Chapter Text
Amaitto Island is a simple, but beautiful island. Small, compared to others, you would have to walk an entire day to reach the other side. A soft breeze carries the peacefulness of the place, making the flag with their symbol in the dock flutter proudly.
Ace sets foot on the island searching for trouble.
People tend to say that nobody is dumb enough to cause problems in an Emperor’s territory, but the truth is that people are really fucking dumb. Ace could, in theory, understand, if they were here to try —and miserably fail, of course— to defeat the old man. But, well, Ace has never been able to understand the marine, either way, he doubts they are here to do that.
It’s under the pretense of restocking that they come. Really, what an unfortunate coincidence for the marine that the Whitebeard’s pirates just happen to be here at the same time.
But, well, it’s not like they can let the marine just do what they want now, can they?
Technically Ace is supposed to be helping Thatch in the market —Setting the marine aside, they really need more food— while smoothly getting information from the locals, carefully with whoever marine could be listening, but that’s boring and Ace is hungry.
So, long story short, he ditched him. Ace doesn’t feel bad about it. Thatch can get enough information there on his own anyways and if he really wanted Ace to stay he should have let him eat what he buys instead of threatening to lock the kitchen for a month if he didn’t stop trying to eat what he bought.
Not like a lock could stop Ace, but point still stands.
Ace follows one of the many paths made of rocks, hoping memory serves him right. Languidly watching the people happily walk through the city with a sense of security that would not have been possible some time ago, before it became one of their territories. Some of the people greet him when they catch a glimpse of him, which Ace politely returns.
The restaurant is exactly where Ace remembers it was. It is less of an actual building and more like a hole in a wall in one of the terracotta buildings. The place is small and cheap, but the food is, and trust him when he says this, really, really good.
Ace sits at one of the empty tables. Apart from three more customers and the kid scribbling something on a notebook in the kitchen —who Ace thinks is the cousin of one of the cooks— the place is, strangely, empty.
At the sound of steps, Ace turns to his right to see a blond waiter approaching.
Ace doesn’t recognize him.
The same can’t be said for the waiter if the small pause before coming closer is any indication. Probably new here, then, not really sure on how to act with the pirates that this island belongs to. Ace is used to it. Though, considering the rat problem that they have he has to be a little suspicious.
He opens his mouth but Ace beats him to it. “Are you new here?”
The waiter jumps out of his skin at the sudden question. A bit of an overreaction if you ask Ace. His pen clatters on the ground, followed by the small notebook despite how much he fumbled to catch them. “I— Uh.” He clears his throat and smiles rather awkwardly. “Is it obvious?”
“Yeah.” Ace says frankly, bending down to grab the things he dropped. “Here.”
The waiter blinks at him before accepting. “Thanks.” Then shifts from his right leg to the left and then to the right again. He clears his throat. “It’s not a problem that I’m here, right?” He nervously asks. “...Like, uh, did I have to ask permission from your captain before or I’m trespassing?”
Yeah, Ace doubts this guy is a marine. “Nah, you are fine.”
“Oh, thank you.” He breathes in relief. It almost sounds exaggerated but knowing you won’t get killed by pirates whose territory you are in must be very relieving, he thinks.
Ace takes a good look at the waiter. He has blond hair held in a small ponytail at the lower part of his head. Some hair falls on both sides of his face, though there’s more hair on the left side. His eyes are a deep black and he’s dressed in a white button-up shirt and black pants. His hands are covered in white gloves and a blue apron that goes from his waist to a little below the knees.
All in all, he looks the exact same picture you would come up with when thinking about a waiter.
Ace stares for a little longer.
Something feels… familiar about him and, you know, now that he thinks about it, the shade of the hair and the black eyes are kind of similar to— “Hey, what’s your name?”
“Dolion.” He answers and Ace doesn’t know how to explain the pang of disappointment that hits him. What else could he expect? What was he expecting? Really, is fucking dumb. “I, uh, would ask for your name too but…” Dolion starts and Ace snaps out of his thoughts. “Is kind of hard not knowing who any of you are, Mr. Second Commander.”
Ace laughs, pleased about the recognition. Damn right he’s recognizable. “Just Ace is fine.”
Dolion —Ace isn’t sure why but the name ‘Dolion’ and the face of this guy don’t seem to fit. But it's probably just Ace being dumb again, seriously, what’s up with himself?— hesitates for a second. “Ace, then.” He nods, tasting the name on his tongue. Something crosses through Dolion’s face for less than a second, so fast that Ace is left wondering if he imagined it. The waiter’s voice interrupts before he can think much about it. “What would you like to order?”
Right, Ace had forgotten that he was in a restaurant. He takes a quick look at the menu and his eyes set on a picture of some steak with… something at the side. Well, whatever it is Ace will just have to figure it out. He is not picky. He points at it. “Fifty of these.”
Now, Ace is expecting some kind of reaction, because every time he orders people tend to choke at how much he asks for —Honestly, is weirder that they eat so little— or get angry thinking it is some sort of joke before he very much proves it’s not. But all Dolion does is nod, write it down in his small notebook, and: “Anything else?”
━━━━━━━━━━
“So, another thing.” Ace starts after his seventy-something plate of food, when most of his appetite is getting satisfied and he slows down a little the speed at which he’s eating (“Do you even chew? Or do you just swallow? Marco had asked him once) when Dolion comes with some water.
“Are you going to ask for more food?” Dolion asks, raising an eyebrow at him.
“No, no.” Ace shakes his hand. There are still five plates on his table, and he’s getting full. But now that he mentions it, Ace squints at the food on his table, would it be enough? It doesn’t look like a lot… “Well, maybe?” Dolion huffs a laugh and Ace scowls at him. “Anyways, that’s not what I wanted to ask you… right now.”
He nods and Ace takes it as his cue to continue. “Have you seen something suspicious lately?” Because Ace is still —always will be, really— a Whitebeard pirate, the Second Commander, and he does take it seriously. So, he needs to search for the marines whose very presence in their territory is practically an insult on itself to the old man. Something that Ace can’t let slide.
Fuck, he’s getting angry just thinking about it. He stabs the steak with his fork and takes a bite out of it, cutting a chunk out of it with his teeth and chewing angrily.
Dolion blinks, looking more attentive. “Suspicious? Like what?” Ace shrugs and swallows the food in his mouth before answering.
“You know, like, something weird.”
“I wouldn’t know.” He says. “I haven’t been here around that much to know if something is unusual here.” Dolion passes a hand through the back of his neck, bashful. “...Sorry.”
Ace really doesn’t think this guy is a marine. They would make it look like they have been here for a long time, well that’s what Marco said anyways.
“It’s fine.” Ace sighs. Well, looks like it’s time to go on a goose chase. Ace isn’t one to like this sort of thing —it isn’t his forte either— sneak around, playing detective while searching for something. Ace is a fighter, prefers the thrill of a good fight rather than the one of finding puzzle pieces, unless the puzzle pieces come up in the form of beating information of the people.
Details, really, it doesn’t matter what he wants to do (i.e. beat up the marine for daring to do this, really it’s fucking insulting) now, he can’t do more than suck it up and wait until he, or someone else, finds the guys he wants to beat up.
“Should I be concerned?”
“Uh? No, not really.” They are just marines, at the end of the day. Any of them can easily sweep the floor with them and he doesn’t think the marine is that dumb to go attacking here. “We have it under control.”
“What’s going on on this island then?” Dolion blurts out and Ace turns to see his face. His eyes scan Ace’s face while looking shy at his question. He goes to scratch his left cheek but ultimately settles on to the right one. “Uh, sorry, I just…” He nervously chuckles in a way that feels forced. “I understand if you can’t tell me.” He clears his throat and when Ace doesn’t reply he continues. “We just met and all, so, ah, well, it’s not really my place to ask… Sorry.”
Ace considers it for a second. He doesn’t see why he shouldn’t tell him. Is the kind of feeling that you have when you know you can tell somebody something and know that they won’t tell.
Wait.
Hold on.
He trusts Dolion, he realizes.
Uh, that’s kind of, no, actually, scratch that, it is weird because Ace isn’t a trustful person. He isn’t the kind of person that goes around trusting this easily. As opposed to Luffy, it takes a long time for Ace to trust somebody, and outside of his crew and Luffy (And Sabo, a long time ago) he can’t say he really does trust that much anybody else.
It gives him pause for a minute and he stares at Dolion again. Ace can’t put a finger on why he trusts him. Hell, for all he knows this guy is a marine.
…No, that doesn’t sound right, that doesn’t feel right. Buried deep in his mind something is telling him that there’s simply no way this guy is a marine.
Ace decides to listen to his instincts, as he always does.
(And, sure, granted, his instincts can sometimes fail him and lead to, as some of his fellow commanders would say, the dumbest shit someone could ever do, but… shut the fuck up, you know what, Ace doesn’t have to explain why he does the shit he does, just trust him on this. He knows what he’s doing.)
He motions for him to get closer. Dolion does, positioning himself in a way so that his right side, instead of the left one, is the one besides Ace.
Weird, but everybody has their quirks.
“Don’t tell anybody.” He says. Dolion nods, bending slightly so that his right ear is closer and Ace puts his hands over his mouth. “Marines are roaming on the island.”
Dolion chokes and turns to see him in alarm. But doesn’t scream the secret in surprise like Luffy would have. “I— Wha— Why?”
“Dunno.” Ace shrugs, taking more food to his mouth. “It’s probably nothing good. But as I said, we have it under control.”
“So, for you to say that I assume you have information about them?” Dolion asks, looking far sharper than Ace thought he was. His eyes are not leaving Ace’s face for a second, searching for something. “Like how they look? Or what division they are part of?”
Ace blinks at him. “You seem very intrigued about all of this.”
The waiter stifles lightly. And a beat passes until Dolion’s eyes widen and he coughs in surprise. A faint blush spreads through his face and he moves his hands like he doesn’t know what to do with them. “That's not— Well— I— It’s not like—” He stops when he sees Ace’s amused face. He sighs. “Sorry, it’s just… People tell me I’m too curious for my own good.”
“Yeah, I can see that.” Ace teases. “Did you want to be a detective when you were little or something?” Dolion’s face gets redder and he makes a really bad attempt at hiding the obvious flush on his face. Ace’s eyes widen and he lets out a laugh when he realizes. “You really wanted to be one?”
“...Detectives are cool.” He tries and Ace laughs harder. “I see you are done with that. If you will excuse me.” He says, grabbing the empty plate and practically bolting to the kitchen.
“From what we know.” Ace starts when Dolion —reluctantly, it’s hilarious, really— comes back.
The waiter’s eyes snap to his face, automatically getting closer to Ace so that he doesn’t have to talk out loud. Right ear close to Ace’s face. Effectively keeping the other people here in the dark. “Our… informant.” Not really an informant, just a girl who happened to hear them and consequently tell them. “Said that there were at least six marines here.”
Dolion hums. “They didn’t get a look?”
“She said that one of them had a long-ass scar on his face.” Ace puts a finger on his forehead, making it go down through his right eye to his neck. “And another didn’t have two fingers on his left hand.”
Ace sits correctly on the chair again and when he looks that Dolion has yet to move he twists his body to see the kind of expression he’s making. Ace can’t really discern anything from his expression. “What are you thinking about?”
“I’m trying to remember if I saw people like that before.” He frowns and just like that he becomes an open book again. “But I got nothing.” Dolion straightens up and turns to him. “I will let you know if I see somebody like that.”
Ace smiles at that. “Thank you.”
━━━━━━━━━━
Investigation goes, well, not as smoothly as Ace would like, not as any of the crew would like, really, but is something.
A week passes, a long-ass week of ‘restocking’ and it would be a little bit more suspicious if the island wasn’t their territory. As it is, if an Emperor wants to spend some time on their territory well it’s none other than the Emperor’s business. Though, they have started to be more on the edge, because, as Izou first said, it is likely that the marines here are starting to suspect.
The marine isn’t that dumb, so it’s a possibility that’s practically a fact.
“You don’t seem very worried.” Dolion says, blinking curiously at him. “Is there something you guys are doing to prevent them from escaping?”
“Monitoring who comes and goes out of the island.” Ace stretches, speaking again when he looks at the expression Dolion is making. He has a very expressive face, Ace has discovered, it makes him awfully easy to read. “I’m not in charge of that, so don’t ask how exactly they know who is who.”
Ace doesn’t pry into it much either. He knows Haruta has it under control, and Ace doesn’t really know what the qualifications for ‘undercover marine’ are —He can spot suspicious people at least, he isn’t dumb, give him some credit— Probably looking like a self-righteous asshole.
“Oh.”
“...Why do you sound disappointed?”
Dolion coughs, looking a little embarrassed. “Anyways.” He changes the subject. “Can I know exactly what you do?”
“I sure hope that’s not you suggesting I’m just sitting on my ass while the rest work.”
“Of course not.” Ace squints at him, is he getting made fun of? Ace thinks he’s getting made fun of. “...But, uh, you do come here every day.”
The audacity of this man, seriously. Ace raises an eyebrow. “Are you saying you would rather lose a precious customer?”
“It’s not much of a loss if the customer doesn’t pay in the first place.” Dolion stops for a second. “That reminds me, are you going to pa—”
“So you are saying.” He interrupts before he can finish the sentence because Ace didn’t bring a wallet today either. But the cooks don’t mind, they would refuse to serve him if they did. “That you don’t enjoy my company?”
Dolion makes a face. Though, Ace can see the badly hidden smile under it. “I appreciate the break I get when you come.” Ace snorts. “No, but, seriously, what do you do? Go around asking people if they are from the marine?”
“I go to investigate suspicious places.” Ace comes here every day because, as he said before, the food is good and to see if Dolion has seen someone.
And, yeah, It would be a lie to say he only comes here for information because Ace does enjoy talking to Dolion. It’s fun. It feels like catching up with an old friend, for some reason. Though there’s something… off.
Like getting kept in the dark.
Ace doesn’t like dwelling much on it because he can’t put a finger on it, well he doesn’t even know if he should put a finger on it. But it’s for the same reason that the name ‘Dolion’ and his face don’t seem to go together.
And he is one to listen to his instincts, but while a part of him screams at him that something isn’t right another screams at him to stay.
It’s… well, fuck if he knows.
Dolion blinks. “...That’s all?”
“What do you mean by ‘that’s all’?” He demands, now he feels stupid at the tone Dolion is using. Ace scoffs. “I also follow around suspicious people.”
“Right.” He still looks a little bit baffled. “So, is anyone suspicious?”
'You' pops up in Ace's mind immediately. But is a different kind of suspicion, hell, Ace doesn’t know about what he’s suspicious about. It’s not about Dolion being a marine, that’s for sure. Whatever, he shakes his head off those thoughts. “Actually.” He says instead. “There is.”
Dolion’s eyebrows raise and Ace takes it as his cue to continue. “A woman. Small, light brown hair, black eyes, a pink hat with some yellow goggles over it.”
“...Did you catch her name?” Dolion asks after a second with eyes that have yet to blink, eyes not sliding off Ace's face for a second. He shakes his head in denial and the waiter breathes.
“Do you know her?”
“I… am not sure.” Dolion licks his lips. “I think I have seen her before, not sure if we are thinking about the same person, though.” He seems to think about something, eyes darting to the side for less than a second before going to his face again. “Why is she suspicious?”
“She doesn’t look like a local.” Ace shrugs. “She went to a lot of places, talked to a lot of people, and didn’t really take a break to eat anything. She seemed to be searching for something.”
“What are your terms for ‘suspicious’?” Dolion inquiries. “That pretty much sounds like a tourist.”
Ace blinks at that. “I mean, yeah.” Fuck, now he feels stupid. “Uh, you know instinct, better be safe than sorry.” He tries but thinks a little bit more. “Wait, no, actually I did lose track of her a couple of times.”
A little bit more than ‘a couple of times’ but Dolion doesn’t need to know that. “And that’s suspicious because…”
“A normal tourist wouldn’t have been able to do that. I was specifically trailing her and there weren't any fights to distract me.” Ace nods, satisfied by his own reasoning. “That’s suspicious, don’t you think?”
Dolion opens his mouth again, but whatever he says falls on deaf ears. World going dark for a second —For Ace, at least— and when he opens his eyes his face is planted on the wooden table.
Ace shakes off the grogginess of his body immediately, raising his head up as if nothing happened. He blinks at the empty chair before him.
“Wh— Are you fine?” Someone asks at his right and when he turns he’s met by the sight of Dolion looking lost —not panicked, as other people tend to be— gloved hands hovering over Ace as if he didn’t know what to do.
What’s up with the question? “Why wouldn’t I be?”
Dolion’s face morphs into confusion. “You just…” He moves his hands at him and then at the table. “Dropped dead for a minute.”
“Yeah.”
Dolion looks more confused than before. Mouth opening and closing like some sort of fish, searching for what to say, but if he says something Ace doesn’t hear it. His eyes latch onto his neck.
More specifically, on the scars on his neck.
Anger washes over him, followed by a concern so strong that reminds him of that time Luffy got attacked by that bear. Ace freezes at the sight.
They are on the left side, slightly poking out of the neck of his shirt. There’s a loose side of a white bandage there too and now that Ace has seen it he can track with his eyes how it goes under the white shirt. The visible scars are not that big, but Ace has the feeling he can’t see how bad it is in reality.
Fuck, is he fine?
His hand automatically goes to where they are. It’s a habit he got from seeing Makino check Luffy’s wounds when she came to see them and Luffy was —more often than not— hurt. It’s something that Ace only does with his brother, but—
He doesn’t get to do it. His index finger barely grazes the neck before Dolion startles back as if he was burned. His left hand clasps onto his neck before he notices the loose bandage and he curses.
“What happened?” Ace asks. There’s a little bit of something on his finger that Ace can't bother to identify at the moment. Wiping it carelessly in his shorts.
Dolion looks at him, his hand is still on his neck, and there’s something guarded in his eyes, like an invisible wall had raised up between them and Ace doesn’t know why it hurts. It goes away before he realizes, replaced by a sad smile that doesn’t look right. “You don’t think that the home of someone that came to live in an Emperor’s territory was that nice, right?”
So it was someone, fuck, the thought is making Ace’s blood boil. Fire going through his veins, he can feel flames flaring under his skin, pooling in his hands and filling his mouth like some sort of dragon. He clenches his hands in fists, in an attempt to calm the fuck down. Shit, how dare they make this to one of his broth—
Wait.
Oh, fuck.
━━━━━━━━━━
Of course it was Ace the problem here.
Ace is a fucking idiot. He knows, for fuck’s sake, he knows damn well that Sabo is dead. Has been for a long, long time, and he knows dead people don’t just come back. It’s been a long time, Ace has moved on to be searching for a ghost in strangers' faces.
Well, at least, he thought he had moved on.
Not enough apparently if he’s thinking of somebody he just met as a brother. Fuck, this shit is reopening old wounds. It feels shameful, disgraceful, to Sabo, to Luffy —and, yes, to his crew too— to be thinking like this.
Of course, Ace thought that this something was off he was fucking projecting Sabo like a fucking idiot. Of course, he was thinking that some things he said were wrong. Of course, something was desperately telling him to stay. Of course, he got mad at the scars.
But Ace can’t fucking help it. It’s not his fault that Dolion looks so fucking similar to Sabo!
No, that’s not right, is more like a version of what Sabo could have grown to be.
It pisses him off as much as it hurts.
Ace really should stop seeing him, for both of their sakes. Ace stops rubbing salts in old wounds and Dolion is a genuinely nice guy, Ace doesn’t think that friendship like… like this would be fair to him.
━━━━━━━━━━
Ace doesn’t stop seeing him.
Because Ace is a lot of things, unwanted by the world and wanted by some, a cursed child, a brother, a son of Whitebeard, the second commander, a troublemaker but he’s not a coward.
Ace doesn’t run away from fights, and this? Oh, this is a fight in its own right.
No matter how much it hurts him, Ace never runs away.
He also kind of needs the information Dolion can provide, there are still marines running around on the island, after all. And according to Haruta, waiters are great resources of information because ‘Nobody really pays attention to waiters, you see, they see a lot of people and they hear a lot. Good job, Ace!’
So, yeah, that’s that. But Ace goes to talk to him as friends, not as a brother, especially, not as a long-dead brother that got killed at ten in search of freedom after Ace couldn’t do shit when the asshole of a father he had came for him.
If only it were that easy.
You see, now that Ace knows what is going on his brain seems keen on pointing out every single similarity and every single difference Dolion has to his long-dead brother, you know, the one that got killed at ten in search of freedom?
Some things Ace could swear on Davy Jones, that are an exact replica of Sabo’s, and then others are way off.
And sometimes, talking to Dolion is like seeing an actor. It’s hard to notice as it is like seeing a good actor because he is convincing in every movement, in every expression, in every word. A great actor that makes you forget he’s acting, but then you will see something, an exaggerated movement, he will say something that you can feel is rehearsed in some way.
It’s annoying, in the way a comedian that keeps telling unfunny jokes is, and Ace is damn sure it’s him again, his own damn problems and his own damn brain desperately trying to convince him that this is Sabo, making some of his actions seem off. Ace brushes it all insistently. There’s no way he could be Sabo. Sabo is dead. There’s no way this guy isn’t genuine, he’s an open book, Ace didn’t even need to spend a lot of time with him to be able to discern how he is and what he is thinking.
(The scars on his neck, an invisible wall, and a smile that doesn’t look right. Are you sure he ain’t hiding nothing? Ace swats at this like an annoying fly.)
Ace’s instincts are pretty much a 50/50 thing. Sometimes they are right, sometimes they aren’t. It can come to bite him in the ass, or it won’t. Normally, Ace trusts his instincts. If it ends up in disaster or not that’s another thing.
Ace doesn’t trust his instincts this time because he knows it’s fucking absurd. Dolion isn’t hiding something and Dolion isn’t Sabo and the feeling that something isn’t right is just Ace being an idiot.
But it is just his luck that not only they are right but that it comes to bite him in the ass.
Or, more accurately, punch him in the face.
It goes like this.
Ace gets fucking restless.
Investigation isn’t going smoothly and every fucking second they spent not catching the marines roaming in the old man’s territory is another second they mock and insult the old man. Deuce caught a glimpse of one of the rats they are trying to take out and the chase that took place that would have led to a fight got cut short when Deuce got fucking stabbed.
Naturally, he’s pissed.
And apparently, it confirms that the marines are stronger than they thought, higher ranks, perhaps a Cipher Pol, or what-fucking-ever what Ace caught is that they are stronger than they initially thought because Deuce isn’t one to lower his guard around enemies and get stabbed out of carelessness.
So, what if the marines are stronger than they thought? They are even stronger, Ace is stronger than any dumb marine that dared to come here and to stab Deuce.
Ace sets out at night with fire through his veins and clenched fists.
Nothing that strange, he does search in the night too, but mostly they are divided into two groups, one at day and one at night. Ace is on the first one because ‘fire is too noticeable in the dark and we are trying to be sneaky.’
(“They are doing an awful job at it, by the way.” A certain revolutionary says.)
Ace was, admittedly, a little (much) pissed about it because everybody knows the fun stuff happens at night.
The only sort of light in the dark is the moon and even that is dim enough that Ace has to make a tiny flame in his hand to avoid crashing face-first into a building. It’s late, late enough that Ace can feel his eyes burn every time he blinks, fuck o'clock in the night, or in the morning, probably in the morning.
The streets are completely empty. The bright colors of the terracotta buildings look gray in the dark, some crickets and the sound of his own steps are the only thing breaking the silence. Other people might find this scary, but Ace is not any other person.
Occasionally he will spot one of his crewmates who frown at the light in his hand.
Well, excuse him if he wants to see where the fuck he’s going! He smolders the flames with a roll of eyes and an exaggerated hand motion just to reignite it when they are out of sight.
Ace walks until he passes some fields with different vegetables and far enough that he gets to a small village. He’s probably like two hours away from reaching the other side of the island.
He enters the city, walking through the empty hallways. He peers through the windows to see people fast asleep with snores that seem to shake the walls, or the occasional teenager staying up late.
He doesn’t have to look a lot, the thing about total silences like this, is that when something does make a noise, it sounds like a bomb going off. He’s in some sort of market, with empty stalls and empty baskets when he hears it.
Steps.
Someone is running.
The village’s houses are far smaller than the houses in other places, something Ace takes full advantage of. Putting out the fire in his palm immediately, Ace jumps from the top of a stall to the top of a house, as quietly as he can and peers over it. He doesn’t have to search long because from the stairs of a street hallway someone falls to the floor.
They get up immediately, taking the impulse of the fall to keep running as if nothing happened, though the ‘slam’ of the body sounded painful. He’s ready to set chase when movement catches his eye. He turns to it, and from the same street hallway, somebody runs after them.
It’s a woman.
The same woman Ace had deemed as suspicious.
The woman who is chasing another person and whose steps Ace has to really concentrate to hear even though she’s running and even then Ace can barely hear shit.
(‘Tourist’ his ass.)
Ace runs after her through the roof of the buildings, wincing at the sound of his steps and the ‘bam!’ that resonates through the night every time he jumps to another roof. The person and the woman are fast, but Ace can easily get ahead of both of them if he turns into fire.
Running as loudly as that makes it a damn miracle nobody wakes up. Honestly is a damn miracle that they haven’t noticed Ace or perhaps they did and they aren't paying him any mind.
Damn rude.
They are going in the direction of what looks like a church. But then the woman is taking something out of her pocket. It’s a small Den Den Mushi that barely starts ringing when they pick from the other side, mouth immediately moving. The woman puts it close to her ear and says something back, Ace can’t hear anything.
Fuck it.
If he’s going to be noticed anyways he might as well go faster. If they turn around and see him, Ace fights them. If they don’t, well, either way, Ace fights them. He jumps off the building, lower part of his body becoming fire, he gets closer to her.
She’s whispering something into the snail so Ace still can’t hear her.
Ace gets even closer, dropping to the ground right behind her. She immediately hangs up at the sound of Ace landing. Cutting herself short of whatever she was saying but not fast enough so that Ace couldn’t hear her.
It makes it falter in his step, falling a little behind which she takes full advantage of.
‘—Abo.’
Shit, no, that is, that’s not it, it wasn’t— It wasn’t his name, it was just similar, even if he didn’t hear the beginning. There’s a lot of names that end up with ‘abo’ so just— It doesn’t mean shit.
He’s dead.
Ace knows this.
Why can’t he suddenly accept that? After all these years? Why now?
Ace shakes his head out of those thoughts, even though his breath picks up —and it’s not because he’s running— and his heart seems to constrict in his chest. He crushes the hope that rises with it, dumb hope, because the dead don’t come back from the grave.
He doesn’t have time for this.
Making his legs fire again, he jumps high into the sky. Discretion be damned. He will go for the person first, if the woman is chasing them then she (probably) won’t give him up that easily and Ace has been itching for a fight. Scanning the streets quickly, he sees them make a sharp turn to the left, some streets before the church. They don’t manage to stop before crashing into the wall but they don’t stop for long, quickly running upstairs.
Ace is ready to dash there and stop them in their tracks when he notices something moving in the roofs.
He throws a ball of fire out of reflex and the shadow throws themselves in a hallway, evading the fire and jumping to the roof again. Something caught on fire on one of the roofs, clothes, probably, and it illuminates enough so that Ace can spot blond hair before he runs away.
Ace has seen that hair before.
The shadow reaches the street where the person got into, with some sort of staff in his hand, he jumps in it. Staff raised above his head, Ace sees the woman getting into the hallway at the same time a metallic ‘plang!’ followed by concrete breaking echoes through the walls.
Ace stays there, illuminating the sky, taking the place of the sun for a few minutes, with his heart hammering into his chest and dumb, futile hope of a brother that’s not dead.
Stupid.
He still has marines to catch and like hell he’s letting these people just run away after whatever the fuck that was. He flies to the hallway, fire leaving a trail behind him, the two guys are already running away (a considerable amount from where they were and Ace doesn’t know if he just stayed up there so long or if they are that fast) He lands in front of them, body turning into fire when he purposely crashes into the floor. A flame coming to life far above the buildings before he turns back to his normal body, but letting his hand burn bright red, a threat.
His br— Dolion is there, with stiff shoulders, he’s still dressed as a waiter, but the clothes are dirtier and messy. There are some red patches on the left side of his face that Ace is too far away to see properly. The tourist has the person thrown over her shoulder. He scans the person until his eyes go to his left hand hanging in the air.
It’s missing two fingers.
A marine.
His eyebrows shoot to his hair and he turns to look a Dolion. Ace feels betrayed, anger and indignation flaring in his chest. He laughs sardonically. “I thought you said you would tell me?”
Dolion’s eyes are set on the flame on his hand for a second too long before his body relaxes at once. Standing more casually and dropping his shoulders. It takes another second so that his eyes unstick from the fire to his face.
He walks so that he’s in front of the woman. He raises his hands slightly in (mock) surrender. Hand extended completely while the other holds a pipe— a pipe (Just like the one he used— Doesn’t mean shit, it could have been an improvised weapon) That’s dripping red in one of the sides.
“I found one.”
His white gloves got changed to brown ones, Ace notes.
“You also caught him for me?” Dolion doesn’t answer, just smiles innocently. His smile has a sharp edge that Ace has never seen from him but seems oddly natural. “Making tourism?” Ace asks again at the lack of answer, looking at the woman who looks at him like a hawk.
“Well, it’s a lovely night.” He points at the moon. “It would be a waste—”
A cough interrupts him, and the marine thrown over the woman’s shoulders spits some blood. He raises his head and when he catches a glimpse of Ace he pales, but then he looks at Dolion then at Ace and smiles in a vengeful way.
The woman catches on but before she can do something the marine rushes out: “His name is Sabo.”
His world stops, flame dying in his hand.
“...What?”
He can’t really see his expression through the dark but he hears the deep breath one of the two lets out.“That’s not my n—” He starts, and the confused tilt on his voice might have been convincing but Ace cuts him short.
“Sabo?” He asks and seeing the name out loud after such a long time leaves a bitter feeling in his mouth. His throat feels dry as if something long left got dusted and all the dust got stuck in his mouth. “Your name is Sabo?”
He doesn’t reply for a second, and Ace creates a small flame on his hand to see him.
He’s looking at Ace with critical eyes, seemingly finds something in his face, and sighs. “Cat’s out of the bag, I guess.” He mutters before bowing slightly in a dramatic manner, right hand pointing at his chest. “Pleased to meet you, Fire Fist.”
Ace didn’t recognize him.
It would be nice to say he did, that he knew him to the point that after oh so many fears of separation, he took a glance at this golden-haired stranger and immediately knew that this was his brother.
It’s a nice thought.
As it is, Ace still doesn’t recognize him.
It’s like all his previous suspicions and feelings got ripped out of him because— because Sabo is dead. Dogra saw it, and no matter how much they searched through Goa Kingdom, nothing came up to suggest that Sabo was alive.
But now, here they are, with a golden stranger using his brother’s name.
“You are— Don’t— Stop lying.” Ace denies and he hates how his voice quivers. “You can’t be Sabo.”
“Why can’t I?” Whoever-this-is immediately replies with an amused tilt in his voice. He turns his head slightly to the woman behind him. “Should I be offended that he doesn’t think I don’t look like me?”
“If anything it should be a compliment, Dolion.” The woman frowns, still looking at Ace but she turns to see the blond. Some type of silent conversation goes through their eyes before the blond smiles and nods.
He walks closer to Ace, with confident strides and a face that doesn’t tell anything, that doesn’t reflect any kind of recognition or emotion at seeing his brother. It doesn’t match with how Ace is currently feeling.
He stops a few steps before Ace. If he extended his hand he would be able to touch him, and that’s what he does. Raising the hand that’s not on fire and putting it on his left shoulder. He doesn’t move away, but he looks a little uncomfortable.
He’s real.
He’s real.
“Sabo.” He says and tears his eyes out of where his hand is connected to his shoulder.
Ace inspects his face, trying to see his brother’s factions on him. His hair is the same color, but longer, and his nose has the same slope to it. His eyes are the same, but the left one is milky white. —It wasn’t like that before, it wasn’t like that a few days ago what the fuck happened— And this close he can see some red patches of skin on his left side, like the ones on his neck, scars, that looks like he was trying to hide them under gallons of make-up but got smudged.
He looks so similar and yet so different.
But this is— He is— “Is it really you?”
“Yeah.” He answers casually, though he looks extremely confused at the same time as if he didn’t know who he was. It hurts but at the same time Ace doesn’t care about that at the moment over knowing that his brother is alive. His heart hammers in his chest and he feels tears prick at his eyes that he blinks away.
“Why do you look like you just saw a ghost?” Sabo asks, grabbing Ace's hand and taking it off his shoulder.
It snaps something in Ace.
As if he just saw a ghost? “I just damn well did!” Ace sneers at him. Hundreds of emotions and thoughts piling up and anger —as always— coming on top.
Don’t get him wrong, he’s glad, he really is, how could he not be happy to know his brother is alive but—
Why do you look like you just saw a ghost?
As if Sabo wasn’t alive all this time. As if Sabo didn’t just fuck off from their lives for years. As if Sabo came back to them. As if they weren’t brothers. As if Sabo didn’t just lie at him about who he was for weeks and know that Ace knows he keeps acting like all of this does not fucking matter as much as it matters to Ace.
It’s been years so why does Sabo look like he does not care at all? They are brothers. “You fucking bastard!” Ace screams.
His right hand clenched into a fist, nails digging in his own palm and his left hand shoots up to grab the collar of his shirt, pulling him forwards and swinging at his face. His fist connects with his cheek and his knuckles hurt with how hard he did it.
The pipe falls to the floor. Sabo staggers at the side. “We thought y—” He starts but Sabo is in front of him in a second and the only thing Ace sees is a flash of black coming to his face before something hits his face, a ‘crack!’ filling the air and then Ace is flying backwards.
A wall stops him from going further. His nose hurts like a fucking bitch and there’s something warm trailing down his face. Ace sits up, his hand goes to his nose, and hisses when he touches it. He looks at his hand and is not surprised to see it comes off red.
At the sound of steps, Ace raises his head to see Sabo approaching. He spits to the side and considering the current state of his nose he’s fucking glad is blood. If he had known that Sabo would hit him this hard, then Ace would have swung harder goddammit. Then Ace looks at his completely black arm. “Armament Haki?” He asks in disbelief. “You went too fucking hard!”
Sabo sputters. “Me? You are the one who swung first out of nowhere!”
“You broke my fucking nose.” Ace accuses.
“Stop whining.” Sabo rolls his eyes. “And this is the Second Commander.” He mutters.
“What was that!?”
“Sabo!” The woman says, sprinting at his side, marine nowhere to be seen —Are you really telling Ace that Sabo was a distraction so that she could take the marine away? Fuck, Ace really should have swung harder— Sabo waves at her and then she takes a good look at Ace. “What did you do this time?”
“Nothing!” Sabo defends.
“That doesn’t look like nothing!” She points at Ace. “We aren’t supposed to get involved with any of the Whitebeard pirates!”
“We were already involved!”
“I— Yes, but you didn’t have to punch him. The problems we have now!”
“It’s not my fault! He started it!”
“Are you saying he just swung unprompted?” She thinks about it a little more. “Actually, no, I can see that happening.” She passes a hand through her hair. “Now what?”
Sabo turns to Ace, inspecting him up and down, smirking slightly at the sight of his nose.
Ace raises a middle finger to him.
Sabo laughs and turns, back on full display to Ace. Putting himself at the side of the woman, who for her part does not take her eyes off Ace. His left side is the one that faces her.
Giving the back to an enemy is an extremely stupid thing to do. Conceited stupid people blinded by their own power, Ace has seen it a hundred times. But Ace knows that Sabo is not stupid, and he doesn’t miss how his right arm is still black.
“I have an idea.” He says not so subtly, Ace pursues his lips. Does he think Ace is stupid enough that it doesn’t matter if he hears?
“I don’t like this idea.”
Sabo pauses. “I haven’t said anything yet.”
“I don’t need to know what the idea is. I know it is going to be something reckless.”
“Just trust me.”
“I do.” The woman says. “I still don’t like the idea, but I know you are going to make it work, so as long as it doesn’t involve going to war with Whitebeard, go ahead.”
Ace can hear Sabo’s smile through his voice. “We are not going to war with Whitebeard.” He turns again, crouching in front of him. Sabo smiles brightly at him and Ace glares. “As long as we don’t get caught.”
“What.”
“What the fuck do you mean?” Ace asks because he doesn’t like the implications of it. He starts to stand up and Sabo opens his mouth to answer.
But of course, is in that same moment that his narcolepsy decides to act up.