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Nami is really starting to think a leash might be a good investment.
She swears she only turns her back for a moment to look at some produce, and when she turns back to Zoro to ask him if he knows the difference between scallions and green onions, he is long gone. She swivels her head to scan the immediate vicinity for a stray swordsman, but no dice. She groans. He’s hopeless. She continues picking up a few more vegetables from the stand, pays for them, and moves down the street. She’ll look for Zoro later. Really, he was supposed to be helping her carry the groceries, but she’ll manage on her own for now.
She visits a few more stalls, adding to the bags in her arms. She pushes her way through the crowd, keeping an eye out for a head of green hair. He will make his way back to her eventually, but she would rather it happen sooner rather than later. It’s getting harder to carry the bags while picking out goods and paying for them at the same time.
She startles when a hand grabs her arm, and she is about to turn around to yell at Zoro for sneaking up on her, but the grip is too callous and forceful to be his. Sure, he’s a brute, but never with the crew, always keeping his strength under careful control. He can be a little rough, but he has never hurt her, even unintentionally.
That’s the first thing that tips her off to something being very, very wrong.
She twists to try and see who is behind this, but she’s swept off her feet and pulled away. She drops the bags she’s holding, fruits and vegetables scattering across the street, but either no one notices or no one cares. Her hands are pinned behind her back, and a scream is halfway to her lips when the same rough hand clamps down on her mouth. She is dragged down a side street, kicking and thrashing to no avail.
They pause, turning her around, and she can finally see her captors as four burly men gather around her.
The one holding her has a large scar running down the left side of his face. He grins, teeth sharp. “A lady pirate huh? Bet you’ll go for a pretty penny.”
Scar-face removes his hand from her mouth for a moment, taking her jaw into his hand and tilting her face to evaluate her, nodding. She cringes away from the touch and pushes down the panic threatening to strangle her. She tries to twist her arms away. “If you know who I am you’re making a big mistake,” she grits out, trying to sound as confident as possible. “Do you really think my captain will-”
He backhands her and her head whips to the side. Blood fills her mouth.
One of the other men shoves Scar-face, jostling her as well. “Don’t fuck up her face, man!”
She glares and kicks her leg out again, landing a hit to Scar-face’s groin. He doubles over in pain, loosening his grip on her. The others take his place and grab her, one pulling her hair and the other clamping a hand over her mouth again. This time, she sinks her teeth into the flesh before it gets a proper hold on her face. The man yowls. She shoves an elbow into the nose of the other man holding her, remembering Robin’s tips on self defense. It’s enough for her to manage to escape, at least for a moment.
She’s not fast enough. The remaining man grabs her with a stronger grip than the others. She cries out, but it’s muffled by a large hand once again. She’s panicking now, flailing with uncoordinated movements. Her mind runs wild, thinking about all the things she hasn’t done yet. Even things as simple as the unfolded laundry on her bed and Vivi’s letter she hasn’t responded to. She can’t go out like this. Not yet.
“Hey,” a voice barks out. She and her captor both turn their heads.
Zoro.
She has never been so glad to see that mossy head of his before.
He moves quickly, and soon the man holding her is in a heap at her feet, slashed down his back. Nami jumps away.
Zoro grins at her and she gives him a shaky smile in return. “You good?” he asks.
She nods, bracing her hands on her knees and leaning against the wall to catch her breath. She lets Zoro take over, watching the men throw themselves at him, swords of their own in hand. Little do they know, the demon of the East Blue won’t be going down so easy. He barely clashes swords with them before cutting them down with precise, efficient slashes. Once he’s done disposing of them, he flicks the blood off of his sword and resheathes it with one fluid movement. Nami’s heart warms and she thinks she might even reduce his debt.
“Let’s go,” he motions to the main street, and Nami nods, not needing to be told twice. She takes one more steadying breath and they turn—
—right into the barrel of a gun. There’s another man, silver haired, tall, and thin. He’s clad in a long coat, posture relaxed. Two more men flank him, burly like the previous men. Nami freezes and Zoro’s hand goes straight to his sword.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” the man warns, cocking his gun inches away from Zoro’s head.
Zoro presses his lips together, evaluating his options. Nami sends a prayer to any gods who will listen that he will just do what the man tells him and not risk a bullet in his skull. Seconds drag by like hours as Zoro stares the man down. Finally, he lifts his hands in surrender. Nami exhales slowly.
The man’s eyes slide over to Nami. She presses her back to the wall as if she could phase through it if she tries hard enough. “You too girlie,” the man orders. “Don’t move an inch unless you want me to blow your friend’s brains out right here.”
Her body is atrophied by fear. She couldn’t move even if she wanted to.
The man smiles amicably, turning back to Zoro. “Why don’t I cut you a deal. I’ll forgive you for cutting down my subordinates, if you just let us take the girl,” he offers, tone diplomatic, as if this is a negotiation and not a threat.
Zoro smiles humorlessly and Nami’s stomach drops, because she knows in her heart of hearts that he’s about to do something very stupid.
He does not disappoint. He shrugs casually and replies, “Sounds like a pretty bad deal to me. Your men must not have been worth much if they went down so easy.”
The man’s smile falls from his face, and he clenches his jaw. Nami flinches when he steps forward. “I won’t ask again. Do you accept my offer?”
Zoro tilts his head from side to side. “Depends. What happens if I don’t?”
“Zoro,” she says, voice thin. “Zoro, no.”
She has seen a scene just like this. It left her without a mother and working for a pirate for the better part of a decade. She knows how this story ends.
“I blow your head off your shoulders, and take the girl anyway.”
“Zoro,” she pleads. “Just shut up and let them take me.”
“Shut up, Nami. I’ll be fine,” he says, voice unwavering. To the gunman in front of her, he says, “Do you really think I would agree to that?”
“Don’t have much of a choice now do you? Don’t go playing hero now. She can’t be worth it.” The man presses the barrel of his gun right between Zoro’s eyes. At this distance, there is no way he’d be fast enough to dodge or even fight back without getting his head blown clean off. There’s nothing Nami can do either, feet glued to where she stands, shaking like a leaf as she watches it all play out before her. She wills herself to think— because she has never been their strongest fighter and never will be, but she takes pride in knowing she can get her way out of any situation with her brains alone—but suddenly she is ten years old again and watching Bellmere stare down Arlong’s gun and give up her life for her daughters. She feels just as helpless as before, watching someone she loves about to get hurt protecting her once again.
“Zoro, don’t do this,” she begs, clenching her fists. “Don’t be an idiot, just leave me!”
Zoro doesn’t even answer her this time. He straightens his back, and the movement makes the man’s finger twitch on the trigger. Zoro asks, smug as ever, “Do you really think you can stop me?”
Nami sobs, covering her mouth with her hands. She can’t believe she ended up on a crew with a bunch of idiots who would be willing to throw away their lives for her.
Zoro spits, “Pathetic.”
She can’t take it anymore. She squeezes her eyes shut and screams. She knows what comes next.
When the gun goes off, it isn’t the sound that brings her to her knees, but the feeling of blood splattering across her face. She stumbles away and falls, hiding her face behind her hands as she wails, as if it’ll make the gruesome scene on the other side less real. All she can think is not again . Her ears ring and she sobs, waiting for the men to approach her again and haul her off, away from the dead body of her stupidly chivalrous friend. She weeps, because she was supposed to make sure Zoro didn’t get into any trouble and yet she brought the trouble straight to him, and because she’s failed her captain by making him lose two members of his crew in one day. Distantly, she’s glad she’ll be dragged away to whatever fate awaits her at the hands of these strange men; it couldn’t possibly be worse than the prospect of facing Luffy after this.
She can’t breathe, choking on sob after sob and time drags on for what feels like hours, and all she can do is wait for the inevitable. She feels a pair of hands settle on her shoulders. She flinches backward and kicks, even though she knows her efforts are futile. The hands grab her wrists next, unfettered by her kicks, and don’t let go but also don’t drag her away. When she opens her eyes, her vision is blurred with tears, but she sees a flash of green in front of her and she freezes. She must be dead too, because she knows what she heard, and she felt his blood on her face, and it’s still there on her cheeks, sticky and hot, and there’s no way Zoro could still be standing in front of her.
If she is dead, this afterlife is too cruel.
“Nami.” That’s Zoro’s voice, clear as day, cutting through the static in her mind. But he’s dead, and she must be too, except the voice keeps coming, and there are familiar hands on her face. She reaches up to feel the hands and grounds herself in the touch, gasping for air. These are Zoro’s hands, she knows. The skin on his palms are tough with calluses from years of wielding his swords. There’s a long scar across the back of his left hand where he took a slash from a knife last week, and another on his thumb where he cut it picking up a broken dish. None of this makes it any more believable.
“Nami,” he repeats. “Nami.” Her hand is pulled away from her face, until she can feel fabric, and warm, firm skin underneath. After a moment, she notices the steady beating of a heart and the rise and fall of a chest under her palm. She focuses on the breathing, closing her eyes and taking shuddering breaths to match the rhythm.
This time, when Zoro calls her name she opens her eyes and there he is, head still on his shoulders. He’s crouched in front of her, holding one of her hands to his chest and gently holding her other hand by the wrist. Her eyes fill with tears again, because by some miracle, he’s perfectly fine. “Zoro,” she chokes out.
He laughs. “Yeah, Nami. It’s me.” He leans closer, taking the hem of his shirt to wipe tears and blood off of her face. She looks down the street, where the gunman is in a bloody heap on the floor with a large gash on his neck where Zoro cut him. He is still holding his gun in a limp hand, and his blood is splattered across the wall right where Nami was standing minutes ago. His cronies lay right behind him, similar cuts across their throats.
“Told you I’d be fine,” Zoro says and the statement makes her blood boil.
“Shut up! You idiot!” She shouts and shoves him, before leaning forward on her knees to throw her arms around his neck tightly, cobblestone scraping her knees. She breathes in the scent of steel, salt, and sweat and thinks she’ll never complain about his stench again if it means he’s safe and sound where he belongs. She’s still fuming, but the tears spill over her cheeks again. Her voice cracks when she whispers, “Don’t ever do that ever again. I can’t lose anyone else like that ever again. Promise me.”
Zoro places his hands high on her back, patting her shoulder. He murmurs, “I can’t make that promise, Nami. I’m always going to protect you guys.”
“How am I supposed to face Luffy,” she cries, shaking her head, “if I have to go back and tell him his first mate died because of me?”
“Luffy would never blame you. You know that.” She does. It wouldn’t make it any easier. “But if I had to go back empty-handed and tell him I could’ve protected you, but I stood by and did nothing? I would rather cut my own stomach open.” She whimpers, hugging him tighter. Damn him and his stupid swordsman code of honor. He continues, “And besides. I’m not going to die. Especially at the hands of such a weakling like him. You just have to trust me, okay?”
Nami rests her head on his shoulder and thinks. She knows Zoro is strong. She knows this like she knows that the sun rises in the east and that the sky is blue. It doesn’t make it easier to watch him offer up his life on a platter. She whispers into his shoulder. “I was so scared.”
“I know that. But that’s why you have to trust me.”
She holds him silently like that for a long time, and Zoro lets her. He might seem like an impatient blockhead most of the time, but for his crew he has an infinite amount of patience.
She sniffs, and finally agrees. “Okay. But you have to promise me something too.”
“Hmm?”
“You have to be more careful,” she urges him. He practically goaded the man into shooting him. Well, trying to.
Zoro chuckles, patting her shoulder again. “Okay. I’ll try. Happy?”
Nami takes a shuddering breath and nods.
“Alright then. Let’s go get you cleaned up.” He rises, carefully extricating himself from her hold. When she doesn’t immediately stand, he asks, not unkindly but perhaps teasing a little, “Can you stand?”
She thinks of making him carry her back so can hold him close and remind herself that he is okay.
Nami takes Zoro’s outstretched hand, standing on shaking knees. She lets him guide them through the streets back through all the vendors they passed, and she thinks about the groceries she dropped. They can’t go back, not with how her blood still rushes in her ears and her hands tremble. The people and buildings blur around her, the world sounding muted to her ears, but she’s pretty sure they make at least three wrong turns. Her tongue is heavy like lead in her mouth though, so she can’t correct him. She focuses on the steady hand on her back, willing herself to put one foot in front of the other. She must look crazy to passersby like this, in a daze and covered with blood.
By some miracle, they do manage to make it back to the Sunny, though Nami suspects it’s mostly by accident rather than Zoro’s navigation skills.
She only catches bits and pieces of what happens next.
The others gasp when they see her, their questions whirling around in her head but she can’t differentiate between each, so she stands there dumbly staring at them. She’s crying again, and Zoro tells them to back off and give her some space, or she thinks he does, because they mostly disperse. Chopper stands in front of her, teary eyed but trying to assess her state regardless.
“It’s not her blood, Chopper,” Zoro says. It makes Chopper relax, and he jumps up into Nami’s arms, wailing. She hugs him, shutting her eyes and pressing her face into his fur.
Behind her, she can hear Sanji yelling at Zoro. “How could you make a lady cry, shithead?!
“Shut up,” Zoro grits out, and Nami hears him unsheathing his sword and clashing with Sanji. “Maybe this wouldn’t have happened in the first place if you had just gotten your damn groceries yourself.”
The accusation hangs heavy in the air, and Sanji growls at him. He responds with an accusation of his own. “You were the one who was supposed to look out for her! Seems you did a pretty shit job of that.”
Nami squeezes her eyes shut harder. Why are they fighting right now? She wants to shout at them, to hit them upside the head how she normally does, and tell them to shut the fuck up, but she can’t find her voice.
When she opens her eyes next, she’s standing in the bathroom, Chopper’s warm presence replaced by a towel and a change of clothes. Robin is standing in front of her.
“I’ll be just outside if you need anything,” she says gently, leaving Nami alone. The tub has already been filled and the room is steamy.
She sits in the tub with her knees drawn to her chest. The last of the adrenaline in her veins is washed away, and she sags backward, leaning her head on the ledge of the tub. She stares at the ceiling, silent tears rolling down her cheeks. The sound of the gunshot and the splatter of blood replays in her head, and her mind conjures up additional gruesome images of Zoro bleeding out on the street with a bullet in his brain.
She hates how much she is affected. It’s over. She doesn’t know why she is acting like this. Nothing bad happened.
(Nothing bad happened this time, her mind supplies. There’s always next time. She can’t go down that road. She knows how this story ends. She couldn’t bear losing someone like that second time.)
Eventually, she regains control of her limbs, and she scrubs herself down until the water is red and her hair no longer smells like copper. After she rinses herself off, Robin brushes her hair and Chopper puts a couple bandaids on her scraped knees. She laughs because the bandaids have a silly pattern, and because besides a few little scratches, she came out of that completely unscathed, when it could have been much, much worse.
She finds herself sitting on a chair out on the deck with a towel around her shoulders to catch the excess water from her hair. The sun is warm on her skin and Sanji stops by to hand her a cup of tea. In a tremendous show of restraint, he holds back the usual flouncing around, only smiling softly and turning to leave.
“Sorry,” she says. He stops in his tracks. “About the groceries,” she explains.
He shakes his head and says, “Ah. Don’t you worry about that, Nami-swan. I’m just glad you’re okay.”
She sips at the tea, and focuses on the warmth of the cup in her hands and the sun beating down on her from above. The breeze carries the scent of the sea over her and she breathes it in deeply, far away from the smell of blood and gunpowder.
Luffy comes by, hanging off of her shoulders and trying to make her smile. It’s not that she doesn’t appreciate the sentiment, but it’s a little too much right now.
Thankfully, Zoro pulls him off by the back of his collar, tossing him away. Luffy rolls with the momentum, and runs off with a sunny grin. Nami feels her lips pulling up into a smile.
Zoro plops himself down next to her chair, sitting at her feet like some kind of guard dog. He leans against his swords, eyes falling shut, but Nami knows he’s not asleep. He doesn’t ask if she’s okay, or give her any empty words to soothe her. They sit in silence for a long time, and with each breath Nami takes, she feels herself coming back down into her body. The regular noises of the ship filter back into her ears: Sanji yelling at Luffy, Usopp and Chopper playing, Franky hammering away at his latest project, Brook playing his violin.
Finally, Zoro speaks. “It's ‘cause of your mom, right?” Nami is always surprised with how perceptive he can be, no matter how many times he shows it.
“Yeah,” she says. “Nojiko told you guys, right?”
He nods. “I’m sorry,” he says.
“For what?” she asks. He doesn’t apologize often, especially of his own accord, and in this case it’s probably Nami who should apologize for all the trouble she’s caused today.
“Scaring you.” Realistically, that’s the least of her problems. She could have been much worse off than being a little shaken up. He adds, “And for getting separated from you.”
“You shouldn’t blame yourself for that,” she says, and after a moment, adds, “or Sanji. It’s just how things happened.”
“Still,” he says. “It shouldn’t have happened. So, I’m sorry.” Gulls cry from above and he turns his head to look up at her. “You know I would have never let you go. I would have brought you back no matter what it took.”
His words make her skin prickle. This kind of devotion is almost scary, and she wonders if she’s really worthy of receiving it, but she knows Zoro has made his choice to protect her and the rest of the crew long ago. She might as well accept it.
She places her cup on the table, tucks her hands under her thighs and sighs. “Thank you.” For saving her, for calming her down, for bringing her back. For understanding. She doesn’t elaborate, but he seems to get it.
He nods once, and turns back away. Carefully, he lays his head against her thigh. His hair is soft against her bare skin, right below where her shorts stop. She places a hand in his hair and begins to card through it, leaning back in her chair and shutting her eyes. He’s always seemed to understand her, perhaps better than anyone else, without needing too many words.
“You did pretty good back there,” he murmurs.
“Hmm?” Between the warm presence of the sun and Zoro beside her, she’s halfway to dozing off, but his voice makes her crack her eyes open.
“Holding off those guys. Barely even needed me.”
“You’re right,” she hums, stroking her hair. A devilish smile takes over her face. “If anything, I did most of the work. You just finished them off. I think I’ll increase your debt for that.”
“Witch,” he mutters, but he leans into her leg, finally dozing off.