part i.

Dawn creeps forward like a thin cut on the skin of the sea and sky, beading with murky red pinpricks of bloody light, promising to rip open in a blazing terror of tremendous storms. Red skies were the first warning signal she learned from sailors singing in town, but she pays it no mind. There is an hour at least before the sun begins to rise.

She walks away from the porthole she pushed open to check the weather and returns to her desk. It is a mess, littered with parchment and three different pens, dirty feathers slicked in ink. Some nights burn later than others.

Another inlet is drying when her door softly opens, and Luffy is there, pouting with his arms crossed.

"What?" she says, pausing with her pen hovering above her map.

He brings his head back and squares his shoulders. He just stares, nose wrinkling, disapproving of whatever he sees. Which is her, and lack of sleep makes her irritable.

"You never went to bed," he says.

She rolls her eyes, and puts her pen back to her paper.

"I wanted to work."

"You don't have to."

"Hey," she snaps. "I don't get on your case when you stay up late training. You think I can't handle a few hours without sleep?"

"What?"

She looks at him and sees his arms slowly fall to his sides, chin tucking into his chest. His head is tilted as if he's trying to figure out what is in front of him. She feels guilt ping against her heart but huffs, turning back to her maps and shuffling papers around to put them in order.

"I'm fine, alright? Just let me work."

The door shuts, and so do her eyes when she hears his bare feet slap against the floor as he walks over to her desk. By the time she opens them, he is bent over, his face close and eyes wide as he stares at her.

She shoves her elbow into his chest and he whines, stumbling back and pressing a hand to where her blow landed. It doesn't deter him, and he straddles her bench to keep staring.

He is impossible to ignore. She knew this from the start, and she reminds herself of that. With a deep breath, she expels her irritation with a sigh.

"Luffy?"

"Uh huh."

"Do you think I'm weak?"

She is nervous for the answer and keeps staring down at the map before her, watching the wet ink gleam in the flickering lamplight.

"No."

She turns her head and Luffy's face is blank, open like a book, and she wrinkles her nose for thinking she could get any other answer from him. But still, it nags at her.

"You mean it?"

"Of course. But you still gotta go to sleep sometime."

She laughs lightly and shakes her head.

"No, this isn't about - I mean, have you ever noticed that there's not a lot of girl pirates?"

"What?" he says, and his eyes start to wander around the room because he can't. He listens when Nami talks, but it's hard for him, so his eyes are always the first thing to go when his body wants to move. "Hm, guess not."

"Usually, women are left behind," she says, and places her hand on his wrist to physically remind him where his focus should be.

"That's dumb," he says, and now his head is turning too, sweeping across the room at all the books and maps. "How would you make your maps if you stayed behind? Stupid."

"Sometimes, people have to put their dreams aside," she sighs and bows her head.

Luffy's palm is rough on the back of her hand, firm and warm and broad. She looks up and finds his eyes locked on her, brimming with focused determination.

"But, you're my navigator, so you don't have to," he says. Then the corners of his mouth draw in a frown. "Why're you talking like this? I don't like it."

Her laugh is shaky, and her free hand comes up to rest over his. She looks down at the odd dogpile of their hands, holding on with a messy need of grips just gentle enough for dawn.

"Sorry. I don't like it either," she says.

"You don't have to talk if you're asleep."

He smiles, the smaller kind with his lips just barely showing a streak of white teeth, perking up with hope rather than amusement.

It makes him look older. Like some day, she'll see this smile at the end of the world, hidden under a straw hat that has been transformed into a crown. And with thoughts like these, she realizes she must be very tired.

"Is that captain's orders?" she asks, grinning.

His eyes widen and he nods, laughing, because he likes playing that card when he can.

He lingers as she puts her things in order, chanting bed, bed, bed, until she whaps him on the head with a stack of crinkling papers. He drags her from the study and shoves her back to her room, saying she can sleep in, captain's orders, and hovers by the door until she sighs against her pillow.

part ii.

Her captain's hat is on her bedside table when she forces herself awake a few minutes before noon. She hates sleeping in, and seeing the sun slant at midday brightness across her wall, she feels like she has missed weeks instead of hours.

Aches bloom in her shoulders and knees as she sits up, slouching over the edge of her bed and staring at the hat. It takes her a moment to see the hole shot clean through the brim.

She rummages through a box under her bed, pulling up a needle and a spool of thread, this time a navy blue. The needle is skewered through straw and she stands up, taking everything with her.

When she leaves her room, her eyes look up out of habit to find the sky split in half; the west bright with sun, the east grey and dark. The deck is half in shadow under the heavy clouds, and turning to look, she sees them traveling side by side with the storm the red morning promised her. She frowns and wants to know who exactly had the bright idea of keeping so close to the storm, but she hears laughter on deck and decides to follow it.

Usopp is the only one to snicker and say Good afternoon to her, and she knocks him in the shoulder for it, but lightly. He laughs and continues rigging something together made of different spare parts from Franky, and Chopper lies on his stomach on the deck, watching Usopp's hands intently.

Zoro sleeps against the railing, and Robin is close by, sitting at the high table under an umbrella, reading and sipping cold tea. Nami sits in the chair across from her.

From Robin she learns that a fish speared the hat. Luffy had been quiet when he left it in her room, and has been since, sitting up on the figurehead.

Nami just sighs out of still being tired, and steals a few sips of Robin's tea before getting to work.

The straw always whines when the needle is tugged through it, and it scratches out sounds like coughs. Up close, she can see the different shades of new and old straw where past holes have been healed, and the rainbow of threads that hold the whole thing together.

She doesn't realize she hasn't been moving until Robin calls her name.

"Something on your mind?" Robin asks.

Nami shakes her head to dispel the fog that has clouded it, and sets down her work. She keeps her hands curved around the top of the hat, drumming on it lightly.

"Nothing, really. I've just been thinking a lot lately," Nami says, and takes another sip of Robin's tea.

"What about?" Robin says.

Nami takes about half a second to start speaking, because she doesn't want to seem too eager. But she isn't really trying to hold back, not when she is still tired, and leaning forward to speak with some privacy.

"Do you ever think about this?" she asks, and lifts the hat slightly to indicate what she means. "About who wore it?"

Robin smiles.

"Yes. The pirate king, and Red-Haired Shanks, and our captain," she says with her quiet, calm pride.

"Yeah, them, but," Nami pauses. "I mean. I've worn it, too."

Robin's smile shrinks a bit, her eyebrows knitting as she thinks before speaking.

"Do you mean, people that have worn it, but have not owned it?" Robin asks.

Nami sighs with relief, "Yes, that."

Robin hums and leans back in her chair, tapping her chin with her finger. But Nami is ready to burst because thankfully, gloriously, Robin understands.

"And, who fixed it," Nami goes on, holding out the hat and pointing to areas like she is holding a map. "There are stitches in here that are older than mine. I just - I can't imagine -"

"- Just who was fixing it?" Robin adds.

"Yes, and, who pro-," Nami starts, then stops, and thinks there is too much power in the word protect. "Who held it, when it could've been damaged. It's decades old, so someone had to -"

"- Someone had to be good enough."

"Yes," Nami sighs, and finally, slouches against the table to rest her chin on her hands.

Robin laughs, and Nami doesn't feel self-conscious about it. It had to be said, and Robin would understand, with her love of history and acceptance of all their captain's whims. She just needs to talk about it, because it annoys her to let thoughts fester.

"Whoever it was," Robin says, and a hand sprouts from the table to rub Nami's shoulder. "I believe they were very trusted."

Nami smiles at the table.

"But."

Nami lifts her head, frowning. "But?" she repeats.

Robin nods, and her gaze drifts to Luffy at the bow.

"But, those men are not our captain."

Luffy is still. His shirt and hair move with the breeze, and she can only imagine how patient he has been, waiting for his hat to return.

Sometimes, when she does this, tying the knot at the end of her fix, her hands grow numb as she thinks of the worth of the hat. She understands that there are things in this world that cannot be swapped for money, and the list grows longer as she gets older.

But there is history woven into the straw. She wonders - did Ace's mother wear this? or Rayleigh? and who in Shanks' crew - and she can't imagine anyone under the hat but her captain.

She excuses herself from the table, walking across the deck until she is close enough for him to hear her. He bounds over the figurehead and rushes to her, grinning wildly, shoving the hat on his head.

"Thanks, Nami!" he says, and he looks whole.

Her face screws up in a smile that doesn't match the bark of her words.

"I fall asleep for a few hours, and we're running neck and neck with a super storm?! Get the ship to port, raise the topsails now."

Luffy laughs, and starts running down the stairs.

"Nami says we gotta raise the topsails!" he bellows, and she knows he would go wherever she said.

Her hands are numb again, and she flexes them at her sides, watching as Luffy and Zoro work to getting the ship on course. She remembers the first time she felt herself give in to him, watching an impossible boy stumble and her body move faster than her thoughts to catch him.

She wonders if the first navigator to bring one piece to their captain felt like this; wondering if he runs ahead of her, pulling her towards her dreams, or if she is ahead of him, telling him where to go.