#cbkwofficial

He didn’t need to give the line of gifts a good look to know who the items belonged to.

Another step back was taken, as if trying to distance himself from the truth. It couldn’t have happened, it shouldn’t have happened. They were the Straw Hats, they could get through damn near anything! But there they lay, the relics of a crew that no longer existed save for their cook and navigator.

Sanji dropped to his knees and reached out with shaking hands towards the remains. They were pulled close, loose pieces of glass falling free of the sniper’s goggles. The red tint to them did nothing to hide the even deeper crimson that was, no doubt, Usopp’s blood. The hat, the sacred afro, the arm — oh, God, the arm.

“R—Robin-chan?” He choked on a sob but  didn’t dare touch the limbs. Doing so would only make him sick, and he already thought he could taste bile on his tongue.

Stomach knotting, he picked up the two pieces that hurt the most; the hat and the single bundle of gold earrings. For the first time since meeting him, Sanji wished he hadn’t been such an ass to their swordsman. Or that he had, at least, told him that he thought of him as a brother.

Fury and the utter pain of loss turned the once level-headed cook into a weeping mess, sloping shoulders shaking as he brought the hat to his chest and tossed the earrings down. It bounced once and joined the rest of the debris.

“You bastards.  .  . You were supposed to be strong enough! What the hell were you doing, sittin’ on our asses?!”

Or was it his fault?

He had been trapped here for quite a while now. Had they been unable to fight because he was there to do his job and properly feed them? Sanji couldn’t imagine them starving. They couldn’t get what they needed without his help, but they were all capable of cooking something.

No. He couldn’t blame himself or them. If there was blame to fall on anyone, it was that junk-heap with a hook.

His pain would linger and nothing, not even the reassurance that Nami was still alive, would dismiss that. But it would remain under the growing rage trapped in his chest. There would be time for other emotions later. He had cried enough, though he wasn’t sure wet eyes really counted. They dried soon enough, anyway, thanks to the intense, burning hate bubbling inside him.

The remains of his friends were pushed into his room and tucked under his shame of a bed before he stood, twisted and kicked a worrying dent in the wall beside him.

That wasn’t good enough, sadly. He could take his anger out on the building as much as he liked, but he would have loved to cave in that fox’s ugly maw.