In Navy Blue or Black!
Title: Sands of Time
Theme: # 20 Sand - Set 3
Claim: Ace
Words: 1241
Rating: PG
Warnings: THIS IS NOT A PRINCE OF PERSIA AU despite the title. Also, 574 spoiler. And, (please don't hate me) written in first person. Vaguely inspired by “The Lovely Bones”.
Disclaimers: One Piece isn't mine.
You know, being dead wasn't as bad as I first had thought. Or, at least it didn't hurt. All the pain from my short life was as blown away. Neither did i feel hunger or sleep. No, being dead was kind of comfortable. Although, I have to admit it is kind of boring. I never had any real time to rest during my life, running around on adventures all the time, but now it's all lazying around, doing nothing. After Impel Down, Marinefold and everything, it was relaxing. I didn't need to do anything. But, with that blood running through my veins it didn't take too long before relaxation became impatience and restlessness.
So, I started to explore again. And, I am sorry to disappoint you if you expected a fluffy Heaven, or a burning Hell, even though I wouldn't mind a little fire around here. No, where ever I am is more like a city. A dead city, ironically enough. Here's a lot of empty houses and gardens, all in gray or another dull color scale. Nevertheless, I started walking around.
At first, the most exciting thing I found was a clock. I didn't know you measured time in Death. Still, a broken clock wasn't really something to hang in the Christmas tree. I was looking for other humans, life of some sort, but as I walked those empty streets, I never saw anything even remotely alive. No humans, no animals or even insects. And, come to think of it; I didn't even see any dead humans or animals. Everything around me was quiet.
Death is fairly small, a few houses, a little park and some kind of main building. I started with the houses, to build up what little suspense I could get from this so called adventure. But, as you heard, they were as empty as a beach during a blizzard. So I strolling up towards the manor, and opened the creaking door. The first sight I was met by was a long, long hallway with what seemed as hundredths of doors. Thinking back now, I wonder how so many rooms could fit into that building.
The floor was filled with dust, and my boots created deep tracks. Good way to find your way back again, because this place was huge inside. I walked along, and I lost track of how many of those wooden doors I passed. Over each one, a metal plate with different names on them hung. I felt on the handle on a few of the doors, but they were firmly locked. Walking along the hallway for what seemed like hours, sometimes trying to open a door or two, I suddenly stopped dead on. On my right hand side, there was a door, looking just like every other. It was just that, over it, my name was written: “Gol D. Ace.”. Just like Death to mock you when it was able to.
I don't know how long I stood outside that door. Time wasn't really of the biggest importance in my life right now. Or death if you rather like to have it that way. Nevertheless, I stood outside that door quite a while. But finally, I snapped out of what ever state I was in, and I turned the door knob. And you know? The door opened.
The only thing that was heard when I entered was my boots walking over dust and sand. Yes, sand. All around the room, on tables, shelves, old, dusty racks and on tall book cases, were hourglasses. Crushed, destroyed hour glasses. New hourglasses, with most of its sand still on the top half. Worn, almost broken but still working hourglasses with the sand divided approximately half-half. Hourglasses that were singing on the last refrain, just a few grains of sand left before they would be finished. And, just like the doors, all the hourglasses had a little sign with a name on it.
In the middle of the room, a big round table stood all alone. There were hourglasses from the floor to the ceiling, and on every imaginable area, but in the middle of the room. And on that table, the biggest of all the hourglasses stood, the glass smashed and the frame crumbled. You were still able to read the sign though; and it read the same as the sign above the door did: Gol D. Ace.
Touching the sand spilled out on the table, a small shiver ran up along my spine. It was strange, the first real feeling I felt since that day back in the real world. The sand was spread all over the wooden table, surprisingly smooth against my fingers as I drew random patterns in it. Touching the grains made me remember things from the past years of his living life. My childhood, my brothers, my first crew, Whitebeard. Everything. For each grain I touched, a new memory sprung into my mind.
Looking up from the sand, my eyes fixed on the other hourglasses. If the biggest, broken one was mine, then who did the others belong to? Some of them were broken, just like my own, were they dead like me? Because that's what I figured the hourglass was a morbid metaphor to.
Looking around, I read the names on the hourglasses, and I recognized all the names on each one of them. The ones further away from the center was people I had lost contact with, or persons who died ages ago. Closer were names on people on my crew, and distant friends. But, what interested me the most was the table behind my own, grander one. A few of the hourglasses on it was broken, but most of them were running fine, even though almost all of them was pretty worn.
In the back, the second largest hourglass after my own stood, made out of solid gold. Even the bloody plate was made out of gold and it read: Gol D. Roger, Pirate King. I figured. Next to that one, old father Whitebeard's resided. It was made out of white marble, but it didn't seem as if that was enough. It was Broken. Dead. My mothers were there too, also broken, but still beautiful. And, small, almost hidden amongst the dead giants to hourglasses, rested a small one, made in black wood. Sabo.
More over, there was one made out of blue metal, wearing Marco's name, still solid. Along with the first mate's almost all of his closest crew mate's stood proud unbroken. It seemed as if most of them had more luck than me.
Alone in the front row amongst those so important hourglasses was a middle sized one, shaped out of what seemed to be, amazingly enough, Adam Wood. Touching it, I confirmed my theory. But then again, that legendary wood was the only material good enough for this hourglass.
On contrary to the other hourglasses, this one's name plate wasn't made out of normal iron, but the same material as my father's. It took me a second, but I smiled at the thought. Maybe I had known it all along, but my brother was sure something over the top. I sat down on the table, seeing as there where no chairs in the room, and I angled the hourglass so I could see better. On the golden plate, installed on the Adam Wood hourglass, I read, still smiling:
Monkey D. Luffy, Pirate King.