Nico Robin stares at her captain's back and a million things run through her head.
She remembers everything, from the first time they met until present, and more importantly, everything in between. She remembers every laugh, always so hesitant and contained at first, until it becomes free and beautiful and untamed in its entirety. She's never felt so utterly and completely reborn before, it was foreign, this sudden, aching feeling that would settle on her chest and spread throughout her being in a sweet frenzy of blossoming joy. It would unfold its petals like the wings of a bird when she gazed fondly at what she could now call her family. The woman would sit in her lawn chair with a book on her lap, and her eyes would travel up to this dizzying hurricane of a crew and her blue orbs would shimmer with a love so unyeilding and intense that tears of happiness would threaten to emerge.
It was strange, really, how one person could draw so many people together with nothing but a mere smile and a promise. All those tender, honey filled memories went flooding through her brain as she stared at the red vest belonging to this dream of a boy, who went goose-stepping somewhat comically through the thick grass of an overgrown jungle. But more importantly, she thinks back to the time he saved her.
That was a particularly mind-blowing moment for her, she could still hear Luffy's voice ringing in her ears, loud and brimming with heart-stopping finality. It vibrated right into the center of her heart and shook her down to the bones, it's what made her knees weak, what made her vision smear until the sight before her was nothing more than a blur of blues and grays.
Its what made Nico Robin scream for her life.
The aftermath of it was dazzling, when she stood upon the wood of the ship permenantly. It was firm and oh so real that the archeologist couldn't really grasp the thought of her freedom right away. And although two years made that ache of familiar loneliness come back again, if only for a fleeting moment, she knew she would come back to him, and she would never leave.
Robin is shoved from her thoughts when her captain is no longer in sight, all she sees are trees and mushrooms and vivid downpours of green and earth.
"Luffy?" Robin says, stopping in her tracks.
"Robin!" He materializes beside her, hanging upside down from a tree, limbs elongated and swinging in childish glee.
"Be careful, Luffy," Robin warns softly, smiling. "You don't want to fall and hit your head."
"I'll be fine! Oh...here!"
Before she can react, Luffy reaches out an arm and plucks a large, Hawaiian flower into her mass of dark hair, tucking it gently behind her ear.
"There!" The rubber boy smiles and laughs and his face is so bright with sun-lit happiness that Robin is momentarily stunned before she relaxes and places a soft kiss on the side of his face.
Pulling back, Robin's smile grows a little wider, nearly exposing her teeth.
"Shall we get going? I can sneak you snacks from the kitchen once we get back to the ship."
Luffy lands from the tree onto his feet, he cheers and places his straw hat more firmly atop his head.
"Really?! Thanks, Robin!"
He hits her on the arm lightly, and the woman of Ohara raises an eyebrow curiously.
"Tag, you're it!"
He races away from her, never fully leaving her view, and she reluctantly follows, trying to swallow back the laughter that pushes from her throat.
And as she runs, another thought comes to Robin, and it makes something within her soar like the bird she was named after.
Because she knows she will never have to scream for her life like that again.