Until You Will Laugh Again
A fan fiction by Crystalbluefox
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Chapter 5
Donor of a Lost Child
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"One day, you will become what you hunt, Zoro Roronoa." Thin lips pulls up to a bloodied grin "That is your destiny, poor human."
The blade slides through the skin, the flesh breaks and lets the shining metal go even further in between the ribs to stab right through the milt. The body falls like a puppet getting its strings cut off. The blade slides out for then to stab right through its throat as well. It smiles up at him, two fangs shining among all the blood pooling up in its mouth, as the cold metal pulls back, almost cutting the head from the body. If it smiled even more, he would be able to even see the glimpse of the smaller sharp ones in the pool of blood in its mouth. Two shining red eyes gleams in joy, even goes to look amused at him.
He flicks the blood off the blade and dries the rest clean in his already blood splattered clothes, before sheathing her back into her respectful white saya.
He stands for a moment, leaning up against a wall to catch his breath; his left eye in a searing pain, his chest feels like it have been slashed open again, opening the old scar once again. Everything is hurting; every part of him feels like it's on fire. It's even hard to stand, his vision is blurring and darkness is creeping slowly into his vision.
He gulps, stands weakly on his legs and walks away while his body still will listen to him.
A deep rumbling laugh makes him stop, the sound creeps its way up along his spine, leaving goose bumps on his skin.
"You are still way too green, boy."
"You should be dead."
"I have been dead since long before you have been born, boy." He could almost see the bloodied smile growing. "But you will have many years before you. I know what you are." He looks over his shoulder to see the blurred image of the creature on the ground.
"I will never become like you things."
"Hah, hah, hah! You are too green to understand, young hunter…!"
— «»»««» —
It jolts hard in his body as he emerges from the deep slumber of sleep. His left eye feels like it's burning, it stings painfully at the memories of that time. Zephyr or Z as he lately started to call himself. Rumours says that he once had been a great vampire hunter himself, many many centuries ago. He had taught newbie's there one day should become great hunters as well, before the great man became what he once hunted. Some says it happened after a tragic episode; others didn't have the slightest idea of what ever happened to the man.
It stings even more. He raises his hand up to grasp the burning eye, but freezes as he feels another kind of pain exploding from his arm. He opens his good eye and stares at the arm there is wrapped in white bandages. He's not even sure why it hurts so much or why he feels so immensely tired. Looking up he sees a bag of blood hanging above his head, from it goes a tube all the way down to his hand.
And then he recognises the place around him.
The hospital.
He's dressed in white, bed sheets, walls, window, ceiling and even the door is white, only the cabinets with numbers on are a boring sad grey.
First, he's not even sure about how he has gotten himself in there. But then, as he unwraps the bandages from his right arm, stares shocked at the revealed wounds there dresses the ruined skin – bite marks, scratches as had he been attacked by a wild animal… it is then that he remembers.
Blood red eyes.
A maniac smile.
Mind as a hungry beast.
Sanji.
"Urgh!"
"Don't force yourself to move! The body is still in an immense pain, wounds like those tends to do that no matter how strong the narcotic are." a young very familiar voice tells him. Hands are on his revealed arm as a new bandage is wrapped around it. The owner of those hands knows not to argue with their patient about not ripping bandages off, because the said patient is too thick-headed to ever listen to reasonable reasons.
He moves his dry tongue, tries to form some words, but as he speaks the voice sounds raw and dehydrated. "Chop-Chopper?" The kid's face comes into vision immediately at the mention of his name.
"I'm right here, Zoro. Please lie back down again and get some rest." The young doctor urges as he leans over him. There is something wrong with the way he is speaking, something forced and not honest. Zoro suddenly remembers again what happened and sits up fully, groaning at the stiff and painfully movements, muscles protest loudly as he sits fully up in his bed, legs down, naked feet brushing lightly against the cold floor underneath. He is almost loosing his consciousness as the world around him suddenly blurs out in colours and-
"Whoa! Zoro! Sit down, sit down!" He's not even aware of that he even has stood up yet, not before the floor rushes up towards him. Chopper manages to push him back into bed before the floor gets too close. Zoro feels sick in his head, sick in his chest and most of all, sick in his heart. He wants to puke and Chopper's already there with the puke-bag before the body jolts, the stomach turns and finally empties its contents down into that one little bag. It's slimy, greenish, and stinks like hell. "Its okay, Zoro. Just get it all out." The doctor says as he rubs a hand on his back in circles, urging him to let it all out. Finally, as he can't get more out, he falls back into bed, immensely tired and exhausted by the action.
"Sanji." He breathes out, that one single name puts Chopper into utter silence and fear, Zoro can't see it, but he can sense it. "Where's… the curlicue?" he turns his head to the doctor, who looks like that breathing would be a crime "He was the one who brought me here… right?"
Chopper takes a shaky breath and nods silently. "Yeah, he did." He doesn't look him in the eyes, he can't. Zoro sits a bit more up and takes his trembling hand. He almost jolts back at the contact. Two grey eyes looks worried up at him; one dark almost black, the other more fainted, withered in its colours, half blind. Chopper knows the story.
"Chopper, what have you done?"
And Chopper, even though of being a manly teen at the age of nineteen, breaks down just then like a little child at only six. No matter what age he reaches, he can't stop still feeling like a lost little child.
"Of all the people…you Chopper?
Of all the people, you should know better…!"
— «»»««» —
The Sea who is sacred to life...
Watches us all from where it is…
The beginning of this world it knows…
The end the Sea fears…
So it shows us the path…
That we should follow among its shallow breath…
So she guides us far and wide…
Towards a perfect, great world…
Pain, tears, suffering,
she collects every and all…
Sleeping friends she calmly takes…
Big and gentle, she cuddles them all…
The waves crashes against the tall wall of stones, dust and earth, swallows the rest of the song as it ends and brings its tones back down into its deeps. The fine drizzle of seawater falls over him like a fresh cooling summer rain, but he doesn't care, he doesn't react upon it. He does not even acknowledge the tall man standing behind him as the man sings to the sea and watches it dance to his tones.
He doesn't care if someone is there or not.
He doesn't care if he's alone, because it was himself who brought this loneliness upon himself.
The tall man sighs, long coat flaps in the growing wind, there howls at him for not bringing a song to it as well. "It never bodes well when a man stands lonely on top of a cliff with a roaring sea underneath his feet." the man says, "Either he has lost his love, lost something very important... or he has done something very very stupid."
Sanji closes his eyes and swallows the hard knot in his throat. Smoke emits from his mouth as he sighs around the half-burned cigarette -his usual brand doesn't even taste him well anymore, but even though, he still clings to just that brand. It is only then he acknowledge the other's presence.
"Who are you, old man?" He asks around his cigarette, but does not turn around to look at him. The man looks up, buries his large hands in his pockets and looks upon the sky.
"Who am I? Who am I?"
"Oi, don't piss at me!" He pulls his cigarette out, blows out a long thick cloud of smoke as he glances over his shoulder. The man is tall, very tall. His skin is brown, his hair, there's hidden underneath a faded blue bandana, is a curled jet-black. As he sensed him, the man's presence felt old, wise and very strong. But now as he looks at him, the man's age is hard to definite. "You're a hunter?"
The man looks at him, the orange-tinted sunglasses reflects his reflection back, it's like looking into two mirrors, though the reflection looks more faded than it normally would. "A hunter?" the man asks, but shakes his head slowly "Once were, but are no longer. That's a long time ago."
"Then why are you here?" Sanji grits out between clenched teeth. Could he never be allowed to be a little alone in times like these? He sucks at his cigarette, hard, deep, feels the smoke spread into his lungs, but does not feel its calming nicotine take effect. He keeps on, until there is nothing left but the stub, then he releases the smoke, the nicotine-cloud is immediately taken by the fierce wind. The stub he throws out into the roaring waters beneath him.
"You are asking too many questions."
Sanji snorts, but there is no humour in it, he looks down so his face is mostly covered by his fluttering hair. One step. One step is all it takes. "Do I?" He turns around to face the stranger fully. The fragile ground groans underneath his feet, as he stands dangerously too close to its steep edge. His heart is beating fast, a heart there shouldn't even have been able to beat. A heart there shouldn't even have existed.
People with bad side effects.
People with benefits.
That's what Zoro used to call those who still clung to being what they once were.
Rather monsters, creatures, because a human would never do what he had done.
He forces his heart to stop beating, demands it to stop give him that false hope, that false trust. It slows down carefully. It hurts. It still slowly as he stops breathing, stops working. There is no other sounds but what he can hear around himself; the small spray of saltwater against the wet stones far down, the whistle in the grass underneath his feet, this stranger's beating heart, his pulse, it's weak, but he can hear it. It's weird to hear all of this among the silence inside of himself. It feels strange, not to feel anything but the wind pulling at his clothes, daring him to fall, daring him to stay. He almost panics.
Almost.
That strange feeling of stilling a heart and stop breathing is so easy, that breathing and make his heart beat again almost feels as a too big of an exertion, feels almost horrible because not breathing and hear all of this is close to a feeling as being intoxicated by one of the strongest narcotics.
Relaxing, dangerous relaxing and calm… and then he feel that humanity slowly slip out of his grasping fingers. He closes his eyes, the blood thumping behind them, slowly stilling, and he honestly can feel the colours of his eyes slowly change to that horrible ruby-red shade.
He slips a breathing air into his still lungs, his heart pounds one single life given time. That lying life given time. It feel safer to breathe, safer to feel the heart pounding inside of his chest in that unusual way.
Dunk… du-dunk…dunk….. du-dunk…
It's not a human's heart's normal beating, ever since that time, he realised, his heart had begun to pound in an unusual way, and slowly, way slower than a human's, almost like a dying man's, as did it not know if it should keep fighting…or just give up.
"I have never seen a vampire have so much regrets in his eyes or to cling so much to humanity while still wanting to give it up."
Sanji opens his eyes and he can tell through the man's tinted glasses that his eyes still has a red gleam in them, that those blue orbs has gotten a sickening colour, like the dying sun shining upon the cold lonely ocean. He smiles at the man, sadly, grins with no humour as he spreads his arms out and leans his neck just a little bit back.
Then the man opens his mouth, just as Sanji leans enough back until he has no more balance.
And falls.
'"How does it feel to die?" the man asked me as he watched me fall, hands deep in his pockets, expression hidden behind those round orange-tinted sunglasses. He wanted to know until the next time we would meet again, he said.
"How does it feel to die?" I thought by my self as I watched the stones rushing up towards me rather than the roaring waters -I could almost already feel the well known pain explode from my bones "It feels like hell...because you know that you can't die.".'
The impact is hard and merciless as he protects his face with his hands -it's a normal surviving mechanism.
First, he feels the bones in his hands break, feels its skeleton splinter into thousand of pieces. His hands -he thinks as it all feels like happening in slow-motion- he will not be able to use for many months, maybe never. As the bones in his arms crushes under the impact, splintering into smaller pieces and impales his veins, muscles and flesh; in his panicked mind he knows that he will never survive this. As his skull explodes against the hard cold stones, he remembers just that one important cursed thing.
He cannot die…!
Blackness…
Darkness…
….
A light.
Colours. Blurred colours. Red colours.
It's night. He's running among the highlighted stores, red lights shines the road up in this pleasure district... or maybe it's all that blood running down his face there makes it look so red. He skits around a corner, almost falls, his lungs stings, painfully, his heart hammering like a ships motor in full speed.
It hurts. Everything hurts.
And suddenly they're there again. Right in front of him, smirks at him, laughs at him, bloody red eyes gleaming dangerously, hungrily in the stores lights. Sanji stops, backs away, but does never make it far before they're all at him.
They love to play hide and seek. They love to play the cat after the mouse. They are like cats, demon cats, just as fast if not even faster. They love to "play with their food," they said, before tearing into it, "especially such a beauty as you," they said before they had chased after him.
Teethes impales his skin, everywhere, he can't even tell from where as pain erupts and his blood gets sucked out. "Game is over," they said before they drank him up, up until there barely were anymore left, until he barely were alive.
Panting, gasping for life, bloodied, shaking, trembling.
And then a hand. Not to grasp upon, but to bite in. He leans up to taste, hungers for the loss he have suffered, hunger to repay the favour, that one last revenge, he grabs it and pulls the creator closer to impale his neck instead and then –
Gone.
He wakes up with a sharp intake of breath, forgets for a moment everything around him, until pain explodes and reminds him of it.
Everything hurts.
Every bone in his body is crushed, smashed into unknowingness. He can't move a single muscle. There's no blood around him, the skin is tougher than that, it needs something very sharp before bleeding, like that sharp rock he feels has broken his back. Crap. So he did bleed. A wave crashes over him again, deletes any traces of blood there have been spilled. But the wounds are closed now, he feels, and the bones in his body are slowly healing.
The healings process is faster than last time, still painful as it cracks back into place through the stretching hours of the night, but sorrowful faster than the last time. His fingers in front of his face can already move, stiffly in a spasm, but they moves.
Sanji feels a cold tear running down his face, not seawater this time, but real tears and he cries.
He's still alive!
And he's hungry as hell.
— «»»««» —
It knocks on his door. He hasn't been home like for ages, but as he returned back to the old place he realised that he could enter the place without any difficulty. It was his own home after all. He walks up to the door, shakes his wet hair like a dog there had gotten a bath, the salt feels uncomfortable on his skin, in his hair and makes his clothes feel that more stiff.
But as he reaches his hand up to the third insisting knock, he halts.
Why would anyone come here?
Who knew that he was to be found here, after not having entered his own home for several months?
Leaning against the door he presses his ear against the wood, a bad habit, even though that he knows that he would be able to hear anything at the other side of that door, hell, he can even hear the neighbour underneath his neighbour talking, but it doesn't help either that these walls to begin with is almost as thin as paper. He stills his breathing as if he's afraid of missing a sound…or to be heard by whoever it is who is standing at the other side, though breathing has become an even harder task, he remembers it as the side effect of being hungry, really hungry. His hand at the door is paler than normal, his eyes hasn't even managed to get their dull hues but gotten directly to being red, that was not a good sign.
Someone halts with the next knocking, moves uneasy from one foot to another 'One person.' and nervously stammers a sound out, or rather, a name.
"S-Sanji?"
It's Chopper.
Surrounded by a weird smell of cold and warm almost synthetic blood, is the best he can describe it as.
Weird, but tempting.
Licking his lips, he hesitatingly opens the door, feels the smell of the blood rush up in his face, almost makes him double over, but not even two seconds after controlling his want, staring down at the teens watering brown eyes, he is instead attacked immediately by a crunching hug.
"Sanji!" Chopper wails aloud as he tightens his grip in a bone-crushing hug, quite literally. He didn't even remember the kid to be this strong. "Oh my god Sanji! I'm so sorry so sorry so sorry! M'so glad to see you and so so sorry!" Sanji's so much taken aback by the complete different but oh so familiar babbling action that he barely knows what to say or what to do next, other than, trying to get free from the still tightening grip.
"Chopper," he stammers out painfully and groans. "You're, breaking my back."
"Oh oh! Sorry!" The kid releases him immediately and steps back, for then to attack him again with an even stronger hug, tears streaming like waterfalls down his face. "But I'm so sorry!"
"God… I think that you just broke my spine now, literally." His back feels weak for a moment while the bone structure tries to find each other again. Weird. Chopper let's go off him, but Sanji grabs his shoulder just before he'll collapse. Fuck! When the hell did the kid get even stronger than that moss-head? Was it because his back hadn't fully healed from the fall from yesterday?
"WAH! SANJI! SORRY! I hurt you!"
"No… shit…!" He bites out through gritted teethes and feels himself being stabilised by the other, until, until he can feel his spine heal together again and there's nothing left but an uncomfortable feeling.
Really weird.
Not only did it heal faster than yesterday, maybe because his spine wasn't torn apart this time, just broken, though he's still a bit freaked out by the others strength.
As soon as Chopper can see that he can stand all by himself, he gives him that beaten puppy-look, before looking down "I-"
"What about getting inside first?" Sanji offers. Chopper hesitates only for a moment, before nodding and enters. He jumps slightly as Sanji closes the door behind him, but doesn't move along as the blond moves out into the kitchen to make something for him, as he always did whenever the little kid came by. Only to realise that everything in his refrigerator has gone bad. It definitely stinks like rotten sewers. Urgh, yuk!
Sanji steps back out to apologize for not being able to offer him something, bad habit, only to find the teen at the exact same place as he had left him in. Chopper isn't even looking up at him.
"Listen, Chopper… if you don't feel comfortable being here then-"
"No!" The teen looks straight up at him with a serious look "I have to tell you, and see you! And to apolo-"
"Look, no. Don't apologize. Anyone would have reacted the way you did when seeing a monster like," Sanji swallows hard "like me."
"No!" Chopper says stubbornly and steps angered up to him, tears still in his eyes. "No! Not friends! Friends never do such things!"
"Well friends do never bite their friends to death either!" He snaps back, his own tears are pressing on, his stomach curls in on itself as he remembers the much too horrible sight. Chopper moves uneasy now, eyes downcast as he nervously bites his lips.
"Actually… Zoro… Zoro's not dead."
Sanji blinks. "What? What do you mean about that Zoro isn't dead? I-"
"We managed to… safe him. Just barely."
"Zoro's… Zoro's not dead?" He says stunned. He can't believe it, it's almost too good to be true. Impossible.
Chopper nods and sighs. There is a slight tremor in his voice at he speaks next. "And… and he told me to tell you about…" The teen slowly slides his bag off his shoulders, before starting to undress himself. Sanji is speechless for a moment, before finally finding his voice as the kid starts pulling down his pants.
"Oi oi! What are you doing Chopper?" He says, surprised to even feel his chin redden at the action. "Hey!"
"He told me to tell you about…" Chopper repeats as he hangs his thumb on the edge of his underwear, hesitating with the last piece of garment. Sanji isn't sure but swears that there's hair growing on the kid's body now and a change of aura in the air.
Chopper looks up at him with a sharp gleaming look, as the sound of bones breaking, sockets popping, tendons stretching, muscles tearing, skeleton changing is to be heard, all in a sickening sound.
And then suddenly, it all happens too fast for even him to understand what just happened.
Suddenly where his younger friend once stood -in a sudden grow-, now stands a very tall animal in front of his eyes and roars its giant jaw in his face. Teethes larger than fists gleams in the lights and promises sudden death to those who's unfortunate enough to be at the reserving end. It closes its mouth and stares at him -he can even see his own reflection in its shining eyes.
A dog.
No.
A wolf.
A mother fucking giant wolf there's even taller than he is and barely can stand in the narrow hallway.
Sanji steps carefully back, not wanting to be bitten by those teeth by accident –Zoro has once told him what truly can hurt a vampire; a werewolf's bite. No wonders with such sharp large teethes.
"This." It says with a rumbling unfamiliar and yet so much like Chopper's voice and looks sadly at him with those beaten eyes. "Zoro told me to tell you about, this."
Sanji gulps and takes a shivering breath as he stares at the giant with large widen eyes.
Unbelievable.
"Oh, my fucking…god…!"
.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.
To be continued
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A.N.: We all carry our own heavy secrets, hidden deep within our self, awaiting to one day get released.
Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed it. Wish you all a wonderful week!
Love
Crystalbluefox