Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Eight years before a boy in a straw hat would begin his journey for the One Piece, Aokiji Kuzan decided to eat lunch at the Baratie. 

It was not a particularly consequential decision. The sun was out, and the breeze whistled as it glided past the spokes on his bicycle wheels. A flock of gulls drifted overhead. It was truly a beautiful day in the East Blue sea, and the ice-ice fruit user was compelled to make a brief pause in his own journey to bask in great weather and even greater cuisine. If the weather had been slightly worse, perhaps a small gathering of clouds on the horizon, Aokiji Kuzan would not have stopped at the seafaring restaurant. But this day was perfectly cloudless, and so he decided to eat lunch at the Baratie.

It was not a particularly consequential decision. (It changed everything.)

Once seated in the dining room, Aokiji Kuzan ordered some lavender tea and the daily salad, a bowl of the freshest leafy greens around topped with sesame seeds and mango bits. A refreshment, perfect for such a balmy afternoon. It was truly a shame that, upon taking a single bite of the cold appetizer, Aojiki Kuzan discovered that he was deathly allergic to mangoes. 

All Devil Fruit users fear the sea. 

Even though he himself could freeze its tempestuous liquid into a docile solid, Aokiji Kuzan possessed that primal strand of terror all users had towards their collective enemy they knew, with a visceral horror perpetually unvoiced, they could never defeat. All Devil Fruit users know what it’s like to drown. Heck, they can’t even wash themselves in peace. Efferent neurons spritzing into numb nothing and the burn of the ocean searing into lung tissue are not uncommon feelings amongst them. 

Suffocating to death felt the same. As Aojiki Kuzan’s body descended into anaphylactic shock, his blood pressure plummeted and his throat swelled rapidly. He could not move or breathe. His airways narrowed until oxygen could no longer enter and he drowned, on the hardwood floor of the seafaring restaurant. 

It was almost poetic that the only devil fruit user capable of generating water—the users' collective enemy—would drown to death on land. The Devil himself must have deigned to correct that particular loophole. 

On that truly beautiful day in the East Blue sea, Aokiji Kuzan died from ingesting a piece of mango. As it happened, the mangoes used for his fatal meal were in the kitchen nearby, and during Aokijii’s untimely demise undergoing peeling by a certain young chef.   

That is where it begins.

After all, a devil fruit is known to reincarnate in the nearest fruit available…

Sanji was bored. 

Zeff had barred him from cooking—again—because he was apparently “too damn scrawny and always getting underfoot” but Sanji knew that it was because the shitty old man wanted him to go out and be a kid more, or something. Every once in a while, the geezer would wake up from one of his old man naps and act like only days instead of years had passed since the rock. Sanji loathed when that happened, because Zeff’s voice would lower and he would kick him less and ban him from the kitchen and he wasn’t weak goddamnit. 

At least Zeff had let him stay in the kitchen, this time. Sanji sat on a rickety stool in the corner, hunched over a crate of mangoes. In his hand, a paring knife deftly sliced off chunks of its reddish green skin. The Baratie received a rare shipment of the tropical fruit the previous week. It was a wonderful opportunity to add a variety of creative mango-inspired dishes to their menu, for a limited time. All the chefs took advantage of the fruit’s arrival, or at least Sanji had with a few simple salad dishes before he was banished from his workstation by the tyrant of a head chef. Even without his cooking, however, there were still many mango meals to be made, and thus many mangoes to be peeled. 

Enter: Eleven-year-old “always getting underfoot” Sanji. Featuring: the mild-melting boredom of peeling a couple hundred mangoes.

Sanji was busy muttering nasty descriptions of Zeff’s parentage under his breath and hacking at a particularly stubborn bit of mango skin when shouts of distress sounded from the dining room. A handful of nearby chefs rushed to aid the hapless customers, but Sanji stubbornly stayed put. The shitty old man would only kick him right back to the kitchen for interfering. Tsk. Sanji hated that he was never allowed to help out in “adult matters.” He wanted to grow up already. He was already halfway there, in all the wrong ways. Might as well get the responsibilities that come with it. 

His thoughts were so consuming that he hardly noticed when the fruit in his palm, ripe and ready to be peeled, began to change. Morphing into something distinctly not of this world. 

He was just so angry, frustrated to his core that he couldn’t do more. He owed Zeff everything, and the man just wouldn’t let him pay back his debt. Sanji moodily brought the mango he was holding to his lips. 

Later, when he recalled this particular moment, this major turning point in his life, he could not say if eating the fruit was accidental or not. He honestly did not know if he had taken a bite of the fruit in his hand and saw the swirls of the devil or saw the swirls or the devil and taken a bite. 

Either way, the mango ended up in his mouth and oh was it disgusting. It was strangely cold, and tasted as bitter as Zeff’s strongest liquor and as sour as vomit. 

But Sanji’s habit of not wasting food was instinctual, by then, and the powers of the devil were promptly swallowed with a scowl. 

The aftertaste is even worse, he thought, and then the obligatory oh shit what have I done once his higher functioning came back online. 

If he hadn’t seen the iconic swirls jutting from the now-maroon mango before, he saw them now. In his palm he held a devil fruit. Of unknown powers. Which he had just taken a bite of. Shiiiiiiiit…

A shriek stemming from his emotional cocktail of terror and rage tore past his lips as he burst out of the kitchen. He streaked through the dining room, past the prone form of one Aokiji Kuzan and the high-strung chefs who attended him, and out onto the deck that dropped off into the sea. A flurry of concerned voices trailed in his wake. 

Sanji told himself that he must jump in, he had to make sure, but his body jolted to stillness nonetheless at the edge of the docks, the front of his shoes hanging off the wood. He was shaking, eyes rimmed with a glossy film of almost-tears. How could he be so stupid! 

He released another incensed bellow as he chucked the Devil Fruit as far as he could into the open ocean. The mango landed with an anticlimactic plop and slipped beneath the gentle waves. Within a moment, there was nothing but the wide, cerulean stretch of the mother sea. 

How was he supposed to get to the All Blue if he couldn’t swim! He was supposed to be a chef of the sea, not a lifelong prisoner to it! 

He rocked forward, intending once again to throw himself into the sea to prove that it wasn’t true. There was no way he had just eaten a devil fruit, he must have hallucinated the whole experience, or the mango was just plain rotten. Yeah, that was it! Fruit was always finicky, especially when it was so warm out. A particularly spoiled one must have slipped past inspection. 

Deep down, he knew that that was not the case. Somewhere in the sinew of his soul, an innate fear had been awakened, and he could not bring himself to leap into the sea. 

Hundreds of miles away in the hallowed halls of Marineford, Fleet Admiral Sengoku the Buddha received a very consequential phone call. The exact content of the exchange is unknown, and not terribly important. The part that was important, came after. 

He hung up the Den Den Mushi with a downward tick to his lips. With steady hands, he stroked his beard in contemplation. It wasn't every day an Admiral died, and from an unknown food allergy nonetheless. His colleague had died not on the battlefield nor in the clutches of the sea but on the dirty floor of some nameless restaurant in the East Blue. Sengoku couldn't decide if the mysterious way of passing fit the aura of the mysterious man, or if it was in any was suspicious. 

He was unable to reach a conclusion before his brief period of personal grief was over, and it was time for the due processes of the navy to proceed. He called a grunt into his office. 

"Phone Vice-Admiral Garp Immediately, he is known to hang around the East—" to keep an eye on his damn family , Sengoku didn't add, "—and tell him to send a fleet to the seafaring restaurant known as The Baratie. I want the place locked down until we decide that the cause of death really was an accident, as they have reported."

"Yes sir!" 

"Oh, and one more thing. I also want every item that may even slightly resemble a fruit on that ship confiscated. On the authority of the World Government. The Hie Hie no Mi, Aokiji's Ice-Ice Fruit belongs to us." 

Chapter Text

Dodging at the speed of light has become a reflex.

A beam of white heat scorches the stretch of ground where Sanji is less than a moment before. He evades the initial attack with a well-placed kick, but the shaft of light is relentless. It tears through the training room, violently ripping through the air itself as it stalks his movements, a mere microsecond behind him. Any misstep will be deadly. 

Sanji wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Is that all you got?” he taunts the Admiral during a brief reprieve, “Is your age finally catching up to you, Light-Light man? ”

Kizaru is dressed to the nines in his yellow striped suit, his Marine coat draped from his shoulders like a cape. Sanji can’t fault the man for his dramatics—he typically wears his JUSTICE coat and three-piece suit the same way. Kizaru’s color choice is appalling, though. Sanji has known the strange if easygoing man for years, and has never let him forget it.

“Has the atrocious yellow you insist on wearing to spite me finally destroyed your vision? Your aim is getting worse, you old shit.”

“Perhaps,” Kizaru adjusts his amber glasses calmly, “you are simply getting faster, Vice-Admiral.”

Then, he shoots out another lethal bullet of light in the space of a blink. Sanji, shocked still by his mentor’s easy acknowledgment of his progress, barely moves in time. His hesitation nearly kills him. The visceral fear of near-death has him tripping over himself in a panic, losing his balance and ending up on the mats in a tangle of his own limbs. The edge of his suit jacket has been charred, and light smoke curls from the ruined material. Sanji groans. His clothes haven’t burned during training in months. What a way to end the streak.

Kizaru watches his pathetic tumble with an impassive smile.

“Or perhaps not.”

And then he walks away and out of the training room, whistling a jaunty tune as if he hasn’t nearly killed a subordinate. Again.

Sanji winces, standing to collect as many fragments of the ruined suit as he can. He will try to sew the jacket back together later. The collected material crumbles to ash in his palms. Maybe not.

He exits the training complex with a grimace, silently apologizing to the grunts that will have to repair the mats and clean the scorch marks off the walls. He knows from bitter experience that they do not come out easily.

At least he hasn’t used his Devil Fruit. Thawing out training rooms—or training partners—is an even bigger pain. Removing the glacial shell from living things is always nerve-wracking. Though it hasn’t happened yet, Sanji is always worried that his ice will crack or even shatter in the process, instantly killing the person inside. He uses the Ice Time prison technique sparingly. Akainu usually gives him shit for that, but Akainu is actually a psychopath so Sanji never really takes the man seriously anyways.

He makes his way through the stone-lined bowels of Marineford with a smile. Zeff has phoned him that morning to relay a recipe for acai bowls that will soon be featured in the Baratie’s breakfast menu. Sanji will not only master the process, but fractionate the time to make the bowls by the week’s end, when he is scheduled to visit the Baratie. The Hie Hie no Mi may be a deadly weapon to the Marines, but it is equally useful in the kitchen, with great practice. Sanji is still working on his finer control of freezing food yet preserving more delicate textures. The acai bowls are a perfect opportunity to practice.

He wonders how many of the kitchen staff he can rope into the project this time. Lunch rush has just ended, and dinner prep isn’t for at least a few hours. Marineford has entered a peaceful lull—

As if hearing his thoughts, the loud wail of an alarm resounds through the stronghold. The Den Den Mushi on the ceilings startle into wakefulness and dutifully bleat their orders.

"Report, all attending Vice-Admirals, Rear Admirals, and Commodores. Report, all attending Vice-Admirals, Rear Admirals, and Commodores. Report, all attending…"

Sanji abandons his pleasant afternoon plans with a long-suffering sigh. Fucking typical. The Marines have disapproved of his cooking hobby since the beginning. Sanji theorizes that their criticism of his hobby stems from an organization-wide insecurity about dedicating their complete mind, bodies, and souls to the World Government. He is proof of potential autonomy, and that scares the shit out of the hive mind. Complicated psychology aside, he swears that some of the “emergency calls” he takes part in are purposely scheduled during his already scarce kitchen time.

I will be filing another formal complaint with Sengoku later, he swears as he pivots from his path to the kitchens to the general meeting hall, and kicking the asses of the goddamned pirates that fucked with my kitchen time.

The goddamned pirates that fucked with his kitchen time are known as the Straw Hats.

His esteemed colleague Monkey D. Garp practically roars when the news is delivered to the grim-faced attending Vice-Admirals, Rear Admirals, and Commodores.

“It’s a family thing,” Sengoku explains, though that really doesn’t explain much at all. Sanji himself is the epitome of dysfunctional family drama, and wouldn’t touch that particular can of worms with a ten-foot pole.

Commodore Smoker sits to his left, slouched with his iconic twin cigars and familiar scowl. He mutters a string of curses, “What did those brats do this time?”

This time? Sanji has heard of the Straw Hat Pirates, but isn’t aware they have interacted with the Marine corps. It has actually been Zeff who begrudgingly acknowledges the strength of their ¥100,000,000 rubber captain, after an almost-disaster on the Baratie a couple months back. Sanji has been busy finishing the paperwork of some minor noble scuffles in Mary Geoise when apparently, both Don Krieg and Dracule Mihawk had graced the restaurant with their presence. When he found out about how close his home was to destruction, he asked ( read: threatened ) Sengoku for an early leave. Funnily enough, the ensuing fight when he was denied said leave is actually what gets him promoted.

Though he would never voice his relief in the presence of his colleagues, Sanji is grateful to the Straw Hats for stepping in when he couldn’t. Who knows what would have happened if they hadn’t.

The rest of the navy, with the exception of some bright-eyed recruits, does not share his goodwill for the pirate group. There are curses and glares as Sengoku launches into a quick summary of the Straw Hats’ exploits thus far. Defeating the Shichibukai Crocodile and exposing his criminal organization to save a nation? Sanji smothers a grin. They really are a strange band of pirates.

The thought is only cemented when Sanji listens to the current drama. He raises a single eyebrow in amusement. Declaring war on the World Government? For a single crewmember? Forget strange, the Straw Hats are downright mad.

Then he hears about the Buster Call.

And he feels the world drop out from under his feet. Because.
Because—

Sanji knows about Ohara.

The Incident has happened before he is born, but is seared into his memory nonetheless. Marineford has curtailed any public knowledge from leaking, but faint whisperings of the evil still lurk in the base. Hushed tales and cruel justifications skulking in the shadows like rattling skeletons in closets. Memories that will never die. It never fails to make Sanji sick.

He knows what controlled genocide looks like. He grows up intimately familiar with the screams of dying peoples who happen to stand in the way of a fractured family of warmongers.

As with Germa, the Marines’ doctrine of Absolute Justice hinges on their monopoly of absolute power. And absolutely it corrupts. Sanji has witnessed the navy’s atrocities firsthand throughout his seven-year-so-far stint working for the shitty World Government, and it never gets any easier to stomach. He has been punished more often than not in the early days of his employment. Back then, his resistance has been loud and clumsy, and the consequences severe. His hands still ache on rainy days.

The learning curve has been steep, but Sanji finds that quiet rebellion bears much greater fruit. He has learned to play the long game, and play it well. He likes to think he has a knack for espionage. Which is why, when he is called upon as one of the five Vice-Admirals to attend the Buster Call at Enies Lobby, he does not kick his colleagues to death and preach about the centuries of injustice the organization is perpetuating.

His eyes flicker to Garp, and find the man already meeting his gaze. So that’s how it’s going to be. Preserving his morality will be difficult, but Sanji refuses to balk from a challenge. He channels Kizaru’s indifference and offers Sengoku a serene nod, then goes to board the fleet entering the Tarai Current.

He feels like a prisoner approaching the gallows as he perches at the helm of his ship and orders his men to set sail. Favorable winds will make their travel quick. The weather is nice, as sunny as it has been that fateful day all those years ago. As always, he speculates what Aokiji would have done, if the man were still alive and Sanji hadn’t unwillingly taken his place. He wonders if the Admiral would have accepted the Buster Call as silently as Sanji has. The thought sends him adrift in waves of melancholy. He spends the rest of the short voyage staring moodily at the horizon chain-smoking. Any subordinate that bothers him is treated with a kick to the side and left the deck smarting.

They arrive at Enies Lobby within a half hour. By the time the colossal gates are in view, the weather has taken a turn for the worse. The sea, placid that morning, has grown angry. Swollen black clouds roll overhead. Thunder crackles in the distance, the sound a backdrop to Sanji’s growing sense of dread. Anticipation settles over the fleet. Even the seamen grunts feel the horror. Ten battleships, two of which are under his direct command, lapse into an uneasy silence.

And then:Vice-Admiral Momonga raises a sword. His bellow parts the seas and shakes the heavens themselves. Sanji wonders if the skies will cry tears of blood, after this.

"CHARGE."

Ten behemoths filled with monsters called men rush through the Gates of Justice with their guns drawn. They open fire immediately.

That’s when all hell breaks loose.

We are all going to die.
The realization is not new to Usopp. He is sure of the crew’s impending doom at least thrice a week. Okay, maybe not three times a week, but it was certainly more often than the sniper was comfortable with. Dancing with death is the Straw Hats’ favorite pastime, after all.

But this time, Luffy isn’t moving.

Rob Lucci has been defeated in a flurry of hot elastic and crumbling stone. Sogeking has burned the World Government’s proud flag to ash in the breeze. They have gotten Robin back. They have won against CP9! But Luffy isn’t moving.

Their escape ship sinks in a soup of flames, and thousands of faceless Marines swarm in for the kill. And Luffy isn’t moving.

They are going to die, but then Merry comes.

Sweet, lovely Merry. Their nakama pulls through with the magic of a dying breath, but it is not enough. Cannonballs slam into the nearby waters with an ear-splitting BOOM. Robin, Franky and Zoro fight to repel the incessant blasts, but their efforts are just shy of success. The battleships advance. It is over.

Usopp’s breath comes in short, painful bursts. Escape is nigh impossible. They need a way to charm the ocean itself, to destabilize the navy’s firing ships. He eyes the megalithic stone Gates of Justice ahead. If only they could figure out a way to close them! The battleships are far bulkier than Merry’s lithe form and would be unable to follow them through.

But alas, the Gates of Justice remain stubbornly open. And the Straw Hats are flagging.

Another series of BOOMs, this time followed by a shuddering jolt. The sound of wood shattering echoes throughout the ship. Merry has been hit.

As if a domino has fallen, two more cannonballs soar through their deteriorating defenses and smash into the hull. Then three. Their brief spell of invincibility has broken, and the Marines are ready to pounce.

Somewhere behind him, Nami is screaming. Water oozes onto the deck. Luffy has already gone down, but the seas bring their remaining Devil Fruit users to their knees. The wood beneath his feet begins to squeal in protest, before eventually giving way. It is a chain reaction. With a loud CRACK, the mast snaps off and tumbles into the sea, nearly taking a crying Chopper down with it. Another cannonball hits. Her balance already weakened, Merry is knocked down. She falls on her side with her passengers screaming, following the trajectory of her mast.

They are going to capsize.

“I’m sorry.”

Dark waves suddenly rush to meet them. Usopp squeezes his eyes shut in regret. It is over. They are all going to die. And I never got to apologize to Luffy…

He expects to hit the ocean with a slap. To be caught beneath the splintering wood of the dying Merry. Sucked under and into the abyss of the whirlpool she’d make while sinking. It is poetic, almost, that Captain Usopp will go down with his ship.

But that doesn’t happen.

What happens is this:

Temperatures plummet. Time ceases its existence and things become very still. Every moment becomes crystallized, captured in an instantaneous fossil of ice. Their small bubble of the world is encased in a rich white blanket with a hint of blue.

There is no sound.

But Usopp can see vapor wisp past his lips as he exhales a shocked breath. He witnesses his crewmates’ stunned expressions as they too find their footing on the frozen, half-turned deck. They see it, as well. How the ice has subjugated the sea in a ring around the iced-over Merry. He turns to his captain to shout in joy to unexpected survival but finds Luffy staring, almost hauntingly, into the abyss.

Beyond the solid ring of ice, there is the tempestuous ocean. A lone figure in the distance is walking on it. From the breast pocket of a three-piece suit, a lighter is slowly drawn.

And in the soundless world of winter, there is a click.

Chapter Text

Sanji does, in fact, have a plan.
It is simple. Convince the Admirals that the Straw Hats are worth more to the World Government alive, fetter them aboard a navy ship, and act very surprised when said ship disappears on the way to Impel Down. They are sailing close enough to the Florian Triangle to blame it on the ghost-tinged seas.

 It would work perfectly. He would keep his shitty employment, the Straw Hats would keep their freedom to continue their mad pirate activities. They would briefly meet in conflict yet go their separate ways in peace, all debts paid.

The real world is far removed from the glass caricatures of the ideal. He knows this better than anyone. So of course he doesn’t expect the plan to smoothly succeed in its entirety, but everything falling to shit before step one is downright embarrassing.

“Puru puru puru… puru puru puru…”

The ringing of his mini den den mushi echoes in the icy air as he steps from the sea to his glacial sheet. He withdraws the small transponder snail from his pocket. With his free hand, he takes a long drag from his cigarette. Sanji is now close enough to the Straw Hats’ frozen ship to see that the pirates’ eyes track his movements. Good. They will watch him negotiate for their lives, and play along.

“Gacha.”

Amber glasses settle over the snail’s beady eyes, and its lips twist like it has swallowed a lemon. The nearby battleships have larger snails to transmit the farther signals from Marineford across long stretches of sea. Sanji is grateful for the technology. An Admiral already on the phone will speed up the deliberation of the Straw Hats’ fates.
He exhales a bit of the tension that has lodged itself in his ribcage since the first mention of the Buster Call. If he knows anything about the Straw Hats, it is their uncanny ability to do the impossible. They will live through this. It is all going to be fine.

He opens his mouth to present his case for the Straw Hats’ imprisonment when a familiar drawl cuts him off.

"Kill them."

Sanji nearly chokes on his cigarette. “What—”

"Kill them all, Vice-Admiral. That’s an order."

Kizaru hangs up before Sanji can draw another breath. Static drones over the line, reverberating off of the cold glaze. If one could peer into Sanji’s thoughts at that very moment, they would find a similar loss of signal.

Sanji may be Error Screening in disbelief at the ruthlessness of Justice, but he has been trained by the very best. So, when a sword suddenly blitzes towards the soft tissue of his neck, he reflexively lifts a leg to block it.

Dress shoe kisses steel with a thunderous clang.

Roronoa Zoro is unexpected. Two-and-a-half seconds before, the Straw Hats’ first mate stands passively with his anxious crewmates on a halfway sunken ship. Totally languid, hands free from his weaponry. The man transforms to a threat in the space of a blink. 

Every movement screams lethal. He advances like a predator, graceful and swift. He is silent save for the soft chime of the three golden teardrops that cling to his outer ear. And he has very nearly decapitated Sanji with a single stroke.

Sanji is not happy with this development.

Biting down on his cigarette, he shoves the katana away. Grunting, the swordsman skids on the icy plain. He exhales a vapor cloud of cool mist.

“Watch it, asshole,” Sanji snaps, “I know it must be hard for you to understand with the moss growing out of your ears, but I’m not fucking attacking you. Hold on for a sec, I have—”

Another sword stroke, from above this time. The blade arcs in a perfect semicircle, a broken halo falling from heaven itself in order to split his skull down the hemispheric line. His corpus callosum practically shivers at the thought of its near bisection.

“—a plan,” Sanji mutters, kicking off the ice to dodge the attack. The weapon slams into the surface where he just stood with the strength of two thousand men. Sanji watches his glacier crack and splinter at the force of it and thinks that maybe he shouldn’t have provoked the swordsman. Too late. The rest of the Straw Hats sans their half-dead captain slide into positions of determined opposition.

"THUNDER TEMPO!"

From behind. Sanji is too busy kicking away yet another awry sword and a strange arm-chain from a pervert in a speedo to dodge the attack. He has to prioritize, damn it. The orange-haired lady, while gorgeous, only possesses an assortment of bruises and a peculiar turquoise stick. What could she realistically do to hurt him?

A lot, apparently.

He has been electrocuted before. He is born and raised in the labyrinthian laboratories of the Germa kingdom. Of course the freak scientists figure out the power of The Chair as a quick and clean method to get what they want, when they want it. If not a physical torture, their harnessing of electricity is definitely a psychological one. For years afterwards, Sanji’s hands break into a clammy and swollen sweat at the sound of rolling thunder. The sight of lightning is worse.

Don’t even get him started on the navy’s required class on anti-interrogation practice.

So yeah, he’s done electrocution. He’s practically a pro at it, which is why he is qualified to attest that this orange-haired lady is a menace.

All of his nerves simultaneously pinch. He feels that particular tingly feeling, like when bored legs or feet fall asleep beneath school desks, but everywhere. Even in his nail beds, and needling behind each eyelid. His muscles spasm in shock. He can see the thick crackles of electricity, twin sparks of blue and white, sail off his body in droves. Realistically there isn’t much sound, but his body rattles from the attack’s shot of pure noise. Whatever power is imbued in her turquoise stick, it certainly has a kick to it.

And finally, a breath. Sanji is still standing, if slightly hunched over. He steadies himself, rapidly blinking to dispel the dark clouds occluding his vision. Ribbons of smoke dance upon the lapels of his ruined suit. They curl into the icy air with a hiss. The orange-haired lady is lucky she is so cute. He likes this suit, damn it.

There is no time to grieve the destruction of the height of fashion, however. A giant wave of hands is hurtling towards him. And right behind the macabre wall of human flesh, leaps an angry man with three swords.

During the brief interlude of electrocution, Roronoa has donned a bandana a few shades darker than his hair. His gaze of hell and steel is hooded by the fabric.

Sanji lunges out of the trajectory of the strange assortment of hands and stifles a laugh at the mosshead’s new attire. The case could be made that the man is influenced by Sanji’s earlier comment, enough to cover up his bright green hair. Sanji kicks away a rush of metal and says as such.

“You embarrassed about all the plant life marinating on your head, moss-for-brains?”

“That’s rich, coming from a guy with dartboards for eyebrows.”

The insult is so casually slung back, Sanji nearly falters. His heartbeat of hesitation allows Zoro an inch of an advantage. A sword rips through the air, deftly slicing his cigarette in two. The cigarette paper flutters away in the breeze. Grainy bits of tobacco splatter over his shirt as they are violently displaced. The brown particles cling to the fabric of his smoking suit. It has already been ruined, but logic doesn’t often accompany Sanji’s emotions. As always, his subsequent rage is quick and all-consuming.

His leg explodes. White hot flames lick up his ankles and he roars in fury.

Sanji takes a satisfying moment to watch Zoro’s gray eyes widen before he slams his blazing foot into the man’s gut. In an instant, he is gone. There is a gentle crack beneath the sole of Sanji’s dress shoe before the swordsman is sent flying. He careens through the stagnant air to the sound of his crewmates exclaiming in equal parts horror and shock.

Zoro smashes into the half-turned deck of the Straw Hats’ dying ship. Wood and ice shards splinter around his slumped form.

Sanji lowers his leg.

Erupting from the decks of the battleships that wreathe the Straw Hats is a thundering cheer. Marines of every branch and rank shout in triumph. Their cries thunder across the makeshift battlefield. Sanji feels the ice quiver beneath the torrent of their voices.

“That’s impossible!” the orange purveyor of electrocution shrieks across the din, “Your leg was on fire, just now. How did you—I thought you were an Ice-Ice man!”

The crowd hollers at his back. Sanji meets the frazzled gaze of the Straw Hats’ navigator and smiles. Her charged current has long since dissipated from his skin, yet he feels positively electric.

“I am an Ice-Ice man. I can freeze anyone and anything, even stop the heart of the sea herself. However, my dear, I am also a Chef. ” Thick ripples of ice roll across the plain towards the pirates, “Hot or cold, I know how to control the temperature in my kitchen.”

Crystalline frost crawls up the Straw Hats’ half-drowned ship and wraps around their legs. The orange-haired lady’s scream is swallowed by the ice. In barely a moment, the Straw Hats are statues of their former selves, encased in glassy prisons that dull their colors to a blue-tinged off-white. He carefully monitors the pirates’ heartbeats as their bodies adjust to the cold shock.

If the cheers are loud before, they are deafening after Sanji successfully contains the Straw Hats. Unlike the ecstatic Marines around him, he is under no illusion that his modified version of Aokiji’s Ice Time will hold, however. He hasn’t frozen them as deeply as he could have, to prevent any long-term neural or vascular damage. As much as the Straw Hats are a cannonball to his carefully constructed Marine persona, he still doesn’t wish any of them harm. Sanji is well aware of the consequences of his bleeding heart, thank you very much— Zeff only lectures him about it every other day. He knows the thin freeze will allow the pirates to escape. Roronoa Zoro’s monstrous strength aside, the rest of the Straw Hats are dangerous and more than capable of freeing themselves. There isn’t much time.

Sanji needs another plan. But there isn’t time.

And the brainless battleships won’t stop their ridiculous cheering. It pricks Sanji’s skin and makes him irritate and itch inside. His throat hurts just hearing their clamor. The navy is a mess of crossed wires and machine contradictions. How many of those bright-eyed Marines actually know what they are cheering for?

He can feel their eyes on him. Hot beams like little spotlights warming every centimeter of his skin. The Straw Hats’ gaze too, through the warped icy film that cradles their heads. No pressure.

Kizaru has taught him to dodge at the speed of light. It is instinctual, the swiftness he needs. Only in his mind. Sanji stands on his glacier, channels a decade of drilled rapidity, and begins to think. He needs to get the Straw Hats out of Enies’ Lobby. Alive, preferably. He ruminates on dozens of risky contingencies in the space of a moment, but his Vice Admiral colleagues are similarly quick. Maybe they already suspect he is holding back. Maybe they already know his deceit as a fact.

Maybe they are just cruel Marines who want a genuinely good group of pirates dead. Either way, Sanji feels the air shift almost imperceptibly as Momonga withdraws a pistol from the pocket of his purple striped suit.

And in the single-minded wreath of justice, there is a click.

The safety is turned off. The crowd roars. There is a second of stillness, that terrifying reminder of reality that oozes before every fatal shot. The frayed chord held together by the threads of obligation and spite pulls to the brink. Again and again and again.

But this time, it snaps.

The gun is fired. Time seems to wobble and melt. It is just like that cloudless day, all those years ago, just like that not-so-consequential paradigm shift. He doesn’t hesitate, not really. Sanji knows the trajectory of the bullet, and it moves a hell of a lot slower than the speed of light. So of course he intercepts it.

Monkey D. Luffy has saved his father.
And Sanji is the one who freezes him into immobility, after all.
It is only fair. It is right.

The bullet meant for the captain’s head glances off the rubber sole of Sanji’s shoe. It skitters across the shiny surface of his circle of ice and slips into the sea with a harmless plunk. Somehow, the sound is louder than the gunshot.

And finally finally, that insipid, grating cheering stops. It only takes a couple thousand witnesses of high treason.

A vein pulses in Vice Admiral Momonga’s forehead. “Kill them all, Vice Admiral. That was an order, ” he quotes. His rage travels easily across the now silent stage. “Yet you directly interfered with the Straw Hats’ execution. That is a violation of the World Government’s will and the navy's tenet to uphold justice. ”

A violation indeed. Sanji is proud that his hands only shake slightly as he tugs out a new cigarette. Eight years of his life in service to the world. Eight years of his life lying to it. He just has to laugh.

“ Get fucked. ”

From the maelstrom of his cluttered mind, a memory rises. Germa, eight years old. The scent of dish soap. His siblings sprawled in tiny chairs, doodling on the wood of their desks with razor blades. A severe, dry-lipped tutor with a penchant for the sound of a strike of fresh chalk. Physics class.

 “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.”
The truth.

After Sanji commits treason, there is a moment, suspended in a reality-bending crystalis not unlike the icy clutches embracing the Straw Hat’s ship, of stillness. Ice flurries dance and spin overhead. The sea itself seems to hold its breath.

And then: reaction.

The thousands upon thousands of Marines boarded on the warships stiffen, the ranks of their rifles shifting instinctively to aim their barrels down and out, towards him. Knuckles whiten around triggers. Cannons are loaded double time. There are only seconds to spare before his body, and those of his Straw Hat companions, are furiously pumped with lead.

Sanji, cigarette smouldering between his lips, flicks his eyes to the frozen pirates. He knows that they can hear him through the thinness of their icy veils. He knows that they are likely confused, probably terrified, and definitely not ready for what comes next. He isn’t sure he is, either.

“Hey, shitheads,” he makes sure he has their undivided attention and points upwards, straight towards the stormy stretch of sky, “Buckle up.”

His left foot stamps into the glacier. Hard.

He is exhausted. The split-second, out-of-this-world crazy idea: untested. But if nothing else, he is damn sure of his ability to get them some serious air.

Beneath him, from the colossal depths of the big blue, the first veins of ice twist and lurch upward. His heel shifts a fraction, deliberate and sure. Body an instrument of exquisite control while his mind screeches in panic. Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.

He flash-freezes the sea.

Easier said than done, of course. But what’s the point of harping on those bloody hours in the training room with an apathetic Kizaru who has not a shred of decency towards the kid who killed his friend? Sanji didn’t kill Aokiji, of course. But that isn’t really the point. He knows the simple fact of misplaced frustration every time he is worked to the edge of medical death and in the way his teacher makes him burn.

There is no need to discuss it beyond the basic point: Aokiji could flash-freeze 100 meters squared in four seconds, Sanji has to learn to do 200 in two.

But that is all out, and he has to conserve at least some of his strength for what comes after. A radius of about twenty meters, as far as he can push it. A perfect circle around the Straw Hat crew and their wreck of a ship. Well over a hundred meters tall and as thick as a Marine battleship’s hull, the giant cylindrical pillar of frozen seawater surges upward to meet them.

Vertical propulsion. Instant, and a bit painful. The massive column smacks into their frozen forms and lifts them upwards, upwards…

An ultrafast, supercooled express elevator.

Sanji is more concerned with the teeth-gritting precision of multi-object temperature control to pay much attention to his former colleagues, but from what he can tell of their enraged screams and haphazard firing, they certainly haven’t seen this coming. The massive ice pillar continues to ascend as they shoot, quite uselessly, against its girth. The ocean upended by his maneuver causes their ships to pitch dangerously towards the great deep, flinging unlucky cadets off their sides like a dog shaking water from its fur. He fights down a smirk—it is far from over yet.

They aren’t even halfway to the cloudline when he knows his limit is fast approaching. A rising tower is nice and all, but they need to move out. He needs to finish the dish so to speak, add his own twist to it. A touch of garnish.

Sanji’s leg ignites—a swirl of flame licking ice—as his Diable Jambe sears directly down the frozen shaft. A spiderweb of fractures compacts in a violent snap. Superheated steam detonates outward, pressure building fast as locked water molecules rupture under sudden, intense heat. The surrounding ocean buckles as vapor roars to escape, churning into an invisible fist under the ice pillar.

It is simple thermodynamics, really. Pressure can be a real bitch, if you know how to use it right. Some heat here, some cold there, and you get an explosion so beautifully violent, so perfectly powerful it might as well be called rocket thrust.

The improvised ice-rocket clears the clouds in seconds.

They emerge from billowing mountains of white and gray, their tops sculpted by invisible hands into cauliflower-like formations that stretch to the horizon. It is a moment of ethereal beauty, supreme rapture! Even for the mannequin-people frozen into complete immobilization. Dreamlike wisps of vapor twirl and burst beneath the apogee of their impromptu flight. The sky above them is a deep, sapphire blue that seems almost solid in its glass-smooth totality.

What a shame, gravity. Gravity, with its inexorable and devastating approach. And Sanji, sweat-soaked and wretched beyond imagining, has fuck-all of ideas how to deal with that particular aspect of physics.

So he defrosts the navigator.

He knows it is the orange-haired lady from the log pose bracelet that encircles her pale wrist. He knows she can save them all from the still smouldering ruins of his suit jacket, still fresh from her well-placed electrocution.

“Hello, my lovely, apologies for the rough transit, would you mind calling the wind in our favor?”

She is too busy screaming bloody murder to answer him. Once-manicured nails scramble on the ice (ouch!) for purchase. Tears well and fly like loose spittle in the rush of air. A whole stream of curses, tossed and lost in the void because of how fast they have begun falling.

“Anytime this week, darling!” Sanji shouts, voice pitched peach-sweet, “We really shouldn’t fall too far, it will be harder to catch a drift. Plus, we’ll soon be in range of the cannons!”

The orange-haired girl does not respond with anything intelligible or even somewhat actionable. Meanwhile, they fall further. Faster. Acceleration downwards—towards the ring of firing Marine ships, towards the sea, towards certain death, certainly. Sanji is running out of patience.

As the ocean and warships rush back up to meet them, Sanji digs his heel into the slick surface beneath him. With a strained snarl, he spreads his arms wide and directs every last shred of his dwindling energy downward and outward. The pillar metamorphoses. Thin lattices of glimmering frost bloom from their ice raft, unfurling like silvery ribbons into the open sky.

A frozen slide, tilted perfectly so.

Sheets of ice curve in a spiraling ramp, arcing toward the distant mist of the Florian Triangle. The surface shimmers with a translucent glaze—thin enough to flex under air pressure, thick enough to bear their weight if she catches the wind right. When she catches the wind right. There just isn’t another option.

His lungs burn. His legs quiver something awful. It doesn’t matter. The runway is set.

He lurches forward, grabbing her shoulders with desperate, aching palms. He is frustrated, and scared, and he honestly doesn’t mean to shout, but—

“NAVIGATE, WOMAN! I’M GIVING YOU A SKY HIGHWAY!”

Oh, Zeff would slap him silly if he’d ever heard Sanji talk to a beautiful flower that way. And he’d deserve it, one hundred—no, one thousand fold. He deserves all the worst things to happen to him, but the Straw Hats don’t. They are good.

For one heart-lurching instant, Sanji thinks she won’t move.

Then—

The navigator’s head snaps up, amber eyes flaring sharp as broken glass. Instinct, beautiful and terrifying. She tears the turquoise staff from her hip with knuckles bloodless from the cold, spins it in her fingers despite the wind clawing at her sleeves, and jams the tip skyward.

Electrostatic charge blooms in a spiral as the staff unfurls its segmented rods. Tiny spheres spin along etched grooves and snap into alignment. Sanji barely has time to appreciate the artistry of the device before the air pitches—a sudden drop in pressure that makes his ears ring. The smell of ozone hums in his nostrils, and he feels the air on his arms rise.

“Heat Ball. Cool Ball. Gust Dial.”

She slams the commands together, words ripping from her lips faster than the cannonballs below. Her hands blur as she whips the staff around herself, dragging invisible threads of atmosphere into patterns.

The sky trembles. A whorl of wind curls at the tip of her staff, spiraling down into a burgeoning column of rotating air. Sanji feels the shift—an updraft kisses their ice raft, tugging it away from freefall and onto his makeshift glissade.

The thin sheet of ice shudders but holds. We have glide.

The navigator plants one foot forward like a queen reclaiming her throne, eyes narrowed against the gale. Her free hand stretches behind her, fingers twirling around her staff in micro-adjustments Sanji can never, even if he studies for all the years he lives, understand. She grits her teeth, braces her knees, and rides the funnel of wind hard and fast across the ice. Pinpricks of loose ice tear at her exposed cheeks, but she stands iron-still, entirely focused.

“I’ve got it,” she hisses, and oh—is that a smile? Vicious, razor-edged, and absolutely magnificent. Something effervescent fountains in his chest, and Sanji feels the first flutterings of a little bit of love.

Their trajectory tilts, curving along Sanji’s ice ramp, and veers east, straight into the swirling mist of the Florian Triangle. Behind them, the cracks of cannon fire boom uselessly into empty sky. At some point, Sanji has fallen to his knees onto the slick surface of the ice sheet. Crouched as he is, however, he can still see past the wrecked pirate ship and over the edge of the craft. Past his spiral swirl of suspended crystal, and to the burning lot of Enies Lobby.

They have cleared the Gates of Justice easy. The colossal doors are on a slow path to open, sweeping through the waves and sucking on the battleships crowded outside them. The suction and feverish haste of the traffic pulls some smaller vessels under. Even though Sanji holds complicated feelings towards the World Government, not to mention towards his quick-to-shoot colleagues, he feels some sick sort of shame at the thought of all the souls that will drown. It colors him an ugly shade of pink.

Do I even have the right to feel bad?

Such thoughts are dangerous and ultimately, unhelpful. They are the kinds of mind tricks that cause him to chew his lips bloody raw and make the exhaustion hit all that much harder.

He feels his vision tilt, and softly sway. His limbs are already numb, have been for decades, centuries maybe. Then his cheek presses against something so cool, refreshing against his flushed skin.

“Marine-kun don’t you dare pass out!” Her scream barely causes a twitch, her words fast with panic, “Vice admiral! Your ice is melting, how the hell do I keep this thing steady if the ramp’s gonna fucking melt? Hey, wake up, please don’t pass out, at least unfreeze my friends before you—”

Far behind, beyond the shimmering heat-haze of cannonfire and the roiling spray kicked by suction tides, Vice Admiral Momonga grips the rail of his flagship. His saber trembles—not from fear, but from the violent lurch of the ship as it teeters on the edge of the whirlpool’s maw.

“Where the hell did they go?” someone barks behind him.

Momonga says nothing. His keen eyes, veteran’s eyes, lock skyward. His jaw twitches once. Twice. A vein pulses at his temple.

He has seen the trajectory.

Above, faint as a thread of silver, their ice-rocket punches through the stormfront and vanishes into the heavy mist veiling the Triangle. Impossible. Absurd. Brilliant. His men haven’t even thought to aim their cannons that high.

He sucks in a slow, measured breath through his teeth. “Find me an airship,” he growls. “Now.”

“Sir?”

“If they’ve entered the Florian Triangle’s upper altitudes, a sea pursuit is meaningless.” His gloved hand curls into a fist atop the rail. “We’ll need reconnaissance with vertical capability. And pray to whatever gods haven’t abandoned us that they are captured before Akainu hears about—”

The words catch.

On the horizon, the colossal Gates of Justice finish their ponderous arc and lock into full open. The suction escalates. Ships capsize. Rigging snaps like spiderwebs yanked taut. Screams echo across the water as two Marine vessels are dragged under, masts splintering like toothpicks.

Momonga’s lip curls in disgust.

“Damn it all to hell. Evacuate the outer ring. We’ve already lost the advantage. We’ll catch ‘em when they land.”

Chapter Text

"You’re awake. Start talking.”

Sanji blinks, disoriented. He tries to sit up. Fails. There’s a hollow pressure behind his eyes—a migraine, and a nasty one. His throat tastes dry and bitter, the aftermath of an ice burn. His power has retreated deep into the recesses of his core, curled up and shivering, buried toxic waste. He feels diseased. Gently prodding it sends threads of agony curdling through his nerve endings. Classic fruit overuse. Fucking great.

He aches, so fiercely the world spins when he tries again to align his head above his centre of gravity. A cold ( metal? ) hand presses him back into the pillows, soft but unyielding. Another voice chimes in, this one closer to him,

"Take it slow. You were out for four days, bro."

The words sink into his sluggish brain like stones into a deep well. Four days. That explains the cramps in his muscles and the cobwebbed haze clogging his skull. He blearily takes in his surroundings. He lies on a narrow cot, threadbare blankets heaped over his midriff. Cracked beams groan overhead, wet mist drifting through the gnarled slats. A weak lantern gutters on a water-warped wooden table. It casts strange shadows across the room, which gently sways as if buffeting the tide. The air smells of salt and old rope. The belly of a ship then, at anchor.

"Didn’t remember your little ship being this… creepy," he says, lamely. His voice is positively wretched, but the room’s other occupants hear him just fine. The tension spikes when his words register.  

Zoro, slouched by the bulkhead with his face dipped in shadow, scoffs in derision. He is sharpening his sword—the white one he so obviously favors—deliberately slow. Each scrape of naked steel on the whetstone rasps powerfully in the quietude. 

Oh, so this is a show of force, Sanji thinks, tiredly. Bring it on, I guess.

“Watch it, marine bitch,” the swordsman snaps. “You’re the one who sank the Merry to begin with.”

Sanji can’t help the instinctual bite back. "Oh come on. That shipwreck was playing coy with Davy Jones’ locker already, not my fault it couldn’t stand it when I kicked your raggedy ass through the mast."

Zoro’s expression hardens. Sanji tenses despite his injuries and can practically feel the epinephrine pulse woosh in his bloodstream. He knows not to be fooled twice; Roronoa Zoro will not catch him unawares again. 

However, there is no need. The other man in the room, who Sanji just notices, places a meaty hand on Zoro’s shoulder, cowing him. Sanji has the barest flicker of recognition from Enies Lobby—he must not have fought him in the scramble. He also doesn’t remember him from the roster of known straw hats affiliates. The blue-haired man is massive and built in proportions that are decidedly… odd. There is also a faint but undoubtable clicking and whirring echoing from his movements. He wears dark sunglasses even in the twilight gloom, a garish Hawaiian t-shirt, and a far-too-tight-for-anyone-to-be-comfortable speedo. Weird dude. 

Cyborg , Sanji realizes belatedly. Superhuman frame, mechanical sound. Not a Pacifista though—too human, too relaxed. Since when did the straw hats have an honest-to-god cyborg in their ranks? 

But he does stop the infamous Demon of the East from attacking, which garners major points in Sanji’s book right about then.

“Well, let’s start this again!” the cyborg grins, perfect teeth gleaming. “I’m Franky, and my buddy here is Zoro. We’re not gonna hurt you, dude, but things are a little crazy right now… so we need to like, figure out what’s going on. From you.”

Not gonna hurt me, huh?

Sanji is not bound to the cot and wears no seastone cuffs on his wrists, but Roronoa Zoro and his swords are right there and he has no illusions of getting out of this interrogation unscathed if he doesn’t show the right amount of compliance. 

It does beg the question of why his injuries have been tended to so cautiously and thoroughly. He’s mildly hungry but nothing near starvation-fear—they must have fed him somehow. The bandages on his torso are far too fresh for four days unconscious, they must have been changed at least once. Sanji knows why he’s received such care—the Straw Hats are good people, no matter what the admirals liked to prattle about in their stuffy war rooms. It is why they saved Nico Robin, and then Sanji tried to save them, and got wrapped up in this damn mess in the first place.

He exhales, rubbing a hand over his face. The scrape of callused fingers over stubble grounds him a little.

A glance between Franky’s measured stare and Zoro’s colder glare proves they will wait for as long as they have to. He tries to hold out his hands in a gesture of peace, but they shake something fierce so he tucks them back under the blankets, embarrassed. "I’m all yours. What do you want to know?"

"You wore that obnoxious Marine coat. You stood with them, on the prow of what looked to be your own damn ship. And you nearly had a front-row seat to our execution," Zoro says. "Then you stopped it. You froze us. You saved us. Almost botched it all, but the point stands. What’s your game here?"

Sanji buries the flush of irritation at that last part. It’s a fair enough question.

"You’re right. I am a Marine. Was. Was a Marine. Vice Admiral even…hah, if you’d believe. Took me years to get there, earning every inch of it the hard way. Thought I was doing something right. Keeping the seas clean. Keeping people safe and all that. Making my father proud." He doesn’t mention the fact that he’d known all along the Marines were dirty and he was slowly working on absolutely desecrating their authority from the inside out. It sounds like a blatant untruth, a desperate ploy to get into the Straw Hat’s good graces. Plus, it doesn’t matter anymore. He continues, "Then I watched what they ordered at Enies Lobby. A fucking Buster Call. Nico Robin was unarmed. You were cornered, surrounded, outgunned. And if that wasn’t bad enough, damn Kizaru ordered your heads taken off like it was housekeeping. No trial. No transport. No hesitation at all."

“And so you grew a pair?” Zoro raises an eyebrow, disbelieving.

"I’d followed those same orders for years without blinking. But that… I stopped the bullet because it was wrong. Simple as that."

Franky shifts, gaze unreadable behind his shades. Sanji rushes to answer the unasked question he believes the cyborg is pondering.

"And before that… well, I froze you because you were surrounded, and you were seconds from getting your brains shot to pulp. I couldn’t talk you out of that crossfire, not after I failed so enormously to establish communication. Appreciate the beating, by the way. Quite humbling experience. Anyways, once Kizaru went all tyrant, the other Vices were never going to listen to reason. So I locked you down long enough to buy us room to move."

Zoro rolls his eyes. "Well, if that’s the case! Thank you, Mr. Knight in shining bullshit."

"It wasn’t charity, if that’s what you mean. Don’t think for a second I was throwing away my career for nothing. You broke Enies Lobby. You put a crack in a system I thought couldn’t be touched. And I figured anyone who could light that fire…might be worth betting on." He sits up straight finally, sharp blue gaze pinning Zoro to the wall, his voice iron-flat now, stripped of apology, "I froze you to keep you alive. I broke you out because I wanted to see if you'd finish what you started. I didn't do it because we’re friends. We’re not."

He pauses. Swallows a sigh and a curse and the head-throbbing ache for a cigarette. 

"I did it because watching a flag burn is better than watching innocent people die under it again."

The silence holds for a beat. It’s taut as wire, and no one breathes for a long second.

Franky straightens fully now, the quiet whir of hydraulics barely audible beneath the creak of the ship's timbers. He adjusts the sunglasses on the bridge of his nose, gaze lingering on Sanji for a half-second longer—still cautious, still weighing—but with something less rigid than before.

"Get some rest. I’ll send for Chopper in a few minutes. We’re not done here, but you’re not dead weight either," Franky says, voice level. He nods once, terse and final, and turns toward the stairs.

Zoro lingers a heartbeat longer. His boots scrape softly on the chipped planks as he pushes off the wall, arms uncrossing. His face is unreadable in the dim, shadow knifing angles across his jaw.

He speaks, voice flat but not hostile. Just factual.

"You earned one chance. Don’t waste it."

He slides his sword back into its sheath with a soft, deliberate click . Without waiting for Sanji’s acknowledgment, he follows Franky out, footsteps dull against the floorboards. The door closes behind the pair with a heavy, hollow thud.

Sanji stays seated on the cot, spine bent slightly, hands braced on his knees. The ache gnaws deep in his bones, but he is pretty sure he slept through the worst of it. He exhales slow, the tension in his shoulders refusing to bleed out fully. His eyes flick toward the faint glow of the lantern, then to the warped planks of the ceiling. The roil of fog crawling into the room. 

His chest rises, falls. His fingers twitch once against the thin blanket.

One chance. Fine.

That’s more than most people get. It’s more than he deserves. 

Their doctor is a reindeer. 

And a brilliant physician, Sanji feels compelled to add. When he first met Chopper he was skeptical of the little furball, even more so when he saw his caregiver had hooves instead of hands. Sanji will admit that he had the obligatory, panicked thought of how the hell could he even hold a scalpel? when the reindeer calmly explained his methods of stitching Sanji’s more serious lacerations up when he was asleep. He still doesn’t know quite how the guy holds his instruments, only that it is done with dexterity and a precision that colors Sanji’s jealous chef heart a granny-smith green. 

Their doctor is kind, adamant that Sanji is comfortable, and unusually bad at taking praise. Their doctor is professional, recording the, admittedly abridged, version of Sanji’s medical history with encouraging nods and the faint scritching of a feather-tipped pen. 

Their doctor is also terrified of him. 

Sanji feels awful about it, but there isn’t much he can do but give the straw hats and their doctor some time. They did just escape Enies Lobby. His presence is a walking reminder of what they barely survived. He knows that as long as he remains unchained on their ship he is a threat, and Chopper knows it too. He catches the reindeer shooting wary glances at him during those first checkups, a flash of fur in his periphery. Initial exchanges are civil, but clipped. Nothing is actively hostile, not like his interactions with other…mossier crewmates, but the doctor-patient relationship is far from trusting. There’s no warmth in the way Chopper touches his arm to check for fever, no casualness in his posture. It’s all careful distance and locked knees. Which is entirely fair. But also, ouch. 

Despite the geneal agony from his injuries and overused fruit, being bed-bound is somewhat of a blessing. Besides Chopper, Sanji doesn’t interact with the pirates over the next handful of days. He’s too busy drawing in and out of a pastel pond of drugged slumber. 

“You really need rest, Sanji.” Chopper would chide, “this will help.” Reluctant, Sanji looks into the reindeer’s doughy eyes and takes the vial from his hoof, downing the sweet liquid in one gulp. 

I have to admit, though. Being high as a News Coo bird really takes the edge off. 

Not that he would have seen the straw hats around, anyways. Apparently their captain is in worse shape than him, and the rest of them have their hands full with the ship drama. From Sanji’s prodding and Chopper’s answering mumbles, apparently the whole Merry sinking thing is actually a Big Deal. Apparently the vessel has to be retired completely. Sanji immediately feels bad for blasting the Mosshead into its mast, not to mention turning the vessel into a giant ice cube after the fact, but the little doctor waves him off. 

“Merry was on her last legs already. She wasn’t gonna make it to the next island, and we all knew it. Even Usopp, deep down…” He trails off, and there’s a burgeoning wetness to the fur around his eyes. Sanji doesn’t interrupt to ask who Usopp is, but he assumes he is another member of this wild company, “We were actually at Water 7 before everything happened with Robin. That’s where we met Franky, you know, he’s a shipwright. Did you know that he’s a cyborg?! Oh, Sanji you have to see his forearms detach its so cool…” 

The conversation trails into excited rambling, as if Chopper’s trying to outrun the sadness he just stirred up. Sanji lets him talk. It’s the most relaxed he’s seen the reindeer so far. 

The guilt still burns in his gut, but it seemed that he is hardly blamed for the Merry’s demise. He does still feel bad about the pirates violent displacement from their vessel though. They were on track to get a new ship back in Water 7, which…wasn’t going to happen anymore, for obvious reasons. Luckily enough, there are plenty of empty ships ripe for sailing lurking in the misty waters of the Florian Triangle. If you ignored all the ghosts, that is. 

Following a round of looting and heated discussion, pros and cons lists and a few days for reality to fully settle in, a ship from the derelict graveyard fleet is chosen as the straw hats’ new home. Their navigator, Nami, and Franky, who is apparently their shipwright, make the final decision. They settle on a wreak of leviathanic proportions. An ancient World Government vessel that might as well be a sea fortress. According to Nico Robin’s assessment of the mildewed records, it practically is one—the ship was built to transport the most dangerous criminals in the world to Impel Down. With a hull of reinforced steel and a mostly intact skeleton frame, it is the safest and most practical option out of the wreckage. It is also the least likely to sink beneath their feet while they figure out how the hell to get it seaworthy. They need to get off of the floundering deck of their temporary hideout and onto something solid, and quickly. 

Sanji, still high and hurting, does his best to help with the repairs. The straw hats are skeptical and suspicious of his presence, but ultimately grateful for the extra set of hands. They sure need it. 

The process is chaos. Controlled chaos, sure, but chaos nonetheless. They are on a time crunch and surrounded by cursed ships, each one whispering rumors of old deaths through splintered hulls and cracked portholes. Every plank salvaged from the other wreaks in the gloom feels like a gamble. But they need wood, steel, canvas, rope—anything that hasn’t completely rotted through. Even a few figureheads are decapitated for decorative salvage. He overhears the sniper (the aforementioned Usopp) rave to Chopper how excited their captain will be about those, once he rejoins the conscious world. 

In lieu of the absent captain, Franky takes command of the repairs, barking orders with manic energy, saws and hammers clutched in his cybernetic limbs. He moves like a man who’d built cities in another life, dragging the barely stable skeleton of the old government ship into something brutal and raw and fast. Nami handles the rigging design, while Robin catalogues every inch of the vessel to parse out dangers from time and traps left by the world government. The rest of them are conscripted to hard manual labor. 

Sanji mostly keeps his head down and does what he is told: lifting beams, hammering joints, fusing metal plates into the hull’s soft belly. His hands blister, bleed, heal, and blister again. It is miserable, and grounding in a way he didn’t know he needed. Cathartic, even. Every day is a race against the rain, against exhaustion, against the flickering paranoia that some ghost-crewed galleon might drift close and decide to take offense. Against the solemn and unvoiced fact that the marines were coming for them. 

There is so much work involved to make their new craft seaworthy that he hardly interacts with the pirates beyond the occasional order or report on progress. He never catches anyone looking directly at him for too long. Just the occasional shared glance passes like a hot potato between crewmates, eyes darting away when he catches them looking. They emanate the kind of wariness reserved for a bomb with a very, very uncertain timer. Again, better than active hostility. He takes it without complaint. 

When he isn’t working his fingers raw, he is asleep. He hardly dreams, which is a relief. He knows that Chopper’s concoctions and his exhaustion are tag teaming to overrule the fact that his brain is just itching to provide him some boiling, golden shaded nightmares featuring Kizaru’s iconic snarl. There is little time to dwell on those thoughts, however. Much is to be done. Nails to be hammered and plates to be welded and all that. What joy. 

After a hard week, the ship is resurrected into a warped, grim bastard child of the ship Franky had planned to build for the straw hats. He calls it Ghost Sunny.  

It doesn’t gleam like the original Sunny was meant to. It broods. Steel-ribbed and blackened with scorched paint, she looks like a war relic pulled out of a nightmare. One of the massive cannons they'd scavenged is mounted off-center near the bow, looming like a crooked grin. The figurehead—an old, battered lion’s head they welded together out of three different ones—has glowing red eyes salvaged from some weird marine tech even Sanji doesn’t recognize, now flickering ominously whenever the wind picked up. 

The sails are uneven but proud, made from patched-together cloth and stitched in huge, bold Xs where tears used to be. There are matching jagged weld lines all along the port side, where Franky had fused steel onto wood like Frankenstein performing surgery in a thunderstorm. Now that had been a living nightmare to witness. The end result looks cobbled, janky, and downright haunted—but it is seaworthy as hell.

Upon the vessel’s completion and informal naming ceremony, all of them gather to release a half-hearted cheer. The shipwright wipes tears from his eyes with a grubby palm. 

“It’s not beautiful,” he sobs, “But it’s fast, mean, and built to punch through anything in the way of the future Pirate King.” 

The second cheer has a lot more enthusiasm. Even Sanji, extremely out of his depth and uncomfortable in the face of such easy camaraderie, joins the celebration. He may have been scrambling with them to save all of their asses from a watery grave, but damn if looking up at the finished Ghost Sunny isnn’t satisfying. He feels a small swell of pride, and an even bigger swell of worry accompany it. Now that he isn’t an active asset to their immediate survival, what are the straw hats going to do with him? Leave him to the sharks? Eat him themselves? They are running dangerously low on supplies form their old ship…(Sanji may be spiraling, a little). 

It is then, with his personal brand of extraordinary timing and dramatic flair, that their captain wakes up. 

“Shishishishi!” Straw Hat Luffy, barefoot, emerges from the bowels of their interim hideout, “What’s all this? You guys built a new ship?” 

Luffy looks somewhat like a ghost himself. Gaunt, half-swallowed in a ratty blanket, one eye squinting under a mop of flattened curls. His skin has the papery sheen of someone who has slept through both a fever and a war. Which, to be fair, he kind of has. 

Chopper squeaks like a dropped kettle and rushes over, babbling a mix of relief and medical warnings. “You shouldn’t be out of bed! Your vitals aren’t stable yet, you haven’t eaten, your spleen could—”

“Whoa, whoa, Chopper, it’s okay!” Luffy says, ruffling the doctor’s hat with one limp hand. “I just wanted to see the ship. I’m not gonna keel over or anything.”

He takes another step forward and tilts his head back, gazing up at the towering mass of metal and patched sails looming above them. His jaw drops open in reverent horror. “Franky, Is that a cannon on the figurehead?”

“It’s a retractable cannon,” Franky sniffs proudly, wiping his nose with his forearm. “We named her Ghost Sunny. It’s like a version of what I planned for you guys before everything, this quaint galleon called the Thousand Sunny... but if she got possessed by a demon and then bench-pressed a Sea King.”

Luffy blinks at him. Then blinks at the ship. Then back at him. And then he grins. Slow and wide and feral.

“Oh hell yeah.”

His knees buckle halfway through the grin, and Chopper screeches again, catching him around the waist.

“You are not allowed to die immediately after waking up,” the reindeer hisses, half-dragging him back toward the temporary medbay. “Lie down! Now!”

“But the ship—”
“I will sedate you again!”

Luffy groans in defeat, but doesn’t resist. He glances back at the others as he is tugged away, and for a second—just a flicker—Sanji sees the weight hit him. It zings like a spike of hot iron down his spine. A kiss of the afterlife, just maybe. Haki. Crude and untrained, hardly the impression if it, but Haki nonetheless. The captain’s eyes narrow in brief but poignant suspicion. Sanji can feel the words unsaid: 

Careful, marine. Careful. 

He stands on the wooden planks, alongside but a few paces removed from the rest of the boiserious crew. Shivering, slightly. 

One chance indeed. 

Chapter Text

It looks a bit like a mackerel. He supposes that it might have been one, once. 

The fish in his hands is nearly translucent, its torpedo-esque body glowing in its paleness against the churning murk. Its eyes are rheumy and unseeing. Its streamlined fins trail a frothy miasma that is neither mist nor silk, but something else that lurks between the planes of living and the dead. It is cold—unnaturally so. The glacial tones of its flesh are far too chilled for an invertebrate, even this far out into the open ocean. 

Ghost fish. 

Sanji can feel a giddy, childish kind of excitement effervescence in his chest. Hair plastered crustily over his eye, clothes half-soaked and unwashed for weeks (Itchy, itchy, reminding him of worse times.)  Nicotine withdrawal clamping on his head like a vice. Cradling a slimy mess of a specter in the midst of the creepiest sea on the planet. 

He often forgets, that this is what its all about. 

Oh, what flavors could he tease from a fish who got lost on its way to the afterlife? What texture! Would a diner be able to taste the despair between the layers of flesh, the sense of unfinished business in the aftertaste? How could he choose a wine to best pair with a phantom? Could such a thing even be captured in cuisine? If anyone could, it would be him.  

If only the Straw Hats would let him into their kitchen. 

He understands why they don’t, of course. Unstable Logia fruit (more like, unstable emotionally), froze them solid during a Buster Call, former Vice Admiral, and all that. A week of laboring over their new ship in the torrential rains was not going to change the facts. But it did make them easier to swallow. 

Their eyes were still assessing, but no longer as suspicious. Oh, the apprehension was still there, of course, but not nearly as demoralising as it had been in the beginning. Minus the steely glare from a certain individual, their gazes were more confused than anything. Like they had been expecting him to do literally anything else upon waking up, than wordlessly help them fix up their new ship. What else was he going to do? Attack them? Walk away? 

(Actually, he could have, if he really wanted to. Once he got the nasty taste of freezer burn out of his mouth and his core cleansed to somewhat functional levels, he could have used his power to create a walkway to anywhere. Apparently Aokiji did it all the time, riding his bicycle across swaths of unsettled sea like they were rolling hills and avenues. Sanji didn’t love traversing thin ice paths atop the frozen, subdued mother sea as much as his predecessor, but it was a viable option. Probably the smartest one. But then again, wasn’t this the whole point? Ghost fish!) 

The truth is, he doesn’t know what he would do if they actually asked him to leave. Maybe he’d freeze a path and keep walking until the ocean itself spits him back out and says begone begone deserter, you heathen who can’t even save a pirate right. Maybe he’d walk all the way back to the Baratie. Maybe he’d shove one of the kitchen’s best boning knives down his gullet, so the Marines didn’t bother to interrogate Zeff for his crimes. 

Anyways, it is still tenuous. So when a News Coo paper arrived (how the hell it managed to find them out here was anyone’s guess) and all the pirates gathered in the galley of the Ghost Sunny with their faces etched in worry, he made himself scarce before they could tell him to fuck off. Their supplies were reaching critical levels of scarce, so he decided to snag the patched together pole Usopp cobbled together from salvage and make himself useful. Hence, ghost fish aplenty. He just needed to find a way to cook them… 

He eyes the shadows of the wreaks that wreathe his makeshift fishing hole. The jumble of ships stare right on back. He does remember that some of them had galleys when they were scrapping the rigging… 

This is a horrible idea, he thinks as he shoulders his way inside a schooner he recalls was abandoned in better condition than most, but fuck, I need to cook. 

What was once a tremendous galley is now a moldy, half sunken room that reeks of despair. Ceiling beams drip with condensation and the walls weep salt. Rotted food floats in brackish puddles that coat the warped floorboards. Shadows cling to the corners like cobwebs soaked in ink. Sanji pokes through decaying cabinets and rusted equipment until he can find a pan that doesn’t disintegrate into iron flecks at the lightest touch. He does eventually locate a semi-usable skillet with only a ribbon of tarnish on the edge, a sickle smooth grin of grime. Now he just needs to acquire a spice. 

As he works, there is a prickle of awareness that raises the hairs on his neck. He ignores them. The ghosts have been trying to converse for days, if conversing is another word for their spirit-sucking, crooning forms of communication they have attempted thus far. Sanji, nor the rest of the Straw Hats could understand their whirlpooling whines, so it was more of an annoyance at this point. A very creepy, bone-deep, sanity-chipping annoyance.

With pickings from other ships, he manages to cobble together a motley assortment of herbs: cumin, oregano, garlic, and what is so ancient its hard to tell, but is probably chili powder. No salt, which rackles that bubble of general frustration hes been trying to tamp down, but its fine. Its fine. He is a fantastic chef, thank you. He can make any combination work. Even in hell’s pantry.

Sanji begins to thaw the first few ghost fish from the ice block he stored them in and flares Diable Jambe to superheat the pan in some mock attempt at sterilization. This is crude as hell, he laughs to himself, but can’t deny that he is having fun. It’s the kind of cooking no one trained him for—alchemical, improvisational, half a dare to the gods. It’s inspiring, and invigorating, makes him feel more useful than he has in a long time. So, of course. 

A snap of wrongness, sharp and cold, slices through the low hum of ghost chatter. 

Sanji lunges, barely clearing the streak of homicidal steel. The block of fish explodes into a thousand ice crystals, and the force thrusts his pan into the galley wall, red-hot metal sinking into the wet wood with an angry hiss. Ash and embers curl off the impact point like the galley itself is exhaling.

Sanji whirls around, mouth open to announce his irritation, when Zoro attacks him again. Instinct whips his leg up, blocking the second swing with the edge of his shoe. He doesn’t give the man a moment to press an advantage, kicking off into a flip over his head. Sanji lands on the serving counter behind him in a coiled stance, ready to spring.

“What the hell.” he says, because that was lethal force. He tries to keep his voice steady, the genuine hurt from bleeding into his tone. Stupid, stupid, stupid. 

He thought that with enough time and enough help, maybe the pirates would trust him. He shouldn’t have held his breath. 

Zoro says nothing. His mouth is clenched around the white sword, knuckles white around the other two. He stares at Sanji with a bloodlust so thick, it practically oozes off of him, rolling in the air like heat shimmer. The man is sheathed in raw, uncut fury. 

Then he moves.

Sanji ducks under a horizontal slice that cleaves a cabinet in half. Ancient plates scream as they shatter to the floor, glass and porcelain diving into the rot. Another sword whips forward—Sanji bends nearly in half dodging the swipe. He uses the pendulum of his momentum to trust a shoe upward, catching Zoro in the ribs, but it’s like kicking a brick wall wrapped in cords of muscle. He’s launched back, skidding across slick planks, stopping only when his shoulder crunches into the cold iron of the stove.

He rolls to avoid the follow-up. Zoro’s black sword splits the still-warm stovetop open in a gout of boiling steam. 

“Oi!” Sanji shouts, coughing, eyes watering. “Do you even see me right now?!”

But of course, Zoro does not answer. And so they continue. His blade hisses through the air, missing the tip of Sanji’s nose by a breath. The sheer force of it sends splinters of the dining table flying, lodging in the wall beside the still warm pan. He dodges again, barely, boot scraping across wet, grease-slick wood. His thigh burns where a nick of steel found tender flesh.

The old galley is a battlefield now—chairs overturned, cabinets shattered, ghost-fog bleeding through the floorboards like mist from a cracked grave. The stink of scorched fish, blood, and mold coats the air. His chest heaves. 

Sanji’s mind races, fighting through pain and confusion. Zoro’s not talking. Not taunting. Just swinging like a machine running too hot, like if he stops for even a second, something worse will catch up.

Something is wrong. 

Yeah, his brain is helpful as always, No shit. 

But it’s beyond general aggression, whatever is happening here. Zoro hasn’t been the most welcoming, but the animosity between them is manageable, nothing beyond being somewhat uncomfortable, its fine (it keeps him up at night). The rage steaming off the swordsman now is magnitudes above the mild suspicion he’s been subject to throughout his semi-disastrous acquaintance with the Straw Hats. So, what changed? 

As they exchange deadly blows in the hollow corpse of the schooner’s galley, Sanji flits through his recent interactions with the pirates. He doesn’t remember saying anything particularly offensive, but then again he is unaware of what may be considered rude in reindeer or cyborg cultures. The Straw Hats have some interesting people on their ship, that’s for sure. 

He can’t figure out what he might have done, but the forces could just as well be completely external. And once he figures that out, its almost painfully obvious. 

A News Coo had delivered a newspaper. 

The Enies Lobby incident was wrapped up weeks ago. Sengoku made some mediating statement that had the dual purpose of promoting World Government superiority and saying much about the actual events all. Photographs from the clusterfuck were few and far between, the actual outcome of the battle a mere footnote in the paper, mentioning the Straw Hat’s lucky escape in a tiny font size as far back as page three. Sanji knows is currently considered MISSING and Wanted For Questioning, but there is no overt acknowledgement of his desertion, no doubt to save face. It can’t be concerning that, unless there is something more to the Buster Call, of which would never be publicized. So no, Sanji is just working himself into circles for absolutely nothing. Typical. 

But it has to be something to do with the newspaper. He’s sure of that, if nothing else. The timing is just too close. And if it is—if there’s something in that paper that turned Zoro from guarded to murderous—then it isn’t just about trust anymore. It’s about survival. So, as the swordsman tracks on the apogee of their orbital clash, he tries another tactic. 

“Whatever that damn” Sanji huffs, “Whatever that damn world government said, I swear to god I don’t buy in on it.” 

Zoro flicks his wrist. Thick globs of seawater and sweat spray off the edge of his blade. It's disgusting, but its also kind of breath-catching, in that primal, adrenaline, oh my god he must just glimmer in the sunlight sort of way. 

“Zoro I am trying here. Trying to help you guys out, I have been since that first bullet. I owe your captain a great debt, but its more than that, its owing to the fact that you are good. You might not trust me, fine, understandable, but I trust you.” 

And shit, wasn’t that the problem? 

“I trust you,” He repeats, shocked again at the admission but unwilling to take it back, stupid, stupid, stupid “Your crew. So, if you really feel the need to kill me right now, fine.” 

Sanji stops dead in the center of the room. Chest heaving in the damp, hair filthy and a mess. Pathetic attempt at a meal obliterated and in pieces around his feet and on his back. He can feel his power squirm beneath his skin, criss-crossing his ribcage but there is no point to that. He spreads his arms wide and thrusts all of his willpower into holding them still. 

Yet, he can’t keep them from shaking slightly. 

“I don’t know what you think I have done, but if I deserve to die for it, then by all means.” He tosses his head back, can’t help a wicked smile as he meets the swordsman’s eyes, “Kill me. You should know though—I don’t beg and I won’t scream. Sorry to ruin your fun.” 

The swordsman stares. 

And slowly, gently, like a bloody sunset, the lap of waves, a sinking ship; he lowers his blades. Steel fall The sound of them clattering to the floor is thunder in the stillness. 

Zoro’s expression is hard to read, but his eyes are wide, as if he expected his own reaction as much as Sanji did. That’s to say: not at all. Sanji’s heart rate is still fluttering like a hummingbirds, and he tries to take a deep breath damnit, focus on the situation but its hard when a bead of sweat trickles between the gooseflesh on his neck and he's somehow not dead yet. 

Do I want to be? 

Zoro stoops to collect his fallen swords. His eyes never leave Sanji’s form, still spread out and quivering, and Sanji can’t help but feel a swell of embarrassment. He lowers his arms. They fall to his aching sides, and he fights not to curl them around his torso, an aborted attempt at protection. Fuck, he needs a smoke. And to kick this bastard six ways to Sunday. 

All three swords are sheathed with a quiet shing. There is somehow more tension in the galley than when Zoro had been actively trying to murder him, and Sanji can’t help but drown in his thoughts over that. He’s simultaneously trying to keep the other man in his sights but look anywhere else, when Zoro suddenly speaks. 

“You,” he says, voice wreaked and wrapped in pure frustration, “Are gonna come to our ship. And tell my captain everything you know about Impel Down. And then I might just take you up on that offer of yours.”

Chapter Text

“It’s like a chess piece, only underwater, tiered, and scaled up to an obscene degree… now that I think about it, it really isn’t like a chess piece at all—but!” Sanji hastens to add, seeing the storm brewing on their faces, “I can draw what it looks like, right now, I just need some paper and a—oh, thank you—writing utensil as well.” 

Chopper wordlessly hands him a pen. 

They are seated around the salvaged table in the Ghost Sunny’s galley. It’s a relic cobbled from at least two other galleons: it’s surface is scarred with age and bad oils. Sanji itches to scrub it down. Though the clock promises it’s early evening, it might as well be midnight. The gloaming was brief, bruised, and sickly—its last light dissolving into a halo of purple mist before the pale sun surrendered to a long, cold dark. The room they make war in is a convulsing spirit. On the walls, the nail studded gasjet lamps sputter and spit, flicking odd shadows across the room and its miserable occupants. They reek of cheap kerosene, the acrid sting needling Sanji’s nose and reminding him of the barracks lanterns on cold nights

The Straw Hats are emotionally wreaked and they look it, too. Usopp is near tears, but this has been a par for course over the last couple of days, especially when he’s around Luffy (Sanji thinks it might have something to do with an odd yellow mask he’s seen the sniper clutch to his chest, though he knows it’s deeper, something jagged and raw he doesn’t have the history to understand). Only the man’s weepy expression is much worse now, the ever-present guilt threaded with very real fear. Nami’s lids are also rimmed red, her mascara chalky and smudged—but she’s as gorgeous as ever, the dark streaks giving her a deliciously edgy look. Chopper’s fur is ruffled and spiny, Franky’s swooping hair wilts. Even Nico Robin’s placid visage is marred with concern. She sweeps her gaze between her wreak of a crew and the stone-still form of her captain, before narrowing suspiciously as she takes in Sanji. He can’t help but gulp and hunch in on himself further to avoid her scrutiny. That’s one scary woman. 

Luffy has said, and continues to say nothing. Granted, Sanji’s only been in the galley for a few minutes, and barely met the guy before this unpleasant conference, but Sanji is aware enough to know that his silence is disturbing and wholly unusual. The captain’s arms fold tight over his vest and his straw hat hangs low over his gaze, shielding it. The damned newspaper rests on the tabletop before him, its sides crumpled around finger shaped grooves, and torn straight in two down the centerline. From his own seat across the table, Sanji can’t make out the small print and doesn’t try to. His head is ducked and his attention entirely on his hastily but accurately scribbled map of Impel Down.

But damn if he isn’t itching to know what it says. 

His hunger for the words runs almost as deep as the hunger in his gut. And oh boy, as soon as the thought arises he shoves it way back to nowhere gray, where it came from. Can’t afford to open that particular can of worms, right not. Though it is strange that no one else has reached for the galley’s pantry, but maybe they’re too grief-choked to think about food.

His curiosity over the paper is only natural. After all, one of those articles nearly (and might still) lead to his gruesome death. Zoro had kept his swords sheathed as he lead Sanji from the schooner’s battlefield to the Ghost Sunny, but it felt no different than a blade pressed against his spine.

 The crossing should have taken an hour at most, but the wreckage stretched the journey into a grueling ordeal. Zoro said nothing the entire way, his silence as heavy as iron, his brooding presence a punishment in itself. Sanji has received more than his fair share of psychological torture in his strange life of his, but parading through a half drowned flotilla for the better part of an afternoon was a new one. And strangely effective. Every splash of his own boots, every creak of rotting wood, every labored breath seemed amplified, as though he were walking alone through a graveyard with his executioner at his side.

Zoro, it seems, knows exactly how to carve down a man’s will without ever drawing steel. By the time the Triangle had surrendered to dusk, Sanji felt hollowed out, brittle, every muscle aching thin. When the crimson glow of the Ghost Sunny finally bled across the horizon, he nearly wept with relief.

Now though, he would very much like to go back to wandering through debris with the murderous swordsman. It had been practically peaceful compared to the complete and utter desolation of this mess. Talk about bad vibes. The wooden floors croak beneath them ominously. 

He finishes his sketch in minutes, babbling all the while to assuage the eeriness of the crew’s unnatural quiet. 

“Level One,” he says, limning the smallest floor skimming just below swooping waves, “Crimson Hell. A garden of metal, the needles were steel gray when it was first installed. Not anymore. Every day it gets a fresh coat of paint from the poor bastards made to run through it barefoot, if you know what I mean.” 

In his periphery he sees Chopper open his mouth to question him, and Robin’s eyes pinch dangerously in response. Sanji hastens to move on, pen circling the oval of the well between hells one and two. 

“In the center of the first floor is an open pit to the second. Now, of course there are elevators, but those are almost exclusively for the staff…” 

He continues his explanation to a silent audience, the pen making soft scritching noises in the salty gloom. Occasionally he hears a hum of understanding from Franky at some of the engineering details, or a gasp from the reindeer at some of the tortures he describes, but after that first slip he tries to keep it light. He can’t blame the little guy—it takes everything in him not to shudder as he shoulders through level three. Its all implied, though. Once he finishes his explanation of the key features of the rumored level six underlaid by the culture of the place, the unthinkable nature of escape, the Straw Hat’s expressions are grim. Despair is etched in every line of their faces. 

“Eternal Hell, huh…?” Luffy eventually speaks, and Sanji swears the temperature of the room drops because the guy sounds like he’s cursing the Devil and near to bring ruin on them all, “That must be where my brother is.” 

Nami’s hands fly to her mouth and she chokes on a sob, Zoro’s jaw grinds and Usopp starts murmuring like a nun on a hill gone mad with prayer, only he’s stumbling over the words hopeless, hopeless, hopeless as Chopper’s tears finally spill over, and he begins to weep in full. 

Sanji is surprised that Monkey D. Luffy even has a brother, the navy sure as hell didn’t know that. Or, he thinks piteously, they totally knew and buried it at the behest of Garp. That is much more likely. God forbid a man has two criminal grandsons (he realizes then that he misses Garp, kind of a lot). 

Even more shocking is that the man is in Impel Down. And no wonder the Straw Hat’s have gained an instant reawakening of their hostility towards him. He’s a breathing, walking reminder of the same damn organization that locked the man away! He’s still surprised Zoro didn’t kill him and save them all the trouble.

Though he knows that countless souls have been condemned, the thought of this unknown man in the underwater prison is particularly painful. It really is a dreadful way to go, and if he’s anything like his brother he certainly doesn’t deserve it. Sanji suppresses a wince and the urge to say I don’t know you very well Luffy, but I am sorry for your loss. 

But Luffy surprises him again. 

“Thank you for the information, Sanji.” Luffy whispers, and isn’t that terrifying. Sanji hasn’t heard anyone say his name in weeks, but what comes next is even more horrific, because the boy-man with the straw hat has that unshakable determination in his regard when he says, “Raise the anchor. Nami! Set a course for Impel Down. We’re going to get Ace!” 

It was like he threw a bomb on the table. The galley erupts in noise and the sheer contrast from the depressing hush from seconds before is dizzying. Sanji can hardly think between Nami’s frantic screeching, Usopp’s high-pitched pleading, and Robin’s gentle but firm concern for the safety of the crew and the sad but unyielding fact that they sail to a certain and violent doom. She details their fates in lurid colors, a pair of hands cupping over Chopper’s little ears. Shackles, fire, the endless screams of men broken past saving. Each word hooks into Sanji’s flesh, a cold reminder that she isn’t exaggerating. He knows she’s right. Damn her, he knows she’s right.

One man doesn’t flinch. Zoro. He rises in a single fluid motion, grave and expressionless, and strides out. No comfort offered, no glance spared for the hysterical crew. That’s Luffy’s burden to bear. Zoro has already accepted the order, already moving to raise the anchor, unfurl the sails, or whatever else it takes to set them on their path to hell.

Sanji watches the swordsman’s retreating back, remembers the sting of his raw pain from hours before, and ponders loyalty. He never knew devotion quite like this before. 

As soon as he thinks it, he knows it is a lie. 

He’s known it in the way Zeff never once asked about the nightmares, never forced him to voice the filth that crawled out of his sleep. Zeff knew Sanji would curse and clam up, tear himself apart rather than admit to weakness. So instead, the old man left offerings: a cup of tea cooling on the desk, clippings from the culture section about rare spices or foreign delicacies, a wedge of lemon cake. Sanji’s favorite. 

And Sanji remembers the details that burrowed into him: the day Zeff taught him to sharpen a boning knife, the ridiculous paper hats at his first Baratie birthday, the lobster bisque he begged him to taste, a moment of stillness before the gruff verdict: “Kid, you’re it.” He remembers, too, how Zeff once dropped to his knees before Sengoku when the Marines came to drag Sanji away. 

How he begged. How he kept begging, every damn time they came back.

Sanji thinks about this and burns. Oh, how he has tried to keep that mess wrapped up in the tidy space of his mind while he has been stuck in this graveyard. But he’s not stuck here, not really, he can walk on water for god’s sake, what the hell is he doing? What if the marines take out his desertion on the Baratie? 

The thought freezes him in indecision. Go back and face the music, and potentially save Zeff’s life? Or go back and face the music, essentially sealing the man’s doom? 

​​There’s no calculus for it, no way to predict which way justice will tip when it’s wielded by men drunk on their own authority. The marines don’t do the right thing. The marines do do the version of righteousness that’s best for them. And oh fuck, the things that have been done in the name of justice. 

It’s hard not to think of Ohara and glance at Robin. He nearly startles when he finds her already looking at him. 

Her voice is velvet, slightly melancholic, “Mr. Marine, if you would be so kind. Our captain seems to be committed to his decision. And I speak for myself, as well as my tearful crewmates when I say that he will be followed no matter what. Your knowledge of the stronghold is quite extensive, we would greatly appreciate any advice you have regarding a potential way into this impenetrable stronghold of yours. And do remember that I have worked for many years as an intelligence operative for individuals whose mere presence would make you defecate in fright. Don’t even think about lying to me.” 

If her method of address doesn’t discomfort him enough, the way her voice pitched low but smile remained a gash on her lovely face certainly did. What a hurricane! She is fearsome indeed, and Sanji allows himself one (1) internal swoon. Then he clears his damn throat and answers the lady. 

“I wouldn’t dream of it, my dear. I do not blame you for your caution—I would feel the same way if I were in your position,” her tight-lipped smile is stone still, and he tries not to wilt at the lack of reaction. The others turn their attention back to him though, and he sucks in a heavy breath, “Breaking into Impel Down to break someone out of it. I am not going to say its impossible, it’s not. Shiki got out by cutting off his own feet and having the one of the luckiest damn fruits he could have in that situation. Guy was a legend. But not impossible doesn’t mean it’s its in the realm of a good idea. But you know that, and it’s not my place to try to convince you of anything. I also wanna come out here and say: I’ve never been to Impel Down. I might have been a vice admiral, but I had other duties—everything I know about the prison is from chatting with colleagues, well, former colleagues. And reading the official documentation.” 

“So you did have access to the classified reports?” Robin asks, thoughtful. 

“That’s correct. Rear admiral and above can view them all at their leisure. Not many do, but uh… I was interested…” In what would happen to me if I ever got outed. If it would be worth trying to escape, or I’d be better off pulling a shiv across my throat. “... I was just interested in the workings of such a fascinating piece of architecture. It’s crazy how they built it, actually…” he stops when he sees their burgeoning annoyance. 

“Right,” Nami purses her lips, arms folded prettily across her chest, “That’s not suspicious at all. So you like reading about people getting tortured. Creepy as fuck, but good for us, I guess. How do we get in?” 

Sanji wants to slam his leg on the table and exclaim that’s not it, I swear I try to keep people OUT of places like that, but its futile, they hate his guts already, and he can’t blame them one bit for it. He holds true to what he said to Zoro earlier. 

He doesn’t beg and he sure as hell won’t scream. 

Instead, bites his tongue and tries to say something useful. 

“There are a few ways I can think of of the top of my head…” I’ve thought about this for ages, turned it around so many times I nearly drove myself to pieces, “... but they all rely on luck, at least partially. We could wait for a supply run. Sneak aboard far outside the gates, hide in barrels, and dodge the inspection somehow. They run once a month on the dot, usually on the fifteenth. That would put us out…” 

“Three weeks from now.” Robin frowns.

Luffy shakes his head, “Not an option.” 

Sanji catches himself tapping his pen in a nervous rhythm he once used during cadet briefings, and swallows. He shifts in his seat and tries to stay still. 

“Fair enough. Dodging the inspection would have been a fucking doozy, I tell you. We could also forge documents that would get us inside legitimately as faux Cipher Pol auditors or World Noble dogs, but I am pretty sure our faces are plastered over every townpole in Paradise right about now, so that won’t work either.” 

To his surprise, its Chopper who speaks, “I could do it! They have my bounty picture in my hybrid form. The marines don’t know what I look like when I’m a human!” 

And isn’t that a disturbing image. Sanji is still getting over the fact that the little reindeer talks and has some of the most advanced medical knowledge he’s ever seen. The fact that he has a human form is downright spooky. At least I now know how he holds a scalpel… 

While his glorious imagination supplies uncanny images of the doctor in this so called ‘human form,’ the Straw Hats are yelling again. Long story short: its too dangerous for Chopper to enter alone, even if he’s going to leverage the rest of them inside shortly after. Sanji can’t help but agree. 

“I also do want to state the obvious.” Sanji taps the pen on the wave-lined sea on his drawing, just beside the Gates of Justice. 

“And what is that, Mr. Marine?”

“We are wanted by the marines. Impel Down is a marine prison. Of course, getting out afterwards is going to be an issue, and a separate conversation. It seems timing is pretty important right now, and there’s no contest about that being the fastest way in…” 

“You’re suggesting we let ourselves get captured!” Nami throws her hands in the air, her gold bracelets winking in the low light. “After everything we went through to get out of Enies lobby?” 

“It seems the situation has changed, my dear.” 

“Maybe, but how do we know you aren’t pulling on one over on us? Turncoat marine helps pirates escape, and surprise surprise, walks them right into prison right after! You’d be a hero,” she spits, “and the rest of us the suckers who fell for it.” 

An awkward pall descends on the galley in the wake of her antagonistic, if reasonable words. Her suspicion of a double crossing is actually genius; if the Straw Hats trusted him more he’d try to suggest just that scenario as a way into Impel Down’s sea slick, sone walls. Who is he kidding though, does he think he can just say oh I pinky promise I will help you get out of hell just a little bit after I throw you in, don’t worry guys I won’t let you be tortured for the rest of your lives! 

The traitorous part of him, the part that leaned into the training and the camaraderie and the simple sense that he was useful, for something, considers of the reaction of his former colleagues. If he brought the Straw Hats in, would Sengoku give him a pat on the back? Kizaru offer him a real smile, one that actually met his eyes? 

He would never do that, especially to the man who saved the Baratie, but he can’t help but think on the possibility. A little bit of this, a little bit of that—alternate timelines rattling around and driving him decades worth of upset. His brain has always liked to torture him with a host of guilty what-ifs that swell, boil and fester like maggots, eating away at the soft tissues of his skull. It was particularly bad when he first ate that damn ice-ice fruit, but he’s trying to be better. Slipping back into old habits here, but hey its been a rough couple of weeks, hasn’t it? 

He really needs a shower. 

“Okay.” Sanji cuts through the hissed argument between Nami and Usopp—one that had not, unsurprisingly, been kind to his image. “We can table that for now, as a last resort. If we had more time and the right equipment, I’d suggest a diving bell. I know your shipwright would be able to pull it off,” he nods toward Franky, who blinks at the unexpected compliment, “judging by how well this ship came together with scraps. But its simply not feasible right now. We’d have to go extra deep to give the sea kings and and patrol the slip. Odds are, we’d implode before we even glimpsed the walls. And even if we did make it that far—trying to dock and squeeze through one of the vents at that depth? The pressure alone would rupture our insides like overripe fruit.”

 “What a way to go!” Franky laughs, and promptly gets his turquoise head chopped by a sharp-toothed Nami. 

“You idiot!” she screeches, “This isn’t funny! We are in the an extremely dangerous situation here!” 

Franky rubs his neck, sheepish, “Ow, yeah, which is why I was tryna lighten things up a little. Get some giggles loosening the joint.” 

“It’s not the time for that!”

Their voices spike again, another round of bickering heating the dingy room. Sanji presses his palms against the scarred table and resists, barely, the powerful urge to bash his forehead into the wood until blissful unconsciousness takes him.

“We could also bomb the place,” he mutters.

That silences them. Then detonates the galley worse than before. If Luffy’s words earlier had been a bomb, Sanji has just dropped a goddamn nuclear warhead.

“Hear me out, here me out!” He tries to yell over the chaos, but its hard to hear his own voice over Usopp’s piteous wails, Franky’s “Not cool bro!” and Nami’s exclamations of “I knew he was a heartless bastard!” Again, ouch. 

Then Luffy’s palm slams flat against the table. The meaty crack echoes through the galley, and the gasjets flare in its wake, shadows lurching across the walls like things alive. Writhing. The sudden silence is thick, nauseating.

“Sanji,” Luffy says, annoyance plain in his voice. “Get me into Impel Down. Talk. No one interrupt him.”

So Sanji talks.

And, for once,

the crew listens.

Chapter Text

They don’t end up moving forward with the bombing plan, and Sanji has to sigh with relief. He hadn’t exactly been thrilled to detail how a few well placed explosive devices could break the anchor chains on the underwater behemoth, thus allowing the separate movement of the lower floors from the structure by even better placed explosive cannons. Luffy was sure that Ace was on one of the lower if not the lowest floor, so it could have worked (and wasn’t it great, putting a name to the… nope, Sanji still didn’t know what Ace looked like. He still pictures the man as a slightly taller version of Luffy. Without the straw hat.) 

Anyways, the bombing plan is scrapped pretty quickly when the technicalities are examined, and Sanji readily admits that there would be fatalities at the neck of the decapitated floor. As in, a whole floor’s worth of prisoners would horrifically drown. And that’s lowballing it, assuming that everything will go right! 

They shut down the Suffocation plan for similar reasons. Sneaking onto one of the marine warships in the event of an emergency beacon wold have been hard enough, forget the lengths and intricacies it would take to set off said beacon. Hint: its not pretty. For the prisoners themselves, the staff, or the general state of prison’s oxygen levels. It takes a lot shy of an actual escape to cause a fleet galleons sailing to Impel Down ASAP, but catapulting hot tar into the open steam vents of the place would definitely rouse them. 

Sanji gets a few more glares from Nami for suggesting that one, but hey, he is just being honest here. Luffy had asked for a way into Impel Down. There are plenty of those, if you don’t worry about the casualties. Oh, and getting out again. 

Damn technicalities. 

In the end, the Straw Hats decide on a tentative plan which Sanji is not particularly thrilled about. Once he’s done the part of explaining the basics and they discuss the details approach, the nature of it starts to seep in. It makes him feel dirty, sharp at the edges. His stomach squirms. But it might just work. 

Materials they will need from the Florian Triangle to complete the rescue mission are quickly mapped out and foraged before they hasten to set sail. After the individual tasks are delegated the Straw Hats turn to Sanji with shifty expressions. They thank him for his input, and stare at the floor without saying anything or meeting his eyes until he excuses himself from their galley. It’s awkward as hell. They do tell him to stay close, however, and to be ready to work on the materials come first light. So it might not be as bad as he believes. 

The night is cold. The past few weeks he had been eking it out in some rotting hollow on another wreaked ship; at least it had a roof, even if it dripped. They told him stay close though and fucking hell he is still pathetic for them so he huddles on their deck to sleep, wedged between a barrel of fresh Florian Triangle sludge and the aft railing, shoulders hunched, knees pressed to chest, trying not to take up more space than necessary.

Ghosts pet his hair and press on his palms for attention. He waves them away and their noises curdle in the surrounding mist, high-pitched and somewhere between a giggle and a sob. They reform, recongeal, and attack again. Whispers worm into his ears like crawling insects. Sanji curls tighter, knuckles white against the barrel, chest tight with a fear he cannot name. He doesn’t sleep much. 

Dawn creeps across the thalassic plane, a coy blush against the endless gray of the waves, and he yearns for a smoke so badly he thinks he might cry. 

He knows, rationally, that he should be over his nicotine addiction by now, after weeks of this diabolical journey, but he ignores the implications of it. logic is a thin barrier, and he lets it slide.Once the physical and mental distress start to blur, the sanity can start c h i p p i n g   a w a y…

No matter, there is much work to be done! 

Once again, the project is lead by Nami and Franky, and once again, the men are delegated to manual labor. Even with the tension coiled tight in the Straw Hats shoulders, the eyebags beneath Luffy’s usually bright eyes, it’s not as arduous as the construction of the Ghost Sunny. Now that they have pushed out of the dense agglutination of haunted wrecks, the mood is lighter. The sky is too. The spooky fog still swamps the atmosphere, but a few birds have braved its depths. 

Luffy and Ussopp practically howl at the sight of a gull, and Sanji’s legs are just shy of full throttle ignition before he realizes that the sound is one of delight. They sneak away from the box building project to fling pellets at the bird with stick slingshots, laughing all the while. Even Chopper joins in, clapping his hooves together with a little rat a tat and Sanji can’t help his small smile. He catches Zoro looking, and quickly glances away. 

Now that he is confined to the Straw Hat’s ship and its smooth but tearing glide through open ocean, Sanji has to figure out a different food strategy. In the ship graveyard, he scavenged in the cabinets of old galleys and corners of collapsed storerooms, choking down any organic sludge he found like some type of rat. He vomited frequently, and his stomach roiled pretty much the entire time they were in that mess, but it beat begging the Straw Hats for some of their food. Or pushing his bruised powers past his limits to hunt spectral sea life that was few and far between. He laments his lost chance to sample his lucky ghost fish. That damn swordsman… 

Outside the Florian Triangle, nourishment comes by far easier. When the ship slows, Sanji waits for the Straw Hats to disappear in the galley for their midday meal (and tries not to feel jealous of whoever must be cooking). He really doesn’t want to use his fruit in front of them, he can tell that his ice makes them uncomfortable, especially Nico Robin. And he doesn’t blame her for it. As the pirates take lunch, he leans over the railing, muscles coiled and senses razor-sharp.

His power slithers from his core like liquid mercury. With a subtle flex of his fingers, he sculpts long, thin needles of ice, the crystal pale against the milky gloom. They elongate with unnatural speed, tapering to impossibly sharp points. Flash-fast, he kicks them toward the water, each strike a precise arc. The ice slices through the air with a whistling hiss before piercing the surface of the waves and plunging low. 

Fish scatter at first, silver bodies catching the wan sunlight in a glittering panic, but Sanji anticipates their flight. He adjusts the angle, a tiny twist of his foot, and another needle erupts from the belly of another, striking a fleeing snapper in the tail, pinning it to the swell like a dart in a board. A school of mackerel rises from the deep, frantic, and he dances along the deck, spinning and kicking, each motion sending a flurry of ice spears into the thrashing water.

The cold is intoxicating, crawling up his legs and through his core, but he channels it, molding it, shaping it with precision born of hours of grueling work in the Marineford basements. A line of herring is herded by a sudden fan of needles; one tiny shift of his foot, and the spray of ice soars wide, impaling two at once. Ozone and salt mixes with the metallic tang of fresh fish, stunned, pierced, and quickly dead. 

Within minutes, the deck is littered with shimmering prizes: snappers, salmon, tuna, carp.  All pinned, impaled, or immobilized by glimmering shards. Sanji steps back and critiques his work. Kizaru would have flayed him alive at such a weak performance, but he gives himself some grace given the circumstances. He scoops up his catch, the ice quickly melting in his warm hands, leaving only the slick, vital flesh. His stomach growls. Loudly. 

Sanji crawls to his hovel by the storage barrels and gets to work cooking the beasts. He is hungry enough to wolf them all down raw, but he knows that he must maintain at least an attempt at civility for his own sanity’s sake. Warm food simmering on a stove always calms him (he’s called back the memories of it often, through the years). He doesn’t have a stove but he does have Diable Jambe, and that’s good enough, for now. 

His exhaustion shows, it’s harder than it should be to control the flames. He could easily pulse them into scorching flares that would brown the bellies of his fish into tasty morsels within seconds, and just as well set fire to the entire Ghost Sunny, thus earning the guarantee of a steely end. He errs on the side of caution, and ends up with mouthfuls of flesh that are ice cold and white hot between bites. Like a shitty frozen meal warmed in an old microwave. 

It doesn’t matter. Because its the first meal he’s been able to cook in weeks, he is etiolated into the thinnest wafer of himself, filthier than he has been in years, and humiliated to such a degree, he will weep when this is over if he is not a corpse. 

But damn does this fish taste divine. 

The marine is acting weird. 

This is not new. Usopp doesn’t make a habit of stalking the man—okay, maybe he does, a little, but come on, it’s practically impossible not to notice him darting across the Ghost Sunny deck like a phantom possessed.  From the few glimpses he’s managed, definitely not the result of deliberate surveillance, but from what he has glimpsed, the guy is… a little unhinged.

There’s something manic in the way he moves. He sweats and twitches oddly, pacing one specific corner of the deck. He avoids them all like the plague, Zoro especially. His legs are tubes of supercoiled energy, ready to boil them to death or push the water in their blood absolute zero. Scorch the world or freeze it to glass? No in between and no predictability to it; just ready to do something, anything, to anyone. 

His presence had been an elephant in room for a while, waved off and unspoken, like its not that big of a deal we have a deadly weapon on the ship or, what are we supposed to do with him besides hope we don’t set him off? 

Franky did bring the situation up, once. A day after the initial Impel Down discussion, when the crew was gathered in the galley choking down some of their last ration packets. A few downed seagulls and Merry’s emergency supplies are hardly sustaining them, but where else could they stop? They don’t have time to find an island, or spend hours with anchors dropped and salvaged fishing poles, just hoping for a bite. Ace is more important, here. They can get by with a few missed meals. 

The low ceiling drips condensation, and the air stinks of powder and stale tea. The mood is rotten with hunger never satiated.  

“So…” he says through bites of some strange-smelling paste, “Are we gonna talk about him?” 

“Talk about who, Franky?” Nami’s smile is saccharine sweet. Her grip on the plastic wrapper of her ration pack is crushing. Usopp worries she might break a nail. 

“You know…blondie outside?” 

Zoro, who had been practically unconscious moments earlier, bolts to awareness. His attention narrows and locks on Franky’s, his hands twitch towards his belt. The whites of his eyes shine like plasma, like a calamity. 

“What about the dartboard, did he do something to you?” 

Usopp only has a moment to consider that, maybe that’s an overreaction, which is shocking coming from him actually, before Zoro’s hands are actually on his swords and he’s on his feet ready to launch himself out the door. 

“I’ll kill him.” 

“Woah, woah, buddy, chill,” Franky holds up his hands in the universal gesture of surrender. “Marine-bro didn’t do anything. I was just asking. I’m new, okay? And maybe this is just how you guys roll, but I think it’s weird that we never talk about it.”

Usopp sips his watered-down tea and nods.

“Yeah, calm down Zoro. And please don’t attack him—we need you ready to help break into the goddamned prison.” Nami says, then swings her attention to Franky, and repeats, “The goddamn prison. Which I would say, is of far more importance that gossiping about the marine traitor on our deck. Who is definitely scheming something!” 

Zoro shifts to stare at her, his body taunt with aggression. His tone drips vitriol, “You assume I wouldn’t be ready if I attacked him.” 

Usopp tenses, braces himself. The gasjets seem to flicker as the pressure in the room balloons to bursting…

“Zoro. Nami.” Luffy interjects smoothly between the brewing cataclysm, “Franky. Usopp. Robin. Chopper.” 

At the sound of their names in a tone that is so firm but also achingly gentle, the crew lapses into silence. Tight shoulders and wrists uncoil, bit by bit. Usopp can dimly hear the wet patter of waves against the ship’s hull. 

“I need to save Ace,” Luffy says, meeting each of their stares in turn. “And to do that I need all of you—and even Sanji. I know he’s a marine,” he nods towards the deck, where indubitably the silent figure lurks, “and he makes you uneasy. But he saved me. Saved us. I don’t think he’s a bad guy. I’m asking—please bear with me.”

He presses his fingers to the brim of his straw hat, the ribbon digging into his skin. Usopp feels his chest tighten as Luffy’s plea settles over them.

“I need you by my side,” Luffy finishes softly. “To save my brother.”

So that ends it. The words lift a weight off Usopp’s shoulders in regards to the marine. They place instead a heavier one regarding their impending mission, but that’s okay, that is exactly where their heads should be at. From the inclined heads of his fellow crewmates, it seems that they agree. The meal soon tumbles back into idle chatter once again. But as they eat, Nami’s stomach emits a conspicuous growl. She pouts. 

“Minus the whole screaming at me to catch the wind, he seemed polite. I don’t know why he didn’t at least thank us for leaving out his share of rations…” 

At that, Luffy pales. “Wait, those were his?” 

A chorus of “LUFFY!” echoes in the galley, followed by ear pulling and soft laughter, and it seems like everything is going to be okay. 

But if the marine hasn’t been eating any of the rations, what has he been eating? And how is he not dead yet? 

The answer to that is soon forthcoming. 

It’s after a lunch of a quarter tube of bean paste each. They disperse from the galley like blown dandelion seeds; drained—it is hardly worth the effort of climbing the stairs for such a meagre meal. Usopp is somewhat worried by this, how the hell are they supposed to break into the most secure facility in the world if they haven’t eaten properly in weeks? But he’s more worried about his impending nap. The new boy’s room is only a little damp, and definitely creepy, but Usopp has always slept better when its colder, and sleeping sounds real nice right now… 

Luffy’s trailing him like a dog, tongue out and flopping, which is the only reason Usopp notices when his captain gradually decelerates, before stopping in his tracks outright. Then: his hat is nearly flung into the sea as he whips his head starboard, neck turning with an audible crack. 

He inhales. Its deep and greedy, as though he’s sucking half the horizon into his chest. Usopp swears on religions he never knew he believed in, he swears that his captain’s eyes go feral. 

“MEAT!” he wails, his limbs jerking out as all four simultaneously attempt to move first without due coordination. The others likely hear his cry, but think it a normal Luffy exclamatory emotion given his hunger, and Usopp would have too if he hadn’t seen his eyes. 

Luffy is rocketing in the direction he first turned. His lips are curled into mean snarl. He’s a starving beast, a man ready to tear the sea apart with his fingernails and teeth.

Usopp stumbles after him, already regretting it. He doesn’t have to go far. Luffy halts so abruptly that his sandals screech against the planks, arms pinwheeling to keep the rest of his body from shooting straight through the railing. His ogling gaze hones in on his target. And there, wedged beside a barrel of sludge, cross-legged by the aft rail, the marine sits. His visible eye is wide with confusion. 

The situation hits Usopp ike lightning. Horrified, and with the pitiful dregs from his energy’s dim reservoir, he lunges for Luffy’s vest, “Luffy no! He is a person—remember what you said the other night, remember Luffy he is a person! HELP!” he screeches, knowing he needs someone else at his side, preferably Zoro, to be able stop his captain from performing the cannibalistic act, “You can’t eat him, you just can’t! I know you are hungry, but—” 

“You guys are hungry?” the marine asks. His voice is rough, laced with a tinge of concern for them, like he isn’t about to be devoured by their captain—

“Yes.” 

Luffy’s going to eat a man. Oh my god. Usopp’s heart seizes. He swears he feels it falter, stutter, catch. This is it, one of those heart battles the old men in Syrup Village joked about, except it doesn’t feel funny now. His head feels foggy. They should have sailed out of the Triangle mists days ago, why is the world suddenly smeared in so much white? 

He’s dimly aware he’s falling. 

He does not hit the deck. Instead, he falls into a pair of strong arms. The grip is steady, but not rough. Usopp feels the cushion of muscle as he’s lowered gently onto the planks, every motion deliberate, careful, as if he weighs nothing.

He blinks up blearily—and freezes.

Its the marine. 

Yet his hands are impossibly gentle, fingertips guiding Usopp’s shoulder away so he doesn’t knock his head against it, tucking an arm beneath his back to support his weight. His gaze glimmers with something quiet, worried.

“You—you just passed out. You guys are hungry,” he says again, but his voice is not questioning this time, its near panic. Usopp doesn’t understand what’s going on. His brain still feels halfway to Skypiea, light and hollow, like he’s floating far above his own body. Luffy hovers in his periphery, restless and twitching, a predator pacing on the edge of pounce. The marine mutters curses. Not at them, but at himself.

“Fuck, I thought… I thought… Idiot, idiot, where would they have gotten food?” he’s practically yanking at his hair, greasy strands threading through shaking fingers. 

See? Definitely a weird guy. 

Usopp tries to edge away from the crazy, to keep from catching it somehow. But as his vision clears just enough, he freezes. He sees it. What Luffy ran like hell for.

A pile of fish.

Not scraps, not bones, not sun-dried things shriveled to tough jerky, but fresh, plump, gleaming fish, stacked in a little heap by the marine’s hovel. Their scales shimmer in the dim light like liquid silver, freshly shined jewels, every ripple of movement across their bodies catching his vision like coins spilling from a treasure chest. And what a bounty! Usopp almost laughs at the absurdity of it. He must be hallucinating now, because surely there is no food on this ship, and there’s no way it would ever look that beautiful.

Yet, Luffy stares too. His pupils are blown wide, iris consumed by black pools, locked on the fish with the kind of singular focus he usually reserves for battles. Drool slips down the corner of his mouth, stringing his grin. The marine follows their gazes. 

“Shit!” the marine yells, and Usopp realizes, oh no oh no he’s pissed Luffy clocked his secret stash, he’s gonna attack us for it, when the blond dives for the pile, and all but scrambles to pour the meat into their arms. “Eat, eat, please! I am so sorry. Fuck. I am so sorry.” 

Usopp, absolutely bewildered and seriously starting to fear for the guy’s psychiatric health, gapes at the bucketload of fish on his lap. Some part of his brain worries that he is being tricked, but the greater, hungrier part of him practically howls. 

He dives in face first. 

The fish tastes like seaweed, soy sauce, and pure unblemished protein. Usopp’s teeth shear through the buttery hide, sinking into tender flesh that bursts with juice. Brine slicks down his chin. Its unbelievably good. Fresh, cleansing. Usopp supposes that he might be crying, a little, or maybe a lot, given how soggy his cheeks have suddenly become. 

In the life and times of the Great Captain Usopp, the battle to stop eating the savior fish is legendary. And yet he fights it valiantly, groaning and overcoming the urge to gorge on them all. One by one, shove their crystalline bodies down his gullet. He can’t just feast. He must remember his crewmates. 

“Luffy! Wait a second, we gotta save some for the others!” he tries to tug his captain out of the feeding frenzy, to no avail. Luffy’s head is buried in his own mound of seafood. Each fish is sucked down whole, swallowed with a loud gurgling, and rapidly disappearing one by one by one… 

“Luffy!” Usopp tries again, but it is ultimately unnecessary.

The marine, still having some sort of conniption, abruptly vaults onto the Ghost Sunny’s rail. Usopp genuinely believes that he is about to witness a suicide, he nearly chokes on a fish tail—hey, how did that get back in his mouth? Damnit his crewmates need this too!

But then the marine does something extraordinary. 

He begins to dance. 

With a single, precise flick of his heel, the air whistles. Glaciers bloom from pale palms. Lengthening, tapering, and kicked downwards, and at great speed. A shaft of ice arcs into the waves, then another, then another—Usopp hears himself gasp at the sight. He watches, mesmerized, as the man hurtles thick javelins of frost from his very body. He’s spear fishing. 

Holy shit, he’s spear fishing!

Luffy having finished his meal, watches too as while picking his gums with an uneaten spine. Juice still clings on his chin, but he doesn’t notice. It’s kind of gross, but his eyes are glittering. Meanwhile, the marine attacks the water in flashes of black and pale gold. And then, as if the sublime display of the hunt is not exciting enough: the Silver Rain begins. 

Seafood falls from the sky. The deck trembles with each impact; its like a chain of meteorites striking the earth. Scales burst into shimmering confetti, fins slap the wood in echoing thuds. Even with the mist clinging to his mind, its dreamlike, surreal. Fish first alone on the deck merge into piles as more drop, and piles merge further into one large heap by the time the marine finishes his work. Its done within minutes. 

The marine thumbs away a thin chain of sweat from his brow before his hand jerks in the direction of his pockets. He turns, those strange eyebrows pinched in wound-up irritation, his hunch a little awkward. 

“You two,” he points at Luffy and Usopp, takes in their fish fat faces, their slack-jawed wonder, “Help me carry these to the galley.” 

 They scramble to obey. Wet fish cradled in their arms, they hasten after the marine in the direction of the ship’s hearth. He moves with none of the hesitation he has had around them the last few weeks; he throws the galley door open with flourish. 

Nami, who had been worrying over the marine’s diagrams of Impel Down, startles. Ink splatters across the parchment as she lurches to get away from the man. The marine pays her no mind, however. He beelines towards the kitchen, motioning for Luffy and Usopp to set their burdens down on one of the counters. It must have been a real sight in its heyday, but now, the unused room is filthy and in shambles. Old stains splotching the floorboards, corroded pans heaped in towers that flake pure rust. Yellowed walls, ceiling wired by cobwebs. The only cabinet that’s not caked in dust is the one they stored their rations in. Usopp catches the marine’s glance at the empty shelves, and he swears the man starts moving even faster. Forget whatever the hell happened to Usopp earlier, this must be what a true heart battle looks like. 

By now, Nami is yelling for Zoro. The marine once again ignores her in favor of whatever manic task he has set. He rustles through the cupboards. He’s pulling pots and pans out at random, muttering himself all the while. The gas in the stove has long since gone stale, and Usopp opens his mouth to tell the guy that when his leg suddenly catches on freaking fire, and he has to bite his tongue so he doesn’t scream.  He calms down when he remembers that the blue flames licking up his pant leg is deliberate, this is part of the marine’s fighting style, and then freaks the fuck out again because oh no is the guy gonna start attacking them? Where the ever-loving shit is Zoro? 

And this has been a real whiplash of a few minutes, Usopp really can’t doesn’t have it in him to be surprised again but—

The marine. The marine starts cooking. 

As Sanji deftly debones a fish with a few well-placed flicks of a partially crumbled knife, Usopp remembers a moment in the fight at Enies lobby, and how the man screamed something about his power, something to do with being a chef, and he thinks, oh. 

And the flesh hits the pan with a sizzle, he’s been passively warming the metal with his legs the whole time, what the hell; the blond moves to debone the rest as he tosses the fish with expert precision, and Usopp remembers a floating restaurant in East Blue, a chef with a mustache and a kick-based style who talked about his son forced to work for the marines and thinks, oh shit.

Chapter Text

As soon as Sanji finishes cooking, he flees. 

He knows that the Straw Hats want to talk to him. Luffy especially. The captain has that taut pinch to his lips that makes Sanji want to slam a saucepan into his skull. Repeatedly.

He definitely caught the captain’s gaze change during the whole raining fish debacle. It is a slow rumble of mounting recognition, solidifying when Usopp leans over, hissing something into Luffy’s ear while Sanji is still frying the first batch of salmon. It scares him, what the captain might have realized during that scene. That I’ve been a chef this entire time, and could have gotten off my pathetic ass and actually fed them? They keep trying to catch his eyes while he hunches over the rusty stove. 

And he deserves their ire, he really does. Conversation feels impossible, the words are sticky, barbed things; they catch on the lining of his throat. He finally did his job properly after weeks of slacking, after weeks of letting them go hungry. 

The thought gives him the urge to stick his head in the sea and drown. He knows if he tries though, his god forsaken devil fruit will spaz out and freeze the water before it so much as grazes his hair. He would smash his face straight into ice. 

And he’d deserve it. Oh, how he’d deserve it. Ice shards in his eyeballs, up his nose and into the soft pink of his brain. 

So, instead of staying, or talking, or cleaning up the mess he made in the kitchen, (ungrateful, ungrateful, what a burden, what the fuck even am I) he runs. This time to a different crevice in the Ghost Sunny, since the accidental unearthing of his hovel. He needs a space to hate himself beyond the nooks they have already carved into the ship’s body. He does not want to sully their meal, their evening, their lives any more than he already has. 

He hears Luffy, then Usopp, and even Nami—Nami!—calling for him, their voices soft, coaxing. They use his name. That alone almost breaks him. But he doesn’t emerge. It’s bizarre. Sanji is a coward, but his pride is iron. He will run from them like a chastened dog, but just as well he cannot bear to let them see his falling apart. 

After, he dozes and slips unnoticed into a fitful sleep. He does not dream. 

The next morning, they arrive at the edge of the Calm Belt, their ship toying with eerily tranquil waters that girdle the dark edifice of Impel Down. Though calling it morning would be generous. The world is soaked in a dewey gray, dawn is still hours from this lonely stretch of sea. The ship is coated with slick condensation, it catches on his shoes as Sanji walks, stiff, onto the main deck. The lights of the prison loom in the distance, bright smudges in the fog. 

The Straw Hats gather in silence. It’s dark out, but Sanji is pretty sure Luffy is staring at him. He is certain once Usopp sidles over not-suspiciously and starts to whisper. Sanji can barely catch a word before he is hushed by the girls. They may be beyond the sight of marine patrols, but with the behemoth lurking close by, the urge to stay quiet is instinctual. There’s no reason to talk anyways, they have already dressed and redressed the plan to the tiniest minutiae of possibility. Contingencies drilled into their skulls by Nami and Robin as they prepped the boxes and stuffed their packs. The current beneath them double-triple checked to be the right one. They all know what to do. It’s still heavy on the nerves. 

Franky, Zoro, and Sanji move as one to unload the boxes from the hold. The boxes are long and narrow and not quite boxes yet at all, they are still missing their tops. Luffy and Usopp grab those, quietly laying them to rest beside their respective receptacles. 

There are seven of them. All slapped together with bent nails and rotting wood, calked by foul-smelling sludge and fermented seaweed. At one point, probably last night, Usopp had dotted tar on the surfaces to glue on barnacles and chunks of coral, to give them an aged look. He slopped buckets of leftover fish guts along the edges, letting maggots chew tunnels through the grain so when they wriggled out and died, the wood looked riddled with time. He rubbed in rotting kelp until it liquefied, a black-green paste that sank deep into the cracks and left his still reeking. Seven coffins, locally sourced from the foetid waters of one Florian Triangle! 

The insides are a bit nicer, but not by much. While the real dead enjoy backs to straight wood rot, the Straw Hats will be treated with reinforced copper plating ripped straight from another ship’s hull. Thankfully, Franky had scavenged some pine pitch and wax to pour and press into the seams. It smells like death, but it will offer them some sort of waterproofing on the journey ahead. Though Sanji knows that by the time they arrive at the prison, they will all be soaked to the bone. 

If they even make it. 

He shakes his head to banish the thought, and sets to help lower Chopper into his tiny casket. The poor kid is shaking, teeth chattering as he hugs his hooves to his chest. Sanji reaches out, presses a reassuring hand on the little doctor’s shoulder, and tries to nod in encouragement, though he knows his head is likely frothed into a shadow by the murk. Him and Franky wordlessly pull the matching lid over the box. And then the cyborg presses the nails to the edges, picks up his hammer and. 

Nails him in. 

The process is repeated for the rest of the Straw Hats. Except Franky, who will be staying on the haunted Ghost Sunny, slipping the vessel back into the mists and waiting for their signal. Sanji and Zoro help him maneuver the coffins once the crew is inside, carefully lifting them over the rail and lowering them to the sea using the rope-pulley contraption they modified from an old lifeboat rack. One by one, they slosh into the current with tiny splashes, and are carried, bobbing gently, out to the open ocean and in the direction of the prison.

“This one is purely anecdotal,” Sanji had stressed, as he explained this particular idea to the crew in the galley that dreadful night, “I’ve heard it from multiple people, but there is no official record of it. I need to repeat this, there’s no official record of it. Impel Down is in the Calm Belt. That’s one of the reasons its so hard to break in and out of, its a watershed in isolation, purposefully situated—I digress. It’s in the Calm Belt, yes, But there is one current that flows through it. Allegedly. The higher ups pretend it doesn’t exist, so of course its rich fodder for cadet gossip, so I’ve heard a bit about it from various places. The one and only current into Impel Down is the Ghost Ride, a soft but constant stream from the Florian Triangle.” 

Robin seemed fascinated by the topic, but Nami was impatient, “Well? That might get our ship within range of the place, but how the hell does that get us inside?” 

This is where Sanji couldn’t help but grimace, “We would need to rely on the utter and absolute nature of some humans to be evil. This is actually hideous. We might not be killing anyone with this method, but it sure as hell hijacks ethics.” 

He looked at Luffy, silently asking for permission. 

“Go on.” He said. 

Sanji is the second-to last to be nailed into his coffin. The moment his back hits the cold metal that will be his bed for the next few hours, he feels himself start to sweat. The chill bites straight through his ruined jacket, clamps a vice on his spine. He swears he sees Zoro, above him with nails in his fist, smirk at his discomfort. Bastard. The top is dragged over, and the last winking starlight disappears behind a slab of rot, just centimeters from his nose. An army of nails pierce the sides like little bullets, and he is locked in, helpless. 

Oh, he could set his legs aflame and incinerate his way out or spear through the wooden world with prongs of ice, but that would just get them all killed or worse, captured. 

He really shouldn’t be so affected by the smell of shit, the dripping damp, or the chokehold of claustrophobia. After all he is definitely in the least danger. If his coffin starts to sink or any harm befalls him en route, he can just use his ice as a buoy to keep him afloat. The others don’t have that insurance, he should be grateful and suck it up. He tells himself that over and over, like a mantra, though each breath tastes more of mildew and copper salt. But old memories always find a way to claw their greedy hands into his flesh. There are no sounds beyond the heave and groan of the waking sea, but Sanji can almost hear the chittering of rats and insects on his cell’s stone walls. Minutes elongate and warp, his head pounds, and those hours of wait are some of the longest of Sanji’s life—not counting his time on the rock. 

He can imagine the view from above. Their dark shapes approaching. A score of seven dark coffins, trailing through the preternatural tide like ants in a line. 

What if I was wrong? He thinks, and maybe even voices, words swallowed by the smothering dark, what if this current doesn’t go to the prison but ribbons out to sea, and we have all willingly offered ourselves to a doom of slow starvation, empty sea? 

His fears are assuaged at the first crunch of wood against rock. Landfall. Or something close to it. 

Sanji strains to parse the murmuring from the marines working the docks, to no avail. The morning shift is sleepy, they speak in veiled whispers and terse grunts. There is no indication of cruelty—though Sanji hopes beyond all hope that they are. They have to be. If they aren’t cruel humans, if these random dockworkers working this random early shift are maybe halfway decent guys who got burned or are not even decent, just not genuinely evil, then Ace is dead. And the Straw Hats very well be, too. 

Yet as his hopes are granted and the coffin is yanked out of the water, Sanji feels something sink in his gut, leech through his abdomen and pool at the base of his spine. The dockworkers carry his, and no doubt the others coffins into the prison, just like that. No hesitation. Sanji feels another layer of cold woosh over him as the natural melodies of the sea fade and they must enter the stony labyrinth of Impel Down. 

You rotten bastards, he wants to scream at the men carrying him, filth, filth! When I get my hands on you I’ll… do what, exactly? He’s profiting off of their horrible decision; encouraging it even. And, really what can he do? They are here for one reason and that is Portgas D. Ace, he’ll get his chance to waste these creatures, and no more. 

They are not in transit for long. He feels a few turned corners, and an anticipated but still swooping elevator descent, before he hears laughter echoing in the halls. Then his coffin is thrown to the floor, and his jaw clenches to keep from expelling the air trapped in his lungs in a long hiss. It’s not like the marines would hear him though, over the loud placing of bets in the corridor. He’s definitely going to bruise from such a rough landing. 

Sanji hears a thump as another coffin is thrown near his and he exhales, thank god, there’s Zoro. And ruminates briefly on the absurdity of the situation. What a crazy fucking plan. How the hell is it halfway to working? 

He had drawn it as a thin squiggle bisecting the map’s docks. “The Ghost Ride. The crux of human depravement. The two are connected by the Impel Down dockworkers. For some context, pretty much all the marines stationed at the prison are bad news. Considered by the marines, to be bad news,” he amends, when he saw their skeptical looks around the table, “Liars, thieves, and rapists. The dockworkers are the worst of them, there’s no doubt about that. They are basically prisoners themselves, only with a superiority complex and a paycheck. That superiority complex over their fellow inmates is fragile, though. They will go to great lengths to ensure it stays. And the Florian Triangle is full of the dead. We have lived that firsthand the past few weeks, ha. Every so often, when decaying ghost ships finally melt to slag and ooze out their contents, a few of the dead slip out of the mists. Necrotized, not quite zombie, bloated corpse and skeleton things in caskets. Buffeted by the Ghost Ride, practically placed on Impel Down’s doorstep.” 

He had to take a break there, for a moment. To gather himself. To make sure his voice didn’t shake, and the Straw Hats mistakenly assume he was lying, and not that he is just utterly ashamed of himself for knowing about this atrocity and doing next to nothing to stop it. 

“The coffins are practically placed on Impel Down’s doorstep. Some of the dockworkers will grab them and bring them inside. Ride the elevator down to the third floor.” 

Robin gasped. Sanji just nodded, grave, could hardly look at her aghast expression, “The third floor is Starvation Hell. The dockworkers make bets on how long they’ll last untouched—the coffins, that is. They push them in, close the doors, and wait around to watch through the glassview. It’s usually only a couple of minutes.” 

Silence. Haunted, horrified silence. For real that time, no murmuring, not even the sound of the flirtatious waves or ghostly creatures of the night. It was like nature herself held Her breath for fear of disturbance. For fear of the humanoid creatures She awakened. 

“That will get us as low as the third floor.” Sanji eventually said, when he had burned enough under their disgusted stares, “We need to be ready to fight as soon as we hit the sand. We’ll have to knock out the dockworkers while they’ve rigged the cameras off and the glassview is still open. It will have to be a quick takedown—we can’t have any of them yelling for help.” 

Sanji’s coffin slams against the sand he knows is not really sand. He braces himself for the sight he is about to see, the things he is about to do, then he he moves. 

He coils a leg to his chest and slingshots it forward. The old nails shriek as they rip from the coffin top, and the wooden slab locking him in goes flying, pirouetting in the dead air and before falling somewhere in the desert unseen. Sanji doesn’t dare look, he focuses on the targets ahead of him. Their inset, insect eyes are wide, their doughy faces limp with surprise. Sanji wastes no time vaulting from the open box, front-handspringing over the open ground, and smashing the side of his shoe into the jaw of the nearest dockworker. The mandible explodes, bone shards and teeth scattering in the dead air, hot blood painting the sand alive one more. Sanji barely hears the man’s choked scream—he’s flipping, turning slamming his heel into another. This time he aims lower, a center thrust shot to the heart of the chest. He feels the sternum collapse beneath his foot, the ribcage quiver and crack. Hard tissue jutting into main arteries, bronchi tree crushed and split. Sanji does not waste his powers giving them a quicker end, mercy. 

The battle, if it can even be called that with the sorry state their competition, is over quickly. The gaggle of men Luffy tore through with his gatling are unconscious in a pile, some of Sanji’s opponents joining their ranks. Meanwhile, the dockworkers on Zoro and Robin’s side of the battlefield are all dead. Necks gaping like fish mouths or twisted to impossible angles by quick hands. Neither have broken so much as a sweat.

Sanji tries to focus on making sure the others got through alright. Nami has a smear of vomit at the corner of her lips, her chest rising too fast, while Usopp looks like the color’s been drained from his veins. He hovers over them, fretting, trying not to see the artificial world ringing their little island of safety. He busies himself with small movements, dusting his sleeves, kicking sand from his soggy shoes, anything to keep his eyes down. 

Of course, it does not last. His traitorous gaze slips from the haggard forms of the Straw Hats to the yellowed haze that bleeds out from the prison’s third floor. 

It’s hot. Logically, Sanji knows it’s only the seeping heat from the lava pits of the fourth floor rising up through the stone, but logic doesn’t matter when his tongue feels like sandpaper. The air shimmers as though the desert itself has been poured into the bowels of this fortress. Each breath rasps at the back of his throat.

The jaundiced, wretched mimicry of a city hunches nearby. Buildings lurch crookedly in the haze, cobbled together from stone stained sickly yellow. Their facades are hollowed out, their doors replaced by crumbling bars. There’s no use to their upkeep, the prisoners here are far too weak to attempt a wider form of escape. Sanji’s eyes catch on the figures hunched in the shadows—prisoners so thin their bones knife through their skin, ribs standing like scaffolding under grayed flesh that will never again see the light of the sun. They curl around stones and cling to the bars with trembling fingers, mouths open as though tasting the heat, eyes hollowed to black pits. Some slump in heaps too still to tell if they’re breathing at all. How many of these people truly deserve to be here? How many are innocent? It’s impossible to tell. The air is thick with the smell of sweat and rot. Sanji’s throat works, trying to swallow the bile that has crept up it. His gut writhes. 

However, they must hurry. There’s no thought of continuing the dockworkers macabre ritual, the pirates drag their fresh corpses out the glassview and into the hall with them. Sanji can see the pitted faces of the prisoners plea to leave them in the sands, “please… anything…” but they continues pulling the dead men by their boots. Leaving them would be even worse, forcing the prisoners to make a choice that would only end up prolonging their misery. 

One day, he thinks as he and his companions strip the dockworkers of their uniforms, their rifles, their boots, One day, this all will fall. And the world will see true equity. 

But that is not today. 

Just as they move to close the glassview and leave Starvation Hell behind them forever, a voice, a piercing falsetto, rings out against the dunes. 

“Mugi-chan!”

Sanji and his companions freeze at the sound, eyes snapping toward a small cell tucked into a nearby corner. Inside, a man spins slowly, twirling with arms outstretched despite the rough black and white uniform clinging to his lean frame. His painted eyes glimmer even under the sickly light, and his lips curl into a dramatic grin. It’s uncanny, in this dead desert where even the rats starve, for someone to have such vitality, such movement, such poise. 

“Mugi-chan!” he calls again, voice lilting, almost singsong, each syllable stretched like a note in a grand performance. Sanji is just starting to turn back to the exit, shake his head sadly at the prisoner that’s no doubt gone mad, when Luffy’s jaw drops, he practically glows. 

“Bon-chan!” 

The prisoner twirls again, heels clicking against the stone floor, cuffs clinking in time to some invisible rhythm. “Ah, I knew it! I knew you’d come this way! The sand, the heat, the despair—it sings to me, and it whispered your timely arrival!” 

Luffy releases the dockworkers and leaps back into the hot sands, sprinting towards the ballerina’s cage with peals of laughter, the crying forms of Usopp and Chopper trailing his wake. Sanji yells that straying from the glassview is a bad idea, there’s no doubt cameras on this floor the dockworkers don’t have the means to rig off. 

Luffy does not seem much to care, “It’s okay Sanji he’s my friend!” and Sanji can only pinch the bridge of his nose and sigh, hope to all hopes that they haven’t stumbled beneath a cam snails gaze. It seems so far that Luffy has the devil’s luck though, so they will be all right. Probably. 

To his surprise, Nami and Zoro look pleased to see the strange prisoner as well, they too tag along as Luffy bounds away from the exit, towards the cell in third proper. Sanji hangs back by the glassview with Robin, who watches the scene with a thoughtful expression. 

“You know him?” A burst of confidence has him asking her. He slouches like they are simply chatting it up at a bar, but he knows he is probably failing at his attempt to appear casual. He’s simultaneously wrung out and spiked twitchy with adrenaline, this floor setting his nerves alight in butterfly ways that he can’t control. He sweats, eyes the Straw Hats in his periphery. They cluster around the bars of the cage, sobbing with happiness and chatting animatedly with its dancing occupant. He doesn’t expect an answer at all, let alone an honest one. He is surprised when Robin smiles at him. 

“Somewhat. He and I worked together, not that long ago. We were part of an organization that… wasn’t exactly the paragon of righteousness. Separately, we decided to leave that life behind, though curiously it was, in both of our cases, for this very crew. In his, to save it. As I am sure you understand.” 

If he ever read the dossiers on Nico Robin’s past alliances, he doesn’t remember them. She speaks as though he is supposed to know the situation she is talking about though, so he nods his head politely. Wouldn’t want to be rude to such a lovely lady.

She’s staring at him. Staring through him, eyes narrowed and seeing too much, far too much, but before he can ask what’s the matter my dear the bars to the cell break with a hearty clang. 

Zoro’s drawn two of his swords, the shitty, corroded ones Franky helped him salvage from some sunken treasure chest and reshape into viable weaponry. And what viable weaponry they are! The thick steel of the cell wall collapses to the sand in two large blocks, split in perfect symmetry down their center line.  

Luffy has jumped to embrace their new companion, because there’s no doubt in Sanji’s mind that this strange, exuberant figure will be joining them. The reunion is short lived, however. Before Sanji has to step in and be the villain who keeps time, Nami is dragging the boys, ballerina included, to the exit, mumbling about strict schedules and keeping quiet. 

There are hasty introductions. “Sanji, this is Bon-chan, he says he has somewhere to get to on level five so he’s coming with us! You both use your legs to fight, you will be great friends!” The jovial mood buoys them into the next phase of their plan, but it now becomes hushed, unspoken. Celebration can always come later, when Ace is not close to being dead. 

They fix the clothing on their bodies and secure the caps on their heads. The whiteness of the fabric, and the humped seagull logo (that privately, Sanji has always thought to look like a pair of outstanding tits) stand out in the dim corridor. Sanji feels strange, wrapped in the marine regalia once more. He was far less itchy than he had been in his tatty suit, that’s for sure. It was still uncomfortable though, and not because his was at least a size too large and definitely had a stench around the armpits. 

The standard marine rifle too feels strange in his hands, but it would be more suspicious to be seen without it. Not like they plan on being seen. Stealing the uniforms of the dead is a contingency; the plan is supposed to progress without the prison staff ever laying eyes on their group. At least until they rendezvous with Ace in sixth, then its beserk time, and Sanji can take a step back from the stress of breaking them all in, as getting them out has always been up to Luffy. They just have to make it there. For now, the cameras have already been rigged off for the marine’s cruel entertainment, they have done well so far. No cameras in the staff halls has done wonders. The alarms are eerily, blessedly silent.

Sanji wonders how long it will last. 

After they shove the dead and dying into a nearby storage closet, stacked and caught and contorted around each other like clothes in a pile of dirty laundry, Sanji leads them down the corridor. The others hunker, or in Bon-chan’s case twirl, low as they weave through the Labyrinthian passageways. The layout of the staff halls that snake the main tortures of each hell are pretty much identical per floor. He flicks through the maps in his mind while they run. 

The edges of the images are a bit foggy, as is the scribbled writing that detailed some of the staff lounges on their original copy, but the borders of the main passageways are firm strokes. Those are what he focused on when he memorized the diagrams, after all. He remembers the ancient days in the candlelight bowels of Marineford, staring at maps until the shape of them had impressed on the backs his eyelids, the pen strokes grayed and perfect, shining in the dark. He does not boast a photographic memory—if he did, he would be able to remember the exact diction and syntax of the extra notes on the maps. Instead, his mind sees the sentences as smears, their forms melted, useless things, but theirs meaning stamped into his psyche each time he retrieves the memory. 

They reach their target fast, despite a few times that voices had drawn pause and a momentary communion with the shadows. Unsurprisingly, Nico Robin is the best at suddenly dissolving into the dark, but the moss seems somewhat adept at sneaking around as well. Sanji files that away in his information bank about Zoro. Which he has made, totally, for survival reasons. Yep. Of course he is exceedingly aware of everything the moss did. The man is actively trying to kill him, Sanji needs every edge he can get! 

There’s no time to chastise himself over the matter further. They’ve reached the west end bathroom. Given its location from the staff lounges barracks, and kitchens (read: far), the relief area should be rarely used. As they approach its steel doors with no guards in sight, Sanji lets out a comforted exhale. Another roll of the dice gone in their favor. One gamble at a time is how they are going to get through this. One gamble at a time. 

They all pile in to the small bathroom. Its as windowless and cold as the rest of the prison, only its dirtier. Sanji nearly balks at the state of the clogged toilets and discolored urinal cakes littering the floor. Then he is reminded of that they are about to do next, and how this bathroom is in nearly pristine shape in comparison. Oh, hell. 

Luffy and Chopper withdraw the two halves of the drill from their respective packs, and snap them together the way Franky taught them. The dexterity in the way they join the machinery looks natural, but Sanji knows that it is only the result of many, many attempts and scolding from am annoyed cyborg. 

Usopp is actually the one who ends up wielding the tool, he hefts its bulk on his shoulder, noodle arms straining. Apparently, the sniper doubles as an assistant shipwright, so it makes sense that he has the most experience with the machine and is the least likely to punch too far through the wall, but its hard not to see him near to buckling at its weight and not wince. Because the drill has to be large. Its the only way they’ll get through such thick stone. 

“You are sure that there’s a shaft here,” Usopp whispers, and its the first thing any of them have said in a while so it catches Sanji off guard when he realizes that its directed at him, “And I’m not about to open a giant hole into the open ocean and kill us all?” 

There’s not much Sanji can say to that, except, “Pretty sure.” 

Nami rubs her temple and groans, Luffy and his odd friend just laugh, the sound echoing in the little room. Usopp dithers for another few seconds, fingers trembling over the start switch, before a look of insane purpose overcomes him. He places the chuck of the drill onto the craggy wall behind the toilet in the largest stall, and begins. 

The ensuring whirring is incredibly loud, there’s not much they can do about that but hope no guard decides to relieve their bladders at this particular bathroom, of all places. They don’t talk as Usopp cleaves the hole, they wouldn’t be able to hear each other anyways. Though Sanji still knows they want to have a conversation. Hopefully it can wait until they are back to the ship and this is all over, he doesn’t think he can handle their harsh words and complete this terrifying mission with them. 

Stone falls away into the waste shaft with a few soft plops. Usopp sighs as Chopper and Luffy pull the drill from his aching shoulders and dismantle it swiftly, storing the pieces on their backs once more. 

The open cavity behind the toilet yawns, pitch dark. Its edges drip with black slime that looks like molasses, but given the location of the shaft, and the vile smell already wafting from its depths, its hard for Sanji to trick himself into thinking its anything but liquefied shit. The others have already started pulling out the mint smeared cloths from their bags and tying them around the lower halves of their faces. He hastens to follow suit. The sharp, almost medicinal bite cuts into the reek, though not nearly enough. He tries not to gag. 

A metal spike is driven into the flooring, and a coil of rope is looped around its width, knotted tight by Robin’s deft hands. Its other end—if you could even call it that, with how many ropes were tied to more ropes to make it so—is flung down the shaft. It is swallowed by the dark with a wet slap and a hiss against smooth stone. 

One by one, they begin their descent. The thin rope shudders beneath Sanji’s hands, slick with damp, and the air presses in around him, cloying. Every time his hand closes around the junction between two ropes, he feels his stomach clench. They checked the knots on all of them with their combined weight, of course, but what if? What if? 

The waste shaft is narrow, tight enough that his shoulders brush the filth-slick walls if he shifts even slightly. He can only imagine the state of his new marine uniform, as he drags himself down through the murk. The thought gives him a grim smile, what quiet blasphemy it is, the one they wreck on the organization!

He hears murmuring from his companions above. Must be time to jam a second spike into the rock and reknot the rope. Its an insurance policy against anyone entering the west end bathroom and cutting their initial chord. Although the stall door is locked, who knows. Better be safe and double tied, than have a slight chance of falling dead to the open sea below. That would really suck. 

They aren’t too far down before air changes. The stench grows heavier, hotter, as they follow the gravity well down its plunging mark. The stink so dense it feels like it could be chewed, spat back out again like bad gum. He hears someone gag, retching unseen, though he feels nothing fall on him, so it must have been someone much higher up their chain of hellbound. The dim glow from the bathroom above shrinks fast, until it’s nothing but a pinprick, swallowed by the thick wads of fecal matter and calcified urine. 

Above him, Chopper’s muffled whimpers bleed through the cloth over his face, broken by the squeal of rope against his palms. He’s in human form for this endeavor, his hooves too sleek to grasp the fibers with any sort of consistency. Below Sanji, Zoro’s boots scrape stone, sparks briefly flickering before being smothered by the dark. The two of them, the heaviest of the group, are at the bottom of the train, alert and ready to catch any of their crewmates should they fall. 

Zoro’s crewmates. Not their crewmates. The shit must really be getting to him, for his thoughts to skip to that. Sanji’s mind snaps at the grotesque intimacy of it all: Zoro, their anchor, tethered to him in this sewerous tomb. Sanji, above him, descending a mere hair's breath away. 

It’s starting to really heat up, the air in the well much drier than it should be. He sends ice flurries up the vertical passage, but its so narrow he can hardly flit many around Chopper’s bulk. It would take a lot more for them to do much good; they must be passing through the bottom of the fourth floor, mere meters away from the pits of boiling blood. The heat, the oily, smothering, endless heat, softens Sanji’s thoughts into feverish mush. Pries open his pores and makes them weep. He forces himself to keep moving, hand over hand, even as it feels like the walls are melting around them. He has to go so far as to manually lower his heartrate, carefully cradling the freaked organ in pulse slowing ice. 

Sanji feels his palms sting with sweat, blistering. The rope, which had been a lifeline, starts to cut into his hands, a burning wire, volcanically hot. His hands, his sacred hands start to scream stop, please, I beg of you, but he can’t dwell on them when the shaft is cooking them alive. 

Then, it’s cold. 

Freezing hell envelops them like a balm, a soft mother, saying there, there, you will be alright. The cold is life-changing, Sanji hears his companions gasp and sigh at its swift arrival. Even Zoro exhales, a long hiss that fogs into the dark.

But the relief is short lived. The cold curdles into pain as breath turns white, then blue, and their sweat flash-freezes against their skin. Sanji activates Diable Jambe, but its effects are again negligible—he has to stymie the power to avoid burning his section of the rope, leaving the others hanging and him and Zoro tumbling straight down past the sixth.  

But it turns out, he needn’t have spent so much time worrying. 

The rope was always going to break regardless. 

A long, tortured groan vibrates through the line, shuddering down into Sanji’s arms. He feels the fibers that once swelled fat in the brutal heat start to seize in such a quick cold, their strength unraveling under thermodynamics’ cruel joke. The taut fibers, oh so thin, seem to fray beneath his fingertips. For a split second, the weight of all of them shifts—and Sanji knows, with a clarity coiled in the base of his spine—that they are going to fall. 

It happens just above Chopper. 

The doctor must know what’s happening just before it does, he changes form the instant the weary threads by his antlers give out with a final, nauseating, pop. 

There is a moment before gravity. A moment that hangs perfectly still, a hushed breath, suspended in the vanta-black night. And then it’s chaos. A lot of things happen at once.

One, Usopp has better reflexes than Sanji has given him credit for. Still gripping his intact portion of rope, he lunges for the little doctor, his hand closing around the tip of an antler and holding it tight. This brilliant maneuver, this life-saving catch Sanji only is only able to witness due to the fact that—

Two, his legs catch fire, an animal reflex. He kicks out, frantically, and his flames lash the walls of the shaft in violent bands. They burn his pants straight off, vaporize the nearby excrement into ash, and cast a a glow on the happenings in one glorious fireball. 

Three, everyone starts screaming bloody fucking murder. Of course, this is only natural, he does not and will not blame Bon-chan and the Straw Hats for this. But it does cause him to panic further, which leads him to—

Four, remember two seconds too late that he is an Ice-Ice man and flash freeze a barrier beneath him and Zoro. He does remember, and he does create the glacial barricade, okay. 

But he creates it after three seconds of free fall. Too slow. 

80 kilograms, plus 80 kilograms in a dead drop. Gravitational acceleration is a solid 9.8 m/s2. Falling almost 45 meters in those mere seconds since snapping. Therefore falling, plummeting really, at a speed above 100 km/hr. 

Zoro SLAMS into the ice sheet with the force of a truck on a highway. He has half a second to gasp before Sanji’s bony form smashes straight on top of him at the same speed. The swordsman’s head is whiplashed into the ice sheet. His hands fall away from swords half unsheathed, blood spurts from a bit tongue. 

Sanji knows this too because he is still conscious. At that point. And, there is a trail of burning shit, literally, spiraling down the 50 meters of walls above them, casting everything alight. Starbursts ignite in fountains of white and gold in his vision, and he fights, oh he fights to keep from fainting, to keep the cracking ice barrier solid beneath their enmeshed bodies. It hurts so much. 

Even though they hang far above them, somehow the crew’s screaming gets even louder. 

Shit, someone’s gonna hear us, he finds himself thinking, delirious, Or, I guess we can just pretend to be rats in the walls.

The thought has him chuckle and cling a bit tighter to alertness. He is able to carefully dial down the temperature, calibrating so its not too cold the bonds will break. The spiderweb fissures of the ice sheet begin to knit themselves back together, gently clasping rough edges, growing stronger. 

Then, Zoro startles awake. After only a few seconds of unconsciousness, he tenses beneath Sanji, his eyes fluttering wildly. It’s clear that the man is disoriented and in great pain. Sanji opens his mouth to tell him to stay still, that he needs to fix the barrier but—

Zoro doesn’t wait that long. He heaves beneath Sanji, screaming, “Get THE FUCK off me, WHAT THE FUCK,” sending the limp blond flying, smashing, into the nearest wall of shit. His head hits the stone with an audible crack that has the rest of the Straw Hats gasping. 

Sanji only has the presence of mind to hear Usopp’s ragged screech of “ZORO, NO!” jut out from the cacophonous mass of noise before the glacier gives way beneath them. His vision fireworks, tilts, then swirls darker until it pitches black and he slips into flickerings of dreams of happier times. 

The walls streak by their falling forms.

Chapter Text

He snaps back to consciousness with a mouthful of seawater. 

He’s blind, thrashing in the inky liquid. Every stroke feels like tearing through spacetime, every flail like ripping his own flesh. Hands splayed and grasping, but it’s futile, he’s prying at nothing, he can’t see, fuck, he can’t breathe—

Oh. I’m drowning. 

A sense of wrongness screams at him to move, to sip from the power of something, but the impulse is weak, the signal distorted as if through layers of foam. He aches too much, it’s dark and bitter cold and he’s so tired. 

Exhaustion oozes over his body, gushing against his skin from the inside out, smothering his legs, his arms, his chest like double gravity. His limbs slacken, heavy as boulders, and his head droops into the blackness, lolling and ready to succumb to an endless night. A numb burn, like the stinging of dry ice gnawing on flesh, coils around him, and for the first time in his life, Sanji doesn’t fight. He drowns. 

A hand gropes for his back, fists around the fabric of his jacket. 

He’s yanked violently upwards, lifted like a rag through dirty soup. His ears roar and then pop from the sudden pressure change, the pain of it nearly knocking him out cold again. Water rushes by, it clings to him heavily, almost like syrup, but the hand only holds him tighter and draws him in close. 

They break the surface.

Or at least, he thinks they do. Nothing changes. Sheets of seawater slick down his shoulders, but it’s still pitch black, the night—or whatever grabbing abyss surrounds them—unbroken. No stars, no moon, just the cold, the slick taste of seawater, and the shock that hits him in waves. He can’t breathe. 

The hand on his back uncoils from his jacket, slips away. Panic detonates in his chest, and before Sanji can grab at it, no, come back, I CAN’T BREATHE, it returns to slam into him. He chokes, coughs, gags; water and bile shoot into his mouth, the taste like rot and salt on the backs of his teeth, and he can’t tell if he’s swallowing or spitting, which way is up from down. The next strike hits harder. His stressed lungs scream, his stomach convulses, and everything inside him rebels, erupting in a hot, choking flood as he splutters blindly, vomiting into the dark. 

His chunks hit something solid, but he’s barely aware of it. His throat is scraped raw, the muscular walls of his stomach seething, but Sanji can breathe finally and he does so with earnest, sucking in fat gulps of the stale air. His head spins, disjointed images sloshing behind closed lids, and he’s barely aware of what’s water and what’s air, what’s real and what’s the fevered nightmare of his bruised, battered body. The nails in his head and the haloing reek of his own spew makes him sick again, and the echoes of wild retching again fill the shaft. I’m so disgusting. 

“Gross…” the owner of the hand says, and Sanji jerks away from it, flailing wildly. Zoro!  

Sanji, bile on his lips and partially drowned, entirely blind, throws himself off the swordsman, plowing straight into the sludge of a greasy wall. Tidal waves explode outwards at this maneuver, peppering the stone sides of the shaft with droplets, gushing and foaming against the mire. He slips under. He cannot see, he feels the weight of the water shift as the other man dives after him. Again, he’s hauled up, this time even more viciously, if it is possible. 

“Wake up and stay the fuck above the sea line, cook,” Zoro says, holding him close, and if Sanji weren’t so concussed, he would probably be screaming. For now, he shivers. The water is glacial, stabbing cold. The pit that leads to open ocean yawns below, a gaping maw with the pressure to bend steel. 

Speaking of screaming, his senses are dull but not entirely anesthetized by the chill, he thinks he can hear some. It resounds from high above, tinny and grating, from where Sanji swears he can see a pinprick of light. Zoro can’t possibly see him look up, but somehow the swordsman notices the sounds at the same time he does. 

“SHUT UP!” his voice suddenly booms, and Sanji flinches at the proximity of it, that deep tenor against his already distressed eardrums. “WE’RE FINE.” 

Speak for yourself, shit swordsman. 

The terrified squalls morph into a clamor of excitement, many voices blending together as one convulsing emotion, effervescent-like. It’s the Straw Hats. The memories of what just happened smack into him like a wave to the face, the kind that drives salt so far up your nose your eyes water for hours afterwards. 

We fell down the waste shaft. From hundreds of meters up. From that high, it should have been like falling on concrete. How the fuck are we not dead? 

“The fuck? Dead?” is what rasps out. He can barely push it past lips a rip of parchment, but the shaft is a funnel for sound. Zoro easily hears him, and must cock his head—Sanji hears tiny chimes from his earrings echo in the dark. 

“Dunno shit cook, I should be asking you that. I was pretty out of it when we fell,” Clearly, Sanji thinks when he remembers how Zoro, deranged, had thrown him into the wall and knocked him senseless. It shouldn’t sting, but dammit—did the man really prefer plummeting into a literal shithole and nearly drowning over enduring Sanji on top of him? The swordsman, oblivious to the other’s internal turmoil, continues, “You did something to make us land okay.” 

“I did something.” Sanji tries to sound sarcastic, but it comes out more tired and confused than anything. He may have avoided a watery grave, but the sea leeches all energy, the will to even move. If Zoro lets go of his waist for even a second, he’ll actually die. 

It’s pathetic. 

“Yeah, turned the water into, like this slush. Perfect consistency to land on, then it broke up when you started drowning. Fucking annoying of you, by the way.” 

Sanji blinks, and is about to get into the man’s face and squawk, “Ever heard of a devil fruit, ya dipshit?” when Luffy’s voice slices through the racket, which has since quieted into a burbling murmur. His tone suggests that he is screeching at the top of his lungs, but to them he sounds like he’s performing a stage whisper. 

“Zoro!” 

“LUFFY!” Zoro screams back, and Sanji slaps at the hand holding him, hissing at the man to watch his damn volume, his head feels like someone poured rocks into it. He is, predictably, ignored. “LUFFY I’M GONNA GET HIM. DRILL IN AND STAY ON THE FIFTH.”

Oh thank god they have the drill, Sanji thinks. It would be truly horrifying if the rest of the crew were stranded indefinitely, dangling over the pit with no rope left to ferry them down and an impossible climb back up to the bathroom hole. At least now they can tunnel into the snowy hell and sit tight until him and Zoro can meet them. 

Wait. How the fuck are WE going to get out now? 

“CAPTIAN I’M GONNA FIND ACE I SWEAR IT,” and Sanji nearly gasps at the conviction in his words (and the pain in his still burning lungs, of course) “I’LL GET HIM FOR YOU AND MEET YOU ON FIFTH.” 

Luffy’s laughter is distorted by the length of the shaft, but Sanji can tell he is truly pleased, “If you say so Zoro. I trust you! We will meet on fifth! Go find Ace! And don’t lose Sanji!” 

With that settled, the tumult from above hushes as the Straw Hats regroup. Their voices fade into a dim gurgle, swallowed by the gobs of effluent that surround them. The light from Sanji’s hysterical flaming descent has also dwindled to a dying ember, a faraway star. It’s just him and Zoro now, buoyed by the rancid salt water, clutching each other in the oily dark.  The wavelets lap gently against their ears, thick with liquefied shit and strings of Sanji’s vomit. 

How romantic. 

The seamy, distasteful feeling of waterlogged underwear hits him then. Clammy fabric sucks against his skin. He is going to need so many showers after this. With bleach. 

Sanji flicks through the diagrams, calculating how fall below the prison they have fallen. The waste shaft juts below the main body of the prison, spewing its guts out over the sea floor. They shouldn’t be more than a few dozen meters below the sixth floor proper, but for his noodle limbs it might as well be a mountain away.

“So, genius.” Sanji’s voice is still fucked, worse than it has been during those meditative chain smoking sessions after a hard training with Kizaru. He needs a cigarette. “How are we getting back up to sixth then?” 

Waste has trickled down the back of his neck and into his sodden collar. Sanji’s skin prickles and he itches to adjust it, straighten his sloppy clothing a little but he can barely move his arms. He is coated in gooseflesh, and his muscles can barely bring themselves to shiver! He’s as useless as a wet rag, and he hates every second of it. 

“I’ll climb us out.” 

Sanji tries flexing his fingers to revive some feeling into them.  They don’t even twitch. Useless. “What, stab your way up the walls like some kind of drunk mountaineer?"

“Yep.” Sanji feels the arm holding him aloft row back and he is transferred, in a way that can be described as nearly gentle, although not quite, to the swordsman’s other bicep. As if hefting the floppy form of a devil fruit user is a natural thing for him. Sanji supposes that with a captain like Luffy it just might be. 

With a shift and a low, water-hewn shing, Zoro draws one blade and, after contorting his swing to adjust for the narrow confines of the shaft, drives it into the stone. The scrape echoes, sharp against the muffled gurgle of the water. 

“Hold on a second, there’s shit on the walls moss! You’re going to ruin your blades, hacking like an animal.” 

Zoro grunts, starts the ghastly process of dragging his torso from the muck, “Got a better idea? Or a way to actually help?” 

Sanji opens his mouth, ready to volley some cutting retort, but nothing comes out. Nothing worth saying, anyway. His throat burns, lungs clawing through the sodden air for a fresh breath that will never come. His body hangs in Zoro’s grip.

A better idea? He doesn’t have one. A way to help? He can’t even lift his own damn weight.

He dangles loosely, tries to keep still and silent and not be such a damn burden, like always. The greasy film that floated across their little ponds surface, slaps against his face as Zoro moves like a machine. A hiss of steel, a grunt of effort and the next sword buries into the stone with a sharp crack and a spray of fecal matter into the waters below. Zoro, lightning-fast heaves them upward, presumably to a second sword buried in the wall. Sanji feels the arm around his waist tighten, the strain of corded muscle transmitting through damp fabric as Zoro hauls them close to the wall, the smell is as horrid as ever, then braces against it with one boot. For a moment they hang suspended, swaying, until there’s the jolt of gravity catching up. Zoro leans back down, free hand ripping his lower sword from the muck with a wet scrape, withdrawing the last rung of their impromptu ladder. And repeat. Hope the blade doesn’t slip. 

 Sanji should have known the rope would break. The baking heat, transitioned too fast into brutal cold. He has fucking fire and ice powers. He should have known the thermodynamical stability would be compromised by their weight—especially when the rope was salvaged from a damn graveyard. He should have reacted faster when it did break. Failure, failure, how the hell can I even call myself a fighter with reflexes that poor?

A faint whirring dribbles from above and he knows the Straw Hats have gotten the drill working. It gives him some relief, but he has still ruined their crew with his stupidity. After all, he is the reason they will lose their swordsman. 

Every centimeter higher is bought with twice the strength it should take. Sanji can feel the muscles bunching, the ragged pull of Zoro’s lungs. He’s carrying both of them, carving steps in a wall of slime and rot, because Sanji can’t. 

If Zoro were alone, he’d already be halfway to sixth by now. If Zoro were alone, they wouldn’t even be down here. If, if. 

The thing about self hatred, is. 

You often don’t realize it is there until its cannibalized you from the inside out, chewed you up and spit you back onto the bathroom floor, bloody and sobbing at two in the morning. Half-delirious and wanting… what? Whatever it is, you certainly don’t deserve it. 

It’s sickening. Like vomit, hard yellow mucus, a bloating of intestinal gas. Like sewage in your gut, fire in the back of your throat, licking up and behind your eye balls, drive that white hot needle into your skull. Deeper, deeper, and don’t forget to twist it too, corkscrew slash the tissues for every time you said something deplorable, did something that made yourself cringe after. A shot, a hit, a cigarette—one for every genuine thought you’ve had about diving off the nearest building, kitchen knife tracing line beneath your breast. You’d be dead at a drop in the bucket. Good. 

“Zoro.” 

“Hm?” Another sword is driven into the stone. The swordsman coils, tightens his grip on Sani, ready to spring upwards—

“Let me go.” 

—and relaxes, so suddenly Sanji feels like the moment is being rewound in time. The shaft is silent save for his heavy breaths and the steady drips of water from the tips of Sanji’s hair, his boots. 

“Why the fuck would I do that.” 

Because I am useless. Because I am a failure. Because Judge was right. Because it’s my fault that Zeff lost his shitty leg and had to retire. Because I ate the mango and stole the ice-ice fruit. Because I thought I could actually help people, but really just was a waste of the Revolutionary Army’s resources and time. Because I was selfish enough to save your captain in the showiest way possible, and we all suffer for it. BECAUSE I LET YOU ALL GO HUNGRY FOR WEEKS. Because I didn’t think about the temperature of the damn rope. Because I wasn’t fast enough to create a solid barrier. Because I cannot swim, and the words thank you for saving me feel like curses on my tongue, and I’m ungrateful, ungrateful.  

Because you have a better chance without me. Because I deserve to die. 

Sanji does not say any of these truths, these memories that flit across his vision like an end-of-life hallucination. Instead, he repeats himself. 

“Let me go.” 

This time Zoro’s response is quicker. “No.” 

“What happened to taking me up on my offer? All mean earrings and tell me or else… of whatever. Don’t tell me you’re a chicken, mosshead? It doesn’t suit you.” 

“It seems the situation has changed, my dear.” Zoro says, voiced pitched high. It’s immediately obvious that he’s parroting Sanji’s own words to Nami, oh so many nights ago. The guy hadn’t even been in the room then. Tsk, must have been lurking, freaking sentient plant life.

“Let me go. Now,” he tries again. 

“I can’t do that.” 

“Please.”

Somewhere above, the muffled groans and metallic echoes of the crew dissolve into silence. They must be through the wall, ensconced on the fifth floor. Good. At least some escape this pocket of perdition alive.

Without warning, Zoro yanks sharply, pivoting their bodies. Sanji slams against the opposite wall of the shaft, a wet, sticky impact that leaves him bodily pressed into the grime and filth. The walls squelch under the pressure of his back and shoulders, cold instantly bleeding through his ruined uniform. 

He cannot see the swordsman, but he hears him breathing hard across the pit. Zoro shifts once more, lifting with a grunt, adjusting the angle so that Sanji isn’t pressed fully against the wall. He is now pinned just enough to keep from falling, but not quite bathed in the shit. It’s a small mercy, but Sanji’s body is exhausted, and he barely registers the improvement.

Zoro does not mince words. “Why do you want me to drop you?” 

“Why don’t you?” 

He hears those earrings jangle again, a shrug, “My captain said don’t lose you. So I won’t. Knowing Luffy, that ain’t changing anytime in the next few centuries, so let’s wrap this up quickly. I have another promise to keep. Hey—” he shoves his forearm into Sanji’s chest, creeping closer, “—don’t you dare think about jumping.” 

“I wasn’t,” Sanji mutters. I was, but only a little bit. 

“I don’t believe you.” 

“Well that’s really too bad, then.” 

“Damnit cook!” A fist whistles past his cheek and slams into the efflivia, barely missing him, “Why are you being so difficult? I know I fucked up, okay! I’m just trying to get us out of here, as per my captain’s orders so get that damn chip off your shoulder while I carry you. Pull this ‘can’t stand me’ crap when we’re out.” 

“What…are you even talking about right now?” Sanji thinks he might have missed something. His ears are still ringing from the impact, after all. 

And he is still soaked to the bone. Unable to ignite his legs but wanting to, more now than ever. He needs to be able to see the look on Zoro’s face much more than he needs it’s warmth. He needs to know what the hell is going on. 

Zoro groans, teeth gritted, “Oh, you want me to spell it out for you? Fuck, okay, whatever. Yeah. I knocked you out, and caused us to take our little dive. Happy now?”

What. 

“No, I caused us to fall!”  

Sanji really starts to think he is hallucinating when he hears Zoro laugh, dry and hollow, “I genuinely can’t tell if you are really that delusional or this is your fucked-up way of getting revenge on me.” 

“How the—how the hell am I the delusional one? It was my plan. I should have known the damn the rope would break. How could I have been so stupid—” 

“—oh give me a break,” somehow, Sanji knows that Zoro is rolling his eyes, or something close to it, “We all tested the rope. You gonna start saying this is all Usopp’s fault too? Robin’s? Luffy’s?” 

“Now hold on a damn minute—”

“No.” Zoro leans more into Sanji’s space, forearm crushing his chest, “You hold on. Take a fucking breath. I don’t know what is going on in that pretty head of yours, but you need to lock that shit down. Seriously, sort it later. Luffy needs us.” 

“No he doesn’t!” Sanji wheezes, “Of course he needs you, but he sure as hell doesn’t need me! Don’t you dare deny that. My dumb ass made the situation at Enies Lobby ten times worse and for what? For nothing! Nothing at all but weeks of mucking it through a graveyard! Where I let everyone starve like a fool. Look around, look where the fuck we’ve ended up! At the bottom of a hole of shit! Almost a decades worth of marine intelligence and this was the best I could even do, isn’t that crazy? Isn’t that laughable? I am the worst thing that’s happened to your crew and you know it, he worst fucking abomination—so why don’t you drop me down this hole of shit and go on with your climb. Maybe then you’ll actually have a chance at saving Ace!” 

He doesn’t realize he is screaming until he stops. Shit, he really said all that, didn’t he? Out loud to the guy who tried to kill him last week, what the fuck. Panting, Sanji finally dregs up the strength to flop his damp arm to his hair and yank it. Hard. 

“Holy shit, you really mean that.” 

“The fuck,” his scalp prickles, burns, he wants to rip the skin clean off and apart, “you mean, of course I meant it. I mean everything I say.” 

Zoro is quiet. Sanji wonders, for the first time, if the other man is some sort of monster who can see in the dark. He feels like he’s being tracked, pinned by that steel stare. Flayed open with his guts spilling out, viscera dripping off their ledge, into the dark pond.

“Yeah, I’m starting to realize that.” Zoro says, sotto voice, and Sanji has kind of lost the plot, he doesn’t know what they are even talking about anymore. The swordsman shuffles on the sword he’s crouched on, scabbard knocking against his thigh, “Cook. I am going to say this once. So, get your damn hands—” he pulls his forearm off Sanji’s chest, gently tugs Sanji’s hands away from where they have twisted around gold threads, “—out of your hair and listen to me.” 

Yep, the part of Sanji’s brain that isn’t in the midst of a meltdown of the most epic proportions thinks, he definitely has night vision. 

“Not everything is about you. All this shit you’re blabbering about, this woe is me and self-sacrificial bullshit, it’s in your head! You made it up!” The Zoro’s voice barely changes, its only the softest tick higher, but Sanji somehow knows this is the closest he gets to hysterical, “Here are the facts, cook. You saved my captain’s life. Our lives. And we weren’t properly grateful for it. I—I wasn’t grateful for it.” The hesitation catches in the other man’s throat, and Sanji knows they are both thinking about that crazed fight in the kitchen, I don’t beg and I won’t scream kill me with my eyes wide open situation and his throat bobs at the memory, “I hated you. I actually did want you dead, you know, I really thought you were pulling one over on us, somehow was involved with Ace’s capture by the world government. I misjudged you, and that’s seriously my bad. I know now that it was irrational. I also know now a lot more things about your relationship with the marines than you might think, but that’s not my business. Luffy wants to have that conversation. Luffy will have that conversation. I’m getting off track here… The point is, and I know this might take a little to get into that skull of yours, but—you aren’t as shit as you think, shit cook. You’re doing just fine.” 

Sanji realizes then that Zoro has been calling him cook. He also starts crying. 

Its a slow, mounting sort of cry. One that’s probably been building for a decade or so, and what the shit, why here, why now? Huddled in the interstitium of this monstrous prison, back half-pressed against a wall of body waste. Blind, ribs broken and probably concussed, wet and filthy, powers cocooned to useless, sapping things by the mother sea. Hungry and sore, teetering over a pit on the edge of a sword that belongs to a man he just met. The tears do not care about these things. 

The man called him cook. 

Sobbing, and he’s talking loud snotty sobs, gasping for breath between each one kind of sobs, his lungs have started shrieking again kind of sobs—oh wait, they never stopped, they are just worse now, and it hurts oh how it hurts. 

Eventually, after part of a lifetime of calamity is poured out (but not all, that will come later yet), Sanji’s noisy weeping trails into quieter waves of hiccups. He gradually unwinds his hands from Zoro’s, how the hell did they get there? Stamps the back of his wrists against his eyes that will no doubt swell hideously. Sucks in a deep breath, holds for one, two, three, and lets it back out again.

They untangle. Without words, they heap back into position, Zoro with his two swords poised to continue the monotonous climb up the befouled shaft. Sanji lets Zoro carry him again, muscular arm snug around his waist, and tries not to feel bad about it. He doesn’t quite succeed. But. One day he might. 

At first, they move slow. Awkward. Feet find the wall again, boots slipping against the slime before catching. Brushing against each other and jerking away again, a little too quickly to be polite. The shaft breathes damp air around them, rancid and wet. From above, droplets run down in thin rivulets, soaking cuffs, collar, hair. 

They press themselves against the unforgiving walls—against each other—two shadows clawing upward, slow but steady, out of the dark.

Chapter Text

They punch through the stone very suddenly. 

There is little warning. One second it’s darkness, the remains of the Straw Hats one with the slime and stench, clinging to the shaft’s walls like throat sores; the next it’s a wall of white knives blizzarding into them, every flake sharper than the last. Usopp’s fingers are frozen sausages, he nearly loses his grip on the drill from surprise at the burst of flurries, the light, the wind’s aching howl. It’s only Luffy’s rubber arms looped around the handle as insurance that keep the machine from plunging down the well and crushing Zoro and Sanji beneath them. He doubts it would have killed them. Those monsters are strong enough to survive such a long fall, what’s another 20 kg chunk of metal on their heads? 

Usopp shudders, not entirely from the chill. A katana and a flaming/frozen foot to the chest sound like a horrible way to go, if he’s being honest with himself (and he always is). He scrambles to shove the broken debris out through the hole, so none of it will rain down the shaft and hit the men below. 

The sniper tries not to worry about the two of them practically hugging the sea floor, half-drowned in the dark. Sploshing in urine trails, gobs of liquefied shit. He knows Zoro will be fine, but Sanji is a devil fruit user. He must be having quite the time down there. What if he’s gagging on sewage, drowning? What if he’s already melted into the waste?

He thinks of Sanji and its hard not to wince. There is no doubt the ex-marine is Red Leg Zeff’s stolen son—finally getting a taste of the man’s cooking was the cherry on top of the absolute mountain of proof the pirates only examined after the fact. Even though Usopp himself had filled up on raw fish beforehand, the meal had been positively divine. 

 He remembers tearing at the perfectly seared flesh with his bare hands, the oily juices running down his chin, his cheeks, and staining his ragged shirt. Nami yelling at them all to slow down and actually chew the meal, enjoy it for fucks sake. The salmon, rich and buttery, yielding to the slightest pressure, its iridescent flakes a beacon of flavor, satiety. The tuna, seared to a rare, ruby-red perfection, its dense, rich chew. How the hell had Sanji managed it with such a dearth of ingredients and kitchen rusted shut for decades Usopp would never know. But it had been very clear that the man is a professional of the highest degree, and Luffy had already decided back on the Bariatie that Zeff’s son would be their cook, so. 

Usopp feels a lot of emotions regarding the whole deal, stupidity for not realizing sooner, shame for being so mistrustful, and let’s be honest, downright rude to the man. And also confusion, because why the hell didn’t Sanji say anything? Usopp’s brain spirals: maybe Sanji has amnesia, maybe he’s secretly been turned into a cyborg and the marines are watching every move he makes out the nerves of his own eyes, maybe he’s double crossing us after all—

He might not even know that we met Zeff. That Zoro fought Mihawk on the Baratie’s decks and almost bleed to death on their old wood, that Luffy beat Don Krieg with bruised fists and a scream that could be heard all the way to Reverse Mountain, probably. That his father told us stories about him, had us rolling with laughter and excitement, told us everything except your actual name, it seems. God, and we had kept an eye out for someone named Eggplant this whole time… 

He shakes his head to clear these thoughts. This is not the time to psychoanalyze the complicated workings of the blond’s head, or reminisce on that fish. That glorious, magnificent fish, which had actually been the best meal Usopp has ever had, like ever, he swears on his honor that it wasn’t just the hunger talking, that fish was—

“Focus, Caaaaaaaptian Usopp!” he hisses to himself, slapping his own cheeks. “Your destiny is not to die reminiscing about salmon!”

Even though the plan is unraveling at its seams and Ace’s only hope is now in a directionless swordsman and a sad ex-marine, there does seem to be some luck left for the rest of them. They were forced to drill where the rope had snapped, which happened to be below the stalactite prongs reaching from the ceiling while above the cloistered staff areas. Who knew if the west end bathroom of the fifth floor was as deserted as the mirror image one on third? Usopp was glad they didn’t have to find out. 

They emerge into the blizzard a few feet above the sleeping form of a massive snowbank. The fifth floor in its miserable, frostbite glory spreads out before them, much of it cloaked in Florian-like mists. Usopp hits the ground knees first, hard enough to rattle his teeth, and nearly loses his footing as ice crunches under his boots. His clothes are still dripping waste-water, and the cold takes it swiftly, sealing the filthy uniform to his skin. He screams. Quietly.

The others tumble after him: Luffy landing in a heap with his arms tangled around Nami, Chopper squealing as he rolls, Robin managing a perfect crouch even with smeared shit on her back and sludge slicked hair, Bon Clay flopping dramatically into a mound of soft snow. 

Usopp breathes out. His air blooms into a huge cloud of vapor, silver fog against the black void above, the dripping spikes of ice overhead. Inhaling is far worse, the cold seems to lacerate the soft tissues of his lungs, burrowing down the fluttering rings of his trachea. He fights to keep from coughing, knowing it will only irritate his windpipe worse.

Snow is everywhere. It spirals, shrieks, gnaws at flesh, exposed skin. It makes the air so thick that even shallow breathing feels like sucking knives. Usopp huddles the mint cloth higher, but it’s soaked through from the shaft’s ooze—it freezes instantly to the side of his face, worse than his uniform straight to the torso. His cheek sticks to it, and he almost tears the skin raw when he pulls it away. 

The world is white and black and nothing else. Frostbite colors. A graveyard painted by someone miserable who only knew two shades. Its somehow, Usopp thinks, even more depressing than the cannibalistic aura, the dead sands of the third floor. At least there had been some color. 

Shapes loom in the distance. Wrecked trees, maybe, or towers of ice jutting like a pirate’s bad teeth. Huddled clusters of cells beyond them. Somewhere in the storm, wolves howl, long and low baying like mourning, like desperation, impossible to localize in the gloom. 

Nami’s hand latches onto Luffy’s arm, fingers digging in until the topmost layer of his dirty uniform crunches. Her lips tremble with cold, but also with words she isn’t saying: Don’t run ahead. Don’t leave us. Not here.

They are not ready for this. They were never ready for this.

Sanji’s briefing flickers in his head. If everything goes to hell and we get stuck on a floor, we have to book it to the nearest elevator. That’s where we regroup. Easy for Sanji to say when he isn’t here, when Usopp’s lungs are freezing solid, he’s certain they are! And his boots squeal across ice slicker than an oil spill.

“C-come on,” Nami stammers. She’s hugging herself so tightly her knuckles are white. Her lips are already blue. “We just… have to make it to the lift. It’s not far.”

“Not far, she says,” Usopp mutters, teeth rattling like dice. “Not far across a frozen death pit full of wolves the size of Sea Kings—”

“Shut up, Usopp!” Nami snaps, voice thin with cold and fear both.

He does. There isn’t anything he can say right now that will change their situation, only grit his teeth and will his legs to get a move on. Let’s go, let’s go. Captain Usopp has endured far worse. Remember the avalanche at Drum Island…

They trudge. Robin’s face is pale but controlled, though her hands twitch at her sides as if she’s fighting not to summon extra arms just to keep herself warmer. They’ll fatigue her too fast to be anything but a drawback as they face this gelid terrain. Bon Clay has stopped twirling and instead shuffles in a hunch, teeth clacking so hard it sounds like applause for a great show. He whispers encouragements to himself under his breath, “You are strong, you are beautiful, you are graceful!” but the quaver in his voice betrays him. Even Luffy, who could fight a god with bare fists and grin (and has), shuffles with shoulders drawn together tight, his breath short. Usopp thinks about how rubber stiffens in the cold, losing its elasticity and becoming more brittle. Breakable. He swallows, and tries to focus on each perilous step on the slippery ground, banishing his panic with it. He does not succeed. 

Only Chopper looks normal. Well, not normal, but a heck of a lot more alive than the rest of the group. It’s a low bar. His fur fluffs against the cold, blue nose pink and shining, hooves steady in the ice. He fusses around them, doctoring, trying to check Nami’s pulse, or shove his hat onto Usopp’s head, or scold Bon Clay for shivering too hard.

The cold storm presses harder. Every step takes everything. His bones feel hollow, the marrow sucked clean out. He can’t feel his toes anymore. He wants, more than anything, to go back to the ship. Just keep moving, just keep moving, just—

And then, just beside them, huddled into the frosty hollow of a nearby tree, a snail eye blinks awake.

Usopp swears he hears the eyelid peel open, a slick wet scrape like meat pulled from bone. Its pupil is too black, its stare too heavy. Dead. He feels it on his skin. Watching, watching, oh fuck, of course there would be cameras, oh fuck, we’re dead. Dead. 

He wants to scream, but the air is a blade in his lungs.

The storm around them falters. Just for a breath. Just long enough for him to realize how loud they are being as they trot across fifth—their clumsy boots, their clattering teeth, their hearts hammering in chests like war drums. The blizzard rushes back in, worse this time, keening through the stalactites above, dragging the sickly sweet smell of rot up from nowhere.

And then the snow dies.

The flurries that so cruelly danced and swirled around their wretched forms do not merely settle. They melt.

Steam curls up from the ground in sickly ribbons. Patches of snowfield white shrivel a necrotized black under something unseen. In the distance, the wolves’ howls twist into high-pitched keening and then cut off all at once.

Usopp turns, slow, unwilling. The mist convulses. Purple boils through it, thick, wet, alive. 

A man steps into view, and instantly Usopp knows he is the Warden. 

Magellan, Sanji had said, writing the name in all caps and underlining it to boot, Avoid at all costs. If we run into the guy, it’s a worst case scenario. Worst possible thing that can happen to us in there, yes, I know what you are gonna say but really—it might be worse than ending up dead. He is made of poison. Made of it. Toxic purple ooze. If we see him, we run. Seriously, don’t fight him, Luffy. Luffy. You need to promise me you won’t fight—

“—GUM GUM PISTOL!” 

Of course. Of course the rubber moron’s first instinct is to launch himself straight into a chemical nightmare. Usopp’s heart leaves his body, climbs up the stalactites, and files for permanent retirement. Sanji shouldn’t have wasted his breath.

Luffy hurls himself forward, rubber limbs whipping through the storm, steam already boiling off his skin, slick pink. Gear Second floods him in an instant, veins bulging, eyes burning. Pure elasticity, firework quick. Snow detonates in sprays under his feet as he rockets straight for the demon, ignoring his crewmates shrieks. 

Magellan doesn’t flinch.

Formed of pure poison melt, a nest of hydra heads drip from his arms, each coil of venomous sludge that gnashes, spits. As Luffy approaches, they surge, striking out to catch a taste of his steaming form. Those fanged maws of liquid acid, each whip-crack scattering drops that sizzle holes into the ice, hungry for flesh. 

Bon Clay shrieks tries to cover his head. Robin grips her own wrist hard enough to bruise, as if holding her body together will stop her from acting rashly. Nami presses her back against Usopp’s, because she knows if she has to pick between him and Luffy, Usopp will bolt first. 

She’s right.

Luffy slams through their swarm. His fist is a cannonball, driving through Magellan’s barrel chest without apology. Impact, hard and fast. Shockwaves, hitting their ears a moment after. Steam explodes outward in a halo.

Usopp hears Nami gasp. Maybe Sanji was overreacting about this guy. Luffy is strong! We might win this, and with the Warden down have a straight shot to get Ace!

But it turns out, that while the ex-marine might have a bad habit concerning dramatic reactions to certain events (ahem, one fish incident, ahem), Sanji was not, even a little, overreacting in regards this particular matter. Because. 

Luffy grins as his arm blasts through Magellan’s defenses, already moving to land another hit when—the poison buckles, ripples, shifts like a rock hitting water, and

swallows him

whole. 

Hydra coils around Luffy’s arm, his shoulder, his face. Wet and hot, with a sting-slapping squelch. The rubber burns, skin blistering, flesh hissing where it touches. Luffy howls. 

Robin is the first to move. “Cien Fleur!” 

Her arms bloom in frantic bursts, sprouting across the ice and uncannily crawling forth maggot-like, scraping, clawing the poison back from Luffy’s body to no avail. They wrench and twist the purple, but every phantom hand melts to sludge in seconds, the pain tearing straight into her real flesh. Blisters rise across her real palms. Her nails blacken, crack. She staggers, biting her lip until blood runs, hot and damp past her ruined mask, freezing to slush as it trickles past the warmth of her skin.

Still she summons more, even as her own arms char and split.

Nami presses both hands to her mouth to keep the scream inside. Usopp is pretty sure he isn’t so lucky. The ragged shrieks that seem to be drowned in the icy forest are certainly coming from him. 

But even as his throat tears itself raw, his fingers automatically move to fumble at his belt, drag his Kabuto slingshot free. He nearly drops it twice. His arms won’t hold steady. The rubber strap has stiffened in the cold, grown clusters of sharp icicles, it cuts his frozen hands until blood slicks the grip. His knees knock so hard they drown the sound of his own heartbeat, the howling storm, Luffy’s ragged screams. He isn’t aiming—not really. He can’t see through the tears freezing on his lashes. It’s pathetic, pitiful, a child’s joke of resistance. And yet, by some animal instinct, he raises it.

“Let him go!” He screams, and nearly chokes on the bile sliding up his throat when the Warden turns to face him. His voice is flat, disinterested, as if he is signing off reports rather than drowning them in venom, ruining their lives.

“You should have stayed in the shaft. The cam snails caught your little reunion with prisoner Bentham in Starvation Hell hours ago… I expected your little parade on the sixth floor, to try and rescue Ace. Instead you crawl here, you fucking cockroaches.”

Bon Clay wails beside him, an apology so broken it dissolves into sobs, snot freezing at the corners of his mouth. He throws himself to his knees in the snow, bowing so violently his forehead cracks ice, babbling promises to die gracefully if Magellan just spares his friends. The Warden doesn’t even look at him. 

Nami clutches Robin’s blistered shoulders to her chest, rocking her as if she can warm her back to life. Robin’s arms are ruined. Red warped things, peeling, weeping fluid. Chopper throws himself forward, screaming for Luffy, but skids back in terror as the Hydra hisses.

The warden answers with quick violence. One serpent slams Luffy into the glassy ice, snapping his body to the floor with a sound like bones splitting. Another holds him down as he writhes. Usopp is sure five ribs at least have shattered on impact, maybe more. His captain doesn’t fold though. He thrashes, grits his teeth bloody, pulls against the ooze with every fiber of his stretched, blistered body. Another hydra maw chews across his leg, eating rubber, leaving pitted welts smoking on his skin. 

The clearing smells like seared flesh, sulfur, rot. Magellan continues. 

“I’ll admit, worming your way in with the coffins was a neat trick. You almost got away with it too. But you got careless, dancing away from the glassview to see your friend. We saw that.” 

Hydra yanks Luffy upright like a hooked fish, then smashes him down again. His head bounces off the floor with a sickening crack. Blood spatters across the snow, bright red and steaming against endless white. Usopp’s hands slip on Kabuto’s grip.

 “Though it appears that one of you was smart enough to stay out of view until now…” Magellan’s beetle-black eyes swivel, pinning Robin. She slumps fully into Nami’s arms, lips purple, arms blistered down to bone in patches. “It does seem you lost your green swordsman on the way however…Roronoa Zoro…pity for him. My staff has been tracking your movements since third—we found your little stake in the bathroom on west end. Tried blowing the shaft with dry air to snap your rope when pulling the anchor wouldn’t work. It seems like we got Roronoa at least.” 

The words hit like a guillotine. Usopp’s knees buckle. His brain flails: Zoro? Dead? No, impossible. Zoro doesn’t die. Zoro’s a maniac, he survives things no sane man should. But Magellan says it with such steady boredom that the thought worms in: what if him and Sanji couldn’t get out of the shaft fast enough? Hypothermia setting in, crushed-cold in the dark? 

Luffy convulses, fighting through the slime that tries to flood his mouth. He tears his lips free long enough to choke out words, each one slurred with blood and foam.

“Zoro… is just fine! He’s strong!”

Usopp almost cries at the stubborn certainty in his captain’s voice. It’s insane, it’s reckless, it’s blind faith—but it’s Luffy, and somehow, as always, that makes it feel real. For a heartbeat, Usopp believes. Then another Hydra maw slaps across Luffy’s chest, and the belief shatters under the sound of sizzling flesh.

Magellan exhales. Hydra exhales with him, vapor curling in their gaping maws.

“I regret to inform you, Straw Hat,” he says, voice heavy as a coffin lid closing, a hammer on a spike, “that it was quite the fall. The impact alone would pulp a lesser man. Even if your swordsman still twitched afterward, he’d be sucked down by the water pressure, pulled away and lost at sea. No great difference, however. You’ll be joining him soon enough.” 

Magellan breathes in deep. His wings unfurl, velvet black giants, on his back. Poison welts pulse along his arms, thickening, knotting, a slow coagulation into ropes of something enormous, something terrible. The air around him puckers, vapor curling and popping, blurring with the rise in potential energy. The sounds are horrific, they seem to suck on Usopp’s ears, a wet chorus, like unwanted mouths dragging over skin.

Annihilation. 

He knows it with such surety, that Magellan is going to kill them. Usopp drops the Kabuto, squeezes his eyes shut. He thinks of his crew, thinks of Kaya, thinks hey mom, I know I’ve come earlier than expected but it will be great to see you again, at least. 

The Warden, body entirely slicked in an indigo so fluorescently, violently toxic, raises his dripping arms. And—

“Puru puru puru… puru puru puru…”

The ringing of his mini den den mushi echoes in the icy air. For a moment, all is still. Usopp almost sobs in disbelief. He can’t process it. He’s watching his captain dissolve alive, Robin blister down to bone, Nami shiver herself into rigor mortis, and here—here—the fucking Warden is being called like it’s a desk job. It’s ludicrous. 

The Warden pauses with his wings poised and body corkscrewed for attack, and unwinds himself, slowly. He reaches a massive hand into his poison coat withdraws the small transponder snail from his pocket. A cartoon little thing, ridiculous in the steaming poison battlefield, fluttering lashes as it blinks. How the thing survived the man’s Devil Fruit, Usopp will never know. 

“Gacha.”

Amber glasses settle over the snail’s beady eyes, and its lips twist like it has swallowed a lemon. The snail’s voice warps into lazy, drawling vowels. Usopp is suddenly and quite fiercely jerked back to the memory of Enies Lobby, the call Sanji had with his weird boss just before everything went to shit. 

"Don’t kill them."

Magellan’s forehead creases in obvious perplexity. “What—”

"Don’t kill them, Warden. That’s an order." Kizaru says, his drawl flecked with static this low into the prison, so far beneath the line where the sky meets sea, “It seems that the situation has changed and quite quickly. As you know very well I have my own individuals reporting from inside Impel Down, and I have just been informed of quite disturbing news, from them and the Vice Warden Hannyabal nonetheless. Fire-Fist Ace has escaped, Warden. Vanished from his cell in the sixth hell, along with the First Son of the Sea Jinbe. Now… you seem to have a lot of explaining to do, Warden… You promised Marineford a pirate on the execution block… and Portgas D. Ace is currently missing. Don’t kill them, Warden. Don’t kill them quite yet.”