notes: I should be writing "Snow Queen," but Sanji kept jumping up and down, waving his arms and saying, "Me! Me! Pick me! You like me way better than Vivi-chan anyway!" ...It's true D: Concerns over Sanji's age were raised. I did make this pairing on purpose, with the age gap in mind. I think Sanji's age and perception of maturity are important themes for his in-manga character, so I'm trying to explore that using this affair. Whether it works or not remains to be seen?

Thank you for all the reviews; they have helped a lot. And Erithil, you're right - flashbacks are extremely hard to pull off...which is why mine are kind of half-assed and just regular narrative but in italics ;

"Damp Weather, Low Moods" part 1

Hina taught Sanji to smoke, and to kiss, and to make love, and to dress well. Sanji thought he'd known how to do these things before, but every time Hina came to his little room in the dormitories, she said the same thing.

"You're just a child."

One part of Sanji wanted to shout, "Then why are you wasting your time with me!" But he never did. He just said humbly, "I'll do better," and kissed her out the door. Because when he came right down to it, Hina was very good at kissing and making love, and she practically turned smoking into an art form. So Sanji found himself spending whole hours studying the way his mouth moved around a cigarette, or turning out his drawers and really examining his tie collection. He would have been alarmed, but Hina's mocking words stung just a tad too deeply. A child was the one thing Sanji had spent his whole life trying not to be.

Zeff did not approve, and he minced no words expressing his displeasure at Sanji's latest affair.

"It'll end badly," Zeff said bluntly to him one day over the dishes. "You're wasting your time."

"Shut your trap, old man," Sanji grunted as he handed Zeff a tureen to dry. "You're here to supervise my cooking, not be the Dating Police."

"Cooking? Supervise?" Zeff swiped at the tureen savagely. "What's there to supervise? You're holed up with the Captain so that I barely see your rotten hide in this kitchen. And when you are here, you do a shit job. Give me a reason why I shouldn't toss you overboard, eggplant."

"Don't call me that," Sanji said automatically. He glared at Zeff across the sink. "Give me one reason why I should stop seeing her," he countered. "Most people would consider a Marine officer a pretty good catch."

Zeff dumped the tureen on the dry dish cart and held out his hand for the next plate. "A reason besides the utter ridiculousness of your age difference, you mean?" he asked dryly.

"Twenty-nine isn't that old," Sanji said defensively.

"I'm not talking about her, you nitwit!" Zeff threw down the cloth and thrust a finger at Sanji's face. "You are sixteen, Sanji. Sixteen. And you've had things far too easy. You're soft as a baby. When I was your age, I'd plundered most of the Four Blues and was making a second round -"

Sanji all but chucked a pair of meat tongs at Zeff. "Spare me the reminisces, crap geezer," he snapped. "And in case you've forgotten, the 'baby' took care of those pirates last week, and the week before that, and the month before that. I'm not exactly sitting pretty in the kitchen, sucking my thumb, you know."

"Oh yes?" Zeff countered, catching the tongs neatly with one large, hairy hand. "You think you're so grown-up, is that it? You think smoking cigarettes around raw food makes you so adult? Giving free wine to pretty girls makes you a man? Beating up customers makes you tough? Scaring off some no-name pirates in a backwater Blue gives you the right to talk big? Listen, my boy, you haven't even cut your eyeteeth yet. Of all the overgrown louts on this ship, the Captain has to pick the one who's still a baby." He shook his head. "What she thinks she's doing with an unripe eggplant, I don't even know."

That was the only piece of criticism Sanji heard Zeff utter against Hina. Zeff never bothered much with the customers - his interest was in the Baratie itself and the food; he never actually cared who ate there - but when Hina sent her compliments to the chef, he always responded with a kind of gruff courtesy.

Sanji did wonder about that, even through his infatuated haze. When his pride had recovered sufficiently from the dish-washing spat, he even asked about it, during a quiet moment one day before the dinner rush.

"Use your noggin, eggplant," Zeff said shortly, the majority of his attention focused on putting the finishing touches to the truly imposing tower of tiramisu in front of him. "Hina's a Marine Captain, and her not yet thirty. When I was the height of my pirating days, she was just a gosling fresh out of the Academy, but oh that girl, already making a name for herself all over North Blue. There wasn't a pirate on those seas who didn't sleep a little lighter knowing she was on the prowl. Hina won't stop 'till she's sitting with all the other fat geese up at Marine Headquarters. Ambition wired into her bones, that's her."

"That's good, isn't it?" Sanji said, trying hard not to sound coaxing. "She's got a dream. You like people with dreams."

Zeff snorted, even as he very carefully dusted a coat of cocoa powder onto the top layer of the tiramisu. "You're not listening. I said the Captain was ambitious, not a dreamer. You're the one with your fool head up in the clouds all the time."

"What's the difference?"

"People with ambition want to stay alive. Because it's all about winning, see? Being around to enjoy the reward, that's the important thing. People with ambition don't mind using other people like stepping-stones, if it'll get them a little closer to their goal. The only lives dreamers put on the line are their own." Zeff sighed, dumping the heavy breath out in a whoosh. "End it, little eggplant. The Captain won't make you happy."

Sanji flushed. "Don't talk like you know so much about me," he muttered, avoiding Zeff's eyes, and then hurried off to check on the fish.

Hina did not teach Sanji to fight, though she was renowned throughout the four Blues for her martial skills. In that respect, she made her intentions for Sanji very clear.

The day dawned cold and drizzly, which put everyone in a grumpy mood after the warmth of the last summer island. Nami and Zoro sniped at each other over breakfast. Luffy, kept in by the rain, turned petulant and clingy, which only encouraged Chopper to do the same. Sanji found that he had to either do the dishes or throttle his Captain senseless. He chose the dishes.

After breakfast, Luffy and Chopper were persuaded down to the men's quarters for a game of cards with Usopp. Zoro followed them to get started on his customary after-breakfast nap. Nami disappeared for a while, then came back into the galley with the log book, her own diary, and a pen, and sat down at the table opposite Robin.

For a few hours it was just the three of them, working in comfortable, don't-bother-me-please silence as the rain hissed into the ocean outside. It was easy to fall into the familiar rhythm of getting the ingredients ready for the day's meals (lunch, then a snack, then a separate snack for les enfants horribles, then tea, then supper, then dessert, then a night-cap). Having Robin and Nami in the galley even helped - Sanji had worked in the bustle of a fully staffed kitchen for his whole life. When he first came to the Going Merry, he thought it would be fantastic having an entire kitchen to himself. Then he'd turned around one day to ask Carne for his opinion on a pilaf, and found that no one was there. It was funny the things one took for granted, he'd thought, standing in the empty galley with the pilaf clutched forlorly in one hand, and the little ways one could feel terribly lonely. He'd gotten into the habit of popping out every once in while to offer Nami (and then, later, Vivi and Robin) a dish, or to delicately hint to the savages that there was food he just might be teased into giving away. It didn't exactly recreate the Baratie, but it kept Sanji from feeling like he was cooking alone.

Now he interrupted his own chopping and washing to flit to the table occasionally, offering another cup of coffee, some fruit, a taste of the chicken broth. Nami took the food absently, barely looking up from her writing, but Robin accepted every cup of coffee and tangerine slice with her usual grave, conspirital smile. Sanji really loved Robin sometimes.

The rain gave way to mere mist and a sullen lead sky sometime after lunch. Even this small change was greeted with a change of mood, as Luffy, Usopp, and Chopper dashed out with whoops of glee to continue their activities above deck. After some restless shuffling of her things, Nami stood up and said she was going to check on her tangerine grove.

It was quiet for another hour.

And then there was the sound of Nami being truly enraged. From where he was at the counter, Sanji gave a little jump, nearly slicing off his finger, and Robin paused with the coffee mug halfway to her lips. Both of them turned their heads to better appreciate the way Nami could pack fury, frustration, exasperation, and long-suffering despair into a single scream. "Just what in all four Blues are you doing!"

- - - - -
notes: Just what are they doing? Who knows? Well, I do, but that's beside the point. I was going to continue in a single chapter, but it got too long and I'm not sure I like the same-chapter switch between drama and humor(ish), as in Zoro's romp with the Baby DenDen. I think I prefer the alternating drama-general chapters, like Chopper's. Whatever.

We haven't seen a lot of Hina in the manga (that is, so far she's not a recurring supporting character like Smoker.) I built a lot of Zeff's description of her from the same SBS that mentions Hina's age. Oda writes something like "The fact that Smoker and Hina have risen so far in the Marines at such young ages means they are very skilled and powerful." I think that Smoker, though rising in rank, doesn't care about or for authority and ambition, whereas Hina seems to very much. In a healthy way, not in a delusional crazed Spandam way. Uh, yeah. That's my way of saying I like Hina a lot and I hope we see more of her in the future. (psst! Review! Thanks! - the management)