The shit hits the fan. Perchance to Dream 9/11
Title: Perchance to Dream 9/11
Rating: From PG to R: This Chapter: PG-13
Words: 2,950
Pairings: Zoro/Sanji
Summery: “Because happy is what happens when all your dreams come true…well, isn't it?” -Wicked
Warnings: Everything from fluff to angst.
Spoilers: Takes place between Skypiea and Water 7, so…
Disclaimer: Sadly, I don’t own One Piece
Notes: Loosely based on and titled after an episode of Batman The Animated Series. If you’ve seen this episode…shhhhh…
Huge thank you: To bronzetigress for being my super-beta and putting up with my ellipses abuse and lack of commas. Thanks again my dear!!!!
Chapter 9
“That’s not the question,” Zoro said, voice laced with shock
“Then what is?” the other pressed gently.
“What’s wrong with you?”
Sanji leaned back a bit in surprise. “Me? You think there’s something wrong with me?”
“Know. I know there’s something wrong with you.”
“Okay… tell me.”
Sanji was talking to him like he was a crazy person, and he didn’t like it. He wasn’t losing his mind or anything. If anyone was acting strange it was the cook!
“You with that girl. What happened?”
“What do you mean? You saw the whole thing. She fell, I helped her up, nothing to it.”
Zoro shook his head. “No. Don’t you remember? On the Merry? The way you acted whenever Nami or Robin were around? With the annoying sugary drinks? And the endless proclamations of love? How did this girl get away with a friendly wave? Don’t you remember all the girls that had to slap you after you only walked by them?”
Sanji was silent for a moment as if he was letting everything sink in. “So. You think something’s wrong because I didn’t go head over heels for that girl?”
“It’s not like you. It’s not. You always act like a dope around girls.”
“I can’t believe this.” He paused, mouth opening and closing like he was searching for words. “You're saying I could never grow as a person? Zoro.” He looked away almost like he was disappointed.
“I’m not saying that. It’s just. Five years seems a little fast for something like that.”
“What? So you would rather have me gallivanting around after every pretty face I see? You’d like that Zoro? Would that be normal to you? Should I chase after men too?”
“NO!” Zoro jerked up off the rock. “It’s... nothing. Okay. It just caught me off guard I guess.”
“You know-” the cook got to his feet. “Fuck you.”
“WHAT?”
“FUCK. YOU. ASSHOLE.”
“How are you mad at me? Why?”
“How can you even ask that? You're fucking disappointed that I’m loyal to you! You’re surprised that I can change! The HELL!”
“That’s not it! It’s just not like you not to look!”
“Well sorry for being better than you think I should be!”
How did this happen? How was he the one on defense now? The whole thing was tilted- up was down, right was left, nothing seemed okay anymore.
“Sanji, just calm down. I wasn’t expecting it okay? It was kind of a big difference. The old me saw it as change in motion, it happened slowly for him, so I’m sure he -er- I didn’t really notice, but with me, this me, it was all at once. You can understand that, right?” He tugged on the blond's arm. “Right?”
He didn’t like it, the lies that were falling off his tongue, but it simply wasn’t right. He needed more time to figure this out… This time a simple explanation from Sanji wasn’t going to cut it. Especially when Sanji himself was the mystery. He wanted to believe the blond, but his instincts had never failed him yet. So now he just needed to observe Sanji, be on the lookout for anything else that seemed out of place- and it would be a heck of a lot easier if Sanji didn’t hate him.
Blue eyes shifted to his own. They looked tired.
“I guess…” Sanji said quietly.
“I like that I have you all to myself, really,” Zoro pressed, tugging the other man in for an embrace. “I wouldn’t want it any other way.”
He felt the blond warily wrap long arms around his back.
“I thought, back there, that something else had happened to you.” Sanji laid his head on Zoro’s shoulder. “You were just standing there staring at nothing, and I thought that maybe the rest of your mind had left too.”
“Don’t worry about that. I’m all right. Now,” he pulled back, “let's put that window in shall we?”
They walked the rest of the way in silence, but the swordsman still held the cook’s hand. His mind hadn’t slowed down, still thinking of possible explanations. He didn’t want to think of the negative. If Sanji couldn’t be trusted then what of everything else he’d said that Zoro took for truth? What about the fates of the rest of the crew, the outcome of his dream, their relationship? And what would Sanji get out of lying anyway?
There were too many questions and not enough answers.
“Here we are,” Sanji stated as the cook’s building came into sight. The owner unlocked the door then held it open for Zoro so he could bring in the glass. The swordsman grabbed a hammer from where he left it the other night and began to pry off the wooden boards, handing the panels back to Sanji. The cook wanted to keep them in case something else should happen and was putting them in the back shed. It was quiet while they worked, as Zoro thought. He was handing the third board to the blond when Sanji spoke.
“You seem distracted.”
“I…I just don’t want to get any marks on your window is all.”
“You’re lying.” Not a question- just a statement.
“Take the board away will you?” Not an answer- just a question.
Sanji stared at him a moment longer, then moved away silently and obviously bothered.
Zoro sighed. Lying wasn’t his thing either. Usopp had that honor.
When the cook came back he took the last panel without words and then disappeared somewhere inside the large restaurant while Zoro put the window in. He worked efficiently, kneeling on the fitted seat, seeing as it wasn’t that hard to install. He’d helped Usopp enough to know basic fitting. Tools and his hands were very familiar to Zoro; tools didn’t have emotions, tools didn’t have mood swings, tools didn’t make him think this much. Yes. Tools made sense to the swordsman. He pulled his mind back as his hands worked, running over the events from the last three days that didn’t make sense…
On the top of the list was Yashin. He had to be involved somehow… something more than just throwing rocks, but Zoro couldn’t figure out the connection yet.
Next: The key and lock of the dojo. There was no way it had been unlocked before Sanji breezed in.
Then: Sanji’s neglecting to call the girls by their “respectful titles”.
And on that same night Sanji never did get to finish the explanation of why they never got attacked over their bounties. That was when the window broke.
Zoro stopped all movement, staring straight ahead at the half finished window. Was it all a distraction? To get his mind off the question… If it was it had worked. He had been so concerned about making sure everything was ‘safe’ that it had slipped his mind.
And then the little girl, Becky,
“Oh you’re being silly Sensei! You know there aren’t any fights at school!”
Which he knew was wrong. It’s inevitable to have fights and then Sanji…
“Some times I tune you out…maybe it happened on one of those days.”
Which took them completely off topic.
The hammer fell to the floor.
This afternoon… the girl. Before it happened he had spotted Yashin hiding behind a booth. But when he noticed the man for the first time he had been standing out in the open, like he wanted to be seen. This time he wasn’t supposed to catch him, and they ran into the girl! Another distraction?
A bad one.
One that may have ruined everything for them… because it was then that Sanji made the biggest mistake. He wasn’t himself.
Oh Fuck.
Zoro jumped down from the window seat and sped into the kitchen. He wrenched the faucet open, letting cool water pour into his hands. He splashed it onto his face repeatedly.
Oh Fuck.
Spinning around he tried to catch his racing breath. His gaze fell on the dishes that had been left out since that night. Something had bothered him about those too.
“Fuck, Zoro, how hard is it to put dishes away?
From the Merry… he had been forced into helping Sanji with the dishes
“If you have them going all different ways you’ll never use your space to it’s full potential.”
“Great. Didn’t know you had yet another fun compulsion shit- cook. The longer I know you the crazier you get.”
“Just put all the plates in like this, dumbass. It’s not brain surgery, even you should be able to do it right.” Sanji proceeded to pluck all the plates that Zoro had placed from the rack and set them back in a pristine order. “The curved side of the plate goes towards the middle and the back of the plate to the back of the rack. See? I managed to fit three more plates in there than you.”
“They're fucking plates.”
“I don’t come over to you and tell you how to wash your swords do I?”
“I don’t ‘wash’ my swords, I polish them.”
“It’s the same thing.” Eye roll.
“NO IT’S NOT!”
And then they fought about that for a while, but Zoro came to understand that when you helped Sanji with the dishes you had to put the plates in “properly” or he’d bitch about it for the duration of the chore. For the sake of sanity everyone just did it his way. And as Zoro looked at those dishes he finally realized what was wrong about them.
The plates were backwards. The curved part of the plate was facing the back of the rack, the flat towards the middle.
Completely backwards.
He backed away from them like they were poison. No… Something so specific like that… There was no way. It was a tick, something that was imbedded into Sanji’s brain. He couldn’t just change it. The chances that he managed to change two such dominant personality traits was like Luffy deciding that he really didn’t need to eat that much. It wasn’t possible. None of this was possible.
He should have known.
It was too good, too perfect. How could he expect that all his dreams would come true? It was as if his fantasies had come to life. This meant that he didn’t beat Mihawk; that that dojo wasn’t his; that Sanji wasn’t his husband after all; that all of this wasn’t…real.
IT WASN’T REAL.
Oh Fuck. Where was he? What was going on? He looked at the plates and a flash of rage struck him. Lashing his arm out he knocked the whole lot of them to the floor watching the china break into tiny shards on the linoleum. Why should he care?
They weren’t real…this place wasn’t real. He grabbed a stool and tossed it against the far wall. It broke on impact.
“Son of a bitch!” he yelled throwing another chair, “What is happening to me!?”
The sound of running footsteps stopped him in his rampage. Sanji was coming.
NO.
Not Sanji. Something or someone pretending to be his nakama. Someone pretending to be the man that he- It wasn't Sanji.
“Zoro!” The blond burst through the doors. He took a quick glance around his kitchen and the panting swordsman in front of him. “Zoro? What’s wrong?”
Zoro slowly turned his head to glare at the thing pretending to be Sanji. “You know,” he hissed.
Sanji seemed taken aback. There was a slight pause before the answer came. “Zoro… You’re scaring me.” He took a tentative step forward, slowly, like he was approaching a wild animal. “What’s going on inside your head?” Pale hands reached out for his face but the swordsman no longer felt any attraction. He sneered at them and pulled back.
“Get the Hell away from me.”
“What’s wrong? What did I do? Tell me.”
“You!” he laughed, “You…”
The blond moved towards him- and Zoro backhanded him to the floor. His hand made a startlingly loud smacking noise as it made contact with the imposter’s face.
“Zoro!” Whoever looked up from the floor, hand pressed to his cheek, staring at the swordsman in shock. It was hard to look at him; that face with that expression on it. He had never struck the cook like that the whole time he’d known him- never with that much hate and malice. But that fragile looking body on the floor wasn’t his Sanji.
“Who the Hell are you?” He growled stepping closer crushing the china shards with every movement.
“You know, I’m your husband, I’m Sanji, Zoro- AHH!”
The swordsman yanked the blond up by the hair and stared hard into his face. “You are NOT Sanji. Stop saying you are! You are not him!”
“Zoro… s…stop. You're hurting me.”
“Then fight back! I know you can. You have before- broke my nose once, remember? Felt so bad that you made me my favorite soup for a week and pretended not to notice. Oh wait. That was the real Sanji.”
“I can’t fight you when I know you’re not in your right mind.”
“No? Not even for self preservation?”
He threw the impersonator against the wall with a heavy thud. Whoever slid down to the floor in a heap. He loomed over the slighter man, hunching close to his face. Grabbing it he forced the fake blue eyes to look at him.
“Now I’m going to ask this just one more time…” He squeezed hard enough to bruise. “Who the Hell are you?”
Tears started to run down the blond’s cheeks. It was such a nice try…
“What am I supposed to say, Zoro? What? You won’t believe me… You’ve finally lost it… I've lost you.”
Zoro punched the wall above his captive’s head. His fist was imbedded.
“Not the answer I wanted.” The swordsman pulled the fraud to his feet.
“I don’t know the answer you want!” the imposter said with a wince. “I don’t know where this is coming from!” He struggled against Zoro’s hold on his arm. “Please, Zoro!”
The swordsman tightened the iron grasp he had on the fake’s arm enough for the man to wince. “It seems you don’t know much of anything!”
He shoved them up against the nearest counter, pinning the slighter man against the surface with his body.
“Zoro… let me call the doctor. He can find out what’s wrong okay? He’ll solve all of-
Zoro clasped a hand over the other’s mouth interrupting the plea. “You look like him. You sound like him. But you’re not him.” Tears from the imposter’s eyes were beginning to make his hand itch. “You tell me the truth now. What is going on here? What really happened to me three days ago?” He let his hand fall.
“I’ve told you all I know already… There was a fight in a bar and-”
Zoro slammed his hand down on the counter beside them. “DAMN IT, GIVE ME THE FUCKING TRUTH BEFORE I STRANGLE YOU!” he screamed into the face before him.
“That IS! God, Zoro, why can’t you understand…”
“Fine. You say I was injured by a blow to the back of the head in a fight?”
“You were.”
“Then why didn’t you have my back?”
“I-”
“You ALWAYS have my back! And why aren’t we attacked for our bounties? And how come there are no fights at my dojo? And how come no one challenges me for my “title” and how come your fucking dishes are fucking BACKWARDS?!”
“Stop it! Just STOP IT!” the blond screamed.
Zoro took hold of his other arm and shook him. “Tell me! TELL ME!” he screamed, “FUCKING TELL ME!” He didn’t care if the blond’s head hit the wall behind him, he didn’t care if the man was screaming, hell, begging for him to stop. How DARE he, how dare this-- this no-one make him feel the things he did?!
“Stop… Zoro… please. I don’t know what you're talking about. I’m so… you’re hurting me.”
He let go.
This man didn’t know. He really didn’t know. The impersonator slid to the ground like a rag doll folding up into himself.
“You're just a pawn aren’t you?” He nudged the still form. “You don’t know anything. That’s what the distractions were for, 'cause you didn’t know. You’re a lie. It’s all a lie”
“Zoro-”
“NO! Stop talking. Stop talking with his voice and his lips. I can’t take it. So help me I’ll kill you.”
“If you’d just-”
But Zoro was done wasting time with this…this…thing.
“STOP!” he yelled at the top of his voice, “Stop talking to me through him!” He pointed at the poor excuse for a Sanji. “Show yourself! I know you're watching! I know you're watching your sick little experiment or whatever the fuck this is! Come talk to me!”
“Zoro? There’s no one there.”
He took a piece of the shattered plates off the floor and threw it at the wall beside the imposter’s head. “No more from you.”
He turned back to his real enemy. “Come out now! If you’re a man you’ll admit when you’ve been found out! Damn you!”
He stilled as he heard the click clack of expensive shoes on hard wood floors. Turning toward the swinging doors he waited. They opened easily, like whoever pushed them did it everyday.
“Zoro, Zoro…” the man said disapprovingly. “What a mess you've made… And after all the trouble I went through to make you your perfect world.” He bent down, lifting the blond's chin up with his hand. “You’re breaking your toys. I never would have expected such childlike behavior from you.”
Zoro narrowed his eyes at the man.
“Yashin. Forgive me if I’m not surprised.”
Rating: From PG to R: This Chapter: PG-13
Words: 2,950
Pairings: Zoro/Sanji
Summery: “Because happy is what happens when all your dreams come true…well, isn't it?” -Wicked
Warnings: Everything from fluff to angst.
Spoilers: Takes place between Skypiea and Water 7, so…
Disclaimer: Sadly, I don’t own One Piece
Notes: Loosely based on and titled after an episode of Batman The Animated Series. If you’ve seen this episode…shhhhh…
Huge thank you: To bronzetigress for being my super-beta and putting up with my ellipses abuse and lack of commas. Thanks again my dear!!!!
Chapter 9
“That’s not the question,” Zoro said, voice laced with shock
“Then what is?” the other pressed gently.
“What’s wrong with you?”
Sanji leaned back a bit in surprise. “Me? You think there’s something wrong with me?”
“Know. I know there’s something wrong with you.”
“Okay… tell me.”
Sanji was talking to him like he was a crazy person, and he didn’t like it. He wasn’t losing his mind or anything. If anyone was acting strange it was the cook!
“You with that girl. What happened?”
“What do you mean? You saw the whole thing. She fell, I helped her up, nothing to it.”
Zoro shook his head. “No. Don’t you remember? On the Merry? The way you acted whenever Nami or Robin were around? With the annoying sugary drinks? And the endless proclamations of love? How did this girl get away with a friendly wave? Don’t you remember all the girls that had to slap you after you only walked by them?”
Sanji was silent for a moment as if he was letting everything sink in. “So. You think something’s wrong because I didn’t go head over heels for that girl?”
“It’s not like you. It’s not. You always act like a dope around girls.”
“I can’t believe this.” He paused, mouth opening and closing like he was searching for words. “You're saying I could never grow as a person? Zoro.” He looked away almost like he was disappointed.
“I’m not saying that. It’s just. Five years seems a little fast for something like that.”
“What? So you would rather have me gallivanting around after every pretty face I see? You’d like that Zoro? Would that be normal to you? Should I chase after men too?”
“NO!” Zoro jerked up off the rock. “It’s... nothing. Okay. It just caught me off guard I guess.”
“You know-” the cook got to his feet. “Fuck you.”
“WHAT?”
“FUCK. YOU. ASSHOLE.”
“How are you mad at me? Why?”
“How can you even ask that? You're fucking disappointed that I’m loyal to you! You’re surprised that I can change! The HELL!”
“That’s not it! It’s just not like you not to look!”
“Well sorry for being better than you think I should be!”
How did this happen? How was he the one on defense now? The whole thing was tilted- up was down, right was left, nothing seemed okay anymore.
“Sanji, just calm down. I wasn’t expecting it okay? It was kind of a big difference. The old me saw it as change in motion, it happened slowly for him, so I’m sure he -er- I didn’t really notice, but with me, this me, it was all at once. You can understand that, right?” He tugged on the blond's arm. “Right?”
He didn’t like it, the lies that were falling off his tongue, but it simply wasn’t right. He needed more time to figure this out… This time a simple explanation from Sanji wasn’t going to cut it. Especially when Sanji himself was the mystery. He wanted to believe the blond, but his instincts had never failed him yet. So now he just needed to observe Sanji, be on the lookout for anything else that seemed out of place- and it would be a heck of a lot easier if Sanji didn’t hate him.
Blue eyes shifted to his own. They looked tired.
“I guess…” Sanji said quietly.
“I like that I have you all to myself, really,” Zoro pressed, tugging the other man in for an embrace. “I wouldn’t want it any other way.”
He felt the blond warily wrap long arms around his back.
“I thought, back there, that something else had happened to you.” Sanji laid his head on Zoro’s shoulder. “You were just standing there staring at nothing, and I thought that maybe the rest of your mind had left too.”
“Don’t worry about that. I’m all right. Now,” he pulled back, “let's put that window in shall we?”
They walked the rest of the way in silence, but the swordsman still held the cook’s hand. His mind hadn’t slowed down, still thinking of possible explanations. He didn’t want to think of the negative. If Sanji couldn’t be trusted then what of everything else he’d said that Zoro took for truth? What about the fates of the rest of the crew, the outcome of his dream, their relationship? And what would Sanji get out of lying anyway?
There were too many questions and not enough answers.
“Here we are,” Sanji stated as the cook’s building came into sight. The owner unlocked the door then held it open for Zoro so he could bring in the glass. The swordsman grabbed a hammer from where he left it the other night and began to pry off the wooden boards, handing the panels back to Sanji. The cook wanted to keep them in case something else should happen and was putting them in the back shed. It was quiet while they worked, as Zoro thought. He was handing the third board to the blond when Sanji spoke.
“You seem distracted.”
“I…I just don’t want to get any marks on your window is all.”
“You’re lying.” Not a question- just a statement.
“Take the board away will you?” Not an answer- just a question.
Sanji stared at him a moment longer, then moved away silently and obviously bothered.
Zoro sighed. Lying wasn’t his thing either. Usopp had that honor.
When the cook came back he took the last panel without words and then disappeared somewhere inside the large restaurant while Zoro put the window in. He worked efficiently, kneeling on the fitted seat, seeing as it wasn’t that hard to install. He’d helped Usopp enough to know basic fitting. Tools and his hands were very familiar to Zoro; tools didn’t have emotions, tools didn’t have mood swings, tools didn’t make him think this much. Yes. Tools made sense to the swordsman. He pulled his mind back as his hands worked, running over the events from the last three days that didn’t make sense…
On the top of the list was Yashin. He had to be involved somehow… something more than just throwing rocks, but Zoro couldn’t figure out the connection yet.
Next: The key and lock of the dojo. There was no way it had been unlocked before Sanji breezed in.
Then: Sanji’s neglecting to call the girls by their “respectful titles”.
And on that same night Sanji never did get to finish the explanation of why they never got attacked over their bounties. That was when the window broke.
Zoro stopped all movement, staring straight ahead at the half finished window. Was it all a distraction? To get his mind off the question… If it was it had worked. He had been so concerned about making sure everything was ‘safe’ that it had slipped his mind.
And then the little girl, Becky,
“Oh you’re being silly Sensei! You know there aren’t any fights at school!”
Which he knew was wrong. It’s inevitable to have fights and then Sanji…
“Some times I tune you out…maybe it happened on one of those days.”
Which took them completely off topic.
The hammer fell to the floor.
This afternoon… the girl. Before it happened he had spotted Yashin hiding behind a booth. But when he noticed the man for the first time he had been standing out in the open, like he wanted to be seen. This time he wasn’t supposed to catch him, and they ran into the girl! Another distraction?
A bad one.
One that may have ruined everything for them… because it was then that Sanji made the biggest mistake. He wasn’t himself.
Oh Fuck.
Zoro jumped down from the window seat and sped into the kitchen. He wrenched the faucet open, letting cool water pour into his hands. He splashed it onto his face repeatedly.
Oh Fuck.
Spinning around he tried to catch his racing breath. His gaze fell on the dishes that had been left out since that night. Something had bothered him about those too.
“Fuck, Zoro, how hard is it to put dishes away?
From the Merry… he had been forced into helping Sanji with the dishes
“If you have them going all different ways you’ll never use your space to it’s full potential.”
“Great. Didn’t know you had yet another fun compulsion shit- cook. The longer I know you the crazier you get.”
“Just put all the plates in like this, dumbass. It’s not brain surgery, even you should be able to do it right.” Sanji proceeded to pluck all the plates that Zoro had placed from the rack and set them back in a pristine order. “The curved side of the plate goes towards the middle and the back of the plate to the back of the rack. See? I managed to fit three more plates in there than you.”
“They're fucking plates.”
“I don’t come over to you and tell you how to wash your swords do I?”
“I don’t ‘wash’ my swords, I polish them.”
“It’s the same thing.” Eye roll.
“NO IT’S NOT!”
And then they fought about that for a while, but Zoro came to understand that when you helped Sanji with the dishes you had to put the plates in “properly” or he’d bitch about it for the duration of the chore. For the sake of sanity everyone just did it his way. And as Zoro looked at those dishes he finally realized what was wrong about them.
The plates were backwards. The curved part of the plate was facing the back of the rack, the flat towards the middle.
Completely backwards.
He backed away from them like they were poison. No… Something so specific like that… There was no way. It was a tick, something that was imbedded into Sanji’s brain. He couldn’t just change it. The chances that he managed to change two such dominant personality traits was like Luffy deciding that he really didn’t need to eat that much. It wasn’t possible. None of this was possible.
He should have known.
It was too good, too perfect. How could he expect that all his dreams would come true? It was as if his fantasies had come to life. This meant that he didn’t beat Mihawk; that that dojo wasn’t his; that Sanji wasn’t his husband after all; that all of this wasn’t…real.
IT WASN’T REAL.
Oh Fuck. Where was he? What was going on? He looked at the plates and a flash of rage struck him. Lashing his arm out he knocked the whole lot of them to the floor watching the china break into tiny shards on the linoleum. Why should he care?
They weren’t real…this place wasn’t real. He grabbed a stool and tossed it against the far wall. It broke on impact.
“Son of a bitch!” he yelled throwing another chair, “What is happening to me!?”
The sound of running footsteps stopped him in his rampage. Sanji was coming.
NO.
Not Sanji. Something or someone pretending to be his nakama. Someone pretending to be the man that he- It wasn't Sanji.
“Zoro!” The blond burst through the doors. He took a quick glance around his kitchen and the panting swordsman in front of him. “Zoro? What’s wrong?”
Zoro slowly turned his head to glare at the thing pretending to be Sanji. “You know,” he hissed.
Sanji seemed taken aback. There was a slight pause before the answer came. “Zoro… You’re scaring me.” He took a tentative step forward, slowly, like he was approaching a wild animal. “What’s going on inside your head?” Pale hands reached out for his face but the swordsman no longer felt any attraction. He sneered at them and pulled back.
“Get the Hell away from me.”
“What’s wrong? What did I do? Tell me.”
“You!” he laughed, “You…”
The blond moved towards him- and Zoro backhanded him to the floor. His hand made a startlingly loud smacking noise as it made contact with the imposter’s face.
“Zoro!” Whoever looked up from the floor, hand pressed to his cheek, staring at the swordsman in shock. It was hard to look at him; that face with that expression on it. He had never struck the cook like that the whole time he’d known him- never with that much hate and malice. But that fragile looking body on the floor wasn’t his Sanji.
“Who the Hell are you?” He growled stepping closer crushing the china shards with every movement.
“You know, I’m your husband, I’m Sanji, Zoro- AHH!”
The swordsman yanked the blond up by the hair and stared hard into his face. “You are NOT Sanji. Stop saying you are! You are not him!”
“Zoro… s…stop. You're hurting me.”
“Then fight back! I know you can. You have before- broke my nose once, remember? Felt so bad that you made me my favorite soup for a week and pretended not to notice. Oh wait. That was the real Sanji.”
“I can’t fight you when I know you’re not in your right mind.”
“No? Not even for self preservation?”
He threw the impersonator against the wall with a heavy thud. Whoever slid down to the floor in a heap. He loomed over the slighter man, hunching close to his face. Grabbing it he forced the fake blue eyes to look at him.
“Now I’m going to ask this just one more time…” He squeezed hard enough to bruise. “Who the Hell are you?”
Tears started to run down the blond’s cheeks. It was such a nice try…
“What am I supposed to say, Zoro? What? You won’t believe me… You’ve finally lost it… I've lost you.”
Zoro punched the wall above his captive’s head. His fist was imbedded.
“Not the answer I wanted.” The swordsman pulled the fraud to his feet.
“I don’t know the answer you want!” the imposter said with a wince. “I don’t know where this is coming from!” He struggled against Zoro’s hold on his arm. “Please, Zoro!”
The swordsman tightened the iron grasp he had on the fake’s arm enough for the man to wince. “It seems you don’t know much of anything!”
He shoved them up against the nearest counter, pinning the slighter man against the surface with his body.
“Zoro… let me call the doctor. He can find out what’s wrong okay? He’ll solve all of-
Zoro clasped a hand over the other’s mouth interrupting the plea. “You look like him. You sound like him. But you’re not him.” Tears from the imposter’s eyes were beginning to make his hand itch. “You tell me the truth now. What is going on here? What really happened to me three days ago?” He let his hand fall.
“I’ve told you all I know already… There was a fight in a bar and-”
Zoro slammed his hand down on the counter beside them. “DAMN IT, GIVE ME THE FUCKING TRUTH BEFORE I STRANGLE YOU!” he screamed into the face before him.
“That IS! God, Zoro, why can’t you understand…”
“Fine. You say I was injured by a blow to the back of the head in a fight?”
“You were.”
“Then why didn’t you have my back?”
“I-”
“You ALWAYS have my back! And why aren’t we attacked for our bounties? And how come there are no fights at my dojo? And how come no one challenges me for my “title” and how come your fucking dishes are fucking BACKWARDS?!”
“Stop it! Just STOP IT!” the blond screamed.
Zoro took hold of his other arm and shook him. “Tell me! TELL ME!” he screamed, “FUCKING TELL ME!” He didn’t care if the blond’s head hit the wall behind him, he didn’t care if the man was screaming, hell, begging for him to stop. How DARE he, how dare this-- this no-one make him feel the things he did?!
“Stop… Zoro… please. I don’t know what you're talking about. I’m so… you’re hurting me.”
He let go.
This man didn’t know. He really didn’t know. The impersonator slid to the ground like a rag doll folding up into himself.
“You're just a pawn aren’t you?” He nudged the still form. “You don’t know anything. That’s what the distractions were for, 'cause you didn’t know. You’re a lie. It’s all a lie”
“Zoro-”
“NO! Stop talking. Stop talking with his voice and his lips. I can’t take it. So help me I’ll kill you.”
“If you’d just-”
But Zoro was done wasting time with this…this…thing.
“STOP!” he yelled at the top of his voice, “Stop talking to me through him!” He pointed at the poor excuse for a Sanji. “Show yourself! I know you're watching! I know you're watching your sick little experiment or whatever the fuck this is! Come talk to me!”
“Zoro? There’s no one there.”
He took a piece of the shattered plates off the floor and threw it at the wall beside the imposter’s head. “No more from you.”
He turned back to his real enemy. “Come out now! If you’re a man you’ll admit when you’ve been found out! Damn you!”
He stilled as he heard the click clack of expensive shoes on hard wood floors. Turning toward the swinging doors he waited. They opened easily, like whoever pushed them did it everyday.
“Zoro, Zoro…” the man said disapprovingly. “What a mess you've made… And after all the trouble I went through to make you your perfect world.” He bent down, lifting the blond's chin up with his hand. “You’re breaking your toys. I never would have expected such childlike behavior from you.”
Zoro narrowed his eyes at the man.
“Yashin. Forgive me if I’m not surprised.”