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With Gold Roger's death, not only was a new age of piracy unleashed upon the world, but also, to the World Government's immense horror and annoyance, an age of ghosts.
Ten Years Ago
It takes a full twenty-four hours for a ghost to awaken. If, that is, a person dies in such a way that leaves behind a ghost.
Ace figures the destruction of Sabo’s stolen ship qualifies.
Dadan stops him from leaving right away, from trying to go kill the bastard who murdered his brother, and then the rest of the bandits pile on, tying Ace to a stupid tree in order to make him stay put overnight. He hates it. He hates it, because he can’t go after Sabo’s killer, and neither can he get to Luffy, who wails for hours, crying for him, crying for Sabo, crying just for the sake of crying.
Ace doesn’t cry.
Not when Dadan and the others finally come out at dawn to check on him. Not when the damn letter shows up, the last words Sabo will ever say. Certainly not when he’s let down, and given the letter, and finally allowed to leave.
It’s not until he’s gone to one of the cliffs overlooking the shoreline, where he’s finally, truly alone, that Ace lets go and sobs for all he’s worth.
Afterward... Afterwards, he goes looking.
Everyone knows ghosts awaken in the spot where they died, but they don’t always have to stay there. If they’re Bound to the place, then sure, there’s a limit to how far away they can wander - but ghosts can come back Bound to any number of things. A favorite belonging, a job they refuse to stop doing, an unfinished task they can’t help but try to complete-
-a person they don’t want to leave behind.
Usually, that means a person responsible for their death, but not always. And Ace figures, if Sabo comes back as a ghost, he won’t bother spending his time haunting the stupid Celestial Dragon - he’ll come home, to his brothers. So Ace checks the cliffs and beaches as close to Grey Terminal and Goa as he dares to go, and then doubles back to the treehouse, and finally tracks down Luffy.
It takes a full twenty-four hours for a ghost to awaken.
He isn’t sure of when, exactly, Sabo’s ship went down, but they’re definitely well past that threshold by the time he locates his little brother on the same cliff where Ace did his crying. Luffy’s lying on his stomach, facing the sea, clutching onto his hat where it’s pulled down low over his face. No more big heaving sobs like the night before, but Ace can hear him sniffling, can see the tears and snot spilling down the seven year old’s chin.
“He’ll be here.”
“Nn.” Luffy takes a deep breath, still hiding under his hat. “He- he sh-shouldn’t.”
Ace can’t help bristling. “What are you talking about? Of course he should! There’s no way he’ll let himself be Bound to anything besides us-”
“Sabo shouldn’t be Bound!” Luffy wails. “Sabo should be free!”
“Sabo should be alive,” Ace snaps back, alarmed to find his vision turning blurry with new tears. “But he isn’t, and I’d rather he come back to us instead of getting stuck haunting the bastard who killed him!” The straw hat gets pulled even lower, completely hiding Luffy’s face. After a beat, Ace scrubs furiously at his eyes, wiping away all traces of moisture before they get a chance to fall. “...he should get to be free. But- but if he can’t-”
Sniffling still, Luffy’s head and hat jerk with a nod. “Then- then we stay together.”
“Right.”
“...Ace?”
“Mm?”
His little brother’s voice comes out the softest Ace has ever heard him speak. “Don’t die too.”
“Tch,” he scoffs, looking away, towards the sea, hopefully towards the ghost that is going to pop up any time now. “I won’t die, Luffy.”
“Promise?”
“Yeah. I promise.”
The faint pressure of a hand settles on his shoulder. It’s warm. It’s always warm, when Ace’s mother manages to touch him. She usually can’t - usually, it’s only times of danger, life or death moments when Portgas D. Rouge manifests strongly enough to give Ace a helping hand, whether that’s pulling him out of harm’s way, or shoving aside a threat. His early years of wandering the jungle never felt dangerous with her watching over him; escaping from the Grey Terminal fire with first Luffy and then Dadan, not a single flame got close enough to singe his skin. Gramps told him, once, that ghosts generally weren’t so weak, so constantly insubstantial, but the way Rouge prolonged her pregnancy not only caused her death, it left her ghost drained of strength as well.
That shouldn’t be the case with Sabo. It won’t. He might- he might come back ringed in fire, or tinged with the grey skin of a death by drowning, but Ace and Luffy will be able to touch him, hug him, whenever his dumb idiot ass eventually shows up.
...if he shows up.
If he becomes a ghost at all.
(It takes a full week for Ace to accept that Sabo isn’t coming back.
He cries all night, to the touch of his mother’s hands stroking his hair.)
Now
A decade later, it takes every ounce of strength Ace has left to muster to keep from crying in front of thousands of marines.
Funny, how being so close to his own death has increased how much he can feel Rouge’s presence. All during his time in Impel Down, she stayed close, a welcome source of warmth surrounded by the chill of seastone. On the trip to Marineford, she never let go of his left arm; here and now, kneeling on his execution platform, she’s practically wrapped herself around his head and shoulders, as if her sheer strength of will is all it’ll take to stop the blades from reaching his neck. Ace can even feel her hair, the featherlight tresses draping down across his back, just as soft as his own when it’s been recently washed.
It isn’t fair.
It isn’t fucking fair.
Ghosts who come back Bound to places or jobs can’t really be gotten rid of; ghosts Bound to more tangible things? Destroy the item, complete the task, kill the person... and they vanish. Off to wherever it is the souls of folks who don’t become ghosts go after their deaths.
Ace has no idea if he’ll wake back up after this.
But he does know, with bone deep certainty, that even if he comes back, even if he awakens to haunt Marineford, or maybe his crew, or Luffy - his mother won’t be around anymore. And that hurts. Because Luffy was right, ages ago, when he insisted, there’s nothing worse than being alone.
At least Ace did get to hug her, before this mess. Thanks to the last person he ever would have expected to help.
Three Years Ago
He honestly doesn’t want to stop in Loguetown.
Dumb ‘tradition’ aside, it’s the well known ghostly inhabitant Ace would rather avoid at all costs. But, unfortunately, there’s good reason that pretty much all ships from the East Blue heading for the Grandline swing by the infamous port, and that’s due to it being the last decent island to resupply for the voyage ahead.
So, bearing in mind Duece’s very reasonable logic, Ace doesn’t put up too much of a struggle when it comes to sailing for Loguetown’s harbor. He certainly isn’t planning on setting foot off their ship, though, not for all the whining and wheedling in the world. At least- not until the phantom sensation of slim fingers gently picks at his wrist.
Ace’s stomach promptly twists into a knot. But. He gets off the ship.
Winding through the streets and ducking away from the odd marine patrol, it takes him a bit to reach the center of town, where a tall execution platform still looms over the cobblestones, nearly two decades past its intended purpose. A couple of people linger near it, but most walk right by with a healthy barrier of empty space. Ace has heard rumors that the Pirate King’s ghost likes to perch up on top of the platform, to frighten anyone who comes too close, but he can’t see any flicker of color or motion.
His mom’s never had the strength to visibly show herself, but Ace knows that tends to be a rarity. He and his brothers spotted plenty of ghosts wandering around Grey Terminal’s trash heaps over the years: some practically invisible, others so solid looking it took a hand passing straight through them to realize there was no longer any flesh or bone.
(Supposedly, Gold Roger laughed for a straight week after his execution, after he first rose from the dead, as one marine after another failed to land any sort of hit on his incorporeal form. And that was even before stories began to circulate of other ghosts popping up, all over the world.)
While thinking about all this, Ace doesn’t realize he’s caught some attention, lingering at the edge of the courtyard and staring up at the platform. “Huh. Didn’t expect the freckles.”
He jumps, automatically bringing up a fist, ready to ignite his fairly new Devil Fruit powers if necessary. The tall man suddenly standing next to him only snorts, slouching with both hands tucked into his pockets.
...the pockets of a long coat. A pirate’s coat.
Slowly, Ace lifts his gaze higher, noting the wide mustache that does nothing to hide an even wider grin, and then a pair of grey eyes peering at him. Eyes just like his own.
Roger must realize when Ace properly recognizes him. The grin eases down into something softer, the man’s whole face shifting towards- “You look good, kiddo. Better than I could have hoped.”
It takes a moment to swallow, to open his mouth and force some words out. “How- how do you-”
“Know who you are?” Roger finishes for him, winking as he says it. “Well, much as I’d like to say a father always knows his own son, it’s more to do with the fact I spotted her first.” That said, the man lifts and holds out his hand, palm up, towards a spot just in front of Ace.
His breath catches in his throat. “You can see her?!”
“Sure I can,” the Pirate King scoffs. Those grey eyes abruptly gleam a bright, dangerous red, a ripple of power shooting down his arm and into- into-
-into Rouge.
Who is, for the first time ever, entirely visible.
“Oh,” the woman says, audibly, Ace can hear as well as see her- “Oh, my- Ace, sweetheart.”
Maybe he hated his blood. Maybe he admitted in his deepest, darkest thoughts that he never should have been born. But for once, for once, Ace can’t muster up so much as an ounce of hatred for the monster who sired him, not when the man himself can do this.
Rouge’s arms wrap around him, and her lips kiss his forehead, his cheeks, his nose, and Ace doesn’t care a bit that he breaks out into loud, ugly sobbing, right there in plain view of anyone who walks by.
(Except, as it turned out, not in plain view. Roger could not only lend his power to other ghosts, he could put up a sort of shroud to keep anyone else from seeing or walking into his personal space. And that’s what he did, for a whole half hour, while keeping a respectful three steps away from Ace and Rouge as they fussed over one another, as they cried and laughed and hugged.)
Now
The memory of Loguetown is all that keeps Ace going, as he kneels on his own execution platform, and struggles to keep from crying as Fleet Admiral Sengoku reveals his parentage to the whole damn world. The way his mom had looked radiant, as she got to touch him, talk to him. The way Roger’s face fell when he admitted it wouldn’t, couldn’t be permanent, that his power over other ghosts waned with time and distance.
The way his stupid father still pushed every scrap of energy he could muster into Rouge’s hands, letting her stay corporeal for over a week after Ace and his Spades set sail for the Grandline.
It never fails to make him smile, thinking of how the crew reacted when introduced to his mother, how they practically fell all over themselves to make certain she and Ace got to spend as much time in each other’s company as possible before she faded back to her usual state.
Well.
It’s never failed up until now, anyway.
But maybe, just maybe, some higher power out there catches the direction of Ace’s thoughts, and decides to throw one last miracle his way.
Not the huge fleet of Grandline pirates who come sailing out of a massive fogbank, no. Not even the Moby Dick, bursting up from the center of Marineford’s bay in all her gleaming glory, his Pops and siblings and friends gathered on deck. No, the real miracle comes in the form of a warship dropping out of the fucking sky, and with it a whole host of prisoners newly escaped from Impel Down, Ace’s idiot baby brother right in their midst.
And bellowing with laughter beside him, the ghost of Gol D. Roger.
See. The thing is. Over twenty years is plenty long enough for folks to make the justified assumption that a mostly stationary ghost is, in fact, Bound to the place where he died. Roger, after all, had never been seen further than the boundary of Loguetown’s central courtyard.
But that would be a bit too boring for the legendary Pirate King.
No, he wasn’t Bound to a place - nor an item, or a person, and technically not even a true task.
Roger only needed to wait for a successor.
Then
“Well that would just be boring,” Roger huffs, when he pops out of nowhere next to Luffy in the middle of the street, and Ace demands in a high pitched tone to know why the hell the man isn’t back in the East Blue. “I was only waiting around for the right person to come along, someone I think has a real shot at my title!”
“And he picked me!” Luffy promptly crows, grinning from ear to ear.
Roger snickers, both at the teen’s reaction and the way Ace is still staring at the two of them in shock. “Well, Shanks picked you, technically. At first I was gonna give that brat an earful for losing my hat, but when he started talking about the little pirate-to-be that he left it with... eh, I figured the kid must be something special. And I was right!” That said, he reaches around Luffy towards a spot at Ace’s shoulder, where he’s been able to feel the faint touch of his mother’s hand ever since they reunited with his little brother. And then, just like in Loguetown, Rouge flickers into view, her laughter ringing out mid-giggle.
Luffy calls that amazing, and she gives him just as tight a hug as the one Ace receives.
So, both Portgas D’s get to meet the Strawhat Pirates, and their royal passenger, and before parting ways Roger infuses Rouge with as much power as he can again, so Ace has some true company on the next part of his search. His mother of course uses a lot of that time to remind him to be careful, and call for backup if he needs it, and not be afraid of retreating if things go badly.
He listens. He does. But then he actually catches up to Teach, and the bastard talks about going after Luffy, and Ace figures if his mom were still able to voice her opinion by that point, she’d tell him to kick the bastard’s ass.
Except, that’s not how things go.
Now
Roger lands on the battlefield with Luffy. None of the other Strawhats are in sight, but apparently, that doesn’t matter when one’s got the undead Pirate King on their side.
Because it turns out Roger isn’t limited in his power-sharing trick to one other ghost at a time.
And there are, evidently, a shit ton of ghosts hanging around Marineford.
Plenty are marines themselves, still following friends, or manning their stations at the gun turrets and battlements. Others are pirates, possibly haunting those who’d killed them, or else still looking after their crews. But more, many, many more, are so obviously ordinary people, who died in a variety of gruesome ways, who find themselves suddenly able to unleash their lingering grief and rage upon the world around them and seize that opportunity with a vengeance.
Most of the Warlords are immediately swarmed, and don’t have any attention to spare for the approach of living enemies when others they’ve already killed start clamoring for a second round. Marines all across the field start screaming, as dead civilians seek out their murderers howling for Justice of their own. And everywhere Ace looks, pirates both living and dead hurl themselves into the fight - his stupid ghost-father and idiot little brother right at the forefront.
“-ill him, kill him now!” Startled, Ace comes back to himself at the sound of Sengoku’s furious shouting, but before either of the executioners can raise their weapons, a surge of pure rage fills the air, and tosses them aside.
Slim fingers curl over Ace’s shoulders. His seastone shackles shatter. And his mother, the previously unassuming Portgas D. Rouge, states in a firm unyielding tone that cracks across the entire area: “You, will not, touch my son."
Ace only gets another moment to stare at the expression of stunned horror Sengoku wears. Because an instant later, his mom flicks a single finger, and the Fleet Admiral goes flying.
Somewhere down below, he can hear his Gramps laughing hysterically.
Light and ice and magma flare, but Rouge knocks away the remaining Admirals just as easily as she did their boss. And then she slips a hand under Ace’s arm, murmuring to him, “Sweetheart, I don’t know how long Roger can keep this up - we need to go, now.”
“No shit,” Ace rasps, still maybe a bit stunned himself. Even so, he gets ahold of himself enough to shift into pure flame, to reach out for his mother’s grasp.
And together, they leap.
(Elsewhere in the world, a young man twitches, one hand coming up to trace the burn mark over his left eye.)