Chapter Text
In the quiet stillness of that frost-covered forest, Zoro only had one thought on his mind: I should’ve brought my gloves.
Given the circumstances, the chill of the night air should’ve been low on his list of priorities, but he had always been more concerned with the troubles of the present than with the worries of the future.
After all, it would be difficult to participate in tomorrow’s wedding ceremony with frostbite. What was Hiyori supposed to place his ring on if he lost his ring finger? Not to mention the fact that he’d have to learn to adjust for the loss in his swordsmanship. He wasn’t interested in delaying his duel with his uncle over his title any longer than necessary—he was already 23, after all—and a missing finger would certainly do just that.
With a huff, he placed his hands in his coat pockets, fingers twitching when they brushed along the freezing ring of metal he’d tucked there earlier. Perhaps he’d been a little hasty to run away from the rehearsal with the wedding band in hand, but if he’d stayed any longer, then the irritating priest may have been met with the sharp side of his blades. It wasn’t like he’d been trying to mess up the vows, he just had little reason to memorize such trivial things. Mihawk and the Kozukis had been annoyed by his repeated blunders, certainly, but it was nothing compared to the ire of the priest. He seemed convinced that Zoro would be a failure of a husband if he failed at the altar, and even suggested that Zoro didn’t want to marry Hiyori in the first place.
The latter was admittedly true—it was a political match more than anything. The Kozukis had royal blood and social status, but their coffers had been drained by a drawn-out struggle with the Kurozumi bloodline. Mihawk, and therefore Zoro as his nephew, had plenty of money, but was lacking the social standing that would give him access to the best plots of land (and the most gothic of castles). The match worked well for both families, and the bride and groom themselves were under no illusion about the nature of their relationship. Perhaps Hiyori had seemed a bit disappointed when Zoro told her he had no intention of pursuing her romantically, but to her credit, she hardly pressed the matter beyond their initial meeting.
Still, Zoro didn’t mind the idea of being married, so long as it didn’t interfere with his promise to Kuina and his path to becoming the greatest swordsman. What he did mind was the pointless pageantry associated with the act of becoming married, hence his midnight jaunt into the wintry forest bordering the town. He would not flee from his responsibilities, of course, but he could at least flee from the overbearing priest and the stuffy chapel.
Ever since Kuina’s untimely death, these woods had acted as a second home to him. He would spend entire days there as a child, working himself to exhaustion and collapsing into the dirt, wondering how long it would be until the earth claimed his bones. Luffy would follow him sometimes, filling the silence with mindless chatter and offering his companionship without being asked. It was strange, Zoro found, how well the man could read people.
Luffy wasn’t there, though. He found social ceremonies even more chafing than Zoro did, and had quickly left the rehearsal as soon as he realized the banquet he’d been promised wouldn’t be held until the following evening. He didn’t understand why Zoro was marrying in the first place, but Zoro never really cared to explain his reasoning to his friend. He’d made a promise to his uncle to fulfill his duties as heir, so he would do so—simple as that.
Not to mention the fact that Mihawk had only pledged to train him if Zoro made such promises in the first place. Of course, Zoro didn’t bothering telling this to Luffy, thinking it another unimportant aspect of his upcoming nuptials.
As it was now, Zoro was well and truly alone, but for the ravens croaking in the darkness and the bugs crawling through detritus on the forest floor. It was sure to be a brief respite from the suffocating interactions of the evening, but a respite nonetheless. Out here, he was free to practice his vows without unforgiving clergymen and relatives tutting at his mistakes.
“With this hand, I will . . . I will fill your cup,” he muttered to himself, racking his brain to remember the stupid words the priest had tried to drill into his brain. “With this cup, I . . . I release your sorrows? No, that’s not it. Damn!”
A tortured groan left his lips at the grimness of the situation and the predictable failure of his memory. He found himself wandering deeper into the woods, the barren trees casting eerie shadows on the ground, as if to portend his doom despite his efforts. If only a wedding could be settled by a duel instead—Zoro had always been much more adept at fighting than using any kind of eloquent speech.
The crunch of his boots over the frozen ground slowed to a stop, his brain presenting him with a rather simple solution. Perhaps it wouldn’t work at tomorrow’s ceremony, but there, alone in that forest, he could treat his vows as an enemy combatant, ready to be sliced apart by his swords. It was all metaphorical, of course (a fact Mihawk would probably applaud him for), but he’d always found that he did his best thinking with a blade in his hand.
Wado ichimonji was unsheathed between one breath and the next, sliding from her saya like fog over a cliffside—smooth yet deadly. He shifted postures, arcing her through empty space and splitting the silence of the night air with a grin.
Looking around, he found himself in a grove of sorts, empty but for the gnarled roots at his feet and a twisted willow at its center, almost as if the other trees were keeping their distance. It was a mark of good fortune for him, though, as the lack of branches overhead allowed the clearing to be bathed in moonlight, illuminating the stage of his battle.
Inhale. Exhale.
He moved, lunging forward at an invisible enemy, Wado poised to cut them to ribbons. In his mind’s eye, a shadowy figure countered his strike, forcing them to jump back from each other and observe their opponent for weaknesses. Unlike before, in that dreary chapel, Zoro now felt much more poised to face his vows head on.
Spinning on his heel, he charged at his non-existent enemy, bringing his blade down. “With this hand,” the phantom sounds of clashing steel filled the brief pause, “I will lift your sorrows.”
He feinted right, slashing upwards and stopping his blade as if it was meeting resistance. “Your cup shall never be empty,” his feet found their way over the tree roots, walking backwards to cut deeper into the clearing, “for I will be your wine.”
His brain and body were completely in sync, falling into the natural rhythm of a duel, no matter how imaginary his opponent may have been. Any hesitation or concern fell to the wayside, and with it came the words that had been escaping him all day. Though unimportant in the moment, he knew in the back of his mind that he was reciting his wedding vows perfectly.
“With this candle,” guard, pass back, parry, strike, “I will light your way,” pivot, advance, “in the darkness.”
In a flurry of movement, he feigned overwhelming his invisible foe with both speed and power, pressing them until their back was against the willow tree at the center of the moonlit clearing. The warmth of his breath was visible in the cool air, but he was no longer bothered by the frigid weather.
He grinned, and in a single motion, slid Wado into the trunk of the tree as if stabbing through his opponent’s heart. His blade remained there when he released her tsuka to reach into his pocket, pulling out the golden wedding band and sinking to his knees among the brambles at the base of the willow.
“With this ring,” he breathed, grabbing a cluster of frosted-over branches like it was Hiyori’s delicate hand, “I ask you to be mine.”
The ice covering the plant burned his skin, but he held on tightly, sliding the ring over a spindly branch with a confident expression.
For a moment, utter silence blanketed the forest. The chorus of ravens, the wind passing through the woods, the quiet chirps of insects—all of it died the instant the jewelry settled at the base of the branch. The only sound was that of his heartbeat in his ears and the quickening of his breath.
Internal alarms blaring, he moved to stand, but it was too late.
The dead shrub wearing his ring curled around his wrist like a vice, layers of ice cracking and shattering with the motion. Before he could recover from the shock enough to move away, the ground began to shake beneath him, the frozen dirt resettling around . . . something. Next to his knee, another identical shrub sprouted from the earth, and suddenly, Zoro was very, very aware that it wasn’t a plant at all.
It was a human hand. A dead human hand.
Caked with mud and ice and covered by mottled purple skin, it had been perfectly disguised among the barren plants.
He sprang from its grasp with a curse, the fabric of his coat sleeve tearing from the force exerted by those thin, pale fingers. In his haste to back away, his heel caught on the edge of an exposed root, sending him sprawling back to the ground. After a few false starts, he gave up on stumbling to his feet and settled for simply dragging himself backwards from the tree, his eyes still glued in horror to the figure now halfway out of its burial ground.
It was hidden in the shadow cast by the willow, but Zoro could clearly see it twisting and jerking stiffly, trying to free itself from the frozen dirt. Before he could move to grab his swords and kill it—could it even be killed?—the corpse mumbled something and rocketed out of the ground, landing on its back with a thud.
Zoro sat motionless, watching in confused awe as the creature pressed itself into a seated position, shook the stiffness from its limbs, and ran its fingers through mussed hair to get the biggest clumps of soil out. It probably wasn’t particularly effective considering the creature’s hands were already caked in mud, but he was not about to interrupt the corpse to say so.
As if hearing his thoughts, the corpse turned, finally touched by a stream of moonlight that allowed Zoro to make out its features. It was a man dressed in a midnight-black suit that was torn and covered in dirt; rust-colored stains near his collar were distinctly recognizable as dried blood, implying a violent manner of death. The color seemed to have been leeched from every part of him, leaving only waxen, blue-tinged skin and blonde hair that hung lifelessly over half of his face. He was abnormally pale (as one might expect from a dead man), which made it all the more apparent that the only color left on him was the dazzling blue of his irises, untouched by the milky film that typically settled on the eyes of the dead. His features were sharp yet sunken where his skin clung to his bones, and his gaze was piercing where it narrowed in on Zoro’s fallen form.
“Some husband you are,” the corpse scoffed, voice raspy with disuse. His jaw made an audible click, as if the joint was settling back into place after death had loosened it. “What are you doing just sitting there while your groom is stuck in the ground?”
Zoro’s own jaw dropped open, simply staring at the dead man now glaring daggers at him. Can corpses talk? And did he just say husband?
“Close your mouth, you’ll catch flies,” the creature said tiredly, moving to stand. Zoro quickly followed, not wanting to be caught unaware by whatever happened next. “Ah, so you understand me then. Good. Though it is a bit rude to not talk to your husband, you know. Especially when we’ve just married.”
“Married?!” Zoro balked. “You—you’re dead!”
The corpse rolled its visible eye, exposing a bloodshot sclera. “Astute observation. Though, are you positive you aren’t the dead one? I’ve seen gravestones with less moss than you currently have growing on your scalp.”
“Wha—Pardon? This is my natural hair color.”
“There is nothing natural about that.”
“I—you!” He stuttered. “You are quite literally dead. You have no right to decide what’s natural when you are speaking and rotting at the same time,” he exhaled sharply, crossing his arms over his chest. “Why am I even speaking to you? Clearly the stress has gotten to my head. Or maybe—did I drink the wine earlier? Perhaps I’m drunk.”
“Oh, great,” the man sighed sarcastically, flicking chunks of dried mud from his hands. “Not only does my husband speak to himself, but apparently he’s also a drunkard.”
“Stop calling me that,” Zoro spat, storming over to the tree to pull Wado from its trunk and point it threateningly towards the corpse. “You are not real. You’re a dream, or a hallucination, o-or something, but we certainly aren’t married.”
“Then why is your ring on my finger?” He asked, holding up a slender hand to show off the golden band. “And why did you recite your vows so perfectly to me? Granted, the whole swordfighting thing was a bit odd, but I suppose it was romantic in its own way.”
Using Wado to gesture to the corpse’s finger, he growled, “Take that off. It doesn’t belong to you, nor do those vows. I thought I was talking to a damn tree, for God’s sake!”
“I would, but unfortunately,” the man made a show of pulling at the ring with all his might, but it remained in place, “it won’t come off. The rules of the dead are different from the rules of the living, you know. You made a binding vow with a dead man, so now you’re beholden to it—at least for the time being.”
For a moment, they only stared at each other. The sole sound was Zoro’s heavy breathing, as the dead man had no need for such unnecessary tasks. Abruptly, Zoro started laughing, startling both the corpse and the ravens that still stood as silent vigils in the barren trees.
Pivoting on his heel, he began walking into the darkness, sheathing his blade as he went. “I don’t know why I’m even entertaining this drivel. Clearly you’re not real, so I’ll be taking my leave. At least I’ll have an entertaining tale for Luffy when I wake.”
Behind him, he heard the corpse grumble something unsavory beneath his breath, but that was no longer his concern. He merely kept walking, quietly applauding his own subconscious mind for its creativity and the realism of his dreams. When he heard the muted sounds of approaching footsteps, he didn’t bother turning around.
“I don’t have time for this. If I convince you this is real, will you take responsibility for the vows you’ve just made?”
Zoro snorted an ugly laugh. “Sure, I am a man of my word, but also a man of reality.”
“Alright. Tell me if this feels real to you.”
The sound of running footsteps told him that he should probably turn around, but by the time he did, a heeled dress shoe was already colliding with his skull.
He stumbled, only vaguely aware of the pain and his growing dizziness, before everything went black.
—💀—
When he came to, Zoro was tucked into a velvet-covered booth of a bar, a piano melody softly playing in the background. He didn’t recognize the establishment, but an unfamiliar bar certainly made a lot more sense than the dream from which he’d awoken.
Still, he wished he’d been a little less indulgent with his alcohol intake—his head was pounding.
He craned his head over the top of the booth, finding the bar suspiciously empty apart from a tall man seated at the piano bench with his back to the room. The place was lit by flame sconces made of green glass, bathing the room in an eerie verdant glow that moved like water with the dancing of the candle’s fire. The furniture was dark and well-used, but not damaged or scuffed like the furnishings one might find in most drinking halls; in fact, it all seemed rather well-polished. Apart from the unexplained lack of patrons, Zoro could even see this as the kind of establishment his asocial uncle might visit from time to time.
He slid from the booth, rebuttoning the front of his coat and walking towards the lone inhabitant of the bar. The piano was sat atop a small stage made of mahogany flooring, framed by emerald curtains tied to the sides of the platform with elaborate gold rope. It was difficult for him to make out most features of the musician from this angle, but it was hard to miss the sizeable afro, or the golden crown that sat askew upon his head.
“Uh, excuse me,” Zoro called, approaching slowly. The music did not falter, but he saw the pianist tense slightly where he sat. “Are you the owner of this place?”
“I’m flattered you would think so, young man, but I am just a humble musician,” he answered, slim fingers still dancing over the keys out of sight. “I hope you don’t mind if I don’t pause my playing. I’ve had this earworm sitting in my brain for hours—it’s a gift for a friend’s wedding, you see—but I haven’t had a chance to play all day. Though, of course, I have no ears for worms to hide in. Yohoho!”
“Um, right. I’ll leave you to your playing, but can you direct me to East Blue Village first? I have an important engagement in the morning, and my uncle is sure to be a pain if I arrive late.”
The gentleman hummed. “We’re quite a ways from there. It’s not somewhere any of us can return to so easily.”
Zoro’s brow furrowed as he stepped onto the stage, still at the man’s back. “What do you mean? Where are we? I can’t imagine I could travel anywhere so far in a single night.”
“My boy, you misunderstand me,” he said lightly, fingers finally stopping their joyful tune. “You see, we’re in the Land of the Dead.”
The words did not sink in until the musician turned to face him, revealing a skull with shadowy eye sockets and a macabre smile formed by permanently exposed teeth. The crisp, black suit he wore was draped over his thin skeleton, bones visible everywhere not covered by clothes. The very fingers that had just been playing a joyful tone were not really fingers at all, just what was left over after the tissue had fallen away.
Zoro abruptly fell backwards off the stage, having started to walk in reverse without realizing. He hit the ground with a thud, unable to regain his balance and aggravating his headache by bouncing his skull off the hardwood. Groaning, he sat back up and blinked the bleariness from his eyes.
“Are you alright?!” Suddenly the skeleton stood directly before him, somehow conveying concern with his expressionless face. Before the monster could blink—though that was probably difficult to do without eyelids or eyes—Zoro pulled Kitetsu from her saya, stabbing it directly into the fiend’s heart.
The skeleton shrieked, bringing its boney hands up to its face in a comical expression of shock. “Ah! You stabbed me—right in the heart, too! Well, you would have if I had a heart. Yohoho!”
Zoro’s eyes widened when the skeleton simply grabbed the blade’s tsuka and tugged it from its ribcage without so much as a wince. He tsked, staring down at the breast pocket of his blazer in dismay. “What a shame. I quite liked this jacket, you know.”
“What—how—why do dead people keep fucking talking to me?!” He shouted from the floor, scrambling back enough to shoot up into a defensive posture and begin hitting his temple with the heel of his palm. “Wake up, damn it!” He commanded himself. “It’s just a dream. Wake up!”
“Oi, Brook! I leave you alone with him for five minutes and he’s already having a breakdown?” called a chiding voice from the entrance at their right. Zoro’s head snapped to look at the newcomer, finding a familiar corpse with piercing blue eyes. He looked significantly more put together than their last interaction, indicating that he must have bathed and changed into the sharp, navy suit and ivory waistcoat he now sported. Of course, that explained nothing else about the baffling situation.
No, he thought to himself, this is a dream. One I can still wake up from if I try hard enough.
With that, he cocked his arm back and punched himself in the cheek as hard as he could, knocking himself off balance and nearly tumbling back to the ground. Before he could try for a second time, a cold hand wrapped around his fist.
“Stop it! What the hell are you doing?!” The blue-eyed corpse shouted, only releasing Zoro when he yanked his fist away by force.
“Trying to wake up, you idiot,” he spat. “Clearly something is wrong here.”
“The only thing wrong here is your head,” the blond snarked, staring at Zoro disdainfully down his hawkish nose. “And I already kicked you unconscious to prove that this is real, remember?”
Zoro blinked, suddenly making the connection between the end of his prior dream and the pounding headache now ravaging him. Could it be that the dead man before him had truly kicked him with such force? It would certainly explain the migraine and the mysterious bump on his skull.
But that was impossible. The dead cannot move beyond death rattles, let alone kick a man like Zoro hard enough to knock him unconscious. He hadn’t lost consciousness when Luffy had barreled into him with a carriage at full speed or even in his ill-advised fight with Mihawk. It would take considerable force to even come close to knocking him out.
“It’s not possible,” He shook his head. “The living dead are just a story to scare children.”
“Must I explain everything again?” The corpse groaned, looking heavenward before snapping his disdainful gaze back to Zoro. “Listen, you tore your sleeve when I first came out of the ground, right? Take a look at your coat.” He did, immediately focusing in on the ripped sleeve with wide eyes. The corpse reached into his pocket, pulling out a ragged piece of fabric and shoving it against Zoro’s chest. “I kept the torn piece to prove it truly happened. And anyway, if this was a dream, how would you explain waking up just now?”
“Ooh! What if he was dreaming within another dream?” The skeleton interrupted. “That would add a layer of mystery, don’t you think?”
“Quiet, Brook. Don’t make this more complicated than it needs to be. I’m not sure the moss head can handle it.”
“It’s. Not. Possible,” Zoro bit out, ignoring the trivial side conversation.
His deceased husband rubbed his eyes tiredly. “Fine. What would prove to you that all of this is real?”
“Nothing, because it’s not.”
A pregnant pause filled the room, interrupted only when the skeleton cleared his non-existent throat.
“Excuse the interruption, but are you not a swordsman?” Brook asked, still cradling Kitetsu in his hands. “You see, as a swordsman myself, I can tell the difference between my true blade and some cheap imitation, even if my own mind created it. Might it be the same for you?”
Zoro pondered for a moment before nodding quietly. He’d spent countless hours of his life tending to his blades, and even more training with them in hand. In truth, he would likely know his swords better than he knew the back of his own hand; they were the best metric of what was real. He was intimately familiar with the language of his three swords, just as he was familiar with their unbending tendency toward the truth.
Unlike the dead men before him, his weapons would not lie.
The musician inclined his head in acknowledgement, then slowly approached with Kitetsu outstretched in his grasp. Zoro could only watch the skeleton warily—distrustful of anyone unfamiliar handling his blades—until he was close enough to snatch her away.
Holding it parallel to his chest, Zoro ran his fingers along the flat of the blade, letting the cold steel bite into his fingertips. As always, she hummed with restless energy, bewitched with a curse that had her thirsting for the kind of carnage that could only be found in battle. He slid her back into her saya, recognizing the distinctive clink of her tsuba meeting the edge of the sheath.
Enma was next. Though she was a recent addition to his collection, her unwieldly spirit made it difficult to mistake her for any other katana; as expected, the moment he moved her through a kata, she resisted his will in that rebellious manner he’d come to respect. He returned her to the place at his side, grabbing for his final weapon—the katana most likely to indicate that this was all a dream. He’d spent so many hours examining this blade that even the slightest inconsistency would unravel this non-reality at the seams.
Every time he’d wielded Wado since she’d come into his possession, it felt like greeting an old friend. She was familiar and warm, even her minor flaws carving a place for themselves in his heart. This blade was his prized possession and, as such, he’d never mistake her for anything else.
Even in that mysterious bar with inconsistencies all around, he knew the moment he held Wado that it was unmistakably her. And if she was real and here with him, it meant that he was real—it meant that everything was real. His vows and subsequent marriage to a corpse, his spouse kicking him hard enough to knock him unconscious, a skeleton playing piano, his presence in a bar located in the afterlife—all of it was his reality.
He blew out a slow breath, letting his gaze go unfocused. Intellectually, there were a thousand other things this could be before it was a genuine trip to the underworld, but he knew from the core of his being that the dazzling blue eyes of the dead man before him held their own reality and a truth not yet known to him. To resist the truth was to delay the inevitable, so he let the fight drain out of his body. All he could do was take the situation as it came to him and act accordingly.
“Well, this is pretty shit, then, isn’t it?” He sighed, dragging a hand down his face and finally sheathing his blade. His companions stared at him silently, as if waiting for a dramatic monologue.
“Is that all you have to say?” The corpse balked. “I thought you’d need a few more hours of convincing.”
“What would be the point?” He shrugged. “I’m not in the habit of denying something when it’s right in front of me, and, in the off chance that it does end up being a dream, I suppose there’s no harm in playing along. I can’t seem to leave this place without help, anyway. Not to mention the fact that I made you a promise, and I keep my promises even in dreams.”
The blond snorted, “I’m surprised you recall that after I kicked your skull in.”
“You did nothing of the sort,” he scoffed, turning around to head to the shelves of liquor behind the bar. It was strange how pedestrian the underworld seemed after accepting that it truly existed; at least the dead drank liquor just like the living. “Before you explain all of this,” he gestured around the room vaguely, “I need a drink.” He poured two fingers of whiskey from a crystal decanter while the two dead men quietly approached and settled on the bar stools. “My first question, though, is this: am I dead?”
The two men shared a glance, but before either could respond, a third voice chimed in from the entrance.
“Not yet. But hold that thought—what a surprise it is to see you down here!”
The figure sauntered into the light, illuminating a freckled face and a cocky smile that Zoro had thought he’d never see again.
“Ace?! Is that you?”
The man chuckled, though the pallor of his skin made it a poor imitation of the dazzling grin he’d had in life. Based off physical appearances alone, Ace looked like a mere shadow of his former self, drained of all color and the radiance of the living.
“In the flesh,” he dramatically outstretched his arms at his sides, gesturing to his body. Ace chuckled at the disbelieving expression plastered on Zoro’s face, walking over to clasp onto Zoro’s shoulders from across the countertop. “I’m happy to see a familiar face down here—and one still living, at that. You look well!”
Zoro shook himself out of his stupor, gently shrugging Ace’s hands off him. “I wish I could say the same for you. What are you doing here?”
“I see you’ve already forgotten my passing,” he teased, lifting himself to a cross-legged position atop the bar counter. Grabbing the hem of his ruffled blouse, he lifted it to his chest, displaying a grisly wound straight through his abdomen, the edges still ragged with dried blood. “A tragic tale of a young life cut short by yet another bastard in the military. The man brought a cannon straight to our base, and the next thing you know, I’m down here with a hole in my gut. Not the kind of housewarming gift I expected when joining Whitebeard, you know.”
“I know, I know. And it’s great to see you again, of course, but—” Zoro exhaled, tapping his fingers against the bar with a frown. “It’s been two years since you left us, Ace. We all mourned you—Luffy most of all. He deserves to see you again, not me.”
“I know you mourned me,” Ace smiled sadly, tucking his shirt back into his pants. “I watched the funeral from down here. But as much as I’d love to see my brother again, it’s not his time. Nor is it yours, for that matter, which is why,” he turned to the blue-eyed corpse, ruffling his hair until the irritated-looking man batted his errant hand away. “I’m going to need Sanji here to explain exactly what happened to get you stuck down here.”
“It’s not my fault,” the corpse—Sanji, apparently—said, indignant. “The moss-head here just started spouting wedding vows in the forest and slid a ring onto my finger. He is the one that made the binding vow, so he’s the one I must rely on.”
“Wait, Zoro was the one to do it?” Ace asked, leaning forward. “That changes things. But why were you in the forest putting rings on corpses in the first place?”
“I didn’t know it was a corpse,” he growled, downing the rest of his whiskey. “His hand was covered in mud, so it looked like a branch or some plant. Who in God’s name would bury a body there in the first place?”
“I didn’t ask to have my body buried there, you idiotic algae, nor did I ask for you to declare your undying love to me. It could have been a beautiful lady instead, but no, I had to get a man with pond scum stuck to his scalp.”
“You need to have your ears checked, twirly eyebrow. I didn’t declare anything.”
“What did you just call me?!” Sanji seethed, pressing up from the table to get in Zoro’s space.
He traced a spiral over his own eyebrow. “Twirly brow. Is that eyebrow a side effect of dying, or something? Can’t say I’m looking forward to it.”
“You insolent, moss-brained ass—"
“Yohoho! While this is great fun, gentleman,” the skeleton interrupted with a laugh, “Vows of this sort do have a time limit on them. We should explain the situation to our living friend here before it’s too late for the both of you.”
A thick silence settled over the group at the portentous words, the flames flickering in their sconces as if in response. The blond’s aggressive posture faded all at once, body slumping back into his seat with a defeated sigh.
“Too late? What does that mean?” Zoro asked. The curly-browed corpse avoided his gaze, instead staring at his own pale finger as it traced absent patterns along the surface of the bar.
“Right now, you are both between states,” Brook explained grimly. “Not quite dead, not quite alive. Your souls are bound by the vow you made. If you don’t come to an agreement about whether to pursue life or death, then you will be permanently trapped in a death-like state, belonging nowhere for all eternity. Even the afterlife would not accept you.”
Zoro swallowed, beginning to regret his earlier decision to escape into the woods to hide from his family. Even the uptight priest would be a breath of fresh air in comparison to whatever the skeleton spoke of. Zoro wouldn’t pretend he knew exactly what a death-like state entailed, but he knew it wasn’t something he had any interest in. What kind of a fool would choose death over life if given the choice, anyway? He expected to die a glorious death at the end of an enemy blade; it would be rather piteous if he instead died because he proposed to a corpse that he thought was a tree.
“I am not finished with my life,” he asserted. “I have promises to keep and aspirations to fulfill. My decision is made, but how can a dead man choose life? Is it not too late for him?”
“For anyone but Sanji, maybe,” Ace said cryptically.
Zoro’s gaze turned to meet a deep well of blue, finding the blond’s expression guarded. He lifted a brow, silently requesting an explanation, until the corpse sighed and pulled a cigarette from his jacket pocket. No one spoke as he lit his tobacco, inhaling deeply and blowing a thin stream of hazy smoke toward the ceiling. The smoke seemed hesitant to part from his lips, flowing around his face like a river before dissipating in the dim light.
“I died on the day of my wedding several months ago,” he said after a moment, voice carefully emptied of all emotion. “Woke up here right before kissing the bride, though I had no idea what had happened. Between one blink and the next, I was suddenly in the underworld. I don’t even recall the moment I died.”
Brook filled the ensuing pause, “Down here, we get glimpses into the Land of the Living—some more than others. I was looking around that day and saw a young couple eloping in the woods, when the bride suddenly pulled a blade from her back and pierced the groom’s heart. My vision was blurry after that, but I saw hazy images of the bride’s brothers carrying our dear Sanji’s corpse beneath an old willow tree—the very same you found him under. He arrived in the underworld soon after.”
“So he was murdered by his bride?” Zoro asked, glancing between the gathered men. His husband stiffened at the mention of his manner of death, but withheld comment. “Pardon my confusion, but this makes it even less clear as to how he’s meant to come back to life. A stab wound to the heart is not the kind of injury one can survive.”
“Of course,” Brook confirmed. “That’s what I thought when I saw it happen. But when Sanji arrived, it was obvious that something was . . . off.”
The blue-eyed corpse suddenly grabbed for the decanter of whiskey at Zoro’s elbow, pouring himself a glass and unintentionally pausing the conversation. He did not look at any of his compatriots as he moved, but the tension was evident in his frame. Zoro forced himself to look away, getting the sense that he was intruding on some internal crisis.
“Off?” Zoro prompted. Ace nodded, turning to examine Sanji’s profile.
“I know you haven’t met many dead people, but we generally share a few traits,” he explained, pointing to the blond. “One is that we lose the color we had while alive. All of the color. You may have noticed that I look a bit grey down here—even my eyes are dim. But Sanji’s eyes are still as bright as they would be in life.”
One of the eyes in question swung up to meet his gaze, the blue just as piercing as the first time Zoro noticed them. Ace was undeniably correct—his own cocoa-colored irises that had such richness in life were now only ghosts of their former selves, tinged with streaks of grey and a film of white. Sanji’s, however, were astonishingly lifelike. In fact, had he not seen the man crawl from the dirt himself, Zoro may have simply thought his sunken features and the pale-blue pallor of his skin to be indicative of a serious illness.
“And? Is that all?”
“No, there’s more. We also all have the wounds that killed us, and if they bled while we lived, then they will bleed while we are dead—at least until the flesh falls away,” Ace explained. “Sanji doesn’t have that. It’s as if he didn’t get stabbed at all.”
Zoro looked at the man in question, who was running his index finger along the rim of his now empty glass. “The entire wound is gone?”
He glanced up and nodded, swirly eyebrow quirked like he was confused by Zoro’s question.
“And that’s not normal?”
He rolled his visible eye. “Yes, that’s what Ace just said, moss brain.”
“Why don’t you show him, Sanji?” Brook suggested, leaning his cheekbone into the heel of his hand in a relaxed posture.
“Why, so he can look for it himself?” He scoffed. “No offense, but I doubt that an extra set of eyes will find an entire stab wound that’s gone missing.”
Contrary to his grumbling, he loosened his ivory cravat and unbuttoned his undershirt to just below his sternum. He tugged the fabric to the side, exposing an unblemished chest, covered only by mottled skin and a light dusting of hair.
“According to Brook and the others who saw me die,” he began, dragging his finger to the center of the gap between his third and fourth rib, “Pudding stabbed me right here. By all accounts, there should be a fairly bloody wound there, but as you can see, there’s nothing of the sort.”
“It’s also strange that Sanji cannot recall the moments of his death,” Brook added. “All of us dead folk remember the sensation of our souls leaving our bodies, no matter the cause of death. Sanji only recalls waking up here, but nothing about the murder.”
Sanji looked away, rebuttoning his shirt and adjusting his outfit accordingly.
“That’s not the strangest thing about him, though,” Ace muttered.
“Of course not. I would assume that title belongs to his curly eyebrow.”
His husband only glared, not rising to the obvious goading. Far be it from Zoro to demand a response when he himself was so reserved, but something about the man’s reticence unnerved him. Still, he withheld comment.
“Listen, Zoro,” Ace urged, quietly serious. His tone immediately had Zoro straightening where he stood behind the bar. “The second we saw Sanji down here, we knew something was wrong. All of us felt it. None of us could place what exactly was so disconcerting about him, but we just knew.”
“We could tell Sanji didn’t belong here,” Brook continued solemnly. “He’s not meant to be in the Land of the Dead—not yet.”
Didn’t belong there?
While Zoro had only recently been introduced to a handful of residents of the underworld, he had to admit his confusion. Who other than a dead man could be stabbed in the chest and buried underground? No one could survive their heart being pierced by a blade, let alone survive months buried beneath six feet of frozen soil. Even if Sanji was walking around and smoking like he had working lungs, it didn’t explain how he could belong anywhere but the Land of the Dead.
Still, Zoro had been wrong before. The least he could do would be to suspend his disbelief and seek an explanation that made sense to his addled brain.
“Even if I did understand what you mean by that, I fail to see what this has to do with me.”
“You made a vow to me in that forest, whether you meant to or not,” answered Sanji. “Like I said earlier, such a vow is much more serious when made with the dead. For the time being, our souls are bound together. Where I go, you must follow. The same is true in reverse. Therefore, a choice must be made between living and dying, but it must be the same for the both of us.”
“But how could you possibly live? How could you simply choose life when everything you’ve said and done points to you being dead?” Zoro countered, meeting the fiery gaze from the blond. “Just because you don’t belong down here doesn’t mean you belong with the living. You’re decomposing where you stand, curly brow.”
The corpse shoved himself up from his seat, knocking his bar stool to the ground in the process. He grabbed Zoro by the lapels of his coat, dragging him forward to growl in his face, “I didn’t want to die either, moss head. Nor did I particularly want to marry a madman reciting wedding vows at midnight with a sword in hand. But I also know that if there is any chance of finding out what is wrong with me and fixing it so I can return to life, it means working with you. While our souls are bound, I can come with you to the upper world and investigate my death with the intention of undoing it. You are my ticket to the Land of the Living for the time being, just as I am your ticket to the Land of the Dead,” he exhaled shakily, some of the anger falling from his voice to be replaced with anxious apprehension. “Although I didn’t ask for this, I would be a fool to ignore your opportune timing. Right now, you are the only one who can help me return to the people I left behind. Even if you don’t understand, I am asking that you help me—you’re not the only one who still has dreams and promises made in the upper world, you know.”
Sanji released his white knuckled grip, turning to pace in agitation near Brook’s seat.
While Zoro may not understand the full breadth of the situation, he could nevertheless respect Sanji’s motivations. If he were in Sanji’s place, he too would be doing everything in his power to return to life and finish what he started, even if it meant having to rely on a complete stranger. Even now with Zoro’s own life at risk, he had to admit that the only course of action was following Sanji’s lead and hoping he knew what he was doing.
“Fine,” Zoro breathed, dusting the front of his jacket to smooth the wrinkles. “Let’s say I help you—whatever that means. How long do we have to do it?”
“Forty-eight hours at most,” Ace answered cooly. “That’s when the full moon peaks, and the spirit realm is the closest to the living realm.”
“So what do I have to do?”
A new voice answered from the other side of the bar, “You either find out what’s wrong with Sanji and fix it, or you die.”
A cascade of chills ran down Zoro’s spine, nearly sending him collapsing to his knees. He stilled like prey being sighted by a predator, but the predator was his own pounding heart.
He would know that voice anywhere—joyful yet ferocious, unyielding yet youthful. It would take hundreds of lifetimes before he could ever forget the way it sounded. He could recall thousands of instances of that voice teasing him when they sparred, cockily declaring their victory again and again. Dreams and nightmares both had been haunted by that voice for years, its lilting laughter echoing in his ears like the whispering of a phantom.
He let his eyes blink open slowly (when had he closed them?), narrowing in on the figure now standing just before the bar, looking almost exactly how he remembered.
“You look as weak as ever, Zoro,” she smiled.
A sob choked out of his throat.
“Kuina.”