Mixed Up (ZoSan)

I Don't Want to Die (In the Hospital)

The first time he dyed his hair was with cheaply bought store dye that didn't last for very long and almost washed out completely after the first rinse. He had surprised everyone in the house he was living in at the time when he emerged from the bathroom with badly bleached, splotchy looking green hair. He remembers how Kuina had first looked envious, and then laughed outright at him. He'd been proud of his first attempt, but the shit she gave him for it wounded him. Not that he'd ever let her know, though; he'd merely accused her of being jealous and found out that he was right. She was, so she then demanded he go with her so she could pick out some cool hair colour of her own.

They didn't do any research into which brand of dye was the best, but they picked up a different brand than the one he'd used originally after the results he got were far from optimal. He bought himself another bottle of a similar looking green, and when they got back home they dyed each other's hair, laughing at one another for the way they looked while they waited for it to set. When it was done, Zoro's hair was a solid, definite green and Kuina's was a deep, dark blue that matched her eyes well.

He never did outgrow that colour. That perfect, absolute shade of green.

"You could lay down on the lawn and lose your hair in the grass," Kuina had once said.

His hair was fading; he'd been in the hospital for too long.

Not only were his roots beginning to come in, adding a layer of dark soil for his blades of green hair to sprout from, but it'd been almost two weeks since he'd last dyed it. It was fading horribly, leaving him with the same look and quality he'd had when he'd first tried to dye it. One of his nurses (who had green hair of her own) kept making snide remarks about it, but the pain killers his doctor had him on and the fact that he was still pretty much bedridden prevented him from getting rightfully angry with her.

He could do little more than flip her off whenever she came to check in on him and taunt him with how brilliant her hair looked.

It'd been four days since the accident, and all Zoro really wanted to do was go home, drink a beer or six, and get Nami to help him re-dye his hair. Four days, and the doctor who'd removed his eye wanted to keep him there for who knew how much longer.

It didn't make sense to him; they'd already explained how he would need to begin to care for his injury post-release, and even had a prescription written up for him for when he was able to go home- which they'd originally said he could do yesterday. The only reason they were keeping him hostage in the hospital was because those fucking painkillers they had him on made him too nauseous to leave his room. His only relief from the boredom and the irritating pain in his eye came in the form of visitors.

His whole team had come once, the day after the accident. They'd crowded the room and gave him a duffel bag filled with the things he'd left in his locker the day before and presented a huge, handmade 'get well soon' card to display by his bed. Even his coach had come with them, but he didn't have any words to share with Zoro. They spoke of general things in an effort to keep the atmosphere light, but it eventually degraded into tearful apologies from those who had been on the ice with him when he'd been attacked and done nothing to help him. Zoro found it embarrassing, and so was quick to forgive them.

No one from his team had come back after the first initial visit, but he hadn't really expected them to.

Nami came every day, but only stayed long enough to relay how Chopper was doing in her care and how work was going and who was giving his students lessons in his absence.

"It's actually kind of cool to see Franky playing again, but he's worried about you; we all are," she'd said to him once, sighing melodramatically as she leaned over the railing of his bed.