Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It's amazing how quickly a situation can turn from bad to disastrous.

If Zoro had to pinpoint the exact moment the battle got out of hand, he wouldn't be able to choose between Usopp throwing a smoke bomb upwind of the group, or when he lost sight of Sanji. Probably the first one, because it directly caused the second.

He thought the job was supposed to be simple. Protect a small village from the bandits that kept ransacking their homes. But the area was marshy, tall cattails and reeds hiding mud and ankle deep water. It was already difficult to navigate the terrain before the battle started, but once it really got going the crew realized they were at a disadvantage. 

The wind felt gentle enough that Usopp didn't think before tossing a bomb, yet it blew the smoke at them too quickly for them to do anything but stay put and wait for it to pass, enemies and allies alike hidden in the dense fog it created.

Normally losing track of where the cook was during a fight wasn't a big deal, Zoro trusted Sanji to hold his own. But seconds after the smoke blew in, he heard a strangled shout in the direction of where he last saw him, only a few feet away.

“Cook?” He called, something like anxiety taking root in his stomach. The silence that answered him was off putting somehow, wrong.

When the smoke cleared, Zoro wasn't quite sure what he was looking at. Or who.

In Sanji's place stood a child, short and rail thin, his fluffy blonde hair glaringly obvious among the brown cattails. He wore strange clothes, and his single visible eyebrow was curled at the end.

The boy was staring at the bandit Zoro had just run through with his swords.

“Cook?” Zoro asked around the hilt of Wado, flicking the blood off his blades before he sheathed them.

A wide blue eye met his, stricken with fear and confusion, then looked back at the dead man. The boy turned and ran.

In the corner of his vision, Zoro saw a bandit in a strange bowler hat running away too, but in the opposite direction. The man held no visible weapon, and was pushing other bandits out of the way.

“Devil fruit!” He yelled, pointing to the rat bastard who must've used his powers on Sanji. A few dozen arms sprouted out of the marsh at his warning, very efficiently capturing the man before he could get too far.

With that handled, Zoro tore off after the child, cutting down anything in his way.

Little Sanji was quick. He sprinted further into the wetlands like dogs were nipping at his heels, but what he had in speed he lacked in agility. 

The mud grabbed at his shoes, jerking him to sudden stops frequently enough that Zoro had no problem catching up to him. It was disconcerting to be chasing after a clearly frightened child, but the other option of just letting him get lost in the weeds was unthinkable, because Nami would kill him.

Sanji glanced over his shoulder and tripped at the same time, landing on his hands and knees in thick, unforgiving mud. 

After a moment of futile struggling, he started to cry. Not quietly, either. Uncomfortably loud, gasping sobs that shook his entire body and triggered a terrible ache in Zoro's chest as he watched. 

He put Wado away and grabbed the kid around his middle. The second he touched him, Sanji screamed and started babbling in a foreign language, eyes wild with panic. Trying to ignore how truly scared the cook was, or how defined his ribs were on his already thin body, Zoro yanked him up out of the mud.

He immediately started thrashing around, making it rather difficult for Zoro to carry him over to a solid bit of ground. He sighed impatiently, mostly out of habit, but the kid went stiff at the sound. Not another noise or movement was made until Zoro dropped him unceremoniously onto the dirt. 

Landing on his ass at Zoro's feet, he stared up at him with wide blue eyes, tears running down his face. Sanji's breath quickly picked up again. His frame shook with the force of his gasps, muddy fingers digging into the earth.

What the fuck was Zoro supposed to do now? He had no idea how to change Sanji back, no idea if this mess was permanent, and no idea how to take care of a child.

But panic was useless, so first things first. “Can you understand me?”

Sanji nodded, still wheezing too quickly. So he knew two languages this young? Wait, how old was he? He didn't look nearly as old as Kuina had been, too tiny and baby faced to be a day over nine. Maybe even younger.

“Then calm down. I'm not gonna kill you.” Zoro wiped the mud off his hands and squatted down. 

Instead of reassuring Sanji, it seemed to have the opposite effect. He started hyperventilating, eyes blank and unseeing. 

Zoro knew what was happening, he'd seen Usopp do the exact same thing when he got too scared or stressed. A panic attack. A child was having a panic attack because he thought Zoro was going to hurt him. The revelation left a sour taste in Zoro's mouth, and he wondered if he should've had one of the more friendly looking crew members handle this. Too late for that, he supposed. 

“You'll make yourself throw up if you keep breathing like that.” He offered his hand for the kid to grab, not expecting Sanji to latch onto it immediately. It was endearing, and also concerning. “Relax, cook. You're safe with me.”

“Cook?” He hiccupped pitifully. 

Shit. The devil fruit obviously took Sanji's memories along with his real age, which meant that Zoro had no rapport with the kid sitting in front of him. He couldn't be too familiar with him or he'd scare him off.

“What's your name?”

Slowly calming down, he took great heaving gasps of breath that shook his whole body, obviously trying to pull himself together. It was a few moments before he let go of Zoro's hand. “It's Sanji, sir.”

Zoro couldn't tell if his voice was still thick with tears or if his accent was just that strong. Either way, Little Sanji spoke so softly and carefully compared to his adult self.

“Just call me Zoro. None of that sir bullshit.” Standing up, he looked around and groaned. Where the fuck were they? “Can you walk?”

Sanji nodded and scrambled up, occasionally still hiccupping and sniffing from how hard he had been crying. When Zoro motioned for him to follow he did so without complaint, closely at first, but soon started lagging behind. He was just too small to traverse the marsh as easily as Zoro did.

From behind him Zoro heard a wet thump, and he turned to find that Sanji had fallen again.

“I'm sorry. I'm sorry, sir- I mean Zoro!” Sanji choked out, struggling to free himself from the muck. He managed to get back on his feet before Zoro reached him, but he was trembling something awful.

“How old are you?” Zoro asked, trying to be as non threatening as possible. It didn't seem to work.

“Eight.” He whispered.

The way he was now, Sanji was unrecognizable as the headstrong cook that Zoro knew. He looked, for lack of a better word, pathetic. Covered in mud and shaking at the slightest mistake, so little a strong gust of wind could probably take him down.

“Eight years old and you don't know how to ask for help?” 

Sanji squeezed his eyes shut when Zoro reached for him, only to open them wide and yelp when he was lifted into the air. “What are you- I can walk!”

“It's just until we get to a road, curly.”

He settled down eventually, though Zoro didn't know if that was a good or a bad thing. The feeling of tiny, trembling fingers clutching at his shirt made him irrationally angry, and he didn't understand why.

When Zoro was eight he was a little terror, a scourge upon his village. Intense, loud, opinionated. But Sanji was so subdued. It wasn't right.

Finding the road took all afternoon, and they walked a good few miles down it before coming across anyone. An old woman driving a horse drawn cart came up behind them. She looked at Zoro suspiciously, not noticing how Sanji had carefully moved behind him to hide.

“Know the way to town?” He asked gruffly, too tired to be polite.

“Back the way you came, though it's a long ways off.”

A small hand slipped into his, and he unthinkingly tightened his grip. Glancing down, he saw Sanji peeking out from behind him.  

“How much further?” Sanji asked him quietly, trying not to draw attention to himself. 

“Oh, poor thing. You're all a mess!” The old woman gasped, her expression visibly softening. Then she turned a scathing glare Zoro's way. “Why are you so far out here this late in the day with him, boy? Look at the state of him!”

Perfect. He could use her sympathy, maybe even get a ride out of it. 

“Bandits.” He said, not really lying. Technically the whole reason they were out there was because of bandits, in some form. “We got turned around in the marsh, we're just trying to get back to the village.”

She tutted, squinting at the sun now hanging low in the sky. “You won't make it before dark. Because of the little one I can give you a ride, but not until morning. Come along now, my house is beyond the bend.”

Not one to turn down an opportunity, Zoro thanked her and pulled Sanji towards the back of the cart. He lifted him up onto the ledge and hopped on next to him, ignoring the look of disbelief he got in return.

It wasn't exactly a pleasant ride, but the setting sun painted the sky in vivid oranges and reds, and Sanji seemed to be transfixed by it.

“What, never seen a sunset before?” Zoro taunted, forgetting for a moment that he wasn't talking to the cook he knew.

“Sorry.” Sanji mumbled, picking at his nails. There was dirt smeared across his face. “It's hard to see them from the- What sea is this?”

Zoro wondered briefly if telling him they weren't in East Blue was a good idea, but he wasn't about to lie to the kid. Though he was curious about what he was going to say before that. “Grand line.”

Panic crossed his face for a split second, then bled away to tired blankness. He didn't say anything the rest of the ride.

The woman's name was Carla, and she was expecting Zoro to do his fair share of chores around the cabin for her hospitality. He helped Sanji down and started grabbing sacks of animal feed from the back of the cart, when a little tug on his shirt caught his attention.

“What should I do?” Sanji asked meekly.

“Wait on the porch.” He told him, sure that if he did all the work himself it would get done faster. But Sanji blanched at the dismissal, hands twisting nervously in the hem of his shirt.

“I can be useful, I promise!”

Zoro huffed, though not unkindly, and shifted the feed bags to one arm. He ruffled Sanji's hair and turned back to the task, not bothering to give another answer when he had been clear the first time.

As he worked, he couldn't help noticing the dread on Sanji's face, clearly visible even from the porch. It didn't sit right with him, how timid and afraid this little version of the cook was.

Carla sized him up once he was done, declaring that he should fit her son's clothes, if only just barely. Sanji was older than her grandson, who she spoke of often and highly, but small enough for the clothes she had on hand. Zoro received a nasty look when she came to that conclusion.

He wasn't the reason the kid was so damn skinny, but he kept his mouth shut about that particular detail. It wasn't like he was happy about it either.

“Do you have a first aid kit?”

“Under the sink.” She waved him off, already started on dinner.

After they were both cleaned up, he set about caring for the few scrapes Sanji had gotten while running away. One on the knee, and a few on the palms of his hands.

Sanji sat on the edge of the sink in his clean clothes, hair once again a stark yellow blonde, curling up as it dried. He stared at his knee seriously as Zoro pressed a cotton ball wetted with alcohol to it, brow furrowed.

“You killed that man.” He said matter of factly, bringing up the memory of how the whole mess started.

Zoro grunted, using a bright red bandage to cover the cut. “I did.”

“Why?”

“Battles are bloody.” Not that he expected Sanji to understand the price of war and freedom, but he just couldn't bring himself to lie. Child or not, he was still namaka.

“You're a soldier?” Sanji asked. His accent really was thick, adding a layer to his words that reminded Zoro of how he- the normal Sanji sounded when he was excited or angry.

“I'm a pirate.”

Nothing else was said until after Sanji was all taken care of, and Zoro was cleaning his own wounds. Particularly a nasty but shallow cut across his abdomen. He held the hem of his shirt between his teeth as he closed it over with butterfly stitches.

“You can't be a pirate. But I don't think you're a soldier either.” Sanji said quietly, knees pulled up to his chest where he sat on the floor.

He glanced at the kid for only a moment, dropping his shirt hem as he started cleaning up the mess of wrappers and dirty cotton balls. “Why not?”

“You're too nice.” It was said barely above a whisper, but Zoro heard it all the same. He tried not to think of what sort of experiences would make Sanji so jaded at that age, already expecting the worst from the get go.

Later, after Zoro had finished the dishes used for dinner and Carla had set out blankets for him and Sanji to use on the couch and armchair, he stood in the doorway of the living room and watched the kid silently.

Carla owned a very fat, fluffy white cat that was both spoiled and vocal, and Sanji had beelined for it after he struggled through his dinner. A simple bowl of potato soup shouldn't have been so hard to finish, especially since he looked half starved already.

He barely managed to eat half of it, and Zoro ended up mercifully finishing the rest of his bowl, shooing him off into the living room.

But with all his attention now on the cat, Sanji was actually smiling. He was lavishing the cat with pets, cooing in that language he had spoken before, though now it sounded much happier.

In fact, Zoro recognized some of the words as terms of endearment that Sanji would call the girls, voice dripping honey sweet.

“Ma chérie, tu es si forte. Une grande fille. La plus grande!” Sanji giggled, patting the cat's side like a drum. He was in his own little world, grinning and so bright that he was almost hard to look at.

Zoro approached quietly from behind, reaching over Sanji's shoulder towards the cat. The second Sanji registered his presence, he grabbed Zoro's wrist with both hands, suddenly horribly afraid.

“Please, I'm sorry!” Sanji gasped, staring up at him in terror. “I won't do it again, please don't-”

They locked eyes for a moment, one terrified and one confused, before Zoro gently pushed his hand within the cat's reach. He let the animal sniff him, huffing in amusement when it smushed its head into his palm. Sanji deflated, slowly letting go of his wrist with an uncertainty that burned in Zoro's chest.

“It's not my cat, what do I care if you pet it?” Zoro said, softer than he'd ever talked to the cook before.

He didn't miss how Sanji hadn't moved to protect himself, but the cat. As though just interacting with it put it in danger, simply because it was Sanji giving it attention.

“Does it have a name?” He asked, realizing the kid was stuck in his head.

“Yessir.” Sanji mumbled. He decided not to comment on that. “Her name's Snowball.”

Humming, he gave Snowball a good scratching behind the ear then stood up, waving Sanji off when he tried to follow. “I'm just going to clean up my swords, do what you want.”

Now that his presence was announced, Sanji seemed to be hyper aware of where he was in the room at all times. He kept him in his peripheral vision, never fully turning his back to Zoro at any given moment.

When it was time for bed, he looked sick with the realization that Zoro planned on sleeping in the chair while he took the couch.

“I'm smaller.” He argued, eyes pleading. For what, Zoro didn't know.

“Don't care. You're taking the couch, curly. Good night.”

Despite how his face twisted anxiously, he didn't say anything else about it once Zoro shut him down. He just lay there, too little and quiet, not at all the man Zoro knew.

Oddly enough, it was like he actually missed normal Sanji. At least he knew how to behave around him, not this scared child who made him want to find and kill everyone who ever treated Sanji in such a way to make him act like that. 

“Zoro?” Sanji whispered, fists bunched in the blanket that basically swallowed him up.

“What?”

“Something's wrong, isn't it? With me. I think I'm not how I'm supposed to be.”

He stared at the tiny silhouette on the couch and thought about cigarettes and blue eyes, and how badly he was going to beat the shit out of that devil fruit user. “Yeah, kid.”

“I'm sorry.”

His stomach churned at the feeble but sincere apology. As though Sanji needed to apologize for his very existence. “Nothing to be sorry about. Get some sleep.”