Chapter Text
The picture was truly crap quality. Maybe that was why it was buried under the newer wanted posters. Mother Sea knew why the Marines even released it. How could anyone recognize someone whose face was almost entirely shadowed by the brim of a hat save the white of a razor grin that looked ready to slit throats?
Ace. Ace could because below that picture blared the name SABO attached to the epithet of High Revolutionary.
He snatched it off the board, bringing it close to his face to better scrutinize it with the intensity of a magnifying glass focusing sunlight.
The world was a big place. There could definitely be another asshole out there named Sabo, but how many of them had blond hair, wore top hats bearing too-familiar goggles, wore napkins at their necks, and, most damningly, wielded a pipe? Not a spear or a proper staff. A pipe.
Ace hastily stuffed the poster in his pocket otherwise risk ripping it from the scream on the verge of erupting from his throat. He clenched his teeth against it and stomped away.
He didn’t know what the hell he wanted to do next, going through cycles of “this can’t be Sabo” to “it has to be” to “he’d contact us if he was alive” to “who the fuck else wore napkins?” to “he wouldn’t abandon Luffy”. On and on and on. His mind tossed this way and that like waves in a storm, and his mood became as erratic as the weather on the Grand Line.
But beneath the turbulence of it all lingered a dark nagging thought drifting quietly up from the depths: What if Sabo hated him for not being there for him, and that was why he never returned…?
It never failed to freeze the fire out of his abdomen.
Ace would take Sabo being alive over dead any day of the week, but would he prefer a Sabo who hated him or a Sabo who no longer cared about him?
It was nearly enough to get Ace to give up doing anything about the poster, and that was exactly the motivation he needed to search for the bastard because he’d never been a coward.
Still… how?
The Revolutionary Army was infamous for being a slippery bunch, and it didn’t help that pirates rarely had any business getting into the business of the Revolutionaries. Without the right connections, he’d have better luck finding All Blue.
“So what’s got your panties in a twist this last week?” Thatch asked casually, approaching Ace from where he hung over the ship’s railing, not brooding.
He wasn’t surprised someone finally confronted him about it. He was even less surprised it was Thatch. His family had given him space, but they were probably also tired of his bullshit by now, and Thatch was the only one who treated Ace’s mood swings like they were actual swings to have fun with.
“Nothing,” they said at the same time, Thatch pitching his voice lower and scowling in a mocking imitation of Ace who shot him an annoyed glance before easing up with a sigh.
He honestly didn’t know what to tell him. Sabo was… he was the ghost haunting the tattooed grave on his arm. It urged him to live freely enough for the both of them every day. He wasn’t taboo, unspoken of and forgotten. The seas would sooner dry up before Ace would kill Sabo like that, but he was also never to be brought out under the sun because it always dragged into painful light how badly he’d failed his deeply unhappy brother whose last moments were alone in hellfire.
“Alright, alright fine. You don’t have to talk. My psychic abilities already know anyway,” Thatch claimed with wholly undeserved smugness that made Ace want to roll his eyes and affectionately push him off the rails. “Don’t be too amazed, okay? You ready?”
“Ready to throw you overboard, yeah.”
Thatch pointed at his left pocket.
“It’s got something to do with that bounty poster you’ve got crumpled up in there.”
Well, shit. How’d he know? Ace made sure no one was watching when he looked at it. He hadn’t even taken it out that many times either! Only like… Hmm…
Thatch laughed at whatever expression was on his face.
“Word of advice, never try to be sneaky. It’ll never work.”
“I sneak just fine through the pantry and fridge,” Ace immediately refuted, casually cleaning out an ear with a pinky.
“Go through my pantry or fridge again, and I’ll filet you, just try it!” Thatch snapped heatedly, jabbing a finger at him like it was one of his knives whenever he caught Ace ransacking the galley.
Yeesh, he was more fiercely protective and possessive of the kitchen than he was of the crew. What was one or fifty strips of bacon between family anyway, right? Cheapskate.
“Anyway,” Thatch huffed. “What’s got you so fixated on some Revolutionary? Don’t tell me he stole your girlfriend… No, I guess getting one in the first place is impossible for you.”
“Shut the fuck up!” Ace hissed, flicking a fireball towards the greasy mass of tinder Thatch called hair.
“Hey! Hair is off limits!” he protested indignantly, dodging the attack with arms thrown defensively over the locks hanging over his head. “You have no idea how much work it takes to keep it this perfect! Maybe if you had luscious hair like mine and didn’t eat like a whale, you won’t have to be jealous of some Revolutionary!”
“Like hell I can be jealous of him! He’s—” Ace bit his tongue before he could unearth all of a dead brother’s annoying old habits he’d give anything to experience again.
“Oho, so you know him,” Thatch said craftily, fingers rubbing his chin in a comically villain-esque way.
Ace sighed, giving up.
“… I had another brother growing up as a kid,” he began somberly, turning towards the sea. It was easier to look at than whatever expression Thatch might have. “He wanted to escape his… ‘parents’,” he gritted out before spitting over the rail because calling those pieces of shit Sabo’s parents felt slimy, disgusting, and wrong on his tongue. “He tried to set sail, but a Celestial Dragon shot his boat down. He died,” he stated as emotionlessly as possible. He took out the crumpled poster and unfolded it. “But this poster…”
“You think it might be him?” Thatch asked solemnly.
“I don’t know.” Ace ran a hand through his hair. “If he was alive, he would’ve let me and Luffy know ages ago.”
“So you’re thinking of personally finding out.”
Ace hesitated before nodding.
“Yeah, that’s the idea.”
“Gotcha. But I gotta say, you’ve got your work cut out a bit there. The Revolutionaries are harder to find than the cumin after Banshee reorganizes the spice rack,” Thatch said thoughtfully. “No one ever finds the Revolutionaries. The Revolutionaries find you.”
Ace brightened as an idea hit him.
Hey, yeah… Why go to Sabo… when he can lure Sabo to him?
“Hey… that look’s making me a little bit nervous here, bud, haha,” Thatch laughed anxiously, sweat dotting his forehead. “You’re not… about to do something stupid, right? Right?”
“That’s it! Thanks, Thatch! I gotta prepare right away!”
Ace immediately got moving, zooming by a Thatch who’d shriveled up in horror on the spot.
“NO! No thank me! Get back here! Marco’s going to kill me!” Thatch wailed after him, but Ace was already gone and skimming across the waves within five minutes.
His plan was simple: find the nearest strife-filled island and call for Sabo. If he didn’t turn up, repeat until he did. Easy.
So he meandered through every street and every battleground with civil unrest demanding to see Sabo. Loudly. Persistently. Maybe with a little bit of running for his life and maybe with a little bit of arson. He didn’t care when people stared or spooked or even attacked. He showed up to every whiff of a Revolutionary gig he could find and made sure he was noticed. His efforts would bring someone eventually, and he was right.
Ace was in a tavern having a meal when he felt someone sit at the table behind him. At first, he didn’t pay much attention to them beyond a subconscious awareness in case they tried to attack his back. But then the guy spoke.
“Fire Fist Ace, I hear you were looking for someone.”
Ace didn’t stop eating, but he did slow from clearing a plate within twenty seconds (he could go faster, but that’d be bad table manners) to clearing one in thirty.
“Oh, so you heard?”
“A bit hard not to,” the other person said dryly. “What business does the infamous Second Division Commander of the Whitebeard Pirates have with one of our members to keep crashing our operations screaming, ‘get your ass out here, Sabo’ like a lunatic each and every time?”
“Well,” Ace drawled around the rib in his mouth, “depending on his answer to my question, he might have some business with my fist.”
“Oh? And what question is that?”
Ace spat the bone out the same way he was going to do after chewing this guy up: forcefully and without leaving anything behind.
“Why the hell you hadn’t told us you were alive,” he seethed.
Because while Sabo’s voice had grown deeper and mellower, Ace would be damned if he couldn’t recognize his brothers’ speaking habits, and Sabo was using that posh tone that rounded the sharp letters of his words which he spoke in a cadence that made his speech flow in an almost hypnotic way people unconsciously nodded along with. It was also the voice he used when playing nice to outsiders.
Even the assholes who cursed Ace’s birth offended him less because those were just weak nobodies. This was supposed to be his brother.
The hurt slowly simmered into spreading heat beneath his skin, dangerously close to blazing on its surface.
There was a pause before Sabo said blandly, almost conversationally, “I wasn’t aware my status was something I had to report to Whitebeard.”
Like flint against steel or a matchstick across a striker strip, it ignited Ace off his chair to lunge behind him, grabbing Sabo by the shoulder to swivel him around to face him, dammit!
Nostalgic blue eyes stared at him with an unfamiliar hard coldness from underneath a hood, holding none of the warmth, joy, and trust more valuable than gold that they used to. Without them, Sabo was like a familiar stranger, and that pierced Ace more acutely and deeply than a Seastone knife would’ve. It reminded him that for all the weeks he spent chasing Sabo down, he still wasn’t ready to be told in the face that yes, Sabo’s abandonment was because he hated him. It burned. The fear burned.
“Not Whitebeard, jackass! Me and Luffy!” Ace yelled in his face. “We thought you were dead this whole time but what? It turns out you were fine and dandy all along, hanging out with the Revolutionaries! We needed you and mourned you! But you didn’t look back at us twice! YOU MADE LUFFY CRY, YOU FUCKWAD!”
For the brief moment before Ace’s fiery fist came down, something flickered across those blues before all hell broke loose, and they were fighting. Tables went flying and food turned to instant ash. Strangely, there was no panicked screaming, but there wasn’t room in his head to think about it, shoved aside by the familiar scorch of rage.
Ace had forced himself to learn to temper his anger ages ago. He had to for Luffy’s sake and then for the Spades and then for the Whitebeards, but that anger was never truly gone. He might forget it or redirect it, but it always smoldered somewhere within him waiting for the right breeze to spread it into an uncontrollable wildfire. It could be so intense that sometimes, it felt more like his flames came directly from a furnace somewhere inside him rather than the Fruit.
Ace could only wish it was his own fire immolating him and not this betrayal. It would’ve hurt a hell of a lot less. The agony boiled out of him and ate his heart alive, and pain had always made the most potent fuel for him.
The tavern didn’t last long under the onslaught. Neither did the street.
If Ace had any lingering doubts about whether this man who could crush concrete with his fingers alone was the twin he’d thought he’d lost years ago, then it was blown clean away like the entire length of the paved stone road was.
Fighting was as much a language as speaking, sometimes even more so. Sabo might’ve learned new fancy techniques, but he still fought with the wildness of the tigers and bears they ran with, scrapping and clawing survival from the jaws of death that stalked behind every tree and trash heap of Gray Terminal. The jungle instinct gleamed from fight-feral eyes. Just like Ace. Just like Luffy.
It was strange. Combat between them used to be a way to push themselves past their limits, to learn each other so they’d know exactly how to protect one another. It used to be a dialogue of partnership but with fire ripping up and down the lane, streetlights bending at odd angles, and craters dotting the ground, Ace could no longer hear Sabo nor did he know what he himself was trying to say.
They both eventually collapsed, Sabo from a sudden faint and Ace from some kind of smoke thrown at his face.
He woke up cuffed with Seastone in some kind of basement and four guards holding weapons staring cautiously at him from across the room. When they saw him stir, one of them ran off to fetch a ginger woman in pink who started demanding why he attacked their leader and what he did to him.
“He pissed me off, so I beat him up,” Ace replied flatly.
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“I don’t believe you!” she cried. “If his high fever has anything to do with your fire abilities—”
“If it were my abilities, he’d be a crisp right now,” Ace interrupted crabbily and said no more. Frankly, he wasn’t in the mood. Besides, if Sabo could die so easily from such a small romp with his flames when getting blown sky high apparently couldn’t finish him off, he’d laugh himself into his grave. He hadn’t been seriously after Sabo’s life, after all.
The woman seemed to pick up that she wasn’t getting anything more from him and turned on her heel with a huff.
Ace got comfortable and waited.
He doubted they’d kill him even if he did attack their apparent leader. They didn’t seem the sort. They hadn’t hit him once in retaliation for all the guards gave him the stink eye. They seemed more uneasy and defensive than hateful, and Ace knew hatred in all its forms.
Time in the windowless basement dragged. He counted the days through his meals. The Revolutionaries were kind enough to cuff him in the front rather than behind so he could at least feed himself. In return for the courtesy, he politely didn’t try to escape right away although that was going to change soon. He wasn’t waiting around forever for someone who clearly didn’t want to see him and never did. Ace could admit he wasn’t the brightest flame in the… the…
…
Look, he knew he wasn’t the smartest guy in the Blues, but he could take a hint. It was fine. He’d overcome this just as he overcame everything else. Survival was in the very marrow of his bones, and he was tougher than his pain. He had to be. It was good enough that Sabo was alive. It had to be.
The third day, he eyed the guard with the loosest stance, getting ready to start his escape. The Seastone made his body feel like it weighed ten tons, but he was used to fighting at less than 100% against much worse odds with much more at stake than his own life.
He casually shifted, intending to bash the guard over the head with the cuffs when a loud groan of metal followed by a deafening crash came from somewhere at the top of the stairs.
Incensed yelling chased a blur of blue and blond launching itself into the basement and right towards Ace who tensed for the… arms thrown around him?
“Ace! Ace, I remember! I remember! I’m sorry! I’m so sorry, Ace!”
Bewildered, Ace found kinship with the equally confused guards over Sabo’s shoulder as his own became drenched in tears… and snot. He kicked him off.
“Don’t get your snot on me!” Ace raged.
The guards tensed, but Sabo just released a wet laugh and pushed himself to his knees, hair from his bowed head hiding his expression.
“Sorry. I just… sorry… You’re right. I lost the right to touch you so familiarly after being gone for so long.”
“You got that right,” Ace snorted but the blistering anger from earlier simply wouldn’t come the same way it did a few days ago maybe because Sabo made such a sorry picture, and, much to his chagrin, even after all these years of radio silence, he still hated seeing his twin sad. “What was that all about? You treated me like a total stranger now suddenly you’re hugging and crying all over me? What gives?”
Sabo winced, pushing back hair from a reddened, glistening eye scorched by an old burn scar.
“It’s a long story.”
“Well, can I hear it while I’m eating and not cuffed?” Ace said, shaking the chains. He nodded towards the guards. “These guys seriously think one plate of food for three meals is enough for a day.”
That got him another laugh, this time less wet.
“Yeah, sure. It’s the least I can do.”
Newly freed, Sabo led Ace up the stairs, past the glaring ginger and the warped metal door indented into the opposite wall (when Ace whistled at the sight, she glowered daggers at Sabo), and straight to the kitchen where finally, finally Ace no longer had to starve. He got to work immediately on a whole cured ham from the pantry.
“So? Start talking.”
Sabo took a deep breath and talked. He talked about his miserable time in High Town, how he found out about Gray Terminal burning, the helplessness and despair that they might’ve burned too, the disgust and rage that led him to departing early, his boat being shot down, and how Dragon rescued him. Whether from trauma or physical injury or both, Sabo became amnesiac but retained a deep revulsion towards Goa that prevented him from ever setting foot on the kingdom again. Without his memories of who tethered him to a country he hated so inherently, he followed Dragon and became a Revolutionary.
“… And that’s why I treated you like a stranger at the tavern. I… I didn’t recognize you.” Sabo’s voice wobbled, full of self-blame and guilt. “I’m sorry, Ace. I’m so sorry. You were such a precious part of me. How could I have ever—”
Ace stuffed a drumstick into his mouth before he could continue his one-man pity parade. Sabo immediately started gnawing down the length of it like a beaver.
“Okay, so let me get this straight. You didn’t leave us because you wanted to.”
Sabo shook his head vehemently, already halfway through.
“And the reason you never told us you were alive was because of something out of your control.”
Sabo froze, the self-loathing from earlier welling up again. Ace rolled his eyes at him.
“Nod, idiot. It was out of your control.”
Sado did so albeit haltingly. It’d do for now.
“So it wasn’t because you hated me or anything.”
Sabo’s eyes widened almost comically, ripping out the cleaned bone that splintered in his fist as it banged on the table with an exclamation of, “Of course not! I could never hate you, Ace!” He looked down at the wood grains of the table overflowing with food scraps and empty containers. “If anything, you should hate me.”
“I couldn’t hate you even when I thought you hated me,” Ace sighed, swiping two bottles of beer from the now empty fridge and throwing one to Sabo. “Sure I was pissed as all hell you never sent word, but I was grateful you were alive at all.”
He left out how greedily he wished for the old Sabo he’d known in his childhood.
“I left you and Luffy for so long…” He gasped and jerked his head up. “Oh my god. We have to tell Luffy!”
Ace dropped into the chair diagonal to Sabo and cracked open his bottle.
“Duh.”
Sabo groaned and sank into the table.
“What am I going to tell him?”
“Why do you have to tell him anything?” Ace said, baffled. “Luffy wouldn’t care. He’d just be happy you’re alive.”
Although “happy” wouldn’t encompass the supernova joy that’d explode from their little brother at seeing Sabo.
“Yeah, but…” Sabo bit his lip. “I’m… different now. I’ve changed so much. I might not be the brother he remembers. I don’t want to disappoint him.”
Ace couldn’t help the incredulous bark of laughter, nearly choking on the alcohol. Sabo shot him a waspish look.
“It’s a perfectly valid concern!”
“Oh, Sabo, you’ve always been the smartest dumbass I know. At least that’s one thing about you that never changed!” Ace chortled brightly, enjoying the way his twin soured further. “Have you ever known Luffy to be disappointed by anything?”
Sabo started ticking off his fingers.
“When he didn’t get enough meat, whenever we beat him to the last of the food, when you told him no to keeping that giant salamander as a pet, when you told him no to anything, really—”
Ace cuffed him on the back of his head. Sabo grinned mischievously at him.
“Smartass, you know what I mean,” he said fondly then more seriously, “After you left, it was just me and Luffy. Without you to balance me out, I didn’t know how to be a good brother, the brother he deserved. We got into a fight not long after your death, and I…” Familiar guilt and shame clogged his veins, making the sin feel twice as heavy. “I was stupid. I didn’t help Luffy fight a bear out of sheer pettiness even when he asked for it. He… he nearly died,” he whispered, reliving the scene in vivid, haunting clarity; the dark spray of blood, the cloying smell of through the petrichor, the priceless weight on his back that truly hammered in that it was solely up to him to carry now.
Sabo sat up.
“Ace…”
“I was a failure and a disappointment as a brother. I had no right to call myself one to him, and if he woke up hating me, it’d be just what I deserved,” Ace railroaded on to spare himself the platitudes. He wanted to hold this particular wound open forever so that he’d never forget. “But sure as rain, the moment he woke up, he still looked at me like I hung the moon and stars.”
The sheer purity and brilliance of his trust and adoration could humble the sun out of the sky let alone Ace who almost lost that light in his own sky.
“You were gone for nine years? So what? I almost got him killed and fucked up a million other ways besides. Make up for it. Be there now and don’t leave again, at least, not to somewhere we can’t follow.”
“Never, I swear,” Sabo vowed solemnly.
Ace accepted it with a nod, but this wasn’t the end of it. Sabo was going to fret. He was fretting now, doing that frown that closed him off with his thoughts. That too hadn’t changed since childhood. He’d likely continue to fret until Luffy blew all uncertainty away in that typical way he typhooned through everything. Sabo would feel silly for his anxiety in the end, but for now, Ace would reassure him as many times as he needed to hear it.
“Alright, let’s go surprise little brother with the good news. Can’t wait to see the dumb look on his face,” Ace snickered, standing from his seat already excited.
Sabo firmed his expression and stood as well.
“Yeah, it’s been too long. I miss him. I missed you too.” He softened. “I think I’ve always missed you guys. I never knew why only a pipe felt right in my hands or why my eyes are always drawn to straw hats, but now I do, and I’d be the biggest moron to exist if I let you go again.”
They grinned at each other, a perfect mirror in their sentiment.
The ginger made her appearance but froze in the doorway, gaping in horror at the state of the kitchen which was… yeah. Ace hadn’t really bothered with plates so there were bones everywhere, oil and sauce staining the table and floor, empty serving bowls, and discarded fruit cores scattered all around. A pigsty was cleaner than this.
Ace scratched the back of his head sheepishly and bowed in apology while Sabo waved jauntily at her, seemingly oblivious to the growing shitstorm writ all over her face.
“I’m truly sorry about the mess. Ah right, I haven’t introduced myself properly. I’m Portgas D. Ace. Nice to meet you.”
“Oh, Koala! Good timing! I’m taking a bit of leave, so—”
“YOU’RE NOT GOING ANYWHERE UNTIL YOU CLEAN THIS UP AND EXPLAIN YOURSELF!”