This one-shot is an extremely (and I do mean extremely – she had even forgotten what it was she had asked me to write about when I contacted her about actually getting off my ass and writing it) belated present for my awesome friend Vendelareader, who has the patience of a saint. Decide whether to leave your shipping goggles on or off, and enjoy the story!
Disclaimer: Nope, don't own a thing.
"We may stumble and fall but shall rise again;
it should be enough if we did not run away from the battle."
- Mahatma Gandhi
He was hurting. It was not anything too bad... or at least he did not believe it was at the moment, but he was... sore. And bruised. And... oh Rodger, could someone please behead him right now, because if his head was going to hurt this much, then he certainly did not need the shitty thing.
Rolling over in an attempt to get the light to stop viciously stabbing at his eyelids, the smell hit him. And not the pleasant smell of tangerines, or a new book, or something the like; no, this was the stench of blood and piss and mud and gunpowder and sweat and ash and...
He promptly threw up, adding the vile odor of vomit to the revolting mix, causing his body to heave and throw up again and again and again, until not even his stomach acids seemed to remain.
His entire body aching and tired, he groaned and tried to spit out the remaining sick from his dry mouth, before giving it up as impossible and trying his best to sit up and open his eyes. The "sit up" part went fairly well, if one ignored the fact that the ground now slowly seemed to be lurching backwards and forwards, as if it could not quite decide on where it was supposed to lay. The "open his eyes" part... well, that did not go so well. Still, after some time he was able to combat the pain the stabbing, unpleasant light seemed to bring and - after brushing tangled and dirty blonde hair out of his eyes - look around.
If he had had anything left in his stomach by then, he would no doubt have vomited again. As it was, though, his body had to content itself with dry heaving until he almost slipped down into the mud again out of sheer exhaustion; his arms were trembling from the effort of holding himself up.
It was like a scene straight out of hell, if not for the cheery, warm sun and refreshing salty breezes blowing by every now and then. Everywhere he looked, there was death. Broken bones, twisted limbs, guts spilling out, blood pooling, crushed or missing body parts, smoking flesh... and everywhere, beneath the blood and mud and Roger knows what else... white and blue, white and blue, white and blue...
His head sent him a painful reminder that thinking is not a healthy activity at the moment, but he ignored it, just as he ignored the heavy lethargy tugging at his limbs and eyelids. He was not going to sleep, not in this place.
He might never wake up again.
White and blue.
White and blue, neither of which were on his person, despite the fact that it was on everyone else and he had woken among them.
White.
And.
Blue.
Fighting his headache, he heard someone shout. No, that was not quite right. The battlefield was silent. It was just him and the dead and the wind and... sounds in the distance. Shouting, clanging, banging...
Surely he had heard those sounds before?
Running. No, being chased. Cold metal glinting in the sun, the sound and smell of guns and cannons going off. Pain and triumph and confusion and frustration and distaste and anger and...
Marines.
The word almost felt synonymous to enemies.
But there were so very many of them, and they were so very dead, and surely he could not have done this...
Could he?
How?
And how did he end up here?
What had happened?
Realizing that his breathing was coming out unevenly between muttered strings of curses, he forced himself to calm down. Getting panicked would not solve shit.
So.
What did he know?
There had been a battle. A big one. And for some reason, neither side had been able to claim their dead, since both he and the... marines had been left out here.
Or perhaps it was just the marines who had left their dead, and he had simply been... missed? Overlooked? Left behind? Forgotten? By...
By whom?
Head aching, throbbing, pounding, he found that he could not remember.
"Shit, shit, shit, shitty fucking shithole-"
Interrupting himself, he drew a couple of deep breaths.
They were important, he knew that much, because his chest was constricting, and hurting and fucking Rodger, he could not start crying now.
If he was missing them, that meant that he had not completely forgotten them. Which meant that he might be able to remember them eventually, if this amnesia ever let up.
Amnesia.
That is what it was called.
It was most likely caused by a hard blow to the head, considering how much pain he was in. He probably had a concussion, too, considering the vertigo, nausea, headache, lethargy and light sensitivity.
...how did he know this?
Drawing up a blank, he returned his focus to the situation at hand. He had a concussion and amnesia. There had to be some sort of cure, right? He would not walk around without his memory his entire life, right? Surely amnesia was curable...
I want to cure all illnesses!
Stilling himself, he grasped on to that tiny sliver of memory with all his might, trying to come up with something, anything that was connected with it.
I want to cure all illnesses!
Did he? Did he want to cure all illnesses? It did not feel wrong, exactly, to want it, but it did not feel right, either.
But on the other hand, if he had, indeed, lost his memories, how would he know what he had wanted before waking up here, surrounded by death?
He fought the urge to curl into a ball and cry for all the blood and death around surrounding him, for losses he did not remember, because none of it made sense, and he was scared, damn it! Still, he could not cry, because...
Why could he not cry?
He had not noticed, earlier, because he had been so very fixated on finding out what was going on, what it was that had happened, but...
Who was he?
He...
He was...
He was frightened, and alone in the middle of a field of death, and he could not even remember his own name.
Shit!
Okay, he needed to calm down. He needed to breathe. He needed to think.
What did he know?
He was male.
He was not a marine.
He was a fighter of some kind, otherwise he would not have been here.
He must be a good fighter, otherwise he would not have survived.
I want to be a brave warrior of the sea!
He froze, clasping on to that memory and replaying it again and again.
I want to be a brave warrior of the sea!
Who? Who was it?
I want to be...
He knew it was not him, this time. The last one had not been, either.
...a brave warrior of the sea!
It was someone else, someone who... someone who-
"Come on you shitty brain! Work!" His voice broke. He was crying now, but he could not bring himself to care. There was no-one around to see him, anyway. "Work! Please..."
It hurt.
It hurt so much, and he did not even know what he was hurting for.
No! He did know, otherwise he would not be hurting, so he just needed to remember.
Remember who it was that had a big enough heart to take on every patient, every hopeless case in the entire world.
Snow and cold and small, so small, but strong and big-hearted and... Flowers. Pink flowers blooming in winter, except they were not flowers, not really. And fur! Fur and a blue nose and-!
The memory slipped out of his fingers just when he needed it the most; just as a name danced on the tip of his tongue, and he fought hard not to cry out with frustration.
But he could not give up.
He could not give up, because...
Because he never did. The entire world could be laughing at him, he could be beaten down and crippled, but he never gave up. He kept rising up, kept doing the impossible and always kept smiling.
Who?
He did not know.
Not yet.
But he would, because he would not allow for anything else.
He would not disappoint them, even if he could not remember them yet.
Taking a deep breath, he stood up and surveyed the battlefield, trying to remember the warrior; trying to remember who it was that so desperately wanted to be strong and brave and useful that he did not realize that he already was.
Obnoxious laughter and strange dances and skulls drawn on sails and tall tales that could never be true but brought a smile to everyone's faces.
He could not remember the name, but at least he remembered, and that was a step forward. He remembered the healer, and the warrior, and the... captain?
I'm gonna be King of the Pirates!
Yes, the Captain with the straw hat and the impossibly wide smile.
He almost fell back into the blood-soaked mud when he realized that he was a pirate.
Well, at least it would explain why he thought of the marines as enemies, despite that nagging feeling in the back of his mind telling him that they were supposed to be standing on the side of the law and be the good guys.
Absently pulling up a saber from where it was stuck in the mud beside him, he looked out at all the death surrounding him.
If this was what being a pirate led to, did he truly want to continue as one? Maybe this was his second chance. Maybe he could start over, now that he was a blank slate. Maybe he could leave this slaughter behind him.
Staring down at the hilt – the purple hilt – of the weapon in his hand, he considered just throwing it away and getting out of there. But... he could not. His fingers almost seemed to close around the hilt out of their own volition.
Staring down at the traitorous appendage (because surely he could not be the sort of person who enjoyed violence and destruction and death, right?) he tried to understand what it meant. Was the weapon important to him, somehow?
Well, perhaps not that weapon in particular, considering that the guard had the marine seagull emblazoned into it, but something similar? Something...
Song and pages fluttering and sake sloshing around in its bottle. A violin and a soft chuckle and the clanking of heavy weights. Bad jokes and limbs sprouting like flowers and loud snoring in the middle of the damn day, and couldn't that big, shitty lump actually help with something for once instead of sleeping, training and getting his useless green ass lost all the time?
Starting at the intensity of that train of thought, he shook his head (slowly, because that headache most certainly was not gone yet and the ground was still lurching about) in an attempt to clear out the confusing rush of memories; surely that could not be the same person?
No, it was not.
But who was who?
Song. Song and music and a violin and glinting, quick steel and an eerie tune floating through the fog. Bad jokes and a missing shadow and missing flesh and bad manners.
The musician.
No name yet, but he remembered. The musician wanted to sail around the world for the sake of a promise.
Pages fluttering and a soft smile and a soft chuckle and purple. Mysterious sharp blue eyes and a compass – no, Log Pose - and sand and a storm and a city on water and a fortress and a sacrifice and tears and she wanted to live.
The archaeologist.
He remembered. She wanted to live and she wanted to unravel the mysteries of the world; to find the forgotten history for the sake of her dead family and friends.
Sake and rum sloshing around in their bottles because fetching a glass was too much of a bother. Deep, unrestrained laughter and an iron determination to never give in and to cut through all the obstacles which got in the way. Heavy weights clanking against each other and the deck despite injuries. Loud snoring during mid-deck, midday naps. Three blades glinting mercilessly and being cradled like something precious and being pampered worse than the women on board. Green. Green and grey and white and a tattered ship drifting forth and a loss against the best there was and a vow. A vow to never lose again.
The green swordsman.
Yes, he remembered him. He wanted to become the best swordsman in the world, both for his own sake and for the sake of the white sword and for the sake of their Captain, who deserved nothing less.
With difficulty, he forced his foggy mind back to the present.
The green swordsman would scoff at the sword in his grip, calling it a fragile toy. It did not seem right in his hand, either. It was too big and too heavy and too clumsy and he knew now that the only reason he had not let it go earlier was due to it reminding him of his crewmates, not because it, in and of itself, was important.
He let the toy sword fall back to the ground. He had remembered, and as such, it had lost what value it had to him.
The doctor, the warrior, the Captain, the musician, the archaeologist, the green swordsman. He remembered them all, but it still felt as if something was missing. That there was supposed to be more of them.
How many?
Lifting up his dirty, scuffed and bleeding hands (there was something wrong with that, he felt; his hands were not supposed to look like that), he stared into them and started counting, raising a finger for each one, even if it felt a bit stupid. Every little bit helps when it feels like a team of fishmen have been playing a violent game of ball with one's... head...
There was something about fishmen. Something important that he should remember.
Something that...
His train of thought was interrupted by a wobbly cannonball planting itself into a body not much more than a couple of meters away from him, producing a sickening crunch and squelch and causing his whole body to stiffen in fear.
The battle was still going on. That was why no-one had claimed the bodies, why no-one had come looking for him. He had heard it before, faintly, but dismissed it in favour of an oncoming rush of memories and then the infernal pounding in his head and rushing in his ears had blocked most of it out.
But now he could hear it again, and it was impossible to ignore it. It sounded like the fighting had moved to stand on just the other side of the hill from him.
He swallowed against a dry throat and bit his, lip, feeling an inexplicable urge to occupy his mouth with something, to calm down.
He could just turn and walk away. He was not exactly fighting fit at the moment, not to mention that he most likely did not know whoever it was on the other side of that hill, not what it was that they were fighting for. Hell, walking away from this shitty situation was probably the smartest thing he could do at the moment. Whomever was capable of causing destruction and death on this scale... well, they probably would not find it very hard to take him down.
Still, his feet would not move and his senses fixated on the battle raging just out of sight. Somehow, despite him not being able to see it, or hear it very clearly, he still felt it in some odd way that he could not quite grasp. They were moving and failing and crying and angry and scared and determined and hating and... he suddenly found one, one presence, who was not like the others. Who was so raging and so determined and so strong that his head almost spun.
He... recognized... that presence, somehow, even if he could not identify it.
And somehow he found himself utterly incapable of even thinking of turning around and walking away.
He was still scared, because come on, what chance did he really have in a battle like that? He was weak and wounded and did not even remember how to fight, but he continued up the hill despite that. Because it was inconceivable to not do so.
And as he crested the hill and leaned against a scraggly, fallen tree for support against his spinning head, he realized why.
There, in the middle of a raging sea of marines, flashed a dance of green hair and clothes and cold, sharp, bloodied steel.
The green swordsman.
The marimo head.
Zoro.
He remembered a name! He finally remembered a name.
And just like that, like his memories had been waiting for that name, they came rushing back.
Tony Tony Chopper – the tiny reindeer doctor who wants to heal the world.
Usopp – the cowardly sniper who wants to be brave.
Monkey D. Luffy – the pirate captain who wants to be King just so he can be completely free.
Brook – the musician skeleton who promised to sail around the world.
Nico Robin – the archaeologist who wants to know the world's best kept secret.
Roronoa Zoro – the ambitious green swordsman who wants to be the best.
And then those who had lain right at the edge of his consciousness, who he had almost, but not quite, been able to grasp.
Nami! Their wonderful, beautiful, marvelous navigator, Nami-swan~
The smell of tangerines and the flutter of money. A Log Pose and shouted commands. Swishing orange hair and tinkling laughter and roiling clouds and tears and fishmen and a map and a village and a debt.
A dream to draw a map of the entire world.
And Franky. Their strange cyborg shipwright with a bad habit of wearing nothing but underwear and an open shirt.
The sound of cola fizzling and gears and tools clinking and clanging. Blue hair and a three-parted chin and skin-covered steel. A broken ship and a misunderstanding and help from an unlikely source and an amazing lion-headed ship and a partly naked chase through the city on the water.
He wanted the ship he built to do what only one had managed before it; sail all the way to Raftel and return from there.
His eight nakama.
He laughed through his fresh tears, and suddenly it it not matter so much if he could not remember who he, himself was, yet. Because he had remembered them, and that was the most important. He remembered them and knew them and he would be damned if he let that shitty mosshead get himself killed down there by those annoying marines.
Steadying himself and resolving to ignore his head's protests, he dashed down the slope, hoping that his reflexes would kick in once he reached the fighting, because he still could not really remember how he was supposed to fight.
Ducking under an incoming mace and planting his sore and stinging hands on the ground to knock the marine's feet out from underneath the grunt, he found out that apparently, he kicked people.
Well.
That did not explain how his hands had gotten hurt, but he could live with that.
Following the movement, he heaved himself up again and kept running towards Zoro's presence until a lesser mountain of a man stepped in his way and levelled a gun at his face. Ducking, he instinctively sent a hard front kick into the man's left knee...
And promptly froze at his pained cry and the sickening, revolting crunch emanating from crushed bone and ripped ligaments. Distantly, he heard cries of:
"Blackleg! Blackleg's here!"
"Fuck! Didn't he go down? We were supposed to separate them, damn it!"
"QUIT RUNNING AROUND SCREAMING LIKE LITTLE PANSIES AND TAKE HIM DOWN, DAMN IT!"
But he could not move. He had just crippled a man for life. As it it was easy. As if it was something common. As if it did not matter. He could not tear his eyes from the man who had fainted from the pain.
Seconds had passed, and seconds could be lifetimes in situations like this. He registered the whistling of sharpened blades and speeding bullets and cold murderous intent heading towards him, but could not quite bring himself to care.
If he was the kind of man who maimed or crippled without a thought, he probably deserved it.
But then it all stopped, no – vanished in a flash of bloodied steel. Snuffed out of existence as if they had never been.
For just a second, the battlefield was silent before a deep, growling and somewhat muffled voice shouted at... him?
"The fuck are you doing, dartboard brow? Trying to get yourself killed?!"
Whirling around, he stared at Zoro, trying to find an answer... trying to find his voice, around the intense wave of desperation and anger and irritation and relief and happiness that washed over him and was not his.
Frantically trying to find a reason for the odd sensation, his mind supplied: haki. Kenbunshoku haki. The ability to sense and predict one's surroundings.
But that meant... that it was the shitty swordsman's feelings?
Apparently he had stood around gaping for too long, because the mosshead tsked at him and turned back to the battle.
"Tch. Whatever, ero-cook. Let's get out of here and find the others."
"What, you seriously think that your directionally challenged ass could find them, marimo?"
He... had not planned to say that. It just flew out, as if on reflex.
How could insults be reflexive?
"What did you say?" Came the returning growl, accompanied by a stained katana inching up towards his face.
"I said, you shitty marimo, that you can't find your way out of a paper bag, much less find our nakama in the middle of a shitty battlefield!"
His mouth really needed to stop acting on its own. He did not want that sword to get any closer to his face. It would be a loss to ladies everywhere if his handsome visage was marred.
..wait, what?
A face flashed before his eyes behind the clear surface of a mirror. His face.
..well. Yes. Having that ruined would most certainly be a loss to ladies everywhere.
He still could not remember his name, though.
"The hell I can't, you dumbass cook!"
He was a cook? Well, that was new. Okay. He could live with that. Cook was... good. Great, actually.
What he could not live with, on the other hand, was the sword swinging towards his face, to he threw up a leg to block it with his sole.
"The hell you can, you shitty swordsman!"
The katana in the green man's other hand came swinging in but did not get very far before they both registered the killing intent focused on them and broke apart to take down a wave of those shitty marines.
Once again aware of the situation, they glared at each other before the marimo growled out:
"Later, ero-cook."
He smirked, once again feeling the loss of his cigarettes (hey, he remembered what they were now! Progress!), and answered:
"Later, marimo."
They both knew that it was a promise to get out of there alive and well with the rest of their nakama, and suddenly he could not really bring himself to care quite as much about the marines standing in his – no, their – way.
If they were stupid enough to try to stop them (arrest them? Harm them? Kill them?), then he refused to feel guilty for defending himself and his crewmate.
...even if the man was a stupid green muscle-head that did not even say his name.
Still, that was alright. One can never have it all. He would admit to being happy simply due to being back at his nakama's side.
Besides, it felt more than just alright; it felt right. He would probably find it odd to actually have his real name cross those lips. The name calling felt more natural, somehow.
Dismissing the odd thoughts, he tensed and prepared to launch himself at their incoming enemies. Before he could do so, however, he felt a strong hand clasp around his shoulder and a wave of warmth wash over him though his haki, prompting him to look over his shoulder at a softly smiling swordsman.
"Glad to have you back, Sanji."
Then again, he was only human. He could be wrong sometimes, and he knew that name. It was his name, and with a rush, everything clicked back into place and all the lost memories returned.
Yes.
Yes, he was Sanji, and sure, it was a bit odd to hear the marimo – no, Zoro – say his actual, real name instead of some shitty nickname, but it felt far from wrong.
So it would only be fair if he returned the favor, right?
"Glad to be back, Zoro."
And he truly was, because this was where he belonged – right beside his nakama. He grinned, aware that he probably looked more than just a little bit childish and dopey at the moment, but not really caring.
Now if he could just have a smoke and be safely back inside the Thousand Sunny's kitchen with the rest of the crew, everything would be prefect.
Turning back to the marines and feeling his grin twist into something darker, he reasoned that it would all come in due time.
Aaaand... Cut! I hope you all liked it! Please leave me a review on your way out?