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Nami wakes up strapped to a table, with no memory of how she got there.
The table is cold against her back, and her hands are bound uncomfortably over her head. She’s sore all over, and she has a headache.
They were ambushed at sea, she remembers, a battleship appearing from the fog so suddenly it was as if it materialized out of nothing. She doesn’t remember anything after that.
She was captured, then.
There are people in the room, two humanoid figures with lab coats and face masks, neither looking at her.
“Oy, assholes,” she says, and then she coughs. Her throat is sore, like she’s been screaming, but she has no memory of that either.
One of the figures turns towards her. “Oh, you’re awake,” it says with a masculine voice. He walks over and gives her a clinical look-over. “Cat Burglar Nami, of the Straw-Hat Pirates, yes?”
She settles for glaring at him, still coughing. She tugs at the bindings on her wrists but stops immediately when they scream in pain. Her skin is rubbed raw, and it feels like she’s opened wounds on them. Something warm trickles down her arm.
“Mm, yes, better not do that,” the figure says. “We don’t want that to get infected. Now, I have a few questions for you.”
“Huh,” she says, and turns her head away scornfully. “Do what you want, I won’t be staying long.”
“No?” She can’t see his face, but he sounds like he’s smirking.
“If you think my captain will stand for this for a moment, you’re sorely mistaken,” she tells him.
“Oh, but Nami, he already has,” he says, and he’s definitely grinning now. “I know you don’t remember, but you’ve already been here a week.”
“What,” she says. “What?”
“I’m sorry to tell you, but it seems you’ve been abandoned,” he says, not sounding sorry at all.
She doesn’t deign to answer that, just scowls at him as he reaches over her head to adjust some tubing of some sort. It’s attached to her arm, she notices. “What’s that.”
“Oh, this? Nothing you need to worry yourself about. Now, I need you to tell me some things about this captain of yours.”
No matter what he wants, she’s not about to give it to him. “Fuck you,” she says.
He doesn’t look fazed, just shrugs and walks over to a cabinet. “Fair enough. I’ll see you tomorrow, then, Nami.”
He gets a syringe from a drawer, and walks back to set it into one of the tubes attached to her.
“Hey, what the fuck?” she says. “What… the….”
The world goes dark.
---
Nami wakes up in chains, with no memory of how she got there.
The room is dark, but she can see just barely. It looks clean, for a prison cell, but it’s cold and the floor is hard and her arms are tied behind her back. She’s sore all over and she has a headache. Her wrists are aching especially bad.
They were ambushed at sea, she remembers, a battleship appearing from the fog so suddenly it was as if it materialized out of nothing. She doesn’t remember anything after that.
She was captured, then.
There’s someone else in the room with her, sitting against the opposite wall and not moving. Cellmate?
Nami shifts, trying to sit up on the floor, and winces as the heavy manacles dig into her raw wrists.
The clinking of chains seems to alert the other person, because they raise their head and say in the voice of a young woman, “Hello? Oh, you’re awake.”
“Hi,” Nami says, voice strained and surprisingly hoarse, like she’s been screaming. She coughs a few times, which doesn’t help her throat or her headache. “Where’s this?”
Her cellmate shrugs. “Some island somewhere. I’m sorry, I don’t… really know. I’ve been here a while, but they don’t talk to me.”
“Who’re they? And who’re you?” Nami asks.
“I’m Leysa,” she says. “I’m a pirate, like you, I’m guessing. Or, I was. I don’t know who they are, but they make drugs, and they test them on the pirates they capture before they turn them in for the bounty. I’m only still here because I don’t have one.”
Fuck.
“I do,” Nami says.
“Then… I’m sorry. They’ll probably test things on you until you’re useless to them, then hand you in. That’s what happened to my last cellmate.”
Fuck, what’s this? Caesar all over again?
“Shit,” Nami says.
“Yeah,” Leysa agrees.
Nami takes a deep breath to calm herself, trying to ignore the pain from wounds she can’t remember getting. What the hell has happened to her since she was captured? Just moving hurts like hell.
“I’ll just have to wait for my crew. Luffy will come to find me, for sure.”
“Haah, I wish I could say the same,” Leysa says. “As far as I know, my crew just left me. How can you be so sure?”
“He’s Luffy,” Nami says. “He’ll always come.”
“It’s good to have something to believe in, I guess,” Leysa says. “How long’ve you been here?”
“A few hours, maybe?” Nami says. “Maybe a day. I just woke up now. I was on the ship before this.”
“That’s… weird,” Leysa says, and then she doesn’t say anything else.
The floor is hard, and after shifting around unsuccessfully trying to find a comfortable position, Nami clambers to her feet. Her legs hurt, and she’s barefoot. Her ankles feel bruised, like they were bound too at some point. Every step she takes around the cell jostles her bleeding wrists.
She ends up standing by the cell’s only window, watching the sky outside slowly lighten from black to blue.
She’s freezing and in pain, head throbbing and throat like sandpaper. Hopefully she’ll get something to drink soon. And eat. She’s starting to get hungry.
The horizon outside is empty. She can’t help but worry about her crew. Are they on the island, or are they somewhere out there on the sea? They might get lost without her, so she hopes they’re on the island.
Then again, they have Jimbei with them now. He’s not her, but he’s a decent enough navigator that he should be able to get them to land with no big trouble.
Behind her is the sound of clinking chains, and she turns to see a young woman stand up from the floor, careful about her own chained hands.
Nami didn’t know she wasn’t alone.
“Who’re you?” she asks.
The woman freezes. She meets Nami’s eyes, and her own widen in horror for no reason Nami can fathom.
“Oh,” she says. “Oh no.”
---
Nami wakes up strapped to a table, with no memory of how she got there.
The table is cold against her back, and her hands are bound over her head in a way that makes her wrists burn with pain that reverberates down her arms. She’s sore all over, and her head hurts bad, probably from dehydration, judging by the state of her throat.
They were ambushed at sea, she remembers, a battleship appearing from the fog so suddenly it was as if it materialized out of nothing. She doesn’t remember anything after that.
She was captured, then.
What the hell happened to her while she was out?
A figure stands by her bedside, dressed in a lab coat and a face mask. “Good to see you awake,” he says.
“Who the fuck are you?” she says. Or rather, whispers, her throat too dry to make proper sound.
“It’s okay, I’m a doctor,” he says. “Let me help you up.”
He does something to her bed which makes her sit up. The movement jostles her wrists, and she shouts in pain, which makes her throat hurt more.
“Whoops, sorry,” he says.
She’s pretty sure he’s not actually sorry.
“You with the marines?” she asks, glaring at him.
“What, me? Of course not,” he says. “I’m an independent actor. Here, I’m sure you’re thirsty.”
He holds a glass of water to her lips.
She’s drinking before her mind catches up with her. For all she knows, it’s poison.
On the other hand, if he wanted her dead, there’d be nothing she could do to stop him, and the water feels like life in liquid form as she swallows it.
“There, that better?” he asks.
“Fuck you,” she says, voice still raspy.
“You’re not very grateful, are you?”
“Who are you, and where the fuck’s my crew?”
“See, that’s the issue.” He sits down at the edge of her bed, leaning his elbows on his knees and folding his hands. “I don’t know where your crew is. I was hoping you could help me with that.”
She narrows her eyes at him. “Why would I help you? You have me tied up.”
“Oh, Nami. I’m sorry, we didn’t have a choice.” He sounds sympathetic, but she’s pretty sure it’s a lie. “You’re having memory issues. You keep forgetting where you are and trying to run away. I promise I’m your friend.”
Fat chance, with the kind of pain she’s in.
“We’re trying to locate your crew, so they could help figure out what’s wrong with you. We were hoping you had a vivre card on you or something, but no luck.”
Oh thank fucking god she left her vivre card in her other skirt.
“I wouldn’t worry,” she says. “They’ll find me soon enough, and if you’re lying, you’ll be sorry.”
“Nami…” His shoulders slump. “Memory issues, I told you. You’ve been here twelve days already. I’m afraid we don’t have that kind of time.”
“I… what? Twelve days?”
“Yes, so if there’s anything you could tell us to help find your crew?”
“No,” she says. “I don’t trust you.”
He’s lying. He must be lying. She was just on the Sunny this morning.
Except twelve days of pain sounds about right for what her arms feel like, fire burning through her veins and pins and needles prickling at her fingers.
“Very well,” he says, sighing in disappointment. Then he stands up and makes to walk away. “I’ll come back in fifteen minutes and we’ll try again. What do you think?”
Twelve days. They better find her soon.
---
Nami wakes up in chains, with no memory of how she got there.
She’s in a prison cell. It looks clean, for what it is, but it’s cold and the floor is hard, and her arms are tied behind her back. They burn like they’re on fire, far too hot to be good, and she can barely feel her fingers. There’s bruises around her ankles like they were bound too.
They were ambushed at sea, she remembers, a battleship appearing from the fog so suddenly it was as if it materialized out of nothing. She doesn’t remember anything after that.
She was captured, then.
She struggles into a sitting position, whimpering at the pain that flares every time she even thinks about her arms. Tears roll down her face, but there’s no one around to see her cry.
Did the bastards break her wrists? What happened? Where’s the crew?
What is this place? How did she get here?
Why do her arms hurt so much?
How long until Luffy gets to her?
---
Nami doesn’t know how long she’s been in this cell. She doesn’t remember getting here.
It’s hard to think past the pain in her arms, and there’s nothing to distract herself with other than the empty horizon outside her barred window.
She was captured, then. By the marines, probably, though the battleship didn’t actually look like a marine ship. Bounty hunters, maybe?
Either way, the crew should be able to find her.
Footsteps sound from outside her cell, and suddenly three people show up outside the bars of her cage, two men with masks carrying an unconscious, chained woman.
“Hey, who are you? Where am I?” she demands.
They don’t give her any answers. One of them points a gun to urge her away from the bars while the other unlocks the door.
Nami considers trying to force her way past them anyway, but discards the idea. It’d be suicide, with them armed and her this badly injured.
They toss the unconscious woman through the door, and then leave, locking the cell behind them.
---
Nami doesn’t know how long she’s been in this cell. She doesn’t remember getting here.
It’s hard to think past the pain in her arms, and there’s nothing to distract herself with other than the window and the unconscious woman on the floor.
At least Nami thinks she’s unconscious. Hopefully she’s not sharing a cell with a corpse.
She would’ve known, though, wouldn’t she? Why hasn’t she checked for a pulse yet?
Luckily, she only needs to take a step towards the woman before she stirs, starting to wake up.
The woman groans.
Nami gets on her knees beside her. “Hey, you, are you okay?”
The woman blinks bloodshot eyes open. She looks sick, but not dead. “Nami?”
“…Do you know me?” Nami asks.
The woman groans again. “Yes, sorta. I’m sorry for leaving you alone.”
“What do you mean, sorta? Who are you? What is this place?”
The woman doesn’t answer immediately, just looks at Nami with sad eyes. “I’m really tired, Nami. I was just in for my session.”
“Session?”
The woman sighs deeply. Then she says in a lower voice, “Help me up, and I’ll explain.”
It’s hard to help her with both their arms tied to their backs, and when Nami’s in this much pain, but they manage.
Then the woman takes a deep breath, like she’s starting a practiced speech, and says, “I’m Leysa, we’ve been cellmates for a week but I think you’d been here a while before that. This place captures pirates and tests drugs on them, which is what they were just doing to me, and they’re testing something on you that makes you forget everything all the time, which is why you don’t remember.”
“Shit,” Nami says.
“Yeah,” Leysa says.
“You’ve told me that before, haven’t you?”
“Every hour or so.”
Leysa looks about ready to faint from exhaustion.
“Sorry,” Nami says.
“Not your fault.”
“How long have you….”
“Months,” Leysa answers before she can even ask. “I think my crew just left me here.”
“Shit,” Nami says. “I swear, when Luffy gets here, we’ll get you out too.”
Leysa looks at her for a long time. “You know, your optimism is almost starting to get annoying.”
“That’s just what we’re like,” Nami says, trying for cheer. She also tries to shrug, and then has to bite back a sob as the manacles dig into what’s left of her wrists.
“Yeah, I’ve understood that,” Leysa breathes, closing her eyes and leaning back against the wall. “Hey, I’m going back to sleep. Don’t wake me up, alright?”
“I’ll try to remember,” Nami says.
Leysa lies back down and goes still.
Right.
Don’t wake Leysa, she tells herself, keeping it at the front of her mind. Don’t wake Leysa. Don’t wake Leysa. Don’t wake Leysa.
…Who’s Leysa?
---
Nami wakes up strapped to a table, with no memory of how she got there.
She’s burning. Her arms are mostly pins and needles where she can feel them at all, and the rest is searing pain. Breathing hurts. Her head’s swimming.
There was an ambush, fog, a battleship out of nowhere, she can barely recall through the pain. All blank after that.
She was captured, then.
Did they shatter her hands with a hammer or something? She feels like she’s dying.
A person in a lab coat and a face mask walks up to her. “Good to see you’re awake.”
“Go die,” she says, voice raspy. “My captain will send your ass flying for this.”
The man huffs. “Alright, I can tell you’re not going to be cooperative today. In that case, I have more important things to do.”
He does something above her head, and the world blanks out.
---
“Hey, assholes!”
Nami wakes up in chains, to the sound of an unfamiliar voice yelling and of someone kicking a metal bar.
She’s burning and freezing at once, and the world is spinning. There’s pain like she’s on fire and there’s too much noise. She thinks she’s dying.
“Fuckers! Get your asses over here! She’s running a fever, dammit! You leave her here she’ll die! Hey, are you hearing me?! She’s no use to you dead, so you better hurry the fuck up!”
Bang, bang, bang, goes the sound of kicking.
Then it stops, and short footsteps approach.
An unfamiliar woman with bloodshot eyes and her arms behind her back carefully settles on her knees on the floor beside Nami.
“Hold on,” she says. “You’ll be fine, just hold on, alright? Don’t die on me here, Nami.”
“Who…?” Nami manages.
“A friend. Don’t worry about it,” the woman says. “Just stay alive, okay? Luffy can’t get to you unless you stay alive, so stay with me, you hear me?”
“Where’s… Where’s Luffy?”
“He’s coming, I’m sure. Just keep breathing, alright? Breathe with me. Come on, hold on. Breathe.”
Footsteps approach. A key turns in a lock.
The world goes red from pain, then black.
---
Nami wakes up tied to a bed, with no memory of how she got there.
Her arms are bandaged and tied to the bedframe at her sides. They ache with a deep pain, and she can barely feel her hands. It looks like a hospital bed, much cheaper than the one in Chopper’s infirmary.
They were ambushed at sea, she remembers, a battleship appearing from the fog so suddenly it was as if it materialized out of nothing. She doesn’t remember anything after that.
She was captured, then.
And injured? And for some reason they’re patching her up.
Maybe they’re bounty hunters, trying to keep her alive to cash in on the entire bounty.
“You gave us quite the scare,” a masculine voice says, and a figure dressed in a face mask and a lab coat walks in.
She glares at him. No matter who he is, it’s probably deserved.
“It’s on us, really. We should’ve noticed you were getting your wounds infected. On the other hand, I told you ages ago to stop pulling at your manacles.”
“Are you bounty hunters?” she asks. “Because that won’t go well for you, you know.”
He laughs. “Oh no, what we do is much more lucrative than that.”
He stops at her bed and looks over some of the instruments attached to her with a practiced eye.
“You can understand that, can’t you, Cat Burglar? Money makes the world go ‘round, after all, and there’s nothing there’s so much money in as people’s lives.”
“Ransom?” she asks, squinting. She knows that anyone demanding a ransom from her crew would find themselves beaten to a pulp, but they might not.
“Much better than that,” he says, tapping a finger on the bag of fluids hooked up to her system. “Medicine. Drugs. Whatever we can make that people are willing to buy. Keeping you alive was quite the struggle. You were in and out for days, but luckily we’re very good.”
Not half as good as Chopper, she’s sure.
“And you can’t even afford painkillers?” she asks, nodding to her wrecked arms.
He laughs. “No, it’d interact with the other things we have you on, I’m afraid. And I don’t really care if you’re in pain, as long as you’re breathing.”
“Luffy is going to send your ass flying,” she promises him.
“So you’ve said,” he says, sounding almost amused. “But sooner or later you’ll get it, sweetheart, and then forget again of course. You’ve been here almost three weeks. They’re not coming.”
She stares at him. Three weeks? What?
“Even if you’re telling the truth,” she says slowly. “Luffy will come, and he’ll be angry.”
“Is that supposed to scare me?”
“He’s an emperor for a reason.”
“You and I both know the media was exaggerating about that.”
Maybe at the time, Nami thinks, but these days? Not so much.
“You willing to bet your life on that?” she asks. “Because he’ll come, and he’ll destroy every single thing you’ve done. Everything you own, everything you’ve worked for, he’ll find, and he’ll ruin.”
“You really have that much faith in him, do you,” the man says. “You think he’ll go through hell itself, fight his way to a place like this, just for little old you? What, because you’re pretty?”
“No,” she says. “Because he’s Luffy.”
The man huffs and walks away without another word.
Nami lies there, through no choice of her own, looking at her hands. She tries clenching her fingers, but they barely respond, and all she gets is pain for her trouble.
Three weeks?
Luffy, where are you?
---
Nami wakes up in chains, with no memory of how she got there.
She’s in a prison cell. It’s cold and the floor is hard, and her arms are tied behind her back. They’re aching with a dull but heavy pain, and tied oddly, not around the wrists like they’d normally be.
They were ambushed at sea, she remembers, a battleship appearing from the fog so suddenly it was as if it materialized out of nothing. She doesn’t remember anything after that.
She was captured, then.
Someone stumbles to her side the moment she moves.
“N-Nami!” a feminine voice says. “You’r-re oka-ay?”
Nami looks up to see an unfamiliar woman, looking very concerned. She’s shivering hard.
“Do you know me?”
The woman laughs. It’s shaking, but relieved. The woman also has her arms tied behind her back, so they’re probably cellmates.
“Yh-Yeah, sorta. I w-was so wo-rried ‘bout you-u. Scared you’d-d-die.”
“Why… What’s going on?”
Nami struggles into a sitting position, helped a little by the woman offering her a shoulder, and the woman gives her a shaky smile.
Then she takes a breath like she’s starting a practiced speech and says, “I’m-m Leysa. We’h-ve been cellm-mates for… t-two weeks but I th- I think-k you’d been h-re a whil-le. They cap-capture p-pi-pirates ’n test drugs ’n such o-on’em, ‘nd th-ey g-gave somth-thin’ t’you that m-m-makes you for-rget.”
“Forget?”
“Ev’ry f-fifteen minut-es ish.”
“Why’re you shivering?” Nami says. “Are you cold? Are you sick?”
Leysa shakes her head. “No it-t’s side-ffect. Will pass, prob’ly.”
“Shit,” Nami says.
“Yeah,” Leysa says.
Not knowing what to do, Nami bumps into her, puts her head on Leysa’s shoulder. With their arms bound like this, they can’t hug, but this is something.
“It’s gonna be okay,” she swears.
Leysa either laughs or sobs, shivering against her. “Y’got… fever. Thought-t yo-ou’d die. Y’re weird b-but bett-tr th’n being ‘lone.”
“But I’m fine now,” Nami says, though her arms ache and she’s not sure she can feel her fingers. “I’ll live and you’ll live and we’ll be fine. My crew’s probably lost, since they’re missing their navigator, but they’ll come, I promise, and then we’ll get out of here.”
Leysa shakes. “Sos-tupid. Thank y-you. Th-ank you.”
---
Nami doesn’t know how long she’s been in this cell. She doesn’t remember getting here.
She doesn’t know who this woman is, either, or why they’re semi-hugging. She doesn’t know how long they’ve been doing that, but it’s fine. It’s probably fine.
---
Nami wakes up strapped to a table, with no memory of how she got there.
The table is cold against her back, and her arms are bound uncomfortably over her head. She can barely feel her hands, and she’s sore all over.
They were ambushed at sea, she remembers, a battleship appearing from the fog so suddenly it was as if it materialized out of nothing. She doesn’t remember anything after that.
She was captured, then.
There’s someone else in a room. A man wearing a lab coat and a face mask.
“Hey, asshole,” she says. Her voice is raspy, and she’s not sure why. All in all, she feels far more worn out than she should after a single battle.
The man glances up at her before he looks back at the clipboard in his hands, ignoring her.
Weird.
She tries to tug at the bindings on her arms, and then bites back a yelp. It’s not just her hands being numb, something is terribly wrong with her forearms. It feels like there isn’t skin left on them, and she can tell they’re bandaged.
“Oy, asshole!” she says again, thoroughly ticked, now. “Not gonna talk to me?”
The man looks up. “Should I?”
“I don’t know, should you?” she asks.
He stands up and walks over, muttering to himself. “Interesting. Could be the change in condition, or simple coincidence, but the implication is there that you remember I’ve spoken to you before. Means it’s not a hundred percent effective, which is annoying, but it’s already proven to be effective enough, and maybe it means you can be taught.”
“Fucker, who are you? Where am I?”
He ignores her. “Maybe, maybe. It deserves a study, at least. All we need is the incentive to remember.” He jogs over to a cabinet, opens a drawer, and pulls out two paper circles, one blue, and one red. Then he walks back and holds them up. “Red means pain, blue means relief, alright?”
She has a very, very bad feeling about this.
---
Nami wakes up in chains, with no memory of how she got there.
She’s in a prison cell. It’s cold and the floor is hard, and her arms are tied behind her back. They’re aching with a dull but heavy pain, and tied oddly, not around the wrists like they’d normally be. She also feels like she’s been repeatedly punched in the ribs.
They were ambushed at sea, she remembers, a battleship appearing from the fog so suddenly it was as if it materialized out of nothing. She doesn’t remember anything after that.
She was captured, then.
Beaten up pretty bad, too, though she can’t remember it. Did she hit her head?
“H-Hey Nami, oh shi-it your face,” says an unfamiliar, feminine voice.
Right, her face also stings, like she’s been slapped.
She struggles into a sitting position to see a friendly-looking woman she’s never seen before, shivering, also bound. Cellmate? Is she sick?
“Who…?”
“I’m Leysa, we-e’ve been cellmates f-for two’n a hal-lf weeks, but you wer-re here a l’ttle longer. These p-people catch-h pirates and t-test drugs on’em, and they’re test-ting some’thin’ on you that m-makes you forget every fif-fteen mins. S’why you c-can’t r-member me.”
“Shit,” Nami says. “Are you…?”
“Getting’ bett-tter,” Leysa assures her. “Just s-side-effects.”
“Shit,” Nami says again.
“Yeah,” Leysa agrees.
For a while, they just sit there.
Nami wonders if one of her ribs is cracked. It hurts to breathe.
She has no idea what they’ve been doing to her, but her voice hurts like she’s been screaming.
“W-What?” Leysa says after a few minutes. “No p-promise your crew’ll com-me?”
“I figured you’d already heard that,” Nami says.
“Yeah, but… s’fine.”
Two and a half weeks. Probably more. It’s a long time.
Did they let Zoro steer again?
“They will, you know,” Nami says, smiling. “They always come. Through hell and high water, they’ve done it before, and they’ll do it again.”
“And get us-s out?”
“Yeah, I promise,” Nami says. “Me, and you, and anyone else trapped here.”
Though she’s not sure where ‘here’ is, except it’s bad.
“You’re c-crazy,” the woman says. “Good crazy, though.”
---
Nami wakes up strapped to a table, with no memory of how she got there.
The table is cold against her back, and her arms are bound uncomfortably over her head. Her hands are numb, prickling with needles, and everything hurts.
They were ambushed at sea, she remembers, a battleship appearing from the fog so suddenly it was as if it materialized out of nothing. She doesn’t remember anything after that.
She was captured, then.
“Ah, you’re awake,” a man’s voice says.
A red circle is held up in front of her, and something inside her flinches.
“A reaction! Fantastic,” the man says, and punches her in the face.
“Motherfucker!” she yells, voice hoarse to the point of pain. “What the hell?”
The man is muttering and writing something on a clipboard.
She spits blood in his face.
“Ugh, yes, yes,” he says, turning around to take off his bloody face mask.
“My crew will tear you to pieces,” she snarls.
“It’s been a month, Nami,” he says, fastening a new mask into place. “They’re not coming.”
One of her teeth is loose. Asshole.
Wait, a month?
“You’re going to die,” she tells him. “I don’t know what you did, but you’re going to die.”
“Yes, yes,” he says, and holds up the red circle again.
---
Nami doesn’t know how long she’s been in this cell. She doesn’t remember getting here.
Her arms hurt, her ribs hurt, and so does her face. She’s lost a tooth at some point, and she can’t remember when. It must’ve happened while she was unconscious.
The horizon outside the window is empty, wide and calm as far as the eyes can see. Her ship should be coming soon. They’ve left her waiting.
“Hey, Nami? Tell me about Luffy.”
The voice surprises her. She didn’t know she wasn’t alone.
“Who are you?” she asks the woman sitting behind her.
“Leysa, but don’t w-worry about it. Tell me about Luffy.”
“Why?” she asks.
For all she knows, this Leysa could be a marine spy of some sort.
On the other hand, something about her makes Nami think she isn’t, makes Nami want to trust her.
“Because you’ve been her-re over a month, and even wh-when you remember that, you’re still so sure he’ll come. I want to know what he’s done to d-deserve that kind of faith.”
“A month?”
“I’ll explain later,” Leysa says. “Just… please, tell me about your captain. Straw-Hat Luffy, r-right?”
Nami blinks a few times. She has no idea whatsoever what’s going on.
But she has the time to figure it out. Clumsily, she walks over to sit down in front of Leysa.
“He’s an idiot,” she says. “He’s selfish and ridiculous, and he’s the man who’s going to be the pirate king.”
“Just like that, huh?” Leysa says. She sounds sceptical.
Nami can’t help but smile. “You haven’t met him,” she says. “I promise, when you do… he’s something else. It’s like fate itself listens to him. It doesn’t matter if you tell him something is impossible. The thought that Luffy would be unsuccessful is what’s impossible.”
“Just k-kinda sounds like you’re blindly in love with him,” Leysa says.
Nami laughs. “Hell no. He’s my captain. He’s our saviour and guiding star, but he’s an idiot. I like girls, anyway.”
“Huh, didn’t-t know that.”
Nami shrugs. Gods do her shoulders hurt. “It’s not something I tell people.” For some reason she trusts Leysa with it. She’s not sure why.
“…Whatever,” Leysa decides after a moment. “It’s still crazy h-how much-ch you trust this guy.”
“I told you, you haven’t met him. You’ll see.”
“It’s-s-still been a month, and he h-hasn’t come,” Leysa retorts.
Again, a month?
That’s insane. Impossible.
And yet, her hair is longer than she remembers. She’s missing a tooth. Everything hurts.
“Well, he’s a moron,” she says. “He probably let Zoro steer, but they’ll come. They always do.”
---
“Even if they were trying to find you, which they aren’t anymore, if they even ever were, they wouldn’t make it.”
Nami’s strapped to a table. It’s cold and hard and everything hurts. Her shoulders are screaming from the awkward position, and her hands are entirely numb.
She’s listening to some asshole in a lab coat talk, because she doesn’t have the choice to kick him unconscious with her legs bound like this. She can’t remember how she got here.
“We’re half a mile into the Calm Belt, the log doesn’t react to this island, and we’re not on any map. No one knows where we are and we’re protected by sea kings at all corners. Face it, they just won’t come.”
“Keep dreaming,” she tells him.
There’s blood in her mouth. Is she missing a tooth? She is, the bastard.
“I swear, this is more annoying than I thought it’d be,” the man mutters.
She resolves to be as annoying as she possibly can from here on out.
---
Nami doesn’t know how long she’s been in this cell. She doesn’t remember getting here.
She doesn’t remember the woman she’s talking to, either. The woman who currently has her head in Nami’s lap.
Whoever she is, she looks terrible, skin flaking off in white sheets and eyes red and unfocused.
Nami’s talking about Alabasta, and she doesn’t remember when she started doing that, isn’t even sure what she’s said this far.
“Uh, did I tell you about Pell?” she asks.
“Yeah, he died,” the woman says. She’s shaking just a little. “He f-flew a bomb into the sky and-d-died.”
“I think he survived, actually,” Nami says. “Don’t know how, but I’ve seen him in the papers, later, just behind Vivi.”
“That’s crazy.”
“It’s just a miracle. It happens.”
The woman snorts a laugh. “Yeah, tha-at’d be nice. You were talking about Luffy, and Cr-Crocodile.”
“Ah, okay. Well, they fought, and Croc won, of course. He was so much stronger, but Luffy is Luffy. He doesn’t die, you know? You can kill him, and he still won’t die. If he wants something to happen, it’ll happen, and he wanted to win.”
“I don’t t-think that’s how it works,” the woman whispers.
“It is for Luffy,” Nami says. “It is for us.”
---
Nami wakes up in chains, with no memory of how she got there.
She wakes up in a prison cell, on a cold and hard floor, with her arms wrenched behind her back and every part of her body in pain.
She wakes up to the most wonderful sound in the world.
“What was that?” a voice says, and a woman Nami has never seen before stands up and looks around in fear and confusion. She looks like she shouldn’t be on her feet at all.
“A Coup de Burst,” Nami says. “Specifically, the ship landing after one.”
“Nami, wh-what the hell,” the woman says.
“I’m sorry, do I know you?”
“I’m Leysa, forget that. What do you m-mean the ship landing?”
“I mean our ship just fell out of the sky,” Nami says.
“What the fuck?”
“Yeah, that’s normal.”
“What the fuck.” Leysa falls to her knees, looking entirely shocked. “Your crew actually came t-to get you. What the fuck.”
“Well yeah,” Nami says. “Of course.”
“Naaaaaaamiiiiiiiiiii!” comes Luffy’s voice from somewhere outside, and she smiles.
“They always do.”
“Nami,” Leysa whispers. “It’s been n-nearly two months.”
Which doesn’t make sense.
It doesn’t make sense, but it doesn’t matter, because they’re here now. She can feel them in her bones.
She can’t remember being this tired before. Can’t remember wanting this hard to go home.
Luffy crashes through the hallway, tears the bars on her cage apart with his bare hands, and she cries.
She cries as he hugs her, more gentle than he’s ever been with her, when he curls his fingers around her manacles and shatters them to dust, as she grabs onto him with unresponsive hands and never wants to let go, because she saw him yesterday, but she’s missed him so much.
“Nami,” he says. “Nami, Nami, Nami. You're alive.”
“Of course,” she sobs. “I can’t die. You need me.”
“Yeah, you weren’t kidding,” some woman says in a breath.
Luffy twitches with confusion for a moment. “Who’re you?” he asks.
The woman doesn’t answer immediately.
“I don’t know,” Nami says, but there’s something there, something important. “I don’t know,” she tries again. “But take her home too. I think… I promised.”
“…You remember?” the woman says.
Nami doesn’t answer. It’s not important. Luffy is important, and then Chopper is important, when he comes crashing through in Heavy Point, half-crazed with panic, and then she’s hoisted up into a safe, strong pair of arms, and they’re leaving.
She’s never seen this place before in her life, but it’s torn to pieces, taken apart and methodically destroyed. Among the rubble are people, strewn about and unconscious as if they were simply in the way.
One still figure in a corner is wearing a lab coat, and he looks like he’s been savaged. It stands out oddly, Nami thinks, among these people who’ve just been taken out for the sake of it, that this one has been targeted.
Well, she figures her crew had their reasons.
They’re all here, all looking at her like she’s been missing forever, though really, it hasn’t been that long, has it?
Even Zoro walks up to check on her, uncharacteristically worried, and he doesn’t leave after that to join some fight, he follows her and Chopper all the way back to the Sunny.
She doesn’t remember how they got to this island. They were attacked at sea, weren’t they? But it doesn’t matter. She’s safe, and she’s tired, and before they even reach the ship, she drifts off to sleep.
---
Nami wakes up in the infirmary bed, with no memory of how she got there.
She’s swimming in the haze of painkillers, and her hands are itching. She’s bandaged from top to toe, as far as she can tell, and she thinks she’s missing a tooth.
They were ambushed at sea, she remembers, a battleship appearing from the fog so suddenly it was as if it materialized out of nothing. She doesn’t remember anything after that.
They won, then, and somehow she got injured.
She doesn’t remember what happened. Maybe she got hit on the head?
But she’s in Chopper’s infirmary now, and she can hear him snoozing in his chair just beside her, so no matter what happened, it’s fine.
She rolls her shoulders, which feel unusually stiff, probably painful if not for the painkillers. Then she turns around and goes back to sleep.
---
Nami wakes up for the second time to the morning sun streaming through Chopper’s window. She’s hazy from painkillers still, but she thinks they’re starting to wear off, because she can feel a faint aching pain in her arms.
Her throat is dry, and she’s actually really hungry, but there’s no one else in the room with her.
“Hello?” she tries.
Barely a second later, the door to the deck opens and Chopper comes through. Before the door swings shut, she can hear the sound of her crew just outside.
“Nami!” Chopper says. “How are you feeling?”
He hops onto his chair and rolls right up to her bed.
“My arms hurt,” she tells him. “And I’m really hungry. Is there breakfast?”
“Yeah, of course,” Chopper says, handing her a glass of water. “I just have to give you a little check-up first, alright?”
She nods. The water does wonders for her throat.
“Okay, so what’s the last thing you remember?”
“After the battle?” she asks, taking another sip of water.
“Anything you can remember after that.”
“I don’t actually remember much of the battle itself. I remember the battleship showed up out of nowhere, and then nothing, until I woke up here in the middle of the night.”
“I see,” he says, and he sounds vaguely disappointed but not surprised. Then he twitches. “Wait, the middle of the night? But it’s morning.”
“Yeah?” Nami says. “I fell asleep again afterwards.”
He stares at her. “And you remember that?”
She’s not quite sure how to answer that. Something here is very wrong. “Chopper, is there something wrong with my memory?”
He starts crying. Then he jumps on her, hugging her around the waist and wiping his face on the front of her shirt. “You’re okay! I’m so happy you’re okay! I wasn’t worried at all, you bastard!”
“Chopper, what’s wrong?” she asks, hugging him back.
Her hands itch like hell.
He cries a little more before he manages to pull back. “You were captured. And we couldn’t tell where you went, and then there was a storm, and without you we just had to manage, so we had no idea how to find you. It took us two months just to track you down and everyone’s been out of their minds.”
“Two months!?”
He flinches back. She probably shouldn’t have shouted in his ears, but that’s crazy.
“What do you mean two months? It was yesterday!”
“I know, I know!” He grits his teeth in anger, and that’s not something she sees often. “They had you on drugs. Said they were medical researchers.” He spits the words like venom. “I still don’t know what they had you on, but it inhibited the creation of long-term memories, giving you anterograde amnesia. You basically forgot everything that happened more than fifteen minutes earlier. We got you back three days ago, and I wasn’t… I wasn’t sure it was gonna wear off, even without the drugs.”
“Shit,” she says, hugging him close. “That’s terrifying.”
---
Chopper insists on holding her hand as she walks out of the infirmary. Really, he’s holding her elbow carefully in his own large hand, because her hands are a mess and she still hasn’t seen what’s under her bandages and isn’t sure she wants to.
He wanted to carry her, but she refused. She needs to feel the ship under her feet.
The whole crew is out on the lawn, all doing their own things, but clearly gravitating towards the infirmary door. She also notes a strange woman she’s never seen before, with her own bandaged wrists, standing by the railing and staring out at sea.
Before she can wonder too much, Luffy’s upon her, wrapping his arms around her in a hug. “Nami! Is your head okay again?”
“Ow, Luffy!”
“Sorry!” He pulls back.
“Luffy,” she says. “Yes, I’m okay. And… thank you, for finding me.”
She expects him to laugh and say, ‘Of course!’ …but he doesn’t. He looks at her, deadly serious, and says, “We should’ve come earlier.”
“We’ve been thinking about vivre cards,” says Usopp, and they’re all there now, gathered around her. “For everyone. It’s a bit of a risk if someone finds them, but we think it’s worth it.”
“Yes,” Brook adds. “Even as much as a day alone can be enough to leave one’s heart crying.”
“We would all rather this never happened again,” Robin says.
“Naaaamiiii, goooorgeouuuuus!” comes from a heart-shaped blur in the background. “Are you hungry?”
“Yes, I am,” she says as Zoro blocks the Sanji-blur from throwing itself at her.
They take her to the galley, swarming around her, almost too close for comfort. She loves them, yes, but this is a little much.
“Honestly, guys,” she says. “I’m fine. I’ll be perfectly fine.”
“You are.” Zoro’s hand lands on her shoulder. He meets her eyes with the one he has left, and the weight behind his gaze makes something sink in for her. “We were missing you.”
Two months. They must’ve been terrified.
“I’m home now,” she says.
He smiles at her. Luffy laughs loudly in the background.
Chopper places her carefully into a chair by the table, and she lets them crowd around her. Sanji places food in front of her. Two of Robin’s arms sprout to take the cutlery, since both her own are in slings.
They need her close. She can understand that. She’ll never mind them, as long as they still let her breathe.
She doesn’t remember being away, but somehow, she feels like she’s missed them too.
There is someone here keeping their distance, though. The unfamiliar woman is sitting at the other end of the table, by herself, picking at her food.
Nami catches her eyes, and the woman freezes. She looks like she wants to say something for a moment. Then she glances around at the crew and looks down at her food instead.
Weird, Nami thinks, and goes back to her own.
---
Four days pass, and Chopper lets her go without the slings, though her arms are still rather useless.
The crew has gotten slightly less clingy, too, letting her walk across the deck without anyone following in her footsteps.
The woman is sitting at the front of the ship, as usual, legs through the railing, looking out at sea.
Nami sits down next to her.
“Leysa, right?” she says.
Leysa looks up, startled.
“I asked Usopp,” Nami says. “He says you decided to come with us when all the other prisoners took the battleship out of there.”
“Ah, well, yh-yeah, I did,” Leysa says.
“How are you feeling?”
Leysa lets out a long sigh and falls backwards onto the deck.
“Better? I… Y-Your doctor fixed most of what they did to me. He says there’s neurological dam-mage that he can’t fix, which is why I’m still shaking sometimes, but it’s-s not dangerous. He saved m-my life.”
Nami grins with pride. “Yeah. Chopper’s the best.”
Leysa raises her arms towards the sky. Around her wrists are scars, likely similar to the ones Nami will have once her bandages come off, if not quite as bad.
Nami never learned not to tug at her restraints, and that apparently made all the difference.
“I never thought I’d get out,” Leysa says, voice hoarse. “I n-never….” She drops her wrists over her eyes.
Nami puts a hand on her elbow and waits for the tears to stop.
“How… How about you?” Leysa asks, eventually.
Nami looks at her hands. Curls her fingers carefully. It hurts, but they respond.
“I might always lack some sensation, but Chopper says he thinks I’ll regain full mobility. Otherwise I’m fine. Not even any memory blips after the first day.”
“That’s fantastic.”
“Mhm.” Nami looks at Leysa, at this woman who knows her, has known her for weeks, and yet is a stranger. “Chopper said you wanted to stay until my memory recovered.”
Leysa hesitates, then nods.
“You’ve been avoiding me.”
After several long moments of silence, Leysa sits up.
She doesn’t look at Nami, looks out, instead, towards the sea.
“I thought… it’d be fine. I’m used to you n-not remembering me, but it’s different here. You’re home. You don’t need me.”
“Oh,” Nami says. “You’ve been taking care of me.”
Leysa shakes her head. “We took care of each other.”
“You’ve been taking care of me,” Nami repeats. “And I don’t even remember. I’m sorry.”
“You saved… everything,” Leysa says, gesturing out to indicate the whole ship. “It’s-s fine.”
“It’s not a game, Leysa. It’s not a balance to keep. You’ve been taking care of me. We’re friends, and I forgot. I’m sorry.”
Leysa’s eyes shine with unshed tears and hope. The kind of hope that hurts, somewhere deep inside. “Oh,” she says, and looks down at the hands in her lap.
Nami bumps their shoulders together amiably.
“Say,” she says after a while. “What was it you wanted to say to me, anyway?”
“Just….” Leysa looks up, looks back, at the crew sunning themselves on the deck, at Luffy scaling the mast with a grin. “Just that you were right. You were right all along.”
“Oh?”
“Miracles do happen.”