Suspense

The moment Sanji awoke to the fading sunlight of late afternoon he panicked. Where the hell was the shitty idiot swordsman? He couldn't believe the marimo had done that! Had he forgotten about Fox-chan? What the hell was it that went on in that green-furred head?!

"Where did that guy go?" he panted, staggering to his feet and dashing across the fallen chunks of wall, ignoring Luffy's miraculous return to health in his haste to find the swordsman. Had Kuma taken Zoro after all? He couldn't have, right?

"Over there!" he realised, spotting someone standing silhouetted against the trees with his back to the ruins. Hurrying closer, Sanji addressed the marimo directly:

"You freak me out… Oi! Where did that Shichibukai go?"

The swordsman didn't answer, not moving from his steady stance. Then Sanji noticed that there was someone kneeling in front of the swordsman and rushed closer before stopping dead as he took in the scene.

There was blood everywhere. Splattered across the ground in a six foot radius at least, like it had exploded from Zoro's body all in one go. And there was Fox, kneeling in front of him with her head pillowed against his solar plexus, tucked partly under his folded arms. Her right arm lay on top of his left, hand buried in the crook of his right elbow and her left was wrapped around his bicep. She was barely breathing, so still and pale she looked almost dead. Blood had dribbled down over her head and back from Zoro's wounds, painting brownish red lines over the bright floral designs of her bandanna and shirt. The swordsman looked worse, with wounds everywhere and what visible skin there was heavily bruised or pale as chalk. Unlike Fox, he didn't seem to be breathing at all.

"Why the heck is there so much blood?!" Sanji freaked. "Oi… are you still alive? Where did that guy go? What on earth happened here?"

"Nothing…" Zoro coughed, his eyes opening briefly before fluttering closed again. "Nothing at all!" he sagged forwards, chin hitting his collarbones and shoulders slumping. Sanji quickly wrapped an arm around the swordsman's shoulders to prevent him putting all his weight on Fox, who hadn't seemed to hear his loud outburst.

"Chopper! Chopper!" Sanji bellowed. "Get over here! I think Zoro's dying!"

Chopper was worried. When Sanji called him over he'd feared the worst and he'd been pretty much right to: Zoro had been taken to the very brink of death by his injuries and Fox was in a coma for no reason the reindeer could think of, the fingers of her right hand so tightly tangled in those of Zoro's left that there was no way of separating them. Now, a whole day after Moriah had been defeated, they had yet to wake up. Chopper had done all he could, cleaning and bandaging all of the swordsman's many wounds and getting Robin to bathe Fox and change her clothing, but neither had so much as stirred yet.

"Chopper!" Luffy called out, entering the ruins the reindeer had commandeered as a medical area with a large bundle on his head.

"We brought the things you asked for," Franky said, walking in behind Luffy through the hole in the wall with an even larger bundle.

"Oh thank-you," Chopper said distractedly, looking up from his patients.

"How are they?"

Chopper swallowed. "This is the first time I've seen so many wounds on Zoro's body. Really: he was so close to losing his life. That Fox was there and he was still this badly injured…" his voice trailed off. "I don't know, I really don't." He huffed, putting that thought aside. "Something must have happened when we were knocked out, something that not only put him in this condition but worried Fox badly enough that she left the Sunny to rush to his side."

"I can't believe that man just left like this," Robin said.

"It's weird how Luffy is surprisingly energetic too," Usopp mused thoughtfully.

"Just a bit," the rubberman agreed, still holding the massive bundle over his head. "I'm not even sure myself!"

Chopper ignored the two strangers who were dragged off by Sanji; he was more concerned by Fox' continued unconsciousness. He had noticed that as Zoro's vitals had gradually improved over the course of the day, so had hers. In fact, their heartbeats and breathing were perfectly synchronised. It was as though she had used her Devil Fruit Ability to merge the two of them into a single being and then sustained the swordsman, her heart beating and lungs breathing for him. Certainly Zoro's organs had been badly damaged by whatever had happened to him, but there had been none of the associated diffuse damage that came from a body trying to make use of damaged organs. Instead there was Fox, who was utterly unresponsive and almost dead without a mark on her. Zoro's gradual but definite improvement as the hours past convinced the reindeer that Fox had tied herself to Zoro like she had to the Merry, but much more deeply. As a result the swordsman was leeching her vitality to heal his many injuries before they killed him, but he needed so much healing her body could barely do more than continue to function.

Unfortunately there wasn't anything Chopper could do except hope for the best.

Fox could not move her body at all; this was what happened in a deep merge when she had to chase after her patient's soul and wrap herself around it to prevent it from getting away even as she reinforced their body and replenished their life-force enough that she didn't need to stay in that perilous place at the very edge of existence where reality was what you made of it. She had removed herself from Zoro's body as quickly as she could, but the damage was done: their lives were locked together now, a solid, permanent conduit joining their minds on both the conscious and subconscious level and marking a point of contact between their very souls.

As it was Fox could feel two hearts beating, two set of lungs breathing, two bodies straining to keep themselves alive after the grievous injuries Zoro had sustained. Her swordsman was completely dead to the outside world, leaving his mind open and wandering in barely coherent dreams in and out of her mind as well as his own, barely able to distinguish which thoughts were hers and which were his. Fox would have shut him out, except it would have also increased his recovery time and possibly sent him into shock as at the moment his body was convinced it had two hearts, four lungs, two brains and enough internal organs for the damage to one set to not be too much of an issue. Losing the functional set would likely cause his subconscious to panic and possibly kill him.

So, in order to distract herself from the feeling of intimate contact in parts of her being that were never meant to be explored by any save herself, Fox listened to what was going on around her: feasting, joy, celebration and music. Music that brought back memories of being both a small child and a grown woman in the arms of a laughing red-haired pirate and twirling around dozens of different bar rooms, island clearings and ships' decks as all around them familiar voices sang an old, much-loved pirate tune:

Going to deliver Bink's sake

Following the sea breeze,

Riding on the waves

Far above the salty deeps,

The merry evening sun

Painting circles in the sky,

As the birds sing…

Fox slipped away into dreams of memories of the smell of alcohol, red hair, warm arms and laughter, salty sea wind, the crisp sound of full sails and the ringing of steel on steel, vaguely aware as she tumbled from memory to dream and back again that the pirate with green hair didn't quite belong. Then the dreams changed and she was the one who didn't belong on peaceful islands with clean wooden dojos where boys fought with bokken and girls fell down stairs in the middle of the night and the roads never led to where it was you wanted to go.

A spot of exposition and a hint of past.