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Of course there had always been a back-up plan, in case Judge didn’t find Sanji in time. There absolutely had to be a groom, and it absolutely couldn’t be any of his children.
If anything, Sanji was surprised that his DNA had been kept even after he had been confirmed a failure. And how was Judge going to stall the minimum five years for the clone to actually grow into an adult? Or had he planned not to wait at all?
Either way, Sanji stood there, staring at a face he remembered so well. A face yet to be marred by welts and bruises and lumps, a face floating serenely in the pod, and Sanji wanted to kick the pod apart, destroy the whole place because what a terrible way to create life, what a mockery to make people as a means to an end, he had never asked to be born and to be born twice was too much, too much.
Behind him, Chopper patted his leg.
“Hey,” Sanji said back, eyes stinging. “Do you think, maybe, we could give him a good life?”
The kid woke up hours later, after everything was said and done. His peaceful face disappeared and his brow instantly knotted as he looked around the infirmary, scrutinizing the bed, the desk, the walls. Sanji set a hand on his and he didn’t pull away.
It really was like looking into a mirror, and did this kid even know what he looked like? Did he even know words?
Chopper approached the bed with halting steps and said, “Hello? Good morning.”
The kid nodded back. “Good morning.”
Sanji let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding and squeezed his hand. Chopper waited for a further reaction that didn’t come, and then said, “I’m Chopper. I’m a doctor. Is it okay if I give you a check-up?”
He nodded again, and Sanji finally let go. During the examination, even as Chopper’s fur tickled his arms, his face, the kid put up no fuss. He kept that solemn look, like he was prepared to go to war. Sanji resisted the urge to grab him again.
After obediently opening up himself for examination, after getting a confirmation that he was a regular, healthy eight-year-old, he asked, “Who am I?” and Chopper looked at Sanji, eyes uncomfortable, and Sanji looked down at the kid and he looked back and shit, he was actually doing this, wasn’t he? He was committing to this, and why had he allowed responsibility over himself? How had the world allowed this?
His mind flew to the obvious and reeled back in distaste. After throwing off the mantle of Vinsmoke, he wasn’t about to continue their legacy.
His second thought he discarded immediately because if Zeff ever found out he’d named a kid after him, Sanji was sure he’d get an earful even while halfway around the world.
He approached his third thought with trepidation, as though it would disappear, and it was with a little hesitation that he said, “You are Gin.”
Usopp gasped, long and loud. “You had a kid?!”
“Don’t be stupid,” Sanji grumbled back. Gin stared out from behind his legs and he ruffled his hair encouragingly.
There was a lot to celebrate. Reuniting the crew (again), defeating Kaido, getting Sanji back, Jinbei and Carrot joining, stealing the Road Poneglyph, and now a kid. Sanji made the menu every bit as overwhelming as the list and the party spilled out over the deck, on the crisp grass he never knew he would miss so much. He received many hugs and reprimands from the half of the crew that missed the first go-around and joined in on welcoming Jinbei and Carrot with all his heart (especially Carrot-chan, that wonderful cutie, how lovely of her to go out of her way to save a guy like him) and laughed along with everybody else once Luffy got the party going in his own special way, but in the end, all he could do was sit and eat and watch Gin.
Luffy was showing him the chopstick trick and Usopp was egging him on to do it. He was holding his hands up and shaking his head, eyes wide, but he couldn’t hide his laughter and this was what happiness looked like, so foreign on that face.
Zoro was also watching. “We don’t have time to deal with a kid,” he said into a bottle of alcohol, and Nami tugged on his ear.
“Says the guy who sleeps all morning,” she shot back.
But he was right. Was he right? Was a life constantly on the run from the marines really such a good environment for a kid? And did Sanji even have an idea what a good childhood was even made up of? If he was really honest with himself, Zeff’s style of parenting left much to be desired. And life on the Orbit was mostly washing dishes. There was his mom, but how could he ever be her? He was wholly unqualified for this. Completely out of his depth.
Gin wailed sharply when Jinbei lifted him to the sky, but there was an excited look in his eye and he kicked his legs like he was paddling through the air.
Hopefully, everybody’s help would be enough.
Luffy was hanging from the yard of the main mast by his legs, swinging Gin up and down and Sanji almost tripped down the stairs on his way out the kitchen.
“Luffy you fucking maniac put him down!”
“Huh?” Luffy shouted down from above, still swinging the goddamn kid like a hundred feet in the air. They were almost going a full revolution around the yard as well, and aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa. “We’re not done yet!”
“I don’t give a shit if you don’t come down right now I’m feeding all the goddamn meat to the fish!”
That got his attention. A little too well, as Luffy unhooked his legs from the yard and dropped for the ten longest seconds of Sanji’s life, carrying Gin along the way, and as soon as the both of them landed, Sanji pulled Gin out of Luffy’s reach.
“We were just swinging,” Luffy said, arms akimbo.
“There’s a perfectly good swing on the deck!”
“We wanted to go higher,” Gin said quietly, and looking at his own guilty face was almost enough to stop Sanji’s lecture right then and there. But foolishness was foolishness and Sanji pointed his spatula at Luffy’s chest.
“You shitty moron, don’t you at least know better than this!?”
“Yeah,” Carrot piped in, coming up behind Gin and threading her arms under his arms. “If you really wanted to go higher, you should just ask me!” Before Sanji could say a word or even scream, Carrot shot up into the air with Gin, high, high, much too high, a million miles too high until he couldn’t see them anymore and holy shit, holy shit, holy shit.
Sanji found that he was still screaming when Carrot landed with a heavy thud, Gin still in her hands. “Wasn’t that fun?”
Gin, now with wildly windswept hair, nodded. “I could see everything!”
Sanji collapsed onto his knees and planted his face on the floor. “Carrot-chan...please...don’t do that again.”
“Aah, c’mon Sanji, it’s fine, it’s fine!” Luffy said, circling around in front of him. “Don’t you trust us?”
That carefree voice was enough to surge Sanji back to his feet and he grabbed Luffy’s vest and hoisted him up. “It’s not about trust it’s about not giving me a heart attack!”
“Hey Sanji,” Usopp called, leaning out the kitchen door. “Something smells weird here...”
“Fuck!” Sanji made it halfway up the stairs before going back for Gin and shooting a glare at Luffy’s way. “We’ll talk about this later.” And then he zoomed back to the kitchen, plopped Gin at the table, and slammed the door.
“But I wanna play outside,” Gin mumbled.
There were things that definitely were the same, between him and Gin. Uncanny similarities that Sanji couldn’t help but wonder whether it was just in his genetic makeup, something intrinsic that defined Sanji in his entirety; or, well, defined Sanji and Gin, now. It was eerie, watching himself press his face against the aquarium glass, or seeing himself read with the same voracity of years past. It brought up things he had hoped he’d left behind. But no, some things stick, don’t they?
And then there was the way that he clung to people, hugging their leg or dragging them by the hand outside, trusting, unafraid. There was the way he took everybody at their word, securely believing that everything they did was the best for him. The way he laughed off teases and taunts, the way he could go to sleep furious and wake up forgiving, the way he could assume the best of the world despite the world never quite living up to expectation. And all Sanji could think was, am I not a naturally angry and bitter person? Is this what it’s supposed to be like? Will he grow up to be a better, more likeable me?
There was another thought, that Gin would love childhood more than adulthood, and it made Sanji’s mind reel. Circle around. The concept was just so unfathomable, and yet his insides boiled with, with, revulsion, maybe. Discontent? Jealousy. Why am I me?
He clamped the thought and dug it deep with everything else before it could broil into something he couldn’t control.
“Hey Sanji, he’s talking to you.”
“Hm?” Sanji looked up. Gin was gazing down at the table, picking at his fingernails. Usopp was staring straight at him, arms crossed.
“He wants to play outside,” Usopp repeated.
His first instinct was to just give him what he wanted. Because why wouldn’t he? Why shouldn’t he bend to the will of a child after having been a child who was denied so much? But at the same time, he had to be a figure of authority, and what sort of authority just went back on his decisions so easily? Sanji took a deep breath. Nothing could have prepared himself for all this.
“Wait ‘til I finish cooking, alright? Then we can go out again.”
He tried not to feel Gin’s sigh weigh down in his gut.
Usopp scooted back a seat and plopped down in it. “Hey Gin, wanna draw?” Somewhere from his bag he unearthed sheaves of paper and a rainbow’s worth of crayons that all clattered and rolled on the table. Gin leaned over to pull a few materials closer to him.
The result, after a few minutes of the sound of waxy scribbling, looked like blobby shit. Which he shouldn’t be thinking, what was wrong with him? But Usopp clapped his hands together and cooed, “Wow, that looks great! What’s the story?”
“That’s me,” Gin started, pointing at some sort of yellow thing in the middle of a circle-y bit, “in the Shark Submerge. And it’s got wings so it’s flying, and I’m gonna see everything.”
“You know, I actually flew, once.”
That tone of voice was unmistakable. Gin leaned on his elbows and settled down. “Really? How?”
“I was fishing for the monster of the sea that was terrorizing the shore of a distant island when I caught this huge pufferfish! It was so mad that it puffed out, like – “ Usopp filled his cheeks up and gestured out a round shape at the same time, something that could fill the room, possibly, “ – and it was about to get away! But I grabbed it – “
“What about the spikes?” Gin interrupted, brow furrowed.
“I grabbed it by the tail, of course! And I dug my heels in and held on tight. It wriggled and thrashed in my arms, a mighty enemy indeed! But I tired it out, and it had to take another breath. What neither of us expected was when it deflated, all that air rushing out pushed me off my feet and we were zooming across the sky! We must’ve flown about halfway around the world before we landed, and then...”
Usopp was so fucking good at this. Why was he so fucking good at this?
“What? Uh, I kinda watched over this group of kids for most of my life, I guess?” Usopp answered some time after dinner, as they were cleaning up. He scratched at his hair and ended up getting suds all over it. “Maybe not ‘watched over,’ more like ‘hung out.’ Or ‘goofed off,’ really. It wasn’t like I was a responsible adult or anything, they already had their own parents?” He bit his lip, looked away. Mumbled, “I don’t know much about raising kids either.”
Sanji drowned the dishes, scrubbing at them under the water. He hoped the faucet drowned him out when he said, “More qualified than me.”
Maybe it was normal to have that sort of experience under your belt. Maybe he was just naturally unfit.
“Surrender, or the kid gets it!”
Sanji froze, and someone with a sword managed to jab it through his side. He turned around. Gin usually was inside. Gin was supposed to be inside. Gin wasn’t inside, but being held up by the neck, held up by a filthy rotten piece of shit bastard, knife pointed at his face, and the sword ripped out of Sanji’s side but he stayed standing and he could hear all the fighting stop, or, almost all the fighting, because Luffy, bullheaded idiot he was, still kept going, and that was to be expected, but.
The damn bastard, seeing someone not quite getting the memo, hoisted Gin and shouted, “Oi! Didn’t you hear me?! Stop fighting or else I’m gonna – “
His side splurted with pain every time he moved his leg, but he kicked at the air, pushed himself forward, past all the inconvenient idiots in the way, up the stairs, and was in front of the shithead before he even started his next word. Sanji’s foot came a second later, and in an instant, the man was gone, skipping across the ocean twice before sinking out of sight.
There was a pause as the past few seconds caught up to everybody else, and then the fight started anew, with one side now slightly more frazzled than the other. Sanji knelt down to pick Gin back up to his feet. “Are you okay?”
Gin didn’t answer. He didn’t even look up at him, simply stared forward, stared at the spreading dark stain on his shirt with eyes that wavered but didn’t veer away.
Blood was inevitable, with the occupation they were in. And this wasn’t the first time Gin had witnessed a skirmish. But it never got any easier, did it? “Get inside,” Sanji barked, but he ended up ushering Gin anyways, and there was that all too contemplative look on his face and he had to talk to him, this was a conversation that needed to happen, but he wasn’t going to start it, was he.
“Just wait here.” And he ran back out into the fray, kicking off every invader he could and generally opening his wound all the more until he required, and this Chopper said with a disapproving tone that almost beat out Zeff’s, eleven stitches.
“I’m sorry,” Gin whispered, when all was said and done. He curled up against Sanji’s side, the one without the stitches, as they settled into bed.
Sanji wrapped an arm around Gin’s shoulders and rubbed them with a weary hand, like he could press a message through his palm; it’s alright, it’s alright.
“Here you go.” Nami handed the newspaper comics over the table, already skimming the front pages. Gin grabbed at it, crinkling the page, and spread it out on top, taking up an inordinate amount of space.
It was cute, the way he mimicked Nami in intensity, running his eyes over the panels with as much seriousness as was apparently warranted. Sanji never took too close a look, though. He wasn’t sure if the fall of the Germa led to the cessation of that one particular comic, but he wasn’t about to find out. Sora, warrior of the sea, could just rot forever in whatever hell published comics went to.
That was probably too harsh.
“Dad,” Gin piped up, and Sanji looked away from the stove only to see him tapping on Franky’s arm. Franky tipped his bottle of cola away from his lips.
“Yeah?”
“Can you make this?” Gin held up the comic page and pointed.
Franky only had to peer at it for a moment. “Hell yeah. Usopp actually made one of those, basically. Just put it in a gun and – “
“A gun.” Sanji set down his spatula. “You’re giving a gun to an eight-year-old.”
Franky straightened up, as though his extra height would give him more protection from the death glare Sanji was sending his way. “It’s a grappling hook gun! I didn’t say I was gonna actually make it!”
“You aren’t?” Gin’s voice quavered, high-pitched. Franky turned his head back and forth between the two of them, hands raised and stuck deciding between whether to ward off one or comfort the other. He ended up spluttering to an inelegant halt.
“He could make a toy gun,” Nami said, turning a page. She sounded chipper. Maybe prices were down.
Franky chugged the rest of his cola and slammed the bottle on the table in a single, impressive motion. “Yup. Toy grappling hook gun. That’s exactly what I’ll make. Right now.”
There were a few objectionable qualities about the toys that Franky made, in that they usually had additional, non-toy-like features and quirks. Like the toy robot that shot actual missiles. Or the toy ship that could transform into a robot and also shot actual missiles. Or the rocking horse that could, amazingly, shoot actual missiles. But before Sanji could remind Franky about this, Franky had already sidled out the door at a clipped pace. Well. He’ll have time to inspect the thing later.
“He didn’t have to run away,” Sanji muttered as he sautéed the onions.
“He can’t help it,” Nami said, a laugh in her voice. She was looking at him now, rather than the newspaper, and her smile was as radiant as it was wry. “You’re the killjoy dad.”
“The what.” But Nami only beamed at him and straightened out her newspaper. Sanji turned to Gin, who sat up and then hunched, glancing all over the room.
“You do it to keep me safe,” Gin offered, which wasn’t reassuring at all.
“Am I the killjoy dad?” Sanji demanded, and was grateful that Jinbei actually looked like he was thinking about it.
“You are...very protective.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
Jinbei’s down-turned mouth strained a little at the ends and his eyes flitted towards Brook, who coughed needlessly and made a florid gesture with his spidery hand. “It is a thankless job, but one parent has to be the one to say ‘no.’ Especially considering certain individuals on board. Being the killjoy isn’t necessarily bad.”
At the cursed word, Sanji groaned and leaned his face into his hands.
“I believe Nami was just teasing you, if that makes you feel better,” Robin added, leaning back into the sofa. Sanji hadn’t intended on her joining the conversation as well, but she always had a way of worming her way into whatever serious discussion. ‘Worming’ was a bad word. What suited her better? Not burrowing. Craning? Cranes were elegant.
“But Brook just said I’m a killjoy too.”
“I was merely defending the role of the killjoy!”
“To make me feel better about being one!”
Brook turned and studied the fish, humming a too-quick, too-loud tune.
“Teasing does have a bit of truth in it, otherwise it wouldn’t be teasing. But it is not meant to be a critique of your character.”
“But I’m doing something wrong!” Sanji practically shouted, and then winced back. “Sorry.”
Jinbei frowned. “Do you...want a critique?”
Sanji sighed loudly into his hands. It almost sounded like a scream. “I’m just, I have to make sure he’s not as fucked up as I am, which...isn’t that hard, but what am I doing? Like, shit, how am I supposed to know what’s good and what’ll screw him over?”
“You don’t,” Robin said.
“Nobody knows; you’re not alone, Sanji. But between the eleven of us,” Jinbei clapped a hand around Sanji’s shoulders and it felt like a cannon blast to the back, “I’m sure we can figure out how to raise a child.”
Brook stopped humming abruptly and looked back down. “If you make your decisions based on what you purely wish for him, then surely you could not do wrong?”
What he wished, huh? Sanji said to his hands, “I just want him to be happy. I don’t want him to have to do anything dangerous.”
Robin made a worryingly contemplative ‘hmm’ and closed her eyes. “Then you probably do not want to see what’s happening on deck.”
Sanji snapped his head up, then snapped his whole body to its feet, throwing off Jinbei’s arm with a surprising ease, and almost ran through the door on his way out.
Gin was standing by Zoro and holding a sword, and sure, the sword was sheathed, but he was holding a fucking sword and the grass smoldered under Sanji’s feet as he skidded up behind Zoro, hooked a leg on his shoulder and tried to push him to his knees. It didn’t quite work out. He had at least surprised Zoro and gotten some height over him, but the brute did squats with a million tons on his back until his thighs had pecs so he wasn’t about to collapse under a foot. Both of them strained against each other anyways.
Sanji leaned down to breathe smoke down Zoro’s neck. “Why,” he hissed, “does Gin have a sword in his hands.”
Zoro turned his head slightly so that they could just barely match eyes. “Was showing him how heavy it was,” he hissed back. “Get. Off.”
“I wanna learn how to fight,” Gin cut in, trying to heft the sword. Its end stayed firmly on the grass. Gin looked helplessly down the hilt and back up again. “I don’t wanna be weak, I wanna be useful.”
Sanji hesitated, just enough for Zoro to throw his foot off and he was forced to step back and regain his balance. There was something about Gin’s face, a hard determination and yet on the brink of tears, that turned Sanji’s stomach upside-down. “You don’t have to worry about that,” he rasped out, curt.
“Everybody else fights! Even Chopper, and all I do is hide and, and people get h-hurt ‘cause of me! I don’t want that to happen. So. Marimo says anybody can swordfight if they train, and that’s what I’m gonna do, and I don’t care if you don’t like it because, because,” he took a deep breath and stared back down at the hilt, hands shaking. “Don’t you get it, dad?”
No, no no no no no. He did get it, all too well, the guilt, the sense of being a failure, everything, and maybe this wasn’t exactly the same but it was same enough and he wanted to say, no, stop, you cannot become me, I cannot become him – but the way Gin kept holding onto the sword even as it pulled him down, the way he pressed his mouth into a grim, stubborn line, what could he do? Sanji glanced at Zoro, but he just stared back placidly, arms crossed.
When Sanji found his voice again he said, “If that’s what you really want.”
Gin was unsurprisingly weak.
With weight-lifting, his arms got sore after three minutes. Practicing katas, he got sloppy after five. He could barely run for one full minute before collapsing, and Sanji would come around with drinks and quietly awkward encouragements. It was pathetic. He was pathetic. I was pathetic.
But there was a difference between training and testing. Tests only measured, observing whatever number was the output and forming conclusions based on that. Zoro trained. It was odd to watch, those slight adjustments of Gin’s stance, the quiet reminders to lift the weights fully, the warm-up stretches in between. Zoro apparently kept a record in his head and announced every little improvement, because even weaklings could improve.
(And what would have happened if Sanji had been trained rather than tested? If he hadn’t just been thrown against his siblings over and over again? If Judge had decided that a genetic mistake like him could at least be useful in something else?)
“Hey brat, careful where you swing that thing. Don’t you know that’s dangerous?”
“Look, I’m bleeding. You might’ve seriously wounded me.”
His mind filled with the instinct to jump over and kick the assholes off the ship, but Sanji clamped it down and kept an eye on Gin. He was trained. He had a sword. It would be insulting. This was the point, wasn’t it?
Gin’s first slice had nicked one of the men’s hand, leaving a thin trickle of blood down his finger. The two pirates were holding their knives lazily, over their shoulders or by their sides, while Gin faced them with a practiced stance. The scene felt almost scripted. Sanji could remember the next line (Shut up! Like I’m gonna just let you kill me!) but reality suddenly diverged from memory as Gin stepped forward and sliced his sword up through a man’s shirt, through skin, and a little bit more than that. The man stepped back, hand over his chest, and his friend dropped his smile and started to loom in a way that was probably illegal. “You really wanna play rough, huh?”
The pirate approached. Gin stepped back. There was something wrong, now. Gin’s expression dropped into something completely different. As the blood ran down his blade, his hands started to shake and his breathing hitched, and that was no stance Sanji had ever seen before.
Sanji was there even before Gin actually dropped his sword, kicking the shit out of the assholes threatening his boy, and he wordlessly picked Gin up and bustled him inside.
In the dark of the kitchen, out of the fray, it was easy to hear Gin’s keening wails, a wet sound of frustration. Gin clung to Sanji’s shirt and curled into his chest. “I couldn’t, I couldn’t d-do it! I couldn’t! I’m a failure, I just couldn’t, he was bleed, bleeding, and, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,”
The sound of clashing metal and cannon fire kept tapping against the walls, reminding him that they were there, but Sanji just stood and held Gin up against him, ran a hand through his hair, let him drip all over his shoulder, whispered into his neck. “You’re just a kid. You’re just a kid, Gin. Children shouldn’t have to fight. You’re just a kid.”
And it hit him, in the chest, so hard that he almost let out a sob himself, because I was just a kid, and what would have happened if he had never needed to learn how to fight? To claw and scratch and struggle against what the world threw his way? He had thrown on the mantle of a warrior, but maybe it had never fit him until he forced himself to fit, hammered himself out and pushed each broken limb into place. Maybe he was a grotesque facsimile of what he was supposed to be, the alternate to the real person that existed somewhere else, all because he had only been a kid, a kid. And maybe he was never meant to be a fighter.
But, looking at where he was now, that was all stupid. He was a fighter. He had to fight. Someone has to, so Gin wouldn’t, and he was always willing to be that person, and he kept whispering: “Franky will melt down the sword. Zoro won’t think any less of you. You’re just a kid. You haven’t even figured yourself out yet. You’re young. You have your whole life to figure things out. You’re just a kid, you’re just a kid.”
“You named a kid after me?”
The question was innocuous, but there was something about Gin (the first) saying it that made Sanji duck his head and scowl. “Yeah? What about it?”
He heard Gin wheeze out a short, clipped laugh, like he wasn’t used to laughing any longer than that, and said, “Nothing.” The two of them leaned on the railing, staring out over the deck where two crews mingled. And then, “It’s just, I’m not even dead.”
“Give me a break, last time I saw you, you were bleeding out of every goddamn hole on your face.”
Gin’s thin lips twitched a smile. “I guess I was.”
The two fell into silence. Sanji fidgeted and took out a cigarette.
To be honest, he hadn’t thought much about what he would do if he met Gin again; he had thought even less about what he would do if he met Gin again while having a kid named after him. It was. Well.
Little Gin was hanging around Luffy’s neck as he bounded from person to person introducing himself at full volume. Sanji could see Gin looking at the kid, then looking back at him, brow knotted, doing the mental math and coming up with a nonsensical answer. “How exactly…?”
“It’s complicated,” Sanji blurted out, and the question just dropped off Gin’s face like it was never there. It was a little unnerving, the way he just tossed aside curiosity as soon as it wasn’t wanted. But that did seem like a quality Gin would have, just not questioning things. Or, Sanji supposed it was. He had to suppose a lot about Gin, especially since he knew his tonfas a lot more than he knew him. “Your captain seems nice.”
“Yeah,” Gin said, and stopped there. It took a few seconds before he seemed to realize that he ought to add more, and then a few more seconds to figure out what to say. “She’s a hardass.”
“Don’t talk that way about a lady,” Sanji snapped, and Gin recoiled a little, stared at him with a bewildered sort of uncertainty. Like he had just stepped on something unexpected. It was a look more for strangers than for friends, and Sanji glanced away. “What happened to Krieg?”
Gin latched onto the new topic quickly. “He couldn’t handle it.”
“Oh,” said Sanji, and nothing else, because as much as Krieg was a bastard it seemed rude to make a snide comment. And then there was nothing else to say. It hurt to realize this, but Krieg was just about the only thing he could think about when he thought about Gin. The smoke churned uncomfortably in his lungs. Maybe this meeting shouldn’t have happened.
Luffy’s hands appeared on the railing in front of them, followed shortly by Luffy himself. He didn’t pull himself up and over, instead just hung in front of them with little Gin on his shoulders. “Yo! Whacha guys doing over here?”
“Getting bothered by you.” Sanji reached over and ruffled little Gin’s hair. “Hey Gin. Meet Gin.”
Gin startled when he jabbed a thumb towards him and waved stiffly. (Finally, someone who was as bad with kids as him.)
Gin waved back, and then turned to Sanji. “He’s ugly.”
“Sure is. But he’s a good guy.”
Luffy laughed. “Sanji, don’t be mean!”
“I don’t mind,” Gin said, shrugging. He really didn’t. Maybe insults stuck as long as questions for him.
“Is he strong?”
Luffy glanced up. “Iunno. Hey, Gin. You strong yet?”
Gin snorted. “What do you mean ‘yet?’” Looking straight at little Gin, he continued, “Back when we first met, I almost killed your dad.”
Okay, holy shit, Gin was even worse with kids than him. Sanji stood up straight and clapped once, trying to knock that wide-eyed stare off of little Gin’s face. “Alllright, haha, maybe let’s reminisce later!”
“He still beat me without having to fight,” Gin continued, inappropriate conversations apparently the one thing that he held on to. Was kicking an option here? Kicking might actually not be an option here.
“Excuse me, I fought,” Sanji muttered. “What do you call having my foot in your ass, huh?”
“It turned out,” Gin said, leaning on a hand to gaze at Sanji, “that as soon as he fed me when I was starving, I lost.”
Both Gins were looking at him now, one much too fond, the other wide-eyed in a different sort of way, and Sanji covered his mouth and the sudden heat he was feeling was from the cigarette, definitely. “What the fuck, you’re still on about that?” he mumbled.
“It’s sort of a big deal to me when someone saves my life.” Gin raised an arm, paused for a moment, and then just threw it around Sanji’s shoulder. It hung like it was too afraid to touch him too much and Gin kept standing a bit too far. With a sigh, Sanji leaned in until they fitted against each other and wrapped an arm around his side before he could run away. They probably looked like two drunks exiting a bar.
The smile on little Gin’s face stretched almost as wide as Luffy’s, full of some parts awe and some parts pride, and maybe Gin was actually better with kids than him.
Fucking Gin.
“Hey dad? My tooth fell out.”
“Yeah? That’s normal. You’ll grow new ones.”
“Hey dad…? My teeth keep falling out...”
Clones weren’t built to last long.
A soldier in the Germa army probably didn’t last longer than a few months, if that. So why bother making sure that a disposable army was a healthy one?
“He’s just...decaying,” Chopper said, his voice breaking up into shards that cut into Sanji’s skin. “I, I should’ve noticed...why didn’t I notice he was dying?”
“Can you do anything?” Luffy asked, sitting straight in his chair like a normal person for once. His tone stopped Chopper’s tears, for a little bit.
“I mean...maybe organ transplants, if we had any organs his body wouldn’t just reject – “
“Like mine?”
Everybody turned to Sanji. Chopper’s lip wavered. “B-but, all his organs are just, failing, you can’t replace all of that!”
He could, technically, replace all of it. If Chopper just scooped everything of him out, left his body a void. But nobody would allow it, probably not even himself, and so Sanji pushed his chair back with a too harsh noise and stalked his way to the infirmary.
Gin was lying down, unnaturally stiff, and if it wasn’t for his wheezing breath rattling out his throat, Sanji would have thought he was dead already. His skin was too pallid. His hair too thin. There was a bucket by the bed filled with the blood he coughed up. He was so thin, so small, getting thinner and smaller, and what if he just simply collapsed away into nothingness, leaving no trace, not even an ion as proof he was ever there?
Sanji eased into the chair at the bedside and leaned on his knees. The wood creaked under his weight and the weight of his thoughts, and Gin opened his eyes.
“Dad,” he croaked. He slid his hand out from under the covers and reached over to him. Sanji stared. His own hands wouldn’t move, couldn’t touch those bony fingers, those peeling nails, couldn’t bear to handle a hand so foreign, and his throat burned with disgust, not with Gin, but with himself, how could he, how dare he, and he raised a hand to shadow his eyes as his shoulders started to shake, fuck, fuck.
“Dad, don’t cry...it’ll be okay.” Gin’s mouth shook into an imperfect smile, broken up by gaps and his own snot and tears. “I’ll be, I’ll be fine.”
Sanji reached out and wrapped his fingers around Gin’s wrist. Lightly, so he wouldn’t pierce holes through his skin. “I’m staying right here. I won’t leave you.”
Gin’s smile closed. The ends of his mouth quivered, like they were holding up the weight of the world. “I’m scared, dad.”
“I’m here, I’m here.”
They gave him a traditional viking funeral. Sanji couldn’t bear to simply bury him. He watched the little boat burn, watched the ashes fall to the sky where they belonged, watched the whole thing fall apart, kept watching even when there was nothing more to watch and everybody else had turned in for their own mourning. Brook stayed the longest, his hand something solid on Sanji’s shoulder.
“It was a mistake.”
He kept wandering out to the head of the ship, looking out at the ocean, even though they had left the site long behind, even though he wasn’t even facing where it had happened. Their actual location didn’t matter. The ocean looked the same everywhere.
This time it was Chopper standing by him. The reindeer sat on the railing, holding on to his elbow.
“If I had known...if I just...I should’ve just destroyed the fucking place. I should’ve...”
Chopper replied, low and quiet, “Aren’t you saying he didn’t deserve to live?”
His hand was twisted up in his hair. He dug his fingers into his scalp. “Shut the – shut up. I killed him, Chopper. As soon as I took him out of that fucking pod, his body just, all I did was give him a painful death!”
“And he could’ve died from something else.” Chopper was too calm. Why couldn’t he just yell at him? Just list the ways he screwed up? “I don’t think life is a mistake, Sanji. I’m sorry he didn’t live longer. But he was happy. Doesn’t that count for something?”
Sanji leaned heavily on the railing and wracked out a choked chuckle. “I don’t know.”