Chapter Text
Gol D. Roger is seven years and six days old when his mom drops a dish in their cramped kitchen, and says in a tight voice, “Go fetch the midwife, lad.”
It’s not a surprise. Her tummy is, like, huge, and Roger’s been waiting for the baby that’s supposed to come out for ages. He knows the exact route to Ma’am Mid’s house, has practiced running it the past month just to make sure, and with excitement pulling him along Roger gets there in record time.
Except after that, it’s just more waiting. Ma’am Mid won’t even let him back into the house, says “You go along and be rambunctious elsewhere, brat, you can pester your mother once all is said and done.”
Ugh.
Roger doesn’t go far. Mostly he loops around the nearest narrow streets, the part of Loguetown crammed up against the southern sea wall, where the wood and stone is always damp and air never stops smelling of salt. A few people fuss at him getting underfoot, even though Roger isn’t even making a ruckus today, just running around in circles. And, okay, sometimes scrambling up on top of the scrunched houses, so he doesn’t have to wriggle through groups of people on the cobblestones, and Mister Joust always knows it’s him and yells at Roger to get off his roof before his foot comes through the shingles. The third time Roger crosses his house the old man actually comes outside, pistol in hand, so that seems like a good time to go all the way home and sit on his own rooftop. Even if that means he’s gotta listen to the muffled sounds of his mom swearing and crying out. That’s what ladies do when they’re having a baby, it’s nothing to worry about. Right? Right.
They were having breakfast when she dropped the dish.
It’s not until just after sunset that his mom stops yelling, and instead Roger hears a tiny wail.
He’s down and squirming through the bedroom window in an instant, ignoring how Ma’am Mid curses at him to stop and go away. His mom looks a mess, covered in sweat and her dark hair all loose and tangled, but she grins at him from where she’s slumped back against their two pillows on the bed.
It’s been a while since she last grinned. Roger beams back.
And then he’s distracted, by Ma’am Mid going “Alright, may as well make yourself useful, come here and hold the babe while I help your mother with the last of it,” and then there’s a bundle and there’s crying and there’s a baby.
...at least Roger thinks it’s a baby.
It’s kinda. Squished.
But there’s a tiny nose in the middle of all the squished red skin, and once he sinks down to sit with the bundle as much in his lap as in his arms, Roger very very carefully brushes the pad of his thumb over the tip of that tiny nose.
The baby’s crying gets quieter.
“Hi,” Roger whispers, gentle like the time he convinced a scared kitten to come out from under the dock. “Hi, squishy baby. I’m your big brother, Roger. You and me are gonna have a lot of fun, okay? Adventures and exploring and all the stuff that goes into good stories.”
The crying slowly stops.
He isn’t really allowed to sing any of his dad’s old songs anymore, not since the ship sank, but his mom is still in bed and distracted with Ma’am Mid, so Roger takes a chance and hums the tune of his favorite, and that does the trick. The baby’s face un-squishes, kinda, and then it’s just- sleeping. Tucked into Roger’s grasp. Like it knows he won’t let anything bad ever happen, not so long as he can put up a fight.
Never, ever ever.
“How about... Ace?”
Roger’s mom snorts, busy scrubbing at blood-stained sheets in their old tin washtub. “You stick that name on every stray you bring through our door, and now you want to give it to the baby?”
“It’s a good name!”
“Uh-huh. Well, if you give it to your little brother, you can’t be giving it to any further critters. Think you can live with that?”
“Mmhm!” Roger looks down into the basket their next door neighbor offered, where the baby’s asleep again. It’s not a very good basket, frayed and coming apart in spots, but his mom lined it with their softest blanket, and the baby doesn’t seem to mind. “He’s gonna stick around way longer than any pet.” Mainly because Roger’s mom always puts her foot down and refuses to let him keep a kitten or dog or crab for more than a few hours, but the baby is different.
...or at least, he hopes so. A few times over the past months, as her tummy kept getting bigger, Roger overheard some of their neighbors asking if things wouldn’t be better to get rid of it, that life for a widow was hard enough with one child, let alone a newborn. But she always scoffed, and now his brother is here, and she’s not shown any signs of trying to get rid of him yet.
“Alright. Gol D. Ace it is, then.”
“Yes!”
Roger obviously doesn’t remember what he was like as a baby, and none of their neighbors ever ask him to mind theirs, but he’s pretty sure Ace is some kind of special as far as babies are concerned. More often than not, his brother seems to just- get things, really quickly. Grabbing the spoon to feed himself after they introduce him to solid foods. Pulling his squishy body upright and taking wobbly steps happens practically overnight, once his legs are strong enough for it. Saying words that are definitely words, even if they come out a little muddled, like ‘mysif’ and ‘moovit’ and of course ‘no, soopid’. That last phrase tends to only come out when Roger is trying to do something for his baby brother, which he never seems to manage fast enough or well enough for Ace’s high standards.
“No!” The toddler hollers, smacking at Roger’s hands, forcing him to stop trying to button up the brat’s raincoat. “Mysif! I do mysif!”
“You’d think he was the older brother,” their mom snorts, shrugging on her own coat and grabbing the big wicker basket they use for groceries. Going out shopping in the rain isn’t much fun, but the drizzle coming down is the lightest it’s been all day, and their pantry is too bare to keep putting the trip off. “Can he actually manage the buttons?”
“Sorta,” Roger says, watching close as Ace’s chubby little fingers work hard to push one round bit of metal through the opposite hole. At least he got them lined up right for the brat. “But it might take a while.”
With a sigh, their mom steps closer and bends down to place her wide hand on top of Ace’s head. Instantly, he looks up with wide, innocent eyes, always ready with a sweet grin for her. “Baby, let Roger do it.”
Ace nods. As soon as their mom backs off and heads to the front door, though, his ferocious scowl returns, and he glares as Roger quickly gets the button situation sorted out. “You’re such a little shit,” he can’t help but tell the toddler. “But I love you anyway.” Ace blinks, his face briefly easing into an expression more surprised than anything else.
At least until Roger tries leaning forward to press a kiss to his brother’s forehead, and gets a smack on the nose for his trouble.
“...an odd pair, the two of them,” Mister Joust is grumbling, underneath the rickety balcony Roger is using to work on Ace’s birthday present. He’s gotta do it somewhere up high, out of sight, or else the twerp WILL somehow find him and ruin the surprise. “At least the older boy’s just your typical foolish high-energy brat, but his brother-”
“Downright strange, I agree!” Ugh. Martuey. She’s a pain on the best of days, but getting to gossip just brings out the worst in the nit-picky woman. Roger sticks out his tongue just on principle, but tries to keep his attention on the paint that somehow keeps getting everywhere, no matter how careful he tries to be with the brush. “Honestly, Rosetta would have been better off ending things with him still in the womb; the way that child talks and acts is borderline unnatural, I’m afraid one of these days he’ll sink a knife into someone just for crouching down to talk to him-! EEP!”
Rising smoothly from where he landed on the cobblestones, Roger offers the startled pair one of his wider, toothier smiles, the kind his mom says are more like a villain in a storybook than a hero. Martuey goes blessedly white-faced and silent. Mister Joust at least tries to nod and act like they weren’t just talking about Ace, about ending Ace before he’d even been born.
Roger stalks home with that too-wide grin still on his face. Funny enough, people fall all over themselves to get out of his way.
He drops it, though, getting in sight of his house, and the little figure crouched on the stoop outside their front door. Ace’s birthday present is still wet with paint in Roger’s hands, but the kid doesn’t even look up to see it when he sits down. “What’s wrong, squirt?”
“Mom’s got another headache.” Ah. Banished from the house, then, until she can handle anything beyond darkness and quiet.
“You wanna head to the market?” Ace shakes his head. “The docks?” Same thing again. “Well, you pick somewhere then.”
“...jungle.”
Roger frowns. “Huh?”
“Want the jungle,” Ace mutters, head turning away, even already half-hidden behind the almost-five year old’s folded arms.
“A jungle would be pretty cool,” Roger says slowly, not entirely sure where Ace even got the idea from. “Full of all kinds of animals and stuff.”
“Tigers. An’ bears, an’ crocodiles...”
“And tuna!”
Both of Ace’s eyebrows shoot up, and he finally looks at Roger, who’s grinning with humor instead of rage. “There’s no tuna in a jungle.”
“Could be! Could be, uh, elephant tuna!”
“Nuh-uh.”
“Yeah-huh!” His brother’s face scrunches up with annoyance, but as Ace opens his mouth again, his eyes catch on the item carefully cradled in Roger’s hands, and the twerp stalls out, jaw hanging slack. “Ah. You, uh, weren’t supposed to see this until tomorrow, but.” Roger shrugs, and holds it a bit higher. “Paint’s still wet.”
It’s a bit better than their usual scavenged wood or cardboard; Roger found the piece of flattened pipe and the rest of it practically fell into place in his head, wiring a crossguard into shape, wrapping the ‘handle’ with cloth, and then painting the whole thing red and orange and yellow, like it’s made out of fire. Nothing as good as a real sword, or the old dagger Roger keeps on his hip in case of trouble, but a pretty cool toy for playing pretend if he does say so himself. Hopefully. Maybe. Although with the way Ace keeps staring, with tears welling up in his eyes, maybe Roger’s opinion isn’t as spot-on as he thought.
“Uh, you don't-,” don’t have to take it if you don’t like it, is what he means to say, but the words die when Ace uncurls, and crawls into Roger’s lap, and hugs him.
Somewhere around the time Ace started walking, Roger hasn’t been able to hold his baby brother without some kind of huge fuss, not unless the kid is already dead asleep. This is different. This is weird.
Roger sets the birthday present aside and hugs the twerp back for all he’s worth.
He’s fourteen years and one month old exactly the day his mom dies.
It. Shouldn’t be a surprise. She wasn’t ever the same, after they went from three down to two, and even Ace bringing that number back up only helped a bit, for the first couple years. After that the drinking started getting worse, and her headaches, and slowly, more often than not, Roger found himself being the one getting groceries and fixing meals, and doing laundry when things got too stinky, and slipping through the nicer docks and market streets that always bustled with outsiders who didn’t mind their wallets as closely as Loguetown’s locals.
Roger is fourteen years old and that’s pretty much grown-up, as far as he’s concerned. Especially considering all the work he puts into minding Ace and making sure their house doesn’t fall apart. He’s got it all handled. He does.
But when he gets home with a pouch stuffed full of stolen berri and a box of the cheap bakery’s discounted goods, and finds Ace silently crying next to the bed they all sleep in together and- and the- the body-
Well.
Suddenly Roger feels really small.
And he wishes, desperately, that his mom would reach down and scoop him up and bounce him on her hip, and they’d sing his dad’s songs while waiting for the merchant ship to come home, and everything was good and safe and it wasn’t all on him-
“Roger?”
His baby brother isn’t ever this quiet. Not unless he’s mumbling about jungles and junkyards. Swallowing past the thick lump in his throat, Roger reaches out, and wraps himself around the seven year old as best he can. “S’fine. It- It’s okay, we’ll- we’ll figure it out, twerp.”
If the tears spilling from his eyes land on the kid, Ace doesn’t kick up any kind of fuss about it. Just burrows in to wrap his scrawny arms around Roger’s chest, and cling as tightly as he can.
The two of them stay there the rest of the night, within arm’s reach and yet impossibly far away from their mom.
Things change, after Gol D. Rosetta is gone.
The house is theirs, bought and paid for years ago with money from their dad’s wages. With the money Roger makes, picking up odd jobs or else picking pockets, he and Ace should be able to get along just fine, like they have for ages. But someone - maybe a nasty busybody like Martuey, maybe a genuinely worried soul instead - calls up what passes for local government in Loguetown, and Roger opens the door one morning to find a woman in a suit flanked by a couple of marines.
He slams it shut. Yanks down the nearest piece of furniture, an old rickety bookcase, to block the threshold even for just a minute longer. Voices shout and fists slam, there’s gonna be an audience drawn on the street, better to stick to the rooftops. When Roger turns around, Ace is already in the bedroom, stuffing a few clothes into his knapsack along with the old packet of photos and the threadbare tiger toy that was the present for his sixth birthday. Leaving him to it, Roger darts into the kitchen for his stash of berri, and the old double-compass hanging over the window, and-
The front door crashes. Ace comes tearing into the kitchen, scared and trying to pretend he’s angry instead. Roger shoves open the window over the sink, and the two of them are gone by the time the marines finish breaking inside.
Making do on the streets isn’t much different from making do at home, as it turns out. Sure, they gotta dodge the odd marine or municipal guard, but as much trouble as the Gol D. brothers would get into even before their mom was gone, that’s hardly a change. Roger lets their clothes stay stinky for longer in-between dunks in the ocean; sometimes he and Ace steal meals rather than money, dine-and-dashing his little brother insists they call it. Scrounging for a mostly dry spot to wait out thunderstorms is honestly the trickiest part, some days.
There are other folks in the back alleys who try to give them trouble, now and then. But Roger still has his dagger, and after a few months picks up a proper sword, while Ace is downright vicious with a long steel pipe in hand. Maybe it should be worrying, how easily his little brother takes to fighting off guys twice their combined size, but... It’s a relief, too. That Roger isn’t constantly looking over his shoulder for the twerp. That unless something really goes wrong, Ace can handle himself just fine. It’s not even that much of a surprise, considering all the other ways his brother has seemed to grow up incredibly fast over the years.
...and then Roger gets a clue of why.
They didn’t exactly intend to duck into the bookshop, but with a thunderstorm rolling in and a group of marines milling near the street they’d need to take back to the seedier side of town, Ace picked a door and Roger went along with him.
The little old clerk mumbled a hello and said to feel free to ask her any questions; Roger took a minute to pull out some complimentary language, got her grinning and agreeing that he and Ace could stay as long as they liked. With that settled, he wandered deeper into the stacks of books and scrolls looking for his brother.
At first it seemed like Ace had vanished, swallowed up by the shadows and parchment. When Roger finally found him, the twerp had settled in a little cushioned nook, the nearest shelves full of kid’s books, and was slowly poking through some thin volumes full of fairytales.
Figuring that was safe enough, Roger sprawled out beside him, and went from yawning to snoring in short order.
He wakes up to the sound of sniffling.
Moving on instinct, Roger reaches. His hand finds Ace’s arm, then his shoulder, and from there it’s easy to tug the kid closer, to drag him down from sitting against Roger’s side to laying on his chest. There’s a rustle along the way, pages catching and crinkling, so Roger blindly pats until he snags the book and tips it out of the way for the moment. By the time he actually blinks his heavy eyelids open, Ace is actively crying into his collarbones, fingers clutching at his threadbare shirt.
No idea what caused the fit, but it’s not like that matters. Roger wraps his arms around the kid and hums their dad’s old song. He can’t remember the words anymore, but he’s never forgotten that tune, the way it can go fast for fun or be slowed down for a lullaby, and he’s done his best to make sure Ace knows it too.
After three repetitions, his brother’s down to the last few sniffles and hiccups. After four, Ace is asleep, tension seeping out of his limbs, breathing coming a bit easier.
Thunder rumbles through the roof of the shop. Any sunlight that had been seeping in through the front windows earlier is long gone, replaced by falling sheets of water and the gloom of evening shading its way to true night. Still, there are a few oil lamps scattered around the bookstore, including one close enough for Roger to still see pretty well. On a whim, he glances down at the book Ace had been holding.
Another of the things that always made his baby brother seem special was the fact Ace picked up his letters and numbers lightning quick, whereas Roger sat through lessons as a kid with aching boredom and only bare minimum attention. His dad did the best he could though, before his ship sank, so Roger does know how to read, even if longer words sometimes puzzle him, and books are more trouble than they’re worth.
This one is fairly thin, though. Children’s fairy tale and all. The words are printed big, and the pictures are pretty watercolors, and-
The village folk shunned the girl for being strange, for knowing things well beyond what a young child could have possibly learned, and she found herself terribly lonely but for the company of her elder sister.
...huh.
Ace is going to be sound asleep for a while. He doesn’t even grumble as Roger shifts, sitting up, letting the seven year old slip down into his lap.
The book is picked up and flipped back to the beginning.
And slowly, Roger reads.