So, I sat down at the computer with every intention of typing up the next part to A Date With Sanji, but for some reason this came out instead. I've always wanted to do a story about Brooke and Sanji because they're my two favorite characters, but I'm obviously very disturbed in the head. Although I can't right a good death scene for the life of me, which reminds me...
Warning: Death. And hints at cannibalism.
And I don't own One Piece, or else I would be taking next week off for Goldenweek.
This can't be right. Sanji looked around at the depressing landscape. This has to be a dream. He still has nightmares about the place, but now it seemed smaller, even more desolate than before (if that was possible). The one major difference was the face that his nakama had washed up beside him. Wait, washed up? He looked at the ocean by his feet. Last time there was no ocean…then it all came back to him. The storm, the wave, the screaming, the jumping in the ocean after Luffy, the sounds of everybody else following, both by choice and by force. This was a different island. A different island with the same problem.
The others were waking up now, slowly but surely. The question on everyone's lips was either "where are we?" or "where's the Sunny?" or some combination of the two. Sanji just sat there staring at the ocean.
"Well, Captain-san, it seems we're marooned on this island." Robin said after gathering her bearings. "What do you propose we do?"
"Find the Sunny of course! It didn't sink, so we just hafta find it and get outa here."
"Yeah, except the Sunny's not here," Usopp pointed out, "it's out there somewhere." He waved his arms vaguely towards the open ocean. "Not to mention there's no guarantee it's still afloat."
"Of course it's still floating!" Franky shouted. "I built her to withstand more than that measly storm! We just got knocked overboard!"
"Maybe you should have thought about that dilemma ahead of time and built something to stop it so we wouldn't be in this mess!" Usopp and Franky glared daggers at each other.
"Stop it you two! Fighting's not going to solve anything!" Nami declared as the voice of reason. "We should be figuring a way off this rock, not debating whose fault it is we're here."
"We just need a boat." Luffy said matter-of-factly. "Franky, build us another boat to go find the Sunny in."
"With what?" Sanji chimed in. Everyone turned to look at him. "There's nothing here but rocks."
"Yosh. Franky, build a rock boat."
"Baka. You can't make a boat out of rocks."
As Franky tried to explain the laws of physics to Luffy, Robin sat down besides Sanji. "Are you okay cook-san? You seem rather depressed." Chopper and Brooke joined them.
"I'm sorry Robin-chan. I don't mean to bring you down." He said before glancing at the ocean again.
"Sanji, what's wrong?" Chopper asked while looking up at him with his cute reindeer eyes.
"It's just...too much like last time."
"Last time what?" Brooke inquired.
"Last time…before…when I was a kid…" Sanji sighed. By now the others were paying attention to him too. He continued, "When I was a kid, a storm through me overboard of the ship I was working on. I ended up on an island similar to this with very little food. It was a drawn out starvation dilemma."
No one said anything, they just stared at him. Chopper broke the awkward silence. "You mean…we have nothing to eat?"
"Of course not!" Luffy countered. "We can just fish for food like we always do when we run out."
"With what? We don't have anything to use for poles or bait…" Nami said, realization sinking in.
"We'll think of something." Luffy said confidently, "We always do. We'll get the fish out of the ocean!"
"It won't work." Sanji stated.
"We'll make it work."
"No, it's impossible. There are no fish in this ocean." More staring.
"What are you talking about? Of course there are fish, it's the ocean!" Luffy said matter-of-factly.
"No, fish can't live here, the habitat's all wrong." Sanji hugged his knees and put his chin on them.
No one said anything until Zoro felt the need to add, "So, we're all going to starve to death?"
"Yeah, seems like it." Everyone just stared at Sanji who just stared at the ocean.
"How did you survive last time?" Robin eventually asked.
"I had some food. A ship came eventually."
"So, we can just wait for a ship to come pick us up!" Chopper stated hopefully.
"Not a lot of ships pass here though…" Nami added.
"No, it's fine. A ship will come eventually." Luffy declared.
"What makes you so sure, Mugiwara?" Franky asked.
"Because I said so." Everyone sighed.
"Even if a ship does come," Zoro said, "there's no guarantee that they'll even pick us up. We are wanted criminals after all."
"Zoro! Way to bring down our only hope!" Usopp shouted.
"Yeah, way to go asshole!" Chopper added.
"I'm just saying is all…" The three of them started fighting. Luffy decided to join in. Nami, Robin, and Franky thought it best to try and split them up. Brooke took up a seat besides Sanji and also stared at the ocean.
"You're not going to die, are you?" Sanji suddenly asked. "I mean, again."
"Yohoho," Brooke chuckled, but there was very little amusement in it. "Not by starvation. I can still feel hunger, and I can still eat and digest food, but it's more out of habit than actual need. After all I didn't eat for fifty years before you all found me."
"Hm. So you just going to sit back and watch the rest of us waste away?" Sanji chuckled, but there was no amusement in this sound either. "I guess this will be a repeat for both of us then, huh?"
"I guess so."
"Alright listen up!" They were seated in a circle on the beach where they were washed ashore. Nami had taken control of their little meeting. "We are stuck on this island with no food and no way out. What are our options?"
"Starve and die." Offered Usopp.
"Options that don't involve death?"
"Wait for a ship." Suggested Robin.
"Yes, anything else though?" Nami looked expectantly at their faces. No one said anything else. Nami sighed. "Okay, Sanji-kun, you've been through this before, what's the best way to go about this?"
Sanji glanced about the island. "We need to cover all sides of the island with lookouts to keep an eye out for ships. We could split up into teams of four."
"Eek! Split up?!" stammered Chopper. "B-but, what if something attacks us?"
"What's going to attack us? There's nothing here." Franky pointed out.
"Oh yeah…"
"Anyway, there are nine of us, so that's three groups of two and a group of three." Nami stated. "Who should go where is the question?"
"I call going with Luffy or Zoro or Sanji," said Usopp. "Y'know, just in case…"
"Me too." Added Chopper.
"Nothing's going to attack us…" Zoro muttered.
"Maybe we should divide by who will be the least likely to starve?" Suggested Robin.
"Geeze Robin, why are you so morbid?" wondered Usopp.
"No, that actually makes sense." Chopper said. "The people who are going to starve slower can take the farther side of the island while the people who would starve faster can stay here and not waste as much energy."
"It's a pretty small island; will it make all that much difference?" Nami asked.
"It could be the difference between life and death Nami-san."
"Okay then, Sanji, you're the cook, you make the teams."
Sanji studied his nakama. He took in their current body weight, muscle mass, eating habits, anything that might give them an advantage in this situation.
"Nami, Robin, and Usopp should stay here." He finally said. "Luffy and Franky will head to the east side of the island…" he paused for a bit, thinking, calculating, before finally saying, "Chopper and Zoro will go to the west side of the island. Brooke and I will go to the far side."
"Hey, Sanji, is that really right…" started Chopper.
"Yeah, it's fine." Sanji said quickly. "I'd put you with Luffy, but after a few hours he might try to eat you. Franky's half metal, so he wouldn't taste very good anyway." He smiled at this, but everyone could see through it.
"If that's what Sanji thinks is best, then it's best." Luffy stated. "We should get going then."
"But wait!" Usopp said, "What are we going to do about water?"
"There's an interesting crater closer inland." Robin observed. "It's gathered enough rainwater to last a couple of weeks even if we all shared it. And it's bound to rain again and collect even more. We just have to take shifts with who's watching for ships and who's getting water."
"Alright then, it's decided." Luffy said getting up. Everyone else who was leaving got up too. "Anything else we need to know?"
"We shouldn't go see each other unless we flag down a ship." Sanji added for good measure.
"Yosh. See you all then!" With that they split up into their different groups and headed in their general directions.
"Sanji-san," Brooke said when they were alone, "you know, it would have made more sense if Zoro-san went with me instead."
"Oh really? And what expertise do you have that makes you say that?"
"Well, you sent me to the far side because I won't die no matter how much I move, but it would have made more sense to send Zoro-san because he has more muscle mass and would have taken him longer to starve."
"Yes, it will take Zoro longer to starve to death than I will." Sanji agreed.
"So why did you choose to go to the far side?"
"I'm not just going to let the stupid marimo starve when I can avoid it. I'm going to give them all the best possible chance I can."
Brooke understood. He said nothing more on the matter after that.
It's not so bad, Sanji thought, it's not that bad the second time around…oh who am I kidding? Last time I had some food…how did the old geezer do it? Oh yeah, he ate his leg. Sanji glanced down at his own appendages. Maybe later. He had cigarettes this time around though, and they helped stave off the hunger until he ran out. Brooke had offered to bring the water to him so he didn't have to waste energy getting it, but he declined; seeing his other nakama if they were drinking at the same time was nice, even if it was only every once in a while.
It could have been days, it could have been weeks. Sanji had forgotten to keep count. Brooke said it's been a month or so, and Sanji was willing to trust his judgment on that matter. After a while he stopped seeing Usopp and Nami-san at the water hole, but he decided not to think anything of it. They were probably just missing each other.
Eventually self-preservation beat out the need to talk to someone other than the skeleton and he let Brooke bring him back water in a cup-shaped stone they had found while he waited there. Brooke still updated him on what the others told him and that almost made up for not being able to see them.
Brooke said it was around the two month mark, however, when Sanji stopped receiving updates from the skeleton. The average human can only go three weeks without food, but Sanji knew his nakama were anything but average. He didn't know if the three week rule applied to reindeer or if rubber and metal made it so they would last longer or if Robin could cut off and eat her extra limbs. He did know that with all of the muscle mass Zoro had that he wouldn't be dead yet, but he refused to let Brooke go and check, just in case. How he himself had managed to hang on for so long was a mystery in itself; he was so thin after all.
Finally Brooke had enough. "I'm sorry Sanji-san, I can't stand not knowing. I'm going to go check on the others." He left, and Sanji couldn't blame him, he was morbidly curious as well. At this point in time though, he would have been happy if even one of them was still alive.
Brooke came back around sunset carrying Zoro. Sanji looked up surprised and was relieved to see that he was still alive. He was Far too skinny than Sanji was used to seeing him (although Sanji probably looked the same), not conscious and barely hanging on from the looks of it, but alive nonetheless. "What about the others…" Brooke just shook his head.
"I put Luffy, Franky, and Robin into the sea…it just seemed…better that way." Brooke explained. "I couldn't find Usopp, Nami, or Chopper though…just bones back were we landed, but they might not have been human, I didn't check."
"I didn't eat Chopper." Zoro suddenly said, startling Sanji and Brooke. "I was tempted too, but I didn't. I just put him in the ocean too."
"Baka." Sanji said. "You should have eaten him. You would have lasted longer."
"I'm not going to eat my nakama." Zoro stated. "And I'm not dead yet." Sanji sighed before turning back to the ocean.
"What are we going to do about watching for ships though?" Zoro continued, "I mean, there are only three of us, so we can't cover the whole island but…"
"Don't be stupid." Sanji said a bit too harshly. "You can't move, I can't move. The only one who can move is Brooke and he's going to be too busy getting us water so we don't dehydrate." He sighed. "And it's not like it matters anyway. No one is coming."
"You don't know that…"
"When did you become Mr. Optimism?"
"Should you two really be wasting your energy fighting?"
They both shut up. Zoro fell asleep shortly after and Sanji followed suit.
It was the night of the third day after Brooke found Zoro. Brooke was off getting some water, so it was just Zoro and Sanji staring at the ocean, waiting for a miracle beyond hope.
"Hey cook."
"Yeah?"
"What are the chances that Mihawk show up in the next few hours?"
"Even if he did show up, you're in no condition to stand up to face him let alone beat him."
"As long as we're hoping for miracles, I figure why not?"
Silence for a bit. "Hey Marimo."
"Yeah?"
"What are the chances that this shit-ocean is actually All Blue?"
"Slim to none, considering your ocean is supposed to have every fish in it while this one has none."
"It's like anti-All Blue."
Zoro looked up at him. "Close enough."
Sanji laughed. "Since when is the exact opposite of what I'm looking for close enough? If that's the case, than in your current state you could be the Weakest Swordsman in the world."
Zoro laughed. "Yeah, so we got our anti-dreams. At least that's something."
"Better than nothing I suppose."
Zoro kept staring at Sanji. "Listen, Sanji," Sanji looked over at the use of his name, "I'm sorry. For all the fighting and the name calling and the button pushing, I'm sorry."
"Quit acting like you're going to drop dead at any moment. You don't have to-"
"Yeah, but I want to. I've never actually hated you…"
"I've never hated you too." Zoro smiled at that.
"Good. I wanted to at least get that straightened up. And I'm sorry for making you have to watch me die. I went through the same thing with Chopper, so I know how much it sucks."
"Baka. You're not dying before me."
"No, you're the cook: the cook never starves to death." Zoro closed his eyes. "You'll find the real All Blue someday; I just know you will."
"Zoro, stop talking like you're dead…it's not like you…"
"Tell Brooke I'm sorry for dying on him too…and say hi to Laboon for me…cause I'm sure you'll see him too…"
"Zoro…stop…"
"Oh, and you can eat me if you want. S'not like I'll be around to complain about it or anything…"
"No…Zoro…"
"Maybe I'll see you in the next life…I'm glad I met Luffy and everyone…even if this is how it all ended…"
"Zoro…"
"It's been fun, it really has…" with that he sighed and said no more.
Sanji just stared. So this is how it's going to end huh? He couldn't even muster up the energy to cry for his nakama who starved to death right before his eyes.
Brooke came back and saw what happened. He handed Sanji his water before going over to check Zoro's pulse for conformation. "Do you want to…" he began.
"No." Said Sanji. "Just put him in the ocean with the others." Brooke obliged.
Two days since Zoro died and Sanji hadn't bothered to waste any energy talking to Brooke since. Brooke understood; he had felt the same way right after everyone of his nakama had died.
Sanji knew the end was near. "Hey Brooke…does dying hurt?"
Brooke laughed at that. "You'd know better than me by now, considering that's what you've been doing for the past two months."
"You know what I mean."
Brooke sighed. "No. The poison hurt, the stab wounds hurt, but after you go, the pain just disappears."
"Is it nice on the other side?"
"I wouldn't know; I never got that far." He looked down at Sanji. "I assume it is though."
"Pirates probably go to the other place anyway." He sighed then looked up. "It wasn't much easier…the second time around I mean, at least not for me."
"Nor I. I doubt it gets any easier though, no matter how many times you go through something like this." Brooke went to sit by his last nakama.
"You've been really calm throughout all of this. Thanks for that."
"It's the least I could do." Sanji sighed again and looked at the sky.
"If I do go to heaven…I wonder how much it'll be like Skypiea."
"From you're descriptions of the place I suppose they would be quite similar…"
"I hope Conis is there, or a cute angel like Conis…I could do without the crazy-lightning-spewing Gods though…"
"Yohoho, couldn't we all."
"I'm sorry Brooke," Sanji said suddenly. "We brought you out of the Florian Triangle just to watch us all die again…"
"Don't be. I'm not sorry I met you all. Even if I have to wait here for another hundred years before I find anyone else."
"But still, having two crews completely annihilated right before your eyes…"
"It's sad, but I don't feel guilty. I couldn't have done anything differently to change the circumstances either time." His eye sockets burned holes into Sanji, "Just like you couldn't have done anything differently."
"It's different for me. I was the cook. It's my job to make sure they don't all starve to death…"
"Only to the best of your ability. There's no way you could have brought food here with us. You did everything in your power to give everyone the best chance of survival."
"Then why am I the only one still alive?"
Brooke looked back at the ocean and fell silent for a bit. "You can't control people's actions as a cook. You can only control what they eat. You can't blame yourself for their inability to preserve energy."
"It's because you were fetching me water. I should have let you get everyone water…"
"I honestly doubt it would have helped them any. The water wasn't all that far to get too."
"There has to be something that someone could have done differently!"
Brooke sighed. "I thought the same thing when I first got back. 'Maybe if someone did this a few of us would have survived.' But in the end, there was nothing we could have done differently save for staying at that last island, but that was out of the question." He looked back at Sanji. "Sometimes the ocean just throws things like that at you."
Sanji laughed. "My kishido has prevented me from saying this before, but she's kinda a bitch."
"Yohoho. But can you blame her?"
"No, even now I still love her."
"You're a real man of the sea Sanji."
"I know." Sanji sighed and took another look at his precious ocean. "You know, I can still the Thousand Sunny, just floating there all by herself. She really was a marvelous ship."
"Franky built her well." Brooke looked towards the ocean too. "That's weird. I see her too."
"Hm? You on the verge of dying too?"
"No…wait here." He said standing up. Like I'm going to go anywhere, Sanji thought, what's he up to?
Brooke started running on the ocean out towards the phantom ship. He's just going to tire himself out and drown…unless…Brooke jumped on board the phantom ship. Sanji stared wide-eyed as the Thousand Sunny made its way towards him and anchored a little down the shore. Brooke jumped out with a bag full of food.
"All of the perishables are spoiled," Brooke said, "but there should be enough for you to eat your fill."
"Not necessary. I shouldn't eat too much anyway or my stomach will explode."
"Yohoho, you're the cook, you'd know best after all."
That's right, I am the cook. And it would be pathetic for the cook to just starve to death here. He picked up the first thing he could grab and started eating.
It took about two weeks for Sanji to completely recover and be able to leave the island. Brooke had set up a grave marker that said, "Here rest the Pirate King, the World's Greatest Swordsman, the Maker of the World Map, a Brave Warrior of the Sea, a Doctor who could cure anything, the Decipherer of the Rio Poneglyph, and the man who built the Ship that sailed the World. Lost but Never Forgotten.
"Well," said Sanji as he surveyed the gravestone, "now what?"
"We continue onward, until I meet Laboon again and you find All Blue."
"Without a captain? Or navigator?"
"We'll find a new navigator. They won't be as good as Nami-san was, but they'll have to do. The two of us can make all of the captain-decisions by ourselves."
"It seems wrong to just…replace them…"
"Yes it does. But would they be happy if you gave up just because their deaths got in the way?"
Sanji put the strawhat on his head and didn't say anything. He didn't need to; the answer was obvious.