Archive of Our Own

There is something in the air among the crew. It’s been there since their swift and rushed reunion back in Sabaody just only days ago. It’s not bad. It’s actually quite the opposite. It is a feeling of rightness. Of giddiness. (And if Sanji was feeling particularly honest, he might even call it belonging .) 

Fishman Island and the ensuing mess gave little opportunity for the feeling to resolve, launching them unmercifully back into the chaos that is traveling with the future pirate king. So it’s almost no surprise at all when Usopp smiles dopey and bright-eyed over the campfire and says, apropos of nothing, “If you could say one thing to your past self, what would it be?”

“Sorry, what?” Nami asks not unkindly, her orange hair almost glowing in the firelight. 

The journey to the first island after surfacing from far below the sea was hardly a day’s worth of sailing. A small summer island that is more fitting of the title “sandbar” with (oddly enough) dense and looming palm trees, this place is blissfully unoccupied. Entirely unnamed, entirely unknown. The only signs that there had ever been life here are some ruins that Robin had found particularly fascinating. 

Luffy, upon seeing the remnants of a great stone water well half-overcome by nature, had declared the island a perfect spot for some camping. And so, the night has found them in the same spot, pleasantly buzzed with the satisfaction of a good meal and even better company, half-overcome with that feeling in the air. 

Usopp shrugs, his smile unwavering. “I dunno, like. Did you guys ever think that you’d be here?” 

Robin hums and oh how Sanji has missed that sound—has missed all of them.

“No,” she muses, and Sanji delights in the appearance of a few sincere smile-lines on her lovely face, “I can’t say that I would have.”

“But like, it’s good, right? So I was thinking, if I could time travel and say to myself,” at this point, Usopp dons his deeper narrator voice, the one he has always used for his bravest, most bold tales, and Chopper’s eyes grow wide and shiny, “‘Hey kid, you’re going to literally live out all your dreams someday with the most amazing people you’ll ever meet,’ I think my heart would have exploded.” 

Luffy cackles, half-lurching across the campfire to sling his arms around Usopp’s shoulders. “I don’t think I woulda’ been surprised. I was always meant to have you all,” their captain says, easy as anything. 

The emotion of it is overwhelming in the best way. Sanji can tell they all feel the sincerity of those words in the ensuing beat of thoughtful, warm silence before Franky promptly bursts into tears. 

“But seriously, if you could, what would you say?” Usopp asks again after a moment of good-natured teasing. 

Zoro’s face scrunches up in that same ridiculous way it always has when he’s thinking very hard about something. The absence of an eye does nothing to quell how goddamn stupid Sanji thinks the Marimo looks when he makes that face. It’s like his single braincell is actively frying in his skull. 

“I’d say ‘train more’,” he answers definitively. 

“Of course you would,” Sanji groans. “What an absolutely brainless waste of time-travel.” 

“Oi!” Zoro points at him angrily, and, when he doesn’t find the words to bite back cleverly, simply concludes, “Fuck you, Cook!”

(And there’s something about even this exchange, too, that feels so right and so perfect after so long without it. Bickering with Zoro over nothing feels the same as a hot bath after a particularly long day—slightly annoying because of the burn, but also somehow exactly what you needed.)

“I would say that love will find a way. It always does. So long as the soul endures, love will find a way to endure, too,” Brook hums. Sanji truly feels the age difference between them at this moment. He feels it in the wisdom that pours from Brook’s very bones and the soothing, sage lilt of his voice as his lipless mouth forms the words, aching with so much sincerity it threatens to choke him. 

(The most noble thing there is telling someone you love that you love them, Ivankov had said to him, once. Sanji thinks he might understand it, now.) 

Nami gently bumps shoulders with Brook (although, really, it’s more like her shoulder bumps his arm) just as Chopper cries, half-choked up, “We love you too, Brook!” 

After that, the answers keep coming, as natural as anything. 

“I think I’d tell myself that it’s okay to ask for help,” Nami admits sheepishly. And, well, Sanji’s only human. He can’t hardly resist telling her how wonderful she is after saying something like that. 

Chopper blushes visibly through all of his dense fur as he admits, quiet but smiling, “I’d say, ‘someday, you’re gonna find your family.’ Oh! And also not to worry because Dr. Hililuk’s dream will be fulfilled!” 

“I’d say, ‘Keep on keepin’ on, little man!’” Franky answers. 

Cryptically, Robin only offers, “I’d remind myself to remember the words of an old friend in even the worst of times. ‘No one is born into this world to be alone.’”

(His wonderful, lovely Robin-chwan rejects his attempt at a tender, loving embrace as beautifully as she ever has.)

Luffy blows a slow raspberry before answering. “It’s tough, but if I only got one thing, I think I’d tell little-me to get really, really strong!” 

“See,” Zoro cries over everyone’s ensuing laughter, “It’s the practical thing to do!”

Sanji hasn’t even noticed that he never responded until Usopp prompts him a few moments later. And oh. 

Oh. 

Most everyone (except for the thoughtless oafs among them) had something genuine to say—something meaningful and something even a bit vulnerable —some testament to what they’ve struggled with and how far they’ve come. But what could Sanji say, really? 

Don’t try to kill the old geezer, kid? 

Fuck, no. He really doesn’t want to have to explain that story. Even the thought of the Rock has his stomach dropping and his skin turning clammy. 

(Following that thought abruptly comes the vague impression of somewhere so very dark and so very cold and so very lonely —an impossible weight on his shoulders and seeing the world out of metal bars, bruises that ache and ache and never go away, weeks and weeks with no one to even talk to but the rats —)

Don’t think about it. Don’t fucking go there. 

Feigning nonchalance, he shrugs. “Hell if I know. Probably something like, ‘use less water in your Pâte à choux.’”

The Marimo-head scoffs. “Just like the cook. Boring.” 

Sanji barks out a harsh laugh. “Oh like, ‘train more’ is particularly poetic?”

“Really, though? Is there really nothing you wish you could say to your younger self?” Chopper asks, batting his big blue eyes. 

God, it’s so fucking hard to lie to him when he looks like that. 

“Nope,” he says, lighting a fresh cigarette. 

(Hard, yes. But not impossible.) 

Something rouses Luffy from sleep abruptly around dawn. He sits up inexplicably alert before the sun is even visible through the dense canopy of trees, confused almost immediately as he takes in the sight of their undisturbed camp and all his nakama. Everyone is exactly where they’re supposed to be.

(But something in Luffy’s brain is insistent—something is wrong and you need to be awake to handle it, to protect them from it.) 

Never one to ignore his first instinct (his instincts have never once led him astray), Luffy rolls to his feet and retrieves his hat from where it had gotten smushed under his head as a make-shift pillow. Once he’s on his feet, the thing that woke him becomes immediately clear. 

Something shiny and small is reflecting sunlight through the trees. 

Luffy starts towards it with little concern, only keeping quiet for the sake of his sleeping nakama, but the thing isn’t where it was. It must be hiding. 

He creeps slowly around the edge of the crumbling stone well. 

“Oi,” Luffy whispers. “Oi, shiny-thing!”

And he’s so busy looking around that he doesn’t think to look down and the next minute, he’s going down, tripping over something small but sturdy. His shin smarts from striking something undeniably metal and Luffy feels the vibration in his teeth. 

Then he hears a whimper. 

Luffy sits up abruptly, the bruised shin completely forgotten, and right there— 

—is a little kid. 

Luffy knows that he was small when he was young. Even Ace had teased him mercilessly about it, especially when he was little. But this kid… this kid is tiny. They’re smaller than Luffy thinks he ever was—frighteningly skinny and short and it’s only made worse by that thing on their head, comically large and bulbous when the rest of the kid is skinny little limbs and a thin neck. 

“What’s that?” Luffy asks, followed immediately by the much more important, “Are you okay?” 

The kid looks impossibly smaller curled into themselves like that, unmistakably braced for a blow, thin shoulders positively shaking, hands clasped tight over the thing on their head. 

Fear can sometimes be a powerful thing—something that you can even smell in the air. This, Luffy realizes, is one of those times when you can almost taste fear on your tongue. So, he stays on the ground to make himself less of a threat and doesn’t dare scoot any closer or reach out to touch. 

(Sabo had rescued a stray kitten from the Grey Terminal, once. It had cowered and hissed at him for days until he was finally able to coax it close enough to take some food, let alone to touch.)

This feels a little bit like that already. 

“I’m sorry I tripped over you. I didn’t see you there,” Luffy offers. Makino always said an apology can go a long way. And again he asks, “Are you okay?”

“‘M sorry,” the kid whispers. “Sorry. ‘M sorry.” 

“What have you got to be sorry for, huh? I tripped over you!” Luffy smiles, even though the kid isn’t looking. “Are you hurt?” 

There’s a little sniffle and an even quieter, “no.” 

“Where’d you come from, kid? Is your mom nearby?” At this, the kid (a boy, Luffy thinks) gives a whole body flinch. It was the wrong thing to say. “That’s alright,” he tries to soothe. “My crew and I can help get you back to wherever you came from.”

Luffy’s heart turns to ice when the boy lifts his head. 

Big, watery blue eyes, blue eyes that Luffy would know anywhere, peer at him through little iron bars. 

“No, please,” the boy begs. “Please don’t.” 

“Okay,” Luffy corrects. “We won’t. Whatever you want, okay?” The boy blinks at him as if he hadn’t expected this, looking doubtful and nervous and still like he’s seconds away from crying. But Luffy needs to see, Luffy needs to know, so he asks, “Who put that on you?” 

The boy just shakes his head. 

“Can I take it off?”

Another sniffle. “Need a key,” the boy mumbles, looking anywhere but at Luffy. “But you shouldn’t.” 

“And why’s that?”

The boy wraps his skinny, tiny little arms around his legs, resting the impossibly-heavy looking helmet on his bony knees. “‘M not supposed to. No one’s supposed to… see me.” 

And Luffy’s heart breaks. 

“That’s seems stupid,” he offers, trying to shove all the anger that he’s feeling way, way down. If this is who he thinks—no, who he knows he is, knows it in his energy and his eyes and his little voice—Luffy needs that off and he needs it off yesterday. “How about I go get my nakama—you’ll like him, he’s a real robot —and we see about getting that off, huh?”

“Shouldn’t. It’s… I’ll… get in trouble,” and the voice is too watery, so tearful that Luffy hardly wants to know what trouble means. 

“Hey, I’m bigger, right? Like a grown-up? So you let me worry about any trouble, okay? I’m the captain and that means everyone has to listen to me. And no one is gonna be in trouble unless I say.” 

When Luffy stands, the boy looks at him like he’s half-afraid that Luffy isn’t going to come back. 

“Hey, can you do me a favor, Sanji? Can you hold onto this for me?” He crouches down as close as he dares and holds out Hat. After a moment of wary appraisal, the boy nods and gently takes the worn straw in his tiny hands, clasping it tight to his chest. 

“How’d—” he cuts himself off, clutching Hat tighter. 

“It’s okay, you can ask me anything.” 

“How’d… you know my name?”

Luffy smiles and gently nudges little-Sanji’s feet with his own. “I’d know you anywhere, Sanji. Little or big. So, wait here, okay? I’ll be right back.” 

He wakes up Robin first. Robin seems like she’d be good with kids and good at keeping them calm. Next comes Franky, because Franky is gonna be able to get that thing off little-Sanji’s head. Then comes Chopper, who will need to do doctor-stuff, no doubt. And then, well. There’s no avoiding it. 

“Sanji,” Luffy whispers, shaking him gently by the shoulder. 

“Hungry? Give me just a second, I can—” And this is Luffy’s cook , through and through, barely awake and already ready to care for him and Luffy aches to know who is sitting out by that old well. 

“Sanji,” Luffy interrupts. “Something’s going on and you gotta' come, okay?”

“Yeah, alright,” Sanji murmurs. He sees Franky, Robin, and Chopper standing around the campsite, quiet but alert at Luffy’s word. “What’s going on?”

“C’mon,” he whispers, holding out a hand to help Sanji stand. He doesn’t let go of Sanji’s hand. 

Luffy kept everyone quiet, waking them first with a finger pressed to his lips in the universal sign for hush, something’s going on so the rest of the crew remains dozing around the campsite as they set off towards the well. He doesn’t want to panic little-Sanji with a bunch of noise and people, if he can help it. 

(Sabo was furious when Luffy and Ace had followed him without him knowing. They had startled the poor kitten so badly when she had just started to trust him.)

As soon as little-Sanji becomes visible through the trees, Sanji goes deathly still. 

He swallows audibly. His hand jerks in Luffy’s grip. 

“Luffy.” 

“Yeah?”

“Please tell me I’m hallucinating.” Fear. The smell of it, the sound of it. Luffy’s never felt fear like this come from Sanji before. He hates it. 

“He’s real. And I think he’s you,” Luffy says. There’s no way around it. 

Sanji closes his eyes tightly, letting out one single shuddering breath. His hands are shaking where they’re clenched into fists at his sides. 

“Franky,” his voice cracks. None of them mention it. None of them breathe. “We need to get that fucking thing off. Right now.” 

When Zoro wakes up, it’s to Luffy with a child on his hip. 

Luffy’s standing in the middle of their campsite, a tiny little blonde-haired thing clinging tight to him with fists so small that the child seems barely real. His captain’s beloved hat dwarfs the head of the child and is half-knocked askew from where the kid is pressing their face adamantly into Luffy’s neck. Unconcerned with any of this, Luffy continues to chatter about the crew in a voice so vibrant and yet so soft-spoken, Zoro can hardly believe it’s Luffy at all. 

“And Nami—Nami’s your favorite—Nami’s the best navigator in the whole world and she’s ours. We fought a bunch of pirates for her back in East Blue and there was a big party afterwards with so much meat and oh! There was this old guy with the propeller hat—he was really funny.”

Nami bends to about Luffy’s height, attempting to meet the kid’s eyes. “Hello, Sanji-kun!” 

And wait. 

That’s not right.

The cook is right here—or he just was— Zoro can still smell those awful fucking cigarettes the cook sucks down like he’s trying to smoke himself into an early grave. The backpack that he was using as a pillow is still just where it was when Zoro fell asleep. And most importantly, the last time Zoro checked, Sanji wasn’t the smallest child in the world but a full-grown, obnoxious, curly-browed adult pain-in-his-ass. 

“Sencho,” Zoro says, because this is a Captain-worthy worry and not a dammit-Luffy-stay-away-from-Sandai-Kietsu-before-she-cuts-your-hand-off-what-have-I-fucking-told-you worry. 

“Zoro’s awake!” Luffy bounds over, jostling the child —jostling but still keeping the boy carefully balanced at his side, one arm wrapped securely under him and a hand on his back to steady him and Zoro… didn’t know Luffy even knew how to do that, how to hold a kid so that they feel safe. 

“Sanji, this is Zoro. He’s my swordsman and my first-mate. Zoro, this is Sanji, but little,” Luffy says, as if this clears up any of Zoro’s questions. 

The boy—and that’s unmistakably the cook, Zoro would know those stupid fucking eyebrows and those angry (but not angry now, no, just very scared) blue eyes anywhere—takes one quick look at him, startles, and goes back to trying to glue his face to Luffy’s neck.

“O-oi,” he mutters, feeling a little pathetic in the face of a tiny, terrified little cook. Zoro watches the little boy’s knuckles turn white with the amount of force he’s gripping Luffy with. 

Luffy bounces the little cook on his hip like Zoro’s seen approximately a hundred mothers do with their babies and where did Luffy learn how to do that? 

“Zoro only looks scary, Sanji! You’re safe.” And as hard as it is to not believe one of Luffy’s easy declarations, the boy still looks half-mad with fear and doesn’t ease up on Luffy for a moment. 

“What happened?” Zoro asks, and thankfully, it is Robin that answers. 

“We aren’t quite sure. Luffy woke up abruptly and found our little cook just a ways off by the old well. Our Sanji is very much still here and is wholly unchanged. No one knows how our young guest got here,” she says in her cool and collected tone. It is then that Zoro notices Franky and Usopp and the thing that they’re scowling at—some sort of metal helmet, recently split down the back by what is unmistakably soldering marks, courtesy of Franky. 

“—so it was meant to lock,” Zoro catches the tail end of Usopp’s observations. 

“What was?” 

All their heads swing in unison to the two at Zoro’s question, save for Luffy, who continues to wander their little camp and point out things to his silent, cook-shaped attachment. 

“See for yourself,” Usopp offers. Franky is stone-faced and quiet as he hands over the broken thing. 

It’s made of heavy iron and sits shockingly cold in Zoro’s hands. A locking mechanism is broken on the back, having been burned straight through and split at the seam. Bars criss-cross what should be the face of the helmet, leaving a small window for eyes and a nose. It is clear that this thing could only be worn by a child, as small as it is. Equally as chilling are the implications . 

Zoro had almost forgotten, but he remembers, now. Iron-mask Duval—the guy from Saobody with the Cook’s face and a grudge about that first damnable bounty poster. It’s been over two years ago now, but Zoro can easily remember the overwhelming rage that had emanated from the cook—the way his hands had subtly shook at his sides and how, if only for a brief moment, Zoro had thought the man was about to throw a punch . 

“Does this have anything to do with how he got here?” Nami asks, eyeing the helmet warily. 

“No, it doesn’t.” 

Sanji— adult Sanji, their Sanji—emerges from the treeline, face pale and grim. His hair is an utter mess and his shoulders are hunched like someone has told him he takes up too much space just by virtue of existing and he’s trying his damndest to disappear before their eyes. 

Zoro hates it, hates that he looks like that. 

“Cook-bro, what is this?” Franky asks. Despite the nickname, there’s something steely in his voice, something that brokers no argument. 

“It’s nothing important,” Sanji snaps. As he approaches, Zoro can smell the strong scent of cigarettes that the cook only carries when he’s been chain-smoking to the point where Chopper is going to confiscate whatever remains.

Zoro turns over the heavy contraption in his hands and puts the pieces together. 

“You were wearing this?”

A single visible blue eye snaps to Zoro’s own. Although there’s a challenge in the glare Sanji levels at him, the cook says nothing. And there’s something else there, too, in his eyes. Desperation, maybe. Something that doesn’t belong on Sanji, whatever it is. 

The urge to pick a fight rises up slowly in him like the steady approach of the tide. 

“Drop it,” Sanji says before Zoro can even open his mouth. “Drop it, all of you.” He glances out of the corner of his eye to his beloved Nami and Robin before adding, sheepishly, “Please, just drop it. It doesn’t matter.” 

Lightning fast, he snatches up the iron helmet— cage, prison, muzzle— out of Zoro’s hands before dropping it on the ground and crushing it into smoldering shards of metal under a haki-laden, flaming heel. 

That thing that Zoro can see in his eyes is at the forefront. He can barely make sense of it. This is serious, his instincts tell him.

Sanji walks away from them without another word. 

With no information forthcoming from the island and no inhabitants to speak of, the crew is forced to move on to the next, taking their unexpected guest with them. Sanji watches the tiny island disappear from sight, swallowed by the ocean horizon and into nothingness. Except, it isn’t nothingness. 

A young ( so fucking young, how was I ever this young?) version of himself clings tight to the fabric of his slacks, eyes closed, soaking up the feeling of the sun on his skin like the precious sensation that it is when you’ve been utterly deprived of it for so long that you’ve all but lost track of the days. The hand that has taken up residence in Sanji’s chest cavity makes another go at squeezing all the life out of his heart. 

So, no. The island has not disappeared into nothingness. The indisputable evidence of the island is looking up at him with his own eyes, albeit much more youthful eyes. 

“Are you really… me?” the kid croaks. And of course he’d be this quiet, Sanji realizes. She hadn’t even released him yet. 

This is a version of him straight from the dungeons of Germa—a version of him that has yet to learn from life on the sea that being loud gets you noticed, being loud makes you unforgettable, and the louder you are and the more confident you act, the more likely it’ll be that you’ll be given work enough to eat that night. This whispering little boy knows nothing of these things. 

Sanji crouches down to the kid’s level. He wonders if any adult in his life besides his mother, at this point, would have done this for him. Probably not. He places a gentle hand on the kid’s shoulder, because Sanji knows from experience that simple touch goes a long way when you’ve been deprived of it for so long. 

“That I am. My name is Blackleg Sanji and I’m the cook of the Strawhat pirates. I’m twenty-one years old and my bounty is seventy-seven million beri.” 

The little boy’s mouth parts in poorly concealed awe. After a moment, he seems to struggle with something before asking, tentatively, “‘Blackleg’?”

Sanji inhales. Exhales. The hand around his heart spasms. 

“You won’t have met him yet, but there is an… old man that you’ll meet that goes by Red-Leg. He’ll make a great sacrifice for you and one day, when you’re old enough, you’ll add ‘Blackleg’ to your name to honor him.” He swallows. “And… to honor yourself.” 

Sanji goes to stand, only to have small hands latch determinedly onto one of his own. The little boy’s face is crumpled into a thoughtful, agonized expression before he mumbles something Sanji can’t hear. 

He summons a patience he didn’t know he had, but looking into his own little face, Sanji can’t bear to snap at him for speaking too quietly, for being scared… for any of it. 

You didn’t deserve any of the shit that happened to you. They were bastards, every last one of them, and they deserve to rot. 

“Speak louder, little one. I can’t hear you,” Sanji says instead. 

Looking anywhere but at him, the kid whispers, “Are we… Are we strong?” 

(The hand around Sanji’s heart tightens into a death-grip, bursting like an overfull balloon and scorching his insides with hot, aching blood.) 

All Sanji can do is swallow around the tightness in his throat, lock his jaw around the curses he wants to scream, and say, “Yeah, kid. We are.”

The kid poorly stifles a watery little smile and starts fruitlessly rubbing at his eyes to fight away the tears that Sanji can already see coming. God, I was such a cry-baby, he thinks, and the old taunts of his long-forgotten (long-ignored, long-buried) brothers return to haunt him. 

Sanji gently squeezes the kid’s hand in his own. “C’mon, little one. Let’s go to the kitchen, hm?” 

Luffy leaves Robin and Nami to puzzle out the mystery of little-Sanji. He trusts them utterly and he knows he’s not much help there, anyways. No, he’s needed elsewhere, and he sets off from the library only to bump directly into Zoro, who hovers by the door. 

“Zoro!” Luffy smiles. Zoro steadies him by the shoulders, a deep frown etched into his face. 

“Sencho,” and this is how Zoro refers to him when something is serious, when something needs his attention or his care or his strength, so Luffy flashes him a reassuring grin. 

“It’s about little-Sanji, yeah?” 

Zoro blinks his one eye, surprised, before nodding solemnly. 

“We’re going to go find Franky because Franky is really smart and he’s going to tell us about that mask we found on little-Sanji,” Luffy states.

“That’s the thing… I don’t…” Zoro inhales slowly through his nose, a meditative breath. “It was not a mask , Sencho. That was a cage. Something is wrong and the cook sure as shit isn’t going to tell us what.” 

And Luffy can’t ignore the look of fear in Sanji’s eyes as soon as he saw that little boy over by the old well, nor can he ignore the croak of helplessness in his voice as he begged Franky to get that thing off, right now! There was real terror, real pain in his cook’s eyes and Luffy has seen that kind of pain before. 

(Personally, Luffy is not familiar with shame. But he is familiar with the way that it can scar a person, the way that it can twist up their self image so badly that all that’s left is anger and fear and a jungle’s worth of carefully-managed distance. He’s familiar with the way that certain words could tighten a jaw, could clench a fist, could leave Ace or Sabo shaking through nightmares for days.)

No one’s supposed to see me, a tiny version of Luffy’s cook had whispered guiltily, like his existence itself was meant to be a secret. 

A man’s past is his own, but that?

Luffy won’t stand for that. 

He grabs Zoro by the wrist and pulls him in the direction of Franky’s workshop. 

Try as she might, Nami can’t ignore the way that little-Sanji behaves. That is to say, he behaves perfectly—not at all like a little boy his age should behave—and she sees so much of herself in him that it’s chilling, if not outright terrifying. 

He’s just so damn quiet . He never raises his voice, never speaks unless spoken to (and even then, he’s barely audible), and flinches at every unexpected sound. Despite what Nami had thought was a quickly formed relationship between their little guest and Luffy, the boy sticks close and careful to Sanji-kun’s side all day. Except for when he doesn’t. 

Around two in the afternoon, Sanji announces his entrance into the library with a gentle tap of his shoe on the door. He saunters in with a tray of delicate parfaits and iced teas adorned with fresh mint and lemon. 

“Where is your little shadow, Cook-san?” Robin asks as she accepts a drink. 

“Robin-chwan is so sweet to worry about him! He was ah—feeling a bit overwhelmed is all.” 

This is not a Sanji that Nami has seen. Usually, her Sanji is a blustering, over-confident fool or he’s something else entirely—a man perfectly in his element. There is the Sanji that plays the part of the love-sick idiot and then there is the Sanji that the crew sees in other, more intimate moments. Sanji is the one that cooks for them, that breathes literal life into their ship with his attentive eye and talented hands. Sanji is the one that is first to spot a bad-day and head it off with treats and conversation and just the right amount of compliments. Sanji is the one to painstakingly care for the whole crew’s laundry, despite how much he shouts at Zoro’s general boorishness and complains about Franky’s fashion choices. 

Sanji is at his most confident when he is caring for others, and that is how she sees him most often: the unspoken caretaker of the crew. A man at-ease because he can provide for them in a thousand little ways. 

This is not that Sanji. 

Nami hasn’t seen him this off-balance and nervous since his first few days with them, all the way back in East Blue. It’s subtle in the same way Luffy is subtle when he’s hungry—that is to say, not subtle at all. He’s avoiding them all. Avoiding answering questions, avoiding talking, just avoiding. Sanji is busy, sure, but he’s never too busy to bicker with Zoro or have an afternoon chat with Robin. It’s in the way he carries himself, too. Gone is all his smooth, carefully crafted swagger and in its place is the body language of a man Nami does not know. 

The childhood version of him that they’ve been saddled with—but Nami wouldn’t dare describe it like that, not for a second—is a child that is shrinking before their eyes. Nami knows what it looks like to try your hardest to disappear. It’s blatant in little-Sanji and that chills her to her core. 

What’s worse is the little signs that she’s now seeing in their Sanji.    

“Would he want to come sit with us for a while? It’s much quieter here than anywhere else on the ship,” Nami offers. 

Sanji seems surprised, but covers it quickly. “That’s so kind of you, Nami-swan. I wouldn’t want to distract from your research. He’s perfectly fine in the kitchen with me.” 

“It’s not an imposition,” beautiful, brilliant Robin smoothly interjects. 

“All the same, I could never forgive myself for letting you beautiful ladies go out of your way, even for a moment!” Sanji stammers with a surprising firmness. He’s quick to disappear after that, shutting the door gently behind him. 

What are you hiding? Nami wonders. 

What are you so scared of? 

Dinner is as dinner aboard the Thousand Sunny always is. When Robin and Nami enter the gallery, the table has been set to the nines—piled high with covered dishes, their silver lids gleaming under the light. Usopp, Franky, and oddly enough, Zoro are already seated, straining unsubtly towards the kitchen where two voices are murmuring something about the art of plating and meal presentation.

Ah, Robin muses with a small smile, taking her customary seat at Sunny's beloved dining table. So they, too, are interested in learning more about their little guest. 

Zoro’s presence is a surprise. Robin has noticed the careful distance that their first mate has taken to putting between himself and their cook since reuniting on Saobody. But now, all that pensive avoidance has been replaced with an even more pensive attention. 

He notices her staring and turns his head away with a quiet tsk of a sound. Robin can’t help but smile. 

Chopper and Luffy enter noisily (entirely by the fault of the latter, who throws open the door with a cry of, “Sanji! Meat!”) Brook follows, much more sedate, but laughing to himself at their Captain’s predictable antics. 

“Yeah, yeah, sit down,” Sanji—their Sanji, the elder of the two—gestures impatiently towards the table with a wooden spoon. 

The meal is as elaborate as ever. Lobster cooked to perfection accompanies a light, savory soup and enormous, yeasty bread-rolls with olive oil and a sharp balsamic vinegar for dipping. As usual, Sanji flits around the table tending to everyone’s needs before sitting himself. 

It’s a curious tradition, dinner aboard the Thousand Sunny. Ever since joining the crew, Robin had made careful note of the one thing she could not puzzle out herself about their chef—Sanji never eats breakfast or lunch with them aboard the ship and instead only ever joins them for dinner. She had asked Nami about it only to learn that even this was a battle. 

Sanji-kun is a chef, through and through but I’d put money on him harboring some sort of an inferiority complex, Nami had said in the quiet, pre-bed hours in Merry’s tiny women’s cabin one night. In the beginning, he refused to eat meals with the rest of us, always grabbing bites of things in between serving or the actual cooking of the stuff. Luffy wouldn’t stand for it. Said that dinner, at least, is for everyone, and that if Sanji didn’t sit and eat it with us, Luffy would wait to eat until he did. It’s like a cosmic event, watching Luffy refuse food that’s right in front of him. Sanji-kun shaped up real quick. 

Their doting cook darts around the table like a hummingbird—pausing for barely a second in between tending to needs that they’ve hardly even vocalized yet. He fetches the discarded bottle-cap from Franky’s cola, passes the butter dish to Chopper’s reach, bats Luffy’s wild hands away from Robin’s own plate as he passes to refill Brook’s glass of milk. And finally, once the chaos has settled a bit and a rhythm is established, Sanji ducks back into the kitchen and returns with their little guest. 

Conversation abruptly quiets and all eyes turn to the little boy half-hidden behind their Cook’s legs. 

Sensing the young Sanji’s discomfort (and who would have thought that the boy that grows into their loudmouthed, opinionated, brash and charming chef was such a shy little boy?) the crew avoids directly calling attention to him, deferring to Sanji’s judgement and continuing on with previous conversation, albeit at a lower, more sedate volume. 

Sanji pulls his younger counterpart up into his lap at the table. The boy buries his face into Sanji’s shirt, holding on tight with both hands and peeking at the table with poorly concealed nervousness. After a moment of intensely studying the table, he taps twice at Sanji’s free hand. 

“Hm?” 

The boy’s voice is so quiet already, and smothered as it is into Sanji’s shirt, it’s hardly there. Robin cannot manage a glimpse at his face.

“Speak up, kiddo,” Sanji gently reminds him with the patience of a man practiced around children. This is not something Robin would have predicted. Judging by Zoro’s intense stare, the swordsman must feel similarly surprised by the revelation. 

“Am… am I allowed?” 

A heavier silence has never existed in this ship. Even Luffy has stopped chewing, his cheeks puffed up comically with food. 

Sanji is stiff as a board, frozen mid-reach towards a roll of bread, expression distant and naked in his shock. 

“What do you mean, Sanji-kun?” Nami asks, her voice gentle and sisterly. 

The little boy slides a hand into his own hair, hunching further into himself and shaking his head with a quiet, “Sorry, I shouldn’t have—Sorry, I’m sorry,” that’s clearly directed solely at his older counterpart. The sound would have been entirely lost to the rest of them if not for the brutal silence hanging in the galley. 

Sanji visibly composes himself. “No, it’s… Yeah, kid. Go ahead and eat. Remember what we talked about. Take it slow. ” 

Oh. 

Sometime in Robin’s youth, there was a particular house and a particular family that she had stayed with, in the loosest sense of the word. Her presence there was more that of staff or servitude than anything. In exchange for cleaning, cooking, laundry, and other domestic chores, she had been offered a spare futon and a spot on the living room floor. (At least, until, a marine outpost had been erected on the island and subsequently, bounty posters were distributed to all residents). 

The conditions of her residence with the family were to work for her spot and her cot by the door, speak when spoken to, stay out of the way, and to never, under any circumstances, eat with the family. Robin’s meals were to be taken out back on the porch, where the family’s children would not have to interact with her and where the parents would not have to see her. 

It was one of the loneliest places Robin has ever survived.

There is a chill forming in her bones. It is the kind of feeling that precedes the snap of a well-executed clutch, the feeling that accompanies certain memories from her childhood, the feeling that chases her awake many more nights than she’d like. 

“Sanji,” Luffy begins after a loud gulping swallow. 

Both blonde heads turn to that voice like they’re on a spring. 

“Everyone eats dinner together on Sunny,” their captain announces.

“S-sorry,” the young Sanji stutters, looking achingly innocent and nothing at all like the man holding him with a face so grim and so tense. 

Usopp smiles, wide and reassuring as Franky says in a volume much subdued, “Don’t worry about it, little-bro!” 

The smile that the boy returns is tremulous, but there. 

(It is, chillingly, like looking into a mirror and seeing her own young face staring back.)    

This is intolerable . 

The crews’ worried glances follow him long after dinner and the anxiety pouring off the kid in waves does nothing to help the feeling of ants crawling under his skin, of being intolerably seen. 

Sanji strips his dish-washing gloves off and buries his face in his hands, rubbing at his eyes.

They were never supposed to know. 

“Um,” the kid mumbles, staring fixedly at the floor. Almost as soon as they had finished eating, Sanji had retreated into the kitchen with the kid at his side and planted him in an extra chair that he had pulled out of storage earlier. He knows it’s unfair to be angry at the kid, but damn it all, he is. And Sanji is certain that the boy can tell. 

He sighs. “Yeah, kid?” 

Little hands wring nervously. “I’m sorry,” the boy whispers, voice shaking. 

And gods, is Sanji simply not equipped for this. 

“It’s not your fault,” he replies, pulling the plug on the sink and watching the dirty water drain slowly. 

“Okay,” the kid says, so fucking quiet that Sanji just wants to shake him until he knows it’s okay to make noise, that it’s okay to be loud.  

The kitchen door creaks open, followed by the unmistakable sound of flip-flops on wood and a cheerful call of, “Sanjis!” Luffy rounds the island corner into the kitchen and immediately, Sanji’s younger counterpart brightens. 

Luffy has always just had a way with people. It doesn’t surprise Sanji at all that this way extends to children. Besides, his captain has always had a particular talent for pulling certain truths out of Sanji like tender meat out of a clam shell. It’s no wonder at all how easily the two have taken to each other. 

“Did you get enough to eat?” Luffy asks and Sanji turns enough to see him squatting on the floor to be eye-level with the kid in the chair. 

“Yes, thank you.” A soft smile works its way onto his face and broadens when Luffy ruffles his hair. 

“Shishishi, so polite! Sanji’s never polite with us, now!” 

Sanji scoffs. “You don’t deserve my manners, you shitty rubber.” 

Luffy stays with them until the kitchen is fully cleaned and even through breakfast preparations, a grounding presence that keeps coaxing genuine laughter from that quiet, hurting little boy. Sanji spends the whole time waiting for the inevitable volley of questions. 

They never come. 

( Luffy’s understanding eyes are somehow a thousand times worse. ) 

Zoro watches the boy trail after Sanji cautiously as the Cook goes to deliver mid-morning smoothies to the rest of the crew, scattered around the ship as they are. The kid is a mystery and Zoro doesn’t get it. Aside from looks—which are fucking undeniable—he’d hardly be able to believe that the Cook and this kid are the same person. 

If Zoro had been asked to picture what the Cook was like as a kid before this Grand Line typical bullshit, he would have easily pictured a scrawny shithead that got into the bad habit of smoking early but had gotten into the bad habit of picking fights even earlier. Hell, a Cook that doesn’t go looking for fights as much as he does now was downright inconceivable. Being a pain in the ass is as integral to Sanji’s person as are his spiral eyebrows. 

This hollow-eyed shadow that never raises his voice, never talks unless spoken to, and flinches if Zoro so much as looks at him is decidedly not a pain in the ass. In fact, it’s like he’s barely there at all.  

It doesn’t add up. 

When Zoro contemplates the young boy’s strange question at dinner the previous night and that thing on his head that Sanji had crushed into smoldering dust, the equation only becomes more unbalanced. 

“Drop it,” Sanji had said, no, begged in a tone Zoro had never heard from him before. 

He’s hiding something. And a man’s past is his own, but this… 

This isn’t just the past anymore. It’s impacting their Cook. Hell, they haven’t had a decent fight or even an argument since picking up the kid yesterday and the rest of the crew has noticed other changes as well. 

The quiet not-quite-Sanji little boy is turning their Sanji quiet. More subdued. Even anxious, as they observed over dinner last night. 

The two blondes drop off Usopp’s smoothie, the younger of the two offering a shy smile to something Usopp says. As they turn to descend the stairs, the kid notices that Zoro has been staring and—there’s no other word for it— freezes. 

“Oi, Cook!” Zoro shouts, and Sanji looks exhausted already, half his usual fire in his eyes as he stalks over with the final remaining glass—Zoro’s. 

“Careful, Marimo. I can still give this to Luffy,” he threatens as he closes the distance between them. 

Zoro stares at the cup. His hands itch with an un-nameable urge. Perhaps to claw their Sanji—the crew’s Sanji—back to them, perhaps something else. In any case, he glances at the smoothie and says, “Looks like shit.” 

It does not, in fact, look like shit. A prominent vein twitches above the Cook’s visible eye. 

“Care to say that again, asshole?” 

Falling easily into their familiar pattern (even after two years apart, it still feels just the same, still feels like coming home) Zoro stalks forward, getting up in that stupid curly face— 

A squeak of a sound and a loud thud. With a violent flinch, the kid goes down hard on his ass, throwing his hands up in front of his face and— 

Shaking. 

Before Zoro can blink, Sanji has pressed the glass into his hands and dropped his silver serving tray on the deck. Hands free, he crouches and pulls the trembling boy into his arms, completely blanketing him from Zoro’s sight. 

“It’s okay, it’s just the moss-head. He’s harmless. It’s alright,” Sanji murmurs over a whispered litany of, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” hiccuping like smothered sobs from the kid’s mouth. 

Zoro has never felt like a bigger asshole in his entire life . 

Sanji quickly carries the kid into the kitchen, not even giving him half of a second to begin to apologize before they’re gone. 

He makes baffled, fleeting eye contact with Usopp, who is watching from the upper deck. 

Chopper would have pushed to see his newest, littlest patient earlier if he hadn’t suspected that the younger Sanji would have an easier time of it if he was allowed to acclimate to the crew a bit more beforehand. But, when Chopper approaches the two Sanjis to request a check-up, it is the older Sanji who seems to be dreading it.

Once the door to the infirmary closes, Sanji all but deflates before Chopper’s eyes. He looks tired, so tired, and it’s only been what? A day? No, something is wrong. Something is really, really wrong. And that’s not even counting all the ways that the child-sized Sanji has Chopper worried, too.

Like it’s routine, the smaller of the pair is quick to climb up onto the medical cot, quiet and eyes downcast, hands folded in his lap.

“Fuck,” Sanji whispers, and Chopper turns to him with wide, worried eyes.

“Sanji…?”

Chopper won’t let him smoke in the infirmary. It’s a place of healing not harming! So instead, Sanji starts to bite at his nails. After a moment or two, he scrubs his hands harshly down his face and sits beside his younger counterpart, something like steely resolve in his eyes.

Warily, Chopper pulls his stool over to the exam bed.

“Chopper…” Sanji starts and stops again, picking at his nails. His jaw works visibly. “What I’m about to tell you cannot leave this room, got it?” Perhaps, if Sanji were himself and not this stranger that’s taken his skin, this would have come out like a threat. Like a demand. But this Sanji isn’t the Sanji that Chopper knows—isn’t the Sanji that makes him hot cocoa when he has a nightmare and stays up to soothe him back to sleep with his easy strength and protective presence—and instead it comes out like a plea.

What am I about to find out?

The younger Sanji has not been behaving like normal human children do. Chopper has seen plenty of kids that are nervous around doctors during his days of shadowing Dr. Kureha, and he’s seen plenty of children from the village outside of medical contexts, too. He knows enough about human behavior to know that something just isn’t right, and little Sanji sitting so stoic and resigned on the exam table makes every instinct in Chopper’s body rise to attention. This isn’t how children this age behave around doctors. This isn’t that at all.

Chopper takes a deep breath, steeling himself and going to the place that he goes when treating patients. Right now, he is not Chopper the Strawhat, he is Chopper the doctor.

“Sanji, as your doctor, I have an ethical obligation to keep your confidence. Anything you tell me when I am acting as your doctor will never be shared with the others, unless I fear for your immediate safety otherwise.”

“Okay. Hell. Okay,” Sanji mutters. He won’t look at Chopper. Won’t look anywhere but at the floor. “He—I— we,” he settles on after an agonized moment, “were… modified.”

Chopper… does not like where this is going.

“I don’t understand. Modified?”

“My—our biological father… Fuck. Shit.” And then, upsettingly, Sanji starts to laugh. “I have no idea how to say this,” he admits after a moment.

Chopper is his doctor right now, not his friend. Chopper-Sanji’s-friend would never push him, not when Sanji looked this miserable. But Chopper is his doctor and he has a sinking feeling that he’s been missing something important this whole time. He measures his response carefully before replying. “Just say what you can.” 

“Experiments,” Sanji offers. “I was… we are… experiments. I don’t… I don’t entirely know what the goal was, honestly. Enhanced strength, reflexes, and something about emotion, but it’s not like anyone ever told me anything except that it didn’t work. Not for me—us—at least. And I don’t remember a lot, but. There were a lot of tests, when I was, you know,” and Sanji gestures to his littler self, who’s tucked his face up into his knees and hidden his eyes. “They took a lot of blood, brain scans, endurance testing… they tried a lot of drugs, too, before they gave up. As far as I could tell, nothing ever worked.”

Oh, Sanji. Chopper blinks frustrated, devastated tears back with all the force he can muster.

“Alright,” he swallows. “That’s alright. Thank you for telling me.” Carefully, he reaches out a hoof to tap little Sanji’s hand and get the boy’s attention. Big, watery eyes blink back at him. “Sanji, I promise you that I won’t do anything you don’t want me to. It sounds like—” Chopper has to pause to choke back a noise that he wants to make, his eyes still brimming with tears he will not let fall, not while he’s working.

He tries again, composing himself one breath at a time. “It sounds like you weren’t treated like your body was yours. That was wrong of them, whoever your doctors were. I will ask before I do anything and if you tell me no, I will stop. I will tell you what I’m doing and why and if you need to take a break, we will take a break for as long as you say. If you have questions, I will answer them. How does that sound?”

The child’s lower-lip wobbles with emotion. “Good, Chopper,” he replies after a moment.

They proceed with the exam.

With each bit of information revealed, it becomes harder and harder for Chopper not to break down crying. The first discovery is that Sanji is severely malnourished. The second discovery is that Sanji’s eyes are unused to direct, bright sunlight and that he’s had a near constant headache since arriving. They take a break between this step and the next when Sanji shakily asks for one. When granted, he flings himself at his older self, who Chopper watches cradle and comfort the boy with increasing dismay.

Oh, Sanji. What have you been through?

His blood work shows that he’s deficient in vitamin D, vitamin C, B12, and borderline anemic. His physical…

His physical is the worst part.

Scars that Chopper never got a chance to see litter nearly every inch of the younger Sanji’s skin. Knowing that the silvery little scars fade by the time Sanji is older brings no comfort, not when Chopper just keeps finding them. He finds evidence of poorly-healed breaks, of tender, still-healing ribs, and the bruises…

Wherever Sanji came from before they found him on that island, it was not a good place. He had been beaten savagely and recently. There are still finger-print shaped bruises in a ring around his arm, hidden by his sleeves, and a boot-print bruise stamped into his spine. Broken blood vessels sit like tiny red freckles around Sanji’s eyes—hard to see unless you’re up close and looking—a testament to how hard and for how long he must have cried. 

When the exam is done, Chopper wants to throw up. The Sanjis, both of them, look exhausted. He gave the child a mild sedative that doubles as a powerful pain-killer for the bruises and the headache and his head lolls limp on his shoulders, listing heavily into the older Sanji’s side. Chopper feels just as exhausted as they look. He sets down his chart with a soft clatter on his desk.

“Sanji… Who did this?” He can’t not ask. This isn’t just reckless human experimentation. This was abuse for the sake of abuse. There is a footprint on the boy’s spine, like someone kicked him down and held him there with their boot (and Chopper will not even think about the size of that boot-print, how small it is and how it must have come from another child).

Sanji hefts his younger self into his arms, little head resting on Sanji’s shoulder, all but asleep already. His eyes are cold and distant when he replies.

“No one that matters anymore,” he replies, and slips out of the door like a ghost.

But what about when we figure out how he’s here? Will he go back? We can’t send him back, Chopper thinks, desperate for answers that he knows he won’t get.

Luffy, I have to tell Luffy. Luffy will know what to do.

But Chopper can’t. Because he promised he wouldn’t. 

He walks to his desk in a daze and stares blankly down at the results of the physical, at the dozens of notes detailing the excruciating abuse, neglect, the torture…

It’s not right. None of it is right at all. And Chopper doesn't have the first clue how to help. 

Their youngest guest sleeps the rest of the day and through dinner. This worries Luffy, because kids need to eat and eat a lot so they’ll grow, so Sanji promises that he’ll wake the boy a little later and see if he’s hungry. Chopper interjects, rather quietly, really, that the pain medication might have killed his appetite and that it’s more important that he get some sleep.

“Pain medication?” Nami asks, her worry palpable.

“For a headache,” Sanji blurts, lying.

Luffy doesn’t like that Sanji is lying to them so much. It hurts in a way he doesn’t have words to explain. Zoro seems to feel it, too. At Luffy’s side, Zoro is tense and withdrawn.

“Well,” Nami offers after a long, awkward moment, “We should arrive at the next island sometime tomorrow evening. Hopefully we’ll be able to find someone that can give us some answers.”

“No luck yet in figuring out where little Cook-bro came from?” Franky asks. 

Robin sighs, “Nothing concrete. I did find mention of the ruins in an old fable about a magic wishing well, but without another source, the tale is complete speculation. It had been translated multiple times and much of the original nuance has likely been lost. Our best bet will be finding someone that knows more.”

“A wishing well? I found Sanji by the old well!” Sanji had been hiding behind it when Luffy woke up. “Did the well do this?”

“It’s impossible to say without knowing more.”

Sanji has sat quiet and still in his usual spot at the table throughout the whole exchange. Luffy nudges him with his foot under the table, and when Sanji glances up, he smiles.

“It’ll be okay,” Luffy reassures him, knocking their feet together.

“What do you think will happen? When we figure it out?” Chopper asks suddenly. He has the same look about him that Sanji does, now. Like he’s hiding something. Like he’s scared. Luffy hates it. Hates that this is happening right under his nose and he can’t seem to stop it or make it better. 

Robin shakes her head, carefully replacing her tea cup in it’s saucer. “There’s no telling.”

Luffy can feel that Zoro is going to talk before any words actually leave his lips; it’s a subtle shift in the atmosphere, reflected by Sanji on an atomic level. Zoro goes to pounce and Sanji braces for the fight, both of their bodies reacting before their brains can catch up. So when Zoro asks, sudden and loud and uncompromising in the tense silence, Luffy is the only one that doesn’t jump.

“What was that about, earlier?” Zoro demands, eyes burning.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sanji shoots back. The cigarette between his lips buckles under the pressure of his clenched jaw.

Unquestionably furious, Zoro lurches to his feet and grabs for Sanji, catching him by the collar of his shirt and half-dragging him over the table to get up in his face. The rest of the crew reacts, Usopp and Nami lurching up and away from the table as the dishes on it rattle and rock precariously, Robin stepping away gracefully, Franky shouting a reprimanding, “Oi!” about the table and the floors when the benches go scraping backwards across the wood. Only Luffy does not move. He watches.

Something important is going to happen.

“Cut the shit, Cook!” Zoro shakes him by the collar, up in his face and angry. “What the fuck is the matter with you? Ever since the kid showed up, you’re like a totally different person! And don’t get me started on the kid—”

Sanji smacks his hands away, spitting and hissing mad, like a coiled snake. His shoulders shake with tension. Luffy braces for the strike, for the bite, for the poison.

“You don’t know what you’re fucking talking about,” he hisses through clenched teeth.

“Bullshit!” Zoro shouts, shaking the table when he slaps his hands down onto it. Franky shouts again, and is ignored. “What was that helmet? Why is the kid so damn scared all the time? Why are you acting like… like—”

“Like fucking what, Zoro?!” 

“Like a coward!”

Sanji recoils back as if struck, eyes flashing with genuine hurt quick-as-can-be before it’s gone again, buried under simmering anger. He drops his lit cigarette into his cup of water and points at the door.

“Get the fuck out of my kitchen,” he commands, calm and deadly. The room is silent.

Before Zoro can start back up again, Luffy intervenes, grabbing Zoro by the arm and quelling him with just a look. Zoro knows he pushed too hard. Luffy doesn’t really have to say it. 

With little more than a scoff, Zoro stomps out of the kitchen, slamming the door behind him. Silently, like a funeral procession, the rest of the crew trickles out, only Nami daring to touch Sanji on the shoulder with a reassuring squeeze as she passes. Soon, it’s only Luffy and Sanji, standing on opposite sides of the table, silent.

“Sanji,” Luffy says, and watches his cook crumple before his eyes.

Sanji buries his face in his hands, shoulders jumping. “Please,” he begs, one word enough to bring Luffy around the table and to his side in a heartbeat. When Luffy pulls, Sanji comes, turning towards him and letting Luffy steer with careful hands on his elbows, even if he doesn’t uncover his face. They move towards the back, sitting on some stacked bags of flour, and Luffy says nothing while Sanji trembles under the single hand Luffy’s placed at the back of his neck.

“You don’t have to tell me,” Luffy says after a moment, only when he thinks Sanji can handle it. “But it’s hurting you. And it’s hurting the other you, too. And I won’t let it.”

Sanji huffs out a laugh, watery and trembling. “It’s not something you can fight, Luffy.”

Luffy squeezes his neck, like scruffing a cat. He thinks Sanji might need the firmer hand, sometimes. He shudders under it, breath hiccuping.

“Let me be the judge of that.” And again, after a minute, he adds, “What can I do? Tell me what I can do.”

“Make it stop,” Sanji whispers, barely there.

Luffy settles Hat on his head, the straw rasping against Sanji’s hair faintly in the otherwise silent room. “We’ll fix it together,” he promises.

“It’s a reminder,” Sanji breathes, voice wet and wavering, “Every time I look at him, it’s a reminder of what I was and I don’t—I can’t—”

The door to the kitchen creaks open. Luffy knows who it is immediately. Sanji jerks his head up, wiping violently at his face, just as littler Sanji rounds the corner. He looks tired. Worried. Extra small, under the kitchen lights and the shadows of night-time.

“I’m sorry,” the boy murmurs, hands twisted up in the fabric of his borrowed-pants. “It’s because of me, right? I’m sorry, I’ll do better,” he swears.

“No,” Luffy and Sanji say at the same time, and when Luffy opens his arms, littler-Sanji shuffles closer.

“No, kid, it’s not because of you,” Sanji lies, settling a hand on the back of the boy’s head and scratching gentle and soothing at his scalp. 

Luffy lifts the boy up into his lap, tucking too-cold little limbs up against his body so they warm faster. It’s cold out tonight. “Someone hurt Sanji,” he explains, rubbing gentle circles on the boy’s back like Makino did for him after Sabo died. “And even though they aren’t hurting him anymore, it hurts to remember. But we’re going to fix it.”

And kids are always more honest than adults, so when littler-Sanji looks right into Luffy’s eyes and says, “But it can’t be fixed, because what’s wrong is me,” Luffy knows that these are the words his Sanji can’t say. 

“No,” Luffy says, firm. “Nothing is wrong with Sanji. Nothing. Sanji is my cook and he’s perfect.”

“But—I’m not how I’m supposed to be,” the boy hiccups, tears cascading over too-hollow cheeks. “I-I… I’m a failure, I’m not,” he breaks off, audibly choking back sobs. “I’m weak.”

Their Sanji, big Sanji, lets his head fall back against the wall with a defeated thunk. “Not anymore, kid,” he rasps. “You get strong.”

It’s too much for the boy, who breaks down sobbing into Luffy’s arms. Big, wailing sobs, like the pain is too much to be kept quiet and can only be shouted out. Luffy bears their weight, adult and child both, and weathers the storm.   

Usopp and Brook are watching the next morning when Chopper suggests that the younger Sanji could do with a long, hot soak in the bath. The boy perks up when Chopper makes the suggestion, and Luffy is quick to leap to his feet from where he was sprawled out on Sunny’s lawn in a patch of sun like a particularly indulgent lizard.

“I’ll take him!” Luffy cheers.

Usopp sets the parts of Nami’s clima tact down and shoves his goggles up into his hair. “That’s a terrible idea, Luffy. You can’t swim,” he reminds their ridiculous captain. The young— impossibly young, how is he so young?— Sanji deflates. “I’ll take you,” Usopp is quick to offer in his stead. “I could use a break anyways!”

“Usopp—” Sanji, the big Sanji, their Sanji goes to protest, and shoots a betrayed sort of look at Chopper, who shrinks under his stare. “You don’t have to, I can take him.”

This doesn’t feel right, Usopp thinks as he stands, his knees popping from kneeling hunched over the machinery for so long. “Nah, it’s no big deal! I needed a bath anyways myself, and you’re busy.” He flashes his biggest smile at the shy little kid, and offers up his hand. “C’mon kiddo, let me show you how the Great Captain Usopp does bath time!”

Sanji-the-younger blinks up at the older, his big blue eyes practically begging to be allowed. When Sanji finally nods his acquiescence, he looks like a man going to his execution, which is really fucking strange, considering that it’s literally just a bath. Sanji has been so off since the little-him came aboard. Usopp had honestly thought he and Zoro were going to come to blows over dinner last night. 

He wiggles his hand and when the kid takes it, Usopp whispers conspiratorially, “I’ll even tell you how I once defeated a mighty sea-king with nothing but a toothpick and some gum.”

And, for the first time since they discovered him, young-Sanji actually giggles. 

It feels good to break the ominous tension that’s descended over the crew like that. Usopp’s always been good with kids. Maybe not so much kids that have been through whatever it is Sanji has clearly been through—touching that helmet had felt like touching something evil, something cursed —but he’ll try his damndest to make the kid laugh a bit, and bathtime is easy. As much as the people back home didn’t really trust Usopp to tell the truth about anything, they did trust him to watch their kids, sometimes. He was always especially good with babies, and Usopp can pretty much manage an entertaining bathtime in his sleep. 

When Usopp turns back around from getting the bathwater to the perfect temperature, Sanji is clutching a towel around himself in a death grip and looking like he regrets every choice he’s ever made.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” Usopp asks, cutting off the rambling story he’d been weaving only seconds before. The kid only chews his lip and shakes his head no. “Feeling shy?” he prompts.

“I don’t think he wanted you to see,” Sanji admits after a moment.

“Who? The other Sanji? Why wouldn’t…?”

“I don’t think he wants anyone else to know,” the boy whispers towards the floor.

“Hey,” Usopp gentles, crouching down in front of the boy. “There isn’t anything you could show me that would make me angry. And Sanji won’t be mad at you either, I promise. But if you want me to go get someone else, I will. It’s up to you, kiddo.”

After a heartbreakingly tense moment, Sanji nods and lets go of the towel.

Usopp wasn’t prepared for the bruises. Or the scars. Or the too-prominent ribs. But especially not the bruises. There are fingerprints on his arms, like someone held him down and— 

“Oh, kiddo,” Usopp breathes, because there’s nothing else to say, really. He takes a deep breath and lets it out, struggling valiantly for his composure. Sanji already looks like he’s about to cry. Best not to make it worse by freaking out. “I bet those hurt, huh?”

After a moment, Sanji gives a shaky little nod. “Kinda’,” he admits.

“You know what’s gonna feel really good on those aches? Some nice, hot water. C’mon, let’s get you in the tub.” 

Usopp tries as hard as he can to ignore the little flinches that Sanji can’t seem to control throughout the bath whenever Usopp touches him unexpectedly or makes a too-quick movement. He gives it his all to make the experience comfortable and fun for the kid, and even gets another couple of laughs out of him. It seems like Sanji’s only finally started to relax when Usopp fucks it up again.

When he slides his fingers into Sanji’s hair to wash it, the boy freezes. A great, heaving shudder wracks his tiny frame, and Usopp stills.

“Are you alright?”

Sanji sniffles. “D-Don’t stop?” he asks, quiet and unsure.

“Okay. Alright. You let me know if you change your mind, okay?”

Sanji melts under the touch, shivering with every gentle scratch of Usopp’s nails over his scalp, leaning into each gentle tug on his hair. How long has it been since anyone has done this for him? Usopp wonders, and his mouth must get away from him, because Sanji answers.

“Not since Mom died,” he murmurs into his wet knees.

Oh.

Usopp swallows. “My mom died when I was young, too. But the people in my village were kind, and my neighbors watched over me until I was big enough to watch over myself.”

Sanji is quiet while Usopp rinses the shampoo out of his hair. It isn’t until he starts with the conditioner that he speaks again.

“My father wishes I was dead,” he whispers. Usopp freezes, and thinks of yellowing bruises on a child’s back, small finger prints wrapped all the way around their arms— 

“Sanji… who put these here?” he dares to ask, just barely touching the finger-shaped bruises.

Sanji buries his face into his knees and wraps his arms around them. The soapy bathwater laps at the walls of the tub. Usopp almost misses the answer.

“My brothers. But I don’t think I’m supposed to tell you.”

Sanji has brothers?!

“That’s okay, kiddo. Thank you for telling me.” He stutters, chest squeezing painfully tight. “You know that they’re… they’re wrong to hurt you, right? They shouldn’t… no one should hurt you like that. Not for any reason.”

Another little sniffle. Each one of them is breaking Usopp’s heart. How does this injured little baby turn into their brash, foul-mouthed Cook? How does that happen?

“Not even if I’m a failure?”

Who could have possibly told this child they were anything but perfect? Who told this baby they were a failure?

“You’re not. I know you’re not. And even if you were, it would still be wrong. Trust me.”

“‘Mkay. Thanks, Usopp.” Sanji murmurs.

You don’t need to thank me for basic kindness, Usopp doesn’t say. Instead, he says, “C’mon, let’s get you dried off” and resolves to talk to Sanji—older Sanji—as soon as possible. Usopp can yell at him when he’s an adult, but not at this kid. Never at this kid.

He bumps into Zoro on the way out, Sanji clean (albeit slightly damp, still) on his back, dressed in more of Chopper’s little clothes. Sanji squeaks when he sees Zoro, and makes a valiant effort at hiding behind Usopp’s hair. Zoro’s face contorts into an ugly, wounded expression.

Why are you so afraid of him? Usopp wonders.

“Hey Zoro, can you meet me at the kitchen in five minutes?” Usopp asks. He’s not stupid. He knows he’s going to need reinforcements for this. Substantial reinforcements. And also, having an ally in his overwhelming anger might be beneficial.

Zoro shrugs. “Sure,” he says, and peeking around Usopp’s head, he asks, much quieter, “Are you alright, little Cook?”

Mutely, Sanji nods.

“Kitchen. Five minutes,” Usopp repeats, and scurries off to drop the boy off with Luffy.

Zoro is waiting outside the kitchen door, as promised.

“What’s this about?” He asks. Usopp is practically vibrating in place with tension. He’s pissed. He’s sad. He’s… so upset he can’t even breathe properly. 

“Sanji,” he says, careful to keep his voice steady, “was covered in bruises.” Usopp grabs his own arm. “A ring of finger prints here,” he says. He twists and points at his back, right over his spine, “And a small shoe print here. And scars. Zoro, he said his brothers did it and that his father wishes he were dead.”

Zoro, mouth agape and eyes impossibly dark and furious, doesn’t even get the chance to say anything before a teary-eyed Chopper rounds the corner, wringing his hooves.

“I couldn’t—as a doctor, I can’t break a patient’s confidence,” he whispers guiltily. “So I… I suggested a bath in hopes that Sanji might… might open up if he had the chance.”

Usopp rubs at his temples. “Fuck. We need to get Luffy,” he whispers. But before that can happen, Zoro is bursting into the kitchen— “Zoro, wait!”

“Who are they?” he demands.

Sanji whirls around from the sink to face them, a half-washed plate in his hands. “What the fuck?” he asks. “Who are who?”

Zoro stalks forward, enormous in his rage. Maybe this wasn’t the right idea, after all. “Your brothers. Who. Are. They?”

The plate slips from Sanji’s limp hands and shatters on the floor.

Sanji is used to Zoro doing really stupid, generally unadvisable shit. It’s one of the first tenants of being a Strawhat: the laws of physics don’t apply to Luffy, Luffy can and will eat anything that moves and isn’t bolted-down, and Zoro is an idiot with questionable judgement. But no amount of knowing Zoro does stupid, unadvisable shit could have prepared him for this. 

“Zoro, wait!” He hears Usopp call a fraction of a second before the kitchen door swings open violently, the bang going off like a gun-shot. The door-handle hits the wall with enough force to put a hole in the wood as Zoro stalks inside, furious with a distinctly deathly aura to him.

“Who are they?” Zoro demands, closing the distance between them rapidly. 

For a second, Sanji fears the worst—they know, they know, they know—before he has to forcefully remind himself that Zoro is, in fact, a fucking idiot and no one knows anything. He grabs his composure with both hands—tattered as it has become these past few days—and shrugs on his usual annoyance with Zoro like a cape. Only then does he turn from the sink to face him, still clutching a half-washed plate in his hands because the dishes only stop for one thing and one thing only, and that thing is a fleet of marines.

“What the fuck?” Sanji asks. “Who are who?”

Zoro stalks forward, predatory. Furious. Radiating the kind of feral protectiveness that Sanji really only ever associates with that awful, unspeakable day on Thriller Bark.

What did I do? He thinks for a moment, heart in his throat. He’s wary of fighting the marimo with the kid around, considering how poorly he reacted to the barest hint of conflict between them the other day, but Sanji’s hardly going to lie down and take it— 

“Your brothers. Who. Are. They?”

Sanji hardly registers the plate sliding out of his hands and shattering on the floor. Everything slows. The world goes quiet and cold. His hands and feet tingle distantly, his only connection to his body the free-fall in his stomach.

They know. 

Sanji has never given ground to Zoro in a fight before, but he’s tapped into a place beyond thinking, wholly instinct, and he takes a single lurching step backwards, back bumping into the countertop. 

They know.

His mouth opens and he speaks but he isn’t sure what he says. It feels like “What?” on his lips, but tastes like no, no, no, please, no— 

And Zoro is so close and getting closer, glass crunching under the soles of his boots— 

(Don’t ever let them see you afraid—)

There’s a kind of inevitability to it. A sort of sick satisfaction that his fears weren’t just for nothing. Of course they were going to find out. Of course, with all his weakness and all his wounds made manifest and real and undeniable, someone was bound to put the pieces together, or the shade wearing his childhood face was bound to say something he shouldn’t have. It’s almost a relief. There’s nothing left to hide anymore. His fears and his paranoia and his anxiety wasn’t for nothing, because the proof is here: they did learn. 

Sanji was right to be afraid.

(—because if they see you’re scared—)

But he won’t accept it. Not like this. Because maybe his childhood self doesn’t have it yet, but there is a fire that Sanji has kept burning in himself since was old enough to start it, and he’ll be damned if he lets it go out without a fucking fight.

(—you’ve already lost.) 

He pushes out, striking Zoro right on the chest and shoving him away with everything he’s got. Zoro’s eyes go wide and shocked, like he hadn’t expected it, like he’s somehow gotten Sanji confused for the haunted little kid flinching his way around the ship.

“Woah!” Usopp, still framed in the doorway, yelps with shock and makes an aborted step forward like he was going to try to come between them.

“You don’t know what you’re fucking talking about,” Sanji hisses, teeth clenched.

“Usopp said that the kid told him, that he saw, so don’t try to pretend nothing is wrong—” Zoro growls. And— is he dumb? Of course something was wrong, it always was, and it was always him.

“They aren’t my fucking brothers!” he explodes. “I renounced that life, I left them behind me years ago, don’t you fucking get that? It’s over!”

Zoro’s hands are tight and burning when he grabs Sanji by the shoulders, shaking him once, twice, like he could rattle answers Sanji isn’t going to give out of him if he just jostles him hard enough.

“It’s not over! The bruises are still healing! Fingerprints, Sanji! A fucking footprint!”

He twists, putting every ounce of his flexibility to use at once, managing to writhe out of Zoro’s truly impressive grip, dancing around him with fighting-footwork until he’s between Usopp at the door and Zoro in a minefield of glass.

“He,” Sanji shouts, throwing an arm out wide to encompass the ship (the child) beyond the door, “Is not me!

“What do you want, huh?! You want to revisit every… every fucking bruise from the waking nightmare that was my childhood? FINE! My father—” spits the word, spits it like a curse, “—wanted super-soldiers, a superior bloodline to re-establish the pride of Germa, and he got me instead! No matter how many fucking tests they ran, or how much experimental shit they gave me, they couldn’t fix the fact that I was a failure! Even my name is a fucking joke. Ichiji was first, but he was too fucking perfect to give a single shit about me and wasn’t that a blessing? Niji was next and god did that fucker have a vicious grip when he wanted to keep me down. Yonji came after me—do you see the pattern? We weren’t kids, we were fucking numbers— and Yonji was as stupid as he was fucking cruel. He broke my arm when we were four, just because he could. Niji helped; got me on the ground and pinned me there so that Yonji had all the space he needed, and didn’t let up no matter how much I begged and cried and Ichiji just watched. 

“They were stronger than me, better than me, mattered to our father when I never had, and when my mom died—the single fucking person that gave even a fraction of a shit about me—my father threw me in the fucking dungeon and told the country I was dead. You want to know what was on my fucking head? It was a mask and it never came off. Not to eat, not to sleep, not to cry. Everything about that place was designed to break me. They wanted me to kill myself. All I had were the fucking rats and the brothers that would visit just to beat me, and half the time I was awake I was considering doing it, just to get all of it to stop . And even then, I would have given anything for them to change their minds and decide I was worth it, that I was something, even after everything. But you know what? No one ever fucking did. 

“My sister freed me because she pitied me. And my father caught me and let me go. One last fucking act of control. Not even my escape was under my own power—I got free because he allowed me to. And his only condition was that I forget the family name, that I never ever come back, that the third forgotten prince stays dead and gone. He may have let me go, but I killed that kid and made myself something different, so don’t tell me that it’s not fucking over when that is the one fucking thing I managed to do!” 

“SANJI!” 

One word—one fucking word—and he drops to his knees in one breath, like he was never even standing.

He wishes he didn’t know where he was, but he does, and it hurts. His vision swims with dark spots, his chest heaves, his tears drip steady from his chin to the wood below. Everyone is watching. Sanji doesn’t need to look to know. Everyone came when the shouting started, everyone heard, and it’s no one’s fault but his own. 

He fucked up, he fucked up so bad, and now Luffy is mad.

(Luffy is going to make you leave—)

The air tastes like a storm before the lightning strikes and there’s an impossible pressure. Like he's undergone a sudden altitude change, his ears are waiting to pop. Sanji knows his Captain’s haki. He’d know it deaf and blind.

He’s neither, and he knows.

And there is not a single person to blame but himself.

Little-Sanji is pliant, shaking with silent tears, and goes to Robin easily when Luffy hands him over to her waiting arms. On the floor in Sunny’s kitchen, Sanji— his Sanji, their Sanji—trembles in the same way.

“Everyone,” Luffy says, soft but firm, “Give us some space.” He pins Zoro to the floor with a look— not you. Don’t move.

“L-Luffy,” Chopper blubbers. He’s crying harder than little-Sanji, whose tears come silent and steady and deeply, deeply exhausted. “I-I’m so, so s-sorry,” he hiccups between sobs, and Luffy stops to scratch his head around the base of his antlers.

“It’s not your fault, Chopper. You did what you thought was best,” he says, but Chopper only cries harder. Nami steps in, fluid and steel-backed, ushering Chopper away and giving Luffy her own look. 

As she passes, the last of the crew to file away, she looks Luffy dead in the eyes and says, every inch of her body made into pure steel with fury, “I want names.” Luffy nods. Gentler, softer, she says, “We have the little guy. Make sure our guy is okay, yeah?” And then she sweeps away. Luffy is always grateful for her, but he’s so grateful for her now that it aches, twisting something up fiercely inside of him.

When he steps into the kitchen and closes the door behind himself, he can see Zoro swallow from all the way across the room. They will talk later—they’ll have to. But now is about Sanji, and Zoro acquiesces with a tight, tense nod. 

Luffy touches him when he comes around. He starts with a hand in the center of his back, slides it up and around to his shoulders as he crouches, pulls him in and holds him there, feels the ragged, half-sobbed gasp for breath against his neck. Sanji’s hands twitch and flutter in the small space between them, alive with indecision and fear, and Luffy thinks of butterflies trapped in jars, wings beating with nowhere to go. He winds an arm carefully around the back of Sanji’s neck, pulling him that much closer, and feels those hands finally settle, going for Luffy’s shirt and just hanging on, tight enough to rip.

Zoro kneels beside them on the floor. His touch wouldn’t be welcome, so he doesn’t reach out, but he’s there, whether or not Sanji realizes it. 

When Luffy speaks, Sanji is pressed so close to him that Luffy’s lips touch the hair falling across his temple. “I am so happy that you are here.”

Sanji sobs.

“I’m happy you’re alive.”

He moans like he’s being flayed, like flesh is coming off of bone. Luffy doesn’t stop.

“You’re wrong, because you didn’t kill him. You were always him. He just got stronger.”

And it sounds like Sanji is hurting, like this is killing him, like it’s murder to hear but it needs to be heard and Luffy won’t stand it going unsaid—un believed— so he holds on and keeps going, holding extra-tight to keep all of Sanji’s pieces inside.

“You were never a failure. Not then and not now. You were never a failure. You were always mine and I need you just as you are.”

“I’m so sorry,” Sanji sobs, shaking all over head-to-toe like something that’s just been born, “I shouldn’t have said any of it and I’m so sorry. Is—is he okay? Is the kid okay?”

Zoro reaches out and gently grips Sanji’s shoulder. His voice is soft, soft like it was for Luffy the night Usopp left the crew, soft because Zoro has a terrible softness in him that Luffy loves with every part of his soul. “I’m sorry. It was wrong of me to push you. I was angry. I wasn’t thinking.” 

“He’ll be alright,” Luffy adds when Zoro is done. “But he’ll want to see you. He’ll want to know you’re alright.”

Sanji exhales raggedly and mutters, “Can I—can we… stay? Just… for a minute?”

“Of course,” Zoro rumbles from deep in his chest.

“As long as Sanji wants,” Luffy echoes. 

Maybe no one ever decided that Sanji was worthy back then, but they’re here now. And Luffy doesn’t mind telling him so until it sticks.

They dock at the inhabited island of Depto early the next morning. It’s a tiny little island with drizzly, always-rainy weather, and the single town it boasts spirals outwards from an ornate temple that reaches up to the sky with humanoid hands. It’s constructed of the same material as the ruins on the island previously, and by Robin’s estimate, she’d even date the structures back to the same period. 

They’re in no hurry, so the crew takes their time meandering through the wet cobblestone streets, exploring at their leisure. The island’s inhabitants are friendly, and multiple street vendors offer them free samples of a warm, mild-flavored drink pressed from a sweet vegetable not unlike a carrot. 

Their guest gets passed around all afternoon, beaming bright enough to make up for the lack of sun on Depto. His feet never once touch the ground. His hands are never empty of treats or trinkets. He spends the most time on Franky and Zoro’s shoulders. 

Despite the eventful day previous, when Zoro approached the younger Sanji with a bashful, sincere apology for scaring him and causing such an awful argument, the young boy had smiled and touched Zoro’s cheek with a small hand.

“It’s alright,” he said, “I was wrong, too. You’re not like Yonji at all. You’re gentle.”

Now, he’s hardly left the swordsman’s side. 

As they approach the temple, Nami carefully picks her way up through their group until she’s at Robin’s side. They spent the night working in the library after both of the Sanjis went down for the night, Luffy and Zoro lingering over their shoulders until they had a name.

The debate was heated and lasted long into the night, various Strawhats coming and going, switching out almost on a rotating schedule so that both watches were always occupied by at least one person—the watch over the ocean and the watch over the Sanjis. No one wanted either of them to wake up alone after such a terrible, draining day. 

Some were of the opinion that the Vinsmokes needed to be confronted. Nami and Zoro in particular argued relentlessly for their downfall to be swift and bloody. Surprisingly, even Chopper had agreed, saying that a despot with the power and technology to genetically experiment on children warranted immediate intervention.

“Personally, I’m terrified. I don’t want to meet the kind of people that could do something so horrible. But, I’m a doctor, and I took an oath of beneficence. I have an ethical obligation here that goes beyond… beyond my fear,” he had told them, his red-rimmed eyes unwavering in the candlelight. “Not just for Sanji, but for others, too.”

Brook and Usopp had taken the opposite stance.

“It is Sanji-san’s past,” Brook had murmured in his sedate, calming voice just as the argument had reached a fever pitch. “No matter our beliefs, it is not our place to interfere on his behalf. Not without his consent.”

“And he won’t want us to,” Usopp said. “We all heard him. He wants to leave all that behind. And it sounds like they don’t want anything to do with him, with us, either. Maybe it’s best to leave this stone unturned. It’s… it’s an assassin empire.”

“Former empire,” Nami snapped. 

“Fine. But it’s still not our place. Not unless Sanji wants it to be.”

Franky, Robin, and Luffy himself all remained undecided, although Robin finds herself leaning more towards a proactive strike against a possibly powerful enemy, loath as she is to make things any harder on Sanji than they need to be.

“What happens when we reach the temple?” Nami asks, drawing her back to the present. 

Behind them, the younger Sanji shrieks with giggles when Franky starts fighting Zoro for the right to carry little Sanji bro, c’mon, give him up, it’s my turn already!

“The future is always in motion. I guess we’ll just have to find out,” Robin says with a smile.

Zoro isn’t really paying attention when a priest or something explains how the whole thing happened. The withered old man took one look at their assembled group as they entered the massive, echoing building and said, knowingly, “So you’ve been given the Kahrismah.”

“So it appears,” Robin says.

“Follow me,” the old man beckons, and really, the whole thing is shaping up to be kind of… dry.

They’re led to an altar of some kind with a stupidly fancy mural depicted out of colorful glass in a window. It seems like a pretty stupid way to memoralize something—one stray rock and that thing is a gonner— but what does Zoro know? There are candles and writings in a language Zoro doesn’t understand. A few other priests—or monks, possibly—come and go while the girls and the man talk. Franky, Zoro, and Luffy aren’t paying attention, content to occupy the little cook. Although, Zoro suspects that Franky is more on baby-sitting duty than anything, because Zoro and Luffy don’t have the best track record around sacred, fragile spaces.

“And then, um—I used, um. I used a different kind of oil, ‘cause ‘pparently the—the ‘smoke point’ of um—olive oil is kinda’ low, and that’s why there was a bunch of smoke, and that time it was better,” Sanji is telling them. He’s a real motor-mouth kid, when you get him going about cooking or the ocean.

Zoro is holding his little hands in his own while Sanji walks across the narrow backs of the wooden pews, balancing on the small space like a tightrope, one foot after the other. He leans heavily on Zoro for balance, and keeps shooting him furtive glances as he walks and talks, as if checking that he’s still going to be there when Sanji looks away.

He’s done a lot wrong the past few days, but this… this he can do right.

“Did um—did you know that tiger sharks can get—um, can be, um—two thousand pounds?”

“Woah, really?” Luffy blinks. He’s hanging on the kid’s every word.

A great deal of shuffling and thank-yous has the rest of the crew drawing near, the adult Sanji wearing a pensive, upset look on his face.

“C’mon, kiddo, hop down,” Zoro prompts. The boy—and they’ve got to figure out a way to differentiate between the little cook and the big cook if he’s going to be sticking around—is so light in his arms, lighter than any child has any right to be.

“What’s the verdict?” Franky asks.

“Luffy was right,” Nami says with a pained sigh, as if the very idea is too burdensome to bare, “It’s the old well.”  

“The locals call it Kahrismah, literally a gift from the gods. A favor from the spirits that their ancestors have worshipped for generations. They believe that structures have an inherent power to them; homes are imbued with spirits of protection and shelter, buildings constructed to be businesses carry spirits of wealth, even pottery is made with sacred intent and houses spirits. Thousands of years ago, these two islands, Depto and Vempto, were one landmass. After a catastrophic event—”

“Volcanic, probably, going off the rock formations on either coastline,” Nami interjects.

“—the two split and the people fled to Depto, leaving Vempto and its structures abandoned. Abandoned does not mean inactive, and the high priest believes that Usopp prompted the spirits of the wishing well to bestow Sanji with a gift.”

“Huh? But Usopp didn’t know about any spirits, did you?” Luffy swings towards the man in question, who blushes something furious and stammers out a series of no, of course not's. 

“But he did ask each of us that question. What would we say to our past selves, if we could talk to them,” Nami explains. “And the priest believes that the spirits must have been paying attention.” 

“So what happens now?” Zoro asks, hefting his little charge a little bit higher on his hip so he can settle more comfortably.

“A wishing well is believed to have the spirits of Apantisi, or ‘replies’. They are thought to give the wisher what they need, literally—what they wish for—whether or not that wish is conscious or not,” Robin explains. She smiles in Sanji’s direction as he scowls up at the glass art in the windows.

He blows out a sigh. “Once I ‘acknowledge the gift’ and show that it’s fulfilled my ‘wish’... that’s it. It’s over.”

They’re all quiet for a moment, until:

“Will it hurt him?” Luffy asks. It is his most serious tone. The one they so rarely hear. It’s the same question Zoro is thinking, breathing in the unique baby-scent of Little-Sanji. Little Sanji, who knows way too much about fish and can talk for hours if you let him and carries bruises like fingerprints on his too-skinny arms.

“No.”

All eyes turn to Zoro, specifically, to the little boy in his arms. Looking thoughtful and strangely earnest, the kid says, “I don’t know why, but… I know it won’t. I think, maybe, that… that I’m not real. And that. This is supposed to happen.” He blinks up at Zoro, those big, familiar eyes impossibly blue. “So don’t be sad, Zoro, okay?” 

There is a lump in his throat and Zoro does not know how it got there.

“Okay,” he says, squeezing the boy once. “If you say so.”

“Can we go home now?” the little boy yawns, resting his head on Zoro’s shoulder. “‘M tired.”

Sanji steps forward and brushes the boy’s hair out of his face. “Yeah. Yeah, let’s go home.”

There is a lot that Brook has seen in his life and his afterlife. There is something, however, uniquely special about today.

Depto is a rainy place with dark, cloudy skies. The morning rain turns into an afternoon drizzle, but they elect to take dinner inside the aquarium, just for the way that it will light up the young Sanji-kun’s face to dine by the fish. The two Sanji’s cook side by side and Brook keeps out of the way, playing a cheery violin tune that Sanji-kun keeps asking, bashful each time, “Um, Mr. Brook-san, could you play it again, please?” and Brook could not refuse that little face, even if he wanted to.

For the first time in days, there is genuine joy in the kitchen.

No matter what comes next, Brook will hold this day close for all the years he has left.

He thinks the term “gift” is oddly fitting. Their little gift has done so much to clear the air on this ship. He’s made all their lives a little brighter, even through the storm.

Dinner is raucous and lively and dammit, Franky is not going to cry! 

(He’s already crying, thinking about how their time with their littlest bro is going to end so soon, and even though it isn’t going to hurt—even though his littlest bro wants whatever comes next— Franky doesn’t because the kid is a joy he doesn’t know how to give up.)

So when the little man asks to get closer to the fishies, please and if the cookies he made were any good, it’s okay if they weren’t, Franky goes above and beyond to make sure the kid gets as close to the fishes as he could ever want to be and makes sure that he knows, without a doubt, that those cookies are the best Franky has ever had.

The kid is special, and not just because he grows up to be their cook. Franky makes a note to let the bigger kid, their Sanji, know it more often.  

Sanji is balancing the child in his lap, sitting on the bench in front of the aquarium glass, watching the fish swim by when it happens. All around them as the crew nurses tea and full-stomachs after dinner. It’s funny, how it almost just… snaps into place. One second not and the next, there. 

So, he expects it even before the little boy turns away from the fish, the blue of the aquarium reflected onto his face, and tells him, smiling, “It’s time.”

Conversation quiets.

“Yeah. I guess it is, isn’t it?” Sanji murmurs. He runs a hand through the kids hair, just how his mom used to do for him, and gathers the words that are suddenly there.

No, not suddenly. Not sudden at all.

They’ve been found over the course of days, found between Chopper’s gentle touch, Usopp’s storytelling abilities, and Franky’s protectiveness. He’s discovered the words in Robin’s understanding eyes, Nami’s righteous fury, Brook’s mournful and patient presence. He found them when Luffy held him and said what Sanji never knew he had needed to hear. He found them here, now, looking at the shadows of fish swimming across the face of a child that was only ever that, a child.

Not a failure, not a mistake, not a great shame to hide. Just a child that didn’t deserve any of what he got. Not a moment of it.

Sanji stands and sets the boy on his feet, going to one knee in front of him, a hand cupped carefully around the back of his head, cradling. He tucks his thumb up under the boy’s ear, rubbing small circles, and the face he sees is his own.

“The things that were done to you were wrong. They were undeserved. They were evil. You were never broken, never a failure, and nothing, absolutely nothing , needed to be fixed. They—they were not your family. You’ll find your family. And they will never make you feel like you are less-than,” Sanji takes a breath, swallowing around the stone in his throat and smiling through the tears trailing down his cheeks.

He brings their foreheads together, presses them crown-to-crown, and whispers with every bit of conviction and every bit of fire in his soul, “The truth is, you were always strong.”

It begins as a light, a faint white shimmering at the ends of the boy’s hair that slowly spread across the body. It comes like a shiver across his skin, like watching the reflection of sunlight on rippling a body of water. The boy reaches out, and takes Sanji’s face between his tiny, glowing hands.

“Of course I am. I’m you ,” he laughs.

And then he dissolves into starlight.

Sanji stays there, crouching, feeling the warmth from hands that were so, so real , fade from his cheeks, cooled quickly by the fall of his tears. When he stands, Luffy collides into him with a full-body hug, rubber arms wrapping all the way around again and again until all the breath leaves him in a punched out laugh. Nami comes next, throwing her arms around him and Luffy both.

“I’m so proud of you,” she whispers, just for him.

Soon after comes a wailing, sobbing Franky, who squeezes all of them just a little too hard, an equally-blubbering Chopper in Heavy-Point so he can better reach, and even Zoro, reluctantly tugged into the pile by a few artfully bloomed hands, courtesy of Robin.

When the boy came on board, Sanji had kneeled before him in the same manner and told him that he was strong. He’d had them then—hell, he’s always had this family, out there and waiting for him to come find them—these impossible, insane people that believe in him, that believe in his strength and his value. 

Now, maybe he believes it, too. 

So he throws his head back, laughs into the embrace, and thinks of only starlight.