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Usopp runs. Dodges the clash between Zoro and the red-haired triplet, weaves between the backwards stretch of Luffy’s arms as he winds up for an attack on the blue-haired triplet. Shies away from the grappling hook the green-haired triplet calls a hand, before Nami’s staff knocks it away from him.
He shouldn’t be here, he’s a sharpshooter, he needs to get range to be useful, but these color-coordinated triplets closed the distance between them so fucking fast he hadn't had a chance to find a vantage point. So he makes a break for it now, scrambles down the castle hallway out of the skirmish. The green-haired triplet follows him leisurely, laughter echoing around the stone halls.
Usopp slams through a door and finds himself at the top of a staircase that winds into the dark below him; unlit torches line the walls, and the air hangs heavy and damp around him. Without warning something crashes into his back and he pitches forward, down several of the stairs before he can catch himself; his ankle twists badly beneath him, and his slingshot clatters into the dark.
The green-haired triplet appears in the doorway, his hand re-winching back into his wrist—he laughs, and laughs, and it’s a cold and uncaring sound. “If you’re so determined to run away, little deer, then run. We’ll take care of your friends first, and come back for you. Who knows: you might even give us a good hunt. In the meantime, say hi to the failure for me!”
And then he slams the door, and alone in the darkness Usopp hears a key turn in a lock.
When Usopp unsticks himself from his terrified freeze he moves toward the door, except his ankle buckles and a flare of pain sparks bright and angry up his leg.
“Shit,” he gasps. “Fuck, this is so not good. Could really do with…some assistance.”
Say hi to the failure for me! There’s someone else in this space, someone Usopp could talk to. Someone the green-haired triplet refers to as a failure, so maybe—someone who could help.
Usopp pulls a penlight from his overall pockets, clicks it on: the little beam only cuts a couple of feet through the dark, but it’s better than trying to take these stairs in pitch black. He clings to the wall and begins, painstakingly, to hop down into the dark. After what must be several minutes of this he gives up and sits, scooting his way down the steps without having to worry about his balance.
As he descends the oppressive damp in the air lightens; Usopp thinks, just for a second, that he smells fresh bread. Preposterous as that notion is, the scent only grows the further he travels. A servant kitchen, maybe? It’s the only reason he can think for this to be here, so far below the main floors of the castle.
Instead when he reaches—finally— the bottom of the staircase, his penlight sweeps across iron bars and molded stone.
“H-hello?” he calls, trying to ignore the way his voice hitches. There’s a clatter from somewhere in the dark ahead of him, and rustling. The beam of his penlight trembles in time with his hands. But still, if nothing else, maybe this place—this dungeon, his brain provides, ever so helpful—has another exit.
So he grits his teeth (he’ll be brave, Captain Usopp off on another grand adventure) and limps forward, past rows of empty cells. The smell of bread gets stronger.
When he reaches the last cell on the block his light reveals a cot, threadbare blankets folded, and a book abandoned on the floor. The more he looks the more he sees: the lamps that line the walls of the cell, the surprisingly well-equipped kitchen, the overstuffed bookshelf, the stains on the bricks that Usopp wants to hope are rust. This has to be where the noise came from. Almost certainly the bread smell, too.
So Usopp sets his shoulders and calls a greeting again, tries to keep his tone friendly and even.
In response there’s a noise like a whimper, muffled and cut short. Usopp would be a terrible sharpshooter if he relied purely on sight—he places the noise behind the little kitchen island, near the floor.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Usopp says. “I just want to talk.”
One of the lamps hangs just outside the cell, so he lights it and clicks his pen light off. And then he waits, because what else is there for him to do?
After a minute the rustling starts back up and a pale hand curls around the counter. Usopp stays perfectly still as the hand provides leverage for a figure to lean out into open space, but he can’t help his gasp. The figure adjusts their weight around the bulky iron helmet with practiced ease; Usopp’s neck twinges in sympathy. The contraption is round and clearly heavy, with bars over the mouth and a thin slit that can’t provide much by way of line of sight.
Whatever the figure is expecting, it isn’t Usopp: their head tilts with something like curiosity, and they crawl out from behind the counter. Now Usopp can see, in the dim light of the single lamp, a person around his age with gangly proportions and rags that might have once passed for clothes. Their left arm twists at an awkward angle, and they’re guarding their ribs as they move.
When they’re halfway out into the open Usopp gives a little wave, keeping his hands low and movements small like he’s dealing with the alley cats he fed during his childhood.
“Hi,” he says again, and the figure stiffens instinctively.
“Hej,” they say, wary. “Vem är du?”
Usopp winces: he hadn't considered they wouldn’t speak Linian. Germa is a traveling country, after all, and the triplets all speak it.
“Sorry,” Usopp says. “I don’t speak—I don’t understand you. Hey, do you wanna get out of here?”
The figure tilts their head further but doesn’t move; Usopp thinks he sees a flash of blue eyes through the small slit in the helmet. He bites his lip, considers—then limps over to the cell door and taps the lock, mimes turning a key. The figure tracks his movement and hesitates, lithe hands fluttering around their head for a second, but then they point to a spot on the opposite wall, just on the edge of the light thrown by the single lamp.
A little glass box holds a key Usopp knows immediately will fit the cell door, so he limps over and undoes the single hasp. How cruel, he thinks, to leave the key in plain sight of the prisoner, and so easily accessible. The nail the key hangs on is noticeably older than the box that surrounds it. Usopp imagines the prisoner fashioning a rod from sticks and twine in a desperate attempt to reach it.
As he unlocks the cell the figure watches him, back against the counter and knees to their chest.
“Vem är du?” They repeat, voice scratchy and low. “Varför är du här?”
Usopp grimaces, fidgets, then limps to the little bookshelf and grabs an unmarked book, hoping—when he flips it open he finds blank paper, which is just what he was looking for. He produces several colored pencils from his overalls—a staple he never leaves the Merry without, in case of emergencies—and lowers himself awkwardly to the floor a couple feet from the prisoner.
First things first: he points to himself and says, “Usopp. I’m Usopp.”
“Usopp,” the figure repeats, a little lilt of an accent revealing itself in their hesitancy.
Usopp smiles, careful to keep from showing his teeth, then points to them. “You?” he asks.
They just shake their head. With a slow unfolding of long limbs, they crawl closer to Usopp, who once again holds perfectly still; they brush careful fingers over his injured ankle, touch feather-light on the swelling skin.
“Som sårar dig?” they say, the question unmistakeable in the tilt of their head and the way their hand lingers on his ankle.
Usopp shrugs. “That bastard pushed me down a couple stairs. What was his name again, the green-haired one? Yonji?”
At the mention of the name the figure scrambles backward, chest heaving, and their twisted shoulder gives out beneath them a couple times but they continue to push themself back until they hit the counter once again and stop, breath loud and fast and whistling past the bars of the helmet.
“Nej, nej, jag visste det, han sände dig, jag kan inte—tack—nej—”
Usopp freezes, uncertain how to calm the prisoner down when they don’t understand each other. He takes a guess at what upset them and tries, apologetic, “No, I—Yonji is—”
He gives a demonstrative thumbs-down, screwing up his face in a comical exaggeration.
The prisoner flinches again at the name, but then their movement slows, their hands fluttering around the helmet again. They mimic the thumbs-down, head tilted, and fuck, Usopp wishes he could see their face. Any amount of facial expression would go leagues in figuring out what they’re trying to say, but the tilt has so far always meant a question.
So he nods, repeats the thumbs-down and pretends to vomit. He points to his ankle and says, “Yonji,” throws in another thumbs-down for good measure. The prisoner copies the gestures again and their breath slows, though they hold themself with a wary stiffness.
Usopp wonders— “Yonji?” he asks, and points to their twisted shoulder and the ribs they’re protecting. After a second they shake their head.
“Niji,” they say, lifting their tattered shirt to reveal a patchwork of bloody bruises and scabs that match the pattern on the soles of the triplets’ boots. “Ichiji,” they add, and tap their shoulder.
The names click in Usopp’s head, puzzle pieces slotted together. He flips the journal open to a blank page and takes a red colored pencil, thinks of the triplets and the numbers on their capes.
“Ichiji?” he asks, and the prisoner nods at the red 1 he scrawls.
The blue 2 goes with Niji, and he leaves a space between that and the green 4 they label Yonji.
As he does this the prisoner starts forward again, cautious and slow, but Usopp doesn’t rush them. With a shaking hand they pick up the yellow pencil and draw a graceful 3 . They point to Usopp and repeat his name, then tap the 3 and their own chest. “Sanji,” they say, and their tone is an odd mix of melancholy and sarcasm.
“Sanji,” Usopp echoes, and gives a thumbs-up.
Sanji double-takes and shakes their head—his head, most likely, given the identical boy triplets—and shows Usopp a thumbs-down. He pairs his name with the gesture, jerks it emphatically when Usopp tries to protest. Sanji jabs at the 1, 2, and 4 in the notebook, flexes a little, then takes the yellow pencil and scribbles over the 3 hard enough to rip through the page.
“Misslyckande,” he says, insistent. “Misslyckande.”
Usopp thinks of Yonji laughing at the top of the stairs. Say hi to the failure for me! Whatever Sanji did to end up down here like this, it’s clear his brothers were, if not responsible for it, at least complicit. And with how new the bruising on his ribs is, and how old the injury to his shoulder, they haven’t left him in peace. The stains in the brickwork, the way Sanji was hiding when Usopp approached…this cell paints a violent picture of Sanji’s time in it.
Now that he’s closer Usopp can see dozens of scars littering the skin bared by the tatters of Sanji’s clothing. There are bruises fading around Sanji’s neck that match the articulated joints of Yonji’s mechanical hand.
Usopp fights back a sigh, in case the noise is misinterpreted, and grabs the notebook and a pencil at random. In purple he sketches a quick doodle of himself laughing, with little cartoon sparkles; adds Sanji, smiling beneath his helmet, with matching sparkles; a thumbs-up between them. Then another version of himself, frowning this time, with quick drawings of the triplets and a thumbs-down. He makes the triplets caricatures, with devil horns and forked tongues and stupid goatees, and when he presents the drawings to Sanji he taps the triplets and pretends to vomit again.
Sanji angles his head so that the light catches behind the iron mask, and smiles; his eyes crinkle at the corners, startlingly blue like the sea on a sunny day.
Emboldened, Usopp resumes drawing: this time an image of Sanji helping him limp down a hallway; then the two of them outside, standing in a field of flowers with a sun in the sky above them. He shows the pictures to Sanji and raises his eyebrows in a question.
In response Sanji takes the notebook out of his hand and adds, child-like, a smile in the center of the sun. Usopp laughs aloud at this, which seems to startle Sanji, but after a second there’s another flash of a smile behind the mask.
“You want to go?” Usopp asks, tapping the pictures again and jerking a thumb over his shoulder at the open cell door.
Sanji hesitates, then nods once, decisive. His nerves are betrayed by the way his hand comes up to flutter around his helmet, which reminds Usopp—
“Do you want that off?” he asks, and sketches Sanji with the helmet, then an arrow, then his best approximation of what Sanji looks like without it. Sanji immediately backs up, waving his hands in protest.
“Nej, nej, det är förbjudet,” he gasps, and Usopp can guess at what that means.
“Don’t worry about that,” he says, layering determination into his tone. “I, the brave Captain Usopp, will protect you!”
Sanji goes still, eyes wide. “Kapten?” he echoes, the vowels just to the left of the Linian. When Usopp nods Sanji scrambles over to the bookshelf, snatches up a book and returns. He flips hastily to a page with an illustration of a ship on the ocean, a Jolly Roger flying above a man in a long coat and tricorn hat. “Kapten?” he repeats, jabbing at the image of the man. “Pirater?”
Usopp can’t fight back his grin, not when this is the most open and excited he’s seen Sanji. So he nods, pointing to his chest. “Pirater,” he says.
At this Sanji smiles, and taps Usopp’s drawing of him sans helmet. “Okej.” Sanji mimes turning something in his hand—the same motion Usopp used about unlocking the cell door. “Har du nyckeln?”
Usopp shakes his head, then pulls his lockpicks from his overalls and shakes one hand side-to-side in a so-so gesture. Nami is by far the better lockpick, but Usopp can hold his own. He gestures for Sanji to turn around and inspects the keyhole at the back of the helmet.
In all honesty, it’s a simple mechanism. The combination of an awkward angle and years of strict rules—coupled, Usopp thinks bitterly, with the limited range of motion Sanji’s twisted shoulder gives him—must have meant whoever made the helmet wasn’t worried about Sanji getting out of it. It only takes a minute of fiddling with the picks to get the thing unlocked.
As he cracks it open he’s met with a ring of weeping sores around Sanji’s neck and matted, greasy blond hair that nevertheless shines like spun gold. Sanji’s breath catches, and his hand flutters for a second before fisting in his hair and tugging painfully.
Usopp reaches up, gentle like he was when his mom was sick, and trades hair for his own hand, laces his fingers with Sanji’s and lets Sanji squeeze until his bones grind beneath the grip. Sanji glances over his shoulder at Usopp and Usopp is met with those bright blue eyes, now uncertain. He smiles reassuringly—if there is one thing Usopp has perfected, between his mom and Kaya, it’s a bedside manner—and gives a thumbs-up.
Sanji laughs, the noise wobbly and hoarse, and returns the gesture with the hand not holding Usopp’s.
Usopp waits by the cell door while Sanji gathers three small books, including the journal they’ve been doodling in, and wraps a loaf of bread in a small towel. Sanji hesitates in the doorway, all fear and panic and falter; Usopp reaches out to take his hand again, and he relaxes at the contact.
Together they limp back up the spiral stairs, and when they find the door still locked Sanji props Usopp against the wall and lashes out with surprising strength to kick the door open.
There’s a shriek and a scramble and then Luffy pops his head around the open doorframe, grinning around a split lip. “Usopp!” he crows, ineffable as ever. “Who’s your friend?”
Sanji shrinks back as though he can hide his long frame behind Usopp, and honestly he’s managing it pretty well. Usopp squeezes his hand.
“This is Sanji,” he says. “He’s coming with us.”
Luffy laughs and accepts this easily, and together Usopp and Sanji step out of the dungeons to find the rest of the crew.