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“Captain, wreckage dead ahead!”
Biting back a curse, Zeff broke away from his grim debate with their crew’s navigator in favor of making his way to the bow. Geoff met him there, tossing over a spyglass, pointing out what Artie up in the crow’s nest had spotted. “Knowing our luck, what do you want to bet that’s the Orbit?”
“You’re not getting my berri that easy,” Zeff muttered back. He adjusted the glass a bit, twisting to bring it into focus, and cursed when he too saw the bits of flotsam, shining white against the waves in the early morning sunlight. “Damn. Blasted storm couldn’t have waited one more night, just one...”
“Might be for the best,” his first mate and oldest friend hummed. “We barely stayed afloat as it is, Zeff. I don’t think the George would’ve made it if those monster waves hit while half of us were aboard another vessel.”
“Hardly matters now, does- it...”
After a beat, Geoff thumped his shoulder. “What?”
Zeff didn’t answer, squinting through the spyglass. He could have sworn- there. A piece of wreckage bobbed higher on a wave, pure white broken up by the glint of golden-yellow and a splash of crimson red.
Turned out that hollering ‘man overboard’ was overkill - the pipsqueak clinging to a chunk of wood and plaster couldn’t have been more than nine or ten years old, if that. But there was definitely still some life to him, that little mop of blond hair lifting as the Cooking George got closer, a shaking hand reaching out to grab the line thrown his way.
Kid doggedly held onto that rope for the couple minutes it took Zeff and Horst to row over to him in a lifeboat, and kept on holding it even after being snagged by the back of his little white uniform and hoisted off his pitiful raft. Rather than pry it out of his white-knuckled grasp, Zeff just gathered up the slack as Horst handled the oars. And then Zeff gathered up the kid himself, once his crew raised their boat back aboard the George, carrying the twerp onto the deck and then all the way to their modest infirmary.
“Has he said anything?” Gumbo Jack asked, hustling in on Zeff’s heels, already reaching for the cabinets that held his supplies.
“Not a word. Made a few noises, though.” First a bitten-off shriek when getting hauled out of the water, like he hadn’t realized what someone throwing him a rope would lead to. And then a handful of choked whimpers, huddled at the bottom of the rowboat, the kind of sound Zeff recognized as someone trying desperately not to sob for whatever reason.
It didn’t tug at his heartstrings. Not a damn bit. It didn't.
“Alright little fella, let’s get a look at those hands, hm?” Jack’s much larger fingers rubbed at the kid’s clenched fists, easing ‘em open away from the roughspun rope, one digit at a time. Zeff bit back a hiss when he could better see the damage; skin badly torn up, at least half his nails broken, splinters visible here and there. Either he’d hurt himself clinging to the Orbit, or else trying to get out of the ship as it broke up and sank. Clinging to the line thrown from the George’s deck certainly hadn’t helped.
Jack kept on murmuring as he treated the wounds, using his ‘Papa Talk’ voice as the crew jokingly called it; man had a wife and little girl back on his home island, waiting for him to come back someday with enough treasure the three of them could open up their own restaurant. Normally Zeff scoffed whenever he heard the warmth in his medic’s tone, but hell, here and now it meant the shell-shocked boy slowly became more responsive, a bit of light coming back to the one dull blue eye not hidden by his hair.
But then Jack tried to ease the kid’s drenched shirt off, and things got a LOT louder.
“Feisty lil’ fella, huh?” Geoff tried to joke, a couple hours later after all was said and done. Zeff just grunted at him, sitting on the floor with his legs stretched out, coat-wrapped bundle in his lap. “...Jack says there are some. Marks.”
“Yeah,” Zeff sighed, too tired to hold onto his anger. “Not slave brands. Least, not any I’ve seen before.” Not the Hoof, but the number ‘3’ tattooed at the junction where the kid’s skull met his spine, hidden by the curls of his hair - unless, say, he screams and struggles to get away from a stethoscope bad enough to practically fall off the table. And down on one thigh, a more stylized looking ‘66’, hidden until they stripped the boy of his soaking wet clothes, Jack doing his best to shout through the hysterics that they just needed to dry him off and almost taking a heel to his jaw for the effort.
Was a half-decent kick, too. Nowhere near Zeff’s level, but he afterwards couldn’t help but wonder how much damage the little castaway could do at full strength.
“You finally knock him over the head or what?” Geoff asked, coming to crouch down in front of Zeff, peering at the bit of fluffy hair poking out the collar of his coat.
“Nah. Just held him down ‘til he passed out.” At which point Jack went through the rest of his examination without the frantic begging for no more needles, please, please don’t strap me down, and Zeff kept on stroking the kid’s damp hair as the best apology he could offer.
He figured waking up dry and cozy would go over worlds better than staying on the infirmary’s exam table or either of the beds, hence stripping off his leather coat and using it for an improvised blanket. Nevermind the cabinet full of actual blankets, those were out of reach in the moment, and he didn't feel like getting back up after sitting down.
...Geoff’s one eye looked especially thoughtful as he went on staring. “What?”
“Nothing, Cap’n,” Zeff’s first mate hummed. A likely story. “Are we going to stick him in crew quarters for now, or do I tell the boys to hang a spare hammock in your cabin?”
“The hell is that supposed to mean? He can stay in-” Here, Zeff almost said, biting his tongue at the last moment. His arms tightened their grip, and immediately loosened again when the kid let out a tiny whimper. “-oh for the All Blue’s sake, fine, my cabin. I’ll keep a better eye on him than you would, at any rate.”
Chuckling, Geoff tapped his eyepatch with a smirk. “Can’t argue with that! Also, Little Louis is already starting dinner, a nice big pot of steaming noodles and the rest of that chicken stock broth.”
“Tell Green Charlie to add his bread rolls,” Zeff said, scowling as his friend chuckled a second time. “Go on, get, don’t make me kick you out of here.”
“Going, I’m going!”
For two more days, Zeff insists high and low they aren’t keeping the kid, as soon as we reach a decent port, the twerp can make his own way, but as soon as the boy is coherent again, able to sit up and eat on his own and tentatively tell them his name is Sanji, he responds to Geoff joking about how close he came to dying with “I’m not going to die until I find the All Blue.”
After that, well.
It’s not like cabin boys on pirate ships are unheard of, now are they?