As long as he keeps cooking, he decides, they'll all be okay, and that means: boiling water with handfuls of spice, cinnamon and sage, bread crusts and oil. It means stems of fruit arranged in an intricate pattern. It means he raps his spoon against Luffy's knuckles as he tries to get his hands into flour crumbs, raps his forehead as he tries to lick pans.
"Sanji," he says, voice whining and weak as a child's, "I'm hungry."
He knows. They all are. Luffy's losing muscle mass and the women are losing their curves and Sanji is powerless to do more than stir cumin into a pot of hot water. Zoro sleeps most of the day, conserving energy, head tipped back and mouth open, but his breathing is shallow.
They're stranded. They're in an empty sea, nothing around for miles, and even the bottom of the ocean is dark and void. The Sunny is out of fuel and they're still on the hot stagnant sea.
There's no wind. Nami looks desperately at the clouds in the far distance, as if willing them closer.
Luffy sprawls out on the deck, panting in the heat like a dog, ribs showing in the sun. He runs his hands over his sides, groans.
The cupboards are empty. The fridge is empty. The icebox is empty. All that's left are crumbs and a few bottles of alcohol and sheer willpower.
"Sanji," Luffy repeats again, hanging off the edge of the counter, melted in the heat. "Sanji, you're the cook, why can't you-"
"I can't cook with no ingredients, idiot," Sanji grumbles, pushing Luffy's tacky limbs off his chopping board. "Find me a fish and I'll do something with it."
But it's useless, he knows. Sanji's studied the seas, in the search for the All Blue. Nami knows too, he's sure, with the way her beautiful brown eyes track the waters, desperation in the knuckles of her hands.
They're in a dead zone. No fish, no wind, nothing but miles of water desert.
Still, trying to fish keeps Luffy busy, even though there's nothing to show for it. He dangles his arms off the side of the boat, wincing momentarily as the seawater hits him. He lets them drift as far as he can, but- nothing.
Robin reads, and reads, and as the days pass she becomes tenser and tenser. Sanji stands by her on the grassy deck as she sits in a lawn chair, flipping through pages with an extra arm. He flirts, mostly to give himself something to do.
"And what is the lovely Robin reading today?" he asks, clearing away the empty wine glass next to her, fingers unconsciously touching the rim where her lips have been.
"Effects of starvation," she says, bluntly, and does not sugarcoat it with a smile. "Mr. Doctor is too- naive to say anything. We are dying."
"Lady Robin always looks on the dark side," Sanji says, trying to keep his voice light.
Robin has pupils that are too large and they constrict on Sanji, capturing him in her gaze. He would do anything for her, anything. She is beautiful in the way a lush jungle flower is beautiful, something with sticky acid inside and little teeth to snare you in.
"If something is not done, Mr. Cook, we will die." Robin turns her gaze away from Sanji and she goes back to her book, fingers sprouting little fractals of digits, better to hold pages with.
On the grass, Luffy plays with Chopper, flipping the little reindeer over to tickle his sides, and Sanji watches, hands in his pockets, silent. Luffy's wrists are getting bonier, and Chopper pants in the heat, pink tongue out.
Sanji is a chef - he should always be prepared.
That's what stings most about the whole thing: he's not prepared. He can kick the walls down but he can't keep his crew fed, and it hurts. Nami is looking over the side of the boat and he brings her a glass of wine, as well, walking with a spring in his step to keep her pleased.
"Hi," she says, voice a little rueful, and takes the glass from him. "Thank you, Sanji."
"Anything for you, Nami, my princess," Sanji says, making his voice syrupy and wet. She drinks, deeply, and he watches the slim curve of her neck as she does so. They both watch as Luffy rolls onto his back and tucks Chopper under his chin, balled up on the grassy deck.
"No food, huh?" Nami licks her glass, catlike tongue sliding around the rim.
"I'm truly sorry, Nami," Sanji says, and clears away her goblet.
"It's not your fault," Nami says, and leans down to pick up her book of navigational charts, exposing the white flesh of her chest. Sanji looks from the corner of his eye.
She straightens up with it in her slender hands, then flicks through to the appropriate page. "We're stuck here," she says, then sighs, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, tracing the diagram with her other hand. "We came during the wrong time. In two weeks, the sea will start moving again."
Two weeks. Can they last two weeks? They've already been there for two.
He's in the kitchen the next day, rifling through the cabinets. Empty, empty, empty. He runs his fingers along the bottoms of the cabinets set in the wall, standing on the tips of his black shoes.
Two weeks. He makes stone soup with the heels of carrots and a few crusts of bread and Luffy complains all throughout dinner. Sanji snaps back, shoves him, and Luffy goes toppling to the floor. Sanji catches his breath, reaches out with one hand, but isn't fast enough to prevent a knife from clattering down as well. He expects Luffy to dodge it - he doesn't. It hits him in the shoulder and the whole room explodes in chaos. Zoro is on him first, leaping over the table and grabbing Sanji by the collar and dragging him onto the floor.
This close, Sanji can smell the alkaline stink of his breath, knows enough about nutrition to know what it means. Zoro's body is digesting itself.
They're starving.
"What the fuck!" Zoro yells into his face, shaking him, eyes flashing and furious. Sanji can feel that he's gotten lighter.
"I didn't mean to-" Sanji stutters out, head knocking against the floor, "I thought it would miss!"
Chopper's cleared the table and he has Luffy on it and he's already extracted the knife, Sanji can tell from the noise Nami's making. He tries to sit up, scrabbles against Zoro's broad chest. He can hear Chopper speaking low to Luffy, who's making agonized little noises.
"You shoved him," Zoro growls, hands circling Sanji's throat, squeezing. "I'm going to kill you, shit-cook."
There's a wheezing noise from the table and Luffy's sitting up, blood dripping down into his lap. Zoro looks up, hands loosening a little.
"Captain." His voice is low, dead serious.
"Let Sanji go, Zoro," Luffy says, and there's a matureness in his voice that Sanji hasn't heard in a while. "He didn't mean to."
"But he-" Zoro is spluttering with surprise and anger.
Sanji sucks air in as Zoro lets go. There's no disobeying the captain. He looks at Zoro and Sanji with baleful eyes, one hand coming up to rub at his shoulder. Sanji feels guilty, incredibly guilty, but there's some sick anger in it, too.
Luffy laughs, suddenly, loudly, rocking back on the table, legs swinging below him. "It's okay," he says, and shrugs. "He thought I would dodge it."
"Why didn't you, bro?" Franky asks, from his place on the side. It's hard to tell if he's gotten any skinnier. Sanji doesn't know how starvation effects cyborgs.
"I'm not feeling so good," Luffy admits, and casts his eyes downwards. "I'm hungry."
Sanji can deal with exaggerated moans of hunger, can deal with plaintive whines, but the way Luffy says it, the raw emotion in what he says, cuts deep. Chopper fusses over his wound and Zoro leaves Sanji with a look of pure disgust and Sanji gets up, after a moment, and returns to the kitchen.
He's never told anyone on the ship about his time on that rock in the sea.
In the kitchen, everyone leaves him alone.
He remembers those days all too well. He wakes up from them, sometimes, sweating, tear-tracks drying on his skin. The strawhats have known hunger before, but before this, they've never known true starvation like Sanji has.
He would gladly take a bullet in the head over the feeling of flesh melting away, of growing weaker and weaker. He would take a sword through the chest over not being able to stand, over wobbly legs and a starving brain.
Zoro finds him, eventually. Sanji is making bread without flour and without egg and without anything but salt and water and suddenly there's a hand on the back of his neck. It's big and calloused and he knows, immediately, who it belongs to.
He sloshes the mixture back and forth in the bowl it occupies, keeps his tone light. "Gonna take revenge yourself, marimo?"
"Shut up," Zoro hisses, and before he can say anything Zoro slams his face down into the counter. Sanji yelps, his cheek grinding into the cutting board. "I'm first mate. I should do what the captain can't."
Sanji hears the distinctive click of a sword being drawn, and his whole body tenses up. He's not fighting back because- well, if he were to die here, he'd deserve it.
Then there's the similarly distinctive click of a sword being put away.
"Luffy's dying," Zoro says, and the pressure on his head lightens up a little. Zoro's voice is measured, but there's pain in it. "He needs food."
"I know, idiot," Sanji says, voice muffled. "I'm doing everything I can!"
"Try harder." The pressure on the back of his head is released, and before Sanji can say anything back, Zoro's gone.
For dinner that night they have water and fish bones Sanji found in the back of the fridge. It's a broth, if you look hard enough.
The next day, Chopper comes to him. His ears are drooping and there are tears gathering in his eyes and his hooves tremble by his sides. Sanji expects the worst, immediately.
"How's-" he starts, and Chopper cuts him off.
"You can eat me," he says, and tears begin splashing down his furry cheeks.
Sanji is horrified to realize that he's looking Chopper over, gauging the amount of meat on him. He'd last at least a couple of meals- he shakes his head violently.
Chopper strides forward, grabs his pant leg in his hooves, tugs. "We're going to die!" he wails, voice clotted with snot. "We need food!"
"Stop it." Sanji kicks Chopper away, gently, nudging him back. "We're not going to die."
"Luffy has..." Chopper wipes his nose, snorts, shakes himself like a dog. "Luffy has a week, if he doesn't get food. That's my... that's my position as a doctor."
Sanji feels cold. A week. Nami said they would be stuck for two, but that was a few days ago. A week.
"Oh," he says.
"He needs a good meal. His metabolism is- he needs food, Sanji!"
He can't die. Luffy can't die, not from something silly like not enough food. That's just... unthinkable.
On the island, on the rock in the ocean, the old man ate his leg.
Sanji was just a kid, so he doesn't remember certain details, like how his hands trembled as he counted out each piece of bread. He can't remember walking along the rock in his bare feet, can't remember holding a knife and hatching a plan to kill the old man as he sat.
What he does remember is the terror when he realized that the old man ate his own leg to survive. He remembers dropping the knife, the clattering as it slipped from his fingers. He remembers the tears that welled up in his eyes. Autocannibalism- he's been disgusted for years at the idea of biting into human flesh.
They're on an empty sea.
He visits Luffy, in the infirmary, which is Chopper's domain and smells like him, sweet and furry. The shelves are packed full of medications Sanji can't pronounce the name of and books of gory pictures. Luffy sits in the cot farthest against the wall, under the window, and his stillness is frightening. Sanji can see the sky from his position near the door, and it is flat and frighteningly empty, a burning blue plane that hurts his eyes.
"Oi," he says.
Luffy turns to look at him, smiles, and it's bright and cheerful and heartbreaking. "Sanji!" he says, and swings his legs out of bed, bare feet hovering above the floor, and then, immediately after his greeting, "Food?"
Sanji sighs, shows his empty hands. "Not yet," he says, trying to pack as much apology into his voice as he can without actually apologizing.
Luffy tilts his head to the side, mouth open in thought, and swings his feet back and forth. "I trust Sanji," he says, and then grins huge. "We're not gonna starve."
They already are. Without his vest, without his shorts, Luffy looks skinny and little kid-ish, the bones of his ankles and wrists knobs against his tan arms and legs.
But captain's orders always take precedence. Always, always. If Luffy says they won't starve, they won't: that's the way it works.
It's Sanji's job to make sure that they don't starve. It's Sanji's job to make sure the captain's orders are fulfilled.
In bed, he thinks about his time on the desolate island. With his eyes closed, he can see every birdshit-speckled inch of the rock in the middle of the sea. He almost caught a gull, one endless day, clutched a handful of feathers before the thing tore out of his hands and was off.
Sanji had cried bitter tears, painful tears, leaving him exhausted and dehydrated. There was blood on the end of the feathers- he licked it off.
He had sat in the path of the blazing sun and thought of duck l'orange, pie a la mode, strip steaks cooked rare. He had cried and cried and nothing helped soothe the ache in his stomach, that dull awful pain that never went away, only ebbed and flowed from one shape to the next.
Zeff ate his leg, and didn't starve. He let Sanji have all the food.
It's Sanji's job to make sure no one goes hungry, and he's failed at that. It's Sanji's job to make sure everyone is fed, and he's failed at that.
He can make it up to the crew, if he just feeds them.
Luffy's not better the next day. His shoulder hasn't healed up: it's still oozing blood, watery and pale. Chopper makes him stay in bed and when Sanji comes to bring him lunch he's sleeping shallowly, skin sallow, dark circles under his eyes. Sanji leaves the bowl of water and spices next to his bed, creeps out the door before he can wake up.
He looks sick enough that it makes Sanji's heart ache and pound.
Zoro finds him in the kitchen again. Sanji is going through the cabinets out of habit, at this point, running fingers over empty shelves and accomplishing nothing but moving dust around. He doesn't bother to disguise his footsteps and Sanji is too tired to throw up a ruckus, so he just looks at him.
"You need to do something," he says, and puts one hand on his swords.
"I'm trying, shithead," Sanji says, and stubs out his cigarette on the countertop. "It's not easy."
"Luffy's gonna die," he says, and the bluntness of his words sends a spear of pain through Sanji. Zoro narrows his eyes, stabs one thick finger into Sanji's chest. "And it's gonna be your fault, chef."
"Fuck off!" Sanji bats his finger away, snarls. "You try making meals with no food!"
"You have to have something." Zoro balls his hands into fists, and he's really angry, truly furious. There's nothing of the playfighting Sanji usually sees in him. "Some secret stash."
"I would've used it already," Sanji snaps, and moves into his fighting stance, knees braced, shoulders squared.
Zoro breathes through his nose, closes his eyes for a second, obviously trying to get himself under control. "No one as stupid as you could hide food," he says, and that's his way of saying fine, I believe you, Sanji knows.
"Get out of my kitchen." Sanji points at the door, makes his voice stern and steady. He's too weak to put up a good fight, if Zoro does decide to attack him, but thankfully he doesn't. He just leaves without word.
Nami calls him the next day and her voice is panicked and wet with tears and he comes to her without a flirtatious word, because he already knows where she's going. The infirmary is packed with crewmates.
Luffy is going to die. There is no polite way about it. His breathing is impossibly shallow, just the slightest up and down of his chest, and his hand, which Sanji touches with careful fingers, is clammy and cold. Chopper sits over him, pouring polituces and mixing medicines, and Sanji walks back and watches from the doorframe and makes up his mind, right there.
He gets up in the middle of the night and makes his way to the kitchen quietly, being careful not to wake anyone up. The sky is flat and empty of stars and Sanji wonders, for a second, mind starved of calories, if they're going to be there forever, flat characters themselves, nothing but the same voices on loop.
The thought goes away as he walks across the decks of the Thousand Sunny and into the kitchen. In the kitchen, it's warm and bright and he points a lamp at the floor, clears off an area, throws down a couple of towels.
He has one of Chopper's anatomy books under his nightshirt and he drops it on the floor, then sits down.
Zeff ate his own leg, and survived. Sanji has a cleaver and materials for a tourniquet and he needs his legs, he really does, but he needs his arms even more: he won't be able to cook without his arms.
He's not terrified. He's not wearing pants, only briefs, and his breathing is careful and his hands aren't shaking at all as he wraps a bandage around his thigh.
Zeff would be proud, he thinks, a fleeting thought, and Sanji sits and watches as his leg starts turning blue from lack of oxygen. He should have a painkiller, something to dull what is going to be excruciating, but he doesn't trust his ability to cook with them. And he's going to need to cook.
He'll cook as much as he can, and then keep going.
It's Sanji's job to feed the crew, and that's what he's going to do. They depend on him, they need him, they've never needed him more than they do now. He cannot let them down. He will not let them down.
Sanji takes the cleaver in his hand, feels the weight of it, looks at his own reflection in its blade. He looks - terrible. His cheeks are hollow and his face is shadowed and he brushes his hair away from his eye, getting a good look at himself. His eyes are bloodshot and he blinks, slowly, then looks away.
On that rock in the middle of the ocean, the sunsets always shone bright and brilliant, rose red and quartz pink and lemon and orange, fading into midnight at the top of the spectrum. Sanji hoists the blade, presses it against his pale skin in a gentle testing kiss.
He remembers watching the sunsets, pain in his stomach almost faded in the glow of the sun sinking beneath the waves.
Sanji palms open the book with his free hand, flipping to the page that he's memorized almost by heart, traces the path of arteries with his index finger. He can tie them off, he thinks.
If he does this, he will save his crew. His brain is starving and ketosis is making it hard to think but he knows, knows that this is a good decision, knows that he will be able to feed the ones he loves. And that's what matters. He loves his crew and he would die for them and perhaps he will but at least he will keep them alive.
Sanji steels himself, takes a deep breath, then brings the cleaver down unto himself. Blood splashes across his hands, scarlet as a sunset.