Chapter Text
Ace wakes up to the feeling of cold, which is highly unusual for him.
Not a persistent cold. Not one that pierces to the bone, like Impel Down's; not one that hurts and aches and will not let itself be forgotten.
A gentle cold, a barely noticeable chill; like a slightly colder rush of air.
But Ace is fire, and cold has long since been lost to him, except perhaps when shackled, or drowning. So what is this?
He opens his eyes to find himself sitting at the edge of a cliff, feet hanging in the void, staring down endlessly rolling waves. The moment is too quiet; like all that has ever been alive has deserted this place, like it has not welcomed life for centuries or maybe longer.
Only the wind, and the water, and him, on the edge of falling.
Ace blinks. And blinks. And blinks, and blinks, in time with the rhythmical crashes of the sea against everlasting rocks, down. His feet are still hanging in the air. He should be worried about falling down, he thinks distantly.
He isn't.
The waves further down are relentless. He stares, at the dance of foam on their edges, at the infinite movement. The wave returns to the ocean; and again, and again, and again.
It takes him a minute, or an hour, or a day, to lift his gaze from the water; to move his hands from where they were resting on the grass, to pull up his feet, and scoot back, and stand.
To inhale, for the first time since he's opened his eyes.
The world explodes with sound. He can hear the roar of the waves, the howls of the wind, the calls of animals from the forest he knows hides behind his back.
Ace inhales. Exhales. Practiced movements.
The biting wind should be messing with his hair. He can barely feel it.
His skin should feel like barely-contained fire. His fingers are cold.
He closes his eyes.
He should be dead.
He-
is?
Ace inhales, exhales, stops.
Does not suffocate.
How would you kill a ghost?
He keeps waiting for the panic to hit him, for the urgency that had characterized him in life to claim him again in death; but the clouds are rolling on the horizon, the waves endlessly crashing on the shores of what he knows to be Dawn Island, and all he feels is numb, is dead.
One step back, two steps back. This is where they buried Sabo.
Isn't it fitting, for him to haunt this, the place where mourning took on its biting edge, death its cruel honesty?
One step back, two steps back.
He keeps waiting for the panic to hit him.
It finally does, when he opens his eyes again, and finds Sabo's grave gone.
oOo
"What the fuck," is the first thing he says. "What the fuck? What the fuck. What the fuck?"
His air is running out; he's never had any air to begin with.
"I died," he says, and hearing his voice speaking out loud feels strange, hearing his voice saying this feels mocking, but he- he died.
He died.
And whether or not he wanted to is out of the question, he tells himself as the instinctive protests hit him. He died. He died. He died and Luffy lived and Pops died for him and he died.
"I died," he repeats, feeling more assured, feeling like he's standing over hollow ground, but grief for one's self doesn't weigh that much, he doesn't think. "Where's Sabo's grave? Why am I here? Where's Sabo's grave?"
The empty air does not answer him. The cliff is perfectly empty, undisturbed. Ace remembers standing here and promising Luffy never to die.
Ace remembers standing here and believing his promise.
Ace remembers-
A fitting place to haunt, isn't it?
If there is no grave anymore, there will be a ghost. If there is no hope anymore, there will be waiting.
He stares at the absence of a wooden marker. The grass looks like it has never been disturbed. If he were to sit here he could almost fall asleep, listening to the sound of waves; and wait and wait and fade. It calls him, almost, like this isn't a place for him to be- like this is wrong, like this is a mistake. You died, you died, come back, you're not supposed to be here.
Ah, but Ace has never been good at dying when he was supposed to.
The cliff, for all its peacefulness, is too empty. Ace is too restless.
He picks himself up all at once. Starts breathing again with a panicked inhale, and then goes through the movements, if only for something to do. Stalks off into the forest.
It looms over him, but he knows its dangers, has since he was young. They are predictable; he does not expect them to have changed.
He's right; he's not.
The tigers do not lunge at him, teeth bared and eyes bloodthirsty, as he makes his way through the high trees and meandering streams of water. But he forgets to pay attention for one minute, gets caught up in the feeling of cold in his fingertips, the way it seems to spread if he focuses on it, and hits his head on a low overhanging branch.
The pain feels foreign; feels distant. It's still here. Ace keeps forgetting to breathe, to blink, but he's not about to give it up.
The forest is the same. It's familiar in a thousand different ways. Ace feels some low longing settle in the back of his chest, just hidden behind his heart. Nostalgia, or something crueler than that.
Here, where he and Luffy used to spar; there is where the path Makino took when visiting them used to be. The berry bushes they used to pick from are still here; if he wandered further he bets he could find his way back to Windmill village, relying solely on muscle memory.
It feels like a reminder. This used to be known; this used to be home.
His tethers feel distant still.
(He died.)
But no matter! He walks on, and on, and on. Everything is the same, except for him, maybe; except for the way when he knocks into trees there is no sound, when he steps into mud there are no footprints. Everything is the same, even him; keep moving, keep running, don't stay still, or it'll catch up to you.
Everything is the same, except when he gets home, there is no treehouse.
"What the fuck," he repeats. His confusion is starting to get redundant.
It could have collapsed, like he guesses Sabo's grave did. He supposes nobody went there anymore, that it got carried away into the ocean by the wind. That nobody cared enough about a ten-year-old boy that died a decade ago to care about his grave, about the only physical thing left of him. And what does it matter? His body wasn't even there.
That's what happens to ghosts, isn't it? Being forgotten.
And Ace was stupid, for engraving Sabo's name on his skin, like that would make him even one bit more alive. Stupid little child, that never quite managed to shake the past away.
Now even his past disappeared on him; proof of his grief destroyed, his once-shelters taken down.
This is what happens to ghosts. Silence, then stillness, then oblivion.
Well, Ace hasn't ever been good at not screaming.
oOo
He goes down to Windmill, for lack of a better thing to do. One, two, breathe, blink, one, two, breathe, blink. Pretending to be alive is so much work.
The path is shorter than he remembers, the silence heavier. He swears that as he gets down the mountain, it gets colder, not warmer. Sometimes, in between the trees, he catches a glimpse of the sea, and aches.
Back at the start, and it's disorienting to find how much he changed. This island used to be bright; it weighs him down now. He was happy, here, once; to come back to it numb is the worst kind of tragedy, he thinks. The worst kind of insult.
But then that's home, isn't it? All of your feelings and experiences in one place, muddled until nothing matters but the present.
Ah, but spirits are creatures of the past.
One step, two steps, don't forget to blink, don't forget to breathe.
Windmill feels forever away. The day stretches; what time was it when he woke up? What time is it now? He raises his head to stare at the sun and it looks muted. He forgets what he was searching for; one step, two steps, don't forget to blink, don't forget to breathe.
What is he doing here?
Solitude feels heavy. Shouldn't weights pass through ghosts?
One step, two steps-
what is he doing here?
There's a knot in his throat. He died. There's a hole in his chest. He died.
What is he doing here?
What is he doing here?
The collapse comes as a surprise. The exhaustion crushes him all at once; the grief too. Hollow ground, and it just gave out under him.
One, two, one, two, one, two. The sun goes down.
Ace closes his eyes.
One, two, one, two, one, two. Ace opens them to the night.
The stars aren't visible, from wherever he is. Ace rolls his eyes at the darkness, like it can still mock him when it isn't controlled by Teach.
He misses safety acutely. He misses- the air in his lungs. The warmth of his life.
His family.
One, two, one, two. You've always missed something, just get up.
He doesn't.
It takes him until the morning to start moving again.
oOo
Windmill Village is quiet in the light of dawn. Makino's door is still closed. Ace considers sitting, considers shouting, considers the rays of the sun against the wood of homes that look so far away, even as he rests his back against their walls.
The sun rises a bit more.
He wanders down to the docks. This is where Luffy must have set sail from; the villagers liked him, because who didn't? Ace set off from the wilderness, the bandits urging him away and Luffy grinning like a sun yet to rise behind him. It was fitting, he thinks.
The water laps on the beach, crashes and melts against smoothed-over rocks, full of shadows in the early hours of the morning. Ace puts his hand in, for the fun of it, and it burns colder than anything he's ever felt before.
"Fuck," he hisses between his teeth, and takes his hand back hurriedly, shaking it all the while. The cold recedes, leaving just the slight chill he's become accustomed to. He takes one step back from the sea, two, bites his lips against the sudden onslaught of grief.
One, two, blink, breathe. It'll be okay, that's what he used to promise to Luffy; he can tell himself the same lie.
The sun rises, and rises, and rises. He can hear the village come alive from behind him; come alive, ha.
He doesn't turn his gaze away from the sea; it's comforting in its regularity, in its indifference, in the way he can still touch it and feel something.
And, well, once Ace asked those people if he should have been born, and they said no.
Home. All of your feelings and experiences, and no matter how muddled you can still see the scars it left.
Crash, return home, crash, return home; and once again, and once again. The waves don't care for him.
He stays there. Where else? What does a ghost do? He wonders, if he tried to touch someone, if his hand would just pass through. If when Luffy comes back, victorious, he'll try to call his little brother's name and find him looking elsewhere.
Oh, but this hurts. His arms come to warp around himself instinctively, and he would be a sight to behold, if he could be seen.
Eventually the sun warms the stone he sits on. It's nice, and he lays down fully, closes his eyes, listens to the sound of waves.
My only regret, he'd said to Luffy, blood on his teeth his lungs his chest his heart, is that I won't get to see you accomplish your dream.
But- he guesses he could, now, couldn't he?
Regrets. Isn't that what holds ghosts back?
A life without regrets, and Ace guesses promises must mean something to someone, if they won't let him die while his is still broken.
Makino's door is open, now. He slips in behind a customer, and stands amid laughter and friendly conversation, feeling impossibly detached.
Luffy's wanted poster stares back at him, grinning and beaming and all that still matters in this world, and Ace breathes, breathes, breathes, and lets it feel natural.
One, two, one, two, live.
oOo
He almost climbs back to Dadan's house, to stare at the bandits, and changes his mind halfway.
It must be decade-old muscle memory that steers him towards Grey Terminal, towards this mess of lives where he used to hide and scavenge and dream of brighter, kinder things. He ducks under leaves and stumbles on branches and sticks, pacing paths that used to be worn down and now look like nobody has ever used them. All of the tree trunks across rivers have been carried away, and if the little markings in tree bark are still here, he can't find them.
Walk, and walk, and walk. You'll reach it eventually.
He emerges from the trees shadows' at midday, sun high in the sky but hidden behind clouds, wind harsh. His wariness wears him down, and he steps outside of the leaves' cover reluctantly.
Grey Terminal was never safe, was never good, it was just the only thing he had. But it carries memories still, and Ace guess that's all that makes him up, now.
He steps out, and the changes hit him all at once, but awareness comes to him in stages.
One: the trees are stained black, now.
Two: the walls are covered in soot.
Three: the air smells faintly of smoke.
Four: Grey Terminal is gone.
He stares and stares and stares, but the expanse of land where it used to pile is empty, save for burned down remains of things he can't recognize despite his best efforts. No movement, no people; the ashes are muddling the ground, it must have rained since the fire.
In a second Ace remembers, devastatingly distinctly, why he used to dislike fire. Why even when it became a part of him, he looked at it with healthy distrust.
This used to be something. This used to be something.
This used to be-
He and Sabo met here. He and Sabo were seperated here.
This used to-
And it's gone.
A part of him wants to cry. Some small, young, tired part of it whispers that it's unfair, that he died, that it's too much- a part of him wants to sit down again and forget why he ever got up again, last night.
The rest of him wants to burn something.
The rest of him wants to make someone pay; he's been told hundreds of times that revenge isn't worth it, it got him killed even, and still the call of it burns in his veins.
This is unfair. This was stolen, this was mine, give it back give it back give it back.
Tears make their way to his eyes, and he blinks and blinks and blinks them away. Crying has never gotten anyone anything, not in Goa.
Ace bites his teeth and clenches his fists and stands alone in the ruined field. Give it back, or pay for its loss.
One inhale is enough to set light to the blaze in his chest, and he strides towards the city's gates, towards the nobles' city, up and up and higher than he's allowed to be.
Well, you know what they say about pirates and rules.
oOo
Sneaking around is much easier, now that he's- well, dead.
He bypasses guards that used to terrify him, uses stairs instead of scaling walls and jumping onto sliding roofs. The people don't look at him wrong, don't look at him at all; he recognizes landscapes distantly, through a veil.
He feels lost, he feels empty, and then he feels ablaze.
(They burnt it.
They killed Sabo.)
He walks on, and on, and on, until the streets around him are clean, vibrant even; until they're less and less crowded, less and less truthful, until the windows are lined with gold and the fountains filled with clear water. Until clothes are brand new, and teeth all white, and Ace hates being here more than he hates being.
This is what should've burned. But this all stone, this is meant to last, this is meant to reign. Leftovers, in the meantime, are easy to scrap into the bin, and left to rot.
He's always known this. He's always been this. He's always- and what is he even trying to do? Last time he fought he failed. Why would it be different now?
He looks at high walls, looks at the city he hadn't even dared to enter as a child, even with a brother locked in there, and feels small, feels stupid, feels helpless.
What now? What now?
He can't do anything. It sinks in slowly. What now? Wait, and wait, and wait, that's why. Loneliness never bothered him like it bothered Luffy, but he's got time to learn, he supposes.
He stands in the middle of the empty road, unbreathing, feeling like he reached out towards something and it escaped him just so. What now? Death.
His anger burns out, and it punches a hole in his chest. It never used to run out when he was alive, and now all that it does is fail him. Don't close your eyes, don't close your eyes, it'll be fine.
"What're you doing here," asks someone behind him, voice tired but still clearly marked with the characteristic disdain of the nobles. "Hey. Move. You don't belong here."
"Fuck off, asshole," answers Ace mechanically. There's a silence.
"I'm sorry," says the voice. "What?"
And-
Wait.
Wait.
"Wait," he says out loud, moving to turn around. "Wait, you can see m-"
His question dies in his throat as he stares ahead, strangled by surprise. Ace blinks, though he doesn't need to, but then again, he would argue that he very much needs to right now.
Sabo blinks back.
"That's a weird fucking question," he says.