.
61.
It's hard to register time when you can't even be awake long enough to know if it's day or night.
Namika finds that it is better this way since she doesn't really have to be lucid for long, but she knows that she hates it too. She would rather have her mind and feel the pain than to be numb and not know how her body is being violated as property.
Hancock is her lodestone in this point. Hancock, who is constant and always there when she wakes from her drugs.
"Try to wake up and stand," she always pleads. "You have to work your muscles."
Atrophy is a concept she knows, from those dark memories that she has. So she always struggles and moves, working her body to at least some semblance of working order.
Thankfully, the Slave Kennels are clean and there is some room to walk, if only for a few feet. They are crowded with other slaves and they watch her with some pity. She is in the worst condition of them all, bar one old man who had been a slave all his life.
"How many years has it been?" she asks out loud.
A man answers, voice hoarse. "You came here two years ago."
Two years. Namika's step falters.
62.
Her owner decides to bring her out of the Kennels, to bring her to Sabaody Archipelago for another purchase. Namika tries not to tremble with the force of her anger.
What terrible timing for her drugs to be administered late.
She hides her ire behind the curtain of her red hair. It had gotten rather long because Hancock refused to cut it. She pretends to be subservient the entire journey and St. Roswald remarks that he wishes he could just stop giving her the drug since she was nicer when she was lucid.
Namika clenches her hands behind her hair and thinks of fifty different ways to kill him with a spoon.
63.
She wakes up with a sudden gasp, heart thundering. But there is no noise except for her heartbeat, because it had become instinct to stifle her cries after a nightmare. She did not want the attention of the Kennel Master, any more than usual.
Namika supposes she is lucky to be years younger than Hancock. Proud Hancock who was already so obviously beautiful that the Kennel Master pick on her, like an ignorant boy pulling on a girls pigtails.
It's counterproductive and, in moments when she can be coherent, she tries to protect Hancock with the little fighting techniques that stayed in her mind.
Sadly, it doesn't do much good.
64.
What bothers Namika most is that the drugs leave her inside her mind, unable to interact with the world.
It is as terrible as drowning and even worse than petrification, the feeling helpfully supplied by her annoying memories.
She does not know how long she spends in her mind, trapped. Neither does she know how long she tries to catch the fleeting memories, slowly vanishing like mist in the sunlight.
Namika is losing her memories and it is more terrible than being whipped for talking back.
Wounds heal, leaving some scars. But memories that disappear are harder to bring back.
65.
It is her birthday, and she knows it because one St. Roswald's friends throw inside the Kennel a newspaper.
Idiot. Foolish, foolish idiot.
There is a reason why slaves aren't given newspapers.
It gives them something to study, something to occupy their time with aside from moping in misery. It gives them information.
All of the men who are in better condition crowd over the newspaper. Hancock along with her friends crouch near Namika and her sparse blanket. There are other huddles besides theirs and they wait their turn to read the paper. But Namika's hoarse voice cuts through the hubbub easily.
"What is the date?" she asks.
One of the men glances over and says, "November 1st"
Namika takes in a shuddering breath. "Oh," she says in a smaller voice. "I suppose I can appreciate the irony."
Hancock smiles at her wearily. "What is it, gentle wave?"
She gives a sad shudder. "It's my birthday, I guess. If that thing isn't outdated."
They have no means to give presents but all of the rest of the prisoners give her small portions of their already meager food.
The food helps burn away the drugs injected in her system and she weeps a little as she can finally sleep without the numbing feeling of the drugs trapping her in dreams that she could not escape.
Her friends huddle close and she is warm again, if only for a moment.
66.
There is a boy in her dreams who loves her. He calls himself Blaise.
Namika wavers, wondering if he is part of her old memories, or a figment of her drugged mind.
Sometimes, when she allows herself to be weak, she thinks that he is beautiful and wonders how he died. She knows he dies because he never quite reaches a certain age, always hovering between being a child and being a man and never settling on one.
There is also another boy in her dreams but he is more fleeting, more elusive than the sunlight that they cannot see in the Kennels.
He has yellow eyes and the fierceness of a hawk. She does not know if he is real or not.
Namika often wakes from those dreams, hands outstretched and trying to catch such an elusive bird of prey.
67.
Hancock wonders sometimes, at the dark wisdom that sometimes peeked from Namika's eyes.
It is age old weariness and years of experience packed into the body of a child. No one ought to have eyes like that and no one should have eyes like that.
Granted, all of them were tired of being used like property, of being abused like they were lesser than humans. The mark of the Hoof of the Tenryuubito is particularly damning and Hancock hates it. She hates it even more than anything in the world.
If she could, she would burn off her own skin, but being a slave had taught her one thing and that was keeping herself able and strong. Strong enough to withstand the abuse and strong enough to keep her head bowed.
In that, even Namika surpassed all of them, even those who had been born slaves.
She keeps her strength and her will to live. She never falters.
Hancock envies her, just a little, because the thought to take her life had crossed her mind, once or twice.
68.
A new slave comes, but she is weak. She cries in her area for an entire month and does nothing but blubber and tremble every time someone approached, be it for comfort or inflicting pain.
Everyone looks at her with some disgust. They are each other's strength in the Kennel, they did not need a constant rain cloud to remind them of their situation. The could have used a person who smiled.
Namika just cocks her head to the side and wonders why the girl fears shadows.
It does not help that their area has little to no light.
69.
"She is scared of the dark," Namika tells everyone once her tears and blubbering have died off, the evidence that she had once again cried herself to sleep.
A wry smirk. "That's really unfortunate."
Someone huffs a laugh, albeit a strained one. A broken rib. "It's not like we can conjure sunlight for her."
"I wish I can conjure warmer blankets," another one remarks.
That starts a debate about wishful thinking and all that, Hancock just listens and taps her head to the side, looking bemused.
"I wonder if we can acclimate her to the darkness," she muses.
Namika just shrugs, a slow movement that is barely perceptible, but her shoulders hurt from her latest session with their master.
"You can do it," she encourages. "It would be better for everybody not to hear weeping too. I really can't help. My drugs are wearing off so they'll knock me high again tomorrow."
She does not look at Hancock's eyes because they always fill with pity at the mention of the drugs. Namika just lolls her head to the side and works her fingers.
70.
She is slowly getting immunity from the drugs.
Namika finds this a little ridiculous, but she noticed so slowly, caught up in her irritation, but the drugs aren't sufficient anymore, not for her. She is adjusting and it is brilliant.
She is in a body of a fourteen year old and children always bounce back very quickly. She had forgotten that and she entertains herself with that thought.
She will act drugged when they dose her and try to regain her former mobility.
Tenryuubito may have been powerful, but they really weren't quite that smart.
71.
Namika makes it a game.
She may have been a child, but she had the memories of a war hero.
Some of those memories were hazy but the clearest of them all were war tactics and psychological warfare. So she applies that, making herself a little more loveable, a little more indispensable and making her masters son depend on her.
He is truly despicable and a filthy arse, but he is stupid and easily manipulated.
Hancock watches her efforts, very much impressed.
72.
"Why do you do it?" the others ask her in her more lucid moments, when the drugs thin and she can look at them all without squinting.
"Hmm?" she mutters. "What?"
"Why bother manipulating them?" they continue to ask.
Namika laughs and it isn't a nice sound. "They're all idiots. So stupid and drunk on their power that it makes them overconfident and obnoxious."
There were murmurs of agreement.
"But think about it," she adds. "They think they are so brilliant that they forget there is always someone better. How it would burn them when I have danced on their corpses. I'll make that boy my tool. He will need me, seek me and I will be shielded, if only for a while because he will always ask for me and his father cannot use me at the same time."
They look at her with respect and awe.
Namika thinks it is rather damning to the morals when the people think it's a normal thing for a fourteen year old to mention an assassination plot without thinking it's wrong.
73.
St. Charloss, her masters son, is always needy, asking her for games.
Having two memories worth of loneliness and having to come up with her own games to chase away boredom, Namika has a lot. But she does not give him everything. She makes sure she gets 'ill' once in a while and making him unable to have her company.
His frustration is beautiful and she makes sure to follow it up with reassuring words, implying that she wanted to see him but her master was too harsh and the amateur doctor assigned to their Kennel had told her to rest.
It is brilliant.
He starts to unintentionally shield her. It works better because of his explosive temper and his unbelievably childish methods.
Namika doesn't know how to smile anymore, but she does think of him with amusement. Silly little idiot, willingly walking towards his own death.
74.
Hancock is the favorite of the Kennel Master and Namika sees the potential there, if only she would cooperate.
Hancock is from Amazon Lily, an island that foster only women and it is no wonder that she gravitated towards Namika, a girl.
But Hancock had never tried to seduce or manipulate a man before. Namika would rather avoid the possible disaster.
It is a shame, but while Namika is a good teacher, she had never really tried teaching seduction and manipulation to a girl older than her.
75.
Slaves have a certain life-expectancy.
Usually, it is only one year. That is always because the masters kill their own slaves out of boredom, because of escape attempts or illness and untreated injuries.
The special slaves are the ones that are hardy enough to survive those injuries, keep their head down and manage to be interesting enough that their master doesn't quite manage to kill them for their entertainment value.
The companions they have in the Kennel are being replaced, one by one until it is only Hancock and her, along with the other two girls. There are some of the older ones that stay alive, but they eventually kill themselves. The blubbering girl had died, killing herself by bleeding to death.
They are the senior slaves now, even if they are younger than almost all of them.
How strange.
76.
One day, Hancock comes back, being dragged on the floor and feverishly ill.
Behind her, the two sisters are in the same state and moaning each other's name.
To keep up the ruse of the drugs working, Namika couldn't run to them while the Kennel Master is watching. But she does signal some of the newer slaves to gently pick up the fallen girls and put them on their cots.
Namika is so mind-blindingly angry that she really cannot breathe.
77.
She gets her information from St. Charloss and he tells her what they had eaten.
Devil Fruits.
Damn it all, but that is the one thing in the entire world that she cannot cure, for it is an irreversible process.
While she would want the power, she wants being able to swim even more.
Her namesake, the sea, is the perfect hiding place after all.
78.
The results of the Devil Fruit shows when Namika wakes up to find Hancock standing over the stone sculpture of the Kennel Master. The girl is repeatedly kicking the man's nose, and it very satisfying to watch it break.
Marigold and Sandersonia manifest their new abilities with ill timing. It is when Hancock is being punished and they try to bite the master.
Ah well, some things were just out of control, but they could have timed it better.
All three of them were locked away, apart from the Kennels and into the deeper dungeon of Mariejois.
Namika grits her teeth and refines her plans.
79.
She poisons St. Charloss and everybody thinks it's an accident.
Namika laughs, until they call in an Admiral to investigate.
They find her and drag her to join Hancock in the dungeons, and she bites her lips to keep her screams in as they whip her.
No, they will never have the satisfaction of hearing her cry.
She passes out on the fifteenth whip and dreams of a boy with red hair and an easy smile like the sun.
She wonders who he is, even as her back is being ripped to shreds.
80.
Her back is on fire when she is being roughly shaken awake.
She sees a fishman looking at her with some concern, but mostly urgency.
"Hurry," he whispers. "You must leave here. There is a vessel to take you from here."
"Hancock," she tells the man. "There are three other girls here under punishment as well."
He nods, eyes hard and decisive. "I will."
In the end, she had to be carried by another of the more familiar slaves. It is a good thing they all respect her enough to leave her alone when she shivers into the blanket they are all given.
"Where are we going?" she mutters. No one answers her and she opens her eyes irritably, only to be silenced abruptly by what she is seeing.
How…beautiful.
The sun is rising and the sea waters turn gold. Namika had vowed to never cry, but it is a close thing, once she saw it.
People often connected sunrises with hope and she could finally understand why.
.
.
Yes, Namika has forgotten Shanks. It's like, a defense mechanism for the traumatized mind to forget the trauma, but don't worry, this isn't permanent.
Please R & R.
~Hallen