Work Text:
Here is the middle (but not the start because the start was decades ago when a young marine swore brotherhood to two strangers while drunk on a party island after getting into a bar brawl and winning.
It was only when they had all sobered up that they realized two of them were pirates and one of them was a marine.
Or that they were rivals.
Or that they had all come to the island to fight each other.
In their defense, the sake was really good. And a lot stronger than it had seemed. The bar had been very dark as well.
And it had been fine, for a while. Garp had chased Roger and Edward and Edward and Roger had clashed and Edward didn’t chase after Garp but somehow managed to find Garp’s den den and kept calling him to ask if he would join Edward’s crew and things were okay.)
But here is now. Because things aren’t okay any more and haven’t been since Garp killed Roger and even though Edward still calls him (and he's gotten better at getting his number, even though Garp actually tries to hide it now.
“Join my crew”, Edward always starts with.
Garp always says no.)
(Edward hasn’t called since Ace was captured.
Garp doesn’t hang by his den den, waiting for his brother to start yelling at Garp because killing Roger wasn’t enough and now he will see his grandson-nephew because he never was able to save anyone.
That's a lie.
He does. Because he knows what he chooses and has been choosing his whole life, even when there have been hands reaching out and-)
Now Garp stands in front of a prison cell, and it's not the same cell but it might as well have been because-
Because-
Ace looks up at him and-
And-
Garp knows he’s supposed to say something, anything.
Ace is looking at him. Ace is expecting something from him.
(Roger spoke first, the last time Garp was down here. Roger looked up at him and spoke first and asked Garp to take care of his son.
Garp and not Newgate, when Newgate was the dad with the family and Garp was the brother killer and-
And then Roger’s logic had somewhat made sense because Garp could hide a baby better and no matter what Senny said he did have a sense of strategy and-)
Garp doesn’t know what to say. “I wanted you and Luffy to become great marines” is what comes out and Ace has claimed Edward, Whitebeard as his father and-
It's good that one of them hasn’t failed to take care of Ace, even if he always has.
Even if he is still failing even through he made a promise to the brother that he murdered and-
And then comes the execution platform and Garp almost hates Sengoku for making him start up there, making him be the set piece in the play about his family's demie for the second time.
He hates iit and hates it and-
And he breaks.
Just not the way he expected.
So. He might have, you know, thrown Ace off the platform. And you know, maybe committed a little bit of betrayal.
Or maybe more than a little bit of betrayal, because he's spent his whole life propping up the system and he just, very loudly and very publicly, threw it all away.
Literally.
So technically he has actually committed a lot of betrayal.
But not really.
Because it doesn’t feel like it.
Instead for the first time since he saw the blades come down he feels like he's doing the right thing.
He forgot what it even felt like.
It feels good.
(It also feels like the entity of Marineford screaming ‘what!’ at the top of their lungs when he calls Edward his brother. If they both survive this, and Garp will make it so because he is sick of losing family he has, the rest of the Whitebeard Pirates will be in for a little bit of a surprise).
The fight is messy and bloody and he might have, you know, thrown Akainu into the ocean but he had been wanting to do that for years.
Dick deserved it.
Blackbeard gets taken care of as well. Well, Marco does that, viciously and Garp is almost glad he never got on the Phoenix's actual bad side.
Either way, they all survive and there is a lot of mess to deal with but Garp’s just glad he doesn’t have to deal with paperwork any more.
“Where are you going to go Shitty Gramps?”, Ace asks.
Garp looks at Edward.
Edward looks at him.
Do you want to say it? He can hear being asked.
“Easy. I’m joining this crew”.
Garp hadn’t seen such a variety of reactions from one person since the time he had eaten all of Senny’s rice crackers.
Ace looks at Edward, and Grap might be a shitty uncle and a pathetic Grandfather, but he can still read his family and he knows he’s just broken his grandson, and everyone else arounds, brain.
But Edaward is laughing and he is laughing too, and for the first time since Roger told him what he wanted Garp thinks he might be okay.
He really does.
(His crew, the ones who've always followed him, Bogard and the rest, find him a month later.
Garp doesn’t know what to expect.
Because he had betrayed them as well, when he had broken and realized he couldn’t let the rest of his family die.
But they had been his family too.
They hadn’t known but still.
“You left without your crew, captain”.
All he can do is laugh. “I knew you’d miss me, Bogard”.
Bogard knows what he means.
And Garp knows that he’s forgiven)