Chapter Text
If you could have a second chance, would you take it?
There are things in this life that are unexplainable, and even more so in the next. Questions left unanswered in the first life became increasingly impossible to answer, and just as easy to forget. They were thrown to the void, where they drifted on a forgotten sea of memories.
He was... cold. For someone who ran so hot normally, Portgas D. Ace felt a chill that numbed him to the bone, and he shivered uncontrollably. What was he doing again?
Luffy.
Oh.
Right.
His little brother had come to save him, and yet in the end... well, Ace ended up saving him instead. But he had done it! Even if the only reason why people had been continuing to watch the war was because they now knew that he was Roger’s son, his name had been known all across the world as the 2nd Division Commander of the White Beard Pirates. That had been enough. Knowing that Luffy went through hell and back just to rescue his own pathetic ass... that had been enough. Jinbei had promised to keep Luffy safe, and Ace believed him. The fishman was honorable, and he’d sooner die than break a promise to a friend—in that regard, he reminded Ace of his bungling kid brother himself... and of their childhood brother, Sabo.
But as memories came flooding back to him, he became increasingly confused. Wasn’t he dead? Was he in hell? Wasn’t that place supposed to be hot? All he saw was darkness, and it took longer than it should have in order for him to realize that his eyes were actually closed. He supposed he wouldn’t know how the afterlife worked—it wouldn’t make any sense to him, anyway. Taking the time, he began to work on opening his eyes—that was his first priority. It took him far too long, though he didn’t know how much time had passed. It could have been an eternity, but light began to fill his vision and he slowly blinked open to see... a pale blue sky. The sun was rising somewhere behind his head, meaning he was facing west. The familiar sense of rocking back and forth gently told him he was on a ship, though one look showed it was a glorified dingy with a sail.
“You’re awake,” he froze, the voice coming from behind him, and belonging to a young woman.
“What the hell is going on here...?!” he mumbled, out of breath. Ace had never had a panic attack before, but he was beginning to think that’s what he was experiencing. “Is this hell? I... I died.”
“You did,” she agreed, not moving into his line of vision. He tried to pick up his head in order to see the woman as she spoke. “But this is very much so the real world.”
“H-how...?” his voice cracked. He saw everything so vividly when he closed his eyes, he felt the pain of being punched through by Akainu. There was no way he survived... she even said he died.
“You are still weak. Your body looks like your old one, but it is, in fact, new,” she continued, and he looked down to confirm it. He had everything except for his hat and his necklaces, the brief vision of his bright round beads stained with his blood rolling to the feet of Whitebeard flooding his memory.
Straining, between his dark unruly locks, Ace tilted his head, grunting in both pain and effort as she continued to speak. “Your Devil Fruit abilities are gone, hence your constant shivering. Now that you have a normal body temperature, moderate climates will feel exceptionally cool until you are used to them.” Her feet retreated and he stopped his attempt to pant, only for the footsteps to return, a blanket thrown over his features. At this moment his vision, his current, waking vision, was filled with the sight of the female, a beautiful young woman who could be around his age, if not a little younger, her tone flat and her gaze studying him. As if she didn’t quite know what to do herself.
“I am the holder of the Tsunagu Tsunagu no Mi, and your soul is tied with mine. That is why you are still here,” she spoke carefully, hands hovering in place above him, hesitant to move, before finally pulling the blanket up to his chin. “As far as I can tell, our connection gave you a piece of my soul, and a new body. Though how? I don’t exactly know.”
Ace stared at her blankly before his gaze returned to the sky, processing this information slowly. The world... wanted him here? For the longest time in his childhood, Ace thought that he wasn’t meant to have been born. That he was an anomaly... a mistake. Even Old Man Garp couldn’t answer the question for him, and he blinked silently. There must be something he had yet to do. His gaze slid over to the woman, who had pushed up to make sure they were going the right way on the small sailboat. It had something to do with her, and this chance...? Well, he wasn’t going to waste it. He could feel his eyes closing—a nap sounded good right about now.