I've always thought that Zeff-Sanji relationship is absolutely fascinating! So much deep, unspoken emotions flow between those two. However there aren't enough Zeff&Sanji fics out there, so I've decided to just write one myself :p
This fic will be a collection of short stories revolving around Sanji's younger days with Zeff on the Baratie. Some of them will be light drabbles, others might turn out to be quite long. Hope you enjoy!
Chapter 1: Overboard
He does not know what exactly triggered him to dive into the rumbling ocean, instantly after the boy fell from deck.
His crew is yelling after him, their panick-stricken voices mingled with the howling wind, rolling thunder and the crashing waves. For once he does not care; his mind is entirely focused on finding a small blond head amid the vast deep blue, but he does not see any sign of it. Could it be that the brat drowned already? How dare he, after so shamelessly declaring that dream, the dream he and the boy shared—
A faint glimpse of gold not so far away catches his eye; the brat is being swiftly carried away by the gurgling waves, splashing desperately to remain afloat and yelling hoarsely for help. Relieved, he readjusts his grip on the slippery broken mast and struggles to reach the point where the boy is rapidly drowning. The angry waves show no mercy, however. The more he tries to direct the mast toward the drowning boy, the more he gets carried farther away from him.
After several seconds of hopeless battle against the waves, he cannot see the boy's head anymore. Something like cold panic coils in his guts. A split second after the blond head disppears completely from his sight, he lets go of the damn mast without hesitation and dives in after the boy. After all those years spent roaming the high seas he does not fear the fathomless depth, nor is he disturbed by the thought of other souls being swallowed whole by it. It was something that he had sadly got used to, and had accepted as the inexorable fate of seafarers at some point. However, losing the boy—who he just barely met—right in front of his eyes, is in itself a different matter. For some reason he cannot conceive the idea of the kid losing his budding life to the very ocean that might be hiding his dream somewhere.
Even as the salty water stings his eyes, he can just blurrily make out an unconscious small figure sinking head-first toward the abyss, oblivious to the darkening surroundings as if ready to embrace pending death. In sharp contrast to the roiling sea surface that just ripped his world apart, the scene unfolding in front of him beneath the wild waves is eerily calm, but for the boy who is silently screaming despair. Using his mightly legs he soars down a bit faster, slicing through the current with his arms and all the while not losing sight of the boy. After a few seconds that felt like several years at least, he finally manages to grasp one of the boy's legs. He then firmly tucks the unconscious kid under his left arm and starts to rise toward the surface, hoping against hope he is not too late.
When he hits the surface with a gasp it seems as if the apocalypse has befallen the world; the sky is pitch-black and so is the sea. Only the deafening thunder, constantly crashing waves and the occasional flash that is lightening reminds him that the world has not ended just yet. As he readjusts his grip on the unbreathing boy so that the kid's head can rest over his left shoulder, he desperately looks around for something to hold onto. The broken mast is nowhere in sight, but he miraculously manages to spot a plank of wood close by that seems large and sturdy enough to serve as a lifeboat. By the time he reachs the plank even his superhuman body is thoroughly numbed by the cold waves; his limbs ache as he lays the boy on the plank first and struggles to clime on himself.
It is then that the pirate captain spots something peculiar in the distance—something that looks like a huge flat rock protruding out of the high waves. How a rock that big is able to float above the waves he has no idea, but he is in no situation to muse about such a thing. Mustering every last bit of strength he has left in his body, he starts to steer the wooden plank toward the mysterious rock instead of climbing on it. Gargantuous waves continuously threaten to swallow him and his body is numb and rigid to the point of getting shattered, but with sheer will power he wades through, all the while keeping an impossibly firm grip on both the kid and the plank. He does not know why, but the sight of the scrawny blond boy under his grip makes him cling onto life. As desperately as he can.
When both of them finally reach the rock, the waves have become slightly calmer, the clouds perhaps a shade less darker. Thankfully the monstrous storm was just passing by, although the grim fact that it has taken too many souls for its offering all at once does not change.
Meanwhile, the two lone survivors on the rock do not have the luxury to praise their extremely good luck, since the younger one is on the brink of death and the older one is desperately trying to bring him back to life. With his two hands folded over the boy's unheaving chest the pirate captain presses down with all his might, oblivious to the dissipating storm and the searing pain from the scars on his arms—the ones he got from struggling on the jagged end of the wooden plank to push the boy on board. At brief intervals between the compressions he plugs the kid's nostrils and blows roughly into his mouth, searching frantically for any sign of life.
Several minutes pass by with no avail, and now he is not worried about the damn brat anymore—but angry. He glares into the gaunt and pale face as if willing to resuscitate the kid just by staring. How dare he die, when he chose to save his sorry ass over his crewmate's lives? How dare he lie so limp and even look peaceful, when he bet his entire world on rekindling that fierce glint in his eyes he had witnessed during that brief confrontation on the ship? How dare he mumble about All Blue if he was going to depart so soon, without a care for the vast future that might be lying ahead of him—
The sound of a little cough snaps the resigned pirate out of his angry musing. He blinks, then hastily resumes the compressions, until the boy is coughing up every drop of seawater that was clogging his lungs. After a few minutes the kid's breathing has become quite steady, faint to the point of nonexistence but nevertheless there. Hopefully his consciousness will return soon as well. Convinced that the brat is going to be okay, he is finally able to lie on his back, close his eyes and let exhaustion take over. Every fiber of his being is screaming with fatigue and he is unable think about anything—so just lying there like a corpse is the best he can do.
He does not know nor care how much time has passed, when something warm and bright slids through his eyelids. Slowly and weakly he opens his eyes, and realizes that sunlight is starting to pour through the dissipating murkiness. He then stiffly turns his head to his side, and is not surprised to find the ocean looking so tranquil and innocent, as if nothing had ever happened. As if it had nothing to do with the sudden absence of his entire nakama...
His nakama.
Maybe some of them survived somehow. Like he and the brat did. True they might be idiots and not half as strong as he was, but they were still the Cook Pirates, weren't they? Tough men he had gathered himself who had ventured all the way to the Grand Line. Surely it would take more than a shitty storm to wipe them all out. He couldn't give up hope. Not just yet.
With a grunt he stands up and slowly walks to the side of the rock, only to learn that they are in fact a few meters above sea level. No wander the sea looked somewhat distant when he was lying down. The rock's side is carved out by the waves, and it seems that they were miraculously rescued only because the storm had roused the ocean and increased the sea level temporarily. With the sea level restored to its original state, there is no going down...damn.
He decides to take a better look at the rock itself, turns around and takes a quick sweeping glance. The place looks barren, if not godforsaken; no greenery nor movement decorates the bleak grey. Not so much for surviving, huh. Oh well... Still better than drowning, is it not?
Just when he is about to sit down something he did not notice before catches his eyes—pieces of wood strewn all over the rock. Some look like parts of a mast, others look like they belonged to a ship's railing. He thinks he even sees a crow's nest shattered to smithereens.
He stumbles upon something and stares downward, slightly dazed. The wooden plank that saved the boy's and his life comes into his sight. The slab of wood seems oddly familiar; its color and texture, even the spots that look more worn than other places are not new to his eyes.
Grim realization slowly dawns on him; the piece of wood had once formed his ship's deck. He stares unseeingly at the wreckage surrounding him, only to realize that every single scrap of wood on this rock was what remained of his pirate ship—the ship that used to be his pride and joy. Why didn't he notice it before? Maybe it was because his mind had refused to accept the hard truth until then—that his ship and nakama were lost to the waves forever.
Uncontrollable grief engulfs him; he drops to his knees, pulling at his hair and weeping shamelessly. He, as a captain, had failed to save his nakama... Not only that but he had made it out of the storm alone, all the while not giving a single thought to his crewmates. True, just saving the boy had taken one hell of a toll on him, but that could not serve as an excuse to his failure... How could he ever forgive himself? Numb with despair, he weeps and weeps silently... His choked wails soon lost amid the softly crashing waves.
He must have fallen asleep at some point... When he opens his eyes again the sun is about to disappear below the horizon, enveloping the world with deep crimson and glorious gold. The dazzling golden rays remind him of something... Something, or someone important, the only hope he had managed to salvage from doom—
He remembers the golden-haired boy.
The child lies on his back a few meters in front of him, his scrawny figure seeming even smaller against the blazing sunset. A soft evening seabreeze rustles through the boy's golden fringe, revealing his peaceful young face. Funny kid, the pirate muses to himself and lets out a light chuckle, to be able to look so tranquil after all that madness...
The confrontation with the brat on that shitty ship feels like ages ago, but the fire reflected in the boy's eyes as he stood brave and proud against him is imprinted his mind. He still does not fully understand why he is so mesmerized by the blond boy, but he cannot—and will not—let that flame of determination in those young eyes die away. With this new resolve he rises to his feet yet again, passes the kid without looking and walks toward the wreckage of his ship to find anything worth salvaging before the sun goes down entirely. The sight of the wreckage still inflicts immense pain on his heart, but he cannot let his emotions get the better of him and hinder their need to survive.
Every time he lifts a piece of wood to search underneath he braces himself, lest he finds his nakama's dead body. Fortunately he does not find any body, but nor does he find anything that might boost their chances of survival. From time to time he also throws glances toward the shimmering ocean, in case he spots any ship that might come to their rescue. When he does not see anything that even slightly resembles a ship however, he is forced to accept the daunting intuition that no help would be forthcoming within close future. It seems like the part of the sea where the rock is located is seldom used for maritime passage.
Just when the sun is about to sink entirely into the water, he spots something beneath a particularly large slab of wood. Hopeful, he hurriedly stumbles toward the wooden slab and heaves. Two tied sacks—one of them huge and the other one smaller—cradled inside what seems to be a wrecked lifeboat comes into sight. Heart hammering, he falls to his knees and unties the bigger sack first with unsteady fingers, hoping against hope for what lay hidden inside the wet fabric to be food—
Clank. Something metallic and shiny drops out of the fully opened sack and hits the rock surface. Dazed, he stares unblinkingly at the golden cup glimmering at his feet. Clank clank clank. More gold and treasure fall out of the loosened sack one after another, the last of the fading sunlight bouncing off their smooth surfaces. He does not know how to process the strange emotion gathering in his guts. Was it disappointment...? He smirks bitterly and finds himself deriding pirates—including himself—for putting their lives on the line for the sake of something this futile...
After putting the fallen treasure back inside the sack and retying it, he does not give it a single glance. He turns to the smaller sack and starts to untie it, much calmly compared to when he untied the first sack. So what if there wasn't anything worthy inside this bag as well? He will just keep looking until he finds anything...anything. Hell, he is even ready to rip off one of his body parts if needs be.
A small smirk of triumph rises on his face as he peers into the fully untied sack; he has finally found what he was searching for—food! He carefully spills the content onto the ground to have a better look, and finds that it is a random collection of groceries such as bread, mushrooms, dried meat and cheese that would last a person for about 5 days in ordinary circumstances. It would be optimal if rescue comes within 5 days by some miracle... If not, however, then he can only hope that the brat is not stupid enough to exhaust his only source of energy within just a few days. He puts all the food back into the smaller sack and reties it, ignoring his rumbling stomach.
Sudden realization hits him as he stares at the retied sack—this must be the food sack his idiot of a crewmate tried to pillage on that passenger ship. The fact that it was found on a wrecked lifeboat with a sack full of treasure is also quite telling; some of the idiots must have frantically attempted a last-minute escape from the rapidly sinking vessel but failed, and only the lifeboat and the two sacks got washed up on the rock somehow. He cannot help but let out a mirthless laughter... Trying to secure food onto the lifeboat yes, but the treasure? Maybe it was this shitty treasure that had ultimately cost their lives, not the storm. Trust the hopeless fools to amuse him to their dying day.
By the time he has settled himself on the rock edge to keep watch, only a thin crimson tinge remains on the darkening horizon, and first stars are starting to appear. Not a single dot decorates the eerily calm sea surface, and he is resigned to just sit there and stare blankly into the vast expanse with no avail for god knows how long.
The kid still lies motionless behind him, and he wonders if everything—choosing to pillage the ship on which the boy worked, surviving the maelstrom by finding something to cling onto and getting washed up on this rock, and finding food amid the shipwreck—was not by sheer chance but just... meant to be. Maybe the sea was not against their favor, but was actually helping them—the boy—out with all the will and force it could muster. Maybe it saved him so that he could save the child, for he does not care about furthering his life, after losing all of his nakama. Maybe the ocean too was mesmerized by the dancing flames kindling the kid's eyes—the blazing fire of hope that would one day cleave its heart in two and reveal the deepest of its secrets that is All Blue.
He finally understands that it was not him who chose to save the boy... He had been simply carrying out Mother Sea's wish. After all, he is not a believer nor worshipper of gods, but a seafarer wise and experienced enough to humble himself to the mysterious blue depth. A man like him does not question its intentions.
The last remnants of dusk has faded away entirely, and a thin white crescent in the deep blue sky is shining benignly on the serene ripples. He gazes into the night, with a poised glint in his eyes that seems to have passed onto him from the boy. Help will come for sure, so don't you dare give in and die in the days to come...no matter how hopeless they are. You shitty little eggplant.
...
Two days later, he tears one of his legs and offers it to the seas. His blood flows like a gurgling stream amid the stifled scream of agony, like the red he saw in the eyes of the youngster sitting on the opposite side.
With that, the world changes.
Fate turns over.
Author's Note:
Phew, I didn't expect the first chapter to turn out this long, but I guess the slightly heavy theme of this chapter called for it. In my perspective Sanji's encounter with Zeff is one of the important historic moments in the OP universe, so I wanted to give it rightful emphasis. I hope Zeff wasn't too OOC in this chapter, with him emoting and being desperate and all that. It's just that I reckoned he couldn't have survived the storm and saved Sanji at the same time had he not been desperate. Besides, we all know how much Zeff loved his nakama, so not giving him the moment to mourn over them doesn't do him justice! I've always thought that he had some time to weep his heart out and recompose his thoughts before he first talked to Sanji on that rock like a bamf.
I had no choice but to be Zeff-centric in this chapter, since according to the manga Sanji was out cold for two days after he got overboard. I hope this didn't make the chapter too boring! Hopefully there will be more Zeff-Sanji interactions and dialogues from the next chapter.
Btw this is my first time writing a fanfic, so any nice suggestions or ideas that could help improve my writing or inspire me for the future chapters will be much appreciated! :) I don't know when the next update is going to be(it might take ages and ages), but I will try to return to this story as soon as I can.