[fic] native son (pt. 2)
Title: native son
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Sanji; everyone
Word Count: ~18,700 (yikes)
Summary: The working title for this fic was “Torrential Vomit of Sanji Headcanon,” alternately “Sanji’s Got Issues.” Both still apply. Set some time between Thriller Bark and Sabaody.
Notes at the very end.
<<
She’s back. She’s back after what must have been a lifetime, long and cold, and he is so glad for the company again that he almost crumples into himself.
“Sanji.” Her white hands are half-hidden by her sleeves, and she blinks at him in the weak and flickering lantern light. “I ran into your friend on the way here. The one with the long nose. He was-upset. I had not thought…” She frowns at him, and he blinks at her. “Sanji,” she says again. “There isn’t any other way.”
The way she says it is more of a plea than a statement. He understands. His voice, when he answers her, is gravel-rough. “You know, there are these stories from East Blue,” he says, and he breathes in expecting the comforting spike of nicotine in his blood, but instead there is only iced-over oxygen, and he coughs violently. “An old woman once told me,” he starts again, through teeth clenched tight to keep from chattering, “a story about her little brother. How, when he was very young, he used to be very sick.”
“And?” He hears so much desperation in the drop of that one word that he can’t help but feel as if his heart will tumble out of his chest to bleed and beat next to hers.
“And so they changed his name so that the angel of death could not find him and take him away in the night. He got better afterwards.”
He has only these stories, small faraway miracles, to offer her in way of comfort, and he already knows that it’s not what she’s looking for. The look on her face has not changed from one of resolute regret, and he gives her a smile that he hopes is reassuring.
He tries again, though he knows his words to her are as empty as his hands. “I once met a man from the far corner of East Blue whose name was Stone.” His grin is a veneer smoothed thin over the hard, weary line of his jaw. “Fucking terrible name, I thought. But do you know why he was named that?”
“No,” she whispers, and the only way he can be sure that she had spoken at all is the gentle exhalation of her breath visible in the night air.
“So that greedy spirits wouldn’t snatch him up. He said that picking up a kid named Stone would be like picking up any old rock from the side of the road. Apparently, spirits would rather go after kids with shinier names like Ruby or Pearl, or whatever, so his parents gave him the most common name they could think of.” Here, he tries to laugh, but his lungs are too stiff and already it is difficult to breathe. “Get it?” he rasps, a last-ditch attempt that catches in his throat and inexplicably makes him want to sob. He fights it down bravely and says, “I think maybe Dirt might have been even more effective, though. Dirt would have fit him well.”
“You know those are not our customs, Sanji,” she responds, slowly, and a little bit sad. “Our people do not believe stories like that.”
You mean your people, he feels the need to point out, and they may not just be stories, like you believe your stories aren’t just stories, like All Blue is not just a story,, but it doesn’t matter. The ring of stones casts dark shadows, and the prince has already been dead for centuries, and his name has always been the same.
She hesitates, but then she moves forward, into the ring, until she is sitting on the cold ground in front of him, her legs neatly folded beneath her. The lantern she carries almost blinds him.
“Our story is an old one. Do you want to hear it?”
“Yes,” he coughs, and he does.
She takes a moment to think before asking, ”How old is the oldest person you know?”
He thinks immediately of Chopper’s guardian back on Drum, and he tries unsuccessfully to suppress a shudder. “I don’t know, hundred thirty, give or take a few decades, maybe?”
“Decades-that means ten years in the common tongue, yes?”
He nods.
“Lord Grimnir is older,” she says. “Much older.”
“How much is much?”
“He is almost five hundred years old.”
If he could right now, he would whistle, impressed. As it were, he can only nod.
She seems more relaxed than he had ever seen her. “The original settlers, my ancestors, were from a small kingdom in North Blue. Lord Grimnir was king there, before he came here on a ship, one of many, more than four hundred years ago. He came with the prince, but the prince was already dead, even then. It seems-it seems like he has only ever been dead, does it not? We never hear about his life. But he must have been alive, once. I think, perhaps, it is still too painful for Lord Grimnir to speak of it.” She looks at him expectantly, and he can only nod again.
She continues. “There is another custom we have, another funeral rite. You know it, maybe. Where you place the dead on a ship, and you burn it.”
He remembers Merry, bright flames and an ache in his chest, and he says, “Yes.”
“They could not do it. They put the prince on a ship, and then they sailed out to sea with him, Lord Grimnir and a host of his men and women, on more ships than the prince had years. They wanted to go with him, follow him through death. And they wanted to bring him back.
“They had heard from a neighboring kingdom of a legendary city of gold. And that in that city was an ancient stone with words engraved upon it. Powerful words that might have the power to bring back the dead. They believed that. So they left to search for it, and the queen and their people bid them farewell from their shores. But they could not find it. They searched and searched, all those men and women on those ships with the prince, all those centuries ago, but they could not find the city of gold or that ancient stone. Do you think it ever existed?”
“I couldn’t know,” he lies through his teeth, feeling like he needs to. She doesn’t have to know how they’ve sailed through the sky, met god in that city of gold and found even him lacking. She doesn’t have to know what was really engraved on the Poneglyph in the golden belfry of Shandora-something remarkable, yes, but not what she is looking for, not what she wants to believe. So he says, “It’s possible. Maybe it’s out there.”
“Maybe,” she repeats, pondering. “But the World Current swept them on, through a terrible storm. They landed here, after many, many days. On this island. They called it Walhal. Do you know the name? It’s an old word in our religion. It is the name of the place where heroes go after death. It was fitting. They thought they might find him here.”
She shifts, staring unblinkingly into the lantern, pupils constricted to pinpricks, the blue of her eyes expansive. “But they did not, and the prince, after so long, his body… still, they could not let him go. They could not bear to let him go, so they brought him onto land, on his ship. Through the forests, all the way here, where we are now. And then they dug and dug and buried him, in his ship. To keep him close to them. Do you understand?”
He does, so completely that it scares him. He swallows thickly, casts his eyes down. She doesn’t notice.
“There is another story from home, a prophecy almost, as old as the name Walhal. If you mourn for someone, if you mourn for someone wholly and sincerely, and if everyone mourns, cries his name, then he will come back to you. We have mourned him for more than four hundred years. It has become a purpose we inherit when we are born, it is the reason we are here. We have taken care to preserve everything the way he knows it. We have kept our language, his language, so that we can speak to him when he returns, so he will know how much we missed him, how beloved he still is. And when he returns, he will need new bones to replace the ones that have rotted away. Yours, Sanji.”
She is quiet now, eyes watching him intently. He has nothing to say, and she stands and steps back, turning her head to hide her face behind the sleek curtain of her hair. “It’s a little desperate, is it not?” she admits. “It is all we have left. It is all we have known, here on our island. We have to believe it. Do you?”
“I understand,” he says truthfully, breaths shallow and voice cracking traitorously, traitorously. “I’ll believe in anything. You should too. It’s easier that way.”
She leaves him again.
He brings his fingertips to the pulse in his wrist.
+++
There are other stories too, all of them extraordinary. He collects them like other people collect truths about themselves; he remembers every one he’s ever heard, folds them into his core.
Listen.
In a village named for the moon, there are flowers and birdsong for a beloved daughter, a cherished rival, and here, a snow-white sword is imbued with the spirit of a dead girl who crosses over on the bridge of a promise, on the shoulders of a man who will carry her to the top of the world.
In two sleepy little hamlets with names as sweet as their children are two graves for two mothers, and before both of them there is a child saying goodbye, I am going now, I am trying to be brave, I am happier than I've been in years, is that strange, to find courage again, to be happy again even after you've gone, will you forgive me, will you watch over me still? I’m leaving to travel with monsters, with the best friends I’ll ever know, with a boy who will be king. You’ll be proud of me, I know.
On an island of winter and ice so much like this one, there stands an empty castle and hoisted flag, skull and crossbones so proud, a banner for all the outcasts who ever dreamt of cherry blossoms in the snow. A castle for your memory, for you to haunt, Doctor, so come in from the cold.
And scorched earth where once there grew a tree that held all the knowledge in the world, a home destroyed by a justice that calls itself absolute, and the lone survivor a child who was never allowed to be one, who had to learn how to laugh, and who will keep alive all of history’s secrets. But you too are promised your place one day, with people who love you as desperately as you love them. You deserve it.
From a city of canals, a train rides the waves, tracks laid on the water because that’s what one does, isn’t it, conquer the impossible, show the world it can be done, with a don! And when that train carries away the most important person in the world to you to die on a foreign shore, far away, you’ll lose a father and your name, but you’ll understand, one day, what he believed you could do, the potential like oil on water, aflame.
And amid banished fears and shadows stolen and found, a crew is finally laid to rest after decades lost at sea, buried in the soil of your native West Blue so that you can be at peace, with home so close to your bones, the strains of a familiar song sending you off, and don’t worry, you can trust me to keep that promise we made so long ago, he won’t have waited in vain.
And there’s more. There is a princess ready to give her life for her country, her kingdom of dry earth and sand and her people who refuse to bow to anyone but her, not to thirst or desert storms or an invading evil seeking only war. And in the sky above the clouds, under the yoke of a false god and his minions, what’s sacred is not the sun or the blue sea, but handfuls of smuggled earth, green life.
Maybe it's not so bad, becoming a part of all that, letting earth inside him, deep under his skin. Maybe he needs that. Maybe he can make this story his, his own tale of land to anchor a piece of his soul that has been afloat at sea for so long. Maybe it’ll be okay. Maybe they’ll carry him with them too.
He understands these stories, breathes their significance, holds them close to his own heart, but he’s still terrified. In the end, they do not come from him, they are not his, and he doesn’t belong here. He doesn’t belong here. Where will he go, afterwards? Will he have to wait again, what’s left of him after he relinquishes his bones, watching the horizon, fingertips to a pulse he won’t even have anymore, battling a hunger that is soul-deep.
He doesn’t belong here. Everything is too heavy and too still.
+++
“You’re not supposed to cry, Franky.”
“I’m not crying! Even though it’s super sad. Have you no hearts?! Ow, are all of you made of stone?!”
“Ah, just let him cry.”
“I said I’m not-sniff-I’m not crying!”
“Jeez, what part of ‘refusing to mourn’ and ‘overthrowing the prophecy’ did you not understand?”
“But-”
“Y-Yeah! We have to be strong! Stoic! Like men! For Sanji! We can’t let this happen!”
“I-”
“What’s sadder, losing a nakama or a dead guy staying dead?”
“I-I-”
“Sit down, Franky. Have some cola.”
“T-Thanks, Robin.”
“You’re welcome. Don’t be sad anymore, okay?”
+++
His breath is coming in short, convulsive gasps, frantic puffs of white mist in the air, but he feels incongruously calm, serene; he’s delirious, he realizes that, but he also knows what he has to do, and he’s suddenly more certain of it than of his own flickering existence.
The stones are taller than he is, and much, much older, like ice beneath his hands; it doesn’t make him feel sick to touch them anymore, to feel death and earth so close, and a ringing loneliness. Perhaps he is too numb. In the center of the ring, he kneels, presses his hands to the cold, hard soil, and he ignores how his lungs spasm with each stuttering inhale-exhale.
Tries to focus, tries to reach. Blue-inked fingertips digging into the frozen ground, a familiar touch embedded in his palm. Underneath him, he knows there is another pair of hands reaching up, stripped of flesh and skin, brittle bone, he can almost see them now, their palms placed parallel. They are not a child’s hands this time, they are bigger, like his own now-and a pale, gaunt face, there, in the earthen darkness below, impossible but there all the same. He forgets his horror, the deep and personal revulsion that had been so strong before. Now he believes only in the symmetry of their bodies, the line of convergence between them, taste of old faith bitter on his tongue.
“Come,” he whispers, curving his spine, bowing until his forehead brushes the earth. The runes on his skin seem to glow, even though the moon in the sky is new. Here is her touch, and here are my bones, come claim them for your own. “Our lady is waiting.”
It’s an old, wooden longship, with a figurehead of a serpentine sea monster, open mouth showing a wicked, forked tongue. It’s intricately carved and very fearsome indeed, but he finds he still prefers Sunny’s pseudo-lion’s mane and snout. The longship is nestled in the roots of a tree so massive that he cannot see the sky past the umbrella of its branches. There is the faint sound of running water, the whisper of leaves far above. It’s bright here, but beyond the sphere occupied by the tree is a formless, shifting blackness.
But there sitting in the longship with him, amid roots so large they might as well be the bodies of seakings, is the prince, who is smiling at him. He looks young. They both do. On his face and hands, and peeking out from under his high collar, are the same runes that are painted are Sanji’s skin.
hello sanji
“Hey there.”
you shouldn’t be here
“Well, actually I’m here to bring you back. You know that.”
you don’t have to
“But she’ll be sad if I don’t. And I’d hate to make a lady sad.”
your friends will be sad if you do
He doesn’t have an answer for that, so instead he says, “You know, I thought we’d look more alike, but we really don’t.”
no that eyebrow of yours is truly and thankfully unique to you
“Oho. For a dead guy, you have quite the sense of humor.”
I’m not dead
“Sure,” he says, like that made any sense at all. “But look. Here’s a body for you, see. It’s not the one you’re used to, but it’ll do, right? Everything’s in working order, last time I checked. Blood type matches. That’s important, I hear. You can have it. You can be alive again, or not not-dead, whatever, if you come with me.”
no
Exasperation. “Come on. Why not?”
I don’t want that and neither do you
“Let me get this straight. I’m giving you the chance to be alive again, to live and dream and go to sea and chase girls and eat amazing food and do all the things that living folks do, things you never got to do, and you’re saying no?”
I am saying no
“Really?”
really
“Okay. Okay, but-why not?”
what will happen to you and to your friends who want you back
“That’s-not the issue here.” He runs a hand through his hair. “This is a promise. I promised. You’re supposed to keep your promises. Always.”
and you promised never to be selfish again
He presses his lips into a grim line. “Yes.”
I lived a long long time ago and now I don’t anymore and that is not going to change
“But can it change? Can I bring you back?”
but I’m not dead
“All right, so what are you?”
myth I suppose
“Myth.”
yes or something like it
but listen sanji
a hand to his hand, palms placed parallel, gentle pressure but no yield
you are not me
and that’s all right
you don’t have to be anyone but yourself
you’ll believe in anything
so will you believe that
He hesitates, looks down at himself and finds that he is already fading, alarmingly fast. He expects the runes to be glowing, especially in this light, with skin against skin, but they are only dull ink, almost black. Something’s gone wrong. This isn’t how things are supposed to go. “But they miss you,” he tries.
I haven’t left them
“Can you leave, if you want to?” he asks quickly, urgently.
when they forget me
“But do you want to leave? Are you happy now? Here? Are you trapped?”
you are kind to ask
“Are you?” he demands. “Being just here and nowhere else. Are you happy?”
it’s a home
And if he tries, really tries, he thinks he might understand that, this concept of home, a place to rest your bones, a place you can come back to stay, immovable and constant and always yours. There is not much of him left anymore on this plane where he does not belong, amid the black roots of a giant ash tree, in a ship with no pirate’s flag, and he feels wispy and grey and sad, but it’s-“It’s warm here, isn’t it?”
a soft, distant smile, ghost-touch of fingertips, and a final
yes.
She had taken one look at him, his eyes, his open hand, and she had turned and left.
Everything is off-center. His mouth is empty and gasping, his lungs are empty, and his heart, he cannot even begin to understand, the weight of it in his chest, how he could possibly bear this inside of him, carry it for the rest of his life, this heart that is ultimately his. He gets up and stumbles out of the ring of stones, imagines himself tripping over black roots that aren’t there.
Alive, yes. Cold, yes. Alone. Yes.
It feels like an eternity before he can register his surroundings again. It’s dark here, and dreary and cold. The tree at his back and the ground beneath him are solid in a way he cannot fathom. The crash of the sea is more imagined than real, but he can hear waves break against his eardrums, and it is loud, loud, loud.
Breathe.
In his pack, he knows there is a crumpled carton of cigarettes, the last of what he brought with him. He needs to smoke now, or else he will really, actually die; he will evaporate, let me become mist so that I can follow you where you go, please, please-
He inhales sharply through his teeth, again, again. He misses them, he misses them so much, and are they already gone? There is only a heavy feeling in his chest to take their place, and there is still blue ink underneath his fingernails. He claws blindly at his pack, edges of jagged panic and reckless, reckless grief radiating outward from his core to prickle at his limbs. He rummages desperately, burn of emotion in the corners of his eyes, come on, come on, please, there-
His fingers suddenly brush against something he would know even blind, though he had not and would not have dared expect it now.
It's rough and scratchy beneath his fingertips, and even without looking he could map out all its nicks and scars, patches where it had been mended with a gentle hand. He grasps it now, pulls it out slowly, holds it in his hands, which are shaking. He holds, and he holds, and he does not look away. How can he. He brings it slowly and reverently to his bare, painted chest, squeezes his eyes shut so tight that lights burst like supernovas behind his eyelids. His whole world is suddenly small enough to fit in the cradle of his hands.
He starts to cry. He can’t help it. He starts to cry, and he recognizes the weight in his chest as something else entirely.
The waves, they are louder.
He stands. He has a long way to go, but he’ll make it there. He has to.
+++
There’s a noise behind her, the deliberate crunch of snow. She lifts the lantern in her hand and turns to see him standing alone, looking ridiculous in shorts and sandals and a puffy winter coat. There’s something off about him, and it makes her afraid, but there’s a reason why he’s here, she knows, and there’s still some fight left in her yet.
“Leave already,” she hisses. “We will try again. He is not yours anymore.”
“You’re wrong,” Luffy states, simple and wise as a child, voice calm but even the wind seems to quiet down in deference. “He’s our nakama.”
Her nails dig bloody crescents into her palms. She’s not wearing nearly enough to be standing outside in the middle of the night, but she seems to burn in the cold. “So what?” she whispers fiercely. “What does that even mean, nakama? That is nothing. That’s nothing, nothing, nothing. What’s a pirate on some passing ship compare to the one who rests here in this sacred ground.”
“You really don’t get it.” Luffy moves, and her narrowed eyes follow him, even as her body begins to tremble. “It means that he means more to us than some dead guy can ever mean to you.”
A terrible desperation rises in her at those words; she does not and cannot understand. The ring of stones is at her back, empty. She starts to cry, tears that run hot and relentless down her cheeks. “How dare you. How could you know? You cannot know how much, how long-you do not understand, if we could just, if I could just-then everyone, anyone is expendable-it is our dream. It is our dream, and Sanji said yes. Do you know how much that means?”
“Of course I do.” The way Luffy looks at her, arms crossed over his chest in solemn fury, makes her words stutter to a halt. She can only wait and waitandwaitandwait, until he says, “But Sanji’s pretty dumb, you know.”
She’s shaking more visibly now, all high alert and bewildered, but he doesn’t let her answer before he continues.
“Everyone says I’m stupid, and that’s true, but I know when my nakama are being stupid too, and Sanji’s stupid because he’ll believe anything you say because you’ve got long hair or pretty eyes or whatever, but really he’s wrong and you’re wrong, and Sanji doesn’t have to give himself up for you or for anyone. Just because it’s your dream to have him become your dead boyfriend doesn’t mean that he has to do it, especially if he doesn’t want to, and especially if it makes him sad, because Sanji’s got his own dreams too, you know, dreams that are definitely not second to yours, or to anyone’s.”
She can only stare, mouth open. He sighs in exasperation, as if he can’t believe this is something he has to explain, but he goes on.
“But Sanji doesn’t understand that because sometimes he’s stupid and sometimes he still thinks he doesn’t deserve this life he’s living with us and that he has to make up for it by giving everyone everything he has, like Zeff did for him, and like he tried to pay back Zeff on the Baratie, but that’s silly, don’t you think? Sanji doesn’t have to repay anyone any more than he already has. And don’t you think Sanji deserves everything too? Don’t you think Sanji should be able to follow his own dreams and not someone else’s?
“Don’t you think he should be able to do all the things that make him happy, like cooking and going on adventures and talking to girls and fighting Zoro and searching for All Blue and just living? Don’t you think he should be able to laugh and smile without having to count the ways to pay for it? Don’t you think Sanji deserves that?”
He pauses when she begins to sob into her hands, a small mercy, but after a moment, he blazes on, ruthless as any pirate for all his youth and innocence. “If you don’t think so, then you’re wrong and I won’t forgive you. We won’t mourn for your stupid prince. It means more to us to have Sanji alive and happy and himself than it means for you to have him cold and dead and someone else. If that’s selfish, then fine. I’ll be selfish for him.”
“But he is one of us,” she moans. “He should give his life for him, like he is supposed to. There is never going to be another, there is never going to be another,” she sobs and she knows it to be true.
“No,” says Luffy. And when Luffy says, “We’re taking him back now. You’re done,” she knows that she has lost.
+++
It’s dawn and he’s made it to the fringe of the woods, where the snow-covered ground slopes gently down to the water’s edge. From here to the shore, it is wide, open space, bright with reflected sunshine; no trees, no cover, no man’s land. Here in the shadow between mountains he feels safer, but Sunny is waiting offshore, white sails furled and silent. The sight of her makes him ache, and he can’t bring himself to look away, lest she disappears the next time he blinks.
He’s not a coward, but right now, he is scared shitless, shoulders hunched against the wind, hands fisted in his pockets for warmth. He is shivering, teeth clacking together, and he knows it’s not just from the cold. He had painfully scrubbed the ink from his face and hands with fistfuls of snow, but still, he can’t imagine how pathetic he must look: dark circles under his eyes, chapped lips, nose full of snot, and an expression on his face that’s probably one of strung-out, full-throttle panic. Fuck, he’s a regular prince charming on ice.
The snapping of twigs underfoot alerts him to Grimnir’s presence behind him, and he curses himself for jumping at the sound, swallows his heart down from where it had leapt into his throat. The wind is mercifully cut off when Grimnir moves to stand next to him, but there is no time to be even grudgingly grateful, because Grimnir suddenly says, “My boy, you look like death.”
He wants to snarl at him, huddled up against the rough bark of a tree trunk in a flimsy suit jacket, face turned away like a kid who just got shoved into the wall by a playground bully. He’s hungry and exhausted and mad with insecurity. He doesn’t even have another cigarette to suck on, so he keeps his head down, blinking hard and fast, and he feels Grimnir watching him. A familiar surge in his veins, a rushing in his ears; he knows exactly what’s coming before it reaches critical.
It does reach critical, and he’s amazed that his body still has the energy to wound itself up so tight, after everything he’s been through these past few hours, days.
And there it is, unbidden, an image of himself that has dogged him relentlessly all these years, a picture-reflection of a boy defined by the sharpness of his cheekbones, the jutting singularity of each of his ribs, the mountain-ridge of his spine down his narrow back. A boy with hollow eyes and hollow cheeks and a hollow, hollow belly.
A boy of bones and bones, he remembers them so vividly, remembers the nightmare of his own small hands raised to his face in horrified wonder, and the impossible marvel of these ligaments holding together a skeletal frame hunched under the weight of a dream larger than a body could ever grow to bear. He is on his knees again on the barren ground, wretched earth, and there is an old, defeated voice asking, again, “How many are waiting just like us in this wide sea?” A voice that does not expect an answering call, the sad timbre of it reverberating in his young, trembling soul. Will he sound like that? Does he already, after all this time stranded? He can imagine a loneliness and hopelessness so deep that you would speak and expect nothing but silence in response, and the terror of it chokes him.
It is a fear that has incubated itself inside him all those years ago and it’s still in his cells, in his marrow. This specter of self that has not been fully exorcised, lurking in the corners of his vision when he has been thinking for too long, has been staring at the water for too long, when the air is dead and the sun is scorching and the ship does not move an inch.
And today, in this land of ice, without his nakama, he is visited again. Today, Grimnir towers over him and says in a voice that could bury him, “My boy,” and again, he feels so small and so cold and so very hungry, for food and for more than that.
And today, now, he has to remind himself to breathe, again, again, breathe so that you do not break, and don’t forget, Sanji, don’t forget where you are now, rescued from death, from your own toxic guilt, from loneliness. Do you remember the defiant hope that refused to die in the cruel cage of your ribs, how it thrashed so desperately between your lungs, how it fed you when there was nothing else. It is still there. Don’t lose it; there will be nothing of you left if it dies.
And do you remember the ships, Sanji? Don’t forget. The first laid to rest in pieces at the bottom of the ocean, the second sailed by in the rain and you wept with such honest despair, the third that seemed to come a lifetime too late to rescue you from the cruelty of your own body, the fourth that was worth more than your meager life, the fifth burning bright at sea-and the sixth you left behind, burying your dreams between wooden planks, love and farewell.
Don’t forget the ships that carried you, and don’t forget what you carry within yourself, this heaviness you know is hope, desperate and intense.
His cheeks have filled out, the proof is in the mirror every morning, and he has grown, look, he has grown so tall, his bones insulated by muscle, by fire, by ambition. His hands, when he raises them to his face, are bigger, stronger, quick and clever.
And the defiant, insidious hope he had to fight down after his rescue is still there, and it has diffused through the rest of him, this once stunted, repressed thing now allowed to stretch and to grow into something called confidence, to pull at the corners of his mouth, to accompany his every stride, and it fits him perfectly, like a finely tailored suit. He has finally learned to recognize hope for what it is, sitting heavy in his chest, something he tried so earnestly to ignore on the Baratie because it gave him something he felt he would never deserve. But now he knows better, and now he can accept it as strength because now he is free to answer yes. To his own prayers, he himself can answer yes.
Yes and yes and yes. Zoro was right that time (and is always right when it counts), when he had declared so brazenly that he did not need a god. Zoro was right, Sanji understands. Don’t forget the ships, and don’t forget yourself. It’s his nakama he believes in now, and in himself, instead of in the stretch of a flatline horizon.
So to Grimnir, he finally says, “No,” and he says, “You don’t know anything,” you don’t know how far these bones have carried and must still carry me, and you know nothing of ships, you have been landed for so long that you have forgotten the greeting of sails on the horizon beyond your mountains. The sea is not your home, but it is mine, and I know now that I can always go home.
So, “Shut your mouth, old man,” he says, pushing himself to stand on his own two feet. “I’m going now.”
“Stubborn child,” Grimnir grumbles, but he is smiling.
And Grimnir sees, this boy looks nothing like the son he once had, this boy who is rail-thin and sharp all over, but in his proud angles there is the same acute tenacity, and there is a vastness in his smile, in his stride, and in the sweep of his hands that is impossible to measure, impossible to express in any tongue.
His son was meant for tragedy, and since then he has stretched out his own years in order to find a way to reverse that, like he had set out from home to do, all those centuries ago. But he finds that he hasn’t visited his grave in recent years, and when he wakes every morning, he wakes expecting the familiar burn of grief in his chest, but it’s not there anymore, or it’s not the same. It had scared him, that first morning, sitting in the patch of early sunlight coming in through the window, listening to the rare notes of birdsong in the air, when he realized that for the first time he felt something like acceptance.
He would bring him back if he could, of course. He would in half a heartbeat. What father wouldn’t? But he has grown old waiting, and waiting, and since meeting this boy and his cohort of misfits, his crew of singers and dreamers and their feverish optimism, he realizes that perhaps the price is too steep, even for a prince, for how could his son rise again, with a burden like that on his bones.
His son was meant for tragedy, long ago, but perhaps it was meant to be that way. And perhaps this boy is different.
+++
There’s someone waiting for him at the docks, awash in the early morning light, and Sanji sees right away that it’s Zoro because Zoro’s head is the greenest thing for miles around. And it’s good that it’s Zoro, because while he’s not the first Strawhat that Sanji would have liked to see, if it were anyone else waiting for him, he might have let his courage die and started running in the opposite direction. But he won’t give Zoro the satisfaction of seeing him flee like a spooked cat. Never. With Zoro, he’s always got bravado to spare. He has a feeling that Zoro knows this as well.
It feels like a lifetime before he is finally standing there on the swollen wood of the docks, looking down at Zoro who looks up at him like Sanji had only been gone on a shopping trip all this time.
“Took your sweet time, beanpole.”
And Sanji can do nothing but throw his pack at Zoro’s head and hop down next to him on the frozen water. He loses his footing and it’s Zoro who catches him before he can fall face first on the ice. I must be tired, he thinks absently.
Then he registers Zoro’s hand clasping his arm and his own hand clasping back, vise-like. They are standing two strides apart, arms locked between them like a bridge.
“What’d you call me?” he whispers hoarsely, belatedly, looking Zoro in the eye even though it almost hurts to do so.
“Beanpole.” Zoro’s grin is brazen and bold, no hesitation. “Problem?”
Sanji stays stock-still, realizes that he can’t make himself release Zoro’s arm, his grip tight and unyielding like rigor mortis, and what’s more, what’s baffling, is that Zoro is holding on as well, just as firm.
He clears his throat. “No one’s called me that since I left the Baratie.” Since I’ve grown, he means to say.
But Zoro reads his mind, in the way that Zoro always does in the midst of battle or in toppling silences such as these, and Zoro scoffs at him. “You’re still a scrawny kid. Don’t get ahead of yourself.”
He considers this for a moment, considers the things that Zoro says with such characteristically calm disregard that Sanji can’t help but take him seriously. He swallows, straightens his spine, does not break eye contact. He forces his tongue to work. “You too.” He pauses, and he adds, for propriety’s sake, “I can still kick your ass, Roronoa.”
Zoro barks in laughter, and says, “Invest in some gloves first,” which means welcome back, jackass, and Sanji appreciates that, and Sanji appreciates-more than he can ever admit in a hundred thousand years-the fact that Zoro only lets go of his arm after Sanji lets go of his.
They start to walk back to the Sunny, their footsteps careful lest they break the ice that is still healing from their seaside skirmish, which seems so long ago. And Zoro says casually, “Kept my promise, didn’t I.”
Sanji knows what he means and he grins so hard his face hurts. “Don’t act as if you dug me up and carried me all the way back here, asshole.”
Zoro shrugs and they walk over the water in grudgingly companionable silence, Zoro carrying Sanji’s pack and Sanji letting him. “I had a promise to keep too,” Sanji admits, kicking at a pebble and watching it skitter over the ice.
“To whom?”
“Myself, I guess.”
“And?”
“I tried.”
“You did well.”
Sanji laughs.
The Sunny is getting closer and she is much, much bigger than Sanji remembers. She towers over them, the smooth wood of her hull impossible to scale and unyielding. Sanji tries to remember how to breathe as they climb the rope ladder and make their way up to the achingly familiar deck. Zoro helps him over the railing, just this once.
“They’re all waiting in the kitchen,” Zoro tells him, and Sanji fills in the rest-for me, for me, for you to bring me back. He can’t make himself move or speak.
Zoro must have seen all the color drain from his face, because he rolls his eyes and throws Sanji’s pack back at him. He cups his hands around his mouth, then, and he shouts at the top of his lungs, “Oi! The stupid eyebrow is back!”
Sanji begins to sputter in protest, but the slant of Zoro’s smile is benign, and he can only manage a shocked gasp before he is barreled over by a blur of limbs and antlers, voices screeching in his ear and calling him an idiot, an idiot, the stupidest idiot.
“I know,” he says, laughing or crying, he’s not quite sure. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I know.”
And he does know, now.
+++
“You didn’t really believe in any of it, did you, Sanji-kun?”
“Nami-san,” he laughs, putting up his hands, half-shrugging. “I’ll believe in anything,” and he will, in myths and stories and legends, in himself and his nakama, in All Blue, he has to.
But Nami is glaring at him. “I won’t,” she snaps, voice laced with white-hot ferocity, hands on her hips. “I don’t. Not in anything that can tear this crew apart.”
Not for the first time, and definitely not for the last, Sanji feels as if he could kiss her.
“Because nothing like that exists,” she says, with an air of restrained hostility. “Not in this world or the next. Got it?”
And he has to agree, in the face of her intensity, her confidence, her conviction, he has to agree, and gladly. “Got it, Nami-san!”
+++
“I’m s-”
“Oho, don’t think you’re getting off the hook that easily, Sanji-kun!”
“Tch, opportunist.”
“Nah, I just know how to make the most of things.”
“All right, all right, what do you want.”
“Hmm. I’m off dish-duty for a month. No, two months!”
“Fine.”
“And you take my next five night watches.”
“Anything else, o benevolent one?”
“You can never again force me to eat mushroom barley soup as a punishment.”
“But it’s good for y-”
“Never!”
“Argh, fine!”
“Actually, I want off dish-duty for three-”
“Do you want to die?”
“Ah-the noble and magnanimous Usopp forgives you from the bottom of his heart, Sanji-kun!”
“Thank you.”
“And… I did mean everything I said to you back there.”
“I know.”
“You really are-”
“All right, all right! You’re embarrassing me, fuck.” He scowls. “You too, okay? Don’t forget it.”
Usopp grins at him. “I won’t. Oh, and here.” Usopp hands him three cartons of cigarettes, neatly bound by a length of twine. Sanji can recognize his own knot anywhere. He takes them and pretends to be engrossed in examining the King Ground logo, like he hasn’t already memorized every detail of it when he was ten. Usopp slings an arm around his shoulders; the sudden weight almost makes his knees buckle. “Don’t smoke them all at once now, you hear?”
He shoves Usopp off him and snaps, “Mind your own business, Longnose.” But he grins back.
+++
“You didn’t catch a cold or anything, did you, Sanji?”
“No, I never get sick.”
“That’s because you’re a monster!”
“Then that makes you the only doctor in the world who can take care of monsters.”
“H-How dare you, you asshole! As if I want to hear such off-hand compliments from you! You bastard! I hate you! Wait, no, I don’t, I missed you so much, Sanji! You idiot!”
“I’m sorry.”
“I hate you! No! Wait! I didn’t-”
“I got it, I got it. I missed you, too.”
“Eh?! Saying things like that doesn’t make me happy at all!”
“Chopper, would you like some hot chocolate?”
“Don’t try to buy my love, asshole! It won’t work!”
“Chopper.”
“Yes, please.”
+++
“I wrote another ballad for you.”
“Another one?”
“You try and tell me my ballads are not unbelievably intense. After hearing such a super sad story about the dead dude, I had to channel all my emotional energies into composing this totally beautiful and heart-wrenching song about your chivalry and manly virtues-”
“My what.”
“-and now people all across the Grand Line will sing this song forever in your honor. I have immortalized you, curly-bro. You’re welcome.”
“That really wasn’t necessary.”
“So modest. Don’t worry about it. Just close your eyes and let the music wash over you.”
“… Later, okay? Just… later. But thanks.”
+++
“Sanji-san! I am simply tickled pink to have you back with us! Ah, even though my cheeks are far from rosy-yohohoho!”
“Thanks, Brook. Can always count on you for a laugh.”
“Indeed! There is no shortage to my repertoire of skull jokes! Would you like to hear another?”
“I’m good. But can I ask you something? Do you know anything about a tree?”
“A tree, Sanji-san?”
“I don’t know if I was just hallucinating, or if I was really there, wherever ‘there’ was, but I think-I think it was a place after life. Not death, exactly, just somewhere you go when you’re not here anymore. And there was a tree. A huge one, and I mean huge, with thick black roots and branches that went up forever. It felt… it felt like it encompassed everything. Like All Blue would feel. I thought you might know something about it.”
Brook is silent as he thinks. “I don’t recall a tree like the one you describe, but even as a soul, my wanderings were always in this world. I can’t say I remember much about dying or death, and I don’t know anything about staying dead. I only remember it was bright for a moment, before my soul was called back to the living world.”
“Yeah, it was bright there too. And warm.”
“It sounds like a very pleasant place indeed!”
“I guess. Just being there made me think that All Blue must exist after all, there has to be an ocean out there to match this tree.”
“There must be. You’ll find it, Sanji-san.”
“Yeah. Thanks, Brook.”
+++
“Welcome back, Sanji.”
“Ah, Robin-chwan, to be able to return to your loving embrace is truly the greatest joy a man can ever know!”
“Haha, I’m glad you feel that way. And I hope we’ll be able to talk in the future about the cognitive dissonance that can arise from one’s personal history. I left West Blue when I was very young, and I know it can be confusing sometimes to have your roots in one place yet have your self shaped by another, or by a sea that is itself always changing. But in the end, you must remember that home is wherever you most want to be.”
“Robin-chan, I fear I could never be as poetic as you.”
Robin smiles. “You are. You would not be on this ship otherwise. And I am glad I found a home with all of you.”
“You know you’re always welcome here with me, Robin-chwan!”
“If you’d like, though, I’d be more than happy to teach you the lost histories of North Blue and even its language. One of the islanders was kind enough to give me several tomes from their library as a parting present.”
“That-that would be really cool.”
“We can start our lessons at your earliest convenience. Hm, it seems you have some blue ink on you.”
“Eh? Oh, it’s actually all over me. They’re ritualistic runes. I guess they were supposed to help with the evocation, or transfer, or something.”
“How fascinating. Will you let me have a closer look?”
“I-I-you want to-m-mellorine...”
“Sanji! What’s with that nosebleed! Someone, get a doctor!”
“I believe that would be you.”
“Ah! It’s me!”
“Please do see to him.”
“Y-Yes! Out of my way, I’m a doctor! Usopp, hold my hot chocolate!”
+++
And to Luffy, who is the only one left on deck after the bone-crushing, head-knocking, sob-fest, nosebleed of a reunion, he can only say, “Hey.”
Luffy takes his eyes off the horizon to look at him. In Sanji’s outstretched hand is the battered straw hat of his messiah of a captain, an entity all its own, one that saved him and brought him back because he needed to come back. Luffy takes it and places it firmly back on his head, where it belongs, and seeing it feels like homecoming.
“Hey,” the boy beams, brighter than anything Sanji’s ever known in his forgotten North Blue, in the East Blue that’s adopted him, in the Grand Line, even in his shimmering All Blue dreams. “I knew I could trust you to bring it back,” says Luffy. “Are you done being silly now?”
“Yeah, I’m done,” Sanji answers awkwardly, doesn’t know where to look. He coughs, nervously.
“Good! Because I’m hungry and I want meat. Like, a lot of it. All of it. You were gone for such a long time, so you’ll have to make it up to me now, because I’m the captain and those are the rules that I just made up. Hm!” The wind picks up, and Sunny’s sails snap to full. Luffy holds a hand to his head to keep his hat from blowing away. From another part of the ship, he can hear Franky singing.
They’re on their way at last. Sanji realizes, suddenly, that he’s been holding his breath. He lets go, finally, exhales smoke and relief and warmth, shaky smile that is worth everything, don’t you know.
And he promises, “I got it, captain.”
“We didn’t cry for that prince guy, you know. Well, Franky did, a little, but the rest of us didn’t. We didn’t want him to come back. He had to stay gone because we wanted you.” Luffy puts a hand on his shoulder, and says, “So welcome back, Sanji.”
He almost wants to laugh. Everything makes sense, when Luffy puts it so simply.
“You mean that,” he tries to tease, tries to be cool, but his voice is small and hoarse.
“Yeah.” Luffy cocks his head and grins like it’s the easiest thing in the world. “Of course!”
“In that case.” He clears his throat. He smiles then, earnest, teeth and gums and all, and he says, “I’m back, shithead. Take care of me, won’t you?”
Luffy brings his hand up and Sanji clasps it tight, Luffy pulling them together until their shoulders collide. And then Luffy hugs him, arms wrapped around him secure as Sunny’s hold, and it’s fine this way, isn’t it, he tells himself, everything he deserves and more, the brush of Luffy’s straw hat against his cheek, and Luffy’s arms and Luffy’s smile, and the sea, open and blue, and their dreams, bright and all their own. Yes. It’s fine this way. His knees are week. He still feels the cold deep in his lungs. His hands are trembling. There is a feast to prepare. And he’s happy.
The story of Baldr, the wisest and fairest, husband of Nanna, beloved son of the goddess Frigg and Odin the Allfather, goes like this: after his death at the hands of Loki the Trickster (and, inadvertently, his blind brother Hodur)-a death that was dreamt by Baldr and foretold to Odin-Hel promised to release Baldr from the underworld only if all the objects in the world, if everyone living and dead, mourned and wept for him-earnestly, sincerely, fiercely. And all did except for one, the giantess Thokk, who refused to shed a single tear, who had no love for Baldr though he was loved by all. It was revealed that she was the Trickster in disguise, and because of her refusal, Baldr must remain among the dead until after Ragnarok and the end of the world.
This is a fic about someone more beloved than Baldr, and about trickster gods and goddesses who know exactly what and whom they want.
So. I will forever be hung up on the fact that Sanji is from North Blue. And North Blue = Scandinavia to me, so there are a lot of bits and pieces Norse mythology in this. And I think, also, Sanji is a story collector, like Usopp is a storyteller, and that's sweet. I wanted him to love stories, because I love stories too.
I’m sorry this was so obnoxiously long. This was originally meant for the One Piece Big Bang last year (I had signed up for the “small bang” which is 10k words-whoops), but then RL got even more R, and I had to put it aside for a long time. I finally dusted it off again a few months ago because it had been tapping on the inside of my skull for so long, and it got to the point where it wouldn’t even let me think of writing anything else before I finished it.
This was a strange and difficult one to write, for too many reasons, but I tried to be as honest with it as I could. It’s important to me. That sounds silly and embarrassing to say (you write dumb fic, self, come on), but I really, truly mean it. And I gave myself until this auspicious day to finish it because it didn’t feel right to hold onto it longer than this (even though, I’m almost afraid to let it go).
So! HAPPY BIRTHDAY SANJI YOU DARLING BOY. Forgive me.
… Now to (finally) get started on those birthday fics I promised. Yosh. *rolls up sleeves*
(Concrit always welcome! ♥)
edit: went back and edited to make something hopefully more clear. thank you captainkai!
if anything else in this huge monstrosity is unclear/confusing, please hit me up and let me know!
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Sanji; everyone
Word Count: ~18,700 (yikes)
Summary: The working title for this fic was “Torrential Vomit of Sanji Headcanon,” alternately “Sanji’s Got Issues.” Both still apply. Set some time between Thriller Bark and Sabaody.
Notes at the very end.
<<
She’s back. She’s back after what must have been a lifetime, long and cold, and he is so glad for the company again that he almost crumples into himself.
“Sanji.” Her white hands are half-hidden by her sleeves, and she blinks at him in the weak and flickering lantern light. “I ran into your friend on the way here. The one with the long nose. He was-upset. I had not thought…” She frowns at him, and he blinks at her. “Sanji,” she says again. “There isn’t any other way.”
The way she says it is more of a plea than a statement. He understands. His voice, when he answers her, is gravel-rough. “You know, there are these stories from East Blue,” he says, and he breathes in expecting the comforting spike of nicotine in his blood, but instead there is only iced-over oxygen, and he coughs violently. “An old woman once told me,” he starts again, through teeth clenched tight to keep from chattering, “a story about her little brother. How, when he was very young, he used to be very sick.”
“And?” He hears so much desperation in the drop of that one word that he can’t help but feel as if his heart will tumble out of his chest to bleed and beat next to hers.
“And so they changed his name so that the angel of death could not find him and take him away in the night. He got better afterwards.”
He has only these stories, small faraway miracles, to offer her in way of comfort, and he already knows that it’s not what she’s looking for. The look on her face has not changed from one of resolute regret, and he gives her a smile that he hopes is reassuring.
He tries again, though he knows his words to her are as empty as his hands. “I once met a man from the far corner of East Blue whose name was Stone.” His grin is a veneer smoothed thin over the hard, weary line of his jaw. “Fucking terrible name, I thought. But do you know why he was named that?”
“No,” she whispers, and the only way he can be sure that she had spoken at all is the gentle exhalation of her breath visible in the night air.
“So that greedy spirits wouldn’t snatch him up. He said that picking up a kid named Stone would be like picking up any old rock from the side of the road. Apparently, spirits would rather go after kids with shinier names like Ruby or Pearl, or whatever, so his parents gave him the most common name they could think of.” Here, he tries to laugh, but his lungs are too stiff and already it is difficult to breathe. “Get it?” he rasps, a last-ditch attempt that catches in his throat and inexplicably makes him want to sob. He fights it down bravely and says, “I think maybe Dirt might have been even more effective, though. Dirt would have fit him well.”
“You know those are not our customs, Sanji,” she responds, slowly, and a little bit sad. “Our people do not believe stories like that.”
You mean your people, he feels the need to point out, and they may not just be stories, like you believe your stories aren’t just stories, like All Blue is not just a story,, but it doesn’t matter. The ring of stones casts dark shadows, and the prince has already been dead for centuries, and his name has always been the same.
She hesitates, but then she moves forward, into the ring, until she is sitting on the cold ground in front of him, her legs neatly folded beneath her. The lantern she carries almost blinds him.
“Our story is an old one. Do you want to hear it?”
“Yes,” he coughs, and he does.
She takes a moment to think before asking, ”How old is the oldest person you know?”
He thinks immediately of Chopper’s guardian back on Drum, and he tries unsuccessfully to suppress a shudder. “I don’t know, hundred thirty, give or take a few decades, maybe?”
“Decades-that means ten years in the common tongue, yes?”
He nods.
“Lord Grimnir is older,” she says. “Much older.”
“How much is much?”
“He is almost five hundred years old.”
If he could right now, he would whistle, impressed. As it were, he can only nod.
She seems more relaxed than he had ever seen her. “The original settlers, my ancestors, were from a small kingdom in North Blue. Lord Grimnir was king there, before he came here on a ship, one of many, more than four hundred years ago. He came with the prince, but the prince was already dead, even then. It seems-it seems like he has only ever been dead, does it not? We never hear about his life. But he must have been alive, once. I think, perhaps, it is still too painful for Lord Grimnir to speak of it.” She looks at him expectantly, and he can only nod again.
She continues. “There is another custom we have, another funeral rite. You know it, maybe. Where you place the dead on a ship, and you burn it.”
He remembers Merry, bright flames and an ache in his chest, and he says, “Yes.”
“They could not do it. They put the prince on a ship, and then they sailed out to sea with him, Lord Grimnir and a host of his men and women, on more ships than the prince had years. They wanted to go with him, follow him through death. And they wanted to bring him back.
“They had heard from a neighboring kingdom of a legendary city of gold. And that in that city was an ancient stone with words engraved upon it. Powerful words that might have the power to bring back the dead. They believed that. So they left to search for it, and the queen and their people bid them farewell from their shores. But they could not find it. They searched and searched, all those men and women on those ships with the prince, all those centuries ago, but they could not find the city of gold or that ancient stone. Do you think it ever existed?”
“I couldn’t know,” he lies through his teeth, feeling like he needs to. She doesn’t have to know how they’ve sailed through the sky, met god in that city of gold and found even him lacking. She doesn’t have to know what was really engraved on the Poneglyph in the golden belfry of Shandora-something remarkable, yes, but not what she is looking for, not what she wants to believe. So he says, “It’s possible. Maybe it’s out there.”
“Maybe,” she repeats, pondering. “But the World Current swept them on, through a terrible storm. They landed here, after many, many days. On this island. They called it Walhal. Do you know the name? It’s an old word in our religion. It is the name of the place where heroes go after death. It was fitting. They thought they might find him here.”
She shifts, staring unblinkingly into the lantern, pupils constricted to pinpricks, the blue of her eyes expansive. “But they did not, and the prince, after so long, his body… still, they could not let him go. They could not bear to let him go, so they brought him onto land, on his ship. Through the forests, all the way here, where we are now. And then they dug and dug and buried him, in his ship. To keep him close to them. Do you understand?”
He does, so completely that it scares him. He swallows thickly, casts his eyes down. She doesn’t notice.
“There is another story from home, a prophecy almost, as old as the name Walhal. If you mourn for someone, if you mourn for someone wholly and sincerely, and if everyone mourns, cries his name, then he will come back to you. We have mourned him for more than four hundred years. It has become a purpose we inherit when we are born, it is the reason we are here. We have taken care to preserve everything the way he knows it. We have kept our language, his language, so that we can speak to him when he returns, so he will know how much we missed him, how beloved he still is. And when he returns, he will need new bones to replace the ones that have rotted away. Yours, Sanji.”
She is quiet now, eyes watching him intently. He has nothing to say, and she stands and steps back, turning her head to hide her face behind the sleek curtain of her hair. “It’s a little desperate, is it not?” she admits. “It is all we have left. It is all we have known, here on our island. We have to believe it. Do you?”
“I understand,” he says truthfully, breaths shallow and voice cracking traitorously, traitorously. “I’ll believe in anything. You should too. It’s easier that way.”
She leaves him again.
He brings his fingertips to the pulse in his wrist.
+++
There are other stories too, all of them extraordinary. He collects them like other people collect truths about themselves; he remembers every one he’s ever heard, folds them into his core.
Listen.
In a village named for the moon, there are flowers and birdsong for a beloved daughter, a cherished rival, and here, a snow-white sword is imbued with the spirit of a dead girl who crosses over on the bridge of a promise, on the shoulders of a man who will carry her to the top of the world.
In two sleepy little hamlets with names as sweet as their children are two graves for two mothers, and before both of them there is a child saying goodbye, I am going now, I am trying to be brave, I am happier than I've been in years, is that strange, to find courage again, to be happy again even after you've gone, will you forgive me, will you watch over me still? I’m leaving to travel with monsters, with the best friends I’ll ever know, with a boy who will be king. You’ll be proud of me, I know.
On an island of winter and ice so much like this one, there stands an empty castle and hoisted flag, skull and crossbones so proud, a banner for all the outcasts who ever dreamt of cherry blossoms in the snow. A castle for your memory, for you to haunt, Doctor, so come in from the cold.
And scorched earth where once there grew a tree that held all the knowledge in the world, a home destroyed by a justice that calls itself absolute, and the lone survivor a child who was never allowed to be one, who had to learn how to laugh, and who will keep alive all of history’s secrets. But you too are promised your place one day, with people who love you as desperately as you love them. You deserve it.
From a city of canals, a train rides the waves, tracks laid on the water because that’s what one does, isn’t it, conquer the impossible, show the world it can be done, with a don! And when that train carries away the most important person in the world to you to die on a foreign shore, far away, you’ll lose a father and your name, but you’ll understand, one day, what he believed you could do, the potential like oil on water, aflame.
And amid banished fears and shadows stolen and found, a crew is finally laid to rest after decades lost at sea, buried in the soil of your native West Blue so that you can be at peace, with home so close to your bones, the strains of a familiar song sending you off, and don’t worry, you can trust me to keep that promise we made so long ago, he won’t have waited in vain.
And there’s more. There is a princess ready to give her life for her country, her kingdom of dry earth and sand and her people who refuse to bow to anyone but her, not to thirst or desert storms or an invading evil seeking only war. And in the sky above the clouds, under the yoke of a false god and his minions, what’s sacred is not the sun or the blue sea, but handfuls of smuggled earth, green life.
Maybe it's not so bad, becoming a part of all that, letting earth inside him, deep under his skin. Maybe he needs that. Maybe he can make this story his, his own tale of land to anchor a piece of his soul that has been afloat at sea for so long. Maybe it’ll be okay. Maybe they’ll carry him with them too.
He understands these stories, breathes their significance, holds them close to his own heart, but he’s still terrified. In the end, they do not come from him, they are not his, and he doesn’t belong here. He doesn’t belong here. Where will he go, afterwards? Will he have to wait again, what’s left of him after he relinquishes his bones, watching the horizon, fingertips to a pulse he won’t even have anymore, battling a hunger that is soul-deep.
He doesn’t belong here. Everything is too heavy and too still.
+++
“You’re not supposed to cry, Franky.”
“I’m not crying! Even though it’s super sad. Have you no hearts?! Ow, are all of you made of stone?!”
“Ah, just let him cry.”
“I said I’m not-sniff-I’m not crying!”
“Jeez, what part of ‘refusing to mourn’ and ‘overthrowing the prophecy’ did you not understand?”
“But-”
“Y-Yeah! We have to be strong! Stoic! Like men! For Sanji! We can’t let this happen!”
“I-”
“What’s sadder, losing a nakama or a dead guy staying dead?”
“I-I-”
“Sit down, Franky. Have some cola.”
“T-Thanks, Robin.”
“You’re welcome. Don’t be sad anymore, okay?”
+++
His breath is coming in short, convulsive gasps, frantic puffs of white mist in the air, but he feels incongruously calm, serene; he’s delirious, he realizes that, but he also knows what he has to do, and he’s suddenly more certain of it than of his own flickering existence.
The stones are taller than he is, and much, much older, like ice beneath his hands; it doesn’t make him feel sick to touch them anymore, to feel death and earth so close, and a ringing loneliness. Perhaps he is too numb. In the center of the ring, he kneels, presses his hands to the cold, hard soil, and he ignores how his lungs spasm with each stuttering inhale-exhale.
Tries to focus, tries to reach. Blue-inked fingertips digging into the frozen ground, a familiar touch embedded in his palm. Underneath him, he knows there is another pair of hands reaching up, stripped of flesh and skin, brittle bone, he can almost see them now, their palms placed parallel. They are not a child’s hands this time, they are bigger, like his own now-and a pale, gaunt face, there, in the earthen darkness below, impossible but there all the same. He forgets his horror, the deep and personal revulsion that had been so strong before. Now he believes only in the symmetry of their bodies, the line of convergence between them, taste of old faith bitter on his tongue.
“Come,” he whispers, curving his spine, bowing until his forehead brushes the earth. The runes on his skin seem to glow, even though the moon in the sky is new. Here is her touch, and here are my bones, come claim them for your own. “Our lady is waiting.”
It’s an old, wooden longship, with a figurehead of a serpentine sea monster, open mouth showing a wicked, forked tongue. It’s intricately carved and very fearsome indeed, but he finds he still prefers Sunny’s pseudo-lion’s mane and snout. The longship is nestled in the roots of a tree so massive that he cannot see the sky past the umbrella of its branches. There is the faint sound of running water, the whisper of leaves far above. It’s bright here, but beyond the sphere occupied by the tree is a formless, shifting blackness.
But there sitting in the longship with him, amid roots so large they might as well be the bodies of seakings, is the prince, who is smiling at him. He looks young. They both do. On his face and hands, and peeking out from under his high collar, are the same runes that are painted are Sanji’s skin.
hello sanji
“Hey there.”
you shouldn’t be here
“Well, actually I’m here to bring you back. You know that.”
you don’t have to
“But she’ll be sad if I don’t. And I’d hate to make a lady sad.”
your friends will be sad if you do
He doesn’t have an answer for that, so instead he says, “You know, I thought we’d look more alike, but we really don’t.”
no that eyebrow of yours is truly and thankfully unique to you
“Oho. For a dead guy, you have quite the sense of humor.”
I’m not dead
“Sure,” he says, like that made any sense at all. “But look. Here’s a body for you, see. It’s not the one you’re used to, but it’ll do, right? Everything’s in working order, last time I checked. Blood type matches. That’s important, I hear. You can have it. You can be alive again, or not not-dead, whatever, if you come with me.”
no
Exasperation. “Come on. Why not?”
I don’t want that and neither do you
“Let me get this straight. I’m giving you the chance to be alive again, to live and dream and go to sea and chase girls and eat amazing food and do all the things that living folks do, things you never got to do, and you’re saying no?”
I am saying no
“Really?”
really
“Okay. Okay, but-why not?”
what will happen to you and to your friends who want you back
“That’s-not the issue here.” He runs a hand through his hair. “This is a promise. I promised. You’re supposed to keep your promises. Always.”
and you promised never to be selfish again
He presses his lips into a grim line. “Yes.”
I lived a long long time ago and now I don’t anymore and that is not going to change
“But can it change? Can I bring you back?”
but I’m not dead
“All right, so what are you?”
myth I suppose
“Myth.”
yes or something like it
but listen sanji
a hand to his hand, palms placed parallel, gentle pressure but no yield
you are not me
and that’s all right
you don’t have to be anyone but yourself
you’ll believe in anything
so will you believe that
He hesitates, looks down at himself and finds that he is already fading, alarmingly fast. He expects the runes to be glowing, especially in this light, with skin against skin, but they are only dull ink, almost black. Something’s gone wrong. This isn’t how things are supposed to go. “But they miss you,” he tries.
I haven’t left them
“Can you leave, if you want to?” he asks quickly, urgently.
when they forget me
“But do you want to leave? Are you happy now? Here? Are you trapped?”
you are kind to ask
“Are you?” he demands. “Being just here and nowhere else. Are you happy?”
it’s a home
And if he tries, really tries, he thinks he might understand that, this concept of home, a place to rest your bones, a place you can come back to stay, immovable and constant and always yours. There is not much of him left anymore on this plane where he does not belong, amid the black roots of a giant ash tree, in a ship with no pirate’s flag, and he feels wispy and grey and sad, but it’s-“It’s warm here, isn’t it?”
a soft, distant smile, ghost-touch of fingertips, and a final
yes.
She had taken one look at him, his eyes, his open hand, and she had turned and left.
Everything is off-center. His mouth is empty and gasping, his lungs are empty, and his heart, he cannot even begin to understand, the weight of it in his chest, how he could possibly bear this inside of him, carry it for the rest of his life, this heart that is ultimately his. He gets up and stumbles out of the ring of stones, imagines himself tripping over black roots that aren’t there.
Alive, yes. Cold, yes. Alone. Yes.
It feels like an eternity before he can register his surroundings again. It’s dark here, and dreary and cold. The tree at his back and the ground beneath him are solid in a way he cannot fathom. The crash of the sea is more imagined than real, but he can hear waves break against his eardrums, and it is loud, loud, loud.
Breathe.
In his pack, he knows there is a crumpled carton of cigarettes, the last of what he brought with him. He needs to smoke now, or else he will really, actually die; he will evaporate, let me become mist so that I can follow you where you go, please, please-
He inhales sharply through his teeth, again, again. He misses them, he misses them so much, and are they already gone? There is only a heavy feeling in his chest to take their place, and there is still blue ink underneath his fingernails. He claws blindly at his pack, edges of jagged panic and reckless, reckless grief radiating outward from his core to prickle at his limbs. He rummages desperately, burn of emotion in the corners of his eyes, come on, come on, please, there-
His fingers suddenly brush against something he would know even blind, though he had not and would not have dared expect it now.
It's rough and scratchy beneath his fingertips, and even without looking he could map out all its nicks and scars, patches where it had been mended with a gentle hand. He grasps it now, pulls it out slowly, holds it in his hands, which are shaking. He holds, and he holds, and he does not look away. How can he. He brings it slowly and reverently to his bare, painted chest, squeezes his eyes shut so tight that lights burst like supernovas behind his eyelids. His whole world is suddenly small enough to fit in the cradle of his hands.
He starts to cry. He can’t help it. He starts to cry, and he recognizes the weight in his chest as something else entirely.
The waves, they are louder.
He stands. He has a long way to go, but he’ll make it there. He has to.
+++
There’s a noise behind her, the deliberate crunch of snow. She lifts the lantern in her hand and turns to see him standing alone, looking ridiculous in shorts and sandals and a puffy winter coat. There’s something off about him, and it makes her afraid, but there’s a reason why he’s here, she knows, and there’s still some fight left in her yet.
“Leave already,” she hisses. “We will try again. He is not yours anymore.”
“You’re wrong,” Luffy states, simple and wise as a child, voice calm but even the wind seems to quiet down in deference. “He’s our nakama.”
Her nails dig bloody crescents into her palms. She’s not wearing nearly enough to be standing outside in the middle of the night, but she seems to burn in the cold. “So what?” she whispers fiercely. “What does that even mean, nakama? That is nothing. That’s nothing, nothing, nothing. What’s a pirate on some passing ship compare to the one who rests here in this sacred ground.”
“You really don’t get it.” Luffy moves, and her narrowed eyes follow him, even as her body begins to tremble. “It means that he means more to us than some dead guy can ever mean to you.”
A terrible desperation rises in her at those words; she does not and cannot understand. The ring of stones is at her back, empty. She starts to cry, tears that run hot and relentless down her cheeks. “How dare you. How could you know? You cannot know how much, how long-you do not understand, if we could just, if I could just-then everyone, anyone is expendable-it is our dream. It is our dream, and Sanji said yes. Do you know how much that means?”
“Of course I do.” The way Luffy looks at her, arms crossed over his chest in solemn fury, makes her words stutter to a halt. She can only wait and waitandwaitandwait, until he says, “But Sanji’s pretty dumb, you know.”
She’s shaking more visibly now, all high alert and bewildered, but he doesn’t let her answer before he continues.
“Everyone says I’m stupid, and that’s true, but I know when my nakama are being stupid too, and Sanji’s stupid because he’ll believe anything you say because you’ve got long hair or pretty eyes or whatever, but really he’s wrong and you’re wrong, and Sanji doesn’t have to give himself up for you or for anyone. Just because it’s your dream to have him become your dead boyfriend doesn’t mean that he has to do it, especially if he doesn’t want to, and especially if it makes him sad, because Sanji’s got his own dreams too, you know, dreams that are definitely not second to yours, or to anyone’s.”
She can only stare, mouth open. He sighs in exasperation, as if he can’t believe this is something he has to explain, but he goes on.
“But Sanji doesn’t understand that because sometimes he’s stupid and sometimes he still thinks he doesn’t deserve this life he’s living with us and that he has to make up for it by giving everyone everything he has, like Zeff did for him, and like he tried to pay back Zeff on the Baratie, but that’s silly, don’t you think? Sanji doesn’t have to repay anyone any more than he already has. And don’t you think Sanji deserves everything too? Don’t you think Sanji should be able to follow his own dreams and not someone else’s?
“Don’t you think he should be able to do all the things that make him happy, like cooking and going on adventures and talking to girls and fighting Zoro and searching for All Blue and just living? Don’t you think he should be able to laugh and smile without having to count the ways to pay for it? Don’t you think Sanji deserves that?”
He pauses when she begins to sob into her hands, a small mercy, but after a moment, he blazes on, ruthless as any pirate for all his youth and innocence. “If you don’t think so, then you’re wrong and I won’t forgive you. We won’t mourn for your stupid prince. It means more to us to have Sanji alive and happy and himself than it means for you to have him cold and dead and someone else. If that’s selfish, then fine. I’ll be selfish for him.”
“But he is one of us,” she moans. “He should give his life for him, like he is supposed to. There is never going to be another, there is never going to be another,” she sobs and she knows it to be true.
“No,” says Luffy. And when Luffy says, “We’re taking him back now. You’re done,” she knows that she has lost.
+++
It’s dawn and he’s made it to the fringe of the woods, where the snow-covered ground slopes gently down to the water’s edge. From here to the shore, it is wide, open space, bright with reflected sunshine; no trees, no cover, no man’s land. Here in the shadow between mountains he feels safer, but Sunny is waiting offshore, white sails furled and silent. The sight of her makes him ache, and he can’t bring himself to look away, lest she disappears the next time he blinks.
He’s not a coward, but right now, he is scared shitless, shoulders hunched against the wind, hands fisted in his pockets for warmth. He is shivering, teeth clacking together, and he knows it’s not just from the cold. He had painfully scrubbed the ink from his face and hands with fistfuls of snow, but still, he can’t imagine how pathetic he must look: dark circles under his eyes, chapped lips, nose full of snot, and an expression on his face that’s probably one of strung-out, full-throttle panic. Fuck, he’s a regular prince charming on ice.
The snapping of twigs underfoot alerts him to Grimnir’s presence behind him, and he curses himself for jumping at the sound, swallows his heart down from where it had leapt into his throat. The wind is mercifully cut off when Grimnir moves to stand next to him, but there is no time to be even grudgingly grateful, because Grimnir suddenly says, “My boy, you look like death.”
He wants to snarl at him, huddled up against the rough bark of a tree trunk in a flimsy suit jacket, face turned away like a kid who just got shoved into the wall by a playground bully. He’s hungry and exhausted and mad with insecurity. He doesn’t even have another cigarette to suck on, so he keeps his head down, blinking hard and fast, and he feels Grimnir watching him. A familiar surge in his veins, a rushing in his ears; he knows exactly what’s coming before it reaches critical.
It does reach critical, and he’s amazed that his body still has the energy to wound itself up so tight, after everything he’s been through these past few hours, days.
And there it is, unbidden, an image of himself that has dogged him relentlessly all these years, a picture-reflection of a boy defined by the sharpness of his cheekbones, the jutting singularity of each of his ribs, the mountain-ridge of his spine down his narrow back. A boy with hollow eyes and hollow cheeks and a hollow, hollow belly.
A boy of bones and bones, he remembers them so vividly, remembers the nightmare of his own small hands raised to his face in horrified wonder, and the impossible marvel of these ligaments holding together a skeletal frame hunched under the weight of a dream larger than a body could ever grow to bear. He is on his knees again on the barren ground, wretched earth, and there is an old, defeated voice asking, again, “How many are waiting just like us in this wide sea?” A voice that does not expect an answering call, the sad timbre of it reverberating in his young, trembling soul. Will he sound like that? Does he already, after all this time stranded? He can imagine a loneliness and hopelessness so deep that you would speak and expect nothing but silence in response, and the terror of it chokes him.
It is a fear that has incubated itself inside him all those years ago and it’s still in his cells, in his marrow. This specter of self that has not been fully exorcised, lurking in the corners of his vision when he has been thinking for too long, has been staring at the water for too long, when the air is dead and the sun is scorching and the ship does not move an inch.
And today, in this land of ice, without his nakama, he is visited again. Today, Grimnir towers over him and says in a voice that could bury him, “My boy,” and again, he feels so small and so cold and so very hungry, for food and for more than that.
And today, now, he has to remind himself to breathe, again, again, breathe so that you do not break, and don’t forget, Sanji, don’t forget where you are now, rescued from death, from your own toxic guilt, from loneliness. Do you remember the defiant hope that refused to die in the cruel cage of your ribs, how it thrashed so desperately between your lungs, how it fed you when there was nothing else. It is still there. Don’t lose it; there will be nothing of you left if it dies.
And do you remember the ships, Sanji? Don’t forget. The first laid to rest in pieces at the bottom of the ocean, the second sailed by in the rain and you wept with such honest despair, the third that seemed to come a lifetime too late to rescue you from the cruelty of your own body, the fourth that was worth more than your meager life, the fifth burning bright at sea-and the sixth you left behind, burying your dreams between wooden planks, love and farewell.
Don’t forget the ships that carried you, and don’t forget what you carry within yourself, this heaviness you know is hope, desperate and intense.
His cheeks have filled out, the proof is in the mirror every morning, and he has grown, look, he has grown so tall, his bones insulated by muscle, by fire, by ambition. His hands, when he raises them to his face, are bigger, stronger, quick and clever.
And the defiant, insidious hope he had to fight down after his rescue is still there, and it has diffused through the rest of him, this once stunted, repressed thing now allowed to stretch and to grow into something called confidence, to pull at the corners of his mouth, to accompany his every stride, and it fits him perfectly, like a finely tailored suit. He has finally learned to recognize hope for what it is, sitting heavy in his chest, something he tried so earnestly to ignore on the Baratie because it gave him something he felt he would never deserve. But now he knows better, and now he can accept it as strength because now he is free to answer yes. To his own prayers, he himself can answer yes.
Yes and yes and yes. Zoro was right that time (and is always right when it counts), when he had declared so brazenly that he did not need a god. Zoro was right, Sanji understands. Don’t forget the ships, and don’t forget yourself. It’s his nakama he believes in now, and in himself, instead of in the stretch of a flatline horizon.
So to Grimnir, he finally says, “No,” and he says, “You don’t know anything,” you don’t know how far these bones have carried and must still carry me, and you know nothing of ships, you have been landed for so long that you have forgotten the greeting of sails on the horizon beyond your mountains. The sea is not your home, but it is mine, and I know now that I can always go home.
So, “Shut your mouth, old man,” he says, pushing himself to stand on his own two feet. “I’m going now.”
“Stubborn child,” Grimnir grumbles, but he is smiling.
And Grimnir sees, this boy looks nothing like the son he once had, this boy who is rail-thin and sharp all over, but in his proud angles there is the same acute tenacity, and there is a vastness in his smile, in his stride, and in the sweep of his hands that is impossible to measure, impossible to express in any tongue.
His son was meant for tragedy, and since then he has stretched out his own years in order to find a way to reverse that, like he had set out from home to do, all those centuries ago. But he finds that he hasn’t visited his grave in recent years, and when he wakes every morning, he wakes expecting the familiar burn of grief in his chest, but it’s not there anymore, or it’s not the same. It had scared him, that first morning, sitting in the patch of early sunlight coming in through the window, listening to the rare notes of birdsong in the air, when he realized that for the first time he felt something like acceptance.
He would bring him back if he could, of course. He would in half a heartbeat. What father wouldn’t? But he has grown old waiting, and waiting, and since meeting this boy and his cohort of misfits, his crew of singers and dreamers and their feverish optimism, he realizes that perhaps the price is too steep, even for a prince, for how could his son rise again, with a burden like that on his bones.
His son was meant for tragedy, long ago, but perhaps it was meant to be that way. And perhaps this boy is different.
+++
There’s someone waiting for him at the docks, awash in the early morning light, and Sanji sees right away that it’s Zoro because Zoro’s head is the greenest thing for miles around. And it’s good that it’s Zoro, because while he’s not the first Strawhat that Sanji would have liked to see, if it were anyone else waiting for him, he might have let his courage die and started running in the opposite direction. But he won’t give Zoro the satisfaction of seeing him flee like a spooked cat. Never. With Zoro, he’s always got bravado to spare. He has a feeling that Zoro knows this as well.
It feels like a lifetime before he is finally standing there on the swollen wood of the docks, looking down at Zoro who looks up at him like Sanji had only been gone on a shopping trip all this time.
“Took your sweet time, beanpole.”
And Sanji can do nothing but throw his pack at Zoro’s head and hop down next to him on the frozen water. He loses his footing and it’s Zoro who catches him before he can fall face first on the ice. I must be tired, he thinks absently.
Then he registers Zoro’s hand clasping his arm and his own hand clasping back, vise-like. They are standing two strides apart, arms locked between them like a bridge.
“What’d you call me?” he whispers hoarsely, belatedly, looking Zoro in the eye even though it almost hurts to do so.
“Beanpole.” Zoro’s grin is brazen and bold, no hesitation. “Problem?”
Sanji stays stock-still, realizes that he can’t make himself release Zoro’s arm, his grip tight and unyielding like rigor mortis, and what’s more, what’s baffling, is that Zoro is holding on as well, just as firm.
He clears his throat. “No one’s called me that since I left the Baratie.” Since I’ve grown, he means to say.
But Zoro reads his mind, in the way that Zoro always does in the midst of battle or in toppling silences such as these, and Zoro scoffs at him. “You’re still a scrawny kid. Don’t get ahead of yourself.”
He considers this for a moment, considers the things that Zoro says with such characteristically calm disregard that Sanji can’t help but take him seriously. He swallows, straightens his spine, does not break eye contact. He forces his tongue to work. “You too.” He pauses, and he adds, for propriety’s sake, “I can still kick your ass, Roronoa.”
Zoro barks in laughter, and says, “Invest in some gloves first,” which means welcome back, jackass, and Sanji appreciates that, and Sanji appreciates-more than he can ever admit in a hundred thousand years-the fact that Zoro only lets go of his arm after Sanji lets go of his.
They start to walk back to the Sunny, their footsteps careful lest they break the ice that is still healing from their seaside skirmish, which seems so long ago. And Zoro says casually, “Kept my promise, didn’t I.”
Sanji knows what he means and he grins so hard his face hurts. “Don’t act as if you dug me up and carried me all the way back here, asshole.”
Zoro shrugs and they walk over the water in grudgingly companionable silence, Zoro carrying Sanji’s pack and Sanji letting him. “I had a promise to keep too,” Sanji admits, kicking at a pebble and watching it skitter over the ice.
“To whom?”
“Myself, I guess.”
“And?”
“I tried.”
“You did well.”
Sanji laughs.
The Sunny is getting closer and she is much, much bigger than Sanji remembers. She towers over them, the smooth wood of her hull impossible to scale and unyielding. Sanji tries to remember how to breathe as they climb the rope ladder and make their way up to the achingly familiar deck. Zoro helps him over the railing, just this once.
“They’re all waiting in the kitchen,” Zoro tells him, and Sanji fills in the rest-for me, for me, for you to bring me back. He can’t make himself move or speak.
Zoro must have seen all the color drain from his face, because he rolls his eyes and throws Sanji’s pack back at him. He cups his hands around his mouth, then, and he shouts at the top of his lungs, “Oi! The stupid eyebrow is back!”
Sanji begins to sputter in protest, but the slant of Zoro’s smile is benign, and he can only manage a shocked gasp before he is barreled over by a blur of limbs and antlers, voices screeching in his ear and calling him an idiot, an idiot, the stupidest idiot.
“I know,” he says, laughing or crying, he’s not quite sure. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I know.”
And he does know, now.
+++
“You didn’t really believe in any of it, did you, Sanji-kun?”
“Nami-san,” he laughs, putting up his hands, half-shrugging. “I’ll believe in anything,” and he will, in myths and stories and legends, in himself and his nakama, in All Blue, he has to.
But Nami is glaring at him. “I won’t,” she snaps, voice laced with white-hot ferocity, hands on her hips. “I don’t. Not in anything that can tear this crew apart.”
Not for the first time, and definitely not for the last, Sanji feels as if he could kiss her.
“Because nothing like that exists,” she says, with an air of restrained hostility. “Not in this world or the next. Got it?”
And he has to agree, in the face of her intensity, her confidence, her conviction, he has to agree, and gladly. “Got it, Nami-san!”
+++
“I’m s-”
“Oho, don’t think you’re getting off the hook that easily, Sanji-kun!”
“Tch, opportunist.”
“Nah, I just know how to make the most of things.”
“All right, all right, what do you want.”
“Hmm. I’m off dish-duty for a month. No, two months!”
“Fine.”
“And you take my next five night watches.”
“Anything else, o benevolent one?”
“You can never again force me to eat mushroom barley soup as a punishment.”
“But it’s good for y-”
“Never!”
“Argh, fine!”
“Actually, I want off dish-duty for three-”
“Do you want to die?”
“Ah-the noble and magnanimous Usopp forgives you from the bottom of his heart, Sanji-kun!”
“Thank you.”
“And… I did mean everything I said to you back there.”
“I know.”
“You really are-”
“All right, all right! You’re embarrassing me, fuck.” He scowls. “You too, okay? Don’t forget it.”
Usopp grins at him. “I won’t. Oh, and here.” Usopp hands him three cartons of cigarettes, neatly bound by a length of twine. Sanji can recognize his own knot anywhere. He takes them and pretends to be engrossed in examining the King Ground logo, like he hasn’t already memorized every detail of it when he was ten. Usopp slings an arm around his shoulders; the sudden weight almost makes his knees buckle. “Don’t smoke them all at once now, you hear?”
He shoves Usopp off him and snaps, “Mind your own business, Longnose.” But he grins back.
+++
“You didn’t catch a cold or anything, did you, Sanji?”
“No, I never get sick.”
“That’s because you’re a monster!”
“Then that makes you the only doctor in the world who can take care of monsters.”
“H-How dare you, you asshole! As if I want to hear such off-hand compliments from you! You bastard! I hate you! Wait, no, I don’t, I missed you so much, Sanji! You idiot!”
“I’m sorry.”
“I hate you! No! Wait! I didn’t-”
“I got it, I got it. I missed you, too.”
“Eh?! Saying things like that doesn’t make me happy at all!”
“Chopper, would you like some hot chocolate?”
“Don’t try to buy my love, asshole! It won’t work!”
“Chopper.”
“Yes, please.”
+++
“I wrote another ballad for you.”
“Another one?”
“You try and tell me my ballads are not unbelievably intense. After hearing such a super sad story about the dead dude, I had to channel all my emotional energies into composing this totally beautiful and heart-wrenching song about your chivalry and manly virtues-”
“My what.”
“-and now people all across the Grand Line will sing this song forever in your honor. I have immortalized you, curly-bro. You’re welcome.”
“That really wasn’t necessary.”
“So modest. Don’t worry about it. Just close your eyes and let the music wash over you.”
“… Later, okay? Just… later. But thanks.”
+++
“Sanji-san! I am simply tickled pink to have you back with us! Ah, even though my cheeks are far from rosy-yohohoho!”
“Thanks, Brook. Can always count on you for a laugh.”
“Indeed! There is no shortage to my repertoire of skull jokes! Would you like to hear another?”
“I’m good. But can I ask you something? Do you know anything about a tree?”
“A tree, Sanji-san?”
“I don’t know if I was just hallucinating, or if I was really there, wherever ‘there’ was, but I think-I think it was a place after life. Not death, exactly, just somewhere you go when you’re not here anymore. And there was a tree. A huge one, and I mean huge, with thick black roots and branches that went up forever. It felt… it felt like it encompassed everything. Like All Blue would feel. I thought you might know something about it.”
Brook is silent as he thinks. “I don’t recall a tree like the one you describe, but even as a soul, my wanderings were always in this world. I can’t say I remember much about dying or death, and I don’t know anything about staying dead. I only remember it was bright for a moment, before my soul was called back to the living world.”
“Yeah, it was bright there too. And warm.”
“It sounds like a very pleasant place indeed!”
“I guess. Just being there made me think that All Blue must exist after all, there has to be an ocean out there to match this tree.”
“There must be. You’ll find it, Sanji-san.”
“Yeah. Thanks, Brook.”
+++
“Welcome back, Sanji.”
“Ah, Robin-chwan, to be able to return to your loving embrace is truly the greatest joy a man can ever know!”
“Haha, I’m glad you feel that way. And I hope we’ll be able to talk in the future about the cognitive dissonance that can arise from one’s personal history. I left West Blue when I was very young, and I know it can be confusing sometimes to have your roots in one place yet have your self shaped by another, or by a sea that is itself always changing. But in the end, you must remember that home is wherever you most want to be.”
“Robin-chan, I fear I could never be as poetic as you.”
Robin smiles. “You are. You would not be on this ship otherwise. And I am glad I found a home with all of you.”
“You know you’re always welcome here with me, Robin-chwan!”
“If you’d like, though, I’d be more than happy to teach you the lost histories of North Blue and even its language. One of the islanders was kind enough to give me several tomes from their library as a parting present.”
“That-that would be really cool.”
“We can start our lessons at your earliest convenience. Hm, it seems you have some blue ink on you.”
“Eh? Oh, it’s actually all over me. They’re ritualistic runes. I guess they were supposed to help with the evocation, or transfer, or something.”
“How fascinating. Will you let me have a closer look?”
“I-I-you want to-m-mellorine...”
“Sanji! What’s with that nosebleed! Someone, get a doctor!”
“I believe that would be you.”
“Ah! It’s me!”
“Please do see to him.”
“Y-Yes! Out of my way, I’m a doctor! Usopp, hold my hot chocolate!”
+++
And to Luffy, who is the only one left on deck after the bone-crushing, head-knocking, sob-fest, nosebleed of a reunion, he can only say, “Hey.”
Luffy takes his eyes off the horizon to look at him. In Sanji’s outstretched hand is the battered straw hat of his messiah of a captain, an entity all its own, one that saved him and brought him back because he needed to come back. Luffy takes it and places it firmly back on his head, where it belongs, and seeing it feels like homecoming.
“Hey,” the boy beams, brighter than anything Sanji’s ever known in his forgotten North Blue, in the East Blue that’s adopted him, in the Grand Line, even in his shimmering All Blue dreams. “I knew I could trust you to bring it back,” says Luffy. “Are you done being silly now?”
“Yeah, I’m done,” Sanji answers awkwardly, doesn’t know where to look. He coughs, nervously.
“Good! Because I’m hungry and I want meat. Like, a lot of it. All of it. You were gone for such a long time, so you’ll have to make it up to me now, because I’m the captain and those are the rules that I just made up. Hm!” The wind picks up, and Sunny’s sails snap to full. Luffy holds a hand to his head to keep his hat from blowing away. From another part of the ship, he can hear Franky singing.
They’re on their way at last. Sanji realizes, suddenly, that he’s been holding his breath. He lets go, finally, exhales smoke and relief and warmth, shaky smile that is worth everything, don’t you know.
And he promises, “I got it, captain.”
“We didn’t cry for that prince guy, you know. Well, Franky did, a little, but the rest of us didn’t. We didn’t want him to come back. He had to stay gone because we wanted you.” Luffy puts a hand on his shoulder, and says, “So welcome back, Sanji.”
He almost wants to laugh. Everything makes sense, when Luffy puts it so simply.
“You mean that,” he tries to tease, tries to be cool, but his voice is small and hoarse.
“Yeah.” Luffy cocks his head and grins like it’s the easiest thing in the world. “Of course!”
“In that case.” He clears his throat. He smiles then, earnest, teeth and gums and all, and he says, “I’m back, shithead. Take care of me, won’t you?”
Luffy brings his hand up and Sanji clasps it tight, Luffy pulling them together until their shoulders collide. And then Luffy hugs him, arms wrapped around him secure as Sunny’s hold, and it’s fine this way, isn’t it, he tells himself, everything he deserves and more, the brush of Luffy’s straw hat against his cheek, and Luffy’s arms and Luffy’s smile, and the sea, open and blue, and their dreams, bright and all their own. Yes. It’s fine this way. His knees are week. He still feels the cold deep in his lungs. His hands are trembling. There is a feast to prepare. And he’s happy.
The story of Baldr, the wisest and fairest, husband of Nanna, beloved son of the goddess Frigg and Odin the Allfather, goes like this: after his death at the hands of Loki the Trickster (and, inadvertently, his blind brother Hodur)-a death that was dreamt by Baldr and foretold to Odin-Hel promised to release Baldr from the underworld only if all the objects in the world, if everyone living and dead, mourned and wept for him-earnestly, sincerely, fiercely. And all did except for one, the giantess Thokk, who refused to shed a single tear, who had no love for Baldr though he was loved by all. It was revealed that she was the Trickster in disguise, and because of her refusal, Baldr must remain among the dead until after Ragnarok and the end of the world.
This is a fic about someone more beloved than Baldr, and about trickster gods and goddesses who know exactly what and whom they want.
So. I will forever be hung up on the fact that Sanji is from North Blue. And North Blue = Scandinavia to me, so there are a lot of bits and pieces Norse mythology in this. And I think, also, Sanji is a story collector, like Usopp is a storyteller, and that's sweet. I wanted him to love stories, because I love stories too.
I’m sorry this was so obnoxiously long. This was originally meant for the One Piece Big Bang last year (I had signed up for the “small bang” which is 10k words-whoops), but then RL got even more R, and I had to put it aside for a long time. I finally dusted it off again a few months ago because it had been tapping on the inside of my skull for so long, and it got to the point where it wouldn’t even let me think of writing anything else before I finished it.
This was a strange and difficult one to write, for too many reasons, but I tried to be as honest with it as I could. It’s important to me. That sounds silly and embarrassing to say (you write dumb fic, self, come on), but I really, truly mean it. And I gave myself until this auspicious day to finish it because it didn’t feel right to hold onto it longer than this (even though, I’m almost afraid to let it go).
So! HAPPY BIRTHDAY SANJI YOU DARLING BOY. Forgive me.
… Now to (finally) get started on those birthday fics I promised. Yosh. *rolls up sleeves*
(Concrit always welcome! ♥)
edit: went back and edited to make something hopefully more clear. thank you captainkai!
if anything else in this huge monstrosity is unclear/confusing, please hit me up and let me know!