Your body was sore and cold against the hard concrete floor. Your hands and ankles were bound skillfully – tight enough to hold fast, without being so tight as to cut off circulation. It was little comfort, you had already realized that the person who was terrorizing you meant more harm to those around you than he did to you.

The gag was unnecessary, and uncomfortable. You weren't going to scream yourself hoarse in the dark cold room. You couldn't see any windows, not from your position, but there was faint light spilling out from around the roof-less interior room you were in. Your head throbbed worse than your body, and you could only assume it was from the smoke that had filled the garden.

Nausea snaked through your stomach and you focused on willing yourself not to hurl. With the gag in place, it wouldn't have anywhere to go, except out your nose, and you would really rather not do that. You weren't sure how long you had been under, but you could tell your hair was dry, so it had been enough hours for the sun to set and rise at least once. You had showered earlier in the day, but you hadn't blown it dry, and with as thick as it was, there was no way it had dried in the few scant hours of daylight that had been left.

For three months you had dared to be happy, and now here's where you were.

Time marched by slowly, and every sound of the building settling around you had you on edge. The cold was getting worse, and you were shivering. You weren't dressed warmly enough to be in a place without any heating. It was a strange consolation that you hadn't been in this building overnight. Wherever you had been before now you had at least been kept warm enough to avoid freezing to death.

Something soft and heavy fell over top of you and you gave a small, muffled grunt of surprise. You had to wiggle to look out from under the furry blanket that had been dropped on top of you. Looking around, and finally looking up, you saw a figure crouching on the rim of the walls that surrounded you. He wore a mask, strangely angled fins jutted out from it in three directions - one of which seemed broken - and there was the reflection of round lenses over his eyes.

Tight curly hair cascaded over broad shoulders, and there was a bow slung over his back. He looked relaxed, at least in his posture, but there was a tension between you – probably because he kidnapped you. Any other details about him were lost in the dim light and your limited line of sight.

"Why?" You manage to ask clearly after a couple of attempts, even with the gag.

The silence was heavy, and you were about ready to give up on him telling you anything when he finally spoke. His voice was soft, but clear, and as the only other sound in the entire building, it was easy to hear.

"Kuro's last victim was my match." He replies flatly, and the sheer lack of emotion in his voice makes your blood run cold. "I killed him. I killed him, but none of the other survivors even tried!" Anger bursts through his voice and his words are bouncing off the concrete walls. There was so much anger and volume in his words it was making your ears ring. "Not a single one of you! In two decades! Even TRIED!"

His voice vibrates off the walls in the following silence, and his next words seemed to be back under control again.

"If someone had tried then Kaya would be alive." His voice was quieter, but there was rage and pain bubbling under the surface. "Most survivors suffered from 'the curse'." He states, dropping down into the room with you. "Most of that wasn't me, but some of it was. Sometimes I'd find a survivor and they would be happy. Happy! Can you imagine it?"

He tilts his head, and the mask exaggerated the movement and its impact. "They hadn't lost enough if they could dare to be happy. Especially since they hadn't done anything. They hadn't tried! I tried, I tried and I was successful! It wasn't so hard." The glinting round lenses held your gaze, and you tried your best to not let fear reflect in your eyes. "But... I'm a brave warrior of the sea, maybe that's why I could do it."

The mask leans forward, mere inches from your face, and you could feel the heat of his breath as he continues. "He's a warrior too, isn't he? Maybe he can do it."

A gloved hand reaches out and smooths your hair back away from your face. You flinch despite your best efforts, but there's no violence in the motion. "Do you think so, (Y/N)? Do you think your match – mm, no, your love, your soul mate, I've seen how you look at each other – do you think that warrior of yours could cut me down?"

Your body freezes and the gloved hand tightens in your hair. "I wanted you to suffer for daring to be happy, I really did. But then he cut down my arrow..." He sucks in a sharp breath and his body shivers. "It was beautiful. A brave warrior of the sea could die to beauty like that. Honorably." His hand and entire body relax. "Without regrets."

You lunge at him without thinking. You didn't want him to die, you wanted him to be held accountable for everything he had done, but even more than that, you didn't want his blood on Zoro's hands. No matter what.

His crouched position wasn't very stable, and you were able to topple the both of you over. The blanket cushioned you against him, but he grunted as his back fell into the cold concrete floor. Your hands were bound, but they weren't behind your back. Your ankles twisted painfully as you let your knees fall to either side of the body below you. He wasn't much bigger than you, and you felt your knees reach the floor.

You brought your bound hands down over and over as hard and fast as you could, but despite his similar size, he was alarmingly solid. He also didn't stay stunned for long despite being knocked over and assaulted. A strong fast hand grabs the ropes between your wrists and holds your arms fast.

You grunt and twist, but you can't break the grip. You were growling curses and anger at him, but nothing was making it past the gag. With your ankles tied together you couldn't shift and move enough to stand or kick him.

You felt something cold and metallic against your side but couldn't jerk away fast enough as the jolts of electricity from the taser short circuit your body. Spots erupt in your vision and pain screeches through you.

You collapse, not entirely unconscious but on the edges of it, mind and body reeling from the intense and sudden assault. You can feel him move you aside, wordlessly, and he cuts the ropes from around your wrists and ankles, and then pulls the gag from your mouth.

He checks your pulse, and a light shines in your eyes, and he seems satisfied by this. He smacks the side of your face, not violently, but with a harsh enough snap to bring you into focus. Your mind is straining to keep awake, and your body aches from the taser so much you can barely twitch your fingers.

"You won't... get what you want." You manage to mumble between pained breaths.

"Only one of us will be satisfied at the end of this," he says, an oddly sad sound in his voice. He opens your phone, and you see Zoro's contact info come up. "You're going to want it to be me, so behave."

He hits the green call button, putting it on speaker and letting it ring into the cruel dark air around you.

It rings and rings, and by the 5th ring you wonder how it hasn't gone to voicemail. The masked man with you seems unsurprised, and on the 7th ring there's a click, and a voice, his voice, steady as a rock.

"What do you want, Usopp?" Zoro asks, and his tone is harsh and almost cruel, and you can imagine the effort he's putting forth to keep it even.

"Ah, so you figured it out. It's been quite a long time, Zoro." Usopp says, the first positive emotion in his voice that you had heard so far. "Did you figure it out first, or did the police?"

"... They did."

"Mm, but you remembered me once they did, didn't you?" There was a strange manic glee in his voice, despite how steady he was keeping it.

"Where's (Y/N)?"

"Oh, she's here, she's fine. Come on little warrior, speak up." You glare at Usopp, and knowing what he wants you don't want to say anything, you don't want Zoro to show up and have to do anything against this man. "Oh, haha that look she's giving me, I think she wants to try beating me up again. Went a little poorly for you last time, didn't it? You should urge her to speak, Zoro, before I do it."

"(Y/N)," his voice comes through the phone with more softness than you wanted to hear. "It's okay. You can tell me."

Your face scrunches up and you open your mouth, but Usopp's hand cracks hard across your cheek. You grunt from the surprise of the slap, a coppery taste filling your mouth as you feel the bruising sting on your skin.

"No bullshit," he warns, his voice hard and stern. "Just say "I'm alive". They don't need to know any more than that."

You spit the blood pooling in your mouth and considered yelling for Zoro to stay away. He wouldn't listen to you; you know that even as you consider it, but you still wanted to.

"I'm alive." You say, as evenly as you can, glaring at the mask in front of you.

"See now, she's alive. And she'll stay that way, all through this entire cursed ordeal, as long as you - Roronoa Zoro - come here and retrieve her. Bring police if you want, helicopters, snipers; the marines, for all I care. But if anyone comes in before you, I'll kill her.

"You, and the Wado Ichimonji, Zoro. That's what I want to see before I let her go."

"Zoro don't! He wants you to-oof!" Usopp's boot was into your stomach with a snapped and precise movement. The blow violently shoved all the air out of you and the tread of his boot bit into your cheek, keeping you pinned to the concrete floor.

"You remember where you'd practice your Santoryu, right?" Usopp says quickly into the phone, his earlier collected tone completely shattered. "She's here, so you'll find your way, I'm sure, but don't take too long. I'm not giving this ingrate the blanket back after that, and she'll freeze before the night's over."

"Usopp, don't-." Zoro's anger was cut off as the line went dead.

"You're feistier than I expected." Usopp says, a manic edge back in his voice, "I thought a few years of harassing you would make sure you stayed a half-broken mess, but it seems three months in that dojo was enough time."

"It doesn't make sense," you growl, trying to push his boot off. "Kuro stopped killing twenty-urgh." The pressure from the boot made you stop talking. Just when you were afraid you wouldn't be able to take anymore pressure, he let up, taking a step back from you.

"Kuro had a plan. For ten years he worked on that plan, disappearing from the world so completely that people figured he had died." Usopp's fists were clenched so tightly there was blood squeezing out past his fingers. "He was Kaya's butler. Her confidant. He wasn't Kuro then, he was Klahadore. Even tempered, infinitely patient. He wasn't thrilled that Kaya entered into the EMP with the rest of us, but he couldn't stop her."

The Early Match Program, or EMP as most people called it, let teenagers voluntarily sign up to be matched with same-age teenagers. The upside to the process was that you could often choose who you were paired with, and you had six years to marry, instead of 6 months. With no real ill-effects if you called things off at any point – except that you'd go into the pot with everyone else and get matched later by the usual process. It had a relatively high rate of success, considering it was meant almost entirely for 14–16-year-olds to use.

"She was fifteen. I was sixteen. He killed her, and I killed him. After a bunch of fuss, I inherited Kaya's fortune, and was excluded from any future arrangements. The world forgot I existed, just like they did with Kuro." He looks down at you, and the familiar cold chill runs down your spine. "Putting a timeline together yet?"

You hadn't been, but you were now. Zoro was a couple years older, and he and Usopp were in the same class, so they were about the same age.

"You would've been eighteen." You say slowly, not sure you wanted to connect any dots, not sure you wanted to know anything more. You push yourself up into a sitting position, stomach twisting. "There's no way."

"It's improbable, (Y/N), not impossible." He laughs. "I've tinkered and fiddled and invented crap since I was six. Taking out a set of brakes to cause a car accident was easy."

"No... no way, I mean – why?"

Usopp lifts his mask, and you shuffle back without meaning to. His face was scarred, his nose was mangled and almost completely gone, the scars radiating out from it twisted his lip, and ran deep lines through his cheeks and his forehead.

He glares at you with terribly clear eyes. "You were happy."