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Sanji’s not in his bunk in the middle of the night even though he’s not on guard duty: first red flag.
Okay, to be fair, this one’s not that special. The cook’s a light sleeper and sometimes, he just doesn’t fall asleep or wakes up randomly. He just gets up at a certain point and starts some of the many chores a few hours earlier than usual. He claims it’s nothing to worry about, but the crew keeps an eye on him throughout the day. As long as Sanji sleeps again during the next night, it’s okay. Most of the time, that’s exactly what happens.
Zoro peeks through the little window in the kitchen door to find out if it’s okay. He could leave anytime, regardless what’s going on in there. Should leave, actually – he’s supposed to wake up Franky to take the next watch. The empty cot lured him away from their quarters.
He sees no food in the oven, sizzling in a pan or simmering on the stove. Instead, the kitchen is spotless. Its surfaces are shiny, the sink is empty, and everything is tidy. Even the towels are neatly folded and ordered according to size. Which means the cook spent the last hour obsessively cleaning, and already checked and rechecked the pantry. It’s still too early in the morning (or too late in the night – at these hours, in these moments, the lines are blurry) to start breakfast. Second red flag. Dangerous.
There’s a weird exchange of feelings happening within Zoro: His stomach sinks in this particular, sickening way, when it feels like you’re going to be sick but not physically. He wonders if Usopp would describe it as fear. At the same time, there’s that familiar rush that pushes him into battle, adrenaline that urges him to move. A strange mixture, really. On the one hand, he wants to cop out, to not deal with what’s probably waiting behind that door, and on the other hand, he knows that he needs to win each and every fight to reach his goal, and he’s itching to get closer.
Well, Zoro’s never been one to back down. Unconsciously, his hand feels for the swords at his side. He opens the door and knows exactly where to look next.
The ashtray is full of cigarette stumps. Usually, Sanji doesn’t smoke in the galley. He smokes everywhere and all the time, but he tries to keep the smoke and the ash out of his kitchen. It’s not a rule set in stone, though, and he smokes in here when he’s upset. It doesn’t have to be anything important – lord knows the sappy idiot gets worked up about many things and life in the New World isn’t exactly a piece of cake. No big deal, per se, but a nice way for the crew to know when not to grate on their chef’s nerves too much. He’s quicker to dish out some of these nasty kicks on the days he smokes in the galley.
But it’s night, and it’s not just a few cigarettes in that ashtray: Red flag number three.
Zoro notices the cigarettes in passing. His gaze is drawn to Sanji himself, who’s sitting on the galley’s sofa, slumped over the table right next to the ashtray. His head is resting on his folded arms and maybe, just maybe, Zoro’s lucky.
Quickly, he moves around the table, as noiselessly as possible just in case – nope. Zoro’s out of luck. Sanji isn’t asleep.
Shit.
Red flag number four.
The big one. Big enough to wrap itself around Zoro’s chest and squeeze. The flag Zoro hates with a passion, because after years together on a small ship, they should be able to avert it, damn it. They should be finally able to recognize flags number one to three, and who even knows how many else there are, early enough and fucking do something.
Sanji isn’t asleep. His eyes are open, half-way at least, and he’s staring listlessly at the wall to his left.
Zoro isn’t an eloquent man. He doesn’t care much for words. But he hates this one with a passion, because Sanji is many things but listless. His eyes are anything but listless. Most of the time, the idiot cook is staring angry daggers at him or spewing hearts out of his eyes or trying too hard to look suave. He’s expressive to a fault, even with only one eye visible thanks to his stupid hair … but tonight is one of these nights.
It's wrong and he’s not going to stand for it. Even if Zoro has no idea what to do, never knew what to do before, his fingers are brushing against the hilt of Wado Ichimonji and he draws closer. He’s not going to have any scars on his back.
When Zoro steps into his line of vision, Sanji’s gaze flickers up at his face for a brief second but that’s all the acknowledgement he gets. The blonde’s gaze doesn’t linger but just passes on, floating.
“Cook,” Zoro says, carefully neutral, and there’s still no reaction. Listless. Impassive.
The big fucking red flag deepens in colour. It’s one of these nights. For whatever reason, Kuina’s face flashes through his thoughts, like a ghost passing through the ship, but he pushes her memory away to deal with the here and now. He’s the worst person do be dealing with this. He’s no good outside of fighting, never felt very comfortable or apt about the personal, casual stuff. He never knows what to say, the words just don’t come to him easy.
“Cook,” he says again, crossing his arms to fake passive-aggressive nonchalance. “It’s late.”
Sanji huffs out a breath that is slightly louder than the others and it might be a reaction to what he said. Or not. It’s difficult. And if Zoro’s not an eloquent man, he surely isn’t any better in reading complex physical cues.
From the first time he’d laid eyes on him, before he even knew that this weird waiter would be one of his best friends and the bane of his daily existence soon, Zoro had seen the tension in Sanji’s shoulders. He thought, therefore, that he had the cook figured out. He wore pretty suits, smoked casually, and spent too much time worrying about his hair, but Zoro always knew the look of someone carrying too much weight for too long. He wasn’t surprised, therefore, when he caught Sanji stress-baking at 3 a.m. for the first time for no apparent reason. Wasn’t surprised to find out about his horrible sleeping patterns or the obsessive controlling of the pantry.
They learned about the shipwreck and the rock soon, and it was a good explanation why food was such an issue. He told them about Zeff’s leg and it fit so well into the idiot’s tendencies to value the well-being of others more than his own. There was a lot he didn’t tell them and it was fine, because Zoro doesn’t care about pasts as much as he cares about the present. And for a long time, the present was going pretty well; great, even. The crew grew, they got stronger. It stayed that way, even when after a while, after Chopper and Vivi and Robin, they realized that Sanji sometimes … got sad. Well, that’s what Luffy called it.
Zoro’s pragmatic. It’s just a fact in life that sometimes, people get sad. On a small vessel like the Merry or even the Sunny, these moods can’t go unnoticed. Nami had shown up with red-rimmed eyes more than once for breakfast. Usopp, at times, hides deep within the belly of his ship until he stops shaking – for hours, for days. He knows for a fact that Robin doesn’t always turn the pages of the books in her hands but stares blankly at them. It’s a normal thing – when Kuina’s smile (the rare, genuine one), that has been burned into the backs of his eyelids, turns from wonderful to overwhelming, he himself tends to be more irritated than usual.
When that happens, he yells and picks fights and somewhere along, the sadness disappears. Perfectly normal. Sad people need to be alone and think, or cry and talk, or punch through walls and scream at others, write sad songs or bake a mountain of muffins, and then they’ll be fine again. They’ll turn around and find Luffy smiling at them and remember that they have a place at his side, that he will always be right with them, watching them with that smile. After a little while, it will be okay again.
It’s different with Sanji, though. Even years later, Zoro still hasn’t completely figured it out. When Sanji gets sad, he changes. When he’s really sad, he stops being everything that’s Sanji – no loud cursing, no stress baking, no violence, no yelling. Just …listlessness. Indifference.
Robin has another word for it because she, too, doesn’t think that ‘sadness’ quite cuts it. It’s a longer one, and it had made Nami pale and Chopper nervously stuttering that this wasn’t his area of expertise. Zoro hadn’t understood back then, and she explained that it was like a sickness, but not of the body.
Zoro still isn’t sure he understands.
He takes a good look at the cook. He doesn’t look sick, maybe a bit drawn, a few lines beneath his eyes that indicate that he is, indeed, tired. His head is resting on his arms in what could be a comfortable position, one cheek pressed onto a bare forearm. He must’ve rolled up the sleeves of his shirt earlier, but the skin on his hands isn’t red anymore from the soap and the obsessive cleaning. It means he’s been here for a while, now. That’s … not good.
“Why aren’t you sleeping? You’re not on duty tonight,” Zoro asks and it comes out rougher than intended. Say something, he thinks, gritting his teeth.
Usopp would be so much better equipped to deal with this. Zoro has seen him talk Sanji out of this … whatever this is. He’d sit down next to the cook and start with some weird story, waving his hands around all the while. One of them would all casually drape itself over Sanji’s shoulder and stay there, and at some point, Sanji’s gaze would find Usopp’s other hand and follow its quick movements. Usopp would speed up, then, twisting the story plot more and more absurdly, until a smile would twitch at the cook’s lips and some life would finally return to him.
But Zoro’s not good at telling stories. Just say something, he thinks again when Sanji still doesn’t react, and he’s not sure who he directs it to. Some kind of anger bubbles up and it feels good. Anger and the cook – that’s a mixture he’s familiar with.
“It’s that little girl, right?” he says, at last, because he needs some answers and Sanji is obviously not working with him here. So frustrating. “We helped her.”
Jackpot – there’s a slight tremor in Sanji’s shoulders and Zoro charges. “We’ve taken her away from there. She’ll be okay.” And, after a while: “There’s nothing more you could have done.” Talk to me, idiot.
They’ve visited an island and did some shopping. When they returned, Franky had found a little girl, maybe ten or eleven years old, hiding beneath a pile of groceries on board of the Sunny. She had flinched away from all of the men. It had taken Chopper in small form and some of Sanji’s best-smelling sweets to lure her out. The arms that had reached for the plate had been littered with bruises and according to Nami, who had been with her during Chopper’s examination, every other part of her body was as well.
Things were settled quickly. She spent two days on board until the Sunny had reached a larger island with a boarding school and a house full of very nice ladies that looked out for children without parents. By the time they waved good-bye to her, the little girl had already stopped hiding and won the crew’s heart by smiling a beautiful smile. Chopper had been crying openly when they left, already missing her, and they had tried to comfort him. It was just a brief moment, but Zoro remembers how Luffy had exclaimed loudly that there was no need to be sad, that everything would be awesome for her soon. Zoro had seen something flicker across Sanji’s face for a second. Something conflicted, some urge to disagree, but it was gone too quickly.
Damnit, Zoro thinks, feeling the ugly stench of failure filling his nostrils, how didn’t they see this coming? He should have seen this coming, miles ago. He had felt some tension in the air, some impact left by the little girl, but Sanji hadn’t been acting off. He’d been his normal, annoying self and Zoro had shrugged the feeling off. What a stupid mistake. It’s his job to look out for this crew, to recognize the danger before they have to. It’s his job to protect them.
It’s just so damn difficult with the stupid love cook. Sanji doesn’t need protection from marines or other pirates or bullets or swords. He’s strong and capable of handling his own during fights and therefore Zoro sometimes stops looking out for him to concentrate on the others. It’s dangerous and he should know better by now – to this day, Zoro has not once seen Sanji’s enemies approach.
“I think,” Sanji starts, suddenly. Zoro almost flinches, even though the cook’s voice barely qualifies as a whisper. “Some part of me always hoped to fix it one day.”
Sanji is still looking at a point in the far distance behind Zoro, no emotion on his face, and his voice is hoarse from all of the cigarettes he smoked. Zoro’s not sure the cook is realizing that he’s talking out loud, talking to Zoro, but hell, he’ll take it.
He has no idea what the idiot is talking about, unfortunately. “Fix it?”
“I got strong. I learned how to fight. It’s what he always wanted.”
Pieces are starting to fall into place and Zoro feels an icy fist closing around his heart as he realizes where this is going. It’s Whole Cake Island again. No, not ‘again’ – it’s still Whole Cake Island. No, wrong again. It’s Germa. It always was fucking Germa, and Zoro, who spent his whole life living in the present, concentrating on the future, doesn’t understand how this works. How one man’s past can have the power to loom like a shadow. Again and again, Sanji’s past builds up like a storm and rips through the Sunny, rips through their cook, threatening to pull him back into the darkness, like a wave into the ocean.
It’s the old chant again, spreading regret and anger: He should have been there at Whole Cake Island. He should have been there to protect his nakama. He should have been there to kick the Vinsmokes’ asses, grab his crew and get as much water between Germa 66 and the Sunny as possible. Part of him knows that it still wouldn’t change years of abuse and internalized inferiority complexes. But maybe he could have stopped some of the violence seeping from the past into the present. Maybe they’d have an easier time dealing with the aftermath.
Zoro doesn’t have much to offer about parents or family, but he has some experience in the wanting-to-grow-stronger-department, so that’s where he aims at. “You did,” he says, thus, because Sanji is one of the strongest people he knows and it’s ridiculous that he keeps fighting without winning. “You got strong.”
“Yeah,” Sanji answers, still inflectionless but hey, that’s a conversation, right? Zoro releases a breath he hasn’t realised he held. “But it didn’t change anything.”
He’s not used to do the bulk of the conversation, to fill in silences and lure out information. That’s someone else’s job, most of the time Sanji’s. Zoro hates irony. He also hates groping for words and coming up empty.
The moment’s almost over and Zoro decides to switch tactics. He eyes the situation before him wearily – there’s a bit of space on the sofa next to the cook, but not enough space for him to sit on. Of course, the idiot is facing away from the chairs at the other side of the table. Zoro’s standing between the table’s end and the kitchen wall and there’s not enough space to get a chair and wedge it in. If he sits down on the floor properly, he’s out of Sanji’s line of sight. He doesn’t dare to push at the table or the sofa, and he’s pretty sure the cook wouldn’t move if he asked him to scoot over.
Leg day it is. Great.
Zoro swallows a curse as he wedges himself between the table’s end and the kitchen wall, lowers himself to his heels in an awkward squat with only some of his weight supported by his right elbows pushing against the sofa’s edge. His thighs are already protesting and his feet will hurt like hell in no time. Tch, he curses the idiot. Probably did that on purpose.
The movement gathered some of Sanji’s attention, at least. Instead of staring into the distance, Sanji’s visible eye followed him down. It’s still expressionless and unfocused, but Zoro’s face is now in perfect eyelevel with Sanji, and it’ll be more difficult for the moron to look away.
“I don’t understand,” Zoro admits and ignores that one of the wooden planks’ edges is cutting into his back. “Explain.”
To his surprise, the cook lets out a shuddering breath. Zoro thinks he might have landed a hit and doesn’t feel good about it at all. On a normal day, admitting he doesn’t understand something would earn him hours of teasing – who would have thought that he’d ever miss it? Right now, he can’t match the person in front of him to the vibrant, temperamental chef who manages to twist himself into a ribbon if Robin so much as winks at him.
“It didn’t change anything,” Sanji repeats slowly, softly, as if talking to a child. It’s just an expression, but the word lingers and creeps under Zoro’s skin to send shivers down his spine. Sanji’s not really talking to him. It makes sense that his eyes are losing focus again, as if looking into the far distance – they’re looking a decade into the past, to be precise. “It means that it’ll never change. He’ll never want me.”
It’s a hollow victory. Zoro grits his teeth and wishes he could find the right words by sheer power of will. There have to be some words to make this better, right? He wishes someone else were here. What can he possibly say about families and fathers, about the love between a child and a parent? Zoro has never, not even in secret, called anybody Mom or Dad.
Whatever it’s worth, he tries. Sanji is miles and years away from the Sunny’s galley, but he won’t let him get away on his own, this time. “He’s a bad person,” he says, and it’s weird that his voice sounds just as firm and strong as always, when he doesn’t feel like this at all. “Nami told me. It was never about strength.”
It’s about the Vinsmokes’ inability to love, about Judge’s clinical and pragmatic ambitions that will never allow him to think about his children as anything but pawns. It’s about Sanji, who somehow emerged as the most kind-hearted person Zoro has met, and therefore suffers the most from his father’s cold-heartedness. It’s about the cruel twist of the universe that Judge terrorizes his own children and somehow got away with it, while an innocent child still carries the pain like a punishment.
He doesn’t say those things. Doesn’t know how. He doubts that Sanji would listen, anyway.
Instead, a bit of life returns to his crewmate. Pale fingers curl around to grip the fabric of his shirt and the cook takes a sharp breath. “So that’s it? It’ll always feel like this?” To Zoro’s utmost horror, Sanji’s visible eye wells up. What could have developed into anger implodes and his voice hitches. “I don’t want to feel like this anymore.”
Zoro’s completely frozen and useless. He’s relieved when Sanji doesn’t actually cry and then immediately feels ashamed because of it. Still crouching in his weird position between kitchen wall and table, he’s wondering if he should get up now. Wake up Usopp or Robin. Nami, maybe. She can be surprisingly insightful if she wants to be. They’re so much better equipped for this than he is. He’d have to leave the cook alone, though, and he doesn’t dare.
I don’t want to feel like this anymore – the sentence echoes. It’s nothing if not vague, but that’s exactly what freaks him out. Maybe it’s all in Zoro’s head, but he learned to trust his gut, damnit, and his gut is screaming at him, has been screaming for a while. He thought he knew what’s coming, but he can’t shake the feeling. I don’t want to feel like this anymore. Something in that echo is making him sick. Zoro doesn’t want to think the words.
It’s just –
It’s getting harder to pull him out. It takes longer. Before Whole Cake Island, the cook managed to pull himself out of these episodes on his own… or had they just not stumbled upon him when he didn’t? Zoro hasn’t moved since crouching down, but his heart is beating in his throat as if he just ran a marathon.
He doesn’t dare to move. Sanji’s gaze has wandered again, the conversation died down. If that even was a conversation to begin with. Zoro thinks that on some level, the cook must have felt his presence, and that keeps him rooted to the spot even as he watches how Sanji’s eyelids grow heavy and heavier.
At some point, they finally drop. Zoro stays where he is and watches how the tension leaves the cook’s shoulders. Fucking finally. He hopes he sleeps dreamlessly.
The outside world wakes up. Warm rays of daylight fall through the galley’s window, he can hear footsteps outside. On a normal day, Sanji gets up at this time and someone else needs to head out for guard shift. Their internalised clocks made them into light sleepers at the time of dawn.
Often, Brooks emerges on deck to softly play his violin, knowing that his audience will slowly but steadily gather. He’ll notice that the crow’s nest is empty, notice the light in the kitchen.
Zoro slowly gets up carefully to make sure word spreads to keep it down for a few more hours. He moves as quietly as possible on numb feet and legs, ignoring the painful prickling that will be unbearable in a few seconds. Sanji is still asleep, hasn’t moved at all over the last hours, and Zoro guesses that it’s a good thing, even if it freaks him out.
He opens the galley’s door just a crack, effectively stopping Brook from pushing the handle.
“Breakfast’s late today,” is all he says, and he’s sure Brook would pale if he could. The message is more than clear, they danced that dance already.
Zoro feels a pang of guilt when he closes the door again without further ado. Brook is a good friend, wise and thoughtful, probably a much better conversationalist than he will ever be. But somehow, he doesn’t want Brook in here when Sanji’s like this. I don’t want to feel like this anymore. Listless. Lifeless.
Throughout the night, Zoro wondered if maybe he understood a bit about what the cook was talking about, because there are enemies he, pirate hunter Roronoa Zoro, demon of the East Blue, will never slay. No matter how much he trains, no matter how strong he gets, he’ll never be able to kill these demons that live in Sanji’s soul. Apparently, they train as well, get stronger as well, which is a nauseating thought.
It’s the difference between them. Luffy appeared in their lives and offered them freedom, and both of them grabbed at it with both hands and pulled. But for Zoro, Luffy had offered freedom to – freedom to fulfil his dream, to connect with Kuina, to see the world. For Sanji, it had meant freedom from. Freedom from feeling responsible about Old Man Zeff, freedom from Germa, freedom from masks, dungeons, freedom from a name. Until the Vinsmokes appeared again and destroyed all of that.
It’s why Sanji is still not free and why this Sanji is the way he is: staring into nothing, unmoving and so very, very silent. There’s no point in talking or moving in a dungeon cell. As long as Sanji’s not free from the Vinsmokes, he won’t be free to see that he’s on the ship of the future pirate king, part of the monster trio and a crew Zoro has sworn to protect until his life ended.
His feet protest miserably as he crouches down again, resuming his guard duty. He can’t win this fight for Sanji, but he can make sure that he’s the first thing the cook will see when he wakes up in a few hours. If all goes well, a plethora of insults about his ugly mug and creepy voyeuristic moss will hail down on him, then. It’s all he can offer, really. Zoro doesn’t know how to free someone from a dungeon of the mind, how to fight demons from the past or people you are bonded to by blood. But maybe, if he stays long enough, Sanji will realize that he’s not alone this time. If the cook doesn’t manage to flee the cell again, they will join him in the dungeon.
The edge of the plank is poking into his back again and his legs hurt. The rays of the sun turn from golden to white until the room is flooded by light. Sanji’s still sleeping.
He doesn’t move.