Zoro breathes in deeply and sleepily, running his tongue around his sleep dry mouth before yawning. He rolls onto his side and reaches his arm out to find nothing. Irritably Zoro opens his eyes to see that his alone in bed. His brain wakes up, and fast too.
Sanji, Kalifa, Kaku.
Sanji is often not there when Zoro awakes, choosing to bother their nakama or at least the other early risers of them. Normally he'll get in on his sunrise workout in the courtyard. This is no normal day though, this is the day after a second attack on them, a second time someone's tried to kill members of Zoro's family and he's not okay with not knowing where Sanji is.
Zoro's hand flies to the necklace at his chest, he's still wearing it so Kalifa can't be fucking with his brain. But Sanji… Sanji was unprotected. He could be anywhere and doing anything whether he's aware of it or not he-
Zoro pauses. He was halfway through climbing over Sanji's side of the bed when his hand hit something strange and crinkling. He takes his hand back and looks. It's paper, probably from one of Sanji's journals but there's no writing on it but instead there's a drawing. It's a sketchy little drawing but judging from the long nose and the stupid haircut the two figures at the start are meant to be Franky and Usopp, there's an arrow pointing to them and then a little picture of Sanji himself.
So Sanji is unlikely to be mind controlled, just leaving weird notes.
"We really need to learn to write." He grumbles and climbs out of bed, still looking at the odd note. Franky and Usopp… get Sanji? He wonders if this is a grammar issue. Franky and Usopp are first so they'd be first in a sentence but it's not like the arrow is pointing from them to Sanji indicating that they're going to where he is. Even in Baratian the grammar isn't backwards. Franky and Usopp are getting Sanji to come to them? But why? Why would they come here to get Sanji and then leave again? They're definitely not in the next room, Franky and Usopp aren't the picture of quiet and stealthy. Sanji didn't draw a place so either he didn't know or it's obvious.
Yeah they really need to learn to write and he should just adjust his body clock and wake up with Sanji.
He dresses efficiently and is gone in minutes. He feels agitated and ill at ease and after last night it's no wonder why. Every guard he passes is wearing one of Sanji's blue stones and all of them look grim. This building is a fortress of defence and yet Kalifa wormed her way inside and into all of their heads. If not for Sanji who knows what would have happened. He is lucky to have a husband so perceptive, even if a part of it was down to luck or the wisdom of one of Sanji's long dead ancestors in choosing magic repelling crown jewels. This is his home, at least for half of the year and having it violated like that makes him feel ill.
If he was being entirely rational right now he might also be able to pin some of the blame for his unhappiness on the death of someone who may or may not have been his friend and may or may not have been guilty of treason. But he can always think about that later or, perhaps, never.
"Zoro!" Usopp's voice jolts Zoro out of his thoughts and he has to look around to make sure that he didn't somehow get to the knights quarters faster than he should have done. He's not there yet though and yet Robin and Usopp are walking towards him.
"Usopp, what're you doing here?" Zoro asks, feeling a little puzzled.
"He does live here, same as you Zoro." Robin says with a chuckle.
"Me and Robin were just checking the outside of the castle and talking to the builders that have been brought in to repair the wall that Nami broke. Unless of course you want a window that big?" Usopp says with a grin.
"I think the repairs are probably a better idea. I was on my way to yours to try to find Sanji." Zoro says.
"You lost your husband again Zoro? Getting a little careless hmm?" Robin says teasingly with a sparkle of mischief in her eyes.
"He left me a note, I think it means that he's with Franky and Usopp. You should probably teach us to write by the way, as fun as children's picture message games are I'd rather be able to actually communicate with that idiot on paper." Zoro says and starts walking again, Robin and Usopp walk alongside him.
"We can start on that, right Usopp?" Robin says.
"Sure, but… I haven't seen Sanij this morning." Usopp points out and worry tightens in Zoro's gut. Did he get the message wrong or did Sanji not make it as far as the knights quarters? No, Sanji is strong, he doesn't need babysitting every second of every day. But then… his father is strong and he got entirely overpowered by Kalifa.
"Maybe I got the note wrong." Zoro mutters, not buying his own words. Sanji's note was strange but any other interpretation didn't make sense.
He gets to the door of the knights quarters and turns the handle. The moment the door is even slightly ajar he has the flowing water-like tones of Baratian flow over him and he relaxes.
"It's got to be Kalifa screwing with your brain Sanji! Who knows what awful things she's put in there?" Franky argues.
So much for relaxing.
"It's not her Franky, I'm sure of it. I know what having her in my head felt like. Just because I can't explain-" Sanji starts to argue back but Zoro has no time to listen to this.
"What's Kalifa done?" Zoro asks, pushing his way fully through the door and looking at the pair of them.
"Nothing, or nothing new anyway." Sanji says soothingly, though Zoro isn't so soothed when he sees the bruises on Sanji's elbows that evidently came to the surface overnight.
"That is ridiculous! You're having hallucinations about things that you couldn't possibly know about. It's not coming from inside your head, it's coming from outside which means Kalifa!" Franky argues, waving his arms.
"You're hallucinating?" Robin asks in alarm, walking around to look in Sanji's visible eye and hesitantly trying to brush the rest of Sanji's hair out of the way so that she can compare them. Sanji ducks out of her grasp with an apologetic smile and a shake of his head.
"No, I'm fine Robin." Sanji says gently.
"Chopper said that you weren't concussed." Zoro says warily.
"I'm not, and I WASN'T hallucinating Franky. It was a dream, it just freaked me out is all because I couldn't wake up from it when I wanted to." Sanji says with a deep sigh, looking very much like he regrets having this conversation at all.
"You had a dream that you couldn't control that wasn't your nightmare?" Usopp asks in surprise. Zoro doesn't quite get what they mean, how can anyone control a dream?
"Yes, I couldn't wake up or change anything and I kept forgetting I was dreaming." Sanji answers.
"That sounds like a regular dream to me." Zoro points out but Sanji shakes his head.
"It wasn't. You can't dream about things that you don't know of and Sanji was dreaming about a real animal that he's never seen before. Look, we went to the library to check and found this." Franky says and tosses a book at Zoro. The cover jacket is folded over one of the pages so it opens there. Sanji and Franky might not be able to read Tsukian but their eyes still work. It's a children's book, one of Zoro's old ones actually though it probably was his father's too as a child. It's a story about a tiger and there's pictures of the cat all through the book.
"A tiger?" He asks in confusion. Robin comes over and leans over his shoulder to look down at the book.
"I can't help but notice a certain resemblance." Robin says thoughtfully, running a finger over one of Zoro's stripes. Even he had thought that they were tiger like when Sanji painted them, but it must have been coincidence if Sanji had never seen one before.
"He painted me before he had this dream." Zoro says, still looking at the picture.
"So she got in his head before last night, who knows what she's been messing around with in there. What if it's some long term manipulation like she might have done to Kaku and she's screwed up something in Sanji's head and he's going to leap off of the roof when the opportunity arises?" Franky says tensely.
"By making him dream of a tiger?" a clearly unconvinced Usopp asks.
"That could just be the only hint we get that she did anything." Franky argues.
"Murder, attempted assassination, treason and assault, you don't think that making me dream of Zoro as a cat is a bit of a step down from that level of evil? I know she's the only person who could be screwing with my head but it just doesn't feel like her!" Sanji retorts.
Wait… what? He was the tiger? Zoro's breathing halts, it can't be, can it? He's got excited over Sanji's dreams in the past for no reason, he doesn't want to get his hopes crushed again.
"I thought you said that you were dreaming of a tiger, not Zoro." Robin asks.
Zoro watches Sanji open his mouth to speak but then falter, frown and sigh.
"It was both. It wasn't Zoro as a person as a- but it felt like it was him inside. I can't explain why I knew, I just did. The whole place felt like Zoro. It was this autumn forest and-" Sanji starts explaining and Robin and Usopp's faces shift to identical pictures of 'ah-hah!' as they realise just what it sounds like Sanji is saying.
"Franky we should go! It's ah… it doesn't sound like Kalifa to me." Usopp says suddenly and darts forward, grabbing Franky by the arm and trying to pull him out of the door that they came in through.
"Whoa, hey now, how do you know that?" Franky protests but Robin comes forward and takes hold of his other arm.
"There's a few things I should explain to you." She says softly and leads him out.
The door closes and Zoro and Sanji are alone in the partitioned room containing Usopp and Franky's sleeping areas. The next joint room off of that is Robin and Nami's, then Johnny and Yosaku and so on in a square around their common area. Sanji looks from the door to Zoro and squints suspiciously at him as if he organised that departure somehow.
"What was that about?" Sanji asks, folding his arms and scrutinising Zoro.
"I'll tell you afterwards. Tell me about your dream from the beginning, in detail." Zoro says, pulling Sanji over to Franky's bed and sitting down. Sanji just stands there with Zoro holding his wrist and trying to pull him to sit but Sanji clearly isn't budging.
"What?" Zoro asks.
"Shouldn't I be asking you that? What's the sudden fascination with my dreams, huh? Why did they suddenly need to run off? What am I missing here?" Sanji demands, pulling his wrist back and then folding his arms petulantly.
"It's… culture stuff. Just tell me about your dream and if I'm right then I'll explain afterwards." Zoro offers but Sanji shakes his head.
"No, you'll tell me now." Sanji insists and his visible blue eye narrows.
"I…" Zoro hesitates. If he tells Sanji then he opens himself up to all of the possibilities about Sanji convincing himself that he knows Zoro when he doesn't.
"You're hiding things from me." Sanji states and takes a half step back, but it may as well have been across the other side of the country for all the distance it feels like there is between them now.
"Don't do that. I'm not lying to you, I just don't know the best way to tell you something and if I tell you it could screw things up, make you think something that might not be true. I don't want to lie to you and I don't want you to lie to me." Zoro explains unhappily. Sanji's face is the picture of offense, so clearly he said the wrong thing again.
"I wouldn't lie to you! I also wouldn't keep shit from you like you're doing to me!" He snaps angrily and Zoro winces.
"It's a culture thing, okay?! It's hard to explain and-" Zoro shuts his mouth halfway through that sentence because there's no way that he can end it which won't further inflame Sanji's temper.
"Your culture should be my culture, so how can I understand if it's not explained to me?" The other man asks challengingly.
"Can you just tell me about your dream, please?" Zoro asks softly and Sanji squints at him.
Sanji sets his hands on his hips and looks at Zoro, studying him carefully.
"You're scared. Whatever this is has you scared." Sanji concludes.
"I'm not scared!" Zoro barks back, though an unpleasant voice in the back of his head asks him why he's been avoiding this conversation if he wasn't scared of the answer.
"Oh yeah, you are. But what of? You're obsessed with this dream, Robin and Usopp worked it out but Franky didn't so it's a culture thing. I can't see that I could have broken some rule if I was asleep." Sanji says thoughtfully.
"I'm not scared, just tell me-" He tries again but Sanji shakes his head and starts pacing.
"It's not some rule against talking about dreams with people who aren't you or else Robin and you would have reacted right away. Anyway, that would be more offended than scared. So it's about the dream itself, but you're not worried about it being a nightmare and if you thought Kalifa was fucking with my head Robin would be in here or getting Nami's advice." Sanji continues, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.
"I think I preferred it when you couldn't understand me." Zoro groans and falls back on Franky's bed.
"No you don't." Sanji snorts and then falls silent.
Zoro leans up a little to see Sanji frowning and tapping his bottom lip with his finger in thought. The sudden draw of attention makes Zoro want to kiss him, but then again wanting to kiss Sanji is one of Zoro's basic states of being these days. At almost any given moment if he was asked if he wanted to kiss his husband he'd probably say yes.
"Nami mentioned something about important dreams before…" Sanji says slowly and Zoro's blood freezes. Nami said she hadn't said anything but it wouldn't be the first time that Nami had 'helped' him against his wishes at the time. In fairness to her she'd never actually done anything against his will that worked out badly for him, she is his nakama and does have his best interests at heart.
"It was to do with being a witch, getting a dream about magic and then being able to do it. It's how she knew that she was a witch." Sanji says thoughtfully.
"I don't think you're a witch, although I still can't explain how you sometimes can kick things so hard that everything catches fire." Zoro says flatly. He really does want to know how Sanji does that because it would be incredibly useful for him to learn to do himself.
"What can I say? I'm just great. I'm not a witch, I didn't have a dream about magic. It was a dream about a place I've never been to and an animal I've apparently never seen which reminded me of you but for some reason that has you scared." Sanji says with a shrug and Zoro's heart leaps.
"Reminded you of me or it was me?" Zoro asks, his voice almost whisper quiet. He tenses his hands into fists in Franky's bedsheets because otherwise he might have to admit that they're shaking ever so slightly.
"You are scared, you're terrified. What is it about the specifics of my dream that you're so emotional about?" Sanji asks, coming and sitting on the bed with Zoro at last.
"I'm not- just tell me which it was." Zoro asks in quiet desperation. Sanji's face isn't angry anymore but instead deeply worried and watching him carefully.
"There's a wrong answer here, or at least an answer that you really don't want to hear. Zoro what are you hoping to hear?" Sanji asks, reaching out for him.
"What I wanted was for you to not do this! I don't want you changing your answers because you're worried about me or you want to say what I want to hear! Just tell me about your fucking dream!" Zoro snarls and Sanji jerks back in surprise.
"Pity. You're afraid that I'll pity you. That I'll change something because of pity." Sanji says after a second and Zoro wants to scream but then Sanji starts talking again.
"There was a stream, it was- I don't know if there's a word for it in Tsukian but I'll try to explain. We have lots of words for water, they all mean different things, they have different ideas about them in Baratie. It was water from a mountain, it's all about something pure coming from something great. Water from there is all about beginnings and newness. I've been thinking about it more since I woke up." Sanji explains, his voice quiet and gentle.
"There was a sword in the water, yours in fact. It was the one your father destroyed and there were others there too. Wooden training swords and smaller plain looking swords. I buried yours." Sanji continues.
"Buried it?" Zoro asks in surprise. Sanji ducks his head a little and pulls a knee up to his chest, he's embarrassed.
"I knew it was a dream, I was aware. But it was still one of your swords and it was broken, it didn't seem right to just leave it there. Your swords are sacred, even when they're just imagined ones in my own head." Sanji mumbles a little awkwardly.
Zoro feels the same way about his swords of course, but that Sanji feels that way about them too just because they're his is an idea so touching and powerful that it almost hurts his heart to hear it. He leans forward and kisses Sanji, the blond wasn't expecting it so it's a little clumsy and he just catches the corner of Sanji's mouth.
"Idiot prince." Sanji mutters and kisses him back, short and quick.
"The rest of the place was this forest." Sanji says, pulling back and fussing with his hair and looking anywhere but at Zoro. Zoro wonders if there'll be a point in time when when he won't be able to fluster Sanji, he hopes not.
"It felt calm and like home. It was all gold and green, though I can't imagine where I got that idea from." Sanji chuckles and flicks Zoro's gold earrings with a finger.
"What about the tiger?" Zoro asks him and Sanji smiles. He looks a little unfocused, as if he's back in his dream and not in Franky and Usopp's room.
"It snuck up on me. I found these skulls, fell over them actually, and other bones too. I guess they were the people he had killed before and then he was there. Just this huge, orange striped cat. A tiger." Sanji says. Zoro feels suddenly a little uneasy. He has killed people before in battle, people who were trying to kill him first and were too injured to survive an attack of his. He didn't do it deliberately of course but sometimes people bleed too much or don't know when to give up. Does that leave the kind of mark on his soul that Sanji could see? There were no bones in Sanji's underwater landscape.
"Were you scared or creeped out?" He asks warily.
"I probably should have been. I got the feeling when I looked at him that I wasn't sure I could win in a fight against it and even if I did I likely wouldn't win without getting really hurt myself. Which doesn't make any sense because we fought that dragon and won and a dragon should be more dangerous than a tiger, but that's how it felt. But even with all that I wasn't scared. I didn't feel like it was going to hurt me, I knew it could but I just didn't think that it would. When I got closer I realised that it was you." Sanji explains.
It was him…
"It doesn't make any sense though, it wasn't you but it was. It didn't talk or anything and maybe its eyes looked a little bit like yours but it was clearly a cat. Or a tiger I guess. But it just… felt like you. I don't know how to explain it." Sanji sighs, gesturing helplessly to convey himself.
"It's ok, I know exactly what you mean." Zoro says slowly and when Sanji looks at him Zoro swears that he could see a flash of blue and white and a far too intelligent black shark eye instead of Sanji's bright blue one.
"I couldn't wake up, I can wake up from any dream that's not that nightmare. Not being able to felt weird and knowing that I saw you as some animal that exists but I've never seen before all makes me feel… uncomfortable. This dream didn't come from my head, it came from outside but I am certain it wasn't Kalifa." Sanji asserts and wraps his arms around himself.
"You didn't get it from Kalifa." Zoro reassures him.
"How do you know?" Sanji asks, looking at Zoro with worry on his face. Worry that he hadn't allowed Franky to see, the tiny doubt that he might be wrong.
"Because you got your dream from me. That was my… soul you were dreaming of." Zoro tells him.
"What? That doesn't make any sense. Did I not understand that or…?" Sanji asks, frowning at Zoro as he speaks. He's clearly replaying Zoro's words in his head, trying to find some way to make sense of them.
"Remember how I told you that there was a difference between loving someone and knowing them?" Zoro presses on.
"Well, yeah. You said it was hard to explain though, and that we kept acting like we had both kinds of relationship. I thought we said we weren't going to bother with the distinction." Sanji says, he looks confused but Zoro can see the beginnings of suspicion there.
"Having that dream is the difference. You… you know me." Zoro says, the words catching in his throat. He'd started to given up on ever being able to say anything like that.
He isn't sure what he'd expected Sanji to say but he hadn't expected him to stand there just staring at Zoro without saying anything. Sanji isn't reacting with the confusion that he'd expected or the surprise and joy that people are supposed to react with. Instead Sanji is just standing there squinting at Zoro, giving him the same assessing look that Zoro's seen him give meat that he's deciding how to best cut.
"Not my dream specifically, but there being some sort of thing there like an animal that I knew was you. Having a dream that I can't wake up from with things I couldn't possibly know. That kind of dream?" Sanji says thoughtfully.
"It's always an animal, but the place is part of it too. The place is supposed to be the landscape of your soul, your life shapes it and the animal is who the other person really is. The good and the bad of them alike." Zoro explains eagerly and Sanji narrows his eyes at Zoro.
"What's wrong?" Zoro asks uneasily, Sanji's reaction is unsettling him deeply.
"You developed this sudden interest with my dreams a while back. You used to just be concerned about my nightmares but you suddenly became interested in all of my dreams after that, but whenever I told you what they were you lost interest. You were looking for this dream." Sanji concludes, watching Zoro carefully as he speaks. No doubt Sanji is reading every reaction on Zoro's face, leaving him to wonder just what it is that Sanji can see. What is he saying without words?
"Yeah, I was." Zoro agrees, he figures that keeping this simple is best. It leaves less room for misunderstanding. He doesn't want to be unclear on a topic as important as this.
"You started being interested in my dreams because you had your own. Which meant that you knew me first, right?" Sanji asks slowly.
"I had mine the night that we got you to Kureha's hospital." He admits.
"Why didn't you tell me? This is supposed to be some big important thing right? You wouldn't be this worked up about it if it wasn't, you wouldn't have been scared of the wrong answer if it wasn't important. So why didn't you tell me?" Sanji asks challengingly and Zoro feels the beginning of guilt prickling at the back of his neck.
"You nearly died, it wasn't a good time to talk about it. You were barely awake for ages and you weren't dreaming at all for the longest time after you woke up because of what Chopper was giving you. And then…" Zoro trails off wearily.
"So you thought that what, I wouldn't get it or understand? So you just didn't bring it up?" He asks, pacing the floor away from Zoro.
Zoro hesitates. Those ideas had crossed his mind but that wasn't what had halted his tongue.
"Baratians don't have the dream. I was… if I told you about it and you understood what it meant but didn't have it because you just can't then I didn't want you to feel shit about it." He says, moving towards the pacing and agitated blond man. Sanji jerks back and glares at him.
"I'm going to give you more credit than you probably deserve right now and assume that you weren't just implying that my people only have shallow romantic relationships because we don't have this weird magic dream that you all get. I'm not going to kick your ass for that but I might kick it because you've clearly been driving yourself nuts about this and you DIDN'T TELL ME." Sanji snaps at him.
"And maybe I'm wrong but I can only see three reasons that you wouldn't tell me. Either you thought I was too dumb to get it, or you thought that I'd pity you and pretend that I'd had the dream too so you'd feel better or you just didn't trust me with the information because we're not close enough. So what is it, huh?" He demands, shoving at Zoro. He catches Sanji by the wrists again but Sanji just glares at him.
This really isn't how Zoro had pictured this conversation going. He had thought that if Sanji did have his dream then they'd rejoice together, tell their families and maybe that would be what Sanji had been waiting for and he might be able able to get his husband into bed. He doesn't want that to happen before Sanji is ready of course but also it's hard to be married to someone as gorgeous as Sanji and not think about him like that frequently and hopefully. An argument wasn't what he'd pictured and worse still is that Sanji isn't strictly speaking wrong. He had avoided telling him despite the urgings of people that he had confided in before Sanji. It hadn't been his biggest fear though and his instinct is to argue with Sanji, to say that he doesn't get it, say that it's a culture thing, or deny the totally true accusations. That would be the easier option and the more comfortable one too.
But who said that this was going to be easy or comfortable all of the time?
He looks at the fuming blond. The man that he knows. The man who has a chunk of Zoro's soul mixed up in his own. Who in the rushing water of Sanji's soul is a sheltered island with Zoro's blades, his colours and his true self and he wants it there without even knowing fully what he's dealing with. In Zoro's own soul there's a river gouged into the rock of his being and Sanji has burst in there and filled it completely. Sanji's water didn't drown him when it could have and Sanji has never hurt Zoro when he trusted him with something important.
"I had the dream when you were dying and then you didn't have it too. I was… I was starting to think I had just imagined it. That I was just so desperate for a sign that you'd live that…" Zoro cuts himself off with a shake of his head. He hates saying that out loud, it's too personal, too humiliating a thing to admit. And yet he feels Sanji relax in his grip.
"We've had two attempts on our lives, an attack on your home and several counts of treason. I think we've got enough shit going on Zoro, you don't need to make things harder by hiding from me." Sanji says gently.
"I didn't want to be wrong." Zoro admits quietly and Sanji pulls his hands free.
"No shit, moron." Sanji snorts and rests his arms on Zoro's shoulders, one hand touching the back of Zoro's hair.
"How is it that the man I know has to be the one who says no shit and calls me a moron?" Zoro asks, wrinkling his nose in distaste. His hands move to Sanji's hips and rest there, almost as if they're about to do one of those Baratian dances that Robin drilled into him.
"Because you're a dumbass that's why. But… I get how you can be worried about screwing up something as important as this. I know I worry about it." Sanji admits a little awkwardly, not quite meeting Zoro's eyes as he does so. Zoro would bet any amount of money that one of Sanji's big worries is about knowing what the mythical 'right time' is for them to finally have sex.
"Guess that makes you a dumbass too." Zoro teases and Sanji purses his lips in irritation.
"I am not." Sanji says firmly.
"Yeah you are, I know you." Zoro says and feels an irrational thrill run through him at being able to say it to Sanji.
"That was the other kind wasn't it?" Sanji asks with a grumble.
"It's not that hard of a difference to learn." He reasons and Sanji scowls before letting loose a stream of words that sound like the same fast paced altered Baratian that Sanji spoke with Shanks before. It is of course completely impossible for him to understand which is Sanji's entire point.
"Very funny, I get your point." Zoro concedes and lets Sanji go, but Sanji doesn't let go of him. Instead Sanji looks thoughtful and worried.
"This dream, it's supposed to change us? Change how we feel about each other?" Sanji asks, his voice sounding uneasy.
"Yes. Well, no." Zoro answers, reconsidering his response as he speaks.
"Oh, real helpful." Sanji snorts, never missing an opportunity to mock him it seems.
"It happens because a relationship is changing that way but also it only happens with people who were supposed to share that bond. That's the theory anyway. The dream is just something that only happens with people who know each other so it's the signal we have for agreeing it's changed." He elaborates. It's a bit of a philosophical problem really. Does he know Sanji because he had the dream or did he only have the dream because he knew him already? Which one came first?
"How I feel isn't any different from yesterday, or the day before that, or the day before that. So if you're expecting some big change then I don't know what to say." Sanji tells him, his voice gentle and wary, as if the blond is trying not to spook him.
"I guess Tuesday was my day then, huh?" Zoro answers brightly and Sanji kicks him in the ankle.
"It's not a test Sanji. Some things are different now. What we can call each other, how you can act, but you've not really let any of those kind of rules stop you before so you probably won't notice them. You'll notice the tattoo around your neck though." Zoro tells him, reaching out so that his hand wraps around almost the whole front of Sanji's throat. He feels smooth burn scarring under one of his fingers and has to remind himself for the millionth time that Sanji is fine. Sanji jolts a little when Zoro's hand first makes contact but he relaxes again and doesn't pull back, speaking volumes about his trust. Sanji's going to have to trust him to let Zoro near him with a bunch of needles and ink needed to make that tattoo, that'll be hard especially as Sanji doesn't trust anyone with even scissors near his neck now.
"Like your parents have? You mean they have those because they know each other?" Sanji asks curiously, still not ducking out of Zoro's light hold on his throat.
"Yeah. The centre would be different though, you'd have my tiger here." He explains, tapping his thumb in the space below Sanji's adam's apple and above the hollow between his collar bones.
"You'd do it? Not some professional or something?" Sanji questions, stepping back and eying Zoro warily.
"Hey, I'm not a professional artist but I have been inking designs on my skin for years! And I'd get proper training first, like everyone does." Zoro protests.
"I'm not saying you'd do a shitty job, I'm saying I'll kick your ass if you let anyone else put something sharp to my neck. I don't trust anyone else enough to not…" Sanji trails off and through the flattered glow that he feels he wonders just what would happen. Would Sanji attack whomever it was or would it send him into the panicked state he gets after nightmares?
"I won't let anyone else do it." Zoro agrees and Sanji nods as if it's all decided and settled upon.
"Come on then, we should go get breakfast and maybe see if we can find our nakama and talk to them before they start talking about us and nothing else." Sanji says wryly and heads to the door. Zoro doesn't bother to fight the grin off of his face and instead just follows Sanji.
He knows him!
Zoro follows behind Sanji on the way to the kitchen. The weight off of his shoulders is so noticeable that he can't help but wonder if Sanji is right about not keeping things from him. Zoro had always just figured that he would be able to tell what things he should and shouldn't keep quiet about. His parents don't tell each other everything, they don't even spend most of their time within a few hundred miles of each other. It's not that Sanji needs to know every passing thought in his head or that he doesn't get any privacy but perhaps he should start operating on the rule of telling Sanji everything unless he has a good reason not to.
"Do I ever bore you?" He asks curiously and Sanji looks at him in surprise and stops walking.
"Not really, no. Sometimes I am bored but it's not with you. I guess sometimes when you go into really in depth explanations about blades I get kind of lost, there's only so much knowledge that I can carry over from knowing about knives." Sanji answers thoughtfully.
"Okay." Zoro says with a nod and continues on.
"Wh- hey! You can't ask a weird question like that and just walk off!" He shouts, catching Zoro by the arm.
"It's-" Zoro hesitates. He was just about to say that it's nothing, but that's exactly the kind of thing he just resolved against. He has no reason not to tell Sanji this, it's not uncomfortable, too private or a dangerous thing to hear. He should say it.
"I was just wondering if trying to avoid boring you was a good reason to keep things from you." He answers and Sanji rolls his eyes.
"Seriously? I'll tell you if you're boring me. Just assume that unless it's about your toenail clippings or anything else gross that you can tell me and I won't be disinterested." Sanji answers and keeps walking.
"I'm sure I could make that interesting. I could try to spell words with them for you." Zoro teases and is wonderfully rewarded with the grossed out face that Sanji makes.
"I'll kick your ass if you try that." Sanji assures him and opens the kitchen door.
"Speaking of, we need Robin and Usopp to start teaching us to write. Your note wasn't that helpful, and it looks like it was backwards too." Zoro says, holding the note up with its little pictures facing Sanji.
"No, you just read backwards. That's a good idea though, how hard can reading be when we can already speak the language?" Sanji asks and darts into the kitchen, taking things for them here and there and talking quickly to the chefs as he does so. Zoro can see that Sanji hasn't been in this kitchen long enough to completely get its tempo and movement perfectly but Zoro is sure he'll be able to do it all blindfolded in no time.
"The handwriting will probably take a while, yours is all swooping and curly like your eyebrows. That's probably going to be hard for a non-curly person like me to get so easily." Zoro says slyly, baiting Sanji and deeply enjoying the glare that he can see Sanji giving him through his hair. Sanji marches over to him, a tray with food on it held aloft effortlessly. He stops before Zoro and squares up to him, tilting his jaw defiantly and watching him through angry and narrow eyes.
"Want to repeat that, asshole?" Sanji challenges him.
"Just wondering if you grew that eyebrow after your curly writing style or if your whole country changed their writing to honour that curly brow." Zoro says calmly. He hears the sharp angry breath that Sanji sucks in and sees the way his snow pale cheeks pink with agitation and how he can almost feel the turbulent water of Sanji's soul around him. He's only playing of course but the connection feels even stronger now, but maybe it's just because he knows it's real for sure now.
To his surprise Sanji pulls back a little, the aggression gone from his stance in an instant and his smile spreading wide and yes, sharklike.
"Well, considering that you're the one who knows me, curl and all, I don't think that you really have any problems with it at all. Maybe you're even picking on it because you like it more than you want, is that it, mossy cat?" Sanji challenges, his voice light and airy.
"That's- I didn't- hey!" Zoro protests and Sanji gets a little closer to him with that dangerous smile.
"Oh, did I startle the little cat? Come with me, fur ball." Sanji teases, actually scratching under Zoro's chin for a second before sauntering out of the door in a swish of fine fabric and a fog of delicious breakfast smell. Zoro is torn between fuming at losing that encounter and wondering what it says about him that Sanji is his other half. Probably that he doesn't respect people who can't fight him for as good as he gets. Either that or he's a sucker for punishment.
He'll skip on asking his nakama which they think it is.
Mentally chalking another win in Sanji's favour he follows his husband out of the kitchen, determined to get even again somehow. In the meantime though breakfast is a good plan.
He follows Sanji back to their room, they can eat first and then he can deal with the fussing of their nakama after.
"You know we should probably tell our parents about us." Zoro says as Sanji sets the food down.
"I think I'll wait until I see my old man before I go into explaining a big cultural and magical thing like this knowing thing." Sanji says with a shrug.
"Fair enough." Zoro agrees, though he can't help but feel how weird it is that Sanji isn't excited about telling his father, or that Zeff would be okay with not knowing as soon as possible. He supposes that if there's no cultural idea of it for them then it's hard for them to have a normal reaction to it. Weird Baratians.
"So aside from the tattoos is there anything else involved with this knowing thing?" Sanji asks curiously as he sets the food out.
"Well, like I said, you were already doing a lot of it before." Zoro answers and picks up a mug and pours coffee into it, he didn't used to be as into the stuff as he is now. He can thank or blame Robin for introducing him to it. Sanji is just as big of a fan of the drink though so Zoro suspects that it's going to be a stable feature of his life forever more by proxy.
"Nothing like any kind of ceremony?" Sanji questions and settles into his seat.
"No, we're already married remember? Anyway not everyone who knows each other gets married, like my parents. I mean most do but not all." he says. Zoro wonders if people ever whispered about the fact that his parents never married, or about his dad being away so much. If they do they're at least smart enough to do it out of his hearing and presumably his father's too.
"Yeah but… I guess…" the blond sighs and bites into his toasted bread with sliced tomatoes on top. Zoro can't see that Sanji looks like anything but disappointed at his answer.
"Were you hoping for something like that?" He asks curiously and Sanji looks a touch embarrassed.
"Well, it's just that it was all really weird when we got married. Neither of us could understand jack shit of what the other one was saying and though we both agreed I doubt you really wanted to be there." Sanji points out.
"It was a perfectly good reason to get married, I wouldn't have done it if I-" He starts to protest but Sanji cuts him off with a wave of his hand.
"No shit, I know all that. I'm just saying that I didn't exactly like you then, I'd be stunned if you felt any different at that time. Am I wrong?" he asks.
"Well… no. But so what? Things obviously changed. Why would you want to go back and redo the past?" Zoro says with a frown. Sure it might have been nice if he and Sanji had met each other some other way and chosen to marry for love and no other reason but who knows if things would have worked out if it had gone that way? He likes their relationship and that includes its less than traditional beginnings.
"It just would be nice to have a ceremony like that where we both understand all of it and I get to hear you say the words that I always imagined. I know the ceremony was a mix of our cultures but I also know it was mostly Baratian for the sake of the court there, but weren't there things from Tsukian weddings that you had anticipated yourself doing and now you can't?" Sanji asks, needling at Zoro's defences.
"It was our wedding, I wouldn't change it." Zoro denies firmly and Sanji sighs a little sadly. Zoro looks at him a little suspiciously, what's his deal with wanting to change things? Is that what he's trying to do though?
"There was a weird lack of walking through fire though." He says slowly and yeah, Sanji lights up with obvious interest.
"You do what now?" Sanji asks interestedly.
"Walking over hot coals, it's a cool kind of trick. You usually get it at wedding parties, but you set your own feet on fire regularly so it'd probably be dull for you." Zoro answers, pretending to sound bored by the idea.
"No, no! That sounds interesting!" Sanji insists.
"You just want a party, don't you?" he challenges and Sanji looks away a little awkwardly.
"Not just that. But it would be nice to have a party for us where no one committed treason or attempted murder." Sanji says with a slight pout.
"I always knew Baratians were fussy and demanding but you have such high standards." he says flatly and Sanji kicks him in the ankle.
"You asshole." Sanji laughs.
"You're aware that you're royalty though right? You can just declare that you're having a party and it'll happen. It won't be one of your stuffy Baratian balls, it'll be a real party. Tsukians are always up for a good time, trust me. Last night wasn't really a good example, a real party is way better." he tells him and Sanji grins a little wider.
"I'll hold you to that. Are you going to finish that?" Sanji asks him, collecting up their plates and pointing at the crust of Zoro's bread on his plate. Zoro stuffs it in his mouth instead of answering and Sanji takes the plate away with an air of approval.
He watches Sanji's fine boned fingers as he stacks mugs and plates neatly in balanced piles on the tray. He leans back in his chair and rests his hands on his stomach, feeling the pleasant fullness of a recent meal. He would help Sanji out but he's not yet cracked how to stack things just as Sanji likes them and so the other man just ends up redoing whatever Zoro helped with and it ends up being a waste of time. His thumb bumps against the bottom of the blue pendant of Sanji's, the one that protected him from Kalifa. He holds it up in front of him, it's strange to see it on him and not on Sanji.
"So this knowing thing… it means that there's nothing off limits for me to ask about?" Sanji begins, not looking at Zoro and his voice carrying a touch of wariness to it.
"There's nothing inappropriate now if that's what you mean, but it doesn't mean that I'll answer every question that you have or get pissed off at things that you say but the day you stop pissing me off will probably be the day one of us dies." Zoro says with a grin.
"That's a filthy lie, if I go first I'm haunting your ass forever. I'll move things when you're not looking, kick your ass if you stop eating well and if Robin or Usopp teaches me to write in Tsukian I'll write insults on your mirrors." Sanji says with a certain flourish in his tone.
"Somehow I wouldn't be surprised." Zoro agrees. He's not going to be distracted though, Sanji brought this up for a reason.
"What did you want to ask me about? Something that you think I wouldn't like you asking me I'm guessing." He asks Sanji.
The blond sighs and turns to look at Zoro properly. He half sits and half leans on the edge of the table by Zoro and reaches out to touch his pendant on Zoro's chest.
"Last night was pretty out of control. Kalifa shattered my crown and I lost myself for a while, I think I even tried to attack you. Your own father got so deep under Kalifa's spell that he tried to murder you. It's just… I usually don't fuss with you because if you want to talk usually you do but that was horrifying. Are you okay?" Sanji asks, barely pausing between sentences as if it'll be easier to talk if he doesn't give himself a chance to stop asking. Sanji's face is worried and he can see that the other man has a painfully tight grip on the table, his worry is clearly weighing on him.
What is his answer though? He's fought seriously with his father before in their duel but that was out of tradition and obligation. Though there was a risk of death it was vanishingly small for him, his father was in greater danger as Zoro was less skilled but still determined to win. Even though Mihawk can be stern and strict and praise is hard to win from him Zoro has never been in any doubt that his father loves him. He's never thought that Mihawk would cause any harm to him beyond training injuries. He would never try to hurt Zoro, much less kill him. So seeing his father lunging for him with his blade and with murder in his eyes was… surreal. Seeing his parents fight for real was terrifying, his dad protecting him and putting himself in harm's way against his other half.
"I don't know." Zoro answers honestly, if a little uncomfortably.
"I'm so angry that she got away." Sanji says bitterly.
"Nothing we can do about it now. We've just got to keep investigating and make sure we're all protected from people like her in the future." he says, tapping Sanji's necklace.
"Yeah… yeah, you're right. I guess if you work out how you feel about it then let me know, otherwise I'll just assume you're dealing with it okay." Sanji says, standing up properly again and picking the tray off of the table.
"Thanks." Zoro responds. He believes Sanji when he says that he's not going to fuss over him or needle him to talk about how he feels. It's a pleasant change from Nami and Robin who when they decide that Zoro is withholding something important will frequently choose to make his life hell until he does what they want. He's glad that he'll stop getting pointed comments from Robin at least about his dream and failing to tell Sanji.
Sanji nods and heads to their bedroom door with his tray.
"I'll take this back to the kitchen and then we can go find our nakam-AUGH!" Sanji shouts in alarm and Zoro is out of his chair and with both of his remaining swords drawn. Instead of an attacker though he just sees a scowling Sanji and an alarmed guard with one fist raised and having clearly fallen through the door. Sanji must have opened it right as the guard went to knock.
"I- aaaaaugh… I'm so sorry your highness!" The guard whines, looking at Sanji with a look of terror. More fear than he should have for just accidentally startling the prince. It almost looks like guilt…
"Oh, I remember you." Sanji says, shifting his tray a little and looking down at the guard who flinches back at those words. It seems like word that Sanji can speak Tsukian has spread, and combining that look of guilt with Sanji recognising this particular guard…
"Tell me what you did or said." Zoro orders the guard, pointing one of his swords between the man's eyes. He breaks out into a sweat and Zoro feels less and less charitable.
"I- I- I'm sorry. I- we were just-" The man fumbles for his words.
"Just drop it." Sanji sighs, pushing Zoro's blade away with his foot.
"No, if he was speaking ill of you then there should be consequences for that kind of disrespect." Zoro argues. The guard nervously looks between them.
"Oh, he didn't have a negative word to say about me. He was highly complimentary, about parts of me anyway." Sanji says with a sharp and predatory smile to the guard.
Zoro glares at the guard. He needs to find out just what they had all been saying about Sanji and he needs to do it soon because he's not happy with this at all.
"Hey, don't look like that. We don't have a problem I'm sure he wouldn't disobey any order I gave him, would you?" Sanji asks the guard, almost sweetly. The guard shakes his head vigorously.
"Great. Now, what did you want?" Sanji asks, looking at the guard again.
"I ah… the King wants to see you both. He said he wanted to discuss a few things with you both and your knights. I think there also might be hearings later as they are letting people gather for them." The guard answers, glancing between them both nervously.
"Take the tray, you're dismissed. Sanji come with me." Zoro says stiffly. His husband looks at him in confusion but reluctantly lets the disrespectful guard take the tray from him and scuttle away in fear.
"Why won't you tell me what they were saying about you?" Zoro asks as they walk along.
"Mostly because it was harmless and I got a kick out of hearing them talk when they didn't think I knew what they were saying. They won't assume that again for anyone I'm sure." Sanji chuckles.
"So why not tell me?" he presses and Sanji laughs.
"I can if you like, but if they think I'm keeping quiet then they're more likely to do everything I say without question." Sanji says with a little shrug.
"Sanji, you're a prince. They'd do whatever you ordered them to anyway, it's their job." he argues, stopping walking and catching Sanji by the arm.
"No, they'd do whatever you say. They don't know me enough to respect me yet and a bunch of them think that I shouldn't be here. They'll respect me eventually I'm sure, but for now I'll settle for fear." Sanji answers with a dark smile and an evil glint in his eyes.
"Holy shit, you're blackmailing the guards with this stunt. That's so underhanded and evil." Zoro remarks in a kind of awe.
"I didn't catch that word, but if you mean using it against them then yes. Problem?" Sanji challenges, his tone light and sweet.
"No… it's just I see why you and Robin get on so well, and Nami too. When you're not doing dumb shit you're a pretty good strategist." Zoro says, his mind already rushing into the future when he'll be ruling with Sanji by his side. With Sanji's intellect and planning the two of them will be nigh unstoppable. It gives him chills just to think about it.
"I'll take that as a compliment." his husband says smartly and starts walking again.
"What's that other thing the guard was saying that we were supposed to do?" Sanji asks after a moment.
"Oh, hearings. It's where people come to the castle and tell us their problems or put forward a case that needs a final decision on. It's often legal crap, two people think they're right and neither will give in until someone in charge makes a call on it." Zoro explains unhappily.
"And they've exhausted every authority up to royalty. We used to do something similar on occasion but mostly my old man dealt with whatever the nobles couldn't decide on. I take it you hate the job?" Sanji asks curiously.
"Yeah, I hate it. Often I can't give whatever help the person needs or I'm trying to pick who's right between two people in a shitty situation. There's no right answer." Zoro says. He wishes that he had an answer to everyone's problems. He does care about his people deeply but it always seems like whenever his father is the one answering he comes up with better answers. He's been making Zoro take his turns doing it alone, trying to ease Zoro into more responsibility but it's one that Zoro would be happier without.
"Sometimes you just have to accept that there's not always a right answer. You can only be ready tforthe times when you can really help people and keep looking for them I guess." Sanji tells him.
"I still hate it." Zoro mutters, reaching the door to his father's study.
"You've got me to help now so suck it up and deal with it." Sanji tells him flatly. Zoro scowls, he's not sure which is worse, Sanji's heartless tone or the fact that he's right.
"You're an ass." He states as a matter of fact.
"Can't bother you that much or you wouldn't like me so much." Sanji teases.
"Pft, I don't recall ever saying that I liked you." Zoro says smartly and Sanji makes a noise that is somewhere between outraged and impressed.
Zoro reaches for the handle of his parents chambers but his hand freezes at his hears raised voices inside.
"-not your fault! How many times do we have to go over this?" Shanks shouts.
"I can still see his face Shanks, I can't just let that go." Mihawk says darkly, his voice is loud but he's not shouting like Shanks is.
"He's fine, you saw him afterwards." his dad says calmly.
"He's fine because you happened to be in the right place at the right time. If not for you…" his father trails off. Sanji twines his fingers with Zoro's and squeezes his hand. Zoro looks at him and feels guilt hot inside of his chest, he knows logically that this isn't his fault but his father is hurting about him.
"He's alive and unhurt. I will scour this planet in search of that witch and I'll end her, I promise." Shanks says soothingly.
Sanji lets go of Zoro's hand and jerks his head quickly in the direction of the door, his hint is clear. He should stop standing outside listening into a private conversation and knock. He reaches out and raps sharply on the door. After a second it opens and it's not Zoro's father but his dad who has opened it.
"Morning." Shanks says pleasantly.
"Morning." Sanji answers back brightly.
Zoro probably should be saying something but instead he finds himself looking at his father. Though the man is dressed in his usual expensive clothes he is less put together than usual. The two halves of the sash around his waist aren't even, his hair isn't styled neatly and there are dark circles under his eyes that speak of a whole night awake rubbing at them. He looks bad for him, even when he's sick Mihawk looks better than this. That means he looked worse earlier and this was as good as he could manage to look.
"You… sent for me, father?" Zoro says slowly and uncertainly.
Mihawk rakes a hand through his hair and stands up a little straighter.
"Yes. I want you to do the hearings today. We didn't have any yesterday because of the preparations for the evening. We shouldn't let Kalifa disrupt more of our plans." Mihawk says in a calm and ordered manner.
"Can Sanji be there too? He is going to be involved with legal things like this eventually." Zoro says and Mihawk nods slowly.
"That seems sensible. However, Prince Sanji, I won't allow your decisions alone to hold any weight. You are not yet familiar with our laws or our customs to the level that you need to be for this task. But, by all means observe and talk decisions through with each other. Doing is the fastest way to learn." Mihawk tells them both.
"That seems fair. Zeff will probably say the same when Zoro ends up helping me do the same thing when we get back." Sanji responds amiably.
"Then I shan't keep you." Mihawk says and inclines his head in a slight nod at them both. Normally that would be his cue to leave and even Sanji is turning for the door.
"Wait, there's something else." Zoro says quickly and Sanji's gaze flicks between Zoro and his father with a skeptical expression as if to question if now is the best time for what Zoro has in mind to tell him. But his father is clearly torn up about nearly killing him and Zoro knows him well enough to know that he won't appreciate Zoro bringing that exact subject up. Honestly the only person in the room who could pry that loose from him is the man he knows, Shanks. So, giving him good news and proof that Zoro's life is still going on and improving is the best thing to do.
"Ah… Sanji and I…" Zoro hesitates, now that he's started he's not sure what words he should use.
"Yes?" his father asks, raising a sharp eyebrow.
"We know each other. We've had the dreams." He blurts out and Mihawk's face is slack with surprise. His gold eyes flick over Zoro's shoulder and Zoro turns to see Shanks staring at him with his mouth hanging open.
"Uhhh…" Sanji says also looking between them.
Zoro isn't quite sure what reaction he was expecting but he was leaning more towards happiness than this. He looks back to his father again whose mouth is slowly curling up into a smile.
"Ah- sorry, sorry son. We're very happy for you." Shanks says, walking forward and wrapping his arm around Zoro.
"I'm- thanks… father are you okay?" Zoro asks, looking at Mihawk whose smile now is showing a lot of sharp teeth.
"Don't. Don't say it." Shanks says sharply.
"Say what?" Zoro's father says slyly with an even wider smile.
"I hate you, don't do it, just don't." Shanks hisses.
"You were wrong." Mihawk says with an uncharacteristic amount of glee in his tone.
"Very funny. I'm going to go talk to my crew, we've got a witch to hunt." Shanks sighs and the serious expression returns to Mihawk's face.
"Don't try to bring her back alive, I want her dead." Mihawk says darkly.
"Absolutely." his dad agrees with an equally sinister expression.
Shanks turns to leave the room and seemingly finds himself face to face with Sanji who had been loitering back away from the three of them. Sanji looks a little wary of Zoro's dad and he really wishes that one day the two of them will get on fantastically, but today isn't that day.
"It seems like I owe you an apology. If you're that much of a match for my son then you can't be all bad. Mihawk got lucky when he chose you." Shanks says sincerely and strangely holds out his hand. Sanji looks a little surprised but then with a smile he shakes it. Is that an apology as well in Baratian culture? He had thought that was just a less formal greeting.
"It's fine, really. Water off a duck's back." Sanji says with a shake of his head and a happy smile.
Water off a duck's… what the hell does that mean? Zoro looks up at his father in confusion but Mihawk doesn't look perturbed at all. Zoro can't help but feel a little lost.
"I never knew how close dad was to being Baratian." Zoro says quietly.
"You've always known your dad is a pirate, he's part of lots of cultures and none of them." Mihawk answers simply.
"Yeah, but I never figured that he was normal for a pirate. I figured the things he was interested in was just because of places he'd been when he wasn't here. I didn't know it was, well, normal." Zoro answers awkwardly and his father smirks slightly.
"Well, I can always teach you more about what it's like to be a pirate. Your father never wanted me to though." Shanks says, looking back at Zoro. Zoro in turn looks at his father, that sounds unlike him. He's never been one to keep Zoro from knowledge, or if he is then he's very good at it.
"You're never here regularly enough for a proper schooling schedule. Zoro has laws to study, swordsmanship, leadership skills, not to mention losing nearly a year in learning another language now. I can't plan that time and account for when you might be back." his father says lightly and Shanks pouts.
"I can't help it, but it can't be that hard, right?" He asks and Zoro catches the little irritated exhale from his father. Zoro's parents don't really argue, Sanji's arrival sparked the worst interaction that he'd ever seen them have. That doesn't mean that they don't disagree though, everyone does even in the healthiest relationships. When he was young it had upset him but Shanks had told him that the difference between a relationship that worked and one than didn't was how people dealt with those disagreements. Knowing how to argue and what was and wasn't okay to say was the important thing. Refusing to have any disagreements ever was way worse for a relationship because it was lying.
This topic though is something that Zoro's parents have always disagreed on. Shanks just has to go away every so often, a few months but never more than a year. Often around six or nine months was normal but it varied. Though his father was by no means a clingy person and was incredibly independent it was always clear that he missed Shanks when he was gone and Zoro's not surprised, Shanks is the other half of Mihawk's soul and vice versa.
"It could be manageable if I had enough warning about when you would be here to plan." Mihawk points out.
"The sea doesn't work like that." his dad replies and Sanji's eyes widen in surprise, as if he's just had some sort of revelation.
"You get-" Sanji says in Baratian and the word that he finishes his sentence with sounds like the word for sea and the word for illness just smashed together.
"Yeah, really badly." Shanks replies, also in his strange accented Baratian.
"Get what?" Zoro asks, waving his hands between them causing both men to look at him.
"Seasick. It's a Baratian thing and also a pirate thing. It's... like being homesick but far worse. It comes from being deprived of contact with the ocean, though for some lakes or rivers will work to fix it. If you stay away for too long it really screws with your health, your mood, appetite, sometimes your sense of balance, sleep, everything. Every Baratian has it to some extent, some people can go years and years without having any contact with the water and be fine others it's months or even days. Most of those just become sailors, fishermen or pirates to deal with it." Sanji explains calmly.
"I didn't know this happened to Baratians as well as pirates." Mihawk says with a raised eyebrow.
That's all very fascinating but Zoro has a bigger concern right now. He remembers the way that Sanji looked when he swam in the waters on the top of the mountain and dived under the surface for an impossibly long time. How he waded into a freezing lake and swam to wash himself like it was the most natural thing in the world to do. He also remembers Sanji's blood staining the river bank after Kaku tried to murder him. For better or worse Sanji seems to be instinctively drawn to water.
"That's not going to happen to you is it?" He asks, voicing his fear. He's not sure how okay he would be with having to lose Sanji for half a year or more every year. How would that even work with the two country arrangement that they've got going on now?
"What? No." Sanji laughs brightly.
"I'm not that bad. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'd stab a man for the chance to swim right now but I'm good." Sanji says cheerily.
"You and me both." Shanks agrees with a nod.
"But Zoro, I'm not sure if you noticed but there's that big wet thing right by the palace back home, it's called the ocean. I'm well aware of when I'm going back there so I can cope, trust me." the blond reassures him easily.
"And if you'd had to stay here forever, in this landlocked country?" Mihawk asks curiously and Zoro watches Sanji pale and freeze up a little.
"Don't do that to him." Shanks says firmly, defending Sanji in a way that Zoro isn't sure he would have believed he'd see after their first meeting.
"No, it's fine. I was merely curious." Mihawk says, waving a hand as if to blow the idea away.
"We're still going back to Baratie. I think I got too used to your seafood there, I'd miss it." He says to Sanji and Sanji's mouth curls into a pleased if devious smile.
"Do you mean seafood in general or seafood cooked by me, hm?" his husband asks, getting close and watching for any tell to the correct answer.
"Weren't we talking about the fact that we know each other?" Zoro asks loudly, desperately trying to divert the topic.
"Yes, we were." Mihawk agrees and Zoro sags a little in relief though he suspects that Sanji isn't going to let that accidental compliment go, not when he's already sunk his teeth into it like he has.
"Congratulations, I'm very pleased for you both. I'll arrange our best tattoo teacher to speak with you both and arrange a plan that counts in your travel obligations. It might be wise to bring your translators in on this as well. I know how pirates feel about tattoos but I wouldn't want to make your lives harder in Baratie." Mihawk says, his voice all business again, seemingly concluding their personal discussion for now.
"I think some people are weird about it, but who cares what other people think?" Shanks says with a shrug and his hand jammed into his pocket in the picture of casual calmness.
"We should care. There's a difference between defying convention and being ignorant. Anyway, don't you two have hearings to be seeing to?" Mihawk asks pointedly, looking at Zoro and Sanji.
"And I have a witch to hunt down and a crew to speak to. I'll see you later Hawky, I'll let you know if we leave early because we get a lead." Shanks says and leaves the room with an over the shoulder wave without even looking back.
Mihawk gives them both a pointed look and Zoro bows quickly and herds Sanji out of the who manages to swear and execute an awkward little bow of his own on the way out. Zoro pulls the heavy door closed behind them and lingers there for a second, he doesn't know what he should process first. How much his father being nearly mind controlled into murdering him affected the man, the new information about this 'seasickness' that affects all Baratians and his dad or the upcoming preparations for him and Sanji getting their tattoos.
"So what now?" Sanji asks, running his fingers through the back of his hair and working out a few tangles with his fingers. Zoro wonders if Sanji rushed off to find his nakama to talk to them without even brushing his hair this morning.
"Hearings I suppose. It'll probably be the smaller hall where we had breakfast before with my parents. The great hall is still going to be wrecked from my parents fighting." Zoro answers and looks around to work out which direction to go. Sanji tuts and pulls him left just as Zoro had started moving right.
"Does not having the ocean by you bother you that much? It seems like a kind of... weird thing to be obsessed with." He asks instead of protesting Sanji leading him around like a dog. He'd rather have answers right now than an argument.
"But magic dreams are normal? I think we underestimated how different our people are." Sanji says with a weary sigh and looks at him.
"We're the same species though, it doesn't make sense why there are these differences." Zoro grumbles unhappily.
"Well, who knows? Maybe ask Kureha if we ever see her again, she might know. This strikes me as some magic bullshit." Sanji concludes succinctly, if not especially politely.
Zoro looks at Sanji out of the corner of his eye. Sanji didn't really answer his question about not being by the ocean but his answer from before made sense. It's easier to go without something if it's only for a fixed time. He feels the same way about being away from home, though he hopes that eventually Baratie will feel just as much like home as here.
"What if you had somewhere here to swim? At the castle I mean. There aren't any big lakes or swimmable rivers around but I mean how hard can it be to blow a huge hole in the ground and fill it with water?" Zoro asks, if that'll make Sanji happy then he'll do it.
"I like how your first solution to a problem is to blow a hole in the ground." Sanji snickers in amusement.
"That's not an answer." Zoro says as they walk on. He's not going to let Sanji shrug this off. It's good if Sanji's seasickness is bearable because he knows when he'll be back by the sea but Zoro doesn't want 'bearable' for Sanji. He wants Sanji to be happy and if that means that he has to carve a hole in the ground that his family have lived on for generations then that's what he'll do.
"Swimming would be great but... you can't just make a crater in the ground and expect the water to stay there. There's all sorts of engineering involved in that sort of thing." Sanji explains. Zoro grins, Sanji does want somewhere to swim. Hey, maybe his dad will like it if he makes it for Sanji and it'll make them both happier.
"I'll do it. I'm sure Franky would be up to the challenge." He says confidently and keeps walking on to their destination. When Sanji catches up to him there is a lingering smile on his face that doesn't fade for quite a while.
When they arrive at the smaller hall Zoro can already hear the sound of people lingering on the other side of the main doors. They make their way into the smaller hall through side doors and find Robin and Nami already there waiting for them. Nami perks up when they come in, looking between the two of them in barely suppressed eagerness.
"He had the dream." Zoro answers before Nami pries the information out of him with her staff. She makes this high pitched e sound that Zoro is fairly sure went above his range of hearing at some point and then throws herself at the pair of them. Sanji looks pleased if a little confused and rubs her back.
"I'm so happy for you!" She exclaims, her face pressed into Zoro's shirt. She pulls back and looks back and forth between him and Sanji with a brilliantly beaming smile.
"Me too." He agrees. He's still feeling relief that Sanji had his dream at all and it hadn't all been in his own scared and sleep deprived mind.
"Congratulations." Robin says a little more calmly, coming up to him and embracing him, then letting him go and kissing Sanji's cheek. The blond turns a burning shade of red hilariously quickly which only deepens when Robin chuckles at his reaction.
"Have you told your parents?" Nami asks him.
"Yeah, we just came from there. We're supposed to be doing hearings now so..." He trails off with a shrug.
"We'll tell the others then. When we left Usopp was still trying to explain the concept of knowing someone to Franky. I knew Baratians didn't really get it but I guess I didn't realise how much they didn't until I saw Usopp trying to explain, even he seemed slightly shaky on the concept himself. How's Sanji dealing with it?" Nami asks, her voice dropping into more hushed tones at the end. Zoro looks over and sees that Sanji is still trying to compose himself over Robin kissing him and then his embarrassment at reacting so much to it.
"He feels the right things but I think we're more different than we thought. Tsukians and Baratians I mean. He says he doesn't feel any different than before but he seems to think it's a change that had already gradually happened. But then why would his dream be so much later than mine?" he tries to reason. This whole thing is just super puzzling.
"Well, I had a thought about that and I think I have an answer. Sanji was too sick to dream right away and that's not too strange, people have had delays because of extreme illness before. But afterwards Sanji took to wearing this, remember?" Nami says and tugs gently on the necklace around Zoro's neck. Sanji's necklace, the one with the magic repelling blue stone in it.
"Yeah, it saved our asses last night. If he hadn't been wearing his crown and this then he would have been alone in trying to get more stones to fight of Kalifa's magic." Zoro points out. It was damn lucky and he dreads to think about what would have happened otherwise. So many things nearly did go wrong last night, Mihawk's shaken state at what he nearly did is proof enough of that.
"Indeed. But think of it this way. This stone keeps illusion magic out, he's been wearing it non stop since you had your dream and only took it off last night because of Kalifa and then he lost his crown when she broke it. Last night was the first time he'd been open to illusion magic. The dream is magical, it has to be. You see inside another person's soul it's like... involuntary scrying. He probably has known you for a while, the dream just couldn't get in." Nami says with an excited twinkle in her eye.
Holy shit... she's right.
"No... I took it off for a minute when I showered. Right before I... painted those stripes on you." Sanji trails off as the idea hits him, obviously he had started listening at some point.
"Stripes from an animal you've never seen." Zoro says as he finishes off Sanji's thought.
"And as soon as I picked that shard out of your head last night you passed out and then you had the dream." he adds in wonder. Well, at least he doesn't have to have any lingering worries about a concussion.
"Sanji, you mentioned that this stone is really common in Baratie, right?" Nami asks, looking at Sanji.
"Yeah. It's in all sorts of jewelry that people wear every day. There are mines for it all over the place but it's not uncommon for it to be in the... I don't know the word Robin. I mean-" Sanji looks at Robin and speaks a word that Zoro doesn't know either.
"Bedrock. So underneath the ground a little way. I suppose large concentrations of it in an area would have the same effect even if a person wasn't already wearing it as jewelry." Robin hums thoughtfully.
No wonder the romantic relationships of Baratians are so weird. If they can't even tell when they know someone or not there'd be no culture of it so even if someone was able to be free from those rocks enough to have the dream they would have no idea what it meant just like Sanji this morning. He wonders if there's a similar reason why they find it hard to distinguish between friends and nakama and what those relationships entail. Man, Baratians are a mess.
"That's one mystery solved. Now if only it could help me find that witch." Nami says and he expression sours.
"Shanks is looking for her and Mihawk is still coordinating a search Nami, there's only so much we can do. We know how to stop her now so we can protect people." Sanji tells her soothingly.
"Except you may have a hard time selling people on the idea of stopping that magic if it'll also interfere with them knowing their other half." Robin adds a little grimly.
"There's got to be a balance. Either way, I've got to have the hearings now and I don't want to let my father down by barely doing them." Zoro says and the two women nod in agreement and take their leave with a few last congratulations and a friendly punch to his arm from Nami. With that it's just him and Sanji in the room with a few waiting guards who are looking anywhere but Sanji. He supposes that Sanji was right in a way, all of the guards are on their absolute best behaviour now when he's around. No doubt they'll all eventually be grateful to Sanji for not telling him whatever it is that they've been saying and then it'll make them feel loyal to him out of gratitude. It is like one of Nami's plans. No wonder the witch likes him so much.
Zoro is pleased to see that someone at least had the forethought to put out more than one chair on their side and so he and Sanji take their seats in the larger fancier feast chairs.
"Ready?" Zoro asks Sanji who gives a mild shrug of agreement. So it might be a worthy thing to do but it doesn't change the fact that these hearings often descend into bickering which is nothing but dull for Zoro. This is something that Sanji is clearly aware of. Nevertheless he nods at the guards who haul the main doors open and usher the first case in. It turns out to be two men who are equally stubborn and had kept escalating their problem which was nothing more than a landslide making the previous borders of their land unclear and both were claiming that the other was trying to steal from them.
Sanji watches the pair silently and listens to Zoro's questions. It is clear though that both men are struggling to keep their eyes off of the fair prince and with the way that his unusual gold hair spills across his fine face Zoro can't blame them. Still, he doesn't want to acknowledge or encourage more ogling of his husband so he pretends as if he doesn't notice.
He hands down his judgement, a pretty standard one at that, and the pair leave with one resigned and the other triumphant. When the door shuts after them Sanji speaks.
"So… am I following correctly that your judgement was that the man who had fought hardest for his land and was the last to resort to calling for help legally was the rightful owner because of that?" Sanji asks, looking sidelong at Zoro.
"Yeah, I guess that's not how it's done in Baratie." Zoro responds.
"Well, maybe we might but that's only because it wasn't farming, hunting or fishing territory. Most likely we'd just divide the contested part in half and send them away. If it was farming, hunting or fishing territory that the other needed to survive then it would go to whoever needed it most, regardless of who owned it first." Sanji tells him.
Zoro wants to say that it's a weird idea and disregards the strength and honour of the people involved, it's his kneejerk reaction and a perfectly reasonable defense of his culture. But… well Sanji is talking about intervening in a situation that could take needed food away from people. Does he really believe that someone else's pride is more than saving someone else from a slow and painful death?
"I'll keep that in mind next time, I hadn't thought of it that way." Zoro says thoughtfully.
"Really? I thought we were sticking to your laws and beliefs here." Sanji says in surprise. He hadn't been lecturing or judging, just observing.
"I'd be an idiot not to learn what your people would do. Only a weak man is afraid to change what he thinks or does because he's afraid of being wrong. I'm not a weak man." Zoro says firmly.
Sanji looks at him and makes a frustrated noise in his throat as he glances around the room.
"Why do you have to say shit like that when I can't get you alone, huh?" Sanji says in frustration, though his tone is one that Zoro has learnt to recognise as usually occurring before Zoro gets himself a lapful of enthusiastic and at least partially naked Sanji.
Zoro reminds himself with steely determination that he can't just bail on this one case in, no matter how attractive his husband is. He occupies himself instead with the next few cases and for the most part he and Sanji either have laws that completely agree or the differences make sense geographically. Zoro can hardly sentence a thief to six months labour at sea when Shimotsuki has no ocean borders.
The tenth case makes Sanji sit up in alertness before Zoro even realises why, though he gets it after a second. The man who just entered is weak and clearly poor, Zoro can tell that from his clothing and walk. What Sanji noticed first and Zoro took a moment to is that the man is painfully thin, gaunt hollow cheeks and spindly fingers.
"Your majesties." The man says, bowing shakily. Not all of the people today have addressed both of them but it's not hard to guess who Sanji is.
"I come from a village two week's ride away and I have come to beg for your help. The whole village is starving. Adults are starving themselves first so that their children may eat and a curse of diseases is spreading among us for we are so weakened." The man pleads in a warbling voice.
Zoro's first reaction is pity and he can see from the wide eyed look on Sanji's face and the way that he is on the edge of his seat that the feeling is mutual. Zoro's second reaction is suspicion. An assassin just escaped their grasp, murdering a man who tried to murder Sanji himself. In this very room he and his loved ones were attacked and now a man shows up at their door, pleading the one thing that would tempt any Baratian into helping but especially Sanji. No… this is too easy. He doesn't want to let Sanji out of the safety of their castle just so that he can wander right into the hands of a murderer.
"That is terrible," Zoro says slowly, "we'll send food back with you right away."
"That is very generous your highness, but… we need help as well. Our crops are dying and sicken us, even if you send us a month of food we will begin starving in a month." The man says sadly. The answer was obvious and maybe Zoro is paranoid but the man didn't look as thankful as he might for a month of food for his village.
"Zoro, that won't fix the problem. We need to find out why there's a famine and-" Sanji starts to protest in Baratian.
"Excuse us, I need to speak to the King about what help we can offer. Sanji come with me. Guards, please make our guest comfortable in here when we're away and get him something to eat." Zoro says, walking to the door and leading Sanji out with a hand on his elbow. He pushes Sanji out into the hallway and then hesitates in the doorway and looks back at the starving man.
"What town did you say you were from again?" Zoro asks, though he knows full well the man didn't say.
"Foosha Village." The man says as a guard ushers him into a chair. The name rings a bell in Zoro's mind and he winces when he recognises it. That's Luffy's home town. If he had any choice before about whether to go or not then he certainly doesn't now.
"I'll speak to the King, and see about getting you that meal first." Zoro says and leaves the room, shutting the door behind him. Sanji is already glaring at him accusingly, all previous flirtations forgotten.
"Are you really going to just-" Sanji starts but Zoro reaches out and covers Sanji's mouth with a hand.
"Shh!" He hisses and pulls a fuming Sanji along until they are out of earshot of the room. It's not that far, Tsukian doors aren't made to make the lives of eavesdroppers and spies easier. Sanji's expression is telling him that he'd better have a REALLY good reason for doing that and manhandling him out of the room or else Sanji is going to be very angry. Probably the kind of angry that results in a surprise test of Zoro's ability to defend himself against an angry unarmed man.
"Hear me out." He says, holding his hands up in surrender. Sanji says nothing but watches him with narrowed eyes.
"Several people have just tried to kill both of us on multiple occasions, it's not smart to just run out of the castle blindly with the first person who asks us to. I know you want to help and I do too but it'd be better to be smarter about this. If someone wanted to lure you into a trap this is all they'd have to do, it's the same stupid leaping to your death that Luffy would do if you threw a steak in the ocean. He'd run in and drown himself." Zoro explains and Sanji doesn't look any less pissed off.
"If I go I might die but if I don't go and he's telling the truth then potentially hundreds of people could suffer the most agonising death possible. I don't need to stand around contemplating what the right choice is! I won't let people starve and if you're asking that of me then-" Sanji starts to snarl but Zoro interrupts him before that can escalate further.
"Did I say that you couldn't go? Trying to stop you from helping someone like this is like me trying to argue the sun out of setting. Of course you're going." He says and Sanji looks puzzled for a moment before relaxing and regarding Zoro with some suspicion.
"So why all of this? Why not tell him we'll help?" Sanji asks in puzzlement.
"Two reasons. Firstly, if he is trying to kill you then I don't want him thinking that you are falling into his trap and secondly I need to talk to my father about what real help we can send." He explains.
"Great, let's go talk to him." Sanji says brightly and marches off in the direction of Mihawk. Zoro rolls his eyes at his idiot husband and grabs him by the back of his shirt at the collar.
"I said I was gonna talk to him, stupid curly brow. He's not going to want to agree to this and I'm gonna have to talk him into it. I can't do that if you pick a fight with him the moment he says no. You have no calm when it comes to this so if you're there you'll be ensuring that we won't go because we'll be banned from leaving." Zoro points out and Sanji winces.
"I know you, okay? You know me too, so have a little faith in me." Zoro urges and Sanji squeezes his eyes shut like he's in pain and then breathes out a harsh little breath.
"It's killing me that me being able to help that man rests on someone who isn't me convincing another person, but… I trust you. I hate this, but I trust you." Sanji says unhappily. He meets Zoro's eyes and Zoro can feel just what a huge demonstration of faith this is for Sanji. He won't let him down.
He reaches out and pulls Sanji close enough to kiss him then does just that.
"Love you, know you." He says whisper quiet.
"And people act like I'm the romantic sap." Sanji teases with a grin that Zoro can feel.
"Shut your stupid face and go find the others." Zoro snorts, shoving Sanji away.
"Ah, there we go. Back to normal!" Sanji cackles and backs off. Zoro flips him off and goes to meet his father. Sanji definitely isn't turning him soft and mushy or anything. He's a fierce warrior and incredibly rugged and intimidating. Yep.
Zoro walks past the guard on the door and knocks on the heavy wood.
"It's me, father." He calls out.
"Enter." Comes back, muted through the wood.
Zoro does so. His father is sat at his desk surrounded by a multitude of papers and several maps are spread on the floor as well as the file on Kalifa conspicuously open on his desk. His father looks up at him as he comes in and shuts the door behind him.
"A case needing my input already?" Mihawk asks with some surprise and he rubs at his tired eyes as he speaks.
"Kind of. A man came from Foosha Village claiming that there's a famine and some disease there. He certainly looked like he was starving. He was begging for aid." Zoro summarises quickly, cutting out much of the emotional detail for he knows that his father won't appreciate it.
"I am assuming that your husband leapt at the chance to help. Tell me you haven't allowed him to commit to anything." Mihawk says flatly.
"I took Sanji out of the room before he had the chance. I promised we'd send food back with him and get him a meal, but I didn't promise anything more." Zoro nods. Of course his father knows plenty about Sanji, no doubt he was aware of Sanji and Zeff's traumatic past too. Very little escape's Mihawk's golden and seemingly all seeing eyes.
"Well, thank you for keeping me updated. You're excused." He tells Zoro with a nod.
Zoro hesitates, he's not done yet. Why does his father think that he is?
"Father, I- that wasn't all." Zoro says warily and Mihawk again looks up at him, both surprised and expectant.
"I'll send the food shipment with the man tomorrow morning and tell him that's all we're doing. Then me, Sanji and our knights will take a different route and-" Zoro begins to explain but Mihawk holds a hand up to stop him. Zoro would wonder if he has a better idea except for the fact that the look on his father's face is displeased and quickly becoming more so.
"I was under the impression that the reason you were just sending aid and not going yourselves was because you too were aware of the obviousness of this trap. Yet you plan to just take the scenic route into your deaths? I'm going to assume that I'm just overly tired and misheard you, so again I tell you that you are excused." Mihawk says a little sharply and turns back to his desk.
This isn't going how Zoro imagined. Perhaps a different tactic is better here.
"I know it might be a trap, I was aware. But the thing is, nothing can keep Sanji from helping people who are starving and he doesn't consider just sending a month of food helping. It's probably just making them suffer for longer actually. Whether me and my knights go or not I can promise you that by morning Sanji will be on his way to Foosha. He stands a better chance by far if we all go and if it is a trap we might even be able to capture whoever it is that's plotting against us and get more information." Zoro proposes. It's a good plan and he knows that with their group they can succeed.
Mihawk stands up and faces Zoro with anger in his eyes and it takes all that Zoro has not to step back away from him. He doesn't think that his father would hurt him but his disapproval pains Zoro in deep ways. Reaching his level of strength and surpassing him is Zoro's greatest goal and he takes his father's approval as a sign that he is heading in the right direction, so losing it pains him.
"You nearly died at the feast and Sanji was also at risk, before you even got here he nearly died because of your incompetence at keeping him alive. If you cannot make him see sense and stay in this castle then I will restrain him in the dungeons." Mihawk says darkly. Zoro thinks that a few chains, guards and doors wouldn't keep Sanji from helping but he decides not to mention that.
"You had me marry him because famines like this have been happening, what was the point of it all if you're just going to keep him and his people locked up in here where they can't help?" Zoro reasons. Sanji brought equipment and seeds with him and lots of tools that Zoro doesn't know the use of.
"And he can get guards to bring him samples or anything else that he might need but none of you will leave this castle until this threat is passed. Do not make me have to tell you again, and do not speak any more of this idiocy." Mihawk responds angrily, getting into Zoro's space as he speaks.
"I'm not incompetent or an idiot! You were already ruling this whole country at my age. I know what I'm doing!" Zoro argues back. What is the guard outside of the door making of this conversation? Do they whisper about him like they did about Sanji?
"And it is a good thing that you lost to me in our duel because you are clearly nowhere near ready to rule and you are proving that you are further from that goal than I anticipated. Neither you, your husband or any of your shared knights are to leave this castle. That is a direct order, now get out." Mihawk says coldly and Zoro feels as if his father just ripped his heart from his chest. Not fit to rule? Just right now or… or ever? There have been princes and princesses in the past who couldn't surpass their parents in their lifetimes and that rarely ended well for them. Zoro had never thought that would be him but if his father thinks that- no… no. He's wrong. He is.
Zoro's hands clench into fists, both out of anger and to stop the shameful trembling of them. He raises his chin defiantly and glares at his father.
"You know what they don't have in Baratie? Revolutions. Because their people don't starve to death or die of diseases that get you when you're that weak. Maybe it's a trap out there but you're hiding us in here like you're weak and scared. If people see that in us then no wonder people are trying to get rid of us and maybe they should do it too. If you're too scared to do what should be done then why are we here?" Zoro demands, aiming for the same cold tone his father used but it comes out angrier than he meant it to. He shuts up before his tongue can get him in more trouble, though he's not sure how much worse he can make it. He turns on his heel and leaves before his father can say another word, shutting the door sharply behind him.
The guard is staring intently at the wall in front of him and absolutely not at Zoro.
Zoro resists the urge to demand of the guard what his problem is but instead just marches off to his room. He wrenches open the door and goes inside, slamming it after him. Sanji, Chopper and all of their shared knights are waiting in the room. Sanji is halfway through packing a bag and Nami and Luffy are leaning over a map on the table but all of them look up at him as he enters, perhaps more dramatically than he meant to.
"Well?" Sanji asks after a few moments of Zoro just staring blankly into the room while slumped against the door.
"He… he said that all of us were forbidden from even leaving the castle. It was a direct order." he says numbly and several of Zoro's knights slump in resignation.
The idea occurs to him slowly and unpleasantly. He let Sanji down. He asked Sanji to have faith in him and he failed. He failed.
"Hmm, do you think they would have locked our horses up?" Sanji asks Franky and Usopp in Baratian. Sanji is still thinking of going, of course he is. Zoro supposes that he could cover for Sanji's absence and stay here and-
"You do realise that us letting you leave is a violation of that order too? Everyone in this castle will try to stop you." Robin points out.
"Was that what they said, they're still planning on leaving?" Nami asks, looking at Sanji and the other Baratians in surprise.
"New plan then?" Luffy asks, folding his arms and looking around their group.
"Escaping at night makes sense. We could make a big show about being resigned to staying so they're not expecting it." Sanji says with a thoughtful hum.
"But you can't disobey the King, surely? And… and Zoro can't do that right?" Chopper asks and looks at them all with wide eyes.
"This is gonna suck." Usopp groans and looks over the map again.
"I don't have a choice Chopper, you took an oath as a doctor not to let people suffer when you could help. So I can't-"
"We're going." Zoro blurts out, his mouth having decided to speak before his brain did and cutting off Sanji in the process.
Everyone in the room stares at him, though the Baratians are more surprised at him interrupting than what he said. But the Tsukians are all surprised at his words for the right reasons.
"You've never disobeyed a direct order from your father." Nami says slowly, tapping her fingers on her lips.
"Yeah, I know. You don't have to-" Zoro sighs, pushing himself away from the door.
"Shut up, I wasn't finished yet. Your father won't expect you to disobey. If we do what Sanji said and make a show about not going then we can make this work. But it'd be best if we didn't all go on the same day." Nami continues and leaves Zoro torn between arguing back about her telling him to shut up and on the other hand applauding her cunning plan.
"It would make sense for Zoro to want to hide in his room with Sanji and avoid his father if the request to go went so badly that we were all banned." Robin agrees and then repeats what she said in Baratian for Franky.
"And if we were really obviously here he'd assume that you were here." Yosaku says with a nod.
"So we're staying here then." Johnny says with a sigh. Zoro feels a little pang of regret, the pair are the only ones of his knights that he's not nakama with so they often end up paired away from the rest of the group on missions. Of course there was Kaku but that's a whole different mess that Zoro doesn't have the space to think about right now.
"No. If we really want to fool the King we've got to do the opposite of what we first think to do. Like… Luffy. We'd never go without you, so we have to. You stay here with… Robin and then the rest of us will go on. You two act like we're here for as long as you can and then after a few days or whenever you're discovered, run after us. You're from this place so you know how to get there without Nami, right?" Sanji says to Luffy.
"That's a lot of lying." Zoro says as something unpleasant squirms in his chest.
"I can get there. But I don't wanna stay behind." Luffy says with a pout and folds his arms sulkily.
"Luffy, I know I can count on you. If you're pretending that we're here the staff will only buy it if all of our meals are eaten, not to mention those of the rest of the group. If there's anyone who can manage that it's you." Sanji says slyly and with an affectionate smile.
"At last, a plan that hinges on how much Luffy can eat." Nami says with a grin and elbows Luffy in the side.
"I'll do it. You can count on me." Luffy nods enthusiastically, his face the picture of sincerity.
"I knew I could." Sanji replies brightly.
"Okay everyone, let's go! We've all gotta look disappointed and then pack when we're back to our rooms!" Luffy declares to the room. Nami rolls up her map and turns around to Luffy and hits him with it.
"And be quiet about it!" She hisses at him. Luffy looks a little sheepish and the group starts filing out of Zoro and Sanji's chambers in subtle ones and twos with breaks between them leaving.
"Zoro, could you help me with something?" Sanji asks and heads into their bedroom without even checking to see that Zoro is following. He will of course because Sanji almost certainly doesn't need help with something, he probably wants to demand to know what the hell went wrong.
Sanji is at the open wardrobe but instead of looking in it he looks at Zoro. The green haired prince closes the door behind him and the uncomfortable feeling in his chest intensifies. None of this day has gone how he expected, for better and worse.
"Are you okay?" Sanji asks, looking him up and down.
"I don't know what happened, I tried to make a good argument but he just didn't want to listen and the more I tried to convince him the worse it got and he's angry now!" He blurts out before he knows what he's doing.
"I didn't ask what happened, I asked if you were okay. You look like you're going to be ill." Sanji says and pushes Zoro down onto the edge of the bed.
"Normally I'd figure that things just went bad and you're upset but you'll be alright but…" Sanji trails off and looks Zoro up and down warily.
Zoro nods and swallows around the lump in his throat.
"I think I reacted badly to something he said." Zoro tells Sanji and he clenches his hands in the bedsheets as the memory of the angry words washes over him.
"What did he say?" Sanji asks and two soft and calloused hands run over his cheeks and then down to the back of Zoro's neck where they clasp shut. Sanji then wedges himself between Zoro's knees and just stands there like that. It's not a hug but the weight of Sanji's presence is somehow reassuring to him.
"He… don't you want to know what I said? I was the one who overreacted. Shit, maybe I should go apologise. I definitely should." Zoro breathes as his father's words echo in his mind. Can his father disinherit him? Surely not if he wins the title from him eventually by right.
If.
"We'll get to that. I've got to know what you reacted to first don't I?" Sanji says reasonably. Zoro must be losing his mind if Sanji is sounding this reasonable. Actually, considering what he said to his father and that he is planning on treasonously disobeying a direct order from his father he mind well have already lost it.
"He said that he didn't trust us out there, didn't trust me to keep you alive and that I was incompetent." Zoro recounts, staring at Sanji's midsection. He drops his gaze down to his own hands in his lap and keeps talking, even though it feels like rubbing salt in a wound.
"Said that I wasn't fit to rule." He finishes.
Sanji says nothing. He's not digging his fingers into the back of Zoro's neck but his pale hands feel tense and his whole body is rigid. Zoro looks up at Sanji and is just able to see through Sanji's hair and see both of his eyes at once. They're wide and his eyebrows are drawn down harshly, his mouth is pressed into a tight and angry line.
"Sanji?" Zoro asks warily.
"I'm… I'm gonna kick his ass." Sanji vows darkly.
Zoro is about to protest when a… burning kind of smell reaches his nose. He looks down to see that Sanji's feet and halfway up his shins are aflame as well as the bedsheets. Zoro leaps back, hauling his legs up on the bed and reaching down in an attempt to smother the fire with the rest of the bedsheets that aren't on fire.
"Oh shit, shit, sorry!" Sanji apologises, his own weird non-magical, non-devil's fruit fire snuffing itself out. Sanji kicks at the fire and between them they put it out. Zoro falls back on his bed with a groan. How is he supposed to deal with this?
"So what did you say that was so bad then?" Sanji asks quietly as he sits down on the bed too.
"That people don't starve in Baratie and if we had the chance to use your knowledge and didn't because he refuses to send us then we deserve all of the rebellion we've been getting. And I called him weak and scared. MY FATHER. WEAK." Zoro says in a voice that he can hear is pitching towards terror.
"Holy shit." Sanji remarks and sits up so that he can stare down at Zoro.
"Well, maybe it's a good thing that we're busting out of here tonight. You two should probably cool off for a while and then if he doesn't take back what he said I'll break some of his bones." Sanji says with violent glee in his voice.
"Are you crazy?!" Zoro demands, sitting up. "He'll kill you, he's probably gonna kill me. I must be crazy thinking about breaking out. I've never disobeyed him like this, I don't know what to do!"
"Really? Never? You've never said something terrible and insulting that you didn't really mean, or break something priceless, or offend some important person, or do something you were explicitly told not to?" Sanji asks, listing a bunch of things off of his fingers and suddenly so much of Zeff and Sanji's interaction is explained.
"No, that'd be hugely disrespectful." Zoro answers with a shake of his head and Sanji just stares at him flatly for a moment.
"Okay, yeah I can kind of see why Shanks thought you were forced into this marriage thing if you'd always done what Mihawk wanted before. Luckily for you being a bad influence is my speciality! I'll bust you out of here and we can go off on a forbidden mission to save a huge number of people from certain death!" Sanji declares, bouncing on the mattress so that he catches himself on his feet and then stands up dramatically.
"You make it sound like I've never done anything without him telling me to. I have a spine you know." he argues grouchily and Sanji drops back down onto the mattress on his knees.
"Pft, boy do I know it. Our whole relationship is us butting heads and testing the other." Sanji laughs. It falls silent between them and Sanji reaches out and gently traces the stripes on Zoro's face and Zoro wonders if he's thinking of his dream.
"You don't have to come with me if you don't want to. You're feeding that man and you did all you could to get us there with the King's permission. Staying here would be helping us too, I'm sure. Your relationship with Mihawk isn't like mine with my father, if you wanted to stay I wouldn't hold anything against you. You did something brave to help those people, that's what counts to me." Sanji tells him softly. He's giving him an out, and no doubt he means it too.
"They're my people, I can do more. And you're my husband, I don't want you wandering the country on your very first visit without me." Zoro says with a shake of his head.
"Hah, what do you think I'm gonna do? Get lost? Hm, actually you're right, it'd be unfair to do that without the master of getting lost there to teach me." Sanji laughs and Zoro shoves him over so that he's flat on his back on their bed and sniggering to himself.
"You think you're really funny don't you, you idiot." Zoro says flatly and Sanji leans up on his elbows and grins at Zoro.
"Well, no matter what you think I'm supposedly your perfect person right? So what does that say against you huh, moss brain?" Sanji retorts.
Zoro gets the same frustrated feeling that he normally gets around the other man, where he's not sure if he wants to smother him with a pillow or kiss him just to shut him up. But that's normal by now.
He's really going to break his father's order and escape the castle with his other half and his nakama, or most of them anyway. It still doesn't sound like the kind of thing that he would ever do and yet he knows that he will.
It still doesn't even seem real when Sanji is perched on the windowsill of a window in their main room after dark. He's peering down and waiting for the guards to move on. There are double the usual number in this area, clearly Mihawk took Zoro's statement that Sanji would try to escape seriously. Zoro also knows that supposedly Usopp is in the distance by the far treeline with their horses. Sanji looks down again and then waves his arm widely and slowly in the air before dropping it again. Usopp should be able to see that from where he is but how on earth he can signal back is- something whizzes by Zoro's cheek and hits the wall behind him, exploding in a puff of green smoke.
"He's ready." Sanji says and hefts his bag on his shoulder and throws Zoro's own one at him. He catches it and feels his insides twist with worry. His father will be furious.
"If the guards catch us-" He starts to protest. He wants to go but this plan feels unsafe. It feels like being dragged to his father's office having been caught escaping and having to see the anger and disappointment in his father's eyes.
"You and I can take anyone Zoro. Besides, they spend all their time stopping people getting in. They don't know the first thing about stopping an escape. Now, breaking out of my palace when Zeff has tried to keep me in is a real challenge, they've had practice." Sanji says with a grin and a waggle of his stupid eyebrows.
"How often do you do this?!" Zoro demands quietly.
"Not often anymore, Zeff realised that banning me from leaving ever was pointless and doesn't bother. I kind of like having the challenge again. Last chance to back out." Sanji looks at Zoro as he says that last part.
"I'm no coward." Zoro says stubbornly and tightens his bag against his back.
"Damn right. Come on, and land quietly." Sanji urges him and then just… steps out of the window into thin air and plummets from view. Zoro rushes to the ledge and sees a shadowy Sanji lurking down on the floor. Zoro didn't even hear him touch the ground.
Zoro has a last second internal battle between doing his duty and doing the right thing until the right thing and Sanji win out and he leaps from the window. He lands on the floor and rolls.
"I said land quietly, not like a sack of fucking potatoes!" Sanji scolds him and boots him down the last ledge to ground level where he lands in a hedge.
Sanji again lands before Zoro without a sound except for the exaggerated sigh and a disapproving tut. Sanji hauls Zoro out of the shrubbery and the pair of them sprint for the treeline. Sanji's form is dark in one of Luffy's dark red cloaks, darker than anything that Sanji owned. They needed to blend into the night and Sanji's normal attire isn't exactly unnoticeable.
"Usopp." Sanji whispers as the sharpshooter and the three Baratian horses become distinct from the darkness as they approach. Zoro's night vision is shot from the lights inside the castle, but it means that the guards will have a poor view out here too.
"You took your time! Franky's just- oh there he is." Usopp whispers back and Zoro looks over the back of Seafoam to see Franky leading Zoro's horse and Nami's. Johnny and Yosaku are behind him in single file with the other horses who seem to be loaded up as well. He remembers that the plan had been to pack everything and assemble the horse tack off of castle grounds and then smuggle the bare horses out and load them up away from prying eyes.
"Where is Nami?" Zoro asks quietly. He feels a sudden pressure in his sinuses and the sky begins to pelt rain down at them.
"Guess that answers that." Sanji mutters and pulls his hood up over his hair.
"It's a good way to get the guards to want to be inside and not out here. Visibility is awful out here now too." Franky says with a nod and a look up at the sky.
"She said she'd be up the hill a little, she showed me where. Come on." Usopp says and leaps onto his horse. Sanji does the same and one by one they mount up and lead their horses into the woods. Zoro's worry seems to drip off him with the rain. What's done is done and he's doing the right thing, whether that is finding some assassins or helping a village of people remains to be seen. He can only hope that Mihawk forgives him when he returns.
