I don't own anything but my ideas.
Cold Seal
"Left eye socket fracture, dislocated shoulder and a torn ligament, seven fractured ribs—two on the right, five on the left—internal bleeding, ruptured spleen, sprained right wrist, broken right thumb, dislocated left hip, twisted right ankle and two ruptured ligaments, broken left tibia, sprained left ankle, five broken toes—three on the left, two on the right—bruising everywhere, borderline malnutrition, hundreds of cuts and lacerations, and probably a concussion, if not worse, but we'll only know that when he wakes up."
"When will that be? Hours? Days?"
Zoro turned to Shanks, who was already calculating keeping the guy in their hospital until he was awake. Less space in the hospital meant more precautions at fights, even with two great doctors as well as traveling doctors and plenty of medical equipment on site. He had a business to run. Beside him, Luffy stuck his finger in his nose, already bored with the logistic portion of the matter.
Law shrugged flippantly, looking bored, but Chopper's face tightened and his eyes began to water. They had been in the operating room with Sanji for hours. It was late afternoon already. The scrubs they were wearing had been soaked through with blood, and Zoro was kind of amazed that one person could contain that much blood, as well as lose that much blood without dying.
"W-Well… it's hard to tell when he's asleep. Especially with head injuries. He could be totally fine o-or… he could be…"
Zoro shifted, eyes flicking to the open door and the blond wrapped head to toe in bandages, half of them already soaked through with blood. That meant if he woke up. Behind him, Nami came down the steps to join them, trying to make as little noise as possible and still looking supremely guilty. Shanks had yet to talk to her, and Zoro didn't blame her at all for being nervous. Shanks had a way about him that just commanded respect, and she's disappointed him.
"The drugs?" he asked quietly and Chopper nodded, nibbling furiously on his lip.
"T-They gave him so much… that many sedatives normally…"
"Why would they give him enough drugs to turn him into a vegetable if they were going to try and sell him?" Nami spoke up suddenly, anger bleeding into her voice with her anxiety.
"They might have been trying for it if he was a fighter. People have weird fantasies and… sexual kinks," Shanks returned. Nami didn't have a response. Beside her, Luffy yawned and she scowled darkly at him.
"Honestly I'm surprised he's breathing without a ventilator," Law spoke up.
Luffy blinked. "We have a ventilator?" Zoro could almost see his mind churning out ideas of blowing giant bubbles with an unlimited source of airflow.
Law shook his head and Zoro scowled at him. "You could just say he shouldn't be alive right now." Asshole couldn't help but not skip the cryptic part of his speech. Law shrugged and tipped his hat bag to play with his bangs.
More thumping on the stairs behind them alerted the group to two others joining, but Zoro had heard the way Kid and Killer walked on stairs enough to identify them without turning around.
Shanks and Kid nodded to each other before the redhead went to stand beside Law, keeping a protective distance from his right shoulder. Law rolled his eyes but Kid seemed to have no intention of moving.
"Well," Shanks said finally, "I'm going to have to speak with Doflamingo about this, if nothing else. Something as big as this so close so our city without any verification with me is—"
He paused at the sound of someone else tapping quietly down the stairs and soon a pair of feet appeared on the top steps, followed by a face as the man crouched down to see them. Shanks nodded at him and he just shook his head in return.
"The police had a squad come in and secure it, but all of the slaves have been taken into custody and the truck is being held. So far, no one has died, as far as the reports say."
"Any rumors?"
The man shook his head again. "Nothing, not to Blackbeard, not to Doflamingo, not here, not to the fight they were at. The city the drop off was in isn't under anyone's territory, so there's nothing to tie it back to anyone. The truck is illegal too, which means there are zero traces, and they couldn't get the driver to spill anything. He's probably scared of what will happen to him if he does—no amount of military will keep him safe for long if he talks."
Shanks nodded again and Chopper blinked confusedly behind him, reaching up to tug on Shanks' pant leg.
"He's risking driving illegal trucks to not get traced back to? Won't police be on more of a lookout for something like that, especially now that they know it's being used?"
"It's less expensive and damaging to lose a truck and a shipment of anything then to get found out, even if police are being vigilant about it. They can easily get more trucks, and even human cargo; keeping an organization under the radar once the military knows for sure that it exists is almost impossible."
"We can keep the guy here," Luffy said suddenly, finger in his nose again. Shanks turned to him, seemingly unaware of Luffy's current distraction, though that could have been because he was so used to it from living with Luffy all these years. "We have the beds for other fighters, he won't be in the way. We can't send him away."
Shanks nodded. "We could use the subbasement apartments. I guess we really don't have any other choice. Dropping him at any hospital is out; there's no way we could sneak in—even to the one in our city, what with the marines stationing themselves there and looking for gang violence."
"No one will know to look for him here either."
"Yup. Investigators won't be able to find this, let alone the apartments."
"Shanks?"
"Yeah?"
"I'm hungryyyyyyy."
Shanks gave Luffy a flat look and sighed heavily, rubbing his forehead with his one hand. "I could honestly use a drink. Or two. Or… eight. We'll start with eight and see how it goes from there."
Luffy cheered loudly and bounded towards the stairs, Shanks' sandals clacking behind him. Zoro rolled his eyes and turned back to everyone else, snorting at Law's unamused expression. Zoro was pretty sure there wasn't a day that went by that Law didn't thank the stars their chaotic family didn't act like that. Zoro agreed, and he knew Kid did too. Kid would have shot Killer long ago if he acted like Luffy.
The air shifted suddenly and Zoro blinked, looking around to try and find the source. It was like… the breathing in the room had picked up. Zoro traced the faces of everyone around before something occurred to him and he turned to eye Sanji's still form intently.
"…Law…" he began slowly and Law turned, Shanks pausing on the stairs and looking back at Zoro's tone of voice.
Everyone followed Zoro's gaze, Chopper looking back and forth between the green and the blond head before he trotted over to the hospital bed, clambering up on the stool beside the bed to look at Sanji.
Sanji was still for a long minute while everyone held their breath, and he suddenly sucked in a sharp breath, mouth falling open slightly as his head rolled to the side and Zoro's eyes widened. He leaned in to get a better look, about to reach forward to pull Sanji's upper lip back—sure that he had seen a flash of extra white where there shouldn't have been any teeth. He leaned in closer, Chopper blinking up at him, not sure what Zoro had seen.
It looked like… Killer's fangs look like—
Bright blue eyes shot open and Sanji snapped up in bed like a bear trap, his forehead colliding with Zoro's and sending him crashing to the ground, taking Chopper and the stool down with him as Sanji let out a vicious scream, thrashing under the tightly-tucked covers.
"His injuries!" Chopper wailed from underneath Zoro, and Zoro shot to his feet, lunging for Sanji at the same time Luffy and Law did to pin him to the bed, Kid joining them after he took the time to sigh heavily at the interruption. Zoro's hands clamped around Sanji's ankles, and the instant they did—as if Zoro weren't holding them at all—one foot lashed up and kicked Zoro so hard across the face his vision doubled. Zoro threw himself forward and gripped the writhing legs hard enough to break bone, tuning out the screams of the blond and the tiny doctor so he could listen and make sure he didn't actually break anything else.
"Put him out!" Nami shrieked from behind them and Chopper rushed for a sedative.
"Don't! This is good!" Law barked, stopping Chopper in his tracks. Zoro looked up to find the maniacal grin of his foster father and glared. Sick bastard was taking pleasure in this.
"If he knows there's a problem then he's coherent! If we can get him to calm down, we might be able to get some answers!"
"Or he could be going ballistic because he's in pain and he's not coherent!" Nami shouted.
"Not with the way he's moving, and we don't want more sedatives in his system either; it's already amazing he hasn't been fried."
That made Chopper stop, and he covered his mouth sadly, watching Sanji fight against the bed like he was on fire. Shanks, seeming to have thought about what Law said, reached around them after a moment and grabbed Sanji's chin, eyes hard as he met the one visible, vibrant, blue one that was rolling like a wild animal's; the other eye was hidden under a thick bandage and no doubt the half vision wasn't helping Sanji's calm. Sanji's movements halted suddenly as his eye locked on Shanks' and he pushed back into the bed, trying to break eye contact with that stare—the same one Luffy had—but his body only continued to shake. Shanks let go of his chin after a minute, but the second he blinked and broke the stare Sanji roared again and they lunged forward, pinning him back down before he could launch himself off the bed.
Zoro gritted his teeth, pulling Sanji's ankles into his chest to keep from having to hold them so tight with just his arms. Any tighter and he would do more damage to the breaks already there—or break more bones. He looked up at the thrashing figure fighting with everyone else to get off of the bed, blood and fluids oozing thickly from every wound in his body and dying his bandages a thick red. Zoro was about to turn away again, not exactly sickened but definitely not wanting to continue watching for the hell of it, when he suddenly noticed that Sanji's canine teeth were growing and shrinking at an incredibly fast rate—fluctuating like Killer's did when he'd almost starved to death from lack of blood.
Zoro pinned Sanji's ankles to him and stuck them under one arm, using his teeth to yank back his sleeve. He thrust his bare arm in Sanji's direction, trying to get him to eat so his body would calm down, when Law suddenly realized what he was doing and why and slapped his hand away sharply just as Sanji's teeth snapped down where his wrist had been seconds ago. Sanji choked on a desperate screeched, throwing his body back into the bed as his spine bent almost completely in the wrong direction, and Zoro's free hand flew back to keep his feet down.
"Nami and Chopper out!" Law ordered over Sanji's caterwauling, making sure everyone else still had him pinned before he dashed over to one of the counters. Nami made a face and started to protest, but the next time Law screamed at her to leave she closed her mouth and marched out, no doubt still feeling like she was on thin ice.
Law whirled around once he thought the room was cleared, a bag of blood in his hands, and stopped at the sight of Chopper standing nervously in the middle of the floor, eyes flicking back and forth.
"I-I… he's my patient too! …I should be able to help… I have to know how to treat him! I can help, I won't get in the way—!"
Law groaned loudly and stepped around Chopper. "Fine. But if you can't handle this or if you tell anyone, I'll cut out your heart and keep it in a jar on display in my office."
Chopper's eyes popped at the threat and Zoro growled, snapping for Law to watch the way he talked to Chopper, but Chopper just grabbed his arm to stop him and nodded up at Law, expression determined.
"Just tell me what to do."
"Good," Law returned, and rounded on Zoro. "Now you, just because Killer happens not to be venomous doesn't mean the rest of them aren't! You never heard me once mention that?! Do you want to become one?!"
"Just give him the goddamn blood!" Zoro snarled. "His whole body is being starved of everything right now!"
Chopper babbled something confusedly, trying to make sense of what was going on, but Law ignored him and shook the tube at the end of the bag harshly until blood started dripping out. He stuck the end of the tube in the corner of Sanji's mouth when his head stilled for a moment and Sanji coughed harshly as the liquid dripped down the back of his throat. He continued to struggle, trying to shake and bite the tube to get it out of his mouth, but Law kept it far enough away from his teeth and far enough back in his throat to keep the blood dripping. Zoro knew that he would process it better and faster if he ingested it normally, but it was still hard to watch Law stick the tube down his throat as he choked and gagged around it.
More minutes went by and Sanji began to still, tongue flicking back in his mouth as he finally tasted what was in the back of his throat, and then—eyes still rolling—he started to turn his head into the tube to drink more of the thick liquid. Law yanked the cord from his mouth suddenly, plugging the drip at the end, and Sanji screamed frantically, making another uncontrolled jerk that almost sent him tumbling off of the table, but Law stuck the whole back of blood into his face and Sanji's jaws clamped down faster than Zoro's eyes could keep track of, puncturing the plastic and letting it gush out into his mouth. Sanji gulped greedily at every drop, slurping and gasping messily around the lack of air from drinking so fast, and in only a few seconds the whole bag had been drained.
"Let him go," Law told them quietly before he dashed to the other side of the room and pulled out another pint of blood, placing it in Sanji's hands just as everyone backed off and let his arms free. Sanji snapped into a sitting position and sank his fangs into the plastic, drinking the blood from the holes as if he hadn't drunken in weeks—which might not have been far from the truth. Second bag empty, he let the plastic fall tiredly into his lap and sat panting, one eye closed and the other covered in bandages, head hanging limp. Nothing moved around him, his body previously so motionless and now so alive after just a couple of pints of blood. It was just like with Killer; an instantaneous cure to his pain.
Zoro looked over to where Law was, but the doctor was intently watched Sanji, waiting for the next thing he would do. A slight quirk in his lips revealed how excited he was to have another NSPH in the vicinity, and no doubt his mind was whirring with the testing possibilities. Behind him, Chopper's eyes were still popping out of his head. He seemed unable to comprehend what he'd just seen, even though Zoro knew he'd understood it perfectly.
Law waited until Sanji's head—still weak and wobbly—started rolling around to make eye contact with the people circling him before he began talking.
"Sanji, I'm Trafalgar Law. Can you hear me?"
Sanji's head jerked up, eyeing Law from off to the side with his one good eye, waiting for him to continue.
"Do you remember what happened to you?"
The only sound in the room came from Sanji's heavy panting as everyone waited, and then the blue eye flicked to every one of them in turn, taking in their placement around him and their stances—ready to pounce again if he lost it. His gaze rested on Killer the longest, staring flatly at him until Killer shifted uncomfortably and Kid moved to stand slightly in front of him and block Sanji's line of vision. Sanji's gaze drifted up to meet Kid's hard glare, but he didn't hold it long and turned back to his hands in his lap.
"We found you in the back of a truck in a shipment of slaves, you were dying from the drugs they gave you. Do you remember anything about that?"
Sanji's stared blankly for a moment before shaking his head, looking back up to Law now that it seemed like he could focus on one thing at a time. The blood was circulating through his system faster now, but he still seemed a little off.
Sanji let out a deep breath, reaching up to rub one temple with the heel of his hand and scrunched his eye shut. Chopper made to get some headache medicine from the other side of the room but Law stopped him with a quick hand on his shoulder.
"What you remember might affect what medicine we can give you. And try not to move too much, you have a lot of injuries and the rate that your body heals will only help so much if you exacerbate them too much."
"He can still have water," Chopper insisted, pouring Sanji a glass from the plastic pitcher on the counter. Law sighed, relenting and letting Chopper dote over his patient before they continued; it wasn't like they were in a hurry or anything. Chopper clambered back up onto the bed, trying but not really succeeding at keeping all of the water in the glass. He offered the glass to Sanji, who's lip curled back uncomfortably and Chopper suddenly realized that he probably thought the water was spiked. He brought the glass to his lips, taking a long and obvious sip before offering the glass back to Sanji. Sanji eyed in again for a moment, but finally decided that it wasn't worth the dehydration and reached out carefully, taking the glass without ever touching Chopper's fingers, and drained it slowly.
Sanji looked back up after he was done, staring back at Law before he swallowed heavily and peeled his lips apart, tongue flicking over a small spot on his bottom lip. "…How bad?"
His voice was thick and saturated from the drugs. It scratched and seemed to catch in his throat, and even those two words made him grimace in pain and he cleared his throat, coughing to relieve whatever was making his vocal cords so heavy.
"After you start," Law said coolly, unperturbed by the glare Sanji shot him in response, iridescent blue darkening with anger. He opened his mouth to protest, but decided against it and let out a slow growl instead. Zoro shifted at the sound, so much more feral and animalistic than anything Killer had ever made. Killer's snarls sounded like a kitten's attempts to learn to roar. The deep rumble Sanji had made reverberated around him, seeping through the air like mist and penetrating his skin. It was menacing. Zoro felt a smile tug at the corners of his lips, his muscles tingling just at the thought of fighting this man.
Sanji leaned back out of his hunched position and pulled his legs up on the table so he could rest his elbows on his knees, leaning his head back to take a slow breath, tongue flicking over that spot on his lip again.
"I got jumped in my city—"
"Where?"
Sanji deadpanned at the interruption but finally dipped his head to face Law. "Where are we?"
"Shanks' territory. That's him, there," Law nodded to Shanks and Sanji looked over boredly at him before answering.
"North of here."
"Where?"
"North."
Law's lips pinched together but he didn't ask again. Shanks didn't seem bothered.
"Seven guys attacked me, all in black with no signs or symbols or logos or uniforms, whatever, and I would have been fine but…" he rolled his shoulder uncomfortably, feeling for any lingering pain. "They hit me with something and I dropped. When I woke up I was strapped to a table with a shit ton of IV's in my arm. They were interrogating me on my city and my boss, and when I didn't answer they would pump me full of shit to try and get me to talk."
"Describe it."
"…I was really fucking cold, and shaking and everything that touched me burned. It was weird as hell. It looked like I was looking through a strobe light and a huge fucking dose of LSD."
Sanji paused, looking between Law and Shanks and waiting for them to say anything. He continued when they didn't, an annoyed look crossing his face, tongue darting out again.
"The next time I woke up, they were pissed. They gave me something that made me say anything that came to mind, but I caught on pretty quick and just stopped talking, so they took me off of the table and beat the shit out of me," Sanji ran a hand tiredly through his hair. "Something about old tactics being around because they worked. I was hungry too, and I hadn't drank—" he paused suddenly, eye widening slightly as he realized what he was about to say and quickly corrected himself, "eaten in weeks so I was really out of—"
"You might not remember, but we gave you two pints of blood when you woke up to calm you down," Law cut in and Sanji stopped, swallowing heavily and meeting Law's gaze carefully. Zoro felt Sanji tense and his gaze flashed to the exit and back. Zoro shifted, ready to stop Sanji when he tried to fly off of the table.
"You're not the only vampire in the city," Law said vapidly, already uninterested in dealing with Sanji trying to escape. "And don't run; did you not hear me say exacerbating your wounds will make them that much worse? If we wanted to do something, we would have done it when we realized why you were so low on blood and reacting like you did."
Sanji closed his mouth, biting down on that spot on his lip, shoulders still tight, but his eye found Killer again and he seemed to relax a little bit, despite still being confused and wary. Zoro blinked, looking down at the pinched expression Killer was making. …Could Sanji… sense, or whatever, that he was a NSPH too? Had Killer been able to tell? Beside him, Chopper's mouth was still hanging open, but other than that he seemed to be handling the situation pretty well. Zoro knew there would be an onslaught of questions after this though.
Sanji collected himself and looked back to Law. "…Well, uh, they started to… starve me." A thick shiver shot up Sanji's spine suddenly and everyone in the room flinched, but did nothing when Sanji didn't move otherwise. Zoro blinked, unable to find a connection as to why that would be that horrible compared to everything else.
"They thought making me crazy would make me want to talk so I could eat. The drugs hit me harder after that because there was nothing but that in my system, but they hit me so fast that my brain basically stopped working. I couldn't even follow what they were saying. It was all just garbled sounds." Sanji rubbed a hand over his uninjured eye, carefully avoiding the other one.
"Your body metabolizes thing quickly anyways," Law spoke up. "At least, Killer's does; but without blood in your system it metabolized that much quicker and you take all of the effects at once. Depending on how much they were giving you, it was just continuous because even your system couldn't clear it out fast enough."
Sanji nodded slowly before dropping his hand, not meeting anyone's gaze, tongue licking his lip. He seemed incredibly uncomfortable talking about it openly, like Killer had been the first time Law had told someone outside their family what he was.
Go figure, after all the torturing. It was also very possible that he started off like Killer had in a military experimental facility.
Sanji cleared his throat, tongue flicking out again. "They next time I woke up they'd put me in a metal room, but I was still up on the other stuff so I couldn't stop them when they came in and shot me up with something hallucinogenic. Birds flying out of the ceiling and scratching me and breaking like glass and the floor turning into tar and shit. I wasn't awake long for that, or I don't remember it. Next time I was on the table again, and they gave me something that made everything hurt like a motherfucker, and they kept poking my injuries to watch me scream—"
"Pain level from one to ten."
Sanji gave him a dark look at the interruption and spat, "Forty-two," waiting for Law to cut in again but the doctor just gestured for him to continue. "Then I was here."
Shanks turned slowly to Law, still processing what they'd heard. "Experimenting doesn't sound like Teach."
"Or even really Doflamingo," Kid agreed. "He can't sell them if they're damaged goods or whatever."
"Moriah?" Law asked quietly and the other two shrugged.
"Moriah does black market stuff," Chopper mumbled, eyes still glazed over as he tried to put everything in place in his mind, making sense of everything he'd seen with Killer but never had a real answer to. "Experimenting would risk the organs and risk his product and reputation."
"Well," Shanks sighed heavily, turning to Luffy. "You still hungry?"
Luffy let out a wild whoop and bounded from the room, Shanks trailing off behind him with a quick reminder over his shoulder that they could call him if they needed.
"…How bad are my injuries?" Sanji asked quietly, all eyes turning back to him as he looked over the yards and yards of bandages hiding his skin.
"You're body is still taking in the blood you drank and is also still pumped full of adrenaline, so you probably can't feel most of it now, but you will later. It's worse than it looks."
That made Sanji's head pop up, and he looked quickly to Killer before back to Law. Zoro could almost hear his brain doing the calculations; if Law knew how fast he and Killer healed and was still calling it that bad, than it was bad.
"Dislocated shoulder, seven fractured ribs, internal bleeding, ruptured spleen, sprained right wrist, broken right thumb, dislocated left hip, broken left tibia, sprained left ankle, five broken toes… you shouldn't be malnourished anymore now that you've fed, but you've got all sorts of cuts and lacerations, and it looks like your head doesn't have any lasting damage, but Doctor Chopper and I will keep an eye on it for a couple of days. We fixed your spleen and stopped most of the bleeding of the rest of your organs, but you need to take it easy, especially after freaking out from lack of blood in your body."
Sanji looked down to where Chopper was nodding excitedly, just starting to comprehend the possibilities of new medical information Sanji contained. Sanji seemed to realize this too and shifted uncomfortably, but Zoro wasn't sure anyone other than Law and Killer noticed. This was all too new for Chopper to realize the effects that his enthusiasm for experimenting and testing would have on Sanji; it wasn't like he knew Killer's situation or how bad Sanji's might have been.
"…How long until I can get out of here?"
"Maybe a month or so, depending on how fast you heal." Law crossed the room and pulled an ophthalmoscope from one of the drawers before coming back, reaching for the bandages over Sanji's left eye. The blond flinched back, but stilled after a moment when Law made no movements to pull away and let Law unwrap the bandages.
"Your eye socket is fractured too," Law said as he dropped the cloth in the trash and flipped on the light, holding it up to Sanji's eye. The socket was purple and deformed, bubbling out unevenly and oozing something thick and yellow down Sanji's cheek. Every once and a while Law would wipe it away with a rag so he could keep looking at it, but it never stopped flowing. Zoro watched for the stretching and reforming of new pink skin he'd seen Killer's body do during the healing process, but the wound was still.
"There was a lot of damage done to the actual eyeball. You don't remember anything about this or how it was done?" Law reached up carefully and with one gloved finger pushed back the disgustingly swollen lid, more blood and puss leaking from the tear duct. Zoro grimaced, looking at the cloudy blue eye pushed slightly off center, so much less alive and bright than Sanji's other eye. He could only imagine how painful that was with Law poking and prodding at it, but Sanji didn't seem perturbed in the slightest.
"No," Sanji mouthed, barely finding the energy to speak. His viable eye closed as he tried to keep himself calm.
"Again, we won't know the extent of the damage until we see how fast your body starts to heal now that you're coming off of the drugs."
"…Should I open my eye?" Sanji asked slowly. "Would it help if you saw the eyeball and not just the lid? It doesn't hurt that badly."
Law paused and everyone else in the room blinked. Law's finger was still holding Sanji's bad lid open. He turned the flashlight up to a brighter level and flashed it a couple times over Sanji's pupil. No reaction.
"You can't see this?" he asked carefully.
"Not through the lid, no."
"I'm holding your eye open. You should be able to see this light. Can you feel me holding back your lid?"
Sanji's good eye popped open and snapped to Law's concentrative expression, but to his credit, he didn't move his head once.
"Can you feel this?" Law asked again, letting Sanji's lid fall and tapping on the outside of the socket. Zoro winced just at the thought of someone poking a fracture of his like that, especially around the eye, but Sanji didn't even blink. He shook his head carefully, reaching up to finger the swollen edge and find where he stopped being able to feel. His fingers paused a good inch from his closed lid and a small shudder shook his shoulders, good eye staring off into the distance.
"It looks like experimenting was done on it. There's a lot of chemical residue that shouldn't be there and isn't anywhere else on your body," Law shut off the ophthalmoscope and laid it on the table. "It might take you longer to heal because of that. We won't decide anything until we look at the progress in a couple of days."
"Why would they experiment on his eye and not his… internal organs, or something?" Chopper asked, clambering up on the table to look for himself. Sanji didn't even bother pulling away, still shell-shocked and staring off blankly.
Law shrugged. "Could be they were testing how much he could be damaged and still heal from. They could have chosen his eye because it's an organ central to hunting, and therefore survival for vampires. It like the heart or lungs, it would take precedent over other things like broken limbs, but losing it won't kill him; he's also got two of them. We don't have to remove it though, your body will keep it from rotting and hurting the rest of you, so there's still a chance that the healing process might start."
Sanji didn't answer, arms hanging limply on the table and good eye now closed as he tried to keep himself calm. He was gnawing on that spot on his lip now.
"…Can… I get some cigarettes?" he ground out through clenched teeth, hands tightening into fists.
Law nodded. "Not in here with the oxygen, but we're going to move you to one of the apartments downstairs that our fighters stay at. Doctor Chopper and I will keep checking in to make sure your healing is progressing, and while you rest, Zoro over here will find you some cigarettes and food," he gestured vaguely in Zoro's direction. Sanji didn't even bother opening his eye to find out which one in the room he was referring to.
Law tapped Chopper on the shoulder after a silent moment and Chopper trotted off into the hallway, coming back after a moment with a wheelchair and rolling it over to the bed. Zoro turned pull the door open again, wondering if there would be anything left over in the kitchen now that Luffy had no doubt ransacked the place or if he would have to order something out, and if so, what would Law consider nutritious enough to give Sanji—
"Hey, marimo. Try not to get too shitty a brand if at all possible. I'm having some serious fucking withdrawal here."
Oh, he already knew he was going to hate this asshole. Zoro ground to a halt, turning back slowly to meet Sanji's blank stare. The blond's tongue flicked out over the spot on his lip again where, no doubt, a cigarette would have been normally. Behind him, Kid snorted loudly and Killer turned away, trying to hide his laughter.
Marimo? That son of a—
"Go, Zoro." Law was smirking, not about to wait for Zoro to react to the nickname. Zoro ground his teeth, debating retorting, but he couldn't come up with anything good on the spot and stalked out. The second he was out of the room Kid guffawed and Zoro slammed the door sharply behind him.
Shanks was waiting for him at the top of the stairs, beer in hand, somehow having known that Zoro would be the first one out of the room. Behind him, Zoro could hear the chefs in the kitchen crying and yelling for Luffy to stop, and periodically a tremendous crash blocked out the screaming, but it always picked up again. Zoro rolled his eyes, the kitchen now a lost cause, and headed for the door.
"Find out where he's from," Shanks murmured as Zoro passed. "Just in case this is a setup. It's very possible with the marines around here. And I'd like you to stay here too to keep an eye on him. We'll put you up in one of the bedrooms."
Zoro nodded, leaving Shanks in the shadows behind him.
-oOo-