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It hits him one night. Like a salvo of hail the memories pelt Zoro, striking every sleeping nerve. He lays awake, gasping, a strenuous labor as his lungs grind out every horrible, terrible rasp.
It hits him one night, in the midst of a darkness shadowed by the same moon, white curtains shifting in an open, summer window.
In his past life he’d been a pirate.
He lays awake staring at the ceiling, blinking back the suddenness of it all, hands grasping the sheets in sweaty clumps. Above him the blue-washed ceiling stares back. He doesn’t know half of those people (how can he?), the man with the bulbous shoulders and shiny, bolted nose— the girl with too many limbs mister swordsman, you okay?
A woman that yells, smacking him with a wide, freckled grin.
He doesn’t know half of those people, but he recognizes two, just two.
He doesn’t know a thing about swords, doesn’t know a thing about kendo. But he thinks maybe there’ll be this innate memory to him, something that transcends lives. So he goes to the gym after class and picks through the kendo club’s equipment in the spare room.
It’s foreign in his grip, and he ends up smacking his knee after the third swing. He tosses the wood aside in anger, a sharp clatter against the gym floor as it follows, glaring at his soft palms. For the first time, the smoothness of the creases bothers him, the pads of his thumb clean and pressed into the shape of a pencil.
Two girls pass by the door, sipping milk out of cartons.
And then a thought strikes him funny. If he remembers, then maybe they will too. He’s never spoken to Luffy before, hadn’t really had any reason to. He was younger, Luffy, and not very popular.
He finds him out there on the stone benches, picking at the painted plastic in his lap. Zoro paces about first under the shade of the main office, hands shoved as far as they’ll go into his pockets, the school uniform flush against his skin. He thinks on that kid with the loud laugh, the one with the rubber smile.
The Luffy here plucks colored bits from a baggie, the sun baking the back of his neck. It makes him feel funny.
In his past life he’d been a pirate, and there his captain was over there alone, always alone.
“Luffy.”
The kid glances up at him, blinking in mild interest. “Yes?”
Zoro swallows, heart thumping. “Luffy, let’s go eat.”
Luffy looks at him oddly then, picking at a paper bag next to him. “I’ve already got food here so. . .”
“Ah, alright then, then I’ll go get something and you wait here.”
He leaves school grounds with three bucks, ten cents too short for anything good. When he comes back with half a sandwich Luffy isn’t there, and his stomach drops a little.
There’d been this place, a hot place. The teacher gets to talking about Africa, about them crocodiles there in the Nile and Zoro jerks so hard his books fly and hit the desk next to him. He stares at that desk, the room quiet though he notices it none.
That’s where Sanji used to sit, before he’d dropped out.
Where was he now? He’d worked— he’d worked somewhere? It’s been almost a year, he can barely remember the line of his jaw.
The teacher asks him to collect himself and so he mutters an apology and reaches over for his books, the pages bent under the spine.
After school he rides his bike down along the road with the outside kitchens and boilers. He might’ve fallen out of luck himself, but maybe Sanji still had an ounce of talent to him. Maybe he was in there somewhere, brushing butter on bread.
The construction workers holler about, some of them playing music as they set the stones and paste.
He jumps his bike over the wires of their electronics, a good few of them yelling. He’d just have to go in and check every single one of them, ask after the boy. It was a small enough town. His lips twitch.
To be born again in the same prefecture, on the same side of the mountains in the same country— surely that long nosed boy and the mikan girl, surely they’d be somewhere far away, never knowing of each other and them.
And the deer, what of him? Hunted already, maybe? Mounted on a wall somewhere— he’s not that Zoro, he’s still himself, but there’s something that gently tugs such gory thoughts from his mind.
No one’s heard of him, no one’s had ear of a blonde delinquent. He buys pickled plum from the last place, wondering if he’d ever liked the shitty cook’s—
He stops, teeth not yet breaking the sticky rice. Ten minutes, shitty cook, just ten minutes.
He blocks the sun, hands to his eyes as he dips his head back, breathing in the air of this world. That Zoro is not him. He’s here, now, in the Minamiaizu district of Fukushima. There is no place called the Grand Line. There is no such thing as a— as a devil fruit.
But he knows he was real, that Zoro, he knows because the memories are so intimate, despite the blurry edges. He removes his hand, blinking harshly into the sun. He is here now, outside the grocer of Minamiaizu.
The workers shout as something backfires.
Minamiaizu. Summer. 1930.
He tries to forget it, but the dreams are no longer dreams. His mind’s gone lazy, creativity is lost on him. Only the memories of a time that doesn’t exist.
There’s a place of snow, a castle on a hill.
He visits Nara on the weekend, feeding the deer. The Great Depression leaks into the waters of the world, trade barriers coaxing unrest. Militaristic notions influence their teachings. The hours have been extended, the sun both higher and lower.
He finally sees him there then, Sanji. He’s shirtless with a leather cap.
He’s a construction worker. Most construction workers nowadays were the zainichi, the Koreans, but there he is smoking with them.
He hasn’t gotten any proper protection to him, hands digging through rubble for something in particular as he puffs out a few words here and there towards the guys that dig instead through rice and pickled fish.
He feels sick suddenly, his bike falling as he dodges a tiny car on his way over, the horn trailing off into the distance.
“Stop! Stop doing that to your hands!”
Sanji does stop then, eyes wide in mild alarm. Some of the guys are staring but he doesn’t care. “Okay,” he’s saying, “okay, just, calm down.”
Those are important to you.
Zoro grabs them, cuts and bruises and rock dust lining the folds of his palm. Sanji is looking at him like he’s gone loony, and sure, maybe he has, but he shouldn’t be hurting his hands like that.
“Do I know you?”
“Zoro.” He says it with a pained confidence. Surely, out of everyone, this stubborn bastard would remember? Just touching him like this, sharing warmth on a muggy, summer day, brings back a flood of memories from that life. Memories that aren’t his, but his to share all the same.
Sanji doesn’t get it though, brow cocked. “Cool, well, you seem like a good guy but I’m just looking for my coins so. . .”
That’s how Luffy had sounded when he’d ditched him. Zoro’s hands fly away, dropping Sanji’s as quick as he can.
They’re running through drills, and Zoro sees Sanji out there walking by the gate, cap at hand as he smokes at the sky.
Zoro decides to leave it at that.
He claps his hands together between each push. He takes his anger out on the ground. They'll have them practicing with guns, the instructor says, orders from the government. The girls' academies in Tokyo have already started. The world is going to shit.
“Hey, you.”
Sanji crooks a finger at him. Zoro pauses by the gate.
“Well, c’mon then.”
So he follows him, fanning himself as the sun licks its way into his shirt. Some of the students watch him leave.
Sanji finds the shade of a crevice between two buildings, dropping atop a crate as he watches Zoro with masked interest.
So Zoro just stands there, looking about as people wander by.
“You,” Sanji starts, pointing his smoke at him, “you’ve been watching me a lot lately. Now, look here, the Edo Period might’ve encouraged those samurais that preferred men over women, but these people now, these people around here, they’re not really into that. You keep staring at me and those construction workers will turn from teasing me to suspecting me.”
Oh shit. Oh shit.
Zoro has his hands out in a surprised manner, eyes wide. “No, wait— no! That’s not it at all, what the hell.”
Sanji’s lips merely twitch. “Then what is it?”
I’ve got the memories of a past life bottled up in my head and it’s tainting everything I see. “You look like someone I know.”
“Me,” Sanji laughs then, “I’m a pretty singular looking dude. Ain’t many that look even remotely like me. You do realize, right, that my ma was a westerner? Not many of those in Japan right now, especially on this side of the mountain. Not with such strong nationalism spreading about these days. She left, the weak bitch.”
He puffs a bit more then at that cigarette.
Zoro had had green hair in a past life, but Sanji was still just as blonde-haired and blue-eyed. Sanji was still the same, though his brow was a bit more tame. The other boy’s staring at him with wide eyes now, smoke slack between his lips.
Zoro doesn’t realize he’s got his fingers in that hair until it’s too late.
He feels the heat in his cheeks like a furnace.
“You sure you’re not into that,” Sanji seems to try and joke, voice breaking a little.
Zoro yanks his hand away as if that bright, golden head had been the damned sun itself.
“Can you cook?” He’d promised himself, no matter what, that he’d ask.
Sanji huffs. “I’m a shit cook.”
Sanji seems to find him amusing. Or maybe he’s just curious. But he stops by sometimes, telling Zoro about the jobs he’s done, about his father and how he’d met the blonde woman from Bordeaux.
And Zoro lies.
He doesn’t mean to at first, but his tongue’s got this crazy idea to substitute his father with that Zoro from another world. He tells him about the swords, about all the places that Zoro had been— he gives it some realistic favors, doesn’t mention the rabbit three people tall or the men that turn into sand. He’s always watching, Zoro, always watching for a glimmer of remembrance.
It’s never there.
Zoro comes to wonder if Sanji will humor him, just a little. This was a boring town tied down by a hungry empire. Surely the boy could use some creative favors.
And humor him he does.
"Pirates?"
Zoro sucks on his straw intently. Sanji is on break, powdered in rock dust as he wipes clean streaks across his cheeks. And then he cracks this impossibly white smile, and Zoro's eyes find the scabbing parts of those hands.
"I knew you were a bit off," he's chuckling, "but sure, okay. Pirates."
"You're not gonna call me crazy?"
Sanji laughs around his cup, throat bobbing with juice. "You're fun, so if I gotta entertain your conspiracies or religious conundrums then I'm game. No need to get pretentious about it. So, tell me oh fair one, what life have we been humbly recycled from?"
Zoro takes a good minute or two to think about. Sure, Sanji was humoring him now, but he might get tired of it later, of Zoro's broken ramblings that don't make any sense, of the red giant in that Halloween park and the lanky surgeon with tattoos.
"How about we start with me," Sanji seems to consider, "what was I like? Adored no doubt."
"You were a pervert."
Sanji chokes a bit, gasping as he thumps his chest. "Yeah," he manages to laugh, "is that so?"
"You," Zoro treads carefully, "you liked cooking. And you had this family- they weren't the good sort."
"Oh look," Sani rolls his eyes, "the gods clearly had no imagination to them, nor any mercy. We could be brothers, me and him. Share a shitty father or two.”
Zoro is quiet for a while, before Sanji raises his brow a bit. "Well? What about you then?"
"I-" was really cool and confident and strong and useful, "I was very different.”
He tells him instead of Nami, the mikan girl with the swollen chest, and Usopp, the liar with the warrior's heart. Sanji seems to like the idea of Tony Tony Chopper, likes that he's a doctor and a monster.
Zoro feels a bit uncomfortable in a house twice as big as his own.
“I don’t know if I wanna hear anymore," Sanji snorts, rambling on as he burns the rice, "clearly the navigator was using me, the little shit. Just like that Bordeaux woman. They're like leeches, ain't nothing good about them lipstick smiles. You wanna know why they prefer red? Blood of their enemies, that's why."
He really seems to have it out for his mother. "You won't ever get married with an attitude like that," Zoro chides mockingly, though his voice fades when Sanji huffs quietly: "Ain't no marrying for people like me."
Sanji's glancing back at Zoro then, a bit wary. "You're not going to freak out, are you?"
Zoro shrugs it off, and Sanji's shoulders seem to settle a little.
His cooking is shit, but that grounds Zoro a little, yanks him back into this world. He can't deny the disappointment though. That Zoro really had seemed to like those little silver tray treats.
"Okay, so riddle me this."
Sanji likes to touch him. It's in the smaller manners, but Zoro's taken a notice to it. Sanji yawns and wraps his body around the student, chin to his shoulder as they watch the troops march through down below.
"What about the names? No way we retain our names through all these recycled lives."
"Why not," Zoro murmurs, watching the formations.
"Oh, c'mon," Sanji laughs in his ear, "there wasn't even a Japan in that world. So how could I possibly be a Sanji."
"What about my name now," Zoro tilts his head back a little, his mouth so close to Sanji's, though the boy doesn't seem to notice.
"It is a pretty fucking weird name. Your dad like 'em blonde like mine?" Sanji does look at him then, eyes dropping to his mouth briefly.
Zoro snorts, turning away. "See, it's weird right? Even though I'm here my name never changes. Something convinced my mother to name me such a ridiculously foreign thing."
"A book, maybe," Sanji reasons. "Or word of mouth."
"Doesn't matter," Zoro whispers, "what is, is, and what was, was. It always works out in the end, doesn’t it? I will always be Zoro, and you will always be Sanji, even if we don't always look it.”
There's a shack out there that the plantlife snacks on. Sanji takes him one day, says no one should know about it, not all the out here. Zoro toys with the greenery that sneaks in through the floorboards.
"My mother," Sanji wets his lips, "she was the one that said that I was okay, that this," he motions to himself, "was okay." It's not often Sanji talks about it, so Zoro quiets down and listens carefully.
"She said the Revolution in her home country fixed that, fixed all those terrible laws from the Ancien Régime. She said it was okay, and then she left me here to go back there."
Sanji's jaw is tense, jutting out a bit as he glares out the empty window.
"I'm glad," Zoro says.
Sanji's expression is wild, the colors of his face livid as he whirls on the boy, before realization strikes him and everything just goes lax in shock. Zoro twirls the plant about his finger. He doesn't regret it one bit. He's glad Sanji stayed.
"Don't say something so dangerous," Sanji whispers.
Zoro huffs. "What, you really think they'll come after you? I think this country has bigger problems at the moment than your apparent taste in men."
Sanji huffs softly, and maybe he thinks Zoro can't hear him, or maybe he's hoping he can. "That's not the danger here."
The field out back is wet from yesterday's rain.
"Zoro," Sanji says suddenly. Zoro thinks his breathing's gotten a bit heavier with that name. "Zoro," Sanji repeats quietly, carefully, "do you like that me? I mean, you know, in the Edo-Samurai-way if you get my meaning."
Zoro's ears burn, the grass now cool against the heated flesh. "I don't think he did—"
"No, I mean you, right now. Whenever you talk about him you get so excited. You try to hide it, I think, but you don't talk about anyone else like the way you talk about him."
Because it hurt. But not just Sanji, no, but Luffy too. It hurt. That wasn't his life, and he wasn’t that Zoro, but there was a pain all the same. Like he was being deprived of something. Like it'd all been ended prematurely. He feels as if he shouldn't be here right now, as if it weren't his time yet and yet here he was.
"No," he murmurs just as quietly, "not like that. He hadn't either. Doesn't mean I don't miss him, though."
It takes Sanji a moment before he's chuckling softly. "You're making me kinda miss him too. That Sanji sounds like he had his shit together. In that world," Sanji suddenly starts up, rolling over onto his side as he peered over at Zoro anxiously, "in that world, would I have been flayed for kissing you?"
Zoro tenses up, whispering. "I don't think so."
"Do you think he'd mind, that Zoro?"
"Probably not."
Sanji leans in ever closer, his words tickling Zoro's lips. "And that Sanji?"
"Probably," Zoro breathes.
He wonders, as Sanji flattens the grass by his head with his hand, mouth warm on his, if this would have been anything those two would have ever done.
No, he decides as his eyes flutter closed, no. This was him, this was all him, right now, right here. His hands tremble, Sanji leaning over him, lips parting wetly, lids heavy.
"What about this? Do you mind this?"
Zoro shakes his head mutely.
Sanji's hands are rough and calloused as they scrape along his stomach, riding his shirt up. "This isn't okay," Sanji's murmuring, "if anyone finds out. . ."
Doesn't seem to stop him though, elbows shaking as he dips to hover ever closer to Zoro, as if still making that fatal decision. "I don't know anything about that Sanji, dunno if he really disliked you like you seem to think, but, but I think this Sanji likes you, so if you'll settle for that then," he wets his lips, "then I suppose you'll have another dirty little secret to keep."
He remembers how Luffy died.
It strangles him one night, and he lays there, arm thrown over his eyes, cheeks hot and wet.
He wonders how long it'll be, until he remembers how he himself had gone. He doesn't want to remember, because he knows it'll all end with that.
He finds Sanji the next day, and he knows he must look terrible.
Sanji doesn't seem to mind the stares when he grasps Zoro's face between his hands so suddenly. "What happened?"
He'll tell him it's not real. He'll finally get tired with it if Zoro admits it's the dying memories that have him this way. Already it's starting to fade, as if the fluke were being unwoven and threaded back together into a proper continuum. As if the Gods themselves had made themselves known through his pain. They would have him cleansed of what was not rightfully his.
"C'mon," Sanji tugs at him then. He ignores the call of the other workers, might lose his job even as he leads Zoro away. They find that shack and Sanji pushes down and down and down until he's on his back and the other boy is cradling him into the floor, hunched over him protectively.
"Come back to me, here. I know— I know this world ain't nothing special. It's a terrible place to be sometimes, with little to make up for it. But it's our world and it's the only one you belong in. If you hate it so much then change it, Zoro, do something about it. I don't mind whatever the hell is wrong with you—" there's a wetness to his shirt then, "I really don't, because I can't read. Did you know? The words get all fucked up, they keep moving around and I don't know what the hell I'm looking at. But when you talk about it, that place, I—" he's shaking his head, burying his face further into Zoro's shoulder. "I like you. I like you a lot. I like you plenty more than that Zoro or Sanji. So don't leave me."
Zoro's hands find that trembling back, utterly taken aback. "How the hell am I supposed to leave you? It's just memories, Sanji, I can't go there. They're not even mine."
"But your mind can," Sanji whispers, "and I'm afraid one day it won't come back."
Sanji picks his head up, leaning back on the haunches of his feet, shiny trails streaking his dusty face.
“Listen I, I don’t know much other than what you told me. I’m sorry Zoro, I’m sorry that I don’t remember him. I have no feelings for Luffy or the witch or the deer that’s probably dead. But,” his lips are wavering, his nose wrinkling, “but I have feelings for you, and maybe the Sanji in that world had been ass, maybe your Zoro had been a shitty drunk, I don’t know, but I hope he doesn’t stop you— I hope he doesn’t stop you from, from liking me too.”
He’s crying, the idiot is crying.
Zoro tugs him down, kissing him as his fingers dig into his cheek bones, his thumb to the curve of his jaw.
He’s never seen him cry before, not in any life, here or then. He doesn’t like it.
“I swear if this is pity,” Sanji breathes but Zoro just tugs him back down, pressing harder.
And so Sanji curls about him once more, licking into his mouth feverishly. He’s still shaking a bit, a few muffled sobs wracking his shoulders and Zoro clings to him, hating, suddenly, that Zoro for dying as he had, alone in an empty hovel just like this one.
Zoro is dead. That Zoro has been dead. He remembers suddenly, as Sanji hovers above him, a small smile playing at his lips, affection in the dimples of his cheeks. He remembers the exhaustion of a wondrous life that had ended long ago.
"Zoro," Sanji murmurs, "Zoro I've never done this before."
He's got his hands to Zoro's uniform pants, fingers dipped cautiously below the waistband.
He doesn't know why, he really doesn't, but he's laughing and Sanji is glowering at him, cheeks burning. "Neither have I," Zoro says as if it's the most obvious thing in the world.
"I just, y'know," Sanji mumbles sheepishly, "wanna make it feel good for you."
Zoro shifts a bit, the air cool on his bare skin as he smiles softly. "Well, what about you?"
"I know I'll feel good," Sanji smiles honestly, "cause I'll be inside you of course."
That makes Zoro's stomach hot, a seeping warmth that spreads to the tips of his toes and they just kind of stare at each other then, breathing softly, quietly.
“Just,” Zoro swallows, “do how you think it should be done. You’ve at least got an idea, right?”
Sanji laughs, raspy and low. “Yeah, yeah I’ve got an idea.”
When he is finally seated inside, their flesh touching once more, Zoro forgets everything in that moment, remembering only that Sanji is bad at cooking, that Sanji dropped out of school, that Sanji worked with the Koreans because they understand what it’s like to be an outsider.
He gasps, the air leaving him as Sanji moves, sweaty above him, hips rolling, lips parted as he cages Zoro’s head in with his arms, licking at his ears and neck and lips.
It’s painful at first, but Zoro won’t admit it, won’t say a word because Sanji is murmuring nice things into his hairline, things that make his chest warm. His fingers find those boney shoulders a few good pushes later, legs twitching minutely with a pleasure that shocks his mind silent. His toes curl, his breathing noisy as Sanji chuckles into his skin.
He can’t stop those damned noises, hands scrambling for proper purchase, never happy with where they’ve settled, always moving as Sanji picks up speed, breathing heavily into the floorboards as he spills inside, hot and wet, a few good tugs twisting a release from Zoro.
He sees Luffy one day, right before enlistment. It's been years, but there he is marching off with the rest of them. He remembers a rubber smile, though he's not sure why.