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"Ouch! Ah, jeez..."
"Hmm?" Usopp turned around, looking up from aiming his musket to examine his blond haired brother beside him. "What...? What is it now?"
Sanji had his back to the long-nosed sibling, throwing the knife he had been toying with away and coddling his limb. "A-Ah, nothing! Nothing, I just...cut myself a little."
The blond cringed away further as his brother frowned and examined him harder. "Really," he said, dipping his gun down to lean over. "Lemme see. Is it deep?"
"No!" Sanji snapped--a little too loudly. As Usopp hissed at him for silence, he sighed and said in a harsh whisper. "No, its not even drawing blood. Stop worrying."
Usopp blinked slowly at him, silently illiterating his annoyance. He went back to peeping over the fallen log they were behind, holding his musket up and watching for movement. "Can't concentrate with all this girliness over cuts," he muttered under his breath. "Shouldn't even be playing with knives--should be doing what dad said and actually doing some work..."
Sanji snapped his head around. "What was that?"
"Nothing!" Usopp cringed under his brother's gaze. He was glad when the blond went back to just hugging his arm to his chest, crying over a 'small cut' like a baby in his eye. The sharpshooter went back to what he was being blackmailed to do. Grudgingly.
The gash in Sanji's arm was pretty deep. He really shouldn't have been playing with the knife--but he was bored. Hunting was....ugh, gruesome. And very boring--his joints ached from crouching in this bush behind this log since dawn. Still, he hadn't expected it the knife to go that deep. Blood was dripping out pretty bad. He winced at the pain, but winced harder when his body automatically began sucking...something out of him to correct the problem.
He watched as skin appeared like tiny tendrils of string, and began stitching over the blood, crossing each other to mend over the wound. With surprising speed, his wound was healed. Good as new. Just the mess of blood that he had to clean up before Usopp saw.
Usopp looked over his shoulder when he heard water sloshing around. "Hey!" he hissed in a whisper. "Stop that! You're wasting water!!"
Sanji gave him another scowl. shaking the drops of water out of the canteen as he did. "Shut up, mind your own business." He happened to take a sniff at his plaid flannel shirt--he crinkled his nose. "Ugh, nothing takes out this damn shady deer piss crap. Dumbest thing you've bartered from a peddler yet, Usopp."
"Hey, it was cheap! And its suppose to attract them better--"
"Isn't that what the doe whistle's for?"
Usopp fingered the tiny whistle he had yet to use on his belt, but didn't say anything. Sanji snorted. Great--as if they didn't have a big enough advantage over the poor things. This was just cheating.
As Usopp finally huffed, defeated but unwilling to comment, Sanji tuned him out. He had corked the canteen back and was wiping his wet arm with the inside of his dark jacket when Usopp sucked in his breath between his teeth, making his brother look up. Sanji was annoyed until he saw Usopp's face, all serious as he aimed at a target. A moving target, it seemed.
"What is it?" Sanji frantically hissed, scootching to Usopp and trying to follow where the gun was aiming. Before them was nothing but thicket, netted together in a near impenetrable wall. But there--slipping across the bushes with barely a rustle, just to the east twenty or thirty yards away--yea, he could see it. The flank of a buck.
Sanji was quivering. Not from nostalgia at the hunt. Not even relief at this idiotic slaughter of a gentle creature about to be over. He crinkled his face in disgust and slouched with his back to the buck and the log, still quivering from the bile in his throat. He wanted a smoke--this was too disgusting. "Tell me when its over," he growled, glaring pointedly at the bush before him.
Usopp's voice was calm, all business. "This is an easy shot. You could try picking up your gun and doing something--"
"No."
"But, Sanji--"
"NOOOO. Never."
Usopp snorted. "You're going to have to come clean to dad sooner or later."
"Let that old man think what he wants--my hands are for cooking, not slaughtering. And stop complaining! I do the skinning, don't I?"
Usopp shivered a bit, but nodded. Sanji had no stomach for killling, and his little brother had a fear of touching dead things.
"Now, hurry up and shoot that thing so we can go home!"
Again, Usopp nodded. He returned to his aim, and Sanji returned to sulking. In a family full of renowned hunters for their village, he was the black sheep. He cooked, which was 'women's work' to his father, and had no skill in aim nor a steady hand with a gun. To make him even more of an outcast, he was a healer. A Stitch, as they were called, with a spat to the ground and a curse at the heels.
He hadn't asked for the power--he had been born with it, from his dead mother's side he gathered. He could heal himself, and with the touch of his skin to another he could mend any creature. Or, unmend them, he guessed. Any body part that was under his touch was at his mercy. If his father ever found out...if anyone found out--sweet Gods, he would be screwed.
The sound of a shot made Sanji snap to attention. 'Great,' he thought, closing his eyes and trying to block out whatever horrible noise the beast croaked out from its dying throat. 'Now we can go home, and I can make a nice venison stew--'
The shout of shock and pain slashed through the air like a machete. It wasn't the sound of a shot deer...it was the sound of a wounded man.
Sanji looked at Usopp. Usopp looked at Sanji. His mouth was opened with a silent scream while Sanji sat there in disbelief.
Finally, the blond muttered. "It...it was the back of a deer...right?"
Usopp didn't utter anything, quivering like a leaf. He didn't have to--Sanji knew the answer.
"s**t....Shiiiiit. Oh, ********!"
"We're dead," Usopp uttered, clinging to his gun as a mixture of animal bellows and human screams intermingled in the air. "We're dead we're dead we're dead--crap, I'M DEAD...! No, no no no no no--"
Sanji had to shake his brother out of his trance. "Snap out of it, Usopp! We're not dead!"
"I KILLED A SATYR, HOW AM I NOT DEAD--"
His screech was cut off by the older brother's hands cuffing his mouth. He reverted to whimpering, as if he was about to cry.
Sanji sighed, trying to calm Usopp. And himself. s**t, they were really in for it now. "Look, Usopp...it's okay. I'll fix this--just...go back home and say something to pop. Lie or something. I'll be back close behind you--"
Usopp blinked his huge eyes and tore Sanji's hand from his mouth. He was frantic. "Sanji, no! You can't kill it--the village will know!!"
A pit fell in Sanji's stomach. Of course, that would be the normal way of seeing how to get out of harming one of the Forest's precious Children. Slaughtering it and burying the evidence. Then none would be the wiser for a couple of months, and things would be fine.
Until a five year long drought suddenly came along. Then, they were screwed. Sacrificially screwed.
In response, Sanji shoved Usopp out of the bushes, gesturing wildly in the direction of their cabin. "Go, just GO! Don't worry about me--get gone before someone starts wondering where we are!!"
You didn't have to tell Usopp twice. He only hesitated a second, staring at Sanji in panic and disbelief. Then, the coward high-tailed it out, tripping on inclines, rocks, and twigs the whole way.
Sanji waited, watching his brother's back til he was out of sight. Then, he steeled himself and slipped across the brush towards the grunts and groans of pain.