Chapter Text
Ace is sitting in the same place he has been for the last two days. His brother’s face is slack and peaceful beneath the unnerving oxygen mask, and all the machines he’s hooked up to are beeping in that slow, steady way that Ace has learned to associate with the word ‘stable.’
Apparently, Ivankov and his people hitched a ride with the Whitebeards, because Ivankov is the one who called from the Den Den Mushi specific to Moby’s communications room. He had information to relay to Luffy’s doctor, who quickly got sick of the game of telephone and introduced his own snail to the Moby’s signal instead and took the call into his office.
This cut out Ace as the unnecessary middle man, but not before he overheard enough to make him wish he’d just thrown the snail into the sea the second it started ringing.
Luffy was tortured in Impel Down. He went through hell. By the time he made it to Ivankov’s level, he was mostly dead already. His only shot at survival was a treatment so invasive, so painful, that it was likely he wouldn’t have lived through it if he was even a fragment less stubborn than he’s always been.
There’s no way to reverse the toll Ivankov’s hormone therapy took on him. Ten years of Luffy’s life, gone in a manner of hours. And now his body is exhausted on every level, pushed past the brink of what it should be expected to endure, and he had to go into surgery on top of all of that.
He’s in a medically induced coma because any additional stress will literally kill him. Law seems fairly confident he’ll wake up, but his answer of “yeah, probably” when Ace asked was actually the least comforting thing that’s ever been said in human history.
Ace has spent the last two days slowly and methodically losing every single piece of his sanity he managed to cling to during the Summit War. He hears the heart-rate monitor in his sleep.
The door of Luffy’s room eases open, and the polar bear mink pokes its head in. Of all the Heart Pirates, Bepo is the one Ace gets along with the easiest. He reminds him of his friends back home.
It’s with an excruciating amount of effort that Ace scrapes together a smile for him. Bepo ducks his head a little, wringing his hands, but instead of the unnecessary apology Ace is half-expecting, the bear says, “Ivankov’s contact showed up.”
“Yeah?” Ace says tiredly. “To consult with your captain, right?”
Even though Ivankov had been adamant that there was nothing to be done for Luffy that Law wasn’t already doing for him, he’d called again a few hours later and said he was sending a colleague their way.
Ace isn’t a doctor and has limited experience with doctors, but he supposes that makes sense. People get second opinions, right?
“Actually, they’re here for you,” Bepo says.
Well, whoever it is, they’re not getting anywhere near Luffy without Law vetting them within an inch of their life. So he squeezes Luffy’s hand, takes another look at all the steady lines on all the monitors, and then follows Bepo into the corridor.
There’s a tall guy dressed in a dark overcoat and a stupid cravat pacing back and forth by the stairs, looking agitated as fuck. He whirls around before Ace is even halfway through the infirmary door and stares at him for like a solid minute.
One eye is a deep cobalt blue, the other a sort of milky coral. The lighter eye is on the side of the man’s face that’s covered by a massive burn scar, so it was probably damaged in some way by the same thing that torched him.
Both eyes widen and then narrow dangerously. The stranger stalks toward him, clearly angling for a fight.
Ace feels his hackles go up. Whatever bullshit this is, he doesn’t have time for it. He’s stressed out and scared for his brother and still feeling the after-affects of living in sea-stone cuffs for so long, which is essentially like a bad hangover, so he’s solidly in an attack first and ask questions later frame of mind.
He’s been polite to the Hearts, because they showed up when they didn’t need to and poured a hell of a lot of time and resources into saving Luffy’s life. His stores are well past empty.
“I dunno who the fuck you think you are,” he grits out, “but come at me like that and we’re gonna have a fucking problem.”
“We already do, you asshole,” the other man says, an artificial brightness in his tone. “Going after Blackbeard? Alone? What the fuck was happening in your brain for you to make a dumbass choice like that? Please, enlighten me.”
Don’t start a fire in this submarine, Ace reminds himself, even as the sudden heat coming off him makes him see everything in waves.
Outwardly, he bares his teeth, and says, “I missed the part where that’s any of your business.”
This guy snarls right back, and he grabs Ace by the shoulders of the jacket Penguin forced him to wear so he didn’t fuck up his bandages, and gives him a solid shake.
“You’re my business—you and every stupid thing you put me through. I literally can’t stand to look at you right now.”
But he’s staring as though it would take an act of god to make him look anywhere else.
Ace’s heart figures it out before his brain does.
He’s found pieces of his brother’s ghost in strangers before, and normally he’s good at compartmentalizing those things away. But Ace is well and truly at his emotional limit here, so he just lets himself recognize this guy. The familiar gait, the way his voice hitches when he’s emotional and trying to hide it with anger, the one extremely blue eye that looks right at Ace like it’s seeing him and nobody else, the way he’s always looked at Ace.
And his hands. Bigger now than they used to be, but scarred in all the same places. There’s a curving white line around his thumb from the time they got stuck in a farmer’s barbed wire fence, surrounded by a ton of stolen squash. Who would think to imitate that?
Everything adds up. Ace knows exactly who this person must be.
He turns to look at Bepo. “I’m having a psychotic break.”
The mink gives him a wide-eyed look. “Um, the captain is resting and I’m not qualified to diagnose that? So can you? Maybe hold off for right now?”
Ace’s dead brother gives him another shake, like he wants to snap his neck or jerk him into a hug and he hasn’t decided which way he’s going yet.
His mannerisms are exactly the same. It’s insane. It’s seeing the person Ace used to know better than anyone superimposed over a stranger’s body. Except not really a stranger—a boy who grew up into his toothy grin and stupid hair and lanky limbs.
His noble-bred brother, as rough and tumble as they come. Ace and Luffy were children of the jungle but Sabo always thought of himself as a step-child at best. He learned how to show his teeth and hide his claws from the same predators that taught his siblings. He was always hungry to prove he belonged there.
As if he didn’t automatically belong anywhere that Ace did.
“I have no idea what’s happening,” Ace says. “You died. Did I die?”
“No, but not for lack of trying on your part, you piece of shit,” Sabo seethes back. His eyes are wet, and his hands are shaking.
“What the hell were you thinking?“ Sabo growls, right in Ace’s face. “There were like ten guys back there.”
“Yeah, and?” Ace shoots back. “They were so weak it was embarrassing. I barely got a workout.”
“What if one of them had a gun?” Sabo’s eyes are dark and cold with anger that is usually directed at the rich people they steal from, not his siblings. Never Ace. “What if they shot you right in the head? Or in the stomach, so Luffy had a chance to watch you bleed out right in front of him?”
Ace feels his insides turn to ice. He glances over at their little brother, deeply asleep in a warm pile of the gibbons he loves so much, the only reason Ace and Sabo aren’t screaming in each other’s faces by now.
He imagines, for one awful second, a gut wound. The heavy, gushing way they bleed. He imagines Luffy’s tiny hands trying to hold him together. He stops imagining it, because now he wants to break something. Several somethings.
“I wouldn’t let him see that.”
“That’s not up to you when you’re dying.” Sabo grabs his shoulders and forces their eyes to meet again, and Ace had assumed it was anger making his hands shake, but then he sees tears on Sabo’s face and thinks it might be something else, too. Something he’s unfamiliar with. “You would do that to him? To me? After you swore to stick by us?”
“Not on purpose! But they said—”
“I don’t care what they said,” Sabo tells him coldly. “They’re nobody. We’re your family. Next time, pick us over them.”
He gives Ace another shake and then stomps to the other side of their little camp, joining the monkeys’ puppy pile and refusing to say another word to his twin for the rest of the night.
“I didn’t remember you until I saw the broadcast,” Sabo goes on, and the anger is seeping out of him now. It seems like the anger was the only thing holding him together, because he sways on his feet. “I saw you and you could have died and then you just fucked off and disappeared off the face of the earth, and I thought—”
Sabo, alive in the world without his memory, all this time. Ace really looks at him, takes in the scars on his face and the milky blue of his damaged eye, and that last stubborn guard around Ace’s heart just folds.
Sabo, alive.
Ace tips forward, smacking their foreheads together hard enough that his brain rattles a little, but Sabo takes it as the gesture it’s meant to be. Immediately his arms come around Ace’s shoulders and he tugs him into a hug ten years in the making and Ace clutches his stupid fancy coat for all he’s worth.
“Sabo,” Ace says, suddenly desperate for him to understand, “I went after Blackbeard because he killed my friend—my brother. And then I couldn’t run away, because he said he was going after Luffy when we were done.”
“Okay,” Sabo says, muffled against his shoulder. “Alright.”
“Our fucking brother broke into Impel Down, ‘Bo. And they hurt him. And now he’s—”
“Iva told me. I know.” Sabo’s hands tighten, almost to the point of pain, and he says, “I want to see him.”
Bepo watches with wide eyes as Ace turns and leads the way into Luffy’s room without another word. He wouldn’t even let some of the nurses in if he didn’t like their overall vibe, and now this random person shows up, picks a fight, and gets the VIP treatment. Bepo probably thinks Ace did have a psychotic break.
Ace closes the door behind him and tries not to hear the way Sabo’s breath shudders. It does look scary. The last time Luffy lay so still and lifeless was after that giant bear mauled him when they were children, and Sabo hadn’t been around for that.
“He’s supposed to wake up soon,” Ace supplies. “Law said it would be about forty-eight hours, and we’re past that mark.”
Sabo nods and sinks carefully onto the edge of the bed.
“Sorry I wasn’t there for you,” he whispers. “I wish I was.”
Ace doesn’t know how to explain that it’s the wanting that makes all the difference. Someone who didn’t show up because they didn’t care, versus someone who didn’t know they were needed and would give absolutely anything to change that.
So he just says, “You’re here now,” because it’s as simple as that.
And when Luffy finally opens his eyes three hours later, Sabo is still there.
A week later, the World News broadcast is hijacked by a member of the Revolutionary Army, who smiles into the transponder as though he’s having the absolute time of his life.
Beside him are Fire Fist Ace and Straw Hat Luffy—both of them clearly recovering well from the war, and in equally high spirits.
“Hello,” the Revolutionary says. “I’m sure it’s going to get out eventually, so I’ll start by introducing myself. My name is Sabo, Chief of Staff of the Revolutionary Army, and these are my brothers. Luffy here in particular has something he needs to say.”
Luffy leans forward a little bit, grinning ear to ear. “Zoro! Nami, Usopp, Sanji, Chopper! Robin, Franky, Brook! I’m sure you’re all safe, wherever you are, and running to meet me! I know seeing all that in the news must have been pretty scary. But I’m okay! Traffy saved me—we’re friends now.”
A tired voice from somewhere behind the snail says, “No, we’re not.”
“And listen! I had an idea. I don’t want us to ever lose each other ever again, so before we meet up, how about we make sure of it?” He lifts his sleeve and turns to show off his bared shoulder, where there’s a cryptic message scrawled in marker, similar to his brother’s tattoo in design. 3D2Y. “You get it, right? I’ll see you all then!”
The way he talks about his crew is so special. He trusts them enough to assume that, even scattered to the corners of the world, they’re scrambling to be together again. He loves them, and he’s happy to let the whole universe know.
“Don’t worry,” Sabo says, leaning closer and ruffling Luffy’s hair, “we’ll take good care of Lulu.”
It’s like watching the years fall away. Luffy’s cheerful expression contorts into a mask of outrage and betrayal, and he shoots off his seat to throw himself bodily at Sabo, screeching, “DON’T CALL ME THAT!”
Ace doubles over, laughing so hard it comes out as a wheeze. The voice from behind the snail says, “Do you guys just really miss prison? Is that it? I’ll leave you here and tell Rayleigh you died before I let any Marine drag me to Impel Down, I swear to—”
The transmission ends.