Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Nami wakes up.

She doesn’t remember falling asleep, so this is a surprise. She doesn’t remember being knocked out either.

She’s not in pain at all. It feels like she’s just laid down for a nap, except she still has all her clothes on and the floor under her is too wet for her to ever choose to sleep on it. Her long-sleeved white blouse is probably permanently stained. At least the cute skirt can be washed.

Cracking her eyes open, she sees trees stretching far above her, shading the sun so effectively there isn’t much underbrush.

Surprising. For some reason she thought she was indoors, even though there’s dirt on the ground and it smells like jungle.

It’s the weather, she realizes. The weather is odd. The trees reach for the open sky far above her, but aside from the spotty sunlight and a slight wind, the weather feels like it’s barely present. Like she’s under a roof.

How did she get here?

She stands up and looks around, but she’s never seen this place before in her life, and she can’t see any kind of trail.

Brushing most of the dirt off her clothes, she tries to think.

There was a man with a very long scarf, she remembers. He was causing trouble, and she and Luffy went to find him, and then… She can’t remember.

And now she’s here. Wherever here is.

Cautiously, she pulls out her Clima-Tact and gets ready, just in case. This is a jungle, and if she knows anything about jungles, it’s that where there’s trees, there’s animals. She has no idea what kinds of animals live here, but she’s willing to bet they’d like to eat her.

The ground she’s standing on has a slight slope to it. If she follows it downwards, she’ll most likely get to water. From there, it’ll be easier to navigate.

Squaring her shoulders and getting a good grip on her weapon, Nami starts walking.

The forest is remarkably vibrant. Mostly green, she sees glimpses of flowers in every colour far above, and every time she passes a clearing where the sun reaches the ground, she has to wade through a lake of bushes and herbs. The slope of the ground is nearly imperceptible at times, and steep enough she has to climb at others. Here and there, butterflies flutter by, and dragonflies and colourful beetles rest on tree trunks. She can hear the buzzing of insects, the wind through the leaves above and the creaking of wood.

After about twenty minutes, she reaches a river.

The river itself is not very treacherous, flowing slowly enough that she could probably swim along the shore without getting swept away. The large number of gigantic crocodiles is a little harder to deal with.

It would probably be better to follow the river at a distance, but before she can turn around, a shout draws her attention.

Three small shapes fall from above.

Three children, brandishing weapons and shouting, diving directly for the crocodiles.

She readies her Clima-Tact and crouches, ready to jump in at any time, but it doesn’t seem necessary.

They strike skilfully and devastatingly, three blows to the head of the largest crocodile, knocking it out instantly. They’re moving so fast she can barely keep her eyes on them, bouncing back and forth from crocodile back to crocodile back, whooping and laughing.

Then they land on the riverbank and start running downstream.

“Come on! Before it floats away!” one of them shouts.

The crocodile they knocked out has been taken by the current, she notices.

The kids run right past her. There’s three of them. The smallest one has a straw hat.

She takes off after them, recognition ringing in her ears. That kid looks way too familiar.

The tallest black-haired kid jumps into the water and grabs the crocodile’s tail, bracing against the river bottom. The blond one with the fancy coat jumps in a little further down and grabs the head.

“Got it!” he shouts.

“You push and I’ll pull,” the first one yells back.

The littlest kid with the straw hat stays on land. He’s bouncing almost literally, to the point where I feels like he should be making a boing sound, waving his arms in the air. “Croc for dinner! Croc for dinner!” he’s shouting.

It’s crazy. It’s so familiar she has to catch her breath, stopping a step behind and to the right of the kid. She knows that voice. She knows that hat.

Except that’s ridiculous.

The kid notices her and stops bouncing for a second, turns around and leans far back to look up at her past the brim of his hat.

Nami feels her heart stop.

That’s Luffy’s face. His black hair and wide-open eyes, his blankly curious expression. He’s much smaller and the scar under his eye looks almost new, but it’s him, no doubt about it.

“Hi, who’re you?” he asks.

She’s clutching the Clima-Tact so hard her fingers feel like they’ll break, but she tries to answer calmly.

“I’m Nami,” she says. “Who are you guys?”

The kid grins with his whole face. “Shishishi, I’m Luffy, and they’re Ace and Sabo,” tiny Luffy says. “We live here!”

Out here? In the jungle?

That would explain a few things about Luffy, except of course it explains nothing because it’s not possible, because Luffy is not a child, and neither are his brothers.

This must be a dream. She’s dreaming that she’s in a giant forest together with tiny versions of her captain and his brothers who are hunting giant crocodiles with metal pipes. She’s had crazier dreams.

Very few this realistic, though.

“Say,” she says, and then pauses. She wants to ask tiny Luffy how old he is, trying to figure out how far back in time the dream has sent her, but then she remembers that she’s… not actually sure how old he is in reality. Instead, she says, “Say, Luffy, do you know what year it is?”

“Eh?” he says, looking completely clueless. Of course. Then he turns back to the river and cups his hands over his mouth. “Hey Sabo! What year is it?”

By now, the tiny brothers have gotten the crocodile’s tail onto land. Tiny Ace is pulling on a leg, and tiny Sabo is up to his chest in water, pushing from the other side. He looks up when tiny Luffy shouts.

“What? Oh, fuck!” and then he goes under, slipping on a rock.

Nami drops her Clima-Tact and leaps over the crocodile after him, reaching out for the hem of his clothes as the river tries to take him.

“Gotcha,” she says, yanking him out of the water by a coattail and holding him to her chest to keep him steady, letting him cough water.

The crocodile has been caught by the current again, and is slowly being dragged towards her, into the river.

She grits her teeth, tightens her grip on the kid in her arms and puts her shoulder against it to start pushing. Nami might not be the kind of monster Zoro or Sanji are, but she’s a New World pirate all the same. She’s stronger than a couple kids.

The crocodile rolls onto land and stays there. Tiny Ace is gaping at her. Tiny Luffy is cheering.

“Uh. You can let me down now,” tiny Sabo says, still dangling from her arms.

She drops him on his ass in the shallows and he laughs.

“Thanks, lady! Who the hell are you?”

On dry ground, tiny Luffy picks up her Clima-Tact, curious fingers pocking at the orange stripes.

“Luffy! Put that down! That’s dangerous!” Nami yells.

“Huh?” Luffy looks up from fiddling with it.

Tiny Ace looks between her and tiny Luffy and the Clima-Tact in his hands. “Just put it down, idiot.”

“I’m not an idiot!” tiny Luffy says, holding it closer.

Nami vaults the crocodile and crouches down in front of him, hand out, her best anti-Luffy glare on her face. “Give. Now.”

He gulps and gives it to her.

“That just looks like a stick, though,” tiny Ace says, looking up at her.

“I’ll have you know it’s a very dangerous weapon.”

“U-huh,” little Ace says, injecting as much scepticism into the sound as humanly possible.

“Can I see?” little Luffy asks.

They’re all adorable children. Nami feels wrong-footed by the whole situation. Doesn’t know how to react.

She looks behind her at where little Sabo is wringing the water out of his coat. Just in time to see a shadow fall over him as the crocodile wakes up.

“Oh fuck, Sabo!” little Ace yells, rushing forwards.

Nami grabs him with one hand. With the other, she points the Clima-Tact.

A lance of supersonic wind crackling with electricity shoots straight through the crocodile’s head with a deafening crack and a burst of hot air.

The riverbank stills in awed silence, all three kids gaping.

“Whoaaa,” little Sabo breathes, his hair ruffled and his hat askew from the blast of air.

Little Ace takes a step back. “Okay, that was pretty cool. Where did you get that?”

“Again! Again! Again!” little Luffy shouts, jumping up and down.

Nami points the Clima-Tact at him, and he shuts right up again. “And that,” she says, “is why we don’t touch Nami’s Clima-Tact. Understand?”

All three boys nod rapidly, and she puts it back in its pocket.

“Do you, uh, wanna join us for dinner?” tiny Sabo asks, jabbing a thumb at the crocodile.

Does she?

She looks up at the sky, clearly visible over the river.

Whatever strange weather phenomenon she woke up to must have passed, because it feels mostly normal now. The wind and the temperature make sense together, and she can feel the edges of larger pressure systems moving around at the edge of her senses. It’s still very mild, but it’s there. She feels a little better with that.

So, she’s dreaming, stuck somewhere in an unknown forest in the past. She is a little hungry. Might as well stick with the captain, even if he’s small and incompetent like this.

“I’d love to,” she says.

Little Ace huffs, clearly not happy. “If you want to eat, you’ll help carry the crocodile.”

Rude brat. How can he expect that of her? She’s… an adult. The tallest person here. And a visitor. It’s actually perfectly reasonable to ask her to help carry something, even if it’s a giant crocodile.

And she doubts any of these kids will be easily bribed.

If only Sanji was here.

Nami sighs. “I guess that’s only fair.”

Together, they carry the giant beast into the forest.

---

The kids don’t have a proper kitchen, of course.

Nami isn’t sure what she expected, but they really do live in the woods. They have knives to help skin and gut the crocodile, but they don’t have countertops or a stove or even a roof to work under, and neither do they have spices or salt or a single vegetable.

What they have is a giant fire and a roasting spit made out of a small tree.

She mentions it, and little Sabo says, “Sometimes we’ll pick fruits and plants and stuff from the forest if we don’t have enough meat, but with a big catch like this, it’s best just to roast it.”

Which explains a lot about how Luffy got like he is.

Unless it’s a dream, which it is, in which case it can’t explain anything because she’s just imagining it all. It feels a little too realistic to be a dream, but that’s still more likely than it being real.

On the other hand, those samurai travelled forwards in time, so maybe travelling back isn’t impossible after all.

She’s not sure she wants to think about that.

The boys pronounce the crocodile done, and she gets a part. It’s bland and slightly burnt, but it’s not that bad.

Little Luffy sits right next to her and his brothers are sitting next to him, and she means ‘sitting’ in a very loose sense, because none of them know how to sit still.

They’re ridiculous. Devouring the crocodile, scrapping with each other over the best parts even though there’s more than enough for everyone, shouting and punching and kicking and rolling around on the ground pulling hair.

Every now and again they bump into her, and she can’t find it in herself to be angry. She can barely keep from laughing. They’re so cute it hurts.

In the end, the crocodile is reduced to bones and the kids are worn out and happy, resting on the ground.

“Hey, Nami,” tiny Luffy says. “Are you a pirate?”

“Not everyone’s a pirate, idiot,” little Ace says.

Luffy sits up, affronted. “But she’s really strong and she isn’t from here and not a marine, so she’s gotta be a pirate!”

Nami laughs. “How do you know I’m not a marine?”

The look he gives her is singularly disgusted.

She laughs harder. “Don’t worry, I am a pirate.”

“For real?”

Now all three of them are interested, sitting up and looking at her expectantly.

“Have you been to the Grand Line?” little Sabo asks.

Little Ace scoots a little closer. “Tell me.”

“Yeah!” little Luffy shouts. “Tell a story! A pirate story!”

“A pirate story, hmmm?” she hums.

By now, all three of them are sitting in front of her, almost vibrating with excitement. She couldn’t tell them no if she wanted to.

“Well, alright. What kind of pirate story do you want?”

“Something real,” Ace says.

“An adventure!” Luffy shouts.

“Something dramatic!” Sabo says. “And piratey! Like… Like fighting a thousand marines!”

“Hmm,” she says, thinking it over.

She doesn’t have to think hard to know which story fits those requirements, but something else is giving her pause.

A memory, of a much older Luffy than this, shouting that if he’s told where he’s going, he wouldn’t want to be a pirate, because that’d be a boring adventure.

If this is real, telling tiny Luffy now of the things he’ll experience in the future would be doing him a disservice. It might be the worst thing she could do to him.

On the other hand, this particular story probably isn’t one he’ll mind. He’d do it a thousand times over, after all, no matter what. Also, this is just a dream, so it doesn’t matter.

“Well, okay,” she says, and the boys settle even closer. “How about I tell you about that time our crewmate was arrested, and we had to fight a whole team of government special agents to get her back?”

The boys nod, excited.

Nami takes a deep breath. “Okay. We didn’t know it at the time, but our archaeologist had been chased by the government for a long time, because they were scared of the things she knew. She’d been very good at hiding from them, and had never been caught, until the day we landed at the beautiful city island Water Seven….”

As she tells the story, she finds herself admiring Usopp. She’s not a storyteller like he is. She frequently has to go back because she forgot to mention something, and she forgets to set the scene and doesn’t manage to make some parts seem as dramatic as they were. She also finds that there are large parts of that day she simply doesn’t remember, and she has to make something up on the spot so the story doesn’t fall apart.

She’s not very good, but the boys seem enraptured even so.

She tells them about what happened in Water Seven, leaving out most of what happened with Usopp and their turbulent first meeting with Franky. The eyes of her audience glitter as she gets onto the sea train, and keep shining as she gets into Enies Lobby.

Parts of the story, she skips over or avoids describing in detail, because they are kids, but also because she doesn’t want to dwell on it. They either don’t notice or don’t care.

By the time the story is over, the sun is on its way down, and between the trees, darkness falls rapidly.

In a whisper, little Ace says, “There’s no way in hell that thing with the boat actually happened.” His arms press tight around his knees and he’s watching her with wide eyes.

Little Luffy is on his stomach with his chin perched on his hands, and little Sabo has his legs crossed. They’re both watching with similar intensity.

“It did,” she says. “The sea is a mysterious place, and she was one of our crewmates too, you know. Don’t make fun of her.”

“…Sorry then,” he says. He doesn’t sound the least bit sorry, but he does sound like he understands.

Little Ace is so much ruder than the Ace she met once, she has a hard time believing they’re meant to be the same person.

“Tell another one!” Luffy begs.

“Isn’t it a little late for that?” she asks, glancing up at what’s visible of the sky.

“But Namiiii,” little Luffy whines, and he sounds so much like her Luffy it throws her.

Little Sabo frowns and looks up at the sky as well. “No, she has a point. We’d better get back before it’s too dark to see.”

“Is Nami coming?” little Luffy asks, still lying on the ground.

“Eh? I don’t know.” Little Sabo gets up and brushes off his clothes. “Do you have anywhere to go back to?”

“Ahh, not really.” She scratches the back of her head sheepishly. “If you kids could put me up for the night, I’d be really grateful.”

Little Ace shoots to his feet. “We’re not kids! And anyway you’re still a stranger. Why should we take you back to the treehouse where we sleep?”

“Eh? I promise I won’t hurt you or anything,” she says, putting a hand on her heart, but she doubts it’ll work. He’s not being paranoid, just perfectly reasonable for a boy in his situation.

As she expected, he just narrows his eyes.

“Come on, Ace,” Sabo says. “We can’t just leave her in the woods for the tigers.”

Tigers?

No no no, dream or not, please don’t leave her with the tigers.

“I don’t know,” Ace says. “She’s pretty strong, she can probably handle herself.”

“Hey Nami,” Luffy says, still on the ground. “If you come to the treehouse with us, will you tell another story?”

Oh, maybe they can be bribed.

She pretends to think about it for a second. “Well, I could probably tell you about how we almost lost a crewmember to another pirate crew in a Davy Back Fight.”

Little Sabo looks interested. “Those are real? Ace, come on.”

Little Ace looks interested too, his expression at war with itself. After several seconds of wavering between excited and suspicious, he points an angry finger at her and says, “Alright, but if you lay a hand on any of us or any of our stuff, we’ll destroy you, got it? You can’t beat all of us!”

Well, maybe not if they ambush her.

“Understood.” She salutes him.

Then they head back into the woods.

It’s pitch black between the trees, the sun too low in the sky to penetrate the thick foliage, and she stumbles several times as she follows the boys, who are clearly following a path they know by heart. The forest is waking up around her, making more noise than ever. Things are moving around just out of sight, and she thinks she can hear something much larger move in the distance.

The boys don’t take notice at all, just skip through the woods like they’re taking a walk in the garden.

She supposes they are, in a way. This is their garden.

Quite literally. For some reason, she doesn’t expect the treehouse to be what it is, a fortress of a crow’s nest, haphazardly constructed from random boards and bolts.

“Did you build this?” she asks as they scale the tree. The bark is rough enough that there’s no need for a ladder.

“Yup!” Luffy says. “We went independent! So now we live here.”

That probably means there’s someone out there still looking out for them, which is good.

“It’s very nice,” she says.

It’s not, but it’s skilfully made for something built by children, and she won’t have to worry about the floor falling out from under her. It’s too small for her to stand in, but more than good enough to lie down and sleep. The floor is covered in a random collection of blankets and pelts.

Luffy plops down on his butt right in front of her. “Now tell about the Backey Fight!”

“Davy Back Fight,” Sabo corrects him, hitting him ineffectually on the head. “Get it right.”

Ace doesn’t say anything, just sits down and looks at her intently.

She can take a hint.

Grabbing a blanket to throw around her shoulders, she dives into a slightly embellished tale about their fight against the Foxy Pirates.

It goes on a little longer than she intended, and little Luffy barely stays awake to hear about his own (name omitted) very abridged boxing match victory. He’s out like a light a second later, and his brothers follow soon after.

Nami stays awake for a while, blinking against her own exhaustion and the dark ceiling above.

She feels too tired for this to be a dream.

If it’s not a dream, then she’s really here, with a tiny Luffy and his tiny brothers, in a treehouse on an island somewhere in the East Blue, probably.

If she falls asleep here, she’ll probably wake up in the real world. If she doesn’t….

This is the strangest dream she’s ever had. She listens to the sounds of snoring children, and she thinks that even so, it’s one of her better ones.

She doesn’t want to wake up yet.

But she can’t stay here forever, and the real Luffy is probably going to need her soon.

She closes her eyes and lets sleep take her. When she wakes up, she’ll be back home.

Chapter Text

Nami wakes up to loud birdsong, to the sun shining through the glassless windows of the tree house. She wakes up with three children sprawled on top of her to varying degrees, all snoring merrily away.

She wakes up still unimaginably lost.

Fuck.

She tries to control her breathing.

Can’t be a dream, then. Too long and too realistic. She doesn’t dream like this.

It wouldn’t make sense as a dream, anyway. Dreams don’t usually make things up from scratch, and this forest is too detailed and too unfamiliar to be from her memories. She’d more readily expect to dream herself back to Cocoyashi.

So, probably not a dream. Not a problem she can solve by waking up.

Not a problem she can solve by having a panic attack either, she reminds herself. If she wants to find her way out of this, she has to be able to think.

She’ll also have to find her way out of the death grip the boys have on her. Little Ace has his head resting on her leg, little Sabo is curled up against her side, and little Luffy is just sprawled on top of her. They must have migrated at some point during the night, like her Luffy still tends to, and she doesn’t want to wake them up.

What is she going to do?

First thing first, get Luffy off her. It’s not simple, but he’s not big and he’s a heavy sleeper, so with a little care, she successfully slides him off her chest to the floor, where he makes a small noise and grabs onto Sabo.

She holds her breath, but neither of them wake up.

Okay. Second problem: Ace.

She sits up as well as she can without jostling him. He seems good and settled on her leg, and while she could move Luffy easily enough, she’s not sure if Ace is as heavy a sleeper.

Well, nothing to do but try.

She slides her hands under his head and slowly pulls away, lowering him gently to the floor.

He moves, fidgeting a little, and for a moment his eyes crack open. And then he rolls over on his side and stills again.

Not quite good enough, then. Ah well, at least she’s free.

Nami crawls over to the windows.

It’s early morning. The sunlight tints green as it shines through the canopy, and in the branches around the treehouse, birds sing like their lives depend on it. The jungle is beautiful. The morning is calm.

The treehouse doesn’t have a door as such, but the windows do the job well enough, and she drops down to the forest floor for a breath of fresh air. It seems peaceful, but she knows better than to assume. She gets the Clima-Tact out and ready before she steps away from the tree.

Nami doesn’t know how she got here. She doesn’t know where ‘here’ is, but even if she did, it wouldn’t matter. She’s at least a decade in the past, further away from any of her crewmates than she ever imagined possible. She can’t even remember what happened.

She remembers the man with the scarf. She doesn’t remember his name, but he was infuriating. She remembers Luffy taking off after him, and herself taking off after Luffy, to make sure he wouldn’t do anything too monumentally stupid like fall in a lake again. Then nothing.

Most likely, the scarf man was the one who sent her here somehow. An ability user, probably, but he’s also out of reach. A decade in the future. For all she knows, he doesn’t even have the ability yet.

Bastard. If she ever gets her hands on him, she’ll electrocute him so hard Enel would get jealous.

She lets out a long breath and looks up. She’s in a clearing just a short walk from the treehouse, and from here, she can see the sky.

The weather is still clear and calm. Almost disturbingly so.

Maybe she’s been too long on the Grand Line, but the air needs more turbulence. Absentmindedly, she starts dropping air bubbles into the sky to whip up a cloud. It builds up agonizingly slowly, like the still air is absorbing her attempts at changing it.

She needs to get home, that’s the most important thing, but if it isn’t a dream, she doesn’t know where to start. She might be stuck here for a really long time.

She’ll have to get used to Luffy being small enough to carry around, and his brothers being almost as small.

And his brothers are a different issue. Tiny or not, she has no idea what to expect of them. She’s met Ace once and Sabo not at all, and it’s not like she can apply her knowledge of normal kids here.

Speaking of the kids, a branch creaks, and she comes aware of a presence behind her.

She stops messing with the weather and looks up at where little Ace is perched in a tree, holding his improvised weapon. About time he stopped pretending to sleep.

“Sorry I woke you,” she says.

He scowls at her. “You’re strong, right?”

She turns fully in his direction. “Yes. Why?”

He jumps down the tree trunk and walks up to her, pointing with his pipe. “You’re strong, so fight me.”

“What?”

She really doesn’t know what to expect from these kids. The Ace she met was someone unconventional for sure, incredibly polite, cocky, confident, and overwhelmingly powerful. This Ace is a child with a pipe and something to prove, challenging her like a rude, tiny Zoro.

“I said to fight me!”

“Why?” she asks, tapping the Clima-Tact against her shoulder.

“So I can get stronger,” he says, the ‘duh’ implied.

He’s so small. She knows he’s terrifyingly strong for his age, probably stronger than nearly anyone else on this island, but really, he’s adorable. She just can’t say no.

“Honestly,” she sighs. She clenches her hand just so, and the Clima-Tact is as long as she’s tall. “Alright then, come at me.”

He attacks before she’s finished speaking.

He’s fast. It’s all she can do to block his first strike, but after the first few seconds, she’s matching him blow for blow.

He fights like a beast, but he’s still a child, and the difference between them is obvious.

“Honestly,” she says again, and gives him a careful tap on the side of his head. “Get your guard up and keep it up, even when you’re attacking.”

She avoids another wild blow and taps him again.

“If you miss, you’re left open for counterattack, and even if you hit, a strong enemy might hit back. And move your feet.”

He attacks again and she blocks again, just to hear him growl in frustration.

Someday, he’ll be strong enough to take down a fleet without breaking a sweat, but at the moment, she feels a little like she’s fighting an especially feisty kitten.

A tiger kitten, maybe, and with a weapon, but still a kitten.

“That speed won’t help you if you keep attacking head on,” she says, easily dodging yet another attack. “If you’re predictable, I’ll just have to hit where you will be.”

She taps him again, and someone cheers.

Luffy has woken up too, it seems. He’s sitting on a root watching them, the third brother coming up right behind.

Adorable.

Aside from the occasional tap, she’s stayed entirely on the defensive, and Ace has noticed.

“Fight back, dammit!” he yells. “You said you’d fight me!”

Well, he asked for it.

She hits his wrist twice, so he drops the pipe. Then she sweeps his legs out from under him. Before he can get up, she places a foot on his chest.

“Hey!”

“Vulnerable points. Wrist,” she says, pointing the Clima-Tact at the body part in question. “Elbow, knee, stomach, face, temple, side of the jaw, throat.” She leaves the end of her weapon resting against his throat.

“What?” he says.

“Hit the legs to bring them off balance, the arms to disarm them,” she says. “Hit them in the stomach and you might cause lasting damage, but if they’re determined enough, they’ll probably still get up. Hit them in the face and you might blind them or worse, the temple or side of the jaw to scramble their brains, and the throat to kill them.”

He doesn’t move, so she taps him gently on the forehead.

“Fight smarter, not just harder. If you fight smart, you can beat a stronger opponent. If you fight hard enough, you can overwhelm a weaker opponent, but if you fight both smart and hard, you can overwhelm anyone. Understand?”

She takes her foot away and lets him get up.

He nods quickly. “Again.”

“What? No,” she says.

“Hell no!” Sabo seems to agree. “It’s my turn!” Or not.

“I’m not fighting anyone!”

Sabo’s face falls. “Come on, Nami. Be fair.”

“Yeah!” Luffy yells. “You fought Ace already!”

And that… is true. The boys have a point, dammit, but she’ll still complain about it.

Sighing, she says, “Alright, but only this once!”

And the second boy jumps at her.

This fight goes much like the first. It seems like Sabo is trying to take her advice to heart, but he’s still an untrained child with too much power and not enough technique. She can step around him without much trouble.

It’s not a walk in the park, of course. They may be kids, but they’re fast and strong, and just blocking and dodging gets her blood pumping. By the time she disarms and immobilizes Sabo, she’s breathing hard.

It’s too early for this shit. She’s hungry and worried and she’s had to sleep in the woods.

A Luffy barely tall enough to reach her knee steps up with his own metal pipe, and Nami can’t handle it anymore.

“How old even are you?” she asks.

“Seven!” he says.

Seven. He already has his hat, so probably, probably….

She points the Clima-Tact at him. “Do you have a devil fruit ability?”

“Huh? Yeah! Shihi, I ate the Gum-Gum Fruit, so…”

“That’s all I needed to know, thanks,” she says, and crouches down.

She hooks the end of the Clima-Tact under the hem of his T-shirt, and then she throws him, straight up, into the crackling storm cloud she’s been building above them since Ace first showed up.

Luffy flies through, and all the lightning discharges at once in a flash and a loud crack, which stuns him even if it doesn’t hurt him. Then he comes down, and she swings her weapon like a baseball bat.

He shoots ping-pong ball-like across the clearing, bouncing back and forth several times before crashing to a stop on the ground.

“Like I said,” she says, poking him on the head. “Fight hard enough, and you can overwhelm a weaker opponent. Are you done?”

“No! Again!” Luffy shouts, bouncing back up as if nothing happened.

“No way, it’s my turn now!” Ace yells at them both.

“I already fought you!” Nami says.

“Come on, we can’t just fight once,” Ace says.

Crazy. These kids are crazy. Why does she have to be stuck with brats like these?

“Before breakfast?” she asks, incredulously.

That at least gives them pause.

“Hungryyyy,” Luffy complains, all energy melting out of him like he just now realized.

“Alright,” Sabo says, clapping his hands. “It’s mushroom season, so let’s go pick some for breakfast.”

There’s an idea everyone can get on board with.

Nami doesn’t remember having seen mushrooms in the forest when she first woke up. Now, with the boys leading the way, they’re seemingly everywhere, vibrant patches of fungus sprouting under every root. She doesn’t recognize any of them, but the boys seem to know what they’re doing.

Though she’s a little worried about how they learned, since as far as she can tell, they don’t know any names. When she asks, they just point and say stuff like, “That one’s edible. That one’s good. That one isn’t. That one’s edible, but it makes you see weird stuff so it’s best to avoid.”

Nami avoids the hallucinogenic mushrooms as best she can and hopes they haven’t figured this all out by testing.

Even with the many brightly coloured dangers to avoid, there’s more than enough good mushrooms to satisfy even the black hole that is Luffy, and soon she’s no longer hungry and much less cranky.

“Okay now fight me,” Ace says.

“How many times are you even going to want to fight?” Nami asks.

“We usually fight a hundred times each a day,” Sabo says.

“A hundred!?”

They’re monsters. Little monsters let free in the woods to run around thinking this shit is anywhere close to normal.

“I’m not fighting anyone a hundred times,” she decides.

“It’s not like you’ll have to fight us a hundred times each,” Sabo says. “Just, uh, what’s a hundred cut into three?”

“Thirty-three and a third,” she says. “But I’m not fighting anyone thirty-three times either!”

“Come on, pleeease,” he says, and then they’re all there, staring up at her with wide, pleading eyes.

And she can’t. She can sort of stand up to Luffy sometimes, but she’s so weak to children and they’re so cute.

“Well,” she says. “Alright, but just today.”

“Hell yeah!” they shout, and once again she has to fend off a rabid child with a pipe.

It’s not difficult, as such. She’s fought far worse opponents while in far more dire straits, but the kids aren’t holding back at all, and she’s trying not to hurt them, which rules out most of her effective attacks. She has to fend them off rapid-fire, and they’re not letting her rest between bouts.

Ace jumps her for his fourth fight of the day, her tenth in a row, while she’s still trying to catch her breath, and she realizes she’ll have to change her strategy.

He lunges at her, and this time, she doesn’t dodge. She aims a hit at his wrist, so he drops his weapon, and then she kicks him.

Not as hard as she would a proper enemy, but far harder than she would any other child. He goes down in two seconds.

“Hey, what the hell!” he shouts.

She gives him her best superior glare. “What? You can’t handle it?”

He takes a breath, and then he grumbles a little. “I’ll get you next time.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it.”

She pulls the exact same move on Sabo, five seconds later, which hopefully teaches him something, but for now just pisses him off. Then it’s Luffy’s turn.

Until now, she’s mostly been dealing with him by throwing him around. He’s so small she can easily pick him up, and while he’s already way too strong for a seven-year-old, his aim is atrocious. He’s easy to deal with.

Now, she lets him try for a while. He misses by a mile on most his hits and spends a lot of time getting out of bushes he accidentally throws himself into, which gives her the room to rest. When she finally grabs hold of him and hits him against a tree, she’s caught her breath again.

It takes the older boys several rounds to catch on.

“The hell?” Sabo asks. “You’ve been using Luffy to get a break, haven’t you!”

“It’s called pacing yourself,” she replies. “You should try it some time.”

Because even though she can deal with each individual match without much trouble, it’s starting to wear on her.

She never expected to feel empathy for any of Luffy’s enemies, but she understands now what it’s like to fight an enemy who keeps getting better as she goes and who refuses to stay down. The older two are already learning to avoid getting taken out on the first hit.

“Enough already,” she says before the forty-first fight, facing a very small Sabo who isn’t acting at all as if it’s already his fourteenth time today. “Don’t you brats ever get tired?”

“What, are you done already?” Sabo asks. He sounds like he’s mocking her, the piece of shit. “Aren’t you a grown pirate?”

Oh, fuck no. He’s definitely mocking her and it’s definitely working.

She’s a Straw-Hat Pirate, dammit! If she made it through all of Enies Lobby, she can handle a handful of insolent children!

“I’ll make you eat those words, you little bastard,” she says, and launches him into the bushes.

Somehow, she perseveres.

She can’t remember having had this kind of stamina before, enough to keep fighting for several hours with no real breaks. Even Luffy, once he realizes she isn’t going to hit him immediately, is clever enough to get closer, increasing his hit rate and shortening her resting time.

Somehow, she manages, if only because she refuses to believe she could lose against a bunch of children.

By the time she’s finishing up the ninety-ninth fight, her hands are shaking from blocking more blows than she can count. She’s not built for this kind of fighting. She’ll be feeling this tomorrow for sure.

“Finally,” she says, lowering the Clima-Tact. “Are you happy now?”

“Nah, not yet,” Ace says.

God, she’s starting to get angry with these kids. “What,” she says, and she makes it a warning.

“You’ve only fought ninety-nine times. You’ve got one left.”

“Are you kidding.”

“This is a dilemma, though,” Sabo says, looking serious. “If one of us gets the last fight it won’t be fair, so who should fight?”

“You really don’t have to.”

“We could do it together?” Ace suggests.

“Boys.”

The warning goes ignored. The boys grin at each other, and then they line up, getting ready to attack.

Nami doesn’t have the energy for this. It’s been hours, her wrists hurt and her hands shake and she misses her own bed aboard the Sunny. There’s no way she’s willing to fend off all three boys at once. That’s just too much.

Heaving a deep sigh, she retracts the Clima-Tact and stows it back in its pocket. Then she channels all the frustration she’s ever felt for her darling captain, and when the boys are almost on her, she gives them each a solid bonk on the head. “That’s enough!”

This time, they stay down, and she wanders off towards the tree roots to sit down and rest.

“Ah, Nami’s scary,” Luffy says.

“Yeah,” the other two agree.

“Okay now you fight me,” Ace says.

These kids. “Are you not done yet!” She twirls around to see them sitting up yet again.

“Eh? Yeah we’ve still got like sixty fights left each,” Sabo says. “You can just keep score if you want.”

He points.

There’s a scoreboard they’ve dragged up from somewhere that she hasn’t noticed. She’s written up with a hundred points.

Well, alright then.

“Ugh, do what you want,” she says, and sits down next to the scoreboard to watch. She’s forever doomed to be surrounded by fight-happy idiots. She’ll just have to accept it.

Not long after, little Luffy comes and joins her as his brothers get ready to fight.

He grins up at her. “Shihihi, your punches hurt too. Does that mean you’re as strong as Gramps?”

Nami’s brain stalls out a little. Her? As strong as Garp?

“Probably not.” She sniffs. “You’re just weak, is all.”

“No, we’re not! We’re strong!”

“Of course you’re weak, you’re kids,” she says. “When you get older, you’ll get much stronger than me.”

“You really think so?” Luffy says, all irritation gone like dew before the sun.

“I know it.”

His smile nearly splits his face and he giggles into his hands, little legs bouncing.

His brothers are still fighting each other down below.

It’s almost nice, now that she’s allowed to sit down. She’s sore and bruised, but the forest around them is calm, and she has Luffy at her side and the sound of idiot boys in the background. It almost feels like she’s home.

“Hey, Nami,” Luffy says, and he’s stopped laughing for a moment. “Are you going to stay here?”

The question catches her off guard. She doesn’t know how to answer it.

“Would you want me to?”

“Yeah, of course!” He almost jumps into her lap in the effort to get closer to her face. “You’re so cool! You’re strong and you’re a real pirate and your stick is awesome!”

She can’t remember if Luffy has ever called her cool before.

Not that she’s wanted him to. She knows he thinks they’re all great, but Luffy calls the weirdest things cool and she’s never felt the need to be a part of that category.

But when he’s seven and adorable, somehow it feels like the biggest compliment she’s ever gotten.

“I have to get back to my crew. They’d probably die without me, you know, and my captain is an idiot, so he needs me to take care of him sometimes.”

Luffy’s face falls. “Oh yeah, that’s true.”

She tries to pretend that her heart doesn’t break. “Well,” she says, and lets out an exasperated sigh. “It’s not like I know how to get back. Until I’ve figured that out, I might as well stay with you kids.”

“Really?” Luffy’s grin is back to its sunshine normal, and he throws his arms around her waist in an impromptu rubbery hug.

“Yes, really,” she says, and she doesn’t try to pry him loose.

Not long after, it’s Luffy’s turn to fight, and Ace comes over to drop down next to her.

He sits a respectful, or probably suspicious, distance away and keeps his attention on the fight starting up below, so she assumes he doesn’t want to talk.

She’s proven wrong a minute later, when he says, “You must’ve been in a lot of fights.”

He’s scowling at her, demanding answers to a question he hasn’t asked yet.

She still doesn’t know what to make of him, small and angry and defiant. He’s a stranger to her, but she’s a stranger to him too, isn’t she?

“Not really,” she says. “You’ve probably been in more than me.”

He scowls harder. “Then how the hell are you better than me?”

She raises an eyebrow. “Because I’m bigger.”

“Fuck off. Tell me the truth!” He looks like he’s just about ready to bite her.

“Do you think threatening me will make me more likely to tell you?”

“Wh- Then what do you want me to do!?”

“Try saying please, maybe,” she suggests.

It looks like she’s told him to swallow a whole coconut. For a few second, he just glares at her in disbelief. Then he sets his jaw and says, in the rudest voice she’s ever heard, “Fucking please tell me.”

Nami almost chokes laughing. Is this kid for real?

“Well,” she says, once she has her voice back. “You tried, I’ll give you that.”

“So?”

“A part of it is that my opponents have been stronger,” she says. “But mostly, it’s because I’ve been taught. You’ve had to figure everything out on your own, right?”

All of his attention is on her now. He’s listening with an incredible intensity.

Maybe if he had experience with teachers, he’d be different, but he suspects he’s never had proper schooling, suspects none of them have. He’s not used to the process of learning being something boring that makes students fall asleep in class. He’s not used to information being freely given at all.

Maybe that’s why he was willing to try for a please in the first place.

“There’s a limit to how much you can learn from experience alone.,” Nami says. “It’s taken humanity thousands of years to develop martial arts, and someone who’s learned those tricks will get stronger much faster than someone who hasn’t.”

“Teach me,” he demands.

She raises an eyebrow again.

“We’re going to be pirates. We need to be strong.” He looks like he bites his tongue. “Please.”

“I wasn’t saying no,” she says.

“Then why….”

“I’m not a fighter.”

He looks confused. “But you were taught?”

She was, sort of. She talked the fishmen into showing her, stole tips and tricks from pirates she robbed as a child because she refused to be defenceless, picked a staff because it was easy and she never moved on to anything more complicated. Not for melee, anyway.

“My specialty isn’t staff fighting,” she says, taking out the Clima-Tact and showing off by making a tiny white cloud that hovers in front of them. For a second, it feels like it’s harder than it should be, but then it works.

Ace stares like she just did magic, which maybe she did. She calls it the Sorcery Clima-Tact for a reason.

“I can’t teach you how to do any of the proper attacks I do, and I really just know the basics of normal fighting.”

“What… What’s this?” Ace says, poking at the little cloud. “It feels like water.”

“It’s sea cloud. Don’t worry about it,” Nami says, as the tiny puff of sea cloud material slowly dissolves away in the East Blue atmosphere.

He blinks, amazed, and then he shakes his head and looks at her again. “Teach us anyway. You’re better than… anyone else.”

They really don’t have all that many people around to help them, do they? But she can’t stay. She needs to get back to her Luffy, to her crew and her ship. She can only stay until she figures out how to leave.

“We’ll see,” she says.

He’d argue further, it looks like, but then it’s his turn to fight and he’s off like a shot.

Sabo, luckily, doesn’t seem like he has any demands of her, just sits there swinging his legs, watching his brothers punch each other.

“Do you do this every day?” she asks.

“Yup!” he answers, grinning wide. His smile has a front tooth missing. It makes him look very young. “A hundred fights each every day.”

“How do you ever have time for anything else?” She glances up at where the sun is almost at its zenith.

“Usually we’d be done by now, but it’s taking longer since you’re here. We probably shouldn’t go hunting today, so I guess we’ll be going into town for dinner.”

“Town?” she asks, then waves the question away. Of course the island isn’t all jungle. “You have the money to pay for food?”

He laughs. “Sorta, but usually we dine and ditch. Oh!”

Suddenly the look he gives her turns calculating, as he sweeps his eyes over her from head to toe.

“Excuse me?” she says.

“D’you think you could pretend to be a noble?”

“Excuse?” she repeats. “Why?”

“Oh, because we keep getting thrown out of restaurants and by now they know most of our tricks, but if we have an adult with us pretending to be important, we could probably get in.”

Dress up nice, probably steal someone’s clothes, getting dinner at a high-class restaurant, being waited on by people treating her like someone important, all while not having to pay a thing? And at worst needing to run from some East Blue island guards?

She grins back at him. “Kid, I like the way you think.”

Chapter Text

Nami wakes up from her half-dozing against a tree as the boys finish their remaining sixty-six fights each. It’s well past noon, and she doesn’t think she’s the only one who’s hungry.

At least she’s hurting a little less now that she’s rested a little.

The boys lead the way through the woods at a more sedate pace, following a path she can’t make out, if it’s even a path at all and not just a route they’ve found on their own. She suspects the latter, as no reasonable forest path would take them climbing up tree trunks and jumping from branch to branch over ravines filled with wild animals.

She only calls it sedate because the kids act like it’s an every-day trip for them, and they’re not in any hurry. They’re even carrying yesterday’s crocodile skin rolled up between them, a burden easily twice the size of any one of them.

Nami takes a while to realize she should probably be annoyed. The ridiculous path makes her feel like she’s on one of Luffy’s spontaneous adventures, following him around because someone has to.

And she sort of is. He’s right there, bouncing ahead, chanting, “Restaurant, restaurant, going to a restaurant.”

He’s smaller and weaker, but he’s so very much Luffy it’s hard to remember he isn’t, not hers, not really. It feels like he is, though he’s not quite her captain, and she’s trying so hard not to feel at home here because none of this is right.

Even if it feels like it is.

It feels wrong, too. There’s something weirdly off at the edges of her senses, something she can’t place, something that’s bugging her, like a word at the tip of her tongue.

Then they reach the end of the forest and all thoughts of uncomfortable weirdness are blown from her mind.

What she sees as the trees drop away is not a town or a city.

She’s hit by a wall of air that smells of rot and rust and decay, and vast piles of garbage spread out ahead.

Her steps stutter to a halt as she takes in the view. She’s never seen this much trash in one place before. It looks like someone has scrapped an entire amusement park right at the edge of the woods and then covered it with garbage, and it just goes on without stopping. It’s like walking into a whole new, terrible world.

The boys don’t stop, don’t even hesitate, just jump onto rusted steel beams and continue on into the dump.

“Nami?” Luffy says, noticing she isn’t right behind them anymore and looking back for her. “Coming?”

She shakes herself out of her stupor and follows carefully after them. “What… is this?”

“It’s the Grey Terminal.” Sabo is the one who answers. “It’s where the trash from town ends up.”

“All of this is from one town?”

He shrugs. “Yeah.”

Past the remains of the amusement park is more trash. Buildings and wreckage yes, but mostly bottles and scrap and old shit rotted into dirt and goo. Here and there are signs of life. Old broken wood panels hammered into improvised huts, trails cleared between piles of refuse, barrels of rainwater with drinking cups next to them that makes Nami want to disinfect her tongue just from looking at them. She even sees a clothesline strung up between two rusted steel beams, with clothes hanging from it that look to be made out of patches.

“People live here?” she asks.

Again, Sabo is the one who answers. “Well, yeah. There’s space enough for everyone here, so there’ll always be a place to sleep, and no one’s gonna arrest or shoot you just for being poor. As long as you don’t get in fights and don’t get sick, it’s better than town for a lot of people.”

He sounds like he speaks from experience.

“You did, didn’t you.”

“Yep,” he says. “Can’t stay here anymore, though.”

“Why not?”

“Got people looking for me.”

“How come?”

“No reason.”

Nami doesn’t press him. It’s none of her business and she’s not sure why she cares. It doesn’t matter much. There’s a thousand possibilities, but they’re all in the past. Even the now is in the past, in a way.

They’re walking deeper into the seemingly unending piles of trash, and she’s starting to see people. Dirty, bandaged, half-dead people, as much a part of the dump as the trash that makes it up.

Nami has seen cruelty before, but even the Celestial Dragons’ slaves looked more alive than some of these.

She swallows her revulsion and follows the boys as close as she can. The jungle is beautiful, but this island, she realizes, is rotten to the core.

If she had any qualms against robbing the people who rule this place, she leaves them behind somewhere in the dirty wastes of the Grey Terminal.

Ahead, a wall is rising, and she can guess it’s a city wall. Their goal, then.

“Think you can help us get past the guard?” Sabo asks, pointing to a door she can just make out in the giant wall, where it seems like someone is letting people through one at a time.

“Usually we get on each other’s shoulders and pretend to be some guy,” Luffy says. “Cause he won’t let us through if he knows it’s us, but it’d be easier if you did it!”

“You’re putting it on me, are you?” she asks, putting on her best unimpressed look.

“What, you can’t do it?” Sabo grins up at her.

Cocky brat.

She sniffs haughtily, and instantly regrets it as the smell of trash assaults her yet again. “Just make sure you slip past while he’s distracted,” she says.

When they close in on the door, she pulls her shirt down to be sure she’s showing off enough cleavage and saunters up to the guard.

“Excuse me?” she says in her most cutesy voice.

His attention is drawn to her like a magnet. Hah, this’ll be too easy.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Hello there!” he says, eyes planted firmly on her chest. “I haven’t seen you before.”

She taps her cheek with two fingers and pouts. “I’ve gotten really lost, mister guard. Think you could let me into town?”

He grins so wide she can see his molars. “Ahh, I don’t know about that, sweetheart. Think you’d let me cop a feel?”

He leans forward.

Nami dances back, just out of reach, and tuts. “Oh, mister, I can’t do that. You’ve gotta pay for that, you know?”

He takes a step towards her. “Yeah? What’s your rates, sweetheart?”

Unfortunately, he’s interrupted before she can reply. He can’t afford her, of course, but she enjoys the negotiation. Nothing like the chance to crush a man’s spirit under her heel and walk away with all his money.

A hand comes down from behind to hit him on the head, and another guard appears. “You’re at work, idiot. Back to your duty before I alert the captain.” The new guard gives Nami a once-over, wrinkles his nose and waves her into the city. “You take your business elsewhere. Away from proper people, if you’d please.”

Well, if he’s gonna be like that.

“Dickhead,” she says, and goes to find where the boys ran off to.

Not far away, apparently. They’re waiting in the shadow of the closest house, watching her work.

“That was so weird. How’d you do that?” Ace asks.

He’s, what? Eleven, tops?

“I’m cute,” she says.

“Like hell. You’re evil.”

Brat.

“It’s so cool.”

Well. Alright then.

“What are you even doing with that crocodile skin?” she asks, pointing to the roll they’re still carrying around.

“We’re gonna sell it for our treasure,” Luffy says.

Treasure. Oh, that sweet, sweet word, the stuff of every pirate’s dream. It melts on Nami’s tongue and shines behind her eyes.

“Treasure?” she asks.

All three kids give her a look. Like she’s suspicious or something.

“U-huh!” Luffy says. “We’re gonna buy a pirate ship with it! And it’s our treasure so you can’t have it!”

That’s… of course not. “I wouldn’t steal from you,” she says.

“Sure, you wouldn’t,” Sabo says.

She’s surrounded by rude brats.

They start walking through the streets, ignoring the people around them. Really, ‘street’ is a charitable term for the dirt road squeezed between ramshackle buildings. It’s better than the dump, but these are slums if she’s ever seen them.

“So how big is this treasure of yours?” she asks lightly.

“It’s huge!” Luffy says.

“A couple million beri,” Sabo corrects.

Ah.

Ace catches her expression. “Fuck you, that’s pretty good.”

She reassures him, “It’s very impressive.” For three children, anyway. She’d gathered that much before her first year under Arlong.

Then again, the boys aren’t leaving the island. She supposes it actually is impressive they’ve gathered that much in a place like this.

They stop at a building that looks marginally less shabby, at the beginning of a marginally less shabby street. The sign over the door shows three circles hanging from a bar, the universal symbol of a pawn shop.

Or maybe not so universal, she thinks as they push through the door into what seems more like a second-hand shop than a proper pawnbroker. In a place like this, people are probably more interested in selling things than in buying them back.

A bell rings as the door opens, and again as it swings shut behind them. A portly man in a threadbare vest comes out from a door behind the low counter, and at the sight of the boys, he brightens.

“My favourite terminal dogs!” he says, grinning.

He reminds Nami of some kind of big worm, slimy and hungry looking. She has to supress an irrational urge to pull the boys away from him. Instead, she crosses her arms and stays by the door.

“What’ve you got for me?” he asks, rubbing his hands together.

The boys hold up the crocodile skin, and he takes it and rolls it out on the counter.

Sleazy or not, the man knows what he’s doing, appraising the skin with an expert eye and a deft touch.

“Not bad, not bad, got a few burn marks here,” he says, pointing to where Nami burnt the thing’s eyes out with lightning and wind. “Eeeh, I can give you five thousand.”

“What?” Nami says before she can think.

She’s been keeping her distance, more or less determined to let the boys do their thing, but this puts a stop to that. She’s not sure yet how much money is worth in this dump, but she knows it has to be more than that.

“Five thousand? That’s outrageous!”

The man looks up and narrows his eyes at her. “Excuse me, lady? I don’t know who you are, but if you think you can butt in on someone else’s transaction like this….”

She shoulders her way up to the counter and meets his eyes head on. “I’m the one who made those burn marks. This is as much mine as it is theirs, and I’m saying five thousand is unacceptable.”

“Uh, Nami?” Sabo says, tugging at her skirt uncertainly.

“Shush,” she hushes him. “Watch and learn.”

The man isn’t taking this, of course, puffing himself up to his full height to loom over her to the best of his ability. “Well I’m sorry, miss. This is the price it’s always been.”

“Is it now,” she says, narrowing her eyes. “That’s odd. Say, boys, are there a lot of people who hunt crocodiles aside from you?”

“Not really.” Ace sounds like he’s shrugging, but she’s keeping her eyes on the man. “There’s some professional hunters from town every few weeks or so, and some of the bandits hunt sometimes, but usually it’s just us.”

“And you always sell them here?”

“Yeah?”

“I see.” She grins. “That means these boys have singlehandedly increased the supply by a significant portion, and all through you, I suppose?”

The man doesn’t answer, but he looks much less confident. Bingo.

“With an increasing supply, the price would usually sink, wouldn’t it? But you say it’s always been the same, which means one of two things!”

She holds two fingers up in front of his face, and he leans back.

“Either! Demand is so high it doesn’t matter; in which case you are definitely paying the boys too little for first-rate skins.”

“First-rate my ass…”

“Or!” she interrupts. “You’ve been underpaying them from the beginning, in which case you owe them compensation, don’t you?”

She rests her chin on her hand with her elbow on the counter and leans forward, grinning.

He has entirely stopped looming and is now scowling at her. “What do you want, lady?”

“Fifty thousand.”

“Fifty thousand!” He looks like he just had a heart attack. “Absolutely not! Eight thousand, and no more!”

“Now why would I ever take that deal?” she asks. He’s already almost doubled his original price on the first step of negotiations. This is going to be good. “We could take our business elsewhere.”

“As if anyone else would deal with these devils,” the man snarls.

If she had any thoughts of showing him mercy, they’re certainly gone now. “You forget,” she says. “That I’m here. If they won’t deal with them, they’ll deal with me. Forty-five thousand.”

The man is almost frothing at the mouth.

Nami’s smile widens a fraction.

Half an hour later, they’re on the dirt street outside the shop, minus one crocodile skin, plus a bag of eighteen thousand, five hundred and twenty-three beri.

“Whoa,” Sabo says.

“Learn something?” she asks, carefully counting eight thousand beri out of the bag to take for herself. For her commission, of course. She’d take ten, but… well, they’re cute.

“Yeah,” he says. “You’re really cool!”

…She can live with taking only seven.

“Can we go eat now?” Luffy complains.

Nami’s stomach is rumbling too. “Lead the way, boys,” she says, and they do.

They continue in towards the centre of the city, and the streets improve as the lingering smell of the Grey Terminal drops away. Soon, there’s pavement under her feet and the buildings around her are well maintained and solidly built.

She can just see the bustle of a marketplace up ahead when the boys turn onto a side street, going north.

“We’re going to High Town,” Luffy says when she asks, in the careful words of a child who knows what he’s talking about and is very proud of it. “But we’re not allowed in, so we’ve gotta climb over the wall.” Then he laughs.

“There’s another wall?” she asks, but she sees it before she gets an answer.

Not quite as tall as the outer city wall, it still rises far above the roofs of the city, raised on a plateau carved out of a mountainous hill. It’s beautiful, red bricks shining golden in the sunlight, laid with impeccable workmanship and divided up by sparkling white towers.

It reminds her of Dressrosa under Doflamingo’s rule, such splendour out in the sun while the city’s people suffer in the shadows.

The outer wall keeps the people of the Grey Terminal from mingling with the common folk, and the inner wall, she guesses, keeps the common folk from mingling with the nobles.

It looks like a giant cage, but it works both ways.

The boys lead the way to a place where the rocky mountain side reaches up high before the wall begins, and with a quick look around to make sure no one’s watching, they disappear upwards like tiny monkeys.

Nami takes a bracing breath before she follows them. As long as she doesn’t look down, it’s not hard. The rock provides plenty of handholds, and when she reaches the brick wall, there are deep cracks in the surface that weren’t visible from afar.

They’re climbing in the shadow of one of the white towers, and if anyone spots them, they’re at the top before an alarm can be raised.

Nami pauses for a second, perched on top of the wall, looking out over High Town. It’s full of glorious mansions and golden-green gardens. The streets are paved with white marble, the people strolling along them are dressed to the nines in incredibly fancy clothing, and even further above rises a magnificent palace.

It’s beautiful.

She’s never seen this many people so sorely in need of being robbed before in her life.

A second later, she follows the boys, jumping down on a roof and then to the ground. It’s high time they get something good to eat.

First, though, she needs some better clothes.

“Can’t we just go straight to the restaurant?” Luffy whines, as they sneak in the shadows, watching people pass by on the street.

“Of course not, idiot,” she says fondly. “There’s no way they’d believe I’m a noble when I’m dressed like this.” She points to the dirt stains on her blouse.

“But I’m hungryyyy.”

“Don’t worry, it won’t be long.”

Not long at all. A snooty-looking woman walks past, dressed in a light green monstrosity with a gigantic hoop skirt, decked out in more jewellery than any one human should ever carry at once.

Bingo.

Nami steps just out of the shadows. “Ah, excuse me, my Lady?”

The woman turns and looks.

A swift yank into the shadows and a light bonk on the head later, the noblewoman, whoever she is, is in her underwear in a hidden dumpster, and Nami is shoving excess earrings into her pockets.

“Let’s see about this,” she says, lifting her new gigantic skirt off the ground. “Think you can fit under here?”

The boys snigger as they make the attempt.

It’s a tight fit, and Nami is happy she decided to keep the miniskirt on underneath, but as long as no one tries running, it’ll go fine.

Finding the restaurant is a little awkward, but she realizes quickly enough that the nobles around her are far too self-absorbed to notice she’s walking around taking directions from her own skirt. The weird way she moves is barely even notable among the tip-toeing fine ladies.

Getting into the restaurant is laughably easy. Her claim that she has a reservation isn’t immediately accepted, but once she puts on a shrill voice and shrieks, “Do you even know who I am?” and “I am to have a private room. I reserved it months ago how dare you!” they quickly change their tune.

It’s a miracle the waiter doesn’t notice the muffled giggling coming from her dress as he leads her to the fanciest table she’s seen in her life.

There’s gold leaf on the walls. The window overlooks the palace. There’s an embroidered tablecloth that reaches the floor, and if the cutlery already on the table isn’t gold, it’s certainly gilded silver.

“Great,” she says, once the waiter has taken her order and left. “You can hide under the table once he comes back.” She lifts her skirt up and lets out a breath of relief when the boys scurry out.

“How long until food’s here?” Luffy asks.

He’s crawled halfway under the table, then seemingly given up with his head buried in tablecloth and his legs sticking straight out.

His brothers are running around examining the room.

“Not long, probably,” Nami says, dropping down in a chair and getting a closer look at the silverware.

She scared the waiter half to death, demanding more food than he must ever have seen one person ordering.

“Now?” Luffy asks.

“Not quite that soon. They’ll have to get it first.”

He makes a whining noise and then stops talking.

Nami stretches out her sore arms and settles back to watch.

The two older boys flit back and forth through the room, looking at everything, running their fingers over walls and chairs and staring out the window, pointing out weird people and the occasional dog.

Nami finds herself studying them, though she’s not sure what she’s looking for. They look like perfectly normal brats, joking with each other and making fun of everyone else, playing off each other like, well, like she’d expect brothers to do. She doesn’t know how these three found each other, but it doesn’t really matter when seeing them together like this is the most natural thing in the world.

They’re perfectly normal kids. A little wild and dangerous, maybe, but definitely children, so why can’t she stop looking for a sign they’re not?

Now that she’s sitting still, not running around town, that unsettled feeling is back. The sense that something is off, something is subtly wrong, tickling the back of her throat. She can’t make sense of it.

Her fingers tap nervously on the table and she makes them stop. Of course she’s unsettled. She’s stuck a decade in the past with no known way home, and her captain is the size of a small dog. It feels wrong because what about this situation is right?

She tells herself that’s it and tries to stop thinking about it.

There’s a knock on the door, and the boys dive under the table just in time to be out of sight as the food is carried in.

“Honoured Lady, I hope this is to your satisfaction,” the waiter says.

Nami regards the overflowing table with a critical eye. “Of course not!” she says, snootily. “I will need at least twice this much. Tell the chef to make another one. Shoo now.”

He grinds his teeth so hard she can hear him, but he leaves when she waves him off.

The boys are on the table the instant the door snaps closed, eating with their hands like the miniature savages they are.

Nami grabs the only fork and knife on the table and starts digging in as well.

It’s good food. Not anywhere close to anything Sanji makes, but certainly restaurant quality, and there’s so much of it that she doesn’t worry about getting to eat her fill before the boys inhale the lot.

Once she’s eaten enough that her stomach isn’t complaining anymore, her eyes are drawn back to them, squabbling animatedly at the other side of the table, fighting each other over the food as they always seem to do, stealing from plates and jamming elbows in faces as a matter of course.

They’re so alive, like rays of living sunshine on an otherwise grey sea.

And just like that, something clicks into place.

There’s a knock on the door, and the boys dive back under the table so serving number two can be carried in. Nami takes a quiet delight in the way the waiter’s eyes boggle at the sight of the table, the previous serving already gone.

And then he leaves, and the boys come back out.

Nami doesn’t eat this time. She’s had her fill already.

Instead, she gets up and goes to look out the window, leaving the food at the tender mercy of the three little beasts.

Down below, people are walking here and there in their fancy clothes and with their noses in the air. There are snooty ladies carrying around little dogs, spindly men in too many clothes with moustaches the size of their hands, and there are children, following obediently at their parents’ heels, with no real spring in their steps.

That’s what’s wrong with this place. The brats eating behind her look like kids, but the ones below really don’t. The whole place feels dead, like any trace of soul and life has been sucked out and dried up, leaving behind a hollow shell.

The air itself smells like heavy perfume. It’s almost as nauseating as the Grey Terminal was, and it’s the only thing it smells like. The people walking below her seem so empty it’s hard to believe they’re really people.

Like they’re puppets, like masks walking around with no face to cover. Even the toys of Dressrosa were more human than this.

The whole place gives her the creeps. The sooner they can leave, the better.

“Nami? Aren’t you gonna eat?” Luffy asks.

She sends him a smile. “I’m fine. Do you know how to best get out of town, for when you’re done?”

Luffy shrugs and goes back to eating. “The gate doesn’t let you go in, but you can just walk out if you want.”

Good to know. She busies herself with stuffing silverware in her shirt. The knife gives her pause for a moment. It’s just sharp enough that she thinks she can use it.

She’ll have to get out of the dress. She can move in a hoop skirt easily enough, but it’s faster without it. The top part of the dress is nice, though, and she did need a new shirt after ruining her white one. It just needs a little trimming.

A few deft cuts and the puffy sleeves tear away, leaving her arms bare. Another few cuts, and the skirt falls to the ground.

There, that’s much better.

She looks to the table again to see the boys fight over the last piece of bread.

“You done?” she asks.

“Yup!” Luffy says, as that disappears as well.

“Then let’s go,” she says, taking a hold of the back of her chair and chucking it through the window.

The sound is amazing. Broken glass flies everywhere, shattering against the street below. There’s shouting and screaming and a vicious sense of satisfaction that she’s elicited some sort of human response from these people.

“Let’s go!” the boys yell, and all four of them go out the window.

They hit the street running, and she can hear the yelling of previously unseen guards, but they’re already far away.

The boys are laughing wildly, and she can’t help but laugh too. She doesn’t usually enjoy running from angry mobs, but right here and right now, it’s so good to feel like a pirate again.

They book it through the High Town gate like a four-part bulldozer, people throwing themselves aside to get out of the way, and nothing and no one could dream of catching up with them. The boys know the way and Nami can run, and they leave every pursuer in the dust.

They crash through the marketplace, through a city centre they went around on the way in, weaving between stalls and shoppers, through a crowd that melts together into a single solid mass of people. It’s the hour for shopping and every soul in the city must be here now.

And then they reach a harbour, swarming with people, but open enough to see dozens of far too fancy yachts and a whole cruise ship moored, and beyond them, the blue ocean, so much more real than the manmade streets it borders.

They veer sharply right, and then the sea is out of sight as they run down an alley, pavement crumbling into a dirt road beneath their feet.

The guard Nami nearly seduced out of his money earlier that day is still on duty, and his eyes widen in recognition when she and the boys sprint past.

Then they’re hit with the full force of the Grey Terminal and have to slow down not to fall on their faces.

It’s a long walk, but they don’t stop before they’re again under the green shadow of immense trees, and the world around them feels alive.

Nami nearly falls to her knees in relief, breathing deeply. She didn’t realize how bad it was until now, how weird and wrong the whole city made her feel, like walking on a soap bubble, it felt like it could burst at any moment.

Back in the forest, the twigs brushing against her face feel solid, the ground under her feet feels real.

The boys don’t seem affected at all. Maybe it’s just that they’re used to it, maybe it’s that they’re kids, and don’t think about things too hard. They seem just as light-hearted as they’ve been since the moment she landed.

“Let’s go put away the treasure!” Sabo says, and walks away into the woods.

It seems like he expects Nami to follow, and so she does, wondering when they started trusting her this much.

She wonders when she started liking them this much.

She’d love Luffy in any world of course, but these children specifically, who seem so vibrant against the background of a drab world, so free in the face of those who would control them, have made their home in her heart in so little time.

The day’s earnings are added to a pile of money and valuables, tucked away under a giant tree root, well out of sight from every angle.

After a moment’s consideration, Nami wraps her own cut up in her ruined blouse and adds it to the hoard. Trust goes both ways, after all, and it is a good hiding place.

Then, once all the important business of the day is taken care of, the boys decide to go beetle hunting.

It seems, future pirates and revolutionaries or not, boys will be boys, and large beetles will always be cool.

Nami doesn’t join, even though Luffy begs her to. She’s bruised and worn out and entirely uninterested in insects, and so she sits her butt down and watches the boys expend their limitless energy on just… being children.

She can’t remember the last time she got to just be a child. Did she ever find the space, after Arlong came, or was that where her childhood ended?

It’s not worth dwelling on. It’s in the past.

Then again, now, so is she.

Those thoughts swirl aimlessly around her head – not acknowledged, but not quite thrown away either – for a long time, as the sun slowly sinks behind the trees and the forest wakes to life around her.

If this is a dream, it doesn’t matter. If it isn’t, then somewhere out there is her past, still happening. If she lets herself think about that for too long, she doesn’t know what will happen to her resolve.

By the time they’re heading back to the treehouse again, it’s almost too dark to see where they’re putting their feet. She just has to trust that they know the way well enough.

She’s had longer days, and she’s had tougher days, but it’s still been a long one, and she’s never been this far away from home.

She hits the fur-covered floor of the treehouse and is asleep in seconds.

Chapter Text

Nami wakes up the next day just to be convinced to fight again.

In the end, she can’t tell them no. They’re so infuriatingly endearing, and it’s so important to them, and deep down she enjoys the chance to be better than them at their own game for once.

At least this time, the deck isn’t stacked as hard in their favour.

They pair up, two and two fighting each other at a time. It’s still a hundred fights in a row, and she’s still sore from the day before, but at least now, they don’t get to rest between bouts either, and it helps.

On the other hand, they’ve learned. Overnight, it seems they’ve gotten wise to most of her tricks and are acting on every piece of advice she can remember giving.

It’s incredibly annoying. They have stamina and recovery times far beyond anything she’s ever needed, and if they get smart too, the only thing she’ll have on them is size.

She’s so proud of them.

Over the next few days, they go on like this. They start every day with breakfast, and then a stupid number of fights before heading off into the woods to do things.

Often, they go hunting. Crocodiles one day, terrifyingly large deer the next. They don’t exactly seek out the tigers, but tigers happen too, every now and again, so large she’d have guessed they were Grand Line native if she didn’t know for sure they’re not. At least their skins sell for more than a crocodile could ever dream of.

They eat most of what they catch and otherwise pick mushrooms and fruit. One evening the boys try to talk her into eating a caterpillar the size of her arm they’ve grilled on a spit, and she nearly electrocutes the bunch of them then and there.

They run the noble lady scam on another restaurant, and it’s just as fun the second time, even though the city is just as strange and dead, and she has the irrational wish to set it on fire just to see what would happen.

The boys show her the forest like they’re showing her around their own personal castle. Just as beautiful as the royal one, if far more dangerous.

Nami finds the spot where she woke up.

She half expects there to be a portal there, some sort of door to the future that she came through, or a pawprint on the ground like one of Kuma’s, but there’s nothing. It’s just another spot in the woods, with nothing to it to give her a hint.

There is no way in this forest for her to get home, and it hurts to realize. She misses her crew. She misses her family.

She’s over twelve years in the past, she learns. The kingdom is named Goa, the island is named Dawn. It’s an island she’s heard of, in passing, as a tourist location for rich people and not much else.

Now she knows exactly how far away from home she is, in space and time alike, and she has no way back. She’s more lost than Zoro on a field trip.

But there are still things for her to do here, until she finds her way back.

There’s a limit to how much she can teach the boys about fighting. It’s a field in which they were always far more gifted than anyone she ever learned from, but she can teach them other things.

She teaches them as many haggling tricks as she can on the few occasions they pop in to the city, and they don’t pick that up quite as fast as they pick up the fighting, but they learn quicker than she’d assumed. It’s a thing she knows well and that they need to know.

And she’s not Sanji, but she knows how to grill something without turning the outside to charcoal, knows what spices to steal to turn a meal from adequate to pretty good.

She’s not Chopper either, but when Luffy accidentally rockets into a sharp stick and cuts himself, she knows how to patch him up.

And she’s certainly not Usopp, but when they’re walking through the woods, when they’re sitting down to eat, or when they’re back at the treehouse but not yet asleep, she tells stories.

She’s still trying to be careful to not say too much, so that Luffy won’t feel it’s all been spoiled for him, later. She’s getting better at it, she thinks, and at making the stories sound good and exciting, at knowing what to leave out and what to keep in.

Either way, the boys are enraptured.

She sits one evening, treehouse lit by the light of the moon shining through the windows, telling a heavily abridged tale of their adventures in Wano. The boys are sitting so close she can feel their breathing, see their wide eyes shining in the moonlight.

This evening is cold. Nami’s digging her toes into the fur laid out on the floor, drawing a blanket tight over her shoulders so it falls over her like a cape, creating a shadow as she leans forward to spin the tale.

The boys share another blanket, squeezed shoulder to shoulder and hanging onto her every word, oohing and gasping at all the right moments.

It feels like she’s back home, pressed up against Nojiko and begging her mother for just one more story before bedtime, just five more minutes, please, it just got to the good part.

It feels like she’s settled.

The thought hits her like a brick, makes her stutter and pause.

She hasn’t, has she? She still needs to get home. Just because she doesn’t know how doesn’t mean she can give up. The crew needs her. Luffy needs her. Her Luffy, not this tiny version. The tiny version is going to be just fine.

She knows he will. He has his brothers.

Right?

“Nami?” tiny Luffy says. “What happened then? Did you save him?”

She realizes she’s stopped talking right in the middle of Tonoyasu’s execution, and hurries to continue. “Ah, no, this was when we learnt something shocking. You see it turns out he was actually an old friend of the samurai!”

If the story from there on out is a little more halting, a little more forced, the boys don’t seem to notice. They just pull closer and drink up every word of intrigue and bloody battle.

When she finally ties it up, it’s late at night, and the boys fall asleep almost on the spot.

For Nami, sleep doesn’t come as easily.

She’s been stalling. For all the forest’s tigers and poisonous bugs, and for all that it borders the nastiest cesspit she’s ever seen, her days here have been downright pleasant. It’s easier to spend her time playing with the children than it is to try to find her way through time itself.

She’s not in Wano now, and even if she was, it’s several years past Momo’s mom’s death, so that mode of travel is unavailable to her, but if she got here, there should be a way to get back. She just hasn’t been looking.

It’s like there’s something about this place, about the forest and the carefree days spent there that makes it hard to remember there’s a life outside of it, that she came from somewhere.

It’s hard to remember this isn’t her home, that she isn’t supposed to be here, in this tiny hut perched in a tree, raising three little monsters to one day raze the world.

Tomorrow, she thinks, rolling over and pulling the blanket tighter around herself. Tomorrow, she’ll go into town looking for information.

With that decision made, she closes her eyes and tries to go to sleep.

---

The next morning, she’s woken by the sun stabbing at her eyes, and once again she’s covered in children.

Every time. Every damn night they somehow manage to migrate on top of her, like she’s a glorified mattress. She knew Luffy moved a lot in his sleep, but this is just silly.

“Okay, up!” she says. “UP!”

They fly in all directions like startled mice.

Luffy bounces off a wall, Sabo rolls across half the room, and Ace shoots to his feet, trips over a blanket and falls on his ass.

Free once more, Nami sits up and fixes her hair. She doesn’t have a mirror, so she has to do it by feel, but she’s reasonably sure it turns out good.

“Good morning!” Luffy chirps. “Let’s go fight!”

“Breakfast first,” Sabo reminds him.

“Breakfast then fight!” Luffy amends.

Nami has just finished putting her hair up when she remembers last night’s promise to herself. “Ah, you’re on your own today, boys.”

“Eh?” All three of them stop on their way out to stare at her. “Why?”

“I told you I needed to get back to my crew, right?” She gets up to follow them out. “I need to go into town to look for information. It probably won’t be very interesting for you three.”

They still don’t move until she’s past them, and for once she hits the ground outside first.

Luffy falls out of the tree right after her. “You’re leaving?”

“I can’t stay here forever,” she reminds him.

The other two jump down to land on their feet.

Luffy looks up, and he looks so sad, eyes shining and lips quavering, like he’s on the verge of tears. “I thought you’d stay longer,” he mutters.

Oh.

She kneels in front of him and puts her hands on his shoulders. “Luffy, I’m not leaving today. I’m just looking for information. I promise you, if I find a way to get home, I won’t just leave, either. I won’t just disappear without warning, okay?”

He looks up and sniffs. “Okay.”

“It’s just for today, so don’t cry. Go play with your brothers, and I’ll be back before you know it.”

That seems to help. He gives her a quick hug, and then runs off into the woods with the other two. Nami is left trying not to think too hard about the way her heart aches for him.

By now, she’s walked the path to the city several times, which means it doesn’t take her much thought to find her way, leaving her with lots of time to think.

The forest seems so much quieter without three terrible children running at her heels or ahead.

They’re not her children, that’s the thing. She needs to stop feeling like she needs to be here. They’ll be perfectly fine on their own.

She knows they will. She’s seen the result.

Though… there was whatever incident caused them to lose Sabo for a while. There was something like that.

She’s never made inquiries about Luffy’s past, about any of the crew’s pasts, really. It’s an unspoken rule aboard their ship not to pry if information isn’t offered, because they’re all hiding buried pain and secrets, and home is supposed to be somewhere you’re safe, somewhere the past doesn’t matter.

Now, she almost wishes she had. Luffy never talks about his past unless prompted, and even then, he prefers not to. Now, she’s been dropped bodily into his past, and she doesn’t have the faintest clue what sort of tragedy is on the horizon, much less whether it’s something that’s possible to prevent.

And she can’t sit around waiting for it. For all she knows, that will take years.

She doesn’t even know what effect her presence here will have, if it’s possible for her to change anything at all or if doing so will have terrible consequences. Are paradoxes a thing that can happen?

The Grey Terminal hits her in the face with just as much force as it always does, but at least now she’s prepared for it, and jogs through as fast as she can while breathing shallowly.

Getting into town is easy without the boys to cover for. Just smile at the guard and he lets her through. Then she has work to do.

Breakfast first.

She’s more of a pirate now than she was when she first met Luffy, but she’s still not quite up for stealing from innocent civilians. A passing noble with a pocket full of gold, however, is free game, and ends up involuntarily paying for her breakfast as well as a pretty pocket-mirror she spots in a souvenir shop window.

Then she sets off searching for a library.

Three hours later, she’s walking down the side of a paved street, vibrating in frustration and just about ready to have a breakdown.

If this is a dream, it’s a nightmare. Except it can’t be a dream, because even in her darkest, wildest imagination, she would never be able to come up with such an atrocity as a whole city without a single library.

No libraries. No bookstores. No old journals hidden on shelves in the back of dinky antique shops. As far as she can tell, there isn’t a single book in the whole central city.

There’s little shops and people’s houses and the occasional restaurant, but from what she can see, there isn’t anything else.

Somehow, without the boys, the city is criminally boring, like she can see only now that there isn’t a single interesting spot anywhere within the walls. Like it’s a paper replica of a city, with no real substance to it once she looks closer.

It’s almost noon, and she’s found less than nothing.

Swiping an unopened candy bar from the pocket of a woman whose clothes look like they’re worth more than the Sunny, Nami sits down at the harbour with a dejected huff.

She’s getting nowhere? Fine. Maybe she should just change her approach.

At the very least, a day without getting attacked with sticks all morning is a welcome change. She has no reason to miss that.

Though it might be better than this kind of frustration.

Shaking her head, she eats her candy bar and resolves to enjoy a break.

The harbour is bustling already this early in the morning, fishermen and merchants coming in from the sea to sell their wares as fresh as possible. None of them pay her much mind where she sits, too caught up in going about their day to notice one strangely dressed woman on a bench.

She lets the noise fade into the background, keeping only half an ear out for interesting information, and leans back, breathing in the air of the sea.

This is clearing her head, at least. This place keeps her on edge, keeps her sharp. In the woods, she might have grown complacent, but here, in this bizarre, half-dead city and so close to the salty scent of her true home, she remembers who she is.

She’s a Straw-Hat Pirate. She’s the navigator of the most easily lost crew in the world. She’s Cat Burglar Nami, and she can’t allow herself to get stuck here.

The wind blows in from the sea with the promise of adventure, and it’s as feeble a wind as it’s been since she first landed, but she knows it inside out, knows what it is and what it will do, and it helps ground her.

If the city doesn’t have anything for her, maybe the merchants will.

She flags one down and gets to questioning.

He’s easy to get talking, but the conversation is the opposite of interesting and what information he has is nearly useless. The merchant ships don’t often carry books, he tells her, and certainly none from the Grand Line. She’ll be hard pressed to find even a single fairy tale or rumour this far from anything.

She misses Robin fiercely by the time the conversation is over.

One useful thing she’s learned, at least. The High Town nobles here often collect the strangest of things, as a hobby befitting the high-born, and if there isn’t a public library anywhere on the island, one of them might have a private one.

Nami squares her shoulders against the ocean wind and sets off to climb the High Town wall again.

Despite her epithet, Nami rarely does actual burglary, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t know how. The mansions masquerading as houses in this part of town have dozens of windows, and above the first floor, they’re often not locked. It hardly takes effort to slip in and out.

Searching through rooms, however, is an exercise in frustration. The mansions are hard to navigate, put together of a maze of rooms, each more boring than the last, seemingly without any system or order, like they’re meant purely for show rather than living. Like they’re built on some sort of vague idea of what a fancy home should look like.

There are also no books. After the fifth mansion, the best she’s found has been a shelf of encyclopaedias, beautifully bound in leather and never opened, filled with information so dull and irrelevant she couldn’t read past a page, the words blurring together.

The only reason she made it even that far is in the clinking of gold and jewels now filling all her pockets, including the ones on the beautiful fur coat she nabbed from a closet in what might have been a bedroom.

Her stomach rumbles, an hour overdue for dinner. A flash of a stolen pocket watch with an insignia engraved on the lid is enough to get her a table at another fancy restaurant without a single question asked.

Nothing but nothing, she thinks while she eats. Like there isn’t a single person in the kingdom capable of coherent thought.

It was a faint hope to begin with, that she may find information relating to Grand Line oddities in such a place as this, but the level at which this place is ignorant is astounding.

It’s looking more and more likely that she will have to travel far afield to find what she is looking for, but even for her, braving the Grand Line on her own is a challenge she’s reluctant to face.

And.

If she’s going to stay in the past for such a long time.

She doesn’t want to leave the boys.

Maybe it’s that they seem to be the only real people on the island. Maybe it’s because it’s Luffy. That somehow, even if he’s a child the size of a clam, when she’s with him, everything seems like it’s going to be okay.

Maybe it’s that Luffy doesn’t have the scar on his chest, and a part of her that she’s trying not to acknowledge is saying that if she sticks around, maybe he never will.

But Nami is no traitor, and leaving her captain to his fate over something as meagre as his own past tragedies would be the worst of betrayals.

As long as the future still exists, she must look forward, and try to go home. Without her, how will they know in which direction to look, after all?

She finishes her meal and slips out a back door to resume her search.

Several futile hours later, Nami feels about ready to cry. Whoever does interior design for these people must be grossly overpaid and horribly underqualified. It’s hard to believe these are houses people live in at all.

They’re far too easy to sneak into, and far too impractical for proper use. She’s barely even had to hide from servants, moving carefully though large stuffy room after larger, stuffier room, and nowhere anywhere can she find a single written word. She hasn’t even found paperwork. Can’t remember finding as much as a single office.

Does this country have a strange habit of conducting all business in the basement, or are these people actually useless? Like a whole social class of blow-up dolls for everyone else to pamper.

Almost like the Celestial Dragons, she thinks to herself, and shudders. Like this place is Mariejois in miniature.

At least she hasn’t seen any slaves around. The people of Edge Town and the Grey Terminal might be poor and sick, but they still have their freedom of movement.

Sabo claimed people choose to live in the Grey Terminal because it’s better than the alternative, and maybe she understands.

He spoke as if from experience.

Her feelings about him having that experience are familiar.

It’s curiosity and outrage, buried under fierce relief that no matter where he was or what he was running from, he’s home now. He’s safe and loved and she will not let him come to harm.

It feels familiar because it’s what she feels when any of her family mentions their pasts.

They’re free now. They’re free, and they’ll never be caught again.

She leaves another house and decides to give up on the mansions. There’s nothing for her in them.

Instead, she looks up, at the last looming wall this country has to offer, up at the golden-bricked, marble-towered royal palace gleaming far above.

High risk, high reward, hopefully. If anywhere in this gods-forsaken kingdom has the information she needs, it’s likely to be in there.

If every mansion in this place is as easy as climbing onto a balcony, even the palace can’t be that hard to break into, can it?

---

In hindsight, she was tempting fate.

In hindsight, she was tempting fate on purpose.

Looking for a challenge.

In her experience, fate rarely turns down a chance to make life harder for her.

The city is getting to her, probably. Or the island, or the whole damned situation. It’s the fucking time travel that doesn’t make a single bit of sense, the way she’s still not sure if she’s dreaming. It’s this place, with its empty people and thoughtless design, the way even the callous evil of the senselessly wealthy isn’t enough to explain the chill down her back that all of this is wrong, wrong, wrong. It’s the weather, so stable it’s niggling at her, about to drive her insane.

She should’ve known better than this.

Because of course the royal palace has royal guards, with royal spears and royal armour and very un-royal guns, and of course they would try to shoot her on sight.

What was she thinking?

Nami isn’t Zoro or Usopp. She doesn’t go looking for trouble, and she’s confident, yes, but not overly so. She’s not the one who comes up with hare-brained plans like ‘break into the palace on her own to look for the library’.

She wishes Robin was here, or Jimbei. Just someone to bounce ideas off of, to talk her out of things like this. Someone almost reasonable.

Oh, who is she kidding. None of them are reasonable! She’s the only reasonable voice on the ship and has been from the beginning.

She needs to get home, before the lot of them end up with their heads stuck in buckets without her.

Except here she is, with her head stuck in a metaphorical bucket.

The situation: She’s sprinting down the street parallel to the palace at full tilt, three guards at her heels, shooting at her. They’re missing by a mile every shot, of course, unused to shooting while running and probably amateurish even while standing still.

If it was Usopp, she’d be dead ten times over already.

But they only need to get lucky once, and the street is wide open.

Additionally, if they’re anywhere close to remotely competent, there’ll be an ambush around the next corner, and there isn’t a single spot to hide between her and it.

Dammit, dammit, dammit.

She’ll have to get serious. It’ll draw attention, but by now that’s a moot point. The windows above her head have protruding ledges, and given an unobserved minute, she should be able to get through.

A bullet hits the ground a meter from her feet. Nami draws her Clima-Tact and prepares an attack.

A bubble filled with a crackling storm falls behind her. Another forms at the tip of the Clima-Tact and sticks. She swings her weapon, giving it speed and a little spin, and then releases.

Bubble number two flies ahead, curving around the corner. Then both go off with a thunderclap, a flash of light and the sound of shattering glass. The guards behind her scream and there’s shouting from ahead.

She doesn’t look back, just runs around the corner.

The guards in front are slightly singed, but still standing. Damn. She must’ve missed, or their stupid armour worked as a faraday cage.

No matter, they’re reeling and blinded from the lightning flash, and don’t even notice her as she slips past them, jumps, grabs a ledge and then vaults herself up, through a window broken by the thunder.

Glass crunches under her heels as she hits the hallway, and she crouches down, out of sight, and sneaks along the wall until she can slip through a door and be gone.

Through the door, she can still hear the shouting of enraged guards echo through the windows, but nothing to indicate they know where she went.

Nami leans her full weight against the door and lets out a long breath of relief.

She got away.

She waits for the sounds of shouting to move away before she slips back into the hallway and goes exploring.

At first glance, the palace seems to function along the same lines as the mansions below. It has the same ostentatious décor, white marble and gold, not an inch of wall left untouched by overdone embellishments. It has the same strangely empty hallways and rooms, only once in a rare while graced by the presence of a servant or a maid, and it has the same overwhelming smell of too sweet perfume.

As she explores, though, Nami can’t shake a strange sense of familiarity.

It’s the floor plan, she realizes. Where the mansions seemed built in a sort of slap-dash way, the palace is structured more logically. It reminds her of Vivi’s palace, in Alabasta. A lot, actually. Down to the placements of the bathrooms.

It’s uncanny.

Maybe it does make sense. They’re both palaces, after all. There can’t be that many people designing palaces. Though the palace in Alubarna is far older than Nami thinks this one can be.

Maybe the designer drew inspiration from there?

Either way it makes searching much less frustrating. She doesn’t have to think as hard just to make sure she isn’t going in circles.

Less frustrating, but no more fruitful. No matter how many rooms she searches through, she can’t seem to find a single book. She can’t find newspapers either, or letters or pamphlets.

Where she would’ve found Vivi’s library, this palace has what seems to be a trophy room, and when she looks closer, none of them even have proper plaques. She’s about to note that the restaurant menus in this country have more writing than the whole palace put together, and then she remembers that none of the restaurants she’s been to here have offered her a menu.

The waiter made recommendations, yes, but there was never anything written down.

What is wrong with this country?

And then she finds something like an office, with a desk and a fancy chair, and finally, there’s a shelf with something that looks like books on it. It almost feels too good to be true, at this point, that some exist.

She drops the whole stack of books onto the desk before she sits herself down in the chair to look through them.

The first one is picked up, and then immediately put down.

Stupid. She should’ve remembered the encyclopaedias. It really was too good to be true.

Book number one bears the wonderful title of Suspenders and Waistcoats: A History of Shirt-Covering Garments.

Nami takes a quick look inside from morbid curiosity alone, and it’s exactly as lethally inane as it sounds. It doesn’t even have pictures.

The rest are no better. Some of them are worse.

Grasses of Goa, Identification, Classification and Phylogeny.

A Brief History of Ceramic Tiles.

The Hatpin, Use and Abuse.

The book titled Cerulean Orbs and Other Words for Eyes seems to have seen a lot of use, and Nami empathically does not want to know.

She buries her face in her arms on the desk.

Nothing. She’s been here most of the day and she’s found less than nothing. All she’s learned is that this place is fucked up beyond all belief and if she stays here too long, she’s scared she’ll be infected.

Hopefully it’s a dream. Hopefully she’ll just wake up eventually, and she’ll be home.

If it’s not, she’s not only trapped in the past, she’s stuck on what might be the single worst island in the world.

Well. Okay, it could’ve been somewhere like Raijin Island, or the top of the Red Line, or a deserted sky island. At least Dawn has breathable air.

Then again, she didn’t end here by coincidence.

She doesn’t know how or why, but there must be some reason she ended up falling into Luffy’s childhood, probably because they were the only two people there when the time travel occurred, as far as she knows.

She still can’t remember what happened after they took off after the scarf guy, but it must have been just after that. She thinks maybe they fought him? Or tried to.

Sighing, she turns her head to the side and settles more properly onto the desk, just resting.

There isn’t a single lead, is the problem. She doesn’t even know where to start. She’s a Straw-Hat Pirate, this isn’t enough to make her give up, but… she’s alone.

Entirely alone.

Not like she was on Weatheria, with everyone scattered and lost. There, she knew where she was going and what she was doing. She had a timeframe and a clear goal and knew that everyone else had the same.

Here, she doesn’t even have that. She hasn’t been this alone since before Luffy came along.

But she does have Luffy.

And his brothers, though they’re still a little odd and unfamiliar to her.

They’re small and weak and feral, but she has them, and they’ll be waiting for her to come back. She doesn’t have her crew, doesn’t have her family, but she has a small part of it, and as it turns out, she’s not entirely alone.

She gets up from the chair, and her eyes fall on the face of a safe set into the wall across the room for her.

Well, there might be other spots of light to her situation as well.

---

Half an hour later, she’s making her way out of town again.

Her steps are a little lighter now, even though she’s carrying a large bag filled with money and gold. Nothing lightens her steps like gold does.

She’s heading for their treasure trove to hide her loot away.

Above, the eternally blue sky is showing wisps of white clouds on the horizon. She can’t feel it coming yet, but soon, she guesses. The weather’s been too kind for too long.

It’s about time it rained.

Chapter Text

Nami wakes up in the darkest part of morning because she’s freezing.

The rain hits leaves above and trickles down branches and tree trunks to be drunk by thirsty roots, drips off twigs and foliage to drum on the roof over her head.

The birds are quiet today, electing to save their breaths rather than try to sing through the noise of the rain.

She wakes up freezing because she’s sleeping on the floor of a treehouse with no glass in the windows, because three boys are holding onto her even closer in their sleep than usual and her blankets have fallen away, and the floor is wet and it’s raining on her legs.

The boys are clamped on like baby koalas, and don’t wake up even when she shuffles further into the treehouse and bundles all four of them up in all the blankets she can get her hands on.

It’s far too early to get up, so she shivers until the blankets warm up, and then she falls back to sleep.

---

It’s still raining when she wakes again, hours later, the sun now high in the sky behind the clouds.

The boys have moved in their sleep, but only to cuddle closer. Luffy has his feet tucked against her chest, and one of the other two has his arms around her waist. It’s certainly not cold anymore, just warm and cosy.

For a few minutes, she just lies there, looking out the window at the rain, feeling the atmosphere moving above.

Absentmindedly, she runs her fingers through the first head of hair she can find.

Then she sighs and sits up, pulling the blankets off all of them.

“Time to wake up!”

They blink awake and untangle themselves from her and each other without complaint.

Then Luffy gets a look out the windows. “Aww, it’s raining!” he says. “But it’s cold! Rain is no fun if it’s cold.”

“How are we dealing with this?” Nami asks, dreading a day spent outside being cold and wet, but disliking the thought of staying in the tiny treehouse all day even more.

“I think we should go up to the bandits,” Sabo says.

“The bandits?” Ace says, sending a scowl his way. “We can’t do that! We moved out, remember? Don’t you have your pride?”

“Oy, asshole!” Sabo replies, understandably. “It’s not about that! We’re just visiting ‘cause it’s cold. They can’t complain about it if we bring food for everyone.”

“Alright! Let’s go hunt!” Luffy yells and jumps out the window.

“Luffy!” Nami and the boys shout, jumping after him.

As they’re racing across the muddying forest floor, the trees too slippery to climb safely, Nami finds the chance to ask about these bandits. “You lived with them before?”

“Kinda, yeah,” Sabo says. “There’s lots of bandits in the mountains, but the Dadan Family are the strongest ones. Ace stayed with them since he was a baby, so we ended up there as well. Dadan’s pretty cool as a boss.”

“She’s a dirty old hag,” Ace argues.

Sabo grins wide. “She’s mean as hell, but we like her, you know?”

And yeah, Nami can understand that.

“Shihihi,” Luffy laughs. “I hate bandits, but I like those guys!”

“Make sure you tell her that. I bet she’ll cry,” Sabo says.

Raised by bandits, grown up in the jungle, too self-reliant for their own good. The more Nami learns about these boys, the more she understands how they turned out like they did.

They’re hunting deer today, and it’s just to be expected that on an island with tigers the size of houses, the prey animals will be similarly terrifying.

She doesn’t know what species they are, if they’re native to this island only or if it’s possible to find them elsewhere. They’re the size of elephants, and all of them have antlers that look like they could pierce a tank.

The antlers are why their normal hunting approach of hiding in trees to spring an ambush from above isn’t going to work this time.

Instead, once they spot the herd, they crouch down and hide in the underbrush, sneaking carefully closer. This soaks them to the bone, but that was unavoidable from the beginning.

Nami has her Clima-Tact out and at the ready, but isn’t planning to use it unless she has to. The boys would be annoyed with her if they thought she was coddling them, and either way, she’s perfectly content leaving it to them.

Unless it looks like they’re in trouble, of course.

Nami has a vague suspicion they’ve gotten less careful with her around as a safety net.

She almost hopes so. Even Luffy can’t have gotten nearly eaten by woodland animals this frequently as a child, could he?

…Actually, she doesn’t want the answer to that question.

A gigantic buck steps away from the herd to graze on a bush, and the boys get moving. They’re not the stealthiest of hunters, but they’re fast and experienced, and the buck doesn’t notice them before it’s too late.

Ace and Sabo jump up, smashing their pipes into its back legs. The buck bellows so loudly the canopy shakes, and jumps in pain, and then it trips right over Luffy’s arm, stretched between two trees.

Its head hits the ground, and then it’s on its side, kicking in the air with deadly hooves, scoring deep marks into tree trunks like the wood is made of butter, but the boys are well out of the way.

They run around, ducking under the huge rack of antlers, and all three hit its head at once.

The buck stills. The rest of the herd disappears into the woods.

“Wohoo!” the boys cheer. “Dinner!”

Nami stands up, courteously applauding. “Yes, yes, and we’re all wet. You said something about a hideout?”

Even her underwear is starting to get soaked through. She’ll take anything at this point.

The boys seem to agree, because the buck is tied to a pole in record time, and soon they’re part carrying, mostly dragging it through the woods.

It’s a steep climb up the mountains, harder still with the water turning every foothold treacherous, but she digs her heels in and deals with it. The deer carcass is too heavy to pull for her to waste her breath complaining.

Usually, back home, she’d make up some excuse to make someone else carry the thing. She’s really not built for it. She’s the brains, not the muscle, and oh, Sanji, won’t you help me out? Zoro, hold this. Usopp, you’re a man, aren’t you?

If she tried to pull that here, the boys would make like Usopp and call her out on her bullshit. Unlike Usopp, she’d feel bad about talking them into doing it anyway.

She’s not entirely shameless.

She even keeps most of her swearing inside her head, even when she slips in the mud.

It’s still cold and she’s wet and she’s hurting from falling once or twice and her arms are hurting from the weight of the deer, added to the aching echo of involuntary and relentless sparring for days, and the brats really must be little monsters if they’re not as tired as her yet.

Though she knew that already.

It almost comes as a surprise when they arrive. Suddenly she’s not having to navigate around trees anymore, and they walk into a clearing, in the middle of which is an actual honest to god house.

Not a treehouse or a cabin, nothing like the shacks and mansions from town, it’s a little ramshackle and it has a watchtower, but otherwise it’s just a perfectly normal-looking house.

Maybe her standards for normal have changed. It looks like it has a waterproof roof, and right now, that’s the only thing she cares about.

“Oy! We brought food!” Ace yells.

Three seconds later, the door slams open and a woman steps through. She’s huge, in a way that makes it clear she’s mostly muscle under a top layer of fat, her hair is tightly braided along her scalp and explodes at her neck into wild orange curls, and she has a cigarette clenched hard between her teeth in rage.

“You brats! Where the hell have you been?”

Nami hangs back a little and lets the entirely undaunted boys handle this.

“What, did you miss us?” Sabo asks lightly.

“Like hell! You shitty brats are nothing but trouble.”

A wide head sticks out the door behind her, smiling at the sight of the boys. “Oh, but Boss, they brought food for everyone.”

The woman, apparently the boss bandit so probably Dadan, lets out a huff that’s almost a growl. Then she barks over her shoulder, “Some of you morons get out here and prep this thing for dinner!”

“Shihihi, you missed us, didn’t’cha?” Luffy laughs, jumping at her.

Instead of stepping aside or batting him away, she gets a brief look of panic on her face and catches him, holding him almost carefully. She doesn’t lean away from the subsequent hug either.

Heh, Nami thinks. So this is Luffy’s unfortunate mother.

“Eh? Who are you?”

The man with the wide head, now joined by several other men clearly here to deal with the deer, is looking straight at Nami.

Dadan looks up too, and her eyes fill with violent suspicion.

Nami gives a small wave and puts on her most innocent expression. “Hi~i ♡”

“She’s Nami!” Luffy chirps. “She moved in with us!”

“Luffy!” the wide-faced man says, and then he turns to Ace and Sabo, who have already pushed through into the house. “Boys! You just let a stranger into your home?”

“But she’s not a stranger, she’s Nami!” Luffy says.

“See? I’m Nami,” Nami says, smiling at the men as she walks past towards the door. She has no intention of getting involved with the gutting and flaying that’s about to commence. “Nice to meet you.”

Dadan puts a hand out to stop her before she can walk in.

Nami is being loomed over, and she’s never liked that. The woman is inches from her face and quite a few inches taller. They’re standing just under the eave of the house, so at least it’s not raining on her anymore, but she’s still cold and wet, and she can see a fire burning indoors so tantalizingly close.

“Nami, hmm? And where the hell did you pop up from?”

Her mind whirls for a good answer. She can hardly come out with the truth and expect to be believed, but at this point, a lie is going to have to be very good. Her best bet is to avoid the question.

Luffy smacks Dadan on the collarbone from where she’s still holding him. “Dadan! It’s okay. It’s just Nami.”

Dadan doesn’t seem affected by the words or the smack.

“I’m just very lost and trying to get home,” Nami says. “The boys have been putting me up for the nights, is all.”

“And a pretty thing like you couldn’t find a better place than a children’s treehouse?” Dadan says, dubious.

“We’re not children!” Luffy insists and is ignored.

“E-heh,” Nami says, rubbing the back of her head sheepishly. “The city here kinda creeps me out, so.”

“Ah!”

The sound of hands smacking together makes them both look up.

Sabo is standing with his fist on his hand like he just hit it in realization. “I get it now! It’s the hair!”

“Hmm, yes,” Ace says, standing beside with his chin resting on his fingers, nodding thoughtfully. “I agree. Redheads are just terrifying.”

Luffy laughs and squirms out of Dadan’s grip to join his brothers. All three of them are still dripping wet.

“Do you three have spare clothes here?” Nami asks them. When she gets nods in answer, she points in their direction and says, “Well go get changed before you all catch colds!”

“Yes, Nami!” they chorus asynchronously before they scurry off.

“Huh, got them to listen…” Dadan mutters under her breath.

The tension between them seems to have broken.

“Speaking of getting changed,” Nami says, smiling sweetly and winking. “One terrifying redhead to another, do you think you have anything that could fit me? I feel like I’ve gone swimming with my clothes on.”

Dadan sounds less aggressive now. “I don’t really have any dresses or anything, but one of my shirts would probably look like one on you.”

“I can work with that,” Nami says and finally, finally steps into the warm, dry indoors air.

It doesn’t take long before her wet clothes are hung to dry and she’s sitting by the fire, dressed in an enormous shirt she’s fastened around her waist with a sash, chatting up the bandits.

They’re friendly, for mountain bandits, but maybe she shouldn’t be surprised. She has no doubt they’re far less cordial towards anyone considered an enemy or a target, but here, around their hearth, it’s made clear why they call themselves a family.

They’re good people, rough around the edges as they are. She can’t help but feel at home here.

The boys come back with fresh T-shirts and shorts on, looking more like they’ve just been through the shower than like they’ve been walking around in the rain.

“Hey, Nami!” Luffy crashes into her and sticks, overexcited. “Guess what? Mogura said Makino is gonna come!”

“Who?” Nami says, trying to pry Luffy off to no avail.

“I just said she might,” says the large man who Luffy identified as Mogura. He’s holding his hands up, trying to ward off disappointment. “We didn’t expect the rain, though, so she might not.”

Ace settles down beside Nami, warming his hands on the fire. “Nah, she’ll come. It’s Makino. If she said she’d come, she probably will.”

“Yep,” Sabo says, plopping down beside him again.

“Another adopted family member of yours?” Nami guesses.

“Eh?”

The boys look up at her, startled. Then they look at each other.

“I guess… sorta?” Ace says, his eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “She’s from Windmill Village, so she’s really just Luffy’s friend….”

“She gave us these clothes,” Sabo says, grinning and pulling at his T-shirt proudly. “She’s really nice and even the bandits don’t mind her when she comes visiting.”

“Pfeh, that’s because she brings booze,” Dadan says.

She does? Nami doesn’t know anything about this woman, but she loves her already.

The wide-faced man, whose name Nami has learned is Dogura, speaks up. “She used to help take care of Luffy back before his grandfather dropped him off with us. She’s sort of adopted all three, now.”

“No, that makes it sound like she’s my mom,” Luffy complains, still latched onto Nami. “It’s not like that!”

“Yeah, she’s more like a big sister or something,” Sabo says.

“Or an aunt,” Ace says.

“She’s a bartender,” Luffy says.

Sabo gives him a look. “A bartender isn’t a family member, Luffy.”

“Makino is, though.”

“Yeah, but that’s not….”

“Food!” Luffy yells, as the door opens again and the men who went out earlier come in carrying the meat from the elephant deer.

He launches himself towards the door, but Nami holds him back with a hand on his shirt.

“Wait until it’s cooked first, idiot!”

“But Naaaamiiiiii. I’m hungryyyy.”

“You’ll live,” she says.

Unable to break free of her hold, he slumps on the floor like the seven-year-old he is, to general snickering from the audience.

Dogura stops laughing long enough to say, “You’re really good at handling them.”

“Ugh,” she says. “My whole life seems to be babysitting a bunch of idiots, these days. At least these ones are small enough to pick up.”

“Oy! You can’t pick me up. I’ll bite!” Ace says.

That sounds like a challenge if she’s ever heard one. “Sure, sure,” she says, placatingly.

“You don’t believe me?”

“I don’t think you’d dare,” she says, chin rested on her hand.

“I’ll show you!” He jumps at her, fuming.

Maybe she shouldn’t have teased him, but it was more or less inevitable, anyway. Without their regular morning sparring matches, the boys have way too much energy.

She catches him, gets on her feet and swings him around once, then tosses him into the air.

His T-shirt reads ‘Sunshine’ she notices. Cute.

He’s not Luffy, but he’s not fragile either. By now she knows how to handle these kids.

She has very few qualms about catching him again and then letting him dangle from an ankle.

“Bastard! Put me down!”

“M-hm?” she says, and keeps dangling him.

He snarls and tries to hit her, which doesn’t do much when he can’t reach her.

“Bro, I think you lost,” Sabo says.

Luffy is laughing too, though he’s still on the floor. “Cause Nami always wins.”

Ace struggles for a little while more before he stills. Then he grinds out, “Please put me down.”

He’s gotten so much better at saying please. She lowers him to the floor, where he sits up and grumbles but doesn’t attack again.

Nami’s stomach growls loudly. The meat is roasting over the fire now, and though it won’t be finished for a while yet….

“That smells amazing,” someone says from the door, echoing Nami’s thoughts.

“Makino!” Luffy shouts, springing from the floor to leap at whoever just came in.

He’s barely caught in the arms of a young woman with the kindest smile Nami has ever seen. Makino is wearing a long raincoat and carrying a large covered basket. Behind her is an old, grumpy-looking man in a raincoat of his own.

“Hi, Luffy. Hello, boys, everyone,” she greets, walking in and putting down the basket.

The bandits greet her back happily and give a few waves to the old man as well, while the boys run up to meet her.

“We were just talking about you,” Sabo says.

“Oh, you were?” Makino says, handing an enthusiastic Luffy over to the old man to greet.

“They were tryin’ to figure out how you’re related to them,” Dogura says.

Makino laughs softly behind a hand. “You don’t know? My grandmother was Luffy’s grandmother’s sister, so I’m your second cousin.”

“Wait, you’re actually related?” Ace asks.

Sabo hesitates for a moment before he says, quietly, “Ours too?”

“Of course,” she answers both of them, reaching out to ruffle their hair before she opens the basket. “Here, I brought you this. Thought you might need them.”

What she pulls out of the basket is three child-sized raincoats, in red, orange and blue.

“Sweet! Thanks, Makino!” Luffy says, wriggling out of the old man’s hold to go grab his new raincoat.

“You didn’t have to,” Ace says, but he accepts the one he’s given even so.

“Of course she did,” the old man says. “Can’t have you brats running around getting sick, either.”

Nami watches, and she aches for them.

Aches for two boys out of three who seem so unused to kindness, who don’t know how to deal with having it given to them.

And for Makino, who is so kind and gentle. Who smiles and fusses and doesn’t judge in the least. Who only laughs when the bandits come over to raid the rest of the basket for several unopened bottles, and waves them off fearlessly.

And the bandits don’t look threatening around her, either. The old man eyes them mistrustfully, but they greet her with their own rough style of politeness and keep a careful distance, as if she’s something precious they don’t want to scare away.

She might not be anyone’s mother, but out of everyone here, she’s the one who reminds Nami the most of Bellemere.

Nami’s heart clenches with warmth and a sort of longing as she watches them interact. Makino is pretty, but her smiles are stunningly beautiful.

Then Luffy tugs at Makino’s skirt and says, “Come meet Nami!”

Nami walks up to meet them.

“Who’s this?” Makino asks.

“She lives with us now,” Luffy says. “She’s a pirate!”

The old man huffs scornfully. “As if you needed any more of those. It’s a bad influence, it is.”

Makino just smiles, however. “Don’t mind the mayor,” she says. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“You too,” Nami says, not really having any other option.

She’s feeling off balance now. The rest of Luffy’s family are all bastards in the best way. She can be comfortable with them, being as rude as she feels like and expecting the same in return, but Makino is so… normal. She’s soft and kind and proper, and Nami doesn’t know how to approach her.

Makino doesn’t seem to have the same issue. She holds out the last bottle of booze from her basket and says, “You’ll have to tell me how you ended up here.”

Nami grins and gleefully accepts.

The bandits declare dinner served, and the boys are gone in an instant, leaving Nami and Makino to sit down together a little away from the crowd with the bottle between them.

The mayor side-eyes Nami a little, but sits down by the fire and doesn’t get back up.

“So,” Makino says, cracking the bottle open with a practiced hand. “You’re a pirate, eh? That’s rare, around here. We haven’t had a proper crew around since Shanks left. Who are you with?”

“No one you’ve heard of,” Nami says, because the Straw-Hat Pirates don’t exist yet, so it has to be true. “That’s Red-Haired Shanks?”

Makino nods, takes a sip of the bottle and hands it over. “The crew stayed at our village for a year, but they left six months ago, now. With Luffy out of the village too, it’s been very quiet.”

“Most people prefer their lives without notorious pirates in them,” Nami notes.

She doesn’t know what kind of booze she’s drinking, but it tastes amazing, sweet and burning in just the right way. She’s never had anything like it.

Makino laughs. “Well, they wouldn’t hurt us. The mayor grumbled about them a lot, but they were always good for business.”

“Luffy said you’re a bartender? I’ll believe it.” Nami hands the bottle back to stop herself from downing it. It’s very good and, she suspects, very strong.

“I got to know them very well,” Makino agrees.

Something about the way she says it raises suspicions.

“You did, did you? Get to know them?” Nami wiggles her eyebrows.

Makino hands the bottle back again with a smile that isn’t the least bit ashamed, but a pink blush paints itself across her cheeks. “Well… maybe so.”

A year is a long time for a crew like that to stay in one place, in Nami’s experience, but proper incentives change a lot.

“Lucky bastard,” she says, and takes a long swig of the bottle. “And good for you. Take what you want and don’t let yourself be… y’know.”

She was right. The booze is way stronger than she’s used to. She’s already inching into tipsy, which is unusual with her tolerance, even on an empty stomach.

Makino laughs, and doesn’t seem uncomfortable. “How did a pirate end up living here?”

“I’m not staying here, I’m staying with the boys,” Nami clarifies. “In the treehouse.”

Makino’s eyebrows go up in question.

“Ran into them in the woods and I’m sorta… stuck, so.”

“Where is your crew, then?” Makino asks.

“Gone and got themselves lost,” Nami says, quoting Zoro and gesturing vaguely into the void with the bottle.

It’s about time she handed that bottle back again, she thinks, so she does.

“Hmm, I see,” Makino says, but the way she says it makes it sound like she’s doubting it.

She takes another sip from the bottle before handing it back again, which is probably a more responsible way to drink, but Nami hasn’t had alcohol since she landed here and it’s so very good.

Nami takes another swig. The bottle is a third empty and she has a feeling she’s the one who’s drunk most of it.

“So how did you end up on the island?” Makino asks.

“It’s a crazy story,” Nami says, and takes another swig because why not.

“And you’d rather not tell?”

Would she? Nami also hasn’t had a proper adult to talk to since she landed. She’s been missing it, to have someone to bounce ideas off of and maybe help her sort things out.

“Not sure you’ll believe me,” she ends up saying.

Makino takes the bottle back for a sip and looks out at the room. “Hm, maybe not. Give me a second.”

She gets up and walks away, leaving the bottle for Nami to snatch back, and a minute later she comes back with freshly grilled elephant deer to eat for them both.

While they’re working through their food, she says, “Shanks has been a pirate for longer than either of us have been alive, you know. He has a lot of stories, from every sea, the Grand Line included. Most of them I never knew if I could believe or not, but then he came home talking about this fruit he found that could turn someone into rubber, and then…” She nods towards where Luffy is stretching his arms unnaturally far to grab more food.

“Devil fruits are pretty common, though,” Nami says.

“On the Grand Line, maybe,” Makino says. “Before I saw it myself, it was in the same category for me as islands made out of cake. Tell me what happened. I won’t say it’s impossible.”

Nami grabs the bottle again, because Makino has a point, but also putting things into words always makes them more real.

Once she puts the bottle down, she says, “I’ve time-travelled.”

“You what?”

“I don’t know how. Me and my captain were fighting this… asshole who kept throwing weird stuff at us, and then…” She can’t remember. The scarf guy made what seemed like an army of adorable woodland animals, though, she remembers that now. They were very cute and very annoying and faded out of existence almost immediately. “I don’t remember. I woke up over twelve years in the past and I don’t know how to get back.”

“I didn’t know that was possible,” Makino says.

“I didn’t either!” Nami says, throwing her arms out. “But here we are!”

Fuck it. Her bottle now.

“If there’s anything I could do?”

“Unless you have time-travel powers you haven’t talked about.” Nami sighs. “Don’t worry about it. You’re so sweet, you know that?”

“Well, thank you,” Makino says.

Makino has finished eating and is looking over the rest of the people in the room as she waits for Nami to do the same.

Then she asks, “Which one of them do you know in the future?”

Nami looks up to where Makino is looking pointedly at the boys. “…Is it that obvious?”

Makino shrugs. “Only guessing, but it seems like you would’ve left already, otherwise.”

“That’s true,” Nami says. Then she says, “I met Ace once, but… Luffy’s my captain.”

“I see.” Makino smiles so warmly it feels like a heated blanket.

A few meters away, Luffy nearly launches himself into the fire on accident, trying to steal meat that hasn’t finished grilling yet, and ends up getting sat on for his own safety.

Nami keeps drinking.

“It must be a rather sudden change,” Makino says.

Nami almost snorts booze into her nose laughing. “You have no idea. Most of the time he hasn’t changed at all, but it’s still so weird to look at this brat when I know the man he’s going to be. My captain is undefeatable, widely feared and just as widely loved. He’s the kind of person you’d follow to hell and back, you know? And this is just a child.”

“Do you love him?” Makino asks.

“Of course I love him, he’s my… oh.” Nami’s brain catches up with her mouth. “You mean romantically?”

Makino nods.

Nami thinks about it for a second. “Luffy?”

Now she has to swallow what feels like uncontrollable giggling.

“Oh god.” Nope, still giggling. “That’s… I pity the poor woman who falls in love with him.”

“Oh?” Makino asks.

“Not that he’s not great,” Nami is quick to reassure her. “He’s infuriating sometimes, but he’s incredible. He’s like… like my annoying little brother who I’ve unwisely decided to take orders from. I’d trust him with my life a thousand times over, but definitely not my heart.”

The bottle of booze is almost empty, but at least she’s not giggling anymore.

“No, you see, if someone fell for him, man or woman actually, if he noticed at all he’d just turn them down on the spot. He’s just not interested, you get me? Nah, I love him, but I’m not in love with him, and I’m happy about that. Not my type anyway.”

Makino seems to have caught her giggles. “And what is your type, then?”

“My type!” Nami starts, and holds the bottle dramatically up against the light.

Maybe she shouldn’t say. It’s not something she talks about. On the other hand, who cares?

The bottle is almost empty already. Ah, nothing good ever lasts, but at least she’ll enjoy it while it’s there.

“My type,” she repeats, and drinks the rest of the bottle. “Has tits.”

Makino laughs, so that’s alright.

“Hey, Nami!” Luffy shouts from over by the fire. “Tell us a story!”

“Right now?” she asks, because she was actually really enjoying this, sitting here drinking and talking to a woman her own age for once.

“Yeah! We’ve got a fire and everything.”

Well, he has a point, and she’s out of booze anyway.

“Alright!” she says, and stands up.

Then she sways on her feet, suddenly dizzy.

“God, what do you put in this?” she asks, turning and giving Makino the empty bottle back. “I love it.”

“Are you going to be okay?” Makino asks.

“Yeah, I’m fiiine,” Nami says, and takes a little more care when she turns back to the boys. “Did I ever tell you kids about Little Garden?”

“That sounds boring,” Ace says, but he’s already settled cross-legged by the fire along with his brothers, eager for the story to begin.

“You might think so, y’brat, but it’s really, really not.”

And she starts telling the story. She’s maybe a little drunk, and it’s maybe a little less coherent than usual, and maybe she can’t quite keep track of the names she’s using for everyone, but she’s pretty sure it’s a lot more dramatic than it usually is.

“So the Princess and the Captain were out exploring, and Swordsbrain and Swirly were out hunting, so there’re only me and Nose-King left on the ship, and then! A giant steps out of the woods!” She throws her arms out, trying in vain to demonstrate how fucking huge Brogy seemed when they first met him.

Somewhere behind her, Makino is still giggling.

“And Nose-King screamed, and I screamed, and then the giant screamed as well! Because!” She holds a finger out for a dramatic pause. “A dinosaur bit his butt!”

Luffy cries laughing.

“No way! Dinosaurs are extinct,” Sabo says.

“It’s true!” Nami says. “I’m not Nose-King, I don’t lie like that. We’re sailing the Grand Line, now. Even time itself isn’t solid.”

Doesn’t she know it. Sometimes you step onto an island and into a prehistoric world. Sometimes you step onto an island and twelve years into the past and your captain is a child.

And right now, there’s nothing she can do about that, so she takes the laughter of her larger than usual audience and lets the story carry her into the night.

Chapter Text

Nami wakes up disoriented, sporting a thundering headache.

The headache, she’s unfortunately familiar with. The ceiling above her, she isn’t.

Sitting up helps a little bit. She really drank way too much last night. Should have stopped after that one bottle. She’s usually better than this, but the whole situation has been driving her nuts and she feels so at home here she didn’t manage to keep her guard up. The booze was stronger than it tasted like, and she didn’t stop in time.

Right, she’s still at the bandit base.

They ended up staying the night, which is just as well. She would probably not have died, trying to walk through the jungle in the middle of the night while drunk off her ass, but she would’ve gotten hurt.

Someone’s thrown a blanket over her, and she’s fallen asleep on a fur on the floor, so aside from the headache, she’s perfectly comfortable. She can’t see the boys from where she’s sitting, but she bets they’re around somewhere.

“Good morning,” a soft voice says.

Nami turns her head to find that Makino hasn’t gone home yet either, apparently, and is in fact standing right there with a cup in one hand and a small paper packet in the other.

“For the hangover,” she says, handing over what she’s holding.

“This some sort of weird cure?” Nami asks, accepting the cup and the packet but holding them dubiously, having too much experience with bizarre hangover cures to trust anything or anyone.

Makino giggles. “It’s water and a painkiller.”

Nami instantly swallows the powder she finds in the packet and washes it down with the water. “Has anyone ever told you you’re a literal angel?”

“Oh, you’re just saying that.”

“No, I mean it,” Nami says, lying back on the fur rug and waiting for the painkillers to kick in. “I’ve been to heaven. Or Skypiea, at least. We went through Heaven’s Gate and it was in the sky, anyway. They don’t hold a candle to you.”

“Well, you’re quite incredible yourself,” Makino says, plucking Nami’s now-dried clothes down from where they were hanging and bringing them over, because she’s amazing and wonderful.

“I’m sure you say that to all the girls.”

Makino sits down next to her. “Not all the girls I know have been to heaven.”

Nami snickers. Then she rubs her eyes and says, “Ugh.”

“Enjoying the blessings of alcohol, are you?” Makino says, which is fair. It’s the right of those who didn’t drink too much the night before to make fun of those who did.

“Another point in favour of this being real,” Nami says, grimacing. “Hangovers. If this was a dream I hope I wouldn’t get hangovers.”

Though even as she says it, the painkillers seem to be kicking in.

“You thought this was a dream?”

“Still sort of do,” Nami admits, sitting up and pulling off Dadan’s crumpled shirt to put her own clothes back on. “Even in the New World, time travel is beyond strange. It feels like there has to be something else going on, you know?”

“And if there isn’t?”

“If I’m just stuck here?” Nami asks.

When she stands up to pull her underwear back on, someone behind her yelps. Apparently there are still bandits in the house who haven’t gone out to earn their daily bread.

Oh well, they’ll just have to deal.

“I don’t know,” she says eventually. “I’ll need to go, then, I think. I’ll have to. This island doesn’t have anything at all to help me.”

She tries to sort out her hair to no avail, and Makino waves her down. She ends up sitting on the floor while Makino runs her hands through her hair, preparing to braid it.

Nothing is quite as relaxing as letting someone else do your hair.

Nami says, “I think, in East Blue… Loguetown is probably my best bet. If not, I’ll have to catch a ride through Reverse Mountain.”

At least Smokey won’t be there yet, and that’s about the best she can say about that option.

“That sounds dangerous,” Makino says.

“It is,” Nami says, closing her eyes against the gentle tug on her hair. “I can do it. I am that good and I know what I’m dealing with, but it’ll be dangerous and difficult, and I’ll be without my crew, and the sea only knows how long it’ll take to get home, if it’s possible at all. Years, maybe.”

Makino ties off the end of her braid and then pats her head in a way that should’ve been patronizing but ends up just comforting. “If it’ll take years anyway, there’s no reason to rush into it, is there?”

“What do you mean?”

“Stay here a while. Sort out your thoughts and make proper plans before you set out. Spending a month to make sure you have a proper vessel and a travel plan won’t hurt in the long run, and if the boys grow tired of you, you can always come down to Windmill Village and stay with us.”

Nami definitely doesn’t cry, but she does turn around and give Makino a big hug. “Thank you. You have no idea how good it is just to talk to someone for once.”

Makino hugs back before she lets go. “Of course. A friend of Luffy is a friend of me. He’s usually right about people.”

He is, at that, even when no one else can tell.

“Makino,” an annoyed voice says, and the old man she’d called the Mayor walks over. “Are you making friends with pirates again?”

“Of course I am, she’s a nice girl,” Makino says with a smile.

“She’s a bad influence, that’s what she is,” the Mayor grumbles. “We should’ve left yesterday already.”

“But now it’s light out and no longer raining,” she says, standing up and brushing the wrinkles out of her skirt. “And I wanted to say bye to the boys before we go.”

The Mayor harrumphs. “Well, you’ll get your wish. They woke up a moment ago.”

As if summoned, a door opens behind her and Nami hears Luffy’s voice go, “Oh Nami’s awake!”

That’s all the warning she gets before they rush her.

She gets up in a crouch and fumbles with the Clima-Tact, barely getting it out in time to block the first blow, which almost knocks her off her feet.

She catches herself and extends her weapon just in time to block the second.

They barely let her breathe, flanking her (like she taught them) covering each other’s weak spots (like she showed) keeping her off balance (just like she said) and raining blows so fast from so many angles she can barely keep up blocking, much less getting on her feet.

She is so pissed off.

Makino steps back with her hands over her mouth in shock. The Mayor barely avoids a wild blow. No one is trying to hit them, but it’s hard to avoid in a confined space.

At least she’s awake.

With a snarl and a jab, she punts Luffy out of the fray, trusting him not to break a rib where any other child would.

Using the momentary opening, she steps back to get her legs under her and stop the other two’s flanking manoeuvre.

Then it’s short work.

She sweeps Sabo’s legs out from under him, then swiftly disarms Ace and grabs him, tucking him under her arm. He’s still kicking, but restrained for now. The end of her Clima-Tact held against Sabo’s throat keeps him down too.

Luffy re-joins the fight just in time to get stepped on for his trouble.

“Not. Indoors,” she bites out.

Ace stops kicking, recognizing a fight lost. “It almost worked, though.”

“Boys!” Makino gasps.

The boys look up in surprise as if they hadn’t realized she was there. Or, more likely, not understanding why she sounds so scandalized.

“Eh? Makino? What’s wrong?” Luffy asks.

“You can’t just do that,” she says.

Nami takes a breath, and then lets it out slowly. “No, no, they do this all the time.” She lets Luffy and Sabo up and tells them, “The ambush was clever, and you’ve really learned a lot since I came here, but next time, not indoors, okay?”

“Yes, Nami,” they chorus, preening from the praise.

“But that’s… are you alright?” Makino asks.

“I’m fine. I can take a few kids,” Nami says.

One-handed, she retracts the Clima-Tact again and tucks it back in its pocket. Then she rubs the bridge of her nose. The headache is down to a manageable level now, but it’s still present.

“It’s just training,” she explains. “It’s annoying to deal with, but that’s how kids learn, and they’re going to need it. You understand.”

Makino still has her hands clutched over her heart, but she’s calming down, and she nods seriously. “Yes. You’re right, of course. Ah, are you…?”

She gestures to Ace, who Nami still has held under one arm, and who is starting to struggle again.

“I don’t know, am I?” she says.

“Dammit, let me go!” Ace says.

“What’s the word?”

He stills. Then he lets out a sigh so long and annoyed he probably empties his lungs out entirely.

“Please let me go,” he says.

She puts him down, smiling at him.

Makino stifles a surprised giggle. “Bad influence?” she says to the Mayor.

He harrumphs again, but all he says is, “Yeah, yeah, let’s get back to Windmill, now.”

“Oh, you’re leaving? Come back soon!” Luffy says.

“See ya! Thanks for the raincoats!” Sabo says.

Ace doesn’t say anything, but he isn’t glaring anymore when he looks at them. Doesn’t look angry at all, in fact.

“We’ll be seeing you,” Makino says, and they turn to leave.

Before they can go out the door, however, she turns around again and tosses something to Nami. “Here. You can have this.”

“Eh?” Nami says, and looks down. In her hands is the smooth rubber surface of Makino’s raincoat. “Eh!? You’re giving me this?”

“You seemed like you needed it, and I have another one at home.”

This time, when Nami runs up to hug Makino goodbye, she does cry, and she’s not ashamed of it.

There are still good things in this world. There are still good things.

---

Later, when the two remarkably normal villagers are again out of sight, heading down the mountain towards civilization, Nami and the boys have breakfast, and end up finishing their usual bout of fights on the grass in front of the bandit house. Then they get lunch.

After that, nicely worn out and happy, they head back into the woods, new raincoats slung over their arms.

They’re quiet as they walk. Nami because she feels calmer now than she has since she landed. She has a plan of sorts, a direction, and that keeps the fear that she might never get home at bay. The boys are quiet for their own array of reasons.

Ace, for example, breaks the silence halfway to the treehouse with a question.

“Hey, Nami,” he says. “Why am I the only one you ever make say please?”

Oh. Dang.

Mostly it’s because he’s the only one she’s ever head be polite, so she knows he can.

She can’t tell him that, though, but there are other reasons.

“That’s bothering you?”

“Well yeah. It’s weird.”

The look he sends her is almost a little betrayed, and, right. She’s been treating them differently, hasn’t she? That’s not good.

“Luffy’s seven,” she starts. “For one thing, he’s young enough that it’s alright, and he’s charming enough that he’ll be able to get away with it for a lot longer.”

“And I’m not charming?”

Nami snorts. “You always look like you want to murder people, Ace. That’s not charming.”

He gives her a flat look, but doesn’t contradict her.

“Besides,” she says. “Do you really think there’d be a point in teaching him?”

They both look at Luffy, who’s looking back with wide, blank eyes.

Lights on and nobody home. Except that stopped fooling her a long time ago. There’s absolutely somebody home, he just thinks differently from normal human beings.

“Yeah, alright,” Ace admits.

“Hey, what about me?” Sabo asks.

“That would be pointless,” she says. “You know perfectly well how to be polite, you’re just avoiding it on purpose.”

Sabo freezes. Ace stops walking too.

Luffy goes, “Eh?” and then trips over a tree root.

“How… How did…?” Sabo tries to say, looking up with… oh damn, she’s scared him.

“Because I’m not an idiot,” she says. “You were the one leading the way through High Town like you used to live there.”

“But he doesn’t anymore, though!” Luffy says, still with mud on his face from falling.

“Of course not. You all live in the treehouse, don’t you?”

Sabo seems to be slowly shrinking in on himself. “But I… I’m….” The look on his face hurts, like a tattoo on her shoulder she never asked for, like Robin crying at the Tower of Justice, like Sanji’s look of despair, walking away from them, and for fuck’s sake, the boy is only ten.

She’s on her knees in front of him before she’s finished the thought, putting her hands on his shoulders.

“You’re a brat I found in the woods. You’re a feral little beast who learned how to say please because you never had a choice, and who avoids it like the plague because it makes you feel sick to your stomach, am I right?”

He swallows, hard, and nods, eyes shining with tears.

Gods and storms. Nami likes kids, but when trying to handle them, all she has to fall back on is what would Bellemere do?

She pulls him into a hug, a little surprised when he lets her. “It’s okay,” she insists. “You’re home. You’re safe.”

That seems to be the right thing to say. He practically melts, burying his face in her chest.

“Yeah!” Luffy says. “You’re with us now, so it doesn’t matter.”

Ace huffs, his arms crossed. “Of course. We already decided, didn’t we?”

“Yeah, but…” Sabo says. He’s already pulling himself together, drawing back and wiping his eyes dry.

Nami lets him go. “Didn’t think an adult would understand?”

He shrugs.

The corner of her mouth pulls into a smile. “Remind me to tell you tonight about that time we had to rescue Swirly from being kidnapped into an arranged marriage. You’re not the only runaway high-born kid I’ve known.”

“Really?”

“Really, but he was a prince, and there were assassins everywhere, not to mention the in-laws.”

“Your crewmate is a prince?” Sabo asks.

“Was a prince,” she says. “Now he’s a pirate, and a damn good cook. See? You’re home where you feel at home, if that’s here or there.”

“And safe,” he says, as if he can’t quite believe it can be true.

“I promise,” she assures him.

When she’s sure no more tears will be falling, they head back down the path.

“Shihihi, so if you’re gonna keep us safe, does that mean you’re staying?” Luffy asks.

Nami sighs. “Not forever,” she says, “But… yes. For now, I’m staying.”

Luffy cheers and runs on ahead, his brothers running after almost as happily, and Nami follows sedately at the back, trying not to think about how hard it’s going to be to leave.

---

Two weeks pass.

Nami settles into the treehouse, gets used to waking up on wooden floors and eating strange fruit and mushrooms for breakfast.

She’s getting used to the fighting as well. While it never stops being annoying, it’s starting to feel… almost enjoyable. She can track the boys’ improvement by the day, but she’s improving herself as well. After nearly two weeks of daily intensive training, her stamina has noticeably increased, as has her reaction times, though that might well be her getting to know the boys better.

She’s also getting to know the island. It’s larger than just the part of it the boys frequent, but as they go on excursions further and further out, exploring large swathes of forest and mountain and even skirting the various villages beyond, it’s starting to take shape in her mind.

Getting her hands on drawing supplies is luckily much easier than finding books, and soon she’s drawn a map, partially to orient herself better, but mostly because it makes her feel better about herself to sit down with her cartography.

It feels like the forest around her settles into a more solid shape with each line on the paper.

She draws other maps too. Vaguer ones, from memory, but important nonetheless, mapping out what she can remember of the surrounding bit of the East Blue, then an even vaguer map of the Grand Line, plotting out a potential route, highlighting places where she might be able to get information.

Plans A through X take form piece by piece, all centred on somehow getting her home, because failure is not an option and never was. She works out where she can go for sure and where she might be able to go, what she needs and what she wants and what would be nice to have. A current map, a compass and a ship, of course, are things she needs.

There are fewer small ships to find here than she would expect, only a few fishing vessels and a small number of private yachts.

Most of her plans are based on luck, on being able to find what she’s looking for, somewhere on the way. Information on time travel, for the most part, by devil fruits or technology or stranger phenomena.

Finding this time’s version of the scarf bastard is also a possibility she’s considering, but she hopes she’ll make it home without having to sail into the New World on her own to look for him.

She remembers more about him now than she did before. Still not his name, and she suspects she might just never have heard it, but more.

He’d been causing trouble for the people on the island for a good while, showing up out of nowhere and scaring people, stealing their things and then disappearing. Nami could’ve respected that, if he wasn’t such a dick about it, and then Luffy went and made friends with the victims, anyway, which made it a moot point.

Luffy’s observation haki was enough to track the man past whatever ability he was using to hide himself, and they followed him through a veritable horde of weirdly adorable but short-lived woodland animals and stranger things into a cave. It might have been an old mine.

Past that, it’s all blank.

When frustration and imagined hopelessness sneak up on her, threatening to overwhelm her, or when this jungle’s insidious complacency starts sinking into her bones and anchoring her to this place, she takes off on her own.

She finds her way down to Windmill Village without problems.

It’s a beautiful place. The air is fresh and salty and the fields a warm brown after a recent harvest. The people she meets there are calm and friendly, and once she finds it, Party’s Bar quickly becomes one of her favourite spots on the island.

In a small village like this, it’s more of a social meeting point for everyone than a regular bar, a combination diner, bar and, considering how much time the Mayor seems to spend around there, political centre of the area. It’s bright and welcoming, a living pearl in a bland world, with good food and better drink, and Nami can easily imagine Luffy’s wanted poster displayed proudly on the wall, just beside Shanks’s.

It also helps that the bartender is amazing, of course.

“That would be the Lord of the Coast,” Makino says, when Nami is leaning on the bar with a glass of beer, complaining about how hard it is to find a ship on this island.

“What Lord?” Nami asks.

“Just the local sea king,” Makino says, snickering. “He’s not too large, for his species, but more than large enough to take out a smaller ship. He’s part of why we get so few pirates around these parts, so we don’t complain too much, but he does make fishing a little risky.”

“Darn,” Nami says, taking a good long drink from her glass.

Just the one glass, this time, and only beer. Their first meeting was embarrassing enough, no need to make it a regular occurrence. At least the beer here is almost as good as whatever mystery drink she had up at the bandit base.

“Don’t worry, there’s a couple fishing boats around here that aren’t used too often anymore,” Makino says. “I’m sure you can borrow one of those.”

“Do you mean it?” Nami says. “I owe you so much, you know?”

Makino laughs. “How about I put it on Luffy’s tab, and you can both pay me back when he makes pirate king?”

Because of course Luffy has a tab the length of the Going Merry built up since he was the size of a gnat. Nami should’ve expected nothing else.

---

Most of her time, she spends with the boys, running around in the woods.

It still feels a little crazy, how quickly they’ve adopted her, how much they seem to trust her and, maybe even crazier, how closely they seem to listen to her.

Maybe it’s that she’s a pirate, and that’s the only thing either of them ever wanted to be. Maybe they can just sense how much she trusts them in return, even though they don’t know why she does.

Regardless of why, she finds that she can talk to them.

She has a conversation with Ace, perched on a branch high above the ground and waiting for a boar that might or might not pass by under them, about why it might be a good idea to learn a little politeness.

“I don’t think you actually want to go through life cursing everyone you meet,” she says.

“Why the fuck not?” he says. “Who cares?”

“They do, and you do because they do.”

“No, I don’t. I don’t give a shit what people think.”

“You sure?” she asks, and sighs at the glare she gets in reply. “Look at it like this. Don’t you like people less if they treat you terribly from the moment you meet?”

He doesn’t answer, but she can tell she’s hit a nerve.

“The same way,” she continues. “People are going to like you less if you start every meeting by treating them like trash.”

“But what if I don’t want them to like me.”

“Then that’s fine, but wouldn’t you at least like to have the choice?”

He looks at her as if he’s not quite sure what to make of her.

“Think of it like a tool,” she says. “When you’re polite, people are predisposed to like you. If you feel like being a nice person that day, being polite makes it much easier. If you feel like being an absolute bastard, you get the chance to catch them off guard. People are so much easier to deal with if they think you’re going to be….”

“A wet blanket?”

“I was going to say predictable.”

“What do you mean?”

He’s looking at her instead of the ground, so she takes it upon herself to keep lookout for the boar.

“If you’re polite, you’re playing within society’s rules,” she explains. “Playing within the rules can be useful, sometimes. It makes navigating social contexts much easier, and it makes people more likely to like you. They’re also going to think you’ll keep playing by the rules. Predictable, see? If you can break the rules at any time but people think you won’t, you have the advantage.”

“Oh,” Ace says. “That actually kinda makes sense. People keep just saying I’m too rude and should stop. Shit like, ooh, you can’t do that, now you gotta apologize to that bastard who called you a monster.”

“Well, you are too rude,” she says. “But not to them. Being polite is how you show respect, and I’m guessing the people telling you that aren’t people you have any respect for at all.”

Ace snorts and looks back down to the ground.

She continues, “Didn’t think so. People who live their lives within the rules don’t really know how things work for those who live outside of them. Plus…” Nami sits back against the trunk of the tree and thinks about slaves being shot in the street. “Sometimes the rules are bullshit. Know them. Don’t feel bound by them.”

Silence falls between them.

The boar isn’t showing up yet, and she’s starting to think it never will. They might have to go look for dinner somewhere else.

“Teach me,” Ace demands all of a sudden.

“How to be polite?”

“Yeah.”

She almost wishes she could. On the other hand, it sounds like a nightmare. “Sorry, I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I’m still a pirate, kid,” she says. “And I wasn’t exactly raised by a fine lady. I know the basics, and I can sort of fake it, but I don’t know enough to teach.”

“Then why’d you say all that stuff about how it’s useful?”

Something rustles the undergrowth below them. “Because you need it to be approachable.” She stands up and pulls out her Clima-Tact. “I’m cute.”

The boar rushes out of the bushes, agitated to a run by another couple boys somewhere on the ground, and Nami jumps it before Ace can react.

The yell, “You’re not cute!” follows her down from the canopy.

---

Two days later, she’s sitting beside Sabo at a relatively quiet part of the river, washing their clothes in ice-cold water, and she’s telling him, “You know, you don’t have to be a pirate.”

Not that she cares if he ends up as one. The future is the future, and she’s going home, but these kids have their own future to walk towards, and as long as they’re out there and free, that’s all that matters, but this one deserves at least to know.

“The hell?” he says, which is fair.

“Don’t get me wrong, you’d be great at it,” she says. “There’s just more options out there than you’d think.”

“Why would I not want to be a pirate,” he says, looking at her like she’s crazy.

He’s in a T-shirt again, specifically because he’s washing the one good shirt he has. She hasn’t asked him why he seems to cling so hard to this one part of his upbringing when he’s rejecting all the rest so hard, and she isn’t going to. How someone chooses to dress is a personal thing.

“Well,” she says, smirking. “Specifically, there’s at least one group of people the government is more interested in catching than almost any pirate crew.”

Nami herself is wearing a cute little sundress she bought for someone else’s money. Bare-shouldered, of course, as she’s preferred since she got her second tattoo.

Sabo squints at her.

“Because,” she continues. “They’re working towards dismantling the entire noble system.”

His face is exactly as priceless as she hoped, eyes boggled, shirt forgotten in his hands. “For real? Like…” His voice goes hushed. “…from the top?”

“All the way to Mariejois,” she says.

She stands up to wring the water out of her fancy green shirt and goes to fetch her skirt.

When she comes back, he’s still staring blankly into the air, hands working mechanically, clearly deep in thought.

“Who are these people?”

She double-checks that there’s nothing in the skirt’s pockets before she settles down to wash it. “The Revolutionary Army. They’re led by a man named Dragon, who… well, he’s someone, alright.”

“How…?”

“I don’t know how to find them,” she cuts him off. “A crewmate of mine probably would, but I’ve never had anything to do with them. You’re clever, though. If you’re interested, you’ll figure it out.”

“It sounds too good to be true,” he says.

“The world is big, and you’re not the only one who’s angry. The only surprise is that they’re succeeding, and you know what?”

He has wide eyes turned her way.

She leans in and lowers her voice confidentially. “After going out there and seeing how little control the government actually has over some places, that’s not a real surprise either.”

He giggles. “Really?”

“Really,” she says, raising her voice to a normal level again. “The big guys like to think they know what they’re doing, but when it comes to the big leagues, they’re barely keeping afloat. There’s so many threats they’re too scared to even try to handle.”

“So it’s possible.”

“Of course,” she says. “Anything is possible.”

He finishes washing his shirt and wrings it out carefully, mind still clearly elsewhere.

“But…” he says, just standing there. “They’re not pirates.”

“No,” she says. “They’re not.”

“What’s the difference?”

She’s finished washing her skirt as well now, but neither of them move from the riverbank.

“Pirates are the freest people in the world,” she tells him. “They go where they want and do what they will, no matter what anyone says. Revolutionaries have a job to do, orders to follow, missions to complete. They dedicate themselves to other people’s freedom, not their own.”

“Oh,” he says. He looks up, out, across the river, out into thin air. “That could be okay.”

---

Nami doesn’t talk to Luffy much.

She talks to his brothers, gets to know them, learns to work with them. They’re kids, and she’s still figuring out what that means, but she doesn’t talk much to Luffy alone.

She doesn’t need to. He’s Luffy. He’s the same as he’s always been, and he was never big on just talking.

He’s still her captain, if he doesn’t know it yet himself. He tells her to come, and she goes with him on reflex, like she always has.

When she’s with him, everything feels more real. The constant, niggling worry subsides, and the feeling she’s had since the first day that something about the world around her is wrong is nowhere to be found. Luffy jumps on her shoulders to reach something, or rolls onto her in his sleep, or just sits next to her as they eat, and everything feels like it makes sense.

She follows him on one ridiculous, childish adventure after another, because where else could she belong than at his back? And he accepts it like it’s natural, doesn’t question that she listens to his ideas instinctually before she even thinks about arguing.

If anyone else thinks it’s weird, they don’t say.

“Nami,” he says, one afternoon she’s working on one of her maps from memory.

She looks up to find him sitting almost still for once on the windowsill, just swinging his legs. “Yes?”

“How long are you going to stay?”

“Until I know where I’m going.”

“And how long is that?”

She taps her fingers. Looks down at her map.

It’s not a proper map. There is a place in town where she can buy one of those, and she’s going to, but for now she’s doing her planning on a rough draft. Nothing more than a collection of vaguely island-shaped blobs at approximately correct distances from each other.

If she needed to, she could leave today. She knows where to get all the things she needs, and her list of potentially useful islands to visit is as long as it’s going to get.

On the other hand, she still hasn’t quite decided where to start, and she still hasn’t been able to shake that weird, off-putting feeling that makes her want to be extra certain her plans are solid.

It’s not raining today, but it’s misting down outside, a taste of water droplets in the air that almost pretends to be proper rain. She knew it was coming before it came.

She’s always been good at predicting the weather, but here, it’s too easy.

She keeps telling herself it’s just because she’s on the East Blue now, after getting used to the insanity of the New World, but it doesn’t feel quite right. The winds are too weak and predictable, the rain comes on what seems like a regimented schedule. It’s putting her off balance.

Most of the jungle feels real, as does Windmill Village, but the rest of the island still feels hollow and fake, and it’s not helping her suspicion she’s dreaming.

“Soon,” she tells Luffy. “I still have a little more planning to do, but unless something happens, I’d say in another week.”

His face falls in devastation.

She tries not to think about how much that hurts. She doesn’t want to leave them, but she can’t stay, not forever.

“Can’t we come with you?” he asks.

“Absolutely not. I’m not taking you to the Grand Line. We’d all die.”

“Aw, Namiiiii,” he pouts. “You don’t gotta take us to the Grand Line, just take us with for a little while? Please?”

She takes a breath to tell him no again, but….

There is a number of islands here in the East Blue she’s been thinking of visiting before braving Reverse Mountain. She could always… take round trips. Bring the boys out once or twice and then take them back to Dawn before she sets off for real.

Sailing as the captain of a ship manned by three children sounds like a nightmare, but somehow, like less of one than sailing alone.

“…I’ll think about it,” she says, and in her mind, she’s already recalculating provisions.

Luffy cheers, and Nami settles down to her drawing with a newly kindled enthusiasm. She’ll still have to figure out where to start, will have to replot her route to take her through Dawn a time or two, and she’ll have to figure out the logistics of taking care of all four of them at sea, but it’s no trouble.

They’ll be able to set out in a week, is her estimate.

Unless something happens.

Chapter Text

Nami wakes up in the treehouse to the morning sun streaming in the windows, the boys sleeping on top of her to various degrees.

Breakfast is berries and freshly picked mushrooms, and the wind from the east comes with the taste of slowly approaching winter. It’s just another day.

The morning sparring matches are almost fun, even by her standards.

It goes on for longer than usual, and halfway through they decide they’ll go to town for dinner today, so they can take all the time they want. It runs long because Nami has finally been talked into using some of the Clima-Tact’s more esoteric functions.

Nothing like the wind lance or lightning bolts, but small things like mirages and fog, or island cloud obstacles, just to make things more interesting.

The boys are having a blast, and Nami enjoys having the undisputed upper hand again.

Not that she ever lost it, but they’ve been getting far too good lately.

She’s enjoying herself, running through the gauntlet of abilities she has that she can use to make things more difficult for them, and she’s been doing so for hours, so it’s not too surprising that she gets sloppy towards the end, just a little bit.

The problem is that the Clima-Tact isn’t acting quite right. The simplest of her attacks work perfectly fine, but most of the more complicated ones are being… finicky. They never work as fast as they should on the first shot, taking a few seconds just to get started, and even after that, they don’t work quite right, not hitting as hard as they should.

She’s starting to wonder if she actually did miss those royal guards a few weeks back after all, or if it just wasn’t as strong as it should’ve been.

And it’s weird. She knows her weapon inside out, knows what each function does and exactly how it works, and she knows it’s not like this.

Even worse is that she can’t replicate it. No matter what’s wrong, when she tries again in frustration and confusion, they work perfectly, as if nothing was wrong in the first place.

Towards the end, even the techniques she hasn’t tried yet are working perfectly fine.

So it’s not weird that she’s distracted, and after several hours of sparring-turned-play, it’s not weird that she’s tired, so when she messes up, that’s not a surprise either.

It’s just a small mistake, anyway. Anyone could’ve done it.

But when the weather egg she sends flying is stuffed full of lightning instead of snow, she still feels the bottom of her stomach fall out.

“Fuck, no!” she shouts the instant after it flies.

Sabo, who is right in the way of the egg, wisely throws himself out of the way.

Luffy, who stands behind him, does not. He shouts in surprise and, when it hits him, catches it.

Then he stands there with the egg in his hands as it starts to hatch.

Luffy is of course not affected by lightning, but that isn’t going to matter. There’s enough stuffed into that egg to fry the entire clearing, the three normal humans included.

There’s no time to run away. There’s barely enough time to think, oh shit, we’re screwed, and to catch the faint hope of, but maybe… before the egg cracks open.

…And nothing happens.

Nami lets out a breath she’s nearly choked on and falls to her knees.

Electricity and insulation. Of course. Of course. It’s not perfect but it’s good enough, and the deadly black ball that was contained by the eggshell is now contained in Luffy’s hands.

“Luffy,” she says. “Be very, very careful.”

Something in her voice must make him listen, because he doesn’t move his hands at all as he looks up. “Huh?”

“Don’t pop that bubble, okay? Not this close to everyone else. Can you walk about twenty meters in that direction…” She points into the woods behind him. “…then pop it? It’s very important.”

He looks over his shoulder, and then he squares his shoulders and nods, before he starts picking his way through the jungle.

“Is he gonna be okay?” Sabo asks, getting back on his feet.

Nami’s heart is in her throat and she keeps her eyes on Luffy’s progression away from them. “He’ll be fine, he has his ability. We won’t, though, if that thing pops here. Let’s get away.”

She stands up and makes sure Ace and Sabo follow her in the opposite direction from Luffy.

“Why would you throw that?” Ace asks.

“It wasn’t on purpose!”

“You mean you almost just killed us on accident?”

“We wouldn’t have died. Shush.”

Then Luffy’s voice comes from behind. “’S this good enough?”

She can still see him when she turns, just barely between the trees. “That should be fine!” she tells him.

He squeezes the bubble between his hands.

The forest blanks out in a giant flash of light. An instant later, a booming thunderclap shakes the foliage. The air fills with the scent of ozone and burning.

Nami’s ears chime with the noise.

“Wouldn’t have died, hm?” Ace says, giving her a look.

She smiles back a little sheepishly. She’d half hoped the thunder ball would have been lessened by the same effect she’s been dealing with all day, but it doesn’t seem like it. Her heart is beating like a jackhammer.

That could’ve ended very badly.

“That was awesome!” Luffy yells, already making his way back.

“It was pretty cool,” Sabo says.

They end up at the clearing again, and she checks Luffy over. Like she expected, he’s barely even singed. His clothes are smoking a little, but most of the electricity went straight into the surroundings.

“Hey, what would happen if you set one of those off in town?” Ace asks.

“I wouldn’t be allowed back in town,” is her answer.

“I’m hungry,” Luffy says. “Let’s go have dinner.”

The other two agree.

Nami’s hands are shaking. This isn’t a mistake she’s going to repeat. She knows that, and everything went fine, so she shouldn’t be panicking.

She’d still like some time to calm down.

“You guys go on ahead, I’ll catch up with you,” she says.

They head off, leaving her alone.

She spends the next two minutes sitting on a tree root, waiting for the shaking to pass. It’s nice. Usually, after a stressful situation, she never has the time for that. Now she can breathe through it for once.

When she feels better, she starts thinking. She still doesn’t know why the Clima-Tact is acting up. Testing all her attacks and abilities one by one helps nothing. By now, they all work perfectly well, just like they should.

The best answer she can come up with for why they didn’t do so to begin with is that she was in the middle of an admittedly low-stakes fight, and the adrenaline somehow made her mess it up.

Which of course doesn’t make a lick of sense. She’s always debuted her new weapons in the middle of fights, and she’s never had this issue before.

Somehow, the time-travel must have messed with it.

She sighs, watches a weather egg float out of the clearing and hatch into a strong gust of wind, and decides it doesn’t matter. It’s all fine now, probably.

The boys are probably through the Grey Terminal already, so Nami sets off through the woods after them.

When she hits the paths through the rotting hills of trash, she starts getting a bad feeling. It could just be the smell, or the aura of the city’s uncomfortable unreality, but she doesn’t think it is. Something is wrong.

She’s jogging by the time she sees people. They look distracted too, looking off in the direction of the city.

“What’s happening?” she asks someone in passing.

The man blinks at her, surprised, then he looks wary of her, but he says, “You’re that girl who’s been around those devil brats, right?”

She’s running.

Around a bend, and she hears raised voices. Nasty adult voices, and then children.

Her children.

Cursing, she draws her weapon and vaults over a trash hill.

There they are, her kids, surrounded and furious. Around them are some of the Terminal’s nastiest residents, and one man who looks straight out of High Town, with one hand on Sabo’s neck.

Luffy is cowering, close to tears. Ace looks ready to murder someone.

Nami understands him completely.

“Oy, assholes!” she yells. “What the hell are you doing?”

The men turn towards her, and she strikes. There’s no holding back this time. She gives the closest two a concussion and wind-lances a third. The fourth goes down to a strong electric shock directly to the chest.

“Forget it, I can guess,” she says, as the four men fall to the ground.

The biggest, nastiest man draws a knife the size of her torso and advances on her. “Who the fuck are you, bitch?”

She knows his type. Small fish in a smaller pond.

“For you? An unlucky break,” she says.

She clenches her hand around the Clima-Tact, and the staff shoots out, hitting him in the nose hard enough to break it.

He goes down and doesn’t get back up.

“Nami!”

Luffy hits the back of her leg and clutches on. He’s bawling so hard his words don’t make sense, but she gets the gist that he’s relieved she showed up.

Ace looks a hint more relaxed as well.

Nami points her weapon at the High Town man, who still has a grip on the third of her boys. “Let him go.”

To the man’s credit, he doesn’t shy back much. Or maybe he’s just stupid. “Don’t you know who I am? You wouldn’t dare.”

This useless piece of shit.

Nami laughs darkly. If it looks anything like it feels, it makes her looks like Zoro. “I’m the navigator of the future pirate king. I don’t give a shit who you are, I’ll fry you all the same. Let. Him. Go.”

The man lets Sabo go.

Nami fries him anyway the instant all her kids are out of range.

Then, finally, it’s quiet.

She’s shaking again. This time from rage. “Are you guys alright?”

Luffy nods against the back of her knee.

“…We’re not hurt,” Ace says.

Sabo has backed up far enough to hit her legs as well, and is staring wide-eyed at the smouldering nobleman on the ground. “Is he dead?”

Nami has to check to make sure herself, but after a few seconds she spots his chest rising and sinking. “No, he’s alive,” she says. In fact, all of them are, which is unexpected. She knows well how lethal an electric shock to the heart can be.

Once again her attacks prove less effective than they should be, but they’re more than strong enough.

“Oh, that’s… good?” Sabo says. He sounds like he’s not sure himself. He’s shaking too, and it doesn’t look like it’s fading as quickly this time.

The man is almost certainly his father, she realizes. Thank god she didn’t kill him.

“He’ll be fine, don’t worry,” she says, giving Sabo’s hair a ruffle.

“Who the fuck is worrying about this bastard?” Ace asks.

“Y-Yeah,” Sabo agrees. “I wasn’t… I mean, I don’t know why I’d even… it’s not like he’s… like he’s good or anything?”

She pushes her anger down for now and kneels down. “No, but that doesn’t mean you’d want to watch him die. You’re not callous, and parents are complicated. Some part of you will always love them.”

“Even if they’re terrible?” Luffy asks.

“Humans are irrational,” she says. “Now let’s get out of here. I don’t want to go to town today.”

She doesn’t wait for an answer, just stands up and herds her boys out of the Grey Terminal, into the jungle, as far away from the city as they can get. Only when she can’t smell even a hint of it anymore does she put her Clima-Tact away, hands still shaking with the need to break something, like someone’s face.

She might be able to build a city-wide thunderstorm with enough time and preparation, but it’s not worth it. She has to keep reminding herself it’s not worth it.

“Nami?” Luffy asks, tugging at her skirt.

Taking a deep breath, she tries to calm down. Then she sits on her knees and pulls the boys into a tight embrace, to general complaints from all three. “I’m sorry, I should’ve gone with you today.”

“It’s fine, you couldn’t have known,” Sabo says.

“I still should’ve gone.” She lets them go again. They’re all fine. Shaken, but fine. That’s all that matters.

“I’m still hungry though,” Luffy complains.

“We should hunt something,” Ace says.

There’s a hint of uncertainty there she’s never heard from him before. Most likely, none of them have been in a situation like that before, that they couldn’t have gotten out of on their own.

After things like that, Nami always finds herself missing her mother.

“Let’s,” she says. “Then we can go up and bother the bandits.”

It says something that none of them argue against it.

The bandits welcome them the same as always, with open arms and grumbles on the side, immediately setting up to turn today’s catch into a proper meal.

The boys begin to unwind and relax once they’re surrounded by their family, but they’re still a little tense, still don’t let each other out of their sights. Their illusions of invincibility have been shaken, and it’s hard to tell how long it’ll take them to recover.

They don’t tell anyone anything of what happened themselves, but some of the bandits notice something is up, and once the boys are well enough distracted, Nami pulls Dadan aside.

“Afraid you’ll have to deal with us for a few days,” she says, keeping her tone light.

Dadan scowls. “The fuck’s your problem this time?”

Translation: Who hurt my kids and am I gonna have to kill them?

Nami summarizes the incident as quickly as she can.

Dadan doesn’t say anything for a while, just keeps her eyes on the boys now happily devouring dinner, and takes a long drag of her cigarette. “That bastard Bluejam got an in with the fancy fuckers, did he?” she mutters. Her eyes flicker to a gigantic axe leant against the wall next to the door, and then she looks back at Nami. “Do what you want. Not like you’d listen to me, anyway.”

Translation: Stay as long as you’d like, and if I get my hands on the people threatening my family, there’ll be hell to pay.

“Thanks!” Nami says, and gives her a hug before she skips back to join the boys.

The next day, they don’t go back to the treehouse.

It’s an unspoken agreement. They go play in the woods, they fight for fun and hunt for food, but they never stray far off the mountain, and once evening falls, they go back to the base.

Nami tries not to read too much into the new normal. It’s natural, that they’d want to stick close to home for a while. It’s hardly going to be permanent. Soon enough, they’ll be back out there on their own.

But there’s a tension hanging in the air, like whatever just happened was only the beginning. She stays on high alert for reasons she can’t quite explain, keeping her hands on the Clima-Tact more often than not.

The boys are jumpy too, never straying too far away from each other, sending glances down towards the city intermittently. There’s a sense to their playfighting now that makes it seem a little less like play and a little more like training.

She catches Luffy one evening looking uncharacteristically worried, and she kneels down and asks what’s wrong.

“Something’s gonna happen,” he says.

“What do you mean?”

He shrugs and looks down. “I dunno. Just something.”

She gives him a quick hug and lets it go. Most likely he’s just affected by the same tense anticipation that seems to have gripped all of them at this point.

But a few days later, he’s proven right.

They leave the cover of the forest for the day, and the south-west sky is burning red.

---

“I wanna come!”

“Fuck no.”

“Come on, Nami. We’re just gonna sneak around you.”

“You’re not the boss of us anyway.”

Nami grinds her teeth together. Her heart’s in her throat and her hands are on her weapon. She’d already be running through the woods, but Dadan has to find her axe before they can go.

It was too much to hope the boys would stay safely here, she knew that from the beginning, but the only thing she knows about what’s lighting up the clouds is that she doesn’t want the boys anywhere near it.

“Fine,” she forces out through clenched teeth. “But you stick with me, is that clear?”

They tell her yes, and then Dadan comes back and they’re running.

Dogura is leading the way, claiming he knows a good vantage point, Nami at his heels, the boys right behind her with Dadan and Mogura bringing up the rear.

The sky is blackening, every glimpse they get through the canopy is darker than the last. They’re only halfway before she can smell smoke, and she wants to stop, wants to grab the boys and run in the other direction, wants to keep them away from this.

But she keeps going.

Soon, they see terrible light through the trees.

Then they hear it. The crackle of fire, the loud booms of explosives, the gong-like noise of metal distorting under extreme heat.

The screaming.

The desperate begging of people with no way out and no hope left. Prayers and pleas for mercy, for salvation.

The Grey Terminal is burning.

They stop at Dogura’s vantage point, lost for words, lost for action, and for some of them, simply lost.

“They’re burning it,” Sabo whispers, as his first real home goes up in flames before his eyes.

“What the shit,” Dadan says, her weapon fallen to the ground. There’s nothing here an axe could help with, anyhow.

Nami shakes herself and swings her Clima-Tact, sending a weather egg into the sky.

The clouds are thin and dry, and the air is filled with smoke, but she can tease at least a little rain into existence.

It doesn’t do much. This is arson, not natural fire. It’ll take more than a drizzle to put it out.

There’s no one close enough to get to them, to the forest. People usually stay away from the forest edge, scared of beasts.

There’s nothing they can do to help.

Luffy is shivering, clinging to Ace.

“We could’ve been in there,” he says, in a smaller voice than she ever wanted to hear from her captain. “We could’ve been.”

Nami’s shaking too. Without another thought, she turns and hustles them all back towards the forest. “We’re going back.”

Luffy doesn’t protest, just clings to his brother and cries. Ace seems torn between wanting to get away and not wanting to seem weak.

Sabo resists. “But we should help.”

“And what do you want to do, huh?” she says, far too distressed to be gentle. “You want to go out there in the fire? Burn to death? You think that’ll help?”

“But….”

“Don’t go!” Luffy sounds genuinely terrified. “Don’t go out there! I don’t want you to get hurt, please.”

“You’re kids,” she insist, meeting his conflicted gaze. “You shouldn’t be here. You shouldn’t have to see this. We’re going home.”

He looks at her, looks at Luffy’s pleading eyes behind him, and then looks over her shoulder.

Dadan grunts. She’s picked her axe up again. “We’ll go around, see what can be done. You four go back and tell everyone.”

Then, finally, Sabo nods, and Nami doesn’t wait another second.

She picks him up. Then she tells Ace, “You’ve got Luffy?” which is enough of a responsibility that he follows without question, and they head back to base.

Sabo is rigid in her arms, and gradually starts shaking as they walk. Ace is keeping almost calm, but he’s also quiet, and he looks somewhere between scared and furious, holding onto his little brother as if anything threatening him would swiftly die a brutal death.

Luffy is still shivering, mind probably still on what he said earlier. They could have been there. They could have been there, right in the middle of everything.

And Nami is shivering too, because she’s pretty sure, if she hadn’t intervened, they would’ve been.

She doesn’t know for sure what the outcome would have been of the incident she stopped a few days back. Doubtfully anything good, but she’s also sure the boys could have handled it, given time.

This? This is something else.

She already knew they lost Sabo at some point, that they thought he was dead, and this was it, she realizes. She’s not sure about the details, but this was where they lost him.

Except they didn’t. She’s currently carrying Sabo. They’re all fine, she has to keep reminding herself. They’re with her. No one is going to hurt them, not over her dead body. She’ll make sure of it.

And that means she changed something.

Undeniably. It’s different this time. The future can be changed.

It’s all she can do to keep moving as her mind takes on the shape of a landslide.

The future can be changed. And something she’s tried to forget, something she’s done her best not to think about forces its way to the surface.

The spell that’s been keeping her complacent breaks, and she remembers.

Bellemere.

---

This is two years before Arlong arrived. Two years before her mother died. Two years before that cursed mark was branded on her skin.

Ten before Luffy saved her.

Eight years of pain that she can just avoid. Several deaths that don’t have to happen.

The past is the past, and she thought she’d let it go, but it’s not, now. It’s not the past anymore. It’s the future, and it’s here, and she can change it.

It can’t be real. It can’t be real.

She’s avoided it because it terrifies her.

If it’s real, it’s worth trying. If it’s real, she’s not sure she’ll be able to make herself go back. If she can have her mother, have her village without the fear that crushed it, have a life she thought she’d lost.

But she needs to go back, needs to go home. She can’t be stuck here. She can’t let herself be controlled by the past.

If this is real, she might lose her resolve, but she can’t ignore it, now. She has to try.

And if it’s not? If it’s a dream, after all?

She’ll lose it all over again.

---

That night, they stay close together, lying curled up so close she can feel exactly where they are, even though it’s dark. She can hear the bandits tiptoe around them and whisper in the background, still going about their business even as she and the boys have turned in for the night.

She needs the sleep, and so do they, yet none of them are sleeping.

Even now, she tugs them closer, just to make sure she has them within reach in case something happens.

They should be sleeping, but they’re not, and she doubts they’ll be able to for a while.

“Boys,” she says, quietly.

She can feel them react to her voice, can tell they’re listening.

“Tomorrow, we start packing. It’s high time we get off of this island.”

Chapter Text

Nami wakes up restless.

They can’t leave the moment day breaks, no matter how much she would like to. There are things they need first, things they need to do, one of them being so distasteful she’d rather do it on her own.

So she sends the boys to pack up their treasure, and for what she hopes is the last time, she sets off through the woods on her own.

What’s left of the Grey terminal is a treacherous field of ash and coal, still smouldering in places. It stinks less now, but she holds her breath and keeps her eyes ahead, not wanting to see what’s below the top layer.

The gate is closed, of course, but she won’t let that stop her. She dives off the coast and swims around, finding a ladder on a somewhat secluded pier to climb up, and she’s in, carrying a number of things in a waterproof bag.

She sells the things, all things she has gathered or stolen to make her life more comfortable for her stay, various fancy clothes and objects now converted to money for her to carry. She’ll need more practical wear for the journey, along with a few other things.

For once, what she’s looking for isn’t hard to find. Even in this city, with its lack of libraries and bookshops, there’s a little place by the harbour that sells navigation supplies. There always is.

“I need a map of this part of the East Blue and a compass,” she tells the woman behind the counter, and then she stands there looking friendly while the woman rummages through scrolls of paper in the back.

The compass is good. The map is… decent enough, when she unrolls it on the counter to check. Well, it’s terrible, but it’s not hers, so that’s a given. It’ll do.

“You going on a trip, sweetheart?” the cashier says, smiling warmly.

“Going home, actually,” Nami answers, keeping her voice light. “I’ve been here far too long already. With the fires and all, I figured it was high time to leave.”

The cashier clicks her tongue in dismay. “Yes, it’s terrible, isn’t it? It’s almost like I can still smell it. Gosh, at least it didn’t spread to town.”

She sounds sincere.

Nami peeks through her bangs and starts rolling up the map. “The people living out there weren’t as lucky.”

“Oh, them. Well.” Now she looks uncomfortable. “They’re, well, you know.”

“Mhm,” Nami says, neutrally. “You wouldn’t know how the fire started, then? It’s a little curious how suddenly it flared up.”

“Gosh, no. It must have been some sort of accident,” the cashier says.

She doesn’t know. Well, Nami wasn’t expecting any of the commoners to have the whole story. This reeks of aristocratic arrogance, and they keep their dirty secrets close to the chest.

“Thank you,” she says, and pays for the map.

Talking to people in High Town is a little more difficult, but not much. A last stolen dress, a haughty expression and a readiness to mention how much less disgraceful the ash field looks than the dump it used to be makes getting into small talk with nobles on the road laughably easy.

And the answers leave her fuming.

“It was such an eyesore, wasn’t it?”

“For my part, I don’t know why we didn’t do it earlier.”

“Why? Oh, I don’t think anyone would need a reason for something like that.”

They don’t know, or they don’t care. They don’t have answers. They don’t have reasons. Behind their empty masks there’s nothing, not even a trace of a catalyst for the genocide that happened here.

She tears the dress to pieces as she walks out the High Town gates, leaves silk shreds strewn behind her. When the guards take notice and start yelling, she tosses a thunder ball their way without hesitation.

Then she takes off down the street and dives off a pier.

The sea around here, like the sky above, is unnaturally calm. It’s as cold as autumn seas should be, but it’s still and clear, and it helps her cool her head as she swims away, past the city wall, past the Grey Terminal.

She’s soaked and freezing when she climbs out of the sea into the jungle, but she doesn’t want to kill anyone anymore and she has the map she needs tucked away in her bag, so she’ll handle it.

She can deal with this.

She’s dealt with worse, after all. Soon, this place will be behind her.

Maybe it’ll do her a favour and burn before she gets back.

The boys meet her on the way up the mountain, and she calms down a little more. They’re with her now. They’re safe, as they should be. She’ll declare war on the world again before she lets anyone touch them.

Nami lets her rage drain away with her breath, lets what’s left solidify into a quiet promise. Before she goes home, she’ll make sure they’re somewhere no one can hurt them.

Then she lets herself fall into their pace as they run through the woods, carefree, familiar, playing for the sake of fun. For a moment, all four of them forget everything that has to do with fire.

She’s laughing with them by the time they get back to the bandit base to eat.

At dinner, she ends up sitting next to Dadan.

“So, you’re leaving soon, are you?” Dadan says, huffing.

“Tomorrow morning at the latest,” Nami confirms. “We’ll be heading down to the village after eating.”

Dadan looks up at the boys, fighting over dinner as they always do. “Good riddance,” she says.

Nami bumps her arm with an elbow and gives her most reassuring smile. “I’ll bring them back, you know. I won’t take them anywhere dangerous.”

“Like the sea isn’t dangerous all on its own,” Dadan mutters.

Nami scoots closer so she can lean up against her. “I know what I’m doing. I won’t let them get hurt. And I’m only taking them because I think they’ll be safer with me than… out there.” She nods in the direction of town.

Dadan looks at her, brows furrowed, and then scowls vaguely off in the same direction for a while. “Don’t come back too soon,” she settles on. “Be nice with some peace and quiet around here.”

“You’ll get bored,” Nami says, smirking. “We won’t, though. I have things I need to do for a while.”

People she needs to see.

If they’re there, that is, but how couldn’t they be? And how could they be, when she’s only mostly convinced that this is real, when she still has the feeling nothing outside this island really exists at all? When even this island seems selectively substantial?

Dadan huffs again. She’s doing her best to seem unaffected, and not at all succeeding.

Nami puts her head on Dadan’s shoulder for just a second. “You’re a good mother.”

To which Dadan splutters and nearly chokes on her food. “You…!”

“Make sure you send them off properly when we leave, or else you’ll regret it.”

“Won’t,” Dadan grumbles.

The food is as decent as usual, heavy on the meat, light on the vegetables. Nami isn’t sure what all these proteins are going to do to her, but by now she’s used to it.

The boys probably need it, anyway. They’re still growing.

“What is it you need to do, anyway, that you’re alright dragging the brats into?” Dadan asks dismissively.

Nami pauses. “I… I’m going to visit my family.”

It’s the first time she’s said it out loud, and the words themselves hurt like a knife, digging up a stream of worries and insecurities. She’s scared. She’s willing to admit that much. Of so many things.

“They’re missing you?”

“No,” Nami says. “No, they wouldn’t.”

“Not very loving, are they?”

“Don’t say that!” Nami snaps. “They just don’t know I’m gone. Because I’m not, really.”

Dadan gives her a long look. “Yeah, I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. You don’t think the boys will be bored coming on something like that, though?”

Nami shrugs. “Maybe, but they wanted to come, so they’ll have to take what they get.”

“Well, if anyone can handle them, I guess it’s you,” Dadan grumbles.

Despite her denials, after dinner, she sends the boys off personally.

Or at least she pushes them out the door with the dubious farewell of, “Don’t get killed or anything, I’d have to deal with Garp.”

The boys just grin and wave before walking down the path towards the village. It’s well past noon by the time they make it there, and Nami immediately moves towards Party’s Bar.

Makino looks up and smiles as they come through the door. “Oh! Are you guys setting out, then?”

“Yeah, as soon as we can,” Nami says, planting herself on a seat in front of the bar. “I’m not sure you could see the fire from here, but after all that, we didn’t want to wait anymore.”

“Could see something. I was wondering if the whole jungle was burning. Is anyone hurt?”

“No one we know, at least,” Nami says.

“Makino!” Luffy says, jumping up to stand on his knees on the next seat. “Nami’s gonna take us out sailing!”

“I heard!” Makino smiles back. “You’ll have to be careful not to fall in.”

“I won’t!”

“Bah,” comes from the old mayor, sitting at a table in the back. “It’s irresponsible, that’s what it is. Taking kids to sea in these times.”

“I do know what I’m doing,” Nami argues. “And we’re just taking a trip. It’s not like we’re raising a pirate flag.”

“We’re not?”

All three boys turn to stare at her.

“But you’re a pirate.”

“I am,” Nami agrees. “But I won’t sail under another flag than my captain’s, and that…” Her eyes catch on Luffy, staring up at her, confused and oh so small. “That’s not an option.”

She’s not a pirate for piracy’s sake, like they want to be. She’s a pirate for him.

Never again will she sail under any flag but Luffy’s.

And she can’t, now. And it hurts.

Makino places her hands over Nami’s, clenched on top of the bar, and says in a calm voice, “Luffy? Why don’t you go tell Gyoru that Nami’s here for the Salt Snipe, okay?”

“Okay!” Luffy chirps, and runs for the door.

After a few seconds of looking back and forth, his brothers follow him, still unwilling to let him out of their sights.

Good. She feels better when they’re together.

Makino gives her hands a light squeeze. “You good?”

“Yeah, just… missing home.”

A smile. Then Makino says in a much lighter voice, “So where are you heading?”

Nami takes a few deep breaths to calm down and spreads the map she bought out on the bar.

It takes her a second just to find Dawn Island on it, because whoever drew it either had horrendous handwriting or plain couldn’t read, and all the names are smudged and illegible, but she locates it eventually and taps it with her finger. Then she traces a line from it to a nearby island.

“First, we’re heading here, to Redbank. I’ve never been, but there’s supposed to be a small village there where we can stock up. That trip will take a little less than a day and a night, depending on the wind and when we can get the ship ready.”

Makino is leaning on her elbows, peering down at the map as well. “Gyoru said the boat should be possible to get into working order in a few hours, if you put the work in, but I hope you’ll stay the night even so. I have a few rooms upstairs.”

Nami smiles. “Thank you. I would love that. Then we’ll leave at daybreak. The earlier we set out, the more time we get sailing in daylight. I’m hoping to teach them enough that they can take night watch before we reach Cocoyashi, but the first night, I think I’ll take the whole watch either way.”

Makino gives her a sympathetic look. “You’ve a long trip ahead of you.”

For a moment, Nami closes her eyes and tries to forget her own stupidity. “I don’t know what possessed me to set out sailing with three children,” she admits. Then she shakes her head and goes back to the map. “We’ll likely hit Redbank around four in the morning, then. After which I’m planning on sleeping until noon if possible, and I’d like to leave the island before three in the afternoon.”

She traces another route, carefully around sandbanks she knows are there, even if they aren’t clearly marked on the map.

“That’ll give us enough time to hit Orange Town around sunset the next day, if we sail through the night.”

Makino winces. “Let’s hope the boys learn quick.”

Nami grimaces and then shrugs. “Worst come to worst, we can find a place to anchor for the night and sleep before continuing. It’ll slow us down, but it’s possible.”

“Are you in a hurry?”

“I’m honestly more worried about our rations if we don’t stock up every two days or so. It’s not a big boat.”

Makino gets a look of realization on her face as she presumably remembers just how much those boys eat.

Nami taps her nail against the blobby shape of Orange Town on her map. It feels weird to be passing through a place that represents so much to her, ten years before she ever stepped foot in it. Ten years before Buggy decided to make a mess there, and ten years before Luffy fell out of the sky and into her life.

“…We’ll stay there a day, I think,” she says. “We’ll want the night to sleep, and I’d like to spend some time in town. Then if nothing goes wrong, we can set out early the next morning and be at Point Blanche by sundown.” She traces another short route to a nearby island that’s marked out with a seagull symbol.

“Oh, isn’t there a marine base there?” Makino asks.

“That’s partially why I want to go. The marines may have information that civilians can’t get. I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

“You’re sure.” Makino sounds amused and unconvinced.

Nami gives a wry smile. “Well, one way or another.”

Makino leans on her hand and smiles fondly. “I suppose you don’t have much to fear from East Blue marines, do you?”

“Not particularly.” She could have handled a small base like this on her own before she ever stepped foot on Weatheria. She wouldn’t have wanted to, but she could have. Now? “I’m a little worried about the boys, but no matter what happens, I’ll handle it.”

“And then?” Makino asks, looking back to the map.

Nami traces the route, east, then north, to Cocoyashi.

“Then home,” she says, quietly, though that’s not quite true. Home is a ship these days. “That trip should take roughly twelve hours, so I’m hoping we can stay at Point Blanche for two nights, and set out in the morning, but we’ll see how it goes.”

She takes her finger off the map, eyes lingering on the shape of the island she knows by heart, until the corners of the paper start to swim in the edge of her vision. Then she rolls the map back up.

“What do you think you’ll find there?” Makino asks.

“My village?” Nami suggests. “Ten years before the last time I remember seeing it. Or maybe nothing. Maybe we’ll sail off the edge of the world because none of this is real. I don’t know, but I have to try.”

“You’re a very brave woman, you know that?”

“I know.” Somewhere outside, small feet are rapidly approaching again, and Nami smiles. “Either way, it’ll be an adventure.”

---

Gyoru is a good man. A fishmonger Luffy seems to know very well and like a lot.

Luffy likes a lot of people, but Gyoru is one of those who seem to deserve it, kind and light-hearted and talkative, he seems to find Nami’s status as a pirate funny more than anything, taking it all with good cheer.

He has a grown son around her age, he tells her as they walk down to the pier, but that man is apparently working inland on the farms, dealing with the harvest, just like most of the younger people in the village.

When Gyoru was young, there was no sea king roaming the coast, and so there were more fishermen and fewer farmers, so really, it’s only good she takes one of the fishing boats so it doesn’t just sit there and rot.

“You’re still fishing, though?” she asks.

And he laughs. “Well, someone has to! Just have to be careful, and it’s no issue.”

The Salt Snipe is… a fishing boat. It’s small, with a cabin just barely big enough for all four of them to sleep in if they don’t mind piling up a little, the sail looks easily manoeuvrable, and a flag hanging from the top of the mast shows its allegiance to Dawn Island.

Gyoru shows it off proudly, and the boys are very impressed, instantly jumping on board and looking everywhere.

It’s no Going Merry, Nami finds herself thinking, and then she casts that thought aside. It doesn’t have to be. It’s in good shape, and though there’s a lot of rope work to be done before it’s ready to sail the open ocean, it’s true that it should be done within a few hours if they do their best.

“Thank you, again,” she tells him.

“Hah! Don’t you worry about it. Do you kids need a hand getting it ready?”

“Oh, if you don’t mind, that would be delightful,” Nami says, smiling brightly at him, and then she turns to where the boys are climbing the mast for some reason. “Oy! You kids want to learn how we make a ship seaworthy?”

“Hell yeah!” is the unanimous answer, and they get to work.

After the third time someone has to fish Luffy out of the water, she starts wondering if it wouldn’t go faster without their ‘help’, but at least they’re having fun.

The sun is low in the sky by the time they’re done and are standing on the pier, looking proudly up at their work.

“We’re really setting out,” Ace says, almost reverently.

“Nervous?” Nami teases.

“Hell no!”

“We’re going out sailing,” Sabo says, and he’s less reverent and more excited.

“We’re going on an adventure!” Luffy shouts, bouncing with his hands in the air.

He’s going to fall overboard so many times.

“Not until tomorrow,” she says. “Let’s go get some sleep so we can catch the sunlight as early as possible, alright?”

“Alright!” Luffy chirps.

Despite their agreement, none of the boys can settle down to sleep in their little shared room above Makino’s bar. Too excited, they’re shifting around and whispering in the dark, not the least bit tired.

Nami doesn’t mind. She falls asleep better with living people around her, and she’s long since learned to sleep through her crew’s bullshit.

Tomorrow, she’ll set off to sea again. Tomorrow, in one way, she’ll be home.

She closes her eyes and drifts off.

---

The boys are not quite so enthusiastic the next morning, as she drags them out of bed bright and early, before the sun has even breached the horizon. They’re bleary-eyed and so sleepy she has to carry them down the stairs, but they’re small, so she doesn’t mind.

She understands them well. She’s sleepy from the early morning as well.

“Are you really awake enough to sail?” Makino asks, stifling a yawn of her own as she gets them all breakfast.

“Mrml,” is the best answer she gets from the kids.

Nami doubts Makino ever gets up this early herself. Working in a bar tends to make for long nights.

“I’ll be fine, and they’ll wake up on the way,” she says. “You could have sent us off yesterday, you know. No reason you had to get out of bed for us.”

“No, but I wanted to,” Makino says, smiling that wonderfully kind smile of hers.

The sun just barely kisses the horizon as they get on the boat, the light blue, golden light of morning bathing the harbour in yellow. There’s a decent wind. Nothing fantastic, but Nami hasn’t felt a strong wind since she got here and this is good enough, already tugging at their sail.

Makino is standing at the pier, and so is Gyoru and the Mayor, sending them off with smiles and good luck wishes (or grumbles and good luck wishes, in the Mayor’s case) and the boys, slightly more awake after breakfast, stand at the back of the boat waving as Nami pulls the anchor up and adjusts the sail to catch the wind just so.

The Salt Snipe glides away, and they are off.

Chapter Text

Nami wakes up properly once she tastes the salty wind and gets her hands on the boat’s sails, but it’s not for the reasons she wishes.

The sea is disturbingly quiet.

The wind picks up as they go and the waves start rocking the boat, but Nami keeps catching herself looking at the map she’s pinned to the wall of the cabin, even though she knows perfectly well where she’s going.

It doesn’t feel like she knows where she’s going.

She’s the best navigator this sea has ever seen. She can close her eyes and feel the smallest changes in the wind as clearly as lights in a dark room. Following a log pose or a compass is second nature. On the sea, Nami always knows where she is, always knows how to get where she’s going. She takes that for granted.

Now, here, on the calmest sea in the world, with a map on the wall and a compass in her hand, somehow, she feels unsure.

She doesn’t like it. It puts her on edge.

The boys don’t seem to notice. They’ve thrown off the morning’s drowsiness and are now bursting with energy, running up and down the boat, climbing the mast for a better view and yelling at the sky.

Luffy bounces around like there’s more energy than there’s room for in his tiny little body, nearly vibrating out of his skin, and she keeps a sharp eye on him in case he goes overboard.

Then he seems to pass some sort of threshold of excitement, and he runs up to perch on the bow of the boat, going still and staring unflinchingly towards the horizon. It’s a painfully familiar sight.

Nami casts another glance at the map which is more and more doing the opposite of putting her at ease, and then she shakes her head and walks up to her captain instead.

“Excited?” she asks him.

His answering grin splits his face in half, lighting him up from the inside like a lantern.

She leans on the railing and smiles back. Right, the horizon is ahead of them. Quiet seas and strange winds aside, she’ll lead them to it, as she always does. It’s easier to believe, when he smiles at her like that.

Letting out a deep breath, she shakes her uncertainty off. Then she looks up the mast at the other two boys and calls out, “Come learn a few things about sailing!”

They’ve jumped down in the blink of an eye.

“Have either of you swum in the open ocean before?” she asks.

It’s mostly a rhetorical question, but she still waits for them to shake their heads before she continues.

“Think you can?”

“I can’t swim!” Luffy chirps.

“I know, Luffy,” she says. And then she adds, for safety’s sake, “If you fall off of there you’re not allowed to sit on the bow again until we’re back at Dawn, okay?”

He freezes in shock, and then he nods rapidly and seriously.

Sabo is looking over the railing at the sea below, and Ace is scowling.

“I could,” he says.

“How would you get back on the ship?” Sabo asks. And then, “Those are some really big waves.”

Nami nods. “We have a rope ladder for that, as long as someone throws it in. I don’t doubt that you two could learn to swim in the ocean with practice, and maybe we’ll get that practice in on the way, but the important thing to remember right now is that the ocean is far worse than a lake or the coast, even just for swimming in, not to mention rescuing people.”

They look at her. Then Ace and Sabo look at Luffy.

“Exactly,” she says. “So! Rule number one. If anyone falls in, not just Luffy, any of you, the first thing you do is yell for me, no matter what. The second thing is tossing the rope ladder overboard. Understood?”

They nod.

“Repeat it back to me. What do you do if anyone falls in the sea?”

“Call Nami…”

“…then throw the ladder at’em.”

“Great!” She waves at all three of them to get closer, and then gestures for them to sit on the deck with her in a little circle, in the middle of which she places her compass. “Now I’m going to teach all of you a few things about navigating and steering this boat, because I intend to sleep at some point during this trip.”

---

Nami isn’t surprised when it’s harder to teach the boys something mundanely practical than it is to teach them fighting techniques, but she’s a little disappointed.

To their credit, they do try.

Sabo seems to know most of the simple terms she’s using already, and both Luffy and Ace are trying to focus, but they’re still a bunch of children with no experience with schooling and no ability to sit still.

She’s barely confident they all understand that the red arrow on the compass isn’t the direction they’re meant to be heading in by the time Luffy flops backwards onto the deck and declares he’s starving to death.

So she makes food.

When the food has been devoured, roughly ten seconds later, she sends them into the rigging to learn how to adjust their course.

They learn much faster like that, and have more fun, laughing as they swing from the mast and pull at the sail and get to see the immediate effect on the speed of the ship. It doesn’t take too long before Nami can call out a heading and they clumsily adjust the course in that approximate direction. They cheer loudly every time, and she can’t help but smile as well.

She stands in the middle of the deck, keeping half an eye on the weather and most of her attention on the boys, and they climb the rigging like seasoned sailors. It makes a certain kind of sense that they can, these boys who have climbed trees as much as most children walk streets, though it’s a miracle none of them are getting seasick.

The only accident happens an hour after lunch, when Luffy, too wound up and not yet used to the small amount of space, jumps off the mast at a sprint, miscalculates, and dives straight into the sea.

Nami can see what’s about to happen an instant before it does, and she’s already running before he hits the water, swimming before he has the time to sink.

It’s still heart-stopping.

The sea is dark and the waves are high, and she reaches out before she opens her eyes, grasping blindly into the void until her fingers brush cloth and she grabs on like her life depends on it, because it might as well. His certainly does.

He gasps and coughs when they breach the surface again. He was only under for a second, but he’s so small in her arms and it’s so hard to believe he’s really fine.

But he is. He’s fine and he’s making noise, and she snags the hat from where it’s floating right next to them, so that’s fine too.

“Namiiii,” he cries against her shirt, still limp in the water and coughing as the waves wash over them.

She hugs him close and looks for the Salt Snipe, already a good distance away now, pulled by the wind.

“Just hold on,” she tells him, and swims.

The ladder hits the water just as she catches up, Ace and Sabo yelling at them from the deck.

Luffy flops to the deck like a drowned rat, still weak and miserable, but safe.

“I didn’t think you’d end up that far behind,” Sabo says.

“You’re fine,” Ace says, almost accusatory. He must’ve been worried.

Nami vaguely remembers them shouting in horror before she dove.

“That’s why I said to call for me rather than jump in yourselves,” Nami says, wringing water out of her hair and clothes. “The ship is moving. Pulling someone out of the sea isn’t easy even for adults.”

They hardly look satisfied with that.

So she reaches out and roughly ruffles two heads of hair. “You did great with the ladder, thank you.”

And they cheer up.

Luffy sits up now and shakes himself like a dog to get the water off. “Thanks for saving me! Shihi, I thought I was gonna die.”

Nami puts her hands on his shoulders and looks him right in the eyes. “Luffy, I will always catch you, no matter what. Trust me on that.” And then she says, “But if you make me ruin all my clothes with salt like this I will be very annoyed.”

“Ah. I’ll be careful,” he says, properly cowed.

He won’t, but he’ll try. It’s the best she’ll get.

She stands up. “Okay. Go pull the ladder back up and let’s get back to what we were doing.”

They jump at the work immediately, smiles in place and all mortal danger forgotten, like dew before the sun. They’re children. They bounce back in seconds.

---

If Nami thought sailing would be enough to distract them from a missed day of fighting, she’s proven wrong once dinner has come and gone.

“Are you crazy?” she asks, though of course she knows they absolutely are.

“We can’t just not fight,” says Ace. “We gotta train!”

“I’m not sure if you’ve noticed,” she says, getting down on a knee to get on his eye level. “But this boat is very small. You start getting into fights here, someone is going to get knocked over the railing.”

“Can’t you just pull us out?” Luffy asks.

She gives him a scowl. “I’ll pull you out of the water if I have to, but I won’t do it any more than absolutely necessary. If you kids start knocking each other in, we’re turning right back around and leaving you at Dawn, you got that?”

That makes none of the boys happy.

“So basically, what you’re saying is, as long as no one falls in we’re fine?” Sabo says, smiling that unrepentant grin of his.

“You think you can do that?” she asks.

She doesn’t think they can do that. She’s seen what they’re like.

“Sure!” they tell her.

Lovely.

“Fine,” she says. “You three do what you want, and the second anyone falls in, that’s it.”

To their credit, they get through the first couple dozen bouts before anyone accidentally slingshots Luffy off the ship, which is more than she expected of them.

It’s the second time today she’s had to dive in, and the water isn’t exactly warm. She’s sopping wet, freezing and thoroughly ticked by the time she climbs back on board with a limp seven-year-old over her shoulder.

She drops Luffy on the deck and wrings the water out of her shirt.

Ace and Sabo wisely take a step back.

“Um,” says Sabo, who was the one to cause this particular mishap. “I’m sorry?”

“What did I say?” Nami says, moving on to her skirt. She’s going to have to change her clothes again, or she’ll catch a cold.

“Don’t shove anyone over the railing.”

“And what did you do?”

“It was an accident!” he insists.

She looks at him, and he takes another step back.

Then she smiles.

“Well! I hope we’ve all learned a lesson. No more fighting on the ship. I will have no objections. Understood?”

“I didn’t even do anything,” says Ace.

“I said no objections,” Nami says, smile promising retribution if they push her.

Then she goes to change her clothes.

She’s barely gotten the wet shirt over her head when she hears another splash from outside.

“Are you fucking kidding!?” she yells, bursting out of the door of the cabin in nothing but a skirt and a bra.

“I got him! I got him!” Sabo yells back, already pulling the ladder up.

Luffy’s sitting on the railing, waving his arms and saying, “Wasn’t me this time!”

Ace is shaking himself like a dog, spraying sea water everywhere, muttering, “Told ya I could swim in it.”

“Am I going to have to turn this ship around?”

“What? No! Why!”

“Because clearly you kids can’t be trusted to stay on the damn boat!”

“I’m sorry! I won’t do it again!”

“Please don’t take us back!”

“Nami, nooooo!”

She considers it. She genuinely considers it for a few moments, going back to Dawn Island where the ground feels solid under her feet and she won’t have to worry about losing children to the surf.

It’s out of the question, of course. Sailing on her own shouldn’t be difficult, but she’s scared to try it on this sea, scared it’ll give under the bow of her boat and send her tumbling into nothingness. The wind blows like it’s indulging her, and the only real thing in the world is three children begging at her not to turn the ship around. If she takes them back home, she won’t sail out again.

“No fighting on the boat, got it?”

This time, they agree much more readily. She has no faith whatsoever it’ll last.

By the time the sun kisses the horizon again, they still haven’t gotten into another fight, and she praises her lucky stars for that. They’re also exhausted enough that they’ll soon start dropping like flies, so she shoos them into the boat’s cabin and tells them to go to sleep.

“Tell a story first?” Luffy asks, swaying on his feet.

She doesn’t even think about arguing. “Lie down, and I’ll tell you how we ended up sailing into the Grand Line.”

At some point, she stopped being so worried about telling Luffy his future. At some point, it stopped mattering. She’s already changing things. The sea only knows what directions his adventure will take from here. Reverse Mountain will always be there, but who’s to say how this version of Luffy will cross it? Her stories are of a future that may never exist, so there is no real need to avoid it.

It’s far from the best story she’s told. She’s distracted, keeping one eye on the darkening sky as she talks, and that particular adventure was a chaotic mess she only recalls about half of, but it doesn’t matter. The boys are fast asleep before she’s even halfway, and she lets her words drift off into silence.

Above, the stars are showing up one by one as the sun slips away. Each of them is a solid point in an otherwise featureless expanse, perfect to navigate by.

There are no surprises. The boat is where it should be and has the heading the compass claims, and yet the sight is disquieting. If they had been off course, at least there would’ve been a reason for Nami to feel lost. Instead, nothing is wrong, and she is left feeling unmoored and disturbed, and without the boys to distract her, she can only drift.

They’re long, dark and quiet hours following the stars before the island of Redbank appears on the horizon, just about exactly when she predicted they would arrive.

It’s late, and she’s tired, and she doesn’t bother going ashore. There’s an open pier, so she anchors the boat and goes the fuck to sleep alongside the boys on the floor of the cabin.

---

When Nami wakes up, the sun is nearly directly above, and she’s alone on the boat.

She feels almost rested and tries not to worry too immediately about the boys. Redbank’s not a big island. There’s nothing here except a foundry and a tiny village, hardly anything they couldn’t handle, and she’s glad they remembered not to wake her in the morning.

When she gets up and stretches the cricks out of her back, she gets a proper look at the island she only saw under the cover of darkness the night before. It looks exactly like she’s had it described. Rusted red beaches, scrawny trees, stone and wooden buildings held together by iron bolts, and the foundry a large stone construction a short walk away from the village. Not a pretty place, but one with a solid identity. Even then, it feels strangely immaterial, something subtly off about it she can’t put her finger on. She had hoped reaching land would make her feel more grounded, but no such luck, it seems.

There are a few people walking around the village now, none looking particularly remarkable, so Nami disembarks to stock up on supplies and see if she can track down her children.

Stocking up isn’t hard, through it pains her to part with the money. The villagers are friendly, if a little unobservant. They don’t pay her much mind, and it takes her a good half an hour before she even finds anyone who’s seen the boys. They point her towards the foundry, and Nami considers for a minute before she decides not to do anything about it.

The boys are just out exploring, they can take care of themselves, and there’s a limit to how much trouble they can get in out here.

She eats breakfast alone for the first time in a while. It would’ve been pleasantly peaceful if not for the strange floating sensation of the world around her not being entirely solid. She’s almost getting used to that feeling, and she’s not sure if that’s a good thing.

The next hour or so, she gets the boat ready to leave. Packing away the new supplies, double checking all the ropes, checking their heading against the map, and then working it out by the placement of the sun just in case, because the map still doesn’t strike her as trustworthy. There’s not much else to do. The island is about as boring as they get, and no one in the village seems interesting to talk to.

She’s just about to go out and look for the boys when the foundry explodes.

The fireball is impressive, reaching far above the tallest trees and flickering with bursts of exciting colours. The shockwave topples several trees nearby and shakes people off their feet as far as the village.

Nami sprints towards the destruction, and doesn’t start breathing until three small shapes meet her halfway, sprinting in the other direction with several large and angry men at their tails.

“WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO?”

“Never mind that! We need to go!” is the only answer she gets.

She knocks the men off their feet with a blast of wind, because the boys might deserve a beating if this was their fault, but that doesn’t mean she’s going to let it happen, and she doesn’t ask again until they’re all four safely on the boat and far away from Redbank, still smoking sadly on the horizon behind them.

“What the fuck did you do,” she repeats, then.

“Ah, we blew up the building,” Luffy says. He’s laughing, looking quite satisfied.

“I could see that. Why.”

Ace shrugs. “They deserved it.”

“They had a bunch of people locked up there,” Sabo says. He looks satisfied as well, though it’s painted with a dark sort of anger. “So we got them all out and then we blew the place the fuck up.”

Nami makes a noise. She’s not entirely sure what sort of noise it is. Supposed to be a deep sigh, it ended up more in the direction of a whimper. Seriously, what the fuck. This was just supposed to be a normal, boring East Blue island.

“Okay,” she says. “Okay. Okay. Any of you hurt?”

The three of them look at each other.

“We’re good,” Ace says.

“Did you have breakfast?”

“Ah, I’m hungry,” Luffy says.

“Right. Let me make you something.”

She makes something like lunch, trying to calm the racing of her heart. She shouldn’t be so surprised, really. She hasn’t had a single uneventful visit to an island since the first time she met Luffy, and the fact that the island seemed criminally boring should’ve been a red flag, not a reason to relax.

There really is nothing surprising about these three finding trouble, whatever sort of trouble it was, slave operation, illicit prison, human experimentation, one or the other. She doesn’t really care about the details. It doesn’t matter.

…Redbank, though. It’s known for having nothing on it, and not in the ‘oh ho we’re not hiding anything’ obviously suspect way.

Nami doesn’t know what to make of it. Another sign of everything being wrong, definitely, but she’s not sure what it means.

The boys devour lunch in about a second, and then she sets them to steering the boat. Learning by doing works best for them, and she wants to know if whatever magic seems to be keeping them on course is still going to work if she’s not the one trying to keep it.

Two hours later, she still doesn’t know. The sea is a featureless plane, the waves existing only because an ocean has waves, and the wind has nothing to say about anything, weather fronts or islands or anything else. The sun implies they’re still on course, but Nami has no real idea, no proper connection. The boards of the boat’s deck feel almost solid under her fingers where she’s sitting, but there’s something wrong there too, something she can’t put her finger on.

She’s not sure when she sat down, when she started clenching her hands against the floor. She’s dizzy, and just scared enough that the knot of anxiety in her stomach is starting to hurt. Her head is resting against her knees, and she really doesn’t want to cry here.

“Nami?”

She snaps her head up.

Luffy is crouched in front of her, looking up to meet her eyes, concerned and quietly serious like she’s only seen him a few times.

He doesn’t say anything, just sits there, being solid, when nothing else is.

“I don’t know if I want this to be real, or if I want to wake up,” she quietly tells him.

He tilts his head the other way in confusion.

She shakes her head. This is ridiculous.

Then she grabs him and hugs him tight to her chest. He squeaks and wiggles to get free and feels so intensely real against her skin.

The deck under her is real, and the wind whispers of distant islands, and the waves sing their staccato rhythm like waves always do, and they’re off course, but only by half a degree or so and it won’t be a problem if she gets it in order quickly.

And it’s fine. She’s fine. She’s not dizzy anymore.

“Namiiiii,” Luffy complains, still wiggling.

She lets him go and stands up. “Sorry. It’s been a weird day.”

“Ah. Sorry.”

“I very much doubt it’s your fault.” She sighs. “Did you want something?”

“We’re really bored!”

The other two boys are looking up at her too, standing a little further back.

“Well, why don’t you try fishing?” she suggests. Maybe she won’t have to pay for all their food. This is a fishing boat; there’s probably fishing equipment on board.

There is, fishing rods and nets stowed carefully away, and the boys don’t complain after that.

The day passes in a flash. The boys have fun fishing, tossing their lines off the back of the boat and competing over who gets the biggest catch. Nami keeps an eye on them to ensure no one falls in the water again, but they seem to have a handle on it. They catch enough fish for Nami to cook for dinner, too, which makes things a little easier on their rations.

Before she knows it, the stars are peeking back out overhead. Now that she doesn’t have to worry so much about running out of food, it’s an easy choice to make to raise the sails, drop the anchor at the first shallow bit of ocean they see, and sleep through the night.

She’s tired enough she should fall asleep instantly, the boys certainly drop, but it doesn’t come so easy to her.

Instead, she stays right on the edge of it, her body too heavy to move but her head full of a grey buzzing that keeps her from crossing over into dreaming. Her thoughts flow like spilled water in this state, wherever they please and hard for her to grasp. The three boys sleeping nearly on top of her help ground her, as the silence of the rest of the world presses heavily on her.

They won’t reach Orange Town tomorrow if they’re not sailing at night, but the day after. It’s been so long now since she was there and Luffy fell from the sky, and she’s still feeling it, almost misses it. She met her fate there and didn’t even know it yet.

She wonders if Shushu will be there, but ten… what? Ten years? It’s a lot for a dog. Shushu is probably not even born yet, so who knows what the town’s like. Maybe it’ll help.

That doesn’t make any sense. Nothing makes any sense and now she’s almost dreaming on top of it all. Nothing here’s going to help, the only thing that might actually help is finding the scarf guy and kicking his ass.

They never did catch his name, but Luffy called him scarf bastard and that worked just fine. He wasn’t too happy about being chased, clearly outmatched in a fight, even Nami could’ve kicked his ass relatively easily, but they just couldn’t catch him. Some sort of illusion ability, she guessed, the random animals he conjured at them were annoying at worst, but even Luffy couldn’t tell exactly where the man was. Something about messing up his haki, if Nami interpreted the angry yelling correctly.

They tracked him to an old abandoned mine, Luffy charging ahead and Nami chasing after, but her memories grow too fuzzy after that point to say anything about anything. She just remembers running into the dark, following the sound of Luffy as the world gradually fell away around her, running and running and…

She doesn’t realize she’s fallen asleep before she wakes again with the morning sun in her eyes.

Chapter Text

Nami wakes up feeling rested, ready for another day of wrangling three boys and a boat. It turns out not to be as hard as she could’ve feared.

Sailing with the boys is almost easy, now. Maybe they’ve just gotten used to the sea, or maybe they’ve had the fear of her properly instilled in their minds, but either way she doesn’t have to fish a single one of them out of the sea the whole day.

They’ve taken well to sailing the ship, absorbing what she’s trying to teach them much faster than she would’ve expected. She barely has to correct them now to let them set the course. They’re reading the compass better than most amateur adults, and swing around the ship’s ropes like they were born for it.

It helps that the wind is forgiving, carrying them in the right direction already, so they don’t have to do anything too fancy.

As long as the boys are on the sails and she has her eyes on them, she feels grounded. That creeping sense of nothing being real isn’t catching her. The wind still feels too tame and the sea too predictable, but like this, she can believe it’s just the East Blue messing her up after so long on more dangerous waters, and not something more fundamentally wrong.

She misses grass under her feet. She misses the sound of Sanji dancing across the deck, misses Brook’s music playing from somewhere or other, Zoro’s snoring from where he’s leant back against the railing. She misses her crew, intensely.

But she’s not alone, even if her only company is children. She’s so damn glad she’s not alone.

They do a good bit of fishing too that day. Enough to keep them fed, and in combination with keeping the ship on course, it’s enough to keep the boys occupied for most of the day.

It’s well past midday when they start getting restless, and by then, Nami is quite restless herself. It’s a small boat with nothing to do on it now that she’s not even doing the bulk of the navigating. Normally she would’ve at least had a book to read, but she hasn’t even seen a book that’s been readable since she came back in time.

They’re all restless, and the boys have been good all day, so she decides a little bit of sparring won’t be the worst idea.

“Really!?”

“But you said no fighting, ever.”

She twirls her Clima-Tact until it’s about half as long as she is tall and smiles. “We won’t be doing the usual fighting. The rules stand as I said, if anyone falls off, we’re immediately done. But what we’ll be doing is learning how to fight on a ship without falling off, so it shouldn’t be a problem. Right?”

“Right!” they yell in unison, and jump her.

One of them does nearly fall off the boat several times as they play (usually Luffy) but by the time the sun starts setting, they’ve all gotten much better at it, learning as she instructs them to grab onto ropes and stay on the deck, and they’re pleasantly worn out besides, so she considers it a success.

She tells them about Drum as they’re falling asleep, and it’s probably the strangest and most disjointed story she’s told this far, because most of what she remembers of that trip is the cold and the fever dreams. She’s still not sure what of what she remembers actually happened, at least before getting to the castle and her fever breaking, but the dreamlike nonsense feels fitting here and now.

Either way they’re all asleep before she can get to the end of the story.

Morning dawns again, and she starts looking for signs of an island on the horizon. It’s unthinkable for it not to be there, of course. She’s the best navigator in the world, and this is the calmest sea in the world. It would be an embarrassment without compare if they’d overshot and gotten lost.

But finding an island on the Blues is nothing like finding one on the Grand Line. There is no log pose here pointing faithfully towards their destination. There is only the sea and the sky, not a landmark to be seen from the ship to the horizon. If you go off course here, you might never know, and even a large island is so small compared to the sea, so easy to miss.

She hasn’t worried like this since she was a child, has always known exactly where she is by the taste of the wind and the direction of the waves, with a map and a compass she can navigate blind. But she doesn’t trust her map, and she doesn’t trust this wind, even if it feels almost normal now, and the worry eats at her.

The relief is a physical thing when the shadow appears on the horizon and she barely needs to adjust the course at all.

It’s fine. Of course it’s fine. It’s unthinkable that it wouldn’t be.

And so, an hour past noon, the Salt Snipe docks at Orange Town.

---

It’s a much more pleasant town when it’s not being raided by pirates, unsurprisingly. The townspeople are friendly and the streets are clean. The ground feels solid under her feet like nothing has since they left Dawn, and the sun is shining overhead. Something is bugging her, but she can’t put her finger on what and doesn’t try too hard to find out.

She steps off the boat at the harbour, shakes off her unsteady sea legs, and tells the boys they’ll be docking until tomorrow. “Try not to cause trouble, alright? These are good people. They don’t deserve to have their stuff stolen or their buildings blown up.”

“Ah, like Windmill Village,” Luffy says.

“Exactly like that, so be nice, alright?”

“Alright,” they chorus, and she almost believes them.

“Are we gonna fight today?” Ace asks.

“If you can find somewhere away from town to do it, and not right away. I have some shopping that needs done. You run off and explore in the meantime.”

Cheering, they take off and disappear around a corner, their voices quickly fading into the distance.

Nami revels in the silence for a moment before she goes off to find a shop. Fish and other sea beasts are all well and good, but she’s no Sanji. She doesn’t trust herself to make a perfectly nutritious meal on sea food alone, so they need vegetables.

Buying the vegetables is easy enough, and not overly expensive once she haggles a little. Looking for books afterwards proves to be a lot harder.

That a town this small doesn’t have a public library isn’t exactly strange, though a little disappointing. The fact that she can’t find any books for sale or loan anywhere is a little more worrying, and stirs the worry that is already lying quietly beneath her thoughts.

A small town it might be, but it’s still a town, she reassures herself. If there isn’t a public library, there’s almost certainly a private one somewhere. The chances of it having information she can use are slim to none, but at this point she just wants to know that the world hasn’t gone entirely insane, or always has been, or whatever.

If there is a private library, it will probably belong to a well-off person or an authority figure, and in this town, there aren’t too many options for that, so Nami asks around until she finds the mayor.

Mayor Boodle looks about the same as he did the last time Nami saw him, years ago and a decade in the future, minus the armour and a few wrinkles. She finds him chatting with a shopkeeper, and he smiles pleasantly at her when she approaches.

Seeing him is like a kick to the chest. He’s the most familiar thing she’s seen yet. The boys are too small to resemble their older versions much, and the town looks different enough with people in it that she can brush it off, but Boodle is someone she’s met before. Someone she’s spoken to, even fought for, to some small extent.

She was a different person then. Smaller, weaker, more tired, more scared. She was worn down to nothing but sinew and bone, holding on by tenacity alone.

The sun fell from the sky here to meet her, she just didn’t know it at the time.

Nami shakes her head and stops thinking about old, nearly foreign-feeling memories. She has the present to pay attention to.

“Ah, you’ll be our most recent visitor!” Boodle greets her cheerfully. “Welcome to our town! You’re those children’s… not mother, are you?”

“Temporary caretaker,” she confirms. “Their family needed them out of the house. I could use company on the boat and they wanted to learn how to sail anyway, so I brought them. You’ve seen them?”

“Just barely in passing, but the townspeople have mentioned them.”

He’s smiling as he says it, so they probably haven’t caused too much trouble. She’s a little surprised.

“How are you liking our town this far?” he asks.

She smiles back at him. “It’s nice. It’s peaceful and the people are friendly. All it’s missing is a library. You wouldn’t happen to know where I could get my hands on a book collection?”

“Oh, hmm,” he says, putting a hand over his mouth as he thinks. “You’re right, we are missing one of those. The town was rebuilt very recently, so many things are still not quite in order, I’m afraid. I can see what I can find for you?”

“No. No that’s, that’s fine,” she says, trying not to shiver as dread makes its sudden appearance running down her spine. She’s put her finger on it. She knows what’s wrong. “I’ll probably have better chances finding what I’m looking for somewhere else, but thank you so much for the offer. Have a nice day!”

She does her best to smile as she extricates herself from the conversation and beats a hasty retreat.

She’s standing in the town plaza, and she doesn’t have to think to turn stiffly towards the sea and walk. She’s trying not to look too closely at the buildings as she passes, but she can’t help it. Can’t help catching glimpses and looking closer.

The buildings do look recently constructed. There are no cracks in the walls, no replaced tiles on the rooves. It’s all new, five years old at the absolute most, probably less.

She remembers noting this before.

She remembers coming here, thinking it such a shame that the pirates should pick this of all towns to raid, this town that had so clearly only recently recovered from the same. These are the same buildings, with the same wear and tear. The houses are the same, the streets are the same, even the people haven’t changed, haven’t aged a year.

Ten years behind, between. This town shouldn’t exist yet, hasn’t been built yet.

Nami sits down at the edge of the harbour and presses her heels against the sea-salted stilts of the dock, trying to ground herself as she keeps her eyes on the sea and away from the town.

She’s wrong. She has to be wrong. It’s been years. She’s remembering it wrong, or maybe the town was just rebuilt twice, maybe the mayor is just one of those people who look the same age for decades. She’s overreacting. She doesn’t know what the alternate explanation would be.

If she’s dreaming, it’s one hell of a dream. Weeks long and dropping her into someone else’s childhood. Shouldn’t she at least be seeing her mother, if this was her dream?

Seas and skies, she wants to see Bellemere.

Just a few days left, and they’ll be at Cocoyashi. Then she’ll know. One way or another.

Her fingers dig into the wooden boards beside her knees. The wind feels almost right now, it makes sense, has been picking up over the last day, but she doesn’t know what that means. Maybe the weather is just strange this week. That happens sometimes. Or maybe she’s right not to trust even the air in her lungs. Maybe this is all wrong. Maybe it was always wrong. Maybe she should…

What?

What can she possibly do, when she doesn’t even know how she got here?

“Is something wrong?”

Nami nearly falls into the sea from the surprise when Sabo’s voice suddenly appears next to her. She ends in a half crouch, one hand over her heart and her calf scratched up from pulling it too quickly up past the edge of the dock. “Don’t do that.”

“Uh, sorry?” he says, taken aback. “You alright?”

“I’m. Yeah.” She sits back down on her butt and lets out a breath. “I’m fine. I was just distracted. Did you want something?”

He grins. “Yeah, we found a good spot, so…”

A long bout of mindless exercise sounds very good right about now, she wholeheartedly agrees with him on that.

She looks at him. Up and down. Looks at this kid she’s gotten to know over the past few weeks.

He’s so small, so young. Sweet and good-hearted at his core, just betrayed too many times by his environment to trust it. Not as innocent as he should be, but more than he will be.

If this isn’t real, what does that mean for him? What does it mean for Luffy? For Ace?

“You sure you’re alright?” he asks again, looking concerned.

“I’m fine,” she says. Then she sweeps him up as she stands up, hugging him close. He complains, but not much. “I’m thinking I’ll buy lunch for everyone, and then we can beat the shit out of each other for at least an hour. What do you say?”

“Oh sweet! Hell yeah!” he says, and stops struggling entirely.

Whether this is real or not, it’s still important, she decides. She promised herself she’d keep them safe, and that still holds.

If this is a dream, then for the duration of that dream, she’ll give these dumb kids what they should’ve had from the beginning. It still matters. It always matters. Kindness is never wasted.

She has to believe that. If she can’t, she has nothing left.

---

The boys have gotten so damn strong.

They’ve found a nice clearing between the trees just outside of town. Nothing like the jungles back on Dawn, these trees are normal-sized, but it’s a good spot for fighting for a few hours, and they’re kicking her ass.

Well, they aren’t, but they’ve managed a couple lucky hits, which would’ve been impossible just a few weeks back.

They’re running a cycle of two one-on-one fights for each of the boys against her, then one two-on-one fight for each pair, then one three-on-one fight before going back to the beginning. Ten rounds of that adds up neatly to a hundred.

It’s around the eight round they start getting hits in, mostly because she’s tired and they’ve gotten so good at coordinating to catch her off guard. But maybe she’s gotten stronger too, because she’s not half as tired as she would’ve been those weeks ago either. She feels like she could keep this up for another hundred fights with no real trouble. Not that she wants to.

She knocks them down, and when Luffy gets back up for the next fight yelling, “Again!” then instead of groaning and wishing these kids had less infinite energy, she thumps the end of her Clima-Tact on the ground and echoes, “Again,” with a smile on her face.

She’s tired, yes, but she’s starting to understand why they enjoy this so much. It’s fun. It’s tricky and exhausting, but it’s fun.

No wonder they all got so strong, raised desperate and yet fighting to play. It makes too much sense.

She wins her final fight and flops down on her back to let the boys sort out their own remaining fights on their own. It feels natural. It feels normal, now.

She’s going to miss this, when she… gets back or wakes up or…

When she gets home. When she gets home, she’s going to miss this insane method of training, going to miss these children who shouldn’t exist. Not as much as she misses her ship and her crew now, but she’ll miss them nonetheless.

The boys wrap it up and flop down beside her eventually. She hadn’t even realized they finished, hadn’t been paying attention.

“Hey Nami, did you see?” Luffy almost shouts.

“Sorry, I was watching the clouds,” Nami says. It’s only mostly a lie. She was looking up, after all, she just wasn’t thinking about the clouds in front of her eyes.

“What?” He sounds instantly heartbroken.

She slings an arm around him and hugs him close for a second. “Why, what did I miss?”

And he’s right back to smiling. “I almost won one!”

“Did not!” Sabo complains.

“Did too!”

“He sort of did,” Ace says.

“He hit me once! That doesn’t mean he almost beat me!”

Nami ruffles Sabo’s hair with the hand that isn’t holding on to Luffy, and then she does the same to Ace just because. “It doesn’t, but it does mean you’ll have to make sure he doesn’t catch up to you, so keep the training up, yeah?”

“Yeah, obviously,” Sabo says, sounding somewhat disgusted.

“Duh,” Ace echoes.

She laughs. Yeah, there’s no doubt they’ll be doing that. Still, Luffy is beaming, and she can’t help the pride bubbling through her at that.

She lets all three of them go and sits up with her legs crossed. “We’re not going to leave again until tomorrow morning, so do you know what you want to do here on the island until then?”

“Ummm…”

The boys look at each other for a few seconds before Luffy says, “Let’s look for beetles!”

“Yeah!” the other two shout, and then they’re running off between the trees.

Nami stays behind. She enjoys spending time with them, but they can easily take care of themselves, are unlikely to cause much damage in the woods, and she doesn’t have much interest in going around looking for bugs.

Not that she has much of an idea for what to do herself. She could go talk to the townspeople, but the thought of going back to that town that shouldn’t exist yet and those people who are as much out of time as she is herself doesn’t appeal to her. It would be easier if she had a something to read, even just a newspaper, but that’s another thing she hasn’t seen since she came here.

That one is definitely strange. It’s possible of course that the News Coo distribution just wasn’t as widespread at this point in time. She can’t remember perfectly how often they got the news when she was a kid, but she’s pretty sure it’s an old institution, so that means, well. No news for the same reason there’s no books anywhere, probably. She can’t even find it in herself to be surprised.

Like clockwork, as she sits there not getting up, the sense of unreality comes over her again.

She’s acutely aware of the edges of her perception and she swears she sees them blur. The forest is too even, too bland. The wind has quieted again, no longer as coherent as it should be.

Time travel isn’t real. Not this kind, not the kind that lets you go back and change things. And yet she wants this to be real, needs this to be real, because she doesn’t know what it means if it isn’t.

Except that’s ridiculous.

Shaking her head, she tries to get out of the creeping uncertainty binding her down. If this is real, she’ll find a way back to her own timeline. If it isn’t, she’ll find a way to break out of the illusion. One won’t be much harder than the other. There’s no reason to sit around feeling demoralized.

The only reason she feels stuck right now is that everything feels too unreal to lean on. The boys left, and she lost her tenuous grip on reality. It’s almost like…

She gets up and runs to find the boys.

They don’t stop the beetle hunt when she finds them, just wave happily, and she doesn’t do anything to bother them. She just sticks to the vicinity and lets the noise of them fill the background.

She was right, it’s not particularly fun to watch children looking for bugs, but that’s not the important thing. The blur at the edge of her vision disappears, the wind almost makes sense again, and the creeping dread fades. She spends the afternoon watching them, thinking about stories she hasn’t told yet, and wondering about the nature of reality.

They go back to town to eat dinner, and after dinner the boys run out again to hunt more beetles. They’ve found a good number by now, and are mostly competing to find the biggest one.

Nami experiments.

If she’s alone in the woods, the unreality hits fast. Town is variable, some parts better and some parts worse. The place they ate dinner is one of the least bad ones. Talking to the townspeople helps, but it hits harder afterwards. The boat is better than any place in town, but even there she starts feeling it if she’s alone for too long. Every time it hits her bad, she runs back to the boys. Only when she sticks close to them does everything feel like it makes sense. Like they’re injecting life into the fabric of reality by their very presence.

She might be imagining it, but probably not. By the end of the day, her nerves are so fried by going back and forth she wouldn’t trust herself to tell Usopp’s worst stories from the truth.

She can’t tell right now, but that’s almost fine. At this point, it’s just because she’s been digging into her own perception of reality all day. So as night falls and they go back to the boat to sleep, she puts it out of her mind and starts telling this evening’s story.

She talks about Vivi. How they met in the belly of a giant whale and how they fought with her in a town full of bounty hunters, planning to spin the whole story of their adventures with her out over the next few days.

In this detached state of mind, she can almost imagine Vivi is there, listening quietly just outside her field of vision. She can imagine that if only she would turn her head, Vivi would be smiling at her, reassuring and strong, a rock to lean on, a warm body to hold. They never got to the point where they slept in the same bed, they didn’t have the time, but Nami still thinks about her sometimes, wonders if Vivi is thinking back, somewhere out there.

She doesn’t turn her head, doesn’t break the illusion. She just tells her story until the boys start dropping, and then she lies down to sleep as well, letting herself nearly believe the sense of arms around her waist and breath at her neck.

She’ll let her brain sort things out while she’s sleeping. For now, she can have this.

Chapter Text

Nami wakes up with her head back on straight.

She lets herself breathe it in for several minutes before she even moves, lets herself delight in feeling like a person again, instead of a bundle of nothing.

When she gets up, the sun hasn’t risen yet. The horizon is barely paling with unrealized sunrise and there are still stars above, twinkling brightly, promising several more hours of night.

Still, she’s wide awake, so she extricates herself from the sleeping boys and casts off, letting the wind catch their sails and getting on with it. The starlight and a sliver of the moon is all she needs to see by. This isn’t hard. This is second nature, and the ropes under her hands give her something to do while she thinks.

It’s hard to sit down and conclude that the world isn’t real, no matter how much evidence she has. She still has no conclusive proof that it’s not just all in her head.

There is a list of things that don’t make sense, and she’s starting to put together how they don’t make sense, but she could still just be imagining it. Orange Town might have been older than she remembers. It’s been years and she wasn’t paying that much attention. The fact that she hasn’t found any readable books might genuinely be a coincidence. The wind might actually be this much weaker on the East Blue, and it’s simply throwing her off. There’s a very real possibility the time travel damaged her sense of reality.

A horrifying thought strikes her that by changing things in the past, she might be erasing herself from existence, and all of this could be symptoms of that. It might not be the world that’s unreal at all, it might just be her.

She shakes her head and assures herself that doesn’t make sense at all. Erasing herself probably wouldn’t happen this slowly. It’d almost have to be instant. And she’s been getting stronger, not sick. It’s just her mind, not her body.

No, what she needs is hard evidence, one way or another, and if her budding theory is right, there’s only one place she can be sure to get it.

If her theory is right, she also can’t think about it too hard, or it’s not going to work, so she thinks about the ropes and the boat and the stars, and lets her thoughts drift away.

“Nami? S’dark.”

She turns around to see the boys, all three awake and rubbing sleep out of their eyes.

“It’s still night,” she tells them. “You can sleep a bit longer if you’re tired.”

“Why’re you up?” Luffy asks, still sounding almost asleep.

“I woke up and couldn’t go back to sleep, that’s all.”

The three of them are perking up rapidly, and she’s pretty sure none of them are going to lie back down, even if it’s still hours before sunrise.

“Well,” she says. “If you don’t want to sleep through the rest of the night, come here, I’ll teach you how to navigate by the stars.”

They don’t have to be asked twice.

Explaining how to navigate at night isn’t hard. They’re already decent with a map and a compass, and the stars are really just an extension of that. They might not be stationary as such, but they’re as consistent as the sun.

“What if it’s cloudy?” Ace reasonably asks.

“Then you better have a compass, or you’ll have to anchor for the night.”

But it’s not cloudy. The air is clear as crystal, and the only thing that eventually dims the magnitude of the stars is the sunrise.

They eat breakfast then, having been too distracted by the sailing to remember being hungry when waking up. Then they jump into the post-breakfast ritual of beating the shit out of each other.

No one gets thrown off the boat at all this time, even though it gets close more than once. They’ve gotten so much better in such a short amount of time, and she doesn’t even pretend not to be proud of them.

The rest of the day passes to fishing and keeping the ship on course. Nami keeps telling the story she started the night before in the pauses between fish getting yanked out of the ocean. She’s getting through the end of Whiskey Peak now, and the boys are gasping at the reveal that the mean Miss Wednesday was actually the Princess from some of Nami’s other stories all along.

She’s become a better storyteller too, since she first arrived here, and time flies blindingly fast. Before they know it, it’s evening again, and something white is shining on the horizon.

They were meant to reach Point Blanche by sundown, but they’re here a few hours early, having set off well before sunrise. Her predictions for travel time have been on the dot this far, which is strange in and of itself. Even she can’t predict the wind that far into the future.

But it’s just a small strangeness in a world that makes no sense, so she sets it aside and ignores it.

Point Blanche, despite its issues, is a beautiful island. It rises in a half spiral from sea level to a tall, sheer cliff side, blinding white. The sight is only marred by the tower built on top of said cliff. A marine base, specifically home to one snivelling Captain Nezumi. Or at least it will be, ten years from now.

It doesn’t take long before the boys notice the base too and send her concerned looks.

“Nothing to be worried about,” she tells them. “This isn’t a pirate ship. They won’t have any reason to mess with us.”

“Yeah, but we’ve got reasons to mess with them,” Ace says.

“I would rather you didn’t. Stay out of trouble please.”

The concerned looks are deeply confused now.

Nami sighs. “Honestly. I’m planning to steal from them. If you cause trouble, they’ll be on alert, and it’ll get harder for me, okay?”

“Ooooh!” they say. “We’ll be good.”

She nods her acceptance and looks back to the island.

There’s a village on it too. A regular marine base town, probably there before the base, but bigger because of it. She’s never seen it in person before, only read it described, and maybe that’s better. Maybe it’s better to stay away from familiar places that could be twisted unrecognizable by her current faulty perception. She’s not sure.

They dock at the harbour without issue, are welcomed without enthusiasm, but also without suspicion, an apathy similar to what they saw at Redbank.

That’s fair enough. Nami doesn’t mind being ignored as she buys the supplies they’ll need for the last leg of their journey, because she has a feeling they won’t be staying here long.

The sun goes down not much later. The town goes to sleep, the boys settle down on the boat to wait, and Nami sneaks up towards the marine base. With Mirage Tempo wrapped tight around her in the dark, she’s all but invisible. They couldn’t see her coming if they knew what to look for, and they don’t, can’t, could never. She passes by patrols so close she could’ve stolen their guns from their belts, and they don’t notice a thing.

If she’d had this weapon when she was a child, she would’ve gathered Arlong’s blood price so fast he wouldn’t have had a single chance to fuck her over it.

But she didn’t, and he did, and the past can’t be changed. Not really.

Probably.

The marine base is quiet and empty this time of night, anyone not on guard duty being fast asleep, and she walks through the hallways unbothered, peeking through doors here and there on the lookout for the archives.

Bases like this are mostly standardised, and she knows them well enough to know where to look, but there’s still a few places it could be. She searches carefully, first the first floor, then the second.

She doesn’t find it on the third either, but she does find something almost better. Behind a door that doesn’t stay locked for long lies an entire glittering hoard of gold. A proper treasure room, with money in stacks and jewels in piles. She disappears through the door faster than you can say ‘profit’.

It pains her that she can’t bring all of it. There’s a limit to how much she can possibly carry. But a sheet knots together into a nice bag she fills with the most valuable things she can find, and she continues her search weighed down but quite happy with the loot.

She gets all the way to the fifth and final floor before she finds the archives.

No one is there this late at night so she can drop the Mirage, put her bag down and just walk around. Technically the door was locked, but that’s hardly an obstacle. No one is going to bother her.

The archives are filled with stacks of reports, mostly local, but some global. Newspapers and internal memos and reminders. The chances she’ll find anything that can help her are basically zero, but at this point, that’s not the only reason she’s here. One way or another, there’s writing here, and she needs to ensure herself it still exists.

Finding the historical bounty files is just a matter of deciphering the filing system. She’s not sure whether the scarf bastard had a bounty even in her present, but if he did and if it was a decade old and if this past is real enough to remember that, she’ll find it here.

She’s not at all surprised when she doesn’t, even when she spends over an hour looking through the New World files to be sure. There are familiar names, and many more unfamiliar names, but no scarf bastard.

She gives it up as a bad job and goes looking for internal memos from the right area.

Just figuring out which drawer to look in takes her a while, and peeking through the first few sheets of paper filed there would’ve made her want to give up immediately if she’d been hoping to find anything in the first place. This isn’t about finding information on anything physical, not really. She’s trying to figure out the nature of reality itself, and that’s a much less straightforward process. Looking for information on the man who probably put her here is just a place to start.

The memos are hard to read. Bad print, occasionally bad handwriting, and the content is uninteresting to the point where it slips her mind immediately upon reading it, but she wants to take that as evidence in itself. Something interesting should’ve been here, right?

She’s left with little more than a headache and mental exhaustion by the time she decides to move on to newspapers. They at least should be readable. A world in which newspapers are this boring is a world in which newspapers don’t sell and the business dies out.

Unfortunately, she never gets that far.

The door to the archives cracks open, and a young and tired-looking marine freezes in the opening, staring at her and the mess she’s made of the floor.

She grabs for her Clima-Tact, but she’s just barely not fast enough.

“Intruder! We have a break-ikjchhh…” He falls to the floor convulsing with electricity, but the sound of multiple sets of heavy boots running in her direction comes immediately after.

Damn, who would’ve thought they’d be this on the ball. Ugh.

She could fight them, of course, but unless she’s planning on taking out every single one of them, any chance of peace and quiet here is lost anyway.

They’re coming up from the floor below, so she grabs her bag, runs out of the archives and starts sprinting up the stairs to the roof, no real plan in mind aside from the initial instinct to get away. She’d make herself invisible again, but the Fata Morgana takes a few seconds to set in place, and she can’t keep it going while running. So up she goes.

Reaching the roof doesn’t help much. Another group of marines is coming up the outside stairs just as she opens the door.

“Intruder!” someone yells.

She answers with crackling lightning. The guys at the top of the stairs get fried, falling on the ones further down, causing a pileup that blocks the whole staircase. Two of them avoid the attack, jumping over and around to rush her, and she swings at them, wielding the Clima -Tact like a staff.

It’s as easy a breathing. After all these morning fighting the boys, the marines move like in slow motion, and the force Nami can put behind her swings feels less like force and more like an extension of her own lightning, a tingling certainty that cuts through the night, breaking bones and knocking the two men down decisively and absolutely.

There are still people coming up behind her, however.

She takes two seconds to consider her options before she decides, screw it, and jumps off the side.

Best case scenario, the fall wakes her up and the whole thing is a moot point. And if it doesn’t, she’s been thrown off higher by her own captain. She’s careful not to jump off the cliffside, so it’s just five floors down. It’s basically nothing.

The side of the tower is slanted, letting her slow herself down by skidding on the wall, and she hits the ground running. It’s downhill all the way to the ship.

The boys see her coming, having stayed up to wait for her, and understand enough from her waving to start casting off immediately. When she jumps off the pier and hits the deck, the wind is already catching their sails. They’ll be across the horizon before the marines can get their ships ready.

“Did’ya steal anything good?” Ace asks.

Grinning, Nami drops her bag and shows off its contents. “See for yourself.”

There’s cheering all around, and Nami puts her new loot away with the rest of the treasure they brought with them from Dawn.

“I didn’t actually get what I was looking for, though,” she mentions. “I got interrupted too early.”

“That’s a shame,” Sabo says.

Nami shrugs. “Yeah, but it’s not a surprise. Something always goes wrong. The only thing you can be sure of when making plans is that things aren’t going to work out the way you hope.”

“Then why bother with plans at all?”

Ace adds, “Yeah you should just go in punching. That always works.”

She chuckles. “It doesn’t. Not always. And it’s always better to have a plan than to have nothing at all. If you’re good, you can adapt on the fly and stay in control even when everything’s out of control.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Sabo says.

“Go to bed,” Nami tells him.

“Eh?” Luffy exclaims. “But we can sail at night now! You said!”

The sky above is completely clear, again not a cloud to be seen, and not even moonlight to dim the stars shining above. The wind, as always, is mild but perfect. She has no doubt even the boys could navigate fine under these conditions.

Nami yawns. “I know, but we’ll be sailing all night now. Better for you to take the second watch, when the sky’s closer to what it was when I showed you yesterday. I’ll wake you up when it’s your turn.”

They accept that, more or less.

“Tell a story first!” Luffy insists as they settle down on the blankets.

And she smiles and indulges them.

She skims over most of Little Garden and Drum Island. She’s told those stories before. All she does is tie them together, to introduce Robin as All Sunday, skim through their first fateful meeting with Mr. 2, and make the order of events clear before she moves on to Alabasta.

The events of those few days they spent on Sandy Island are hard to summarize into an engaging story. There was a lot of running back and forth, near misses and arguments that should’ve been cleared up sooner, if only they’d had the time. Nami feels like she missed most of the action. She was always elsewhere when people got into fights, and if she’s honest with herself, she doesn’t remember the progression of events perfectly.

But none of that matters. Not really.

Over these past few weeks, she’s learned how to pick an incident apart for the parts of it that were important. The important things in Alabasta weren’t which exact order they did things in, they were Vivi’s desperate struggle to save everyone, no matter what happened to her, Crocodile’s continued efforts to stop them, and Luffy’s iron determination to cut through the bullshit.

The story Nami tells might not have too much in common with what actually happened, in the end, but it’s true, nonetheless. They fought, they won, despite it all. Nami has the scars still, and she treasures them. They left one crewmate and gained another.

It’s not until the boys are dead asleep that Nami remembers Alabasta was where they met Ace, too. The first time. The only time. She completely skipped over it, telling the story.

She looks down at the sleeping form of the boy who was her captain’s brother once, and compares him in her mind to the terrifying young man she met at that coast. She can see the similarities better now than she could when she first came here. The differences can be accounted for easily by the years between them, and the fact that she only knew Ace, the real one, for a few minutes at the most.

She loves these kids. She hasn’t been good at denying that. They deserved better. Deserved to play and fight and laugh for years and years still.

One of them is dead, not for his many crimes, but for the one he didn’t commit. Another might be, might not. The third is the man she swore her life to. She loves them. She’ll miss them. She’s pretty sure they’re not real.

At least for the most part.

Nami wants to go home, properly home, and the fact that the boat’s heading for Cocoyashi feels darkly appropriate.

Chapter Text

Nami wakes up feeling less tired than she should be.

She woke the boys and went to sleep closer to sunrise than sunset, and after the early morning the night before, she’s been awake too long and slept too little both this night and the last. But she feels fine. She wakes up before noon, and she feels rested, almost calm.

Which is good, when she is this deeply worried.

If the boys notice her state of mind, they don’t say anything. They just drag her into breakfast and/or lunch and then convince her to join them in beating each other up.

She’s not sure they’re aware this is the last leg of their journey. She doesn’t think she’s even told them where they’re going, just that they are, and they haven’t asked. She gets the impression that as long as they’re sailing, they couldn’t care less where or why.

It’s a good state of mind. She can empathise, wishes she could join them.

But when the shadow of another island finally appears on the horizon, it happens after several hours of her dreading it. In one sense, it’s a relief to be here. In another, she wants to turn right back around.

They’re here either way, however. And something is wrong.

That becomes more and more clear the closer they get to the island.

Nami knows what date this is supposed to be, or at least what year and month. It’s two years before Arlong ever arrived. She’s sure of that.

And yet, as they approach, she sees destruction.

Gosa Village is wrecked, torn apart and thrown around, and she knows that look. She remembers how that happened, because that wasn’t even from a decade in her past, it was recent the last time she was home, the last time she saw her island at all. It’s not even remotely correct.

But they get closer still, and she blinks and shakes her head, and… maybe she imagined it? Because Gosa Village is just fine, looking as she remembers it from her childhood, smoke rising from chimneys and people walking around the streets like nothing’s wrong.

Nami glances at her boatmates. Luffy seems momentarily confused before he clearly decides it’s probably nothing, and the other two don’t seem to have noticed at all.

All three of them are so excited they’re nearly jumping off the boat, thrilled to be approaching land again. They wave as they pass by Gosa and continue up the coast, and the villagers wave back.

They could keep going all the way up to the orchard. All the way… home, really. That was the original plan, but Nami feels herself hesitating, now.

When Cocoyashi appears in front of them, she raises the sails, and they drift in to dock at the harbour.

“I know a good café near here,” she says. “Let’s get something to eat.”

There’s general cheering at that announcement, and the boys all but lead the way into the village.

It’s strange. The ground under her feet feels more real here than it has anywhere since they left Dawn. The air feels right, the smells and sounds are in place and proper, barely a thing out of place. The sense of unreality that’s been haunting her for days is distant, here. She’s home. Things are almost alright again.

And yet, they aren’t.

It’s not just Gosa. Everywhere she looks, there’s damage. Things that are missing, that were broken by the fishmen, or taken away to keep safe from them. There are houses empty that shouldn’t be, a tension over the people that is so very familiar, but shouldn’t be.

And then she blinks, and it’s fine. The houses are filled, the people are relaxed. Nothing is wrong yet.

It was always like this, always calm and whole and undamaged. The other village, the memories of that, more recent time superimposed on this one… a crack in the illusion, or another sign she’s going insane.

The café owner doesn’t recognize her, but is as friendly as ever, a familiar face in a familiar place. The same goes for the people passing by on the street. This reality has that going for it, at least. Whatever memories are causing the damage she sees out of the corner of her eye, at least they haven’t brought back the dirty looks she used to get when she was working for Arlong.

She spots Genzo down the road, walking in another direction. She can’t tell at this distance if he has his scars yet. She thinks he might. She thinks he might not. She doesn’t want to see, doesn’t want to walk up to him and speak with the man who might as well be her father, when she doesn’t think he’s real.

The food is a delight, and Nami tries not to seem too distracted as they eat. The boys are certainly happy, don’t seem to have noticed anything wrong.

Not with the village, at least, but Sabo gives her a concerned glance after they’ve been sitting there a while and she hasn’t eaten a thing. Her plate is empty, of course, but not by her own hand. “You alright?” he asks.

“Better than the last time you asked,” she tells him.

“it’s only that you look kinda scared. Do we have to fight something?”

“No!”

“Then should we like, leave?”

She meets his eyes and keeps them for a moment. Either he’s more perceptive than she thought, or she’s worse at hiding it.

Probably the second. Her heart is racing and her shoulders are tense. She’s probably being obvious.

“No,” she says. “No, this is where I was planning to go.”

“Oh.”

“Why?” Ace asks, looking around, clearly unimpressed. “There’s nothing here?”

She has to laugh, because yes, there isn’t. That’s sort of the point.

“There’s something,” she says, then she shakes her head. No, she’s not running. Whatever happens, she’s strong enough to face it. “Come on. Finish eating. There’s someone I want you to meet.”

She pays for the food, and whether the money is real or not she’ll never mind leaving it here, then leads the boys out of the village, up along the path towards her childhood home. It feels right, after they’ve spent so many days showing her around theirs.

It’s a bit of a walk, and she doesn’t take it fast, strolling along and pointing out every mildly interesting thing along the road that she can think of.

The boys aren’t hugely impressed, but they’re having fun, running back and forth to chase bugs or watch the little fish swimming around in the rice paddies. The wind feels right now, like it didn’t when she arrived. It feels like she’s used to, like she’s intimately familiar, the structure of her home island ingrained into her soul. If she doesn’t think too hard about it, this is perfectly normal.

She’s just bringing her children home. What is there to worry about?

Once they’re close enough to the orchard for her to smell it, she picks up the pace. She can’t help it. The tangerine trees smell like every home she’s ever had. Citrus scent is heavy in the air, and she wants a little bit to cry again.

Then they’re there, between the trees, and although this is the most real she’s felt in a long time, it still feels like a dream. One of the good ones, this time. The sun above is bright and warm, bouncing off waxy leaves and ripe fruit, the wind is mild but constant and brings with it the whisper of children laughing.

The sound startles the boys, who look around in confusion, and Nami looks down the next line of tangerine trees to see herself.

It should be more surprising, perhaps, but she was expecting this. It’s right, it should be like this.

Two girls are playing between the trees. A girl maybe eight years of age with bright orange hair and her older sister. When they’re spotted, the older girl stands up and puts her hands on her hips. “Who’re you guys?”

“We’re just visiting,” Nami says, walking closer until they’re standing across from each other. “Hello, Nojiko. I’m Nami, and these are Ace, Sabo and Luffy.”

“No you’re not!” the little girl says. “I’m Nami!”

Nami crouches down to get on eye level with her younger self. She can’t remember having been this adorable, puffing her cheeks out in an angry pout as if it would ever be possible to take her seriously.

“I am too,” she says. “You can be the little one. I’m the big one.”

Little Nami blows a raspberry. “Okay, I guess,” she allows. “At least you’re pretty.”

“She’s not that pretty,” Ace shoots in.

“Oy!”

By now, Luffy has wandered over to the girls and is looking at the old dolls they were playing with. “What’re you playing?”

The girls, instinctively aware of the danger, grab their dolls off the ground immediately, but little Nami still sits down on her heels and starts explaining the somewhat convoluted and nonsensical political situation between her doll Princess Frilly and Nojiko’s doll Princess Queen Nono, a game Nami can vaguely remember them spontaneously making up at some point when she still found joy in playing with dolls.

“You can’t be both a queen and a princess,” Sabo says. “That’s not how that works.”

Nojiko crosses her arms and stares him down. “Oh yeah? Are you the king of princesses or something?”

Nami is pretty sure Nojiko at this age was still half convinced princesses were a fairy tale thing and not a real thing that actually existed.

“No! I just know how they work!”

“Well this is stupid,” Ace says. “It doesn’t matter what she is. Pirates are probably gonna rob her anyway.”

“Like you could!”

Luffy starts laughing. “No, that’s dumb. Pirates save princesses.”

“No they don’t,” little Nami says.

“Yeah they do! Nami said so!”

The children all turn to look at her where she’s still sitting crouched down, hiding a smile behind her hand.

“I suppose it depends on what sort of a pirate you are,” she says. Then she stands up and brushes the wrinkles off her clothes. “I have some boring adult things I need to do. Are you okay playing together here for a while?”

They shrug and nod and tell her yeah.

“Play nice, alright?” she tells the boys. “No fighting girls.”

“Why not?” Luffy asks, and gets punched in the head by Sabo, who calls him an idiot. Though of course he just bounces right back up.

Nami shakes her head and leaves them to it.

Judging by the sounds drifting after her as she walks away between the trees, they’re getting along swimmingly, so she’s not worried. Not about them.

She doesn’t think much as she walks through the orchard and up the road towards the house. This is her home. She knows it like the back of her hand. The walk feels right, the sound of her footsteps on the dirt road, the breeze above, the rustling of leaves, the smell of fresh citrus and something cooking in the air.

She reaches the door and rests her hand on it. Maybe she should knock?

A low humming drifts out through an open window, along with the sound of someone stirring a pot on the stove. The smell of tangerine duck is almost overwhelming this close.

Nami pulls the door open and walks through.

Bellemere looks exactly like Nami remembers her, the same easy, unbreakable smile on her face as is burnt into Nami’s memory.

“I’m home,” Nami says, and her mother turns fully to greet her.

“Nami!” she says, smiling wide. “You sure have grown. How was your trip?”

Like a kick to the chest, it hurts. Like someone has yanked her heart out and left her stumbling. Her voice comes out in a hitch, and tears are already falling from her eyes.

“It was fine,” she says, stepping forward and reaching out almost involuntarily.

Bellemere catches her, wraps her in a warm embrace she hasn’t felt for far too long, and Nami breaks.

She’s hugging back as hard as she can, sobbing on her mother’s shoulder, trying to hold on to something she can’t have, something she shouldn’t have. “I missed you,” she cries between sobs. “I missed you every day. I’m sorry. I just wanted you back.”

The hug is just as warm and strong as she remembers. The smell of her mother feels safe, along with the humming and the hand rubbing her back that allows her to cry, allows her to fall apart, just for a little while.

Once Nami has calmed down enough to be able to let go, Bellemere says, “That’s okay. I’m here now. It’ll be okay.”

Nami sniffs and tries to dry her face, but the tears just keep coming. She has her mother’s hands on her shoulders to keep her steady, and she hasn’t noticed before now how long she’s been wanting that. Except it’s not true, it’s not real. She wants it to be, wishes deeply that it was.

But she doesn’t need it to be.

“I know,” she says. “I know, it’ll be okay. But this isn’t. None of this is. You’re not my mother.”

“Nami,” Bellemere says, not angry, just sad. “I raised you. Isn’t that enough?”

“It’s not that. You didn’t. You’re not. You’re not her.” Nami grabs at Bellemere’s hands to ensure she stays, trying to explain. She gestures towards the window, towards the children playing in the orchard outside. “I’m eight. You shouldn’t recognize me at over twenty.”

“Do you think I wouldn’t recognize my own daughter?”

“You’re exactly like I remember. Exactly like I’ve imagined.” Nami shakes her head, as if she could get rid of the tears still running down her face that way. “I’ve lived longer with you gone than alive. My memory shouldn’t be that perfect. None of this is real.”

“How could you say that?”

“No, listen, listen to me.” Nami tugs on Bellemere’s hands, then lets her go so she can pace. “None of this makes sense if it’s real. It’s… the weather was wrong when I first showed up here, like it wasn’t even there. It got more real the more I thought about it, but it stayed too predictable, almost like it changed from day to day because I expected it to. People we’ve met, strangers, are exaggerated or apathetic. Aside from this place and most of Dawn, the towns feel empty and are weirdly laid out. It’s like they’re the ideas of towns, surface expectations, not anything real. And this place feels real, but it can’t even stay in one shape!”

She sits down heavily in a chair, and after a long few seconds, Bellemere sits down across from her.

“It’s a dream,” Nami says. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. Except… the thing I kept running into with that idea was where I showed up. If I was dreaming of the past, in a way that was meant to convince me it was real, I’d end up here, not in some random other place. And then I figured it out.”

“Figured what out?”

Nami looks up, wipes her eyes again. “It’s a dream,” she says. “It’s just not my dream.”

“…You might have to explain that one,” Bellemere says.

She takes a deep breath. “I fell into his childhood. It only makes sense. Dawn Island felt real because he grew up there. He knows that place as well as I do this, so it had to be accurate. But the wind didn’t. He doesn’t notice the weather the way I do, so there was no need to keep it perfectly accurate for his sake. It adjusted to me, but slowly and with a delay.

“The sailing is entirely wrong, for the obvious reason that even after all this time, he has no concept of what it takes to sail from one island to another, only that if I’m there, we end up in the right place. And I’m here, so we always ended up in the right place, even if the intervening time didn’t make sense at all.

“And Orange Town. It felt more real than Redbank or Point Blanche because it was a place we’d both been, but it didn’t make sense, still. It was easier to build something from our memories than to invent a whole previous town from scratch, and by the time I noticed, it wasn’t going to adjust for me. I’ve never seen the old town either. And Cocoyashi? This island? He’s only ever seen it after Arlong, but I know what it’s supposed to look like, and when I note that, it changes to match my memories, and it’s… it’s blatant.

“I feel better when I’m closer to him because the world genuinely is more solid close to him. It's built for him. If I get too far away from him, I might fall out of the dream altogether.”

“Are you planning to?” Bellemere asks.

“What?”

“Leaving? Getting away from him?”

“What? No.” Nami shakes her head. “Absolutely not. For so many reasons. There’s no guarantee it’d even work, for one. Physical distance only matters so much, in a dream, and if it doesn’t work it’ll just suck. And even if it does…” She looks out the window again. The kids have somehow ended up in the front yard, gathered around something or other on the ground that she can’t make out. “That’s my captain out there. He might not know it himself, but he is, so I’m sticking by his side no matter what.”

Bellemere is smiling, when Nami looks back from the window. Wistful but genuine. “You’ve really grown up, haven’t you?”

“I have,” Nami agrees. “You’ve stopped fighting me, on whether or not this is a dream.”

“I won’t lie to you. I can’t. I… suppose I wouldn’t be a good imitation if I tried too hard to convince you of something you know is wrong.”

“Yeah.” Nami’s hands, folded over each other on the table, are suddenly much more interesting to look at than the woman across from her. “I think that might be why you recognized me too, even if it doesn’t make sense. I know you shouldn’t, but I’m not really capable of imagining a version of you that doesn’t.”

“What’s your plan now?”

She curls her hands into fists. “I’m waking us both up. That will probably be easier now that I… now that I know for sure. I just have to remind him who he is, first.”

“I don’t suppose I could convince you to stay?”

Nami looks back up at the dream of her mother. “There is nothing here but memories. Sweet ones. Ones I appreciate having seen. But still only memories.”

Bellemere smiles, and nods, and reaches out for Nami’s hands. “Then, bring this with you when you leave. I love you deeply, and I am so proud of you. This piece of me that you remember is real, and I know. I could never have asked for a better daughter.”

---

Nami isn’t crying anymore when she leaves the house. There’s a calm over her, a certainty in her footsteps she hasn’t felt in far too long.

The kids look up at her curiously when she approaches them. “Nami?”

“Luffy,” she says, singling him out. “Can you come with me? I need to talk to you.”

“Eh? But we were playing!”

She opens her mouth to say they can play later, but… that would be a lie, wouldn’t it?

Looking down at these children who never met, four of whom are hardened, grown adults and the fifth of whom is dead, playing for once in the dirt like the children they are, what she says is, “Alright, you can keep playing for a bit longer, but I do need to talk to you, so could you come meet me up that road afterwards?” She points to show him the road she means.

He nods seriously and goes back to playing. There seems to be some sort of intricate battle map drawn into the dirt, with the dolls sitting on it as… she’s guessing markers of some sort.

She leaves them to it and goes on ahead.

They’ve been in the dream for roughly a month, now. A little while longer won’t make much of a difference. Hell, if he forgets himself and they take another day, it won’t be that bad. There’s no rush at this point.

But she doesn’t have to wait too long before he comes running up the road after her.

“You’re done playing?”

“Yeah. What’d you want?”

“Come on, I’ll show you,” she says, and continues up the road.

“Eeeeh, why can’t you just say it?” he complains, but he follows even so.

The walk up to the cliff isn’t long, heading vaguely for the village, but taking a left onto a path up towards the sea. She doesn’t say anything on the way, just walks, feeling the ocean wind playing with her hair.

They reach the end of the path to see a single grave framed by the sky and the sea.

Nami sits down in front of it without a word.

Luffy looks confused, but he sits down next to her anyway. To his credit, it takes him almost half a minute before he gets too antsy and asks, “So who died?”

“My mother.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“It’s alright,” Nami says. “She’s not dead here. I met her just down there, in the house. She’s fine. She’s just not my mother.”

Luffy looks like a giant question mark.

“You didn’t know it was hers, so you didn’t know it shouldn’t be here, and I haven’t been thinking about this place, on purpose, so it couldn’t adjust for me.”

“Ah, it’s a mystery grave,” Luffy says.

“This has been fun,” Nami says. “But we have to go. We have a different adventure to get back to, you and I.”

“Eh? What sort of adventure?”

“The actual one, where you’re my pirate captain and I make sure you don’t die at sea. We have a crew waiting for us, Luffy. We can’t sit around here.”

He blinks at her a few times. “Is this a story again?”

“I’m sorry, no story this time. Zoro will get so annoyed with us if we get lost in a dream.”

“You don’t make any sense,” he complains, bouncing like he wants to leave, looking off into the distance.

She sighs and grits her teeth. She has one more thing she can try, but she was hoping not to have to resort to it.

“It’s been fun, hanging out together all four of us. You and me and Ace and Sabo.”

“Yeah!” he agrees.

“But Ace died, remember?”

Luffy freezes.

He looks at her, eyes wide and uncomprehending, and then he slowly looks down at his hands.

And for a moment, the world falls to pieces.

The ground under her is still solid, and she holds on for dear life as everything else disintegrates. The sky above tears apart to burning red, and the cliff isn’t there anymore.

Luffy’s hands are covered in blood, and around them is a battlefield frozen in a moment of chaos, faceless warriors ripping into each other in a solid mass of violence and death. The air is ice-cold and she is fever-hot. There’s screaming and raging and crying, the clash of swords and the cracks of gunshots, and the wind smells sharply of blood and burnt flesh, nearly choking her.

And then they’re back.

The blood is gone. Bellemere’s grave is gone as well. There’s only the grass under them and the sea ahead, the light ocean wind playing with her hair.

“Oh,” Luffy says, looking up from his hands again. “Right. He did.”

Nami has to catch her breath, a hand on her chest over her racing heart, trying to swallow away an instantly dry throat.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

“S’alright.”

He’s still and quiet in a way he should never be, still holding his hands out in front of him, but looking away.

“I think,” she tries, then stops and tries again. “Do you remember the scarf bastard?”

He makes a disgusted face that makes it very clear he does, which at least shakes him out of the unnatural stillness. “I’m gonna kick his ass when I catch him.”

“Get in line. But do you remember if he used some sort of ability on you?”

“Uuuuuuh.” He scratches his head as if he’s trying very hard to think back. “I dunno. I don’t remember anything after I went into that cave.”

“Same as me then. This is what I think.” She turns so she sits facing him. “I think you’re dreaming. I think this is some sort of dream he’s put you in, and I think I got dragged in after you.”

“Eh?” He says, and then he says, “Oh!”

“It makes sense, right?”

“Yeah!”

Thank goodness. “So, we need you to wake up. It’s your dream. I can only barely affect it, but you’ve been accidentally creating evil factories and random treasure rooms because you figure that has to exist on an adventure. Nothing’s going to stop here unless you wake up.”

He nods, and stands up, having been sitting down for much longer than he can usually tolerate.

Nami closes her eyes for a moment and ignores him wandering around. She isn’t alone anymore, and it’s a weight off her shoulders.

Another weight falls when she hears, “Nami?” in Luffy’s voice, and he doesn’t sound like he’s seven. He sounds like himself. Like the man she’s known and loved and been deeply annoyed by for years.

She turns to look at him and it’s him, grown up and himself, all his scars in place and with fists that have punched out gods.

And then he says, “I don’t know how to wake up.”

Chapter Text

They walk back down towards the house together, Luffy a little ahead, Nami a little behind.

She’ll admit she’d been hoping Luffy could fix things, once he remembered. Even now, it feels less impossible when he’s here to help, but she has to think, to put together a new strategy.

They reach the house with the children still playing in the front yard, and slow down.

None of the children look up, even when they get close. It’s like they’re invisible, just observers now, walking around in a world that has stopped pretending to be real. Bizarrely, it feels less dissonant.

Luffy looks down at the miniature versions of his brothers playing with a furrow in his brow.

“Were they really like that?” Nami asks.

“Yeah,” he says.

She looks down at the kids, at a version of herself who’s never had to watch her mother be shot, who’s never been locked up and forced to work, who never will.

“Do you ever wish it could’ve gone differently?”

“It didn’t,” he says.

“It didn’t,” she agrees.

The kids laugh. The sound is distant and muted. Nojiko stands up and waves her arms, shouting something it’s hard to make out. It’s a reality that could have been, maybe should have been. But it isn’t. Dwelling on it won’t help.

Luffy closes his eyes like he’s pained, and says, “Stop.”

The kids are gone. Bellemere is no longer standing at the stove inside the house. It’s just the two of them on the island, now.

“Let’s go somewhere else,” Nami says.

“Yeah,” Luffy says, and starts walking back towards the village where they left their boat.

Nami doesn’t particularly want to see the village now, fake and entirely empty, she just wants to go… and a thought hits her, and she grabs Luffy’s hand to stop him.

“Wait, I have a better idea.”

“Eh?”

“Close your eyes,” she says, and closes her own too. “It’s a dream. It’s your dream. We don’t need the boat, let’s just go. Wherever you want. All you have to do is think it.”

He doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t keep moving either, just stands still for a few seconds.

The wind doesn’t change, but the sound hits all at once, and Nami opens her eyes to find herself in the middle of Sabaody Park, Ferris wheel spinning, food stands all around, and sparse but loud crowds walking around. The surroundings seem almost to fade in, starting out hard to focus on before they’re properly there. The smell of the market comes in a moment later, and then, haltingly, the wind shifts until it’s right.

“Whoa! Cool!” Luffy says, instantly distracted from everything else. Then he zeroes in on a food stand. “Oh, I’m hungry.”

Nami is pretty hungry too, come to think of it, so she lets him drag her off to buy something to eat.

She says ‘buy’, but they don’t pay for it. There’s no one there who’s real enough to pay, and the guy at the stall doesn’t notice them beyond handing them food they didn’t have to ask for. The dream world is practical, if nothing else.

They settle down at a nearby table.

The food is incredible, some of the best she’s ever tasted, which she figures is only fair if they’re to be stuck in a dream. In hindsight, the unrealistically good booze on Dawn Island makes more sense now.

“We need to find a way out of here,” she says once she’s finished.

Luffy makes an annoyed face. “Usually if it’s a dream I don’t want, I just decide to wake up, but it’s not working.”

“I suspected as much. This isn’t a normal dream, it’s some sort of ability-powered illusion.” She sighs. “Nothing around us is real. Realistically, nothing we find here is going to help us. We need a way to fight the scarf bastard directly.”

“Is he real here?”

“Fuck knows. Probably not.” She sighs again, more frustrated this time. She knows it can’t actually be impossible, or at least she refuses to believe it is, but she doesn’t know where to start. They’re essentially trapped, and anyone who could help them is outside.

The crew could probably do something, but after a month, Nami’s not going to bet on them. What she really needs is another voice of reason to bounce ideas off of.

And just as she thinks that, someone sits down at the table with them.

“Rayleigh!” Luffy shouts.

And it is, except it isn’t, of course. He sits down like he expected them to be here, like he has agreed to meet them, and they just forgot. He looks like the real one, feels like the real one. In any other situation, he’d be exactly who she’d want to see if she were trapped.

She has to catch herself from relaxing. It’s too easy to believe he’ll know how to fix things.

“…You’re not real,” she says.

Not-Rayleigh laughs. “I’m not, but that doesn’t mean I can’t help, does it?”

“You’re made out of our memories of you,” she argues. “You don’t know anything we don’t. I’m not sure how you could help.”

Luffy grimaces. “Uuuuhrg. This is confusing.”

Not-Rayleigh just smiles at her, annoyingly confident for someone who just admitted to being an illusion. “It’s not about telling you anything you don’t know. Sometimes you just need to put what you do know in perspective. It’s not always necessary to know how to answer every question, as long as you know the right questions to ask.”

Luffy’s next “Urgh” sounds less like confusion and more like old frustration.

“Does he talk like this often?” Nami guesses, feeling a little odd about talking about Rayleigh in front of not-Rayleigh’s face, but not-Rayleigh just chuckles.

“All the time!” Luffy says, gesturing in the air. “It’s all, ‘You know how to do this already, all you have to do is figure out how to look at it,’ and stuff like that.”

“And you did,” not-Rayleigh says.

Nami cuts in. No matter how curious she is about what Luffy’s been up to when he wasn’t with them, there are more important matters at hand. “You’re saying we already know how to get out of here?”

“Maybe I am, maybe I’m not. All that exists here comes from the two of you. If there is a way out, you’ll have to find it here.”

“And what if there is no way out?”

“Nami! Of course there is!” Luffy scowls, unwilling to entertain even the hypothetical.

Not-Rayleigh just shakes his head with that same, confident smile. “There is always a way. Your willpower is the most powerful thing you have, and you still have that, as illusory as this place may be. Don’t discount it.”

“I’m not sure haki would help here, even if I could use it.”

“Anyone can. But no, that’s not what I’m talking about. It’s much simpler than that. Just don’t give up. You have an enemy. You can reach him. All you have to figure out is how.” He sits back, hands out to present his argument. He really shouldn’t be as convincing as he is.

“Everyone’s got weaknesses,” Luffy adds, like that’s self-evident.

Not-Rayleigh gets up and leaves as quickly as he came, leaving her to look at the crowd he disappears into as Luffy devours a second helping of food he got from somewhere irrelevant.

“Weaknesses,” she repeats.

“There’s always something they can’t do,” Luffy says.

Her mind is racing. It seems impossible. They’re in an entire constructed world. While it’s not perfect, it’s about as whole as it can get, but there has to be something…

“Books!” she shouts, standing up in a hurry.

“What?”

“Wait here, I’ll be right back!”

She runs off. There’s a bookshop on this island. She knows there is, she’s shopped there before, and she remembers exactly where it is, so the dream can’t hide it from her in time. And indeed, it’s exactly where she expects it to be, shelves lined with books when she comes in. Even on its own it’s a delight to see after so long deprived of it.

Only when she gets closer does she read the titles on the spines.

Slug Husbandry for Beginners.

Dust Bunnies of the World.

A Complete Genealogy of Longhair Cats.

Of course. The same kind of inane nonsense she would never in a million years want to read, but this time, she smiles at the sight. Unreadable they might be in spirit. In practice they’re still books.

After a little deliberation, she grabs the dust bunnies one. Something that out-there has to have at least a couple interesting words in it.

She runs back to Luffy and slams it down on the table.

“The fact that I couldn’t find anything written down didn’t make sense to begin with, but the more I think about it, the more it fits.” She sits herself down, still grinning. “You wouldn’t know. I guess you don’t read too many books in your dreams?”

He looks at her like she’s insane, which is fair enough.

“Yeah I don’t either!” she says. “No one does. Dreams can have a ton of nonsense in them, but they’re usually not that complex in the details, more about the way things feel than the way they actually look, but writing has to be correct, or it just isn’t writing. So as a rule, no one can read in dreams. Any book just…” She opens the book, and the writing is smudged, like the printing was all wrong. She can make out words when she looks right at them, but none of them are right. “…looks like this.”

Luffy tilts his head in confusion. “What’s that mean?”

Nami is too excited to sit still. She stands up again and leans forward on the table. “So this isn’t a normal dream, right? It’s being made by someone. All of this is way more complex than my dreams ever get, and it feels wrong, but it’s only small things. But he still can’t do writing. There’s a limit to how complicated stuff he can do! He’s probably got some sort of energy limit! We could even see it when we came here! The place is too complicated, and he couldn’t keep up. Going to a whole new place all at once was just too much! It took him a minute to get the environment right!”

“Oh!” And Luffy’s got it, jumping up and slamming his hands on the table as well. “So we gotta go a ton of cool places!”

“Hey Luffy,” Nami says, and she’s smiling wide enough it hurts. “This is a dream. I bet you can swim here.”

His jaw drops from glee, and then he grabs her arm and they’re running through now deserted streets towards the sea, never far away on Sabaody’s small islands. They jump without hesitation.

For a moment after they hit the water, Nami is worried she was wrong, that he’s going to sink even here. But then his head breaches the surface beside her, and he laughs.

“Wohoo! I can swim!”

“Think you can breathe underwater too?” Nami asks, and they both dive.

“Yeah!” he says a moment later.

Nami, unfortunately, discovers she can’t and she has to surface again. Annoying, but of course, it’s not her dream.

She scowls at the water for a few moments before she thinks of something else. She might not be able to change the dream quickly or efficiently, but she might be able to change herself, the only part of this that definitely exists more to her than to him.

A moment later, she has a fish tail where her legs used to be, and can breathe underwater just fine.

Luffy laughs when she comes back down. “Sanji’s gonna be happy.”

“Too happy. Don’t you dare tell him.”

“Hey, let’s swim to Fishman Island!”

She races off ahead of him in place of answering.

The descent down from Sabaody is a trip neither of them is likely to forget. It’s glorious, already dreamlike, rays of light diffusing down from above as massive creatures move in the dark. Swimming down as a mermaid is even more incredible than watching from the ship was, and she enjoys every second of the trip. Sea monsters can’t hurt them now. Nothing can even touch them. The world is theirs.

The bubble of Fishman Island appears ahead of them, a shining pearl, impossibly sunlit in a dark abyss. There’s a haze around it that slowly clears as they get closer, making it hard to make out details. They circle it until it’s crystal clear, then Luffy says, “Cool! Where do you wanna go now?”

“Did I ever tell you about Weatheria?” Nami says, because pulling from her memories has been slower this far, so going to somewhere only she has been seems like a good way to fuck the scarf bastard over.

“Oh yeah!” Luffy says, because she did, one of those nights in the jungle.

“Take us up, and I’ll show you!”

A giant fish bursts out of the dark, and Luffy grabs hold of it with one stretchy arm and Nami with the other, and they’re dragged upwards at a breakneck speed.

The fish breaches the surface and unfurls into a giant bird, continuing up towards the clouds with flaps of massive wings.

Nami shakes her fish tail off and grows wings for herself, catching the wind and flying ahead, showing the way. There is no way to show, of course. This is nowhere, is nothing, but Luffy knows where they’re going, and she’s leading the way, so a minute later, Weatheria shows up in front of them, stubbornly solid. It’s there, shining and bubbly and with the artificial rainbow hanging behind it like a halo, just as she remembers it.

“Whoa, cool!” Luffy jumps up and down on the clouds as they land. “This is where you were?”

“It was, yes.” She turns her back on the island, not wanting to see any more dream versions of people she knows, and peeks down over the edge, new wings comfortable and folded behind her. “Where do you want to go next?”

“Ehh, I’m still hungry. Let’s go to Big Mom’s place! I want cake!”

Nami grabs him and jumps, opening her wings to glide them both down again towards the surface.

“Right below us!” she says, even though it wasn’t, because she’s not going to give the dream the time it needs to adjust.

Luffy makes it so it is, and the ground is still knitting itself together as they land. There are no enemies to meet them, no people on the streets. They haven’t been created yet, and they’re not going to get the time to.

Cake is easy to find. Luffy has gotten the hang of making things exist. All they have to do is turn around to find it. And then they’re off again.

They don’t give the dream time to settle, they run or jump or fly or just go from place to place as fast as they can come up with them. From Tottoland to Alabasta to Water 7 to Little Garden, and it gets shakier and shakier around them. The ground is flat and blurry whenever they land, and it takes longer each time before it manages to settle into itself. Sounds stop making sense, stop fitting the places they are, the silence cutting in more and more often.

Nami keeps her wings, but she changes them to suit her needs. Sparrow wings to keep out of the way, eagle wings to rise on, seagull wings to ride the breeze and magpie wings to fit her. She can be anything. They can go anywhere.

They find the waver and set out onto the open ocean from the feet of Zou, which disappears into nothing behind them, and Luffy shouts, “Watch this!” and suddenly the sea is boiling with massive sea kings. One rises up just under them, and Nami doesn’t panic, there’s no reason to panic, she just pushes the gas and rides up its neck at a speed, jumping off its head to loop around a coil of the serpentine body of another. She’s yelling, Luffy is whooping and laughing. It’s a roller coaster that could only ever exist in a dream, chaotic and impossible.

And then it stops.

The sea kings are gone. They’re standing still on a mirror-surface sea. Their reflections and the sunless blue sky are the only things to be seen.

Nami’s wings are gone. Her clothes are back to what they were when she woke up in the woods.

She steps off the waver and onto perfectly flat ground, a sea that doesn’t give and doesn’t ripple, only reflects her image back to her. When she turns around, the waver is gone too.

“Ehh, was that it?” Luffy asks.

“Getting tired, are you, scarf bastard?” Nami asks into the air. There is no answer.

Luffy looks around, and for a moment as he tries to move them, there’s the impression of trees, shadow and light, the blurry darkness of the jungle, but then it’s gone and they’re back on that perfectly blank sea.

“What now?” he asks.

“Seems like he’s run out of energy. He can’t make anything else up.” A thought hits her. It might not even work, but trying never hurts. With a possibly evil smirk, she says, “Hey Luffy, remember that cave we tried to fight the scarf bastard in? Take us there.”

“Alright,” he says, and for the last time, they go.

It’s dark.

Not quite pitch black, but dark enough to seem that way after the blank sea. There’s a lot of noise coming from somewhere, sounds of fighting, unfamiliar and deeply familiar voices shouting, swords clashing and guns firing, but there’s no way to tell where it’s coming from.

After a few seconds, she can see enough to tell where they are, and the first thing she sees is herself.

They’re in a small room, more of an alcove, with rough stone walls and a few pieces of discarded mining equipment. On the ground are two unconscious figures. Luffy and herself, slumped on top of each other.

But she and Luffy are also standing upright, wide awake.

“It worked!” she whispers. “He can’t make up anything new, so when we tried to go to where he is in real life, he’s just showing us what’s actually happening as he sees it!”

Luffy stoops down and tries to shake them awake, but of course nothing happens.

She shakes her head. “No, we’re still in the dream, we’re just seeing a… a picture of reality. It won’t be that easy. But listen! The crew came to rescue us! We just have to get out there to see what’s going on.”

That shouldn’t be too hard, but as she looks around, she can’t see any exits of any kind. It’s as if this place is a little bubble of air entirely covered in rock, but that doesn’t make sense. Their sleeping bodies ended up here somehow.

She’s about to start testing walls when Luffy winds up a punch.

It’s funny to watch. In the dark, she can almost feel it more than she can see it. She can see him pulling his fist back, yes, but she can feel the force he’s coating it with, can feel it covering his skin until it almost shines, or does some strange opposite of shining.

It’s not like he needs haki to punch through a wall, really. At this point it’s probably just instinct to use it either way.

He finishes his wind-up and hits the wall with all his strength.

And stumbles right through it.

Confused, she reaches out a hand, and her fingers pass right through the wall as well, as if it isn’t even there. It’s an illusion, of course. Not even a solid one. Shaking her head with a chuckle, she steps through after him.

The abandoned mine she steps into is in chaos. The ground and walls are all but completely hidden behind illusory environment, grass and trees and sand straight out of their frantic adventure through the dream, all matter of creatures and people fighting a small group of attackers, but the attackers are their crew, so it’s barely an even match. She can’t see the scarf bastard anywhere.

“Guys!” Luffy yells at them as he picks himself off the ground. “Oy! Over here!”

Nami runs up to him. “I told you! It’s a dream! This is just something we’re being shown, we’re not actually here. We’re sleeping behind that fake wall. They can’t see us.”

Luffy growls in annoyance to match her own and looks around the mess of illusions, probably trying to catch a glimpse of their enemy. Then he narrows his eyes, and a burst of conqueror’s haki washes through the room.

Nami has felt this many times before, but she’s never known how to describe it. Conqueror’s haki always seems to strip away pretence and bluster, shake delusions, reduce things to their fundamental parts. It’s an overwhelming force, but it’s something truer than physical, deeper than touch. It knows you. It forces you to know yourself.

For an instant, the illusions all flicker, and the crew turns as one to look at them.

---

Zoro tries not to growl, biting down hard on Wado’s hilt. He has to move, has to reach his opponent, but every swing of his swords is met by another blade.

She looks like Tashigi, but he knows she is Kuina, and she isn’t real, but that doesn’t help.

He’s lost track of the man they’re trying to fight between the illusions he’s flooding the cave with. The landscape is a quilt of nonsense, only some of which is solid, and the battlefield is flooded with beasts and animals, all appearing and disappearing just as fast. They fade the moment they’re struck, but they’re real enough to get in the way.

Whenever anyone gets close enough to where they have to assume the man is hiding, he gets out the big guns and conjures up stronger and more personal illusions, dragged right out of their memories.

In a corner, Chopper is facing down a whole herd of scarily large reindeer. Robin is still dispatching shadowy figures approaching her from all sides. Sanji dealt with a handful of neon-coloured copies of himself with annoying speed, but is now tied down trying to protect Usopp, who is still dazed after a gigantic version of Sogeking knocked him out with a ten ton hammer.

No one else is in sight and they still haven’t found Luffy or Nami.

Dammit, dammit, dammit.

Zoro lunges in another attack, but it’s no use. Kuina is taken from his memories of her, and he never could beat her.

This version of her is no child. She’s what he imagines she would be. Stronger than Mihawk, faster than anyone, outmanoeuvring him at every turn, smugly gleaming with superiority she’s earned. It’s like beating on a steel wall with a feather duster, except he could probably manage that.

It’s useless. He didn’t win once as a child, and he won’t now…

He’s an idiot.

“Fine,” he says, taking a step back and lowering his swords. “Fine. You win again.”

The illusory Kuina stops for a second, then lowers her own. “Of course. What did you expect?”

He punches her in the face.

He never did that as a child.

Of course he didn’t. It’s outside the fight, which he just conceded. It’s underhanded, it’s not even swordplay. It’s just stupid. There was no point. He didn’t, he never would have, and this never happened.

The illusion fades away.

Zoro raises his swords again and moves on. He has to find the enemy before anyone gets overwhelmed. Taking that man out stops the fight either way, but he has to find him first. Haki doesn’t work. The man has somehow spread his presence throughout the entire cavern.

He has just about resolved to simply cut every single illusion in half when conqueror’s haki crashes through the room.

Every illusion flickers, disappearing for an instant, and he spots the enemy floating high up by the ceiling. More importantly, he spots Luffy.

Luffy and Nami both, standing to the side of the room like they’d been there all along, looking no worse for the wear than they did yesterday. They’re fine, they’re alive, they’re here. They’re alright.

Nami immediately starts waving her arms and shouting, pointing back towards the wall they’re standing by. “HEY! We’re over here! This wall isn’t real and we’re knocked out behind it! Help! Wait, Luffy, what’re you…” Luffy of course, upon spotting the enemy, is running in for a punch. “WAIT, LUFFY—”

And they’re both gone again, like they were never there.

---

“—DON’T!”

Between one word and the next, the world is a black void.

Not the mirror sea this time, there’s nothing. There’s enough of an idea of a ground that they can stand, but everything else is black nothing. It’s not even dark. She can see herself and Luffy perfectly fine.

Luffy looks down at his fist like he’s confused it didn’t hit anything.

She bonks him on the head. “Idiot. I told you we were still in the dream. Of course he wouldn’t let you punch him.”

“Eh? He was right there though.”

She sits down with a huff. “He wasn’t. We’re still lying on the floor in that secret room, and he’s still awake, but whatever.” She stretches, feeling about as relaxed as she can, in this situation. “The crew’s there, they know where we are now. They’ll wake us up soon enough.”

Luffy drops down beside her with a huff of his own. “I’m gonna send that guy flying.”

“I want a go at him myself first, thank you very much,” she says. And then she looks at Luffy and asks, “Actually, could you do something for me, when we wake up?”

“Eh? What?”

She explains.

He’s not hard to convince.

It feels like it takes a very long time before anything happens. Maybe it’s the dark. Nothing seems to happen here. Time doesn’t seem to pass. It’s just the two of them in an empty void that is no longer trying to listen to them.

How long could it possibly take anyone to get to them? A minute? Ten? It feels like an hour has passed, and maybe they’re not as easy to wake up from the outside as she had hoped.

But then something changes. A sudden dizziness, distant voices, a sharp smell. She tries to stand up, but she’s not sure if she’s sitting or…

“Augh,” she says, trying to get away from the smelling salts being held under her nose. “Whua…?”

“Nami!” Suddenly she has her arms full of Chopper. “How are you feeling?”

She shakes her head, and the dizziness goes away on its own, followed by a fading sense of vertigo as she sits up in the same dark alcove she was in before, now lit by a match held in Sanji’s hand. Beside her, a bloodied Usopp is waking Luffy up the same way she was just yanked back to wakefulness. The sounds of battle are still going beyond the fake wall.

“I’m great. Sweet. Fantastic,” she says, scrabbling for her Clima-Tact. “Luffy?”

“A-ah,” he agrees, shaking off his own disorientation and getting on his feet. His eyes are on the wall, and he’s just about to jump through it.

She tosses him a weather egg, and he goes.

Her legs are still unsteady, but she follows as fast as she can, and gets through the fake wall just in time to see him blast away the illusions and grab the scarf bastard with one stretched arm, dragging him close. With the other, he holds up the egg.

“This!” Nami shouts, raising her lightning-charged weapon over her head. “Is for all the gold that wasn’t real!”

The scarf bastard fries.

Every illusion disappears, leaving the cave strangely bare. Nami blinks afterimages out of her eyes as she looks around at her crew. They’re all here, every single one of them, a little beat up but fine, and she’s missed them so much.

Usopp says, “We were looking for you all day, and you were just asleep all that time?”

“We weren’t just…” Nami says before his words get through her mind. “All day? How long have we been asleep!?”

“Just about twenty-two hours, by my estimate,” Robin says.

“Eh!?” Luffy sounds just as shocked as Nami feels.

They exchange a bewildered look. They’ve lost a day. Less than, even. Weeks in the jungle, days out at sea, less than a day lost in the waking world.

Robin understands immediately, of course. “Subjectively, how long was it for you?”

“…We were stuck in that dream for at least a month.”

“What?” Usopp says.

Then Sanji shouts at Luffy, “You mean you spent a whole month alone with Nami!?”

“Shut up,” Nami says, smacking her hand over his face. “He was seven for most of that. We were stuck in his childhood for some reason.”

“What does that even mean?”

“But you’re okay, right?” Chopper asks.

Nami looks at Luffy. He looks fine. The tips of his clothes a little bit singed from being point blank to a lightning strike, but entirely unharmed.

“I’m hungry,” he complains.

Nami’s stomach rumbles just as he says it.

“Hungry and tired,” she agrees. “We’ve both been through a lot of bullshit without getting any real food or even rest, but I think we’re both fine.”

“Let’s go back to the ship,” Luffy says.

“Please,” she adds.

They leave the cave as a group.

The first thing Nami notices as she feels the wind on her face is that she was wrong. Even at its best, the dream wasn’t a particularly good imitation of reality. Closer to how things feel than how they are. But of course, dreams always feel more real when you’re in them.

Here, now, the world is as it should be. Her crew is around her, radiating heat and safety. The wind is right, the chill in the air catches her off guard because it's there on its own, not because she expected it to be. It’s early evening, and the island under her feet exists without her input.

Already the dream is starting to fade. She doesn’t think she’ll forget it, but parts of it are going to fade into old memory. Like something she did once in a past long gone.

“Say, Luffy,” she says. “Did your cousin actually sleep with Shanks?”

“Huh!?” comes from at least one crewmember.

“What? Oh, Makino,” Luffy says, looking up into the sky. “I dunno. Probably.”

“You don’t know?”

He laughs. “I was a kid. I wasn’t looking. Makes sense if she did, though.”

“What the hell happened in that dream?” Usopp asks.

And Nami grins at him, slinging an arm over his shoulders just to bask in the reality of him. “Oh, do I have a story to tell you…”

Chapter Text

Restlessness draws Nami awake early in the morning, and she’s out of bed and grabbing her Clima-Tact before she can really think about it.

It’s annoying, she thinks as she makes her way up to the deck. It was less than a day, but she spent a month training every morning, and now she’s waking up expecting it. She’s lost any dreamt-up muscle she might’ve gained, so she hasn’t even gotten anything good out of it.

The sun’s just risen, still low in the sky, but there are almost no clouds and the wind is pleasantly mild. Proper and definitely real, but mild. It’s a beautiful morning.

Luffy is already up and sitting on the figurehead, as usual.

Nami steps onto the grass. “Luffy,” she calls out to draw his attention. “You wanna fight?”

This is probably a bad idea, but the Clima-Tact is already extended into a proper staff in her hand, and her newly installed habits are insisting it’s the right thing to do.

Somewhere behind her comes a bang, probably from Sanji smacking his head on a doorframe in surprise.

Luffy isn’t surprised, though. He doesn’t make it weird. He just looks at her and grins, hops down to meet her on the deck. “Sure!” he says, raising his fists in a loose fighting stance.

“Not too seriously, alright?” she says, raising her staff to match him. “You’re not seven now. You’d just kill me.”

“Yeah I know,” he laughs. “Come on.”

She attacks.

She loses instantly, of course. He really doesn’t hit her hard, doesn’t hit her at all, but he brushes her staff aside easily and swipes her legs out from under her like it’s nothing. Maybe this is payback from all the times she did the same to him in the dream. But no. It’s just that this is as easy as he can go on people. She gets up and tries again.

It’s frustrating as hell, but she doesn’t really consider stopping. Her hands starting to hurt from the impacts just feels normal.

They’re not alone on the deck anymore. The other awake members of the crew have come up to see what’s going on and are watching from a distance. Every time Nami ends up on her back, she gets a glimpse of Sanji with a death grip on the railing, trying not to jump in to help her somehow. He knows better than to get in the way of something she asked for, but it’s rough on him. Zoro, Usopp and Robin are also there watching, less distressed and with various levels of curiosity.

Nami attacks again. The most frustrating part is that she does get hits in, at least one each time, it just doesn’t do anything. Even if she was strong enough, blunt force attacks just don’t work on Luffy, so it’s pointless.

He knocks her back and she takes a moment to regain her balance, to step back and take a deep breath.

Anyone can.

She can feel the weight of her staff in her hands, so much more real than it was in the dream. She can’t believe it ever fooled her. This is right, this is real.

She closes her eyes and takes another breath. She can feel the power running through her stance, from her feet on the grass through her spine to her hands, all the way through the tip of her staff. All her force is here, brought to bear in every swing, her staff an extension of her arm, of herself.

When she opens her eyes, the Clima-Tact shines with a coating of power.

When her next attack lands, it hurts.

Of course, she knows it hurts him because it surprises him, and his reaction to the surprise is to knock her on her ass even faster than before, which makes her lose focus and the coating blinks away like it was never there.

But it was, and she knows it. And when she gets back up again, it’s easier. A thought brings it back.

Luffy is laughing, grinning at her, and when he sees her stand up, he raises his fists and beckons her. “Again?”

She wraps haki around her weapon and matches him.

“Again.”