Chapter Text
Ace scratches at the fresh bandages over his wrist as he lets the adults talk over him. It’s getting late. He’s going to miss it again. He doesn’t even know what he did this time, he thinks in exasperation. This place has too many rules.
The bed he’s sitting on faces the window. It seems a little backwards, considering they went out of their way to put a privacy curtain next to it to hide it from the door, but he supposes the window is far enough away for no one to be able to peek into it. And, well, this room is on the second floor. It’s dark and gloomy outside, the rain pelting against the glass loudly. At least it hasn’t thundered yet. He looks over at the nurse’s carefully organized desk and shelves, at odds with the childish drawings and decorations hanging on the walls. A poster of children standing in a row stares back at him, the printed ‘What hurts?’ over them as the graphic expands on the various body parts for kids to name. No one here is young enough to need that, right?
The conversation between the adults has petered off, and he turns back to look towards them just in time to see the police officer that showed up earlier start walking towards him. She grabs the nearby cheap plastic chair, turning it around so she’s sitting on it backwards to address him, arms crossed over the back of it. He looks her over as he waits to be addressed. Her hair is kinda cool. Red and shaved at the sides with her sideburns left long. He doesn’t remember meeting her before. That’s good. It’s always harder when there’s a before.
“Hey, sweetheart,” she says. There’s a soft smile on her face. He wrinkles his nose in response. It’s a little… disarming. Her tone and body language seems all soft and friendly, even though she’d been business-like with a harsh tone when speaking with the nurse and his teacher. Weird. Why would they be keeping him this long if he wasn’t in trouble? Is she trying to pretend he’s not? “Can you tell me how you got hurt?”
Ugh. Seriously? This is the third time he’s had to repeat it. He doesn’t get what the issue is. “I fell wrong.”
The lady’s smile turns a little strained. That seems more right. “No, not that. Why did you fall?”
Because he’s too damn small. That’s not an answer he can actually say, though. They wouldn’t get it. He looks at his reflection in the window. How long until he stops being too small for his instincts? He wishes he knew. “‘Cause Higuma hit me.” Ace pauses after this, kicking his legs. The ointment they put on his bruises itches. He doesn’t know if it’s supposed to itch. He can see the question coming from the slight frown on the officer’s face, so he clarifies: “My foster dad.”
He hates calling him that, but it’s what that guy is. Legally. Lucky number whatever. He catches some whispering in the back about how they’re waiting on his social worker to arrive. He hates that even more. He didn’t do anything this time. He should’ve lied when the teacher asked him why he wasn’t writing anything down today instead of admitting he’d hurt his wrist. Or he should’ve just sucked it up and wrote anyway. But he didn’t do either of those things, and now he’s stuck here, in trouble. This sucks.
“Why did he hit you?” The cop asks when he doesn’t keep talking. She’s doing her best to sound patient.
That question is easy. Ace rolls his eyes when he answers: “I talked shit.” The lady’s lips go thin and white as she looks at him and he winces. Manners. Right. He knows those. He can be good at those. He doesn’t want to when he’s mad, and he’s been mad, but he can be polite. He learned all that. He knows he did. “I mean, I talked back.”
To be honest, it wasn’t even that strong a hit. It’s embarrassing that he got injured from it. He knows he has to dodge now. He’s good at dodging. He only fell because he couldn’t move out of the way in the staircase, and then he failed to catch himself correctly. He used to be better than that. He looks at his reflection again and thinks maybe he used to be better in a lot of ways.
“Does this happen often?”
There’s something in that sentence that makes him pause. She looks mad, but she isn’t talking like she’s mad at him. “... I guess,” Ace answers, feeling a little embarrassed. His mouth works faster than his brain sometimes. His mouth and his fists. That was true before, too. “Everyone says I’ve got a smart mouth.”
The officer pauses at that, taking in a short breath as if to calm herself. He tenses, but all she does is smile at him again after that, a little strained. “No, sweetie. I mean does your foster father hit you often? Is this the first time?”
He shrugs, looking down at his scuffed knee. “Yeah, sometimes. If I’m being a bother,” he says. It’s not like the guy tries to beat the shit out of Ace or anything. …But. It’s not exactly like the usual way grown ups hit kids either, though, slaps and punches upside the head when they’re being a pain or disrespectful. He’s had to dodge more glass bottles than he cares to count in the past few months. …Well, not that he’d never dodged projectiles before. Maybe it’s not so different.
When he glances up at her, the officer is frowning at him, jaw clenched. “Does your social worker know about this?”
He almost laughs at the question, turning his gaze back to his lap to try and hide the smile. “She’d be the first to say I’m a lot of trouble,” he says. It’s a joke no one gets, going by the answering silence. Not that he expected anyone to understand.
There’s footsteps out in the hall then, coming towards the door, the sharp slap of heels against the tile echoing around them. Ace straightens up, leaning to see over the edge of the privacy curtain. The officer turns back too, looking in interest at the imposing woman down in the doorway. Her bright orange curls are pulled up into a messy bun, her suit jacket and shoes wet from the rain outside. There’s a bright red necklace that always catches his eyes around her neck, the only thing standing out from her otherwise boring, professional attire. Well, that, and the loud chewing she’s doing as she looks around the room, what Ace knows to be nicotine flavored gum in her mouth. From the way she’s chewing, it’s only one this time.
“Alright, Ace, what did you do this time?” Dadan asks, wiping some water off her face. Some of her makeup runs with it.
The nurse pauses, looking at his file and then him before she looks back at his social worker. “Oh, um, no, we called for Ann Portgas, you must’ve heard the wrong file name…?”
Dadan grimaces at that, looking over at him with a questioning look on her face. Ace tugs at his school uniform skirt, finding his lap fascinating suddenly. He hasn’t seen her face to face since she dropped him off at Higuma’s, and he… might have neglected to mention some things during her last phone check up.
“He likes Ace better,” she says in a careful tone, and there’s a vague noise of surprise from all three other adults at the he. His fists bunch up in the school skirt. “Unless you’ve changed your mind on that?”
He hasn’t. He’s Ace. He always has been, since before. This body doesn’t change that. “No,” Ace mumbles, reluctant. “But Higuma put everything down under Ann.”
It feels like such a stupid complaint. It’s his name. Legally. And there’s a reason he hadn’t said anything before. Sure, Higuma was a drunk and an asshole who talked shit like how being a tomboy was never going to make Ace a man, like he hasn’t been and always will be more of a man than this loser ever has, and he swiped at and threw things at him over the slightest things, but. But he doesn’t care at all what Ace does outside of being a good girl at school and doesn’t attract attention as long as he can still get his check, and that’s an arrangement that really worked for him after the past few homes.
Besides. No one ever takes him seriously about this. It’s not like Higuma is the first. Dadan’s the only one who’s been consistent outside of… the thought makes him look at the time with a frown.
Ah… He’s really going to miss it if this keeps up.
“She never said anything about being… Are you sure it’s not just a nickname she likes?” His teacher asks in a soft voice that carries in the awkward silence of the room.
Yeah. No one ever takes him seriously. Ace frowns down at the bed, trying to decide if it’s even possible for him to slip away at this point. Probably not.
“Just–Why did you guys call me?” Dadan bites with a loud smack of her gum, foot tapping on the ground. “You said there were injuries, so I thought Ace got into a fight again, but there’s no other kid here.”
The police officer is the one who answers, getting up to face Dadan after giving him a smile he thinks was meant to be reassuring. “Ace has various bruises and a sprained wrist. He stated that his injuries were caused by his current guardian.”
He jolts at the pronoun use, blinking up at the cop. She doesn’t look back at him, so he turns his gaze back to Dadan. She’s looking at him with such sad exhaustion that he looks back down at his lap again.
Before, she didn’t used to look at him like this, he thinks. He misses the exasperation.
Dadan rummages through her pocket, taking out some gum she hastily adds to the one she’s already chewing. “Alright. Let’s go over everything, Ace.”
Fuck.
—
5 missed calls
You have one voice message and one saved message. To play your messages, press–
“Ah… alright, then. Hmmm. I think I can manage this same time tomorrow. Don’t be in too much trouble, now!”
Message deleted.
—
The day ends the same way these things usually end for Ace; sitting in Dadan’s car with all his belongings in a bag.
They’re sitting in a fast food drive thru, which isn’t usually how these things go. The rain still hasn’t let up, though it’s more of a soft drizzle by now. He follows the path of a single raindrop on the window until it’s out of sight. His social worker has her window partially open as she takes a drag of a cigarette. It looks like the gum wasn’t cutting it today. She doesn’t bother putting it out when a hand reaches out from the drive-thru window holding a greasy bag, sticking it in her mouth so she can hand the bag over to him to grab the drinks that follow. Ace diligently puts the bag between his legs despite the fact that he’s still wearing his school uniform and it’s going to stain. He’s probably not going back to this one anyway. He opens the bag and rummages through to find his chicken nuggets as Dadan pulls over to park so they can eat.
She didn’t want to go inside the restaurant. She’s not really supposed to feed him, he thinks. Well. She’s not supposed to let him ride in front, either. Or smoke with him in the car.
There’s so many rules now.
“I got you a milkshake,” Dadan tells him like it’s a surprise. He was sitting next to her as she ordered. He heard it. He still nods in answer around his mouthful of nuggets. She sighs around her cigarette, holding out her free hand so Ace can give her her food. He hands her the wrapped burger after rummaging through to get to the bottom of the bag beneath the fries. She unwraps it and takes a violent bite, mouth still half full when she asks: “You gonna tell me why you kept all of Higuma’s shit to yourself, now?”
He grabs the milkshake to swallow his apparent bribe and clear his mouth of nuggets. It’s a mistake, because his hands are sticky from the packet of sauce he opened for his nuggets, and now so is the drink. Rummaging for the napkins is a good excuse to not look her in the face when he answers. “It didn’t seem like a big deal,” he tells the bag. He secures a napkin and wipes his hand, crumpling it up and shoving it in the car door afterwards. The next napkin he puts over his lap for later. “His aim’s shitty.”
“Language,” Dadan says automatically. Ace cuts her a look. It’s hypocritical, and not only because she just used the same one earlier. He learned all of his swears from her. Not that she knows that, he supposes. “And that’s–you know that’s not the point.”
He shrugs. He’s not sure he does know what her point is. He doesn’t… mean to make her life difficult, though. They switched him to her caseload because she’s the only social worker he didn’t try to fight, back when this whole thing first started. He feels a little bad about it. She got saddled with him simply because he hadn’t been able to hide his fondness for her from before.
He nibbles on a fry. “Where am I going this time?” He asks to change the subject.
Dadan sighs, taking a long drag of her cigarette again. She’s gonna finish it in two minutes at this rate. “There’s a group home not far from here,” she starts, tapping her cigarette on the edge of the window pane so the ashes drop down outside the car. “You’ll have to switch to the other school in the district, though.”
Ah. Good to know it really isn’t a problem that he's stained the uniform, then. Ace turns back to look out the window. “Alright.”
There’s a lull in the conversation. He scarfs down his food while Dadan eats at a more sedate pace next to him. Her lipstick has stained the ends of her cigarette and there’s some sauce at the corner of her mouth from the burger, her frown pronounced as she looks outside. Ace makes sure his hands are clean before he hands her a napkin.
(Fix your face, old hag, the voice inside of him teases. He shoves the last chicken nugget in his mouth instead of saying it.)
She takes it with a surprised blink. “Thanks,” she says, her voice gruff. She shakes her head. “I know I told you to stop making trouble before this place, but…”
He gets it. He’s been in more schools and homes than he cares to remember in the past few years, and she’s the one who has to deal with that every time. Still, he feels a frown pull at his mouth as he stares stubbornly out the window again. Like it’s his fault people keep calling her for the littlest things. “I know.”
A crumpled napkin hits the side of his head and he turns to look back at her, offended.
“Don’t give me that attitude, brat,” she scoffs. “What I was trying to say is–you’re not causing trouble by calling me if you end up with a drunk who throws bottles at you. Hell, Ace. No one should be trying to hit you at all.”
He doesn’t answer verbally, reaching for his milkshake and loudly slurping it instead. It feels weird to hear that from her. She’d never have said any of this before, he thinks. The atmosphere in the car is heavy. She sighs again and throws her burger wrapper somewhere in the back of the car, using her now freed hand to rub at her temples like he’s giving her a headache.
“…Look, I know things were messed up with that man before we got you, but–”
Ace wrenches the straw out of his mouth, feeling heat rise to his face in anger. “He never hit me,” he defends. His chest feels tight. It only gets tighter at the pitying look she gives him and he growls as he kicks at the glove compartment. “My dad never hurt me!”
Dadan looks mad for a second, and it’s familiar, it’s better, but then she looks at him with sad, tired eyes again and he hates it. “We both know that’s not true.”
The problem is, it is and it isn’t. Ace slumps into the seat and looks out the window once more.
“Just… drop me off at the stupid home already.”
—
No new messages. One saved message. To play your message, press–
—
The group home isn’t as crowded as he expects it to be. There’s a handful of other kids, but the only ones that stand out are a blond teen who’s got the gangly limbs of someone who’s just hit their growth spurt and his blue haired companion with glasses. They’re not siblings, but they’ve known each other in the system a while, going by how they act. They don’t stand out to him because of that, though. They stand out because the blond laughs like a hyena when Ace has to correct the social worker on his name when he’s introduced to the group, and the blue haired guy snickers alongside him.
Ace’s glare to them is clearly a lot more cutting than they expect it to be, but despite the blood rushing to his head he doesn’t try to punch their lights out the way he wants to.
He pretends his restraint is rewarded by being given his own room, though he knows when he steps into the cramped, closet-like space it’s because they don’t know if he should share with the boys or the girls. That’s alright. He doesn’t need a lot of space. Even with this room only being a bed and a dresser without any windows, that works for him.
He doesn’t bother unpacking his scarce belongings. He knows from experience it’s best to leave everything in bags for the next time he has to go. There’s only one thing he takes out for now; a somewhat large, worn out plush of a tortoise cat. He’s careful as he turns it over on its back, opening the secret pouch on its stomach and taking out the flip phone hidden inside the fluff.
It’s not like he expects the burner phone to have any new messages since the one he missed during school. Only one person has this number. He turns it on anyway, methodically checking his voicemail despite the lack of notifications. His thumb hovers over the button to replay his saved message, but–no. Not here. He doesn’t know how much privacy even this room really gets him.
After spending far too long searching for it, he locates a single outlet in the room placed awkwardly under the bed. He grabs a pillow before he crawls down there, plugging his phone in with the charger that was inside the cat before placing the plush over it to hide it. He curls up right there under the bed, still in his old school uniform, resting his head on the pillow. His back hides the plug from view at this angle. It should be good enough.
The tortoise cat stares back at him. One button eye looks like it’s hanging by a thread, and he notes to himself to repair that when he can. He’s not sure how much longer he can get away with carrying the cat with him as cover, though. He’s eight now, so… maybe two more years? Then he’ll have to think of an alternative.
“He said he’d call back tomorrow,” Ace tells the cat. The cat, of course, doesn’t say anything in response. “He can’t usually call two days in a row.”
He wonders if that’s a good sign.
He closes his eyes. Before, he’d never have looked forward to hearing that man’s voice. But now…
(A hand ruffling his hair. It’ll be alright, Ace. Loud, booming laughter as he’s picked up despite his squirming.
A silhouette led away in handcuffs.
He had her hidden away in here– Who cares? The child of a man like that–)
He opens his eyes suddenly and reaches for the phone. He hesitates before he dials the one number stored in it.
—
The number you are calling is currently unavailable. Please leave a message after the beep.
“... Hi, dad. Um… Sorry about today. They had to move me again.
…
That’s all. Bye.”
—
In a previous life, or maybe in another universe, Ace was a pirate.
He’s had the memories of that life for as long as he can remember. They jumble with his current ones in a way that always makes it hard for him to separate the before with the now. It leaves some marks. A too familiar way of speaking with people who believe themselves to be strangers. Skills and knowledge no one his age should have. An inability to remember that fire burns him while water presents no danger at all. He doesn’t know how to stop any of that, not fully, but he’s working on at least being less obvious with all of those.
The one thing he can’t work on are the dreams, though.
He wakes up from another one that night drenched in sweat, heart pounding, the phantom pain of burning and choking on his own blood lingering. He can still smell his own cooked flesh and his mouth tastes like metal, his senses on fire. There are tears streaming down his face he makes no move to wipe away as he lays there and concentrates on simply breathing, staring at the underside of the bed.
(In and out. Yeah. Like that, son. You’ll be alright, Ace. I’m here.)
It’s a dream he has a lot. Dying. It’s not the only one, of course. It’s not even the only one that leaves him a wreck like this. It is easily the worst, though. It’s not the pain or guilt or whatever else that makes it that way. It’s that–it’s that–
(Thank you, for–)
In another life, Ace was a pirate. The son of a demon. Shunned by the world for ever being born. He remembers. But despite all of that, Ace had been loved. And in this life–in this life–
He turns to the side to look at his phone, checking the time with blurred vision. Eight more hours until his next call.
(Six months until his father’s next court appeal. Two years since he was put on death row.)
He closes his eyes and tries to go back to sleep.
—
“Hello?”
“Ace! How are things going? I got your message! What happened? Why did they move you again?”
“... No reason. It wasn’t a good fit.”
“Hahaha. You always say that. Don’t want to worry your old man, huh? What’s this, the sixth one now?”
“Seventh. It’s fine, dad. What about you? Is it really okay for you to call again so soon?”
“Even if it wasn’t, it wouldn’t be enough to stop me from wanting to talk to my son.”
“... Don’t be stupid. If you get caught, they’ll take the phone away.”
“Hahahaha! Let me concern myself with those details, Ace. C’mon. I’ve got at least ten minutes. Tell me what you’ve been up to since last time!”
“... Yeah, okay.”