Everything living is born to die, so enjoy life while you have it.
Those Who Favour Fire
A One Piece Fanfiction
By: Sanjuno Shori Niko
Summary: This being 'still slightly alive' thing is rather more complicated than Ace was hoping for...
Timeline: More of this heartwarming tale can be found here.
=/=
(In which Ace has the first day of the rest of his life.)
Luffy was too weak to move much in the morning after Ace's resurrection, so Ace just sighed and less-than-reluctantly sacrificed one of his shirts to make a harness. (It was a better fate than the shirt deserved. Horrible things, shirts.) They needed to find out who had survived the Marine purge, and how much of the island was damaged, but Ace refused to leave Luffy vulnerable and undefended. There was no telling if all their enemies had left the island or if there were still some Cipher Pol agents hanging around. Ace needed to keep Luffy close if he wanted to keep his little brother safe. Ace’s flames roiled under his skin while dark worries plagued his thoughts, speeding along his already impressive healing. (The dead Ace had not been a logia, so Sakazuki had not used Haki in addition to his magma ability. The scabbed over tunnel of burns still hurt, but they were not deadly to the fire logia... not any more at least. The strike to his torso was placed lower and further to the left side than the deathblow Ace remembered dying from. Sakazuki had wanted this Ace to die slow and in agony. There was no other explanation for missing lungs, heart, and spine when the Ace here had been East Blue weak and mostly self-trained.)
"... He dragged our body here alone after the Marines left." Ace looked at his ghost-self in surprise. It was the first thing the younger Ace had said that morning. The spectre looked like he very much wanted to kill something with extreme bloody prejudice. "He had to hide under our corpse as it cooled, while the Marines laughed. He hasn't eaten since before the attack and... it took… it took a full night and day for the deal to go through. We had to wait for the green flash to make the exchange."
"Damn. Oi, Luffy." Ace looked over his shoulder at his sleepy-eyed little brother. "Are you hungry?"
"Un! Starving!" Luffy nosed at Ace's shoulder with insistent little head butts. "Can we have meat?"
"Of course!" Ace laughed, leaping down from the tree house. The lofty hut was better made and better hidden than the one Ace had grown up in, which was probably why the Marines had missed it. They were in a different part of the forest too, higher up the mountain than the Bandit camp, far from any established trails... The other Ace had probably built the new tree house when Luffy showed up, given how the tree house was closer to the Village than Grey Terminal. Ace had thought about doing that himself, once upon a time. The first tree house had been too small for three growing boys, but after Sabo was gone Ace had not been able to bear the thought of leaving behind the house Sabo had helped him build. The extra years must have helped the other Ace be rational, rather than trapped in place by sentiment. Ace grinned and struck out into the forest after getting his bearings. (It had been four years since he had last walked these woods, but he still knew exactly where he was.) "You'll get lots of meat, baby brother! How else are you supposed to heal and get stronger?"
"Yatta! Meat!" Luffy, assured that he would get his preferred meal, promptly began to chant one of his enharmonic made-up-on-the-spot songs. This one, naturally, focusing on the awesome powers of meat and big brothers. Ace tried not to feel flattered, but it was so innocently charming that the pirate was hard pressed to resist the urge to suffocate his baby brother with cuddles.
'So cute.' Ace whined to himself, steeling his will to stay strong. Shaking his head at his own ridiculousness (but to be fair, he had forgotten how goddamned adorable tiny Luffy was) and headed out for the closest hunting spot. 'I can hear the brother complex jokes already.'
/.../
Once Luffy had consumed twice his own body weight in meat, the rubber boy passed out, snoring gently against Ace's back. The older D smiled and buried what little remained of their kill. (Usually he did not bother, trusting the scavengers to clean up after them in due time, but right now there was still the lingering concern that the Marines had stuck around.) Clean up finished, the logia user set off for the bandit camp, dreading what he would find and wanting to get the worst over with before Luffy woke up.
The bandit camp was too still and far too quiet for comfort. Ace sat high in a tree, examining what he could see of bullet holes, the gouges caused by blades, the broken windows and wrecked doors. The ground was burned around lumps of glassy rock. Magma, cooled down enough to revert back to stone. He stretched his Observation Haki as far as it could go, narrowing his eyes at the lack of results. Ace glanced at his ghost. "How far away from me can you get?"
"... I'm not sure." The ghost tilted his head with a faint smile. "Should we find out?"
"Check for baby den-den-mushi. The Marines may have left the place watched just in case of survivors." Ace scowled at the bandit camp. They may have been horrible at child rearing, but they had been the only parental force Ace had known during his childhood, and it broke something inside Ace to know that he would never see them again, leaving his mind disquieted. "The longer the Marines think were dead, the better off we'll be."
"On it." The spectre flickered as he flowed away, more and more like a heat mirage the further from Ace he got. Ace remained crouched and still on his arboreal perch. The air next to him cooled after a few minutes, and Ace cocked an eyebrow at his doppelganger. (Ace fought back a surge of anger. He was just a kid, still lean to the point of scrawny without the muscle Ace had started packing on at twenty, and nowhere near his full growth. The Marines had murdered him!) The spirit shook his head. "I don't think the Marines left anything behind, but they wrecked the place so I'm not sure..."
"You don't have my experience with what to look for, but you'll learn." Ace grinned and shook a finger at his younger self. "Follow along. I'll just be careful for now, but I think we'll have to risk it."
Ace crept into the silent camp, every sense alert for danger. Softly, Ace murmured to his ghost-self, pointing out places where traps and spying equipment were likely to be. Even after he found the first body, Ace did not stop. Even when he found Dadan's body (what was left of Dadan's body) he did not stop.
"... Are you going to bury them?" The spectre’s face was blank as he stared down at the pitiful remains of the dreadful bandit leader who had kept them alive during their most vulnerable years. (Hindsight granted clarity. If Dadan had really hated him, why had she raised him through infancy? Yes, she had violently encouraged him to be self sufficient, but she had never let him starve. Ace had seen the weakness that plagued people who had suffered prolonged malnutrition in infancy, and that was never one of Ace's problems. Dadan may have lacked overt affection, but she had never stinted him of her care. Not the mother Ace had wanted, fuck no, but certainly the mother he had needed to get strong enough to survive in Paradise.)
"No. Moving the bodies would tell someone that we've been here." Ace collected what he could use from the bandit camp, including the contents of the hidden treasury. Once he and Luffy set out to sea they would need the funds, and the dead had no use for belli. "I can't just leave them to rot, either. Not only would Dadan probably haunt me, but human bodies cause sickness in the living if they aren't properly taken care of."
"So what are you going to do?" The ghost watched as Ace headed for the forge where the bandits had made the bullets for their guns.
"Pirates are given back to the sea, but Dadan was a bandit, a fighter… and warriors deserve a pyre. I'm going to burn them." After a moment of consideration, Ace kicked in the side of the brick forge. The flame logia ignored the cascade of embers that pooled around his feet. Instead, Ace walked away, fire flaring to hungry life in his wake. It did not take much coaxing from Ace to spread the fire through the whole camp. The pirate let the flames rage as he moved his collection of scavenged goods and valuables to a storage cave near the tree house.
Luffy was starting to stir from his food-and-healing coma by the time Ace was done, so the older D checked to be certain the burning camp would not threaten their section of the woods before hunting down lunch. Ace managed to convince Luffy to eat a few wild vegetables with his meat this time. The younger D fell straight back into a doze once he was done eating, and Ace recognized the pattern. Luffy would sleep and eat in repeating cycles until he had healed a bit more. Truly, the D constitution was a wondrous thing. The elder brother felt a bit bad for being relieved by the situation, but Luffy being quiet and still made it easier for Ace to gather the things they needed in order to escape East Blue.
"Hm... we should check the village now." Ace looked over at his ghostly double's pained expression and bit his lip. Going back to the scene of your death had to be hard. (Thank fuck Ace had a valid reason to avoid the ever loving hell out of Marineford.) "I'm sorry."
"It needs to be done." The spectre looked away. "Go. Before Luffy wakes up."
/.../
Foosha village was worse than the bandit camp had been. Maybe it was because Ace could tell that the bandits had fought back against their killers. The villagers were civilians, used to the Marines trained under Garp's rough, idiotic honesty and Fist of Love. Sakazuki's men had slaughtered them like sheep. (Ace tried to avoid looking at the bodies. Tried to avoid seeing the familiar faces. Tried to avoid noticing when the crumpled forms were smaller than even Luffy.) 'Like shooting fish in a barrel. They didn't even have a chance to run.'
The Party Time Bar had been reduced to rubble, small fires still burning throughout the village from kitchen stoves left unattended and knocked over oil lamps. Ace's gaze flickered over the damage, and he sighed. 'Canon fire. They shot at the village. Two more Admirals and they'd have made it a Buster Call.'
Swallowing hard, Ace circled around the bar. He needed to check the docks for an intact skiff. If Ace could not find a ship in one piece, he would need to find some way to pull up one that could be repaired enough to get them to the next island. Hopefully it would not come to that, because Ace and Luffy needed to get off Dawn Island (and hopefully out of East Blue) unnoticed.
A ping against his Haki, like a fingernail flicking a crystal glass to check for flaws. Ace froze and stretched his Observation Haki to the limit. She was hidden, and still hiding, but not from him. Not from him. Boots skidding over shattered brick and charred timber, Ace bolted for the well house behind the bar. 'Not in, but near enough to access the water… The bootlegger closet!'
Ace heaved the remains of a tiled roof aside, digging until he found the hidden door. The lock and hinges burned away from the cracked wood under the flames focused into knives from the tips of his fingers, and Ace hauled the door aside with a wide grin, reaching down into the dark hole as ash-smudged and blood-stained hands reached up for him in return. "Makino!"
"... Ace-kun?" The bartender's eyes went wide and filled with relieved tears. "You're alive! Oh, thank god! I saw what they did... oh, thank god! You're alive!"
"So're you." Ace choked on a laugh and hauled the woman up out of her hiding spot and into a relieved hug. "How bad are you hurt?"
"Nothing serious. A few grazes, mostly. Some bruises and little burns." Makino's gaze locked onto the bandages wrapped around Ace's otherwise-bare chest as she pulled back enough to look the young man over. "I saw what that man did to you, Ace-kun. How..."
"I'm tough, and Marines have bad aim." Ace grinned and ignored the pull in his chest that told him to slow the fuck down and stop overextending himself. Right now Ace was held together by bandage tape, Armament Haki, and fervent prayers. Even without considering the time he had spent mostly dead, or taking the side effects of magical cross-dimensional resurrections into account, Ace needed to rest and heal as much as Luffy did after the massive blood loss and major organ damage he had suffered, but there was no time. "Luffy's going to go nuts once he wakes up and sees that you're okay."
"Luffy-kun?" Makino's eyes followed Ace's thumb to where the boy rested on his brother's back. "Is he alright?"
"He was scared, and he got hurt, and he saw things that... well. You know what he saw. But he's healing, and he's Luffy." Ace smiled at the bartender's look of worry. "He's Luffy, Makino-san. As long as he has us, he'll be okay. For now, though, we need to focus on getting off of this island. Gramps can't protect us any longer. For now, the Marines think that Luffy and I are dead. They probably don't care much about you, but if they come back while Luffy and I are still here, or if someone from Goa ratted you out..."
"I know." Makino swallowed harshly and looked at the ruins of the village. "I knew that there were different types of pirates. I didn't think that the Marines were the same way. At least Morganeers and Peace Mains call themselves different things."
Ace was silent, allowing the bartender time to gather her thoughts. Makino had taught a younger Ace a lot about manners and tolerance and forgiveness. Ace did not think Makino would be forgiving this.
"They burned the harbour." Makino slid her hand into Ace's grip as they turned away, offering the young man a wan smile. "But I have a small ship hidden up the coast. I don't think the Marines would have found it. It should be big enough to fit the three of us."
"... I didn't think you ever left the island." Ace tilted his head to look at Makino as they set off along the path that led away from the destroyed village.
"I bought it when Luffy-kun first came to live with me." Makino's lips thinned in disapproval. "I hid it away when Garp-san moved Luffy-kun into Dadan-san's care. I've kept it dry-docked ever since, but it's otherwise ready for immediate voyage."
"So..." Ace helped Makino over a fallen tree and wordlessly handed her a knife so she could hack off the ragged remains of the skirt that tangled around her legs. Ace cleared his throat and looked up at the trees until she was done. "Did you ever trust kuso-Jiji to keep him safe?"
"No." Skirt trimmed to just above her knees, Makino handed back Ace's knife, her eyes hard. "Especially not when I found out about you. He should never have exposed your parentage to anyone if he truly wanted to pass you off as his grandson, but especially not to bandits."
"I thought you liked Dadan?" Ace kept his voice mild, hiding his surprise. This was a side of Makino that Ace had never seen before. Angry, critical, but still protective of Luffy and Ace.
"I'm a bartender, Ace-kun. That means that I never turn away customers, and I'm very good at faking a pleasant face." Makino sighed and gave Ace a rueful smile, leading the way down the coastline with firm strides despite the ugly black-and-blue bruising that covered most of her right leg. "I'm afraid that I'm not a good enough person to mourn a woman who can abandon the child entrusted into her care in the woods."
"She protected us, in her own way." Ace looked at his ghost self, seeing the wrecked expression on the younger version of his own face. Ace recalled his nightmare, and remembered a bandit hoard diving into fire to save some stupid-ass little punks trying to fight adult pirates. "None of the bandits gave us up to the Marines. It got them all killed, trying to buy us time."
"I know, Ace-kun, but this and that are two very different things." Makino turned and led Ace towards the water. "I can be thankful that she fought to protect you while still being angry at her for not taking proper care of you."
"... That sounds confusing." Ace mused aloud, listening to his invisible double mutter about headaches and crazy women as Ace followed Makino into a cave located in a shallow cove. The mouth of Makino’s cave was hidden behind a landslide, but Ace could clear that away easily. As Makino had said, the ship was small. It was a pincke meant to be crewed by only two or three people, although one person could get away with crewing solo if the day was calm or it was an emergency. It was well maintained, designed for Blue Ocean travel, and fully stocked with all a person could want during an emergency evacuation. Not a ship meant to move fast or fight, but the shallow draft meant they could escape up rivers when they wanted to anchor out of sight. A good ship for being sneaky and avoiding notice. Ace handed Luffy over to Makino and started going over the ship for trouble spots. Makino watched in amusement, not bothering to ask where Ace had learned so much about ship safety.
"Well?" Makino raised a brow as Ace jumped down from the deck.
"We should probably reseal the hull before we leave, just as a precaution." Ace dusted off his hands and grinned at Makino. "We can use the curing time to hunt meat and move our stores on to the ship. Luffy can use the time to heal before we set out, too."
"When shall we leave then, Ace-kun?" Makino smiled at Ace's enthusiasm.
"A week, maybe a few days more, it depends on the weather." Ace shrugged one shoulder and took his little brother back from the bartender. "We can stay in the tree house until then."
=/=
Motherfuckingdamn, now I remember why I get annoyed by archive sites. Arrgh, having to get my chapters in order is a bit more challenging than I remember it being at fourteen. Of course, when I first started writing fanfic I had the lunatic idea that stories had to be written in chronological order. Wow, have I ever been spoiled by LJ and my ability to post whateverthefuck I write in whateverthefucking order I write it in. Bah. Nonlinear narrative is what all the cool kids are doing these days. Sweartogods.
Those Who Favour Fire is the most cooperative fic I have when it comes to sequencial scenes. My writing doesn't start skipping around until after the Merry is aquired, so... meh. I guess AO3 is going to be seeing more of my OP fic while I shuffle some things around for Karmic Balance.
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HERE THERE BE DRAGONS!!! (Original Pinks! Frilled! Anniversary eggies! I have them all! Mwahaha!)
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A One Piece Fanfiction
By: Sanjuno Shori Niko
Summary: This being 'still slightly alive' thing is rather more complicated than Ace was hoping for...
Timeline: More of this heartwarming tale can be found here.
=/=
(In which Ace has the first day of the rest of his life.)
Luffy was too weak to move much in the morning after Ace's resurrection, so Ace just sighed and less-than-reluctantly sacrificed one of his shirts to make a harness. (It was a better fate than the shirt deserved. Horrible things, shirts.) They needed to find out who had survived the Marine purge, and how much of the island was damaged, but Ace refused to leave Luffy vulnerable and undefended. There was no telling if all their enemies had left the island or if there were still some Cipher Pol agents hanging around. Ace needed to keep Luffy close if he wanted to keep his little brother safe. Ace’s flames roiled under his skin while dark worries plagued his thoughts, speeding along his already impressive healing. (The dead Ace had not been a logia, so Sakazuki had not used Haki in addition to his magma ability. The scabbed over tunnel of burns still hurt, but they were not deadly to the fire logia... not any more at least. The strike to his torso was placed lower and further to the left side than the deathblow Ace remembered dying from. Sakazuki had wanted this Ace to die slow and in agony. There was no other explanation for missing lungs, heart, and spine when the Ace here had been East Blue weak and mostly self-trained.)
"... He dragged our body here alone after the Marines left." Ace looked at his ghost-self in surprise. It was the first thing the younger Ace had said that morning. The spectre looked like he very much wanted to kill something with extreme bloody prejudice. "He had to hide under our corpse as it cooled, while the Marines laughed. He hasn't eaten since before the attack and... it took… it took a full night and day for the deal to go through. We had to wait for the green flash to make the exchange."
"Damn. Oi, Luffy." Ace looked over his shoulder at his sleepy-eyed little brother. "Are you hungry?"
"Un! Starving!" Luffy nosed at Ace's shoulder with insistent little head butts. "Can we have meat?"
"Of course!" Ace laughed, leaping down from the tree house. The lofty hut was better made and better hidden than the one Ace had grown up in, which was probably why the Marines had missed it. They were in a different part of the forest too, higher up the mountain than the Bandit camp, far from any established trails... The other Ace had probably built the new tree house when Luffy showed up, given how the tree house was closer to the Village than Grey Terminal. Ace had thought about doing that himself, once upon a time. The first tree house had been too small for three growing boys, but after Sabo was gone Ace had not been able to bear the thought of leaving behind the house Sabo had helped him build. The extra years must have helped the other Ace be rational, rather than trapped in place by sentiment. Ace grinned and struck out into the forest after getting his bearings. (It had been four years since he had last walked these woods, but he still knew exactly where he was.) "You'll get lots of meat, baby brother! How else are you supposed to heal and get stronger?"
"Yatta! Meat!" Luffy, assured that he would get his preferred meal, promptly began to chant one of his enharmonic made-up-on-the-spot songs. This one, naturally, focusing on the awesome powers of meat and big brothers. Ace tried not to feel flattered, but it was so innocently charming that the pirate was hard pressed to resist the urge to suffocate his baby brother with cuddles.
'So cute.' Ace whined to himself, steeling his will to stay strong. Shaking his head at his own ridiculousness (but to be fair, he had forgotten how goddamned adorable tiny Luffy was) and headed out for the closest hunting spot. 'I can hear the brother complex jokes already.'
/.../
Once Luffy had consumed twice his own body weight in meat, the rubber boy passed out, snoring gently against Ace's back. The older D smiled and buried what little remained of their kill. (Usually he did not bother, trusting the scavengers to clean up after them in due time, but right now there was still the lingering concern that the Marines had stuck around.) Clean up finished, the logia user set off for the bandit camp, dreading what he would find and wanting to get the worst over with before Luffy woke up.
The bandit camp was too still and far too quiet for comfort. Ace sat high in a tree, examining what he could see of bullet holes, the gouges caused by blades, the broken windows and wrecked doors. The ground was burned around lumps of glassy rock. Magma, cooled down enough to revert back to stone. He stretched his Observation Haki as far as it could go, narrowing his eyes at the lack of results. Ace glanced at his ghost. "How far away from me can you get?"
"... I'm not sure." The ghost tilted his head with a faint smile. "Should we find out?"
"Check for baby den-den-mushi. The Marines may have left the place watched just in case of survivors." Ace scowled at the bandit camp. They may have been horrible at child rearing, but they had been the only parental force Ace had known during his childhood, and it broke something inside Ace to know that he would never see them again, leaving his mind disquieted. "The longer the Marines think were dead, the better off we'll be."
"On it." The spectre flickered as he flowed away, more and more like a heat mirage the further from Ace he got. Ace remained crouched and still on his arboreal perch. The air next to him cooled after a few minutes, and Ace cocked an eyebrow at his doppelganger. (Ace fought back a surge of anger. He was just a kid, still lean to the point of scrawny without the muscle Ace had started packing on at twenty, and nowhere near his full growth. The Marines had murdered him!) The spirit shook his head. "I don't think the Marines left anything behind, but they wrecked the place so I'm not sure..."
"You don't have my experience with what to look for, but you'll learn." Ace grinned and shook a finger at his younger self. "Follow along. I'll just be careful for now, but I think we'll have to risk it."
Ace crept into the silent camp, every sense alert for danger. Softly, Ace murmured to his ghost-self, pointing out places where traps and spying equipment were likely to be. Even after he found the first body, Ace did not stop. Even when he found Dadan's body (what was left of Dadan's body) he did not stop.
"... Are you going to bury them?" The spectre’s face was blank as he stared down at the pitiful remains of the dreadful bandit leader who had kept them alive during their most vulnerable years. (Hindsight granted clarity. If Dadan had really hated him, why had she raised him through infancy? Yes, she had violently encouraged him to be self sufficient, but she had never let him starve. Ace had seen the weakness that plagued people who had suffered prolonged malnutrition in infancy, and that was never one of Ace's problems. Dadan may have lacked overt affection, but she had never stinted him of her care. Not the mother Ace had wanted, fuck no, but certainly the mother he had needed to get strong enough to survive in Paradise.)
"No. Moving the bodies would tell someone that we've been here." Ace collected what he could use from the bandit camp, including the contents of the hidden treasury. Once he and Luffy set out to sea they would need the funds, and the dead had no use for belli. "I can't just leave them to rot, either. Not only would Dadan probably haunt me, but human bodies cause sickness in the living if they aren't properly taken care of."
"So what are you going to do?" The ghost watched as Ace headed for the forge where the bandits had made the bullets for their guns.
"Pirates are given back to the sea, but Dadan was a bandit, a fighter… and warriors deserve a pyre. I'm going to burn them." After a moment of consideration, Ace kicked in the side of the brick forge. The flame logia ignored the cascade of embers that pooled around his feet. Instead, Ace walked away, fire flaring to hungry life in his wake. It did not take much coaxing from Ace to spread the fire through the whole camp. The pirate let the flames rage as he moved his collection of scavenged goods and valuables to a storage cave near the tree house.
Luffy was starting to stir from his food-and-healing coma by the time Ace was done, so the older D checked to be certain the burning camp would not threaten their section of the woods before hunting down lunch. Ace managed to convince Luffy to eat a few wild vegetables with his meat this time. The younger D fell straight back into a doze once he was done eating, and Ace recognized the pattern. Luffy would sleep and eat in repeating cycles until he had healed a bit more. Truly, the D constitution was a wondrous thing. The elder brother felt a bit bad for being relieved by the situation, but Luffy being quiet and still made it easier for Ace to gather the things they needed in order to escape East Blue.
"Hm... we should check the village now." Ace looked over at his ghostly double's pained expression and bit his lip. Going back to the scene of your death had to be hard. (Thank fuck Ace had a valid reason to avoid the ever loving hell out of Marineford.) "I'm sorry."
"It needs to be done." The spectre looked away. "Go. Before Luffy wakes up."
/.../
Foosha village was worse than the bandit camp had been. Maybe it was because Ace could tell that the bandits had fought back against their killers. The villagers were civilians, used to the Marines trained under Garp's rough, idiotic honesty and Fist of Love. Sakazuki's men had slaughtered them like sheep. (Ace tried to avoid looking at the bodies. Tried to avoid seeing the familiar faces. Tried to avoid noticing when the crumpled forms were smaller than even Luffy.) 'Like shooting fish in a barrel. They didn't even have a chance to run.'
The Party Time Bar had been reduced to rubble, small fires still burning throughout the village from kitchen stoves left unattended and knocked over oil lamps. Ace's gaze flickered over the damage, and he sighed. 'Canon fire. They shot at the village. Two more Admirals and they'd have made it a Buster Call.'
Swallowing hard, Ace circled around the bar. He needed to check the docks for an intact skiff. If Ace could not find a ship in one piece, he would need to find some way to pull up one that could be repaired enough to get them to the next island. Hopefully it would not come to that, because Ace and Luffy needed to get off Dawn Island (and hopefully out of East Blue) unnoticed.
A ping against his Haki, like a fingernail flicking a crystal glass to check for flaws. Ace froze and stretched his Observation Haki to the limit. She was hidden, and still hiding, but not from him. Not from him. Boots skidding over shattered brick and charred timber, Ace bolted for the well house behind the bar. 'Not in, but near enough to access the water… The bootlegger closet!'
Ace heaved the remains of a tiled roof aside, digging until he found the hidden door. The lock and hinges burned away from the cracked wood under the flames focused into knives from the tips of his fingers, and Ace hauled the door aside with a wide grin, reaching down into the dark hole as ash-smudged and blood-stained hands reached up for him in return. "Makino!"
"... Ace-kun?" The bartender's eyes went wide and filled with relieved tears. "You're alive! Oh, thank god! I saw what they did... oh, thank god! You're alive!"
"So're you." Ace choked on a laugh and hauled the woman up out of her hiding spot and into a relieved hug. "How bad are you hurt?"
"Nothing serious. A few grazes, mostly. Some bruises and little burns." Makino's gaze locked onto the bandages wrapped around Ace's otherwise-bare chest as she pulled back enough to look the young man over. "I saw what that man did to you, Ace-kun. How..."
"I'm tough, and Marines have bad aim." Ace grinned and ignored the pull in his chest that told him to slow the fuck down and stop overextending himself. Right now Ace was held together by bandage tape, Armament Haki, and fervent prayers. Even without considering the time he had spent mostly dead, or taking the side effects of magical cross-dimensional resurrections into account, Ace needed to rest and heal as much as Luffy did after the massive blood loss and major organ damage he had suffered, but there was no time. "Luffy's going to go nuts once he wakes up and sees that you're okay."
"Luffy-kun?" Makino's eyes followed Ace's thumb to where the boy rested on his brother's back. "Is he alright?"
"He was scared, and he got hurt, and he saw things that... well. You know what he saw. But he's healing, and he's Luffy." Ace smiled at the bartender's look of worry. "He's Luffy, Makino-san. As long as he has us, he'll be okay. For now, though, we need to focus on getting off of this island. Gramps can't protect us any longer. For now, the Marines think that Luffy and I are dead. They probably don't care much about you, but if they come back while Luffy and I are still here, or if someone from Goa ratted you out..."
"I know." Makino swallowed harshly and looked at the ruins of the village. "I knew that there were different types of pirates. I didn't think that the Marines were the same way. At least Morganeers and Peace Mains call themselves different things."
Ace was silent, allowing the bartender time to gather her thoughts. Makino had taught a younger Ace a lot about manners and tolerance and forgiveness. Ace did not think Makino would be forgiving this.
"They burned the harbour." Makino slid her hand into Ace's grip as they turned away, offering the young man a wan smile. "But I have a small ship hidden up the coast. I don't think the Marines would have found it. It should be big enough to fit the three of us."
"... I didn't think you ever left the island." Ace tilted his head to look at Makino as they set off along the path that led away from the destroyed village.
"I bought it when Luffy-kun first came to live with me." Makino's lips thinned in disapproval. "I hid it away when Garp-san moved Luffy-kun into Dadan-san's care. I've kept it dry-docked ever since, but it's otherwise ready for immediate voyage."
"So..." Ace helped Makino over a fallen tree and wordlessly handed her a knife so she could hack off the ragged remains of the skirt that tangled around her legs. Ace cleared his throat and looked up at the trees until she was done. "Did you ever trust kuso-Jiji to keep him safe?"
"No." Skirt trimmed to just above her knees, Makino handed back Ace's knife, her eyes hard. "Especially not when I found out about you. He should never have exposed your parentage to anyone if he truly wanted to pass you off as his grandson, but especially not to bandits."
"I thought you liked Dadan?" Ace kept his voice mild, hiding his surprise. This was a side of Makino that Ace had never seen before. Angry, critical, but still protective of Luffy and Ace.
"I'm a bartender, Ace-kun. That means that I never turn away customers, and I'm very good at faking a pleasant face." Makino sighed and gave Ace a rueful smile, leading the way down the coastline with firm strides despite the ugly black-and-blue bruising that covered most of her right leg. "I'm afraid that I'm not a good enough person to mourn a woman who can abandon the child entrusted into her care in the woods."
"She protected us, in her own way." Ace looked at his ghost self, seeing the wrecked expression on the younger version of his own face. Ace recalled his nightmare, and remembered a bandit hoard diving into fire to save some stupid-ass little punks trying to fight adult pirates. "None of the bandits gave us up to the Marines. It got them all killed, trying to buy us time."
"I know, Ace-kun, but this and that are two very different things." Makino turned and led Ace towards the water. "I can be thankful that she fought to protect you while still being angry at her for not taking proper care of you."
"... That sounds confusing." Ace mused aloud, listening to his invisible double mutter about headaches and crazy women as Ace followed Makino into a cave located in a shallow cove. The mouth of Makino’s cave was hidden behind a landslide, but Ace could clear that away easily. As Makino had said, the ship was small. It was a pincke meant to be crewed by only two or three people, although one person could get away with crewing solo if the day was calm or it was an emergency. It was well maintained, designed for Blue Ocean travel, and fully stocked with all a person could want during an emergency evacuation. Not a ship meant to move fast or fight, but the shallow draft meant they could escape up rivers when they wanted to anchor out of sight. A good ship for being sneaky and avoiding notice. Ace handed Luffy over to Makino and started going over the ship for trouble spots. Makino watched in amusement, not bothering to ask where Ace had learned so much about ship safety.
"Well?" Makino raised a brow as Ace jumped down from the deck.
"We should probably reseal the hull before we leave, just as a precaution." Ace dusted off his hands and grinned at Makino. "We can use the curing time to hunt meat and move our stores on to the ship. Luffy can use the time to heal before we set out, too."
"When shall we leave then, Ace-kun?" Makino smiled at Ace's enthusiasm.
"A week, maybe a few days more, it depends on the weather." Ace shrugged one shoulder and took his little brother back from the bartender. "We can stay in the tree house until then."
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Motherfuckingdamn, now I remember why I get annoyed by archive sites. Arrgh, having to get my chapters in order is a bit more challenging than I remember it being at fourteen. Of course, when I first started writing fanfic I had the lunatic idea that stories had to be written in chronological order. Wow, have I ever been spoiled by LJ and my ability to post whateverthefuck I write in whateverthefucking order I write it in. Bah. Nonlinear narrative is what all the cool kids are doing these days. Sweartogods.
Those Who Favour Fire is the most cooperative fic I have when it comes to sequencial scenes. My writing doesn't start skipping around until after the Merry is aquired, so... meh. I guess AO3 is going to be seeing more of my OP fic while I shuffle some things around for Karmic Balance.
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HERE THERE BE DRAGONS!!! (Original Pinks! Frilled! Anniversary eggies! I have them all! Mwahaha!)
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