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A scream broke through the air. Zoro was beyond furious, a rage, like he had never felt before, rose from within him. He clenched his fists, his focus zoning in on the monster who would dare to do this. Before he knew it, he had the monster's throat clenched in his fist.
"You…" he couldn't even finish the sentence. He was too enraged, remembering how this monster laughed, that sick gleam in his eyes. He squeezed harder until he heard a crack. Zoro dropped the lifeless body to the ground and turned to face the rest of them. The bastards who had dared to hold him back, who stopped him from preventing this. A moment later, they were all lying on the ground too.
He stood there for a few moments, panting and looking over all the corpses on the ground. He turned to face Sanji and a whole new rage passed over him. The cook had his head down, probably passed out from the pain, and Zoro could see why. His hands were already beginning to swell, and a bone jutted out from one hand with blood streaming from around it.
He closed his eyes to cut off the terrible image. He needed to calm down, to think, to get them out of this place. He opened his eyes and ripped a shirt from one of the men. He didn't know much about medical stuff – that was Chopper's job – but he knew the bone should not be sticking out like that. He approached the cook and feeling slightly nauseous, he pushed the bone back into Sanji's hand before wrapping both hands in the shirt to try to stop the broken bones from getting any worse.
Then he found the key on the one who did all this, and unlocked the cuffs around Sanji's wrists. Now he just had to wake him up, find his swords and get them out. He used another shirt to tie off as many of the bleeding wounds on Sanji's body as he could.
"Hey…" he shook Sanji's shoulder slightly.
"Come on cook, we have to get out of here," he frowned. Thankfully, Sanji woke up, but maybe not so thankfully. Zoro didn't want to see that pained, distraught look in his friend's eyes.
"Let's go," he said quietly, about to stand up.
"It hurts," Sanji's voice came out in almost a whine. Zoro froze, seeing the cook close to tears. He looked away. Sanji wasn't supposed to be like this. He wasn't supposed to be broken and almost crying, because Zoro didn't know what to do when his usually tough and unbreakable friend was like this.
"We have to go," he repeated quietly, grabbing Sanji's arm and pulling him to his feet. Sanji gasped in pain and almost fell back down, but Zoro tightened his grip on Sanji's arm to steady him. Aside from his broken hands, Zoro could also see that Sanji had lost quite a bit of blood from the previous torture. And all of this was causing the cook so much pain and Zoro didn't know what to do to fix it. The only person he knew who could fix it was Chopper.
"Come on," he gave the blonde a light tug and walked towards the room's exit. A little while after leaving the room, he managed to find a guard who he scared into leading him to his swords. He hooked the weapons back onto his belt where they belonged before drawing one. One would be enough to take care of anyone who got in his way.
After getting lost, more times than he would like to admit, Zoro finally got them to the exit without too much trouble from the marines guarding this place. For all that bravado the marines showed when they first arrived, these guys were pretty weak.
But after leaving the prison, a new problem arose. The base exited out into a mountainous place, and the village the Sunny was docked at was nowhere in sight. On top of that, Sanji's condition was getting worse. It seemed he could barely even walk from both pain and blood-loss, despite Zoro doing everything he could to stop the bleeding.
"Damn marines," he cursed. Putting their base somewhere so far away… he needed to get Sanji to Chopper immediately. He looked back at the cook to see him staring at his wrapped hands with a hopeless look in his eyes.
"Stop thinking about it, it won't make it better," Zoro stated, sounding a bit harsher than he had meant.
"How can I Zoro?" his voice cracked, and the tears that he'd been holding back this whole time started to fall. "It hurts, so much… And-"
"Chopper will fix them. You'll be fine," Zoro interrupted.
"No! How do you know that!? What if he can't fix my hands? Then what Zoro?" Sanji's voice tapered off to almost a whisper. Zoro opened his mouth to speak, then closed it. He didn't know what to say. It seemed nothing he said could make this better because Sanji was right. He usually never agreed with the cook but this time…
His hands had been broken very badly, and while Zoro wasn't a doctor, he didn't think they would be very easy to fix. Then he would never be able to cook properly again, his whole life… But they had to have hope, if nothing else. Because if anyone could fix this, it would be Chopper. They just needed to hurry back to the crew and then believe in the little reindeer.
"Just believe in him, Chopper can do it," he said, nodding. What Sanji, and Zoro too, really needed was hope. Even if the chance was slim that anything would work, they just had to have hope.
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