Disclaimer: I do not own One Piece.

It was a quiet kind of ritual by the time it was happening on the Thousand Sunny. She hadn't had the opportunity to make much of it at all, before the crew had been separated, mostly because the birthday she was celebrating hadn't been anywhere near yet. And she hadn't properly celebrated it at all while training on that cloud with the old geezers.

(In truth, maybe she had kind of pushed the date away for a bit, off to the side, where she couldn't see it that often any more)

(Her mother wouldn't be mad at her for not remembering to do the birthday ritual as she'd taught it to them)

(Belle-mère had been dead for longer than she'd been in her life by then, anyways)

Maybe, just maybe, Nami was still missing her adoptive mother more than words could say. Her death day had been ten years ago – eight years of uncertainty, half a year of getting to know Luffy and his band of hooligans, of going places that no one in her village had ever seen, of adventures that no one could dream up they were that crazy… and then two years of separation from her nakama that taught her to rely on herself more than the eight years before knowing them ever had.

Ten years of her life, lived without her adoptive mother to come back to.

In the end, her little ritual hadn't ever been a regular thing that she did. She made space for it whenever she could, wherever it was possible to do so, but it had not once been celebrated for two years in a row. Mayhaps she could start a new tradition on their new ship. After all, it was supposed to be their home now, wasn't it?

"What'cha doing there, Nami?" gnawing the meat off a bone, Luffy got down beside her in the snow that had accumulated on deck, sandals crunching his foot imprints into it. The idiot hadn't thought to bring more than a jacket again, had he? Stupid dumbass was going to get a cold at this rate…

Not looking up from the small accumulation of items in front of her – three small candles arranged in a triangle formation, a tangerine and a Beli in the middle – she kept quiet. Oh, were those tears that were falling down her cheeks and landing in the snow in front of her hers?

A hand covered by a thick mitten came to rest against her right cheek, tenderly, carefully, wiping the tear track away a little bit. Her captain had always known when keeping quiet was more appropriate, no matter what she said to the contrary. From the beginning, he'd been more attuned to the crews' feelings than they could have anticipated he'd be. Endearing a trait that it was, no one could think to escape the draw that Luffy presented – like moths to a flame, they gathered around him.

"Just a- just a little birthday celebration, Luffy." She said in lieu of anything else she could have.

"Whose?" came the prompt question. Ever-curious, that one. She wouldn't trade him for the world.

"Bell-mère's." Feeling the need to elaborate, to justify, she went on to say, "I know it's not her deathday, but I don't think she'd have wanted us to celebrate her deathday, at all, anyways. I'd rather celebrate her birthday than anything else in memory of her." Nojiko had always, from the start, celebrated both, in the quiet, small house up on top of the tangerine groves.

Luffy's face remained impassive for another moment, before a smile took it over. "Alright. Let's celebrate her birthday, then!" She regarded him for a minute in silence, before she showed him what to do, in that little ritual of hers. The snow proved a silent backdrop to their voices when they rung out into the void of the sea, saying "Happy Birthday, Bell-mère!"