Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The door closed behind Marco, and the locker went quiet again.

Ace was still sitting on the edge of the bunk, his split lip treated, his cheekbone going blue despite the flames. Deuce was sitting beside him, in exactly the same position, and neither of them seemed to know what to do with his hands.

Skull picked a shirt up off the floor, refolded it any old how, and threw it onto a bag.

"Right," he said. "What got into you two?"

Neither one answered.

"No but really." He straightened up. "You've never fought. Never. In a year and a half, I've never seen either of you raise a hand against the other, not even when Ace sank Deuce's dinghy. So what did you do, Ace, to make Deuce shout at you?"

Ace lifted his head.

"Why does it have to be me who did something?"

Skull, Mihar and Banshee looked at him.

All three of them looked at him at the same time, with exactly the same expression of deep boredom, and nobody took the trouble to answer.

Ace sighed.

"Yes, all right. Fine, I get it." He rubbed his cheekbone and grimaced. "I said something stupid. I deserved it."

"It must have been seriously stupid for Deuce to shout at you," said Skull. "Deuce never shouts. Deuce lowers his voice."

Ace turned his face away.

"Probably something along the lines of 'I don't deserve to live, abandon me, blah blah,'" said Banshee.

Deuce turned his head toward her, his mouth open.

Skull and Mihar looked back and forth three times between Banshee, Deuce and Ace.

Ace went bright red, and Mihar snickered.

"How did you know?" Skull asked.

Banshee shrugged and took off her apron.

"Deuce would never have blackmailed Ace with his own life if Ace hadn't come out with something like that first." She folded the apron over her arm. "There are things Deuce doesn't do. That one is first on the list."

Deuce went red under his mask, which was invisible and perfectly audible in the silence that followed.

Skull started to laugh.

"I think Banshee is the cleverest of us, in the end."

Mihar smacked him behind the head.

"And you're the stupidest."

Deuce cleared his throat.

"Banshee. What was it like, in the women's quarters?"

He was changing the subject with total obviousness and nobody pretended not to notice, but everybody let him do it.

"Oh." Banshee sat down on the bunk opposite. "I met Gin and Whiskey. They're Marco's seconds at the infirmary, and they also manage everything to do with the women on the ship, because apparently Marco couldn't manage it."

Ace started snickering into his hand.

Deuce turned his head slowly toward him.

Ace went on snickering, and avoided his gaze with remarkable diligence, because he remembered perfectly the only time Marco had tried to handle a question of that kind himself.

"What?" Deuce asked quietly.

"Nothing."

"Ace."

"Nothing at all. Go on, Banshee."

Deuce looked at him a second longer, then gave up.

"Why couldn't he manage it?" Skull asked.

"They didn't tell me. Gin just said he came to find them after two weeks to announce that he didn't know how to do it, that he never would, and that they should take it on and tell him what they needed."

"That isn't a bad answer," said Mihar.

"The cubicles are so big," said Banshee. "There are eight of them. With doors. And a bolt on the inside, and a shelf, and a mirror." She shook her head. "And the girls couldn't have cared less about the fact that I'm a mermaid. Whiskey saw it from the way I walk, she asked me directly, and when I told her she just answered that there are six Fish-Men aboard and that one of the commanders is one."

"Namur," said Ace.

"That's right. You knew?"

"... I saw him at the big table at midday."

Mihar nodded.

"That's a good thing. Though honestly, seeing as Fish-Man Island is under their flag, it doesn't surprise me much."

"It's under their flag?"

"For years. Everybody knows that, Banshee."

"I haven't been to Fish-Man Island in eleven years," said Banshee. "We aren't very warmly received, the mermaids who leave."

There was a small silence that nobody tried to fill.

Skull broke it.

"Have you done something to your hair?"

Banshee raised a hand to her head.

"Yes."

"It's very pretty like that."

She gave him a big smile.

"They helped me detangle it properly. And they lent me some products."

Ace looked at her.

He knew exactly what he was looking at. He had seen it a first time, in the other life, and he had only realized it months later: Banshee had flourished on this ship as much as he had. She had stopped holding herself like somebody who takes up too much room. She had started singing in the passageways, which she never did on the Spadille, and after a year she knew everybody's first name.

"Skull's right," said Ace. "It suits you very well."

Skull turned his head toward him at an alarming speed.

"You know how to compliment things other than food and fights?"

Ace shot him a black look.

"No but seriously. The last time you said something nice to me, it was to tell me my punch had improved."

"It had improved."

"You added 'for a guy that skinny.'"

"That was a technical detail."

"And to Banshee, last year, you said her stew was 'courageous.'"

"It was courageous!" Ace spread his arms. "It was the right word! It took courage to make and it took courage to eat!"

"I saw you have three helpings," said Banshee.

"I was hungry."

"You said it was the best stew you'd eaten since Dawn Island."

Ace fell abruptly silent.

Deuce leaned forward.

"Nothing else, Banshee? You were gone a while."

"Ah. Yes." She straightened up a little. "I think I'm going to join the kitchen team. If that doesn't bother you."

"Why would it bother us?"

"Because it means I'll be on duty at mealtimes, so I won't be eating with you every evening anymore. And because it means I'm choosing a division before everybody else."

"Banshee," said Deuce, "you fed this crew for eighteen months without knowing how to cook and without anybody having asked you to. If you want to learn properly, nobody here is going to find that awkward."

"I think it's very good," said Skull. "We'll eat better."

"I'm going to throw you overboard," said Banshee.

"Mihar wants to throw me overboard too. You'll have to agree on the order."

Banshee smiled and crossed her arms.

"Anyway. Thatch seemed very nice. Well, before he went insane."

Ace stopped glaring at Skull dead.

"Insane? Why?"

"Because of you," said Mihar.

"Me? Why me?"

"He found out you weren't eating enough."

Ace took his head in his hands.

"Oh no," he said, and he said it so quietly that only Deuce, sitting ten centimeters away, heard it. "I'd forgotten."

Deuce turned his head toward him, but Ace had already straightened up.

"Insane how?" he asked.

Banshee thought for a second.

"He pulled a ham out of the salting tub by hand."

"What?"

"A ham that had been in the brine for eleven hours. His station chief explained to him three times that it wasn't ready and he said it would be salty and we'd get over it." She counted on her fingers. "Then he got six pans going at once. He sent a kid off to fetch all the tinned meat in the stores, all of it, without exception. He hired me for the evening shift when I'd been hired for the morning, and he had me boil twenty liters of water that he never used."

"Twenty liters?"

"They're still boiling, to my knowledge."

Skull nodded gravely.

"He also shouted at a woman about the brine. And at a guy at the sinks, but he apologized right afterward."

"Batty," said Ace.

He said it before he could stop himself, and Deuce squeezed his shoulder.

"Anyway," said Deuce very fast.

"How did they find out?" Ace asked.

Mihar and Skull said nothing.

"I told Commander Vista," said Deuce. "When he came to ask what we needed, earlier. He asked me whether we needed extra portions for the cat, I said it was for you, and he asked me how many."

Ace sighed.

"And Vista told Thatch."

"Not exactly," said Skull.

"What do you mean, not exactly?"

"Actually we'd gone to look for Banshee, because it had been a while and she was alone in a passageway we don't know. We went to the infirmary and we met Whiskey, who by the way is very, very pretty, and I think I'm going to try talking to her tomorrow."

Ace raised an eyebrow.

Mihar didn't flinch. He said absolutely nothing, but he shifted on the bed, moving his weight from one buttock to the other, which with him was the infallible sign of deep discomfort.

Skull nudged him with his shoulder.

"Oh, honestly. No reaction? You could be more jealous, you know."

"I've missed an episode," said Deuce. "Are you two going out together?"

Mihar and Skull turned toward each other with an expression of absolute disgust, then toward Deuce, at the same time.

"Are you out of your mind?"

Banshee snickered into her hand.

"Oh, I think you're right, Deuce," she said with a mocking smile. "It's true that they haven't been letting go of each other lately."

Mihar, stung, shot back on the spot.

"Rubbish. I just thought that girl was pretty, and this idiot thinks I've fallen in lo—"

He stopped in the middle of his sentence.

Deuce and Banshee were both looking at him with exactly the same victorious expression.

Mihar crossed his arms, sank into the mattress and hunched his shoulders.

"I hate you both."

Skull and Ace burst out laughing.

"That says it all, Mihar."

"I'm going to bed."

"It's six in the evening."

"I don't care in the slightest."

Deuce smiled under his mask, let a few seconds pass, then picked up again.

"Right. So, after Mihar's love at first sight—"

"IT WASN'T LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT."

"After Mihar's love at first sight," Deuce went on, "what happened?"

Skull sat down on a crate.

"We got lost. Completely. We took the wrong staircase, we ended up in a rope store, and on the way back up we ran into this afternoon's commander again. The tall one, with the mustache and the pink pen."

"Vista," said Deuce.

"And another one with dreadlocks."

"Rakuyo," said Ace.

He said it without thinking, at the same moment Skull finished his sentence.

Skull stopped.

"Yeah, that's it." He narrowed his eyes. "Wait. How do you know?"

Deuce rolled his eyes and nudged Ace's shoulder.

"Are you doing it on purpose or what?" he breathed.

"No, no," Ace breathed back.

"You've done it three times today."

"It's fine, it doesn't matter."

"It does matter, Ace, it's exactly the kind of—"

Skull narrowed his eyes further and watched them whisper.

"What are you doing there?"

"Nothing," they both said at once.

"There's a guy with dreadlocks and chains, Ace knows his name without ever having met him, and you're whispering."

"I saw him at the big table at midday," said Ace. "Somebody called him by his name."

"Mm."

"Go on with your story, Skull."

Skull stared at them another two seconds, visibly unconvinced, then picked up again as if nothing had happened, because he was Skull and he had a limited attention span for mysteries that didn't concern him directly.

"Right. So Vista needed a favor, and they bet on it. That's visibly how they settle things between themselves. They bet on our favorite colors."

"Your what?" said Banshee.

"Our favorite colors. They pointed at us, they each gave two colors, and they asked us to decide." Skull spread his hands. "Vista won. Rakuyo had said black for me."

"Why black?"

"Because I wear black."

"You wear black because it was the only fabric we had," said Mihar.

"That's exactly what I explained. He took it very badly." Skull shrugged. "Anyway, Vista won, and he handed the note to Rakuyo so he'd be the one to bring the news to Thatch. And then he fled down the passageway wishing him good luck."

Deuce ran a hand over his mask.

"So one of Whitebeard's commanders lost a bet on your favorite color and had to announce to his head cook that Ace was underfed."

"That's it."

"All right."

"We got to the kitchens at the same time as the other three commanders, and there you are."

There was a silence.

Then Skull picked up again, and his voice had changed.

"He went a bit insane. Honestly. I'm not really sure we can trust him."

He was turned toward Banshee as he said it, so he didn't see Ace tense.

The shoulders locked, the jaw clenched, and Deuce, who knew that back by heart, laid a hand on it before Ace had time to open his mouth.

"We can trust him," said Deuce. "I vouch for it."

Mihar, Banshee and Skull looked at him strangely.

Deuce didn't elaborate. He had nothing to elaborate on, in any case, since the only information he possessed was that his captain claimed to come from a future in which that man had been murdered, and that wouldn't have helped the discussion.

Nobody said anything.

"Did he say anything?" Ace asked.

"Who?"

"Thatch. Did he say anything about me?"

Banshee and Skull looked at each other.

"He said he'd told you off," Banshee answered.

Ace frowned.

"When?"

"Eight days ago. You took an entire ham from his pantry at two in the morning, he caught you in the passageway and he gave you a lecture about rations aboard a ship at sea." She looked at him. "He kept coming back to it. That's what put him in that state, not the figure. He said he'd talked to you about stocks."

Ace remembered it very well, in fact. He hadn't listened to any of it. He had stood there with his ham under his arm, waiting for the guy to finish talking, and he had left without a word because he intended to do it again the following night.

It hadn't crossed his mind for a single second that Thatch would ever think about it again.

"He blames himself," said Mihar. "A lot. One of the others had to take him by the arm to stop him."

"Which one?"

"The one in the kimono. He told him that nobody else on this ship had done as much, himself included."

Ace said nothing at all.

Banshee eventually raised a shoulder.

"Right. And so, what's the plan now? Are we joining them for good?"

Ace breathed in.

"Yes."

He nodded, and he did it slowly, as if to convince himself.

"I want to ask Marco if I can talk to Po—"

He stopped in the middle of the word.

"To Whitebeard," he corrected. "Later. After dinner."

Deuce briefly closed his eyes behind his mask.

"We'd do better to ask them how the crew works this evening, then," said Mihar. "During the meal, since they're dining with us. And to try to at least be friends with them, especially if they're our future superiors."

"That's exactly what I was thinking," said Deuce.

He straightened up and surveyed the room.

"Three rules for tonight. One: we answer their questions. Honestly, without embroidering. They're going to ask us things about ourselves and about the Spadille, and there's no reason to lie about that."

"And if it's about Ace?" Skull asked.

"You answer as well." Deuce threw a glance at his captain. "Everything that's been true for eighteen months, you say it. It's the rest that doesn't leave this room."

"What rest?"

"There is no rest," said Ace.

"There's a rest," said Mihar.

"Two," Deuce went on, raising his voice. "We ask our own questions. The divisions, the duty rotas, who commands what, who decides what, where we're going, how we're paid. We spent a month in a locker without asking anybody for anything, that stops tonight."

"And three?" said Banshee.

"Three: nobody talks about the fight."

Skull raised a hand.

"They were there…"

"I know perfectly well they were there, Skull. I'm just saying that if somebody asks, we say we talked it out and it's settled."

"And if Haruta asks three times?"

"Then you answer her the same thing three times."

"She'll ask six times," said Mihar.

"Then you answer six times."

He turned toward them.

"Thank you."

Banshee rolled her eyes.

"It isn't for you to say thank you for that idiot captain."

Ace straightened up.

"She's right." He looked at all three of them. "Thank you very much. I know you're making a lot of effort."

Skull, Mihar and Banshee looked at him as if he had three heads.

Nobody said a word for several seconds.

Skull was the first to recover the use of speech.

"You said thank you."

"Yes."

"You said thank you very much."

"That's what I said, yes."

"Deuce." Skull turned toward him without taking his eyes off Ace. "Does he have a concussion?"

"He doesn't have a concussion."

"Are you sure? Because I saw him take your fist in the face and—"

"He doesn't have a concussion, Skull, I examined him twenty minutes ago."

Banshee, for her part, wasn't laughing at all.

She had sat up on the bunk, and she was looking at Ace with a calm attention that was a thousand times more unpleasant than Skull's questions.

"Ace," she said.

"What?"

"Why are you thanking us?"

"Because you deserve it?"

"That isn't an answer."

Ace opened his mouth.

He had nothing to say and he knew it. He had just spent twenty minutes being screamed at by his second for exactly that reason, and in his head the sequence was very clear: he was going to get the mark, he was going to stay, and one day he would leave anyway because he always ended up leaving, and on that day he would at least have had time to say thank you.

He obviously couldn't explain that.

"I'm sorry for asking so much of you," he said.

He was talking faster and faster, because he had the impression of walking on a gangway that was giving way under him.

"Really. I know it isn't easy, I know you didn't choose any of this, and I know you spent a month in a hold because of me. But I'm certain it'll be all right for us here. I promise you."

The three of them exchanged a look with Deuce.

They looked very worried, and that was all Ace had time to notice before Mihar opened his mouth.

"Ace. Are you—"

Somebody knocked at the door.

"Room service!"

The voice came from the corridor, and it was frankly laughing. It was the young woman commander, the small one with the short hair, the one whose first name Ace knew very well and had absolutely no right to know.

The door opened before anybody had answered.

Haruta came in backward, carrying a tray far too big for her. Izou followed with two more trays stacked up and an expression that said clearly he had not agreed to carry two trays.

"Right then," Haruta announced. "There's roast."

She set the tray down on the crate that had been put back upright.

"There's roast, roast, a bit of roast, potatoes, roast, two hams one of which is far too salty because nobody managed to stop him, and a thing I couldn't name that he made with the rest of the butter."

Marco came in behind them, with a fourth tray on each arm.

"And there's as much again downstairs," he said. "He's doing a second service. For you."

He set the trays down.

There was food for forty people in a locker that held seven.

Ace looked at it all without moving.

"That's a lot," he said.

"Yeah," said Marco.

"That's really a lot."

"He wanted to come himself," said Izou, sitting down on a crate with considerable dignity. "We decided it was a bad idea for this evening, and he gave in in exchange for the right to double the quantities." He unfolded a napkin over his knees. "So eat, and above all don't say anything about the ham tomorrow."

Ace sat down slowly in front of the nearest tray.

He looked at the quantity of food spread out in front of him.

"Eat," said Marco. "Seriously. If there's anything left when we take the trays back up, he's going to want to know what."

Haruta had already settled on the floor, legs crossed, and was attacking the leg of something.

"Right!" she said with her mouth full. "So. Who wants to know how this ship works?"

Mihar raised his hand before anybody else.

"We do," he said. "All of us. For a month."

"Perfect." Haruta set down her poultry leg and wiped her fingers on her trousers, which made Izou grimace. "Then we start at the beginning, and the beginning is the sixteen divisions. Izou, correct me if I get it wrong."

Izou rolled his eyes.

The questions began before everybody was even seated.

"How many divisions?" Mihar asked.

"Sixteen," said Haruta. "Plus the allied crews, but those don't count in the numbering, they have their own captains and their own rules. On the Moby, there are sixteen divisions and sixteen commanders."

"And each division does what?"

"Each division does everything."

"What do you mean, everything?"

"In combat, everybody fights." Haruta grabbed a potato with her hand and ate it without using a fork, which made Izou grimace for the second time. "There's no division that stays at the back. The sixteen divisions are trained for combat, all of them, without exception. The only nuance is the infirmary: the nurses are trained to defend themselves, not to attack. They're taught to disengage, to shield a wounded man, to hold a position until we arrive. Not to charge."

"And the cooks?" Banshee asked.

"The cooks charge like everybody else."

Banshee slowly set down her fork.

"Ah."

"Thatch is the fifth strongest on the ship," said Izou. "Or the fourth, depending on Vista's mood and how you count."

"I thought he made tarts."

"He makes tarts," Haruta confirmed. "That's exactly why nobody takes him seriously the first year."

"What does he fight with?" Mihar asked.

"Two sabers."

"Like Commander Vista?"

"Not at all like Vista." Izou cut a fresh piece of ham. "Vista is a fencer. He learned in a school, he has stances, he corrects people's posture in the corridors. Thatch fights like somebody who learned in the street and then spent thirty years doing it very well. It's a great deal uglier and it works just as well."

"And do they train together?"

"Every Tuesday for twenty-two years. It always ends in an argument."

Skull had leaned forward, elbows on his knees.

"And do we choose? Or are we assigned?"

"You choose."

"Just like that? We arrive, we say 'I want the third' and it's settled?"

"Not quite." Haruta set down her potato. "There's a routine for newcomers. During the first week, you do half-days of discovery. You spend a morning or an afternoon in a division, you watch what gets done there, you get your hands into it if you're asked, and you move on. In a week you see about ten of them."

"And then?"

"The second week, you keep six divisions and you do a full day in each. The third week, you keep three. Then two. And at the end, you announce yours."

"That's almost a month," said Mihar.

"A month, yes. Unless somebody is already certain what they want to do, in which case we don't waste their time."

"And if we get it wrong?" Skull asked. "If I choose a division and after six months I realize I hate it?"

"You change."

"Just like that?"

"You go and see your commander, you tell him you want to change, and he helps you change." Haruta picked her potato back up. "Half the people aboard have changed at least once. Rakuyo started in the kitchens."

"Rakuyo started in the kitchens?"

"He lasted three months. Thatch still says he was his worst student in forty years of career, and Thatch has trained a guy who put salt in a custard."

"And why did he leave?"

"He didn't leave," said Izou. "Thatch threw him out."

Skull started to laugh, and he was still laughing when Izou added, without changing his tone:

"That said, he still goes down to make the desserts. Once or twice a month, at night, when the kitchens are empty. Nobody has ever said anything to him about it and nobody ever will."

"He makes desserts?"

"He makes excellent desserts. It's the rest he can't do."

Izou had served himself a slice of ham, the smallest on the tray, and was cutting it into pieces of remarkable regularity.

"Do any of you already know?" he asked.

Skull and Mihar shrugged at the same time.

"Infirmary," said Deuce.

"Kitchens," said Banshee.

Marco turned his head toward the bunk.

"And you?"

Ace was eating.

He had been eating since the start of the conversation, without looking up once, without intervening, without asking anybody for anything. He hadn't said a word since the trays had arrived.

"You," Marco repeated. "Hand-to-hand, no?"

Ace finished his mouthful.

"The second division," he said. "For the navigation."

Marco narrowed his eyes.

He said nothing at all, but he narrowed his eyes, because the second division hadn't had a commander for four years and because it was indeed the one that held the helm, the charts and the readings, and because there was no reason in the world for a boy who had arrived a month earlier, who had never left the upper deck, to know that.

"Did you spy on them all month or what?" Skull exclaimed. "To know the divisions and people's first names?"

Ace shot him a black look.

Deuce spoke before he had time to open his mouth.

"Yes. That's exactly what he did." He set down his glass. "For a month. To find out whether it was worth joining them."

Everybody turned toward Ace.

Ace thought for half a second about all the things he could answer, then decided to shrug and let absolutely nothing show, because the only thing he was certain of was that Deuce would have his hide if he opened his mouth.

Haruta burst out laughing.

"Honestly, I like that. It's very unpleasant and it's exactly what I'd have done."

"You're the one who handles intelligence," said Izou.

"Precisely. That's what I'm saying." She pointed her fork at Ace. "Did you take notes?"

Ace didn't answer. He went on chewing.

"He never takes notes," said Deuce. "I'm the one who takes the notes."

"Then I want to see your notes."

"No."

"Come on."

"No, commander."

"Just the part about us."

"Especially not the part about you."

Haruta turned toward Izou, looking frankly impressed.

"He's very good, this one. I want him in my division."

"He said infirmary."

"I know, I'm trying anyway."

Banshee wiped her hands.

"Right. We don't know all the divisions, so I'd like the list. With the commanders."

Izou unrolled it.

He unrolled it in order, specifying for each one what it actually did aboard beyond combat. The first with Marco, which held the infirmary and the general coordination. The second, without a commander, which held the navigation. The third with Jozu, then the kitchens. The fifth with Vista and everything to do with equipment, supply and stores. The eighth with Namur and everything done underwater. The eleventh with Haruta, who handled intelligence, newspapers, informants in ports and what Izou coyly called "discreet visits."

Mihar sat up at that point.

"What exactly are the discreet visits?"

"We go in somewhere, we look, we come out," said Haruta. "Generally nobody knows we've been."

"And how many of you are there?"

"Forty-two. Which is few, because very few people are interested and even fewer are any good."

Mihar said nothing, but he didn't take his eyes off Haruta for the next three divisions, and Deuce made a note.

Skull, for his part, had visibly been lost since the sixth.

"Hold on. The one with the chains, which one was that?"

"Rakuyo, seventh."

"And the big one with the cigar?"

"Fossa, fifteenth."

"And the one with arms the size of my torso?"

"Jozu, third." Izou looked up. "Do you mean Jozu or Blamenco?"

"I don't know. He was made of diamond."

"Jozu."

"All right." Skull rubbed his forehead. "I'm going to need a written list."

"I'll make you one," said Izou.

"And how are we paid?" Mihar asked.

Haruta sat up, visibly pleased with the question.

"A third of every haul goes to the ship. Repairs, equipment, food, ammunition, and the reserve for the islands under our protection, because some of them don't produce enough to get by alone. The rest is shared."

"In equal shares?"

"In equal shares. A commander gets exactly the same as a guy who arrived last week."

Skull looked up.

"Seriously?"

"Pops decided that forty years ago and nobody has ever tried to change his mind." Haruta shrugged. "Anyway there's nothing to buy at sea, so the money mostly gets used in ports, and in ports everybody ends up buying everybody else a round."

"And the decisions?" Deuce asked. "Who decides on a course, an alliance, a war?"

"Pops."

"That's all?"

"That's all." Izou set down his glass. "He listens to the sixteen commanders, sometimes for hours, sometimes for three days. He asks their opinion, he takes it into account, and then he decides, and what he's decided gets done. It isn't a democracy, it's a family with a father."

"And if he decides something you think is stupid?"

"We tell him. Loudly." Izou had a thin smile. "And then we do it anyway."

Deuce nodded and noted that in his head, next to all the rest.

"Last question," said Banshee. "Where are we going?"

Haruta and Izou looked at each other.

"That," said Haruta, "is an excellent question, and the answer is that we never really know. We have a course for twelve days. After that, it depends on the mail, the newspapers, and who's in trouble."

"Who's in trouble?"

"There are about fifty islands under our flag. When one of them has a problem, we go." She grabbed another piece of potato. "That's roughly three quarters of what we do."

The commanders took an interest in them.

It was the strangest thing of the evening, and Deuce noticed it very quickly: they weren't asking questions to gather information. They were asking questions like people getting to know each other. Haruta asked Banshee how long it had taken her to learn to walk, and when Banshee answered six months, she followed up with the fact that she herself had learned to use a saber in five weeks and that the two weren't comparable but she found it interesting anyway. Izou asked Skull why he wore a mask, then realized that he himself put on makeup every morning and that he was in no position to ask that question. Marco questioned Deuce about his medical studies for a quarter of an hour, with a level of precision that put the young doctor into a sweat.

And there was the question Mihar had predicted.

"Right," said Haruta, settling back against the bulkhead. "And this fight?"

"We talked it out," said Deuce. "It's settled."

"Yes, but over what?"

"It's settled."

"I'm not asking whether it's settled, I'm asking what it was about."

"Haruta," said Izou.

"What? I saw an entire room turned over and two opened brows, I think I'm entitled to ask the question."

"We talked it out," Deuce repeated. "It's settled."

Haruta stared at him for a good three seconds, then let out a sigh and grabbed a potato.

"You're exactly like them," she muttered. "All seconds are like that. It's a disease."

And through all of that, Ace said nothing and went on eating.

Marco eventually looked at him.

He looked at him first out of professional curiosity, because the kid was emptying his third tray and had been quoted at twelve portions without anybody joking. Then he looked at him more attentively, because there was something that didn't add up in the way he was eating.

Ace was eating slowly.

He was eating a great deal, but he was eating slowly, his head buried in his plate, every mouthful held twice as long as necessary. That wasn't the way a starving man eats. It was more the way of somebody trying to make something last.

Deuce noticed at the same moment.

He turned his head toward his captain, met his gaze for a fraction of a second, and he saw that Ace had tears in his eyes.

Ace turned his face away at once.

He couldn't stop.

He had thought he'd be able to. He had sat down in front of that tray telling himself that he was going to eat normally, talk a bit, listen to Haruta explain things he already knew by heart and wait for the end of the meal. And then he had taken the first mouthful.

It was Thatch's roast.

It wasn't a metaphor, it wasn't an impression, it was exactly and precisely Thatch's roast, with that thing he did with the fat and the rosemary and whose recipe he refused to give, and the crust underneath slightly overdone because he said it was the best bit and nobody was supposed to know. Ace had eaten that dish two hundred times. He had eaten it the evening of his first mark, and the evening of his first command, and the evening Thatch had turned forty-six and had demanded to be allowed to cook his own birthday.

And for six months, he had eaten nothing at all.

That was what was coming up his throat and that he couldn't get back down. Six months. A week in Impel Down first, where you couldn't really call it food, and before that the weeks after Banaro, and before that again the months of the hunt where he had eaten anything anywhere without ever sitting down. He had lost the taste of things. He had realized it very late, in his cell, one day when he'd been given something that should have been rice: everything seemed bland to him. Absolutely everything. He ate because you had to eat, and it did nothing for him at all.

Thatch was dead, and for three weeks the kitchens had been run by the seconds of the fourth division. They cooked well. They cooked very well, in fact, Thatch had trained them all himself. But it never tasted the same again, not once, and Ace had spent those three weeks sitting at the end of the counter in front of an empty stool pretending not to understand why.

He had a piece of it in his mouth, there, now.

And he wanted to get up, cross two decks, walk into those kitchens and say something. Anything.

He obviously couldn't do that. Thatch would take him for a madman, and it would be the third or fourth thing today to make him look like a madman, and in any case he had decided a few hours earlier that he was going to keep that man at a distance.

That was, incidentally, the stupidest plan he had ever had, and he was realizing it with a piece of roast in his mouth.

He was happy. That was the problem. He was so happy that he couldn't breathe properly, and he was doing his best to hold it in because there were three of Whitebeard's commanders sitting two meters away from him and he had already cried twice in the same day.

He lowered his head a little further and took another mouthful.

Eat, idiot. Eat and keep your mouth shut.

He felt Marco's eyes on him and looked up.

The phoenix was still watching him, sitting on an overturned crate, a piece of bread in his hand that he hadn't started.

Ace frowned.

Marco raised his eyebrows in return, not impressed in the slightest.

Ace rolled his eyes and went back to his plate.

Marco was rather surprised by that.

He didn't let it show, of course, because he never let anything show, but it was the third time that day that this kid had answered him with a gesture instead of a sentence, and each time the gesture implied a familiarity that didn't exist. You don't roll your eyes at somebody you've known for a month and tried to kill forty-seven times. You roll your eyes at an annoying older brother.

Marco set down his bread and noted that somewhere, next to all the rest.

He now had a complete list, and it resembled nothing.

A kid who said thank you the way people say goodbye. A kid who touched his chest twenty times a day in a place where he had no injury. A kid who knew the name of every commander without having been introduced to them, who knew where Marco's office was before being told, who called the room at the back "the commanders' room" as if he'd drunk there a hundred times. A kid who had announced his father's name to four hundred men in broad daylight and who had answered yes when asked whether he was going to die.

Marco had no theory that held up. He had three that half held up, and all three bothered him for different reasons.

He decided to wait, because that was what he always did, and he picked his bread back up.

Ace eventually set down his fork.

He had emptied three trays and started on the fourth, and there was still enough to feed ten people. He took an empty plate, slid a good portion of roast and two pieces of ham onto it, and set it on the floor near the door.

"By the way," said Mihar. "Where's Kotatsu?"

Everybody looked around the locker.

There was no cat. There was no cat at all, not under the bunks, not on the bags, not across the door, and nobody had the faintest idea when he had last been seen.

"Damn!" said Skull, leaping to his feet.

Ace wiped his mouth with his napkin.

"He's probably with Stefan."

Skull stopped.

"Stefan?"

Ace shrugged.

Haruta, for her part, had stopped chewing entirely.

"You know Stefan?"

Ace froze, napkin still on his mouth.

Deuce pinched the bridge of his nose through his mask.

"Who is this Stefan?" Mihar asked.

"The Moby's Klabautermann," said Izou. "He's a dog."

Skull stayed perfectly still for two seconds.

"Klabautermann," he repeated. "What's that? A breed of dog? Because have you seen the size of Kotatsu? He weighs sixty kilos and he's got teeth like my thumb. He's going to devour your dog. You're insane to leave them together, we have to find them right now."

"Don't worry," said Ace. "Stefan's bigger than him."

There was a silence.

Marco cleared his throat.

"A Klabautermann," he said, "is the spirit of a ship. When a ship is loved long enough and strongly enough by enough people, it ends up having one. It isn't a harbor legend, it's a thing that exists, and we don't really know how it happens."

"And it's a dog."

"This one is a dog, yes. A very large white dog with a patch over one eye and a mustache that looks like Pops's." Marco set down his glass. "You mostly find him in the kitchens and in Pops's room. He sleeps at the foot of the armchair. Thatch keeps something back for him every evening and claims it's for the seagulls."

"And you all see him?" Banshee asked.

"No."

Izou took over.

"That's the principle. You don't see him because you're looking for him." He set down his cutlery. "Members of the crew end up meeting him one to one, one day, generally in a passageway in the middle of the night, and it happens when they genuinely consider themselves part of the family and this ship their home. Not before. Some wait two years. Others see him the first week. I saw him after eight months and I thought I'd had too much to drink."

"I thought it was a bear," said Haruta.

"You were twelve."

"I was fourteen, Izou."

"You were twelve, and you came and woke me at four in the morning to announce that there was a bear in the galley."

"It was the size of a bear!"

"You had a butter knife in your hand."

"It was what I could find!"

Skull had abandoned his plate.

"Hold on. So there's a giant ghost dog on this ship, nobody knows where it came from, and you calmly wait for it to decide to show itself to you to find out whether you're really part of the family?"

"That's roughly it," said Marco.

"And that seems normal to you."

"Nothing is normal on this ship, yoi. There's a ten-meter man sleeping on a drip in the room next to the one where we drink, and you have a sixty-kilo cat." Marco shrugged. "You get used to it."

Banshee raised a hand.

"Does he eat?"

"Excuse me?"

"The dog. Does he really eat? Because if I'm going to work in the kitchens, I'd like to know whether I need to plan for something."

Izou and Marco exchanged a look.

"Thatch puts out a bowl for him every evening," said Izou. "And every morning, the bowl is empty."

"So he eats."

"So something eats," said Marco. "We stopped asking the question thirty years ago."

Every gaze converged on Ace.

Ace froze again.

"Maybe the dog likes me," he said. "That's all."

"The dog likes you," Haruta repeated in a very slow voice.

"It happens, dogs liking people."

"You've been aboard thirty-two days and you spent thirty-one of them trying to kill his owner."

"I just said I didn't know why."

Deuce decided it was time to step in.

"Commander Marco."

Marco turned his head toward him.

"Ace would like to meet the captain this evening, if that's possible. To make things official."

Marco didn't seem to know what to answer.

It was visible, and it wasn't like him. He hesitated, opened his mouth, and stayed a full second without saying anything, and Ace, who was watching him, didn't understand at all what was happening on his face.

Izou laid a hand on his shoulder and answered in his place.

"No problem. I'll let him know."

"Izou—"

"While Marco and Haruta take the plates back up," Izou went on without letting go of his shoulder. He turned toward Ace. "Do you want to go now?"

Ace nodded.

They all stood up.

Deuce stood up too and took a step toward the door, and Ace gave him a nod that meant no.

Deuce stopped.

He looked at him, and his look said very clearly: you'd better hold your tongue.

Ace grimaced.

He knew exactly how difficult it was going to be. He had spent two years unable to hide anything from that man. The old man didn't even ask questions: he looked at you, he laughed, and then he said the thing you were in the middle of hiding as if he were talking about the weather, and he waited. Ace had been caught that way at least fifteen times.

And he was about to walk into his room to ask him for a mark while pretending not to know him.

He set his napkin back on the tray and stood up.

"Ace," said Deuce.

"What?"

"Breathe before you speak."

Ace nodded and went out with Izou.

Izou walked calmly.

Too calmly, in fact, and Ace wasn't fooled for a second. The commander of the sixteenth division was advancing at a steady pace, hands in his sleeves, looking straight ahead, and he was saying absolutely nothing. He hadn't said a word since they left the locker. He hadn't asked a single question about Stefan, nor about the divisions, nor about the fact that a boy who had arrived a month earlier knew the name of a ship's ghost dog.

Ace knew why. Izou never asked the questions right away. He waited, he accumulated, and one day he sat you down and gave you three months of details in chronological order.

They went up the upper deck passageway.

"Two things," Izou said after a while.

"Yes?"

"The first. When you go in, don't stay standing. He's going to tell you to sit down and you're going to refuse out of politeness, and then he'll have to lift his head to talk to you, which pulls on his neck." Izou didn't turn his head. "So sit down straight away."

Ace nodded. He already knew. It had taken him four months to understand, in the other life, and it was Thatch who had told him.

"And the second?"

"He may ask you questions that have nothing to do with what you've come to ask for. He does that. Answer honestly and don't try to understand why, because you won't understand."

"All right."

Izou let three steps pass.

"And a third thing, while I'm at it."

"You said two."

"I've changed my mind." He stopped in the middle of the corridor. "If you're going in there to ask him for a place having already decided you'll give it back one day, don't do it tonight. Wait until tomorrow. Wait until next week. He'll accept either way, but he doesn't need that."

Ace froze.

"I don't understand what you mean."

"No. Of course." Izou started walking again. "It's the door at the end."

"I know."

Izou turned his head toward him.

Ace felt the sweat rise on his back.

"I mean, it's the only door that size." He indicated the end of the corridor. "It's bigger than the others. It's logical."

"Mm," said Izou.

They took another ten steps.

And the doors flew open.

Ace didn't have time to understand. He saw a white mass burst out of the opening and he had exactly enough time to think ah, damn before seventy kilos of dog hit him full in the chest and sent him to the floor.

He landed on his back without any trouble.

He even took it cleanly, chin tucked in, arms spread, the kind of fall you only manage after being knocked over a few hundred times by the same thing. Between Stefan and Luffy, Ace had considerable experience of creatures that throw themselves at you without warning.

It was an enormous dog.

He was white, with the long hard coat of a mountain dog, a gray patch around the left eye and, under the muzzle, a thick mustache that came down on either side of his jaws in two white points, exactly the same as those of the man sitting in the room, which had never made anybody aboard laugh because nobody had ever dared point it out. Standing, he came up to a grown man's shoulder. Lying down, he occupied a passageway.

Stefan planted both front paws on his chest and set about washing his face completely.

"Stop, stop, Stefan!" Ace was laughing, both hands in the thick fur of his neck. "Stop, you're heavy! You're really very heavy!"

The dog yapped, beat his tail, and redoubled his efforts.

Ace rubbed his ribs with both hands, as he had done hundreds of times in another life, and Stefan dropped his full weight onto him with a grunt of absolute contentment.

"You're crushing me."

Stefan didn't move.

"You're really crushing me. Stefan."

The dog nibbled his ear.

Izou, for his part, hadn't made a move.

He watched the scene for a long moment, perfectly still in the middle of the passageway, and then he turned his head toward the room.

Whitebeard was sitting on the edge of his immense bed, propped against the cushions. He looked surprised.

Izou saw it, and he became even more confused than he had been two minutes earlier.

Because Stefan never hid anything from Pops. That was the rule. The dog and the old man had known each other for forty years, the dog slept at the foot of his armchair, and when the dog recognized somebody for the first time, Pops knew before anybody else. He had announced it for Izou. He had announced it for Haruta, for Vista, for some thirty people. He would come to the table and say "well now, Stefan has met so-and-so," and that was that.

So why did he look surprised?

Ace eventually got free. He pushed the dog off with his shoulder, pushing a little harder than necessary, and Stefan yapped, offended, then caught his forearm in his jaws, without squeezing, and started pulling him toward the bed.

"Hey. Hey, no. Let go. I can walk."

Stefan pulled harder.

Ace let himself be dragged two meters, throwing Izou a frankly embarrassed look.

And Whitebeard smiled.

He said absolutely nothing. He smiled, and he gave a nod toward the door, and Izou understood. He went in, laid a hand on the panel, and closed it behind Ace without a word.

He stayed in the passageway, back against the bulkhead, arms crossed, and he waited.

He thought back over what he had just seen, and he didn't like at all what it said.

A dog who only shows himself to people who have decided this ship is their home. A boy who knows him by name and who lets himself be knocked over as if he had done it a hundred times. And Pops, who knew nothing.

Izou had learned in forty years not to conclude too quickly. He waited.

The room was immense and it smelled of waxed wood, cold tobacco and something medicinal.

The bed took up the whole back wall. Around it, on their steel supports, Marco's machines rose like a small forest of metal, and two of them were switched on, which meant the old man had agreed to use them that evening. There was an armchair, a low table covered in charts and folded newspapers, and a round window through which you could see the night and the white crests of the waves.

"You wanted to see me?" said Whitebeard.

His voice filled the whole room without his needing to push it.

"Sit down."

Stefan was already settling the question. He gave a great shove of his shoulder into Ace's legs, and Ace lost his balance and found himself sitting on the edge of the bed, and the dog immediately installed himself across his feet like a sandbag.

Ace found himself sitting there, his back a few centimeters from the giant's flank, and he felt the enormous heat coming off it.

He tried to stay focused.

"Um. Yes." He cleared his throat. "I'd like to officially ask to join the crew. Me and the Spades."

"The Spades."

"My men. They agree." Ace clenched his hands on his knees. "They'll behave themselves. I promise you."

Whitebeard took his time.

He took so much time that Ace felt his stomach start to knot, and then he said:

"And if I refuse?"

Ace jumped.

He jumped sincerely, because the idea hadn't come to him for a single second. Not once. He had spent the day dreading a hundred different things and that one wasn't on the list, because in his memory the old man had offered him this place three times in a month with an enormous smile and Ace had spat at him every time.

"Refuse?" he said.

"Yes. If I refuse, what will you do?"

Ace stayed silent.

He imagined the thing. He honestly tried to imagine it: the doors of this room closing behind him, and a ship somewhere, and the sea, and none of this anymore. And it hurt him far more than he expected, a stupid immediate pain somewhere in the middle of his chest, exactly as if he had just been put out for good.

And then he thought of something else.

Maybe this is a chance.

He hadn't managed to push them away. He had tried all day and he had failed on every count: Thatch had opened his pantry to him, Vista had counted his portions, Marco had brought him his medicine, and Deuce had smashed his face in for merely suggesting keeping his distance. If the old man said no, everything would resolve itself. The Spades would stay here, safe, in the biggest family in the world, and Ace would leave alone, and when he failed a second time against Teach there would be nobody at Marineford.

He got up off the bed.

And he bowed.

"I understand," he said. "It's dangerous. I know what I am and I know what it would cost to have me aboard if it got out."

He kept his head down.

"Can you accept the Spades only, please? They haven't done anything, them. They followed me, that's all. They're young and they're good and they deserve better than drifting with me. Keep them. I'll leave alone, I won't come back, and I won't tell anybody I came here."

The silence that followed was very long.

Ace stayed bowed, eyes on the flooring, his heart climbing into his throat.

Stefan gave a small whine and nudged his hand with his muzzle.

"Stand up," said Whitebeard.

Ace straightened.

"I was simply asking the question," said the old man, "to find out what kind of captain you were."

Ace lifted his head.

"I have never considered rejecting you, my boy."

Ace relaxed without realizing it.

It was a total, instantaneous release that went down from his shoulders to his hands, and it took him a second to understand that it was relief. A violent, disproportionate relief, the relief of somebody who has just learned that his father isn't going to put him out.

And underneath, right behind it, the anguish of seeing that chance slip past him.

He stood there not knowing what to do with his body.

"Come and sit back down."

Ace obeyed.

Stefan lay back down on his feet with a sigh.

Whitebeard took the cup set on the low table, looked at it, and set it back down without touching it.

Ace noticed the gesture. He noticed it because he had seen this man drink sake every evening of his life and he had never seen him set down a full cup.

"How many of them are there, your men?"

"Twenty. Nineteen plus me."

"And they voted."

"They voted." Ace gave a small laugh in spite of himself. "Well, they voted on the fact that I wouldn't be their captain anymore. And then they all flicked me on the forehead, one by one, queuing up."

Whitebeard burst out laughing.

It was an enormous laugh that shook the whole bed, and Stefan lifted his head sharply.

"Gurararara! One by one?"

"One by one. There was one who took the opportunity to hold a pufferfish against me from a year ago."

"Then they love you a great deal, my boy."

Ace stopped laughing and lowered his eyes to his hands.

"Yes," he said. "I think so."

"Have you reached Laugh Tale?"

Ace turned his head.

"Laugh Tale?" He frowned. "Is that an island in the New World? I don't know it at all."

Whitebeard looked at him.

He looked at him in a new way, frowning, with the air of a man facing a riddle that isn't behaving as it should. Ace held the gaze without understanding a single word of what was happening, and eventually shrugged.

"Why? Is it important?"

"No."

"You look like you find it important."

"I look like a great many things." The old man settled back into his cushions. "You've never heard that name."

"Never. I know Sabaody, I know Jaya, I know Water Seven. I've never heard of an island called that."

"And nobody has ever mentioned it to you? An old sailor, a drunk in a port, somebody trying to impress you?"

"No."

Whitebeard stayed silent a few seconds.

"Good," he said at last. "Then forget I asked."

"You're not going to explain?"

"No."

"Why?"

"Because the answer wouldn't bring you anything tonight, and because it isn't mine to give." He turned his head toward him. "And because I was wrong, which happens to me. I was simply curious."

He let a beat pass.

"On this ship, we are a family. Every man aboard is my son, and every woman my daughter, and that doesn't depend on their blood, on what they've done before or on what's said about them." He turned his head toward him. "Do you accept that?"

Ace opened his mouth.

"You aren't obliged to call me dad, nor Pops," Whitebeard went on. "Some never have and I've never asked them to. You can call me Whitebeard or captain until the end of your days, it won't change a thing."

He laid his enormous hand on the mattress, beside Ace, without touching him.

"Because I, in any case, will consider you my son until the end."

Ace froze.

He couldn't move at all anymore.

He felt his eyes sting and he could do nothing about it, because everything was coming back to him at once and out of order, and there was no dam capable of holding against that.

Good grief, he loved this man.

He had known it late. He had known it too late, on a platform, with an entire world on fire around him, and he had spent the previous two years not admitting it to himself because he had decided once and for all that he wasn't permitted a father.

And yet he had had one.

He had had one completely. He had had a father who had never taken him for an idiot. Never, not once, and that was the most extraordinary thing in the whole story: Ace had spent his childhood being a problem for everybody, a kid who was too violent, too angry, too loud, the boy nobody knew where to put. And Whitebeard had looked at him once and encouraged him in absolutely everything he undertook.

There had been the second division. Nobody had believed Ace would manage. He himself hadn't believed it for three days. It was the navigation division, the one with the readings, the charts, the registers and the rules, and Ace couldn't read New World language, understood nothing about the ship's standards, mixed up two notation systems out of three and had exactly the opposite temperament to the one the post required. He had heard the murmurs. He had heard a man say, in a passageway, that a hundred men had been given to a kid who couldn't write his own report.

Pops had believed in him.

He had done it in the most discreet and most effective way in the world: he had called him up in the evenings. Almost every evening, for months. Ace would come up to this room, sit exactly where he was sitting now, and the old man would tell him adventures. Old stories, islands, storms, men he had known. He told them in New World language, slowly, repeating the difficult words without ever pointing out that he was repeating them. And then he would ask him to talk about Luffy.

Ace talked about Luffy for hours. He did it in that language because the old man asked him the questions in that language, and he was never bored, because you're never bored when you're talking about your little brother. He had learned to read that way. He had realized it six months later, one morning, filling in a form without needing to ask anybody, and he had stood there, pencil in the air, taking in what the old man had done.

Pops loved Ace with all his heart. As he loved each of his children.

That was the most incredible part. There were sixteen hundred people aboard and there wasn't a single one he knew badly. He knew their mothers' names. He knew who was afraid of the dark, who had a debt in a port, who cried on somebody's anniversary. He always found a moment for each of them, without exception, and nobody had ever understood how he did it.

People said he shone like a sun.

Ace had never found that right. A sun burns, and it forces you to look away. Pops was a moon. He was that immense calm thing that stays there all night without asking for anything, and that keeps watch, and that gives enough light for you to find your way.

And there was one thing Ace had never told anybody.

The day he took the mark, he had stayed a whole hour in front of a mirror in the infirmary, twisting his neck to see it on his back. He hadn't cried. He had only had a very stupid and very precise thought, which he had hurried to crush: now, if they find my body somewhere, they'll know who to give it back to.

It was the first time in his life that he belonged to a place.

He had had time to tell him.

That was the only thing he didn't regret. At Marineford, in the smoke, he had had time to say that this man was the best father in the world, and to call him Pops in front of everybody, and to thank him for having loved him.

But good grief, how he wished he hadn't come.

That was what was twisting his stomach, there, now, sitting on that bed. He would have so wanted his father to stay home. He would have so wanted him not to wage a war for a kid who had disobeyed, to let him die alone on his platform as he had deserved, to abandon him, for once, one single time in his life.

And at the same time he remembered exactly what he had felt on seeing him arrive.

He remembered it with a sickening precision. He was chained up, he was waiting for the axe, he had made his peace with all of it. And then there had been that noise, and that voice, and Ace had lifted his head and he had seen his father standing on a ship in the middle of the bay, come to fetch him.

He had been happy. Horribly, shamefully happy.

Because Pops was the perfect father, that was the truth, and because Ace would have given anything to grow up with him. He thought about it often, and he had never spoken of it to anybody. He wondered who he would have become if that man had raised him. Maybe he wouldn't have been so bitter. Maybe he wouldn't have been so stupid with people, so incapable of receiving anything, so gifted at breaking whatever reached out a hand to him.

Pops had said something to him about that, one evening, in this room.

He had said that Ace loved other people a great deal more strongly than he loved himself, and that was why he was always lost. That his emotions were multiplied by a hundred, love, anger, joy, frustration, all of it, that they all arrived at once and too strong, and that he couldn't manage them because nobody had ever taught him how. And that all of that was normal.

Ace had cried that evening too. From relief. Because he was twenty, he had believed himself broken since the day he was born, and an old man had finally just put words on what he couldn't say.

He even remembered the end of the conversation. He had asked, sniffling, how the old man could know that. And Pops had laughed, and he had said that he'd had the same kind of little brother a long time ago, and that it had taken him twenty years to understand how to talk to him, and that he had gone about it very badly from start to finish.

Ace hadn't asked who it was. He hadn't thought about it for a single second, at the time.

Today, sitting on this bed, he understood who he was talking about, and it made him want to scream.

And Ace hated that Pops was ill.

He hated it more than all the rest. He would have wanted him to be eternal, he would have wanted that immense body never to give way, he would have wanted Marco's machines to disappear from this room. He knew Marco did everything humanly possible, he had seen him do it, he had seen him spend whole nights recalculating doses, he had seen him collapse into a chair at dawn.

But he also knew his father wasn't eternal.

Marineford had proved it.

He didn't realize he was crying.

He realized it when an enormous hand came to rest on his back.

It came to rest delicately, with a lightness Ace wouldn't have believed it capable of, and it stayed there, immense, warm, covering half his back in one go.

Ace turned his face toward the captain.

He was wrecked. There was no other word for it: his eyes were red, his nose was running, the tears were falling from his chin, and the lip Marco had stitched had started bleeding a little again.

"Can I call you Pops, now?" he asked.

Whitebeard nodded.

"Of course, my son."

Ace sank into the giant's hand.

He let himself drop into it with all his weight, forehead against the palm, both hands gripping the wrist, and he cried as he hadn't cried since he was ten.

"Thank you, Pops," he said. "For everything."

The hand closed a little on his back.

Ace stayed there, his forehead in that palm, listening to the enormous and slightly wheezing breath of the giant above him, and he cried out everything he had been holding since he opened his eyes in that infirmary that morning.

Whitebeard asked no other question.

After a long while, he spoke.

"You know," he said, "the worst thing about children like you isn't that they arrive broken."

Ace sniffed against his palm.

"It's that they arrive convinced it's their fault." The hand moved a few centimeters up his back. "You're eighteen, my boy. You have all the time in the world to discover that you were wrong."

Ace gripped the giant's wrist more tightly.

He wasn't eighteen. He was twenty, and he was dead, and he knew exactly how the story ended if he let it run its course.

"I'll try," he said.

Stefan laid his head on his knees.

And in the passageway, on the other side of the door, Izou heard the crying, and he said nothing to anybody.