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It was fear, cold and sick, that struck first. Sanji had been sleeping, or trying to. Had been riding waves of thoughts he'd tried to temper with plans for breakfast, then lunch, then dinner, repeating. Plans that always lead to one place. To rationing, to dwindling, to nothing. He was hungry, like he always was, but laying in bed for so long only brought the feeling to the forefront. He needed to smoke. He needed to check the pantry.
Ten minutes later found Sanji doing both. He'd burned the stick down to nothing on the deck, nodding vaguely to the crow's nest and hoping nobody would come down. He hadn't taken his time, breathing too quickly and not deep enough. He put the stub out on the railing and let it fall into the sea. He couldn't smell the salt nor the smoke. He began to feel small.
The pantry was dark, he hadn't turned on any lights. He didn't need to, knew where everything was by feel alone. He ran his hands over bags of rice and flour, over salt and cans. His mental inventory looped and looped. Here, hunched in the darkness, Sanji began to get lost. The inventory stuttered, he lost track of his counting. His hands were clumsier than they should be, his memory muddled. At once, he stopped being certain of where he was. His hands left metal, the memory of something desperate, and found their home fisted in his hair.
Sanji curled up, as tightly as he could. Kept his knees locked up around his ribs, his hands around his head. If he began to cry, that wasn't anything new.
---
Robin had come to enjoy the second watch. It was comforting, now, to spread her vision out over the ship, to form a gentle ear and capture the soft sound of sleep. It was a reminder, as many things were, that she wasn't alone any longer. There was no fight to stay alert, no constant thrumming fear. The Thousand Sunny's crow's nest was warm, and she had eyes enough for her reading and the watch, both. She considered, idly, the many dangers that could come to pass for pirates sailing the Grand Line. The thought brought a smile to her face, if simply for the fact that she'd imagined each danger with the whole crew at her side.
A portion of her peripheral vision called her attention to movement on deck. She focused, and spotted the familiar figure of the cook emerging from the men's bunkroom, the gentle flick of light and the resulting brush of rising smoke. An odd hour, but a semi-standard sight. She left his still figure where it stood, and returned to her reading.
And here I have, to be sure, experienced states (not many) which in my opinion correspond very closely to the clairvoyant states described by you, Herr Doktor, in which I completely dwelt in every idea, but also filled every idea, and in which I not only felt myself at my boundary, but at the boundary of the human in general.
In the mood for pondering the wide and varied states of the human mind, Robin began to idly scratch a note in her accompanying journal. As she penned, her hand continued to move as her sight focused elsewhere. On Sanji's figure, moving across the deck. Returning, not to the bunkroom, but home to the galley. The space that was more his own than any other on the ship. She wondered, perhaps, if he had seen her through the nest windows and gone to fashion her something to drink. It would not be the first time. She kept her eye on the door and waited, ten minutes, than twenty. The cook did not re-emerge.
Leaving a ring of eyes in the crow's nest, Robin opened the hatch door and descended the ladder, many hands keeping her tethered to the sturdy rope. She would not mind a cup of coffee, something to focus her through the last few hours before dawn. And if she managed to dig up some insight about what had brought Sanji here at this hour, she would not turn it down.
Sanji was not in the immediate kitchen. Robin did not quite frown, but stood still for a moment, taking in the dark and quiet space. A hand by the wall reached over to turn on the light, letting Franky's masterful wiring fill the space with warmth. She left the harsher kitchen lights as they were, and moved forward. Not a thing out of place, the first door she opened was to the pantry.
Light spilled into the dark, carving a rectangle into the floor between the meticulously organized shelves. Her silhouette broke a shadow into it, but it was not enough to hide the shape curled in the corner. Half-dressed, yesterday's button-up shirt and a pair of pajama pants, face hidden by a pair of tense clutching arms, long limbs all curled into himself, Sanji was pressed to the back wall.
"Sanji-san?" Robin voiced, uncertainty and worry finding no purchase in her tone, despite the way the feelings nipped at her.
Sanji did not respond, but his breathing audibly hitched, and additional tension spiked through his frame.
"I'd like to turn on the light." She said, pausing for long enough to give him time to protest it, should he be suffering a migraine or related affliction. His eyes were hidden, after all. He did no such thing, and Robin gently brought the lights up, keeping their intensity dim.
There was no additional wince or flinch, so Robin began to move forward, crouching carefully to her knees as she drew closer to him. The floor was hard, it couldn't be comfortable.
"Are you alright?" She asked, already anticipating the response. Sanji, while usually unable to truly hide his feelings, would deflect and avoid to his dying breath, without once admitting he was dying. He would smile too readily, would compliment her kindness and push himself to move, already offering to do something for her, as if to apologize for witnessing him, even briefly.
That is not what happened. Here, in the gentle light of the pantry, Sanji lifted his head from his arms and revealed his face. Light reflected in the wet streaks down his cheeks, raw and ruddy. His eyes met hers, and they were wide, so wide. And he shook his head, teeth biting grooves into his lips.
Her heart broke. He looked so young, all of a sudden. He was young, she knew, all the more evident from how he tried to hide it each day. How he drew himself up behind smoke and suit, how he swore and stomped. His job was one that did not offer much room for rest, and Sanji had taken the mantle on like he wasn't sure who he could be without it. He worked near-constantly, almost desperately. And most of the time, he managed to make it look like he wasn't running.
Ready to be refused, Robin opened her arms. "Would you like a hug?" She asked.
Sanji knew her, even like this. The look in his wide eyes was naked relief. A look she could have mirrored, Clover finding her breathless and scraped, leaning forward into Saul's hands, seeing Luffy smile as he promised to bring her home.
He nodded, more tears escaping his eyes to splash down onto his sleeves. He didn't loosen his grip on himself, but he leaned forward, just enough that Robin could catch him, could surround him in her arms and hold on. He pressed his face into her shoulder and shuddered, a hitching cry escaping him, near-breathless.
She held him for a long time, until he had unspooled just slightly, his grey eyes deep and dark as the sea, his face scrubbed red by salt.
"What's wrong?" She tried, forming a new hand to brush hair from his face. He leaned hard into the touch, sniffling.
To her near-surprise, he spoke. His voice was quiet, barely a whisper, living high in his throat. He said one word, so soft she barely heard it. "...Hungry."
She couldn't help but smile. "You are in the right place for that, then," She gathered arms around him and drew him close to her. Sanji had always been light, and with enough arms, Robin could pick him up with ease. She bundled him into her grip and began to move, feeling him shove his face into where her hair spilled over her shoulder.
It was a gift, after all, to get the chance to give back. To carry Sanji's own tenet forward. It was with a smile that Robin spoke her promise. "Let me get you something to eat."