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Not sleeping well isn’t an uncommon occurrence, and over the years Nami has grown fairly used to being a light sleeper. She’d retired to her quarters earlier than usual tonight in an attempt to get a jump on charting their next course after the events of Loguetown, though she’d only managed a few pages of her book and a rough sketch before the pain in her arm had been too much for her focus.
“Dammit,” she hisses, grabbing for the painkillers she now keeps on her desk. The ache had followed her through dinner, and then the brief conversation during clean up and the crew milling about the kitchen before they all went their separate ways for the night.
Fine, she decides as she swallows the pills dry. She’ll just go to bed early tonight and get up early tomorrow to do what she needs to get done.
Except, of course, that isn’t how it works out at all.
Nami wakes with an ache in her arm that has persisted, fading as she finds a comfortable spot and then ratcheting up again just as she’s on the cusp of sleep. At first it was simple enough to attribute the pain to digging a knife into an old tattoo, and then with the healing process of a fresh one. (In hindsight, a new tattoo over a fresh wound may not have been the best of plans, but it had been a major part of her healing process, and she trusted Dr. Nako.) That had been weeks ago now, and while it isn’t the same searing, white hot pain of driving a blade into her flesh, it still hurts.
Some nights she starts out small: flexing her fingers, rolling her wrist, and then a gentle swing of her arm to work out the kinks. Other nights the pain in her scar flares and she has to shove a pillow in her mouth.
Tonight is one of those nights.
Unable to sleep, Nami curses and throws her covers back with her good arm before she pads her way out of her room, slipping through the corridors until she’s out on the deck. The seas are calmer out here the farther they get from the East Blue, the breeze gentler as it blows her bangs into her eyes, and she sweeps a hand over her face to chase away exhaustion.
Some fresh air will do her some good, she decides. Her room was feeling a little cramped anyway. The scar along the back of her hand where she’d driven a knife through it doesn’t fare much better.
“What are you doing out here?”
Nami’s eyes snap open to find Zoro peering down at her from the crow’s nest.
“What are you?” she shoots back before she can think better of it.
Shrouded in moonlight, Zoro sweeps his arm around him. “Sunbathing.”
Nami closes her eyes again, digging her knuckles into her forehead. When Zoro speaks again, he sounds much closer, and she turns to find him halfway down the rigging. He’s a little quieter and more graceful than she gives him credit for, though she’ll never admit that to his face.
“There a reason you’re up? I didn’t think my watch was over yet.”
“It’s only been an hour.”
“Felt like longer.” He shrugs, ropes creaking with the movement as he settles his feet on the deck. His gaze remains fixed on her, watching her face with quick scrutiny, though at least he doesn’t glare at her. Her shoulder twinges, and she rolls both of them back. His eyes narrow.
Zoro doesn’t say anything though, and she’s relieved he doesn’t. They pass the next few minutes like that, Zoro with his head tilted back to look at her from the lower deck, and she with her chin raised and waiting for … she isn’t sure what. For him to tell her to go back to bed? Call her a witch and mutter about how he doesn’t trust her? Again, she isn’t sure—they aren’t close, not like he and Luffy, but there’s been that mild discomfort since they left Arlong Park, or maybe since she told him he had a debt following Loguetown. He isn’t outwardly vicious, and they exchange a few barbs, just as they always do, but there’s an underlying tension she hasn’t been able to put a name to.
Eventually, she looks away first. She tilts her head to watch the full moon above them, assuming their conversation is over, and she listens to his footfalls as he climbs the stairs and then enters the kitchen with a grunt as he passes her.
She doesn’t know how long she watches the moon for, letting the breeze slip across her cheeks and through her fingers, or for how long she listens to the gentle waves against the hull.
She’s lost in thought and rightfully startled when there’s the sound of a throat being cleared behind her. Nami whirls to find Zoro again, this time holding out what looks to be a folded up dish towel.
Confused, she furrows her brow, gaze bouncing between it and him.
He sighs with an eye roll. “Press it against your arm.”
She doesn’t realize she’s been bracing a hand on her shoulder until he gestures to it. The towel is warm and damp against her fingers when she slowly takes it from him, apprehension bleeding through her fingers and in her gaze, and Zoro keeps his eyes on her until she’s done as he says. She hisses at the sudden influx of heat, though in her next breath the pain subsides some. His work apparently done, Zoro folds his arms and braces himself against the wall, one leg crossed in front of the other and content to finish the duration of his watch there.
“You probably tore through some muscle,” he says, gaze fixed on the masthead. “Surprised if you don’t have some nerve damage too.”
“Huh?”
“You stabbed the shit out of your arm back there,” he says. His eyes are sharp, and when he angles his head she can catch the end of an earring glinting in the moonlight. “Guess no one on this crew half-asses things, huh?”
She breathes out a laugh, though it sounds more like a huff.
His expression pulls into something like consideration, and she turns her full attention to him, interest piqued as it strikes her that he’s actually trying to initiate a conversation with her. Why she can’t be totally certain, but she’ll entertain it to see just how far it goes.
“Air pressure might mess with it some too. I don’t know how,” he adds the emphasis, likely because he expects her to needle him, “But I used to know a guy who claimed every time his knee hurt it meant rain.”
“Something to do with barometric pressure,” she says. “When the air pressure’s low your body tissue expands more and can put pressure on nerves and scar tissue, and low air pressure means worse weather, so it makes sense your friend figured they went together.”
At his look she shrugs, then grimaces, and then decides to do so with only one shoulder. The heat seeps into her bicep, and she manages to relax some as it does. It’s not nearly to the point where she’s entirely comfortable, but it’s better than the sting that woke her from her restless slumber, and better than the one that’s clawed into the meat of her shoulder for nearly a decade.
Maybe eventually it won’t hurt so much to look at her arm.
She nods to it with, “I didn’t know you cared.”
Zoro shrugs with an ‘eh.’ It’s not so endearing.
“Thanks,” she deadpans. Maybe she misinterpreted his attempts at a conversation. He isn’t exactly the chattiest of the bunch, but then Luffy and Usopp combined have the other three beat in that regard.
“My pleasure,” he says, returning the tone.
She almost wants to laugh, and instead worries her teeth into her bottom lip to keep the sound from slipping out. Her arm still aches down to the marrow, the memory leaching into her bloodstream with notes of shame and anger. Nami flexes the fingers on her free hand, tugging at the scar, and figures it’ll be a long while before she gets back to sleep.
Though she doesn’t say anything as she passes by him, she can feel his eyes tracking her.
“Come on,” she says as she rounds the cabin and starts up the small flight of stairs leading toward the stern. She can practically hear the huh? in his exhale, but he still follows nonetheless.
Climbing up onto the small grove making up the back of their ship takes a little more work with only the proper use of one arm, but at least Zoro spares her dignity and lets her hoist herself up on her own.
He only watches quietly, standing just below as she mills about and pretends he isn’t regarding her with a curious look and waiting for her to explain herself. He’s quiet still as he climbs up beside her, arm resting on his swords as she carefully scrutinizes her trees and then shifts the towel to her wounded hand.
Reaching up with her right arm, Nami plucks a tangerine from the nearest tree; she glances over her shoulder to Zoro. “Don’t tell Luffy.”
He raises an eyebrow and follows suit as she lowers herself to the ground, though he pauses to lean his swords against the nearest tree. Part of her wants to tell him he probably doesn’t need to carry them around on his watch, but she knows it would go unheeded and she’s hardly ever seen him without them, anyway.
The dirt is cool beneath her bare knees, and then on her calves when she makes herself comfortable on the grass. Now she thinks she should have worn something heavier than sleep shorts to bed, but then she hadn’t expected to spend her night out here.
Nami holds out the tangerine to Zoro, who only glances between it and her.
“Here,” she says, because she’s not about to admit she wants him to do it. “It’s free.”
“Free,” he mutters, not a thanks, though he takes it from her after another moment of hesitation. She doubts she’ll ever see even an inkling of the three hundred thousand beri she’s decided he owes her. “Nothing with you ever is.”
“Tonight, I’m making an exception.”
He pulls his legs under him, mimicking her pose as he rolls the tangerine between his palms. The towel is cooling now, and she flips it over to leach any residual warmth from the other side.
They sit by one another in the grass, crosslegged and partly hidden in shadows that sway in the breeze, moonlight peeking out over their knees or shoulders. Nami watches him peel the tangerine carefully with something near reverence or respect.
When he’s done, he passes it back to her to let her take the first slice. His hand is rough and calloused, but nimble as he plucks one of his own after she holds it back out to him.
“Sometimes my chest still hurts,” he tells her, voice soft but loud enough to be heard and not meant to venture beyond this miniature grove. Rough nails pick at the white membranes. His expression is still closely guarded, like he expects her to use his words against him. “Some spots more than others, and I’ll check it just to make sure it’s still closed.”
“My shoulder hurt more before I stabbed it,” she whispers. Tonight will stay between them and the trees. Promises all built on lies, and then a permanence and words she couldn’t take back etched into her skin. There have been times over the last few weeks she spots blue ink out of the corner of her eye and tenses; catches a quick glimpse in the mirror and her blood boils.
A pinwheel and a tangerine twine across her bicep.
Nako hadn’t been able to remove the old tattoo, not entirely. It was a mend over an old wound, making something new out of the brand that had haunted her for nearly half of her life. There will always be a scar where she stabbed the knife into her arm, where it twisted like she could carve it away or stain it over in blood. There will always be a scar where the hand that killed her mother was the same that dragged her into a chart room and sneered welcome to your new home.
The first night she’d even gotten it she’d scrubbed herself raw in the bath as if she could watch it pool along the drain, and the skin had only reddened in irritation and stung and burned, leaving the blue standing out even more harshly.
“That doctor does some decent work,” he says. She nods.
They still need a doctor of their own on the ship; someone who has better knowledge than the rudimentary patchwork skills they all possess. It’s an undeniable fact their worst wounds have yet to come.
Zoro subconsciously runs his fingertips across the top of his scar, and vaguely, she wonders how much of it he still feels.
The towel has lost most of its heat by this point, though she presses it against her bicep once more just for those last few traces. The pressure itself is a little more soothing, too.
“How did you end up with—” she gestures vaguely at his … all of him, though the broadest gesture centers around his chest, “—that, anyway? I know Arlong didn’t do that. You were bandaged up long before that.”
“Told you I had no more clean laundry.” The corner of his mouth raises in a grin, and she rolls her eyes to the moon and back. After a second, his expression sobers. “Mihawk. After you ditched us at the Baratie the guy I’d been searching for showed up. I challenged him and got my ass kicked.”
“I’ll say.”
“Doesn’t matter now.”
“Of course it matters now, Zoro. You almost died.”
“But I didn’t.”
“You could have!”
“We all could, every day.” His voice is even.
That’s just like him, isn’t it. Zoro, who shrugs off the threat of his own death but balks at the thought of someone else’s. He’s fiercely protective of the crew in a way that almost catches her off guard—any pirates she had past run ins are loyal, yes, but most would just as easily let someone else lose their head if it meant sparing theirs. The mere idea of it incenses him.
“Don’t dwell on it,” he says. Her consternation must show, and she works to school her expression in the dark. There isn’t a command in his voice, but more a gentle coaxing, if Zoro could be considered gentle. It makes her narrow her eyes a little, eager to ask what he’s up to, and barely refraining from doing so.
She peels off another slice. When Nami looks up again, he’s gesturing to her with his chin.
“How’s it feel?”
“Still hurts. Still feels like I want to rip my arm off to see if it’ll hurt a little less, but better than it was before.” She holds up the towel she’s been wringing through her fingers, sticky with juice from the tangerine. “Thanks.”
He squints at her arm like he’s studying it, like whatever he’s looking for will pop out of the swirl of blue ink and scars.
Starting to squirm under the scrutiny, she hisses back, “What?”
“Depending on how much it hurts, you could try stretching it out some. Make sure you still have some range of motion and flexibility and it’ll prevent it from getting any worse.”
“It’ll get worse?” she mutters. “You have incredible bedside manner.”
His face twists into a frown. “Do you want help or not?”
“Fine.” Nami sets the towel on the grass and the remainder of their tangerine on top of that.
Zoro’s mouth is still set into a grimace, as are the lines in his forehead she wants to tell him are going to make him look older than he is.
“You should… ” he starts, arms raised to pantomime through it, and Nami sighs and twists on the grass.
“Just show me.”
They don’t look at each other as he pushes himself onto his knees and comes to loom beside her. His hands are warm, and she watches him circle a finger around the wound before pressing down against the skin.
“You want to apply enough pressure, but not too much that you’re just causing yourself more pain.” Her own hand hovers until he reaches for it and bends her fingers to mirror his. Once he has them where he wants them against her shoulder, his gaze flickers to hers before easing her through the motions of a cheap massage and flexing sore muscles. He tracks the shifts in her expression as he has her fingers apply more pressure in some spots than others, and it’s pretty much the exact opposite of relaxing. The ache lessens a bit, though. “Might be easier if you had a roller ball or something you could use, but kneading the muscle should help ease up some of the tension. How far can you rotate your shoulder?”
“You seem to know an awful lot about this stuff,” she mutters.
When he pulls away, dropping his arms, she swings her own in a full arc that hurts like hell, but it’s still possible, a sight that seems to appease him enough that he sits back in his previously occupied spot. They will never talk about this again, she decides.
“My line of work, you had to make do on the fly.” He sucks on his teeth. “Not the first stab wound I’ve seen.”
“You mean former Pirate Hunter Roronoa Zoro? Oh how the mighty have fallen.”
He chuffs out a laugh.
“Y’know, if Sanji had come out here right now, he’d probably kick you right off the ship.”
“He’s welcome to try,” he grumbles. He reaches over and snatches the tangerine off the towel as she rotates her shoulder again. The joint clicks and she makes a gagging sound in the back of her throat. “It’s going to take more than two minutes to heal,” he says around a slice.
As if he’s one to talk. The first time she met him a floating hand stabbed him through the back and his response was a power nap—after carrying a heavy cage across town with his captain in tow. She curls the fingers of her scarred left hand again.
“Still,” she sniffs, resting both of her hands in her lap, toying with her bracelet. Zoro tosses her the tangerine and she considers picking another one. It’s not like Luffy has to know. “Roronoa Zoro, famed bounty hunter and now a wanted man.”
“That’s right, the Straw Hats have to be criminals now, don’t we?” He starts to laugh, the sound low and almost soothing were it not for the topic at hand. He sounds pleased with himself, like this is just one more hurdle to sate his craving for a challenge.
“You know having a potential bounty on our heads and people after us is not a good thing, right?”
“Oh shit, really?”
“I—” she starts, and then her jaw snaps shut with an audible click as he raises an eyebrow. He looks so amused. “You moron.”
An idea seems to strike him, and he goes from bemused to like he just had an epiphany. She has mixed feelings about that look on him.
“Hey, if there’s a potential bounty on my head and I turn myself in to collect it, I could probably pay back that damn debt you say I owe you in no time at all.”
“You’re a dumbass,” she says evenly. “Yes, you do owe me, and no, I’m pretty sure you can’t turn yourself in to collect a reward.”
“How would you know?” he shoots back, like she dare question his logic and expect him to concede without a fight. He's pretty full of himself when he asks, "Were you a former bounty hunter?”
“Well, I—no, but no one with a bounty turns themselves in!”
“Not willingly.”
“If you were such a famous pirate hunter, how did you wind up so broke then?”
“Never called myself that,” he says. “When you end up jailed and about to be executed, the marines don’t exactly stop to ask if you want to take everything with you.”
Her mouth shuts at that, lips pressed into a thin line. As much as what she knows of Zoro and his joining the crew, the bulk of the story consists of Luffy asking do you wanna die? and Zoro saying I’m busy, so no, why.
When Zoro turns his gaze back on her, there’s something in his expression that takes her a second to place. He really is just amusing himself, isn’t he. “You’re incredibly easy to rile up.”
“Oh like you’re one to talk,” she grouses back. “I so much as breathe too loud near you and it pisses you off.”
“You don’t piss me off,” he says with a sigh. The comment catches her off guard and she freezes. They can tolerate one another, sure, and can sometimes manage a conversation, yeah, but Zoro isn’t overly nice to her, nor is she to him. “You annoy me sometimes, sure, but I figure that comes with being in close quarters on a constant basis.” His head tilts. “You do breathe a little loud sometimes, though.” Her cheeks puff out as she huffs. “Exactly.”
“Shut up. You’re not exactly my favorite person to live with, either.”
“Ouch,” he says with a fake wince. Nami rolls her eyes so hard she thinks she might get a headache.
The breeze picks up again and she hunches her shoulders against it, pushing her hair back out of her eyes.
Zoro stands, dusting himself off. “Should I ask what my debt is now?”
She almost barks out a laugh that would have awoken the rest of the crew. His expression is skeptical at best.
“I gave you back every cent you gave me, so I don’t see why I owe you,” he mutters.
“How did you even get those swords, anyway?” she asks instead.
“Guy gave ‘em to me—one of them’s cursed, too.”
“Really?”
She figures he could probably talk for hours about swords if one were to let him, though no one else on the crew has the same interest he does, and while she might not totally understand the mechanics of it all, maybe someday, way, way in the distant future, when she’s in a giving mood, she’ll entertain the thought of it. (For a fee, of course. And to figure out why he decided holding one in his mouth was a good idea.)
For now, though, it’s not like she can see herself getting to sleep anytime soon, and the company has been—mostly—pleasant, if not entertaining, at least. If he leaves now she’s just going to end up sitting on the grass by herself, bored and with a persistent ache in her shoulder.
“Tell you what: I won’t raise your debt if you answer a few questions.”
Zoro eyes her in a calculated way that she’s familiar with, then lets out a breath, an annoyed sound slipping through it, and she expects him to tell her no, he’s dealt with her enough for one evening. Maybe he’ll go back up to brooding in the crow’s nest.
He rejoins her on the ground. He must be feeling generous, she thinks.
“Fine,” he mutters (which surprises her) while not looking at her (which doesn’t). He snaps up the rest of his half of the tangerine and reclines some, elbow resting on his raised knee and his other leg outstretched. “Let’s get it over with.”
“That was easy,” she says, mostly to herself. To him, she settles on asking, “How long have you and Luffy known one another?”
“You mean around the time we ran into you?” he asks, hand poised halfway to his mouth. She nods. He pauses, considering, clearly not having expected that as a question. “About three weeks, I’d say.”
“That’s it?” Her brow furrows, the skin between her eyebrows pulling together. “Always got the impression it was longer than that.”
He shrugs but doesn’t offer anything more, gaze tracking over the dark horizon.
“How’d you end up on the crew?”
“He asked; I said no. He asked again and it was that or face a firing squad.”
That … well, that sounds about right for them. Maybe one day, again, far in the future they’ll all gather around a campfire and regale one another with tales of how they joined the crew, sharing moments where stories will hold more nostalgia than pain.
Nami pulls her knees up to her chest against the cool night air, drawing her legs in and wrapping her arms around them as if that will fend off the chill. The breeze tastes of tangerines and salt.
She follows his gaze, thoughts shifting away from wishing she’d grabbed a warmer sweater.
“I’d heard rumors about you before,” she says, a murmur on the wind like he isn’t supposed to hear it. The subtle clench of his jaw is her only indication. The word before boasts a hefty weight; it’s a life lived on the run, full of sharp grins and a dream built upon a pillar of sand and a promise made with no plans of being fulfilled. “You’d been called a demon, someone some pirates would just whisper about like they were afraid you’d appear out of nowhere if they said your name too loud.”
“I’ve been called a lot of things.”
Nami rests her chin on her knees. “So have I. Totally unoriginal, but I think ‘conniving little bitch’ might be one of my favorites.”
“What do you know, they used to say the same thing about me.” His voice is flat, and she turns her head just enough to squint at his profile.
“Careful, Zoro, or I might think you’re funny.” He starts to smile a little, so then she adds: “Or funny looking, at least.”
“There it is,” he says, though there’s no real annoyance to his tone. “That wasn’t a question, by the way.”
She purses her lips as she thinks of her next. “Why do you want to be the world’s greatest swordsman?”
“Made a promise.” He makes no move to elaborate beyond that, which is about as much as she expected. Instinct says there’s more to that story, but it isn’t hers to hear. When she doesn’t press it, he swallows the last slice he’s been chewing on and asks: “Do I get to ask questions now?”
“Hold on,” she says, to which his mouth twists, “Just one more.” He tilts his head, waiting. “Why did you come after me?”
“Captain’s orders.”
She can hear it clearly, of course, Luffy standing amidst the rubble of Arlong Park and declaring that she was one of them, that she was his friend. She’d caught him in the midst of the banquet after, when he’d been trying to track down some of that melon ham, right before she’d ducked away from the festivities. Of course he was going to come after her, and the question had confused him more than anything, like the answer wasn’t obvious.
“Would you have come after me if he hadn’t?”
Zoro is quiet for a beat, his expression unreadable. “I don’t have much interest in fighting someone else’s battles for them if they have no interest in the fight to begin with. Your personal business is personal for a reason.” She studies him a little more, and then he turns to face her. She wants to look away. “I knew the second I pushed myself into the water that you were coming after me.”
She watches where his fingers curl into the grass. Her own spin her bracelet around her wrist again.
“Stealing the Merry to go after Arlong was one of the stupidest things you could have done, but I get why you did it,” he says. She bristles at his first point, but then he meets her eyes and continues: “Luffy was going after you no matter what—you’re part of his crew whether you like it or not, but we’re all here only because we want to be. And I don’t fight for people because I think they’re weak or because they’re just waiting for someone else to do it for them. You have a lot of fight in you; it was just time to let someone else step in to do what you couldn’t.”
She thinks about Luffy again, his shouts ringing out across the way even in the midst of battle, highlighting his own weaknesses. Their motley little crew stitched together over the course of a few weeks complements one another well, somehow.
“Speaking of which,” Zoro says, pushing himself upright before shifting to face her fully. She watches the movement pull at his scar. “Can you fight?”
She blinks at him. “Excuse me?”
“Make a fist.”
She does, and he reaches over to take it. He shifts her thumb with his own.
“Seriously? Tighter,” he mutters, and she grumbles at him while making the proper adjustments. “If I attack you, are you trying to break my nose or shoo away a fly?”
“Hey,” Nami starts. He sits back a little, within arm’s reach, and holds up a hand with his palm out toward her. “If I’d known I’d end up with boxing lessons, I would have gone back to bed. And I'm wounded!”
“Great. Now can you throw a punch or not?”
She mimics him with a poor imitation and follows through anyway. The impact of the skin is sharp. Zoro barely even blinks, seemingly more focused on her mocking him.
“Decent.”
“You’re an excellent coach,” she mutters. He gestures for her to do it again. “Really? This is no fair—you have swords.”
“And I need to know that you’re capable of defending yourself.” Until he can get there, he says; to fight until it’s time to step aside and let someone else do what she can’t.
Throwing a punch with her left takes a little more effort, the muscle too tight and her inhale hissing through her teeth. Zoro doesn’t discourage it, but he does watch her a little more intently when she swings with that arm.
A few more hits and he seems content enough, or at least bored of her punching at his hands. He probably has so many callouses from handling swords and weights for so long he can hardly feel the sharp points of her knuckles.
“You should rest it,” he says. “Too much overextension and you’re just going to do more damage—too much and there’s no going back to the way things were before.”
That can be said for a great deal of things.
“You just made me throw punches.”
“I didn’t make you do anything,” he says. Because no one on this crew is forced to do anything against their will, isn’t that right?
She narrows her eyes at him, drawing her arms back to fold them over her chest. For a moment she continues glowering at him, and he merely sits back, unfazed. To his credit, her arm does feel a little better than it did before, and who would have thought, all she had to do was punch Zoro a few times.
Nothing like some late-night physical therapy and all it cost her was a tangerine and just a little bit of dignity.
In the end, ice, heat, and painkillers are what they settle on. Zoro tells her to mind her arm though; wounds will heal, sure, but if she isn’t careful she may do more harm than good. She may never have quite the strength she did before but, again, his knowledge is limited, and with Nako the focus had been more on stitches and new ink, though he’d told her there was some muscular tearing and to take it easy. Maybe they do need a doctor on this ship.
The conversation dwindles until they’re both sitting in the grass, staring off into the horizon and speckles of stars and moonlight glinting off the waves, and Nami would almost call it companionable silence. When Zoro climbs to his feet, she almost doesn’t notice until he bends into her peripherals to pick up his swords again.
For a second she hesitates on what to say to him: thanks? Okay, bye? Try not to get lost going down the stairs? Nothing at all?
He adjusts his last sword—one that probably has a name since they all have names, but she can never remember them because who names a sword—and Nami catches a frown flashing across his features like he has something else to say but not the words for it.
She doesn’t realize she’s been pressing a hand to her shoulder again until she sits up a little straighter to watch him go.
“Nami,” he says, voice firm in a quiet way. “Your scars are up to you to define. Arlong might have been the reason for it, but you’re the one who says fuck that, those wound are yours and the guy who gave them to you doesn’t mean anything. You own the wound. It’s part of you, not him or anyone else.”
She watches him in silence, throat working but no sound coming out. She isn’t quite sure if she likes this side of Zoro; it throws her off guard too much, though that’s been par for the course as part of Luffy’s crew since day one.
She clears her throat, which suddenly feels tight.
“Arlong didn’t stab me though. I did that.”
“Didn’t he?” He shrugs. “Every scar I have is because of me; I’m not giving ownership of me to anyone else. Mihawk almost sliced me in half and it was my own damn fault. Not because he has more skill, but because I was convinced I was better than I was.” He begins climbing down the raised platform, his focus on her even with his back turned and moonlight glittering off his earrings and scabbards. “Your scars are you taking control of your life again. Where things go from here is up to you.”
He may not be as stupid as she makes him out to be, even if she still thinks he’s a bit of an idiot.
The question of trust goes unvoiced, though she has her answer.
“Zoro,” she calls, just before he’s made it far enough she’d have to raise her voice to be heard. She swallows and thinks about how this isn’t something she plans on saying to him often, nor expecting to hear in return. “Thank you.”
He’s quiet for a while, earrings shifting in the breeze. His chin raises in a nod.
“Go back to bed, Nami,” he says. It’s the most he’s used her name since they’ve known one another. Her arm still hurts as she gathers up the dish towel and remnants of a tangerine peel. The only ghosts left behind tonight are the imprints in the grass and the ones that linger in the backs of their minds.
Tomorrow there will be no traces of their late-night conversation, just a glance exchanged at the breakfast table as she bids them all good morning, and she might find him the next night and hold up a fist and he might hold up his hand and critique her form.
Nami won’t call Zoro her friend, just as he won’t do the same.
The breeze tastes like tangerines and salt as she presses her fingers into her shoulder.