Chapter Text
The only good days in Germa were festival days, and even those tended to be bad. Festivals were massive, extravagant events more for showcasing the nation's military prowess than actual celebrations. The old ways and traditions were shoved aside for marches, demonstrations, and recruiting efforts.
Join the military, live forever.
That being said, Sanji was still sad he was going to miss the New Sun festival on account of being locked away in his room like a misbehaving child. It was his favorite holiday, all the music and decorations inspired a sense of wonder, whimsy that Germa so desperately lacked. Reminders of a time before Vinsmoke Judge decided to remake the country in his image.
Sanji's room had a single window in it, one with a sill just big enough for him to perch on, with thick iron bars that blocked most of the light from coming through. Thin strips of sunlight were all that could pass, casting his room in a perpetually eerie twilight.
Even if the bars weren't there, Sanji couldn't see the festival from his seat at the windowsill. His room was on the other side of the castle, facing the sprawling Germa forests, acres and acres of evergreens for as far as the eye could see.
But the main street where most of the festivities took place was close enough that he could still hear the marching band and the din of the crowds. The celebration was huge, which was expected considering the Germa troops had just returned home from invading yet another neighboring kingdom.
How many did that make? Six? Seven? Sanji stopped counting after the third one. It depressed him to even think about the king's exploits.
Vinsmoke Judge was an excellent general, he was born to lead men to war. But in being so, he was a terrible king, and a worse father. No man should have such absolute power over a kingdom, military or not. Sanji supposed it was thinking like that which got him locked up in the first place.
That and the fact that he was a flight risk, of course.
It was the day of the new sun, and he didn't want to think of such awful things like war anymore. Sanji wanted to be at the festival, buying so many sweets and pastries that he got sick of them. He wanted to be another nameless face in the crowds once more, free to live as he pleased.
He wanted to get his hands on a couple of sparklers and take them back to his home, his real one, where he could climb out onto the roof and light them without anyone bothering him but the old man who took him in. Like he had before Judge dragged him back to the castle kicking and screaming.
He wanted to listen to his mother tell the story of the first festival, her eyes alight with mirth as she mixed up little details and waited for him to notice. Sanji knew all her stories by heart, he always noticed.
Over a decade had passed since the kingdom of Germa was graced with a queen. Sanji was secretly convinced that all the parts of Germa that were still worth saving were buried with his mother. It wasn't long after she died that he ran away, taking nothing but the clothes on his back.
For years he lived a quiet, unassuming life with a grumpy man who ran a restaurant in the outskirts of the city. Sanji was happy there. He was normal, he was free. Zeff, the old geezer who dragged him off the streets, even taught him how to use the magic that he avoided for so long.
It was because of magic that Judge found him again. He hated it, despite knowing that it would always be a part of him. Sanji was the only surviving Vinsmoke who could use his own mana to fuel his spells.
Magic wasn't much more than parlor tricks to normal humans, certainly not something to be feared. Most people in Germa needed an energy source to draw from, and a stable energy source was prohibitively expensive. Unstable sources were banned. Because of it, all the best witches and sorcerers were in the military, under Judge's thumb.
The floor rumbled beneath him, and Sanji rolled his eyes at the sheer size of his father's ego. It was just like Judge to organize a victory parade that shook the massive stone castle.
He wouldn't be shocked if the guards who usually stood watch at his door would later talk about how much of a mess the festival made. Last year it took days to clear the streets of all the debris. He had helped the cleanup effort, because he hadn't yet been found by his father's guards. He hadn't even known they were looking for him, blissfully unaware that Judge had decided he could somehow be of use after years of living as a regular kid on the outskirts of the capital city.
Sanji wasn't allowed to attend the festival because his father knew that if he had the chance he would run and never look back. Which was the principal reason he was locked up in a room that had felt too small when he was only a child, and claustrophobic to the young man he was now.
Make no mistake, he vastly preferred the room over whatever torment his father or his siblings could cook up. Sure, it was cold, and the only heat came from the magic suppressing sigils etched into every inch of the stonework, but if he was in his room then he wasn't being forced to do magic for Judge. And he got to have some books to keep him occupied.
The enchantments were new, put in place after he burned through yet another solid hardwood door trying to escape. His father replaced said door with one from the dungeons, with swirling enchantments along the metal bars.
No one in Germa was strong enough to use magic in that room with all the safeguards they put in. For Sanji, who had magic running in his veins and pouring out of him like a natural spout of mana, the enchantments made him lethargic. Weak. The iron cuffs around his wrists felt like they were eating away at his life. He was used to crude spell work and sloppy sigils on the streets of Germa, such high level anti magic enchantments seemed like overkill.
But losing time and feeling like he was constantly underwater was nothing compared to the horrors that awaited him outside of the room. His magic had grown exponentially in the years he'd been free. And while he had learned restraint when he was living with old man Zeff, the stress of being back in the castle made him volatile, prone to explosive fits. Judge wanted to find a way to weaponize that power, or to take it for himself.
Sanji took comfort in the heavy weight of the suppressing spells, letting his restraints hide him from his family. The freezing room was more of a friend to him than his own brothers ever were. He just wished they wouldn't chain his wrist cuffs together every time he was to be without guards.
The walls rumbled again, and this time dust fell from the ceiling. He entertained for a moment the possibility of an invading army marching through the streets, mowing down the forever army of Germa. But the thought was fleeting. His country was undefeated for a reason.
The shaking came to a stop soon after it started, and Sanji breathed a sigh of undeserved relief. He stretched his aching legs out over the stone windowsill, cursing the cold for his stiff joints. The glass was cracked along the side from a previous escape attempt, and wind whistled through it to keep the room a frigid temperature.
As uncomfortable as it was, Sanji still preferred to sit by the window. It was his only entertainment besides the books he'd already read ten times over. He liked watching the trees and pretending like he was anywhere but in the castle again. At least his hands stayed warm, the cuffs heated up every time he triggered the suppression enchantments.
The thin rays of sunlight suddenly grew dim. Sanji peered between the bars curiously, looking at the clear blue sky for answers. Just as quickly as it had flickered, the sunlight shined bright again. With it came the realization that the window was letting in dust on the wind.
Bemused, and more than a little bored, Sanji trailed his fingers through the speckled rays of light. He waved them around and watched the dust swirl, imagining that he was weaving magic through the air instead of dirt and dust particles.
When he lived with Zeff, the old geezer who took him off the streets and raised him like a son, Sanji spent many years refusing to use his magic. He was terrified of it, and of losing control. It took a long time for Zeff to convince him that his magic could be used to better his life instead of ruining it. Once he started learning to control his magic, he realized he didn't have to hate it, and that he was quite strong.
Then Judge came for him, and Sanji refused to use his magic for his father's unethical research. If he wasn't going to use it to better Germa's military, then he wasn't allowed to have it at all. He was surprised to find that he missed the feeling of spellwork, almost as much as he missed the feeling of the sun on his skin.
A barrage of cannon fire was heard off in the distance. Sanji allowed himself to fantasize that it was some opposing country, one ruled by a democracy or something of the sort, which would sweep through Germa's capital and seize the throne from his father. One that would restore the balance and bring Germa citizens the stability Judge so often preached of. There was nothing stable about a nation always at war.
But as much as he liked to imagine that an invasion would save him from his father's tyranny, Sanji was still a prince of Germa. When the roundup happened, if it ever did, Sanji would be one for the gallows right next to his siblings.
It said a lot about him that he found the thought comforting.
A shiver ran down his spine in time with another low rumble through the walls of his room. It was barely a room anymore, all the modifications turning it into a cell. Sanji wrapped his fingers around the thick chain connecting his wrist cuffs, the metal warm with suppression magic. The closest thing he could get to comfort was the same thing that caused him pain.
He began to worry as time went on. He didn't care about his brothers, evil as they were, but he hoped his sister was okay. Reiju was a hell of a lot smarter than him, she knew how to play their father's games. But he still worried for her, wondering if she'd come see him after the festival. A foreboding feeling sat heavy in his stomach.
The source of his discontent was not immediately clear. Was it the far off echoes of cannon fire that had lasted too long to be a demonstration? Was it the sound of yells that he couldn't discern emotion from? More than likely it was both, paired with the constant alertness being in the castle demanded.
He sat there for what felt like hours, straining his ears for any indications of what was occurring on the city streets. The sun moved until its light no longer came through the window, further shrouding him in shadows.
By then he should've heard fireworks, or the marching band for the army. It set him ill at ease to know the schedule of the festival wasn't being followed. Before, he could excuse the strangeness as a new demonstration that his father put together. But where was the music? The New Sun festival was known for filling the city with song and dance, lasting well into the night. What was this eerie silence that pervaded the air, broken only by distant booms and shouts?
A sharp crack from somewhere below him made Sanji jump, almost falling off the windowsill. He knew what gunfire sounded like. It was followed by more shots as the sound of many boots pounded against the stone a floor below him. Something was wrong, and Sanji was locked in a goddamn cell like a prisoner.
He pulled at the chain hanging between his wrists, hoping for the first time in a long time to find that some new weakness had formed while his attention was elsewhere. The chain held strong, and as his anxiety spiked the sigils carved into the stone under him lit up in swirling patterns of white. It drained him, left him lightheaded and disoriented.
He was so distracted that it took a few minutes to realize the glaring light wasn't coming from the enchantments he had accidentally activated. The door to the stairwell outside his room, a heavy hardwood creation made of many boards and metal, carved with its own protective suppression spells, was white. All of the sigils were so bright Sanji almost couldn't look at them, and even as he squinted at the door the surrounding enchantments on the walls began to glow too.
Like something was coming closer.
His room was at the end of a short hallway, facing the stairwell door straight on. He normally appreciated being able to see who decided to pay him a visit, but now all he could feel was this rising apprehension as the light grew brighter and brighter. Who, or rather what, was coming up the stairs?
Sanji tucked himself as far away from the bars of his door as he could get, the cuffs biting into the skin of his wrists painfully as he hunched down in the corner. He was afraid. Terrified of what was behind the door and of what it would do once it inevitably found Sanji in his little makeshift cell.
The door was built to need at least two people, or one Judge, to open. But something hit it with a loud thump, so loud that Sanji covered his ears, and the hinges tore from the stonework like paper. It teetered dangerously before falling with a boom. Dust rolled across the floor, and all the enchantments in its stead lit up.
His breath stuttered as he stared at the darkness of the stairwell, clawing at the gap between the cuff and his wrist as if it would suddenly give way just because he needed it to. Sanji knew fear like an old friend, but what he felt as he saw the man who stepped onto the downed door was something more than that.
Reverence was a new experience for him.
The man glowed. His hair was a mess of white curls so luminous that the cast off light from them reached the ceiling. Wisps of fog, or clouds, wrapped around his bare shoulders like a cloak. The bottoms of his bone white pants were singed, as though burnt away, and his feet were bare even in such a frigid climate.
As he walked deeper into the hallway, Sanji could see a grin so wide that it showed off a full mouth of teeth, just as bright white as the man's hair. Wherever his feet touched, the anti magic sigil would glow absurdly brighter for just a moment before the light flickered out. As if they were overloaded, rendered useless in the face of his magic.
The man laughed, a raucous, overjoyed sound as he lifted a foot to stare at the carvings in the stone. He leapt to another spot and watched the light sputter out, giggling all the while. Again and again he bounced around to see how his mere presence was too much for the best suppression enchantments in all of Germa.
There was no music, and yet the man danced over the carvings. He jumped up impossibly high to brush his fingertips across the sigils on the ceiling, laughing when they responded in kind.
Sanji shuddered at the display of power, unable to comprehend how someone could overwhelm spells that were crafted by his father's best spellworkers. Did someone so magically gifted even exist? Was he dreaming?
Absurdly enough, all he could think of was his mother's story about the origin of the New Sun festival. In the middle of winter, the sun would vanish for days at a time. Before astronomical advances, it was believed that the sun died each winter, only for a new sun to rise after the long dark.
He wasn't a child anymore, Sanji knew that the sun didn't really die each year. But as he watched the man dance across the stones, lighting up every inch of the hallway with a radiant smile, he couldn't help but wonder if he was looking at the new sun. Though why a personification of a celestial body would wear a straw hat was beyond him.
Sanji was so absorbed in watching him that when the man came to a stop in front of his door, it didn't spook him. The heat rolling off of his tanned skin even from the other side of the bars explained how he could stand to be barely clothed in the midst of winter, wearing only tattered white pants of a style that Sanji didn't recognize. Certainly not Germa fashion.
There was an old scar taking up most of his chest, mottled and forming an X over his vital organs. Burned, or rather melted, as though someone had poured molten metal over the man's torso. What creature was able to scar such a terrifyingly powerful man?
“Hello.” The man spoke common, in a dialect Sanji was unfamiliar with. His words sounded like that of ten men layered over each other to form a single uniform voice. “Why are you in there?”
“So I cannot run.” Sanji answered, surprising himself. His common was rusty, and he wasn't one to speak to random strangers who were probably invading the castle. But there was something inviting about the man, even though he made the hairs on the back of Sanji's neck stand up.
“Mmm.” The stranger hummed as he studied the bars of the cell door, pushing a hand through to test the width of the gap.
Then in a grotesque display of flexibility, the man began to climb through the gap in the bars. It was as if he had no bones, his skin stretching in ways that it had no right to, the straw hat falling to the floor as he shimmied his torso through.
Sanji stared in horror, unsure whether to scream or gag. The man finally collapsed onto the floor in a pile of twisted limbs and stretched skin, the enchantments under him flaring up only to extinguish seconds later. He took a moment to fix himself before he grabbed the hat and put it back on his luminous hair.
“Talk about a tight squeeze!” He said, throwing his head back to laugh at his own bad joke.
Oh, he's dangerous. It was not a sudden revelation, but one that had been brewing in the back of Sanji's mind from the moment he laid eyes on the man. His presence was suffocating, the whole area warming up thanks to the heat he was exuding.
Sanji tugged at his cuffs again, immediately stopping when the slight noise drew the man's eyes like a predator hearing prey. His pupils were ever shifting, adapting to the tiniest changes in the environment. As the man came closer, Sanji could see his irises were ruby red, glowing like hot coals.
He wasn't too proud to admit that he was terrified of being in the same space as the stranger. He knew of all sorts of spells and potions, but none that let a human do that.
“You must be real important to be locked up like this.” The way he moved his head, like his neck extended further than it should've and bent where it wasn't supposed to, made him hard to look at. His teeth were much too big for his mouth. Or were there too many?
“I am not.” Sanji set his eyes just to the left of the man's head, determined to seem as if he was returning the uncomfortably charged stare. Then he had a horrible thought, that maybe the man might misread his attempts at eye contact to be aggression like some kind of wild animal, and he quickly looked away.
“Your eyebrow is neat! Are they both like that?”
He flinched at the hand reaching for his face, the chain rattling to remind him that there was nowhere to escape to. The enchantments on the cuffs lit up in response to his spike of fear, the light almost unnoticeable in the stranger's glow.
Red eyes locked onto the metal with alarming speed. “Oh cool, you've got magic too. Is that why you're here?”
“No-” Sanji cringed away from his curious fingers, dreading the outcome. If a simple touch fried the best magic suppression enchantments in Germa, what would skin to skin contact do to Sanji, who was mostly human? He panicked as he tried to remember the word for stop in common. “No!”
It worked, surprisingly. The man froze, unnaturally still with his fingertips a hair's breadth away from Sanji's wrist. His skin tingled and pricked just from the close proximity, similar to a static shock.
“You wanna be all chained up like that?” He asked with that strange, amplified voice, his face scrunching up in a way that would be funny if it wasn't horrifying that he could make such an expression in the first place.
“No.” Sanji said, feeling like a broken record as he pressed back against the wall.
“So what's the big deal-”
Thundering footsteps and the clanking of armor filled the stairwell. The man yelped and glanced around Sanji's barely furnished room before running to hide against the wall next to the door like a child hiding from a scolding. He laughed into his palm as though it was a brilliant plan.
He really needed to brush up on his common, because he wanted to be able to tell the strange glowing man that he was a fucking idiot.
“What are you doing?” Sanji whispered harshly, wondering what he himself was doing. Aiding and abetting, probably. “You glow. Under the bed!”
The man stared at him for a moment before scrambling under Sanji's bed, pulling the blanket half off the mattress so it hid his luminous body. The cast off from his hair was especially bright, so Sanji planted himself on the floor in front of him to hide it from anyone looking in.
In for a penny, in for a pound. It was too late to change his mind, Sanji was just going to have to aid a fugitive.
When two guards burst from the stairwell and saw him still in his room with the barred door locked, the looks of confusion on their faces was priceless. They lowered their rifles and walked down the hallway, suspiciously checking every corner. One even looked up at the ceiling like he was going to find a glowing man clinging to the stonework.
“We know he came through here, where did he go?” The head guard asked Sanji, peering through the bars at his room with growing apprehension. Apparently they were really expecting to find him in there. Wonder why.
A giggle from behind him forced Sanji to clear his throat to cover it. “He went back down. Whatever he's looking for, it's not in here.”
“He didn't try talking to you?”
“What the fuck would we talk about? Nice weather, how's storming the castle going, mind letting me out of this cage?” Sanji rolled his eyes, only to have to rattle his chain unnecessarily loudly when the man giggled again.
The other guard scoffed at him and raised his gun, though it wasn't the threat he was going for. They weren't allowed to shoot him while he was still useful to Judge. “Stand up, smartass! Come to the door so we can check your cuffs.”
Shit. He didn't think they were going to do the usual routine at a time like this. If he stood up, there was a decent chance someone was going to see the castoff light from under the bed. “Shouldn't you be defending the castle or something?”
“Now!”
“Alright, I'm getting up. Don't throw a fit.”
He pushed himself to his feet and stepped away from the bed, his heart thundering in his chest. He could see the guard at the door looking at where he was sitting, a crease forming in his brow.
No, don't look there. Look at me.
Sanji tripped over his own foot and slammed hands first into the wall next to the door. He cursed under his breath, wrists stinging from the impact, but it had the intended effect. The guards were looking at him again.
When he offered his cuffs to be checked, the guard with the raised gun grabbed the chain and yanked him against the bars. He huffed and rolled his eyes, cheek squished into the metal as the guard rattled his chain obnoxiously. The suppressors lit up for a split second, just long enough for the guard to notice.
“Oh, that's cute. Are you trying to curse me?” He jeered and wiggled his fingers condescendingly in Sanji's face. “Gonna put a spell on me, witch?”
Normally that would be enough for Sanji's temper to explode, he was so easy to goad into a fight. But there was a man who climbed through the bars under his bed, and he couldn't remember the last time he felt so alive. Sanji held his tongue.
“Get a move on.” The head guard whacked the other in the shoulder, making him pull too tightly on Sanji's chain. He hissed low at the pain, quick to yank his hands back to his side of the bars when he was released.
“Tch, you're no fun.” The guard grumbled, side eyeing Sanji like it was somehow his fault.
They turned and headed back down the hallway, chatting quietly about where to look next. Sanji backed away from the door and a hand brushed against his back as if to warn him. He froze, but the touch only left a strange tingling sensation in its wake as the glowing man went up to the bars.
He dropped his hat on the other side and began to climb through despite the guards still being at the end of the hallway, his body once again contorting and stretching in ways that defied nature.
The guard who had tried to goad Sanji into a fight glanced over his shoulder and made a frightened noise, scrambling to raise his gun. Sanji barely had time to cover his ears before the shot rang out, and he couldn't bring himself to look away.
It should've killed the man. The bullet should've turned his skull into a gaping wound. Instead, Sanji watched as it definitely hit, but his face stretched backwards with the bullet. Like rubber.
The rebound sent the bullet hurtling back towards the guard, hitting him in the neck. But he was a normal human, his skin didn't stretch. His throat split open and blood splattered along the wall in an arc as he fell backwards into the open doorway.
Sanji inhaled sharply, stumbling over his own feet as he backed up towards the window. He met the eyes of the head guard and was horrified to find only fear in them as the man charged the remaining guard, jumping up and kicking off the wall to send him careening down at a high angle. He looked like a wild beast pouncing on his prey.
Another gunshot was followed closely by a strangled scream, and this time Sanji turned away before the guard fell. He didn't want to see what had become of him.
“Still wanna run?”
The man was at the bars again. There was blood on his garishly white pants, and a red smear on his stomach from where he had tried to wipe it away. He bent down to pick up his hat, plopping it on his head with a bright grin.
“What?” Sanji asked, lowering his hands from his ears.
“You said you're in here so you can't run. Do you still want to run?” He held up a ring of keys, one of which was a dungeon key that would match Sanji's repurposed door.
More than anything.
Just the idea of being able to stretch his legs, of an open space or a destination or anything really for him to run to, it was maddening. Sanji took the keys with trembling hands, barely processing that they were sticky with blood. None of the keys would open his cuffs, which were sealed with magic, but that didn't matter as much as the open door did.
“Thanks for covering for me!”
He looked into those vivid red eyes and was going to ask what the man was doing there, what he wanted, why he bothered to take the time to free Sanji. But what actually came out was “Are you the sun?”
“No, I'm Monkey D. Luffy.”