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Zoro's boot steps echo against the stone walls of the empty castle. He barely hears it over the constant chatter.
"And one of the maids said that the prince always wears his gloves! Always! I mean gloves can be cute, but always? Not every outfit can look cute with gloves, and definitely not if he doesn't even go outside!" Perona floats just slightly over Zoro's shoulders, completely immersed in her own yammering.
He tucks Mihawk's feathered hat and black cape under one arm, freeing up a hand to plug a finger in his ear. It does little to block the noise.
"They said he gets mad if the servants so much as come within touching range of him. Why would it matter if he's already wearing gloves?"
He sees a flight of stairs. No harm in taking it, he supposes, especially with the added bonus of being further away from the noise source.
"And rumor has it that he hates people. Did I mention he never leaves his room? Not even for Princess Reiju's birthday banquet today-"
A pause in the distance.
"Zoro? Zoro you uncute directionless dummy! Where did you go? Geez, this is why Daddy... your lost ass... every single time... better be grateful..."
As the last audible words fade from below the stairs, Zoro finds himself in a corridor that looks like Sir Mihawk's. Short, kind of cold, with two doors. The knight's chamber is the one on the darker side. Yes, he's sure. Despite what Perona insists about his sense of direction, he has never gotten lost when the rooms didn't move themselves. Now he just needs to put away the hat and the cape like Mihawk requested and get back to sampling the booze at the feast. The knight has been thoroughly using him as an errands boy since taking him in a month ago. The damn things he puts up with for a chance to train with the sword master.
He opens the door and puzzles at the same aroma of food as the banquet hall. There it is again, the rooms moving on him. Of course it only ever happens when Perona is not around, and she never believes him. He frowns and pushes the door all the way ajar and finds himself in a cozy kitchen. Little plates with bite sized servings of each dish from the feast are spread out over the small kitchen island, including a miniature version of the cake, a tiny three tiered thing that fits on a saucer. A young man in chef's uniform stands at the counter, holding a fork and taking a meatball from one of the plates.
Ah, must be a new kitchen aid who doesn't know the rules yet.
"Hey you!" Zoro calls, visibly startling the man. "You new here? Everyone eats in the banquet hall, together, even servants. King Zeff's rules."
The man turns to look at him, shoulders tense and posture guarded. Golden blond hair covers one side of his face. His visible blue eye wide with shock.
"I'm not here to get you in trouble, but d'you understand me?" Zoro assures, taking a step forward and reaching out his free hand to help the man lower his fork. "Means we can't eat in the kitchen. We have to move it all to the banquet hall first."
To his surprise, the man raises a knee to block Zoro's outstretched hand, and the meatball falls off the fork from the exertion and rolls along the floor.
"Wasting food is a major crime around here too, you know." Zoro huffs, bending down to pick up the meatball that has made its way to the side of his boots. He raises it and slips it into his mouth. Before he can chew, he finds himself pinned to the wall by the firm sole of a leather shoe on his chest.
"Spit it out!" The man yells, deep voice resonating through the sole of his foot.
It's too late though. Zoro unwittingly swallows from the jolt. He blinks at the man, who might as well have been told that Zoro just swallowed the last antidote to the poison he drank. He retrieves the foot on Zoro's chest, curls himself into a ball on the floor of the small kitchen, and sobs.
"Oi, knock it off. It's just a meatball. There's another one on the plate here!"
"I'm sorry..." The man whispers, hands coming up to grip at the roots of his blond strands of hair. "I'm so sorry..."
Zoro stares at the blond. He tries to wrap his mind around what the man could possibly mean, but he decides to leave the man alone be when he hears Perona's voice down the hall threatening to unleash her ghosts on him if he doesn't appear before her within ten seconds. He gathers the knight's hat and robe from where they've fallen and steps out of the small kitchen.
~*~
The next morning Perona shows up at Zoro's door as usual, but instead of accompanying him to the training ground, she drags him back inside to fuss over his shirt.
"You need something presentable to see the prince. Take that ugly ass white t-shirt off right now and put this on." She demands, pulling out the only clean dress shirt left in the wardrobe.
"Can't train for shit in that." Zoro scoffs.
"That's because you won't be training, dummy! Daddy received a message that the prince requests to speak with you this morning, so be thankful that I'm making sure you're presentable and not lost on your way there."
"What prince?"
"What do you mean what prince?! There is only one prince, the one I've been telling you about for the last weeks! The rumored hermit princeling, the one that never leaves his room! But you've got a point. Why would the prince ask for a grumpy unsociable dumdum like you when he hates people to begin with? ..."
Zoro tunes out the rest of Perona's rambling until they reach a corridor that's oddly familiar. A short knock and a muttered "don't wander off" later, Zoro is left standing alone at a closed door. It clicks open to reveal a flash of gold and a frowning blue eye. It's the new kitchen aide from yesterday, now dressed in a wine red three piece suit and dark gloves and seemingly in a better state of mind.
"You... you alright yesterday?" Zoro asks, and his concern is met with an inaudible mutter. The man shifts a little before stepping away from the door to let him in.
"I'm here to report to the prince." He adds, looking around the room for someone with authority and finding the two of them alone.
"Have a seat here." The blond pulls a chair from the vanity desk near the door and starts again when Zoro's seated. "Are you in pain anywhere? Have you seen Chopper?"
Zoro runs a hand along his ribs where the blond kicked yesterday.
"Wasn't that hard of a kick. I've had way worse." He shrugs.
"Anywhere else?" The blond lowers himself to sit on the side of the bed so that his face is at Zoro's eye level, still watching him intently with the visible blue eye. "Nausea? fever? Difficulty breathing?"
"N...noooo?" Zoro draws out the word, raising an eyebrow. "And I don't have time for small talks. You know where the hermit princeling is? Or did Perona get lost dragging me here?"
"Is that what they call me now?" He chuckles dryly, pulling back slightly and raising a gloved fist over his gut. "In any case, you will be living in this room for the time being. If you need to retrieve anything from your room, I will arrange for it to be brought to you."
A few thoughts break out in a fight for attention in Zoro's mind. He sits there dumbly staring at the blond until a winner emerges.
"You locking me up here?"
"what? No!" The blue eye shoots up at him. "I just wish to keep an eye on you."
"Why? 'Cause I couldn't dodge that half ass kick of yours? Told you. I've had worse."
"Because you swallowed my food." The blond whispers after a pause.
"... And?"
Zoro frowns when the blond gives no additional information.
"What, you poisoned your food?" Zoro offers. "What were you trying to do, kill yourself?"
That seems to strike a chord.
"I would never-" The blond jumps from the bed only to bite back the rest of the sentence. He adds with a sigh. "Not on purpose anyway."
"Either way I can't do that. I have training."
"Sir Mihawk has granted me permission to suspend your training due to the special circumstances. His exact words were 'Please inform my squire that we shall speak of resuming his training after he learns to dodge a simple kick to the chest.'"
Zoro feels a heat on his neck and cheeks.
"Well that simplifies things. Just need to beat you, is that it?" He stands and puts a hand on Wado's hilt.
"Big words for someone who was pinned to the wall yesterday." The blond gives a small smirk and nods to a pair of glass doors behind translucent blue curtains. "Balcony."
"Tch, as if a sneak attack out of desperation counts."
As soon as the blond closes the glass doors behind them he strikes with a flash of his black leather shoe. Zoro deflect with Yubashiri's sheath and draws Wado to swing at an unguarded shoulder. The man dodges with an effortless back handstand, freeing up both legs for a round kick that drives Zoro into a far corner of the balcony before he can draw Kitetsu to block.
"So those swords of yours are not just decorations." The blond chuckles from his handstand, golden locks falling away from the face to reveal oddly curled eyebrows.
"Like those eyebrows of yours? No they're not." Zoro smirks and takes the chance of the blond's momentary distraction to push the leather sole back and swings at the hands, careful to use the back of the cursed blade.
The man makes no effort to dodge or block the attack. Instead he uses the split second advantage to drive a heel to Zoro's face, making it impossible for the squire to block in time. Zoro feels Kitetsu land the attack the same time the heel connects with his cheek. They both slam onto to the stone tiled floor of the balcony.
"Why didn't you dodge?" Zoro asks as soon as he regains his breath. "You wouldn't have hands by now if I used the blade side."
"They're a reminder." The blond mumbles, looking at his gloved hands. He dusts himself off and makes his way back into the room to a half open white door. "I suppose that was a draw, which means you're staying here as I requested. Cosette will be arriving with your breakfast any minute now. You can let her know if you have any requests during your stay here. Make yourself at home, but just... don't try coming into my kitchen again."
With that, the blond disappears through the door, leaving Zoro alone at the glass doors joining the balcony to the bedroom. There's a simple bed the blond was sitting on with light blue linens and matching pillows, a book shelf, and a vanity table where Zoro was seated earlier. On the table in front of the mirror is a delicate silver crown, and Baratie's royal crest is engraved onto the silver plate mounted in the middle. A fish leaping over vast ocean waves.
"Wait..." Zoro yells toward the open kitchen door. "Did you say you're the hermit princeling?!"
~*~
Zoro changes back into his training outfit the first chance he gets and spends the morning going over as much of his routine with Mihawk as he can remember, thankful for the balcony where there are no furniture or fabric to damage by a swinging blade. Once or twice he thinks he catches the prince watching him through the small kitchen window, but he finds no one there when he turns to look. By the time lunch draws near, he's finished the muscle trainings and sword stances and is sitting by the kitchen door, meditating to the soft beats of the blond's whisk.
When a maid comes by to inform him that his lunch has arrived, he catches sight of the prince sitting by the small kitchen window and eating out of a freshly packed lunchbox. He follows the man's line of sight to find a handful of off-duty servant boys sitting under the naked tree in the court yard in the early winter chill, talking excitedly as they trade side dish items from their own lunchboxes. The corner of the blond's lips pulls up, and he picks up a piece of fluffy egg roll just as two of the boys fight over who gets the last piece of their own. He takes a bite and grins.
"Why don't you join them?" Zoro asks from the doorway, startling the man again. "Weather's good. Food's packed. Go have your picnic."
"Go finish your lunch while it's warm." The prince reaches out and squeeze the pair of black gloves on the windowsill.
"D'you watch us from here sometimes?" Zoro catches the corner of the training ground from the edge of the window.
"I watch you get your ass kicked by Sir Mihawk everyday, yes."
"A little obsessed, Curly"
"And you have a lot of questions, Mosshead."
"Look, if you're gonna imprison me here and make me miss my training, the least you can do is let me ask the damn questions."
The prince falls silent.
"So tell me." Zoro presses. "Why'd'you insist on locking yourself here and letting the servants pass rumors about you hating people when you clearly want to go out there and join all the fun? Is this some sort of solitude training bullshit for royalty?"
"All I said was I enjoy watching you get your ass kicked." The blond grins, blue eye not quite meeting Zoro's.
"You can just tell me if you want me to stop asking questions."
The prince turns back to the window for a long minute, and Zoro is just turning to leave when he speaks next.
"If you promise not to touch anything, you can come hang out in the kitchen while I clean up." He says, almost too quietly for Zoro to hear.
"If you want." He adds before shoving another piece of egg roll into his mouth, and Zoro feels like he has just earned a victory of sorts.
~*~
Zoro can't help but wince inwardly at the sight of the angry bruise across the back of the prince's hand as he rinses the lunchbox under running water.
"Hurts?" He asks from the kitchen island a few steps away, where he's been instructed to finish his own lunch.
"I get it that you're mad at me for holding you here." The blond flexes his bruised hand.
"Wasn't me. Kitetsu has a temper."
The blond raises an eyebrow.
"It's cursed. Always out for blood." Zoro says, reaching a hand over the red hilt and feeling the ever present low hum of impatience.
The prince shoots him a pondering look and finishes the dishes.
"How did you know it was cursed?" He asks again when he joins Zoro at the counter.
"It's got a history, apparently brought a few previous owners to their deaths." Zoro recalls the day he picked up Kitetsu in that shop. "Can tell from holding it too. Whines for blood."
The blond leans onto the counter. His visible blue eye lingers on the red hilt as Zoro works his way through his pasta from the main castle kitchen.
"Can I... try? Holding it I mean." He asks quietly.
Zoro shoots the prince a curious glance at the request and picks up the red blade from his side.
"Don't touch the hilt." He warns as he sets the sword down on the counter. "Don't give it an excuse to draw blood."
The blond raises his bruised hand and lays a tentative finger on the gripping rope across the middle of the sheath, then another finger, then slowly the palm of his hand, then the other hand further up the sheath. He lifts it slightly off the table, and before long, he lets out a soft gasp and lets go of both hands. Kitetsu clanks against the countertop.
"You can feel it too, right?" Zoro grins.
Again, the blond doesn't answer.
~*~
The hours turn into days, and every sparring session Zoro initiates ends in a draw. He finds himself less worried about when he'd get to leave and more curious about the man's self imprisonment. He asks for the blond's reasoning in the decisions he makes every chance he gets, and the curly prince dodges most of his questions.
"Why do you make your own meals when you can just let the castle kitchen make them like they're making mine?" He asks again one day from his usual spot against the kitchen island after their now routine afternoon sparring session, and this time the blond slows his chopping with a long inhale.
"Have you heard of the All Blue?" The man gives a rare smile, a small quiet thing that hangs off the corner of the sparkling blue eye, and the expression brings enough warmth to disperse the snow storm outside. "It's a legendary sea where you can find all the fish in the world! No one found it yet, but just imagine living there as a chef and trying your hands on every kind of fish you've ever heard of!"
"You want to live there one day?"
The smile drops from his face with a shake of his head.
"I like to pretend I live there. It takes my mind off things."
"Things?" He asks and is ignored in favour of chopping, which he has come to expect.
"Your sword." The blond says after a bout of silence. "Why did you keep it if you knew it was cursed? Aren't you worried it'd kill you?"
"It's a good blade." Zoro beams. "My luck overpowers its curse."
The man looks up at Zoro, the hidden blue eye peeking through the blond curtain of hair, twinkling with wonder. He stares at the squire for a while. The sudden interest makes Zoro swallow unintentionally. The prince holds out a bare hand to him.
"Will you be able to tell if my hands are cursed?"
Zoro looks at the outstretched hand, pale from the lack of sunlight and littered with small old scars. The bruise from Kitetsu a few days ago is fading to a sickly green. Gently he takes the hand in his and closes his eyes to concentrate, ignoring the pounding of his heart and the heat spreading across his cheeks. He feels nothing, no hum of bloodlust or intention of harm, just the warmth of human flesh in his palm and the slight tremor against his own steady hold.
Zoro shakes his head and feels the tension leave the hand in his grip.
"Why do you think your hands are cursed?" He asks and receives only a small frown in reply.
~*~
At lunch the next day, the blond offers Zoro a small slice of apple, and after making sure the squire lives to see the sunset, the prince hands him a cup of tea at dinner, then a fried egg the next morning, then a bowl of soup at noon. Slowly, he starts asking what Zoro likes to eat and adding them to his notebook full of recipes, and slowly, Zoro stops receiving meals from the castle kitchen.
"I should try a stew next!" The prince announces one morning, blue eye glinting with a childlike glee. "I always wanted to try it, but there's no way I can finish a pot of stew all by myself."
Zoro picks the last few grains of rice off the plate that held his onigiri and bites his tongue on the comment that the blond should just share his food. He knows by now that the man's terrified of the idea of having others eat his food, even though it's clearly an upgrade from the castle kitchen, even though there's no reason for the fear as far as Zoro can see.
"We should do it today! It's Banchina's birthday, and Usopp told me before that she loves stews!" The prince adds, flipping through an older notebook before clapping it shut. He skips to the wardrobe and pulls out the chef's uniform, the one he wore the first time Zoro walked in on him. "And her favourite cake flavour is chestnut. I always save some from the last restock in the fall. I'll cut down on the sugar, so you'll have to help me eat it, ok? Maybe I can make one big enough to write the whole name this time."
Zoro spends the day between his training routine and watching the small kitchen window as the blond buzzes around in preparations for the two-man feast. The air of focused excitement rolls off of him in waves, replacing the usual longing. It puts Zoro at ease, knowing there are still occasions that can bring this much joy to the lonely prince. For the first time in the weeks he's spent in this place, he naps on the balcony floor among the snow piles, leaning his head by the kitchen window, to the steady sound of the prince's knife on the cutting board.
By the time he wakes up, the blond is putting the finishing touches of the butter cream decorations on the dinner plate sized cake next to a counter full of double portion dishes.
"Tada! It's big enough to fit the name!" The man flashes him a blinding smile when he spots Zoro by the door. "I wonder if Patty and Carne are making a different flavoured cake for her banquet tonight. Usopp usually comes by asking for chestnuts in the morning each year because those two idiots never remember to keep extras."
"Maybe we finished a bit early." The blond continues, staring out across the court yard at the dark banquet hall a floor below. "Maybe they're starting late."
It's not until then that Zoro realizes that he's heard the names before, from one of Perona's stories, about a young gardener who used to play pranks on her before he lost his mother to a chronic illness at the end of summer.
"When's the last time you talked to Usopp?" He asks tentatively.
"Oh it's been months! He's the only one who can climb that tree all the way to the top, but I guess it's gotten a bit cold for that lately." The prince eagerly points to the bare branches a few feet away from the stack of snow on the balcony railing, both casting long shadows in the dim orange glow of the setting sun.
Zoro takes a breath. It's something he'll find out sooner or later, sometime tonight, by the looks of it.
"I don't think there'll be a feast tonight." He nods to the quiet banquet hall across, and when the blond turns to him with a questioning smirk, he retells Perona's story as calmly as he can.
The prince listens wordlessly, and Zoro pushes himself to finish the story when the smirk fades, first to a blank stare of disbelief, then to a twist of agony. When he's done, the man is curled into a ball on the floor of the kitchen, hands pulling at the roots of his silky strands, just as he did the day they first met.
"It's my fault again." He mutters. "It's the chestnuts... I should've known."
"She had a chronic illness." Zoro tries to reason. "It wasn't a surprise, and it wasn't even close to when she ate the cake."
"No, you don't understand!" The blond whimpers, shrinking further into himself. "I'm cursed. My hands are cursed. Everything I touch turns into poison."
"You asked me to check. I didn't feel anything." Zoro takes a careful step forward. "Why do you keep thinking your hands are cursed, Curly?"
"I killed my own mother." The man looks up at Zoro, hair an absolute mess, eyes red and teary, breaths ragged, spitting out each word like venom. "She ate the first meal I ever made, and she died."
The words slice their way deep into Zoro's soul, and he finds no comfort to give. Instead, he crosses his legs in front of the distraught prince and listens to pain that's spilling out as tears. The sun sets beyond the training ground as they stay like this on the crammed kitchen floor. By the time the blond's breaths calm, they were sitting in darkness.
"She smiled at me, said it was delicious." He finally says, sounding hoarse and tired. "She was so sick already. She barely left her bed for years."
"So it wasn't the food-"
"No, it was. It was." He shifts in the darkness, making his voice muffled. "He kept repeating it, made sure that I'd never forget, that I'd be reminded every time I looked at my hands, that these were the hands that ki-"
Zoro rushes forward and wraps himself around the shadowy lump, cutting the man off mid-sentence. Thin shoulders tremble against his arms.
"Who said that?" He growls quietly.
"My..." The blond mumbles into the front of his shirt. "My father."
~*~
It doesn't take long for the blond to fall asleep from exhaustion after Zoro tucks him in. The squire sits by the bed and watches the prince until the breaths are slow and even. He retrieves his swords from the kitchen and opens the door to the corridor. He doesn't know the first thing about King Zeff's daily schedule, but he supposes if he makes a ruckus in the throne room, the king would probably show himself.
He will have his answers from the king then.
"What do you plan to do?" A cold voice stops him in his track as he climbs a set of stairs.
He looks up to find a familiar figure perched on the upper floor railing.
"Princess Reiju." He recognizes.
"The throne room is on the floor below." The princess says, expression eerily blank. "But you won't find what you're looking for there."
"Where is he?"
"Our adoptive father was not the one who did this to him."
"You knew what happened?" Zoro tries to keep the rage from his voice.
"More than King Zeff. Unlike him who only learned about it later, I was there."
"And you did nothing about it this whole time!" He draws Wado and points it at the princess. "Both of you!"
"We did what we could." She turns her head to a wall lamp, showing no sign of acknowledgement of Zoro's weapon. "He was only five years old, too young to know that an adult could lie or be wrong, that someone in the shape of a father could say things out of the need to shift blame from himself. Instead he took it to heart. He made sense of it by building nonexistent rules into his understanding of the world, of himself. It left a mark in him."
Zoro listens, and when he finds no deceit in her voice, he sheathes Wado.
"Where is the guy?" His low voice echoes against the walls.
"Who knows." She hums. "Somewhere in North Blue I suppose. Why do you ask?"
"I'll drag him here if I have to, make him kneel before Curly and tell him it was all a lie."
Reiju shakes her head.
"Our adoptive father taught him how to cook because he wanted to learn, but no matter how much he improved in his cooking, he would cry and apologize incessantly whenever someone tried to eat his food. Knowing the cause did nothing to help. The more we encouraged him to share, or tried to tell him that Mother's death was not his fault, the more he retreated into his shell. In the end he shut out both of us completely, refusing to leave his room or to let us speak to him."
She pushes herself off the railing and lands on the top step of the stairs with a soft click of her heels.
"Neither truth nor reason will help him. He has been under a curse all along, not one that poisons his food, but one that traps him in the words of a fake father figure." She takes a few steady steps down past Zoro. "What would it take to undo such a curse?"
Just like that, the squire finds himself once again alone in the staircase.
~*~
Zoro lets Reiju's words roam in his head, paying no mind to where his feet are taking him. At some point he's treading on the brittle snow of the rooftop, and from the edge of the roof he sees the top bare branches of a tree, extending to a stone balcony with snow piled onto the railing. The glass doors beyond are dark, with translucent blue curtains barely visible through the snowy reflections, but the small window beside it is lit.
Through the window Zoro catches sight of the prince, still in his chef's uniform, sitting at the kitchen island filled with his own cooking, head hanging low and gloved hands tangled in messy blond locks.
The words ring in Zoro's ears.
They're a reminder.
What would it take to undo such a curse?
He backs up a few steps, starts with a run, and leaps off the edge of the roof onto the tree top, weighing it down and shaking pieces of frozen snow onto the ground below. He hangs there for a while with his legs tucked into a nest of twigs, waiting for the swaying to settle. When it does he drops his feet and swings himself forward to grab on to a lower branch with a leg and an arm. From there he shifts closer to the tip of the branch, slowly, with baited breath and eyes on the goal, until he's close enough to reach out and grip the cold iron bar of the railing.
"Curly!" He calls, knocking on the locked glass doors as soon as he climbs onto the balcony.
It doesn't take long for the prince to come running, throwing the doors open and staring at Zoro with bloodshot eyes.
"You're alive!" He whispers, reaching out a gloved hand to Zoro's face, tinkling his earrings in the process.
"Of course."
"I thought I killed you."
"You never killed a soul." Zoro takes the gloved hand in his own, numb from the cold, and lowers himself onto one knee.
"What are you doing?" The prince's hand tenses in his grip.
"Breaking the curse. Do you trust me?"
Zoro waits until he receives a small nod before letting go of his hold and stiffly pulling the glove free from the hand. He sets the glove on the cold stone tile beside him. Warmth bleeds onto his cold palm at the first touch, and the prince pulls back from the shock before relaxing again.
"Your Highness." Zoro starts, fixing his eyes on the pale hand in his. "I, Roronoa Zoro, hereby pledge my swords and my life to be your shield and protector for as long as you shall have me."
He presses a kiss to the back of the hand, where the bruise from Kitetsu has now faded completely, and looks up to find a tinge of pink on the prince's cheeks.
"Let me stay by your side as a reminder." He adds softly. "That you fed and nourished me with these hands without bringing me the slightest harm. May your heart be free from the words that bind it, and may your hands be free to bless those who cross paths with you, the way your gentle spirit was made to do from the start."
The blond watches him, thin lips pursed and quivering.
"Do you understand what you're asking, shithead?" His voice sounds strained. He retrieves his hand to wipe at the mess of tears and hair around his already swollen eyes, making them worse. His shuddering breaths dance in the cold air in a thin mist.
"I'm asking to be your knight. It's the first thing I learned to do as a squire." Zoro says and waits for the man to collect himself.
The blond calms after a while, slipping off the remaining glove and tucking it into his uniform pocket. He takes a deep breath before straightening his posture.
"Your sword, please. The red one." He says, putting a rare tone of authority into his voice.
Zoro pulls Kitetsu from where it's attached to his haramaki and holds it up between them. The prince lifts it with both hands, shaking slightly, no doubt from the bloodthirsty aura Kitetsu is sending through the touch. Zoro watches as the man slowly unsheathes the cursed blade, visibly exerting himself to keep a steady grip on the hilt.
"I, Prince Sanji of the Kingdom of Baratie, hereby vow to place my faith in you, that for as long as you stand unharmed, I shall trust that my curse is truly broken. I charge you to live a long and fulfilling life."
He taps the flat side of the blade on one of Zoro's shoulders, then lifts it and taps on the other one before carefully sheathing it.
"Arise, Sir Roronoa Zoro." He holds out the sword as Zoro stands, and watches as his knight slides it back into place.
Zoro shakes the stray pieces of snow out of his pants, and when he finishes, he finds the blond still staring at him with an unreadable expression.
"What?"
"Thank you for doing this for me." The prince sighs. "For being alive."
Zoro feels heat creep up his cheeks at that. He searches for words and finds none.
"You gonna lemme eat?" He gestures to the kitchen window instead.
"I have to heat it up first." The man chuckles as he leads them both back into the room.
~*~
A couple of days later Cosette visits to restock the pantry. The prince freezes in front of the apple tarts he has set cooling on the counter just for the maid, hands gripping his gloves and staring at the dessert. He bites his lower lip and begins to curl in on himself.
Zoro reaches across the kitchen island, takes a pale hand in his, and presses a silent kiss to the back. A reminder, like he promised.
The blond looks up at him, searching for a moment before closing his eyes and letting his shoulders drop. He picks up the small plate and offers it to the maid with a twirl much too fancy for the small kitchen space. He spews a string of cringeworthy compliments with a bow, and when the girl takes the plate with a blush, he sneaks a glance at Zoro.
Did I do that right? His crystal blue eye says. Are you proud of me?
~*~
Zoro wins his first sparring session against the blond when the servants begin decorating the castle for Christmas. He grins at the man as they're both on their backs, panting on the stone balcony, thrilled that he's returning to his training with Mihawk, but happier still to see the prince dodging an attack to his hands.
The next day Zoro follows Perona's babbling to the training ground for the first time in weeks, and there he stands listening to a stern lecture about all the possible consequences of raising a sword at the princess his mentor has sworn to protect. When the training ends, he finds the blond, wrapped in a winter coat, under the tree in the court yard, holding two lunchboxes.
"Zeff sent a message." The prince leans back against the tree trunk as Zoro bites into a still-warm egg roll. "Asked me help with the Christmas feast."
"You agreed?"
The man reaches out and gives Zoro's free hand a squeeze, fingertips chilly from the wait out in the cold. The knight returns the gesture.
"I suppose I can give it a try." The prince lets out a misty breath at the touch.
~*~
Zoro spends the day of the Christmas feast tagging behind the prince between the main kitchen and the banquet hall. When the preparations are finally done and the celebration well underway, Zoro retreats to the balcony with a bottle of booze for a break from the crowd.
"It's full moon tonight." The blond joins him at the railing.
Zoro looks up to find a vast starry sky, clear and crisp in the mid winter night air. The moon hangs just above the prince's bedroom across the court yard.
A gloveless hand finds Zoro's, just a brush against his knuckles.
"What're you thinking about?" Zoro asks.
"I'm gonna tell Zeff about All Blue. I want to look for it." The man exhales. "You don't have to come if you-"
"Your words, a long and fulfilling life. Can't get rid of me now."
Zoro turns to find that small quiet smile hanging off the corner of the prince's sparkling blue eye, and he vows to do all that he can to keep it there, the first prerequisite to his long and fulfilling life.
_=~*~=_