Chapter Text
“Have you heard? They say there’s a Whitebeard pirate in Block B.”
It’s in the quiet of the changing room, when thoughts of prying ears are furthest from their minds, that Dusk Isle’s guards string together their gossip. It’s annoying, the way they prattle on about this shit like it matters to them.
“Why keep one of those monsters in this backwater prison? If Whitebeard comes to collect his man, the whole island’s finished.” At least it would shut you up, he thinks but doesn’t say. “Shouldn’t we ship him off to Impel Down?”
“You think the boys at Impel Down are gonna fare any better against an Emperor?” The guard snorts. “I hear they’ve got a better idea.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“You know that research Vegapunk left behind?”
Ace tosses his bag onto the floor of the locker, shrugging on the thick layers of his uniform. He keeps his back to the gossip, but pride won’t deafen him to their words, and he’s subjected to them anyway.
It’s always like this when he covers the late shift. The afternoon guardsmen are the worst for it; they sit on their thumbs, waiting out the hours with little more to do than flap their mouths and talk shit. The day shift isn’t like that; they’re too busy with the mundane tasks thrust upon them by the warden. Ace likes working days. It’s too bad, then, that it’s always the midnighters calling in.
The second guard bounces his foot, crossed over his knee, as he sprawls out across the bench on the far side of the room. He’s all too aware of the implications that follow Vegapunk’s name. “Whitebeard won’t take that lying down, though. If he catches wind of it, we’re all dead. We’ve got one base on the coast. Ace is our only devil fruit user, and we can’t trust him to—”
The first guard kicks his partner in the shin, as Ace turns at the sound of his name. They shut their mouths, pale-faced as they watch him. Fucking morons.
Ace straightens his tie over his double-breasted jacket and settles the cap over his dark mop of hair. The rigid layers of the uniform suffocate him beneath obligation, and the old clock hung above the door chimes with the start of his shift.
He crosses the narrow aisle between the lockers and bench, and grips the first guard’s shoulder. “Go home,” he says, breaking through the unnatural quiet. “You look tired.”
The body beneath his hand bends with his strength.
“Yeah. Sure thing. Take it easy.”
Ace offers a lazy wave as he takes sanctuary in the vacant halls. The prison is only four floors, compact compared to most Grand Line prisons, but the island itself is just a small speck in an ocean so uncomprehendingly vast. It’s rural. There are two small towns along the coast, and Dusk Isle’s Marine base is known lovingly as the Graveyard Shift. Soldiers are sent here to watch their careers die; once dispatched, they never return. There’s nothing to do here, no way to gain notoriety or build up a reputation. Pirate attacks? They happen, sure. Small islands like this make for good targets, after all. But the threat never outweighs the power of the sole Marine base stationed here. Big-name pirates are unheard of; there are several officers who’d give up a limb to face off against a member of the Worst Generation, even if they lost, just for a moment of praise and a chance off this rock.
Small prisons don’t need many guards. There are no more than forty prisoners kept here at any given time, and because of that, they operate on a shoestring budget. There are about twenty guards regularly employed at the prison. So, if there’s ever a sick call or injury, vacancies are filled by taking from the stockpile of men sitting on their asses at the main base.
Ace. It’s always Ace, only ever Ace, because he’s the only rank-and-file trusted with the task. He should be flattered. He isn’t. Today, like every other before it, he curses his devil fruit and everyone else for never having eaten one.
The warm, golden-hour hues fade, and through the barred windows, all he can see is the shift of blues and purples into midnight. The final dregs of sunlight won’t last the hour. Each step he takes reverberates in the cold, damp tunnel of stone, making it feel more empty than it is. He holds out an arm as he passes by, fingers brushing against the wall sconces, lighting them with the sparks of his devil fruit. Soon, small flames flicker, their light bouncing off the stone.
Block B. The basement is the coldest. It sits far enough above ground to allow for tiny windows along its ceiling, but the light they offer is dim and fleeting, even in the day. The hall is a cylinder of black until his flames chase away the dark, and one by one, each sconce he lights leaves the hall a little brighter. They keep high-risk criminals down here, the ones slated for death row or transfer. Seastone is pricey, so it stands to reason that all their devil fruit users are kept in one place.
This is where pirates tend to stay, and for all that they bitch and moan about how much they want to prove themselves, it’s always the Block B guys skipping work.
The last flame burns bright beneath his fingertips, and his patrol begins in earnest. The kitchen crew got dinner out early, so all that’s left for Ace to do is keep the peace. Most of the inmates will sleep through his shift. Trouble is rare, and even on the odd occasion that a prisoner acts up, it never amounts to anything. Dusk Isle doesn’t deal with Impel Down level threats, out here in the boonies.
“Thanks.”
Ace lingers at the far end of Block B’s basement hall, his flames shedding light into the very last cell and the man shackled within. He’s a pale, lanky thing, the flames casting long shadows across an angular face. His ankles and wrists are bound by ordinary shackles, not seastone, and he looks for all the world like he doesn’t care to be here. Ace hasn’t seen this one before.
Well, this isn’t quite true. Ace is a Marine. He’s combed through hundreds, maybe thousands, of wanted posters over his years of service, and every face he finds in Block B always rings familiar. But it’s the tattoo on the prisoner’s chest, the dark ink of a Jolly Roger, that tells him who he’s looking at. The words he failed to tune out in the locker room find him again, and he can’t help but stare.
The pirate presses back against the cool stone wall, tired, bored, and everything in between. Marco is his name, first mate of the Whitebeard Pirates, infamous across every sea. He doesn’t belong in this shoebox of a cell on one of the most remote islands on the Line. Their little prison is far from equipped to deal with a threat of his magnitude, and it’s a wonder how long they can hold him before he manages to bust out. And they can only hope that he does; there are stories about Whitebeard coming after those who touch his crew, and if he takes issue with their island, all that will remain are the ashes he leaves behind.
“It’s too dark in here,” the pirate mutters.
Ace scrutinizes him. It’s rare to hear a word of thanks from a prisoner, let alone for something so small. He’s been called every curse under the sun, and every word they share with him is usually mean-spirited. “What’s your angle?”
“No angle,” Marco says. “I have poor eyesight. It’s worse in the dark.”
He says this, but isn’t looking anywhere. His eyes are far-off and unfocused, and the only attention he’s giving is to the long-faded view from the window.
Ace doesn’t linger. He has rounds to make. But he glances back once, just once, at the tiny cell on the far end of the hall, and wonders what to make of the stranger sitting there.
There are no secrets on small islands. It takes three days, a week tops, for noteworthy news to sweep from one town to the next, and Marco’s capture is no exception.
After two weeks, Marco’s suddenly a household name. People in No Man’s Land tend to get excited over fuck-all, their lives a little too slow and peaceful to feel the adrenaline they crave. The gossip sweeping the marketplace doesn’t mention that Marco was only brought here because Dusk Isle’s prison was the closest to his point of capture, or that there was a concern he’d escape if they left him on the open water too long. That would diminish the townspeople’s pride. After all, they’re holding one of the most infamous pirates in the world. Don’t sweat the details, right?
Stories of the sorts of terrible things Marco’s done make their rounds, and Ace doesn’t wonder how much truth there is in them. What would a bunch of nobodies out here know about the escapades of an Emperor’s right hand? They’re a bunch of urban legends, each tale embellishing the last, but Ace keeps his head down and his mouth shut, knowing Marco will be transferred to Impel Down before his execution. There’s another week until the transfer. Seven more days, and all this commotion will blow over.
Ace is handed another graveyard shift at the prison, two-and-a-half weeks after the last. Working alone means he’ll have some goddamn peace and quiet, able to escape the gossip of the main base for a night.
At the start of his shift, he makes his rounds, lighting the sconces through the halls of Block B. Like before, he reaches the basement, and in the furthest cell, the talk of the town is dozing against the bars. Marco’s not asleep, but his eyes are closed, his head pressed against the cool metal at the front of his cell.
“Thanks,” he says like last time, peeking an eye open. “But it would have been nice if you came earlier. I’m trying to sleep.”
Ace rolls his eyes, snuffing out the flame of the sconce right beside Marco’s cell. In the dim light, he sees the man smile, just a bit. Amused, or grateful, Ace isn’t sure.
A few hours into his patrol, Ace spots two men guiding that same inmate out of his cell. They wear Marine uniforms, but they’re not guards. They’re not strangers, either; Ace remembers spotting one of them with the commander a while back.
He stops them before they make it to the stairs, holding an arm up to block their path, and glances at the shackled blond behind them, who isn’t giving them an ounce of attention. Marco watches the firelight flicker across the walls as though he’s the only one here, and it’s nice to know that Ace isn’t the only one he ignores.
“Hey there, fellas. Care to explain where you’re taking my inmate?” There was no mention of this in the transfer log. As far as he’s concerned, these two shouldn’t even have a key to Block B’s cells.
“What’re you doing here?” It’s the one he recognizes who asks. They know him from the main base, though Ace is a bit infamous in these parts. Even if they never met, he’d likely know the name and face of the island’s only devil fruit user.
“Working,” he says, sizing them up. “Same as you, I’d think.”
“We were given orders from higher up,” the other answers.
“To do what, exactly?” He crosses his arms, scrutinizing them. It feels like he’s seen this one before, too, but he can’t put a name to the face.
“It’s confidential. You know we can’t say.”
“Sure it is,” he nods. “Still need to know what you’re doing with my charge, though.”
“Look: call up your commander, and he’ll tell you the same thing. We’ll put him back in a few hours.”
The more Ace looks, the more he can tell something isn’t right. Marco’s out of it. His legs are weak. The two unknowns have their arms hooked around his own to support his weight, and his feet drag uselessly against the stone. Marco’s head hangs, everything about him droops, and Ace wonders what the hell they’ve drugged him with.
Behind them, a third Marine slips out from the open cell. A lab coat hangs over his uniform, and Ace recognizes this guy as one of the researchers from the lab on the third floor, Vegapunk’s old place. They’re telling the truth; this confirms it. But every new piece of the puzzle turns his stomach, and he thinks back to the locker room gossip from two weeks prior.
The researcher smiles at him and nods, directing his men to move on, and all Ace can do is step aside and obey. This guy outranks him. Soon, they disappear up the stairs, and only he and the researcher remain in the quiet of the basement.
“Don’t you worry.” The man smiles like a snake awaiting its prey, and Ace can imagine him wearing that smile in front of every prisoner he took before this. “We’ll bring him back safe and sound.”
Ace watches the man go. None of this sits well with him, but all he can do is step back and wait. Worrying about whatever happens on the third floor is well above his pay grade.
There’s something in the cell at the far end of Block B’s basement hall. The sconce before it remains unlit, but a soft blue glow illuminates the darkened path as Ace makes the final rounds of his shift. He didn’t see the researcher’s team bring the pirate back, but that light catches his eye, burning softly, and draws him in.
Something is there, but it isn’t Marco.
At first, he’s not sure what it is, all glowing and ethereal like a mythical beast. But through the eye-bleeding light, he can make out the feathers on its back, an elongated neck, and the wings that surround it.
There’s a bird in the cell. Ace wasn’t trained to deal with this.
There’s no way something this big got inside the prison on its own power without breaking through a wall. He doesn’t speculate for long; laboured breathing echoes through the basement. The bird shivers against its heatless flames, and something is clearly wrong with it, but Ace doesn’t know what to do. Part of him wonders if he could fry it up, and if something like this is even edible, but the urge dies just as soon.
The cell door is locked. There are only three copies of the key: one is the master key kept in the warden’s office, the other is around his belt loop, and he suspects the last one belongs to the researchers.
This thing is Marco.
Ace is at a loss. Protocol tells him not to interfere in the research team’s studies, but fuck, the product of their work is back in his cell, so there’s not much interfering to be done, is there? Something’s clearly wrong with Marco, and all prisoners have the right to see a doctor when they’re ill, even those on death row. Until an inmate departs, it’s his job to keep them secure and alive. But would the prison doctor know what to do if Ace called her up and shoved a bird into her infirmary?
When Marco’s head comes to rest on the floor, Ace unlocks the cell door and slips inside. He keeps his distance just in case this is all an act, but this thing isn’t getting out of here without a lot of help. Marco’s ankles are still shackled, and there’s a seastone cuff on one of his wings. They fed him a devil fruit, one of the ones Vegapunk left behind. He’s heard horror stories of what those things have done to people in the past. This one… He’s not sure what Marco’s supposed to be. A phoenix, maybe? He heard rumours of mythical zoans, but they’re extremely rare. It wouldn’t be surprising if Vegapunk was trying to replicate one.
Nothing happens. Marco doesn’t seem to notice the company, his breath coming out in short, burdened gasps, and Ace makes a careful approach. With a caution usually unknown to him, Ace runs a hand along the feathers of Marco’s wing. It’s cold to the touch. Marco’s body shivers, but all Ace can do is radiate heat and stay nearby. The prisoner leans into the warmth, desperate to fight off the chill, so Ace stands where he is.
It’s from the seastone cuff, he knows. Ace doesn’t have a key for it, and he can’t break seastone.
For a while, Ace sits next to the bird and uses his body like a space heater. Marco continues leaning into him, shivering as he balls himself up tightly, the drugs still coursing through his system, and Ace wonders why he cares. He isn’t sure. Something inside him burns at the sorry sight of this poor man, and he wants to make things right.
That might be why he melts away a link in the chain of Marco’s shackles. Maybe that’s why the metal bars are soon to follow.
These efforts jostle Marco from his sleep, tired eyes searching Ace. But he isn’t himself right now, and there’s no thought behind his stare. Ace can’t be sure if this is a side effect of the drug, or the artificial devil fruit. Only time will tell.
When Marco closes his eyes, Ace claps his hands loudly in front of the bird’s face, jolting him awake.
“None of that,” he says. “You wanna live? Or are you gonna rot in here until your execution?”
Marco isn’t coherent enough to hear his words, and Ace doesn’t know if he can do this.
No one will know, he tells himself. Ace has been manning this wing on and off for the past five years, and nothing bad has ever happened before. They’re dealing with a Whitebeard pirate. There’s no security footage, no proof of his involvement. It’ll be fine.
No one’s around. He takes a deep breath, and drags Marco’s limp body close.
Ace has a knack for explosives. He can thank his logia for that. The blow rocks the walls of the prison, and everything fades behind a white light. Sirens follow. The sprinklers kick on. A piercing wail cuts through the ringing in his ears, and he struggles to keep balance as he prods the bird up into the air. Soon, a spread of blue wings lifts through the hole in the wall and pierces the velvet sky, and Ace is running. He can’t be here when back-up arrives.
It takes forty-two minutes for Ace to turn on the Marines. Hopefully, they won’t hold it against him.
The prison falls into chaos. The investigation takes hours, and the interrogation is even longer. But with no proof that he was at the scene during the incident, Ace is allowed to clock out and drag his tired ass back home. Block B will be off-limits while under repair, and the inmates will be transferred to other blocks in the meantime. With any luck, he won’t be getting called in anytime soon. He should have blown it up sooner.
Approaching his house, something is off. The shed to the side looks a bit different, but it’s hard for his sleep-deprived brain to pinpoint why.
Ah, he realizes as he rubs his eyes, the roof caved in.
Why is the roof caved in?
Ace tosses his bag onto the grass and runs to the shed. He flings the door open, fire burning beneath his skin in sync with all his anger. But the moment he sees a mass of blue feathers, it’s like a bucket of cold water is dumped on his head. In the middle of his floor, Marco sleeps amidst the debris from the roof.
He covers his face with his hands and lets out a long-suffering sigh. He wholeheartedly deserves this, and he knows it. But he isn’t dealing with this right now.
Ace cleans up the mess around the bird as best he can, making sure there are no nails that Marco can stab himself with. Marco’s entire body is curled into a tight ball, so all he sees is a mass of feathers, but there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong at first glance.
After draping a bunch of blankets from the house over the bird, Ace goes inside to find his bed, and accepts everything that awaits him in the shed when he wakes up.