I knew the Zeff flashback was gonna be long! ~Phew!

Anyway, here it is.

.:Chapter 13 - Zeff:.

The passenger shipThe Orbit was in flames, even as rain pelted the deck. Drops ran like tears down young Sanji's growling face.

Stupid pirates!

In the boy's anger, he charged at the captain of the Cooking George. Even distracted – directing his men to take everything but the ship's food – Red Leg Zeff easily knocked Sanji back with a swift kick of his infamous right leg.

"What are the odds of our young cook being attacked by cook pirates?" Brook chuckled before breaking into song. "Our world works in mysterious ways~"

Nami snapped at him. "Let's not do that!"

This was no time for musical shenanigans; even though Luffy pouted, thinking it was always a good time for musical shenanigans.

"Zeff ordered his crew to take whatever they wanted except for the ship's food," Robin noted.

"The Cook Pirates value food – what a surprise," Usopp said, his sarcasm earning him an amused glance from the archeologist.

"It's a rare form of compassion to show your enemies," Robin clarified.

Zeff turned to stare dispassionately down at the feral boy with the blonde fringe crawling back onto his feet, a frustrated snarl ripping out of him.

All little Sanji could think about as he bled from multiple wounds and struggled to stand was that he finally found a possible place to be happy. He was finally away from his father. He was finally, finally able to just cook, and to search for his dream. And then they had to show up and ruin everything!

There was no way they were taking this away from him!

Sanji – observant as he was - zeroed in on the pirate captain's fiercest weapon – his right foot. The boy pounced. His teeth sank into the leather of Zeff's booted ankle, jaw locking as he bit as hard as he could. The pirate couldn't kick him with his stupid foot if he was already attached to it, right?

"Ah, a child's logic," Brook hummed.

Luffy laughed. "Nah. I think he's onto something."

Unimpressed, the captain demanded what the little brat thought he was doing.

Voice muffled, young Sanji screamed, "I won't give up on my dream! I'll find theAll Blue someday, no matter what!"

The cooks ofThe Orbit pleaded for him to stop; the Cook Pirates laughed.

But Zeff did not laugh.

"Sanji's intrigued him," Robin noticed with a small, knowing smirk.

"His passion strikes again," Franky wept.

The storm brewing around them surged. It was sudden when the tidal wave hit, overtaking both ships as men struggled to steady themselves, and to keep their respective vessels from capsizing. Sanji, however, lost his grip as the rushing current swept him instantly out to sea.

Something ignited in Zeff when he realized the kid whose heart held a fiery spirit had been tossed overboard. There was only a split second of hesitation before he cursed. Grumbling, "Damn brat" before diving in after him.

When Sanji's memories resurfaced from the black, stormy water, the boy was sprawled on his back, sun shining down on his battered body. Slowly, and a tad disoriented, he woke.

"So, the brat finally wakes up."

Startled, young Sanji bolted upright. "Pirate…! Ow, ow, ow…" He curled in on himself, wincing.

"I wouldn't move much if I were you." Zeff sat cross-legged before him, at the edge of a cliffside. Wherever they were looked more like one giant outcropping of rock than an actual island of any kind. "You're still pretty banged up from that beating you took. You're lucky to be alive, ya know?"

Zoro remembered Sanji saying that he had been lucky to escape Germa the first time… And now Zeff was calling him lucky to survive the storm that had dragged him into the sea.

From where Zoro was sitting, though, Curlybrows was anything but lucky.

Except…he had managed to endure it all. Problem after problem, near-death after near-death, he had managed to survive.

Was that considered luck? Or strength of will?

To Zoro, it just proved how strong the cook was. From the very beginning.

Sanji frowned down at his sore muscles, then at the pirate. "Damn geezer… Where's your ship?"

"Hell if I know. It was a terrible storm. Our ships were most likely destroyed. It seems we're the only survivors. Washed ashore on a desolate rock without so much as a coconut tree to give us food. We have no choice but to wait for help."

Zoro cursed under his breath. This was exactly what he was talking about!

Sanji gripped his stomach as he shakily sat up, glancing at the burlap sack next to him.

"Anyway, that bag over there is your share of some of the food that washed up. Should be about five days worth. It's not much, but it's better than nothing. If you ration it, it'll last longer. So use your head when you eat." He grinned humorlessly over his shoulder. "Good thing we're both cooks, huh?"

Sanji spotted the size of Zeff's bag. "Wait a second! Is that bag your share of the food? You got way more than me!"

"Of course I get more food! I'm a grown man, so I need more nutrition to survive. That should suffice for a runt like you." Zeff glanced at the boy. "Don't expect any pity from me, you little brat."

Stubborn as ever, Sanji glared at him with a pout. "You're such a greedy old pig!"

"Well, they're two peas in a pod, I'd say," Franky said.

"How long do you think they were stuck there?" Chopper wondered with a frown. "Do you think a ship really came within five days…?"

None of the Straw Hats seemed hopeful. Especially with Sanji's track record.

Zeff didn't care what the kid had to say. Told Sanji to get to the other side of the rock and watch for ships. 'Til then, he wasn't to bother moving from his post.

Sanji grumbled, now on his own side of the massive rocky terrain. "I'm not gonna let him know even if I see a ship."

"Oh, Sanji, we know that's not true," Nami sighed fondly.

The young blonde laid out his rations in front of him.

"I'm gonna survive on my own!"

"Hmm." A thought crossed Robin's mind. "Remember what Judge said before Sanji escaped?"

There's not a sea in this entire world where you could survive on your own.

"I have a feeling our cook is taking to Zeff poorly because the only other man he's known with authoritative power up to this point was his father."

"I see," said Brook. "Zeff isn't what you would call warm, either."

"He doesn't have that sense of tyrannical entitlement the way Judge does," Robin added. "But he's just as dogmatic and straightforward."

"And Sanji's too young and too conditioned to tell the difference," Chopper said. "To him, Zeff must be like Judge because there's no other category to put him in."

"So, what he's really doing is sticking it to Judge," Usopp finished, nodding.

Rations spread out before him, Sanji meticulously calculated how he could make his food last as long as possible.

Hopeful, he smiled, peering out at the horizon like he had never suffered a day in his life. Like as long as he was out of Germa, there was nothing that could be worse than that. He was certain they'd spot a ship before he got even close to running out of food.

"Sanji is a glass half-full kinda guy, isn't he?" Franky said. They had a lot of those on their crew, but it usually wasn't the self-deprecating ones. Their cook was an all-out enigma of a guy.

As he dutifully began to sit and wait, time passed in a blur. Sun and moon rising and falling in a loop of memory. Weather changing day-by-day, as young Sanji's body slowly diminished.

By day twenty-five, all Sanji had left in his small hands was a single piece of bread. It was covered in mold.

"Day twenty five?!" Chopper shrieked.

"Okay, Sanji's insistence we don't waste food makes way more sense," Nami realized.

"Well, yeah," Luffy said lightly. "When we first met him, Sanji fed that pirate from Don Krieg's crew when nobody else would, because he refused to let him starve. That's when I knew he was the cook my crew needed."

Robin, Franky, Brook, and Chopper smiled at that tidbit of information. Their captain really did know how to pick his crew members.

Then Chopper shook his head sharply, eyes squiggling with water. "But look at him! He's already so malnourished!" If there was one thing a doctor and cook saw eye-to-eye on, it was nourishment.

Zoro glared at the screen, unblinking. "We already know how this goes."

"Which is…?" Usopp prompted.

"Not good."

Onscreen, Sanji took a small bite of his moldy bread and whimpered, remembering a time when the crew of The Orbit ate the leftovers off a strangers' plate. Little Sanji thought it was so gross, and scraped the food into the trash before they forced him to do it, too.

"Why would you do that when we have plenty of fresh food, huh?"

The crew had laughed, teasing him about how he should have some. Now, on the rock, a starving Sanji began to cry silent tears. He never really thought about where his next meal would come from. Food was just always there. And if it wasn't, the ingredients were, and that was all Sanji needed. The thought of running out never crossed his mind before…

He was spoiled and stupid for thinking he'd always have food, wasn't he?

The Straw Hats frowned.

"We're all guilty of taking things for granted," Usopp muttered sadly.

"It's easy to get comfortable," Robin agreed. "However, our young chef is conditioned to think having human flaws means there is something wrong with him."

"On top of everything else, he doesn't need to be so hard on himself," said Chopper, sniffling.

Sanji rubbed at his face, the salt in his tears stinging his dry eyes, and his fingers fumbled.

The Straw Hats gasped as the boy's last piece of bread fell to the sea.

Sanji's red-rimmed eyes peered over the edge of the cliff, hand outstretched in his attempt to catch the last of his food. Now, he had nothing.

Panic set into his sad eyes as he curled back into place.

By day seventy—

Chopper wasn't the only Straw Hat who shrieked this time.

—Sanji's skin clung to the bony shape of his skeleton. His hair was a tangled mess and dulled of its color. His lips were white and chapped. Eyes sunken and nearly lifeless. The vibrant optimism that came naturally to the cook had vanished.

He was dying.

"Humans generally can't survive more than a month without food and water!" Chopper's hooves dragged down his face as he screamed. "They've been on that rock for over two months! Even subtracting the time Sanji had his rations, that still clocks him in at almost a month and a half of starvation and dehydration! That's impossible!"

"Two months without anything?!" Luffy stared at the screen like it had to be messing with him. For him, two minutes without food was already too long.

Nami couldn't believe it, either. "And here I thought we were goners when we ran out of food on our way to Whole Cake Island…"

"Really puts it into perspective, doesn't it?" Brook hummed.

Luffy waved it off. "Well, Sanji's stronger than he thinks he is. He's too stubborn to die."

"That's for sure." Zoro couldn't take his eye off the skinny kid onscreen, looking the part of a corpse without actually being one. He was the same kid who fought through anxiety before he was six. The same kid who knew the grief of depression before he was eight. And now he was the kid who learned the effects of starvation firsthand before he was even a teenager.

Yet, Sanji had remained warm despite so much cold in his life. He never turned bitter. Never took it out on others. And Zoro hadn't thought he could love that shitty cook any more than he already did. Until now.

Young Sanji felt so weak. Weaker than he'd felt his whole life. And he wondered. Wondered if he was alone. Wondered if that geezer was already dead. What more did he have to lose?

With what felt like the last of his energy, Sanji crawled back over the ridge to the other side of the rock.

There, in the exact same position he left him in, was Zeff.

"He's alive!"

Sanji's shocked eyes quickly zeroed in on the bag next to the pirate, unable to believe he still had so much food.

"That bag was never touched," Franky said, sure of it. "There's no way."

"It's the same size as when Sanji left him there," Nami agreed.

"It's like he hasn't moved at all…" Usopp gulped. "What if he's dead?!"

"You idiot, you met him!"

Usopp wasn't listening to Nami. He just mumbled, "It was Zombie Zeff the whole time…"

His stomach growled at the sight. Desperate.

Sanji was suddenly behind Zeff, moving on shaky legs, a kitchen blade he had found in his bony hands, and eyes alight with the craze of starvation.

"I came to steal your food…" He swallowed thickly. "Think you can kill me? Well…go ahead! Because it sure as hell beats starving to death!"

Zeff didn't move as Sanji descended on the bag, slicing it open with one, quick swipe.

But what spilled out, was gold.

"Haah?!" Luffy scratched his head. "The old man was eating treasure all this time?"

"He hasn't eaten anything, dummy!" If only he was close enough for Nami to smack. Then, absently she added, "I wonder what happened to that treasure—"

"Not the time, Nami," Usopp side-eyed her, as the others wondered how the hell that old man was alive if he had no food.

"Hey…" Sanji's heart dropped to his empty stomach. The knife clattered to the stone. He fell to his knees. "What is this?!"

"Didn't I tell you not to come over here?" Zeff said after a moment of letting the kid process his loss. His voice was just as tired as Sanji's. "Unless you saw a ship."

"This is all treasure!"

"Strange, isn't it? We have all this money, and we're gonna starve."

Usopp glanced conspiratorially toward the navigator who could sense his remark before he even said it.

"Taking notes, Nami?"

"The only note I'm making is to withhold your allowance at the next island—" a sinister star gleamed in her stare "—and watch you crumble."

Nope. Usopp didn't like this game anymore.

Angry now, Sanji ran over and grabbed at the pirate's coat. "What's going on?! Where's all your food, old man?"

"There's no way he only had treasure!" Chopper's doctor brain was not computing any of this. "He had to have eaten something!"

"Come on! You have to be eating something, so where is it? Answer me!"

Sanji suddenly cut off when he noticed something was off. Just below Zeff's knee, a rope tied the ends of his black pants over an obvious stump. Where his leg used to be.

There was a beat of dead silence. And then:

"KYAAAAHH!" Most Straw Hats were screaming, even as the harsh reality of what they were seeing threw every single one of them for a loop.

Sanji balked. Fell back in shock as his pupils withered in horror. "What- What happened? What happened to your leg?"

"He… He didn't." Zoro was gonna gag.

Even the mind specialists – who had been patiently silent as they extracted the memories – seemed to stir a bit uncomfortably in their seats.

"We have spied quite a bit of oddities in our research," Hollowell commented to his subordinates. "But that sure is a new one, isn't it? ~Teeshishishishi. My, what people will do on the brink of death is fascinating…"

The Straw Hats were still in their own frenzy.

"That's how he lost his leg?! That's so gross, nooooo!" Crying, Nami could've gone her whole life without needing to know that.

"He cut—cut off his own—To eat—" Usopp was stuttering.

"Wow. Ya know, in retrospect we should have seen it comin'," Franky said. They knew the guy had a peg leg, after all.

Chopper was still rolling around in terror. "That's not how the human body works! He was so, so lucky he didn't bleed out." He sat up with a gasp, nose running. "Or get an infection! Do you know what starvation and dehydration do to the immune system?! How is he still alive?" He swiped the wet from his eyes, growing instantly serious. "I need to study this man's medical history."

Robin, lips pursed but as calm as ever, nodded. "It's…remarkable he managed such a feat."

"Wait." Nami peeked through her fingers after covering her face in an attempt to restrain the images in her brain. "That means Zeff gave all the rations to Sanji, right?"

"Despite the ~gruesome circumstances," Brook crooned, serious. "This was the turning point our young Sanji needed, I'd say."

"You…gave up your leg…"

Sanji struggled to comprehend what he was seeing. What it meant.

"…in order to save me?"

Zeff didn't hesitate.

"That's right."

"I wonder how it tasted."

"LUFFY!"

"What about the food? You gave me all the food you had, didn't you?"

"That's right."

"What…?" Tears welled in Sanji's eyes as his breath caught. Nobody had ever… Why would anyone…

Zoro's thoughts softened, no longer focused on the What's done for Sanji, but the Why's.

Before, the Straw Hats had seen that Zeff would become the first person to ever tell him it was okay to make mistakes. That he didn't have to be perfect to be worth something.

Now, he was shown as the first one to sacrifice anything for him.A concept they didn't think a Sanji at that age had ever considered before – that he was put first.

"But…" Sanji's mind was reeling. "You had to have known that without that leg, you'd never be a pirate again."

"That's correct."

Face soaked with tears now, Sanji shook his head wildly. Upset. Angry.Furious.

"Why'd you help me?!" he demanded. It was too much… He gave up too much!

Sad, albeit fond, smiles graced the Straw Hats' faces.

"I would never ask for any of this!" Sanji cried.

Of course he would never ask. He's the one who did the sacrificing for others.

"I… I can't think of any reason for you to be kind to me!"

Franky was weeping again. "How can someone so small carry a weight of self-doubt so big?"

"Sanji's always been generous without a reason," Nami said. Overly so, in a lot of cases, but… "It's a little heartbreaking that he thinks someone needs a reason to be kind to him in return."

"Old fool!" Sanji wailed. "It doesn't make sense to sacrifice so much for me! So why…?!" He scrunched his eyes closed, sniffling and wringing in his haggard breaths. All the days of starvation taking its toll on him on top of seeing the price this pirate he had thought was a bad guy decided to pay. To pay in order to save him.

"Tell me why! Why did you?!"

There was a moment for a seaward breeze before Zeff's rough, weary voice responded. "Well, it's simple. For my entire life I've had the same dream…as you."

Sanji stilled. "The All Blue…?"

That didn't make sense. Nobody ever believed him. They only ever laughed.

Zoro chuckled darkly. "When laughed at, he becomes infuriatingly persistent. When someone is on his side…"

"He gets wary," Usopp finished. Because, yeah, the sniper could kind of relate to that, couldn't he? Honestly, he wondered how Sanji dealt with it.

"But they say it doesn't exist…"

"Of course it does."

His certainty shook Sanji to the core. Zeff met him eye for eye, his sharp cheeks rising as a small smile played at his cracked lips.

"Head to the Grand Line," he said, pointing out at the horizon. "The All Blue surely exists there."

And as Sanji stared beyond where the man's shaky finger pointed, the merciless ocean turned out to be just as kind as the grumpy old pirate. Because there, finally, was a ship.

The Straw Hats shared a collective sigh of relief that this particular torment for Sanji was finally over.