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It’s not like Zoro has never heard of the devil fruit users.
He has never met any of them, admittedly — not many seventeen-year-olds from a small island in East Blue could boast that they have — but he’s heard of them, has prepared to fight any of them in his path to become the strongest. So no, he isn’t planning to just turn into a bumbling idiot as soon as he meets a devil fruit user, hell no.
He just didn’t expect to end up on a ship filled with those very devil fruit users.
Strawhats, they call themselves, the name deceivingly benign.
“Are you really Zoro?” A raccoon — an actual talking raccoon — walked up to him, frowning and patting him on the leg.
“There are no signs of him being an impostor,” a woman replies, and she would’ve seemed like a normal human being in the midst of these monsters if it weren’t for all the extra arms currently holding Zoro down, making sure he wouldn’t suddenly turn hostile and attack anyone. “For now, we have to assume that he’s being truthful.”
He grits his teeth at her suspicion. “I do not lie.”
The boy with the strawhat laughs from his spot on the ship’s mast, his ridiculously long limbs are wrapping circles around it. “That sounds like Zoro all right.”
“Truly an interesting turn of events,” the skeleton looking over the railing observes, because of course even skeletons can talk on this ship.
But even this ragtag group of monsters around him doesn’t baffle him as much as the man currently walking out of the ship’s galley does, a familiar white sword attached against his hip, clattering against two other blades. There are little things that feel off – the scars over his eye and chest don’t seem familiar, and he carries an air of confidence Zoro has yet to perfect — but everything else is a flawless copy, if not an aged version, of himself.
“Leave him alone,” the man says with a voice Zoro knows to be his, and in all the seventeen years he has been alive, he never expected he would one day stand before his twenty-one-year-old self.
Zoro isn’t drunk enough for this.
“So,” Zoro says after his third bottle of sake, hesitant – how do you even begin a conversation with an older version of yourself? “Twenty-one.”
His older self shrugs. “Yeah. And you’re…” he trails off, watching Zoro with a look he usually gives other people when he knows he’s forgetting an important thing. Kuina used to tell him it made her want to punch him in the face, and Zoro kind of understands the sentiment now. “…young,” older Zoro decides to settle with that.
Zoro glares. “I’m seventeen.”
“What I said. Young.”
“I’m an adult —”
“You’re not an old man either, dumbass, stop acting so high and mighty,” the cook of the ship pipes in, knocking Zoro’s older self lightly on the head. Zoro watches his older self rub his head, obviously playing along, because there’s no way a hit like that actually hurt. It wouldn’t have hurt Zoro now, and he’d like to think he’ll be stronger a few years from now.
He notices that happening a lot, when it comes to his older self. Indulging people, that is — letting the long-nosed man pull pranks on him, the talking raccoon to sit on his lap. Little things Zoro swears he’d kill people over. And this cook – Sanji, wasn’t it? – gets more privileges than most, Zoro realizes — his older self lets Sanji call him names and kick him, among other things. Sanji is currently sitting across the table, beside the older Zoro, far into his personal space that their shoulders are pressing against each other, and Zoro’s older self doesn’t even try to lean away.
Zoro recognizes it as it is – affection. And he knows, better than most, how much of a weakness it is.
His disapproval must’ve been written all over his face, because his older self suddenly puts down his empty sake bottle and sighs. “All right, I’ll bite. What’s your problem?”
Zoro scoffs at the question. He doesn’t know where to even begin, but decides to start with a simple, glaring one. “We’re pirate hunters.”
“I was. You are. It never mattered and you know it,” his older self answers calmly. “We’ve always been swordsmen, first and foremost.”
Zoro can feel Wadou against his hip, and knows the answer to be true. Doesn’t mean he has to like it, and he suspects he wouldn’t like the answer of his next question, either. “Why aren’t we looking for Mihawk?”
At that, a dark look passes over his older self. Sanji glances at him, clearly worried. “We found him,” he says, and it takes him a moment to add, “we lost.”
Zoro despises the resignation in the older Zoro’s voice, slamming the table before he can stop himself. “Then fight him again!”
The galley goes quiet.
The girls have stopped talking, peering from behind the island, and the skeleton has ceased playing on his violin. Zoro can feel curious eyes on him, even from the doorway, where the others must be trying to peek into, trying to figure out what just happened in the wake of his outburst. Zoro hates it, hates that they care, their attention and concern enclosing him to the point of suffocation.
“Not right now,” the older Zoro finally answers, after a moment. “Not with how we are right now.”
It is not the answer Zoro wants to hear, and the devastating rush of disappointment that hits him surprises him in its intensity. “Are you giving up?” He yells, no longer caring that the whole ship could hear him now. “Is this what this is? How did I get so weak?”
His older self watches him quietly, and it pisses Zoro off, how he could look so impassive. All he says is, “acknowledging shortcomings is not a weakness.”
What a load of bullshit. Zoro’s entire body itches to unsheathe his sword, reminding the man in front of him of his dream – of their dream. He can still feel the way Kuina’s finger tangled against his, a shared promise that left a brand on his heart, and wants to grab the man before him by the collar and ask — have you forgotten her? Do you not hear how Wadou weeps?
“I will not become like you,” he spits out, bitter, feeling his throat tight, his heart a crushing lead weight. “You will never achieve your dream this way.”
He chooses the words he knows will hurt — would’ve hurt himself — but time and again his older self continue to confound him, because he merely closes his good eye and says, “one day, you will learn by yourself why we choose to walk this path.”
Zoro watches himself — twenty-one and none the wiser, apparently — and his gaze falls on the Cook, beside him. Always, always beside him, Zoro knows, hasn’t seen them left each other’s side in the few hours he’s been on this ship, bickering over the smallest things. The words leave his mouth before he could stop himself: “the Cook. He’s making you weak.”
Zoro feels the force of the hit before he even sees his older self move, and the only thing that keeps him alive is his own instinct, pulling Wadou out of its scabbard just quick enough to parry the attack from the older Zoro. Even with that, though, the strength behind the swing is still overwhelming, and Zoro finds himself flung backwards, hitting the wall of the galley with so much force that he could feel the wind knocked out of him.
He coughs, choking on nothing, and before he could find his feet he already finds himself pinned against the wall, the wooden planks digging into his back.
“Say that again,” his older self snarls, voice low, and Zoro actually feels chills running down his spine.
He tries to tip his chin up defiantly in an effort to save some dignity. “That Cook, whatever you have with him — it’s making you weak. You’re losing focus, and —”
The rest of his sentence dies on his lips as he is once again hurled to the side, thrown over the door before falling onto the grassy deck below, the dirt leaving burn marks all over his skin. He could barely defend against the next attack, his older self swinging down with so much force Zoro could feel the trembling in his hands down to his shoulders. His loses his grip on Wadou by the next swing, and the sword roll and clatter unceremoniously across the deck.
“Was that weak to you?” His older self hisses, and Zoro looks up to see the older Zoro looms over him. He is suddenly caught up in images of an old memory, Kuina standing over him with a wooden sword over her shoulder. She looked so tall, then — untouchable. His older self looks no different from her now.
“N—no,” he admits, hates how it comes out as a stutter, but unable to say it any other way.
“Now imagine fighting that every day,” the older Zoro says, “because that’s what having the Cook around is like. He’s annoying, wouldn’t shut the fuck up — but he’ll know you better than you know yourself, and he’ll force you to become a better version of yourself, because he’ll never expect any less. He’ll understand, more than most, what it’s like to throw yourself headfirst towards the chase of your dream.”
His older self leans down then, and looks him straight in the eye. “If you’re disappointed in me — in what we’ve become — that’s between us. But don’t you fucking dare bring the cook into this.” And for a second, Zoro sees something flit across his face — something softer, the sharp edge of his expression making way for something gentler as he tells Zoro: “he’s gonna be the best thing that’s ever happened to you.”
There’s something in the way his older self says it — like he believes every word to be true. Zoro feels a sharp pang of — what? Jealousy? Longing? He can’t quite place a name on it yet, but as he sees Sanji walk up to them, hand circling around the wrist of his older self like he’s done it a thousand times, a million times — Zoro wants; to understand, to feel, to even begin to fathom, what it’s like to have someone like Sanji by his side. The way his older self does.
“How long have you been listening,” His older self says, almost a whisper; there’s an embarrassed flush on his cheeks, his earlier hostility nowhere to be seen.
“Long enough,” Sanji says, and there’s a little smile on his face – teasing, perhaps? “Don’t be so harsh on yourself, you oaf. He’s just a kid.”
He watches his older self slide a hand up Sanji’s neck, framing his face and pulling him into a kiss, right before his vision starts to blur and everything falls into darkness.
Zoro opens his eyes to the sky blazing-blue above him, Wadou safe in his right hand.
He doesn’t believe that there’s a predetermined path he has to take — believes more in the future he can shape by his own hands, that his choices mean something. The Zoro he met, he concluded, was simply a version of himself he could be — a possible future in a different universe. He may become him, or he may not. He simply finds peace that even in a different world, a different timeline, he is still chasing after the same dream.
He continues to watch the sky, and can’t help to wonder what shade of blue his Sanji’s eyes will be.
Zoro is nineteen, bickering lightly with one foul-mouthed cook from a floating restaurant as Merry sails towards their dreams. He’s a pirate, a nakama, and maybe, just maybe — a lover, too. If Sanji will let him.
Zoro looks at his life and smiles, content that this is the one fate he doesn’t have to fight against.