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Nami wakes up with a small start, breathing out carefully as she opens her eyes – listening for the creak of the wood, feeling the sway of the ship below as she carefully slips out of her hammock, dragging a hand through her hair with a small frustrated huff at the buzz at the back of her mind.
She slips into a stolen button-up shirt, one of Zoro’s for she didn’t dare to think what Sanji’s reaction might have been to seeing her in something of his and Luffy was too skinny.
Zoro at least had a broad chest and shoulders, allowing her to button it closer over the chemise and shorts she’d been sleeping in.
She slips out quietly with a reassuring brush against Robin’s hand, knowing that the older woman was sensitive enough to have woken at her first shift, and getting a squeeze back from one that blossoms momentarily to entwine their hands with a brush of a thumb over the back of her hand.
The sea breeze immediately eases something inside of her and she takes a moment to stare out over the deck of Thousand Sunny, inhaling, allowing her lungs to taste the freedom of the air, a reminder than she wasn’t stuck in that small dank room, mapping out sea chart after sea chart until her hands bled.
Luffy had killed Arlong – there was no need for her mind to take her back to those days in the middle of the night, but it didn’t stop them from dredging up anyhow, a ghostly reminder of what she had been and would have remained if she hadn’t found her Captain.
She threads across the grass on bare feet, up to the bushes of tangerines, snagging one with a fond inhalation of the citrusy tang.
The rest of the ship is asleep save for he who had chosen to keep watch for the night and she lingers below for just a moment – a hesitant curl in her stomach but craving some sort of distraction from her own mind.
She bites down carefully on the tangerine, hauling herself up with easy familiarity until she reaches the top, slipping both arms through and leaning her chin upon them with an inquiring tilt of her head. “Mind some company?”
If he’s surprised he make no show of it, eyes dark and unreadable, one leg drawn up, the other stretched out.
“Not at all, Nami-ya.” He draws his leg in, making space for her, and she pulls herself up, dropping down opposite him.
Trafalgar is a tall man – stretched out but wired with muscles and imposing because of it. The tattoos on his hands are strange for a Doctor but also amusing in their irony the more she gets to know him, gets to see something softer – that bit of him that had made their Captain accept an Alliance.
Luffy genuinely enjoys Trafalgar’s company which had been a strange thing in itself to behold. They were very different people, seeking the same goal, and as much as Luffy left Trafalgar wrong-footed it never would have happened if there wasn’t something good buried deep beneath the hurt and anger of the Surgeon of Death.
Nami sometimes wonder if there’s something about Luffy that pin-points the hurt and wants to help. Whether he’s consciously aware of it or not – it was certainly a theme of their little crew.
She breathes out, watching her air mist in the cool sea air as she breaks the tangerine in two, shelling them with easy familiarity, scratching away at the white until only orange remained.
Nami gave the right half a studious onceover before offering it with a raised brow in silent question.
Unlike her get-up Trafalgar is wearing long-pants, thick boots and coat buttoned nearly all the way up. He’d removed the fluffy hat which rested beside him, near the large sword Nami had caught Zoro itching to give a thorough inspection, through a good spar, if she knew the moss-head well.
“I thought you didn’t like sharing them,” he says, voice low and smooth, but he does take it as Nami gives a little hum.
Truthfully she had originally enforced the rule because Luffy was absolutely hopeless if she wasn’t firm with him and she did enjoy the way he brightened when she took the time to join him when he was perched at the bow of the ship – vest fluttering in the wind, straw hat on his back and a rare treat of mikan to be shared, just between the two of them.
Sanji occasionally requested the use of them for desserts and it was a good back-up against scurvy - which Tony had expressed his relief about - and when Usopp or Franky was hands-deep in their experiments she occasionally slipped them one as a reminder to eat and drink.
She had a vodka-tangerine mixing below deck courtesy of an experiment she and Zoro was working on beside other berry mixes, something for just the two of them to share when they took watch together, walls lowering for moments of camaraderie.
And she regularly indulged with Robin – her head pillowed in the older woman’s lap as she listened as she read out loud.
Brook wasn’t much for eating, being what he was, but he did sit with her when she trimmed them down – offering his stories while admiring and offering praise for her work and when she was done he would pick one out and she would lean her head on his shoulder as he hummed something to her while she polished it of.
But it’s hard to put this into words and she isn’t about to try.
“A treat is good, every now and then,” she offers, popping one into her mouth, biting down with relish as the familiar taste of home explodes across her senses.
She watches from the corner of her eye as Law hesitantly breaks one off and bites half with a little blink before drawing the entirely of it into his mouth with a curl of his tongue and a small hum. “Thank you, Nami-ya.”
She gives him a small smile in acknowledgement, tilting her head back to watch the stretch of the wide sky above them.
She wonders if Nojiko is somewhere out there, looking up at the same sky. Her sister had always been something of a night owl, it was something they had in common, often sharing a glass of warm milk on the porch, huddled shoulder to shoulder, both too stubborn to put on something more.
She had always been warm blooded but she always felt cold after nightmares – as if the memories wormed beneath her skin, chilling her from her very core.
“Couldn’t sleep?”
She startles, torn from her musings, shifting her gaze to Law who shoves another piece of mikan into his mouth, apparently in a good enough mood to open conversation, one dark brow raised.
His hair looks surprisingly soft, his nose sharp and the golden of his eyes just visible in the low light. He makes for a striking character, in his own way, and Nami can even admit that he’s handsome, in an intense sort of way that made most think twice about approaching him.
She had seen the shadows that brushed through his eyes – anchored and tied to the Schichibukai they were travelling to face, his own personal demon, his Arlong.
She wonders what kind of wounds hides in his soul - wonders who he’d lost.
“A lot of my mind,” she allows, brushing strands of orange from her face and tucking it back behind her ear as the wind tugs at it and she catches Law’s eyes absently following the motion.
“I’m surprised the others are sleeping so heavy,” Law says with a little grumble, eyes flashing darkly.
They’re getting closer and closer to Dressrosa, closer to Donquixote Doflamingo.
“It’s just how they are,” Nami says with a fond curl of her lip. “Leaving the worries for tomorrow.”
“But not you,” Law says and she hums in acknowledgement.
She wonders if he misses his crew – wonders about the men and women who would chose to follow the Surgeon of Death.
Just like Luffy he had a small crew and she wonders if it says something about the two – if there’s more than just crew, is more than just family, is more than just-
Nami doesn’t know if there’s a good word for they are.
They belong to their Captain – somewhere, along the line it had become more about seeing his dream come true than their own, a willingness to sacrifice anything to see him claim his rightful title of Pirate King.
Their dreams and goals were just stepping stones along the path leading to their ultimate goal.
And this man – he’ll one day stand opposite them and he’ll challenge Luffy for the right and Luffy will win.
Nami believes this with the entirety of her soul.
“He’ll do it,” she finds herself telling Law. “Luffy – he’s all about doing the impossible. Once he’s put his mind to it, there’s absolutely nothing he’ll allow to stand in the way.”
Law stares at her for a long moment and Nami shifts, drawing her feet into a crisscross as she leans forward, struck by a sudden urge to make him understand.
“When I was very little a former Marine named Bell-mére found me and another child two years older than me named Nojiko. We had been lost in a storm but - somehow survived, and she decided to take us in. We became a family.” Nami considers the last two bits of mikan in her hand. “We didn’t have much growing up. Bell-mére barely made enough to keep us fed on the mikan she grew out back to sell and I often stole pens and navigation books from the town to suppliment my own passion despite her scoldings."
She looks up at him, meeting his dark eyes and the little fringe of black that brings her mind to her own Captain.
“I was an ungrateful child,” she admits bluntly. “I knew we had little and I resented it, lashed out even when I knew Bell-mére were giving most of her food for me and Nojiko to share, losing weight as she lived mostly on the tangerines she grew. I was eight when the Pirates came and my last words to Bell-mére that day was me yelling about a stupid dress, telling her that I wished I’d been adopted by someone rich.”
She tilts her head up, remembering those last moments – Bell-mére’s refusal to deny them as her children, her inability to pay up to Arlong and then-
“Arlong made an example of Bell-mére and killed her and when he discovered my innate ability to draw maps he kidnapped me, forcing me into a small room that became mine where I drew until my hands bled for many, many years until he made me an offer. He told me that if I could collect 100,000,000 belli he would free my village and I, being the fool, believed him.”
It had been a mocking offer, something for her to cling to between the months where he locked her up – stuck with nothing but four walls and piles upon pills of papers and notebooks.
“Luffy saved me,” she tells Law, eyes softening. “Arlong had the highest bounty in East Blue at that time and here was this stubborn foolish kid and all he needed to hear was me asking for his help to put his life on the line and free me, destroying the room that had become my prison and everything inside of it."
She had thought it impossible – had resented him, this foolish pirate-to-be with dreams too big for his head.
And yet, here they were – Luffy deep asleep below deck, climbing every closer to fulfil his dream and she had become more than she had ever thought possible, no longer than lost girl scrambling to survive.
She wraps her hand over her tattoo – feeling the raised scar against her palm where she’d slammed the knife in, picturing the pinwheel and tangerine perfectly in her minds-eye.
“Bell-mére told me that ‘If you can survive, then happy times will come… lots and lots of them… will come your way’ and Luffy proved to me that she was right. I would not be here if it weren’t for them – I am free, because of them.”
There’s a complicated sort of emotion in Law’s eyes as he considers her, something murky and familiar for she had worn those eyes too, once, had seen them reflected back at her in the mirror where she could barely stand the sight of herself.
“Why are you telling me this, Nami-ya?” he asks, something like yearning flickering and then disappearing behind a long-crafted mask.
She gives him a small smile. “Believe in him,” she says, pressing the last mikan into his hand, his fingers curling instinctively around the piece, and Nami drops down, sliding easily down the rope and landing softly on the grassy deck.
-
Law stares at the piece of fruit for a long while, the tangy freshness lingering on his tongue long after he’d finished his half off, his mind circling through the story of the Navigator.
His mouth gives a little twitch, head tilting up to watch the sky with a flick of his thumb and a snag of his teeth as he catches and bites down on it.
Hey Law... I love you.
Nothing and no one will stop you. You are free now.
“Believe in him, huh?” he repeats, closing his eyes.