Please Explain to Me

A One Piece short story.

Summary: Sanji went through hell and back and he was still in an abyss. He resorts to cutting to find his peace, but one day things go too far and Zoro comes home.

Warning: this is rated T for language, cutting, Zosan, and emotional instability.

THIS IS A MESSAGE: Please, do not resort to cutting. It may seem to help you for the short term, but it can have long term effects. Cutting is NEVER the answer. If you have the urge, put down your blade and talk to someone. You can even talk to me if you have to, but I beg of you do not resort to this. It could end horribly.

Please explain to me why death and life are both so cruel. Why they both are out to break you, tossing you between each other like that monkey in the middle. Tell me why life is out to kill you, just as much as death is; and why death seems like a great escape, even if there's that chance you're going down instead of up and then your death is a bigger hell than life had been.

Please explain to me why the cigarettes don't work anymore. I still feel the raw pain and it stings worse than the delay in my lungs to expand. Why do I have to feel the pain now, when back then I could just let the worries rise up in the smoke? Why is now any different, or is it just life playing its cruel little trick on me?

Please explain to me why I am alone—and the blade feels so good.

It felt fucking great actually, the way it split apart my skin and bade the blood to come free like it was draining my worries out my arm. It felt so fucking great the way I had to lean against the counter for support so I could keep watching my blood trickle down the drain. Perhaps I found my new kick, the thing to numb the hurt.

I rested my forehead against the mirror, feeling like a part of me was lifting from my body, free of the greedy tango I was in with life. I was on the ground yet I was flying, and it was all because my arm was growing paler and my hand was itching to make another cut.

So I did.

I started close to the elbow join and worked my way down, starting off shallow before going deep, sighing when this cold rush envelops me. This was so much better than worrying, than trying to smoke it off. Please explain to me why cutting feels so good.

I couldn't help myself—my fingers were so eager—I let the blade latch onto more skin and rip it open. Another shot of that freezing chill was injected into me, and I'm addicted. Please explain what got me to this point.

It was a combination of a lot of thing—a shitty job, a shitty life, a shitty boyfriend, a shitty funeral. It started with a damn call and my entire world came splintering down, and life just stood there and laughed. Cigarettes just weren't the same after the day, especially since he got me into it and never told me to quit.

My bottom lip trembled as I thought about it, so I give into one more slice. That was better.

It had been my foster father, an old fart by the name of Zeff. He picked a fight with a wrong crowd of guys—because the shitty bastard wouldn't be defeated by anyone, especially since he was an amputee—and got himself killed because some kid brought a gun. His restaurant went under when I was put in charge, because I couldn't do it. I couldn't run it like he did. There was a reason why I was elbow deep in the sink hacking away my arm, keeping my sleeves rolled up so I didn't have to clean my shirt afterwards.

That wasn't the end though. After losing my job and my father, I barely had a dime to my name, so my boyfriend took me in. He was a bastard and I still loved him, even when he kept telling me to get off my ass and get over it all. He didn't get it, he didn't understand how every time my heart thumped against my rib cage it felt like it would shatter. He doesn't understand compassion.

Just when I thought I couldn't go any lower, life showed me a thing called an abyss—which I fell into after the old fart's funeral. It wouldn't have been so bad I would like to think, if the night had followed never happened; but it didn't and there was no taking it back, and I had to put on that damn suit again for a second funeral.

It was my friend, one of my best friends actually, who was in a car wreck with his brother. His brother died on impact, and that goofy grin never came back to him. He was in the same rut I was, but while he eventually picked himself back up again, I never moved. Another reason why I was hidden in my boyfriend's bathroom, cutting like I was trying to die.

I wasn't. Trying to die I mean. Because like I said before, it would be my luck to be bitch slapped in the afterlife and given a one way ticket straight to the depths of hell. I was just trying to numb the pain of the today, and I will admit I get a little carried away.

I didn't know when Zoro would be back—the asshole boyfriend I was mentioning—so I had to get myself cleaned up before he started investigating. Turning on the faucet, I washed away what I could, watching the pink swirl as the drain slurped it up. I might had been a little too eccentric with my cutting this time, so I made sure to wrap it up with two layers of bandages instead of one, before cleaning up my weapon. I stow it in its usual spot—under the cabinet, behind the towels, a place Zoro would never dream of looking.

Satisfied that I was pretty relaxed and presentable, I smoothed out the sleeves of my shirt to cover the evidence. I've been doing this for a good six months and I can't call myself a pro yet. The real art was not getting caught, but it wasn't hard to hide things from a single celled organism like Zoro.

Wiping down the countertop and floor—just to be safe—I exited the bathroom feeling a lot better than I did going in. I could feel the hangover effects of cutting beginning to string its way in my head, slowing down my thinking until I'm too wobbly to walk. I didn't mind this ill feeling afterwards. I just climbed into bed and curled up, and the feeling would subside.

It's been weeks since I've gone outside, months since I've visited several rooms in the very house I was staying at. I only had three functions: cook in the kitchen, sleep in the bedroom, cut in the bathroom. I didn't bother to go outside and smoke anymore. My stupid boyfriend couldn't even smell the nicotine if I had smoked it in his face.

Getting myself comfortable in bed, the wobbling found its way to my vision, making me almost sick to look at things. I closed my eyes and waited for the feeling to drift away, but it didn't. Please explain to me why I felt physically horrible but mentally blissful.

I didn't move for a long time—didn't even process anything that was happening. I was drifting in and out of sleep, hardly registered as alert each time I woke up. I felt so tired, but when I slept it wasn't enough. I wanted to throw up so bad that it made my stomach ache but I didn't even have enough energy to turn over in bed so I could.

When I was conscious enough I would sit there on the bed and trace the marks I made through my sleeve, filling even through the bandages the way my skin still parted at even the tender touch. The cuts I had made weren't healing this time, after all the other times they became nothing but scars that I cut into again.

Just when I would start to think I had gone too far, my brain would slow down again and I would drift back into sleep, only to start it over when I was awake. Was life being a bitch again, tossing me around like I was the object of monkey in the middle? Please explain to me why I couldn't get up again.

I know the time passed when I should've made supper, but I couldn't get up. Zoro would be home any moment and when he realized there was no food ready he would hunt me down until he got his answers. I had to do something or he would discover my high and if he took that away, consider me gone. I couldn't live without that relief.

I fumbled to push my upper body up, the arm that I cut straining to even obey my commands. It felt like ages before I even managed to sit up, the world rushing to crash against my head and made me so dizzy I fell back again. I wouldn't admit defeat—but after trying it for several times only to get the same result, I had to. I just couldn't move.

Zoro got home from the dojo he worked at at his usual time, and I wasn't there to greet him. Like I had said, he came investigating and found me wrapped up in the covers, unresponsive. Even in my sleep, I could feel my heart pulsing in my arm, and the wet feeling licking at my side, but I didn't put my finger on what it was until he was shaking me awake.

"Shit cook! Oi! Wake up! Wake up now dammit!"

He was so fucking noisy. He's never heard of the volume button. Grumbling, I forced my eyes open, feeling that it took more effort to do that than it normally did.

"Hey dartboard brow! Don't you dare go back to sleep on me! Fucking talk to me!"

My eyelids were working against me, wanting nothing more than to cement my eyes shut. I didn't know why he was basically shrieking at me.

When I go to say something, I realize my tongue wasn't working. It won't move to form words, to curse at him like I usually did. Fighting back against the force that made me want to go back to snooze city, I slowly look down. There I was, my orange pin-striped shirt stained in the blood of the cuts I made, oozing through the bandages to stain the sheets. Please explain to me why my boyfriend had to find me like this. My head lulls back.

"Hell no shit cook I'm not losing you too!"

The lightness I had felt when I was cutting returned, making it where I barely felt the idiot picking me up. Maybe I really had gone too far. But believe me, I wasn't trying to kill myself. I was just looking for that third dimension escape.

"Sanji you better not leave me."

Heh. That's the first time in a long time I heard him really call me by my name, not some insult he concocted with his unicellular brain. He used to say it, a lot more often, when we were intimate and I still gave a shit about this world; but after Zeff went and I lost it, it was like a taboo word. It's funny that he decided to say it now.

I wanted to say he was an idiot. He was basically acting like I was dying; but then I would remember those cuts I made, the one that went so deep I probably busted a vein in the process. There was so much blood, I could feel it as it glued my clothes to my skin. I didn't realize someone could bleed so much through their arm. No wonder I had felt so light headed in bed.

I had been bleeding out.

Please explain to me why I made those cuts so deep.

Then, it felt so good. I felt like I was on cloud nine and not even the shit life would throw at me could bring me down—but now in hindsight, when I can't keep my eyes open for more than two seconds and an awful sort of sickening feeling chugs through me, maybe it wasn't so great.

In and out of my conscious swings, I heard Zoro's voice. I had always made fun of the shit he had said, claimed he never fucking cared, but maybe, just maybe, I had been wrong.

"Sanji, please don't die on me."

"I love you."

"Look I know I don't say it… hell I haven't said it in a long time because I've been an ass but Sanji I really do love you."

"I'm sorry. I should've heard you out. Shouldn't have said the shit I said—just don't fucking die on me okay?"

"I know I'm the biggest asshole on this earth. I know I don't deserve someone as funny, as smart, as badass as you. I don't deserve the food you make or the way you keep my place clean. I know you deserve ten times better than what I got but please… please just don't leave me."

If I could, I would've told Zoro that I wouldn't leave him, that I still loved him after all this shit. Believe me, I didn't mean to try to kill myself.

But I did.

Please explain to me why I finally understood it was not the end of the world only for me to get myself killed before I could enjoy it?

Please explain to me why I thought cutting wasn't harmful when piece by piece I was killing my body, until the day my boyfriend tried to save me but he didn't make it to the hospital before I was gone? Please explain to me why I thought it was okay to let that blade touch my skin, because now I know I made the one person I love carry my corpse home.

Believe me, I didn't mean to try to kill myself.

But blades are made to hurt you. No one explained that to me.

-Soul Spirit-