Chapter 8

The measure of freedom

For Nami, knowing that she had only one day left with Luffy and Ace made her anxious during dinner. She chewed the lentils unwillingly, with her mouth full and the heart broken. She continued like this, one breath away from a heart attack, until it was time to sleep.

As her thoughts twisted and with the wooden ceiling getting closer, a snore from Ace in the next bed brought her out of the nightmares and made her roll onto her side to look at him.

On the mattress, small and old, the teenager had invaded the bed while Luffy hugged him like an octopus its prey. The image made her smile despite her anxiety. Even in her way of sleeping, traces of the warmth, love and freedom that she longed for could be read. Of a world without worries, only joy and beautiful dreams.

A solitary tear escaped her, frustrated with herself for those feelings that wore her down, eager to reach out and touch a better life with the fingertips.

In solitude and silence she allowed herself to cry for a while to vent her grief. When she was done, her flushed cheeks against the wet mattress gave her shivers and the world became lighter.

Luffy muttered something as he tightened his hug on his brother. Nami smiled heartily, without holding back, without thinking about the consequences of a smile, for once in what seemed like a lifetime.

The hours passed while she watched the brothers turn and turn on the mattress, overwhelmed by the heat but always together and dawn came earlier than expected with the promise of one last day. A last day that Nami planned to take advantage of until the last minute. Because she was determined not to regret her departure when she packed her bags in the early morning. If the mission was already completely lost, she need to make the most of those last hours.

When the sun began to rise over the horizon, Nami stretched and finally got up, looking for a change of clothes. The night before she didn't mind changing in one of the dark corners, so she could sleep in a more comfortable shirt, but she knew the light would be a problem.

The thought gave her chills, so, quick as a snake, she slipped from Luffy's borrowed bed and headed to a corner of that house without privacy to put on her favorite T-shirt, the white one with blue stripes, which hid everything that she need to remain secret. The ink under the cold of the morning made her felt like it was wriggling, but that was just her imagination, Nami reminded herself as she pulled the hem of her shirt down.

While the brothers continued to sleep, Nami developed the maps she carried, drawn in halves and in the end she concluded that with two or three books she might be able to try to complete it. The problem would be Arlong. One more empty-handed trip, she shivered at the thought and her teeth grated. Just the idea of spending a month on legumes again gave her a stomach ache; she planned to eat until the belly told her she couldn't fit another crumb in her. Arlong wasn't much for raising his hand, but greed was breaking the bank and Nami hadn't been productive for too long.

"What is for breakfast?" Luffy asked still half sleepy.

The boy placed his chin on the top of her head to use it as support. Luffy's hands moved back and forth over the papers, looking for drawings of sirens on city maps.

"You could draw stories, dragons, clowns, pirates..."

Nami remembered the image of her mother scrawled in ink on cut paper and pushed her hands away to return the maps to their place.

"I don't draw, I just map."

"Well, you would do very well, you could also be the artist of my crew."

She snorted, but instead of refusing outright, she remembered that she had promised to live her last day immersed in dreams and let herself be carried away by the flow of his words.

"I'm sure you'll find someone who draws better than me. Maybe the cook, the sniper or the doctor can draw dragons. I can only reproduce what I see."

Luffy laughed as he walked away from her to look for breakfast in the pantry.

"Don't worry, we'll find dragons for you to draw."

Ace, still stretching sat on the bed, laughed. His voice was hoarse when he spoke.

"By the time you find them, I will have already drawn them three times."

"But you don't know how to draw!"

The indignation was palpable in the boy's voice and Ace increased it as soon as he reached over his head with an arm and took the bag full of buns in the closet.

"I'll send you one as a souvenir, Luffy, so you can hang it on your ship."

"And I'll send you three of Nami's so you can hang it on yours."

The girl snatched the bag of candy from Ace in a careless manner and put a whole bun in her mouth. They both looked at her with their mouths open as she calmly chewed and swallowed.

"Why are you going to send each other drawings? Aren't you going in the same ship?"

They gave each other a look full of pride before they proceeded with a story about honor, brotherhood and dreams that Nami enjoyed having breakfast with laughter and sugar. It had been so long since she had tasted anything sweet that she almost cried several times throughout it.

With the story, fun and a little bizarre, she had more questions than it resolved. Because they used to cut each other off with emotion and assume that she had knowledge about certain facts in their lives that she knew nothing about.

"But weren't you just two? Who is Sabo? What is the drinks oath? Which of you have the money to pay for two ships? Wouldn't it be better if you traveled under the same flag?"

The mood changed so quickly that she barely had time to wonder why. The shadows grew as the two brothers looked at each other. Luffy opened his mouth and closed it again. Ace, on the other hand, stood up and turned around while brushing off his pants.

"Sabo was our brother. He died a few years ago, when he went out to sea." Luffy explained, with his head down and his shoulders drooping.

"He didn't die, they killed him." Ace's voice was so cold that Nami's bones froze. "He was killed by a Heavenly Dragon because of his own family. And then they just replaced him. As if it had never existed."

Silence fell like a heavy sea of ice between them. Her muscles screamed at her, desperately to break the immobility, but she remained completely frozen, trapped in a past that was not hers but that smelled like hers.

"Ace, it isn't..."

She cut Luffy off faster than she would have ever felt capable of being a pillar of salt, jumped over herself, and for the first time in a long time, she was the one offering the hug. They were both surprised when she crashed into the two, nearly knocking them over. Overwhelmed by her own emotions.

Luffy laughed as he hugged her back, delighted, and Ace squeezed her a little, silently thanking her for a nice gesture, but one that meant a whole world to her who was dying to share with them.

Nami would like to talk about her mother, about her experience. Tell them that she still kept a small jar of dirt darkened by blood under a loose floorboard of her house. Ask them if they remembered their brother's voice or they forgot it. How long it had taken them to lose his smell. If their hearts still hurt as she saw in Ace's words and in Luffy's black eyes.

Because for the first time she felt that two people who didn't share her past would understand her and feeling accompanied gave her immense peace.

She did not hold back the hug because, for one day, she allowed herself to feel, but she didn't mention Bellemere because freedom, for her, always had a measure.

This is the first part of the final day :)

Well, I am cooking some stuffs, the fic will be longer, don't worry my bbys