A/N: I forgot to mention that this fic is a little musical in that the chapter names are songs that you can listen to for that chapter. Entirely optional but hey.
Zoro is searching on his laptop for other reports about his death, trying to find out why the police aren't investigating. Sanji didn't really have any idea of how long he'd been there half aware on that ledge and when he tried to remember details they slipped through his now intangible fingers. It felt so good though, just being seen, it seemed to make him more real.
He's sitting down on the sofa by Zoro, or rather, trying to. He can't really feel the thing properly and if he doesn't focus he either ends up floating above it or sinking through it. Curiously he looks over at Zoro who momentarily pauses typing and looks back expectantly.
"What?" He questions with an impetuous little frown.
"Nothing." Sanji answers quickly. Zoro rolls his eyes and returns to searching online, all reports though seem to show that they believe Sanji offed himself.
With a sigh, or something that sounds like a sigh since he doesn't actually breathe now, he looks at his hand. Holding it up he can see through it a little, he's a paler version of himself, his skin tone is still there but washed out. He focuses and manages to make himself look a little more solid so that he can't see through himself. He pushes his focus the other way and he becomes almost invisible. Completely invisible apparently as Zoro jolts and looks right through him in surprise.
"Sanji?" He calls out, his gaze sweeping across the room and right through Sanji.
Sanji drops his focus again and reappears making Zoro startle slightly. His scowl becomes decidedly less amused which, even less to Zoro's amusement, amuses Sanji immensely. At Sanji's laughter Zoro sulkily returns to his trawling of newspaper articles.
Curiously he reaches his semi-transparent hand out and touches Zoro's shoulder, he finds the first real amount of resistance there that he's found since he died. He can touch Zoro! Zoro raises an eyebrow at him but says nothing and continues working. Curious Sanji pushes harder and focuses, his hand slips through Zoro's arm and into his chest with only a mild amount of resistance it's a little like putting your hand through warm jelly.
"GAH! Stop that!" Zoro yelps, backing away from Sanji quickly.
"Does it hurt?" Sanji asks curiously.
"No, but it's not nice. Just like this." Zoro snaps and kicks his shitty converses right through Sanji. Sanji's body swirls mistily around Zoro's leg and it makes Sanji feel cold and a little sick. Zoro removes his foot and glares at Sanji.
"Now cut it out." He says firmly.
"Eesh, fine. No need to be a dick about it." The cook huffs to himself.
"Try using your time to remember what happened to you. Can you remember who you argued with for example? That's probably the person who killed you." Zoro sighs sitting up fully again and levelling his dark eyes at him.
"It was with a man, I know that for certain." Sanji answers unwaveringly.
"You remember it?" the other man smiles slightly looking hopeful. Sanji supposed that if he remembers more it makes Zoro's job a little easier.
"No, but I'd never get in an argument with a woman and I'd certainly never fight with one." He asserts confidently.
"Not ever?" Zoro questions curiously.
"I'd rather die!" the cook snaps indignantly.
"Maybe you did." Zoro says quietly.
Sanji finds himself reeling a little at that. Surely a woman wouldn't have killed him? He'd never have said anything so despicable to a delicate lady to make her feel like she should shove him out of a window! It had to have been a man. But who? He screws his eyes up and tries to replay the night in his head. He can still only remember fragments, Zeff's proud smile, the announcement of the TV judges saying that he'd won, the bustle of the party. After that… he remembers more that he had an argument than the argument itself, then just the sensation of falling and pain.
When he returns his attention to the green-haired guy he's slouched into the sofa staring up at the ceiling with a vacant look on his face as he chews the end of the pencil in his mouth.
"What I want to know…" He says slowly,
"Is why the cops don't think that anything was off about your death. I mean, you don't exactly seem like the type. I know that you didn't kill yourself, you don't look like someone who did and I've never met a jumper who didn't know that they jumped. Met one who didn't realize that they succeeded but that's different." Zoro muses.
"I'd never kill myself. Why would I even want to?" Sanji agrees.
"Well, suicide is a solution to a problem. Depression, financial trouble, broken heart, you get the picture. Any of that apply to you? Would the police have any reason to assume that there was a reason for you to kill yourself?" Zoro answers with a shrug and looks to Sanji for an answer.
"No, nothing like that." He answers flatly. His life had frankly been going pretty awesome, until it… wasn't going at all.
Zoro checks his watch and his lips move slightly as he counts. Sanji rolls his eyes, this guy is his only hope?
"Yeah, I can swing by the police station before work. See if I can't find some answers for you." Zoro says leaping up and swinging a tatty backpack over his shoulder. At a loss of anything else to do Sanji follows him and gets ignored in the street again. That said though people seem to give Zoro a bit of a wide berth anyway, almost like they would if he was walking along looking like he was talking to no one, perhaps people can sense weird. And, well, Zoro's some sort of ghost-seeing psychic, that's pretty weird. Besides the guy looks like he's taken clothes that hobos have turned down.
"God, I would kill for a cigarette." Sanji says to himself rather than Zoro since Zoro can't talk to him right now. Zoro glances over his shoulder quickly at him though and then ducks into an alleyway.
Zoro leans against the wall, his lean frame huddled in the shadows. He looks at Sanji calculatingly through low lidded eyes.
"Promise not to abuse this in my apartment if I tell you this?" Zoro says quietly.
"I- sure?" Sanji frowns not understanding what's going on.
"You smoke right? Or, you did? Since when?" Zoro asks slowly.
"Long before I was legal to, why? I didn't die of lung cancer Zoro, I died from faceplanting into the pavement from fifteen stories up." He replies tartly and glares at Zoro for his insensitivity.
"Check your pockets, or wherever it was that you kept your cigarettes." Zoro orders him.
Sanji and Zoro stare at each other solidly for a few moments before Sanji relents and pats himself down. To his surprise he feels the outline of his lighter in his breast pocket, in wonder he puts his hand into his jacket and feels the warm edges of his lighter. He pulls it out, the silver case glinting translucently in the half-light of the alleyway. Miraculously his other pocket also contains a pre-rolled cigarette and his stash of tobacco and rolling papers.
He makes an undignified squeak of glee and lights up a cigarette relishing the feel of the smoke in his lungs – well, not his lungs but, oh screw it. He doesn't care where or even how the hell he's smoking when he's dead, none of this makes any sense so he's not going to start questioning shit now. His pleasure must show on his face because a smile is quirking at the edge of Zoro's narrow lips.
Abruptly Zoro pushes away from the wall and quickly walks back out onto the street. Breezing along Sanji follows Zoro, careful to stay in his wake so that people don't walk through him, that was unpleasant enough the first time.
When they arrive at the police station a sour faced little man glowers at Zoro. Sanji wonders if he recognises him.
"I'm here to see Captain Smoker." Zoro states as he reaches the desk.
"You're a civilian, we've explained this to you before. You can't just waltz in here and demand to see an officer because you just feel like it." The officer states. So he does recognise Zoro then, apparently the man has been here before looking to see this 'Captain Smoker'.
Sanji waits for Zoro to say something to this but Zoro just stands there silently, waiting patiently. Not that the officer has called this guy to come down, but Zoro's waiting as if he had.
"Go away." The officer on the desk says to Zoro after an uncomfortable minute or two.
Zoro stays put and just stands patiently at the desk.
The officer stares back coldly at Zoro.
Zoro taps his fingers idly on his thigh and his decrepit shoes squeak on the floor when he curls his toes. More minutes pass.
"He's not in. So, you can leave now." The officer adds to the silence of the room.
Zoro stands there silently and unmoving not breaking his gaze with the officer.
"What are you doing Zoro? He said that he's not here, you're just being creepy." Sanji insists, touching Zoro's arm hesitantly. The corner of Zoro's mouth twitches into a small grin at Sanji's words, the officer behind the desk actually flinches at that.
He quickly picks up the phone and tries to look away from Zoro but the guy's gaze seems to be hypnotic to the guy who is calmly watching him.
"O-officer Smoker, that creepy kid is back again!" The man squeaks down the phone. The man on the other end of the phone says something and the officer puts the phone down. The officer starts shakily giving directions but Zoro is already marching off in his shitty shoes through the shitty door.
Sanji follows the green-head through the maze of cubicles. Okay, that was strange. Apparently Zoro gets what he wants by being weird. Zoro abruptly stops at the desk of a large grey-haired man who's looking at Zoro like he's the last thing that he wants to see, ever. Which Zoro probably is on balance. The guy is huge and he looks ridiculous in his tiny cubicle filled with shitty papers and a computer that looks like it might be older than Sanji is.
"Sanji's death. Apparently you're not investigating, it's not suspicious?" Zoro blurts out.
"What's suspicious is the way you show up at my desk after almost every goddamn tragic death. You're like some creepy angel of death." The man says scowling at Zoro.
"Well- if you did your job right then I wouldn't have to." Zoro says unevenly, his eyes sweeping around the room nervously.
"Fuck you. The death isn't suspicious, now get lost Nancy Drew." Smoker growls.
"It wasn't a suicide, he was pushed. He didn't kill himself, so why aren't you investigating?" Zoro insists loudly, a little too loudly in fact if the stares that Zoro draws is anything to go by. Zoro seems to notice and reddens a little.
"There wasn't any evidence of a struggle, which you would get if you tried to push a healthy young lad like that out of a relatively small window like that." Smoker sighs, pulling out a chair for Zoro which the green-head awkwardly dithers between sitting in and not before clumsily folding himself into the chair.
Sanji looks Zoro over, he's got a nice frame on him, if he was more athletically inclined Zoro could really be ripped with that body type. As it is Zoro looks like he's spent his entire life indoors practically starving to death, he's skinny and uncoordinated. Sanji finds himself glad that Zeff got him involved in kickboxing as a kid. He might be skinny himself but he's all muscle, not as Zeff frequently asserted a 'long streak of nothin'. Or… he was. Now he's just ecto-plasm or whatever.
"No blood on the windowsill or anything?" Zoro questions carefully.
"Oh gee, now that you mention it, that might be indicative of a struggle mightn't it? Why, thank you Sherlock! No, there was no sign of a struggle." Smoker repeats, whapping Zoro on the head with his newspaper.
Zoro looks up at Sanji and frowns.
"Maybe… maybe he was already half out of the window." Zoro says slowly.
"Was he trying to kill himself or not kid? Make your mind up." Smoker sighs irritably.
"Maybe… maybe he was smoking. Leaning out of the window to do it, so that he didn't have to go all the way down to the bottom of the building, then someone pushed him." Zoro says looking at Sanji's breast pocket where he pulled the lighter and cigarettes.
Smoker's face freezes and the man spins in his swivel chair to pull a file out of the filing cabinet crammed into the man's tiny cubicle. He pulls out a manilla file and slaps it onto his desk, he flicks it open and Sanji spies a picture of him at his birthday paperclipped to the front page. Smoker leafs through a few photos one of which grosses Sanji out, both because he now knows what someone looks like when they chew pavement after a fifteen story drop and because he knows that that was him. Smoker stops on one photo and pulls it to the top. It's a rolled cigarette that's burnt down to the end but half smoked so the half that remains is mostly cigarette-shaped ash.
Zoro apparently spies this as well because he leans forward to offer his latest theory.
"He must have dropped it when he was pushed. If he was killing himself who jumps before they've finished their last smoke? He doesn't seem like the type to waste half of a cigarette." Zoro points out. Sanji nods fervently in silent agreement.
"He wasted himself Zoro. Look, I know that you feel like I let you down when I investigated your parents murders but trying to solve every suspicious death won't bring them back. Not all deaths are unsolved murders Zoro." Smoker says gently, laying his large hand on Zoro's shoulder.
"It's not about that! Sanji didn't kill himself, I know he didn't! Now tell me what you need to re-open the case!" Zoro snaps, jerking away from under the policeman's touch.
Smoker sighs and looks at the scowling teen in silence for a few moments before turning back to glance at the picture of Sanji's last cigarette suspiciously.
"At this point? We'd need means, motive and opportunity from whoever did this, if anyone did. All our suspects had witnesses saying that they were there at the time of the death. A confession is what we'd really want, with more people than you saying that you heard it." Smoker sighs.
Zoro nods quickly and stands, nearly knocking over the tall half-dead pot plant in his haste. He dithers at the entrance to Smoker's cubicle before turning back to smoker.
"Thanks, or whatever." Zoro mumbles before dashing off. Smoker stares after the retreating back of the green-haired weirdo before rolling his eyes and grumbling under his breath about how he's not paid enough for this shit. Sanji glides through a wall as a short cut and comes back out into the reception at the same time that Zoro makes it out. He follows Zoro through the door.
Zoro is glancing at his watch and Sanji remembers that the guy has work after this. He glides along the street after Zoro. He thinks about what Smoker said, Zoro's been bothering him since his parents died, correction, since his parents were murdered. Sanji wonders if Zoro could see ghosts before his parents died or if it was a result of the event. Did Zoro see his parent's ghosts? Did he try to solve their murders to put their spirits to rest like he's doing with him?
"Hey… so… I'm sorry about your parents." Sanji says eventually.
Zoro's shoulders tense and he stops in the street.
"Don't." Zoro breathes quietly so that no one else can hear him, Sanji even struggles to catch it.
"I just mean, it can be hard and I just-" Sanji starts, reaching his hand out to Zoro.
"Don't!" Zoro snaps spinning and swiping his arm through Sanji's dispersing him like mist and giving him that creepy cold feeling again.
"And don't follow me either! Go back to mine and wait there!" Zoro adds loudly. Sanji glances around and notices some people decidedly not looking at Zoro and rushing along their way to get away from the crazy guy.
"Okay, sorry." Sanji says holding his hands up. Zoro nods once and strides off again into the night, leaving Sanji alone and dead outside the police station.