Chapter Text
Luffy cries when he sees him fall.
Ace pays him no mind, because he still doesn’t care about Luffy enough, and because in their short acquaintance he has learned that Luffy cries for everything. He picks himself up from the ground while Sabo tries to reassure their new companion that Ace is not actually dead, he just fell. Luffy is still crying. The tree’s branches are too thin to climb it, so they will have to find another one.
“Shut up,” snaps Ace. He’s furious because he fell and he’s furious because he doesn’t like Luffy or his tears and he’s furious because he always is. “Stop crying. I’m fine.”
The kid looks at him with big teary eyes and Ace scowls at him.
“You are not going to die?” Says Luffy with a raspy voice.
Ace rolls his eyes.
“I’m not going to die,” he promises.
It’s a lie, of course. But to be fair, he means it at the moment. After all, despite everything, he’s still a kid. He believes he can conquer anything. He believes it is in his blood.
And he hates it.
Ace learned he was cursed when he was four.
He doesn’t remember from whom he heard it from (probably the old man) or how he discovered it (probably eavesdropping), but he has had the knowledge since then.
Devil’s spawn.
Would be better off dead.
Monster’s seed.
A curse into this world.
It’s funny to have so many titles and names, except it’s not funny at all.
He doesn’t cry himself to sleep because he doesn’t cry. Children of monsters don't cry. Children of monsters don’t hug themselves to sleep wishing they were never born and missing a mother they never knew. Children of monsters don’t feel sad and empty and alone at the tender age of eight. So he rages instead. Anger courses through his blood like a poison and Ace embraces it with his tiny fists. Children of monsters are allowed to be angry, after all. And he hates him, he hates everyone.
(He hates himself.)
The Moby Dick is too big and Ace is too small.
Some days he can’t breathe. Something comes up from his stomach, to his chest, to his throat, and suddenly he can’t breathe and everything is too much, too much, too much and Ace is weak again.
(He takes refuge in his cabin, hugs his knees to his chest and tries not to cry. He’s fine. He’s fine. He’s fine. He repeats the lie until he almost manages to convince himself.)
He feels claustrophobic in such a big space, ironically, and wishes he could fly away from time to time like Marco does.
“I could give you a ride sometime if you want,” says Marco when Ace jokingly brings up his envy. “You are not too heavy.”
Ace smiles, big and wide and happy, as if casual shows of care and camaraderie didn’t shock him to his core everytime they happened.
“I’d love that!”
Ace doesn’t know much about family, but even he can grasp a basic concept: the big brother must protect the little brother.
It’s just common sense, really. The stronger one protects the weak one.
“I’m not weak!” cries Luffy, raising his tiny fists.
“You’re the weakest person I know,” says Ace just to annoy him.
“That’s not true! I’m sure that a lot of people in town are weaker than me!”
Ace mocks him.
“That’s your great defense? That you are stronger than some civilians? Amazing words from the future Pirate King.”
Luffy inflates his cheeks like a squirrel.
“One day I will be stronger than you, Ace! I will be stronger than all of you and you won’t be able to laugh at me! I’ll protect you because I'll be the strongest!”
Ace laughs at him, of course.
Marco traces the crossed out “s” on his left arm, startling him. Ace snaps his eyes from his beer to his crewmate, who smiles sheepishly at him.
“Sorry, I forgot you don’t like to be touched without warning, I was just wondering how drunk you were when you got this tattoo.”
“Not as much as you are now,” replies Ace, earning a low laugh. Marco is too close, sitting by his side with their thighs and knees almost touching. The party is still going strong around them, but Ace hasn’t been paying attention for a while. The only thing he really likes about parties is the food.
“I’m not that drunk,” says Marco with bright eyes. They’re blue, and Ace feels a pang of nostalgia.
But it’s just that. Nostalgia. Marco is Marco, not someone else.
“It’s a memento, actually.” Ace takes a sip from his beer and refuses to look at his friend again. “For my brother. His name was Sabo and he died a long time ago.”
He can feel Marco breathing deeply by his side and that grounds him.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know you had another brother apart from Luffy.”
“I don’t talk much about him.”
Perhaps he should. Perhaps he should constantly remind the world of his existence, but Ace is selfish and he just wants to forget.
(Not Sabo. Never Sabo. He dreams of his laugh and his eyes and his hat and the way he was so gentle with Luffy for no reason at all. Sabo is always there. In his tattoo, in the sun, in Marco’s eyes, in the flames that lick his skin like a bold lover, in a person with blonde hair and no face lost in the crowd of a port.
He can’t forget Sabo. He won’t forget Sabo. He exists in a corner of his mind, untouched by time and violence, breathing and real.
If he talks about him, he stops being alive. He has to explain he’s dead and the breathing living Sabo who looks at him through Marco’s eyes stops existing.)
Ace learns to be a person step by step.
People have a lot of rituals and rules that you have to follow for no discernable reason at all. Ace doesn’t really get it (he’s the son of a monster, after all), but he applies himself. Makino teaches him manners and formal speech and how to write and how to introduce himself to strangers and Ace learns it all. He can’t be just a cursed child anymore. He’s all Luffy has left, and Luffy needs a person who can take care of him, not a devil’s spawn who promised revenge on the world.
That desire died with Sabo.
(Not really. Ace is still angry, he’s still hateful, he’s still full of rage. But he swallows it. He’s not just the monster’s son anymore. He’s Sabo and Luffy’s brother. And that comes with responsibilities.
He won’t fail them like his father failed him.)
The curious thing is that Sabo is angry too.
He’s better at pretending he’s not, but Ace can see his own empty anger reflected back at him. He can tell by the tick at the jaw and the bruised fists and the tense neck, and he doesn’t understand why exactly Sabo is so angry (he’s not the son of the devil, he’s not hated by every single breathing person just for existing), but it’s enough.
Ace feels less like a monster when they’re together.
“We are really strong,” says Sabo one day, after they have hunted a bear; they are both panting and covered in dirt. “I bet one day we will be strong enough to take over the world and make things right.”
Sometimes Sabo says really weird things that Ace doesn’t know how to interpret.
“Make things right?”
“You know, stop injustice and slavery. Kill all the nobles and bad people who hurt others.”
“That's dumb.”
“Is it?”
“Yeah. I’m going to be too busy being a pirate to do all those things.”
“I guess. I’ll have to do it alone, then.”
Ace scoffs.
“You are going to kill all the nobles on your own?”
Sabo eyes are bright, almost feverish.
“If I have to.”
(He stops talking about it after Luffy joins them. He starts talking about traveling the world and writing a book. His eyes are less bright, more calm. Ace resents him for it. They were supposed to be a curse upon the world and now Sabo chooses to be a big brother.
He hates him.)
He wakes up with the taste of cooked meat in his mouth and a hand going through his hair. He pretends to be asleep a little more, shivers running through his spine as the hand buries itself in his unruly hair and massages the scalp, going down to his neck, the thumb doing circles below his ear.
Ace feels like he could purr.
“Ace.” It’s Marco. Of course it’s Marco. “Wake up.”
He doesn’t want to wake up; he wants to curl into himself and let Marco pet him until he feels safe and relaxed and happy.
But he opens his eyes a little bit. He’s a brother here too. He has responsibilities.
He tries to speak, but only manages to mumble something incomprehensible. His tongue feels heavy and clumsy.
Marco laughs above his head, the sound warm and sweet like the hot chocolate Dadan prepared in winter, the one she liked to pretend it wasn’t for them so they could steal it and feel like real pirates. Marco’s hand travels from his neck to his back, caressing the lines of his tattoo with his fingers.
“C'mon, you fell asleep while eating and Thatch sent me to get you. We have a meeting in five minutes.”
Ace whines and yawns and Marco laughs again and everything is fine.
They sleep in the same bed during the winter, to keep warm. Luffy goes in the middle, Ace and Sabo at his sides. It’s not a good arrangement, because Luffy moves a lot in his sleep, kicking them, and also because Sabo snores and Ace has a problem with being touched and personal space, but they do it anyway.
Luffy is fast asleep, like always, but Ace is still awake, listening to the storm going outside their shelter.
He wonders, for a moment, if his father ever lied down with his friends like this or if everyone was too afraid of him to do something like that.
Gol D. Roger.
He forms the name in his tongue, even though he has never pronounced it out loud. It tastes like ashes.
“Ace.”
Sabo’s voice startles him from his thoughts. Luffy is still sleeping between them, warm and small. In a weird streak of protectiveness, Ace thinks he would do anything for him.
“What?”
“Stop thinking stupid things.”
(The Mera Mera no Mi tastes like ashes but his fire burns without smoke.)
“Did you know my mother?”
If Pops is surprised by the question, he doesn’t show it. Ace never wants to talk about his father, but his mother is another matter entirely.
“I did. Portgas D. Rouge. She was a remarkable woman, powerful and strong. I saw her beat Roger down more than once. I think he fell in love with her because she could kick his ass.” Whitebeard laughs. “You have her freckles. And her temper.”
(Ace touches his face and feels warm.)
The old man comes to visit him in prison.
Ace wishes he could hate him, but his hate died years ago, when Whitebeard accepted him as his son. Garp looks older than he remembers, the heavy lines of age marked in his face. He looks haunted, but Ace doesn’t want his pity.
“Did you know my mother?”
(They might kill him because of his father but he’s alive because of his mother, and if he has to choose, he chooses to be her son instead of his.)
Luffy cries when he sees him fall.
Ace wants to tell him to shut up and listen, because he doesn’t believe he has much time to speak and wants to say goodbye appropriately.
(He learned how to do it, after all. To be a proper person and not a monster or the son of one.)
“Thank you for loving me.”
Are you proud of me, Sabo?
He smiles.