Chapter Text
When asked, "What is your favourite colour?" People are more prone to answer with a light-hearted or bright colour. Sometimes, they'll answer for a specific reason, or perhaps the meaning of that colour.
If asked, Sanji would answer silver. The most interesting thing about the colour would be its usualy associated with a metallic type of material.
Sure, that offers it a sense of desirability, but truly, who likes a colour considered cold and slightly shiny? Why not pick something reflective or warm? There's nothing comfortable or safe about this colour either.
Obviously, the follow-up question is: Why?
"I don't know," sanji will shrug, refusing to make direct eye contact as he continues to stir the vegetables in the frying pan.
It's truth enough really, honestly maybe he should have just said grey and left it at that. While not common, it's still definitive, known. Or even black, like his suit and tie (like his hair). The worst that could have been responded with was "boring," and bieng ignored afterwards, as sanji had so gotten used to.
Instead, Ussop looks at him like he's crazy, beginning to ramble about why his favourite colour, purple, surprisingly enough, is clearly superior and only worthy of the great captain Usopp.
(Instead, he resigns himself to a harsh scoff from his brother, while the man shoves sanji into a counter and pours the red-hot food onto sanjis's head.
~~~~~~~~~~{ ○ }~~~~~~~~~~
Sanjis favourite colour is silver.
It's the colour of his first and last gift from his mother: kitchen utensils, mainly a specific small knife for his small hands, with their initials carved into it.
After his mother's death, Sanji was confined into a cell of entirely grey. Set in the stone guarding of two prison bars; one tight over his face and the other heald tighter in shaking fingers.
Even then, he knew figting for freedom was pointless, but that never stopped the flicker of hope every time someone came to his cell, his cage.
Yet no one kept the door open longer than a few minutes.
Bieng's resignation to fate is something Sanji lives with for years.
While considerably not many, for the start, this small cell becomes his home. He stops expecting to hear the breeze or the passing ocean waves.
After two years of almost isolation, Sanji has truly made a home for himself within the small confines. It has become peaceful, almost. Sometimes, if he's lucky, a mouse or rat (that isn't too hungry to consider him a meal as well) will stop by and let Sanji talk for hours on end. Not that the rodent would know what he's saying, but Sanji is grateful none the less.
Nothing of note ever happens, though; he gets a meal a day (sanji is pretty sure it's the food scraps of his siblings, but he doesn't complain at the meagre offerings, knowing that if he does he wont eat for a week) sometimes his father will come down, try and fail to train him.
That, sanji knows, is his own fault now. At first, he didn't understand, but he's getting better, actually training. Sure, he's a failure compared to his siblings, but they have advanced technology; sanji has his father's bimonthly training and a wall to kick and punch.
Pretty quickly, sanji learns that, unlike with his mother, getting injured is not grounds for sympathy. So, even with what a small, almost 13 year old sanji can assume is a broken hand, knuckles bleeding and swollen, his father still forces him to push through and fight his older brother.
(Obviously, he looses, but he'd tried, this time. Realy tried)
Punching the wall during personal training the next day only makes everything hurt more. He kicks it instead. The wall chips slightly. Sanji decides that he's going to stop fighting with his hands because they seem to be failing him and his father.
Besides, he read in a book somewhere that the femur is the strongest bone or something.
By the time sanjis' thirteenth birthday actually rolls around, his father gifts him with not only his presence but another chance.
A test of skill. Break this stone block with no outside help.
His father gives him what he is sure is Nijis training outfit from when they were younger because its ugly bright blue colour. He doesn't ask where his is.
At first, because it's the most logical course of action, sanji goes to punch the block, praying to the ever unhelpful Northen storm gods to channel his strength like the ocean.
It doesn't work, and his father looks.. more than displeased.
Sanji wants to give up, tears welling behind his eyes. Somehow, by some horrid mistake, instead of stopping, taking punishment like he knows he can, he drives the fear, the weakness into anger.
Kicking the stone block is considerably easier. Like pliant wood under two oposite forces, the stone breaks into two, fractured pebbles flying off the block and his foot.
Clearly, just as surprised as sanji seems to be his father makes an actual audible noise. It's more of a shock than sanjis first success.
Even more surprising, however, is that his father smiles while his siblings stand wide-eyed.
That might be the most emotion he's ever seen on them.
This is probably the most Sanji has ever felt in 3 years as well.
Forcfully, his father grabs him by the shoulder, patting slightly, even if this lasts no longer than 2 seconds. sanji is grateful: he's no longer a useless failure.
While he'll never be on par with his siblings, of which he's come to terms with, but that's okay; Sanji is no longer a failure.
..
Despite this, he's still confined to the cage. Although, luckily, it's not permanent, more of a room he'll sleep in. He'll take anything if it means he can leave during awake hours, walk around, and eat real food.
In the next few days, sanji spends his waking moments lined next to his siblings in order of number as usual.
Next to his siblings, Sanji realises how different they look now. Sure, they'd always have a stark hair colour difference, but that was always the case. Now, compared to sanji, they are all considerably taller than him, more tanned and more toned. They have a muscle mass that sanji couldn't even picture on himself.
(Sanji wonders for a brief and unwanted minute if this was what his mother felt like next to their father. Skinny, small and sick)
Yonji tries to step on his feet, but sanji doesn't react, mostly because he is too busy trying not to compare himself with his mother but also because he barely feels it.
The "meeting" continues regardless and lasts for what the loud alarms tell him is half an hour.
Sanji is not permitted to train with his siblings- he understands this, and they are stronger and superior to him.
The room he gets sent to instead is incredibly bright, a different training suit folded in the centre of the white square room.
This time, it's his, he knows by the pitch black colouring and distinct marking of his number 3. Next to it sits a black canister, labelled "raid."
There is one mission, use the suit and the canister to stay out of sight. If he fails more than three times, the trial will stop, and he will face punishment.
How his siblings ever completed this test sanji will never know. In fact, he's so bad at this that they've got him working it as a side test instead with other training sets to take up the most of his day.
For the next year and a half, sanjis life becomes a routine:
Wake,
go to the morning meeting,
do some training to increase and improve a subject, be it knowledge based or physical improvements,
Go to the white room and try to hide,
Sleep in the cell.
Failing becomes the norm, facing punishments stop hurting, and really, it's only making him stronger, so even though he fails the tests, tired and sore, he accepts each punishment without fuss.
On the week coming up to sanjis' 15th birthday, he is to take the test again.
Donning the suit feels natural now. Even his body is starting to agree because his roots have started growing in black the same way his siblings did when their body modifications started working correctly and in tandem with the suit.
Still, sanjis hair does not determine his ability, only that he's finally integrating into the suit, into the family.
Against all odds, anyway, sanji completes the test, he uses a mix of speed to keep himself hidden, and the punishments he's learned to sit quietly through have played a major help- when weapons came out of the walls (of which sanji wasn't even aware were there in the first place), sanji doesn't scream, doesn't make noise, even as he's practically gliding across the floor at a pace barely visible in the alternating lights. He just continues going, staying quiet and unseen.
When the timer goes off, even though sanji all but falls to the ground from exhaustion, his father claps anyway.
Apparently, he did so well. Even his father gave him a reward of his choice.
Originally, he was going to ask to see his mother's grave but then quickly decided against it - holding attachments to her seemed to hold him down, and his father hated that more.
Then he thought he wanted a better bed - a room even, but honestly, the two and a half years he'd spent locked up made him grow accustomed to it. sanji finds he can't stomach the idea of his old room again and decides to keep the stone cell. It will make him stronger and more resilient anyhow.
Finally, he asks for access to the kitchen. The ability to cook.
Sanji hasn't cooked in 5 years, but he vaguely remembers bieng a child and how enjoyable it was.
His siblings have hobbies, so why shouldn't he? Besides, this way, he won't ever have to go hungry again. Bieng able to make his own food is a win-win.
Gracefully, his father, Judge, sanji has started calling him, or sir on work days, permits it, much to the chargrin of the chefs.
As it turns out, he's terrible at cooking, but that's fine, sanji will eat anything.
Despite the Chefs seemingly dislike of him, they are.. weaker. They let him make mistakes, and they give him recipes and tips on how to improve.
...sanji doesn't call them out on it.
(He doesn't mention the head chef, some washed up pirate, is trying to teach him how to be weaker himself)
By the time sanji is 16, he has managed to move up in his father's eyes. He is even allowed to be considered on-par with his siblings. Or, kind of anyway. Still not as strong as them, of course, but stronger than the other soldiers/ cloned workers in the castle.
Like most birthdays, he is given a test, one that he passes out of sheer willpower because he'd recently broken his leg against his brother.
Completing the test is a struggle, but that's all sanji remembers of it. He was probably feverish definitely delirious from pain, but none of his siblings ever complained about things like that, so he didn't either.
Not that he remembers, but apparantly, his leg caught on fire - that's how fast he was going. Sanji wouldn't have believed it if not for his previous fight with ichiji where sanji had moved so swiftly that his leg sparked a little.
Perhaps it's his father's experiments finally coming to fruition, or maybe it's not at all.
But it doesn't quite matter, really, because he had lost the fight anyway.
..
On sanjis 17 birthday, he spent sitting in the kitchen.
Oddly enough, there are no chefs, not even waiters or castle hoppers walking around to deliver food to the masses of soldiers.
Or so he thought, because halfway through to his third ever official attempt at baking a cloth covers his face, familer wrinkled old hands over them.
He can't fight back, not against the crazy chef, not that he'd loose, but he still can't bring himself to attack him.
This is why he never takes down his mask and never removes the suit around strangers. He'd gotten too comfortable in the kitchen, too weak. That's his fault.
Hopefully, he thinks, vision blurring to black, father will forgive him.