Work Text:
- luffy -
You change when Ace dies.
There was always this feeling you had when you knew he was alive. Just like Ace, it was warm. There was this light in your heart, keeping you running, almost like a little generator. You would do whatever you wanted, and that light would give you the extra push, whispering in your ear, Ace could do that. Then you’d barrel through your obstacles out of brotherly spite, just to make him proud, to tell him, Hey, I can do that too!
Jinbe says that you need to think of what you still have. And you love your crew so desperately, so wholly. You want to see them. You’re supposed to see them in two years, you promised.
...But they’re not Ace. You know that they’ll survive. But Ace isn’t coming back.
Without him it’s not the same. You miss that warmth so bad, you’d do anything to feel it again.
It’s that yearning that finds you stepping off the cliff.
Daggers of cold bite into your skin as the air is knocked violently from your lungs on impact with the water. The sea overtakes your powers in seconds and you feel your strength drain rapidly away. It’s so cold. So cold, so fucking cold. But you don’t care. You know that waiting for you at the end is the warmth you’re looking for.
- nami, two years later -
It’s late. You’d give everything to be asleep right now, but there’s so much work to do. You’ve got to chart the Fishman Island currents before you forget them. Exhaustion has convinced you to do your work out on the deck, charts draped out and pinned down with assorted paperweights over the table as the brisk midnight breeze forces you awake. The ship is silent save for the howling of the sky, and occasionally, the muffled sounds of Zoro training from up in the crows nest. What a dumbass. How can he train at a time like this, when every reasonable person would be asleep?
You sigh and take a deep gulp of the now-cold coffee that Sanji had left for you before hitting the hay. Lucky man, getting some sleep. Though, you suppose he can’t be all that lucky—he does have to get up in a few hours to make breakfast anyway.
You work as diligently as you can when you’re running on absolutely no sleep for a little while, taking breaks every now and then to slap yourself awake or rescue a page that threatens to float away. You get some good progress done, and by the time you’re about to pass out, you can safely say that you’ve gotten enough down on paper to complete the rest after a good night’s sleep.
As you start to gather your things, you hear the quiet sound of flip flops...well, flip-flopping across the deck. You turn around to see Luffy pulling himself out of the boy’s dorm and towards you. Instinctively, you roll your eyes before greeting him. “Well, look who’s awake. If you’re looking for a midnight snack, Sanji’s asleep.”
No reply. His hat is nowhere to be found, his expression blank, eyes groggy. Normally Luffy at this time would be drooling all over the first person he caught sight of, begging for food. Whatever’s going on right now is weird, to put it mildly.
“Uh. Luffy?” You wrap your nightrobe tighter around yourself and wave a hand in front of him as he stumbles across the deck towards you. No reaction—he doesn’t even look at you, just kinda shuffles past you and heads further down the deck. “Hey, Luffy, what are you do—“
Your words trail off as Luffy pulls himself up onto the railing of the Sunny and steps off the side.
A strangled scream escapes you as Luffy drops out of sight and under the waves with a splash. You’re not even thinking as you strip off your robe and dive in after him.
The water is freezing and wild against your skin, but you refuse to acknowledge it and force yourself deeper into the inky blackness. Where is he? He can’t have sunk so far so fast. It takes a few seconds but you finally spot a faint silhouette below you, sinking like an anchor.
Luffy, you dumbass! you think, reaching out to grab his arm and pull him back towards the surface—but the moment you grab hold of him, he wrenches his arm free of your grip and kicks you away.
Panic seizes your body as you struggle to hold your breath in—even underwater and weakened by the curse of the sea, a kick from Luffy is still a fucking hard kick. What the hell is he doing? You’ve had your fair share of rescuing devil fruit users from the ocean, every non-user on the crew has, and Luffy knows the routine by now, so why the hell would he kick you away?
You’re determined now, and frankly, a little scared, so you dive down again and try to catch hold of his ankle. He jerks free easily, the resulting motion kicking the two of you further apart. You come back and try again, grabbing his shirt and trying to drag him upwards, but his flailing makes it difficult to do anything more than keep him from going any further down. It’s like he’s not actively trying to hit you, just trying to break your grip.
You want to scream at him, slap him, tell him to snap out of it, but you’re both underwater and neither of you has the air to spare so you just try to pull him up as much as you can. There’s a muffled sound from up above you and, to your immense relief, Sanji swims down to your side and manages to grab a hold of Luffy’s torso.
There’s no time to think about what he’s doing here, or to be grateful that he’s not drooling over your nearly nude body. The two of you share a quick nod and pull the struggling Luffy back to the surface.
You gasp in a deep breath as you, Sanji and Luffy all breach the surface. Somehow the cold slipped your mind, but as soon as the chilled air hits your skin, you’re immediately reminded. Still, your focus is on your captain. He appears unconscious, paler than usual and looking oddly frail.
“What—“ Sanji stops to gasp for air— “happened, Nami-swan?”
“I-I don’t know! He was walking from the dorm and he just—“ You stop to breathe too—Luffy’s heavy and the waves are rough enough without you making it harder on yourself by talking.
“Over here!” You look up and catch sight of Usopp throwing a rope out to your group. With Sanji’s help, you secure the rope under Luffy’s arms and help the crew haul him aboard. Everyone’s there, all in different stages of alertness but awake regardless, and all of them look concerned.
Chopper wastes no time in grabbing Luffy and whisking him away, closely followed by Zoro. He must have heard you scream and alerted the crew.
The moment your feet touch the deck, your legs give way and you collapse to the floor. You stammer out a shivering thank you to Robin as she graciously offers you a towel and practically carries you to one of the deck chairs. Your whole body is shaking—and at this point, it’s not just from the cold. You think you’re starting to understand what just happened, and the very thought makes you feel sick. “I-I’m fine, Robin, you should check on Luffy—“
“Chopper says that it’s likely you‘ve contracted hypothermia,” Robin interrupts smoothly. “Don’t worry. Our doctor will take care of him.”
“He jumped,” you whisper. It comes out in almost a rasp.
Robin casts a strange look at you—an invitation to explain.
“He—he just walked up to the ledge, got up on it, and he stepped off. And when I tried to drag him up, he wouldn’t—he wouldn’t let me, he was kicking me off, flailing like a madman. It was like he was determined to sink!” Your voice starts to break, and you wisely cut yourself off and burrow further into your towel.
Robin is silent for a long while. When she does speak, her voice is cold. Methodical. “So you’re suggesting that our captain, who for all intents and purposes, is of sound mind and body, attempted to commit suicide.”
“Gah—I don’t know. He seemed really out of it, but I...I don’t know. I don’t know,” you repeat.
Robin’s silence resumes. You venture a look at her and see that she’s staring towards the infirmary with an oddly stony look that sends shivers down your spine.
“Nami, would you excuse me?” she finally says, deathly calm. “I need to talk to Luffy about something.”
Robin walks away without waiting for your answer.
- robin -
When Luffy comes around, it isn’t quiet, like most patients in the midst of recovering. It’s with a bloodcurdling scream and a hand pressed against his scar.
Unfazed, you close your book and sit up a bit straighter as your captain catches his breath. He’s really not all that injured—the only reason you’d managed to get Chopper to leave you alone with him in the first place—but you wouldn’t know it from the look on his face. You’ve only seen this kind of panic in his eyes before once, two years ago back in Sabaody, when Kuma took all of you away and ripped Luffy’s world apart, piece by crucial piece.
“Where—“ His eyes land on you and he visibly relaxes, his hand dropping to his lap. “Robin? Did something happen?”
“You tried to kill yourself,” you say, matter-of-factly.
Luffy’s eyes widen for a split second—it’s gone as quickly as it came, and he looks down into his lap and fiddles with the sheets in an attempt to avoid eye contact. He knows something, for sure.
“Luffy, look at me.”
He shakes his head, eyes now screwed shut.
“Luffy,” you press. “You need to tell me what happened.”
“I don’t wanna talk about it,” he mumbles, like a petulant child.
“You are our captain, and more importantly, our nakama,” you retort. He flinches at that. “If you’re going through something serious, we deserve to know, so we can help you.”
“I dun’wanna,” he mumbles again. Quieter this time.
”Luffy, you’ve always been there for me—let me return the favor.”
Luffy chews at his lip—he’s a bundle of nervous tics and habits right now, stuff you’ve never really seen him do before. Finally it’s like something snaps inside him and he turns towards you.
“I thought I was better! I thought I was over Ace being gone, that I could move on for him and for everyone and for myself and for Sabo and for Gramps and Makino and the old hag and her bandits in the mountains because if I could move on, then they’d be able to move on too, right? So I train for two years so I can see you all again, so I can keep the people I care about safe so it doesn’t happen again and I don’t have to watch anyone I care about die again, and I tell myself that I’m better because I HAVE to be better, but then I punched that jerk on Fishman Island with a fire punch exactly like Ace would have only not nearly as cool and as special and as amazing as Ace and it just. It hurt, because I miss him, but I couldn’t save him, I don’t get to have him back, and there were some days back with Rayleigh where I thought that it might be better if I was dead with Ace instead of here, only Jinbe talked me out of it and I thought I was better and then something hurt, it hurt when I punched the fish guy like it hurt when I lost Ace and I just wanted to be with him again, I miss them both so much...”
By the time he stops to take a breath, Luffy’s in tears, struggling to breathe through the hiccupy sobs. You relocate yourself so you’re sitting beside him and let him bury his face in your shoulder while you rub soothing circles into his back. Sometimes you forget that the young man you chose to follow for the foreseeable future isn’t even in his twenties yet. He’s still just a boy, carrying so much weight on his shoulders—but silently, so as not to disturb others. You know the feeling far too well.
“Please do-don’t tell the others, please don’t be mad at me, Robin,” Luffy whisper-sniffles into your shirt, hands buried in the fabric. You wonder for a fleeting moment if this is what your mother felt when she held you—this deep-seated protectiveness for another, that you would do anything to keep him from having this look on his face.
“I’m not mad, Luffy.”
“Really?”
“Really. Everyone struggles with loss, Luffy. Ace was your older brother, I’m sure you will always miss him, but remember that he would want to see you achieve your dream before you even entertained a permanent residence in the afterlife.”
He snorts, almost a laugh. “Yeah, he, he would.”
“You’ve always been there to pick up your nakama when we needed you the most. We’re here for you too, Luffy, never forget that.”
“O-okay.”
“That being said, if you ever try and do something as reckless as this again...” You purposely leave the statement hanging, a blanket warning.
“I won’t,” he asserts with a forceful nod.
You raise an eyebrow. “Promise?”
“Promise.”
You sit there in silence with your young captain, letting his breathing slow, his muscles relax. After a short while, he’s asleep again, snoring like the Monkey D. Luffy you know and adore.
Chopper bursts in a few minutes later, visibly relaxing at the sight of you and Luffy. “Oh, thank goodness! I heard him scream but I needed to treat Nami’s bruised rib first. He woke up?”
“Yes, but not for long. He must have been exhausted.”
“Did he...say anything about what happened?”
You consider the question for a moment, then nod.
“He mentioned that in the past two years, he’s been having rather frequent bouts of sleepwalking.”
Chopper blinks in confusion. “Really? I’ll have to add that to his file, I didn't know that. I guess this must have just been a freak accident then.”
“Yes,” you muse, your eyes locked on the figure of your slumbering captain. “Nothing more.”