Archive of Our Own

You know the wind is sky moving. It happens all the time.
Marie Howe

First: a storm. She remembered none of it but knew the story by heart, having begged on her mother’s knee to hear it again, and again, and again. Tell us, tell us: nothing else was left? We were the only three still standing? You rode that wind through rain and sea and red-hot fever to take us with you all the way home? And how it cleared in the morning to give way to gentleness, sky aloft through the billow of curtains in a breeze. Then a pinwheel, stirring laughter. Summers blown blue and wide. The whispers of the branches overhead as they chased each other through the mikan trees, leaves tickling their shoulders like uncut hair. All the while the wind still bringing in everything anew, the rising tides and the salty ocean spray and the black-painted sails in the distance, closing in. 

After that nothing much moved at all. 

Her new room boasted a sturdy desk she didn’t have to share with anyone else. No more fighting over the inkwell, elbowing each other for space, keeping the line of her quill steady on paper over the crude letters notched long ago by children into the wood: NOJIKO AND NAMI WERE HERE! Shelves caged her in on all sides, laden with all the books on mapmaking and marine navigation she would never again have to steal from the store. And the view from the window was the biggest luxury of all, its arch an unblinking eye, overlooking the shoreline and everything that lay beyond it.

Night after night she would trace that view in her mind as she watched the breaking of the waves and waited for something to arrive. At first she envisioned a grand naval fleet, cannons firing with the righteous fanfare of trumpets, the same flag signalling rescue her mother once flew. Then, when their ships sank one after another into the sea until they gave up on coming at all, her imagination turned on itself. She’d take anything: the wrath of a storm, a beast, even other pirates—another pack of wolves to tear apart the same hollow bone. Anything, so long as the winds changed shape and direction just enough for her to slip through the gap of a new opening, an escape.

Eventually she came to know the topography of that empty horizon better than any map. 

The window was fixed and did not open. Sometimes, when she pressed her palm against the sun-warmed glass, it burned.

There were tricks to not being seen, as a thief. It wasn’t about being quiet, but knowing when to be loud. She was good at that—kicking up a fuss, tuning her voice to a victim’s helpless shrill, finger pointed in the direction of the real danger. How fast the disappearing act worked then! It all depended on the reading of the weather. Scenting change in the air, and turning face to follow it: a civilian’s girlish innocence, a marine’s starched white uniform, a pirate’s emblem carved deep into skin. Jettisoning people and places like so much useless cargo. How to surrender everything but that last patch of grove in the heart. What lay buried there among the mikan trees.

After, the townspeople would pretend not to see her on her rare visits to the village. Her footsteps rang out against the path, announcing the interloper passing through. They would hear her coming and clear out by the time she arrived. If she raised a hand to wave at a straggler or a nosy neighbour peeking through the window, she received no response but a hastily averted gaze, a dropped curtain. She did it anyway for the sick relief that these reactions proved the opposite: they could still see her, they knew who she was and where she was from. What she’d done. 

Only Nojiko never once looked away. Her gaze itched at Nami’s skin as they sat in the orchard, shoulder to shoulder. The line of her mouth indifferent as it puffed at a cigarette. A nasty new habit—Nami had recoiled the first time she returned to see a silhouette lit by a glowing red ember in the window of Bell-mère’s house. Heartbeat a flurry in her chest, falling, falling.

“Stop it,” Nami said.

Nojiko flicked the ash from the end of her cigarette. Who had taught her to do such a thing? Just what was it she was looking at—another inch grown uneven at the ends of Nami’s hair? The bruise on her chin from a newly penniless pirate’s fist? The only mark of inheritance to which she could lay claim: not a set of smoker’s lungs but the fishhook gouged in her skin?

“Don’t look at it,” Nami said. Her hand crawled up her arm to cover her bare shoulder. 

“Nami,” Nojiko said.

“Don’t.”

“Nami.”

“It’s ugly.”

Nojiko’s hand closed over Nami’s own, nails still raking into skin. She pried it away from Nami’s shoulder, turned it palm-up, placed a mikan into it.

“They’re sweet this year,” Nojiko said. Her breath smelled of smoke.

The mikan sat in Nami’s palm, its reliable stonelike weight. She split into the peel with the nail of her thumb and began to pull it apart. If her process was slower than usual, with bandaged fingers and trembling hands, Nojiko surely saw, but didn’t comment.

Slivers of yellow wedged under her nails. Nami dropped a mikan slice into her mouth, then another. The summer had sweltered, its rains grudging and late. The fruit was tart. Pith stringy and bitter. The acrid sting of cigarette smoke clung to them both.

“Yeah,” she said, mouth full. “Tastes good.”

Not being seen meant being the one watching. She spied on the pirates even as she stood in their ranks, careful never to let on the keenness of her gaze. They had to have a tell—some measure of what bound them together, more than just lawless cruelty, violence for violence’s sake. Somewhere to stick the knife. What she learned instead: so this was how those who called themselves pirates got to live. How they lied and stole and took whatever they pleased. She’d do better, she thought, and beat them at their own game. Look how greedy I can be: heart a bottomless pit. I’ll pay any price you set. You know nothing about the depth of my want. 

“Oh!” said Luffy, turning in his tracks as though he’d just remembered, gummy smile still glued to his face. “Does this mean you’ll join our crew now?”

Nami huffed out a breath, blew at the wayward curl of hair that always untucked itself from behind her ear. Buying herself time. Like she hadn’t already handed over the more valuable thing, the key to the next world clutched tight in his fist. A debt repaid. Rationalizing it that way so she wouldn’t have to weigh up the truth of her own want: to feed the fire that so shamelessly burned. That big old grin. For once, to watch someone else get exactly what they were asking for.

Anyway, some of all that dumb luck would have to rub off onto her, right? Fortune was what she followed, whichever way the wind blew. She smiled back, just as big, just as bright.

Still, fair warning: “I’m only teaming up with you for now, remember that!”

Luffy’s grin only widened, rubberlike as the rest of him. “Yeah!”  

See? Easy pickings. 

It was the other one who worried her, if just for a moment. The slant of Roronoa Zoro’s stare, sizing her up. Well, she could do that right back. What was a notorious bounty hunter doing here, bleeding out for a pirate? What price had been pledged? Was it worth it? Then the moment lapsed and he spilled back onto the ground with a groan, face blunted by pain. Sharpness gone in the lift of a blade from her neck. She shivered in the shadow of what had passed her by.

But later, running through the village past all the empty houses where people once lived, Nami watched Zoro slump boneless over his captain’s shoulder, eyes closed, expression tamed into something almost peaceable. She reevaluated: maybe he had simply seen the same thing as her. A man split into parts, sinking out of sight into the distant blue sky. The devotion of a starved dog. Against all helplessness and threat of harm, an entire town rallying to rescue one of their own. Soon the people would open the windows of their houses, air out the rooms, sweep the dust from the front porches. Reclaiming the place they called their home. Meanwhile, she would sail away with company to embark upon their next adventure. What more miracles to witness there.

Up ahead—the slap of sandals against cobblestones. Luffy, rounding the corner and disappearing fast. They’d left her holding all the treasure. It still wasn’t too late. She could give them the slip, steal away with her hard-earned winnings. Pore over the days left in her final tally like gold.

Nami hoisted the bags higher and ran faster, arms aching, heart pumping.

“Wait up, you idiot,” she called. Ribs sore in her chest. For some reason she couldn’t quite catch her breath.

“Let me get this straight.”

The sun: noon-high. The sea: blue as far as the eye could see, too late to turn back. The damages: Zoro’s wounds, the bleeding stopped, bandages freshly changed. Three cuts torn clean from the straw of Luffy’s hat, patched by Nami with needle and thread. Five million beli, the total halved by Luffy’s careless gesture at the docks, like it had meant nothing to him to leave behind.

Nami took in a deep breath.

“A proper ship,” she began.

Crunch. Luffy bit into an apple. 

“A real crew.” 

Zoro was leant back against the side of the boat, arms crossed, eyes shut. Dead to the world. 

“Navigation equipment.” She was really getting into it now. “Repair tools. Balanced rations. Medical kits. Emergency supplies. Money! Treasure! Not even a life buoy to toss out to someone drowning at sea!”

In the time it took for her to say it, the apple in Luffy’s hand was reduced to a core.

She sighed. “I thought you guys were pirates. You don’t have anything at all!”

Luffy chewed. Swallowed. Tossed the core over the side of the boat.

“What are you talking about?” he said, brow furrowed. “We have a crew.”

Nami resisted the urge to bang her head against the mast. “Is that all you got out of what I said?!”

“Food would be good,” Zoro said, having deigned to crack open an eye. “And booze.”

“Yeah! Meat!” Luffy cheered.

“Meat?” Nami folded her arms across her chest. “Well, you’re not touching my treasure, so how are you going to buy meat without any money? Who’s going to cook it? Where will you store it?”

“Aw, I dunno,” Luffy said. He brightened. “I’ll just eat it all right away, so we don’t have to worry about that!”

“That’s even worse!” Nami pressed a hand to her forehead to curb a rising homicidal urge. “Look, I told you, I’m not part of your crew.”

“Yeah.” Luffy poked a finger into his ear and dug around. Gross.

“You’ll need someone who really knows this stuff when I’m gone, because I’m only here for now.”

“You’re here,” Luffy agreed, finger still in his ear.

“That’s not what I’m trying to say!”

“Then what are you saying?” Luffy whined, losing all his patience at once.

The first harvest after Bell-mère’s death was so plentiful that the unkempt grass of the grove flooded with fallen mikans. Trees burst in the violence of bloom, branches sagging under the weight of the season. Nojiko bruised her knees from the hours she spent filling Bell-mère’s old basket, far too heavy for one child to carry. All that fruit would have been left to rot if not for the rest of Cocoyasi Village banding together to help gather the yield, and then to buy it. Everything the town ate that year was coloured orange: jams and syrups, fragrant desserts, bottles of juice crushed by hand. The labour of an entire town in paying off a single person’s toll.

Nami never saw a single bite of it. She dined with the pirates, who cared little for the island’s delicacies, more for what they were worth. As the lowest-ranking member of the crew, her rations were few: stale bread and gruel and the toughest cuts of meat. She stole instead from the other pirates’ plates, and they reacted with amusement, mostly, as if she were a stray cat under the table begging for scraps. She let them believe it. What’s yours is mine, she thought; you just don’t know it yet. 

Still, sometimes, even now, she dreamed of it. What she’d missed. The bitter work of what was shared and passed around and earned. All that goodness from the earth offered up like it cost nothing to give, and what it had tasted like.

“You’re going to need more people, if you want to survive.” The crux of it seemed lost, somehow, when she said it. Like pointing out something as obvious as the sun. “That’s all.”

“Oh, yeah, I know that,” Luffy said. He didn’t look chastened or annoyed—excited, even, at the prospect. The grin was back. “That’s where we’re going, aren’t we? To find the rest of our crew.”

Nami narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re that confident, huh?”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

Luffy’s hand was snaking back into the open crate of apples. Zoro’s head lolling back—was he seriously asleep again? How convenient it seemed, the weightlessness of having nothing, no debts, no anchor dragging you home. Only the endless promise of the horizon ahead. Wind in the air. But all that freedom came with a price; if you weren’t the one paying it, then someone else was.

Nami’s knuckles whitened around the wooden frame of her stolen boat. What did it matter to her, anyway, how these pirates wanted to live? How did it go, again—lying and stealing and taking whatever they wanted. She’d do the same and get out of here while the getting was good. That was how things worked at sea, after all. No stable ground on which to stand; only the rocking of the treacherous waves below.

“Hey!” Luffy stuffed his apple into his mouth and swallowed it whole, core and all. Throat bulging, he pointed out into the distance. “Look! An island!”

“Eh?” Zoro mumbled in his sleep.

Still the sunlight came down, relentless in its shine. Nami raised a hand to shield her eyes, turned to look where Luffy was pointing at. 

There came a moment—not the decisive act of breaking into a run, not when her heel drove down into cheek, not even the dizzying rush of free fall—when she remembered. It was the impact of landing flat on her back, wind knocked out of her, every bone aligned in the same single crack of pain. Staring up at Luffy’s indignant face, awake, alert, a wave of giddy relief washed over her, so big it brought her back to the last time she had felt such earth-shattering revelation. A mother’s cry: They’re my kids! That the ground beneath your feet was real after all, it was true, everything you believed was true. You were a family. You could buy your home back and set everyone free. A boy could save a village, defeat the villain, sail the seas and become the Pirate King. 

The pained scowl was fading into concern. “Nami? You all right?”

“Yeah,” Nami said, clutching her shoulder—the other one, for once. She had to smile at the irony, and then found she couldn’t stop, so wide her jaw hurt. “I’ll leave the rest up to you.”

Past the brim of his hat, the sky was so blue. She cradled her shoulder in her hand and let it ache. 

“A whale.”

“No, a sausage.”

“That one—a sad face. See, that’s the nose, and those are the eyes, and there’s the mouth?”

“Hmm... no. A cake.”

“There. A goldfish. Hey, did I ever tell you about the time I came across a giant goldfish on one of my adventures?”

“No way! That’s super cool! It looks more like a roast chicken, though.”

Usopp squinted. “What? No, it doesn’t.”

“He’s just hungry,” Nami cut in, because Zoro was napping as usual and there was no one else around but her to put up with Luffy and Usopp arguing over the shapes of clouds in the sky as they waited for a tug at their fishing lines. “Everything looks like food to him.” 

“You’re hungry again?” Usopp turned to gape at Luffy, perched next to him on the ship’s side. “We just ate lunch!” 

Luffy sagged like a wilting flower, hooking his chin onto Usopp’s shoulder and slumping against him. “Meat,” he mumbled.

“Wow.” Usopp straightened up, puffing out his chest; Luffy was now clinging fully to his side. “Never fear! I’ll catch something juicy in no time, massive enough to last us days—no, weeks! Have I ever told you about the time I caught a sea king with nothing but my trusty fishing rod? Why, it took a whole hour just to reel it in to shore, though in the end it was no match for my strength, of course. I brought it back to the village and everyone feasted for a month! They called me Sea King Catcher after that, built a gold statue in my honour in the middle of the square...”

“That’s funny,” Nami said. “I don’t remember seeing such a statue in the village when we were there.”

“N-no? Ah, that’s too bad, you must have missed it. I’ll point it out to you next time when we go back. Though, it might not still be there anymore, because I graciously told the townspeople to melt it back down if they were ever in need, you know, like any hero would do...” 

Nami raised an eyebrow—not at the outrageous lie, nor the doubling down of it. They had that in common, after all: being liars. He just wasn’t as good at it, because he started out already on the defense, everything sounding like an excuse even before the fact of what he was trying to prove. But maybe that could be attributed to the nervousness he still hadn’t shed since he stepped foot onto this ship as part of the crew. All bluster at first, overcompensating with his tall tales, then deflating when no one tried to one-up him or even call his bluff. Even now she felt herself being observed with the guarded wariness of a mark staring down the barrel of something too good to be true. Never mind the fact that they wouldn’t even have this ship if it weren’t for him.

No, what had really caught Nami by surprise: Go back?

“You’re not going back,” Nami said.

Usopp blinked at her, frozen mid-ramble. “Huh?”

“You’re not going back home. Not for a long time, anyway.” Nami leaned against the ship’s railing next to him, propped up her chin in one hand. “You know that, right? You knew it when you decided to leave. You must have.”

The crash of the waves below. Nami turned her head. Usopp wasn’t staring up at the clouds in the sky, or out at his idle line of fishing wire, but down at his own hands.

“Yeah,” he said. “I knew.”

He swallowed. She watched the hunch of his shoulders, his tight grip on the fishing rod. Was that regret in the clench of his fists? Or guilt at the lack of it?

“A journey through the Grand Line.” Nami tapped her fingers against her chin, keeping her tone light. “Ah, who knows how many years it’ll take. If you’ll ever even reach the end.”

“Of course we will!” Usopp said at once, seeming scandalized she would suggest otherwise. So the latter, then. On his shoulder, Luffy’s head lolled unnervingly; he had, of course, fallen asleep. “I’ll be a great warrior of the sea by then—no, a legendary hero—no, a god! And I’ll definitely come back. I’ll come back and tell everyone the stories of my exploits!” 

He stared at her, defiant, as if daring her to doubt him. 

Nami hid her smile in the palm of her hand. “You’ll have to let them know to replace your statue, then. God has a much better ring to it than Sea King Catcher.”

She shifted her arm, and winced at the throb of her shoulder beneath its bandages. She’d wrapped it up herself, along with Zoro’s wounds, both new and reopened; all the worst of Usopp and Luffy’s scrapes. Every scratch of Kuro’s claw.

It didn’t escape her notice that all the patchwork jobs had conveniently fallen to her. Thread still holding fast, tight and teethlike in the woven straw of Luffy’s hat. She’d be hard-pressed to say she minded it, though. She was no doctor but she’d picked up a few things, some from Dr. Nako’s clinic when she had broken her arm falling out of a tree as a kid, others out of necessity. Just what it took to survive.

She had always found something reassuring in the act of fixing up a wound. Like the danger was over—that such a thing was possible—and all that was left was the work of making it right. It wasn’t altogether too different from mapmaking: you assessed what was in front of you and made it knowable. Even safe. 

There was that suspicious look again on Usopp’s face.

“Hey, Nami. You decided to leave home, too, then? Where were you from?”

So that was it. Harmless curiosity, not mistrust nor misgiving. They must have seemed so mysterious—foreigners sailing in from the sea, pirates without a ship or crew, rescuers in his precise moment of need. All those made-up stories: he’d simply been fishing for their own pasts, what they’d seen and done. Just who were these strangers with whom he’d thrown in his lot.

It was smart. She’d tried it, too, and found out very quickly that neither Luffy nor Zoro had a halfway intelligent thought to share between the both of them.

“No. I’m just along for the ride.” Nami flashed her teeth at him. “And the beli.” 

“Ha, ha, good joke!” Usopp laughed nervously. “But seriously—where are you from? Did you meet Luffy there?”

Now that was a good joke. Her nails dug into her cheek. If she had met Luffy there—the very idea was laughable. If he had washed up on the shore in his ramshackle boat, wandered into Arlong Park without a care in the world and said, I’m hungry. If he had been there. If she had seen him coming from her window—

“No,” Nami said. “I’m from someplace he’s never been. A village by the seaside. The weather’s always warm, there. People plant crops, rice fields. Fruit. Everyone works hard. It’s like any other place.”

She might as well have lied, for how little she had revealed. Still, Usopp said, as if satisfied by her answer: “You’ll miss it too, then.”

It wasn’t a question. He was seeking reassurance, kinship as a crew member, evidence of belonging measured in loss. 

Nami bit back her response: I always have.

Still propped up on Usopp’s shoulder, Luffy jolted awake with a snort. “Hah? Did we catch anything yet?”

“No,” Usopp said, at the same time that the fishing rod jerked in his hand. They both stared at it in shock. “Uh—I mean—” He shoved Luffy off him and started to reel it in. “Oi, stand back, everyone! Prepare yourselves! This is a big one, I can feel it!”

He flung the rod back as if expecting resistance. There was none. What had bitten at the other end of the line came sailing smoothly out of the ocean with the ease of a knife through butter. For once, Usopp hadn’t lied. The fish that hung from the hook was no sea king, but its size was nothing to scoff at, either. It soared high and all their upturned faces followed its graceful arc through the air, water shimmering off its sleek blue-green scales, drops of rainbow in a fine-misted rain. It held their spellbound gazes, cradled in the grip of gravity, and then it came crashing down straight into Zoro’s snoring face. 

“Oh, crap!” Usopp blurted.

All of them watched in horror as the fish slid down Zoro’s cheek and flopped weakly on his chest.

“No way,” Usopp said after a moment, awed. 

Zoro hadn’t budged. He was still leant against the ship’s mast, arms folded behind his head, out cold, heedless of the giant fish smothering him in his sleep. 

Luffy started to laugh. 

“Shut up,” Usopp hissed, “what if he wakes up,” but Luffy was slapping his knees in his mirth like Usopp had pulled off some magician’s act that had brought the house down. Nami stared at the fish gurgling under Zoro’s chin, dangerously close to his open mouth. She then made the mistake of making eye contact with Usopp.

That was it. Both of them clapped their hands to their mouths, shoulders shaking, struggling to contain themselves. Laughter escaping like bubbles. 

“Somebody hurry up and grab it—Usopp, you go—”

“No way! He’ll definitely wake up then—you do it—”

A rubber arm stretched out past them both and scooped up the fish in its hand. It zipped back and Luffy held the fish up by the tail next to his beaming face. 

“It’s almost as big as I am!” Luffy said, practically drooling.

Usopp preened. “That’s right—they don’t call me the Sea King Catcher for nothing! We can snack on this and still have enough left over for dinner!” 

“You sure about that?” Nami said, smirking. They’d both seen Luffy eat. Even now he seemed to be contemplating if he could fit the whole thing in his mouth. 

“Oi—stop that!” Usopp yanked the fish away and out of Luffy’s reach; he needed both hands just to lift it. “Get away. I’ll cook this.”

“You’re not a cook, though,” Luffy said sulkily.

“You’re not, either!”

Luffy stuck his tongue out at him. Then he visibly perked up, pointing behind Usopp’s shoulder. “Hey, that cloud looks like takoyaki.”

“What—no it doesn’t!” Usopp said. “That’s too specific. It clearly looks like a lion.” 

“Not this again,” groaned Nami.

Luffy pouted. “Well, what does it look like to you, then, Nami?”

What it looked like, when she tilted her head to the right just so, was one of the southern Conomi Islands, home to Cocoyasi Village; home to her. She could make out the run of its coastline where Gosa Village lay, a bustling town graced with fair weather and temperate rains. Or at least it used to be, before Arlong’s pirates levelled it into barren ground. 

“Hmm. Looks like takoyaki to me,” Nami said.

“Yeah! I told you!” Luffy pumped his fists in the air. 

See, Usopp? That was how you told a lie: you gave them what they wanted to hear. 

“Fine, takoyaki, whatever,” Usopp said, still struggling with the fish in his arms. “Can someone help me get this into the kitchen?” 

Luffy followed after him, chanting “Fish! Fish! Fish!” the whole way, which turned out to be the thing to finally wake up Zoro. 

“Huh,” Zoro said. He frowned. “Why am I wet?”

Nami couldn’t help herself. She laughed, one last time. No one to hear it. In the sky the cloud was taking itself apart, back into the blue. Soon its shape would be nothing at all. She settled back against the railing to watch, and to wait. 

“You know what to do.”

On the desk laid a neat array: quill, inkwell, ruler, paper. Bookshelves towered over her. Maps hung from lines that stretched across the room, fluttering in the air like the wings of pinned insects. Through the arch of the window, they were being watched by the moon. 

He tapped a finger against the blank page before her. The tattoo on his arm opened its jaws and said, “This is your home, right? Show it to me. Draw me a map.”

She recoiled from its sharp teeth. Her foot lashed out and hit the leg of the desk. The inkwell spilled. What sat inside now crept across the paper until every inch of blankness was eaten away. 

He picked it up, examined her handiwork. A sheet of black.

The tattoo smiled.

“Very good,” it said. 

She blinked awake. Her arms were numb, her hair sticking to her mouth. Fear in her throat. She had fallen asleep at her desk—she would be punished.

Then she raised her head and saw there was no map before her, only the ledger that calculated their earnings; there was no window; she was no longer a child.

Up on the deck, the night air was a balm, cool upon her face. Everything turned silver by the moon. She headed for the railing at the side of the ship, then stilled as her skin prickled with the familiar awareness of being watched. She craned her neck to look up at the crow’s nest.

Atop the ladder, she said, “Go to bed. I’ll take over from here.”

Zoro squinted at her. “I’m on last watch. Sun’s not up yet.”

“It will be.”

Nami waited, but Zoro just sat there, arms folded across his chest, immovable. She could say it: Look, I just want to be alone. But it wouldn’t make sense, even to herself, why she couldn’t have stayed in her own room, or sought refuge in the empty lounge of the ship, and anyway, it wasn’t even true.

She sighed. “Shove over.”

She made sure to jostle his swords as she clambered in just so he would do exactly that, scrambling to move them out of the way, cursing her out all the while. But he still didn’t leave, though the space between them in the crow’s nest was cramped at best and she was purposefully sticking her feet into his legs.

“You know, I’m surprised you’re not training up here,” Nami said. “Or napping.”

“I’m on last watch,” Zoro said again, like she hadn’t heard him the first time. She rolled her eyes. Still, she could admit she’d underestimated him, in his capacity to pay attention. So there were moments of stillness in between the tireless whet of blade against stone.

“Hey,” Zoro said. It was dark, but she could imagine his frown, the suspicion that surely glinted in his eyes. “Is there a storm coming?”

Nami was taken aback. “No, it’s nothing like that,” she said. The night was calm, and so was the sea.

Zoro grunted, and to Nami’s astonishment settled back as if appeased. Like that had been his only concern—the ship’s navigator coming to warn him of danger. She changed her mind; clearly she was the one being underestimated here. She almost said something out of spite—checked your wallet recently?—but wrested it back down. She wanted him to shut up, after all.

At this height, the cool night air turned the sharper edge of cold, and she welcomed it. A sheen of sweat still clung to the nape of her neck. She drew her knees up and wrapped her arms around them. 

Zoro didn’t say anything more. His face was turned forward; his gaze did not waver. She could almost pretend she really was alone, the stiff line of her shoulders loosening, her mind clearing. She hadn’t liked the quiet when she was younger, but she’d gotten used to it. Now it was something she was grateful for. An understanding, even, between the two of them: no pretenses, no need to swap stories or make small talk to while away the time. Why are you up at this hour; did you have trouble sleeping; what do you want. None of that. Only the silence of the same night they shared. 

Nojiko understood it, too. Could sit there for hours without a word, puffing away at her cigarette, waiting for Nami to crack first. And Nami always did, because she’d been the less patient of the two since they were kids, asked forgiveness instead of permission and eventually started skipping that step too. Gave up every truth because what was there that Nojiko wouldn’t find out anyway: it was me, I ate the last slice of cake, I beat up that kid for saying stupid things about Bell-mère-san, I’m joining the Arlong Pirates to become their surveyor and draw sea charts. 

It had been her first test. Draw me a map of your home, he said, and she did. She drew with painstaking detail the coastline that contained the island and everything within it. She labelled the beaches where she collected bits of junk that washed up from the sea, the dock where she watched the fishermen at work, the forests where she raced the other children in climbing trees. She charted the elevation levels in meticulous loops and whorls, from the flat ground of the village fields to the clifftop where they buried Bell-mère. She drew until her hand cramped and the grip of her quill chafed against her calloused fingers and the newly tightened skin of her shoulder burned from the strain. 

When she was done he picked it up and looked at it and smiled. Very good, he said, and he took it from her and left. 

Zoro hadn’t moved, hadn’t said a word, but he wasn’t sleeping; she could tell by now when he was just from the shift of his breathing. His three swords lay between them, one white as bone. She wondered, safely in the cover of the night, how his wounds were healing. Where those swords had come from and what they had carried him through. Why swords, anyway? Why had he accepted it without question, when she came; why hadn’t he asked? Why did he have to make it so easy, to sit here and stay? 

The sun came up. One moment it wasn’t there, the next it was undeniable. She’d seen so many sunrises by now out on the ocean, mingling in the crowd on the deck of a luxury liner or steering home on someone else’s boat, and still it stole her breath away every time. It was nothing like the view through a window—it never ended. Whichever way you looked, the sky was touched by colour, that point of no return. 

Soon Luffy would be hollering for breakfast, Usopp grumbling about being woken up, though at least he hadn’t had to put up with Zoro’s snoring; oi, Nami, you’re up too? Beside her, Zoro yawned. The wind briefly threaded through his earrings. They stirred and settled back into a uniform line.

What do you want. If he had asked, she would have had to lie. So she was glad he hadn’t asked.

She just needed to see it, sometimes. Proof the whole world existed. Here it was. 

Over their heads, the pirate flag lifting, filling out with wind, announcing their place within it. 

Of all instruments she admired the efficiency of the compass, the steadfast point of its needle, its aim true. With it in hand there was no excuse to wander off course, and yet that was exactly what they did. Days running off the page as they sailed onward, and they weren’t without purpose, but the duties Nami followed like a guiding star had broadened somewhat from steal and survive. When she steered through a storm there was now something more to protect than a sack of pilfered gold on a rickety boat, something built to last; others, too, to shorten the sails, secure the rigging, carry out each and every one of her barked orders. All hands on deck. Winds easing, waves flattening, her muscles aching with the sore satisfaction of a job well done. Luffy already basking in the return of the sun, like he’d expected nothing less.

Then there was the scavenging. Some nights they went to bed hungry and she tossed and turned in her hammock thinking viciously of all the places she could be, every piece of treasure that could have passed through the palm of her hand. Others they docked upon the shores of strange, small islands and feasted on unfamiliar fruit. Waded in the brackish shallows to fish out crustaceans as though jewels buried in the silt, searching for softness within the shells. She even found herself drawing maps—quick, imperfect things sketched on paper at the end of a long day, not for any practical use or reference, only out of habit, a restless hand. Making notes, evidence: freshwater stream runs here and cave where spider bit Usopp and forest of palm trees with coconuts Zoro split open—sweet. 

Once they got caught out in an onslaught of rain and had to make a break for it back to the Merry for shelter, and Luffy was laughing at how Zoro’s hair stuck up in wet spikes, and it was funny so Nami laughed too; laughed the night Usopp told spooky stories by lamplight and interrupted himself with a bloodcurdling shriek when Luffy stretched his arm around to tap him on the shoulder; laughed at Luffy’s impressions of Buggy, of Jango, of Zoro waving around three chopsticks as swords; laughed at Usopp slinging stones at Zoro’s whirlwind of blades as he trained in the morning, infallible aim meeting infallible precision; laughed as Luffy and Usopp’s mouths watered imagining the banquet of dishes that would be served in a restaurant that sailed on the open sea. 

She was still laughing when Johnny swept the armful of bounty posters into the air, spilling before her like ink onto paper, into skin. 

The Baratie stood on an elegant pretense: it didn’t stand at all. It floated, but seated with a napkin folded neatly on your lap and handed a menu listing the unpronounceable names of all the bottles of wine at your disposal, you could forget. You could forget you were set adrift on the hunger of an entire ocean. 

Luffy had caused a stir as usual. Made a grand entrance, a mistake. He’d get out of it, or he wouldn’t; it didn’t seem terribly important. He already had his sights set on something else: a cook to bring with him to the Grand Line.

Said cook was currently refilling Nami’s cocktail glass. 

“Anything for you, my lady,” he said around the cigarette clamped between his teeth. “Anything you want.” 

The curtains lifted on the open windows, letting in the wind. 

She generously patted his hand; he swooned. “How very thoughtful of you,” she told the ember of his cigarette. 

“Lady?” Usopp was muttering. Zoro, leant back in his chair; the cook eyeing him suspiciously like he seemed in danger of doing something as stupid as propping his feet up on the table. She raised the glass to her lips. 

You’ll say yes, she thought, watching him sidelong. Look at you. Black suit and tie; something to prove. You’ll come. You can, you’ve got people to let you go. You’re the only one holding yourself back. What is it you’d rather keep—your pride? Your propriety? Your idleness, the stink of boredom on you like cigarette smoke? What is it you won’t give up—why have you given up?

Her glass emptied. She set it back down a little too hard; Zoro’s attention caught, his eyes narrowing at her, flintlike. She ignored him, wiping her mouth on her napkin.

She was jealous, she realized—something she hadn’t felt in a very long time. There had never been occasion to be, not when everyone else was working so hard, had already given up everything. Only pirates were greedy enough to ask for more, coveted what they could never have, took what didn’t belong to them. 

They had stolen her, too. This wasn’t where she was needed, where she belonged. This had nothing to do with her. 

“Would you like some more?” the cook asked, ready with another refill. 

“Thank you,” Nami said. “But I think I’ve had enough.” 

The stem of the glass in her hand was thin enough to snap. She let go of it instead.

In the end all it took was a little commotion. 

It was funny. She’d spent all that time plotting escape routes for if she ever needed to make a quick getaway—her simplest contingency plan consisted of a well-timed push when Luffy was sitting on the Merry’s figurehead, then commandeering the ship and sailing away when Zoro jumped overboard to fetch him; Usopp she was reasonably sure she could take on in a fight. Reasonably—and it turned out all she needed was her same old strategy of misdirection. The real danger: the menacing ghost ship that had just pulled up to the Baratie. No need to notice her slipping out of reach. A clean exit as any. How very convenient. How cowardly.  

She didn’t look back—she didn’t need to. They’d done it, at any rate; they’d gotten what they came for. Sure, they’d have to shell out for a new ship, but that couldn’t be too difficult, what with the beginnings of a proper crew they had now, down to the cook Luffy had always wanted. And why was that surprising? That was Luffy: he got everything he wanted. That was why she’d followed him in the first place.

Who knows? One day, far in the future, they might even make it all the way.

She rested her arms atop the ship’s railing, gazed at the blank horizon before her. Almost dreamily, the thought came to her: navigators must be common on the Grand Line. All that world to map.

The Merry’s silence was almost companionable. The wind burned at her eyes. She watched the waters until she recognized what lay ahead. 

Her room was how she’d left it. 

She stood in it. Desk, shelves, clothesline of old maps hung to dry. She ran her fingers through them, thought of the unfinished sketches she’d left in her room on the Merry, docked at the pier. All she had taken with her was the bag of treasure, the ledger she’d been using, and...

She reached into her pockets. Set the items down one by one on the desk.

First, the cook—she’d never learned his name. The lighter she lifted from his breast pocket as he leaned over the table to serve her. It was a small, worn thing, well-used. She flicked it open, shut: it got the job done. He probably owned countless copies of it, kept a collection in a drawer somewhere, wouldn’t even know it was gone.

Next, from Usopp, whose pockets were always full of clever knickknacks, invented contraptions, funny-shaped pebbles: a single rubber band. He’d slung it at Luffy’s forehead one afternoon and laughed for ages at the irony, forgetting to retrieve his ammunition. Nami picked it up off the ground, thought of giving it back or tossing it out and ended up doing neither. Now it was nothing more than a useless keepsake; now it was hers.

The only thing of value Zoro possessed was his swords, which were obviously out of the question. Still, she’d fleeced him down to his last two beli one night while betting on cards, and then she’d stolen those, too, fished the coins right out of his pockets. Ruthless, he called her the next morning, watching her toss them up and down in her palm. She smiled then, and she smiled now as she stacked the two coins on the desk. The lonely clink of metal. 

Luffy had even less. Nothing but the clothes on his back, the straw hat she’d held, once, in her hands. She wished he’d had something to take. She wished—

She met the window’s eye. Looked out at the slice of sky it had to offer. Something in her chest buckled at the sight of it, under its weight. 

“The world is so much bigger,” she told it, in awful, collapsing relief. “I know it, now. I’ll be back for it.”

In the meantime there was an overdue visit to make. Work to be done. She spared the paltry assortment on her desk one last glance: so that was all this chapter of her life amounted to, in the end.

She really believed it, too. 

Her hand closed around his throat.

“Mess with me any more,” Nami hissed through gritted teeth, “and you’ll die.”

Water dripped from them both. He laughed.

“I wonder,” Zoro said. 

“Those idiots,” Nami said, “they’re not supposed to be here.”

“Aren’t they,” Nojiko said. 

She couldn’t stand Nojiko sometimes. It was like speaking into a mirror and expecting anything out of it than your own cutting stare. They were both sitting in it, the room she’d overturned and destroyed, face-to-face at the table like they couldn’t see the evidence of her own want scattered in broken pieces around them. Plain as the crack in a shattered vase. Her hands clenched, one gloved, one bare.

“They’re nothing to me. I’m not...” She swallowed. “I’m not one of them. I don’t know why they won’t just let me go.”

“Usually, when you steal something from someone, they’ll want it back,” Nojiko said. “Shouldn’t you of all people know that by now?”

Nami scowled at her. “Then why won’t they just take their damn ship and leave?” 

Nojiko unhelpfully lit up a cigarette. Nami thought of the cook’s lighter sitting on her desk and dug her nails into the grain of the table. 

“I don’t get it.” She stared down at the old map laid out before them both, shook her head. “They could have any navigator they wanted.”

“Sounds like it,” Nojiko said. 

“So why are they wasting their time here?”

Nojiko breathed out a lungful of smoke. “Was it a waste of time?”

“What?”

“What you spent with them. Was it a waste of time?”

“Five million beli,” Nami said automatically. The same amount she’d started with, that first day in Orange Town; less, even, because Luffy had left half of it behind. From the very beginning she’d been operating at a loss. So long she’d stayed with them, weeks of earning nothing, while the townspeople paid their tributes in full. The corners of her eyes pricked at the crushing shame of it—not even the precious time she’d let leak between her fingers like sand, but that despite it, against all reason, at her own expense—

“No,” Nami said. No, it was worth something so rich she’d forgotten, long ago, the immeasurable wealth of days she used to run through like grass. She could feel it even now, in the stillness of the room. Wind in her hair. 

A wistful sheen in Nojiko’s eyes, then. “You had fun?”

Nami studied it, the expression she’d so rarely seen before on her sister’s face. The hard lines of her body toughened from harvest work, the lovely ink that ran across her collarbones. The weary sag of her mouth. For the first time she let herself think it. What they might have been, had the pirate flag not drifted into view in their corner of the world. Growing up: years and years and years of it, lazy and forgiving. Time renewing itself like the tides. What she might now be allowed to have. She loosened her fist. 

“Yeah,” Nami said, giving in to it. No longer remorse nor self-reproach. Only the frank admission of what they had been cheated of for too long, a secret for them both to share. The marvel of it: “I had fun.” 

What cut the deepest was that she was blindsided by the betrayal when it arrived. How could she not have seen it coming? It was what pirates did: they lied, they stole, they took what they wanted. Well, they had it now. What they wanted.

And the whole village had known it, too, all this time. For years they’d banked their hopes on—what? A child’s belief in promises? All their lives put on hold as she played nice with pirates, letting her jaunt across the sea and counting on her to remember to return. Handing her an endless length of rope with which to hang herself, or to find her way back. Here she was, for all the good it did them. A fumbling, empty-handed surrender. A failure: Everyone, I’m home. 

It was the same with Luffy and the others. Their foolhardy bravado, so generous you could drown in it. Their belief that the world bent for everyone that way. Luffy’s blank stare; Zoro’s knowing sneer. The look on Usopp’s face when she drove the knife between them and held it there, like he was surprised it would bleed. Her hand bloomed red through the bandage; she didn’t feel it. She didn’t feel anything at all.

The strawhats, the village, the pirates: how could they all see through her so easily like she hadn’t learned a thing? When had she tipped her hand? She thought she could outplay them in this game. She was wrong. The shovel struck stone, scraped bottom. Not even the emptiness echoed. What kind of thief couldn’t hold onto what she wanted? What kind of pirate was powerless to take it back? What kind of person gambled so carelessly with the lives of others and was left with nothing at all?

The tattoo leered from her shoulder.

She raised the knife. 

She lowered the hat.

On her knees, she traced the line of stitching made by her own steady hand. As though through it she could map her way back to the person who had lifted the needle, strung thread through its eye. Known with conviction this was something she could fix. 

Her fingernail caught in the weave. The hat smelled of salt. How many times it had been fished out of the ocean. How much seawater and blood had dried from the straw. How easy it was to drift away in a sudden gust, a fall; how it had been caught every time, returned to its rightful place to shelter from sun and rain and wind. 

Her eyes pricked, again, face still numb from her tears. Fresh pain lanced through her arm. The ruined skin of her shoulder felt unpeeled like it revealed the truth of everything red and tender beneath. She knelt there knowing she held someone else’s world in her hands, knowing she had handed over her own in return. 

Her fingers trembled.

It was heavy.

“Just join me again, and everyone else can live,” said Arlong. “I’ll spare them all. Everyone you love so much.”

It sounded so easy, laid out in such simple terms even a child could understand. And a child had. She had done it, years ago, begged and bargained and bent herself into every shape, all the while thinking she had earned the sweeter end of the deal. What could possibly be worth more than that: another chance to make things right? What wouldn’t she give up in return for another breath, another day, another sliver of sunset watched from the window? Every year had scraped by in the fistfuls she had stolen for herself, clinging to the scraps of life she’d been given, forgetting what it meant to be full.

She thought of the nights they went hungry on the Merry, the resentment that had hardened in her belly like a stone. Now she was overcome with longing. Luffy’s miserable face, his stomach growling; Zoro telling them to shut up and go to sleep; Usopp running his mouth off, describing in lavish detail all the great meals he may or may not have feasted upon in his life, only making everything worse. I know, now, she thought, wanting to laugh at the senselessness of it: I would rather be starving with you. 

For so long you could survive, but somewhere you had to set the line. This is it: this is as far as I go. Like the last lesson Bell-mère ever taught her. Some things were worth dying for.

All of them—they were dying for her. Usopp, drenched in blood, intent on telling the truth of who it belonged to. Zoro sinking fast in the water without so much as a fight, eyes closed, expectant. Even the cook—a moment of startled eye contact in recognition: I was right about you, you said yes. And Luffy, their captain, catching her wrist tight in his hand, waiting for her to do the same. 

They were fighting for a reason, had staked their lives on it. To settle for anything less would be the worst betrayal of all.

She turned her back on the pirate who had set the last eight years of her life on a leash. 

“Everyone,” Nami said, voice ringing out clear as a bell. “I’m sorry. Please die with me.”

The smile broke out on her face before she could even finish saying it, boundless and free. 

When Nojiko found her, it was in the orchard with a shovel in hand.

“There you are,” she said, and then, “oh, don’t tell me you’ve somehow found more treasure to bury?”

Nami laughed. “I wish!” 

The coffin-sized hole the marines had unearthed still lay empty; neither of them looked at it. Instead Nami was surveying the trees. She nodded at a line of saplings, trunks slender and leaves sparser than the rest.

“Growing in well, aren’t they?”

“Taking their sweet time, more like,” Nojiko said with a snort. 

Most of the new mikan trees were propagated from cuttings. Only these few, Nami knew, had been planted by seed. Though they were young yet, it surprised her that they had survived their eight years without the guiding arm of a branch. 

“They look good. Healthy.” Nami dropped her shovel in the grass and reached out a hand to one of the saplings, placed a palm against its trunk. It was sturdier than it seemed. Somehow, without any memory or map, it had known to grow straight and strong, to spread its branches skyward. It had known exactly how it should live. She traced along the bark, thought of her own self these past eight years, slanting through every crack, unruly and overgrown. 

The secretive hush of the leaves in the wind. Bell-mère-san. Did it really turn out all right? Have I? 

“They won’t bear fruit for a while yet,” Nojiko said. She had sidled up to her, barefoot in the grass, looking at ease. From the near distance they could hear the town’s raucous celebration, laughter and chatter and cheers. When was the last time Cocoyasi Village had made such a sound? Nami thought of asking why Nojiko wasn’t with them, but she knew she would only be asked the same in return. She bit at the inside of her cheek: a smile. 

“Ah, I can’t wait to taste them someday,” she said. 

“Give it a few more years. You’ll have to be here for that, though,” Nojiko said, and it wasn’t a question.

“Yeah,” Nami said. “I’m looking forward to it.”

She watched the smile spread across Nojiko’s face. A mirror. 

“In the meantime,” Nojiko said. 

She strode to one of the mature trees, plucked a mikan from a low-hanging branch. She held it out, just as she had eight years ago, when Nami had scrubbed her eyes with the back of her hand and said, “I have to go.”

“Wait,” Nojiko said then.

“I can’t. They’ll be expecting me. I’ve already been gone for too long.” Still, she looked up; still she couldn’t help her own hope. Watched as Nojiko disappeared into the trees and returned with a mikan in her hands. 

“Eat,” Nojiko said, and for once Nami didn’t argue, face stinging from her tears, fingers working stubbornly at the peel. She ate every salty bite, sucked the juices from her fingertips, and when she was left with nothing but a handful of seeds laid in her palm, she closed her fist around them. She stood there like her own tree, feet planted firm, hunger rooting her to the ground. 

“Nami,” Nojiko said. How she was coming to know that terrible tremble in her sister’s voice. She let Nojiko pry open her fist, spill the seeds into her own palm.

“I have to go,” Nami said again, because it was all there was left to say.

“Nami.” Nojiko’s eyes red-rimmed, face forlorn. She looked like she would crack open. Seeds still cradled in her hand. “I’ll keep them safe. OK?”

“Yeah,” Nami said, because even as a child she knew when she was being asked to make a promise. She wrapped her arms around herself; her shoulder still hurt. She was convinced it always would. “OK. Bye.” 

She turned around, didn’t look back, didn’t want to know what Nojiko looked like when she had lost everything, didn’t want Nojiko to know the same of her. She carried the emptiness of her palm all the way back to her room in Arlong Park.

Now her hand braced itself against the bark. The branches stirred in the wind, bearing the promise that was yet to come. The treasure she had once clasped tight in her fist.

Nami laughed. She took the mikan, unpeeled it with a practiced hand, split it and offered the other half to Nojiko.

“You, too,” Nami said.

Nojiko’s smile was crooked. She took back her half.

“You need a haircut,” she said, between bites. 

Nami nodded, felt the ends of her hair brush at her shoulders. “Yeah,” she said, through a mouthful of fruit. “But first, I need your help.”

She gestured at her shovel, pointed at the trees, then out in the direction of the sea. 

Nojiko’s eyebrows raised in understanding.

“Oh, you’re going to need a lot more help than that,” she said. She cupped her palms around her mouth and shouted: “Oi—Gen-san! Everyone! Get over here!”

“No, don’t bother them, they’re having fun,” Nami said, but it was a lost cause; she could already hear the ripple of commotion, the answering calls, the approaching footsteps. 

“What,” Nojiko said, her gaze sly. “You didn’t think you were doing this all by yourself?”

Nami laughed. “No. I guess I didn’t.” 

She finished off the last of her mikan, wiped her palms on her shirt. Picked up her shovel and got ready to get to work. 

Her captain was sitting on the Merry’s figurehead, past the prow. 

“Hey, Nami,” Luffy said. “That was a good trick.” 

It was taking a while to gather up all the wallets again. Not that she was doing it herself, of course; she had enlisted assistance, freely volunteered from Sanji and forced from Usopp. They were still at it now, Sanji cheerfully sweeping the wallets into a sack as Usopp grumbled, both of them under strict orders to account for each and every last one, “and if there’s even a single coin missing I’ll know, believe me!” 

“You’re merciless,” Usopp had accused.

“Aww, thanks, Usopp,” Nami had said. “But don’t think you can sweet-talk yourself out of this!”

Now she rested her elbows on the ship’s railing, leaned forward enough to feel the sea spray on her face. Watched Luffy dangle his legs over the side, tempting fate, the unforgiving waves below. 

“You sure stole a lot!” Luffy laughed.

Zoro snorted. “What else would you expect from her?” 

Nami shot them a smirk. “You have no idea.”

It wasn’t just wallets. She had stolen three mikan trees from Bell-mère’s grove. The view of Arlong Park crashing down into rubble and dust, every map she’d ever made fluttering down in pieces like snow. A vision of her mother’s face in the muted blue of the night. A lighter, a rubber band, two beli. A straw hat held tight in her hands. 

I stole from you, Nami thought, watching it now on its perch, remembering its weight. And I’ll keep stealing from you, every last thing you have to give. I’ll never again falter from taking what I want. I’ll never let go.

She thought maybe it wasn’t really that much of a secret after all.

“I’m just taking what’s mine,” Nami said. 

Luffy crossed his arms behind his head and grinned. “Good.”

Behind them, Cocoyasi Village was long gone, nothing more than a memory of laughter in the distance. The tattoo on her arm had always tethered her; now it was no longer a chain but a compass needle of its own, pointing her path home. Until then, she still had so far to go, her future to chart. Everything there was left to settle lay ahead. Blue skies and open ocean and—she squinted. Something on the horizon.

“Everyone,” Nami said. “There’s a storm coming.”

She watched her crew straighten to attention. 

“Already?” Zoro groused. 

“I see it! I see it!” Luffy crowed in excitement, pointing.

“Not a big one, right, Nami?” Usopp said. “Uh, right, Nami?”

“Nami-san,” Sanji said. Stamping out his cigarette, straightening up. “What should we do?”

Strike of lightning in the sky, closer than it appeared, though the thunder was not yet upon them. A rising wind, lifting her hair, filling out the sails overhead. The promise of the flag flying there. She grinned.

“Don’t worry, everyone,” Nami said. “I’ll see us through.”