Chapter Text
The island of Zou is actually a living, breathing, moving elephant that wanders the globe endlessly and without direction, seemingly, while the muscles shifting under its hide do the same, springy ground roiling underfoot. Soil overlaid over elephant skin, trees rooted so deep the thick trunks are part of the ancient creature itself, moving with each shifting, rippling tendon. Surely, this is why the forest paths are moving around her, and Luffy has disappeared from in front of her. Zoro and him were meant to be carrying freshwater to load onto the Sunny when Luffy got lost, sending her wandering around somewhere in the middle of a forest instead. She’s trying to orient her way back when a bright flash of orange catches her eye.
“You!”
Nami sniffs, turning to look up when Zoro nears. She’s crouched in a cluster of bushes with fat, star-shaped leaves, hidden in the middle of nowhere, and her face is blotchy pink. “What do you want?” she groans.
“You should be with the others,” Zoro says, setting the drum of water down.
Nami tucks her head above her knees, curling up smaller, arms wrapped around her shins. A branch of leaves sways in the breeze, shielding her. “I already told you, I’m not going.”
“You’re going. You let her get taken away, so you’re going to get her back.”
“I didn’t let her do anything. She did it herself.”
Zoro glares at the fragile figure at her feet. It’s been a constant fight the last couple of days, Nami refusing to go with them to Tottoland while Zoro insists it’s her responsibility to come along. The argument might be part of the reason Nami is hiding away even though they just have hours left before they depart, like this is something she can avoid by running. “Sanji loves you,” Zoro grits out, crouching beside Nami. “You need to be there.”
Suddenly, a frail sob shakes Nami’s shoulders, and her hands fly up to cover her mouth. Fuck. Zoro’s never been good at dealing with crying people, and especially not now when… well, when it’s unwarranted. Sanji’s the one who got kidnapped and is being forced away, not Nami.
“Goddamnit,” Zoro hisses. “It’s true. You know it’s true, she’d be happy to see you come for her!”
“F-fuck off,” Nami hiccups.
“What the hell is your problem!”
“That! T-that’s exact… exactly my problem!”
Zoro holds her anger at bay, clenching her fists together and slowly asking, “What do you mean?”
“It’s my fault she left.” Nami wipes at her face, smearing tears over her cheeks, eyes swollen. “You don’t get it. If— fuck. If we weren’t dating before, if I didn’t take advantage of her, she wouldn’t be so used to… sacrificing herself like that.”
Zoro’s anger all melts away into pure bafflement. “What? What are you talking about?”
“I took advantage of her love. She just kept giving and giving and I was so excited, so I just kept taking and taking and— I ruined her. That’s just who I am. I ruin things. I’m not used to having nice things so I keep taking too much from them, even when they have nothing left to give and—”
“What the fuck? Nami, where is this coming from?”
“You’re so dense,” Nami snaps, finally looking at her again, glaring furiously. “That’s just how I grew up, okay? I steal things, I hoard things, all the time! I just keep taking things! And Sanji is way too nice, because all she does is enable me. Even when we were dating, everything was all about me, all the time. Never about her. I asked her if something was wrong? Nothing, let’s talk about Nami instead. Are you okay, Sweetheart? Need anything, Love? Even when we broke up! She didn’t even ask me why, or beg me to take her back!”
“Do you… want her back?” Zoro asks cautiously.
“No! I just… I know this was my fault.” And she sounds exhausted now, all the sparking anger gone from her, just trembling shoulders and fingers and wisps of hair. “When Bege was here, and held us all captive, I saw this look in her eyes. And I know that look. If I go with you guys to get her back, then she’s just going to sacrifice herself all over again and we’ll be back to square one.”
“And you called me dense.”
“Excuse me?”
“The cook would’ve sacrificed herself for any of the crew, you’re not special. And if she tries to pull that shit again, then you won’t have to worry because I’ll stop her. So quit it with all your self-pity bullshit.” Nami stares at her with wide, bleary brown eyes, like she can’t believe what she’s hearing, so Zoro puts it in simpler terms. “I’m telling you to stop crying and just come with us. I’ll be right there beside you, so nothing bad’s gonna’ happen when we see the cook again, I promise.”
The flurry that hits her catches Zoro so off guard she falls back backwards, flat onto the ground, branches digging into her back and Nami’s arms wrapped tight around her. Head tucked up under Zoro’s chin, face damp and cool on the skin of Zoro’s throat, Nami refuses to budge.
“Fine,” she chokes out, “I’ll come. But you better keep that promise, or I’ll double— no triple, your debt.”
“Witch.”
“Tough luck, Mossy.”
“You can’t say that, that’s the cook’s thing!”
Nami giggles.
Zoro sighs. “Are you going to let go?”
No answer, except for the tightening of Nami’s arms around her. Zoro resigns herself to being stuck on the ground for a while longer, and finally wraps her arms around Nami too.
Zoro doesn’t like Charlotte Pudding. It’s only Nami’s hand tight over hers on Shusui’s hilt that prevents her from drawing it, as they sit and listen to all the flowery bullshit the girl’s spouting.
“He was such a gentleman,” Pudding giggles, pale fingers splayed over her round cheeks and caramel hair falling over her face, hiding her blush from view. Zoro’s fingers twitch. Nami squeezes her hand harder.
“Yup, that sure sounds like Sanji!” Luffy grins, excited, wide, gleaming. “But I think you might’ve made a mistake. I know she wears suits a lot, but Sanji’s a girl.”
Pudding freezes just slightly, looking up. Smile still in place, brows furrowed in polite confusion, she says, “I’m sorry? My fiance is the third prince of Germa, though.”
“Nah. If you’re supposed to marry our Sanji, then you’re not marrying some prince. Sanji’s our cook, and she’s a girl.” Luffy leans over the table, fists set on the polished wood, chocolate smeared across his cheeks and staining his lips. There’s nothing childish about his gaze, though.
Pudding looks away, unable to stand the intensity in his eyes. Her fingers twist into her dress, and her mouth pressed into a hard line. “Of course. It must’ve been my mistake. I guess there could have been a… second princess of Germa.” She clears her throat then smiles brightly at Luffy again, seeming to shake herself out of it. “Well he— she said we couldn’t get married anyway because of your crew. I can help you. I’ll talk to Sanji and bring them to meet you.”
“You’ll really help us? Wow, thanks lady, you’re super nice!”
“Anything for Sanji!”
It’s when they’re finally sailing around the coast to meet up at the rendezvous point that Zoro finally voices her suspicions. “She’s hiding something,” Zoro announces.
Nami pulls her aside before Luffy can disagree, a frown already breaking his previous excited rambling. “Pudding is helping us,” Nami hisses, “and she is the only help we have in this place! What else are we supposed to do?”
“I don’t like her.”
“Geez, really? I couldn’t tell.”
“I’m serious, something about her seems off.”
“Zoro, you say that about every new person we meet! You said that about Robin! About Sanji, too!” Nami sighs rubbing at her temples. “Look. I know why you’re angry, but give her some grace. She clearly didn’t know, and she corrected herself when Luffy told her, didn’t she?”
“She shouldn’t have even made that mistake!”
Zoro doesn’t know what to do with the persistent, noxious feeling twisting in her. How dare Pudding claim to love Sanji when she doesn’t even know her?
Sanji doesn’t look like a man. Sanji is quite literally one of the prettiest girls Zoro has ever met. Possibly the prettiest. Zoro would know, after despairing over that same prettiness for months before she realized she could like girls. This Pudding person must be delusional or purposefully cruel.
Nami unfolds a piece of paper from her pocket and shoves it at Zoro. “Look at this.”
“The wedding invitation?”
“Read this.” Nami jabs a finger at the paper, crinkling it even further. “Vinsmoke Sanji, third prince of Germa. Prince. They didn’t know, Zoro. And I doubt they’re being very nice about it now. I also doubt Sanji would be very pleased with you if you decapitated her nice fiancée who at least tried being normal about it, when she found out she’s been engaged to a woman this whole time instead of a man like she thought. So could you maybe, maybe try not being difficult about something for once!”
“Fuck you,” Zoro spits out. But she still stops complaining about Pudding all the way up until they get lost in the forest.
“I knew it! I told you that bitch was evil!”
“You don’t know that!” Nami insists. “Luffy’s the one that ran after the Sanji-looking thing! Maybe if we just waited longer—”
“Why do you care about that girl anyway!” Zoro grabs Nami’s arm, stopping her mid-run and almost sending her careening into the ground. “You don’t even know her!” Nami glares at her, trying to shake away Zoro’s grip without success.
“I don’t care about Pudding. You’re just… overly mean to her.”
Zoro scoffs. “Whatever. And if you don’t care, then you should. That’s the lady engaged to your ex-girlfriend, you should hate her!”
“Maybe I just want one good thing in Sanji’s life, okay?” Nami snaps. “Of course I don’t want her to leave the crew, but Pudding is pretty! She likes to bake! And she’s way nicer than me!”
“So?”
“So what? If I’m not going to make Sanji happy, then maybe Pudding can, alright?”
“Charlotte Pudding,” Zoro says slowly, hand loosening around Nami’s arm, dropping to her side. “Pudding. You would trust the stranger we met for ten minutes to make Sanji happy?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. They’d be a good fit, I guess.”
“You guess.”
Zoro pivots and goes on ahead, trekking through the sentient trees and bushes, thumb running over the leather wrapping Wado’s hilt. Of course the random, pretty, delicate baker girl who likes making chocolate would be a better fit for Sanji. Of course that’s who Nami picks. She knows Sanji best; afterall, she dated her. Not like Nami would ever think that maybe Zoro likes Sanji, or that Zoro would be good at her side, even though they’re already friends, even though that would mean Sanji gets to stay with the crew instead of abandoning them for an Emperor’s territory.
It’s such a stupid thing to feel jealous over. This shouldn’t be about Zoro’s feelings. She’s just being selfish and putting her own emotions over Sanji’s needs, the most important of which is to actually be rescued from her abusive family. Zoro remembers what Sanji said a few weeks ago. I ran away from home and the only blood family I've ever loved were my mother and sister. Said simply, as though there wasn’t more to the story. Zoro doesn’t need the rest of it to hate those men, though. The father and brothers she now knows Sanji has, who were always the ones to hurt her. This is all so much more important than Zoro’s stupid romantic feelings for Sanji, so why does it hurt so bad anyway?
“Hey.” Nami catches her hand, fingers gripped tight, leather hilt pressing into her palm. “You’re upset.”
“I’m not”
“Zoro, I’m serious. You were normal two minutes ago, and now you’re moping. What did I do?”
“Drop it.”
Nami plants her heels on the forest floor, digging in, refusing to move. Both hands are wrapped tight around Zoro’s wrist now. Zoro’s strong enough to break free and march forward, but that would only end up twisting Nami’s wrists and hurting her.
“Are you fucking kidding me? We’re wasting time.”
“I’m not letting go. Not until you tell me. How are we supposed to save Sanji if you’re off your A-game? Remember, you promised me you’d make sure she didn’t run off again.”
“I hate you,” Zoro declares.
Nami rolls her eyes. “I’m sure. Now tell me so we can fix it, and get back to saving our girl.” And then she blinks, grip loosening, repeating the words our girl to herself. “Holy shit. Zoro, do you…”
Zoro yanks her arm away, finally free, face burning. “Not that it matters. You said it yourself, if there was gonna’ be one good thing in Sanji’s life, it’d be Pudding.”
“No! No, oh my gosh, no! Not now! Zoro.” Nami grabs Zoro’s face with both hands and drags her down, squishing her cheeks almost painfully. Her eyes are wide, all big and watery brown like baby deer eyes or something stupid. A delicate flush brightens her face. “You stupid beefcake. Zoro, Sanji loves you! If I had known you like her, of course I’d want you together!”
“I can’t bake,” Zoro says. “And I’m not nice, or… you know.”
“Girl, you’re a hot bitch! Who cares! I’m sorry I even said any of that other stuff.” Nami pinches her cheeks, mouth pursed, determined. “Sanji loves you because you’re strong, and keep her on her toes and… and are more than nice. You dragged me here kicking and screaming.”
“You hate me for that.”
“I love you for that. I hate you for stretching out my shirts whenever yours are in the laundry. I love you so goddamn much you hunky jackass. Go get your girl.” Nami lets her face go and pats her on the cheek in parting.
“Our girl,” Zoro corrects, a little cautiously. Nami’s left her reeling.
“Our girl,” Nami agrees, and smiles the brightest Zoro’s seen since she and Sanji broke up.
It only takes only another five minutes for Zoro to lose Nami, the woods weaving around them as errant tree roots trip her and flowers sing and sway at the edges of the footpaths. The moon is high in the sky, nighttime crawling through the canopy to the underbrush and weepy vegetation singing lullabies.
“You’ll never get out,” a willowy tree cackles, branches waving in her face.
Zoro resolutely ignores the taunting and gloating, letting it all disappear into meaningless noise in the back of her mind. Was it a left here… or a right? Ah, Nami was behind her when they got separated, so that means…
She pivots on her heel and marches back the way she came, and the tree splutters. “Huh? What the— why would you go that way?”
“Shortcut,” Zoro answers tersely. Stupid tree.
And the last time she saw Chopper and Carrot they were to the left of her, so if Nami is backwards and Chopper is left then all she has to do is cut a diagonal across the bushes to find them again and—
She pops out of the forest, the treeline disappearing behind her and opening into a wide, grassy field as far as the eye can see. A road cuts through it, yellow-brown bricks pathing straight for the fuzzy outline of a city in the distance. Sweet. If she can get to civilization she can ask around and find Sanji. She starts following the road, pleased and even a little bit smug.
Take that, Nami! While even you, the navigator, were getting lost in forests, Zoro made her way out within minutes. Now you can never make fun of her for being “directionally challenged” again!
Zoro makes it to the city with the sun beating down from high noon above her, with only a few wrong turns and a definitely brief nap under her belt. She’s intending to slip into a cheap restaurant for food, alcohol, and people to jostle for information, when she runs straight into a very familiar woman.
“How did you get in here?” Vinsmoke Reiju, first Princess of Germa and also Sanji’s older sister, hisses, yanking Zoro into a room just as footsteps ring out behind them.
“Through the front door?” Zoro levels her with an unimpressed look. Sanji had said she loved Reiju, not that the elder sister was particularly smart.
Reiju glares at her. “I’ll bet. I’m surprised security didn’t manage to catch you before I did. What’s your plan here, infiltrating Whole Cake Chateau in broad daylight? And after the stunt your Captain pulled on the way here?”
“Luffy? You saw Luffy?”
“Saw is one way of putting it. Who knows how any of this is going for them, now.”
Footsteps sound outside the room. Zoro’s haki tells her it’s just one person readying to enter, so she should be able to take them out with ease—
Reiju shoves her into the space between the bed and wall, surprisingly strong for how she looks. “Yes, just leave that here,” she says to whoever is there with her. She kicks Zoro’s shin when she tries to get up. It’s only after almost ten minutes have passed that the door clicks shut again and Zoro’s allowed to crawl out from the tight space indignantly and brush herself off.
“Welcome back,” Reiju says. She’s perching on a delicately carved, white wooden chair and primly sipping a cup of tea. On the table before her lies a spread of all sorts of pastries and other prissy, colorful food arranged into shapes. “Take a seat.”
“Where’s Sanji?” Zoro demands. She’s just wasting time here.
“Out at a suit fitting. She won’t be back for hours.”
Damn it. “And Luffy?”
“Long gone, if he knows what’s good for him.” She doesn’t say it like a threat. In fact, the tone of her voice has held a certain moroseness this entire time, unable to be hidden even by her curt words. “You should leave too.”
“I’m not leaving without Sanji, and Luffy isn’t either.”
Zoro pulls out the other delicate chair from the table and flips it around, taking a seat and resting her arms across the back.
“So you’re staying in my room until she returns and inevitably shoos you away too.” Reiju sets her teacup down. Her face is pale and waxy, and her fingers are thin, lifeless things where they clench into the table cloth. She’s nothing like Sanji. Zoro finds it almost impossible to reconcile the woman before her with the sister Sanji mentioned before.
Resigned, Reiju sighs and stands. She waves a bony hand at the assortment of food. “Feel free to make yourself at home. No one else should be coming in here the rest of the day. I’ll let you know when Sanji returns.”
Zoro squints up at her. “You’re being awfully nice all of a sudden.”
Reiju smiles thinly, without amusement. “This is not me being nice.”
Then the princess slides on a coat and leaves, the only sound the door quietly shutting behind her. There’s really not much else to do. Zoro is just a few hours out from finding Sanji. Leaving to find Luffy now would just take her further from that goal, so she trusts him to figure his situation out himself, whatever it is. Instead she nibbles at the spread before her, picking at whatever seems to be the least sweet, and decides to lightly nap until Reiju returns with word of Sanji’s return.
Zoro awakens with a gasp, feeling like she’s just resurfaced from underwater.
That was supposed to be a nap.
Reiju is here, shaking her shoulders violently awake, and watery, morning sunlight is streaming in through the sheer curtains, and she’s still slumped forward in that delicate chair with cream smeared across her lips…
“You drugged me,” Zoro slurs, shoving Reiju away.
She stumbles as she stands, the chair toppling to the ground before her. She tries to draw Wado but her fingers are noodles. Fuck, her head aches. Not unlike when she has a hangover. She wasted a whole day. That’s ridiculous. A whole fucking day. That stupid bitch, just because Sanji loves her doesn’t mean Zoro’s not going to maul Reiju at this point—
“Why’re you bleeding?” Zoro squints at her.
Reiju frowns. She looks even paler than she did before. Her mouth is pursed tightly and her fists are clenched. Under her short dress, her thighs are haphazardly bandaged up, red spreading like spilled ink through the gauze and medical tape.
“Get out,” Reiju says flatly. “I have to change.” She pushes Zoro aside, fumbling for her dresser. A mountain of tulle falls out. “Sanji walks out from the garden.”
“What?”
Reiju freezes. She turns, skirts piled high in her arms, and glares at Zoro so fiercely it almost mimics the feeling of having conqueror’s haki directed at her. “Do I have to do everything here?” She drops the dresses onto her bed and pushes Zoro by the shoulders to the edge of the room, pulls back the curtains and pries open one window. She points down three floors to the garden. “Get out,” she repeats. “The wedding starts in an hour.”
And that’s when Zoro trips and pitches forward outside the window, wind whistling past her ears as she tumbles. She falls into a rosebush. The thorns prickle, scratching her skin in an army of thin, angry lines that does more to effectively wake her up than anything else.
Fuck.
The garden is a delicate little thing out of a fairy tale. It’s a long strip of rectangle pushed up against the brick wall of Whole Cake Chatea. If she peeks around the corner she can see the plot allotted for the wedding, tables set out across the lawn all clothed in lace, stands holding candles to light the area in the pre-dawn morning, flowers stuffed into bouquets arranged everywhere. A live band is playing near the stage where the brides are supposed to stand, tuning their instruments. Back the corner to the garden, the wrought-iron gate has been tied with roses and translucent cloth winding around the spokes.
Under her feet is a cobblestone path through a sea of plants, pink and purple flowers that smell so sweet it’s almost cloying. Overhead, twinkling lights are wound around arches where white buds drip from vines. Nestled into some bushes is an elaborate door. When it opens, Zoro’s breath catches.
Sanji doesn’t notice her at first. Her head is bent over her lighter, flicking it with concentration until the flame catches on her cigarette. Then her shoulders drop with relief as she takes a long drag, stuffing the golden lighter back into her pocket. She turns around, eyes still closed, pinches her cigarette between her thumb and forefinger, then opens her eyes and sees Zoro.
Sanji freezes.
The first thing Zoro notices about Sanji is that she looks gorgeous. There she stands in the midst of a cove of flowers, fairy lights playing across her face, blonde hair curled around her head like a laurel, like a golden crown. The second thing she notices is that Sanji is miserable. Her deep blue eyes are set alight against the contrast of the dark bruises under them; her jaw is tense in surprise, her nose is turned up and regal, and her mouth is pursed around smoke. Her narrow face is wan and gaunt, despite the gold dusting her colorless cheeks. She looks devastated, and also so, so beautiful. Zoro wants nothing more than to cradle her in her arms and let her know everything’s okay.
“Not you too,” Sanji rasps, and it’s such a broken sound for someone so lovely to make.
Zoro falls forward and catches her hands in her own. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Sanji shakes her head. “You all didn’t need to come after me, is all. This wasn’t part of the plan.”
“What plan?”
Sanji looks at her in silence, eyes wide, jaw ajar.
Zoro squeezes her hands. She scans over every inch of Sanji like she can memorize every single part of her in the next few seconds.
“That plan,” Sanji finally chokes out, “with Bege? You weren’t there. Oh my god, you weren’t there. Okay. Okay. This is fine. Just— when Luffy pops out of the cake. That’s your signal. Go crazy, except don’t fight Bege because we need him—”
“What happened to your hair?”
Zoro lifts a hand to cup Sanji’s cheek, running her fingers through the short strands at her temple. She might still be a little bit out of it. She tugs on a coil and Sanji flinches.
“They made me cut it. Anyway, did you get all that?”
“You liked your hair long.”
“I did,” Sanji says tersely. “But what’s done is done. It’s fine.”
“Mm.” Zoro hums. She runs her hand through it again, admiring the way the bright color shifts as it falls through her fingers. “I like it both ways. You look pretty.”
Sanji's face flushes immediately, turning pink rapidly. “You mean that?” she whispers.
“‘Course I do. You always look pretty.”
Then Zoro does something which she, at the moment, finds to be an incredibly appropriate and normal action to take. She lifts the one of Sanji’s hands she’s still holding up to her mouth and clumsily kisses the back of it.
Sanji lets out an adorable squeak.
It’s then that a melodic voice calls out something unintelligible to Zoro from inside, and Sanji calls back to it, breathless. She peels Zoro off her and holds her at arm's length. “Okay, Darling, take a breather. Wait here and remember what I said earlier about Luffy and the cake and Bege, okay? You got all that? Good, good. I’ll be back in just a moment, promise.” And then she shoves Zoro down into a bush of some floppy white flowers and rushes through the door back inside.
Hours later, once the thrill of battle, fresh air, and general sobriety has her clear-headed again, Zoro will remember to feel embarrassed. Days later, at random moments and places on the Thousand Sunny on their journey to catch up to the others in Wano, Zoro will remember everything she did when she was still a little delirious and contemplate throwing herself off the side of the boat.
She never does quite manage to fully relieve herself of mortification, mostly because whenever Sanji sees her now she gives her this awkward, shy smile that makes Zoro’s heart speed up to overdrive. It’s unimaginable how much she missed her. Even more so, how nice it is now that Sanji’s come home.