Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Maybe it had been naive of Sanji, but he’d assumed that the Rainbow Mist situation would be his only encounter with time fuckery in his life. Even with all the nonsense of the Grand Line, time travel is the sort of thing that most of the world’s population is unlikely to deal with. With those odds, having anything to do with it twice is so unlikely that you really shouldn’t even worry about it happening. Especially when it hasn't been a day since your first time travel situation.

Sanji should have known better. Not that it would have prepared him for what he finds when he runs out of the galley, summoned by Nami-san’s shocked scream and Chopper’s panicked cries for a doctor.

There’s a man kneeling on the Merry’s deck, curled into himself. He’s holding his left hand away from his body, so the blood coming from where his ring finger should be can drip freely onto the wood. His wavy blond hair reaches his shoulders, and Sanji knows who he is the moment he sees a curly eyebrow and a blue eye locks on him. The man’s left eye is hidden by his hair. All things considered, this man can be considered young, but he’s clearly much older than Sanji. He’s still running and hiding from his past. Maybe he’ll still be covering half of his face when he’s sixty, eighty, a fucking corpse.

Sanji stands frozen at the door to the galley as the crew gathers around this other version of himself.

“His hand! Help him!” somebody urges, a cry that sounds like hunger and darkness. It takes him a moment to recognize the voice as his own. His cigarette falls to the deck and it's only out of reflex that he crushes it under his shoe.

His plea gets Chopper to move, but Sanji stays where he is. He takes note of Zoro standing close to their surprise guest, a hand on the hilt of his swords, while Luffy’s coming forward without considering that this might be a trap.

“Sanji!” Luffy says, and Sanji looks at him before he realizes that Luffy’s talking to this other version of himself. “Sanji, what happened?”

Luffy stands as close as he can without interfering with Chopper. That says just as much about the severity of the situation as the look on his face: grave and concerned, taking in the sight of the other Sanji’s wounded hand.

The other Sanji looks up at Luffy and stares at him, mouth hanging open and eyes wide. How long has it been since this other Sanji saw Luffy like this? What's in store for them, that it makes the other Sanji look heartbroken at the sight of his captain? Whatever it is, it will tear him apart, because he only manages to hide the pain after a full second, when normally Sanji has it handled and secured before his face can even do so much as twitch.

“Sanji!” Luffy urges. Whether or not he noticed the reaction caused by his presence is anyone's guess.

Sanji's going to bet that he saw it, because Luffy sniffs out sorrow and regrets like it's another meal with which to fill his bottomless stomach.

The other Sanji laughs bitterly, a bit manic, and he seems to be smiling at a personal joke when he says, “Nothing happened.”

He gets to his feet and asks Chopper to lead him to the infirmary. That's not something he'd need to ask for if he was still sailing on the Merry.

When the other Sanji and Chopper disappear into their makeshift infirmary, followed by a Zoro that’s yet to lower his guard, all eyes turn to Sanji.

He lights a new cigarette and meets their gazes. Luffy and Robin-chan are unreadable. Usopp and Nami-san are worried.

“He'll have to eat to get better,” Sanji says.

Luffy grins, and that’s the sight Sanji focuses on as he turns around to head back inside. He refuses to wonder about anything except how much his tastes might change through the years.

Even if he doesn’t like the same things anymore, nostalgia should make the other Sanji appreciate the food he's about to eat.

Sanji pauses with a hand hovering over his knives.

Fuck. His future self is probably a better cook than him.

“My most sincere apologies for surprising you all.” The Other sounds like he means it. “If I'd known how, I'd have tried for a less shocking entrance. I hope I didn't rattle you, my darlings,” he says to Nami-san and Robin-chan, and those words, he definitely means.

They're gathered in the galley in front of the closest thing to a feast Sanji will allow himself to prepare without a direct order to do so. Food is a guaranteed method to get into someone's good graces.

Sanji won't stop staring at The Other while he eats. He’s trying to discover, through the minimal changes in The Other’s expression, what needs to be improved.

Everything The Other does is a clue about the future, but Sanji will only focus on the food.

“How old are you?” Usopp asks.

Fuck you too, Usopp.

“That's not a very polite question,” The Other chastises lightly.

Zoro rolls his eyes. The Other’s gaze fixes on him, strangely fascinated by the movement. That means something too. Sanji won't think about it.

“From some of the things you've said, I understand that these events, that for us constitute the present, are something that you have already lived through?” Robin-chan asks.

“That's right, Robin-chan!” The Other says, hearts in his eyes as he goes on to praise Robin-chan's brilliance.

“Robin-chan is so smart,” Sanji himself sighs, because she is and it must be said.

“Great,” Zoro groans, “now there's two of them.”

“Shut up, Marimo,” The Other says, and Sanji begrudgingly appreciates him.

“So things between you and Zoro are the same in the future, huh?” Usopp says, looking tired.

That just happens to be the one topic that Sanji needs to know about and dreads. He doesn’t know whether or not to consider it lucky that he has been observing his future self with a level of attention he only reserves for food, women and Zoro, because it lets him catch The Other’s immediate reaction to Usopp’s innocent comment. If Sanji had to pick a word, he’d call it a flinch, but it was too small for that. It was a quick, minute tensing of every muscle in The Other’s body, like a response to a full-body attack.

“Some things simply can’t change. It’s impossible when you’re dealing with him, you see?” The Other says, giving the crew a falsely apologetic look. When his eyes meet Sanji’s, the sentiment becomes genuine.

“Oi,” Zoro warns.

“Don’t try, Shitty Swordsman,” The Other says, raising his eyebrow. “I have twenty-one years of training on you.”

“So that means you’re still around each other then and that you haven’t stopped training, Cook-san,” Robin lists. “It’s nice to know that the Straw Hat Pirates are still going around the world after so long.”

The Other grimaces. “I’m not sure I was supposed to let you know that.”

Sanji covers his face and groans. “I’ll have to do better than you when it’s my turn to do this.”

“You won’t.”

Zoro, Usopp and Nami-san laugh at him. Terrible.

“You know, I think I, the Great Captain Usopp, could give you some pointers on time travel!” Usopp’s words are partly lost in his laughter. “Once, I encountered a Devil Fruit user that froze me in time! While the world went on around me, I remained in a single second, unaware of what was happening, completely vulnerable in case somebody decided to attack me!”

“That’s so scary!” Chopper says.

“But how would traveling forward in time compare to this situation?” Nami-san asks, smiling mischievously and looking as beautiful as she always does when she one-ups someone. “You didn’t have to worry about revealing the future.”

The Other looks at them with a fondness that matches what Sanji feels sometimes and doesn’t let himself show. Not yet. Maybe not even in twenty years; perhaps The Other is only allowing himself to show it now that he won’t have to deal with any consequences, now he knows he gets to keep and love these people for two whole decades. Or maybe because he knows he won’t get to do it.

The moment dies a swift and brutal death when The Other meets Sanji’s gaze and then lowers his eyes to his injured hand, which he’s keeping close to his chest. “Sorry about the spoilers, Little Eggplant.”

How dare he—

“Little Eggplant?” Usopp repeats in a whisper, exchanging a look with Nami-san.

“Don’t call me that,” Sanji growls at the same time, because he can either focus on the nickname or on the horror of inevitably heading towards an event that might kill part of his soul.

“I’m not calling you by our name, it feels weird,” The Other says, shrugging and not even glancing at Sanji, who’s left to glare at The Other’s hair.

“It’s the least you owe me, since you went and got injured like that,” Sanji says, pointing at the bandages around The Other’s hand. He knows Chopper did his best and that his best was fucking amazing, but Chopper can’t regrow a finger.

“You think I had a choice?” The Other sounds darkly amused by the idea. Or maybe just resigned.

“Of course you did!” Sanji half stands up, ready to kick The Other. He deserves it. “You knew it was going to happen!”

The Other looks at him and raises his visible eyebrow, challenging. There's pity in his smirk and Sanji won't. Think. About. It.

“Hey, Old Sanji,” Luffy starts, and The Other splutters.

“Old?!” both he and Sanji yell.

“He’s forty!” Sanji exclaims, pointing at The Other. “That’s not old!”

“I’m on my best years!” The Other defends himself.

Luffy tilts his head. “You’re older than our Sanji. You’re Old Sanji. If we had an even older one he’d be Oldest Sanji.” He crosses his arms over his chest and nods in agreement with himself. “And if we got another one he’d be Most Oldest Sanji.”

That whole sentence was a crime against language and sense and Sanji weeps in his soul.

The Other blinks. Then he chuckles. Then he starts laughing, full-bodied and genuine.

“Never change, Luffy,” he says, and Sanji hears it as the plea it is.

His body feels heavy and his head feels light, forcing Sanji to sit down again.

“Why would I?” Luffy asks, frowning.

The Other smiles softly and lets it go, but a sense of dread falls upon all of them.

“Anyway, Old Sanji,” Luffy says, uncrossing his arms and leaning forward, “how did you get hurt?”

Seems like the sense of dread decided not to fall upon Luffy, who is watching The Other with all the intensity and seriousness he seems to keep in store just for moments like these.

This is a boy that would die for his dream, but also for each and every one of them if he had to. Sanji saw it at the Baratie, in Arlong Park and in Alabasta. He sees it here. This boy will be king, and The Other is his subject.

Zoro sits straighter at Luffy’s tone and Sanji swallows. The Demon of the East Blue is ready in case his captain has an order for him.

The Other only shakes his head, unaffected by Luffy’s potential greatness. “I’m sorry, Captain, but I can’t tell you.”

“You have to, so we can change your future,” Luffy says.

“It’s a private matter,” The Other insists.

Sanji’s heart picks up speed.

Tell him, he silently commands The Other, because in this moment that boy isn't Luffy; it's their captain, the future Pirate King. Sanji must bow to his betters.

“Your hand, Old Sanji.”

It’s a good attempt, everybody knows how important his hands are to Sanji. The possibility of saving them is half the reason Sanji wants The Other to tell them what happened.

The Other… grins. “I was protecting the love of my life.”

He sounds so fucking proud of himself. Smug, even. Zoro scoffs and Sanji wants to throw up.

Usopp and Chopper turn their eyes to Nami-san, who presses her lips into a tight line and gives Sanji a look of deep discomfort. Robin-chan and Luffy keep their attention on The Other, who meets Sanji’s gaze and shrugs, like he didn’t really go and ruin their lives. Their life. Sanji’s future.

Is it possible to kick someone back to his own time?

“Quit that, you two!” The Other snaps at Usopp and Chopper when he notices what they’re doing. “This has nothing to do with my sweet Mellorine.”

“Like there’s anybody else you’d call the love of your life,” Zoro says, annoyance dripping off every syllable.

“You don’t know shit, Moss-head,” The Other says.

God, I wish that was me.

“Many things can happen in twenty years,” Robin-chan says, giving The Other a scrutinizing look. She must have caught the mistake in his reply, because she’s the smartest person Sanji has ever met. Of course she noticed that The Other didn’t pick the easy out of claiming he’d met someone new to whom such an important title could be applied.

“I have to stop talking,” The Other mutters. Robin-chan's lips curve softly into what could be a smile, or maybe just an acknowledgement of his (and Sanji’s) discomfort.

Can I be in love with her instead? Please?

“Would it help you if we told you what we have been up to this point, Cook-san?”

“If you could do me such a favor, dear,” The Other says.

“Oh! I can tell him!” Luffy jumps in, a hand in the air, all seriousness gone.

“You can all tell me.”

They manage. It's a mess, but it's not like The Other doesn't know what they're talking about. He smokes in silence while they talk and Sanji watches him and the way he looks at the crew. He knows all his tells, he knows that The Other loves these people, he knows his crew will suffer one day. The Other’s future scares Sanji.

It’s a surprise when The Other snorts.

“Mr. Prince, huh?” There's an amused glint in his eye. “That's a shit alias, Little Eggplant.”

“Shut up, it was clever and you know it,” Sanji says, his first words since the recounting of their adventures began.

The Other laughs around his cigarette. “Was it, Prince Sanji?”

The nickname has every guy in the crew snickering; even Zoro, who nodded off a couple of times during the whole story. Nami-san and Robin-chan hide smiles behind their hands. If they knew the truth behind the joke, they wouldn't laugh.

The Other knows the truth and he can laugh anyway. He can tease Sanji about their past without any malice, and Sanji bristles, envious and afraid.

“Fuck this,” he mutters, standing up. “I'll be outside.”

He ignores the others' comments and questions as he leaves. He pretends he doesn’t feel The Other’s eyes on his back.

Fuck his future self. Fuck him and his confidence, and his grief, and his stubborn heart.

Sanji leans against the railing and smokes to avoid thinking. This is a whole new level of self-hatred. If he wasn’t the one feeling it, he’d consider it worthy of analysis. Not by him, because he’s not touching the landmine that is psychology, but still, someone should take a look at this. Ideally not with him as the study subject.

Yeah, he’s not doing well at not thinking.

“Hey.”

It’s been at least an hour since Sanji left the galley, possibly two. He doesn’t recognize the voice.

That’s what I sound like?

He turns his head just enough to acknowledge The Other’s presence. He seems to take that as an invitation to join Sanji.

“Mind if I smoke?” The Other asks, already lighting his cigarette. It’s tempting to say ‘Yes’.

Sanji chooses to bite his tongue.

They stand side by side, Sanji facing the ocean while The Other looks at the Merry.

“Are you up to date on our life?” Sanji finally asks, watching him out of the corner of his eye. He has to wonder whether or not The Other purposefully stood with the visible half of his face to Sanji. Like an invitation to be curious.

“Yeah.” The Other blows out the smoke slowly. His cigarettes don't smell the same as Sanji’s. “Have you really been traveling for only a few months? That felt like over three years of adventures.”

“It's been an eventful journey.” Understatement of the century for most of the world’s population. An accurate summary for a prince of Germa. “I'm guessing it'll stay the same?”

And there it is again, the sorrow.

“Yeah, you could say that.” The Other takes a long drag of his cigarette and holds his injured hand closer to his chest. “Have you met someone named Trinket already?”

He's certain they haven't. If this person has stuck in the mind of his future self, they should have stuck in Sanji’s too.

“Not that I know of. What are they like?”

“She's a gem of a woman,” The Other sighs dreamily.

“That's redundant.”

“You'll see when you meet her.” A thoughtful hum. “I know we met her properly at some point after Wano, but it didn't hurt to check if we'd run into her before.”

Sanji takes note of what little The Other has given him: a woman known as Trinket, somewhere or someone named Wano, more adventures. He wonders if he'll have to remember this conversation word for word or if it'll happen the same when it's his turn at the other side of it. He doesn't know if what The Other has revealed is an accident or kindness.

“Say hi to her from me when you meet her,” The Other continues, unaware or uncaring of Sanji’s silence. “She likes to dabble in time fuckery, she shouldn't be surprised.”

Sanji hums noncomittally.

More silence. More smoking.

“The love of your life, huh?” Sanji says quietly.

“Unfortunately.”

“Are you loved in turn?”

The Other’s sad smile is enough of an answer.

Sanji rests an elbow on the railing and buries his hand in his hair.

“Fuck.” He grabs a fistful and pulls. “Fuck.”

“Tell me about it.” The Other doesn't sound very bothered.

“How?” Sanji demands. “It's been twenty years!”

“Twenty-one,” The Other corrects, matter-of-factly.

“That's worse!” Sanji cries.

The Other turns his face to him and brings a finger to his lips. He tilts his head towards the galley and then pointedly looks up at the crow's nest.

“Small ship, Little Eggplant, and I don't think the lovely Robin-chan is affording us the privilege of privacy.”

“Don't say that about her,” Sanji warns, pointing an accusing finger at The Other.

“I'm not badmouthing her; she's wonderful and perfect and has every right to do whatever she wants, including eavesdropping into private conversations about unrequited love.” From anybody else, that'd be sarcastic.

Sanji lowers his hand to the railing. He's yet to let go of his hair.

“You should be over it already!” Sanji hisses.

“Sorry to disappoint,” The Other says, and yes, that's sincere too. Forty years in the world and Sanji’s still a failure.

It drains the fight out of Sanji. His hand falls from his hair and comes to hold onto the railing as well.

The Other exhales, making smoke rings.

“I talked about love with the Marimo once,” he says conversationally. Sanji’s heart drops. “I told him I'd been in love for years with someone, and that I didn't think it'd end any time soon.”

“What did he say?”

“That I lacked self-control. That love is a choice, so if I wasn't getting over it that was my fault.”

“What a dick.”

“I know!” The Other laughs, entertained despite everything. “I kicked him for that, don’t worry.”

“Good.” Sanji smiles, feeling himself in sync with The Other for the first time. “Did you leave a bruise?”

“Of course.” The Other’s grin widens. “More than one.”

“Excellent. Well done,” Sanji says, and offers The Other a new cigarette.

He accepts it and studies it for a long moment before tucking it into the pocket of the loose pink button-up he's wearing.

“I'll keep it for luck,” he offers as an explanation while getting out one of his own. Sanji doesn't ask for one; he wants to discover that variation of his vice by himself.

More smoke rings. More of The Other looking at every detail of the Merry with a longing and reverence that chills Sanji’s blood and makes him grip the Merry’s railing tightly. He tries to sear the wood’s texture into his mind.

“He's right, though,” The Other suddenly says. Sanji doesn't have to bother trying to figure out what he means, because he immediately adds, “It is a choice. Every day, I fall in love. I could leave, or forget, or tell him and let him break my heart, but instead I choose another day of longing.” He makes a face. “He can never know he's right, he'd rub it in for the rest of his life.”

“I'm not telling him if you're not telling him."

“Deal.”

Twenty-one years of longing. It's already bad now that it's mostly attraction, now that it feels like flambéing a dish—quick flames that will die as soon as there's nothing left for them to burn. He can't imagine how much worse it'll be when it becomes a mature love, the sort that warms you up like the oven in winter while you bake.

“Do you remember this conversation?” Sanji asks.

The Other nods. “I also remember how you feel now.”

Sanji purses his lips. His hopelessness is settling on his bones, seeping through them and making its way to their center to become part of the marrow.

“Why did you say that? When Luffy asked you how you got hurt?”

The Other snorts. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to lie to him? I swear he can smell it when someone's lying.” Grumbling, he adds, “There's a lie detector somewhere in him, I know it.”

Luffy in the future is still a threat to emotional privacy. Got it.

“And why are you lying to me now?”

The Other presses his lips into a tight line, guilty.

“Tell me the real reason why you didn’t lie,” Sanji demands.

The Other tilts his head back and fixes his gaze on the crow’s nest. “It's been too long. I wanted to be honest about this at least once.”

Sanji lowers his head and bites his lip.

“He’ll know.” Sanji's voice is barely more than a whisper. “When you get back. He’ll know.”

The Other scoffs. “I doubt he remembers what I said today. It’s not like he believed it.”

Sanji stares, incredulous. “You— I’m going to lose a finger for him.” Once again, he starts pulling at his hair. “He's an idiot, but even he can figure that out.”

“Sanji,” The Other says gravely. Sanji reflexively tightens his grip on the railing. “It doesn't matter.” The Other looks down at his injured hand and closes his eyes for a couple of seconds. “I don't know what happens now. I don’t know if I'll get to go home, or if I'll have to wait twenty-one years to see everyone again.”

And just like that, The Other’s honesty makes sense. Who cares if Zoro figures it out? The Other might have two whole decades to prepare himself for his reaction, the same way he had that long to accept what would happen to his finger.

“You’re lying,” Sanji accuses. It’s a plea. He leans his weight against the railing, feeling faint. He hopes Robin-chan is listening. He hopes she has read some book or heard some story that'll give them the way to save The Other from being stuck here.

“You think I was sent here with a map and a compass?” The Other raises an eyebrow. “You think I want to be here, that I wanted this to happen? The crew has been looking for a solution for years, but we have no way of knowing if it'll work.” He swallows. “I might be stranded, and if that’s the case, well… I’ll make my way back the slow way.” He smiles, full of fake bravado. “So, see? Even if he figures it out, he won’t expect me to still love him when I'm sixty.”

“But you will." There’s no other possible outcome. The day Zoro refused to renounce his dream, he left his mark on Sanji’s stupidly romantic heart. What else could he have felt? Zoro was young, attractive and strong, and he was living the way Sanji wished he could. He'd been ashamed of how much he'd envied that overconfident swordsman that was about to die in front of him. He'd been ashamed of his own weakness at wishing he could go and throw his life into finding the All Blue instead of killing his soul every day in the Baratie. He'd been ashamed of his own selfishness, and he'd hated Zoro for reminding him that he used to have a dream. He'd loved him, as he loves him now, for dreaming.

He loves him because he chooses to do so every day, even though he hates it.

“Yeah,” The Other murmurs. “I will.”

It would have been better if his heart had latched onto someone else, but Sanji will honor its desires. He will savor every drop of affection that flows from it to his arteries and veins and then back into his heart, as restless as the tides at sea.

Perhaps Sanji’s a bit in love with love itself as well.

“Does it hurt the same?”

The Other shakes his head. “You get used to it. And it’s not like it keeps you from living your life.” He smiles, and Sanji thinks he looks content. “You get to sleep with some lovely people, and you even fall in love a couple of times.”

“It doesn’t work out,” Sanji notes.

“Not from lack of trying. You get to stay friends.” A pause. “They're good friends.”

“Should you be telling me all this?”

“It won’t make a difference. I’ve been where you are, remember? I stubbornly fought against everything I’m telling you right now.” He shrugs. “It’s the only way things work out. You have to live every day like you don't know I exist. You have to fight with tooth and claw and assume you won't make it if you don't.”

Sanji turns up his nose. “I don't need you to tell me to make an effort.”

“I don't want you to grow complacent just because you know you'll get to be me.”

“It's because I know you exist that I can't be at ease.”

“Good.”

The Other takes one last long drag of his cigarette and looks around before extinguishing it against the railing. It leaves a small mark on the wood that he rubs with the pad of his thumb.

“I love this ship, you know?” he murmurs to the air.

There's no need to reply and Sanji doubts The Other wants him to. Every word and emotion can be used against you.

“Why don't you stay, Old Sanji?” Luffy asks, eyes wide open and all-seeing. “Having two of you would be so cool.”

More like you think you’d get to eat double the food.

“I'm sorry, Captain,” The Other says, sounding genuinely apologetic, “but you're waiting for me in the future.”

A knot forms in Sanji’s throat.

Luffy grins. “Yeah, I am!”

If anybody tries to make Sanji say a word now, all he'll be able to let out is a sob.

“How are you getting back, Cook-san?” Robin-chan asks, even though she might have been listening while Sanji and The Other talked. Maybe because of that.

“We have a plan,” The Other says. “They're going to try to open a portal for me at a specific place, so I have to head there.”

“Wouldn't it be safer if we took you there?”

“My lovely flower,” The Other says, extending a hand to Robin-chan, palm up, “your concern for my well-being is a comfort in these difficult moments, but I'm certain you know that it's better for everyone involved that I leave as soon as possible.”

Robin-chan concedes with a nod and carefully places her hand over The Other’s, making him sigh in delight.

“It wouldn't do to create another self-fulfilling prophecy,” she says.

“Another?” Usopp asks.

The Other smiles adoringly at Robin-chan.

“You have always been a wonder,” he tells her. “Every second with you has been a gift. Every single one,” he adds intently.

Robin-chan lowers her face, hiding what Sanji is certain is a genuine smile.

“Thank you, Future Cook-san.”

There's something there. Sanji swallows his curiosity, aware that he'll find out the details at some point during the next twenty years.

The Other makes a round through the crew, saying goodbye to each one with cryptic words he's undoubtedly enjoying. Nami even gives Sanji an unimpressed look after The Other bows to her and recites an ode to her beauty.

He has to remember how to breathe when The Other reaches Zoro and pulls him aside. He takes Sanji too, like he knows how scared he is of what he might say.

Well, he probably knows.

“Give me a smile, Marimo,” The Other says, low enough that nobody else should hear him.

“Fuck off, Curls,” Zoro snaps, with a hand over the hilts of his swords and his eyebrows furrowed. “One of you is more than enough.”

The Other puts his hands in his pockets and leans towards Zoro, holding his gaze.

“This whole thing won't be your fault,” The Other says softly, with a tenderness that must be giving them away.

“Of course not!” The look Zoro gives The Other is bewildered to a degree that makes Sanji laugh despite himself. “You were probably protecting some woman!”

“What I mean,” The Other says, laughing as well, “is that you didn't fail as our protector.”

The words make all the cockiness and annoyance disappear from Zoro’s face. He looks like The Other hit him—eyes wide and lips parted to suck in a breath—and reduced him to nothing but the nineteen year-old that Sanji sometimes sees napping with Chopper.

“Who says—?”

“Yeah, I know, you don't care and the only thing that matters to you is your dream.” The Other waves a hand dismissively, making both Zoro and Sanji bristle. “That's now. When I'm from, though?” He gives Zoro a heavy look. “You'll blame yourself for this, and I won't let you. You have to remember that this is a choice I made and that he,” The Other points at Sanji, “will make too when the time comes.” Zoro sets his jaw. The Other smiles. “The only one at fault is my heart.”

Am I always this melodramatic?

Zoro makes a face. The Other takes a step back and heads for Luffy before anything else can be said, leaving Sanji alone with Zoro.

“You have a stupid heart, Love-Cook,” Zoro says, glaring at Sanji, who has to hold back the instinct to kick him.

He takes his time lighting a cigarette, fully aware that every second of silence makes Zoro focus more on him, but too tired to fight.

“Don't say that,” Sanji finally threatens, earning himself a confused look. “This is the only thing I won't let you look down on.”

He walks away from Zoro, unwilling to explain himself—that was more than he should have said. He comes to stand at The Other’s side just as Luffy’s telling him, “You have to come back to us, okay?”

Not thirty minutes ago you wanted him to stay here.

The Other smiles. “I will, Captain, even if I have to get there one day at a time.” The line of his mouth turns amused. “You’ll accept me even if I’m a geezer, right?”

He asks it casually, like he isn’t talking about potentially roaming for twenty-one years. Sanji’s stomach churns at the idea.

“That won’t happen!” Usopp cuts in. “I, the Great Captain Usopp, will find one of the thirteen portals that link the different ages and bring you back to us when all of this happens!”

The Other’s visible eye narrows with how wide his smile is.

“You better, or I’ll be feeding you oats for the rest of my life!”

Usopp looks suitably horrified by the idea, and his face doesn’t change even while they’re putting The Other on a boat and sending him away.

Sanji watches The Other go, making a mental note to get his own log pose in a few years and maybe pick up some skills for when it’s his turn to get sent back to the past.

“Fucking time travel,” he mutters to himself.

The rest have the sense to leave him alone, but not of giving him privacy. He feels his eyes on them while he smokes and watches the horizon, barely moving until he can’t see the boat anymore.

“Fucking Future Sanji,” he adds.

And that’s that. He has to deal with the present. He has twenty-one years to make his peace with the eventual loss of his left ring finger.

He tries to keep The Other out of his mind through their different adventures, but there are times in which he can’t help but remember him.

He thinks about The Other when they lose the Merry. When Zoro takes Luffy’s pain and Sanji promises to himself that next time he will be the one that dies. He sees that he’s as doomed as The Other had said he would be, that he will choose the Marimo’s safety over his own when the time comes. He accepts that his original fascination is gone, and that what’s left has crystallized into a genuine, deep love.

He thinks about The Other when the Vinsmokes decide to reappear in his life, and every time he finds himself missing Zoro’s smile.

Give me a smile, Marimo, he constantly echoes in his mind. He bites down on his cigarette to keep the words inside his mouth.

The one time that thinking of The Other makes him laugh is when they finally meet the mentioned Trinket. It turns out that she can turn herself into amber.

A gem of a woman alright.

Chapter Text

The thing Zoro will always hold against the Future Cook is that he carved a space for himself in Zoro’s mind, from where he gleefully taunts him from then on.

Zoro had every intention of forgetting about the whole time travel thing. There were over twenty years left until the Cook went on his little trip to the past, and Zoro isn’t the guy you go to when you want to deal with maybe-magic bullshit and scientific research. He’s the one you call when you want someone slashed, stabbed, or cut. The only thing he got from the Future Cook’s visit was that Zoro would still be around all those years later, and Zoro decided to promptly forget about it, lest it made him grow careless. So yeah, all in all? A pointless encounter that was taking up space in his head.

He finds himself cursing the fucker just a few days later, in Skypiea. He’s taken aback by the concern and white hot rage he feels when he finds Chopper hurt and unconscious. He’d been aware of some fondness for everyone—you can’t go around getting into trouble and almost dying without bonding with the people that shared the experience with you—, but until that moment, he hadn’t truly known how deeply he cared for the mismatched lot of idiots that Luffy had gathered and called a crew.

With the realization came the memory of the Future Cook implying he knew how Zoro felt about all of them.

Seriously, fuck that guy. Today, tomorrow, and every day for the next twenty-one years.

One thing is accepting that you actually love your crew and another is dealing with everything that comes attached to said realization. Like the fact that you’re the guy that was specifically recruited because he was strong. Zoro's job is to protect everyone, so that’s what he’ll do.

It’d be great if the rest of them weren’t so good at getting hurt, but he’ll manage. Not even the knowledge that the Cook will still be alive in two decades gives him a break, because maybe the only reason he makes it is because Zoro’s doing his best to, as mentioned, keep everyone alive.

He starts paying more attention to things he hadn’t considered, in ways he hadn’t taken into account. Before Skypiea, knowing how the Cook fought meant knowing how to win against him. After Skypiea, it meant knowing the cracks in his defense that could be used against him, and that Zoro himself would have to protect. He has to guess when the Cook is downplaying an injury, not just because it means danger for Zoro himself, but because the whole crew relies on the two of them to be their heavy hitters and protectors. He listens to what the Cook says and takes note of what he does, trying to figure out who is the person that he’ll sacrifice himself for in the future.

The problem is that the Cook would happily die for any pretty woman that crosses his path. The only real clue Zoro has is that the Future Cook said he’d done it for the love of his life, which makes Nami the main suspect.

The first time Zoro has doubts about that is when they meet a woman known as Trinket, almost three years after their encounter with the Future Cook.

It happens on a summer island that they stop at for supplies. They leave Robin on the ship and when they come back they find her drinking tea with a blonde, curly-haired woman dressed in white. Zoro takes note of her shoes (sturdy boots, made for running and kicking), the gas mask hanging from her belt, and the scars all over her body.

“Hi,” she says with a smile, standing up to greet them all with a polite bow of her head. “I’m sorry for the intrusion. My name is Trinket.”

Next to Zoro, the Cook tenses up. Trinket’s gaze—which until that moment had been assessing all of them—falls on him and softens. Her smile widens.

“Yes?”

The Cook takes a step forward and extends a hand to her. “My dear, I have waited years to meet you, and now that I have I curse the time it took for me to do so.”

This is when things get downright bizarre: instead of being uncomfortable or politely ignoring him, Trinket puts her hand in the Cook’s.

“Believe me, it’s a pleasure to finally meet all of you, Straw Hat pirates.” She squeezes the Cook’s hand. “And it’s a delight to make your acquaintance, Black Leg.”

Zoro narrows his eye at this woman. There’s suspicious behavior and then there’s that. She must be after something.

“What the fuck,” Usopp whispers.

The woman claims to be there because she wants to buy any amber they might have. She explains that over a slice of cake that the Cook gave her along with a new cup of tea.

“I’ll pay as much as you want,” she adds.

Nami’s eyes light up at that, so that’s it for her acting as common sense.

“What do you want it for?” Usopp asks.

Trinket lightly bites her lower lip as she clearly thinks about whether or not to be honest with all of them. Zoro keeps studying her, waiting for her to attack or reveal her true colors. The white is blinding under the sun and Zoro’s getting tired of it.

“I have a dream,” Trinket starts, the magic words to make every member of this crew pay attention. Even Zoro finds himself curious about what she might want. “It’s a big project and I need a whole lot of amber for it.”

Nobody looks convinced.

“What sort of project?”

“Ah… Well…”

“Does it have to do with time?” the Cook asks, offering her a napkin.

Everybody turns to look at him. He only has eyes for Trinket, who takes the napkin and keeps her eyes fixed on the Cook’s hands.

Caught.

“How did you guess?” Trinket’s voice is soft and embarrassed.

No, not embarrassed. She doesn’t look honest to Zoro. Coy, maybe.

“Would you believe me if I told you that my forty year-old self told me about you?”

Trinket’s head whips up to look at the Cook. She opens her mouth and covers it as the first syllable of a word or sentence is coming out. Then she starts crying.

It takes a while for her to calm down, and when she does she tells them about her big plans to have absolute mastery over time itself.

“Then you can help us,” Luffy says, his first words to her after greeting her earlier.

“With what?” Trinket says, already nodding.

“Sanji’s going to travel back in time one day, and we want to make sure he comes back to us.”

The Cook hands Trinket a handkerchief, and she dries her eyes with delicate movements. “Do you know how that happened?”

Everybody shakes their heads.

Trinket purses her lips. “That’s not helpful at all.” She sniffles and takes a sip of tea. “The most likely options are a devil fruit or one of the thirteen portals, though.”

“One of the what?” Usopp asks.

“The thirteen portals,” Trinket says. She eats a bite of cake and moans, “Black Leg, this is so good.”

That gives the Cook a nosebleed, which makes Chopper freak out and sends everything into chaos for a full minute, during which Trinket keeps eating and sounding scandalous.

“We understand if you don’t want to help him after that,” Nami says, covering her face in embarrassment.

“Oh, I’d do anything for a man that can bake like this,” Trinket says, with a hand over her heart.

“I’ll prepare whatever you want, my Gem,” the Cook promises, going down on his knee.

“I’ll hold you to that.” Trinket grins at the Cook, the corners of her eyes crinkling, and for a moment it’s like nobody else exists. Never before had Zoro felt like an intruder when the Cook was flirting.

Around him, he sees that many of the others have averted their gazes.

The moment ends when Trinkets raises her head and explains to all of them, “There are thirteen time portals scattered around the world, connected to different eras. If you fell into one of them, you’d find yourself in the past.”

“Only in the past?” Robin asks.

Trinket nods. “Every record of them mentions that they can only take you back, but they’re not very good records.”

“How do you know about them?”

“I’ve been collecting everything about time travel and chasing rumors since I was fourteen.” Trinket shrugs. “You can find out a lot of things when you go after the things people treat as fairy tales.”

Yeah, they know about that.

“Should we trust her?” Zoro asks Luffy later.

Trinket and the Cook are alone by the railing, talking and laughing like old friends.

Luffy looks at them, head tilted slightly, just in time to see Trinket take the Cook’s hand. She says something that has him laughing with his head thrown back.

“Yeah, I like her,” Luffy says. “And she likes us.”

They don’t have much amber, but they sell it to Trinket at three times the cost. She pays without haggling, which also counts as suspicious, but nobody’s reacting normally here.

“What will you do with that?” It’s Franky who asks this time.

Trinket smiles, showing her teeth. It’s as blinding as her clothes. “I’m going to stop time.”

She leaves them her contact information and tells them to call her if they ever need her.

To the Cook, she says, “Call me whenever you want.”

The Cook kisses her hand and Zoro wonders if this is the love of the Future Cook’s life. Maybe her meddling with time is what will get the Cook in trouble.

They meet Trinket a bunch of times through the years. There’s a period during which Zoro thinks she and the Cook have something going on, then it seems to be over without any fanfare. They appear to be close friends, judging from the constant correspondence and calls, and by how every time they meet, the Cook offers Trinket his hand and they waltz around with no music while exchanging pleasantries and laughing.

He doesn’t like the way she looks at the Cook, infinitely sad even though she seems to glow with delight at his presence. He doesn’t like how her shoulders tense when she looks at Zoro. He doesn’t like the way she never haggles when Nami charges her two or three times the price of amber, and how her footwear is always something you can easily run away in.

“I still don’t trust you,” Zoro says to her over a bottle of sake about six years after they met her.

They’re outdoors on a spring island, the sun is about to come out, and nobody else is awake. Trinket herself had woken up only a few minutes ago and laid down on her stomach next to Zoro.

“That’s smart, Pirate Hunter,” she says, not sounding even a bit offended. If anything, she sounds relieved. “I wouldn’t trust me either.”

Zoro has already said his piece and he doesn’t want to hold a conversation, but Trinket seems to take his silence as an invitation to keep talking.

“I mean, I want to control time.” Trinket’s tone is matter-of-fact, self-aware. “And nobody who wants to control time…” She sighs. “I’ve done terrible things to myself, you know? I’ve…” She turns to lie on her back and raises herself on her elbows. The grass has stained her blindingly white outfit, and Zoro’s gaze gets stuck on the green spots. “My abilities? I’ve let some really messed up people do some very fucked up things to me, just so I could do more with my power.” She swallows, her eyes fixed on Zoro’s face. “It scares me to think what someone who doesn’t care about others might do, if they thought it’d let them control time.” She swallows. “Some days I think of quitting, you know? Some days I can’t remember why I have this dream.”

“Then why do you continue?”

Trinket smiles. “I made a promise.”

Zoro narrows his eye at her. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because you want to protect everyone, and maybe telling you this will help one day.” Her smile stretches into a grin. “I trust you, Pirate Hunter.”

It doesn’t change Zoro’s opinion of her.

Eight years after meeting her, they all get invited to Trinket’s wedding. The groom is a whole decade younger than she is, had fallen for her when he was a teenager, and made a vow to himself to woo her when he was old enough to be taken seriously. Zoro can respect the determination to love someone for so long.

“Determination?” the Cook says when he shares that thought, his eyes following the bride as she dances with her husband, her head resting on his shoulder.

“Yeah. He didn’t have to stay in love with her for so long.”

The Cook snorts and glances at Zoro before returning his attention to the newlyweds. The current song is ending, and a man in a hooded cloak and an ornate white mask takes the chance to tap the groom's shoulder and gesture at Trinket, who grins. Somehow, that one isn’t the most suspicious guest at the party.

A new song begins. The groom leaves his wife with Suspicious Guest #3, takes out his cane and finds his way to the edge of the dance floor while the other two spin into a waltz.

“This song is from the North Blue,” the Cook says softly, almost to himself. Zoro pretends he didn't hear.

The Cook takes a drag of his cigarette and slowly lets out the smoke. He and Zoro watch Trinket and Suspicious Guest #3 move with the ease and familiarity of old sparring partners.

“He didn’t have to love her,” the Cook says when the song ends. “Love is… someone makes a home for themselves in your heart and that’s it. Good luck kicking them out.” Lower, he adds, “Trust me, I’d know.”

On the dance floor, Suspicious Guest #3 bows low to Trinket, kisses her hand, and leads her back to the groom.

Zoro looks at the Cook out of the corner of his eye. “Are you saying you’re in love, Curly?”

“I am, in fact.” The Cook turns his face towards Zoro and smirks. “I have been for years.”

“With her?” Zoro says, pointing at Trinket.

The Cook shakes his head. “I loved her for a while, but my heart already belonged to somebody else.” His speech is slightly slurred. He’s been drinking since dinner started. “Isn’t that a pity?” He gestures at the dance floor. “It could have been me dancing with her today.”

Zoro seizes the opportunity. “Is this that love of your life that’s going to get you in trouble in ten years?”

“The one and only,” the Cook says, nodding. “I tried to get over them, but I don’t think it’s going to happen.”

Zoro scoffs. “Weak.”

The Cook freezes for a millisecond.

“Excuse you?”

“You heard me.” Zoro steals the Cook’s glass and drains it under his bewildered gaze. “Love is a choice. If you actually wanted to get over this person, you would.”

“You think it’s so easy?”

“Yeah, because it is.”

The Cook barks out a laugh that makes something twist in Zoro’s gut, the same way he feels when he makes a mistake while fighting. “If it was, nobody would ever be heartbroken.”

“That’s because people lack self-control.” Zoro downs his own glass next. “Like you. What good does it do you to love someone that doesn’t want you?”

The Cook stands up.

“How fucking dare you,” he hisses.

“I’m telling it as it is, Love-Cook.”

The kick is a surprise only because he didn’t expect the Cook to cause a scene at Trinket’s wedding.

The fight is vicious and only lasts the amount of time it takes for Trinket to realize what they’re doing and encase them in amber from the neck down.

Most of the guests look amused by what’s happening. Even the newlyweds are laughing. The only ones covering their faces in visible embarrassment are Nami, Usopp, and Suspicious Guest #3, who later approaches Trinket with flowers stolen from one of the tables and dances with her again.

The Cook has a couple of girlfriends through the years, but he’s single by the time he turns forty.

Despite the happiness inherent to a celebration, there’s a sense of dread hovering over the crew. When the Cook compliments Nami, she smiles uncomfortably and excuses herself, as aware as everybody else that she’s the only person that the Cook has stayed loyal to.

From that day on, Zoro makes a point of never letting the Cook go anywhere alone with her, and if danger presents itself, Zoro protects Nami before the Cook can try to do so.

“What do you think you’ve been doing, Marimo?” the Cook says through gritted teeth, bandaging the arm Zoro scraped while pushing Nami out of the way of danger. Chopper is busy with Jinbe and this type of wound is nothing, but both Chopper and the Cook had thrown a fit over Zoro’s suggestion to leave it alone.

“My job,” Zoro says simply.

The Cook’s hands twitch. “I’m gonna need you to elaborate on that, because it doesn’t make as much sense as you think it does.”

Zoro huffs. “We all know what’s coming this year, so I’m handling it.”

The Cook squints and visibly thinks about Zoro’s words for a moment.

“You’re… risking yourself for Nami-san because you think she’s the reason I’ll fall through time?”

“What risk?” Zoro says, blinking in confusion. “Unlike the witch, I can take care of myself.”

“Don’t call her that,” the Cook chastises without any heat, looking distracted even when he pokes at where the scrape is to make Zoro hiss. “You can stop doing that. It won’t happen because of her.”

“It won’t happen because I’ll stop it from happening.”

The Cook sighs and gives him an odd smile. Tired, resigned, pained—downright weird. Zoro doesn’t like it.

“You won’t, Zoro,” he says. “And you have to stop thinking you can stop this or you’ll feel like shit later.”

“Are you saying I’m not capable?” Zoro bristles.

The Cook doesn’t argue. He gestures dismissively and checks the bandages, angering Zoro further.

They don’t fight because the Cook doesn’t take the bait.

They hear rumors of a time travel cult and they all know what’s coming.

They call Trinket to check. The den den mushi wears a white headband for her.

“I’d been hoping you wouldn’t hear about it until next year,” Trinket says regretfully.

“You already knew about it?” Nami asks.

“Sort of.” Trinket sighs. “In the last eighty-four years, at least two people have shown up around the world claiming they come from the future. I talked to one of them; she told me that she’d been captured and thrown into one of the thirteen portals by a weird cult.” The sound of pages being turned comes through. “I’ve been looking more into them since I met you. They seem to think that if they throw someone through each portal following a specific schedule, they’ll gain control of them.”

“Is that true?” Robin asks.

“Of course not. If it was, I’d have thrown myself through all of them already.” Trinket clicks her tongue. “The portals are like the ocean. They’re part of the world and you can’t dream to control them. At best you can make them work with you.”

Zoro presses his lips into a tight line and thinks about her warning, so long ago, about how terrible anyone dealing with time travel chooses to be.

“When’s the next ceremony?”

There’s a pause before Trinket reluctantly says, “I think it’s in three weeks.”

“Where?” Nami asks, probably already plotting a course far away from wherever that is.

“There’s an island called Aparición in the South Blue? If I got it right, that’s where the portal is.”

Coincidentally, they’re currently in the South Blue, still searching for new islands for Nami’s map of the world. Zoro doesn’t appreciate it when things try to make themselves look fated.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” the Cook asks.

“I was scared I’d be sending you straight to the past if I did,” Trinket says apologetically. “You’re one of my dearest friends, Black Leg.”

“I appreciate your concern, my Gem, but it looks like Fate has a plan for me.” The Cook smiles as he speaks: tired, resigned, pained. A man headed for the gallows.

“Sanji will be alright,” Luffy promises, his gaze serious. This is the King of the Pirates making a promise, and Zoro believes every word. “We’ll take care of him.”

Trinket sniffles. “Thank you,” she says, but it’s clear she doesn’t believe Luffy, no matter how much he has accomplished.

After the call, they vote on what to do. The Cook votes in favor of dealing with this cult, because someone else will be sent through that portal if they don’t.

“Let’s be honest, Captain,” he says, resting an elbow on the table and blowing out smoke, “if we didn’t know about my possible trip to the past, we’d be rushing towards this adventure, wouldn’t we?”

Luffy concedes the point. They set a course for Aparición.

The Cook goes out to continue smoking by the railing, leaning his back against it while he takes in the sight of the Sunny. Robin joins him, and Zoro watches her accept a cigarette from the Cook. Unlike him, she faces the ocean.

Throughout the years, Zoro has found himself offering support and protection to different members of the crew. He generally doesn’t have to do more than stand there and let them lean on him, either literally (Chopper) or figuratively (Nami). He’s never done it with the Cook. He’s never had any reasons to think the Cook might need him, and he’s never felt inclined to give him the idea that there’s anything besides comradeship between them.

Maybe Zoro would have gone to him today if Robin hadn’t gotten there first. Probably not. He and the Cook don’t have anything to say to each other.

He watches from afar as the Cook and Robin talk. At one point, the Cook raises his left hand and moves his ring finger. Then he shrugs and runs a hand through his hair, smiling in a way that screams self-deprecation.

Zoro doesn’t know how he notices that. He just knows that that’s what that smile means, the same way he knows that when Nami licks her lips before she goes into a shop, it means trouble for the seller. The way he knows that Robin picks at one of her nails when she’s worried. That if Brook taps on his clavicle, it’s because he’s composing something in his mind. Zoro has picked up on small things about all of these people through the years, and stored them away to know how to handle them.

And then there are the obvious things, the details that can’t be missed. Robin’s hair barely reaches past her ears now and is streaked with gray, each discolored strand proof that she has lived long enough to get older, and the snacks and meals the Cook prepares specially for her have turned her body into something softer and wider, although her constant running and climbing after knowledge have kept it firm.

The Cook’s hair reaches his shoulders now, and he only ties it back when he’s cooking. He’s gone back to covering his left eye, the way he did when they first met, and there are smile lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth.

Both of them look like they’ve lived happy lives, and the awareness of that fact gives Zoro the same epiphany he had years ago in Skypiea: he loves this crew. He still loves this crew, more than yesterday and less than tomorrow.

Unlike back then, when Zoro’s affection was only another reason to fight, Zoro allows himself to bask in the sense of belonging that the knowledge brings to him. This is his crew, and he loves them all. Even the Cook, although that’s something he must never know.

Following that feeling he makes his way to the railing, sits down next to Robin’s legs, and closes his eyes for a nap.

It takes him a while to fall asleep. His body no longer accepts any surface for a mattress, and his injuries take longer to heal, making themselves felt at moments like this. He has too many scars to bother remembering. He’s still young enough, but nobody could mistake him for something promising anymore. He has reached the top and his face and body show it. All he wants for the rest of his life is to be able to keep his family safe, and that’s what he’s going to do.

He wakes up because he thinks someone is touching his hair, but the only one around when he opens his eyes is the Cook, who’s taking out a new cigarette. Asking him how many he’s already smoked is an invitation for him to nag Zoro about how much he drinks on the next meal, so Zoro bites his tongue.

He only watches the Cook and thinks about how he killed this man once, and how he won't let him break Luffy’s heart again.

They try to behave as usual on the way to Aparición and fail. Nami avoids the Cook, Chopper and Franky look sad all the time, Jinbe and Brook have an air of nearly solemn resignation around them that gets on Zoro’s nerves.

Usopp is on his way from Syrup Village to meet all of them—with Kaya in tow because having another doctor around is always useful—and Zoro’s not betting on him being able to behave. He also isn’t betting on him reaching them on time.

Luffy and Robin are the only ones that don’t change around the Cook, which shouldn’t be a surprise. Luffy’s Luffy. Robin, meanwhile, probably made her peace with this back when the Future Cook first appeared.

Zoro knows he’s been acting weird for longer than all the others, so he doesn’t bother dialing it down. He has a job.

He calls Trinket and asks her everything she knows about this cult and the portals. Nami sits next to him to ensure they don’t forget anything, and she takes notes in the quick, illegible chicken scratch that is her handwriting when she’s in a hurry. Together, they develop a strategy for the inevitable encounter with the cult. They consider their options.

They reach Aparición the same day the cult’s ritual is supposed to happen.

Usopp and Kaya are still on their way, at least a whole week away. The Cook gives them a call that sounds like a farewell and Usopp bursts into tears.

“This is the plan,” Nami says, spreading a map of the island over the table. “We,” she points at Robin and then at himself, “will stay with the ship.”

Everybody nods. Keeping the women away from any danger is the smartest course of action. To ensure the Cook doesn't get it into his head that he might be needed there, Jinbe will stay back as well.

They're divided into pairs, because Robin argued that it'd be good to have someone keeping an eye on the Cook while they explored the area. Luffy goes with Franky, Zoro with Chopper, and the Cook with Brook. It had been Robin's idea as well to split up Luffy, Zoro and the Cook.

This time travel cult is, in Nami’s words, painfully cliché. They’re meeting in a maze of interconnected caves, for starters, although Trinket had told them that was simply because that’s where the portal was located.

“Then the portal is cliché,” Nami had grumbled, and Trinket had agreed.

Other than the location, though, the cult could pass for a normal group of people. Nobody’s wearing robes or cloaks or anything suspicious. There’s a woman in sandals, and a guy in shorts.

Chopper sniffs the air.

“Anything odd?” Zoro asks, his entire being attuned to their surroundings and beyond. Luffy and Franky are standing still somewhere in this underground maze with a person Zoro doesn’t know—probably the poor bastard that was supposed to get thrown into the portal—, while the Cook and Brook are moving around, checking for threats.

That’s another strange thing: they haven’t run into any guards. Nothing to keep out intruders, nothing to catch unwanted visitors. The whole thing reeks of a trap, but minutes pass with nobody coming for them. Luffy and Franky leave the caves with the other person and, still, nothing.

The other pair comes closer to where they are, getting ready to stop this weird cult that’s not doing anything.

And then, darkness.

No, not darkness. Nothingness.

One second Zoro is listening for attackers and watching every shift of the light and shadows, and the next, he can’t see anything and the only sound he hears is his own heartbeat drumming in his ears. He can’t feel the ground under his feet, he can’t tell if he’s standing on anything, and when he breathes in he can’t feel the air entering his lungs. There isn’t even any resistance when he moves.

He’s suspended in the void, in a place where your own existence stops being a certainty, so alone that an unprepared mind could break.

Zoro has trained for this. He has walked into dark, empty caves where he only has his own heartbeat for company, places where he’s been stripped down to his core and rebuilt himself. He isn’t afraid of nothingness.

He focuses on what he knows exists beyond him. He searches for Chopper’s presence and for the cult members. Failing that, he looks farther away—for the Cook, who burns like a beacon, and for Luffy, who shines like the sun. Heat and light he can follow back before someone important gets hurt.

After an eternity, he glimpses something at the edge of his consciousness, and then he smells cigarette smoke.

Every time Zoro has sought absolute solitude to train, the first sign of home he’s found on his way back has been that same smell. He follows it once more.

His steps take him nowhere, but he doesn’t stop moving.

Then he tastes blood.

There’s fear all around him, settling on his bones, seeping through them and making its way to their center to become part of the marrow.

The feeling isn’t Zoro’s. It claws at his soul, calls to him like damnation itself, and Zoro lunges towards it, this weak link to reality that threatens to tear him apart.

Zoro comes crashing down into the cave he’d been in before. His knee hits the rocks on the ground with a force that makes him grit his teeth to keep from making a sound, the fabric of his pants tearing with the friction. Warm blood trickles down his leg, a minor discomfort he can easily ignore. There are far more important things happening around him.

Most of the cult has been subdued. It wasn’t even a dozen people, and they’ve all already been rounded up and beaten. There are signs of battle all around—crushed rocks, burn marks, pieces of wood and fabric from what seem to be banners, and that’s when Zoro realizes that this isn’t the place from where he was taken. This might be deeper into the caves, or wherever it is that the ritual was supposed to happen.

The nothingness is pulling at Zoro’s shoulders, trying to drag him back, but the fear is still present, weighing down his shoes and keeping him in this damp cave.

“Zoro!” Chopper calls, relieved and broken, but it doesn’t sound like the emotion that brought him back.

“You’re back!” Brook cheers. Definitely not what tied Zoro to the world.

Zoro turns towards the sound of their voices and hurries to join them.

“Where’s the Cook?” he asks Brook. If that idiot went back to the ship-

“He went after the…” Brook gestures vaguely with his hands. “We don’t know what that was. I don’t think it was a person, not anymore.”

“It’s the thing that caught you!” Chopper says, sniffing the air and taking off in a run down a corridor.

Zoro and Brook follow him.

“It’s like… a big shadow!” Chopper explains, never slowing down. “One moment you were there and the next there was this big black nothing shaped like you!”

“Like me?”

“It even moved a bit like you,” Brook adds.

“I think it was starting to look like you when Sanji chased it off,” Chopper says.

They reach a new wide area and find the Cook trading attacks with a human-shaped void. Behind them, the air shimmers.

They’ve found the portal.

“Good to see you’re back, Marimo,” the Cook says through gritted teeth, dodging and kicking. The relief in his voice resonates with the last wisps of fear that hang from Zoro’s clothes.

Zoro draws Enma and joins the fight. If any sword is capable of cutting nothingness, it’s her.

“Don’t touch it directly!” the Cook warns when Chopper tries to charge their enemy.

Chopper stops just in time and finds himself pulled back by Brook, who charges with his own sword.

“What is this?” Zoro asks, lunging when the Cook steps back, forcing the void to retreat.

“No idea, but I think it was trying to be you. That’s why it ate you.” The disapproval is clear in the Cook’s voice. His jaw is still clenched.

“It clearly has taste,” Zoro says, never letting the void close enough to touch him.

The Cook scoffs and Zoro chances a look at him, smirking despite the seriousness of the situation. They’re overpowering this thing, they’re going to beat it soon, and the Cook will get to go back to pining after Nami with no risk to himself.

His stomach sinks when he catches sight of the Cook’s left hand. For the first time since he became the best, Zoro falters.

It’s Brook who covers for his mistake, keeping the void at bay.

“You’re bleeding,” Zoro says, thinking of the smell of cigarettes and the taste of blood that brought him back.

There’s no time to be weak. He slashes at the void and hears it scream.

The Cook glances at him and lunges for the void again, with a flaming kick to where the head would be.

“I had to make it spit you out,” the Cook says, dodging, going low so Zoro can attack. “I figured it became what it ate, so I tainted its meal.” He smiles, somehow both smug and self-deprecating. “It lost its Marimo-ness as soon as it got a taste of me, so there might be some hope left for its palate.”

Zoro knows he has to focus on the fight, but the last twenty-one years of his life are crashing down around him.

“Focus, Marimo!” the Cook yells, jumping in front of Zoro, using Zoro’s shoulders for support so he can throw a high kick that pushes the void directly into Brook’s path.

“Your hand.” It’s the only thing Zoro can think to say.

The Cook is standing directly in front of him, and this isn’t the moment for this, but there’s blood seeping through Zoro’s shirt over his shoulder and there are only nine fingers instead of ten pressing against him.

Zoro’s eye is glued to the Cook’s face and the Cook’s expression doesn’t reveal anything.

“I told you it wasn’t about Nami-san,” the Cook says simply. Resigned. He lets go of Zoro and takes a step back. He turns around without sparing Zoro another look.

“No,” Zoro says. He doesn’t know what it is that he’s denying.

The Cook isn’t listening to him anymore. He’s fighting the void, kicking, burning, pushing back while Brook tries to hurt that thing.

They have to win before they lose the Cook. If they win this now, the Cook will look at Zoro and say that he lied, that he’s loved Nami all along. If they win this now, Zoro can pretend that nothing has changed.

Zoro rejoins the fight, vicious in his desperation, and Enma seems to sing as they break the void down to pieces.

He truly believes they’re going to make it. They almost make it, that’s the worst part. The glimpse of victory, the hope.

The Cook’s pant leg rides up when he delivers a high kick, exposing his ankle. The void reaches for him, tries to touch his skin, and the Cook throws himself back to avoid it. He puts a hand down to regain his balance, but it’s his left hand. The wound that’s left where his ring finger should be touches the ground and the Cook’s wrist bends instead of supporting his weight. He falls back.

It’s so stupid. It’s so unbelievably, spectacularly stupid.

The Cook’s visible eye is wide as he realizes what’s happening. He extends a hand forward and Zoro rushes to him, tries to catch him before he’s gone because he promised this wouldn’t happen, he promised they wouldn’t lose the Cook, he promised he’d take care of everyone and the Cook cut off his finger to save Zoro and the Cook loves Zoro not Nami and the Cook is gone while the void is still here and this was not supposed to happen.

Zoro's hand closes over nothing. He turns around and unleashes Hell.

This is what Luffy and Franky find when they follow the path of violence towards the rest of their crewmates: Chopper and Brook crying, pieces of nothingness scattered all over the ground, and Zoro standing in front of a shimmering light.

“Where’s Sanji?” Luffy asks. His tone says that he already knows.

“In the past,” Zoro says, gesturing at the portal.

“Okay.” Zoro turns to look at Luffy and finds him staring ahead grimly. “We’ll get him back.”

Zoro nods. He swallows.

“He did it for me.” Chopper and Brook heard the Cook’s explanation too, there’s no point in withholding the information. “It was always about me.”

And Luffy—who knows everything and nothing, who sees each little thing that makes you you with just a glance—meets Zoro’s gaze and says, “Yeah, I know.”

Chapter Text

The Sunny’s figurehead is a jarringly cheerful sight in the distance. The lion wouldn't be smiling if it knew a member of the crew was gone.

I told you it wasn’t about Nami-san.

They’re dragging along the stupid, ridiculous time travel cult, who happen to be the sort of idiots you’d expect to go along with such a stupid concept. Too much money and time, not enough empathy. More interested in looking good while messing up with one of the laws of the universe than with who might get screwed over in the process.

I told you it wasn’t about Nami-san.

Who the fuck worships time travel. Why the fuck would anybody join a cult. Who the fuck wears sandals and shorts to a ritual. What the fuck was that thing Zoro cut to pieces.

I told you it wasn’t about Nami-san.

The cultists won’t stop whining, and if Zoro doesn’t get away from them he’ll snap.

He catches Luffy’s eye, gestures towards the Sunny with his head, and walks faster, until he can’t hear anyone.

Things will get better. They’ll make the Marines handle these people. Franky will start putting together the thing he and Usopp designed just for this. Usopp will get here in a week and then he and Franky will get the Cook back.

Things will be normal again.

I told you-

Nami and Robin are visible now, leaning over the Sunny's railing, not bothering to pretend that they weren't waiting for them.

-it wasn't-

“Hey!” Nami calls, waving at him, eager and relieved.

-about Nami-san.

If Zoro had done his job right, it’d be him and the Cook going down this dirt road, arguing because the Cook would have hated that Zoro had actually succeeded in saving him. The bickering would end the moment the Cook heard Nami, because he’d be more interested in waving back at her and calling her name, as enthusiastic and adoring as he'd always been.

You don’t know shit, Moss-head.

He adored Nami, but he loved Zoro.

I was protecting the love of my life.

Something must show on Zoro’s posture, on the way he walks, because Nami stills and lowers her arm.

Zoro stops and looks up at her from the ground, wondering for what must be the hundredth time how they got it so wrong.

Nami rushes down the Sunny, with Robin and Jinbe following at a measured pace. She stops in front of Zoro, grabs the front of his clothes with one hand and looks up at him with eyes made wide by fear.

“Where’s Sanji-kun.” A demand, not a question.

“In the past.” Saying it a second time drives home the enormity of Zoro’s failure.

“That can't be!” Nami's free hand gestures between them. “We took every precaution! I stayed behind! You were all there!” She puts her hand on Zoro’s shoulder and holds on tight enough for him to wonder about bruises. “If you tell me this was some fated thing…”

She swallows and loosens her grip. She doesn’t remove her hands. It's Robin who makes her let go of Zoro when she and Jinbe reach them.

Zoro expects her to comfort Nami, but instead she turns her gaze to him, assessing. Regretful.

She's the one that suggested Sanji, Zoro and Luffy split up.

“You knew,” Zoro says, a hint of a growl in his voice.

Robin nods. Nami looks from Zoro to Robin and back to Zoro. Her shoulders are tense, her expression is pained.

The rest of the crew, along with the stupid time travel cult, can be heard approaching.

“It wasn't about you,” Zoro tells Nami. The words taste like blood, anchoring him to the world.

Nami furrows her brow. She looks behind Zoro and returns her gaze to him.

The sharp intake of breath gives away the moment she figures it out.

“Oh,” Jinbe says.

Zoro doesn't turn around when the others reach them. He faces Nami and waits for her to give him the judgment that Luffy didn't.

If he was someone else, he could try to save himself. He could point out that nobody knew how the Cook felt and that the Cook himself never said anything about it. Zoro, however, isn't a coward. It's his job to see what will bring them trouble. He should have believed him when the Cook said it wasn’t about Nami.

Give me a smile, Marimo.

He should have known twenty-one years ago, just from that request. He's never fulfilled it.

Nami only looks at him. The crew is silent, and even the idiot cultists seem to have gotten the memo that this isn't the time for them to whine about shit.

“It wasn't your fault, Zoro,” Robin says.

Of course someone would say that. Of course they wouldn't want him to take responsibility for this. Zoro knows better.

Nami should have known better too, but she nods at Robin's words. Only once, a small movement of her head, but a nod nonetheless.

“The crew is my responsibility,” Zoro says, and makes his way to the Sunny.

At some point through the years, Zoro realized that arguing with the Cook after a fight was a great way to deal with excess adrenaline. The habit leads him to the galley today. It doesn't matter that the Cook won't be there, that his footsteps won't follow Zoro to stop him from taking any booze he can find; he needs some normalcy.

It's that normalcy that stops him at the threshold. There are dishes drying by the sink and the leftovers from lunch are cooling on the counter so they can be stored in the fridge. The full ashtray makes the room smell of cigarettes, despite the open window.

It's the lack of knives that makes him look twice. None of the Cook’s knives are drying alongside the dishes; they're all in their block, perfectly organized. Another look at the ashtray and Zoro notices that the box of cigarettes the Cook tends to keep next to it is gone.

Zoro steps into the galley. He doesn’t let go of the door until he's too far inside to keep touching it.

The place is spotless, as usual. The dish towel by the sink is dry and clean. New, even though the Cook had changed it yesterday. Zoro was there when he did.

The leftovers on the counter have been labeled. A closer look reveals the Cook didn't just write what's in each container, but also how long it'll last and what other dishes they can be used in.

Zoro opens the fridge.

Nami's footsteps are unmistakable as they come into the room, her heels clacking against the wood.

She stands next to Zoro.

“Oh, Sanji-kun,” she says softly, taking in the wall of carefully piled-up containers inside the fridge, organized by the day they must be eaten and each portion labeled with the crewmember it belongs to.

“There must be enough for a week here,” Zoro notes. He lowers his eye to the bottom of the fridge to confirm his suspicion: there are two additional containers for the last day, for Kaya and Usopp.

Nami follows his gaze and kneels in front of those portions to trace the carefully written names. After a moment, she stands up again, closes the fridge and grabs Zoro by the arm to lead him to the table.

If it was anybody else—even Chopper, even Luffy—Zoro wouldn't allow it. Nami, however, has been there from the beginning, even when she tried to tell herself that she wouldn't be part of the crew. She might not have seen all of Zoro’s struggles, but she was there when Luffy barely had a boat and didn't even have a flag, when Luffy was a seventeen year-old with the sun in his smile and dreams as big as the world. She knows as well as Zoro how much faith and stubbornness it took to follow Luffy at first. All the others came later, when Nami and Zoro were there to vouch for their captain's determination, when they couldn't defend his lack of sense. Nami knows that Zoro has never allowed himself to be anything but Luffy’s most reliable crewmember. If sometimes she took him out for drinks and didn't add them to his debt, that was between the two of them.

The Cook would have had a seizure if he'd known.

Zoro smirks before he remembers that the Cook doesn't love Nami. His expression hardens again. If the Cook was here, he’d try to cut him into ribbons for this.

“What happened?” Nami says, pushing Zoro to sit down and taking a place in front of him

Interrogation, then, not sympathy. Good.

“How much do you know?”

“Almost the same I knew when you all left.” Nami drums her fingers on the table once. “I came after you when I saw that nobody else was hurt.”

Zoro clicks his tongue. That sounds like sympathy.

“Some… Void thing ate me and the Cook fed it his finger to make it spit me out.”

Nami gets up and comes back with a bottle of sake and two cups.

“And then?”

“We went to fight that thing, he lost his balance and fell through the time portal.”

“Oh, Sanji-kun,” Nami says again. Zoro pours himself a cup of sake to keep himself from screaming.

“He did this to himself,” Zoro growls. 

Nami stares at him for a long moment during which Zoro starts sweating, even though he could swear the temperature in the galley has dropped.

She pours herself a cup as well and drinks it slowly, holding eye contact with Zoro.

“I didn’t need saving!” he snaps, with that edge of panic that only Nami can elicit these days.

She sets down her empty cup and waits for a couple of seconds before saying through gritted teeth, “Everybody needs saving sometimes. Even Luffy.”

“It’s my job to keep everyone safe!” Zoro yells, standing up. Thriller Bark burns in his memory.

“And you failed this time! Is that what you want to hear?” Nami cries, getting up as well. She points at him and continues, “Forget about it! He made a choice; you said it yourself!”

“A stupid choice he didn't need to make!”

“Something ate you, you stubborn-”

“I’d have found my way out of that thing!”

Nami gapes and recovers in record time.

“He saved you and this is how you react?”

“There'd have been no need for that if he'd told me how he felt!”

For the second time in less than a minute, Nami’s rendered speechless. She's still furious, but her voice is lower when she asks, “Would you have accepted his feelings?”

Zoro reels.

“No!” He grimaces at the idea. “I'd have been more careful today!”

“Don’t you fucking dare to lie to my face, Zoro!” Nami emphasizes her words by slamming her hands on the table once. She lowers her head, hiding her scowl. “I know what you would have done, because it's the same thing I've been doing this year. You'd have pushed him away to save him, and in the end this would have happened anyway.”

Zoro clenches his jaw.

Nami sits back down, her shoulders low, and refills her cup.

“You'd have done the same stupid thing I've been doing all this time, rejecting him completely because maybe then he'd forget about you and be safe.” She stares into her drink.

“I don’t feel the same. Rejection was a given,” Zoro says, the fight leaving him as well.

“He knew that,” Nami says. “But in trying to save him, you'd have been needlessly cruel and it wouldn’t have changed anything because that's what he's like.”

Zoro drops on his seat.

“I should have noticed.” He’d been congratulating himself on all the little things he’d picked up through the years, and yet the Cook had been a glaring blind spot.

Nami drinks.

“We didn't learn anything from dealing with the Vinsmokes, did we?” Her mocking smile is an accusation of their naivety. “If he wants to hide something, he does. He fooled us all.”

“Not Luffy,” Zoro says quietly.

“Luffy doesn’t count.” Nami sighs. “We'll get Sanji-kun back,” she continues firmly. “And when we do, we'll yell at him for not letting us help him, and for scaring us like this.” She licks her lips. “And I'll apologize for being so cold to him since his birthday.”

Zoro grunts noncommittally. He can't think of anything he wants to say to the Cook, besides berating him for possibly endangering the crew with his silence.

They call Usopp to give him the news. They try to call Trinket, but she never picks up. Finally, they call Tashigi to deal with the cultists and the person they rescued from them. She isn’t anywhere near them, but she promises to send people she trusts to deal with the situation, and by nightfall it’s just the crew again.

Good, because the Cook didn’t leave any food prepared for those people. They don’t deserve it, but the Cook would have fed them anyway. He might even be worrying about that now, wherever he is.

The others gave Zoro looks during the day. By dinnertime, Zoro’s tempted to throw himself into the portal to avoid them. Only Nami and Luffy behave as usual. Even Robin watched him expectantly.

Zoro focuses on eating. The Cook made each of their favorites, as if trying to comfort them in his own way for what happened. It’s a feat that he managed to prepare enough food for a whole week without any of them noticing. Or maybe not. What’s there to notice when the Cook cooks? It’s like thinking there’s something odd in Brook playing the piano. If the Cook spent longer in the kitchen these days, they either didn’t notice or didn’t pay it any mind.

Franky clears his throat. “Should we… talk about today?”

Zoro cringes.

“In a debriefing way!” Franky hurries to explain. “Like… what we saw and what you fought!”

“I'm curious about that as well,” Robin says, leaning forward. “What you described… From what I understand, that entity was trying to assimilate Zoro?”

Normally, this is when Zoro would stop bothering with the conversation. They’ve already won the fight, there’s nothing else to think about. Tonight, he listens, because there must have been a solution that didn’t involve the Cook mutilating himself. They’re going to find that solution and Zoro’s going to be furious at the Cook for jumping at the self-sacrificing option when there was another one available, and it’ll prove… something. He doesn’t know what, but something will be proven.

Chopper tells them about the void swallowing Zoro whole. Zoro hears about the Cook reaching the cave to find Chopper avoiding the attacks from a shadow that moved like Zoro, and then chasing it away, leaving Chopper and Brook to deal with the cult. Zoro repeats for everyone what the Cook had told him.

He doesn’t tell them about tasting blood when the void ate the Cook’s finger. If he thinks too hard about what that means, he’ll throw up.

“Couldn’t he have tried to feed that void something else?” he grumbles.

“I’m sure he tried,” Robin says, judging.

It’s Luffy’s stare that makes him feel small.

“Zoro.” He doesn’t even need to raise his voice for the crew to go silent.

Zoro doesn’t want to take this anymore. He gets up and heads outside without a word.

He didn’t expect Luffy to follow him.

“Zoro,” Luffy calls again, softer than before. “You’re being mean.”

“I’m acting as usual.” To prove his point, Zoro sits against the mast and closes his eye.

“Zoro.”

“What.”

“You’re not angry at him.”

Zoro scoffs. “What makes you think that? I’m fucking pissed, Luffy.” He figures he should look at his captain for this. Luffy’s crouching in front of him, expression unreadable.

“Yeah, but you’re not angry at Sanji.”

There’s no point in talking. There’s never been one when Luffy gets an idea into his head.

“I miss him too,” Luffy continues.

“I don’t miss him.”

Luffy’s face doesn’t change, but Zoro knows he doesn’t believe him. “You’re worried about him, but you shouldn’t be. We’re getting him back.”

Zoro put his faith in Luffy long before the world could imagine what he’d be, and he’s yet to be let down. Now that he’s King of the Pirates, only a fool would doubt him. Luffy will punch through time itself to drag the Cook back home if he has to.

Zoro tilts his head back and looks at the stars.

“How did you know?”

“Huh?”

“That he got hurt for me.” That he loved me.

“He was always finding you. Like you find booze or I find meat.”

Zoro frowns at that, thinking of following the smell of cigarettes to get home when he’d needed it.

The smell of food, coaxing him out of the crow's nest at mealtimes.

The Cook’s fear while Zoro was gone, calling him back.

No, the Cook never found Zoro. He gave Zoro the option of finding him instead.

“How do I repay that?” Zoro asks the night sky.

“You don't,” Luffy says, flicking Zoro between the eyebrows. “Don't be stupid,” he continues, uncaring of Zoro glaring at him. “It was a gift.”

One that Zoro never wanted nor asked for.

Luffy flicks him again.

“Stop that. You're thinking too much.”

“What do you know?”

Luffy shrugs. “I know that you're both dumb, but we've gotten this far. Things will be fine.”

“You make it sound easy.”

“You make it too complicated.”

Luffy stands up and dusts off his pants. He gives Zoro a long look, nods to himself, and leaves.

The night sky and the sea are the same they've always been. Neither seems to know that Zoro’s understanding of the world changed completely in the last twelve hours.

Luffy’s right. Zoro’s problems are small and he's overthinking.

Zoro closes his eye and readies himself to deal with more awkwardness for the foreseeable future.

Before, Zoro used to stay alert for when the Cook would inevitably come over to interrupt his training, insisting on the importance of a break. Now, if Zoro doesn’t remind himself to stop, nobody comes for him. Part of him wants to keep pushing himself out of spite. The other part tells him that, unfortunately, the Cook was right about pauses, and that if Zoro doesn’t take care of himself when he isn’t around, the Cook will be smug about it when he returns.

So Zoro pauses after every hour and pretends he doesn’t notice the crew watching him when he goes into the galley for water and a snack.

It's Robin who climbs up to the crow’s nest on their third day of waiting for Usopp.

She sits by the window and doesn't say a word.

“Why didn’t you stop him?” There’s no need to explain what he means.

Robin smiles, tight-lipped and sympathetic.

“He loves you. There was no point in trying.”

It’s the first time someone has said it aloud. Zoro grits his teeth and lowers his face.

He doesn’t want to talk about this anymore.

Despite all the crying they got to hear when they gave him the news, Usopp still sheds some more tears when he gets to Aparición. He covers his eyes with his forearm and sobs over ‘Sanji’s brave sacrifice’. He goes so far as to cling to Zoro and cry on his shoulder, while Kaya offers him tissues and a bag in which to drop the dirty ones.

When Zoro can’t take it anymore, Kaya takes Usopp’s hand and guides him to lean against her. They hold each other while Usopp insists that things would have gone differently if he’d been there. Kaya nods solemnly at his words, despite knowing them to be a lie, and stands on tiptoes to kiss the top of his head.

The sincerity of the spectacle makes Zoro look away. He leaves while everyone is distracted to try to get himself together.

They're getting the Cook back today and he still doesn’t know what he's going to say to him.

They make their way back to the portal and wait while Franky and Usopp set up the thing that will let them reach back in time for the Cook.

Zoro doesn't know how the science works and he doesn't care. What he knows is that everything at this point should be pretty straightforward: they strap a harness thing on Luffy, grab his arm, and send him through the portal. The Cook should be waiting for him at the other side, and Luffy will give the signal to be pulled back once he’s found him.

Easy, right?

Wrong.

Luffy hasn't been gone for two seconds and he's gesturing to be brought back. He's drenched when he returns.

“The portal opened over the sea!”

“What,” Zoro says flatly.

Luffy nods.

“Oh. Of course,” Robin says, dismayed.

All eyes turn to her.

“Back then, Sanji fell on the Merry. In the middle of the ocean in the Grand Line.” She furrows her brow, upset. “That's where the portal must open to right now.”

“But how?” Usopp asks. “Shouldn’t a portal always lead to the same place?”

“Maybe the portals move,” Jinbe suggests. “Like the planet and the currents.”

“I'll check again!” Luffy announces while running to launch himself through time a second time.

This time, Jinbe jumps after him, and it takes longer for Luffy to give the signal for them to reel them home.

Both Luffy and Jinbe are wet now, and the report is the same as before: the portal opens in mid-air right over the ocean. The Cook wasn't there.

They run back to the Sunny to try to contact Trinket, even though she hasn't answered any of their calls since the Cook disappeared.

She doesn't answer this time either. Her husband does, at least.

“I'm sorry,” Coin says, sounding like he means it. “She's been having some problems since last week.”

“What sort of problems?” Zoro asks.

I wouldn’t trust me either, Trinket had said, and Zoro hasn’t forgotten the warning.

There's a pause before Coin says, “Someone stole her best kept secret. She's on a recovery mission.”

“Should you be telling us that?” Nami points out.

“She would have told you the secret last week if this hadn't happened.” Zoro can practically hear him shrugging. “She told me she expected you to call today and asked me to answer any questions you might have about what went wrong with the rescue mission.”

In a flash, Luffy’s face turns serious. “How does she know about that?”

“Well… Please don’t get angry, Straw Hat, but she has known for years.”

“What?!”

“I know how bad that sounds.” Coin sighs. “She wanted to tell you, but she made a promise to Black Leg that she wouldn’t.”

“Sanji knew?!” Luffy’s practically climbing on the table to try to fight the den den mushi, which cowers under the evident threat.

“It’s complicated. Can I ask that you trust her?”

Luffy looks furious. Robin gestures at him and addresses Coin. “What can you tell us about what happened today?”

“I assume you went through the portal and didn’t find Black Leg, right?”

“Yes.”

Another sigh. “That’s because the portals move. Or rather, they don't.” Coin hums. “Let's see… to put it simply, while a portal always stays at the same place in the present, in the past it opens on a spot that depends on the time of day and the date. It can be determined if you study the portals, but if you don't, you can't guess where you'll go.”

“That makes no sense!” cries Usopp.

“It does, but it's hard to explain like this. I'm sorry.”

“So how do we get Sanji back?” Luffy demands.

“You can't,” Coin says simply. “At least not in the way you’d planned. He doesn't know where the portal is at the time, so you won’t find him if you go to the past. I'm sorry.”

“You're wrong,” Luffy says, glaring at the den den mushi. “We'll get him back. We'll go back ourselves to find him if we have to.”

“Straw Hat…” Coin starts, tone conciliatory. “I know this is difficult, but can I ask you to trust my wife and your cook?”

They all exchange looks.

“Sanji knows about this?”

“It’s complicated. But he has a plan to come back to you. He’s had it since the day he met Trinket. Can you believe that he’ll be able to return with all of you as soon as Trinket comes home?”

No, Zoro thinks.

Luffy looks at all of them in turn.

“Alright,” he says. “We’ll wait. But if she doesn’t call in a month, we’re finding her.”

“If she doesn’t call in a month, I’ll be begging you to find her.” Coin clears his throat. “Do you have any more questions?”

“Do you know anything about a void creature?” Robin asks before anybody else can speak.

“The one that tried to eat Roronoa?”

“How do you know about that too?” Zoro asks.

“Ah, that’s not my secret to tell, I’m sorry.”

Zoro wishes he could shake this man through the line.

“So?” Robin prompts. “What do you know about that?”

“Devil fruit user gone wrong. Subjected himself to some experiments and lost his identity, so he eats people to gain a new one,” Coin says matter-of-factly. “The time travel cult was just his way of finding new people to impersonate. The ones that were sent through time were the lucky ones, in fact.”

Zoro grimaces. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Nami shiver.

“What did you do with him?” Coin asks.

“Zoro cut him down to ribbons,” Luffy says.

“Good. He was a creep. He gave trouble to a friend of us for years.”

“And you didn’t think to tell us about him?!” Nami says.

“Again, that’s not something I decided. You’ll have to ask Trinket and Black Leg.” Even more sighing. Being married to Trinket sounds exhausting; the Cook dodged a bullet there. “I’m begging you to trust them, Straw Hats.”

“One month,” Luffy remarks.

“One month,” Coin agrees. “Thank you.”

The call ends. Zoro sort of wants to go and fight Trinket now.

“What now, captain?” he asks Luffy, ignoring everyone else.

“We wait,” Luffy says. He climbs down from the table, looks around and, after a moment, he finds his smile. “Okay, let’s go see what else is in this island, yeah?”

The wait is hell. Luffy has a blast taking down a series of local crime rings, but Zoro needs more than that to keep his mind busy. All he can do is to think and remember, latching onto his failure to notice the glaringly obvious.

Now that Zoro knows what to look for, he finds the Cook’s love all over his memories of him. A million moments of affection hidden behind a smokescreen.

He should have known the day they found the All Blue, when the Cook turned to him with a smile on his face and said, “What do you think, Zoro?”

He should have known after he beat Mihawk, when the Cook hurried over to support him and asked, “What now, Zoro?”

He should have known when he made good on his promise to kill the Cook. When they thought that there was no hope for him and Zoro drove a sword through his chest.

“Thank you, Zoro,” the Cook said, putting his arms around Zoro’s neck and hiding his face in his shoulder, getting them closer to each other and worsening the injury. From afar, they must have looked like lovers.

The prepared meals the Cook left them ran out the day Usopp and Kaya arrived, so they’re back to a chore roster to keep themselves fed. Zoro’s sure that even the Cook would have been unable to praise Nami’s scrambled eggs. Zoro misses eating food made especially for him to enjoy.

He misses having someone to bicker with.

He misses the challenge that fighting with the Cook was.

He misses being able to think about the Cook without being angry at himself.

At least being pissed at the Cook isn’t new.

It’s not a surprise when Usopp climbs to the crow’s nest and clears his throat. It is a surprise that it only took him eight days to do so, considering how everyone has been avoiding Zoro.

“Who put you up to this?”

“Kaya,” Usopp says, sitting down on the floor. He has a beard these days. He still smiles when he says his wife’s name, and even more if you bring up his kids.

Zoro hums and sits down next to him. He gestures for Usopp to get on with it.

Usopp swallows and averts his gaze. There goes his courage.

“I don’t know, really.” He rubs the back of his neck. “Is there anything going through your head?”

If Zoro lies, this conversation will end in a moment. Same if he doesn’t say anything.

They could have saved themselves a lot of trouble with a bit more honesty.

“Back at Trinket’s wedding, I told the Cook that love is a choice. That he could choose to fall out of love with this person that was going to get him in trouble.”

Usopp cringes. Yeah, Zoro can see it too. He soldiers on.

“I don’t understand why he didn’t. He knew I didn’t feel the same.”

For Zoro, life had been about becoming the best and helping Luffy achieve his goal. After that, it had been about staying the best and keeping Luffy safe. There hadn’t been room for the Cook in his thoughts, so why hold onto hope for it?

“You’ve never been in love, huh?” Usopp is giving him a slightly condescending smile that Zoro doesn’t appreciate.

“I never saw the point.”

“Yeah, I can tell.” Usopp puts an elbow on his knee and props up his chin on his hand. “Romance isn’t a thing you do for yourself. It’s like friendship in that way. You don’t love your friends so they’ll love you back, you just do it, and this type of love is the same.”

Zoro scoffs. “You can say that because you’re married to Kaya. She looks easy to love.”

“Yeah, she’s amazing. So what? I spent years away from her. I could have fallen out of love in that time. It’d have made things easier with the Merry, or whenever I had doubts. But she was wonderful and I wanted to keep loving her, because I thought she deserved it.” He sighs. “Even when I thought there wasn’t much value in my love, I thought it was the best thing I could give her, so it was hers.”

“That’s masochistic.”

“Maybe.” Usopp shrugs. “But when I saw her again, I didn’t regret my decision. She was still just as wonderful. She still is. That’s why every day I go and decide to fall for her again.”

Zoro frowns. “Isn’t that something that just happens?”

“Who told you that?” Usopp says with a laugh. “You said it yourself, love is a choice. A lot of the time it’s not a conscious one, but it is one. Whenever Kaya does something that makes me happy, I choose to appreciate it and make it feed my love for her. Whenever she does something that annoys me, I decide not to let it affect my love for her. Every day, I choose her, and I’m lucky that she chooses me every day too.” He rubs his eyes, which became bright with tears while he was speaking. It’s uncomfortable to see.

“So what? I should go and choose to be in love with the Cook?” It makes sense, doesn’t it? It’s the only way to make it up to him. To repay the Cook for giving up a finger for him.

Usopp lowers his hands to give him an unimpressed look. “How is that the conclusion you’re drawing from this?” He sighs. “You don’t have to do anything. I love Kaya because I want to. Sanji loves you because he wants to. If you’re going to accept his feelings, it should be because you want to.” Usopp gets up. “Stop thinking about it so much,” he says. “See what happens when we get him back.”

“You really think that’s going to happen?”

Usopp raises an eyebrow and stares at him for a second. “Are you worried it won’t?”

“I didn’t say that.”

Usopp tilts his head. Then he shakes it and ends the conversation, leaving Zoro alone with the thoughts that haven’t stopped swirling around his head since he understood the Cook’s feelings.

As much as Zoro hates to admit it, he and the Cook have always been complementary equals. Zoro is certain that he's stronger, and more loyal, but in the end they're Luffy’s wings and they work together for the same goal.

The Cook being in love with him breaks the balance. The Cook has stakes in every fight that Zoro doesn't have, and it gives him an edge, doesn't it? If the Cook loves him, then Zoro has fallen behind, because the Cook saw something in Zoro that was different from what Zoro saw in him. They're supposed to match each other. Zoro is supposed to be the one person the Cook doesn't have to worry about.

Zoro’s head is a mess and he's fairly sure that his line of thought makes no sense. He should stick to facts instead of trying to think about things.

What he knows is that the Cook loves him. That the Cook is gone. That the only thing he ever expected from Zoro was death, and the resignation makes Zoro itch to break his nose. Zoro has more to offer than violence, so why wouldn't the Cook ask for that?

When Zoro killed the Cook, he let go of Wado and held him, unwilling to let him drop to the ground like some common enemy.

“Thank you, Zoro,” the Cook said, hugging him and pushing Wado further into his own chest.

“Don't mention it, Sanji,” Zoro whispered, feeling the Cook’s blood soak his clothes and the Cook’s tears on his neck.

Later, they found Zoro kneeling, the Cook held safely in his embrace. Luffy was furious, yelling about how there must have been another way.

Whatever it was that Germa had done to the Cook, it ended up saving his life. They'd been ready for the worst when he opened his eyes, but he smiled the same as always and said, “I'm sorry for worrying you all.”

Only then did Luffy forgive Zoro.

As requested, the Cook never mentioned it. The scar that Wado left on his chest is the only thing Zoro has ever given to him.

Three weeks and four days after the Cook’s disappearance, the promised call from Trinket finally comes. Zoro never thought he'd be happy to see the den den mushi wearing the white headband that means she's at the other end of the line.

“I'm so, so, so sorry for the delay,” Trinket says when they pick up. She sounds out of breath and exhausted. “And I’m so, so, so, so, so very sorry for hiding things from you all these years.”

“Are you okay?” Kaya asks.

“Not really!” It sounds slightly manic. “I haven't slept in three days and I think I inhaled smoke and my clothes are dirty and there's an uninvited guest in my house and I think you guys hate me now!” She laughs and, yeah, that sounds manic too. “But nothing’s broken and everything will be fine!”

“Love, I think you need a nap,” Coin can be heard saying in a low voice.

“Maybe she should eat something first?” another voice says.

The crew freezes. They know that voice.

Zoro’s heart speeds up.

“Later, later,” Trinket says. “Straw Hats! I have your cook! Come pick him up before something happens to him!”

“My dear Gem, that sounds threatening.”

Everyone crowds around the den den mushi.

“Sanji-kun!” Nami says, relieved and ready to cry.

“How are you, Sanji?” Robin asks.

Everyone but Zoro, who watches from afar. He isn’t ready for this.

“Ah, to hear your sweet voices is a balm for these old bones,” the Cook says, and everyone exchanges looks.

“Are you calling me old too, Sanji-kun?” Nami asks, nervous instead of angry.

“Of course not, Mellorine! You will always be radiant. I’m the only old one here.”

His voice is rougher than Zoro remembers it. Older. He doesn't want it to be older.

It's been twenty-one years, three weeks and four days since the Cook disappeared, and his voice reflects that.

“Where are you?” Nami asks.

“You know Pache? In the South Blue?” Trinket says.

Nami nods, saying, “We're about five days away from there. Four, if the wind helps us.”

“Perfect! We'll be waiting for you!” They hear Trinket take a deep breath. “Now, if you don't mind, I need to go collapse somewhere.”

“Do you mind if I…?” the Cook asks.

“Go ahead.”

“Hello, everyone,” the Cook says. “I'm sorry for worrying you.”

“You scared us!” Chopper cries.

“It truly wasn't my intention.”

“We talked to Coin when we couldn’t get you back,” Robin says.

“He told us how the conversation went. Please don’t be mad at Trinket, she was only doing what I asked from her.”

“Hiding information from us wasn’t very nice of you, Sanji,” Robin chastises.

“I was worried about time paradoxes. I really didn’t want to interfere too much.”

“I’ll forgive you when you’re back with us.”

“That is more than I could have ever dreamed of,” the Cook simpers.

Zoro rolls his eye.

“Is the Marimo there?”

Everyone’s attention focuses on Zoro.

“What do you want?” Zoro asks, finally approaching the den den mushi.

“Just wanted to hear you,” the Cook says softly. “Ah, I should end this call so you can come for me. I look forward to seeing you all!”

After a quick round of goodbyes, the call ends and they all rush to finally leave Aparición. The preparations distract everyone from Zoro.

“You're a musician, you have a good ear, right?” he asks Brook after they've set course. Too late, he realizes that he walked himself into a trap.

“I would if I had ears! Yohoho!” Brook says, but to Zoro it sounds like he's going through a script. Like he knows it'd be weirder if he didn't make the joke.

To stick to the script, Zoro groans.

“Why do you ask?” Brook says.

“The Cook. Did he sound older to you?”

“He sounded different. Are you worried?”

Zoro shakes his head, unsure of what he feels.

“He's been waiting for too long.” Waiting for Zoro to love him. Waiting for the crew to find him.

Brook tilts his head and stares with his empty eye sockets and the weight of a dead crew on his back.

“We're bringing him home now. Better late than never.”

Brook understands waiting. Zoro doesn't. He can't imagine wanting something and not reaching for it with both hands, fighting everyone on his way for it if he had to.

Then again, the one the Cook would have had to fight is Zoro himself. Zoro never does anything he doesn't want to, so what would have been the point of the fight?

He could have at least done Zoro the honor of trying.

Zoro really needs to stop thinking about this.

The house that Trinket claimed for herself in Pache is the same as every other house she has taken over since they met her: too big for two people, and full of things that won’t be missed for weeks if they’re stolen. The owners won’t suspect a thing when they come back from wherever they are.

Trinket greets them at the door, dressed in a long white dress. For the first time, Zoro sees her wearing sandals.

“Hey, guys,” she says, smiling apologetically at them, hugging those that let her do so.

She leads them to the living room. Her husband is sitting on a plush chair, his fingers tracing the words on the book on his lap. On a sofa, dressed in a dark blue suit, sits a man with eyebrows that anybody who hasn't been living under a rock for the last twenty years can recognize. His hair is shorter than the last time Zoro saw him, it only reaches the collar of his shirt. The white strands in it make it look much lighter than Zoro remembers it. He has a beard that's been braided. There are wrinkles all over his face, and he isn't smoking.

Someone gasps at the sight. The man beams at them.

“What the fuck is that beard?” Zoro says without thinking, and the man laughs instead of rising to the bait.

“Oh, come on!” Trinket glares at Zoro and goes over to the Cook to hand over some money.

Before anything else can be said, Luffy yells the Cook’s name and runs to wrap himself around him. Literally.

“Hey, Luffy!" the Cook says, patting Luffy’s back. “It’s been a while.”

What an understatement.

Zoro’s gaze goes to the Cook’s hands. The left ring finger is gone and the wound has healed. There's a golden band on the right one and Zoro sets his jaw at the sight, inexplicably annoyed.

“Don’t do that to us again, Sanji!” Luffy chastises. “Nami can’t cook!”

“Hey!” Nami yells, but it sounds half-hearted at best.

“Wait a minute,” Trinket says, looking at Luffy and then at the Cook. “Did you explain things after I left you to talk to them?”

The Cook’s sheepish smile seems to answer her question.

“Black Leg! That’s so mean of you!” She turns towards the rest of them and says, “I’m so sorry, I thought you knew. That’s not your cook! Or, well, not yet at least?”

“What?” Chopper says, walking forward to sniff the Cook. “It's him! It smells like him!”

“He isn't smoking,” Brook points out.

“I was forced to quit,” the Apparently-Not-the-Cook says, still in Luffy’s hold. He’s smiling softly.

Luffy leans back and squints at the Apparently-Not-the-Cook. “You’re Sanji, though.”

“I am, but what Trinket says is true.” He coughs once. “I come from the future. Your Sanji’s upstairs.”

They have to hold back Nami to keep her from beating the Older Cook into a pulp.

“What the fuck, Cook?!” Zoro says, readying himself to fight. Senior citizen or not, this man deserves at least a couple strikes.

“Are you sure you want to try that, Shitty Swordsman?” The Older Cook smirks. “I have twenty-one years of training on you.”

“I can still beat you!”

“Keep telling yourself that.”

“Boys!” Trinket chastises. She glares at the Older Cook. “You’re on thin ice, Black Leg.”

She makes them follow her to a room on the second floor. What they find when she opens the door is the Cook, their Cook, asleep on a plush chair. He's slumped to the side, his head propped up on his hand, his elbow on the armrest. His left hand rests on his lap. Zoro looks at the stump left where his ring finger used to be.

He looks peaceful. The only time Zoro had seen him like this, he'd been dying in his arms.

“Sanji?” Luffy calls.

The Cook is perfectly still. He doesn't seem to be breathing.

“He can't hear you,” Trinket says, gesturing for them to stay put and walking over to lean over the Cook. “He's frozen in time.”

“What?”

Trinket turns her head to smile at them. “Did you know that amber has been able to preserve ancient specimens in perfect condition for millennia?”

“But not alive,” Robin points out.

There's nothing to worry about. Zoro knows it, because the Older Cook is here, watching this happen. Soon, the Cook will wake up. He’ll be fine.

“Yeah, well, that's because there wasn't a devil fruit user working with it. He’s been with me since he fell through time,” Trinket says, turning towards the Cook again. Her expression softens, and she cups his face. “Wake up, Black Leg,” she whispers. “The wait is over.”

Zoro realizes that he has been holding his breath when the Cook’s chest begins to rise and fall steadily, and Zoro draws air into his own lungs at the same time.

The Cook opens his eyes.

“Am I still dreaming?” he says, sickeningly sweet, his gaze fixed on Trinket. “Such perfection can only be a product of my imagination. Or perhaps this is Heaven?”

“Not yet, Black Leg,” Trinket says, brushing stray hairs out of his face.

Zoro frowns. Didn't the Cook love him? Why is he letting Trinket touch him so casually?

“Your crew is finally here,” she continues.

The Cook seems to forget about her. Trinket steps back as he sits up in a hurry and looks around, just in time to catch an armful of Luffy.

“Sanji!” he says again, just as happy as earlier.

“Luffy!” Sanji says, hugging him tightly and hiding his face in Luffy’s shoulder.

Over twenty years of waiting. Frozen in time and kept safe by Trinket. Zoro turns to her, reluctantly impressed by what she accomplished.

“He's a bit older than he should be, sorry about that,” Trinket says, bowing in apology. “I woke him up for my wedding and for some other events.”

“It's just a few weeks, my Gem, it's alright,” the Cook says, sniffling. “And, besides, I wanted to be at your wedding. We had a splendid time there.”

Then his eyes catch on the other version of himself, who waves in greeting.

The Cook dries his eyes with his sleeve as best he can with Luffy wrapped around him. “Why are you here?”

“Officially, to play a prank on everyone.” The Older Cook smiles. “But really? I figured you deserved some good news after all this.” He raises his right hand, letting everyone see the ring on it. “I wanted to tell you that you're going to be okay. There will be bad days, sure, but when you get to be me? You'll be alright.”

The Cook licks his lips. Everyone is watching them interact, afraid of interrupting. Zoro, despite himself, waits for everything the Older Cook will reveal, his gut twisting at the idea that the Cook dared to move on.

“Do you love them?” the Cook asks. “The person I'll marry?”

The Older Cook scoffs. “Who do you take me for?”

The Cook nods and swallows. “Do they love you back?”

At that, the older Cook beams, the same radiant smile from when they were nineteen, and says, “They do.”

The Cook’s gaze meets Zoro’s and the weight of the hope in it nearly brings him to his knees. Twenty-one years of love, begging to be reciprocated. The first time the Cook has asked for what he wants.

Then the hope disappears, killed by resignation. Zoro can almost hear him thinking: if Zoro didn't choose him in twenty-one years, why should anything change now?

Zoro could pretend that this is about debts, but he isn’t a coward. This is entirely about what he wants, and what he wants is this overwhelming, stupid, self-sacrificing love that is being offered to him.

Zoro wants to find out what it’s like to be in love, and he wants it with this idiot. The only one that keeps up with him and keeps him on his toes. The idiot that feeds him and doesn’t let him get lost. The idiot that wants so ardently that he’s afraid of burning if he lets it show.

Love is a choice, selfish and selfless at the same time, and Zoro has made up his mind about it: he’s going to fall in love with Sanji.

He wants to be in love with Sanji.

Chapter Text

Hope does, as they say, spring eternal. It’s a stubborn, resilient little thing that you can’t manage to kill no matter how hard you try, and Sanji has been its victim his entire life. Hope is what allowed him to run towards the Orbit and leave Germa. Hope is what he clung to while he starved on that rock. Hope is what kept him alive when the Vinsmokes came back for him.

Not even meeting his future self had managed to get him rid of it. When Zoro killed him, he rejoiced in the knowledge that he'd never know what Sanji felt for him. When he found himself alive, he told himself he still had years ahead to get over the Marimo. When he fell for Chiara, for Tiffany, for Elena, he truly believed he'd gotten a better love, one that would last, one that wouldn't require his sacrifice.

Even when Sanji held his broken heart together with string and stubbornness, even when he practiced cooking with one finger less, part of him expected everything to turn out fine. How could it not, when Luffy himself was looking after him?

It all comes crashing down when they go fight that time travel cult and Chopper says, “That thing ate Zoro!”

There's a strange figure in front of Sanji, a person-shaped void that taunts him with its very existence. Sanji doesn't need any features to recognize that silhouette—he knows who stands at that height, he knows the line of those shoulders and the angle of that jaw. Sanji knows Zoro like he knows every knife in his kitchen, and so he understands that this shadow might be trying to be him, but it's yet to replace him.

“Spit him out,” Sanji growls, running towards the void.

He trades blows with the thing, pushing it back, demanding the return of the idiot he loves. He chases it through the cave system where the portal to the past waits for him, aware that every step he takes leads towards heartbreak. He can’t think of a single reason not to keep moving. If he manages to save Zoro, it’ll all be worth it.

Features start appearing on the shadow, allowing it to smile mockingly at Sanji. He has dreamed of kissing that mouth, and seeing it twisted into a mockery of its real smile fills Sanji with burning rage.

Stop that, he tells himself. Take a step back and think.

And he does. He studies the mouth, the nose, the eyes appearing on that void, and he understands what he’s seeing.

“You are what you eat, aren’t you?” he murmurs. He looks down at his hands and makes the choice he’d always known he’d make. He needs his feet to fight. He needs all his senses unimpaired. There’s no time to think of something else.

The scream that tears out of him when he cuts his finger has nothing to do with the pain.

Blood drips onto the ground as Sanji rushes forward, a steady trickle he doesn’t have the time to worry about.

“Let this work,” Sanji pleads to nothing in particular. “Let me see him again.”

He shoves his own severed finger into the thing’s mouth, laughing inside at it, at how it gave itself a weak spot when it acquired a proper shape. He feels the void trying to pull him in when his skin brushes against it, forcing him to jump back before Zoro’s fate is passed on to him.

“I hope you choke on that,” Sanji spits out, watching the void twist and flare. It screams, a wordless cry that freezes the blood in Sanji’s veins, and everything distinguishable about it disappears. It becomes a human-shaped void again.

Sanji doesn’t need to see Zoro to know he succeeded. He brings his ruined hand to his chest and gives himself a single second to dwell on what happened.

He doesn’t even get that. The shape lunges at him, forcing him to go on the defensive. It pushes him back through the tunnels, until they reach a wide area in which the most noticeable feature is a spot where the air shimmers.

Here it comes. He can stop waiting. He can stop being afraid. Soon it will be over.

He hadn't prepared himself for Zoro to find him before the end. He'd assumed that he'd fall to the past before Zoro found out the truth. Sanji realizes then that he'd still had some hope left in him. That all these years, he'd wondered if Zoro secretly felt the same and hadn't made a move because he'd been sure that Sanji loved Nami-san.

The last of Sanji’s hope dies when Zoro’s expression shifts to horror as understanding settles upon him. Sanji got a family and a place in the world, how dare he ask for more? He's not allowed to have all that and Zoro’s love too. At forty years of age, Sanji’s still the same he was at seven, at twelve, at nineteen, at twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three…

A selfish brat.

An idiot that stretches out a hand as he falls, praying to all these gods that don't love him that Zoro will get to him in time and save him.

And then he's in the past, broken-hearted and tired, choking back tears and hysterical laughter as his younger self sees how deeply Fate's hatred for him runs.

Seeing the Merry again fills him with melancholy. He wishes he could protect all of them from what's coming, that he could go and fight all their enemies before trouble comes to them. He can almost hear Trinket warning him against tampering with the past.

His breath catches when he sees Zoro, nineteen years old and still free from the weight of their dreams. He looks fragile like this, before he bulked up. He looks innocent, at this point in time before he tried to die for Luffy, before Sanji asked him to kill him.

I'm sorry, Sanji thinks, looking at Zoro. He'd forgotten what it was like to see both of his eyes, so he gives himself time to memorize the view, to keep it safe alongside his mother's face and his first glimpse of the All Blue. While Sanji’s sacrifice was worth it because he saved Zoro, falling into the past and getting to see him like this again is a sweet torture.

He tries to spare his past self the dread of knowing that Zoro found out how they feel.

He tries to tell Robin-chan how loved she is by all of them, that they’ll fight the world for her.

He tries to save Zoro the shame of thinking he failed. He wishes he could see him smile freely again.

As Sanji sails away from the Merry, taking one last look at the home that loved them all so much, he lets himself feel everything he has been carrying since the day he met himself. He curls over his mutilated hand and cries over the stupid hope he never managed to let go of. He cries because he protected his hands his entire life and knows he’d give them both up to save his crew if it came down to it. He cries because being ready to make a choice doesn’t make it any less painful. He cries because Zoro knows how he feels, and not even at the end could he pity Sanji enough to love him back.

Considering how far from the South Blue the Merry was when Sanji fell into the past, he doesn’t manage to get to Aparición at the time they’d agreed on. It’s nothing to worry about; Luffy’s probably making camp in front of the portal, waiting for him. If not, then he’s probably popping through it several times per day just to check if Sanji has finally arrived.

On the way to Aparición, Sanji carefully doesn’t think about seeing Zoro again, and how everyone must know now about his feelings for the sentient piece of moss. How he has pathetically yearned for two whole decades.

When he stops running away from his own awareness, he understands why Zoro had been so unimpressed with his love. Where Sanji saw devotion, Zoro saw masochism.

It’s time to give up. He’ll move on from this stupid love. He’ll find somebody else to love and offer her his stupid heart, all of it. He’ll offer his stupid soul, his hands, anything the new love of his life might want. He’ll belong fully to someone else and forget that he’d ever been Zoro’s. There are no instructions on how to get over someone, but he’ll figure it out, just as he’s figured out how to live without his left ring finger.

The wound heals on the way, faster than it should. Sanji taps on the scar Zoro left on his chest years ago—years in the future—and reminds himself that he’s human.

Forgetting Zoro becomes the last of Sanji’s priorities when he reaches Aparición and nobody comes for him. He finds the portal and waits. And waits. And keeps waiting. He wonders if he got it wrong somehow and explores the rest of the tunnels. He maps the cave system and then it hits him that the portal had opened on the Grand Line when he fell through it. He realizes that if Luffy and the others go through the portal, that’s where they’ll appear too. He should have stayed where he was. They’re a bunch of idiots not to have thought about that.

Now Sanji’s stuck in the past. He’d freak out about it if he hadn’t planned for this eventuality—as much as he trusts his crew, he also trusted Fate to try to screw him over, and he wasn't going to make it easy for her.

He heads to the docks and looks for a ship to take him to Pache, a private-ish island that’s considered to be more of an oversized garden by the people that have been there. He toys with the cigarette he got from his past self? Current self? He asks it for luck, which is all that's left for him now he's all out of hope.

“Where do you need to go?” calls a female voice from atop the figurehead of a small ship.

Sanji stares when he sees her, unable to stop himself. The woman has dark brown hair, brown eyes, thin lips, a hooked nose and olive skin, most of which is covered in words—lines and lines of text that wrap around her arms starting at her wrists, up to her shoulders to curl around her neck and to continue down to her torso. Her top doesn’t show her abdomen and she’s wearing pants, but Sanji knows there are words around her legs too. It’s impossible to forget someone like that, after all, and Sanji remembers her clearly from Trinket’s wedding. He and Zoro had argued whether or not she was more suspicious than the man with flowers in his beard and the woman with sunken eyes and no meat on her bones. He never learned her name. By the time the wedding comes, she will have shaved her head and covered her scalp with words as well.

The woman bears his staring impassively. She waits him out with the same easy smile that had been on her face when she called to him.

Sanji clears his throat and puts away the unlit cigarette.

“Forgive me, sweet canary, I was struck by your beauty.”

The woman laughs, clear and musical. “It happens. It’s fine.” She leans towards him. “So? Where to, traveler?”

“Pache.”

“Oh, we haven’t been there in a while.” She nods to herself and climbs off the figurehead, back to the deck. “It’s just as good a place as any, and less than a week’s sailing away from here. We’ll take you.”

That’s too convenient. Sanji doesn’t want to doubt a woman’s word, but he can’t help it.

“Just like that?”

“Yeah. Come on.”

The image of her dancing and laughing freely at Trinket’s wedding comes to Sanji’s mind. Whoever she is, Trinket trusts her, or she will trust her.

“How much will it cost me?”

The woman shakes her head. “My ship and I, we take payment in stories. If we like your story, the trip’s free. If we only like some parts of it, we’ll ask you for a favor once we’ve reached our destination. If we hate your story, we’ll charge you…” She shrugs. “I don’t know how much we’d charge you. We’ve never hated a story.” She rests her forearms on the railing and licks her lips. “Are the terms acceptable, traveler?”

Sanji nods.

“Welcome aboard the Calibri, then!” She makes a sweeping gesture towards the ship. It’s painted black, and the figurehead is shaped like a raven’s head. The sails are a blinding white.

The crew only includes two more people, who mostly leave them alone. For the duration of the trip, Sanji spends his afternoons drinking with the captain. She sits on the figurehead and listens to him talk about his life. He doesn’t know if it’s the alcohol, his unwillingness to displease a woman, or something darker, but he finds himself telling her and her ship more than he should and more than he’d meant to—about a boy in a dungeon, who later starved on a rock and grew up to search for and find a legendary ocean. He tells them about a man in love for over half his life.

The captain never interrupts him and doesn’t hurry him when he needs time to gather his words. She drinks and the Calibri sails smoothly—the wind always behind her, the currents always in her favor.

Sanji hopes she won’t recognize his younger self at Trinket’s wedding. He feels drained by the time they reach their destination, and relieved when she takes his hand and says, “What a fascinating story. We don’t need anything else from you.”

Back when they were still together—an event that’s yet to happen at this point in time, which only makes everything more confusing for him—Sanji asked Trinket if she remembered where she’d been around the time when he met himself.

“Pache,” she said, without needing a second to think about it. “In the South Blue.”

Looking back, Sanji should have suspected something from how easily she’d answered, but in the moment he’d been happy to have the information.

Pache isn’t big. It belongs to some eccentric rich guy that bought it so his best friend could grow as many plants as he wanted, on the condition that he and his wife got to visit whenever they felt like it, and that if anybody wanted to live there, they should let him know, because he refused to have anyone not living well on his property. Most of the people that settled down there work in the giant garden that the island has become, but some people have paid exorbitant amounts of money to get to own a house there. Sanji can understand wanting to live in a beautiful place, but he can’t figure out why anybody would waste so much money on houses they don’t occupy. It’s the exact sort of place that’d call to someone like Trinket, patron of the abandoned and forgotten.

She hasn’t become that yet, though. At this point in time, she’s a scared woman messing with powers greater than herself. Sanji will be lucky if she doesn’t kill him without asking questions for tracking her down.

Fucking time travel, turning kind-hearted people into monsters.

Blessed, beloved Trinket, who dragged herself back into humanity kicking and screaming.

To kick and scream is what Sanji pointedly avoids doing when Trinket ambushes him in the warehouse he allowed himself to be led to. He also lets himself be encased in amber from the neck down and hopes he can convince his future-but-past girlfriend that he isn’t an enemy.

“Who are you?” Trinket asks, taking a seat on a large crate and crossing her legs. The view of her thighs forces Sanji to look towards the ceiling and will his nose not to bleed.

His nose doesn't listen.

“My name is Sanji, my lady.” He licks his lips and tastes the blood that has trickled down. “They call me Black Leg, and I’m a pirate.”

He wishes he could bow when she narrows her eyes and watches him with absolute disdain.

“Why have you been looking for me?” Fuck, her demanding tone? Sanji never got to hear her like that while they dated. He’s starting to regret even more things about his life.

“I need your help.” Sanji lowers his head and hopes to convey his sincerity, his willingness to obey her every command. “Please.”

Trinket lets him suffer for an eternal instant before she speaks again. “How did you find me?”

This is the difficult part of the conversation. The one that might end with Sanji’s head separated from his body.

“You will tell me about this island in a few years.”

An amber blade forms right under Sanji’s jaw, grazing his skin. More blood pools around his neck. Trinket remains on her crate—a queen on her throne, judging her lowly subject.

“Password.”

“Huh?” Sanji looks up, confused. “What password?”

Another blade appears directly in front of his right eye. If the worst comes to pass, Sanji can shield himself and escape. Trinket isn’t prepared for what he can do.

“How can you be a time traveler if you don’t know about passwords?”

“I’m not a time traveler on purpose. I fell through a portal.”

“Try harder.” Trinket huffs and leans back on her hands. “Who sent you after me?”

“Nobody.”

“You think I'll believe that I told you where to find me but didn’t give you a password? Please.”

The blade’s tip gets closer to his eye. Sanji tilts his head back, closes his eyes and focuses. Only once he’s certain that they’re alone does he open his eyes.

“I know your real name,” he announces.

Trinket tenses up.

“That’s not possible,” she says, not quickly enough to cover up her surprise.

She told it to him late one night, while he traced the scars on her back and they shared a cigarette. She explained that those that dealt with time travel hid their names in case their enemies figured out a way to go back and erase them from history.

“We don't know if the world has always been like this,” she said, shivering. Sanji didn't know if it was because of his touch or because of the underlying horror of what she was explaining. “Maybe someone has figured out time travel and our lives are a result of their meddling. We have to be careful about who we let close.” She grinned. “But I know I can trust you.”

“Come closer,” Sanji says, just like she'll say to him in seven years.

At twenty-five, Trinket’s as gorgeous as she'll be when this time’s Sanji gets to meet her, but her outfit choices are far less practical—she’s in a miniskirt that flutters when she jumps off the crate, gifting Sanji with yet another sight to treasure. Blood runs down his lips and chin.

The blade in front of Sanji’s eye melts back into the amber keeping him in place. The blade at his neck doesn't move.

Trinket lowers her ear to his lips and Sanji whispers her name—a jewel on his tongue that he's offering as proof of devotion. The same gift she'll give to him when he's twenty-six. Distantly, Sanji wonders if the reason she told him her name was because she knew he'd need it today. Maybe Sanji’s creating one of those time paradoxes that Trinket had loved to tell him about over breakfast in bed.

As soon as the word has been spoken, the blade disappears, as does the amber around Sanji’s body.

It's not necessary, but he drops to his knees. Leaves himself at Trinket’s mercy.

She offers him a hand. “Tell me everything.”

As expected from her, she took over a large, comfortable house that clearly belongs to people that don’t spend nearly enough time there to justify keeping it. It’s full of small things that Trinket eyes greedily, even though she only pockets those with amber in them.

The kitchen is a dream. They buy ingredients and Sanji cooks for someone else for the first time since he prepared everything for his disappearance.

Her reaction to his food is somehow more indecent than it was the first time he met her, perhaps because there are no other witnesses. She even asks him for a cigarette before dessert.

“Alright, Black Leg,” she says when she's finished her meal, wiping her mouth and folding her napkin. “I’ll do it. I’ll look after you until you can return to your crew.”

This is why he fell for her the first time: she was always willing to help. Sanji thinks he could fall for her again now, because even at her worst, she won’t leave a helpless soul alone.

He pushes away the thought; there’s something better waiting for Trinket at the end and he’s got enough with one grand unrequited love.

She leads him to a bedroom and makes him lie down.

“Go to sleep, Black Leg,” she says, sitting next to him and smiling reassuringly. “I’ll freeze time for you once you’re out. It’s less scary that way.”

“Thank you, my Gem,” Sanji says.

The last thing he sees before he closes his eyes is Trinket shaking her head and looking amused.

When he reopens his eyes, Trinket is some years older and she struggles to meet his gaze. She’s ditched the white miniskirts for white shorts. Just as before, she’s wearing sensible shoes.

“I met you today,” she says, handing him a glass of water. “You’re such a flirt!”

That explains the embarrassment.

“I'm sorry, my Gem,” Sanji says, thinking of that first meeting. “In my defense, you are beautiful.”

Trinket blushes at the compliment. “I can't believe I was charmed by you,” she mutters, her shy smile contradicting her words.

She gives him a summary of what has happened since he came to her. She tells him about Alabasta and Crocodile, about Shirohige, and about the bounty poster that reads ‘Vinsmoke Sanji’.

“Do you trust me?” Sanji asks over the breakfast she made for him. “Despite everything?”

“You know my name, Black Leg.” Like that's enough of a reason, and maybe it is, for her.

He spends an entire day awake, marveling at the world. When it’s time to sleep again, Trinket takes his left hand and says, “Do you wish you'd done some things differently?”

Sanji nods.

“Why aren’t you trying to change it?” Trinket caresses what's left of his ring finger, and a knot forms at Sanji’s throat.

“Because I might make things worse.” Sanji swallows. “Despite everything, my friends and I don’t have a bad future, and I want to go home.”

“That’s a heavy weight to carry,” Trinket says. She lets go of his hand and puts her arms around Sanji. “I’ll get you there. Don’t worry about it.”

From her perspective, they’ve only known each other a couple of days. From his, it's been almost twenty years of friendship. She doesn’t need to convince him of her sincerity, yet she tries to sound solemn when she makes her promise, and her commitment breaks down what little of a barrier Sanji had managed to put up. He clings to her and sobs, wails, howls, lets himself be nothing more than a wounded beast in his grief and self-hate. He cries for the people that he left to die so his future would exist, the destruction and suffering he isn’t helping to prevent. He cries over all the pain he couldn't spare himself. Once again, he cries over his stupid love, and the finger he lost.

“How do you live with a heart like that?” Trinket asks, rocking their bodies as he calms down.

“My Gem,” Sanji says with a laugh, “don't try to pretend like we aren't the same.” He leans back to look at her, his smile watery.

She opens her mouth, closes it, opens it again.

“I can't freeze you when you're sad, you'll wake up sad too.” Trinket sighs and brushes Sanji’s hair behind his ear. “Go wash your face and we'll go for a walk.”

They end up getting dinner at a small place that’s barely more than a hole in the wall and which has the best risotto Sanji has ever eaten. He takes mental note of how it must have been made and puts it down on paper once he and Trinket return to the house she’s currently occupying.

“Can you give it to me when I’m finally back with my family?”

“Of course,” Trinket says, holding the recipe like it’s a treasure. Maybe she understands that it is.

“We’re dating!” is the first thing Sanji hears the next time he wakes up. “Why didn’t you tell me that I’d date you?”

Sanji smiles sheepishly while Trinket paces around the room, monologuing and freaking out over the possible consequences of dating someone she met through time travel. She doesn’t talk about what it means that he’s here. They both pretend they don’t know they don’t have a future together.

He lets her talk and uses the instance to look around. They’re in a different bedroom from before. He wonders how many places he’s been left to wait in during the last four years.

As an apology for not warning her, he makes her favorite for lunch. He remembers to ask her first, even though he already knows, just to avoid giving her another reason to berate him for not properly handling information that might affect the future.

He spends some days awake, seeing what the world has been up to since he last looked at it, and keeps himself from wondering where the Straw Hats might be in that moment. He plays with the old cigarette to distract himself.

Her red-rimmed eyes tell Sanji what happened, the next time she wakes him up.

“We broke up,” she confirms without him needing to ask.

Sanji nods. “I genuinely wish it had worked out.”

“I know, that’s why I’m sad.”

She’s in her early thirties now, and she’s still just as lovely. Sanji suspects he’ll think the same of her when she’s seventy, eighty, ninety, simply because it’s Trinket, and not being in love with her anymore doesn’t change the fact that he loves her.

“I did what I could to love you as you deserved,” Sanji tries to apologize.

“I know that too.” Trinket shakes her head. “And you know that’s not the reason we didn’t work.” Her smile is wry. “Between the two of us, we have enough secrets to write a few novels.”

“True.” Sanji takes her hand. “I’m sorry.”

She looks down at their clasped hands and stands up, pulling him to his feet. She settles her free hand on his shoulder and Sanji prepares himself for a waltz. It’s his first dance with her since he came to the past. The steps come to him easily, because he and Trinket spent—and will spend—years perfecting them.

“You never told me about the scar on your chest,” she says as they spin.

“I asked the Marimo to kill me.”

She chokes on air.

“That’s horrible!”

“I thought I didn’t have a choice,” Sanji says with a shrug.

“And? Did you die?”

The fact that she’s asking it as a joke makes Sanji feel a bit bad for answering with the truth: “I did.”

Trinket whistles under her breath.

“You never told me what happened to your friends,” Sanji says.

“I got in trouble with the wrong people.” Trinket swallows. “I pushed them away to try to protect them.”

Sanji nods.

“Do you miss them?”

“Every day.” Trinket closes her eyes and rests her forehead on Sanji’s shoulder. “It’s like I’m missing a piece of my soul without them around.”

“I can relate,” Sanji says, thinking of the Straw Hats.

They dance without music and talk about everything they never told each other while they were together, turning their secrets into the song that guides their movements.

“You know what will become of me, don’t you?” Trinket finally asks him, once they’ve gotten all the answers they wanted.

“I do.” Sanji bites his tongue. If Trinket asks, he will tell her about a man he only knows as Coin, who traveled the world for years trying to find a woman with a laugh like sunrise. He will tell her that this man will make her laugh freely, and that she will make him marvel at the world. He will tell her about her wedding.

He won’t say a word unprompted, careful about protecting the future.

Trinket doesn’t ask, but when she accepts Coin’s marriage proposal, she wakes up Sanji to tell him about it and introduces them to each other.

“I’ve already met him, you know?” Sanji says, laughing.

“Yes, but not like this!” Trinket says, watching Sanji nervously. It hits him then that she wants his approval.

What an odd thing, their relationship.

“Are you going to threaten me to ensure I’m good to her?” Coin asks, offering his hand for Sanji to shake.

Sanji grabs it firmly. “You searched for her for years. I think you know exactly how precious she is and how lucky you are.”

Coin grins, something boyish in his glee making him glow. “Yes, I am!”

If two people have ever deserved each other, it’s these two. Sanji’s happy for them. He makes them lunch to show how he feels.

The next time he's woken up, it's so he can meet Trinket’s best friends. One is a man twice Sanji’s height, heavy-built and ever-smiling, who picks him up like he's a doll and welcomes him to the family.

“I'm only her friend?” Sanji says as he's rocked to the sides, his arms trapped, his legs swinging in the air. The man’s beard pickles his forehead. He will put flowers in it for Trinket’s wedding, and the current Sanji will think he's suspicious. Sanji should apologize for that, but he bites his tongue.

“And that makes you family,” the other friend says, a dark-skinned person with sad eyes and gentle hands, who had touched Sanji’s shoulder and smiled kindly at him when they heard Sanji’s name.

Trinket watches this happen and gives the details to Coin, and when Sanji offers to make a feast to celebrate them all being together, she follows him to the kitchen.

“This happened because of you,” she says, showing him where everything is. “You made me realize what sort of life I wanted.”

Sanji winces.

“I'm not sure that's a compliment, my dear Gem.”

Now that every person she loves is back in her life, Trinket’s laugh does sound like sunrise.

In hindsight, Sanji should have known that he’d be invited to Trinket’s wedding as this version of himself and not just as a member of the Straw Hat Pirates.

It’s when he starts thinking about how to disguise himself that he realizes what had been in front of him all along. He laughs to tears when he finds the mask and cloak he remembers a specific guest wearing and then again when he requests a particular song and asks Trinket to dance with him at the party.

“What’s so funny about a North Blue waltz?” Trinket says, poking the corner of his mouth.

“I remember this moment.” Sanji can’t stop smiling. “I remember wondering who was the weirdo dancing with you.”

Trinket snorts and they laugh together, with the ease that only comes from complicity.

When he gets the chance, Sanji slips away from the party and finds a place from where he can watch Zoro to his heart's content. He's kept himself from dwelling in memories of him, but what is he supposed to do when Zoro's right there?

He remembers how they’d forced Zoro into a suit for the ceremony, and that he lost the jacket and tie long before it began. Now, his sleeves are rolled up, he's helping himself to everything the open bar has to offer, and Sanji indulges himself with wondering. If he pitched his voice higher, if he held his body differently, if he tried a different accent, would he be able to fool Zoro? Could he go over to him and ask him for a dance?

He shakes his head, trying to physically dislodge the idea from his mind. There isn't a world in which Zoro would agree to an invitation to dance from a stranger. The only thing that would make the odds worse would be if he knew it was Sanji asking.

Sanji stays away and contents himself with drinking in the sight of his friends on this happy occasion.

The woman with words on her skin approaches him near the end of the party.

“Hello, traveler,” she asks, smiling. “Any chance you might want us to take you somewhere?”

It’s hard to suppress the shiver that her words elicit.

“Not for now, thank you.”

“Pity.” The woman makes a moue. “You look like you have one hell of an update to your story.”

Sanji swallows. “Maybe in a few years.”

The woman licks her lips and leaves him alone after that. Sanji makes a hasty retreat from the room to try to calm himself down with all the cigarettes he hadn't allowed himself to smoke that day out of fear of being recognized.

His good luck charm stays safe in his pocket.

“The wait is over,” Trinket whispers as Sanji wakes up.

It’s a wonder that he doesn’t choke on his tears at her words. He can’t hold back when Luffy runs to him and hugs him, as open with his affection as Sanji remembered him. Sanji clings to his captain, to this man that broke the world a hundred times to reward any kindness that was offered to him, that ran after the people he loved and made them his treasure.

His crew, his family, is around him, welcoming him home, and Sanji doesn’t allow himself to think about what led to this, about his imminent rejection. He wants to simply rejoice in his return.

That’s not easy to do when he sees that an older version of himself is present as well. A Sanji that wears a wedding band and who promises him that he’ll be happy. That he gets to love and be loved back.

Sanji’s stupid heart guides Sanji’s eyes towards Zoro.

Love me, Sanji pleads. I won't disappoint you. I’ll be good enough. I’ll make it worth it.

Zoro meets his gaze and breaks Sanji’s heart. He looks… overwhelmed. Shocked. Lost. Like he has finally understood the weight and depth of Sanji’s love and it reminded him what fear is.

Foolish Sanji. Selfish Sanji. Greedy Sanji. He already has too much and still he asks for more.

It had been naive to even entertain the notion that this could go differently. Sanji saw Zoro’s face when he understood who was the love of his life, he heard his denial of it, he knew that his twenty-one years of longing couldn't have a happy ending.

It's Sanji who looks away first, too tired for a staring contest he can’t win. Everybody else seems uncomfortable by the short silent exchange that just occurred. Luffy, who is still wrapped around Sanji, squeezes him more tightly.

The older version of Sanji clears his throat, drawing everyone’s attention, and smiles at Trinket. She approaches him and he takes her hand as soon as she’s within reach.

“I'll be on my way, my dear. Thank you for…” He trails off, lost for words, and smiles apologetically. Sanji can relate—he could talk for a decade and still he wouldn’t be able to properly express his gratitude. “Thank you for everything,” the older Sanji says, and kisses Trinket’s knuckles.

Trinket clicks her tongue and shakes her head. “You realize you dropped a bomb here, don’t you?”

The older Sanji’s smile turns sheepish. “Will you forgive me?”

“No, because you aren’t sorry.”

Both of them laugh at that, and the older Sanji lets go of Trinket’s hand so he can offer her his arm.

“Will you escort me to the door, my Gem?”

Trinket loops her arm with his. “Of course, Black Leg.” She turns to the rest of them and says, “Behave while I’m gone, Straw Hats!”

Sanji watches them leave the room and slumps in Luffy’s hold. When he looks around he notices that Zoro is staring at him, that his gaze is intense and his expression is determined.

“What?” Sanji snaps. He pretends he doesn’t notice the others watching them.

And Zoro, who doesn't lie and who doesn’t do pleasantries, says, “It's good to have you back.”

Before Sanji can process his words, Zoro turns on his heel and leaves.

Someone—Usopp—lets out a low whistle.

It doesn’t take long for Trinket to return. She’s alone when she does.

The moment Sanji finally gets to step out of the room he woke up in, he recognizes the house. It’s not hard to do—from his perspective, it’s only been a few weeks since he went looking for Trinket, even if it’s been two decades for the world.

“Pache, my dear Gem?” Sanji asks, taking in the current state of the place and trailing his fingers over the walls. The roof is in dire need of a coat of paint and the clutter is as suffocating as it was when Trinket brought him here long ago to freeze him in time.

“I thought it’d be a nice detail,” Trinket says, grinning.

It is. Sanji can’t deny the romanticism of it, especially when he sees the kitchen. It’s where he got to cook again for the first time after he fell into the past—the first place where he believed that everything would be alright—and now he gets to cook for everyone here. Because he will—every adventure must end with a feast, after all. It might not be proper to be in charge of your own welcoming meal, but there’s nobody else here he trusts with the task.

“Thank you,” Sanji says, turning to Trinket and extending a hand to her.

She takes it and lets herself be spun around the kitchen under the eyes of Luffy, Nami, Usopp—everyone but Zoro, who’s yet to come back. They’ve all been asking questions for a while, and Sanji has answered and asked questions of his own.

He’s still reeling from the discovery that it took longer than planned for him to return to everyone. He’s made his peace with the fact that Trinket will never explain to him why that happened. She's allowed to her secrets.

“You'd have done the same for me,” Trinket says, shaking her head.

“Yes, and you’d have been grateful too.”

It’s then that Zoro returns. Sanji senses his presence before he sees him, and has to stop himself from turning to look at him. He needs a moment to figure out how to pretend, how to act like it doesn’t bother him that Zoro knows his greatest secret.

The waltz comes to a natural end when Coin enters the kitchen. Sanji leads Trinket back into her husband’s arms, where she’s happier than she ever was with him, even at their best times. He’s never wished for anything less than the best for each of the women he has loved, which maybe explains why they couldn’t stay together.

He’s always wished for the best for Zoro too. Sanji finally allows himself to look at him, at this man he can’t have, and finds Zoro already watching him. There’s no repulsion on his gaze, no anger or disgust, only the same serene intensity with which he faced every challenge that presented itself. The same seriousness with which he’d looked at Sanji before killing him.

“We should let you work in peace, right?” Nami-san says, cutting through the tension in the air.

Sanji can’t answer her. His mouth is dry and his words are lost in memories. Zoro, fighting him without the annoyance of their usual sparring, without the feral glee that lit him up when he faced a strong enemy. Zoro, blocking all of his attacks, his sharp gaze searching for a crack in Sanji’s defense. Zoro, holding him as he died.

“Yes, please, Nami-swan,” Sanji croaks. Zoro had respected him in that first and last duel between them, and that’s not a reaction he expected as an answer to his feelings.

“Okay, you heard him, let’s go!” Nami-san says, pushing everyone towards the door.

Everyone but Zoro, who heads for the kitchen table and takes a seat.

“Come on, Sanji-kun needs to work!” Nami-san says, going over to try to pull him away by the ear.

In all the years they have sailed together, Nami-san has yelled at Zoro, dragged him around, kicked and hit him whenever she’d thought it was needed. She never feared retaliation from the King of Hell—she knew as well as everybody else in the crew that he’d never lift a finger against her, that she was their compass and one of their voices of reason, that without her they’d never have gotten anywhere, both literally and figuratively. If he’d ever truly minded her actions, he’d have done something about it, the same way he’d spoken against Luffy’s wishes back when their captain had been about to run to ask Usopp to come back to the crew.

Today, Zoro doesn’t budge. He rests an elbow on the table, props his head up on his hand and doesn’t move a millimeter when Nami-san tries to get him to stand up.

“He can still work if I’m here,” Zoro says, meeting Nami-san’s gaze.

She blinks and raises her eyebrows. Zoro’s expression remains neutral, bordering on bored.

“What are you doing, Marimo?” Sanji grits out, stomping over towards the brute. “Nami-san just gave you an order.”

“I’m not going anywhere, Cook,” Zoro says. “You’re welcome to try to kick me out.”

Nami-san lets go of Zoro’s ear and turns to Sanji, wide-eyed and bemused. She opens and closes her mouth and looks at Zoro again.

It’s tempting to kick him just for making Nami-san look so lost in front of everyone.

“Don't tempt me, Marimo,” Sanji threatens. He turns to Nami-san. “Don’t let this idiot ruin your mood, Mellorine.”

Nami-san shakes her head and scoffs. “Nobody’s ruining anything.” She studies Zoro, who holds her gaze challengingly, and finally sighs. “Can you handle him, Sanji-kun?”

“Yes, of course, Nami-swan.”

“I'm leaving him under your care.” She says that to Zoro instead of Sanji and then leaves, ushering everybody else out of the kitchen and closing the door. Sanji can only blink in confusion and try to puzzle through the last ninety minutes of his life.

Zoro huffs, rolling his eye, and makes himself comfortable. As if this is a regular day on the Sunny, as if everything between them hadn't changed.

It's worse than rejection, this indifference.

Sanji sits down in front of Zoro and pats his pockets, searching for a cigarette. He only finds the one he took from his younger self, his constant companion throughout this ordeal.

“It's been years since you last smoked those,” Zoro says.

He's right.

“How do you know? It's just a cigarette, like all the others.”

“I've seen you smoking since we met.” Zoro shrugs. “I can tell apart every brand you've ever bought just from how it's rolled.”

There's no doubt in Sanji’s mind that it's true. The details must have gotten into Zoro's brain without him meaning to, the same way he knows when Nami-san’s tangerines are ready to be picked, or what books Chopper already has. A lifetime together doesn't leave anyone unscathed.

“Why did you stop?”

They don't do questions, or sharing. Zoro doesn’t really do talking, so Sanji stopped trying back in Cocoyashi.

“Why are you asking?”

“I'm curious, Cook.”

It reeks of pity, but Zoro doesn't do pity either.

Sanji swallows and rolls the cigarette between his fingers.

“They stopped making them.” There's something in Zoro's expression that compels Sanji to add, “I got this one from my past self.”

“So that's the last one left in the world?”

“Probably.”

His good luck charm has served him well, but there's not much else it can do for him. It might be time to give it a proper ending. Sanji brings it to his lips and pats his pockets again.

“Here,” Zoro says, setting a pack of cigarettes and a lighter between them.

There's no reason for Zoro to have that on him.

“Did you start smoking while I was gone?”

“I already drink, Cook.” Zoro pushes the items towards Sanji. “These are for you.”

Maybe Sanji’s dying. It'd explain this.

“...why?”

“I didn't know if you had any and you're even more of a prick without nicotine.”

“Do you want something?” Sanji asks, narrowing his eyes.

It makes Zoro smirk, in that way that leaves Sanji unsure whether he wants to kick him or kiss him.

“I do.”

Sanji settles for grabbing the cigarettes and the lighter and standing up.

“There must be some booze here for you,” he mutters.

He feels Zoro's attention on him as he ruffles through the kitchen, taking stock of everything Trinket got for him. The only alcohol he finds is wine.

“Not what I want, but I'll take it,” Zoro says when Sanji gives him the bottle. Smirking again, or still.

“If you want something else, get it yourself.”

“That's the idea.”

The smugness has Sanji’s instincts inching closer to violence with each passing second.

“Are you going to leave now?”

“Nah.” Zoro leans back in his seat and opens the wine.

Sanji can't take this anymore. “That's it!?”

“What?” Zoro doesn't even look at Sanji; he's busy studying the wine's label. He nods to himself and takes a sip, then a gulp, under Sanji’s incredulous stare.

“After everything that's happened, you don't have anything to say?”

Zoro frowns. “I didn't think you'd want to talk about it.”

“Of course I don't want to talk about it!” Sanji says, throwing his hands up.

“Then why are you pissed!?”

“Because I’m in love with you and you’re not even making the effort to reject me!”

Despite how hard he'd tried through the years, Sanji hadn’t been able to keep himself from imagining what it’d be like to tell Zoro how he felt. None of the scenarios ever ended with his feelings being accepted, but also none of them involved him yelling about them. In hindsight, he should have seen it coming. The only thing the two of them have ever been able to do without arguing is to have each other’s back in a fight, and even that took them time.

It’s Zoro’s turn to scream something. Sanji sets his jaw and readies himself, but Zoro snorts at Sanji’s words and smirks again.

“Yeah, that’s not happening.” To punctuate the statement, Zoro drinks. Straight from the bottle, the brute.

“You don’t love me,” Sanji accuses, pointing at Zoro with the cigarette he forgot to light up. “Reject me so I can move on.” He’s almost certain that it didn’t sound like the plea it was.

Zoro raises an eyebrow. “Who are you trying to fool, Cook? You won’t move on if I reject you. You’ll go back to pining for another couple decades, like the stubborn prick you are.”

He’s right, and it leaves Sanji at a loss for words. He knows that Zoro can tell, because his smirk loses its edge and he sets the bottle on the table.

“Look who’s talking!” Sanji says after a moment.

“Takes one to know one.” Zoro shrugs. “You’re going to marry this stubborn prick, Cook, so don’t complain.”

Sanji barks out a laugh. “Who says I’m going to marry you?”

“I do.” Zoro looks straight into Sanji’s eyes, and Sanji won’t back down from this challenge. “You love me, and I’m not losing that.”

Oh, how Sanji hates him then.

“Don’t you think I deserve to be loved too? We can’t just get married because you don’t want me to fall for somebody else. I have some self-respect.”

He half expects Zoro to laugh, but he stays serious, with that odd respect he’d only shown to Sanji when he’d been at his worst.

“I’m not marrying you now, Cook.” Zoro leans back in his seat, never taking his eye away from Sanji’s face. “I’m going to fall in love with you,” Sanji sucks in a breath, “and when that happens, we'll tell Luffy to officiate our wedding.”

For a moment, all Sanji can do is stare at Zoro.

“It doesn’t work like that, Marimo,” Sanji says, hating himself for wanting what Zoro promises.

“Says who?” Zoro smiles, a show of teeth that has never failed to send a shiver down Sanji’s spine. “I’m going to love you like you love me, Cook, and we’re going to be happy.”

Only the stupid love of Sanji’s stupid life could make that sound like a threat.

This is the man that got Dracule Mihawk’s blessing to pursue his title, who came back from hell to keep a promise, and who got everything he wanted and more, regardless of whether or not he deserved it. One wing of the Pirate King. Half of a set.

Sanji—the man that found a legendary ocean, who clung to his humanity even if it killed him, who has fought with and against Zoro a thousand times and matched him blow for blow—downs half the bottle’s contents, licks his lips, and puts the world’s Greatest Swordsman to work washing vegetables.

He decides to keep the cigarette from his past self for a while longer.

He tells himself that the weak spark inside his chest isn't hope.

Chapter Text

For the last twenty-one years, no matter how close to the crew Sanji got sometimes, the Sunny remained unapproachable—she'd recognize him regardless of how he disguised himself, and it'd kill him to leave again, even if it was so he could return at the right time. For his mind, it hasn't been more than a couple of months since he left. For the world, it's been a few weeks. His heart feels every second he spent in the past, and it’s only when Sanji steps onto the Sunny’s deck that it hits him that he's home. He cries once again, safe with his family, back where he belongs.

He doesn't get to reacquaint himself with the ship immediately, because Chopper insists on a full check-up and then Sanji heads over to their storage room to do some inventory. It should help him regain some control over himself, because he’s still feeling unbalanced by Zoro’s promise. It’s soothing to simply count cans and check expiration dates.

“Robin and I made sure to keep everything well-stocked,” Nami-san says from behind him.

When Sanji turns he finds her leaning against the storage room's threshold, looking at him with the same self-assured calmness that she presented when it came to money and resources. Her shoulders, however, betray her nerves.

“So I'm noticing, Nami-swan,” Sanji says with a smile, gesturing towards the sacks of rice and the barrels of fresh water. “Thank you.”

“It was the least we could do,” Nami-san says, shaking her head, subdued in a way that makes Sanji’s heart twist.

He hesitates before he asks, “Is something troubling you?”

At the same time Nami-san says, “I'm sorry.”

Her brow is pinched and her jaw is tense.

“What for, Nami-san?” Sanji asks softly.

Instead of soothing her, fire comes to Nami-san’s eyes with his question. “You really don't know or is this about how you never want to make me upset?”

“I can't think of anything you've done that you need to apologize for, Nami-san,” Sanji says sincerely.

Nami-san’s expression crumbles and she covers her face with a hand. “Of course you don't.” She laughs bitterly. “I could give you up for the reward and you'd thank me.”

“Well—”

“Don’t,” Nami-san orders, a hand raised to stop Sanji from saying more.

He closes his mouth and Nami-san uncovers her face. Her pained look hurts Sanji down to his soul, but he holds his tongue and the urge to ask again about the matter. She'll tell him soon, he knows.

“I didn't believe you when you said you weren't in love with me.” She winces. “You just… you were always complimenting me and Robin and it couldn't be Robin, she's married!” She tilts her head back and groans towards the ceiling before looking at Sanji again. “This sounds so self-centered. And I am self-centered! But you… you're my friend. You're my family. I should have believed you instead of hurting you and I'm sorry.”

After a moment of silence, Sanji hesitantly says, “Can I talk now?”

“Let me guess: you don't remember me hurting you,” Nami-san says sadly.

Sanji nods.

“I've been a bitch to you since your birthday, Sanji-kun!” Nami-san says, her tone dancing on the line between exasperation and despair. “I've been avoiding you, ignoring you, snapping at you… I've been horrible to you for the past few months! Don't you see any problems with that?”

It'll only upset Nami-san if Sanji answers her question. He shrugs.

“Sanji-kun!” Nami-san cries. “You should be angry! Or upset! Or… something!” She throws her hands up in the air. “At the very least you could wonder why I did it! You know I'm not that mean!”

“But I know why you did it, Nami-san,” Sanji says simply.

Nami-san stares. “No, you don't.”

Despite his best efforts, Sanji can't keep a hint of condescension out of his sad smile. Everybody still forgets how much he sees and knows.

“You wanted me to fall out of love with you.” Nami-san gapes and Sanji adds, perhaps unnecessarily, “You thought that if I didn't feel anything for you, that if you got me to hate you even, I wouldn't lose my finger.”

It takes Nami-san a moment to find her words, her eyes unbearably sad as she looks at Sanji.

“How did you know?” she asks quietly.

“You love me, Nami-san, just like I love you.” Sanji gives her a small smile, because she is, and will always be, one of his favorite people. It’s impossible for him not to smile at her. “Of course you'd try to save me.”

Nami-san’s expression crumbles. Sanji opens his arms.

Long ago, he'd have given up a lung to hold Nami-san like this, to feel her pressed against him, clinging to him. Today, he'd give it up to make her stop crying.

“Your hand, Sanji-kun,” Nami-san sobs. “I thought we'd never see you again. I thought we'd get you back an old man and that you'd have spent twenty-one years remembering me as a bitch!”

Sanji laughs and drops a kiss to the top of Nami-san’s head, chaste and fond.

“My sweet Mellorine, I could never think of you that way.”

Nami-san cries harder, even as she says, “You better not! I'm the best thing that ever happened to this crew!”

“I want to agree, Nami-swan, but I think Robin-chan shares that honor.”

It draws a wet laugh out of Nami-san, who hides her face against his chest and says, “That's fine. It's Robin.”

Sanji holds Nami-san until she calms down. Her tears soak through his shirt. Sanji rubs her back in circles.

“I'm sorry, Nami-san.”

“Why are you sorry!?” Nami-san says, hitting his shoulder with her palm.

“Because I couldn't find a way to tell you the truth and spare you this pain.” He wishes he could have. He curses his past self for keeping this secret and upsetting Nami-san, for making her think that he might resent her meanness, for not telling her that he knew how much she cared.

Nami-san sniffles and leans back. “You should have told me. I'd have helped you woo that idiot.”

“The idiot would have rejected me, Nami-san,” Sanji says sadly.

He knows Zoro. He'll take on the world to spare the others any suffering. Zoro would have broken Sanji’s heart a thousand times to protect his hands. His treasure.

“Yeah,” Nami-san says with a resigned smile, wiping away her tears with the heel of her hand.

Sanji wouldn't be a gentleman if he didn't carry a handkerchief for situations just like this.

“Thank you, Sanji-kun,” Nami-san says when he gives her the handkerchief, and takes a step back. It's a pity to lose her contact, but Sanji endures.

Nami-san dries her tears, folds the handkerchief, and puts it away in her pocket.

“I'll wash it first,” she explains.

“There's no need, Nami-san,” Sanji says, extending a hand to silently ask for her to return the small piece of fabric, hating that she thinks she has to wash it for him. “You shouldn't subject yourself to such small tasks.”

Her eyes fix themselves on his hand, and just as Sanji’s beginning to wonder what's so interesting about it, he realizes it's the left one.

“That’s true, Sanji-kun,” Nami-san says, enveloping his hand with both of hers. “But let me do something for you this time, okay?” Her eyes are kind. “We can go back to the usual later.”

“I…” Sanji swallows and lowers his head. “I'm a lucky man, Nami-san, to get even a drop of your attention.”

“It's not luck, Sanji-kun.” Nami-san squeezes his hand softly. “Everything you have, you've earned it. We love you because you're you.”

There are moments in which it burns to be reminded of his own worth. Moments in which Sanji feels raw and in which the part of himself that never left that dungeon in Germa makes itself felt, leading him to be surprised by his family's love. It's been happening less and less often through the years, but when it does, it knocks him out. It unmoors him.

It would be embarrassing to cry now, wouldn’t it? He’d been crying not three hours ago.

Some tears fall anyway. Nami-san offers him his own handkerchief and they laugh together through their tears.

There's no manual on falling in love, which means Sanji has no idea what Zoro intends to do in order to return his feelings. Sanji half expects him to meditate himself into it, that he'll try to find the key to romance in the rhythm of the world so he can use it on himself. A trick, needed because Sanji alone couldn't earn his love; one that Zoro would keep using until he died because he'd refuse to admit he made a mistake.

He thinks that's what Zoro’s trying to do when he finds him leaning back on the galley's couch, eye closed and arms crossed over his chest. Sanji leans against the door's threshold and watches him, enjoying this small freedom that his secret being revealed has allowed him. He isn't naive enough to believe that Zoro isn't aware of his presence.

“Cook,” Zoro says, slowly opening his eye.

“Marimo,” Sanji says with a pinch of wariness. They’re bound to start fighting in the next few minutes. He takes a step into the galley. “What are you doing here?”

Zoro yawns and stretches his arms over his head.

“Waiting for you.” He gets to his feet. “Do you need help with lunch?”

Sanji stares. “Why?”

“Huh?” Zoro blinks and frowns.

“Why are you offering to help me,” Sanji says, his tone flat because of his bemusement.

“Ah, that.” Zoro goes over to the kitchen bar and leans against it. “I asked the others how romance worked and they all said it was good to spend time together.” He gestures vaguely with one hand. “To do things for the other person and show that you care what they like.” He shrugs. “You like to cook.”

“Who did you ask?” A chill runs down Sanji’s spine at the possibilities.

“Usopp, Franky, Jinbe…” Zoro lists with his fingers. 

Maybe Sanji should kill everyone to spare himself this nightmare.

“...and Robin.”

Murder canceled.

“That’s not…” Sanji begins, then finds himself without the strength to continue. There’s too much to explain here, too much to be bared that Sanji wants to protect.

“What?”

Sanji licks his lips and comes to stand next to Zoro, his hip against the bar.

“That's to get someone to like you, not to make yourself like them,” he explains. “You don’t… what you’re trying to do… It’s not really a thing, you know?”

“Guess I’ll invent it,” Zoro says with a shrug. “I’ll follow the advice while I figure it out.”

That sounds terrible for Sanji’s heart. He’ll be damned before he says it.

“Fine.” He swallows. “Bring over a sack of potatoes. We’re making a stew.”

To get Zoro’s help in the kitchen is a rare privilege, reserved for when the rest of the crew has more urgent matters to deal with. It only happens when they’re leaving the wreckage of a recent battle, when Chopper’s busy with the wounded and Nami-san and Robin-san are acting as his assistants, and whoever’s left standing is put to lead the Sunny to safer waters. To have Zoro’s help is something associated with stress and concern in Sanji’s mind, while at the same time it’s a source of stability. Zoro knows that the kitchen is Sanji’s domain, that his word is the law there, and so he does as told without causing unnecessary trouble. If Zoro’s helping, everything will be done the way Sanji wants it, and that’s one less thing to worry about. Zoro treats the kitchen like a battlefield, and the two of them are always perfectly in sync while fighting.

It’s not any different today. By the time the stew’s on the stove and Sanji’s pouring orange juice over some recently cut cherimoyas, he’s completely forgotten to be nervous about Zoro’s presence.

Until he looks up and finds Zoro standing closer than usual and watching him work. Watching his hands.

“What?” Sanji snaps. He doesn’t cover his left hand, even though he itches to do so.

Zoro takes a deep breath and looks up at Sanji. “Thank you.”

Sanji stares. “Who are you and what have you done with our Shitty Swordsman?”

“Oi!” Zoro crosses his arms in front of his chest.

“You’ve never thanked me for anything, Marimo,” Sanji says, moving towards the sink to wash his hands. Zoro follows him. “What’s gotten into you?”

It takes Zoro a moment to reply. It’s nice to know that Sanji isn’t the only one feeling lost in this situation.

“I’d truly be shitty if I didn’t thank you for saving me,” Zoro says, grabbing a kitchen towel and offering it to Sanji.

“It’s what we do,” Sanji says, drying his hands under Zoro’s attentive gaze. “We take care of each other.” He folds the towel and leaves it on the counter.

“You did more than that.” Zoro points at Sanji’s left hand.

“I’d have done it for any of the others.” It’s true, and Sanji needs Zoro to know it. He did it because he loves Zoro, but not because he’s in love with him. It’s an important distinction.

“Yeah, but you did it for me. And you…” Zoro swallows and meets Sanji’s eyes again. “I scared you.”

This is more honesty than Sanji ever expected to have to subject himself to with Zoro. It’s humiliating.

“I wasn’t—”

“You were, Cook. I felt it. That thing became the people it ate, and when it tasted you it got your emotions. You were afraid.” Zoro grabs Sanji’s left hand and studies what’s left of his ring finger. “That thing didn’t spit me out because of what you did. Your fear showed me the way out.”

Sanji bristles and tries to pull his hand back, but Zoro tightens his hold. “Are you saying I did this for nothing?”

It’s impossible for Sanji to free himself without risking more injuries.

“I’m saying I’d be dead if you hadn’t done that.” Zoro’s expression is solemn, the way he only looks when he prepares for a fight—that moment of seriousness and acceptance that precludes his bloodlust. “I don’t think I’d have found my way home without that. So, thank you, Cook.”

“Why are you thanking me?” Sanji asks, voice verging on manic. He could try to fight his way out of this. He’s good at that. He could kick Zoro and run for the door. “We don't do that. Where is your pride? Is this pity?”

“It’s because of my pride that I must thank you for your sacrifice.” Zoro’s thumb draws circles on the back of Sanji’s hand. That small gesture is enough to make Sanji give up on freeing himself. Zoro only does what he wants to, or what he must, and there's no reason why he should be holding Sanji’s hand. “I don't do pity, Cook.”

“No, you don't,” Sanji murmurs. “But this isn't like you.”

“I’ll be your husband one day,” Zoro says with a shrug. “I don’t want you bitching about how I didn’t thank you for saving my life.”

“I'll find other things to bother you with.”

“Of course you will. But not this.” Zoro looks down and brushes what's left of Sanji’s ring finger. He frowns. “Why this one?”

Sanji blinks, lost by the sudden turn of the conversation. “Huh?”

“I understand why not the thumbs, but why that finger? Wouldn't a pinky have been better?”

“Oh.” Sanji can't help his sheepish expression. “You know how I have a lot of rings?”

“Yeah?”

“I don't have any for that finger.” Explaining this has to be one of the most awkward experiences of Sanji’s life. “And I'm right-handed, I didn't want to hurt that hand.”

“What!?” Zoro exclaims in disbelief. “You cut your left ring finger so you could keep wearing all your other rings!?”

“You don't get to criticize me, Moss-head!” Sanji says, jabbing a finger against Zoro’s chest.

“That's the most ridiculous…!” Zoro trails off and, suddenly, starts laughing.

He finally lets go of Sanji so he can wrap his arms around his own abdomen as he bends over with laughter.

“It's not funny!” Sanji says, indignant, except now that he's said it out loud, he kinda understands Zoro’s reaction. “It's not that funny!” he amends. A chuckle escapes him, slightly hysterical despite the amusement.

“Rings, Cook!” Zoro says.

“Shut up!” Sanji demands, except now he's laughing too, letting years of fear and tension go.

It takes them a while to calm down, and it mostly happens because Sanji remembers to check on their food.

“It's not that funny,” Sanji grumbles between laughs as he stirs the stew.

“Sure, Cook,” Zoro says, amused.

Sanji forces himself to keep facing the stove. He can't afford to fall even deeper in love now, when he's supposed to be allowing the Marimo to catch up to him.

“Quit that and set the table. This is almost ready,” he says.

Zoro agrees without complaint.

Unlike what happens with the cooking, having Zoro’s help with the dishes isn't rare. It's something he's willingly helped with since they sailed on the Merry. Sanji asked him about it once.

“It's delicate work, it helps with control,” Zoro said then, nineteen years old and still naive, and Sanji had used his words as an excuse to make him dry the dishes after almost every meal.

After getting his help with lunch, Sanji didn't expect Zoro to stay behind and help clean up too. He figured Zoro would be sick of his company already.

They don't need to talk for this. Sanji fills the sink while Zoro brings over what needs to be washed. Zoro stands at his side to dry the clean plates once the table has been cleared.

“Zoro,” Sanji says, just because he can, as he passes over a glass. “Zoro,” he says when he hands over a knife. “Zoro,” when he holds out a pot.

“Stop that,” Zoro growls.

“I don't think I will, no,” Sanji says with a laugh. Two whole decades, and the constant repetition of his name still annoys the Marimo. Why would he stop?

Zoro grumbles under his breath. When they're done, he reaches into the soapy water to take out the plug and let the sink drain. Then, like the brute he is, he dries his hands on his pants.

“Use a towel, you beast,” Sanji says, throwing a kitchen towel at Zoro, who immediately drops it on the counter.

“Too late,” he says.

Sanji’s mouth twists in disgust.

Instead of rising to the bait, Zoro narrows his eye, frowns and studies Sanji.

“Why me?” he finally asks.

There's no point in pretending not to know what he means.

“Why do you want to know?”

“I want to figure out how this works,” Zoro says. “If I understand why you love me, maybe I can see how to fall for you.”

What was left of Sanji’s good mood disappears, leaving him uncomfortable and exposed. He sets his jaw and grabs the towel to dry his own hands.

“It’s different for everyone,” he says, keeping his eyes on what he’s doing. “I don’t know what makes people fall in love, Marimo, so…” He takes a deep breath. “I don’t know if there’s any point in telling you this.”

“Tell me anyway. Help me understand.” There’s a hint of vulnerability in Zoro’s demand that makes Sanji meet his gaze. Zoro must hate to be in front of a situation that has him so out of his depth.

Sanji exhales shakily and buries a hand in his own hair. “Do you remember your first duel against Mihawk?”

Zoro gives him a flat look.

“Not in that way, Marimo,” Sanji says with a roll of his eyes. “What I mean is…” He licks his lips. “Do you remember me that day?”

He knows what the answer will be and readies himself for how much that’ll hurt.

It knocks him off balance to hear Zoro say, “You yelled at me to give up on my dream and live.”

Sanji gapes. “I didn’t expect you to remember that,” he says after a moment.

“I hated you for it,” Zoro says simply. Sanji doesn’t flinch because he isn’t surprised—he’d asked Zoro to betray the very essence of his being, after all.

“I hated you too,” Sanji admits, pulling lightly at his own hair. “I envied your conviction, and for having the freedom to die for your dream. I hated you for making me want more than what I already had.” He runs his fingers through his hair, down to the tips, and drops his hand to the side. “Then I joined the crew and… Every single day, I saw you working towards your goal.” He smiles at the memories. “Every time I thought I was wasting my time, I told myself I couldn’t give up on my dream before you did.”

“I was never going to give up,” Zoro says petulantly.

“I know, Marimo. I’ve always known.” Sanji’s smile widens. “And it wasn’t just that. I could have resisted if it had only been that, but…” He takes out a cigarette and stalls by lighting it. “You were always watching over all of us. You put the weight of all of our dreams on your back and didn’t say a word about it, even when it was killing you.” He closes his eyes and takes a long drag of his cigarette. He exhales the smoke slowly. “You kept us alive.”

“Not you,” Zoro says gravely. When Sanji opens his eyes, he finds Zoro watching him with a dark look.

“That doesn’t count,” Sanji says. His hand comes up to rest over where the scar is on his chest. “I asked you to do that.”

Zoro’s expression stays the same. “What was the point? You'd met your future self.” He even seems angry now, or maybe upset.

“That wasn’t a guarantee of anything. Time travel is weird. And anyway…” He tastes blood, the same way he did back when Zoro killed him. “I was lost until you pushed Wado into my chest. The shock brought back every other emotion with it. Didn't you think it was weird that an emotionless person was thanking you?”

“I was too busy worrying about whether or not you'd die.” Zoro sets his jaw. “I hated it, Cook. Despite our differences, you were important to me. And Luffy wasn't going to forgive me.”

“I knew that. It's why I decided to survive.”

Zoro snorts. “You decided to survive?”

“I could feel…” Sanji gestures at his own chest, his body, at the result of Judge’s meddling, “this trying to bring me back. I could have resisted it. I wanted to.” He brings his cigarette to his lips and takes a long drag, his head tilted back and his eyes on the ceiling. “I thought it’d be safer for everyone if I let myself die.”

“Why didn't you?” Blunt question, hard tone, and Sanji hears what's behind it: the old fear, the grief, the anger and pain and despair and all the horrors that Sanji’s change had brought them all. The relief when Sanji had come back to life.

“Because you held me, Marimo,” Sanji says with a shrug, looking at Zoro again. “I felt safe. I knew you'd keep everyone safe, that you'd stop me as many times as you had to.” The smoke from his cigarette drifts towards the ceiling, acting as a flimsy barrier between him and Zoro. “And I knew that if I stayed dead, Luffy wouldn't forgive you.” Zoro sucks in a breath and Sanji smiles sadly. “I couldn't do that to you, so I didn't.”

The anger and bitterness leaves Zoro’s expression, and he watches Sanji with something akin to awe on his face. It's not a look that Sanji has seen Zoro direct at anyone but Luffy, and even then it had only happened in specific, glorious moments. It's not an expression that belongs in the Sunny's kitchen, with them standing by the sink and leftovers cooling down over the counter.

“What?” Sanji snaps, lost in front of this.

Zoro shakes his head and takes half a step forward. “You knew I hated it?”

“Yeah, of course.” Sanji blows smoke to the side. “I never understood why you agreed to it.”

“Because you asked,” Zoro says, like it’s the most obvious thing. “You never asked for anything from anyone, so for you to do that… it had to be important.”

Sanji’s heart speeds up, beating so hard it threatens to break his ribs.

“You can't say things like that, Marimo,” he says with a pained laugh. “I already love you, there's no need to make me fall harder.” He closes his eyes and covers them with his free hand. He senses more than he hears Zoro get closer.

“Don't run away from me, Cook,” Zoro demands in a low voice.

“Who's running?” Sanji says, glaring at Zoro through his fingers, widening his stance to maintain his place. Zoro is chest to chest with him now and Sanji’s not going to take even half a step back.

“You're trying to.” Zoro grabs Sanji’s hand and forces him to lower it. “I told you I'm going to love you, so why are you scared of loving me more?”

“I'm not scared,” Sanji bites out.

“Liar,” Zoro growls.

They hold each other's gaze for a long moment. Zoro doesn't let go of Sanji’s hand. He's careful with it, his fingers wrapped around Sanji’s without crushing them. It gives Sanji the courage to say, “What if you can't love me, no matter how hard you try?”

Zoro scoffs. “I said I'd do it, didn't I? I keep my word, Cook.”

“That's the problem, Marimo!” Sanji says, gesturing with the hand that holds the cigarette, filling the space between him and Zoro with smoke like the world's worst incense burner. “What if you don't want to keep it? What if you realize I'm the last person you want to love? What if-?”

“Stop that,” Zoro snaps, covering Sanji's mouth with a hand. Sanji leans back to free himself, but Zoro goes with him while saying, “You talk like I don't know what I'm doing. You really think I have no idea what you're like after all this time? Give me some credit, Cook!”

Sanji stills and Zoro uncovers Sanji’s mouth in order to take his cigarette.

“I spent weeks thinking about what I'd do about your feelings for me, and I chose you.” He puts off the cigarette in the sink.

“Why?” Sanji had wanted to sound challenging. Instead, he sounds confused, small, lost. Hopeful and brittle.

“Because it's a good love.” Zoro leans slightly towards Sanji. “Help me with it. Fight for me. Woo me. Trip me and make me fall with you.” It's a challenge as much as it is an invitation. Sanji studies his face to try to find a single reason not to give himself up to hope, but all he finds is Zoro.

He’s lost the naivety of their first year as a crew, but he’s also lost the regretful seriousness with which he came back from Kuraigana. He learned how to laugh again, and it shows in the lines around his mouth and eyes. Gone is the boy Sanji met at the Baratie, and so is the ghost that was left of him when they met again in Sabaody. The man in front of Sanji is Zoro, scarred and alive, firm and reliable like the ground. When they met, Sanji had been certain that that reckless boy wouldn’t get to grow old.

“I want to kiss you,” Sanji pleads.

“Do it, then,” Zoro says with a smile. Like he doesn't mind being kissed by Sanji. Like he's actually excited for it.

Despite the invitation, Sanji moves slowly, giving Zoro ample time to change his mind. He cups Zoro’s face with his free hand and caresses his cheek with his thumb. For a moment, Zoro freezes under Sanji’s touch. Then he leans into it, closing his eye.

Sanji gently moves his hand to play with Zoro’s earrings, making them clink against each other.

“This always meant home to me,” he says quietly.

Zoro looks at him again, questioning.

“If I heard your earrings, it meant I was home,” Sanji explains, self-conscious. What a stupid thing to confess.

Zoro nods like he understands and says, “It's your cigarettes for me.”

It's Sanji’s turn for a questioning look.

“I'd recognize them anywhere. The moment I smelled them, I knew home was close, or that you would take me there.”

That simple admission gives Sanji the courage to brush his lips against Zoro’s. He doesn't dare to do more, part of him still expecting rejection.

“Kiss me like you mean it,” Zoro demands, grabbing Sanji’s shirt, pulling him closer. Keeping him in place.

“I'll always mean it,” Sanji says, angry and ashamed and in love. “If anybody needs to try here, it's you.”

With a growl, Zoro presses himself to Sanji and kisses him, his tongue brushing over Sanji’s closed mouth, licking into it as soon as Sanji’s lips part. Zoro lets go of Sanji’s hand to cradle the back of his head, and Sanji puts his arms around Zoro and clings to him, digging his fingers into Zoro’s back. He kisses Zoro with the enthusiastic lust of his adolescence, with the hungry yearning of every moment spent apart, with the desperate devotion of twenty-one years of longing. He sucks on Zoro’s tongue and bites his lip, drops chaste pecks on the corners of his mouth, and swallows every sound Zoro makes, starving for everything he can take from him.

And Zoro? He gives as good as he gets. He pushes Sanji against the sink and narrows Sanji’s awareness to his presence, solid and reliable. He lowers his hand from Sanji’s shirt to his hip and sneaks it under his clothes to hold on tight to his waist like he needs an anchor just as much as Sanji does.

They kiss until Sanji’s dizzy, until he forgets he ever lived without knowing the taste of Zoro’s lips. Both of them are panting when they break apart and neither lets go of the other. Sanji lets out a pathetic little whine when the kiss ends. Zoro rests his forehead against Sanji’s. They breathe together.

“I love you,” Sanji admits into the minimal space between them.

The only sound in the galley is their heavy breathing, and Sanji finds his sense in the moment between his words leaving his mouth and Zoro saying, “I know.”

It’s only Sanji who is in love here. His hands release Zoro’s shirt without him thinking about it. He’s conscious of what he’s doing when he rests his hands on Zoro’s chest and pushes him away.

Zoro doesn’t get the memo—his fingers remain buried in Sanji’s hair, his other hand stays curled around Sanji’s waist. Sanji could kiss him again, and it'd hurt more than losing his finger had.

“Let me go, Shitty Swordsman,” Sanji grits out.

“No,” Zoro says, his gaze fixed on Sanji’s. His hold on his waist loosens, but he keeps his hand where it is. “Not yet.” He rubs circles on Sanji’s skin with his thumb. “I don't want to.”

It'd be easy for Sanji to kick himself free, they both know it.

Instead, Sanji grabs Zoro’s shirt again and drops his forehead on his shoulder.

“You have ten seconds,” he says.

It lasts a minute.

After the help with cooking and the dishes, part of Sanji feared that Zoro wouldn’t leave him alone from then on. As much as he might love him, Sanji would turn murderously violent if he had to see Zoro all the time. They do argue constantly, and it can only partially be blamed on Sanji’s inability to deal with his feelings in any other way.

Zoro, thankfully, keeps out of Sanji’s way almost as much as he used to, only popping up to help with meals and cleaning up. Sanji almost drops the eggs the day Zoro appears in the kitchen while he's starting with breakfast.

“Shouldn't you be sleeping?” Sanji asks, clutching his heart and trying to will it to stop racing.

“I'll take a nap after breakfast,” Zoro says around a yawn, heading for the counter. “What do I do?”

“Why are you here?” Sanji feels a bit insane. Zoro shouldn't be awake now. Zoro should be sleeping, not-

“Helping you.” He says it so simply, like he didn't get out of bed early to try to make Sanji’s day easier. It was enough with lunch and dinner. It makes Sanji’s knees go a bit weak.

“Right,” Sanji breathes. He coughs to cover it up. “Okay. Get me the whisk.”

He still doesn't trust Zoro with any of the actual cooking, but it's nice to have someone to find and wash things for him as he works. It makes the process go faster, so by the time they’re done, there are a good fifteen minutes left before the crew starts waking up. Zoro heads over to the galley's couch and lies down.

“Wake me up when breakfast starts, Cook,” he says, and closes his eyes, leaving Sanji to fight the need to jump him.

When Brook and Robin-chan enter the kitchen later, they aren't subtle in their staring. When they finally tear their gazes away from Zoro’s sleeping form, Robin-chan is smirking. Brook opens his mouth.

“Don't,” Sanji says.

“I'm so happy for you,” Brook says anyway, sniffling.

Sanji groans and goes to get Robin-chan's coffee. She follows him.

“It's true,” she says quietly, resting a hand on his forearm. “You deserve to be happy too.”

“It's not…” Sanji breathes in slowly, his head low and his eyes fixed on Robin-chan's wedding ring. “He says he wants to fall for me. It hasn't happened yet.”

“He's always done what he wants, though,” Robin-chan reminds him. “Trust him.”

“I do.” And it's terrifying, this hope. That Zoro’s willpower will be stronger than Sanji’s luck.

“It'll be alright,” Robin-chan says with a soft smile, and how can Sanji not trust her too?

After that, Zoro starts getting up at the same time as Sanji. It allows Sanji to sleep a few more minutes, and his body thanks him for it. Zoro naps on the couch while everybody else eats, and nobody comments on his presence anymore. The only one that still has any sort or reaction to it is Sanji himself, who keeps expecting to look up and discover it had all been a dream, a hallucination brought on his lovesick mind.

Zoro remains, and comes back, and Sanji falls all over again at the same time he falls harder.

One unavoidable consequence of having Zoro’s company is that they start talking. At first it's small things—anecdotes, funny situations, personal trivia—and one day Sanji finds himself explaining what it had been like the first time someone requested his food at the Baratie.

He bites his tongue when he realizes what he's saying, how much of himself he's offering, and looks out the corner of his eye to gauge Zoro’s reaction. Maybe he hadn't been listening.

No such luck. Zoro’s eye is trained on him, and when Sanji looks at him, he tilts his head and wordlessly encourages him to continue.

The rest of the story spills out before Sanji can stop himself, and Zoro smiles and tells him about the dojo where he grew up.

“I've never heard you talk so much,” Sanji says when Zoro’s story ends.

“I've never cared to talk about these things.” Zoro dries his hands on a kitchen towel—it took weeks to make him stop using his own clothes—and brushes a strand of Sanji’s hair behind his ear. “But you like to know them.”

He does, it's true.

“Tell me more, then,” Sanji demands, unwilling to be the only exposed one in this kitchen.

Instead of resisting, Zoro says, “What do you want to know?”

Everything.

Sanji’s lost in the possibilities. He opens and closes his mouth, trying to decide on his first question, and finally settles for, “Why don't you like chocolate?”

Zoro tells him.

These days, Zoro laughs every time they fight on the deck, delighted whenever Sanji blocks his swords. Sanji smiles, vicious and proud, and laughs with him. He allows himself to hold on to Zoro’s hand after helping him to his feet, and to play with his earrings when they’re cooling down later, sharing the shade of Nami-san’s trees.

Sometimes he forgets that Zoro doesn't love him yet. It's hard to believe he could have more than this.

Since Sanji doesn't let him cook, Zoro often ends up simply spending time in the galley while Sanji works. Sometimes he sleeps, other times he cleans his swords, on occasion he studies Sanji. It used to make Sanji self-conscious, now he barely notices it, no matter how much the Marimo might tease him over the fact that he has named some of the kitchen appliances, or his habit of humming when he puts on music.

The romantic ones are Sanji’s favorites, to the point that sometimes he forgets himself and sings under his breath.

“Cook?” Zoro suddenly calls from the couch.

Sanji snaps his mouth shut, only then realizing that he'd been singing at a normal volume. He flushes in embarrassment at being caught getting carried away.

“Yeah?” he answers without turning away from the stove.

“Can you look at me?” Zoro says, strangely subdued.

“Give me a moment, Marimo.” Sanji measures the water he needs and pours it into the pot with the rice. He adds salt and spices, giving his face time to recover its normal color, and tries to ignore Zoro’s eye on him.

Finally he puts the lid on the rice and turns to look at Zoro, who's watching him seriously. There's a small frown between his eyebrows. He doesn't say a word, only watching Sanji as some old singer croons about the miracle of love. Sanji wishes his taste in music wasn't the sort that lended itself to irony and cosmic jokes.

Zoro gets to his feet when the song ends and silently approaches Sanji, who raises an eyebrow and waits to see what it is that got into Zoro's head. Something dumb, probably. Hopefully.

To use the time, Sanji unties his hair and sets to redoing the ponytail he puts it in when he cooks. He has his hands in his hair and he's holding the hair tie between his teeth when Zoro takes a deep breath and says, “Dance with me?”

Sanji stares. This is the sort of moment in which it'd be more appropriate to gape, but he doesn't want to drop the hair tie. He lets his hair fall down his back, puts the hair tie in his pocket and finally asks, “What?”

To his credit, Zoro doesn't seem to feel even a little bit awkward. He keeps watching Sanji like he's something to figure out, a piece of the world’s puzzle.

“You,” Zoro points at Sanji. “Me,” he points at himself. “Dancing,” he points in the general direction of where the music's coming from.

A cigarette would be nice now.

“Why?”

“I'm jealous.”

Sanji thinks he might look very stupid right now, wide-eyed and lost for words.

“Jealous?” he repeats. Zoro isn't the jealous type—he doesn't care that Sanji has kept sighing over women at every port, that Nami-san and Robin-chan are still his favorite people, that he calls Trinket once a week to catch up.

“Yeah.” Zoro walks around the bar to enter the kitchen itself. “You loved to dance with Trinket. You danced with Chiara and Elena too, when you could. I'm the only one of your loves that hasn't danced with you.” He offers his hand to Sanji, palm up. “I don't like that, Cook.”

The last five minutes have probably been some of the lowest of Sanji’s life; he's done nothing but gape and feel confused. The Marimo’s bound to tease him forever over this.

“What are you doing?” Sanji says, gesturing towards Zoro’s outstretched hand.

“What do you think?” Zoro scoffs. “You know how this works, Cook. Has nobody ever asked you to dance before?”

“No.”

“No?” Zoro frowns and lowers his hand. “Really?” he asks, incredulous.

“Who would ask me to? I only ever dated women.”

“So?”

Zoro has a point, but it's not about gender, or even about dancing. It's about wanting to be close to someone and taking the first step. Nobody has ever pursued Sanji.

Since he can't say all that, Sanji shrugs.

“Okay.” Zoro closes his eye and mouths something to himself, frowning the whole time. Then he looks at Sanji again and solemnly offers him a hand, while hiding the other behind his back. He actually bows and says, “Would you honor me with this dance?” without even a hint of mockery in his tone.

A nearly hysterical laugh bubbles out of Sanji.

“What are you doing?” he says, his tone higher than he would have liked. This has to be a joke.

Zoro doesn’t reply, he only waves the offered hand.

“Since when are you so formal? Are you possessed? Is this mind control?” Sanji continues.

That gets him a glare.

“Do you even know how to dance?” Sanji asks, taking half a step towards Zoro against his better judgment.

“Mihawk made me learn,” Zoro says, matter-of-factly. He's still bowing.

“Dracule Mihawk?” This is a joke, isn't it? A cruel practical joke.

“Do we know any other Mihawks?” Zoro asks flatly, looking unimpressed.

“Maybe you do!” Sanji says, waving his hands in the air, trying to catch some sense floating around.

“Cook, either reject me or dance with me. This pose is ridiculous,” Zoro grumbles.

“Yes! It is!” Sanji gestures at Zoro with both hands. “Why are you bowing!? Get up!” He grabs Zoro’s shoulders and pulls him upright.

“It's the polite way to ask for a dance!”

“Maybe in a king's court!” Or a full century ago. Considering the likelihood of Mihawk being a vampire, it kinda makes sense for his idea of manners to be ancient.

“Luffy’s King of the Pirates. It counts.” Zoro raises his hand to put it in Sanji’s line of sight. “Now stop avoiding the question. Will you dance with me?”

“All of this because you’re jealous?” Sanji says, needing another moment, or maybe a couple years, to get used to the idea of dancing with Zoro.

“Cook,” Zoro warns.

“Fine!” Sanji lets go of one of Zoro’s shoulders. Zoro is quick to grab his hand.

“Was that so hard?” he complains.

Sanji wants to stick out his tongue, like a child, but then Zoro’s other hand settles on his waist and he pulls Sanji towards him until they’re pressed against each other. Sanji’s fairly certain that he died at some point and this is his torture for having a high libido.

“Did Mihawk teach you the appropriate distance between dance partners?” Sanji asks, his heart hammering against his chest. Zoro’s so close he must be able to feel it too.

“Yeah, he did.” Zoro smirks, smug. “But I like this better.” He lightly squeezes Sanji’s hand. “Shall we?”

“Okay,” Sanji breathes, out of ideas for how to continue denying himself what he wants. Three seconds into the dance, he opens his mouth.

“Don't,” Zoro says, narrowing his eye at him. “We're keeping our mouths shut for a full song, then we can argue.”

“Fine,” Sanji huffs. He turns his face away, unsure of what will happen if he allows Zoro to see his every expression.

The current singer is a heartbroken one. Her voice is raspy and tired in her longing, as she begs to stay in her former lover’s memories—in winter, in summer, as they grow old. It’s a cruel song, after everything Sanji’s put himself through. It makes him cling more tightly to Zoro, press himself impossibly closer and shut his eyes, trusting Zoro to lead.

“Cook?” Zoro says into his ear, soft and intimate.

The song is over, a new one has started, and at some point Sanji lowered his head and rested his forehead on Zoro’s shoulder. They aren't dancing anymore, only swaying in place.

“This is cruel, Marimo,” Sanji says. His words are muffled against Zoro’s jacket. “This… Is there any point to it? Don’t you think there’s a reason I never tried to dance with you?”

Zoro wraps his arms around Sanji and presses his lips to his temple. It's not a kiss, and yet it feels infinitely more loving than one could ever hope to be. The soft swaying doesn't stop.

“I think I'm a bit in love with you, Cook,” Zoro says against Sanji’s skin.

Sanji snorts. There isn't even a drop of amusement in him. He’s desperate to believe in Zoro’s words. “You think?”

He doesn't pull away. He knew when he died that no place in the world was safer than Zoro’s embrace—he’s not going to leave it now, when hope is threatening to shatter him.

“I don't know what love is supposed to feel like. The romantic one, I mean.” Zoro leans back slightly and guides Sanji’s head up with a hand, so they can see each other’s face. Sanji has never been more aware of somebody's touch. “Before today, it never bothered me that you've never danced with me. I know that I like how happy you are to see me in the mornings. I know that I want you to grow old and that I want to be the reason you're so happy when you're sixty.” He brushes Sanji’s hair back and tucks it behind his ear, leaving his eyes exposed. “I know I like your face, for some reason. And that when I think about how we could have lost you, it—” He sets his jaw and swallows. He cups Sanji’s cheek. “Don’t leave us again, Cook. Not unless you know how and when you're coming back.”

To see Zoro looking serious isn't a novelty. It happens every time someone in the crew is sick, whenever he finds a worthy enemy, and on the rare occasions in which Luffy allows his own smile to fade. It's not rare for him to be solemn either. Sanji can count on the fingers of his left hand the amount of times he has seen Zoro look insecure about something.

It would be inexcusably rude to tease him about it.

“And you really can't tell whether or not that's love?” Sanji says, smirking, his heart racing.

Zoro smirks as well. “Maybe I'll know if you kiss me again.”

So Sanji does.

It's his years of experience as a chef that tell him when to disentangle himself from Zoro and go back to the food. Zoro sticks to his side and then to his back, keeping his arms around Sanji’s waist and his forehead pressed to the back of Sanji’s neck while Sanji plates their family’s lunch.

On the next island where they disembark, Sanji takes Zoro to a hotel. He spends the night showing him what exactly it means to be loved by him, and the consequences of that love lacking an outlet for over two decades.

He's fairly sure that Zoro's head over heels for him by the time morning comes.

It would be a disservice to their friends to think they didn't know what was developing between them, considering Zoro never tried to hide his efforts to fall for Sanji. They also didn't bother hiding that they were going to spend a night together, which opened them to comments and waggling eyebrows when they came back.

It's hard to care about being teased when the stupid love of your stupid life looks proud of himself for having slept with you, when your nails have left marks on his back and your chest is a field of bruises gifted by his mouth. When you got to fall asleep holding him, his back to your chest and your legs tangled together.

Other than getting to kiss Zoro whenever he wants to, hold his hand and get up to indecent things when they can find some privacy, Sanji’s life stays mostly the same as it was when he woke up back in the present. Zoro still helps him with breakfast and the dishes, they still argue over everything and nothing, and they're still each other’s favorite sparring partner.

Sometimes, though, when one of his favorite songs comes up, Sanji offers Zoro his hand and leads him into a waltz around the kitchen and the galley. It's as easy as fighting back to back with him, and it always ends with them kissing.

Sanji ignores the little voice that points out that Zoro hasn't actually said he loves him yet. He already trusts Zoro with his life and death, there's no reason not to trust him with his heart too.

It couldn't last, it was too good to be true. Sanji knew it and still allowed himself to have some faith, to believe that the good star that watches over Zoro had deemed him worthy of staying by his side.

But today, after breakfast, Zoro kissed him slowly and carefully and looked at him with a troubled expression afterwards. Then he said he couldn't help with lunch and locked himself up in the crow's nest.

Sanji hadn't planned for that, which means their next meal will be late. It puts him in a sour mood that only worsens as everyone in the crew finds an excuse to go into the galley to check on him, while pretending that's not what they're doing. At least it helps to distract him from what really scares him, from the possibility that Zoro had gradually stopped loving him during the last few weeks, while Sanji had kept falling deeper. Maybe this is what his future self meant when he said he'd go through some bad things before he got to be happy. This is why he shouldn't have had any hopes.

This won't help with lunch and he better get to work.

He smokes faster than usual as he readies everything, and pretends he doesn't notice the concerned looks from some of the others when lunchtime arrives and Zoro doesn't show up immediately. Luffy’s the only one that seems, and probably is, unaffected.

When Zoro finally arrives, the others are already eating. He stands at the door and stares at Sanji until Nami-san orders him to, “Stop gaping and come here!”

Zoro doesn't stop looking at Sanji and he doesn't sit down either. Instead, he goes to the kitchen to retrieve his portion. He knew that Sanji would keep it covered and warm for him, like he always did before Zoro started helping him with the food.

The only empty spot left is next to Sanji. Nobody dared to occupy it, and so Zoro takes what's unofficially become his place since Sanji came back. He sets down his plate and proceeds to eat in record time under everybody's nervous gaze. When he's done, he turns towards Sanji and resumes his staring.

“What are you doing!?” Sanji snaps, unable to focus on his food when Zoro’s eye is drilling a hole on the side of his skull.

“Waiting for you to finish. You'll bitch and whine if your food gets cold because I distracted you,” Zoro complains. He grabs the sake Sanji left out for him and gestures for Sanji to hurry up.

Sanji sets down his fork and glares at Zoro. “You've already distracted me. Say whatever you wanna say, Marimo.”

The table has mostly gone silent. The only remaining source of noise is Luffy taking advantage of the situation to get more food for himself. Sanji can hear his own heartbeat thundering in his ears.

Zoro rolls his eye. “Remember you asked for it when your food gets cold.”

“Get it over with fast so I can go back to it, then!” Sanji says, jabbing a finger against Zoro’s shoulder.

Zoro grabs his hand and says, “Let's get married.”

Several jaws fall open. Brook's might have literally fallen.

“Huh?”

“Marriage, Cook,” Zoro says, shaking their joined hands. “I promise to be with you forever and to brutally murder anyone that hurts you, you promise to be with me forever and to keep me fed. Luffy stands before us so it's official, then we eat and dance to celebrate.”

Someone, Sanji's betting on Franky, sniffles.

“That's a wedding, not marriage,” Sanji says, feeling delirious.

“You want a wedding, though,” Zoro points out.

“Yeah, I do.” He really, really does. Sanji wants everyone to see him claiming this man for himself for the rest of his life. “But you? We've been together, what, two months?”

“One month, three weeks and four days, or just one month and three weeks, depending on when you start counting,” Zoro says, matter-of-factly. “Who cares? You've been in love with me for ages and that's not changing anytime soon.”

Sanji splutters. Zoro ignores him and continues, “I'm in love with you too and I'll stay that way for the rest of my life.”

There's a choking noise from somewhere. Sanji would have bet on Usopp if they hadn’t already left him and Kaya in Syrup Village shortly after Sanji’s grand return. Maybe it was Chopper?

“Let's get married, Cook,” Zoro repeats, lowering their hands to his lap.

He waits while Sanji tries to make his brain work again.

“This isn't how proposals are done,” Sanji finally says, waiting for Zoro to tell him he's joking. For the Sunny to sink. For Trinket to wake him up and tell him this was all a dream and he still has years of waiting ahead.

“Yeah, well, I decided on it just now.” Zoro says, annoyed.

Somebody facepalms, if Sanji goes by the loud smack he just heard. He suspects it was Nami-san.

“Where am I supposed to get you a ring?” Zoro continues, uncaring of the others. He frowns. “Huh.”

He lets go of Sanji’s hand and takes off his earrings. He cleans them with the hem of his jacket and offers them to Sanji, who wishes he looked less dumbfounded. “Here. I'm sure Franky can turn them into rings.”

He looks at Franky for confirmation.

“Yeah, I totally can!” Franky says with a thumbs-up after he manages to control his sobbing.

“Cool.” Zoro turns back to Sanji and shakes the earrings on his open palm. “Here's your ring, Cook. Are we getting married?”

Sanji's eyes go from Zoro to the earrings, then back to Zoro.

“Can we go back a bit?” It comes out breathless in his incredulity. “You love me? You actually love me? You don't just think you do?”

Zoro gives him a flat look and raises an eyebrow. “Yeah? You must have seen it coming, it's not like I hide how I feel about you.”

True. Sanji wants to doubt this, but to doubt Zoro would be unforgivable. His Marimo is honest to a painful level. He's made him feel loved for a while and Sanji has refused to see it. He can't keep himself ignorant any longer.

“You love me,” he says, certain this time, blinking rapidly to keep himself from crying. “Since when?”

“No idea, I figured it out this morning. It was confusing at first? Like, what was this,” Zoro rubs his chest, “thing I felt just looking at you. Fucking weird, Cook. I figured it was love, but if I was wrong you'd mock me forever.” He shrugs. “So I thought about it, meditated, worked out, and yeah. I'm in love with you. Can we now go and spend the rest of our lives together?”

The answer is obvious, and yet Sanji seems to have forgotten how to speak. He clutches the earrings tightly and uses all his willpower to hold back his tears. Zoro watches Sanji, unconcerned.

The silence is interrupted by Luffy. “We’ll have to get Usopp for the wedding. And Sanji’s old man. Nami, how fast can you get us to them?”

“Luffy!” Nami-san cries, exasperated, and everybody takes that as their cue to say something too, from congratulations (Jinbe) to reviewing and grading Zoro’s proposal (Robin-chan). Brook starts humming to himself what sounds like an arrangement of a wedding march.

It all becomes a happy chaos, during which Sanji finishes his meal. It did go cold, but he doesn’t mention it. Mainly because he saw Zoro smirking after he took his first bite, and Sanji’s not going to give him the satisfaction of an ‘I told you so’.

They don’t let him clear the table and do the dishes, forcing him to escape outside, unwilling to bear the teasing any longer. He hasn’t accepted yet, but everybody acts like he did.

He stands at the railing and fumbles for a cigarette. Zoro comes to stand at his side. He leans against the railing and watches Sanji struggle with his lighter.

“You have to quit,” he says, taking the cigarette from Sanji’s lips and putting it away. “I want you to last me a long time.”

“Then you better stop drinking too,” Sanji grumbles, searching for another smoke.

“Sure. I’ll just go to you whenever I’m craving a thrill,” Zoro says simply.

“How can you just go and say things like that?” Sanji complains, lowering his head to try to hide his red cheeks.

“Because it’s the truth.” The smugness in his tone should be a crime.

They stand in silence for a few moments, with only the ocean for company.

“Do you still have that cigarette you got from your past self?” Zoro asks.

“Yeah, why?” Sanji says, frowning at the change of topic.

“Wanna share it?”

Sanji blinks. “You don’t smoke.”

“Sometimes I do.”

Sanji has seen him, but it isn’t something he associates with Zoro.

“I thought I had to quit?” Sanji continues, trying to understand what’s happening.

Zoro scoffs. “Since when do you listen to me?” His tone changes into an amused one when he adds, “I was thinking that your last smoke could be the last of its kind that’s left in the world.”

“That’s poetic.” Sanji narrows his eyes. “Are you feeling fine?”

“I thought you’d appreciate it, Cook.”

“I do. It was just… unexpected,” Sanji says, trying to sound nonchalant instead of touched by the effort to humor him.

He takes out the cigarette and places it between his lips. Before he can light it, Zoro takes the lighter and does it for him.

“Here’s to our future,” he says quietly, holding Sanji’s gaze. “We’re going to be happy.”

Slowly, Sanji smiles. He takes a drag of his cigarette and offers it to Zoro, who lowers his mouth to the filter instead of taking the stick from Sanji. His lips touch Sanji’s fingers for a moment, and then Zoro’s straightening himself and blowing the smoke into the air.

“I’ll hold you to that,” Sanji says, taking Zoro’s hand and interlacing their fingers.

“So it’s a yes?” Zoro asks, his lips curling upwards.

“It was always going to be a yes,” Sanji says, moving closer.

A grin appears on Zoro’s face, radiant and excited. The smile Sanji hasn’t seen since they were nineteen, since the time before Zoro became aware of his own limits. The one he has grieved all these years, brought back to life by his answer.

“Zoro,” Sanji breathes, putting his hand behind Zoro’s neck. He pulls Zoro towards him, needing to taste that smile he’d dreamed of so many times back when he was young.

“Sanji,” Zoro says against Sanji’s lips, still smiling, and rests his hand against the small of Sanji’s back.

The cigarette burns down to the filter, and twenty-one years of longing end with it.

Chapter Text

“There used to be a lot of crime here,” says the woman currently bagging Zoro’s groceries. “Twenty years ago-”

“Twenty-one!” corrects the woman next to her, without pausing in the process of counting Zoro’s change.

“Shoosh,” says the first one. The other one rolls her eyes and resumes her task. “Well,” the woman addresses Zoro again, delighted about having an audience, “back then,” she side-eyes her companion, who scoffs, “it was pretty much impossible to go outside at night. Those were dark times.”

“Obviously. It was night,” the second woman interjects with a smirk.

Zoro snorts. The first woman looks at him like he just betrayed her.

Still, she continues. “This wasn't a peaceful place. There were crime rings! Murders! Theft! I don't know what would have become of us if it hadn't been for-”

The other woman has been mouthing along with what's being said, even imitating the speaker's facial expressions. At the end, though, she loudly exclaims, drowning her companion’s voice, “-Straw Hat Luffy!”

“Every time!” the woman that had been telling the story cries. “Every single time you do the same thing!” She hands Zoro his purchases and turns to argue with her partner, who is downright cackling as she hands Zoro his change.

He leaves them to it with a goodbye they don't hear and resumes his walk. The town is lively, full of small shops and happy people. On some storefronts and walls he can see the leftovers and remains of a recent celebration—the anniversary of the island's liberation at the hands of the Straw Hat Pirates. Zoro has been entertaining himself today asking people about it, amused by the different versions of the events. They all agree that Aparición is what it is today thanks to Luffy, who they regard as an almost holy figure, descended from the heavens to save them all. That's something Zoro actually heard today and which had him laughing so hard he got stared at. He didn’t bother with an explanation. It’s not like anything will change if he tells these people that Luffy only did all that to keep busy while he was waiting for a call.

“Flowers! Flowers! Buy a flower today!” calls a boy further down the street. He's standing on a box and gesturing wildly, drawing everyone’s eye to him. “Get one to apologize! Get one to declare your feelings! Get one just because it's pretty! Buy a flower today, you won't regret it!” He sounds passionate about selling his flowers, to the point that Zoro figures he might as well buy one. Sanji will tease him forever when he hears about it, and then he'll smile and kiss him.

Yeah, buying a flower is a great idea. Zoro should buy three, or twenty. He can ask for a kiss for each one.

He's heading towards the boy when the sight of a man coming from the opposite direction makes him stop in his tracks. His hair is almost completely white and his build is heavier than the last time Zoro saw him, but his eyebrows are unmistakable.

The man goes to the boy and buys a bouquet, red and blue and yellow, and after he pays he looks up at Zoro and smiles at him. The same smile that has been gifted to him almost every morning for two decades and counting.

“Marimo,” the man—Sanji, his Sanji, albeit much older and thankfully free of the stupid braided beard—greets him.

“Cook,” Zoro says, looking him up and down. His wedding band is still on his finger. He still walks confidently. He isn't smoking. “Are you here to see me or did we fail at getting you back?”

It's an unnecessary question. The older Sanji laughs and grabs Zoro’s right arm to pull him along as he walks.

“You know I'd have asked my darling Trinket to freeze me again if that had happened,” Sanji says, fond and content.

“It doesn't hurt to check.” Zoro turns his head to see him better. “How old are you? Eighty-two?”

Sanji nods.

“Are you making it a habit of visiting me whenever your current self takes a trip to the past?” Zoro asks. “Is your version of me currently getting a visit from a centennial you?”

“Centennial? That's a big word, Marimo, where did you learn it?” Sanji mocks. His hand squeezes Zoro’s arm lightly.

“I'll fight you right here and now, old man, don't try me,” Zoro threatens.

“I've got twenty-one years of experience on you, Marimo,” Sanji says, his eyes glinting with amusement. “Don't get cocky just because I'm older.”

“You don't get cocky, Curls. Now answer my question.”

Sanji sighs dramatically and lets go of Zoro’s arm in order to take his hand. He interlaces their fingers and Zoro becomes acutely aware—for the umpteenth time since they got Sanji back from the past, twenty-one years ago—of the empty space where the ring one used to be.

“This is the last time,” Sanji says, dragging Zoro out of his thoughts. “I just wanted to surprise you.”

They come to a stop in front of the inn where Zoro’s staying. For this Sanji to know where it is, it must mean that Zoro himself will tell him about it later.

“Won't you invite me in?” Sanji’s smile is suggestive.

“You're my husband. You don't need an invitation.”

Since they got married, Sanji has never stopped lighting up every time Zoro calls him his husband. It's nice to know that that won't stop happening in the next twenty-one years either.

They walk in hand-in-hand and Sanji patiently waits for Zoro to find the right room. He's delighted when he sees that Zoro got one with a kitchen.

“I had a hunch I'd be seeing you while I was here,” Zoro explains when Sanji asks him about it.

“You knew my future self was going to take a trip to the past just to see you?” Sanji raises a skeptical eyebrow.

“Cook, the current you jumped into the past just to give all of us a scare,” Zoro says flatly. “And after all these years together? I know how much you like the dramatics. I was sure I’d be seeing you,” he gestures at Sanji, “pretty soon.”

He sets down the groceries and starts putting them away. Sanji comes over to help unprompted.

“And here I thought you'd be surprised to see me,” Sanji complains.

“You'll have to try harder,” Zoro says with a shrug.

Sanji grabs him by the shoulders, meets his gaze directly and solemnly announces, “I'm pregnant. It's not yours.”

Zoro barks out a laugh and Sanji clings to him, laughing loud and unashamed.

“Fuck, I love you,” Zoro says, dropping a kiss on Sanji’s hair.

“Even now that I'm old?” Sanji asks against his neck.

“I love you with the dumb beard,” Zoro puts his arms around Sanji’s waist, “of course I'm going to love you now that you don't have it.”

There's no reply, only Sanji tightening his hold on him. It makes Zoro frown and lean back to see Sanji’s face. He's got a watery smile on.

“Have I not told you enough? Did I kick it and leave you alone?” Zoro will find his way to the afterlife and give his future self a taste of his swords for daring to die if that's the case.

“No, Marimo,” Sanji laughs. “You're still around, still a pain, and still obnoxious about telling me how you feel.”

“Then why the tears?”

“I'm happy, you insensitive idiot!” Sanji wipes his face with his hand.

“Good.” Zoro nods. “That's how it's gotta be.” He pulls Sanji towards him again, letting him hide his face in the crook of his neck. “I promised you we'd be happy, didn't I?”

Sanji nods. “You looked terrifying when you said it. Like you'd have bent the universe itself to ensure you fell for me.”

“I'd have done it if I'd had to,” Zoro says. “I wanted to love you.”

And now that he knows what it's like? He'd make the same decision again in a heartbeat, to fall over and over again, every day, for the idiot currently in his arms. He'll tell him so when his Sanji gets back from his little trip to the past. He makes a mental note to tell this older Sanji the same thing in the future, when he returns from this excursion to the past.

“Thank you for that,” Sanji murmurs.

They stay like that for a while, hugging and simply existing together. Eventually, Sanji sniffles and removes himself from Zoro’s hold. He clears his throat, grabs the bouquet he bought earlier, and offers it to Zoro with a flourish.

“For you, my love.”

His smile is warm. Each and every time Zoro sees it, he wonders how they all missed Sanji’s feelings for him back then. They’re blinding in their obviousness.

“Thanks, husband.” Zoro takes the flowers. “How long are you staying?”

“Just tonight.” Sanji sighs. “I gotta head to the pick-up point tomorrow.”

Zoro hums and starts looking for a glass; he doesn’t expect to find a vase in a rented room. “So I'm supposed to wait alone until the current you comes back?”

He fills the glass with water and puts the flowers in it. He’ll get his Sanji a bouquet of his own when he comes back.

“You wouldn’t be waiting alone if you'd gone with the others,” Sanji points out.

Zoro’s Sanji, the sixty-one year-old one, had left for the past through the portal in Aparición. They were to wait two weeks before they jumped in to bring him back, and the rest of the crew had decided to use that time to relax. Zoro decided to stay as close as possible to the portal instead, just in case.

“I'm good here,” Zoro says. The existence of the older Sanji—the Most Oldest Sanji, chirps an almost forgotten memory—means everything will turn out fine, but he’s not risking it.

Sanji hums. He proceeds to rummage through what Zoro has yet to put away and select a few ingredients. Zoro watches him out of the corner of his eye as he surveys the kitchen, and can practically hear him planning and organizing what he's about to prepare. He doubts he'll ever get tired of watching Sanji at work, of the precise elegance of his movements, the confidence with which he performs every task. He'll happily spend a few lifetimes doing exactly that.

When Sanji passes next to him, Zoro grabs his left hand and kisses what's left of his ring finger. Sanji’s breath catches.

“Look at that,” Zoro teases, smirking smugly, “I can still surprise you.”

Sanji scoffs, but he doesn’t move away.

“What was that for?”

“A vow.” Zoro caresses Sanji’s knuckles with his thumb. “I've decided I'm gonna be with you in my next life too.”

“And who are you to decide that?” Sanji raises his eyebrow. “Maybe I don’t want to spend two lives with you. Maybe this one is enough.”

“Yeah? Come on, Cook. Look me in the eye and tell me that you don’t want to be with me forever,” Zoro challenges.

Sanji glares at him and keeps his mouth shut.

Zoro smiles and touches what’s left of his ring finger. “In our next life, I’ll put a wedding band here. Where it’s actually supposed to go.”

There are many more wrinkles on this Sanji's face that have yet to appear on the current one's—smile lines and marks of age, all of them a result of Zoro having kept his promise of happiness and love. The smile lines become evident when Sanji hears Zoro’s words.

“Yeah?” Sanji asks softly.

“Yeah.” Zoro’s in no rush to die, but he’s looking forward to his next life now.

“I'd like that,” Sanji says. “I always wanted that, you know?”

Zoro frowns. "What?"

“A wedding ring on that finger.” Sanji raises his hand. “It's why I always kept it bare. I promised to myself that the only ring I'd ever wear on it would be my wedding band.”

It's easy to imagine that, the romantic fantasy of a hopeless sap. Another dream that he tried to pretend didn’t actually matter, until it was out of his reach. Zoro will fix that.

“Just wait a bit, okay?” Zoro says. “Next life, you're getting your ring.”

“You better remember, Marimo,” Sanji warns.

“I will.” Zoro kisses Sanji’s hand again and finally lets him go so he can start cooking.

He helps him with it, like he's been doing for the last twenty years and like he'll be doing for the next twenty-one. Like he'll be doing in every new life until the end of time, if he can have his way.

Zoro always gets his way.