Chapter Text
What else is a man to do? What else is a man to do when his eyes burn behind his eyelids no matter how tight he shuts them? What is a man to do when his gaze carries so much more weight than what it used to? What is he to do when there is an organ in the pit of his stomach, alien and intrusive, beating and bleeding loosely under his skin as it wants? Too heavy to carry, too obtrusive to work around, too internal to see. When it pulls on his lungs and his heart and soon, he is afraid, he thinks he is going to die. What is a man to do once the storm has settled, but no one has addressed the wreckage? The breakage? The fraying fabric yet to mend. The wood that is still splintering. The metal bent, and the screws missing, and the tools that he needs to bash his head open and let his thoughts spill out don't exist. If they do, he is yet to hear of them. If they don’t, he is simply yet to die.
What else is a chef to do than to bake?
He is alone at night, the only other person awake at this hour sitting in the crows nest watching vigilantly for passerby ships. He is alone, so he thinks he should be fine. No one to find him working away in the galley over madeleins. Madeleines that used to sit at the host’s counter as decoration back at the Baratie. Carne would try to sneak them under his apron, but he’d never succeed. Makes Sanji wonder who was stealing them, because he would have to bake a new batch every week. Zeff, the old bastard would breathe down his neck every time he did, like a horrible back seat driver telling him “More butter, eggplant,” or “you have to freeze the pan before you fill it you idiot! Everyone knows that!”
No one to assume that he can’t sleep. Not that he, well, can. Because the things he sees at night are indescribable in their horror and not to mention gore, and Sanji especially has a rather acute predisposition toward anxiety of this matter.
It’s only gotten worse, the nightmares among other things since their departure from Wano. The constant stimulation worked wonders as a distraction from the more unfavourable repercussions of the more previous of his recent adventures. Violent action to occupy the clearly empty space in his brain instead of the now regular incessant berating.
Slowly he folds the flour into the batter. He does not have the proper mold for regular madeleines, betraying their most iconic feature, but at sea and on the run you simply must make do.
No one to find him stress-baking like a loser in the middle of the night. That is, until a particularly strange shadow finds its way over the window, blocking the moonlight from entering the kitchen. Sanji looks up to find Nami staring at him. Almost in shock he stares at her blankly, offering up a crooked smile when she continues to stand there, dumbfounded. It takes her a second to disappear beyond the frame and open the door to the messroom.
“Sanji?” She mumbles. “What are you doing?”
It takes a moment for him to respond, still holding the bowl full of dough in one hand and a spatula in the other. “Um,” he responds eloquently. “Making cookies?”
Her gaze drifts over to the dining room table, where plates and plates of baked goods are arranged neatly over the tablecloth. “Yeah, it seems like you’ve done a lot of that.”
“Big crew,” Sanji hums quietly.
“We’d manage.” She slowly makes her way over to behind the counter.
Sanji places the bowl down, resting his hands on the counter top, hands backwards like they’d been screwed on the wrong way. It’s too uncomfortable, the stiffness, so he takes it back in his arms and resumes his stirring.
“Sanji?” She says again, like a prompt. “Are you alright?”
“Of course, dear,” he says, adjusting his grip on the spatula.
“Then why are you up in the middle of the night?” She asks. “I saw you turn in a couple hours ago. Couldn’t sleep?”
“I could ask you the same question,” he squeaks out, just barely shoving down the urge to place everything gently on the counter and rub his wrist with two fingers.
“I was using the bathroom, not the oven.”
“Well now I have the opportunity to be with you. I’d say it was a pretty successful baking session. All…” He swallows, not quite sure he can salvage whatever he is going for. “According to plan?”
“Sanji.”
“What? You aren’t enjoying one of our typical meaningful midnight chats?” Humour isn’t the right choice. He knows that. There is a slight twinge in his jaw, like a spring that hasn’t been cleaned in years.
“Sanji, we don’t have meaningful midnight chats. We don’t really have meaningful chats in the daytime, either. You know that. What’s going on? Are you alright?”
He shifts his weight to his left leg, then to his right, and then because his bones don’t quite feel right in his body back to his left. He considered saying ‘Um’ again, but doesn’t think that would be the best strategic move for his current prestige. He traces his eyes over the pattern in the marble, though he’s seen it a million times before and could draw it in his sleep. “I’m sorry,” he rushes out. The bowl has now been successfully abandoned and the batter slightly overmixed. He’ll lament properly when he serves everyone.
“For what? You’ve apologized a thousand times, Sanji,” she says like that itself is an apology in some strange way. “We’ve forgiven you. Luffy’s forgiven you. What more could you be sorry for?”
‘But it wasn’t enough.’ He wants to say. ‘Everything.’ he wants to say. He is so, so remorseful that those thousands of apologies have paled in comparison to the millions trapped underneath his tongue. “I’m sorry,” he says instead. “I’m sorry, dear, but I just can’t seem to look you in the eye.”
She seems to shift when he says that, like she hadn’t yet noticed it was an issue until he spoke. If he could he would see the darkness that lay over her face shift into an almost figmental expression.
And Sanji, in his pink chef’s apron slides to the floor against imaginary walls, fingers now bunched together holding onto the edge of the counter. Nami goes to crouch down next to him, only to realize he is shaking with such intensity that he has his eyes screwed shut, like he’s afraid the motion will throw him overboard. Maybe it will. Irrational fears and all that.
“Sanji,” she says for the third time, unsure of what else to say, no doubt. “What is going on?” There is no ‘with you’ at the end. No accusatory bite, no absurd fuel in her words. He doesn’t appreciate it nearly as much as he should. He hates that he doesn’t. Take a moment to breathe. To process, but that anger doesn’t dissipate, nor calm, nor take a separate, abstract form.
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs in place of a proper answer. And he keeps saying it, with no steady tempo, no rhyme or reason, no real meaning behind those lips. “I’m sorry, this shouldn’t be happening.”
That seems to catch her. “Why?” She asks, patiently. “What does that mean? Why shouldn’t this be happening?”
“I-” And that’s just it. He doesn’t have a concrete reason, which is just making this more pathetic. Nami doesn’t deserve to see him like this. Nami doesn’t deserve to deal with this – to still be dealing with this. Even after she charged into enemy territory for him. After she helped convince him to come back. Helped fix whatever was wrong with him. “Why don’t they ask about anything?”
“Do you… Want them to? Do you want them to ask about what happened?”
“No! I just- I don’t understand why they still look at me like- like-”
“Like they trust you.” It’s a statement. Not a guess. Because she knows.
And he knows. He should. This isn’t a new development. He’s had their trust for a long time, lived in it, reciprocated it, and yet he left. He broke that trust. Didn’t put enough in them that they could help. They couldn’t. And yet.
And yet they did.
“Because they do.” She reaches a hand out toward him, placing it on his shoulder in a reassuring action but all it does is make Sanji want to puke.
He throws a quivering hand over his mouth, and when he feels bile crawl up his throat he launches himself towards the door, leaving Nami behind in the kitchen.
To his utmost disappointment she finds him with his face hovering over the toilet in the dark, spit hanging ugly on his lips. He turns his head away. She shouldn’t have to see this. This shouldn’t have to happen – this shouldn’t be happening. Nothing makes sense anymore, shown clearly on her face that’s filled to the brim with confusion and concern.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbles again, so quietly that she can’t hear it. I’m sorry I've made you look at me like that.
“Sanji.” She keeps saying his goddamn name. He doesn’t know what to do.
Because he can’t stop shaking and there is this strange feeling in his gut like gravity has increased on his lungs tenfold but left the rest of his useless organs behind to suffer the consequences of his actions.
“Please don’t, Nami dear.” He coughs out when he sees her take a hesitant step forward. “Please don’t come in here. You shouldn’t… you don’t have to see this if you don’t want to.”
She does anyway, in the kindest fashion, and how could he ever hate her? How? How could he make her hate him? She crouches down next to him just as she had done so not even five minutes ago. “Sanji.” And this time she’s determined. No more messing around. “Do you want to talk about it?”
He shivers. “Not really. Not much to talk about.”
“Bullshit.”
“I.” He stops abruptly, unsure of how to continue. “It’s stupid.”
For a second it looks like she might hit him over the head, but she takes a deep breath and refrains from doing so at this moment. “No. No it’s not.”
“Yes. It is. I know that you all still want me here. I know that, I mean how stupid would I be after that whole fiasco if I came back with you and still thought you guys didn’t care but. But. You’ve consoled me so many times. And yet I- I’m sorry Nami dear but I… I don’t believe you. No matter how many times you tell me I didn’t fuck something up fundamentally for some reason I just can’t believe you.” He tries, he really does, but he still can’t meet her gaze. And after a while she reaches out to sooth him, rubbing small circles on his back, but all it does is make him feel sick again.
And he wonders as he chokes loosely on his own throw up, when did he become the type of person that cries instead of smiles when touched by a beautiful woman.
It all worked out in the end. No one died. No one died and yet he is so, so guilty.
“It wasn’t your fault,” she says, and he knows that. “You were threatened. Your family was threatened. We all know that.”
“Forgive me for saying this where you are trying to be so kind, but I’m afraid you aren’t really helping.”
She pauses, and Sanji feels pathetic. He’s taken on monstrous beasts and horrible creatures only to fail yet again in the face of Vinsmoke Judge.
They stay there for a moment, breathing, a bit too laborious for some. Sanji buries his fingers in his hair, tossing it back and forth, tugging slightly, then yanking harder because it feels like every strand is facing the wrong direction. Nami reaches out to stop him, but he shoves them in his pockets before she can reach him.
“Do you want me to–”
“No thank you, darling.”
She pauses. Then, quieter, “Do you want me to put the dough in the fridge?”
He thinks for a moment, then even quieter than her. “Yes please. And could you lock the cellar too?” He fishes around in his pocket and hands her the key.
She accepts it, her hand under his when he drops it so he won’t have to touch her, and she leaves him there in the dark.
He doesn’t cry, doesn’t sob, but he does mourn the food he wasted. Wastefulness like that damn country incarnate. Wastefulness like his brothers’ breath shaped around words that no one needs to hear. He spits into the toilet and flushes it. Washes his face, runs his hands through his hair and washes his face again.
Tomorrow he will look at Nami with kindness, as the great separator of him and the betrayer of a heart that pumps the foreign blood in his veins, and she will speak of this to no one.
Though, what he fails to take into account is that it is already long past midnight.
He will take the dough out in the morning.
-x-
“Stress.”
“I know that, buddy.”
“So. So much stress.”
“Yeah. How do I make it stop?”
Chopper’s been looking at him like the little guy is drunk out of his mind for a little while now. He whispers a little ‘oh my, oh my god’ under his breath like he’s in a telanovella and lays his head in his hooves. “You’re asking me how to stop being stressed out?”
“Well, evidently, yeah. How's it work normally?” Sanji says, swinging his legs back and forth.
“It doesn’t, normally. Not unless you know what’s stressing you out so much you experience a bout of emesis at the mere thought of it.”
“I do.”
“You know?”
“I know what’s stressing me out.”
Chopper blinks. With only one eye, but it’s not quite a wink. It’s creepy. “What is it?”
“Well.”
“Well?”
“Like. It’s kinda like if you made a sous vide.” Sanji shrugs.
Chopper’s mouth is hanging open and his left eye keeps twitching.
“And you’ve been doing it for years and you’re like, ‘oh wow, i've been doing this for years! I’m pretty good at it.’ And then you use raw garlic and get botulism.”
Chopper’s dysfunctioning eyes go wide at that and he slams his hooves down on his table. “Botulism?!” He looks distraught. Sanji thinks it’s kind of cute, even. “Botulism!? If you have botulism it’s more than just stress, Sanji– but botulism is a neuroparalytic disease and if you did have it you–”
“I don’t have botulism.”
“Yeah.” Chopper grunts. “Okay. You don’t have botulism," he says, almost like he doesn’t believe him.
“Maybe not the best example, but my point still stands.”
Chopper looks one wrong medical term away from a hernia. Which. “What point?!” He cries, desperate for some sort of substance.
“Now my hands are all covered in raw garlic,” Sanji says suddenly. “And I want to make other things, y’know, but everything I make just tastes like garlic. Like millefeuille, and tart tatin, or–”
“Medications that slow blood clotting?”
“Yeah! I think? And that stuff ain't supposed to taste like garlic, and I survived years without the curse of raw garlic, even after I learned about garlic and how to use it! And that was a while ago! Like, when I was just a kid a while ago. So, why now? I just made a mistake, but it keeps affecting my cooking and I can’t really tell why. Y’know?”
Chopper, who is finally calm and collected, sighs. “Sanji, I’m no therapist–”
“I would prefer if you used the term ‘michelin star chef,’” Sanji says, a smirk barely concealed behind the hand that he’s brought up to drum his fingers over his cheek.
Chopper makes a face at him. Unknowable in its expression but it gets its message across clear enough. “I am not a professional in this field, and I do not have a degree in psychology–”
“You don’t have a degree in anything. You’re a reindeer–”
“Sanji!”
“Shutting up.”
Chopper takes a deep breath. “It seems to me like you haven’t been questioning why there is… raw garlic all over your hands.”
Sanji takes a deep breath, prepared to disagree, but his face twists in a great feat of contortion after a moment. Has he? “Huh,” he hums. “Wow. You got me there, doc.” Feeling like the issue has been solved, Sanji slings his suit jacket over his shoulder and makes his way over to the door.
“Where are you going?”
“Um… Lunch?”
“It’s ten o’clock.”
“Snack? You’ve solved me, Chopper. I’m cured.”
Chopper mutters another ‘oh my god’ under his breath like he can’t believe the wondrous extent of his own medical prowess. It almost looks like he shudders. Perhaps under the weight of his prodigal genius. “No,” He says softly. “No you are not ‘cured’ Sanji.”
“Well. Okay sure, but now I can work on it. Yeah?”
Chopper doesn’t voice any of his concerns, so he must have gone insane. “Yeah but, Sanji?”
Sanji peers at him through the doorway.
“If this is messing you up so bad you can’t make your steak tartare or something, then ask one of us for help, alright? We’d be glad to. All of us.”
Sanji is quiet for a moment, almost looking as if he’s mulling it over. Even though he already knew that. “Tart tatin, Chopper. Steak tartare goes quite nicely with garlic.”
“Sure. Whatever. Just ask us for help with your… garlic problem, yeah?”
Sanji has a quick mental image of someone licking garlic off his hands and shudders. “Ew.”
“You know what I mean,” Chopper sighs again.
“You got it,” Sanji says and walks away down the hallway.
“This crew,” Chopper laments. “This crew is going to die. This crew is going to die without me, because they are all idiots.”
-x-
The rest of the day goes by without issue. Sanji cooks, Luffy eats, Usopp tells dramatic stories of false courage and bravery to an enamored chopper. The crew is normal, nothing out of the ordinary. And Nami is staring daggers into the back of Sanji’s neck.
Her eyes blown wide, way out of proportion and he really only wants her to stop so her eyes won’t fall out of her sockets. It’s been going on for a little while now, her gaze boring holes in his dress shirt as she takes bites of mini sandwiches and sips of her Shirley Temple. He hasn’t addressed her yet, despite all of his atoms yelling at him that it’s rude to disregard a lady like that. He’s not disregarding her, though, not really. Just saving his own mortal skin from complete and utter annihilation is all.
Oh, how selfish are his worldly desires.
She leaves soon enough when everyone else filters out and he refuses to turn his back away from her. Zoro has probably fallen asleep on the couch, but Sanji doesn’t acknowledge him. Doesn’t bother to turn around to face him if he is awake. Doesn’t dare to tempt fate in his own kitchen.
It takes him longer than usual to do the dishes. What is normally nothing but muscle memory becomes stiff, rigid movements. His arms heavy like the water has traveled up his skin and now soaks his sleeves where they are rolled up at his elbows. Even after he has finished he stands there, regrettably letting the water run so as to not hear Zoro’s snoring if he is there. Too cowardly, perhaps. Standing alone in his kitchen in his home and he pauses in the face of.
Of who exactly?
He shuts the water off.
Zoro is not there.
To his surprise it is dark out. Though, he doesn’t dwell on how long he must have been standing there like he’d gone mad. He spots Zoro asleep on the lawn and scowls.
Most are close to comatose when Sanji enters the men’s barracks, missing only is the aforementioned swordsman and Jinbe, who is most likely up in the crow’s nest on watch for the night. He stands there, for a moment gazing wistfully albeit a tad bit creepily at his crew. Chopper is curled up on Franky’s chest, not stirring in the slightest at just how much of a ride he’s getting due to how large a man he is on, whose snoring is known to wake up a sea king or two. Usopp’s limbs are rocketing out in every direction like a spider, and his nose looks to be engaging in a painful match with the rope of his bunk. Brook, predictably looks like nothing more than a pile of bones that you would see in a particularly depressing cave. Though it is Luffy that surprises him. He has not yet made his nightly inevitable descent to the ground, still dangling half over the edge like he wanted to take a bite out of the adam wood.
Shutting the door softly Sanji makes his way over to his bed, shrugging off his suit jacket on the way. His pajamas are folded neatly over his blanket, and he quickly changes into them. Simple flowy pants and a soft button up shirt. Though, he has no urge to climb into bed.
He thinks of Chopper, snoozing away on his personal trampoline.
And so he walks over to Luffy’s bunk and climbs the ladder. Luffy barely even stirs when Sanji lifts him back over the edge onto safe mattress, but he does reciprocate when Sanji wraps his arms around him, tucking his captain’s head into the crook of his neck.
“G’night, kid,” Luffy mumbles, and Sanji laughs.
“Thank you captain. Good night.”
-x-
The catastrophe that has befallen has nothing to do with chopping carrots. Sanji thinks. But he is chopping carrots, and right now it does seem like a pretty awful thing to be doing.
Don't get him wrong, carrots are great! They’re great in soups, stews, and stir fries, and god knows how much he loves making cakes out of them for the ladies. But if you were to tell the cutting board that the violence being enacted upon it is not due to the poor quality of the carrots bought from the last island they stayed at, Sanji thinks it would snap in half.
“Oregano, maybe?”
Sanji’s not in the mood.
“I’ll fucking kill you. Get out of my kitchen.”
“Woah, touchy subject. But can’t, sorry. Captain’s orders.” Sanji isn’t facing Zoro, but there is a smirk somewhere laced into the tone of his voice that is miraculously more annoying than the one most definitely stitched onto his face. “I’m here to make sure you aren’t making out with any of your cooking utensils, or something.”
“That makes no sense Marimo. Why would Luffy send you in here knowing it would cause a fight and delay lunch. And stop leaning on my counters!”
“Im not leaning on your counters.”
Sanji turns to scowl at him. He who has both his arms on the countertop and one foot hooked around the ankle of the other. He raises an eyebrow. Zoro shrugs. “Thought this was called an ‘island’”
A metal bowl narrowly misses Zoro’s head and clatters to the floor at the far end of the room.
A beat of silence passes as Sanji pushes the carrots to the side and starts on the potatoes.
“Or, wait no. Someone asked Luffy to ask me to come in here.” Zoro hums to himself, like he’s actually thinking about it. Sanji almost scoffs. Like Zoro has ever thought about his actions before. Like he ever will.
That smile, though, almost too bored to be properly classified as a smile. That one he hasn’t seen since Sabaody that has resurfaced here and now for some reason. That recent emptiness of expression, like Mihawk took Zoro’s request to teach him to be the best as “make me more like you.” Make me not express outward emotion, make me never smile or laugh outside of a particularly thrilling battle. What a narcissist.
“That makes even less sense, shitty swordsman. You just agreed? What’s in it for you?”
“Nothing much, really.” He picks up a mango from the decorative bowl of fruit on the island and twirls it around.
And there is that organ, again, pushing on his heart, tugging on his throat, bursting through his skin. There is nothing to be held in reverence, here, where his blood is being pumped with the eagerness of a hopelessly enamored child and the violence of his reality. There is nothing special about himself, he must be reminded. There is sympathy, which in itself is sympathy. There is a beauty, which is, well.
Well.
“Nothing at all, actually. Couldn’t even sleep if I tried with your incessant muttering, crying for help.” Zoro puts the fruit back, for which Sanji breathes out a sigh of relief. You’d be surprised at how clumsy he can be. How clumsy he used to be, at least. Another one of his flaws that was taken mercifully from him during his years away. Sanji still hasn’t gotten used to it. “You’d think after eleven years you’d know what oregano is.”
“I know what oregano is. I’m not using oregano.”
“Doesn’t it go well with, I don’t know, the potatoes?” Zoro teases, like the bastard he is.
It does, Sanji mourns. “Clashes with the mint. And it works best with yellow potatoes. Reds are better for stews.”
“Huh,” Zoro hums. For some reason. “How informative are we.”
“Yeah, like you’ll retain any of this. Too many weeds in that head. All that space under your thick skull is taken up for roots.”
Zoro drums his fingers on the countertop. “My apologies, oh wise and omnipotent love-cook. I was under the impression that ‘what should I use here? What would bring out the flavour of the lamb? Oh I’m so lost, whatever should I do?’ would elicit a response seeing as it is, well, a question.”
“First off, that’s not what I said, and second it wasn't a question. I didn’t even know you came in here.”
“That’s an admission of defeat.”
“It is not! And who is teaching you these words?” Sanji whips around once he’s finished removing the bones from the lamb.
Zoro shrugs.
“Go die.”
“There’s no shame in admitting you need help sometimes,” Zoro says, smirking.
“Kill yourself.” Sanji scowls, dropping everything into the simmering broth. “I was just thinking aloud. A concept I don’t doubt you aren't all that familiar with since you seem to fail with internal thinking as well, so I don’t blame you for misinterpreting the situation.”
“Har har. You already made a brainless joke, twirly. You’re getting soft on me.”
“What else is there about you? Muscle-bound dyslexic lug.”
“I’m not dyslexic.”
“Yes you are, just ask Chopper.”
Zoro straightens his legs and turns towards the door. Sanji exhales in relief. The poor galley doesn’t deserve his presence.
“Don’t get caught up in all that thinking. We know what happened last time.”
And there is something about that that has Sanji seeing red. In no time at all he’s across the kitchen and has Zoro’s collar in his hand. He jabs his heel into the back of the shitty swordsman’s knee, forcing him to the ground. There is an ache in his chest, this time. It’s new, a steady dull throb instead of the regular pulsing pain in his abdomen. It travels through his shoulders, down his arms and settles at the base of his thumb, where it locks in a vice grip against Zoro’s shirt.
Zoro looks up at him through an enigmatic expression. It’s strange how he hadn’t resisted at all. How he rests on his knees, unblinking, his face scrunched up in light puzzlement. How, almost as if he wants to appear nonthreatening and benign, he slowly raises his hands so they are out in the open. How he didn’t even try to draw his swords.
How he opens his mouth slowly, and how his tone is gentle, more like a reminder than an observation. “Curly,” He says, and Sanji tenses. “You’re using your hands.”
Zoro doesn’t break eye contact, no, it’s Sanji who’s gaze slips down to where just under Zoro’s chin is Sanji’s right hand, still holding his chef’s knife. It’s angled loosely toward Zoro’s neck, only about an inch away from prodding skin.
“It was a shitty joke.” Zoro breathes slowly, like Sanji might really kill him. His heart beats. Once. Then twice. Then something else does. “That’s on me.”
“Shut up.” It’s not yelling. It’s not shouting, just stern, and enunciated but it makes him clench his jaw all the same. And he would never. Kill him. He would never, but he might. His hands shake.
Eleven years, and his hands haven't shook once.
The knife presses lightly against a vein in Zoro’s neck.
In one motion – only one, for he can’t spare any more than that – he opens the door with his knife still in right hand and throws him outside with his left.
Bastard doesn’t even have the manners to trip on his way out.
-x-
Usopp finds him on the floor of his workshop. To give him credit he doesn’t say anything about it. Not at first at least. He simply stands at the door, probably open-mouthed like an idiot for a while, staring at Sanji, who is gazing wistfully at the ceiling with his hands folded over his stomach. It only takes a moment or two before he steps over Sanji’s lifeless corpse and pulls on his welding mask.
They remain in simple silence, broken occasionally by the sparks and screams of hot metal bonding to hot metal. Sanji can’t see what he’s making, having been staring at the same spot where the wooden walls meet the ceiling for the past hour or so.
Eventually, Usopp sighs and removes his welding mask.
“What’s up?”
Sanji, to the best of his ability from his position on the floor, shrugs.
“Bullshit.”
“I am…” he trails off. “Seeking joy and comfort and whimsy in my life?”
“If you wanted joy you’d go to Nami, comfort Robin, and whimsy Chopper. What do you want from me?” Usopp rests his elbow on the table and leans over so Sanji can see him. “You’re acting weird.”
He’s not wrong, which is infuriating, because even though Sanji still can kick him, Nami would probably yell at him for it. What is he here for? Honestly no clue. He hasn’t been this clueless about something in a long time. He is acting weird, but that’s okay. It’s acceptable. He’s earned it. He’s waited his whole life for the opportunity to act a little strange.
Waited through iron bars and stone floors and galley lines and crowded kitchens and customer service for the chance to be mysterious and vaguely pathetic.
It’s almost laughable how this is something that he dreamed of.
He has better ones now.
“You know Germa wasn’t always a seafaring nation?” He says, suddenly.
Usopp stills, not quite sure how to progress with the conversation. After a second his shoulders untense and he slouches back in his seat. “Makes sense. They had to start somewhere.”
“They originate from somewhere way up north. So far they had their own dialect of north blue. So far that no one could understand it. I remember my mom used to tell me of the words she thought were funny. Literal translations, strange meanings, funny slang, anything. But you know what I thought was the funniest thing ever?”
Usopp shrugs, twiddling his thumbs.
“There were eight words used to describe affection, and six of those you could consider love. And out of those six words five of them were synonyms for the word war. War, or violence, or bloodshed or hatred or any combination of the sort. But there was only one word for pure, unfiltered love.” Sanji breathes. In, then out, then a pause and out again. It smells musty in here. Dry and arid and sawdust-y.
Usopp, noticing the pause, opens his mouth slowly. “And why was that?”
“Because it was the name of a God.”
Usopp hums appreciatively. It’s a strange thing, seeing him so calm and collected, though maybe he’s always like this in his workshop. Like how Nami’s always focused in her map room, or how Jinbe is so serene at the helm. Or like how Sanji is at peace in the kitchen. So long as no moss-headed idiots didn’t disturb him.
So long as they said nothing too terrible.
“They believed in gods?” Usopp asks innocently. “I didn’t think they were the type.”
They. They, he says, like those people, perhaps as a people are not connected to anyone here. They aren’t, and it’s simple like that, but it is also a kindness.
“Before Judge became ruler, yeah,” Sanji sighs, and it surprises him he hasn’t felt the urge to light a cigarette yet. “But not quite like others. They thought that long ago the Blue Sea was a god too. That it, or maybe it’s people did something terrible once upon a time and we were punished for it. Though, they thought other things like the sun was a planet too and so was the moon, so, how right could they have possibly been? They thought that all the planets were petrified versions of the gods, and that they were all bodies of heat. That a long time ago the Blue and its people, us, went against the law of the world and as such the heat was taken from us and plunged us into blizzard and permafrost. Of course, this was never the case, as they were simply too far up north to ever feel the heat of the world properly.”
“Even with the sun?” Usopp asks.
“Even with the Sun,” Sanji answers. “She was the most praised of all. Back then at a certain age a child would choose a god to live under and retain their values and such, but the Sun was universal. It was believed that the Sun was the Blue Planet’s ‘Older Brother,’ which I don’t understand very well because my mother always said she was a woman. When the Blue was cast into darkness the Sun chose to burn bright enough to save the people of our world, and as such we celebrate her, even though she is burning inside her own cloak.”
Usopp was quiet for a moment. Sanji wondered if he didn’t know what to say. If he was always the one telling grand stories and hadn’t had any experience on the receiving end. “That’s beautiful,” he says, suddenly.
“It is,” Sanji agrees.
They don’t talk like this. They don’t chat like this. Not anymore.
Not with Nami, he doesn’t, either.
Does he even talk with Luffy that much?
“What about the moon?”
The blood trapped in him jumps, exited and glowing with memory. Of his mother, telling him these tales before she lost her voice fully, or of his origin? Blizzard and permafrost. In his veins.
“The guardian. The Moon keeps watch, neutral in its malice. Respectful of the Sun’s decision, but honouring that of the rest of the gods’.”
“And…” Usopp trails off unexpectedly. “Your mother?”
Sanji nearly jumps. His eyes flicker open fully, not that they were closed before but now they are alert, wide, waiting. He looks at Usopp for the first time since he had started talking and sees that he is sitting with his legs propped up on the crossbar pedal. His face, now devoid of any welding mask looks expectant and patient, and his hands no longer search for something to fiddle with. One props up his face, the other lay calm against his thigh.
When Usopp meets Sanji’s gaze the image shatters, and he mourns its loss. Usopp’s eyes blown wide and his mouth stuttered for an excuse. His arms brought up and his hands shaking and stuttering comically. “I just- I assumed she grew up with all this ‘cause of like, before your- Judge took over you said it was still like- a thing! And like, you said a child grows up and chooses a god to worship or follow or something? And I was just wondering if… or I guess who…”
“Who my Mom chose to follow?”
Usopp looks a little sheepish, but Sanji can tell he’s trying not to let it show.
Sanji laughs, like it should have been obvious. And well, it could have been. If you were Robin, who never forgets what is told to her, or Jinbe, who takes everything everyone says to him into careful consideration.
“Who else?” It’s a lighthearted little smile, but Sanji hopes Usopp sees it anyway. “The god of love.”
If he was a stronger man he would tell him about how she had a portrait hung up on the wall of her room of the god of love, and how starkly it contrasted the portrait of the god of war that was strung above the biggest chair in his father’s throne room. How the dichotomy made his nose wrinkle, and how they were two completely different concepts yet their synonyms were synonyms. How they both wore neutral expressions yet they both conveyed such strong emotion that he remembered thinking that there was no possibility the artist hadn’t met the gods himself. That that, right there, is Love. And that, right there, is War. War and violence and bloodshed and hatred.
“The god of love,” Usopp says, like the words taste strange and new in his mouth. “What was her name?” He dares to ask.
Sanji inhales.
“The god of love…” he tests it too, just in case the shape of it has changed.
“Venus.”
-x-
Sometime in the next week he finds a handheld telescope on his bed. It’s well crafted and hand painted, and if you squint you can see fingerprints in the paint, though intentional or not Sanji can’t tell, because, well, they are overlapped in the shape of small hearts.
Using it would mean going up into the crows nest, though. So he places it in his locker and pretends it won’t crush him.