Hello again!
I wrote four different versions before I settled with this. I had a hard time trying to fit everything I wanted to happen in this one chapter, such a hard time in fact, that I had to cut this chapter into two and push back the later chapters. Bright side, you get more content in the long run! Down side, there's a shitload of setup and waiting for the action to get into gear! Well, I hope you enjoy nonetheless. Onwards, to chapter five!
the breaking point
One year prior to our story, Nami is asked by Sabo to aid in the search for his younger brother, who of which, has been missing for seven years. In present time, Nami learns of Law's lost love and is reminded of her own from a long time past.
five | gone away
7 months prior…
Nami grimaces in disgust.
The town is lined with death, the sour sweet scent of it beyond horrid in the grey skied humidity. Dead bodies buzzing with fat black flies, lay in haphazard piles in the streets outside of thatched homes and ruins of what were once Marine owned buildings.
As she passes them by, Nami kicks a soggy stuffed doll out of her way, watching disinterestedly as it lands into a puddle of oily substance. Almost immediately, the toy is run over by the wheels of one of the many corpse collecting carts. Some liquid from the puddle splashes onto the toes of Nami's boots. Her lips curl downwards into a frown.
She wants to leave. She doesn't want to be in this dirty hellhole surrounded by people who haven't bathed since the First Rebellion. Just sharing the air makes her more and more anxious and wanting to scrub the filth from her skin. She wonders why she is here and not hidden away in the haven of her room.
"How long do you plan on staring at your shoes?" The impatient snap of her partner's voice draws her from her thoughts and Nami blinks as she raises her head to look the woman in the eye. When Nami doesn't answer, the woman scowls.
"You better not screw this up for us, you've been watching clouds and daisies all day. We need this to work." The woman frowns. "Sabo's counting on us."
Nami nods without looking at the woman, her gaze elsewhere as she watches people shove corpses haphazardly into the beds of their carts. Her disinterest earns her a click of the tongue. She feels her eyebrow tick, but takes a breath to calm herself. It would do her no good if she were to hurt her partner. With obvious reluctance, she meets the woman's burning gaze with a bland smile.
Nami gestures vaguely, "Lead the way."
The woman, or rather, Nami's partner, turns on her heel to stalk angrily down the street towards the brilliantly lit tavern at the end of the road. After a moment's pause, Nami follows.
Inside, amongst the sweat of unbathed strangers and meaty breath of greasy meals, the reek of death is no less prominent, but Nami shakes both the scent and her ill mood off her shoulders like dust, plasters her best smile on her face, and scans the room for the man she was sent here for. When she finds him, she slinks through the crowd with a whisper of guilt chilling her blood.
The poor man.
Exactly two hours, thirty minutes and fifty-seven seconds later, covered in blood that is not her own and limping on a sprained ankle, Nami slips from the back rooms of the tavern and into the dark alleyway which snakes along the outskirts of the ragged town. She does a quick scan around the area to make sure that no one is watching her before she unzips her ruined jacket and mops the blood from her face and neck. When it appears that this method does more harm than good concerning the blood, she turns her jacket inside out and uses icy water from the gutter to create some semblance of clean.
The chill from the frigid night bites into her bare arms, exposed and unprotected by the simple singlet she wears, but Nami ignores it as she shoves the ruined jacket under a rotting corpse near her. Just as she's about to make her escape into the night, a sound from deeper in the alley startles her.
She peers into the darkness, rooted in her spot as a figure walks into the meager moonlight, one hand outstretched towards her as though she were a feral cat it wished to tame. Inch by inch, the face is pulled from the black velvet of night, skin looking almost blue from the moon and hair an odd shade of tainted blue pink. He wears a simple patterned bandana around his forehead and white-white clothes that are much too out of place with the rotten bodies lining the walls.
She stares stupidly. She almost thinks she's hallucinating—he's so… clean.
The urge to touch him—to see if he's real—if he exists—has her fingers twitching up to meet his own. But then he speaks, and she is awoken from her stupor.
"Nami?" he asks breathlessly, his eyes wide.
Her hand falls back to her side, though the hand of the stranger continues to close the distance. His fingertips graze one cheek, darting back as fast as they came, barely—just barely—in time to evade the tip of her blade.
That was stupid of you, she berates herself, letting a stranger get so close.
"Who are you?" She holds the machete out to bring back the distance between their bodies. Her palms slick with nervous sweat and she feels the sudden urge to run—run, run, run and never look back—but she swallows it down. "How do you know my name?"
His eyes dart back and forth from the stained blade of her weapon to her face, unsure of where to settle. After a heated pause, he says with a calm that has Nami's nerves jumping in a red flagged warning, "I am a friend."
He holds both of his hand up beside his head, open and palms facing her.
"I won't hurt you," he says gently. There is a sincerity in his voice, a kind of sincerity that Nami hasn't heard in a long time. Perhaps too long. It drains the fight from her blood and Nami finds that she has to look away from his carbon gaze. His eyes are free from deceit and the innocence in them are so painfully familiar that she cannot bring herself to meet his stare.
Don't look at me.
He takes one step forward.
Don't touch me.
Nami takes one step back.
Please.
"Nami—" he begins, taking another tentative step towards her only to rear back in shock when Nami presses the blade of her machete-knife to his throat.
"Stay where you are. Don't come any closer," she warns.
His expression morphs into something like concern. For her or for himself, she doesn't know. Nor does she really care.
"Who are you?" she asks again.
A voice from the tavern's backroom's answers for her.
"Vice Admiral Coby!" calls the voice of a boy no older than twelve, "We've found the captain!"
The pink haired stranger turns to the voice, his face placid. "You know what to do," he says with nearly no emotion. Nami turns as well, just in time to see a young boy dressed in a dirty Marine uniform salute the stranger with a ramrod back, impeccable posture, before he disappears back into the tavern. The sight of such a young—innocent—boy venturing into a place echoing with pleasured moans and pained cries intermixed with the dirty wet slap of skin on skin sends a blush of shame and revulsion to Nami's cheeks. When she faces the stranger once more, he is watching her carefully, though no less sincerely.
"You're a vice admiral?" she manages to say accusingly. "Of the Marines?"
"Yes," he says easily, as though the feat to claim such a title is nothing more than the swatting of a pregnant fly.
Nami stares, a mixture of disbelief and oddly enough, betrayal unfurling in her gut. She turns to flee, but before her foot can leave the ground, the Marine has his hands on her shoulders and knee pressed to her thigh as her back collides with the brick wall behind her. The impact knocks the breath out of her lungs.
"Let me go," she hisses through gritted teeth, trying but failing to pull out of his grasp. Her hands claw at his wrists, drawing blood and scraping away ribbons of skin. He wrestles with her for a moment, overpowering her easily and locking both her hands over her wrists.
"Just wait a moment, will you?" he implores.
She glares. "You're a Marine."
And more importantly, a man, but she keeps that thought to herself.
"Nami," he says again in that voice, as though she were a feral cat he wished to tame, "I won't hurt you."
She says nothing. Though he must attribute her muteness to stubbornness, Nami is almost embarrassed to admit that it is because of fear. They are alone in the dark. Should she scream, no one would come for her. If he wanted, he could do anything he wanted to her.
It's your fault you know. What man wouldn't? Such a pretty face, such a wonderful body, you're what dreams are made of, sweetheart.
Her heart begins to race.
"I-I know that we didn't know each other very well, but I'm begging you, please, remember me." His breathing is uneven as he pulls Nami's escaping hands together by the wrists. He pins her arms above her head, and here is where Nami's flight instinct is rages—telling her to run, run, run, run away.
She feels a cold trickle down her back, her mind blanking back and forth from reality to past pictures as she recalls all too well a time when this position—her hands held above—rope—sometimes chains—cutting into the tender skin of her pretty wrists.
He shakes her, and jarringly, she is brought back to the dank alleyway, captured between him and the dirty brick wall.
"My name is Coby. We met in Water 7 at the Galley-La. Don't you remember? Tell me you remember me!"
The innocence in his eyes melts into something wild, something untamed and not quite sane.
"It doesn't matter if you don't remember me, you just have to know this. You just have too—look here, no one is going to walk out of this war alive, no one is going to make it out. People are dying, and it doesn't matter how many, how young, the Marines draft, this isn't going to end. Ever." He swallows hard. "Listen, Nami. The Government, they—they know—they're planning to use a weapon against you and your comrades. They're planning to kill everyone."
Like she had when she first laid eyes on him, she can only stare stupidly. His words sink in, albeit slowly.
Kill, he says, kill, kill, kill. A voice snarls at her from the back her mind, mocking and petty and vicious. You're a killer. You're the same. You want that. You want it.
"I can't live with something like that. I can't stand by and do nothing. This—everything—it can all be stopped if we overthrow the Government. Many of us are planning a coup, almost one fourth of the Marines are on our side, but we can't win—and neither can you if it's only us."
But you don't care, do you? Because you can. You can live with it just fine. You did it before, didn't you?
"Seven powers—seven fleets—nearly seven hundred thousand men which will tip the war in our favor are holding back because they only follow the orders of one man."
Finally, she snaps, "What does this have to do with me?"
His eyes are wild. "It has everything to do with you!"
"Nami," he says, his eyes bearing down on her, stripping her naked beneath his gaze. "Where is your captain?"
Nami blinks.
Captain…
Her mind drifts.
Where is your captain? Where? Wherewherewherewhere—where, oh, where—where is your captain, now, sweetheart?
Captain—her brow wrinkles, but the stranger named Coby doesn't notice, only shakes her more insistently—my captain?
She had a captain once.
A very long time ago. A time from before. Before the before, back when she was…was… still beautiful. Yes, back when she was beautiful, pretty, young and untainted—still wanted. Back then, before the before, when she had sailed the seas, there was a man with hair and eyes the color of moss who kept her safe and another who had dark eyes, dark hair, and a smile that could put the stars to shame and who—
Didn't want you. Lied to you. Hated you. Spat on you. Left your pretty, pretty self to die while he ran off with better, smarter, prettier friends. That's right, he left you. He left you all alone. Isn't that sad? Doesn't that make you… angry?
No, she thinks, that's not—
One moment, she is watching the stranger named Coby ramble and trip over his words like a madman, and next she is enveloped in darkness as she feels the world shift from underneath her feet. She falls—falls, falls, falls, down, down, down in the never ending darkness—and opens her eyes, in what seems like milliseconds later, to a pair of wide, blue-blue eyes and hair the color of caramel taffy.
"You're awake!" Koala exclaims, tension Nami hadn't noticed before draining from her frame.
Nami blinks. She sits and puts her feet to the floor in one smooth motion, ignoring the sway of vertigo that sweeps over her body as she does so. Koala puts her hands to Nami's shoulders, voicing her alarm, but Nami pays her no mind. Instead, she pulls the intravenous needle from her arm and pushes the woman out of her way.
She needs to see Law.
She needs to ask him about the before the before, needs to tell him about the man called Coby, about the war, the children walking into brothels, the Government—the enemy… many things. There is too much to say.
She pulls the white curtain separating her away from the other patients and is immediately disgusted. The sickbay is overflowing, busy as ever. Nurses and the like, half run, half jog between patients, their skin damp with sweat even though the room is ice cold. There is blood on the floor, trailing from a gurney that is left sitting the middle of the makeshift hall of white sheets and curtains. She knows with one look, that the groaning, crying man laying on the abandoned gurney—who is holding the coils of his intestines futilely to his stomach, green bile and dark sludge leaking onto his hands—will not survive.
That must be why he was left there. It would be a waste of supplies in tending to him.
Nami eyes the trail of blood as she passes it by. She would have to come back later to scrub it clean.
"Law!" she calls out over the chitter chatter of voices, orders, crying and screaming, ignoring all of them and the background voice of Koala's worry most of all. "Law!" she tries again.
She sees a head turn towards her, and recognizes him before he can face her. Her eyes are intent on his figure, hand stretched out to meet his held out halfway when someone pulls her back. Nami whirls on them, a scowl in her lips and growl rumbling in her throat. The hand on her shoulder releases her, and the man attached to it rears back, startled.
"The hell do you want?" she snaps at the man.
It's burning. It's as though there is a blistering burn of the strange man's handprint on her shoulder and she brings her hand up to viciously rub the sensation away.
Disgusting.
The strange, rude man raises his hands in mock surrender. "Easy. Was just looking to pass a message."
"Later," she barks, turning away from him and back to Law. He is already halfway to her and she takes a step, words on the tip of her tongue, but the man who'd touched her without permission, does so again.
She screams.
Both Koala and Law is at her side in seconds.
"It would be best if you kept your hands to yourself," Koala scolds, quick to interpose herself between Nami and the other man. "Now," she says with a placating tone, "What message did you have to pass along?"
The man rubs his wrist sheepishly. "Sabo wants to see Nami—"
"That's Miss Nami to you," Nami interjects with nothing but snark.
He falters but otherwise does not argue. "Sabo wishes to see Miss Nami as soon as she awakens."
"How convenient, I was just about to make a visit myself. I'll take her there," Koala says easily, ignoring the growing tension as Nami glares balefully at the man.
The man shifts uncomfortably. "That won't be necessary, Sabo wants to see her alone. No one else."
Something dark crosses Koala's face, her bluebell eyes sharpening, but only for a second, and it disappears as quick as it came. "Alone, you say? Ah, well, you best be on your way, then."
When she turns to face Nami, she's nothing but cheer and smiles. "You heard him, Nami. Sabo wants to see you now; he must have something very important to say to you."
"But, I—" Nami looks to Law, but Koala won't have any of it.
"You can tell Law everything you want to later," she says, and all but shoves Nami out of the sickbay, the strange, rude man following clumsily behind. Law looks at her, as though tempted to follow her, but a nurse tugs at his sleeve and his attention is turned elsewhere.
Angry at being both denied and pushed away, Nami huffs to herself as she stumbles to right herself. She straightens her generic shirtdress and before the man can skip away, Nami asks him irritably, "Where are my things?"
"Oh! You mean your swords and weapons and things… They're in there." He points to the room just across the hall of the sickbay and Nami treads towards it. "Though I suggest that you shouldn't retrieve them until later—Miss Nami?"
Nami pushes the door open without difficulty and strides inside with no hesitance. The trinkets, jewelry and whatnot laid on the tables pick at a wanting urge deep inside her, but she squashes it down as she makes a beeline for the familiar shape of her swords and knife. The swords she swings over her shoulders by their strap, and her knife she secures to thigh, like always. Behind her, the idiot of a man tip toes inside the room, barely leaving the open doorway.
"You shouldn't be in here without—"
Nami ignores him. She strides past him, but it seems as though the man if intent on spoiling her mood in every which way. He reaches to touch her—touch her!—again.
"Miss Nami!" He catches her elbow and spins her to face him, only to scramble away from her when she faces him with a knife in her hand, gleaming wickedly and poised with practiced perfection to run across his throat. She pins him to the wall, her eyes hard and unforgiving. Her blade breaks skin, a small bead of red welling up along the edge.
A flick of her wrist and the blade is gone from his tender throat, but the threat laced with bloodlust and contempt does not leave her eyes. "Touch me again, I dare you."
She leaves the bumbling fool outside the threshold of the sickbay and stalks angrily to Sabo's office, her white-knuckled grip never leaving the handle of her knife even as she flies up four flights of stairs. When she arrives at his door, she forces herself to take a deep breath.
Calm, Nami. Calm.
The knife finds it way back to it's sheath at her thigh. She rubs away the man's hands from her arms, hard enough that her pale skin turns red and ruddy.
Calm.
She breathes in.
You're okay.
She breathes out.
"I'm okay," she says to herself.
Once her heart has stopped racing painfully in her chest, she raises on hand up to knock. The response is immediate.
"Enter."
She enters.
Many hours later, at a quarter past five in the early morning, when nearly all the nurses and help are only beginning to rise from bed, she kneels on the cold concrete floor of the sickbay and scrubs the blood away. It stains the hem of her white shirtdress pink, but that is of little importance now.
Wash, wash, wash away, she wills it.
Go away.
She scrubs harder, the wet scrape of her brush echoing in the sickbay, startling loud amongst the soft moans of pain.
"Nami."
She doesn't dare look away from the task at hand.
Wash, wash, wash away, she tells it.
Go away.
"Nami, you said you wanted to tell me something."
Did she? Did she not? She's not sure. What was she supposed to tell him? Yesterday… she had wanted to speak with him. Yes, that's right. She had many things to say—but… But. She doesn't remember what she had wanted to ask…
Her brow furrows.
Harder, harder. The stain will not leave if she works so slowly. Her hair drags in the dirty water and soap, but she ignores it. Scrub, harder and harder still. Law sighs.
"Why don't you stop scrubbing the goddamn floor and just fucking listen to me for once?" he growls as he snatches her hands away from their task.
She stares up at Law, not understanding his anger. All she wants is to clean, all she wants is for the blood to go away. She is doing no wrong. None at all. She is just doing her job! She's just doing what she was told! Clean the blood, he'd said. Clean up your mess, he'd told her. That is what she's doing. So why does Law fault her? Why is he so angry with her? Does he not know what will happen if she doesn't clean up her mess?
Tears prick her eyes.
Why can't he leave her to clean? Why can't he leave her be? She doesn't want to be punished, she's been good, she promises, she's done everything that was asked of her.
Look at what you did, he says.
"You're bleeding," Law tells her, though the anger in his voice isn't quite gone as he takes the brush out of her hands. She looks down and indeed, her hands are bleeding.
Look at the mess you made, he says.
Clean it up.
Pulling her hands from Law, Nami takes up the brush again and continues to scrub the floor. Wash, wash, wash away. Go away. Don't come back.
Please.
Stay away.
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Present…
These days, Nami wakes with ear piercing screams loud enough to wake the dead. On the good days, she will not remember her dreams, but on days like today, she does.
The cocoon of Law's embrace is familiar and inviting to her harebrained senses. She soaks up the heat of his body like a greedy sponge as her hands find purchase in whatever part of him is nearest. He rocks the two of them side to side gently as she sobs nonsense into the skin of his neck. Though his touch burns her—as the touch of man always does—and musky smell of sweat repulses her, she allows him to draw her in closer.
Law is her friend. He means her no harm.
When the worst of her crying has faded, reduced to nothing but a stray sniffle every so often, Law loosens his embrace and places his hands on her shoulders with the intent of pushing her away. She holds fast against his attempt to separate them and resists when he twists to try and meet her gaze. Finally, he sighs and gathers her into his arms once more.
"What did you see, Nami?" he asks in that gentle tone—the one he uses when he wants everything and anything from her.
Nami only shakes her head.
The dream is fading from her mind, but the worst of it remains seared into the back of her eyelids, playing over and over. She doesn't want to speak of it, doesn't want to think of it, just wants it gone and forgotten. Describing such vicious things makes it seem all the more real. It is a dream, a terrible dream, and that is all that Nami wants it to be.
She presses tentative fingers to the skin of her back to trace one of the many puckered lines embedded there. She knows without looking that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of those whipcord thin scars, crisscrossing like a myriad of silver veins hidden under the blue black ink of her tattoos. In the far corner of her mind, where the dark, dirty things lurk, a voice as smooth and sleek as black diesel grease taunts her as it chuckles in salacious warning.
"You mustn't tell lies…"
Nami shivers.
A dream…
It is just a dream.
She curls tighter into the protection that Law offers so readily. From what, or rather, who, she hides from, she doesn't know. When she lays back down, she pulls her three swords into her arms, as though they might repel the evil away.
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It doesn't make her mood much better, but for breakfast to eat alongside her wretched, bitter and salty 'medicine' and equally wretched ration bar, Law procures a tangerine for her to eat. She finds herself staring at the pitted surface for several long breaths, simply admiring the fruit. Fresh fruit is rare in this time and age, and where Law finds all these to give to her is a complete mystery.
"Are you going to stare at it all day?"
Her head snaps up to meet his amused gaze.
"I could. I might," she admits, stroking one finger across the tangerine's rind. "It reminds me of happy things."
"What kind of things?"
Nami shrugs, "Just happy things."
He doesn't ask her anything else. They sit in silence, Law contemplative and Nami aloof as the sun peeks over the ruins of the once grand city, it's almost golden light piercing the dark of the late dawn and chasing shadows back until they are nothing more. Nami stares in silent awe. It is beautiful, the sun—but then it rises just a tad bit higher, and is hidden behind the thick smog of gray.
How disappointing.
By the time the meager grey tainted sunlight touches her bare toes, weak and brittle through the grimy, stained glass windows, Law stands with his sword in hand. From the corner of her eye, Nami watches him cross the room to stand by the barricade he had made the night before.
She doesn't realize that his intentions until she sees him slipping into his boots.
"Where are you going?" she asks quickly before he can leave without a word. In her haste to stand, she drops her tangerine in the rumpled nest of her blanket.
"I need to check something," he says without looking at her. "Stay here."
A pang of anxiety has Nami's stomach hardening into lead.
"Alone? You'll come back, right?" There's that embarrassing leak of desperation in her voice again. Her cheeks flush, but she doesn't retract her words.
He gives her a look over his turned shoulder, eyes narrowed in annoyance as though her asking him such a thing is absolutely ludicrous, but does not answer. He doesn't tell her yes or no, and that ambiguous silence only makes her panic spike.
She forces him to face her, her lips pulled downwards in a scowl. Her eyes search his. "You won't leave me will you? You'll come back?"
Law seems mildly surprised. "What gave you that idea? I've been with you all this time haven't I?"
His response makes her angry. She wants to argue with that, to rebuke him and tell him haughtily, righteously so, that even though someone has spent years at your side, they can and will still leave you lonely when you begin to become a burden. It's happened before. She'd been abandoned, half delirious with fever and left to die—
…What?
Her eyebrows furrow.
Not true, she thinks, shaking her head, that can't be true.
The lines of her open palm fade in and out of focus, and only when Nami meets Law's stare, does she realize that she'd been staring. The weight of his golden gaze grounds her and when she blinks, the daze falls away as quickly as it came.
"You slipped away for a while there," he says when she only watches him blankly. "What were you thinking about?"
"I was…" She turns her focus to the wall just behind him. It's water stained, and the once seamless blue and white wallpaper peels like old nail polish from the cherry wood paneled walls. Her lips curl in distaste. What kind of idiot would ruin that level of craftsmanship with cheap striped wallpaper? She asks Law this, but he only sighs.
"I don't know Nami. Frankly, I could care less about the fucking walls."
That wasn't very nice of him. Nami frowns.
"Someone went through all the trouble to carving all that wood, at least someone should appreciate it," she reprimands, scowling.
Law puts his hand to his forehead as though to ward away a headache and sighs. Again. She sees him roll his eyes underneath his closed eyelids. "Nami, just stay here."
He turns to leave once more.
"Wait!" She takes his arm, pulling him back by the elbow. "You never answered my question."
Law shakes her grip with a roll of his shoulders. "I think it's quite fair, seeing that you ignored mine and that, like I said earlier, I don't care about the walls."
"Law." She's almost whining. "Tell me you'll come back."
His shoulders tense, then relax.
"Thirty minutes," he says, still turned to the barricade.
"Really?" she asks.
"Yes, really," he agrees easily enough.
She's not satisfied with his answer, and opens her mouth to tell him so, but then he leaves with a zip in the air, gone before she can bid him goodbye, nothing but the receding blue tint of his 'room' left to show that he was ever standing there.
"Don't get hurt," she says to the barricade, even though there is no one to receive her soft warning.
She falls down to her nest of blankets and picks back up her tangerine. As she begins to peel the vibrant skin away, she begins as well, the needless task of counting the seconds until Law will return. Her lips move, but the words are soundless beneath her breath.
One, she says slowly in the haven of her mind.
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Five thousand, six hundred and twenty-one.
Her eyes flick to the grimy window.
Five thousand, six hundred and twenty-two.
No sign of Law.
Five thousand, six hundred and twenty-three.
A peek out the dirty windows has her worrying. It's almost noon, that much she can tell by the placement of the sun in the sky. She has been waiting for nearly two hours, and in those two hours, Law has not returned.
Thirty minutes, he'd said.
Five thousand, six hundred and twenty-five.
She slumps down into her blanket. The worry gnaws and writhes inside her, until she has no choice but to stand and begin pacing.
Five thousand, six hundred and twenty-nine.
Should she leave the makeshift shelter to search for him? Or should she stay and wait for his return? Law would be angry at her if she disobeyed, but then again, he could be dead. Or dying. Or worse. Her stomach sinks.
Five thousand, six hundred and thirty-one.
What should she do?
Five thousand, six hundred and thirty-two.
She turns to the barricade. Leave?
Five thousand, six hundred and thirty-three.
She turns to the bedrolls. Or stay?
Five thousand, six hundred and thirty-four.
"Law you idiot…" she groans and sidles down the wall to sit with her knees drawn to her chin and head in her hands.
Five thousand, six hundred and thirty-five.
Nami frowns.
Five thousand, six hundred and thirty-six.
Time is just ticking away…
Five thousand, six hundred and thirty-seven. Five thousand, six hundred and thirty-eight.
Slowly, she looks back to the barricade.
Five thousand, six hundred and thirty-nine.
She stands.
Five thousand, six hundred and forty.
Damn that Law.
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Her paranoia isn't helping in the least.
Nervously, Nami shifts the combined weight of her pack and Law's on her back as she dares a peek behind her. No one. Nothing but descending steps. She begins to walk up again, and just the same, the noise picks back up.
Someone is following her.
Or at least, she hopes someone is. If she's lucky, it'll be a someone, not a something. Some little ways away, the pitter patter of little feet and scuttling of rocks echoes from the deep confines of a tower ruin. Nami's eyes dart back and forth between where she thinks the source of the strange noises is and her haphazard path of crumbling stairs in front of her. She can't pinpoint the exact source, and can't distinguish whether the noises are being made by a human or a—she shakes her head to rid the thought.
"No," she tells herself, "don't think about those things."
She turns her attention away from both the little echoes and dark, dirty thoughts. Just the wind. It is just the wind. There are no people here. There is nothing here to hurt her. Nami nods to herself and continues on her way up the stone steps of the bell tower.
The air is crisp, save for the rotten scent of sulfur and sting of chlorine, and lifts the little tendrils of saffron hair that has escaped from her otherwise neat ponytail every so often. If the sky weren't as gray as it is, and the roads weren't littered with dry, cracked bones and broken homes, Nami might have even called it a nice day.
Mild weather, she thinks to herself as she climbs atop the empty bell stand, scouting the grounds of the ruined city once she reaches the edge of the roof. No rain today…
Nami brings a hand up to her brow to hold her hair from her eyes.
Now where would he go…?
She turns north and sees the blue and white lines of the shore. There would be where she would have gone, had she been in possession of a boat, but Law is neither her nor does he own a means of travel currently.
She turns east, and is surprised to see thin wisp like tendrils of smoke. Her eyes follow the poorly concealed trail down to a squat looking shack built into the ground and leaning heavily against the side of a dilapidated warehouse. From her vantage point, she can see the faraway figures of tottering busybodies, walking back and forth, inside the building and back out. A few are stationary, and only move from the waist up, as though peering cautiously around.
In her chest, her heart begins to race.
Impossible. There are no people here.
She pulls Law's pair of binoculars from his pack and brings them to her eyes.
They… aren't people.
They are hulking, fat, and hideously disfigured—Nami guesses that they are at the very least, twice her size in height and five times her size in weight. Their arms drag on the ground as they move to and fro, gathering stray wood and the like with thick sausage fingers and chipped nails caked with filth. A greasy layer of film coats their sickly pale skin, and it is not until Nami focuses on their faces that she sees them for what they are.
Clones, she thinks immediately, taking in the cookie cutter faces of rotten teeth and scraggly dark hair.
Her breath quickens. She scoots a little further in a poor attempt to see more.
…No, not clones. They're too slow, too monotone. These are drones. Very similar to clones, but due to times restraints and the haste for battle, these shells were created without the ability to think for themselves. Drones work through a system, all connected to one hive mind that must always remain close by…
A noise behind her has her body freezing terror. She whips her head towards the source of disturbance—a darkened doorway, six o'clock—and hisses, "Who's there?"
Nami drops the binoculars and puts her hand to the handle of her knife. Her eyes search the shadows beyond the doorway, looking, calculating so that when—
Oh.
Her body relaxes and she expels her baited breath.
How silly of her.
A matted tabby cat peeks from the darkness, poking its little head out from the rubble and meows weakly, it's bright amber eyes staring at Nami intently. It's cute, she'll give that. The little runt wears the sad, needy look very well. Though nervous, it is unafraid under Nami's stare, and pads slowly over to where Nami is perched, cautious.
She presents her fingers, which the cat sniffs daintily before allowing her to rub between its ears. When she pulls away, the cat follows and licks at her fingertips earnestly with its sandpaper tongue.
"I don't have anything for you," she tells the cat. She thinks of the ration bars she and Law has eaten for the past five days, but doesn't think the cat would like, let alone be able to digest the hard, dry squares.
The cat meows again, this time softly, as though pleading with her.
"Well… If you help me, I'll help you. How about that?" Nami says justly. "I'm looking for someone. Tall, dark hair, brooding… angst ridden and incredibly self absorbed…" Nami points to the fingers of her left hand. "He has the word death tattooed on both his hands."
The tabby only blinks.
"I see. You don't know." She frowns, though good naturedly. Bringing her hand up to cup her chin, she stands with a thoughtful cock of her head, eyes fixed to the wisps of smoke. "Well, I on the other hand, have an inkling…"
When Nami looks back to the little matted tabby cat, she's smiling. "Shall we?"
And towards the smoke they go. Halfway down the steps of the broken, beaten bell tower, Nami turns to look at the cat trailing behind her with a twinkle in her eye. "Say… You don't happen to know if there's any treasure around here, do you?"
Again, the tabby only blinks.
I feel terrible! Anopy, thank you for the review! I left you out in the previous update, but don't worry, I didn't forget you. And hey, it's okay. I think most of us are real life Bepos. But then again, who wouldn't want to be? ;)
Follows, reviews or anything from the readers are well loved! Thank you for reading!
SELF NOTE; Hmm…Hmmmm…Hm. I don't know how I feel about this chapter.