Chapter Text
This world is vast, with unseen peaks and untraversable valleys, choking fogs and skies that stretch endlessly above. A place of impossible scale, home to uncountable creatures, sea beasts, whales as big as mountains. Even humans have variety - giants, tiny folk, those with extra joints in their arms, long legs, long necks. And people that aren’t human at all but deities, nations given flesh, absorbing their culture, bleeding in their wars, and carrying the weight of their people’s dreams.
Sanji likes to pretend to be human.
He does human things, like eating and dancing and flirting and never, ever mentioning where he comes from or who he is.
What kind of king casts out his own county?
One that experiments on them, blurring science with mythology, with magic, until there are no lines and the little boy Germa is some terrible monster reborn from a human but decidedly not.
Sanji doesn’t know the details and he doesn’t want to. He’s going to keep his head down. He’s a chef at the Baratie, nothing more.
But the sea, she’s calling.
Sanji might die at any moment.
He realises not long before Luffy explodes into the Baratie. On a warm night, alone in his room, leaning out of the window with a cigarette. The waves gently rock the floating restaurant, like a mother cradling a child. It’s a feeling Sanji has known all his life. This life, anyway. He can’t speak for the much shittier version of him that came before.
Sanji almost drops his cigarette at a sudden pain in his torso. He leans against the window pane heavily and lifts his top, seeing the gash on his side slowly open up and widen. It’s a familiar sight. Somewhere, probably on the other side of the world, Germa is waging war. It looks like the battle is fierce. As Sanji watches, the wound opens up further and further, and there’s an alarming amount of blood. He can feel them. The soldiers. He feels their lives flicker out. Dozens of them. A hundred. Two hundred. Three hundred. Rising.
Sanji stumbles away from the window as if repulsed. There’s nothing he can do to stop the bleeding. It’ll stop only when the bloodshed ends in whatever far-flung country Germa is invading.
Bathroom. He should get to the bathroom. Easier cleanup.
By the time he manages to stumble there, lightheaded and sick, he can barely lock the door behind him. Have his fingers always looked so pale?
The bleeding won’t stop. The blood slips through his fingers, sticky and warm, without remorse. He puts a hand on the sink, slips, falls. There’s the walls. There’s the ceiling. He can’t breathe. And the thought comes to him.
At what point is Germa no longer a country?
This marauding band of warmongerers and their leader who calls himself king. Germa has no children. Few women, servants borrowed from other lands. Its citizens grown instead in vats, clones with no free will and little in the way of personality. Are they even human? Does Germa have culture? Unity? It doesn’t have land. It doesn’t have schools, libraries, restaurants, hotels, shops. There are no weddings. No births. No families, other than the one on the throne. No mourning when a friend dies. There is no living in Germa. There is only working for Germa.
And once that sense of Germa as a thing, a country, a unified spirit, is gone… will Sanji be gone, too?
It’s not Luffy who convinces Sanji to leave the Baratie, although of course he’s a factor. Sanji would not have left for any other captain. But it’s the swordsman that makes something click in his head.
Zoro challenges Dracule Mihawk, the world’s strongest swordsman, to a fight. This green haired teenage pirate hunter from the East Blue, probably from somewhere nobody has heard of, challenging the world’s best. Willing to die for it. And for what? Because it’s his dream? It’s stupid. It’s reckless. It’s going to get this idiot killed. This handsome overgrown houseplant must have chlorophyll for brains, because it’s just so stupid.
“Do you have a death wish?! Just give up! Give up on your dream and live!” Sanji stands on the ruins of the Baratie’s deck and stares. He doesn’t know this man. But he’s irrationally invested, can't look away, as Mihawk strikes Zoro down, parts his flesh diagonally, Sanji’s chest aches in sympathy.
This man, this mortal. He’s so ready to die for his dream.
Sanji is living on a timer. No longer as immortal as he once was, ready to slip away from this life once the last thread of Germa’s nationhood is cut. For now, Sanji is alive. And isn’t that incredible? Isn’t that horrifying?
He wants to find the All Blue. It’s a silly, childish dream. A dream not just for humans but for human children, something Sanji has never been. But he has to find it. He knows it’s real. Something in his still-beating heart and his barely-remembered memories is telling him it’s not just possible, it’s unimaginably real. Unthinkably beautiful, beyond both the concrete human world beneath his feet and the supernatural life that fizzes beneath his skin.
It’s now or never.
Later, he walks the length of the Baratie’s deck for the last time. Zeff has known for some time that there’s something different about Sanji.
Any other child would have died on that rock. Sanji’s body can change, lose weight, use up every available cell of fat and muscle, but it won’t let him starve to death. If he is to die, it is to be with the last gasp of Germa’s nationhood.
Zeff ate his own leg for nothing - and doesn’t that inflate Sanji’s guilt threefold? If he had only been up front to begin with. Or at all. It’s something they have never spoken of out loud, Sanji’s unnatural existence. Sanji should not exist, and Zeff sacrificed everything just to make sure he kept existing anyway. Stupid old man. Sanji owes him everything. Zeff taught him to be human. Zeff taught him everything.
“Oy, Eggplant. Don’t catch cold.”
Zeff knows full well that Sanji cannot get sick.
Sanji looks up at Zeff, standing in front of the place he has called home for so long, and collapses to his knees. His gratitude can’t be expressed with either the language of mortals nor something divine. He has to act beyond words, so he moves until his forehead is pressed into the hard wood of the deck in both gratitude and apology.
“Owner Zeff!” He feels the rough wood of the deck pressed against his skin and his heart beating furiously in his chest, pressing against his skin as if trying to leap out. “Thank you for all the damn things you’ve done for me over all these years! I’ll never forget your kindness… for the rest of my life!”
However long that turns out to be, Sanji will never forget it. Can never forget the first man to show him kindness. Show him that men could be kind. In their own ways. The first, but not the last. The other chefs join in with his tears. He’s both surprised and not surprised to hear that they’ll miss him. Miss him, of all people, a monster among men? And yet it’s not a shock at all, because this is his family.
“I’ll see you again, you damn bastards!” He yells as he leaves. He wishes he could believe it.
Sanji wipes his tears and sits in the boat. He finally gets a closer look at the swordsman. He’s ruggedly handsome, in a homeless chic kind of way. Like he just passed out behind a bar but he’s looking good doing it, and he knows that. Sanji is instantly annoyed. What gave this idiot the right to look so good, even whilst cut open and half dead? That’s dickhead behaviour. Sanji wants to fight him.
“The hell are you looking at, cook?”
Sanji thought Zoro was asleep, but as he’d been staring at the swordsman’s chest, one eye has opened on his stupid handsome face. Sanji scoffs.
“Just assessing whether you’re going to bleed to death before we can get miss Nami back. It would be inconvenient to have to stop to shove you overboard.”
“Hah?” Zoro sits up with only minor difficulties, though the sheen of sweat on his forehead betrays how much he must be hurting. Sanji can sympathise. He’s never gotten a wound that big from Germa’s wars before, but he’s been close. “You wanna go, swirly brow?”
“Swirly-!” Sanji stands, offended. The gall. The impudence. “You might not have much blood left, but if you’ve one thing, it’s audacity!”
“The fuck do you mean? I don’t order any cities.”
Audacity. Sanji gets it now. Zoro must be a good runner, because common sense is chasing him but the mosshead is faster.
Sanji groans. “Idiot.”
“And I could still take you any day.”
Sanji sits back down. “It’s not a fair fight if one of us has been sliced open like sashimi.”
“Only one of us?” Zoro’s gaze finds Sanji’s shirt, near his tie. Sanji looks down to see blood blooming against the blue pinstripe. He groans internally. He likes this shirt. Fuck Judge. Fuck Germa.
Sanji gets out a handkerchief and loosens his tie with a weary grumble. Now that it’s been pointed out to him, he can feel the pain. Most of the time he doesn’t. He’s always in pain.
“Shit. Must’ve missed a wound from the fight with those dickhead Krieg Pirates.”
Zoro’s gaze is more discerning than Sanji would like. Maybe not such an idiot after all. Still, he eventually looks away and out to sea, towards the Conomi Islands where Nami awaits.
“Sure, cook.”
Arlong Park is Sanji’s first experience fighting against someone who actually wants to kill him. That he remembers. Sanji’s memories of his first life are sparse at best.
He knows he was old. Maybe not in appearance, a human would be fooled by his youthful face, but old in all the ways that mattered.
He knows he loved war, and conquering others, and that his ruthlessness was well known in the North Blue and beyond.
He knows he was hated.
He knows he fell from power spectacularly, after a glorious 66 days of being the whole North Blue. That, he remembers, in nightmares and memories that haunt his long nights and flicker unbidden to him in the daytime. Fire, and blood, and a terrible tearing, ripping, serrating pain, the pain of being torn from his land and existing as a mere shell, a ghost, the Germa Empire holding on to nothing but a fleet of ships and a whispered plea that he was still a country, please, could he come to the Reverie and pretend?
Sanji’s memories of that time are remembered as if underwater, like they’re happening to someone else, little comic book strips playing on repeat when he can’t sleep. He doesn’t claim that other Germa as himself. The two of them look different, act different. And these days, Sanji doesn’t claim Germa at all.
As far as anyone is concerned, he’s a normal human who just won against a normal fishman, and it hurt like a bitch. It’s refreshing, he thinks, to have injuries that are not caused by Germa’s far-off wars but by his own personal battles, his own fight to save his crew. To save a village instead of destroying one. His cracked ribs are proof of his free will, his humanity. Sanji loves it. Even if the bruises blossom under the scars of Germa’s battles. Their proof of ownership.
Sanji watches Luffy destroy Nami’s cage, the place she spent her childhood locked away working for Arlong, and he can see Nami’s mental cage opening too. Sanji can’t look away. And he can’t prevent the jealousy burning in his chest. Sanji is shackled to Germa, and always will be.
“Nami!”
Sanji’s breath catches in his throat when he hears Luffy. His voice sends a shiver down Sanji’s spine. His captain. He can’t take his eyes off him.
“You’re my friend!
Nami is crying. Sanji can feel tears in his own eyes, too. Friends. A crew. A planted seed. So much potential, contained in such small human bodies. It takes Sanji’s breath away, this feeling of togetherness.
And then Sanji’s leg starts bleeding from Germa’s far off destruction, and the illusion shatters.
After the fight, Cocoyashi has a well earned celebration. A three day long celebration. Sanji makes himself busy, cooking for the villagers and casually flirting with any pretty woman he sees. He spots Zoro out of the corner of his eye, staring, and extracts himself from the giggling middle aged woman who has grown maybe a little too fond of him. Sanji knows he’s older than he looks, but he doesn’t feel it. And he doesn’t remember those other years, so the 19 years he knows are the only ones that count, right?
He grabs an extra beer and heads over to Zoro, passing him the spare. He sits leaning against a post.
“Are they ever gonna run out of energy?” Sanji takes a sip of his beer and watches the dancing crowd. “It’s been three days!”
“They’re free for the first time in a long time,” Zoro shrugs, and he’s watching Sanji instead of the villagers.
“Free to get drunk and flirt you mean!” Sanji snorts.
At this, Zoro throws his head back and laughs. Sanji’s heart quivers in his chest like a shivering rabbit. He has to look away. Zoro’s laughter is pure gold. Sanji wants to bottle it up and keep it, wants to taste it, wants to roll it around on his tongue like a fine cooking wine. Oh, the dishes he could make with this laughter.
“As if anyone would wanna flirt with you, Curly.”
Sanji scowls and considers throwing his beer at Zoro’s head. Never mind, he’d rather stomp Zoro’s ridiculous laughter into the soil and tap dance on it.
“Like you’re one to talk, you neanderthal! There was a lady talking to you earlier and you barely even acknowledged her, so rude. You wouldn’t know flirting if it kicked you in the head.”
Zoro raises an eyebrow and takes a sip of his beer, peering down at Sanji with a challenging look in his eye that sends a thrill of something through his body. He has the audacity to smirk. “Wouldn’t I?”
Sanji can feel his face start to light up. He has to get out of here before he explodes with warmth and mortification. He gets to his feet as gracefully as he can with the amount of broken ribs shifting under his skin.
“Whatever, mosshead. I need to top up the curry, enjoy photosynthesising by yourself.”
He hurries off, feeling Zoro’s gaze on his back.
Once Nami has finally pulled herself away from the sight of her home village slowly disappearing over the horizon, Sanji is waiting. He hands her the drink he’s been patiently waiting to present to her, made with the tangerines of home.
“Something sweet for someone sweet, darling Nami?” He bows and presents the tray. It’s enough to make her laugh, and that’s what he’d been aiming for. He pretends not to see the tears she subtly wipes away before she accepts the drink.
“Thank you, Sanji. It’s nice to know someone on this crew knows how to treat a girl.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Sanji sees Zoro roll his eyes.
“Of course. And may I say, it’s wonderful to have a woman on the crew. These other idiots wouldn’t know personal hygiene if it slapped them in the face. Or manners.”
If Zoro rolls his eyes any more, they’ll fall right out of his head. Sanji ignores him and leans against the railing next to Nami.
“I know it’s hard. Leaving your home.”
Of all of them, it sounds like he and Nami have the most to leave behind. Usopp has Kaya, but Nami has a whole village who loves her. Sanji has a whole restaurant who - inexplicably - loves him. Luffy doesn’t talk about the past, only of the future and adventure and dreams. And Zoro? Sanji’s convinced Luffy dug him out of a field of weeds in some backend nowhere island. A field where weeds are particularly stubborn and particularly handsome and-
“Yeah,” Nami sips her drink and glances to where Cocoyashi has already disappeared behind them. Then she looks in the opposite direction, to the sheep figurehead where Luffy is sitting, and smiles. “But we didn’t.”
Sanji tilts his head, considers Luffy with a discerning look. It’s true that this is home now. But whilst Nami and Usopp and Zoro and Luffy can carry their first homes with them and make a new home here on the Merry, the same doesn’t feel true for him. No matter what, he’s tied to Germa. His unwilling home. The anchor pulling him down. A ball and chain to drag with him, as he desperately tries to create home and family out of nothing. Like he's scrambling in the dust, dirt under his nails, trying to dig up a new place to belong.
“Right…” Sanji echoes, and it feels like an empty sentiment. “We didn’t.”
Sanji manages to avoid meeting another like him for one whole island. That is to say, Cocoyashi was too small, and Loguetown… isn’t.
He should have known. Big adventures mean big islands and big islands often mean big populations, enough people and culture and nationhood and spirit to manifest… someone like him.
Sanji no longer remembers what it means to be a nation. He knows about the bad parts, the day-to-day struggle, the cuts and bruises that appear on his skin. Most nations get these injuries once a century, maybe every decade if they’ve got violent neighbours. Or never, for the peaceful islands in the East Blue. Sanji has a new one every day. Germa is never not at war. Neither is Sanji’s body.
So Sanji doesn’t recognise the heavy feeling creeping up on him from behind. Foreboding, like gravity pressing on his back. He’s heading to the execution platform with Zoro, desperate to save their captain, and the pressure hits him like an anchor. He stumbles, breathless, and Zoro spares him a glance.
“Can’t handle a little running, cook?” Zoro teases. Infuriating. Sanji doesn’t rise to the bait this time, instead turning his head to scan the crowd until his eyes land on a short, older man, maybe in his 40s - but with eyes much older. He has a rough appearance, somewhere between pirate and marine, but a shrewd look about him like he knows trade - knows business. His hair is dark and scraggly, and for a moment Sanji is reminded of Gold Roger’s wanted poster.
The man is looking right at him, and Sanji knows immediately. This is no man. This is a nation. This must be Polestar Islands. Whatever conversation Polestar wants to have with Sanji, Sanji doesn’t want to have it with him. He gets it. Another nation, uninvited and unexpected, stepping foot on your land. It might be a precursor to invasion. Sanji doesn't remember the cultural ins and outs of the people like him. For all he knows, this is an act of war. That’s not what Sanji wants. Sanji is just Sanji, and he needs to get his captain and get the fuck out of here.
Thankfully Polestar seems to lose him in the following confusion of fighting Buggy’s pirates, the storm, Luffy’s impending death, the lightning, the marine captain, and all the other shit Loguetown throws at them. Polestar does not want him here, and Sanji can’t help but wonder if everything going to shit at Loguetown has anything to do with Polestar feeling threatened by his presence. Is Sanji a danger to the crew? A liability?
“The hell’s wrong with you?” Zoro interrupts Sanji’s thoughts. They’re on the ship, sailing blissfully away from danger. Sanji gets out a cigarette, despite the pouring rain. It gives his hands something to do other than clenching in his hair. Zoro is leaning against the railing nearby.
“The hell you mean, shitty mosshead?”
“You were distracted. Who was that guy? He was chasing you.”
“Dunno,” Sanji gazes coolly at Zoro and attempts pathetically to light his cigarette. “Maybe someone whose ass I’ve kicked at the Baratie. What’s with the interrogation?”
Zoro’s eyes narrow. He has one hand on the handle of his white sword. “Don’t bring trouble onto this crew, dartbrow. Luffy does that enough for all of us.”
“I’m not,” Sanji gives up on lighting his cigarette. Luffy’s talking about doing a cast off, so he’s got to fetch a barrel. He tries to move past Zoro, but Zoro grabs his arm and leans in, too close.
“I mean it. I have my eye on you, cook.”
Sanji’s eyes flick down to Zoro’s lips and then back up to his eyes.
“...Enjoy watching my foot as it comes towards your face then, asshole.”
He walks off towards the other side of the ship. He feels Zoro watching him, and sets his back straighter, despite the blood he can feel trickle down his spine.