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Ace was surrounded by all the food, drink, and riches a pirate could dream of, and all he could think about was how much Sabo would’ve hated it. He understood that hatred, too, in a way he hadn’t quite before, having never experienced it himself. It really was ostentatious.
That was the word Izou had used to refuse the assignment. Those noble banquets are far too ostentatious. No, thank you. He punctuated the sentence by flicking open a fan and passed the request along to Marco with a sharp glance.
Marco replied with a distinctly unapologetic shrug. Too recognizable; most of us are, really, and there are going to be dozens of Marine officers there. Ace is the only commander who stands a chance, plus then we’ll know how he does with undercover work and infiltration.
Thatch’s attempt to not laugh at the suggestion resulted in a poorly stifled snort. Sorry, but since when does Ace have a subtle bone in his body?
Ace bristled. Screw you guys, I can be subtle. I just have to get whats-his-name alone in the cellar and Haruta will do most of the work, right?
Without drawing attention to yourself, Izou added, but yes.
Ace’s pride had all but demanded the assignment, his habit of needing to prove himself coming back full-force, but he’d had his own doubts once he realized the full scope of what he’d be doing: everything Sabo had hated. All the status and decorum and protocol and expectations, the stifling status quo he’d never had the chance to see for himself, and he began regretting this chance as well. The assignment was simple in theory—get Officer Koraku (not whats-his-name, apparently) to the cellar, where Haruta would meet them question the corrupt Marine about the slave traders he’d been allowing in Whitebeard’s territory—but the execution would be a big problem, because in order to get Koraku alone without anyone else noticing, Ace would have to be subtle and blend in with this ostentatious nobility he hated with every fiber of his being. Every rule of etiquette he learned was another knife in his skull, another little cut that had killed his brother.
His pride still wouldn’t let him back down. He sometimes wished it would.
And now he stood here in this lavish hall of velvet curtains and gaudy gemstones and restrained string music and tiny pastries on silver platters, using every ounce of focus he had to keep from crushing the pathetically delicate stem of his champagne glass with his silk-gloved hands. He stood here wearing a mask and a blue suitcoat, his lost brother’s color, because for as long as he’d been preparing for this assignment, the little blond boy in blue kept dancing at the corners of his vision, and he couldn’t help but chase any trace of him he could find.
He stood here with a job to do.
He had to find Koraku, but he also had to track any potential threats or complications, anything that could throw a wrench in the mission, and the masks made that difficult, even as they protected his own identity. And he had to keep track of everyone while not making it obvious that he was doing so.
Ace decided that when he got back to the Moby, the first thing he’d do was find Marco and tell him he hated undercover work. He wanted to set this stupid place on fire and be done with it.
Koraku himself was surprisingly easy to find, with his tall frame and booming laugh. Ostentatious. He was in the center of a cluster, though, his presence summoning an endless parade of admirers and onlookers hoping to brush shoulders with the distinguished Marine. While he could at least feign interest in his fellow partygoers, he seemed entirely unaware of the uniformly-masked waitstaff’s presence, nearly knocking one girl over as he made broad gestures to augment whatever tale he was spinning. Ace wanted nothing more than to rip those blank silver staff masks off, raid the wine cellar, and talk shit about all these nobles until sunrise. But he had a part to play. Gods, this sucked. Sure, he’d learned patience to look after Luffy all those years, but that didn’t mean he’d ever liked it.
Most of the other attendees were civilians, no one for Ace to be bothered about. There were a couple of people he suspected were Marines, with their strict posture and battle-ready alertness, but no one he could’ve named. He kept an eye on them all the same.
And then there was the boy on fire.
Not literally, of course, though Ace might change that if his temper got any shorter. No, this boy was not aflame, though he might as well have been for how he drew Ace’s attention. He wore a long red coat and a black mask laced with gold, and his blond hair was pulled back in a short, neat braid. He drifted between clusters of people, alternately commanding recognition and becoming invisible as he blended in and moved along with no apparent agenda. He couldn’t have been much older than Ace himself, though he carried himself with an unignorable assurance. The clack of his boots against the floor felt like the only sound in the room to Ace, like marking a heartbeat, though he knew it must have been his imagination.
Perhaps it was Ace’s brief undercover training or his clumsy observation haki, or perhaps some deeper, purer instinct, but he was sure this boy on fire didn’t belong here any more than he did himself.
Perhaps for those same reasons, Ace suspected the boy might be a problem. The wrench he was supposed to keep an eye out for.
So Ace split his attention primarily between Koraku and the boy in red.
But also the food.
Working hard made him hungry, okay? Even hungrier than usual. The one thing making this bearable was the new game he’d made up: how much could he eat without drawing attention to himself? Which quickly became, how much spider crab sushi could he eat, because within an hour of his arrival Ace had decided it was in the running to be his new favorite food.
“I heard they’re native to the North Blue.”
Ace nearly dropped his sushi as he turned around and came face to face with the boy on fire. He held his own sushi effortlessly in a pair of chopsticks as black as his gloves, and lifted it ever so slightly towards Ace as if making a toast before eating it. Up close, Ace could see that his eyes were a brilliant blue, though one was paler than the other. An ache he didn’t dare name stirred in his chest.
He nodded while he found his voice. “It’s very good.”
“I see you like it.”
Ace fought his expression out of annoyance, which was shockingly hard considering almost all of his face was covered. Shit. Had he already lost his own game?
The boy on fire kept watching him with an intensity that was both unsettling and, somehow, comforting. “What brings you here, Mister…”
“Sabo.” Ace replied without thinking and cursed himself.
The boy’s face, or what little of it Ace could see, became perfectly neutral for a split second, so neutral it might as well have been a mask of its own.
“And you are…”
Before the boy on fire responded, the string orchestra started a waltz. He extended a hand towards Ace. “Shall we?”
And then they were moving in step across the ballroom floor before Ace realized he’d accepted the invitation. Maybe he hadn’t and the boy had swept him along on his own. They rotated slowly, Ace never meeting those too-blue eyes, always tracking his surroundings for Koraku and the other Marines he’d spotted earlier. No matter which way they spun, there was a threat somewhere behind Ace. His skin crawled, itching against the blue fabric that was not meant for a fight.
What am I doing here?
“If you keep looking like a deer in headlights, someone’s bound to notice you’ve never done this before,” the boy in red said in an undertone.
Ace opened his mouth to protest, or say anything to save his evidently threadbare facade, but the boy spun him and he had to focus on his footwork to keep the rhythm of the waltz.
“Try to act natural. People are bound to question you if you question yourself first.”
Their arms shifted, and suddenly Ace was the lead and the boy on fire was following him. Ace wished his throat wasn’t so dry. He wished he hadn’t agreed to dance with this stranger. He wished those blue eyes weren’t so scaldingly familiar—
He closed his eyes and imagined the hands in his were Izou’s, walking him through steps, tapping counts on his wrist. He imagined the tinkly, pretentious laughter echoing in the room was instead Thatch’s teasing chuckle when Ace missed a step, forgiven late in the evening over extra snacks. He imagined the candlelight piercing his eyelids was Marco’s flames. He imagined the cooking he smelled was Sabo and Luffy roasting their catch over an open fire deep in the jungle.
He raised an arm and spun his stranger.
He heard a soft laugh, steady and real, perhaps the only real thing he’d found in this strange place. “There you go.”
Ace opened his eyes.
And then they crashed into Koraku.
There was the sound of breaking glass and suddenly there was champagne all over the Marine’s white suitcoat. Ace’s hand went cold as the boy on fire slipped away from him, fussing over Koraku, apologizing and insisting on helping him get cleaned up, what a terrible clumsy mistake of his, how could he ever make up for the trouble—
Ace was stranded in the middle of the ballroom and remembered how little he belonged there.
He remembered the story Luffy would tell about Shanks, when some bandits spilled a drink on him and he laughed it off. When he met Shanks himself, he saw why Luffy looked up to him so much. Something so small didn’t matter. Except here, where everything was upside down and no one knew what mattered in life and gold was choking everyone—
Koraku was away from the crowd for the first time that night.
Ace rushed after them, dodging other guests and staff. He thought he saw the boy in red leave through the West door, and who needs that many doors anyway, who even needed a ballroom in their damn house—
He caught up to the two of them just outside the ballroom, where the boy was still apologizing profusely. Biting down his frustration, Ace joined in. “I’m so sorry, sir. I believe I have a spare coat, please let me help—”
The boy in red gave him a strange look over Koraku’s shoulder, though his litany of performed remorse didn’t waver.
Koraku frowned between them, but the shine under his eyes and his wobbly stance showed he wasn’t sober enough to put up more than token resistance. “But the tango, I promised my wife…”
“I can tell them to wait for you,” the boy said, manhandling Koraku towards Ace. “Please, go with my friend, let us make it up to you.”
Koraku shrugged and shuffled along. “Alright, alright, if you insist.”
Ace grabbed his arm to keep him from wandering and started to lead him to the cellar. He looked back at the boy on fire one more time, suddenly wishing this was an ordinary party and they could chat without scrutiny and spin slowly to the serenading strings. He wished he hadn’t closed his eyes for their whole dance, wished he’d let his gray eyes meet blue and managed to grasp whatever had gotten lost in translation in those moments when he’d been afraid to look too closely. Maybe, in another life, they had been friends. Ace hoped so.
The glimpse he caught was not so much of the boy on fire as it was of the keyring dangling from his gloved hand as he waved in farewell.