A/N: I had terrible insomnia recently and right before I had to get up, One Piece, a show I hadn't watched in a decade, randomly came into my mind. I decided it was a sign that I should read the series and get caught up. This was born out of that. I might add other one-shots based around one word like this one.
If they hadn't been poor, Bellemere would still be alive.
It was a useless thought. One that didn't change anything, but one that still came to Nami's mind again and again during the years she served Arlong. If their family had just had enough money, Nami, Nojiko, and Bellemere could have lived happily together.
True, Nami had hated being poor and always wearing Nojiko's old clothes and never having enough food. But she would have taken all of that, she would have taken living on the street, if only Bellemere could have lived. If only that strong, proud, beautiful woman could have kept on being Nami's and Nojiko's mother.
And then she was given a task. She made a deal with Alrong. So long as she drew the maps he wanted, he would let her leave the island to try to gain one hundred million berries. And, once she did that, she could buy her village's freedom.
Nami's entire focus in life became money. Money meant life. Money meant freedom. If she got the one hundred million, no villagers would be killed because they couldn't afford to pay Alrong's people tax. No villagers would be killed because they got angry and yelled at a fish man, or had the audacity to show even a hint of violence toward them.
Once she had the money, no one else in the village would die or be hurt. They could return to their normal lives and spend that money caring for themselves and their families, as they should have been able to do all along. Once she had the money, she would be free of Alrong.
Everything she did, everything she worked for, everything she was, all boiled down to money. It almost became a compulsion. Just the sight of pirates made her hands twitch with the urge to take their treasure. Her life was stealing, and almost none of that was spent on her, was meant for her. She didn't have money to waste on herself. All of it had to go into her secret cache to free the village.
All her plans, all her efforts, came to nothing in the end. Arlong had lied from the beginning, but, miraculously, it hadn't mattered. Because the crew she had joined, the crew she had betrayed, had followed her and saved her and her village.
But that didn't erase the past eight years. That didn't change the fact that for so long, Nami's whole world had boiled down to money and having enough of it. Hording treasure was still her default mode, the first thought on her mind whenever an opportunity presented itself.
Maybe someday, after she had enough money not to ever worry about it again, after her and her friends' adventure was over and they were all safe, maybe then her first thought wouldn't be for money. In the meantime, money was equated with safety and freedom in her mind. Her friends meant that as well, but money was a close second.
If only she'd enough of it, her mother would still be alive.
