This isn't the first time she's left his crew to protect them, and Nami knows Luffy remembers.

Because when Billy glides down through the falling plumes of earthen smoke and lands on the Thousand Sunny's lawn to drop off a breathless and bedraggled Luffy, it is not just the goofy, beef-headed rubberman who slides down from the bird's back - it is Straw Hat Luffy, the upstart pirate rookie worth 300 million beri and the captain of a crew worth more than 600 million - a crew with enough power and moxie to challenge the entire world and emerge from battle victorious.

This rubberman, this pirate, this captain strides past his grinning crew and yanks her into a rough embrace. Even if she wasn't faint with Daft Green poisoning, she could not resist. He is not the same lanky, rubbery boy she met in that devastated town in the East Blue - his collarbone is a sharp ridge against her nose, his breast hard with muscle under her lips, his abdomen under the ratty red dress shirt like a velvet-clothed wall of iron, his hands firm enough to leave bruises on her back. His skin is salty with sweat, but layered under the musk and dirt she expects is a fragrance that tickles at her nostrils, soft but sudden - cologne? Sanji must have helped to dress him up for the invasion.

His is not a hug of affection, nor of comfort, but one of reclamation, of possession.

But he says, "Nami! You're my navigator," and he says it with his stupid wide grin and with his fierce eyes under a knotted brow and with his tight strong hold, and he is not that rubbery boy anymore, but he isn't just any captain, either.

He is her captain and when she turns her face into his neck so only he will know her tears, he tucks his nose against her ear and says, "You're my nakama, Nami.

"Don't ever leave again."