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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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