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Zoro throws himself against the metal grate for what must be the hundredth time. Every impact against the cell door reverberates through his entire body, and the sound of metal on metal echoes into the dim expanse of the hallway outside. His wrists are bound behind his back by something heavy, iron most likely, and his shoulder is screaming in protest as he slams it into the grate again. Again, it accomplishes nothing, but Zoro is relentless. He’s a rabid dog, blind with rage, gnawing at the bars of its kennel. Fuck. Fuck this. The constant background noise of chains clinking with each movement is rubbing on what’s left of his fraying nerves. Frustration doesn’t even begin to cover it. He has no idea where he is or why, but he knows that he’s ready to cut someone in half.
A voice from a cell across the hall barks at him. “For fuck’s sake, enough already!”
Zoro pauses his rampage for a moment, realizing, belatedly, that he isn’t alone. Far from it, in fact. For the first time since waking up here, he stills, allowing his observation haki to flood his senses. Immediately, he picks up on the voice from across the hall, then more begin to trickle in through his sixth sense, now open and attuning itself to its surroundings. A dozen or so voices surround him to his left and right. And there are more, many more, whispering faintly from somewhere above his head. He glances up at the ceiling above him. A drop of gray water lands on his face and Zoro reaches for it with his tongue. It’s salty.
Realization hits like a bucket of cold water. He is being held in Impel Down.
Of course he had been brought here. Where else would the Marines be keeping one of the most wanted men in the world? And judging from the number of voices above him, he is deep underwater, on one of the lower levels. He surveys his surroundings. It’s damp, and the sound of water dripping echoes off a distant wall. Zoro’s cell is dim, lit only by a greenish artificial light streaming through the gaps in the metal bars. He throws himself against the grate one more time for good measure, earning another “shut up!” from across the hall, and tries to think. Impel Down is somewhere on the Grand Line, not the New World. Which means that he is days, maybe weeks from where he last saw the crew. His heart skips a beat. How long has he been unconscious? How long has he been gone? Panic returning, he sifts through his memories. What the hell happened?
There was a fight, he’s sure of that. But that isn’t it. Something else had gone wrong, there’s something that he needs to do.
Another drop of water lands on him.
Water.
The Sunny was taking on water. It was flooding the hull from a half dozen places, and the crew was scattered about in organized chaos, shouting at one another over the distant booming of cannons as they scrambled to patch the hull, keeping pace as new holes pounded through Sunny’s wood in an unrelenting rhythm.
Zoro stood side by side with Sanji at the railing, both squinting out across the open ocean. Whoever was firing at them was clever - using some kind of long range weaponry designed to keep their ship out of reach of a direct fight. Zoro’s hand twitched over the swords at his hip. Eventually that ship would move within his range, and this would be over in seconds.
“Zoro, Sanji, let’s go!”
Zoro had scarcely a second to turn his head at the sound before he was jerked upward and flung into the air, careening towards the ship in the distance. He clung to his swords and watched the waters rush past below him, his brief annoyance at being manhandled quickly giving way to a familiar thrill, the anticipation of a fight.
He glanced up at his captain, who was laughing as he catapulted himself towards the ship, arms outstretched, flinging Sanji and Zoro along. As the sun passed directly overhead, Luffy’s face passed briefly into shadow, grin turning somewhat sinister, no doubt responding to the same thrill that twisted in Zoro’s stomach. This would be fun.
The three of them tumbled onto the enemy deck in a pile of swords and limbs, the cook disappearing as soon as he managed to untangle himself. Years ago, Zoro would have wondered at that. Now, experience told him that Sanji was on a solo mission below deck, looking for a way to disable the long range cannons. And Zoro, being a thoughtless meathead, had just gone looking for a fight. Well, at least Luffy had done the same thing. The two of them scanned the marines scattered about the deck, choosing their opponents.
There were less men on deck than Zoro had expected. And no one made a move towards the newcomers. They all just…stood there. Some of them exchanged glances. Then, one of them nodded in a way that felt odd. Intentional. The realization struck Zoro. These men were on a suicide mission.
Something mechanical clicked, and the world went immediately, impossibly quiet. The air felt charged, almost vibrating. Zoro locked eyes with Luffy. The ship exploded.
Ears still ringing, Zoro surfaced, coughing up seawater. The acrid smell of smoke and gunpowder clogged his senses. Instinct took over, and he dove back under, searching. The water was dimly illuminated by the burning remnants of the ship above, and crowded with debris and bodies. It was like swimming through liquid rust. Zoro pushed down the rising panic and swam deeper, sifting through the debris. Where was he? He would be unconscious by now, but surely still alive. There was no alternative. Zoro’s chest burned and there was still no sign of Luffy in the murky water.
Zoro broke the surface, gasping as he turned, scanning for something, anything. He sucked in another breath, about to dive back in when something heavy slammed against the back of his head. The world went white, then black.
There is nothing after that. Zoro’s head is pounding and it’s difficult to think clearly. Sanji had been there, right? He’s a stronger swimmer than Zoro - he could have gotten to Luffy and they could have both escaped. Or they were also taken, in which case they could be being held somewhere near here. But in that case, wouldn’t he sense their presence immediately? Or maybe - no, that isn’t an option. He shakes his head. They’re alive. And he’s getting back to them, and the rest of the crew, one way or another.
Time for Plan B, then. Zoro steps away from the metal grate of the cell door and backs up to the stone wall behind him. It’s ice cold. He curls his left hand into an awkward fist, wrapping his fingers around his thumb in a loose grasp. Turning slightly to get a better angle, he presses the fist against the damp stone. He exhales.
Slowly, through his nose, he takes another breath, feeling along the connection between mind and muscle, forged and strengthened over years of training. He gathers his strength into a single point. Visualize. Then commit.
He exhales. In one smooth motion, he presses against the stone and twists. His thumb dislocates with a sickening pop.
Zoro grins, swallowing down the nausea as his stomach flips at the sudden onslaught of pain. He wriggles the iron cuff over his hand and lets it drop, dangling from his other wrist. His hands are freed from behind his back, and he sighs in relief as he flexes his shoulders, one way and then another. Plan C would have been to tear the entire hand off. Luckily, it hasn’t come to that.
The slapping of boots on stone echoes down the corridor, and Zoro senses them before they come into view. A group of guards is running towards his cell, no doubt responding to the nonstop racket he’s been making since he first woke up. Zoro presses his face against the grate, holding his hands behind his back.
“Pirate Hunter Zoro - step away from the door!” The guard that must be the leader steps into view, baton drawn. He’s a huge, bald man who looks like he hasn’t shaved in days. He’s almost cartoonishly brutish. Zoro presses his face further against the metal and smiles wider.
“Make me.”
The guard takes the bait immediately, stepping close, almost toe to toe with Zoro. In an instant, Zoro’s uninjured hand is wrapped around the guard’s throat in a vice grip.
The fight is short-lived. He’s hanging onto the man like a dog with a bone, but his other hand refuses to cooperate. And the other guards don’t seen too concerned about their leader. Zoro clamps down on the throat harder, but something pricks his exposed arm. A needle. His vision wavers, and his grip loosens.
When Zoro wakes up again, he’s leaning against the stone wall. It’s damp, and sends a chill down his back. He tries to pull away, and discovers he’s now completely restrained. Thick iron chains encircle his arms, chest, legs. He thrashes against them as if sheer force of will would be enough to set him free. Despite the cold of the stone, he feels his face begin to burn with frustration.
Not frustration, exactly. Shame. Zoro’s jaw is clenched so tightly that his head is throbbing. Memories of Sabaody hit him like a punch to the chest. The shame of being sidelined, of being taken out of the fight while his crewmates stayed behind - it’s even worse than defeat. In the darkness of the solitary cell, Zoro closes his eyes and lowers his chin to his chest.
He’s about three seconds from giving in to despair when another thought related to Sabaody crosses his mind. Two years ago, when he was a wild animal on Mihawk’s island, delirious with the need to get back home, Luffy had been right here. In this exact prison. Looking for his brother.
If Luffy is alive, he is coming for Zoro. If there’s even one crew member left alive, they are coming for him. They are not the same crew that was separated two years ago. And, the thought surprises him as it arrives, he trusts them without a shred of doubt. The crew will come - all he has to do is ask.
Zoro settles back against the wall and closes his eye. Slowly, intentionally, he relaxes inward, separating his thoughts from his body. He channels the extent of his trust, his confidence, his unwavering loyalty to those idiots. His certainty that he will see them again is a tangible force. It gathers within him into a single point and crackles through his chest. Conqueror’s haki erupts outward like a beacon, splitting the air like a thunderclap. It will be felt for miles. It might be enough.
Time passes, but Zoro has no frame of reference to count the time by. The sickly green light never wavers, and the throbbing of Zoro’s hand and the pounding of his heartbeat in his ears fade in and out of his consciousness in waves. Eventually, a sound shakes Zoro from his trance, bringing him back to the present. It’s a voice, one that his haki has picked up before his ears - like something echoing down a canyon, bouncing off far away walls. The voice becomes louder, and he realizes with a start that the voice is laughing.
As the distant laughter washes over Zoro, an invisible weight lifts, and a stupid, easy grin spreads across his face. Suddenly, he’s nineteen again. He’s a teenager setting sail in a dinghy in the East Blue, without a map, without a plan, without hesitation. Still a boy, really, practically vibrating with the promise of adventure. He’s senseless. He’s invincible. Voice rusty with disuse, he starts to laugh too.
Someone down the hall shouts at him to shut up. He only laughs harder, whole body shaking. He laughs at all of it, the chains, the dark cell, the bruises covering his body. Did his captors think they stood a chance against the literal god of liberation? Zoro’s god, who had set him free years ago in a marine base in the East Blue.
And when God finally appears, Zoro is waiting.
The metal bars of the cell are ripped away, easy as tearing a page from a book. Luffy is there, grinning like a crazed man, eyes bloodshot. His chest is bare, one arm coated by a sleeve of blood spreading from a gash in his shoulder. It’s a red river running down his arm before, impossibly, defying gravity entirely, drops bouncing off the ground in all directions, spraying the nearby stone like ink splatters. The sight is downright horrific. Zoro takes no notice. His captain is here. He’s here and he’s alive.
“Found you!”
He’s not sure which one of them says it.
Luffy frowns for a moment, as if just noticing the metal restraints pinning Zoro to the wall. He reaches out and in one swift movement, pulls at the cuffs on Zoro’s wrists. There’s a flash of light, and the cuffs clatter to the floor, bent into twisted hunks of iron. Luffy drops to his knees, there are more flashes, and the remaining restraints fall away, one by one. Relief floods behind Zoro’s eye, and he leans his head back against the wall.
Luffy leans in and reaches out to press the palm of his hand against Zoro’s face, not seeming to notice the red handprint he was leaving. Marking him. Zoro leans into the touch and inhales deeply. The metallic scent of blood washes over him first, then something cleaner. Like the spray of saltwater on wood.
“Found you.” Luffy says again, and his voice is strangled by emotion. Tears well in his eyes, but they don’t fall downwards. They drift away, swirling lazily around his head. The hand on Zoro’s face tightens possessively. Zoro covers it with his own.
“Let’s get out of here,” Luffy says. And then he tenses, hunching over as if he had just been punched in the stomach. “Just give me ten minutes.”
Luffy sways slightly, then collapses forward onto Zoro. The dark color seeps back into his hair like spilled ink, and the blood at his shoulder stops dancing and instead drips, drips, drips onto Zoro’s pant leg. It’s clear now how gruesome the injury is. Zoro realizes, abruptly, that they don’t have ten minutes.
Grunting, Zoro uses his uninjured hand to pull Luffy’s dead weight up and over his shoulder, then climbs to his feet. “Time to go.”
He hurries down the corridor that Luffy came from, his captain’s dead weight a constant alarm bell on his shoulder. Hurry. It looks like an earthquake had nearly split the prison in two. Bodies of guards and prisoners alike are scattered between chunks of rubble and piles of what used to be stairs. Somewhere far above, an alarm is ringing. Luffy’s skin is slick with blood. Zoro adjusts his grip, ignoring the faint groan in protest. Groans are good. Groans are alive.
Zoro trudges forward and upward through the prison, skirting around the various piles of debris, occasionally freezing in a shadowed corner as a group of guards runs by, shouting. With no swords and one working hand, it’s slow going. His legs are starting to shake, and his vision is darkening at the edges.
“I assume you have a plan to get us home, right, Luffy?” Zoro says through clenched teeth, ducking around a corner. “Right?” He shrugs his shoulder, shaking his limp captain. Luffy is slow, too slow, to respond. “Mm-yeah,” he murmurs. “Home. Mmtakin you home.”
He doesn’t know how far he’s gone, doesn’t know where he is, but it feels like he’s hiked for miles. In an empty hallway, he pauses to catch his breath. Half a second later, his senses prick and he instinctively turns his head in the direction of the disturbance.
Someone is running towards him - no, that’s not it. Someone is running away from something.
Zoro barely has time to process the thought when a familiar figure bursts into the hallway from a side corridor and screeches to a halt, looking one way, then the other. It’s Sanji, looking unhinged, like he hasn’t slept in days. He’s clutching Zoro’s swords. Sanji turns on his heel and knocks out the guards pursuing him in a single, smooth motion, then runs down the hallway to Zoro. The cook says nothing, just stares at Zoro in obvious, painful relief, chest heaving.
If Zoro’s face shows the same relief, he refuses to acknowledge it. And he’ll deny it later. Instead, he looks over Sanji’s shoulder, squinting at the side corridor he had burst from.
“Where the hell did you come from?”
“Followed Luffy. Or I tried to. Kind of had a hard time keeping up with him once he turned, well,” Sanji gestures vaguely, “you know. Anyway, I thought I’d take a little detour since I figured you’d be useless without these.”
He holds out the swords to Zoro. Zoro takes them wordlessly, without looking away from Sanji’s face. A dozen snide remarks come to mind, but each one is silenced by the smooth, worn weight of his swords, the ache of his muscles, the unidentifiable look in Sanji’s eye.
“Thanks, cook,” he says instead.
Sanji blinks, and then notices Luffy slumped against the wall. Zoro turns as well. Luffy’s skin is unnaturally gray.
“That’s a lot of blood. What the hell happened?” Sanji drops beside Luffy, tearing his pant leg into a makeshift bandage and tying it tightly around Luffy’s shoulder. “Next time, stop the bleeding first, moron,” he mutters.
“There isn’t going to be a next time.”
“Yeah, sure.” Sanji stands, pulling Luffy’s limp form up with him, one rubbery arm draped over Sanji’s shoulders. “The upper level is directly above us. Are you up to taking a shortcut?”
Zoro grins. “Stand back.”
He can only manage two swords, Wado in his mouth and one in his right hand, but that’s all he needs. He ignores the strangled look on Sanji’s face, who’s just noticed the thumb hanging limp on his left hand. The swords feel right at home, comfortable, deadly, and in an instant Zoro has cut through the ceiling above, and the three of them are standing at the entrance to Impel Down.
“Looks like our ride is here,” Sanji says, waving as a massive Marine warship pulls up along the dock. Zoro has seen many warships, but the scale of this one is insane. It’s one of the powered ships, the kind reserved for admirals and vice admirals, the kind that could cross the calm belt in hours, not days. What the hell had happened here?
“Hurry up, you three!”
Nami appears, leaning over the railing. She waves at them to hurry, the log pose at her wrist glittering as it catches the sunlight. Her attempt at putting on an exasperated expression would have been believable if it weren’t betrayed by the tears in her eyes at the sight of her crewmates.
Time passes in a blur as the warship speeds away from Impel Down and back towards the New World, where the Sunny sits waiting, Franky and Robin left behind to guard the ship. Tears are shed, shouts and hugs exchanged, wounds bandaged (with Zoro’s hand nearly giving Chopper a stroke), and at some point a cool night settles over the ship like a thick blanket.
In the darkness of a room below deck, Zoro is lying on his back, awake, listening to the unfamiliar sounds of the warship. They’re vaguely mechanical, nothing like the creaking wood and flapping sails of the Sunny, which Zoro has become so accustomed to. Luffy is asleep in a cot beside Zoro’s. Ignoring the stiffness of his muscles, Zoro drags himself out of bed and stands over Luffy, silent. Luffy’s face is completely changed from the laughing demon who had flipped the world upside down to free his first mate. Now, he just looks like any other sleeping teenager.
Still moving stiffly, Zoro drops to his knees beside his captain, resting his bandaged hand on Luffy’s arm. He swallows, and when he speaks his voice only comes out in a whisper.
“Thank you.”
Eyes still closed, Luffy stirs, reaching over and pulling Zoro up and over until he’s lying beside him in the narrow bed. Luffy wraps his arm around Zoro’s chest, stretching slightly to extend his reach, and promptly falls back asleep, snoring gently. In the dark, Zoro sighs, mouth twitching with a small smile, and lets himself fall into an easy, deep sleep.