Chapter 9
A prison for beetles
When Bellemere found her, Nami had no name. She was a very small, stunted girl, Bellemere didn't know how old she was, orphaned, starving and without a name. Her mother used to say that she fell in love with her smile in a world full of wars, screams and crying and she loved to imagine the encounter between soap bubbles and magic. Over the years Nami understood that that first smile had been the lack of hearing and not magic.
Nami was deafened by bombs and screams for the first few months of her life. Bellemere saved up every year between work and hunger to have his ears checked by the village doctor once a year. Babies and children could have serious consequences and, according to the man, older and more drunk than wise, Nami lost a lot of hearing because of it. It was difficult for her to hear the songs of the birds and she can´t catch the sound of cicadas in summer.
She wasn't sad about the hearing loss, she can't miss what she never had. But Bellemere suffered greatly when she knew her daughter would never be able to hear the waves of the sea and, in an attempt to bring her closer to that vast sea of mysteries, she gave her the name that Nami now carried everywhere with her. Her mother's first gift, the only one she had held onto tooth and nail so as not to lose it when she was enslaved.
In the end the sea became her enemy and her ally. One more part of herself. The place she went to when she was unable to understand her own feelings.
There she went the las day in Dawn Island and while Ace and Luffy, barefoot, fought between water and sand, she stopped to admire the waves that would take her away from there the next day.
A storm was approaching, she concluded once the daydreams brought her back to reality. And with the storm it would be easier for her to escape without being followed. In the unlikely event that Ace or Luffy managed to get a boat, it would be impossible for them to go sailing in a rising swell.
"Nami, have you ever met a mermaid?" Luffy 's question woke her up as she lowered her head to the ground again and calmly breathed in the salty smell of the sea.
"No," she pondered for a few seconds on the phrase that hung on her tongue, "but I know a cowfish."
Luffy's eyes widened and Ace snorted as he threw a piece of seaweed at Nami's face. She screamed for a moment before sitting up, her tongue salty and sand in her eyebrows. The gaze full of promises of war.
"There can't be cowfish here, Nami."
She snorted.
"Or you haven't seen them."
Luffy lay down on the sand and rolled towards her, his eyes wide open, filled with an illusion that threatened to steal her breath.
"Have you found treasures?"
She narrowed her eyes, sat up, and smiled proudly.
"Better. I stole them."
Luffy's eyes shone.
"Like pirates."
The words came in a crash and Nami staggered as she heard them. Stunned by the unexpected attack.
"Never. I will never be a pirate, Luffy. I steal from those bastards."
The two looked at each other for a few seconds, in silence, until Luffy threw himself on the sand to pick up a crab from the ground to play with.
"Then we should hate each other, but I like you."
"The secret of thieves is that people like you until you put your hand in their pocket."
The boy started to laugh.
"I only have beetles and crabs in mines, Nami. And I won't dislike you even if you stole them. You fed me your lentils. We are friends."
Between incredulous snorts, the girl stood up and approached the silent sea that watched her, the only witness of her treacherous plans.
"Someday I will hurt you and you will have no choice but to hate me. I am very good at being hated by others. It's my natural talent." she spoke haughtily, but inside that voice that spoke to her of a simple life with Luffy and Ace twisted. On an island full of windmills instead of fish men.
"Your talent is to make maps and drawing. Fear is not a talent."
"I'm not scared!"
"You surely…"
A scream interrupted them and, as they both turned their heads in the direction of the eternal peacekeeper of their arguments, a huge wave dragged them both rolling to the ground.
When the salt water receded, Luffy was breathing between coughs on the ground, with a starfish stuck to his forehead.
"Ace!" The reprimand came naturally and Nami was startled to hear herself so closely with someone other than Nojiko.
"If I drown you, will they take me to jail or give me a trophy for ending boredom?"
She approached the boy with her hair blowing in the wind and her fists clenched.
"By the time the navy arrives you'll be dead." The threat was full of venom and Ace laughed as he ran.
"Don't kill my brother!"
While the three fought between sand and water, with the sun's rays in the form of scribbles on their skin, the insults and laughter playing in the background, Nami decided to forget the countdown, the smell of rain and the storm clouds. Just for a little while. A little more time at their side.
When the sun fell and their wet clothes turned cold, the three of them set out for home again. Ace, with his voice hoarse from shouting, happily told them how to survive an attack by a hungry black bear and she made notes as the story became further and further from reality.
The sun had burned the skin on Nami's cheeks, and the greenish bruises felt a little tight. The seawater stuck her hair to her face and Luffy, exhausted from so many games with an element that was already crushing him, was enjoying the views from his brother's back.
Luffy's loud and clear exclamation caught them by surprise.
When the two turned in his direction, they caught the orange glow of a huge glow planted on the boy's cheek. He watched her with an illusion so brilliant that it could have darkened the world. Her heart vibrated at the weight of his emotion.
"Nami, look! It's you, you've come flying" the excitement scared the insect, which moved away in the direction of the nest of black, curly hair that was Luffy's hair .
"That's a beetle, I'm a person!"
Ace's body shook with the suppressed laughter still stored in his stomach.
"She scratches with her legs just like you."
"I don't…"
"Portgas D. Ace?" The voice, deep and strong, startled the three of them, Nami had not heard the sound of his steps, although that did not surprise her, what worried her most was the fact that Ace and Luffy had not heard it before, like the last time they had been surprised by footprints in the forest.
They turned cautiously. Nami took a step back, alerted, by the eyes of someone who fears, to an obvious danger.
The draw of a seagull made her shiver as the two brothers looked at the man who had caught them from behind without flinching. He was a tall, young man with black hair and sharp eyebrows whom she had never seen before.
"Yeah?" Ace's question came out without prior caution, without measuring what might happen next, because she was sure that, if she had measured it, she would never have taken that step forward.
A flash from the corner of her eye caught the girl's attention, among the bushes she made out a face and another seagull cap. Alerted, Nami spun around and caught the gaze of two dozen eyes behind the bushes surrounding them.
Ace's back tensed as she unintentionally reached out to Ace's side and grabbed Luffy's pants, her fingers curling with tension and growing fear.
"Porgas D. Ace," the leader of that circle of guards repeated again, without the question implicit in the name, "for the charge of rebellion and murder of the king, you are officially detained under the orders of the government of Goa from this moment on."
Nami used to show her chest with how quick she was to offer answers to problems. That time, it took her two more seconds to understand the meaning of the accusations. Her eyes, so wide that it was painful, shifted with a frightening slowness towards Ace who had not even moved a single muscle in the face of the words.
"I suggest you surrender without making any fuss," The man warned when he saw Luffy sit up suddenly, still attached to his brother's shoulders.
"There must have been a mistake, he didn't..." The girl said quickly, still with the half-digested surprise in the pit of the stomach.
"Proceed."
The order brought a dozen navy men out of hiding and they came out with their weapons already pointed in the direction of the three, loaded and ready.
Ace cautiously lowered his brother from his back as the weapons cautiously followed the movement. Luffy raised the fist in defiance and the promise of death flashed across his forehead.
"Luffy, stop it," the teenager's order came cold, without fear, with an authority that produced rashes. "Nami is here, you have to protect her, not me. I did nothing, I am innocent. Nothing is going to happen to me."
Luffy turned in the direction of a noise that she didn't quite catch. Handcuffs dangled from the guard's hand.
"Tell it to Dadan. Call grandpa."
The instruction paralyzed Luffy who looked at Nami and Ace respectively with palpable indecision. She wanted him to move and at the same time, she feared the moment when a wrong step would detonate the cannons.
"Ace, no..."
A punch knocked Luffy to the ground and a strong blow left Nami down. Luffy's breath, out of rhythm with fear, ruffled her bangs and, despite her attempts to be strong, her cheeks were soaked with helpless tears.
"Let him go! Is innocent! Get your hands off my brother! Ace is innocent!" The boy's screams got into Nami's head and tumbled between memories of fish men and blood.
An iron-coated boot stabbed into the ground between her and Luffy 's head. Nami trembled and her chest vibrated between terrified sobs.
"Come on, boy, shut the fuck up if you don't want your friend's head to explode."
Reality became increasingly vague, surrounded by the vibrations of her chest and breathless gasps. The feet around moved from side to side. A piercing hum deafened her completely and the world turned and turned, leaving her lying there, on the cold floor, with the sharp stones stuck in her cheek.
The cold of the boot pinched the skin.
The hands felt sticky with blood. Her mother's dead eyes stared back at her from the reflection of the metal.
She closed the eyes and held the breath.
"Nami."
It was barely a whisper, but the warmth of a breath on her forehead startled her.
She didn't dare open the eyes until a hand brushed her cheek full of frozen tears.
"Nami we have to…"
The familiarity of Luffy, of the jeans that she already associated so much with him, of those soft fingers, of a voice that she already felt was hers, snatched Nami away from that dark sea in which she had immersed herself and the rise was so fast that, instead of breathing, she sobbed. And once she started crying she couldn't stop.
Sorry but with the work, the final part of Master and christmas update was imposible for me.
Buuuut here we are, with the a new chapter and the start of the plot.
Well, Did you expect this plot twist? hehehe
By the way, my first language isn't english, please forgive my mistakes.
(Tomorrow I am going to edit some details, don't panic)