Chapter Text
“The Light of Fire.”
Coming into being. The warm embrace of life.
“Prometheus! Come join us!”
Light, fluffy. The happiness and joy of his fellow gods.
“Today, I rest, my friends. We cannot take on these forces. One day, I will wake anew, and we will then destroy them.”
Guilt, sorrow. Failure. They’d failed. All of them.
“Well, if you’re going to take a nap, why shouldn’t we, too? Let the mortals take over for a while.”
Loyalty. Undying loyalty to his brethren, wherever they went.
Ace woke up on a beach that shouldn’t have felt familiar, but did. He blinked as the details of the dream he’d had registered in his mind. Except.. it didn’t feel like a dream. It felt more like a memory.
It was a memory.
Ace remembered now. Prometheus, the Light of Fire. Nika had wanted to rest for a while, to regain his power, so they all had. 800 years.. had it really been that long?
“Ugh..” Deuce groaned, and Ace’s heart stopped. Right. He’d failed. Failed to protect his crew. Failed as a captain. Failed again, he realised belatedly. Ace sat up, every bone in his body protesting at the movement, but the pain disappeared as quickly as it came when flames licked at his body, healing most of his wounds. Ace sighed in relief, stretching and standing up. Gods knew how long he’d been out for.
Wait.
His Devil Fruit didn’t do that.
Carefully, tentatively, Ace walked over to the water lapping at the shore and placed a hand in. Nothing. Ace placed both hands in. Nothing. Ace moved to sit in the water. Nothing.
Which could only mean—
He’d gotten his powers back.
The light tap of boots against stone shook Ace out of his stupor, and he tensed a bit, reaching out with his Observation Haki. When he registered the owner of the sound, he relaxed and turned around to meet her.
The person who’d once been Thanatos greeted him with a tone that was soft and yet void of all emotion. “Welcome home.”
Ace smiled. “I’m home.”
—
“Wait, wait, wait— repeat that again for me? You’re a what?”
Ace was currently sprawled on the couch in the living room of his new home, covered in bandages, exhausted from the emotional turmoil he’d just undergone, and watching in unabashed amusement as Deuce’s jaw dropped further and further at every one of his crews’ tales.
“We’re gods.” Damian repeated, slender fingers reaching up to toy with his crimson hair as he crossed one of his legs over the other.
“Yeah, okay, I got that part. But how? Why? Why does Ace only remember now?”
Ace winced at his former first mate’s words. He knew that Deuce didn’t blame him, but the fact that he’d failed to save his crew still loomed over him.
Styx sighed in exasperation. “Our memories of our former selves only return upon our ‘awakening’, which has to be triggered by a certain event. In Ace’s case, it was his return to the Acropolis— His original home. Naturally, that also comes with regaining some of his powers. But as is with the rest of us, what he has now is a far cry from what he had before.”
Deuce dragged a hand down his face, inhaling deeply before speaking again. “You said before that you would only reincarnate as one of your people. In other words, the Acropolians. But Ace is from the East Blue.”
“His mother was one of us. He carries her blood, and therefore counts as an Acropolian.” Styx drawled, clearly wanting to be over with this conversation.
Sensing Styx’s irritation, Deuce took care to formulate his next words. “Okay, okay. Last question— What the fuck was up with that devil fruit?”
Ah. That.
Ace groaned. He really didn’t want to talk right now, but he figured that he should give Styx and Evelyn a break. “So, you know about Davy Jones— Or Davy D. Jones, should I say— and how he supposedly created devil fruits, right?” Deuce nodded, and Ace continued, voice still slightly raspy. “Well, so he was real, and that did happen. Anyway, we met with him back in the day, and he offered to let us create fruits of our own. Some of us, like Chief, declined, but I and 3 others accepted. However, there was one condition: Should we consume the fruits ourselves, they would dissipate and cease to exist.”
Deuce blinked. “Oh.”
“.. Y’know, at this point, being a subordinate to a member of the most wanted pirate crew in the world might actually be the least of my problems.”
Ace snorted, and Damian laughed.