Well, here it is; my weird new story!

It's going to be kind of dark, though, not entirely. I do always try for some humor and elements that lighten things up a bit.

As of right now, the rating is K+. Lowest rating I've ever had to put. '-' Anyway, that will change in later chapters, because currently the characters are too young to do anything T rated.

Enjoy!

EDIT: I've come back and done a little sprucing, employing what I've learned from my beta reader. 6/23/13. ;)

He was eight and a half years old. No more than a baby, though he'd already started school. That's when it happened. His mother died of an illness exactly one year after being deemed healthy. Then his father started to hurt him. A lot. His father would hit him and scream at him "it's your fault! It's your fault!" no matter when or where they were. His father even hurt himself, cutting his arms with the broken bottles. It was painful to see his father like that.

It took exactly five months, one week, four days, ten hours and fourteen minutes for anyone to notice his pain. Even then, it took another few weeks before they took him away from his father. He would have been sad. He wished he were. His flesh and blood, his blood that was both inside and outside of him, his father since birth was being taken away. But, he smiled that day. It was a sad smile, one that lasted less than a minute. A smile of relief, however slight.

The woman who saved him from that hell took him to a large building. A brick building, covered in grime from all the years it had been standing without proper care. It reminded him of school. He didn't mind being in school, but this place was different. It was dark, unlike school, though just as loud. It smelled like various cleaning products, all masking an underlying smell of urine.

That reminded him of the hospital where his mother passed away. He didn't like that place.

He scrunched up his nose as he allowed the woman to lead him by the hand to a tall desk in the center of the first room. She spoke with a smaller woman at the desk, one with a bandana on her head. The woman at the desk looked down at him and he looked back at her, not knowing what to do or say. She smiled at him, a loving, pitying smile. One he wouldn't soon forget. It had been a long time since someone smiled at him with any amount of love.

The woman behind the desk gave the other woman a clipboard, something that he was also familiar with from the hospital, and took his hand from her. "Do you want to go sit over there and wait for a minute?" she asked, her voice sweet. He just nodded. He really didn't want to go anywhere, not unless his mother was with him, but he had learned that he should listen to adults, or else be punished. His father taught him that.

He went and sat on the least dirty-looking wooden chair around a glass table. Various magazines and coloring books littered the table, but he only looked at them. He didn't really want to read or to color. He did like to read, and he liked to color, but those were things he did with his mother. He didn't want to make her upset by doing them without her.

Minutes into his staring contest with a "choo-choo" train on the cover of a coloring book, the bandana woman came back. "Hey... Your name's Sanji, right, sweetie?" she asked, smiling and petting his hair. He blushed and shook his head. No, his name was not "Sanji, right, sweetie." He didn't want anyone to call him that.

The woman laughed and brushed his blonde hair with her palm. "Would you mind staying here for a while?" she asked, smiling so that her eyes crinkled at the edges. Sanji thought she was pretty and nice, just like his mother. So, he shook his head.

The woman put out her hand for him. "Okay then, Sanji-kun. It'll be nice to have you here. My name is Makino."

Sanji took her hand and shook it slightly. "Makino-san," he mumbled.

Her smile faltered for a moment before breaking out even wider. "What lovely manners you have! Come now, I'll show you to your room."

"Room?" Sanji asked, feeling bolder every second he was in her presence. Makino nodded, standing and leading Sanji across the large, dark room. He was somewhat glad to be out of that room, even as he saw the woman who saved him waving goodbye and leaving the building for her car. He didn't even know her name, but she was nice for helping him. He would miss her, he decided.

"You'll have to share your room with another boy, but I'm sure he won't trouble you," Makino told him. He didn't like the idea of sharing a room with another boy. Or anyone, really. What if they were sharing a bed? No, Makino didn't say that they were. He shouldn't let his imagination run away. "He's kind of... rambunctious, but he'll be nice to you if you're nice to him."

Sanji shook his head. He didn't like being near other people when he slept. Maybe she wouldn't make him sleep in the same room as the other boy? That would be much nicer, if he didn't have to sleep in the same room as someone else.

Makino led him down a long hallway that dead-ended and branched off into other long hallways. In the third hallway, she brought him to one of the many wooden doors. They all had a piece of paper taped to them with two names on it, except for a few. The door they stopped at said "Roronoa."

Sanji squeezed her hand. Roronoa sounded like a bad name. Maybe his roommate would beat him up? He hoped not. He didn't like being beat up. But, if his roommate was older than him or bigger than him, he wouldn't be able to stop him. Sanji had learned a few things to help him get away from his father, but not enough to evade someone who was always in the same room as him.

Looking down at him, Makino sighed. "It's going to be okay, little one. For tonight, you should stay here. I'll bring some food up to you at dinner time, okay?" She smiled, handing him a small bag that he hadn't realized she was holding. He recognized that bag as his own, brought from his house and full with his clothes. His father had gotten him that bag, a blue backpack with one strap, when he started school. Though he had vowed to always treasure the gift, it repulsed him a little as he held it.

Makino knocked on the door lightly. No one answered, so she opened it slowly and peered around the room. "It seems that Roronoa-kun is out. Oh well, you'll meet him later." Makino smiled, ushering Sanji over to a wooden bunk bed against the back right corner of the greyish room. The top bunk had bright green sheets with a matching bright green pillow and clothes hanging over the end. The bottom bunk had a seemingly thinner mattress with a white blanket, a white sheet and no pillow, made up neatly. That, also, reminded him of the hospital.

"Oh, sorry, Sanji-kun! I'll be right back with a proper pillow and blanket," Makino apologized, stroking his hair one last time before hurrying out of the room and shutting the door behind herself. Sanji instantly felt colder. Looking around the room with one dresser, one chair, one lamp, one bookshelf and one window, he wondered if he would be able to withstand staying there for any period of time.

He dropped his bag by the bed and went to the window. It was almost sunset and a few clouds were in the sky, spreading out thinly here and there. He turned his eyes down from the sky and watched a group of children playing with a ball in the yard. He had seen them before he went into the building, and they had stared at him. Not angrily, or with any sort of malice. They just stared. Sanji thought they were sympathizing with him, and he would've told them they didn't understand if they hadn't all gone back to playing ball a moment later.

Sanji wondered if he'd ever be able to play with them, happy with his meager state of living. It wasn't as if he came from a lot, but he felt as if he'd lost his most prized possessions and a piece of himself with them. He had, truthfully, lost all that he could lose without dying himself.

He sighed, putting his hand against the single window pane. It was dusty and cracking and Sanji wondered if the next small breeze wouldn't shatter it. He shivered and took his hand away from the window. He wouldn't want to be touching it if and when it shattered.

"Who are you?"

Sanji jumped and spun on his heels to face the door. A boy, only a hair taller than him if he had to guess, stood in the doorway, frowning at Sanji. He returned the frown with only a bit of fear and stepped forward, sticking out his chest to make himself just a bit more imposing. "This is my room," Sanji said boldly.

The boy at the door snorted. That wasn't a sound he heard often from children his age. "That doesn't answer my question. Who are you?" the boy repeated as he took a few steps into the room. Sanji shrunk away from him, his back touching the wall. "I-" He swallowed. "I'm Sanji."

The boy, tan almost to the point of blending in with the floor, looked Sanji over. While he did that, Sanji noticed perhaps the most important detail about the boy. "Is your hair green?" Sanji asked before he could stop himself.

Instantly, he stiffened. The boy looked at him, a flash of annoyance behind his dark eyes. "Yeah. And, your hair is yellow."

Sanji nodded, not knowing what else to do. The boy didn't look terribly upset, but neither had his father when the beatings started. "It is."

"So, what's weird about my hair being green?"

"I didn't say it was weird, it just..."

"Just, what?"

Sanji fiddled with the hem of his shirt. The words were on the tip of his tongue. He always had a way of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, but this time he would stop himself. "Itlookslikeseaweed," Sanji slurred quietly. So much for stopping myself, he thought.

"Whaaaat? What the hell did you just say?"

At that moment, the door opened and Makino stepped in. She frowned at the other boy, lightly bopping him on the head with a fist. "Now, Roronoa-kun! What did I say about that kind of language?" she scolded, shifting the pillow and blanket that were tucked under her arm.

Roronoa-kun? Sanji questioned internally. As in, my roommate?

"Be nice, and introduce yourselves! Go on, boys!" Makino urged, dropping the pillow and blanket on Sanji's bed. The two boys shared a look; one that conveyed stubborn, adolescent unwillingness. "Now, now. If you're going to be living together until one of you is chosen, I suggest you start off on the right foot. That means introductions," Makino said, eyeing both of them.

She sighed after a minute of neither doing anything towards progress and shuffled out of the room, shaking her head. Before she closed the door, she said, "I'll be back in a few minutes, so don't go starting any trouble, okay?"

When Makino was gone and, Sanji hoped, far enough down the hall, he shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "Er... I'm Sanji. Umm, it's ni-... meeting you."

Roronoa rolled his eyes. "You already said that," he stated flatly. The boy glanced at the door with an irked expression and sort of groaned before meeting Sanji's eyes. "I'm Roronoa Zoro. Now we've been introduced." With that, Roronoa Zoro climbed up the ladder onto his bed and flopped down on his back. He crossed his arms over his chest and within seconds was snoring. Sanji couldn't believe his eyes.

He stood by the window, clutching the bottom of his shirt and frowning. Sanji would have to be in that room for who knows how long with that weirdo. He could almost say for certain he wouldn't survive it.

Then again, that Roronoa hadn't hit him like he thought he was going to do. That was at least not a bad thing. He might be able to handle it. But, he still wasn't quite sure why he was there. He had other relatives, aunts and uncles that liked him well enough. He didn't need to be there and he would really rather not be.

The dreary city setting was over-bearing. It felt so cold, even though it was the middle of April. Sanji hadn't been in the city very often when he was younger, only coming up every now and again to visit relatives or for something school-related. Honestly, he didn't like it. It felt like the sun never shined. And there were a lot of bad people. Mean, angry people who had nothing better to do than bump into other people on crowded streets.

Sanji frowned. He sat down lightly on the edge of the bed that was to be his and the springs creaked horribly. There was a huge dip in the middle that he hadn't seen before, and dust flew up when he patted the mattress. Sanji coughed sporadically and tried to fan away the dust with his hand. That didn't really help, but he couldn't think of anything else to do.

Before the dust killed him, Sanji stripped the thin blanket off his bed and used it to sweep the mattress. He replaced the thin hospital blanket with the puffy blue one with elephants on it that Makino brought him and put the pillow at the top of the bed.

He stared at it, the place that he would be sleeping, and he felt sad. It wasn't supposed to be like this, he told himself. Sanji felt like running away from what his life had become. He knew he couldn't do that; he had nowhere to go. Still, it was suffocating and miserable in that place and Sanji couldn't think properly and he just wanted to go somewhere else.

"Okay, boys, I hope you- Sanji-kun! What's the matter? What happened?" Makino knelt beside Sanji and put her hands on his shoulders. Sanji shook his head. "Why are you crying? Did Roronoa-kun do something to you?"

"I'm not c-crying!" Sanji defended, rubbing away his crocodile tears with the backs of his hands. He felt himself pouting so he bit his lip. Only babies and girls pouted. And Sanji was not a baby or a girl. "I'm not crying..." he repeated, maybe just for his own benefit.

Makino made a sound that Sanji had only ever heard his mother make and then she wrapped her arms around him. "Oh, shh, it'll be okay. This place isn't so bad. You'll see," she cooed, rubbing up and down his back with one hand and stroking his hair with the other.

"I'm not... crying," Sanji told her again, sniffling in the middle.

"I know, honey, I know," Makino whispered. She pulled away from Sanji and smiled at him. "Are you hungry? Or, would you rather just go to sleep now?" she asked, rubbing a not-tear off of Sanji's cheek with her thumb. He just glared at the floor, pouting the most pitiful and cutest pout that Makino had seen. She couldn't help herself but to laugh.

"What?" Sanji asked, annoyed. It's not polite to laugh at someone when they're unhappy, after all.

"You're so adorable, Sanji-kun! You'll make tons of friends here, I guarantee it," Makino announced, smiling brightly. To that, Sanji blushed, causing Makino to laugh again. "Alright, now, what'll it be? Dinner or bedtime?" she asked again, still giggling.

"I'm not hungry," Sanji told her, offering a small, apologetic smile.

Quite a few more minutes of questions went by before Makino finally left Sanji to himself. It had gotten a lot louder in the halls during that time, Sanji noticed. He wondered how many people were staying in the school-ish, hospital-ish building. He didn't know how many kids got dumped here like him, but from the sound of it, he was guessing a lot.

Sanji sat down on the edge of his bed again, this time without the presence of a dust mushroom-cloud, and sighed. It was dark outside, he was tired, and for the first time in months, he could sleep without worrying about being attacked.

Or can I? Sanji looked up at the top bunk. His roommate seemed like kind of a troublemaker. Who's to say he wouldn't attack him in his sleep? Definitely better to err on the side of caution.

He stood on the edge of his bed and turned carefully to face inwards at the top bunk. Zoro's fingers were linked under his head as he snored rather like a lawn-mower. At least he's asleep already... Sanji let out the tiniest of breaths and Zoro snorted.

His footing slipped and before Sanji could blink he had landed on his backside on the hardwood floor. He gasped in slight pain and shock, looking up at the top bunk to make sure he hadn't awoken Zoro. That was a close one! Sanji sighed when Zoro turned over in his sleep, throwing his arm over the edge of his bed. He almost thought the other had woken up. That wouldn't have been good. Though, Sanji wasn't sure why it wouldn't have been good. He really didn't know the kid, so he couldn't rightly judge whether or not it would have been okay to wake him. Of course, he wouldn't want to disturb- Never mind. He's still asleep, anyway.

Sanji crawled over to his bed and tunneled in under the covers. It was a lot warmer under there. He was still in his day clothes and he hadn't brushed his teeth, but he was comfortable and not willing to move. It was a strange comfort, one that smelled kind of like it was drowned in the perfume of one of the old ladies from his old neighborhood that so liked to hug him, but it felt kind of nice. Kind of safe. It was probably a jinx to think it, but he figured things were calm enough for now.

As he fell off to sleep, he wondered what his next few days would be like. If he would like it there, or if he would hate it.

So? How have I done with my venture into the slightly-more-serious? In all honesty, I am so into this story. I don't know when I'll post it, or how long it will go, but, it'll be cool to write.

Okay, so, apology time! I did some actual research on the foster care system and it was all really depressing! I couldn't pick my jaw up off the floor while I was reading the wiki page! So, I improvised. I made stuff up, and, it came out like an orphanage. Sort of. I don't know.

If there's anything wrong, tell me. But, especially tell me if you just really liked this chapter! ^^

Ciao~