Starvation Diary #2
Summary: Sanji's worst nightmare comes true, but this time the Straw Hats won't let their nakama bear it alone. Sanji/Everyone nakamaship. Sanji's POV. Set post-Impel Down, in the New World.
Warnings: Some swearing, and depending on how fragile your stomach is, you may not want to be eating while you're reading this. And somehow, despite all attempts to get away from it, the angst continues.
Disclaimer: I do not own One Piece, etc.
Chapter 11: Day 27
Day 27 finds me draped over the Sunny's railing, mentally composing a letter to the shit geezer. I've no idea how to get it to him - a message in a bottle is just cheesy, and if there were actually carrier pigeons out here in the middle of fucking nowhere I wouldn't have to write this thing. But what the hell, someone someday will find it and let him know what happened.
Dear Shit Geezer.
"Dear"? What the hell?
Oi, Shit Geezer.
There, that's better.
Oi, Shit Geezer. Something funny happened to the way to All Blue...
Actually, it's not funny at all.
Something fucking ironic happened on the way to All Blue, I found the opposite - Empty Blue. Dead Blue. The sea that contains no food whatsoever. Just what every sea cook wants.
"Think you're telling me something I don't know, little eggplant?"
Great, now the shit geezer's voice is in my head, along with the demented part of my brain that's obsessed with recipes for reindeer meat and freaks out whenever Zoro says something remotely nice.
Nope, nobody in here but the two of us!
Then where's the shit geezer's voice coming from?
"Over here, little eggplant."
I raise my head wearily and I blink. Twice. Three times, as a ship shimmers into visibility out of the haze.
That can't possibly be the Baratie, I left it in East Blue, objects the part of my brain that can still think logically.
Baratie's a ship, blockhead, it can sail wherever it wants.
Part of me still finds the idea of the Baratie barrelling over Reverse Mountain absurd, but who am I to doubt the ship I see before me, the smells of home wafting over to my nostrils, and the familiar figure I see leaning on its railings?
I feel my face breaking into a grin, and my hands waving frantically, before I can even tell myself not to show too much emotion before the shit geezer.
"OIIIIIIIIIIIII! Everyone, look!" I holler, wondering why I'm the only one who's seen the Baratie so far. Whoever's on watch must have fallen asleep.
"It's okay, little eggplant," the shit geezer says. "They don't need to know I'm here." Somehow his voice carries clearly over the water towards me, even though I'm too far away to see his lips move.
"What the hell are you doing here?" I ask. I don't even try to hide the broken relief in my voice, I'm just so glad that he's here.
"This is the perfect place to open a floating restaurant," the shit geezer shrugs. That's funny, I was just thinking exactly the same thing. The supply run would be hell, and we wouldn't get many customers, but whoever does make it would be willing to pay a fortune for the food. I know I would, right now.
"So you've been here before? You knew about Dead Blue?"
"You're a hundred years too early to lecture me about the mysteries of the Grand Line, little eggplant. I spent a whole year on the Grand Line. 'Course I know about Dead Blue. I've even starved in it."
"Then why didn't you fucking warn me about it, shit geezer?" I ask bitterly. He's always been like this. Everything I've learned from him, it's been by eavesdropping and peering over shoulders and getting battered by a peg-leg. Why can't he be like a normal father sometimes - I mean, a normal guardian or whatever the hell he considers himself - and just say things outright?
I regret now not preparing myself better for the rigours of the Grand Line. I should've snuck a look at that precious journal of his, for example. But back then, I never thought I would be leaving the Baratie until...well, I didn't want to think about it. So I never did. I never realised he had so much to teach me.
"I told you to make sure you had at least three months worth of food when you sailed from anywhere," he says in his usual dry, sarcastic tone, reminding me how much I used to loathe it - and how much I've missed it.
"How could I forget? Owner Zeff's Rule #1 of Food Stocking. You literally pounded it into my head." And I have tried to follow it, although adjusting for Luffy's appetite - not to mention the unexpectedly big appetites of some of the other members of the crew - Usopp and Chopper come to mind - was hard in the beginning.
"Well, d'you think I just pulled that number out of my ass?"
Three months...the time it takes to cross Dead Blue. He had tried to teach me. He'd given me this precious piece of wisdom gained through hard experience, so I could avoid inflicting the same fate on my crew - and I'd failed to learn the lesson.
I know Luffy and the crew don't blame me for it. Hell, I'm not even allowed to feel guilty about it. But they're not the only ones I've disappointed. Making a shitty broth is one thing, but when he finds out that I've let my crew go hungry - that I've failed in the most basic duty of a sea cook - he's going to kick my ass so hard, I shudder just imagining it.
Who am I kidding? He doesn't need to "find out". He already knows. Why else would he be here, other than to save my life - again?
God, I'm in so much trouble.
It comes as a surprise when he speaks again, because his voice isn't angry, like I expect, or dry and sarcastic, like I remember, but regretful, almost like an old man's.
"I was a pirate for a long time, and many's the time when we didn't have enough food to eat."
Great. Shit geezer must've gone senile on me. If I've heard this once, I've heard it a hundred times. And whenever I remember those times, I think, wouldn't it be great if there was a restaurant in the middle of the sea? If I get off this island alive, I'll invest everything in building a floating restaurant. His new dream, to replace the one that I destroyed. We did that. We opened the Baratie, we fed everyone who came who was hungry, whether they deserved it or not. So why is he telling me this again?
"Every time it happened, I swore it would never happen again. I would stockpile more food, invent new storage methods, experiment with new dried goods...but then something unexpected would happen, and it would turn out not to be enough," Zeff's voice sighs.
Wait, so I'm not in trouble?
The same thing happened to him? He was always so anal about the food supply at the Baratie, I never imagined that he would ever let this happen. I thought the only thing that could make him starve was a freak storm washing a random kid overboard, who happened to share his dream of All Blue.
"Remember, little eggplant, the sea is cruel. And worse, it's unpredictable. There are things that are beyond even a sea cook's control. Especially on the Grand Line." The words are uncharacteristically gentle, to the point that I barely believe they're coming from the shit geezer's mouth – until I remember him telling me "don't you go getting yourself sick, now" when I left, in exactly the same tone, and to the same reaction.
Tears prick at my eyes, as they have all too often since this whole shitty episode started, and suddenly I have only one desire in the world. More than anything else, more than food, I just want to be right there by his side, even if all it gets me is a kick in the rump.
"Well, that's all I came to say. You know how to take care of yourself." The figure on the Baratie gives a casual wave, and before my bewildered eyes, the Baratie begins to shrink as it speeds off in the opposite direction, a lot faster than I ever thought it could move.
"Wait! You're not going already?" I holler after it desperately.
"Idiot. Men should just say goodbye quietly."
"I'm not talking about saying fucking goodbye! I don't need your fucking absolution, my crew needs food!"
But the figure's already disappeared from the upper deck, and I know he didn't hear.
My head throbs with a single thought: we have to go after him. I turn to look for Nami-san, explain everything to her, when I hear her voice issuing the tail-end of a command I can't quite catch.
"Ow! Right away, Nami-sis!" Franky responds, clambering nimbly up the rigging to adjust the sails. She must have seen the Baratie and ordered us to turn to meet it, I think with relief.
But instead of turning to port, instead of carrying us closer to the Baratie and Zeff, the ship makes a hard right.
"Oi! Franky! You're turning us the wrong way!" I yell up the mast.
"What's that, Cook-bro? Nami-sis told me to go this-a-way," Franky shrugs and says, pointing towards open ocean.
He must've mixed up Nami-san's orders. Apparently the marimo's idiocy is contagious. I turn to Nami-san, and I see her studying her palm intently. "Nami-san, look, we have to go that way! The shit geezer - Owner Zeff is there!"
She looks up at me with a puzzled look, her gaze following my finger in the direction of the stern. "Sanji-kun, there's no one there."
I whirl around to look. The Baratie's gone, already past the horizon. My heart lurches. "Look, they've gotten too far away! We have to go after them! Now!"
"Sanji-kun?" Nami-san's eyes are wide with shock, and I realise that my wrist is curled around her slender forearm in a tight grip. Before I can even tell it to let go, a fist of iron tears my hand away from her, leaving five angry red impressions where my fingers desecrated her pale skin.
"What's the matter, Cook-bro?"
My head swims as I try to process what I've just done. What is the matter with me? I hurt a lady. Not just any lady. Nami-san. A wave of revulsion washes over me, and only Franky's grip keeps me upright.
"Nami-san, I..." My voice chokes off. I can't find any words...there aren't any words abject enough to apologise for what I've done. I'm supposed to be the one protecting her, not hurting her. If the shit geezer saw this, he'd kick my ass into orbit.
A cool hand presses at my forehead, and I hear Nami-san's worried voice. "Franky, Sanji-kun's sick. Go get Chopper, will you?"
"Sure thing, Nami-sis!" Franky releases his hold on me and I manage to stay upright for a few seconds while his heavy footsteps clump away. Only when he's disappeared into the infirmary do my legs give way under me.
"Sanji-kun?"
I press a hand to my mouth, fighting the waves of nausea that are threatening to turn my stomach upside-down. With my other arm I claw my way to the side of the ship, hoping against hope I can get there before I throw up all over the deck.
"Sanji-kun!" I feel a comforting hand on my back, but even that doesn't help as I heave the contents of my stomach over the side of the ship.
Or rather, I would be heaving the contents of my stomach over the side, if I actually had anything in my stomach.
My innards return to what passes for normal after a few ineffectual dry heaves, and I lie there, staring into the mesmerising blue sea.
And then I see the shadows in the water, each tracing out a distinctive shape I've seen many times on paper, and only once in real life. Elephant trunk tuna, a species native to South Blue. A whole school of it. I never even got to taste it, Luffy got to it first.
As my eyes adjust, I see more shapes, almost leaping out of the pages of my book on the fish of the four Blues. Boa salmon, West Blue. Rainbow dragonfish, North Blue. Orangetail, East Blue.
There's only one possible conclusion. I've died and gone to heaven. Cook's heaven. I've found All Blue.
The shit geezer was so close. But the Thousand Sunny's fast, Franky won't mind using a barrel of cola to catch up with him. We can go after him in just a bit.
I need to see this for myself.
I kick off my shoes, shrugging off the hand clutching at my back, and jump into the water.
As I descend into the deep, deep blue, the last thing I hear are the cries of my nakama, screaming my name.
Author's Note:
And then Sanji died and we never got to figure out what happened to the rest of the crew 'cause he was the narrator. The end.
Noooooo! Don't kill me don't kill me please!!!
Sorry about the long wait for this chapter. Writing sick and delirious 1st person POV is super hard. I experimented with several different ways of writing this chapter, and this one was the least sucky (in my opinion), even if it doesn't actually manage to crawl out of the pit of suck. That'll teach me to write a multi-parter in 1st person from now on. I figured that he'd sound lucid to himself, and his own mind would smooth over any logical gaps in what he was imagining. Any OOCness or confusion, I blame on Sanji's being too sick to narrate properly.
Well, at least it's written, and I can proceed at last to the next chapter. And yes, there will be more chapters. I was just kidding. *is killed by reviewers* Thank you all for the reviews last chapter, by the way, you're all awesome.
P.S. -JansenFriedh827- totally called this one.