~Sanji~

.o0o.

Sanji always had a love-hate relationship with the Sunday lunch rush. On the one hand, he loved feeding people. Knowing for a fact his patrons wouldn't be going hungry for another day gave him the deepest sense of fulfillment. Especially since the nearest island was almost 500 miles away.

On the other hand, the amount of shitty, entitled assholes that darkened their doorstep was almost too numerous to count. It left Sanji fit to be tied. From picky eaters who left half their meal untouched, to those who demanded a whole new meal because there was one hair on their mashed potatoes to snobby food critics who would throw their food on the floor in an over dramatic fashion as if to prove they were too good for it.

Sanji sat back against the outside wall of Baratie, and took a long drag of his cigarette. The grey smoke sent a wave of calm through his body. He always kept his smoking to minimum during work. This was a high class restaurant after all, no one wanted the smell of smoke hanging in the air. But he was on break now so everyone could suck it.

He flicked off the ash and watched it fly away in the sea breeze. Sanji considered the little stick of nicotine between his fingers. He remembered how cool the older chef's looked when they smoked, and how much he wanted to emulate them. Sanji could help but chuckle at himself. He was such a stupid little kid.

It took him forever to be able to stomach the horrible taste of the smoke, but as soon as he could, Sanji strutted about thinking he was the hottest shit off the press. Of course, he was immediately made fun of by the other chefs, but he took it in stride. At least, he did a little.

In his defence, he was quite an angry child, and his co-workers liked to take the piss a little too much.

Still, over time as Sanji settled into his new habit, they all laid off him, thankfully. He quickly tired of getting in trouble for kicking their asses.

Sanji took another drag. As much shit he got from the other chefs and the Old Man for smoking, he realised that it came in handy for him, in a way…

It turns out extreme starvation had more long term detriments on a person than just malnutrition and shit. Those, at least, were an easy fix. What got Sanji long term was the mental problems. Well, problem. He absolutely could not bare the feeling of hunger. Even feeling ever so slightly peckish was enough to send him into a frenzy back then. More than once, he had to be pulled away from the pantry for fear he would gorge himself to death.

It got to the point were Sanji was being woken up in the middle of the night by hunger pangs that would usually be sated by breakfast, making him charge down stairs and eat until the sun rose. It didn't seem to affect the Old Man as much, but Sanji assumed that as an adult he had more self control.

When Sanji took up smoking, he quickly realised that his cigarettes suppressed his appetite as a side effect. It very quickly became a godsend. Between meals - and when not cooking - he would smoke just to stave off hunger until he actually needed to eat. Now Sanji was a little behind on his medical studies, so the actual benefits of such a routine were beyond him, especially for the long term, but it certainly helped him through the worst time of his recovery. Mentally at least.

At 19 Sanji had no need for such a routine. He just enjoyed the habit. And he still through it made him look incredibly cool. Not that he'd ever admit that aloud.

A loud crash sounded from inside the restaurant followed by several people yelling. Probably Patty getting shitting with a customer. Again. Sanji loved Patty - another thing he'd never admit - but that guy needed to learn proper manners. And not care so much about money.

The front door slammed open around the corner was where Sanji was sitting. The shouting became all the clearer.

"You can't do this to me!" The customer yelled, indignant, "I am a paying customer!"

Judging by the slight strain in the man's voice Patty was holding him up by the collar. Wonder what the poor bloke did? Sanji chuckled to himself. Knowing Patty like he did it could be anything an attempted dine and dash to looking up at him wrong.

"What? A paying customer that doesn't wanna pay 'cause he found a hair in his near finished soup!?" Patty retorted angrily. Sanji could hear the spittle fly, "A hair from his own damned head?"

Sanji took a long drag, trying to keep his blood from boiling. So it was one of those types of bastards. At least Patty was justified. Had it been him that the cheap bastard complained to, Sanji would have shoved the soup down his throat, plate and all.

At least Sanji trusted Patty to not waste what little food was left.

"Do you treat all your customers like this!" The asshole asked, completely ignoring the larger man's immensely valid point.

"Only the ones who are stingy bastards." Patty answered sounding smug all of a sudden. Sanji didn't have to see it to know what was going to happen. The old chef had decided what to do with the trash.

"W-wait!" the now former customer stammered, "What are you doing!? D-don't, please! I'll pay! I'll pa-AAAAAAHHHH!"

He was going to throw it out.

The pleading was immediately turned into a scream of terror that was slowly fading off into the distance. A minute or so later a soft splash could be heard. Sanji allowed himself a smirk as he put out his cigarette butt on the wooden deck.

"AND STAY OUT!" Patty called after him.

Baratie's doors slammed shut, and Sanji was outright grinning to himself. This place was pretty great sometimes.

"What the hell are you all looking at?" Came Patty's muffled voice, "And where the hell his Sanji? He's been gone like an hour!"

"I'm on break, shithead!" The younger chef yelled back as loud as he could, "I've got 10 more minutes, keep your knickers on, you big baby!"

"Hurry up then, you've got paying customers waiting on you!"

"I'll be back when I'm back!" Sanji huffed and took out another cigarette.

Only sometimes.

Sanji looked out to sea. The endless horizon stretched out before him. The ocean waves twinkled merrily in the sunlight, as if dancing to the tune of the wind above and the current below.

It was a beauty to rival that of the legendary Pirate Empress herself.

There was so much out that Sanji didn't even know what he didn't know! The islands, the food, the women. The things to do, the places to see, the thought of them all was more intoxicating to him than any wine or mead.

All Blue was out there, too.

The crown jewel of the ocean. The mythical Seventh Sea. A chef's paradise. Sanji's dream.

To be able to lay eyes on it, to simply know that it was real would allow Sanji to die happy. But not before, setting up a restaurant there and spending the rest of his days cooking there. Maybe he'd model his after Baratie? Have a float about the place to make full use of the ocean, and give people a place of respite as they journeyed through to wherever they wished to go.

That was his dream.

It was the dream that wouldn't be reality, however. For centuries there have been stories of people searching for All Blue, finding nothing that wasn't already known. What chance did he have? He was just a little cook from East Blue with dreams bigger than he had any right to have. Hell, he couldn't even get recognition from his own damned mentor.

Besides - Sanji looked up at Baratie's white painted wall, hearing a clash of pots and pans - he still had a debt to pay. He refused to move until it was.

Sanji took another long drag, blowing the smoke out as hard, and as far as he could, trying to reign in the wonderlust that had built up inside him. His dream was stupid, and so was he for dreaming it.

Looking back over the sea, trying to just enjoy the calm before he rejoined the chaos inside, a glint of light caught his eye. Something in the water was catching the sunlight. It wasn't the wave as it wasn't sparkling. It was sharp. Pointed even.

Sanji got up from his position against the wall and crawled over to the edge of the deck to try and get a good look at it. It was… a bottle?

It was, in fact, a green glass bottle, floating the waves in his direction. Sanji reached through the guard rail, for it. His curiosity was peaked. He plucked it out of the water and positioned himself to sit up against the rail.

Turning it over in his hand, Sanji would see nothing odd about it. It was a standard 550ml, green, glass beer bottle, though without any identifying label on it. It was still corked. Copenborough, if he had to guess. But, Baratie didn't stoke this brand. It was too cheap, none of their patronage drank this garbage.

It could have been a passing ship dumping its garbage into the sea? Or maybe this bottle was just chucked overboard? That didn't explain why it was still corked. It was too light to have any beer in it, but, giving it a shake, there was definitely something inside of it. A letter maybe?

That made Sanji's heart lift a little. He'd always wanted to find a message in a bottle. It was another stupid thing, but then again the whole concept of putting a letter in a bottle and hoping the tide would somehow carry it to where you wanted it to go was stupid. It was a snapshot into someone's life, and what the most important thing to them was at the time.

So, that begged the question; what was inside this one? A child's letter to Santa? A message to a lost family member or loved one? A letter of love from a beautiful woman for her far away lover?

Oh, how Sanji wished it would be the latter.

Grabbing the cork, Sanji pulled it out with a twist. It gave a satisfying squeak and a small pop as it slid out easily. Upturning the bottle, its contents fell out easily. The paper has a yellowish tint to it, as if it was quite old. That would make sense. The nearest island was hundreds of miles away. It was rolled up nice and tight, held together by a thin, red piece of string.

Sanji didn't have much time before his break ended. He needed to read this fast. He pulled on the loose end of the string all but begging for it to be a love letter. The string came apart easily, unfurling the paper.

He unrolled it fully and began to read.

'A Letter to My Younger Self' it read. So… not a love letter. Damn, that was disappointing, but whoever wrote this must have learned a lot in life to write to his past self. It could be interesting nonetheless.

To younger me,

I don't exactly know what to write here because we weren't given much to go on other than to not give out any details. Just that we could give you some shitty advice or something. I'm not entirely sold. But I have some shit I wanna say, so why the hell not?

If you're getting this letter when I think you're getting it, you've got some shit ahead of you. A lot of shit is gonna go wrong, some of it as a direct result of you. But, so much more will go right in the long run. I'm not gonna tell you something corny like 'don't worry' or some shit. I know you won't. This is more of a 'heads up' than anything else.

What kind of stupid hindsight lesson was this? Sanji scoffed aloud. 'I won't say don't worry because I know you won't?'. What rubbish. But… there was something familiar about these first two paragraphs that he could quite put his finger on. Rereading didn't help ring any bells. Maybe it was the almost excessive use of the word 'shit'?

More to the point, I want to warn you about 'them'. You will meet them again, whether you like it or not, and they are all even more rotten than you last remember. Sure, you don't remember much of them anymore. It was better off like that. But, what they are now, or should I say, what they always were, and you, being too young to realise, was that they are scum. The lowest you could ever find. The only possible exception is Reiju.

Sanji's heart skipped a beat, turning his blood to ice. There was no way. It must have been another group of incredibly shitty people with someone named Reiju. Her name was common enough wasn't it? He read the words once more, desperately looking for any possibility that it wasn't them. The whole paragraph was written like the author was pressing his pen angrily against the page. Certain words looked like the pen almost ripped the page trying to write them.

What was the possibility that whoever wrote this letter had a run in with the Germa 66, and wanted to tell his younger self about it. Only for it to end up in Sanji's hands. What were the odds…

What if it was for him?

That horrible thought almost made him drop the paper. Sanji fought the urge to look at the signature at the bottom. There was no way in hell it was for him. What? Did his future self find a way to send a letter through time, just so it could float to him on an ocean wave? That would be absurd.

Yet… it still made sweat roll down his brow. The way the first paragraphs were phrased, made it seem like that's just what the author was expecting. Sanji swallowed thickly and continued reading.

What I want to tell you is that when the time comes trust your friends. Now, I know what you're thinking. 'What friends?' You'll meet them soon enough. They will become as much your family as Patty, Carne, the Old Man, and everyone else on Baratie. Trust them. Tell them about Germa, no matter how much you think it's 'your problem'. They'll stand with you, and face down the World. It's happened before.

Sanji's jaw dropped. That all but confirmed it. This letter was written for him by his older self. How was this even possible? The Old Man had always said that strange things happened at sea, but surely even this was a bit much. Maybe it was one of those Devil Fruits he read about that one time?

The mere idea that he would ever have to meet up with those heartless bastards ever again was enough to make Sanji want to vomit. For years that chapter of his life had been close. He had moved on. That it might be ripped open like an old wound scared him shitless.

How could he tell anyone about this? Who would even believe him? If not about his former family, then about this damned letter. Sanji didn't want to tell anyone. It was his past, his problem to deal with, and no one else needed to be involved.

But, wasn't that exactly what this letter was warning him against? Trying to solve a problem by himself when he clearly didn't have to. His future self had people he could depend on to such a high degree, and regretted not sharing his connection to the Germa 66 with them.

Maybe, Sanji would be able to meet these people? It could be years before he gets that chance.

Now's were I say it; Don't worry. Despite meeting those shitty bastards again, everything works out for the best, and the adventure you go on is worth so much more.

I know what it's like for you right now. You feel trapped. But you'll never admit it because Baratie is home. It's the Old Man's dream. If you were to, in someway, say anything against it, it would feel like you're insulting that fact. But, maybe, just maybe, if you could get some acknowledgement from the Old Man then your debt would be repaid and you could move on. You're so stuck on that fact that you started repressing your own dreams and ambitions just so you wouldn't grow restless.

You're a goddamn idiot. I can't tell you the details of what's to come, but you are so far off the mark with everything. When you meet your friends you'll know why. Learning from a shitty scrap of paper won't do you any good. You'll meet them soon, so be ready.

Regards, Sanji.

Sanji didn't know how to react. How could he? He had just been called out by his future self through the medium of time travelling paper. His situation right now had been summed up in its entirety only to be called stupid. If it were anyone else Sanji would call bullshit. What did they know about him and his life? But this left no doubt in his mind. This was his future self who had found some way to send this letter back to him. The only person who knew Sanji, was Sanji.

Whatever had happened to his older self had benefited him and it would happen to himself soon enough. It would allow him to leave Baratie with no regrets. It left Sanji feeling hopeful for the future. That what lay before him wasn't a lifetime working under the Old Man, searching for any shred of validation.

Soon, or not, it could still be some ways off before anything came to pass. Until then, Sanji had good food to make and shitty customers to serve. If he remembered correctly some hot shot Marine Lieutenant was booked in for this afternoon for a date or something. If Sanji was lucky, it would be with a pretty lady, giving him a chance to sweep her off her feet!

Grinning stupidly Sanji got to his feet. He almost crumpled up the letter when he noticed the post script at the bottom of the page.

P.S. I forgot to mention you get to live with two of the most beautiful and wonderful women on the planet! Serving them food at all times of the day! It truly is a beautiful life!

Fuck waiting! When could he sign up? Living with two beautiful women day in and day out sounded amazing! Sanji lost himself to the feeling of Love. He could already imagine them! One feisty and outgoing, while the other was more reserved and mature but both equally amazing! It made his heart want to dance!

Oh, how he hated his future self now! He was off living the dream with gorgeous women while he, in the present, was still here making food surrounded by the sausage fest that was the Baratie staff. It wasn't fair!.

"Sanji! Hurry the hell up!" Came the unwanted interruption by Carne, "You're break ended five minutes ago!"

Sanji stopped his gleeful dancing to glare in direction of his co-worker's voice, "I'm coming now! Quit your whingeing, you big baby!" he growled.

With one last look over the paper Sanji grinned. He crumpled up the letter and threw it out to sea as far as he could. If he kept it he'd only dwell on it. If it held true, then he didn't need to worry, and if it didn't, then it was business as usual. Also he'd never trust dodgy letters in bottles ever again.

Sanji pushed open the doors to Baratie. Time to get back to work.

.o0o.

(Notes: So new story! Simple enough premise that I've not seen before on this site in all my years of using it. Probably missed it tbh. Either way, here's my take on it.

So there will be 10 chapters. One for each Straw Hat. I will make a concerted effort to make the message of each letter different so that each chapter doesn't feel samey. But, some characters messages really will just be 'Don't worry about it'.

This story will be updated weekly. Twice a week if you're good.

Last thing. I crave feedback! Tell me what you think! I want to improve as a writer, and I can't do that with a silent audience.

Thanks for your time!)