Sanji isn't sure how he got to the infirmary in the first place, he doesn't remember walking there or passing out, but right now he doesn't care. He doesn't care because Zoro is gone.
He runs in cycles from crying so hard that he thinks that he might be sick to lying there numbly and drifting into fitful sleep. He's in the infirmary more for the sake of privacy than because there's anything medically wrong with him. It's not like there's anything Chopper can do anyway, the kid can set a broken bone but not a broken heart.
His nakama give him space. Most of them have lost someone in their time too, so they know that there's nothing that you can say to make it better. Nami comes to visit him with food and so does Robin, he tries to make himself feel awful about their having to cook but he can't seem to make himself fit any more terrible feelings into himself so he accepts their food numbly. At least none of them try to convince him that the world he just lost or the people in it weren't real, they all know the truth about that.
The reactions of the ladies differ wildly. Nami is angry on his behalf and distraught for him, she keeps apologizing but neither of them seem to know what for. Robin on the other hand is quiet, she doesn't demand conversation from him and unlike Nami she doesn't feel the need to insist that he "talk it out". Instead she sits quietly and strokes his hair, she asks him once if he wants her to kill the oracle for him but Sanji knows that it won't make things better.
Chopper tells him that if he wants to talk he's there for him but Sanji can't bear to burden someone so young with his pain when it won't help.
After two days he decides that enough is enough and he needs to go back to doing his job, if just because he should and it might keep his mind off of things. He wouldn't mind so much if it wasn't for the fact that he's so unstable. He can be looking through the fridge for ingredients and suddenly lose it because he remembers eating strawberry pancakes with Zoro, which he can't ever do again because Zoro is DEAD. Then he just crumples into sobs and feels awful all over again.
Zoro comes to speak to him for the first time a few hours after Sanji laid eyes on him since it happened. Much to his shame he fell apart and sobbed the first time he saw Zoro, it was just too raw. When Zoro slides awkwardly into the kitchen though Sanji glances over his shoulder and just manages to hold it together. There's that awful feeling of rightness and wrongness when he sees him, part of him just recognises him as Zoro and is desperate to run to him but the other half knows full well that whilst Zoro is nakama he's not the Zoro that Sanji is looking for.
"Yeah?" He asks in a flat voice since Zoro hasn't made a sound.
"I… wanted to talk to you." Zoro mumbles and pauses. He's clearly trying to think of how to phrase what he's saying, his hand is nervously tangling in the short green hair at the back of his head, his fingers tensing and loosening through it.
Sanji's chest clenches painfully, his Zoro did that, his Zoro showed that kind of nervousness and stress. He remembers thinking that the Zoro that he'd known from here never showed that kind of emotion. Stupidly he almost thinks that he's looking at the Zoro that he loves and it hurts all over again. Zoro must read some of that emotion in his face because he startles and starts talking again.
"Do… do you want me to go away? I mean, do you want me to stay away from you?" He asks suddenly, his words sounding awkward and rushed.
The question surprises Sanji, it's so out of the blue that he doesn't even know what to say to that. Zoro glances down at the swords on his hip and slowly pulls the white one and its sheath free and lays it on the counter before Sanji. Sanji looks down at it without understanding.
"The girl who this belonged to died." Zoro states tapping it with his finger.
"I know that." Sanji answers because although Zoro's never told him directly they all know each other's stories. It's not that they've not told each other because they don't want the others to know, just that it can be too painful to tell again and again so they tell each other's.
"Do you remember Smoker?" Zoro questions apparently randomly.
"What the hell does that have to do with anything?" Sanji frowns unable to keep up with the conversation. What on earth does him remembering Smoker have to do with him or with Zoro's sword?
"The girl- the woman that was with him. You remember her?" Zoro presses.
"Yeah, I can't remember her name. Taka-something. You were really weird then." He replies reluctantly going along with this weird conversation.
"I guess I was. She looks just like Kuina would have looked. She looks just like I'd always imagined her looking if she hadn't died and had got the chance to grow up. I know because I dream about her regularly, what it would be like if she hadn't died, or if our places had been changed…" Zoro trails off with a note of pain in his voice. The swordsman's hand is resting gently on the hilt of his precious sword, his index finger absently tracing the path of the wrap on the hilt.
"I couldn't handle it. Seeing her looking so like Kuina. That kind of pain never really goes, it'll scar but never really heal and seeing Tashigi just opened it up all over again." Zoro explains with a sigh.
Zoro glances up at him with dark eyes and Sanji realises his meaning. Zoro thinks that he is going to cause him the same pain and is offering to stay the hell away from Sanji to protect him. Stupid idiot. Zoro seems to take his stunned silence as an affirmation and nods to himself, he goes to pick up his sword and leave when Sanji catches him. He tightens his grip on Zoro's wrist to hold him there.
"Don't go." He breathes shakily.
Sanji looks up at Zoro who eyes him with a mixture of cautiousness and curiosity.
"I can't lose both of you." He adds quietly.
"Well, okay." Zoro agrees. A part of Sanji notes that Zoro looks pleased to hear that outcome. Sanji releases Zoro's warm skin and Zoro tucks his precious white sword back in its place.
"If there's anything I can do to help." The man offers with a vague gesture to the kitchen and Sanji.
"I doubt that there's anything that anyone can do, I feel like shit all the time." Sanji mutters rubbing the heel of his palm in his eye, his eyes always feel itchy from crying lately. Zoro's laugh startles him into staring at the marimo.
"You're sort of supposed to feel like that, idiot. It's part of the deal." Zoro says with a grin tugging at the corner of his mouth.
"Well I didn't agree to that deal, you unsympathetic bastard." Sanji snaps angrily. How can Zoro be so blunt at a time like this?
"My sympathy 'aint gonna help shit." Zoro shrugs at him.
"Get outta my kitchen you sociopath!" Sanji snarls, rounding the kitchen counter to kick the shit out of Zoro. Zoro smartly backs up and pauses at the open door.
"Do you feel like shit now?" Zoro questions with a sly little grin that looks like it'd be more at home on Robin's face than his.
Sanji pauses at that. How does he feel? He feels angry and irritated with a little bit of wounded pride for good measure. But… well, okay now he feels like shit again for realising that he forgot about his Zoro for a few moments. But equally for a moment he didn't feel like shit.
"Anything I can do." Zoro repeats and disappears before Sanji can either burst into tears or murder him. Sanji's torn on which to do so for a while at least he does neither.
Zoro's jaw is set in a tense furious line, the muscles of his back stand in tense bunches underneath his t-shirt as the man sits with his back to him.
"Zoro?" Sanji calls and comes closer to Zoro. The man's shoulders tense even further.
"Get away from me." Zoro growls in a voice filled with venom.
"Zoro what's wrong?" Sanji asks ignoring the command from his nakama. His hand lands gently on Zoro's shoulder.
Zoro turns suddenly then, smacking Sanji's arm away with his own. His face is etched in anger and his eyes are bloodshot and red. As his mouth twists into a snarl a section of the skin on his high bronze cheekbones peels off and flutters away into a petal leaving behind a bleeding wound. Sanji recoils in horror.
"What's the matter Sanji? Too hard for you to see the real consequences?" Zoro growls threateningly. Dark red blood seeps down his cheek and another petal shaped flake of skin peels away leaving another bloody hole.
"You think being obliterated like that didn't hurt?" Zoro demands, shoving Sanji in the chest.
"I didn't- I didn't ask for that! I never chose that, you shoved me out!" Her retorts defensively in fear. Zoro looks like he could kill right now and Sanji isn't entirely sure that he doesn't deserve it.
"You chose it! You wished me into existence just to fulfil your sick desires because you're a coward and a pervert!" the swordsman curses him and in a smooth movement pulls free that white sword.
"I'll kill you for what you did to me!" Zoro declares and swings the blade high.
Sanji's scream echoes loudly through the room as he lands sharply on the floor. He sees Zoro crouched by his side and he screams in fear for a second before he realises that it had just been a nightmare and this Zoro wasn't trying to kill him at all, no matter how much he deserved it.
"Zoro, you're making it worse. Let him calm down." Franky's deep voice commands from somewhere out of sight and with a regretful face Zoro disappears and is replaced by Luffy's worried looking face so close as to almost be out of focus.
He assures everyone with a shaky voice that he's fine and climbs back in his hammock to prove it, there's no reason to worry the others or keep anyone else awake. Usopp reaches for the lamp light above his hammock but pauses and looks down at Sanji in his low slung hammock. His long nose resting on the edge of the hammock would look almost comical if Sanji was in the mood for laughing.
"I had bad dreams too after my mother died. They go away, eventually." Usopp says quietly to him and clicks the light off. Sanji hears Franky mutter Tom's name and the creak of Zoro's hand tightening on the wraps of Wado's hilt. A sad noise comes from both Brook and Chopper's direction and above him Sanji can hear Luffy patting his hat. Sanji doesn't go back to sleep after that but he can hear that it takes everyone else an awful long time to drop back to sleep as well, clearly his pain is reminding everyone else of their own.
Over the next week Sanji stops crying, crying makes him feel worse and not better. When he's been upset in the past crying felt like opening the stopper of a barrel of pain and letting some of it drain out, cry enough or feel sad for long enough and it would dry up, but with this it feels endless. The others have as much said that it's never going to completely go away so what's the point in crying? It won't bring Zoro back, it won't undo what was done, all it does is hurt him. So he focuses on doing his job and skirts over moments that feel precarious and might have made him cry before. If his mind settles on Zoro he forces himself to think of something else, anything else, until he feels stable again.
It starts working because before long he can sleep properly again, the dreams of Zoro falling apart or trying to kill him stop about halfway through the first week and after that Sanji sleeps soundly. In fact he sleeps a lot, he hits the hay earlier than he did before and wakes up late, if he can he manages to nap in the middle of the day. He doesn't feel so sad anymore, he feels more numb or hollow, but mostly he feels tired. He finds himself lethargic as if he had slept for two hours rather that for ten hours straight.
Still, he manages to do his job, he cooks three square meals a day for the crew. Okay, they might not be the best thing that he's ever cooked, to his pallet they always taste off somehow, as if something is missing. He tries playing with the spices and herbs but it always tastes slightly flat, nothing seems to change it so he stops caring so much about that.
Zoro tries to start a fight with him a few times, it's sort of a sweet gesture but Sanji just can't work up the energy anymore. Two weeks after the… incident Chopper brings the subject up at dinner time.
"Sanji, you've been sleeping a lot lately. Do you feel tired?" Chopper asks him in a slightly stiff voice.
"Hm, yeah. I feel like I've not slept at all." Sanji says stifling a yawn behind his hand and going back to stirring his frankly lacklustre soup until it cools.
"But you went to bed pretty early last night, and you slept in pretty late too. About eleven hours in total in fact, that's almost half a day asleep." The little doctor continues. Sanji shrugs because what can he say? He doesn't know why he's so tired lately.
"And I've noticed that the nightmares seem to have stopped." Chopper continues in his medical voice.
"Meh, I'm not dreaming at all." Sanji comments feeling bored. His soup is cool enough now so he starts on it, not that he feels especially hungry though.
"Really." The reindeer remarks.
Sanji looks up at that and notices almost everyone at the table either deliberately not looking at him or looking at him surreptitiously, except for Zoro who is as subtle as a falling piano and is outright eyeballing him.
"What's this about?" Sanji asks frowning at Chopper who is looking at him with a worried and thoughtful look on his face.
"I'm just trying to confirm something. Tell me, you've seemed a bit off with your cooking lately. Are you enjoying it? Do you still feel hungry?" Chopper presses looking at him with serious eyes.
"No, I don't feel especially hungry but I'm not sick or anything Chopper. I'm perfectly healthy honest." He smiles weakly at Chopper. The doctor's concern is sweet, but unwarranted.
"And this? I could cook better." Zoro challenges, poking the edge of his own soup bowl a little too hard and sloshing some out of the side. Sanji would have half a mind to smash the marimo's face in it for that but he can't be bothered, and it's not as if his violence has instilled any manners in the man thus far is it?
"I'm just a little off okay? I don't know why, I've tried playing with the spices but it doesn't seem to work. So…" He trails off with a shrug.
"So what?" Zoro challenges with a glare, "There's no point? You don't care?"
"It's not that, it's just… I don't know, I can't fix it right now. What's your problem anyway?" Sanji shoots back irritated. Why the hell is Zoro getting on his back about the goddamn food? It's still better than he'd get if he cooked for himself or if anyone else cooked!
"Sanji, the things that you've described, the things that we've noticed… lack of appetite, sleeping too much, not being able to focus on things or enjoying things you used to; these are all symptoms of depression." Chopper says before Zoro can say anything else to irritate Sanji.
Sanji levels the little reindeer with an unimpressed look but the doctor doesn't back down or take back what he said. The kid can be brave when he believes that he's looking after the health of his nakama.
"Of course I feel depressed, what would you expect after- after what happened?" Sanji says quickly skirting around talking about what happened. Whenever he does it's as if he can feel something bubbling up in his mind, but if he avoids the topic mentally he doesn't end up cracking or having his emotions boil over.
"Depression isn't the same as feeling sad Sanji, feeling sad would be healthy here! You're just repressing what happened and the rest of your mental health is suffering for it!" Chopper exclaims angrily, standing up suddenly and leaving over his little hooves on the dining table.
"We're just concerned Sanji." Nami adds softly. Sanji realises that everyone at the table is looking at him, they must have planned to bring this up. Distantly he realises that he should feel outraged but the most he can seem to feel is slightly irked.
"I'm fine." He sighs wearily waving them away with his hand.
"You're not FINE! You don't feel anything anymore, the old Sanji would have kicked my head off by now for insulting you!" Zoro yells, slamming his fists on the table and making all of the cutlery jump and clatter.
"You're walking around like you're dead or something!" the swordsman accuses vehemently.
"Hey, that's not fair." Brook protests from the other end of the table in his sing-song voice.
"See! The dead man at the table is more alive than you; he's got more feeling than you!" Zoro shouts pointing at the musician.
"You're being ridiculous. How I deal with this is my business." Sanji glares up at Zoro who is standing angrily at the table with his clenched fists pressed into the tabletop.
"You're being a coward and letting this rot inside you will just kill you!" Zoro snaps pointing at him accusingly.
"I'm not a coward." He retorts narrowing his eyes at Zoro.
"You ARE. You're choosing to feel nothing because it's easier than the pain, that's cowardice." The other man declares with quiet menace in his voice.
Zoro looks away then, his eyes narrowing as he glares at the wall. Sanji thinks that he can read some emotion on his face, disgust perhaps?
"I don't even know what he saw in you." Zoro mutters.
He needn't have been so quiet because his words strike Sanji so much that Zoro might as well have cut them into his flesh with his swords. Suddenly Sanji finds that he can hear his blood pounding in his ears and it feels like his entire mind is boiling over now and he can't avoid it.
Flashes of memories sear themselves behind his eyes, his Zoro on their first oh-so-awkward first date, his Zoro smiling at him sleepily in bed in the morning, his Zoro passed out over his detective work. Zoro doesn't know what that man saw in him? He doesn't think he deserved the life that he so briefly had and treasured so deeply?
His foot swings through the space that just seconds ago was occupied by Zoro's head. The swordsman has darted back, his chair behind him falling over at the moment, Zoro's practiced at avoiding near-fatal kicks. Sanji is seeing red though, how dare Zoro say such a thing? The fucker wouldn't know love if it kicked him in the nuts, Zoro is calling him emotionless? He's the one who can't feel a thing for anyone!
He leaps the table and swings for Zoro again who by now has two swords out to block him. Zoro catches his kicks with the blades and shoves back, trying to push him off balance.
"What's the matter cook? Can't take feeling something for once?" Zoro goads him.
Sanji hears Nami and Chopper yelling at Zoro not to anger him, not to say such terrible things but Zoro clearly isn't listening and neither is Sanji really. Sanji hurls himself bodily at the green-haired man instead of kicking him. The unexpected move shoves Zoro back and out of the galley door.
Getting his bearings back Zoro leaps the balcony and lands on the lawn deck below so Sanji can't corner him and get too close as to be too far into his range.
"What's the matter cook? You said that you were in love with him but you don't feel a goddamn thing, he's dead and don't you care!" Zoro yells up at him.
Sanji hurls himself off of the balcony with every intent of murdering the man, nakama or not. He pulls his foot back as he lands but something inside him destabilises.
Zoroisdead.
He'sgone,forever.
Suddenly Sanji can't seem to get enough air into his lungs, he feels like he's drowning and choking at the same time. His vision blurs as his eyes fill, but his eyes are clear enough to see Zoro drop his swords carelessly into the ground and step forward just in time to catch him as Sanji nearly doubles up in grief.
He howls in pain into Zoro's shoulder. It's as if every moment of nothingness that he chose instead of the constant grief is piling itself into his brain all at once and it's excruciating. He heaves great wracking sobs into Zoro's shoulder as the man's large warm right hand slides down his back and rubs soothing circles there.
"You are still in there." Zoro breathes gratefully against his neck and strokes his left hand through Sanji's hair.
Sanji can't focus though, he's not sure if Zoro is making this better or worse. Part of him wants to crawl into Zoro's arms forever and let the man hold him until his pain goes completely but another part of him is just screaming that his Zoro, the one that loved him, is dead and this Zoro is just looking out for him out of honour.
"Hey, it's going to be okay. I promise." Zoro says quietly to him.
"You can't say that!" Sanji sobs against him. He feels Zoro's muscles tense under him at that, Zoro doesn't like being told that there's nothing that he can do about something. Sanji wishes that there was something Zoro could do, that anyone could do, but he doesn't think that things are ever going to be alright again.