*work, work, work*
Title: A Place Called Home
Theme: # 27 Betrayal - Set 3
Claim: Ace
Words: 1284
Rating: PG
Warnings: Rookiepirate!Ace, a little angst and nakamaship. Spoilers up to chapter 589.
Disclaimers: One Piece isn't mine. Bleh.
The freckled raven hung with his arms across the railing of the Whitebeard pirates' ship 'Moby Dick', looking out towards the wast blue ocean. Hours went by but not once did the boy move. At first, people assumed that he was sea sick and laughed at him behind his back, but as time went on, they threw worried glances.
The freckled boy's name was Portgas D. Ace, former captain of the quite infamous Spade pirates, but since some time one of Whitebeard's many crew men. The kid was only seventeen, but he had still managed to make a name for himself during his short time as a captain. On all photos that got printed in the various newspapers he was always seen grinning with wind in his unkept hair.
Now, sighs escaped him every other minute. Marco, the vice captain on 'Moby Dick' watched the new recruit from a distance for a long time before he slid down from the barrel he sat on and walked over to Ace, taking a seat with his back leaning against the railing. Ace didn't look up at the other man when he sat down, but kept staring at the moving waves.
“How's it going, kid?”, the phoenix man asked, neither him looking at Ace. There was along pause before the black haired boy answered and Marco almost considered getting up again. The wind ruffled the boy's hair, effectively covering his dark brown eyes from Marco and the rest of the world. Shaking his head, the blond made a motion to leave when Ace finally opened his mouth to speak:
“Is this ever going to end?”
“What's gonna end?” Confused, but yet intrigued, Marco sat down again.
“Everyone leaving me, and me leaving everyone!” finally taking his eyes of the sea, the boy fixed his brown gaze on the tanned face of the phoenix. He hadn't been crying, but the wind had whipped his eyes red. Marco shook his head, and put a comforting hand on his shoulder.
“It's ended now. I, the old geezer and the rest of the crew are your new family and friends now.”
Huffing, Ace shrugged his shoulders , still with his eyes on Marco.
“I've heard that statement many times before. You know, I have had quite many families.”
Counting on his fingers, he begun;
“”My so called father, my mother, gramps Garp, Dadan and her family, Sabo, Luffy... And then the Spade pirates and finally: you guys.”
Marco raised an eyebrow, but remained quiet, and so Ace continued with a grim sigh.
“At least you all have one thing in common; you betrayed me, or got betrayed by me.”
“What makes you say that?”, the blond frowned.
“Because it's true!” Ace almost yelled in the face of the blond. “My father betrayed me and my mother, first by making her pregnant and then by leaving her. And if it wasn't for me, then my mother would still be alive! After growing up with that, I swore never to trust anybody ever again!”
“But you did, didn't you?”, Marco stated calmly, judging from Ace's gloom look. For a single second, his depressed face was replaced with the hint of a smile. It seemed as if not all memories were bad memories.
“You did trust someone, and you had fun doing it.”
Immediately, the pale smile was gone, replaced by dark eyes once again engaged in a staring contest with the ocean.
“As long as it lasted, yes.” Supporting his chin in his hands with his elbows resting on the wooded railing, Ace coughed to clear his throat from the dry wind.
“His name was Sabo...”, he begun and then he told the story about his best friend and their adventures together. The volume in Ace's voice rose a little when he told the phoenix about how they slew alligators and bears, and how they time after time did the old classic eat-and-run. But when the raven's history took a sudden turn towards a darker path, his voice shrunk back to its former small state.
Marco, who finally had thought that the freckled boy's suffer and sulking was over, found himself biting his lower lip when Ace told him about the day Sabo got captured by his own parents, the burning of Grey Terminal and then, lastly, about the day when this Sabo had set sail and met his doom at the end of a World Noble's rifle.
“If I just had saved him from his father, that would never have happened! I betrayed Sabom my own brother!”, he whispered, looking down on his boot clad feet.
The blond man was for once unsure what to say. The story about the three brothers sure impressed him, but with that end, what was he supposed to say to his crew mate? He had never before spoken to the boy as much as he had this evening, even if he had been a part of the crew for almost a week now. He could never have guessed that the grinning face on the wanted posters hid such a tragic past.
Marco didn't need to say anything as Ace continued:
“After that, I promised my little brother and myself that I would live my life without regret and to live my life just the way I wanted to. And so I did, and when I turned seventeen, I set sail to become the greatest pirate that had ever lived, despite the fact that my grandfather wanted me to become a marine, the exact opposite of my plans.”
Although seeing Ace's point, Marco couldn't help but to let out a soft snickering at the though of the infamous Fire Fist as a marine. Ace too smiled weakly, even though he had showed another example of a betrayal in his life.
“I found myself a loyal crew and we raced into the world. I really thought that we were unbreakable... until Whitebeard proved me wrong. There was nothing wrong with the crew at all, they fought until their blood boiled. It was their captain that suddenly stood in front of a dilemma. They could run or they could fight and thus lose. Either way, I would betray something, my crew or my way of living. And so the story go; I betrayed my crew by losing.”
“Ace you...”, Marco begun. “you can't live with the idea that everyone is going to betray you, especially not on this crew, You've heard Thatch, Jozu, Vista and the others and what they call the old man Whitebeard, right?” 'Pops', 'Father', 'Dad' and he calls us his 'Sons'. That's the way this crew works. We're like a big family. Now, I can't help if you had a tragic past, because even I admit that you've had a tough time. I can however hope that your misfortune with families end with this one. I can't promise that you won't betray us, that I can only hope. But I can promise you that this family will never let you down, despite what enemies you meet and despite what problems you encounter. We will always be there for you, like a family.”
Weakly, Ace smiled at Marco's words. A small light of hope, resembling that one Sabo had lit for him many, many years ago burned in his chest. Once again he looked out towards the ocean, but this time he looked straight ahead towards the sun and the future. All he could do now was to wait and hope that Marco was right and that the flame in his chest would continue to burn.