melly

30 , she/her have been inactive for years but the fandom craving hit. currently spiraling back into one piece and batverse

[mellymith]

[ladyhoneydarlinglove]

{one piece ficlet, nami & zoro} nightmare

(got an AU project i’m brewing up that’s got a lot of nami and zoro interactions so i wanted to get some practice in.) Rating: G Notes: takes place between arlong park and alabasta. based off a personal headcanon i have that zoro’s blunt force honesty is actually extremely effective at warding off things like nightmares or panic attacks. ~~~~~

Nami wakes alone in the dark with a scream caught in her throat, and only the gentle rocking of the ocean waves and the soft sound of Vivi’s snores from the other side of her cabin keep it down.

Instead she bolts upright, chest heaving as she tries to catch her breath. Arlong’s laughter echoes inside her head, sharp and cruel as his awful smile. Those teeth have haunted Nami for years, and even now, after the real ones were shattered into a million pieces by Luffy, the ghost of them remains inside her dreams.

It’s no use trying to go back to sleep. Nami glances at the clock by her bedside and grimaces; only 2am. She briefly considers trying to work on some of her charts, but her mind feels foggy, a soup of lingering fear and exhaustion. Too easy to make a mistake, she decides. Besides, Vivi is still asleep, and Nami would hate to wake her.

She slips out of bed and dresses quietly before heading up to the kitchen for a cup of coffee and hopefully a snack; Sanji always makes something for whoever’s on the night watch. Tonight that’s Zoro, and he’s only on the second of three onigiri when she enters the galley. Nami snags it off his plate and shoves it into her mouth before he can stop her. 

“Hey!” he protests, scowling deeply. “That was mine!”

“Tough shit,” Nami shoots back, except it comes out more like ‘uuff ith’ with how stuffed her cheeks are with rice and salmon. Zoro flips her off.

“What are you even doing up?” he grouses. “You’re not on watch tonight.”

Nami shrugs, stepping over to the coffee maker. “Couldn’t sleep,” she says, which is true enough. She doesn’t plan on saying anymore, because Zoro doesn’t need to know, but then as she’s opening a cupboard to grab a bag of grounds he asks—

“Nightmare?”

Nami pauses, surprised. “How…?”

“You’re shaking.”

She blinks, then looks at her hands. The one holding the bag of grounds is trembling, ever so slightly; the one against the counter isn’t, but only because it’s gripping the formica white-knuckle tight. When Nami breathes, she hears a wobble in her lungs on the exhale.

“… Yeah,” she says after a moment, pulling the bag of coffee grounds to her chest like a shield. As if brown paper and bitter beans could save her from anything besides a caffeine headache.

Zoro doesn’t ask, and yet as the moments tick by while they exist in awkward silence, Nami feels more and more compelled to say something, until finally she blurts out, “Sometimes I dream that Arlong’s come to take me away again.”

She’s not looking at Zoro, but she can picture the confused tilt of his head perfectly in her mind’s eye as he says, “Huh?”

Nami swallows around the sudden lump in her throat. “Arlong,” she repeats quietly, measuring scoops of coffee into the basket. “Sometimes I dream that he… That he’s followed me, all the way from the East Blue. And he takes me away and drags me back to Arlong Park and there’s… There’s nothing I can do but scream.”

There’s a prickle underneath her eyes now, a quiver in her bottom lip. Nami bites it as she presses the brew button on the coffee machine, willing herself not to cry. It’s not like Zoro hasn’t seen it before, but she doesn’t particularly relish the idea of it happening now; comfort is like a foreign concept to the swordsman, and she’s pretty sure he would only make her feel worse.

“That’s stupid.”

Case in point.

Nami grits her teeth, hands balling into fists at her sides. She doesn’t know why she bothered—of course Zoro doesn’t get it, muscle-headed brute that he is. She opens her mouth to yell as much, to scream that not all of them have so little brain in their heads that they can’t bother to process things like worry and fear—

“If Arlong comes back, we’ll just kick his ass. Same as last time.”

Nami pauses. Processes. Blinks.

“Huh?” she says, turning to look at him. Zoro has the audacity to roll his eyes, like she’s somehow the dumb one here. 

“We beat that stupid shark to a pulp, remember? And that was with me half dead and down two swords. Now I’m all healed up, I’ve got Kitetsu and Yubashiri—“ He pats two of the swords at his side with the same tenderness one might show a beloved pet “—and all of us are already stronger than we were back then. Plus we’ve got a doctor now. Which means we can really go all out ‘cause there’s someone around to patch us up.”

He grins, wide and feral, and now it’s Nami’s turn to roll her eyes. She opens her mouth to lament poor Chopper’s plight, but before she can, Zoro’s expression turns serious. 

“Besides, even if all of that wasn’t true, you don’t really think we’d let Arlong take you away from us again, do you?”

Nami blinks again. 

The lump returns to her throat as she thinks about four men—boys, really—that she unquestionably betrayed. Boys that stood up and fought for her freedom anyway. Sanji, who barely even knew her back then, save that she was a girl who needed help. Usopp, self-proclaimed coward, taking on a fishman that veteran Marines wouldn’t have fought, all by himself. Zoro, barely back from death’s door, wounds still open and bleeding as he dared to try and fight Arlong himself. Luffy, punching through the wreckage of her former prison, his straw hat still warm where it sat on her head.

She laughs suddenly, watery and weak but bright as a sun-ripened mikan. 

Zoro’s right, she realizes. It is stupid. As if Arlong could ever hope to fight his way through the rest of the crew to get at Nami.

As if Nami herself would ever let him drag her back to her own personal hell, now that she has friends worth fighting for.

“No,” she says sheepishly. “I guess I don’t.”

“Then what are you worried about?” Zoro asks, and Nami just shakes her head with a soft sigh.

“Do you want this coffee? I think I’m gonna try and go back to sleep after all.”

Zoro grunts, which Nami takes as a yes. She pours Zoro a cup, setting it down next to his empty plate. “Thanks,” she says, and Zoro raises an eyebrow.

“For what?” he asks, and Nami realizes it’s a genuine question when he tilts his head, one eyebrow raised. It makes her want to laugh. That’s Zoro, she thinks. Profound. Stupid. Profoundly stupid.

She wouldn’t have it any other way.

[nebuleeart]

Cold hands, warm embrace

[zqnl]

heavily inspired by a dormont illustration, nothing like 1950s spousal resentment to invoke enjoltaire energy

think i’ve finally figured out a workflow that works for me 🤩🤩

[bion-art]

Sir🦋

[dailydccomics]

Batgirl by Dan Mora

[mellymith]

It's quite strange to come back here every 4 years and see what my active fandoms were in different periods.

[opzsfan]

[Zosan - Modern Life AU] Sofa

[themetalhiro]

What were they expecting ?

[darkdumbass]

Between the lines

(I originally optimized the screentones for viewing on twitter, so I hope it looks well here too.)

[sainteverge]

hello, i’ve finally finished my super niche quiz: which fictional character incarnating a specific ideal of androgyny found in french romanticism are you?

please read the description for warnings before taking it!

[satirewrites]

sylphrena!!!!!!!

[arabellas]

SHADOW AND BONE APPRECIATION WEEK ♡ day one: favorite character ↳ INEJ GRAFA

[jedidragonwarriorqueen]

[tiffanyachings]

“The blood of the queens of Cintra,” began Crach in a thoughtful tone, ‘is strangely connected with the sea. If a woman of this blood dies, the sea falls into true madness. It is said that Ard Skellig mourns Riannon’s daughters.“

[onlycosmere]

And it's begun

original gif from elliott_au

[peachdoxie]

I think my brain is just going to spontaneously combust now

[peachdoxie]

Seeing Kelsier in this is like. is like. You know when you're reading something and all the words are familiar to you and the sentences make sense but you just can't understand what they're trying to say. that's this.

[nicolasnelson]

GIF MAKER POSITIVITY MEME 2021 | day 3: one piece ↳ “No mourners, no funerals.”