Title: On the Ocean Blue
Written By: NikoArtagnan
Genre: Fantasy/Friendship/Adventure
Rating: T, will eventually go to M
Summary: An outcast from Earth is flung headfirst into a hostile, unforgiving world, and finds themselves tagging along with a very particular crew of misfit pirates, and the boy who wants to be the King of them all. But this isn't the world of One Piece you thought you knew, and there are terrible things lurking in the shadows...
Chapter-Specific Warnings: Homophobic slurs, depression, internalized misogyny, Kelly REALLY needs to watch her temper
Author's Notes: Nami being a Magus is so much fun, I swear to God.
Chapter Fourteen:
The Cherry Blossoms Are Falling
NAMI
-…She is warm, but everything is so, so loud. She opens her eyes, and then everything is bright. She hears a voice that she thinks is her sister's, soft and quiet, and safe, and then she looks up and sees dark blue hair framing a face with dark blue-green eyes brimming with tears. But this can't be her sister's, because gently feathering the edges of Nojiko's face are feathers. Feather the color of Nojiko's eyes. And she has never felt her sister like this, because something, something connects the two of them, like the currents of the ocean, but stronger. So much stronger.
What's going on?
Then she hears another voice. A man's, tired and aching. Her sister gets up and walks a short distance, handing her over to the man, who Nami knows just as she knows her sister. She looks up into a…woman's face…but wasn't it just a man's voice she heard? She has Nojiko's eyes and Nami's hair and feathers, and she is crying. Nami can hear her sobs over the roar of some crazed animal in the distance. Over the sound of screams and gunfire. Over the sounds of things crashing and breaking. It sounds like the day when Arlong came to Cocoyashi, but more. More.
"I'm so sorry," she says. "I wish I could keep you. I wish I could be a better parent. But I know someone good will find you."
"Mama, I don't want to forget!" Nojiko wailed through her own tears. "I wanna stay with you."
A door opens.
"Nahuatl, I must take them now if they are to escape." A man's voice. Sobbing harder now, the woman nodded.
"Please, Calder…protect them. Get them to safety." The woman pulled Nojiko close and touched her forehead. Nojiko sagged in the woman's arms, unconscious.
Nami cried out, feeling the connection between them grow dim and fade, and a figure picked her sister up from the floor. Then the woman touched her head, and everything went dark.
So dark.
It was so cold…-
Nami's eyes shot open and she rose to her elbows, breathing harshly, the ice pack that had been resting on her forehead sliding off with a wet thump.
She turned to her left, and looked out the window, raising her hand to protect them from the light.
She was alive. The fever that had plagued her waking moments and dreams for the past days, the agonizing pain that had wracked her limbs – it was gone, replaced by a bone-deep fatigue and the vestiges of the unnatural heat in her face and body.
What had she been dreaming about? She put a hand to her temple, but the vestiges of the dream slipped away like grains of sand in a sieve, leaving her with only the barest wisps of color, sound, and fear.
Nothing else.
Nami's eyes bulged as the old woman's scalpel pressed into her neck. Looking past the crag of a nose that hovered a scant inch above hers, Nami stared into a face that was as cold as the winds blowing outside the window, and into dark eyes that seemed to burn with a steely, measured madness.
This was not someone to mess with.
"The only time someone leaves my care is if they're recovered," Doctorine said with a harsh cackle that made the skin on the back of the younger woman's neck prickle. "Or if they're dead. You ain't going anywhere for the next three days, at least, so you're goin' to lay your ass back down and not move. We clear, girlie?"
"Doctorine, I'm pretty sure she gets the idea, now back off," A voice from the doorway ordered, not sounding pleased at all.
The old woman immediately stood, tucking the scalpel into one of her pockets. Nami turned and saw Ciel standing there, a small leather-bound book in one hand, his pack in the other. He wore his normal attire, but oddly enough his hair was unbraided, falling in a waterfall of silky black to his waist. It gave a strange beauty to his normally hard face, and Nami was struck by an insane urge to run her fingers through the strands. He tucked the book into his bag.
"You're too protective, little cobra," Doctorine said, smirking, and Nami saw the man stiffen.
"And you're too free with the blades. Shouldn't they be keeping sharp things away from senile old hags like you? Y'might hurt yourself after all," Ciel said, folding his arms over his chest and trying a smirk that sat wrong on his lips.
Tension made the air thick and heady, and there was an air of something territorial. Nami was forcibly reminded of a time many years ago on one of the islands she'd visited, of a mama bear and an alpha wolf bristling over territory.
The air thickened until Nami though she would choke on it, and the words tumbled out before she could stop them, anything to cut the tension.
"Ah, Ciel, do you need help braiding your hair?" She asked, and felt herself blush when that unnerving gaze landed on her. In the harsh light from the window, Ciel's eyes seem to blaze like specks of green fire.
Doctorine laughed, and just like that the air eased, and the smile that quirked up Ciel's mouth was a great deal more genuine than the smirk he'd been wearing.
"Why don't you let the girl play with your hair, if that'll keep her in bed," Doctorine said with a smirk. "You can pretend to be princesses if you want," and there was enough hint of a tease in the words to make the man twitch.
"How about y'go and take your old lady medicine, because you obviously need it, y'old bag," Ciel retorted easily, and dodged the barrage of scalpels that embedded into the wall behind him. "Sheesh, menopausal much?"
Doctorine rolled her eyes. "Fucking brat." She wandered over to a table on the other side of the room and cracked open a bottle of some sweet-smelling alcohol.
Ciel pressed the back of his hand to Nami's forehead and grinned. "Well, at least you know your way around medicine. Feeling better, Nami-chan?"
Nami nodded, and made grabby fingers at Ciel's long fall of hair. It looked as soft as silk this close up, and finer than the clothes she'd stolen or murmured over in high-priced shops she could never afford to enter legally, and even the noblest ladies' elegant dresses.
Ciel snorted, and turned around, sitting on the bed beside her. He handed Nami a couple of elastic ties and said "Knock yourself out, doll."
Nami carded her fingers through Ciel's hair, cooing at the softness. It felt even better than silk, she thought with glee, and began the process of weaving it into a tight braid. It was fairly simple. She remembered Bellemère-san teaching them how to braid, when Nojiko's hair had been as long as Ciel's. Bellemère had sometimes liked having her hair braided too.
Her grip tightened as her eyes burned.
"Hey, hey, easy there," Ciel said, and when Nami realized she was pulling the man's hair, she loosened her grip.
"Ah, sorry," she said, and continued braiding with steady hands.
"What's up, doll?" the man asked, sounding ridiculously tender. Nami paused.
"…I used to braid…my sister, she had longer hair. And my, my mom, she…" The words tangled on her tongue. "She taught me how to braid."
Nami felt a warm hand press against her side.
"I'd've liked to meet her," Ciel said quietly, and Nami laughed.
If that burst of sound sounded more like a sob than a laugh, well, no one would say otherwise.
After a short period of time, Ciel said "I'll go fix you something to eat after you're done, if you'd like."
"Yeah."
KELLY
"CIELLLLLLLLLL!"
Kelly blinked and turned, staggering as Chopper leapt into her arms
"Chopper, what-?" she asked, staggering as she tried to simultaneously keep his antlers from poking her in the eye, a hold on the bowl of chicken broth she'd whipped up for Nami, and from falling on her ass. For such a tiny thing, Chopper could pack a lot of a force into his body.
What the hell had gotten into him-
"MEAT!" A very familiar voice bellowed from down the hallway, and Kelly felt her lips pull back into an involuntary snarl. She fought to keep her claws from exploding out, and the strange bitterness she assumed was her poison surged behind her jaw.
She tasted hunger in the air, the ice-cold stone tang of the hallway unable to mask the acrid, agonizingly familiar odor of humans on the hunt and the shaking fear that coated Chopper's warm earth musk scent. She shuddered, and managed to rein back the fury that threatened to consume her. She'd often been on the receiving end of that awful hunger and she didn't like thinking about how often Chopper's fear had been her own.
"Chopper, darlin', would you take this to Nami?" she asked, and handed Chopper the bowl. "I'll make sure these fucking morons don't follow you."
He nodded, sniffling.
"Go on then, sweetie," she said, smiling, and after setting him down, shooed him off.
Her smile slipped from her lips as Sanji and Luffy appeared in her view, shaking off Gin's and Shere's calls.
Leave me be. I have a lesson to deal out.
The cats quieted immediately.
"What the fuck do you idiots think you're doing?" Kelly said, fighting to keep her voice calm. Sanji and Luffy skidded to a halt in front of her.
"C'mon Ciel, move! I want meat!" Luffy said, flashing her a grin that defied the laws of anatomy. It did nothing but piss her off even more, because she could still smell his hunger, and it made her stomach lurch unpleasantly.
"Move, you stupid scoundrel, Nami-san needs a bowl of warm venison soup to get better," Sanji said, looking down his nose at her – even though the blond was at least five inches shorter than her.
"Nami doesn't need anything, you pathetic, little, attention-starved dog of a man," Kelly said blandly. "I made her a nice, light chicken soup, something that won't make her even sicker than she was. Are you really as stupid as you seem, blondie? If you had any sense in your pitiful little brain, or if you thought with something other than your dick once in a while, you'd realize that Nami didn't fucking want any god damn venison soup. Gods know after practically being in a coma for the past several days and eating nothing, her stomach can't handle it."
Apparently she wasn't as successful in keeping the rage from her face as she had hoped, because both the boys stepped away from her.
"What the hell is your problem?" Sanji asked.
"Ciel, if you want some meat, I'll share with you!" Luffy said, blinking at her in confusion.
She could feel something snap behind her eyes, like a string that had been pulled beyond the breaking point.
Her hands snapped out, snaring both of the males around the neck and slammed them against the wall to her left.
"I will say this only once," she hissed, her control fraying. "That reindeer is not meat. He is my friend, and if you ever go near him again, I will eat you. Do you understand me?"
"What the fuck-" Sanji choked out, his fingers scrabbling at the grip on her neck. Luffy was choking as well, her connection to the sea disrupting his natural defense against blunt force.
"That was not a question that required speech. A nod will do. Now, I will ask one last time, do you two dumbasses understand me?"
Two pairs of wide eyes met hers and in unison the two men nodded.
Kelly leaned back, letting her grip fall from their necks to the front of their shirts, and then, with a mighty heave, tossed them both down the hall and out the door.
She breathed quietly.
(Mistress?)
I hate humans, she said, the words raw with pain and anger. I really, really hate humans.
The connection was silent, but for the feeling of warm fur pressed against her mind, the closest thing to a hug her Familiars could give her with the distance laying between them.
Kelly shuddered yet again, turned on her heel, and went in search of the comfort being among Nami, Kureha, and Chopper would bring her.
The comfort of being among family, something whispered in the back of her mind. She ignored it with the ease of long practice.
Kelly jerked from her trance when the sound of explosions rang through the castle. She'd taken to a private room to spend some time organizing her mindscape, to quiet the lingering fear that had turned her legs to jelly.
Not even the Highborn Daemon Lord she'd faced back when she was fourteen had stirred such fear in her belly. It was only humans who could scare her so badly. Humans were awful, awful creatures.
-…"...the real heart-stopping evil was right inside the human mind," her Mama says, reading from the threadbare book. Kelly curls up beside her, resting her head on the older woman's broad thigh. It is sad, Kelly thought, that humans are so bad. Was it in all humans? Not in Mama or Papa or Nee-chan or Li or Ezra, surely.
She thought about the man who'd made those foul comments towards her Nee-chan earlier that week, the way her Mama's mother had mocked her father for being a "faggot", and how those older, neighborhood kids had killed that little piglet they'd stolen from Old Man Donovan.
And she thought she understood what her Mama had said."…-
She shook her head and stood. Wapol was here, then. She'd better find Nami, make sure the girl didn't run into the big mouthed moron.
A woman's scream interrupted her thoughts, and Kelly ran from the room in the direction of the sound.
She skidded down the hallway and threw open the door that opened onto the middle room with the spiral column. Freezing cold wind whipped past her, chilling her cheeks, but she paid it no mind, focusing instead on the three people standing on the show.
Luffy looked up at her and waved. Nami nodded.
The other man – who she assumed was Wapol - looked seriously demented. He was tall – only about a hand's span taller than her, with purple hair that curled up in spikes out from under his strange animal hat, a long, slightly hooked nose, and metal covering what she could see of his jaw, cheeks, chin, and neck. Or maybe part of his face was actually made from metal? She'd never been too certain when she'd seen the show if the metal was just a covering or was actually a part of his face.
"Hi, Ciel! Are you feeling better?" Luffy called, as cheerful as ever. "You were right about the reindeer not being food! He's going to be our nakama!"
Kelly blinked. Oh, so that had happened already? And that unabashedly apologetic tone in his voice made shame curdle in her gut. Perhaps she had…maybe she'd been a tad too vicious?
She inwardly winced.
"Ah, well, that's… that's fine, then," she said lamely. Then she turned her attention to Wapol before she did something stupid like blush.
"Who's this idiot, then?" She asked, gesturing at the man, who glared.
"Do you know who I am, you impertinent fool?!" He yelled, hands on his hips. "I am the great and powerful-"
"Yeah, yeah, don't give a damn," she said, dismissing him and turning back to Nami. "You, miss, need to be in bed. Doctorine did a wonderful job, but you are still recovering, and being out here will not do you any good if you wish to be healthy again." She vaulted over the railing and landed lightly on the snow. It crunched beneath her boots.
Wapol began ranting – something about weapons and ruling the world, how pitifully cliché – as Kelly approached the other woman.
"Come on now, Nami-chan, back to bed with you," she said.
"Ciel, I'm fine-" she began, only to stop when Kelly folded her arms over her chest. "Look, we need to get out of here before Doctorine gets back, all right? We can't afford to stay here any longer than we have. We need to get Vivi to Arabasta!"
"I understand that, but it won't help anything if you relapse on the way there, goose. We don't have a doctor, which makes you getting better here all the more important. You're the navigator, Nami. Something happens to you, we're all sunk," Kelly said. Luffy nodded and rested his chin on Kelly's shoulder.
Nami sighed.
"I lost the key!" Wapol yelled from behind them. All three turned to look at him.
"…The ex-fatass is still here?" Luffy asked, looking bewildered.
"The opening will be postponed," Wapol said, and ran for the staircase.
"GET BACK HERE," Luffy shrieked, and ran after him.
"So this is the key to the armory?" Nami asked, looking down at the small metal key she held in one hand. "I thought it was the key to the treasury…"
Kelly sniggered. "Nami-chan, you're amazing, you know that?"
"Of course I am."
"NAAAAAAAAAAAMIIIIIII-SWAAAAAAN!"
Kelly felt the smile slide off her face and her amusement leave her in a whoosh as Sanji crawled towards them on all fours. So pathetic, something inside her snarled, even as something else shifted uneasily. She could taste the pain his injury still gave him, and that made her want to howl to the moon like a wolf.
"Sanji-kun, you're crawling. Are you injured?" Nami asked, kneeling down and gently touching his arms.
As Sanji's eyes turned to hearts (and how the fuck was that physically possible?) Kelly promptly stepped on his head, driving his face into the snow.
"Look, Nami!" she said as cheerfully as she could while Sanji squirmed and swore beneath her foot. "It's a giant-ass cockroach. I should go find some pesticide."
And so Luffy defeated Wapol.
The villagers who'd come to the mountain (and everyone else) were given yet another surprise, for Sara had – rather unexpectedly – gone into labor, and had given birth to a healthy baby boy, who she and a gravely injured Dalton named Dante.
As the villagers celebrated, and the injured were forced to rest in Kureha's office (though Nami was undoubtedly planning their escape), Kelly had gone to sit in the quiet room that the new mother had been granted. Her bear – named Bjorn – curled up by her feet, one eye on his Mistress and her son.
Kelly watched the woman as she nursed her son, utterly content.
"You never really forgave me, did you?" she asked the other Magus wryly.
Sara turned in her direction, then laughed.
"No, not really. Was it that obvious?"
Kelly shrugged. "After I'd thought about it for a while."
"If it's any consolation, I don't hate you," Sara said, and turned her sightless eyes to the window.
"Hate's a terrible thing, my Mama always said. Eats you up from the inside out," Kelly said sagely, feeling dopey and drugged by the warmth of the room and the tiredness that had suddenly stricken her body.
She was so damned tired.
"Your mother sounds like a wise woman," Sara commented idly.
The two of them sat together in the silence for a long, long time, each lost in their own thoughts, while the winds roared like a hundred thousand caged animals outside the window.
She stood to the back of the group, to the side, a little away from the rest of them, watching as the sky exploded and Chopper sobbed. In the distance, the mountain where the palace was had seemed to have turned into an enormous cherry blossom tree, gleaming bright and beautiful even in the bitter cold.
Tiny pink blossom snowflakes fell from the sky in lazy spirals.
Kelly looked at the pirates she'd found herself traveling with and sighed. Then she froze, something Luffy had said drifting through her mind.
-…"You were right about the reindeer not being food! He's going to be our nakama!"…-
Why would Luffy have said something like that? Her fingers trembled as some emotion she couldn't name bubbled in her chest, frothy and light, and so very, very dangerous.
Our. Our nakama.
(Could he have been talking about her, too?)
…No. She shook her head. She was overthinking it. Luffy had obviously meant him and Nami, and had used that pronoun to mean the two of them.
Obviously.
Of course.
Kelly sighed, feeling cold for reasons that had nothing to do with the winter wonderland around her.
And as the pirates watched the mountain bloom, the Magi turned her head towards the sea. If she closed her eyes, she could almost hear the blessed sea's siren song. Longing beyond reason raged in her blood, a bitterly potent agony when paired with the loneliness that was always, always with her.
'Mama, Papa, Beth, Alex…Lien, Henry, Nee-chan…I miss you so much. I have to get back to you. I have to,' she thought. 'I can't stand this. Hiding and running and pretending every single day. I can't do this forever. I just can't.'
She waited patiently as power weaved from her hands into the cloud below, anchoring the enchantments in place for another thirty days. The nature of the ground here prevented any true protective spells being laid, but her mother had taught her well.
The young woman breathed in deeply, chasing away the thoughts of her long dead mother, who'd died so thousands of people could live, and shook her blond hair out of her eyes.
"They're coming!" A woman's voice called out as she pulled back, detaching herself from the flow of power, allowing the last shield to snap into place.
"Sit ventus cantare," she said, speaking the words to the spell that would bring the shields up. She did not pay any attention to those who gathered a respectful distance behind her. "Sit aqua fluunt, sit terræ obstupuerunt…"
She could feel them coming, their hot, stinking hunger for human flesh and life, their chittering, inhuman laughs, and their filth.
"Et per gratiam deorum, et ignis æmulatio!*"
Power exploded through the air, finding the monsters and crisping them into ash as the men, women, and children behind her cheered. She dropped back, secure in the knowledge her people were safe, and that she would be caught before she hit the ground.
And sure enough, two brown-skinned, heavily tattooed arms caught her before she fell very far, and a very familiar, scowling face appeared before hers.
She smiled dreamily and he rolled his eyes.
"Thank you, Wiper," she told her longtime friend and bodyguard.
The two of them watched as the monstrous Daemons - those who had not been able to get away in time - writhing outside the shields died horribly, screaming like thousands of dying birds.
"Well done," he told her. "Now sleep."
And she did.
*"Let the air sing, let the water flow, let the earth tremble, and by the grace of the Gods, let the fire rage!"