Chapter Text
An exploding cannonball sends the Cooking George listing to one side.
The resulting spray of water reaches all the way up to where Red-leg Zeff stands on the quarter deck. He's already given the order to lift anchor and set sail. All around him, the Cook Pirates work to do just that. One of the benefits of running a pirate crew full of chefs is that they are damn efficient. He eyes the giant snail ships prowling around the nearby island's coastline. The part of his gut hardened and aged with years of being a pirate sensed trouble as soon as those giant eye stalks crested over the horizon. This was not a typical East Blue fleet and the once green and vibrant East Blue island they were visiting is now a dust field of explosions and gunfire. The battlefield consumes everything in sight within seconds of the war starting. Zeff has no desire to find out who the warring parties are. Unfortunately, that does not stop them from becoming targets.
“I was starting to miss the chaos of the Grand Line anyway, lazing around this sea”, Patty the Cook Pirates' first mate yells, where he's leaning over the side of the ship. His giant forearms flex and he easily swings the anchor out and up, securing it, still dripping, to its usual perch.
“I would have preferred crossing back over Reverse Mountain first before getting shot at.” Carne answers from where he and other members of the crew are adjusting the working-end of the halyards to best catch the wind.
Another cannonball comes careening through the air towards his ship and Zeff makes short work of kicking the bastard in an identical arc back towards where it came from. They sail away shortly after that. Zeff keeps standing on the quarter-deck till he's sure the battle can't reach them anymore, then makes his way down to the main deck. As dangerous situations go, escaping an island in the middle of an impromptu war is tamed for an experienced pirate crew from the Grand Line. He points toward the horizon once his boots hit the main deck, “Haul wind and get the Cooking George out to deeper waters!”
The first mate sends him a yes chef and a cocky loose salute. The rest of the crew parroting him. Zeff grunts making his way to the ship's galley. They had gone shopping for supplies earlier in the day. He trusts his crew to make good choices when it comes to buying foodstuffs, but still. He'll go over the new supplies and check the state of the ship's inventory himself. The Cooking George's pride is its crew of first-class chefs and its galley. Said galley sports a kitchen more suited for a semi-high-class restaurant than a pirate ship. The pristine stainless steel counters are a sharp contrast against the warm wooden tones of the walls and the lights rigged up around the room ensure that every working station in the kitchen is well-lit. The crews' chef coats hang near the door, labeled and distinctive from one another. There are tables set to the side of the galley, surrounded by plush booths in a deep blue color. The whole space feels more like an open kitchen restaurant than a galley.
He only makes it three steps inside before his nose picks up the pungent scent of something unwashed and dirty in his kitchen. The small figure dressed in rags startles at the sound of the door opening and Zeff sees that it's a child with a rat's nest of dirty blonde hair tangled on top of their head. The ends of it hanging limply down towards their shoulders. A tangled mess of it covers half the kid's face, but Zeff's sure the kid's a boy.
His voice is harsh when he speaks, “I don't tolerate rats in my galley, kid.”
Instead of scampering away, as Zeff expects, or acting even a little bit wrong-footed at being caught, the boy approaches him. He stops far away from reaching distance though so the kid has some sense at least. The boy's hands tighten into stiff fists at his side and his head almost disappears completely behind the hunch of his shoulders, “Let me cook!”
His voice is surprisingly firm as he makes his demand. Over and over again. The kid's accented voice is high-pitched and childlike, tongue-tripping over the unfamiliar vowels and consonants of the Eastern language. It's clear wherever he's from, it's not anywhere in this sea. And that he's still far too young to be making demands of a captain while standing on his ship. Zeff feels a faint twinge of something sour and unpleasant in his chest. There are only a few reasons why a kid would show up dirty and ragged-looking in an unfamiliar sea. None of them good. It's something you'd expect to see more of on the South Blue than the East Blue.
“Let me cook!” the boy continues to demand. He only quiets down when Zeff begins to speak.
“This is the Cook Pirates' ship,” Zeff states, crossing his arms, “You've got a lot of nerve making demands of its captain. What makes you think its crew is short-staffed on chefs that I'd hire a little snot-nosed eggplant like you?”.
The boy stares at him blankly, his one visible eye clouding over with confusion. Right. The kid's Eastern is practically non-existent then.
“No,” he states plainly this time, shaking his head for emphasis.
Zeff's been captain of the Cook Pirates for almost two decades; he's no stranger to stowaways, and unlike some other pirate crews out there, he has no patience for children on his ship. The boy's blue eye goes from cloudy to wet as his lower lip begins to tremble. This is exactly why Zeff doesn't have any patience for kids—they're too damn emotional. The kid, for his part, doesn't start audibly bawling, instead, grubby hands lift to quietly rub at the tears in his eyes. They already look red and swollen, Zeff notes. This close, he can see the tracks of old tears cutting through the dirt smeared on the kid's cheeks. There are loose butterfly bandages around most of his fingers and the frayed edges of the long-sleeve shirt he's wearing do a poor job of covering the bandages wound around his arms. The shirt itself seems a size too small despite the boy's lithe frame.
He sighs, “Look, we already set sail. I'm not going to order the ship turned around to dump a kid back in the middle of a war zone.”
He continues, even as he sees his words bounce straight off the kid and float uselessly around in the kitchen, “I'll let you sail with us till the next nearest, safe, port and then you're out of my kitchen and off of my ship-” He points a calloused finger at the kid's forehead, “You got enough brains in there to get all that, Eggplant?”.
By the vacant expression, Zeff is going to assume no. The boy gives one long wet sniff and mumbles, “...cook?”.
Zeff sends him a flat expression, tugging at his beard, “No.”
———
The rest of the Cook Pirates accept the presence of the foreign stowaway easily.
Zeff stands at the main cooking station, stirring the beginnings of an easy meal. He's got battered shrimp and squid frying in the pan with some ginger and a dark umami sauce. On the other side of the galley, the rest of his crew are clustered around the booth where the stowaway sits. The kid's as stiff as a marine cadet getting hollered at by a vice admiral, hands clenched in his lap. Patty's looming over the kid's left near the galley wall, forearms crossed, while Carne, by contrast, is crouched down by the kid's side, his large frame creating a buffer between the two.
Zeff sic'd them on the boy as soon as he got the kid seated at the table. The rowdy bunch of Cook Pirates immediately stomped and jostled their way into the galley at the first call. Two crew members left outside to navigate and keep watch. They'd stopped dead at the sight of the kid's wide-eyed stare. The ship doctor's weather-worn face pulled down at the state of the child while the rest of them jumped at the opportunity to inspect the new source of interest on the ship. Carne's making a show of pointing toward everyone and saying their name, hoping it'll prompt the boy into offering up his own. Zeff sets the sea meat aside and cracks in the eggs. Chopped garlic, peas, and leftover crab meat are all tossed in before the eggs can start firming up. He can feel the kid sneak a peek every once in a while, but he doesn't ask to cook again. Or offer up a name.
“C'mon kid, you got to give us something here”, seems like Carne's given up all other avenues and gone straight to begging.
“Maybe the kid's a mute?” Patty grunts, eyebrows pulling down into a scowl.
“Maybe your ugly mug scowling down at him is turning him into a mute,” another crew member pipes up. A round of guffaws passes through the room, and the kid's head whips around, eager to understand what's so funny. Some of the mutism definitely stems from a lack of understanding then.
The Cooking George's shipwright leans back against the booth, twirling a wooden spoon between deft fingers, “I can't believe the boy managed to stowaway onto the ship, we weren't even docked that close to the island.”
Zeff reintroduces the squid and shrimp meat to the mixture, continuing to stir. The rich scent of cooked seafood fills the galley, hanging around the occupants' heads. Another glance at the table shows the look in the boy's visible eye has gone from curiosity tinged with jealousy—to straight hunger. It doesn't take a sharp mind to understand the kid hasn't been fed well in a while. Finally, Zeff adds the leftover rice, freshly chopped peppers, and pours a lightweight seed oil over the mix to brighten up the flavors a bit. The finished plate looks appetizing with vibrant colors of fresh vegetables and sea meat nestled within a golden bed of rice. The hearty weight of it thunks against the wood of the booth's table.
“Eat up kid, we don't waste food at sea.”, Zeff says. From how hungrily the kid was eyeing him near the end there, he thought he'd immediately start shoving the fried rice into his mouth. Instead, the kid takes a minute to spin the plate around and inspect its contents before spearing a single shrimp and chewing on it. Zeff has the bizarre sense that his food is being judged by the little brat. Every element of the food gets the same individual treatment. He half-expects a review by the end of it, but the kid just quietly starts eating the food in neat bites.
Carne offers the kid a wide smile, the same smile mirrored on every cook in the room, “It's damned good right?”.
The boy, of course, doesn't answer, but the bright smile he sends back is pretty telling. Zeff feels something loosen, and worse, soften at the sight of the kid's smile. Luckily, the sound of their navigator pushing into the galley is distraction enough that he can pretend to ignore whatever that was. Robby is the only one in his crew not from the East Blue. When the first inklings of youthful stupidity started urging Zeff to cross Reverse Mountain, he had enough sense in his head to realize the best way of surviving the unpredictability of Grand Line seas was to hunt down a navigator that earned their sea legs sailing it. Robby is also the only member of his crew, not completely fluent in Eastern, which is why when he gives his report on their current heading, he peppers his speech with World Common words.
The boy makes a sharp noise of excitement, eye brightening. He looks like a dog that spotted a particularly good bone,
“I know that language! Can you speak it fluently?!” he exclaims in the same language. Unlike the kid's Eastern, there's no hiccup or awkward stuttering. A thick accent no longer blankets his voice, although there's still a hint of it clinging around the edges of his words, but it is fancy—like his mouth grew and took shape around a silver spoon. World Government fancy, great.
Zeff briefly resigns himself to a future where his bounty is racked up by several thousand berry if the Marines discover the missing World Government-fancy child looking like an ill-kept prisoner in the middle of the Cooking George's galley. He doubts they'd listen if he told them the kid boarded a notorious pirate ship willingly. World Common is the preferred language used on Zeff's ship and the Grand Line. They only defaulted back to using the language of the East Blue after returning to their home seas for a bit. It also means that the entire crew can hear the royal cadence dogging the stowaway's words. The kid's excited exclamation dimmed the wind under the sails in the room and the boy knows it. He shrinks back down into himself looking cowed, fingers tangling and pressing against each other.
“Well fucking finally, we got real close to Carne doing a full mime-act near the end there.” Patty's voice speaks up from where he's still leaning against the wall. It's said with enough force and exasperation to get the sails going again. The Cook Pirates have never really been a serious bunch despite their fierce reputation. The kid's fingers continue to twist and tangle with each other.
“Eat your food, Eggplant.”, Zeff orders, pushing the plate closer to the boy again, “Afterwards, we'll talk about what you're doing aboard my ship.”
———
Afterwards ends up being quite some time later. Zeff's tired of the kid stinking up the galley with his smell. The kid turns beet red and indignant when he says as much. The upset tilt to his features quickly turn more hopeful at the mention of a bath., however. Every time those wide blue eyes light up with wonder at the mention of addressing a basic need such as hunger and hygiene, Zeff's right foot feels restless.
Leading the boy out of the galley becomes a whole thing once the kid spots their Jolly Roger whipping around on the main mast. He mentally redrafts the part in his speech to the Marines about the boy willingly getting on a pirate ship because despite boarding the ship in broad daylight, he's somehow missed the fact that it's a pirate ship.
“You're pirates?!”
The shipwright swings one spoon up pointing towards the tip of the mast, “What gave it away, the Jolly Roger,” another dark-tanned hand points a different spoon towards the front of the ship, “-or the matching figure head?”
The kid pouts a pale hand tugging at the mess on his head. That's going to be hard to detangle.
“What's your name, kid?” Zeff asks in an attempt to distract him.
This gives the boy more of a pause than the realization that he's in the company of pirates. He chews on his lip for a second, hand still tugging at blonde hair. He answers in a voice barely louder than a whisper, “...Sanji.”.
After that, Zeff marches Sanji straight to the bathroom. He looks old enough to bathe on his own without drowning himself, so he leaves the kid to it. Zeff settles against the railing right outside the door. The island isn't visible on the horizon anymore and the sounds of battle have long since faded away into the distance. Sailing the East Blue means they don't have to hop from island to island. Instead, they're on course straight to the nearest decent port town. Robby's report stated it will be about a week before the Cook Pirates can wash their hands of the little stowaway.
Zeff smooths a hand over the hair in his beard. The boy's situation is strange, there's no doubt about it. He's not sure how the kid ended up on an island he doesn't belong on. There's nothing particularly noteworthy about that East Blue Island, either. No slave trades that he knows of, and it's not one usually frequented by pirates despite being an independent island outside of the World Government's jurisdiction. As far as he's aware, the snail-ship fleet doesn't sail the Grand Line, and the news coos have yet to mention them. The only thing he's certain of is that they carry serious firepower and a military-trained crew. Zeff wouldn't be surprised if there was nothing left of the island by the end of the day.
The sun has noticeably shifted further down the sky by the time the bathroom door clicks open again. Zeff stows away any further thoughts on the matter. Where the kid came from and how he got here has nothing to do with him. The only obligation the Cook Pirates have is to keep the kid well-fed till they can drop him off somewhere.
Two days later Zeff's stretched out on one of the benches on the main deck. The sun warming the back of his neck while the breeze chases away the worst of the heat.
“I think he's imprinted on you like a baby duck.”, Carne speaks up on the bench across from him. There's a small wooden table separating the two, playing cards and berry coins scattered across its surface, “I'd bet good berry, you're the first friendly face the kid's seen in a while. As ugly as it is.”
“That's what happens when you feed strays, Captain,” Fasti states not kindly. The green and white bandana does nothing to hide the displeased tilt of his eyes. Fasti is one of the Cook Pirates' main combatants, with a similar fighting style to Zeff's own. He's leaned up against a barrel near them, now. Lurking, Zeff's mind supplies.
Patty turns toward where Carne sits next to the first mate, continuing to shuffle the cards in his hands, as he asks, “Ducks do what now?”
“Baby ducks imprint. Means they form an attachment to the first moving person or object they see after they hatch.”
“Huh.”
Zeff ignores the conversation going on in front of him to send Fasti a stern glare, “You know the rules of the Cook Pirates. No one on the ship goes hungry and we don't steal food from our victims.”, he shifts, accepting the hand of cards Patty deals to him, “The Cooking George doesn't have room for a growing Eggplant, we'll drop him off at the nearest port.”
“Right...” Patty says, his own set of cards nearly lost behind the meaty fist of his hand, “Does the brat know that?”.
Said brat sits close to Zeff's side on the bench, looking down at his swinging feet. He didn't put up a fuss when the adults around him started talking in the language of the East Blue. It's the only way Zeff's gotten some modicum of privacy the last few days. Sanji's been stuck to his side ever since that first meeting in the galley, even sleeps curled up in a nest of blankets on the floor of the Captain's cabin. Yelling or kicking only grants him a little bit of extra space, but it's usually not long until wide, wet eyes slink back up to his side, looking skittish and miserable. They're sitting outside now for the kid's benefit. Sanji's got his back to the table, enjoying the full force of the sun against his face. His cheeks, still round with baby fat, already have a slight pink tint to them, and Zeff knows he'll have to chase the kid into the shade at some point, but for now, he leaves him be. Whatever situation Sanji was in before landing himself on the Cooking George, didn't grant the kid a lot of time outside. After his bath that first day, he bundled Sanji up in borrowed clothes tied around his frame to make it fit a bit better and sent him off to the ship's doctor.
Now days later, the kid's wrapped up in another set of new, borrowed clothes, and Zeff's got the ship doctor's grim report bouncing around his head at night. They'd somehow managed to detangle the rat's nest on the boy's head with minimal help from a pair of scissors and it now curls ever-so-slightly around his shoulders and ears. Half his face is still hidden behind a long fringe, which he seems to prefer. The little bit of skin that isn't blue-yellow from bruising is a sickly pale color, barely distinguishable from the fresh bandages covering the worst of the wounds—indicating a lack of time spent outside and the reason Zeff's currently baking like a piece of dried meat out on the main deck. There's also a painful-looking rash on both sides of the kid's jaw, spreading down towards his neck like something kept rubbing against the skin there.
Any attempts at trying to get Sanji to talk about his past end in disaster. As far as the boy and thus the Cook Pirates are concerned, he spawned semi-fully formed on the Cooking George. Sanji shuffles around on the bench till he can shamelessly stare at Zeff's hand of cards. Patty and Carne watch the boy's face like a pair of hawks. Sanji's mouth turns down into a grimace, and Zeff huffs a breath through his nose. Another thing he's been unable to do the last few days—win at a round of cards.
———
A week after meeting the stowaway, he's digging the tip of his boot into the kid's ribs, sending him crashing down the gangplank. It hurts. It's meant to hurt. Zeff is a Grand Line pirate and captain of the Cook Pirates. He's earned a bloody reputation with a fighting style so distinguishable they've tacked it onto his first name. He's not a soft man and he's not fit to raise a kid. Sanji lands with a thump on the port's dock down below. The port town they're docked at is a decently sized one with little-to-no criminal presence. The boy will be just fine here and Red-leg Zeff and his crew can continue on their journey to re-enter the Grand Line without the liability of a child on board. If only he'd actually stay down on the docks long enough for the Cook Pirates to set sail again. Zeff sighs as the boy clamors back up onto bony knees.
“I want to be a cook, I want to sail with you!” the boy manages to yell, despite the noticeable wheeze in his voice.
I want to retire and open a restaurant one day when I'm too old to sail, Zeff thinks. But there's only one way for a pirate to retire, and it's not something as simple as hanging up the jolly roger and calling it a day. He bends down, dragging the gangplank back up the main deck. Sanji's still hacking up a storm down on the dock, hunched over his knees. The yelling clearly stole the last bit of breath his lungs managed to cling onto. At least he's staying down. Third time really is the charm with this kid. Gangplank secured back in place, Zeff gives the order to set sail. He can't bring himself to move away from the railing, though. Instead, he stands there watching as the boy teeters up onto two unsteady land legs and finally manages to draw in a deep breath. Of course, the kid merely lets it loose in a scream a second later.
“I'm going to make it to the Grand Line, and I'm going to find the All Blue!”
It's the loudest Zeff's ever heard the boy be. Sanji spent most of the week on the ship, skittering around, quiet and meek as a mouse. There were times when Zeff thought he could see the spark of something hotter in the boy's eye wanting to catch light. But it was usually snuffed out under the weight of whatever it is that also robs the boy of a peaceful night's sleep. The glow of it sparks out from the kid's mouth now making Zeff's breath hitch. A heat buried deep down in his chest—deep into his bones, at the cluster of nerves that make up the human body—starts to heat up and arch towards the dock as the kid fuels it with the glowing sparks of an impossible dream. Zeff's dream. A dream he's long since stopped fueling himself. A determined deep-blue eye meets his own watered-grey ones, and Zeff offers a branch for the kid's sparks to latch onto, “Alright, little Eggplant. We'll anchor close by at sea for the night. If you can make it back on my ship by morning light for the second time, I'll take you to the fucking Grand Line myself.”
The boy's mouth pulls up in a cocky show of teeth.
———
Fourteen-year-old Sanji is a pirate and sometimes he's also a cook. Mostly he's been a thorn in the Cook Pirates' side for the last six years now. The temper the kid's been hoarding away has been given space to grow aboard the Cooking George. His tongue's grown sharp along with his temper—the formal speech he once spoke with quickly giving way under the force of a pirate's vernacular within the first year of sailing.
Zeff still managed to instill the manners of a gentleman into him and respect for women, so he's not doing too bad a job at raising the kid. Sanji's a natural protege when it comes to cooking, something he has no shame in baiting the other Cook Pirates into a fight with. Patty grumbles the loudest and butts heads with the kid the most, but they're all secretly proud of the brat. Another thing Sanji's taken to is their captain's unique fighting style. Fighting doesn't come as naturally to him as cooking did, yet it doesn't stop him from adopting the Blackleg fighting style as his own. Sanji is fourteen years old and happy for once in his life when it all gets ripped away from him in an afternoon.
The snap of the Cooking George's main mast is deafening. The once sturdy pillar splinters and tilts, falling to the ocean below. The Cook Pirates' Jolly Roger goes down with it. The ocean is quick to swallow it into its depths along with the other bits of debris falling off the burning Cook Pirates ship.
Sanji does nothing to stop the tears from falling down his face. The only people he's ever been willing to call family are bleeding out and burning alive in the ruins of their home. The thick scent of it clogs up his nose and burns the back of his throat. He can feel the Vice Admiral's hand where it digs into the meat of his shoulder, discouraging him from moving where he's kneeled. Not that he needs to. Sanji can't move, too caught up in the sight happening port side of the Marine ship he's held on. The sound of the Vice Admiral's voice is faint behind the loud rush of blood and flames in his ears, but he hears the words Vinsmoke and experiment. A grim feeling of helplessness he hasn't felt in years shivers down his spine to settle into his bones. If he breathes in hard enough, he can smell the scent-memory of iron clamped over his head and the feeling of cold concrete beneath him. He should have listened to Zeff and let the Cook Pirates abandon him on that dock in the East Blue. At least they wouldn't be dead and it wouldn't be his fault.