Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Orange and reddish leaves crunch beneath Usopp’s boots as he darts through the woods. He pauses only in brief moments to turn his chin to the sky and sniff. The chilly air dances with the scents of fading autumn: loamy soil and peeling bark and above it all, strangely, the smell of fresh-baked bread.

He knows he shouldn’t follow. He remembers too well the fairytales his mother told him years ago, of witches and spells and all manner of luring horrors waiting to gobble up little boys who stay out past their bedtime. But his mother is gone now, lost to the winter of childhood, and he needs to eat more than he fears the darkened spaces of the wood. At fourteen, he’s more than old enough to brave short food-gathering trips alone, no matter how many childish fears still linger. He has his slingshot and his snares, and so long as he doesn’t stray too deep, he can hunt his squirrels and rabbits and make it back to town before the anxiety freezes him in place.

Even with the meagre courage he’s gathered, hunting has been hard lately. The woodland creatures are all busy stockpiling their own winter stores, barricaded in their holes and alert even to silent predators, and Usopp has never been good at staying quiet. His clumsy footsteps stumble over any fallen branch, and he’s just as likely to startle at the sight of a hare as the hare herself. This past week, he’s collected nothing but acorns and sap, and his stomach is as empty as the satchel at his side. He doesn’t know what he’ll do when the snow comes, but he can’t afford to think about that. If he does, he might just sink down to the ground and never get back up.

Usopp follows the smell to a break in the trees, glad for a mission to take his mind off his hunger. Maybe a traveller left something behind in the clearing? He’d pull crusts from a campfire’s burning embers if he had to, that’s how desperate he is. 

This is as far as he’s ever dared tread into the wood, and he’s cautious as he approaches the clearing, but he can’t help his gasp as he steps into the light of midday. 

He finds himself standing at the foot of an enormous watchtower, lichen sprawling from every crack in the crumbling grey stone. The path to the tower’s base is overrun by thorny bramble, though Usopp can see tufts of greenery flourishing around the foundation: the last remnants of summer, still clinging to their little haven of sunlight. 

Whatever war this tower was built for, its purpose is long outgrown. The wooden shutters at its zenith are all closed and bound by ivy ropes, and the forest itself has grown taller than the windows once stood. No wonder Usopp never saw the tower from town: the forest’s canopy overshadows its tiled roof. 

The bready scent is stronger in the open air, though Usopp still can’t tell where it’s coming from. He circles the entire perimeter of the tower, carefully avoiding the bramble patches, but all he finds is a door with a heavy padlock at the back of the structure: no signs of human passage. Maybe the smell is coming from further on? If only he could scale the tower itself, he might be able to look for other clearings or cottages nearby, but any crevasses in the stone are too narrow for even his nimble fingers to grip. 

Usopp is craning his neck towards the sky, searching in vain for better handholds, when he sees it: drifting softly from a gap where the roof tiles have fallen in, the smallest wisp of smoke. 

He picks a sturdy-looking tree and starts climbing.

For all that he hates heights—and he hates heights—Usopp is sure-footed as he pulls himself up through the branches. Though he’s never run into any witches, there are real enough threats in the woods—bears and wild pigs and the kind of men who might make sport with a friendless boy if they could catch him on his own—that he’s learned how to make a quick escape. 

The air grows warmer as he ascends, the sun unbearably bright. He shields his eyes against the glare as he glances higher and , yes, there. One of the shutters is open, with a little orange light spilling out. Usopp climbs, and climbs, until the shivering tree begins to bend in an ominous way and he dares go no higher. Pushing aside leaves and smaller branches, he shimmies out onto a thick bough until he’s close enough to look through the open window. 

Usopp can’t see much from this low vantage: he thinks there might be a table in the corner, decaying and worn, but if it wasn’t for the telltale glow of a hearth from further within, he’d think the place was abandoned. That, and the delicious smell, so close now it has him salivating as he breathes in as deeply as he can.

A plate of the softest looking bread he’s ever seen is sitting on the windowsill. Part of the loaf has been torn into small pieces, and a flock of sparrows gathers around the offering, chittering and hopping and singing short ditties of thanks before fluttering off to make room for newcomers.

If fairie tricks exist, this must be one, but Usopp can’t bring himself to care. If he’s cursed for the rest of his life, so be it: his life already feels cursed, and what’s a little more suffering in the future if he can have just a taste of that bread now? At least in all the stories, the children get a good meal or two before their inevitable demise.

He leans out, careless in his desperation to reach the plate and its miraculous food. His arms aren’t that long, but if he can reach just a little farther... 

The tree branch shudders beneath him. For a terrifying moment, his other hand loses purchase on the bark and he’s sure he’s about to fall. He flails wildly, scrambling for anything to hold onto before he plummets down to the forest floor. His fingers latch onto a higher branch just before he tips into nothingness and Usopps drags it down to his chest, clinging tightly as his breath heaves out in frightened gasps. 

“You’re not dead,” he babbles to himself, eyes squeezed shut, “you’re fine, Usopp. Not even hurt, see? That was pretty scary, but it takes more than that to knock a sniper off his perch, hah! Now you just need to get down safely, and you can forget about almost dying. That witch nearly got you, but you outsmarted her. You didn’t fall. You’re fine...”

He forces himself to open his eyes—he doesn’t want to look down again, but he can’t make the descent blind—with an inward promise that he can steal at least one more glance at the forbidden bread before he goes. At least he can carry the sight of it to feed his imagination, and the smell... he’s never going to forget that smell. 

But when he opens his eyes, he forgets all about his planned retreat, because the window isn’t empty anymore. 

There’s a boy, maybe a year or two older than Usopp, standing between the cracked shutters, holding a second plate of steaming bread in his mitted hands. His blue eyes stare back at Usopp with cautious confusion, like the boy is just as baffled at what he’s seeing as Usopp is. Slowly, he sets the new plate down beside the first and leans out, long golden hair falling over one eye as his face breaks from the slanted roof’s shadow.

“I don’t know you,” he says warily. “Are you from the castle?”

Castle? Usopp didn’t even know there was a castle on the island. He’s never left the little coastal town he grew up in, apart from his foraging excursions, but if the woods could hide a watchtower, maybe they’re tall enough to hide a castle too.

“Yep!” Usopp says, before he can consider the wisdom of lying to a witch or fairie or whatever supernatural creature takes the shape of a frowning boy with yellow oven mitts. “I’m a... a prince, actually.” He cringes, but it’s too late to recall the flustered words, so he has no choice but to commit to the story. “I’m on a mission to greet all my loyal subjects. And, um, collect taxes.” He points at the plate. “One loaf of bread should cover it, for now.”

Usopp waits breathlessly for the boy’s response. He fully expects the shutter to be slammed in his face—that’s the treatment he gets from most of the shopkeepers in town, who’ve long lost patience with his lies—but then the boy laughs: a startled sort of sound, like he wasn’t expecting something so loud to come from his own body.

“You’re not a prince,” he says, and Usopp’s face flames, “but I’ll give you the bread.”

“...Wait, really?” Usopp sputters. “I mean, I’ll definitely take some bread, but are you sure—” he pauses, reluctant to even utter the question as his stomach eagerly growls, “are sure you don’t need it?” 

The boy in the window doesn’t look starved, but he has a thinness about him all the same: a dark, sunken quality to his eyes that Usopp knows too well from his own hungry nights, and he suddenly feels ashamed for trying to ply the boy’s food away. If he’s cooking for himself in this abandoned place, instead of eating a midday meal with his family, he might be as hard up as Usopp. 

But the boy shakes his head and holds out the plate. “If you’re hungry, you should eat,” he insists. “Take it?” 

The boy’s voice is quiet and careful, like Usopp is another sparrow who might be easily frightened away by large movements. It’s the farthest thing from threatening, and Usopp finds the last dregs of his suspicion fading away as he looks at the boy’s earnest expression.

“Okay,” Usopp says, just as quietly, as he inches forward on the branch. The boy holds the plate out as far as he can, half his body hinged over the deadly drop without a hint of fear, but even when Usopp manages to take one trembling hand off the branch to reach across the divide, there’s still far too much distance between them. Only an arm’s length separates Usopp from the tower—so close that he can see the steam rising from the loaf, can practically taste its nutty aroma—but the plate is too far to grab. 

“Actually,” Usopp says, breathing out shakily as he settles both hands back on the branch, “my arms are kinda tired from all this climbing, and it might be hard to eat up here, you know? Even for someone with my amazing balance. Maybe you can just bring the bread down to the ground and I’ll meet you there?”

The boy swallows, abruptly ashen, and Usopp quickly searches what he just said to figure out what might have offended him. Maybe it was rude to ask the boy to do more work after he already offered to feed Usopp? But he can’t expect Usopp to sprout wings and hop over to the windowsill, can he? He isn’t really a bird. 

“You can’t get in,” the boy says at last. “The door’s locked.”

Oh, right. He’d seen the lock when he arrived. “But you can open it, right?” Usopp says, tilting his head at the boy’s reticence. “You don’t have to let me upstairs or anything. You could just hand me the bread through the door?”

The boy shifts again, and something twists in Usopp’s stomach, painful enough to overtake the hunger pangs. He should be used to being turned away from peoples’ doors by now, but this boy doesn’t even know his reputation, doesn’t know he’s a liar—unless he’s been to the village and heard about Usopp? Unless someone there told the boy he shouldn’t trust him? 

“I don’t have a key,” the boy says, and then quickly speaks again before Usopp can say anything, “but I can throw the bread down to you?”

You don’t have a key? Usopp thinks, confused, but a theory starts to blossom the more he thinks about the boy’s hesitation, his shiftiness at Usopp’s questions. 

This tower must have been locked by its real owner, but the boy snuck in somehow and now he doesn’t want Usopp to find his hidden entrance. He can’t blame him—if Usopp could find someplace this amazing to hide out in town, he’d never want to give it up. He’d be like a real sniper then, nestled in the rafters with the best view in miles. Maybe the boy has daydreams like that too, and Usopp flushes with a sudden desire to find out. It’s been a long time since he’s made a friend, but if the boy hasn’t shooed him away yet, he thinks it’s worth trying at least.

Usopp looks down again at the thorny ground, knowing full well any loaf of bread tossed from the tower would get lost in the bramble or ruined in the dirt. As he stares at the tangled vines, a familiar excitement starts to bubble in his chest: the elation of a new idea. He scoots backwards towards the trunk of the tree and the boy’s breath catches, hand reaching out almost unconsciously despite the distance, as if to catch Usopp’s shoulder in midair.

“Wait, you don’t have to g—”

“Give me twenty minutes?” Usopp calls, one foot already slipping down to a lower branch. “I’ll be right back up!” 

He clambers down more quickly than he climbed, excitement softening any lingering fear. He drops the last four feet to the ground and runs to the nearest patch of bramble, pulling the hunting knife from his satchel as he falls to his knees in the dirt. The vines are tough and woody, but he manages to saw through a handful with only a few nicks to his palms, then sets to work stripping the thorns. Once the vines are safely smoothed, he leaves the bundle on the ground while he searches the surrounding wood for fallen branches. It’s easy enough to find something that serves his purpose: a long stick with an uneven fork at the end, strong enough to withstand a few experimental whacks against a nearby log. 

Back in the clearing, Usopp starts weaving. Every once in a while, he glances up to make sure the boy is still there, watching silently from the window above. His hair, long enough to fall to mid-shoulder at rest, drifts like a golden pennant in the breeze. Usopp smiles up at him and returns to his work, and soon enough his creation is complete. He threads the stick through the strap of his satchel so it rests against his back, then starts the long climb back up to where the boy is waiting.

This time, he’s brave enough to choose a slightly higher branch, so he’s fully level with the window. The new perspective gives him a better look inside the room. Beside the table he can now see the stone hearth, with a cast iron pot still nestled in the glowing coals. A ramshackle set of shelves hold other kitchen supplies—dishes, a cutting board, a rolling pin, a few copper pans—and a small collection of books, but he’s too far away to read their titles. The shelves themselves seem cobbled together, with slanting boards and nails sticking out at odd angles like they were once connected to different joints. Just behind the boy, Usopp spies a splash of bright red fabric, though he can’t see what it’s covering.

“What is that?” the boy asks, eyeing the contraption of wood and vine on Usopp’s back as he settles into his new perch. 

Usopp pulls out his new invention and brandishes it triumphantly. “It’s a net! Cool, right?” 

He’s actually kind of proud of the design: he managed to weave something of a basket shape out of the vines, and the knots connecting the basket to the stick are the same type he uses with his snares, so he knows they’re sturdy. The net should hold together as long as they don’t put anything too heavy in the basket. Not bad for a half hour’s work!

To Usopp’s disappointment, the boy’s expression is still sceptical, but that just means Usopp needs to prove to him that it works. Bracing the stick under one arm, he shuffles the wood forward, inching it closer and closer till— there. The lip of the basket catches on the windowsill, and he grins.

“See? Never let it be said that the great inventor Usopp backs down from a problem!”

The boy touches the edge of the net with hesitant fingers, then looks up at Usopp.

“You’re an inventor? I thought you were a prince.”

His voice is dry, but Usopp thinks he hears amusement nestled somewhere in there too. Usopp grins wider. 

“I’ve got lots of talents!” He wiggles the net. “Load me up?”

The boy picks up the loaf of bread, then pulls a yellow handkerchief off of the shelf. Does this boy own anything that’s not yellow? Usopp thinks to himself. Carefully, the boy wraps the bread in the cloth and sets it in the basket, and once he’s gotten the thumbs up, Usopp pulls the net back.

If the smell was alluring from a distance, it’s intoxicating up close. Usopp unwraps the bread and tears a hunk off the loaf—god, it’s still warm inside—and inhales deeply, savouring the flavour before it even hits his tongue. Earthy and rich, and is that cinnamon swirled through the dough? He takes a bite and nearly falls out of the tree. The bread, impossibly, tastes even better than it smells: there’s a hint of subtle sweetness in every bite, and the whole grain texture is satisfying without being dense. A quarter of the loaf is in his stomach before he notices his own pace, and he forces himself to slow down, to appreciate each mouthful. He’s convinced he’ll never taste anything this good again, and he wants to make it last.

When half the loaf is gone, he reluctantly wraps the rest in the handkerchief and puts it in his satchel: he’s still hungry, but he’ll be hungrier tomorrow for having reawakened his appetite. Only then does Usopp remember he has an audience. The boy is still watching him, wordlessly waiting for... Usppp’s opinion?

“This is the best thing I’ve ever eaten,” he says, for once completely honest, but the boy shakes his head.

“It’s just bread,” he says, almost shy. “And I haven’t got the recipe right yet: it’s missing something. Pumpkin seeds? Or maybe a glaze...” he trails off, gaze dropping to his lap. 

“It’s amazing,” Usopp insists. “Seriously. If I could eat this bread every day, I’d be happy for the rest of my life.”

The boy looks back at Usopp, and though his mouth is still set in a frown, his eyes are wide. 

“You mean it?” he says, and Usopp nods emphatically.

“Would I lie to you?” The boy’s lips twitch, but he doesn’t call Usopp out, and Usopp feels a little more of the anxiety in his chest fade away.

“Then come back tomorrow,” the boy says. “I’ll make you something even better.”

Usopp blinks. “Really?”

The boy nods. “I’ll try with pumpkin seeds next, and you can tell me if it’s an improvement. I mean... if you want to.”

“Yes, of course I’ll come!” Usopp says quickly. Who would turn down the offer of more free food? “You can rely on Usopp, expert taste tester! I’ll be here. Uh,” Usopp hesitates, “if I can remember how to get back.” It’s not like the trees here are any different than the rest of the woods, but he’s sure it’ll be fine. If the boy is going to bake bread again, he can just follow his nose. “I should probably get going now though. I’ve gotta make it to town before dark. Wouldn’t want to get eaten by a wolf or anything, since I smell so good now!” He laughs nervously. “Thanks again, um... sorry, what was your name?”

The boy looks off towards the hearth, and for a moment Usopp isn’t sure if he’ll answer. The thought is nerve wracking. This whole encounter already feels so impossible, he’s not sure he’ll believe his own memory tomorrow without a name to anchor it to: proof that the boy was something other than an imaginary spirit conjured by a hungry mind.

“Sanji,” he says at last. “I’m Sanji.” He looks at Usopp like he’s dreading his next question, but Usopp doesn’t have time to sate the rest of his curiosity about his new friend. The sun is already dipping past the top of the trees, and he really does need to hurry back.

“Okay! Thanks again for the bread, Sanji,” he says as he slips down to the next branch. He pauses as soon as his feet are firmly planted and lifts his head back up towards the window. “You promise you’ll be here, right?” 

He just wants to check. People say they’ll come back but... well, it’s always good to make sure.

“I’ll be here,” Sanji says, with a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “I promise.”

Usopp carries the promise with him all the way back to town, along with the leftover bread. The warmth of both keeps the worst of the evening chill at bay. It’s nearly winter, but for now it’s still autumn, and Usopp has a full belly and a trail of fresh bread to follow in the morning. He falls asleep in his mother’s old house with a light heart, and the taste of hope on his tongue.

Chapter Text

True to his word, Sanji is waiting when he returns the next day, though the telltale scent of toasted nuts had already soothed Usopp’s worries long before he reached the tower. With the net he’d hidden in the undergrowth strapped to his back, he climbs the tree and whistles to the closed shutter. A moment later, the window flies open to reveal Sanji in a flour-dusted apron, a mixing bowl cradled beneath one arm. 

He looks out of breath, taken aback by the sight of Usopp, and Usopp is abruptly, mortifyingly aware of the early hour and the fact that they never actually discussed when he’d return, only that he would. The sun barely rose two hours ago, but he’d been too excited to sleep late, and leftover bread for breakfast gave his steps the energy they’d been lacking for weeks.

“Sorry, should I have come later?” he says nervously.

Even though it’s too late to go back and change things, his mind is already sprinting through worst case scenarios: Sanji glaring and telling him to get lost, that other people have important work to do—

“No,” Sanji says quickly. “No, it’s fine. I’m almost done anyway.” He grabs the wooden spoon in the bowl and starts mixing again, and the smell of apricots wafts out of the window. The new scent catches Usopp off guard; he’d been expecting cinnamon. 

“What’s that?” Usopp says, craning his neck to get a peak at the bowl’s contents.

“Pastry filling. It would be better with fresh fruit, but if I rehydrate the dried apricot in cream, it should help with the texture.”

“Oh... but I thought you were making bread? Not that I’m complaining! Pastries sound amazing too.” He can’t remember the last time he’s had a fancy dessert, and with fresh cream? His mouth is already watering.

Sanji nods his head towards the table where three plates sit side by side, each covered with a dish towel. “I made the bread earlier, but I thought I should make something else too. Nobody likes to eat the same thing two days in a row.” 

Usopp doesn’t really know how to say that he’s been doing exactly that for most of the past two years, but yeah, that makes sense for other people. If he had the choice, he’d love to have a bit of variety in his diet. Game meat and foraged nuts can fill your stomach, but they do get pretty boring after a while. 

“Did you have to get up early to start all that?” Usopp asks as Sanji begins to spoon the thickened cream into rectangular pastry shells. “I hope it wasn’t too much work...” He doesn’t know that much about baking, but he remembers it taking his mother hours to make bread for the week, between rising and shaping and tending the loaves in their little brick oven. 

“I don’t mind,” Sanji says. “Cooking is the only reason I get up most days.”

He can’t tell if Sanji is joking or not: his voice is light, but the phrasing has a dark edge that doesn’t sit well with Usopp. But thankfully, Sanji’s face breaks into a smile that’s unmistakably happy as he wraps one of the loaves in another handkerchief and places a few pastries on top, uncovered to protect the cream filling. Usopp offers the net, and a minute later he has a lapful of baked goods, and he’s lost again in the incredible aroma of fresh bread. It looks like Sanji went with the pumpkin seeds after all. The salty flavour of the loaf is a perfect contrast to the sweetness of the pastries.

“You’re not a witch, are you?” Usopp says, licking cream from his fingers. “Like, you’re not going to steal my firstborn baby in exchange for all this food?”

Sanji snorts. “Not that I know of.” He pulls the apron over his head and folds it neatly on the windowsill. “I just like to feed people.”

“Do you sell your bread too? I bet people would pay a lot for it.” Plans are already whirling in Usopp’s mind. Maybe he can offer to help Sanji with his business, hand out fliers or draw signs or something. He knows the charity won’t last forever, but if he could help Sanji somehow, then maybe he would keep paying Usopp back with fresh bread, and he wouldn’t have to scavenge this winter after all.

But Sanji shakes his head. “Not many customers in the middle of this forest. You’re my first one, actually.” He hesitates. “One day I’d like to open a restaurant, though.”

“You should! Your baking is incredible, and I bet you make lots of other delicious things too. I don’t really have any money right now, but when I do, I’ll eat at your restaurant every single day.”

Sanji smooths the folded apron with his hand, again and again, until every crease is erased. “You don’t think it’s a stupid idea?”

“What, opening a restaurant?”

“Yeah.”

“I think it’s an amazing idea! Seriously, if I was as talented as you, I’d want the whole world to taste my food.”

Sanji’s hair only hides half of his blush. “It’s not that great,” he mumbles. “I’ve still got a lot more to learn.” He gestures at the net. “And you’re talented too.”

“This? Nah. I’m just good at cobbling things together. It’s not really, like, a proper skill.” Not a proper skill that can get him a proper job, anyway, which is the main source of his daily problems. Even if he could fib his way into an apprenticeship, he doesn’t have the experience to match the kids who grew up learning trades from their parents. His mother was too sick to work for most of her life, and his father—well, he’ll come back and teach Usopp what he knows one day, but he still has to survive till then.

“What else have you made?” Sanji asks, and he seems genuinely curious, and Usopp wants any excuse to stay a bit longer, so he pushes down the lingering worry that someone as accomplished as Sanji won’t be impressed by his silly hobbies and tries to think back on his best inventions: toys he made for village children, snare designs he tweaked to be more effective, the mesh canopy he rigged over his bed to keep the mosquitos out at night. He adds a few embellishments to each of these endeavours, but Sanji listens attentively, even when Usopp realises he’s been rambling for half an hour straight without giving the other boy a chance to say anything.

“Sorry,” he says sheepishly, rubbing his neck. “Just don’t get to talk about this stuff much, I guess.”

“You can talk as much as you want. I really don’t mind.”

Sanji’s words are deliberately casual, but his eyes have that dark, sunken look again that Usopp remembers from yesterday. If it wasn’t for all the food on the table, he would swear Sanji looks just as hungry as him. 

“I could show you one of my snares tomorrow?” Usopp offers. “Or like, maybe I can make you something you need? For your cooking, or whatever.” He bites his lip, hoping Sanji won’t be annoyed by his overeagerness. But they’re kind of friends now, right? So it’s probably fine to invite himself over. “I don’t have a lot of materials, but if I can make it out of stuff from the forest, I can probably try?” 

“Okay,” Sanji says, his voice strangely thick. “I’d like that.”

“Great,” Usopp says, trying not to let his relief show too much. So far, this friendship-making plan is going much more smoothly than he expected. “So, tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow.” Sanji smiles, and for a moment, the darkness in his eyes vanishes, replaced with a fervency that reminds Usopp of when a new idea of his own takes hold and he has to rush home to start on it. “I’ll have something even more delicious for you to try by then.”

“Can’t wait!” 

Usopp starts to pack up the leftovers, but he pauses when he notices a hint of yellow at the bottom of his satchel. It’s the handkerchief from yesterday’s bread, crushed beneath his knife and slingshot. He takes it out and brushes off the crumbs as best he can. His calloused fingertips catch on a monogram embroidered on the corner of the fabric: a tiny letter ‘V’, stitched in neat cursive. 

“Sorry, I forgot to give this back,” he says, holding out the mostly-clean handkerchief. “I think it’ll fall through the holes in the net, but I can try to toss it?”

“It’s fine,” Sanji says. He wrinkles his nose. “Keep it. I don’t need it.”

Usopp’s not sure what he would do with such a nice piece of fabric either: it seems wrong to use something so pretty as a napkin, but he’s not about to let a precious gift go to waste. He fluffs out the fabric again. It’s a big piece of cloth, probably made for folding into fancy pocket squares or elaborate plate toppers or whatever else rich people do with perfectly functional material. Carefully, Usopp folds the square in half and wraps it around his hair, tying the fabric into a kerchief. 

“How do I look?” 

Sanji laughs, and Usopp is proud that he’s managed to startle the sound out of the otherwise serious boy for the second day in a row. 

“I never thought to do something like that with them.”

“That’s why I’m the great inventor,” he says with a wink. “My ideas are always the best.” He’s used to bolstering his courage with false bravado, but somehow the boast is easier to believe when Sanji nods in agreement. “I’ll be back to show you more of my incredible creations tomorrow!”

The glare of the sun isn’t quite so harsh with the light-coloured kerchief to cover his head, and Usopp swings down through the branches with a clear and untroubled mind for the first time in weeks. He has something to look forward to tomorrow, and when tomorrow comes, Sanji is the one who asks him to come back to try another dish he’s been developing. By the end of the week, they’ve stopped having the conversation entirely: they both know that Usopp will be stopping by the next day, no excuses needed.

It’s surprisingly easy to fall into the new routine. Usopp still ventures into the forest each morning at dawn and returns to his mother’s house at night, but he doesn’t have to spend long hours hunting or foraging anymore. With a full stomach from Sanji’s cooking, he has time to spend the mornings whittling and inventing and thinking of new gifts to bring along to the tower so he can stop feeling quite so indebted by Sanji’s generosity. 

He carves a new mixing spoon out of a maple bough. He takes springs from his worn-down mattress and bends them with pliers into a thin whisk, and adds a wooden turn crank so that Sanji’s hands can have a rest from beating cream and egg whites for his confections. He goes to sleep grinning with the memory of Sanji’s expression whenever Usopp produces a new gift: always so surprised, so grateful, as though he wasn’t literally feeding Usopp food that costs ten times what his little offerings are worth. 

Every so often, Sanji does tell him not to come for a few days. “I have to go get more ingredients,” he explains the first time, apologetic at the disappointed expression Usopp tries and fails to hide. “But then I’ll be able to make all sorts of new things for us to try?”

“Are you sure you don’t want me to come along and help?” Usopp asks, partly because he really wants to know what market Sanji’s getting all this food from—maybe it’s cheaper than the one in town?—and partly because he feels bad leaving Sanji to haul all those provisions through the woods alone. He’s not the strongest person around, but Usopp can carry a sack or two of flour if it helps share the load.

But Sanji waves him off, telling him he can handle the shopping just fine on his own, and Usopp reluctantly agrees. The next two days are dull without a visit to look forward to, but it’s worth suffering through the boredom for the excitement of returning on the third day to find Sanji’s shutter open, just as he said it would be. 

“You came back,” Sanji says when Usopp’s head pops above the windowsill, voice heavy with a relief that confuses Usopp as much as it warms his chest. Shouldn’t he have been the one worried that Sanji wouldn’t come back? 

“Of course I did,” he says anyway. “You’re my best friend.” 

The admission slips out thoughtlessly, but he means it. He has friends, sort of—he plays with the village children during the summer, but then they go back to school, or to the harvest, or their parents warn them away once they realise who exactly they’ve been spending time with down by the docks—but he’s never had a friend like Sanji. He’s never had a friend this close to his own age, who he can share his interests with and who doesn’t seem to mind Usopp’s talking, but instead leans closer to catch every word. And he feels the same. He loves listening to Sanji talk about cooking: how to grill dried meat over open flame so that it tastes fresh, how to cut a speckled apple into pretty shapes that disguise the brown spots. If he didn’t need to sleep, he’d probably stay up in the tree forever with Sanji, chattering the day away. 

Sanji turns away from the window and picks up his mixing bowl, the maple spoon fitted perfectly to his palm. “I think you’re mine too,” he says softly. As he starts to stir, one shoulder lifts to brush something from his cheek, though maybe he’s just adjusting his grip on the bowl. It’s hard to tell from so far away.

Maybe it’s still too soon to ask, but one day, Usopp hopes Sanji will trust him enough to let him come up to his room. He wants to see all his expressions for exactly what they are. Until then, he’ll just have to fill in the blanks between half-smiles and echoes of emotion: whatever reaches him, he’ll gladly take, and the rest? 

Well, he’s always had a good imagination.

Chapter Text

“Your parents don’t mind that you’re out here every day?” Usopp asks, trying for nonchalance as he stares up at the blue sky through the leaves. 

Being quasi-horizontal is a nice change of pace for their hangouts. He’d had the idea to bring an old blanket from home and fashion it into a small hammock that he could string up near the trunk of the tree, where the branches are thickest. The hammock isn’t big enough to bear his whole weight, but he can lean his shoulders against the cloth and take some of the pressure off his legs. He would have built something more permanent, but Sanji told him it wasn’t a good idea given the bigger birds that roost in the tree in Usopp’s absence: they might peck at his work and destroy it. Still, it’s a relief to be able to relax even a little this high up. 

Usopp isn’t surprised when Sanji doesn’t answer immediately. He’s suspected for a while that Sanji doesn’t have anyone to go home to. Any kid can be protective over their favoured hiding spot, but nobody with a real family has this much free time, especially not at their age. (Sixteen, Sanji said when he asked last week, though the number came after a long pause, like he had to think hard about his answer.) Usopp would still be in school if he could afford the books, and Sanji is old enough to be working already, bringing in money to help his parents. 

“It’s fine if you don’t have any,” Usopp offers, unable to let the silence linger for more than a few seconds. He’s never been good with awkward pauses: too much empty air and you really do start to feel lonely. That’s why he makes sure to talk to himself as much as possible. “I think it’s super cool if you’re making it on your own. That’s what I’m doing too! Two brave adventurers, living off the land! Or, you know, wherever you get your food. I guess you probably don’t have wheat fields around here, huh...”

Usopp tilts his head back to the window, to see if any of his questions are landing with Sanji. The boy is sitting at the sill, staring past Usopp towards the expanse of trees and worrying a lock of hair between his fingers: braiding the fine strands, then unbraiding, then braiding again. 

“I’m not an orphan,” he says at last. “But I’m not... I don’t stay with my family anymore.” The reluctant words seem wrenched from his throat, and Usopp suddenly feels awful for pushing.

“That’s ok!” he says quickly. “I’m not an orphan either, but I live on my own! My dad went away when I was a little kid, but he’s coming back any day now, I’m sure of it. So maybe your parents will come back for you too?”

Sanji laughs, but this time Usopp doesn’t feel proud for being the cause. It’s a mirthless sound, tired and hollow. “No, I don’t think so.”

Usopp swallows. He’s just made things worse and he knows it, but he doesn’t know what else to say to comfort Sanji. All that keeps him going is the knowledge his father is coming back: that he has to survive just one more week, just one more winter, just one more year, and then he can finally rest. If he didn’t have that hope, then he doesn’t know how he could keep moving. Maybe that’s why Sanji seems so sad all the time: he doesn’t think he has that reunion to look forward to. 

Well then, Usopp’s just got to show him the truth. People really do come back—you’ve just got to believe it hard enough. So the next time Sanji tells him not to visit for a couple days, Usopp decides he won’t leave any room for doubt. 

The morning of Sanji’s next shopping trip, Usopp races into the woods before even the birds have awoken. He reaches the tower at sunrise and clambers up the tree, its branches as familiar now as the eaves of his own home. With the shutters closed, he’s got all the time in the world to carefully unpack his satchel and its precious contents. He’s been stockpiling a few gifts for Sanji: a spatula to match the maple spoon, a set of hair ties wound from colourful scraps of fabric, along with a few other knick-knacks. Usopp was looking forward to seeing his reactions for himself, but imagining Sanji’s surprise when he opens the shutter and sees the bundle of gifts waiting for his return is almost as good. 

He’s gauging the distance between himself and the window, trying to decide if it would be easier to toss the bundle or to dump it out of the net onto the narrow sill, when his ears prick at the sound of snapping drywood. Something’s coming towards the clearing, something large enough that its approaching footsteps reverberate in the still air. Usopp shrinks back into the foliage, forgetting in his alarm that no bear or cougar could climb this high.

But it’s not an animal that steps into the clearing: it’s a group of men. Two soldiers, in the kind of heavy armour Usopp’s only seen in history books, break from the woods first, each carrying a large pack on their back. Behind the soldiers, unburdened, walks another figure in finer dress. From his perch in the sky Usopp can’t make out the figure’s face: all he catches are glimpses of red hair through the leaves. 

His alarm turns to panic when the entourage veers towards the tower, heading straight for the locked door. The red-haired figure produces a key, and then the tower is open for the first time in Usopp’s memory and the three disappear inside the stone structure. The moment the door swings shut again, Usopp is flying down the tree. 

Whoever the men are, if they have a key they must be the rightful owners of the tower. Thank god Sanji wasn’t here when they finally came back. Thank god, thank god ... but wait, won’t the men find Sanji’s cooking tools when they get to the top? 

Well, it’s better than if they found Sanji, so he can’t worry about that now. Even if they steal Sanji’s things—and his heart preemptively mourns the well-worn instruments that Sanji loves so much—Usopp can get him new ones. He can learn to make pots and pans, right? Maybe not out of wood, but there’s always scrap metal at the docks, and he can probably persuade the blacksmith to show him how to hammer it into the right shape (if he’s forgiven Usopp yet for costing him a day’s work with his latest pirate false alarm), and then everything will be fine again. 

Everything will be fine, so long as Usopp doesn’t get caught. 

His heart is beating out of his mouth by the time he hits the ground. The shutter is still closed, but he doesn’t wait around to see if it stays that way. There’s absolutely nothing he can do about the interlopers except hope that Sanji takes as long as he said to return. Crushing the bundle of gifts back into his satchel, he races to town and spends the next two days pacing his mother’s house in an anxious haze, petrified of returning to the tower, but just as petrified at the idea of Sanji being caught unawares if he doesn’t.

On the day Sanji is supposed to come back, he forces himself to leave the safety of his home, though he’s more cautious of the woods than he’s been in weeks. Each cracking twig is enough to send him stumbling into the cover of the nearest tree, only for a raccoon or beaver to waddle out from the undergrowth and regard him with a blank expression of pity. What happened to Usopp, the fearless hunter? Even the prey animals seem to see him as one of their own. 

He shakes himself and keeps moving. He can’t afford to be frozen anymore. He needs to reach Sanji.

There’s no sign of the interlopers when he makes it back to the tower. Usopp circles around to where the soldiers entered the clearing, but any footprints in the woods have already been covered by fresh-fallen leaves, and their metal boots, unhindered by thorns, left no trace in the clearing’s snarled vines. Usopp realises with a sickening lurch that they might have come here any number of times before and he’d never have been able to tell. 

At least the padlock is shut again. Usopp gathers the courage to dart forward and test the lock, but the metal is as sturdy and unbreakable as it ever was. The soldiers aren’t here, which means he still has a little time.

Usopp’s customary whistle trembles more than usual, but the shutter still opens easily to his call. Sanji is standing in the window, looking as happy at Usopp’s arrival as he always does, with an eager little smile and a plate of warm buns in his hands.

“Usopp, you have to try these while they’re hot. I finally got some raisins and—”

“You have to leave,” Usopp rushes out. “Today—no, right now.”

Sanji freezes. “What? I can’t—” he says, smiling dropping in an instant. “I can’t leave.”

“I know you don’t want to, but it’s so important, Sanji. I came back the day after you left, and there were these men—”

Sanji slams the plate down on the windowsill, hard enough to rattle the porcelain. “You came back here?” he snarls. The anger in his voice takes Usopp completely by surprise. “Why the hell would you come back here?”

“I—” Usopp stutters. ‘ I wanted to surprise you’ gets lodged in his throat; all his tentative hopes feel so juvenile in the face of Sanji’s thunder. “I thought it was ok? I know this is your spot, but I thought, even if you’re not here, maybe I could still come...” Usopp trails off. He doesn’t even know why Sanji is angry, so he can’t figure out what to apologise for. 

“When I tell you to stay away, stay away.” Sanji starts to turn, and Usopp is so panicked by the rejection that he almost doesn’t notice when the light of the window hits Sanji’s exposed cheek, there’s a mottled patch of red and purple staining his pale skin. 

It’s a bruise, a few days bloomed.

“Hey,” Usopp says, scrambling forward as far as he dares. “Hey, Sanji, wait—are you ok?”

Still half-turned, Sanji’s shoulders start to shake. It almost looks like he’s crying, until a bitter chuckle floats out the window. 

“Of course I am,” Sanji says. “What have I got to complain about?”

“But, your face...” Usopp says, then trails off again, unsure how to describe what he’s seeing. The skin doesn’t look scratched or torn up, like when Usopp isn’t watching the path and runs into a low-hanging branch. The bruise is circular, stretching from the corner of Sanji’s mouth to his ear: a reddened apple of angry warmth. 

Sanji raises a hand to his cheek, barely flinching as he cradles the tender spot. His palm is just the right shape to cover the bruise entirely. 

In Usopp’s mind, a gear starts slowly clicking. 

“Ah. Does it look ugly? I don’t have a good mirror.” Sanji’s words are indifferent, like he doesn’t really care what Usopp thinks, but he’s still watching the window from the corner of his eye. Usopp holds onto the sliver of blue between Sanji’s fingers, praying that whatever he says next doesn’t end with Sanji closing the shutter for good. For once, the swooping fear in his stomach has nothing to do with the drop below his feet. 

“It looks painful,” Usopp says carefully, and Sanji winces harder than when he first touched the bruise. “How—how’d you get it?”

Sanji drops his hand, then turns away from the window entirely and starts to gather up the pans from the morning’s baking. “I tripped. Ran into a tree on the way back from the market.”

“No, you didn’t,” Usopp says, and steels himself with a breath. “You’re lying.”

Sanji sets the last pan down with a sharp clang. “Says the prince,” he bites out, a mean curl to his voice that Usopp’s never heard before. He wants to shy away from Sanji’s sneering disdain, to apologise again, to agree to whatever Sanji says so that they can go back to being friends, but he can’t make himself do it. There are too many gears clicking in his mind now, churning through all the strange things about his new confidante that Usopp had been all too happy to brush aside in the heady bliss of food and company. Like how odd it is that he found a boy cooking food for the sparrows, alone, in a crumbling tower he refuses to leave...

But, no. That’s not what Sanji said. 

I can’t leave.

“Takes a liar to know one,” Usopp says, hoping a bit of self-effacement will soften the inherent accusation, but Sanji still flinches and he flinches in turn. “It’s fine, though!” he backpedals quickly. “If you don’t want to tell me the truth, it’s okay. I—I get it, we haven’t been friends that long, but I just... I don’t want you to get hurt. That’s all I came here to say. That there were these men, and they seemed really scary, and they might hurt you if they find you here, so could you please just leave this one time—”

“I do want to tell you,” Sanji interrupts through gritted teeth, stopping Usopp’s increasingly frantic rambling. “I want to tell you, but I can’t, Usopp.”

“Why not?” Usopp doesn’t mean for the question to come out so small, but as much as he knows he deserves it, nothing ever aches so badly as not being trusted.

“If I do, they’ll hurt you too.”

Sanji speaks the word ‘they’ with a cold familiarity, and it dawns on Usopp at last that throughout this entire conversation, Sanji has never once seemed surprised by any of his warnings. Like he already knew there were men in the forest. Like he already knew they were coming to the tower, before Usopp said a single word.

Another gear clicks gently into place. 

“They caught you, didn’t they?” he says softly, almost afraid to be right. “That’s how you got that bruise?” Sanji only laughs, and the sound catches on the autumn wind, harsh and chilling. 

“You can’t catch something that’s already in a cage.”

Usopp thinks he might be the one who starts crying. He’s been on the brink of it for two stressful days, and the frustration of another cryptic answer is close to pushing him over the edge. 

“Sanji, what does that mean?” he pleads, and the desperation in his voice is finally enough to turn Sanji’s head back to the window. He stares at Usopp wide-eyed, like someone startled out of a bad dream, who’s only just remembering that another world exists behind the veil of lingering darkness. 

“It means,” he says, then swallows, “it means they don’t have to try and catch me. They know where I am. They’re the ones who put me here. They’re the ones who locked the door.”

“You can’t leave,” Usopp echoes faintly. Sanji slowly nods. “Then... when you went to get food...”

“I didn’t go anywhere,” Sanji admits. “They bring the food to me. I guess I’m not supposed to starve just yet.” He takes a shuddering breath, and Usopp watches in real time as his face goes carefully blank. “But you know, it’s really not that bad. You don’t have to worry. Just don’t come when they’re here, and there won’t be a problem.” Seeing Usopp’s face still frozen in horror, Sanji picks up the plate of buns and tilts them so he can see their glistening tops. Usopp has never felt less hungry. “See? They even brought me the raisins I asked for. They didn’t have to do that.”

Usopp stares at the bruise on Sanji’s cheek, the perfect palm shape unmistakable now that he knows what he’s looking at. Someone hit Sanji across the face, hard. The only thing Usopp’s not sure about is if it was skin or metal that left the mark. But somehow Sanji’s talking about raisins, like that makes everything okay?

“How am I not supposed to worry? You’re telling me you’re locked in here, and that these people can just come and... and do whatever they want to you, and you’re completely fine with it because they’re not letting you starve?”

“Of course I’m not fine with it!” Sanji snaps, the mask of indifference twisting into a scowl. “Do you think I wanted to be stuck in this tower? Do you think I wanted my fa—” he cuts off, breathing heavily. “I’m just saying, you don’t have to worry about me. Nothing has to change. We can just... go back to how it was.”

“No, we can’t,” Usopp whispers. Sanji looks crestfallen, but what hurts more is the shuttered acceptance in his eyes, like he already expected Usopp’s reaction to be exactly this. 

“Oh. Okay. Did you still... I can pack up some food for you, before you go.”

“I’m not leaving,” Usopp says forcefully. “I promise I’m not. But you have to tell me what’s really going on, Sanji. You have to, or I’ll...” He casts around for some ultimatum that falls short of abandoning their friendship, because he just promised he wouldn’t, and because he knows he couldn’t bear to speak the words no matter how empty the threat. “I’ll come back here and yell at those guys until they tell me the truth instead.”

The thought of actually following through sends terrified shivers down Usopp’s spine, but thankfully Sanji doesn’t call his bluff. Instead, his expression crumples with a different sort of resignation. It’s a slow collapse, like a building crumbling in on itself, brick by fragile brick. Usopp watches as the tension teeters, teeters, and then Sanji says, quietly, “If I tell you, you won’t believe me.”

Usopp summons his most disarming, carefree smile, though he can feel his own lips shaking with the effort. “Just trust me, ok? I’ll believe a lot of crazy things. Super gullible. I used to think you were a witch, didn’t I?”

“True.” Sanji swallows again. “Well, I’m not a witch, and you’re not a prince. But I...” he hesitates. “I used to be.”

“A witch?” Usopp blurts out—he really didn’t expect to be right about that part—but Sanji shakes his head.

“A prince.”

Sanji wasn’t exaggerating. The story he offers Usopp—in a flat monotone that feels intentionally detached, like he’s talking about a distant cousin instead of himself—is utterly unbelievable. And yet Usopp wholly believes it, no matter how ridiculous the details, because he doesn’t think even he’s a good enough liar to invent a story so cruel.

There’s a castle, Sanji explains, a few miles west of the tower, hidden from the sea by the overgrown trees. It’s the seat of an old and failing kingdom, but that used to encompass the entire island, from Usopp’s coastal village to the furthest expanse of the forest and whatever else lies beyond. That castle is where Sanji grew up, along with his sister and his brothers and the kingdom’s last remaining monarch: Sanji’s father, who ruled them all with an authority better suited to commanding thousands. 

“His grandfather conquered this island,” Sanji tells him. “He’s the one who built these watchtowers, so that nobody else could take back what he took. My father used to bring me and my siblings to visit them when we were little, to remind us what our family’s glory used to be.”

Sanji doesn’t once mention his mother, but Usopp hears her absence in every carefully chosen word—in how his father, unopposed, unquestioned, raised his children to be brutal generals. Their sole mission was to take back the kingdom his father had lost: not to glorious battle, but to the slow attrition of time. Loyal vassals died of old age, or left for other islands, and the forest grew, and grew, and more towers were swallowed by the trees, and most people forgot there was once a great kingdom they answered to. Sanji’s siblings, and the armies they would raise once they were grown, were meant to make the world remember. 

Only Sanji couldn’t shape himself into the soldier his father wanted him to be. “I could barely even hold a sword,” he admits, a trace of emotion creeping into his voice at last, though Usopp can’t tell if it’s self-recrimination or righteous anger colouring his tone. “No matter what my father tried, I just couldn’t bring myself to fight.” Sanji’s fingers drift to his cheek, tracing the edge of the bruise, and Usopp shivers. “He locked me in this tower to teach me a lesson. He wanted me to look at our history, every day, so I never forget what I owe my family—what I owe him.”

Sanji stands and moves jerkily to the corner of the room, to the red fabric Usopp noticed on his first visit but never found a reason to ask about. He throws the covering off, revealing the decaying remains of the tower’s former military occupation: smashed weapon racks piled on top of iron chains and rotting armour, like the skeleton of some twisted mechanical creature, its limbs broken and left to rust. Sanji picks up a helmet and stares into the broken visor with lifeless eyes. Usopp’s stomach aches to see Sanji’s slender fingers—so careful with a knife, so delicate with the sweets he wraps in linen before offering them to Usopp—cradling a remnant of war.

“How long have you been in here?” Usopp asks, relieved when Sanji finally puts the helmet down and covers the pile again.

“Two years.”

“...Two years?” he repeats shakily. 

Usopp was only twelve two years ago. Usopp’s mother was still alive when Sanji last set foot outside this tower. It’s almost too long a time to fathom. 

Sanji shrugs. “I think. Maybe a little longer.”

“But he... he has to let you out eventually, right? He can’t just keep you here—” 

—forever.

Sanji sits back down at the windowsill. He picks up a bun and starts carefully tearing it into pieces for the birds that have already begun to gather, excited for their benefactor’s newest crop of treats. His gifts vanish as soon as they’re laid down, and Sanji watches the full-beaked sparrows flit away into the trees, something tender and sad in his eyes.

“Maybe. He hasn’t come to see me in over a year. He still sends my brothers though. Probably wants to make sure I haven’t thrown myself out the window yet.” This time, Usopp knows he’s not imagining the darkness beneath Sanji’s careless tone. “He still wants me alive for some reason. But even if he let me come home, I wouldn’t go. I’d rather stay in this tower forever than go back to the castle. At least here, I have the birds.” He smiles fondly over the gap. “And you.” 

“But—but if you could leave, you would, wouldn’t you?” Usopp asks, trying to ignore how hot his face suddenly feels at Sanji’s words. He’s doing his best to be a good friend, but he wouldn’t call his company anything worth living for. “If you didn’t have to go back?”

“Where would I go?” Sanji sighs and picks up another bun. “I don’t know how to find the road. I don’t know how to get food that isn’t brought to me. I don’t know anything about the world that I didn’t learn from books or my father’s lessons. I’m useless.”

“You could come home with me?” Usopp offers, flushing again when Sanji’s surprised eyes immediately flick up to meet his own. “I mean, I don’t really know much about the world either, but I can hunt and forage, so you’d have some ingredients? And maybe someone in town would hire you at their restaurant or something, as long as they don’t know you’re friends with me...” 

Sanji frowns at Usopp’s last few words, but his eyes are still thoughtful. “That would be... incredible,” he says, and Usopp’s chest swells. “But what if my father came looking for me?”

“Then I’d hide you in my basement!” Usopp declares, already imagining himself shoving a furniture barricade across his mother’s door, a starry-eyed and grateful Sanji clinging to his back. “Or, I don’t know, I’d make you a disguise and pretend you’re my brother or something.” He looks at Sanji’s golden hair and then down his own brown locs. Hmm, maybe not. “I’m sure we’d figure it out.”

Sanji looks at Usopp for a long time, long enough to know that Sanji is really thinking hard about his offer. He bites his tongue and tries to let the silence be silence, to not push for an answer when Sanji’s already said so much that he didn’t want to say.

“I believe you,” Sanji says at last. “If I could leave with you, I think we’d figure it out.”

Usopp’s face breaks into a relieved grin. “Then let’s do it! Come home with me!”

Sanji stares at him, shocked. “But I can’t get out of the tower. I don’t have the key, and there’s no way my brothers would give it to me.”

Usopp’s smile only widens. Now that he actually knows the shape of the problem, he can start solving it, and his mind is already abuzz with ideas. “Leave that to your best friend Usopp—he’s got a few tricks up his sleeve.” He rolls up his actual sleeve for good measure, flexing so Sanji can see what a solid month of tree climbing has done for his once-scrawny arms. “If you give me some time, I’m sure we can get you down from there.”

Usopp measures the distance to the windowsill like he’s done so many times before: the space between himself and Sanji, who’s waiting for him, who’s trusting him to find a way to close the gap. 

Looking at the distance now, it really doesn’t seem so far.

“Before the first snow falls,” Usopp promises, “you’re going to be free.”

Chapter Text

Usopp has a very clear vision for how this rescue mission will go. 

First, he’ll pick the lock. He’s never picked a lock before in his life, but he knows it involves sticking something inside and wiggling it around, so the rest should be easy enough to figure out. Second, he’ll run upstairs and give Sanji a big hug. Third, he’ll ferry him home in triumph, with Sanji’s family none the wiser.

Simple. Easy. Risk-free. It’s the perfect plan.

Unfortunately, the first step doesn’t go as smoothly as he hoped. Picking the lock is a bust (he nearly breaks his mother’s best hairpin in the effort), as is cutting the lock (the shackle is too thick), smashing the lock (same problem), and prying off the metal plate the lock is attached to (for all that the rest of the tower is crumbling, the mechanism is shiny and new and bolted tight and Usopp can’t make a dent in it). After a full day of wasted effort, he’s forced to abandon the easy path and start thinking of new ideas. 

His second plan is far less dashing, far more dangerous, and he’s already hoping Sanji will talk him out of it before he even opens his mouth, but for now, it’s the best one he’s got. Usopp reluctantly sets aside his dreams of a swift, stressless rescue and moves on to his boring new step one: gathering rope. 

He goes to the dockmaster first, since the oceanfront warehouses in town always have coils to spare. He’s shooed away with a scowl and the promise of a beating if he ever starts another panic without any black sails on the horizon. Disappointed but not truly surprised, he smothers the embarrassment at having asked someone so obviously uninterested in helping and trudges further down the docks, searching for friendlier faces.

The fishmongers, hanging massive tuna by their tails to dry in the sun, are equally unimpressed. He recognizes the matriarch of the group, an older woman who used to bring his mother cod casserole when she first got sick, so he momentarily hopes she might be sympathetic. But just like the dockmaster, she sneers and turns away at his request. He really shouldn’t be surprised by her denial either; his false alarms have cost the woman’s family a fair bit of business over the years. Once her friendly obligation to Banchina was gone, there were no more casseroles on the doorstep, so why would she give him rope now? 

His last stop is the church in the town square, though he’s resigned to the inevitable answer by the time he raises his hand to knock. All their rope is in the bell tower, and none of the clergy will let Usopp near those bells after he rang them once without permission, signalling an invasion that never came. 

Well, he thinks as the door shuts in his face, at least the ban doesn’t sting as heavily as it once would have, back when he still dreamed of making a sniper’s nest out of the church spire’s rafters. The appeal of towers has lessened for Usopp as of late. 

All these setbacks Usopp recounts to Sanji from his tree perch as he braids together strands of stained white cloth. Three finished braids hang from the branch below him, floating like jellyfish tendrils in the sea of chilly air. In the end, the laundress agreed to give Usopp some ruined sheets in exchange for a few day’s work, so he didn’t return empty-handed. His fingers are raw from the lye and sting as he handles the rough cloth, but at least they finally have some material to work with. 

It’s still strange to think he’s rambling on about his mundane problems to an actual, real life prince, but it’s stranger still because it doesn’t feel strange at all. Sanji doesn’t act like any prince Usopp would have ever dreamed up. He swears sometimes, when something burns or he drops a bowl or a squirrel starts nosing at a loaf of bread he’d set aside for Usopp, and his posture is terrible too. Usopp’s school teacher would have rapped him on the head with a ruler if he’d slouched as much as Sanji does. Aren’t princes supposed to be trained in etiquette? But Sanji doesn’t seem to care about that sort of thing, and it makes it easier to believe Usopp doesn’t need to either: that they’re still just friends, no matter where they come from. 

Sanji listens quietly for a while, but when Usopp runs out of stories, he finally speaks up.

“Everyone in your town sounds like an asshole.”

Usopp startles a little at the vehemence of the statement. Sanji’s opinionated, but his strongest beliefs usually concern food and the preparation thereof, not innocuous anecdotes from Usopp’s home life. 

“Sorry, I probably made them sound worse than they are—they’re good people, they’re just kind of fed up with me. You’d get it if you grew up there. I’ve made a lot of trouble for them.” It’s painful to admit it, but he doesn’t want Sanji to come away with the wrong impression. His neighbours really did help a lot while his mother was alive. Banchina was well-liked: the only quarrels anyone had with her were about Usopp’s behaviour. It’s not really their fault that Usopp squandered all that goodwill after her death. 

But Sanji doesn’t look convinced. “If they’re good people, then why were they letting you starve?”

Usopp goes still. “I—I wasn’t starving,” he says, fingers frozen around the braid in his lap. The heated certainty in Sanji’s voice is hard to argue against, but that’s not... that’s not how it was. “I guess I was pretty hungry when we met, but that’s just ‘cause the hunting was bad that week.”

“You were starving,” Sanji insists. “If I could see that from all the way over here, there’s no way they couldn’t.”

“Yeah, but...” Usopp says, “they didn’t have to give me food, even if I was. It’s not like I’ve done anything for them.”

“If someone’s hungry, you feed them.” Sanji frowns, but he lets the topic drop, and Usopp goes back to his weaving, chest uncomfortably tight for the rest of the day. 

He tells himself on the walk home that he just didn’t do a good job of explaining the situation to Sanji. Of course he’s going to take Usopp’s side, if there’s even a side to take. It’s not like he’s talked to anyone else from town, and Usopp’s not exactly known for telling the whole truth (though he has been trying harder lately, at least with Sanji). But there’s a difference between letting a person starve and just... not giving them stuff for free. He really hasn’t done anything to deserve anyone’s kindness. 

Still, it’s hard not to look at all the closed shutters on his street and wonder how different these past two years might have been if even one of them had opened for him like Sanji’s did. Maybe he doesn’t deserve their help, but there's a cold trickle of uncertainty in his heart now as he passes by the silent houses of his neighbours, like rain slipping through the cracks in a weather-beaten roof.

The second step in the new plan is out of Usopp’s hands: or, more precisely, in Sanji’s.

As much as he hates to ask it of him, Usopp eventually sends Sanji rummaging beneath the red cloak for supplies. Lumber isn’t exactly in short supply in the forest, but heavy boards aren’t something he can pass over in his net. Following Usopp’s instructions, Sanji finds the least-splintered wood in the pile, picks out an iron gauntlet to use as a hammer, and gets to work. 

“This is harder than it looks,” Sanji mutters as he brushes back the hair that stubbornly refuses to stay in Usopp’s hair tie for longer than an hour. In his lap sits the beginning of a roughshod bracket, its upper arm secured at least twenty degrees short of the right angle Usopp asked for. Groaning, he wrenches the wooden pieces apart and starts again. “How did you even learn how to do this?”

Usopp shrugs. “I used to pick up odd jobs at the wharf when I was a kid to help my mom out. I liked to watch the ship carpenters work when I wasn’t scrubbing barnacles. It was cool seeing how things fit together.” 

Sanji inclines his head toward the shelf by the hearth, with its crooked, wobbly joints and exposed nails. “Wish we’d met before I tried to build that monstrosity. You might have saved my first set of dishes.” He snorts. “I didn’t realise I’d forgotten to actually attach the top shelf to the one below it. I was eating off the windowsill for weeks before I convinced my sister to bring me a new plate.” 

Usopp winces in sympathy. “I mean, not all my inventions turned out great at first either. You should have seen my first slingshot. The rubber snapped the first time I actually tried to shoot something.” He gestures to a small nick above his eyebrow. “Thought I was going to take my eye out.” 

“But you figured it out?”

“Mhm!” Usopp nods. “You’ve just gotta keep experimenting! I’m sure it was the same for you and cooking—you didn’t make everything perfect on the first try?” He tries to stifle the nervousness beneath the question. What if Sanji really does do everything perfectly on the first try? It’s not like Sanji’s ever cooked him anything that wasn’t incredible, no matter how much he hems and haws about the exact ratio of ingredients. Maybe Usopp’s the only one who needs to get things wrong five times before he gets them right.

“I thought I did.” Sanji chuckles softly. “Isn’t that funny? I was ten, sneaking into the kitchen to cook with whatever scraps the cook left behind, and I thought my food was incredible. I just didn’t have anyone to tell me how bad it was.”

“I’m sure it wasn’t that bad.”

Sanji sets the bracket down and blows on his hands. His palms are red—from holding the wood steady or the cold air, Usopp can’t tell. He should see if he has a spare pair of gloves at home. For all that Usopp’s house lacks in fancy food, at least the walls insulate against the wind unlike Sanji’s drafty room.

“No, it really was. Even the servants wouldn’t touch my cooking. I figured they were just too polite to eat something a prince made. Now I know they were trying to be kind: to tell me I was good at something, even if I wasn’t. I think that’s why my—” he pauses, “why they lied about how my food tasted. So I didn’t give up on... you know, everything.” Sanji clears his throat, then looks over at Usopp with a self-deprecating smile, like he’s sorry for bringing down the mood. As much as he likes to see Sanji smile, this is one of Usopp’s least favourite expressions. “But I have an expert taste tester now, right? So I can trust your opinion.”

Usopp preens at the flattery, but it’s an uneasy pleasure. The charming words feel like a misdirection, a slight of hand, like snatching a bottle cap from a child’s ear. The problem is, he knows the trick too well. 

There used to be so many questions that he couldn’t answer: What are you going to do with your life, Usopp? How are you going to live? He regrets now that he told so many lies in return: Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine, the incredible Captain Usopp always has a plan! He’d thought people would rather hear about the fearless sniper than the struggling urchin, but after a point, they just stopped asking.

Listening to Sanji dance around any part of his childhood that hurts too much to mention, he’s starting to understand why even the kindest of his neighbours lost patience with his tales. It's painful to listen to someone avoid the truth so obviously, when all you wants to do is help shoulder the load. 

The farther Usopp and Sanji come along in their plan, the harder it is to hide the evidence of what they’re doing. The sheet ropes are too big to hide beneath the cloak and too heavy to bring up and down the tree each day: even coiled around his middle, Usopp can really only manage two at a time. The rest have to be left on the ground, waiting for an assembly process that he’s already dreading. He wove a net on the ground, but can he really weave a bridge in midair? What insane schemer wearing Usopp’s face dreamt this plan up? 

He wishes he could talk to the sparrows, ask them how they build their nests sturdily enough to trust that their eggs will be safe. His skull isn’t that much sturdier than an eggshell when it comes down to it, and he has just as far to fall.

At first, he tries hiding the finished ropes beneath leaves, but the soft, damp piles of freshly-fallen red and orange that used to be so abundant are starting to disappear with the season. Most of the leaves are a dull brown now, dry enough to be carried away on a light breeze. They crumble in Usopp’s fingers as he shoves handfuls over the ropes, leaving white curves peeking out of the dirt like dried animal bones.

He and Sanji agree it’s too risky to leave anything out in the open, so one night, Usopp stays late to dig a trench near the clearing. He brings a shovel from home and carves into the soil for hours, hollowing out a narrow channel a few feet deep. After the ropes are safely stowed, he shovels a bit of loose dirt overtop and covers the spot with more leaves. With one final weary tamp of the shovel, he calls the job done. It took till past midnight, but at least he’ll actually be able to sleep knowing that their hard work won’t be discovered.

Usopp shoulders the shovel and turns back towards town, but a flicker of movement catches his eye. Something... someone is moving between the oaks, interrupting the flow of moonlight as they shift in and out of sight. Usopp falls back behind a tree, pressing a hand to his mouth as he watches the silent figure pass. 

In the dark, he can’t make out exact details, but he sees enough: rich clothing, a confident stride, and long hair that gleams a muted cherry in the grey light. No guards this time, but the likeness is unmistakable. This must be the brother he saw from his tree perch all those days ago. 

The figure is heading straight for Sanji’s tower. Usopp tries to follow. 

He really tries. 

He takes a step. 

One intensely hard-fought step—

And then his heart seizes and he’s running the opposite direction, cursing his cowardice all the way home.

He dreads the opening of the shutter when he creeps back the next morning. He knows he should have been braver, at least followed the figure until he knew for sure where they were going. God, what if Sanji’s hurt, and he could have warned him? 

But Sanji’s face is unmarred in the early light, apart from a look of concern at Usopp’s obvious distress. No bruises, at least that Usopp can see.

“What’s wrong?” Sanji asks immediately, setting aside the breakfast he’d prepared for them both and giving Usopp his full attention.

“I saw your brother in the forest last night.”

Sanji’s mouth hardens into a tense line. “Which one?”

“I don’t know. He had red hair?”

“Ichiji,” Sanji mutters. “Why the hell would he...” He trails off, pacing back and forth in front of the window, before his frown deepens. “Usopp, are you sure it was red?”

“I think so? I mean, it was dark, but it looked... reddish?”

“Could it have been pink?”

Usopp thinks hard. Between the moonlight and the distance, he really can’t be sure of anything. “I guess?”

“You probably saw Reiju,” Sanji concludes, posture relaxing slightly as he sinks down into his usual seat at the window. “She came by last night.”

“She came here? Are you alright?” Usopp says earnestly, still studying Sanji’s face for any sign of injury. Sanji looks perplexed for a moment before his eyes widen in understanding.

“Yeah, of course. Don’t worry, Reiju’s fine. Better than my brothers, at least. She comes to see me at night sometimes—sneaks me things my brothers won’t bring me.”

“Oh,” Usopp says. He can’t pretend there isn’t a little pang of jealousy at Sanji’s admission: he’s glad that Sanji wasn’t completely alone before his arrival, obviously, but he’d thought till now that he was Sanji’s only visitor. “Does she have a key?”

“No. But she’s a good climber, just like you. That’s why I didn’t want you to leave your hammock up overnight. She likes to use the same tree.” 

“Oh,” Usopp says again, shifting uneasily on his branch. Their branch, he corrects himself. His and Reiju’s. Reiju, who apparently brings Sanji things too? Probably nice things, since she lives in a castle. Expensive things. “Do you guys... talk?”

“Sometimes,” Sanji says, heedless of Usopp’s mounting discomfort. “She doesn’t usually stay long. Can’t risk anyone figuring out that she’s coming to see me. If my father realized...” Sanji’s voice takes on a guilty tinge. “She says he’s been harsher with her this year. Maybe he realized sending me away didn’t solve all his problems, I don’t know. But she hasn’t been able to come as often.”

All of Usopp’s jealousy swirls into shame at his own selfishness. He likes being special to Sanji, but he knows what it is to sit at an empty window, waiting for a visitor that’s long overdue. He’d never want Sanji to feel abandoned by the only other person who’s looking out for him. 

(He just wishes she would have chosen a different tree.)

“Well, she came last night, right?” Usopp offers. “What did you guys talk about? Unless that’s—sorry, I’m not trying to be nosy, I just don’t know what siblings do together. I’m an only child. Did I tell you that already?”

He’s rambling again (does Reiju ramble, or does she always know the right amount to say?) but Sanji only smiles. “I figured. And not much. She had to get back before dawn, and I guess I don’t know how to talk about my day anymore without talking about you.” His smile fades as he looks back at Usopp. “But I’ve been wondering... if I should tell her about us. About our plan.”

“What?” Usopp’s mouth goes dry. Until five minutes ago, he’d assumed it was him and Sanji united against the rest of his family: the idea of telling one of them had never once crossed his mind. “No offense to your sister, Sanji, but are you sure we can trust her? What if she tells your brothers, or your dad?”

“She hasn’t told them about visiting me. And she’s lied to them to get me the things I ask for—I know she has. Reiju doesn’t agree with what my father’s doing. We feel the same about a lot of things.”

“Yeah, but... isn’t it still a huge risk?”

Sanji is quiet for a long moment. “She's just as trapped as I am,” he says at last. Usopp can’t see how that could possibly be true, given she’s walking around the forest while Sanji has been stuck in one room for two years, but he lets Sanji finish. “If I leave, I don’t want her to feel like I abandoned her. Like I never cared about her at all.”

“Sanji, that’s very... that’s very kind,” Usopp says, and it is. It’s almost unbearably selfless: he’s never known Sanji not to care about any living thing, whether it’s an injured bird or a thieving squirrel or even a lost, hungry boy in the woods. Usopp doesn't know how someone can endure all that Sanji's endured and come out the other side with so much love left to give.

He’s still worried, obviously—he doesn’t know Reiju, not like Sanji does, and he doesn’t want their plan to hinge on any more unknowns than the multitude they’re already dealing with. 

But he also knows he’s a pessimist by nature. He jumps to the worst possible outcome, always. Every time he crosses a bridge, he imagines a new way it might collapse beneath him. That’s fine when he’s the only one clinging to the rail for dear life, but can he really ask Sanji to leave behind someone he cares about without a word, just because Usopp is afraid of what could happen? 

He’s still not good at being brave, but for Sanji’s sake, he can at least try.

“Ok,” Usopp says. “You should tell her.”

Usopp can sense it, when the air begins to turn. There’s a stillness to the forest: an absence of movement, of comings and goings. The animals have all finished their gathering and retreated to their dens, ready for the change of season. Tramping the familiar path with one final load of sheets in his arms, he can’t shake the queasy feeling that he’s the only creature left alive for miles. 

His own stockpile this winter will be nothing but a burrow of rope, and hope—hope that he wasn’t lying to Sanji, that they’ll figure out how to survive once Sanji is free. Reiju hasn’t come back to visit yet, but Sanji is going to ask her to bring an extra pack when she does. They can take what’s left in the tower with them: Sanji’s clothes and his pots and pans and whatever ingredients they can carry on their backs. If they ration what they have, it’ll be enough for a while, and then... well, they’ll figure it out. That’s what he promised, and he means to make good. No matter what happens, they’ll figure it out.

In a few days, Sanji’s brothers will return. After their visit, he and Sanji will have two weeks before the next food delivery to secure the brackets, to build the bridge, to strip everything usable from the tower and disappear into the night. Everything needs to be ready before then, so they have as much time as possible to make their escape. 

But instead of finishing his last few brackets, Sanji is currently hanging his head out the window, staring down at the ground below with a look of intense concentration. He’s been doing that a lot lately. Usopp doesn’t blame him. He’s pretty used to the height by now, but even Usopp is petrified about how this traversal will go. Sanji’s probably mentally preparing himself for what’s soon to be his first journey over open air.

“I think it’s going to frost soon,” Usopp says, casting about for a conversation topic to take Sanji’s mind off the terrifying drop. “I’m going to have to break out my extra-grippy boots.” He doesn’t really have another pair of boots, but maybe he could attach some spikes or something to the bottom of his normal ones—there’s an idea to stick in his back pocket for when he has free time again.

“Already?” 

“Yeah. Sorry, wish I could make the fall last a little longer, but I can’t hammer the weather into shape!” He smiles to himself—another cool idea to test out someday—but Sanji’s frown only deepens. 

“Hey, Usopp, before it frosts... can you do something for me?”

“Sure, what’s up?” 

“You see those plants down there?”

Usopp leans over, following Sanji’s gaze. There are still a few tufts of green sheltering around the tower’s base, the last bits of stubborn life to survive the falling temperature. 

“Yep?”

“Can you bring me some? However much you can pick.”

“They’re not going to sting me, right?” Usopp has developed a healthy wariness of anything that grows in the clearing; it all seems determined to pierce his skin, no matter how carefully he steps around the vines. 

“Don’t worry, it’s just a plant. It’s food, actually. Lettuce.”

Usopp squints down at the flat leaves below. “Really? I didn’t know lettuce grows in the forest.”

“Only here,” Sanji says. “It needs sun to survive.”

“I bet the stupid thorns keep the animals away too.” Usopp grins. “But they can’t stop me!”

True to his word, he delivers Sanji five handfuls of supple green leaves the next morning. 

“Here you go,” he says, sliding the net over carefully so he doesn’t jostle the lettuce out of its handkerchief bed. “So how do you eat this stuff? Do you make salad, or do you fry it...”

He pauses, surprised that Sanji isn’t immediately lighting up at his questions. Usually, Sanji loves nothing more than explaining his cooking process. But Sanji’s gone silent, fingering the leaves with a far-off look. Usopp dumps the rest into a waiting bowl and pulls the net back when his arm starts to shake, but Sanji doesn’t seem to notice its disappearance. 

“Aren’t you going to try it?” Usopp asks as Sanji continues to piece through the leaves but doesn’t raise a single one to his mouth. If there’s one lesson he’s managed to pick up from their weeks together, it’s that chefs have to taste all their food. But Sanji shakes his head.

“This is a special lettuce. We should save it.”

“Special?” Usopp asks. It looked like normal lettuce to him: kind of like slightly-shriveled spinach, but with a sweeter smell.

“It’s magic.”

Usopp almost laughs, but Sanji’s expression is still deadly serious. “Wait, really?” Sanji doesn’t blink, and Usopp’s stomach starts to twist with a familiar embarrassment. “You’re teasing me.”

Finally, Sanji huffs a little laugh. “...Yeah.”

“Well, don’t! I just stopped believing in all that witch stuff. I don’t want to lay awake at night worrying about some evil lettuce monster stalking the woods.”

“It’s not ev—” Sanji starts to say, but catches himself. “Let’s just save it, okay?”

“Okay,” Usopp reluctantly agrees, “but I don’t know how long it’ll keep, Sanji. If you let it sit, it’s going to rot.”

It feels backwards to be lecturing Sanji about food preservation given their circumstances, but Usopp tore those fragile roots from the ground with his own hands. That lettuce was barely clinging to life by the time he plucked it, and he doesn’t think the dark of Sanji’s tower will improve its health. 

Sanji nods, but he still doesn’t taste the lettuce. Instead, he picks up the bowl and sets it on the shelf with the reverence of a religious offering, then turns back to Usopp.

“Just a few more days,” he says. “Rapunzel is hardier than it looks.”

Usopp thinks he might be overestimating the hardiness of any plant that’s lost its roots, but he’ll concede the point: he’s never even heard of rapunzel, so he should probably defer to Sanji’s better judgement. 

And besides, a few more days are all they have before their plan comes to its end. Special lettuce or not, there won’t be any time left to wait. 

“Are you ready?” 

Sanji nods, then brings the gauntlet down on the nail, forcing it through the bottom of the bracket into the windowsill below. 

The shutters rattle with each blow as Sanji pounds nails in one by one, securing upright brackets in a line until the entire sill is spiked like a wooden fencepost. There’ll be no moving the brackets once they’re in place: no hope of wrenching the nails out again without splintering the windowsill below. This is the one and only chance they have to get this right.

The anchor ropes are next. Usopp swings the end of each braid in an arc, letting the momentum carry the ropes up into Sanji’s waiting hands. As carefully as he would plait a loaf, Sanji secures each line to its bracket, following the knot forms Usopp spent the last week teaching him from afar. Over, then under, twist the loop, pull through— He mouths instructions, but Sanji’s hands are confident without his help. When Usopp yanks, the ropes stay fixed, and he secures his own ends to the sturdiest branches below, fashioning a runway of white lines leading up to Sanji’s window.

The hardest part of the process falls to Usopp. Despite the frigid air, he’s sweating as he starts to weave horizontal lines through the anchor ropes. He keeps up the mouthing, concentrating on his own instructions like a mantra so he can’t think too hard about what he's actually doing.

Over, then under, then over, then under— 

The farther out from the trunk he moves, the fewer branches he has to lean against. Soon, all he has to support him is the netting he’s already finished: the ever-growing spiderweb of rope that he’s spinning as he climbs, hand over hand, up to where Sanji is waiting. He doesn’t dare look through the holes between the ropes. Everything focuses down to the white lines, the weaving, the rhythm of his breath. Sanji’s shimmering hair gleams in Usopp’s periphery as he leans out over the sill, hand extended for hours, ready to grab Usopp’s the moment he’s in reach .  

The worst part is having to retreat to get more rope. While he weaves, at least his head is turned upward, but it’s almost impossible to ignore how high up he is as he crabwalks back down to where he started, the unfinished bridge rocking gently like the world’s most treacherous cradle. His arms are shaking so badly by the end of the first descent that they have to take a thirty minute break before Usopp can muster the courage to start again. 

This is a story you’ll have for the rest of your life, he reminds himself every time his resolve starts to falter. When else will Usopp ever be part of a tale so grand? The lonely tinkerer who became a great warrior, a prince-rescuer, a hero. And all of it will be true! Not that he’ll be able to tell anyone in town without putting Sanji in danger, but he’ll know it happened.

But when even that hard-fought courage fails, and he starts to think a lifetime of wallowing in his own cowardice would be just fine as long as he never has to set foot on that rope bridge again, he looks up at Sanji. Sanji, who looked so dazed this morning when he told Usopp that yes, his brothers left the day before, like it was only just sinking in that this is the last time he’d ever have to see them. Sanji, whose food is the only reason Usopp has the strength to keep climbing this tree at all. Sanji, who might be a prince, but more importantly, he’s Usopp’s best friend, and Usopp is not going to let his best friend live like this anymore, no matter how scared he is. 

He gets back on the bridge and keeps climbing. 

The sun is beginning to set by the time Usopp hauls the final rope onto his back. An hour ago, Sanji had suggested breaking for the day and finishing tomorrow, but he convinced him he could keep going. Truthfully, he knows if he stopped now, he would never get the nerve to start again. His fingers work on instinct now, and he ties his last knots sightless, closing his eyes so he can’t see how the darkness swells the distance between himself and the ground. 

His estimations weren’t perfect: when the final rope is secured, there’s still a solid gap of two feet between himself and the window. He’ll have to take both hands off the bridge to reach the sill. He chokes a dry sob at the realization; the exhaustion is finally setting in now that the adrenaline of the climb is fading, and when he tries to reach up, his hands stay clenched to the ropes, immovable. He can’t make himself do it. He just needs to take this one last step, but he can’t, he can’t—

“Usopp,” Sanji says, and his voice is so close, and Usopp can’t help but look up to meet his eyes, and they’re so close too, and he thinks, so that’s what it really looks like when you smile.

There’s a hand waiting for him, stretched as far as Sanji’s arm can reach, and without thinking he reaches out to take it. With one mighty heave, Usopp pushes off into the open air, and for a heartstopping moment, he’s flying. 

Then his feet light on the windowsill, and Sanji’s arms wrap around his middle, holding him steady, as he takes his first step inside the tower.

Chapter Text

The hearth sputters as Sanji stokes the coals, gold hair burnished copper in the glow of reawakened flame. He places an oiled pan on the grate above the hearth, then cracks four eggs, white edges crinkling the moment they hit the heat. He carefully nestles slices of yesterday’s bread into the remaining space in the pan, and soon the entire room is filled with the smell of butter and toasting cinnamon. 

Breakfast for dinner, Usopp thinks, and pulls the blanket tighter around his shoulders. That’s what his mother used to say, making a treat of the times when they couldn’t afford more expensive proteins like meat or fish. No matter how much or little she had to give him, she always tried to show him the positive side of their circumstances. Watching Sanji bustle around the fire, filling the darkened tower with light and food and casting worried little sidelong glances, like he’s checking to make sure Usopp won’t collapse before he gets dinner on the table, he can’t help but be reminded of her caring spirit. 

Sanji’s been doting since the moment Usopp stepped off the windowsill and his legs collapsed beneath him. Whatever adrenaline had been holding him together had rushed out of his body in an instant, the toll of the day’s arduous work finally hitting in one overwhelming crash. He could barely lift his arms, let alone stand, and he was so cold that he thought his teeth might break from the chattering. But Sanji, with an efficiency that reminded Usopp of his own days helping his bed-bound mother navigate the house, had picked Usopp off the floor and moved him to a chair, wrapped him in a blanket, build the fire up until it was hot enough to burn Usopp’s soles, and got to cooking.

It feels so good to be taken care of, he can almost ignore the creeping sadness he feels as he looks around and realizes exactly how small Sanji’s world has been these past two years. 

The circular room had seemed so much larger in Usopp’s imagination. The dark corners were full of endless possibilities while they were hidden behind the window frame, but the reality is much more cramped. The tower was obviously built for utility, not the comfort of its garrisoned soldiers. There’s barely room to walk between the sparse furnishings. Sanji’s narrow cot awkwardly butts up against the curved wall, one of its metal legs resting far too close for Usopp’s comfort to the staircase opening that leads down to the base of the tower. The bench below the window, where Sanji sits during Usopp’s visits, isn’t much wider than a stepstool. Sanji’s made good use of the space, with neatly organized shelves and baskets of folded clothing below the cot, but there isn’t any room to move. Usopp wouldn’t even call himself claustrophobic, but after years of unhindered freedom to run through the woods and the streets of his hometown, he can’t imagine being caged in such a small place.

But it’s hard to feel sad for long when Sanji looks so happy—so real. When he’s here, placing food down in front of Usopp, pulling up the bench up at his side so that they can both reach the plate. His shoulder brushes Usopp’s as he sits and the touch feels electric; some part of Usopp wasn’t quite convinced until their hands met that the boy in the tower really was a real person, not just a mirage of the light who would shimmer and fade when he reached the window. 

He’s stepped into the dream now, and Usopp can’t bring himself to take his eyes off Sanji, desperate to savour every moment of togetherness after such a long time apart. 

As much as Sanji likes to cook, Usopp’s rarely seen the boy try his own food with the same enthusiasm, but some new hunger seems to have awakened in him. Sanji takes a piece of bread from the plate and crams it in his mouth. He follows the bread with an egg, then a bite of hard cheese, and while he still carefully nudges the biggest portions to Usopp’s side of the plate, for once Sanji eats like he’s the famished one. Watching Sanji finally take his fill, Usopp feels something in his heart ease, like a muscle he’d kept clenched for weeks. 

They usually talk during meals, but even Usopp is too weary for conversation tonight. He can’t possibly feel lonely in the silence with Sanji by his side, so he concentrates on chewing and lets the unspoken relief of their success fill the air instead.

The fire has died back down to embers by the time they finish eating, painting the room with pale flickers of orange light. Usopp wishes the night hadn’t fallen so fast: he wanted to spend more time celebrating with Sanji. But it’s already pitch black outside the window, and Usopp’s eyelids are drooping as much as his blanketed shoulders. He shudders as he imagines crossing the bridge again in total darkness. They had discussed taking a day or so to get Sanji’s things out of the tower before Sanji makes his own escape, but he hadn’t thought—or let himself think—about how many more traversals he’d need to do on his own. 

He can’t bring himself to stand and say goodbye, though he knows every minute he waits will make the exit harder. But Sanji doesn’t leave him wallowing in his indecision for long. 

“Do you... I know the room is ugly, and there isn’t a real bed, and it won’t be comfortable, but...” he says awkwardly, shoving his chin into his hand as he stares past Usopp at the wall. “Do you want to stay? Here, tonight.”

“Absolutely yes,” Usopp agrees without a second of hesitation. 

More time with Sanji, and a chance to postpone the next surefire opportunity to break his neck till the morning? There’s no way he’d say no. 

Sanji lends him some spare pajamas that aren’t covered in dirt and twigs: a nightshirt of fine white silk and a pair of cotton pants, both of which will probably be a little big on Usopp’s smaller frame, but much more comfortable than sleeping in his unwashed overalls. 

He unsnaps the straps of his overalls and starts to pull off his shirt, eager to be out of his sweaty clothes. Sanji abruptly turns around to face the wall. Usopp pauses with one arm still trapped inside his shirt, confused, until Sanji mutters, “Just tell me when you’re done.”

Only then does Usopp blush, belatedly realizing his blunder. As a kid, he used to strip naked and jump in the ocean with his friends and nobody thought it was strange, but he’s vaguely aware that things are different now. That he’s fourteen and not nine, and that Sanji is older than that, and the rules have changed in a way he’s not sure he can fully articulate. He pulls off the rest of his clothes, truly conscious for the first time of his bare skin, and redresses quickly so that Sanji can turn around again.

The cot isn’t really big enough for the two of them, but they manage it regardless: not even politeness could compel either boy to consider the freezing stone floor as a serious option. Usopp’s back, curved to avoid the equally cold wall, is aching within minutes, but he doesn’t dare readjust and elbow Sanji in the chin a third time. Not that Sanji isn’t taking his fair share of the discomfort. His long limbs dangle over the edge of the cot, one socked foot peeking out from the blanket as he rubs his knees together, trying to get a little warmth from the friction. 

Yet despite the uncomfortable position they’re crammed into, Usopp can’t help but grin. Call it the euphoric aftereffects of adrenaline or just the joy of having his best friend at his side, but he doesn’t think anything could dull his mood tonight.

“Hey, Sanji,” he whispers, “how long has it been since you’ve had a sleepover?”

Sanji blinks at him. “Sleepover?”

Oh, right. Sanji probably didn’t have friends coming over to his house... castle... whatever, if he was a prince. But Usopp’s glad that even with everything changing around them—with the passing seasons, and getting older, and all the ways the world seems different year by year—that they’re not too old for this. Since Sanji never got a real childhood, he’s happy he can show him at least one thing he missed.

Usopp snuggles further into the blanket, until only his nose and eyes are showing, and tugs Sanji down with him. Sanji, still perplexed, follows his lead, and when they’re scooched down as far as they can go without falling off the bed, Usopp throws the blanket over both their heads. 

“You have to make a fort like this,” he says as the darkness closes around them. “For privacy.”

“So nobody can find you?” Sanji echoes quietly, and Usopp nods.

“No parents allowed. That’s the most important part.”

The cot rustles beneath them as Sanji shifts slightly. His knee butts up against Usopp’s: a single, warm point of contact. “Then what?”

“Then you tell each other secrets.” He racks his brain for something to share. “Like... I almost got kidnapped once!”

“What?” Sanji leans forward, like he always does when Usopp starts one of his stories, but this time Usopp can feel his curious exhale. He thrills at the attention.

“Well, not really kidnapped— the ship did start to leave port, it’s just that nobody knew I was on it. I just wanted to see a cannon up close, you know? And this ship had huge ones—the biggest guns you’ve ever seen. They were amazing, Sanji.” 

Really, they were: rows upon rows of guns so tall they cast shadows over his head. He still remembers the sleekness of their black barrels, polished with oiled rags until they shone like manta rays breaking the surf. Someone must have loved them a lot to care for them so well. 

“But before I knew it, the crew was casting off and the ship started to pull out of the harbour, and they had no idea I’d snuck on board, right? And I couldn’t just tell them, because they’d think I was a stowaway and probably stick me in the brig for a year or hand me over to the Marines, even though I wasn’t—I just wanted to see the cannons.”

“How’d you escape?” Sanji says, curiosity now tinged with a tiny hint of admiration, and Usopp grimaces, remembering why he usually invents a different ending to this story. The first part is the exciting bit. The rest is far from admirable. But it’s not really a secret if it’s not true, right? And sleepovers are for sharing real secrets: the things you can’t say in the light of day.

“I, uh,” Usopp says, “I jumped. Off the side of the boat.” 

It was the stupidest thing he could have done, in hindsight. There were a hundred ways he could have died that would have been so much worse than whatever punishment the captain would have meted out. Sharks, or jellyfish, or getting dragged beneath the hull of the ship and torn to shreds by barnacles. He could have broken both his legs and drowned a hundred metres from shore. He did sprain his wrist in the fall, the water hard as a stone slab when he hit the waves, and that alone nearly sank him. 

“I got home late,” he admits. A shiver passes across his back. “It took me two hours to swim to shore, and by then it was dark, and my mom really did think I’d been kidnapped. I shouldn’t have made her worry like that.”

The worst part, the part that Usopp can’t bring himself to add to the tale, was the look on his mother’s face when he walked through the door, sopping wet, no explanation to give other than a hastily-cobbled story about falling off the pier. He knew if he told her the truth, she’d have to live with the knowledge she’d almost lost her only child to his own stupidity, and he already felt miserable enough about it for the two of them. He couldn’t bear to pass on any of that distress to her. 

“You couldn’t help how long it took to swim back.”

“Yeah, but she was sick, you know?” The word catches in his throat. ‘Sick’: it’s a word that can mean anything, so it means nothing at all. Sick can mean a headache, or it can mean his mother not getting out of bed for two weeks. Sick can mean the sniffles, or it can mean days of sitting by his mother’s side, listening to her ragged breathing and wondering if her crusted eyelids would ever open again. “I should have been there, taking care of her. But I wasn’t. I was trying to see the cannons.”

He’s not sure what kind of response he expects from Sanji: recrimination, maybe? Or worse, reassurance, like Usopp really didn’t do anything wrong, when he knows he did. He always tried to be a good son, to make sure she never had to worry about more than the day-to-day challenges of her illness, but he just kept messing up. 

But instead, Sanji says quietly, “If you’d made it back on time, she still would have been sick.”

A hot tear gathers in the pit of Usopp’s eye; he swipes it away before it can slide down his nose. It’s jarring to hear it put like that, so bluntly, like the conclusion was inevitable. 

There was always a part of Usopp that believed if he just figured out the right thing to do—if he’d fed her the right food, and made sure she had the right amount of pillows, and gone to church and said the right amount of prayers—she might have lived a little longer. But he did all those things, and she still died, and maybe that’s the brutal truth of it: that no matter what he had to give, it was never going to be enough to save her. 

“I know,” he says, in a voice that doesn’t sound sure at all.

The air inside their bedding fort has grown thick and heavy, the heat of mingled breath clinging to Usopp’s chin and neck. Has he said too much? Too soon? They’re close, closer than they’ve ever been—knees adjoined, sharing breath—but maybe not close enough to share something so personal. 

“I have a secret too,” Sanji whispers from the darkness. 

“Yeah?” Usopp wishes desperately he could see Sanji’s face, to know if he’s moving the conversation along because he wants to play the game too or just because he’d rather not linger within Usopp’s sad past. Should he have lied after all? Kept the story light, focused on the exciting parts of the adventure instead of the depressing reality that always lurks at the end?

“When I was a kid, I thought I could do magic.”

“...You did?” Usopp can’t picture that at all. Usopp is the silly one who still believes in fairytales and witches and cursed woods: Sanji’s always had a practicality about him that made Usopp’s fanciful imaginings seem childish by comparison. 

“I thought I could heal people with my cooking.” A sharp breath breaks the stillness. “My... my mother said that I could. That all it took was one bite of what I made and she felt all better.”

Usopp swallows. “She was sick?” he says, and when Sanji whispers, yes, he knows they both understand the true meaning of the word.

“She would always send me into the woods, to look for rapunzel. She said it was a magic plant: a medicine that every mother knew. And I thought she was right, because she always looked so much happier after she ate it. Like she really was getting better.” Hot breath wafts over Usopp’s nose as Sanji exhales, his voice growing quieter with every word. “But then she died. And I realized the rapunzel wasn’t magic. She just wanted me out of the castle, where my father couldn’t find me.” 

Sanji draws his knees towards his stomach, tightening his body until not even his toes peek out from the blanket. Usopp draws his own up until their positions match again.

“A smarter kid would have realized it was just a story, but I wanted to believe it. I wanted to believe that something, anything I did mattered. But it didn’t matter. I didn’t—” 

Sanji’s voice cracks and goes silent. The quiet should be sending Usopp into spasms of anxiety, not least because Sanji is upset and that’s the hardest feeling to know how to respond to. But for once, he’s grateful for the silence, for the chance to think through Sanji’s words until the story reveals its true shape: the simple image at the heart of all the tangled complications. 

“Your mom was happy when you gave her the rapunzel?”  

Sanji doesn’t answer aloud, but Usopp feels the blanket move slightly as he nods. 

“Then you did make her better.” He says this with the certainty of every smile that welcomed him home from school—of the late nights where his mother asked him to read at her bedside, of the way she livened to his voice even when every other moment of her day was painful. “You couldn’t magically cure her, but you made her life better. That matters a lot.” 

The hug takes Usopp by surprise, so much so that he almost doesn’t recognize Sanji’s thin arms for what they are before they’re wrapped around his neck. But he returns the hug with twice the enthusiasm—so much enthusiasm that their foreheads knock against each other in the dark. Usopp winces and Sanji says ow, and suddenly they’re both giggling through thick lungs and wet eyes. The shrouded past that clung so heavily to Usopp’s shoulders a moment before falls away. All that covers them is a light blanket, easy enough to push aside when the storytelling is done. 

“I still think you can do magic,” Usopp says. “I was starving, and your food brought me back to life.”

“It was just bread,” Sanji says. “It wasn’t anything special.”

Usopp shrugs, lifting Sanji’s arms slightly. “It felt like magic.”

He feels that magic even now—that shimmering in the air, like when he first smelled cinnamon on the autumn breeze. Like he’s being drawn forward, towards something warm and welcoming and terrifically unknown. He shifts closer and their noses brush: an icy point of contact to add to all the others. How is it possible to be so close and to still feel so far away? 

“Thank you,” Sanji whispers, and the words fall from his mouth and into Usopp’s, so that they almost taste like his own. 

“For what?”

“For making my life better.”

And when Sanji nervously, carefully, presses his mouth to Usopp’s, he realizes at last what he was searching for in the dark. 

This is finally close enough.

Chapter Text

Usopp throws the shutter open to a crystalline world. The first frost came and went while they slept, and now the trees are laced with dewdrops of ice. The hard-packed earth of the clearing twinkles below, little silver charms of light dancing from place to place as Usopp tilts his head. 

The rope bridge survived the night, much to Usopp’s relief. He’d been half afraid they’d wake to find it dangling from one thread, torn to pieces by the birds that Sanji told him roosted in the tree before he admitted the truth about Reiju. But there were never any birds to fear, and their escape route is still safe in the dawning light. 

The buttered toast Sanji places in front of Usopp when he returns from the window is overlaid with a bed of soft, green leaves. Usopp doesn’t say anything, but he grins as he takes his first bite. A little bitter, but still perfectly good to eat. They haven’t waited too long after all.

Sanji chews thoughtfully on his own breakfast while he glances around the room, cataloguing possessions and deciding the order they’ll bring them down. Usopp should probably be helping, but instead he’s staring at Sanji, still in his rumpled pajamas, his hair uncombed and tangled around his ears. He’s so used to Sanji arriving at the window already dressed with his hair neatly combed or braided. A happy little shiver runs through Usopp, remembering that he’ll get to see Sanji unbuttoned like this every morning from now on. 

A whole host of new shivers arrive when he’s finally bundled back up and staring down the length of the rope bridge from the opposite side. He hefts the bag of clothes on his back, readjusting to delay the inevitable moment when he’ll have to step off the windowsill again. 

They’d agreed to start with Sanji’s wardrobe, nothing too heavy while Usopp is still getting comfortable with the traversal. Tomorrow, he’ll carry over his pots and pans, and on the last day, they’ll take what’s left of the food together. Everything else inessential they’ll leave behind. While the bridge still looks sturdy, Usopp’s not ready to bet his life on it holding up to more than five or six trips. 

Usopp checks the brackets for the fifteenth time, then steals a final hug from Sanji before swinging his legs over the sill and beginning the painstaking descent back down to earth.

At least it hasn’t snowed yet, he reassures himself as he shuffles down the bridge. The twisted sheets crunch beneath his fingers, but at least they’re not slippery. His hands are cold, but at least his gloves are thick enough to keep a good grip. He repeats these little encouragements under his breath until he can’t hear all the louder thoughts—about ropes snapping and brackets bending and boys plummeting to an untimely death—and after a few nerve wracking minutes he’s off the bridge and back in the familiar safety of the tree. 

The branches seem as sturdy as wrought iron compared to the sheet ropes, and he clambers down quickly, more focused on keeping the bag of clothes from sliding off his shoulder than the ground below. He lands with a soft thud at the bottom and dusts the twigs from his gloves, then turns towards home—and freezes.

There’s a girl standing beneath the farthest shadow of the tree, deep enough into the wood that no sunlight reaches her face. The fur-lined hood of her sable cloak is thrown back: long tresses of dusky rose frame a wind-chafed face, turned upward towards the sky. 

He nervously waits for her to notice his presence. It’s too late to hide, no matter what his instincts are screaming. But her chin never dips in acknowledgement. Her eyes stay fixed on the bridge and the open shutter at its peak. 

“Hi?” he calls out hesitantly. Her stillness is intimidating: it reminds him of a cougar’s motionless observation, the kind that ends with bloody efficiency as soon your back is turned. “You’re—you’re Reiju, right?”

At last, her eyes glide to him, though her chin remains raised to a haughty point. She’s almost Sanji’s height, and her icy stare bears down on him with a gravity that makes Usopp want to bow his head. For the first time, he truly grasps that Sanji comes from royalty.

“You’re the one who’s been visiting my brother.”

“...Wait, you already know?” he says, darting his eyes back towards the tower in confusion. Sanji hadn’t said anything about Reiju coming in the last few days. Surely he would have told Usopp if she did?

“Sanji’s never been able to hide anything, from anyone.” There’s a disapproving edge to her voice that catches Usopp off guard. He’d expected the sister Sanji cared about so much to be more like him: quiet, kind, with a tight-sealed pot of anger in his chest that occasionally bubbles over. But the coldness of her speech is alien. Her familiar blue eyes hold nothing of Sanji’s warmth: they bore into Usopp, like she can see straight through to his trembling heart. He doesn’t think this is a person he can lie to.

“How long have you known about me?” he says faintly. 

She doesn’t answer, but her sharp look is enough. Usopp’s shoulders deflate. So much for all their careful secrecy.  

“Why didn’t you say something to Sanji before?”

Reiju finally turns her head from the tower to look at Usopp. Her hair gleams with the same icy glamour as the ground, each glistening strand perfect and immovable, as if the gentle waves had frozen solid with the frost. She only comes in the evening, Usopp remembers. How long has she been standing out here? 

“I thought you’d get bored with my brother eventually,” Reiju says, giving him a cursory once over as she speaks. Her lips purse, unimpressed. “Then you’d stop coming, and you wouldn’t be a problem anymore.” 

“I’m not a problem!” he protests. This is Sanji’s sister, so he’s really trying to be friendly and inoffensive, but her offhand dismissal stings more than he’d like to admit. “I’m trying to help your brother! That makes me the opposite of a problem. I’m a solution!”  

Her gaze starts to slide back towards the tower, not even a little interested in what he has to say, and his brittle self-esteem snaps like an overwound wire. Frustrated words start pouring out before he can stop them.

“Shouldn’t you be happy that someone else is risking their neck for Sanji? You’re not the one who has to risk their life climbing over that death trap up there. Have you ever even tried to get him out yourself?”

Her eyes whip back to him, dark with sudden anger. Usopp takes a hasty step back.

“Don’t be shortsighted,” Reiju says, her voice sharpened to a razor-thin point. “What will you do when my father comes for you both? How much will you be willing to risk then? Your own freedom? Your life?”

Usopp swallows. “I can protect him.”

Reiju laughs, and for the first time Usopp hears a resemblance between their voices: this is what Sanji’s laugh sounded like when they first met, mired in the kind of bitterness that overwhelms any mote of potential hope and smothers it till it dies. 

“I assume my brother told you who he was, or you wouldn’t be willing to go this far. But if you think rescuing a prince will save you from those rags,” she says, eyes trailing down Usopp’s patched overalls, “you're wrong.” She starts to walk towards him. Usopp takes another step back. “You won’t get anything as a reward for this. He has nothing to give you.” 

“He doesn’t have to give me anything,” Usopp says. “I just want to save him.”

Reiju is standing right in front of him now. There’s nowhere else to retreat: his back hits the tree when he tries. 

“You’re as softhearted as Sanji,” she says softly, anger bled to cold disapproval once more. “But our family is past saving.”

She shoulders past him and grabs for a handhold on the tree. With the ease of an acrobatic, Reiju swings herself up onto the lowest branch, her eyes turned upward once more.

“...Wait!” he forces himself to call out. She pauses for only a moment, one hand poised in midair, before grabbing the next branch. “If your family isn’t worth saving, then why haven’t you left already? You could just go somewhere else. You’re not stuck in a tower like he is.” 

She scoffs and keeps climbing. 

“...You could come with us?” he blurts out, then immediately regrets the offer. None of his fantasies involved setting a third place at their dinner table for Sanji’s surly sister. But at the same time, he hates the hopelessness in Reiju’s manner of speaking just as much as he hated it in Sanji’s. She might not be the friendliest person in the world, but that doesn’t mean she deserves to live in misery for the rest of her life.

Reiju heaves herself up onto a thick branch, one that Usopp’s used as a resting spot himself many times before, and straddles the wood before finally looking down at Usopp. As much as he hates to admit it, Sanji was right: she’s a good climber. Like Usopp, she reaches only the sturdiest handholds, searching always for the least perilous path forward.

“Why would you want that?” she says. Her eyes narrow with suspicion. “It’s safer for you two to go alone. Bringing me along is a completely unnecessary risk.”

“Sanji loves you,” he answers without hesitation. That part seemed obvious to Usopp. But for a fraction of a second, her expression cracks and he sees profound confusion in her eyes, like a child realizing that their mother has disappeared into the crowd and there’s nobody there to hold their hand. 

The uncertainty lingers only a moment, too short a time for Usopp to truly understand her reaction, before her expression reforms into something aloof once more. She blows on her hands and pulls herself up to the next branch. Her head and shoulders disappear, then her feet, and then Usopp is alone at the base of the tree again.

It’s a relief Reiju showed up at all, Usopp reminds himself as the uneasiness of the encounter begins to fade. He was starting to think they’d have to go before Sanji got a chance to say goodbye.

Maybe Sanji will have better luck convincing Reiju, or maybe he won’t, but Usopp pats himself on the back for trying as he reshoulders the pack of clothes and starts trudging home. A couple months ago, he doesn’t think he’d have dared argue even this much with someone so intimidating. Maybe all this tree climbing really has made him a little braver than he was before. 

Usopp returns to the tower later that evening than he meant to. He’d hoped to be back while the sun was still high, but on the walk home, he’d discovered that his snares were full. Usopp knew too well that if he didn’t collect his spoils right away, some other predator would steal the rabbits before he got a chance. They really can’t afford to waste food now that they won’t have Sanji’s deliveries to rely upon, so Usopp took the rabbits home and skinned and cleaned the bodies, then smoked the meat in the oven for a few hours so it would stay fresh, and by the time all that was done it was already late afternoon. Even hurrying at a decent pace, he couldn’t make it back before nightfall.

But Sanji doesn’t comment on his tardiness. In fact, he seems distracted all through their late dinner of rapunzel and roasted potatoes, reluctant to meet Usopp’s eyes, which in turn makes Usopp’s anxiety spike. He’d been expecting a repeat of the night before: a quick invitation to stay the night, followed by more talk and bed-sharing and giggling and maybe, if he was lucky, another kiss or two. 

The more withdrawn Sanji becomes, the more convinced he is that none of that is going to happen. Sanji probably regrets sharing so much beneath the sheets, and that’s why things are so awkward now. Or maybe Usopp was bad at kissing? That’s an even more mortifying thought, but a horribly plausible one. He’d never done it before, so he probably did something weird, like put his hands in the wrong place or pressed too hard or not hard enough, and now Sanji doesn’t want to look at him because he’s embarrassed he ever touched lips with someone so inexperienced. 

He opens his mouth to apologize for whatever it is he did—a blanket apology, since if the kiss wasn’t the problem then bringing it up will make things weirder and everything will be even more ruined than before—when Sanji finally speaks. 

“Reiju told me that I should leave without you.” 

Usopp’s hands go cold. All his worries dim as a fresher, far more potent fear takes hold.

“She said that you’ll slow me down,” Sanji says hollowly. “That your house is too close to the castle and we’ll be caught in a day if we stay there. She said I should take what I can carry and go alone, today. Cut through the forest, find a place where no one knows my name, and disappear for good.” 

Usopp waits for the end of Sanji’s speech with horrified anticipation. He waits for Sanji to say that he told Reiju she was wrong, that he and Usopp were in this together till the end. Every step of the way, no matter how many times they revised their plan, there was never any question about what would happen after the escape. They’d go home together. They’d figure it out, together. That’s what they promised. 

But instead, Sanji says, “I think she’s right,” and Usopp’s heart rends with the force of a lightning strike.

“...Oh,” he whispers. “Um.” He can’t help it: his lower lip starts to tremble. “But I thought you wanted to—but I guess, um, if you don’t actually want to live together, it’s okay.” It’s not okay. He knows his warbling voice makes it clear how not okay he feels about any of this.

“I do want to live with you.” Sanji’s hands go to his hair, tugging at the roots with a painful grip. “But we’ve both been naive, Usopp. If my father comes looking for me, it would be so easy for him to find us in town. How many of your neighbours have seen you go out into the woods every day? And some of them know you were looking for rope. My father is charming when he wants to be. All it would take is one person to point to your house and we’re finished.”

“But,” Usopp says weakly, “but if we were careful, and I told my neighbours not to tell any strangers about us—”

“Do you actually trust those assholes to have your back? Do you think they’ll believe you if you tell them you’re trying to hide me for perfectly legitimate reasons? Or do you think they’ll assume the worst about you, like they always do? If someone rich and polite and well-dressed says you’ve stolen something of his, won’t they take his word over yours?”

Sanji’s words hit like a slap: they startle the tears right out of his eyes. He blinks, reeling, as the truth permeates his chest. They won’t believe him. Sanji’s right—of course they won’t believe him. But his heart doesn’t want to accept the truth. Instead, it floods with an anger that he knows Sanji doesn’t deserve, but who else can he blame, in this moment, for the unfairness of his life?

“So why are you still here?” he spits. There’s bitterness on his tongue now too, acrid and unfamiliar. “Why didn’t you leave me behind yet? You could have just gone. You didn’t have to stick around just to tell me how nobody likes me. Don’t you think I know that already?”

“Because I want you to come with me,” Sanji says desperately as he leans forward across the table, grasping for Usopp’s hands. “Usopp, let’s do what Reiju said. Let’s go through the woods and find a new place, a new life. We can leave your town behind. We can leave behind every single person who doesn’t understand how incredible you are.”

Leave... town? 

It’s not that he’s never thought about going somewhere new. He’s had countless daydreams of stepping onto the bow of a ship, like his father must have proudly done the night he left, and sailing off for adventures unknown. But that dream was always sometime in the future. When he was older, braver—when his dad came back and taught him everything he needed to know—then he’d set his sights on the horizon. 

This is all too soon. How can he leave behind his mother’s house, with its little cookstove and its uneven floorboards and the armchair that always creaks on the third rock? How can he abandon the harbour where he played hide and seek with his childhood friends beneath the docks? 

If he leaves now, how will his dad find him again?

Sanji’s still leaning forward, waiting for his answer. There’s so much pain in his eyes, but an incredible determination too: to escape, to survive. To live. 

He’s going, Usopp realizes, whether I come or not. 

Either I lose my home, or I lose him.

“Just... let me think about it?” he says, desperate for any excuse not to make this decision right away. “Not for long, I know we—you don’t have much time before your brothers come back. But can I have one more night to decide?” 

They were already planning to leave tomorrow morning, right? So it doesn’t change anything if he spends his last night thinking. It’s not fair to expect him to have an answer so quickly to a question he never expected Sanji to ask.

Sanji’s face falls. “Sure, Usopp,” he says quietly. “We can talk about it tomorrow.” He sits back in the chair, out of reach once more. Usopp stands, feeling as shaky as when he first climbed through Sanji’s window, like some part of his soul was still hanging over the precipice between life and death. 

He walks to the shutter. He waits, hoping Sanji will call out and tell him to forget all about what Reiju said, that nothing needs to change, that he can still stay the night. But he doesn’t. 

Usopp pushes the shutter open, and only then do Sanji’s soft footfalls pad up behind him. His arms wrap around Usopp from behind, not dragging him back inside, but steadying him, until his legs find enough strength to step back up onto the sill.

“You deserve more than what they’ve given you,” Sanji mumbles into his shoulder. “No matter what you do, remember that, ok? No matter what you decide... you deserve to be with people who won’t abandon you.”

Then why are you leaving? Usopp wants to cry out. 

But Usopp is the one with his hand on the open window. 

He’s the one disappearing.

It’s past midnight when he finally gets home. The living room is pitch dark, but he doesn’t need to see to find his way through the familiar space. He drops the key in the porcelain bowl on the mantle that he painted at school when he was six. He toes off his boots and kicks them into the dusty corner, where they’ll add another couple scuffs to the crosshatch of marks on the wall. He hangs his coat on the third peg: the first was his mother’s, and while he was too young to remember what peg his father used before he went away, he always leaves the second one free just in case.

The kitchen still smells of roasted rabbit and sweet cedar smoke. Usopp sits down at the table, in the chair nearest to the door. He always liked to be as close to his mother’s bedroom as possible no matter what room he was in, so he could hear if she needed help. The wooden floor is grooved from years of dragging the heavy chair out from its spot. He pushes his socked foot into the groove, like he did when he was a bored child who’d rather be outside than eating dinner, trying to make his big toe fit perfectly in the depression.

Usopp’s stomach rumbles. He almost goes to grab a piece of rabbit from the counter, but he can’t make himself do it. If he decides to stay, he has to save all the food he can. He’ll need provisions to live on when Sanji’s charity is gone. 

He wants to light a candle, some brightness to chase away the hunger, but those too he should save until he really needs them. Tallow isn’t cheap, and there will be darker nights to come.

Maybe he finally looks old enough and strong enough that someone will hire him to haul lumber this winter. Then he could afford to buy food from the tavern a few nights a week, enough to fill the gaps in his stomach, and candles too. It’s not like it’s hopeless: he survived on his own for years before Sanji was a part of his life. There’s no reason to think he can’t do it again.

The prospect is too exhausting to contemplate this late at night. He puts the rabbit away in the icebox as his stomach continues to growl, then heads for bed. He’ll sleep a few hours, then get up and think about things properly. Better to make a decision this big when you’re really awake, right?

But his feet pause halfway through the darkened hallway. Before he can consider what he’s doing, he reaches out and turns the handle to his mother’s bedroom.

He hasn’t been in this room since she died. It looks the same as it did when he last closed the door, preserved pristinely by the lack of visitors. There’s the blue bedspread, the three fluffed pillows, the stack of books on the chair below the window whose curtains were never drawn, so his mother could always wake with sunshine on her face. The only proof of the passage of time is a flower vase on the nightstand, filled to bursting with the dried-out husks of whatever lilies or roses or carnations it once held. He doesn’t recognize the vase. Someone must have left it after the funeral reception: a last gift for a beloved friend.

There were a lot of gifts, the week his mother died. Trays of sandwiches and baskets of fruit, pats on the head and promises that nobody would ever forget about Banchina, that she was so admired in this town. If he needed anything, he could come to any one of the townsfolk and their doors would always be open.

And the doors were open, for the first few months. When he got hungry, he went to the church and a priest gave him loaves of stale bread. When he needed to repair the fence, he knocked on a neighbour’s door and they lent him a hammer and nails. And it seemed, for a few months, that everyone had forgiven him for all those childish times he thought he saw pirates in the mist, because his mother had died and that made him worthy of pity, if nothing else.

But then Usopp started to see the pirates again. He heard their jeering calls in the harbour. He spied their glimmering cutlasses in the crest of every wave. And one by one, the doors closed, and the gifts disappeared, and he realized that whatever pity he was worth, he’d used up every last drop on tall tales. Nobody wanted to give up their hard-earned food to a troublemaker, a liar. They had their own mouths to feed.

He moves the pile of books to the floor and sits down on the chair, staring at the empty bed that was his parents’, then his mother’s, then no one’s. And for the first time, he lets himself really, honestly consider the possibility that his father isn’t coming back. That he’ll live alone in this house for the rest of his life, waiting in vain for someone to decide he’s worth returning for. That he rescued Sanji, but there isn’t a rescue coming for him.

The thought feels treasonous the moment it enters his mind. Yasopp, the fearless pirate, the loving husband, the hero of every story Usopp’s ever told himself about the high seas, would never abandon his child. No father would ever leave his son to rot alone in some little seaside town...

Or a crumbling stone tower.

Usopp looks around the room, lit only by the hazy moonlight that seeps through frosted glass. Nobody comes crashing through the door to yell at him for doubting his father’s memory. His mother’s bedroom is quiet. Unjudgmental. It hears his anxious thoughts and offers gentle stillness in return. He remembers now why even during the darkest days of his mother’s illness, he still found peace in this room.

My father’s not coming back, he thinks, and trembles. The bedroom lovingly accepts this thought without comment or criticism.

I don’t want to be here anymore, he thinks, more boldly. This thought too, the silence envelops and gently carries out of his body, till it’s a thing he can examine in midair: something soft and abstract, apart from himself. 

“I want to go with Sanji,” he whispers. “I don’t want him to leave me behind.”  

For once, he hears his own voice clearly, absent of all chatter and noise, all anxieties and insecurities. In the silence, all that echoes is the simple truth: Sanji wants him to come, and he wants to go. He wants what Sanji promised he could have. He wants a world where there are people who will love him for exactly who he is, and he wants to be that world for Sanji too. Whatever love he’s been given, he wants to give it back three times over.

Usopp sits a while longer, enough time to fix the room in his memory. When he finally leaves, it’s with his mother’s blue bedspread folded in his arms and their favourite book perched on top. He finds the bag with Sanji’s clothes in the living room and places the bedspread and book inside. Then he goes to the kitchen and lights a candle. He eats bits of smoked rabbit over the sink until his fingers are greasy and his belly is full. When the first candle runs low, he lights another, and relishes the warmth of the flame, the luxury of uninterrupted light. 

He falls asleep in the armchair and wakes with an unburdened heart. Maybe this is how Sanji felt when he realized he’d never have to see his brothers again. For the first time in years, Usopp doesn’t need to worry about gathering his snares, about who he’ll run into in town, about how he’ll find enough food for the winter. Instead, he thinks of how he and Sanji will cook on their walk—Sanji has the pans, but Usopp is pretty good at building campfires—and how many days it’ll take to cross the forest, and whether the place they’ll settle down will have a harbour where they can watch the ships together. The world feels beautiful and fresh and full of possibility: new problems to solve, new things to see. He’s going on a real adventure at last.

Usopp locks the door and places the key in the bowl for the final time, then steps out into the frigid wind and lets it carry him down the street, away from his old life and towards the new.

The last time Usopp climbs the tree to Sanji’s window, it’s with the confidence of months of practice. His fingers are steady and sure of which handholds to grab as he scrambles from one branch to the next. He leaves the bag of clothes nestled in the empty hole where he hid the ropes. He doesn’t want the extra weight. Every moment he wastes is a moment Sanji won’t know that he’s made up his mind to come. His satchel is as light as the day he first scaled the tree: a slingshot, a few snares, and a yellow handkerchief are all he carries for this final ascent. 

The shutter is still open, and Usopp’s heart leaps at the sight. He quickens his pace, hand over hand, branch over branch, until he can see the bottom of the sill. No scent of crisping salt pork or fresh baked bread drifts down from the window, but Sanji probably packed all the food away already. That’s fine: he’s too excited to eat breakfast anyway, and they’ll have lots of time for snacking while they walk. He has no idea how big the forest is, but he figures it’s got to be a few days of hiking at least to reach the other side.

He checks each line of ropes as he crosses the bridge, looking for any flaws he might have missed on his first few traversals. This will be Sanji’s first (and thankfully, only) crossing, so he wants to make sure there aren’t any weaknesses in the weave that Sanji’s less experienced hands might fall through. But he doesn’t find a single one. It’s a perfect construction, and for once he lets himself be truly proud of his handiwork. The bridge has held up beyond his wildest dreams. He wonders if someone will take it down after they’ve gone, or if the ropes will hang here forever, a testament to a historical moment as exciting as any boring old war. This is the day that the great inventor Usopp rescued the lonely prince: it deserves to be remembered!

Usopp whistles as soon as he’s a few feet away. To his disappointment, Sanji’s golden head doesn’t appear, but he spies a metallic gleam just above the sill, like light reflecting off of one of Sanji’s polished pans. Maybe he’s packing the last of his kitchen supplies and didn’t hear him? 

He whistles again. Again, no response. Confused, Usopp rises to his knees and grabs two of the brackets. This part is a lot easier when he’s got Sanji’s hand to hold onto, and he’s puffing by the time he manages to get one knee onto the windowsill and hoist himself up.

“Sanji, I decided! I’m coming—!” 

But the figure standing between him and the hearth isn’t Sanji. It’s a man, so tall his head nearly brushes the low ceiling as he turns to face Usopp. The silver of his ornate breastplate gleams with the same piercing glint as the broad-bladed spear in his hand. His lips curl back into a vicious, white-toothed grin.

“So,” Sanji’s father says. “You’re the little magpie who’s been stealing from my stores.”

A muffled cry pulls his attention towards the back of the room. The red cloak lies discarded on the stone floor, and amidst the uncovered wreckage Usopp’s eyes find Sanji’s at last: wide and terrified above the delicately manicured hand that covers his mouth. Reiju’s other hand jerks him back when he tries to lunge forward, snaring him in place.

Something cold and wet lands on Usopp’s cheek. 

It’s snowing.

Chapter Text

Snow lands in Usopp’s hair in heavy, damp clumps, too fresh to linger long before melting away. A trickle of ice water runs down his back. Sanji’s father sneers at his trembling shoulders.

“When Reiju told me someone was climbing through my son’s window at night, I thought it must be a charming rogue with a taste for easy prey.” He looks Usopp over, clicking his tongue with distaste. “At least if he’d been seduced, I might have understood. Hot blood can make a young man do foolish things—even betray his family.” The butt of the spear thumps against the stone floor, and Usopp flinches. “But even after all this time, you find new ways to disappoint me.”

The man turns to the back of the room, to where Sanji is still struggling against Reiju’s hold. Usopp manages to catch Sanji’s gaze again, but only in short glimpses: his eyes keep flickering to his advancing father and then back to the window, pleading for help that Usopp doesn’t know how to give. Usopp watches the scene unfold in mute horror, too petrified to move. Only Reiju’s eyes remain fixed on the floor, staring at no one. 

“I see now that I’ve been too lenient. If you allow a dog the run of the yard, it will always find a way to slip the fence.” Sanji’s father pauses at the edge of the rubble, then nudges the iron helmet free of the pile with his spear. He picks it up and regards it thoughtfully. “I’ll have to shorten your leash.”

“W-wait,” Usopp stutters out. He doesn’t know what the man is about to do, but he can feel the air in the room begin to thicken, heavy with something dark and sinister and irrevocable: a breed of malice that won’t be satisfied by a few bruises. He starts to step off the windowsill, desperate to interrupt whatever is about to happen, but freezes again when the man’s head swivels to glare at Usopp. He scoffs, then jerks his head towards Reiju.

“Take care of that.” 

Reiju jumps to the order immediately. Sanji starts scrambling towards the window as soon as she releases his arm, but his father cuts off his escape with the whetted edge of the spear. Sanji’s cries for Usopp dwindle down to nothing but the sound of panicked breath as the blade presses against his chest, forcing his back to the wall.

Usopp digs into his satchel with a shaking hand—maybe if he fires a warning shot, Sanji’s father will be distracted long enough for Sanji to get free, maybe, maybe —but Reiju has a hand on Usopp’s collar before his own can find the slingshot. He tries to shove her off but her grip is unrelenting, far too strong for a girl her age, and he gasps for air as his shirt tightens around his windpipe. 

“Why?” he manages to say. “Reiju, why did—” She squeezes tighter, and his voice disappears.

“All I did,” she whispers, tugging him in till their noses are almost touching, till he can’t see anything past her cold, relentless glare, “is try to save my brother from his own foolish heart.” 

Usopp searches in vain for any hint of remorse in her eyes. Maybe... maybe this is a trick. Sanji always said his sister was the smartest of his siblings. Maybe she’s been on their side all along, and she’s just waiting for the right moment for the dramatic triple-cross. That would be an exciting twist ending to the story, right? 

But there’s nothing in her eyes. Reiju regards him dispassionately as he claws at her fingers, pulling them free one by one until the hand around his collar finally loosens enough that he can force a few words out.

“He loves you,” he whispers hoarsely. It’s the only thing he can think to say—the only words that seemed to get through to her the first time they met. But this time, there’s no flicker of indecision in her expression, no confusion or doubt, and Usopp feels the last of his hope start to slip away.

“Love,” Reiju murmurs, tilting her head. “I don’t want his love. Without love, Sanji would have escaped already. He could have saved himself if he left you behind. But he stayed, for you.” Her fingers flex; Usopp chokes. “Love is an obligation. It’s a chain around your neck.” 

Usopp shakes his head, even as tears gather in the corner of his eyes. He’s not certain about much, but he knows she’s wrong about love. If that’s what love is, then Sanji wouldn’t have let Usopp make the choice to come back on his own. Sanji would have clung to him, that last night in the tower, and reminded him of everything he’d given Usopp—the food, the friendship, the hope for the future—until he couldn’t do anything else but agree to stay. 

But he didn’t. He let Usopp go, even knowing he might lose him forever.

“It’s not a–a chain,” he gasps out, wheezing between each word. “It’s not an obligation. It’s not love if you have to pay it back.”

Somewhere in the background, Judge is growling out threats and Sanji is weeping softly, but Usopp forces himself to stay focused on Reiju. He swears he can see it now: beneath her deadened exterior, he can see little flashes of pain at every terrified sound Sanji makes. 

“You stayed for Sanji, right? Because you love him too.” She swallows, squeezing her eyes shut as another whimper shakes them both. “It’s not too late. You can still come with us.”

“...I—” 

"Reiju."

The booming command overpowers the small room. Reiju recoils, and in that brief moment, her grip on Usopp’s collar slips. 

His body understands what’s coming before his mind does. His hands are scrambling for anything to hold onto before he can make sense of the sudden rush of cold air against his shoulders, the dark shutters flying past, Reiju’s shocked face framed by wooden bars, growing smaller and smaller as he falls backward off the windowsill. Sanji screams his name, but it’s too late: he’s already gone.

Usopp hits the bridge shoulders-first and tumbles, somersaulting wildly until his foot finally catches between two ropes and yanks him to a halt. He’s left staring up at the snow-specked sky as blood rushes to his head.

“A long conversation for a simple order, girl.” 

Get up, his mind shouts, but this time his body is slow to respond. He’s too disoriented to do anything but sway with the violent rock of the bridge. Get up, get up, get— 

“I didn’t know we were in a hurry.” Reiju’s calm voice drifts down with the snowflakes. Usopp blinks, clearing the ice from his eyes as his vision finally refocuses. Reiju is still standing at the window, half-hidden by the shutter, her back to the outside world.

“He knew your name.” He can’t see the man’s face, but the wrath in the accusation is deafening. Reiju’s head never dips. She remains perfectly still, balanced on the precipice.

“Sanji must have told him.”

“If you’re lying to me—”

“Who was the one who told you about their plan?” Reiju takes a sharp breath. “I’ve never given you any reason to question my loyalty.”

Usopp’s mind isn’t shouting anymore. It’s all gone eerily quiet.

“...No. I suppose not.” Sanji’s father appears at the window, blond hair and blue eyes staring down at him: the wrong blond, the wrong blue . “But next time, I expect you to finish the task.”

Too late, Usopp realizes that the sudden blinding glare isn’t the sun piercing through the clouds. It’s the glint of a blade, held aloft towards the sky. 

“Usopp!” 

Sanji’s blue eyes might be tearstained and terrified, but they’re the only ones Usopp wants to see. And he does see them. Before Sanji’s father shoves him away with a gauntleted hand, before Reiju throws her arms around Sanji and hides his face from the window, Usopp sees that perfect blue one last time. 

The spear falls with an executioner’s precise stroke. In one swift, efficient slash, every rope is cleanly severed from its bracket, and for a moment, Usopp is weightless in the open air, like a fledgling bird pushed from the nest too soon.

And then he begins to plummet.

Cold is the first and only sensation Usopp can feel when he wakes. The rest of the world returns only in sluggish waves of awareness. The ground is strangely soft beneath him. There’s something sharp pricking at his cheek. His arms and legs are heavy, buried beneath the blanket of cold that surrounds him, envelops him, entices him to keep sleeping. 

But eventually, the pain returns as well, and slipping back into unconsciousness becomes impossible. The throb in his shoulders and the ache in his left arm are muted by the cold, but there’s no relief for the slow-creeping burn that spiders across the top half of his face, stinging more intensely with each passing minute. He tries to turn his head away from the breeze, but his cheek scrapes against a pincushion of barbs and the burning erupts into a wildfire. He goes still, breathing in and out as he waits for the worst of the pain to pass into something bearable again.

When Usopp finally gathers the strength to open his eyes, all he sees is a kaleidoscope of shimmering white and grey. The burning doubles instantly, so he shuts them again and shoves his face into the snow.

He was falling.

The memories are hard to gather into a coherent whole, and even when he manages to piece them together, it’s like he’s seeing what happened through another person’s eyes, watching from the side as a boy who looks just like him falls from the sky. He sees himself grab hold of a severed rope just as the half of the bridge still connected to the tree snags in its branches, wrenching him to a brief halt in midair before his hand slips and he plummets the rest of the way down. 

He’s not dead. It wouldn’t hurt this much if he was dead. 

A sheet of snow slides from Usopp’s torso as he maneuvers himself onto his right side. He starts to reach out with his left hand to brush the rest of the snow from his legs, but a bolt of pain rockets through his arm and he goes still again. Dislocated, or broken: he doesn’t dare move the limb enough to figure out which. 

He tries to push himself off the ground with his good arm, but he yelps as thorns piece through his glove and into his palm. 

The brambles. He landed in the bramble patch. That’s what was scraping his cheek. It’s probably what cushioned his fall, saved the rest of the bones from the fate of his left arm.

Carefully, he threads his hand through the thorny vines and finds solid earth below, enough purchase to leverage himself onto his knees. He doesn’t dare stand and risk tripping on the vines while his eyes still hurt too much to open, so he crawls instead, pushing aside the bramble where he can and pushing snow over the places where the vines are too thick to clear. He can’t have fallen far from the tower: all he needs to do is reach it, and then he can rest against the stone for a while and catch his breath. He can do that—just that little bit more. Just a little more, then he can rest for a while, and maybe press some more snow into the scratches on his face until the burning goes away. 

At last, the brambles come to an end. His hands and knees pass onto soft snow once more, and after a few more minutes of crawling, his knuckles bang into something hard and solid. He’s so exhausted that he doesn’t notice at first that the roughness of the surface is nothing like stone. It’s only when he leans his aching back against the structure that he realizes what’s scraping against his coat is tree bark. Instead of crawling to the tower, he’s managed to crawl his way out of the clearing entirely. 

He tries to open his eyes again, to see where he took a wrong turn, but while the pain has faded by now into a throbbing ache, the world is as white and hazy as it was the first time he tried. 

Snow blindness. He’s never experienced it before, but he’s heard of the condition from loggers who spend most of the winter outdoors. That... that must be what this is. Just a bit of snow blindness. If he rests for a few minutes, it’ll go away. He can’t afford to wait too long, not when Sanji’s still at the mercy of his father. Did he and Reiju take him home or is he still in the tower, waiting for Usopp to come back?

He gathers his knees up to his chest and shivers. Just a few minutes, then he’ll keep going. In the meantime, he’ll think of a new rescue plan, one that doesn’t involve any flimsy bridges or treacherous heights.

But sleep takes him again before he can come up with a step one. 

It’s night by the time his reluctant consciousness crawls back to him: or at least, he assumes it must be night, since everything is so dark. The lack of snow-glare is a relief for his aching eyes, but it doesn’t help with the problem at hand. He can’t see a thing around him.

Maybe he can find his way back the way he came. It shouldn’t be too hard, right? Once he makes it back to the clearing, the moonlight will show him the rest of the way. 

But his first few faltering steps don’t lead him into the moonlight. They lead him face-first into a tree. He winces as the impact jostles his arm (not broken, he reassures himself, I’d be screaming if something was broken, that’s a relief) and tries to reorient from what he blearily remembers of the night before. The clearing should be to the... left. 

See? Everything’s fine. He’s still got his internal compass, even if he can’t see very well right now. 

Usopp holds his good hand out in front of him this time. It saves him from knocking into the next tree in his path. He manages to avoid the next as well. And then the next. And the next. 

Too many trees.

He’s going the wrong way.

Usopp’s breathing starts to quicken as he turns around, trying to remember what direction he came from. It was probably... that way.

He starts off again, grateful for all the time he’s spent walking the forest floor. His familiarity keeps him surefooted even when he can’t see the ground. But it’s no use. He trudges on till the blackness turns to grey, then back into a white landscape dappled with shadows of strange, amorphous shapes, but every time he puts out his hand, there are still more trees in his path. 

And he still can’t see.

Usopp walks by night and sleeps during the day. When the sun is high and the glare is too much for his eyes, he digs burrows in the snow and curls up like a marmot in its den, dreaming of hot pastries and smoked rabbit and Sanji’s warm smile. But when the temperature begins to drop, he gets up and starts moving again. If he sits still too long, he’ll freeze. If he freezes, Sanji will never know that he’s coming back for him. So he keeps walking.

He holds snow in his mouth until it turns into water. He fastens his arm to his chest with a makeshift sling of dead roots. He folds the handkerchief from his satchel into a blindfold and pulls it over his eyes so that he can press on without wincing at the too-bright light of morning. He keeps walking. 

He sleeps.

He wakes up.

He sleeps.

He keeps walking.

He keeps walking, until one day there are no more trees in his path. He walks out of the wood and into the warmth of uninterrupted sunlight. He walks until his boots leave the crunch of snow behind and find the stability of well-packed earth, worn by the weight of wagon wheels and tramping feet. He walks until he hears his first human voice in what feels like weeks and remembers that there was something he was walking towards when all this began: someone to find at the end of the journey. Not just survival, but a reason to live.

Usopp sinks to his knees in the middle of the road. It’s a faint hope, but maybe the person won’t pass him by. Maybe they’ll come over to talk to him before it all ends, just for a minute. He can tell them about the boy in the tower, and they can go look for Sanji, and Usopp will have done something worthwhile with his life after all.

The trundle of a cart. The slowing shuffle of shod hooves. A soft gasp.

“Hel... he...” he mumbles, but can’t manage a single word. It’s too much energy to even open his mouth. He gave everything he had to get this far. He has nothing left.

“Oh, sweetheart,” comes a woman’s quiet voice, “what happened to you?”

When he finally collapses, there are gentle hands waiting to catch him. They pick him up off the ground and lay him in a bed of sweet-smelling hay. They offer him water, and stroke his hair when his shoulders start to shake. Once he’s settled, the woman leaves his side and climbs into the front of the cart, but all along the softly rocking journey, there are murmured promises of food, of shelter, of a doctor who’ll come by in the morning. 

“Who leaves a child like that, alone in the middle of winter?” the woman says to herself. “It’s not right. It’s not right.” A hand reaches back and brushes Usopp’s forehead, like he used to do when his mother’s temperature ran high. “Well, don’t you worry. You won’t be out in the cold for much longer. Just sleep for a bit, sweetheart. I’ll let you know when the road ends.”

He doesn’t know what road he’s on anymore, but at least tucked beneath the sweet hay, he’s starting to remember what it feels like to be warm.

Chapter Text

Usopp sleeps for nearly three days. He only knows this because the woman who pulled him into her cart tells him so when his fever finally breaks. He remembers waking intermittently in a strange bed, to sip at broth and to let the doctor set his shoulder back in its socket, but the rest is a haze of fitful dreams. 

On the fourth day, the doctor returns to check his eyes. He tosses out terms that Usopp’s never heard before: ocular trauma and corneal abrasion and photophobia. Usopp nods along like he understands. He keeps quiet. He isn’t difficult. First impressions matter, and he has to get them right this time around. He doesn’t think he’ll survive another night out in the cold.

“This damage is severe,” the doctor says, not to Usopp. His part in this examination is over. It’s a relief, not to be the center of attention. “What happened to him?”

“I wish I knew,” the woman answers. “I found him like this near the crossroads. No sign of any parents. Can you imagine?” The doctor makes a low, disapproving sound.

“I can, but I wish I couldn’t. Keep the lights low. And give him these, they should help with the pain. The rest will heal on its own—as much as it ever will.”

After the doctor leaves, the woman presses something into Usopp’s hands. He feels out the shape with his fingers: two ovular disks set into soft, padded rims, with a cord of leather to connect the two. 

“Not as colourful as that handkerchief of yours,” the woman says gently, “but I think these’ll be more comfortable in the long run.”

He carefully places the goggles over his injured eyes and ties the cord around his head. The lamplight from the bedside table, which had been searing into the periphery of his clouded vision all morning, dims to a cool grey, like early morning fog drifting over the sea. 

“Now that you’re properly awake, I need to ask... is there someone who’s waiting for you to come home? Someone who takes care of you?”

Usopp shakes his head slowly, and the woman clucks her tongue as she tucks him back beneath the covers. Usopp wishes he could see her face, to know if the displeased sound is directed towards himself or the world at large. 

“I need to check on the chickens, but I’ll be back with dinner in an hour or so. Get some sleep till then.”

“Wait,” he croaks out. She pauses, hand stilling in the motion of smoothing the bedspread down. “How... how much?”

“How much what, sweetheart?” 

He lifts a nervous finger to tap the goggles. “For these? And the arm?” He knows all too well how expensive doctors can be: how easy it is to use up even the most carefully saved berry on a few emergency house calls. It’s not like he has any money to pay her back right now, but he just needs to know, so that he’s not blindsided when the bill comes due.

But the woman only rubs his arm sadly through the blanket.

“You let me worry about that, alright? Just focus on getting better.”

He doesn’t know if not worrying is an instruction he can follow, but he’s out again before he can press the point.

By the end of the week, Usopp is well enough to get out of bed and walk around the little farmhouse for short intervals. By the end of two weeks, the doctor assures him that his eyes are healed enough to handle the sunlight, so long as he wears his goggles. The next morning, he joins the woman outside on her porch, holding the feed bag open with his good hand as she scatters kernels of dried corn for the chickens. He listens to the staccato peck of their beaks against the icy ground and imagines what their colours must be: red and beige and tawny brown and gold. 

Every day at dinner, he and his new benefactor have meandering conversations that Usopp contributes very little to. She talks about the weather outside, her friends down the road, how much the newspaper gulls charge these days. She doesn’t seem to mind that he has nothing to say in return. The fanciful stories he might once have peddled to make himself more interesting feel ghoulish to repeat in light of all that’s happened. He doesn’t want to talk about his daring adventures, real or imagined. He doesn’t really want to talk at all.

But every day, behind his locked lips, there’s a question burning on the tip of his tongue.

Why are you letting me stay?

He accepts the soups and the mashes and the smoked sausage that the woman prepares for him with the question still aching in his mouth, but he presses it back down with his spoon and offers quiet thanks instead. 

“Don’t thank me now,” she says. “In the spring, my garden will bloom, and then you’ll have something truly delicious to try, I promise you that.”

There’s another promise laced between her offhand words: a place for Usopp, at least till spring, if he wants it.

If he wants it. 

Two weeks of staring at nothing but vague patterns of light have, ironically, given Usopp some measure of clarity. He’s had endless hours to lie on his back and think, and think, and all that thinking has led its painful way to one inevitable conclusion.

He can’t go back for Sanji. 

It’s too late. Even if Usopp could see, he’d never find the tower again coming from this direction. The woman hadn’t even heard of his hometown when he finally worked up the courage to mention its name, and even if he could find his way home, he has no friends to help once he gets there. There’s no one else who’s been to the tower who can guide the way. He’s just as likely to get turned around in the forest and eaten by a bear than stumble across the right path blind.

So what can he do? What on earth can he do?

The routines of everyday life keep him sane in the daytime, but at night, the despair becomes so overpowering that he wants to smash his slingshot to pieces. Why’s he even thinking about rescuing Sanji, the way he is now? A sharpshooter who can’t see: he’s nothing more than a punchline to a cruel joke. 

Usopp yanks on the empty rubber band, pulling with all the hard-earned strength that meant nothing in the end, that did nothing to protect Sanji against his father, because he was too petrified to shoot even when he could see the whole world clearly. But the woman takes the slingshot from his hands and puts it on the nightstand before he can snap the band in half.

“Don’t wreck what you’ve got,” she tells him, the closest she’s come to chiding in all their weeks together. “You’ll want it again when it’s broken.” 

He’s never seen her face, but Usopp imagines, in that moment, that she looks a little bit like his mother. 

The question finally slips out over bedtime: not the one burning on his tongue, but the one he’s been asking himself every day since he arrived. 

Once he’s settled beneath the covers, the woman checks to make sure he doesn’t need anything he can’t fetch himself. Usopp is familiar enough with the house to find his own way around, but some of the disorganized cupboards are still a mystery. It’s a familiar call and response, one they do every night, but he’s struck all at once by the strangeness of hearing someone else’s voice at the door, asking if he’s eaten enough or has enough blankets or wants the window cracked. 

In all his memories, he’s the one hovering by his mother’s bedside with a glass of water and a pillow, making sure she’s comfortable for the night.  

It’s all reversed, all... wrong. 

Everything is wrong. 

The wave of self-pity finally crashes over the fragile dam he’s been maintaining by sheer force of will. It bursts out of his mouth, and he’s helpless to control it, helpless to stop the words that come pouring from him. 

“I can’t shoot, or hunt, or build things,” he says, praying the woman has already left, desperately hoping that she hasn’t, that someone’s listening, that he’s not spilling out all his hopelessness to the shadows of an empty room. “I can’t take care of myself anymore. I can’t take care of anyone. I couldn’t take care of my mother. I couldn’t save my friend. If there’s nothing I can do, then what’s the point of me?” 

When he finally gets ahold of himself again, there’s silence from the doorframe, and he’s sure that he’s been abandoned. But then there are soft footsteps padding up to the bed. The mattress dips as the woman sits by his side in the darkness, sharing the quiet with him as her fingers start to stroke his hair. It’s an undemanding touch, whisper-soft and familiar, like a motion she’s done a thousand times before. 

“You can’t do those things now,” she says. “But you will again, if you want to. Or you’ll find new things you like to do. There’s no rush. All you need to do now is live—just live your life. That’s enough.”

How can that be enough? How can he expect to live when he has nothing to offer, no one waiting for him to come home?

“...Can I tell you a story?”

He squeezes his eyes shut and nods.

“I was married once, to a man I loved with all my heart. We had a farm, just like this one but bigger, and a house, and a... a daughter. And everything was perfect, exactly how I dreamed my life would be when I was your age.” She chuckles, a little sad but not despairing: a laugh at past foolishness rather than present pain. “But it wasn’t perfect. I suppose nothing ever is. I was too sharp with him, and he was angry with me, and over the years we forgot why we fell in love. Things became so unbearable that when he and my daughter left, I didn’t try to stop them.”

She sighs, and the fingers in Usopp’s hair still. “The life I have now is not the life I imagined when I was young. But that doesn’t make it a bad one. Does that make sense? I built this house myself from its foundations. I grew a garden. My chickens are the best in the neighbourhood—certainly the chubbiest!”

Usopp giggles despite himself. When the woman pinches his ear fondly, he knows she meant him to. 

“And just when I thought this new life couldn’t get any better, a fairie child stumbles out of the forest for me to find.” Her fingers start stroking again, back and forth. “Like the world knew I only needed one more thing to be completely happy. It’s almost enough to make an old woman believe in magic again.”

He knows she means the sentiment to be assuring, but his gut still twists with guilt, like he’s lied to this woman about who she rescued without even opening his mouth. 

“I’m not a fairie child,” he says quietly. “I’m sorry if that’s what you want, but I’m not magic or anything. I’m just...ordinary.” 

Sanji was the magic one: the fairytale prince, the golden-haired beacon of hope, all mysterious and beautiful and good . For all Usopp’s boasting, all his blustering attempts to convince himself otherwise, he’s never been anything special. If he faded away, the world wouldn’t notice. No storybooks would lament the sadness of his passing. He’d just be the stupid boy who got lost in the wood and never made it back home: a cautionary tale for young children.

“I guess that depends on whose story you’re telling,” the woman says. “Your life looks ordinary to you because you’re the one living it. But I’ll call it magic if I like, because that’s what it looks like to me.” She pinches his ear again, teasing. “Maybe in your story, I’m a witch who kidnaps little lost children off the road to fatten them up.” She laughs, and like everything about her, it’s a gentle sound. “But I hope you see me more kindly than that.” 

Of course he does. Even if she was a witch, he wouldn’t be afraid of her. He’s already faced down a villain much scarier than any old witch and somehow, incredibly, lived. 

...He’s alive, isn’t he? He didn’t die in that fall from the tower. He should have, impaled by a spear or broken by the ground, but by some miracle, he’s still alive. 

Usopp thinks of Sanji’s startled expression the first time he appeared at the window of the tower, like he couldn’t believe his eyes but refused to blink. Like from his perspective, Usopp was the impossible dream come to life. Like he was the magical one all along.  

Thank you.

        For what?

                For making my life better.

Maybe... even if he didn’t save Sanji from the tower, it was enough that he reminded him there was still something to believe in: a little magic, a little hope. Maybe what he did for Sanji—what he was— still mattered.

“I just have to live,” Usopp says slowly, trying out the words to see if he believes them. “That’s all I have to do?”

He still can’t quite fathom the idea: a life without endless tasks to take care of, plans to revise, tallies to check off to ensure he survives another winter. A life where someone else tends the chickens and sets the table and tucks you in at night, reminds you to only do what you can and what you have the energy for, and to rest when you need it. 

He doesn’t know if he’s ever truly rested since his mother got sick, all those years ago.

“Just that,” the woman says. “That’s all you have to do.”

He drifts off with a hand still stroking his hair. When he wakes, he’s alone, but the blankets are tucked tightly around his shoulders. He drags one arm out and blearily reaches for the goggles on the nightstand, but instead, his fingers brush a curved handle of smooth wood. 

Usopp pulls the slingshot beneath the covers, tracing its familiar shape like an old friend rediscovered. His fingertips still know every divot, every notch where his whittling knife slipped. The slingshot might as well be a part of his body for how natural it feels in his hand. 

He gets up and follows the chilly morning air out of the house. There’s snow on the porch, the evening snowfall frozen over into a hard crust that crackles beneath his stocking feet, like a pie top fresh from the oven. The crust gives way to the softer flakes below, damp and dense and easy to pack into small pellets.

The world is still white and inscrutable, but when Usopp listens, he can hear wood creaking beneath the heavy weight of frost. There are trees nearby. He’s lived too long near forests not to know the sound. 

He raises his arm and shoots. He doesn’t see the pellet hit the mark, but a flurry of feathers rises into the air. The flock of crows caw their collective indignation before returning to their perches. Usopp smiles, breaths a quiet apology for the inconvenience, and raises his arm again. 

He practices until his fingers are too stiff to draw the band back, then he goes inside for breakfast.

Usopp stays until spring. When the season arrives, the woman—who he comes to call ‘Auntie’ after a single, mortifying day of attempting to use her first name and blushing each time at his own impertinence—doesn’t say anything about him moving along. Instead, she feeds him fresh peas in cream and tender beet shoots and promises that the strawberries will be even sweeter when summer comes. 

She’s right. The strawberries are delicious, all the more so because he had some small part in their creation. He and Auntie worked side by side to sow the seeds, and he built the trellises himself: clumsy and crooked, but next time he’ll do a better job. He’s just got to get used to measuring the angles by feel instead of sight.

His aim’s getting better too. The crows have learned to fear his warning shots whenever he hears the rustle of thieving wings in the garden. Auntie tells him about a shooting competition at the harvest fair in autumn. He shakes his head shyly at her first suggestion, but by the time the air turns frosty again, he’s gathered enough confidence to give it a try.

Usopp comes in third place, behind a boy with a twanging bowstring that he can tell from ten paces is strung too tight, and a girl with a slingshot like his, who misses the target four times out of ten because she pushes her foot too far forward to steady herself, crunching gravel all the way. He’s a little disappointed, until he hears the uproarious cheers from the audience as he’s given his flimsy foil medal. He dreams about those cheers for a week, and wears the medal proudly beneath his shirt for longer than that. 

His eyesight doesn’t come back, but his voice does. All of Auntie’s neighbours are desperate to know about the strange out-of-town boy hanging in her shadow, and single word answers aren’t nearly enough to satisfy them. Like the chickens squabbling in the yard, they peck at him incessantly until he gives them what they want: a good story. He never tells the same one twice, mixing up little details each time. Was he from the north or the south? Did he lose his way in the woods, or did a wolf pull him from a caravan wagon, or maybe his boat was shipwrecked at sea and he swam to shore? 

The whole neighborhood is in a tizzy of gossip by the end of the season. In the beginning, he worries that Auntie’s little gasps whenever he invents a particularly flamboyant detail are the first signs of deteriorating patience, and he tries and fails to scale his explanations back into the realm of remote plausibility. But soon he realizes that the inhales are just barely suppressed laughter.

“Oh, Amarynth and Lydia are going to be fighting about that one for a month,” she chortles as they burst out the door of their latest teatime visit. (Her two closest neighbors both believe themselves the primary arbiter of local gossip, and each is utterly confident they have the ‘true’ tale of Usopp’s mysterious arrival.) Usopp warms, knowing that even if Auntie doesn’t believe any of the improbable stories he tells about how he found his way to her, her happiness that he did never seems to fade. 

But he doesn’t tell her about Sanji or the tower. It’s not that he’s worried she’ll call him a liar, but he knows she’ll lump it in with all the other stories, something silly to laugh about before tousling his hair. It’s one thing to not be believed when you’re making things up, but it hurts a lot more when you’re telling the truth.

It still aches to keep the story a secret from her, but it’s a bearable kind of pain, like an old cracked rib: the sort of ache you learn to live with, even if it twinges now and then, reminding you that there’s something deep inside that never healed quite right.

For three years, Usopp rests, and relearns, and finally starts to believe in the future again. He wins the shooting contest on his second attempt, and after celebrating the win with Auntie he helps the runner-up restring his bow so that it curves at a better angle. The boy shows his father, who asks Usopp if he can take a look at his traplines, and within a month he’s picking up small crafting jobs all around town. It’s not enough work to make a living quite yet, but it’s enough to buy Auntie flowers for her table and a nicer set of goggles for himself, with copper frames and flexible straps that go over his head instead of around. It’s enough to reassure him that he’ll have a way to support himself once he’s on his own again: a path to a safe, comfortable life, where he won’t have to worry about going hungry. 

But there’s an itch inside him still, a craving for adventure that never quite died, and it makes him restless. He still finds his way to the harbour every chance he gets, wandering off from his and Auntie’s errands to sit by the docks and feel the blast of salty spray against his face, listening to the gulls squawking and the bells ringing to signal another departure for a port unknown.

Auntie never tries to call him back before he’s ready. She can see, he thinks, that the older he gets the stronger the wanderlust grows. He’s seventeen, closer to a man than a child, old enough that a ship captain might hire him if they were willing to overlook his eyes. He’s just not sure if he’s ready to leave yet.

Spring comes for a third year in a row, and Usopp is still wallowing in indecision. He’s hard at work distracting himself from that indecision by shooting at the fence posts that line the wide road leading down to the ocean—they’re a tricky target, since all he has to work with is his spatial memory, but the soft thump of rubber hitting wood tells him he’s on form today—when he hears a shout from further up the road.

No, not a shout: a scream, high pitched and outraged. 

“Give me back my purse, you son of a—” 

Wind whips against Usopp’s sleeve as someone runs by, frantic footsteps pelting down towards the water as a thunder of other footsteps give chase. The yelling girl is at the forefront of the pack, but he can already tell they’ll be too slow. The thief’s footsteps are all but drowned by the surf, seconds from stepping onto the maze of docks and disappearing into the crowd forever.

On instinct, Usopp raises his slingshot and fires. A moment later, the thief yelps. Something heavy hits the ground and starts clattering down the hill. 

The girl barely pauses to shout ‘thanks for that!’ before she takes off after the purse and its strangely metallic-sounding contents, but the two other sets of pursuing footsteps skid to a halt beside Usopp. 

“Woah, that shot was amazing,” says the first stranger, buoyant and energetic. Usopp can practically hear him bouncing on his feet to see the collapsed thief at the end of the road. “You didn’t even look and you still hit him! That’s so cool!”

“Not bad,” agrees the second, deeper voice. “But you missed his head.”

“I wasn’t trying to kill the guy!” Usopp protests. Honestly, he’s not sure he had a concrete objective in mind when he shot other than stopping the thief, but he’s certain it wasn’t murder in broad daylight.

“Headshots don’t have to be lethal,” the stranger says, but before Usopp can remark on the equally detrimental effects of traumatic brain injury, the girl is back, shaking her bag triumphantly.

“Got the goods!” she crows. “No thanks to you, Zoro. I thought you were going to be my bodyguard till we pawned this stuff off?” The boy beside Usopp grunts dismissively, and she sighs. “Anyway, thanks again, uh—” She pauses mid-sentence. Usopp can practically feel her stare boring through the opaque goggles and putting the pieces together: quicker than most people, honestly. “...Thanks.”

“No problem,” he says, shuffling between his feet. This is the part where his new acquaintances realize there’s something wrong with his eyes and the admiration and gratitude is replaced by gawking and disbelief. He can’t really be blind, can he, not if he shoots like that? A small, wounded part of him is already stiffening preemptively, curling around his heart before the accusations start. 

But the other two don’t seem to have cottoned on so quickly. The louder boy slings his arm around Usopp’s shoulders and starts dragging him back up the road, saying they’re on the way to dinner and that Usopp has to come too since he just helped them out. 

“Nami’s got lots of money, so we can treat you as a reward!”

“Say it louder, I think a few pickpockets didn’t hear you the first time,” Nami grumbles. “And I don’t have money yet, so nothing too fancy, okay?”

“Um,” Usopp says. He should probably just go home: he has no idea who these people are, and Auntie will be waiting up if he gets home too late. But he doesn’t get to eat out that often, and he kind of wants to find out what Nami has in her bag—the clanking almost sounded like paperweights banging together, which is a strange thing to carry around in a purse. “Sure, I can come, for a bit.”

For the entire walk into town, the louder boy practices a dramatic reenactment of Usopp’s one-in-a-million shot. The performance might be more flattering if Usopp could actually see what he was imitating, but he appreciates the enthusiastic sound effects. Nami takes his place at Usopp’s side when he gets too distracted to pull Usopp along at his own breakneck pace. 

“Sorry about Luffy,” she mutters softly. “He’s an idiot, but he means well.” 

“It’s okay,” Usopp says back. “He seems nice.” His relentless energy is a little bewildering, but his cheerfulness is infectious. “I’m Usopp, by the way,” he adds, since nobody else seems inclined to ask. Isn’t it kind of weird to invite someone to dinner before you even know their name?

“Right,” Luffy says, stopping abruptly and clapping his hands together. “Downtown. Which way to the grub, Usopp?” 

Usopp frowns. He knows basically where they are, but he isn’t really used to giving tourists directions, and his mental catalogue of landmarks doesn’t include a lot of visual detail for obvious reasons. Still, he’s pretty sure there’s a good pub just up—

“Luffy,” Nami hisses before he can finish the thought.

“What?”

“Can you please pay attention for once?” Usopp opens his mouth to reassure her that it’s fine, he was just thinking, but before he can the other boy—Zoro—says bluntly,

“Usopp’s blind.”

A moment of awkward silence passes.

“...Yeah, I know?” says Luffy, puzzled, like Zoro had just pointed out that Usopp has two arms. “But he still eats, right?” Only then does Luffy’s voice drop to a horrified hush, as if a sudden loss of appetite is the worst affliction he can imagine. “You do eat, right?” 

Usopp lets out a startled laugh. He can’t help but be disarmed: even if the comments are positive, he’s never met anyone who found his lack of sight completely unnoteworthy. 

“Yeah, of course,” he says. “I love eating. It’s one of my favourite hobbies.”

“Great!” Luffy says, and claps his hands together again. “Then lead the way!”

And so Usopp finds himself at the head of the little party as they make their way to the pub two streets north, though Luffy reminds him every few minutes that it’s only a temporary promotion. 

“I’m the captain, and this is my crew! But you can be in charge for a little bit until we get some food. Then I’ll take over again.”

“You guys are sailors?” Usopp asks. They all sound a little younger than what he’s used to hearing at the docks, but maybe they’re just starting out.

“Nope,” Luffy says, with a grin that seems to emit its own brilliant, tangible aura. Usopp can’t explain how, but he feels it when Luffy smiles. A colour starts to shimmer amidst all the grey, not in his vision but somewhere deeper in his soul: a cheerful, sunny splotch of red. “We’re pirates.”

Usopp doesn’t make it home that night. They’re at the pub just long enough for Zoro to knock back two glasses of whisky and Luffy to order half the menu before a Marine bursts in with an arrest warrant, which leads to a bar fight, which leads to the four of them hiding out in a back alley while officers comb the streets for whoever stole a set of very expensive black cat figurines from the local branch commander’s office. 

“It’s fine, I’ll just pawn them off on the next island,” Nami whispers to Usopp, like that’s the thing he’s worried about right now. 

“You guys are thieves?” he hisses back, realising with mounting horror that he might have fired on the wrong target. 

“Pirates,” Luffy corrects him. “And the commander’s a bad guy, so it’s not really stealing. The cat thingies are evidence.”

“But I’m still going to sell them once we’re done here,” Nami reassures Usopp. “No sense wasting perfectly good antiques.”

“...Right,” Usopp reluctantly agrees, and then there’s a shout from the rooftop above and they’re off again, dodging and weaving through the streets, the cries of angry Marines close on their heels. 

The next few hours are a blur of bizarre revelations and stomach-churning excitement. Apparently even idyllic farming communities near the sea still have their quirks, like branch commanders who also happen to be evil pirates in disguise. 

It turns out Kuro of a Thousand Plans is not just an urban legend from Usopp’s hometown, and is instead a real person: a fact Usopp would have preferred to learn any other way than nearly being skewered on the man’s claws when he and his goons finally catch up to them in the town square. Thankfully, it also turns out that not all cats can see in the dark, because Usopp shoots the streetlights out and the other three manage to take down all of the fake Marines in the ensuing confusion. 

The quartet stumbles back to Auntie’s farmhouse at dawn, bruised and triumphant and starving. Usopp has no idea what he’s going to tell her, but in the end, he doesn’t need to say anything at all. News reached Amarynth and Lydia near midnight, which means absolutely everyone in the neighbourhood already knows that Auntie’s adopted son helped thwart a secret pirate invasion. She wraps him in a relieved hug and fusses over his cuts and scrapes while Luffy and Zoro plunder the chicken coop, and they all sit down to a breakfast that feels more like a celebration. 

“So, where are the three of you headed next?” Auntie asks when everyone's eaten their fill. 

Luffy burps. “The four of us! And not sure yet. We still need to find a boat—”

“Wait, hold on,” Usopp sputters. “What do you mean, the four of us?”

“You’re joining my crew!” Luffy says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. And when he says it, it is. Of course Usopp is going to join Luffy’s crew.  This is his chance for adventure at last. It was a foregone conclusion from the moment he raised his slingshot and took aim at the purse-thief, like his body knew already that these were the friends he’d been waiting for all his life.

“...Can I?” he says, turning to Auntie. There are a dozen questions wrapped up in those two words. Can I really do this? Can I leave this island behind for good? Can I leave you, after all you’ve done for me?

She reaches out and grips his hand beneath the table, giving it a firm squeeze. She holds on for a moment longer than she usually would. Then she lets go. 

“It’s your life,” she says, and though he can hear the sadness in her voice, there’s pride there too. “Go live it.”

He packs his bags that night and by the next morning, they’re off to the harbour to look for a ship. He gets along well with the dockmaster, so he’s pretty sure he can convince him to cut them a bargain. Usopp slots in naturally between Nami and Zoro in the walking order. This time, the leaving comes with no regrets. He’s finished all he wanted to accomplish in this town. He’s ready for what comes next. 

“So how’d you get those scars?” Zoro asks as they round the bend towards the harbour. Nami and Luffy’s chatter ceases, the sudden lull open and anticipatory, like they’d both wanted to ask the same thing. Usopp raises a finger to his cheek, tracing the spidering lines that creep out from beneath the goggles. 

He has a hundred lies he could tell them. He’s been practicing for this moment for years.

“There was a prince trapped in a tower,” Usopp says instead, surprised at how easily the words leave his chest. “I climbed it to rescue him, but I fell.”

There’s a beat of silence. Then Luffy laughs in delight. 

“Wow, you’re really the coolest, Usopp! What was the prince like? Did he have a crown?” 

The lingering ache in Usopp’s ribs finally begins to mend as Luffy peppers him with questions the whole way to the docks, each as curious and trusting as the last. 

Chapter Text

Usopp learns a lot about his new crewmates during his first few weeks at sea. 

He learns that Luffy’s firecracker energy doesn’t have an off switch, but that he can generally be distracted away from any activity that causes too much damage to the deck. He learns that Zoro spends most of his time napping in inconvenient places, and he needs to be careful where he steps if he doesn’t want to tread on any errant limbs. He learns that despite her sharp edges, Nami is like him in all the ways that matter, and they’re fast friends by the end of their second day. 

A salient example: both Usopp and Nami understand the importance of rationing food. It’s a concept Zoro and Luffy seem utterly uninterested in, which is how their little crew ends up fifty leagues from the nearest port with nothing but cobwebs in the hold and a ratty flyer for some restaurant called ‘The Baratie’ clutched like a stay of execution in Nami’s hand. The delivery gull, squawking impatiently, had flown off after dropping the piece of paper on Usopp’s head.

“A floating restaurant?” Nami says dubiously. “That’s got to be a scam, right? Pirates luring in desperate sailors with a meal so they can steal their boats?”

“Sounds like something you’d pull,” Zoro says, while Luffy moans that Nami’s pirates can take everything they own because he’s going to die right now if he doesn’t get something to eat. He sounds pitiful enough that Usopp almost believes him, though he suddenly feels a lot prouder of his own fortitude back in the nut-and-sap days. Regardless, they all agree to take the risk.

It’s not a scam, as it turns out. The Baratie is a real place, that’s really located at the coordinates from the flyer, with a small array of ships anchored at its bobbing dock and the unmistakable scent of grilled fish drifting from its portholes. He’s not sure he trusts Luffy’s description of the ship itself—the giant fish head entrance they supposedly walk through to reach the dining room seems at odds with the gentle string music and the charming aura of clinking cutlery and crystal glasses—but Usopp’s still enraptured by the novelty of it all. 

They’re seated by the maitre d’ and Usopp gets a moment to appreciate the slinky tablecloth as it falls over his lap—the material would be a pain to scrub stains out of, but it probably looks pretty—before their waiter arrives. She delivers the day’s menu in a crisp, efficient manner, not wasting a single word on introductions or pleasantries. After taking their drink orders, she turns and marches off to the table beside theirs, then repeats the exact same spiel in the exact same order.

“Aren’t there any other waiters?” Nami whispers after ten minutes without a sign of their drinks, let alone food. Now that she mentions it, Usopp can’t hear any other footsteps except the gentle click of heels: their own waiter darting around the dining room, taking orders and delivering meals to what sounds like dozens of occupied tables. “I don’t want to be rude, but—”

“Oi,” Zoro calls above the murmur of polite conversation. “We’re still waiting for our drinks.” The heels click to a stop for a brief moment, then continue on in the direction they were already heading. 

Luffy groans in despair, but Usopp smirks to himself. They wouldn’t be so hungry now if Luffy and Zoro had actually listened to his and Nami’s warnings about the food stocks. They can stand to suffer a few minutes more while their beleaguered waiter finishes the rest of her rounds.  

The waiter does finally return after another fifteen minutes of complaints from Luffy. “Sorry for the delay,” she says as she sets down their drinks, not sounding sorry at all. “We’re short staffed today.”

“Seems like you’re the only staff,” Zoro says. Her starched sleeves rustle as she shrugs. 

“Some people can’t handle this place,” she says vaguely. As if to punctuate her words, a crash rings out from what Usopp assumes is the kitchen, followed by a torrent of shouting and curses. “The owner is... particular.”

Based on the ferocity of the shouting beyond the wall and the number of subsequent crashes, Usopp thinks ‘a madman’ might be a better description, but he keeps the thought to himself. He doesn’t mind if Zoro and Luffy suffer a little bit first, but he still wants to eat. 

“As an apology for the wait, the bread is on the house,” she offers with the bored air of someone who says this line ten times a day. Usopp is starting to wonder if ‘short-staffed’ is a permanent state of employment for this restaurant. “I’ll be back shortly.”

She isn’t, but Luffy is mollified by the promise of more food, and Nami is mollified by the promise of free food, so they muddle through somehow until the waiter comes back with the promised bread. She sets down the basket between Usopp and Nami. Usopp lifts the napkin and inhales, and the warmth of the rising steam washes over his face with the comforting scent of... 

Cinnamon. 

Memory rushes back with the physical force of a punch to the punch. He can feel the cracking of branches beneath his feet, the bite of autumn air against his cheeks, the glare of the sun as he climbs higher and higher, chasing the scent of cinnamon through the leaves—

Usopp reaches out a shaking hand to take a piece of bread from the basket. It’s still hot and fresh, pillowy beneath his fingers, but there are hard bits stuck to the top with some kind of glaze. He peels one off and puts it in his mouth. The pumpkin seed cracks between his teeth. 

Usopp swallows the bite, then swallows again. There are tears welling in his eyes, but the goggles hide them from the rest of the table. 

It’s impossible, completely impossible... but he knows this taste, this smell. He’s used to buying his bread from bakeries now, and tried a dozen varieties of pastries with Auntie, but he’s never come across another loaf that tastes like this. 

“Wait!” he calls out before the waiter can run off again. He shoves back his chair and darts around Nami’s to catch her arm. “How do I get to the kitchen?”

She turns to look at him, then freezes beneath his touch, probably noticing his blindness for the first time. Whatever, Usopp doesn’t really care about what she thinks of him right now. Maybe if she pities him enough, she’ll tell him where to go before scurrying away to another table. 

“Are you going to get our dinner?” Luffy asks hopefully, but Usopp ignores him, focusing all his attention on the waiter and trying to convey his desperation through grasping fingertips. He’s sure it’s not subtle: his hands are still trembling. 

To his surprise, she doesn’t shrug him off, or even pat his arm kindly before telling him the kitchen is off-limits to customers. Instead, she hesitates, then places a hand over his, neatly trimmed nails pressing lightly into his skin. 

“I’ll show you.” 

Something’s changed in her voice, something he can’t quite call the pity or indulgence he typically gets from well-meaning strangers, but it’s far from the aloof brusqueness of her earlier script. She guides him to the edge of the room with slow, even steps. Other diners call out for her attention, but her path remains focused and steady, never veering from her course. 

They pass through a pair of swinging doors into an empty hallway, and the chatter of the dining room falls away. He can still smell cinnamon above all the other scents vying for his attention, fragrant dill and ocean-brined cod and lemony potatoes and a hundred other flavours that don’t matter. He won’t be distracted: he was a hunter once, and he still knows how to follow a trail. 

The waiter pauses on the threshold of what must be the kitchen. Usopp can still hear yelling inside, a furious fight that’s only grown in intensity since the first clatter of crashing pans. The louder voice is gruff and roughened, fed by a gnarled sort of wrath that would overpower anyone with a weaker will, but his opponent is holding his own, his younger voice brash and stubborn and so achingly familiar that Usopp lurches out of the waiter’s grasp. 

“Usopp—” she starts to call out, but he’s gone, bursting through the kitchen doors before he can think to question how the waiter knew his name.

The kitchen is so chaotic that nobody notices his intrusion. He’s folded into the landscape of movement like an errant fly, brushed off with a ‘watch it’ or ‘out of the way’ by the cooks he stumbles into, but otherwise unremarkable, unobserved. He feels his way through counters and around stoves, following the shouting to the very back of the room.

“—last time I put you on bread service. Only a tongueless idiot would think cinnamon pairs with anything we have on today’s menu! Did you dump your palate out the window with your ashtray this morning, or are you intentionally trying to piss me off?” 

“If you’d added the sirloin to the menu like I told you to, then this would have worked just fine! The sweetness of the bread is a perfect contrast—”

“Since when do you get to tell me what to serve in my own goddamned restaurant, eggplant?” the louder voice spits, something heavy and wooden thudding ominously against the floor with every other step, but Usopp has faced down more frightening men in more frightening circumstances, and he isn’t scared now. His voice is clear and unwavering when he finally opens his mouth to speak. 

“Sanji?”

The world doesn’t stop the way he feels like it should. The kitchen still bustles on in the background, cooks shouting orders and table numbers and minutes till the pasta is done. Dishes sizzle on the stovetop, and heeled steps click up behind Usopp, the waiter finally having fought her way back to his side. But the argument quiets at least, as both combatants turn towards the new voice in their midst.

“Who the hell are you?” the louder voice snarls. But the other voice is silent, and for a single, terrifying moment, Usopp thinks he might have been wrong: that he smelled cinnamon and heard the ghost of a friend on the wind, and his mind conflated the two because he wanted to believe it so badly.

But then Sanji breathes out, low and choked, so much closer than he expected, “Usopp?”

He throws himself around the boy in front of him without any hesitation, not caring that he nearly knocks them both off of their feet, not caring around the surprised shouts around them, not caring about anything but how warm and alive and real Sanji feels in his arms. 

He’s still thin, though not as thin as he was at sixteen—taller now than Usopp by another few inches, but not so tall that Usopp can’t press his face into Sanji’s shoulder and breathe in salt and cigarette smoke and a hint of cologne. Sanji’s arms tighten around his back, dragging Usopp into his apron and clutching him there with a white-knuckled grip. Neither of them fall. They sway in place with the gentle rocking of the deck like two trees grafted together, all limbs entwined. 

“You know this kid, eggplant?” The older man’s voice has lost most of its bluster, though none of its gruffness. Sanji nods wordlessly against Usopp’s neck. Usopp’s grateful he doesn’t pull away to answer. He’s not ready to let go yet. He’s not sure he’s ever going to let go again.

“Since Sanji’s a mute now—first time in his life, I might add—do you want to tell me what the hell is going on here?” the man says, bewildered.

Usopp almost lifts his head, thinking the question was addressed to him, but the waiter answers before he can.

“His name is Usopp. An old friend of my brother’s.”

Usopp startles as her voice transforms into something familiar, but forgotten more easily than Sanji’s. He can hear the pragmatic edge to her words, now that he’s listening closely, but not the harshness of the Reiju he knew, not the anger and despair. In a different moment, he’ll take the time to process what her presence means—to wonder how she and Sanji might have ended up in this place. For now, all he wants to focus on is what’s in front of him.

“So Sanji had friends, huh?” the man murmurs to himself. “Guess it’s not impossible then.”

“Shut up, old geezer,” Sanji mumbles, without any real bite. He finally pulls back from Usopp, just far enough to really look at him. Usopp wishes he could do the same—wishes that he could see the kind of person that Sanji grew into. Does he still have the same shy smile? Are his eyes still the same shade of blue?

“I can’t believe you’re alive,” Sanji says quietly. His thumb traces the marks on Usopp’s cheek, and there’s a soft inhale of breath as he notices at last the price Usopp paid for that survival. 

“Come on,” Usopp says, trying to keep his voice bright though he’s seconds away from crying out of sheer overwhelm, “do you think a fall like that could take down the great inventor Usopp for good? I’ll have you know I landed very gracefully on a pillow of ferns. The only problem is that I was tired from all that climbing, and when I woke up it was too dark to see, so I got a little lost, you know? Otherwise I would have come back for you right away.” He swallows. He knows why he didn’t come back, he knows the agony and guilt that he went through in making that decision, but Sanji has no idea. What if he thinks Usopp just didn’t care enough to try? “I would have come back, Sanji.”

Sanji takes a shuddering breath, and suddenly there’s a much bigger hand on his shoulder, shepherding the both of them away from the quieting rows of counters—only then does Usopp realize the rest of the chefs have gone silent, listening in. 

“This touching scene is slowing down my service,” the old man grumbles, his wiry hands shoving them both through another set of swinging doors. “If you’re not going to cook, I don’t need you in my kitchen, eggplant.” A hand shoves Usopp down into a chair. Sanji gets deposited right beside him. “Sit your ass down and stay put. I’m going to get this scrawny kid some food before he keels over.”

He shuffles off through the doors again, but stops just outside them. The man lowers his voice, but not enough that Usopp’s well-honed ears can’t catch the start of the conversation that ensues.

“Thought we’d talked about skulking behind doorframes, radish.” A pause. “Patty can cover your tables if you want to—”

“No,” Reiju interrupts. “He was Sanji’s friend, not mine.”

Her heels click away, more hurried than they were even in the rush of the dining room, and the man sighs before stalking off himself. 

Which leaves Usopp and Sanji alone for the first time in three years. He reaches out, trying to find Sanji again, but Sanji doesn’t reach back. His arms feel stiff beneath Usopp’s touch, and a bit of nervousness starts to bleed through the euphoria. 

“Sanji, I’m—”

“Why are you happy to see me?” Sanji whispers. “I’m—I’m so happy you’re here, but you don’t have to pretend. I’m the reason you almost died. I’m the reason for what happened to your eyes, right? If you never met me, my father wouldn’t have hurt you, and then you wouldn’t be—”

“Alive?” Usopp finishes. He grabs Sanji’s hands and holds on, even when Sanji tries to pull away. Somehow, in all his worry that Sanji would hate Usopp for abandoning him, it never once occurred to him that Sanji would feel guilty for what happened to him. 

Maybe it should have been obvious. Sanji is still the same boy through and through, isn’t he? The same selfless boy who couldn’t leave his sister behind to suffer alone. The same boy who blamed himself for his mother’s death because he couldn’t weave enough magic to save her. 

He’s still the same boy, and Usopp still loves him for it, but Usopp isn’t the same person he was three years ago. He understands, after years of bedtime tuck-ins and home-cooked meals and praise for even the smallest accomplishments, that they weren’t to blame for what happened. They were just kids, trying to mend the bridges that the parents who should have carried them left broken in their paths. It wasn’t his fault that he couldn’t rescue Sanji from that tower. It wasn’t Sanji’s fault that he needed to be rescued.

“If I never met you, best case I’d still be stuck in my hometown surrounded by people that hate me, waiting for my dad to come back. Maybe I’d have kept going another couple winters before I gave up, but then what? Sanji, you’re not the reason I got hurt. You’re the reason I survived. You told me there was a place out there where people would want me around, and you were right. I’ve met so many amazing people, Sanji, and I’m part of the best pirate crew in the East Blue. I can’t wait for you to meet them .” He squeezes Sanji’s hands. “And now I found you again too. Why wouldn’t I be happy?”

“But,” Sanji says stubbornly, like he’s casting around for any excuse that still lays the blame at his feet, “but your eyes...”

“Are you kidding? What’s cooler than a blind sharpshooter? I’m going to be a legend once we get some wanted posters.” This time, there is a little bluster amidst the honesty: he’s had years to make peace with his blindness, but he can’t deny that he still misses the sight he used to take for granted. It’s gotten easier, but it’s never been easy. He wonders if Sanji hears it too, that tinge of sadness beneath his genuine excitement, because he leans forward and gives Usopp another hug. When he pulls away, Usopp catches him. He places his hands on Sanji’s cheeks like Sanji did in the kitchen—like they’re still two boys entwined beneath a thin blanket, learning each other’s faces in the dark. 

Sanji’s hair is shorter than it used to be. His swooping bangs tickle Usopp’s fingers as he moves them from mouth, to nose, to cheekbone. Usopp brushes back the cropped hair so he can reach his eyes, pinning it behind Sanji’s ear. His skin is warm to the touch. Usopp feels a little warm too. 

There are scars on his face, just like Usopp’s, though faint enough that they might be invisible to anyone else: thin lines sliced across his forehead and over the bridge of his nose, another at the base of his neck. The scars are smooth-edged and straight, like cuts from sharp metal that pressed too hard against his skin. Neither of them escaped the tower unmarked. 

“You know,” Usopp says, a new idea taking shape with every word, “I bet there’s a lot of magic plants out there in the world. Stuff that we’ve never even heard of before. Rapunzel was kind of a dud, but who knows? Maybe there really is a plant that can cure everything—even scars. And I’ve got a ship, and a crew... it might be worth a look?”

He doesn’t want to drag Sanji away from a life he’s happy in, from the restaurant he always dreamed of, from the strangely rude-yet-caring old man he seems to have shackled himself to. But at the same time... he has to ask.

Before Sanji can answer, the door swings open and the man returns to drop off a heaping tray of fish and potatoes and a gaggle of noisy followers-on. Usopp pulls away from Sanji just in time for his three friends to come rushing through the door, a chorus of ‘don’t scare us like that!” and “we thought you fell off the boat!’ and ‘who’s the eyebrow dude?’ and ‘finally, food!’ drowning out whatever Sanji’s response might have been. 

But that’s fine. There’s nothing they need to decide right now. He’s just happy to eat a good meal with his friends— all his friends—and let the future arrive at its own pace. 

As his pessimistic nature dictates, Usopp expects something horrible to interrupt his and Sanji’s reunion: a pirate attack on the Baratie, or a sword-wielding foe appearing on the docks, or a thief in the night who steals their boat and leaves them stranded. And he’s not really wrong. Some of those things do happen, eventually, though not in that order and not all at the same time. The disasters wait for a few days to start, as if the universe knows that his and Sanji’s story has already had its fair share of calamity and doesn’t want to overburden the ending.

Instead, Usopp and Sanji talk. For hours, they sit side-by-side on the Baratie’s upper deck, Sanji cross-legged, Usopp’s feet dangling above the waves, and they share everything that the other missed in their three years apart. 

Usopp tells Sanji about Auntie and the chickens and first place medals, about a purse-thief and a garden and Lydia’s horrifically dry tea biscuits. His tales aren’t fanciful or exciting—no grand adventures, just everyday life, but Sanji hangs onto every word. Even so, Usopp tries to get through his part of the story quickly: he’s much more interested in what Sanji has to say. 

Sanji is more hesitant than Usopp in his own telling. He glosses over the finer details of what happened immediately after Usopp’s fall, and Usopp pretends not to notice how Sanji’s hands restlessly reach for a cigarette whenever they veer too close to the topic. But he does tell Usopp about Reiju’s change of heart: how less than a month after Usopp’s supposed death, she stole the key to the tower from his father and dragged them both out into the snow, leaving everything behind but a bag of old clothes that she found along the way. Sanji taught Reiju how to make the snares Usopp had shown him— over, then under, through the loop —and they survived on what they could catch until they finally reached the forest’s end.

Everything after that was easy living, according to Sanji. Usopp quietly doubts that a year of hopping between any ship that would hire two destitute teenagers, followed by two in the company of Red Leg Zeff and his tough-as-nails kitchen crew, could be as carefree as Sanji claims. 

But then, there are parts of his own story that Usopp spares Sanji the painful details of as well. Not all pain needs to be voiced aloud. Sometimes it’s enough to know that if you did speak, someone would be there to listen. 

In the days that follow, the rest of the crew swiftly adopt Sanji as one of their own. (Well, except Zoro, but Usopp figures he’ll have to warm up to Sanji eventually.) Luffy declares that they’ve found their new cook after a single late-night snack raid of the Baratie kitchen, and Usopp can’t blame him: the cheese and mushroom mini souffles that Sanji whips up (once he’s done grumbling about Zeff’s inevitable throttling) are probably the best thing he’s ever tasted, and that includes the bread that literally saved his life. 

Sanji demures at Luffy’s offer, saying he needs time to think about it, but the lack of outright ‘no’ gives Usopp an outsized dose of hope: if Sanji was determined to stay, he’d have said so. He’s open to persuasion, and Luffy has rarely needed more than a crack. There’s only one fly in the ointment, one possible thing that might hold Sanji back from coming along, and it’s the same as it’s always been: Reiju.

It doesn’t take Usopp long to realize that she’s avoiding him, and has been since they began their sojourn on the Baratie. While Sanji has blossomed under all the newfound attention, she’s all but disappeared into the woodwork. If he didn’t occasionally hear her voice drifting from the dining room, he’d be convinced he imagined that she was here at all. 

In fairness to Reiju, Usopp doesn’t seek her out either. Maybe that makes him even more of a coward than he already knows he is, but he has no idea what to say to her. There are too many feelings that refuse to coalesce into some concrete conclusion like forgiveness or hate. He’s angry that she betrayed them, but grateful that she freed Sanji when he couldn’t. He mourns for the years her decision cost him and Sanji, but he understands the sheer hopeless inertia of being trapped in your own miserable life. He empathizes, but he doesn’t know if that’s enough to mend the antagonism they were both forced into. Even if the circumstances were outside their control, some relationships are just broken from the start.

She finally finds him on the third night of their rest stop, while Usopp is enjoying a brief period of solitude. Sanji is off bickering with Zoro on the far side of the docks, while Nami works on her charts back on the ship and Luffy makes trouble for the cooks inside the restaurant. In the quiet lull of twilight, Usopp checks the ropes, a routine he follows every night no matter where they’re moored: even the best knots can slip, and he’s not about to let their new home go floating away on his watch. 

He doesn’t even hear Reiju’s approach, which is a rare miss these days. But then again, he never saw her in the woods either, or heard her footsteps in the crackling leaves. They must have crossed each other’s paths more than once before they actually met, but Usopp never once heard her pass. It must take a lifetime to learn to be so utterly silent. 

“Sanji’s going with you,” Reiju says, appearing like a phantom beside the bollard to Usopp’s right. 

She says it like it’s an inevitability, though no decision’s been made yet. Usopp’s not even sure if Sanji’s talked to Zeff about their offer. He’s been too nervous about pressuring Sanji to ask, though he hopes he has spoken to him. If there’s one regret Usopp has about his final parting, it’s how little time he and Auntie had to say goodbye. 

“I want him to come,” he says, heart still a little jumpy from the surprise of her appearance. “I think he’d be happy with us, you know? Getting to be out on the ocean, sailing wherever he wants, not—”

“Trapped inside,” Reiju says.

“...Yeah.” His mouth works around the question he’s not sure he wants the answer to. “So... if Sanji does want to come with us... what will, you know, you do?”

He doesn’t have it in him to ask Reiju to come along too, not this time. He can tell himself it’s because it’s not his place to ask, that crew recruitment is ultimately Luffy’s call, but he knows his hesitation is more about how many rejections one heart can take: how many times you can offer a hand before you start to hope the other person slaps it away for good. 

“Nothing,” Reiju says. Her foot taps against the metal of the bollard, a careful, controlled tic, but a tic nonetheless. “I never intended to be his jailor.”

It’s not an admission of guilt. It’s not even an apology. But it is an acknowledgement, and maybe that’s all it needs to be. A recognition of what went wrong. A chance to do better the next time. 

“Before you go,” Reiju says before Usopp can think of what to say next, “I have something to give back to you.” She leans over and drops something in front of Usopp. Frowning, he reaches for the object, not sure what to expect. From what Sanji told him, they left everything behind when they fled the tower, even Usopp’s gifts. Sanji was too weak to carry a thing, and Reiju didn’t want to take extra weight that they might have to drop later on. Leaving a trail could have been deadly. 

It’s a bag, he realizes after pulling the offering into his lap. A very disheveled bag: bits of the canvas are frayed and torn, other parts stiff from years of wear and water damage. He doesn’t remember owning a bag like this. The only one he ever had was his satchel. 

“I found it near the tower,” Reiju says, “buried in snow.” Usopp reaches his hand inside and draws out a book. The pages are warped at the edges and the spine is bent, but the roughness of the canvas cover is still familiar beneath his fingertips. He reaches inside again, and his trembling hand sinks into quilted fabric. He pulls it out too and holds the blanket to his chin, cherishing its softness as he breathes in and out, in and out. It’s astonishing, how after all these years, the fabric still smells like his mother.

“I looked for your body after you fell. These are all I found.” 

“You kept them?” Usopp says, disbelieving. She and Sanji left everything else behind, every bit of their own history abandoned, but Reiju held onto his book and an old blanket for three years? 

“They weren’t mine to throw away,” Reiju says. Though her voice is still carefully blank, Usopp is starting to hear the nuance in her way of speaking, to notice the words she leaves in the margins. 

He’s not sure he’ll ever be able to fully understand Reiju, but he accepts her sidelong apology for what it is, and hugs the blanket closer to his chest as he nods. 

She starts to walk away, but turns back one more time. The dock creaks with her indecision, planks rocking back and forth between her feet.

“You were right,” she says at last. “Sanji loves me, and he loves Zeff. And I... I love him.” She takes a shaky breath. “But I was right too. That love is keeping him here, surrounded by everything he wants to forget. He looks at me and he sees our father. He looks at Zeff and he sees his own death.” The planks shift, then still once more. “You asked me what I’ll do, if he wants to go?”

Wordlessly, Usopp nods again. 

“I’ll break the chain. That’s what love means to me.” 

Her weight settles at last, and she takes a confident step towards the restaurant. Usopp doesn’t call out to her, and she’s gone as swiftly as she came, leaving Usopp with his recovered treasures and a quiet understanding: for the first time, they’re truly aligned. Whatever choice Sanji makes, they’ll let him choose for himself. 

At the end of the dock, Sanji is still shouting at Zoro. Usopp hears a splash, then a spluttering snarl as Zoro heaves himself back out of the sea.

Children, Nami would probably mutter if she were next to him. 

Usopp smiles to himself. He takes a moment to bury his forehead into the blanket, savouring one more time the scent of home. Then he tucks the book and the blanket back into the bag and slings it over the side of the boat and onto the deck, where it will be safe until he brings it back to the room that he and Luffy and Zoro share. 

There’ll be time for memories later, but for now, he wants to run down the dock and join in the roughhousing. It’s been too long since he’s jumped in the ocean with his friends. 

Usopp would stay for weeks if he could, eking out every last minute of uncomplicated joy before any hard decisions have to be made. But the universe won’t wait forever, and calamity is always waiting at the door, beckoning towards their next adventure. It begins as a whisper: a name muttered between two of the less-couth guests that step through the Baratie’s doors as the Straw Hats eat a late lunch in the dining room.

Mihawk, one of the Warlords of the Sea, has been spotted near an archipelago called the Conomi Islands. Zoro’s chair screeches backwards. Nami, who’d been having a lively discussion with Usopp about the echolocative abilities of sea snails, falls abruptly silent. 

Moving on from the Baratie is no longer a vague discussion, but an urgent imperative. Zoro is insistent they leave immediately. Luffy is all-too-eager to get back on the open sea. Nami is unusually reticent to offer her opinion. And Usopp... 

Usopp begs for one more night, then breaks the news to Sanji.

He finds him at the end of dinner service, stacking plates in the sink for the dishwasher to deal with. Usopp touches Sanji’s arm to let him know he’s there, just above the wrist. His skin is bare beneath Usopp’s touch, sleeves rolled to his elbow, and Usopp wants nothing more than to slip his fingers beneath the soapy water, to take Sanji’s hand and hold on so tightly that Sanji can never leave his side again. He wants the fairytale ending that was stolen from them, the belated moment of triumph, the part where Sanji tugs him into his chest and says that now that he has Usopp back, he wants for nothing more. 

But Usopp pulls back, clutching his own hand to his side so it can’t wander, and he’s still not certain whether his reluctance is all for Sanji’s sake, or if he’s still too much of a coward to proclaim his deepest desires aloud while he doesn’t know what Sanji’s answer will be. 

“We’re leaving tomorrow,” he says.

Come with us, he wants so badly to say instead.

“...You are?” Sanji’s voice is small, caught off guard. He must have thought they’d have more time too. 

“But—But you know, Luffy still wants you to be our cook. If that’s... that’s something you wanted. The offer’s still there.” 

Please, come with me.

“I—”

“Take the night to think about it,” Usopp rushes out before Sanji can finish his sentence. “I know it’s a big decision. If you want to come too, find us at the docks at dawn.”

“...Okay,” Sanji whispers, and Usopp runs out of the kitchen without saying even a provisional goodbye,  because it turns out the churning in his gut was cowardice all along. 

He regrets the abruptness of his retreat immediately, and paces the length of the boat all night long, too conflicted to sleep. But every time he starts walking towards the rope ladder that hangs from the gunwale, he hesitates. 

Sanji let him make his own choice to return to the tower. He has to give him the same chance. He knows—he hopes— that Sanji knows how badly Usopp wants him to come, but if that’s not what Sanji wants, then he can accept it. He’ll probably cry into his pillow about it for a month, but he can accept it. 

The night wind slips away into the subtle warmth of morning. Usopp hasn’t slept. He doesn’t think Zoro has either: their pacing became a twinned rhythm during the night. Nami and Luffy emerge from below deck as the sun rises. 

It’s time to go, and Sanji isn’t here. 

“We need to head out,” Nami says, nervously tapping the compass in her palm. “We’ll lose our tailwind if we don’t go now.”

It’s still early enough that the restaurant isn’t open yet. The docks are quiet and free of customers. The chefs inside are probably hard at work on morning prep, Sanji among them, making up for the handful of shifts he skipped to spend time with Usopp and the other Straw Hats. 

Usopp swallows, trying not to let his disappointment show, but Nami still rubs a hand down his arm before giving Zoro the order to cast off. Zoro undoes the ropes from the bollards and gives the dock a solid kick before grabbing hold of the rope ladder and hauling himself aboard.

Usopp turns away from the dock, biting his lip and focusing on the lap of water against the side of the boat as he hauls up the lines. He can hold himself together, at least until he’s not needed on deck. Then he can have a nice, satisfying cry in private.

The lap takes on an odd, jarring sound as he coils the ropes, like a far off hammer smacking wood... or the pelt of pounding feet.

“Wait!” Sanji’s call rings out over the waves. “Wait, I’m coming—!”

“So what the hell took you so long?” Zoro shouts back. “Too late, we’re not coming back for some idiot cook who’s too busy flirting to look at a clock.”

“I wasn’t flirting, I was just saying goodbye to— goddamnit,” Sanji puffs out as he skids to a halt on the dock. “The sun’s barely up! I’m not that late!”

“Then get on quick,” Nami says. “The wind’s about to catch the foresail.”

Sanji hesitates, no doubt eyeing how far they’ve already drifted away from the dock. But Usopp doesn’t—he runs to the side of the boat and stretches out his hand, grinning from ear to ear.

“You can make it,” he calls. “You just have to jump.”

“You sure?” Sanji says, like Usopp doesn’t know exactly the distance between them, like he didn’t spend weeks of his childhood calculating how far their arms would have to reach to meet in midair.

“Trust me,” Usopp says, and Sanji leaps. 

Usopp catches his hand and holds on with all his might, till Sanji’s feet find purchase in the rope ladder. He could probably climb the rest of the way by himself, but Usopp doesn’t let go of his hand. He keeps holding on, until Sanji heaves himself onto the gunwale—until they’re face to face at last.

Luffy cheers and just like that, they’re off, sailing into the rising dawn. The sails billow out in the wind, and Usopp wraps a steadying arm around Sanji’s waist as the boat lurches forward. 

Even though the worst they’ll get is bruised knees, he promised Sanji he wouldn’t let him fall, and a hero never goes back on his word.