Chapter Text
"Make a big show about it, right? I'll fly your flag, I'll raise it so high they'll see it from the back of the port."
Lantern lights, some desperate wish. There’s certainty in Ace’s gaze, and the red reflecting off from them looked like Grey Terminal's fire. Flames the size of monsters from his books, brothers just out of reach. He remembers wisps of smoke and flying embers from behind the city walls, and he remembers how all he wanted was to go back.
Ace’s grip on his arms is unyielding. It's a solid presence within the first light of the morning, and there’s noise in the streets of Goa - excited chattering about some World Noble who’s due to arrive early today.
Sabo knows about it all. He knows distraction when he’s presented with it, and he knows it’ll be safe, he's checked, he knows.
“Leave this to me,” Ace says. There’s no tremble in his voice the way it does in Sabo’s legs, arms, choking up his lungs. But Sabo leans into comfort when he hears it and he holds on to it like it's his only way out.
“Before you know it, we’ll all be home together!”
So Sabo gives Ace his blue coat. It's tattered and well worn, and along with his hair tucked into his hat, Ace looked every bit like Sabo's silhouette from afar.
.
When Sabo first met Ace in his youth, rough-faced and all deep-seated loneliness, he didn't think he'd lose him four years later to a Celestial Dragon’s cannon fire.
The force of a sun blast colliding with the body of a ten year old sunk a corpse beneath the waters, joined by hesitant cheers as monsters landed on Goa’s port. His parents’ face would twist, and in the distance, he’d hear Luffy’s crying getting louder, and louder, and louder.
It’s a dream that’s seared itself into his mind despite not having seen it, but Dogra’s description had been enough, and it was just the thing to set Sabo down in a series of revelations of life-changing multitudes.
Of course, to say that he had no part in the incident itself would be a lie. That’s seared into his mind as well. In his formative years since Ace’s death to his first true step outside of Dawn Island, that guilt manifested and festered still like an open wound.
Grief, he also learnt, especially if you hadn’t moved on from it for a long time, goes hand-in-hand alongside the thing, and if you don’t let go of one then you simply won’t let go of the other.
But guilt and grief could be weapons, too, couldn’t they? It’s a twisted kind of justification he landed on one day that carried over to his decision to join the Revolutionary Army, as if actively being part of the organisation that aims to take down the World Government is a way for him to atone for leading his brother to his death.
Luffy had put up less of a fight than he thought he would when Sabo told him he didn’t want to be a pirate, in the end- His little brother was intuitive like that, and ultimately, he was only concerned on whether Sabo would be happy or not.
It wasn’t happiness, per se, as he would come to realise. Night in Baltigo was cold, but it wasn’t what kept Sabo awake the first few days he was assimilated into the Army. Memories bit like frost in his mind, of Ace, of his would-be legacy, of monsters and their reaches in the larger world.
Happiness wasn’t what he was here for, but, isn’t searching for a type of closure part of it?
Working his way up his newfound career had been exciting. As it turns out, being in a community of like-minded people that wasn’t just his brother, a group of bandits, and the occasional grandfather was, frankly, an enjoyable environment to be in. He made friends, the first in a long time, and now with a year under his belt, Sabo really feels like he’s made a place for himself despite his upbringing and despite being a blight for those he attaches himself to.
(Ace, never far from his mind, gently chides him from where he resides next to his desk, ever-present like a haunting ghost. The child would look outside of the window to Baltigo’s horizon, the shoreline and the sea beyond it. “It’s not your fault,” he would lie. Sabo would grit his teeth, and would continue to write his report.)
Beyond making friends and the beginning excitement, the missions proved to be the most exhilarating part of being a Revolutionary. There's something about settling uprisings and offering freedom that sings in his heart, a feeling of rightness that he couldn't shake each time he came too close to a stray bullet or after dodging each swipe of an opposing blade.
Guilt can be a weapon , he thinks again. A bottle of liquor is clutched in his hand, his mind diving into the depths where Ace stays. Grief can make me .
So he strikes harder, faster, and swings too close to death for comfort. Puts his very being into his work and ideals and bleeds for it. Koala would look at him like he's mad, sometimes, but understanding quickly follows like the second shot of an arrow. It's built into every freedom fighter, that altruistic intensity in each physical blow and with every word spewed on the battlefield. Koala gets it. Why wouldn't she?
But what Koala will not get, however, is that above all, the need for atonement dictates Sabo's life more than she or himself will ever know. Being in the position that he is, crucial information of the world and its machinations invade his mind and soul like a hurricane.
Slave transports, Sabaody's Grove 1, monsters on Goa's port. He knew his target, there was a report he'd seen in the intelligence office dating back eight years, of Saint Jalmack's presence around Dawn Island, East Blue. Eyes pore over every possible location. If he could land a mission next to where a Celestial Dragon was last sighted, maybe, just maybe....
(To hell with Admirals or battleships. He'd make short work of it, he'll go undetected. Once he gets that scum's head - !)
Maybe he'll rest easy once it's done. Maybe happiness can come out of closure. Maybe he wouldn't dream of corpses under the sea clothed in his own tattered coat, cannon fire knocking off his top hat from his brother's head. Maybe he can let go of guilt, can let go of grief.
Except, nothing ever goes Sabo's way, and the next morning when he wakes, a certain pirate's wanted poster sends his world off-kilter.
.
In another part of the world and in a different time, one Portgas D. Ace woke up in an unfamiliar ship. His last name was lost to him; Amnesia, the nurses called it, and he only knew of his first when he heard someone call out to him, someone not entirely there.
Marco was the one who brought him to the ship after the Phoenix saw a child's body drifting on a piece of wood in the middle of nowhere. It was a miracle he had survived, they said, and he remembered not being able to see for a while before he learnt to adjust. The first time he saw a mirror left him panicked; half of him was covered in wounds, his face burdened with the brunt of it all, a mass of red flesh blending into freckled skin.
He wondered how he looked before the burns. He wondered about a lot of things, actually. Ace felt like his memories were the price he had to give away in exchange for a chance of survival, but he didn't feel like a survivor at all. There was a nagging feeling in the back of his head that begged him to realise that he was missing a very, very important piece of his life from before, and Ace nearly went mad in search for it.
The Whitebeard pirates, as they had introduced themselves as, told him that they found him near Shimotsuki Village, a few kilometres away from its ports.
"Is that not your island?"
Ace shook his head. No. Can't be. There was no pull, not a trace of anything.
Yet when he was presented with a pair of goggles- Marco had told him that they had been with him, clutched in his hand when the man found him- it pulled to him like gravity, and he held them like some sort of treasure even when he couldn't figure out why. He recognized this, Ace had thought. It was the only connection he had to his life from before, and maybe it was the only connection he'll ever have.
(It kept him tethered. In his first days amongst pirates, Ace felt fear in the face of solitude and he knew it wasn't the first time he'd felt it.)
They took him under their wings in the end, thankfully. The ship he was on converged with the main one, and Whitebeard, enormous stature of a man and the subject of Ace's childlike awe, declared Ace as his son, and Ace's heart felt like it could burst.
Family, his father had said. A place to belong.
(On the same day, two boys clumsily put together two sticks and tied it to form a cross, stuck it in the earth and prayed for their dead brother so he could rest in peace.)
Ace thought of himself as blessed for the next years of his life. The Whitebeards were largely supportive, and before long, he was a pirate in the making despite being hidden from the public eye for a majority of his youth.
It didn't stop him from exploring, however- Ace was playful by nature, and any of his brothers would be hard pressed to say that they hadn't seen the boy try to sneak off the ship to explore the island they'd be docked on, or helping Thatch and Haruta pull off pranks on some unlucky division. He became the resident menace of the crew, much to Marco's dismay, and did his best to make himself stronger so he won't fall behind the rest of them. And then-
- the devil fruit.
(They weren't joking when they said it's cursed.)
He didn't think eating it was wrong. He'd been eager, to be honest, when his birthday- the day they'd found him floating in the sea- came around and Whitebeard tossed him a bright orange fruit resembling fire. Said it was Marco's idea.
His brothers were all smiling at him and Thatch in particular was fussing over cake ingredients and the dinner party afterwards, because Ace at fifteen had an appetite much larger than before. Ace offhandedly offered his thoughts on Seaking cake and laughed at Thatch's disgust.
He brought the fruit up to his eyes, examining its unnatural shape. "The Mera Mera no Mi, huh?"
"Yep," Marco quipped from beside their captain. He had an easy grin on his face that hadn't let up since the day began. "Eat that and you'll be a fire logia. Of course, only if you want to."
Blenheim snorted then, amused. "Mama bird jus' wants another fire person around, I bet."
"Huh? Say that again, yoi."
"Ooh, Marco's mad!"
Ace chuckled at his family's antics. He didn't think he could be any happier. Soaking in the sounds of laughter and being in the joyous company of the Whitebeard Pirates... He didn't think he'd be so blessed. He blushed a bright pink when the noise simmered down as everyone waited with bated breath. The fruit in his hand, at the time, felt heavy with a thousand expectations.
Thatch put a hand on Ace's shoulder. "Go on. Take a bite!"
It took a few seconds for Ace to refuse.
Not really refuse, no. He just wanted more time to think about it. Ace liked swimming after all, and he just knew Namur would've fallen to his knees if Ace lost the skills he'd learnt from him. Marco, on the other hand, suggested that it would give him closure; That while he didn't remember who or what caused his scars, receiving the ability to wield fire itself would help him move on. The thought was noble.
He was conflicted, to be honest.
It took him two days to decide what he would do with the fruit. He was ecstatic at the thought, of course, at first- He would match with Marco's blue flames, and won't that just be the best thing?- but as any other person, he was afraid of change.
Jozu was the one to catch him staring out to the sea late at night that day. The commander leant against the railing beside him, and a calm quiet reigned between them for a moment before he started to talk.
"Made up your mind yet?"
Ace snorted. The boy juggled the fruit in his hands nonchalantly, as if he wasn't worried it might fall to the depths below. He could always swim to get it back, after all. Ace furrowed his brows at the thought, lips pulled to a frown.
"I like swimming," it wasn't just that, Ace knew, so he kept talking. "And becoming fire when I have...."
"The scars?"
"I know I don't remember. Eating fire when I've been burned already leaves a bad taste in my mouth, is all."
Jozu hummed beside him. There was a pause before the diamond man piped up again.
"I liked swimming too, you know." He began. Ace could hear distant sounds of the rest of his brothers on the other side of the ship. There was a dull orange glow washing over their backs from the lanterns hung on a nearby cabin door, and Ace glanced at Jozu, attentive.
"Didn't mean to give it all up for a fruit, though. Ate it by accident. If I had known it was a devil fruit, I would've given it to someone else."
Ace blinked curiously. "Do you regret eating it?"
Jozu smirked and held up his arm, willing his devil fruit to work. Diamonds plated his skin in an instant. They shone brightly, reflecting off what little brightness the night gave. "I got stronger, Ace," he said. "Didn't really have time for regrets when all it's ever done was protect my family."
Ace's eyes widened in realisation, and he looked at the Mera Mera no Mi again in a new light. "Stronger," he murmured. He brought the fruit closer to him then, suddenly untrusting of himself to not drop the thing straight into the sea. It seemed to beckon to him, this miniature sun in the palms of his hands. Maybe he can make the right choice. Maybe, he thought, closure can give him strength.
So as Jozu brought his sake bottle towards his lips and tipped his head back to drink, Ace, with underlying hesitation, ate the devil fruit in just a few bites- ploughing through it quickly after he realised just how bad it tasted. He gagged, hand to his throat as he threw the stalk to the side.
"Fuck, Jozu-"
"Language,"
"- That was rancid! Horrible! I could've died from just the taste..!"
Jozu rolled his eyes at the boy's theatrics. "You wouldn't. Also," he pointed out with a finger. "Why don't you try it out?"
"Huh?" Ace managed to say. He was about to roll his eyes then, was about to say something along the lines of alright, let me just take three years off to actually learn how to use it first , before he saw smoke rising from under him. He looked down, tentatively, slowly, with the curiosity of someone who already knew what was happening but was inclined to see it anyway.
He recognized it as flames. Fire burning his toes.
In turn, something in his brain sparked .
(- in a short second, his world flipped itself on its head. He was no longer on the deck of his home but instead, he was on a wasteland full of garbage upon garbage, and the fire was higher than him, much higher than the walls he could see off in the distance. The smell was prominent; It stank of filth- wealth- corpses he knew were a lot because everyone was screaming, running towards the sea like madmen- )
Ace jerked, shouted, and swung his foot forward from underneath him. His arms flailed. Fell on his behind and turned his head around. There was panic on his face and Jozu could see it clearly because he laughed. "Shocking, ain't it? It was the same for me too-"
Ace was breathing a bit too heavily.
Jozu frowned, realising that something had gone wrong and all but dropped the bottle and quickly stepped down next to Ace. "Oi,"
"G-get it off."
The words trembled quietly and Jozu had to strain his ears to hear them. "What was that?"
Knee-jerk reaction. A pavlovian response. Ace turned to him so fast Jozu worried he might've gotten whiplash. The boy- fifteen years old, fresh off his birthday- had his hands raised as if he was indecisive on whether to grab Jozu's shoulders or not. His face was pale and his voice, full with pure, absolute terror, screamed, "Get it OFF! "
(He couldn't feel his legs at first. It would only be a second until he couldn't feel his arms. He was so sure he could make it out alive, but- All this fire in one place was mortifying. Even more so with himself in it.)
"It's- It's hell on earth," Ace blurted out incomprehensibly, looking back down and seeing the fire rise, spreading, higher and higher, and higher still. It morphed his vision; he could see a boat now, the force of a sun blast shooting its mark, a child's eye.
Amongst it all, Ace could hear footsteps and voices coming in from all directions raining like thunder in his ears. His mouth was dry and his skin felt clammy. Yet his mouth still deemed him fit to speak, and the words tumbled out of him faster than his brain could catch up.
I can't die yet. The fire hurts. They're still there, both of them-
It was all gibberish, though. By then, he was a sobbing mess. Can't speak properly, see. Didn't realise the fire was already put out, see. He pressed his palms to his eyes in an attempt to not see anything and he heaved.
Ace woke up in an infirmary bed the next day, confined in seastone cuffs with Thatch and Marco beside his bed, their expressions clear with deathly worry. The nurses said it was some kind of a flashback- Amnesia, they called it- and Ace's mind couldn't take the onslaught of memories in.
Like a fleeting reverie, his scars itched something fierce. What was closure, when he was too weak to face his fears, when he didn't even get his memories back from it?
It was much too late for regrets, however, and Namur did fall to his knees upon learning that Ace had, in fact, eaten the devil fruit. And because news spread like hellfire on the Moby Dick, most of the crew treated him like glass as soon as he was discharged, and for the first time of his life that he could remember, Ace felt anger like he was born out of it.
"They're just worried, yoi," Marco said, as if he wasn't the one who hovered around him the most. The blonde gave him a lazy stare but Ace could always recognize Marco's tell; crossed arms and a single finger tapping his forearm. His brother was nervous for him. "You know how they are."
It made Ace grind his teeth. He could feel fire under his skin, a supernova about to burst. "I'm not a kid," he bit out, hating the way flames licked up his arms, his shoulders, his words. He could control them, he will. "They can shove their worries elsewhere."
The young pirate found himself awfully reliant on his newfound abilities soon enough. It wasn't hard to grow accustomed to it when it prevented death by the occasional stray bullet or someone's lucky swipe of the blade.
Fire, the all-mighty thing that once plagued his mind, proved to be useful in certain aspects, and Ace couldn't stop thinking of ways to implement it into his own moves and in other practical ways. Maybe he could ask the shipwright division to build something for him. That could be fun. Fire could be fun.
It wasn't closure, yet, of course, but it was a step in strength. Ace could live with that. If he can protect his brothers better because of it, he would do anything to make the power yield to him.
Ace lit up a finger, willed his hand ablaze, watched as it morphed into a miniature sun in the palm of his hand. He made the flames fade in an instant, and the boy felt himself smile at the sight of it. Maybe, this could be a blessing as well.
.
The day of the Celestial Dragon's arrival, Sabo hears the news from Dogra.
“Then, was that - !?”
He can't breathe. Sabo feels a piece of him break. Suddenly he's falling, he drops to the floor in disbelief.
“Ace-” he gasps, chest hurting, “That was Ace, they- They shot-”
Then there comes the fury, and there comes vengeance wrapping its tendrils around his beating heart. He grabs his pipe, thinks he can smash a Celestial Dragon's head in, and before he could rush out the door Dadan slams him to the wooden planks of his second home. It's not as painful as losing a brother but it clears his head, and Sabo could hear her words through the rushing of blood in his ears.
“What are you going to do!?” She demands. “It was this world that killed Ace! What can you hope to do?!”
There's hate in his veins when he sees Dadan and her bandits cry for the boy they raised, when he hears Luffy erupting into a wail. It's unfair- There are people cheering in High Town, welcoming the scum that killed his brother, and his family is broken, and Luffy calls for Ace through his tears- and how is any of this fair at all?!
(The night of Ace's death, Sabo sobs to himself. Curls up as small as he can in the treehouse that is now too spacious, too wide. One body less.
He remembers eyes underneath lantern lights and he remembers agreeing to Ace's stupid, stupid plan. His clothes, his silhouette, his flag. It's Sabo who should've died, he thinks. The sea should've taken him instead.)
.
A kettle whistles on the stovetop, a sharp noise that cuts through the din of the Revolutionary base’s mess hall. The day opens like any other in this current age of piracy; Papers are strewn about on the table next to him, scrutinised and pointed at by restless members of the organisation, people who, probably, haven’t had too much sleep. Time is of the essence, after all; One more second wasted could be another man dead.
Sabo munches on a toast as he shuffles through a relatively thin stack of paper Ahiru had passed on to him the day before. The situation in Vira seems to have ramped up to a tempestuous degree, a call for hand on Bourbon Wolf’s emancipation, a stealth mission on West Blue, among others- but his hand soon catch on to a rough piece of paper that he managed to slip in before he made his way to the mess hall.
The blonde straightens it out, feeling the ripped edges of the note, a show of his little brother’s clumsiness. Sabo smiles softly; This month’s letter is earlier than normal.
He has a moment to wonder if Dragon wants a part of Luffy's sketches to hang on his office wall when the doors swing open. It’s the paperboy- who isn’t actually their paperboy, just someone who had the unfortunate grace to deliver the morning news to the base’s multiple rooms aside from their sleeping quarters- and he waves some sheets of wanted posters like he’s airing out smoke.
“Pirate rookies, comin’ in!” Paperboy announces. “New wanted posters, hot off the Navy’s great frying pan!”
Some people laugh and others groan; Sabo simply continues with his breakfast as the boy distributes the papers around, tucking away Luffy’s letter back in between the write-ups he was given. He’s more interested in the news than the wanted posters, to be honest, but it doesn’t hurt to catch up with new faces on the sea.
It makes its way to Sabo, eventually. His eyes blink away from the headline, another pompous display of the Marines’ military power, before skimming the news for anything worth noting. In his leafing through the pages, however, a wanted poster manages to escape from in between them, and Sabo catches it before it could fall to the ground.
A familiar face greets him. His breath hitches in his throat.
It’s a testament to how entrenched Sabo is in his work as a revolutionary that his hands don’t shake holding the wanted poster. His eyes tell a different story, however, when he reads every word to its minute detail, boring holes into the portrait above the name. He pulls the pages the wanted poster fell out from and lays it flat on the table and under the palm of his hand.
Pirate rookie , the words jeer, mere decoration within the paragraph, Whitebeard’s son .
The scar presents itself glaringly above everything else, his freckles next, the slope of his nose, those grey eyes. The feral grin on this pirate’s face framed by flames shouldn’t make Sabo feel like the world is ending- But it does, and Sabo rises from his seat with a loud clatter. Something he doesn’t dare call hope rests like ice in his chest and his mouth falls slightly agape.
Pirate rookie, Whitebeard’s son, Fire Fist Ace. Wanted for fifty million beli.
“Sir?” His colleague calls from the table next to him. He has the same wanted poster in his hands. It’s real, apparently. “You know this guy?”
Know him? Sabo thinks the world is pulling some big, cosmic joke, and the blonde would have laughed if he wasn’t so shaken. Because this shouldn’t be possible, there’s no way. Because the story of Ace goes like this; He met him when he was six in a trash heap, sworn brotherhood at ten, planned a risky escape for Sabo some days after, sailed in front of a Celestial Dragon’s ship, his flag, his silhouette, lead him to his death , and Dogra, pale-faced and in disbelief, Dogra said-
“It was so sudden, I barely realised what had happened. I doubted my own eyes!”
This shouldn’t be possible.
“No,” Sabo says after a beat of a second, ashes on his tongue. “I don’t.”
But he folds the wanted poster like it’s some beloved letter, tucks it carefully in his pocket. It doesn’t mean anything, Sabo tries to convince himself, even after the day is done and as the night crawls into its deepest hours. It doesn’t.
(In another part of the world and at the same time, one newly dubbed Fire Fist Ace is congratulated by his brothers for his first bounty. Happy birthday, they cheer. It’s the brightest Ace has ever smiled.)