#ob im

[witherednonsense]

Im and Luffy from chapter 10 of Oceanbound. Made with picrew

[witherednonsense]

I want to do a more in-depth look into Luffy’s and Im’s relationship in the future. I wanna do a chapter that focuses on how unhealthy the interactions between them are.

Luffy is fresh off the island she was on with Fritz. The year and a half Luffy was there, she was in a constant state of pain, both physical and mental. He did everything he thought was needed to turn her into a weapon. When she is finally free from that, she is moved to an environment where - even if they are nice - no one has any meaningful human connections. 

For Luffy, this is a worse hell. Luffy has always been a creature that thrives on human contact. Being deprived of it in so many ways - while she is struggling with her new identity - she is vulnerable. 

Luffy is twelve, scared and alone.

This is the point she meets Im. An eight hundred-year-old sociopath who sees her as a means to an end. Who starts to take advantage of the fact that she has no real bonds and isolates her further.

The problem arises in the fact that Im is also a creature that thrives on human interaction. A person who thrives on contact who has been without it for eight hundred years. While they both play a game of who can out lie who, they both start to fall for it. Bit by bit the other becomes the only source of contact that they have left. Until they start to develop a codependency on each other.

This is where Luffy flees. Luffy has stated before that she is afraid of Im, but that is a lie. She is afraid of herself when she is with him. Afraid of the fact that she has become attached to him while he has the same.

They do not and will not ever have a romantic relationship. It is more of a platonic mania. They view each other as an extension of themselves. If one were to die the other would not be far behind.

And that scares Luffy. That there is a part of herself so far out of her control that she would be swept up in Im’s flow, as he is in hers.