Chapter Text
Nami steps from starlight into the inert chill of her and Robin’s quarters. She holds up her lantern, not bothering with the room lights. The flush from the evening’s wine is already dissipating from her extremities, the cold quickly seeping into her skin and bones. Hissing, she runs tip-toe through the room to keep the rest of her feet from touching the ice-cold floor. She swipes her foot under the bed, kicking out her fluffy white boots. Setting the lantern on the vanity, she hops in place while she pulls the shoes over her frozen toes, wincing at how they ache. Kicking them back off, she does a weird tip-toe skip to the closet for a pair of thick socks to put on, followed again by the shoes.
Next, she digs among the disheveled duvet for Sanji’s blue hoodie, eventually unearthing it with a triumphant huff. The fabric is thick and soft but chilly from the night air, making her shiver when she pulls it on. She buries her nose into the neckline, breathing deeply. It doesn’t smell like Sanji anymore.
Why would it? She stole it weeks ago when they first set off from Zou to retrieve him. She had always liked it on him, liked the blue with his eyes and how happy and comfortable he looked in it. That first night, she swore that she only needed a few hours to wallow in her guilt at being too weak to stop him from leaving. And, surrounded by his scent—his expensive cologne, cigarette smoke, and just a hint of grease from the kitchen—she had cried.
She wore it most nights on their way to Whole Cake, usually only in the cold library at night. A time or two, eyes burning from staring at her maps and too tired to change, she had worn it to bed.
Of course the scent is gone now, just the faintest hint of cigarettes if she turns a certain way, gone again before she can be sure it was there.
But Sanji is back with his cigarette smoke and cologne, with garlic and spices on his fingers. She doesn’t need the hoodie anymore—not that she needed it in the first place. She could give it back.
Except, it’s already warm against her skin, and her shivers are finally subsiding. And, well. She is a thief.
The hoodie had tugged chunks of hair out of her already-messy bun. She pats at it and tries to smooth it before giving up. She shakes out her hair and combs through it with her fingers before pulling the frizzy mess into a quick and loose braid. Using her finger to curl some of the flyaways around her face, she turns to glance in the mirror to check the hasty work.
Oh, right, she thinks as she stares at the blank wall above the little vanity.
The mirrors.
The mirrors and the Big Mom Pirates and that awful—if convenient—Mirro-World. Luffy trapped inside with a billion-beli bounty monster. Fire exploding from the mirrors, immolating the Sunny from the inside out, burning their home and their only means of escape from Big Mom’s territory.
Luffy’s voice shouting from a shard across dimensions, commanding them to break all the mirrors. To protect themselves. To leave him to figure his own way out. Attacked on all sides and no fucking time to argue, to think of another way. Believing in Luffy but breaking the mirrors with an agonized scream all the same.
It’s over. Nami reminds herself against the swoop of dread she had carried constantly during the overwhelming adventure at Whole Cake. It’s over, and we escaped.
“Ah, I think...” The vanity's top drawer doesn’t usually stick, but tonight it opens with a screech of wood that pierces the quiet of the room like a scream. Chills burst down her spine but she shakes it off, laughing at herself and marking it up as yet another thing Franky will have to look at when they see him again.
She shoves aside makeup brushes, snagging the handheld mirror from under two eyeshadow pallets. The face is a little larger than the width of her spread hand. No handle, but the plastic lavender frame is wide enough for her to hold.
“Yes!” She whispers and doesn’t know why she’s whispering because there’s no Robin or Carrot in the room, and everyone else is on the lawn deck. She holds the mirror up and brings the lantern closer. The jumping light and shadows on her face are jarring. Nami tries to focus on her hair, refusing to acknowledge how the chilly darkness, the screeching drawer, and the lingering paranoia of being hunted through Whole Cake have thoroughly spooked her.
Lowering the mirror, she holds the lantern out from her body so her eyes can re-adjust. She blinks, waiting for the deep shadow pits to recede back to the familiarity of her bedroom.
Except.
It's dark under the vanity. Darker than the rest of the room. She catches it from the corner of her eye and then looks at it full-on, blinking like a black spot is in her vision. She swallows, apprehension plummeting through her again. She lowers the lantern just a little, thinking that maybe the light just isn’t reaching far enough.
But the space underneath is the pitch black of a yawning mouth swallowing the lantern light in soundless gulps. She should be able to see the vanity's strawberry-lemonade paint and the polished wooden floorboards beneath it. The lantern in her grip wavers with her shaking hand, it’s metal and glass casing clinking together tinnily.
Nami jerks back, stumbling a step until her calves brush against the edge of the bed. She looks away from the vanity and takes a shuddering, centering breath. There’s nothing there—just ordinary shadows.
She can almost hear Usopp with his superstitions: “if there’s a weird sound at night or a shadow that shouldn’t be there, you don’t call back to it and you don’t shine a light into it. You keep your eyes averted, and you move the fuck out of there. Don’t you know anything?”
Usually, Nami agrees wholeheartedly. She’s a self-proclaimed scaredy-cat. Being scared also usually means being smart. But she’s not in some wilderness on a strange island; she’s in her bedroom. If she doesn’t look, she knows she’ll just keep thinking about it later when she's trying to sleep. She’ll have nightmares about mouths opening wide and gulping her down in silence. She knows she’ll dream of falling in darkness forever if she doesn’t suck it up and check for monsters under her vanity.
Besides, they’d already gone up against a mysterious shadow monster and won, hadn’t they?
“Please don’t be anything weird or horrible,” she prays before lifting the lantern again.
The light illuminates the chair, the pink paint of the vanity, and the space—and floorboards—beneath.
Nami laughs to herself, except it’s a single sharp and breathy note that doesn’t sound much like a laugh at all. She rubs her hand over her face. She’s being so stupid and childish.
“There’s nothing there,” she whispers defiantly into the cold night.
She flies out of the bedroom anyway, like she’s a child again, convinced that the monster from under her bed is chasing her. If she looks back, she’ll be—well, she doesn’t know. But she’s not about to find out.
Breaking into the moonlight is a relief, and Nami immediately breathes easier. She hurries down the stairs and imagines the darkness and paranoia dissolving behind her like feathers in the wind. She even giggles to herself about her childishness. Slowing down once she hits the deck, she creeps along the lawn, which is charred and pitted in some areas from the battles they narrowly escaped from. She steps heavier once she remembers that nothing short of cannonball fire would wake her idiots and hurries more purposefully toward the warm glow of the fire pit.
“You OK, Nami-swan?”
The fire dances about Sanji’s golden hair and elongates the tired marks under his eyes and the healing purple bruises along his temple and cheekbone.
She’s so glad he’s home.
“Yeah,” she sighs as she plops down. She catches it when Sanji realizes she’s wearing his hoodie. He smiles dopily, a pink dusting on his ears and cheeks. But he keeps any commentary to himself, which is good because she's not in the mood for pervy or mushy things.
“Yeah,” she repeats and then finds herself being more honest than she expected. “The dark is just spooky, sometimes.”
Sanji hums in agreement, though Nami’s pretty sure that, to him, the only spooky things in the dark are creepy-crawly bugs. “Luffy dropped a plate behind me today, and I about jumped out of my skin,” he admits. His rueful chuckle says, how silly, how stupid am I?
“I’m glad it’s not just me.” She turns her face away from the fire to hide how sad he made her, to hide the anger at his family she has to scrape from her face and tuck inside of her so she doesn’t scare away this surprising and fragile little openness offered to her. When her emotions are suitably schooled, she turns back and smiles with a nod toward Luffy. He's sitting between them, slumped against Sanji, fast asleep. “That didn’t take long, did it?”
“He conked out before you even got up the stairs. It’s embarrassing how poorly he handles his ale,” Sanji scoffs, but he’s grinning fondly.
“Well, there’s no island-wide rager to keep him occupied.”
The crinkles at the corner of Sanji’s eyes are adorable. Had they always been there? And so boyish? “Then we should definitely have one in Wano.”
“There’s too much to do before we can even think about a party there.” But her heart races in almost-giddy anticipation at another victory, another step closer to achieving all of their dreams. “Should we take them to bed?” Nami asks, gesturing at Brook, Chopper, and Carrot, who are all asleep under the thick quilts they had brought on the deck for their impromptu picnic.
“No,” Sanji murmurs as he gently reaches to ease the tankard out of Luffy’s hand and set it beside his empty wine glass. “It’s cold; let them be by the fire a little longer.”
“San-ji,” Luffy mumbles petulantly in response to the jostling.
The night wind surges around them, stinging Nami’s ears until she pulls the blue hood over her head. Luffy’s shirt is still open, baring his skin and white bandages. He’s wearing Zoro’s button-up, the dark green linen one with the light green hash marks. Luffy had stolen earlier in the evening, running back toward the fire and laughing with the shirt's tail flapping behind him, a dinner napkin tied around his head. He had stopped before them, snatched up one of the steak knives from the pile of dirty dishes, schooled his face into a hilarious grimace, and said with an affected voice, “being caught off guard could cost us our lives from now on!”
Chopper had squirted milk out of his nose with laughter, so Luffy continued his ridiculous impressions until they were all laughing so hard they hurt.
“Stupid Captain,” Sanji mutters now, maneuvering one arm around Luffy’s back and tugging the ends of the shirt closed and buttoning the buttons. Luffy had grown taller and broader in two years, but so had Zoro. Luffy swam in the shirt, the sleeves hanging over his hands, the hem skimming just above his knees.
(She’s glad the sleeves are covering the bandages around his arms. She tries not to imagine how they hold together the split skin from where Luffy had—
From where he had tried to—)
Luffy grumbles and presses into Sanji, almost knocking them both down. Sanji responds with something soft and nonsensical before sighing indulgently and guiding Luffy to rest on his lap. Something red spills out of Luffy’s pocket with the movement and rolls across the grass to clink against the foot of the iron fire pit.
Nami picks it up, rolling the red ball between her thumb and forefinger. It’s heavier than it looks, and she can make out a million tiny scratches on its dulled surface in the firelight. It’s a bead meant for stringing on a bracelet or necklace.
Her gaze snaps up to Sanji once she realizes what she’s holding, what this bead is. He’s staring back at her, his startled, awed expression surely mirroring her own.
Without saying a word, Sanji reaches out, hand trembling. Nami reverently places the bead in his palm. He slips it back into Luffy’s pocket.
Luffy snorts comically, breaking the tense atmosphere. He shifts, dark eyebrows furrowing before he turns to his side and presses his face into Sanji’s stomach, wrapping his arms around Sanji’s hips before finally becoming still again. Eventually, while Sanji stares stupidly down at Luffy, his hands hovering unsurely in the air, Luffy starts to snore into Sanji’s shirt.
“Oh,” Sanji says, eyes wide as he looks down at Luffy. He knew that Luffy had welcomed him back to the crew, had forgiven him—hadn’t ever seen anything to forgive. But Sanji still seems surprised all over again at the precious thing he gets to hold in his hands. “Oh.”
Nami respectfully looks away from the wet little quake in Sanji’s voice.
The open door at the top of the stairs, the one leading to the women’s quarters, catches her notice. She had closed it behind her, hadn’t she? She had pulled it shut during her childish flight out of the bedroom. Right? She glances at her hand, trying to recall the vibration of the knob under her palm, but she only remembers how fast her heart was racing.
Goosebumps slither down her arms, despite the hoodie, despite the fire. Every nerve in her screams like the drawer in her vanity and—
“Nami-san?”
She startles hard and looks at Sanji as if in a daze. She reminds herself that she's not cold at all. She’s nice and warm by their fire. The stars above them shine bright enough to chase away most of the shadows on the lawn deck. She’s with her crew. There’s nothing to be frightened of.
She turns back toward the door. It’s closed.
“Nami?”
“I… think we should sleep out here, together,” she says, her words as slow as syrup. “I don’t want to wake them up trying to move them.” She forces her body to turn away from the door, eyes lingering until the last second.
Sanji had covered Luffy in a blanket while she was distracted. An unlit cigarette hangs from his lips as he combs thick black hair away from Luffy’s forehead and tucks it behind his ear in a tender, unconscious gesture.
Sanji looks her over, clearly concerned.
“The fire is nice,” he agrees eventually, tone careful. But he doesn’t push her, so she doesn’t get too annoyed at his handling. “I’ll take the first watch.” He looks like he needs about two months of uninterrupted sleep. But she doesn’t fight him about that, either.
Freedom from monsters doesn’t mean freedom from nightmares.
She murmurs good night to him and stands, taking her quilt. Chopper snuffles cutely when she stoops to tuck him back into his blanket burrito, and she’s still smiling when she sits next to Carrot. She leans over her friend, tempted to try and rub away the dried tear tracks in her fur but not wanting to risk waking her up.
Nami swallows back Pedro’s crushing absence, tired of grief. Wiggling under Carrot’s blanket with a satisfied sigh at the warmth, she pulls her quilt over them both. She wraps her arm around Carrot’s waist, doing her best to lay over her like a shield.
The scent of cigarette smoke curling in the salty breeze and Carrot's coarse hair are the last sensations Nami has before she slips into sleep.
**
Nami wakes to wan light, the kind between the night and the dawn that almost makes it harder to see than complete darkness. The shadows are long in this in-between, the poor gray light blurring the edges of things. She sits up, blinking and confused at her bearings. The stars are cold, distant pinpricks in a sky indistinguishable from the sea.
It’s cold, though there is no breeze. She tucks the blankets around Carrot and stands, squinting at the deck. Someone smothered the fire pit during the night, though she still feels a little heat emanating from it. Sanji is asleep now, tangled up in his and Luffy’s blankets. Brook is gone, perhaps to the crow’s nest. Chopper is now burrowed with Sanji, having migrated to the nearest body once Brook left for his watch.
Luffy is gone, too.
She looks up again but can’t quite understand the stars above her. Had they drifted off course?
The sea is a silver gray like the sky. As still as a looking glass.
She is coming.
Nami whips around, heart in her throat until she sees the silhouette on the figurehead above. She stands on her tiptoes as if it would help her to see better.
“...Luffy?” But that’s not right. He would have to shout for her to hear him. He’s up the stairs, past the helm, up the giant figurehead. Even with the wind and waves eerily calm, she shouldn’t have heard him from that far away.
She looks around her again—Chopper, asleep. Sanji, asleep. Carrot, asleep. Their heads are buried under their blankets. Brook is in the crow’s nest. Or in the kitchen, making tea. The silhouette on the figurehead is too small to be Brook.
“Luffy?” She asks again. Taking a step forward, she frowns when the heavy morning dew seeps into her boots and socks. “Is that…” No, that’s stupid, don’t ask that, she firmly tells herself. Of course it’s Luffy. Who else could it be? They were alone on the ocean.
She licks her lips. “Who’s… coming?” Gooseflesh spider-crawls up her shoulders and skitters across the back of her neck. She squints at the figurehead, but the in-between light makes it impossible for her to see anything. Luffy’s outline slips into the gray sky and sea and he’s just one more shadow in the pre-dawn morning.
“Luffy?” She tries again, her voice shaking.
Seconds stretch where she doesn’t breathe, doesn’t blink. And then,
What’s in your hand?
Nami launches up and over to her hands and knees, swallowing a terrified scream like she learned to do all those years ago. Pieces of hair, freed from her braid, cling to her sweaty forehead and neck. She bats at them, at her face, half-convinced in her sleepy panic that thick bands of spider webs have ensnared her. She tries to sprint away from the suffocating weight around her, promptly face-planting when she trips on the quilts and blankets. The brief spark of impact finally wakes her, at least, but she continues to struggle like she’s fighting for her life.
She just wants out.
Finally rolling away, she wobbles to her feet, fingers clawing at her thighs for her Clima-Tact.
“Nami-san?” She reels around, boots catching on the goddamned blankets, arms pinwheeling.
“Oh, dear—” Dry, brittle fingers wrap around her wrist and steady her. “The fire is out, but I think the metal is still quite warm,” Brook says as he kneels at her feet to untangle the blankets from around her ankles.
She looks over her shoulder at the smoldered fire pit. Now that she’s paying attention, she feels a little of the warmth radiating enough to whisper against her leg. She could have burned herself.
“There we go. My lady,” he says, remaining on one knee and gallantly offering his hand for Nami. Affecting as much regality as her white fluffy boots and pale pink sweatpants afford her, she places her fingers in Brook’s palm and primly steps over the bedding. Brook chuckles a little at her, which is what she wanted. On his feet, their hands still loosely clasped, he elegantly spins her out, and they bow at each other like they’re at the end of a dance.
“Am I the last one up?” It’s a gray morning. She can clearly see around her, images sharper and more colorful than in her dream. The thin clouds stretch over them as far as her eye can see, enough to block the sun and sap the warmth out of the air but not enough to rob them of pleasant daylight.
“I came to retrieve you for breakfast.” He bustles around her, picking up the blankets, shaking out blades of grass, and piling them over his arm to drop into the laundry. He tells her the breakfast dish line-up as he works. “Luffy-san is sore about the lack of bacon, bless him, but Sanji-san said he’d be feeling good enough to make his Sea King sausage tonight if the repairs don’t wear him out too much. I can hardly wait! My mouth is already watering, but ah!”
“You don’t have a mouth,” Nami finishes as she picks up the last couple of blankets. Brows furrowing, she runs her hand over them. They’re dry, with no lingering dew. Tilting her head down, she scowls at her boots. They’re soaked like in the dream; she can see the water beading on the fur.
“Are you sure you’re well, Nami-san?”
Blinking rapidly, like that could help her somehow make sense of the swell of confusion and dread inside her, she looks back to Brook. His face is stark white, his exposed teeth and lack of expression as familiar to her as any warm, gentle smile. Who needs lips to smile? To sing? Certainly not their musician.
“Just hungry.”
“Oh?” he hums, and because it’s hard to track his eyeline (because he has no eyes! Yoho!), he helps her by tilting his skull down. “What are you holding?”
What’s in your hand?
Nami swallows and looks down.
It’s the lavender-framed mirror from her vanity drawer. She’d carried it out with her, held it while she talked with Sanji around the fire, and held it while she slept and dreamt. A small line of fog outlines her thumb on the glass, but its silver-smooth face unerringly reflects the white-gray sky above her.
“So one was left after all?” Brook asks as they walk up the stairs toward the kitchen, where Nami can now smell the delicious breakfast waiting for her. She can even hear Luffy’s voice and Chopper's laughter followed by an ominous crash and Sanji’s swearing. “My, my,” Brook hums. “So lively in the morning! These old bones can’t keep up.”
Nami tucks the mirror into her pocket and reaches to hold Brook’s elbow like he’s a gentleman escorting her to a grand ball. The position is a little awkward with his height, but he slouches a little to accommodate her. Her stomach rumbles, and she beckons him forward more insistently, grinning at him.
“I think you’re the liveliest of us all.”
**
The sun never breaks through the clouds. The sea and wind stay calm. Nami spends most of the morning adjusting and re-adjusting their course because it’s fucking difficult traveling by vivre card. She’s had practice getting to Zou—which had been ridiculously annoying because the island had kept moving. She kicks ass at her job, but this is the most tedious navigating she’s ever done. The vivre card’s ragged edge isn’t as precise as a needle, and the paper is prone to only little twitches and flutters so she’s unsure if it’s pointing North, East, or Northeast. Plus, either Kin’emon moved drastically during the night, or the Sunny got off course while Nami slept.
The rest of the day is hard work. Hard because they’re down to half of their crew. Hard because this is the fourth full day out of Whole Cake, and they are all still covered in stitches and bruises. Drunk with exhaustion, they're hilariously (and somewhat dangerously) delayed in physical and mental processes.
But they work because the Sunny is in bad shape. The kitchen is amongst the worst of it.
“No thanks to you, Luffy!” She had sworn at him as they hauled patchwork materials from below deck and across the entire damn ship to the galley in the late morning.
“Sorry, sorry!” He called ahead of her, balancing wood stacks on his shoulders with Chopper yapping at his heels.
“Dammit, Luffy! Watch your fucking injuries! No, Nami, don’t—”
She had thrown her mallet at the back of Luffy’s head anyway and then tried throwing the entire piece of wood she was carrying when the little shit had the audacity to dodge. “You don’t sound sorry at all!”
After the kitchen, the deck needed the most work. An Emperor had stood on Sunny, the sheer weight of her will and presence almost imploding their ship. The cargo bay was a hazard that needed re-organization and repairs. A thorough search of the hull for leaks was required. Weakness in the foremast necessitated reinforcement while Nami and Sanji worked together to stitch a patch on their sail.
A painstaking inventory made their decimated stores a disheartening reality. They were on a tight schedule, but they would have to stop eventually to restock food and other necessities, including some of Chopper’s infirmary supplies.
After dinner, resting her forehead against the shower wall, the hot water does little to soothe Nami’s sore muscles. It stings her skin, making it apparent that she had forgotten to reapply sunscreen early enough in the day. She’ll have a burn on her neck and shoulders before it fades into a cluster of freckle galaxies. She aches to her bones.
Stepping out, Nami applies Chopper’s aloe mix to her burns before massaging his muscle relief cream into her legs and lower back. Even her fingers and knuckles feel sore and swollen.
She changes into warm, comfortable clothes for the evening. Well, mostly warm. The long-sleeved crop top she chooses to go with her sweatpants isn’t exactly suitable for their current environment. But it’s cute. She grimaces when the neckline rubs at her sunburn.
Still, she muses as she slips on fuzzy socks and house shoes; it had been nice to keep up with the boys today. In a crew of monsters who could singlehandedly take down a giant, she often felt like the weak one. How could she know how strong she was when she compared herself to them?
But the other day, she’d hauled a barrel of Cola into the Soldier Dock System. And, yeah, sure, some of the monsters on her crew can lift that thing with one hand. And she was entirely fueled by terror and adrenaline, but there was no way anyone from Cocoyasi could have done that by themselves. They would have needed two, maybe three people.
Sometimes, Nami wonders if Cocoyasi’s residents might see how strong she is while doing everyday things like lifting a full barrel of Cola and think of her as a monster, too. She can’t help but be fiercely proud of that.
The dining room table is cleared of dishes and mostly tidied back up when she re-enters and dramatically slumps over the table.
“I think even my hair is sore,” she groans miserably. “If the others were here, I wouldn’t have to work nearly as hard.” She angles her head, cheek squished against the table surface, as she glares up at Luffy. He doesn’t even register her rising ire, focused instead on the brightly-colored origami paper someone had handed him, likely to redirect his fidgeting. He’s pretty good at origami shapes—as long as you don’t expect him to make anything... traditional. His tongue poking out as he works is freaking adorable, but he’s wearing one of his vests, exposing his bandaged arms, and she still can’t bear to look at those.
Pouting, she thrusts her hand into Luffy’s face. “Look at this! My nails, which survived Whole Cake—they survived Big Mom, Luffy!—have been torn to shreds today. These conditions are inhumane!”
Luffy just blinks at her. “Uh,” he says intelligently. “Sorry?” And then his expressive features melt into an annoyed scowl. “You were the one who yelled at us to do all of those things!”
Nami rears up to glare at him. “Because they needed to be done! Don’t use my words against me!” She slumps back over. “Zoro owes me so much money. I could have made him do my work and his while I watched from a lawn chair. I deserve a break, you know.” She pauses, thinks, then decides, “I’m raising his interest for shirking chores today.”
Luffy bubbles over with laughter like champagne fizzing over a crystal clear glass.
“That moss head doesn’t know his ass from a hammer,” Sanji scoffs as he appears at the table, setting down a tea cup and saucer in front of Nami. She wearily lifts her head in acknowledgement of the steaming cup. There are cute little frosted biscuits lined on the curve of the saucer. “I’m easily worth ten of that stupid swordsman.”
“Well, if you say so,” she hums.
“I do say so! I’ll prove it!”
“Oh?” She smiles sweetly up at him. “How will you do that, hm?”
“Ah, is Nami-san manipulating Sanji again?” Brooks asks as he ducks into the dining room with Chopper in tow, both cleaned and in fresh clothes.
“Manipulation isn’t nice, Nami,” Chopper pipes with the utmost disappointment. “Especially not to idiots like Sanji.”
“Oi, you shitty little raccoon dog. How about you watch your mouth?”
“Nami!” Chopper cries, skipping past Sanji, over Luffy, and into Nami’s arms with big crocodile tears. “Nami, Sanji is mad! I’m too cute to die!”
“What were you saying about manipulation, Doctor Chopper?” Nami sighs but hugs him briefly before setting him beside her. He giggles and pulls out a pen and the medical journal he’s been writing in lately. Further down the table, Brook tunes his violin, thanking Sanji warmly when he delivers Brook’s tea in his favorite teacup.
“Carrot?” Nami asks, hopeful, but Brook shakes his head.
“On top of the crow’s nest. She wants to be alone again, I’m afraid.”
“I brought her up some blankets! And she promised she would come for a snack later since she didn’t eat dinner,” Chopper adds.
“That was good of you, Chopper,” Nami says, smacking Luffy’s hand away without looking when he ventures to steal a biscuit.
“San-ji,” Luffy whines, cheeks puffed out more like a distressed toddler than a man with a billion-beli bounty.
“You just ate, shitty captain,” Sanji grumbles but plops a prepared plate of triangle-cut sandwiches in front of Luffy anyway. Nami can smell the steaming tea Sanji sets next to the plate and recognizes the blend as the one he makes to promote sleep. Luffy is usually the last person who needs help with that. Still, Robin told them he had been restless enough on the voyage from Dressrosa to delay his own healing—“much to Torao-kun’s poorly-hidden consternation," Robin had assured with a sly smile. She suspected it had to do with the crew's separation. Nami and Chopper had started giving him the tea on the way to Whole Cake, and Sanji had wordlessly started making it for Luffy as soon as he returned to the Sunny. Nami didn’t even have to tell him; that’s how wonderful and attentive Sanji could be.
“The best cook,” Luffy whispers reverently to himself before he starts to eat. Nami grins teasingly at Sanji’s failed attempt to hide his blazing cheeks.
She winces when something in her pocket jabs into her thigh. She pulls out the lavender-framed mirror and sets it on the table. Had she carried it with her all day? Why had she put it in her pocket again after her shower?
Luffy’s gaze immediately zeros in on it, eyebrows climbing in surprise.
“Oh! We had one left?”
“You don’t think they can get us with that, can they?” Chopper asks tentatively, setting aside his journal to duck under the table and come up on Luffy’s lap. This, incidentally, blocks Luffy from his sandwiches. Luffy huffs briefly but stretches his arm around Chopper, causing the little reindeer to whirl around and viciously pinch Luffy’s ear with his hoof.
“I told you not to stretch your damn arms for no reason, you bastard!”
“Ow! Sorry!” Luffy says, not sounding sorry at all. “But sandwiches!”
“Perhaps there’s a certain range to that Big Mom pirate’s power?” Brook muses, tilting his head to signify that he’s looking at and talking about the mirror. “Otherwise, Big Mom would be able to reach her opponents anywhere in the world.” He sips his tea, demurely returns it to its saucer, and slumps over the table. “What a terrifying thought.”
“Don’t depress yourself!” Sanji reprimands from the kitchen.
“I liked Branch. She was funny,” Luffy says, Chopper now hanging over his shoulder. “And Katakuri is a cool guy. If they could reach us, I don’t think they would right now.”
“Right now?” Chopper whimpers. “You mean they could come later?”
“Dunno,” Luffy blithely shrugs before genteelly sipping at his tea—proof he’s fucking with them, Nami knows, because Luffy doesn’t genteelly do anything unless he’s being a shit. Still, she can’t help the plunge of dread. They are almost five days away from Whole Cake now, and she still feels the threat of that entire hostile territory nipping at her heels like a legion of hounds.
Chopper snivels quietly about Big Mom chasing them while Brook nervously stutters comforting platitudes. Nami kicks Luffy’s shin under the table for scaring them. He howls offense in response, even though she knows he experienced no real pain—and Zoro calls her the dramatic one.
“Anyway,” she says a bit loudly, popping her last sweet biscuit in her mouth and chewing thoughtfully down at the mirror. She didn't have anything to say; she just wanted to stop talking about the Big Mom Pirates potentially leaping out of the damned mirror like a demented Jack-in-the-box.
“Are you going to hang it in your room again?” Chopper asks, sitting on the table next to Luffy’s sandwiches (the better to try and steal one) and peering over the mirror. The silver face reflects the top of his and Nami’s heads.
“You’ve been in Nami-san’s and Robin-chan’s room?” Sanji yells from the refrigerator.
“Chopper-san!” Brook laments just as dramatically. “You’ve been holding out on us!”
Nami rolls her eyes at them but smiles at Chopper. “You remember that?”
“Mm!” He says. “You and Luffy and Usopp put them in all the rooms on the Merry and did it again for Sunny! You said it was good luck?”
“Well, uh,” Nami trails off. After last night in her room and the weird dream on the deck, she doesn’t want to speak of dark, creepy things, even in the warm comfort of the dining room.
“There’s a superstition in East Blue that hanging a mirror near the doors is a protection,” Sanji says, finally settling from his busy work in the kitchen and sitting across from Brook with a cup of tea and a few of the frosted biscuits.
“From what?” Chopper cries, the little sandwich he had successfully stolen from Luffy suspended halfway to his mouth in his dismay. Luffy reclaims it by stretching his neck and snapping it away with his teeth.
“Well,” Sanji says, thoughtful. “I’m not too sure.”
“Bad luck?” Nami guesses. Belle-mère never really gave in to superstitions—at least, not that Nami saw. Still, there had been a little mirror at the front door of their house. And, now that she’s thinking about it, she remembers mirrors hung up at many shops and restaurants in Cocoyasi. She chews on this memory from her childhood, so extraordinary because of its ordinariness, and savors it. “Maybe mirrors in entryways are good luck because they're supposed to distract or capture bad luck.”
“Or evil spirits,” Luffy adds with an overdone spooky voice. “Dadan had mirrors up at all the doors to ward them off. I think she even put one up in our treehouse, even though we didn’t think she knew where it was. Ace and Sabo wouldn’t have done that back then.” He pauses long enough to pop another sandwich in his mouth and shrug. “I don’t care about evil spirits and stuff, but hanging up mirrors kinda reminds me of them, you know?”
Nami wants to laugh because only a man like Luffy would look at superstitions and talk of evil spirits and say, “yeah, that reminds me of home. Nostalgic, isn’t it?”
But it is nostalgic. Right now, Nami isn’t looking at the mirror and thinking of evil spirits, bad luck, or even the Big Mom Pirates. Instead, she thinks of Belle-mère’s house. She recalls the creak of the front door, the wooden floorboard thudding hollowly under their feet, and the rug—had it been blue? green?—that always got kicked askew. The old doorknob you had to turn just right for it to catch. The coat rack beside the mirror and Nami and Nojiko's sandals shadowed by Belle-mère’s muddy boots.
“Then let’s hang them up again! Who cares about shitty Big Mom Pirates? Not me!” Chopper cheers, little hooves in the air before they drop back to his lap. “But we only have one mirror right now.”
“Then we’ll put it up here, in the dining room,” Nami decides. She hadn’t been thinking about hanging this one up—it’s just a handheld mirror best used for makeup. But now, floating in her memory of Belle-mère and thinking about what home means, she firmly believes that this is the best place for their last mirror to go until they get more.
(She thinks about their separated crew members, Carrot’s deep grief, and their upcoming battle in Wano and figures they could all use a little luck right now.)
“It’s where we spend the most time, right? I think it’ll protect us the best here.”
“Whew!” Chopper sighs, relieved, sitting back on the table. He swipes the next to the last sandwich and stuffs it in his mouth in one devilishly smooth motion. “What a relief! We’re safe.”
“Oi!” Luffy says, cheeks puffed again before he tickles Chopper’s sides in retribution.
“I saw the crate with the broken mirror pieces in the cargo hold today,” Sanji says. “Are we hoping to repair the broken ones?”
Brook shudders. “So much bad luck in one box, it gives me goosebumps! But, ah—I don’t have any skin.”
“Oh, I know this one!” Chopper says, waving one hoof because the other is trying to push Luffy away. “Seven years of bad luck for every broken mirror, right? Why are there so many mirror superstitions? Humans are so strange.” A pause. “I can’t help but worry about that box of bad luck, though. Oi, Luffy! Let’s get rid of it!”
“Can’t,” Luffy says, his face smushed comically between Chopper’s hooves. He’s holding the last sandwich protectively to his chest.
“Usopp would never set foot on the Sunny again if he found out that we broke the mirrors and just tossed the pieces overboard,” Sanji interprets for Luffy. “If we're not going to repair them, then we have to bury them on land. I don’t really think much of the broken mirror superstition, but Usopp does.”
“I don’t think we could pull off lying to him about it,” Nami agrees, already imagining Usopp’s horrified face.
“That’s how we reverse it?” Chopper asks, hopeful. “Then let’s do that! I don’t want to throw the pieces overboard anymore.”
Chopper returns to Luffy’s lap once the sandwiches are gone, and Luffy rests his chin on Chopper’s head in between sips of his tea. His energy levels had mostly returned today, but he had worked hard beside them the entire day, though Chopper had manhandled him for medicine, bandage changes, and a nap around midday. Now the skin beneath his eyes is dark, and he’s more visibly weary than usual. His shoulders and arms look more fragile under the bandages.
He’s still a little on the thin side.
Nami eyes Sanji out of the corner of her eye just in time to see the flicker of concern.
“But really,” Chopper muses. “I know of superstitions and stuff—I heard of breaking mirrors, walking under ladders, and knocking on wood before I even left Drum. I even heard of sailing superstitions like whistling into the wind or having a woman on board.”
“That, of course,” Sanji interjects, “has more to do with misogyny and suppression of women in a historically male-dominated industry and social structure.” He lights a cigarette before taking off his jacket and laying it beside him, exhaling a small stream of smoke. “Dumb bastards.”
“Or redheads,” Luffy grins at Nami, but it’s not even teasing, just a little adoring. “Redheads are bad luck, too.”
“Oh?” Chopper asks, and Brook chuckles nervously, already wisely edging away from them. “Why?”
“No soul.”
“Ah! Nami has no soul!”
“Shut up, you two!” She snaps, half-climbing the table to pinch Chopper’s ear and pull at Luffy’s cheek. She lets it go when he tries to get away from her, so the skin flies back with a snap and sends him careening backward off his seat, taking Chopper with him so they land in a pile of groans and giggles.
“I’m just saying,” Chopper continues as he valiantly climbs back up to his spot on the table, leaving Luffy behind on the floor. “Reindeer don’t have anything like that, you know? I mean, I guess they…” he trails off, touches his blue nose. “Well, that wasn’t really a superstition. I think it’s just a human thing. I don’t really get why. It’s just a mirror! And there are so many superstitions about them. But talking about it, I can’t help but somewhat believe it.”
“There are a lot of superstitions to do with mirrors,” Brook agrees. “In West Blue, you’re not supposed to let a baby look into a mirror—he could remember his past life. And you should cover the mirrors in the house of someone who passed away, so their spirit doesn’t get trapped.”
“There’s that one superstition in North Blue,” Sanji adds. “That you can’t hold up a candle to the mirror to look at yourself because it might call forward an evil spirit.”
Nami can’t help it; she shivers at the thought. Last night, when she had been creeped out in her bedroom, she had held the lantern to the small mirror in her hand just like Sanji described.
“But that’s silly, right? How else would people see themselves in a mirror?”
Sanji shrugs. “How should I know? It was probably more of a deterrent for anyone using the mirror at night. You can’t get ready for late-night illicit shenanigans if the boogeyman is waiting in the mirror to grab you.”
“So which is it?” Brook asks, nodding toward the mirror in front of Nami. “Is it protection? Or a window for an evil spirit to come through?”
“I think it’s a mirror,” Luffy says, finally slithering back into his chair.
“I think it’s what we want it to be,” Sanji agrees.
“Then I want it to be protection!” Chopper cries, and Nami smiles at him.
“Alright!” She says, slapping the table. “Get me some, I don’t know—a drill, a hook, glue, twine, or fishing line. We’ll hang it up tonight!”
Chopper and Luffy run off and return shortly with Usopp’s massive toolbox between them. It takes Nami some time to parse out the organization—it’s not a standard toolbox with seeds, tabasco sauce, and fake roaches neatly aligned next to things like wire nails, screwdrivers, tweezers, pliers, and all kinds of string and twine. It doesn’t take long, but by the time she figures out what implements to use and hangs the mirror, Chopper is too sleepy to give more than a mumbled “yay!” from where Brook is holding him against his bony chest.
“Seriously, guys,” she tsks. “Where’s the enthusiasm?” Nami adjusts the mirror again and then takes her time methodically packing and re-packing Usopp’s toolbox. She made up her mind about something while working on the mirror, and now she’s waiting for everyone to leave so she can talk to Luffy. Luffy probably wouldn’t mind talking about this in front of everyone, but she would, so she waits.
“I think it’s lovely,” Brook promises her. “But I should get this one to bed. And these old bones are very tired, trying to keep with you young ones today. Good evening, mademoiselle,” Brook farewells, shuffling Chopper and his violin so he can kiss the top of Nami’s hand on the way out. To Luffy, slumped over the table and half-dozing, he runs his porcelain fingers through his hair. “I’ll wake you after my watch, Captain.”
Sanji’s already wandered off for his watch. He left behind a tray of two sandwiches, fruit, and tea ready to pour over for Nami to take to Carrot. She had refused the same tray when Sanji switched places with her and had claimed to be too tired to eat, which had all but broken Sanji’s heart. He had already smoked through two cigarettes by the time he returned the tray to the dining room and wrapped up his last tasks in the kitchen before leaving again.
When Brook is gone, Nami licks her lips and wraps the embroidery thread she’d found in Usopp’s box around her fingers before plopping next to Luffy. He stirs and slowly lifts his head to blink muzzily at her.
“Oh? Is it time for sleep?”
She means to keep looking him in the eye but can’t stop looking at his arms. “Aren’t you cold?” But what she means is, doesn’t it hurt? And why are you such a self-destructive dumbass? And why did you make me watch you be a self-destructive dumbass?
Luffy heals fast. She wishes he would heal faster. She’s not sure how long she can bear to look at his self-damaged arms without slapping him across the face again.
(She wonders if the tears he ripped in his arms will scar. If they’ll look like Lichtenberg figures in his skin.)
“Nami?”
She takes a breath and stops hesitating. “Luffy, I saw the bead last night. It fell out of your pocket. Me and Sanji put it back.”
He tilts his head, thinking, and then brightens. “Oh, yeah!” He reaches in, digs out the bead, and holds it gently in his palm. “It fell out? Thank you for getting it for me!”
“Yeah, of course,” she says, finally looking up at him to smile. “Listen, I was thinking when we were hanging up the mirror.” She holds up the thread. “What do you think about me making a bracelet for it? So you can string it on and wear it around your wrist. Maybe it won’t be as easy to lose.”
“Oh,” he says, looking down at his palm, eyebrows furrowed. He tilts his hand back and forth, watching the bead lazily spin.
Nami tries not to push him, even though she wants to hurry through the anxious stone in her stomach.
“I don’t even know how I got this,” Luffy says quietly. “I just woke up with it in my pocket. I don’t know if someone—Jinbe, maybe—picked it up and carried it. Or maybe it just…” he trails off. “Maybe it got caught up in my clothes and Torao found it.”
“Did you ask them?”
Luffy reaches behind him to pull his hat onto his head. “No. Does it matter?”
“I guess not,” she says. The how and why, she thinks, have never mattered to Luffy. “What do you want?”
“Hmm,” he murmurs and then grins at her. “I don’t want to lose it yet.”
Yet, she thinks with a little twist. Yet.
Like Luffy is always waiting to lose every last piece of Ace.
“Then we won't,” she says. She takes the black glossed embroidery thread. Usopp had different colors, but she thought this would go best with the red. She tapes the ends to the table and gets to work knotting and braiding the strands. She doesn’t make the band too thick or flat—it still needs to thread through the bead. But she makes it as tough and durable as she knows how to, her fingers quickly remembering the knots and patterns Belle-mère taught her and Nojiko.
Luffy watches her the whole time, wide-eyed and fascinated. When she’s done, she patiently guides Luffy’s hands to assemble the bead himself. He’s got wide palms and thick fingers, hands that always seem clumsy right up until they’re not, right up until he’s holding his breath with Nami as they carefully thread a big, red, scratched-up bead onto a piece of braided string.
He laughs a little breathlessly when she secures the bracelet to his wrist. “Yes,” he says. “Yes. I like this.”
His soft, pleased smile melts her heart.
“That’ll be ten thousand beli,” she says primly. He gasps dramatically but doesn’t do her the service of being distracted. He leans over and kisses her cheek, giggling with delight.
“Nami’s so smart,” he says. “You’re the best.”
Nami gently moves the bead up and down the braided bracelet she made. She didn’t want him to lose it, it’s true. But what she hadn’t told him—what he maybe wouldn’t have understood—is that she’s hoping, like the mirror hanging in the doorway for protection and good luck, that Ace’s bead on Luffy will do something similar. Bring him luck; she thinks as her fingers lightly skim the bulky bandages under his new bracelet. Protect him.
Even from himself.
“It looks good on you,” she declares. He grins, all boyishness that makes her want to ruffle his hair. So she does, knocking over his hat in the process, making him squawk.
Luffy waits semi-patiently until she closes Usopp’s toolbox, then picks the heavy thing up for her. “Thanks again, Nami!” He calls over his shoulder, way too loud. “Good night!”
She shakes her head ruefully at his back and turns to pick up Carrot’s tray. She rolls her eyes when she spots Luffy’s origami creations on the table, the extra pieces of paper fanned out. She hastily stacks the paper again and leaves his creations lined up on the table as if they were standing sentry. She does take one—she has no idea what it is, but it sort of looks like a flower—made out of pale green paper with delicate orange designs and places it on Carrot’s tray, sure it’ll at least make her smile.
Her bedroom is oppressively cold and dark when she enters. Blindly, she sets the tray down on the floor at the door. She doesn’t want to flick the light switch and wake Carrot if she’s sleeping, but she can’t even see enough to find her way around.
She fumbles to the sitting area, where they keep a lantern and candle on the table. She struggles to locate the matchbox and pick out a match. She finds the striking surface with her finger but misses the box completely the first two times. Eventually, fire spit-hisses-crackles to life, and it might as well be a sudden solar flare in the darkness for the way it makes her eyes water and blink. She quickly lights the candle and cups the flame from the chilly draft.
Carrot is curled under the covers. Nami sighs, her stomach turning over with guilt and worry. But she knows about grief, anger, and vengeance. She knows she just can’t will those things away for Carrot, no matter how much she wishes she could.
Nami places the candle on the vanity and decides to bring the tray inside and set it down next to it. Carrot has been restless—never sleeping through the night. If she wakes up in an hour or so, she might see the food and take it with her during her early morning wanderings.
She turns to her closet for a different shirt to sleep in. A cold chill crawls up her neck, and her heart stutters. She whips around, a fist already raised—
But there’s nothing. The room is dark, the candlelight weakly casting eerie fluttering shadows. There’s no one there, just Carrot in the bed.
She sighs and thinks she might need Sanji’s relaxing tea if she hopes to get any rest tonight. She squints in the closet, fumbling for the built-in drawers, when a weird, awful smell slams into her like a physical wall. “What—” she starts to say but gags as soon as she opens her mouth. It’s rancid, whatever it is—sharply rotting with the worst taste of sweetness to it. Hands over her nose, she stumbles back, hip bumping into one of the chairs.
“Na-mi,” Carrot whispers.
Her heart trips up her throat as she turns toward the bed. “Carrot?” She asks, voice muffled by her hands. “Are you awake? Do you smell—?”
“Nami.”
The voice isn’t coming from the bed.
Slow as a dream, her eyes travel to the vanity, to the space she's avoided since the previous night.
She screams.
It rips out of her throat before she understands why she’s screaming.
Carrot is—she is—
Nami runs toward the vanity, toward her friend, thigh glancing off the table and sending her twisting to the floor, candles and candlesticks and matches skitter-spinning in her wake.
“Carrot! Carrot!” She screams, hasn’t stopped screaming. “Why are you—please, please come out. Where—where do I even touch you?!”
Because Carrot is under the vanity. It’s a small vanity, low and narrow and there is no way Carrot should be able to fit herself under there like she is.
Except Carrot’s arms and shoulders are not right. In the dim, flickering light above her, Nami can see that Carrot’s arms are twisted and popped out of place. Her breath is labored and slow because her knees are jammed so far into her ribs that she can't get enough air.
“How?!” Nami shouts inanely and doesn’t actually care about an answer right now. She reaches in and pulls at Carrot’s ankles, her calves.
Carrot doesn’t help, probably can’t move enough to help. She just wheezes and stares at Nami, past Nami into the darkness behind her.
“No,” Nami whispers in denial, fingers gripping Carrot’s ankle tighter as her brain finally catches up. “No. No.”
Because if Carrot is here, twisted up like some sort of doll stuffed inside a box, slowly suffocating, then… what was in the bed?
Slowly, not letting go of Carrot, not letting her think for one second that Nami will leave her like that, she looks over her shoulder, blood rushing in her ears like a cyclone.
Something moves from under the covers. Nami can’t see what it is, her angle making the shadows too deep. She just sees the blankets sinking, like the body under it is sinking into—through—the bed. Like the figure she had thought was Carrot is deflating into shadow. There’s a whisper of… movement? A smell, that god-awful smell of rotting things.
The closet door creaks closed.
tbc