Home.
The word meant many things to Sanji. The Baratie sprang to mind, with its late nights, early mornings and warm kitchens, with the smell of the sea and the sunshine on the ocean. The Sunny came to mind as well, with rowdy nakama and quiet sunrises cooking before the crew woke.
This strange place however was not home. He steps back to put a little more space between himself and Zoro, his bare feet catch on the edge of a rug causing him to stumble backwards and knock his elbow painfully on the edge of the mantelpiece. Wado rattles in her stand at his clumsiness and he spots Zoro's eyes flick to her with a sharp edge of worry, but his eyes quickly turn back to Sanji.
"Sanji? Are you feeling okay?" Zoro asks quietly, approaching him slowly with his hands splayed out peacefully as one might approach a small frightened animal. Sanji would be angrier at Zoro treating him like that if he weren't so spooked about waking up somewhere strange in bed with Zoro.
"No I'm not! This isn't home, this isn't the Thousand Sunny! So what is this place?" He yells, backing up against the mantelpiece fully as Zoro's slow steps towards him are starting to put him ill at ease.
"This is home, our home. Don't you recognise it?" Zoro says slowly and leans to flick a lamp on, throwing the room into light. The place isn't big but nor is it small. In the light the furnishings appear warm and welcoming and the kitchen that Sanji can spy across the room gleams invitingly in the light. The place is nice enough but undeniably alien to him.
"No I don't." He answers firmly. The marimo's eyes narrow at that but he nods slowly as he accepts that fact, clearly Sanji's confusion is written plainly across his face.
"Well, tell me what you do remember. Do you remember who you are? What's the last thing that you remember?" Zoro prompts him.
"I know who I am. The last thing I remember was… we'd just finished dinner-" he starts but Zoro interrupts him, a habit of Zoro's that's always endlessly irked Sanji. It's as if nothing that he's saying could possibly be as important as what Zoro has to say in his lazy, dumb drawl. He suspects that half the time Zoro only interrupts him just to piss him off.
"Who's 'we'? You and I?" Zoro questions him and doesn't flinch when Sanji glowers at him.
"No, everyone." He answers impatiently, but Zoro's unsatisfied expression suggests that Zoro wants him to be more specific. He rolls his eyes and continues.
"Luffy, Nami, Robin, Franky, Usopp, Brook, Chopper and the two of us. Happy? We'd just finished dinner after visiting the town on that island… oh hell, what was its name? D-something… Djerba, that was it. I'd been given a golden lotus from that oracle-woman and told that if I ate it the thing would grant my wish. I took a bite and I guess I passed out. That's the last I remember before waking up here." He explains quickly. He frowns and frantically searches his memory but he can't remember any thing else and his body clock doesn't feel off in the way that it does when he's been unconscious for days.
"Sanji I- nothing like that happened. I've never heard of that place, that sounds more like a dream to me. You… tell me who you think you are." Zoro insists with a deep frown.
"I already told you, I know who I am!" He snaps feeling irritated that he's told Zoro all that he can remember from before waking up in this strange place but Zoro still won't explain what the hell is going on here.
"Oh, I'll just take your word for it shall I then? No, tell me what you know about yourself. Just like, the first ten facts about you that spring to mind or something." Zoro says slowly. Sanji wants to scream and tell Zoro to just be helpful already but he suspects that it may just be faster to humour Zoro and do what he says rather than arguing so he obliges.
"Ugh, fine. My name is Sanji, I'm a chef, I was raised by Zeff, I'm a smoker, I was born in North Blue, I'm a pirate, I'm nineteen years old-" He rattles off facts almost unthinkingly. He notices Zoro's face change from slightly relieved to extremely tense all of a sudden.
"Wait, what? Nineteen? You're not nineteen, and not a pirate either!" Zoro corrects him with a deepening frown.
"Yes I am, and so are you!" Sanji snaps irritably, whatever game Zoro is playing here it's not funny and it's wasting valuable time.
"No, no you're not. You and I are both twenty five. And what the hell is 'North Blue'?" Zoro retorts, his face looking a little more worried than it does angry.
"What's North Blue? Are you simple or something? Stop asking me dumbass questions and give me a real explanation of what's going on here and where the Thousand Sunny is!" Sanji yells, stepping forward and grabbing a handful of Zoro's shirt threateningly, he's had enough of this insanity and the way that Zoro's looking at him like he's lost his mind.
"I don't know what this 'thousand sunny' is." Zoro says with a frown directed down at the hand fisted in his shirt.
Sanji feels himself snap. There's only so much a sane man can take, he's woken up in a strange place in bed with Zoro of all people with no idea how he got there and Zoro acting like someone's removed his brain. And now the moron says that he doesn't know what the Thousand Sunny is? There's just so much one person can stand.
"It's our ship! It's the pirate ship that we've lived on for months! You can't miss it, it's massive with a lion's head on the front and a goddamn lawn and trees in the middle! We're pirates and it's our pirate ship, is that clear enough for you, you idiot? NOW WHAT'S GOING ON HERE?" He yells, shaking Zoro forcefully with his shirt.
Zoro knocks Sanji's hand off of him and instead tangles his hands suddenly in Sanji's hair, shoving him back against the mantelpiece with the motion.
"What the hell are you doing? Get off of me!" Sanji yelps trying to escape the insane marimo's hands.
"Checking to see if you hit your head, you've clearly got a concussion or something." Zoro answers shortly and continues exploring Sanji's skull with his fingers. Sanji squirms but Zoro holds him firm with his hands in his hair and cleverly presses himself close enough to Sanji that he can't raise his knee to kick the insane swordsman away. After a few moments of this unwarranted molestation of his skull Zoro brushes Sanji's hair away from his eye.
"Hey! Get off!" he squawks batting at Zoro's big hands, no one messes with his hair.
"Shut up, I just need to see both of them. Look at the lamp." Zoro orders and stares intently into his eyes. The thought washes over Sanji that Zoro is still trying to check him for a concussion. He looks over to the lamp behind Zoro and feels his eyes sting a little at the brightness, he looks back at Zoro and tries to blink the glowing dots out of his eyes.
Zoro frowns a little more and lets Sanji's fringe drop. He steps backwards swiftly and turns to walk off into the bedroom that he'd come from.
Despite his argument with Zoro and the marimo's irritating behaviour Sanji feels so lost in this strange room that he has no choice but to follow Zoro, who is the only familiar thing nearby. Zoro snags a pair of trousers off of the floor and grabs something from the pocket of it Sanji can't tell what it is from the distance that he's at. Zoro presses it a few times with his thumb before holding the thing to his ear, it's small and white, and a little bigger than his own palm, he sees a flash of a little silver symbol on the back before Zoro curses under his breath and jabs at the thing again.
"I'm taking you to see Chopper, he's not answering his phone so he's probably at the hospital." Zoro says distractedly. For a moment Sanji wants to ask if Chopper's okay, until it occurs to him that wherever they are Chopper probably would be helping out at the local hospital given a chance and thus far more likely to be acting as a doctor there than a patient.
Zoro swears a little more to himself under his breath and again picks pair of black jeans off of the floor and quickly shimmies into them, he then plucks a watch from the bedside table nearest him and snaps the catch on it shut efficiently. Zoro gives him a strange look for a moment before turning to leave the room again.
"Why're you just standing there? Get dressed." Zoro says jerking his thumb at the cupboard that takes up the whole wall floor to ceiling at the far wall by the foot of the bed. In a couple of quick strides Zoro disappears into the other room leaving Sanji alone and feeling adrift.
After a moment or two of standing there like an idiot a shudder of nicotine withdrawal hits him and he glances around the strange room for a smoke. A few seconds of searching later he finds a packet of cigarettes and a sliver lighter on the bedside table on the side of the bed that he woke up on, with familiar ease he lights the cigarette and inhales deeply. He turns the lighter over carefully in his hands and examines the pattern on it. It's not one of his own lighters but it's a nice one, there's a shark delicately engraved into the side and the mechanism is smooth, it was probably expensive.
Slowly he walks over to the wardrobe that Zoro pointed at earlier and opens it, his cigarette leaving a trail of smoke behind him. To the left in the wardrobe are pristine suits hanging up all together, looking smart. In the middle is a narrow row of shelves, only wide enough to hold a pair of shoes and on each shelf is a pair of shoes neatly together with the laces tucked inside. Near the top are smarter shoes, glistening with polish, further down there are more casual shoes and even a few pairs of trainers near the bottom. To the right of the wardrobe, which is by far the larger section is a rail of t-shirts, casual shirts, sweaters and jackets. He flicks through them warily and is pleasantly surprised to find that he likes everything that he sees. In the drawers below the shirts are underwear and socks all neatly tucked up together, he recognises a few pairs as being the same as ones that he owns. Desperate for a sense of familiarity he plucks a pair out to wear, whoever these belong to will surely forgive him for wearing them.
The thought slowly steals over him that these are his clothes. Zoro's words from earlier come back to him, home. He lives here? But it can't be. He doesn't know what the wish that the lotus gave him was but he sincerely doubts that it was this. He doesn't even know what this is. Feeling anxious he pulls off his pyjama top and shrugs on an orange t-shirt with white edging to it. It occurs to him that he doesn't know what the weather is like outside and what he should dress like so he walks over to the window and pulls the curtain aside.
It's bright out, not from the sun but from the multitude of lights dotted in the darkness. He squints at the horizon, he guesses that they're only an hour or two off of sunrise but it's still pretty dark out. He glances back down at the lights and marvels at the streets spread below him, he's never seen so many lights in one place, even Water 7 at night wasn't this lit up. He squeaks in something between surprise and delight to see these… things zooming about with some speed in the little roads below. For a moment wonder overpowers his anxiety and he stares, the things are boxy and have each got two lights on the front of them too, he's never seen anything quite like them before. Zoro appears at his side, fully dressed and with a thick looking green leather jacket on that looks stiff in the joints.
"What're you looking at?" Zoro asks with a frown as he peers through the same window as Sanji.
"I was looking to see what the weather was like, but what are those?" He asks somewhat excitedly as he points to the things zooming through the roads with their lights on. Zoro looks from where he's pointing and back to him with an even more worried look on his face.
"Tell me you're not asking me what a car is." Zoro says flatly, his face something between horrified and disbelieving.
"A ka-aar?" He tries rolling the word around in his mouth, Zoro said it a little like cart without a t.
Zoro's eye twitches and Sanji swears that he hears something almost like a whine of fear slip from Zoro's throat. The man shakes himself and his ever present scowl returns.
"Put this on and finish getting dressed. It's cold out." Zoro says tightly and shoves a thick leather jacket into his hands before disappearing into the other room again.
Sanji glowers at the door, as usual Zoro is being irritating and unhelpful. He looks down to the jacket in his hands that Zoro unceremoniously left him with, it's black with reflective silver edging running across it. It feels stiff and heavy in his hands and it takes a few moments before he realises that the jacket is somehow armoured. He feels it a little more curiously and finds that it has a thick plate in the back of it and another curved one in each elbow. Figuring that he has nothing better to do than what Zoro has told him to do he pulls on a blue hooded sweatshirt identical to the one that he wore after Thriller Bark, some things are still the same evidently. He slides himself into some trousers that fit him perfectly and with a little difficulty he shrugs on the jacket and finds it unusual to feel so restricted. In the right pocket of the jacket are two bulky gloves that are armoured and padded as well, ever careful of his hands he puts them on. He has no idea what Zoro is preparing him for but it is always better to be over-prepared for a situation than under-prepared.
Fully dressed he walks back out into the mains rooms and finds Zoro sitting on one of the chairs zipping up a clunky looking boot on his foot. Next to the marimo's feet are another pair of boots that Sanji guesses are for him. Sanji walks over to him and takes the boots silently. He's about to sit on the sofa to put them on but sees that there are two helmets already taking up the space, one is a shiny lime green and the other is silver and blue. Unsurprisingly Zoro grabs the green one and puts it on, leaving space on the sofa for Sanji to sit down and put his boots on. He feels a little numb and out of his depth as he follows Zoro's example and puts the remaining helmet on. He's no idea what's going on or why they're dressed so strangely and the fact that Zoro's telling him squat makes him more than a little nervous. How exactly is Zoro planning on getting them to the hospital, by firing them out of a goddamn cannon or something?
"Come on, even I know the way to the hospital from here." Zoro announces and opens the front door and holds it open. As Sanji passes him he swears that he can hear Zoro mutter something like 'at least I hope I can' under his breath. He follows Zoro into a lift and tries to keep calm, Chopper will surely have some answers unlike the stupid marimo. He tries not to panic at the strangeness of the situation, Zoro isn't helping by walking around without his swords like he's not missing a damn thing. It was just forgivable when Zoro was in his pyjamas after just waking up but now Zoro is fully dressed and leaving his 'home' with Wado laying forgotten on the mantelpiece and Sanji having seen neither hide nor hair of the white swords two fellows. Moments later the lift doors ding open and Zoro exits the lift leaving Sanji little choice yet again but to follow him. They're in a large room, if you can call it that, which is filled with lots of the "car" things that Sanji had spotted from the window earlier, they're big and boxy and clearly designed for carrying people. These ones are all empty and their bright lights are off.
Zoro comes to a stop in front of a bright green… thing. It looks a bit like a bicycle, in the same way that a house cat looks a bit like a lion. It reminds him a little of Smoker's bike, but the man powered that with his devil's fruit power, something which Zoro distinctly lacks. Nevertheless Zoro swings his leg over the side, kicks at something on the side of the bike with his heel and twists something up the front that makes the bike roar to life. To his shame he jumps a little at the sudden noise. He manages to compose himself by the time Zoro looks over his shoulder at him expectantly.
"Well? Get on." Zoro says as if it's the most obvious thing in the world. Sanji bristles but refuses to demand exactly where Zoro wants him to get on. The bike isn't the biggest thing in the world, but he thinks that the black bit near the back of the bike might be a seat of some kind, and not too far below it is a metal bit sticking out where he could presumably put his foot. Refusing to let Zoro make him look dumb he puts his foot on the identified peg and his hands on Zoro's shoulder's for balance and swings his other leg over the bike. To his pleasant surprise there's another peg on the other side and he can sit relatively comfortably on what indeed is a seat, he's not worried about his balance which is flawless as always.
He's just trying to figure out where to put his hands when he hears Zoro's say something, he can't tell what as Zoro's voice is muffled from his helmet and Sanji's ears are muffled by his own. He's about to demand that Zoro repeat himself when the bike lurches forward suddenly and his body bypasses his brain in an act of self preservation and flings his arms around Zoro's torso to avoid being thrown off of the back of the damn two wheeled thing.
Zoro picks up speed alarmingly fast, leaving Sanji holding onto Zoro for dear life. He thinks that they must be going at least as fast as that puffing tom train was, or at least it feels like it. He's never been so exposed on something so small going so fast, if they were to hit anything they'd surely die. It occurs to him that this might be why Zoro gave him such a sturdy jacket, gloves and helmet. He yells in terror as Zoro zooms out onto a road proper, only just missing one of the giant boxy four wheeled things. The bike darts around the large vehicle, the driver of which is profusely swearing at Zoro. In what seems like some convoluted suicide attempt Zoro runs the bike through the tiniest of gaps in between those large fast travelling people carrying boxes and… well, anything else really. He rides like a crazy person just missing lamp posts, other vehicles, pedestrians and god knows what else. Sanji might be a bit of a proud man but even he'll admit (although not in front of any ladies) that he shut his eyes and held onto Zoro like a dying man to a life raft and waited to either die or for Zoro to stop the terrible machine.
Eventually, thanks to some miracle, Zoro stops the bike with them both unharmed. After a moment Sanji releases Zoro from his vice like grip and opens his eyes, and very carefully climbs off of the evil green machine of doom as Zoro turns a key in the front of it and stops the rumbling from within the machine. Sanji yanks his helmet off and gasps lungfuls of blessed air, he'd felt a little claustrophobic in that helmet and the near death experience didn't help. Zoro kicks a stand free from the bike and leans it carefully on it, Sanji waits patiently for Zoro to get off of the bike before kicking him in the back.
"You crazy bastard!" He yells and kicks Zoro again.
"Hey!" Zoro shouts back, trying to catch Sanji's leg in an attempt to avoid another kick.
"You nearly killed us!" He accuses forcefully and kicks Zoro in the arm.
"Stop it, we're fine. I know what I'm doing." The swordsman insists, pulling his helmet off and taking Sanji's from him. Zoro runs a chain through the two helmets and the front wheel of the bike and locks it before standing up and levelling Sanji a wary look, as if cautious against further violence against his person.
"Come on." Zoro says and places a hand on the small of Sanji's back and steers him towards the inside of the hospital, irritably Sanji lets him.
Shortly they come to a reception desk and sitting in the seat there is a small petite blonde woman. Her name, Victoria Cindry, comes to his mind from the tangled mess in his head that is Thriller Bark, he ended up with a jumble of memories from that time, both from himself and from the experiences and memories that his zombie had. By the time he starts paying attention again he can already see that she and Zoro are arguing uselessly over calling Chopper, neither prepared to give in.
"Look, just call him already!" Zoro snaps.
"I have no reason to, you're not hospital staff. If you have an emergency go to the emergency room and stop bothering me." She retorts with a glare.
"Who do you call if you've got something stuck up your ass then?" Zoro growls, his fingers tensed so hard on the desk separating the two of them that his knuckles are going white.
"Oh, it's that sort of emergency is it? That'd be a proctologist." Cindry answers with a devious smile.
"Oh good, then you'll know who to call if you don't call Chopper for me, cause if you don't I'm gonna ram my foot so far up your ass that-" Zoro snarls before Sanji cuts him off with a knee to the kidneys. He's not going to let Zoro talk to a pretty lady like that, even if she is refusing to call Chopper for them through the hospital intercom for no good reason.
"Ahahah, please excuse my idiot friend here, he doesn't know how to talk to pretty ladies such as yourself." He smiles charmingly at Cindry as he shoves Zoro behind him with the flat of his hand, she eyes him suspiciously but doesn't say anything. Zoro, for his part stays put and silent thankfully, so Sanji continues.
"I have to be honest with you here, he hit his head this morning and he's not been quite right since, all angry temper and that. And Chopper's an old friend of ours and for some reason the only way I could convince him to see a doctor was to come and see him, you see? So I'd really appreciate it if you'd call him for me, I'd hate for him to lose his temper again in his state and mess up your nice waiting area." Sanji lies smoothly.
Cindry looks at him suspiciously and then looks over Sanji's shoulder to Zoro, Sanji subtly follows her look through his hair and sees Zoro pull a crazy enough face to corroborate his story. Apparently convinced she shoos them away with a wave of her hand and picks up the phone and hears her explaining the situation quietly down the phone.
Zoro stops and leans against the wall, waiting for Chopper to get down to them. He eyes Sanji with dark eyes and he smirks in a motion so familiar that Sanji knows it by heart.
"You're a shockingly good liar sometimes, you'd make Usopp blush." Zoro snorts quietly so that Cindry doesn't overhear them.
"Shut up asshole, you can't talk to ladies like that." Sanji retorts, jabbing Zoro in the chest.
"And lying to them is better?" Zoro grins teasingly. Sanji feels his face flush at that because he doesn't usually approve of lying to ladies either but sometimes it's necessary. He absently kicks Zoro in the ankle but the man's boot stops any real damage from occurring.
"Sanji, Zoro, are you two okay? What's the big emergency?" Chopper's voice says from behind Sanji. Sanji turns but can't spot the little reindeer anywhere. He frowns, feeling confused, he's sure that he heard Chopper's voice.
"He's lost his memory… sort of." Zoro explains with a sigh. Sanji turns again, trying to see where Chopper is if Zoro is talking to him. But there's no reindeer anywhere at all! There's a skinny kid in a lab coat standing near them, but no Chopper.
"He looks disorientated." The skinny kid says in Chopper's voice.
He gawps, that skinny kid just spoke in Chopper's voice, straight out of his entirely human and not at all reindeer mouth! The kid is skinny, perhaps sixteen at the most, with out of control tufty brown hair, but most noticeably of all, he's not a reindeer.
"Sanji, are you feeling okay? Talk to me." The kid says again, and there's no mistaking it, that's Chopper's voice. And those big brown concerned eyes have more than a passing resemblance to Chopper's own ones. Sanji recoils in horror, this seriously can't be right. How is it possible for this day to get stranger. He backs into Zoro who gently places a steadying hand at the small of his back, and ordinarily Sanji would kick the marimo for such a gesture, as if he were a weak child or something, but right now he's feeling unnerved enough to let him.
"Ch-chopper?" he asks shakily, staring at the worried looking kid.
"Yes Sanji? Tell me what the problem is." The kid, apparently Chopper, says. Sanji feels his brain rebel at the whole idea and at this whole terrible day. First he gets given a magic lotus, eats it and wakes up in a strange place with no clue how he got there, in bed with Zoro who seems to think nothing is amiss aside from him, he nearly got killed on the back of that machine with Zoro and now some kid is talking to him with Chopper's voice as if he were the little doctor!
"You- you're not a reindeer! Who are you?" He yells pointing an accusing finger at the kid who he refuses to believe is really Chopper. He feels the hand on the small of his back shift as Zoro's fingers twitch tensely and hears the despairing groan slide from the other man's lips.
"This is the problem. It's memory loss, sort of. I need you to fix him." Zoro sighs.