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The ocean has a dreamlike quality that day. Bluer than anything Sanji’s ever seen, glittering in stillness to the horizon, so flat and serene it seems to disappear into the distant clouds. From the dock where he sits with Nami, fishing lures bobbing in the waves before him, he sees sea birds diving between crystalline waves, darting after minnows and other small creatures weaving through the shallows.
A bucket sits between them, half-full.
Nami sighs, sad and heavy. It’s only been a day since Arlong’s defeat, and though she’s a lot brighter now that weight’s been lifted, Sanji’s seen that slightly confused melancholy playing over her face at times.
“I should be happier, shouldn’t I?” she says suddenly, hands tightening around the rod that rests in her lap. “I’m free, he’s gone, the village is safe…”
“But you lost a lot,” Sanji says, quietly.
Moments pass – the ocean laps at the pier. Behind them, among a dense jungle of verdant greenery, a narrow path winds back to Cocoyashi village. The beach that stretches out on either side is empty – this pier isn’t in regular use, not now the main harbour is safe.
“Years,” Nami says angrily. “Time I could have spent with my sister, my mother…”
It hurts her so badly that she doesn’t know where to put it – can’t be seen as ungrateful for the free years to come, can’t show her pain to a village of relieved celebrants. Surely those who’ve lived on this island, unable to leave without explicit permission, unable to breathe, have been much worse off.
“Well, screw it,” she says, suddenly standing. Her grip on the fishing rod loosens, and it clatters to the boards at her sandaled feet, forgotten. When Sanji looks up at her, her face partially hidden by a wide-brimmed sunhat and her sun-browned shoulders shaking, he thinks she must be crying, and begins to reel in his line, ready to comfort her.
But she looks down and grins, face gleaming in the sunlight. “Wanna scream?”
There’s a brightness in her eyes that he’s not seen before – half tears, half gleeful promise of an impending release. She's shaking, still, but not crying – it’s excitement, he realises.
“Nami-san, what do you mean…?”
“I mean, Sanji-kun, do you want to stand on this pier with me and scream out at the ocean?”
“But the village –“
“They’ve probably heard me before,” she smiles. “I used to come here as a child.”
The image of a young Nami, responsibility so heavy on her, coming here just to cry and scream her worries and fears – it hurts.
But he’s starting to feel it, too.
All the things he still hasn’t told them.
It would be nice to relieve some of that pressure building up inside him.
He stands, a little uncertain. “What do I do?”
“It’s like this,” she says, and hunches her shoulders, taking a deep breath… before bending forward and screaming – truly, primally – across the ocean before her. Tiny fish dart away beneath their feet, and from the trees behind them a single parrot takes flight.
A breeze picks up Sanji’s fringe, playing over his face and ears with a gentle caress. Go on, it seems to say. It’ll feel so good.
Nami turns back to him, grinning at his slightly stunned expression. Her eyes shine in the sunlight, caramel brown and bright. There’s a beautiful pink flush in her cheeks, and she looks lighter, somehow.
She motions to him. Sanji turns to face out to sea, all that blue and green stretching on and on before him. Give me your pain. Let it go.
He gulps, stutters, “I d-don’t think I can…”
Nami smiles softly. “With me, then,” and she puts her arms out and hollers again, a laugh playing under it like an accompanying instrument – and bolstered by her bravery Sanji joins her, a little stuttered and quiet at first but building to a howl of grief and pain and loss that plays in tandem with Nami’s – primal and unrestrained. Two teenagers with years of hurt behind them and an ocean of promises ahead.
“See?” Nami yells, “isn’t it amazing?!”
“Yes! Oh my god,” he laughs, as a strong wind rises, carrying their voices back towards the village.
“You can say things too,” she grins, “like this –“ and raises her face to the sky – “I want my mom back!”
The sky picks up her words and carries them far away, into the bright and blue. Sanji doesn’t know what to say – until it hits him.
“I’m so thankful for my dad!”
Zeff’s calloused hands grasp his shoulders from across the ocean, steady and sure.
Nami, smiling so wide she could burst –
“I miss being five!”
“I love cooking!”
“I love money!”
“I want to be loved!”
“I’m sad!”
And on it goes, every major and minor thing that plagues them, given to the ocean, until they’re out of breath with their hands on their knees, panting in the fading light.
Sanji, light-headed all of a sudden, sits on the edge of the pier and lets himself fall back. The sky above is clear and full of faintly twinkling stars.
He feels the air shift as Nami takes the spot next to him. They breathe, free and easy into the twilight.
“Helps, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“Genzo-san never asked me… back then, what I was doing out here,” she says quietly. “I think he always knew.”
“I’m glad you had him around.”
“Yeah.”
Sanji doesn’t have to look. He knows there’s a tear or two trailing down her freckled cheeks. They fall between the cracks in the pier, joined by his own.
He starts at a faint rustle behind them, a crunch in the dry sand at the treeline.
Usopp, sheepish; “Are you guys yelling?”
“Yeah. Come on in.”
The sea takes it all.