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It only takes a day or two for Zoro to notice—which he’s almost proud of, really, given his own observational track record. And yet, for forty-eight hours his whole world has been narrowed down to one person, the turning point for the rest of his life sitting four feet from him in the bottom of their dinghy; he’d be ashamed if he didn’t. By the time they spot dry land on the horizon and paddle toward it with the ferocity of dying men, he’s already halfway to attuning himself to the rhythms and motions of his new Captain—so when Luffy bursts through the door of a bar he’s found without even looking, Zoro notices but assumes (at first) he’s just familiar with the area. Luffy doesn’t spare a glance at the chalkboard sign and demands meat! without regard for the written selection.
(The waitress titters, charmed, and Luffy grins, and it’s all Zoro can do not to roll his eyes at how smoothly he’s managed to get what he wants without even trying.)
And yet, when they’ve counted out their coins (because even though they’re pirates, criminals, Luffy insists they pay for their food—they’d been nice people, he says, and Zoro doesn’t question it) and Zoro asks, Luffy laughs and calls him stupid. Says he smelled the food, and Zoro doesn’t question that, either.
They wander through the market, gathering a swathe of provisions that Zoro knows (even now) won’t last nearly long enough, because Luffy has demolished everything from Rika’s mother and neither of them know when their next island will be, anyway. But Luffy isn’t so much a bull as a ferret (or a monkey), wreaking havoc enough to get them cursed out of the square—not by damage alone but as an agent of mayhem. And by the time they fall gasping and panting and laughing into their boat, tossing their spoils (not paid for, this time—because they’d not been nice people) as they fumble with the sail, he’s long forgotten about it.
Only when they’re far enough away again, when they’ve secured the ropes and settled back into the ship’s small but sturdy hull, do they reach for their pilfered sacks and spread out their wealth.
“What the fuck are we supposed to do with thirty jars of blackberry preserve?” he asks, as though there’s a reasonable answer (and as though he cares at all, because a reasonable answer doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things). He turns a jar over and over in his hands, staring in dismay at the rows of glass lined up between them. When he’d heard the clinking in Luffy’s massive pack, he’d hoped—naively, perhaps—for rum.
Luffy snickers, grinning at him as he twists open one of the caps and the pop! is swallowed up by the hissing of the sea around them. “’S that what it is?” he says, half a question and half uncaring, then he tilts the jar like a drink and spoons out a glob of fruit with his tongue.
Zoro snorts. “You didn’t know?” he asks, and he does roll his eyes—kicking at the empty crate they’d smashed open, the label BL. BERRY PRES. painted clear and thick and heavy in the looping standard alphabet.
Luffy just shrugs, chewing a mouthful of gummy mush, lines of sugary purple dripping down his chin. “Figured it was food,” he says, and he tips the jar back again.
Zoro resigns himself to eating sweets for the next however-long and pries open his own jar. “Never had it before?” he asks, because he hasn’t made it as far as Dawn Island yet and isn’t sure if they even have blackberries there.
But Luffy sticks out a black tongue and replies, “Yeah. Just didn’t know what was in them, is all,” matter-of-fact. Zoro can’t decide whether that means he’d grabbed boxes at random—and what a Captain who’s willing to leave provision-gathering up to chance will mean for his long-term sanity—or if he’d genuinely not known.
The lid gives easily, and Zoro flips it toward his Captain in response—but it sails wide and Luffy snatches it out of the air before it can tumble over the side of the boat, almost upsetting the rest of their haul as the hull rocks. Before anything breaks, Zoro reaches out to steady the glasses, but as he leans forward Luffy snatches the opened jar from his hand and snickers again—and Zoro knows they’ll be out of food in a day or two. Maybe less.
“Hey!” he gripes, but Luffy keeps giggling, and he’s already picking up another one anyway.
Luffy takes mouthful from the jar he’s stolen, double-fisting berry jam, now. Zoro wonders if he’ll need to dunk Luffy in the ocean to get him clean, wonders if he can trust Luffy not to upturn the whole boat in fifteen seconds if Zoro has to jump over the side himself.
“They’re all the same, right?” Luffy asks, and Zoro glances around them—everything labeled near-identically to the crate in concise letters, obvious as obvious can be unless—and realizes, then. And shrugs.
“All blackberry fucking preserves,” he grumbles back. Luffy nods, grins, and Zoro spoons his own dinner (and breakfast tomorrow, and lunch, and dinner again—) out with his fingers.
He can work with this, he thinks. Next time, we won’t get split up. He is still figuring out what it means to be a pirate, to be a first mate, to be a partner in crime. This is, perhaps, just another part of the job.
---
When they run aground at their next island, it’s uninhabited, covered in dense forest, crawling with wildlife. He does not know how to start a fire and he almost takes off a finger trying to properly skin the thing they’ve caught for dinner—but Luffy laughs and shows him how with an expert hand, so in the end it doesn’t matter anyway.
By the time they’re settled on the beach against the upturned skiff, propped in front of roaring flames and roasting meat, Luffy’s taken to marveling with an over-exaggerated kind of glee at how he’s survived this long without being able to hunt for food, and Zoro concedes the point (because Shells town had not been the first time he’d nearly starved to death, just the first time it mattered) but he kicks sand in Luffy’s direction anyway.
“Fuck off,” he grouses, and Luffy giggles, poking at the fire with a stick even as he dodges.
“Well at least you have me now,” Luffy snickers back. “How’d you even make it this far?”
Zoro shrugs, eyeing the fire. “I dunno, never needed to know,” he replies. And it’s true, mostly—he’s never sought out a bounty, just people, fighters—and they’d always been one in the same around populated areas—cities, towns, villages. He’s never found a decent opponent worth challenging on islands like this, so he’s never stayed long enough for food, shelter, and warmth to matter beyond an immediate need. “How’d you make it this far without knowing how to read?” he asks, partly because he can’t pass up the opportunity to tease and partly because he’s genuinely curious.
And Luffy throws his head back and laughs. “I dunno! Never needed to know,” he replies, grinning, parroting back Zoro’s own answer as Zoro rolls his eyes (again, because all he seems to do is roll his eyes at his ridiculous Captain, but he does it with a smile, too).
Zoro thinks of the rigorous lessons he’d been forced to sit through at the dojo, the rows of boys lined up etching characters on paper and reading aloud from primers. He thinks of sitting in his mother’s lap, watching her trace a finger down the pages of old leafed books. He thinks of the hundreds of signs along the streets of his village, bustling with people and life and business.
What he cannot do is think of a time he’s ever needed to dress an animal—not before today. And so, he concedes to that, too. He sees no reason to argue the point. Never needed to know.
Then, Luffy decides their dinner is done based on some unseen, unspoken thing (that Zoro will learn later, with time and practice, but not yet), and that is that.
After they’ve had their fill, tender meat stuck in their teeth and hands scalded with hot juices, Zoro repays his Captain a kindness for showing him how to stack logs and tinder, the first of many demonstrations, by stealing Luffy’s stick and writing his name in the sand. He spells out the letters in the standard alphabet, both of them together—LUFFY and ZORO side by side—and Luffy beams.
“That’s me!” he says, leaning over Zoro’s shoulder and grinning before Zoro can even get a word out, and Zoro raises an eyebrow.
“So you do know, then,” he says, and it’s somewhere halfway between a question and a statement, because Luffy is already shaking his head before he finishes.
“I know my name, stupid,” Luffy replies, and Zoro pokes him with the stick—then Luffy shoves him away and points to the Z that Zoro’s drawn.“And that’s you!”
“Close enough,” Zoro shrugs, and he squints down at the words he’s written. He thinks, suddenly, that’s me and that’s you, and it feels like the start of something—but he doesn’t sit with it, because he’s already losing Luffy’s attention, and he doesn’t want to lose Luffy’s attention—so he traces more lines in the sand underneath their names.
He guesses a little because he’s rusty, but he figures Luffy wouldn’t notice anyway, and it feels like flexing a muscle he hasn’t used in ages. He hasn’t seen it outside Shimotsuki, after all, and he’s been gone for a few years now.
Luffy leans back over his shoulder again, this time a little quieter, and hums, “Those are different.”
Zoro nods, digging the tip of the stick deeper into the sand before tossing it into the fire, where it crackles, spits, disappears. “Kanji,” he says, enunciating the word. “Learned it forever ago—a bunch of old people in the village insisted everyone at the dojo learn it. And the language.”
Luffy turns to look at him and Zoro blinks, because they’re so close and he can feel Luffy’s breath on his face, a sour meat-stink in the air, and Zoro can’t think of the last time he’s been this near to another human being. The look in Luffy’s eyes is wide and amazed, and Zoro can’t think of the last time someone’s ever looked at him like that, either.
“There are two alphabets?” Luffy asks, and even though it’s a simple question it doesn’t feel simplistic, just like a gap in his knowledge. The same way Zoro had asked Why not? when Luffy had told him they couldn’t burn wet logs.
He leans his head to the side, away from his Captain, and Luffy pulls back, too—rocking onto his heels as he stands again, smiling down at him. In the orange glow of the firelight, the edge of his sun-colored straw hat is—something.
Zoro buries his fingers into the hot sand and shrugs. “I think there’s more than that,” he says, “I only know two, though.”
Luffy laughs, then bends down to inspect the scratches in the beach. “That’s so cool! You’re so cool, Zoro,” he giggles. “I knew you were perfect.” And he beams, and Zoro turns to stare into bright, bright fire just for a moment—because right then it feels easier to look at.
“Whatever,” he scoffs.
When Luffy doesn’t say anything else, he turns back to find his Captain staring intently down at the row of kanji under his own name, expression torn between a frown and something else—something serious but not. Contemplative. Like he’s absorbing something new and it’s going to change everything, somehow.
(Zoro will learn to recognize this look after seeing it a hundred-thousand times in battle, but here, now, it is a strange and unusual marvel.)
Then the moment passes, as all moments do. Luffy pouts and flops onto his back in the sand, careful—Zoro notices—not to disturb the writings at all. “Ah,” he exhales. “It’s too long.”
Zoro snorts. Rolls his eyes (again, again, again). Wishes for the millionth time that they’d found rum instead of fruit spread, because he’s feeling relaxed and happy and buzzed on nothing and he needs more. So he reaches for Luffy's hand without thinking—like he’s ever been one for touch before, not realizing until later that he’s even done it, when he’ll blame the fact that he threw their stick into the fire, even though by now they’ve been sleeping wedged against each other in the dinghy for a week—and traces two swirling characters in his palm. “Me,” he says the word in that other tongue, then, “Me.”
Luffy tilts his head to the side, watching, and then flops over onto his stomach—stretching his arm to an angle that would have made Zoro gag a week ago, he thinks—to trace the characters in the sand with the fingers of his other hand. He squints. “Doesn’t look like anything.”
Zoro drops his palm and the arm snaps back into place. “Well, that’s what it says,” he replies. Then, without thinking, he reaches over and writes one more character in the sand next to it. “Sword,” he says, then, switching, “Sword.”
Luffy tilts his head up to look at him and his eyes dance, twin flames reflected back from the bonfire, and Zoro thinks he looks like he’s laughing even though there’s not a sound coming from his mouth—like the laughter’s coming from inside. And then Luffy really does giggle, cutting his eyes back to the words. “Me. Sword. Me sword.”
And Zoro thinks, me and sword, my sword, your sword, us, in a literal way, but instead gripes, “Oh, fuck off,” for the second time tonight because he’s trying not to laugh and he also knows—
And Luffy just snickers and says, “Write penis next!”
-x-x-x-
Nami is less than enthusiastic when she realizes.
It’s days, weeks after their mad dash from Orange town—in the aftermath of another heist on another island, intentional on her part and just part of the daily routine on theirs. (She’d sent them out for supplies and they’d come back with half the town chasing them—she’s still not sure why. This becomes a pattern.)
They’ve spread out the treasure Luffy hasn’t opted to leave behind on the larger deck of Nami’s stolen ship—barely a ship, really, because it’s not much bigger than their dinghy—and she’s taking stock. There’s a tally running in her head, but as good as she is she just can’t value each item and total it at once, so she’s pulled out the ledger she keeps tucked with the rest of her supplies and has started making notes.
At first, she’d been worried about the bounty hunter—swordsman—whatever, because she’s met his kind before, but by now they’ve settled into a routine. They orbit each other like the same poles of two magnets, and she’s aware enough to understand that he’s watching her just as much as she’s watching him. He suspects, she thinks—suspects she’s hiding something. But even though he’s vigilant he’s never aggressive. Keeps out of her space. Stays quiet. Watches Luffy like their interactions are the most interesting thing in the world.
Now, like he has for every day before this one, he just props himself back against the railing and dozes off (or pretends to, maybe). It’s his little Captain, the current and future bane of her existence, who proves the most difficult, and that’s after he’s already given away half her spoils twice now to the village she’s just robbed, for reasons she’s beginning to understand but unwilling to fully confront.
To keep him occupied while she works—because otherwise he’ll knock some priceless thing into the sea or sink them or something—she tasks Luffy with sorting through a trunk of parchment she’s pilfered from a particularly stuffy, particularly ornate study.
He pouts, chastised when she finally gets him to sit still long enough to listen, as she sighs, “Just sort out what looks like it has to do with the Grand Line and I’ll look at the rest later.”
She doesn’t return to her ledger until she watches him flop on the deck and start rummaging through the trunk, satisfied that he’ll actually try and keep out of her hair. He’s quiet only long enough for her to settle before he breaks out into raucous, off-key singing—to himself and Zoro, partially. The swordsman meets her gaze and rolls his eyes, a smirk half twisting his lips as Luffy hollers between them, and in that moment she wants to laugh with him—but she doesn’t, just snorts, the closest she’ll get until the numbers are summed and she knows where she stands.
They pass the time like that, the three of them together but apart, until Luffy lists over to the side and huffs, rolling against Zoro—who just sticks a leg out to stop his momentum. “Nami!” Luffy whines, reaching for her even as he presses against his swordsman. “I’m done. I’m bored. Find an island!”
Nami wonders if she should be surprised that he’s actually managed to finish the job, but they’ve been around one another long enough, now, that she’s figured out he’s childish but not stupid, not actually that easy to manipulate unless he lets her, and half the time he refuses to do things simply because he can—not because he can’t.
And yet, when she peers into the trunk, leafing through some of the piles, she wonders if she’s been too optimistic.
“Luffy, I’m serious,” she sighs. “If you’re—” she doesn’t say we’re, not yet, “going to the Grand Line, you’ll need materials.” She pulls out one of the stacks and starts thumbing out page after page, already derailed from her first task because if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself, and lamenting the fact that she’d ever expected anything more. (That’s how it’s always been, after all—Nami relying on Nami relying on Nami.)
Luffy just looks at her, a lost puppy, stretching one arm out in that strange, horrifying way she’s already growing accustomed to—and she swats him away, pulling out several sheets. “Nami!”
“No—” it comes out blunt and tired. “What is this?” she sighs, waving one paper in the air with particular vigor. “Tributary rivers to the central bay in—this doesn’t have anything to do with anything.” She tosses it back in the trunk and before she knows it, she’s settled cross-legged on deck, filling the empty space Luffy has left.
The Captain smiles at her from his sprawl, expression sheepish, maybe, but not upset—just vaguely apologetic. Above him, the swordsman raises his eyebrows at her and grunts, “I could have told you that,” and she’s not sure whether he’s literally talking about the chart or the fact that Luffy’s been sitting here doing everything wrong for at least half an hour.
When Luffy huffs, “Sorry, Nami,” it almost sounds sincere.
Nami sighs again (again, again, again), pulling out the next, this time labeled Canyons in the East Blue Coalition of— and she just holds it out, blinking at him. “Seriously?” she says. “Seriously?”
He sticks his tongue out at her in response, one arm already snaking back toward the piles of valuables she’s finished sorting, and she’s about to intervene when Zoro snags an arm around his waist—distracting him enough to retract his groping, trouble-causing hands. He pouts and falls limp, and Nami shakes the paper again, wordlessly seething but not angry, really. Just tired.
“I know the Grand Line is a line,” he whines, and Nami can’t actually tell if he’s genuinely offended or not. Zoro seems more amused than anything, though, so she figures it must not be terrible. “I tried to pick out everything that looked like something straight—”
“It says right there!” she shoots back, jabbing her finger at the title. “Canyons! Canyons!” Luffy just looks at her a little blankly, and then she locks eyes with Zoro again—and she gets it. “Oh my god,” she says, but she doesn't have time to deal with the realization because Luffy reaches for her again, pleading, Nami, I did what you said! You promised! Show me that cool spinning move! and Zoro lets him go and the entire afternoon derails.
---
They almost run out of food for a fourth time, and she’s starting to realize that will just be a fact of her life for as long as she’s hitched her (pilfered) ship to theirs. Unfortunately, they’re still two days out from the nearest island at least, and the uncertainty puts her off balance. They’ll have to find some way to make due, and she considers just cutting their ropes more than once—but something stops her. The thought of… just cutting their ropes, really.
Because something has shifted these last few weeks, shifted deeper and more permanently than with every other crew she’s ever tried to con. She justifies it with the certainty that Luffy is going to be big, she just knows it in the core of her because there’s something about him, and if she waits with them just a little bit longer (just a few more days, just a few more weeks) she’ll be able to cash in on an even higher reward.
So instead of resorting to mutiny (not that she’s really part of his crew—this is temporary. Temporary.) or cannibalism, she scrounges through the left-behind hold until she comes up with a passable set of rudimentary fishing gear and resigns herself to a future without breakfast if things fall apart any faster.
The two of them (the Captain, the swordsman) are missing, tucked away on their own little dinghy off the port side and dozing in a tangle of limbs—not a care in the world and she envies them, but also wants to do what she can to make sure they stay that way—so she settles on the starboard side with her portion of their dwindling provisions.
A substantial amount of fumbling later—which she is appalled by, because shouldn’t this be intuitive?—she has a line haphazardly cast out into the sea and she settles in to wait. And wait. And wait.
And nothing happens—until Luffy comes up behind and startles her, intentionally or not, with a bright, “Fishing!” and when Nami looks over at him, she sees the sun reflected in his gaze.
“In theory,” she grumbles, turning away, turning back to the sea. “There’s nothing here.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Luffy peer at her, then at her bait, then over the side of the railing—and he chuckles. “Yeah, there is,” he says, and he reaches out for her rod almost politely (but not, because this is Luffy) so her instinct is to hand it over without hesitation. It’s useless anyway, she thinks.
As she watches, he reels it in—then unties her knots and rearranges them. Picks out some other part from the basket of food she’s brought above deck, the bits she’s been avoiding because—aren’t fish herbivores?—then eats one massive bite and takes a chunk for the hook. She blinks at him, smiling while he works, looking for all the world like there’s care in him when she’s only ever seen him act as delicate as a brawl.
Zoro’s on deck too, she sees—peering out at the horizon, ostensibly ignoring the whole thing but paying close attention in truth, Nami knows, because there’s only three of them really and it’s hard not to pry on even their most private moments. (They have all learned this, by now.)
After a moment, Luffy waves in her face like she’s gone somewhere else and says, “Watch!” with a grin—and when she looks at the fishing gear in his hands she wonders (for a moment) if he’s found a whole new set. Because it looks proper now.
“Okay,” she says—and she’s not sure what she expects, but it’s certainly not the half-full bucket of fat, silver fish they’ve got flopping on deck in less than an hour. And certainly not the teasing, griping, terrible instructions Luffy gives when he makes her try it, too. Zoro laughs at her while she struggles, grouching that it’s impossible to be this bad at fishing even as Nami watches Luffy retie his knots, too, but he never calls her stupid, never calls her weak—just says she’s scaring off all the fish with her evil-ugly face. She briefly starts to reconsider the dangers of ditching them before she’s ready, but settles against it because she does end up with a fish of her own. And, as she watches it wheeze and die in the pail, she feels a bizarre kind of pride.
Luffy guts them half-decent and she watches that, too—watches what parts he tosses back into the bucket to reuse as bait, he says—and she absorbs the skill the same way she’s absorbed everything else she’s needed to survive up to this point. She’s surprised when Zoro roasts them in the galley, exhibiting a bare-minimum kind of competency with cooking that catches her off guard even when he mentions chores and boys and dojo. And she marvels at her own stupidity (for getting attached, for wanting) when she breaks out the bottle of whiskey she’s kept hidden in her own supplies, away from their joint provisions. They drink that night—the three of them, even though she’s figured out by now Luffy doesn’t like alcohol so much as he likes the company that keeps it—and they laugh, and for a moment Nami pretends that this is the whole of her life and she’s free.
Half-drunk, well-fed, and sprawled out under the stars, Nami lounges with her legs over the side of the ship and her back flat on the deck. Luffy’s sprawled perpendicular to her, head resting on her stomach while she runs her fingers through his hair, and Zoro’s next to them both with his back propped against the rail—Luffy’s legs across his lap, one broad palm resting on his Captain’s ankle while he swigs from the whiskey in his other hand. Wordlessly, Nami reaches out, and he leans over to hand it to her, an unreadable kind of not-smile on his face that she thinks, maybe, might be mirrored on her own.
She thinks of the day, thinks of things that people know and don’t know, and blurts, “Is it true you never learned how to read?”
She feels Luffy shrug against her, unbothered, and laughs. “Not never,” he says, like there’s a technicality somewhere in there that matters. She passes him the bottle when one hand flails out, and he sips before swapping it back to Zoro.
“Sometime, then,” she prompts, and resumes combing through his greasy, salt-crusted hair. They’re all sweaty and slimy and gross, now—the pile of them fish-stained and sun-baked even in the cool evening air—and for some reason she’s never felt so comfortable.
“I started,” he hums, “but the person who taught me—he died.” He shrugs again, and Nami looks at Zoro, who looks at Luffy, and she realizes this is news to him, too. “No one else was very good at it, so it just didn’t matter.”
Nami frowns, gazing up at the endless expanse of space above them—bright and glistening—and thinks of Nojiko, of Bellemere, of Genzo. Thinks of maps and books and how much written lines have defined her life. Wonders why she’s never properly learned how to fish before, even though the answer is obvious—because she’s been alone.
“So you know some things,” she amends, and she feels his laughter in her stomach as he tilts his head back, reaching for her hand.
“I know some things,” he parrots back to her, a smile in his voice, and she rolls her eyes even as she lets him take her hand. His skin is soft, uncalloused in a way that’s not natural for anyone who lives their life on the sea—pliable but firm, warm, the texture of him so Luffy that Nami can’t imagine his touch any other way. Then, deliberately, he traces two swirling patterns on her palm, and Nami resists the urge to curl her fingers because the tickle catches her off guard.
“What’s that?” she asks, and the bottle appears in her peripheral vision again—Zoro dangling it over her head until she reaches up with her free hand to grab it, to take a swig.
“Zoro taught me,” Luffy replies. “It’s my name in his language.”
Nami tilts her chin up, resting the bottle on-deck as she raises her eyebrows at Zoro, who just shrugs.
“It’s not my language,” he grumbles, and the sound is low enough in his chest (and they’re buzzed enough, maybe) that Nami feels the gravel of it in her own bones. “It’s just a language.”
Luffy makes a face, and Nami hears herself snort—passing the bottle back to Zoro and bypassing Luffy in the loop because he’s still got her hand clasped in both of his, and he doesn’t seem to notice.
“It’s shorter than five letters. Easier,” Luffy chirps back.
“Fair,” Zoro snorts, and then says—broadly, to no one in particular, “It’s me, anyway.”
Nami blinks, wondering if she’s had more to drink than she realizes. “It’s you?”
“No,” Zoro shakes his head, absently palming Luffy’s ankle still draped across his lap, keeping him in place as his Captain wiggles his feet. “The word—the word’s me.”
“Oh,” Nami replies, dumbly, and Zoro takes a swig.
Luffy hums again and it’s like electricity against her skin, again and again, and she knows she’s just on the cusp of grasping something that she’s not ready to admit in the cold crush of sobriety—but that for now, maybe, she can. And so she grabs Luffy too, and traces her own name on his skin—Nami, Nami, Nami—as if writing it there will imprint on him, will make it real—so that he won’t forget her when she’s gone, and he giggles, wrestling her hand back with a grin and traces his name again—me, me, me—and Nami can pretend, for a moment, that he means mine.
(And then there’s another character, one letter—sword, sword, sword, she learns—and then he’s writing her name back to her, too, four standard alphabet letters pressed slow and deliberate between the two of them. Me. Sword. Nami.)
---
She corners Zoro later, the next day or the day after that, and hisses, “Doesn’t it worry you?” without preamble like there aren’t a hundred other things they should be worrying about—
Which proves true enough, because he just shrugs, “No,” and she can’t even say with certainty that he knows what she’s talking about.
She pinches the bridge of her nose. “Luffy,” she says, as if there’s anyone else. “Shouldn’t it matter if the man you’re following—”
“—You’re following him, too—”
“—if the man we’re following—” she amends, physically resisting the urge to smack him in the head as she cuts herself off and takes a breath. “Shouldn’t he at least be able to read the title on a map?”
Zoro looks at her like she’s just sprouted extra limbs and says, baffled, “What for? We have you.”
And Nami just blinks back, because she genuinely can’t think of a response—not one she wants to say, anyway. Not one she means, even if it’s the truth. (Because you don’t have me tastes like a lie, even though they don’t have her, not forever, not really.)
She doesn’t have to, though—because Luffy’s head stretches down from the too-close stern and he says, serious despite the stupidity of his own elongated neck, “Is it that important?”
Nami thinks it’s a sign of just how comfortable she’s getting that she doesn’t even blink, doesn’t acknowledge it and just replies, “Yeah. I mean, I think so,” with a shrug that’s just a shade too casual, maybe, because she feels tangled up inside. “It’s not an issue now, but it’s a big world.” She avoids Zoro’s gaze even though she can feel his eyes on her, boring twin holes in the side of her head as she addresses Luffy. “What if we get separated?”
Luffy looks at her, really looks at her, and a beat of silence passes. Then, “Is it important to you?” he asks, like it’s the better question, the more important question, even though Nami can’t quite tell the difference because her answer’s still the same. She nods, and he seems to come to a decision, then. Determined. “Okay, then teach me.” He pauses, glances at Zoro, and then amends, “Not Zoro’s language.”
And that breaks the tension—because Zoro lets out a kind of indignant huff like he’s offended, almost, and Nami just snorts, “I don’t even know what language that is.”
(And none of them will, not even Zoro, for years and years—not until they’re incognito in a foreign land, together for the first time in what feels like ages, and all of this is a distant memory.)
But Luffy just beams at her—and at Zoro, too—and crows, “Thanks, Nami!” as her cry of, I didn’t even agree to anything! goes ignored.
---
The notes begin so close to Syrup Village (and Usopp) that they feel as much a part of Merry as everything else, new and beautiful and theirs. Usopp has the best handwriting of all of them—better than Zoro, anyway—and he catches on quick without the need for an explanation. And he doesn’t say anything about it, either because he’s afraid to offend or because he’s spent so long with children it’s become second-nature to teach—Nami doesn’t know.
KITCHEN on the galley door, and everything else labeled—BATHROOM, MEN’S ROOM, CANNON DECK—uniform and perfect, like they’d intended it that way from the start. They leave a notebook on the dining table and every day one of them writes a new word he might like (SHIP, PIRATE, OCEAN) and a new word he might not (HESITATE, APPROXIMATE, ORDINARY), because he’s more inclined to look at one if it’s worth learning the other. And they leave messages, too—GOOD MORNING! on the bathroom mirror, DINNER 6:00 PM on the fridge, KEEP OUT! in the storehold below.
(And the one exception is NAMI’S ROOM—which he insists, insists on writing himself because he knows how and maybe knows something else, too—that she needs it—in a shaky, unused scrawl, and that night she sits and stares at it and cries. Because to be wanted enough, to be loved enough even as she lies through her teeth in ways that don’t quite feel like untruths anymore—it hurts worse than any hit she’s ever taken from Arlong. And she wants to hold each letter in her hand like the most delicate gift. NAMI’S ROOM. A better room. Home, given freely.)
There’s no rhyme or reason to it, because none of them have ever really taught anyone to read and it’s not a question of intelligence—he knows the standard alphabet, he knows each sound; it’s the putting them together that he’s never had to deal with. And because he’s Luffy, he picks up quick—because all hurricanes have an eye, and his is a core of quiet observation.
They float aimlessly (but not, really, because Nami is in charge and they’re inching ever-closer to the Red Line, to the island that sits just before it, to the shark-sharp teeth waiting there for them all) and end up on another island, another dense forest, another adventure to explore. Usopp is a coward but he is their coward, so she sends him out with Zoro to forage what they can—to supplement their food stores because they’re always running out of food, now, faster than before.
(Luffy insists they find a cook, but Nami hesitates—because it feels too much like change.)
Luffy stays behind with her willingly (almost) and she’s grateful (almost) because the farther they travel the shorter the days have started to feel. Fleeting, temporary, like the fullness of their provision-hold and the calm East Blue weather.
They set up camp on the beach, and by now Nami has learned to let the Captain sort out their spot on his own—even though she watches as he strips the branches, watches as he digs a hole in the sand, watches as he layers it with rocks from the forest’s edge—while she checks the Merry’s rigging and joints now that she’s at rest.
When the two of them return, though—hours later, long after dark; baskets bursting with a miscellaneous collection of flora and hunted fauna—she doesn’t get the chance to sort through what they’ve found because Luffy is already stretching, reaching to snatch it up. And before she can yell at him fucking—don’t eat everything, god damn it!, he’s plucking blue flowers and red mushrooms and something else, too, from the pile—and tossing them into the sea.
“What the hell!” Usopp yelps, indignant, worse for wear from events so traumatizing they’ll probably hear about it for the rest of the night (the rest of their lives, maybe) if the scratches on his arms and face and everywhere are any indication.
But Luffy just sticks his tongue out at him as Zoro hauls them both toward the fire that Luffy’s already set to roaring. “But they’re poisonous,” Luffy says, and that brings them all up short. And Nami wonders, then, if they’d ever even considered it. Usopp, the product of a more domestic childhood than any of them ever got to have, even with his own tragedies. Zoro, who maybe should have known better by now because he’s spent so long with Luffy, but who is still learning—just like the rest of them. And she herself, who’s never even thought to forage—not before this, before them—because she’s always stolen what she can’t afford.
Usopp physically blanches and lets out a strained kind of, “Oh,” and Luffy just shrugs, dumping their baskets out onto the sand. The small animals (a rabbit, a squirrel, something else, too) he tosses to Zoro, who lays them out but doesn’t do anything with them (not yet, Nami knows, because he’s waiting for Luffy to finish this so that if he needs to ask for help he can, even without words—just eyes and gestures, a third language she knows he’s learning to speak—Luffy—and a second language she’s learning to speak, too).
Then he tears open a fat, white mushroom the size of a melon with his nails, peeling back the stringy layers so they can look right into the core of it, and he says, “This one’s good—see? No holes, no bugs,” and Usopp edges ever-closer until they’re bent over piles of things, discussing. Absorbing. Heads pressed together in a serious way even as Luffy describes with glee the kinds of terrible things that will happen—your organs will liquefy! You’ll get a purple rash that makes you see ghosts! You’ll get so scared of water but you won’t know why!—if they eat this plant, or that bug, or that berry. And even as Usopp quakes and shakes and looks seconds from sobbing, he doesn’t move. He listens. And Nami and Zoro listen, too.
And by the end of the night, they have meat on sticks wrapped in tangles of herbs and mushrooms, and no one has died. They feast with their bare toes buried in the earth and Nami doesn’t resist when Luffy reaches out for her, pulling her close as he sings some pirate song he’s just made up (probably), already tucked against Zoro in that way she thinks they’ve always been. She tumbles into his lap and as she goes, she grabs Usopp’s hand, too—and they fall together, the four of them, into a heap on the sand, laughing and giggling and full and happy. Teenagers, children—pirates and criminals. A sniper, a navigator, a swordsman, a Captain. A liar, a prisoner, a wanderer, a King.
(And later, days and days down the line—when there’s someone new to slot into the gaps between them, filling a void they don’t even know they’re missing, not yet—they’ll hear him shout, bloody and pissed and a little bit stupid—I don’t know how to use a sword; I don’t know how to navigate, either. I can’t cook and I can’t tell lies. I know I can’t survive without help from a lot of people—but I can still beat you! and it will be the truest thing, the most honest thing. And they will cry, all of them, because that’s the core of it—they have only given him one small gift, and in return he has shown them how to live.)