Chapter Text
He wakes with the kind of disorientation that's grown familiar these past few months. The kind that's accompanied by the desire to retch as the tinnitus subsides and his temples eventually cease in their pounding.
Zoro cradles his skull and sits up. He tries to open an eye and realizes that he's able to see in both, and a sinking feeling settles deep in his gut.
It has happened again. This isn't his body. At least not the one he's used to.
He checks his surroundings and finds three swords nearby. His own, but not quite. Wado's familiar hilt greets him, but under his touch, he feels its hesitation. It knows, of course. It's been with him the longest.
Then there's Kitetsu, but even it harbors the same wariness. There's a resistance as he touches its hilt, like it's yet to understand the gravity of all they're going to go through. Like it still wants to test his limits in its own willful way.
And Zoro sees Yubashiri, who greets him like an old friend. The familiarity stings like a deep end of an uneven laceration—she was beautiful and prideful, and he lost her too early. Had he known haki prior to wielding her, they could've seen the world together.
She's whole now—solid, in his palm. He tests her weight and realizes that this, too, is something he's forgotten due to time passing. That she's light and malleable under his touch, content with going along with his wants.
His other hand finds the smooth, wooden deck of the Merry, and he's hit with another wave of combined nostalgia and regret. It's the Going Merry. She's still with them and carrying them through the very beginnings of their dreams, paving the way to their fruition. Another friend that Zoro has failed to protect, fondly remembered.
"Oi, stop slacking off and help with unfurling the sails," a voice says, followed by a kick to Zoro's side.
He knows who it is without looking. But the voice sends a jolt in him nonetheless—it sounds too young. Younger than what Zoro last remembers. He turns his head and finds Sanji: blond and haloed by the sun, fierce and radiant. Shorter than he remembers and of a thinner, leaner built, but unmistakably stable and reliable.
This is Zoro's third jump. In the last one, Sanji was in his thirties and looked at him with the fondness reserved for a lover. In the one before, Sanji was twenty-six and welcomed him with a kick to the face.
Zoro has no concrete understanding of why this is happening to him. He thinks he either took a wrong turn in his own universe or pissed off the wrong person and they decided to teach him a lesson. He thinks both are possible, and while he can easily adapt to the changes, there's one that always sets him off.
Sanji kicks him again. Harder, and it lands against his hip.
"Did you hit your head in your sleep?" Sanji asks. He doesn't understand, and his default is teasing that will likely devolve into anger and lead to a sparring match. How many times have they wrecked the Merry by being petulant and careless?
Zoro tucks his swords to his chest and breathes. His depth perception isn't fucked, but at the price of having a body that doesn't know haki. The thing with the jumps is that while he gets to keep his wits about him, it's never the same body. He's currently nineteen while his consciousness is that of a forty-year-old man. He knows this body's limitations and feels the frustration creep up on him as he realizes exactly at what point in their journey this is.
There's an island up ahead. Zoro knows that one and he doesn't need to check under his boots to be certain. That's Little Garden, and he'll end up hacking his ankles halfway sometime today. He remembers the pain and already hates that he'll get to experience it once more. They are yet to meet Chopper.
"Do you still have your sewing kit?" he asks as he stands, strapping his swords to his haramaki.
Sanji answers him with a look that is combined bewilderment and embarrassment. There’s a healthy flush that creeps up his neck, threatens to spread across his cheeks.
"What?” Sanji asks once he recovers. “How do you know that?"
That he's been mending the crew's clothing whenever it's his turn to do the laundry? That it's his way of making himself useful and low-maintenance because he's yet to learn his place in Luffy's crew, that he's loved and wanted here simply by being himself?
"Do you have it?" Zoro asks, instead of voicing any of his thoughts. It's not his place. This is not his life. This is not his crew, and these are adventures he already experienced, dangers he already faced. But because he's in this body, it cannot protect the others in the way he wishes.
"Yes," Sanji says, looking at him with narrowed eyes. He'll be gone for most of the day, securing the path to Alabasta. But by the end of it, when they all sail away from this place, he's the one Zoro needs.
"Hold on to it," Zoro says. "Might need it soon."
He doesn't wait for Sanji's answer and instead climbs up the rigging to do as Sanji asked.
Later, when Dorry and Brogy have assisted their escape and Nami is days away from manifesting the symptoms of a lethal infection, Zoro is perched against a crate in the storage room while Sanji tends to his ankles.
"Idiot," Sanji is saying, and Zoro shuts his eyes and pretends that the voice is deeper. That it's his Sanji chastising him for his terrible life choices, and it's laced with fondness instead of exasperation. "Why the fuck did you think that cutting them off is a good idea? You're not a doll."
Zoro has a piece of cloth trapped between his teeth, his hands clinging to the edges of the crate as he braces himself. He remembers this pain and knows he'll experience worse, but the sink of the needle into his skin still sends his eyes watering.
Sanji glances at his face every now and then and Zoro gives him nods of reassurances despite the pain searing that he thinks he might pass out. He's been stitched before, back in Cocoyasi. But that was done under anesthesia while this isn't, and he's biting back the urge to ask for reprieve because he doesn't remember it hurting this much. It stung like every wound made by a named blade, but not to the point that it made him tremble.
When he realizes why, his breath is stuck in his chest. Sanji's movements are methodical and precise, a pinch between his brows indicating utmost concentration, and that's what hurts. Sanji is patching him up in the rudimentary way that lacks Chopper's skill, and at this point in the journey, they're hardly friends. They're crewmates and Zoro will gladly take a blow meant for him, but they don't have the kind of relationship that Zoro's desperately trying to get back to.
The one that he hopes he sees waiting for him every time he opens his eyes after a jump.
"This might get infected," Sanji notes after a moment, despite him repeatedly dousing the thread with alcohol to disinfect it. "We really need a doctor, and yet Luffy would likely prioritize getting a musician. This is a ship full of morons. With the exception of Nami-san and myself."
Sanji offers a palm to him and Zoro loosens his jaw around the makeshift gag. His ankles are no longer half-separated from the rest of his limbs, and he feels lightheaded. He's soaked in sweat and catching most of his breath, and Sanji picks up the bottle of whiskey by his feet and hands it to him.
Zoro eyes it, trying to remember if it went like this the first time. If that's merely concern in Sanji's exposed eye and nothing else.
"You need it," Sanji says, his jaw set. Zoro accepts, takes a healthy swig from the bottle, and he hears Sanji light a cigarette. "I'm sorry that I wasn't there."
Zoro pauses, the tip of the bottle still pressed against his lower lip. Did it happen like this? Did Sanji say such things to him in this part of their journey and meant every word? Did he understand this early on that protecting the crew can be a joint responsibility, something they both prioritized after Luffy?
He realizes that he doesn't remember it like this because at the time, he hardly cared. The pain overwhelmed him. And he wanted to bear the brunt of said responsibility, unconvinced that it needed sharing. He wanted to be the crew's sole protector at this time, to be able to keep everyone out of harm's way at the price of himself.
He looks at Sanji and remembers their years together, the years they're yet to have in this life. This isn't his place. He's the wrong Zoro, and he's not reacting to this in the way that nineteen-year-old him would have.
He feels the telltale signs of another jump occurring: there's a tingling originating from the tips of his fingers and he feels as though the ground is starting to shift despite the Merry sailing in smooth waters. He has minutes left, and he commits every detail of Sanji's face from this time to memory.
He didn't remember it happening like this, but maybe he's remembering it wrongly. Maybe Sanji didn't need years to look at him like that. Maybe Zoro's wishing for the one that belongs to him and that desire has bled into this reality, making him see things that aren't quite there. He's trapped between flashes of pain and regret, and he wishes he has more time.
But the tingling has reached the rest of his limbs and he knows it's time. In a minute, there will be another one of him here. Perhaps the one that this Sanji knows—nineteen, cocksure. Obstinate.
"We're getting Vivi home because of you," he manages to say, and he sees Sanji pause. Smoke has distorted most of his features, but Zoro doesn't look away. He knows those eyes, the shape of that potty mouth. The youthful countenance and the absence of the stubble and a well-trimmed goatee.
Every time he jumps, aside from wishing that he'll get back to where he belongs, he finds himself hoping for one other thing: for Sanji to be there, somewhere next to him. Because if he sees that golden head then he knows he's found his way—to his home, to his family. Perhaps not the one he knows too well and misses terribly, but the one he'll always belong to.
"I still won, by the way," he says, just as the surroundings turn blurry and the pinpricks of nausea begin to overwhelm him. "My Triceratops beats yours and you know it."
Sanji's response is an indignant huff and it's the last thing Zoro sees. He doesn't hear whatever tirade Sanji has for him as he shuts his eyes, and everything shifts. Like a veil lifted slowly then yanked forcefully, and he loses his proprioception, surrendering to the tide and waiting for its ebb.
Distantly, in a part of him that remains steadfast, he thinks of cigarette smoke and seafood and prays he'll wake up to both nearby.