Sanji isn't often lost for words, he's a pretty confident guy and pretty mouthy too so usually he's not the quiet type. But with Zoro passed out on the sofa leaving him alone in the room with another dead guy who he just moments ago accused of deliberately draining Zoro of life, he feels a little… awkward. It seems like the guy wasn't doing that, or at least not much more than Sanji has been doing cumulatively.
The two of them are just standing there, trying not to look directly at each other and neither knowing what exactly they're supposed to be doing right now. The little nagging voice in the back of his mind is prompting him that he should probably apologise, but he's frequently ignored that voice in favour of male pride so he stands in silence.
"So… how did you kick it?" Usopp eventually asks with a loud nervous laugh.
Sanji stares at him and after a heavy silence for a few seconds laughs at the absurdity of the whole situation.
"Murder, I was pushed out of a building and bit pavement. You?" Sanji says giving the other guy a curious look.
"Murder too. Did… did it take long for you? To die I mean?" Usopp asks worriedly looking at him.
"Didn't feel a thing. I remember being terrified about falling but nothing else, Zoro looked over my autopsy report and said it looked like it was instant." Sanji shrugs, his memory of that time is patchy as is but he's glad that he can't remember what it felt like to have your bones shatter and your brain splatter across the pavement.
"It- it felt like it took forever for me. I don't know how long it actually was but…" Usopp shudders and for a few moments wounds flicker into visibility about his body, deep stabs and gashes. The guy looks like he lost a fight with a threshing machine or something! Usopp shakes his head and suddenly appears normal again, he doesn't seem to have noticed the change in his appearance.
He remembers quizzing Zoro a few days ago about something he'd first said about suicide cases. Zoro had said that suicide cases tended to look "messed up", he'd explained that it was something to do with mentally internalising your injuries. People who killed themselves were in some way prepared for what would happen to them, or at least aware enough of it for it to become stored in their memory and as such it tended to affect their appearance. On top of that people who killed themselves and continued existing as ghosts tended to feel guilty and they sort of subconsciously punished themselves by looking like that.
Sanji guesses though that the same logic holds true for those that look a long time to die, if you spend ages dying of wounds like Usopp's then he supposes that it's the kind of thing that sticks in your memory for a while. It went a way to explaining why it felt so cold to be near Robin if she died of hypothermia.
"That sucks." Sanji offers. He's not going to say that he's sorry because it wasn't like he did it. Usopp nods and looks carefully at Zoro. Sanji follows his line of sight. Zoro's completely out of it, sprawled across his cheap looking furniture with his arms and legs all tangled up. He's nineteen but because he's so goddamn malnourished his body looks younger, his face looks like he could convincingly be older though. Or it does when he's awake anyway, when he's awake he perpetually has this scowl on that makes him look older and gruff. But asleep his face is smooth and calm, he looks a little angelic actually. Usopp's probably thinking that this skinny young guy who looks like he could pass for a hobo doesn't look like much, but he doesn't know jack about Zoro.
"He'll do it you know, help you I mean. He'll get you to where you need to be." Sanji asserts confidently.
"Oh yeah, then why're you still here?" Usopp asks quirking an eyebrow at Sanji. Sanji shoot Usopp a sharp look that makes the guy flinch back in fear, chicken.
"I was being… uncooperative. I didn't really want to go. I like-" Sanji pauses, he wants to say that he likes Zoro but for some reason he doesn't want to admit that to Usopp, it feels private somehow. Weird.
"I like it here. I shouldn't have died, I don't want to go. I thought I could just stay here forever." He says instead.
"But you don't want to turn into one of those horrors!" Usopp gasps in terror.
"I didn't know that could happen!" Sanji snaps feeling creeped out by the idea. He can't imagine how awful it must feel being one of those creatures, it felt terrible enough just being near them!
"I suppose I don't have much choice but to go." He murmurs sadly. Maybe he can still try to get Zoro under Zeff's wing before he leaves, he'd hate to have to go and leave him alone. Or maybe he could go and come back again? Was that what Robin did? She seemed to have more knowledge of what could have been than just a ghost, maybe when you're on the other side you get that kind of knowledge and can come back. But would Zoro be able to see him then? Questions, questions. He didn't have any answers though.
Zoro slept for an astonishing amount of time, Sanji was glad that he at least had today and tomorrow off, it was seven am the next morning by the time he woke up! He and Usopp had kept themselves amused by swapping stupid stories and jokes or playing I-spy out of the window (which eventually stopped due to the rampant amount of cheating on both sides) and when Sanji started to feel a little claustrophobic he floated up onto the roof and smoked for a few hours.
When Zoro eventually did awake it was with a stream of muffled curses, the guy looked like hangovers personified and Sanji firmly wouldn't let him do anything until he'd drank two pints of water, had breakfast and showered. This irritated Zoro to no end and amused Usopp endlessly.
"How long have you two known each other?" Usopp asks with a giggle.
"Since he found me when I was dead." Sanji shrugs. He's kind of lost track of the days, it's a little hard to keep time when you don't have sleeping to mark each day out by. It's been… a week maybe?
"Oh, you two seem like you've known each other forever." Usopp comments, sounding surprised. Usopp shrugs and seems to forget about it but something about his sentence sticks in Sanji's mind. He feels a little like that too, he's barely known Zoro any length of time but he does feel like he's known him for a long time, it should have been longer but… hm. The feeling skitters away from him like roaches away from the light. He shrugs to himself and lets it go.
Eventually the squeaky clean, fed and watered Zoro emerges looking like a human being for a change. He sits on the sofa and shoots Sanji a sarcastic look as if to say 'can I do my job now?', Sanji flips him off for good measure.
"Tell me about yourself, why are you here?" Zoro asks, leaning back on the sofa, the familiar notepad on his knee as he watches Usopp expectantly.
Usopp launches into a pretty fucking tragic life story. His mother is dead and his father is absent, possibly dead who knows. He's in love with this pretty rich girl who, surprisingly, seems to like him too. Not that he's allowed to see her because her staff all think he's riff-raff who should be leaving the young lady alone. The young lady in question is very sick, she's always had frail health and the death of her parents not too long ago sent her health into a tailspin. Usopp came along to cheer her up and help her, it seemed to be working.
Sanji finds it a little hard to believe that anyone would kill this guy until Usopp's face darkens and he begins to talk about the girl's butler. They've never liked each other and recently Usopp overheard the butler planning with some criminals, apparently part of a gang that he used to run, to kill this lovely young lady for her money after tricking her into signing over her fortune to him in her will. Usopp had tried to warn her but she'd rejected his, admittedly rather outlandish sounding, warning. In an effort to find proof to convince her Usopp wound up alerting the butler to his knowledge of the plan and was murdered to ensure that he could never tell anyone the truth. Stabbed to death as it happens, this explains the injuries.
Zoro leans back thoughtfully after this tragic tale and scratches his jaw as he thinks.
"It sounds to me like you can't leave until either she believes you or until you're sure she's safe." Zoro sighs.
"I don't want her to think I was lying, not about something like that! And I can't just leave her in danger like that!" Usopp agrees desperately, his hands clenched together in what looks almost like prayer.
"So I've got to go talk to her. Great." Zoro groans unhappily. Sanji raises an eyebrow at that, what could be so bad about talking to a pretty lady? From the way Usopp describes her it sounds like the woman's a genius and practically a movie star in looks, what could be so bad about that?
"Oi, asshat. It's always a privilege to talk to a pretty lady!" Sanji chides the dumb ape.
"Yeah, she's really nice Zoro. She'll listen to you." Usopp smiles reassuringly.
"She might be nice and she might be pretty, but you try leading a conversation with "hey I'm here to pass on a message from your dead loved one!" and see how far that gets you. People can be surprisingly un-nice and ugly when you're someone like me." Zoro grumbles.
A part of Sanji's soul aches. He wonders if Zoro's friends knew about this part of Zoro, the part that sees dead people, or if Robin knew. He wonders if even with the people Zoro's close to know and accept all of who he is. If not the man must feel unbearably lonely.
"Do you have anything that I can tell her? Anything that'll prove that you're really here and I'm not a nutcase?" Zoro asks hopefully.
"Aside from knowing what I've already told you… I suppose… I suppose that you could tell her to go to my house and look in the box under my bed. I was… I bought her something. I think that she'd know it was from me. I never told anyone so… would that do?" Usopp says sadly.
"Let's go find out." Zoro states and with that strides out of the building. Sanji and Usopp glance at each other and follow him quickly out of the building.
It takes a little directing on Usopp's part, Zoro has no sense of direction even when he's told to go left he still seems to end up going the wrong way, but they get there. There happens to be the most fancy pants mansion that Sanji's ever clapped eyes on.
"Well how the hell am I going to get in there?" Zoro mutters to himself as he stands on the small wall with his hands wrapped around the railings, straining on his tiptoes in his shitty converses to see over the neatly manicured hedge. Sanji's wondering the same thing but Usopp is beckoning them down further along the fence. Zoro shrugs at him and follows.
It turns out that Usopp is leading them to a point in the hedge where the bars are attached to a hinge, no doubt the handiwork of Usopp himself. Zoro sneaks through and is led expertly by Usopp who is clearly a master of sneaking through the neat patrolled gardens of this lady's stately home. Soon they arrive at the bottom of an old tree.
"I used to tell her stories and jokes from that branch up there all the time, it made her happy. Never thought I'd be leading a medium here to talk to her now that I'm dead." Usopp murmurs sadly. Zoro shuffles awkwardly, clearly he doesn't like this any more than Usopp. Instead of talking to the man, Zoro leaps ungracefully and with a fair amount of grunting and cursing under his breath manages to haul himself up onto the branch. He finds an assortment of pebbles stored in a knothole of the tree.
Zoro snags one and flings it lightly at the window, it bounces off with a rattle. Sanji hears footsteps dashing towards the window and quickly the panes are flung open by a girl with delight written all over her fine features, her face falls rapidly when she sees Zoro. Sanji guesses that the woman must have for a moment thought he was Usopp and he was still somehow alive, he wonders if Zeff has that feeling sometimes, it's hard to be the one left alive.
"Who are you?" She asks warily eyeing Zoro.
"I've got a message for you, I'm sorry if I startled you I just-" Zoro says guiltily dropping the stones. She looks at Zoro assessingly, not meanly but, well, Zoro looks a bit shabby even when he's scrubbed up.
"You don't look like a messenger." She says plainly in her elegant voice. Her pretty blonde hair slides over her shoulders, Usopp wasn't lying about how pretty this girl is.
"Hah, I don't exactly get paid for this so I don't get a stupid uniform." Zoro laughs awkwardly. He seems to realise that this isn't going well and reddens with embarrassment.
"I- um. The message, right. I have a message for you from Usopp." Zoro tries again. This time the woman's face does sour from an obvious stab of pain and anger.
"Usopp is dead." She says harshly, her grief pouring through her words clearly.
"I, yes, he is. But, I… I still have a message from him, to you I mean." The green head fumbles, starting to go red himself. An uncomfortable silence descends suddenly, Zoro was obviously trying to work out how best to broach the topic but now he's got to work out how to break the silence too, it doesn't help that the Kaya woman is looking more angry and upset by the second. Sanji winces to himself, Zoro seems able to talk to him just fine, why is he so awkward and uncomfortable with the living?
"You- you're saying you've got a message from Usopp, Usopp who's dead?" She asks shakily, she's staring at Zoro with wide distrustful eyes and Sanji can see this train wreck coming before it happens.
"Don't say-" He starts desperately, knowing that only Zoro can hear him.
"Yes!" Zoro says happily.
"Oh shit." Sanji groans. Just because Zoro can hear him doesn't mean that he's listening.
"You're… you're sick! My Usopp is dead and you're, what, trying to pass on some message for him?" She demands, her anger visibly building as her knuckles whiten as she grips the window ledge tightly.
"Yes! About Kurohadol, his name is actually Kuro, what Usopp told you is all true! He said that he didn't want you believing that the last thing he said to you was a lie, you're in danger!" Zoro insists earnestly, his wide eyes shining with honesty that apparently only Sanji can see.
"Usopp is dead! He didn't tell you anything! If Usopp was here now he'd attack you for saying such a terrible thing! What he said about Kurohadol was a stupid joke!" She yells at Zoro furiously.
"It's not a joke!" Zoro replies desperately, clearly becoming anxious at how loud Kaya's being.
"It is, it's a sick joke! My Usopp is dead and you thought that you would come here claiming that you have a message from him? You thought I'd pay you because I'm rich and grieving?" Kaya accuses angrily with tears welling in her eyes.
"Kaya, he's not lying, it's true!" Usopp insists, but Kaya can't hear him.
"I don't want your money! Kuro does, he's trying to get you to write him into you will, then he'll kill you like he did Usopp!" Zoro shouts hopelessly.
"Get out! Get out!" Kaya screams and rips her shoe off of her foot and hurls it at him. Zoro dodges but nearly falls out of the tree completely in doing so, he's hanging from the branch with both arms trying not to fall.
"I can prove it! Usopp never told anyone when he was alive but he bought something for you, it's in a box under his bed, I don't know what it is, just go look!" Zoro pleads as he scrabbles for grip. Sanji tries to reach for Zoro to pull him up right as Kaya grabs the old fashioned phone off of her desk and hurls it at Zoro. It sails through the air and through Sanji effortlessly and smacks Zoro right on the temple.
Sanji watches in horror as Zoro goes limp and falls from the tree and crashes to the ground, blood is streaming from his temple alarmingly. Shit, people died from things like that didn't they?
"Zoro! Don't you dare be dead! Wake up!" Sanji yells falling weightlessly to the floor and swinging his substance-less hand through Zoro's face, he doesn't want to actually touch him for fear of making Zoro's head injury worse.
Mercifully Zoro's eyes blink groggily open and slowly they focus on Sanji. He's grinning so wide he's surprise his head doesn't crack in two. Zoro's alive.
"You had me worried for a second dumbass." He laughs, touching the side of Zoro's face lightly. Zoro leans into his touch for a moment before trying to push himself up on his elbow.
Sanji glances up, he can hear the woman calling for her guards and from the seriously scared look on Usopp's face, this isn't a good thing.
"They have guns and stuff so we really need to get him out of here!" Usopp squeaks and he drops down from the tree.
Between the two of them they manage to cajole Zoro into getting up and stumbling in the right direction towards the hole in the fence for Zoro to escape through. Sanji can see the guards rounding the corner and at the speed Zoro's stumbling away and the speed that they're running they're definitely going to catch him.
Sanji pauses, there are some medium sized rocks lining the edge of the gravel pathway, if he could just kick one at them they'd trip and Zoro would have time to get away. Can he move something that big? He's been able to support Zoro's weight leaning on him lately but that's Zoro so maybe he's more affected by stuff like that. The heaviest thing he's been able to move so far that isn't Zoro was that cupboard door.
The guards were gaining. Goddamnit he didn't have time for self doubt here!
He scowls down at the stone. He needs to remember what it felt like to be solid, what it felt like kicking things in his kickboxing lessons, he needs to keep in mind that if he doesn't do this Zoro could really get hurt. Or worse. He aims, pulls his leg back and kicks. The rock skitters across the ground right into the path of the two guards tripping one right up and making him drag the other down with him in his reflex to catch himself.
Sanji grins triumphantly and dashes off after Zoro. He phases through the hedge and fence to find Zoro shambling down the street, pressing a hand to his temple. He looks like an honest to god Zombie with all that blood trickling down from his head wound on to his face and with the dirt smeared on his clothes from his escape.
"Let's get you home, moron." Sanji smiles and follows Zoro down the road. He stops at the corner to light a cigarette and rolls his eyes, a few seconds later Zoro passes him by again, this time heading the right way.
When they get back Zoro throws his coat onto the floor, kicks the front door shut and locks himself in the bathroom. Sanji gives him a few minutes of privacy and smirks to himself that Zoro felt the need to lock the door when only Sanji has the capacity to even move the door handle and both of them can phase through the wall effortlessly anyway. He glances over at Usopp who's floating morosely by the window, he doesn't seem like he's going to be a problem, it's probably okay to leave him alone for a moment.
"Can I come in?" He asks through the wood of the door.
"You damn well know you can, there's not much I can do to stop you." Zoro's gruff voice answers back. Sanji bristles but decides to keep his cool a little longer.
"May I come in?" He rephrases. All he gets in response to that though is a grunt so with a roll of his eyes and a brief mutter of 'why do I even bother?' Sanji slides through the door.
Zoro's sitting on the edge of the tub holding a bloody washcloth to his head. He doesn't look too pale and head wounds tend to look worse than they are.
"Let me see." He orders, waving away Zoro's hand. Zoro grumbles and pulls the bloodied cloth away. It's a small cut, about an inch long and there's a nasty looking bruise forming around it too. Blood oozes thickly out of the cut now that Zoro's pulled the cloth away.
"That'll bleed for a while. You're probably just sucking it out with that absorbent cloth though. You're better off just disinfecting it and putting a bandage on." Sanji suggests, kneeling at Zoro's feet.
Zoro gets the relevant medical supplies. Sanji is pleased that Zoro at least has the forethought to own them but is a little worried that they look fairly well used and replaced, why does Zoro need them often enough to warrant that? Zoro gingerly dabs at the cut, wincing every time it touches his skin. Sanji rolls his eyes and presses Zoro's hand against the cut properly, Zoro hisses and swears at the sensation.
"Don't be a baby." Sanji teases, leaning close into Zoro to agitate him. Zoro pauses and seems to study every part of Sanji's face for a second, once again Sanji feels like he's missing out on something intrinsically human but the moment passes and Zoro looks a little sad for some reason.
"Does this always happen?" Sanji asks curiously.
"Pretty much. Tell someone that you're speaking on behalf of someone that they love and they get angry or scared. Being clocked with a phone is new though. Better than being shot at though. I'm not sure if it's better or worse than being punched." Zoro shrugs sadly.
"Zoro…" he breathes sadly. He doesn't deserve that.
"It's not like I even ever ask for money for doing this, not that I would, it's not right. I didn't ask for this, I don't want to do this but I have to. I can't just let people like Usopp suffer, even if they didn't turn into those things it'd still be wrong. But it doesn't mean that I'm okay with people just…" Zoro trails off with a wince a touches the cut on his head. He sighs deeply and presses cotton to it before starting to wreathe a bandage around his head.
After Zoro cleans up they go back out into the main room where Zoro wearily sits down on the sofa. He looks over to Usopp by the window with an apologetic expression on his face.
"I'm sorry Usopp. If she doesn't go and find what ever it was that you bought her and believe me then I'll find another way of stopping Kuro, even if I have to get the police involved." Zoro apologises.
"Don't apologise Zoro! You were a true hero! If we have to go back again then we have to go back, it's not a problem. I believe in you!" Usopp declares with a big thumbs up and a cheesy grin at Zoro. Despite himself a smile quirks at the edge of Zoro's sad expression.
"Anyway, it should be your turn Sanji!" Usopp announces turning to look at Sanji.
"Me?" Sanji blinks startled, Zoro from his place on the sofa looks just as perplexed.
"Yeah! Like Zoro said, Kaya might go and change her mind on her own. And you're running out of time too, let's do something to help you now." Usopp smiles.
Sanji is lost for words, that's pretty kind of Usopp especially since he has less time left before changing than Sanji does but he's not going to stop the man he supposes. But what else really was there to do?
"It'd be nice to find a motive. I don't know who would want to kill Sanji, I mean, he's not that annoying." Zoro smirks at him.
"Shut it, shithead." Sanji snaps.
"People kill for the same reasons, jealousy – you get lovers doing that a lot, anger, killing for silence – like Usopp here, killing for something someone has, revenge… but none of those seem to fit Sanji here." Zoro sighs despondently.
"It'd be nice if I had a little more evidence to look at, I don't even have the show that Sanji was on before he died, they didn't air it because you died." Zoro adds sadly. There is only so much that a man on his computer can dig up without being some kind of super hacker, which Zoro isn't.
"Wait, wait, you were on TV before you died? What network?" Usopp enquires, suddenly enthusiastic.
"I don't know. The show was 'the national cooking showdown' if that helps." He shrugs, he can't remember details about which network it was, what relevance did that have to anything?
"Hey! I worked for that network! I used to do all of their set design, painting and stuff. Their offices are just downtown where I worked, they'd have the footage stored there digitally!" the crazy haired ghost enthuses.
"Do you think you could get me in there?" the green head asks perking up noticeably.
"Sure can!" Usopp grins.
Zoro makes and excited little noise and starts packing up his laptop into his bag. They have a small fight when Zoro tries to leave in his bloodstained clothes. Sanji points out that just because they were clean on this morning doesn't mean that they're clean now and it's socially unacceptable to go out in blood covered clothes, even if it is your own blood. Zoro grouses about that but eventually changes.
Dark is falling now as Zoro sneaks through the edges of the network's property followed and directed by two ghosts. Usopp guides him expertly through the place, knowing just where to duck out of view of the cameras and giving Zoro all of the codes to the doors as they meet them. They only come up against one physical lock but Sanji is able to unlock that one from the inside and let Zoro in.
Under Usopp's direction Zoro downloads the relevant files for all the cameras that were filming during the show as well as the final cut of the show that they were going to air too. They then manage to sneak back out of the building without anyone noticing that they were even there.
They're about halfway home when Usopp pauses and touches his chest, he looks unnerved.
"I feel strange." He says nervously, his hand over where his heart would be if he was still alive.
"It looks like she believed you after all, I guess whatever you left her convinced her." Zoro smiles gently at Usopp. The long nosed guy gasps and starts to glow brilliantly gold from the inside out, he holds his hands up before his astonished face as the light that he's radiating glows brighter and brighter until Usopp becomes indistinguishable from the glow around him. The light feels like sunshine on his skin and Sanji gets a sudden impression of blue skies and laughter. Suddenly the light winks out leaving them both alone on the dark street with Usopp gone.
"That's what happens when you move on?" Sanji gasps in awe. Zoro nods affirmatively with a small smile on his lips.
"What happens after that?" he asks curiously as he and the marimo turn to walk the rest of the way home together.
"No idea." Zoro shrugs and hefts his laptop bag that may well hold the secret that'll enable Sanji to find out just what happens next for himself.