Chapter Text
Luffy is an insane, unapologetic problem magnet and a complete moron to boot, Nami concludes within the first two days of traveling with the ragtag group that consists of him, Zoro the Pirate Hunter and herself.
The dingy is barely enough to sustain the hyperactivity of the unfortunate captain of the future pirate crew. It's barely enough to sustain one, normal human, to be fair, but it honestly only makes things worse — how in the seas they managed to survive this long is beyond her. She watched Zoro swimming after the straw hatted idiot that fell overboard at least three times in the span of four-to-five hours alone, and Nami is not sure how he has enough faith or patience to not just let him drown. After every dive he seems more tempted to, and at one point threatens to do just that, but Luffy only laughs at the face Zoro's making at him, and she sighs.
Maybe it has something to do with the strange magnetism that surrounds Luffy like a blanket. She is mature enough to admit, even, that it's pulling at her own strings too — the way he smiled sends a tingling feeling to her fingers, like a bonfire in the summer nights, or baked bread just taken out of the oven.
It's weird, perhaps, to think of a barely familiar stranger in such a domestic way, but Luffy is clearly not ordinary either. He's rarely caught without a grin that splits his face in two, and his laugh is closer to hissing of cymbals than an actual human sound, and he's so hypnotic in his strangeness that Nami can't help but lean closer, can't help but preen when her temporary captain calls her the best.
Monkey D. Luffy is an oddity Nami doesn't yet understand. Maybe she never will, maybe their adventures will be cut short, but she'll cherish these moments that feel so much like home, even so far away from a rough shack with tangerine trees.
A splash interrupts her thoughts, followed by a second one, lager and more forceful, and her brows twitch.
Or, she will, if only that stupid idiot stops falling into the damn sea.
Perhaps tagging along was a mistake. They're monsters, surely, but monstrously idiots too.
Nami sideyes Zoro as he flops onto the poor boat with force enough to almost topple it over, not even bothering to change clothes probably in anticipation of another fall. It was weird to her at first, but she gets it now, she thinks. No point in changing if it'll just get wet. It's probably the reason he naps so often, too, because she can vividly see Luffy falling in the water even in his sleep.
Honestly, what bit him, — and Nami by proxy, — to join this not-yet crew? She's going to go gray before she hits her thirties, and that's if she gets lucky.
She didn't even get the chance to berate him for throwing them off-course with his unplanned swim again (again!) before Luffy was flying to the nose of the boat. He was laughing, a belly-chest kind of laugh, but Nami's words were already thrown into the wind in stangled yells as he stopped just shy away from the water. He stared vacantly at the sea with gaze unseeing for a short blink, which made her words falter ever so slightly.
Then Luffy grinned like nothing happened at all, laughed and called her silly, and Nami, enraged and with teeth sharp as blades, thought that perhaps she was seeing things. She hit him about it, naturally.
As one does.
Now, he was sitting in the desired place, humming some off-tune shanty and giggling when the hot sun hit him in the face. The singing gets interrupted by a sudden remark about how cool the sea is! It sparks like glitter! out of blue, and a heap of mirth after a beat of silence, as if after a response. Nami blinks away from her compass and the map to look at the relaxed expression of the teen basking in the golden rays, and mumbling some scrap of conversation, and she suddenly feels like she overhears only one side of a dialogue that happens between Luffy and nothing.
"Who are you talking to?" She asks, confused after he cheers at silence, and Luffy snaps his head around at her like he forgot she was even here.
He beams at her with excitement, as a soft, warm wind ruffles his hair and almost knocks his prized straw hat away, and replies, "My brother!"
Nami blinks at him again, and makes an over-the-top dramatic gesture to look around, but she already knows what she'll find: two dinghy, one of which is fully hers, unresponsive Zoro fast asleep farther down the boat they're occupying, who clearly is not the one this is about, and an endless ocean expanse. The sun gleamed across the waves, sparks of color bouncing off of them, but otherwise no ships, or islands, or swimmers, or anything for at least another couple miles.
One beam of light hits her face harsh enough to blind her, and Nami puts her hand to her forehead to protect her eyes and see what made Luffy giggle again.
"He says hi!"
She lifts one of her brows, unimpressed. There was still no 'brother' in sight.
Luffy's grin grows.
"Leave it, witch." Zoro grunts with eyes still closed, apparently not as asleep as she thought. "I've tried to make sense of it for a week. Wasn't as successful as I'd like to be."
"Don't call me a witch!" Nami snaps.
"Then don't act like one!" He yells right back.
"Shishishi! Yep, you're getting along well!"
The SHUT UP! they both yelled in reply might've as well caused a storm, earning a giggle and a tussle soon after. It almost made Nami forget it, because as they continued the journey Luffy had not referred to the supposed 'brother' anymore, but the interaction still lingered in her mind.
Was it just her, or the sun in that moment seemed just a tad bit brighter than it should?
(Later, not by much but still enough to make a difference, when she sits on the ground with a dagger shoved deep into her shoulder, blue of a cursed mark turning bright red, steaks of tears and snot running down her face, voice cracking in plea of help me, she hears a soft whisper from a man planting his hat atop of her head.
"He's scum." He tells into the silence, voice blank and so unlike the teen Nami knows, turning to walk the road of an enraged mob. "You're right, I see it now. I see it.")
(Later, just a bit farther into the future, standing above Arlong, bloodied and scarred, he bores his void-black eyes deep into the barely present soul of unconscious body. Nami didn't dare step close, as a shout for her (her!) captain had logged itself somewhere in her throat, and she suddenly hyper-aware of the oppressing silence, of the presence so great it almost buckled her legs, of the unbidden fury that no one else seemed to notice.
"You hurt my navigator, went against the code of your own crew and betrayed my brother." He tells to it, drowned by the cheers and relief and tears, spitting venom like there was no crime greater, like there was no mark worse. "Sun Traitor.")
(He went back to that happy-go-lucky attitude as soon as he noticed her, and she had no energy, or desire, to ask. She's not sure she wants to know the answer.)
Oh well. She'll find out what it means eventually, right?
Nami only hopes it wouldn't be on the battlefield with a full-on war. Seas know that it's a possibility with Luffy.