A/N: Song for this chapter is Creep by Radiohead
It's not that Sanji doesn't like Zoro, because he does – mostly anyway. But being around the same person constantly with no one else to talk to is enough to drive anyone crazy, as such Zoro is starting to try his patience and he's never had much patience to begin with. Add to that the fact that Sanji is still grieving about being dead in the first place and frustrated with the lack of progress in their case and you have a ready made argument.
"If you were any good at this you'd be working for the police!" Sanji snarls angrily across the main room.
"I'm plenty good, besides, why would I want to be surrounded by dead people all day? I get enough of that ALREADY!" Zoro shouts back defensively, slamming his laptop shut from where he had been researching Creuset.
"If you're so good then why am I still here?" Sanji snaps feeling the frustration boiling inside of him.
"I don't know! Why the hell are you here? You're certainly not helping!" Zoro retorts and turns his back on Sanji angrily.
Sanji presses the heels of his palms into his eyes and feels the disconcerting absence of pressure there, he's not got any physical weight when he touches himself at all. Suddenly he doesn't want to be here at all, he doesn't want to be arguing with Zoro, he doesn't want to be dead and he doesn't want any of this.
"And anyway-" Zoro starts, turning on his heel to face Sanji. His face goes blank though suddenly and he looks right through Sanji, the same way that everyone else does. He glances around the flat quickly, even looking behind him.
"Sanji?" Zoro calls with a worried note in his voice. He frowns slightly and nearly walks through Sanji on his way to the window without ever seeing him, Sanji has to dodge out of the way. Zoro opens the window and looks outside.
Sanji looks down at himself and realises that he's not there! He holds his hand out before him and sees absolutely nothing. Meanwhile Zoro leans back into the room and shuts the window quietly.
"I didn't mean it." He says quietly to himself, sounding almost a little hurt. Zoro bites his lip and glances around the room once more in case Sanji might have suddenly re-materialised. Unsuccessful in his search he sighs and picks his bag up from the floor and shoves his house keys into his pocket.
Sanji's eyes widen, Zoro was going to work, Sanji knew that he was about due to leave. With a sneaky grin he realises that now that he's invisible he can spy on Zoro and try to learn more about the man without Zoro catching him.
Following Zoro to work at night is as boring as following Zoro anywhere is, though at least this time Zoro isn't pretending that he can't see him – he genuinely can't. Still, other people still avoid Zoro, like they can sense that Zoro is somehow different to them. He wonders if it's as a result of Zoro's sixth sense. He's not thought to ask Zoro if he can perceive other things that normal people can't, like read minds and shit. Though, from Zoro's social awkwardness Sanji would guess that Zoro isn't a mind reader, and from Zoro's past Sanji is certain that he can't see the future.
Zoro walks into a large convenience store, it's ten at night and Sanji wonders if he's stopping in to grab something before work. However, when Zoro makes his way past the shelves of stock without a second look and through an employees only entrance Sanji realises that Zoro actually works here.
He walks into the break room where three other tired looking teenagers are standing around in various states of readiness to leave. Zoro walks past them silently and all of them ignore him, as if Zoro was the invisible one instead of Sanji.
Zoro fiddles with the padlock on the locker in front of him, tugs off his jacket and pulls out an employee shirt which he just puts on over his threadbare Iron Maiden t-shirt.
Sanji looks from Zoro to his co-workers with a raised eyebrow, none of them have even acknowledged his presence or said hi. Instead they're cheerfully chatting about movies between themselves. He looks back to Zoro who is staring into his locker with focused determination, as if he's psyching himself up for something. The cook watches as Zoro plasters on a bright smile and turns to face his work colleagues.
"Movies huh? I- I heard that new Sherlock Holmes film was good." Zoro says with awkward enthusiasm.
The three other teens still for a moment before continuing on their conversation awkwardly without him.
"So, let's go then. Sunday night?" The small blonde girl says with forced brightness.
"The three of us." The curly haired brunette at her side agrees rather pointedly.
"We should ask Jeff if he wants in too. Let's go ask." The guy with them says in that flat bored voice that so many guys who try to be 'cool' use.
The three of them leave the room together leaving Zoro entirely alone and ignored. Zoro smacks the back of his head against his locker frustratedly and turns back to slam the door of the thing and lock it again. Sanji hears himself muttering the word 'stupid' over and over again under his breath, somehow Sanji thinks that it's self directed rather than at the three assholes that just acted as if he wasn't even there.
Sanji scowls and strides out through the wall back into the shop after the three jerks.
"That guy just gives me the creeps, why does he have to work here?" The curly haired girl whines with a shiver.
"Ugh, tell me about it." The guy agrees flatly. They pause at the till where a bored looking older guy in his twenties is reading a magazine with his feet on the counter. He glances up when he sees the others.
"Hey is uh… Zack here? Can we go?" The guy asks hopefully.
"Yeah, let's hit the road." The other guy replies with a grin. Magazine guy grins and chucks his magazine on the floor and vaults the counter to land with his buddies as they all walk out of the shop.
"It's ZORO you jerks!" Sanji shouts after them, not that they hear him. God, they work with Zoro and they don't even know his name? Besides Zoro isn't creepy! He can be a little annoying and stubborn sure but he's not creepy! He's sweet and generous, not to mention dedicated and loyal.
Slowly Zoro comes to the till and sits down in the chair there looking disappointed but not surprised.
"Bye then." Zoro says quietly to himself.
"Forget them, you're better than that." Sanji insists to Zoro, but Zoro can't hear him, probably because Sanji doesn't really want him to. He wants Zoro to do what he said, sure, but he doesn't want the man to know that he followed him there. Zoro had forbidden him and Sanji can see why, the man has some pride and he clearly doesn't want Sanji to know that he works at a shitty place like this with assholes like them.
"Oh come on Zoro, don't just sit there. Get your phone out and call your friends before they go to sleep, tell them how much you hate the assholes you work with. Laugh at the losers! Don't just… sit there." Sanji pleads, but Zoro just stays in his chair looking small and alone.
"He's not going to call anyone you know, you can stand there all night and he won't." A female voice from behind him states.
He yelps in an alarmingly feminine way and spins around to see a tall woman standing right behind where he had been. Her hair is long and dark, she has pale skin and very blue eyes. She watches him in an assessing way.
"He's not got anyone to call. No one besides Smoker that is, and the two of them aren't close." She continues gently.
Sanji steps a little closer to the woman now that she seems unthreatening. Her breath mists out before and Sanji feels cold standing near her.
"Who are you?" Sanji asks with a shiver.
"A friend of Zoro's, family a little bit." She smiles slightly with a hint of sadness, her eyes still on Zoro in his chair.
Sanji's eyes widen, didn't Zoro say that he had a foster mother? A woman who took him in and then died? Who died of cold?
"You're… Robin? The one that died of hypothermia?" Sanji guesses carefully, he doesn't know if it's impolite for other ghosts to talk about how they died.
"Technically I was murdered. A man called Akoji, he shoved me into the river in the middle of winter as punishment for something I had done when I was younger. I couldn't swim, but I managed to grab onto a bridge support. Unfortunately I froze before I could get out of the river." Robin says, her expression souring.
"I'm… sorry. Does Zoro know?" Sanji asks, Zoro had said that she died of hypothermia not that she'd been murdered.
Robin shakes her head sadly, dislodging ice crystals from her hair as she does so.
"He can't see me, so I could never tell him that I was pushed. There's this rule about psychics not being able to see people that they knew. It's probably some kind of inbuilt reflex to stop them all going mad. That's what happens to all of them, they either go mad eventually or kill themselves, you never see people like Zoro when they're old." Robin answers sadly.
Sanji looks over at Zoro again he's putting away magazine guy's inconsiderately thrown magazine.
"What did you mean when you said that he's not got anyone to call? Surely he's got someone that he can talk to?" Sanji frowns in concern.
"No, not anymore. When I fostered Zoro he was alone, I wanted to make him feel normal again. The world is so awful to people that aren't normal, and I know what that's like. After a while he met Luffy and his brother Ace and he was really happy for a while. That was all I wanted. And when I died they helped put him back together again, he had friends." Robin says sadly, the guilt evident in her tone.
"Why not anymore then? Can't he see them?" Sanji asks with trepidation.
"No. Ace was involved in some gang stuff, they weren't bad people but they did manage to piss off some bad people. Luffy got involved to try to save Ace when things looked like they were going bad. They got trapped in a burning building, they both died. It's a little hard to survive having a melting rebar strut impaling your chest." Robin answers flatly.
"Shit." Sanji breathes. How is it that everyone Zoro cares about dies horribly? No wonder the guy is so mentally scarred.
"And if you had listened to Zeff when he told you not to show off at the competition you could have met Zoro when you were alive and changed everything for him. But you didn't listen!" Robin says accusingly, her blue eyes narrowing at him dangerously. Robin's eyes seem to sear into his soul, it's almost like he can feel something being forced into his brain. Suddenly images flash behind Sanji's eyes, memories.
"Just don't be a show off okay? I know what you're like, just try to go one day without being a cocky motherfucker alright?" Zeff sighs at Sanji's sigh.
"You," Sanji accuses, "have no sense of showmanship."
"Just behave." Zeff orders.
Then there's the image of the hallway outside the party, the noise of the post-show celebrations echoing out to them.
"I TOLD you to keep yourself under control for ONCE!" Zeff shouts angrily.
"It's my life, I can do what I want!" Sanji shouts back.
"You don't go pissing off powerful people like that, you think that Creuset doesn't have connections? He could end your cooking career!" Zeff snaps pointing a finger in his face.
"Whatever." Sanji says dismissively and stalks off to the window to have a smoke. He can't be bothered to go all the way down to the ground floor to have a smoke, but the least he can do is lean out the window. He hears Zeff stomp off on his false leg as he slides the window open as he leans out and lights up.
Then there's the disconcerting feeling of things rewinding inside his head, like his brain is an old VCR player. He's back at the cooking competition but things are different.
He smiles gently at the room revelling in the warmth of his victory as Zeff smiles on proudly from the audience. He does as Zeff said and stays modest on the outside, he's secretly smug inside and he knows that he wiped the floor with this so called 'pro' and the twitching in Creuset's eye tells him that he knows it too. Sanji instead gets off on smiling congenially and letting the guy feel like a jerk.
That night he's outside the homeless shelter delivering meals, he can't let his own personal victories get in the way of helping the hungry after all. He's got one meal left and no one else around to feed, he considers eating it himself as he's not had a chance to sit down and eat much all evening as people were too busy congratulating him at the party instead.
As he rounds the corner he sees a scruffy looking guy standing around the back of the building staring into thin air and smiling to himself. The guy turns around and halts when he sees Sanji, golden earrings glinting in the moonlight as they jangle at his sudden stop.
"I wasn't talking to myself." He says suddenly.
"I… didn't think you were. Uh… were you talking to yourself?" Sanji asks uncertainly, he hadn't even heard the guy say a word.
"No!" the guy snaps. Now that he's closer Sanji can see that his hair is… green. How weird.
"Then who were you talking to?" Sanji asks, gesturing to the empty parking spaces around them.
"Uh… no one?" The guy ventures. Sanji snickers to himself, the guy seems nice but not too quick.
"Here, I think you need this more than me." Sanji says holding out the box of food to him. The green-head looks at it suspiciously and then raises a sarcastic eyebrow at Sanji.
"You know I'm not homeless right?" He says flatly.
"You sure?" Sanji asks looking at the guy's shitty clothes.
"Fuck you." The guy scowls, Sanji finds himself laughing at this.
"The offer still stands though, free food. I'd usually charge twenty bucks for this in my restaurant." He grins at the man.
"Hmph, can't be very good if you're just giving it away for free then." The guy comments haughtily.
"By that logic I guess you sleep with prostitutes huh?" Sanji shoots back snarkily. This makes the other guy burst into laughter that seems to surprise them both. He grins and shakes his head and goes to retrieve some plastic cutlery from the boot of his car. He leaves the lid open and sits down on the edge leaving room for the green-haired newcomer.
"Share it with me?" He offers holding out a fork and popping open the lid of the box to reveal perfect linguini.
"Sure you're not a serial killer or something? This could be poisoned, you could be trying to kill homeless people… and me." The guy says suspiciously.
"God you're weird." Sanji snorts. The guy freezes a little at that, looking a little frightened and hurt.
"I kinda like it. There must be something wrong with me. Come on, it's the best thing you'll ever eat." Sanji grins around his full fork.
"As long as it's not the last thing I'll ever eat." The guy responds with a warm melting smile and sticks his fork into the box and eats with a happy smile.
"Sanji." He says introducing himself.
"Zoro." The other guy smiles happily.
Sanji gasps as the world returns. He glances over at Zoro, expecting to see the happy smile that he'd just watched in what Robin had shown him but Zoro just looks lonely instead.
"You should have listened. Instead you took away his last chance. What do you think he was doing up on that ledge in the first place? Looking for you?" Robin says coldly. Sanji opens his mouth mutely, that was what Zoro had been doing wasn't it? He'd seen Sanji stuck up there and come up to free him hadn't he? But then he recalls Zoro's startled expression when he saw Sanji on the ledge.
"No…" Sanji pleads, shaking his head. Zoro couldn't have been up there to jump could he? But what else would he have been doing up there on that ledge if he wasn't looking for Sanji? No one climbs out of a window that high up for the goddamned view. Surely Zoro wouldn't though? Zoro… well, he couldn't exactly say that Zoro had everything to live for. He was being haunted frequently, he had no friends, a shitty job and everyone he got close to died horribly.
"You need to fix your mistake as much as you can." Robin says sharply and turns away from him, vanishing in a flurry of ice crystals.
"How do I fix anything if I'm already dead?" Sanji shouts after her but she's already gone.