Chapter Text
Zoro sat up in his bed and yawned. Just another day at sea and another day closer to the crew reaching their goals. He squinted as his eyes adjusted to the light and eventually moved to get up, only he stopped when he realised where he was. He was in the infirmary. Why was he there?
It took a moment but he vaguely recalled a fight with the marines. The Straw Hats had beaten them easily and were celebrating their win when Zoro had just blacked out. That was all he could recall. And now he was in the infirmary.
Chopper was at his desk working away at something, his back to Zoro.
“Chopper?” Zoro said, but his throat was dry so he was barely audible. He looked around for some water and spotted a cup on the tray by his bedside. But as he reached for it the most peculiar thing happened: his hand went right through it.
Zoro frowned and tried again. The same thing happened. His hand just went right through it, kind of like the ghosts Perona had or one of the skills Brook learned during the crew’s two years apart.
Zoro closed his eyes and breathed. Relax. Everything was fine. He was probably hallucinating from some strong medications Chopper had given him.
When he opened his eyes he noticed Chopper had moved to the other corner of the room, back still to Zoro.
“Chopper?” Zoro said again, louder this time. His throat was still parched but not as rusty as it had been.
Chopper, however, did not react. He was too preoccupied with studying his medical notes. Zoro had seen him like this plenty of times. He smiled. He was stupidly fond of their little doctor.
“Chopper, when will the medication wear off? I think I’m having hallucinations or something.”
But Chopper didn’t react. Surely he had heard? He opened his mouth to repeat himself a little louder, when Chopper turned to face him with a scowl on his face. A scowl that he usually got when he was deep in thought about something.
Zoro waited for Chopper to react to him being conscious but he didn’t. Zoro frowned and waved his hand to the side, but Chopper still didn’t react. This was getting kind of odd. Was he having worse hallucinations than he thought?
But that’s when Chopper chose to step forward to Zoro’s bedside. He completely ignored Zoro and instead bent over the bed to examine.. Zoro’s pillow?
Zoro turned his head to see what Chopper was looking at and he nearly jumped out of the bed at what he saw. It was… him? Only he was lying down still unconscious in bed and Chopper seemed to be checking his vitals.
What the fuck? Scratch the hallucinations, he must be dreaming. Yeah, that made more sense. Only, when he looked around everything was so vivid and detailed, unlike his usual dreams — they were usually a bit vague.
But still. Dreaming was the only logical conclusion. He just had to bide his time and he would wake up and all of this would be but another dream he would soon forget.
He watched as Chopper took down notes after examining Zoro’s unconscious body. He craned his neck to see what he had written and was surprised by the details. Long medical words he had no knowledge of covered the paper. They sounded completely foreign to Zoro. But they must have been somewhat familiar if his subconscious seemed to be aware of them. Right?
What alarmed him the most, however, were the dates. According to this dream, this was his third day of being unconscious.
Zoro shook his head as if to dispel the nagging at the back of his head. It was just a dream, after all.
Sick of being in the infirmary, Zoro moved to get up off the bed. He paused and looked back when he heard a sigh. Chopper was holding onto Zoro’s hands.
“Wake up soon, Zoro. Please,” he said. Chopper’s eyes got so watery he had to wipe them on his sleeve.
Zoro swallowed, feeling somewhat guilty for making their doctor so worried. But no— it was just a dream. Anything happening here was from his subconscious imagination. How many times did he have to remind himself of that?
When Zoro reached for the door handle, he stupidly forgot he was in a ghost-like form. He couldn’t grab anything but his hand could pass through things. Did that mean the rest of him could? Tentatively, he put one arm through the door and let the rest of his body follow. Success!
“Breakfast is served,” he heard Sanji yell. Luffy practically leaped into the dining room while the rest of the crew followed behind. Zoro followed too.
Robin hesitated at the door. “I’m just going to get Chopper.”
“Ah! As usual, always thinking of others my dear Robin-chwan! What would we do without your kind-hearted presence on this ship?” Sanji rambled on, but Robin hadn’t stuck around to hear it.
A few minutes later, she walked in with a disheartened Chopper behind her. Robin squeezed his arm and invited him to sit next to her.
“Chopper! How is Zoro doing?” Luffy said, while stuffing his face with some large piece of meat that Zoro couldn’t identify.
“Don’t speak with your mouth full!” Sanji scolded. “And make sure you eat all your food groups!” he said, as he filled Luffy’s plates with a pile of sauteed spinach and mushrooms.
Luffy was unfazed by the addition to his plate and looked to Chopper with his big unrelenting eyes, full of spirit. “So?”
Chopper deflated and looked down at his hooves. “No good still. His vitals are better but he still hasn’t woken.”
“That sounds like improvement, though, right?” Usopp said, wiping his mouth with a napkin. “We just have to be patient.”
Chopper looked at Usopp and nodded, his eyes still slightly red from being wiped in the infirmary. “That’s all we can do at this point.”
“He’ll come good,” Luffy said, certainty laced in his tone. “He always does.”
“Yep. Marimos are persistent pests. Can’t get rid of them,” Sanji said.
Zoro smirked. Luffy and Sanji were certainly right, despite the offensive phrasing from the latter. If this wasn’t a dream, Zoro would have fought him.
After that the crew settled into their usual breakfast routine of just chatting among themselves.
But really, it was fascinating watching his fellow crewmates speaking about him like this and seeing them interact without him. It was so vivid and real that Zoro was sure Chopper must have administered him some heavy stuff and instead of waking up it had the opposite effect.
“Before you all go, what did you all think of the shakshuka? I put together the recipe this morning,” Sanji said as he collected the empty plates.
“Hm. Was that the round thing with sweet red stuff in the middle?” Luffy said, a finger to his chin like he was deep in thought. Which, knowing him, he probably was. Just, it wasn’t very deep at all. They had all quickly learned Luffy didn’t work that way.
Sanji sighed. “No, Luffy. That was the jam doughnuts.”
Luffy nodded, still concentrating. “Yes, they were very good. I liked them.” His features evened out. “Thanks for breakfast, Sanji!”
“Idiot. I didn’t mean those!” he yelled, but it was too late, Luffy was long gone and the others with him. Sanji looked so pained and it was terribly amusing to Zoro. Zoro just wished he could’ve captured it with a visual den den mushi.
Robin and Usopp stayed in and helped Sanji clean up while the rest cleared out.
“I really enjoyed the shakshuka for what it’s worth, Sanji,” Usopp said as he cleaned the table.
“As did I,” Robin said. “There was a perfect balance of creaminess and spice that I never thought possible with the addition of avocado and chorizo.”
Of course, Sanji proceeded to gush over Robin’s praise.
Zoro didn’t know why he was still hovering about there. He had no interest in this. However, he was somewhat confused as to how his subconscious would know these fancy dish names if Sanji had only come up with them this morning. Was his subconscious just coming up with random words that sounded like stuff Sanji would say? It wasn’t impossible; it was probably what happened with Chopper’s medical notes too.
However, the longer this so-called dream went on, the more real it seemed to get. Zoro had never dreamed so meticulously and vividly before.
He sighed. He really hoped he would wake up soon. He was sure he hadn’t been out for three days like he had in this dream world, but for a dream world things sure were moving slowly.
He got up and was about to exit the dining room and kitchen when he heard Robin speak up. “Chopper’s very worried,” she said. “He doesn’t know why Zoro blacked out like that. He’s been pouring over textbooks non-stop.”
Zoro frowned. This really was starting to feel real, the way the dream mimicked his reality. Zoro too had no idea what caused him to black out.
But…
But was this actually a dream?
Zoro thought, logically, it had to be. But then he remembered, they had sailed the Grand Line and were now sailing the New World. All sorts of strange things happened upon those waters. And they, as a crew, had experienced so much of it. A man, whose name was Crocus or something, was living inside Laboon, a whale! There was an island in the sky they flew on their ship to! They fought off zombies on Thriller Bark! They had even been to a set of islands made of food! And half the crew had weird devil fruit powers! Was it really an absurd idea that Zoro wasn’t dreaming?
The more he thought about it, the more it made sense and the more it made Zoro want to lie down and go back to sleep it all away. It was even giving him a headache, despite the lack of physical body.
But that wasn’t an option. He just had to endure and hope he regained consciousness soon. But for the time being, he might as well see what his other crew members were up to. He spotted Franky in the distance.
Zoro made his way over to Franky, who was on his knees putting something together. He had no idea what it was meant to be, but that was probably because it was missing parts, by the look of it. He was spared his guessing, however, when Jinbei came over.
"What are you working on, Franky-san?" Jinbei asked.
Franky paused what he was doing and looked up at Jinbei. "Oh! Just the man... err fishman I was looking for!"
Jinbei raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"
Franky stood up, brushing the dirt off his knees. "I need your muscles. Normally Zoro-bro is the muscles but as you know..."
"... He's out of commission right now," Jinbei finished for him. "I have no qualms about helping. Though there are plenty of other crew members with the muscles too."
"Oh, I know. But they often come with ahh... caveats. Luffy is strong but has no attention span or patience for helping, Usopp is great help with the tools but not so much at lifting the extreme weights, Sanji is kept pretty busy in the kitchen, Nami’s strengths do not lay in her physical strength, Chopper is busy with Zoro currently, and Brook is, well, a skeleton."
Jinbei hummed. "What about Robin-san?"
Franky grinned. "Robin's super! Always has an extra pair of arms to spare, you know?" He chuckled to himself. Zoro rolled his eyes at his lame joke. "However, she helped me out yesterday and the day before yesterday, so I kinda wanted to give her a break."
The praise had Zoro wondering how much Robin could potentially lift. He knew she was strong but because she spent most of her time reading, he had a tendency to forget her physical strength. Zoro decided he was going to invite her to the gym some time.
"All right, what do you need me to do?" Jinbei said.
Franky gave Jinbei a pat on the back -- a pat that would've knocked any regular person over. "Glad you’re on board, bro! So I'm building a specialised custom cannon as per Usopp-bro's request. It's going to be able to shoot all kinds of ammo including Usopp's pop greens. It's also going to have a larger range than anything you've ever seen before!" Franky was gesturing wildly as he explained. Zoro watched, a small smile tugging at his lips. It really was gratifying seeing his crew mates so passionately discussing their projects.
Jinbei nodded at the end of the explanation. "So you just need me to hold part of the cannon while you install it?"
"Yep."
"How heavy is this cannon?"
"You'll soon find out. Nothing you can't handle!"
As Franky slowly wheeled the heavy cannon part across the deck, Jinbei's eyes widened. Zoro could feel the fishman's dread and quite rightly so. The thing was huge. But that was typical of Franky. He often sprung some very heavy jobs onto Zoro. Fortunately, Zoro enjoyed the challenge. But that didn't mean they didn't leave his muscles aching afterwards.
Jinbei rolled his shoulders back and listened attentively to Franky's instructions and they got started. Zoro observed the installation of the cannon, somewhat curious about the process since it was so foreign to him; he never managed to see much of what was going on when being the muscles.
Franky and Jinbei managed to get the cannon installed in decent time but the sweat and cola was pouring off the both of them. The sun was out in full force and when mixed with such physical exertion sweating abundantly was only natural. Even for a fishman and cyborg it seemed.
Jinbei used a towel to wipe the sweat off of his face. "So you're telling me it's normally Zoro-san carrying that weight?"
Franky nodded. "Yep. Don't ask me how he does it. For a human his strength is beyond my comprehension."
Zoro felt a little smug at the praise, though he wasn't entirely sure why it was hard for people to understand. He had trained for so long and so consistently that he was bound to get strong. Was he really freakishly strong? He wasn’t sure. He just knew he had to get stronger; he still had Mihawk to beat. Praise was praise, though. He'd take it.
Jinbei watched as Franky dusted the cannon now that it was installed. "You think he's going to be okay? No one really seems too concerned except Chopper," Jinbei said.
"Mmm. Probably because this has happened before. Zoro-bro was knocked out for days but made a full recovery. He goes in hard and pays the price. Though, I'm not sure what happened this time considering we were mid-celebration. Personally, I'm a little worried, but keeping it under wraps. I'm sure most of us are feeling the same and just don't want one another to worry."
Jinbei hummed in acknowledgment. “Let’s hope he wakes up soon.”
“Yeah.”
Zoro frowned. Surely there was no reason to worry? Though if this really was real, which Zoro was getting the increasing feeling it was, then he’d already been out for three days.
“Zoro’s strong. In so many ways. We really need him here, you know? And I don’t mean for the heavy lifting— though he is a lot of help with that too.”
Jinbei patted Franky on the back and attempted to offer a reassuring smile, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes. Franky appeared to sense this.
“You’re not holding out much hope for him, are you?” Franky said.
Jinbei sighed and dropped his arm from Franky’s back. “I really hope he proves me wrong. However, I’ve seen so many of my friends and family taken unexpectedly by unexplainable things on these waters and it’s made me…” Jinbei hesitated, “jaded. The optimist in me was crushed for so long and it’s only in recent times that I’ve been getting reacquainted with what it feels like to have hope.”
Franky merely nodded.
Zoro’s frown deepened. How could Jinbei think that way? He’d been sailing with them long enough to know better. Zoro would be fine, just like always.
Wanting away from the sombre atmosphere, Zoro sought a place to nap. He found a nice shady spot under Nami’s mikan trees. He usually avoided that spot but none of the crew were anywhere in sight so Zoro closed his eyes and just hoped he could nap even in this peculiar form he was in.
Despite feeling like all his energy had been sapped from the whirlwind of events, sleep did not come. Zoro couldn’t even figure out if it was his current spirit-like form preventing him from sleeping or whether it was the nagging worry at the back of his head about his current state.
In any case, Zoro stayed out there for a while and watched as the sky transitioned from bright blue to vibrant orange and reds. Sanji called everyone in for dinner before it could get dark. Zoro followed behind everyone and decided to take his regular seat at the kitchen table. Despite not being there physically, the crew still reserved it for him. Something about that warmed his chest. If only he could get them to stop looking so glum whenever their eyes crossed the vacant spot.
“Any progress with Zoro, Chopper?” Nami asked. Zoro saw a few shoulders relax, as if Nami asking that question had relieved them of a burden.
Chopper looked down at his hooves. “No.”
The change in the air was stifling. Or at least it was to Zoro. Everyone ate their dinner in relative silence — or what can be classed as silence when it came to the crew. And silence was never a good sign on the Sunny.
It felt like it took forever for someone to break the silence, but eventually Brook did. “Mind if I check up on him after dinner, Chopper? I’d like to play him a song. Of the soothing variety.”
“Um, sure, I guess,” Chopper said. His eyes were watery again—they had been throughout all of dinner. Zoro wanted to slap some consciousness into himself, pretty sure that this wasn’t just a dream like he’d thought. He never wanted to see their doctor so worried because of him.
But maybe he would do just that. Maybe if he interacted with his physical body he could wake up somehow. Eager to test his theory, Zoro left the subdued kitchen and made his way to the infirmary. It was time to fix things.