Please please please, Oda, make Luffy and Nami canon in the end. Please. Slight spoilers for anyone not caught up on the current state of the Straw Hat Pirates! This is my take on the end of the journey. Side note: it really bothers me that Laugh Tale has been revealed as the official spelling, as I had always known it as Raftel...anyone else?
Together Forever
Chapter 1: A Proposal of Sorts
Nami hummed to herself as she traced the shape of Laugh Tale on her map—the map of the world she had set out to create. She had been charting this map from the start of their adventure, little by little with every island they explored. Laugh Tale was the last island they had visited to be included on the map. There were still so many other islands out there that she had yet to set foot on, but reaching the end of the Grand Line marked a major point in her mission. The worst of it was supposedly over, and she was well on her way to making her dream a reality. Beaming proudly and wiping the back of her right hand over her brow, she leaned back to admire her craftsmanship. There was probably ink all over her face, but she couldn't bring herself to care.
"Oi, Nami!" The demanding voice of her one and only captain interrupted her peace and solitude. She wasn't in the least surprised to hear him, but she had been hoping for more time alone.
Huffing and putting down her quill, she arched a brow at the figure who had flung open the door. "What is it, Luffy?"
"Everyone's gone, and you've been in here for hours!" The rubber man complained, barging into the library and entering her personal space. His exasperated face was suddenly mere inches from her own. "Come out already!"
"You know how important this is to me." Grabbing his chin and turning his face away from her, Nami gestured to her pride and joy, the expansive map almost covering the entirety of the table before her. "Look, I just added Laugh Tale!"
"Wow! You really did!" Luffy exclaimed in amazement, leaping onto the table for a closer look. He lifted the brim of his straw hat and grinned broadly at her, full set of teeth in view.
How could she not react to that signature smile of his? She found herself reflexively smiling back. A second later, she realized that Luffy was standing on her map—dirty sandals and all. With an enraged screech, she smacked him with so much force that he toppled to the ground in a tangled heap of limbs. "You idiot! You left your footprints on it!"
"Ow!" Luffy sat up, pouting and clutching himself protectively. "Maps look dirty anyway!"
"Only if you get them dirty! If you ever do that again, I'll kill you!" She threatened heatedly, glaring down at him with her hands on her hips.
Rubbing his face, Luffy grumbled to himself before staring up defiantly at her. "You can't say that to the Pirate King!"
"Is that so, oh mighty one?" Nami bit back, kneeling down while pulling him up by the collar of his shirt so that they were eye level. With her free hand, she poked at the large crown sitting snugly on top of his straw hat. Luffy caught the devious glint in her eyes and audibly gulped. "Then instead, I'll take this and you can pay me 100,000 beli." She deftly snatched his crown with lightning speed and set it atop her own head. Tossing her long wavy hair over her shoulders, she was absolutely certain she looked fabulous, even while sporting ink stains.
"N-no way! I already owe you too much money!" He protested in shock, his eyes bulging out at the prospect of being in further debt.
"Damn right you do." Nami released her grip on him with a satisfied smirk. As she straightened, she whipped the straw hat off his head and twirled it in her hand, gazing down at it thoughtfully. Stripped of his prized possessions, Luffy only managed a weak "oi" before she continued talking. "So now that you're officially the Pirate King, you should have all the money in the world, right?"
Luffy flopped down onto his back with his limbs sprawled out like a starfish. "You saw all the treasure we found on Laugh Tale. It's probably enough for all of us to do nothing but eat meat for the rest of our lives!" He laughed boisterously in delight.
Nami observed him silently, watching as the joy on his face morphed into something more serious, more contemplative. With a small sigh, she situated herself next to him, smoothing down her dress and crossing her legs under her. "What do you want to do next, Luffy?" She asked softly.
He stared up at the ceiling, seemingly transfixed on something. "I'm not sure," he admitted after a few more moments of silence. Then his happy-go-lucky demeanor was back full force as he punched the air with his fists. "But that's the thing about being the Pirate King—I can do whatever I want! I know I'll have to continue sailing the seas and rule my territory! It would be nice to go back home someday and see everyone there. Oh, and of course see all of the friends we made on the way! Man, I wonder how they're all doing."
Nami sighed dramatically and pulled his left cheek, stretching it a whole foot. She was pretty certain that they shouldn't be sailing anywhere near East Blue anytime soon, given that Luffy had recently become the most wanted man in the world. Who knew what kind of trouble they would be bringing to their families? But that was another conversation.
"And who's going to be sailing the seas with you?" He definitely could not be trusted to go anywhere alone. His sense of direction wasn't nearly as bad as Zoro's, but he had an unfortunate propensity for mischief and trouble that required aggressive management.
He blinked at her and tried to speak through the stretching of his cheek. "You. And everybody else."
She released his cheek and it bounded back into place with a resounding snap. Shaking her head and bringing her knees up to her chest, Nami found herself suddenly overcome by a wave of uncertainty and sadness. "Luffy...you see," she hesitated, unsure how to tell him this as gently as possible. "Things probably aren't going to be the same anymore."
Confused, he scrambled to sit up quickly and peered at her closely. "What do you mean?"
Avoiding his gaze, she continued to play with the straw hat in her hands. "The journey is over, isn't it? We found the One Piece, and you're the Pirate King. Now, everyone is focused on fulfilling their own dreams. Zoro, Usopp, Sanji-kun, Chopper, Robin, Franky, Brook, Jinbe…they all have plans ahead of them. And I'm not sure if embarking on another voyage is part of them." The thought of the Straw Hat Pirates separating had plagued her mind for months before they had even reached the end of the Grand Line. The closer they had gotten, the more she found herself wishing for time to just stop. She may even prefer the countless near-death situations over the crew disbanding—well, maybe that wasn't entirely true, but the point was that she loved all of her nakama and the possibilty of not being together was painful. And she knew that Luffy cared for all of them just as much, if not more.
She attempted to lighten the mood. "Of course, some of them may want to sail again. But I think everyone deserves a break too…I mean, how long has it been? Almost a decade?"
While she was talking, he had begun to count with his fingers for reasons that were beyond her. Instead of throwing a tantrum like she had half-expected him to, Luffy was unnervingly quiet. "I see."
"You do?" She responded in stark surprise.
"What about you?" His full attention was on her then, and she felt herself growing warm and fidgeting under the intensity of his stare.
"I..." Her brown eyes drifted over to the map. The past week had honestly been a refreshing change of pace—since they had reached the end of the Grand Line, she felt like she had all the time in the world to do anything she wanted. Would she try to live a normal life...as a civilian? She snorted at that thought. There was no going back from being a pirate, and besides, she was a thief to the bone. Well, there was really only one possible answer then. She resolutely forced the straw hat back onto his head and walked over to a window overlooking the deck of the Thousand Sunny. There was a reason she had chosen to work on the map on this ship rather than on land. She had always felt the freest at sea.
"I'm your navigator," she declared and glanced back at him over her shoulder, a small smile on her face. "I'll take you anywhere you want to go. And besides, I haven't finished my map yet. I can count on you to ensure my safety, right?"
"Of course!" His response was automatic and firm. His face broke into a huge grin, and he began to jump and clap ecstatically. "All right! The journey isn't over!"
"Wait a second, Luffy, I'm not done." She brandished a finger at him. "I can sail for a few more years, but I've been thinking more lately about the future..." she trailed off, nibbling on her bottom lip and wondering if she really wanted to divulge her most private thoughts to him. She was in her mid-twenties now—there were certain things to consider. Oh, to hell with it.
"I eventually want a child," she blurted out and immediately blushed crimson at the confession. Bell-mère-san's laughing face flashed through her mind.
Luffy was suddenly white as a sheet. She was the scariest woman he knew, and even he, the Pirate King, didn't feel brave enough to take her on. "I'm not marrying you."
"What?!" Nami punched him in the face and followed it with a few kicks for good measure. "Who said anything about getting married?! And to you, of all people!"
He swung out of her reach to the other side of the room, chuckling and blissfully oblivious to the insult she had hurled at him. "Oh good then. We can have a child, no problem."
We? Her eyebrows twitched in annoyance. After all these years together, she still didn't understand, not even remotely, how his mind worked. It would forever be an enigma that she would actually rather not solve, for her own sanity. "What do you mean by we?"
"I want a child too," he said simply as if it was the most reasonable statement in the world. His eyes were comically bright. "Oh man, it'll be so fun having a kid on board!"
"Wait, wait, wait, back up." Rubbing her temples, Nami was feeling an impending headache. She often had them around him; it was an inevitable side effect of too much Monkey D. Luffy. "You want to be a father?" She knew that her tone was accusatory and probably rude, but she was too beyond disbelief to care.
"Yeah!" He confirmed with a wide grin. "Gol D. Roger was Ace's dad!"
She arched a brow at his simple logic. "And who do you expect would want to be the mother?" She was concerned about the possibility of there being such a person but also extremely curious about the woman he deemed worthy to rule the seas with.
Scratching his cheek, he looked at her as if she had just sprouted another head. "You're so stupid, Nami. It's you, of course."
"Don't call me stupid, you idiot!" She immediately lashed back, her reaction time impossibly fast after years of sparring insults. His words echoed in her mind, and she abruptly felt faint. "Me?! You want me to be the mother?!" Did he even understand what he was saying? The implications of it? She had never even entertained the idea of "settling down" with someone—she was an independent woman and had been set on being a single mother, like Bell-mère-san. She had thought there was a higher chance of adopting a child than having one of her own.
He gave her a petulant look. "Who else? You're such a weirdo. We're gonna be together forever anyway."
She was speechless, her mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water. She knew that he wasn't joking. And just when she was hopeful that the days of him doing crazy things and catching her off guard were behind them…was this his idea of a proposal? Struggling to collect her wits, Nami narrowed her eyes at him dangerously.
"I never agreed to being together forever." She sniffed with a haughty upturn of her nose, deciding that was the most adequate response she could muster at the moment.
He frowned deeply at that. "Why not? I need you by my side."
She sucked in a sharp breath at those words, her heart inadvertently fluttering in her chest. He continued, "How am I gonna go anywhere without my navigator?"
She sighed in resignation, unable to refute his Luffy logic. It was futile to do so anyway. That was as close to a proposal as she was probably ever going to get. Crossing her arms over her chest, she looked smugly at her idiotic captain, the man she sometimes secretly adored. Her feelings toward him were a little complicated, to say the least.
She settled the matter with a flippant, "Well, I'm not marrying you."
"I'm not marrying you first!" Luffy shot back, easily baited and instantly riled up.
She waved that off. "And as the mother of your child, I demand 70% of everything you own."
"50%!" He tried uselessly.
Nami threw her head back and laughed, a genuine and wholehearted sound that reverberated through her body. They were going to be terrible parents—she was calling it now. Any child of theirs was going to be a nightmare and real force to be reckoned with. Not to mention that a child of the Pirate King would be born with a prominent target on their back and possibly even a bounty. And knowing Luffy, a child of his was not going to be kept a secret from the rest of the world. It would likely be quite the opposite; an unapologetically rowdy announcement followed by a series of banquets and celebrations. Their faces would be on the cover of every newspaper for weeks. Nami wasn't really sure what she was signing up for, but she would figure it out as she always did…and maybe Luffy would even surprise her. Maybe.
Placing her palms on his back, she began to shoo him toward the door. "Perhaps it's negotiable. Now get out, I need to focus on my map."
He stopped moving and much to her frustration, she found herself pushing her whole weight against him to no avail. He didn't even budge an inch. Turning around to face her, his face lit up with another grin. "See you later then?"
He hadn't even asked for his crown back, and that somehow felt meaningful to her. Nodding, she summoned all of her courage and fisted her hands in his shirt, pulling him in as she pressed her lips to his. It was chaste, more of a kiss of gratitude than anything else. This man had given her freedom, and now he was promising her the entire world. It was certainly going to be dangerous, even more so than it already was, but she had a feeling that things would work out with him by her side. After all, he was the most powerful pirate in the world. She drew back, appraising his flabbergasted expression with immense satisfaction and sealing the deal with a wink.
"Looking forward to it, Captain." She promptly shut the door in his frozen face and adjusted the crown decorating her head. Oh yes, she was definitely looking forward to their new adventure together.
~To Be Continued~
The prologue to a new adventure. :)
End Notes: My opinion is that marriage/settling down isn't necessary for either Luffy or Nami, but having a child to carry on the legacy isn't out of the question. I hope you guys enjoyed it, and I'll be back when inspiration strikes again! Reviews are always appreciated; I'd love any thoughts as this is my first One Piece fic.