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DEATH APPROACHES.

Sanji had crossed the River Phlegethon for the seventh time and was bleeding rather prolifically from a wound in his side when he heard the tolling of a distant bell. Colossal, unfathomable, completely inaudible to human ears. A herald of the end – a hallmark of the space between worlds – a harbinger of the moment when breath halts and muscles stiffen and mortal heartbeats fall forever silent.

As hellfire burned on the surface of the river around him, Sanji ground to a halt, clapped his hand fruitlessly over his wound, and shouted, “Fuck!”

From somewhere approximately off to his left, Death said, “That’s my line.” And then he added, like an afterthought, “Fuck you. You absolute fucking asshole.”

A soft, miserable sort of groaning sound that would drive a mortal mind mad was beginning to echo around the walls of the cavern, which were stained a bloody red by the flames. Gray whisps – like curls of smoke, if smoke had a vendetta against you and contained the incomprehensible faces of the damned – gathered at the corners of Sanji’s vision. When he chanced a glance down at his abdomen, scarlet blood was seeping up through the spaces between his fingers and beginning to drip onto Asphodel’s rocky soil.

Sanji tapped the toe of his right shoe against the ground, gamely ignoring the hot, nauseating roil of pain that issued up his side in response. Flames immediately licked up his leg, the blue-white of a gas jet in contrast to the Phlegethon’s syrupy crimson.

“Can we do this later?” he asked Death. “I’m kind of in the middle of something, here.”

“Yeah. You’re in the middle of bleeding to death. Again. Like an idiot loser.”

“I’m not bleeding to death,” Sanji bald-faced lied.

Death made a sound that articulated, quite adeptly, that he was considering cutting out the middleman and throttling Sanji himself. “You are unbelievable. Are you seriously arguing about whether you’ve got a fucking mortal wound? With me?”

“When you put it like that,” Sanji said, delicately, “it sounds very stupid.”

“Well, if the shoe fits,” Death said. The shades, baring knife-sharp teeth and taloned hands, began to pour toward them on all sides, gnawing and shrieking, desperately climbing over each other for a chance to sink their teeth into god-flesh. Death clicked his tongue impatiently and snapped, “Oi. Can you guys please get lost? We’re trying to have a damn conversation.”

It would’ve been an uncharacteristically polite request, if he hadn’t accompanied the words with an enormous, sweeping slash of his sword. There was a burst of light, silver-bright, that threw every jagged corner of the cavern into sharp relief for a split second. The shadows of the dead erupted into ash, screeching in a cacophony that was so thoroughly unpleasant Sanji slapped both hands over his ears automatically.

The echoes ceased; the ash settled. Zoro flicked dust off his sword, returned it to its scabbard, and turned to face Sanji.

Sanji immediately wished with a profound desperation that he hadn’t.

“Look,” he began, his voice much smaller than it had been before Zoro turned the full force of his hurt and misery onto him like some kind of evil, wretched, guilt-inducing laser beam. “You know I had to go.”

“Yeah,” Zoro agreed, which sucked. Sanji had kind of been hoping he’d start swearing at him again.

“I couldn’t stay. I – that place was destroying me, Zoro. It was eating me alive. Or, well… as close to alive as we can be, down here.”

“Yeah,” Zoro agreed, again. “I know that, too.”

“Then – why are you here?”

“I’m here because you’re dying,” Zoro said, lifting one shoulder in a shrug. “What, are you pissed at me for doing my job, now?”

“You know what I mean, asshole. Did… did my father send you to stop me? Is that why?”

Zoro’s expression shuttered and then snapped closed entirely. Any trace of emotion, excised neatly like a diseased limb. Sanji had been wrong, before. This was so much worse.

“Is that seriously what you think?” Zoro demanded.

“No,” Sanji whispered, but the damage had already been done.

Zoro looked at Sanji, his single pupil bright and gold as the offering-coins mortals placed in the eye sockets of the dead. His mouth twisted into a bitter scowl, and his hands curled into trembling fists, and he still caught Sanji around the waist when he collapsed onto one knee. The movement was easy, instinctive, like it was what he had been made for. Like he’d been cut out of the cosmos, sewn into the fabric of the universe, so that he could tuck one arm around Sanji’s shoulders and press his other hand flat against the wound on his side.

“Guess it wasn’t worth bothering to say goodbye to me,” Zoro said, and his voice sounded kind of slippery and far away, like Sanji was listening to it from underwater. “No outrunning death, and all that. Figured you’d see me again whether you wanted to or not, is that it?”

“I have to do this,” Sanji said – or tried to say. His vision was becoming alarmingly blurry. He’d thought, when he set out on this insane venture, that he’d eventually become used to dying. It hadn’t happened yet. “I thought you’d understand. I’d – I’d hoped— ”

“I understand,” Zoro told him pitilessly. “Sometimes I think I understand better than you.”

“Zoro,” Sanji said, and then, horribly, he choked on a mouthful of his own blood.

“Shh,” Zoro said, softer. “I’ve got you.” And then: “If you won’t say it, I will. Goodbye, Your Highness. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I hope I never see you again.”

In the moments before Sanji’s vision went black, he felt Zoro’s arms slide beneath his bent knees and around his limp shoulders. There was a brief bloom of warmth against his forehead: the careful, closed-mouth press of lips. Then everything faded, and he felt nothing at all.

Sanji, third prince of the Underworld, god of nothing in particular, died in the arms of his oldest – his only – friend.

A few moments later, he woke up.

When Sanji dragged himself out of the River Styx, he had the dubious honor of being personally greeted by the crown princess of the Underworld. Reiju gave him a vaguely pitying look as he crawled onto the glacial, tiled floor of the House, soaked through to the skin with the briny, red-tinged waters of the river.

“Again, Sanji?” she asked, in a tone that was likely intended to be gentle commiseration but mostly just made Sanji want to tear his own hair out. In the vaulted, stone-walled cavern where the River Styx fed into the House of the Dead, her voice left behind a shadow, Sanji’s name echoing around the room several times before fading into silence.

“Yeah, well, you try to fight your way out through the myriad horrors of the Underworld,” he snapped. And then, very pathetically, he added: “It sucks.”

Using an elbow to leverage himself up to a seated position, he drew his other hand experimentally over the now-unblemished skin of his torso. Each of the times this had happened so far, it had taken him a little while to reacquaint himself with his body, which was suddenly and jarringly absent of whatever injuries he had been carrying before the moment of his death. He took a tentative breath, and a ferocious shudder raked through his entire body in response.

“Father’s realm is inescapable. Definitionally, you cannot escape it. That’s sort of the whole point,” Reiju said. Her tone was cloyingly patient, like Sanji was a little kid again, asking why they were never allowed to leave the House or why they’d never seen the sun.

“Watch me,” Sanji said, which would probably have been much more impressive if he hadn’t been trying and failing to stand up straight when he said it.

“At least get some rest before you go out there again,” Reiju suggested, curling her hand around his elbow to steady him.

“I can’t do that. If I hesitate now—”

“You’re running yourself ragged. You look terrible, little brother.”

“Dying repeatedly will do that to you,” Sanji said.

The phantom of Zoro’s touch – his arms around his shoulders, his lips against his browbone – abruptly plowed into him with the force of a thousand furious revenants from the pits of Tartarus. The look on Zoro’s face, lonely and furious and heartbroken and resigned. The sound of Zoro’s voice, telling him, I hope I never see you again.

“Oh, dear. You look like you’re about to throw up,” Reiju informed him, not sounding particularly alarmed by this.

“What am I doing? I’m ruining everything,” Sanji whispered, more to himself than to Reiju.

“Sanji,” Reiju said, sharply. She used her grip on her elbow to pull him to a stop, swinging him around to face her. “You told me you were resolved.”

“I am resolved,” he said.

“Your feelings for Koshiro’s brat—"

“I am resolved, Reiju,” he said, only it came out of his mouth much closer to shouting. Reiju gently squeezed his elbow, just looking at him, and he deflated. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to – I know you’re risking a lot to help me. Just… don’t talk to me about Zoro. Please.”

“He tethers you here,” she told him, not unkindly. “He’s a Chthonic god – he’s even more deeply rooted in the Underworld than we are. Father was assigned to the House; he was forged here. We’re transplants, but his creator has been down here since before time existed. If we’re a skin graft, he’s a lung.”

“He’s not an organ. He’s my friend.”

Reiju reached out to gently smooth Sanji’s hair away from his face. With sympathy coloring her expression, she said, “I sometimes wonder if Father knew what he was doing, assigning him to guard you, back when you were both still young. Like, maybe he gave you something that could never leave this place because he knew you already had one foot out the door. That god is an anchor, Sanji. If you truly want to leave, you have to let him go.”

“Ask anything of me,” Sanji said. “Anything, and I will try to give it to you. Anything other than that.”

“He brought you back here, you know. Delivered you to the mouth of the Styx personally. Did he kill you out there? Did Father ask him to?”

“No,” Sanji said, “and also, if you’re intentionally trying to upset me, it’s working.”

Reiju threw her hands into the air, a gesture of mingled frustration and surrender. “I’m not trying to upset you, I’m trying to help you, little brother.”

Sanji reached out and took her hand. “You’ve already helped more than I ever had the right to expect of you. There’s nothing left you can do for me, now. I have to walk the rest of the path myself.”

“Did you make it out of Tartarus again?” she asked.

“Yes. I made it halfway through Asphodel this time.”

“That’s pretty incredible, Sanji. You’ve already defeated our brothers seven times,” she said, politely refraining from adding, which is seven times more than I was expecting. “But you know things are only going to get harder from here. Escaping Tartarus is one thing, but the Bone Hydra blocks the path to the Lethe – and, once you’re in Elysium, the Champion—”

“I know, but I’m getting better every time, too. Stronger. Way faster than I ever was before. I’m going to make it out, I know it.”

Reiju nodded. “I hope you’re right. I’ll go and keep Father’s gaze averted for a while. There’s some administrative House business that needs to be taken care of. Maybe I can buy you enough time to beat the Hydra without drawing his attention.”

“Thank you,” Sanji told her, with feeling.

Reiju made a dismissive sound. “Don’t thank me, little brother. I remain unconvinced that this isn’t a fool’s errand.”

If the shoe fits, Zoro’s voice said, from somewhere at the back of Sanji’s skull.

“Go now, Sanji,” Reiju told him.

Sanji nodded and lurched forward to hug her tightly for the space of a single second. She stood there stiffly, allowing the embrace but not quite returning it, the way she always had. Then he released his sister and headed straight for the doors of his father’s undying House, passing from the realm of the gods and into the land of the dead.

This attempt, Sanji made it a few chambers into the infernal labyrinth of Tartarus before he stepped into a quiet room bathed in an unnatural golden light. There was a distant hum in the air, then a high, liquid clatter like coins spilling out from a palm, and then, suddenly, Sanji was not the only one in the chamber anymore.

“Goddess,” Sanji said, dropping into a low bow. “It is an honor to be graced with your presence.”

“Cut that out,” the projection of the goddess Nami told him, sounding deeply unimpressed. “Groveling is inane when you’re a god yourself, and I have it on good authority that you don’t simper over Luffy like that.” As always, her image was remarkably clear and vivid; the first time she had appeared, during his initial escape attempt, Sanji had spent a split-second half-certain she’d descended to the Underworld to help him in person.

“Luffy is but a pale shadow of your divine, glorious luminosity.”

“Ha! You’re lucky that guy doesn’t have a trace of the obsessive self-reverence some of the rest of us do. He’s an oddball, but he is king of the gods, Sanji-kun. Most people would genuflect to him, not me.”

“An oddball is right,” Sanji muttered, straightening up to look the illusory Nami in the eyes. “It’s really good to see you again, Nami-san. Thank you for helping me.”

“Yeah, well. It was getting pretty boring topside, and I owed Reiju a favor. Just keeping up my end of the bargain, that’s all,” she said, lifting one bronze shoulder into a shrug. Her kimono was beautifully-crafted, shimmering in the semi-darkness like it was formed from liquid gold. The kanzashi in her hair glittered, crowed with flowers that looked as though they’d been shaped out of unblemished emeralds.

Nami, like the rest of the pantheon, shone with an inward glow that none of the underworld denizens really possessed. Sanji and his siblings were noticeably immortal, of course, with the unsettlingly symmetrical features and the unageing youth of the gods, but they lacked the magnetic radiance and sun-kissed shimmer to their skin that their counterparts had, above the earth. Sometimes, Sanji wondered whether he would start to look like that if he ever managed to escape and feel the light of the sun on his skin. It was probably a childish flight of fancy, but he sort of thought it might suit him.

“I give you the gift of affluence. May the Underworld’s wealth come to you in a windfall,” said Nami, tapping a fingertip to the center of Sanji’s forehead. Even though she wasn’t physically with him, Sanji still felt the ghost of the touch, just the barest hint of pressure. It was the exact spot where, just a short while ago, Zoro had placed a kiss. Nami raised an eyebrow. “My, my. You’re blushing more than normal, Sanji-kun. Are you sick?”

“I’m perfectly fine, my darling,” Sanji assured her. “Only astonished by your beauty and generosity, as always.”

“You’re a sweet-talker, Sanji-kun. But that won’t save you when you face the Champion of Elysium.”

“Any chance you feel like giving me a hint about who that actually is?”

Nami grinned. It wasn’t a particularly nice expression, and made her eyeteeth look briefly but terrifyingly sharp. “Nope. I like you and I want you to escape – but honestly, I think it’ll be more fun to keep this a surprise. Besides, when you finally face the Champion, we’ve got something of a bet going on the outcome, up here. Wouldn’t want to accidentally spoil my chances of winning.”

“Great,” Sanji said, glumly.

“Chin up, little godling. We bet on everybody. Just means we already see you as part of the family. See you on the other side, okay?”

There was a flare of gold-tinged light, and then Nami was gone, and Sanji was alone again. Even in her absence, though, a hint of her blessing remained, hovering above his hands. The slightest ripple in the air around him, like he was looking at his body through clear water.

“See you on the other side,” Sanji replied to the empty room, wishing more than anything that it could be that easy.

Yonji was waiting for him in the massive final chamber standing between Tartarus and the fire-soaked banks of the Phlegethon. His brothers had been taking turns attempting to stop him – and had succeeded rather spectacularly the first few times, before Sanji had gotten a handle on his strategy for each of them. If Sanji had to pick, he would say Yonji was his preferred obstacle. Ichiji was too smart and Niji was too cruel; Yonji was huge and freakishly strong, but he relied almost entirely on brute force. If Sanji was quick and smart enough, their confrontation usually ended quickly.

Once Yonji was down, Sanji left the tomb-cold depths of Tartarus and stepped out onto the banks of the Phlegethon. He clambered onto the barge and carefully maneuvered it across the river, mindful not to accidentally step in the water. Heat issued up from beneath the ramshackle wooden planks beneath his feet, which maintained their structural integrity only thanks to some kind of divine intervention. Humiliatingly, one of his previous failed escape attempts had ended with him stumbling too close to the bank and plunging headlong into the flames.

It probably wasn’t a great sign that Sanji was developing partialities for certain causes of death over others. Getting killed by the shades wasn’t actually that bad, all things considered. Burning in the Phlegethon had been the worst option so far.

He passed through the bleak, lava-ridged Fields of Asphodel quickly. He was developing something like a sense-memory for the different forms the shades adopted as they attempted to take his life. Before he reached the Bone Hydra, he ran into two of the other surface-gods, as well: Chopper, whose gentle touch knitted closed several open lacerations on his left arm, and Franky, who gifted him with a pair of boots that plowed through enemies with the force of a battering ram.

With their help, the Hydra went down easy. For the first time in his immortal existence, Sanji crossed through the desolate heat of Asphodel and stood on the banks of the River Lethe.

As he crossed the Lethe and stepped into Elysium, it was like passing through a barrier into another world. The crater-cracked, blackened earth of Asphodel felt like a remote and long-forgotten dream, here. Elysium was lush and green and the air was illuminated with an ambient blue light. The colors were so bright that they ached in Sanji’s eye sockets. Where the Styx bubbled and the Phlegethon roared, the Lethe carved its way through the landscape almost too quietly to be heard, its waters tinted a frothy smoke-gray: the color of forgetting.

The grass sparked and curled and hissed under Sanji’s boots, leaving blackened footsteps in his wake.

The first few chambers went smoothly. Then he passed into a room populated by a seething mass of souls that had taken the form of neon-winged butterflies. They swarmed him, sank diamond-sharp pincers into his skin. He was bleeding heavily by the time he drove his foot into the center of the soul-mass, dissipating it.

“Fucking butterflies,” Sanji muttered to himself, limping into the next room.

The stone door clicked shut behind him.

Somewhere out of sight, dismal and hollow, a bell tolled.

DEATH APPROACHES.

“You have got to be kidding me,” Sanji snapped.

“They’re insects, idiot prince. Their wings are pink and they sparkle a little. Why do you look like someone dragged you ass-backwards through shrapnel?”

Zoro stood in front of him, hand resting on the pommel of one of his swords. He was scowling, dark eyebrows furrowed in the center of his brow, a muscle jumping in his broad, square jaw, but that was sort of just Zoro’s face. If Sanji had to guess, he was probably a bit less angry than he had been during their previous encounter. Maybe seeing Sanji violently beef it had assuaged his fury, just a little bit.

“They’re pretty pointy,” Sanji said, regarding the butterflies. Then, hoping he sounded dismissive instead of despondent, he added, “What happened to I never want to see you again?”

Zoro shrugged and said, in his rock-salt growl, “Too optimistic. Clearly you need serious help, if you’re getting your ass beat by a bunch of bugs.”

“I have help,” Sanji sniffed, a twinge of wounded pride sounding in his thoroughly moth-eaten chest.

“The surface gods,” Zoro said, his voice so scathing and dismissive that Sanji reflexively twitched in his direction, as though he’d be enough to protect him from getting smited. Smote? Hit by eight hundred lightning bolts at once.

“They said I could join them, if I wanted,” Sanji said, a little defensively. Something about Zoro tended to make him feel very small – like he was a kid again, soft-handed and scared of the world, flinching at shadows in every corner. “They said they’d welcome me.” They called the palace of the gods ‘home’, like it would be mine, too, Sanji did not add. It wasn’t necessary. Talking with Zoro was an exercise in being flayed open, his innards exposed to the air. No matter how much Sanji tried to hide, Zoro always saw it all.

“I’ve had my eye on you for ages. You’re a pretty good liar,” Usopp had told him once, in a tone of great admiration. A high compliment, coming from the god of storytellers. With Zoro, though, it was like he might as well have been made of glass.

“The gods are strong,” Zoro said now, unsheathing two of his blades as the shades began to claw their way up through the soft green earth and the blue-tinted walls. “Luffy especially. But they’re not down here. I am.”

“You’re saying… you’re going to help me escape?”

“I’m saying I challenge you,” Zoro said, pointing a sword straight at the center of Sanji’s breastbone. “I bet I can take out more of these creeps than you can.”

Like a little kid, Sanji snapped back, “What? No way in hell.”

“Prove it, prince,” Zoro said, mouth broadening into a wide, honest grin.

Sanji stomped his foot on the ground. Fire licked up his leg. “Bring it, mosshead.”

They threw themselves into the fray together, like two limbs attached to the same torso.

For a single, jewel-bright moment, Sanji wasn’t the failed third prince of the Underworld, disappointment of his House, half-baked godling fleeing from an empty future. He was a child again, newly-formed and full of hope, chasing Zoro around the echoing chambers of his father’s palace and laughing so hard it turned to hiccups in his chest. He was sparring with Zoro at the training grounds, knocking him into the dirt and getting knocked down himself. He was flat on his back on the ground next to Zoro, always next to Zoro – breathing heavily, nursing a sore jaw and a healing cut across his cheekbone, smiling so much it hurt his face. He was looking up at the starless expanse above their heads, bright-burning with a feeling of possibility that had still lived inside him, back then.

Sanji cleared the last revenant with a perfectly-timed heel driven directly into its head. Its skeletal form dissipated like mist, and the chamber was silent apart from the ever-present murmur of the Lethe and Sanji and Zoro’s twinned breathing.

“Seventeen,” Zoro panted, wedging one of his swords into the soft ground and propping himself up with an elbow on its pommel.

“Eighteen. Suck it, skull boy,” Sanji said, with all the dignity of his station.

Zoro made a soft, irritated sound with his tongue. He didn’t look particularly angry, though. Actually, he wasn’t really looking at Sanji at all.

“You win,” he muttered. Then he held his free hand out, gaze trained on the ground, and he grumbled, “Here.”

Sanji blinked at the object in his hand. It was a palm-sized glass bottle formed in the shape of the caricature of a heart. The liquid inside was a dark navy blue and glittered faintly when it caught the light. “That’s – that’s a centaur heart. You’re giving me a healing potion.”

“Obviously. Did you get knocked around a few too many times by the Bone Hydra? Gonna start identifying other objects for me? That’s a rock over there. Another rock. Another rock. And on the ceiling? Oh, yeah, another fucking rock—”

Sanji shook his head and waved a hand in Zoro’s face to shut him up. He really must’ve felt uncomfortable about this; Sanji was the panic-rambler, not Zoro. Maybe he was nervous Judge would find out he was helping?

“Why are you giving this to me?” he asked, curling his hand around the object. In a rare act of self-preservation, he was careful not to let his fingers touch Zoro’s skin.

Zoro inspected his feet, and then his swords, and then the aforementioned stone ceiling. “You’re going to face the Champion, right? You’re gonna need all the help you can get.”

“Zoro,” Sanji said. It was just about the only thing he could manage.

“Stop fucking looking at me like that,” Zoro snapped. “Don’t give me any of your sappy shit. I said I’d help, didn’t I? This is me helping. It’s not a big deal.”

“If Judge finds out—”

“I don’t give a single solitary shit about Judge.”

“He’s your king, Zoro!”

“He’s fucking not, you idiot! You are! I don’t owe him a single ounce of my allegiance. He lost me the damned instant he gave me to you.”

Sanji’s jaw dropped. He would have taken it better – it would’ve hurt so much less – if Zoro had simply wound up and then socked him really hard in the stomach.

Zoro’s ears had flushed a furious scarlet. He said, viciously, “Ugh,” and then, “Fuck this,” and then he wrenched his sword out of the ground, spun it in his hand, and cut a ragged-edged rift in thin air. It shuddered with energy that radiated off its edges like heat from a frying pan. Through the gap, Sanji could see a glimpse of somewhere else entirely – a city street, bustling and sunlit, a world away.

“Wait!” Sanji said. “You can’t just say something like that and then go, Zoro!”

Unhesitating, Zoro said, “Don’t fucking die again, I’m busy,” and stepped into the portal. It snapped shut behind him with a static-sharp hum, leaving Sanji alone.

It was Zoro’s stupid fault Sanji lost to the Champion.

By the time he stepped into the arena, which was colossal and domed and booming with the voices of a myriad cheering souls, his pulse was still pounding in his ears. It was like he could hear each individual beat of his heart, trace the entire contraction of the muscle start-to-finish. His brain kept fruitlessly cycling through an unending loop of Zoro’s face, his clenched fists, the shape of his mouth around the words, You are. You are. You are. You are.

Then the Champion stepped forward, raising a hand to acknowledge the screaming of the crowd, and Sanji’s mouth went dry. For a brief moment, he imagined he could hear Nami’s laughter from somewhere in the distance.

“Fire-Fist Ace?” he gasped. “The Fire-Fist Ace? Are you serious?”

The Champion raised his eyebrows, crooked grin inching across his face. Sanji never got to meet Luffy’s mortal brother in person, back when he was alive, but his shade felt just as vibrant and present as any of the gods below the earth. The energy in the arena seemed to pool around him, gather at his feet, like he formed the center of a well of gravity. He must've been spectacular, back when he was alive.

“Oh? Are you a fan, Challenger?”

“I… followed your career,” Sanji admitted, hoping he sounded a little less star-struck than he felt.

“Nice of you,” Fire-Fist Ace said, laughing. Sanji wasn’t sure he’d ever heard somebody laugh like that: unhesitating and unreserved. Maybe Zoro, back when they were both new, but that had been a long time ago, now. “What’s your name, Challenger?”

“Sanji.”

“Just Sanji, huh?”

Sanji hesitated, and then blurted, “Roronoa Sanji.”

Very, very, very, very, very embarrassing. So unbelievably embarrassing. Sanji sent a fervent prayer of thanks up to Luffy and the rest of the surface gods that Zoro was currently anywhere on the face of the planet other than here. If he’d witnessed this, Sanji would’ve had no other option but to fling himself into the depths of Erebus to be unmade.

“Well, Roronoa Sanji—” If Sanji hadn’t been blushing before, he surely was blushing now. “—I’m always flattered to meet a fan, but unfortunately business is business. In this arena, matches are single combat, to the death. Well… to the second death, I suppose. Don’t worry about losing, your shade will reassemble itself in Erebus eventually.”

Sanji would’ve made some comment about his over-inflated sense of confidence, but, well… it really was over quickly.

The last thing he saw before the waters of the Styx closed over his head was Ace’s jagged smile. The last thing he heard was the distant tolling of an infernal bell.

When his head shattered the surface of the Styx this time, he wasn’t greeted by Reiju. Instead, he gasped and shook ruddy water out of his hair and spit the taste of blood out of his mouth, and from somewhere above his head the goddess of violent death informed him, “You’re making my brother sad.”

“I know,” Sanji wheezed. He pulled himself out of the pool by his forearms and collapsed onto his back, the memory of fire eating into his skin sending a tremor like an earthquake down his spine. “It’s not like I’m happy about it, either.”

“Well, stop it, then,” Kuina said.

“I can’t,” Sanji told her. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re a weakling and I don’t get what he sees in you,” Kuina said.

“I know that, too.”

“He’d tear this whole House down if you asked him to,” Kuina said.

“Yes,” Sanji said. “That’s why I haven’t asked.”

Kuina groaned, her geta making a sharp clacking sound as she tapped it impatiently against the tiled floor. “You’re terrible to chew out. You feel badly about things too easily. Call me an asshole and challenge me to a duel, or something. Try to stab me really hard in the eye socket.”

“Sorry, I think there’s a mistake. You’re thinking of Zoro, not me. He’s the one with the plant life growing out of his head, if you’ve misplaced him,” Sanji said.

Kuina’s eyebrow twitched. For a second, Sanji thought she might punch him. Instead, though, she burst into laughter. Kuina didn’t laugh often; when she did, it transformed her whole face, made her look younger and gentler. Of course, it also sounded unsettlingly like the screams of the dying, so that did undermine the effect a little. Zoro’s eyes were the color of grave money; Kuina’s were the unbroken, ceaseless black of the pit.

“Do you really have to go?” she asked him, once she had sobered again. She had settled down beside him, her legs tucked neatly beneath her, her back very straight. When they were young, Sanji had asked Zoro if Kuina ever slouched, and Zoro had laughed in his face.

“I do,” Sanji told her. “Ever since – without Mom here, anymore…”

Kuina nodded. “It’s colder,” she said, and Sora had been the goddess of springtime, but they both knew she didn’t mean the weather.

“It’s so much worse when you guys aren’t here,” Sanji admitted in a whisper, tugging his legs up to his chest and resting his forehead on his knees. “When you and Zoro are working, it’s like Father doesn’t even remember he has children, half the time, and the other half all he remembers is how badly we’ve disappointed him. And I’m not… I’m not like my siblings. The other day he told me that I was probably the god of failure. The god of broken things.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Kuina said, tipping sideways to lean her shoulder against Sanji’s.

“Then I’m the god of nothing,” Sanji said, almost too quietly to hear. “I think that’s probably worse.”

“Zoro hates when you talk like this,” Kuina said, tone completely matter-of-fact. “He’d be super pissed at you, if he was here.”

“He’s not here,” Sanji said, and if he was crying a little into his knees, that was between him and the weathered, river-soaked fabric of his yukata. “He’s always gone. He has a purpose, Kuina-san. He’s important. I just – I’m selfish, in the end. I don’t think I can stand to keep watching him leave.”

“Is that why you left without telling him?”

Sanji unfolded himself and got, tremulously, to his feet, with all the grace of a baby deer learning to walk for the first time. “Not really. It’s like I said, Kuina-san. I’m selfish.”

If I waited and told him goodbye, I never would have left.

Kuina fell into step beside him as he began to shuffle away from the Styx and deeper into the center of the House. Like Zoro, she walked with her hand propped on the hilt of her moon-white sword. They’d never looked much alike, but Zoro and Kuina had been formed by Koshiro, the lord of night, to be two halves of one whole. The hilt and the blade; the hand and the sword. It was obvious in the way they held themselves; in the way they fought; in the direct, unflinching way they’d look you in the eye, like you were the only other person in the room.

“I think you’re scared. I think you’re running away, and not from this House,” she eventually said.

“Yeah, well,” Sanji said. “At least I’m fast.”

Sanji made it to the Elysian amphitheater and was summarily murdered by Fire-Fist Ace three more times.

There was something different about his fifth attempt to get past the Champion.

Sanji’s skin was singing from the blessing he’d been given by Jinbe: a promise of enhanced strength and decreased vulnerability. A skeletal, bomb-carrying ghoul had tried to take a bite out of his arm earlier and promptly shattered his teeth on his skin. The Underworld’s semi-dusk looked brighter, enhanced, like his vision had been turned up to eleven, thanks to a rare appearance by Robin, who had kissed both his eyelids and promised him foresight. Since then, he’d been sensing attacks the split-second before they came, a prickle of instinct itching on the back of his neck.

And, only a few moments after arriving in Elysium, he’d cleared the chamber of spirits and been immediately met with a rush of power so immense it nearly bowled him off his feet. For a moment, the room’s stone walls resounded with the roar of waves, the stomach-deep growl of thunder, the chatter of flame. There was the distant sound of laughter, an explosion of colorless light, and then Sanji was standing in front of the king of the gods.

“Hiya, Sanji,” Monkey D. Luffy said. “Man, it’s taking you ages to escape. Can’t you hurry? It’s boring up here.”

“Hi, Luffy,” Sanji said. “Good to see you.”

Even without Luffy’s physical presence, his aura was staggering. There was something deep and primal at the base of Sanji’s brain demanding that he sink to his knees and bow his head and perform obeisance. He successfully fought it and kept his chin lifted, knowing a dramatic display of fealty would only embarrass both of them. It was a bit too hard to look him straight in the eyes, though, which were strange and pupil-less and contained the raging waves of an ocean Sanji had never seen. Instead, Sanji politely directed his gaze at Luffy’s forehead.

“Robin told me that you told her that you like to cook. That’s good, because I really like to eat,” Luffy said, propping his hands on his hips and issuing a laugh that sounded like the rumble of an earthquake. “We’ll have a feast when you finally make it up here. Deal?”

Sanji nodded. “Sounds like a deal to me.”

“Sweet.” Luffy stretched, raising his arms over his head and tipping his torso from side-to-side. “Sorry I can’t stay longer. Nami gets on my case when I’m gone for too long and she’s actually pretty scary. See you soon, ’kay, Sanji?”

“Yeah. I will. I’ll see you soon. I swear it.”

He bent his head. Luffy took his face between his hands and gave him a loud, smacking kiss on the forehead. Energy flooded through him immediately, sending his spine snapping straight and his eyes shooting open.

“Sanji! Break free!” Luffy told him, and then he was gone.

The hordes of the dead in the next few chambers were nothing to him at all. Sanji blasted his way through the phantoms of Elysium without breaking a sweat. He felt hyper-aware, more awake than he’d ever been, synchronized with the pulse of the world around him.

That might be why he felt it, like a shadow passing over the sun, the split-second before the umbral bells began to toll.

DEATH APPROACHES.

In lieu of saying hello, Zoro immediately said, “Next time you fight Ace, get past his guard and hit him in the center of his chest. Doesn’t need to be your hardest kick. It won’t incapacitate him, but it’ll stun him, and you can take him down from there. He’s the Elysian Champion, but he’s still mortal. He remembers what it felt like to die.”

Sanji, unimpressed, drawled, “Greetings, my handsome and dashing Prince Sanji, how are you doing on this fine night, or perhaps morning? Given that we are underground, it is impossible to know which is which. Oh, thanks so much for asking, mossball, I’m doing great. Your manners are always so pretty. How are you today, or maybe tonight?”

“Not to critique your delusions, idiot prince, but I don’t think I’ve ever said the word dashing before in my life.” Zoro paused and then added, “You look weird.”

Sanji blinked, then looked down at himself. When nothing in particular struck him as out of order about his appearance, he shot Zoro a nasty glare. “Gee, thanks.”

“I’m not picking a fight. I’m being serious. You’re like… glowing.”

“Oh,” Sanji said, startled. “Oh! Maybe it’s the blessings from the surface gods? I ran into Luffy earlier and whatever gift he gave me felt pretty intense, for a second there.”

“Oh,” Zoro said, and nothing else.

Sanji sighed. “Did you come all this way just to give me an ominously worded battle tip and then comment on my appearance, Zoro?”

“I’m here for another competition.” Zoro lifted an eyebrow, leveling Sanji with the kind of look that frequently led to an all-out bare-knuckle brawl, when they were younger. “You game? Got something for you, if you win.”

“Oh, yeah? Another centaur heart?”

Zoro unsheathed his swords. “How about you beat me and find out?”

Sanji would have liked to say that he considered the offer carefully, but he didn’t. Zoro was looking at him with that molten-gold eye, the slightest curl of a smile at the corner of his mouth, and Sanji wasn’t thinking much about anything at all.

“Hope you can keep up, marimo. I’m kind of on a roll right now.”

“Big talk from a guy who’s died twenty-seven times in the past two weeks.”

“Nice of you to keep track,” Sanji grumbled.

The shades emerged from the earth, groaning horribly, reaching for Sanji and Zoro with their bone-fingers sharpened to deadly points. Sanji and Zoro leapt into action in unison, falling into place with their backs against each other. Sanji’s legs caught fire; Zoro’s swords shone silver in the ambient light.

It was over so quickly, Sanji barely noticed it had begun.

When the dust settled, and the chamber was cleared, Zoro announced, “Twenty-one.”

“Fuck,” Sanji said. “Nineteen. Guess I won’t be finding out what your super-secret mystery present is.”

Zoro hesitated, and then he opened his mouth and lied so transparently Sanji almost went into shock.

“I, uh… I messed up my count. It was actually eighteen.”

“Like hell,” Sanji said, baffled. He couldn’t remember the last time Zoro tried to tell him a lie. There was actually a distinct possibility that he never had, in their thousands of years attached at the hip. If he’d been this terrible at it all along, Sanji kind of understood why he refrained.

“Whatever. Just take it,” Zoro growled. He held out his hand, fingers closed. When Sanji placed his own hands underneath, he opened his fist and dropped the object into Sanji’s cupped palms.

It wasn’t a centaur heart.

It was an earring. Small and silver and carved in the shape of a butterfly with a tiny needle through its heart. When the cold metal came into contact with Sanji’s skin, a trill of magic went through him, a little spark like a static shock.

“If you’re wearing it and you get through a chamber without taking damage, it’ll heal you a little,” Zoro mumbled. “Just a little bit, though. Like, a really small amount. So probably better not to get hurt at all.”

Sanji closed his shaking fingers tenderly around the earring and said, with no small amount of fury, “You’re making this whole leaving thing really fucking hard, you know.”

“Good,” Zoro said, fiercely. “I hope it feels just as shit for you as it feels for me.”

“I don’t think you mean that.”

“Fuck you,” Zoro began. Then he deflated, all the fight draining out of him, in a way that made Sanji feel leagues shittier than the time he drowned in the Phlegethon. “I could just kill Judge. I could cut him up real small and throw him into the ditch where they keep the Titans. I could do your stupid brothers, too. Easy. Then you could stay. You wouldn’t have to go.”

“We’re not doing a coup d’état, Zoro. Luffy may be an… unorthodox king of the gods, but even he can’t let the Underworld government topple without getting involved.”

“Well, then, tell me what the fuck I’m supposed to do,” Zoro snarled. “You can’t stay here, and I can’t live on the surface. When I pledged myself to the House, I swore an oath on my swords that I’d stay by your side forever. I’ve loved you for as long as I’ve been sentient. I don’t want to live an eternity without you. Tell me what to do, Sanji. I’ll do it.”

Sanji reached for him. It was a mistake, undoubtedly, but Sanji had never been a particularly strong man – at least, not when it came to this. He slid his hand around the nape of Zoro’s neck, curling his fingers into the shaved-short crop of his hair, and tilted his head forward to press their foreheads together. Zoro heaved a sharp little breath and screwed up his eye tight, bringing his hand up to press a warm, calloused palm against Sanji’s cheek.

“I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to leave you. I don’t know how to stay,” Sanji whispered.

Zoro said, his breath warm against Sanji’s skin, “I’m sorry. When you left for the first time – I almost took off after you, right then, but Kuina said I should let you go. That I’d just make it harder. Make it worse. I know I’m making it worse.”

“Zoro—”

Zoro’s touch fell away from Sanji’s cheek. He stepped back, opened his eye, and reached for Sanji’s hand. With his solid, steady fingers, he unfolded Sanji’s fist and extracted the earring. Then he gently pushed Sanji’s hair away from his face and tilted his chin, fastening the earring into his earlobe.

“Stay alive, Your Highness,” he said. “And I’ll stay out of your way. For both of our sakes.”

Then, with a flash of a sword, he was gone.

The fifth attempt was different. Ace went down hard with a roundhouse kick to his chest. The ghostly crowd screamed Sanji’s name. One of the shades had painstakingly quilted a banner with his face on it. When Sanji offered them a hesitant wave, their half-transparent smile lit up their entire face.

It wasn’t until he walked out of Elysium and began his ascent to the Temple of the Styx, bringing him the closest to the surface he had ever been in all of his existence, that tears began to pour silently down Sanji’s face.

He’d assumed, once Ace had been defeated, the way out of the Underworld would be mostly clear. There were the rats and the satyr cultists that populated the Temple at the mouth of the Styx, but he’d fought his way through plenty of equally wretched creatures by this point. There was Cerberus, the massive three-headed hound that guarded the Stygian gates, but Cerberus had always been fond of Sanji, who’d spent his childhood sneaking him snacks whenever possible. When Sanji approached, all he had to do was toss him a couple slabs of raw steak, and he lumbered aside and left the gates free for Sanji to pass.

“Bye, buddy,” Sanji whispered, feeling hairline cracks issuing through his heart at the sound of the whimper, low in Cerberus’ enormous chest. “Good boy.”

He set his palms flat on the gate’s stone doors and gave a massive shove. They stuck for a moment, then shifted with an agonized groan. Sanji stepped through; as soon as he released them, the doors slammed shut behind him with the finality of a coffin lid closing.

He was standing in the middle of a wooded clearing, surrounded by bare, blackened trees with jutting branches like knobby finger bones. The sky stretched above his head, endless and a shade of blue so pure that it made something inside Sanji’s chest ache.

The surface world was cold.

It wasn’t the permanent, stagnant, damp chill of the House or the mausoleum-freeze of Tartarus. It was a true, sharp, bone-deep cold. The air whipped around him, carrying spirals of fat, white flakes that melted to water on Sanji’s skin. The white stuff was all over the ground, ankle-deep. It evaporated in hot puffs of steam when Sanji’s feet came into contact with the earth. Sanji’s breath evaporated, too, lifting into the air in front of him in thick clouds, like smoke.

He took a deep breath that tasted odd inside his mouth. Fresh, clean, nearly sweet, laced with none of the slippery, ever-present rot of the Underworld.

“I made it,” Sanji whispered, to the empty air. “I did it.”

“Not yet.”

Across the clearing, Vinsmoke Judge, Lord of the Underworld and Keeper of the Dead, stepped out from beyond the trees. He wore a set of armor so black it felt like it was leeching the color out of his surroundings. The massive helm on his head had a visor carved to look like the top half of a skull, jawless and empty-eyed.

“I tolerated this nonsense because I thought it was keeping you busy,” Judge told him. “I figured, as an exercise, it might at least carry the added benefit of making you a little less pathetic. Don’t you think the game has gone too far now, though, Sanji?”

Sanji’s hands were beginning to tremble. He’d come so far; he’d fought spirits and ghouls and witches, he’d overcome his brothers, he’d destroyed the Bone Hydra. He’d defeated Ace and become the Champion of Elysium. He’d met the surface gods; he’d been offered their friendship, and offered his own in return. He’d torn himself up by the roots. He’d broken his only friend’s heart and, along with it, broken his own. All so he could get here.

Only to be stopped by his father.

Judge will kill you, a voice whispered, at the back of his mind. You are god of nothing. He is the Sovereign of the Underworld and the Lord of the Dead. If you fight him, he will destroy you. Your soul will be banished back to the pit.

Fear closing over his head like the frigid waters of the Styx, Sanji steeled himself and said, “I’m leaving, Father. Let me go.”

“This is the Underworld, boy. We have a reputation to uphold. You know there is no escape.”

“I don’t give a shit about the Underworld’s reputation,” Sanji snapped.

Judge’s face folded into a thunderous scowl. “You disappoint me.”

Sanji bared his teeth. “Yeah? Well, what else is new, old man?”

The air around Judge rippled. One moment, his hands were empty; the next, he was gripping his fuck-off huge spear. Sanji had been afraid of that weapon for longer than he could remember being alive.

“If you will not go on your own,” Judge boomed, “I will send you back to the depths myself.”

Sanji thought he had been prepared. He’d done everything imaginable to ready himself. He was stronger than he’d ever been; he’d gained more combat experience since he started trying to escape than he had cumulatively in his entire existence; he was carrying the priceless blessings of the immortal gods.

But his father’s hands twisted around the grip of his spear, and Sanji froze.

Judge turned his head, his pupil dilating, and he threw his spear, hard. It slammed straight through the center of Sanji’s chest. For a moment, inanely, all Sanji could think about was a silver butterfly, stuck through the heart with a pin.

For the span of several heartbeats, Sanji felt nothing but surprise. He blinked down at the staff jutting out of his abdomen, pressing his fingertips to the place where it had ruptured through his skin. Blood, red and steaming hot in the frigid air of the surface, stained his fingers and began to run down his torso in rivulets.

“Oh,” he said, the word weirdly fuzzy, like it had been wrapped in wool before hitting his ears.

Then the pain lit up his insides like a fireworks display.

In the haze of agony that descended over him, Sanji collapsed sightlessly to his knees, spitting up a coppery mouthful of blood. It splayed black against the white expanse of snow beneath him. Somewhere, Judge was saying, “Take this as a lesson, boy,” but Sanji heard it as if he was standing at the other end of a very long tunnel. His vision was going dark around the edges.

From somewhere very, very far away: a bell tolled.

DEATH APPROACHES.

Above Sanji’s head, Judge’s voice was saying, “Ah, Roronoa. I’d wondered if we’d be seeing you.”

A gentle touch, on Sanji’s cheek. On the back of his head. Warm, careful hands; strong and latticed with scars and more familiar to Sanji than his own. He turned into the touch and let his eyes fall shut.

Zoro, he tried to say. His mouth formed the word, without any breath behind it.

“I’ve got you,” Zoro’s voice said, quietly.

“I know,” Sanji managed, despite the spear embedded in his left ventricle.

He died.

In this dream, he was small, and he was hiding from Niji in one of the House’s long, winding corridors.

Gods did not grow or mature at the same pace as mortals, so Sanji wasn’t sure exactly how old he was, at least by human reckoning. He knew that his hands were too little to properly hold the sword his father was trying to teach him to swing. He knew that his voice was high and unsteady. He knew that his mother was there, out of view, but alive – a sunflower-bright presence down the hall, even as she slowly faded.

In this dream, he was nursing a rapidly-fading bruise on his forearm from where Niji had taken his skin between his fingers and viciously pinched. Sanji wasn’t quite aware of the seriousness of the problem yet, of just how little he resembled his siblings, but he did know this: other gods didn’t bruise.

His brothers were creatures of vengeance, punishment. His sister had inherited their father’s affinity for the wealth beneath the earth, the jewels and the oil and the gold that were mined by mortal hands. Sanji was slight-shouldered and shy. He liked to cook. Sometimes, when he was making his way through the halls of the House, he sang. And when Yonji punched him in the nose one day, he bled a shocking, horrifying red. It had startled both Sanji and Yonji so badly, they’d both started weeping.

The sound of slow footsteps rang out from the opposite end of the corridor. Sanji immediately ducked into one of the many alcoves lining the walls, tucking himself behind an immaculately-preserved human skeleton, its bones lacquered with gold. He muffled his breathing with a palm and waited for his brother to pass.

A head of green hair appeared in the hallway. It was not the correct one.

“Oh,” Sanji blurted, out loud. “You’re not Yonji.”

The young boy – god? spirit? – in front of him jumped a full inch into the air. His hand flew to the bamboo staff he wore belted at his hip with the immediate readiness of instinct. His eyes, wide and dark-lashed and a liquid shade of gold, snapped to the skeleton.

“You can talk?” he said, appalled.

“No, dummy,” Sanji said, climbing out from the alcove and stepping down to the floor. “That was me.”

The boy was about Sanji’s height. He was close to Sanji’s size, too, maybe just a little squarer in the shoulders. His messy crop of short hair was slightly flattened on one side, as though he’d been laying on it recently. He surveyed Sanji with unabashed interest, mouth a little open. It should’ve made him look dumb. It did make him look dumb. Sanji just… didn’t really mind it.

“Who’re you?” the boy demanded. It wasn’t an appropriate way to talk to a prince. Sanji’s father always made the servants bow and scrape. He said it was the only way to ensure they learned respect.

Sanji wasn’t sure if this stranger respected him, at least not by Judge’s metrics, but he was looking at him unflinchingly with those unsettling, light eyes and Sanji knew immediately: even if this boy didn’t respect him, he saw him.

“I’m Sanji,” Sanji said. He hesitated, then bowed a little; even if the strange boy didn’t know his manners, Sanji was vaguely worried this might be something of a test, and that his father would be furious if he didn’t act according to his station.

“Oh,” the boy said. “I’m Zoro.”

“Are you a ghost?” Sanji asked, stepping just a little closer to him. He’d never seen a ghost like this before. Zoro looked very solid.

Zoro scowled. “Nah. My old man says my sister and I are the new gods of death. He said we’ve gotta move in here. I didn’t want to. It seems pretty boring. And the hallways keep moving around.”

“It is pretty boring,” Sanji admitted, momentarily forgetting his earlier suspicion. “I don’t think the hallways move, though.”

“That doesn’t seem right,” Zoro said. “Hey, are you a ghost? Why were you hiding earlier?”

“I’m not a ghost,” Sanji snapped. “I’m a prince. My father is the king.”

Zoro said, in a tone completely devoid of any awe or reverence, “Oh. Got it. If you’re the prince, does that mean you know the way to the training grounds from here?”

Relief hit Sanji so hard it almost knocked him clean off his feet. “Y… yeah. I can show you? If you wanted.”

“Cool. Thanks. By the way, what’s the deal with your eyebrows?” Zoro asked.

Sanji blanched and slapped a hand over his visible eye, the one not hidden behind the curtain of his bangs. “None of your business!” he screeched. “Why do you have moss growing out of your skull?”

“I do not!”

They looked at each other, hackles raised, for a long moment. Then Zoro snorted out a laugh, and Sanji started to giggle, and then they were just laughing, the sound ringing loudly in the halls of the dead.

“You’re okay, prince,” Zoro told him, decisive. “We can be friends.”

“My brothers won’t like that,” Sanji warned him, trying valiantly to tamp down the enormous, unfamiliar, fluttering feeling rising in his chest.

“Who cares?” Zoro said. “If they’re annoying us, I’ll beat them up.”

Sanji’s mouth fell open. For a moment, all he could do was stare at Zoro, his jaw slack and his eyes enormous. Finally, he managed to say, “Do you promise? If you promise, I’ll show you anywhere you want to go in the palace. Anytime. The hallways never move for me.”

Zoro beamed, the expression bright enough that it lit up the entire corridor and Sanji was struck by the sudden urge to avert his eyes. Was this what mortals meant, when they said something felt like staring directly at the sun?

“Deal,” Zoro said, and he reached out a hand.

Sanji squinted at it.

Zoro rolled his eyes and moved the hand up and down. “You shake it when you make a deal, idiot prince. Don’t you know anything?”

“Oh!” Sanji said, and he lurched forward and grabbed Zoro’s hand with his own.

Zoro was very warm. His palm was rough and calloused. He curled his fingers around Sanji’s with a firmness that stopped just shy of hurting.

Their hands still pressed together, Zoro looked at him and grinned and then he said, in a voice that didn’t belong to him –

“Wake up.”

Wait. Is this how it goes?

“Sanji. Wake up.”

Zoro, Sanji tried to say. He didn’t have a voice, though. He didn’t even have a mouth.

He looked down, and saw himself, his adult body, speared through with his father’s weapon. Blood smeared sticky on his palms.

The voice of the king of the gods screamed in his ear, “Wake up!”

For the first time in a long time, Sanji woke up in his own bed, in his own bedroom, in the palatial House of the Dead.

Someone was sitting in a chair drawn up close to his bedside, cool hand gently combing the hair off Sanji’s forehead. His voice heavy with sleep, eyes still mostly closed, Sanji asked, “Zoro?”

The hand paused in its motion. Then Reiju’s voice said, “I’m trying to decide if I should feel insulted by that.”

Despite the weight of his eyelids and the pounding of his head, Sanji cracked his eyes all the way open.

“Reiju,” he rasped, the word dragging like fingernails inside his parched throat. “What – what—?”

“What happened? Well, from what I gather, it sounds like Father killed you. Your boy with the swords came out of the Styx with you in his arms, looking like the wrath of the gods. He carried you here and wouldn’t leave until he was sure you were breathing again. Didn’t even bother to greet me, which is extremely rude of him, by the way. I know you’re his favorite, but I am still the crown princess.”

“Oh,” Sanji said. And then he added, much more quietly, “He left, though? He’s gone?”

Reiju looked at him and sighed.

Sanji closed his eyes.

“Little brother,” she said, taking his hand in hers. “I wish you would give this up. Things have been difficult recently, but is it really worth all this suffering? You lived with it before. You could learn to live with it again.”

Sanji squeezed her fingers and pressed his eyes shut tighter against the sting of tears. “I could. But I don’t want to. I want things to be better. I want to feel like I deserve for them to be better.”

“In this world, you get the family you have,” she told him, not unkindly. “Not the one you deserve, Sanji. I’m sorry. It’s not right, but that’s how it is.”

Sanji shook his head. “That’s not true, though. I chose Zoro, didn’t I? And the gods of the surface chose me. They care about me, Reiju. They don’t want me to be anything I’m not. They don’t even care that I’m not the god of anything. They just want me to be with them. Luffy asked me to make a meal. I promised him I would. Isn’t it that simple? All I’ve ever wanted was to be seen for what I am.”

He opened his eyes and looked up at the same ceiling he’d stared at when he was small. His room hadn’t changed; it was the same place he’d retreated after Judge said something particularly cruel, the same bed he hid under to avoid the raw-edged knuckles of his brothers, the same desk where he’d scribbled down love letters he couldn’t bring himself to address and promptly ripped them up, furiously blushing all the while.

His sister was looking at him, her mouth pressed into a very thin line and her eyes glimmering with tears.

“I’m sorry. I know that I failed you, Sanji,” she whispered.

He sighed. “You were young, too. Your job was to grow up. It shouldn’t have been up to you to keep me safe.”

“I stood by and watched so much. I let our brothers hurt you. I didn’t speak up when Father hurt you, too. I let it happen right in front of me.”

“You were trying to survive, Reiju. I don’t blame you. I never have.”

“I was a coward. I still am. I keep trying to keep this family together, and I never think about what I’m losing in the process. I’ve been trying to fix things without considering the possibility that maybe they were meant to break.” Reiju abruptly got to her feet, releasing her vise grip on Sanji’s hand. “I lied, Sanji. Your swordsman didn’t leave you here. I kicked him out of your room. I wanted to try one more time to convince you to stay. I’m selfish, and I’m sorry.”

Sanji jerked a little, pushing himself up in bed. “Then – Zoro—”

“He’s still here, probably. Heaven and earth know that god is the most stubborn creature I have ever met. Except for you, maybe.”

“Could you check, maybe?” Sanji asked, a little meekly. “There’s – something I’d like to talk to him about, if he’s still here.”

Reiju rolled her eyes, but her expression was very gentle. “You’ve always been insanely single-minded when it comes to him. I’ll go look right now. Stay put, okay? Zoro said your body would remember the trauma, even after it was healed.”

“Aye-aye,” Sanji said, executing a crisp salute that made his sister laugh. She disappeared through the arched double-doors to his bedchamber. She’d barely been gone for a minute before the doors opened again.

“No bells this time?” Sanji joked, but the sight of Zoro killed the second half of the sentence before he could finish getting it out of his mouth.

Zoro, wide-eyed and wild-haired, half-sprinted into the bedroom. When his eye locked onto Sanji, sitting with his back against his pillows, he ground to a complete stop. His cheeks, normally a warm tan, were a jaundiced shade of pale. They passed several seconds in silence, just looking at each other, Zoro shoulders rising and falling with his labored breaths.

“Are you okay?” he eventually asked.

“Well, I don’t have a huge fucking spear sticking out of me anymore, so,” Sanji said. Going by the look of nausea on Zoro’s face, this didn’t seem to land with the airy nonchalance Sanji had been aiming for.

“Yeah,” Zoro said, faintly.

Sanji winced. “Are you okay? Do you want to sit down?”

“Yeah,” Zoro said, again. Sanji expected him to flop down into the chair Reiju just vacated, but instead he kicked off one zori sandal, then the other, and then he announced, “Scoot over.” This was the only warning Sanji got before he climbed into bed beside him, settling over the blankets, a line of living heat pressed up against Sanji’s side.

“Oh,” Sanji blurted, as his stomach did a feat of acrobatics and leapt into his mouth.

Zoro shot him a sideways look. “Problem, curls?”

“No. Nope. No, nothing, there’s no – there’s never been any problem. Ever, actually. So. Yeah. No problems, here.”

Zoro stopped looking a second away from being physically ill and barked a laugh, so at least Sanji’s inability to string a sentence together while embarrassed was beneficial for something.

“You’re so red right now. I don’t know a single other god who blushes like you do.”

“If you haven’t noticed, I’m not very good at being a god,” Sanji snapped.

Zoro frowned. “That’s not what I meant.”

Sanji slumped down into the pillows, trying to arrange his jaw in a way that said ‘manly and pensive’ and not ‘pouting like a moody brat’. “It’s okay, you know. I know I’m not… what I should be. As if I needed any more proof of that. What kind of god gets shish-kebab’ed and needs to get carried back to their childhood bedroom?”

Zoro sighed and tipped his head back, looking straight up at the ceiling as if praying to Luffy to give him strength. “Sanji. Do you know how many people have successfully broken out of the Underworld?”

“I… no. Is this a quiz? Because I didn’t study—”

“Zero. None. Not a single fucking person has done it and survived. No mortal, no half-blood hero, not even any of the gods. Your father tried it, once, back when the previous king of the gods first stuck him down here and his situation was more… House arrest, instead of House custodian. He got torn in half by the Bone Hydra and never attempted it again.”

Sanji said, “What?” and then, “No,” and then, “What?”

“As far as I know,” Zoro said, “you are the first one to ever begin your journey in the pit and end your journey on the surface. Congrats.”

“What the fuck? How the fuck?”

“What are you confused about? It’s simple. None of them ever asked for help.” Zoro shrugged, the movement of his shoulder gently jostling Sanji a little. When he came back to stillness, Sanji slipped with him, leaving him leaning against the warm, solid curve of Zoro’s bicep. “Nobody could do something like escape this place alone. It’s the End for a reason. But your sister, the surface gods—”

“You.”

“—Yeah, I guess, me, too. Everyone wanted you to succeed. They still do. And now you know it’s possible. All you have to do is get back up there and beat the shit out of your garbage old man.”

“My garbage old man is one of the three most powerful divine beings in the pantheon,” Sanji pointed out.

“He’s a piece of shit bully with a big spear and a massive ego. That’s all.”

Sanji opened his mouth heatedly to protest this but…

But.

Wasn’t Zoro right?

There was a part of Sanji that was always going to be the scared little runt of a kid who simultaneously craved his father’s attention and lived in perpetual fear of his wrath. There was a part of his heart that was always going to remember the stretches of neglect, the disdain, that fucking metal mask he’d briefly been forced to wear in the hopes it would teach him discipline. Those years lived in him. They probably always would.

But, in the end, wasn’t Judge just one god? Hadn’t the king of the gods touched his face and smiled that unfathomable smile and told him to break free? Hadn’t he felt fresh air on his face, for the first time in his immortal life? Hadn’t he made up his mind? Wasn’t the hard part already behind him?

Sanji was crying – big, wet, silent tears rolling down his cheeks. He turned his face into Zoro’s shoulder, pressed it against his warm skin and the soft fabric of his yukata.

“I can do this,” Sanji said, his voice muffled by Zoro’s bicep.

“Yeah,” Zoro said, his own voice a little unsteady. “I know you can.”

He folded his arm around Sanji’s shoulders and let Sanji sob for awhile, carding a careful hand through the sheaf of Sanji’s hair.

When Sanji had cried himself out, his throat dry and his eyes sticky, he extracted himself from Zoro’s grip and scooted slightly, positioning his body so that he was facing him. Zoro kept a hand on Sanji’s shoulder, thumb tracing a slow circle, as Sanji reached out and curled his fingers into the front of his yukata.

“I don’t know what life will look like after this. For either of us. I know that if I leave, if I beat Judge and get out of here, things will never be the way they used to be between us again. But we’re immortal, Zoro. I don’t want to live a thousand mortal lifetimes – I don’t want to live one lifetime, if it isn’t by your side. So, I’ll… I’ll wait for you. I’ll wait forever if I have to. I don’t care how long it takes.”

Zoro patiently waited until the end of this monologue, his face perfectly impassive. Then he slid his hand from Sanji’s shoulder to the nape of his neck, rolled his eye, and said, “You’re so damn dramatic. The fuck are you waiting for? I’m right here, aren’t I?”

Sanji went still. He reached up and pressed his fingertips along the knife-edge of Zoro’s jawline, the high ridge of his cheekbone. He traced along the jagged length of the scar over his eye socket. He brushed the pad of his thumb over the arch of Zoro’s upper lip.

“You’re right here,” he marveled.

“Yeah,” Zoro said, his voice even rougher than normal. “I’ve always been right here, idiot prince. So what are you gonna do about it?”

“You need to give me a nicer nickname,” Sanji said. “If we’re going to be doing this.”

“Doing wh—”

Sanji moved his hand into Zoro’s hair and leaned forward to kiss him, square on the mouth.

Zoro responded immediately, with the urgent hunger of a starving man, hauling Sanji forward and into his lap. One broad palm splayed across the expanse of Sanji’s lower back, Zoro kissed Sanji’s mouth open, fierce and desperate, with an easy strength and confidence that jolted down Sanji’s spine and made his toes curl. When Sanji hesitantly parted his lips for Zoro’s tongue, stunned and a little overwhelmed, Zoro groaned and tugged a little on Sanji’s hair, half impatience and half encouragement. Sanji’s throat made a weird little whimpering noise he wasn’t aware he was capable of producing. Zoro licked the roof of his mouth.

After the lack of breath in his lungs became a pressing issue, Sanji wrenched himself away with a choked gasp. Zoro, undeterred, dipped his head to kiss Sanji’s cheek, the juncture where his jaw met his ear, the soft length of his throat.

“What should I call you, then?” Zoro asked, the words pressed warm against the shell of Sanji’s ear.

Sanji, who had nothing at all happening inside his brain except for Zoro’s name on a frantic loop, said, “Huh?”

“You said you needed a nicer nickname. I’m open to suggestions.” He kissed Sanji’s neck, then pressed down on the skin he’d just kissed with his teeth. Sanji sucked in his breath sharply.

“Ow. Are you a dog? I’m not a chew toy, marimo.”

Zoro nipped at the edge of his jaw. “Is that a nice nickname? Asshole.”

“Marimos are very nice. They’re round, and – and cute.” What the fuck was Sanji even talking about, at this point?

“Aw. Are you calling me cute, curls?”

“No. You’re a brute. You don’t bathe, and you grunt more than you talk, and you chew with your mouth open – fuck, Zoro.”

Zoro paused what he was doing – which was, namely, sucking a bruise onto the curve of Sanji’s clavicle – and blinked up at him innocently.

“Should’ve known you’d be a biter,” Sanji muttered, heat burning in his cheeks and the tips of his ears.

Zoro grinned at him with the smug self-satisfaction of a big cat stalking prey. “Oh? Imagined this much? Daydreamed, maybe? What did I do to you, if I didn’t bite?”

Sanji planted a palm directly in the middle of Zoro’s face and shoved him. “Fuck off, are you kidding me? You could not get that information out of me under torture.”

Zoro burst into laughter, the kind that shook through his whole body. It lit up his whole face, made him look like the kid he’d been back when they met. He brushed his lips against the sore, reddening spot on Sanji’s chest that he’d just been worrying at with his teeth. Then he sat up, manhandling Sanji so that he was sitting back against Zoro’s chest, Zoro’s chin resting on his head. His hand moved to splay out across Sanji’s breastbone, covering the stretch of unblemished skin where his father’s spear had found its mark.

“Don’t you have souls to reap?” Sanji asked, allowing Zoro to tug the blankets over both of them.

“The dead can wait. I should know,” Zoro said. “Sleep now, my prince.”

“That’s a nicer nickname,” Sanji mumbled. Zoro was very warm, and the bed was very soft, and it turned out that his body did remember the trauma of death.

Zoro’s nose pressed into his hair. “Still not the one, though, huh?”

“No,” Sanji said, letting his eyes slip shut. “Try my name, marimo.”

“Okay,” Zoro said. “Sanji.”

“Zoro,” Sanji said, sleepily. And, with that satisfactorily established, he fell asleep against the warmth of Zoro’s chest, ear pressed directly over the slow, steady rhythm of his beating heart.

When Sanji woke, Zoro was, predictably, still snoring quietly. In another world, Sanji thought he’d probably make a pretty decent god of naps.

Carefully, trying not to jostle Zoro too much, Sanji untangled their limbs and extracted himself from the bed. When he was done dressing, he crossed the room to carefully kiss the crown of Zoro’s head. The instant he did, Zoro’s eye opened, glinting up at him in the pale, unchanging light of the House.

“Actually saying goodbye, this time?” Zoro asked.

“Saying ‘see you later’,” Sanji corrected him.

“Hm. I like that better,” Zoro told him, reaching up to curl his hand around the back of Sanji’s head and tug him down into a sleepy, slow-moving kiss.

As they parted, Sanji blinked, a little dazed.

Zoro snorted. “You look so dumb.”

“I forgot we could do that now,” Sanji admitted.

Zoro rolled his eye, but the corner of his mouth was curving up into a smile as he leaned up to kiss Sanji again.

“Go kick Judge’s ass,” Zoro told him.

Sanji laughed, the sound a little unsteady. “Simple, right?”

“Now you’re getting it,” Zoro agreed, and then he tilted his head, as though listening to something that was beyond the range of Sanji’s hearing. “Guess I gotta go back to work. See you, Sanji.”

“See you, Zoro,” Sanji said.

Zoro kissed him one more time, and then there was a flash and the bed was empty, as though he had never been there at all.

Simple, Sanji mouthed.

He headed for the exit and left the House of the Dead for the twenty-ninth time, pausing only to send a quick prayer up to the surface gods for luck.

The gods must’ve been listening.

“Back again?” Ace said, his surprise obvious on his face. The roar of the Elysian arena was becoming something of a comfort to Sanji on his repeated ascents; even Ace, who initially sparked shock and awe in Sanji, was starting to feel more like an old acquaintance you looked forward to running into. “I thought you would’ve continued up to the surface after you beat me last time. Did something happen?”

“Ha-ha, yeah,” Sanji said, rubbing an awkward hand on the back of his neck. “I, ah… got killed pretty quick after that. I need to keep trying, though, so. Sorry, but I’m going to have to beat you again.”

Ace waved an airy hand. “Yeah, of course. No hard feelings. Actually, I was kind of bummed when you won last time. Nobody else has given me real competition in ages. But, hey, Challenger, before we get into it – I heard an interesting rumor about you recently.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Kind of a funny thing. Probably impossible, but… One of the shades recognized you from back when they first arrived in the Underworld. Said they saw you down in the House of the Dead. That mean anything to you?”

“It doesn’t,” Sanji told him, honestly. “Not anymore.”

Ace laughed, tipping his head back. “Okay. I can respect that. We all want the chance to become something different than how we’re made. I’ve been there myself, on occasion. Thought that was a mortal thing, though – never heard of the gods feeling like that.”

“I’m kind of an unconventional god,” Sanji admitted.

“Unconventional or not, you’re still a god. You’ve honored me by meeting me in combat as an equal.”

“An equal? You beat me multiple times, buddy. Think it’s safe to say that you’re better than I am.”

“Dunno about that. You beat me last time, didn’t you?” Ace shifted into a ready stance, fingers flickering into flames. He grinned, a dimple appearing at the corner of his crooked smile. “Think you can do it again?”

“Yes,” Sanji said, and he did.

When the dust had cleared, Sanji’s foot was planted in the middle of Ace’s chest. Both of them were breathing heavily, smeared with dirt and ash and blood.

“I know matches are to the second-death,” Sanji panted, “but I’d really rather not kill you again, if it’s all the same to you.”

Ace barked out a laugh. “I mean, you’re technically the Champion of Elysium now, godling. You can set whatever rules you want.”

Sanji blanched. “Wait. Does that mean I have to fight here, if other people want a chance to become Champion?”

“Ha! Nah. I’ll keep the seat warm for you, if that’s what you want. Might be fun, though, if you ever wanted to come face some challengers yourself.”

Sanji removed his foot from Ace’s torso and leaned down to haul him up, hand wrapped around his forearm. “You’re pretty cool, Fire-Fist.”

“You’re not bad yourself, Sanji.” Ace curled his hand into a fist and tapped it against Sanji’s chest. “Whatever’s up there, past me? Give ’em hell for both of us, yeah?”

“Deal,” Sanji said, beaming. He headed for the exit, pausing only to turn around and wave. The screams of the crowd followed him into the passageway beyond, to the foot of the staircase that led up to the Temple of Styx – and, beyond that, to his father.

Even though he had been preparing himself for it, the cold of the surface still hit Sanji with the force of a punch to the jaw. He wrapped his arms around himself and shivered as the doors of the Underworld ground shut behind him. The clearing, snow-soaked and so white it almost hurt to look at, was silent and empty, apart for the dark, broad-shouldered shape of Judge.

He got to his feet and swung his spear, resting it across his shoulders. “Clearly you’re still a slow learner, boy. No matter, though. I’ll just have to keep killing you until the lesson sinks in.”

“You can try,” Sanji said, his tone saturated with a confidence that he did not truly feel.

This time, when Judge launched himself forward, Sanji was ready.

Judge was fast, but Sanji was faster. He ducked under the initial swing of the spear, which came at him with such velocity that it would have turned his bones to powder on contact. The wind left in the spear’s wake blew Sanji’s hair off his face. He dropped low and swung one leg out, hooking one ankle around Judge’s and yanking. Judge went down hard, hitting the ground with enough force that, for just a moment, the entire world seemed to tremble. Sanji swung his leg down, heel aimed directly at Judge’s face, but Judge rolled out of the way. He adjusted his grip on the spear and swung up, and Sanji flipped backward to avoid taking the hit directly across his chest, landing on his feet in a crouch.

“You’re weak,” Judge told him, using his staff to shove himself back up to his feet. “You’ve never been as strong as your siblings.”

“I am weak,” Sanji agreed. “But I beat my brothers. I beat the Hydra. I beat the Champion, and I’m going to beat you. I’m not fighting alone.”

“Sentimental nonsense,” Judge spat. “Strength isn’t transferrable, boy. It isn't something you gain by proximity. You either are strong or you aren’t.”

“You’re wrong,” Sanji said.

“You’re dead,” Judge snarled.

Fire flickered to life on Sanji’s legs. “Not yet.”

It was the hardest fight of Sanji’s immortal existence. Ace was an exceptional warrior, maybe the finest Sanji had ever seen, but, in the end, he had still been a mortal man. He didn’t have the stamina, the power, the sheer emotional excess that had been grafted into the genetic makeup of the gods. When Sanji knocked Judge down, he got back up almost too quickly for the eye to track. When he managed to kick him hard enough to knock several teeth out of his mouth, he spat a mouthful of golden ichor onto the snow and kept coming. When he kneed him at top speed in the center of his stomach, the blow sped and strengthened by the force of Jinbe’s blessing, he went down on one knee and snarled.

Looking down at the top of his head, at the jagged edges of his crown carved from bone, Sanji said, “Stand down. Let me go, Father. It doesn’t have to be like this.”

“I’m not surrendering to my most useless child,” Judge said, and he clambered back to his feet and screamed.

There was a blast like the impact of a meteor. Sanji stumbled backwards, lifting a forearm to protect his face. When he lowered it, Judge was surrounded by a halo of orange flame, flicking across his body. He lowered his spear in Sanji’s direction, and the wave of fire came at him so quickly he barely had time to dodge. In the split-second before he was consumed by the flames, he felt a strange shiver go through his body, and then he moved. The split-second of luck was enough to save his life, but only just: he felt the skin of his left arm bubble and burn as he flung himself to the side, out of range.

He collapsed to the ground, screaming through his teeth at the agony that ran up his arm.

Nami’s voice sounded from a direction that Sanji couldn’t place. Careful, Sanji-kun.

Keep fighting, a second little voice whispered. There was a soft hum, and Sanji watched with wide eyes as the skin on his arm began to heal.

“Thank you, Chopper. Thank you, Nami-san,” Sanji whispered.

You can do this, Sanji, Chopper replied.

“The surface gods should keep their noses out of the Underworld’s business,” Judge snarled.

Sanji felt it rush over him in a wave. He felt them everywhere, suddenly. Robin’s hand on his shoulder, gently guiding his movement. Franky’s boisterous laughter, his call of, You got this, Sanji-bro. Usopp’s voice, shouting, You have the strength of ten thousand proud warriors! The lilting sound of Brook’s lyre. Jinbe’s strength in his limbs. Nami’s uncanny luck. Chopper’s gentle healing. And, beneath it all, Luffy’s voice, telling him, Sanji! Break free!

The feeling was too big for his body. He didn’t know how to hold it. Tears spilling over, running down his cheeks, Sanji let loose a wild, wordless yell. He allowed every ounce of the pain and the abandonment and the fear and the loneliness he’d been feeling for the past millennium to pour into it. Judge’s eyes widened.

Sanji launched himself into the air. His leg, burning, swung downward in a direct and unwavering arc. He collided with Judge with such force that the earth beneath them cracked, leaving a blackened crater where solid ground once stood. Judge screamed. He buckled like rocks crumbling to the ground in a cave-in. His hand lost its grip on the spear. He fell onto his back, arms splayed, golden ichor trickling from the corner of his mouth.

Sanji, for a long moment, stood completely still. The fire flickering up his leg sputtered out. Snow fell around them in dizzy spirals.

“I won,” he said, out loud, just to see what the words felt like. “I beat you. I won.”

Judge bared his teeth up at him. “What are you waiting for? Kill me.”

Sanji shook his head. “No.”

“Coward.”

“Fine, maybe I’m a coward. But I’m not you, and I can make my own decisions, and right now I’m choosing not to kill you.”

“Pathetic! Cut out that bleeding heart of yours, Sanji! Your pity is repugnant to me. Strike me down! Kill me!”

“I won’t!”

“Do it, runt!”

“Okay, I think that’s enough,” a new voice said.

Judge’s eyes blew wide. He attempted to push himself up on one elbow, crumpling back down to the ground when it slid out from beneath him.

Monkey D. Luffy, king of the gods, stood in the center of the clearing. The snow had melted around his feet, leaving behind a perfectly round patch of grass, blooming a lush, vibrant green. His hands were propped on his hips. He wasn’t wearing a crown; instead, a beat-up straw hat was perched haphazardly on his head. His clothes were threadbare and visibly patched in several places. He looked scruffy and young. He was glowing so brightly with an internal light that it made him kind of difficult to look at directly.

“Hey, Sanji. Took you long enough,” he said, grinning.

“Hi, Luffy. Sorry for keeping you waiting,” Sanji said, faintly.

“That was a pretty great fight,” Luffy told him. “You’re kinda cool, you know?”

“Thanks,” Sanji said, his voice even smaller this time.

Luffy laughed, then turned to lean over Judge. “Get lost for now, okay, old man? We’ll talk later.”

Judge opened his mouth and was halfway through a roaring, “What?” when Luffy waved his hand, and he vanished entirely.

“Don’t worry,” Luffy said, dusting off his hands. He turned to look at Sanji, the full force of his otherworldly presence trained on Sanji’s face. “Sanji decided to spare that guy, so I’ll spare him, too. I don’t want him to rule the Underworld anymore, though. Nami says I can change that if I want.”

Breathless, mouth dry, Sanji said, “That sounds like a pretty good idea to me.”

“I thought so, too! Hey, Sanji, I’ve got a question for you.”

Sanji nodded. “Of course. Ask me whatever you want.”

“Do you want a job?”

Sanji’s jaw fell open. “Do – I – what?”

“Do you want to be Lord of the Dead?”

Bowled over, struck silent, Sanji closed his mouth and then opened it again. Then, before his brain could catch up to his stupid mouth, he said, “I’m honored, Luffy, but…”

Luffy didn’t seem offended by Sanji’s completely irrational rejection of the most generous offer anyone could have ever imagined. He didn’t even really seem surprised. “Yeah, I didn’t think so. It doesn’t really suit you. That’s okay! I have someone else I can ask. Actually, I think you’ll really like him. He likes to cook, too, same as you. And he used to be a pirate! So cool, right?”

“That’s… that’s really cool, Luffy.”

Luffy slapped Sanji on the back, just on the wrong side of too hard. “I know, right! But, hey... In that case, what do you wanna be, huh?”

“What do you mean?”

“You got your freedom! Now you can be anything, right? You don’t wanna be Lord of the Dead, so what do you wanna be?”

“I don’t know,” Sanji said. Then he steeled himself, and said, a little too quickly: “I… I’d like to be your friend. All of you. And I’d like to be a chef. I’d like to learn how to cook like mortals do, with mortal ingredients. I’d like to travel, maybe. See the world. Try foods I’ve never even heard of before.”

“Ha! You’re pretty silly, Sanji. Why’d you say you didn’t know? Sounds like you know really, really well.” Luffy grinned and reached out, cupping Sanji’s face between his hands. When he spoke again, his voice had changed, taken on layers, like he was speaking with the voices of thousands of people all at once. In the unfathomable voice of the king of the gods, Luffy said, “I name you: god of plenty, god of nourishment, god of life. I name you: lord of the harvest, patron of all mortals who share a meal with another. I name you: friend of the surface gods, beloved of the Underworld. I bid you walk both worlds unharmed. I name you: Roronoa Sanji.”

Sanji’s face turned absolutely, utterly crimson. “Oi, oi, what the hell is that?”

Luffy blinked, that weird, ineffable glaze leaving his ever-shifting eyes. When he spoke, he sounded normal again. “Eh? What’s wrong? Are you upset? We all heard you tell Ace that was your name!”

“You – you all heard—?”

“Yeah! We were watching the battle, of course. Zoro, too! Are you worried he won’t like it? He looked really happy, Sanji. Normally he’s kind of like—” Here, Luffy pulled a rather spectacular recreation of Zoro’s characteristic scowl. “—but instead he was smiling really big. Nami made fun of him for hours and hours.”

Somewhere, a bell began to toll.

Sanji, burying his face in his hands to try and hide his blush, groaned out loud. “Sure, yeah, now he decides to show up.”

DEATH APPROACHES.

“Hey, Luffy,” Zoro said. Then, because he was the worst person on the face of the planet, he added, “So. Roronoa Sanji, huh?”

Sanji, his face burning, said, “Come over here, asshole. I’ve still got all my blessings and I’m going to beat you into next week.”

Without hesitating, Zoro drew his swords and bared his teeth in a grin. “Is that any way to speak to your husband?”

“Man, you guys are pretty funny,” Luffy said, slapping both of them on the backs. Zoro took it mostly unflinchingly; Sanji couldn’t help a slight wince. “A fight sounds like fun, but not right now. I was promised a feast.”

“Sanji’s the best cook in the universe,” Zoro asserted, immediately sliding his swords back into their scabbards.

“Don’t raise his expectations so high!” Sanji snapped, elbowing him in the ribs.

“What, do you want me to tell him you suck?”

The stone doors of the Underworld stood sealed shut behind them, unmoving and silent as the grave. Someday, not too far in the future, Sanji would return. He would meet the crotchety new Lord of the House, a blond man with an enormous mustache and a missing leg. He would reunite with Reiju, and sweep her into a hug that she would tentatively return, for the first time in their long lives. He would fall asleep in Death’s arms, in a bedroom that no longer felt like a prison cell. He would leave and come back again, whenever he wanted, and see the world up close and taste foods he’d never even imagined. He wouldn't even have to bleed to do it.

For now, though: he had a family to cook for.