I don't own One Piece or it's characters; that's the good fortune of Eiichiro Oda.  But the way the words go together - that's all mine.

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Once Nami toweled off, she'd have to deal with everything.  Right now, she was floating and her problems were dissolved in the water surrounding her. 

Her legs and elbows were a mess, but she'd gotten most of the blood off.  She'd taken a nasty fall getting away from the last gang she'd stolen from. The smell of a few hard days at sea, working a ship alone, was gone as well.  It was nice to be clean again.

Clean was a relative term, she thought as the blue in her shoulder licked at the edge of her vision.  It had grown with her as she had aged. 

Her thoughts drifted into dark waters. She wondered if her tattoo would spread like cancer, until the entirety of her skin was dark and blue and she had become just like them…

She'd made her appearance at Arlong Park.  She'd had a short caustic conversation with Arlong, gone upstairs and then looked at the new data they had collected for her to compile into maps.  Later she'd showed off some of the maps she'd stolen too, just to make a point that she wasn't running around out on the ocean, doing anything like trying to find treasure to save her village.  It was a dangerous game she was playing and sometimes she knew she walked a razor sharp edge with the fishmen, but as long as she gave them maps, they would keep her around.

Like a pet.

Just before she'd walked out the gate, Arlong had stood in front of her.  For a moment she had been scared out of her mind.  Her thoughts had fluttered like butterfly wings;  wondering what she had done, wondering why he was smiling at her like that.  She'd fought back the panic and forced a lazy grin on her face.  He'd never see her cringe.

She shuddered as she remembered the feeling of those large webbed hands weighing down on each of her shoulders.  He'd said, "Nami, you've grown into a wonderful woman."

She had stretched her smile a little further in answering.  She would have liked to spin around and saunter away, but he was holding her in place.  If he'd wanted to, Arlong could have dug his hands into her, putting on the pressure until her shoulder blades cracked.

Arlong had let her go.  He knew he had the best leash of all; one on her heart.

Nami frowned. She didn't want to please Arlong and didn't want to be the kind of person that he liked.

The tattoo crept into her line of sight. 

She didn't want to be his.

Nami leaned back and rested her neck on the rim of the tub.  She forced herself to breathe deeply and stretched out her legs and her arms, trying to relax.  Her feet stuck out over the end of the tub and the fingers of her left hand brushed against the razor sitting on the edge. 

Her gaze was drawn to the shining blade.  With a few quick strokes, she could get rid of the permanent skin stain on her shoulder.  The blood would make a mess, but what was a little more blood spilled here and there?

Nami splayed her fingers and the razor scuttled across the tiles of the floor.  Her right arm crossed over her breasts and her fingers went to her shoulder.

The difference between a brand and a tattoo, she reflected, was all in the wearing.  The design was her price tag.  Price tags get snipped off after the price is paid.

She grinned.  The first thing she would do after she'd dropped her box of treasure at Arlong's webbed feet, would be to walk down the middle of the main street of Kokoyashi and go straight to Doc's office to have it removed.  When she bought her village back, she would rid herself of Arlong's mark forever.

Nami let her hand sink into the water.  It hovered over her heart.

Arlong did not know about her other tattoos.  They had taken years of patient application.  They were a rainbow of colors and as the years passed, instead of fading, the lines grew thicker and the pigments grew more brilliant.

Those tattoos were given to her by Bellemere.  They were the strength to smile, the will to survive, and the ability to go it alone.

And the greatest of the tattoos were the three words: I love you.  That is what she carried on her heart, more permanent than any inked skin.  That is what she was branded with; that is what owned her soul.

Arlong would never get that.

Soon she would rid herself of her price tag and regain the respect of the men and women in her village.  She would be able to tell them that she'd been fooling them all along and then hand them the greatest present she could give - their lives, unsullied and unspent.

Nami wouldn't let anyone else spend a life on her again.  Once was enough.

She wondered how many others had been killed for trivial nothings that had annoyed Arlong and his crew.  She wondered what Nojiko had been omitting in those litanies during all the years she had been thieving and running and returning.

She pulled her arms and legs back into the tub and hugged her knees to her chest.  She gripped that bit of steel in her soul that Bellemere had ingrained in her all those years ago.  She would not cry.  She was a survivor and survivors always smiled.

The water was getting cold.  She'd have to get out sometime.

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