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Sanji knew something awful had been done to him the moment he woke up feeling like his head was filled with cement.
He could barely lift it off his pillow, mouth dry and eyelids crusted together. At first everything hurt, a full bodied ache all the way down to his toes, but the longer he spent awake, the more he realized it was centralized to his torso.
At his bedside sat his sister, wearing a blandly pleasant smile as usual. But he could tell from the way it wavered when he let out a soft groan that she was almost as unhappy as he was.
"Hurts." He mumbled, mostly to himself. Sitting up was its own separate ordeal, one that nearly took him out of commission again. Sanji wasn't wearing what he-
Oh. He didn't actually remember going to bed. Or what he was doing the night before, or whether he had on the stupid uncomfortable noble garb Judge demanded he wear. Right now he didn't.
Chest wrapped in thick bandages, Sanji brushed his fingertips over the gauze to feel out exactly where the injury was. He already knew, he wasn't an idiot, but maybe he hoped that they wouldn't be so needlessly cruel.
"How could you let them do this again?" He whispered hoarsely, not expecting an answer.
The scars had long since healed from the first surgery many years ago, when he was still too young to realize that what they were doing to him and his siblings was wrong.
Sanji couldn't escape it, it was on his body at all times. The proof of what they'd done. Thick, unmistakable keloid tissue, purple and white and hideous. Marking him as what he was; an experiment.
But he'd gotten used to it over time, even sharing its existence with his friends, back when the world made sense and he still had time to spare. Sanji was learning to move past it. He was more than the crimes committed against his body.
And yet now, knowing he'd once more been split open, flayed on a table for surgeons to shamelessly handle his organs, all Sanji wanted to do was die.
"I had no choice." Reiju said, a slight waver to her tone. "The doctors don't answer to me."
He didn't want to hear that. What Sanji wanted to hear was that she tried, or that someone stood up for him, even just a nurse or a servant. He didn't want to know that they encountered no struggle in the kidnapping and violation of his body.
Sanji laid back down, facing away from his sister, and bit his fist to keep everything from spilling out. But his shoulders shook as he started to cry, and Reiju was kind enough to not speak again.
"You're still hiding something."
Sanji looked up from the zucchini he was slicing into neat coins, finding Nami's expression both suspicious and guilty, as though it hurt her to mention this at all. "Sorry? I'm not sure what you-"
"Cut that out." She ordered, sitting down roughly on the stool across from where he worked. "You've been hiding away in the kitchen all day and sneaking around at night."
He swallowed the denial that came bubbling up, acidic on its way back down. Setting down the knife, Sanji cleared his throat and reached for a hand towel. His smile felt outlandishly fake on his face. "Want a drink?"
"What I want is for you to be honest with me." Nami said, eyes trained on him as he pulled out two glasses and a bottle of something far stronger than an appropriate midday drink.
His hand shook as he poured two fingers of patron in one, glass clinking against glass. Being back on the Sunny still felt like a wonderful dream, one he'd surely wake from soon enough.
Wrists bare, clothes comfortable once more, friends at his side. Everything he wanted so very badly, and knew he did not deserve.
In the other glass, he layered grenadine, orange juice, and the patron, topping it off with a maraschino cherry. He slid the prepared drink over to Nami after dropping a short yellow straw in.
She didn't take a sip, but nor did she push it away. A win, in his eyes. "Sanji, won't you just tell me what's wrong?"
"No need to waste your concern, my sweet. I'm not quite healed up yet, that's all." Sanji gave a shaky smile, but it crumbled quickly.
Was it so wrong to keep this to himself? Would it be too much to share it? What if she thought he was trying to guilt trip her? What if she thought he agreed to it, that he gave his consent to be opened again?
The hurt in her expression hit him as solid as a gut punch. Nami was sharp witted, she wouldn't be so easily brushed off. That he'd even try was an insult to her intelligence.
"I know, I'm sorry. You don't have to say anything." He said, scrubbing at his face. Then he tapped his glass against the island counter and downed it all in one go.
It burned the whole way down, hot and heavy as it coated his esophagus. A short cough forced its way up, but he muffled it behind clenched teeth.
"It's not- I'm not endangering the crew again."
"Yeah, I'm sure that's what you thought when you left, too."
Sanji flinched, clutching the glass in a white knuckled grip. He heard a soft clink and opened his hand to find cracks spiderwebbing out from the parts his fingers covered. "Shit. Uh, sorry, just give me a second."
Cupping it in both hands, Sanji quickly threw the ruined glass away before returning to the island. The look Nami gave him was one of hesitance, as though she didn't know how to proceed.
Did she think he might hurt her? That he broke the glass out of anger?
"I'm sorry." Sanji apologized again, uselessly. What else could he say? "Have I been making too much noise at night? I'll be quieter, the injuries just make me restless."
"Make noise." She said aggressively, making him jump. Nami leaned in, hands folded tight together and eyes narrow, jaw set like she was prepared for a fight. "Make so much noise I never wake up wondering if you're still here, understand?"
He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. So Sanji shut it and stood there staring at the fire in her gaze, marveling at how sincere her anger was. She wanted him to be louder?
"Sanji, I'm asking- No, I'm telling you to start taking up space in our lives again." Nami said, reaching across the counter with an open hand. "I don't want to turn around and find a drink waiting, I want you to bring it to me. I don't wanna eat dinner without you at the table. I want you to ask about my day so I have an excuse to talk to you again."
His chest hurt like it'd been caved in. Sanji understood that this sort of thing wasn't easy for her, she didn't like grand speeches or emotional talks.
In a way, she was like Zoro, though he felt awful comparing her to a man even in the safety of his own mind. Nami preferred the intimacy of actions over words, because she was so used to lies.
How dare he know this, and still lie to her face? Forcing her to say the things she'd rather not speak about so plainly? Sanji felt sick with shame.
"Can't you just tell me what's wrong?" Nami asked once more, squeezing her still empty hand shut when she realized he wasn't going to take it. "How bad are these injuries? Should I get Chopper?"
"He already knows."
Sanji took a deep breath, trying to come to terms with the fact that he couldn't just stay silent. He knew the moment it happened that he was going to suffer from someone else's choice for years, just as he had the first time. But he thought that if he pretended that nothing ever happened, and nothing ever changed, maybe he'd start to believe it himself.
He still couldn't bathe without covering the mirrors and turning off the lights.
"Do you remember that talk we had back at Skypiea? After I got struck by Enel." He started putting away the ingredients for their drinks, hoping Nami would touch hers soon. "I was all messed up from the lightning, and you helped Chopper with my bandages. He wouldn't tell you what caused my scar, said you had to ask me yourself."
"Yeah, I remember." Voice softer now, Nami retreated back to her side of the island. She looked exhausted, worn down by all the things they've gone through. Sanji was sorry that he added to that list.
Touching the front of his shirt, Sanji tried to figure out the best way to say it without just dumping such a heavy secret on her shoulders. He didn't want her to think he was trying to guilt her into feeling sorry for him.
"The doctors, they um," He laughed nervously, the taste of bile thick on his tongue. "Well, they wanted to see if anything had changed, I guess. On the inside."
When he stopped talking, Nami didn't immediately respond. She stared at her hands wrapped around her drink, brows furrowed like she couldn't quite process what he was trying to say.
"They cut you open again." It wasn't a question, but she didn't sound sure of herself either. More like she was testing a theory.
Sanji nodded, throat tight with all the things he couldn't force himself to tell her. Like how he didn't want it, or how they hadn't asked. How he woke up one morning and the deed was done, without so much as a warning.
How his sister knew it was going to happen, and didn't tell him. But she sat by his unconscious body until the sedation wore off, and brought him soup that tasted utterly bland, and helped him change the bandages so he wouldn't have to look at the wound.
Nami stood so abruptly that she nearly knocked her glass off the counter. He startled reflexively at the noise, freezing in place.
"Sanji," She said with a thick tone, standing right next to him but not touching. "Can I have a hug?"
Not can I hug you, or do you want a hug, but a plead for comfort. Something he could wholeheartedly give without an ounce of guilt.
He opened his arms and let Nami fit herself between them comfortably, waiting until she settled before wrapping them around her. She was so warm, and smelled of sweet tangerines.
After a moment or two of silence, Sanji's easy smile began to falter. He squeezed just a hair tighter, and found Nami returning the force of it tenfold. Holding him like she didn't want to let go, gently swaying side to side.
"It's okay that you don't wanna talk about it." She whispered, face tucked into the crook of his neck. "But you can't think that we'll think less of you, or that we don't want to help."
His breath hitched, and Sanji immediately moved to stifle it with his hand. Except Nami was holding him so tightly, and she made a noise of displeasure when he started to let go.
"It's unpleasant. I don't want to make anyone uncomfortable or gross them out." He tried to explain, but she disagreed.
"Your body isn't gross just because of what they did to you. It's still yours, still you. And we all love you."
Sanji wasn't ready to hear that. He hadn't prepared himself, didn't know how to protect his heart from what he so desperately wanted to be told but couldn't believe.
Not gross? Those bastard doctors cut him open like he was already dead, they touched his organs, ran their gloved hands over his muscles and tissue. They made him into something disgusting. Something unnatural, inhuman.
They didn't put him back together right, he just knew it. Because if they had, he would've been able to handle Nami's concern like before, instead of feeling as if the world was crashing down around him.
"How can you say that when you've seen it?" His scar, the long, unavoidable proof that ran up his stomach, around his navel, and split into a V going up his chest.
Vivisection, Reiju once told him, her own scar older than that of her brothers. Meant for autopsying a corpse, for taking out all the gristle and viscera that wouldn't be necessary for a burial. He and his siblings were nothing more than meat, experiments to be handled as such.
"Because all I saw was you."
Sanji grimaced, thinking that must be the worst thing to see, but Nami didn't sound like she regretted taking a look. She sounded protective, and upset, and a little teary.
"I won't stop you if you want to keep it hidden, but don't assume that I want you to as well. Or any of the crew, for that matter." Nami said definitively, leaving no room for argument. "You're our Sanji, scars and all."
He gave a wet laugh, hearing a bit of Luffy in her words, and trying his hardest to internalize the message. It didn't stop the tears that started dampening her hair, though, or the slight hitch of his chest as he tried not to sob.
"Missed you guys." He mumbled, cheek pressed to the crown of her head. "The whole time, I just wanted to-"
When he couldn't finish that thought, Nami did it for him. "Welcome home."