Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

By the seventh day into the march toward his own death, Sanji had mostly stopped being terrified and had looped back around on a steady course toward furious.

Outside the confines of his carriage, through the grubby, narrow window, the permanent frosts and snow-peaked mountains of the continent’s far north had gradually gentled into rolling hills and miles of verdant farmland. Scrubby, low-growing pine trees began to give way to beds of yolk-yellow wildflowers and sprawling groves of white oak and magnolia. It was a bit difficult to maintain a permanent feeling of bone-rattling dread when the sky was a brilliant sapphire-blue, and the warm breeze carried a barely-there tang of salty ocean air.

In the north, spring was a distant memory. Here, it was in full, riotous bloom.

Trying in vain to keep the enchanted handcuffs binding his wrists from chafing the raw, reddened skin any further, Sanji awkwardly shrugged off his winter furs and pried the carriage window open. The fresh air hit him like the tide rolling in. He closed his eyes and tilted his face up, toward the sun, swallowing hard against the blood-hot ball of rage that had lodged itself in his throat. Even vividly imagining setting the carriage on fire and stomping the remains into ash didn’t do anything to ease the feeling.

If Sanji had been a different sort of man, maybe there would’ve been some comfort to be found in the sunlight and the breeze. After all, since he had to die eventually, maybe it wasn’t so bad to do it in a place like this. At least here, his body could return to the earth; back home, the biting, six-month-long winters kept corpses frozen at the moment of their death for ages.

Unfortunately, Sanji wasn’t the type of person to embrace cold comforts, by nature. As a result, rather than finding solace in the blooming trees and fresh sea air, they mostly just really, really pissed him off.

Unable to so much as cast a minor charm due to the handcuffs, he sat stock-still and ground his teeth together until his molars ached.

As Vinsmoke Judge’s least-favored son, it wasn’t a particular surprise that he’d be sent away from Germa for the purposes of forging an alliance someday. When he was young, Sanji had sort of figured – or maybe hoped, foolishly – that his eventual exile would take the form of a marriage. An arrangement of convenience, to be sure, but perhaps one that he and his partner could both find joy and companionship in, someday. It wasn’t what he would’ve chosen for himself, but it was a future he could imagine, if he tried hard enough.

Instead, he was being shipped off like a glorified sacrificial lamb, to be slaughtered on the altar of some upstart warlord in a straw hat.

Typical, Sanji thought, with venom. His father couldn’t even pick a dignified, well-established monarch to murder him. Instead, he was stuck being paraded across the continent to be dropped on the doorstep of a man who’d been crowned only six months prior, labeled ‘tribute’ like a sack full of gold or a particularly fine stallion.

Once again, Sanji vividly imagined committing several acts of unspeakable violence. Most of them involved arson. As always, none of the images did him any good.

One of the guards riding horseback alongside the carriage thumped a terse fist on the roof. “Shut that damn window!” he shouted.

“What the fuck am I going to do? Crawl out of it?” Sanji snapped back. When nobody replied, he said, “Eat shit. Mon tabarnak j’vais te décâlisser la yeule, câlice,” and snapped the window back into place, redoing the latch with a sharp click.

He considered shouting through the front wall to the driver to ask for a smoke, but gave the idea up quickly as a complete waste of his limited lifespan. In the seven days since they’d set out from Germa’s capital city, the guards had made it perfectly clear that they didn’t intend to interact with him unless it was to announce a break or tell him to shut the fuck up.

Maybe Monkey D. Luffy needs a chore boy, he thought, for what must’ve been the hundredth time that week. Maybe the Dawn Castle kitchens need another dishwasher. Maybe he’d at least keep me in the dungeons as a hostage, to keep Germa in line.

Or maybe all the rumors are true, a nasty little voice that sounded a lot like Niji whispered, somewhere in the back of his head. Maybe Monkey D. Luffy is a merciless conqueror, a destroyer of kingdoms, with an insatiable appetite and a pack of monsters at his beck and call. Maybe he’ll use and discard you like the trash you’ve always been. Maybe his monsters will share you around before he puts you out of your misery.

Sanji shook his head viciously and reached for the anger like a lifeline, curling his hands into fists that only trembled a little bit. His stomach felt tangled and queasy, twisted into a thousand knots. He wanted to scream and cry and kick a hole through the side of the carriage. He wanted to ask fate what, exactly, he’d done to deserve this. There was a tiny corner of his heart that even wanted to turn around and ride back north and promise Judge he’d do better, if he’d only let him stay.

He hoped he wasn’t about to puke on his nice, clean pants. This morning’s change of clothing had been one of the only indulgences the guards had allowed him since their departure.

The sun was making its slow way toward the horizon by the time Sanji spotted the first signs of an approaching settlement. The houses this far from Dawn City’s center were small and simple but solidly built and kept in excellent condition: obvious signs of a community’s prosperity. Sanji thought about the ramshackle huts around the poorer areas of Germa and felt a weird, petty twist of vindication. Judge might have fancied himself a true king, but the commoners who lived under Monkey D. Luffy’s rule had walls without holes and roofs that didn’t leak.

A few people paused to watch the carriage and its escort as they trundled by, looking up from hanging laundry or descaling fish or chatting with their neighbors. It was a testament to just how many noblemen Monkey D. Luffy must have received in the past few months that none of them looked particularly impressed by the opulence of the carriage or the number of guards. If anything, Sanji thought he could see a note of disdain in their faces – although maybe that was simply projection.

Eventually, the houses grew taller and closer together and shops began to spring up. The buildings were made from a wood so dark it was nearly black, the rooftops sloped and tiled. Lights illuminated the thoroughfare, round lanterns swaying with a rosy glow in the deepening twilight. The streets quickly became bustling and crowded, flooded with people going about their daily lives. Sanji scooted closer to the window and leaned forward, close enough for his breath to fog up the glass.

Most people averted their eyes as the carriage passed. In the doorway of one little restaurant, though, a little girl with a pair of messy pigtails caught Sanji’s eye. She waved at him, flashing a gap-toothed grin. Sanji offered a hesitant smile back, lifting his hand, just before she was swallowed up by distance and the crowd.

The carriage trundled onward. A moment later, Sanji finally caught his first glimpse of the sea.

For a moment, everything fell away. The ancient, bitter sting of his father’s disregard; the rumors about Monkey D. Luffy’s infamous ‘appetites’; the sound of his brothers’ laughter as he was loaded into the carriage like cattle selected for slaughter.

The late-afternoon sunlight scattered off the ocean like sparks, and Sanji’s mind went quiet.

The sea here was nothing like the gunpowder-gray, froth-tipped waves of his childhood. It was calm and clear and the perfect, improbable aquamarine that could be found in a children’s storybook. He’d never imagined a color like this existed in nature. It was difficult to tell where the sea ended and the sky began.

Dawn City’s famous docks stretched out and out and out into the water. Ships crowded the shallows, their masts jutting up from the sea like a forest. Nearly all of them prominently displayed a black flag marked with a skull and crossbones, topped by a straw hat. What had to be hundreds upon hundreds of people swarmed around the pier, selling wares or servicing ships or embarking and disembarking from the vessels. It was a riot of life and color. Sanji hadn’t realized a place like this existed anywhere in the world.

His awe ruptured when the carriage jerked to a sudden halt. His heart leaping into his mouth, Sanji tore his eyes away from the ocean and once again tipped his head against the window, trying to catch a glimpse ahead of them.

The procession had paused on a small stone bridge over a narrow but steep canal, bordered on the far side by a white wall. It loomed at least fifteen feet high, topped with rounded clay kawara tiles. Set in the wall, at the bridge’s mouth, was a massive, two-tiered koraimon gate. Its doors were firmly shut.

“Didn’t we send the herald ahead to announce our arrival?” Judge’s selected representative asked, his voice muffled by the carriage walls.

“Yes, sir. They should’ve received the message over an hour ago.”

Feeling strangely separate from his body, as though he was watching the scene unfold from some very great distance, Sanji sat silently as his father’s envoy leapt down from the front of the carriage and began to shout for attention. It was all terribly undignified. If Sanji had room left inside his brain for amusement, he’d find it funny.

After several minutes of this circus act, the massive gate finally creaked slightly ajar. Someone stuck their head out through the gap between the doors, caught sight of the procession, and stepped out and onto the bridge.

Sanji had never seen anyone like even remotely like this woman in his entire life. Her sheaf of orange hair, chin-length and slightly unevenly-cropped, was the same shade and possessed the same internal illumination as the deepening sunset sinking above the ocean. Freckles covered nearly every visible inch of her fair skin. She wore a cornflower blue, striped yukata and had a wooden bo staff strapped across her back, worn with obvious age and use.

She greeted the Germa delegation with a testy, “Yes? What can I do for you?” Her tone was respectful but cold, containing not a hint of the scraping deference that people normally dripped with when they spoke to his father’s representatives.

Never mind what he’d thought before. It turned out that Sanji did have room left inside his brain for amusement.

Battling a tiny smile, he sent a brief but fervent prayer of thanks to the gods that he got the chance to witness this, before being sent off to his early grave.

“Greetings to His Lordship, Monkey D. Luffy, King of the Pirates and Sovereign of the Southlands. We have traveled many hundreds of miles on behalf of His Majesty, Vinsmoke Judge, King of Germa and Lord of the North,” the envoy announced, in a solemn tone of great import. Sanji guessed he’d been internally rehearsing this speech since they set out a week ago. “We come bearing tribute for His Lordship, as a sign of our master’s feelings of friendship and enduring goodwill. May our peoples persist in peace and harmony for many fruitful years to come.”

At the mention of tribute, the orange-haired woman’s face lit up. “Tribute, you say? Germa is famous for its enchanted gold industry. Am I to expect—?”

The envoy hesitated. “Ahem. Not… exactly, madame. After all, any upstart lordling might offer you gold or jewels. His Majesty wishes to extend a different kind of tribute, to demonstrate his respect for Lord Luffy’s… taste and judgement.”

Without a shred of humor, Sanji whispered under his breath, “Ha.”

The look of joy on the woman’s face melted away. “Oh,” she said dismissively, having obviously lost interest. “Well, in that case, you’d better leave it and go. Luffy greatly appreciates the gesture of friendship. Your goodwill has been noted.”

This reception was clearly not what the envoy was expecting. His face twisted, as though he’d bitten directly into bread that had gone moldy. When he waved his hand to signal to the guards, the movement was sour and brusque.

The delegation’s appointed mage pressed her hand to the carriage door and muttered a spell. The door briefly glowed a pale red around the edges, and Sanji felt a shudder go through the wall as the locking charm broke.

Sanji held himself with as much poise as possible as two guards opened the door and reached in to yank him out. He stumbled a little as his feet hit solid ground for the first time in nearly a week. The guards’ hands closed around his elbows, one on either side, grips crushingly tight. Judge had warned them, before they’d left Germa, that Sanji was a flight risk. Clearly, they’d taken his warnings to heart.

A muscle jumping in his jaw, Sanji allowed himself to be manhandled to the open mouth of the gate and shoved to his knees in front of the orange-haired woman.

“Our tribute,” the envoy announced, a note of smugness in his voice. “King Judge’s third son, Vinsmoke Sanji.”

The woman’s mouth fell open. This close, Sanji could see that her eyes were wide and thickly-lashed and a warm shade of brown, like coffee mixed with just a little cream. She was very likely the most beautiful woman Sanji had ever seen. If he had met her under different circumstances, without the impending ax of destiny dangling over his proverbial neck, he might’ve bowed or kissed her hand or perhaps recited a sonnet.

Instead, Sanji, with a note of acid humor in his voice, said, “I humbly greet Cat-Burglar Nami and offer my service to His Lordship, Monkey D. Luffy, to be commanded as he sees fit.”

“Oh,” said Cat-Burglar Nami, first advisor to Warlord Luffy. Her expression had snapped shut entirely, leaving her face an unreadable mask. “That’s… This is an interesting choice. For a tribute offering. In general, you know, people offer us livestock or some barrels of nice wine. Maybe an expensive heirloom or two. Queen Vivi gave us a duck. A big one, you know, since it’s Alabastan.”

The envoy did not seem to be listening to this. “He shouldn’t give you any trouble,” he said, gesturing to Sanji. He nodded to the mage, who pulled a wax-sealed scroll out from her sleeve and handed it to Nami with a flourish. “His magical abilities have been quite thoroughly sealed. If he does attempt anything questionable, those handcuffs have been equipped with a… safeguard. You may activate it by reciting the words written upon that scroll. He understands the consequences, should this happen.”

Nami looked down at the scroll in her hand and then back to Sanji. “I see,” she said, her voice perfectly neutral. An academic observation, almost – I see.

Sanji was glad somebody did, because he was increasingly certain he didn’t understand anything about Monkey D. Luffy’s court at all. After all, what kind of warlord had his first advisor meet a foreign delegation at the front door? What kind of advisor spoke to a delegation with this kind of guarded, wary tone?

Sanji didn’t know if the envoy was feeling similarly wrong-footed, but he certainly seemed eager to depart. Stepping back and folding into an elaborate bow, he said, “Well, then. We have delivered the tribute and our friendship has been offered. By your leave, then, My Lady, we will make our exit.”

“Right. Yes, sure. Go ahead and leave, please,” Nami said. Without bothering to see them off, she turned back to Sanji and suddenly, horrifyingly, dropped to a crouch in front of him. “You okay to walk, Prince Sanji? I’d like to go inside and… Well. I’m sure Luffy will be interested to hear about this.”

Sanji got to his feet, a little stiffly, muscles cramped and tender from the days he’d spent crammed into the carriage. He paused and looked over at the sea, one more time. He wished, absently, that he might be able to convince Monkey D. Luffy to kill him out here, in view of the ocean.

“Of course, My Lady,” he said, inclining his head respectfully. “Please, lead the way.”

“No need for all that, Your Highness. If you know who I am, then you already know I’m no lady,” Nami said, with a little laugh.

Was that some kind of a test? A way of assessing his ability to be deferential, despite his former status?

He winced and said, “I’m not a prince any longer, My Lady.”

Nami frowned at him for a moment, her eyes sharp and considering. “Point taken,” she said, eventually. “By all the gods, this is so far above my paygrade. Follow me this way, Sanji-san.”

As the clatter of hoofprints on stone announced the departure of Germa’s diplomatic delegation, Sanji and Nami stepped through the gate of Dawn Castle. Sanji did not turn around again, even when the gate swung shut behind them, the clang of the latch slamming into place as dismal and mournful as the ringing of a gong.

Dawn Castle wasn’t at all what Sanji was expecting, on the opposite side of its wall.

The Vinsmoke Palace in Germa’s capital city was many things: ostentatious, technologically-advanced, enormous, cold. Most of all, though, it was quiet. Even when crowded with soldiers and sorcerers, scientists and servants, a hush lay like a blanket of fresh snow over the whole place. Nobody spoke or sang or laughed too loudly. Once, when he’d crept into the kitchen to cook in the middle of the night, Sanji dropped a pot, and he’d been able to hear its echo scream out through the entire building.

Dawn Castle wasn’t like that.

Beyond the wall was a courtyard that was already in full spring bloom, trees dripping plum blossom petals that scattered like snowflakes with every breath of wind. The castle itself was beautiful, multi-story and gabled, the walls painted a shade of blue just a little bit paler than the yukata Cat-Burglar Nami was wearing. Despite the place’s undeniable prettiness, though, it was quite simple. There were no gold or jewels to be seen – not even a single bronze statue of Straw Hat Luffy. Sanji wasn’t sure what kind of building he’d imagined the conqueror of the south to choose as his base of operations, but it certainly wasn’t this.

The difference was in more than just its lack of excess, though. Dawn Castle was teeming with life. The inhabitants entirely lacked Germa’s intense single-mindedness; some people were hurrying around attending to tasks, but others were just clustered in corners chatting. Somewhere Sanji couldn’t see, someone was strumming what sounded like a koto, notes floating on the air in a melody that sounded vaguely familiar, like something half-remembered from a dream. There were even a few kids around, chasing each other down the cobbled garden pathways in what looked to be an elaborate game of tag.

“Sorry about the chaos,” Nami said, turning to look at him over her shoulder. “We didn’t realize we’d be having a guest, otherwise I would’ve warned people to behave themselves. Don’t worry, folks get used to it eventually.”

“I understand,” Sanji answered, politely. Get used to it? Why attempt to reassure him like this? Was there a chance Warlord Luffy might decide to spare his life?

There was no point getting his hopes up. Sanji determinedly swallowed back a growing internal cry of maybe, maybe, maybe and followed Nami into the castle.

He’d expected to be led to a throne room, or at least some kind of grand reception hall. Instead, Nami wove expertly through the crowds until they reached a much quieter corridor, stopping at a sliding screen door at the end of the hall.

No matter how highly-ranked or well-respected, every single one of Judge’s advisors would’ve been expected to knock, announce themselves, and beg an audience with the king before entering a room. Nami didn’t even pause. She slid the door open without fanfare and announced to whoever was inside, “I take back everything I’ve ever said about the tribute deliveries. They’re not fun and they’re not exciting and, in fact, they’re completely awful.”

“Are you serious?” a much lower voice responded, gravel-rough. It was the kind of voice you felt in the back of your own throat. “You’re the one who’s been making us keep up this circus act.”

Another voice added, “I must say, I agree with our dear swordsman. Of all the people to change their minds on this point, I was not expecting it to be you, Miss Navigator.”

“Shut up, meathead. Not you, Robin, you’re a darling. Luffy, stop trying to steal Usopp’s snack and focus up, please.”

“What did they deliver to freak you out like this? A young maiden seeking Luffy’s hand in wedded bliss? Their firstborn son?” another voice jumped in, snickering.

“What a funny joke, Usopp! You’re a natural-born comedian!” Nami said, and then she grabbed Sanji by the arm and hauled him bodily into the room. “It was their third son, actually.”

The room, it turned out, was a simple office space, populated by a few overstuffed chairs and a massive desk, completely covered in hand-drawn maps. There was a bookshelf against the wall absolutely crammed full with scrolls of varying age and condition. A series of tiny notecards tacked onto the shelf identified them as more maps, sorted by cardinal direction and cross-referenced by date.

As Sanji stumbled to a halt inside the room, at Nami’s side, six faces turned to stare at him. Their expressions that ran the gamut from mild surprise to abject horror. The panicked buzz in Sanji’s skull was briefly interrupted by the thought that this had to be one of the oddest gatherings of people he’d ever seen.

In one of the plush armchairs, a dark-haired woman sat with her legs folded neatly and a third arm sprouted from her shoulder, holding a mug at the ready while her two other hands paged through a massive book. Leaning against the wall next to her was an abjectly enormous man with a shock of blue hair and something decidedly magical about the shape and size of his limbs. A little, deer-like creature with soft, brown fur and a sweet-looking face ducked behind the blue-haired man the second he met Sanji’s eyes. A man with a long nose and shoulder-length locs had frozen in the middle of a bite of food, chopsticks hovering, forgotten, a few inches away from his mouth.

“Their… third…” the long-nosed man said, slowly.

“Son,” Nami finished for him. “Yes, that’s what I just said. Keep up, Usopp.”

“My goodness,” the dark-haired woman mildly, her voice velvet-low.

“They sent me a person? What did they do that for?” a new voice asked, from the opposite side of the room.

Unable to put it off any longer, Sanji turned to look at the two other figures in the room, slumped against the far wall and perched on the end of the desk, respectively.

The Demon Swordsman, Roronoa Zoro, and Straw-Hat Luffy himself.

Even without the three swords and the straw hat, Sanji would’ve known them on sight. After all, there had been photographs of them printed in nearly every newspaper produced on the continent in the last year and a half.

Roronoa Zoro, out of everyone in this odd little gathering, at least looked the part of the Warlord’s right hand. Despite being around Sanji’s height, his presence felt enormous. He was broad and solid-shouldered, his arms and torso thick with muscle. He wore his kimono loosely enough that it exposed nearly the entire length of a jagged, horrible scar bisecting his chest. His left eye had been excised from his head, and it had not been cleanly done. He carried three katana, strapped to his hip, and held himself with the conviction of a man who knew how to use them. The three earrings, which Sanji had seen in photos, were an oddly delicate detail. They caught the light and glittered, an eye-catching, buttery gold.

Straw-Hat Luffy, on the other hand, just looked like a man. Dark-haired, round-faced, with a crescent-shaped scar high on his cheekbone. He wore a fairly shabby red vest over his loose, white, long-sleeved shirt. There was mud on the hem of his pants. The infamous straw hat, hanging around his neck, looked weathered but beloved, like he’d worn it every single day and cared for it just as long. He looked sweet-natured and laughter-prone and young, not at all like a man who’d torn a path of destruction through the continent and toppled King Kaido. His eyes were locked onto Sanji’s face with an expression of rapt attention.

Sanji allowed himself the span of a single second to consider his options.

Option one was to attempt to fight his way free. With the enchanted handcuffs still in place around his wrists and seven of the continents’ strongest fighters assembled in this room, this would naturally be a doomed endeavor from the start. Even still, it was the only honorable path for a self-respecting Vinsmoke to take.

But Sanji wasn’t a Vinsmoke anymore. And he wanted, so damn badly, to live.

He wanted to survive this. He didn’t want to be gloriously struck down in battle. He didn’t want to die a noble, blood-soaked death. He didn’t want to disappear from this world and have the sum of him be this: a pawn his father used and threw away.

Was that really too much to ask? Was his pride really too great a sacrifice, if it meant he’d somehow get to live?

Option two, then, he thought, and he sank down to one knee.

“Lord Luffy,” he said, propping his elbow on his knee and bowing his head. Reciting the words from rote memory, he continued, “It is an honor to meet you, King of the Pirates and Warlord of the South. I ask for forgiveness for imposing on your hospitality and beg for sanctuary within your land. I will serve in whatever role you ask of me, in exchange. I make this plea as a guest in your halls, before the eyes of the ocean and the sky.”

“Who the hell is that supposed to be?” that gravel-low voice asked, from somewhere above Sanji’s head and to the right. The Demon Swordsman, then. The hair on the nape of Sanji’s neck prickled under the weight of his attention.

“That is Germa’s tribute,” Nami spat. “Judge’s third son, Vinsmoke Sanji.”

Sanji winced at the sound of his name, keeping his eyes focused directly on the worn, wooden floor below him.

“Sanctuary?” Warlord Luffy echoed, sounding perplexed. “The… eyes… of the ocean? Huh?”

“It’s a traditional plea for asylum, used by northern peoples during wartime,” the velvet-voiced woman explained. “He’s asking you to grant him a place to stay, in exchange for his service.”

“Service?” Luffy said. “Oh, no, no, I definitely don’t want a servant. Yuck.”

Sanji’s stomach sank. A moment of extremely unpleasant silence descended over the room.

“I know Vinsmoke Judge is unhinged, but this makes no damn sense. What the hell kind of king sends his son as a tribute offering?” the Demon Swordsman said.

“An attempt at infiltration, perhaps?” the velvet-voiced woman suggested. “Germa has been conducting cross-borders raids with increased frequency in the last few months. This may be the opening salvo in an invasion plan.”

“They never did like the treaty borders I drew up,” Nami said, a bit doubtfully.

“Kind of a crazy stunt to pull over some badlands, though,” pointed out the long-nosed man that Nami had called Usopp.

“Yeah? Well, Judge is fucking insane. I wouldn’t put a move like this past him at all,” the Demon Swordsman said, and silence fell again.

“Are we sure it’s actually his son?” Usopp eventually asked, something like hope in his voice.

“Hard to fake those eyebrows,” the enormous, blue-haired man observed, staring at Sanji over his dark-tinted glasses.

Sanji managed to restrain the impulse to lift a hand and cover his eyebrow. He wished he hadn’t braided his hair back that morning. It would’ve at least allowed him a curtain to hide behind.

“Good point. We met Crown Prince Ichiji and Prince Yonji at the last world conference, remember? I guess I can see the family resemblance,” Nami mused.

“I don’t remember a blond prince in attendance at the conference,” the velvet-voiced woman observed.

“I wasn’t exactly welcome on diplomatic outings,” Sanji interrupted, before he could stop himself. “And, technically speaking, I haven’t officially been a prince in a long time. I was removed from the line of succession when I was seven.”

“Must’ve been a pretty shit prince, then,” the Demon Swordsman drawled.

His dismissive tone struck like flint inside Sanji’s chest. The fury he’d been feeling back in the carriage, that ball of pain and rage, guttered and sparked back to life.

For the first time since he’d gotten to his knees, Sanji lifted his head. His eyes caught on the Demon Swordsman’s. It was quartz-gray, like tempered steel. The color of the sky before a blizzard.

“Yeah,” Sanji agreed, evenly. “You could say that.”

“Okay,” Warlord Luffy said. “All right, you guys. That’s enough.”

The burn of his anger immediately died out again. He dropped his gaze and hunched his shoulders as Luffy hopped off the cluttered desk and walked across the room, wooden sandals clattering on the floor. He stopped directly in front of Sanji.

Straw Hat Luffy is a monster, not a man, Niji’s voice sneered, inside Sanji’s brain. He’ll tear your guts out with his teeth.

And then Straw Hat Luffy, King of the Pirates and Warlord of the South, crouched down, balancing on his toes, close enough for Sanji to reach out and touch.

“I don’t really get it, but sanctuary granted,” he said. “Sounds like you’ve had a hard time. I’m glad you’re here, now, Sanji.”

Sanji recoiled, face snapping up to stare at Straw Hat Luffy with shock. Luffy grinned at him, and it wasn’t the distant, benevolent smile of a king or the mad, blood-drenched snarl of a warlord. It was the kind of smile that sang, the kind that fizzled in your veins like champaign.

“Luffy,” the Demon Swordsman said, obvious skepticism in his voice.

“It’s okay, Zoro,” Luffy said. “Let’s stand up, okay? It’ll be easier to talk like this.” Luffy grabbed Sanji’s arm and pulled both of them up to their feet. He gave Sanji a friendly pat on the bicep, not particularly gentle but with obvious affability. Sanji only flinched away a very little bit. “There! Way better, right?”

Sanji was taller than the warlord of the south by several inches. It was an extremely jarring thing to realize. He’d expected to be loomed over.

“He looks a bit overwhelmed, Luffy-san,” the dark-haired woman said, quietly. “A little space, maybe?”

Luffy immediately stepped back, hands lifted in a gesture oddly like surrender. “Oh, right! Sorry, Sanji! Nami says I ‘ignore personal boundaries’ sometimes, whatever that’s supposed to mean.”

“It means literally this,” Nami grouched at him. Sanji stood in mute and aghast shock as she stomped over and grabbed Luffy by the scruff of his neck, dragging him bodily away from Sanji. Luffy didn’t even seem phased by this treatment, giggling and attempting to squirm out of Nami’s grip.

Once, a servant carrying a towering basket of laundry had knocked into Judge in the hallway. Judge had ordered their pinky finger removed.

“Oi, blondie,” Roronoa Zoro suddenly said.

Sanji jolted, swallowing hard. He turned to meet Roronoa’s eyes, forcing himself not to flinch away. Luffy might’ve accepted his request for sanctuary, but if the Demon Swordsman had assessed him as a threat… He was Straw Hat’s right hand. If he demanded Sanji’s death, surely Luffy would allow it.

He didn’t move to unsheathe one of his three swords, though. Instead, he tipped his chin toward Sanji’s hands, at the golden cuffs mostly obscured by the neat, ruffled cuffs of his white sleeves. “What are those, then?”

“Are those handcuffs? How long have you been wearing them? The blisters!” the little, antlered creature blurted, scurrying out from where he’d been hiding behind the dark-haired woman. Fear seemingly forgotten, he grabbed Sanji’s hands between his hands. Actually – not hands. They looked much closer to small hooves.

“Ask before touching, Chopper,” Roronoa Zoro said, mildly.

“I’m so sorry!” Chopper squeaked. “Sanji, is it okay if I touch you?”

Sanji, who was now considering the possibility that perhaps he already died en route to Dawn City and was currently in the afterlife, said, “Yes. Thank you for asking. Be careful, though. If the spell is triggered somehow while you’re in range, they could hurt you.”

“The spell?” Chopper asked, leaning down to inspect the reddened skin of Sanji’s wrists.

Nami snarled, “This thing,” and lifted the sealed scroll that Judge’s envoy had given her. “From what that idiot was saying, it sounded like they’re some kind of torture device. Is that accurate, Sanji?”

Sanji nodded. “Yes, My Lady, for the most part. It’s an innovation Judge has been working on for a long time. They’re standard anti-magic cuffs, except the gold is imbued with a curse while the metal is being worked into shape. If you were to read that scroll out loud, the spell would activate and permanently destroy my hands.”

Chopper froze, hooves hovering in the air about an inch above the cuffs.

His dark complexion looking a little ashen, Usopp said, faintly, “What the hell?”

Luffy’s face had gone extremely stony. “Franky,” he said, tone considerably icier than it had been before. Sanji shrank back a little, on instinct.

The blue-haired man nodded. This was “Cyborg” Franky, then, Sanji realized – a man famously more spell than skin, who’d reassembled his own body almost entirely from metal and magic. “On it, boss. Mind if I take a look at those, little brother?”

Sanji silently offered his hands in Franky’s direction.

Franky peered down, large hands moving with surprising delicacy over the cuffs, as well as the chain linking them together. “There’s no locking charm, so there must’ve been a key that they used to close and lock these when they put them on you. Did they give that to Nami, too?”

Sanji shook his head. “No. There was a key, but it stayed in Germa. If it came with us, I would’ve had the opportunity to steal it en route, and it’s not like the cuffs are ever meant to come off. They’re supposed to be insurance.”

Nobody in the room seemed to appreciate this explanation much.

“Well, you weren’t kidding, Zoro,” said Usopp. “Insane is right.”

“You’ve been wearing those things since you left Germa? It takes a whole week to get from there to here!” Chopper asked. His big, round eyes looked menacingly wet.

“Okay, well, good thing I don’t need a key,” Franky announced. “You’re looking at the world’s greatest artificer, little brother. I’ll get those things off you super quick. You can count on me.”

“Wait, what?” Sanji said. “You want to take them off?”

“Of course,” Nami said, sounding appalled. “Why wouldn’t we?”

“Well… I might run off,” Sanji offered, with a little less confidence. “Or I could be a spy, like you were saying earlier. I could try to hurt one of you. I could set your castle on fire. There are a lot of options.”

“I gave you sanctuary,” Luffy said. “You can go wherever you want. I wouldn’t ever keep anyone here if they didn’t want to stay. And if you try to hurt one of us, we’ll just fight you properly, face-to-face, and we’ll win or lose like that. I wouldn’t use a nasty trick like that on anyone.”

They said you were violent, Sanji thought, with something like desperation. They said you were merciless. An unstoppable force, an immovable object. What is happening here? What is going on?

Franky’s hand jostled the cuff on his right wrist. Sanji’s heart cannonballed into his stomach and he nearly bit off his tongue with the force of his flinch.

“Perhaps focusing on something else would be a good idea, while Franky finishes his work?” the dark-haired woman suggested, clearly noticing the look on his face.

“Good idea, Robin!” Luffy chirped. “Hey, Sanji, what’s something you like to do? Like, I like meat and fighting, and Zoro likes swords and booze—”

“Oi,” said the Demon Swordsman.

“—and Nami likes money, and Robin likes books and old stuff! What do you like?”

“Oh,” Sanji said. “I… I mean, it’s not – it’s not really proper, for a prince—”

“But, as you’ve said, you’re not a prince anymore,” Nami pointed out. “So it should be fine to talk about it now, right?”

“Right,” Sanji said, a little taken-aback. “No. You’re right. I… I like to cook.”

“No way!” Luffy shouts, delight blooming over his face like the plum blossoms, in the courtyard outside. “I like to eat!”

“Ah-ha. There you are, bastard,” Franky suddenly burst out. He slid the pad of his thumb over the gold, muttering something under his breath. A tiny seam in the surface began to glow a chilly blue. Franky grabbed a delicate metal tool out of his belt and began to fiddle, sliding the tool into the seam. There was a tiny little click, then a hissing sound as the curse on the cuffs dissipated. And then they fell away from Sanji’s wrists and dropped into Franky’s waiting hand, inert.

For a moment, Sanji stood stock-still, unbelieving. He gently pressed his fingertips to the naked, blistered skin on the inside of his left wrist, hands trembling. Out of a pure, burning sort of desire, he drew his fingers through the air and whispered a spell. Crimson sparks issued from his skin, rising into the air before coalescing into the loose shape of a butterfly.

“Oh,” Chopper cooed, reaching up with a hoof. The butterfly landed on his nose and beat its wings, once, before dissolving. “That was amazing!”

“A ridiculous waste of magic, if you ask my father, but thank you,” Sanji said, laughing. Then he turned to Franky and said again, with a voice that miraculously didn’t tremble: “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it, little brother,” Franky said, tucking the metal tool back into his belt and flashing Sanji a thumbs-up.

“Now that that’s handled,” Nami said, shooting the cuffs a remarkably nasty look, “we should discuss options.”

“For what?” Luffy asked.

“For Sanji,” Nami said. “He can go, of course. But, Luffy—”

“I already thought of it!” Luffy cut in. “We still need a head chef. If you wanted, Sanji, you could stay here permanently. Since I already gave you sanctuary in the eyes of the sea and whatever. You could be my cook!”

Sanji said, “What?”

“Don’t worry, though!” Luffy continued, as though he hadn’t just offered Sanji both a home and a job in one fell swoop. “If you want to leave right away, I promise you can. I don’t take tribute if it’s people. Hey, Nami, we should send out some kind of message about that. Tribute is fine, but no more people!”

“No, Luffy, wait,” Chopper interrupted, wringing his little hooves. “I’m sorry, but I’m going to need him to at least stay in the castle overnight. Those sores around his wrists look terrible and they need proper cleaning and treatment. And – Sanji, I’m sorry, but when was the last time you had a full meal?”

“It’s been…” Sanji began, and then his voice crumbled in his mouth like dry bread. “I… I’m not quite sure.”

A tear spilled onto Chopper’s round cheek.

Sanji’s emotions suddenly felt too large and messy for his own body. He dug into his pocket and pulled out his handkerchief, passing it to Chopper. He hesitated for a moment and then gently patted Chopper’s head, careful to avoid knocking his hand against his antlers, one of which appeared to have already been broken once and then repaired.

“You have to stay the night,” Chopper begged him. “I know I don’t look like much, but I’m a doctor. I’ll take really good care of you. Please, please, promise you’ll stay—”

“All right,” Sanji said, patting Chopper’s head with a little more surety. “Okay. I’ll stay. Thank you, Doctor. I’ll be in your care.”

“That doesn’t make me happy at all, you jerk!” Chopper said, in transparently delighted tones.

“All right, then. That’s a good enough decision for now,” Nami said, looking pleased. “In that case, would somebody be willing to bring Sanji to one of the empty guest quarters? He can rest there until the kitchens are finished with dinner and Chopper’s ready to look him over.”

“I’ll take him,” Roronoa Zoro announced, from his post in the room’s far corner.

Everyone besides Sanji jumped a little at the sound of his voice, as though they’d momentarily forgotten he was there.

“I’m not sure that’s the best idea, Zoro,” Nami told him. “I still have some things to cover with Luffy, but… Maybe Usopp could…”

“If we let you play tour guide, you’re going to vanish off the face of the earth and we won’t find either of you for at least a day. Plus, the guy’s clearly traumatized and, no offense, but you’re completely terrifying,” Usopp muttered near Zoro’s ear, in a stage whisper that was easily audible to everyone in the room, Sanji included.

“I’m not scared of him,” Sanji blurted. Everyone’s heads swiveled back in his direction, including Zoro’s. The Demon Swordman’s expression was stoic and appraising, as though he were sizing Sanji up for a fight. “I’m not,” he reiterated, feeling heat flood into his cheeks at the scrutiny. “I’ll go with him. Thank you for offering, swordsman-san.”

If Zoro was surprised by this easy agreement, he didn’t show it. Instead, he nodded firmly and crossed to Sanji’s side. And then, to Sanji’s utter disbelief, he extended an elbow for Sanji to take.

Usopp whispered to Nami, “What is happening?”

“Does Zoro have manners?” Nami hissed back to him, mouth hidden behind her hand.

“Shut up, you two,” Zoro told them, without rancor. “Well, blondie?”

“Right. Sorry,” Sanji said, and he took Zoro’s arm.

Even through the layers of fabric between them, Sanji could feel the heat radiating off Zoro’s skin, furnace-hot. His arm was very solid, even relaxed, the considerable swell of his bicep pliant under Sanji’s touch. The warmth in Sanji’s cheeks deepened. He glared at the floor to compensate.

“Straw Hat,” Sanji said, turning back to Luffy right before they left the room. “I – I’m really… Thank you.”

Luffy nodded at him, and smiled hard enough it looked as though it might hurt his cheeks. “No problem! Feel better soon! Eat lots and lots of food!”

“Don’t get lost, Zoro!” Nami and Usopp yelled, in unison.

Sanji let Zoro lead him out of the room, Zoro lifting his free hand to make a rude gesture at Nami and Usopp over his shoulder.

For a long moment, they walked in silence. Zoro seemed unbothered by this, his expression as placid and opaque as it had been since Sanji arrived. Sanji’s stupid pulse accelerated with every step, as his brain became more and more convinced that Zoro was taking him out behind the castle to stab him and then bury his body without any witnesses.

Finally, he blurted out, “You thought I was a spy.”

Zoro grunted in confirmation.

“Don’t you have a problem with me staying the night, then?” Sanji asked, a note of incredulity slipping into his voice despite himself.

“Nah,” Zoro said, casually. “Luffy says you’re fine.”

“Luffy could be wrong,” Sanji pointed out, fully aware that he was now providing arguments in favor of removing his own head from his shoulders.

“He’s never wrong about shit like this,” Zoro said. There was a brief hesitation, then he added, “I should know,” and Sanji thought, Oh.

“He took a chance on you, too,” he guessed.

“I took a chance on him. But he doesn’t take chances,” Zoro said. “He somehow just. I don’t know. He just knows. It’s a leap of faith, I guess.”

“A leap of faith,” Sanji repeated, barely audibly.

There was another pause. Sanji forced himself to take a deep breath, now only about thirteen percent convinced that he was about to be quietly shish-kebabbed by the second most powerful man in a several-hundred-mile radius.

“You’re not really going to get us lost, right?” he eventually checked, mostly just to break the silence.

“I’m not that bad,” Zoro snapped, the tips of his ears flushing a rosy pink. “They’re exaggerating.”

The blush in Zoro’s ears made him look strangely young. Another odd detail, another puzzle piece that didn’t quite fit right.

“None of the newspapers mentioned you having trouble with directions,” Sanji said.

“The newspapers are full of shit,” Zoro told him, matter-of-factly.

“I’m starting to get that,” Sanji admitted. “Luffy’s nothing like what they say about him.”

“Yeah?” Zoro said. “And what about me?”

They call you a demon, Sanji thought. But you noticed the handcuffs. You reminded Chopper to get my consent before touching me. You offered to find me a place to stay. You offered me your arm, like I’m still something worth treating with respect.

“Jury’s still out,” Sanji eventually said. “You’re not as tall as I pictured.”

“Starting to think you’ve got some teeth under all those courtly manners, blondie,” Zoro said, grinning sideways at him.

Sanji considered this. “I guess maybe I do. It’s just… The courtly manners are all I’ve had, my whole life.”

They stopped outside a door. Zoro slid the screen open and stepped inside, toeing off his shoes in the hallway before walking over to the bedroom’s window. He pushed it open, letting in a warm breath of night air.

“It’ll air out pretty quick,” Zoro said. “They keep it clean in here in case somebody shows up unexpectedly to visit, so there shouldn’t be any dust. Futon and bedding and everything should be in the cabinet. There’s a toilet off the hall, and we can show you the bathhouse once Chopper’s looked you over. You need anything else?”

Sanji was still looking at Zoro’s shoes, left just outside the door. He didn’t know why this one gesture was what sent him over the edge. Something about the simple gesture of respect, the ease with which he’d done it. Sanji felt it in his chest like a static shock.

“I don’t understand,” he said, quietly. “I don’t understand any of this. Any of you. What do any of you gain, by showing me kindness? It’s not like Judge will care.”

“None of us give a fuck about Vinsmoke Judge,” Zoro said, with force. “And the point isn’t to gain anything. It’s not a transaction, and it’s not political.”

“What is it, then?” Sanji asked, a little desperately.

“Kindness,” Zoro said. He paused, and then added, “I didn’t get it, either, when I first met Luffy. But the more time you spend with him, the more you’ll start to understand.”

“You don’t know that,” Sanji pointed out. “You don’t know anything about me. Maybe kindness isn’t something I’m capable of.”

Zoro shrugged, eye fixed very seriously on Sanji’s face. “I know you survived a weeklong journey strapped into a torture device. I know you’re a cook. I know Luffy likes you and wants you to stay, and I know Luffy’s never wrong about shit like this. I know you comforted Chopper, even though he was crying over your pain. I know you’re not scared of me. Guess I’ll just have to figure out the rest.”

Sanji considered this. Then, for the first time since climbing into that horrible carriage, back in Germa, he allowed himself to smile, real and true.

“Okay, then. Seems fair, since I still have to decide whether the newspapers got you wrong or not. We’ll just have to figure out each other.”

Zoro blinked at him. The tips of his ears were red again, and the warm tan of his cheeks looked a little darker, too.

“Fine,” he said. “Yeah. Okay. See you later, cook.”

“Bye, swordsman-san,” Sanji said.

Eye studiously averted from Sanji’s face, Zoro turned and scurried into the hallway. The door slid shut behind him, and for the first time in over a week, Sanji was entirely alone.

As Zoro had promised, there was a rolled futon and bedding tucked away inside the room’s cabinet. Everything smelled fresh and clean, like soap and sunshine and a little like the plum blossoms from the courtyard. Sanji laid it out and then stepped back to inspect his work. He gently touched the blistering skin on his wrists. He listened with rapt attention as the sounds of music and children’s laughter floated in through the open window. It sounded like their game of tag had evolved into an elaborate reenactment of Straw Hat Luffy's defeat of the former King of the Southlands, Kaido of the Beasts.

When the tears finally came, they were steady and soundless. Sanji lay flat on his back on the futon, covered his face with his forearm, and wept. He kept time with the frantic pounding of his pulse until it steadied and, eventually, slowed.

The sun had fully descended and the room had filled with a pleasant, cool, blue sort of dusk, when there was a gentle knock at the door. Sanji shuffled over, still wrapped in the duvet, and slid the door open.

Nami and Chopper stood on the other side, Chopper clutching an ominously over-stuffed bag against his chest, Nami carrying a tray laden with food and a pot of tea.

“So you did make it here in one piece!” Nami said, stepping into the room and setting the tray down on a squat little table, near the spot where Sanji had set up his futon. “How long did it take Zoro to find the place? Usopp and I have a bet going.”

“We came directly here. It only took a few minutes. I’m sorry if that throws a wrench into your bet, My Lady,” Sanji said, smiling a little as he remembered Zoro’s ears turning red. I’m not that bad. They’re exaggerating.

Nami’s eyebrows lifted. “I see. He didn’t do anything scary, did he? Don’t worry, the glaring and scowling are just sort of how his face works.”

“He was a perfect gentleman,” Sanji assured her.

Nami and Chopper exchanged wide-eyed looks.

“Interesting,” Nami said, a slow smile beginning to spread across her face.

“Is it?” Sanji asked, a little alarmed.

“Don’t you worry about that, Sanji-kun. Are you hungry? We normally all eat together, but mealtimes tend to be even more chaotic than usual, around here. I figured it might be nicer to have the peace and quiet, just for this evening.”

Sanji bowed his head gratefully. “That’s very thoughtful of you. Thank you, Nami-san.”

“You’re so polite, Sanji-kun. It’s sweet, but there’s no need to speak so formally. None of us do, as you might’ve noticed. Here, why don’t you come and eat something? Then Chopper can take a look at you.”

The food was nice – not particularly memorable, but warm and filling and blessedly fresh. They hadn’t been starving him on the ride here, not really, but he’d only been tossed stale scraps and dry road rations once or twice a day, seemingly only when it occurred to the guards to remember his existence. Sanji ate methodically, savoring every bite, careful not to eat himself sick and let the dinner go to waste.

Chopper and Nami sat cross-legged on the tatami mat as he ate, chatting casually about some trouble Luffy got into and a new ‘project’ Usopp was working on. It sounded like it involved casting long-term weather-working spells on Nami’s bo staff – a tricky piece of magic, indeed.

Listening in, Sanji found himself feeling oddly charmed. In Germa, spellcasting never would’ve been used for something like that. Magic was about power, explosive and overpowering. A top-ranked sorcerer dedicating himself to an intricate enchantment that would create a high-pressure weather system? Germa’s court mages would keel over in horror at the idea.

When he was finished eating, Sanji moved the table aside and extended his wrists for Chopper’s inspection.

“Luckily, the skin isn’t broken anywhere,” Chopper observed, opening his bag and extracting some ointment and bandages. “That significantly reduces the risk of infection. Still, you should apply this ointment twice a day and keep them clean and covered for now, just in case any of these blisters rupture. The ointment has one of my own healing charms mixed into it, so it’ll be really good for you.”

“Aye-aye, Doctor,” Sanji said, because it had obviously made Chopper happy, earlier.

Sure enough, Chopper blushed and wiggled a little, ducking his head to avoid Sanji’s gaze. “Whatever! Don’t think you can sweet-talk me! Now move the blanket so I can listen to your heartbeat!”

Once he had finished checking Sanji’s heartbeat and blood pressure, and had even tested his reflexes using a little wooden mallet, Chopper sat back and snapped his bag closed, setting it aside.

“Other than your wrists, you seem to be in good health, Sanji-san. You’re a little malnourished and dehydrated, but we can work on that.”

“If he decides to stay,” Nami reminded Chopper gently.

“Oh, right,” Chopper said, turning his big, starry black eyes to stare directly into Sanji’s soul. Those things should’ve been classified as some kind of weapon, Sanji thought. “Please, please think about staying! It’s really nice here. I know you’ll like it. Everyone’s so amazing and so nice, and having friends is—”

“Let’s wait until tomorrow to give him the hard sell, kiddo,” Nami said, ruffling her hand through the fur at the crown of Chopper’s head.

“Okay,” Chopper agreed happily. “Do you want a piece of candy, Sanji-san? I give them to the kids when we do check-ups!”

Sanji thought for a moment about what the look on Judge’s face would be, were he to hear that statement uttered in Germa’s hospital wing.

“Sure,” he said, mostly out of spite. “Thanks, Chopper.”

This seemed to be the right thing to say; Chopper lit up and started rummaging through his bag’s front pocket. “I have chocolate and licorice! Which do you like better?”

Over the top of Chopper’s head, Nami was giving Sanji a serious, thoughtful look. When he met her eyes, nibbling on a just-barely stale piece of dark chocolate, she gave him a tiny, approving smile and a nod.

“Try to get lots of rest tonight,” Chopper told him, getting to his feet – his hooves? – and offering Sanji a polite bow.

“Someone will come and wake you for breakfast tomorrow,” Nami said, standing and brushing invisible dust off her yukata around the knees. “Don’t worry, we don’t get started too early. Some of us like to sleep more than others. Would nine o’clock be all right?”

“That’s more than fine,” Sanji said. “Everyone in Germa starts their day around five.”

“That sounds… intense,” Nami said, with the delicate tones of someone who is refraining from using considerably harsher language.

Sanji awkwardly rubbed a hand on the back of his neck. “It’s an intense kingdom, generally speaking,” he admitted. “You can get used to anything, though.”

“Yes,” Nami agreed, reaching up to touch a spot high on her left bicep, hidden by her sleeve. “But I’m not so sure you should have to. Goodnight, Sanji-kun.”

The next morning, the sun was high in the sky outside the window before a quiet knock sounded outside Sanji’s door.

He had been awake for quite some time by that point, rising with the sun out of habit. He’d already folded up his bedding and reluctantly dressed in the same clothes he’d been wearing when he arrived. His white, button-up shirt smelled a tiny bit like sweat, but it was only really noticeable when he put his nose right up to the fabric. The dark pants and red, mid-length cape were in much better condition, only a little mussed from the carriage ride. Still, he wondered who he’d have to speak to about finding something else to wear. Germa’s envoy hadn’t left him with any belongings or a single berry to his name, under the obvious assumption that he wouldn’t need material goods in the afterlife. He’d have to hope somebody would be willing to part with their old clothing out of generosity.

When the knock sounded, Sanji was in the middle of doing his hair. In the absence of a brush, he’d had to finger-comb the tangles out. He’d plaited it back as best as he could without a mirror, tying it off with the same faded ribbon he’d used the day before. Fiddling with the bow and hoping his braid wasn’t hopelessly lopsided, Sanji walked to the door and slid it open.

The dark-haired woman – Robin, Sanji thought – waited in the hallway, her hands tucked neatly behind her back. In the light of the morning, now that some of the numb panic had fled Sanji’s system and it had begun to seem less and less likely that this was all some nasty trick that the universe was playing on him, he was better able to appreciate just how beautiful she was. She had the regal features of some legendary monarch, right off the pages of a history book, memorialized in sculpture and song. She carried herself like a dancer, or perhaps a skilled combatant, shoulders back and head held high. The high cheekbones, the brown skin, the hawkish nose, the silken hair, the statuesque height – like Nami, the previous day, Sanji was struck by the conviction that he’d never met anyone like this, ever, in his entire life.

Also like Nami, Robin carried a single weapon – a long-barreled pistol, holstered to her hip.

“Good morning, Sanji-san,” Robin said. “I’ve been instructed by Chopper to remind you to reapply the medicinal cream to your wrists before we head to breakfast.”

“Already done,” Sanji said, holding up his re-bandaged wrists for her to see. “Thank you for playing escort, Robin-san. I’m sure you had better things to do with your morning.”

“Not at all,” she said, with a tiny smile. “We had a bit of an argument, actually, over who would get the chance to come get you. I narrowly beat out our dear swordsman for the honor.”

“Oh,” Sanji said, utterly baffled by this. “That’s… Huh. Why? If you don’t mind me asking.”

“Ask anything you’d like, please, although this answer isn’t a particularly exciting one. We’re merely all excited about the chance to get to know you,” Robin explained, gesturing with a broad sweep of her arm for Sanji to begin walking. “None of us have met anyone from Germa before, and it seems you’ve walked quite a challenging path, before coming to us.”

“I was a prince,” Sanji corrected her, gently. “Even if I didn’t have my father’s favor, I wasn’t exactly living in squalor.”

“There are many different kinds of paths,” Robin said, “and challenges can take many different forms. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“I guess so,” Sanji said. “Still, if you’re all treating me this way out of pity…”

Robin paused, the broad stride of her steps faltering. “I don’t pity you, Sanji-san. And, I cannot speak to what may or may not be in the others’ hearts, but none of them are prone to pity, either. Pity is sympathy without understanding. But when I saw the look on your face in Nami’s office, yesterday… Well. I suppose I’m trying to say that I understood it, in my way.”

“Oh,” said Sanji. “You… you’ve walked a challenging path, then?”

Robin smiled again, a barely-there curve to her perfect lips. “Exactly so. All of us have, really.”

“And you all ended up here,” Sanji said.

Robin’s eyebrow quirked upward, just a little.

Sanji lifted his hands. “My apologies, I’m really not trying to pry. I guess I’m just… trying to figure Lord Luffy out. I’ve never met a ruler like him before.”

“I understand,” Robin assured him. “Like I said, you can ask me anything. If it’s something I don’t wish to answer, I’ll simply decline.”

Sanji nodded. “If it’s not presuming too much, then, would you tell me… Why him? Why decide to follow Straw Hat Luffy?”

“At the time, I wasn’t sure myself,” Robin said, thoughtfully. “He’d kept me from ending my life, you see, and I couldn’t imagine what to do with myself in the aftermath. Following him seemed like the lesser of many evils. Now, though… I suppose I was searching for my place. Hoping to find somewhere to belong. Luffy gave me that place. Without reservations, without caveats, without expecting anything in return. That is why I pledged my service to him. There is no other reason.”

“It’s a nice idea,” Sanji acknowledged.

Robin leveled him with a wry, sideways glance. “A nice idea, but ultimately unrealistic, hm? I thought the same thing, you know, when I first began to travel with Luffy. Before he was a king, or even much of a captain.”

“You changed your mind, though?” Sanji asked.

“I did,” Robin said. “If you give him a chance, you might, too. Back then, he wasn’t a king yet, but he’s always been quite a remarkable leader. Ah, here we are. I hope you’re hungry.”

Dawn Castle’s dining hall was huge, full of mismatched tables arranged at odd angles. A few unfamiliar faces were seated around the room, eating in a contented silence or happily chatting with their neighbors. There was no obvious hierarchy and no apparent seating arrangement that Sanji could make sense of.

At a long table set along the far end of the room, the remaining Straw Hats were already assembled. Sanji and Robin had barely set foot in the room before Luffy’s head whipped around. He waved at them enthusiastically, lifting his entire arm above his head.

“Robin! Sanji! Come eat, come eat!”

Nobody in the room seemed particularly surprised by this display. A trio of older women who looked like they might be members of the cleaning staff even giggled a little, fondly rolling their eyes.

Sanji, who had never in his entire existence witnessed a person roll their eyes at a ruler, fondly or otherwise, had to fight to keep his facial expression neutral.

As they approached the table, the rest of the Straw Hats greeted them boisterously. It was the same group that had been assembled in the office the previous night, with the addition of a magically-animated skeleton with a frothy cloud of an afro adding to his already-considerable height.

Sanji, who had essentially lost the capacity for surprise at this point, said, “Oh, hello.”

“Hello!” the skeleton said, rising from his seat to take Sanji’s hand and shake it vigorously. It felt like… well. Shaking a handful of bones. Not to put too fine a point on it. “I am Brook, court musician and herald to the King of the Pirates. And you must be Sanji-san, eh? I had heard so much about you from my dear friends, here, that my heart simply couldn’t bear the idea of going another day without meeting you. Not that I have a heart! Yo-ho-ho-ho! Skull joke.”

“That’s very kind of you,” Sanji said, politely. “Nice to meet you, Brook-san.”

“What a nice boy,” Brook said, evidentially moved by this reply. He clapped a hand on Sanji’s shoulder and launched into a heartfelt recitation of a poem about new friendships.

Sanji, helpless, glanced at the table and happened to catch Zoro’s eye. He seemed to be fighting back laughter. Sanji mouthed, What do I do? Zoro gave him a subtle thumbs-up and mouthed back, You’re doing great.

Shooting Zoro a dirty look that he hoped communicated, You’re absolutely no help at all, Sanji gently patted Brook’s bony hand. “I’m sorry, we interrupted breakfast. The last thing I’d want is to distract anyone from food.”

“Ah, yes, I hear tell that you’re a chef, Sanji-san!” Brook said, sliding back into place on the bench and gesturing for Sanji to take a seat next to him. “A noble profession, indeed.”

“I don’t know about nobility, but it’s something I’ve always loved,” Sanji said, sliding into place. As soon as he’d sat down, a full plate was passed into his hands from across the table. Sanji looked up, surprised. Nami flashed him a grin and a wink and slid him a glass of orange juice before returning to her own meal.

Like yesterday’s dinner, the food was fresh and filling but not particularly memorable. It seemed the Dawn Castle kitchen was more focused on getting as much food onto plates as possible, rather than on the artistry of cooking. That was more than understandable, given the number of mouths that needed feeding, but… Sanji took a bite of his home fries and his brain started spinning, running through a list of frying techniques and spice combinations that could level them up. The bread, served with butter and honey and jam, was hearty but just a little stale; it would be better to bake it in-house, rather than buying from somewhere else, if it could be avoided. Mixing roasted garlic and rosemary into the butter would add depth of flavor. A simple warming charm on the plate of eggs would help, too – maybe if he could—

“—ji-kun. Sanji-kun?”

“Oh! Yes?” Sanji said, tearing his gaze away from his plate.

Nami raised an eyebrow at him.

“Sorry, Nami-san,” he said, sheepishly. “My mind was somewhere else. What did you say?”

“I was asking how you were feeling today?”

“Wonderful,” he said, mostly truthfully. “My wrists don’t hurt at all anymore. Chopper, you’re a miracle worker, truly.”

Chopper wiggled so hard, he slipped off the bench and under the table. “That doesn’t make me happy at all! You jerk!” he shouted, his voice a little muffled by the table.

“Sanji!” Luffy shouted, from the other end of the table. He seemed to have paused midway through demolishing a stack of pancakes about as tall as a human baby. His gaze was bright and focused directly on Sanji’s face.

Sanji jolted a little, sending his fork clattering against the side of his plate on the tabletop. “Yes, Lord Luffy?”

“I want to show you the kitchen, today!” Luffy announced. “Come with me after breakfast, okay?”

“Ah, the charm offensive,” Usopp said, wiping an imaginary nostalgic tear from his eye. “The recruitment drive. Those were the days.”

“Funny,” Zoro commented, without looking up from his tamago gohan. “I don’t remember you needing much convincing to join up. Keeping you on board, though—”

“Too soon!” Usopp said, lobbing a chopstick that Zoro neatly dodged, without so much as turning his head.

“All right,” Sanji agreed, trying to ignore the nervous stutter-step his heart was doing inside his chest. “I’d love to see the kitchen. Thank you, Lord Luffy.”

Luffy pulled a face. “You don’t have to thank me, I’m not doing anything special. And no titles while we do the tour! You have to promise me, okay?”

Sanji faltered. Just as it had with Brook, he found his gaze tipping automatically toward Zoro, mostly by instinct.

Face set, eye serious, Zoro gave him a single nod.

“All right, then. If you say so,” Sanji said, turning back to Luffy.

“Yes!” Luffy said, pumping a fist in the air. “You’re gonna love the kitchen so much, Sanji, trust me.”

Things would have been much, much easier if Dawn Castle’s kitchen sucked.

Instead, Sanji followed Luffy into just about the most beautiful kitchen he’d ever been fortunate enough to step inside. The room was huge and sunny, with a whole wall of windows connecting it to the castle’s outer courtyard. Everything was gorgeously maintained with a combination of spells and mechanics – Franky’s handiwork was obvious, now that Sanji knew to look for it – and the equipment was top-shelf quality. The knife block alone was a chef’s absolute dream.

The appliances seemed to have been handcrafted for the space, likely by Franky and Usopp working in tandem; all of them were an odd but lovely shade of aquamarine, and each had a setting or two that seemed… out of place, compared to the others. For example, next to its normal settings, the oven had a large, red dial tucked under a latched glass cover. It was labeled TURBO. A tiny flame had been drawn in the center of the O with what looked like black ink. There was a piece of parchment tacked up next to it that said, DO NOT TOUCH. ESPECIALLY YOU, ACE.

“Franky made pretty much everything in here,” Luffy explained, giving the stovetop a friendly thump. “He says I’m not allowed to use any of it because I might ‘blow up’ the ‘whole castle,’ which is pretty unfair, if you ask me. I haven’t set anything on fire in ages. The last person to do that was—”

“Fire Fist Ace?” Sanji suggested. He’d just discovered a second note, this one tacked to the deep frier. This one read, ABSOLUTELY NOT, FIRE FIST. “One of King Whitebeard’s top lieutenants, right? I’ve seen him in the papers.”

“Yes! He’s my brother,” Luffy said, proudly.

“No kidding,” Sanji said. “Hell of a family tree.”

“Pretty much. I’ll tell you about my other brother sometime, too,” Luffy said, with a laugh.

Sanji slid a hand along the gleaming countertop, his touch light and nearly worshipful. “Still, I think I understand why Franky feels protective over this place.”

“So you like it, then?” Luffy prompted, a blinding grin spreading across his face.

At the back of Sanji’s head, a niggling little voice informed him that he was more than likely falling into a trap of some kind. For the moment, though, that voice felt distant and unimportant.

Trust me, Luffy had said.

All right, then, Sanji thought to himself. A leap of faith, huh?

“Luffy,” he said, quietly but firmly. “Let me cook dinner tonight.”

Without hesitating, Luffy chirped, “All right! Make us something delicious, okay? With lots of meat!”

“Deal,” Sanji agreed.

“Do you need help? Usually we have… um… I’m not sure exactly how many, but a lot of kitchen staff! I can let Miss Jessica know that you’re in charge tonight, if you want! They wouldn’t mind helping out.”

“That’s a kind offer, but I’d like to show you what I can do on my own, first. If you don’t mind.”

From the way Luffy beamed at this, Sanji assumed that had been the correct answer.

“It’s all yours, then! Make sure to make a lot, okay?”

“Naturally. Nobody’s going hungry on my watch,” Sanji said, already folding up the sleeves of his shirt and heading for the pantry. The sound of Luffy’s laughter followed him.

This wasn’t so bad, Sanji thought. Maybe he could get used to a king like this, after all.

That afternoon, alone in Dawn Castle’s perfect kitchen, Sanji experienced something akin to a death, followed immediately by a resurrection.

He prepped his ingredients for the bœuf bourgignon with steady hands. For the first time since Judge had dragged him out of the dungeon over a week ago, he felt like there was air in his lungs. He’d been thrown off his feet, yanked through the looking glass and into a mirror world, but some things hadn’t changed: the whisper of his knife; the sizzle of browning meat; the aromatic spicy-sweetness of garlic and onion, sautéed in oil. Some of the tension slid out of his muscles, the scope of his world narrowing until it was just him and the steady beat of his heart and the song that the ingredients sang, as they began to transmogrify into food.

He had so utterly forgotten where he was and what he was doing that he nearly ruined everything.

At the very edge of his peripheral vision, a hand wrapped around the bottle of Pinot Noir Sanji had been using to cook. With intentional stealth, it began to remove the bottle from the countertop.

Entirely on instinct, Sanji whipped around and hooked a foot around the evildoer’s ankle, sending them toppling to the ground with a heavy crash. In the same motion, he caught the wobbling wine bottle with one hand, sliding it down the counter and out of reach.

Roronoa Zoro blinked up at him from the ground, his eye wide and his mouth open.

Sanji gaped down at the second-in-command of the continent’s most powerful warlord.

Oh. So, I’m going to be decapitated after all, he thought. This is it. I had a good run. Apart from the bits that were complete and utter shit, of course.

Hands fluttering ineffectually, he stuttered, “Holy shit. Fuck. I’m so sorry. I didn’t – it wasn’t – I didn’t mean to—”

“Curls,” Zoro said, staring up at him without moving. “Can you fight?”

“No,” Sanji answered quickly. “Well. Germa requires all members of its royal family to be trained in combat from birth, so… Yes? I’m no good, though. I really didn’t mean to do that. Are you okay?”

“Nothing’s hurt but my pride,” Zoro said, taking the hand Sanji offered and allowing Sanji to pull him to his feet. His palm was coarse and warm, covered in fine white scars and rough with callouses. His hands were broader than Sanji’s, but Sanji’s fingers were just a little longer. That was a stupid thing to notice. Sanji noticed it anyway. “Not sure who told you that you’re no good, but nobody’s been able to get the jump on me in a damn long time.”

“I’m nothing special,” Sanji said, quickly dropping Zoro’s hand and going back to his cutting board. “My brothers used to beat me all the time, back when we all trained together.”

“You a swordsman?” Zoro asked, looking down at Sanji’s hands in appraisal as he picked up his knife.

“No. Despite my father’s best efforts. I don’t fight with my hands,” Sanji said, nodding down at his dicing. “Need them for this. Sorry to disappoint, Mr. Three-Sword-Style.”

“I’m not disappointed,” Zoro said, seemingly unphased. He slid into place next to Sanji and leaned on his elbows on the counter, tilting his head to look up at Sanji’s face. “I’m interested.”

“I don’t see why you would be. I’m not particularly interesting,” Sanji said, lifting the cutting board and using his knife to slide the chopped vegetables into the pot on the stove.

“Guess we have a difference of opinion, then,” Zoro said.

Sanji felt his cheeks heating up, despite himself. “If you’re buttering me up for something, you can just go ahead and ask.”

“I don’t lie and I don’t flatter,” Zoro replied, easily. “But I do want you to spar with me.”

“Sounds pretty boring for you. I’m not going to be much of a challenge for Straw Hat Luffy’s Demon Right Hand,” Sanji said, voice dry.

“Let me decide that,” Zoro replied.

To give himself a moment to recover, Sanji brought the cutting board and his knife over to the sink to wash them. He set them into the drying rack, toweled off his hands, and sighed.

“I’ll save you the trouble of deciding. Trust me, mosshead, you’ll only wind up disappointed. Everyone else who’s ever sparred with me certainly has.”

Zoro raised an eyebrow. “Mosshead?” he repeated, with distaste.

Sanji blanched. “Shit, sorry! I just thought – you – you’re always calling me nicknames, and—”

Zoro burst out laughing.

It was so unexpected, Sanji tripped over his own foot and nearly went careening to the floor, before he caught himself on the edge of the counter. When Zoro laughed, it made him look ten years younger, lighting up his whole face. The laughter rolled through his entire body like an earthquake.

Zoro had a single dimple on one side of his smile. There were a few freckles on the bridge of his nose, too, nearly invisible against the gold-tinged tan of his skin. How had Sanji not noticed them the night before? They felt obvious now, like the sun in the summer sky.

“Don’t freak,” Zoro said, through his laughter. “It’s fine. Knew you had some teeth to you, cook.”

“You’re so strange,” Sanji said, over the distressed ringing in his ears.

“So they tell me,” Zoro agreed, folding his arms to cradle the back of his head in his hands.

“You’re all strange,” Sanji continued, heatedly, directing a glare at the countertop to keep himself from staring at the curve of Zoro’s biceps. “This is the strangest court I’ve ever been in, in my entire life. None of you make any sense to me.”

Zoro nodded, the expression on his face eloquently communicating the word, Obviously.

Sanji hesitated, hunching over the pot on the stove.

“I want to stay here,” he admitted to the vegetables, his voice tiny. “I want to join you. I want to be Luffy’s chef. I want to have a place here, like Robin-san said. Somewhere to belong.”

There was a beat of silence. And then Zoro said, “Hey, cook. Can I touch you?”

Before he could think better of it, Sanji said, “Yes.”

Zoro reached over and, with the tips of his first two fingers, he tapped Sanji’s chin, guiding his head away from the stovetop. When Sanji met Zoro’s eye, Zoro lowered his hand and said, “So stay, then.”

“It’s that simple?” Sanji said, doubtfully.

“Yeah,” Zoro said. “It’s that simple.”

Sanji clicked his tongue. “Nothing’s ever that simple.”

“This is.”

Sanji said, “Fine, then. If it’s really that easy, I’ll just stay. What do you say to that, shrub-head?”

Zoro grinned. “I say, welcome aboard.” Then he leaned in, body bending close enough to feel the heat off his skin. His eye caught Sanji’s, heavy-lidded and dark-lashed, and for a single, frozen moment, Sanji frantically thought he was about to be kissed. Instead, though, Zoro snatched the bottle of wine off the counter from behind Sanji’s back and slipped out of reach before Sanji could grab it out of his thieving hands. “See you later, cook.”

“Oi!” Sanji shouted after him. “That’s cooking wine! I need it for dinner, asshole!”

Zoro disappeared out the door, the sound of his laughter echoing back through the hall.

Sanji stood stock-still at his station for another long moment, flushed and wrong-footed, heartbeat slamming in his throat. Then he determinedly tossed any and all thoughts about algae-coated idiot swordsmen out of his mind, and got to work preparing the broth.

When the dinner hour finally rolled around, Sanji dropped the final bowl onto the table in front of Brook and stepped back, wringing his hands and waiting with bated breath as the Straw Hats took their first bites.

There was a moment of silence. Then, Nami said, “Oh. Oh.”

“Holy shit, Sanji,” Usopp said. “When you said you liked to cook—”

“We figured it was, like, a hobby,” Nami continued. “Not that you were—”

“Completely and totally super,” Franky finished.

“This is the best thing I’ve ever eaten,” Luffy announced, around an unchewed mouthful of beef. “Ever. In my life.”

“You’re so cool, Sanji!” Chopper shouted.

Sanji stood still, eyes wide and hands slack at his sides, as the Straw Hats began to speak over each other, throwing themselves onto the food with gusto. The clatter of plates and silverware filled the room, the smell of garlic and butter tangible on Sanji’s tongue. Luffy snatched a chunk of meat out of Nami’s bowl and got a slap upside the skull. Sanji flinched, minutely, but Luffy just burst out laughing and lunged for Usopp’s instead, as though subordinates smacking their monarchs was routine.

Someone slid into place next to him and tapped the side of his arm with a bowl. By rote reflex, he accepted it and looked sideways.

Zoro lifted an eyebrow at him.

“Well?” he said, jabbing a thumb at the table. “You gonna stand here all night, curls?”

Robin scooted closer to Franky, leaving plenty of room for Sanji on the end of the bench. She waved her hand to signal him over.

“Like I said,” Zoro said, breath warm next to Sanji’s ear. “Simple.” There was a look on his face as he watched the other Straw Hats demolish dinner – not quite a smile, really, but something near to contentment. Sanji thought, once again, about the Demon Swordsman from the newspapers, teeth bared, swords glinting, drenched in blood.

“Yeah,” Sanji agreed. “Simple.”

A leap of faith, he thought. And then he took his plate and sat down next to Robin, bending his head to tuck in.

Chapter Text

Sanji leaned his hip against the edge of the counter. He lit his cigarette with a murmured spell and watched with mingled exasperation and amusement as the most powerful man on the continent attempted to wedge his entire body into the narrow gap between the ceiling and the industrial-sized refrigerator.

“If Usopp comes in, you have to tell him I’m not here, okay? Tell him I left. Tell him I ran away to visit Ace. Oh, or Tora-o! I like Tora-o, he’ll believe you,” Luffy told Sanji. He had somehow managed to get one of his arms trapped between his body and the ceiling. His mop of dark hair spilled over his forehead and toward the ground.

“Who on earth is Tora-o?” Sanji asked, staring at Luffy with simultaneous fascination and horror. Even considering the spell that had permanently transfigured Luffy’s body to rubber, Sanji was fairly certain human knees weren’t supposed to bend like that. “You know what, never mind. I’m not sure I want to know. Why are you hiding from Usopp this time? What did you do?”

“Nothing! How was I supposed to know all those ketchup bottles were for making stuff?” Luffy puffed up his cheeks and pouted. This man had toppled King Kaido. People all over the world intoned his name with reverence and dread. Sanji took a moment to reflect on the strangeness of fate.

“Luffy,” he said, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “Please tell me you didn’t eat Usopp’s ketchup straight from the bottle.”

Luffy poked his head out from over the top of the fridge and peered down at Sanji like some oversized bird of prey. “No,” he said. “Of course I didn’t. I dumped it in a bowl first, Sanji, and I ate it with a spoon.”

“There is something very seriously wrong with you,” Sanji observed pleasantly.

The door to the kitchen slammed open, bouncing off the wall with enough force to chip the paint. Sanji thought he felt a headache beginning to develop around his temples.

“Where is he?” Usopp hissed, a vein popping in his forehead and an empty ketchup bottle clutched in each hand.

Sanji took a drag off his cigarette and shook some ash onto the enchanted ashtray Franky had made for him. He’d presented it with great fanfare, accompanied by several dramatic poses. It’s self-cleaning, little brother! And this way your kitchen won’t smell like smoke… unless Luffy gets in there and starts messing with my beautiful oven again.

“Oh, hello, Usopp. Are you looking for someone?”

“Luffy,” Usopp said, with the dire tones of someone pronouncing the name of the devil. “I know he came this way. I followed the trail of ketchup-y fingerprints and villainy.”

Sanji cut his eyes sideways to check on Luffy. He’d somehow managed to steal an entire baguette off the countertop and was gnawing on the end of it, watching Usopp and Sanji interact with the bright, beady eyes of a racoon rooting through the garbage cans.

“Sacrament de câlisse de tabarnak.” Sanji clicked his tongue in annoyance and pointed. “He’s up there. And if he wants me to cover for him in the future, he should think twice about stealing my ingredients. I need that baguette for dinner, you maniac.”

“Sanji!” Luffy wailed, launching off the top of the fridge and landing in a heap of limbs on Sanji’s nice, clean floors. “Betrayal!”

Sanji reached down and plucked the baguette out of Luffy’s hands.

“If you’re going to kill him or turn him into a newt or something, take it outside. No blood or lizard goo near my nice, clean cooking stations,” he told Usopp, turning back to the counter to extinguish his cigarette and wash his hands for food prep.

Usopp grabbed Luffy’s ear and started to march him toward the door. “Oh, yeah, Sanji! Zoro was asking for you earlier,” he called over his shoulder.

“Yeah? What, did he manage to forget the way to the kitchen? I’m here at the same time every damn day.”

“Well, you know him. I’ll point him here if I see him again. See you at dinner!”

Sanji waved lazily over his shoulder without turning around.

Once Luffy and Usopp were gone, Sanji inspected the baguette that Luffy had pilfered. The end he’d chewed on was pretty much ruined, but if Sanji cut that part off, the rest was definitely salvageable. He grabbed a serrated knife and sliced it carefully, setting the bit with Luffy’s teeth marks to the side, so Luffy could finish it later. Then he turned to the pile of tomatoes and fresh basil for the bruschetta, swapping out his bread knife for a standard chef’s knife.

The last two months or so had easily been the strangest in Sanji’s twenty-five years of life. It was difficult to imagine a more enormous career change than going from long-term inhabitant of Vinsmoke Judge’s least prestigious dungeon to Straw Hat Luffy’s personal chef. For his first month living in Dawn Castle, Sanji’s brain had itched with the constant, low-simmering anxiety of someone experiencing a very good dream, worrying that the tiniest misstep would cause the whole thing to collapse around him like a house of cards.

It wasn’t like he particularly enjoyed the unspoken social rules and expectations of Judge’s court, but at least he knew his place, there. Here, it was like someone had shoved him onto a stage and expected him to play a part without ever handing him a script.

When she found out he had nothing to wear apart from the clothes on his back, Nami had dragged him into the city and let him pick out three different suits, magically tailored to fit like they’d been sewn with him in mind. When he’d protested weakly, aware of his own expensive tastes, Nami had rolled her eyes and waved him off with, “What’s the point of having money if you don’t spend it? You have to get the dark blue one, Sanji-kun, it matches your eyes! Don’t worry, I know this atelier, he’ll give us a good discount.”

Even after the blisters on Sanji’s wrists had healed, leaving behind only a thin ring of pale scar tissue, Chopper continued to check in on him every single day. Once he’d pronounced Sanji fully recovered from the malnutrition and dehydration of the long journey southward, he began to bring his mortar and pestle into the kitchen and mix his salves and tinctures at the bar, just to be in Sanji’s presence.

During the downtime between meals, Franky and Usopp invited Sanji into their workshop, demonstrating each of their bizarre creations. Franky promised to create a whisk spelled with a self-propulsion charm – to prevent carpal tunnel syndrome, little brother. Usopp slipped him jars of his homemade chili oil to use in cooking.

Brook asked for Sanji’s favorite songs, listening with jovial focus as Sanji taught him the words and hesitantly hummed out the melodies.

Robin dug out interesting and rare cookbooks from the library, leaving them on the kitchen counter for Sanji to find. When he complained about how long and unkempt his hair was getting, she sat him down and trimmed off the split ends. It curled around his shoulders now, healthier and shinier than it had been in years, and just long enough for Sanji to pull back with a ribbon while he was cooking.

With every additional kindhearted gesture, Sanji felt like he had more to lose. There was something hostile at the back of his head that assured him he was pulling off some kind of long-term con, tricking them into wasting their kindness on him. Someday, it snarled, they’ll figure it out and send you packing, just like Judge did.

It hadn’t happened yet, but that didn’t mean it never would.

“Sanji-kun!” Nami’s voice called, from the kitchen’s still-open doorway. “Do you have a minute?”

“For you, my dear, I have hours,” Sanji said, setting his knife down and setting his partially-chopped tomatoes to the side. “What can I get for you?”

“Anything extremely caffeinated would be wonderful,” she said, sliding into a high-legged stool on the opposite side of the island counter. “The treasury is a complete mess. Nobody knows how to do their jobs. I’m the only competent person in a hundred-mile radius.”

Sanji hummed in commiseration. “That sounds about right.”

“Also, as if all that’s not bad enough, we just got word that a village was attacked along the northern border last night.”

Sanji paused in the middle of filling the kettle up, his back stiffening sharply. “Oh?”

“It’s probably nothing,” she assured him. “There are still some bandits picking around the edges of our territory. They think that Luffy’s just some upstart. All bark and no bite, you know? Vultures. General Jinbe will send a team up to go check it out, make sure nobody’s hurt. It’s just a major headache on my end, logistically.”

“I hope everyone’s all right,” Sanji muttered, rooting around in the cabinet for some tea. His tea stores had remained blessedly safe from Luffy’s wandering hands, at least up until that point. Their intrepid leader had tried to eat the coffee beans, once, though. “Other than that, things with Germa have been quiet lately, haven’t they?”

“Pretty much silent since you got here,” Nami said. “Don’t worry, Sanji-kun. If something comes up with Judge, you’ll be the first to know. Well – the second, probably. I think I legally have to tell Luffy first. But I’ll come straight to you next.”

“Thank you, Nami-san,” Sanji said, forcing a bit of a strained smile. “You work so hard. This place would instantly collapse without your capable guidance.”

“Don’t I know it,” Nami said. “Anyway, how are things with you? Zoro was looking for you earlier, you know.”

“Did he put up a notice on the board, or something?” Sanji griped. “I’m right where I always am.”

“Brought it up in our meeting this morning, actually. Oh, I really need to find Sanji before the end of the day, I have something so important to discuss with him—”

“Ha-ha,” Sanji said.

“Okay, maybe it wasn’t quite like that,” Nami admitted.

“You know, I’m starting to think if that overgrown mossball used my actual name, he’d drop dead on the spot.”

“He is weird about that, isn’t he?” Nami said, looking a little too smugly knowing for Sanji’s liking.

Pivoting onto firmer ground, he said, “Well, local plant life aside, things are running smoothly around here. Could you take a look at this recipe for me? We have so many of your tangerines coming in, I need to come up with some new ideas to use them all.”

He passed his notebook over to Nami, open to a scribbled recipe for a tangerine-glazed salmon; it was mostly legible, he thought, although he’d gotten so excited about the idea of adding coconut and chili to the topping that he’d punched a tiny hole in the paper with his quill pen.

“This looks divine. You really are an incredible chef. We never had anything this creative before you came here,” Nami told him, gratefully accepting the mug of tea Sanji handed to her – earl grey with a splash of milk, sweetened with just a little honey.

“It’s nothing, really. Experimenting with recipes is the best part of the job. I’m glad it looks good,” he said, cheerfully.

“It looks amazing. I’m so excited to try it,” Nami said. She handed his recipe notebook back and slid off the bar stool, mug of tea in hand. “Thanks for the caffeine, Sanji-kun. I almost feel like a person again.”

“Good luck with the rest of your work this afternoon, my dear.”

As they always did, the rest of the Straw Hats flitted in and out of the kitchen as the afternoon deepened into evening. It wasn’t until Sanji was putting the roast chicken into the oven that Zoro finally appeared in the doorway.

“Nami said you’d mentioned wanting to talk to me at the morning meeting today. You can’t have gotten that lost on your way here,” Sanji commented, shutting the oven door and leaning back against the counter, arms crossed over his chest.

As expected, Zoro scowled spectacularly. “I did not get lost. I had stuff to do.”

“Oh, sure. What exactly is your job, mosshead? Besides cutting up bad guys and falling asleep in inconvenient places.”

“Cutting up bad guys is hard work,” Zoro said, unconcerned. He crossed the kitchen to stand an arm’s length away from Sanji, mirroring his posture. This close, Sanji could see a faint sheen of sweat around his forehead, making his bronze skin shine and darkening the hair along his temples to a shade closer to emerald than moss.

Training, then, Sanji realized. Obviously.

“If you sweat on my countertops, I’ll kill you,” Sanji informed him sweetly.

“I’d like to see you try,” Zoro told him, in a much more earnest tone than most normal people would’ve delivered that sentence.

Only a few short weeks ago, speaking to Zoro like this, even accidentally, would’ve been more than enough to send Sanji into an immediate panic spiral. The second-in-command to a warlord, armed to the teeth, with the authority to cut down anyone he deemed to be an enemy to Luffy… Sanji valued his life too dearly to risk teasing someone like that.

He’d learned pretty quickly, though, that under the muscles and glares and snarls, Zoro was a pretty mild-tempered man. He was quick to snap and had a way of getting under Sanji’s skin with supersonic speed, but he took Sanji’s jabs and returned them without any pride or genuine rage. If Sanji had asked one of his brothers what their actual job was, or made even a playful threat against their lives, they would’ve slapped him clean across the face and stuck him in the dungeon for a week.

“You want something to drink?” Sanji offered.

“Beer,” Zoro said, immediately.

“Try, yes, please and thank you. Your manners are atrocious,” Sanji complained, already opening the fridge to retrieve the stash of porters he kept aside for this exact situation.

“Not all of us got etiquette lessons growing up,” Zoro pointed out. “You don’t have to bother with the nice glass and stuff. You know I don’t care about shit like that.”

“I know you don’t, but it’s about the principle of the thing. People in my kitchen drink out of the correct glasses.”

Zoro took a sip and shrugged. “Tastes the same either way.”

“You’re hopeless,” Sanji bemoaned. “What did you want, anyway?”

“Oh, yeah,” Zoro said. He set his beer on the counter and turned his body to face Sanji, propping himself up with one hand flat on the countertop as he leaned into Sanji’s space. “Changed your mind yet?”

“Ugh, I should’ve known. Answer’s still no, mosshead. And if that’s all you came here to ask, you can buzz off, I’m busy with dinner,” Sanji said, putting a hand on Zoro’s face and shoving him backwards.

Zoro caught Sanji’s arm by the wrist and pulled his hand away, fingertips pressed to the spot where Sanji’s pulse thrummed against his skin.

“Come on, curls. I swear it’ll be fun.”

“You know, call me crazy, but beating each other up recreationally isn’t my idea of fun, muscle-for-brains.”

Zoro gave his wrist a little tug. “You’re telling me you’ve never thought about kicking me, like, really hard, right in the face?”

The Sanji of two months ago would’ve assumed this question to be an extremely straightforward trap. The Sanji of today rolled his eyes hard enough to hurt.

“I mean, sure, I’ve thought about it, but I think about doing a lot of things! That doesn’t mean I’m going to do them! I have some self control, mosshead. Restraint!”

“Just once. One time. Come on. If you hate it, I’ll never ask again, I swear.”

“You’re so persistent,” Sanji said, grabbing Zoro’s hand and attempting to pry his fingers off his own wrist. “Like a fungus. Don’t you ever give up?”

“Not on this. It’s called commitment, cook.”

“Well, well,” Robin’s voice said, from the opposite side of the island counter. “This looks cozy. What might you two be talking about?”

Sanji realized abruptly and with horror just how closely he and Zoro had been speaking. He wrenched himself free from Zoro’s grasp and skittered backwards several steps, until they were standing at a much more polite distance.

“Nothing!” he blurted.

At the exact same time, Zoro lazily replied, “Sparring.”

“Ah,” Robin said, wistfully. “Is that what they’re calling it, these days?”

Sanji grabbed the mug of tea he’d prepared for Robin’s inevitable visit – she always emerged from the library around the same time in the late afternoon – and pressed it into her hands with urgency.

“Thank you very much, cook-san,” Robin said, seemingly unphased by this lack of professionalism. “It’s so heart-warming to see you both getting along. Have a pleasant spar.”

“You’re embarrassing me in front of Robin-san,” Sanji hissed at Zoro, as soon as she had disappeared through the door.

“Your fault for being easily flustered,” Zoro said, dismissively.

“Ugh,” Sanji said again, with feeling.

He retreated to the kitchen’s wall of windows, cracking one open to let in the warm, early-summer air. The heat in the south was like nothing Sanji had experienced growing up. It stayed hot even as the sun went down, leaving the whole world lethargic and saturated. No wonder Zoro took so many naps.

He lit a cigarette, muttering the charm and cupping his hands to keep the breeze from extinguishing it. He took a long, slow drag, directing the smoke out into the deepening twilight.

“All right,” he finally said.

“What?” Zoro asked, behind him. And then, catching on: “Oh, shit, for real? You’ll do it?”

“Want me to change my mind?” Sanji threatened.

“Hell, no,” Zoro said. “Tomorrow morning? After breakfast?”

“Whatever,” Sanji agreed. “But just for the record, I’m not going easy on you, mossball.”

“Obviously,” Zoro said, like he was insulted by the mere idea.

He lingered around the kitchen for a few more minutes to finish his beer, allowing Sanji to press an onigiri stuffed with spicy tuna into his hand. It was dumb to drink on an empty stomach, after all, especially after a training session. Even lichen-covered idiots didn’t leave Sanji’s kitchen hungry. Then he left, and Sanji was alone again, standing with his face tipped toward the buttery moonlight outside the window.

“You idiot,” he whispered to himself, before extinguishing the cigarette and snapping the window shut.

The next morning, after breakfast was cleared off the table and the kitchen had been thoroughly scrubbed clean, Sanji stood across from Zoro on the dusty packed-earth ground of Dawn Castle’s training courtyard.

There were so, so many reasons this was a bad idea. Maybe the worst idea, ever, that anyone had ever had.

First and foremost, Sanji hadn’t fought anything since the last time he’d refused to permanently maim one of his father’s foot soldiers during a sparring session. That episode had been what had earned him his most recent stint in Germa’s dungeons, and had probably also been the inciting factor in Judge’s decision to send him to Luffy.

Secondly, as abnormal as Straw Hat Luffy’s court was, it was still so unbelievably far from Sanji’s place to physically fight with a sovereign ruler’s second-in-command. If someone so much as took a swing at any of Judge’s inner circle, even within the context of training, they would probably lose a hand.

Third.

Across the training yard, Zoro shrugged out of his outer robe, leaving him in just his haramaki, slim-cut black pants, and dark boots. The mid-morning sun stained his bare skin to burnished bronze. Like this, he reminded Sanji of the statues of Germa’s legendary military heroes that had lined the halls of Judge’s palace. That merciless scar across his chest went all the way down to the lower right side of his ribs, ending at the narrowest part of the arc of his waist. The sunlight cast soft shadows on the sharp jut of his cheekbones, the fine lines of his jaw, the curve of his muscles. Like this, sun-drenched and silhouetted against a perfect blue sky, even Zoro’s hair looked flattering. Less like algae and more like jade.

“You’ll forgive me if I keep my clothes on,” Sanji said, primly, as Zoro tossed his robe to the side. He lit a cigarette and stuck it between his teeth, before returning his hands to the pockets of his suit pants.

“You gonna be pissed at me for ruining that fancy getup of yours?” Zoro asked, unsheathing his white katana.

Sanji bent his knees a little, testing his range of motion. “That’s only if you can swing one of those sticks of yours quick enough to hit me.”

Slowly, deliberately, a grin spread across Zoro’s face. His eye was alert, electric, burning onto Sanji’s.

Without saying another word, he launched himself forward, sword glinting in the sunlight.

Zoro was fast, Sanji had to hand it to him.

Of course, Sanji was faster.

As Zoro’s katana approached Sanji’s head, he slid easily under the blow, bending backward like a reed under a strong wind. In his backbend, he caught himself with a hand above his head and propelled himself into a headstand, aiming a kick for Zoro’s chin. Zoro blocked Sanji’s heel with the flat end of his blade, shoving him backward; Sanji let the force of the push carry him forward again, off his hands and back onto his feet.

He landed neatly, with the grace of a gymnast. Then he took a drag from his cigarette and shook some ash onto the ground.

“That all you got?” he asked.

“Hell, no,” Zoro said, and he moved the white katana to his mouth, reaching to his hip to unsheathe both of his other swords with a metallic hum just within the range of Sanji’s hearing.

“Oh? Taking me seriously, then?” Sanji said.

He muttered a spell, and his legs caught fire below the knees.

Zoro’s face lit up. Then he was in motion again, a blur of skin and tempered steel. They collided in a whirl of sword and flame, meeting with enough force that a gust of wind exploded outwards, sending dust flying in a whirl. Sparks scattered off the point where they’d collided.

And something inside Sanji came alive.

It wasn’t like a spark, or a lighter clicking into life. It wasn’t the flicker of a candle or the glow of a lantern. It was the guttural roar of a housefire. It was Zoro’s grin and the flash of his swords and the frantic, hummingbird drum of Sanji’s heartbeat. It was the way they matched each other, strike for strike, with the ease of two dance partners who had been taking to the floor with each other since infancy. It was Zoro’s tightly-wound strength, barely concealed, with every controlled movement of his muscles. It was the way he made swordplay look like an art form, somehow.

When Sanji’s brothers fought with swords, that was all they were doing: holding a weapon and swinging it. When Zoro fought, it was like a prayer to something higher, a hymn performed with a focused reverence.

For the first time, Sanji fought and he fought and he fought, and he didn’t hate his own skin. He didn’t dream of clawing his way out of his own body, magically transporting himself anywhere but here. When the hilt of one of Zoro’s swords caught him in the side, hard enough to bruise, he didn’t even recoil. It was an injury honestly gained – one he earned on his own terms, under his own power.

I love this, Sanji realized. Holy shit. I love this.

The realization interrupted his movements, causing the spell on his legs to stutter out. He’d hesitated for less than a second, but Zoro’s eyes immediately snapped to his legs, cataloguing the opening. When Sanji lashed out with his next kick, Zoro slid his katana back into its sheath and caught Sanji’s leg with his bare hand, low along his calf. His sandpaper-rough fingertips burned against the fine bones of his ankle, between the hem of Sanji’s pant leg and his sock. He grinned, all menace and challenge, and hauled Sanji in a little closer. The tug brought them nearly flush together, hip-to-hip, a line of heat ringing down the length of Sanji’s body.

If he pulled just a tiny bit harder, I could hook my leg around his waist, Sanji thought, like a maniac.

“You’re slippery, cook,” Zoro said around his white katana’s hilt, his voice an earthquake-rumble, so deep and so close Sanji felt it rattle around inside his chest cavity.

There was a pause. Zoro’s thumb trailed a circle across Sanji’s Achilles tendon.

With a screech and an implosion like a train crashing into a solid concrete wall, Sanji’s brain caught up to his body. He blanched, flushed nearly purple, and then used his other leg to launch himself into a spinning kick. It caught Zoro in the shoulder and sent him flying clear across the courtyard, landing with a crash on the earth and sending his katanas flying in three separate directions.

Zoro immediately popped his head up and screeched, “Oi! What the hell was that for!”

Sanji had dropped his cigarette. Stamping it out with venom, he snarled, “Keep your hands to yourself! Idiot mosshead!”

“Are you stupid? We’re sparring! Fighting! We literally have to touch each other!”

Sanji sputtered wordlessly. The fact was, he didn’t have a good reason why he’d reacted like that. It was just that Zoro was touching him, and his body had been so close, and if they’d stayed like that for another second, Sanji thought he was probably going to do something irredeemably, unfathomably stupid.

“Whatever!” Sanji snapped, a half-hearted effort to save himself from explaining his completely irrational thought process. “You’re just mad because I got the jump on you. Don’t blame me because you’re too slow.”

“Come over here and say that again,” Zoro said, heaving himself to his feet.

With all the maturity and dignity of his former station as a prince of Germa, Sanji stuck his tongue out at Zoro.

The sparring session ended with both of them sweaty and bruised and covered in dust. There was, in fact, a considerable tear along the front of Sanji’s nice silk tie. He couldn’t quite bring himself to be mad, though. After all, his heart was beating and the sun was shining and – easy as breathing – Zoro slid into step beside him.

“I could sew that for you,” Zoro offered, nodding at his tie.

“Like hell,” Sanji said.

“I know how to do it. I’ve done stitches on myself enough times,” Zoro informed him, confidently.

“Stop looking proud about that. Is that really something to brag about?” Sanji snapped. “And your dumb lunkhead skin is not the same as a bespoke silk tie.”

“Why the hell not?” Zoro asked.

“You can’t be serious.”

They bickered their way out of the training courtyard and into the castle. Sanji thought with an unpleasant tinge of fondness that it would be nice if he could tuck some of Zoro’s laughter away and bottle it.

You idiot, he thought at himself again, with a little more urgency this time.

Sanji and Zoro’s sparring sessions first became frequent, then daily, and then, finally, habitual.

It was strange. Somehow, attempting to kick Luffy’s second-in-command’s face in on a regular basis had managed to translate into a new comfort and confidence with his surroundings, inside Sanji’s mind. He no longer hesitated before asking Nami to put in an order for supplies the kitchen was getting low on. He no longer faltered in the doorway whenever he entered Usopp and Franky’s workshop, or Nami’s office, or the library. Every few days, he even voluntarily went with Luffy to the waterfront and sat at his side, fishing poles dangling into the crystal-blue water, while Luffy chatted his ear off about everything and nothing.

“You seem happy,” Luffy had announced to him, during one of these outings.

“What? Right now?” Sanji asked absently, focused on threading his fishing line through the hook.

“All the time,” Luffy said. A small fishing boat passed them by on its way into port; the people on board did a double-take, then waved at Luffy with enthusiasm. “When you first got here, you’d smile a lot, but it wasn’t a happy smile. Now you smile for real. So! You seem happy.”

“Oh,” Sanji said. “Well. I am happy. It’s nice here.”

“It is,” Luffy eagerly agreed, swinging his feet over the side of the dock. “It’s really nice.”

“If you lose a sandal like that, I’m not jumping in after it,” Sanji warned him.

Luffy, predictably, laughed at him. Just as predictably, when he accidentally kicked both shoes off and into the surf only a few minutes later, Sanji sighed and shrugged his suitcoat off, preparing himself to jump in.

June slipped into July, which deepened into August, humid and stifling. Even for Sanji, the heat quickly lost its novelty. The city stayed hot well into the night, humidity hanging over the castle like a damp blanket.

Even with the window in his bedroom thrown all the way open in the hopes of tempting in a breeze, sleep was evasive that month. Often, Sanji found himself waking up from his typical uneasy dreams hours before dawn, sweat sticking his hair to his forehead. On those nights, he usually trudged to the kitchen to get started on work. Busy hands, quiet mind.

Sometimes, if the night was hot enough, the others would join him, eyelids drooping and hair mussed; Sanji would pass them a cold drink and gesture for them to sit at the bar. If there was enough left over from the day, he’d dig fresh fruit out of the refrigerator and slice it, setting the plate on the counter to be shared.

On one memorable occasion, Zoro wandered into the kitchen around four in the morning, wearing nothing but a soft linen pair of sleep pants, his hair flattened on one side and the faint impression of a pillow stamped on his cheek. Sanji’s stomach had dropped like he was on a boat crossing a choppy sea. He’d invented an inventory mix-up so he could go and pace frantic circles in the pantry for a little while, burying his burning face in his hands.

Apart from the humiliating tribulation of experiencing… whatever emotion he was experiencing in relation to a walking, talking shrubbery, Sanji’s life had become a quiet thing, defined by the smell of cooking food and the laughter of the Straw Hats and the singing of Zoro’s swords. Outside of dreaming, he nearly forgot what it had felt like before: the dank, musty smell of the dungeons, the dripping of pipes and skitter of insects, the bone-deep soreness that followed a punch.

It was his mistake, thinking something like this could last.

The bubble ruptured on a muggy, sweltering day in the middle of August.

The news came when Sanji and Zoro were halfway into a sparring session. Zoro, shirtless and sweat-soaked, had a knee planted on Sanji’s chest and the flat side of his sword pressed to the soft underside of Sanji’s chin. His other hand pressed Sanji’s thigh firmly into the earth, holding him in place. His breath was hot against Sanji’s mouth. It was all extremely normal, and Sanji wasn’t feeling any particular type of way about it at all.

His brain, which seemed to have filled with a red-tinged static, stuttered back to life when Nami’s voice echoed out from the opposite side of the training yard.

“Zoro! Sanji-kun! I’ve been looking for you two everywhere. I’m sorry to interrupt… ahem. Whatever this is. But it’s really important.”

Zoro straightened up, removing his sword from Sanji’s throat and lifting his knee off Sanji’s sternum. Sanji immediately rolled out from under him, scrambling to his feet and knocking dust off his clothing. He wished desperately that he’d at least left his vest on over his shirtsleeves.

“What’s going on?” Zoro asked Nami.

“Is everything all right, Nami-san?” Sanji added. He took another wide step away from Zoro, just to be thorough about things.

Nami didn’t immediately reply, which sent a sick swoop of concern dropping low into the pit of Sanji’s gut.

“Sanji-kun, do you remember what I promised you, the day after the raid on that border village, a few months ago?” she eventually asked.

“Wh—” Sanji began, adjusting his rolled-up sleeves and looking determinedly away from the flex of Zoro’s back muscles as he bent to pick up his outer robe. Then his neurons mercifully started to fire again, and he managed to catch up to what Nami was saying. “Oh, shit. Yes. About Germa?”

“That’s right,” Nami said, voice grim. “We just got confirmation from General Jinbe. There was another raid, on a larger town this time, and this one was most definitely not bandits. It was an invasion. Led by Crown Prince Ichiji.”

Sanji’s hands dropped to his sides. The lighthearted look on Zoro’s face, the easy slope to his shoulders, the softness to his mouth and eyes, vanished.

“Let’s go,” Zoro said, and Nami nodded.

The rest of the Straw Hats were already gathered in Nami’s office by time Nami, Zoro, and Sanji arrived. Luffy was sitting cross-legged on the desktop, bent nearly double over a map that had been scribbled on with red ink in several different places along the northern border. Chopper shuffled over to greet them at the door and, in a gesture that nearly caused Sanji’s heart to melt through his chest, he reached out with a little hoof to take Sanji’s hand.

“I really don’t get it,” Usopp was saying to Luffy, stroking a hand over his beard as he poured over the map. “It’s not like that area is strategically important or resource-rich. Why would Judge waste troops on such a pointless attack?”

“There are some pretty productive steel mines around there,” Franky pointed out, doubtfully. “Not that Germa needs to raid steel mines, with the rate they turn out gold, up there.”

“Is he making for the Donquixote pass? That would grant access to Dressrosa in the West, and Germa’s relations with Law-san have always been strained, to say the least,” Robin suggested.

“Oh!” Luffy said, drumming his hands on his thighs with enthusiasm. “Does that mean we’re going to see Tora-o? Let’s go, let’s go!”

Well, that’s one mystery solved, Sanji thought. So that was Luffy’s friend that he’d mentioned before, Tora-o – otherwise known as Trafalgar D. Water Law, the man who’d been ruling Dressrosa since King Doflamingo had been deposed, nearly two years ago.

Sanji still remembered that incident with vivid clarity – it had taken place between two of his stints in the dungeon, and the headlines around that time were the first he’d ever heard of Straw Hat Luffy. When Judge had heard about Luffy and Law’s victory, he’d been apoplectic. Sanji had ducked around corners to avoid him for a week.

Nami shook her head in response to Robin’s suggestion. “No, I doubt it’s about Dressrosa. The pass looks good on paper, but it’s far enough north that, to transport an army, you’d need either a whole team of expert weather witches to keep the blizzards off or the greatest luck on the planet.”

“Maybe Judge is hungry!” Luffy suggested. “We have some good farms up there!”

“Not good enough to warrant this,” Usopp protested.

“Bad intelligence, then?” Brook suggested. “Perhaps he was led astray by an advisor? Treason from within the heart of Germa, straight out of a poem. What a lovely tragedy that would make.”

“There are enough tragedies out of Germa already,” Sanji cut in. “And you’re all working off an incorrect assumption. If it really was Germa’s army that attacked that village, and it really was Ichiji leading them, then Judge isn’t acting strategically at all. At least, not in the way you’re thinking of.”

Robin raised an eyebrow. “Please do go on, cook-san. I’m sure we’d all appreciate your expertise.”

Sanji sat down on the floor, his back to the wall, and draped his arms over his knees. His fingers itched for a smoke.

“To understand Judge, you have to understand Germa. As a nation-state, war is the backbone of Germa’s DNA. Each king of Germa proves himself worthy of reigning in the halls of his forefathers through violence. Every victory in battle cements his legacy. It’s why Germa’s people still revere the kings of the First Age, before the Age of Pirates began. The legends say that Germa’s founding king conquered half the globe. There’s an oil painting or a statue or a – fucking, I don’t know – gold-encrusted tapestry of him around every corner, where I grew up.”

He looked up at the Straw Hats and offered a joyless smile, lips pressed tight together.

“To all of you, violence is a means, a method of achieving a goal. Responding to international political dynamics, obtaining supplies, even settling a personal score… They’re all logical explanations, but they miss the point. To Judge, and to the rest of the Vinsmokes, violence is an end in itself. The purpose of waging a war is simply to wage it. And Luffy, as you guys may have noticed, has recently becoming something of a big deal. If Judge can take you down, he’ll be cementing his place as leader of our people – or, his people, now, I suppose.”

Sanji might as well have dropped one of Usopp’s enchanted stink bombs in the middle of the room. Everyone’s facial expression had gone very grim, indeed. Nami sank down in the chair behind her desk, rubbing a hand over her face.

“What a headache,” she muttered. “Maybe if we called a Council of Kings summit… I know your relationship with your family isn’t great, Sanji-kun, but would you be willing to talk to Judge if some of us went with you as a buffer? Ask him to cut it out before innocent people get hurt?”

“Ha-ha,” Sanji said, without any particular humor. When he received near-identical confounded stares from the rest of the Straw Hats in response, he continued, “I’m sorry, everyone. It’s a nice idea, but even if Judge gave a shit about civilian lives, I would be the worst possible person to send to try and convince him of anything. He doesn’t value my opinion in the least. In his view, I’m a complete failure as a child. I couldn’t even die properly.”

“Ah? What?” Chopper squeaked, tucking himself a little closer into Sanji’s side. “What are you talking about, Sanji?”

“Question seconded. What the hell does that mean?” Zoro demanded, his voice disconcertingly flat.

“I mean, I’m here, aren’t I?” Sanji said, gesturing to himself and then around the room.

“I’m afraid we still don’t fully understand, cook-san,” Robin said, although there was something about the look slowly dawning on her face that made Sanji think she did.

“Luffy didn’t kill me. As you all know,” Sanji said.

“Of course he didn’t. He doesn’t go around murdering people for fun,” Nami said, testily.

“Well, he was supposed to,” Sanji said. “Judge thought he was going to, anyway. And, to be honest, so did I. That was sort of the entire point of sending me here in the first place.”

Usopp dropped his mug of coffee. An arm sprouted from the side of the table and caught it before it could spill or shatter. The hand passed the mug back to Usopp, who accepted it blindly.

“Thanks, Robin. Now, just – wait. Wait. Let me make sure I understand. Sanji, you’re saying that, when you got here, you – you thought—” he said, before smacking a hand over his own mouth.

Sanji nodded. “The conqueror of the south? His demon swordsman? His monstrous inner circle? The papers weren’t exactly shy about describing your exploits in gory detail. Judge assumed I’d be dead by morning. Or worse,” he said, with a casual tone that he hoped didn’t ring as false as it felt.

“Worse,” Zoro echoed.

Sanji caught his gaze, began to ache under the weight of it, and then looked away.

“I have an idea,” Zoro said, not very pleasantly. His hand closed around the pommel of his white katana. “We could just go hunt Judge down and I could cut him in half.”

“Good idea. Let’s do that,” Luffy said, cracking his knuckles.

“Unfortunately, I think that counts as causing another international incident, which we have been repeatedly informed by the Council of Kings is a no-go,” Nami said, although the look on her face was worryingly deliberative.

“You topple a government one time,” Usopp grumbled.

Nami shook her head. “Twice, Usopp. Kaido? We’re literally ruling from his former capital city right now?”

“Oh, right,” Usopp said. “You topple a government two times.”

“A subtler attempt on his life might work,” Robin interjected. “A blade in the night, perhaps. Poison in his cup. Every court can be infiltrated, after all.”

“While I appreciate the sentiment,” Sanji said, feeling oddly touched, “killing Judge wouldn’t solve the underlying issue. This is just how Germa is. And it hasn’t been fully decided whether Reiju or Ichiji will end up with the throne once Judge dies, but if it’s Ichiji, you might end up with even bigger problems if you assassinate him.”

“What should we do, then?” Luffy asked.

Everyone in the room turned to look at Sanji. He shifted uncomfortably under the attention.

“I’m not a military advisor,” he said, a little weakly.

“Don’t worry, I know that,” Luffy said. “I just want to hear what you think.”

“Well… In my opinion, the best thing you can do right now is wait him out. Increase patrols along the border, maybe station General Jinbe up there full time. If Germa attacks again, it’ll be under the king’s banner, and one of my siblings will very likely be leading the charge. Otherwise, it wouldn’t bring any honor to the Vinsmoke name. At that point, anything you do will be a matter of self-defense. Even the Council of Kings would have to respect that.”

“Ugh,” Luffy said. “But waiting is the worst, though, Sanji.”

“He won’t make you wait long,” Sanji promised dourly. “But, Luffy, don’t underestimate what Germa’s forces can do. And if even one of my siblings is there…”

“I get it,” Luffy said, nodding firmly. “Don’t worry, Sanji. I’m taking this seriously.”

“I know you are,” Sanji said, wearily. “Now, if you all don’t mind, I really need a bath and about sixteen damn smokes.”

“Are you okay, Sanji?” Chopper asked, squeezing Sanji’s hand. “Do you want company? It’s not good to be all alone, when you’re feeling scared or overwhelmed.”

Sanji smiled a little and patted the soft fur at the crown of Chopper’s head. “Hey, don’t worry about me. I’m all right. You stay here and supervise these idiots, okay? They need it. Excluding the lovely Nami and Robin, of course.”

“Okay!” Chopper said, with a little wiggle.

“Oi, cook,” Zoro began, taking a step toward him.

“See you all later,” Sanji said. He was out of the room before Zoro could say anything else.

Coward, Sanji’s brain informed him, in Judge’s voice.

Obviously, Sanji thought back. What else is new?

An unfamiliar tension settled over Dawn Castle after that meeting, as the Straw Hats waited with bated breath for Judge to make his next move.

Everyone was sleeping a little less than they had been, before. Sanji was barely sleeping at all. He spent most nights in the kitchen, fitfully dozing on the couch when his mind finally settled long enough to allow it.

Once or twice, he woke up from a nightmare with a gasp, his heart slamming in his throat, only to find Zoro’s outer robe draped over him. It was embarrassing to admit, but he found it much easier to fall back asleep on those nights. The robe mostly smelled like sandalwood, now that Sanji was regularly forcing Zoro into doing his laundry, but there was another scent that clung to the fabric: a perpetual tang of steel and sword oil and sweat that was unique to Zoro.

Sanji tucked his face into the fabric and curled up on his side, and, when he fell back asleep, his dreams were quieter and gentler things.

A few days after the Straw Hats met in Nami’s office, Sanji and Zoro were in the middle of a sparring session when Zoro ducked under a roundhouse kick with practiced ease and announced, “Oi, cook. I wanna say something. You can tell me to fuck off if I’m out of line, all right?”

“Sure? I guess?” Sanji said, aiming a blow for Zoro’s stomach and narrowly missing. “Not like I’ve ever hesitated to tell you to fuck off before, but duly noted.”

Zoro caught his foot with the flat sides of two swords, crossed to protect his midline. “You don’t like fighting because of Judge. That’s why you said no to sparring with me so many times. Am I right?”

Sanji’s footing faltered and the fire licking up his calves extinguished itself with a dull whoomp. He half-expected a slice to the cheek as a consequence, but Zoro clocked the stumble and immediately shifted his grip on his blade. The sword blurred harmlessly past Sanji’s head instead.

“Ah,” Sanji said. “I guess I understand the warning, now.”

“We don’t have to talk about it,” Zoro immediately offered, lowering his swords.

Sanji shook his head. “No. It’s fine. You’re right. Training was… not optional, in Germa. I guess I don’t have the greatest associations with combat for the sake of combat.”

“Shit. Sorry I pushed you so hard,” Zoro told him. There was something that almost looked like a pout on his face, softening all the harsh planes of his face and making him look sheepish and young.

“No,” Sanji said. “No. Zoro, don’t you get it? I needed to be pushed.” He waved around the ring, at himself, at Zoro. “You were right. This is fun. I like sparring, and I like spending time with you, and I like being able to stand on my own two feet, on my own terms. I never would have done it if you hadn’t asked. It’s not like you forced me, either.”

“Still,” Zoro said, scuffing the toe of his boot on the ground and studiously avoiding Sanji’s eyes. “I was too persistent. I assumed you were just… I don’t know.”

“A coward?” Sanji supplied, wryly.

“Yeah,” Zoro agreed, a little too readily for Sanji’s taste. “That was shitty of me, though. I just didn’t get it. I told you when you first got here that I wanted to understand you, and I didn’t even really try.”

“Hm,” Sanji said. “And – what? You’re trying now?”

“Yes,” Zoro said, completely earnestly.

The solemnity on his face brought an angry rush of heat to Sanji’s face. “It’s not like I’m that complicated,” he muttered.

Zoro shrugged. “I mean, you make no sense to me.”

“Oi,” Sanji snapped.

“I’m not insulting you, cook, I’m just saying. You’re confusing. It always feels like you’ve got eight layers of thought process going on underneath whatever you’re saying out loud. It’s like I can see your brain churning away in there.”

“Whereas you just say whatever pops into your algae-coated skull,” Sanji said.

“Well, yeah, pretty much.” Zoro lifted his swords back into a ready position, but then lowered them again before moving to strike. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“About?”

“Why Judge sent you here. Were you keeping it under wraps on purpose?”

Sanji considered this. “I’m not really sure,” he said, eventually. “I guess… Maybe I just didn’t want it to change how you looked at me. All of you, I mean! Not just you, obviously. Not you at all! I couldn’t care less about what an overgrown lump of seaweed thinks of me. But Nami-san and Robin-san, of course. And… everyone else,” he finished, lamely.

Zoro did not look overly impressed by this outburst.

“We don’t, you know,” he said, scratching at his cheek with his index finger.

“You don’t what?” Sanji said, a little flustered by his own confused rambling.

“We don’t look at you different. Because of this. At least, I don’t, for what that’s worth to you.”

Sanji clicked his tongue, shoving his hands into his pockets and turning his back toward Zoro. “Come on. You can be honest with me. Isn’t it a little pathetic? To be thrown away like that?”

“Cook,” Zoro said. “Sanji. Don’t run away. Look at me.”

“No, thank you,” Sanji said.

Zoro stepped into his field of vision. He’d put his swords away at some point over the course of this atrocious conversation. He reached out with an empty hand to tap two fingers against Sanji’s chin. Reluctantly, Sanji let him guide his face around until they were staring at each other, eye-to-eye.

“I don’t lie and I don’t flatter,” he said, a perfect echo of what he’d told Sanji, that first evening in the kitchen. “And if Judge threw you away, it was because he was too stupid to realize that you’re someone worth treasuring.”

Sanji’s mouth fell open.

Something inside his brain clicked into place. He felt, dimly, as if a light had been switched on at the back of his head. Everything that had felt strange and shadowed was now thrown into sharp relief.

He was in love with Zoro.

It wasn’t like Sanji was a complete idiot. He knew attraction – he recognized the shape of it, the way his skin buzzed and his palms went clammy every time Zoro was in close proximity. Love, though… that was different. Somehow it had happened without Sanji even noticing. It was like he’d been trying to solve an equation with half the variables covered up. All of a sudden, the answer seemed obvious.

It’s him. This whole time, it’s been him.

“Ah,” Sanji said. And then, horribly, he started crying.

The look of panic on Zoro’s face was so hilarious that it averted a complete and utter emotional breakdown, which Sanji greatly appreciated. He was able to contain himself to a couple wet sniffles, then scrub his hands aggressively over his face to hide the evidence.

“You sure you don’t flatter?” he said, his voice a little thick from tears.

“Yeah, cook. I am,” Zoro said, still looking as though Sanji had wound up and punched him directly into the solar plexus.

“Well,” Sanji said. “I guess that’s all right, then.” He stepped forward, just a little, until he and Zoro were standing directly next to each other, facing in opposite directions. Then he tipped sideways and allowed their shoulders to knock together, Zoro’s arm a line of heat along the length of Sanji’s own. “Thanks, mosshead.”

“Didn’t do anything worth thanking me for,” Zoro muttered, head turned away from Sanji. The shells of his ears had gone just a little pink.

Sanji’s heart sang. His fingers itched to trail along the back of Zoro’s neck, find out if the short hair there was as bristly as it looked. He wondered if Zoro’s blush would spread if he pressed his mouth there.

Sanji’s fingertips bumped along Zoro’s palm. He felt Zoro’s hand flex in response, his fingers curling inward to loosely cup around Sanji’s.

And then, suddenly, an image leapt into his mind: his mother, pale faced and dying, reaching out to touch him with a trembling hand.

Tell your father I forgive him, she’d told him. Not that Judge had ever asked.

He’d spent his first few years of life watching a marriage fall apart, and the rest of his life feeling the consequences of that collapse. What the hell did Sanji, of all people, know about love? About romance? The real kind – the kind you found outside storybooks and poems?

Attraction to Zoro was one thing, but this? This was going to ruin everything. This thing he had with Zoro – the peace he’d found with the Straw Hats – his stupid, ungainly heart was going to wreck it all. He was going to take it in his hands and destroy it.

If that was the case… better not to hold it in the first place, he thought.

He stepped away, retracting his hand and tucking it up toward his chest, protective. “Well, I better get dinner going,” he mumbled, without looking at Zoro.

“Wh—?” Zoro said, sounding dazed.

“I’ll see you later. Thanks for the pep talk, mosshead.”

There was something small and ugly inside Sanji that hoped Zoro would ask him to stay. Something that wished he’d grab onto Sanji’s hand properly. Something that imagined him demanding, Sanji. Don’t run away, again. Something that pictured Sanji listening and reaching back.

Instead, Zoro just frowned and said, “Oh. Okay, then. See you later, cook.”

“Right,” Sanji said, feeling miserable and nauseated. “Yeah. Bye.”

He grilled up a slab of fresh sea king meat for dinner that night. It was the closest thing to an apology that he could allow himself. Zoro looked up at him, and then down at the plate, and said nothing.

The next morning dawned brilliantly clear and glorious, the sky soaked with the beginnings of a sunrise that spread across the horizon like watercolor paint, a thousand shades of crimson and tangerine and pink.

Sanji was prepping his onions for a quiche when Usopp appeared in the doorway, waving at him.

“Hey. You’re up early this morning,” Sanji said. “Uh – hey, what are you doing? Oi, Usopp—!”

“You’re coming with me,” Usopp said, grabbing Sanji by the shoulders and unceremoniously steering him toward the doorway. “Stop squirming, you’ll like this surprise, I promise.”

Sanji sent him a deeply skeptical look over his shoulder.

“I’m being honest! I swear on my name as the Great Captain Usopp—”

“That shit’s not helping your case, buddy,” Sanji said, but he allowed himself to be guided through the halls and up a narrow set of stairs.

Sanji hadn’t spent much time in this part of the castle at all. He peered around curiously as Usopp led him down a long corridor, up another flight of stairs, and then finally to a trap door and a rickety wooden ladder.

“Our destination, sir,” Usopp announced, with a sweeping bow.

Sanji rolled his eyes but gamely stepped onto the ladder, pushing the trap door open and poking his head out.

He was looking out onto a low, flat section of the castle’s tiered roof. The boughs of one of the taller plum trees extended over the edge; a cluster of orange-winged monarch butterflies flitted between its leaves, spiraling like snowflakes. Above, the early-morning sky was saturated with citrus tones, so bright Sanji could almost taste the tang in his mouth. He could see the ocean over the sloping roofs of the town, the coin-shaped curve of the rising sun just visible over the horizon. Yolky and frothy, like an omelet.

The rest of the Straw Hats were scattered around the roof, watching the sun rise. They turned around in unison when they heard the quiet rattle of the trap door opening.

“Wow,” Sanji said, softly.

“Sanji!” Chopper shouted. Zoro was holding him on his shoulders, his scarred hands propped on Chopper’s little knees to keep him steady. “Look! The sun! The sun is rising!”

“Ah, good morning, cook-san,” Robin said, giving him a little wave. “We’d hoped you’d be awake.”

“It’s been a stressful week, huh, little brother?” Franky boomed, clapping a massive hand on Sanji’s shoulder. “It’s important to slow down and enjoy stuff like this sometimes, too.”

“Hi, Sanji-kun,” Nami said. To Sanji’s complete and utter shock, she stepped forward and squeezed him into a tight but fleeting hug. “How are you doing?”

“Need you even ask? I’m in the arms of one of the world’s two most beautiful women – I’m in heaven, darling.”

Nami laughed and rubbed her knuckles into the top of his head fondly. The motion hopelessly ruined the ponytail he’d pulled his hair into when he’d started prepping breakfast, so he undid the ribbon and let it fall loose around his shoulders.

“Sanji!” Luffy shouted, waving with his whole arm above his head from where he was sitting on a slightly higher gable of the roof. “Come sit with me!”

Sanji blew Nami a teasing kiss and crossed the roof, planting his palms on the higher ledge and leveraging his body up to sit beside Luffy.

Slowly, as the wind rose and the sky lightened from soft grey to pale blue, the sun broke across the horizon. Color struck the sea and sparked, like steel on flint.

Across the roof, Zoro lifted Chopper off his shoulders and began to spin him in circles. Chopper shrieked with breathless laughter, all four of his limbs flailing wildly.

Sanji ached. He felt twisted up, like a dishtowel wrung out over the sink. He looked away from the scene, too quickly, and had the misfortune of turning to look directly over at Luffy.

Beside him, Luffy leaned back on his hands, kicking his feet gently. He smiled at Sanji, but it wasn’t quite his usual carefree grin. “Sanji,” he said, his voice uncharacteristically serious, “he won’t ever say anything, you know?”

“Hm?” Sanji asked, uncomprehending.

“Zoro,” Luffy elaborated, nodding his head in Zoro’s direction. “He’ll wait and wait and wait and wait forever, because he doesn’t want to pressure you or scare you off or make you feel unsafe here.”

“I don’t feel unsafe here,” Sanji protested automatically. Then he blinked, and, with a strangled voice, he said, “Wait. Luffy. Are you – are you saying that he—”

“Zoro’s my best friend in the whole world,” Luffy continued. “He was the first person to believe in me, when I said I was going to become king of the pirates someday. He’d the kind of guy who would lay down his life for any of us, no questions asked. He’s the best second-in-command I could’ve ever asked for. I love him so much. He’s kind of a dummy, sometimes, though. He doesn’t see the way you look at him, so he thinks it’s just him feeling that way, all alone.”

“Oh,” Sanji managed to rasp out. “Oh. Well. It’s not.”

“Well, yeah, all of us know that, Sanji,” Luffy said, not unkindly. “You’ve loved him for ages and ages.”

“Is it seriously that obvious? To everyone?” he asked, in a small voice.

“Pretty much! To everyone except Zoro, anyway!” Luffy said. He held a hand out and watched in transparent delight as a monarch butterfly fluttered around his fingers and then landed in his palm, wings beating slowly.

By this point, Chopper had managed to climb onto Zoro’s head and was clinging onto his face, still near-sobbing with laughter. Zoro reached up and started to tickle him along his ribcage, which resulted in Chopper floundering wildly. They toppled to the roof together with an almighty crash. As they fell, Zoro twisted midair so that he landed on his back, Chopper bouncing safely off his torso.

“Idiot. They’re going to fall and break their necks,” Sanji muttered.

“I don’t know,” Luffy said, with obvious unconcern. “Zoro’s pretty steady,” he added, which was undeniably true and somehow managed to make the ache in Sanji’s chest even worse.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Sanji admitted, almost in a whisper. “If I tell him how I feel, and he rejects me, that’s horrible, obviously. But if he says yes, I… I don’t know what I’m doing, Luffy. I’m so scared I’ll ruin everything, right when I’ve finally found something good.”

“Sanji is silly,” Luffy informed the butterfly on his palm, which fluttered its wings sympathetically. “You’re making it way too complicated. Love isn’t something that’s ruined by sharing, you know?”

“I don’t,” Sanji said.

“You didn’t,” Luffy corrected him, gently. “You do now. Do you really think that Zoro would be mad at you for loving him? Or that he’d laugh at you because of your feelings?”

“Maybe,” Sanji said, defensively, before deflating. “No. He wouldn’t.”

“Right,” Luffy agreed. “That’s not so scary, then, is it? And it’s okay that you don’t know what you’re doing. Neither does Zoro! Whatever comes up, you guys will figure it out together. You’ll be a team, right? You kind of already are.”

“I… guess I didn’t think of it like that,” Sanji said. He took a deep breath and curled his hands into the fabric of his pant legs, averting his eyes from Luffy like a witness to an eclipse. “Thank you, Luffy. I… I…”

Luffy smiled and tipped his shoulder into Sanji’s. Solid, warm. A simple kind of pressure. He didn’t say the words out loud, but Sanji still got the message: I’m here.

“I just really love you, you know?” Sanji finally managed to say. It was the first time he had spoken those words out loud since they’d folded the last of the topsoil over Sora’s open grave. “Thank you for being my friend. Thank you for showing me that there are leaders worth following. Thank you for changing my life.”

“I love you, too, Sanji!” Luffy said, and he gently tossed the butterfly into the air and swung around to wrap all four of his limbs around Sanji, propping his chin on Sanji’s shoulder. “You’re my friend and my cook and I love you. Your dad is the worst and I’m going to beat the shit out of him someday, but he gave me you, so I’ll always be grateful for that.” He patted Sanji’s back. “Don’t be scared of Zoro. You make each other happy. That’s not something to be scared of.”

Across the rooftop, Zoro released an enormous bark of laughter at something Chopper had said. He raised his head and turned to look at them, and when he caught Sanji’s eye over Luffy’s shoulder, his smile grew a little, crinkling the corners of his eyes.

“Yeah,” Sanji said. “I guess I’m starting to believe that.”

The plan was simple. Sanji was going to ask Zoro to meet him for sparring later in the morning than they usually did. He’d make two bento and dig up some of the nicer sake that he’d hidden in the cabinet under the sink, and then he’d take Luffy’s advice.

It was like Luffy said. Even if Zoro didn’t want him like Sanji wanted Zoro, it didn’t mean their friendship had to end. And, if Zoro did want him… Sanji didn’t know anything about what real love should look like outside of novels and fairy tales, but maybe he and Zoro could figure that out together. They’d never been conventional. After all, Sanji had somehow managed to fall in love in the space between Zoro stealing all his cooking wine and trying to cut his head off.

Tomorrow, Sanji promised himself, as he approached his room after the post-dinner clean-up was finished. Tomorrow, I’ll tell him.

He slid the door open to his bedroom.

There was already someone inside.

The person stood by the open window, her hands tucked neatly behind her back. Her gaze was directed out through the glass, into the busy courtyard. The sinking sun illuminated her sheaf of pink hair. She wore black clothing, nondescript and easy to move in. There was a short sword strapped across her back. The shimmer of old magic hung around her shoulders, clinging to her hair: the remnants of a charm for passing undetected.

Without turning away from the view, Reiju said, “Hello, little brother. It’s been a long time.”

Sanji said, out loud, “No.”

The world had ended, surely. Everything was collapsing around him. If the earth wasn’t coming to an abrupt and violent close, why couldn’t Sanji breathe? Why had his body gone cold? Why had his heart stopped entirely?

He stumbled into the room and, with numb and trembling fingers, he slammed the sliding door shut behind him.

“You can’t be here,” he said, inanely. “You have to leave.”

Reiju sighed. With her customary dancer’s grace, back straight and chin lifted, she turned from the window to face Sanji. The look on her face was vaguely pitying, as though she thought he was embarrassing himself, just a little.

“Sanji,” she said, gently. “Did you really think Father would just let things continue as they are?”

“Get out,” Sanji told her. “You have to go. Get out, now.”

Reiju didn’t seem particularly disturbed by this reception. “You cut your hair. It looks nice like this,” she said, stepping forward and reaching to tuck Sanji’s bangs behind his ear. “Sometimes you remind me so much of Mother. Out of all of us, you look the most like her.”

He took a huge step backwards and kept moving until his back hit the wall behind him.

“Don’t talk to me about Maman,” Sanji hissed. “What are you doing here?”

“Our father has a proposition for you,” Reiju said.

“Your father,” Sanji corrected her. “Not mine. He’s made that perfectly clear.”

“Believe me, I know you two have had a… difficult relationship,” she said, frowning. “But, Sanji, you have a real opportunity, here. You have something he wants, and you can bargain for it. You could come home, if you would only help him—”

“If I help him… what? Invade the south? Start a war with Luffy?”

Reiju spread her hands as if to say, What can you do? “Precisely. Father wants to take Dawn City. More to the point, he wants to defeat Straw Hat on the battlefield. Unfortunately, the Council of Kings has decreed that he’ll lose his crown if he begins another war without provocation. It’s put him in a bit of a difficult position.”

“Too bad. He always wants a war with somebody. If he’s upset about being put in permanent time-out, he can take that up with the Council.”

Reiju looked unimpressed by this line of argument. “Sanji, be reasonable about this. If you come back with me, if you tell us everything you know about Straw Hat, Father promises he’ll reinstate you as prince. He’ll even let you cook, Sanji, he told me you could use the kitchens whenever you liked. It’s everything you wanted when we were young. Don’t you see what an incredible chance this is? For you and for our family?”

“That’s the carrot,” Sanji said. “Now tell me the stick.”

Her expression fell, almost imperceptibly. It was visible mainly around the left corner of her mouth. “Just come home with me, Sanji. Please.”

Sanji crossed his arms over his chest. “No. I’m sure he gave you orders. What are you going to do if I refuse?”

 She sighed. “If you come with me now, you won’t have to worry about it.”

“I want to know, Reiju.”

“You’re so stubborn, Sanji. Fine. If you refuse to come home with me tonight, I am to choose one of the Straw Hats and kill them. One per day, until you come home. Those are his terms.”

It was a warm night, drenched with late-August heat, but Sanji’s blood still flash-froze in his veins. He felt it, suddenly: a chill on the wind. The oncoming winter. The impending frost.

There was a phrase, in Germa, for when the normal word for cold just wasn’t enough. You’d be walking home from the market or finishing up the workday, insides of your nose frozen solid, cheeks chapped, throat scratched dry. You’d pass a friend or a neighbor and say, Y fait frette.

Colder than cold. That’s not the kind of thing summer could erase.

Winters like that didn’t leave you. They curled up inside your bones and made a home there.

“No,” he said, quietly. “You can’t do this. I won’t let you.”

“Sanji,” Reiju said, again. “I’ve been scoping the place out waiting for an opportunity to speak with you all day. I was listening, earlier. When you were speaking on the roof with Warlord Luffy. I heard you two talking about the swordsman.”

“No,” he repeated, his voice higher, frantic.

“You love these people,” she said, a note of real urgency in her tone. “You care about them, and they trust you. You know what you have to do.”

“How could you ask this of me?” Sanji whispered.

Reiju looked wretched, but she shook her head. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, little brother. I didn’t want this for you. I never did,” she whispered. And then the earnest feeling in her expression flickered and died, like a candle burning out. “You have until midnight. Make the right choice.”

Sanji didn’t pack anything. There wasn’t any point.

The hallways were quiet as he made his way through the castle. Nami’s office was dark and silent. Sanji slid the door open and stepped inside, lighting the lamp on her desk to see by. He rummaged through the top drawer of the desk until he found some unmarked parchment, then sank into the chair and wrote.

To my dearest Nami-san and Robin-chan (and also everyone else),

Unfortunately, I have been called back to Germa by my father. This was put to me less as a request and more as a command. I’m sure you can imagine. To avoid causing any further problems for you all, I’m leaving Dawn Castle tonight. Please, don’t come looking for me. Luffy, this means you! I know it might be difficult to believe, but this really is the best way.

I am really so

I feel so lucky to have

Thank you for everything you

I lo

Take care of yourselves. Keep eating vegetables, and nobody skip any meals! Chopper’s the world’s best doctor, but you people keep him way too busy.  I’ve kept a log of all my recipes and notes on everyone’s diet and schedule for Miss Jessica. I hope she finds it helpful.

I will never forget what you’ve done for me. I hope that someday we can all meet again.

- S

He folded up the letter with steady hands. Then he took a long, slow breath and tore a strip of parchment off the bottom of the page. In bold letters, he wrote, To mosshead. Then, in much smaller letters, right beneath it, he wrote, I’m sorry. Trust me.

He folded both letters and left them on Nami’s desk, corners tucked under her ink bottle to keep them from blowing away. Then he slid open the window and stepped through it, out of the castle and into the night.

He paused just long enough to light up a cigarette. Then he set off walking.

He didn’t look back.

The Vinsmokes were waiting.

Chapter Text

It was technically possible that Sanji’s return to the court of Vinsmoke Judge could have gone worse. For example, the entire room could have exploded around him. He could’ve simply dropped dead on the spot. Or perhaps a comet could’ve impacted the earth and wiped out human life entirely.

When Sanji had slipped out of Dawn Castle to meet Reiju that night, he’d been expecting another weeklong journey in another stuffy carriage. It would have been extremely unpleasant, but it would have at least given him some time to compose himself. To reign in his anger and grief. To recall what it felt like to be Vinsmoke Sanji, unwanted prince of Germa, rather than Sanji, chef and friend and Straw Hat.

Instead of a carriage, though, Reiju had led him to a tiny, unmarked boat tied up at the docks. She’d tapped the wooden side of the dinghy with her palm and whispered a spell. It shuddered and then burst into motion, speeding across the water’s surface. The sour, briny spray off the waves stung Sanji’s eyes and clung cold and damp to his hair.

They’d sailed directly out to sea until the coastline disappeared from Sanji’s view. A few minutes later, in the distance, a dark blotch on the horizon resolved itself first into one ship, and then two, and then over a dozen.

At least a quarter of Germa’s navy, including its flagship, was anchored about a league and a half off the coast of Dawn City.

This wasn’t a welcome committee. It was an invasion force.

“At the risk of sounding like I care about what happens to Judge, I should tell you that he’s going to regret this,” Sanji told Reiju, as she steered their little boat up close to the towering flank of the flagship.

“Father doesn’t regret anything,” she told him indifferently. “It isn’t in his nature.”

“Yeah, well, he’s never faced Straw Hat Luffy before. He’s going to lose, Reiju.”

“Maybe,” she agreed. “But it’ll be on his terms. It always is.”

Reiju tied their boat off and stepped gracefully onto the flagship. It was strangely silent. Only a few visible soldiers patrolled the upper deck, their shoes clacking against the wood in perfect time.

Apart from Reiju and Sanji’s own dinghy, there were six or seven unmarked yachts tethered to the side of the flagship. They were obviously not part of Germa’s navy, differing utterly from the snail ships in both shape and size. None of them flew a single identifying flag, including the double-six insignia that was emblazoned on every vessel that sailed under Judge’s banner.

Sanji raised an eyebrow and opened his mouth to ask about them.

Before he could, Reiju said, “Come on, little brother, let’s go.”

It was beyond strange to be back on the flagship. Although Judge and his court passed most of the year land-locked in Germa’s massive imperial palace, Sanji had spent a significant percentage of his childhood on board this ship. The last time he was here, Judge had been considering sailing east and attempting to annex the small island nation of Alabasta. The plan had been abandoned when it was determined Alabasta’s natural resources weren’t worth the effort. Clearly, Judge had set his sights southward instead.

Reiju slid an arm around Sanji’s shoulder and steered him into a disused cabin in the flagship’s servants’ quarters. While he waited, she rummaged under the bed and extracted a cloth bag she’d clearly hidden in preparation for this. She looked inside the bag, breathed a quiet sigh that Sanji thought might be relief, and then tossed it to him.

“Get dressed,” she said.

“What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?” Sanji demanded, gesturing at his suit.

“He’ll want you in the appropriate clothes for a member of the Germa nobility, and you know it. It’s bad enough that your hair isn’t long enough for a proper braid anymore. Let’s not give him even more reason to be annoyed.”

Sanji dumped the bag’s contents out and onto the bed. It contained an ensemble nearly identical to the one he’d worn the day he arrived in Dawn City. White, blousy shirt, neat black pants, a one-shouldered mid-length cape. This one was a deep burgundy, the color of strong wine.

There were also a pair of golden wrist cuffs that tumbled out onto the pile of clothing, clinking softly as they collided with each other. They were nearly identical to the pair that had been fastened to his wrists on the ride from Germa to Dawn City, minus the chain linking them together.

“No,” Sanji said, immediately rearing back.

“Sanji, listen to me. They’re fake,” Reiju said, reaching forward to grab his hands. “Father is expecting you to arrive wearing them. I spent days creating this set. They look exactly like the real ones, but the charm in the gold is inert. I swear to you, if you put them on, your magic and your hands will be safe.”

“What? Threatening my loved ones isn’t enough for him?” he replied, acid in his voice.

“You know it isn’t. Contingencies on contingencies,” she told him, gently.

Sanji looked down at the cuffs.

“This would be a cruel thing to lie about,” he told her, quietly.

“I know I’m not the older sister you deserve,” Reiju replied, just as quiet. “Even still, I have always done my best not to be cruel to you. Please trust me on this, Sanji.”

He thought, for a moment, about the tsunami of relief he’d felt when Franky had removed the first pair of cuffs. He thought about Chopper, how gently he’d touched him, the amount of care he’d put into ensuring the blisters healed into thin, fading scars. He thought about Zoro’s eye, sharp on his wrists. He’d noticed Sanji’s discomfort, and they hadn’t even known each other yet. He’d pointed it out, even though he’d still thought Sanji could be a spy.

You’re doing this for them, he reminded himself. Isn’t this a small burden to bear, in exchange for what they’ve done for you?

He chewed on his bottom lip and then decided, “All right. Fine. I’ll wear them, but I want to put them on myself. On my own terms.”

“Thank you,” she said, squeezing his arm softly. “You’re making the right decision. Take your time, I’ll meet you in the hallway when you’re finished dressing.”

Sanji changed into the new clothing slowly, wincing at the heavy slide of velvet over his skin as he swung the cape over his shoulder and fastened it. He folded up the suit Nami had bought for him with careful reverence, sliding his palms over the jacket to flatten it out.

Reiju was right – his hair wasn’t long enough to be plaited back properly. Instead, he pulled the top half back and twisted it into a low bun on the back of his head, pinning the bun into place and letting the rest curl loose around his shoulders. Not quite appropriate for a member of Germa’s royal family, but acceptable enough to be seen in public without scandalizing people.

Then he reached for the golden cuffs.

He allowed himself a moment of anguished memory. Chopper’s sweet smile, Nami’s quick wit, Usopp’s creativity, Franky’s generosity, Robin’s wisdom, Brook’s off-beat sense of humor. Luffy’s grin. Zoro.

He slid the cuffs into place around his wrists and snapped them shut, sealing them firmly closed.

A tremor went through his body. He gave himself a moment to breathe through it. Then he adjusted his sleeves to cover the glimmer of metal. Back straight, he stepped out of the cabin and into the hallway.

Reiju turned to look at him. There was something deeply sad in her eyes as she smoothed out the fabric of his shirt over his shoulders and carefully adjusted the clasp of the cape.

“All right,” she said. “Let’s go.”

Sanji had been carried out of Germa and tossed into the carriage kicking and screaming. That night, he entered the flagship’s banquet hall on his own two feet.

Reiju had looped her arm through his own. She clutched his elbow with the appearance of familial fondness, but Sanji could feel the iron strength running under her skin as she held him in place. He wasn’t entirely sure whose sake her caution was for: Judge’s, or his own.

Sanji had been expecting to be greeted by the usual cast of characters: Judge, his brothers, and some combination of generals, sorcerers, and advisors. He’d missed the mark, though. Tonight, the banquet hall was packed full. Tables had been arranged down the length of the room. Along the wall opposite the door, on a raised dais, Judge sat directly in the middle of a massive, gleaming table, looking out on his guests. Ichiji, Niji, and Yonji sat to his left. The two spots directly to his right sat empty.

This answered the question of those mystery ships, at least. Judge was entertaining some very illustrious guests, indeed.

Sanji had not been allowed to attend state events after he was written out of the line of succession, so the only place he’d ever seen these faces had been in newspapers. Even still, he recognized a few of them instantly. At the head of one table sat Whitebeard, one of the most well-respected monarchs on the continent, and the man that Luffy’s brother still served, even now that Luffy was a king in his own right. Another familiar face belonged to Dracule Mihawk, king of Kuraigana and a famously formidable soldier in his own right. According to Nami, this was the man who had given Zoro the scar across his chest in one battle and taken his eye in another.

There also was a fourth king in the room, currently sitting in a watchful, stony-faced silence. The so-called Surgeon of Death, the current King of Dressrosa.

Trafalgar D. Water Law.

Sanji bit sharply down on his tongue in an effort to keep his facial expression blank.

Trafalgar Law whispered something to the enormous, bear-shaped man who sat in the seat beside him, his watchful gaze following Sanji and Reiju as they approached the dais.

Despite his best efforts, the lacy edges of hope were starting to bloom in Sanji’s chest. Maybe, his heart whispered. Maybe, maybe, maybe you can pull this off, after all.

He wrenched his gaze away from the Dressrosa delegation and set his sights determinedly forward. Shoulders squared, he allowed Reiju to escort him to the front of the room. When he looked sideways at her, there was something that nearly looked like fear in her eyes.

“Go along with it, Sanji, please,” she whispered in his ear.

“Go along with what?” Sanji hissed back, just as Judge got to his feet.

“Mon fils,” Judge called. “Oh, my boy. I was so terribly worried about you.”

This proclamation was horrible and confusing enough. Things got worse, though: Judge stepped around the table, descended from the dais, and then he pulled Sanji into a hug.

Sanji managed to suppress the startled instinct to slam his knee into Judge’s lower ribcage, but only just barely.

“You know the consequences of failing to cooperate,” Judge said, nearly inaudibly, in Sanji’s ear. Then he pulled away and clapped a hand on Sanji’s shoulder, hard enough to sting.

“My friends!” he shouted to the rest of the hall. “A miracle has happened! Your presence truly must be a lucky charm. My son has been returned to us! Tonight, we celebrate. Bring our guests more wine!”

Judge gave Sanji’s shoulder a little shake and then returned to his seat, whispering something to Ichiji as he passed him.

“Ah,” Sanji said to Reiju, trying to move his mouth as little as possible. “So that’s how he’s playing it.”

“That’s how he’s playing it,” she confirmed, leading him up to the head table and practically depositing him directly into one of the two empty chairs.

Two members of the food service staff stepped up and filled the wine glasses that had already been set out on the table in front of Reiju and Sanji. Sanji nodded his thanks and then dropped his gaze to the table as his father, still standing, raised his own glass.

“As you all know, this past half-year has been agonizing, as I awaited news regarding the disappearance of my third son, Sanji. Thankfully, after learning that he had been cruelly kidnapped and held against his will by Straw Hat Luffy, my daughter was able to infiltrate Dawn Castle and bring him safely home. I stand before you a humble father, recently struggling with the loss of a beloved child. This Straw Hat is a danger to civilized leaders everywhere. If my son was not safe in our own home, what is to say your families will be?”

Sanji sat very still, patting himself vigorously on the back when he managed to avoid retching into his wine glass.

Across the room, Trafalgar Law was staring steadily at Sanji. Sanji carefully did not return the look.

“Tonight, we celebrate my boy’s return. But, as we do, I beg that you consider carefully my proposal. With your support at the next Council of Kings assembly, I pledge to you that Germa will eradicate this menace once and for all.” Judge raised his glass toward the guests. “Enough business for now! Santé, tout le monde.”

At Reiju’s pointed look, Sanji echoed, “Santé,” and took a blank-faced sip of wine.

It tasted like blood in his mouth.

When the banquet finally, mercifully ended, Reiju escorted Sanji to the bedroom he’d slept in as a child, between stints in the flagship dungeons. It looked exactly as it had before he’d been sent away – that is to say, it looked barren and absent of life, like a display in a store’s front window or the bedroom in a dollhouse. The only significant change was that the door had been removed from its hinges, replaced with a set of iron bars.

“Lovely. Atmospheric. Really warms the place up,” Sanji said.

“It’s better than the dungeons, at least,” Reiju said.

Sanji ran a hand over the bed’s perfect, unwrinkled white duvet and closed his eyes. “I guess I’m starting to think that I deserve better than at least.”

Reiju was silent for a long moment. Then she sighed and said, “Perhaps it would be a better world if we all got the things that we deserved. Good night, little brother.”

Sanji did not sleep that night. His thoughts were dizzy, uncertain things. They poured in a deluge, with the force of a monsoon.

Mostly for something to do, he paced back and forth across the carpeted floor, his fingers twisted into his hair. Every once in awhile, he found his mind wandering back to Dawn Castle. He wondered what the reaction would be when they found his letters on Nami’s desk. He imagined the look on everyone’s faces. Then he shook his head ferociously and forced himself to stop wondering and imagining.

It had been his mistake, really. Getting used to life with the Straw Hats. He should’ve known better than to think things would end any way other than this.

The sun had only recently risen when a heavy banging sounded at the bars across the open mouth of Sanji’s doorway. Sanji turned to see Niji standing in the hallway outside, a deeply unpleasant smile on his face.

On instinct, Sanji took several large steps away from the doorway.

“Gotta say, this is a surprise. We didn’t think we’d be seeing you alive again, failure,” Niji said, sneering.

“Same here,” Sanji said, honestly.

“Come on, then. Father wants to see you. He says no visible bruises until the foreign delegations are gone, so you don’t have to keep cowering like a kicked puppy.”

“Very heartwarming,” Sanji muttered.

Niji flung open the barred door, the hinges shrieking loudly in complaint. He waited until Sanji had stepped out of the room and into the hallway. Then he spun and drove his knuckles into Sanji’s ribcage, emptying the breath from his lungs and sending him toppling onto one knee.

“Didn’t say anything about invisible bruises, though,” Niji said.

“Dégage,” Sanji snarled.

 “Careful, failure. I see you’ve got some nice jewelry on, there. Wouldn’t want to take a swing at me and lose a hand, eh?”

Sanji bared his teeth but got to his feet in silence. It was humiliating, but the smart move was to let this pass. Niji seemed mostly to have hit him for the principle of the thing. Enraging him would only increase the chances of a beating beginning in earnest.

 “Let’s not keep him waiting, then,” Sanji spit out, jerking his chin for Niji to lead on.

Niji led Sanji to the flagship’s massive audience chamber, the walls lined with gilded statues, Judge’s golden throne glittering in the center of a raised stage. Judge sat on the throne with a look of supreme disinterest on his face. He was flanked by Ichiji and Yonji on one side and Reiju on the other, each of them standing at attention with their hands folded behind their backs. This time, when Sanji entered the room, he didn’t rise from his seat at all.

Niji and Sanji stopped in front of the dais. Niji dropped into a low bow.

Sanji stood with his back straight and his chin lifted in challenge. “King Judge. I thought our business had concluded.”

“Ah,” Judge rumbled. “I see your time with Straw Hat finally gave you a spine, boy. I suppose something good did come of that ridiculous situation, after all.”

“Spine or not, I’m only doing as you taught me,” Sanji said, nonchalantly. “Bowing to my king, and no other.”

“Insolence,” Ichiji snarled. “How dare you speak to our father like that?”

“The inevitable result of banishment, I’m afraid. Doesn’t seem much worth it, paying respects to a king who threw you away,” Sanji said.

Ichiji opened his mouth to reply, but Judge lifted a hand to silence him.

“No matter,” Judge said. “Bow to whomever you like. It makes no difference to me. But let me make myself plain. I will conclude this state visit with official permission to declare war on Straw Hat. If you interfere with this mission, in any way, I will send Reiju back to Dawn Castle and let her select the first person to kill. I hear you’re quite fond of that orange-haired wench. A lover, perhaps? Did Straw Hat spare you so you could warm her bed?”

More than the punch to his side, that comment was difficult to bear. Sanji bit down on the inside of his cheek so hard he tasted blood.

Suck it up, he told himself furiously. Let it pass. You’ll make him pay for it eventually.

It was the right move, no matter how badly his stomach was churning. When he failed to take the bait, Judge merely shrugged his massive shoulders and turned away. “Regardless. You will appear at state dinners. You will look appropriately traumatized. When asked about the specifics of your ordeal, you will demur. Do I make myself plain?”

“Entirely so, yes,” Sanji said. Judge’s fear, his weakness, his fumbling attempts at compensating for them… all of it was obvious to Sanji.

When he was a child, weak and lonely and least-favored among his siblings, Judge had seemed larger than life. Bigger than the endless northern sky above them. His fury, his disappointment, his disdain – Sanji had felt them all like an earthquake, like a typhoon, like the eruption of a volcano.

Now, though, he just seemed small.

“Very well,” Judge said, waving his hand. “Get out, then. And, remember, Sanji. You are doing this for the sake of your country and your people. For the sake of the crown that you owe your loyalty to.”

“Yes,” Sanji agreed, unflinchingly. “I am.”

It took Sanji a little less than a day to decide on a plan. It took three before he was ready to set it into motion.

Steps one and two of the plan were easy enough to execute. He completed them both in the span of a single afternoon, during an ostentatious – and, frankly, tasteless – display of Germa’s naval capabilities, staged for the sake of their royal guests. He’d been a bit concerned that his absence might be noted, but he needn’t have worried. In fact, he doubted Judge would’ve noticed if he hadn’t showed up to the display at all.

 It was the third and final part of the plan that was going to be the trickiest to pull off. It was also by far the most important. If he failed at this, his window of opportunity for action would close entirely. Whatever happened next, he would have to watch from the sidelines.

That evening, Sanji waited until darkness had fully fallen. Then he whispered a simple adhesion charm that Usopp had taught him, smoothing the magic onto the soles of his boots with his palm. Once he’d tested it and found it to be working, he muscled open his bedroom’s porthole window and slipped out, into the night.

The outer walls of the ship were greasy with spray off the sea and a clinging fog that had set in as night began to fall. Sanji wasn’t worried, though – Usopp’s charms had never failed him before.

Unhesitating, he lowered himself down from his window to the one directly below. Planting a foot on the frame, he leveraged his body down and leaned close to the glass to peer inside. As he’d guessed, the guest quarters directly below his bedroom were not in use, probably on the off-chance he’d decided to start shouting for help. Apart from the disused furniture, the room was entirely empty.

Sanji pressed his palm to the thick, double-paned glass of the window. A faint orange glow began to gather around his skin. Pulling at every ounce of heat and force his magic allowed, he whispered, “Break.”

The glass didn’t shatter. It exploded soundlessly into a fine, grainy dust, spiraling down and coating the windowsill like a thin film of snow.

“Oh,” Sanji said, a little surprised.

He slipped in through the empty windowpane, landing on the carpet on his tiptoes. He tapped his fingers on each of his boots to dispel the sticking charm. Then he crossed to the room’s desk and began to rifle through the drawers.

Under a pile of blank parchment, he found a blunt letter-opener about the size of a butter knife. Tucking it into his sleeve, he headed to the closed door leading from the chamber to the hallway. He bent to press his ear against the wood, holding his breath while he listened.

There was nothing moving on the other side that he could hear, apart from the distant, bassy pounding of the waves against the hull of the ship. Satisfied, he slowly turned the handle and slipped out into the hallway.

The next step was a challenging one, although it would be far from the hardest part of the night.

Sanji had made a note of approximately what direction each visiting delegation had been departing toward, after meals and meetings had concluded. Once he was outside the empty guest quarters, he turned right, then ran as soundlessly as possible down a long, narrow corridor. He descended a flight of stairs, ducked into a closet to avoid a patrolling guard, and then finally stopped outside a door.

This was a high-stakes gamble. If he’d picked the wrong door, everything he’d done tonight would unravel around him. It might even get him killed.

Sanji gathered his courage tight to his chest and knocked firmly on the door.

There was a pause, followed by the muffled sound of soft voices. Footsteps echoed from the other side. Then the door swung open, revealing a young man of middling height, wearing a fur-lined trapper’s hat.

“Thank you, but we don’t need anything else, tonight,” he started to say, before falling silent, mouth falling open. “Your – Your Highness?”

“Hello,” Sanji said, pleasantly. “Is His Grace in?”

“Who’s asking?” a quiet, low voice asked from inside the room.

The man who’d answered the door turned over his shoulder and whispered, “It’s the third prince!”

“Oh? Let him in.”

The man in the hat gave Sanji another quick, searching look before stepping back and allowing him entry. Sanji nodded to him politely before stepping into the room.

It was one of the flagship’s larger guest quarters, complete with a sitting room and several attached bedrooms. The huge, bear-shaped man Sanji had spotted at dinner several nights before was sitting on the couch, along with a woman with a cloud of tight, black corkscrew curls. A man with a shaggy mane of red hair stood by one of the bedroom doors, a katana strapped to his hip. The man in the trapper cap hovered a few feet behind Sanji’s left shoulder, like he wasn’t entirely sure what to do with himself.

“Your Grace,” Sanji said, bowing with a hand over his heart, the way a person from Dressrosa would greet someone of higher rank. “If I might beg a minute of your time.”

Trafalgar D. Water Law looked up from his desk. “Judge’s elusive third son,” he said, in a tone that somehow managed to land halfway between amusement and contempt. His expression was completely blank. “This is a surprise. We hear you’ve had quite the misadventure recently. In fact, when I asked Judge to speak with you, I was informed that you wouldn’t be making many public appearances during your recovery.”

Sanji straightened up from his bow. “I know this visit isn’t exactly following proper procedure, Your Grace, but it is important. It’s about a mutual acquaintance of ours.”

Law’s expression went, if possible, even blanker. “I see,” he said, slowly. “Well, then.” He signaled, and the man in the hat closed the door to the hallway and locked it. “Go on, please, Prince Sanji. I’m all ears.”

“Just a moment,” Sanji said.

He took a few rapid steps forward, halting right in front of the desk. At the sudden burst of motion, the red-haired man by the door went for the sword on his hip. Law didn’t so much as blink.

Sanji offered him an apologetic smile and then ran his fingers below the lip of the desktop. His fingertips bumped against something gauged into the wood. He pulled the letter opener he’d stolen out of his sleeve and sliced into the symbol until he felt a few chips of the wood flake away and fall to the floor.

Around them, the observation spell Judge’s mages had cast on the room dissipated with a barely-audible sigh.

“Better to have some privacy, yeah?” Sanji said, blowing a loose lock of hair out of his face.

“Now, that is interesting,” said Law, leaning back in his chair. “I take it Judge has those spells cast in all of his guests’ quarters before they arrive?”

Sanji nodded. “Of course. I’d check the bedrooms, too. He has his court mages imbed the charm into wood. They’re hard to spot, but all you have to do to destroy them is ruin the sigil. Even splashing ink on them will do.”

Law nodded at the dark-haired woman, who slipped out of the room and into the corridor that led to the sleeping quarters. “Not that I’m ungrateful for the assistance,” he said to Sanji, finally rising from his chair, “but I must admit, I’m at something of a loss as to why you would thwart your own father’s surveillance efforts.”

“He’s not my father,” Sanji bit out. “I – apologies, Your Grace. Judge had me expunged from the family tree when he sent me to Luffy as tribute. Our familial tie is severed.”

“Bonds can take other forms than that of formal kinship,” Law told him.

“Of course they can. But not between me and Judge,” Sanji said, firmly. “Your Grace, Luffy told me you two were good friends.”

“Of course he did,” Law muttered. “Pretty sure the word discretion isn’t in his vocabulary.”

“Oh? Was he wrong, then?”

“Not wrong, exactly,” Law said, slowly, looking cornered.

Sanji felt a little stab of triumph. “Not wrong? Was he right enough that you would be able to get an urgent message to him?”

Law lifted an eyebrow and replied, evasively, “Depends on the nature of the message, I suppose.”

Sanji nodded. “Fair enough. I’d be cautious of me, too. Let me elaborate, then.”

Unceremoniously, Sanji unfastened his cloak and swung it off his shoulders, dropping it onto the desk. He spun the letter opener in his hand and used it to tear open the stitches connecting the velvet outside layer to the silk interior lining. Then he slid out two sheets of parchment, dropping the cape on the floor and spreading the pages out on the desk, side by side.

“Before I left, I told them to leave this to me but, frankly speaking, there’s absolutely no way that’s going to happen,” Sanji said, as Law tucked his hands behind his back and leaned over the pages to inspect them. “I know full well that they’re going to come charging in here one way or another, Council edict be damned. Luffy’s not much for battle strategy, but even so, it would be pretty stupid to fly in completely blind. And, at the very least, this should be enough to prove to the rest of the international community that he was provoked.”

The moment Law realized exactly what he’d been looking at was obvious. His head snapped up and he spun to look at Sanji with wide eyes. It was the first noticeable emotion he’d shown on his face since Sanji had set foot on the flagship four days prior.

“Those are Germa’s invasion plans,” Law said, slowly. “This is how Judge intends to defeat the Straw Hats.”

Sanji nodded. “Yes. Their invasion plans, and their full intelligence dossier on each of the Straw Hats. Plus a full record of their attacks on border villages. I copied them using a duplication charm during that stupid military display earlier. There’s also a full schematic of the snail ships from the engine room, the flagship included. Should be enough to cut the head off the snake, no?”

The other members of Law’s retinue had been slowly inching toward the desk. By now, they stood close enough to look over the documents themselves.

“Holy shit,” the man in the trapper hat said.

“This is amazing,” the bear-man said. “We could prevent a war with this.”

“That’s the idea,” Sanji said.

Law ran a finger along the snail ship schematic, brain visibly churning behind his eyes. “If I brought this to Judge, he would very likely have you executed.”

“That’s true. I guess I’m hoping you won’t bring it to Judge.” Sanji shrugged. He rotated the cloak in his hands, curling his fingers into the fabric. “Call it a leap of faith, if you’d like.”

“A leap of faith,” Law repeated, incredulously. “No offense, Your Highness, but that is insane. You don’t even know me. Why would you trust me with this? You’re putting your life in my hands.”

“I trust you because Luffy trusts you,” said Sanji. That was all.

At the sound of Luffy’s name, some of the tension immediately drained out of the sharp lines of Law’s face, the stiff set of his shoulders. He covered his face with a tattooed hand, closing his eyes.

“That man is more trouble than he’s worth,” Law said, deeply unconvincingly.

“You’ll take these to him, then? You’ll warn him?” Sanji asked.

Law looked up at him. “Yes. I’ll take them. How long do I have?”

“Judge will want to attack before winter. It’ll only get harder to muster land-based reinforcements once the killing frost sets in. You have two weeks, at most, if we want to end the invasion before it can begin.”

“I only need one,” Law told him, unflinchingly.

“Good,” Sanji said. “Thank you, Your Grace. I… I really am grateful for your help.”

Law waved the thanks off, turning back to the papers on his desk. “It’s nothing. Straw Hat-ya is my friend. I would’ve gone to him about Judge’s intentions anyway. These plans, though… You’ll give them more than a fighting chance, with this.”

“Good,” Sanji said, with feeling. “That’s all, then. By your leave, Your Grace.”

He bowed and turned to make his exit.

From beside the desk, Law said, “You know, when he told us the story of your misadventures, Judge made it sound as though you were Straw Hat-ya’s hostage. I admit I found that difficult to believe. And if you’re willing to risk your neck like this…”

“He’s my friend,” Sanji said, firmly. “They all are.”

Law nodded, his face set and serious. “This was a brave move, Prince Sanji. I hope you survive it.”

“Thank you, Your Grace, but I’m not a prince anymore,” Sanji said, on his way out the door. “I’m a chef.”

Eight days later, Sanji was lying on his bed with his hands folded over his stomach, eye tracing invisible patterns on the ceiling, when the cannon-fire began.

It was the first truly cool evening of September. Sanji had shut his window against the suggestion of frost on the air, but when he heard the first dull, muted boom, he sprinted to the window and shoved it open. He made it in time to see one of the smaller warships, tethered to the port side of the flagship, go up in flames.

The night, previously a deep and plummy dark, lit up like the sun was rising hours early. Scarlet-soaked light flickered across Sanji’s face. A few moments later, another boom sounded, this one close enough that he could feel it reverberating behind his collarbone. The flagship trembled around him, bobbing uneasily up and down in the waves.

In the distance, a siren began to wail plaintively. The muffled sounds of shouting lifted into the air from the deck.

He had to hand it to Law. The man was efficient.

Sanji sat down on the ledge beside his window and watched in rapt silence as Germa’s fleet caught fire, one by one, and began to sink into the sea. Every few minutes, he’d catch a glimpse of one of his siblings soaring by, shimmering with the layered cloaks of offensive magic they’d been drenched in. A pit of anxiety opened up inside his stomach. The Straw Hats were strong, but under the sheer weight of that amount of magic…

Above the mast of one of the nearby ships, pitch-black clouds frothed like water set to a boil. Suddenly, a fork of lightning cracked down from the sky and struck the deck. Then another, and another.

Another heavy impact rippled through the flagship, vibrating up Sanji’s spine.

He thought, or maybe he fooled himself into thinking, that he could hear the breathless whoop of Luffy’s laughter over the unfolding chaos.

Minutes passed. He wasn’t sure how long he sat there, watching Germa’s invasion forces burn. Eventually, though, heavy footsteps sounded in the hallway behind him.

Without tearing his gaze away from the window, Sanji lilted, “Sounds like you guys are having some trouble down there. Here to take it out on me, then? Seems a bit of a waste of your energy considering the circumstances, but who am I to pass judgment?”

For some reason, his brother – whichever it was – didn’t take the bait. Perhaps being on the losing end of a battle had helped wise them up?

Sanji turned away from the window, lifting an eyebrow.

From the other side of the barred door, one sword in each hand and the third clenched between his teeth, Zoro stared back at him.

He was breathing hard, his chest and shoulders heaving under his robe. His hands were bloody up to the wrists. He’d covered his hair in a black bandana, his eye alight with an infernal glow from within. There was a spatter of blood across his cheek. He looked wild, vicious, every inch the demon that the papers made him out to be.

Sanji nearly collapsed to the floor from relief.

“Zoro,” he managed, and found he could not think of another word that mattered enough to say.

The swords clattered out of Zoro’s hands, hitting the hallway’s tiled floor with a riotous crash. It wasn’t loud enough to be heard over the sound of Judge’s laboratory exploding, though. The windowpane rattled with the force of the sound, Sanji’s whole bedroom temporarily lighting up crimson and violet as Judge’s magical innovations went up in flames.

“Zoro,” Sanji said, again.

Zoro removed the hilt of his white katana from his mouth. Silently, he twisted it in his hand and then moved, almost too quickly for Sanji’s eyes to track. A moment later, he was standing stock-still with his sword re-sheathed. As if they’d only just realized what had happened to them, the bars across Sanji’s doorway belatedly shattered into pieces, crumbling onto the floor.

Zoro’s eye traced over Sanji, taking careful stock along the length of his form, then stopped dead on his wrists. His whole body bristled, like a tiger whose tail had been stepped on.

“Are you fucking kidding me? Again?” he snarled.

Sanji jumped a little and raised his hands. “They’re fake! They’re fake. I’m okay.”

“You’re okay?” Zoro said, incredulously. “You’ve been locked up with a bunch of maniacs for two weeks and you tell me you’re okay?”

“Well, I’ve certainly been worse,” Sanji joked feebly.

This was the wrong thing to say. The bloodlust rolling off of Zoro amplified tenfold.

He stepped forward, and the motion brought him fully into Sanji’s bedroom. The sight of one of the Straw Hats here, in the room where Sanji had been informed of his mother’s death, made for a bizarre juxtaposition. Like a sapling growing up through the permafrost.

“Hey, come on,” Sanji said. He took a step forward, too, tripping over nothing as he went. “I really am okay. Look. Not a scratch on me, all right?”

“Despite your best efforts,” Zoro said, acerbically.

“I’m sorry. I’m really sorry, Zoro, but I just didn’t know what else to do.”

Zoro stomped forward, crowding into Sanji’s space, teeth bared. “Yeah? Clueing me in never fucking dawned on you? Telling Luffy? Anything other than disappearing into the night with nothing but a cryptic fucking note? Do you know how badly you scared everyone?”

“It was made perfectly clear to me that roping the rest of you into the situation would only end poorly. This was the best solution I could come up with!” Sanji shouted back, squaring his shoulders and meeting Zoro’s glare head-on.

“More like, it was the only solution that ended with you being the only one to get hurt. Am I wrong?”

“Well, is that really so wrong? To want to protect you all? To want to keep the people that I love safe? How could I have lived with myself, if Judge had hurt any of you because of me?”

“It’s not wrong!” Zoro yelled. “It’s not. I’d be a massive fucking hypocrite if I pretended otherwise. That’s not the point!”

“What is the point, then? Why are you so pissed at me?” Sanji asked, his voice coming out much more delicate than he wished it would.

“Why am I pissed at you?” Zoro shouted. “Why am I pissed at you?”

Suddenly, his arms were around Sanji’s shoulders. He yanked him forward, chest pressed against chest. Sanji’s face dropped into the curve where Zoro’s neck met his shoulder, forehead pressing to the blood-hot expanse of his skin. Zoro’s palm splayed against the nape of his neck, holding him there.

Sanji deflated. Eyes falling shut, he lifted his hands slowly, balking only for a second before curling them into Zoro’s robe at the small of his back. He took a deep breath against Zoro’s skin. The mingled scents of sandalwood and steel and sword oil spread across his tongue.

“I’m not angry, you moron, I’m so damn relieved I could throw up,” Zoro said, his voice muffled.

“Oh,” Sanji said, softly. “Well. Don’t do that. These clothes are very expensive.”

Zoro released a tiny, huffing laugh, turning his face to press his nose into Sanji’s hair. “You scared the shit out of me,” he said.

“I kind of scared the shit out of me, too,” Sanji admitted.

Zoro’s hand began to slide in a slow circle between Sanji’s shoulder blades. It felt ridiculously, almost comically good. Sanji had to lock his knees to keep his legs from giving out from under him.

“Not that I have a leg to stand on, here, but self-sacrifice is overrated. Next time, you can come to me. We’ll figure it out together,” Zoro told him sternly.

You’ll be a team, Luffy had said. Whatever comes up, you guys will figure it out together.

“Hope to fuck there isn’t a next time. This once was bad enough,” Sanji sniffed, surreptitiously wiping his wet cheeks on the fabric of Zoro’s robe.

“You and me both.” Zoro’s other hand slid from the nape of Sanji’s neck to the back of his head, carding through his hair with astonishing gentleness. Sanji had just witnessed this same hand cut through enchanted steel bars in less than a second. “Guess I can’t complain about your methods too much, though. Think you just won us a war before it even really got started.”

“Guess I’m just efficient like that,” Sanji said.

“Come home with me, cook,” Zoro said.

“Yeah,” Sanji said, folding his arms around Zoro a little tighter. “Let’s go home, Zoro.”

The deck of the flagship was in chaos. The floor was decidedly slanting beneath Sanji’s feet. None of Germa’s foot soldiers paid Sanji or Zoro any mind as they made their way through the crowd. They were too busy evacuating.

“We need to steal a boat. Should be easy enough with all this going on,” Zoro said, before confidently setting off in the wrong direction.

“Sure, but the boats are this way, you directionless cactus,” Sanji said, grabbing the back of Zoro’s robe.

“Well, how would I know?”

“You still have one working eye! Put it to use sometime! Unbelievable.”

They made it to the part of the deck where the other ships had been tethered without incident. Sanji and Zoro found a small fishing boat, made for perhaps a five-person crew, and began the work of untying it. They were almost finished when Zoro, standing on the deck and hauling the anchor up, froze, gaze fixed over Sanji’s shoulder.

Sanji spun around, leg erupting with fire.

Reiju stared at him.

“Shit,” Sanji said, letting his leg flicker out.

“Little brother,” she said.

Sanji heard the telltale clink of metal as Zoro’s palm closed around the hilt of one of his swords. He quickly spun around and raised his hands. “Just wait a second, mosshead.”

“To give her time to stop you from leaving? I don’t think so.”

“Please,” Sanji said. He set his foot on the boat and leaned forward, pressing his hand around Zoro’s. “Just… trust me.”

He expected another argument, but Zoro just looked from Sanji’s hand to his face before relaxing his grip on the sword.

“If she makes a move, I’m not gonna stand here and do nothing,” Zoro warned.

“Wouldn’t expect you to,” Sanji said. He released his grip on Zoro’s hand and turned back around to Reiju. She had been watching their exchange with an odd expression on her face. Sanji didn’t think he’d ever seen her look like that before. “What are you going to do now?”

“Go back to Germa, I expect,” she said. “Try to rebuild.”

“A defeat like this…” Sanji said.

Reiju nodded. “I know. Our family will have a great deal of work to do, if we want to regain the respect of our people.” Something like a genuine smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “The invasion was Ichiji’s idea, you know.”

Sanji pursed his mouth in false sympathy. “That’ll be just awful for his chances of being named Judge’s successor.”

“Indeed,” she answered, dryly. “What a shame.”

Sanji faltered for a moment. Then he said, “You know I don’t blame you. For anything.”

Reiju’s smile died. “Perhaps you ought to.”

“We were all just trying to survive,” he said. And then he mustered his courage and added, “You know… if it ever gets really bad… I hear the south is nice during the winter. Word on the street is that Dawn Castle has a great chef, too. He’s got recipes from the north on lock.”

Reiju’s jaw dropped open as though he’d smacked her. Sanji wondered distantly if that was what he’d looked like, when Luffy had first offered him a place – a home, a job, a family.

“Thank you, little brother. But I think I have to stay. Someone needs to fix what we’ve broken.”

Sanji nodded. He might not understand Reiju’s unwavering sense of commitment to their blood-drenched, desolate homeland – or their blood-drenched, desolate family – but there was something in him that thought it could be worth respecting. If she found a way to make some good with it.

“If you ever change your mind,” Sanji said, “you know where to find me.”

“I do,” Reiju said. Her eyes shifted from Sanji to Zoro. “Demon Swordsman. It’s difficult for me to imagine anyone being good enough for my brother. He has always been the best of us. I hope you prove me wrong.”

Sanji’s stomach dropped. “What? Wait a second—”

“I don’t have to prove shit to you,” Zoro snapped. “The only opinion that matters is his.”

Reiju smiled. “Well said, swordsman. Sail safely, little bother.”

Before Sanji could say another word, she took off in a burst of magic that warped the air around them, speeding back in the direction of their brothers’ shouts.

“Goodbye to you, too,” Sanji mumbled.

“Don’t know what I was expecting from your sister, but I don’t think it was that,” Zoro said, as Sanji undid the hitch tying the fishing boat to the dock.

“Trust me, I get it,” Sanji answered, jumping from the flagship onto the fishing boat. “Now let’s get out of here before any of the rest of them show up.”

“They anything like her?” Zoro asked.

Sanji thought about this. “Not really,” he decided. “Not where it counts.”

“You think she’ll be able to fix Germa?”

“To be honest, I don’t know if it’s fixable. Violence is so… embedded, there. The court would have to be rebuilt from the ground up,” Sanji said. He watched as the fire-lit shapes of the sinking navy began to retreat into the distance. The flagship was tilting dangerously towards its stern. “I think she’ll try, though.”

“She’ll have a clean slate to do it,” Zoro said, nodding at the burning ships.

“Yeah,” Sanji said. “I guess she will.”

There was a pause, a moment of silence. Then Zoro stepped close to Sanji’s side and said, “Can I?”

“What…?”

Zoro reached down and grabbed one of his hands. Sanji sputtered wordlessly, uncertainly attempting to squirm out of his grasp.

“Hold still, idiot cook,” Zoro said. Then he unsheathed his white sword and, with the kind of delicacy that Sanji used to filet a rare and costly cut of fish, he slid the blade between Sanji’s wrist and the golden cuff and lifted. The cuff snapped free, falling to the deck of the fishing boat. “Other hand.”

Sanji raised it, a mute offering. Zoro repeated the process. When he was done, he leaned down and picked the ruined cuffs off the deck, offering them to Sanji on an open palm.

Sanji took them, paused for a moment, and then hurled them overboard with all his might. They landed far enough away in the waves that it was invisible and inaudible in the dark of the night.

“Better?” Zoro asked.

Sanji turned away, tilting his face toward the approaching shoreline. “Better,” he said, and meant it.

The celebration was in full swing by the time Zoro and Sanji’s stolen boat arrived at the Dawn City pier.

From the docks all the way up to the castle, the entire city was ablaze with light. Despite the lateness of the hour, every storefront was illuminated red-gold, windows and doors thrown open to let in the night air. The streets were full to bursting with people – sitting on doorsteps, dancing in the middle of the roadway, cooking food in makeshift stalls. The mingled scents of yakisoba and dango and okonomiyaki bloomed on Sanji’s tongue. Music thrummed through the city like a heartbeat. Above the castle’s gabled rooftops, someone set off a firework, and then another. They bloomed over the sky, massive and iridescent and the same tangerine shade as Nami’s hair.

“Wow,” Sanji said.

“People around here know how to throw a party,” Zoro said.

“This is so much, though. Did they have all this ready? How did they know Luffy would win?”

“Guess they had faith,” Zoro said, like that kind of belief was nothing special. Like that kind of love was nothing special.

They made their meandering way through the streets, headed in the general direction of the castle. They’d been walking for several minutes when Sanji caught a whiff of the mingled smells of baking batter and salty-sweet red bean. He grabbed Zoro’s hand and yanked him to the side of the street, following his nose until he found the stall selling taiyaki. Laid out on the stall was a line of fish-shaped pastries, baked to a perfect golden-brown.

“Any chance you’ve got money on you, mosshead?” Sanji asked.

“Obviously not,” Zoro muttered, his fingers twitching under Sanji’s iron grip. The movement caused Sanji’s brain to catch up to his actions, abruptly, and he dropped Zoro’s hand with a self-conscious laugh.

“No money necessary, young man,” the old woman working at the stall said. Her eyes sparkled in the lamplight as she looked from Zoro to Sanji and then gave Sanji a quick wink. “Everything’s free tonight. Especially for Straw Hats, if I may say so.”

“You’re too kind, madame,” Sanji said, bowing his head and gratefully accepting the taiyaki she handed him, wrapped in a thin paper napkin.

“Not at all. Here, Roronoa, you too. Eat well and recover your strength.”

Zoro looked a little skeptical, but bowed his head and reached out to take it from her all the same.

As they walked away from the stall, Zoro eyed the little fish like it might chomp him on the nose if he tried to take a bite.

Sanji elbowed him and said, “Red bean filling, mosshead. It won’t be that sweet.”

Zoro’s expression cleared immediately. Sanji erupted with laughter.

They kept walking as they ate, ducking around the crowds with difficulty. The second time Zoro nearly took a wrong turn down a dead-end alleyway, Sanji reached out to snag his hand again.

“You’re going to walk into the ocean,” he grumbled. “Let’s just stay like this for now.”

“Cut the shit, I’m not going to walk into the ocean,” Zoro snapped. Despite the protest, his hand closed around Sanji’s – loose and tentative, like he was holding spun glass.

Sanji squeezed his fingers. “I’m not gonna break. Hold my hand properly, idiot.”

“Don’t tell me what to do, asshole,” Zoro growled, but his fingers tightened around Sanji’s, his blush deepening up to the tips of his ears.

Miraculously, they managed to reach the castle without Zoro going astray.

The front gates had been thrown open. Light from the courtyard spilled out and into the street like water flowing downstream. From the center of the bridge, Sanji could hear the strum of Brook’s shamisen and the roar of Franky’s laughter. It was precisely the same spot where Sanji had been yanked out of the carriage and shoved to his knees at Nami’s, half a year ago now.

Sanji stumbled to a halt, staring up at the castle, familiar and beloved, its windows glowing golden in the darkness. For a moment, he was dragged under by the tide of his memories: his fear and anger and misery, the smell of springtime and plum blossom on the air, the sunlight glinting off the ocean.

At his side, Zoro paused and squeezed his hand. Quietly, he asked, “You good?”

“Yes,” Sanji said. “Yeah. Better I’ve ever been, actually. Come on, mossball, we’re missing the party.”

They stepped through the gate and into the packed courtyard. Less than a second later, Luffy’s voice rang out, joyfully shouting, “Zoro! Sanji! You’re back!”

Sanji lifted a hand to wave and was nearly knocked off his feet when Luffy barreled into him at top speed, throwing both arms and both legs around his torso. The impact wrenched his hand free from Zoro’s. Sanji allowed himself a fleeting split-second to mourn the loss before smiling and returning Luffy’s hug.

“Hey, boss,” Sanji said, patting Luffy’s back fondly. “Thanks for the assist. Sorry to have worried you.”

“Don’t do that again,” Luffy told him, sternly.

“We already had that talk,” Zoro told Luffy, above Sanji’s head. “Booze?”

“Over by the back wall!” Luffy said, pointing.

Without turning around, Zoro tossed them a little wave over his shoulder and disappeared into the crowd.

“Zoro was really worried about you, you know,” Luffy informed Sanji, disentangling his limbs and lowering his feet to the earth, so that he only had a single arm flung around Sanji’s shoulders.

“I was worried, too,” Sanji admitted. “I’m glad going to Trafalgar Law worked out. He seems like a reliable man, all things considered.”

“Oh, that’s right! Tora-o thought you were really cool, by the way!” Luffy chirped. “Well, he wouldn’t say so, but I could tell that’s what he was thinking. He’s around somewhere, if you want to say hi?”

“Maybe later?” Sanji said, struggling to imagine Law describing anyone on the planet as ‘really cool’. The concept was jarring, to say the least.

“Great! By the way, Sanji, your biological dad is really, really weird. When I was fighting him, he started giving me this list of all your best qualities? Something about how you have a soft heart and put your life on the line for the weak? He’d been really mean before then, so it was pretty confusing.”

“Did he call me a failed experiment at any point during this monologue?” Sanji asked, dryly.

“Oh! Yeah, he did! And he said you didn’t have any royal pride! Those are good things, right?”

Sanji sighed and smiled, running a hand over his face. “Yeah, Luffy. They’re good things.”

“So weird,” Luffy said, arms crossed over his chest. “Well, whatever. I already beat him up and burned his dumb boats, so who cares? Let’s go and say hi to everyone, okay? They’re all in the corner with Brook.”

Sure enough, the rest of the Straw Hats were clustered around Brook, most of them obvious degrees of inebriated. Brook’s bony fingers moved so quickly across the shamisen’s strings that they nearly blurred. His song was upbeat and triumphant. From the chord progression and the way Nami and Usopp seemed to know every word, Sanji thought it sounded like it might be from the continent’s eastern shoreline.

When the Straw Hats spotted him approaching, they let loose an uproarious cheer. Chopper threw himself into Sanji’s arms and burst out sobbing. Nami kissed him sloppily on the cheek, then scrubbed the lipstick print off with her sleeve. Usopp and Franky squeezed him into a group hug so tight, he thought he felt his ribs crack a little.

“Good to have you back, Sanji-san!” Brook said, raising his voice to speak above the sound of the shamisen.

“We missed you so much!” Chopper wailed, burying his face in Sanji’s knees.

“Never scare us like that again, you maniac! I nearly mustered my three-thousand-man army to chase after you on the spot,” Usopp said.

“It is truly lovely to have you back, cook-san,” Robin told him, gently adjusting his collar and smoothing it down. “When we found your notes, we feared the worst. It’s a relief to see you returned whole and healthy.”

“I’m so sorry, everyone,” Sanji said, bowing at the waist. “Thank you for coming after me.”

“Of course we came after you, dummy,” Nami said, whacking Sanji gently on the side of the head. “You’re one of us, aren’t you?”

“No thanks necessary, little brother,” Franky told him. “As if we’d leave you in a place like that.”

“You’re our cook and our friend. We’d follow you anywhere,” Luffy added. He lifted the straw hat off his head and reached over to shove it, messily, onto Sanji’s. “Welcome home, Sanji.”

“Yeah,” Sanji said, his eyes welling up with tears. “I’m home.”

After waltzing himself to near-exhaustion with Usopp, then with Nami, and finally, memorably, with Chopper, Sanji managed to extract himself from the dance floor and went to find Zoro.

He wandered through the crowd for a few minutes, scanning faces and offering polite smiles when he caught strangers’ eyes. Finally, when he’d nearly reached the castle’s entrance, he spotted a lone figure perched on the lowest tier of the roof. Sanji sighed and ducked through bodies until he reached the plum tree that stood directly beside the door. He took a running leap, catching one of the sturdy, low hanging branches and hauling himself up. Then he leaped from the branch to the roof, landing lightly with his knees bent to absorb the impact.

Backlit by the fat September full moon, Zoro saluted him with his half-empty bottle of beer.

“Any chance you’ve got another of those stashed somewhere?” Sanji asked.

Zoro grinned at him, teeth flashing in the low light, and pulled another bottle out from behind his back. He tossed it to Sanji, who caught it one-handed.

“Alcoholic,” Sanji accused, without heat.

“Maybe I was just hoping to have some company,” Zoro said, his grin slipping sideways a little, going crooked.

Sanji cracked open the bottle and sank down next to him, tucking his knees up to his chest and wrapping his arms around them. Another firework went off; this time, they were close enough to see that Franky was launching them using some kind of shimmering, magical contraption he’d attached to his arm.

“I’d never seen fireworks before tonight,” Sanji admitted, his face tipped up toward the sky.

“Yeah? Germa not much for parties, huh?”

“Not if you don’t count military processions,” Sanji said, and took a long drink.

They sat for a moment in silence, watching the fireworks stain the wispy clouds like ink dripped into water. Then Zoro cleared his throat and set his beer aside.

“When you were gone… Luffy mentioned there was something you had wanted to tell me, before you left. He wouldn’t say what it was, though. Said that was for you to share, once we got you back.”

“That was tactful of him,” Sanji said, with genuine surprise.

“You gonna keep me in suspense, then?” Zoro asked, propping himself up on one hand to look over at Sanji. His robe slipped to the side, exposing the broad expanse of his chest, the curve of his collarbone – the pale, crooked line of the wound that nearly took his life. The moon spilled over his skin and clung to it like quicksilver.

Sanji reached out and touched Zoro’s cheekbone, carefully, right next to the scar that carved its brutal way through his eye.

“No,” he decided. “I’m not.”

His fingers slid to Zoro’s jaw, then pushed into his hair.

“Tell me to stop, mosshead,” he whispered.

“Fuck, no,” Zoro snarled, surging forward to grab Sanji’s face between his hands and kiss him.

Sanji set his beer aside, tipping his head into the kiss and clenching his fingers in the front of Zoro’s robe to drag him closer. Zoro reared back and snarled encouragingly before pulling Sanji into his lap. He kissed Sanji’s mouth open with eager dedication, sliding his tongue between his lips. His hands splayed out, warm and strong and huge, across the small of Sanji’s back. Sanji wrapped his legs around Zoro’s waist and buried his hands in Zoro’s hair. It was softer than it looked, even the shortest section, at the nape of his neck.

Zoro’s tongue was hot and slick. He tasted like alcohol and steel and old blood. It should’ve been gross, but Sanji just burned. Even this closeness, their bodies pressed together in one long, unbroken line, wasn’t enough. He felt feral, ravenous. He wanted to peel back every layer of both of them. He wanted to swallow Zoro whole. He wanted to crack open Zoro’s ribcage and crawl inside.

Overwhelmed, he broke the kiss, gasping for breath. Zoro let out a low, animal whine in protest, his mouth tracing down Sanji’s cheek and to the soft underside of his jaw. His hand curled into Sanji’s hair. He tugged out the pins holding Sanji’s bun in place – a tiny, stinging zip went up Sanji’s spine – and pulled until his hair came loose and tumbled around his shoulders.

Sanji tipped his head back on instinct, allowing Zoro better access to his jugular. Zoro’s lips pressed there, then his tongue, then his teeth.

Somehow, through the fog, Sanji’s brain managed to kickstart back to life. Not yet, it reminded him. Not yet you idiot.

“Mosshead,” he panted. “Hey, wait. Hang on.”

Zoro immediately froze, lifting his hands away from Sanji as though he’d touched a metal pot on the stovetop. “What’s wrong? Are you – did you not want to—?”

“That’s not it!” Sanji blurted, too quickly.

The fear on Zoro’s face melted away. Much more calmly, he said, “Oh. Then what’s the problem?”

“I’m doing this all wrong,” Sanji said. He turned his head, letting the undone mess of his hair fall between his face and Zoro. “It’s the wrong way around entirely. But, Zoro, I’m in love with you.”

Zoro’s body, still pressed against Sanji’s, went very still indeed. He could feel the frantic slam of Zoro’s heart, beating a tattoo against Sanji’s own chest.

“It’s okay if – if you’re not,” Sanji managed. It felt like squeezing lemon juice into a cut, but he had to do this. For the sake of his own heart, at least. “But, if you – if it’s just, you know, attraction, then I shouldn’t do this, because – I really, really—”

“I suck at talking,” Zoro interrupted.

Sanji blinked, startled into silence by this non sequitur.

Zoro leaned forward and pressed his forehead to Sanji’s. “I’m too blunt and I always start fights with you and I know I’m no good at this romantic shit. But Sanji, I swear I’ll try to be. If you’ll let me.”

“Then,” Sanji said, “then… you…?”

“Yes, cook,” Zoro answered. “Yeah. I do.”

“Oh,” Sanji said. “Well, in that case. I think you’d better take me to bed, mosshead.”

Zoro blinked at him.

“Unless… If you don’t want to…?” Sanji continued. Had he read Zoro wrong, then? Maybe he wasn’t interested after all—

Like a switch had been flipped, Zoro curled his hands under Sanji’s thighs and surged to his feet, kissing him hard on the mouth, and then on the cheekbone and the nose and the lid of his exposed eye.

Sanji laughed and shoved at his face. “Are you gonna be able to find my bedroom like this?”

“I have some pretty good motivation,” Zoro said, with intent.

To be fair to Zoro, it was pretty much the quickest Sanji had ever seen him find his way to any location, ever. Even with his lips on Sanji’s mouth, his jawline, the column of his throat, it was only a minute or two before they were stopping outside Sanji’s bedroom door. Zoro managed to slide it open with a foot, his hands still firmly curled around the backs of Sanji’s thighs.

He licked into Sanji’s mouth and stepped into the room, slamming the door shut behind them without breaking the kiss. He bit down on Sanji’s bottom lip as his fingers went to the clasp of Sanji’s cloak, at the hollow of his throat.

Sanji pulled back, reaching up to help Zoro before he could shatter the clasp entirely with his fumbling fingers.

“That eager to get me naked, mosshead?” Sanji teased.

“I hate seeing these clothes on you,” Zoro growled, balling the cloak up in one hand and tossing it unceremoniously to the side.

“They look that bad, huh?” Sanji said, still mostly joking.

Zoro rolled his eye and yanked the bottom of Sanji’s shirt out of the waistband of his pants, his fingers moving to unfasten the topmost pearl button beneath the collar. “You know you’d look good in a brown paper bag, cook. But you wear them like you hate them,” he said, voice thick, leaning in to kiss the soft spot just below Sanji’s ear.

“Oh,” Sanji said. Zoro took his earlobe between his teeth and he repeated, with significantly less composure, “Oh.”

Zoro finished unbuttoning the shirt and shoved it off Sanji’s shoulders. He took Sanji’s face in his hands and kissed him fiercely, with dedicated intent. Sanji took advantage of his distraction to undo the belt of his outer robe and discard it, moving it aside much more gently than Zoro had treated his shirt and cloak. Then he hooked a foot around Zoro’s ankle and sent them both toppling down onto the bed. Zoro landed on his back with an oof, and Sanji settled on top of him, between his legs.

“This how you want it?” Zoro asked, looking up at him with a hint of a smile tugging at his lips.

“I haven’t decided yet,” Sanji admitted. “I just know I want you.”

“You’ve got me,” Zoro promised, reaching up to cup a hand around the back of Sanji’s neck and drag him down. Sucking Sanji’s tongue into his mouth, he slid his other hand up Sanji’s chest, dragging the calloused pad of his thumb across Sanji’s nipple.

Startled, Sanji gasped a high-pitched whine into Zoro’s mouth.

“Sensitive,” Zoro said, dragging his lips to Sanji’s jaw and nipping at the spot where the bone curved beneath his skin.

“Ayoye. Stop biting me. Down, boy,” Sanji hissed.

“I think you like it,” Zoro said. He shifted down, pressing his teeth to the side of Sanji’s throat. The skin immediately bloomed pink, darkening to red when Zoro closed his lips and sucked.

“Zoro,” Sanji said, mostly just to say it.

“Yeah,” Zoro agreed. His hands wandered down, trailing along Sanji’s stomach, stopping just above the waistband of his pants. “Yes or no, cook?”

“Yes,” Sanji said, and then, when Zoro’s hand slipped into his pants: “Yes. Please, come on, hurry up.”

“So polite,” Zoro said, a laugh obvious in his voice. He slid an arm around Sanji’s waist and leveraged his weight sideways, flipping them over so the considerable bulk of his body covered Sanji’s entirely. Sanji arched up into him, chasing his mouth. Zoro kissed him, open and messy, and Sanji couldn’t help groaning into it as his thick, rough-skinned fingers finally closed around Sanji’s cock and began to stroke.

“You’re so pretty like this, curls,” Zoro said against his ear.

“Fuck off,” Sanji said, winded. “Get off me and take your fucking clothes off, idiot.”

Zoro grinned, blade-sharp, and sat up on his knees. “Bossy, aren’t you? What happened to please?”

“Well, I am a prince,” Sanji said, in his stuffiest, most unpleasant accent.

Zoro barked a laugh and rose from the bed, undoing his haramaki and stepping out of his pants. He stood there naked, miles and miles of bare skin on display. Sanji couldn’t help blinking, dazed, at the sight of him. The yellow autumn moonlight turned his skin to gold.

“You’re staring, cook,” Zoro said, climbing back over him, propping himself up on his forearms.

“You’re beautiful,” Sanji said, like a dumbass.

Zoro gaped down at him in mute shock for a moment. Sanji started to sputter out an apology, fighting the urge to hide his face behind his hands, when Zoro’s entire face turned scarlet.

“Oh,” Sanji said, wonderingly.

“Whatever,” Zoro bit out, reaching for Sanji’s pants again. “Ugh. God. You can’t just say shit like that.”

“Zoro,” Sanji said, reaching up to run his fingers through Zoro’s earrings, which sang quietly under the touch. “You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

Zoro yanked Sanji’s pants off.

He ducked down and pressed his mouth to Sanji’s in a fierce, bruising kiss, all teeth and tongue. When Sanji gasped breathlessly into the kiss, he pulled away and, holding eye contact, licked a stripe up his palm. When he wrapped his spit-slick hand around both of them, pressing their dicks together, he hissed through his teeth, single eye fluttering shut.

Stars went off behind Sanji’s eyelids and he tossed his head back, onto the pillow, his hair spilling around him.

“Oh, fuck, Zoro—”

Zoro began to stroke them in earnest, mouth kissing a burning trail up Sanji’s throat. Sanji reached down, closed his hand over Zoro’s, swallowed up the sweet sound of Zoro’s groan with his lips.

It was over embarrassingly quickly. Sanji’s hips snapped up into their shared grip, his movements stuttering, before spilling over their hands and onto his own stomach. Zoro’s eye went wide at the sight. Sanji, trembling with the force of his own orgasm, curled his free hand into Zoro’s hair and said, “C’mon, Zoro. Let go. I wanna see you.”

Zoro kissed Sanji, his aim off-center and landing at the corner of his mouth, and then he came, too.

For a moment, they lay there, sticky and satisfied, foreheads pressed together as they breathed each other’s air. Eventually, though, the feeling of their sweat and spend became gross enough that Sanji started weakly shoving at Zoro’s shoulder.

“Get off, you huge photosynthetic lump, we need to clean up.”

“Huge, huh?” Zoro said, pressing his grin into the place where Sanji’s jaw met his throat.

“You’re ridiculous,” Sanji said, trailing his fingertips up and down the expanse of Zoro’s back, mapping out the ridges of his spine and the curves of his lateral muscles.

“And you’d better stop touching me like that, if you really wanna get cleaned up instead of going another round.”

“Ah,” Sanji said, a burst of heat plunging low in his gut. “Well. I mean. Cleaning up could probably wait.”

Zoro laughed – the real, honest one, the one that went through his whole body and curved his eyes into half-moons and made Sanji’s stomach feel like the earth had dropped out from under him.

“Good,” he said, leaning down and nudging his nose along Sanji’s cheekbone. “Wanted to get my mouth on you, anyway.”

“Fucking do it then, coward,” Sanji said, to cover up the fact that his face was turning scarlet.

Zoro laughed again, shoved him back onto the blankets, and did.

The dreamy, peaceful sort of contentment Sanji was feeling lasted about three minutes into breakfast the next morning. Then Chopper looked up from where he’d been placidly tucking into his oatmeal and he gasped.

“Sanji! What happened to your neck? You’re all bruised! Did someone hurt you?”

“Nobody says a fucking word or you’re all eating compost for a week,” Sanji hissed, slapping a hand over his throat to cover the offending spot.

“Chopper, when two consenting adults like each other very much,” Usopp began, grandly, before Sanji whacked him brutally over the head with his ladle.

“Oh,” Chopper said, knowingly. “This is about sexual intercourse. I understand. Robin says I’m not allowed to be a part of those conversations until I’m a bit older, unless they involve your medical care. Did you practice safe sex, Sanji?”

This sent Franky and Brook into hysterics, Franky toppling backward off the bench. Sanji vividly considered multiple ways he could murder Usopp with the ladle. Zoro, who was cheerfully eating his tamago gohan, didn’t even look up. The traitor.

“I hate you people,” Sanji bemoaned, carefully spooning extra fruit into everyone’s bowl. Even if the Straw Hats were all evil and had been placed on this earth to torment him, they still needed their Vitamin A.

Luffy paused in his attempt to eat his body weight in bacon, flashing a thumbs up at both Sanji and Zoro. “Oh? Did you guys finally talk, then? Congrats!”

He might as well have set off one of Franky’s firecrackers in the middle of the table.

“Ha!” Nami shouted, over the general pandemonium. “Pay up, suckers. I take cash and check, no IOUs. I’ve learned from my previous mistakes, thank you, Zoro.”

“What?” Usopp wailed. “No! Damn it, I thought it would take you guys at least another month.”

“Congratulations, you two,” Robin said, tranquilly, as a hand sprouted from the tabletop to hand Nami a small stack of coins.

“I believe I had money on it happening before the beginning of October, Nami-san,” Brook told Nami politely.

“Oh, so you did. We’ll have to split the pool. I’ll do those calculations once I’ve collected it all. Franky, you owe—”

“Hold on, did all of you bet on us?” Sanji demanded.

“Everyone except Luffy,” Usopp said. “He’s not allowed to anymore. He’s got some incredibly cursed and terrifying sixth sense for these things.”

“Plus, I’m broke,” Luffy said, cheerfully. “So Nami won’t let me.”

“Unbelievable,” Sanji said. “If you guys are really this bored, I have chores in the kitchen that need to get done – you too, Chopper?”

“Sorry, Sanji!” Chopper said, ducking behind Franky after passing Nami his coins.

Sanji dropped his face into his hands.

Across the table, Zoro burst out laughing.

“Yeah, yeah, yuck it up,” Sanji muttered, half-heartedly tossing a napkin at him.

Zoro propped his chin on his hand, smile softening a little at the edges as he looked across the table at him. Sanji blushed scarlet and turned his head away, muttering something that was simultaneously spiteful and nonsensical.

“They’re going to be even more annoying like this, huh?” Usopp asked Nami in a stage whisper.

“Obviously,” Nami agreed.

“How about we all shut up and eat breakfast before it gets cold,” Sanji suggested vehemently.

The bedlam persisted throughout the rest of the meal. Under the table, Zoro’s foot tapped Sanji’s and then hooked around his ankle. A few seats away, Luffy caught Sanji’s eye and smiled.

“I’m so glad you’re back,” he said, stretching out an arm to clap Sanji’s firmly on the shoulder.

Sanji, wavering dangerously close to tears again, said, “Yeah, Luffy. Me, too.”

After breakfast was finished, Sanji and Zoro stood shoulder-to-shoulder at the sink in the kitchen. Sanji washed and rinsed the dishes and then handed them over, lilting Zoro’s name every time he did so, mostly because he could.

Zoro dried with the same focused attention that he did everything, his dark brows furrowed in concentration as he worked on the delicate glassware. It was a ridiculous level of effort for such a simple chore. Sanji loved him so much it ached inside him.

“Hey, mosshead,” Sanji said, passing him a mug. “Have you figured me out, yet?”

Zoro looked at him sideways and bared his teeth in a sharp-edged smile. “Yeah, cook. Turns out you’re really not that complicated, after all. What about you?”

Sanji thought about the newspapers headlines he’d relived in vivid detail during that hideous, never-ending carriage ride south. The moniker Demon Swordsman, the successive defeats of Doflamingo and Kaido and Judge. He thought about Zoro carrying Chopper on his shoulders, tickling him until they were both breathless with laughter. His laugh, his dimples, the crescent curve of his eyes when he smiled. He thought about Zoro’s hands, soaked in Germa blood, gentle with glassware, reverent on Sanji’s bare skin.

“Pretty much. Turns out that meathead swordsmen are pretty easy to understand. Who knew?” Sanji said.

Zoro reached over and teasingly pinched Sanji’s cheek with a wet hand. Sanji squirmed and laughed and said, “Come on, mosshead, at least dry off first.”

“Quit complaining, whiner.”

“You’re dripping dishwater all over my nice tie, asshole! Nami-san bought this for me.”

When Zoro took Sanji’s tie in a soapy hand and yanked him forward, Sanji dropped the dish he’d been rinsing into the sink with a wet clatter.

“Oi!” he shouted, in a half-hearted protest.

Zoro kissed him. Sanji curled his wet hands into the front of Zoro’s robe and kissed him back.

“See? Easy to understand,” Zoro said, against his mouth.

“Shut up while you’re kissing me, algae-brain,” Sanji said, and pulled him back in.