Chapter Text
Sanji awoke to a soft thrum echoing across the ocean. He groaned, not wanting to get out of bed.
Zoro made an annoyed grunt beside him, grabbing at Sanji all the tighter.
“ No ,” Zoro muttered, his eyes shut.
Sanji groaned in response, lightly wriggling out of the swordsman’s sleepy grasp. He sat up in the box hammock and scratched his head groggily.
Coincidentally, Franky had decided that it was time to build another guest hammock, and coincidentally, it was a double sized one, like the one he and Jimbei used.
Coincidentally, you see.
No one had said anything to Sanji yet. There were a few smiles, a few glances, but as far as the crew was concerned, Zoro and Sanji disappearing for a few hours each day and returning battered and grinning was business as usual. Even Chopper was managing to keep his mouth shut, which meant that poor tiny reindeer knew exactly what was going on.
The thrum returned, a pulsating sensation that vibrated in his bones.
Zoro groaned in annoyance.
“You can feel that?” Sanji whispered, amidst the snores of the rest of the men.
“Mmhmm.”
Sanji stared at the wall of the dark room and yawned. “Think I gotta do it now.”
Zoro responded with a muffled grunt, his arms wrapping around Sanji’s waist all the tighter.
Just as Sanji was ready to knee him in the gut, Zoro spoke.
“Need help with the barrels?” Zoro asked, plopping his head into the crook between Sanji’s thigh and hip.
“Nah. I’d rather do it alone,” Sanji answered, sleepily petting Zoro’s head.
“Nng, okay,” Zoro said, slowly loosening his grip. “Want me to see you off?”
“Go back to sleep, mosshead,” Sanji whispered.
“I can stay up. If you’re not back in an hour I’ll… I’ll.. ” Zoro muttered, turning over to the other side of the box hammock. “I’ll kick your… ass…”
Sanji snorted as Zoro’s soft snores filled the room.
He kissed the man on the forehead and slowly lowered himself down from the box hammock. He pulled a suit jacket over his pajamas, grabbed his crutch, yawned again, and headed to the kitchen.
Chopper said he would be able to move to a boot soon. No more crutches or hopping around. Just limping on his own two legs.
Three large barrels in the pantry waited for him, one glowing, two normal. The glowing barrel was brighter than it had ever been before, almost as bright as the sun, and the metal fastenings were straining against the pressure of what it contained.
He scratched his chin and blinked, still not fully awake. Probably should get the Mini Merry set up first.
He limped down to the base of the ship, staying quiet so as to not awake Usopp who had fallen asleep in his factory in the other room.
The weather was good, at least.
It didn’t take long to release the Mini Merry into the ocean, and by the time he had done so, he was feeling awake enough to think like a normal person. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a lighter and a cigarette, igniting the stick without a second thought.
He ambled back to the kitchen, the barrels in the same spot they were before.
Badump. Badump. Badump.
The sound of a heart.
It took him two trips to get all three barrels to the Mini Merry, much to his chagrin. Stupid leg. Taking weeks to heal. Absolutely unnatural.
He looked out onto the horizon, trying to judge the distance he’d need to travel by eye. There was a light fog, with the sky just starting to lighten even with no sun in sight.
He hoisted himself on the railing, one leg on each side, and glanced down at the Mini Merry. Here he went.
“Whatcha doing?”
The voice caught Sanji off guard and he instantly jumped back to the lawn deck, shivers running down his spine.
“L-Luffy!” Sanji sputtered as the rubbery captain bounded down from the crow’s nest. “You’re--awake.”
“I was on night watch!” Luffy said, his hand gripping his straw hat as he landed onto the lawn deck. “But then I fell asleep. And then I woke up.”
Sanji nodded. “Good. Good. That’s good.”
“You felt it too, right?” Luffy asked.
Sanji stared at his captain blankly. “It?”
“The heart. It’s awake again,” Luffy said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
“You--you said you didn’t remember anything from the island,” Sanji said cautiously, shoving his hands into his pajama pants.
“I don’t. But I still felt it. You’ve been keeping it in the kitchen,” Luffy said, idly picking at the inside of his ear with his pinky finger.
His breath caught on his tongue and a quiet panic ran over him.
This could be. Bad.
“I wasn’t trying to leave!” Sanji blurted out.
Luffy stared at Sanji, tilting his head in confusion. “Yeah, I know.”
“Oh,” Sanji said, wholly unprepared to have this conversation at such an hour. “Okay.”
“Why would you leave? You love us,” Luffy said. “And we love you.”
Sanji coughed, picking his cigarette from his mouth and twirling it in his fingers. “Yeah. I guess so.”
And it was true. He had no intention of leaving. The desire had died the moment Zoro apologized to him, fully laying it to rest deep in his gut. This was his home. This was his family.
And this was his captain. The man who saved him more times than he could count.
“I’m uh--I’m going to go take care of this,” Sanji muttered awkwardly.
“When you get back, can you make me a midnight snack?” Luffy asked eagerly.
“Sure,” Sanji said. “It’s not midnight but… sure.”
Luffy grinned and clapped his hands in joy, and in turn, Sanji smiled wearily back at him.
“See you in a bit, Sanji!” Luffy said, stretching his arm back to the top of the crow’s nest.
He didn’t know if Luffy wanted to talk about something, or if the guy truly just wanted a snack, but either way Sanji suspected there was a lot more Luffy had picked up on than he let on. Except maybe him and Zoro fucking like rabbits for the past week. Sanji wasn’t entirely sure Luffy realized that yet. Or maybe he did and Sanji was just living in blissful denial.
He boarded the Mini Merry and propelled it forward, keeping a close eye on the Sunny behind him. Didn’t want to get lost, afterall. That would just be fucking embarrassing.
With the fog and the lighting, Sanji cautiously took the boat just far enough that if he shouted, there was a chance no one on the Sunny would hear him.
He had known this day was soon, and he had somehow gotten Jimbei and Nami to direct the ship closer to the calm belt. And while he could not see the calm belt from here, the rumbles of the sea monster were not far away.
The glowing barrel rocked back and forth behind him in a rhythmic fashion.
“Impatient little shit,” Sanji muttered, angling his crutch to turn to face the glowing barrel.
He grabbed his barrel opening hammer that he kept in the pantry and gave one of the metal rings a soft thwack.
The effect was instantaneous, and the barrel burst open, bright green light pouring out and illuminating the sky. Mushrooms and bubbling yeast and moss and more, all floating in the light as if made of air.
Sanji tipped the barrel over, dumping the massive glass orb into the ocean.
No sooner did it leave the barrel did a dark purple haze start to swirl around it, creating a new protective shell. To think he had fished out this thing as just a marble amidst its crumbling corpse.
Sanji sniffed, took a deep inhale of his cigarette, and rested his hand on one of the other barrels.
“I’m going to have Nami write down these coordinates,” Sanji said coolly. “And I’ll keep an ear out with the news. If I hear about sudden deaths in this part of the grand line, I’m going to come back. And I’m going to kill you.”
The green light flickered.
Sanji sighed, leaning back and looking at the sky. Not a single cloud.
“And if you take me now, well, needless to say there’s going to be a really angry crew after your ass,” Sanji continued. “There’s a swordsman aching for revenge and everything.”
The heart did not respond, but Sanji didn’t expect it to. He chewed on the inside of his cheek, trying to choose his words carefully despite not even knowing if they were heard.
“Anyway, in this barrel are seeds from Usopp’s pop greens, Robin’s flower bed, and Nami’s tangerines,” Sanji said. “Alongside dirt, mulch, spices, all sorts of nutrients and shit.”
He placed the barrel into the water, unopened, took his good leg, and gently pushed it into the growing purple haze. It vanished.
“And this one,” Sanij said, slapping his hand down on the other barrel. “Is full of salt. Don’t know if you need it, but your seawater was shit. Do better.”
He pushed the other barrel in, and it disappeared as well.
The purple bubble loomed over him ominously.
Sanji shoved his hands back into his pockets and shrugged. “I don’t got anything else for you, so don’t be an ungrateful fucking brat about this.”
And still, no response.
Sanji scratched at his head, taking a deep breath. “I’m your dad now, got that? Or--mom, if you want to see it that way. Whatever. I didn’t give birth to you or anything, but you’re sure as shit my responsibility. So don’t fucking disappoint me, all right?”
The purple haze started to fade, disappearing along the horizon.
“...I’m also going to write down what I did,” Sanji said softly, idly scratching at the curled end of his exposed brow. “I don’t know how long I’m gonna be around for. So if I can’t be responsible for you… well, someone else will take my place. So don’t get fucking complacent. Not being a murderous evil bastard is hard work. Listening to what people want and not just doing whatever you feel like is hard work. You get lazy and that’s that. I don’t give infinite chances. Just one.”
Not entirely true, but what did the freaky little orb know? It was just a stupid fuckin’ orb.
And with that, there was really nothing else to say, was there?
Sanji turned to the Mini Merry, preparing it for the journey back. That had gone more smoothly than he thought it would.
He glanced at the fading purple orb one last time.
“Don’t get yourself sick with some sort of shitty glass-eating disease, all right?” Sanji called out as the Mini Merry sputtered to life.
The small boat turned around and started the journey back to the Sunny.
“ ...thank you… Sanji… ”
The voice was familiar. The one who spoke to the giant. The consciousness him, Zoro and Luffy shared.
He turned around, hating himself for the hot tears that falled, and looked back at her as the island faded away for good.
“Next time we meet, I’ll figure out what kind of meal a shitty orb like you eats. So don’t piss me off,” Sanji’s voice cracked as he spoke.
The scent of dirt and salt and mushrooms filled his nose, and for a brief second, Sanji swore he saw a forest growing between a crack in the sky.
He returned his attention to the Mini Merry, guiding her to the Sunny, still in view.
Probably looked like a real fucking sucker right now.
He wiped away his tears and blew his nose aggressively into his sleeve. Crying was so stupid. This was so stupid. He was so goddamn stupid.
He needed to get back. No doubt his stupid not-boyfriend would wake up shortly, realizing the sleep-conversation they just had and immediately interrogate Sanji for answers on how it went. And of course Luffy was waiting for him, ready to devour anything Sanji made. And if any of the others had awakened, he needed to assuage their fears too.
The Mini Merry closed in on the Thousand Sunny, its towering features never failing to impress Sanji, even now.
He was home.
~The End
(This was initially going to be an author's note, but alas it was too big, so at the bottom of the fic it goes)
And there it is, the ending to Shard Island.
I didn’t initially plan for this to be the ending, and my initial ending was more akin to the ending of Chapter 39, where the crew kept Sanji company while he cooked.
But sometimes themes get the better of you. I do not hold the philosophy that characters hold a mind of their own, but if I had to explain it, I could only say this ending was Sanji’s choice, as cheesy as that may be. If he had a chance to try and fix the island, he was going to take it, in true Oda fashion, for better or for goddamn worse. And once the idea occurred to me, it festered like a rotting sore until I knew there was no other way to end this adventure.
If you’re interested, I have some fun Shard Island facts to share with you. If you’re not, you are free to leave. I can’t keep you here any longer. Also spoilers for Wano and anything before it!
I got into One Piece when I was a teenager. Sanji quickly became my favorite (although I remember Zoro being my favorite first), and naturally shipping Sanji and Zoro together was as easy as pie. I remember as a teen trying to think of how I’d write a fanfiction for the two. The only premise I could think of was “Sanji met a devil fruit user in his youth who could swap orientations, and willingly sought it out so he could be straight, and now the devil fruit user has decided to reverse the agreement.”
Even as a teen I was deeply unsatisfied with the premise, and without much satisfaction with what I wrote for fanfiction, I put any thoughts of it behind me. I still loved One Piece of course. Wrote my college essay on how sexist it was. Based a dozen OCs on isolated traits of many of the characters. Created many a hypothetical shonen story in my mind. But time passed, and interests faded.
And for ten years I really didn’t think of One Piece much at all. I caught up sometimes, but I never really regained the same passion I had for it after falling off of it when I went to college.
Of course, that all changed when I heard that Sanji got a second backstory. I had to go back, and go back I did. Ever try to start the Whole Cake Island arc without any context? Flashbacks upon flashbacks all set in Zou, and I never finished Dressrosa so I was absolutely lost.
Whole Cake Island frustrated me when I caught up, around the time he made the cake for Big Mom. It was almost everything I wanted, but not quite. Zoro not being in the arc felt like a betrayal. Not of Zoro’s character, but one to me. Sanji got a whole arc and only a small handful of the characters got to see it, and man that sucked! A while later, I caught up again, this time up to the end of Wano, and the Sanji v Queen fight was when I finally saw what Whole Cake Island was building towards. Death pacts! Angst! Sanji flat out stating his flaws in opposition to being a perfect soldier! I was hooked!
I fell back into my One Piece deep dive, but since it would be a while before the anime caught up, fanfiction was few and far in between (and also so many new headcanons! Gosh golly!). So I did what any fanfiction writer did. I decided to write it myself.
Naturally, I wrote what interested me, an assortment of tastes that would never fit in One Piece paired with ten years of trying to be a published author and completely failing, but now equipped with skills teenage me could never even dream of. I wrote the first chapter with no idea where it would go. I kicked around some ideas, maybe evil versions of the characters, versions who never met Luffy, maybe something about the raid suit, until I settled on doppelgangers of the unnatural variety.
But I knew more than anything I wanted a story where Zoro was mad at Sanji for what happened in Whole Cake Island. Fun fact I did not know "Zoro doesn't forgive Sanji" was a hot button issue in the fandom! If I had known I might have written it differently! But hey! here we are! It also meant I was not expecting the resounding response from folks shocked and appalled that Nami and Zoro were pissed at Sanji. Meanwhile in my head it was all perfectly sensible because I was also pissed at Sanji--but instead of Whole Cake Island, it was everything else. I feel like "Fishman Island" as an explanation suffices here, especially after being so goddamn excited for the time skip, waiting patiently for each chapter update when it came. So it seemed like a win win, and it didn’t take long for the rest of the plot to form due to how much I liked the idea.
There were a lot of story beats that never made it to page due to logistics, but I want to discuss some highlights of me attempting to plot this story out.
Chapter six, when Sanji wakes up on the island for the first time, was my first mistake (technically). In my original draft, Doppelzoro was barely a footnote, because in my original draft, we would not get Sanji until Zoro met up with him after they realized they had been infiltrated. Zoro would of course eventually learn that Doppelzoro had hurt Sanji, but it would be much, much later, and it would be said offhand, like so many of Sanji’s traumas.
But when I decided the torture story probably needed more torture, it was an easy spot to fill (even if it bothered me that we would get exposition on how the Heart worked twice! ugh!!). So Doppelzoro got a bigger role, and it wasn’t until much later that I realized I now needed to follow up with that role. Everything he did after Sanji and Zoro escaped was planned much later, with many a late night stressing over the fact that I now had to give this character purpose that I never intended to. The day I realized Doppelzoro and Sanji could duel for the right to be captain was a happy day indeed.
This was of course, part of the reason the story was not thirty chapters long.
The other came from chapter eleven. It’s funny, no one ever really commented on what Brook said in that chapter. How he tells the tale of the doppelgangers, and speaks to their humanity before anyone else does. When I finished that chapter, I waited a day before posting it, a rarity for me.
I knew I had to make a choice, there. I had recycled Shards from an old original fiction idea of mine, so the concept of them being Actually Complex Creatures was nothing new to me. But my initial plan had been to lazily take the name and the aesthetics and settle in for some good old fashioned torture and whump.
Brook’s story, which I adored when I fabricated it in my mind, called that into question. I knew if I published that chapter, I would not be satisfied until I made good on it. And I had absolutely no plans to give any of the shard’s arcs whatsoever. And when I published the chapter, I still didn’t.
It would be a problem for future me, I decided. Each moment of torture and sadness the doppelgangers showed, and even the humanity of the island itself, came one step at a time, sometimes conceived only when I sat down to write it.
Which was another reason the story got so much larger. The original version in my head was actually much more contained. Sanji and Zoro’s emotional talks were initially planned to start immediately after both were trapped in a dungeon together. Franky was never going to be captured (another plot point I decided shortly after posting the chapter before it occurred), and the plot of the story would end when they got rescued.
I even had the themes all planned out in my mind. Sanji would be weakly and tiredly sitting in the Sunny, alongside an equally bruised and tired Zoro, hearing the crew excitedly talk about how exciting it had been, and all the fights and all the cool things that had happened! And how they rescued Luffy! And how there was really an old man trapped there the entire time, and he was the one who controlled the shards! But it was okay because he’s been healed and everything is okay now!
And all the while a traumatized Sanji and Zoro, having told no one of what happened to them, are listening to this going “mmhmm. Mmhmm. Great. Yeah. Wonderful.”
It would have been a different story, that one.
There was so much I never intended to write in this. I never intended for Sanji to go so deep into my own issues, even when I knew I wanted to tackle a headcanon of him being hypersexual and traumatized, as well with moral neurosises. I never intended for Zoro to be a callout post to myself, as I piled on every autistic trait I had onto him and thensome for good measure. And I certainly never intended to give Nami a POV chapter or for…anything really. But it crystallized into… whatever this is.
A love letter to Sanji. This fucking fic wouldn’t exist if you weren’t such a frustrating character to love. An emotional regurgitation of my own traumas and my own deep affection for characters I’ve known for years. Just an absolute reach for catharsis after years of trying my hand at original fiction.
I don’t think I’ll write anything like this again, but who knows? All I know is I need to take a nice long nap.
Thank you for staying with me for so long. It means more than you could ever know. And thank you to every single person who commented, especially those that left multiple paragraphs across every chapter. I never expected that level of passion on anything I wrote, ever. And for these past eight months, you’ve made me more happy than I could ever say.
And if you’re reading this in the future, after it’s been marked ‘complete’, thank you too. Thank you for getting this far. I hope it gave you what you were looking for. I know it gave me what I was looking for.