Chapter Text
Fire.
It felt like pure liquid fire took up all the blood in his veins, swimming throughout his body and devouring every cell until there was nothing left but flaky ashes.
He was supposed to be fire: giver and taker of life. There was none that burned more brightly than him, yet in a moment to defend the one person he swore to use his fire to always protect, it had been snuffed out. He had been snuffed out. A shaky smile donned his lips as he felt the embers that made him slowly dissipate, frizzling away into the sweat and tear permeated air.
Ace carried many many regrets with him. As innumerable as the stars, as Dadan’s crimes, as his father’s children. He’d never admit any of this. But the one thing he would never, ever regret was laying down his life for his little brother.
‘For Luffy,’ His fuzzy mind reasoned, even though it meant he would never get the chance to see his brother become the Pirate King. When Akainu shoved his fist into Ace’s chest, it was the worst physical pain the Whitebeard pirate ever felt in his entire life.
(Nothing would ever be more agonizing than the pain of losing Sabo.)
But, if it meant that Luffy got to live, he would gladly spend the rest of eternity having his heart punched out. Skin and muscle bubbled and sloughed off the bone that dried up in the sweltering heat of magma. Organs had exploded, his weakly beating heart laying somewhere by his ankle. Knees collapsed into the ground and he felt his body being embraced.
Tears fell down Ace’s face, it shouldn’t have ended like this. But it did.
Ace didn’t have a lot of energy, but he had so much to say. ‘I’m sorry’ being one of them. There was no time for apologizing and Ace would be damned if he wasted his last breath with a flimsy apology. So taking in a breath with wilted lungs, he donned the smile of a D.
Th
ank
You
For
Lov
Ing
M
e
Portgas D. Ace died at the age of 20. And then he woke up.
Dark brown eyes flickered wildly back and forth, blurs of colors streaking across his vision as his heart, his heart, beat rapidly in his chest. Panic filled him until his eyes stopped moving long enough for his nose to register the distinct smell of isopropyl alcohol. Alcohol. Alcohol. He latched onto it. Alcohol meant…infirmaries. He clenched his toes and wiggled his fingers, they were slightly stiff with some sort of material covering them. Alcohol, infirmaries and bandages. He let out a calming breath, groaning as he shuffled about beneath the covers, his bones aching in one form or the other.
With the ache came the striking thought that he should be dead.
His mind ran as fast as his eyes did. Didn’t he die at Marineford? No, he couldn't have if he was here in an infirmary. But he remembered his last words and the faint feeling of his body slipping out of Luffy’s arms and—oh Kami, Luffy. He had to find Luffy! Pushing marrow deep aches aside, he scrambled out of the bed, flopping immediately to the floor as he became entangled in the linen sheets.
“Ow…” He groaned, a shuffling mess on the wooden floor that seemed a lot darker than he remembered. It smelt of lemons. It should’ve been pine. This was not the Whitebeard infirmary. He needed to find Luffy.
He agonizingly popped up from the ground and realized his head barely passed the desk. That could not have been right. He looked around and everything in this completely unfamiliar infirmary was bigger than he was. A weird mixture of dread and confusion filled him as he looked in the full length mirror affixed to the back of the infirmary door and saw that he was a child. He looked as if he was ten again. Rounded facial features, short stature and a small scar on his lips from when a wolf bit him in the face. The only thing that remained the same were his freckles that stood against a pale pink background instead of a lightly tanned one.
Crap.
Realizing this, he was completely on high alert now. Ace rummaged through the infirmary draws, looking for anything that he could use as a weapon to defend himself. He knew of a few things. Scissors, scalpels. But as his search started to turn up fruitless, a frown formed on his lips. Either this was an incredibly understocked infirmary or the doctor kept all their things meticulously hidden because the only thing Ace found was the tiny hammer used for checking reflexes. Well, he’d just have to beat someone to death with the tiny hammer then.
With his…tiny hands and…flabby muscles.
He went back to the door of the room, cracking it open to take a peek at the unfortunate sods who would be at the receiving end of Ace’s ferocious attack. His previous thoughts about this not being the Whitebeard infirmary was further cemented by the fact there were no recognizable faces on the deck of the ship. No Marco. No Vista. No Iso. No Pops.
What happened to them? He knew they had come for him.)
Instead there were burly and skinny and not so burly or skinny men scattered around the deck doing things that Ace could not see without opening the door further. Mustaches, wild hair, no hair. Ace picked out several men he believed he could fully lay out on their ass if need be given his current…predicament.
A raven eye locked onto Ace’s and the boy immediately shut the door, flying under two cots on the opposite side of the infirmary that he hadn’t noticed before until that moment. There was a slight dip in them, meaning they were occupied. By who? Ace didn’t care. He just needed to get into position to decimate the ankles of anyone who got close to him. Ace could hear the creaking of the planks of the deck growing closer to the door, a muffled din behind the wood before the knob turned. Ace clutched the hammer tighter. Then, the knob loosened and the muffling ceased before the creaks of the deck began again but drew further away from him. After waiting just a few more seconds, Ace slid out from under the beds with a grunt and a huff, dusting off his hands on his shorts. His head turned towards the men—boys, they were boys. He turned his head towards the boys on the beds, snoring lightly and oblivious to Ace just standing there with al weapon in his hand.
Tufts of black and blonde hair were all that were visible from Ace’s position and the pirate’s curiosity piqued him. Scoping out more enemies he thought. Standing on the side of the bed with the boy with hair dark and glossy as onyx, Ace pulled the cover down and turned the boy over to get a look at his face.
Ace’s eyes widened and the tiny hammer dropped from his hands.
No, it couldn’t be. Yet, there was no one else that Ace knew with a crescent scar under the right eye. Quickly he yanked the sheet off of the wavy haired blonde, who was snoring with his mouth open. A chipped tooth.
Luffy… Sabo… ?
When the blonde began to stir, Ace ducked behind the desk. He wanted to see what their reactions were to each other without Ace’s presence influencing their choices. Sabo, or the kid who looked identical to him, yawned loudly, then scratched his back. His eyes were barely open before he shook the lump of a human in the bed next to him. He blinked blearily, head turning to scan the infirmary before gaining the expression of someone who realized they were not where they were supposed to be.
“Luffy, Luffy wake up.” ‘Sabo’ said, panicked, shaking the boy next to him.
‘Luffy’ groaned, slapping ‘Sabo’s’ hand away. “Just a few more minutes Nami…”
Nami. It was a name familiar to Ace. The name of his little brother’s orange haired navigator he met all the way back in Alabasta. It was the first and last time he saw Luffy with his crew.
“I’m not Nami.” ‘Sabo’ said, shaking ‘Luffy’ faster. “Wake up you dumb idiot! Geez, you’re even harder to wake up than Ace! And he had narcolepsy.”
Ace’s eyes widened. It…it really was them wasn’t it? But how.
“Luffy…Sabo…?” Ace said weakly, tears threatening to well in his eyes as she stepped from behind the desk, making his presence known.
Sabo turned his head towards Ace. “Ace….?”
Luffy, who was fully awake now, leaped from the cot without a moment of thought and barreled into Ace, nearly sending the two careening to the floor. “ACE! I missed you so much!” Luffy cried, gripping at his shirt.
Ace wanted to squeeze Luffy back, tell him that everything was going to be alright now that he was here. But, he was torn. Well, more like paralyzed as he could only stare at Sabo. Alive and breathing not dead.
Sabo was always the more composed of the three of them. So he didn’t become a fountain of tears like Luffy did or like how Ace was about to become. Yet, Ace didn’t miss the way Sabo’s shoulders and lips quivered, eyes glossing over with yet to be shed tears.
“What’s with that look, Ace? It’s almost like you’ve seen a ghost.” He manages to put on a smirk, like the smug bastard Ace remembered him to be. But Ace is still frozen. He wanted to hug Luffy, but he also wanted to punch Sabo in his big stupid face and demand why the hell he had to go get blown up by Celestial Dragons at the ripe old age of 12!
Luffy broke him out of his stupor when he noticed the haunted expression on Ace’s face. “Oh yeah!” He sniffled, wiping away snot and tears on Ace’s shirt. “Sabo is alive. He was alive the whole time, but hit his head really hard and forgot about us. He had amnesty—”
“—Amnesia, Luffy—”
“—ambrosia—”
“—that’s even further away—!”
“—but he’s here now and remembers us all now, see!”
And Ace did see. He still didn’t know how to channel all the conflicting emotions that whirled around inside of him like a storm. So he did the next best thing he thought of.
“Idiots!” He punched the two of them on the heads, large goose eggs forming. “Why’d you…why’d you have to—” Tears dripped down his eyes as he remembered Luffy falling down from the sky, the entire mast of a ship under his arm and water whipping around him to signify his grand entrance.
He felt himself being pulled into a hug and he melted into the embrace of his two brothers.
“I’m glad to see you two are up and feeling better now.” A new voice said, interrupting them.
Ace growled, sticking his arm out in front of his two brothers. His eyes flickered to the hammer discarded on the side of the bed. “Who are you and where the hell are we!” He demanded. It was a complete one 180 from the borderline sobbing mess that he was. The not quite dried tears made him look like a terrified brat with no bite to his bark rather than someone to be taken seriously.
“The Lunar Eclipse!” A newer, more jovial sounding voice popped up.
“He didn’t ask you Roger, he asked me.”
“Yeah, but I’m the captain so I have to answer all the important questions aboard this ship.”
“Oh yeah, then tell me where our ship is longitudinally.”
“First off, unfair question. Second off, ask Gaban.”
Ace didn’t tune into the two fools bickering. His mind singling out that one name. Roger, as in Pirate King Gol D. Roger? The demon who made his life a living hell even before he was born? There was a fire in Ace that ignited, one that had been smothered by the love his brothers had given him but now exploded outward again seeing the face that had been smeared all over the poster with the highest bounty in the world.
“Hell, no!” Ace shouted. “You stay away from me! And my brothers.” The young pirate pointed a finger at Roger.
“Ace…” Frowned Sabo, who knew all too well about the struggles Ace had with being the ‘son of the devil’.
“Get me off this ship! I want nothing to do with the Pirate King!”
Roger gave the man next to him a puzzled look. “Pirate King? What the hell is that? I don’t care about being a king over anything, adventure is what I live for!”
Ace shook his head. “Ugh. Just forget about that then, I just don’t want to go anywhere with you!”
Ace grabbed his brother’s hands, ignoring their protests as he dragged them out of the infirmary looking for a way to exit the ship. They shouldn’t have been protesting anyway! They should have been the ones dragging him instead to prevent him from committing outright murder!
“Eh? Why would you want to go?” Roger asked confusedly, tilting his head to the side. And how did the bastard even know his name? “Especially since you and your brothers have been here for 2 years already.”
Ace halted in his tracks.
What?