush in both your cheeks.

“Oh so sorry to interrupt — I heard all this commotion and thought something bad might’ve happened,” his voice is half-teasing, half relieved exasperation. He puffs out a dramatic sigh, digging in his pocket for a cigarette and lighter.

Finding both, he takes a deep pull, letting a thin stream of smoke out through his nose before casting you both a sharp, mischievous look.

“Should’ve known it was moss-head here having dessert for breakfast.”

“Fuck off, cook.”

Sanji smirks, rolling his eyes as he saunters away from the door, leaving it to swing shut behind him, but not before calling out —

“Remember to take breaks! Breakfast’s in an hour, and I’m not savin’ you any if you miss it!”

— — —

Breakfast is a messy affair that day — with both you and Zoro slinking into the kitchen exactly one hour later, Zoro looking annoyed, and you looking understandably sheepish. The second you meet Sanji’s eyes, you flush a bright crimson and look away, but Zoro only scoffs as he drops into his normal seat and folds his arms. You slip into the seat next to his, your gaze fixed determinedly on the table before you.

When Nami arrives, she flings her arms around you, giving you a hard squeeze.

“Don’t ever do that again,” she says, pulling back with fever-glass eyes, shimmering with tears.

Zoro grunts, “I’ve already tried that.”

You resist the urge to shoot Zoro a dirty look, and instead, squeeze Nami’s arms.

“Sorry I scared you.”

“It was pretty scary!” Luffy’s voice rings out as he joins the throng, plopping into the seat at the head of the table and flashing you a massive grin, “but boy are we glad you’re okay! It’s kinda a cool power you have! Scary, but cool!”

“I wasn’t worried for a minute!” Usopp claims as he trundles in, smiling bravely as he takes the last seat. At a pointed look from Nami, he clears his throat and turns towards Sanji, “So! Uh — what’s for breakfast?”

Sanji smirks as he starts to set out an entire breakfast service, complete with eggs three ways, freshly baked brioche with a variety of homemade jams, grilled fish, sausages, bacon, a steaming pot of rice, along with miso soup, freshly squeeze tangerine juice, and hot tea.

“And an aged ale,” Sanji says, offhandedly, setting a bottle in front of Zoro without looking at him, “for medicinal reason only, alright? Don’t go looking for this kind of treatment every day.”

Zoro blinks at the bottle of ale before shrugging and popping off the cap with a finger.

“Wow, Sanji! This is amazing!” Luffy compliments, before immediately digging in. Usopp looks similarly eager as he reaches for a steaming brioche bun.

Sanji smiles as you make to reach for some eggs and Zoro bats your hand away, tugging the entire tray towards you for easier access.

Nami only smirks.

“I figured we could all use some good fuel after —” Sanji clears his throat as he settles in his own seat, neatly tucking a napkin into the collar of his shirt, “well, after a hard battle.”

His voice catches briefly before he hitches a bright smile back onto his face and serves himself a thick slice of bacon.

You pause, halfway through slicing a perfectly poached egg, your eyes caught on the golden yoke beading at the tiny puncture wound from your knife.

“Look — I’m really sorry for —”

“Don’t.”

“It’s alright.”

Zoro and Nami speak at the same time, both freezing for a second before glancing at each other and Zoro sighs, slumping back in his chair with his arms folded.

Nami purses her lips before taking a breath.

“It’s… well, it’s not alright,” she amends, staring down at her own breakfast, “but you don’t have to apologize. Just…” she finally looks up, her gaze electric in the morning light spilling through the wide windows, “let us protect you next time.”

Zoro grunts a brief affirmation as you swallow passed the lump in your throat.

“I — it’s just — it’s hard,” you admit, setting down your utensils to stare at the palms of your hands, the skin there soft and unworn, so deceivingly so. Sometimes, you hated the fact that you always came back devoid of scars — as if even that has to be stripped from you. The proof that you’d suffered, the reminders that you’d time and time again survived.

“When dying —” you force your mouth to wrap around the word, to hold it on your tongue without shrinking away, “is the only thing I’ve known for… for forever, really.”

“Mm, well,” Luffy’s slightly muffled voice breaks out from down the table, making everyone jump. He grins, swallowing a mouthful of sausage, “Shanks used to tell me that dying and living are really just the same thing in the end — you just gotta choose what you’d rather do that day!”

A beat of thin, shocked silence follows, before you break into a surprised laugh.

“Whoever this Shanks person is — he sounds like a pretty cool guy.”

Luffy nods enthusiastically, spearing another sausage with great voracity, “He was! And I think he’s right! I mean — we’re your crew now! And we’ll take care of you. So… just choose to live next time!”

Nami is the first one to start laughing, and soon, everyone follows after. The sheer ridiculous simplicity of the statement catching everyone off-guard, the truth of it sweet as freshly made mochi.

— — —

Later that day, you find yourself staring out at the endless stretch of sea at the head of the ship, the wind tangling loose fingers through your undone hair.

Zoro sidles up next to you, standing close enough for your arms to brush.

He’s rarely left you alone in the hours since the fight, since you’d woken up again in his hammock. But it’d been his turn to clean out the bilge, and he’d mercifully not asked you to accompany him for that specific little venture.

Now, he stands next to you, his body warm, his hair slightly damp from what looks like a recent wash.

“We’re goin’ after him,” he says, his eyes following yours as you both scan the wide expanse of shattered-glass sea.

“Crocodile?” you ask, though you already know the answer.

“Yeah, and Baroque Works.”

You turn to face him, the wind whipping your hair into so many thin tendrils of darkened silk. You reach up a hand to catch a few strands in a vain attempt to keep them from flying into your eyes.

Zoro twists around, leaning in to rake his fingers through your hair, wrapping them around his fist till he’s reeling you in, close enough for you to press both hands to his chest.

He watches as you fight with some internal compulsion, probably to tell him that it’s too dangerous, that they’ll never win. But finally, you seem to steel yourself, looking back up at him with a liquid fire deep in the warm darkness of your eyes.

“It won’t be easy,” you say, your voice soft, but he’s close enough to catch them, his other hand steadying itself along your hip.

His lip slants into an amused grin.

“Good. I’ve never liked an easy fight.”

You smile despite yourself, fighting the urge to roll your eyes.

“Masochist,” you say, inching your hands up to loop around his neck. Zoro smirks, cocking his head to one side, tugging you ever closer by the back of your neck.

“Maybe. But speaking of liking pain — what’s this I hear about you and the waiter makin’ stuff later on in the kitchen?”

You peer up at him with huge, doleful eyes before heaving a melodramatic sigh.

“I always thought you were the jealous type,” you lament, attempting to turn your face away but Zoro’s fingers dig into your skin, sending a strange, gooseberry ache tingling through you as you gasp, your eyes flickering back to meet his molten gaze. Heat blisters into your cheeks as something very much like desire pools in the depths of your belly.

“I’ve never been good at sharing.”

You laugh, nodding, “Yeah… that was true even when we were kids. Even though you always pretended you didn’t want anything till it was offered to you.”

Zoro scoffs, shrugging, “Figured if something was mine… it’d come to me in the end.”

“And now?” you ask, the hint of a tease threading through your voice, just enough to make Zoro’s skin prickle with want.

“Now, I just take what I want.”

“Or…” you lean in to skim your lips along his cheek, lilting your voice low enough to make him shiver, “you follow them for three whole weeks, then offer to buy them a drink at a bar, right?”

Zoro makes a half-annoyed, half-contemptuous noise, frowning as he pulls back. But before he can say anything, you’re laughing, and the sight of it strikes him breathless, the mid-morning sun draping you in orange and gold, your cheeks flushed with life and color, your body warm and soft in the circle of his arms.

You’ve never looked so beautiful — you’ve never looked so daringly, dashingly alive.

By the time the laughter trickles out of you, Zoro is also smiling. He reaches up to coax your face towards his, brushing your hair back with a careful finger.

“Guess you’re right — you got away in the end.”

You still against him, watching as he glances off towards the vast expanse of endless sea.

“But rumor has it, you’ve never let go of a mark,” you say.

Zoro’s eyes snap back to you, and the way you’re grinning up at him makes the world tilt on it’s axis around him.

“I haven’t,” he murmurs, lowering his head till your noses are bare inches apart.

“Then… don’t let me ruin your record.” The moth-wing flutter of your lashes twists tight the torque in his chest, and it takes him half a breath to realize that this must be what it feels like to fall in love, or rather — to realize that you’ve already fallen.

“Hn. Wasn’t planning on it,” he says, delighting in the tiny little shiver that shakes through you at his words. He pauses as your noses finally brush, your breath ghosting across his lips, so painfully, torturously close.

“So…” he purposefully draws out the word, letting it rumble through him, a low growl of sound. You blink up at him, curious, but pliant, and so, so terribly trusting. He allows himself a wolfish grin.

“What’re you and the cook makin’ later?”

You let out a frustrated groan and make to pull away but Zoro easily jerks you back, locking you against his chest even as you let out a surprised squeak.

“Are you going to kiss me or not, Roronoa?”

Zoro chuckles, “Depends on what your answer is.”

You flush, crinkling your nose as you glare up at him, “Sakura-mochi, the kind you like. There, happy?”

“Sure. So long as no one else gets to have any.”

Your eyes go wide, and you open your mouth to retaliate but Zoro presses in, crushing your lips to his in a searing kiss. The only noise you make is a tiny, desperate sigh as he sates himself on the taste of you, the sharp thundering in his chest quelled by the way you clutch at him, your fingers digging sharp pinpricks into his chest as you scrabble to pull him closer.

He is breathless when you break apart, and he’s light-headed with the sight of you and your kiss-bruised lips, stained dark by the pressure of his teeth. It sets something savage on edge inside him and it takes everything in him not to drag you somewhere and let the burning hunger swallow you whole.

“Like I said,” he says, his voice ragged, “I’ve never been good at sharing.”

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“Uh — m-morning! How’d — how’d you sleep?” he asks.

You quirk an eyebrow.

“Fine… but that’s third time you’ve asked me that today, Usopp.”

Usopp licks his lips, nodding, “Yeah! Well — I mean — it’s important to sleep well, y’know? And with you bein’ the newest member of our crew — I just wanted to make sure that you’re really sleepin’ well —”

“If you have questions… you’re allowed to ask,” you say, effectively cutting off his rambling explanation.

“What happened to your hand?” Nami asks, pointing.

“Oh —” you look down at the small bit of bandage from the night before, curling your fingers in on your palm, “I cut myself while making some mochis last night.”

“Oh! I love mochis!” Luffy grins, striding towards the hatch that leads below decks just as Sanji peaks out to call for lunch.

“Yes,” you laugh, following after, even as Nami sighs, shaking her head, “you’ve said that a lot too.”

Down in the corridor, you bump into Zoro, yawning widely as he waits for everyone to pass by before bringing up the rear. You exchange a glance that seems to unspool between the two of you, keeping you tethered even as you look away, following the rest of the crew into the kitchens for lunch.

Meals are always a noisy affair on the Merry — and you wouldn’t have had it any other way. It’s remarkable, Zoro thinks, how quickly you’ve melded seamlessly into the strange and colorful tapestry of their rick-rack pirate crew.

But still, there’s a strange distance between you and everyone else, as if the air itself shimmered around you, keeping you out, keeping you othered. You smile as Sanji pours you a generous glass of mimosa, reaching out to garnish it with a slice of juicy tangerine.

“So! What is it that you’ve been wanting to ask me?” you turn your gaze on Usopp, who nearly chokes on his mouthful of pulled pork, swallowing hard as Luffy thumps him on the back.

Zoro pauses mid-sip, the bubbles in his drink going flat in his mouth.

“Uhm —” Usopp looks wildly around at everyone else before turning back to meet your eyes. You give him a soft smile, as if letting him know that he’s not being put on the spot. He licks his lips and clears his throat and reaches out to toss back his entire drink before coughing comically into his fist, “I — well, actually we — I mean like — me and Luffy and Nami —”

“Keep me out of this,” Nami throws up her hands.

“Okay fine, me and Luffy —” Usopp casts Luffy a desperate look, “were just thinking the other day like — do you remember — how many times you’ve uh —”

Sanji sighs, rubbing at his temples with his fingers. Zoro feels his jaw tighten at the question.

You nod, expression neutral as you take another small sip of your drink before setting it down.

“You were wondering if I knew how many times I’ve died?”

The silence is the room rings so loud Zoro thinks his ears may pop. He swallows passed a mouthful of food that suddenly feels like it’s been turned to sand, putting down his chopsticks.

“But… only if you wanna — I mean — we were just curious — it’s not like it’s super important —” Usopp blusters, clearly trying to backtrack as hard and fast as possible.

“I don’t keep count…” you say, reaching out for a tiny sandwich, breaking it in half carefully between your fingers and popping one half of it in your mouth, “not anymore. I used to though… and then it just…” you lift up your left shoulder in a half-hearted shrug, “I didn’t see the point in it anymore.”

Nami reaches out a hand and places it on your arm, giving you a squeeze. There’s a fierce fire behind her eyes, a soul-deep pain and understanding. Zoro wonders at the things she might’ve been made to do at Arlong’s behest, if she might’ve once upon a time kept count of all his million and one indiscretions before realizing one day that it was pointless.

His palms pulse with heat and he feels the reckless urge to hack something in half.

“But to answer your question, more than a hundred, I think. I stopped counting when I hit the 90’s,” you pop the second half of the sandwich into your mouth and chew slowly. The quiet simmers around the table, before Sanji sighs and gets up to refill everyone’s glasses.

“Was it all that Crocodile guy?” Luffy asks, his voice jarringly serious. Everyone turns to look at him. He stares at you, his brows furrowed slightly.

You shake your head, “No. Most of it was actually bandits and thieves — people tend to lash out when they get scared, and a little girl who isn’t afraid of death — well,” you let your voice trail off.

“Do you remember them?” Zoro asks. His voice scrapes out of him, raw and bloodied. He tries to play it off with a cough and a deep drink, but no one is fooled.

You turn towards him, a light smile gracing your lips, “What? Gonna offer to go and hunt them down for me?”

Zoro shrugs, setting down his now-empty glass.

“As touching as that is,” you shoot him a tiny wink that makes Nami grin, “I’d rather not waste everyone’s time. They’re not worth it.”

A muscle feathers in Zoro’s jaw as he reflexively clenches and unclenches his fist on the table.

“And… I don’t think it’d make me feel any better,” you say, looking down at your own hands. Zoro forces himself to relax, to loosen his fingers and slacken his shoulders. But he stares down at his half-empty plate, his appetite gone.

— — —

Later that night, you find him siting alone in the crow’s nest, his back propped against the mast, one arm resting on a half-bent knee. He barely turns as you push yourself into the small space, casting your eyes up at the star-speckled night.

“Can’t sleep?” you ask, curling your arms around your legs, knees pressing into your chest.

Zoro grunts, shifting slightly, relaxing just enough that your elbows brush.

“Somethin’ like that.”

The silence stretches between the pair of you like the missing years, all those hours spent living and growing on opposite sides of a vengeful sea.

“D’you remember during the winter,” you say, your voice sending goosebumps prickling along Zoro’s skin, soft as heartbreak, fresh as an open wound, “when I’d say for dinner… and we’d sit out on the veranda and make up constellations?”

“Yeah,” Zoro laughs, leaning into the warmth of you, as natural as sinking into a memory, “the swordsman, the wheelbarrow, and —”

“And the mochitsuki!” you giggle, toppling into him as the memory seizes you both. You reach up and point towards a cluster of stars, “Right there! Look!”

Zoro scoffs, though he follows your finger, “Those are just a random bunch of stars —”

“No, you always picked a random bunch of stars —”

“I did not! I bet I could still find my swordsman constellation.”

Zoro squints at the dizzying array of twinkling specks, scanning the sky until he reaches out a hand to point.

“See those right there? That’s the swordsman.”

“You’re so full of shit, Roronoa,” but you’re laughing, and then so is he, the sound of natural it rumbles his shoulders and warms his limbs.

Zoro shakes his head, and by the time he realizes he’s leaning down to brush a strand of hair away from your cheek, it’s already too late. His body, a thrumming conflagration of muscle memory — his arm so used to the motion he didn’t even have to think. He skims this knuckles along your cheek, feels the weight of your tiny gasp ring through him like a church bell.

Your lashes flutter; there are stars from a thousand unnamed constellations caught in the dark oceans of your eyes.

“It’s… it’s not even winter.”

Zoro’s brows crinkle, his head cocking.

“What?”

You let out a puff of laughter that scalds across his lips.

“The stars —” your eyes flick up for a single second before slicing back down, “they’re different in the summer. Back when we picked out constellations… it’d been winter.”

“Oh.” Zoro doesn’t know what else to say. He’s held still by your closeness, by the burning flame of you, by the sea salt sweetness of your skin, the obsidian spill of your hair as it tumbles over your shoulder, tickling his arm. You’re so, so close, and yet he’s struck by the distance still left between you — too much, he thinks, far too much.

The kiss can barely be called a kiss — only the ghostly skim of lips on lips, a gasp masquerading as something more. But it’d been something, and you both jerk away from each other, lightening-jolted and gasping. You, with a hand pressed to your chest, Zoro, propping himself up with an arm against the crow’s nest’s rim.

Minutes go by, and neither of you have the courage to speak.

“It’s late,” Zoro finally manages, clearing his throat as he rums a thumb along the base of his sword, seeking the comforting grate of it’s well-worn tsuka, “you should —”

“Can I stay?” you ask, the words echoing through him, and for a second, beneath the light of all those million uncertain stars, he feels like a child again, and he sees you as he once had — midnight hair and a dreamer’s smile, pleading with his sensei to stay just a bit longer.

“Just… till I get tired,” you amend. Zoro blinks, and there you are again, all grown up, the vestiges of childhood still visible in the way you bite your lips, but there’s nothing childish about the way his stomach twists or the way your eyes dart down to rest on his mouth, lingering for a breath too long.

“Fine,” Zoro says, forcing his gaze away as he moves to sit back against the mast. You curl in next to him, resting your cheek on his shoulder. He waits for three beats before letting out a long sigh and adjusting his shoulder to match your height, letting you shuffle till you’re pressed almost fully against his left side.

He feels the weight and warmth of you seeping into his skin, more intimately than he’d ever felt it before. And like this, Zoro thinks that eternity might not be so long a time.

It’s long after midnight by the time you stir, and this time, Zoro doesn’t hesitate before looping one arm beneath your knees and the other around your shoulders, cradling you against his chest as he makes his slow, steady way back down to the main deck, and then below. You stir as he lays you down in his hammock, easing in next to you, your eyes blinking open to the bleary, moonlit dark of his room.

“Zoro?” you ask, your voice still mired in sleep.

“Yeah, I’m here,” he says, as if it’s the only answer you might’ve been seeking. You smile, lopsided and sweet, sinking into the pillow, one hand reaching out for him.

He tugs the sheets up and stretches out an arm to pull you close, feeling the soul-deep settling of the first drop of rain as it meets the sea, knowing that this is where he’s meant to be.

— — —

The pair of you are shaken awake by the wild rocking of the Merry and the too-close boom of canon-fire. Zoro jerks up, reaching for his swords; you, already swinging out of the bed as well, your eyes bright and wild.

“Wait —” Zoro bars your way as you try to jerk the door open.

“What?” you snap, the terrible, leaden look eclipsing your expression as Zoro watches you force the feeling, the life, from your face.

“You stay here.”

“Like hell I will,” you try to jerk passed Zoro’s arm, but he’s nothing if not strong, and he forces you back with a harsh shove.

“Stay here,” he says again, his knuckles already going white as he grips the handle of his sword.

“No.” You bare your teeth, and for a moment, Zoro barely recognizes you — your face devoid of anything but fear and anger, your eyes huge and hollow. Then, a flicker of light —

“I —” you swallow, “I won’t let anyone die for me. Not for me,” you say, as if the thought were an unbearable terror, gorging itself on the tendrils of your mind.

Zoro stares at you for what seems like a century. All the while, the unmistakable sounds of a battle rages on above.

Finally, he bites out, “I’m not planning on letting you die either.”

Your lips press into a thin, ghostly smile as you push passed his now-slack arm.

“Then don’t,” you say.

“Don’t what?”

You cast him a single backward glance, “Let me die.”

— — —

It is pandemonium by the time you and Zoro make it up to the main decks. A single look and you know that you’re all outnumbered and hundred to one.

“Your old boss really doesn’t give up, huh?” Zoro asks as he jumps in, parrying two blows and kicking another attacker in the stomach.

You duck beneath a pair of throwing stars, pulling out your knives.

“He’s not known for it — no,” you say, grunting as you swiftly dispatch someone swinging a pair of nun-chucks.

Across the deck, Sanji is round-house kicking someone in the face while Nami pivots off her bo staff to send someone else flying over the railings. Somewhere behind them, Luffy’s clear shout of Gum-Gum-Whip! echoes over the glistening morning waves. And up on the crow’s nest, Usopp fires round after round of his newly developed exploding pellets.

But it’s endless, and as many attackers as you fell, more keeps coming, seemingly appearing from nowhere as they clamber over the side of the ship, snarling as they swarm towards you.

“We — we have to get out of here!” Nami calls, barely keeping hold against a gargantuan pirate three times her size, bearing down over her with two giant, flashing swords.

“B-but — where do we go?” Usopp calls, desperately trying to re-load his slingshot, his fingers shaking so hard he almost fumbles his next round.

A hard, chilling realization settles in your chest, sinking till it weighs at the bottom of your stomach as you look around at the wreckage of the Merry, your eyes blurred with smoke and tears.

“There’s nowhere we can run!” Sanji says, nailing someone in the side a second before they catch Luffy in the back with a knife. Luffy throws him a thumbs up, winding up for another attack.

In the distance, you see the shadow of a large, familiar ship getting closer and closer, and suddenly, clear as day, you know what you have to do.

You dart out in front of Zoro, digging your knives into a man’s chest deep enough to feel his bones crack before ripping out the blades and spinning around to press your own chest to the tip of Zoro’s blade.

“What the hell?!”

Your hand whips out, grabbing Zoro’s wrist as he tries to pull away. Behind you, you hear the distinct sounds of Nami shouting something about an approaching ship, but you can’t make out the words.

“They’re coming after me,” you say, in a voice so quiet you doubt Zoro can hear you, but from the way his eyes go wide, you figure he catches the gist. He tries again to jerk his sword away but you pull it back so hard the tip snicks open the front of your shirt, drawing a dark droplet of blood.

He freezes just as a single warning clap of thunder roils overhead.

“You have to do it,” you say, your voice steady now, just loud enough for the others to hear, even as all sound seems to fade away, the action around you blurring as time itself slackens around you.

“No,” Zoro says, the line of his jaw drawn so taut you almost laugh, “I said I wouldn’t let you die.”

You nod, reaching out across what feels like an impossible distance to brush a thumb along his blood-spattered cheek. Overhead, dark clouds gather, streaks of lightning illuminating great patches of sky as the entire ocean froths with the oncoming storm.

“Right. That’s why you have to kill me instead.”

“No.” Zoro feels the word scrape out of him like a handful of broken glass, but the thing in his chest (can it still be called a heart?) claws up his throat, crawling into his mouth, leaving his tongue thick and bloodied. Panic knots through his veins as he tries to think of another way — any other way.

Distantly, he hears the shouts of his crewmates as they struggle to keep the onslaught of enemies at bay. And he knows — the same way a body knows how to cry without ever being taught, the first thing humans do when they’re brought into this world — that there is no other way.

You smile a smile that looks like the shadow of every single nightmare Zoro’s ever woken up from screaming.

“Can you at least make it quick?” you ask, leaning in, his sword tipping back so as not to run you through, but the blade still skims along the side of your neck like a sweet, fatal promise.

You close the space between you and lay your palms on his chest, letting his heart thread it’s hopeless drumbeat into the flat of your hands.

Overhead, Usopp is shouting about an enemy ship to the starboard side.

You clasp your fingers over Zoro’s hand on the hilt of the Wadou Ichimonji, and you feel the blade vibrate against your skin — as if it knows, as if it too is mourning.

A single raindrop patters down onto your cheek as you reach out to brush Zoro’s jaw.

“Zoro, please —”

A shard of lightning streaks overhead. A deafening clap of thunder. Zoro opens his mouth in a drowned out yell as he draws his blade across your neck in a sharp, abortive swipe and watches as the red wreaths down your front.

For just a second, it seems like your lips are caught in a smile, your eyes glimmering with secrets. And then, you slump forward into his arms, heavy and unmoving.

Somewhere behind him, Nami screams.

“Uh — m-morning! How’d — how’d you sleep?” he asks.

You quirk an eyebrow.

“Fine… but that’s third time you’ve asked me that today, Usopp.”

Usopp licks his lips, nodding, “Yeah! Well — I mean — it’s important to sleep well, y’know? And with you bein’ the newest member of our crew — I just wanted to make sure that you’re really sleepin’ well —”

“If you have questions… you’re allowed to ask,” you say, effectively cutting off his rambling explanation.

“What happened to your hand?” Nami asks, pointing.

“Oh —” you look down at the small bit of bandage from the night before, curling your fingers in on your palm, “I cut myself while making some mochis last night.”

“Oh! I love mochis!” Luffy grins, striding towards the hatch that leads below decks just as Sanji peaks out to call for lunch.

“Yes,” you laugh, following after, even as Nami sighs, shaking her head, “you’ve said that a lot too.”

Down in the corridor, you bump into Zoro, yawning widely as he waits for everyone to pass by before bringing up the rear. You exchange a glance that seems to unspool between the two of you, keeping you tethered even as you look away, following the rest of the crew into the kitchens for lunch.

Meals are always a noisy affair on the Merry — and you wouldn’t have had it any other way. It’s remarkable, Zoro thinks, how quickly you’ve melded seamlessly into the strange and colorful tapestry of their rick-rack pirate crew.

But still, there’s a strange distance between you and everyone else, as if the air itself shimmered around you, keeping you out, keeping you othered. You smile as Sanji pours you a generous glass of mimosa, reaching out to garnish it with a slice of juicy tangerine.

“So! What is it that you’ve been wanting to ask me?” you turn your gaze on Usopp, who nearly chokes on his mouthful of pulled pork, swallowing hard as Luffy thumps him on the back.

Zoro pauses mid-sip, the bubbles in his drink going flat in his mouth.

“Uhm —” Usopp looks wildly around at everyone else before turning back to meet your eyes. You give him a soft smile, as if letting him know that he’s not being put on the spot. He licks his lips and clears his throat and reaches out to toss back his entire drink before coughing comically into his fist, “I — well, actually we — I mean like — me and Luffy and Nami —”

“Keep me out of this,” Nami throws up her hands.

“Okay fine, me and Luffy —” Usopp casts Luffy a desperate look, “were just thinking the other day like — do you remember — how many times you’ve uh —”

Sanji sighs, rubbing at his temples with his fingers. Zoro feels his jaw tighten at the question.

You nod, expression neutral as you take another small sip of your drink before setting it down.

“You were wondering if I knew how many times I’ve died?”

The silence is the room rings so loud Zoro thinks his ears may pop. He swallows passed a mouthful of food that suddenly feels like it’s been turned to sand, putting down his chopsticks.

“But… only if you wanna — I mean — we were just curious — it’s not like it’s super important —” Usopp blusters, clearly trying to backtrack as hard and fast as possible.

“I don’t keep count…” you say, reaching out for a tiny sandwich, breaking it in half carefully between your fingers and popping one half of it in your mouth, “not anymore. I used to though… and then it just…” you lift up your left shoulder in a half-hearted shrug, “I didn’t see the point in it anymore.”

Nami reaches out a hand and places it on your arm, giving you a squeeze. There’s a fierce fire behind her eyes, a soul-deep pain and understanding. Zoro wonders at the things she might’ve been made to do at Arlong’s behest, if she might’ve once upon a time kept count of all his million and one indiscretions before realizing one day that it was pointless.

His palms pulse with heat and he feels the reckless urge to hack something in half.

“But to answer your question, more than a hundred, I think. I stopped counting when I hit the 90’s,” you pop the second half of the sandwich into your mouth and chew slowly. The quiet simmers around the table, before Sanji sighs and gets up to refill everyone’s glasses.

“Was it all that Crocodile guy?” Luffy asks, his voice jarringly serious. Everyone turns to look at him. He stares at you, his brows furrowed slightly.

You shake your head, “No. Most of it was actually bandits and thieves — people tend to lash out when they get scared, and a little girl who isn’t afraid of death — well,” you let your voice trail off.

“Do you remember them?” Zoro asks. His voice scrapes out of him, raw and bloodied. He tries to play it off with a cough and a deep drink, but no one is fooled.

You turn towards him, a light smile gracing your lips, “What? Gonna offer to go and hunt them down for me?”

Zoro shrugs, setting down his now-empty glass.

“As touching as that is,” you shoot him a tiny wink that makes Nami grin, “I’d rather not waste everyone’s time. They’re not worth it.”

A muscle feathers in Zoro’s jaw as he reflexively clenches and unclenches his fist on the table.

“And… I don’t think it’d make me feel any better,” you say, looking down at your own hands. Zoro forces himself to relax, to loosen his fingers and slacken his shoulders. But he stares down at his half-empty plate, his appetite gone.

— — —

Later that night, you find him siting alone in the crow’s nest, his back propped against the mast, one arm resting on a half-bent knee. He barely turns as you push yourself into the small space, casting your eyes up at the star-speckled night.

“Can’t sleep?” you ask, curling your arms around your legs, knees pressing into your chest.

Zoro grunts, shifting slightly, relaxing just enough that your elbows brush.

“Somethin’ like that.”

The silence stretches between the pair of you like the missing years, all those hours spent living and growing on opposite sides of a vengeful sea.

“D’you remember during the winter,” you say, your voice sending goosebumps prickling along Zoro’s skin, soft as heartbreak, fresh as an open wound, “when I’d say for dinner… and we’d sit out on the veranda and make up constellations?”

“Yeah,” Zoro laughs, leaning into the warmth of you, as natural as sinking into a memory, “the swordsman, the wheelbarrow, and —”

“And the mochitsuki!” you giggle, toppling into him as the memory seizes you both. You reach up and point towards a cluster of stars, “Right there! Look!”

Zoro scoffs, though he follows your finger, “Those are just a random bunch of stars —”

“No, you always picked a random bunch of stars —”

“I did not! I bet I could still find my swordsman constellation.”

Zoro squints at the dizzying array of twinkling specks, scanning the sky until he reaches out a hand to point.

“See those right there? That’s the swordsman.”

“You’re so full of shit, Roronoa,” but you’re laughing, and then so is he, the sound of natural it rumbles his shoulders and warms his limbs.

Zoro shakes his head, and by the time he realizes he’s leaning down to brush a strand of hair away from your cheek, it’s already too late. His body, a thrumming conflagration of muscle memory — his arm so used to the motion he didn’t even have to think. He skims this knuckles along your cheek, feels the weight of your tiny gasp ring through him like a church bell.

Your lashes flutter; there are stars from a thousand unnamed constellations caught in the dark oceans of your eyes.

“It’s… it’s not even winter.”

Zoro’s brows crinkle, his head cocking.

“What?”

You let out a puff of laughter that scalds across his lips.

“The stars —” your eyes flick up for a single second before slicing back down, “they’re different in the summer. Back when we picked out constellations… it’d been winter.”

“Oh.” Zoro doesn’t know what else to say. He’s held still by your closeness, by the burning flame of you, by the sea salt sweetness of your skin, the obsidian spill of your hair as it tumbles over your shoulder, tickling his arm. You’re so, so close, and yet he’s struck by the distance still left between you — too much, he thinks, far too much.

The kiss can barely be called a kiss — only the ghostly skim of lips on lips, a gasp masquerading as something more. But it’d been something, and you both jerk away from each other, lightening-jolted and gasping. You, with a hand pressed to your chest, Zoro, propping himself up with an arm against the crow’s nest’s rim.

Minutes go by, and neither of you have the courage to speak.

“It’s late,” Zoro finally manages, clearing his throat as he rums a thumb along the base of his sword, seeking the comforting grate of it’s well-worn tsuka, “you should —”

“Can I stay?” you ask, the words echoing through him, and for a second, beneath the light of all those million uncertain stars, he feels like a child again, and he sees you as he once had — midnight hair and a dreamer’s smile, pleading with his sensei to stay just a bit longer.

“Just… till I get tired,” you amend. Zoro blinks, and there you are again, all grown up, the vestiges of childhood still visible in the way you bite your lips, but there’s nothing childish about the way his stomach twists or the way your eyes dart down to rest on his mouth, lingering for a breath too long.

“Fine,” Zoro says, forcing his gaze away as he moves to sit back against the mast. You curl in next to him, resting your cheek on his shoulder. He waits for three beats before letting out a long sigh and adjusting his shoulder to match your height, letting you shuffle till you’re pressed almost fully against his left side.

He feels the weight and warmth of you seeping into his skin, more intimately than he’d ever felt it before. And like this, Zoro thinks that eternity might not be so long a time.

It’s long after midnight by the time you stir, and this time, Zoro doesn’t hesitate before looping one arm beneath your knees and the other around your shoulders, cradling you against his chest as he makes his slow, steady way back down to the main deck, and then below. You stir as he lays you down in his hammock, easing in next to you, your eyes blinking open to the bleary, moonlit dark of his room.

“Zoro?” you ask, your voice still mired in sleep.

“Yeah, I’m here,” he says, as if it’s the only answer you might’ve been seeking. You smile, lopsided and sweet, sinking into the pillow, one hand reaching out for him.

He tugs the sheets up and stretches out an arm to pull you close, feeling the soul-deep settling of the first drop of rain as it meets the sea, knowing that this is where he’s meant to be.

— — —

The pair of you are shaken awake by the wild rocking of the Merry and the too-close boom of canon-fire. Zoro jerks up, reaching for his swords; you, already swinging out of the bed as well, your eyes bright and wild.

“Wait —” Zoro bars your way as you try to jerk the door open.

“What?” you snap, the terrible, leaden look eclipsing your expression as Zoro watches you force the feeling, the life, from your face.

“You stay here.”

“Like hell I will,” you try to jerk passed Zoro’s arm, but he’s nothing if not strong, and he forces you back with a harsh shove.

“Stay here,” he says again, his knuckles already going white as he grips the handle of his sword.

“No.” You bare your teeth, and for a moment, Zoro barely recognizes you — your face devoid of anything but fear and anger, your eyes huge and hollow. Then, a flicker of light —

“I —” you swallow, “I won’t let anyone die for me. Not for me,” you say, as if the thought were an unbearable terror, gorging itself on the tendrils of your mind.

Zoro stares at you for what seems like a century. All the while, the unmistakable sounds of a battle rages on above.

Finally, he bites out, “I’m not planning on letting you die either.”

Your lips press into a thin, ghostly smile as you push passed his now-slack arm.

“Then don’t,” you say.

“Don’t what?”

You cast him a single backward glance, “Let me die.”

— — —

It is pandemonium by the time you and Zoro make it up to the main decks. A single look and you know that you’re all outnumbered and hundred to one.

“Your old boss really doesn’t give up, huh?” Zoro asks as he jumps in, parrying two blows and kicking another attacker in the stomach.

You duck beneath a pair of throwing stars, pulling out your knives.

“He’s not known for it — no,” you say, grunting as you swiftly dispatch someone swinging a pair of nun-chucks.

Across the deck, Sanji is round-house kicking someone in the face while Nami pivots off her bo staff to send someone else flying over the railings. Somewhere behind them, Luffy’s clear shout of Gum-Gum-Whip! echoes over the glistening morning waves. And up on the crow’s nest, Usopp fires round after round of his newly developed exploding pellets.

But it’s endless, and as many attackers as you fell, more keeps coming, seemingly appearing from nowhere as they clamber over the side of the ship, snarling as they swarm towards you.

“We — we have to get out of here!” Nami calls, barely keeping hold against a gargantuan pirate three times her size, bearing down over her with two giant, flashing swords.

“B-but — where do we go?” Usopp calls, desperately trying to re-load his slingshot, his fingers shaking so hard he almost fumbles his next round.

A hard, chilling realization settles in your chest, sinking till it weighs at the bottom of your stomach as you look around at the wreckage of the Merry, your eyes blurred with smoke and tears.

“There’s nowhere we can run!” Sanji says, nailing someone in the side a second before they catch Luffy in the back with a knife. Luffy throws him a thumbs up, winding up for another attack.

In the distance, you see the shadow of a large, familiar ship getting closer and closer, and suddenly, clear as day, you know what you have to do.

You dart out in front of Zoro, digging your knives into a man’s chest deep enough to feel his bones crack before ripping out the blades and spinning around to press your own chest to the tip of Zoro’s blade.

“What the hell?!”

Your hand whips out, grabbing Zoro’s wrist as he tries to pull away. Behind you, you hear the distinct sounds of Nami shouting something about an approaching ship, but you can’t make out the words.

“They’re coming after me,” you say, in a voice so quiet you doubt Zoro can hear you, but from the way his eyes go wide, you figure he catches the gist. He tries again to jerk his sword away but you pull it back so hard the tip snicks open the front of your shirt, drawing a dark droplet of blood.

He freezes just as a single warning clap of thunder roils overhead.

“You have to do it,” you say, your voice steady now, just loud enough for the others to hear, even as all sound seems to fade away, the action around you blurring as time itself slackens around you.

“No,” Zoro says, the line of his jaw drawn so taut you almost laugh, “I said I wouldn’t let you die.”

You nod, reaching out across what feels like an impossible distance to brush a thumb along his blood-spattered cheek. Overhead, dark clouds gather, streaks of lightning illuminating great patches of sky as the entire ocean froths with the oncoming storm.

“Right. That’s why you have to kill me instead.”

“No.” Zoro feels the word scrape out of him like a handful of broken glass, but the thing in his chest (can it still be called a heart?) claws up his throat, crawling into his mouth, leaving his tongue thick and bloodied. Panic knots through his veins as he tries to think of another way — any other way.

Distantly, he hears the shouts of his crewmates as they struggle to keep the onslaught of enemies at bay. And he knows — the same way a body knows how to cry without ever being taught, the first thing humans do when they’re brought into this world — that there is no other way.

You smile a smile that looks like the shadow of every single nightmare Zoro’s ever woken up from screaming.

“Can you at least make it quick?” you ask, leaning in, his sword tipping back so as not to run you through, but the blade still skims along the side of your neck like a sweet, fatal promise.

You close the space between you and lay your palms on his chest, letting his heart thread it’s hopeless drumbeat into the flat of your hands.

Overhead, Usopp is shouting about an enemy ship to the starboard side.

You clasp your fingers over Zoro’s hand on the hilt of the Wadou Ichimonji, and you feel the blade vibrate against your skin — as if it knows, as if it too is mourning.

A single raindrop patters down onto your cheek as you reach out to brush Zoro’s jaw.

“Zoro, please —”

A shard of lightning streaks overhead. A deafening clap of thunder. Zoro opens his mouth in a drowned out yell as he draws his blade across your neck in a sharp, abortive swipe and watches as the red wreaths down your front.

For just a second, it seems like your lips are caught in a smile, your eyes glimmering with secrets. And then, you slump forward into his arms, heavy and unmoving.

Somewhere behind him, Nami screams.

So suppose you are the next best thing. Suppose it’s just the nebulous workings of the human mind, of the brush-stroke memories he’d attached to the shape of you simply because you were there. And you were different.

Different from all the other boys and girls at the doujou. Different from him and Kuina too.

And there, something clunks inside his chest, blunt and oppressive, the same way it had when he’d run into that Tashigi girl in Loguetown. So maybe that’s it — maybe he’d held onto the memory of you because it was one of the last solid things that tied him to Kuina. You and the Wadou Ichimonji. But as much as other swordsmen might wax poetic about how a blade is a living thing, he can’t reminisce with a sword, can’t share a drink over those silver-lining days and star-spangled nights.

Sometimes if he closes his eyes, he can still hear it, the sound clear as if it were echoing into his room from the decks above — you and Kuina laughing, your heads bent over the basket of sweets, eyes glittering as you picked all the prettiest ones.

It was the only time he’d ever seen Kuina smile the way she did. The only time he’d seen you look so pleased.

The dull clatter in his chest sharpens to a throbbing ache, as flesh would around a fresh knife wound. He flips over onto his side and sighs.

He doesn’t remember falling asleep.

The memory comes to him, clear and sharp as fresh-cut glass. The autumn sun paints thick streaks across the doujou floors, and afternoon practice has just ended. You’re sitting by the door, your hands folded neatly in your lap, your hair twisted back in a simple braid that fell over your right shoulder, tied off with a dark red bow. Anyone could see the care that was taken with it — the love inherent in the simple detail.

Zoro makes a show of stretching his arms over his head, yawning as the other boys all scramble towards you, Shimotsuki-sensei tutting as he watches, an indulgent grin on his lips.

“Gimme the blue one!”

“No I want the blue one!”

“Fine then gimme the yellow one!”

“I want the one that’s three layers!”

“That one is the prettiest —”

“As if you know what pretty means.”

“Yeah, well real men don’t like pretty things.”

Zoro scoffs, turning his head resolutely away. But a while later, you patter over with your basket, dropping down in front of him.

“There’s still the sakura one left, if you’d like.”

Zoro frowns, “A — a real swordsman knows the meaning of abstinence.”

You giggle, reaching into your basket to pull out a plain-looking mochi, pale pink and powdered in sugar. Zoro can tell from the dark red bleeding through the translucent skin that there’s an azuki filling — his favorite.

He gulps.

“Well, how can you know abstinence… if you don’t know indulgence first?”

Zoro chews on his lips for a second before making a show of rolling his eyes and plucking the mochi from your hand. He bites into it and swallows passed a delighted shiver. It’s delicious — the azuki sweet and creamy, the cherry-blossom skin perfectly chewy. It sticks to his teeth in the best way and he has to fight down a bright blush threatening his cheeks.

“Th-thanks.”

You smile, clearly pleased.

“Those are my favorite too,” you say, folding a white cloth over the mouth of the basket before pushing it aside — precise movements, not a moment wasted.

Zoro thinks, brashly, that you would’ve been a great swordswoman. Kuina’s always talking about how he’s wasting his movements by swinging wide or cutting too deep.

“Did… did you make them yourself?” he asks, scratching at his cheek, chancing you a single glance. You’re watching him with wide, dark eyes, clear and entrancing. He swallows, his mouth feeling suddenly very, very dry.

“Not all of them,” you look down at your hands, and he sighs with relief. It’s strange, holding your gaze like that — he’d always fancied that you could see more than you let on.

“Just the plain ones — I’m not good enough yet to make the more complicated ones,” you explain, toying with the tips of your fingers. Your nails are short and perfectly filed. There are bits of white stuck under them. Zoro wonders whether it’s sugar or flour or maybe a mix of both.

You look back at him with a crooked grin.

“But just between you and me —” you lean in, your eyes glittering, your voice conspiratorial, “the plain ones are always the best.

— — —

Zoro jerks awake to the sound of laughter, and grumbling, he twists himself out of the hammock, squinting in the morning light. Somehow, he’d slept clear passed dawn, and he curses himself for missing out on his morning katas.

Rounding his door, he follows the sound of voices till he comes into the kitchen, only to find you and Sanji, laughing, standing too close, the air around you a snowfall of powdered sugar. The slanting rays of the rising sun casts the entire scene in a sparkling, ambered glow, as if encasing the moment in honey.

Like this, the pale of sugar falling from your fingers looks like dust-motes caught in the liquid light.

“Zoro! You’re awake!” and there, the laughter in your voice, running undercurrent to the way you say his name. It’s been so long since he’d heard his name said like something more than just a name —

He purses his lips and scowls. An ugly, nameless thing rears its head inside Zoro’s chest.

“Yeah well — couldn’t really sleep last night.”

And he knows it’s unfair to be taking this out on you; he sees it in the flicker of emotions that passes by your face — hurt, confusion, hesitation, regret.

“Zoro —”

“Whatever. Just tell me when breakfast is ready.” He spins around and slinks out of the room, his chest twisting tight as a hangman’s noose, his heart a riot of irregular beats, slamming against his ribs.

“Zoro —!”

He makes it all the way up onto the main deck, his fingers digging into the hilt of his swords, heat pluming up and up and up till he swirls around to pin you with an icy stare.

“What?”

You shrink back, your brows furrowing, and for a second, he almost feels bad, feels like the naive boy he used to be, so desperate to prove himself to Kuina, and to you.

“I — we were just —” you look away, your eyes cutting across the flat deck of the ship towards the trap door that leads to the rooms below.

Zoro lets out a hollow laugh, backing away, his footsteps falling heavy, “No, it’s fine. You don’t have to explain. We don’t owe each other anything.”

Your gaze swings towards him, eyes wide and lips trembling.

Zoro notes with a savage satisfaction that your gaze is kaleidoscoped in unshed tears.

“No! That’s not — I’m —” your breath catches over your words, time and time again and Zoro allows himself a cruel grin, watching you struggle.

“You’re what?” he asks, unable to keep the poison from his voice.

“I’m sorry!”

Zoro nearly snarls as he rounds on you, a few quick steps carrying him into your personal space; you back away, scrambling back till your back thumps against the main mast.

“Sorry?” he repeats, his voice dangerous and low, “yeah… sure. Whatever.” He jerks back, shaking his head.

You narrow your eyes, “Don’t.”

Zoro’s lip curls, “Don’t?”

“Don’t walk away,” you say, swiping a hand across your mouth, licking your lips as you push yourself off the mast to face him.

“Oh, yeah? What else am I supposed to do, huh?” Zoro asks, casting his eyes up towards the endlessly blue sky. He feels anger bursting inside him like summertime sparklers, the fuses short, the explosions bright and unrelenting.

“Just… let me explain —”

“Explain? Explain what? How you nearly killed me twice? How you threatened me with my life? How you let me believe that you were dead for —” he throws his hands up, turning away from you, shaking his head, “for almost two months?”

“I had no choice!” you shout, your fists balled at your sides, “you really think Baroque Works — Crocodile would’ve let me send you a — a message?”

Zoro scoffs, “Well you could’a done something. Anything.”

You deflate, your fists loosening. You lean back against the mast, looking anywhere but at Zoro’s face.

“I didn’t mean to… to make you worry.”

Zoro lets out a hollow laugh.

“I wasn’t worried.”

Even without looking, he feels you wince at his words. He takes three steps towards you, and jerks your face up with two fingers and hisses into your face.

“I was mourning the death of a friend.”

Your breath hitches — he sees it in the way your pupils constrict, in the way your expression falls slack.

“If I — but I couldn’t — you don’t know what they did —”

Zoro very nearly sneers, the gaping wound inside him pulsing red and fire-poker hot as he lets go of your chin.

“You think you’re the only one with a tragic backstory? Look around,” he gestures around the main deck, where the whole crew’s gathered, with various expressions of shock and trepidation scattered across their faces.

Zoro tightens his hold, bearing down over you as he whispers, “You’re not special. Get over yourself.”

He jerks his hand away, turning to stalk back towards the trap door. He hears you cough behind him.

“You’re a real dick, Roronoa, you know that?”

He’s pleased to hear that at least your voice is shaky, even as your words burrow themselves beneath his skin.

He barely glances over his shoulder, “Yeah. Been told a good few times.”

And he strides from the deck, slamming the trap door behind him as he does.

— — —

“Hey.”

Zoro groans, barely peeling open one eye as Luffy edges his way into the small storage room.

“What?” Zoro asks, casting his eyes back at the wood-beamed ceiling.

Luffy crosses his arms, seemingly searching for the right words.

“That wasn’t very cool of you — what you did back there. But — I can kind of get where you’re coming from.”

Zoro chokes back an indignant laugh, “Yeah?”

Luffy nods, spurred on by his apparent acceptance, “Yeah! Like — I get it! You’re just mad that someone you cared so much about let you believe she was dead! But now that she’s not dead… you don’t really know what to do with your feelings!”

Zoro narrows his eyes, uncertain what to do with the surprisingly accurate diagnosis. Luffy is grinning, looking mightily pleased with himself as he plops down on top of a wooden barrel, crossing his legs.

“It’s a bit more than that,” Zoro says, letting his eyes flicker back to the ceiling.

“Yeah? Then tell me!”

Zoro sighs, considering his words.

“I mean, do you even know what it’s like? Thinkin’ you’ve lost one of your —” Zoro nearly chokes on the word, barbed and abrasive in his throat, but he forces it through, “your friends?”

Luffy nods, his smile never faltering, “Sure! You almost died at the Baratie and that really, really sucked for a while!”

Zoro jerks up, running a hand through his hair.

“That’s not — I mean —” he shakes his head, unable to entirely parse through his thoughts.

“It’s not really that different, is it?” Luffy asks.

Zoro groans, scratching at his scalp with his nails. He can’t refute Luffy, but he can’t verbalize why it had been so different for you either. It leaves him feeling gouged out and hollow as he slumps back into his hammock, leaving it swinging with the weight of his body.

“Its okay,” Luffy says, jumping to his feet and padding over to give Zoro a solid smack on the arm, “if you just say your sorry, I’m sure she’ll forgive you!”

Zoro nearly snarls as he scrambles up, but Luffy’s already bouncing out of the room, humming to himself.

“Oh! She’s in the kitchen — it’s weird, but I think she likes to make sweets when she’s stressed. Kinda nice though — it’s like we’ll never be short of desserts on the ship again!”

“Right,” Zoro says, leaning back into his hammock, scowling at the ceiling.

Luffy pauses by the door, “She’s not a bad person.”

Zoro sighs, hesitating perhaps a beat longer than he should have.

“Sure. If you say so.”

— — —

He dreams of you. He dreams of the later summer day when the air was so tepid that practice had ended early in lieu of letting all the students laze by the small koi pond in the backyard of the doujou complex.

You’d come over that morning with your usual sweets, and had stayed for lunch with the rest of the children.

Kuina had tried to teach you some basic forms with a wooden sword, but even from afar, Zoro could tell that you’re woefully inept at handling anything as long and unwieldy as a katana.

“If you practice, you’ll get better,” Kuina offers, leading you to the koi pond, where you’d peered curiously into the crystal clear water and gasped with pleasure at the white and black spotted fish that flickered beneath, their scales shimmering in the late summer sun.

“Betcha you couldn’t do a hundred swings,” Zoro says, thumbing at his nose, rolling up his sleeves. Next to you, Kuina rolls her eyes, but you stare at him for a long second before smiling.

“Sure! I can do a hundred.” You leap to your feet, and Kuina hands you one of the light wooden training swords.

Zoro takes great pains to pull out one of his real katanas, metal and cloth and all, dropping into a perfect sparring stance.

“One! Two!” he counts, swinging the sword down in a controlled motion, his heels digging in, his toes keeping him balanced.

You follow his movements, though after a good thirty of them, you gasp, the wooden sword clattering to the ground. Zoro turns, only to see you cradling one of your hands. He rushes forward, not caring that his own sword clanks down into the soft grass as well.

“It’s a splinter,” you say, forlorn as you hold up your forefinger to the light, a minuscule shard of wood protruding from the soft pad beneath your nail.

Zoro sighs, reaching out to grab your hand in his. He can’t help noticing the softness of your skin against his own callused palms, how small your hands feel in his.

“Hold still,” he says, peering at the splinter with a frown dug between his brows.

“I-it’s fine! My mom will take it out once I get home — and we’ve still got seventy more swings —”

Zoro tuts, shooting you a dark look, “If we don’t take care of it, it might get fester and get worse.”

You go quiet, your arm going slack as you let Zoro twist your hand this way and that. After a few more moments of silent assessment, Zoro leans in to press his thumb to the base of the splinter. You squeak in protest, jerking your arm back on instinct, but he’s stronger than you, even then, and he holds you still.

“Quit squirming! I’m gonna squeeze it out.”

You clamp down on your lips, eyes wide and watery as you force yourself still, and Zoro goes back to the gruesome work of forcing the splinter out bit by bit.

When finally, the needle of wood falls away from your hand, there’s bead of blood welling up into the wound. You press the finger into your mouth.

“Thanks,” you say, grinning at Zoro.

It’s only then that Zoro processes the blaze of heat that rushes into his cheeks. He looks away, clearing his throat.

“I’ve always hated those old practice swords — the handles aren’t wrapped well enough. Here —” he reaches down and hands you one of his real swords (the best and most well-balanced one), the hilt wrapped with fine black cloth, in a traditional diamond hatch.

Your wrists tip forward as he hands you the sword, but a second later, you hold it upright, marveling at it’s balance.

“Whoa… it’s so… beautiful.”

Zoro crinkles his nose, stepping back to pick up another one of his swords, dropping into a sparring stance again. He makes a concerted effort not to look in Shimotsuki-sensei’s direction, even though he can feel the man’s eyes tracking him, know the exact shape and luster of the man’s soft, knowing smile.

“C’mon, seventy more swings to go,” he gruffs, glancing back at you.

You nod eagerly, trying to mirror his stance. But your legs are too far apart, your knees not bent enough. And it’s plain as day the katana is a bit too long for your body. Still, Zoro smiles to himself as he begins to count again —

“Thirty-four, thirty-five —”

— — —

It’s a week before either of you speak to each other again. Though even Zoro has to be hard-pressed to not notice the delicate little sweets that now seem to accompany the ends of all their meals.

And he can hear your laughter, hard as he tries not to, the sound trickling into him like spring water — clear and sweet. He can see you frequently chatting with Nami, that familiar rosy glow to your cheeks, or hear you joking with Sanji, the pair of you staking opposite ends of the kitchen — you to make dessert, him to make whatever the hell he’s decided to make that day.

As for Zoro, he finds himself circling the periphery of these cheery moments, sticking to the shadows, somber as a vulture, watching you with dark eyes and a nameless weight bearing down on his chest. He knows he’s being unreasonable, that none of this is objectively your fault.

But as he’s heard Sanji say to Luffy more than once — feelings aren’t objective things. You kinda just have to let them be.

It’s a warm, sun-baked afternoon when he pushes into the kitchen and finds you there, by yourself for once, an apron tied around your waist, a bowl of fat, juicy strawberries sitting on the counter before you, the area around the counter dusted in a fine layer of flour and sugar.

“Ow — shit —” you drop the tiny parring knife you’d been holding, bringing your hand up to your eyes.

The late afternoon light cuts slantwise across the entire kitchen, illuminating the shape of you in a solid chunk of shadow, like a piece of cut cloth in the dappled, golden light, inked against the freshly waxed floors (courtesy of Usopp, at Sanji’s snack-based behest).

“What happened?” Zoro rushes forward before he can stop himself.

“N-nothing,” you say, making as if to jerk back, but Zoro catches your hand and forces it forward into the light. He can see the small snick the knife had made on your palm.

Scowling, he looks up at you, a silent question in his eyes.

“I was — I was peeling the strawberries.”

He’s caught momentarily off-guard by the strangeness of your answer.

“Peeling strawberries?”

You blush, the color saturating your skin like the berry juice staining your fingertips.

“Yeah! Cause… the strawberry skins have those little seeds in them, and that creates a strange texture if it’s mixed into the filling so —”

Zoro scoffs, reaching into a drawer to pull out a bandage and a small roll of gauze.

“Hold still,” he says, leaning down to wipe the cut lean.

You sigh, your voice falling flat as you say, only half-jokingly, “Don’t worry — it’s nothing. It won’t kill me.”

Zoro levels you with a sharp glare and you freeze mid-breath, clamping down over your lips as you drop your head to hide your eyes behind your soft bank of bangs. Zoro resumes his work, his heart thundering an irregular beat at the back of his throat.

He finishes bandaging you in silence, and then, he drops your hand and turns to leave.

“Wait —”

He stops, barely sparing you a look over his shoulder.

“I —” you teeter on the balls of your feet; he can feel you weighing your words, searching for the right ones to say. Finally, you settle on, “I’m making sakura-mochi next. Do you… do you want to try some?”

Zoro huffs, turning back around with slightly narrowed eyes. He regards you for a long moment before making his way to the sofa and dropping into it, folding his arms. You let out a visible breath, the tension draining from your shoulders as you make to pick up the parring knife again.

“Here, I got it.” Zoro is by your side in an instant, plucking the small knife from your grasp and tugging the bowl of fruit towards him.

“But —”

“I might not be a waiter, but I can handle my knives,” he says, squaring his shoulders as he starts the methodical work of skinning each strawberry.

The silence coagulates around the pair of you like melted butter, growing colder by the minute. You carefully measure out half a cup of warm water and pour it into the pristine white rice flour, kneading the forming dough as you go.

Zoro plunks one strawberry after another into a separate bowl, dropping the thin strips of pebbled skin into the trash.

After another few moments, you pause. So does he.

“That other day —”

“I should’ve told you —”

You both talk at the same time, both freezing after a single, starling heartbeat.

Zoro sighs, shrugging up a shoulder.

“You first.”

You resume your gentle kneading of the lumpy dough.

“No, it’s just… I… I get it. I know why your mad at me. But… it’s not that simple,” you say, your voice imploring.

Zoro’s shoulders stiffen, “Seemed pretty simple to me.”

“What did you expect me to do? Bare my soul to you the first time we’d met after almost a decade? After you’d been hunting me for weeks — for a bounty?”

Zoro drops his hands, one still poised on the knife’s handle, the other cradling a half-skinned strawberry.

“I wouldn’tve — you know I wouldn’t —” he nearly whips the knife across the room in frustration, but thinks better of it at the last second. It drops from his hand with a dull clatter as he reaches out to wipe his hands on a discarded towel.

“I… I hoped…” your voice fractures along the word and Zoro places the strawberry into its bowl.

“I hoped you might’ve… recognized —“ you try again, but Zoro shakes his head.

“A good hunter always keeps his distance,” he recites, words dull. You nod, pursing your lips. It was something sensei had taught him — don’t strike until you absolutely have to. And when you do, make it quick.

Slowly, you start to knead the dough again, pressing the heel of your hand into the center. Zoro watches the soft white of it bulge beneath your fingers, the rough lumps smoothing out until the entire thing is round and soft and perfect.

Zoro folds his arms, leaning a hip against the counter.

“Why didn’t you tell me? The first time?” he asks, the accusation now gone from his voice, replaced by something much, much worse — uncertainty.

“I couldn’t — not without Baroque Works tracking me and —” you bite off the last bit of your sentence, looking away.

“And what?” Zoro asks, his voice gentle.

“It’s nothing. You’re right — I should’ve —”

“No,” Zoro says, grabbing you by the wrists and forcing you to him, “tell me what they did to you. I — I want to know.”

You lick your lips, your eyes watery, fractaled by the dying light, “But… maybe I don’t want you to know. I don’t want — want to you think of me like — like that.”

Zoro lets out a mirthless puff of laughter, “Bit too late for that.”

Your eyes snap back to his, wide and searching.

He shrugs, grip loosening ever so slightly on your wrists.

“I —” he has to fight through the tightness in his throat, the dryness papering the back of his tongue, “I thought of you all the time,” he admits, licking his lips, “most nights, I’d have these dreams of when we were both —” he breaks off again, his mind mired in the haze of half-forgotten memories.

“When we were both kids?” you offer gently.

Zoro nods.

“So please… tell me what happened.”

You stare at him as he stares at you. He sighs, the edge of his lips twitching up ever so slightly.

“And… you promised.”

A tiny laugh punches out of you, startled and resigned all at once. You nod.

“Yeah… guess I did.”

The last dregs of sunset bleeds the room empty, and the pair of you are suddenly thrown into a pitched, primal dark. In it, your eyes shown, black and glassy.

“My parents were always living on borrowed time,” you say, trailing a finger through the fine dust of rice flour on the counter, “they…” you break off in a puff of laughter, the sound so course it doesn’t even register as a laugh.

“They couldn’t have a child, so they… got creative. They were young and in love, and desperate to start a family.”

Zoro frowns, trying to piece the disparate pieces of the story together.

“Do you know where Devil Fruits come from?” you ask, dusting your hands off before wiping them on your apron and reaching for a piece of wax paper to wrap your freshly made rice dough. Zoro watches you move through the seemingly mundane tasks, his mind spinning.

“Uh — not really. Never really thought about it.”

You nod, pressing the wax paper in around the edges of the dough, folding it in neat, origami lines until the whole thing is wrapped.

“Legends say that Devil Fruits are enchanted by Sea Devils — manifesting when humans want something enough to wish it into existence. Most of the time, the trade-off is simple — the Devil Fruit eater gains some kind of power, but gives up their ability to survive in seawater,” a wry smile plays at your lips.

“Have you ever thought of the average life expectancy for a Devil Fruit eater?”

Zoro shakes his head, frown carving deeper and deeper between his brows.

“Well, I can tell you — it’s not as long as you might think. Most of them end up dying young…”

From beyond the windows, a pale, silvery moon peaks out from the far horizon, casting the room in a cold, alien glow. You wrap your arms around yourself, as if defending against an unseen chill, and Zoro feels the familiar pull behind his navel, to reach out for you and pull you close.

“My parents wished, but when they got their wish, it wasn’t a god that had answered them — it was —“

“A Sea Devil.”

There’s no question in Zoro’s tone, no room for shock or wonder or bewilderment. He’d watched you die; and yet here you are in front of him, traced silver by the moonlight.

You nod, reaching up to drag your fingers through your hair, and Zoro watches, breathless, at the inky spill of it over your shoulder, shielding your face from the burgeoning light.

“What did they trade?” Zoro asks, though a part of him thinks he already knows.

“Their lives,” you answer simply.

Zoro narrows his eyes, “Still doesn’t explain how you ended up —“ he motions at the stagnant air between them. Above decks, he can hear the sound of a fire being built, the clatter of footsteps and the warm trickle of laughter.

You shrug, “The cardinal rule of wish-making, as any good fairy-tale will tell you,” you spin a finger around in the air before pointing it at Zoro, “is… specificity.”

Zoro grunts, casting his eyes down at the bowl of half-skinned strawberries.

“Careful what you wish for…” he says.

You raise your thumb, your forefinger still pointed at him, now in a finger-gun shape, before pulling an invisible trigger. Zoro feels a shiver shake him all the way down to his bones.

“Apparently, when they said ‘we’ll give you our lives’, they didn’t know they’d wished away my life too.”

Zoro swallows, “So… what? They made another deal?”

“Yep,” you sound entirely too bright, reaching behind yourself now to untie the apron, “they made another deal.”

“And what did they trade away this time?”

You slip the apron from around your middle, reaching out to hang it on a hook by the far wall. When you turn around, it’s to find Zoro still watching you, the curves of his face washed colorless by the moon.

You offer him a small, heartbreaking smile.

“The only thing they had left to trade — my death.”

So suppose you are the next best thing. Suppose it’s just the nebulous workings of the human mind, of the brush-stroke memories he’d attached to the shape of you simply because you were there. And you were different.

Different from all the other boys and girls at the doujou. Different from him and Kuina too.

And there, something clunks inside his chest, blunt and oppressive, the same way it had when he’d run into that Tashigi girl in Loguetown. So maybe that’s it — maybe he’d held onto the memory of you because it was one of the last solid things that tied him to Kuina. You and the Wadou Ichimonji. But as much as other swordsmen might wax poetic about how a blade is a living thing, he can’t reminisce with a sword, can’t share a drink over those silver-lining days and star-spangled nights.

Sometimes if he closes his eyes, he can still hear it, the sound clear as if it were echoing into his room from the decks above — you and Kuina laughing, your heads bent over the basket of sweets, eyes glittering as you picked all the prettiest ones.

It was the only time he’d ever seen Kuina smile the way she did. The only time he’d seen you look so pleased.

The dull clatter in his chest sharpens to a throbbing ache, as flesh would around a fresh knife wound. He flips over onto his side and sighs.

He doesn’t remember falling asleep.

The memory comes to him, clear and sharp as fresh-cut glass. The autumn sun paints thick streaks across the doujou floors, and afternoon practice has just ended. You’re sitting by the door, your hands folded neatly in your lap, your hair twisted back in a simple braid that fell over your right shoulder, tied off with a dark red bow. Anyone could see the care that was taken with it — the love inherent in the simple detail.

Zoro makes a show of stretching his arms over his head, yawning as the other boys all scramble towards you, Shimotsuki-sensei tutting as he watches, an indulgent grin on his lips.

“Gimme the blue one!”

“No I want the blue one!”

“Fine then gimme the yellow one!”

“I want the one that’s three layers!”

“That one is the prettiest —”

“As if you know what pretty means.”

“Yeah, well real men don’t like pretty things.”

Zoro scoffs, turning his head resolutely away. But a while later, you patter over with your basket, dropping down in front of him.

“There’s still the sakura one left, if you’d like.”

Zoro frowns, “A — a real swordsman knows the meaning of abstinence.”

You giggle, reaching into your basket to pull out a plain-looking mochi, pale pink and powdered in sugar. Zoro can tell from the dark red bleeding through the translucent skin that there’s an azuki filling — his favorite.

He gulps.

“Well, how can you know abstinence… if you don’t know indulgence first?”

Zoro chews on his lips for a second before making a show of rolling his eyes and plucking the mochi from your hand. He bites into it and swallows passed a delighted shiver. It’s delicious — the azuki sweet and creamy, the cherry-blossom skin perfectly chewy. It sticks to his teeth in the best way and he has to fight down a bright blush threatening his cheeks.

“Th-thanks.”

You smile, clearly pleased.

“Those are my favorite too,” you say, folding a white cloth over the mouth of the basket before pushing it aside — precise movements, not a moment wasted.

Zoro thinks, brashly, that you would’ve been a great swordswoman. Kuina’s always talking about how he’s wasting his movements by swinging wide or cutting too deep.

“Did… did you make them yourself?” he asks, scratching at his cheek, chancing you a single glance. You’re watching him with wide, dark eyes, clear and entrancing. He swallows, his mouth feeling suddenly very, very dry.

“Not all of them,” you look down at your hands, and he sighs with relief. It’s strange, holding your gaze like that — he’d always fancied that you could see more than you let on.

“Just the plain ones — I’m not good enough yet to make the more complicated ones,” you explain, toying with the tips of your fingers. Your nails are short and perfectly filed. There are bits of white stuck under them. Zoro wonders whether it’s sugar or flour or maybe a mix of both.

You look back at him with a crooked grin.

“But just between you and me —” you lean in, your eyes glittering, your voice conspiratorial, “the plain ones are always the best.

— — —

Zoro jerks awake to the sound of laughter, and grumbling, he twists himself out of the hammock, squinting in the morning light. Somehow, he’d slept clear passed dawn, and he curses himself for missing out on his morning katas.

Rounding his door, he follows the sound of voices till he comes into the kitchen, only to find you and Sanji, laughing, standing too close, the air around you a snowfall of powdered sugar. The slanting rays of the rising sun casts the entire scene in a sparkling, ambered glow, as if encasing the moment in honey.

Like this, the pale of sugar falling from your fingers looks like dust-motes caught in the liquid light.

“Zoro! You’re awake!” and there, the laughter in your voice, running undercurrent to the way you say his name. It’s been so long since he’d heard his name said like something more than just a name —

He purses his lips and scowls. An ugly, nameless thing rears its head inside Zoro’s chest.

“Yeah well — couldn’t really sleep last night.”

And he knows it’s unfair to be taking this out on you; he sees it in the flicker of emotions that passes by your face — hurt, confusion, hesitation, regret.

“Zoro —”

“Whatever. Just tell me when breakfast is ready.” He spins around and slinks out of the room, his chest twisting tight as a hangman’s noose, his heart a riot of irregular beats, slamming against his ribs.

“Zoro —!”

He makes it all the way up onto the main deck, his fingers digging into the hilt of his swords, heat pluming up and up and up till he swirls around to pin you with an icy stare.

“What?”

You shrink back, your brows furrowing, and for a second, he almost feels bad, feels like the naive boy he used to be, so desperate to prove himself to Kuina, and to you.

“I — we were just —” you look away, your eyes cutting across the flat deck of the ship towards the trap door that leads to the rooms below.

Zoro lets out a hollow laugh, backing away, his footsteps falling heavy, “No, it’s fine. You don’t have to explain. We don’t owe each other anything.”

Your gaze swings towards him, eyes wide and lips trembling.

Zoro notes with a savage satisfaction that your gaze is kaleidoscoped in unshed tears.

“No! That’s not — I’m —” your breath catches over your words, time and time again and Zoro allows himself a cruel grin, watching you struggle.

“You’re what?” he asks, unable to keep the poison from his voice.

“I’m sorry!”

Zoro nearly snarls as he rounds on you, a few quick steps carrying him into your personal space; you back away, scrambling back till your back thumps against the main mast.

“Sorry?” he repeats, his voice dangerous and low, “yeah… sure. Whatever.” He jerks back, shaking his head.

You narrow your eyes, “Don’t.”

Zoro’s lip curls, “Don’t?”

“Don’t walk away,” you say, swiping a hand across your mouth, licking your lips as you push yourself off the mast to face him.

“Oh, yeah? What else am I supposed to do, huh?” Zoro asks, casting his eyes up towards the endlessly blue sky. He feels anger bursting inside him like summertime sparklers, the fuses short, the explosions bright and unrelenting.

“Just… let me explain —”

“Explain? Explain what? How you nearly killed me twice? How you threatened me with my life? How you let me believe that you were dead for —” he throws his hands up, turning away from you, shaking his head, “for almost two months?”

“I had no choice!” you shout, your fists balled at your sides, “you really think Baroque Works — Crocodile would’ve let me send you a — a message?”

Zoro scoffs, “Well you could’a done something. Anything.”

You deflate, your fists loosening. You lean back against the mast, looking anywhere but at Zoro’s face.

“I didn’t mean to… to make you worry.”

Zoro lets out a hollow laugh.

“I wasn’t worried.”

Even without looking, he feels you wince at his words. He takes three steps towards you, and jerks your face up with two fingers and hisses into your face.

“I was mourning the death of a friend.”

Your breath hitches — he sees it in the way your pupils constrict, in the way your expression falls slack.

“If I — but I couldn’t — you don’t know what they did —”

Zoro very nearly sneers, the gaping wound inside him pulsing red and fire-poker hot as he lets go of your chin.

“You think you’re the only one with a tragic backstory? Look around,” he gestures around the main deck, where the whole crew’s gathered, with various expressions of shock and trepidation scattered across their faces.

Zoro tightens his hold, bearing down over you as he whispers, “You’re not special. Get over yourself.”

He jerks his hand away, turning to stalk back towards the trap door. He hears you cough behind him.

“You’re a real dick, Roronoa, you know that?”

He’s pleased to hear that at least your voice is shaky, even as your words burrow themselves beneath his skin.

He barely glances over his shoulder, “Yeah. Been told a good few times.”

And he strides from the deck, slamming the trap door behind him as he does.

— — —

“Hey.”

Zoro groans, barely peeling open one eye as Luffy edges his way into the small storage room.

“What?” Zoro asks, casting his eyes back at the wood-beamed ceiling.

Luffy crosses his arms, seemingly searching for the right words.

“That wasn’t very cool of you — what you did back there. But — I can kind of get where you’re coming from.”

Zoro chokes back an indignant laugh, “Yeah?”

Luffy nods, spurred on by his apparent acceptance, “Yeah! Like — I get it! You’re just mad that someone you cared so much about let you believe she was dead! But now that she’s not dead… you don’t really know what to do with your feelings!”

Zoro narrows his eyes, uncertain what to do with the surprisingly accurate diagnosis. Luffy is grinning, looking mightily pleased with himself as he plops down on top of a wooden barrel, crossing his legs.

“It’s a bit more than that,” Zoro says, letting his eyes flicker back to the ceiling.

“Yeah? Then tell me!”

Zoro sighs, considering his words.

“I mean, do you even know what it’s like? Thinkin’ you’ve lost one of your —” Zoro nearly chokes on the word, barbed and abrasive in his throat, but he forces it through, “your friends?”

Luffy nods, his smile never faltering, “Sure! You almost died at the Baratie and that really, really sucked for a while!”

Zoro jerks up, running a hand through his hair.

“That’s not — I mean —” he shakes his head, unable to entirely parse through his thoughts.

“It’s not really that different, is it?” Luffy asks.

Zoro groans, scratching at his scalp with his nails. He can’t refute Luffy, but he can’t verbalize why it had been so different for you either. It leaves him feeling gouged out and hollow as he slumps back into his hammock, leaving it swinging with the weight of his body.

“Its okay,” Luffy says, jumping to his feet and padding over to give Zoro a solid smack on the arm, “if you just say your sorry, I’m sure she’ll forgive you!”

Zoro nearly snarls as he scrambles up, but Luffy’s already bouncing out of the room, humming to himself.

“Oh! She’s in the kitchen — it’s weird, but I think she likes to make sweets when she’s stressed. Kinda nice though — it’s like we’ll never be short of desserts on the ship again!”

“Right,” Zoro says, leaning back into his hammock, scowling at the ceiling.

Luffy pauses by the door, “She’s not a bad person.”

Zoro sighs, hesitating perhaps a beat longer than he should have.

“Sure. If you say so.”

— — —

He dreams of you. He dreams of the later summer day when the air was so tepid that practice had ended early in lieu of letting all the students laze by the small koi pond in the backyard of the doujou complex.

You’d come over that morning with your usual sweets, and had stayed for lunch with the rest of the children.

Kuina had tried to teach you some basic forms with a wooden sword, but even from afar, Zoro could tell that you’re woefully inept at handling anything as long and unwieldy as a katana.

“If you practice, you’ll get better,” Kuina offers, leading you to the koi pond, where you’d peered curiously into the crystal clear water and gasped with pleasure at the white and black spotted fish that flickered beneath, their scales shimmering in the late summer sun.

“Betcha you couldn’t do a hundred swings,” Zoro says, thumbing at his nose, rolling up his sleeves. Next to you, Kuina rolls her eyes, but you stare at him for a long second before smiling.

“Sure! I can do a hundred.” You leap to your feet, and Kuina hands you one of the light wooden training swords.

Zoro takes great pains to pull out one of his real katanas, metal and cloth and all, dropping into a perfect sparring stance.

“One! Two!” he counts, swinging the sword down in a controlled motion, his heels digging in, his toes keeping him balanced.

You follow his movements, though after a good thirty of them, you gasp, the wooden sword clattering to the ground. Zoro turns, only to see you cradling one of your hands. He rushes forward, not caring that his own sword clanks down into the soft grass as well.

“It’s a splinter,” you say, forlorn as you hold up your forefinger to the light, a minuscule shard of wood protruding from the soft pad beneath your nail.

Zoro sighs, reaching out to grab your hand in his. He can’t help noticing the softness of your skin against his own callused palms, how small your hands feel in his.

“Hold still,” he says, peering at the splinter with a frown dug between his brows.

“I-it’s fine! My mom will take it out once I get home — and we’ve still got seventy more swings —”

Zoro tuts, shooting you a dark look, “If we don’t take care of it, it might get fester and get worse.”

You go quiet, your arm going slack as you let Zoro twist your hand this way and that. After a few more moments of silent assessment, Zoro leans in to press his thumb to the base of the splinter. You squeak in protest, jerking your arm back on instinct, but he’s stronger than you, even then, and he holds you still.

“Quit squirming! I’m gonna squeeze it out.”

You clamp down on your lips, eyes wide and watery as you force yourself still, and Zoro goes back to the gruesome work of forcing the splinter out bit by bit.

When finally, the needle of wood falls away from your hand, there’s bead of blood welling up into the wound. You press the finger into your mouth.

“Thanks,” you say, grinning at Zoro.

It’s only then that Zoro processes the blaze of heat that rushes into his cheeks. He looks away, clearing his throat.

“I’ve always hated those old practice swords — the handles aren’t wrapped well enough. Here —” he reaches down and hands you one of his real swords (the best and most well-balanced one), the hilt wrapped with fine black cloth, in a traditional diamond hatch.

Your wrists tip forward as he hands you the sword, but a second later, you hold it upright, marveling at it’s balance.

“Whoa… it’s so… beautiful.”

Zoro crinkles his nose, stepping back to pick up another one of his swords, dropping into a sparring stance again. He makes a concerted effort not to look in Shimotsuki-sensei’s direction, even though he can feel the man’s eyes tracking him, know the exact shape and luster of the man’s soft, knowing smile.

“C’mon, seventy more swings to go,” he gruffs, glancing back at you.

You nod eagerly, trying to mirror his stance. But your legs are too far apart, your knees not bent enough. And it’s plain as day the katana is a bit too long for your body. Still, Zoro smiles to himself as he begins to count again —

“Thirty-four, thirty-five —”

— — —

It’s a week before either of you speak to each other again. Though even Zoro has to be hard-pressed to not notice the delicate little sweets that now seem to accompany the ends of all their meals.

And he can hear your laughter, hard as he tries not to, the sound trickling into him like spring water — clear and sweet. He can see you frequently chatting with Nami, that familiar rosy glow to your cheeks, or hear you joking with Sanji, the pair of you staking opposite ends of the kitchen — you to make dessert, him to make whatever the hell he’s decided to make that day.

As for Zoro, he finds himself circling the periphery of these cheery moments, sticking to the shadows, somber as a vulture, watching you with dark eyes and a nameless weight bearing down on his chest. He knows he’s being unreasonable, that none of this is objectively your fault.

But as he’s heard Sanji say to Luffy more than once — feelings aren’t objective things. You kinda just have to let them be.

It’s a warm, sun-baked afternoon when he pushes into the kitchen and finds you there, by yourself for once, an apron tied around your waist, a bowl of fat, juicy strawberries sitting on the counter before you, the area around the counter dusted in a fine layer of flour and sugar.

“Ow — shit —” you drop the tiny parring knife you’d been holding, bringing your hand up to your eyes.

The late afternoon light cuts slantwise across the entire kitchen, illuminating the shape of you in a solid chunk of shadow, like a piece of cut cloth in the dappled, golden light, inked against the freshly waxed floors (courtesy of Usopp, at Sanji’s snack-based behest).

“What happened?” Zoro rushes forward before he can stop himself.

“N-nothing,” you say, making as if to jerk back, but Zoro catches your hand and forces it forward into the light. He can see the small snick the knife had made on your palm.

Scowling, he looks up at you, a silent question in his eyes.

“I was — I was peeling the strawberries.”

He’s caught momentarily off-guard by the strangeness of your answer.

“Peeling strawberries?”

You blush, the color saturating your skin like the berry juice staining your fingertips.

“Yeah! Cause… the strawberry skins have those little seeds in them, and that creates a strange texture if it’s mixed into the filling so —”

Zoro scoffs, reaching into a drawer to pull out a bandage and a small roll of gauze.

“Hold still,” he says, leaning down to wipe the cut lean.

You sigh, your voice falling flat as you say, only half-jokingly, “Don’t worry — it’s nothing. It won’t kill me.”

Zoro levels you with a sharp glare and you freeze mid-breath, clamping down over your lips as you drop your head to hide your eyes behind your soft bank of bangs. Zoro resumes his work, his heart thundering an irregular beat at the back of his throat.

He finishes bandaging you in silence, and then, he drops your hand and turns to leave.

“Wait —”

He stops, barely sparing you a look over his shoulder.

“I —” you teeter on the balls of your feet; he can feel you weighing your words, searching for the right ones to say. Finally, you settle on, “I’m making sakura-mochi next. Do you… do you want to try some?”

Zoro huffs, turning back around with slightly narrowed eyes. He regards you for a long moment before making his way to the sofa and dropping into it, folding his arms. You let out a visible breath, the tension draining from your shoulders as you make to pick up the parring knife again.

“Here, I got it.” Zoro is by your side in an instant, plucking the small knife from your grasp and tugging the bowl of fruit towards him.

“But —”

“I might not be a waiter, but I can handle my knives,” he says, squaring his shoulders as he starts the methodical work of skinning each strawberry.

The silence coagulates around the pair of you like melted butter, growing colder by the minute. You carefully measure out half a cup of warm water and pour it into the pristine white rice flour, kneading the forming dough as you go.

Zoro plunks one strawberry after another into a separate bowl, dropping the thin strips of pebbled skin into the trash.

After another few moments, you pause. So does he.

“That other day —”

“I should’ve told you —”

You both talk at the same time, both freezing after a single, starling heartbeat.

Zoro sighs, shrugging up a shoulder.

“You first.”

You resume your gentle kneading of the lumpy dough.

“No, it’s just… I… I get it. I know why your mad at me. But… it’s not that simple,” you say, your voice imploring.

Zoro’s shoulders stiffen, “Seemed pretty simple to me.”

“What did you expect me to do? Bare my soul to you the first time we’d met after almost a decade? After you’d been hunting me for weeks — for a bounty?”

Zoro drops his hands, one still poised on the knife’s handle, the other cradling a half-skinned strawberry.

“I wouldn’tve — you know I wouldn’t —” he nearly whips the knife across the room in frustration, but thinks better of it at the last second. It drops from his hand with a dull clatter as he reaches out to wipe his hands on a discarded towel.

“I… I hoped…” your voice fractures along the word and Zoro places the strawberry into its bowl.

“I hoped you might’ve… recognized —“ you try again, but Zoro shakes his head.

“A good hunter always keeps his distance,” he recites, words dull. You nod, pursing your lips. It was something sensei had taught him — don’t strike until you absolutely have to. And when you do, make it quick.

Slowly, you start to knead the dough again, pressing the heel of your hand into the center. Zoro watches the soft white of it bulge beneath your fingers, the rough lumps smoothing out until the entire thing is round and soft and perfect.

Zoro folds his arms, leaning a hip against the counter.

“Why didn’t you tell me? The first time?” he asks, the accusation now gone from his voice, replaced by something much, much worse — uncertainty.

“I couldn’t — not without Baroque Works tracking me and —” you bite off the last bit of your sentence, looking away.

“And what?” Zoro asks, his voice gentle.

“It’s nothing. You’re right — I should’ve —”

“No,” Zoro says, grabbing you by the wrists and forcing you to him, “tell me what they did to you. I — I want to know.”

You lick your lips, your eyes watery, fractaled by the dying light, “But… maybe I don’t want you to know. I don’t want — want to you think of me like — like that.”

Zoro lets out a mirthless puff of laughter, “Bit too late for that.”

Your eyes snap back to his, wide and searching.

He shrugs, grip loosening ever so slightly on your wrists.

“I —” he has to fight through the tightness in his throat, the dryness papering the back of his tongue, “I thought of you all the time,” he admits, licking his lips, “most nights, I’d have these dreams of when we were both —” he breaks off again, his mind mired in the haze of half-forgotten memories.

“When we were both kids?” you offer gently.

Zoro nods.

“So please… tell me what happened.”

You stare at him as he stares at you. He sighs, the edge of his lips twitching up ever so slightly.

“And… you promised.”

A tiny laugh punches out of you, startled and resigned all at once. You nod.

“Yeah… guess I did.”

The last dregs of sunset bleeds the room empty, and the pair of you are suddenly thrown into a pitched, primal dark. In it, your eyes shown, black and glassy.

“My parents were always living on borrowed time,” you say, trailing a finger through the fine dust of rice flour on the counter, “they…” you break off in a puff of laughter, the sound so course it doesn’t even register as a laugh.

“They couldn’t have a child, so they… got creative. They were young and in love, and desperate to start a family.”

Zoro frowns, trying to piece the disparate pieces of the story together.

“Do you know where Devil Fruits come from?” you ask, dusting your hands off before wiping them on your apron and reaching for a piece of wax paper to wrap your freshly made rice dough. Zoro watches you move through the seemingly mundane tasks, his mind spinning.

“Uh — not really. Never really thought about it.”

You nod, pressing the wax paper in around the edges of the dough, folding it in neat, origami lines until the whole thing is wrapped.

“Legends say that Devil Fruits are enchanted by Sea Devils — manifesting when humans want something enough to wish it into existence. Most of the time, the trade-off is simple — the Devil Fruit eater gains some kind of power, but gives up their ability to survive in seawater,” a wry smile plays at your lips.

“Have you ever thought of the average life expectancy for a Devil Fruit eater?”

Zoro shakes his head, frown carving deeper and deeper between his brows.

“Well, I can tell you — it’s not as long as you might think. Most of them end up dying young…”

From beyond the windows, a pale, silvery moon peaks out from the far horizon, casting the room in a cold, alien glow. You wrap your arms around yourself, as if defending against an unseen chill, and Zoro feels the familiar pull behind his navel, to reach out for you and pull you close.

“My parents wished, but when they got their wish, it wasn’t a god that had answered them — it was —“

“A Sea Devil.”

There’s no question in Zoro’s tone, no room for shock or wonder or bewilderment. He’d watched you die; and yet here you are in front of him, traced silver by the moonlight.

You nod, reaching up to drag your fingers through your hair, and Zoro watches, breathless, at the inky spill of it over your shoulder, shielding your face from the burgeoning light.

“What did they trade?” Zoro asks, though a part of him thinks he already knows.

“Their lives,” you answer simply.

Zoro narrows his eyes, “Still doesn’t explain how you ended up —“ he motions at the stagnant air between them. Above decks, he can hear the sound of a fire being built, the clatter of footsteps and the warm trickle of laughter.

You shrug, “The cardinal rule of wish-making, as any good fairy-tale will tell you,” you spin a finger around in the air before pointing it at Zoro, “is… specificity.”

Zoro grunts, casting his eyes down at the bowl of half-skinned strawberries.

“Careful what you wish for…” he says.

You raise your thumb, your forefinger still pointed at him, now in a finger-gun shape, before pulling an invisible trigger. Zoro feels a shiver shake him all the way down to his bones.

“Apparently, when they said ‘we’ll give you our lives’, they didn’t know they’d wished away my life too.”

Zoro swallows, “So… what? They made another deal?”

“Yep,” you sound entirely too bright, reaching behind yourself now to untie the apron, “they made another deal.”

“And what did they trade away this time?”

You slip the apron from around your middle, reaching out to hang it on a hook by the far wall. When you turn around, it’s to find Zoro still watching you, the curves of his face washed colorless by the moon.

You offer him a small, heartbreaking smile.

“The only thing they had left to trade — my death.”

The snow crunches fresh and true underfoot, and he watches as you bloom beneath the robin’s egg sky, head tilting back, your breath twisting up in a thin spiral of white mist as you let out a long breath.

“It’s so beautiful out!”

“Careful, or you’ll slip,” he admonishes, tugging you off a small snowbank back onto the sidewalk. You pout up at him even as he adjusts your scarf.

“Killjoy…” you mutter, and Zayne scoffs, tugging on his own turned up collar.

You pass by an old man selling flowers on the street corner, and you skip ahead to press a bill into his hand, telling him to keep warm even as he smiles and hands you a flower. Zayne watches, a tender happiness threading up his throat as you turn back to hand him the flower.

“For your desk,” you say, “to add some color, or else people are gonna think you’ve got no personality.”

Zayne takes the flower and studies it, a rose in shocking lemon-rind yellow. He brings it up to his nose.

“Thanks.”

You grin up at him, looking pleased and mischievous both.

“Now you owe me a flower too!” you say. Zayne regards you with a contemplative sort of look before turning and continuing down the street. You pout, jogging after him.

“Fine, fine — you don’t have to give me a flower — I was just —”

“You’ll get one,” he says, reaching into his pocket for a credit card. Stooping down towards a mound of untouched snow, he scoops up a thin layer on the card and begins his work, pressing each layer around the previous one, using the heat of his hand to melt the “petals” till they curl into one single snow-white rose.

You gasp as he finishes his work, dusting his hands off on his jacket.

“It’s… beautiful! But… how am I gonna carry if it there’s no stem?”

At this, Zayne tsks, summoning his Evol, and you watch with bright eyes as a crystaline stem forms from the base of the rose, extending out, glimmering leaves unfurling in ice as he hands the flower to you. You take it between delicate fingers and smile as you lean in to take a whiff.

“It won’t smell like a rose,” Zayne says, tucking his hands back into his pockets, watching as you stare down at the miraculous flower, “that’s not something my Evol can do just yet.”

But your smile is brilliant as a winter’s morning as you turn back towards him, clutching the flower to your chest, “It’s okay — it smells like winter!”

“Does it now?” Zayne asks, amusement twinkling behind his eyes, “And what exactly does winter smell like?”

You twirl the white rose between careful fingers before shooting him a truly heart-stopping wink —

“It smells like you.”

final wc: 604 || be part of my taglist!

a/n: a few words of explanation -- the trend that anon is asking about can be see here, its rly very cute. also, the title of this fic is a "play" on the popular 一剪梅, aka the "xue hua piao piao" song LMFAO, where i changed the "梅" meaning "plum" from the song title to “玫" from '玫瑰" or "rose" since both 梅 and 玫 are pronounced "mei3". i thought it was a fun little thing to do and the actual song itself is about winter and snow so! :)

In his dreams, you’re vibrant and laughing, your cheeks full of color, your lips brushed in reds or pinks or purples. You offer him a freshly made mochi, your fingertips dusted in rice flour. He reaches out for it but just before he can take it, the tiny little sweet splits open to reveal a raw, bleeding heart.

Blood trickles between your fingertips, slicking down your arm like pomegranate juice.

Zoro looks up to find you smiling, but there’s blood oozing down the sides of your face, collecting in the dip of your collarbones from a massive gunshot wound to the side of your head.

You cock your head, offering him the bloodied mochi.

“C’mon, take it! Everyone else got one!”

He jerks awake to a quiet knock at his door and Sanji’s muffled voice from the other side.

“Breakfast, mosshead. Made your favorites — grilled mackerel and miso soup and rice. I’ll uh — keep it warm for ya, but not for long, okay?”

Zoro swallows passed the dryness in his throat, closing his eyes and pressing a hand to his face, shielding himself from the bright orange light seeping in from the little window in the corner. After a few more minutes, he swings himself out of bed, dragging his swords with him down the hallway into the kitchen.

Everyone is there, gathered around the hanging table, talking in whispered tones. They all go quiet when Zoro rounds the door, and Usopp clears his throat, leaning back with a forced lightness.

“Seems like we’ll be hitting the next island soon!” he says, eyes darting towards Nami, who sighs and nods.

“Yeah, it’s only a few more days till we get to the next island,” she says, glancing back down at her hands, “then it’s straight up into the Grand Line.”

Zoro nods, dropping into one of the empty seats and pulling the only fully set tray of food towards him. He stares at the carefully arranged items — the fish grilled to skin-crisp perfection, the miso soup still hot enough to steam, the rice fluffy and sweet.

He picks up his chopsticks.

“Good,” he says, his voice too soft, “the faster we get there… the better.”

It’s strange, how Zoro’s never before believed in ghosts. But now, he sees the shadow of you in everything he does. In the swift swish of his swords through the air, in the flutter of wind in the Merry’s sails, in the rhythmic creak of the planks of the main deck.

He thinks of you, of the sadness that had flickered in your eyes the second before Crocodile (or Mr. 0 as he’s known in Baroque Works; they’d since figured out his name and his ranking, but not much else) pressed the gun to your head and pulled the trigger.

He finds himself reliving the moment, sinking into the infinitesimal space between the breath and the gunshot; he searches it as if there might have been clues tucked in the way your throat had caught or the specific way your lashes had fluttered. He thinks, at least, you hadn’t looked scared.

And maybe, that in and of itself is the mercy.

— — —

He sees you again in Mag Mell, a tiny jewel box island tucked along the edges of Paradise. It’s an island of dreamers, of poets and painters, musicians and mystics, with wending streets papered in silver dust, and houses painted in dessert-bright colors, with pearl-gilded roofs, and golden-tipped steeples hung with glittering crystal bells that tolled by the passing hours.

People here sang easily and laughed freely, and it’s all Zoro can do not to look for you around the bend of every street corner, to jolt at every single peal of bright, unabashed laughter.

You would’ve been so happy here — at least the you from his childhood memories. Guilt claws at his insides. He should’ve done more — should’ve tried harder to save you —

So when he does catch glimpse of you, the you that’s been haunting all his all sleepless nights, he isn’t sure if he’s actually dreaming. But how could he be? They’d just docked hours ago — with Sanji and Usopp off shopping for groceries, and Luffy plowing through the market for food, Nami doing… whatever Nami does in cities like these.

At first, he thinks its his eyes playing tricks — his subconscious toying with him in this place that seems so cruelly perfect for the you of his memory, as if his dreams hadn’t been ruthless enough. But then, he hears your voice, and he’s sure it’s you.

He follows you down one twisting alley, and then another, the streets folding over one another like tributaries to a mother stream. Around the third bend, he loses you, and for a frantic moment, he finds himself spinning around himself once, twice, until a thin pair of arms slams him up against the far wall, painted a deep mahogany red.

“What part of don’t follow me are you not understanding?” your voice is nothing more than a hissed breath, tight and angry and pleading, but it’s yours.

The next moment, Zoro has you flipped, pinning you to the opposite wall, this time in a blinding turquoise, his teeth bared, a sword poised at your throat.

“Who the fuck are you?” he asks, forcing out the words, his heart a wild, untamed thing beating in his chest, hard enough to sting. His eyes are too wide, searching your face desperately as if looking for a sign, a slip-up that might prove you’re not who you look like you are, and yet —

The wry way your lip twists up has his stomach roiling within him. You stop struggling, tilting your head to look at him in the gather of shadows of the deserted alley.

“What? Forgotten me already? And here I thought dying in front of you would make more of a lasting impression —”

“Exactly,” Zoro bites back, unable to stop his sword from digging into the skin of your neck, a thin line of blood seeping out from beneath your otherwise unmarred skin, “I saw — I watched you —” his throat seizes forcibly over the word die and he struggles for a few seconds before he jerks back, “I watched you get shot.”

You rub at your throat with a ginger hand, drawing it away to stare at the rub of red there, your expression inscrutable.

“Yeah… that you did.”

He whips his sword out to the side before slipping it into its sheath with a dull shink.

You eye it warily, the late afternoon sun creeping into the alley inch by golden inch. It kisses at your toes and creeps up your ankles as you stare at the sword at Zoro’s side.

“That was Kuina’s, wasn’t it?” you ask.

The name slams into Zoro like a gut-punch, and it’s all he can do to keep himself from stumbling.

“So what if it is?” he asks, a quaver to his voice that he almost doesn’t recognize. He turns away from you to stare at the strip of street visible from the darkened alley. A little girl with twin pigtails skips by holding a fistful of multicolored balloons, giggling as a boy races after her, trying to steal one.

“Can’t believe you still have it after all these years.”

“Yeah, well. Call me sentimental,” but his voice is flat, almost sardonic as he turns back to stare at you.

You allow him a helpless grin, “You always were more sentimental than you’d let on. Even when we were kids.”

“You died,” he spits the word out like poison, and you flinch, almost as if struck by it. He takes a deep, steadying breath but makes no move to back down as he asks, “so how the hell are you still here?”

You press your lips, casting your eyes away, your head lowered.

“You’re on a crew with a guy made of rubber — can’t you figure it out?” you ask, rueful and quiet.

Zoro scoffs, “So far as I know, there ain’t no Devil Fruits that can make you immortal.”

You wince again, though when you do speak, there’s a weary humor tacked to the ends of your words.

“You were always smarter than you let on too,” you say, finally looking up, “you’re right. It’s not a Devil Fruit.”

Zoro frowns, unable to keep the intrigue from bubbling up his chest as he watches you.

“Then…” he trails off, waiting.

A golden shaft of sun slants fully into the alley now, finally high enough to hit the side of your face, casting your features into stark relief. Like this, he can see the hollows of your cheeks, the blueness in your lips. But also, the flicker of light that once danced like fireworks behind your eyes.

“It was a deal,” you say, as the sun shifts behind a soft gauzy cloud, tossing the island into a momentary shadow once more, and your face is again shrouded in darkness, “with the Devil himself.”

— — —

“So… you can’t die,” Sanji says, stubbing out what must be his fifth cigarette since the beginning of the conversation.

A half-finished dinner service lays in an array of dishes before you, but even Luffy isn’t reaching out to pick at the remains.

You shake your head, “No, that’s the thing — I can. I just don’t tend to stay dead.”

Nami frowns, “But how does that even work? You get killed, and what — you just… respawn?”

You sigh, letting out a tired laugh, “Something like that. I die, and I wake up the next morning exactly in the last place I went to sleep.”

“Whoa, weird,” says Luffy, finally reaching for the remains of a whole roast chicken, stuffing a drumstick into his mouth.

You nod, “Very.”

Usopp is chewing on his bottom lips, looking concerned, “But… I mean — when you do d-die… does it still hurt?”

You slowly pivot to stare at him, your expression carefully neutral.

Beside you, Zoro shifts slightly, and everyone goes strangely still as they wait for your answer.

“Sometimes,” you say, carefully, “if the person killing me decides to make it hurt.”

Sanji leans back, staring up at the broad canopy of stars above the deck of the Merry.

The silence that stretches over the table is fraught with implication. Eventually, you let out a long breath, leaning back in your chair.

“But you get used to it after a while,” you say, the shadow of a smile quirking your lips.

Zoro narrows his eyes, “You make it sound easy.”

His voice is hard, his gaze fixed on a point just over Luffy’s shoulder. Beneath the low dip of his unbuttoned shirt, you can still see the remains of the scar Mihawk had left him with. No doubt he was remembering his own close tangle with death.

You lilt your head and roll your shoulders.

“What they don’t tell you about dying is that it’s the easiest thing… but easy doesn’t mean painless,” your voice is light and airy and painfully frivolous, “eventually, easy just means that at least… you know it’ll end.”

Across the table, Sanji lets out a breath as Nami gasps. Luffy purses his lips.

“But… as long as you fall asleep in a safe place, then even if you die, you’ll just wake up there again, right?” he asks.

You fix him with a look, before letting out a helpless laugh.

“Yeah, something like that. The only thing is — when you’re working for the big-bads, they tend to make sure you only ever fall asleep somewhere they can get their hands back on you.”

“But you’re with us now!” Luffy grins, puffing out his chest, “so we’ll make sure you stay alive without having to uh — die first. Good?”

Others might only see childish innocence in his words, but you can see the absolute certainty he evokes in the rest of his crew. And that, more than anything else, makes you believe him.

You let out a shaky breath.

“Yeah, okay.”

Zoro grunts as he gets up from the table, stalking off without another word. Nami sighs, watching him go before rolling her eyes and going after him.

Sanji strikes a match and lights up a new cigarette.

“Let him be. He was real beat up after seeing you —” Sanji dips his head, “well, you know. And he’s not what you’d call super in touch with his emotions, I think.”

He shoots you a good-natured wink.

You laugh, a tired, rubbed-raw sound, nodding.

“Yeah. I know.”

Sanji taps off a bit of ash and leans forward, “So — what’s the story?”

“What makes you think there’s a story?”

Sanji blows out a series of smoke rings before reaching over to refill your glass, “Mosshead’s not exactly known for makin’ friends wherever he goes, if you know what I mean,” he slides you smile before continuing, “so if he’s this —” Sanji pauses to cast about for a proper word, “attached… to someone, I figured there’s just gotta be a story, right love?”

You sigh, nodding as you take a long sip of your drink, savoring the coolness as it slides down your throat.

“You’re right… there is a story. But I’m not sure it matters much anymore. We’re both…” you look down at your hands, pale and pink in the fading firelight, “not the kids we used to be.”

Sanji shrugs, “Neither is any of us,” he coaxes, voice gentle, “but that doesn’t mean the kids that we were don’t matter any more.”

You nod, finally allowing the warmth of the fire to wash over you as you sit back in your chair.

“Alright then — it was a long time ago but… we grew up in the same village…”

— — —

“Hey — where’re you going?” Nami catches up with Zoro just beneath the main deck, the hallway scattered with pinpricks of light, seeping in through the cracks in the planks above.

Zoro spins around, his shoulders hunched.

“To be alone.”

Nami sighs, stopping a few steps short of him.

“What’s with you? Aren’t you happy that your — your friend is alive?”

Zoro bears down on Nami, his eyes flashing.

“I don’t trust her — what if it’s not her? What if it’s a —” he waves a hand through the thickening darkness between them, “an imposter?”

Nami’s eyebrows kick up, “What, finally get your hands on a dictionary in Mag Mell?”

“Fuck you.”

Nami laughs, folding her arms as she leans up against the darkened hallway wall.

“Fine, you don’t trust her — but what else can we do? Leave her here for Crocodile and the rest of Baroque Works to catch up to her?”

Zoro tsks, turning around to pace the length of the hallway, every muscle in his body feeling tight and wrung out.

“Wouldn’t matter much — she can’t die remember?”

“Yes, she can,” Nami says, her words harsh enough to stun Zoro still. She stalks up to him, her eyes blazing in the imminent dark. “You’ve almost died once — tell me, was it a pleasant experience?”

A muscle ticks in Zoro’s jaw, but he keeps his mouth clamped shut.

He remembers it in pieces, in fever-break moments and mind-numbing delusions. He remembers the bone-deep ache that had seemed to permeate every inch of his body, of the dull pounding in his head as he tried to piece together what his crewmates were saying to him, sitting by his bedside. He’d known they were there, but he’d couldn’t let them know, couldn’t force him limbs to move the way he wanted.

It had been nothing short of agony.

“Look, I’m not asking you to trust her but at least think — think about the life she would’ve led in Baroque Works. What they might’ve made her do if they knew that every time she died, she’d just wake up in the last place she fell asleep.”

Like this, Nami’s voice is soft, almost silken. A spate of unease slithers down Zoro’s spine.

Zoro stares down at her. It hadn’t been so long ago that he’d regarded Nami with the same kind of vague distrust.

“Think for a second, about the suicide missions they would’ve made her take.”

Those words ring through Zoro like a death knell, and he takes half a step back, his head spinning with the implications. She’s right, he hadn’t thought of the life you’d led; he’d been so caught up on the vast dissonance between the person you were and the person you'd become. He’d been so tangled in his own feelings of shame and anger that he hadn’t paused to think.

Nami sighs and takes a few more steps back.

“I mean. You heard her — just because dying is easy, that doesn’t make it painless.”

“I just —” Zoro closes his eyes, letting a clenched fist thump softly against the wall beside him. A terrible, hot prickling sensation is working its way up the back of his throat, constricting his airways. He swallows hard around it before turning to look at Nami once more.

“I just can’t stand the thought of losing her again.”

Nami lets out a breathy laugh, bobbing her head once. There’s still a steely light to her eyes, but her voice when she finally does speak is soft —

“Then make sure it doesn’t happen again. I mean, what are those three swords for anyway?”