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His first step on dry land was more of a stumble.
After an entire life on the sea, having the ground stand still was disorienting, nauseating even. It felt like everything was tipped at an angle, including him, but his mind was still stuck upright, and so the fall had that sense of inevitability about it. And it made sense, really, for his escape to be a bumbling one.
C’mon, can’t you even walk? Or are you lousy at that too?
Makes sense for the baby of the family to crawl! It’s a good look for you!
His knees weren’t that skinned, at least. It should be fine to leave it alone. But he should take it slow. There’s no rush, now that he was in another ocean.
The dock he was on was the one that was closest to the North Blue. If he squinted, he could probably see the sheer wall of the Red Line looming above. It would have been nicer to get further in, settle down somewhere in the middle of the East, but the ship he had stowed away on didn’t appreciate stowaways, and he didn’t want to think about what they would do if they ever figured out he wasn’t just some passenger’s kid.
They could keelhaul you. Beat you up and toss you in the sea. Oh, oh! Maybe they’ll make you their slave for life and work you to death!
Ha, no way. They wouldn’t find a use for him.
The port town was as odd as the feeling under his feet. There was stone, yes, but there was also wood. Shingles. Greenery. People milling about with no purpose, no uniform, talking freely, and it was noisy and weird and colorful and crowded, and he trailed along one side of the street, pressing himself against walls when he could.
He’ll have to find shelter. No, maybe food first and then shelter. And clothes. And then, well...then he would have to survive.
Survive? Really? Might as well give up here, then.
There was a marketplace by the docks and he was able to quietly pick up an apple and pay, digging out a coin from a pouch tied to his side. The woman behind the stall raised an eyebrow at the currency, but accepted it. “All by yourself today, hun?”
He took an instinctual step back. She rose her eyebrow a bit further.
You know how you look right now? Like a weakling. Like a target.
Relaxing his legs, he looked down and stuttered out, “Where...is a good place to stay…?”
“Y’mean like an inn? Hun...a kid like you shouldn’t be going off on your own. Your parents – “
“He’s at the inn!” And then, a little quieter, “They. They’re at the inn.”
A terrible liar to boot. So, so many holes to pick through...you’re such an idiot, you always were.
“I, just, forgot. The way. Back.” The woman was still staring at him, he could feel it on the top of his head. He rubbed the apple with his thumb, around and around, until surely one of them would go raw. “To the inn,” he supplied.
The woman raised a hand to her cheek and sighed, heavy and hard. She leaned back. Pinched the bridge of her nose. “Hun...I don’t really think…”
Use the knife. Do it. What the hell did you bring it for?
I woulda pulled the knife long ago! If you want anything, force it out! Make her bargain for her life!
Do it, you coward. Do it! You want to impress us? You want respect? We won’t bother you if you do this one simple thing.
He bolted.
The woman shouted after him, but he didn’t parse the words, their meanings just slid right off, and he ran and he ran and he ran.
Ha. Well, we never expected anything different from you, Sanji.
The apple had been too sour, too soft. Nothing like home, where the food was only the best of the best and there was always enough of it, even if the others would tease him, steal the food off his plate, make him wait until they all left so he could finally eat unharrassed. He finished the apple anyways, let it drip down his chin, tossed the core down a drain.
The good news was, nothing seemed to cost too much here. The money he brought would last him quite a while.
And then after that? Did you even think at all?
He managed to find the inn on his own, a squat little homey place that smelled like...like...too much. Too much people, too much smoke, too much drinking, too much dirt, just too much, and the world was simply nothing he expected.
That’s right, cry. Just lie down and cry like the useless runt you are.
Go ahead and panic! Give all these rats a show!
Since the man behind the bar was clearly an employee, he went over to him first. He had to knock on the side of the bar a few times for the bartender to even see him, and even then he only got noticed because a patron helpfully pointed him out.
“I want a room,” he mumbled, and the helpful patron translated for him, and he flushed.
See how helpless you are? And you’ve went and gone into the real world now! You’re going to die, you’re a prince and you’re going to die like an animal and you’ll finally be able to do something and feed the scum of the earth.
The bartender looked him up and down, a familiar sort of expression. “Kid – “
“I’ve got money,” he cut in, this time loud enough to be understood, and he raised his pouch as high as he could, which was not very high at all, and so he shook it a little to get it clinking. “How much is a room?”
The bartender leaned back out of sight for a moment, but he could still hear his sigh. He leaned over again. “Kid, look. This isn’t a daycare or anything. Where’re your parents?”
“They’re coming later,” he said, having mumbled various responses to himself before. No hesitation. The right tone. Eye contact.
He’ll still find you out, you know. Just because you’re you.
“How about you sit here and I get you a drink? I’ve got milk here, you like that?”
Well. Could he put something in it? Alcohol, he could probably taste. But there could be things other than alcohol behind there. But he surely couldn’t have pre-drugged drinks. He’d accidentally drug someone unrelated and then the game was up. So if he just watched his hands really carefully…
He managed to climb up on the seat and settled, keeping his eyes wide, trying not to blink.
You’ll miss something, you know.
He only picked it up when he was sure the white was just milk white specifically. And after that he dug around in his pouch for some coins.
“Uh, no, you don’t need to give me that. Wait here.”
That was suspicious, wasn’t it? But he could use all the help he could get. But.
The bartender went around back somewhere. Sanji gave the patron next to him a glance. She gave him a half-lidded glance back and acknowledged him with her glass, the way he imagined heroic and mysterious strangers did. He opened his mouth and immediately said nothing. He couldn’t.
She gave him one last lingering glance and continued her relationship with her drink.
He could still see the bartender, leaning over a Den Den Mushi.
He bolted. He tried to. The stool was too tall and he immediately fell on his chin and everything rang around him, once, twice. The patron next to him was leaning over, picking him up, asking some questions with that cool look in her eyes and he wanted to say, “Help me,” he wanted to say, “I can’t get caught,” he wanted to say, but he could hear the bartender’s voice raise from behind the bar, a very belligerent “Hey!” and he got his feet under him and ran, straight into someone’s legs, around them, out the door.
Brilliant job, genius. I can’t wait for you to die in the streets.
The alleys squelched and smelled like nothing he knew. It was night and he was cold, and he kept thinking about his bed and the fireplaces and every bit of comfort he used to have. He wanted to tear his own head off, throw it away, just stop, stop. But he didn’t even know how to punch.
So you finally figured it out, there’s nothing better for you than what you had at home. And you left it all, you weakling, you coward. You ran away because that’s what you do best, and even then you’re a screw up because here you are and are you happy now? You think you won?
Think about how much we let you hang around! We tolerated you, you know, a pitiful guy like you, but you didn’t get how nice you had it. And you know we won’t let you back in after this.
There were unwanted people here too, with the same sort of face and the same sort of clothes, breathing out the same sort of miasma that lent to the same sort of atmosphere. He knew all of this so well, but there were more men here, less women, less children. Less amputees.
This particular alleyway seemed to be prime real estate around these parts. The unwanted all lined up against the walls, under ratty mats, sitting on dissolved cardboard. One of the buildings had tossed out some garbage, and he could see some shadows in the distance digging through it.
He found some space and sat down, curled his legs up, buried his face in his arms. There had to be other towns on this island, right? He could keep moving, try again, figure out the right things to say and the right things to do until he got it and then, and then.
(There was something else though, an undercurrent to that thought, asking, is this alright? Was this okay for me to do? Is this my punishment? That was the part of his mind that was crying, surely. That small little crybaby part, the childish part that always got him beat up, the part that nobody liked. He had to kill it, someday soon, if he really wanted to survive.)
He heard someone squelch in front of him and looked up.
“Hey, bucko. What’s that you got there?”
The person in front of him was covered in a thin veneer of dirt and the passing of time, and his smile was very incomplete, like he’d had his fair share of punches. He was standing, pointing casually at the pouch. Sanji flitted his hand over it.
“Now now, shouldn’t be any secrets here, right? ‘Sides, I could hear the clinking a mile away. Got lucky pickpocketing, eh? You wouldn’t mind spreading the wealth around a little, right?”
He scrabbled to his feet and tried to back away but only hit the wall. Had one hand over his pouch, the other suddenly wielding a knife. But looking at it now, it seemed more like a thumbtack than anything, and the guy acted like it was too, chuckling, leaning his arm against the wall above him, leaning over so that the sky disappeared, and Sanji tried to shrink down further while still standing.
The knife was so easy to hide, but it was so small, he was so close, at least a sword had some distance, kept anybody away as long as you were swinging it. A knife was nothing like a sword.
He knows you got a weapon now, moron. Haven’t you heard of a surprise attack?
He’s gonna kill you now. He could pluck that knife right out of your hand. He could slit your throat and you’ll bleed and bleed, so much more than you’ve bled before.
Remember all those children games before? This will be so much worse. We were nice to you, y’know, and here’s where you learn it the hard way.
His eyes glanced to the side and his feet followed soon after, but the man noticed his tell and grabbed him by the leg and he yelped and let go of the knife (you failure, you utter incompetent) and he felt himself slammed against a wall, a heavy hand on his face and another one grabbing at his side and he couldn’t even scream out, not with that hand in the way, and even if his blind kicks connected with something he ended up hurting his own legs instead, and this was it, this was as far as he could go all alone. This is what happened to runts separated from their families, it was so clear, so simple, why did he think he was different.
“Fuck, leave the kid alone, Ran. Don’t be an ass.”
“When the hell did you become a saint? Go suck a dick.”
There was a thick sort of sound, one that reverberated right into his head and down to his toes, and he dropped to the floor and bounced in the muck alongside the one who had so recently held him up. There was a woman now, looking the same as the others but the only one offering her hand to him, and she said, “C’mon.”
All along the alley, the unwanted were stirring, like the brewing sea, like a tsunami about to come, and he took her hand and they sprinted out, into the streets, into the light, barreling through anybody unfortunate enough to be nearby, and if anybody else poured out of the alley, then they certainly weren’t following them. She bled into the crowd, tugged him into the flow, moved up and down so smoothly that nobody could complain, and they ended up in the shadow of a warehouse by the docks, their panting covered up by the slap of waves.
He didn’t have his knife. He lost it so quickly. He was just so...so…
“Thank you,” he mumbled out as his wheezing slowed.
“Thanks don’t pay the bills, buddy.”
He didn’t want to look up. He wanted to run again, but there was a hand on his shoulder and he ended up looking anyways, traveling up that arm, all the way to her face. Her expression wasn’t nasty. It was unfair how calm she was. No jeers or anything he could recognize. Just a cold, hard reality.
“I don’t wanna get messy, kid,” she said as his breathing started to speed up, as he closed his hands around the pouch again. “I really put out my neck here for you, don’t you think? I deserve a little something.”
She was clutching his hands now, prying them apart like opening an oyster as he cried and said, “No, no,” but his own hands were never really strong to begin with and it cost nothing to take the pouch from him. She picked through it, counting everything in there. He just stared at his hands, sniffling.
“You...you can’t...that’s all I have, please...”
She glanced down, tossed a couple coins on the ground. “Go find a family to take you in or something. Cute kid like you, that’ll be no problem.”
But she was wrong. There was nothing about him that anybody would want, not really. Even she didn’t help him for him. But as she slunk away he picked up the coins, one by one, and squeezed them in his hands until they burned against his skin.
Wake up. Dig for scraps. Dig for money. Look for work. Fail. Sleep. Rinse and repeat.
He was a veritable local at this point. Nobody knew his name, but they certainly knew his face, that small, rounded face that peered from behind corners and stared from a safe distance away. Like a ghost, really, if ghosts needed to beg for leftovers from restaurants.
He couldn’t keep going like this, not for long, not when he curled up outside and remembered a mattress, a pillow; warm food and a warm belly; a certain sort of stability that didn’t exist here, the knowledge of where he stood in the world. He needed to get out. He needed to be on a ship.
Of course, when it gets tough, you just give up and run. That’s why nobody likes you, they can all see how rotten and useless you are. You don’t have to be family to see that.
There were loads of people at the docks, and he pestered all of them, just please, take him, get him out.
“So what can you do?”
“I can – “
Go on. Say it. What can you do, Sanji?
He tried to stand straight. “I’ll do whatever you want.”
It wasn’t a lie, and yet it was a falsity. He meant his words. He just couldn’t make them true.
Cargo was too heavy for him to move. He couldn’t pull up nets, pull up anchors, pull down sails, nothing like that. Working cannons was out of the question. He had no stamina for cleaning them either. He couldn’t even swab the decks for long periods of time. And none of them said it, but he knew the reason they turned him away. He was just useless.
The strong survive and the weak die, and you know who you are.
How did you even have the gall to think you could survive! You should’ve known, we told you, over and over!
Maybe if he trained, somehow. If he could do, push-ups? The things that everybody else did. If he just had the energy. If he could eat more. If only he had the money. But he needed to work to have money, and he needed to be useful to work, and there was no exit for him, was there. Either live like this. Or.
You were never worth anything in the first place.
All the times we kicked you? All the times dad punished you? We were telling you to die.
The one useful thing you could ever do in your miserable life. Just die.
Quietly. Out of the way. Bothering nobody ever again.
He was sitting at the docks, feet kicking out over the ocean. If it was high tide, the water would be lapping his toes.
The sun was so orange, resting on the horizon like that, dull enough to stare at, at least for a while. The clouds around it, lit up so brilliantly, could have been a soft duvet settling itself all over the world. There was something kind about it, as though something without sentience could be kind. Or maybe it was because it had no sentience, it was kind, unconditionally, unequivocally.
If it got dark, he would lose his nerve, and so he got to his feet and looked down, and he shuffled his feet, and there’s nothing to be afraid of, it’s just like falling. Only, not pushing himself back up again.
He breathed in. Breathed out, because what would holding his breath matter anyways. Breathed in again, out.
And when he swung a foot out over that ledge, someone grabbed him by the shoulders and spun him around, a woman, it was a woman in a nice uniform and she had her face close to his, she was kneeling, her hands were gripping his arms so tight, he forgot to breathe for a moment, he couldn’t figure out what she was shouting because he kept seeing waves, the waves that were still lapping behind him, he turned his head to look like he might see something else there but the woman pulled his head back.
“I’m gonna take you inside, okay?” she said, and he might have nodded because she was tugging him along by the hand towards the largest ship he ever saw, or, pretty large anyways. There should have been all sorts of thoughts running through his head. But there was nothing at all, or nothing much, and he marveled at how quiet it seemed.
He didn’t remember much about the ship. It felt like he had just blinked and he was in the captain’s quarters, huddled in the corner, pressing himself in as much as he was able. The woman kept asking him things but he shook his head until she stepped away and sat behind her desk, reading over papers and counting something on an abacus.
Eventually, he stopped rocking, he stopped counting the clack clack clack of the beads, he found enough pieces of himself to put together and he covered his face and cried.
The woman didn’t look at him for a while, let him sit. But a few minutes later, she approached with a handkerchief at arm’s length in a gentle enough grip that he was able to snatch it easily and she crouched there, in front of him, until he got tired of crying and just sat.
“Do you have parents?” she asked and he shook his head with his hands still over his eyes.
The next question came after a long, tentative pause. “Would you like to work here?”
“I c-can’t, I’m,” and his breath hitched a step, his words almost dissolved into a whine, “I’m useless. I’m useless, I’m useless, I’m sorry, I can’t do anything.”
“What’s your favorite thing to do?”
He looked up at that, and through his red-rimmed eyes he saw some sort of expression he had never seen before, a weird sort of tranquility, but with intent, all of it directed towards him, and it drew the words out of him like a fishing rod. “I...like cooking...”
“There’s a lot of cooks in my kitchen. You can learn from them, if you want.”
His hands were still over his mouth. He looked everywhere but at her. “Is, would that...really be, alright…?”
She smiled and held out an open hand. “Welcome to the Orbit.”