Stolen // One Piece

chapter forty

After speaking to his chef (whining, really), Luffy sought after his navigator, hoping to thank her for the comfort she had provided him with the night before, though mostly to apologize for his lack in self-discipline.

He was Luffy. He was supposed to be strong and yet he let the one person he wanted—needed—to be strong for, see through the cracks he had been left with.

The memory of the concern contorting her face as she pushed the hair from his eyes and dried his tears was permanently seared into his brain. It set his skin on fire. God, he hated vulnerability.

He tried to ignore the little black vines creeping into his mind, whispering about how, "he had always been the weakest," always "the burden," and he visualized himself swatting them away as they wrapped up his body, around his neck, and suffocated him.

The thumping in his chest began to quicken as he felt panic rising in his body.

It always began in his toes. Wriggling heat clawed its way up through his thighs and around his hips and knotted in his stomach. By the time it reaches his arms he knows he's shaking, and then when it reaches his shoulders the burning makes it hard to breathe, hard to speak, hard to see, hard to think. By the time it reaches his head he feels dizzy, and the tears spill.

When he collided into the red-head, the heat was still in his toes and it was easy for him to look at her and force the heat into hiding.

He apologized, and she rolled her eyes.

The heat returned, faster this time. He swallowed past the lump in his throat before speaking.

"Thanks. For last night," he added as she cocked her head to the side.

"Don't thank me," she replied, flapping her hand in dismissal. "We're on the way to another island, only a few more miles from here. It should only be a couple of hours before we get there." Nami showed him a map she had been holding, pointing to what Luffy guessed was her approximation of where the Thousand Sunny was currently, and then dragged her finger to another point on the map of where the island was. He nodded. When she realized how close their heads were bent together, what with Luffy craning to see, Nami cleared her throat and stepped away, muttering about how badly she needed something to drink.

He stared at her silently as she walked away.

                                 ~ • ~ • ~ • ~

Ace was always keeping a close eye on his little brother. Watching, analyzing, learning. When they were kids, after he realized how terrible to Luffy he was, he vowed to change. To be better. And so he did.

For years, even after he set off to be a pirate, he was always checking newspapers and worrying about where in the world Luffy was.

Even when he had "died."

And now, sitting atop the Crow's Nest, he watched Luffy begin to shake, run head-first into the fiery navigator he called his friend, and stare after her while she practically ran from him. He saw the shaking return, and watched quietly as Luffy tore his hands through his hair and shove the heels of his palms into his eyes.

The shaking always meant something bad.

After that vile bastard Porchemy had kidnapped him, and Ace and Sabo rescued the unusually quiet, nearly dead Monkey D. Luffy, is when the shaking started.