Devil
After their victory at Arlong Park, Zoro had been accosted by Fox and half-carried back to Cocoyashi village. He hadn't fought her, partly because she was crew and had proved it by not lifting a finger to stop them beating up people she knew, but mostly because his reopened wounds really, really hurt. Well, they had really, really hurt but somehow Fox' hand on his chest was numbing the pain enough for him to be able to walk despite the adrenaline from the fight having worn off. He was more curious about how exactly the blind woman could possibly know where she was going and not trip over things.
"I'm sure you remember that I am a Devil Fruit User, Roronoa Zoro?" Fox said as she dragged the swordsman into the village doctor's surgery.
"You did mention it," Zoro grunted.
"My ability enables me to bestow healing, among other things," she said as she strong-armed him onto the bed in the back room, "so lie down and take it like a man." She glared at him as he tried to prevent her from stealing his shirt, "Or do you want to be crippled for life?"
Zoro surrendered. He was going to be the strongest swordsman in the world; he could handle a little indignity if it meant he would recover faster than the two years the doctor who'd looked at him before Fox dragged him away had said was standard.
"Good." Fox placed his shirt on the chair and turned her back. "Strip."
"Wha?!"
"You can keep your underwear," the white-haired blind woman said in the tones of one granting a major concession as she locked the door of the room and closed the window shutters, "but I need to be able to touch your wounds in order to treat them."
Zoro stripped quickly, his boots falling to the ground and his trousers joining the shirt on the chair before he lay back down on the bed and pulled the blanket over his legs. Never mind that she was blind; he didn't feel comfortable being practically naked in a locked room with a woman he barely knew.
At least she hadn't tried to take his sword away.
Five minutes later Zoro was red-faced and acutely embarrassed: Fox had removed her shoes and shirt and was kneeling on the bed in trousers and a bikini top, slowly running glowing hands over his legs. He could actually feel the glow; it was like warm water that washed away all the aches and pains he'd been feeling, soothing bruises and closing wounds. The green-haired swordsman was doing his best to look away from her, not wanting to be accused of looking down her cleavage, but the slow, thorough way she was running her hands up past his knees was sending his brain into the gutter no matter how hard he tried to distract himself.
"What the hell are you doing?!"
"Checking for damage, reinforcing muscle tissue and ensuring that all these scars you've accumulated don't reduce your mobility," Fox said absently, leaning back on her knees and arching her back like a cat. Zoro couldn't stop his eyes from following the way the movement made her chest bounce, then blushed and looked away as soon as he realised what he was doing.
"Now that I'm sure your legs are fine," she crawled up his body and settled down with her knees on either side of his hips, "I can get to work on your torso. Who did this to you anyway?"
Zoro watched as she carefully held her hands slightly above the surface of his injuries and shivered as he felt his muscles reattaching themselves together. "Dracule Mihawk."
Fox' head shot up. "Hawk-eyes? The Shichibukai?" Her hands were perfectly steady, which was a stark contrast to the urgency of her tone.
"Yes?" Zoro wondered what the fuss was about.
"How are you still alive?"
The swordsman smiled at the memory. "He told me to surpass him; that he would stand at the top of the world and wait for me. Ow!" a sudden flash of pain made him cringe.
"Oh?" Zoro suddenly did not like Fox' tone. There was a curious lilting edge to it, suggesting things that sent his instincts jangling as her hands moved further up his chest. "So you have his approval, Roronoa Zoro. That has to be a first."
"What do you mean, a first?"
Fox' left hand continued up the gash past his heart towards his shoulder while her right remained over his heart. "I don't believe any swordsman on the planet has ever gained Dracule Mihawk's approval, never mind that he basically told you he wouldn't mind being beaten by you someday."
Zoro hadn't thought to phrase it quite like that.
"I suppose you'll want to keep the scar then," Fox continued, hands drifting back to the middle of the now closed wound.
"Yes," Zoro rasped. Being healed felt really, really strange and completely unlike any other sensation he'd ever experienced. It was tingly and sore at the same time as feeling warm and pleasant and relaxing; he didn't like the contradiction and didn't know how to react to it.
"This will probably feel very, very strange," she warned him before placing her hands side by side at the middle of the almost healed gash and firmly moved them apart in opposite directions.
Zoro almost swallowed his tongue. Strange was an understatement: it felt like all his nerve endings had fired at once, burying him under a tidal wave of hot-cold-wet-dry-rough-smooth-pain-pleasure that ripped a moan from his throat and rolled his eyes into the back of his head. The eternal moment finally passed, leaving him sweating and panting for breath with his hands fisted in the sheets.
"Better?" Zoro could hear the mirth in Fox's voice; he bet she'd known exactly what that would do to him. He opened his eyes so he could glare at her and instinctively cringed back into the pillow as a familiar pair of eyes looked back at him.
"Wha?!" it was more of a squeak than anything else. Fox grinned down at him, sharp jaw, tousled hair, straight nose and fierce, golden eyes completing a picture that made Zoro want to either punch her or run away as fast as he could. There was no way on earth Fox wasn't closely related to Mihawk.
"So, let's do this properly," Fox drawled, her voice no longer soft and demure but an alto echo of the World's Strongest Swordsman. "My name is Dracule Lisska, but my friends call me Fox. It's a pleasure to meet you, Roronoa Zoro."
Mwahahahahar!