Chapter 11
Tormented secrets
That night, between lightning, thunder, threats and fear, when Nami and Luffy went to sleep they found a silent house and a presence that writhed in the shadows and never took shape. The walls and things thrown here and there spoke of Ace in an overwhelming way. His absence screamed silently.
As Nami lay down on the mattress in the dark and stared at the ceiling, even though sleep was clouding her thoughts, she realized that it would be impossible for her to sleep that night. She tried to encapsulate the thought, to enclose it in the concrete memory of the types of beetles she knew so far, in the ways of reaching into a pocket and twisting his fingers to take out a wallet without the victims realizing it, in the shudder that she felt on the back when the pressure began to drop in the atmosphere and it spoke to her about storms.
Luffy's fingers on her arm surprised her. As she narrowed the gaze in his direction she saw a muffled whisper in the way the boy's mouth moved.
"What?" Nami asked out loud. She gestured over her ear so he would understand. "Can you speak louder? I don't hear whispers unless you whisper them in my ear."
Luffy seemed to gauge his response for a few seconds before sitting up and crawled across the mattress to take a place next to her. Without a shadow of doubt or shame, he brought his mouth closer to her and his breath warmed the back of her neck, as if he were a child with a secret.
Nami didn't even move, surprised by how much the boy's closeness calmed her, when she never was a fan of unnecessary touching.
"Do you think Ace will feel lonely locked up?" Her chest tingled, touched by a question so innocent and at the same time so close to those she did not want to answer about herself .
She thought about it a couple of times before answering. Luffy stretched out excitedly as he brought his ear closer to her and Nami held back the smile that was trying to form on her mouth, turned around and spoke with her lips a couple of centimeters from her friend's lobe. She and Noriko played when they were young to tell secrets without their mother finding out, a dangerous game considering how loudly her sister had to whisper for her to hear it.
"Probably, but he will also think about you, and about today, about how much fun we had throwing seaweed and about the rice with meat that he will eat as soon as he comes out. When you are locked up there is more space for thoughts. For the good and for the bad, you know?"
She returned to her position and Luffy quickly climbed to her ear to take the place she left. Out of the corner of her eye she saw him with the eyebrows clenched, his thought held between them.
"Have you ever been to jail, Nami?"
The idea made her stomach turn, but she shook the head quickly and squirmed again, searching for his friend's ear.
"No and I hope I never will be. But they punished me when I don't do what I should. Sometimes is for good. If not, I forget why I must do it. When I'm alone and can't do anything, I refocus. Lately I think it would be good to be punished again. I think I'm starting to forget what I really have to do."
She saw Luffy stir, with the desire to reply written on the profile of his face, so she went ahead of him before he raised his voice more than necessary in the middle of the night.
"Don't anyone punish you?"
He denied so quickly, his hair tickled Nami's nose as she turned to allow him to speak.
"Never. When my grandfather gets angry he only takes me to train."
She wrinkled her nose in question and Luffy continued with the explanation.
"You know, he takes me to the forest and releases me to the animals, or throws me off cliffs or..."
She narrowed her eyes to look at him and her eyes, just a few centimeters away, sparkled with disbelief written in them.
"Those are punishments, Luffy!"
The silence was broken for a few seconds before he put a hand to his mouth and motioned with a finger for her to turn her head again so he could speak into her ear.
Nami narrowed the eyes one step away from the anger and indignation written in the movement.
"It helps me and Ace to make us stronger. Grandpa probably wouldn't do it to you without you being with us. Or he would even train you with other types of activities. I bet he'd make you recite the shape of the island from memory or something. Their workouts always work, even if you end up hating them later."
Before he continued with the sentence, Nami turned his face with her hands and put the mouth on his ear, wanting more to bite it off than to continue whispering. That Luffy was not able to relate the violence implicit in his training with that of her punishment, drove her crazy.
"Leaving you alone in the forest only serves as attempted murder, Luffy. Our punishments are the same."
He, unable to move the head with the force Nami was exerting to keep him in place, spoke forward with the gaze fixed on his friend.
"At least my training make me stronger. Leaving you locked up for what's the point?"
She let go of his cheeks as if they were burning and turned the head to the ceiling again, hurt by the question.
"I already told you; it helps me think."
"That doesn't make you stronger."
"Just because you don't use your head to think doesn't mean that it doesn't help people."
Silence surrounded them for a while, full of darkness and apathy, until Luffy squinted his head again to whisper some words in her ear in which the secret was implicit.
"They hit you, Nami. What is that for?"
She clenched her fists, one word away from the reply, with the heart in the throat and the open secret she kept spilled between the two of them. But she stopped when the memory of the chains and loose teeth came back into the memory.
How dare she even defend him? What he did to her. What he did to others. Could she really understand all the suffering Arlong caused? The beatings he gave her? Was she willing to defend that out of pride? If she defended what he did to her, perhaps she was accepting that it was okay for him to do everything he did to defend his purposes. And the murder of his mother was implicit in the idea.
The air grew stale in her lungs and the rice and meat threatened to escape. The nausea increased when Nami squeezed her stomach to prevent it from coming out and the ribs told her of a recent beating.
The girl sat up with the hands on her belly, the face green and her breathing altered. Panic clawed at her insides. She couldn't defend him. She didn't have to justify it. If she continued like this every day she would be closer to becoming him.
"Nami, what's wrong? Are you afraid? Hunger?"
The urgency and concern in Luffy's voice brought her back to her senses a little. She remained silent when Ace was arrested was one thing, but she couldn't allow panic episodes like that to continue, fear couldn't and wouldn't take her mind.
Nami counted to twenty while breathing to the rhythm of the numbers that danced in her thoughts.
As she looked her trembly legs, she took a breath, even with the sensation that her sore ribs were hugging her lungs and forced herself to lie down again. Luffy caressed her fingers and she took advantage of the touch to hold his hand tightly and anchor herself to the ground, to the present, to the now with him, in the darkness. In the silence that Ace left that she had to focus on to save him. The thought of punishments, of fish men, and everything that threatened to fall and crush her Nami must to be put aside. Forget them.
"What..." the boy began out loud.
She turned the head and whispered in his ear again, her heart still hysterical in her chest and the hair on the back of her neck standing up.
"Do I look like a monster?" she inquired into that ear of childish words and insidious questions.
She squeezed the boy's hand as she returned the gaze to the ceiling, waiting for his response. It took a couple of seconds for Luffy to react again.
"No, you're my friend, Nami."
She shook her head and met his gaze fiercely.
"Friends can be monsters too. I'm a monster?"
The teenager frowned so much that darkness swirled in his gaze.
"Of course not."
She took a breath and closed her eyes.
"I have the feeling that every day I am closer to being one. That one day I will become him."
Luffy shifted uncomfortably next to her, behind the eyelids she kept clenched. Nami squeezed his hand to keep him there and prevent a streak of fear from pulling him away from her.
"He? The one who hits you or the one who locks you up?"
She gave a giggle full of contained tension and bitter humor. Nami opened the eyes and held the lie on the tip of her tongue. Because in that darkness, locked up on an island of windmills, after a storm and the threat of losing a friend at the hands of the government, she was incapable of telling lies.
She had already thrown her principles overboard by deciding to stay, and considering that Luffy would never be able to leave the island and follow her, tormented by poor guidance, Nami felt her tongue loosen before she spoke.
"There are not two people, Luffy. He is the only one who does the dirty work. Him and sometimes his group."
This time his friend got so close to her ear that she almost felt like he was biting it.
"Who?"
The weight of the truth buried her and weighed so much that one day she would end up suffocating under it, but she couldn't speak.
"Who?"
Her lips trembled, with the "A" drawn between them, the "R" stuck between her teeth.
"Who?"
Nami squeezed his hand and breathed.
"Arlong. He's name is Arlong.
She said it in a voice so quiet and so tiny that she was barely able to hear herself, but Luffy's fingers twitched in relief.
"Alright."
The answer surprised her and the boy's expression left her confused. Calmness and determination were drawn on his cheekbones, and sharpened the rounded scar.
"Alright?"
He nodded and Nami realized that the truth had lifted such a weight from her shoulders that she had only room left for sleep while her eyelids began to feel heavy.
"I'm going to beat him up so he doesn't even say your name again."
She smiled through the haze of sleep under such a ridiculous sentence.
"You won't even be able to find it."
A yawn blurred the "it."
"I don't need it, I have a navigator to take me there."
She shook her head as turned back toward the ceiling, looking for a comfortable position to fall asleep.
"I would never guide you to death, Luffy."
"I do not want you to do it. Navigators take the captain wherever they want to go. So dying is my thing and I'm not going to die until I become the pirate king."
"I would never guide you to your death."
He squeezed her hand and his laughter echoed in the corners of the dream.
"Don't you see, Nami? You are not a monster. You're just an orange beetle caterpillar."
"Worm."
Laughing and hand in hand, Luffy guided her to the world of dreams. No nightmares to torment her, just sand, water, kings and pirates.
Another day, another chapter, I hope you like it.
I know sometimes I writte some intense escens, but I can't change my style, sorry.
Oh, and sorry again if you found some mistakes in my grammar, my firt languge is not english.