something completely different: Chopper side (1/2)
anonymous
May 10 2009, 16:56:48 UTC
Anon who seconded had a go, picking Nami and Chopper. I totally think it would be interesting to see more attempts. I realised I don't ever write this dynamic at all and it was surprisingly hard to think up any ways they would interact.
I hope this fits in the gaps between canon, because I re-read the manga and tried to do so, but am still not sure.
Nami is working on the final version of her map of Drum Island. Slowly, painstakingly, in stolen hours in between reassuring Vivi and terrorising the crew. Chopper's taken to watching her work.
The first time she saw him peeping past the edge of the door (or not) she smiled and slyly said, "Come in and take a closer look, if you want. Do you like maps?"
He started to shake his head, then caught himself and panicked a little from realising he was going to have to speak to explain after all, because he didn't not like maps; he'd just never really... used one. A reindeer has a nose to help them find their way around, better than any human attempt to compensate poor directional senses and lacking olfactory nerves.
"If you're travelling with us to new islands and different countries," Nami says, saving him the trouble, pulling out a stool beside her, "then you'll need to know about reading maps."
Chopper sidles up to the seat and climbs it hesitantly. Perching on the seat, he stares wide-eyed at the patterns on the paper, and the words she's written in clear, large lettering at the top: Drum Island. His home.
It's not difficult, when she explains it, how to decipher the miniature paper landscape, and he's used to absorbing information from human females with volatile tempers. She explains what she's working on while she works, though sometimes becoming so absorbed she falls into long silences where she forgets to talk at all.
He doesn't mind. It's comfortable, the sense of companionship familiar, and he's disappointed when she stands up, pushing back her chair, and finishes her map-drawing session with a stretch that makes him concerned for the long-term health of her back, hunching long hours over creations like this.
He's there with her when she returns to work on it next.
Sometimes even when she's not there, he sneaks into the room just to stare at the map, rolled out on the table with the paperweights, pens and ink pots; spends hours just gazing at this miniature version of his home as the real thing recedes more and more miles behind them in the great, great ocean.
The intricate detail of lines on paper is something he's more used to seeing tracing the shapes of human anatomy, his life in the absorption and memorisation of those texts. One day, if he finds all the cures and secrets that haunt his dreams, he'll create his own, but Nami is already committing her dream to paper.
Although it's beautiful in its own way, it's also amazing to him in a very particular way.
It might be home, but not the way he ever knew it. It all looks so simple there on the page; each human village marked next to its name, the little symbols of trees for forests. You can't see the inhabitants who chased him away. There, the Drum Rockies, there, the coast -- places he's never been, places he never knew existed, for all that they've shared an island not so many miles wide.
There's no extra annotations, no flights of fantasy or sentiment, though he's seen those doodled on her practices and scrap-paper: reindeers and snowy landscapes, Vivi hunched up in her big warm coat, Zoro naked weight-training in the snow, Luffy and Usopp pelting each other with snowballs. The map is a perfect distortion of reality, dry and merciless, the real world made condensed.
He remembers her taking triangulations from the castle, her fever barely controlled and Wapol barely defeated, while Doctorine attended to Sanji, seizing the only chance she would have before they had to go. Explaining to him, as she did it, the process of translating the world to numbers.
Chopper sits and he gazes down at the tiny detail on the map that marks the castle on Drum Mountain. If he stares at it hard enough, his mind wanders far and long, and it's almost as though he can see through the paper to what Doctorine is doing now, all those many miles away.
something completely different: Nami side (2/2)
anonymous
May 10 2009, 17:00:26 UTC
Nami knows what he's up to, sneaking in to stare at the map when she isn't there, but she understands what homesickness is. After all, she spent so many years fighting for her home, only to so easily leave it once the fight was won. She knows their little reindeer doctor's situation isn't so very different.
She's had more than enough time, in fact, especially in the bid for distracting herself from hunger since the idiot they call a captain ate all the food. It doesn't usually take her so long to finish her maps.
This one, though, she deliberately takes her time over, leaving it laid out on the table between sessions, unprotected before the hazards of shipboard life, the elements, and Luffy. She catches Chopper there at least once a day, whether he realises she's spotted him or not, staring so intensely at his left-behind island home that it makes her own chest ache in sympathy. It brings back a few memories she hasn't thought on in a while.
Now, though, the climate is starting to change and that means they are days away, perhaps less, from Alabasta, and she needs to work on other maps. The next time she finds him staring like her work holds depths she never allocated to it, she slips into the room to lean over her chair at the desk. Looking down critically for a moment and concludes that, indeed, it is finished, before she turns her attention back to the little doctor.
"I have other maps that you can look at," she tells him, waiting until he's completed that exaggerated flinch with his whole body and has finished failing to hide behind a table leg. "All the exciting places we visited before you joined us, maps of East Blue where we came from... maps from all the world's seas outside the Grand Line."
Chopper stares longingly at the one map still on the table, clearly understanding a trade is involved here, but he blinks a little tearfully and nods -- apparently realising, as she did, that it's time to move on. "C-can I see... d-do you have a map of the place you came from, Nami?"
She laughs gently at the small, oblivious revenge. She's been holding onto it all these years, after all. But she knows it's unintended, so it's not that first, child's map of Cocoyashi village that she takes out, but the real one, post-Arlong. She rolls Drum Island away to set the other in its place.
"Here." She points out to him Genzo's house, her old home where Nojiko still lives, the orange groves, the other villages, the plantations, and watches Chopper's eyes grow wider and wider.
Yes, there's a whole world out there, can you see? Places where monsters are common. Places where it never even snows...
She doesn't tell him about Arlong, about the real monsters - as bad as, worse than, Wapol. Those he'll find out for himself in time, he already has more grounding in the type than he ought.
The next roll of map paper she takes out is almost blank. She'd barely started putting together all her notes and observations before she fell ill.
"Let me show you Little Garden," she begins, and her pen traces the features of the prehistoric jungle island while her tongue stumbles over their wild adventures there. Unlike Usopp, she's not a gifted storyteller, but she doesn't need to be and his eyes sparkle anyway before the tales. She and Chopper have this in common; they both want to conquer the world's mysteries, to tame it in their own way - not with fists or force or action like Luffy or Zoro, or even Usopp in his dreams - but she by mapping its secrets, he by healing its ills.
The changes in the air today are hot and dry. Alabasta, next. This time, she's sure.
They're taking a reindeer to the desert. Once they hit land, the adventures won't just be tales anymore.
Re: something completely different: Nami side (2/2)
anonymous
May 12 2009, 01:55:21 UTC
OP here. I gotta say, I realised I don't ever write this dynamic at all and it was surprisingly hard to think up any ways they would interact. is EXACTLY the kind of thought process I was hoping would happen, so I was happy right off the bat.
Then I was even happier, because this fic is adorable and full of little character details and interaction quirks that not only work but show that a lot of thought and love went into this. Anon, you are a wonderful anon! Also for some reason "They're taking a reindeer to the desert" is my favorite line and I have no idea why. This is just a great, cute, thoughtful fic and I'm glad you wrote it for us.
Re: something completely different: Nami side (2/2)
anonymous
May 15 2009, 11:16:36 UTC
Yay! I really liked the idea of this prompt, so glad it was okay. :)
It's strange because they're both characters I'll write, but with different groups of characters so they barely exchange a sentence with each other. Funny that that can happen. It was a neat exercise to write.
Re: something completely different: Chopper side (1/2)
anonymous
May 10 2009, 17:05:24 UTC
wow, this was amazing! I like how you made the interaction almost incidental in Chopper being drawn to the maps, it took on a less forced air that way. Not OP, btw.
(my favorite line was the one about taking instruction from human females with volatile tempers)
I hope this fits in the gaps between canon, because I re-read the manga and tried to do so, but am still not sure.
Nami is working on the final version of her map of Drum Island. Slowly, painstakingly, in stolen hours in between reassuring Vivi and terrorising the crew. Chopper's taken to watching her work.
The first time she saw him peeping past the edge of the door (or not) she smiled and slyly said, "Come in and take a closer look, if you want. Do you like maps?"
He started to shake his head, then caught himself and panicked a little from realising he was going to have to speak to explain after all, because he didn't not like maps; he'd just never really... used one. A reindeer has a nose to help them find their way around, better than any human attempt to compensate poor directional senses and lacking olfactory nerves.
"If you're travelling with us to new islands and different countries," Nami says, saving him the trouble, pulling out a stool beside her, "then you'll need to know about reading maps."
Chopper sidles up to the seat and climbs it hesitantly. Perching on the seat, he stares wide-eyed at the patterns on the paper, and the words she's written in clear, large lettering at the top: Drum Island. His home.
It's not difficult, when she explains it, how to decipher the miniature paper landscape, and he's used to absorbing information from human females with volatile tempers. She explains what she's working on while she works, though sometimes becoming so absorbed she falls into long silences where she forgets to talk at all.
He doesn't mind. It's comfortable, the sense of companionship familiar, and he's disappointed when she stands up, pushing back her chair, and finishes her map-drawing session with a stretch that makes him concerned for the long-term health of her back, hunching long hours over creations like this.
He's there with her when she returns to work on it next.
Sometimes even when she's not there, he sneaks into the room just to stare at the map, rolled out on the table with the paperweights, pens and ink pots; spends hours just gazing at this miniature version of his home as the real thing recedes more and more miles behind them in the great, great ocean.
The intricate detail of lines on paper is something he's more used to seeing tracing the shapes of human anatomy, his life in the absorption and memorisation of those texts. One day, if he finds all the cures and secrets that haunt his dreams, he'll create his own, but Nami is already committing her dream to paper.
Although it's beautiful in its own way, it's also amazing to him in a very particular way.
It might be home, but not the way he ever knew it. It all looks so simple there on the page; each human village marked next to its name, the little symbols of trees for forests. You can't see the inhabitants who chased him away. There, the Drum Rockies, there, the coast -- places he's never been, places he never knew existed, for all that they've shared an island not so many miles wide.
There's no extra annotations, no flights of fantasy or sentiment, though he's seen those doodled on her practices and scrap-paper: reindeers and snowy landscapes, Vivi hunched up in her big warm coat, Zoro naked weight-training in the snow, Luffy and Usopp pelting each other with snowballs. The map is a perfect distortion of reality, dry and merciless, the real world made condensed.
He remembers her taking triangulations from the castle, her fever barely controlled and Wapol barely defeated, while Doctorine attended to Sanji, seizing the only chance she would have before they had to go. Explaining to him, as she did it, the process of translating the world to numbers.
Chopper sits and he gazes down at the tiny detail on the map that marks the castle on Drum Mountain. If he stares at it hard enough, his mind wanders far and long, and it's almost as though he can see through the paper to what Doctorine is doing now, all those many miles away.
Reply
She's had more than enough time, in fact, especially in the bid for distracting herself from hunger since the idiot they call a captain ate all the food. It doesn't usually take her so long to finish her maps.
This one, though, she deliberately takes her time over, leaving it laid out on the table between sessions, unprotected before the hazards of shipboard life, the elements, and Luffy. She catches Chopper there at least once a day, whether he realises she's spotted him or not, staring so intensely at his left-behind island home that it makes her own chest ache in sympathy. It brings back a few memories she hasn't thought on in a while.
Now, though, the climate is starting to change and that means they are days away, perhaps less, from Alabasta, and she needs to work on other maps. The next time she finds him staring like her work holds depths she never allocated to it, she slips into the room to lean over her chair at the desk. Looking down critically for a moment and concludes that, indeed, it is finished, before she turns her attention back to the little doctor.
"I have other maps that you can look at," she tells him, waiting until he's completed that exaggerated flinch with his whole body and has finished failing to hide behind a table leg. "All the exciting places we visited before you joined us, maps of East Blue where we came from... maps from all the world's seas outside the Grand Line."
Chopper stares longingly at the one map still on the table, clearly understanding a trade is involved here, but he blinks a little tearfully and nods -- apparently realising, as she did, that it's time to move on. "C-can I see... d-do you have a map of the place you came from, Nami?"
She laughs gently at the small, oblivious revenge. She's been holding onto it all these years, after all. But she knows it's unintended, so it's not that first, child's map of Cocoyashi village that she takes out, but the real one, post-Arlong. She rolls Drum Island away to set the other in its place.
"Here." She points out to him Genzo's house, her old home where Nojiko still lives, the orange groves, the other villages, the plantations, and watches Chopper's eyes grow wider and wider.
Yes, there's a whole world out there, can you see? Places where monsters are common. Places where it never even snows...
She doesn't tell him about Arlong, about the real monsters - as bad as, worse than, Wapol. Those he'll find out for himself in time, he already has more grounding in the type than he ought.
The next roll of map paper she takes out is almost blank. She'd barely started putting together all her notes and observations before she fell ill.
"Let me show you Little Garden," she begins, and her pen traces the features of the prehistoric jungle island while her tongue stumbles over their wild adventures there. Unlike Usopp, she's not a gifted storyteller, but she doesn't need to be and his eyes sparkle anyway before the tales. She and Chopper have this in common; they both want to conquer the world's mysteries, to tame it in their own way - not with fists or force or action like Luffy or Zoro, or even Usopp in his dreams - but she by mapping its secrets, he by healing its ills.
The changes in the air today are hot and dry. Alabasta, next. This time, she's sure.
They're taking a reindeer to the desert. Once they hit land, the adventures won't just be tales anymore.
Reply
Then I was even happier, because this fic is adorable and full of little character details and interaction quirks that not only work but show that a lot of thought and love went into this. Anon, you are a wonderful anon! Also for some reason "They're taking a reindeer to the desert" is my favorite line and I have no idea why. This is just a great, cute, thoughtful fic and I'm glad you wrote it for us.
Reply
It's strange because they're both characters I'll write, but with different groups of characters so they barely exchange a sentence with each other. Funny that that can happen. It was a neat exercise to write.
Reply
Reply
I like how you made the interaction almost incidental in Chopper being drawn to the maps, it took on a less forced air that way.
Not OP, btw.
(my favorite line was the one about taking instruction from human females with volatile tempers)
Reply
Reply
Leave a comment