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Chapter Text

An insistent clicking could be heard in the passenger seat of the old truck, they had been driving for 5 hours and still had a good 3 more before reaching the nearest town. The blond let out a sigh and turned to his passenger visibly irritated.

“Ace, could you please stop that? It´s not easy to ignore while trying to stay awake for 8 hours”

“I told you I could drive us there in the second half”

“And getting a chance of dying because you fell asleep? I prefer being a zombie at the wheel”

The freckled was about to protest when a little whimper was heard in the back seat, he turned around to see his 2 year-old baby brother now awake and looking at them sleepy.
“Good morning Lu~ had a good sleep?”

The boy smiled at him before giving a big yawn and look for his stuffed whale Laboon, only to notice that it was dropped to the car floor, causing him to start whining.
“I don´t think I can put up with him crying right now, I swear I´m gonna lose it”

“I’ll move to the back seat with Lu, just pull over for a second”

After the car stopped, Ace quickly moved to the back seat and rescued Laboon from the floor giving it back to his little brother. The car went back to road, silent except for the baby giggles.

Ace kept distracting Lu the rest of the way, looking over to his brother a couple of times; he could see how tense the blond was and that really worried him, they worked their asses off to finally get their own home, and they were planning on finally living peacefully… but an 8 hour ride without sleep breaks was not a good start, even less with how their night before went.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Their landlord had given them 3 moths to vacate their house, apparently they sold the lot to some Arlong guy who was planning on making some private-deluxe complex in that area and everyone living there had to move out.

Sabo had been working a 16 hr. shift and the news was like a punch in the gut for him.

“We need to find somewhere to live as soon as possible Bo, we cannot afford ourselves be homeless with Lu again”

“I know, but houses are ridiculously expensive here. If we move there we´ll end up losing more money than we earn… and hotels are definitely NOT an option again”

They spent the days looking for affordable places, they could feel time crawling at their backs every day that went by without any progress, until remaining a week they found their salvation.

“Sabo, look!” the older quickly ran to his brother with his phone in hand “I think we have enough to afford buying this house”

“You want to BUY it?!”

“That´s the reason we´ve had been working so hard! To have our own home!”

“Yeah, but not yet! It´s gonna be an extreme loss all at once!”

“But at the long run it´ll be better, check it out! It has a farm on the backyard so we can work there, sell what we plant and eat with it, and even have some animals in the future! Also, apparently has been abandoned for 10 years so it´s really cheap! Look, it’s basically free!”

“Abandoned for 10 years? Really cheap? Talking about some horror movie shit…”

They looked through the photos; the house didn´t look so bad so they decided to call the number that appeared in the info. The owner was an old man that was really desperate to sell the house, due to it being abandoned and not in the best conditions it had acquired the ‘haunted house’ title by the town, so the original price dropped ridiculously; time to vacate was practically knocking on their door so they decided to accept.

When the day came they hadn´t been able to sleep well for being packing so they were at edge, and the fact that Arlong´s guys forced themselves in the building and literally kicked out everyone didn´t help.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

After another 3 tiring hours they finally reached their new home, the first thing they noticed was the incredible amount of crows in the roof and the owner waiting for them at the doorframe.

“Ah, there you are guys” the man approached them and gave them the keys “Do not worry about those pigeons, they get easily scared with scarecrows or loud noises”
Sabo took the keys looking over to the crop land, it was empty but the ground looked really good, they shouldn´t have any problems with cultivating; and in the middle of it a red barn that seriously needed a new coat of paint. The two-floor house had a pretty dirty look, the once white paint was now yellowish with moss near the roof and ground; the windows were obscured by dust, the door was the best looking thing, it looked like it was changed recently. He then went to take a look at their backyard, as soon as he approached, a bunch of crows took fly escaping the area, he didn’t mind tho, they were probably going to leave as soon as they kept seeing movement there; about the backyard itself, it was small, it had two flowerbeds that were totally dead; had a covered up well in the middle and a stone path that got lost over the grass at the end of the yard; and there was a wooden door near the floor, the outside entrance to a basement.

“So… Electricity, you have a gasoline-based electric generator on the basement; there´s enough water in the tank to flush the toilets, but if you want to shower I recommend you take water from the well, it´s clean enough to take showers but boil it if you want to drink from it; about neighbors… you only have one”.
The man explained while pointing at the locations of each thing. “The barn smells awful, and needs a thorough cleaning before putting any animals there, apparently a wild animal went to give birth there and left everything bloody, I cleaned as much as I could but still smells” Sabo made a grim face at the mental image “The nearest town is 40 minutes that way, Makino is the owner of the biggest store, she´s a sweetheart, I think she´ll even give you discounts if the baby goes with you, she can’t have children of her own so she has a soft spot for them”

The blond looked over to his brother, who was tippy toeing his way to the door, his big eyes shining in curiosity over the new place, that image made him smile unconsciously.
“Heh, yeah, we´ll keep that in mind… who´s our only neighbor?”

“Bluejam, he lives about 5 minutes over there, if you want to visit him just follow the dirt trail, he made it over the time, he´s been kind enough to come and weed the place”
“I´ll keep it mind sir, thank you for the info”

“No worries, if you need something just call me, the house is old so I´ll understand if you have questions about it” the man entered his car and waved his hand goodbye before leaving them in their new home.

Sabo tossed the keys to Ace to open the house while he took the things out of the truck. The dark haired teen open the door, the first thing that greeted him was the smell of humidity in the air; he looked around the first floor, the wooden floor looked in good condition and didn´t creaked when stepped on; the walls on the other hand had pretty old paint in them and some dubious precedence stains in them; the first room he could see was the living room… or so it seemed based on the chimney on the corner; next to the living room were the stairs, the handrail appeared to have been replaced recently. He watched as his baby brother made his way to the corridor, which had a really thick wall separating it from the living room and stairs; he walked behind Lu procuring the younger steps, seeing that the corridor ended with the kitchen/dining room and a big glass sliding-door, through it he could see the backyard.
In the middle of the corridor was a door that seemed to lead to the basement, it had a few holes because of termite but what caught his eye were some marks in the floor right beneath the door, like if something had been scratching there.

“Some help out here??” Sabo shouted for his brother to help him carry out the sofa, snapping him out of thought before running over to help.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When they finally finished moving the stuff out and accommodating it on the first floor it was already night and they were having a nutritious cold instant soup that they packed for lunch while Luffy was eating a handful of cereal.

“The owner said the house has 3 rooms, so each of us gets their own”

“That´s good to hear, but tonight we´ll have a sleepover on the same mattress or we won´t sleep tonight”

“Yeah… if we try to put each bed in the rooms we´ll be sleeping by tomorrow”

Ace looked around their new home, it wasn´t the best place but it was definitely good.

“Hey Bo, why do you think this place was so cheap? I mean, the crop field is huge, the house has 2 floors and there´s even a little backyard… the price should´ve been at least 4 or 5 times bigger”

“Nah, I mean sure, it should´ve been way more expensive, but the house has no electricity other that the generator, not enough water to shower and we´ll have to deal without internet for a while”

“Yeah… we´re lucky there’s even phone signal”

“Plus, the fact that this place was labeled ‘Haunted’ after being abandoned doesn´t really helps on selling it”
It was true, the nearest town apparently was small, and the smaller the place the more superstitious it is.

After they were done with dinner they took one of the mattresses upstairs, noticing that unlike the first floor the wood creaked at every step, they also saw that the last door was nailed shut.

“That´s weird… I´ll call the owner tomorrow in case he did that for a reason”

“A reason?”

“Like… a broken window that he couldn´t repair, or wild animals, or something…”

“But the front and back doors are new, even the back door is fully glass”

“That´s why I´m gonna call him”

They ended up putting the mattress in the floor of the second room; didn´t even changed their clothes, grabbed their baby brother and lay down with him between them to keep him safe. Luffy smiled widely when he realized that they were sleeping together and made grabby hands to them, the brothers returned the smile and each one grabbed one hand, making him drift to sleep almost immediately.

Neither of them could hold back a wider smile at that, they kissed each of Lu´s cheeks and went to sleep.

None of them noticing the eyes that looked at them from the darkest parts of their new home.

Chapter Text

The morning came with an unpleasant discovery: the crows at the rooftop took the job of alarm clock and started to squawk as soon as the sun rose.

That startled Luffy awake, making him start crying, adding to the loud morning of the first day at their new home.

Ace took Lu in his arms and started rocking him, giving him little smooches in the cheek to try and calm him down. Both older brothers had a sore back for the position they slept in, and with their loud waking they were pretty irritable, they needed the baby´s laugh and smile to ease them.

Sabo groaned as he stood up, they needed to go to town for seeds and cultivation tools, restock their food and get a hammer to open the door. But they needed to shower and have breakfast, and to do that they had to start the electricity generator and pull water from the well.

“Ace, do you want to go to the spooky basement or the horror movie well?”

“Still with the horror movie scenario?”

“Come on, try to deny it”

Ace let out a chuckle and shook his head.

“I´ll go to the basement, if I scream for help grab Luffy and leave before you die too” He joked while he stood up and put his shoes on.

Ace went to the basement with his brother; the floor of the place was wood covered in old hay strands, there were also some hay bales stacked on a corner, he took one and sat Luffy there while he turned on the generator; right after doing so he saw something between the wooden floorboards, he tried to reach it but it was too deep down, he didn´t want to break the floor so he decided to ignore it.

Sabo went to the backyard, being greeted by a lot of crows that took fly again when he stepped outside, he sighed and removed the cover off the well, a strong smell attacking him and almost making him gag.

“Ugh… this smells awful…”

He took the bucket and started to bring water out. The water was definitely clean and didn´t smell bad, but for some reason the well was just foul. He brought the buckets to the kitchen and turned the stove on.

He felt a small grab on his leg and looked down to see his baby brother hugging him, eyes staring at him with love; then he felt a bigger grab on his arm, being Ace who was hugging him from the other side.

“And this?”

“Shut up and let us love you”

Sabo laughed and returned both hugs as he could, he loved his brothers, and every way to show love was very welcome.

~~~~~~~~

After breakfast and a bucket bath they hopped on their truck and headed to town, the drive was much more enjoyable than the previous day, all three were feeling way better and even on the mood to sing along the radio… well, the elders, Luffy only clapped along the music.

When they arrived, the town it was just as expected: small place, unpaved streets, old houses, old trucks and cars. It was like a place taken out a cowboy’s movie with the difference that there were trees everywhere instead of desert.

They entered a store next to a bar and were greeted by a green-haired woman who immediately cooed at the baby. She looked to be around her 40s, and had a maternal aura around her.

“Welcome to Party’s Shop, my name is Makino, how may I help you?” the woman´s eyes were locked on the toddler, probably unconsciously.

“Good morning Ms.-“

“Please, only Makino~”

“S-sorry… Good morning Makino, we´re looking for some cultivation tools and seeds…and food…and a hammer…”

The lady chuckled at shyness of the blond and pointed to the first aisle “gardening and repair is there” then pointed at the last one “food there”

The brothers went to the indicated aisles and started picking what they needed “Can I ask you guys a question” they heard Makino ask.

“Sure, what is it?”

“Are you the married couple that bought the crow house?”

Ace blushed furiously at that and peeked out from behind the shelf “Two things! One: yes, we bought it. Two: WE´RE BROTHERS!!”

Makino looked at them horrified for a second before her face turned as red as the teen. “Oh my god! I´m so sorry!! I only heard that a couple with a baby bought the farm, and you ARE buying farming stuff and have a baby with you so-”

Sabo approached her with his brother in arms and sat him on the counter. “This is Luffy, our baby brother”. He knew that it was an uncomfortable moment for these two, so he tried to ease it.

She looked at Luffy and her eyes immediately started to shine again “Ohh~ He´s so cute~ Look at his big eyes~” Makino already loved him, it was a fact “How old is he?”

“He just turned 2”

“Hello Luffy~ how are you~?” The toddler looked at her and smiled before making grabby hands at her. Sabo nodded and Makino picked him up. “Hello? Not gonna answer me baby?”

“He won´t do it, he hasn´t talked since an accident we had a little while ago”

That shocked her, and it was like only then she noticed the scar under the baby´s eye, the scar that occupied half of the blonde’s face blinding his eye and a scar that peeked out from the neck and hands of the shirt of both older brothers.

Before she could apologize for that, Ace came and put everything on the counter. “I´d like not to tell my whole life right now, thanks”

“Right… sorry” Makino put down the baby and started to calculate their total. “If you ever want to eat in town I offer you to come to my restaurant right next to this shop, my husband and I are the owners of both places, I´ll give you a full meal on the house… for the uncomfortable welcoming I gave you…”

“Thanks, we´ll keep it in mind” Sabo thanked, paid and got Luffy out of the store, being followed by his brother, who was carrying everything to the truck. “Want some help?”

“No, I just want to get out of here”

“Right… but you didn’t need to be so rude, she just asked a question”

“A very intimate one”

“It’s not like she knew…”

Ace shook his head without saying a word, it was a sour memory and just wanted to get home, Sabo let him have it, and so as soon as everything was on the trunk of the truck and Lu on his child seat, they returned to their home.

~~~~~~~~

After they were done accommodating the tools and preparing themselves to start planting Sabo called the old owner of the house to ask about the nailed door.

“A door is nailed-shut? I don´t remember doing that”

“So can we open it?”

“Yeah, maybe I did it years ago and I forgot why, so as far as I remember there shouldn´t be any problem opening it”

Sabo thanked the old man and hung up.

“Can we open it?” Ace approached him following a little Luffy who had way too big boots for him.

“Yeah, but let´s do it after we plant, the crops are more important”

The brothers spent the rest of the morning and all afternoon preparing the land, planting the seeds and fertilizing it, Luffy imitating their actions, making him feel like a great farmer. They finished after some hours, leaving the crops ready to grow.

That evening, after they were done and had dinner, they headed up to build the bases of the mattresses; Sabo decided to keep the first room, which was right at the end of the stairs, and Ace decided to keep the second one so Luffy´s room was the farthest from the stairs. When done, they headed to the last room and removed the nails; they opened the door and saw the floor was really dirty and the window was also nailed shut.

“I think you were right Bo, the owner nailed it to keep wild animals outside” Ace said pointing at the door, there were scratches at the inside part of it and even on the door knob.

“Geez… what kind of animal can do that?”

“A big one? I mean, we have a big ass forest next to us”

The toddler went to the window in curiosity while his brothers were talking; he smiled at the dusty window and reached his hand to make figures with it, erasing the old shapes of fingers that were marked there.

The middle brother went and lifted him up when he noticed the dust disaster the youngest was doing “Don´t do that Lu, now you have to wash your hands”.

Luffy laughed at this and brought his dirty hands to his brother´s face, leaving him with blackish little hand marks all over.

 Ace smiled at that image and shook his head laughing a little bit “Are you gonna shower together or do you want me to wash Luffy?”

“Nah, I´ll do it myself, it´s been a while since we showered together~”

Sabo smiled and kissed the baby´s cheek, earning another giggle from him.

Ace saw his brothers walk away and decided to put Luffy´s bed by himself; getting the water at the right temperature and showering Lu was gonna take a while so he decided to go on with it. While he was arming the mattress base, he noticed a crow watching him from outside the window.

“Huh… I wonder why there are so many crows…”

Chapter Text

The next day started the same as before: the crows squawking their lungs out as soon as the sun came out, Luffy getting startled awake and crying, and the brothers consoling him; they knew maybe it was bad to spoil him like that, but they couldn´t stand to hear their baby brother´s cry.

After breakfast they went to check the barn, it smelled awful the closer they got to it, so that Sabo had to carry Lu so he didn´t ran away from the smell. Ace opened the door, the smell got even worse as soon as he did.

“Ugh… it smells like shit…”

“I mean, there is probably actual shit in here, the windows are broken so animals could´ve came in… even the owner told me that one of them gave birth here”

The oldest approached a big stain in the ground right in the middle of the place. “Yeah, that´s definitely blood here in the ground”. Sabo went to see the stain too, confused at what kind of animal could´ve lost THAT much blood during birth.

Before any of them could say anything more on the matter some footsteps were heard from the entrance of the barn, they turned back to look at a man that was very comfortably making his way to them, smiling like if they were long-life friends.

“You guys must be my new neighbors! Sorry that I came to visit just now, I was kind of busy! My name is Bluejam”

The man was very tall, long messy black hair, there were a few teeth missing. The brothers knew it was awful to judge someone based on their appearance, but something about him just felt really out of place.

Luffy started to whimper anxiously at the sight of the stranger in front of him, he didn´t like him one bit.

“Oh… y-yeah, the owner told me about you” Sabo cracked a smile as politely as he could, trying to keep the toddler calm “My name is Sabo, these are my brothers Ace and Luffy… Sorry for not going to visit you either, we’re still trying to get used to this place and our new routine”

“Yeah yeah, is understandable, don´t worry my friends”

The brothers were really uncomfortable at this point; this man just came out of nowhere acting like they were the bests of friends, entering their property like that. Also there was Luffy, at his barely 2 years old he always had a good judgment: he´ll always smile at people he liked, good people, and whimper at people he didn´t, bad people. And he was always right.

“So, uh… how can we help you?”

“Ah! I was wondering if you guys needed some help in the farm, or around your house. You know how living here is… you got to make a living out of something, ha ha!”

The brothers exited the barn with the man basically on their talons, Ace getting mad at how the man’s corporal language and voice tone gave away that he wasn´t going to take a ‘No’ for an answer.

“We´re doing pretty well actually, don´t need any help”

“Not because we´re being rude or something!” Sabo quickly said, scared at the instant change on the man´s face “We just want to learn how to make things on our own… and we don´t have money to pay you with”

Bluejam face went from a frown to a smile again after a couple of seconds.

“Oh, I don´t need money, I´m fine with having something to eat, really~”

Luffy started to whine harder, he didn´t like that man one bit and just wanted him to go away.

“N-no…” Sabo started rocking Luffy in his arms trying to calm him down, it was obvious that the man found their baby annoying “We´re fine alone, really”

“Now now, don´t be humble guys, I´m okay with that~”

The persistence of the older man was really starting to piss off Ace “Look man, we´re telling you that WE ARE FINE, we DO NOT want nor need your help”

Bluejam let out a loud laughter before shaking his head in amusement.

“I know how you teenagers are, not wanting to bother other people, but it´s okay~ I´ll come by tomorrow” And without waiting for an answer he left.

“Are you FUCKING KIDDING ME?!”

The scream startled the toddler, not being able to put on any longer with the stress and started crying, leaning in the blond´s shoulder. The older brother sighed and looked over to the freckled.

“Why don´t you go ahead to the house, you need to calm down a bit…”

“But he just self-hired!!”

“Ace, please” Sabo made a gesture to Luffy “I know you´re angry, so am I, but you need to calm down a little… we´ll be there in a bit, okay?”

The older brother let out an exasperated snarl and walked to the house at fast speed, cursing under his breath.

The blond shook his head and stroked his baby´s back “Don´t worry Lu, you´ll see that when we get there he´ll be better”. Sabo closed the door of the barn behind him without noticing, and Luffy without being able to tell him, about the grayish fingers that were starting to come out of the ground right where the blood stain was.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

It took them a while to get Luffy to sleep after dinner, he was too stressed out by everything that happened that morning, but when he finally dozed off, the brothers were able to talk about the matter.

“Sabo, we can´t let that man work with us, we don´t have enough money nor food to pay another person”

“I know, but I don´t think it´ll be a good idea to just tell him ‘hey, get out of our house or we´ll call the police on you’ ”

“And why the hell not?? Luffy was too stressed with that man, and you know that his gut is ALWAYS right, the guy´s probably a motherfucking serial killer that´s trying to get our key so he can rob us and kill us!”

“Okay, first off: lower your voice or you´ll wake Lu up. Second: I tell you is a bad idea BECAUSE he´s a bad guy”. Ace looked confused at that logic, so the blond kept explaining. “The old owner said that Bluejam came to weed the place sometimes, so he probably knows the place better than us at this point, maybe he knows about secret passages or something”

“Really, Bo?”

“I´m just saying, this is a really old house, and there are places where the walls just seem too thick, like the space under the stairs or the wall that divides the hall and the living room”

“The basement entrance is there”

“Yeah, but it´s right where the wall ends, there´s a lot of space wasted”

The raven-haired teen let out a sigh and hid his face behind his hands. He didn´t want to get into a fight with his brother because of that, but the situation was getting him on his nerves.

“This is a mess…” he said as he dropped into the sofa.

“We´ll try to stay on his good side, ok? We’ll make him work where we can see him, and not coming into the house or near Luffy without one of us keeping a close eye on him. How does that sound?”

“Well… I’m not gonna convince you otherwise, will I?”

Sabo shook his head, making Ace sigh for millionth time.

“Fine… but I´M gonna be with Luffy making sure that man does not comes near him at all, got it??”

“If 2 years ago I told you that you were gonna be this protective of the baby you could´ve flipped me off~”

“…Shut it”

~~~~~~~~~~~~

That night Luffy was woken up by the creaking floor of the second floor, steps approaching his room. His stomach had a little hurtful feeling when he saw his door open and one of his brothers coming in.

Luffy saw as that person that looked like Sabo removed the baby safety bars of the bed and hopped in with him. He felt scared, and wanted to cry the moment he felt this ‘person’ that resembled his brother giving him a kiss on the forehead and laying besides him, imprisoning him in its arms.

The toddler wanted to cry, scream for his real brothers. This thing with him looked like Sabo, but the feeling it was giving away was anything but loving. Its touch was harsh and cold, the fingers way too hard to be his brother´s, the embrace was too hard and there was no breathing or heartbeat.

The fear froze him to the point where he couldn´t even cry, the embrace was hurting him more and more, making him whine in pain. To his surprise, the presence quickly loosened the grip, not hurting him anymore but still making him unable to get out.

Luffy closed his eyes as hard as he could, trying to go back to sleep, trying to ignore the cold presence beside him.

Chapter Text

The brothers have never been as uncomfortable as they were the next day.

“Hah, I never thought gardening could be so entertaining” Bluejam said with a smile while watering the sprouts.

Sabo returned a crooked smile “Y-yeah… It´s also safe enough to keep Luffy close” he pointed at Ace, who was teaching Luffy to properly hold a watering can without all the water getting out.

“But make sure you keep him away from the tractor or you´ll have a toddler pancake, HAH!!” the man laughed loudly at his joke, ignoring completely the grimace on the blonde’s face “Or baby in tiny parts that you´ll have to spend days searching for-“

“Uh, Bluejam… I´d appreciate it if you didn´t made those kind of jokes about my baby brother being dead? Even less reference that we might kill him…please”

The man stopped laughing and looked at him with a forced smile. “Hey come on, it´s just a joke~ Don´t be so bitter~”

“R-right…” He saw Ace staring at him from his place, so he made a sign to go bring lunch outside. “Hey, uh… we´re not used to have people working with us, and we really like to spend the day with Lu, so… how about your gigs are from morning until lunch? So you get to have free time too?”

“You really love your brother, are you sure that he´s actually your brother? You act like if you were his mother, ha!”

“Maybe is just the age difference” Sabo shrugged it off lifting the wheelbarrow.

“Let me do it” Bluejam basically snatched it from the younger´s hands and started pushing it to the house, leaving the teen on his spot. As he approached the house he started to slow down, staring at the windows of the house.

“Are you looking for something?” He got startled at the oldest brother´s question; he looked down to see Ace holding 3 plates of food and Luffy carefully holding his plastic bowl of fruit puree.

“I was just looking for uh… the basement, to leave the wheelbarrow!”

“We’ll leave that thing on the barn, you can´t push it to the basement, there´s stairs there”

“O-oh, yeah right! I forgot about it, I mean, I saw the barn empty yesterday so-“. He was cut off by Ace, who had an annoyed look by now

“Just go and leave it in the barn, lunch is ready”

~~~~~~~~~

After lunch, Bluejam apologized again.

“It wasn´t my intention to look weird back then, seriously!”

Ace completely ignored him and took the plates inside the house, leaving him with his brothers.

“Ah… I’ll see you tomorrow then…” Sabo only nodded and tucked his baby brother so he could take a little nap “Bye Luffy”

At the mention of his name, the toddler whined a little, not wanting the scary man to even talk to him.

“Hey now, it´s rude to not answer back to your elders”

“He won´t answer, hasn´t talked in about a year, the doctor said is his coping mechanism”

“Ah? You shouldn´t spoil him like that! Let him man up!!” Bluejam knew that those kinds of comments will make the brothers mad, but he couldn´t help himself, he really hated weaklings.

“Look man, we will let Lu deal with trauma the way he pleases until he’s old enough to go see a pediatric psychologist to help him with it”

The older man shook his head and sighed helplessly before turning around and leaving the place, mumbling under his breath “Psychologist… a good beat up should be enough…”

Sabo was sure Bluejam didn´t intended him to listen to that, which only made him shiver worse before entering his house and locking the door behind him.

“Ace, we need to talk”

“Are we finally firing him and calling the police on him?”

“No, even though I wish… I was right, it´s for the best if we try to keep us on his good side”

“Aw, c’mon! Why can’t we just tell him to fuck right off??”

“Right now he went away mumbling about wanting to beat Luffy up!!”

“Giving us more reasons to report him!!” The freckled approached his brothers “Let´s just go to the police! Or sheriff! Whatever the town has!”

The blond sighed and shook his head, rocking the toddler in his arms to get him to sleep. “But what if they just come to question him? What if they don´t do anything on the matter and just leave him there, with us, and angrier? He’s definitely stronger than us, he can easily win in a fight if he wants us to pay for it”

Ace let himself fall into the couch and covered his face “So? We’re stuck with him??”

“I don´t want that either, but we just arrived, Bluejam has lived here for YEARS. What do you think will happen when the outsiders go to the police to get someone they´ve known for way longer arrested??”

The oldest groaned and laid completely on the couch, making grabby hands to get his baby brother with him. “Fine, we’ll do things your way…”

“Thanks…” with all the pain of his heart he gave Lu to Ace “I swear that if things get too bad with him we’ll go straight to the police…or sheriff”

Ace gave kisses on Lu´s cheek before tucking him next to him “By the way, yesterday you showered with Luffy, did you accidentally hurt him?”

Sabo looked terrified at that implication, answering Ace´s question “HOW COULD YOU THINK THAT?!”

“Calm down! This morning I noticed that he had bruises in the arms, so I thought maybe he slipped and you grabbed him a little bit too hard trying to stop the fall”

That state scared him even more, kneeling in front of them and quickly removing Lu´s shirt, feeling his hands shake when he saw the huge bruises on the little one´s arms and a little bit around the scar on his chest.

“L-Luffy… where did you get these? ...”

The toddler shifted uncomfortable, eyes drifting to the stairs. He pointed at the ceiling where his room was situated.

“In… your room?”

“Oh yeah, the baby safety bars of the bed were down”

Ace immediately regretted saying that, Sabo looked one step from a heart attack. “They were down!? He could´ve fell! What if it was how he got the bruises? They could´ve been so much worse if he fell on his head! Why did you just tell me now!??”

“CALM DOWN, GODDAMIT!”

“HOW CAN YOU TELL ME TO CALM DOWN WHEN LUFFY HAS BRUISES LIKE THESE??!”

“Shut the fuck up! You’re scaring him!”

The baby looked at both of his brothers horrified; he hated it when they fought, he hated loud sounds, so he instinctively covered his hears and shut his eyes closed while curling up in a little ball.

Sabo’s look softened immediately and rubbed his brother’s arm softly. “Sorry Lu… But I’m really worried about your bruises… how did you even get them?” He asked in a sweet voice to calm him down.

Luffy started to relax at the touch and his eyes wondered to the place where his room was, pointing at it again.

“Ok, it was in you room, but how?”

He started to play with his fingers uncomfortable, not knowing how to tell him about the creature that looked exactly like him that went to his room that night.

“Don’t want to tell me?”

He whined softly and hid his face on Ace’s chest, not wanting to continue thinking about it.

The blond sighed at that and scratched his head, he was nervous, scared that maybe Lu did it on accident while he was sleeping, making the bars go down and hurting himself; because that meant that he´s not safe in his bed and could fall and hurt himself worse.

“Do you think maybe we need to change the bars?”

“I don’t know… maybe it was a one-time thing? Let´s give it another night, if they go down again then we’ll change them, ok?”

Sabo nodded not fully convinced, but he decided to let it go. One part of him wanting the bars going down so he could change them and be calm, but the other terrified that they did it again and his baby brother could get hurt.

~~~~~~~~~

That night, Ace woke up around 3:00 a.m. when a loud crack in the wooden floor was heard near his door. He groaned angrily and was about to cover himself up with his sheets again when he heard Luffy’s little sobs. They were really quiet, like trying not to wake them up.

He stood up and exited his room to go to the youngest’ one, the floor beneath him didn´t crack that much, so he wondered why the sound had been so loud.

When he opened the door the sight surprised him: Sabo was inside Luffy’s bed, hugging the toddler while sleeping. Ace smiled fondly, smile that was quickly wiped out when he saw his baby brother watching him in terror, shaking a lot.

“Lu? What’s wrong?” The toddler´s eyes were drifting to Sabo’s figure, that´s when he noticed the firm grab that the blond had on the younger. “Hey Sabo, wake up, you’ll hurt Lu-“

His words died instantly when he saw his brother´s face, the grayish tone his skin had, old blood marks that were dripping through his cheeks and the completely white eyes that penetrated into his soul.

Ace’s first reaction was to quickly grab Luffy and pull him to his chest. The creature that made a poor impression of his younger brother didn’t seem to like that, as he opened his mouth wide and his face started to deform. Limbs way too long started to appear through the floor trying to grab him, causing him to scream in panic before running out of the room.

The floor cracked loudly beneath him while making his way to Sabo’s room, they needed to get out. But he heard heavy footsteps behind him, feeling the presence of the creature following him, almost breathing on his neck… if the creature had breathing.

As soon as he reached the stairs the creature was already at his side, he felt it’s grabbing on the arm, cold and strong. It was hurting him, it felt like those fingers were trying to rip his skin off; before he could make any sound Sabo’s door opened, revealing a scared Sabo looking at them, confused, and the creature disappearing the moment the door flew open.

“The fuck are you doing?! Why are running and screaming at this hour? Why are you even running and screaming??”

“D-didn’t you see that?!” Ace’s body was shaking uncontrollably; he kept a sobbing Luffy buried in his arms.

“The only thing I’m seeing is you scaring Luffy…”

The oldest turned to the baby and caressed his back “H-hey Lu, the monster is gone…”

Sabo groaned and shook his head “Don’t say stuff like that, you’ll give him nightmares”

“Wha- Sabo, you need to believe me! There was a monster there in Luffy’s room, it looked like you and was in his bed!” he turned to the youngest “Right Lu? You saw it too”

“Of course, ask the kid about monsters, it’s not like his imagination won’t go crazy and side with you”

Ace looked at him like if he had grown a third eye “You seriously don’t believe me?! You were the one freaking about Luffy’s bruises! We need to get out of here NOW!!”

The blond groaned again and covered his face exasperated “It was probably a hallucination of your narcolepsy, and I AM worried about the bruises, but come on…monsters?”

“Was not! I know how to differentiate them! And there was DEFINITLY a monster there!!”

“Yeah… I can see that. Go to sleep”

“Sa-!”

“GO TO SLEEP” the middle brother said before shutting the door in the oldest’ face, leaving him incredulous, he could’ve never thought that Sabo couldn’t believe him… even less if it involved Luffy.

The freckled started shaking again and turned to Lu’s room, feeling a heavy atmosphere coming from it.

He sighed and took the baby with him to the room; he didn’t exactly believed in anything…but if there was really someone out there, he was praying that nothing happened to them…

Nah, fuck it.

He took some pillows and went to sleep in the truck with his baby brother.

Chapter Text

He was startled awake by a knocking in the window, he looked out and saw Sabo’s angry face looking back at him.

“Did you really sleep out here?? With Luffy?!”

Ace sighed heavily, he could already tell that this was gonna be a horrible day.

“I’m telling you! There was a monster in there! I was NOT sleeping there”

“Get the fuck out of there”

The oldest opened the truck and got out, feeling his back and neck killing him for his sleeping position. Then reached at the back seat, taking Luffy out of the pillow fortress he was in.

Sabo snatched the toddler from Ace’s hands and started looking at him, noticing that there were new bruises on his arms.

“What the fuck? Look at what you did!!”

“I’m telling you it wasn’t me!! There was a monster in Luffy’s room that looked like you and was in the bed with him!”

“MONSTERS DON’T EXIST, ACE!!”

“They do! They’re living in this goddam house! And they’re hurting Luffy! WE NEED TO GET OUT!!”

“YOU’RE BEING CHILDISH ABOUT THIS!!!”

Both brothers started to shout to each other about how irresponsible the other was until they heard a whine coming from between them; they shut up as soon as they saw their baby brother shaking and crying, terrified of their shouting.

Ace was the first one to react, trying to touch his face “Lu…I’m sorry baby, I-“

He was interrupted by Sabo, who hid the youngest’ face in his chest and caressed his back. “We’re sorry Lu… we’ll try to avoid screaming like that again…” He said while walking back to the house, leaving Ace on his spot.

Luffy peeked to the house from his position, seeing the gray figure staring at them from his window.

~~~~~~~~~~

Days went by in the worst way possible; for Sabo, every day woken up by the loud crows on their rooftop, going out of their house to get his brothers out of the truck, and fighting with Ace almost every 5 minutes; for Ace, every day woken up by the knocks on the window, having pain in all his body all day long, fighting with Sabo because he couldn’t trust him.

Every night, the oldest brother would take Luffy with him to sleep on the truck. The freckled noticed that the monsters only appeared when the brothers were separated from each other, that they lurked away from them when they were together, but couldn’t convince the middle brother to stay together all the time, not even at night; he also noticed that the baby always knew where the monsters were, he only saw them when Sabo wasn’t around, but Lu saw them all the time… not acting, only watching.

The middle brother took care of Luffy the rest of the day; the baby whined sometimes ‘cause pain in his body, ‘cause he missed his bed, ‘cause he was sleepy. He always tried to ease Lu by giving him snacks through the day, playing longer with him, and even started to try and learn sewing to make a boat plushie for him.

They hated it. Sabo hated fighting with his brother, he loves Ace more than anything, but can’t just accept move out of their house because of “ghosts”. Ace hated every second they spent in that house, he’s the oldest brother, he’s supposed to protect them, but how can he do it if Sabo is acting like a hard-headed idiot and not listening to him?

They didn’t know how long it was gonna get dragged along, but they got their answer sooner than later, when one morning they woke up to see their crops completely dead. The blond had gotten out of the house to get his brothers, but as soon as he stepped out all he saw was the blackened crops all around him.

“W-what…?”

He felt his stomach drop upon seeing all their hard work completely destroyed. He ran to the truck and knocked loudly on the window, making Ace startled awake.

“What was that for?!”

“You tell me!”

Sabo replied while pointing at the dead crops. The oldest looked confused for a moment before realizing what was happening, he stepped out of the truck to get a better look and turned to his brother.

“What happened?? How are they dead? They were just fine yesterday!!”

“You slept here, didn’t you see something??”

Ace shook his head and ran to the crops, which broke in his touch totally dry. “Maybe we did something wrong yesterday? Maybe we watered it too much? Or should’ve done something specific, like with the corn?”

The blond grabbed his head thinking of what to do, they NEEDED to harvest soon or their money would run out “We need to plant again, be very careful, ration the food-“

“Wait, you want to STAY?? We should leave! There are no crops holding us back!”

“We can’t leave! This is our house! And we need the money”

“We can stay at a hotel and work somewhere in the town”.

“That’s not for discussion! The reason we wanted a house is because we didn’t want Luffy to live in a filthy hotel room again, remember??”

Ace started shaking a little, he was right, they had promised themselves that they weren’t gonna let their brother in a place like that again “Fine, no hotel, can we ask someone to rent us a room in exchange of doing their chores?”

“We are NOT leaving! Stop with that already!!” Sabo opened the door and grabbed Luffy “I’ll take a shower with Lu, take one after us, we’ll go buy more seeds” And left before Ace could say anything else in the matter.

The freckled watched as his brothers disappeared behind the door and let out a heavy sigh, he didn’t know how much longer he was gonna be able to keep his sanity at this rate. Before he could take a step into the house he saw movement in the corner of his eye, he turned to look that the barn door had opened. In his mind was a big ‘NOPE’, but he had to close the doors to avoid any animals entering.

When he arrived at the barn gates, he noticed that the new crops, the ones closest to the barn, were starting to die; inside he saw a black blob in the middle of the floor; it looked and smelled disgusting so he thought it may have something to do with the dead crops, and so he grabbed a shovel to clean it up.

But as soon as the shovel touched it, a gray hand suddenly came out of the blob, grabbing the shovel and pulling it strongly, causing Ace to lose his balance and fall into the blob.

~~~~~~~~~~

Sabo had a firm grip on the car wheel; his eyes and nose were red for being crying.

Ace was silent next to him, bandages covering his upper body and face.

***

Sabo had been in the middle of the shower when he heard his brother screaming for help, with adrenaline rushing through his body he didn’t even noticed the moment he was already dressed and the moment he arrived at the barn, only to be greeted by the sight of Ace in the ground, bleeding from wounds in his arms, chest and cheeks. There were too many wounds to treat them himself, so he drove him to the ‘hospital’, where he waited for a couple hours before a kid (apparently the doctors’ kid and trainee) told him to go and distract himself with something else.

He decided to go to the store to restock their seeds and food; being greeted by Makino, who immediately cooed at Luffy, Sabo explained the situation of their crops.

“That’s weird… maybe you watered them too much? Or should’ve done something specific…like with the corn!”

“Ace said the same… but it doesn’t make any sense, the crops should’ve died slowly, not from night to day”

Sabo starts to pick things up while Makino plays with the toddler, they were in silence before a man speaks up.

“Do you have enough money?”

“Huh?” The blond looks behind the counter, just now noticing the door, where a red-haired man was entering from.

“I asked if you have enough money to buy everything you need”

Blood drained from Sabo’s face at that, looking at the prices and making mental gymnastics to get the total price.

“N-no…” He starts to change some stuff for cheaper ones before feeling a hand on his shoulder, he looks up and saw the man standing beside him.

“Grab everything”

“W-what?”

“I said ‘grab everything’, don’t worry about the price, I know is hard to have enough money when you’re doing a fresh start, even more with a toddler to take care of”

Sabo looked at him surprised and shook his head “I can’t-“

“I’m not giving them away for free, you’ll pay what you can now and the rest when you sell your crops”

The teen let out a sigh that and nodded, swallowing the impulse to hug this man before him.

“Will do! Thank you Mr.…”

“Call me Shanks, ‘Mr.’ makes me feel older than I really am.”

“Thank you, Shanks”

Sabo smiled as he took everything back, glancing to the couple who were cooing and playing with Luffy.

“Hey…Makino, I have a question…”

“Sure, what is it?”

“The first time we came here you called our house “the crow house”, why?”

“Oh, well… the people in this town usually don’t have much to do, so the teenagers and sometimes adults used to go there, and every time they claimed that there were a lot of crows, and some even swore to have seen shadows in between the crows when they took fly”

Sabo bit the inside of his cheek, swallowing his nervousness and thanking her, reminding himself again that this is a very superstitious town.

 After paying with what he had and loading everything to the truck he saw the doctors’ kid running towards him, grabbing his pink hat so it didn’t fall off.

“Y-your brother woke up and is good to go…”

***

The silence in the truck was really uncomfortable, only being broken by Sabo’s sniffs and Luffy’s random sounds. Sabo had cried his eyes out when the doctor told him that Ace’s bruises were caused by himself, as the shapes of the hands marked on his arms fitted his.

Ace couldn’t take it anymore and slammed his hands on his legs.

“We need to get out of that house!”

“Not happening and you didn’t have to go to the extreme of hurting yourself”

“It wasn’t me! The ghosts did it!”

Sabo sighed and shook his head “Ace… I know I joked about the whole ‘haunted house’ stuff, but-“

“IT IS HAUNTED!! THERE ARE FUCKING GHOSTS THERE!!!”

“GHOSTS DO NOT EXIST!”

“They do! They’re the ones who hurt me!! Why can’t you believe me!?”

“How can I believe you when it’s not the first time you’ve done this stupidity!?”

The truck fell in silence until the heartbreaking cry of their baby brother got them out of their shock.

“Stop the truck and let me out”

“Ace, I didn’t mean-“

“STOP THE GODDAM TRUCK OR I’LL JUMP!!”

Sabo stopped and Ace got out slamming the door behind him, walking in the direction of the town, he needed to calm himself down. The blond continued the ride cursing himself for not watching his mouth.

After 5 minutes they arrived home, he grabbed Luffy, who had been crying, and stepped into the house while giving him kisses and telling him sweet things to make him stop crying. When the toddler couldn’t stop he decided to use the ‘stop crying and you get a treat’ trick, so he headed to the kitchen.

Not even a couple of steps into the hallway and he froze completely at what he was seeing: crows where arriving at the backyard, swarming the place; the well in the backyard was open and a figure came out of it. He quickly grabbed his phone to call the police, but stopped when noticed the familiar figure of Ace, soaking wet, approaching the glass door and knocking it.

“Sabo! I had a little incident back here… can you open up, please?”

The blond couldn’t be any more confused at that, Ace had stormed off back to the town 5 minutes ago walking, so why was he coming out of the well?

Luffy whined scared at the figure outside the house and his cries became louder.

“Sabo! Open up please! I’m freezing out here!”

He wanted to go open the door, but his gut was telling him to run. With shaky hands he dialed his brother’s number, hoping that the man in front of him had a ringing phone with him, but his stomach dropped when the phone was picked almost instantly and answered with a harsh “WHAT!”

He started to shake even more as the figure knocked louder on the door.

“Ace…?”

“What the fuck do you want!?”

“Come back, NOW”

“Ok, listen to me you little shit, first of-“

“COME BACK NOW!!!” He shouted, on a nervous voice that he didn’t know he could sound like; while still staring at the figure “There’s someone... Something outside the house that looks exactly like you, and wants to get in”

Just as he finished saying this, Fake Ace’s head started to deform, his face started melting away and blood dropped from every pore of his now blue body, slamming into the glass and managing to crack it.

“OPEN UP YOU LITTLE BITCH!! OPEN UP!! I’MGONNAKILLYOUANDTHATOTHERBASTARDOPENUP!!””

“Fuck!” Sabo heard Ace hissing and then some noise that told him he started to run “Go hide in your room and don’t open you door at all, no matter what! If you hear my voice, don’t open! I’ll call you when it’s me, and I’ll need you to open the door as soon as you hear the phone ringing!”

“Why?”

“I’ll open the door when I call you! They disappear when the three of us are together, so it’ll be ok, your room has view at the front door. But only when I call you!”

The teen hung up and quickly made his way to his room, passing next to the slamming door of the basement, where fingers started to crawl from beneath the door. When he arrived to the start of the stairs he heard the wood crack behind him, he turned to look at another figure dropping from the ceiling beneath the baby’s room, figure that as soon as it dropped, started sprinting towards them.

Sabo hurried to his room, entered and closed the door behind him as fast as he could, feeling the slams on his back.

Tears were running down his face, hugging Luffy in a protective way while trying to soothe him, he had never felt worse in his life. Ace had been hurt and he hadn’t trust him, he didn’t trust his own brother and now both he and his youngest brother’s lives were in danger.

He knew that if they died it’ll all be his fault, and if they survived he couldn’t forgive himself.

A few minutes passed before the slamming stopped, being followed by a voice “Sabo! It’s me! Open the door!”

His hand went to the doorknob, but stopped when he remembered what Ace told him. “Sabo, please open up!” He kept looking at his phone, waiting for the call to come “Open up! The monsters can hear me! They’ll kill me!!” A knot formed on his stomach, he couldn’t open the door “My phone died! I can’t call you! ...The monsters are here! OPEN UP!!” The voice started to sound more and more desperate, cracking with chocked sobs “OPEN UN, PLEASE!!”

Sabo couldn’t take it anymore. If that really was his brother then he was gonna get him killed for not trusting him, again, so he opened the door.

His phone started ringing while he stared at the blood covered grayish figure in front of him, moving erratically and disappearing between the wood of the floor.

Adrenaline had rushed through his body in that second that his ears were ringing, he barely saw from his spot Ace entering the home and rushing up the stairs, where he was on his knees with Luffy firmly placed against his chest.

He couldn’t hear anything that Ace was saying, or most likely, his brain didn’t process it. The only sound that came out of his own mouth was a “sorry” before breaking into tears again.

Ace hugged Sabo as soon as he started to cry, grabbing Luffy so that he wasn’t squeezed in the hug.

“I’m sorry… I fucked up, I fucked everything up!! I’m the worst brother ever, I should’ve listened, and I should’ve trusted you!”

“Hey Bo, please don’t do this”

“No, I ruined it!” The blond hugged his brother in a desperate way, clinging to him while shaking “It’s my fault, I fucked up, I-…” He gasped before taking the brunet’s face between his hands “Please forgive me…”

Ace sighed and with his free hand he caressed Sabo’s cheek, giving him a kiss on the other one.

“Already did”

Chapter Text

The first time Sabo met Ace he was greeted by an angry boy who, from the first moment, decided he didn’t like him, and showed it every time he could.

Ace would push him whenever he passed next to him, steal his food when he got distracted, put bugs in his shoes and socks at night, flush the toilet when he was showering, etc… In other words, he was a little shit to Sabo.

Garp, who was their caretaker, never did anything to stop the bullying, he always brushed it off as ‘just silly pranks that brats do’ and ‘it’ll show you to man up’.

This one sided abuse lasted a whole year until the blond got back at him, putting a scorpion under his blanket before going to sleep. Sabo was expecting a beat up, but instead got an “I’ll get YOU next time”. That was the beginning of a rivalry that with time became a very good friendship. He didn’t expect it, if he was asked if he wanted to be friends with Ace he could’ve told that person to fuck off, but it still happened.

They became super close, the pranks slowly became a thing of the past and started to explore the woods behind the home, always competing on who ran faster, who catches the more bugs, among other plays. They had started to open to each other, how they ended up under Garp’s custody, what they wanted to be when adults, etc… Life had never been better for him since he was removed from his abusive family; he had finally found his first friend, his first brother.

Garp always treated them like if they were soldiers: training in the morning, afternoon and night; meals were rationed; if they got into fights they were up to themselves; he never hit them though. The only kind of affection they got from that man was when they got seriously hurt, sick or it was their birthday; they received a little pat on the back and a kiss on the forehead.

But that they didn’t dare to ask for more! Even less a kiss on the cheek like they saw other parents do with their children! On Garp’s words it was: “You’re boys, not girls. Only girls and weirdos get kisses on the cheek by another man”

But it didn’t bother them. Sabo knew it was because of the different mentalities from another time. So asides of that, he was happy.

It was on his 8^th birthday that things took a rough downhill for him.

He had woken up early and ran to the garage, where he knew Garp spent his free days off work; he wanted to get a cake to celebrate, but as soon as he opened the door he saw the man that took care of him strangling a man, before noticing that the kid was there.

Garp made a movement with his hand telling him to wait. Sabo watched frozen in terror as the man slowly stopped struggling and fell dead.

“Get in the car, now”

The kid snapped out of his thought and did as said, feeling his body trembling violently. The older man put the body on the car trunk before hoping in and taking off.

Sabo couldn’t process completely what had just happened. In was a silent tour until they arrived at the end of the woods, the place was practically abandoned by the hand of god. No house around in at least an hour, and the only road was marked by the lack of trees.

Garp took out the body from the car and a rope; he tossed the rope to Sabo and ordered him to make a gallow while he prepared the area. After 20 minutes, the guy was hanging from a tree and a little stepladder was in the ground under him.

The man took Sabo into the car and started to drive back to the city, silent for some minutes before the older spoke up.

“You just helped me out there, now you’re part of this. If you say a word I’ll see you in jail” Those words made the kid terrified “Also, not a word about this to Ace, you already know how many issues he has with his father… you don’t want to give him more issues with me, do you?”.

He broke down to tears on the way home, in the middle of the ride Garp bought him a really big cake.

“Aw, look at you, crying because you got a big cake. Happy birthday brat”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The brothers were 12 when Garp officially adopted them, legally changing their last name to Monkey D.

Ace was happy that he finally got rid of that cursed last name that made him so miserable, almost crying out of happiness that he finally got a real family. Sabo on the other hand, as relieved as he was to also getting rid of his last name, his tears were of frustration.

But ‘happy family time’ only lasted much. Garp had started to get physical every time they misbehaved or he was moody. To the point of hitting them out cold. He would call it ‘fist of love’ whenever they complained, and how ‘they needed discipline to become proud soldiers’.

Ace didn’t know what made him get so aggressive, but Sabo did. Now that social services weren’t up on his ass with the orphans; now that they were legally adopted; they weren´t their problem anymore.

This always made Sabo miserable, if he had a slight chance of outing his now father, Garp would take him on another trip: another person killed, delivery of drug or a meeting exchanging money that definitely came from corruption at his job.

Every day he felt sinking more and more; so the day they were discovered in main act, he felt like crap. That day Garp had taken him on one of those trips, but when they arrived there were other policemen waiting for them. Apparently when the corruption had taken on their salary,  they finally decided to see what was going on.

Garp ended up in jail and the kids were transferred to another foster care, this time with a woman named Dadan.

Dadan had somehow achieved to let Sabo off the law for being an accomplice to the man; that woman had some contacts, those contacts had contacts, she managed to get a chain reaction until she was able to speak with a man called Dragon, who accepted saving the kid in exchange of a favor that he would use later.

The brothers had been 14 when this happened.

Ace was devastated at that, he had always hated himself because the world blamed him for his mother’s death and his father’s actions. He had always hated being ‘Gol D. Ace’, so changing his name was the best thing for him. Now it felt awful.

He trusted that man, he had been the only one to not judge him, and he had been the first one to give him a family. But now it was all shattered. It was like the universe decided to align in order to prevent him from having a normal family.

Oh, he just had an awful luck with his family, didn’t he?

Chapter Text

The moment his brother turned 18, Ace grabbed him and left Dadan’s house, they didn’t hate her, on the contrary, but the fact that she was part of the social services that put them with Garp on the first place made them fear that they could get under someone else’s care again, so better safe than sorry.

There was also the fact that some guy named Akainu seemed to be obsessed with the freckled, always stalking him and trying to find excuses to get him into jail. The man was just a rank higher than Garp, but that made him almost untouchable, so Ace couldn’t just tell him to fuck off. He had the mindset that his bloodline was enough to punish him, so getting out of there was as much of a blessing as it could be.

They were living on a cheap-ass hotel that surely broke all sanitary rules, but they couldn’t ask for more with how small their income was. Ace worked as a bartender and Sabo as a cashier.

Life wasn’t the best for them, Ace felt especially guilty whenever he felt sick, and it didn’t help that when he hid it, Sabo felt bad for him. But he wasn’t gonna let his body ruin their new life.

Not that he had a say on the matter.

One day Ace had been feeling rather sleepy, he had been feeling really tired lately. He was attending the bar as usual when an already drunk man stormed into the bar, stepping in front of him and snapping his fingers at him.

“Alcohol!”

“W-what…?”

“I said ‘alcohol’!! Are fucking deaf or something?! Give me my alcohol you little sh-“

Ace interrupted him and shook his head, pointing at a signal near the entrance.

“Can’t do, we don’t sell alcohol to already intoxicated people”

This enraged the drunken man incredibly, making him jump over the counter and grab the freckled.

“GIVE ME MY FUCKING ALCOHOL YOU FUCKING BITCH!!”

Ace tried to fight him back but his head was getting dizzier every second, until everything became black.

He woke up to a white room and an immense headache, he was in the hospital, apparently he passed out and the man started to smack his head until security arrived and called an ambulance.

‘Narcolepsy’ was what the doctor told him after some questions and got some medicine prescribed. He went back to the bar to talk to the boss, who told him that he needed an apology if he wanted to come back to work, as the fight had affected the reputation of the bar. Ace told him off and stormed out of there.

Sabo had to take extra hours on his work until Ace got another job, which wasn’t an easy task the worse his narcolepsy got, but he just refused to see a doctor, he kept claiming that a little thing like that shouldn’t be worth spending that much money on drugs. It also didn’t help that Ace’s sleep schedule was starting to mess up his too.

One night the freckled woke up screaming and panicking, he couldn’t move and kept trying to warn Sabo about the ‘monster’ on the corner, which he described as a terrifying creature that was gonna eat them alive.

“Ace… there’s nothing there…”

“I’m telling you! It’s sitting right there!!”

“Ace… it’s 2 in the morning… please go back to sleep, you’ll wake up the people in the other room”

That was the first argument they had over Ace’s condition, he kept waking up very early the morning, kept refusing to take medication, making it almost impossible to find a new job. Money was cutting short that Sabo was forced to a point where he just stopped eating some days; his brother’s metabolism was way faster than his own, so every time he got him food he just said things like ‘I already ate’ or ‘a co-worker invited me dinner’. He could survive without eating some days, but doubted Ace could. Food was the most expensive thing they bought, so he could suck it up a little.

~~~~~~~~~

Sabo had been at the end of his now 10 hour shift when he got a call from the hospital.

‘His brother had attempted to kill himself’

The blond cried while asking him why he did it, only getting silence in response. He broke down hugging his brother, he didn’t want to lose him, Sabo asked him what he did wrong, what could’ve changed.

Ace never told him.

However, Ace did give in. He apologized to his old boss and begged for his job back, also accepted to get treatment for his narcolepsy.

Their relationship took a weird turn from there, Ace acted different, colder towards Sabo, and he couldn’t understand why.

~~~~~~~~~

They worked for a couple of years until one day they received a call from Dadan, asking them to go to her house. The brothers were confused by this but went to see what was going on. When they arrived they were met by the woman, who was holding a little ball of sheets.

“Thank god you came! If I kept this little shit here we could’ve gotten in trouble!”

She said as she shoved the ball into Ace’s arms.

“What the fuck?!”

He almost dropped it, but Sabo was quicker and grabbed the little ball, feeling it move in his arms and whining a little.

“What…?”

“Be careful!! That’s your brother right there!!”

Sabo almost hurt his neck on how fast he turned to look at the woman.

“Excuse me??”

“Well, technically he’s your nephew, as you‘re legally registered as Garp’s children… but you can register him as your brother, save him some confusion in the future”

Ace didn’t want to hear anymore and raised his hands to stop her.

“HELL NAH! Why the fuck would be taking care of him!?”

“Because you’re his family by law! And now that both of you are adults you have to take him in! ... Also, the man that helped Sabo out told me this is the favor he’s taking”

“Why now, though?!”

“Because he was just born? He’s literally 3 weeks old”

Ace shook his head and arms, there’s no way they are taking care of a fucking kid, but before he could say another word he heard a soft gasp coming from Sabo, who was touching the baby’s cheeks.

“One down”

“Nope! No no no! Leave that thing, Sabo! Where are his parents?”

Dadan sighed and crossed her arms, looking down to the floor.

“Mother died at childbirth and father is a wanted criminal”

Ace’s mouth shut instantly as his eyes widened, he felt his body cold and started to tremble a little. That scenario was painfully familiar for him.

“So you either adopt him or he’ll go into foster house like you, that can get him on a good home… or he could end up with the man that has been stalking Ace for a while”

“He came?!”

“Yeah…Akainu tried to make me give him Luffy, he’s definitely hot on your tracks, so you adopt the baby or he gets the chance to get him”

Sabo looked at his brother, who was silently staring at the floor.

“I’ll take him, he’ll be my responsibility, and I’ll do it even if you don’t wanna”

No one made a move for what felt like an eternity until Ace simply nodded, stood up and exited the house.

“Fine…but don’t expect me to even interact with him”

Well, looks like they had a baby brother now.

~~~~~~~~~

Life with the baby was just as a dream as it was a nightmare… at least for Sabo; Ace was just in a nightmare.

Sabo was the one who took full responsibility of the kid, feeding him, changing him, making him stop crying, and he even had to ask his boss to let him take the baby to work. The blond was in love with Luffy, he was such a sweet baby (but a little piece of shit when he wanted to).

Ace on the other hand hated this, he hated being woken up in the middle of the night again, he hated the smell of used diapers, baby puke and having to interact with him whenever Sabo was on the bathroom. He has never been a fan of the thought of being a father, hell, he didn’t even want a relationship, and so having a newborn shoved into his life all of the sudden was horrible.

And it didn’t get any better. Luffy started to get sick really often; they had to spend money on the doctor, who every time told them ‘you need to buy this medicine’, ‘you need to get him this treatment’. They did everything they were told but the baby didn’t show any signs of getting better.

Sabo was becoming desperate, so he called Dadan to ask for her advice on little kids, being answered with “Are you stupid?! Of course he’s getting sick! You live in a filthy place! You have been getting scammed, move out of there if you don’t want to keep him like that”.

The blond sighed, he knew that convincing Ace was gonna be hard.

~~~~~~~~~

They got into a fight, Ace said that he wasn’t gonna pay for a home, so Sabo took a loan to buy an old van house whose owner just wanted to get rid of.

The freckled wasn’t happy, the van was too small for 2 adults and a baby, but at least the damn thing still moved, so they could go to their jobs on it.

Also, they didn’t have to pay to stay somewhere, only buy gas and the stupid verification stamps that had to go on the glass.

Sabo’s job only got worse; he had to take a second job to pay for the loan, as he knew Ace was too proud to back off on not paying for the van. He couldn’t get enough sleep because Luffy kept waking up at night, he still wasn’t eating enough; his health got really bad in just a few months.

When he finally got a free day he had to swallow his pride in order to get some deserved sleep.

“Ace… Could you please take care of Luffy for a few hours while I get some sleep?”

The oldest looked at him like if he’d just kicked a puppy.

“WHAT?! No! No! I’m NOT taking care of THAT!”

“Pleas-“

“NO!! I told you the first day that that I was NOT taking care of him!”

“Ace, please… I want to sleep”

“No! I’m not taking care of him! The farthest away from me, the better we’ll both be”

Sabo shook his head and pointed to himself.

“Can you please think about me for once? I’m literally d-“

“SHUT UP! Think about you? THINK ABOUT YOU?! How about you think about ME!?!”

At this point Luffy had started crying, startled by the loud screaming basically next to him.

“How do you think I feel when you start making decisions by yourself that harm you or both of us? That changes our life? Luffy was YOUR decision! I told you I didn’t want him, and yet I also have to pay the broken dishes with him!!”

“Is that it? Is that the reason you hate me now?!”

 “No!! I don’t hate you! But how do you think I felt when I noticed the things you were doing for me? You were hurting yourself! You started hiding stuff and lying to me, just like Garp did! - SHUT UP, DAMMIT!!”

The cries of Luffy were only getting louder and louder, Ace ended up snapping at him.

“SHUT THE FUCK UP, SHUT IT!!”

Sabo was shocked by that statement, not knowing how to take those words.

“…What? How can you compare what I did with what HE did?”

“You- I- I don’t… know! You are my family, my brother! And you were lying to me! Doing shit behind my back! Like if I didn’t have enough in my whole ass life with an ass family!!”

Ace broke into tears, he couldn’t take it anymore and he ran off the house, anger and sadness numbing his mind.

Sabo felt his knees weak and fell to the ground, his head was spinning, pain drilling through and the crying of the baby ringing on his ears. With tears on his eyes he took the keys to chase after Ace, painful screams hurting his ears.

The blond turned to the baby screaming, snapping at him as well.

“SHUT UP!! SHUT UP!! LUFFY, SHUT THE FUCK UP!!-“

But his own screams were cut off when a strong pain installed on his body, he couldn’t register the sound of the gas cap opening and someone tossing a match there, his world turned black as his surroundings took into flames.

~~~~~~~~~

Ace was just a couple of streets away when the sound of an explosion made him stop; his body went cold when he realized that it came from where his home is.

He ran back as fast as he could.

When he arrived he saw the van on fire, people around calling the firefighters, recording on their phones and a muscular man pinning down the stalker that was Sakazuki, still with a match box on his hand.

Ace felt adrenaline run through his veins when he couldn’t spot his brothers in the crowd. His body acted for him, he ignored the screams of the people and entered the flames, spotting Sabo unconscious with half of his body in the flames. He dragged him outside, where he put him on the pavement and re-entered before anyone could stop him.

His shirt was starting to burn, not taking into flames but melting on his torso, the pain was barely noticed by him due the adrenaline of finding his baby brother. He arrived at the crib, where Luffy was crying silently, out of air, in pain with a piece of glass encrusted right under his eye and other pieces of melting glass burning on his chest.

All memory after seeing the baby like that was pretty blurred, but when he woke up at the hospital the doctor told him that he had entered in a shock not letting anyone near his brothers, and had to sedate him in order to take them there. He kept Luffy close to his chest and his body covering Sabo’s, his torso burning with the melted shirt that had to be removed taking pieces of skin with it.

The police made a public apology to the brothers, since the crowd was filming, the face of Sakazuki was pretty clear. They took full blame on his obsessive behavior towards them, so they offered them some money until they were good to work again and an ex-police officer called Bellemere let them live on one of her departments.

The three brothers had to start again, a new home, a new life.

Ace with his whole torso burned and fully scarred. Sabo with half his body burned and deformed, one eye blinded. Luffy with a scar under his eye and his whole chest burned and cutted.

Each one with their own scars, physically and mentally.

Chapter Text

The brothers woke up with the sound of the crows like every other morning.

They had slept inside the truck, hugging, with their baby brother between them. They had cried their apologies for hours before deciding that they weren’t staying in that house any longer. That day they were gonna empty it and live on the truck. They were gonna wait until the harvest, sell the crops and then moving the hell out of there.

When Bluejam arrived they had to give an excuse about why they were leaving.

“Luffy’s health hasn’t been the best lately; I think the bugs are making him sick”

“Are those bruises bug’s bites?”

“Most likely, yeah, we don’t want him to get worse”

“The baby will grow up vulnerable if you do that, just put some alcohol over the bites to ease the itching and he’ll be like new”

Sabo kept shaking his head until Bluejam finally noticed Ace’s bandages, releasing a cackle.

“And what happened to you? Did you try to wrestle with a bear?”

“Well, I was attacked, so…”

Bluejam’s smile disappeared immediately and let out an awkward laugh.

“Oh, heh… uh…”

Not knowing how to recover from that, he simply shut up and started to work.

The brothers kept spending time together, and if they needed something from the house or the barn they’ll just send Bluejam to get it, they were moving out so they didn’t care if he stole something at this point.

However, Bluejam wasn’t having any of it when Luffy needed to use the bathroom and the brothers went together or simply used the bushes of the forest surrounding them, he hated when people babied boys like that. In his eyes it was so wrong, he was gonna grow up to be a delicate man, no guts, borderline incestuous, just because his older brothers just couldn’t let him man up.

Where Ace and Sabo saw the need to protect the baby from monsters that haunted their home, in Bluejam’s twisted mind he saw two depraved young adults. If only they were women it shouldn’t be a problem with him, women are maternal after all, and men aren’t.

But the straw that broke the camel´s back came when Luffy, finally being on his own for 5 seconds, suddenly got scared apparently out of nowhere, he had gotten spooked by the basement monster stalking him from behind the wall, and ran crying to his brothers, causing him to fall and start crying even louder.

When Ace hurried over to him to calm him down and gave him a kiss on the cheek, telling him that everything was going to be okay, he lost it. He threw everything to the ground and pointed at them.

“You guys make me sick! How can you think that treating him like that will do any good for him when he gets older?!”

“Excuse me?”

“You treat him delicate like if he was a girl! Not only that, you take him to the bathroom TOGETHER?! Are you trying to groom him or some shit?!”

At the mention of that sentence, Ace couldn’t help but grimace in disgust and rage, as Luffy covered his ears scared at the screaming.

“What the fuck are you talking about?! This house fucking sucks, we’re not letting him alone!!”

Sabo chipped in the conversation equally angry at the older man.

“How can you even think that?! What is wrong with you?”

Bluejam made an expression of a deer in headlights before responding with the same anger.

“What is wrong with YOU?! You clearly weren’t raised properly if you think doing shit like this is normal, all of you are boys, act like so!”

And after that, he ended up storming off, leaving the brothers filled with rage.

“I can’t fucking believe it…”

Ace muttered while caressing the baby’s back in order to make him calm down, giving him a little kiss on the cheek. Sabo approached them and also gave him a little kiss, making him start laughing. Once achieved their goal, they went back into the house, deciding they were done with the crops for the day.

“Ace… Is it really that bad?”

“What?”

“I mean… Garp said it, now Bluejam is saying it”

“Sabo-”

“Is it wrong?”

“No, no, no! Listen to me! We are family, is just a way to show affection, don’t let them get into your head. Yeah, both of them say that, but do you want to know what else they have in common? They are both scumbags; Garp is a corrupt and violent murderer, Bluejam is an asshole, he looks very violent and I wouldn’t be surprised if he had killed someone before”

The blond bit his lip, not knowing what to say, he hadn’t thought about it that way. They just wanted to show their love to each other, why was it wrong for them to do so but would be okay if they were girls?

The freckled took his brother by the arm and gave him a hug, Luffy in between, also giving out a hug.

“Don’t think about it on the downside… I know I’M the one always doing it, but you don’t, so think about it this way: Do you think Lu would be the way he is now if we ‘treated him like a boy’?”

Sabo thought about it for a second before looking down to his baby brother, who was looking at him with the sweetest smile in the world.

“No… And I don’t want to imagine it… We’re doing things ok”

The oldest went for another hug, but found himself interrupted by a loud sound coming from the basement. They turned to look at the door that was completely open, scratching sounds coming from there. The brothers took a cautious peek inside, where they found that a crow had made its way in from the backyard entrance; the crow was scratching the floorboards and trying to stick its beak between the wood.

Sabo went to shoo the bird before it got hurt, Ace meanwhile looked shocked at the floor, it was the same place where he had seen something shine the first day.

“I think it’s trying to get that thing out”

Ace pointed at the shiny object, Sabo looked at it and thought for a second.

“Let’s go for the hammer, I don’t think we’ll be able to take it out without breaking the floor”

And so they did, they broke the floorboards and got out a pendant, it was pretty dirty but the chain still got a little shining to it. When they opened it they were met by a faded photo of two people, one of them was a man, pale skin and blue hair; the other one was a younger Bluejam.

The brothers were shocked by that, that was definitely not something they were expecting to find, but before any of them could say a word, a figure appeared in front of them.

It was one of the monsters; it slowly took the appearance of the blue-haired man in the picture before throwing its head backwards, a thin line appearing on its neck before snapping and getting cut, leaving a decapitated figure standing before them before disappearing.

Chapter Text

Before the crows were able to wake them up that morning the brothers were already on their way to town; they had woken up pretty early and gotten a good breakfast, they had a feeling that today was gonna be a long day.

When they arrived to town they saw that the stores were just opening, they approached the green-haired woman that was putting the menu outside her restaurant, who gave them a big smile when she saw them.

“Good morning guys! Did you come to get breakfast?”

“No, tho we still hold onto that” Sabo politely declined “Actually, we just came here to ask you a couple of questions”

Makino tilted her head curious and nodded inside the restaurant; they went in and saw Shanks cleaning the tables, who greeted them with a smile.

“Good morning guys! What can we do for you today?”

“We have a couple of questions regarding the town…and Bluejam”

Shanks looked confused at that. “What do you want to know?”

“Well…” Sabo began “Has there been crimes in these town in the past few years? Of the likes of…murdering? Beheading to be precise?”

The adults were shocked; almost terrified at the question the blond just asked them.

“W-what? Why are you asking that?”

“We have a…theory”

Ace took the pendant out, showing them the picture of Bluejam and the other man.

“Oh! That’s Porchemy! He’s one of Bluejam’s brothers!”

“Or maybe was” the red-haired answered after his wife “Porchemy has been missing for years, alongside the other brothers, only Bluejam is still living in the woods… Which is weird, I mean, your house WAS theirs, the old owner of that house is Bluejam’s father, so I don’t know why he isn’t living there”

“Does this have to do with the other question?”

Ace bit his lip nervous; he didn’t know if they should tell. But Luffy was pretty comfortable around these two. And they always trust Luffy.

“You are going to think we’re crazy or something” The freckled began “But our house is haunted, and we think it may have something to do with them. Porchemy is the ghost that got beheaded, it’s currently haunting the basement and he comes out of the floor; there’s another one in Luffy’s bedroom, he comes out of the walls and hands come from the floor, he also drops from the ceiling in the room below; another one is in the well, he comes out of it and walks around the backyard, where there are always a lot of crows; and the last one is in the barn, he comes from the ground and is definitely the one that kills our crops”

Ace took a deep breath after that information dump that the adults were still trying to process. The room fell in a silence that extended for a couple of minutes, making the brothers feel regret over telling them; I mean, why would they trust them? Ghosts? A haunted house? Just ridiculous!

Shanks approached them; looking at them like if he was trying to read them, various emotions going through his eyes.

“You don’t have to believe us” Sabo talked “I know is a crazy thing, but we just needed to tell someone about it…we have no relationship with anyone else…”

“It’s okay… we trust you guys” Makino finally responded “You really have no reason to make up such a story if you were trying to do something bad”

The brothers were surprised, but Luffy let out a chuckle, he clearly trusted them for a reason, it was like the baby had some kind of sixth sense for reading people and his brothers couldn’t be more grateful of this.

The adults invited the brothers to stay in their house upstairs the restaurant, until it closed so they could discuss what to do.

Almost in the evening when the restaurant closed, they sat down to talk about the situation.

“Let me get this straight…” Shanks started “Your house is haunted by ghosts… that are probably Bluejam’s brothers, giving the new information… and are trying to kill you”

“Short story, yeah, that’s basically it…sorry for the entire information dump earlier”

“Is okay, you were nervous”

Ace blushed embarrassed, playing with the baby to dissimulate it. Sabo chuckled soft at his brother’s expression, only making his face redden more.

The blond returned his eyes at the couple, hesitating before speaking.

“We want to try and make contact with them again; maybe we can make some sort of deal in order to make them leave us alone”

Shanks looked at them suspiciously, not liking where this was going.

“So, we want to ask you to look after Luffy while we-“

Sabo was interrupted by Makino, who stood up and walked towards them firmly.

“You are NOT going back there to confront some ghosts that can easily hurt you! Not alone!”

The brothers looked shocked at her; they weren’t expecting her to be the one to step in. Shanks sighed and approached them as well.

“Seems like Makino and I agree to not let you go back alone… I was gonna suggest that we went back with you, be backup or at least emotional support… Also, I don’t think it’s a good idea to leave Luffy here”

“Why not?”

“You said that they don’t attack you if you are together, maybe it has something to do with you being brothers? They are brothers too, so maybe if you leave him here they’ll get angry?”

Sabo frowned lightly, they hadn´t thought about that possibility.

“Maybe… I don’t know…”

Makino shook her head and pointed at the baby.

“We’ll go with you, he’ll have 4 people protecting him, so don’t worry too much about it”

Ace sighed and smiled softly, he was so happy, but he couldn’t understand why they were being so nice to them.

 “Why are you so willing to help us? You barely know us”

The green-haired woman smiled and approached him, giving him a thigh hug, surprising the oldest brother.

“Hmm… Yeah, I wonder why…Maybe it’s because nobody as young as you should be in a situation with so much pressure like this, not while having to care for both yourselves and a little kid, not when is obvious that you’ve never had help before…”

The freckled was processing what was going on, those kind of words, coming in such a soft voice, a hug so thigh and at the same time not thigh enough, with such maternal warmth making him want to cling to her like if he was a kid again. He didn’t even notice when tears started to fall down his eyes.

Sabo couldn’t help but start tearing up as well, is like if a cascade of feelings that kept themselves bottled up just decided to come up with such a simple show of care and affection; he hugged his baby brother closest to his chest, and felt a couple of arms around him. Shanks was hugging him.

And just then, they let themselves cry in front of another person that wasn’t them.

~~~~~~~~~

They could see the house in the distance, Sabo shaking at the wheel just thinking again about their plan. They were gonna make a deal with fucking GHOSTS, and there were a lot of things that could go wrong there.

When they arrived they were welcomed by a bunch of crows feasting on the crops and shadows looking through the windows of the house.

Shanks was the first to step out, trying to shoo the birds, when that didn’t work, Ace took out his phone and played the sound of a gunshot, scaring them right away.

“Huh, that’s weird…”

“Yeah, the owner told us the first day that they get really scared with gunshots… but no one has lived here for years, so they shouldn’t know…”

Makino stepped out of the truck holding onto Luffy, looking at the shadows on the windows; they were like black silhouettes with white shining eyes being the only visible feature on their faces.

“That’s not good…” the blond said next to her “We’ve never been able to see them when we´re together…”

Sabo guided them into the house; as soon as he opened the door, a heavy feeling surrounded them, like if the presences in the place knew something was up. They entered the building, silence all around them only being broken by the whimpers of the baby, who had his eyes looking all around them, wary of his surroundings.

They sat down in the living room, preparing themselves in case anything went wrong and they had to leave. They had also brought some weapons with them, a couple of axes and machetes.

Ace sighed deeply before starting.

“We know you can hear us! We want to make a deal with you guys!”

And as if cue, the upstairs floor started to crack loudly before a growl made them look in the direction of a black blob that started appearing in the roof right below Luffy’s room. From that blob came out a hand, then another, then a head, until a whole body fell from the roof.

The shadow wasn’t looking like the past times when he took the appearance of Sabo, this time he was a bigger man, long hair and a face that spilled rage, he clearly wasn’t happy that there were new visitors in their home.

But right as he started moving his misplaced limbs towards them, Sabo intervened.

“We want to help you! You guys are obviously here because you still have something to do… You want something… someone”

Right as this was said. The shadow stopped moving; the basement door flew open and the ghost, Porchemy, dragged himself through the stairs; the well opened and the dripping ghost with blue skin looked at them behind the glass door, not looking like Ace anymore; and another one looking at them behind the front door, the barn ghost.

They were surrounded by ghosts, curious ones, vengeful ones.

 “Listen, we just want to live in peace, and we know that you want to leave this house as well, but to do it you need revenge on that who wronged you, am I right?”

The ghosts stayed in silence, until Porchemy spoke up in an eerie voice.

“Bluejam… he killed us because he was disgusted by us”

“So” Ace continued where his brother stopped “We’ll give him to you if you leave us alone afterwards… We’ll give you Bluejam”

They stood in another silence before nodding.

Sabo looked at the ghosts thoughtfully, he wanted some other answers too, and they looked calm enough to maybe answer.

“Can I ask a few questions before?”

Porchemy nodded again before the blond continued.

“Why were you attacking us?”

The ghost from Luffy’s room was the one to answer the question.

“This is our home; we don’t want anyone here, not with us, not again”

“Then why didn’t you say so? You can talk! You talked to Sabo the other day but not to me!”

The ghost from the well approached the glass, leaving a wet trail behind him.

“You seem to be the kind of getting physical first”

Ace flustered and crossed his arms, muttering angrily about that not being true.

“What’s with the crows?” This time was Shanks the one who asked.

The ghost from the well let out a laugh before answering “They are the ones that came before you, not that anyone remembers them… and if you don’t give us Bluejam you’ll become part of the murder”

That gave chills to the adults and the brothers, who hugged Luffy closer.

“Don’t worry about the kid, we won’t harm him, children are sinless unlike adults… also, we’ll need someone to take care of the home when the old man dies”

There was a collective laugh between the monsters, Ace and Sabo were trembling at this point.

“We’re not good people, we’re not going to help you with Bluejam, so bring him to us by yourselves or you’ll become part of the home with us”

Porchemy sentenced before they disappeared, leaving the others absolutely terrified, they had to finish the man NOW.

Chapter Text

That same night, they prepared themselves to attack; it was a 40 minute drive from town to the house, so they’ll call right away to ask for the sheriff.

Their plan was to kill Bluejam and tell the sheriff that he broke in and tried to kill them first.

Sabo was the one who offered going for Bluejam while the rest prepared the weapons, the call and a safe place for Luffy to be hidden in.

As soon as Makino made the call, Sabo went running in the direction of Bluejam’s house. It was little old cabin, lots of dead animals hanging outside the door like trophies.

Sabo knocked on the door, waiting for a few seconds before the man answered; he looked surprised to see him there.

“Oh, hey… What are you doing here so late at night? And here of all places?”

“I’m so sorry…for the way we’ve been treating you, but we need your help NOW”

“And why should I help you after the way you treated me?”

The man looked pretty smug, Sabo wanted to punch him so bad, but he knew better than to do it and hid his expression of disgust as best as he could.

“There’s someone in our home looking for you, he’s threatening us… he told me his name is… Porchemy”

After hearing the name, the older went pale right away, a look of sheer horror installing into his face. He opened and closed his mouth a few times without any sound coming from it.

“A-are you sure…that’s his name?”

“Yeah! He’s a really big man, with long blue hair!” Sabo replied, remembering the photo they found of the not-so-monster-man at the time “He told us that he has some business with you and wants to see you, please help us”

This only fed into the terror Bluejam was feeling, he cursed under his breath and grabbed a shotgun from behind the door. Sabo jumped when he saw this, but couldn’t react in time before the man started to drag him back to the old house.

The blond followed as he could, the man kept cursing all the way back, saying things like “it can’t be him, it shouldn’t be” and “if the others are there too”. His eyes losing sanity every step they took. Sabo could see it perfectly, literal ghosts of his past came back for him, and the fear was eating his mind inside out.

When they arrived to the house it was complete silence, they stepped in cautiously, looking around them and feeling themselves being watched.

“He kept us in the basement…”

Sabo whispered while making his way there, he saw Bluejam tense even more, walking shaky steps behind him; but as he reached the top of the stairs he felt a kick on his back, Bluejam had pushed him down the stairs while screaming, eyes darting around in a panic attack.

“Fuck this! They are supposed to be dead!! YOU HEAR ME YOU STUPID FUCKS?!”

Down the basement, Ace hurried over to his brother, who was moaning in pain after hitting his head to the ground after the fall.

Just as he was screaming, Shanks exited his hiding spot and attacked him. Bluejam defended himself, blocking the attack with his shotgun. Behind the adult, Makino stepped out of her hiding spot as well and swung her axe at Bluejam, cutting deeply into his arm.

However, the man was getting out of his mind. Seeing shadows of dead people by the corner of his eye; flashbacks of abuse and cold murder assaulting his mind; the pain was making scenarios in his memories that never happened, mixing the past with the present; adrenaline rushing like crazy.

Bluejam pushed Shanks to his back and grabbed Makino by the hair with his injured arm, not feeling the pain in his frenzy, and violently pushed to the wall, breaking the thin wood and falling in a space between the walls.

As Ace was rushing up the stairs with a machete on his hand, Bluejam took his shotgun and shot at him, hitting on his shoulder, making him fall on his back. Before he could take another shot, a hammer was thrown his way, making him drop the gun. Sabo rushed and tackled him to the wall, hitting his head in the process.

Bluejam started screaming bloody murder, obscenities and names that he didn’t recognized. He then felt his hair getting grabbed and a knee connected with his face a couple of times before Shanks was over the man again, trying to stab him with another machete.

Bluejam started to kick the red-haired man to get him off him, he managed to get both of his legs by his side and with a kick of both legs got him off. He stood up quickly and grabbed the machete, but before he could attack, he heard between the ringing of his ears, a small whimper coming from upstairs. He smiled to himself and rushed up the stairs; Shanks noticed this and went after him.

Sabo grabbed his bloody nose, everything spinning around him before the woman screamed in terror. He looked over to her worried, only to see the origin of her scream. She was laying in the floor, with four rotten, mummified corpses over her.

“Oh shit…”

Bluejam arrived at the second floor and tackled down the first door, forcing himself into the room. A soft cry got his attention to the closet, where Luffy was watching in fear, silently crying for help while hugging his plushie. He opened the closet door and took a swing of the machete to the baby, only to be stopped by Shanks, who put his arm in the way, receiving a hit on it; he yelled in pain when his arm was hit again, and again, and again.

Bluejam had a psychotic look on his face while doing so, like he was living a beautiful moment.

“I’m so tired… I’M REALLY FUCKING TIRED OF YOU GUYS!! What does that baby has of special that everyone just wants to protect him?!”

Another hit to the arm.

“All of you make me sick!!”

Another hit to the arm.

“WHY CAN’T YOU ALL FUCKING DIE?! LEAVE ME ALONE!!”

Another hit to the floor.

Oh.

Looks like the arm wasn’t connecting to the rest of the body anymore.

Oh well.

Makino rushed up the stairs, holding her breath when she saw her husband lying on the floor, a puddle of blood becoming bigger every second that passed. She felt rage swarming her body as she rushed with her axe at him.

On the first floor, Ace was making his way up the basement stairs, looking over to his brother, who stared in shock at the corpses. Ace only had to glance over them to notice that those were clearly the bodies of these ghosts who had been tormenting them since they arrived to the house.

Before he could take a word on it, he heard a loud crash from the stairs where Bluejam had thrown Makino knocking down the handrail, before quick steps came their way.

The brothers looked up to see Bluejam frozen in place, his eyes locked with the void empty sockets of the corpses where eyes were supposed to be.

Ace groaned and took advantage of the shock to try and hit him with the machete, successfully hitting his face and cutting deeply his cheek.

Bluejam pushed the freckled back, trying to get to his shotgun.

Ace rushed after him and managed to tackle him over the basement stairs, but as the man was falling, he took the teen’s arm with him, dragging him to the basement.

His hand had a firm grip on Ace’s arm, who struggled with his injured arm to get out. He finally saw the hammer near him and with his leg dragged it closer to him, finally taking it and starting to hit Bluejam so he released him.

The man, however, was laughing. Mad laughter at every hit he took.

“I’m going to hell… I’M GOING TO HELL!! I’M GOING TO TAKE YOU ALL DOWN WITH M-“

But before he could finish, a shot was heard. Bluejam’s limp body finally let go of Ace and fell to the basement ground, where the floor began to become a black gooey surface with hands coming out of it and grabbing Bluejam’s corpse, it was such a sight as the body began to dry itself leaving behind a mummy.

The freckled looked up from his spot to see his blond brother with the shotgun on his hands, trying his best to breathe with the blood in his nose trying to get on his lungs. Sabo rushed towards his brother, hugging him and shedding tears, while sirens were heard in the background.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Man…this is such a mess”

The sheriff Fujitora mumbled to himself looking at the crime scene while his assistant Coby took the notes.

4 corpses that had been hidden behind the walls, blood that had been covered up in the exterior, but was left decorating the insides of a secret passage made by too big walls that connected the basement and a room in the second floor, an old crime scene that had been covered up as the repairs of an equally old house, and a corpse being retired from the basement, whose mummified face was that of a maniac man.

Given the clues of the house, he concluded: the first murder was a beheading in the basement, after that, the old owner left the house for unknown reasons; the second was a drowning in the well; the third was the worst, clearly had been tortured before being killed, his legs had many cuts on them and his limbs seemed to have been pulled to the point of dismemberment; the fourth one had been cut open and strangled to death.

The fifth one being the cause of the first four.

Now 5 brothers dead and a tale of an abusive man with 5 children, who he raised in such a manner that got burned into the oldest’ mind. They were men after all; being soft was unacceptable and punished by death. That was the way. It was a tale took to the grave…kind of, but the old owner of that house wasn’t gonna admit the errors he committed with his children.

“To think that someone could murder four people in such ways and hide their bodies in the crime scene, that also was their house… I swear, sometimes I just want to go blind so I don’t have to see how messed up and cruel people can be”

~~~~~~~~~~~~

The only two doctors of the town’s hospital had been running from bed to bed, treating injuries while their kid did his best to keep the baby from crying.

It had been a long night, but they managed to properly treat the brothers and the woman, while Shanks managed to stay out of danger, but still unconscious.

When the brothers were told they could stand up and walk around, they went straight for their baby, who was in Chopper’s legs, crying still a little bit. As Sabo lifted him up, the kid pulled the blonde’s sleeve to have his attention.

“Uhm… I know I’m still an apprentice of doctor… but I don’t think you’ll find a psychologist for him in this town…or anywhere nearby; so uh, if you don’t mind, you can bring him to me, I can take care of him and treat him in all my possibilities”

The brothers looked at each other for a moment before Sabo nodded.

“Thank you Chopper, we’ll talk about it”

The kid nodded nervously before Kureha approached them to tell them that Shanks had woken up.

In the room, Makino was sitting next to Shanks’ bed, her head was wrapped around in bandages and had a cast on her leg; her and Sabo were the ones that got off better, Sabo only having a broken nose and a sprained arm; Ace had bandages in his arm and chest covering up the bullet wound, bandages around his head, a sprained wrist and many bruises on his arm. Shanks on the other hand… well… he lost his arm and his body was also full of bruises and cuts.

Ace was the first to bow down to him, both in gratitude and apology, followed by Sabo, who bowed down a little less as he had the baby in his arms.

Shanks shook his head at this sight.

“No no no, don’t even do that”

“But… your arm-“

“It was my arm or Luffy, and I don’t regret my decision”

Tears flooded the brothers’ eyes again, they didn’t know how they could make it up to him but they would do anything asked, he did give up an arm for their brother after all. They wondered how many times they were going to cry.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was made a rumor in a time spawn of a couple of days. “The crazy old man Bluejam was behind the murder of 4 people and attempt of murdering other 5; he also messed around in the crows house, making it seem haunted so that no one discovered the corpses, every time someone went there and saw shadows it was only him making everyone run away from his crime scene”.

This made the townsfolk have some sympathy for the poor brothers who had to live in a place like that, people who weren’t even involved at all wanted to show their support, maybe on good faith or just because they wanted to be associated with a story like that, it didn’t matter as long as they helped the brothers.

As time passed, Ace and Sabo got to make a good living off their land. Consuming their own crops and selling the rest was a good business in a small town where the stores could buy cheap and yet they could make good money.

Now, the brothers were chilling on their renovated backyard, it had been a hot day and they were watching over a now 6 years old Luffy, who was playing on a little pool that uncle Shanks had gifted to him on his birthday.

“Crow!”

The brothers looked at the youngest, who was pointing at the roof; they looked up to see a single, solitary crow watching over them. That crow had been living on their rooftop since that day they got rid of the ghosts, all of the other crows had left as well except for this one, but never really bothered them, it just watched over them, like if it was protecting them.

Like a gesture of thankfulness.

The three of them smiled fondly, the crow lived on that house, who were they to take its home from it? After all, it was like part of the family now, a part of their home sweet home.