A/N: No warnings this time, just some good old fashioned Baratie love! With a special appearance by Alex, the mysterious older brother. o3o ((Don't worry, you'll learn all about him in the main story eventually, and yes, he is an OP canon character. *wink*))

"And then the ghost of Christmas present raise its hand, the fingers no more than skeletal bones wrapped in dried leather, to point at the tombstone. Scrooge fell to his knees pleading with the spirit, 'no no, please, Spirit, I have changed! Tell me that I may sponge out the writing on this stone!' But the spirit had no comfort for him. In fact it said nothing at all as the bells of the church began to toll, the message clear, Scrooge would die!"

"AHHHHHHHHHHH!"

"Oh c'mon, it's not even that scary!"

"Pape! Pape!" The seven-year-old dashed into the kitchen, ducking around the other cooks, nearly in tears, to hide in front of the head chef. "Pape! Alex is telling scary stories! He said he wouldn't! He said it was a good story, but it was ghosts and bad men and people making fun of people and I don't wanna die!"

"What the shit, little eggplant!" Zeff looked down with a stern scowl. Then he registered what the child was saying, and bellowed, "STRING BEAN, GET YOUR SCRAWNY ASS IN HERE!"

"What?!" The lanky teen crossed his arms over his chest and rolled his eyes. "It's just the Christmas Carol."

"Right and I'm Pere Noel, pull the other one. Grab your apron, you know better."

"Ugh, fine! But if I don't toughen him up, who will? You coddle him, Old Man!"

Zeff looked down at the younger boy while the older stalked off to the supply closet. "Go on."

"What?!" Sanji looked up blinking.

"Yours too, little eggplant."

"But I didn't do anything! It's all his fault!"

"You're in the kitchen aren't you?"

"UGH! FINE!"

Patty leaned over from where he was layering slices of potato into a casserole dish, "You know they're more alike than they like to admit. I bet they're arguing over who gets to pull the sugar for the candy canes right now."

"As if either of them could do it right, all scrawny and undergrown." Carne laughed from the other side of the station, the finely grated cheese in front of him in a neat pile.

Zeff said nothing, carrying his roasting pan in both hands. On his way back, however, the two sous chefs suddenly cried out, hopping on one foot, one right after the other. With a satisfied twitch of his impressive moustache, the head chef moved back to where his boys were indeed arguing over the candy cane base.

"EGGPLANT! STRING BEAN! KNOCK IT OFF!" His peg leg clocked both of them across the back of the head.

Both boys huffed identically, in spite of there being ten years difference between their ages.

Zeff resisted answering either attitude by simply moving over to the mound of boiled sugar. He hefted it from the table and threw it to Alex, who threw it to Sanji, who threw it back to their father. Within minutes the family tradition erased the lingering shadows of resentment, and both boys were laughing as the candy grew whiter with each toss.

The head chef took a moment to glance at the picture of the bright woman above his desk, just visible from where the three were aerating the candy, and he smiled. Sanji nearly caught him in the face with the sugar and his attention was drawn away from the missing person in their number.

"Oi! Watch it, brat!" He groused at the little eggplant, only to have them both laugh at him, just the same way Carmen did any other time he got too sentimental over her photograph.

They struck a rhythm after that, meshing into the sounds of the kitchen around them. Catch, toss, chop-chop, scraaaaaaaape, toss, and catch. Chop chop. Patty's laughter. 'Order up!' Catch, toss, chop-chop. Alex caught Sanji's eye with a grin.

His voice rang out over the din, unbroken and clear, "There's a hero's tale of a ship that sails under distant stars somewhere far away, and she's bound for glory, on a foreign shore, but the hero's every boy who sailed off to war."

"Somewhere far away there's a soldier boy who dreams a dream of home," Zeff couldn't hold a tune in a bucket, but at this time of year, the cadence made the candy-making easier to follow. The catch and toss matched the pattern of the song easily, so he gave his gruff attempt, if only to bring back memories of the boys' mother, "where a nightingale sings a promise to the ones who sleep alone. Spring is in the air with scent of cherry blossom in the glen, whispering a prayer, saying bring our heroes safely home again."

Alex made an encouraging nod at his little brother, trying to get him to join in, "So the willows weep, and the candles burn, for there is no sleep for the ones who yearn. As I tell your story, with a thankful heart. You are always in our thoughts though we are worlds apart."

The thing was though; Sanji was very shy about his voice. For a boy it was quite high, and it embarrassed him often. Especially since he knew they wouldn't be able to afford the hormone blockers for him any more than they had been able to afford them for Alex. The difference was Alex's voice was naturally deeper.

Still… If the Old Man could give it his all in a repetition of the chorus…

"Where are you?" Sanji's clear soprano burst from his throat, color high on his cheeks as he caught and released the candy again.

His older brother answered him, "Somewhere far away."

Which gave him slightly more confidence to reach for the whistle notes only he could manage, "We miss you more with each new day..."

A few of the other cooks in the Baratie's kitchen joined in for the round they made out of the final chorus. Alex led them, followed by an enthusiastic Sanji, and Zeff's non-harmonic baritone covered the third group while the rest of the staff fell in and out of each set of voices as they lost their place only to pick it back up again with someone else.

"Somewhere far away there's a soldier boy who dreams a dream of home where a nightingale sings a promise to the ones who sleep alone. Spring is in the air with scent of cherry blossom in the glen, whispering a prayer, saying bring our heroes safely home again."

All the while, they kept the rhythm going, the candy tossed in time to the chopping of vegetables, and even the wait staff picked up the beat in their staccato steps, dress shoes ringing on the tiles as they carried trays of orders out to the dinner crowd. By the time Alex and Zeff dropped out for Sanji to finish them off the boiled sugar base was pearlescent white and ready to be rolled with the red stripes and stretched into sticks.

So the three separated, the patriarch moving to mould the log of red and white peppermint so that Alex, with his almost-adult muscles could pull and roll out four-inch sticks, which Sanji wrapped in plastic and tucked into a display to finish cooling before they could be eaten. Though they didn't need it, the melody of the song stuck in their heads, and out through the youngest's lips unconsciously.

Alex nudged their father, and smirked about it.

The head chef raised an eyebrow as though to question his older boy's motivation, but neither said anything for fear of stopping their little nightingale.

It wasn't until he'd moved off with a full tray of candy canes that Zeff let Alex say anything. "He sounds like Mom."

"Mmph. Don't let him hear you say that. He'll try to fight you again."

"Aw, it's good for him! And besides! He should know he's good! He should practice it. Maybe have more skills than just slaving away under your thumb all the time."

"Watch it, String Bean!" Zeff cuffed him lightly, "Now take the rest of this upstairs." Alex huffed and moved off to the sound of his father calling, "AND YOU KEEP THAT COMMENT TO YOURSELF, BRAT! YOU HEAR ME?!"

"Yeah yeah! Don't bellow, Old Man. Some of us aren't deaf like you are."

It was after the dining room officially closed that Sanji caught up with his father again. The head chef was balancing the daily log, reading glasses perched on the bridge of his prominent nose, his toque sat carefully out of the way, and with each new equation, his impressive moustache gave a small twitch indicating how hard he was concentrating. The bigger the twitch, the tougher the problem.

The seven-year-old leaned on the edge of the desk to one side, looking down at the books without actually glancing at Zeff. "42."

"What?"

"The answer. You wrote 24. It's 42. You switched the numbers."

The moustache twitched. Hard. And Zeff fixed the mistake without comment. He followed the column down with fewer facial hair movements though, and when he reached the end of the page, he let his eyes drift over to his younger boy.

"What do you want, little eggplant? I know you didn't come in here just to double check my accounting."

Sanji squirmed, his eyes shifting about the room anywhere but his father's face or the brilliant picture of the woman hung on the wall above it. Except that the single visible oceanic orb kept landing on her over and over again.

"Ah."

"Ah what, shit geezer!?" The tiny blond's temper flared to cover his embarrassment.

That earned him a knock to the rear from the Adam wood pegleg. "Ah is you want to know more about your mother. Out with it."

"DON'T HIT PEOPLE, SHITTY OLD MAN!" Sanji growled, and Zeff hit him again.

"HAVE MORE RESPECT FOR YOUR ELDERS, SHITTY EGGPLANT BRAT!"

He landed on the floor that time, his head down with his long bangs over both eyes. He was pouting, as usual, but whatever his question was, he obviously cared more about it than he let on because he wasn't storming off to his room like usual. So Zeff let him stew in it for a while, tidying up things in the office that didn't really need it, but took up enough time that the boy could work through his snitfit enough to actually ask his question. Sometimes the head chef was sure he was going to end up going grey and bald just from the stress of raising such petulant children.

Eventually, Sanji mumble, "That song."

"Yeah?"

"We sing it every year."

"Yeah."

"Why?" He looked up to meet his father's gaze, confusion and a touch of grief on his face.

It had been three years since his mother's death, and the last year, changing his name, cutting his hair, adjusting to things… it weighed on his tiny shoulders. Within the privacy of his own mind, Zeff wished he could just pull the child up into his lap and hold him, the way he had years ago, when he was really little. Things were easier then. They didn't have to worry about someone saying the wrong thing, or treating him differently just because he wasn't quite like other little boys his age.

The head chef sucked on his teeth and screwed his moustache up to one side. "C'mere, brat."

Surprisingly, for once, Sanji came willingly; climbing up into his father's lap so they could both look at his mother's picture. He gave into the—as he deemed it—childish urge to rest his head against his father's chest, and curled into the big man's embrace like he used to. As though he'd read Zeff's mind.

They both sighed, and the older's voice rumbled underneath his ear, "It was a long time ago. The first Christmas I spent with your Maman. We were in France when the call went out for able-bodied young men. I don't remember where we heard it, I think it was some café, but the important part was that the singer wasn't anybody famous. She had a nice voice, but your Maman sang it better. It was stupid superstition, but it made her feel better to sing it while we worked. Call it good luck, or whatever, but they never called my number. The year after that and the year after that and the year after that. Your Maman sang it at Christmas and when it continued that I was not called for the draft, her faith in the song only grew. By the end of the war, she had been singing it so often that it had become tradition and it just wasn't Christmas without it."

"It's not a very Christmassy song." The boy commented.

Zeff made a noise somewhere between a grumble and a hum, "No, but that's not what Christmas is about." Sanji looked up, confused, "Christmas is about tradition and family and caring for each other. It's good food, stupid arguments over who's doing what, and spending time with people you don't get to see too often. It's about coming together to remind each other why we give a shit the rest of the year, and they hold it at the darkest time of the year because sooner or later the season's gonna change and the cold'll go away and everything will be—"

"Hot and humid again, making Patty stink up the joint!"

That earned him a scowl, but it was the one that vibrated the older chef's moustache, so Sanji knew he was trying his hardest not to laugh. "That too, brat. My point," Zeff ruffled his hair just to annoy him, "is that sugary sweet carols or super religious bullshit is just what people attach to it. For your Maman it was about wishing that everybody who had to go to fight came home safe, and at the same time hoping I didn't have to go. She got lucky. Not a lot of others in our class did. So, we keep up the tradition to keep her wish alive."

"But there's no war now." Sanji squirmed, fixing his hair, but still too curious to stop the conversation.

"No, but that doesn't mean people aren't fighting somewhere. It's the thought behind the thing, eggplant, not the thing itself. Now stop being so nosy. Don't you have dishes to put away?"

"Okay okay!" He huffed, sliding off of his father's lap and making for the office door. He wasn't fully satisfied but he knew asking for more would just upset the man.

He got hauled up short just before he left though, Zeff's voice slightly tighter than before. "You did good, brat. She'd have been proud of you."

Sanji beamed at him, "I think she'd be proud of you too, Pape!"

Then he was gone and Zeff was left to clear his throat. There must have been some dust in the office or something, making his eyes all misty. Yeah. He glanced up at the picture. Dust. Right. With blond hair and bright blue eyes and a heart bigger than the South Blue.

A/N 2: Song - Somewhere Far Away by Fox Amoore ft Nici Kinsman (AKA Lilypad)