Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Hurry the hell up, you maggots!”

Ace trips over his feet, and hisses at the new scrape across his knee. The whip flashes beside him, and he’s up again, throwing his arms on the lever and pushing along.

He can’t stop here. They’ll whip him again.

“Move the travelator nice and slow now! No slacking!”

Ace isn’t sure, but based on the carves on the wall-- it’s been a hundred days since he came here. His hands are heavy against his lap, his chains heavier than that.

It’s fortunate that Sabo taught him that it was important to count the days. With how mundane the days are, Ace loses track easily. 

(Let’s try and reach three hundred and sixty-five.)

And what? Will he get a prize? Will he get to see his brothers? Will he get a day of rest and will he get to go home?

It’s hard to say.

(But he can wait. He can wait. He can wait.)

(And one day…)

He throws his fist against the wall. It doesn’t shatter. He grits his teeth. Blood fills his mouth. 

“One day I’ll get out,” he says, and though the walls don’t speak, he knows they’re laughing a thim. It doesn’t stop him from gritting his teeth and biting back the tears when he says it again, and again, and again. 

“I’ll get out... One day...”

Someone joins his cell one day.

He’s usually assigned a solitary cell because of his ‘mischief-making’ as they put it (and maybe Ace accidentally almost killed one guy a few times), but when a particularly misbehaving outlaw comes up, they’re put with Ace as punishment.

Because anything that pisses Ace off too much will die.

Ace curls up around the side of the doubly reinforced cell. The shackles on his wrists are five times heavier than a normal pair. The bomb collar around his neck has a core made of seastone, and that’s as hard as diamond, so Ace can’t break it.

He only looks at the wall, at the few scrapes of days.

It’s nine-hundred and forty-six now. It takes up a lot of space on the wall and it’s a pain to count, but Ace remembers it. 

“Get in there, you fucking fish!”

Ace simply watches when a figure is shoved into the room. Ace first notices the tail under him, brown to deep purple, with light-coloured fins.

(A fishman? No, a merman. Sabo taught him the difference before.)

The merman scowls when the door is bolted shut, and he quickly lifts himself up, leaning against the grills. 

Ace spots the bomb collar. Then he spots the Hoof of a Soaring Dragon on the man’s side. Then he turns his gaze to the side, back toward the number of days.

Surely, the merman will be removed from this room eventually. 

As long as he stays quiet, maybe he’ll still be alive when he leaves.

The merman didn’t leave. In fact, it seems like they’re officially cellmates now. He’s always there when Ace comes back, and even if he isn’t, he comes back soon.

Ace doesn’t mind him. Merman or not, he never liked talking to people, and the merman is quiet. There’s no point in killing him, it’s a waste of energy. He carves down the mark for day nine hundred and eighty-seven. 

He traces the numbers on the floor, 987. 

As in, days. 

Since he arrived in this place.

It’s a pretty small number when he puts it down like this, compared to the wall before him, that he can’t find a place to write on anymore. 

His nails are broken, his skin is peeled. He’s all skin and bones, but he’s alive.

He’s alive, and the fire still burns in his eyes.

“I heard,” the merman says.

Ace lifts his gaze a little. He doesn’t really understand why the guy’s talking to him. Maybe he’ll just ignore it…

“I heard you killed all your cellmates before me. Why do you not kill me?” he asks.

Ace leans against the corner of the room. He isn’t in the mood for boring, pacifist talk. He needs all the rest he can get before his next shift.

He has never seen a merman before. Sabo told them stories, and Luffy was incredibly eager to meet one just to ask if it had a digestive system. Ace doesn’t know how to feel-- his first meeting with a merman, and it’s this ridiculous situation.

“You can’t speak?” the merman is still talking. Why can’t he understand that Ace doesn’t want to talk? “Or do you perhaps not understand words?”

Ace clicks his tongue. 

“Be quiet,” he grounded out the words, irritated. He sees the merman flinch a little, not actually expecting a response. “I’m tired.”

The merman kept quiet after that.

But his gaze never left the boy’s.

Day One thousand and Ninety-Five.

Mariejois is on fire, and his cage door is shattered open by a large hand. The shackles on his wrists finally fall from him, and the weight of the world is no longer on his shoulders.

When the pirate unlocks the bomb collar on his neck and tells him to run, Ace only looks to the wall again. He finds himself turning toward his merman cellmate.

“My name is Aladine,” the merman tells him, extending a hand.

Ace stares at it for a long moment. The building is shattering, quaking in the remnants of what will definitely be a disaster the world will remember.

But he takes the hand, and gives it a firm shake.

“I’m Ace,” he says. His next words come stronger, “Portgas D. Ace.”

He never saw Aladine again.

Ace spends the next five years searching. His immune system is a wreck-- the lack of exposure aside, the handlers always made sure the strong slaves never got too strong, to prevent a rebellion. 

Now the effects were permanent and he got sick, much too often. 

His narcolepsy, even worse.

He stows away on ships, works as a cabin boy, shrugs on some sleeves so they don’t notice his deformed arms. He utilizes the super strength they cultivated and built into him and makes himself a place on merchant ships, working his way somewhere, anywhere. 

He finally makes it to East Blue, finally runs away--

--but Dawn Island is gone from the map.

(He turns around and never looks back.)

Ten years ago there was a fire that burned the Terminal. It was in that fire that Ace was separated, Ace was brought in, and Ace was trapped. 

Five years later they broke out and they were free. 

Another five years later, Ace is seventeen and still, still searching for any signs of the brothers he never forgot. Of the brothers he so desperately wishes are alive. 

“Huh? The captain’s sick again?”  

“Don’t complain,” Deuce says, pulling his gloves back on. “Give him his rest. Banshee, think you could make him something light? You know him.”

“Course. Everyone else’s gotta wait for their meals though.”

The Spades will whine, because it happens as often as a storm on the seas-- too often-- but they’ll crowd outside of Ace’s room, taking turns keeping watch in case Ace needed help. 

Ace would toss and turn-- sometimes, he’d even wrench awake in the middle of the night with a choked scream hastily silenced-- but his crew will flood his room every time, calling out in alarm and worry and bully him right back into the companionship he will deny wanting once he’s fully conscious. 

No one would mention the carving of what seemed like a count on the wall, marking each day that went by. Deuce had tried over and over to get him to stop that habit-- even made him a calendar he could stroke off instead, but Ace had bad habits that were really, really hard to break. 

Even then, for a moment-- for a long, impossible-sounding moment really-- Ace was somewhere he could call home again. 

(And the Spades, who knew exactly what drove Ace to this point-- would make sure things stayed that way.) 

“I don’t care about your head. I just want to make a scene and there’s no better way.”

Whitebeard scoffs. “Just a trouble-loving suicidal punk, huh?”

Ace smiles. “Something like that.”

Portgas D. Ace made his name at the age of seventeen. Rumours swirl around on his strength, the capability to crush skulls with his bare hands. They say he’s capable of shattering the hull of a galleon with just his fingers.

Coupled with his flame devil fruit, his bounty rose as quickly as it was issued.

There was only one thing he wanted in life. Fame and prestige, his name spread out far and wide. He didn’t care about being the strongest or anything, he just wanted the entire world to know his name, and come right for him.

Being a pirate isn’t all that hard when you’ve got strength and power and a fueled hatred for the world.

But one thing Ace could never be ready for… was waking up in Moby Dick’s infirmary.

Fuck.

Assasination Attempt 61 is a failure as well, so Ace carves a single stroke alongside the others that filled a good portion of the wall. 

Ace goes flying across the air, and his elbow knocks sharply against a railing-- he yelps, something in the joint shifting just a bit too out of place. 

Thatch lifts his head, laughter cut short.

That didn’t sound good. Did the boy break a bone? Crap.

“Marco! Get him!” 

Marco, ever the vigilant phoenix, soars right over to scoop their resident spitfire out of the air. Depositing on the deck, Thatch hops over the ledge and Marco’s there immediately.

Ace is clutching his strangely bent arm, and Marco hisses.

“Hey hey hey back off,” Ace says sharply. “I’m fine. Happens all the time.”

Marco rolls his eyes, crouching down, “no. A fucking dislocation is not fine --” Then he looks at it closer. Holy crap, no bone bends that way. How is he not bleeding or blue?  “Dude. That’s broken. Don’t touch it.”

“It’s not broken,” Ace says, grinding out the words, evidently in a lot of pain. He braces his hand on his foot, and sets a hand over the other side--

“No, Ace--” Marco would forever regret not stopping Ace, because in the next moment, the boy snaps that bone right back into the shape of an arm. 

Someone in the background runs to throw up, and Thatch closed his eyes two minutes ago.

Marco is seething.

“Ace, tell me you did not just fucking do that.”

Ace has the gall to look at them like they were being a bother. “What?” he asks, like his mom just told him not to bully a line of ants. “Geez, you guys make a big deal out of everything.” 

Then he marches off.

Yeah, fuck this. Marco grabs his shoulder.

“Infirmary. NOW.”

“Wait what? You don’t have arm bones??” 

Marco is the most shocked right now. 

Ace is pouting in an ‘I told you so’ manner. 

Marco is still staring at the arm. No bruising. No blood. It’s not the matter of his Devil Fruit, it’s his body itself. Ace was strange even before the fire-body problems.

They didn’t question why the boy always wore long-sleeved clothing. Eastern people tended to wear summery clothing, but Ace didn’t.

Ace’s elbow was a metal ball-joint. His entire arm, though covered in a layer of (now that he looked, obviously synthetic,) skin, and its internal parts were a fusion of thread, wires, and metal beams in shoddy prosthetic bone technology. His frame only returned to bone near his shoulder blades.

“They broke a long time ago, but they still wanted me to function, so they invested in something stronger,” he mutters under his breath. “It was a lousy try, so they tend to bend once in a while, nothing a little knocking can’t fix.”

Invest, Marco considers the words. Invest.

What a weird word to use.

“Is that what your super strength’s all about?” Marco asks. Kind of makes sense. Normal kid, semi-normal devil fruit, abnormal strength. This explains the abnormal strength.

Ace gives a non-committal answer, and wanders right off again.

It’ll be a long while before he’ll learn to trust them.

(But he gets there, one day.)

“Does it bother you? Fatherhood?”

The conversation comes briefly after Ace accepts his new allegiance as Whitebeard’s youngest and newest son. They’re discussing his tattoo now, with Izou, Thatch, and Marco in the room. 

“...not really,” he admits. Once upon a time, maybe it did. Once upon a time, the thought of fatherhood crushed him. 

But now…

If people found out he was Gold Roger’s son now, maybe that would erase it. Maybe that would erase the importance of the mark on his back. 

Maybe he prefers being the son of a monster, rather than barely a human at all. Maybe he just doesn’t want to be either of them, but when, oh when, has he ever had a choice? 

“I don’t know anymore,” he says. 

Izou, Thatch, and Marco’s eyes meet— and collectively, they decide against chasing for an answer. 

Izou clears his throat, changing the topic. “So… where do you want your tattoo, Ace? Your arms are out of the question, since they’re not real skin…” 

“I get to choose?” 

“You get to– obviously?” Thatch blurts. “Here, Izou keeps notes.” 

Ace hums, looking through the designs sketched out on Izou’s table, the notes of who liked which. Some people liked it simple and small, and it was even fine if it wasn’t somewhere too visible. Everyone just wore it proud. 

“You guys really like that old man, huh?” he says. “Enough to wear his mark, to show the world you belong to him.” 

“Of course,” Marco says, a hand at his stomach. “This mark is our pride. It means we’re family. In the same way we are his sons, he is our father. And this is proof of our connection.” 

Proof of connection. 

“What if I don’t want proof?” 

Ace has scars, and marks, and disfigurements, but he’s proud of none of them. They chain him down, they tear him from the ones he truly loved—

—and they ached and rang in his nightmares and never quite went away, ever. 

“Then you cover it up with something better.” 

Izou’s answer, almost unhesitant, comes as a surprise to Ace. 

“If the human skin is a canvas, then the good part about it is that there’s an infinite number of ways to change it until you’re comfortable with it,” Izou says. “If a tattoo can get you any closer to that point, we’d be glad to help, you know? Just say the word.” 

He’d said it, like it was just so easy. 

And Ace wants to believe it. 

He so dearly wants to believe that. 

Maybe he’ll let himself believe that. 

So he asks, “what’s the most gaudy way to wear Pops’ mark?” as he stands up and slowly pulls away his shirt, allowing his torso to remain bare before an audience for the first time in a long, long while. 

They stare.

Of course they do. They have seen his arms, they have seen the joints, but they have not seen how far they extended, coring through his shoulders to the skin stretched over the front covered in scar tissue and replaced skin, a well-toned figure for no one’s benefit. 

“T- The, well,” Izou clears his throat, composing himself, trying not to remember how old Ace is and what those scars mean for someone barely twenty. “I guess you could just wear the whole jolly roger… though, not sure if you have the canvas space for that.” 

Ace turns around. 

“Think it’d cover this , at least?”

One step.

Maybe once he’d gotten this out of the way, he can go back to being the Portgas D. Ace that simply worried about his dead father’s legacy.

Chapter Text

Sabo doesn’t know what day it is, how long it’s been, and when it’ll ever end.

If he’s not careful, he’ll forget the reason he’s here. It’s so hard to grasp at the straws of his sanity now.

His left arm is always numb. There are scars from all the injections, bruises from the abused veins, and most of all, the world is noisy. So noisy. He hasn’t slept in years.

(But I have to bear with it. Bear with it.)

As long as he’s patient, as long as he tolerates-- one day, these assholes will bring him back to his brothers. Back to the cell they started off in.

(They promised.)

Sabo doesn’t want to think that they were never planning on upholding their end of that deal. If he thinks that way, he’ll lose it.

He’ll lose his last shred of sanity.

He has a number. SX-56471. 

It’s burned on his shoulder, a pesky brand to add insult to injury. 

He wasn’t just a property of the Celestial Dragons-- he was a property of their labs, nothing more than a test tube, and they’re only keeping him alive until they see the results.

He never knows what they put in his bloodstream. 

More often than not, the scientists themselves don’t know either. 

They’ve simply put it in a syringe and injected it into one of many guinea pigs, just to see what happens. Then they delight in documenting the effects. 

When he isn’t on the surgery table, he’s in his cell, squirming and howling in agony. Throwing up blood. Bleeding from wounds that were never there. Fighting against monsters of his hallucinations. Trying to recall what happy days felt like.

And in any other situation where he’s able, he’s scrubbing the floors, or standing outside doors just to look pretty for the tourists. 

It hurts. It hurts.

But he can’t die. He needs to live. Even through all of this, if there’s a chance he could see them again— he can’t die before them.

They promised to set out to sea.

(Who’s they again?)

(Oh, right. His brother.)

(Brothers. Brothers, plural.)

He stands outside the Head Scientist’s door, collar bolted to the wall, standing on display.

The guy’s there again. The slave with the strange hair, where the colours split perfectly in the center. Orange on the left, white on the right. 

Sabo’s been dubbing him ‘Inazuma’ in his head, because of the lightning bolt-shaped scar at his temple. He always seems to be assigned here to clean. 

(Maybe he’s an experiment too.)

They meet eyes for one brief second, and quickly turn away. Slaves aren’t allowed to acknowledge each other.

He looks like he’s in his teenage years. Sabo’s never met an older slave before. The experiment slaves are all as young as him, after all. They usually die quickly. 

If Sabo had been older like Inazuma, would he be able to escape? Would he be able to protect his brothers and run away before they were caught?

(That’s a question only God would know the answer to.)

Inazuma is there very often after that. Every time Sabo is there, filled with more bandages, Inazuma is there as well. 

Sometimes, Sabo wouldn’t be able to see past the dizziness, but he can feel it. From the oversensitive air on his skin, he can feel the conditioned, careful movements form Inazuma in the distance--

And just a little, it grounds him.

And the sense of meager familiarity is warm in the freezing laboratories.

Every time there’s a rejection, there’s the never-ending pain.

Each time, Sabo thinks he’s better off dead.

But he doesn’t know how to die. Can he bite his tongue? What if he doesn’t die from that and he has to live mute for the rest of his life? That’s better than staying here.

He never manages to bring up the courage to do it, though.

When he sees Ace again, he wants to have the voice to tell him everything’s going to be alright. When he sees Luffy again, he wants to have the strength in his arms to hold him tight and never let him go.

That’s all he wants.

“I do not have a name, but I want to know yours,” Inazuma speaks to him one day. 

The Head Scientist is absent, but Sabo still stands there, looking pretty for the camera. Inazuma could talk to him as long as they continued scrubbing the floors.

Sabo looks at him with his eyes.

(It takes him a long moment to recall his own name.)

“Sabo,” he says, weakly. It sounds foreign on his tongue. “Can I call you Inazuma?”

Inazuma looks up briefly for a moment, surprise in his eyes. Then he turns back to the floor, picking up the rag and squeezing water into the bucket.

“Yes,” he says, “please do.”

Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick

The moonlight burns his skin. The night breeze shreds his skin like an icy gale. His clothes are thick and suffocating and the floor hurts to lie on.

He whimpers and cries but the frustration in everything never ends.

He covers his ears, squeezes his eyes shut, and he tosses and turns and no spot is ever comfortable enough for him. He can’t help but sob. He hasn’t slept in weeks.

Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick

God god god god GOD what is that annoying ticking noise go away I just want to sleep I just want to sleep I just want to--

(Maybe a few months later, when he wonders again, someone will tell him that ticking noise was the bombs that had been implanted in the wall, waiting for the time they were set to go off.)

(And for the first time, Sabo will realize, with unabated glee , that the handlers’ tactic of making their most mentally capable slaves too delirious to think— it had finally backfired.)

(The slaves could have noticed the attack that would free them.)

(Thankfully, none of the slaves had been physically capable to report it.) 

Explosions. Lots of them.

The entire world is trembling, the air is crackling, and Sabo is shaking, shaking, shaking.

The door opens with a sharp crash. A familiar figure runs in and scoops him right up. He’s small in those arms, but he looks up and he knows who it is.

It’s Inazuma.

“There’s a breakout,” Inazuma says, and Sabo barely registers it. “We’re running.”

Not a choice, not a question. They just have to.

His chains come off quickly, and Inazuma is running out, into the fire, into the outside world, back into freedom.

Into freedom.

Sabo follows Inazuma and ends up in the hands of the Revolutionary Army, facing the visage of a man that says he knows him. 

“You are the child I found in Goa,” Dragon the Revolutionary says. “This is a pleasant surprise.” 

Sabo doesn’t remember him. 

“He is part of the division that is clouded from entry,” Inazuma explains. They are forcefully dumbed down to be experimented on, so they can still do menial tasks like clean and work. 

All Sabo does is stand still, confused, overwhelmed-- and numb. 

It takes a few days for the ringing in his ears to subside, for him to get used to the shaking of the boat and the breeze of the sea on his skin-- it takes him too long to not scream in discomfort at everything, to finally fall asleep without wrenching right awake in panic. 

It takes even longer for the eternal dosage of drugs to finally pass through his system, for the withdrawal symptoms to not make him want to kill himself, and for him to finally-- finally be able to sleep, soundly and rested. 

But when it all does, Inazuma greets him with a smile and says good morning.

Sabo, for the first time in five years-- thinks clearly. 

And the first thing he does is cling to Inazuma’s chest and sob .

He doesn’t forget a single thing. He remembers everything down to the very last detail of what was done to him. 

“I had brothers,” he begs, “I want to see them. I need to.”

Dragon also searches. 

But they never find them. Too many slaves set free, too many are children, too. They are hiding well, Dragon assures him, but it doesn’t ease Sabo’s worries at all. Dawn Island was destroyed some time ago. There is no home left to go, just the sea to wander for the rest of their lives, as outcasts. 

“I just wanted to be free,” Sabo pleads, “we are, right?”

Dragon doesn’t promise him anything. He knows better than to be idealistic like that. 

So instead, he puts a hand on the boy’s head, mindful of the bandages and the oversensitive skin that hurts when touched with too-rough hands, and he simply gives him a deal. 

“Get stronger,” Dragon says. “Then I will do all I can to ensure it for you.”

Sabo downs a drugged cocktail meant for Koala, and stares the perpetrator right in the eye as he does it. 

“Try better,” he says, and then he punches the man in the nose. 

“What the-- Sabo-kun!” Koala chastises, “for fuck’s sake, I said no! You’re jeopardizing everything, you idiot!” 

Sabo does not. He doesn’t understand, ever fucking understand— and he doesn’t understand why Koala stops him, either. 

He’s making you delirious so you can’t think straight, Koala, he would explain, and people would connect the dots on why Sabo hated seeing people drink themselves stupid, that means they’re like them. Like them . I hate them, Koala. You hate them too, don’t you?

Sabo knows that Koala doesn’t relate as much. She wasn’t in the division of slaves that was drugged up to infinite dependency. She didn’t know how much it sucked to go through those withdrawal symptoms. 

No poisons will ever work on Sabo anymore. 

But that also went for medicine, alcohol, caffeine, anything . They just make him throw up and refuse to eat or drink anything for days. 

Like hell he’d let himself see it happen again to anyone . 

Ivankov is fascinated, and mortified all the same, by Sabo’s biological makeup. 

His hormone powers are nigh useless against Sabo, and that makes him wary. If there were more like him out there, Ivankov may one day be taken off guard… still, for there to be such an unfortunate existence just to counter his abilities…

The reason for the fight of the Revolution grows each day. 

“Sabo-boy, we’re going to my homeland,” he says. He has Sabo for the week, and he’s going to make the most of it. “Vi believe you will like to meet my Newkama princesses.” 

Sabo frowns, brows furrowing in confusion. 

“Why?” he asks. 

Ivankov feigns hurt, “oh, your rejections hurts!” 

“I don’t mean it like that, I’m just asking— why do I need to?” Sabo’s perplexed, “you’re supposed to bring me on missions to observe your workings.” 

“Vhy, vhy yes!” Ivankov ushers him onto the boat. “For the Newkamas of Queendom, having fun is a mission! An important mission. Go on now, Sabo-boy!” 

Sabo isn’t obliged to help out with any chores, since Ivankov declared him a guest rather than a cabin boy or crewmember— but he can’t help but insist. 

Even on a clean day, he reaches for the dirty dishes and starts on them before everyone’s done with dinner. It’s faster, he insists, and he doesn’t eat much anyways, he needs to use the time to do something else. 

Sometimes he helps out the cabin boys with the daily laundry, the ropeswain with the inspections, and the quartermaster with the rations. He learns, as much as he can, helps, wherever he’s needed, and wherever he isn’t.

He works. And works. And works. 

He’s feeling great. 

That means he needs to work. 

He works until he’s sick, and he’s sick until he works. 

He sees it, more often than not in the corner of his eye, Inazuma standing by the door of the captain’s quarters, doing nothing but stare out into the sky. 

He doesn’t need to.

There are no chains on their hands, no bolts on their collars, nothing holding them up and forcing them down. 

When they look out they see widespread skies, exuberant towns, the flush pinks of Kamabakka and its cherry forests. It’s not the dull gray and constant morose of the corridors they’ve become so familiar with, and the difference, little by little, ground them to the new reality. 

Sabo works. 

Inazuma stands, never too far. 

Together. 

(Inazuma stands, one day, with a glass of wine and a body much more comfortable for themself— and Sabo chases the other cabin boys around with a mop high over his head, yelling loud and indignant at them because those cretins spilled a whole cradle of fishwater upon the deck and he has to start over.)

(Ivankov and Dragon watch from the upper deck, and the smile that graces their faces are at ease.)

Koala joins the Revolution for revenge. 

“A group of Fishmen picked me up,” she says. “They took great care of me, but because of me… I think you know.” 

She doesn’t share much else. She reaches for the book on the top shelf and hands it to Sabo with a strained smile. 

In Mariejois, Koala had been in the category of slaves that were so unremarkable, they weren’t given much at all. They weren’t valuable enough to handle with care, and they weren’t useful enough to invest in. 

Koala spent most of her time covered in grime and festered wounds, a smile forced upon her strained features. She was neither human, nor monster, nor toy— she was simply a disposable machine that could easily be replaced. Once the kicks stopped making her work as efficiently as before, she would be thrown down the trash chute and recycled for other purposes. 

“Up there, there were neither humans nor fishmen, nor giants or even dwarves,” Koala says. “There were only the dragons, and the pebbles at their feet.” 

Koala fights against discrimination. Koala fights against herself, trying to be something with a will of their own once again. She was never allowed anything, and for once, for once, she wanted to be the one striving forward, all on her own. 

She threw aside her family to come here. 

Sabo takes her hand, and they curl around each other under the bookshelves, the book between them, papers around them, sprawled all over the place. 

“Language is pretty difficult on the Grand Line,” Sabo says, guiding her through the first sentence of the Devil Fruit encyclopedia. “You sure you wanna start here?”

“Yeah!” Koala beams, “I'm no good at all the complicated navigating or organising stuff. I’d much rather learn about Devil fruits so I know how to counter them, yanno?”

Koala has never learned how to read well. 

Sabo has never liked the reason he was able to read well. 

But that’s fine. 

Koala could teach him some of that Haki she’s learned how to use, can tell him the stories of the adventures she’s gone through on Fisher Tiger’s ship— and Sabo could calmly guide her through language and phonetics and mathematics, just like how he’d done so long ago for the brothers he’d yet to find. 

Koala is a fighter. 

Sabo is a giver. 

It comes one day, soon after Sabo’s found a place as the Chief of Staff of the Revolutionary Army. The world has yet to know his name or face, but the world now knows Portgas D. Ace’s as he drives a flaming fist through a Marine warship. 

“...he’s doing well.” 

Sabo’s reaction is too tame, even to himself, but he’s genuinely happy. 

He wipes away the tears that form and takes a breath to compose himself, he tries his best, he hopes for something more, he hopes so dearly to be there , and yet. 

“It’s been so long…” 

He sobs. He buries his hands in his face and he can do nothing but sob . 

In his wanted poster, in the pictures in the news article, Ace is smiling bright and wide. He hides his torso behind a shirt, a cowboy hat planted firmly on his head—

— he’s alive . 

He needs to see him.

He needs to see him. 

Not now, not yet. The Spade Pirates are wild and free and just picking themselves up for notoriety— there’s no way to predict where they would head next. He’s in the New World now. Those routes are impossible to pin down!

Ace is happy. Ace has found family and joy once again. 

“Are you sure you don’t want to go?” Koala asks. 

“Of course not,” Sabo says, pinning up the poster on the wall before reaching for the paper to cut out the article. “It’s a sensitive time for the Revolutionaries now.” 

The rise of the Chief of Staff already has the government on alert. They can’t afford to make any careless moves, especially since they’re investigating the movements of the Warlords and the Emperors as of late. Crocodile’s been strangely quiet, and that guy, and the Emperors are all strangely nonchalant to the explosion at Punk Hazard. 

They have to focus on that. 

“I have to do my own thing now,” Sabo says. “Just knowing he’s alive is enough for me. But we’re different people now, he’s a wanted man, and I’m someone that can’t draw attention to myself no matter what. We’ve got to keep away.” 

“For now?”

“For now.” 

It’s for the same reason Koala doesn’t seek out Jinbei, or any of her old Sun Pirate comrades. Other than the shame that plagues her, she wants to be better, to be stronger, to be so much more , and so much healthier, before presenting herself proudly to them again. 

Sabo’s almost the same. Not exactly, but similar in spirit. 

Ace is heading onward, to his dream. 

He’s seventeen, they’re both seventeen— and they’re thriving, just as they’ve promised so long ago that they would. 

Luffy’s alive too, definitely. 

They’ll meet again one day. 

“Ah, but, I’m definitely sending a letter. Can we bribe a News Coo for a sec?”

Chapter Text

When they separated the children, they took the strongest ones and made them stop just strong enough. They took the smartest ones and made sure they were always too delirious and drugged to form a coalition. They then took the weakest, most impressionable ones-- and gave them knowledge they wouldn’t know how to use. 

Luffy eyes burn, when he sees the world in particles and atoms and information. They tampered with his head, tampered with his mind, put something in there and now nothing is ever the same. 

He touches a wall and he knows what it’s made of. He can’t pronounce it but he knows exactly what it’s compounded from. 

He is forced to look into the faces of prisoners and see, see , his eyes burning right into their minds, detecting every microexpression and every hesitation, every habit and every tell. And he is forced to tell his handler if the prisoner is a liar. 

And then he is forced to look as the torturers shatter a new bone, and he is forced to understand which bone that was, the veins it will hit, the muscles it will rupture, and the nerves it activates. 

And he is forced to understand the consequences of such an injury, because if he disobeys, the same thing will happen to him. 

He understands. 

He understands. 

He doesn’t know what to do with everything he understands, because understanding too much leaves no space for new thoughts to form. 

He can’t even sleep, his own thoughts driving him mad as he desperately, desperately, tries to keep Ace and Sabo in some part of his mind. Tries to remember Shanks’ face beyond the missing arm and the three scars, he barely remembers the warmth of their bodies when they hug him, barely remembers how straw feels on his hand. 

His hat. He wants his hat. 

The slavers have it. They keep something sentimental from everyone in his group to use as bargaining tools, as bait to waive the frantic children when it’s time to work. 

He only gets it once every few weeks and he’s too afraid to yell for it anymore. 

That, and he promised Ace he wouldn’t cry. 

He looks at the metal cubes on the tables. 

They’re lined up, girls on one line and boys on the other, together but never making eye contact. 

The handler reads their assigned numbers. It’s such a long number that Luffy always knows it’s him but he never remembers when he tries to recall it later. 

“Identify the material,” they would say. 

And Luffy will speak, in unison with the girl beside him, the exact chemical compound that he understands nothing about. The words are in his head, but he can’t make heads nor tails about what these symbols and numbers mean as they form sounds in his mouth.

The handler nods. They only wanted the information, not a coherent thought. It was like they were machines being tested for bugs. 

“Next.”

Luffy walked on, in an opposite direction from the girl. 

He never looks at her. She never looks at him. They simply moved through the screenings, each and every day beside each other— their faces pulled tight, their movements weaker, their voices strained but stable enough to not fall behind. 

They’re not allowed to speak to each other either, but it’s all Luffy wants to do.

It is in one of these days, at the end of the line-- that the handler speaks directly to him. 

“The both of you have Devil Fruits, yes?” 

“Y-Yes,” the girl’s answer was a second late, but aside from a puckered scowl, the handler nodded. 

The handler turns to the one beside him, and they converse, like the two kids aren’t right in front of them. 

“They’re perfect subjects for what they were, but since we’ve got a newer chip now, we can scrap them, can’t we?” and Luffy doesn’t understand it, but he reads the immediate tension radiating right off of the girl beside him and he realizes what scrap means. “It’s not like we can replace that chip. They’ll just die, that’s a waste of a good slave.”

“They have Devil Fruits. Shouldn’t we transfer them to another division?” the other handler suggests, “I’m sure the entertainment hall would like them. Or, since we have a girl--” 

“Ah, you two, you’re dismissed,” the first handler interrupts him to turn to the two kids, “you will receive further orders tonight.”

Luffy has to turn away and walk, but he doesn’t register the complete dread that’s sunken into the pit of his own stomach. Instead, he keeps reading the little strains in her body and the way she’s tucked in her stomach, knowing she’s so afraid, so afraid, and he just wants to give her a hug and beg, because hey, I’m here, can’t you see? 

It’s hell from then on. 

There are no tests in the roles of an entertainment slave that serves the inner hall where the Celestial Dragons and its prime guests of royalty frequent. There’s just obedience and submission and hours upon hours of needing to be hyper-aware of everything, in case he accidentally angers a guest by accident. 

It’s a good use of his eyes, but it also gives him endless migraines. There are no rests in this life either, just reprieve— but he has to endure. 

They’ve kept his hat. Maybe just to swing a carrot on a hook, but they kept it. He gets to keep his hat every few days, that’s enough. That’s enough. That’s got to be enough.

(Endure.)

(Endure.)

(Endure.)

He promised Ace he wouldn’t cry.

(No matter what.)

He finally meets the girl again. They’re in a carriage, dressed in the prettiest, stuffiest clothes he’s ever been forced into-- but he knows they’re not staying on long-- and they are being brought into their next venue to serve the guests. 

Neither of them are smiling. Neither of them look at each other, never even move, unless ordered to. 

But moments before they arrive, the girl whispers just one question to him. 

“Hey,” she says, and Luffy looks at her to see unease, to see sadness, to see desperation. “Do you have a name?” 

Luffy takes much, much too long to remember what a name was. Is it not a number? Is it not all of those names he’s been called? Does his name really belong to him anymore, no one’s called him by it since… since how long, he doesn’t know either. 

“Luffy,” he finally says.

The girl doesn’t respond for a moment. 

Then, “I’m Sandersonia.” 

Luffy looks over, “Sand...y?” he questions, not so sure how the rest of that name went.

Sandersonia considers him for a moment— then she nods in approval of the nickname, her lips curling into a light, genuine smile. Luffy sees it, and abruptly, he remembers how to make one too. So he grins right back, though it’s a little wry and tired. 

The carriage stopped. The two swirled back to stoicism, straightening— and taking a breath in unison. 

Just as they did before, when they were in their tests— they moved in unison— and walked on forward, ignoring the dreadful sink in the pits of their stomachs. 

They can see everything. They can understand everything, with the modifications that have been done to their heads. So of course, they were the best dancers in the division for a long time— the best in servicing, the ones that knew exactly what to do to please guests. 

They never messed up. They stayed alive. 

No matter the depths they ended up falling into. 

They weren’t together when the fire broke out in Mariejois. 

But on opposite ends, they knew that they were doing the same thing together. They knew that they were connected, and they knew that each other were safe. 

Luffy clutches his hat to his chest. 

Without his chains, without his bonds, his eyes taking in the sights of something called freedom for the first time in ages— he runs. 

They survived.

Luffy runs. He wanders the seas, stows away on ships in barrels and wanders quietly-- quietly, because if he’s quiet, no one will ever notice. He slips onto merchant ships in the cargo, finds himself on islands, and lives for a while in a forest. Then, back onto another ship, and the cycle repeats. 

He finds his grandfather. 

Or rather, his grandfather finds him. 

Luffy can see, in his sunken eyelids and his wrinkled skin and the way his eyes blow wide, his mouth drops open— his entire figure trembles as he hesitates to reach out— Luffy can tell, that this fragile, broken man, was every bit the grandfather he remembered. Something’s a little different, but it doesn’t matter. 

“Grandpa!” he beams. 

And since Garp is too scared to hug him, Luffy will jump for one instead. 

He’s a few years overdue on a hug and Luffy just wants his grandpa to cry and let him cry into his shoulder. Because he knows he won’t be hurt in those arms. 

He knows he’s safe here. 

And Garp breaks . 

“I’m so sorry,” it’s the only thing he can say for the next long while, crumbling into himself, arms around his grandson with a hesitation, he can’t bear to squeeze too tightly, not when there were so many wounds on this little body, so many that didn’t look right-- “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Luffy doesn’t think there’s anything to forgive here. 

Marine Hero, Monkey D. Garp the Fist— Luffy doesn’t notice until much later, when they’re in an inn and gorging on food, getting a bath, wrapped up in warm blankets— that his grandfather no longer goes by that name. 

He can’t read newspapers. Everything on the walls are a blur and the walls of text are a migrainefest— but he can hear. Or feel , perhaps. 

He can’t hear the innkeeper downstairs, the fellow patrons— but they’re either speaking of his grandfather with disdain, with spite, with hollow admiration or with pity. 

Now they call him Traitor , a stain in the ranks of the Marines, a disappointment, a threat . 

Garp is no longer a marine.

Luffy thought Garp loved being in the Marines. It;s the only thing that keeps Dawn Island safe. The only thing that keeps Garp safe, from being the father of Dragon the Revolutionary. It’s insurance, for the day Ace and Luffy are revealed to the world. 

(If he threw it all away, did that mean it was now all useless?)

Luffy carefully feels the rough straw in his hands, hugs the hat to his chest-- the strain tugs at his shoulders, in his ankles— and he feels nothing. 

He hasn’t felt actual physical pain in years and it’s only now that he realizes it’s not the mental numbness that is distracting him from it— he’s genuinely incapable of feeling anything of that sort ever again. 

And he realizes that this was it. This is the reason. 

This is the reason Monkey D. Garp stopped dreaming. 

(Luffy only finds out about Dawn Island much, much later… but by then, the horror had come and gone, and Luffy could do little but squeeze his grandfather’s hand and be happy that there’s something left.)

(He can still feel mental pain, vividly.)

(But he’s so tired.) 

(So, so tired.) 

Luffy wakes confused. 

The clothes Garp brings him is comfortable. The bath Garp draws for him is warm and he’s allowed to soak as long as he wants, because it’s a pampering session, not a quick hygiene process to be presentable before the guests. 

Garp allows him to just sit and do nothing all day, as Garp goes about to make ends meet, somehow. He’s by all means not a pirate, since he doesn’t fly a black flag— a sea wanderer, perhaps— they sail the seas food adventure and for solace, because the land does not accept them. 

“Grandpa,” Luffy admits one day, “I want to do something.” 

He can’t handle the emptiness, because there’s nothing but the thoughts and the sea and the space . 

He’s lived so long surrounded by walls that were too, too close, people that never left him alone, chains that kept his hands and ankles never too far apart— but now that they’re all gone, their absence drives him insane. 

This comfort is unsettling. 

This boredom is unsettling. 

He’s been changed, from something that could simply be amused by dragonflies, into something that craves knowledge. He will never understand the constellations and the patterns of the wave,s but each and every dredge he gathers in his hands only to watch them fall and—

—and he doesn’t know what to do, once he runs out of information. 

He doesn’t want to be useless. He’ll be scrapped. 

He doesn’t want to be idle. He’ll be caned.

He doesn’t want to slack off all day, because he needs to endure, to live, to go on— so he’ll be able to find his brothers again, right?

He can’t slack off. 

He can’t. 

“Grandpa,” he sobs into his chest, he doesn’t know how long he’s been clutching onto that ratty, worn fabric, he doesn’t want to think of the scars under his hands. “Grandpa, just let me do something. Do anything. I don’t care what it is, just let me do it, please .” 

Garp hasn’t seen Luffy happy in a long, long while. And many years ago he wouldn’t have believed anyone if they'd told him what brings his grandson’s smile back would be him demanding the boy to swab the entire deck. 

Garp can’t handle any of this. He can’t accept any of this at all. 

Back on Mariejois, his job was to serve. Whether this meant dancing or performing, or serving drinks, or far worse than that, Garp didn’t know and didn’t dare to ask. But Luffy leaps to trees and spins around a branch with grace, not his usually rubbery clumsiness, and his steps are light and quick, and his hands are dexterous with piles of supplies, even more so than Makino’s ever were—

—and he wanted to hope the answer wasn’t ‘all of the above’. 

“Grandpa! What are you sad about?” 

He’s gotten really good at guessing emotions, too. It’s got something to do with Luffy needing to know, just in case a customer’s in a bad mood he has to know how to avoid getting hurt as little as possible. 

Luffy grins, ear to ear, pulling Garp’s cheeks wide. 

Garp pulls him into a hug and swears to never let go.

“You know, Luffy,” he brings up, “I actually just remembered. Before I found you, I was going around destroying government research facilities. I should get back to it.” 

“Woah! For real?!” Luffy brightens, “like, a whole base on your own? That’s cool! Can I help?”

Garp picks up his straw hat and sets it firmly on his head. 

“Yeah, help out as much as you want.” 

The no-name research facility is easy enough to take out, the slaves and experiments were not. There were multitudes of them, families old and young and new, infants born here—

—Garp didn’t allow Luffy to see what had been in progress here, but he had an inkling Luffy understood anyway. 

“We… we are immensely grateful, sir… but…” 

“Where do we go from here?”

Garp frowns at that. He hadn’t thought of it yet, the previous facilities he took out only had researchers, and the ones that survived all had places to be. But the people in this base have been here for so long, they no longer had anything else. 

“Well… I guess we could find an uninhabited island somewhere.” 

Everyone here was enhanced, just a little, in different ways. So there were women with a strength of a thousand, and men who were masters of architecture without experience.

“Convenient that we have a lush forest right around, huh?”

Garp brings all the survivors, just slightly less than fifty people, into the island, and they began to build. 

“We may as well use this as a home base for now too, Luffy,” Garp says, “always nice to have a place to come back to, yeah? I’ll log it into an Eternal Pose… you’re not listening to me, Luffy?”

Luffy’s scampering around, everywhere, a tray of bowls of porridge, serving it up to everyone who wanted one. His words are polite and rehearsed, but his smile is genuine and contagious. 

People can’t help but adore his presence. 

“Just saying, Luffy, you’re gonna stay on this island, alright?”

“Okay!” Luffy hollers back, “I'm only gonna set sail when I’m seventeen anyways! That’s what I promised Ace and Sabo!” 

The mention of his other two grandsons hurt, but Garp sighs fondly. 

Then, it registers. “You’re setting sail so soon?!” 

“What? That’s not soon! That’s still a few years away!” 

“Yeah but my grandson’s leaving the nest right after becoming an adult?! Think of your poor grandpa’s feelings! I’m lonely!” 

“It’s okay Grandpa, I love you so you’ll be okay!” 

“Don’t decide that for me! And there’s no way in hell you’re ready to set sail!” 

Marianne’s one of the many children that were freed when Monkey D. Garp stormed the research facility— and she’s been living quite a contented life on the island (dubbed “monkey Island”, because they’re very creative like that,) doing nothing much but paint all day.

“Ah, so you’re the one that always puts paint on the shopping list!” Luffy beams, “hi!” 

He sets down the crate of paint tools and drawing supplies beside her little hut by the beach. 

“We’ve got plenty this week, since Grandpa managed to get a lot of money!” he says. “They’re saying it’s your birthday today, right?”

Marianne blinks, her eyes empty, her face neutral. 

She glances at the tool, then at Luffy’s smiling face. 

“Yes,” she says. “Thank you.” 

Saying so, she dishes out her sketchbook and some yellow paint. Luffy stares at her work for a while, soon finding himself with a damp sketch paper painting of a sunflower. 

Luffy beams. “You're good!” 

“Yes.” 

She’s happy, Luffy can tell. Even though looking at this drawing hurts his eyes, with each stroke analyzed in his head as purposeful, confident, coloured and mixed— it scatters his brain, it hurts his head, but he at least understands this picture is full of feeling. It’s full of emotion and gratitude, and joy.

It’s all feeling that Marianne is physically incapable of showing on her face. 

Luffy averts his eyes, but holds onto the drawing very carefully to lift his head to her instead. She’s a little wonky inside, too, and he’s very happy to know that. 

She, too, is coping.

They’re the same. 

“What else can you paint?” he crouches down, “can I watch?” 

Marianne hums, reaching for the other sketchbooks in her pile— in the few months she’s been free, she’s filled, so so many sketchbooks with her colours. She sits down by a rock and Luffy leans in by her side, and they go through it together. 

“You’re from North Blue?” Luffy’s honestly surprised to hear. 

Marianne nods. “For maybe seven years,” she says, “there was a tsunami… and then, most of us ended up in that facility,” she says, gesturing toward a painting where she stood with two others, boys much older. “I’m the only one left, though.” 

They had been part of different experiments. Artificial Fishman Project, or something, she found their names in the records they liberated from the facility. But they were going to be scrapped, and they escaped from their cage instead— and now, no one knows for sure if they lived or died. 

It’s been too many years now. They would be far, far, away, if they lived. 

Luffy leans into her. “So you’re like me, huh? I got separated from my big brothers too! We’ll definitely meet again one day. Once I set sail, I’m going to go find them.” 

“Set sail?” she asks, like the concept’s utterly foreign to her. “But it’s safe here.”

“Safe just isn’t my thing. Plus, we promised to meet on the seas again,” Luffy says. “We were captured and separated, but we’re still brothers! So of course, we’ll find each other again one day!” 

But why, she doesn’t ask, but she feels, very truthfully. 

It’s been so many years, and the last they remembered was a life of captivity together. They could not help each other escape, they could not do anything to protect each other. 

How could ‘brothers’ bear to reunite after such a pathetic display? 

They were better off forgetting each other, moving on, and living their new lives never getting involved with each other again. 

“Don’t be silly,” Luffy says. “Who needs a reason to want to see each other again? Doesn’t matter how much time has passed, I’m sure they’re looking for you, too.” 

Marianne isn’t sure if she should believe him at all. 

If they’re still alive… she wonders if they’ve made it home to North Blue. Maybe some of their family would still be alive. They’re not connected by blood, but blood would be all they can rely on at this point.

Surely, they’ll live, strong. 

Surely…

“I’m going to set sail in a couple years,” Luffy says, “and I’m going to find my brothers on the seas! You should do that too!” 

Surely, there’s value in trying anyways.

Marianne clutches the sketchbook to her chest, and wonders if it’s worth it. She barely remembers her brothers’ faces anymore… all she has are the drawing in her book that aren’t coloured in where the faces are supposed to go. 

“I don’t remember their names, either,” she admits. “But I do remember our favourite sea creatures.” 

It’s strange, but memory is odd in the strangest of places. She had been young the last time they met, and she only cared for things like those. 

“Oh really? It’s like me and my brothers with colour! I’m always red! Ace is always orange, and Sabo is always blue,” Luffy cheerfully shares. 

“You’re more yellow,” Marianne insists. 

“I agree!” Luffy snickers. “But a Captain’s gotta wear a red Captain’s coat, you know?”

Marianne’s confused. “Really?”

“Kinda!” he chuckles. “But what about you and uhhh, sea animals?”

Marianne hums, reaching for the sketches, finding the paintings she did long ago of more mundane things. 

(“Marianne, Marie, you’re the star of our seas.”)

“I like starfish,” she says. “And then my two big brothers, they liked penguins and killer whales.”  

Neither of them notice Garp watching from afar, a relieved smile on his face as Luffy simply chatted and laughed, and did nothing but enjoy himself thoughtlessly for hours on end. They played, shared, and when night fell, they hunted something in the forest and ate it over a fire together. 

They’re found in the morning asleep slumped over each other,  a blanket laid over them. 

“Luffy, look who I found! Look at your dumb brother! I’m gonna smack him in the head when I find him!” 

Luffy squeals at the sight. “It’s Ace!” 

Luffy had been helping in the canteen when Garp comes in with Ace’s bounty poster, grinning wide and proud. Luffy snatches the paper right out of his hand and cheers for it, showing it off to everyone around them. 

“So, Luffy? How’ll it be, you gonna go find him with me right now?”

“Eh? You can do that?”

“Yeah, last I heard Whitebeard found him,” he groans. “I haven’t shown my face around in a while. I suppose I should pop by my old friends sometimes… we could go find your favourite Red-Haired in the meantime, too.” 

“Oh! Shanks!” Luffy brightens up, possibly even more, at the mention of him. 

He reaches up to his hat, snickering. He’s heard that Shanks was worried and looking for him, but Garp dropped by to tell him the good news a while back. All that was left was for Luffy to go on his journey, become a great pirate, and fulfill their promise. 

“No, I won’t go,” he says. 

He holds Ace’s wanted poster close to his chest. 

“This is how Ace is telling us he’s alive!” Luffy says. “So I’m gonna do the same thing, too! I’m gonna say it even louder— I’m gonna get an even bigger first bounty, so I can really declare to the world!” 

He throws his hands up and declares, loud and clear. 

“I’m Monkey D. Luffy, and I’m going to be the Pirate King!” he hollers. “Right? I gotta be big and super cool about it! I’m gonna plan it and everything!” 

Garp bursts out laughing. 

“Yeah! Go for it, my boy!” he hoots, “but if you’re gonna make a name following your grandpa’s footsteps, ya better be ready for a hell of a pummel if you embarrass me in any way, you got it?”

“...huh?” Luffy’s celebration abruptly ceases when Garp cracks his knuckles. Why is Garp reverberating with excitement and bloodlust?

“First of all, your eyes are cheating, so we’re going to cover those up. You’ll never learn Haki if you cheat your halfway up to it,” Garp says. 

“...wait, Grandpa…” 

“Ah, Grandpa, what a great word,” Garp says. “I have a feeling I’m going to degrade into ‘Shitty Geezer’ in a minute, but that’ll be worth it.” 

“Wait,” Luffy pales.

Garp beams. “I raised you boys to be Marines, so I always thought I should go a little easy,” he says, ignoring Luffy’s mortified, ‘easy?’ to crack his shoulder. “But you’re gonna be a pirate, and Pirates gotta be twice as hardened. I hope you’re prepared.” 

Luffy spins around, and without another word he breaks off into the jungle at full speed.