Chapter Text
“Any gem with a hardness below five will not be able to be restored,” the Lunarian prince informed them.
He then went on to explain why this was the case, but Ace could no longer hear him.
Any gem below a hardness of five. That meant…
“Luffy,” Ace said aloud unintentionally. A hairline crack formed beneath their eye. “That means that we can’t…” They couldn’t say it. More cracks formed along their body.
“We can’t restore Luffy,” Sabo finished for them, sounding just as horrified.
Luffy…they were the only reason Ace had come with Phos. And now…
Now they were stuck here. There was no way the Lunarians were letting them go back. They’d just be ground up and used to coat the planet’s surface like the others.
Tiny chunks of Ace’s face and arms fell to the floor. As their mind continued to fill with static, the sound of their delicate clinking turned into that of dripping blood.
Quick flashes of a vague childhood. Full of blurry faces except for two. Luffy and Sabo, their brothers.
Sabo was taken away.
“We’ll live without regrets.”
“I won’t die. Not while I have a wimpy little brother to look after.”
A blur of colors and people and bitterness and blood blood blood…
“Thank you for loving me.”
Dripping blood turned back into cracking stone.
Ace clutched their head and let out a wail. “Luffy…my little brother!”
The memories, the all consuming grief. It was too much, too much for them to handle.
And their head broke under the immense pressure.
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