You were the daughter of the so called witch of Drum Island.

That was what people called her. Witch. A frightening word whispered around the island like a curse. But the truth was much simpler and far less dramatic. Your mother was not a witch at all. She was just the last doctor left on the island after King Wapol had driven all the others away.

Because of that, when someone was dying, there was only one place left to go.

Your castle.

Which explained why two absolute lunatics had decided it was a brilliant idea to climb the massive mountain that guarded it.

The mountain itself looked less like something people climbed and more like something built specifically to keep humans out. It was a brutal wall of snow, ice, and jagged stone. The wind howled across it like a spirit, and the cold bit into skin like a thousand tiny knives.

Yet somehow, those two idiots had climbed it anyway.

Luffy and Sanji.

All for the sake of their sick friend.

Her name was Nami. She had been bitten by a kestia, a small but incredibly dangerous creature whose venom spread fast. Of course, the two boys who dragged her up the mountain had no idea about that yet. All they knew was that their navigator was dying.

The climb had not exactly been kind to them either.

One of them, the blond one, had fallen during the ascent and cracked a few ribs. The other had nearly frozen to death after carrying the girl on his back.

By the time they reached the castle, they were all barely standing.

So now the castle was strangely full.

Luffy, the rubber boy with the straw hat, was currently soaking in a large tub of warm water to fight off the hypothermia that had nearly killed him. Nami lay in another room, hooked up to an IV while antibiotics slowly worked through her body.

And the blond one was resting in a bed nearby.

You had been the one who treated him.

You were the one who set his ribs, wrapped the bandages carefully around his chest.

Which meant you had spent quite a bit of time looking at him.

And honestly.

He was hot.

Not temperature hot. You had checked that already.

The other kind of hot.

He had a ridiculously pretty face, sharp features, messy blond hair that somehow still looked perfect, and a body that looked like it had been carved out of marble by an overachieving sculptor from ancient Greece.

Seriously. The guy looked like a statue that had come to life.

Living up here on Drum Island didn't exactly provide many opportunities to meet new people. It had mostly been you, your mother, and Chopper for a long time. Snow, medicine, and the occasional screaming patient.

Lonely didn't even begin to describe it.

And then suddenly this strange, sweet looking, ridiculously attractive, slightly insane man had literally climbed a frozen death mountain and collapsed at your door.

You could not help being a little curious.

So you sat in the chair beside his bed, watching him while he rested.

A good while later, chaos exploded somewhere down the hall.

More specifically, Luffy woke up.

The moment he regained consciousness, he started screaming at the top of his lungs, accusing your mother of being a witch who had thrown him into hot water so she could cook and eat him.

It was completely ridiculous.

The shouting echoed through the castle until Nami finally spoke up, weak but calm, assuring him that everything was fine.

That seemed to fix the problem instantly.

From your seat besides his bed, you saw how he reacted when she began speaking, how his eyes went.

They lit up like fireworks.

"Nami, you're oka... ahh."

He tried to leap out of bed and rush toward her.

That lasted about two steps.

Pain shot through his ribs, forcing him to stop halfway across the room. He grabbed onto the bed pole, breathing sharply as the pain shot trough his torso. His still very shirtless torso.

Only then did he see you.

For a brief second, Sanji just stared, clearly confused, before smiling politely, yet brightly.

"Hi."

And immediately tried to walk towards Nami again.