Warmth Over Flowers
Word Count: 4,591 words Pairing: Roronoa Zoro x Nami Artists: @daftyoungen
Summary: When Zoro left to find Kaidou, he didn’t expect to be successful in locating the Yonkou so quickly. So of course, the Straw Hats would find him even faster! However, on a winter island, during a harsh winter storm, one member of the crew goes off to search for him all on her own and is in need of an immediate rescue… (title inspired by the manga series Boys Over Flowers)
NOTE: This story takes place on the unnamed winter island in Kaidou’s possession, where Scotch was located when Drake attacked him during the time skip. Without a name, I wanted to clarify that here, thank you.
BANG BANG! “NAMI!” Zoro cried out, hoping to breach the wild howling of the snowstorm with a belated warning. His voice couldn’t overcome the drifting ice shards or the thunder he spied a few yards away, and so the swordsman relied on his feet to carry him through the layers upon layers of snow that piled high around his legs as he fought the winter island’s storm in order to reach her. The gusts that blew past him, through him, collided with any of his exposed skin managed to steal every single breath from his frigid lungs while he stomped his way towards the battle.
He didn’t know just how many enemies Nami was facing, but in Kaidou’s territory, it was more likely that their power levels should worry her about rather than the quantity of the Yonkou’s subordinates.
A bright flash of lightning blinded him as it reflected off of the snowy field that he had been trying to cross. Zoro hissed even though his own ears couldn’t make out the sound as he raised his bare hands to somehow rub his impaired vision away. However, his Haki did not need his eyes to be open in order to activate – as his mind’s eye opened to warn him of the battle Nami was currently facing, he also managed to predict a new weather pattern that was looming overhead.
Raining icicles.
Impatience bleeding into his system, Zoro drew his swords and grit his teeth on the hilt of the Wadou. Sandai Kitetsu and Shusui in hand, he used their sharp tips to aid his escape as he clamored through the snow. Like ice picks did he pierce the ground beneath the snow and pull himself towards the battle. The first icicle that his Haki had warned him about slammed down three paces behind him and the force shot his hood up over his head as broken pieces struck his coat. That one crash gave him pause – did Nami have a coat before she escaped Kaidou!?
The next icicle cut off his path and he raised his blades to protect his body. He had barely taken a step! Before he could fathom his next move, his body moved of its own accord to cut through the icicle that was aimed at his head. The sky was clouded and darkened by the night enough as it was, with only Nami’s distant lighting brightening the island. He needed to reach her faster, before she called attention to herself!
Before the icicles impaled her!
Before anything took her life!
“Santoryuu,” growled the swordsman as he glared at the open field before him, icicles plummeting into the snow with enough force to shake his stance. Unafraid and unrelenting, he took the chance to catch his breath before calling out, “108 Pound Phoenix!” The blast from his attack was almighty without a direct physical target to receive it. As the force shot straight into the sky in a dome-like shape, so did it fly forward, digging through the snow, forming a thin path ahead. With swift feet did he rush forward in the direction he had seen that familiar lightning activity—
“D-Dammit!” He cursed at himself when he somehow managed to step off the path in a matter of seconds. Zoro stared firmly at the line his swords had drawn as he escaped the icicle storm and raced onward to save the navigator!
It was a very rickety run as he came face to face with his greatest yet silent flaw.
But it was even more distressing when he managed to reach the battlefield, where he found Nami.
There was a small hill that he had cut through unexpectedly and he nearly thought that he had somehow journeyed off course again. That is, until Zoro’s eye tore away from the line in the snow when a spark of lightning crackled at his boot so suddenly. His speed had carried him towards the battle, which had ended with a horde of Kaidou’s pirates’ bodies lying in every direction within a massive crater. So deep was it that there were patches of dirt peeking through the snow that tried to cover the indentation! Men and women of all sizes either laid dead or twitching with buzzing electricity dancing over their corpses…
“N-NAMI!” The swordsman shouted with a twist of fright in his voice as he leapt into the crater to retrieve the navigator. Her orange hair managed to stand out during the heavily clouded storm, but so was her signature green bikini top, acting as the only cover for her upper body.
“Dammit, Nami! What the hell are you doing out here, like this!?” His bark was hollow as he fell to his knees at her side. It was a horrifying notion to think that she was facing against a Yonkou’s crew alone, it was terrifying to see her body huddled in the middle of the battlefield without any winter clothes on.
But the worst scare he came face to face with in that crater was the fact that her skin had begun to turn blue.
It shocked him the moment he tried to pick her up, just how frozen her body was. Hadn’t she been fighting off Kaidou’s crew just moments before he arrived, he wondered. Her wide-range Thundercloud attack had blinded him!
‘Then why does she look like she’s been lying here for hours!?’
Unconscious and unresponsive, the navigator looked worse than he could have imagined her to be. Zoro genuinely felt that he was looking at someone else – that he couldn’t be staring at Nami of the Straw Hats, the woman who had been apart of the crew for nearly as long as he had – but that signature tattoo of hers was unmistakable.
As much as he hated to admit it, everything was unmistakable.
“Nami…” Feeling the low vibration in his throat of the way he said her name made his heart sink; the weather continued to oppose both of their survival and prevented him from hearing just how devastated he felt. A scowl befell his face, the dark and increasingly demoralizing thoughts crept up on him the moment he let his guard down. After all, Chopper had taught them all about the deadly illness you could contract in extremely cold temperatures. Hypo…
Hypo…ther…
Hypother…mastat, or something.
“Shit, what did he say?” Asked the swordsman as he tried to stand in for the Straw Hat’s doctor as his forcibly removed his coat form his body. His spine straightened, stiffened as soon as the frosty breath of winter blew against his back. He glared at Nami while lamely wrapping her up in his jacket simply because he knew that inside her intellectual mind were the answers he was looking for on how to tend to her!
At least her jeans protected her legs and prevented her condition from getting much worse.
Zoro lifted his crew mate into his arms and held her close, hoping to channel his warmth into her, despite how little her actually possessed. He moved a few of the stray pieces of fur from the hood out of her face in order to glance at her expression, now that he had a better view. He had never seen Nami sleep without her eyes being fully closed and it gave her a most haunted look. Skin pale, breathing weak, blue lips – whether it was that hypothermastat or not, she couldn’t have been well at all.
And then, it hit him.
“You’re not…shivering.” The fact was spoken so gently, Zoro wasn’t even sure he said it. If there was one thing he knew it was that cold bodies shivered… Living ones, anyway.
They also weren’t blue, typically.
And her eyes weren’t closing— “I need to find us somewhere to spend the night. Shit, somewhere indoors!” Constructing a plan, Zoro knew he needed a formidable shelter in order to survive and keep Nami alive. Anything inside a cave would still welcome in the cold. It was a fool’s errand potentially, but he had to find a building or a house of some kind if he was going to reunite the Straw Hats come tomorrow.
And that was exactly what he was going to do.
On top of the tired, dense body, he now had to lug around the lead weight that was Nami’s unconscious form. His robe might as well have been sliced to smithereens by the unforgiving wind and his boots were soaked through, yet Roronoa Zoro climbed out of the crater without so much as a grunt. The snow greeted him with a harsh smack in the face once he emerged, and he welcomed the refreshing burst if only to reawaken his weary mind.
One steely eye scanning the surrounding area, the once chivalrous swordsman scoffed. “Couldn’t you have left me a clue or something, telling me where you were going? You’re the navigator, aren’t you? You’re always making fun of me for having no sense of direction, so what am I—”
His toes knocked something light and thin, ending his mindless rant.
Zoro was shocked yet relieved to see that he had stumbled upon none other than the Climatact as he was leaving the makeshift battlefield. Reaching down carefully, he picked up his crew mate’s prized (and expensive) weaponry like it was some major triumph. Something positive amongst the chaos the night. Lifting it to show it to its owner, the swordsman hadn’t expected the Climatact to be much help on its own; it wasn’t until he raised the orange-tinted baton that he noticed something green flashing in the off to his right.
He uttered an unintentional ‘huh’ as he spied the light – was that beacon attached to a structure of some kind?
“…Shit.” Was all Zoro could say, hoping against reality that he could make his way towards the possible shelter without a single slip-up…
Not as he passed through the horde of fallen bodies…
Not when he traipsed over another hill…
Especially not during his descent through a sloping strip of trees…
“Heh, you must have rubbed off on me.” Concluded the swordsman as he found himself smirking up at an industrial-styled building that stood tall beneath the gleaming green light.
Just as he was about to celebrate his momentary victory, a tornado-like tempest swirled around him and battled with his stressed body to stay within its icy grasp. Snowflakes struck his cheeks like cold sandpaper in blatant protest of his attempt to flee the storm. Their assault only reminded him that he couldn’t relax just yet, not when he needed to guarantee that there would be no surprises once they made their way inside. The caution tape that wrapped around the building was tattered so badly that it wasn’t visible until he was standing directly in front of the wall of the building but he still managed to use it as a physical guide to lead him towards some sort of entrance.
Zoro nearly thought that he had somehow turned around and walked right back to the corner her had first arrived at until he spotted a deep line in the middle of the wall. No, he quickly realized, it was a mechanical pair of doors. Without a knob of any kind, the clueless swordsman had no idea how he was expected to open them. There was some kind of frozen black box on the wall – was there meant to be a key!? A childish, restless part of his mind urged him to cut through the metal or make his own damn doorway!
Allowing the winter weather inside by any means would be a foolish mistake, though.
Zoro wordlessly sneered at the mechanism that he could not use before continuing to stomp his way around the building. His Haki had not activated since the icicles attack and he truly believed that that meant they had found a rather secure place to hideaway. No security cameras meant no one was watching him foolishly waddle around the premises—
Foolish, until he found a traditional door with a frozen handle.
It didn’t take much for the relieved swordsman to use his Wadou’s hilt to chip away at the ice that kept them from going inside their shelter; a set of seven blows and the door knob was free to use…if one had a key. “…All right, that’s it.” Zoro nearly tossed the Wadou Ichimonji back into its scabbard, braced his arm, and threw himself into the door. Once, twice, three times he struck with his shoulder followed once with his foot in order to force it open and allow them inside. A weakened thud and a tumbling step forward indicated that he had achieved his goal. He felt a relieved breath escape him – nearly stealing all he had left inside his lungs – during his sluggish march inside their newly discovered shelter. On the floor a few tiles away from the entrance was a door knob…which he had presumably kicked out in his desperation.
Looking around, he doubted the place he had happened upon would have a spare.
It appeared that the swordsman and the navigator would be staying in an unoccupied security facility; there were screens laid out like a grid on the wall next to the door he had charged through, a control panel that was much too complicated for Zoro’s tastes resting beneath it. Again, his lone eye searched the surprisingly small space for any Den Den Mushi roaming around, silently relieved to discover that there was nothing within the vicinity to spy on them.
They were completely and utterly alone for the night.
“Okay, Nami,” Zoro spoke in a commanding tone in the hopes of awakening the frozen girl. Now that the wind was no longer thrashing around him, her limp body was even more alarming since he could feel just how still and lifeless she truly was.
As important as that was, there was something else he knew he needed to focus on first: sealing off the entrance he had bashed in, now that it was without a door knob. It took him a matter of seconds to see that there was some small yet sturdy-looking futuristic box propped up against the side of the control panel, perhaps heavy enough to close the door. Arms full, Zoro used his feet to shove the box in front of the ajar doorway. A buzzing sound started up the moment he knocked forward an inch but without any sparks and smokes coming out of the device, he persevered—
Pale, dim lights shuttered on above his head after he positioned his makeshift door jam in place.
“Huh,” was his brilliant reaction to the probable emergency lights that could make their stay a great deal easier – he managed to lock them indoors and provide them with lighting. Luck on his side, the swordsman moved onto his next concern: creating a place for her to rest in such a cold and office-like room. “Let’s see what we can work with here.”
He continued to hold her as he rummaged through the technologically advanced room. Everything was sleek and purposeful, emotionless and inhospitable compared to what he had envisioned while wandering through the snow. He had quite a long while to think of where he’d take her after all, given that he had left Kaidou and the Straw Hats before the sun had set on the west side of the island. If Nami had gone looking for him, Zoro assumed she would eventually run into him before he would have found her…
Again, he asked himself if she had been without a coat the entire time she had been separated from the crew?
Zoro squeezed her in his arms. Sighing, he paused his search to glance down at the typically rambunctious navigator in her current state. Being alone with her during a time where they were so far separated from any other living person on the island felt much more frightening than he imagined it would have. Nami wasn’t the type who would have sat quietly and waited for him to solve their problems, no. She would have told him where to go, most likely while he was forced to carry her on his back, all while loudly advising him on how to make the most out of the room he had found. She would have been warm due to her fiery nature and would have spent the rest of the evening berating him for doing what he did…
For putting them both in such a dangerous situation.
“I was trying to avoid this…or anything like this.” Mumbled the swordsman with a defensive rumble behind his words. He couldn’t remember the last time he was so physically close to her, yet being nearly face-to-face with Nami then and there was almost awkward as much as it was necessary.
“What I did…was necessary.”
Zoro stated the words he had kept within for so very long that hearing them spoken aloud shattered the tenderness he had experienced momentarily. Reaffirmed in his goal, he lifted his stare and noticed there were two more doors for him to consider. He nearly hissed when he examined them more closely, until he discovered what they each opened up to: his right led to the rest of the facility through a hatch marked ‘Corridor 001’ and the other appeared to be a glass-paneled opening to a closet that housed a dozen or so lab coats inside! More layers, which were exactly what they needed!
There was a moment of disbelief that opening the closet door required a mere sliding motion until it was tucked away within the wall. The easiest moment of his day, most definitely. “This is probably as good a place as any, considering where we are.” And on that note, the swordsman informally decreed that they would be camping out in the closet for the night.
To him, it made the most sense. The door he had used to enter the building was merely wedged in place at the bottom, which meant that any sort of strong gust could rattle it off its hinges and welcome some strong gusts of snow inside. The closet could be sealed off if need be, but casually, door opened just a sliver, it was technically an insulated space for them to come together for warmth. Zoro plucked the lab coats off of their hangers and let the metal hooks cry as he collected them for much less scientific reasons than they were made for. He jostled Nami around quite a bit during his nesting process – some for him to use as a cushion for the potentially long stay, others draped over them in a rather uncoordinated way – until he could tuck her into his side.
Then, finally, after everything he’d done to find her, Zoro could allow himself to relax.
“Ah…our temporary home.” He felt foolish for whispering something so blindly optimistic while releasing a breath that he had been holding onto deep within his chest. His nose was red like Luffy’s vest and his skin felt he had allowed Mihawk to slash at his flesh with his kogatana repeatedly; switching roles with Nami on a typical day would have been a foolhardy decision but to do so in an enemy’s territory, during a snow storm, felt very much one of the lessons he endured on Kuraigana Island.
Those challenges had been life-threatening in the beginning, too.
“Hm, I should probably see how you’re doing.” It wasn’t meant to sound like a question, at least, Zoro didn’t believe so. Nevertheless, his fingers twitched when they reached for the winter coat he had given her and began to slide it off of her shoulder. Nami reacted instantly – reminding him that she wasn’t merely sleeping next to him, but potentially fighting for her life – with a breathless whimper. Her desperation to keep his coat inspired him to move quickly as he moved to observe her one bluish skin.
To his great disappointment, it was still blue.
Franky’s hair color did not belong with Nami’s creamy complexion, Zoro decided in that moment. Brows digging into each other, lips burrowing into his cheeks, he was free to express his complete and utter displeasure when there was no one there to witness his natural response. However, as if she sensed his sullen mood, Nami’s head suddenly bobbed against his bicep. It felt as if she was calling him to attention! All he knew how to do was brave the bone-chilling touch of her body and place one hand on her shoulder, drawing her in.
“I don’t have anything else for us to use,” explained the swordsman with an earnest affliction to his tone. “This place wasn’t made for us to camp out here during the night, and I wouldn’t know how to turn the heat on, wherever it would be in here.” By the end of his explanation, it felt like he was pleading with her to understand that he had done his absolute best to bring her back from the frigid temperature that plagued her body. He hadn’t made her go out into the storm to find him – he hadn’t even invited the crew to follow him to the island! They had chased after him without his consent to do so. The Straw Hats were as everyone thought of them: eternal troublemakers that stuck vehemently to their causes.
Though Roronoa Zoro was the last person allowed to mock a crew mate for overzealous loyalty.
When a slight brush of wind slipped under the open collar of his robe, he couldn’t tell if it was Nami’s breathing beginning to regulate or a burst of air from his own nose, but it riled him just the same; he pretended it was her, as part of him had been thinking about how he came to be in his current situation. His newfound urge to speak his mind had been expanding ever since the crew reunited again all those months ago…it was only fair that the noisiest crew mate had her share of being scolded too.
“Wouldn’t need to figure out how to turn a heater on if I was in Kaidou’s headquarters, and you were safe on the Sunny, right? I told you guys time and time again that Kaidou would be our greatest threat – that we kept pissing him off with everything we were doing – but none of you listened. Then he takes Kidd and tries to make an example out of him, and suddenly you were beginning to take things seriously. But me? I had been thinking about what to do about Kaidou for a hell of a lot longer than all of you.
“I left to do what I needed to do in order to protect the crew. Usopp left, Robin left, you left once too, and… Yeah, we always chased you guys down. Sanji was the one exception for me, though…
“Argh, you guys shouldn’t have come!” Bursting with the strength that the budding warmth in his body provided him with, Zoro carried on audaciously. “You have no idea what I nearly managed to do for you guys so you could make it in the New World safely. I was so close to having him accept my terms and then you showed up so quickly! Your fault, huh? You didn’t even make Luffy bring Law and his crew with you! Now everyone else is sitting in a Yonkou’s jail! Why… It’s become worse than I could have ever wanted.”
Impassioned and unstoppable, Zoro turned to angle his head so that he could address Nami while staring her down. “You weren’t thinking when you brought them here, and look where it got you. Not in prison, yeah, but now you’re situation is a hell of a lot worse.”
Outside the building, the winter gusts shifted and struck the structure, mimicking the fury with which he had just chastised her. His reverence of Nami had always been the basis of his respect for her, the disillusionment sinking into the pit of stomach, mingling with the sick feeling of worry he had been housing whenever she made anytime of jarring movement. So when she bobbed her head again, Zoro felt the capacity of his endurance deplete instantaneously.
Sitting side by side felt so cold (ironically), so he shuffled her one again and propped her body up against his leg. Unintentionally, he was cradling her again, an act she appeared to appreciate as she fell into him rather suddenly. She wasn’t set up completely between his legs, however, the navigator easily found a place on his chest to rest her head, a space against his firm form to lay comfortably against.
And finally, she began to shiver.
“Nami!?” Zoro gasped soundly. It started in small jerking motions in her upper back, her hips, her hands, but it was unmistakeable that she was beginning to move again! That would normally be a negative sign in an everyday situation – to Zoro, it felt miraculous.
Unless he assumed that she was only beginning to feel better because she heard his accusatory rant and was planning to recovery quickly so that she could deliver her hefty, heated response.
He scoffed in disbelief at her unconscious vigor, then sighed at himself for being so aggressive with her. A remorseful hand patted the ground until he found a loose lab coat and draped it over her lower half in response. Nami rattled against him, teeth chattering as her shuddering unsettled her, and his typically emotionless heart twisted so tightly in his chest. His other hand became protective as he brought it back onto her shoulder, securing her against his most likely uncomfortable body. Everything about being on the worst winter island in all of the New World was uncomfortable…
Knowing that at least one member of his crew was safe was all of the comfort he needed, though.
Roronoa Zoro believed in the Straw Hats no matter what it was he had tried to do by pursuing Kaidou, including his faith-based prediction that they would escape from their prison cells without being harmed the way Kidd was. They were fine – he knew it – which meant that he could focus his sole efforts on taking care of their navigator. Even if he couldn’t remember much about that hypothermastat sickness Chopper had taught him about, the swordsman admired the strength Nami showed in fighting off its effects.
“…Let’s get some rest,” Zoro suggested while tucking Nami’s head under his chin, bringing her even closer. “If you wake up before me…you can take me home.” He promised her those words as a sign of the faith he had invested in her as well.
The sudden crackle of her voice was almost like a verbal reminder that that was her intention, all along.
((Thanks so much to the ZoNa Discord for giving me more than one idea for my entry this year! Ultimately, I went with this one because I never wrote a blanket scenario for ZoNa, and the sudden realization felt wrong!?
We DO know Kaidou has a winter island in his control, we know Zoro DOES somewhat fear him, so I put two and two together to make a premise for why there would be a naturally occurring blanket scenario for Zoro and Nami in the OP universe.
Thanks for reading! Now go show some love to @daftyoungen for doing an amazing job illustrating the last scene for this story before it was even finished being written! She did fantastic work and it really motivated me in the end~))
