Compared to the first time she awakened in the body, she still couldn't think of the scarred bag of flesh as hers, the second time wasn't quite as traumatic. That is to say, she did not drop away into a dead faint.
The hammock underneath was clean and comfortable, the sheets felt like silk against her skin, and the air was clean and fresh, not full of dust. Her vision, squirreled away behind her eyelids, was hues of soothing orange as she basked in the warmth of the bedside lamp. Her consciousness slowly began to awaken, begrudgingly breaking free of sleep's chains.
With a groan and stretch, Nami slowly sat up and opened her eyes.
And for a moment, all was right.
Then, with the force of a thundering tsunami finally reaching land, the memories came crashing back .
Shaking like a leaf in the wind, she drew her hands out from under the safehaven of the silky sheets and stared. A low moan built up up in the back of her throat and escaped through clenched teeth, the sound spreading through the empty room. She shook her head from side to side, sweaty red locks plastered to her forehead, and forced the hand back under the covers. Away from her eyes.
Away from her.
The same thought from before assaulted her mind, drowning out everything else to white noise, running endlessly on loop.
The Pirate Hunter had attacked more than just her hands
Taking a deep breath, she withdrew the offending limbs from the blanket. Eyes glazing over her hands, she focused on her arms themselves. Bile rose in her throat and the world shuddered to a stop around, nothing else mattering, as she stared at her arms. Stared at the ugly black thread criss-crossing up her arms, pulled taut against raised skin.
Nami leaned over her bed, took a brief moment to feel a pang of regret as she stared at the lush carpet, and opened her mouth to empty her stomach. She expected a torrent of half-digested sludge to burst from her mouth and splatter against the ground, seeping into and defiling the clean carpet. Instead, all she did was retch. Her stomach heaved and sweat broke out across her clammy skin as the nauseating retching sound filled the otherwise quiet room.
Her trembling (disfigured) arm wiped away at her mouth, the taste of stale spit in her mouth overpowering her tastebuds. She wished she had puked. At least then, she had something to show for it. Dry heaving only left her with clammy skin and the shakes. She stared up at the ceiling and dimly wondered what time it was.
A minute passed. Or maybe it was an hour. Time passed oddly when you had the shakes and only your own scars for company. Eventually, the shakes passed and the knots in her stomach loosened from unbearable to merely discomforting. With shaky (scarred) hands, she rolled up her pants legs. The small remaining rational part of her brain pleaded with her to stop, she already knew what it would be like. Hell, she could already see an ugly line of stitching or two on her pale feet. Still, she pressed on.
Still, she recoiled.
Pyjamas scrunched all the way up to her thighs, she looked at the remains of her legs with mounting horror. The jagged lines cut deeper into her enflamed skin, throbbing all the way to the bone marrow. And, now that she was aware of it, every slight movement of skin caused twangs of pain to ripple through her legs. The mere presence of the ugly stitching grinding against the normal skin, prickles of discomfort arising from the edges, could now be felt. She could feel the stitching, how it shifted slightly as she stretched out her legs.
Felt how unnatural it was.
Dead weight against the top layer of skin.
Nami pulled down taut (like her skin) on the cloth and watched it cover up the marred flesh, watched the pale yet enflamed skin disappear behind a layer of yellow. But she could still feel the stitches, could imagine them writhing and breaking apart her flesh. Widening the gap between wounds and, finally, dropping down into her veins and rushing towards and clogging up her heart...cutting off the blood flow, the oxygen to her body.
Could imagine falling to the ground, struggling to breath as cold fingers pried at her throat. How the enflamed skin would seem so vivid against her white, cooling skin.
With a little shriek, Nami lept to her feet. For a horrifying moment she thought that her legs wouldn't support the sudden shift in weight, that the stitched limbs would collapse and never rise again, but they, miraculously, held. Massaging her throat, Nami shook her head from side to side and let out a small sigh of relief.
As if it had called to her, Nami's eyes locked onto the small mirror on Vivi's bedside table. The object was small and unassuming, oval glass surrounding by fake birch wood, and yet had the potential to cause her so much pain. The same rational part that had objected to her looking at her legs screamed at her, begging on its hands and knees for her to reconsider, as she stared at the mirror. Reminded her that it was madness and whatever she had seen before had knocked her out. Just because she had forgotten and blocked it out didn't mean she had to remind herself.
But that was exactly why she had to to see it.
Nami couldn't not see her new face. You couldn't just avoid something like that, growing queasy at every peripheral reflection off glass. Some things you had to face head on, damn the consequences. That was it, really.
Some things you just had to face head on.
With a wobbly two or three strides, she found herself in front of the mirror. A thousands different thoughts raced through her head, though later she would be able to recall none of them, as she reached out. The second her fingers hesitantly brushed against the manufactured wood, the voices quitened and she was left with a clear head.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Her arm seemed to convulse, shooting out in a blur and awkwardly knocking Vivi's cosmetics to the ground with a clatter, returning with the mirror before she blink. Nami closed her eyes, raised the mirror as if in deep prayer, and opened them.
Her hair was the same eye-catching vivid orange, she thought with relief, unaware that she had even feared that the Pirate Hunter's sword would somehow change that. Her, often described as doe by smitten sailors, brown eyes blinked back at her, same as ever.
That was where the similarities with her (old) face ended.
The same jagged and uneven, as if a child had squiggled them in with a dark crayon, stitches coated her once creamy skin. Overlapping over taut skin, giving the appearance of wrinkles and crinkles around her eyes, and the same enflamed skin that plagued the rest of her body. The angry red rash coated her cheekbones and spread down towards her neck, tapering off around her mouth.
The mirror fell from numb fingers, landing on the desert princess's bed with an unsatisfying clunk. Shatter, she found herself thinking wildly, break apart you stupid thin-
Her marred legs finally buckled out from underneath her and Nami feel nearly gratefully down on the carpet. Tears pooled down her cheeks, traveling over the bumpy red, and dripped onto the carpet. The leak became a flood.
And Nami let herself weep.
Though she did not faint.
She clung to that, at least.
The air was itself was charged with the tension as the caravel drew closer and closer to the snowy island, the tall mountains growing and sharper and larger by the second. The waves lapped against the hull with their frothy whiteness, glaciers half-hidden by mist in the distance.
Vivi drummed her fingers lightly against the railing, watching the light snow land and dissolve on the wood, and sighed. Almost instinctively, her head moved towards the direction where Nami's room (Vivi had started bunking with the boys, Nami needed a safe space) was.
And things had been moving so well.
Nami had left her room the day before on shaky legs, frail and pale but burning with determination, just in time to feel the brunt of Luffy's new powers. Just in time to see Wapol's men part before Luffy, just in time to see Luffy reach the egocentric exiled king.
Just in time to hear the sickening crunch as Luffy's open palms smashed into Wapol's gut, sending the coward right back into his submarine with a satisfying crash. Wapol's men had taken one fleeting look at Luffy's snarl and decided that, oath or not, there are somethings that aren't worth dying over for your country and king.
Truth be told, Vivi and the others had not even noticed that Nami was awake and moving until she tripped over Mr. Bushido's body. The startled omph noise had locked all eyes on the pale fallen navigator, whose eyes were frozen inches from her tormentor.
Even then, against all odds, Nami had managed to get back up. Her lips set in a line, she had looked at her gaping onlookers with an eyebrow raised in defiance. The simple yet cocky movement conveying all of Nami's usual sass and swagger. Conveying a message of "you didn't really think that'd keep me down, did you?" Usopp had let out a weak chuckle. A small and tentative smile had graced Sanji's ashen face. Even Vivi had a felt a weight loosen from her body, replaced by welcome warmth.
And in that moment, Wapol's incoherent threats fading into the background, all was well.
Then Luffy had stepped forward, eyes sparkling with happiness and pure and utter relief, with his mouth curved into its usual smile and the hat which had shadowed his face had finally fallen back. Nami had put her arms on her hips, a wry grin on her face. "Kinda shocked to find the ship in one piece, no offense Luf-"
Luffy's new power (could it even be considered Luffy's power when he had zero control over it?), as if sensing new blood, had once again lashed out. The blast had seemed to breeze through the rest of them, briefly ruffling through Vivi's blue hair, before slamming full force into Nami's scarred form.
Nami's eye had rolled up and she had fallen onto Mr. Bushido in a tangle of limbs, the dull thud of her fall echoing through the still and silent air. Vivi hadn't even seen the navigator fall, truth be told. She had focused on Luffy the second the power had erupted, realising what it was going to do.
She had seen the light die from his eyes as his crewmate fell, seen the slump in his shoulder. Seen how much the power was killing the once so full of life pirate and seen what it had reduced him to.
And, looking around at her downtrodden friends (looking at the dead look in their eyes), Vivi had came to a decision. She had to break her promise to Mr. Bushido about not revealing information she had no right to know. She was going to explain to Luffy what Conqueror's Haki was and how to hopefully control it and, most importantly perhaps, how to not let it control you.
And if Mr. Bushido would have handled things differently?
Tough.
He shouldn't have let a bug bite him when he knew that an insect on Little Garden carried a deadly virus. Shouldn't have let his guard down, so completely and utterly down, that a child could sneak up on him and paint a hypnotic symbol on his back. Shouldn't have done so many things.
And so Vivi had sat Luffy down at the kitchen table and explained to him as gently as she could manage, though dancing around the subject would never really work with a straightforward person like Luffy (you couldn't trust him to fill in the unsaid gaps), about the power that was capable of bringing a kingdom to its knees: The Haki of the Conquering King.
She had woven him a story about hearing it as an Alabastian folk legend and as tall tales from passing spice merchants in the harbours she had visited and, with a pang of guilt, she had watched the rubber teen easily accept the answer. Hardening her resolve, VIvi had told her everything she knew about the power so elusive that it had passed on into legend.
About how it thrived off of the user, always a bit too eager to unleash. How it was said to feed off of emotions. About how it naturally calmed down when not in tense situations. Easier when the tension was from a fight to the death and not a potential backstabbing crewmate and the woman he had destroyed, obviously, but the base message was the same: remove the source of the tension and the Haki should return to being something you controlled...instead of the other way around.
Vivi honestly wasn't even sure how much of what she told Luffy was true and how much was wishful thinking fabricated up by people enthralled by the tales of the one in a million power. She had only seen flashes of Luffy using it in Wado Ichimonji's stored memories and then he had always looked perfectly in control, not a drop of hesitation in his eyes. Then again, that Luffy had been trained by "The Dark King" Silvers Rayleigh (the amount of infamous people that the Straw Hats had known still made her head spin), so she was flying blind when it came to learning how to control it.
She had tentatively suggested that any form of stress release would be better than nothing. It certainly couldn't hurt anyway and, she thought to herself, anything to take Luffy's mind off things would help tremendously.
Basically, she had told Luffy and Sanji to beat the living tar out of each other.
And to her delight, it seemed to have worked.
Luffy was plonked on top of Merry's head, snow falling lightly down on his sentry form as they approached the winter island. He spun his tattered hat lazily on one finger with eyes half closed, a soft smile on his face. The savage beatdown that had masqueraded as a spar had really helped Luffy loosen up. And that was one less problem for Vivi.
And sure there was none of his usual infectious cheer and over-excitement and there was an electric undercharge of power in the air around him, but it was a start. Baby steps, the sand princess reminded herself, baby steps.
As they got close enough to the island to see the individual snow-laden pine trees, Vivi turned to Sanji. The fidgety cook stood at the helm, eyes occasionally flickering towards Nami's room, white-knuckled fists clenched as he guided the Going Merry down a convenient nearby river that snaked in through the island from the coast.
As Sanji's pinched eyes strayed towards Nami's room for the third time that minute alone, Vivi frowned. Taking in his haggard face and battered frame, the frown grew deeper. While the frenzied spar yesterday evening had done wonders for Luffy, the same could not be said for Sanji. The blond man had seemed to fold into himself even more, barely speaking above monosyllable or grunts.
Even more worrying was that Vivi had yet to see Sanji asleep since that night nearly a week ago where he had collapsed, sobbing, into her arms. True he may have been catching snatches of sleep in the kitchen where, admittedly, Sanji now spent most of his time.
But some intuitive part of Vivi felt otherwise and that troubled her. She would have asked the cook if she had any idea how to phrase the question without sounding like an overbearing mother hen. The last thing that any of them needed.
"Sanji," Luffy said, his hat now resting between his knees, "feel that? Trouble ahead."
"Hmm?" Sanji replied, his clouded eyes not moving from the narrowing river in front of them.
Luffy tilted his head far back, stretching it to a near ninety degree angle from his body, brown eyes studying Sanji. "Do you not feel it? Through your Haki?"
Sanji started, his arms confulsing momentarily and nearly sending the ship into the banks, and his blank eyes brightened. "Oh yeah," he muttered, absent-mindedly turning his head towards Vivi, "people up ahead of this next bend."
Usopp flinched, abandoning whatever contraption he had been fiddling with, and leaned closer towards the helm. "Marines? Pirates?"
Luffy shook his head, sending it back to his body with a rubbery snap. "Nope, just locals. But they're pissed," he added after hearing Usopp sigh in relief.
As Usopp yelped, Sanji turned the helm and the easy going caravel turned the bend into a naturally formed inlet. Vivi tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, hardly daring to breath.
They were surrounded.
Dozens of armed men and women stood around the Going Merry in a crude semi-circle, all scowls and hostile glares. One towering man in a fur-lined, long green tunic strode forward of the rest. "Leave this place!"
Luffy stood up, looking utterly ridiculous on the sheep figurehead. "We just need to see a doctor for someone on the ship."
The local man scowled, face looking like it was chiseled from stone. "A likely story, foul pirate. Do not make me repeat myself, begone!"
Luffy's eyes were blazing defiance. "No."
One of the more eager men raised his rifle with a snarl and, whether accidentally or purposely, fired. The foul stench of gunsmoke filled the air and the bang of the bullet rushing through space dominated the tense and otherwise silent landscape.
The bullet smashed into Luffy's chest, sending him sprawling onto deck, his hat flying into the winter air.
And the Haki of the Conquering King exploded through the clearing.
Watching men collapse to their knees, eyes rolling up into the back of their heads and foaming at the mouths, Vivi let out a sigh.
Baby steps, she reminded herself as Luffy yelped and chased after his errant hat.
Baby steps.
The last of the the bunny rabbits fell to the blast of the power (Vivi had called it the Haki of Kings or something but, to Luffy, it was still the power), falling down onto the snow with a simpering whimper. Luffy absent-mindedly pushed one of the larger ones out of his way, the burly beast falling with a flop onto the packet snow.
Were these weaklings really the bloodthirsty beasts that that Dolt fellow had warned him to avoid? No, couldn't be. He had seen animals twice as big back home on Mt. Corvo! Luffy spared the fallen animals one final glance before pressing on towards his goal: the Drum Rockies.
The cylindrical mountains contrasted ominously against the soft ambers of the setting sun, sending dark shadows down across the ground for miles around. Luffy shivered, already being nestled deep within the shadows not helping, as the temperature continued to plummet and the snowfall grow heavier. WIthout a doubt, there would be a blizzard soon. Though he hoped to be halfway up the tallest of the Rockies by then and out of the storm's eye, well on the way to his target: the elusive doctor.
Or well he hoped that he was on his way to a doctor, he wasn't one hundred percent sure. Dolt (had the man in the fur-lined green tunic been called Dolt? Dolt sounded right but he wasn't certain…) had told him that the only doctor lived out here in seclusion, which was awfully convenient for Dolt who really wanted Luffy out of his hair. And sure Dolt had seemed honourable enough and Luffy's Observation Haki, inexperienced as it was, hadn't picked but any lies but still…
It was awfully convenient.
Honestly, Luffy probably shouldn't have just accepted Dolt's words for fact but he had been a little stunned at the fact that Dolt hadn't passed out from the burst of the power back at the Going Merry. After they had disembarked, they had found him: on his hands and knees, gasping for breath. The Devil Fruit user, or at least Luffy was pretty sure the weird itch in his Haki was because of a Fruit (it felt animalistic...Zoan maybe?), had shakingly rose to his feet and looked like he was going to still tell them to leave. Then he had seen Nami held reverently in Sanji's arms, bridal style.
And that was the main reason Luffy had trusted Dolt's information in the end. Because Dolt had given him the information out of the goodness of his heart and not because Luffy had forced his hand. Still, Luffy wasn't dumb enough to think that just because Dolt had changed his tune that it meant that everyone else was. No, that was why he had left Sanji behind to guard Vivi and Usopp.
He would never forgive himself if even more people got hurt on his watch.
Adjusting Nami slightly on his left shoulder, absent-mindedly staring at the twinkling stars starting to appear in the darkening sky, and trying to lift Zoro just a tad bit higher up on the right (he was basically just dragging the swordsman through the snow at this point), Luffy pressed on. And that was how, looking like the world's saddest weighing scales, Luffy finally reached the towering cliff of rock that was the greatest of the Drum Rockies.
Staring up at the monolithic object carved by Mother Nature herself, which jutted up into the heavens (no end in sight), Luffy let out a timid pulse of Observation Haki upwards. He winced and gulped when his maximum range didn't even let him sense anything his eyes couldn't already see.
Taking a deep breath, and making sure the triple knots securing his crewmates were still tight and secured, he started the climb towards the doctor he could only pray existed.
From the very beginning, it was hell.
His very nerves were screaming from the the effort and his limbs started to shake after only a minute of climbing, Zoro and Nami seeming to grow heavier and heavier on his back. Zoro especially was quite literally dragging him down, Luffy's right side an inch lower than his left as the deadweight fought to obey the laws of gravity. His fingernails and toenails splintered and broke off, fingers and toes chafed and bloody.
Time seemed to bleed together as Luffy climbed. His eyelids were heavy weights on his face as the night grew old. He wasn't sure if he could even track time anymore. What he felt was seconds, could be minutes. His minutes, hours. Around the quarterway mark, he let himself have a few seconds of rest. Struggling to even take in air, he stared and stared at the full moon high in the sky. He faintly remembered the moon not even being out when he had started the climb but, so high in the sky, stuff that had happened below felt like a dream.
As he resumed his climb, fingers and toes feeling like they were being ground down to the bone, he noticed that he couldn't feel the pain or cold anymore. Couldn't feel anything at all, everything muted.
Numb.
Somewhere between the quarter mark and the halfway point, Luffy began to think of the lock and only the lock. Fantasizing about how much easier it would be to climb if he could finally break down the lock and gain the boon that was armour, obsidian protection for his skin (blue? Skin wasn't meant to be blue, was it? He couldn't quite remember…). The most frustrating part was that, for all intents and purposes, the lock was broken.
Over the course of the last week, the tension that had been Luffy's day-to-day life had all but ruined the lock. Giant spiderweb cracks ran through the once gleaming gold, now reduced to rusted iron. The once near ceremonial-looking great chain now hung by an inch, warped and distorted.
Luffy thought he was nearing the top now, his resolve hardened at the thought of reaching the doctor. He was on fire yet cold, mind going a mile a minute yet sluggish. His eyes finally closed and, with a sigh, Luffy fell.
And, against the very edge of his consciousness, something pinged against his Haki: the familiar and comforting warmth of people.
Dolt had told him the truth, the doctor existed.
…
The doctor existed.
Luffy's eyes snapped open, brown warped black by pure defiant willpower. His twisted body fought for purchase against the rock, the stone gleefully gnawing at his flesh as he fell. Leaving streaks of blood in its wake.
He would not die here.
Zoro and Nami would not die here.
The lock snapped.
The stone behind his limbs shattered and his hands were gleaming obsidian as Luffy roared.
