Usopp looms over you after the call ends. "I'm sure he'll make it," he says. "I mean, there was plenty of time for them to trace the call, but it wouldn't matter. He finds you."

You groan, your body aches and the sharp kick to your stomach hurts like hell on top of it all. All you can manage is a shaking cough, but you want to just reach out and at least knock this man out.

"Aww, don't panic, Zoro's already got blood on his hands anyway, this won't bother him." Usopp says, and something in his voice twists your heart. "I mean, as far as he thinks he does, he does. He always felt weirdly responsible for Kuina's death, but what really got to him, was when he found me."

Usopp works as he talks, forcing your hands together and binding them back together, behind your back this time. You don't have the strength to struggle, and your few attempts earn you nothing more than a few painful twists.

"Kuro killed Kaya, and then I killed him. I didn't know what to do afterward, but Zoro found me. He wasn't even supposed to come over, but there he was. Hours too late to do anything about it. Covered in sweat, shaking head to foot." You could feel Usopp grunt from a stifled laugh. "It was the first time I'd ever seen him look afraid. I honestly wasn't sure he had any other setting than disinterest kendo jock until that point."

"You weren't paying attention, then." You snap. You shouldn't have said anything, and you knew that, but you were beyond frustrated. It was hard to believe the two were actually friends, it hadn't taken you any time at all to sort out what Zoro was like. Sanji knew, you'd seen it on his face during the couple of times you'd interacted with him.

"You're really more talkative than I had expected!" Usopp exclaims, that twisted manic kind of joy in his tone. He turns you around to face him, pushing you against a wall. "Now. You can let me put a nice, soft, breathable cloth gag in your mouth, without fighting me, or I can do something painful and possibly irreversible." He leans close, the mad clarity in his eyes is more horrifying than the mangled scar on his face. "And I promise I will tell him every precious detail of it, if we go that route."

You could feel your blood freeze and your stomach drop.

"Cloth." You say finally and opened your mouth when Usopp brought the gag up.

"A wise choice, chatterbox." He says, tying it snugly into place. "Now, we're going to get you over that wall. I want you nice and prominently visible when he gets here. Work with me and we'll get this done without any broken bones on your part."

Usopp hoists you over his shoulder, his strength belying his slighter frame, and climbs up the wall. It's hard to keep yourself balanced against him with your hands behind your back, but not impossible. The hardest part is the core strength is takes, and the flowering bruise on your stomach from earlier nearly covers your vision in spots.

You expect him to set you on the ledge and scream into the gag as he simply tosses you over. You land into a soft-ish pile of empty cardboard boxes, covered in a few layers of blankets. He lands easily nearby, laughing amusedly to himself as he pulls you from the pile of collapsed boxes.

"You need more training, little warrior." He teases, dusting you off roughly and patting the side of your face when he's done. "You flinch too much."

Usopp keeps one eye on you, as he turns and rummages through a set of bags that were piled up off to the side. Looking around you see the abandoned warehouse has been that way for years. The dust is thick in places, but there's also deep marks in the concrete and cinderblocks.

"Zoro broke a lot of cheap swords, perfecting that Santoryu of his in here. You'd think fighting with three swords was ridiculous, but he made it work. Almost spent more time here than at the dojo at one point." His tone is relaxed, like he's talking to you about an old friend over drinks. "We drifted apart after Kaya died, I mean, I drifted apart from a lot of people. Doesn't matter if it was self-defense, no one's comfortable around a guy with blood on his hands."

He looks over at you entirely. "Oh, not that I'm doing this to drive you away from him. You won't leave him. You wouldn't leave him even if he kills me in cold blood. Nah, this isn't about that. People have been afraid of Zoro his entire life, that scowl of his is legendary." Usopp pulls free what he was looking for and your legs buckle, causing you to sit down hard on the concrete. Your eyes were frozen on the items before you, and your body shakes. Terror wells up inside you and you are struggling to breathe.

Usopp put on Kuro's gloves, the ten long merciless blades scraped along the concrete as he did so. The frosted glass of the warehouse made the sunlight outside soft, more like moonlight than anything else. The sharp blades glinted the light off of them, and you wanted to run. You needed to run. The scars on your back burned, and you knew it was in your head, but it didn't matter. Your legs wouldn't cooperate with you.

"Yeah, maybe a little too poetical." Usopp admits, putting his hands behind his back, trying to calm you down by putting them out of sight again. "Twenty years and you're still terrified of them. Kuro would be happy to know that - if he wasn't bones right now."

"You stay here, on your ass or your feet, I don't care. You move toward him before I tell you to, and I'll finish what Kuro didn't. Nod, if you understand me, little warrior."

You nod, and Usopp smiles, moving to stand behind you. Behind is the door-less, ceiling-less room you had been kept in, in front of you – after the wide open of the warehouse, is a wide hall, and doors beyond that.

If you were rested, if you weren't sore and hurt, you could do it. You could outrun Usopp. Your stride wasn't any shorter than his, and you were quick. But you were hurt. Bound. The gag was already making it a little harder to breathe, as you had discovered when panic threatened to overwhelm you earlier.

"If you run, the hands that catch you will not be kind." Usopp warns from behind you, and your entire body relaxes. You hadn't even realized that you had tensed up, while thinking about your odds.

The minutes had gone by horribly slow earlier, when you were alone in the cold stone room, but they went by excruciatingly slow with Usopp behind you. You didn't know how far from the dojo you were, so you didn't know the soonest he would be here.

You only knew he would be here. No matter how desperately you wanted anyone else to walk through those doors.

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Enough time went by that you had sat down and huddled in on yourself to keep warm. It couldn't have been more than an hour, but you were cold. The first signs of activity were the distinctive sounds of a helicopter circling the building. The first time you heard it you weren't sure you should get your hopes up, but it when it circled again and again, you realized the entire warehouse had to be surrounded.

You got to your feet, and tried to look around the warehouse, but the first thing you saw was Usopp's face. The smile on his face was unsettling, but his eyes on you meant he was just as alert as he had been earlier, and if you went for the doors, you wouldn't make it.

After what seemed like an impossibly long amount of time, the doors at the end of the hall opened.

You knew the figure that was walking slowly toward you, but you barely recognized him. The energy coming from Zoro was intimidating. It was almost like his presence made the hallway darker than it had been, despite the open-door spilling light into the hall. He wore his bandana tied around his head, instead of tied on his arm, and something about it unsettled you a little.

You subconsciously took a step toward him and heard Usopp warning you to be still. The twisted marksman was right behind you, and the long blades of Kuro's claws draped over the front of you, as he lazily and carefully put his hands on your shoulders. You couldn't stop your heart from racing, or your body from shivering, but you managed to keep your feet under you as Zoro closed the distance between you and him.

"Stop there, Roronoa." Usopp says, when Zoro is about fifteen feet away.

"I came in first, let her go." Zoro demands. His voice was deep, coarse, like shards slicing through the air.

"Aww, and let my precious little human shield go with all the attention outside?" Usopp pulls you against him, the shifting metal making you wince. "You came in first, so I'll let her live, but your actions will determine in what capacity she lives."

"... What do you want, Usopp?" Zoro questions.

You didn't want to hear him say it again, you didn't want Zoro to do what he was going to demand. Not for your sake, and so you shook your head, trying to talk from behind the gag. Cold steel settles against your neck as arms held you in place, lines of steel encircling your body, the voice in your ear was ice cold.

"You can't stop this little warrior, stay still."

"It's okay, (Y/N)." Zoro assures you.

You swallow hard but stayed still as Usopp spoke. "Fight me."

"... What?" Zoro was truly dumbfounded. You weren't sure what he had expected from Usopp, but this certainly wasn't the outcome he had been prepared for.

"Fight me. You win, and you walk out of here with your Kaya. You get your happily ever after. You lose, and you'll live, I have no intention of killing you," Usopp's fingers rolled over you, the blades shifting menacingly along your body. "but I'll add an unforgettable number of scars to her body. Nothing to compare to a few thin lines on her back."

The rage that rolled off Zoro was heavy enough to make you feel dizzy, and it wasn't directed at you at all. There was a pleased chuckle from Usopp, and you were tossed aside.

You heard the clash of metal against metal before you'd even landed and scrambled to your feet to see the two of them going at it. There was nothing else but the sparks of their fight. No light, no warehouse. You weren't even sure you existed for a moment.

This wasn't how you wanted to see Zoro's fighting style. You turn toward the doors, if you left then Zoro could leave too, and Usopp didn't have to get what he wanted.

"You're holding back, Zoro." Usopp growls, "That's unacceptable."

Your steps faltered, but not because of what Usopp had said. You felt that terribly familiar cold prickle go down your neck and turned to see sharp eyes and sharper blades coming after you. He had said several times that he wasn't going to kill you, but the madness in those clear eyes left you unsure.

You were tackled roughly from the side – you hadn't even seen him move; you were so focused on Usopp. You knew that Zoro was fast on a straight line, but you were shocked by how explosively fast he truly was. This wasn't tag or hide 'n' seek in the dojo. Apparently, this was closer to what he was capable of when he was serious.

Zoro was between you and Usopp now, his body already turned back toward the blades barreling down toward the both of you. The terrible melody of metal against metal was broken by a muffled scream from Zoro as he stumbled back a step.

"Oh, that's gonna scar." Usopp said almost apologetically. "Do you want hers to match? Or mirror it maybe? Then you could appreciate -."

"Shut up." Zoro growls. "You're not going to goad me into killing you, Usopp."

"Aww, I went too hard, didn't I? Well, that's fine. It's simple – I already told your little warrior before, but you want me to get my way. Either you kill me, Roronoa Zoro, or I'll satisfy my needs by ripping the light out of her life again."

Glass shattered from somewhere, and there was strange sound of something cutting through the air impossibly fast. Zoro's swords were already going back into their sheathes as Usopp's body fell. The realization was sinking into your brain as Zoro turned toward you.

There was an explosion of activity as people poured into the warehouse. He undid the ropes on your wrists, and you pulled the gag free as he helped you to your feet. You couldn't pull your eyes off of Usopp's body and were only vaguely aware of the details.

"(Y/N)." Zoro's voice pulls you away from what you were trying to process, and you gasp.

Zoro was bloody, but the worst was a line across his left eye, from his forehead down to his cheek. It was bleeding and you moved to try and stop it, but Zoro caught your wrists in his hands.

"It's okay."

"It's not okay, y-you're bleeding." Your hands twist in his grip, but you couldn't do much more than cry as this newest revelation brought everything crashing down. "Your... your eye, it's... is it?"

"Doesn't matter."

"It does! I love your eyes." You cry.

"Just my eyes?"

You bark a laugh, in the middle of your sobs. "Seriously?"

"I really need to hear it right now." He admits. His voice was laced with exhaustion, and you were sure this whole ordeal had been just as hard for him.

"I love you." You say, bleary, tear-stained eyes focusing on the one beautiful eye looking back at you. "I'll never be afraid to say it out loud ever again."

He moves you, putting your head on his right shoulder, and holding you close as the police covered the distance from the entrance and filled the warehouse. Even over the rising din of the police and the orders being barked out by Smoker you could hear his voice, smaller than you'd ever heard it.

Soft against your heart.

"I found you."