Chapter Text
Flash of lighting, separating the sky in half and being reflated off the blade of the knife that sliced through muscles.
A sharp gasp. "W-What?"
Greedy boisterous laughter being covered by the deafening thunder, somehow he still manages to hear it. Sending chills down his spine, filling his body with nothing but dread, and notifying him that this whole situation wouldn't end well.
The world started spinning, dissolving everything, leaving him in darkness. That lasted for a few minutes.
With a flash of bright light, the darkness changed. Before he could orientate himself, a piercing scream break the silent in the air. A scream filled with so much despair that he felt like he is being dunk into the cold ocean.
Intangible words soon filled the air, people shouting and screaming, pointing out directions, people running around.
It's so chaotic that he doesn't know where to look. Finally making up his mind, he wouldn't know how long this will last, might as well look at the most important piece of information where he will finally understand what is going on.
Getting a good view, it's only after he witness the whole thing did he noticed the distinct metallic smell that is no other than blood.
The weak apologetic smile on the pale face made him take a few steps back. The tears flowed down without him realising.
This can't be happening. This shouldn't even happen!
"It's too late."
"You're lying! Do something!"
"I can't feel a pulse! Rigor motis have already set in! We can't do anything for him!"
"NNNOOOOO!"
His view is getting blurry, notifying him that the scene is either going to change soon or it's ending. As the scene slowing dissolve, he managed to overhear the most important information that he needed.
Thinking about the last sentence that he managed to hear before everything dissolve, his heart pounded so hard as if he had been running for hours. The sentence continued repeating in his mind, as if his brain is trying to make sure that he never forget what he heard.
The hand that landed on his shoulder made him tense up, he is still disorientated from what he had seen.
Is he surrounded by enemies? Or is he surrounded by friends? He can't remember.
"Hey, are you okay? You're shaking." The familiar voice is just inches away from his ear. Usually with him being this disorientated, he would have attacked the first person and bring them down till he remember where he is. And in this situation, he found the voice familiar meant that he is in friendly company and he didn't need to protect himself.
"Don't worry. I'm fine, just slightly sleepy. Maybe I should head back to my room to rest for a while." he answered.
Breaking away from those hands who are still grabbing him; no doubt that those mother-hens want to escort him back to his room, he quickly fled. Knowing full well that he doesn't look too well.
There's no need to worry the others. There's no need to put more things onto their plates.
After all he was the one who was born with this curse, he have the responsibility to solve this problem. Especially when the person who started this whole thing is a member of his Division.
Slamming the door shut without thinking about it, he locked the door for extra 'security'. He have to focus all of his attention on creating a plan and he can't do that when there will be people barging into his room and trying to figure out what happened or just trying to baby him.
There are a lot of things which he had to do, he will need to find out what is the cause for the incident, after that he will need to try and figure out when that incident is going to happen
There are tons of things which he had to do, he had to find out what is the cause for the incident, find out why; depending on the reason he might be able to prevent the whole incident from ever happening, make sure that his plan will work, make sure that he had gotten everything that he needed and stay alert until it's time.
But first thing first, he need to start making the plan.
Staring at his brother whom had just fled, this has never happened before. Turning his attention onto the broom that his brother had dumped onto him before fleeing, it seems like he will need to assign another person to take over the forgotten chores.
Not that anyone will mind once he informed them that their brother is feeling unwell and have retreated to his room to rest.
But what he had witness worried him.
“Thatch, what’s going on yoi? And where is Ace?” Turning his head to look at his older brother and closest friend walking in his direction.
“He isn’t feeling that well and have went into his room to rest.” He answered, the frown never leaving his face.
Even Marco started frowning at what he heard, it took a while before Marco continued, “There’s something more to this.”
Nodding his head, “Let me ask someone to take over Ace’s job before we talk about it in your room.” Thatch answered before the both of them split up. Marco should know how serious this situation is just by his reaction, and knew that they will be having a long talk.
“Hey Jack, Ace isn’t feeling well is resting back in his room. Do you mind taking over Ace’s chores?” Thatch asked the first brother who he come across.
“He isn’t feeling well? Sure I’ll do them, make sure to send him to the infirmary for a check-up later on will ya?”
Giving a thumbs up as an answer, he quickly rush off in the direction of Marco’s room. Thankfully no one stopped him to either talk to him or try to talk him out of setting up his pranks, he need to tell Marco about their brother’s weird actions because he will just over think things and might angered their youngest brother.
Opening the door without knocking on it, what’s the use when his best friend already knew that they are going to talk? Setting down on the chair that was meant for him, Thatch took a while to gather his thoughts and where he should begin and Marco just wait.
“Ace stopped in the middle of doing his chores.” He started, “I thought that something might have gotten his attention but there’s nothing worth seeing, I thought it might have been another attack but Ace didn’t drop. So I got worried and head over there, only to find Ace’s pale face and shaking.”
When Marco nodded his head to prompt him, “When he snapped out of it, he didn’t answer anything and just fled. He fled away from me Marco!”
Settling back into his chair with one of his eyebrow raised, now Marco could understand why Thatch wanted to have this talk in his room, away from everyone’s ears. Everyone will be so worried if they hear this.
The Ace that they know is someone who will never turn his back from a fight or run away from anything even if the situation would end in his death, they had a glimpse of that trait during the first fight Oyaji had with the brat and the next hundred days with Ace trying to take Oyaji’s head had them know that Ace will never stop till he is either dead or he finally changed his mind.
“That is strange yoi.”
Shooting a worried look at his brother and closest friend, “Marco, do you think there is anything that we can do?”
Shaking his head, “We don’t know what truly happen at that time, the only thing we could do right now is to keep an eye on Ace.” Pausing for a moment, “We shouldn’t tell anyone about this yet, it wouldn’t be good to alarm Ace yoi. If we notice anything alarming, we will tell everyone. Including Oyaji yoi.”
Staring blankly at Marco for a while, Thatch agreed. While the Commanders do know how they should act when they have to keep tabs on someone however Ace’s instinct is inhumane, he always know when someone is staring at him, knew when people are following him, basically Ace just gives all of them the feeling that he never let his guards down even when he is among family.
“It should be easy I guess? Since the both of us are close to him.”
Snorting at Thatch’s uncertain tone, “We can try, after all he should think that we were worried about what happened yoi. It should be okay.”
Staring at the white piece of paper that had been sitting in front of him for the past few hours, Ace couldn’t help but throw his hands up and groan out in defeat. Without knowing the cause for the incident, there’s no way where he could come up with a plan that is flawless enough to make sure nothing screws up.
Belly flopping onto the unmade bed, looks like he will need to wait for that person to come back before he could create any plan. Thank goodness the wait shouldn’t take too long, after that person comes back, he will need to do something to touch either that person or the things that had been touched.
Again, that shouldn’t be too difficult. Every one of them are assigned chores to do; even the commanders, therefore he shouldn’t have any troubles.
Unless someone is keeping an eye on him. That would make things difficult, winching when he remembered his reaction just now, no doubt that Thatch and Marco will be keeping an eye on him.
Thinking about it for a while, he quickly shrugged it off. He will just have to put on a show during dinner to show his close friend and lover that everything is normal and that he really was just ‘unwell’. Taking a quick glance at his alarm, Ace decided that there’s enough time for him to have a quick nap before dinner comes. He will need his ‘energy’ if he had to act as if nothing is wrong.
A familiar cracking sound.
Smoke so thick that it caused him to cough uncontrollably.
Blades whining as they clashed against one another.
Battle screams, screams of panic, commands being shouted out through the chaos.
“SABO!”
Luffy. His baby brother is screaming. But the voice sounds too young to be his baby brother.
What is going on?
Another scream. This time filled with pain.
Another scream. One that is filled with so much pain and oh so familiar to him.
“SABO!”
“-ce, Ace wake up yoi.”
Snapping his eyes open, it’s been a while since he dream about the day when Sabo; his brother, nearly died.
“Ace, are you okay yoi? You’re shaking.” Marco asked, quickly placing a hand on Ace’s shoulder to try and anchor his lover down. While his younger lover have never confessed, Marco knew that he suffers from nightmares occasionally and had to wake the younger brat up before whatever nightmare his lover have turns bad.
Weakly pushing himself up, Ace couldn’t help but curse when he notice his body is still shaking. “Y-Ya, I’m okay.”
“Another nightmare yoi?” Marco settled down onto Ace’s bed, wanting to see if Ace would share what the nightmare is about. When Marco realise Ace is still tense from the nightmare, he slowly rubbed Ace’s back, hopping this will be able to calm his fire-brat down.
It took a while before the tension in Ace’s body disappear, “Ya, another nightmare. One that I haven’t had in a long time.”
“Want to talk about it yoi? It might make you feel better but if you don’t want to, it’s okay.”
Thinking about it for a while, “I told you about my brothers before right?”
“Sabo and Luffy?” Marco couldn’t help the smile from appearing on his face. Once Ace have gotten pass his stubbornness and joined them, it didn’t take the others long to hear Ace talking about his two other brothers. Whenever others complain about Ace being too reckless, giving others heart-attacks, Ace love to bring up the stories about his two other brothers. Telling everyone about the troubles that Luffy always get into, forcing Sabo and him to clean up the mess.
As if knowing what he is thinking, Ace give him a blinding smile. “Who else?” however the smile soon dropped from Ace’s face. “While I did tell all of you about the mischief that Luffy got into and how Sabo and I had to clean it up, there are times that we did get into such deep shit that it nearly killed us cleaning them up.”
Chills went down Marco’s mind the moment his brain process what he had just heard, his brain producing the worst case scenario.
“I have to confess that most of those times are because of Gramps’ training, they weren’t humane.” Huffing out at his memories of all the trainings they had to go through, “But there is one where I seriously thought that we shouldn’t have been alive.”
“Which one is it yoi?” Keeping his eyes on Ace.
It’s always dangerous to ask Ace talk about his past; not about the troubles he had gotten into with his brothers, everyone beside Oyaji and him do not know about this tiny piece of information because Ace didn’t want to tell anyone about it. Oyaji knew about it when Ace finally decided to join them and confessed about his heritage that was the only thing that Ace confessed yet Oyaji knew about the ‘demons’ that Ace is fighting.
Ace had been the one to tell him. Stating that since the both of them are in a relationship now, they shouldn’t be keeping any secrets between them, and Marco could understand the reason. Really, he did the moment he heard the ‘secret’.
With Gol. D. Roger as his father, the Marines and civilians keeping an eye out for anyone who resemble Roger, it’s a miracle that Ace managed to survive until he met them. Maybe without Garp’s help of hiding Ace away, there’s a high chance where Ace would have been killed before he live through the age of 4.
Not only is his life being targeted, Ace is painting large targets on those who are around him, even with Oyaji’s status as a Yonko wouldn’t keep them safe. His status as Ace’s lover will make everything worse.
With their inability to have a child, they didn’t have to worry about their child or children having to go through what Ace had to experience during his childhood.
“Sabo never really like or embraced his heritage and ran away from home when he was only six years old. We met in the Grey Terminal and became friends because we hit off really well, we were only seven at that point of time. Luffy joined us three years later, with another mouth to feed we had to do whatever we could to survive and save up enough money to buy our ship, during those times Sabo’s father never gave up his search for him. Everything was fine until Sabo’s father found us while we were escaping when we were 11 years old, in order to get his heir back Sabo’s father paid some shady people to do it.”
As Ace paused here to take in a deep breath, Marco never once stop rubbing his lover’s back, wanting to make Ace as physically comfortable as possible as the battle with the ‘demons’ continued.
“Those shady people had burnt the forest down, believing that it will flush us out as we live in the forest. The fight turned into a battle for both survival and time, the battle lasted for way too long even if we had the bandit leader; Dadan’s, help. While my attention focused on the leader, Sabo had to stay by Luffy’s side to make sure he wouldn’t be overwhelmed by the others. Without anyone noticing, Sabo was thrown into the fire by one of the underlings.”
Freezing up, Marco found it hard to breathe. It’s true that the flames from his zoan Devil Fruit isn’t warm and he can’t use it as an attack as it doesn’t burn like Ace’s Mera Mera no Mi since it is mainly used for healing the injuries he sustain during battles, sadly it doesn’t cover the pain he experience.
Marco had spent a long time to make sure he doesn’t react to the pain, it wouldn’t do any good if Oyaji and the others realise this flaw (those mother-hens wouldn’t allow him to take on any attacks aimed for them) and he had the unpleasant experience of being burnt alive once.
(The Marines had ambushed them while they were docked on an island where most of the crew were out having fun, leaving those who were on watch outnumbered and trying their best to keep their home safe. Thank goodness he had stayed behind due to the overflowing paperwork accumulated, none of the Marine was strong enough to land a hit on him therefore they decided to try burning him alive.)
Ace turned his head to make eye contact with Marco, “I can never forget the screams from both Luffy and Sabo. Especially Sabo when he was being burn alive, I froze and wasn’t able to do anything to help Sabo, Dadan was the one to help him. It’s a miracle that all of us survived the fight but we had to hide from the Marines that the shady people called, it took two weeks before it was safe enough for us to head out. Due to the long wait, there were nothing much which the doctors could do except to bandage the wounds up and pray that they would heal. Dadan’s hands were badly burnt, took her a few years of intensive physical therapy before she could use her hands like she used to as for Sabo, it took nearly a year before the bandages leave his body, took half a year before he could move around without screaming and his left eye was so badly damaged that he could hardly see anything out of that eye.”
It took a while before Marco could kick-start his brain to say anything, “But all of you survived right? Isn’t that the most important thing yoi?” Giving what he hope is a comforting smile, he didn’t want to let Ace get stuck in the ‘regrets’ portion instead of looking at the outcome.
“True.” A weak smile was returned.
Marco will count that as a win, letting the silence dragged on for a while and to let whatever he just said to sink in. “Come on yoi, let’s grab our dinner before Thatch demand everyone to search for us.”
Ace’s rumbling stomach and laughter brought a smile to Marco’s face as he pulled the both of them to the dining room.
Covering his mouth with the sleeve of his kimono; making sure that the cloth doesn’t touch his lips, “What’s that oaf worried about?” Izo asked, keeping his eyes on their Head Chief who continued pacing in the space available between the two tables.
“Marco and Ace aren’t here yet.” Vista answered, wiping his mouth with a napkin.
“And?”
“You know that Ace never skips his meals.” Vista answered.
Rolling his head, “You stupid oaf, there’s nothing to worry about. Maybe Marco and Ace want to spend some time alone.” Pulling Thatch to the table that commander uses and forced him to sit down.
“But-“
Izo never let the man finish his sentence, “No buts.” Glaring at Thatch to make his point, “If they aren’t here within 15 minutes, you’ll go and collect them.”
Thatch isn’t too happy with Izo’s demand sadly he couldn’t do anything unless he wanted his hair to be destroyed by Izo’s fan.
“Come on Thatch, Izo could be right that Marco and Ace just wanted some time alone. We all know that Marco had been swamp with paperwork and the both of them couldn’t spare anytime to be together or even talk about anything beside work.” Haruta added, hoping that this would be able to calm down his older brother.
“Ya, you’re right. Sorry.” Thatch give a weak smile before he start on the food placed in front of him.
Izo continued his observation on Thatch, he knew that there’s something wrong.
With over a thousand member on their crew, it’s nearly impossible to get close with every single person but this is slightly different for the Commanders. Each with their own division to lead, the other commanders will step in to help with their brother or sister who just made to the new rank, there are times where they will face a problem where it’s hard to solve or they are too busy with other things and would need another commander to step in.
With the additional fact that they work together so damn much, it’s natural that they are close with one another and know when someone is hiding something away from them. And with Thatch being Thatch; someone who can’t hide his emotions away from everyone, Izo knew that Thatch is hiding something away from them.
A gentle almost non-existence nudge at his side made Izo tear his eyes away from Thatch. Without saying a single thing or even looking at him, Izo understood what Namur is telling him. All of them knew and agree with his deduction, Thatch is hiding something from all of them but if Izo kept on looking at Thatch like this, their Head Chief will raise his guards.
Rolling his eyes, Izo turned his attention back to his half-finished dinner. He might not like having information being kept away from him,
Huffing out softly, Izo turned his attention back to his half-finished dinner. Izo might not like having information kept from him but he do know that there are times where he shouldn’t push. This is the case right now, if Thatch doesn’t want to tell them anything, there’s nothing which they could do to make him talk.
A loud rumbling sound soon reached everyone’s ears, most of t hem couldn’t stop the laughter from escaping. There’s only two person who they know will be able to create such a monstrous sound, one of them is Oyaji who is sitting with them eating his own dinner and the other one is Ace whose stomach will rumble whenever he is hungry at any time.
(There’s once when everyone thought they were under attack, causing them to rush around the whole ship to find nothing and linked it back to the Commanders’ room. That’s where they found out that it’s Ace’s stomach that caused the loud noises and it only stopped when Oyaji and Marco coaxed the brat up to eat whatever Thatch managed to create half asleep.)
“Looks like our trouble-maker and his care-taker is here.” Rakuyo whispered out causing those who are near him to chock on their food or spitting out whatever is in their mouth.
That’s what Marco and Ace see when they walk in, people chocking on their food while others trying their best to help them. Turning to one another, they shrugged it off, not wanting to bring any more work to themselves if possible.
“Marco! Ace! I’ve already grabbed your food for you!” Thatch shouted out, waving his hand franticly to catch their attention.
Upon hearing what Thatch said, Ace quickly pull Marco to the empty seats.
The moment Ace sit down, he started stuffing all of the food into his mouth, it feels like everything had returned to normal. Izo screaming at Ace to slow down before the juices from the meat splatter onto his kimono, Thatch and the rest laughing and Marco ignoring everything else to enjoy his meal.
It feels so normal that everyone forgot the fact that Thatch had hidden something from them and that Thatch forgot the conversation he had with Marco about Ace’s strange behaviour. That’s the out-come Ace needed and wanted, he will need to be as normal as possible before he could do anything to prevent whatever he had seen happening.