Tea Party
By Dixxy Mouri

"Momma . . . you're hurting my head . . ."

Tap's mother chuckled at her. "We're going to a wedding today and I'm just making sure your hair looks nice," she said. The five-year-old pouted – it was bad enough whenever her mother dressed her up to take her to see her aunts for tea parties, but apparently weddings were even worse. It wasn't that Tap hated dresses, she just didn't like the frilly lace ones her mother favored because they were harder to move around in, and they were scratchy from the lace and crushed velvet, and she got in trouble if they got dirty or torn.

"She's a kid, of course she'd going to want to run around and play – you can't get mad at her for being a kid,"she'd heard Daddy say one day after her mother had been particularly upset over a green dress she'd been wearing when she took a tumble into the mud. "Besides, isn't the bigger problem her knee? Look at how bad she got banged up!" He'd turned his attention to Tap, smiled, and ruffled her hair. "Come on, let's go get you patched up."

With one final tug, Momma dropped her hair and Tap turned her head to see that her mother had crafted a fancy braid that she'd laced with blue ribbons and flowers. It was still pulling on her head a little, and she wondered if Daddy would be able to loosen it up for her a bit before they left. "Don't you look adorable?"

Tap shrugged. "It's nice."

Momma smiled and stood, brushing off her own dress. "You're so cute," she said.

"How long do we have to be at the wedding?" Tap asked.

"Weddings last the whole day. It's taking place at one of Grandmother's Tea Parties."

Tap made an "oh" sound. She'd never been to one of Grandmother's tea parties, but she knew they were a really big deal. Her grandmother was a very powerful person, an Empress, and she was in charge of the island everyone lived on. Everyone called her "Big Mom", probably because Grandmother was both very big and a mother many times over (Momma was one of over 80 children – Tap could barely count that high). The tea parties she threw were always a big deal, and someone (one of her uncles, she thought – she couldn't remember which one, there were too many) had told her that if you were invited to a tea party, you had to go. All Tap knew about this wedding was that one of her aunts was marrying a prince from a country with a powerful army, so this wedding was a particularly big deal.

"All right, now I need to finish getting ready for the tea party – please stay out of trouble," Momma said before exiting Tap's bedroom. Tap pouted, looking herself over in the mirror. This dress was frillier than usual and really scratchy and she was pretty sure it was going to be a pretty boring day. She pouted, deciding immediately that she didn't like weddings.

Tap left her bedroom – Momma had gone into her parent's bedroom, humming to herself as she fixed her hair. She could hear sounds from downstairs and assumed that must be where Daddy was, so she shuffled to the stairs, sat down on the top step, and started to go down one-by-one, just like her father had taught her to do when she was little so she could go down the stairs without getting hurt.

Sure enough, Daddy was looking himself over in the mirror by the front door. He was wearing white pants and a fancy-looking blue jacket with funny-looking shoulder pads. He caught a glimpse of Tap and turned to her, a smile on his face. "Hey there, Tap-chan," he said. Tap took that as in invitation and bounced towards her father, reaching out for him in a silent plea to be picked up. Her father complied, grunting a little as her hoisted her up. "One of these days you're going to be too-big for me to pick up."

"No! Never!" Tap said, shaking her head.

Daddy kissed her cheek. "Don't worry – I don't think that's going to be anytime soon," he said. Tap smiled, kicking her feet. "Hey, not so rough!" He took a look at her feet, clad in only the "foot" part of her white tights. "It looks like your mother forgot to put your shoes on." Making sure he had a good grip on her, Daddy bent down to pick up a pair of Tap's shoes and carried them into the living room, where he gently put her on the couch to put on the shoes. Tap frowned – they were a white pair of shoes with straps on the top and buckles on the side. They scuffed easily and Momma would definitely not let her run around in them.

"Can I wear my boots with the ducks on them?" she asked.

Daddy sighed. "Sorry, Tap-chan, those aren't okay for a wedding."

"Why not?"

"It just . . . isn't," he said. "It's hard to explain. You'll understand when you're older."

Tap sighed as her father finished putting on her shoes and took a seat on the couch next to her, gently putting a hand on her shoulder. "I know you don't like these things but it's just for one day. Tomorrow we'll go do something fun, okay? I promise." Tap looked up at her father and nodded, giving him a big, toothy smile. Her father smiled back.

"Are we ready to go? Mama won't be happy if we're late," came the voice of Momma as she came down the stairs. She stopped at the bottom of the stairs and twirled, showing off her dress and shawl.

"I just got her shoes on – we should be all set to go." Daddy picked her up again and Tap sighed, resting her head in her father's hair. Momma was checking herself over one last time in the mirror by the door before taking Daddy's hand and leading them out of the house.

Yep. Tap definitely wasn't a fan of weddings.

Although they were surrounded by tea and cakes and sweets for the tea party, the wedding itself was long and boring as a bunch of adults talked about the importance of family bonds and loyalty to the Big Mom Pirates, blah, blah, blah, Tap wondered when she would be able to have one of the treats littered about the party. It was outside and it was a nice day, so that made it even worse that everyone had to sit around and not do anything except watch people in fancy clothes stand there and not do anything.

Much praise was heaped onto Grandmother, who seemed very pleased with the wedding (even though it was still really, really boring). Grandmother always kind of frightened Tap. She was a very big person, one of the biggest people Tap had ever seen, and her face was really scary. But Momma always said that she didn't have anything to be afraid of and said she was silly for being afraid. "Mama would never hurt one of her children or grandchild, so don't worry, you'll always safe around Mama!"

Tap started kicking her feet. At least sometimes her aunts said interesting things at the smaller tea parties her mother liked to take her to, and there wasn't this long, drawn out boring talk before they got to have the sweets. She watched her feet, pretending that her feet were disappearing and reappearing with each kick.

Momma saw her fidgeting and gave her a stern look, gripping her hand as a silent reprimand. Tap pouted, looking up at Daddy. Her father, for once, wasn't paying any attention to her, his eyes focused intently on the ceremony, absently twisting his wedding ring. He looked really serious, but Tap wasn't sure why.

Finally the old boring guy said the boring woman and the boring man were husband and wife, they kissed, and a bunch of people started clapping. Tap started clapping, too – it was finally over! Everyone else was probably happy it was over, too! Now they could get up and move and have sweets! Tap started to cheer, and her mother shushed her again.

The adults started to get up and move around, Momma getting up and waving at a group of her sisters. She politely waved good-bye to her and Daddy before disappearing into the crowd. Her father was still looking at the bride and groom with that weird look on his face, giving Momma a half-hearted "all right".

Tap tugged on his hand and he shook his head, dazed as if he'd been snapped out of a train of thought. He took a deep breath and apologized to her, saying he was just a little lost in thought. Daddy took her hand and asked her if she wanted a piece of cake, leading her over to one of the dessert tables. "You're not going to make me eat my veggie tables first?"

Daddy smirked. "Just for today, we can have cake first."

"What kind of cake?" Tap asked.

"All kinds," said Daddy. They stopped before the table, and Tap was awe-struck at how many cakes she was looking at. They smelled wonderful – chocolate, vanilla, lemon, raspberry, cinnamon and sugar, rum and raisin, spice and coffee . . . and that didn't include all of the cookies and candy on display! "Just remember, Tap-chan – you're little so don't overdo it or you'll get a-"

"Where are the macarons?"

Suddenly, everyone got very, very quiet, and all eyes turned to Grandmother. She had a funny look on her face, and her voice was a lot more booming than usual. Tap clutched her father's hand and looked up at him to ask what was going on. Daddy was completely still and looked very scared. She could feel him starting to tremble, and she could see lots of the other adults looked just as frightened.

"Daddy, it's okay. Momma said that Grandmother would never-"

"GIVE ME MY MACAONS!"

Suddenly people were screaming and running as Grandmother lunged forward, tossing people and food aside like a dog sloppily eating from a bowl. She was screaming for the macarons, greedily stuffing food into her mouth as everyone scattered. People were shouting to not run, while others were shouting to run.

"Big Mom, c, calm down! Someone is going to go get the macarons!"

"RUN!"

"NO, DON'T MOVE! DON'T SHOW ANY FEAR – THAT'S THE WORST THING YOU CAN DO!"

"Where is the Minister of Candy!? Shouldn't he be here!?"

"Everyone GET OUT OF HERE!"

"No, don't do that, she might use Life or Treat!"

Daddy scooped up Tap in his arms and started to run, jumping up and onto the edge of the dessert table. Tap started screaming as her father continued to jump and run, moving much faster and higher than she knew he was capable of, almost as if he were running through the air itself. He had a wide-eyed, terrified look on his face as he carried her further and further away from the party and Grandmother. "Daddy!" Tap cried, clinging to him in terror. She peered back at her grandmother's rampaging, whimpering.

She and Daddy stopped moving – Tap wasn't sure how, but they were way up high on the roof of Grandmother's chateaux. Daddy put her down behind one of the giant candles, sat down, and pulled her into his lap, wrapping his arms and legs around her protectively. "Stay quiet," he whispered, and Tap nodded, trying her hardest to hold back a whimper.

The sounds of screaming and Grandother's yelling continued for a long time. Daddy had his hands over Tap's ears, trying to shield her from what was going on below, but she could hear little bits and pieces of the carnage anyways. She gripped the sleeves of his jacket, clenching her eyes shut as she waited for it to be over.

But Momma said that Grandmother wouldn't hurt anybody . . .

After a long time had passed, Daddy loosened his grip on Tap and the two of them crawled to the edge of the cake, looking down to see the aftermath of Grandmother's rampage. Tap gasped. Tables and chairs were, at best, knocked over, and at worst, broken and in several pieces. Lots of people were lying on the ground in and in weird positions, some of them being covered from head to toe in bed sheets. Lots of frosting and red jelly was splattered across party, and Tap could hear the sound of people crying.

Grandmother was nowhere to be found.

"Daddy . . . what just happened?" Tap asked.

Daddy was quiet, looking over the damage at the party. He was breathing heavily, closing his eyes and lowering his head. He muttered something to himself that Tap couldn't make out. She leaned her head against his arm, her bottom lip quivering as she tried not to cry. ". . . Tap-chan, I need you to promise me something," he said.

"Daddy?"

Her father pulled away from the edge of the scene and turned to face her. Taking her hands, he looked into her eyes and spoke very plainly, but very sternly to her. "Whenever you deal with your grandmother, promise me you'll be careful," he said carefully. He looked like he was starting to cry, and that was what finally made Tap start crying as well. "Whatever you do, please don't be careless. I don't want to see you get hurt because you said or did the wrong thing. Okay?" Tap nodded, crawling over to her father to give him a hug. He hugged her back.

"I promise, Daddy," she said, clinging to him tightly. "I promise."

Momma found them sometime later, after Daddy led her through the chateaux to get back down from the roof. She and her sisters had found a place to hide, just like she and Daddy had done. Tap was relieved – she'd been so shocked and scared by everything that was going on it didn't even occur to her than something might have happened to her mother. She asked if they could go home, and her parents quietly complied. It didn't look like the rest of the wedding was going to happen anyways, what with the mess Grandmother had made.

Daddy carried her all the way home, a sullen look on his face. Momma seemed all right, commenting that it had been a while since her mother had gone on a rampage like that and how it was a good thing someone found her some macarons when they did. Daddy nodded along quietly, his eyes staring straight ahead as they made the walk home.

When they got home, Momma headed to her parent's room to get changed and Daddy asked Tap if she was hungry. She shook her head – she didn't have an appetite. "Tap-chan . . . you need to eat," he said. "Just a little bit, okay? Please?" Tap whimpered as her father carried her into the kitchen. He set her down on the floor and knelt down, presenting her with a tangerine. "Just a few bites."

"Okay," Tap said, taking the tangerine from her father. She didn't start to eat, however, just standing there and staring at Daddy. She decided to ask a question, speaking very quietly out of fear that her Grandmother was going to find them and do to their house what she did to the wedding. "Is Grandmother a bad person?"

Daddy looked at her with very sad eyes. "She's a very powerful person," he said.

Tap nodded, slowly peeling away the skin and eating one of the pieces. He took another tangerine, sat crossed legged on the floor in front of her, and the two of them ate quietly, Daddy collecting her scraps of peel and the last two sections of the fruit when she was finished. He ate the last two pieces, looking sad and pensive as he did. Tap wasn't sure why he did that – he always did that when she wasn't able to finish something – but as he did he always glanced down at his wrists sadly, his eyes locked on one of the metal wristlets he was always wearing.

Tap had never seen him without the wristlets before – not once. All she knew was that when she was very little her father had yelled at her when she tried to play with them and they started making a funny beeping noise – it was the only time he'd ever raised his voice to her, and she didn't go after them a second time. Sometimes if he parents were having a disagreement, Momma would tug at one of the wristlets and her father would stop arguing with her. At first she'd thought it must be a married thing, but she'd seen other married couple before but Daddy was the only one who had the wristlets. She'd asked about them before, but he always said it wasn't anything she needed to worry.

Daddy walked her over to the kitchen sink so they could wash their hands and quickly wiped her face with a dish towel, mumbling that her mother would get mad if she got the juices from the apple on her dress. Once they were done, he picked her up and held her close, just standing there in the kitchen with her. "Do you need to talk any more about what happened today?"

"I don't know," she said. She did have a lot of questions, but Daddy seemed really upset and she didn't think he wanted to talk about it. "Can I ask you about it later?" Her father nodded, and for a moment Tap wondered if he was going to start crying again. She hugged him back, gently patting his back to try and make him feel better.

"Thanks, Tap-chan," he said.

". . . and they lived happily ever after, the end," Daddy finished, closing their favorite collection of bedtime stories. It was a couple of hours later and almost time to go to sleep – Tap was sitting up in her bed in her favorite pajamas (they were blue with fish all over them), leaning against her father as she tried to follow along with the words on the page. She understood some of them, but reading was still pretty hard.

"I'm never going to get the hang of reading," she said in frustration.

Daddy laughed, ruffling her hair. "You're not doing that bad at all – I started reading when I was about your age, but you don't figure it out overnight. It takes time, usually a few years," he said. Tap's eyes widened in disdain as he father got up to put the book back on her bookshelf, shelving it at the end next to her music box with the whale on top.

"It takes years!?" Tap cried out. "How many!?"

"A lot, if you want to read the bigger books." Daddy turned back to smile at her. "For instance, I'm twenty-seven and even I can't wrap my head around some of the really hard books." He sighed, looking over all of the books on the shelf and stopping on the stuff bird perched on top of a book about history. "I used to know someone who could, but . . . never mind that now."

"Twenty-seven!? I don't even have that many fingers and toes!" Tap whined. She threw off her blanket to stare at her toes and fingers at the same time. She planted her feet on the fuzzy green rug on the side of her bed that her mother said reminded her of sea moss, counting each toe and finger. "I only have twenty of them! That's so many!"

"Hey, I'm not that old," he said. Daddy looked at the clock on the wall – it was yellow with paint splatters all over it and had paint brushes instead of sticks for the minute, hour, and second hands. Tap still couldn't read it, but her father clearly could. "But I think it's almost about time for lights out – we had a long day today and you need your sleep."

Tap sighed, shuffling back into bed while her father sat down next to her again, nearly knocking over her lamp (she thought that was a funny lamp – its base was a ship, and its shade was a pretty blue with red stars on it). "We're not going to another wedding tomorrow, are we?" she asked, yawning. She rubbed her bottom eyes sleepily before moving her right hand to rub her top eye.

"No, definitely not," he said, rubbing her shoulder. He looked at the dresser and picked up her bank, which was shaped like a kitty. He shook it, and the coins inside made a lot of noise. It wasn't a surprise – Tap had been saving up money for a few months now because she wanted to be the one to buy her and Daddy ice cream for a change. "Maybe we can go to the park tomorrow – looks like you have a lot of coins saved up."

Unfortunately, the park was the last thing on her mind. "Was your wedding like that?"

Daddy looked like his was about to say something, but instead he looked like he'd eaten something that gave him a tummy ache. He looked down, not saying anything to her right away. He twisted his hands in his lap for a few minutes, and Tap realized something bad must have happened at her parents' wedding, too.

But that didn't make any sense – she'd seen pictures from their wedding before and it didn't look like Grandmother had destroyed anything. Momma was in her wedding dress with a big bouquet of flowers and her arm linked with Daddy, and Daddy was dressed up all nice, though now that Tap thought about it he hadn't been smiling that much in the pictures. Oh, his mouth was always turned up in a grin, but something in his eyes didn't seem right, like he was sad about something.

"If, if you're worried about what you saw today . . . not every wedding is like that, no," he said. Tap pouted – he didn't answer her question, but he looked like he was really hurting. Sometimes Daddy got really sad, but he wouldn't tell her why – he'd find something else to talk about and then eventually it looked like he was doing better.

"Are you feeling okay?" asked Tap.

"I'm fine," he said, but she wasn't convinced. Tap pouted, sitting up again and rummaging around the top of her night stand before she found a pink box with little bandages inside – they were from last Christmas and had little reindeer on them. She offered her father the box. He smiled sadly at her, but took one of the little bandages anyways.

"Thank you," he said, pocketing the bandages and starting to tuck her in.

"Can I have one of my stuffed animals tonight?" she asked.

Daddy smiled. "Of course – who do you want?"

"Can I have Mr. Monkey?" Tap asked. Mr. Monkey was the best out of all her stuffed animals at protecting her from nightmares, monsters under the bed, and monsters in the closet. Daddy nodded and got Mr. Monkey from his position on her bookshelf before bringing him to her bed, tucking in the stuffed toy with his daughter. Tap sighed – now at least she was safe from bad dreams.

There was a soft knocking on the door, and both Daddy and Tap turned to see Momma standing in the door frame. Her mother seemed to be taking what had happened at the wedding really well, probably still believing that Grandmother wouldn't hurt them. Tap wasn't so sure she believed that anymore, and she didn't think Daddy did, either.

"Sanji darling, are you coming to bed?" She smiled.

Daddy nodded solemnly. "Just tucking Tap in for the night, Pudding."

Momma walked into the room. "Okay, let Momma kiss you good night, too, Tapioca." Tap closed her eyes as her mother bent over to kiss her cheek before standing back up and gesturing for her husband to follow her. She disappeared down the hallway.

Daddy gently ran his hand over Tap's head again before giving her two quick kisses on either side of her forehead. "I love you, Tap-chan," he said quietly. "Have a good night and have good dreams, okay?" He pinched Mr. Monkey's ears. "You have Mr. Monkey here so it'll all be okay, right?" Tap nodded – no matter how bad her dreams were, Mr. Monkey always made everything better eventually.

"I love you, too, Daddy. Good night," she said. She watched as her father stood headed to the door. He flicked off the lights to her room and glanced over his shoulder at her as he closed the door behind him, leaving Tap with only the dull glow of her chef's hat night light and the stars shining through her window.

She wished Mr. Monkey could find a way to save her Daddy, too.

Author's Notes

I'm not sure if the big reveal worked or not but, yes, this takes place in a sort of "bad ending" to Whole Cake Arc. This is going to get expanded upon in an upcoming story (tentatively) called Knotted, which will have a larger focus on Sanji (possibly including this incident from his point of view but I'm not sure what else his perspective might add here) but also feature other characters as well. My current plan is to get the entire story (or at least most of it) done before I start posting it so it might not be out for a while. I also think this kind-of works as one-shot.

Please note that this story was posted on July 31 2016 (which is also my 30th birthday – yes I am that old), at which point the story was only up to Chapter 833 officially (Chapter 834 unofficially) so this may not fit with the actual canon very well. I mean it obviously won't because I really don't think Oda's going to actually let Sanji and Pudding get married but yeah, I you're reading this after just know I didn't have all the information on hand.

Anyways, if you liked it please be sure to leave a comment or review so I know what worked, what didn't work, and how much you all hate me for making this

Dixxy