Chapter Text
“The princess’s tower is supposed to be around here somewhere,” Zoro said, staring intently at the map Nami had drafted for them. Then he turned it upside down. “Or maybe it’s over there. Either way, we’re definitely on the right track.”
Luffy nodded, happy to keep humming his adventuring song as they wandered through the chilly forest.
“The tower’s supposed to be huge,” Zoro continued, nose still stuck in the map. “Nami said it was so big, ‘even idiots like us couldn’t miss it.’”
“Is that it?” Luffy asked, pointing at a large tower in the center of a clearing they had stumbled into.
Zoro looked up, turned the map over a few more times, then compared it again to the tower. “Yeah.”
Luffy had few aesthetic sensibilities, but he had liked the wintery forest they had gotten lost in, even if it was rather cold. The tower before them, despite clearly being a fixture of the place given the heavy layers of frost lining its walls, seemed entirely alien to the environment. Where the woods were sparkling and almost cute, the tower was stark and brutal.
As they drew closer to the base of the tower, it gave off an almost oppressive atmosphere, and Luffy couldn’t help but feel sorry for the poor princess who had been trapped in this place.
Zoro placed a gloved hand on the nearly completely smooth jet black stone. “Looks like we’ll have to climb. If I use my swords—”
Luffy didn’t bother listening, instead stretching his arms all the way up to the lone windowsill high above their heads. With another snap back to normal, he catapulted himself to the top, while Zoro whined about waiting for him dammit.
“Smoke princess!” He called. “It’s me, Luffy!”
“The princess doesn’t know who you are!” Zoro called from down below.
“It’s me, Luffy the pirate! I’m rescuing you now!”
At the top of the tower, Luffy eagerly pulled apart the heavy shutters, breaking a locked clasp in the process. Luffy had intended to dive straight through the window, but upon pulling back the shutters, he was met with iron bars tightly packed together across the window.
Luffy wound his fists round two in the center and had to exert more strength than he initially thought he would need to snap them off. He tossed them below, earning a curse from Zoro for throwing things, and started pulling at the bottom of the window. It was locked and definitely not meant to be opened from the outside, and Luffy may have pushed it up so hard that it shattered, but he was in.
He called again, “I’m rescuing you for real now!” as his last warning before slipping inside.
The one room of the tower’s top floor was dark with a heavy scent of smoke in the air, which Luffy took as a good sign given the princess’s title. But there was something else, something that smelled delicious. Luffy sniffed the air, growing more excited as he detected the unmistakable scent of food, so mismatched in this dreary place.
Luffy took an excited step forward and was promptly wacked in the face so hard his body was sent flying back into the barred window. He slid to the ground, rubbing his injured nose as a shadow fell over him. “Who the hell are you and how the hell did you get in here?”
The person before him had long blond hair, so long that it spooled behind them and Luffy’s eyes followed the train of hair to nearly halfway across the room. “Oi, you listening?”
Luffy blinked up at the figure before him. “Smoke princess!” Then Luffy frowned, because the man before him was definitely not a princess, which according to Nami meant Luffy’s actions were not those of a rescue but breaking and entering. Still, maybe there was a chance. “Are you, uh, Ruby the smoke princess?”
“No? Do you mean… Reiju the Vinsmoke princess?”
“That’s it! I’m supposed to rescue her. Are you guys friends?”
The man stepped back, seemingly deciding that Luffy wasn’t a threat. Or rather, he crossed his arms, drawing into himself as chewed on his lip for a minute and fixed his gaze somewhere to Luffy’s side into nothingness. “She’s my sister, and if you’re looking for her, you’re in the wrong place.”
“I don’t think so,” Luffy said, brushing himself off as he stood. “My navigator drew us a map here, and we got a request to save whoever was in this tower.” Luffy narrowed his eyes. “Are you sure you’re not the smoke princess?”
The more Luffy looked at him, the more he decided that it was a distinct possibility. The long hair that spooled around the room was gold and shiny where it met the light streaming in from the window, and the man had a fragileness to him that Luffy had come to recognize in people who needed to be saved.
The man, though Luffy realized he was probably more like a teen around his own age, scowled. “I already told you, Reiju is my sister. I’m her brother, Sanji. I bet she put you up to this, though. Sorry. You can leave.”
“Sanji,” Luffy said, attempting to commit the name to memory. “Sanji. Hey, what’s that smell, Sanji? It smells really good!”
Sanji stiffened. “Nothing! It’s nothing! I said you can leave!”
Luffy ignored him, instead letting his nose lead him in the direction of possible food. Midway across the room, his foot caught on a pile of hair, sending him sprawling back to the floor. Somewhere behind him, Sanji yelped, likely due to the surprise tug. Luffy pushed himself up and spit a few strands out of his mouth, only getting more tangled in his attempts to free himself. “Boy, you got a lot of hair, Sanji!”
“It’s not my fault! I’ve been in this shitty tower since—ow! Stop moving! You’re making it worse!”
Sanji kneeled beside him, pressing a hand to Luffy’s shoulder to still him, while he worked on freeing him. “Have you thought about getting a haircut?” Luffy asked. “I usually get mine cut whenever I get stuff stuck in it, which actually happens a lot.”
Sanji gave him an odd look. “That’s gross.”
Luffy shrugged.
Sanji sighed. “I’ve been in this tower for over ten years. Not a lot of opportunities to get a haircut.”
“Ten years?” Luffy couldn’t imagine being stuck in one place for a single year, let alone one as dreary as the chilly tower.
Sanji nodded. “My family decided it would be better if I didn’t live with them, so I was sent here. My sister sends supplies sometimes, so it’s not that bad.”
Luffy’s jaw dropped. “Are you stupid? This is terrible. It’s small and dark and there were dumb bars on the window I had to break.”
Sanji looked offended until that last part. “You broke the bars?”
“Yeah, I had to get in somehow. Come see.”
Despite still being in the process of untangling a few strands wound around the buttons on Luffy’s vest, he shot to his feet, grabbed Sanji’s hand and pulled him towards the windows. “Look!”
For a moment, Sanji stayed in the shadows of the tower, but he seemed mesmerized by the view outside. Luffy took another step toward the window, pulling Sanji closer even as he stayed as far away as the lengths of their arms would allow.
In contrast to the gloom of the tower, it had been a bright, crisp day, even if the sun was beginning to set after hours of Luffy and Zoro wandering.
Luffy stuck his head out the window and frowned. “It’s going to be dark soon, but I always like waking up early and watching the sunrise. The dawn makes the sky all these pretty colors—have you ever seen?”
Sanji hesitantly came to stand beside him, his fingers ghosting over the remains of the bars Luffy had destroyed. “Only from inside,” he said, his voice sounding choked.
“Well, do you want to go out with me?”
Sanji choked on air. “Excuse me!?”
“Do you want to leave and come outside with me?”
Sanji hesitated, letting out a sigh that curled into smoke in the wintery air. In full light, Luffy could see in full what he had only caught glimpses of despite being literally tangled in it. Sanji’s hair was like a cape of sunlight, cascading off his shoulders and shimmering as every little movement from the gentle breeze outside caused new delicate threads to be exposed and shine.
Without thinking, Luffy grabbed a stand still slightly stuck to his vest and started running his calloused fingers through it.
“I think I have to refuse—what are you doing?” Sanji asked.
“I know you’re supposed to be the smoke princess,” Luffy said, stroking the soft stands. “But I think that’s wrong. I think you should be the sunshine princess instead.”
For some reason, this made Sanji’s face turn red, and with a wince, he yanked his hair out of Luffy’s hands. “Don’t just say things like that to people you hardly know! A-And I can’t go with you.”
“What? Why not?”
“Because lots of reasons!” Sanji said, tossing his hands in the air, which made his hair billow out behind him. The action was so distracting that Luffy didn’t pay much attention to what Sanji was telling him, instead picking up another strand of hair from the ground to play with. “I don’t even know who you are, and who knows what my family will do if they discover I’m gone, and my pantry is full of food that I can’t just let go to waste—”
“There’s food here!?”
“Yes?”
Sanji stood beside him in mildly muted horror for a quick lunch that consisted of Luffy shoveling anything remotely edible in Sanji’s meager kitchen into his mouth. It was only after he was finished and Sanji had to rescue him from nearly choking to death on a fork he had swallowed, that Luffy realized he should have saved some for Zoro. He also realized that he had totally forgotten about Zoro.
“Hey, Sanji, Sanji!” Luffy chanted, hopping from foot to foot. “I know you’re not sure if you want to leave, but you need to decide soon before my friend gets frostbite, okay?”
Sanji blinked at him. “Uh.”
“But I think you should say yes because this place sucks and your food was really yummy and you were nice and let me play with your hair!”
“I told you it’s not a good idea—”
“I don’t care about good ideas. I just think you should do what you want.”
Sanji bit his lip and took another look around the dimly lit tower. “Give me just one second.”
He made his way to a far corner of the room, crouched down, and held his hand out to grab something before returning to Luffy’s side now with a mouse peeking out of his shirt pocket. Sanji flushed and looked away. “He’d starve if I just left him here.”
Luffy grinned. “Makes sense. Animals love princesses.”
Sanji scowled and looked as if he was about to argue but was immediately cut off by Luffy scoping him into his arms, one arm around his back, the other tucked under his knees and stretched out to hold on the windowsill. “Ready, Sanji?”
“Ready for what—!”
Luffy threw them both out the window, his arm providing a bungee that would eventually snap them to a relatively safe stop. But in the immediate fall, Sanji clung close to him, his hair billowing out in a great arc as if it were a waterfall spilling out of the tower. On their way down, Luffy thought he may have heard Zoro shout in surprise, but he paid that little mind as he gripped Sanji tight, ensuring that the tower’s precious treasure was safe in his arms.