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When Zoro wins, he stands alone.

He wanders through the streets of what the locals call the town of the beginning and the end.

Or they used to call.  They are all dead now.

He stops in front of the body of an executioner.  Zoro flexes his hands made of pliable steel and cocks a head more titanium than bone.  The executioner clutches a long sword in his hand.  A primitive way to kill, but with practice, Zoro supposes one could become proficient at killing without pain.

Zoro comes to this world with precise orders.  A boy needs to be executed.  His supporters need to battle with his killers.  Zoro’s duty is to ensure none live to become a victor or a martyr.  Climb up time’s threads into the past and make sure no one survives this battle to muddle the futures Wano Agency has arranged.

He continues a sweep around the square, bodies littered around him.  He wants to itch the scratch of uncertainty at the back of his mind.  He is not slipping, he tells himself.  But during his last few missions, not all went as planned.  For an operative charged with ensuring the threads of fate weave together with perfect precision, any baby left alive to grow old with malice and vendetta, any flower blooming in dust to inspire a wandering poet, any bullet misfiring is a mistake of galactic proportions.

Zoro can feel something amiss.  He is not slipping.  The Germa Garden is here.

A shiver runs up his spine.  Not fear, but anticipation.  He sees marks of the Garden operative, his opponent in a time war that knows no end.  This body is a few meters to the right from where it should be.  This woman lays in a position meant to inspire the bards who will come to this godforsaken town looking for stories.  Stories are powerful.  Some stories should not be told.  Zoro corrects the problems and moves on.  Nothing he cannot fix.  The Garden would need to try harder.

He looks up at the execution dais and leaps up, expecting the body of a black-haired boy with dreams to change his world.

There is none.

Zoro bares his teeth and howls at the sky.  There are three moons in the sepia-colored evening.  Each mocks him.  When he calms, he looks down and finds a sheet of cream-colored paper, clean save a single line in a long, trailing hand:  Burn before reading.

He should leave it.  It is not planned.  And therefore it should not exist.  It is a trap.  He will read it and a poison will fill his body either killing him on the spot or seeping into his blood to infect his fellow operatives when he returns to the Agency.

But winning a time war requires risk.

He picks up the lighter left next to the note and burns it, watching the words materialize as flames eagerly lick the paper.  He sneers, face a mask of anger as the signature appears then disappears.  He lets the ashes fall and leaves a battle that he has lost.

Sorry, looks like your prince is in another castle.

Just a little joke on my part, although I suppose it falls flat if you’re unfamiliar with this particular brand of early 21st Century Strand 1132 humor.

While you did put on a very lovely massacre, I’m afraid my pirate friend here will live another day, go on to topple kingdoms and inspire millions, who in turn will go on to topple more kingdoms and inspire more people. Thus the dominoes fall, and the tide of this war shifts to Germa Garden.

Better luck next time.

I had hoped it would be you here.

You’re probably wondering what this is — although not, I’d wager, who. You know just as well as I that we have unfinished business, ever since we crossed paths during that mess on Baratie-52.

Truth be told, I’d become bored with this whole war. Wano’s flashes and bangs up and downthread, Germa Garden’s patient planting and burrowing into into each strand, your unstoppable force meeting our immovable object, it all just got so dull. Less a game a chess, with carefully planned strategies beautifully executed, and more tic-tac-toe, where the outcome is decided by the first move and the rest are just the inevitable possibilities, nudged one way or the other by Wano or Germa.

Dull, predictable.

Boring.

But then there was you.

Suddenly it was interesting. I had to put my all into evey move I made, lest you counter it. You bring passion and competency to your side’s speed, give it some staying power, making a shitty difference, and I found myself excited again.

Please find my thanks all around you, although I imagine you’ve fixed most of it by now.

I do like to imagine you reading this, of reading my words in the flickering of the flames, focusing on me and nothing else, if only for a moment, unable to backread, your eyes only able to go forward. You must absorb them, commit them to your memory, and should you want to read them again, you’ll have no choice but to think of me, keeping me close and with you at all times. Should you wish to tell you superiors what I’ve said, you’ll have to admit you’ve already been comprimised. Yet another casuality in that bloody plaza.

This is how we’ll win.

But I’m not only writing to brag – although that is the most important part. I also  wanted to tell you I have a lot of respect for your tactics. Your passion and straightforward solutions almost make this war worth it. Those three blades of yours are inspired, and I hope you’ll rest easy knowing that when Germa’s mulchers come around and take in everything here, our next victory will have a little bit of you in it.

Best wishes,

Blue

Sanji is standing next to a tar pit, the bubbles popping slowly on the surface. When the seventh bubble pops, he dumps the jar of water left for him in, carefully watching that heat up and bubble too, and waits.

When Sanji wins – which is always – he simply moves onto his next task. He recalls his victories fondly while on the move (upthread to the stable past, downthread to the chaotic future), as one would favorite lines or stories. He’s a good footsoldier, he does what he needs to do – whether it’s move a stone, seduce a politician, or murder an innocent bystander, he does it and he does it well – in any particular thread, and leaves without a trace. Germa’s invisible hand throughout time.

He doesn’t stick around, beause he doesn’t fail. Ever.

He’s in the much distant past, the age of the dinosaurs, with raptors and t-rexes and brontosaurus moving all around him. His task should have been a simple one, send a certain flock of butterflies through a certain meadow. An event so seemingly small and insignificant, but the breeze from a butterfly’s wings in just the right spot at just the right moment can cause all kinds of shifts downthread, shifts that would turn this thread to Germa’s favor. 

But the butterflies never came, and in the meadow instead was water in a glass jar – much too refined for the time period – with a label: Read by Bubbling.

So he sits by the tar pit and watches the bubbles form. Soon enough, the bubbles start to form letters, then words, then sentences. 

His eyes widen as he reads, his fists squeeze tight as his teeth clench. But soon he’s laughing, the sound shocking the ancient birds from their perches as they scatter.

He’s not used to losing. The sensation is electrifying and exciting, even as he seethes in rage and tries to turn this failure into an opportunity.

He drops the jar to the ground and grinds it under his heel until the glass turns back into the sand more at home in this era.

Well, Sanji had wanted excitement, and he certainly hadn’t disappointed.

Dear Ever Blue,

As I walked through this prehistoric landscape, I imagined you walking next to me.  We had a wager over who could take down the largest prey.

Mine was bigger.

Just returning the favor from Strand 505.  You pulled the joker out from under my nose.  Don’t worry, I compensated on a thread further up.  The Agency doesn’t accept defeat after all.  If the boy with the straw hat doesn’t die, there are other ways he can be made to suit our needs.

It is an honor (please imagine the sarcasm in my voice) to finally meet you.  I too have seen bits and pieces of you scattered through the worlds I’ve torn apart.  I wonder what you look like.  Like me, I assume you take on different forms to suit the mission at hand.  I imagine that your teeth always glint like the predator you are.  The subjects in my worlds often whisper legends of flaming legs.  Rotisserie is your specialty?

You’ve heard of my swords.  They, like me, seek blood.

Forgive me, I am not skilled in taking up correspondence.  You can imagine that we do not have the opportunity to secure pen pals in our trade.  I’ve done what the various books on the epistolary craft have informed me I should do.  I started with a greeting.  But I proceeded perhaps too quickly to jest and threats.  We don’t know each other that well yet.  But we will, won’t we, All Blue?

I’ve repaid your letter with my own.  A dangerous game we play.  If our superiors discover our tacit connection, who will think they infected whom?  

I’m curious.  Will you respond to my note?  You seem like the type who wants the last word.  Or will you forgo this dangerous game, one that you are surely aware by now that I will win.  

If you do write back.  Is the Garden as secluded as I’ve heard tell?  Ah, but you’d probably have to kill me if you told me.

This was fun.

All my best,

Green

Breathing through his gas mask, Zoro stares out at the frozen tundra around him.  He knows that without the suit of frostfire he had forged in Wano Agency’s dungeons, his skin would turn brittle, blister, burn in the span of seconds.  An unforgiving world.

Zoro is also unforgiving.

But today, he is here to plant a seed.  Many seeds.  Hundreds of seeds.  It is a mission that does not require killing, but precision.  He must place seedlings a certain distance apart, letting fractal resonance work its magic.  One day the seedlings will become apple trees.  One day the orchard will be important inspiration for a creature that looks like a monster but dreams as a human.   He lets a children’s story about apple trees and liars play in his head.  A remnant from some other strand of time.

His steps are silent.  This land is hard, brittle ice.  His feet leave no trace because the ground does not want him.  An easy mission.  Perhaps because his superiors think he needs a break.

Zoro finds his way to a clearing.  Or it was supposed to be a clearing.  He blinks, staring through his goggles at the copse of cherry blossom trees.  They are beautiful.  Pink on white, delicate petals somehow withstanding the climate.  They shouldn’t exist.

He walks to the center of the grove and looks up at the sky flecked with stars and petals that look like snow against the backdrop of black.  He waits.

It begins when the wind picks up in just the right direction at just the proper speed.  The gale through the trees becomes a voice, a howl that feels as though it strikes through Zoro’s frostfire armor.  He strains to hear all the individual words.

He curses at the silence when the wind dies down.

Looking around at the cherry blossoms, Zoro contemplates whether to raze them all down to plant the seeds in his back pocket.  But roots run deep.  And he, ironically, does not have the time.  With a heavy sigh, he supposes that cherry blossoms can inspire just as much as apple blossoms and continues walking, the voice reading a letter still playing in his head.

Dear Moss,

I hope you enjoy the cherry blossoms. The apples would have been a nice touch, but there’s something about pink petals on a white background that really brings the whole landscape together, don’t you think? And if Germa needs this particular shade of pink to appear on Hiriluk’s mausoleum so when explorers from a distant land across the sea discover it in a few centuries they can bring it home with them, well, I won’t tell if you don’t.

Your letter was welcome. It told me a great deal, perhaps more than you though it would. (Although I’d be remiss if I didn’t correct one assumption on your part: whatever we’re hunting, mine will always be bigger).

Regardless, I am pleased you chose to continue this little game. I imagine you too, the crease in your brow and the scowl on your face when my plans bear fruit, so to speak.

I can see them quite clearly from my perch up here, high amongst the pink. Now that you know I’m watching, I’m curious to see if you’ll stay or go. Will you see me? If you don’t, imagine me waving, I’m too far away for you to see the grin on my face.

I’m kidding, of course. I’ll be long gone by the time the wind hits just right. Made you look though, I bet.

I eagerly await your next reply,

Blue

The desert kingdom is in the midst of a civil war, and Sanji has planted himself by the princess’s side. It is important she wins, but not until the moment is right.

But there is another reason Germa sent him here. When the night is just frigid enough, and the moon just bright enough, he sneaks out of the palace proper and into the royal tombs below.

He winds his way through the catacombs, disabling and quickly replacing the traps as he goes. He needs to be swift, but to not leave a trace. He’s not supposed to be here, after all.

He finds what he’s looking for in the deepest part of the tomb. There, just past the kings and queens long past, he finds it: the giant black slab of stone, said to have the secrets that hold this strand together.

He approaches it cautiously, only to find it blank. He circles the stone, running his fingers along and edge, and hears a faint hum beneath the surface.

Circutry. 

He takes the emerald gem gifted to him by the princess off his ear, and presses it hard against the side. Words appear along it now, deep and indented as if they’d always been there, but not the words he’d been expecting. 

As soon as he’s read them, they vanish. 

He can’t help the wide grin that spreads across his face, or the small chuckle that escapes his lips as he makes his way out of the tomb, just as quickly and quietly as he’d entered.

This part had always been a long shot anyway. The princess is his priorty, and now has his full focus.

He steps out of the tomb and looks at the emerald in his hand, sparkling in the moonlight. 

Well, almost his full focus. 

Azul,

Were you expecting the history of the world laid resplendent before you on this slab of rock?  Apologies, that’s for the Agency to know and Germa to find out.  The language is… unfamiliar to us, but I know of an archaeologist on Strand 0206 that we can consult.  By the time you read this, she’ll be singing secrets sweet as a robin.

I did look for you on that cold planet.  You should have stuck around.  We could have had a nice warm drink before I snuffed out your flame.

Query for you.  That wasn’t your… real voice, was it?  It was quite grating.  I imagine you with a more melodic sound.  At the Agency, we don’t speak, communicating with wires and flashes of light in the constant dark.  The next time you’re surrounded by pitch black, look around.  If you see light flickering in the distance, you’ll know that I’m on the way.  I see well in the dark.

Ah, there I go again, making veiled threats.  A force of habit.  I’m merely trying to continue what has thus far been a lovely conversation.  Can you imagine me, creating traps that are easy enough for you to undo, then spending precious time connecting circuits, tangling wires to make sure you can see these words?  The lengths I go to simply say hello…

You can have the princess.  She’s not part of our plans.  Her emerald would look good on you.  I hope you’ll keep that splash of green, really brings out your complexion.

From,

Green

The jungle is full of noise.

Zoro swats away a beetle the size of his head.  The riders ahead of him have stopped, so Zoro jumps down from his horse and stretches.  The leather straps and bands across his body have become supple over time, and move with him, a second skin.

He has played the role of the horde’s leader for at least a decade now, slowly rising in the ranks, embedding himself amongst a people that normally trust no outsiders.  With them, he has conquered lands, transformed forests into farms, nudged them toward a future well-suited for the Agency’s needs.  It has been tedious, but he has put in a hard decade’s work and intends to reap the rewards.

He scratches absentmindedly at an itch in his side as he strides to the front of the column.  He no longer misses the dormant implants sewn into his limbs and tangled in his chest to protect him from each world’s dangers.  Here, the worst that could happen is a bug bite, though he will not miss those.

Zoro gives orders and his subordinates begin chopping down trees, clearing the land for an outpost from which to extend the range of their war.  Watching carefully, Zoro roams amongst his workers and touches the trees that will soon become simply wood, giants felled with steel and that now lie naked on the ground, insides bared.

He stops when he finds the letter.  It begins in the tree’s heart, words written in an alphabet that relies on the size of each subsequent ring, some larger, some smaller, some created by uneven ridges from some unhealthy year.  Zoro reads and memorizes and does a mental arithmetic of how long it would have taken to compose this correspondence.

His men ask if anything is wrong.

Zoro explains in their tongue that everything is just right.  He orders them to continue and walks away from the letter that will soon become a house.

Dear prickly cactus,

An archelogist on Strand 0206? Send her my love. She’s a phenomenal chess player and has a fantastic taste in poisons.

I like how you imagine me. Rest assured, my real voice is much more pleasant, should it be the last thing you hear. Far from you lurking around in the dark being threatening, I take comfort in you keeping such a careful watch out for me.

I think about you too, or wonder is more accurate. Do you eat, I wonder often? Or is it all tubes and injections designed for optimal output over flavor and taste? If you do, what’s your favorite food? Do you sleep? Do you dream?

(As for me, while Germa Garden houses delectable sweets far beyond the imagination, I’ve always preferred food on the spicier side, most recently the spicy seafood pasta served at a particular restaurant in Strand 43’s 32nd century Kupier Belt)

Let me ask the most important thing, before this tree runs out of years and you put it towards your war efforts. What do you want from this? What are you doing here?

Because I know what I want. I enjoy our chats, far more than I know I should. I would like to think we are on the same page. But, overly cautious that I am, I still need to ask.

Tell me the truth, or don’t tell me anything.

Best,

Blue

The two armies clash violently in the middle of the forest. They each have a stake in the land they fight on, claim it as a place that houses their particular god, spill blood on the sacred ground so thoroughly and completely it seeps into the soil and stains the feet of any who step on it.

But they are not Sanji’s concern. It doesn’t matter who wins this war, as they’ll all be wiped out by the large storm passing through in the end.

Before that happens, Sanji needs the gold.

Sanji flits between one side and the other, between fighting combatants without any of them even sparing a glance his way. He is nothing to them, a part of the background, as indistinguishable as one of the trees.

It’s what he was created to be: stealthy, invisible.

Ignored.

He finds the hidden city easily enough, and the gold is there, prime for the taking.

But he is no pirate, and least not in this life, not for this mission. He simply needs to move enough of the gold to a nearby cave system to survive the cataclysmic storm, so that in five hundred years a downtrodden adventurer can find it and use the vast wealth to invent a new type of fishing hook. 

A small event to be sure, but no less than seven strands depend on it.

So he heaves a sigh and starts moving the gold.

He’s about halfway done when the rain starts. The hidden city is protected from most things – tucked away in the valley as it is, practically underground – but because of the way this particular storm hits, it will experience the flooding first. The combatants in the forest above will be too caught up in their hatred for each other and their righteous bloodshed to notice anything is amiss until it’s far too late.

The raindrops land on the gold he’s holding, dripping down it until a simple word forms: Blue.

He pauses, his heart pounding in his chest as he sets the gold back down, letting the rain fall cleanly on it and the rest of the letter appear.

He sits down as he reads it, barely noticing the falling rain picking up as he takes in the words, the warmth in his chest banishing any chill from the weather.

By the time he’s done, it’s a full on downpour. The thunder startles him, fully absorbed in the message as he is, and he quickly gets back up to continue moving the gold before the lightning starts.

Blue, dear blue, my cerulean sea,

As I was idly arranging molecules so that the rain would find you well, I reflected on the nature of storms.  The upcoming storm will be devastating, a knock up stream that will turn this strand from the sky into the sea.  There is beauty in destruction done well, though, isn’t there?

I wonder if you’re as beautiful as you are destructive.

You asked if I eat.  The short answer is I do.

The long answer is I don’t need to.  We grow in pods, nutrient balance maintained by gel bath.  When we are needed, we awake, decanted like fine wine into the bodies of agents that fit the time and world of our mission.  Even then, we can survive months on a single charge, and if we partake in meals, it is only to maintain the semblance of normalcy if we are embedded with civilians.  We were taught that eating is gross.  Mashing and gnawing and grinding, a wasteful process, an impossible process for our bodies to maintain perfect form, too much fat here, too little sodium there.

But– I do enjoy eating these days.  I eat rice steamed in banana leaves, flavored with salt from dried ocean beds.  I explore bitterness and textures.  I eat metal to see if my teeth are worth their weight.  Sweetness I have never understood, but I’ve sucked the marrow out of roasted sugar cane and eaten blueberries full to bursting with their own flesh.  I could love sweet, if that is what the Germa Gardens offer.

You also ask if I sleep and if I dream.  I do not sleep.  I do dream.  These days I dream in blue.

What do I want from this?  I pondered your question across three worlds and two decades.  I looked for answers in the beating heart of a dying volcano.  I’m not sure I know, but I can try to explain.  You asked me to tell truths.  What do I want?  Understanding.  Exchange.  Victory.  I want to be entertained, and I have the feeling you want the same.  

Yours,

Green

P.S.  A personal question.  Do you have friends, Blue?  And how?

Some worlds are almost comical to Zoro.  Their existence so improbable, the random interaction of atoms clashing in more dimensions than the average mind can conceptualize resulting in the macabre.  On this world, everything is the same as Strand 2022.  Just longer.

He glares from a distance at the Games that he is meant to interrupt.  Ants scurrying on a grassland, plotting and scheming and cheating for meaningless gains.

The players, the animals, chase a ball.  Zoro thinks about Blue, imagines how he and Blue would tear their opponents to shreds, envisions leaving behind only dust and prayer after their victory in the Games.  Blue has no face in his vision, but Zoro is certain he is smiling.  

Zoro blinks and returns to his mission.  This one is straightforward.  One side must lose.  The other must win.  The loser, overcome with rage, will find a way to reappear in the timeline.  He will lose again.  Overcome with rage, he will reappear.  A constant cycle of defeat and rehabilitation until one day he stands supreme, jaded and cynical, ready to tear apart the world.

Every villain deserves a moment to shine.

Zoro redirects the wind with a flick of his sword.  The fox loses.

He stands, looking out at the fields of green one more time.  He freezes.

The ripples of the wind on the tall grass below are only visible from where he stands.  The shifting patterns in sage form words that last mere moments, in handwriting now familiar.

Zoro could record the words with the mechanism wrapped around a strand of fiber in his skull.  He turns it off, which the Agency does not think he can do.  He reads and memorizes, then turns his optic nerve back on.  He gouges a rift across his eye as an explanation for the moments of missing footage.  The Agency will fix it later if they find it necessary.  He walks away, half-blind, and returns home.

My most lucky lettuce,

I hope this letter finds you well and in high spirits. I personally don’t care much for sports, but I suppose if I had the right opponent, the right partner, I could find myself indulging.

What a funny thing some places are. Here everything is what we would call long, but if we stayed here, lived only here, knew of no other strand or any other world, this would all be normal. Instead we flit from place to place, as impermenant as the breeze I am writing to you with.

Food for thought.

Speaking of food, thank you for your wonderful words on it. They were delightful and most welcome, especially after consisting on army rations for too long. The rain was cold, but your letter was the spark of warmth that got me through.

Missing from your talk about food, I noticed, was talk of hunger. You mentioned not needing to eat, sure, and there certainly is pleasure to be taken from the simple act of eating in and of itself. But hunger too is a multi-faceted thing, not merely bound to food or biology. Do you feel hunger, Green, feel it burn inside you, making a place all its own? Have you ever had a hunger that couldn’t be filled, that only grew and grew more and more no matter how much you fed it, until it was its own thing entirely?

Sometimes I think that’s what I have instead of friends.

Sometimes I think that’s what I deserve instead of friends.

Sometimes I think you could be the closest thing I have to a friend, and isn’t that something.

Write to me in Water 7 next.

Blue

Water 7 is one of those cities artists and poets dream about. True to its name, water flows through the streets, turning them into bustling canals. Citizens ride large sea creatures through them, friendly smiles on their faces as they go about their day amongst the cascading waterfalls that surround the city.

Sanji loves it here. The hustle and bustle of the people going about their day, the eclectic mix of tastes and smells that can only be found in a bustling city. The opposite of everything Germa Garden is and stands for, but Sanji can’t help the settling in his chest he feels whenever he enters such a city.

He sits outside one of the city’s most popular cafes, reading but not absorbing the paper in his hands, more focused on the people around him. His charcoal black suit is tailored and finely pressed, just another finely dressed person in the sea of people.

He’s not here to be anyone or do much of anything, besides see a rather eccentric man about a boat. His main task is to simply observe and blend in. 

The server brings her tray to his table, and places the teapot and sugar bowl down in front of him. When she places the teacup and saucer down, his eyes widen.

She turns to go about her business, but before she can leave, Sanji says, perhaps too sharply, “Excuse me.”

She freezes, her eyes wide and terrified as she turns back to him, “Y-yes?”

He relaxes his face, giving her a pleasant smile as he intentionally softens his tone, “Sorry, but this set. It doesn’t match.”

“I’m so sorry about that,” she bites her lip and holds her empty tray against her chest, “Your tea was ready, but then I noticed a crack in the cup. We’re at peak so there aren’t any other matching sets available, and I figured you didn’t want to wait any longer for your tea, but if you don’t mind waiting just a little longer-”

“It’s quite alright,” he assures her, smile softening even more as he lets his voice grow syrupy, the picture of a perfect gentleman, “It’s perfect. Thank you.”

She returns his smile, a faint blush on her face as she nods and moves on to the next table. 

Sanji stares at the teacup, his fingers tracing along the line of blue circling the rim. He pours the tea in carefully, making sure not a drop is spilled and letting the leaves dance about. When he picks up his spoon, he notices the sheen of something coating it, a rare substance only found two strands over and further downthread.

It takes all his willpower to stay in his seat. Every part of him is screaming to get up, to rush back to the kitchen. If he’s quick enough, maybe he can get just a glimpse of him, maybe he could catch him, maybe he could-

Instead he stays where he is and stirs his tea. 

As he stirs, the tea leaves unfurl. They swim around the spoon, some with it, some against, until they start to form his letter. With each paragraph break, he takes a sip, breaking apart the old words so he can stir in the new ones. 

He wonders for a moment if the lump in his throat and the fluttering of his heart are symptoms of a fast acting poison. The thought doesn’t scare him. 

He refuses to acknowledge the alternative, which very much does. 

When the tea is finished, the leaves clump together unremarkably at the bottom. Once he finishes reading, he takes the cup and places it under his heel, crushing it, adding a spark of fire until it’s nothing but dust. 

With that settled, he pays his bill and leaves, his smile bright and his heart light. 

Dear 0000FF,

As I sit here in the cafe, I wonder if you’ll sit in this same spot eventually.  We do gravitate toward each other, don’t we?

The window to my right has a box garden.  I think of you when I see gardens and flowers.  I must admit, I fall back on stereotypes when I imagine things that might be meaningful to you.  Seeds and grass, growing things.  And yet, when you write me, you write in furnace and in flame.

Hunger.  You ask about hunger.  Do I feel hunger?  No.  And yes.  Hunger from scarcity, no.  Our diets are programmed so that we receive nutrients before we know that we need it.  I can turn off any system in my body that tells me to eat, if it gets too distracting.

But that’s not the hunger you describe, is it?  The blade searching for more bodies.  The need to escape the dripping faucet on that same stretch of sink.  The hollowness…  It sounds beautiful and familiar.

When I was a boy, I wanted to become something greater than myself.  I wanted to stand on mountain peaks and yell at the seabed that I had conquered, that none had bested me, none had withstood the magnitude of my strength.  I longed for the absolution that comes with a title of Greatest.

That hunger broke me.  I was light, hollowed, still hungry.  When Commandant found me, he said there’s work for those like you.  So here I am.

Still hungry.

No friends, Blue?  You?  Whose magnificence leaks through their words like light through fingers covering eyes?  I suppose those around you simply cannot understand what makes you worthy.  Don’t you think… don’t you think I can?

The problem with the medium of bending tea leaves to your will is that a sentence can be hard to take back.  Do I want to take it back?  What was I even trying to say?  Before I continue to ramble, I’ll end here, friend.

Yours,

Green

Sunglasses sit on the bridge of Zoro’s nose, a necessity in this world of never night.  He looks up at the gates ahead of him.  There is a trial happening behind the gates, a sham of one, a kangaroo court as some worlds have come to call the concept.  He has found that in most worlds, in nearly every period of time he has visited, justice is a word emblazoned on walls but not encouraged in practice.

The judge is a three-headed dog that snarls ribbons of saliva onto defendants and, more often than not, eats them.  The jury is made of prisoners who gain years of freedom by awarding longer sentences.  The accused enter the front gate, the guilty leave through the back.  It is a system made by the vindictive and run by the lazy.

Zoro vaults over the gate and watches from the bench, sitting next to the hound who has fallen asleep after a meal.

He has a mission.  A crucial one.  The Agency is not happy.  Other agents have been caught or killed, cleansed from the weave or marooned on strands of which it’s better not to think.  He whispers a few words into the ears of the juries that come through like clockwork.  A prison riot soon.

He wonders if Commandant watches him.  What would he see?  Zoro has been so good.  He does not even think the sky’s name.  Often.

Once Zoro has fomented enough unrest, he turns to his next mission.  

He slips to the back of the courtroom and sorts through stacks of rope.  The hanged man.  From the threads meant for execution, Zoro finds the one he looks for.  He rolls the language of knots between his fingers, working through each intricate paragraph, a smile blooming on his face in the worst of worlds as he reads the letter from the best of men.

My dear Evergreen,

As you probably already know, the whole of Germa Garden is connected, one entity spread out through many buds and seeds, each with a task and a purpose to designed serve the whole. My task is to be separate, to be whatever Germa needs me to be.

I have been many things in many lifetimes. I have been a lover, a fighter, a bird, a bee, a bear, a fox, a gentle breeze on a soft summer’s day, the swift finality of an executioner’s ax.

For the most part, Germa requires me to be invisible, relegated to the background, unseen.

You see me.

Does this make me a failure of an agent? To be seen so thoroughly and so completely by the enemy? Perhaps.

Do I care? Not really.

And that terrifies me.

I can see you too, so clearly on that mountaintop, conquering the world as is your due. I want to be there with you, whether to push you off and find my ultimate victory or to be by your side as you obtain everything you’ve ever wanted, I’m still not sure.

These feelings, these desires, are new to me. I want to see you, I want to keep you at a distance. I want to defeat you, I want to make you stronger, I want to be stronger for you. I want to best you, to lord my victories over you. I want you to be proud of me for them.

I want you to keep being mine, whatever you mean by signing yours.

I’m still not sure what that means for me.

But I know I want you to keep seeing me.

Best,

Blue

Sanji sits in his perch, watching over the graveyard with a careful eye. Seeds had been planted here by Germa many eons ago, a trap to catch the unwitting enemy. He has known about it forever, an army of zombies ready to burst up and devour their prey at any moment.

Tonight’s the night the trap is sprung.

His task is a simple one: observe, and when the zombies get their fill, dispose of them, leaving no trace behind, nothing to infect this or any other strands.

As he sits and waits, he spies movement on the other side of the graveyard, and his heart stops. He knows this operative, has become so attuned to his footsteps through time and the presence he leaves behind that he’d know him anywhere, anywhen. 

It’s Green.

Sanji brings nothing with him between strands and missions but knowledge, purpose, tactics, and Green’s letters. Everything he has and everything he is belongs to Germa, is supposed to go to Germa, but Green’s letters he keeps for himself, tucked away in his fingertips, under his nails, between the lines of his palms. Keeps them on him as he fights and flirts and finesses his way through his tasks.

Keeps them warm and safe next to his heart.

He watches in horror as Green – so young here, still a teenager by the looks of it – enters the graveyard. The first of the zombies begins to stir, clawing its way out of its grave.

Green doesn’t notice them at first, too focused on whatever task he has at hand, his eyes shining in the dark as he surveys the area. By the time he realizes what’s happening it’s too late. The zombies burst from their underground prisons and latch onto him, trained and cultivated for years to seek out a particular set of nanoscopic implants – Green’s implants, his Green.

Sanji acts without thinking. He does not spare a thought for the consequences, doesn’t even wonder if this is a test set by Germa, or if and how Germa possibly knows.

The zombies grab onto Green, and Sanji is on them like a shot, with too many pointed teeth and razor sharp claws than expected on such a small fox.

He rips and tears the zombies apart, freeing Green. The remaining zombies turn towards him, but Sanji is quicker, taking them head on. They fight back of course, cutting him deep, but he pays it no mind, too busy biting and slashing until there’s nothing left but blood and dust.

When he’s done, he turns towards Green, not his Green, not quite yet, but there’s a subtle shift in his shocked gaze that lets him know he will grow to be.

Sanji darts away from the graveyard, back into the woods as he thinks over what he’ll tell Germa.

Enemy action, most likely. They must have discovered the graveyard and messed with it further upthread. A carless mistake on his part left him too injured to fix the mess, and besides, direct confrontation with enemy agents is against protocol. 

It’ll do. If Sanji believes it, Germa will too.

Once he’s in the deepest, darkest part of the woods, he changes back and catalogs his wounds. There’s a deep gash along his lower back that he knows will scar, but everything else is superficial cuts at most. He leans back against the tree trunk, trembling as his mind catches up to what he’s just done.

His hand falls to the ground, and it lands on an envelope.

He picks it up with shaking hands. It’s a beautiful deep blue, the edges painted with flickering flames, and sealed with a dab of green wax.

Sanji laughs as he sobs, clutching the letter against his chest, unwilling to open it for the longest time.

But open it he does, the need to read it too great to ignore forever.

Once he’s done, he reads it again, and again, and again.

Dear Blue,

I don’t know what to say.

Thank you is a fine place to start.

For saving me.  I felt you, when you climbed down my braid.  I know the sound of your footsteps better than anyone else’s.  I followed you when you watched the younger me.  Forgive me for invading the privacy you deserved as you tried to decide what you were and what you would do.

I could not have beaten the undead alone.

Don’t look for me.  I’m gone, somewhere upthread.  And you should be too.  I’ll have to see the deep blue of your eyes some other time.  I don’t know why you were sent to watch me die.  Fear is not something I’m well acquainted with, but Blue, do I fear for you.  

It’s so hard to write this.  I am on the precipice of a map that is not fully drawn.  Here there be dragons.  Which direction is forward?  All I know is that I have some idea of where truth north lies.

Let me be clear and stop speaking in metaphors.

I like writing you.  I like reading you.  After I finish your letters, I become frantic thinking about my response, how I can compose the perfect phrase to your infallible words.  Unstoppable force meets an immovable object, and that place where we are is where I’d like to stay.

In this letter, I am yours.  Not Garden’s, not your mission’s, but yours, alone.

Yours,

Green

It is two years before Zoro hears from Blue again.  He pushes himself fully into his work, clearing missions in record time.  No applause or praise from the Agency.  Only more work, which is gratitude enough.

Zoro looks for Blue everywhere.  In Strand 622, he wanders mangrove forests, starting debates with villagers on the morality of the slave trade that spurs a principled, incorruptable bureaucrat to seek reform of underground markets.  Zoro slips away when a war breaks out, knowing he may have to return to make sure it breaks the right way.

He stabs a man who’s about to stab another man who’s drunk on a grain whiskey that Zoro steals after his work is done.  He drinks from the flask as he walks the cobblestone streets of Water 7, glancing into the cafe in the hopes of seeing a flash of indigo.

A shadow follows him.

Commandant must suspect.  So Zoro throws himself headlong into his missions.  Time and time again, he wins.  Climbing upthread and down, he braids and unbraids history’s hair.

He wonders if one of his fellow agents found his letter, full of want and want and want for someone he should not rightly have.  Perhaps Commandant is getting all the work he can out of him, and then Zoro will be retired to Wano, crushed into a pill that will be swallowed by another.

Or.

Blue read the letter and recoiled.  The letter was too full of Zoro’s achy breaky heart.  He covered the page in ink drawn straight from his own veins, and Blue saw the words scarred onto cream-colored paper as something wrong.

Zoro gnashes his teeth.  He had pushed too hard.  He had built too brittle a base for him to have laid his weight in Blue’s hands.  It was too much, his letter, too much at once, written in a hurry as he watched Blue and his younger self side by side.  He should have taken his time, found a way to weave straw and sea shells into a necklace that explained coyly that Zoro loved Blue but only as much as Blue needed to be loved.

He fights monkeys on an island for months, a task that he does not understand and is probably more punishment than progress for the Agency.  But it is distracting.  He practices sealing one by one the pneumonic pathways in his body until he sees black and not blue.

On a foggy morning, a flock of seagulls lands in a lake.  They should not be there.  As they fly away, one diverts from the group and lands next to Zoro, placing a comforting beak on Zoro’s thigh.  It departs, leaving behind three feathers.  Zoro presses them to his lips, clutches them against his chest for a long time before he reads. 

My dear sweetpea,

My sincerest apologies if these letters find you late. Germa has me embedded, stuck in one place for quite some time while I work on my next mission. What it is I cannot say for obvious reasons, but it’s location is at the bottom of the ocean, and it makes sending out anything without them noticing very difficult.

Still, I write to you often.

I am married this time around, and I think Germa gave me this mission to relax and recuperate. She is a mermaid princess, and they know how fond I am of mermaids, anything with the sea really.

But every morning as I look out over the ocean, I see bright green seaweed floating out on the blue water, and I think of us.

Your last letter. Don’t worry, I won’t leave it anywhere for anyone else to find. It belongs to me, and I take care of what’s mine. Few things are, but that let’s me treasure what does all the more.

I hesitate to talk about what was in it. I’m afraid that talking about it will shrink it’s impact on me, make it small and manageable. I don’t want that. I’m not sure the words exist that could express just what your letter did to me, but it was big and powerful and life changing, and I want to keep that with me, always. 

Instead, I’ll give you this. Something you’ve had for quite some time now.

Yours,

Blue

PS. Thank you. For the letter. For everything.

-

Dearest Honeydew,

The days here are long, the sun an artificial construct beamed to the ocean floor by large tree roots. I spend my days fishing and my nights tending to my wife.

I think of you often.

I can still feel you, running up and downthread. You move quickly, act passionately, and with me gone no one can stand in your way. Germa is incensed, growling in a manner more bestial than a Garden should, and asks me to work harder.

Sometimes I wonder if I am too fiery with you. Sometimes I feel that this – whatever this is – is something better served by softness and kindness, to be held and cradled in tender hands with gentle touches. But being so soft for me is always part of a ruse, an act, a mission, and I cannot be anything but completely honest with you.

Yours,

Blue

-

My dear seaweed,

I never noticed how many green things there were in the world until I was cut off from all but a few of them. It’s freeing, being so far away from everything, but it does get lonely.

I want to tell you about the first time I ever felt lonely.

We are not born or created, so much as we are grown. Germa plants the seeds of us throughout time, buries us in threads that only those of Germa Garden can access. (I shouldn’t be telling you this. Part of me still wonders if this is a long con, that this is what you’ve been after this whole time. But I’m well past the point of no return, even if that is the case.)

Germa planted me in Strand 32, in a restaurant on the ocean. I was raised by an old pirate there who considered me his son in every way that mattered, and I let him be my father.

When I was young, I got sick. This wasn’t a normal illness that Germa infected us with to bolster our immunity, but something much deeper, something using me to get to the rest of Germa.

That should not have been possible.

The whole thing felt like a fairy tale to me. I remember being so sleepy, drifting in that space between dreaming and waking. I remember a kiss, and something to eat. It was a kindness, I felt, and I couldn’t imagine something like that being anything but caring. A true fairy tale, through and through.

Then the hunger began.

It consumed me, in every way someone can be consumed. I became starving, reaching out for something, anything to sate the emptiness that had opened up inside me so suddenly. I turned back to Germa for nourishment, for anything to end it, to fill me again, to stop me from fading into nothing.

And Germa cut me off.

It’s standard procedure, I know now. Germa must survive. It can, does, and always will cut off loose ends that do not meet its standards.

At the time though, I only felt the loneliness. Something that had been there my whole life was suddenly gone, and only me, myself, remained.

For the first time, everything was mine. My hands and my face, my thoughts and my feelings, my father, my room, my life. It was all mine and mine alone.

After a few weeks, the hunger faded. I adjusted to being me. I found out how freeing that could be.

But after a year, Germa took me back. I was an asset, after all, one that had already had too many resources poured into it to be so simply let go. So they grafted me back on as if nothing had ever happened.

They searched for a cause, but found nothing. Just me as I always should have been. Nothing to suggest corruption or that I had been comprimised.

Germa took me back, but always kept me at a distance. Sent me far away to do their bidding, let the worlds ignore me as they tried their best to.

I’m not sure why I told you all this.

No, I know why I told you all this.

I miss you, my sweetpea, my honeydew, my favorite moss. Two years is a long time with no contact. I sleep side by side with my wife, feed her food I’ve painstakingly crafted to her tastes, whisper sweet nothings in her ear, make sure she is happy and cared for and loved.

And the whole time, I wish she was you.

There is something I want to say, something I’ve been wanting to say for a while now, but have always held myself back.

So take it now. Take my words, take my thoughts, take my feelings, and give me whatever you can in return. They’re yours now, always and forever yours.

Love,

Blue

Even the longest of missions come to an end.

After two years and with the love and support of her gentle husband, the mermaid princess finally unleashes her full power.

It's enough to significantly alter this Strand and dozens connecting it in Germa’s favor. 

(Her husband, tragically, dies in the initial blast. Her grief is strong enough to inspire her to do great and terrible things, altering several more Strands. He, meanwhile, is quickly forgotten, even by history’s footnote.)

Sanji beams as he watches the chaos unfold, as he slips away and returns to Germa, as he is once again returned to the fold. 

Secretly, tucked away in the deepest part of his heart where it can’t be reached, just for him, is a thought.

I can’t wait until Green sees.

Darling Bluebird,

I wish I could see your triumph.  I can picture you, standing ferociously, surrounded by the havoc you wrought.  We will be feeling the ramifications of your work, I am sure, and I will be sent to undo it, which I will.  But the idea of you returning to the Garden in glory fills me with unimaginable joy.  I bare my teeth to the wind, wanting to shout, that is my equal, my partner, the push to my pull.  Are you smiling, sea foam?  Is your sapphire flame, the one that mocks the devil himself, shining brighter at your victory?  

I send you this letter on a falling star.  Perhaps too bold, but I want my words to you to cut in fire across the sky.  The time for small gestures is past.  I have spent too long writing to you on raindrops.  With this letter, I write to you with the universe as the background.  

Your last letter… “Always and forever yours.”  I stand here, at the end of the world, or my world at least.  And I wonder… Hell–

I love you, Blue.  

Have I always?

When did it start?  Some time during this never-ending tic tac toe of chess moves, or perhaps before?  Did it start before you were Blue and I was Green?  Did we meet in dreams, scattered images put together through our letters?  Time is immaterial to us, but at this moment, I want to put a pin in that moment in time where I knew I loved you and always will.

I want you, Blue.

I want to offer you the marrow of the world.  I want to chase and be chased after.  Never have I felt so stricken between wanting to be prey and predator simultaneously.  I want to be teased, to be drawn within an inch of patience, I want to go further than my limits.  I remember hunting you through Whiskey Peak, thrilling to think I might touch the loosening strands of your hair.  My blades long to cut themselves on the whetstone of your limbs and come up wanting.  I want to drink tea with you.  In a cafe with mismatched tea cups.  I want to sit beside you in ten years or a thousand.  Do you remember the flowers on Amazon Lily that bloom by the light of blue moons, once a century?  I want to fix you a bouquet of them from every span of time that we traveled together.

Is it too much, this love I feel?  Maybe I’ve over-read the simple word with which you close your letter.  Maybe I overstep your bounds.  Blue…  I’ve always wanted to be alone at the top of the world.  But when I think of you, I want to be alone together.

Blue, my love, I love you, I love you, I love you, and I want to find out what that means together.

Love,

Green

Commandant summons Zoro to a field office.

It is on a world made half of blistering ice, half of blazing fire.  It reminds Zoro of him and Blue, but as he walks through the torn landscape, Zoro tries not to think about Blue.  Not here.  Not where there are so many eyes.

He enters a factory that decants agents and mixes poison, and sometimes Zoro isn’t sure if that is not just one and the same.  The poison the factory makes these days looks like fruit, and Zoro thinks about the origin story of human beings on an otherwise unremarkable strand of Earth.  Original sin, as if sin needs an origin and is not just part of the fabric of the world.

Commandant stands behind a desk.  Today he has taken the form of a great brute of a man.  Twice Zoro’s size and three times his girth, wild black hair, skin like dragon scales.  It is an intimidating form, and Zoro wonders if it was chosen purposefully as he stands in Commandant’s shadow.

“We’re in bad shape,” Commandant says.  “Long, careful work on the adversary’s part.  There’s a new braid, executed by a single operative, it goes upthread and downthread, tying together different parts of different worlds that should not be.”

Commandant offers a piece of paper to Zoro.  “Do you recognize this man?”

Zoro looks at the drawing of Blue and contorts his face into one that would match a man trying to recall a memory of an image glimpsed across a battlefield, then forgotten.

“I recognize him,” he says finally, “East Blue, in the battle of Krieg-882.  I believe he has other faces.”

“That’s where our observers took this likeness.”

A shiver runs down Zoro’s spine.  Observers.  How long have they been watching him?   What else might they have seen?

“I’ll raise him to the top of my target list.”

Commandant fixes a beady eye on Zoro, it crackles with black lightning.

“We’ve mapped out his path,” he says, “So far as we can trace it.  Interestingly, it has intersected with another.  Yours.”

“We’ve faced each other before,” Zoro says, trying to decide how much information to give to show he is being helpful and to keep Blue as far far far away from this man as he can.

“We believe your paths have crossed because he has gone out of his way to cross them.”

A pit opens in Zoro’s stomach, one that love and hope and fondness falls through and remains suspended.  Vertigo in his lungs.

“What are you saying?” he asks, though he knows the answer.

“He’s been grooming you.  You are being played.  He wants to turn you, seeding dissatisfaction.”

“I am loyal.”

Commandant looks at him carefully, then nods.  “He is waiting for the opportunity to make contact.  Through that contact, we strike at the heart of Garden that this operative has become.  Our agents will craft a message that will… swiftly and immediately, end him, end the threat.  All you need to do is deliver it.”

Zoro nods, salutes his leader, and exits the factory.  He makes it ten threads, three continents, several centuries away before collapsing in front of an ocean the most blue he has ever seen.  His Blue.  He must save his Blue.  They can make this work.  They have to.

After a few moments, he watches the white crests of waves form words on top of blue.  He reads and feels the pit in his stomach open wider, a maw wanting to take in and destroy everything in the world except him and the color of cobalt.  He takes a deep breath, filling his metalloid lungs with the scent of sea that has come to represent his love and then walks away, shoulders slumped and tired.

My most treasured marimo,

I fear this will be a boring letter, as I’m too overwhelmed and overflowing to be very coherent. There’s this rising heat inside of me, so intense and bright that I can barely contain it, and I don’t want to. I want to feel everything, bask in it, be consumed by it until all that’s left of me is this.

To know that you feel that same, that we are equal partners in this, that your heart beats at a pace right along mine, that I can gorge myself on this and never run out – oh Green. Green, Green, Green, Green, Green, I want to write you sonnets. I want to bake you cakes, or make you that steamed rice you like. I want to dance with you in the moonlight and kiss you under a rising sun. 

I’m writing to you on the crests of these waves and I am laughing, giddy with glee, laughing at being held by knifepoint only to find your hand holding the blade. That surrender can be so satisfying, so freeing. That it took me this long to find out.

Green, I love you. My darling Green, I want to move the stars for you, write to you in every moment of time to say just how much I love you, how much you mean to me. I want to give you letters that will brush your cheek and touch your hand, letters that can bite and sting and mark you as mine. I’ll write to you by seaweed and shark’s teeth, viruses and dandelion fluff. I’ll-

Stop. I’ll stop here. This is not how most courting is done, I feel. I want the flowers from Amazon Lily, and diamonds from Momorio. I want to burn the thousands of worlds between us and see what rises from the ashes, discover it with you hand in hand. I want to meet you in every place I have loved.

I don’t know how this is done between beings like us, Green, my darling Evergreen, but I want to find out. I want to find out with you.

Love,

Blue 

Sanji feels like singing. He’s not, of course, he is a professional, but as he slices the warlord king’s throat in his hotel room, disposing of the puppet master once and for all, all the joy inside him wants to burst out of him.

He silently slips into the room across the hall, stashing the bloody knife under the his mistress’s pillow.

After all, this kingdom is known for its passionate woman, and no one would think twice about one stabbing a traitorous lover.

He slips easily back into his own room, and allows himself some brief humming as he tidies himself up, idly thinking about ways to send and receive letters, about his hand lightly brushing over another.

He has won, which is a familiar feeling. He is happy, which is not.

Once he’s ready, he takes the stairs two at a time to meet his alibi in the bar for a drink.

As he slides into the empty barstool next to the pink haired woman, she turns to him, and Germa’s eyes stare back, a deep, multifaceted blue under a swirled brow.

Sanji doesn’t miss a beat, but his smoothness upon seeing them might as well be a stumble. He turns towards her, smiling sedatly at her as she pours him a matching glass of wine.

“I hope you don’t mind,” Germa says, their eyes sparkling as they stare into Sanji, “But I wanted to toast your success in person, as it were.”

Sanji chuckles as he picks up his glass and swirls it, “It’s good to see you, as it were.” He raises a brow, “But you’re worried about something.”

“Let’s toast first.” She picks up her own glass and stares at him with wide eyes, “To lasting success, and our inevitable victory.”

Their glasses touch, and they take a sip.

“You’re in danger,” Germa says as she sets the glass down, “We want to put you to bed.”

Sanji does his best to look surprised, but just a bit, quickly but pointedly letting a grin cross his face, “I’m flattered, but I never put out on the first date.”

They sigh as they lean forward, cupping Sanji’s face gently in her hand, and Sanji feels the gentle pull of the promised rest.

“Sanji,” she says, sternly but not unkindly, “your work, while outstanding, is obvious.” She brushes his cheek with her thumb, “You are not supposed to stick out. You are not supposed to be noticed.”

A flash of green runs through his mind, but he keeps it hidden, keeps his expression neutral and his tone calm as he leans into their touch.

“I have done everything you’ve asked of me, and I’ve done it well,” he says, his eyes locked on theirs, “If you pull me now, we’ll lose everything we’ve just gained. Not right away, but slowly, surely, the tide will turn against us. Keep me in, and we can push this. We can win.”

Germa hums, considering, and pulls away. Sanji sips his drink while he waits, doing his best not to appear anxious one way or the other.

“Very well,” they say with a sigh as she stands up, “When you’re finished here, head upthread until you see my sign, then proceed twelve strands over. There’s a delicate opportunity there I need you to address.”

“Of course,” he nods, his face blank, but inside he is singing.

She stares at him for a moment, then says, “You are more important to us than you realize. Don’t forget that.”

Then Germa is gone. Sanji laughs and makes a loud remark about the strength of the wine as his alibi returns, her eyes green and and her brows straight as she comes back to herself, and the evening becomes a pleasant one.

When he checks out the next morning, the concierge stares at his bill in confusion.

“I’m sorry, Sir,” he shakes his head, “There seems to be a problem with your bill. I’ll make up another one and-”

“Can I see it?” He says, already reaching for it, seeing the smudge by the wayward decimal point for what it is.

The concierge hands it over, and Sanji reads it. He is not trembling, he is not nauseous, his pulse is steady, and if he keeps telling himself that it’s bound to be true.

“Ah, yes, you’re right,” he says, all sunshine and smiles, his tone sugary sweet, “My friend and I did have quite a good time last night, but sadly champagne wasn’t involved.” He crumples the bill into his tightly clenched fist, “There was nothing to celebrate.”

He pays the new bill and exits the hotel quickly.

He hears the horrified scream from a housekeeper on the top floor, and closes his eyes for a moment, pretending its his.

Once he’s far enough away from the hotel, he blends into a large crowd milling about the street watching a beautiful dancer.

With his eyes focused on her and the bright green stem of the rose clenched between her teeth, he opens his fist, letting the old bill fall silently to the ground. He shifts his heel to crush it, adding just enough heat to turn it into so much smoldering ash.

Dear Blue,

They know.

Not everything.  Not yet.  But enough.

They know you.  They know it was you who dealt them a blow with the heel of your boot.  They know it was your foot at their neck, standing triumphant, charring metal with the intensity of your flame.

They know you’re close to me.  They showed me a map of our meetings, and if I were not so despairing, it would have been beautiful.  They don’t have the letters.  Just the timeline, just your interest, your nearness.  They think you want to turn me against them.  Did you?  Once?  Is that why you reached for me first?

They are working industriously now, toward an end that is your end.  I am to respond to any contact from you with a letter.  This letter will–

I can’t say it.  I can’t lose–

Listen to me, Blue, I am yours.  I would rather break the world than lose you.

I have a solution, after tortured days reliving every crossroads that brought us here.  It should be easy.  It should be easy.

Let me go, Blue.  Forget about me.  I’ll let you.

I’ll send their letter.

Do not read it.

Their gambit will fail, and they will assume you did not really want anything to do with me.

We will go our separate ways.  We can fight, we can chase each other.  But no more letters.  No more of this.

How, how, how I ask myself.  It will be like tearing each bone out of my body and replacing them in cruel and unusual ways that will ache for the rest of my life.  But I’ll do it, if it means letting you live.  You, resplendent Blue, my Blue on waves.  I love you.  I love you.  I love you.  I’ll write those words everywhere I go.  On the face of mountains, on the sea bed, on the bodies of enemies and the DNA of children.

I am so sorry.  If I had been stronger… If I had been worthy.  But you wouldn’t want me to curse myself this way.

I imagine your hands, leaving dimples in the page with their warmth.

Burn my next letter before reading.  Leave it behind.

Keep my memory instead, as I will keep yours.

I want to hold you.

I love you.

G.

On top of an elephant walking on the surface of a sea, Zoro sits to write a letter.  The experts create the poison from bits of Blue they found throughout time while Zoro composes the words.  He decides to write the letter as a plant, one with one inch thorns and ruby red berries that scream of death.  Blue must know.  Blue must remember not to read.

He writes a simple enough note.  An expression of interest in Blue’s opening salvo.  He tries to remember his first letter to Blue so many many many years before.  What words did he use then, when he only saw Blue as an enemy and not as his love.

The experts review the letter, plant the poison message in its lines, and leave.

Zoro sits with the note and hides another message, layers upon layers.  A true letter.  He can’t help it.  If the note is to be read, the last words Blue must read will be his.  If Blue reads the letter, it is the end.  If Blue doesn’t read the letter, it is also the end.  So, Zoro works to make his last words beautiful, make them worthy of the man he loves.

He gives the letter to Commandant to send, and he sits on a mossy rock in the middle of the forest.  It is going to rain soon, he knows.  Torrential rain that both destroys and replenishes the world twice a day.  He does not seek cover, instead rejoicing in the pelting of water hard as bullets.  His body takes a beating, and his heart does not emerge from it cleansed.

All is well, he tells himself.

They will go back to how they were before.  Two agents in a time war, fighting for marginal gains on the battlefield, catching only glimpses of flaxen hair and blue eyes.

Green,

If that’s what you want.

B

Sanji frowns at the plant in the windowsill.

He’s a baker’s apprentice in this life, milling around making treats as he bides his time, constantly overlooked in place of his chocolatier boss.

Stuck in the background, ignored once more.

The plant mocks him, with its bright red berries, its luscious green leaves, and its sharp pointed thorns.

The letter is well composed. He cannot say the same.

That angers him the most.

He’d grown it dutifully from a seed, using it to mark the passage of time since the last letter. It’s growth taunts him, reminding him of broken promises and things he can’t have.

The words on the plant are obvious, the code so easily cracked that even a child could do it. Dear Blue, I’ve thought about your proposal, but need a show of trust. It’s risky for me to contact you, so I’ve hidden the real letter in this posion. Eat it, and it’ll tell you where and when to met me.

It doesn’t even sound like him.

He imagines an Agency shithead looming over his shoulder as he writes, and it fills him with unbrideled rage. Sometimes he dreams of finding them, of cornering them in a dark alley and kicking them, burning them up until they’re nothing but a husk. But even in his dreams his kicks fail, and instead they laugh at him, their mouth twisting in a smirk as they say his name as a taunt.

On his good days he touches the thorns lightly, and thinks of spindles and fairy tales. On his bad days, he jumps a bit downthread and watches the Empress’s hunger fueled rampage destroy the entire kingdom, just to revel in the destruction of it all.

Today is a very bad day.

A berry fell off the plant. He almost broke a wall in frustrustion – what if it had been a paragraph? What all important words would he have missed? – and frantically checked it to make sure no thorns pricked it on its way down, that no juice had escaped.

It hasn’t been that long, has it? A letter rescinding the letter could arrive at any moment, a letter contradicting this contradiction, a simple My Dearest Bluebell we’re in the clear –

But he’s running out of time. Once the plant dies, the letter, Green’s last words to him, will vanish for good.

Honestly, he’s insulted. Green said to ignore his next letter, and here it is, literal poison as a test of Sanji’s interest and Green’s success. If he eats it he dies, if he doesn’t, Wano will know Green tipped him off, and kill him instead.

It’s not fair. If he’s to be destroyed so thoroughly, be betrayed so completely, the least they could have done was make it a challenge.

To be defeated by something so simple…

He strokes the plant's leaves, and allows his mind to be filled with nothing but the color.

He was always going to eat it. He hates wasting food.

There are as many berries as there were letters, and he eats them slowly, savoring the bittersweet taste of them as he breaks them against his teeth. 

He laughs as he eats them, wiping the blood from his smiling lips, drowning in the sharp pain and the soft words. 

When he’s finished, he wipes away his tears, mixing them with his blood, as he looks around for a pen and paper.

He’s got one last letter to write.

Stop.

Blue, don’t read this.  Blue, please.  Each word will twist the cells in your body into death and I can’t let you do that.  I watched them make it.  Watched them concoct this letter with bits of you.  I wanted to tear them apart, rip them limb by limb for daring to hold pieces of my love in their hands.

Don’t shrug off this danger, Blue.  It’s real.  It’s not a sea monster who is dangerous only in size and dripping teeth.  It’s no wolf-man who howls vainly against the power of your form, no god of lightning, or civil war.  You cannot defeat this, Blue.  You won’t come back after this.

Put this down.  We have our memories, do we not?  We won’t drink together in the setting sun in the aftermath of a long battle.  But I’ll constantly be raising a glass to you wherever I am.  We won’t dance together, but haven’t our trysts always been the dance of perfect enemies?

Stop, my love.  Find something that will expel the contents of this letter from your stomach before it breaks down into venom coursing through your veins.  Find a healer.  I know Germa has operatives who can remove poison from bodies.  Go to them.

Goddamn it, stop.

I am so weak.  I let them use me.  I let them do this to you.  If you have read this far, I am guilty as a weapon wrought upon you.  Give me up.  Let me go.  I love you.  I love you.  I love you.

I love every one of your forms.  Always with the eyes befitting your moniker.  I will love you on battlefields of snow and fire, across forests and plains.  In the rings of trees, in ancient words on stone.  On the island I wandered in my youth, I will look up at maple trees and watch the sun flickering through pointed leaves and I will love you in the dark and light spots I find.

I know your grace.  I know your loneliness.  I know the way you take only what you have to and give however much you can.  I wish I could have shown you my home, I wish I could have shown you some of the worlds I have come to love.  I want to sit on a park bench with you in a town by the sea. That’s all I want now.  A small home, a dog, or two, green grass.  To touch your hand.  To run my fingers through your hair.  What does your hair feel like?  Is it as soft as I imagine?

I cannot stop you now.  All I can do is try to convey the depth of how much you are loved.  How much I love you.  Blue, does it hurt?  Have I hurt you?  Have I given as much joy to you as you have given to me?  As you go, I am here, Blue.  I would weave the world for you.  I am by your side now, I have always been there, and I will always be sitting with you.

What do I do now?  My crystal lake, my bluebird, my midnight sky.  Will I continue, knowing there will never be an us?  Or will there always be an us?

My All Blue.  At the end, at the beginning, at all the infinite moments in between, I love you.

Green

Zoro finds him.  He should not have come, but he does not care.  He burns through worlds, cuts threads that should not be cut, ravages time and space to be able to stand at Blue’s side.  The Garden senses him, tries to catch him, slithering through roots and threads.  Commandant feels the threat and sends agents to protect him.

Fuck them.  Fuck them all.

Blue lies on a bed.  His face is halfway between a mask of pain and a mask of peace, and Zoro knows that he fought to die composed.  Fought to die in a way that would bring Zoro as little grief, because how could Zoro not have come to witness him.

He is everything Zoro imagined.  The exact person Zoro imagined writing letters, finding letters, who Zoro caught glimpses of between their battles.  Who Zoro never dared to look at too long, fearing his attention would spark suspicion at the Agency.

He gives Blue all his attention now, collapsing by him, holding a cold hand.  On Blue’s chest is a letter with Zoro’s real name.  Blue should not have known it.  But then, Zoro has always known Sanji’s.

The letter is sealed.

Why hasn’t the world changed at Sanji’s death?  Why hasn’t the sky turned red in illness?  Why hasn’t the earth crumbled in on itself?  Why is it quiet outside, when everything in the universe should die the way that Blue had to?

Zoro runs his hand through Sanji’s hair.  The only sound now is his sobbing, his aching, hurting tears fill the emptiness inside him with salt water.

The world finally begins to react.  Vines sprout around him, metal shakes in the ground.  The Garden is here.  Zoro grabs the letter and runs.  He slips through threads, razing cities and burning jungles.  Continents come apart and come together.  When he stops finally, on a cliff above a raging ocean, he sits and reads the letter.

Oh Green,

The twist of you in me, the bit I can never quite shake. You are the blade hovering threateningly over my heart, and I am writing to you just before the plunge.

Of course I would write to you. I can never resist getting the last word in.

Of course I would eat your words.

I will try to get myself together, to make this last bit of me as legible as possible. I resort to paper and pen for this as there is no time for anything else. And what an experience it is, writing to you in plain sight. To be forced to write what’s happening as it happens, what I’m feeling as I feel it. 

I wish you could hear my applause.

Bravo, my mint. Excellent job. Nine out of ten.

(I’m keeping the last point, because you should always strive to do better.)

Even my teeth are hurting, and I must say, I wasn’t expecting that. The cold sweats, yes, and the trembling – and I must apologize if that makes this hard to read, but you can consider that proof of your total victory over me.

I’ll admit I was disappointed at first by such an obvious double-bluff. But in the end it worked, I bit into your poisoned apple. There will be no glass coffin for me, I’m afraid, no prince to kiss me awake and whisk me off to a happy ending.

You would have been a terrific asset for our side. If there’s one thing I’m upset about here at the end, it’s how your talents and skills are being wasted by your Agency.

I’m fading fast, my mind going every which way as I try my best to keep it together. I’ve only died once – that time I’ve told you about – and it wasn’t anything like this. Funny how being erased cell by excruciating cell can put everything in perspective for you.

I did love you. That much was always true. With however much of me is left, I can’t help but love you still. This is how you win, Green: a long game, a hand played close to the chest, not striking until the moment is right. You played me like a virtuoso at a grand piano, and I am proud of you for such a wondeful betrayal. 

I imagine you as a viper now, slithering up to whatever’s left of me and eating the remains, pilfering them for anything of value left. I imagine you’ll by exceedingly tidy about it, so dull and boring as you go about it in an extremely efficient manner. I certainly hope I’m dead by then.

The pain really is agonizing, I’ve never felt anything close to this before. There’s a certain beauty in it. Is this what it’s like to not be hungry anymore? It’s ceratinly easier than the other way. I wish I could go back upthread and-

I think this is the end. I’ve still got to seal this – I can’t have you disappointed in me for not finishing a letter properly, now can I?

Thank you, Green. It’s been one hell of a ride.

Take care my green mamba, my copper acetate, my most deadly nightshade.

Yours,

Blue

Zoro kills time in East Blue because Sanji liked it here.  He’s a hero in Wano, the agent who gruesomely, permanently took down Germa’s most dangerous operative.  He travels island to island, eating food that tastes now like ash.  Do you eat?  Sanji had asked him that once.  He watches a trio of youngsters in a jungle, waving around sticks, pretending to be bigger and older than they are.  A woman dances among orange trees.  A young boy yells secrets to a young girl on her balcony.

He returns to the island where he was once just a boy, wanders into a museum for the cool air on his metallic skin.  

He stops in front of a painting and feels his heart stutter to a stop.  After pounding at his chest, the clockwork ticks again and Zoro takes a gasping breath.

It is a portrait of a young boy with blue trousers, lying on the bunk of a ship, the circular porthole letting sun into the room to shine on blonde hair.  He has a hand on his chest, a letter clutched in it.

Zoro’s brain races.  He does not recall this painting, though he did not spend much time in museums.  Is he reading too much into it?  Is it a trap?  From the Agency or the Garden, he no longer can guess.  Is it a message from Sanji?  To what end?  A taunt, left behind by a Sanji before he loved him?

Hope clutches at his chest.  He recalls Sanji’s last letter.  This is how you win, Green:  a long game, a hand played close to the chest.  He places it side-by-side in his mind with this message.  He is clutching at straws, playing with death and time.

But there is a chance.  The poison was meant to kill an operative of the Germa Garden.  It could never harm the Wano Agency.  But if Sanji were not an agent of the Garden.  If Sanji had Zoro’s own codes, antibodies, resistance…

Zoro whirls out of the museum.  He starts his final mission with a tiny dagger shaped like a cross that he stole from a shopkeeper in Kuraigana.  He pierces himself with the blade, breaking all the tracking systems in his bones and veins.  He begins to run, knowing that the Agency will start searching for him immediately.  He runs to many places through time, an island of giants, a world made of sand, a jungle in the sky, a kingdom underwater.  He digs through raindrops, the core of trees, bird feathers, to find every trace of Sanji he can.  And he devours those bits, writes those pieces into his own DNA, forcing his body to remember, burning his love and his memories into his skin.  When he finishes, he has made himself into someone who can save his Blue.

He slips into Germa on a boat, evading their turret defenses with just enough of Sanji in him to avoid detection.  He sails and sails and sails through enemy waters and finds Sanji on a ship, captained by an old pirate.

Zoro slips into the restaurant and watches during the day as Sanji, his Sanji, whirls through the room.  He is in a suit.  He is young, and still hasn’t filled it out, but he will, in time.  It takes everything in Zoro not to go to him now.  He waits until nightfall and finds Sanji sleeping in a room with a porthole watching over the sea.

When I was young, I got sick.  Sanji told him this once.

Zoro bends to Sanji’s bed and kisses him.

His teeth cut Zoro’s lip, and Zoro tastes blood.  He lets it drip and flow, and Sanji’s tongue darts out to claim the fallen blood, the antivenom, the resistance for a future poison.  He frowns, contorts, stiffens, and Zoro, reminded of rigor mortis and the pale of Sanji’s skin in death, stumbles backwards.  He must go, he must go.  Germa will sense that something is happening to Sanji.  Blinking away tears, praying that he has done what he must, Zoro heads to the door.  He stops when he sees an envelope on Sanji’s bedside table.  It is green.

He grabs it, knowing it is his to take and flees.  He looks back one last time and sees Sanji, eyes open, watching him go.

The Garden seeks him.  But it is Commandant who finds him.

Dear Eggplant,

It’s been a while since I’ve been called that, but it’s been less for you, I imagine. Yes, your instincts are correct. It’s you, writing to yourself from the future.

Need more proof?

If I wasn’t you, how would I know about the box of cigarettes you’ve hidden from Zeff under the third plank from your bedroom door? Germa doesn’t want you to have them either, but you sneak them anyway, because it’s the first real decision you’ve made that feels like your own. Or the scars on your left thumb that you got the first time you tried peeling potatoes? Germa healed it long ago, and while you were grateful at first, now you miss the proof of your progress.

Now do you believe me?

You’re probably wondering why I’m breaking the one rule of time travel here by contacting you, and I wouldn’t if it wasn’t for a very very important reason.

His name is Zoro.

He’s your counterpart in Wano Agency, and you love him very much.

At first, he will just be a nuisance, a shadow that keeps getting in your way. Then he will become the most interesting thing to happen to you in, well, ever. Then he will be so much more.

You think you know love, little eggplant. You read about it in books, and flirt with the pretty girls and handsome boys that pass through your restaurant, and think you know all there is to know about it. 

You have never been more wrong in your life.

Loving Zoro is like being in the center of a wildfire, all the passion and destruction that you keep tapped down inside of you finally let out to encompass anything and everything, and reveling in the freedom it brings. Being loved by him is like falling into the ocean, being surrounded by the never-ending vastness and depth of it, but knowing the waves will carry you safely.

Love isn’t a game or a means to an end. It is beautiful and powerful, and so much more.

You make think Germa loves you, and they do, to an extent. Very soon I think you’re about to find the limits of their love. When that happens, you’re going to feel lost and alone, little eggplant, like you can’t possibly do anything right, like you’re a failure. After all, if Germa Garden doesn’t want you, doesn’t love you, who will? Who can?

There is someone out there who will love you, who will finally see and know you. He will show you that not only are you worthy of love despite your faults, despite your deeds, despite the blood on your hands, but you are worthy and loved because of it.

The things you would do for him. The worlds you would burn for him. The lives you would save for him.

Zoro will love you so much. He will try to convince you to save yourself, that Wano will let him live if you just give him up, but you know better. You know it has to be either you or him. You know Wano is looking for a certain narrative, a desperate fool in love killed by their heartless spy, and you feed it to them to save him.

You don’t mean the words in your last letter, not all of them. Surely he knows that? Surely he knows which ones are truth and which are fiction?

All this to say, you can trust Zoro, little eggplant. There will come a time when you wish to reach out to him, to see what all the fuss is about. Do it. It’s the best decision you’ll ever make.

Take care, 

Sanji

PS. To the Mossy Prince kissing me awake: burn this after reading. I’ll see you soon.

The trial, as much as there is one, is short. Commandant asks one question: “How did you get into Germa Garden?”

Zoro doesn’t answer.

He is found guilty of crimes against Wano Agency and tossed in the deepest, darkest cell, his execution set for later that day.

Whatever Zoro put in his blood had allowed him to sneak into the heart of Wano, to infiltrate the guards and be the one to escort Zoro to his cell. Sanji should have tried this years ago – he’d have been a hero on Germa back when he cared about such things. But perhaps it is only his love for a certain mossy Agent that lets the camouflage work, that knowing and loving him so activated the parts of Sanji that are now mostly Zoro.

Keeping up appearances, he shoves Zoro roughly into his cell, but holds the door open so he can ask him, “Why wouldn’t you tell them?”

Zoro shakes his head, “Some things are worth more than winning.”

“If that’s the case,” Sanji hesitates. He’s pretty sure he knows the answer, but he’s always been the cautious type, even now, and he wants to be sure, “Why didn’t you just join Germa? Sell us out?”

Zoro looks angrily up at him, a fire in his eye that Sanji had only imagined, and his heart skips a beat finally seeing it in person, “Germa doesn’t deserve us,” he spits, “Neither does Wano. We’re better than them. This is how we’ll win.”

His heart flutters in his chest, knowing damn well the we he’s talking about isn’t Wano.

“No, my dear marimo,” Sanji says as he lets his disguise fall away. Zoro’s eye widens as he takes him in, his smile slow to start, but quickly spreading into a full grin as Sanji slips the key out and takes off his cuffs.

“This is how we’ll win.”

Epilogue :

Dear Curly,

Pass the salt.

Just kidding, everything you make for me is perfect.  I sit across from you now, a lazy morning, eating the simple breakfast you’ve made with your hands that love creating more than taking.  You sip coffee and read the newspaper, and every few moments, I can feel you look up to glance at me as if to make sure I’m still there.

I’m still here.

Even now, when we’re joined at the hip, when we have all the time in the world together, I still want to write you letters.  It is easier for me, to wax poetic in written form, than to simply tell you everything you are to me.  My blue nightingale, my lavender wisteria, my pure turquoise, if I said those words aloud they would feel so much more hollow, a platitude in passing.  You make fun of me for communicating in grunts.  Do my letters to you make up for that?  I am not used to speaking, but this, this form of communication lets me put all my feelings on fiber, paint pictures on paper, and don’t you deserve that, my love?

We have made a life for ourselves on this final island, this last timeline.  Neither the Garden nor the Agency will find us here.  But neither can they replace my failing parts or replant your dying seeds.

That is more than okay, for me, to be able to fall asleep next to you and wake up in your arms every day for the rest of my last life.

Contentment.  Blue, did you ever think you would feel content?  I remember feeling powerful.  I remember feeling hungry.  But right now, with the sunlight streaming into this humble home of ours, reflecting off dust motes and the curve of your hair, I am content.  I look forward, not to changing the path of a civilization, but to walking the path behind our house to the sea, hand in hand.

I love you, Sanji.  I would kill for you and I would die for you, and I’ve done both of those already.  I would do it all again. 

I’ve been interrupting my letter writing to glance up at you to make sure you’re still there.  Birds of a feather.  Your hair is over your eye.  I want to reach for you and tuck it behind your ear so I can see my favorite shade of blue.  You’ll glare at me and tell me to mind my own business…

I just did it and you glared at me and told me to mind my own business.

Sometimes I think this cannot last.  That our old organizations will come bursting through the door and drag us away from each other.  But even then, we’ll find a way, won’t we, Blue?  A love like ours is inevitable, isn’t it?

I’ll wrap up my letter here.  I can feel you growing restless.  Your leg taps against the floor, your fingers twitch.  You want to test yourself against an equal, and I am here, my love.  I’ll seal this up and leave it for you to find, though I can see you rolling your eyes right now, knowing what I intend to do and finding my little games mostly tiring when we no longer need to hide our correspondence.  But what’s the use of making this easy?

I’m yours.  From now, since forever ago, to the end of time.

Zoro

He finds the letter tucked under his pillow, one of Zoro’s favorite hiding spots.

Sanji rolls his eyes, but reads it right away, absorbing every word as if that’s still the only way he can read it again.

He can’t help the big goofy grin that spreads across his face when he finishes. He digs around under his bed for his box full of his most precious treasures – things that are his and his alone – and files Zoro’s letter away with all the others. Some are written to him between the petals of pressed flowers, some on the edges of seashells, and one particularly tricky one written along the scales of a pinecone, but most are on simple, plain paper, his love spelled out in the open for anyone to read.

When he’s done, the box tucked safely away again, he goes off to find his husband.

He spots him in their living room, reading something on the couch, and Sanji stops in the entryway for a moment, just to take him in. The sun comes through the window, sparkling off the three golden bars in his ear. His face looks relaxed, his hair soft, and Sanji’s fingers itch to run through it. 

Eventually Zoro notices him lurking and glances up at him. The smile grows on his face as he puts his book down, an open invitation.

Never one to pass up an opportunity, Sanji sits in his lap, his fingers playing with his earrings as he says, “I found your letter.”

“I knew you would,” Zoro says, nuzzling his neck as his arm wraps around his waist to support him.

Sanji hums as he leans in, placing a soft kiss on his temple and breathing him in, taking in what essence he can from this man who loves him so much.

“I feel content too,” he whispers into his skin like a secret, “I feel full.”

He’s surprised by it, even still. He assumed it would be difficult, cutting himself off from Germa completely, striking out into an unknown world with a man he’d never properly met before, only knew and loved through letters scattered across time. 

But it had been easy. Zoro made it easy, to love him, to be loved by him, to be with him.

These days Sanji wonders how he ever felt satisfied with anything else.

“Have I told you I love you recently?” He muses, fingers running through his hair.

Zoro hums as he thinks about it, and leans into his touch, “Not since you entered the room.”

“My apologies then,” Sanji laughs, cradling his face and tilting it up so he can stare into his eye, “I love you, my beautiful evergreen, my wonderful bay leaf, my dear sweet marimo.”

He leans down and kisses him, Zoro parting his lips and letting him in easily. He holds Sanji like he’s something precious, kisses him like he’s breathing the very life back into him through their connection.

Sanji can’t get enough.

When they pull apart, Sanji stays close, breathing another, “I love you,” across his lips.

“I love you,” he says a third time, just to make it stick, as he kisses the corner of his mouth.

“Always and forever?”

Sanji grins, his thumb rubbing his cheek as he gazes down at this wonderful, beautiful man, “Always and forever.”

He kisses him once more, and whispers his last secret in the space between them.

“To the end of time.”