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That thing, that twisted thing which wore the cook's face, was currently handcuffed to a bed in the captain's quarters. The handcuffs were flimsy, the bed itself could be easily destroyed, the thing sure as hell didn't care much about cook's precious hands, and yet it stayed put. It didn't try to escape, not even once when it had every chance to do so, when it could easily break every single bone in the cook's gentle hands, to gnaw off its own limb to escape the trap.
It simply seemed to enjoy torturing them too much.
Wado was heavy in his hand, its cold blade pressed against the cook's pale neck, heart pounding in his ears, air threatening to choke him, bile horrible bile rising in his throat, tears tears tears spilling -
"To think that he loved you! You know he considered you the love of his pathetic life?"
The thing was laughing. Its laugh was cruel cold nothing like cook's warm bright everything yet-
Wado fell to the ground.
At first, they agreed to take turns feeding the beast chained up on their ship.
(-everyone except Zoro, Zoro was weak, Zoro crawled his way through hell, with scrapped knees and bloody palms just to fall further down than ever-)
Franky and Usopp tried to reverse engineer the suit, Chopper worked tirelessly day and night trying to find the nonexistent cure, Luffy and the witch and everyone else visited the thing- that thing with jet black hair and cold blue eyes - in an effort to get their cook back.
"Sanji is still in there," Luffy said in his captain's voice, resolved and serious.
(-and Zoro was selfish, so selfish that he believed in fairy tales all of the sudden, so disgusting that he had broken the promise he had made to the man he loved, so pathetic that he wanted what he couldn't have so horribly-)
It didn't understand them well, their emotions were too complicated for it to comprehend, Robin had said, but it was sadistic, and it enjoyed watching them squirm, pulling memories, insecurities, and waves of self-hatred from cook's self-destructive mind.
The thing liked to talk.
(-and Zoro couldn't stand to hear it, couldn't stand to hear the fact that the cook loved him back, couldn't stop himself from imagining the cook in the bed, under him, the golden hair sprawled around his head like a halo -)
He cornered Usopp about it.
"It switches, sometimes it talks about Sanji's childhood, sometimes about Sanji's feelings, and well sometimes-"
Their snipper went uncharacteristically silent for a moment.
"Well, sometimes it simply gloats."
It made the witch cry.
It made the witch cry ugly tears, and she refused to tell them why.
(- Zoro let that thing stomp over everything the cook held dear, he betrayed him, and he let that horrible thing parade his corpse around-)
She stopped going to the captain's quarters.
Soon enough, only Robin and Luffy went to see the thing. The beast. The mockery.
(-Zoro knew his nakama, his family, he knew that they hadn't given up, that they never would, but it hurt them, hurt them so much, he was supposed to protect them-)
Robin went rarely, mostly just to feed it, but Luffy, amazing, powerful, the Sun itself Luffy would be gone for hours.
"When I slapped him, back at Whole Cake, his face was already bruised and swollen so much. He was wearing a mask, and he beat up Luffy- I couldn't have known- but why does it still hurt? Why did it tell me that?"
Roronoa Zoro, the demon of East Blue, the king of hell, the right now perhaps the sole wing of the future pirate king, was a coward.
Roronoa Zoro walked down to the captain's quarters on a starless night, his heavy boots hitting the wooden stairs, all three of his swords by his hip.
The thing didn't sleep. It was handcuffed to the heavy bedpost, but it was fully awake. The handcuffs were special, designed to be gentle around its (his) hand, and they extended to allow the thing to go to the toilet. Even though the thing was for all purposes a prisoner on this ship, it acted like a prince it was.
It greeted Zoro with a smile, one containing too many teeth, and Zoro, who was so used to being an apex predator, suddenly found himself in the role of prey.
"Finally," it said, looking right into him, tearing apart Zoro's very own soul.
"I've been waiting for you, and yet you hid like a pathetic lowlife you are."
Would Luffy ever forgive him if he slayed this beast who brought everyone so much pain? Would his own heart ever forgive him?
"He was wrong about you, you know. He thought he could trust you, he thought you would fulfill your promise. What a fool, trusting other people to fix his mistakes."
He gripped the hilt of Wado, trying to ground himself.
"I thought a lot about why you didn't kill me then. You were never a coward in his memories. Pathetic, yes. But you always did what had to be done. Loyalty, duty, strength. He admired all that about you."
The thing cocked its head, now full-on laughing.
"Your face, contorted in pain. That's what I wanted to see as I die. Because you did care about him. I saw that in his memories. Yet you ran away, something he never ever predicted. It was so illogical, I couldn't wrap my head around it. But you gave me some time to think, to analyze the situation. It is so simple really."
Zoro couldn't move. He prayed to the god he didn't believe in, his god was dead, to let him do what he had to, needed to, do.
It stopped laughing.
"You desire him."
(-Zoro loved him so much from the start, since the Arlong Park, since the moment he saw him fight, since he tasted his food, since Alabasta, since he saw how beautifully clever he was since he saw his kindness-)
"And I'm not exactly opposed to that. I'm not much in the emotions department, but I still have some carnal desires. "
It licked its lips for emphasis, never breaking the eye contact.
"We have a bed right here. Or we can do it on the floor. I don't care much. You can even leave the handcuffs on, you seem like the kinky type. I don't feel much of a pain, you don't even need to prepare me. I can even pretend I'm him and cry-"
"You talk too much," it was the first thing Zoro said since he had entered the room.
"You can shut me up then," the thing winked at him.
It was torture, how some of the cook's behavior seeped into this thing. The people pleasing, horniness - was the thing playing with him? It had done so since the very beginning. Or did some aspect of the cook remain?
(- Zoro was the fool who hoped-)
"It's the black hair, isn't it? Well perhaps you can grab some of the chemicals from the sick bay or cyborg's workshop and we can do something about it?"
It even started to joke now. Zoro had to leave.
"Past me- weak me - I know you all like to pretend that I'm a separate thing, and I even indulged you fools for some time because it amused me, he had a silly little dream. About that place called the All Blue. He dreamed of running his own restaurant, cooking all day, never leaving someone hungry. That nasty old man living just above the kitchen, these horrible fools visiting ever so often. It was all so stupid. You know what was the silliest part? The wedding band on his finger and you in his bed. You fighting the challengers for your title of the World's Greatest swordsman in front of the restaurant. Two children playing on the docks, even though he was so afraid of having children, of passing his genetic material down-"
Zoro let him ramble for too long. He slammed the door shut.
"You are never getting him back!"
The thing was shouting behind him.
The moon was clear in the sky, and Zoro lit up a cigarette with Sanji's lighter.
(-Zoro could have had everything he ever wanted-)
The smoke, the smoke was beautiful.