By the time Zoro had rested his head into the crook of his arm, he was already drifting off into sleep, slightly comforted by the thought of the blonde laying safely several feet away but overwhelmed still by the events of the past several days. Brief images flashed before his eyes as he vividly recalled clutching Sanji's bleeding form against his chest, the heavy metallic scent of the blood almost seeming to flood through his mouth and nose as he desperately tried to brush the memories away from the forefront of his thoughts. Images and sensations continued to assault him however, visions of Sanji's lifelessly pale face as the EMT hurried him into the ambulance, the intense waves of hopeless fear that crashed into his very core as he realized there was nothing further he could do to help the blonde maintain his waning grasp on life, how vehemently he had wished he could have taken the blonde's pain and suffering into himself at the time.
Darkness swirled all around, engulfing him in its inky depths as Zoro tried to regain control of his mind, to escape from the onslaught of traumatic imagery his slumbering subconscious seemed intent on throwing his way. He struggled to clear his head and escape from the nightmares grasp, but as the mental assault continued its constant barrage, even he could tell that something was different. Something didn't feel right, a nagging sensation of having overlooked something very important tugged at the very fiber of his being, the haunting images only serving to further solidify this theory. Everything felt wrong and distant, as though his reality was but a mere glimpse of the universe's truth but as he flailed about, he could feel sleep's grasp on him beginning to wane. It was a few more moments until his eye flew open, panicked sweat trickling down his side and onto the hardwood floor upon which he had rested. He allowed his gaze to slowly wander the room, mentally willing his heartbeat to return to a comfortable pace as his pulse pounded rapidly in his ears, but as his eye landed upon his empty bed nearby, Zoro felt his heart seem to freeze for a moment at the realization.
Sanji was gone.
Blind panic rushed through Zoro's mind and it took a good minute of frantically glancing around the room before he realized he could see the light from the bathroom shining along the edges of the darkened hallway. He could feel his initial panic waning as he came to grasp the blonde's location, however the panic inside him was slowly being replaced by a cold unsettling fear sitting thick and heavy in his stomach at the familiarity of the situation at hand. If something else happened to Sanji, under the marimo's own roof none the less, he knew there would be no chance of forgiving himself. With a growing uncertainty gnawing anxiously at his insides, he stood up and made his way to the hallway, pausing momentarily in the doorway to peer down the hall towards the restroom. He shuffled silently up to the bathroom door and paused again for a few moments, listening for any signs of distress before, hesitantly, his hand floated up to gently rap upon the wood. A few tense seconds passed before the door creaked open, Sanji's wary face peering through the crack in the door as he stared out at the partially clothed swordsman, apprehension and irritation coating his face in even parts.
"Can I help you? Or have you just come to bother me while I try to take a piss?" Zoro felt his face flush momentarily in shame, his fear dissipating as he realized how this would look to the blonde if he were to bother trying to explain himself. He instead found himself pushing his way past curlybrow into the bathroom, one steely briefly flitting over the incredulous expression that flashed through Sanji's oceanic eyes before he focused his attention fully onto the toilet. He could hear Sanji huffing in disbelief at the sudden intrusion, and instead decided to focus on relieving his bladder, the splashing of his stream inside the bowl serving to alleviate some of his stress along with the flow of urine.
"It's my bathroom, asshole, if I want to use it you can't fucking stop me." Zoro smirked to himself, slightly proud that he'd covered his tracks and avoided seeming nervous in front of the ex-chef. He could still feel Sanji's eyes boring into the back of his head as he shook off the small remaining droplets of urine but it just took a small sigh and a few choice words to jostle him back into an uncomfortable state of mind.
"What are we doing, Zoro?" Sanji's voice sounded almost defeated and, with a quick glance in the mirror, Zoro saw him rubbing his temples, delicate fingers gently working circles as his furrowed swirled eyebrows peered out from above. The marimo could feel the anxious knot tightening within his stomach as the blonde continued. "It feels like we're some shitty little kids playing house, just trying to forget our own lives and make believe like we're happy and functional in our new 'reality' we've constructed. But I really don't think we can handle this anymore." Zoro turned around to face the blonde, worry heavily etched across his features as he met Sanji's saddened gaze. "I don't think you can handle this anymore..." Sanji's voice had dropped to almost a whisper and every word seemed to send dangerously cold shivers along Zoro's spine, warning signals blaring through his thoughts.
"What are you talking about? I thought... I'd hoped maybe things were getting a little better at least?" Zoro spoke tentatively, his thoughts in mild disarray. Sanji sighed heavily and reached his left hand up to brush his fingers through his flaxen locks when something in Zoro's mind clicked and his hand reached out, instinctively grasping the blonde's wrist and pulling it towards himself, turning it over with a quizzical expression on his face. "Sanji... Where is your bandage?" Confusion coated his expression as he stared blankly down at the smooth skin of the ex-chef's wrist, unblemished and seemingly untouched. "Sanji?" The green haired bastard's head whipped up, his steel grey eye searching for answers within the blonde's deep azure gaze but only spying what looked like doleful sympathy sprinkled in together with what may have been regret.
"Zoro, why are you bothering to ask questions we both know the fucking answer to?" Sanji snapped back at the swordsman in a hushed tone, snatching his hand back and rubbing his fingers lightly over the smooth skin. Zoro continued to stare at the space the blonde's hand had previously occupied, his mind tried to process his surroundings but only succeeded in making his confusion more tangibly agitated. What was Sanji referring to, what was he was missing that supposedly he already knew? Questions seemed to drag through his mind haltingly as though trudging through the thick, viscous slime his emotions felt they had congealed into and Zoro found himself staring blankly into Sanji's eyes, dumbfounded and lost like a mere child. Sanji leaned forward, a wistful smile gracing his lips as he tenderly scooped Zoro's face into the palms of his hands and began to whisper sighingly.
"Zoro, its time you remembered the truth and stopped playing make believe. You can't keep lying to yourself. You moss-headed bastard, we both fucking know I never made it to that hospital alive."
Chopper's words flitted through Zoro's mind rapidly as his thoughts swirled chaotically. "I know that I can't fix this, but is there anything I can do for you? I hate seeing you both like this... Seeing Sanji like... this..." Sanji lying there still, so eerily serene on his gentle bed of white, his skin delicately transparent in its paleness. How cool his hand had been when Zoro had cradled it to his cheek, how he had stayed by Sanji's side as they tried to remove his body from the room, fighting violently with the nurses when he wasn't allowed to follow them into the morgue and his subsequent screaming removal from said morgue.
Reality and fiction meshed together harshly, memories and falsities clashing against each other and only the indomitable perception of death and loss came through with clarity. "He's on a mandatory 72-hour hold until we can determine if he is in a safe enough state of mind to be released but..." Spoken about, not to. Nothing seemed to make sense anymore and Zoro could almost feel himself breaking inside, his emotions reaching their absolute peak into nothingness as cold hands seemed to grasp the back of his consciousness and drag him above himself. He could see himself slinking to his knees in an empty bathroom, his body curling forward onto the floor as dry sobs racked his pitiful form. His face pressed against the cold stone ground of the bathroom, a grotesque mask of anguish frozen on his features.
Everything feels so empty when you're truly alone and sometimes as long as you wholeheartedly believe it, a lie can be truth, if only just to you.
AN: So I had written a good bit of this earlier in October but the file got fucked up and I lost the chapter which kinda bummed me out so it took a while for me to convince myself to rewrite it, but here we go :)