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Zeff had seen his death coming for a long time. When he had been very young, it had been starvation; when he had been only slightly older, it had been the wars the street rats of his island waged for the barest scraps whilst the nobles feasted above them. Once he had set out on his own, even as his nightmares left him carefully counting out hardtack and jerky and barrels of fresh water, Zeff had known with absolute certainty that he would meet his end in combat with another pirate crew or the Marines, and that he'd meet it sooner rather than later; he'd been more than a little surprised at his continued survival long before that young upstart burst onto the scene and got himself a crown.
Still, in all his years of dreaming and dreading and knowing, Zeff had never imagined that dying at the hands of the Marines would be this dull. Even when he'd pondered execution (primarily after Roger's death; many pirates took great lengths to go out in blazes of glory however much the Marines wanted to make examples out of them), his mind had glossed over the hours upon hours between capture and being marched onto the platform. And, even if he'd had, Zeff probably would have imagined the kind of crowded, screaming hell that his first mate described Impel Down as, not a dark, otherwise empty hallway of a Marine ship, where the drop of every bead of sweat from Zeff's brow echoed off the metal floor.
The first week (at least, Zeff thought it was a week; food and water were inconsistent, and he had no daylight to judge time by), Zeff had tried to break the silence: singing shanties until his voice wore out, then tapping his good leg against the floor in something approaching a beat, then clicking his tongue just to hear it reverberate through the space. Over time, though, the quiet had sunk into his bones, until even a noise as soft as the ship's creak or the slide of his own clothes against the floor was as loud as a cannon.
There was the shout of the door at the end of the hallway unlocking (Zeff wasn't sure why that door was locked in the first place; the leg he hadn't broken when being captured was shackled to the wall, and the cell itself was locked fast in a way Zeff doubted he had the skills force open), then the scream of its hinges, and after a moment, a small boy scuttled in, a tray perched carefully in his hands. He was the ship's chore boy, Zeff was pretty sure, because he looked much too young to be a normal Marine cadet. He looked much too young to be a chore boy, too, with his big blue eyes hidden by his hair and his skinny arms no wider than the bars of Zeff's cell, but Zeff supposed that the Marines' standards in many aspects were slipping as of late.
The boy slid the tray through the bars, and Zeff was mildly surprised to see, in addition to the hardtack that had been thrown at his head on an irregular basis and a pitcher of water, a tiny bowl of soup on it. There was no silverware - the image of fighting a Marine armed only with a butter knife floated into Zeff's mind, unbidden - so Zeff brought the bowl to his lips and drank it carefully. It was still warm and less watery than he'd been expecting, between him being a prisoner and his experience trying to stretch out meals at sea, and Zeff drank deeply and almost missed it when the bowl was empty.
"Needs more seasoning," Zeff said as he settled the bowl on the tray, taking off the pitcher and hardtack to tide him over until the next time the Marines deigned to feed him. The chore boy's face screwed up adorably, and Zeff wondered if he was going to snatch the pitcher of water out of the cell and throw it in - or at - Zeff's face. Instead, once Zeff had collected the hardtack and water, and placed an empty pitcher onto the tray, the chore boy took it - a bit more huffily than normal, perhaps - and walked back to the rest of the ship.
The next time the chore boy came back, the soup was saltier than the sea, and Zeff gagged as he attempted to swallow it. The next two times the chore boy skittered to Zeff's cell, there was only hardtack and water, but the time after that, it was a spoonful of the lukewarm guts of a pot pie, the gravy of which ran down Zeff's chin and into his beard.
"Needs more oregano," he said calmly.
"Oregano is for savages," the chore boy hissed, reminding Zeff of a month-old kitten more than anything else. (Or perhaps a furious baby bird, tweeting angrily at a cat that could crush its bones with a single swipe. The boy was tiny, and skinny even for his size.)
"Then call me a savage..." Zeff wasn't sure why he was fishing for the boy's name; it wasn't as if he particularly wanted the boy's company. He wanted conversation, yes, even if it was mostly muttered insults, and the boy seemed the only crewmember inclined to get within range for Zeff to even attempt to talk with (the others had taken a liking for throwing the hardtack at Zeff's head, knowing he was slow to dodge given the state of his leg), but he would much rather be conversing with his first mate or medic or any member of his crew (provided they weren't also imprisoned on this ship) than the kid in front of him who bristled at every critique like it was aimed at him personally. (Then again, maybe they were; Zeff didn't know what a chore boy's normal chores were, beyond swabbing the deck and getting yelled at.)
"Sanji," the chore boy said hesitantly.
"Sanji," Zeff said. "Call me a savage if you'd like, because if all it takes to be one is having any sort of palate at all then I'll be the first to give up my pistol for a club."
"If you had no oregano," Sanji muttered the next time he brought Zeff water, "then what would you use?"
Zeff hummed as he considered the constraints of the question, given their location. "Hard to keep herbs at sea, but I'd expect even an institution with the taste of the Marines," he spat the word, more out of habit than vehemence, "to keep some dried. What spices do you have?"
Sanji rattled off a list that Zeff, even as he was just starting out, would have considered barely adequate, and then mused about growing herbs in the boxes that the ship apparently had for growing potatoes.
"It'd work for mint, at least," Zeff said. "For the oregano, you could substitute dried thyme for it, though the flavor would be off."
Sanji nodded fervently at that, his expression as if he thought he ought to be taking notes, and Zeff's suspicion that he'd been doing at least some of the ship's cooking solidified. (There was a strange, stirring feeling in his chest at that look, a reminder of how he must have felt on his first ship as he gazed at the cook's pantry and wondered what everything in it could do. The boy was a Marine brat; he wouldn't have that hunger. The Marines always kept their precious little cannon fodder fed, even if their food was bland slop fit for pigs.) What Zeff thought was two days later, Sanji brought some sort of chicken and potato soup that had been liberally seasoned with thyme, and Zeff complimented the seasoning before complaining about the inconsistency of the potato cubes' size and thus firmness (with the largest chunks being nearly raw).
Sanji didn't bring normal food with the hardtack and water every time - and the other Marines pressed into service of feeding Zeff never brought anything but hardtack and water, both of which were generally thrown at Zeff's face - but every second or third time he came there was a tiny helping of something else - a scrap of fish, a teacupful of soup, half of a piping-hot pastry - on the tray. Zeff thought the hardtack was coming more frequently, too, though he had no real way of measuring time; he supposed the Marines wanted him fattened up, or at least not a scarecrow, for the execution. (Though they weren't feeding him enough for that; his portions would barely be enough to sustain the bird-thin chore boy.)
One day, Zeff could think of nothing to criticize about the filet of fish that had been curled up next to his hardtack (there had been a lot of fish recently, and Sanji's eyes looked more sunken every time Zeff saw him; he wondered if the ship had stranded itself in a calm belt or otherwise missed a resupply), and so settled the plate down with a grunt and nod; he guessed the time and isolation had eroded his taste. Rather than take the tray and leave, Sanji paused for a moment, as if waiting for a comment.
"The Captain says your crew was the Cook Pirates," Sanji said hesitantly. "How... did that work?"
"How does a pirate crew work?" Zeff asked, his voice hoarse from irregular use.
"Why were you the Cook Pirates? Was it because you were the Captain and a chef?"
"No. There are many crews like that, but we were the Cook Pirates because we were all cooks. It started many years ago, when Garp the Hero - he was just Captain Garp, then, if that - broke up a fight between the crew I was apart of and another crew -"
"What was it called?" the chore boy asked.
"What was what called?"
"Your crew. Their crew."
"Doubt you'd have heard of either; they weren't real powerhouses, and dissolved in that battle," Zeff said, and Sanji seemed to deflate at that. Zeff wondered how much of this conversation was curiosity, and how much of it was loneliness. (He wondered how a chore boy, someone everyone on the Marine ship could yell at or direct, was as lonely as a man trapped alone outside of meals.) "My crew was - I'm not sure it was a formal name, I don't think we had bounties at that point, but we called ourselves the Tiger Sharks, because we'd eat everything in sight and it sounded better than Pig Pirates. It was hunger that drove us to sea, and to join together in the first place, after all. The other crew was the Blackpowder Pirates, I think; their captain had a fruit that let her generate explosions at will. Not sure what became of her after - or my crew, for that matter - but after Garp jumped in, I and the chef of the Blackpowders got stranded together, and found we shared a dream, and so we decided to band together. The crew grew from there, but since other pirates knew our goal it was mostly other chefs who joined us, and we taught the others how to cook."
Sanji opened his mouth as if to ask additional questions, but there was a harsh knock against the door to the hallway, so the boy swiftly picked up the tray and scampered to the exit.
"What was your dream?" Sanji had only brought hardtack and water, but he knelt in front of Zeff's cell regardless.
"What dream?" Zeff asked.
"That you and the other chef had," Sanji asked.
"We dreamed of finding the All Blue," Zeff said. Sanji frowned. "The chef here could probably tell you about it." Probably thought it was fake, too, in the rigid Marine adherence to facts and incuriosity, but he'd probably indulge a child's whim.
"The chef... he's... I'd prefer if you told me about it."
"Well, if you insist," Zeff said. "You know of the five oceans, right? The four Blues and the Grand Line? The All Blue is said to be the space where all the oceans meet, and sea life throughout all of them prospers."
Sanji's stomach growled. "You could set up a restaurant there, and serve every seafood dish imaginable."
"Well, everyone needs a retirement plan." Zeff's was currently a noose if the hunger didn't kill him first, but Sanji half-smiled at the joke, and that night Zeff dreamed of fish.
The questions continued every delivery after that, even the ones Sanji only needed to make as long as it took for Zeff to replace the water pitcher on the tray with the empty one in his cell. He would suggest topics ranging from Zeff's crew (ordinarily, Zeff would have suspected the eager questions to be an attempt at interrogation, but the chore boy was too eager about stories about now-dead men that happened before he was born for that to be the case) to dishes he had cooked to islands he had visited, but he was equally glad to latch on to most of the topics Zeff brought up - except the Marine ship they were currently on.
No. Sanji cheerfully discussed the ship's kitchen and the security to the cell's hallway and the size of the crew, but was unwilling to talk about the Marines on the ship they were currently on. Which, combined with his eagerness to talk to Zeff, probably ought to have been troubling, though Zeff pushed that thought to the back of his mind in favor of enjoying Sanji's company. It kept the silence from ringing off the walls to the same extent.
It was on one of these visits with actual food (some kind of seafood pasta that Zeff thought was attempting to be Alabastan but suffered from the ship's limited variety of spices) that, as Zeff puzzled out how to eat it without utensils, the door at the end of the hall banged open, and a Marine entered, his yelling echoing so much that it was incomprehensible. What was comprehensible was the impact on Sanji, who froze, and then curled up on the ground, arms carefully nestled around his head, anticipating kicks that swiftly followed.
Carefully, Zeff levered himself onto his one good leg, clutching the bars of his cell walls for balance, and leaned as far forward as he could. At the start of his imprisonment, his arms would have been too thick to fit between the bars of his cell, but now they slipped through easily to snag the back of the Marine's kerchief and pull it back.
Well, it was less the deliberate pull Zeff intended and more an overbalancing onto his still-broken leg (Zeff had done his best to keep it straight, but he could see his ship's doctor's wince at it at it even with the man elsewhere and possibly dead) and then swiftly onto the floor, but it did the job of driving the Marine into the bars well enough. From his sprawl, Zeff tried to be intimidating as the Marine whirled round to face him.
"Why don't you," Zeff spat, "pick on someone your own size?"
The Marine stared at him a moment, nostrils flaring, and Zeff wondered if he was going to unlock the cell and try to kick him while he was down. (Some distant, long-forgotten corner of Zeff's mind, the one that had fed starving children as a starving teenager, thought that would still be better than watching Sanji get the shit kicked out of him.)
"I don't think," the Marine said, voice deadly calm, "you get to pick whether I punish your little accomplice." With that, he turned on his heel and stormed out of the cell block.
For a long, terrifying moment, the hallway was silent, and Sanji was perfectly still. Then Zeff carefully shoved his tray back into the hall until the rim of it nearly touched Sanji's forehead.
"Rule one of prison is making sure everyone gets fed," Zeff said, though he doubted there was such a thing even amongst prisoners from the same crew. Still, Sanji sat up, stiffly and robotically, and picked at the pasta with his fingers. Even when the food was gone, he didn't look at or speak to Zeff, only hunched into a ball with an arm wrapped around his head.
"What did they mean about you being my accomplice?" Zeff asked as the silence stretched out.
"It's stupid," Sanji mumbled.
"Marines are always stupid," Zeff said. "Generally aren't stupid enough go after their kids like that."
Sanji shrugged, and slumped back against the bars of Zeff's cell. Zeff waited.
"The food," Sanji said. "I saw - you were starving, and I couldn't - not again - and they're careful about who gets how much food, but I always get the bottom of the pot and they're never keeping an eye on that and-"
"You were giving me your meals," Zeff said.
"Not all of them, and I know it's not much. Sorry."
Zeff opened his mouth to speak, then closed it when all that came to mind were swear words. Not at the kid (mostly - what a damn reckless thing to do, with such consequences to the kid and limited benefit to Zeff) but at the situation, and at the ache of memory in his chest it brought up.
Sanji seemed to shrink even more at the silence. "I said I was sorry," he whispered.
Zeff wished Sanji would be for anything but not bringing him more food - the boy was frighteningly small as it was - but he doubted any comment in that vein would be useful. Instead, he said, "when I was a child, we had no food."
"There was a famine."
"Not exactly. The nobles had food, and the rest of us fought for their scraps. They'd toss it out of their carriages to watch the street kids squabble over it. Sometimes, when they wanted to seem generous, they'd hand it out to the little kids, the ones your age" - Sanji pulled a face at being called little - "and those of us who'd gotten too big to be cute would sometimes try to steal it from them."
"Did you?"
"For a while. There weren't many other options. But then I got bigger, and the little kids got to be little, and... it's different, when you feel that you're fully grown and the people you're fighting for food are children. And I realized that there was a much more reliable way to get food."
"What?"
"To rob the nobles' carriages. After all, they had the quality stuff, and enough for all of us. My first act of piracy, and I barely knew what a Jolly Roger was."
Sanji let out a startled bark of laughter, then grew quiet. "Did it matter?" he asked after a while.
"Did what matter?"
"Stealing from the nobles."
Zeff wasn't sure it had, in the long run; the nobles had found guards not long after he and his gang had started hijacking carriages, and started tossing food from the parapets of their castles. Most of the kids who had shared in his riches, eating until they were all almost sick with it, had probably died on that island, in the way Zeff had imagined himself dying there. But the idea of being able to eat until everyone was full, to fight together and not against...
"Yeah," Zeff said. "It mattered."
The Marines did not come back what Zeff thought was the next morning, and only stepped in the day after to deliver water and lock Sanji in a cell properly. (And torment at the boy a bit, of course, even as Zeff yelled and Sanji shrank back. Sanji had the sort of wide-eyed fragility that was to schoolyard bullies like a waving cape was to a bull, and Marines were nothing if not schoolyard bullies all grown up.)
"Zeff," the boy whispered once the Marines had left. "Is it real?"
"What?"
"The All Blue. Is it real?"
Zeff thought about the geography of the Grand Line that cut the world into quarters, and the years spent fruitlessly looking for a place where that geography slackened a bit. He thought about the chefs who had laughed at his dream. He thought about the pathetic attempts he had seen to recreate it in pretty glass tanks, and the way they always seemed lifeless even with their perfectly healthy fish and perfectly manicured seaweed.
He thought about the stories whispered around every kitchen, despite the giggles at the very idea. He thought about the furious rant of a biologist about evolution and diversity and how there must have been some interchange between the Blues, probably as recently as a thousand years ago. He thought about the feeling deep in his own gut, the way his heart beat faster at the very thought.
"It will be once you find it," Zeff said.
Sanji laughed. It was a bitter, pained thing, and Zeff could hear his tears against the floor by the end of it.
After a couple days, the Marines dragged Sanji out, yelling at him to get back to work. Zeff supposed that they didn't want to do the chore-boy's chores. A few hours later, a Marine handed Zeff half a square of hardtack, and threw a jug of water in Zeff's face.
Sanji did not return to the hallway. Zeff tried to convince himself that he was only missing a sound outside his own voice.
Zeff was woken by the ship rocking violently, throwing his weight onto his injured leg. Outside, thunder boomed - no, Zeff realized after a minute as the sound of it grew louder and more regular. Cannons boomed, and it was clear from the ship's rocking that someone was returning fire.
After a while, the cannonfire quieted, and Zeff strained his ears in the growing silence, trying to glean any information about what was going on. For a long time - or what felt like one; Zeff's grasp of time was tenuous at best - there was nothing, and then Zeff could hear the thunder of boots and a surprisingly close explosion, followed by the creak of the door at the end of the hall.
Then his first mate was in front of him, his hand grasping Zeff's shoulder as he glared at the lock so strongly Zeff thought it might melt from the fury.
"Keys!" the first mate yelled over his shoulder. "And Blau, now!"
There were shouts of agreement, and the echo of more boots, and as Zeff's gunwoman fussed through an absurdly large ring of keys for one that would unlock Zeff's cell he croaked, "Sanji."
Zeff's first mate frowned at him.
"There's a kid," Zeff said. "Sanji. Chore boy. He's with us."
"Little blond thing?" the first mate asked, and Zeff nodded. "Already tried to bite Blau's face off."
"Good for him."
"Yeah, well, it's made him a bit testy, so maybe don't try to claim you're fine and run from the sickbay." The first mate's eye flicked to Zeff's leg, and he blanched.
"I'll be fine," Zeff said, and eventually Blau, who had gauze hastily taped over his nose, bound the leg to his satisfaction and slowly eased Zeff onto the gunwoman's shoulder so he could shuffle out of the prison block - and towards shouting. As Zeff reached the main deck of the Marine ship, he could see his quartermaster with a very familiar squirming, screaming, small figure tucked beneath one arm - one whose screams died as Zeff drank in the sight of the Cooking George, a ship he'd never let himself imagine seeing again, blackened and battered but still floating. After a minute, the quartermaster let Sanji down, and carefully he walked over to Zeff. There was a sickly green bruise around his eye, and Zeff tried to remember if he'd gained it when the Marines had turned on him, or if it must have come after.
"What's going on?" Sanji, voice hesitant and eyes darting between Zeff's crewmembers and the white-uniformed bodies scattered about the deck, asked.
"We're leaving," Zeff said. "We'll dump you at the next port, if you don't want to hang around with pirates."
"Are we going to find the All Blue?" Sanji asked tentatively. He shrunk back as laughter bubbled up from the rest of Zeff's crew, and Zeff's first mate - with some degree of hesitance - reached out to ruffle his hair.
"Good to know you've been teaching our apprentice the important things," Zeff's first mate said, and Zeff found himself laughing, too.
"Well, we'd better find it," Zeff said. "It's legendary until we do."