Chapter Text
Anybody who’d spent any degree of time around Luffy knew learning anything about his past was… well, a bit of a gamble. He wasn’t very good at keeping secrets but he never brought things up until they were right in front of him.
Or forced out by coincidence.
Nami was already dreading tossing him the map. She could have thrown it to Usopp or to Sanji or to anybody who knew the actual value of a treasure map (Robin was busy otherwise her choice would have been obvious) but with the situation like it was, Luffy was the only real option she had.
He caught it. That was good. He had it and when she shouted at him to keep it safe, he would—
Turn around and throw it with full strength into the ocean behind him.
For a second, Nami simply watched it go. The case spun end over end through the bright afternoon light before it struck the water with a small splash and vanished beneath the surface. She could still make out its shape for a moment beneath the waves, sinking steadily through bands of green and blue until it disappeared completely. A single bubble drifted back toward the surface.
Behind her, Luffy punched the idiot who had started all of this square in the face.
He won the fight, naturally, and she immediately walked over and hit him hard on the back of the head.
“Ow! Nami!”
“Idiot!” she snapped. “That map was the only reason we came out here to begin with!”
Luffy brought his hand up to nurse the growing bump, looking far more confused than he usually did. “I kept it safe like you asked!”
“You threw it into the ocean!”
“Just forget about it,” Zoro said and Nami could have hit him too. “It was probably a fake anyway. Why would anyone hide treasure on this dump?”
“On an island known as Hidden Treasure Island?” she asked. “Who knows why they’d do that?!”
“The name is a bit on the nose. Perhaps it’s a trap,” Robin said.
Nami conceded that she had thought of that but also, treasure was worth the risk. It wasn’t like they’d find any kind of trap Luffy couldn’t brute force his way out of. And speaking of her captain, he was beaming.
“It’s not gone for good,” he laughed. “I’ll send a letter to get it back.”
“A letter?” Usopp repeated.
“Yeah.”
“To who?” Nami asked, her patience drawn thin. “The ocean?”
Luffy scoffed as though she was the one being crazy. “No,” he said. “To one of my friends. She always sends back things I toss into the ocean if I ask.”
“Is this a real person or another dolphin you’ve been throwing food to?” Sanji asked.
“I’ll show you.”
And Luffy hadn't been lying. Not even slightly.
The moment he yanked open the cupboard doors, letters spilled out across the floorboards. They slid over each other in uneven stacks, some loose, some tied together, some folded so many times the creases had nearly worn through. Nami stepped back as another bundle toppled after them and then another.
"Whoa!" Usopp jumped aside as a packet bounced off his shoe.
Luffy didn't seem remotely concerned. He simply reached deeper into the cupboard and pulled out more.
Then he opened a crate.
Then a drawer.
Then another crate.
Letters were everywhere.
Some looked new enough that the ink still stood dark against the paper. Others had yellowed with age. A few had obviously been soaked and dried so many times that they curled at the edges like old leaves.
Nami picked one up slowly, tracing over handwriting she didn’t recognise as she read through the most normal, inoffensive letter she’d ever seen.
I think a bird flew into one of my windows. It wasn’t hurt, I don’t think, but it’s on the upper floor and I can’t quite get there. Nothing exciting.
Did you get to try some of that cake you saw? How did it taste?
She turned it over but found no symbol or seal. Just a small number written on the back in black ink.
Luffy stood proudly beside the piles, his hands propped onto his hips. “This friend!” he said. “We send letters all the time. You can read them if you want.”
The Straw Hats looked at each other in confusion. Usopp snatched a newer one from his feet while Robin carefully lifted one of the twined bundles. Nami picked up another one.
Have you ever seen this flag before? I found a box full of them on the shore today and have no idea what to do with them.
There was a simple sketch of a jolly roger she’d never seen before underneath it.
“You should have told me you needed somewhere for these ages ago,” Franky said. “You’ve just been shoving them down here?”
Luffy nodded and rocked back on his heels. “Yup. Sometimes I send them back to her for a while but she says she can’t keep both our ones forever. Cause she has all the ones I write and they already fill up a room.”
Nami began to look for the smallest number but she kept finding ones that stretched further and further back; the handwriting turned younger and more childish as she looked through the yellowing papers. The further back she went, the more the paper varied, turning from thick letter quality to scraps of newspaper and even a napkin, still delicately numbered.
Robin laughed softly and read aloud the one she was holding. “I didn’t know doctors could turn into different shapes. Does he stretch like you? Either way, you’ve got a very special one then. What an interesting message.”
Luffy stuck his head out to look. “Eh? Oh, that’s when I first told her about Chopper.”
Chopper looked up, eyes wide. “Me?”
“And about how cold it was. She sent me a chicken pasta soup that day because she said it could also come in different shapes.” Luffy laughed happily. “It was really good but it burned my mouth.”
“My, I can certainly see that some of these came with food attached,” Brook mentioned. “Is this one speaking about me? She’s asking about a skeleton?”
Luffy grabbed the letter and frowned at it. “Nope. This one’s about some other skeleton I found that I thought was Nami.”
“Think this one’s about you,” Franky said, holding up one. “First a cyborg and now a skeleton? Sounds like fun. Is it at least a lady skeleton to help balance things out?”
“Oh, right,” Luffy said with a grin. “She says Robin and Nami need another girl because there's too many guys.”
“Not wrong,” Nami said. She was starting to think it was impossible to find the beginning of these things. “So these are just the ones she sends you? Where are all your responses because I know you don’t write this well.”
“Like I said, they’re in one of the rooms in her house. But she doesn’t have enough space for them all so she told me I can only send mine to her when I absolutely have to.”
“And she keeps the numbering system, I imagine,” Robin said. “Sanji, you’ll be rather happy about this. She’s quite fond of your cooking.”
Sanji looked up. “What? How would she know how I cook?”
“Cause I send her some,” Luffy said.
“That can’t still taste good.”
“No, it happens pretty quick,” he said with a nod. “If I send it with the letters, she can even try it when it’s still hot. The first time she asked because she’d visited the Baratie and the old guy there said you’d run off with me. So, she wanted to see if your food was as good as his.”
Sanji choked on his cigarette. “What? Which letter is that?”
“I dunno. I don’t remember the numbers.”
He immediately began to flick through more of the letters and Nami sat back on her legs, staring at the piles in front of her. “Luffy,” she said. “These things talk about everything we’ve ever done.”
“Yeah. I only write about important stuff.”
Usopp scoffed. “Sorry, I haven’t seen either of your shoes. Have you looked in the aquarium? Important?”
“It is!”
Robin put down her small bundle and neatly tied the twine back into place. “So, does this friend live on the island where you were raised?” she asked.
“Nope.”
“Then how did you meet?”
“She sent me a letter one day and I sent her one back.”
Nami sighed because as fascinating as it was to find out Luffy was apparently sharing their entire lives with a stranger, she had other important things to handle. Namely how a pile of letters could possibly get her treasure back.
“How does this relate to the map?” she asked.
Luffy rustled through the letters, sending them flying everywhere until he grabbed a piece of paper and a half-broken pencil. He dropped to the floor cross-legged and began to scrawl something on the paper in nearly inconceivable handwriting. Nami watched, her brow furrowing deeper with every word.
“Hey! Why is she asking about my speedo?” Franky asked.
“She says I’m bad at drawing everyone,” Luffy responded simply. “And I always run out of colours so I improvise. There. That has everything important on it.”
He shoved the letter toward Nami who squinted to read it. “Tossed you a treasure map. Please send it back with a pie.”
“Yup.”
“This isn’t… how do you get this to her?”
He reached over and snatched an ammo pouch from Usopp, dumping all the contents on the ground before he scrumpled the paper up, shoved it inside and marched toward the deck. Nami exchanged a look with the others before they all hurried to follow their captain outside where she got to witness him wind up and hurl the pouch with full strength into the sea.
It splashed loudly and began to sink and Luffy turned back, grinning. “Now we wait!”
Her eye twitched. “Is your friend a fish?”
“Huh? Not that I know of.”
“Then how are they going to get that?!”
“It’ll come back.”
“When?”
He shrugged. “Depends how long it takes her to find the map. She gets lots of stuff so it might take her a while.”
Nami stared at him, wondering if killing your own captain was really that frowned upon before she breathed out slowly and turned her head to the sky. It was okay. They had clear seas all around them and nobody else was on this island. She could wait a little bit.
And then kill him.
The afternoon dragged on.
The ocean rolled lazily against the Sunny's hull. Somewhere overhead, gulls cried out before vanishing into the distance. Sanji eventually disappeared below deck. Usopp lost interest and started bothering Chopper. Even Zoro, who had been asleep for most of the conversation, managed to find a new place to nap.
Every now and then Nami found herself glancing toward the water.
Nothing happened. At least, not for a while.
Luffy gathered up all the letters while they waited, shoving them into the cupboards again and she sighed, wondering how they had gone this long without noticing him hurling things into the ocean. Then again, if she thought about it, she had seen him tossing things into the waves but she’d brushed it off as just him being weird.
There was no way this would work and yet, two hours later, Luffy stepped back onto deck and held out a very soggy map to her.
“There you go!” he said.
Nami snatched it from him immediately, her eyes darting across the exact map she’d seen him throw into the ocean. The only difference was, written delicately above the drawing itself, a handwriting that had rapidly become familiar.
I’m sorry, I can’t attach a pie to a map.
Nami blinked at the map and then looked back toward the ocean before she went back to the map. It was damp from seawater and yet… but there was no way Luffy could have gotten this back from just sending a letter. That was absolutely ridiculous.
“Where did you receive this from?” Robin asked, putting words to Nami’s confusion. “Was it brought by something?”
“Nope. All you’ve got to do is toss it in the ocean and then later, I’ll find it again in my room,” he said. “Anything works. My hat. My vest. My pants once. And if it’s not obviously mine, I can just ask for it and she’ll go look.”
Robin leaned over and Nami moved to allow the other woman to look over the map. “Interesting,” she said. “It must be a devil fruit ability of some sort. If anybody physically boarded the ship, we’d have seen them.”
“Oh, yeah, she has a devil fruit.”
Nami blinked at her captain, genuinely wondering how he had gone this long without mentioning he had some kind of cross-ocean messaging system.
Then again, they had learned about his older brothers only when physically walking into them.
“It’s amazing to consider that it’s tied to the ocean,” Robin said. “Most fruit stop functioning entirely when exposed to sea water.”
Luffy shrugged. “I mean, if I don’t put it in something, then it gets to her all soggy and she can’t read it. Or the pencil rubs off.”
“Which fruit is it?”
“I don’t know.”
Nami turned her head toward him. Everybody else who’d been listening in followed suit and Luffy just grinned as though his answer made perfect sense.
“You don’t know?” Nami repeated.
“Nope. Never asked.”
“You have been sending letters through whatever impossible ability this is for years and you never bothered to ask how it works?!”
“Why would I?”
Robin laughed softly. “Most people would be curious how they’re talking to someone across the ocean.”
“Doesn’t matter how it works,” he said. “And I ask her the important stuff.”
“Like?”
Luffy thought about it, tapping his shoe against the deck before he nodded. “She doesn’t like the one kind of boar. I can’t remember the name but it doesn’t even taste like proper meat. It’s gritty.”
Nami blinked. “That’s not important information.”
“It is if you’re going to eat it. She sent me some once and it was pretty bad.”
Everybody was still staring but Sanji shrugged. “Was probably how it was prepared. Get her to send some more and I’ll see if I can work with it.”
“Okay!”
“No, no,” Nami said. “We’re not ignoring the fact that you know her opinion on types of meat but not the name of the fruit that allows her to send things across the sea from who knows where?”
“There are also these weird flowers that keep growing around her house,” Luffy offered as though that information made it better. “She doesn’t know how to stop them but they smell really bad. There’s also this guy who wanders through her garden sometimes and he looks kind of like my drawings.”
“Have you considered talking to her through a transponder snail?” Robin asked.
He shook his head. “Nope. I don’t know if she has one.”
“If you don’t mind me asking, how long have you known this woman?” Brook asked. “Some of those letters looked quite old.”
Luffy thought about it. “I think I was eight?”
Nami stared at him as though he had spawned a second head. Which honestly might have made more sense than whatever conversation this was. “So, you’ve been able to speak to this person the entire time and you never thought to tell us?”
He blinked. “It wasn’t important?”
“This could have been so useful!”
“What’s more interesting to me is how you’ve known her for so long but never wanted to meet in person,” Robin said. “Haven’t you wanted to see her?”
Luffy paused, frowning as though that thought had never occurred to him before. Then he turned to Nami with a massive smile. “Maybe we should! It would be fun! Nami, can you take us to her?”
Nami sighed. “Where does she live?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then how am I going to take us there?!”
Several years ago, you had been walking along the beach when you’d found a hat. Young and brand new to the idea of having a devil fruit, it took you a while to realise it belonged to somebody and longer still to work out how to send it back.
When you did though, you wrote a little note and tucked it against the brim, asking its owner to keep it safe.
And for many days, you hadn’t thought about it again. Not until you stumbled over the exact same hat in your kitchen not long after with its own letter tied roughly to the top, demanding to know if it was alive.
No, you promised in your returning letter. I am though. My powers found it and sent it back.
You hadn’t known how often he would write to you once he figured out how. Initially, it seemed to be because he was lonely but then it quickly turned into something just for the fun of it. His letters always arrived scrambled, soggy, and often dirty but you got used to it quickly, learning how to read even the worst of his handwriting.
Eventually, you drew his messages to you automatically.
After you found the treasure map he asked for, you’d settled on a lounge chair in your garden. It was a lovely day. Warm sunlight spilled across the garden and turned the edges of the grass gold. Somewhere beyond the trees, something was burning. The scent drifted lazily through the air every few minutes before disappearing again beneath the smell of salt and flowers.
You reached for your drink only to find a book beneath your palm instead of a glass. Curious. It was thick and bound in leather but detailed the local fauna on an island you’d never visited before.
You picked it up, finding the water-soaked pages stuck together and dripping an annoying amount of sea water and shoved between them, was another note.
So soon?
What island do you live on?
You chuckled at the directness and pulled a pen from your jacket, gently writing a little note that you tucked against the margins.
It doesn’t really have a name sadly. I hope you found the pastry I sent back in your pouch. Please don’t forget and let it go off again.
Then you closed the book and flung it into the air above you, sending it back to where it came from before you picked up your own drink. You had no idea that the moment Robin found her dossier returned and gave the note to Luffy, you’d started two full-scale searches.
One for an island with no name. And one for whichever of Usopp’s ammo pouches contained food.