DISCLAIMER: One Piece belongs to Eiichiro Oda.

~ Hell Is in the Hand of the Beholder ~

"And then he said, 'Do you wanna eat my ass?' Of course I didn't want to!" Tears streamed down Sanji's cheeks as he regaled the rest of the crew with the tale of his struggles in the Kamabakka Kingdom. "But he just kept waving it at me! It was. So. Fucking. Hairy."

"Oh, my poor baby," Robin said, sounding more amused than sympathetic as she patted him on the head.

Sanji's misery visibly decreased by a small fraction at the gesture, for (no matter how sarcastically it was given) one of his two most-beloved ladies - who he had missed so much during the two years they had spent apart - was now gracing him with the comfort of her touch.

The reality of Robin petting his hair was no match for the hell of his memories as the next part of the scene presented itself in his mind, though.

"And then, he started... kind of... jumping up and down, but not really jumping very high, more like bouncing in place, I guess... and that's when I noticed that there was a dingleberry." A sob broke from his throat and he wailed, "There was a dingleberry!"

Luffy snickered and whispered, "Dingleberry."

Usopp, who was sitting beside the captain and had been able to hold in his laughter until this point, now burst into a fit of giggles.

Sanji was somewhat surprised that Luffy knew what a dingleberry actually was and hadn't mistaken the term for a type of food. On the other hand, the captain was the kind of person who asked every nonhuman person he met whether they pooped or not, so it shouldn't have been surprising that 'dingleberry' was already a part of his vocabulary.

Nami dragged the two laughing idiots out of the room. The others could faintly hear her yelling at them for being insensitive jerks, and then bonking them each over the head with her staff for good measure.

"What happened next?" Zoro asked, eager to hear more about his least favorite crewmate's memories of misery.

Once he got to the end of the story, Sanji broke down and wept. Robin hugged him, patting his back with one hand and stroking his hair with the other. Then, feeling that this was not enough due to the severity of the situation, she used her power to summon more hands so that she could pat the entire expanse of his back all at once.

As much as he did not want to relive his time on the cursed island, Sanji decided that if it meant he could be comforted like this by Robin every time, he would be happy to continue sharing stories of his horrific memories with the rest of the crew.

~end~