Work Text:
It’s two in the morning on a rare calm night in the New World, the night’s party dying down, when Ace finally opens up to Thatch.
The party is in honor of Ace finally quitting his murderous campaign against Oyaji, so his company had been in high demand all night as he talked to people without his usual convenient excuses that had been wearing pretty damn thin lately. The conversation, drinks, and laughter had been flowing freely all night, crewmates welcoming him left and right, so the kid had loosened up considerably by the time Thatch finds him taking a breather on the top mizzenmast yardarm.
“Helluva night, kid.” He sits down next to the teen, letting his legs dangle absentmindedly. “It’s not every day we get a guy hellbent on killing Oyaji to do a complete about face and join the crew!”
Ace snorts. “Sure, but you’d never be able to tell by the party. What is this, the third one this month? Just yesterday the lot of you were carousing without a care. I know for a fact Emmanuel and Karaya were still drunk from last night when the party started!”
“Um, excuse you, that’s the lot of us now little brother! Or did you already forget what this party is for?” Thatch elbows Ace playfully, and gets an honest to God pout in return. Fearsome pirate his ass; the kid was downright adorable. He really ought to thank Marco for getting through to him last night, he thinks to himself, watching fondly as Ace turns to look out across the waves with a distant look in his eyes. When he continues speaking, it’s with a softer voice. “You’re one of us now, and no one here takes that lightly. From now on, we’ll always have your back.”
“How can you say that so easily? I did try to kill your captain for literally a hundred days straight,” Ace points out. There’s a pause in there that Thatch can’t quite decipher, but he decides that’s a question for future Thatch to answer.
“Joining the crew means you get a fresh start. No one is gonna hold it against you; God knows we’ve all done our fair share of attempted murder on this ship. Speaking of, do not get between Izou and his tea, it’s not a pretty sight.” He pauses to let Ace snicker at that for a second. “Besides, no one really wanted to kill you even on day one.”
“Seriously?” Ace gives him a dubious side eye. “That can’t be true. I am fully aware of what an arse I’ve been, being as it was entirely intentional.”
“You don’t kill people for being assholes! If we all went around killing everyone who was a bit of a dick, we’d all be dead six ways from Sunday in, oh, about 2 days. Not good for morale, that.”
“You don’t say,” Ace snarks back. “Still, that’d be news to just about every other pirate whose path I’ve crossed since I’ve set sail. Pretty sure some of them didn’t even wait for me to speak.”
Now it’s Thatch’s turn to be dubious, because yeah, pirates are assholes, but he’d have thought Ace wouldn’t have as much trouble with that as the rest of them due to being almost impossible to not like. Him being the target of what is clearly a fair few murder attempts is very hard to believe. “Why were all these people trying to murder you?”
Ace looks incredibly baffled at this question. “Because I was there?” Thatch waits for elaboration, but there is none. Apparently he thinks this a self explanatory answer, because sometimes Ace doesn’t communicate so well. This is only partially because half his points of reference for normal are actually off the wall bonkers and his native tongue appears to be a bastard offshoot of East Blue. (And his Grand Line had a distinctly Marine flavor to it, because God forbid Ace make sense.)
Dragging himself back from his thoughts, Thatch attempts to get the elaboration he wanted out his newest little brother. “So, what, you never bothered to find out why any of those random pirates wanted to kill you?”
“...No?” Bless him, he is genuinely confused by this isn’t he? Ace sees the look on his face and tries to clarify. “Never bothered asking before, didn’t see why I should start with pirates.” As reassurances go, it’s pretty shit.
“Ace, are you telling me people wanted to kill you before you became a pirate?” Surely Thatch is misinterpreting this, because Ace is literally still a teen. Basically a child, really. And no child deserves to be targeted like that.
“As long as I can remember,” Ace shrugs, kicking his feet idly over the long drop to the deck. Thatch can almost feel his heart doing its best to plummet the whole way down.
“Fuck.” There’s no other appropriate response to that revelation.
“Eh, doesn’t really bother me anymore unless things really go arseways because of it.” Ace shrugs again like he thinks that will make Thatch feel better about him facing death as a child, about possibly losing his new little brother before they ever even met. When he glances over to Thatch, the look on his face must be almost as devastated as he feels, because Ace immediately starts flailing in response.
“It’s not like it really matters, I mean, uh, I have all of you to watch my back now, right? And it made me strong, so it’s not like it was totally a bad thing! Plus, I was almost literally asking for it sometimes, so it’s kinda my fault anyways-”
“It’s never okay for adults to hurt children like that!” Thatch interrupts. He can see Ace starting to take offense to that, so he continues before Ace can argue that he’s not a child anymore, and certainly not weak. “Ace, please don’t treat your life so lightly! What if you’d died and we’d never met, huh? You may have only officially joined today, but you’ve been important to us, to me, for a while now!”
There’s a long moment, then, where Ace considers him with a guarded expression. Thatch has clearly touched on something with his words, so he waits for the teen to collect his thoughts. When Ace finally speaks, there’s a careful deliberation to his speech.
“So it’s a good thing I’m alive?” Thatch immediately understands that this is no throwaway question to be answered lightly. This could make or break Ace’s trust in him.
“I’m grateful every day to have met you, Ace, and now I’m even more grateful that you were alive for me to meet.” He puts every ounce of sincerity he can into his words, because it’s the absolute truth and Ace needs to hear it. He is so, so grateful that Ace is alive.
There’s another long moment as Ace takes in his words. Then he relaxes and looks down with a faint smile, and Thatch silently releases the breath he didn’t realize he was holding.
“I’m glad I lived long enough to meet you too, Thatch,” Ace says softly. He fingers the string of beads around his neck, and looks back out across the waves. “I’m glad I made it this far.” He looks utterly at peace. Thatch’s heart aches, then, as he realizes that Ace hadn’t expected to. And when he puts his arm around Ace, telegraphing every movement, the smile on his face aches too.
“And you still have a ways to go. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you, kid, quit talking like it all ends here.”
“Nah, it’s not like that. My days have been numbered since the beginning, is all, so I’m just happy that I’ve made the most of it.” What really hurts is that Ace seems to actually be pleased by that. Like he thinks it’s a gift to simply be alive. Like he thinks his life isn’t worth preserving. He pulls Ace a tiny bit closer.
“Ace, please don’t throw your life away. It’s okay to live for tomorrow,” Thatch presses. He’s seen this before, and he can’t just leave it like this; that way lies the taking of unnecessary risks and heartbreak.
“I know that!” Ace protests. “I just… I wanna start living before I start dying.”
“Okay, but. Think about it?” Maybe he can’t change Ace’s mind now, but he’s got all the time he can steal from Davy Jones to do it. He just hopes his thievery is up to the task.
It won’t be today, or tomorrow, maybe not even a year from now, but there will come a day when Ace will decide he wants to live. Thatch can feel it. And on that day, he can only hope that he will have had a hand in it.
Ace deserves to live.