Nami was blind.

She had lived her entire life believing something that everyone else had long since realized was nothing but a lie, naively trusting that there was a silver lining to every cloud, no matter how black.

She'd believed that even the cruelest of people would keep their promises.

When she had realized that what she had always thought wasn't truly the case, it felt like a punch to the gut. She had still been doubled over in pain when it struck her that maybe there was no such thing as silver linings.

And Nami wondered if maybe, instead of silver linings, there were black linings, and even the brightest of clouds had a dark side.

Bellemere had told her that there was always a good side to things. That everyone, no matter how evil, just needed to be loved. Nami had believed her.

But then Bellemere had died.

Stupidly sticking to her morals, even when it could have meant death, even when she knew that it meant that she wouldn't be able to see those silver linings that she had oh-so-naively believed in anymore.

Bellemere had abandoned Nami because she loved Nami.

How ironic.

Sometimes Nami wondered if Bellemere would have lived had she decided to abandon Nami, or had she chosen to never adopt her. If Bellemere had looked the other way, she would have been alive… but she had been too kind for that, too self sacrificing and loving.

It hurt a million times more than any physical wound ever could.

Nami felt like a lost child in the dark, groping for a door that wasn't there.

The offer of money was a false door. It paved a way to what she had thought was her future… but that was because her blinders had blocked out the sight of the thorns on the sides and the nails on the ground that made it impossible for her to reach her fantasy of a goal.

Her tangerine orchard was like a door to the past, when everything was good and peaceful and she could give her true smiles. But then she came plummeting back down to earth, and the pain increased tenfold.

Then Luffy had come.

As she went back to Arlong, her blinders falling off, she had assumed that the world around her was nothing but the darkness he pointed out to her.

But Luffy had shown her those were a form of blinders too. That the real world maybe was a little scary, and held heartache… but it also had wonder, and a form of brilliance money couldn't buy and no words could describe.

And suddenly, Nami could see. And the world was even more beautiful than Bellemere had told her.