The trouble with the sun setting was that after it did, and twilight had deepened to true night, there was no real way to tell whether time was actually passing at all. Maybe if he could follow the stars--but it was a cloudy night, and Zoro had never been good at picking out constellations anyway. They all just looked like little dots of light to him.

After stashing the hidden grapes under a blanket on the bench, he went through a few katas. But there was something markedly unsatisfying about chopping empty air, and the cursed katana's bloodlust was so high this moonless night that it sliced his thumb when he returned the sword to its scabbard. He exercised instead, wishing for weights, lifted up the couch--the wooden frame was heavy, though not nearly enough--and did squats with it instead. Then handstands, alternating hands; he lost count somewhere around a thousand, kept doing them until cool fingers of sweat trailed down the back of his neck into his hair and his muscles were beginning to tremble with each measured extension.

When he heard the footsteps he dropped and rolled to his feet, shaking the fatigue out of his arms. More than one set, three, he thought, and guessed it was acolytes or priests coming to bring up something, like the bandages last night.

But it was Sanji when they entered, Sanji leaning on a priest almost his height, with an arm around the cook to support him, pulling him along at a stumbling pace, his shoes stubbing on the floor. They were respectfully trailed by an acolyte holding his black jacket, draped over both stiff arms like some special ceremonial garb, which he laid on the floor with all the appropriate deference.

Sanji's head hung down, blond hair hiding his face. He shrugged off the priest's assistance, but without it seemed momentarily to forget how to walk, finally stumbled a few paces back until he bumped into the wall and slid down it, palms pressed to the smooth stone.

The priest dipped low to him and to Zoro, and then he and the acolyte respectfully bowed out of the chamber, all in silence. If Sanji noticed their departure, he gave no sign, drawing up his knees and resting his forehead against them, his arms crossed over his head.

"Sanji?" Zoro squatted before him, visually examining what he could see of his crewmate in the lamplight. His shirt was still buttoned, neatly tucked into the pants, and Zoro noticed no telltale stains. His shoulders under the blue pinstripe were rigid, however, and his breath was coming in shallow pants. "Hey, uh, Sanji?"

"I didn't know." His voice was ragged, harshly torn from his throat. "Fifth death, death of blood. I didn't know. Those bastards. They...I didn't know." His shoulders hunched inward, the corded tendons on the back of his hands standing out in sharp relief as his fingers dug into his arms. "Those bastards."

"Who?" Zoro asked. Death of blood...but even looking closer he could see no obvious injury, for all the pain evident in every line of Sanji's curled-up frame. What the hell had they done? "Didn't know what--"

Sanji shook his head, twisting it back and forth, face still pressed to his knees. "I didn't...should've...bastards..." The words caught in his throat, sticking in a dry gasp that sent a shudder through his body. "They..."

"Who, Sanji?" Zoro demanded, wrapping one hand around the cursed katana's hilt. "You need to tell me if I'm gonna know who to kill."

"No." Sanji's head jerked up, his face white and drawn and his eyes reddened, glittering like glass shards. "It wasn't--no one here. None of them."

"That damn goddess--"

"She didn't do anything. No one did. Didn't touch me, didn't do anything, just showed me...I should've known already. I didn't..." He dropped his head again, took a few rapid breaths like he was suffocating on the very air and then forced himself to continue. "The pool, it's filled with the water of the goddess, not allowed to drink but I can look...and she showed me...it must've been days ago, weeks. I should've known already. Even in the Grand Line."

"Known what?" Zoro asked, grating his teeth with the effort of keeping his tone patient.

For too many irritatingly and unnaturally long seconds Sanji was silent, but for the short breaths dragged into his lungs, and then he muttered, "The Baratie. They...those bastards..."

Zoro wasn't sure he had understood that muffled mumble. "How's that--"

"The goddess," Sanji said, now enunciating with slow precision, a low, monotone recitation, "showed me what happened to the Baratie."

He folded his arms over his head again, as if he were trying to block his ears from some terrible inaudible noise. "First my parents, but I knew that already, even if I don't remember it that well. Though I never forgot my mother's face, how frightened she...but their gravestones look peaceful now, in the sunlight. And the ship I apprenticed on, under the water--I knew those cooks never got any markers, except the wreck on the sea floor. But that was a long time ago.

"But I didn't know...the Baratie...couldn't have been that many weeks ago...long after we were in the Grand Line...but I still should've known. Somehow.

"It's still floating, the fin's keeping it on the water, even with all those holes smashed in the walls...and no one to fix them, no one left at all. The kitchens, the tables, the quarters...they were fighting in every room, every step, the blood's everywhere. The blood, and the...they're...every one of them..." His hands were fists, the knuckles bleached fish-belly white, and he pressed them against his arms to stop their shaking. "No one left to close the doors, the gulls have gotten in, but there's enough left that I could still see who...all of them. All of them there, every single cook, not one of them made it. Even..."

"You saw it?" demanded Zoro. "You saw them get--"

"No." Sanji's shoulders twitched. "They didn't show me the past, not how it happened, just--now, what's there now. What's left."

Zoro rocked back from his crouch, sat down hard and stared dumbly at Sanji's bowed head, the blond hair with its dull sheen in the golden lamplight. "Who could have--"

"Bounty hunters." Sanji looked up just enough to eye Zoro over his folded arms. "Pirate hunters--maybe friends of yours? Who knows how many of 'em. They never recalled Zeff's bounty."

"How'd you know it was hunters, if you didn't see them?"

"They--because they...dead or alive, all the posters say, you know, so they only bothered to bring proof. Left his body, just took his wooden leg, and his..." Sanji swallowed, a painful scraping in his throat. "Took his head, like any good hunters. You probably did yourself, huh, when you were--"

"No," Zoro said. "Some dead, but I never..." It was standard practice for some bounty hunters, easier than hauling a whole corpse in to claim the reward, but those who had fought strongly enough that he had been forced to kill were worthy of more respect.

"We got hunters before," Sanji said, eyes fixed on some invisible point far past Zoro, "always fought them off, but this time...there must've been a goddamn fleet. Blasted the walls with cannons, shot up the whole restaurant, probably before they even boarded. Must've caught them unawares...probably in the morning. Nights without customers, we--they'd drink all night, and then you couldn't get any of the lazy assholes up, kick them in the heads and they still wouldn't open their eyes before noon. It was Carne's birthday a couple weeks ago, they'd have partied until dawn..."

He swallowed again. "If I had been there, maybe I might've...there must have been something I could have done. If I had been there, if I'd never... But I didn't even know. I didn't know. Those bastards... Patty, Carne, all the others who came after them...Owner Zeff. Every one of them, and I didn't even know it..."

"Sanji," Zoro said, but it must have been too quiet; Sanji didn't even look at him.

He wrapped his arms more tightly around his knees, as if he had to hold himself together or else fly apart. "If I'd only been there, if I've never left, I could've done something. I could've fought those bastards off."

"Don't be stupid," Zoro said, loudly enough that he finally got Sanji's attention, though the gaze that met his wasn't angry but disturbingly blank. "I know how all those damn cooks fight. If there were someone in East Blue who could actually take out the Baratie--"

"Even if I couldn't have helped, if it wasn't enough," Sanji whispered, "at least...I'd have been there with them, when..."

"You idiot," Zoro growled. "I said if--because there isn't anyone. There's no way. It couldn't have happened."

"I saw it." His whole body was trembling. "I saw it, I saw the bodies--"

"And how the hell do you know that was real? I was a pirate hunter once, like you said, and I know of most of the hunters in East Blue, and there's not a single damn one strong enough to dare to take on the Baratie--especially after what happened to Krieg. Even if that was with Luffy's help--after that, who would try it? The bounty on Zeff's head wouldn't be enough to make it worth anyone's while."

"Maybe--maybe they were after more than that--"

"What, then? Revenge? After what, ten years? And why take out the whole restaurant--why leave the ship floating, if that's what they were really after? It doesn't make sense."

"It's supposed to make sense?" Sanji surged upright so suddenly he almost bowled Zoro over, exploding out from that hunched ball to loom over the swordsman with his fists clenched and his stance set for attack. "What those bastards did--if you'd seen it--" He was shaking still, his eyes wild.

"But I didn't see it," Zoro said, "all I've got is your damn word, and I don't believe it."

He was ready for it, and Sanji's kick was much too slow anyway, hardly any power behind it at all and it threw him off-balance, enough that he had to catch himself on the wall. Zoro didn't bother blocking, just ducked out of the sweeping blow and flipped to his feet. "I'm supposed to believe the Baratie fell to some half-ass bounty hunters? That a couple cannons and guns took out all forty of those fighting cooks? Not as strong as you still means they're pretty damn strong. You just said that you'd fought off hunters before. Shit, that restaurant survived Luffy for a week! Who the hell could've--"

"I saw it," Sanji gasped, too hoarse to shout, his throat too dry. "They showed me--"

"How do you know what they showed you was real?"

"If you'd seen it--it was real. It was too damn real. I saw it!" From the wideness of his eyes, he was seeing it still, his gaze focused on some invisible vision beyond Zoro. "They're all..."

"You're really such a moron that you'll believe anything you see?"

He said it to make Sanji react, but he might as well be the invisible one here; far from attacking him again, Sanji hardly seemed to recall he was there at all. "If they hadn't shown me, I wouldn't even have known..."

"Dammit, listen to me!" Zoro slammed his fists into the stone wall on either side of Sanji's head, leaned in close enough that his crewmate couldn't look away, could only meet his glare with a mesmerized stare. "Whatever you saw," he said, pronouncing each word distinctly and with enough force to hammer them into that dazed blond head, "whatever they showed you, it wasn't real. If the Baratie was attacked, if Zeff's bounty was claimed--you'd know already. Even in the Grand Line. Nami gets that damn paper, there would've been something about it, if it really happened, and she'd have told you. It wasn't real, Sanji. Fifth death, whatever it's supposed to be, that fucking goddess showed you a lie. It wasn't real."

"It--" Sanji's voice trembled as bad as the rest of him. "It wasn't--real--"

"Unless she really killed them--but it's all supposed to be ceremonial, right, none of it's real, it's all just a fucking ritual. A vision or something. They showed you what you needed to see for this ceremony--what were they supposed to do? Show you what's really happening on the Baratie, everyone cooking food and pouring wine and yelling at the waiters--what kind of death would that be?"

"...the waiters?" Sanji sagged back against the wall, wiped one hand across his pale face. "There weren't...I didn't see any..."

"You didn't see anyone there but who you were expecting to see, did you?" Zoro demanded. "No customers, no waiters, no new cooks you didn't know--you said it was everyone. No one was off getting supplies or anything? No one got away, or fought on the attacker's own ship?"

"N-no." The shuddering exhalation drained him of the last of that angry strength; without the wall at his back he might have dropped in his tracks. Sinking to the floor again, he rocked his head back against the stone, elbows on his knees and hands dangling limply from the wrists. "I didn't... There's always someone out, quarters are too tight unless there's a few at sea, making a run. That wasn't..."

"It wasn't real, Sanji. It was a goddamn lie." Zoro crouched in front of him, made sure his crewmate had to look at him and not that imaginary carnage still showing in his mind's eye. "What would Zeff do to you, if he found out you actually believed some stupid bounty hunter took him down?"

That rasp could be a chuckle only by a generous interpretation, but Zoro was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, especially since Sanji made the effort to sit up, tried to assume some semblance of composure. "That damn old man...he'd kick me through this wall. He'd..." His face twisted and he turned away, so his hair falling over his eyes hid him from Zoro. "He's...not..."

"He's not dead."

"No. No, I guess...it doesn't make sense, does it. Just what they wanted me to see. But I believed it...damn it." He covered his mouth with one hand, breathed hard through that muzzle. "How could I...I didn't even think of it. Didn't...it was so real. Just what they wanted. Damn it, I am that stupid."

"Right," Zoro said, running his hand through his hair, raking furrows in the short green spikes. "You're stupid. And you're starving, and you're thirsty, and you lost enough blood that you probably shouldn't be able to stand at all."

Sanji turned his head back enough to give him a look through his long bangs. "Not dead yet."

"Yeah, yeah, you could kick my ass. I believe you, don't prove it, okay? Just stay put." Zoro got up, went to the bench and brought back the bundled blanket, lifting one corner to show Sanji the concealed treasure.

Sanji blinked at the little pile of fruit. "What's that?"

"Some cook," Zoro snorted, "can't even recognize food!"

"No." Sanji's eyes narrowed and he looked away.

"Come on," Zoro said, picking up a few of the grapes and pushing them toward him.

"Not hungry."

Zoro stared. "You're not that dumb. Look, there's no one here to see. They'll never know."

"You don't know that." Sanji dropped his head, shut his eyes. "Even if none of the priests are watching...there's the goddess."

"Don't tell me you believe that bullshit--"

"I can't chance it!" Sanji snapped. "If I don't do this now--I don't...even if they let me do it again, I don't know if I could..."

"Then forget it," growled Zoro. "We can just get the hell out of here."

"And they kill that little girl. You want that?"

"Damn it, no one has to know. You can just have a couple, practically won't count--"

He extended his hand toward Sanji again, but the cook didn't even glance at the grapes, just slapped his hand aside, with enough force that the fruit went flying, tiny purple globes bouncing over the rug. Then, quicker than Zoro could stop him, he had grabbed the bundle, flipped the blanket over to spill the rest of the bunch and cast them all aside.

The exertion cost him; his face was gray when he slumped back against the wall, out of breath. "No," he said as he panted. "I gave my word." Then his mouth quirked. "Besides, you didn't even peel them. What kind of attendant are you?"

Zoro glared, shook his head and got up to collect all the grapes, swept them into the blanket and took them out to the balcony to dump them over. Wouldn't want to explain their presence to the priests, when they next came by. Though hell, he could probably just say it was a midnight snack for him and they would buy it. Too damn gullible...trusting the chivalry of pirates. Completely insane.

When he returned inside, Sanji had gotten himself to the couch, was sitting on the nearer end, staring gravely down at his shoes as if debating whether it was worth the effort to take them off.

Zoro didn't contribute an opinion, just took a seat beside him. He didn't have to wait long before Sanji said, just a quiet rasp, "I am hungry."

"I figured."

"I thought I remembered what it was like, but I didn't. Not really." He folded his hands together, gazed down at the knot of his entwined fingers. "I am one stupid son of a bitch, aren't I."

"Hell, it's not like I didn't know that already." Zoro sighed. "Sanji, why didn't you say something before? Explain about the priestess, when this whole thing started?"

"What was there to tell? You knew everything that mattered. It was my fault. Like you said--you already knew I was stupid."

"Yeah. Well." Zoro looked up at the ceiling, high enough above that the lamps barely illuminated the mosaics. "Did you ever hear how I joined up with Luffy?"

Sanji shrugged. "Always guessed it was along the lines of, 'Hi, you're the pirate hunter Roronoa Zoro, you're good with a sword or three, now be part of my crew.' And then you said, 'No,' and he said, 'Yes,' and then you got in trouble, and all of us know how that ends."

Zoro was almost surprised to find himself smiling a little. "...pretty much, yeah. Except I was already in trouble when he found me. Only I didn't know it, I thought I had a deal, I didn't know that the damn marine's bastard son was gonna break his promise and screw me over."

"They're not going to do that here."

"I know."

"So, what, you're saying I should screw them instead? Say to hell with the priestess and just turn tail--"

"I'm saying," Zoro said, "that I would have done the same damn thing. Even if it is stupid. There's some things that are more important."

Sanji went so still Zoro thought he might even have stopped breathing, had to fight the urge to smack him to get him to start again. "Oh," the blond finally responded. Then, with a bit more animation, he raised his right hand, five fingers spread. "Five down."

"Just two to go."

"Piece of cake," Sanji said.

"Why don't you get some sleep?" Zoro suggested, standing to give him room on the couch, and tried to pretend he wasn't disturbed--surprised, rather--when Sanji didn't give him so much as a dirty look, just nodded and lay down. He didn't close his eyes, however, staring forward at the far wall and seeing something in those formless shadows. Zoro could see his throat working, heard the sandpaper grating of his suppressed sigh.

"The Baratie's fine," said Zoro. "They're all okay, Zeff, Patty, Carne, all the others. It wasn't real."

"You can't know for sure."

"Doesn't mean I'm not right." Zoro put his hands in his pockets, felt the cigarette case he had almost forgotten about. "Look, tomorrow, after this is over--" second day almost gone, about time, the minutes had passed quicker when he had been tied to the post in that damn marine base--"when we get back to the ship, you can send a message to the restaurant. Shouldn't take too long to get an answer. Just to be sure. But I'm telling you now, everything'll be okay."

"If you say so," and Sanji said it with just enough irony that Zoro swallowed a relieved sigh of his own. The cook rolled over onto his other side, facing away from Zoro, bending one arm back under his head, the other curled against his chest.

He remained silent as Zoro crossed the room to extinguish the lamps, but when the swordsman looked back, he had coiled into a tighter ball, and it still wasn't enough to stop the quivering of his shoulders, visible even in just the starlight.

"Sanji?"

"N-nothing," Sanji muttered, with a catch that might have been a cough.

"I'm gonna go exercise on the balcony," announced Zoro. "It's too warm in here."

"Whatever."

He was pushing aside the door, the wood scraping softly against the frame, when Sanji said, quietly, "Zoro?"

"Yeah?"

"Thanks. ...For the grapes." He sounded so weary he couldn't be completely awake, but he still managed a little sardonic edge. "Thought that counts, right?"

"Whatever," Zoro said, and left him to sleep.

to be continued...

As promised...perhaps what was expected, perhaps not; at any rate hope this goes a little ways to content all you horrible sadists (of course, I'm the one writing it...)