And I’d Know Your Face if I Was Drunk and Blind and Dead

by Solena2

Summary:

Sometimes, Sabo wonders about who he used to be.
He gets the chance to find out when he bumps into Fire-Fist Ace at a bar.

Notes:

so one piece is currently eating my entire brain.

asl just makes me so insane… especially ace and sabo like. wdym ace dies not knowing sabo is alive. wdym sabo only remembers when it’s too late to save him. oda when i fucking get you

i wrote this all in one go. like, stopped to eat dinner but other than that this just grabbed me and wouldn’t let go until it was done. nearly 4k in one day… that might actually be a new record for me

Chapter 1: Hey There, Stranger

Notes:

hey guys i decided to make a podfic of this. link here if you’re into that.

it’s interesting how a podfic can let me convey stuff through tone and pacing that’s difficult to get across through a pure text medium… i wouldn’t say it’s necessarily the better way to experience this fic but it definitely lets me explore certain aspects of it differently

anyway you guys should like check it out and stuff i’m fairly proud of it

Amnesia is a funny thing.

You know essentially nothing about whoever you were before the fateful day Dragon fished the corpse of before-Sabo out of the sea and set his best doctors to reviving it, until you woke up in a body you have no connection to, a face you had to learn how to recognize in the mirror.

You feel like a ghost, some days. Possessing the remains of whoever you were before that day, moving his body like it’s your own.

Hell, for all you know, you are some kind of ghost, and not actually the original owner of this face at all. There’s a lot of wild shit out there in the world. It could happen.

All you have to connect you to this body are its instincts, the ones that take control of you ever so often, have you do things you don’t know how to do and say things you don’t know period.

Where’d you learn to swing a pipe, tie a cravat, hunt a bear? Where’d you learn the names of half a dozen poisonous plants native to the east blue? Where’d you learn to dive into the sea after a devil fruit user so casually you had time to take off your coat first, motions born of habit like you’ve done them a thousand times but you didn’t know you could do it at all until you already had.

Sometimes it feels like your body moves without your input, like the ghost of the person who had it before you is in here with you, leading your motions.

It’s terrifying, sometimes. Unnerving. A constant reminder of how much of you is just gone, destroyed in the same explosion that left half your face a scar.

You only have one eyebrow. Koala likes to tease you about it.

Other times, you hold onto those instincts as tightly as you can because they’re all you have left. You let your body move on its own and try to hypothesize about who you must have been, to end up with the eclectic collection of habits and skills and tics that defined you well enough to stick around when nothing else did.

Muscle memory is all the memory you have, from before. 

You know how to do a tea service and tie a cravat and the correct angle to bow to a prince or a duke or a king, and the clothes they found you in were finely crafted and expensive, and you must have been some kind of noble, right? 

But you also swear like you’ve spent your whole life in the slums and your best weapon is a pipe of all things and you’re better at wilderness survival than just about any of the other recruits, and where the hell does that fit in?

The only thing you remember, really remember, is that you don’t ever want to go back to where they found you.

So whoever you were, you guess you probably would have been glad to become someone else, if only to escape whatever you were running from.

But sometimes you do wonder, because-

Well. Working with the revolutionaries, you help a lot of people run from a lot of different things, and while some of them do it with a smile and not so much as a glance backwards, most of them have things they regret having to leave behind.

Possessions precious to them, heirlooms or childhood toys or gifts from precious people. Family who wouldn’t or couldn’t go with them. Places they loved, childhood homes or beloved parks or favorite beaches.

And every time you hold someone’s hand as you help them onto a ship and see them look back, you wonder if you did the same, once, setting out on that little wooden boat alone.

You spend a good ten years thinking you’ll never know. 

Life’s funny like that, sometimes. You’re somewhere around ten when Dragon saves you, and somewhere around twenty when someone recognizes you as a person you don’t remember being.

You’re in a shitty seedy little bar in a shitty seedy little town on some random island in the grand line, one too insignificant for either the yonko or the marines to bother with.

It’s too insignificant for the revolutionaries to bother with, either, but you’re between missions on the way back to Baltigo, so you stopped here to rest up and resupply before making the journey home.

Apparently, you’re not the only one to have that idea, because you’re about a quarter of the way through the bar’s stock of food when Fire-Fist Ace walks in.

You’re sitting in a booth in the back corner, one that has a good view of all the exits that doesn’t leave you especially visible to the rest of the patrons, keeping half an eye on everyone coming in and out because when you’ve been a spy since the age of ten it takes active effort to turn those habits off, and why would you when it’s safer anyway.

Because of that, you see him the second he walks in, and recognize him the instant you spot his face.

A common training game back home in Baltigo is to grab a stack of wanted posters, obscure the names, and compete over who can recognize them all the fastest. You get extra points for knowing their full name, epithet, current bounty, or alliances.

You and Koala play sometimes, but you got good enough at it that the normal way was too easy, so you made a more challenging version where you’d cover all but a few features of the poster, leave just the nose or the eyes or the jawline exposed. You’ve made a game of coming up with the hardest combinations of random pirates and weird features you can in hopes of being able to trick the other.

Sometimes you don’t use bounty posters at all, instead grabbing photos from newspapers or magazines to stop you from getting comfortable just practicing with the same photos over and over again and force you to actually learn appearances instead of just memorizing headshots.

One time, you won a game by recognizing Portgas D. Ace by only his freckles.

Those same freckles, now, are on the face walking up to the bar to order. He’s got the hat too, of course, the necklace, the tattoo on his arm, all things you really should look to first, but for whatever reason it’s his freckles you recognize him by, before anything else.

And the eyes, of course. You’d know those eyes anywhere.

Half lidded and paired with those slanted eyebrows, they should make him look angry as his gaze flickers around the bar, cataloguing the other patrons, but they’re countered by the easy grin on his face and the overall effect settles somewhere in the realm of charming instead.

When those eyes land on you, though, that grin falls away and he takes a full step back, face white like he’s staring at a ghost.

You shouldn’t be suspicious to him right now. You’re just sitting at your booth, hat next to you, resting your face in a cupped palm as you watch him.

And watching him- he’s one of Whitebeard’s division commanders. The whole bar is watching him. It would be more attention grabbing if you weren’t.

But despite the fact that you should be no one to him, just one of a dozen faces he’ll see once and never again, you watch his eyes flicker over your face, over your hat, over the pipe you’ve left resting next to you, and at no point does he look any less like someone just slapped him with a wet fish and then killed his dog.

He says, “Sabo…?” In a small voice, like he didn’t mean to say out loud at all, and.

How the hell does he know your name?

The Whitebeards only have minimal contact with the Revolutionary Army, and they’ve certainly never had contact with you, given you spend most of your time either stuck in Baltigo doing an army’s worth of personnel management or off on missions so secret Dragon can’t risk sending anyone he trusts less than his second in command.

Your face is almost completely unknown outside the upper ranks of the RA. The most anyone outside it has on you is a couple blurry photos of someone wearing a top hat and wielding a pipe. Your name?

Short of a leak from somewhere very high up, no one should know your name.

But somehow, Fire-Fist does, and he’s just said it in front of an entire bar’s worth of unknowns, and even if they don’t recognize you, they do recognize him and any one of them might wonder about the mysterious man Fire-Fist looks at like he’s seen a ghost, look at your hat and pipe, remember the few descriptions of the Revolutionary Army’s chief of staff, and-

Haha, that would be bad.

If the Whitebeards know your name, your anonymity is probably already doomed, along with who knows what else from whatever source leaked it to them, but there's no sense in turning that "probably" into a "definitely" by having a public confrontation over it. 

It's tempting to bluff him, to try and convince him he's got the wrong guy and slip away, but you need to know how he knows that name.

And the way he's looking at you, you doubt it would work anyway.

Instead, you shoot him a wink and paste a smile over your dread with the ease of long habit. 

Slip out of your seat, walk to the door without stopping to pay, and say, with just enough of a tease in your tone to make everyone in the bar assume you're just some random he had a memorable one night stand with or something, "Let's take this somewhere private."

You're already through the door by the time he gets enough of a hold on himself to say, "...Right. Yeah." And follow you. 

You’re careful to keep just far enough ahead of him that he can’t talk to you, but close enough for him not to lose sight of you entirely. He follows you obediently enough, and doesn’t call out to you or say your name again, and you aren’t sure whether that’s him being mindful of the locals or just the sheer power of whatever took hold of him when he first spotted you.

It’s surprising, honestly, how docile he’s being, letting you take him out of the bar and following you without a word. 

From reputation, he’s supposed to be a brash, impulsive type who acts before he thinks and picks a fight with anyone strong who crosses his path.

That lost, wounded expression is still on his face every time you look back to make sure he’s still following, and it sits in your gut like a stone.

—

You only stopped at this island by chance, planning to grab a quick bite and a few drinks before getting back on the Striker and continuing towards Alabasta to look for Teach.

It’s a dinky little place you don’t even know the name of, the kind of island people only stop at on the way towards somewhere else. The town, if it can even be called that, consists of a couple fisherman’s huts, a clinic, a little general store, and a bar. You guess there’s probably a farmer or two on the outskirts, too.

The only building here you’re interested in has a wooden sign tacked to the front that labels it “Denny’s”. You only know it even is a bar by the overwhelming stench of cheap beer and cigarettes you followed to find it in the first place.

You kind of pity people who dislike the smell of beer. They must have it rough.

You walk in and everyone turns to look at you. It’s something you’re used to, at this point, after three years as a pirate and especially after Pops promoted you to second division commander.

Being recognized anywhere you go isn’t really your favorite thing, but when it’s because of Pops you think you could almost manage to be fond of it. People look at you and see someone strong, someone who’s earned the respect of the strongest man in the world, and that’s not something you’re ashamed of being recognized as.

Still, you think any form of widespread public recognition towards you will always leave you a little unsettled. The more people looking at you, after all, the higher the chance someone might figure it out.

It’s nothing short of a miracle that you’ve made it to twenty without anyone who knew your sperm donor recognizing you. Especially when you somehow manage to look more like him every goddamn day.

You figure you’ve probably got a year or two max before someone notices the resemblance and you die. It’s part of why you were so determined to chase down Teach immediately, even against Pops’ orders - if you wait, you might never get the chance.

Speaking of recognition.

You walk into Denny’s and see a ghost.

It’s habit at this point to look around and catalogue faces wherever you go, in case you stumble on an enemy or a marine or Teach himself, and you’re doing that like normal when you spot him and the whole world stops dead on its axis.

He’s sitting in a booth near the back, a dozen empty plates piled in front of him as he idly plows his way through another. His hair’s longer, which throws you off for a second, and there’s a massive scar on his face which throws you off for a few more, but he’s looking at you and that means you can see him right back, and you would know that face drunk or blind or dead.

He’s wearing a black coat you don’t recognize over a cravat you do, and there’s a pipe next to him and on the table is a hat you’ve seen a thousand times.

How are you supposed to react to seeing an adult version of your dead brother in a random bar when you’re not even drunk?

You don’t mean to, but without your input, your mouth forms a shape and you exhale just enough to give it a sound, and you say, in a voice smaller than you usually admit to being capable of, “Sabo…?”

And it can’t be him, right? It can’t. He’s dead.

He’s been gone since you were ten.

He’s been dead so long you didn’t even realize you still remembered his face until you saw a warped reflection of it here, just now, on a stranger at fucking Denny’s.

But when you say that name, feeling like you’ve lost your mind, the reaction is instant. Subtle, maybe, but instant.

His eyes widen, his single eyebrow is raised, his mouth goes tight. He looks-

Scared. 

Before you can decide how you feel about that (bad. You feel bad) he’s smiling and the fear is gone like it was never there at all, and he winks at you and says, lightly and with a distressing tint of innuendo, “Let’s take this somewhere private.”

His shoulders, you notice, are still tense, for all his face has relaxed.

By the time you’ve managed to shove most of your emotions back in their boxes to be reexamined never, he’s already most of the way out the door, but you get yourself together enough to say “…Right. Yeah.” In something that almost approaches a normal voice and follow him.

He keeps ahead of you, flitting around corners only just slow enough for you to keep sight of him without breaking into a run, and you don’t have the composure to do anything but let him lead you.

If this is a trap, you’re the easiest mark in the world right now. 

But god, try and fucking find someone capable of being careful and cautious and reasonable in this scenario. He looks like Sabo.

He looks like Sabo and answers to his name and he’s scared of you and fuck, you’ll follow him anywhere in the world if it means you get answers about what the hell is happening here.

Finally, he’s led you out of town, past even the farmsteads at the outskirts, and he stops and lets you catch up to him.

He’s still smiling at you. You’re more certain than ever that it’s fake, because it’s the same smile he used to use when you’d run grifts together, back in the day.

And it can’t be him but god. Who else. Who else.

You should smile back, keep up your usual persona, turn all this into a joke somehow but you really just can’t.

You have no idea what face you’re making when you ask, on purpose this time, “Sabo?”

There’s nothing in the world that could prepare you for his response, because he asks, directly to your face and to all appearances dead fucking serious, “How do you know my name?”

Wh-

Huh.

What.

How. How are you even supposed to respond to that.

You settle on saying, somewhat desperately, “What do you mean how do I know. How would I not know. You still have the same fucking hat, how could I not know.”

He just sort of blinks at you, like he doesn’t understand why you’re freaking out, and you continue feeling like you’ve walked into some kind of upside down world where nothing makes sense. 

Sabo says, “…To the best of my knowledge, we’ve never met.”

The best of his knowledge. He’s so fucking pretentious. What the fuck did he just say. 

“What.” It comes out flat and sounds a bit like you’re being actively strangled. He should be thankful you managed to say something intelligible to that at all.

You feel like you’re losing your mind. God, fuck. You meet the ghost of your dead brother and he doesn’t even have the courtesy to fucking. Recognize you.

How is he even alive. 

Is it even him? God, you still actually don’t know that. This could be a fucked up hallucination or a devil fruit or some grand line bullshit. 

Surely a trap would know the name of the person it’s trapping, right. Surely. You’re like, famous now. Surely a trap wouldn’t take the face of your dead brother and make it say-

What does he mean you’ve never met. How could he say that. How could he say that, after everything.

Fuck.

But he just shrugs, looking baffled and only slightly less tense than before. “I know of you.” He admits, like it’s something to admit and not- “But I don’t recall us ever having crossed paths.”

His eyes narrow, a bit, and the air sparks with something as he says, very seriously, “I really do need to know how you know my name, Fire-Fist. I don’t exactly spread it around.”

He’s. Is he. Threatening you? Or even just. Trying to intimidate you. Into telling him how you know his name.  

“Are you joking?” You ask, somewhat hysterically, already knowing by the look on his face and the hand on his pipe that he’s not. “We- you- you’re my brother. I thought you were dead. Luffy thought you were dead. Dadan cried. Fucking gramps cried. And you’re just- you think I wouldn’t recognize you? You’re wearing almost the same outfit you did when we were kids, and you think I wouldn’t-“

You’ve worked yourself up halfway to punching him when you manage to bring yourself to look back at his face and stop cold.

He looks.

You don’t even have words for it. Uncomprehending, maybe. Horrified. Poleaxed. Like he just watched a stranger’s dog get shot in front of them.

The hand on his pipe relaxes. In fact, he looks like he’s about to straight up drop it from shock. He says, “Oh.” And, “Oh, no.”

That’s. Not promising.

Not that anything about this interaction has been anything other than deeply unpleasant and unnerving with the constant looming threat of whatever the hell is actually even happening here waiting to pop up and swallow you whole.

He puts his smile back on. He was always better at that than you. “I was kind of hoping to never have to have this conversation, but. I.” He falters, a little, at whatever face you’re making, but says. “I have amnesia.”

What.

That. Would explain some things.

But it also makes you feel like the world is tilting under you, and summons a sick feeling somewhere deep in your chest, and a lump in your throat.

He doesn’t. Remember you?

Sabo is still smiling. Not the lazy, vaguely predatory one from earlier that was so fake it made you nauseous, but a hesitant, apologetic grin, like he doesn’t know what other face to make. “I was in an accident at sea when I was ten or so and almost died. I got lucky and some passing sailors fished me out and treated my injuries, but, well.” He taps the scar that covers half of his face. “Head trauma, you know? I don’t remember anything from before then.”

He bows to you, and you flinch. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

You try to breathe. You mostly fail. “You don’t remember.” You say, in a numb voice.

He meets your eyes and gives you possibly the only earnest expression he’s given you today. It’s awkward and unsure and guilty and he says, “No, I don’t.” He hesitates before continuing, “I know this is probably. Unfair to ask of you, given the wound I’ve evidently reopened just by being here, but. I’ve always… wondered. About who I was, before.”

That is really unfair to ask of you, actually. Kind of fucking cruel, to ask you to tell a stranger with Sabo’s face what he was like, when you’ve spent most of the last decade only so much as mentioning him once in a blue moon, and only to people who knew him.

But you’re weak, and you don’t think you can bear to let him go this soon after seeing him again, even if he’s someone else entirely now, so you say, “I’m on my way to Alabasta right now. If you’re not busy, you can come, and I’ll. I’ll tell you everything.”

Sabo, finally, gives you a real smile. “I’ll call my boss. I have some vacation time saved up anyway.”

Notes:

might write a part two at some point where they go to alabasta and meet luffy. or the inevitable marineford fixit bc you know that’s what this premise is ultimately a setup for
might also add art… still new to the fandom so i haven’t drawn ace at all yet but i have drawn sabo like thirty times in two days. when the autism hits amirite. i even actually described things for once so there’s like. clear visuals i could draw

i always feel so gypped in reunion fics when sabo sees ace and instantly remembers. like i get it was sorta like that in canon but cmon guys. draw it out a little. make it hurt first. what’s hurt/comfort if you don’t hurt me, y’know?
not that this is really hurt/comfort… if i write part two, maybe. as it is it’s mostly just “ace and sabo’s terrible horrible no good very bad day”

i know a lot of people like to write ace getting mad at sabo immediately but like. personally if i were in that situation i would be too busy going “what the fuck? no seriously what the fuck is even happening?” like yeah he might be angry if you gave him a couple minutes without explaining anything so he could get past the incredulous “what the fuck”s to the angry ones but even then he’s just gonna go right back to baffled and horrified when sabo keeps earnestly professing to have never seen him before in his life
because like. how do you even react to that, man

edit: ok added some art. might add more we’ll see

edit 2: ok i’m most of the way through writing chapter two so i guess this isn’t a oneshot. i’ve got a pretty clear roadmap in my head of how this is going to go but i already ended up having to split my original plan for chapter two into two separate chapters because it got too long so like. we’ll see how things go. i’m like 7k in and i haven’t even gotten to luffy yet. this was originally just supposed to be a quick little single scene fic what happened…
uhhhh i’ll just add tags as i update. i know how annoying it is when wips tag for stuff they haven’t added yet. you can probably guess all the major plot points anyway

Chapter 2: Didn’t I Know You, Once?

Notes:

why is this so long… usually when i do multichaps the chapters are like 2k each. this is like 5k what is this.

also, and this goes for all my fics - feel free to tell me if you spot any grammar or continuity errors. i do proofread but sometimes i miss stuff. for this chapter especially there’s probably some errors since i wrote a solid portion of it on the bus on my phone.

You still need to eat, and Sabo still needs to do… Whatever it is he came here for. Resupply, probably. You offer to treat him if he eats with you, but he says he’s already full.

You know damn well he’s not. There were only a dozen or so plates on his table when you saw him, earlier. He could’ve eaten twice that at ten and somehow you doubt his appetite has gotten smaller as he’s grown up.

God, he’s grown up. 

You both have, but seeing him as an adult… It has you off-balance, even now that you’re back at Denny’s, alone at a table with no Sabo to be seen. 

He doesn’t want to be seen with you, you think. What he said earlier, about people not knowing his name… Maybe he’s some kind of spy now, or something.

It would explain why you’ve never seen a bounty for him, at least. He tried to intimidate you earlier, even though he only knows you by reputation now, (fuck, you hate that. You hate that more than anything) so he must be strong enough to actually put up a fight, still, which means there’s no way he wouldn’t have a bounty by now unless he’s some kind of spy.

If he had a bounty, you could have found him years ago, before you were wrapped up chasing Teach. You don’t want to drag him into that. You know damn well this might kill you.

You wish you had more time. Time to chase down Sabo and rebuild something with him, time to watch Luffy become everything you know he’s going to, time with Pops and the Whitebeards…

But the clock’s been ticking since two years before you were born, and Gramps can only buy you so long. 

You don’t know how much time you have left, but you know it’s not a lot.

The mera mera no mi really is fitting for you, isn’t it? You’re a candle of a person. You’ll burn bright right up until you burn out, and then you’ll burn the brightest of all, that last guttering spark before the wick drops and the light dies.

You want to ask Sabo what happened to him so badly it’s killing you. From that vague, polite summary he gave you earlier, you wonder if he’d even answer. You wonder, if he did answer, whether it would be the truth.

This stranger wearing his skin, who’s spent ten years apart from you living a life you can’t even imagine-

You don’t know who he is, really, beyond the superficial. He has no reason to trust you enough to let you learn.

Sabo was always the best liar, between the three of you. You don’t know if you know his tells anymore. 

You probably just won’t ask for any details about his life he doesn’t volunteer. If he lies to you and you believe it, it might actually just fucking break you.

He agreed to come with you to Alabasta, though. And he wants to know more about himself.

So that’s something.

In a fit of pique, you actually pay for your meal. You don’t feel like giving the runaround to whatever passes for law enforcement on this island for however long it takes Sabo to meet up with you. 

And if you starting something managed to scare him off- yeah. Better not to chance it.

He appears just about instantly when you get back to the Striker, and you think he was probably waiting for you somewhere out of sight. 

More evidence he doesn’t want to be seen with you. He didn’t even want to be spotted with your boat.

There’s absolutely no good outcome to you unpacking your feelings about that right now, or probably ever. In the box they go.

The one good thing about him leaving you to eat on your own is it’s given you a chance to get yourself back under control. You greet him with your usual grin and he’s polite enough to pretend not to notice the way it falters every time you look at him too long.

There’s nowhere on the deck of the Striker that’s safe for a passenger. The prow is constantly getting hit by waves and needs to be aerodynamic to cut through them, so for all it’s big enough he can’t sit there. The stern is perpetually on fire by design and he doesn’t have your devil fruit.

You’re not going to ask about his scar, or about how he feels about fire these days. He agreed to go with you. For the sake of your sanity, that’s all you need to know.

Marco’s gone with you on the Striker a couple times. Theoretically, he’s one of the few people who actually could share the deck with you, but he usually perches on top of the mast in phoenix form instead.

Deuce used to go with you everywhere on the Striker, back at the very beginning of things, before the Whitebeards and before the Spades had a proper ship. Because of that, the Striker is actually built to accommodate a single passenger.

Only a single passenger, and they can’t be too heavy or they’ll unbalance her, but she can do it.

It’s just… not quite how you’d expect.

“Are you sure this is safe?” Sabo asks again, sitting on top of the sail with an arm around the mast. 

It’s nostalgic in a way that bites, but you laugh anyway. “I told you, the mast is reinforced! I used to do this with my first mate all the time. It’s not going to break.”

He makes a skeptical noise. “And having the weight of an entire extra person up here isn’t going to capsize us the second we hit a wave? This isn’t exactly a big ship.”

“That’s what the counterweights are for!” You tell him. “Geez, you’re always such a-“

You stop.

He leans over to offer you an expression of polite concern. “Ace?”

You told him, earlier, to stop calling you Fire-Fist. Hearing him address you like a stranger with that face was too much. Watching him look at you without an ounce of attachment while calling you your name in the same cadence he always did might actually be worse.

There’s no depth to that expression at all. Like he doesn’t even understand why you-

His hand reaches up to fiddle with his cravat, the same way he always did when he was feeling guilty about something, and some of the tension leaks back out of you. He knows why you stopped, he just doesn’t know if he should say anything.

Before, he would have either pushed until you admitted the problem or distracted you until you forgot about it. Now, neither of you know what to do with each other at all.

“Sorry.” You say, putting your grin back on. “Just- I guess some things don’t change.”

This time, it’s his turn to flinch. He looks vaguely unnerved under the congenial front that seems to be his habit now as he asks, “We argued about stuff like this- before?”

“Yeah.” You say. “All the time, actually. You always thought I was too reckless about stuff, and I thought you were too cautious. We’d always butt heads over everything. Most of the time literally.”

Sabo leans in slightly as you speak, telegraphing his interest as clearly as the subtle rhythmic movement of his gloved pinky rubbing his ring finger telegraphs his discomfort.

So his tells really are the same, then. You’re not going to tell him that. It would probably just make him uncomfortable.

Besides, you. You don’t want to stop being able to read him. The fact that you still can is most of why you haven’t had a full-on breakdown yet.

Don’t think about that.

“Was I right?” He asks. “To think you were reckless?”

He’s smirking just slightly, enough to tell you this is a tease. You smirk back. “We were both reckless back then. You only managed to seem reasonable because I was louder about it.”

He snorts, but his fingers start to rub together more forcefully and you trust them more than his face, so you cut the conversation there and set off.

You’re not looking at him when you light up. If he flinches- you’d rather not see.

—

It’s a long way to Alabasta. You’re not entirely sure whether you’re a fan of that.

On the one hand, it gives ample time for Ace to tell you stories about yourself, and as much as hearing about all the things you don’t remember makes you feel like a stranger in your own skin, it’s just-

It’s just such a relief to finally have answers. 

You’ve made your peace with your amnesia, but that doesn’t mean the looming curiosity about yourself hasn’t dogged your every step since you were ten. (You know, now, that you were ten, and the doctors’ guesses on your age were correct) 

And you always wondered, too, what kind of person you were, especially given the indications of you having been a noble. The looming fear that Before-Sabo was the same kind of selfish spoiled little brat you see so often-

You used to wake up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night, convinced your old self was a demon hiding under your skin, waiting for the right moment to reveal itself and bring down everything you’d come to believe in.

Obviously, now that you’re an adult, you know you were just a kid back then, and that even if you were shitty, it would be more an indication of the environment you grew up in than any inherent aspect of your own nature.

But still, there’s an intense sense of both vindication and relief in finding out that while you were a noble as you’d suspected, you’d hated it so much you ran away at five to live in a dump and eat garbage instead. That you’d hated it so much that being dragged back was the catalyst that made you set sail in the first place.

Maybe it’s just that you’ve spent so long trying to forgive yourself for an origin you weren’t even sure of, and now you’re hearing that you were more similar to who you are now than you could ever have hoped for, and it just.

You’ve spent so long wondering about, and resenting, and trying to forgive the image you built in your head of who you must have been, and now Ace is telling you-

that it was just you, all along. That you’re barely different at all, apparently so similar that he keeps stumbling on it, landing face first in the only thing, seemingly, that’s really changed.

He keeps forgetting you don’t know him. Not in a way that makes you think he’s in denial, or trying to paste the old version of you on the current one, but in subtler ways.

It’s more like… you’re similar enough to who you were before for him to subconsciously fall into old patterns with you, and every time he notices he’s done it he stops immediately and you remember that every second you spend with him is one you spend tap-dancing on an open wound.

But he’s an adult, and he’s the one who offered for you to travel with him. It’s not up to you whether whatever closure he’s hoping for from this is worth revisiting that ten year-old grief. 

And he certainly seems to think it’s worth it. He’s so terribly careful with you that it’s almost worse than if he ignored your feelings entirely. He changes subject so smoothly every time you start feeling out of place in your own skin that the only reason you even notice it is because you’re trained to.

The fact that he can pick up on your discomfort so easily is. Unnerving. 

It’s another reminder that he knows you, even though you don’t know him. It’s one thing to hear about the person you used to be but aren’t anymore. It’s another to realize you still carry enough of Before with you to be recognized by it.

He might know tells you don’t even remember you have. Preferences you haven’t reestablished. Habits you’ve forgotten you remember.

It’s not that he knows you better than you know yourself, because he doesn’t. It’s that he knows a side of you you’ve never seen, and the longer you talk to him the more you realize that forgetting your past doesn’t mean it stops having shaped you.

But overall, even despite all that… Learning about yourself is something you’re glad to have the chance to do, and that makes you glad this is a long enough trip for you to ask as many questions as you want.

There are downsides, but not ones you aren’t prepared for or willing to endure.

What you forgot to take into account when you agreed to this, however, was the means of travel itself.

Sitting on the sail isn’t terribly comfortable, but it’s not awful either. You’ve had worse. The sea spray soaking you and the cold wind chilling you to the bone is unpleasant, but bearable, especially given there’s a roaring fire directly under you.

The fire, of course, is the issue. Intellectually, you trust that Ace won’t burn you by accident, especially given how many times he’s apparently taken passengers this way, but logic doesn’t do much against the sick swoop of your stomach every time a spark reaches especially high or you feel a flare of heat.

Looking away makes it worse, so you keep your eyes trained on Ace and his fire, but no matter what you do here it’s not going to help. It’s just not.

It’s not fun. You aren’t having a fun time.

You don’t tell him that. It’s not like he can stop using his fire to make you more comfortable. It’s the only way to propel his ship. 

You should have arranged to meet him somewhere, or something. You thought you’d be fine, because it’s not that you can’t handle fire, it’s just that you don’t like being near it, but you really neglected to consider the effect it would have on you to spend a twelve hour trip sitting on a sail above an open flame like a fucking smoked ham.

He stops in the middle of a story about the two of you and Strawhat Luffy deciding to hide from Garp the Fist (your… grandfather? Apparently? What the hell is this family tree) by running away to live in an treehouse and says, “Sabo?”

“What?”

He’s looking up at you, and you can see his expression. He looks worried and thoughtful and a bit guilty underneath. “It’s not the story making you uncomfortable, is it.”

It’s not a question. You smile and deflect. “Who says I’m uncomfortable?”

Ace sighs and drops his head back down to a normal angle instead of craning his neck at you. There’s something almost bitter to his tone as he says, “I know you, remember?”

It’s kind of the crux of the whole issue that you don’t.

You don’t say that, but he must read it in your silence, because he says, “Yeah, I know.” And then, “It’s the fire, isn’t it.”

Ten years as a spy and you might as well be an open book to him. You wonder how much he’s seen and hasn’t mentioned for fear of scaring you off. You wonder how ready to crawl out of your own skin you must look for this to be what gets him to stop letting you pretend you can hide.

The flame cuts out abruptly. “I used to hate it too, you know.” He says. “After Grey Terminal.”

“Hm?”

You move to jump down from the sail, but he holds up a hand to stop you. “Wait a minute for it to cool or you’ll get burned. I.” He stutters. Starts again. “I could barely even look at fire for years, after everything. Had to steal a portable oven so I could cook without freaking out. So… I get it.”

A fire logia who doesn’t like fire? That’s a new one.

Ah, but he did say he used to. “Did you get over that before or after eating your fruit?” You ask out of sheer morbid curiosity.

Ace lets out a dry laugh. “After.” He tells you. “A while after. Guess there’s something to be said for exposure therapy. The deck should be cool enough now.”

You hop down. “It’s funny. You’d think I wouldn’t have a problem when I don’t even remember why I don’t like it, and yet.” You say. “You really didn’t have to stop on my account. I knew what I was getting into when I agreed to this, and we still need to get to land somehow.”

The look he gives you at that is just a little too knowing. He catches your discomfort immediately again and turns those too-perceptive eyes away, but says, “The break will help though, won’t it?”

You don’t respond. He puts his grin back and says, more casually, “Besides, I was planning to stop for lunch at some point anyway. It’s not like I can really eat while sailing.”

He keeps doing that. Cutting away from a topic every time you start getting antsy about it. It’s… considerate.

The fact that he can see through you consistently enough to consider you is most of the problem, in this case. It makes you feel terribly vulnerable. You’ve made a career out of hiding your weak points.

It’s not his fault he knows you, or that you’ve apparently changed far less than you thought. It doesn’t have to be his fault for you to hate it.

“Lunch?” You ask, letting the subject change happen. “How are you planning to manage that? Somehow I doubt you’ve got enough food on this ship to feed the both of us.”

Especially when he has to know how much you eat.

But he just laughs and pulls out a fishing rod. “I’d be broke in a week if I actually paid for all my food! Nah, this is way easier. Especially in the Grand Line, since stuff gets so much bigger out here.”

So you end up fishing.

You’re lucky enough to get a bite from a smallish sea king, so it doesn’t end up taking too long. Ace hesitates when you catch it, but you tell him to go ahead and roast it. A little discomfort is better than risking food poisoning from raw seafood.

It doesn’t take long for you to finish it off, between the two of you. Ace’s appetite is apparently the same as yours, though you’re a bit hungrier because you ended up leaving the bar early this morning.

By the time you’re both fed (not full, but enough to get you the rest of the way to Alabasta), you feel a little less like a stretched out spring and a little more like a real human being.

The break can’t last forever, though, so soon enough you’re hopping back up into the sail and settling in for seven more hours of gritting your teeth.

Ace keeps the conversation moving, doing his best not to leave you alone with your thoughts for too long. You probably appreciate it under the intense spinecrawling unease, but you’re actively avoiding acknowledging your own emotions right now so you’ll decide how to feel about it later.

At some point in between telling you stories about your past, he finds time for some questions of his own.

“So you’ve got amnesia.” He says.

“Yeah.”

“How’s that work?” His tone is idle, but there’s a thrumming tension underneath it.

This was bound to come up at some point, huh? And he’s given you the answers to a lot of questions today. It’s only fair to respond in kind.

“Well, I told you I don’t have any memories from before I set sail.” You say. “I get… Impressions, sometimes. Or hunches. I kept a lot of muscle memory and general knowledge. But I lost everything related to my own history.”

There are multiple kinds of amnesia. Yours… isn’t one generally associated with head injuries.

Ace stays quiet, so you keep talking. “The doctor I spoke to about it, back then, called it traumatic amnesia. They said it was probably initially due to the head injury, but that not regaining any of my memories as I healed meant I probably didn’t want to, on some level. Apparently it’s one of the human brain’s defense mechanisms… to just lock away any memories you can’t deal with.”

The doctor’s theory was that the head injury temporarily blocked off most of your memories, but that you should have regained them after as you healed and those parts of your brain were stimulated with oxygen.

And it’s true that you did regain things, back then. At the very start, right after waking up, you struggled to talk properly because you’d forgotten most of your vocabulary, had to relearn how to walk and eat, and over the next few years almost all of that eventually came back.

Almost all. You still struggle with words sometimes. It’s part of why you tend to speak so formally - if you forget a common word, often it’s easiest to just substitute with a more technical term instead.

And if you overwork yourself too hard, even ten years after what happened, all the old symptoms come rushing back… confusion, short term memory loss, impaired hand-eye coordination…

Koala teases you for skipping work, but she lets you get away with it because you both know that you overextending yourself turns you into an active liability to a far more extreme extent than it does for an average person.

The fact that it’s only abstract, general information that came back to you made the doctor think that you must be repressing your personal memories. A psychological problem, rather than a physical one.

The fire crackles under you, and you realize that Ace still hasn’t spoken. You mentally play back the last thing you said and wince.

He asks, finally, “You don’t… want to remember?”

You sigh, and try to figure out how to put the truth in a palatable shape. "Until today, I didn't know- I always thought-" It's hard to phrase it. "I assumed the old me was someone else. I was…"

You don't talk about this, ever. But you get the sense Ace didn't talk about you much at all before today, and he's. If he's willing to dredge out his grief for your sake, it's only fair to return the favor. So you admit, quietly-

"I was convinced, for years, that one day I would wake up and be the old me again, and that when I did the current me would just… disappear."

He looks up at you. You don't have words for his expression. You keep talking. "I didn't know anything about myself, except that I was probably a noble. I didn't think-"

"You assumed that forgetting made you a different person." He says. His tone is hard to interpret.

You confess, "I still don't understand how it didn't."

Waking up on Dragon's boat was a rebirth. You came into the world at ten years old as a blank slate, an untouched canvas, and had to remake yourself anew.

Or so you'd always thought, before today. 

So can you really be blamed for assuming that regaining your memories would constitute the death of your new self? 

It's a bitter kind of relief to discover that your oldest fear is an impotent one solely due to that new self never having been such at all.

You always thought you were starting fresh, blazing a new path and deciding who to be in absence of outside influence, but all along you were just acting out the steps of a dance you'd forgotten remembering. 

Fuck, that bites.

You can't say any of that. Not to him.

He hesitates again, the conversation lulling in favor of the crashing waves and crackling flames, and your knuckles are definitely white under your gloves from how tightly they're clenched.

It takes him a while to speak again. "...And now?" He asks. "Do you still…?"

Not much point in fearing your old self anymore, is there. Don't say it like that. He's too good at reading you to miss the bitterness. 

Instead, you say, "...Don't get your hopes up. It's been ten years. I don't know if I even could remember, at this point." But "...If I wasn't curious at all, I wouldn't be here."

If you'd met him five years ago, you would have run the second you realized how he recognized you. But it's been long enough now for you to be more even-keeled about it. 

As a teenager, who you were at ten mattered a lot to you. The missing part of your life was still the majority until recently, even discounting the first couple years you wouldn't have remembered anyway. 

As an adult, it's easier to be objective about it. You can look back on those missing years, now, with a sense of detached curiosity. Who you were at ten defines your origins, not your current self. 

It's not an open wound for you anymore, the way it is for Ace. It's probably only an open wound for him because you showed up again. 

You're still a little bitter about how little you've apparently changed, but it's not an attack on your identity like it would have been a few years ago. You don't like it…

But you'll get over it, at the end of the day. You're still you. 

"I wouldn't be opposed to regaining my memories," You tell Ace, "But there's no way to know whether it'll ever happen. Maybe I'll wake up one day and get everything back, but I doubt it. Maybe interacting with you and hearing about my past will unlock a few things, but most of it… It's been ten years. A lot of those memories might just be gone."

“Alright.” He says, sounding like he’s talking more to himself than to you. “Alright. That’s. That makes sense.”

There’s another long silence before he remembers that he’s trying to distract you from the fire and starts talking again.

When you’re about an hour away from Alabasta, sailing with only the light of Ace’s flames to see by because the sun went down ages ago, he says, “I should mention- I’m going to Alabasta because I heard a rumor that a person I’m hunting is here, but Luffy is also supposed to be somewhere in the area.” Luffy is… right. Strawhat Luffy. The other brother. “I was planning to try and meet up with him. You don’t have to come, but…”

“You want him to know about me?” You ask. “Are you sure that’s- It seems a little cruel to tell him I’m alive but don’t remember him.”

Though maybe it’s crueler to ask Ace to carry that knowledge alone.

“He deserves to know.” Ace says.

You think about what Ace has told you about Luffy. “I’m not entirely opposed to meeting him if you think that’s for the best, but from the stories you’ve told me… do you think he’ll accept it? If he tries to force me to remember, or to be the person you lost-“ You grimace. “You would know better than me whether there’s a risk of it, but if there is, I’d rather not chance it.”

It wouldn’t be good for anyone involved, if that happened.

But Ace just shakes his head. “I guess I can see how you’d get that impression of him from what I’ve told you. And make no mistake, he is an idiot most of the time. But…” He looks up, letting you see a fond smile on his face. “When it comes to this sort of thing, he’s actually surprisingly mature. Never tell him I said this, but he’s… honestly probably better at this stuff than I am.”

The fact that Ace hasn’t had a full-on breakdown is already impressive, given how fucked up this entire situation must be for him. He must really think highly of Luffy’s resilience.

At this point, you trust Ace about as much as it’s possible for you to trust someone you’ve technically only known for a day. You say, “I’ll defer to your judgement on the matter, then.”

You still have a few days before you need to go back to Baltigo anyway.

Notes:

the way i’m handling sabo’s amnesia in this fic is heavily influenced by my mom, since she got a traumatic brain injury when i was pretty young and spent the next decade recovering from it. she didn’t have complete amnesia like sabo, but she did forget a lot of stuff and had trouble accessing the memories she did have. the bit about how sabo’s doctor expected him to remember after his brain was “stimulated with oxygen” is a reference to a real-life treatment for brain injuries where patients are placed in a room with a high oxygen concentration for a few hours per session over multiple sessions, which can help with memory loss.

the thing with amnesia is that a lot of the time the memories aren’t actually gone, they're just either inaccessible or the brain has forgotten where to look for them. the oxygen thing basically like… necromancies cut-off memories back to life. i remember after my mom tried it she was really shocked because she remembered things she’d thought were entirely gone.

uhh don’t quote me on any of the specifics about that though. i was pretty young when my mom did it so it’s possible i’m misremembering some stuff about how it worked

since sabo does get all of his memories back in canon i have to assume his amnesia doesn’t have an entirely physical cause, (especially since it was seeing the news about ace’s execution that brought them back) so i’m going with a combination of him genuinely losing access to a lot of memories after the explosion, most of which he regained access to over time, and him subconsciously repressing the rest. i know repressed memories often end up being just as hackneyed a trope as completely unexplained amnesia, but i tried to make it at least somewhat realistic for this fic, so hopefully it doesn’t feel too cliché…

the bit about him sometimes struggling with words is actually taken from my own experiences. obviously everyone forgets words sometimes, but when it happens often enough that you have to develop coping mechanisms for it, i think there is an actual word for it. (which, predictably, i can’t remember…)
it’s a reasonably common issue for people with head injuries or certain flavors of neurodivergence, and Sabo has trouble with names in canon, so i feel justified projecting on him here.

Chapter 3: We Can’t Go Back to Yesterday

Notes:

with every chapter i write sabo becomes more autistic so i decided to just add the tag and roll with it. luffy is also autistic in this but i’m not tagging it because that’s just canon

i love digging into how all of them have distinct and equally unhealthy ways of repressing all of their emotions. funky little guys <3

It’s well into nighttime when you land in Alabasta, so you and Ace book a room in a local inn and resolve to start looking for the Strawhats tomorrow.

You still can’t afford to be publically connected to him, so he handles the booking on his own and you meet him in the room afterwards.

Once you’re both inside, he says, “If I ask you why you don’t want to be seen with me, will you give me a true answer? I’d rather you just tell me to fuck off than lie, if you really can’t say.”

Your identity is need-to-know even in the upper ranks of the Revolutionary Army. It’s part of how you’ve stayed under the government’s radar so long. 

You trust Ace not to maliciously reveal information about you, even after just a day of knowing him. How much he cares about you was obvious within about five minutes of meeting him, and you don’t think he’d do anything to risk losing you a second time.

So that just leaves… “Are you good at keeping secrets?”

To your surprise, that prompts a shocked laugh. “Am I-?” He sounds incredulous. “Fuck, sometimes I can almost forget you’ve got amnesia, and then you pull out something like-“

Ah. You’ve stepped on a nerve again. “Sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.” He says. “Just- you don’t have to worry about that. I’ve been keeping secrets since the day I was born.”

That’s a loaded response if you’ve ever heard one. You wonder what secret he could have that would be big enough to prompt that reaction.

You won’t ask. The person he entrusted that secret to… doesn’t really exist anymore. “Okay.” You say instead, before lowering your voice. “The reason I can’t be publicly associated with you is that I’m the chief of staff for the Revolutionary Army. The World Government hasn’t figured out my identity yet, but if they start looking into me as an associate of yours and connect my face to the rumors…”

Ace’s eyes go wide. “Oh. Oh!” He says. “I knew it! You are a spy!”

How did he- oh, right. You must have given it away when you tried to intimidate him for knowing your name back on that island. Sloppy, but you don’t think you could really have been expected to do any differently, given the information you had at the time.

And he probably would have suspected it no matter what, just on the basis of you not having a bounty. He said you were always equals as kids, so he probably assumed you’re still in his league by default.

He’d be wrong to, of course. As far as you know, he doesn’t have haki yet, probably because he’s been relying on his logia invulnerability. You’d obliterate him in a real fight.

It’s tempting to bring that up just to see how he reacts, but finding an isolated place to spar would be difficult and risky, and haki stands out too much this early in the grand line for you to throw it around willy nilly just to show off.

“Chief of staff, though…” He muses. “That’s second in command, right? Nice.”

You let yourself smirk smugly. “Thank you.”

The next day, you head out as soon as shops start to open to pick up a disguise. You and Ace spoke a bit more last night about how meeting with Luffy is likely to go, and he warned you that Luffy is almost definitely going to end up at the center of some kind of commotion even without the added scrutiny that will inevitably result from Ace showing up.

The shopkeepers you buy your disguise from might remember you, especially given your distinctive mode of dress, but that’s easy to solve by simply going out without your vest, coat, or hat.

Without those, you just look like one of the dozens of tourists and travelers out doing shopping of their own.

You always hate dressing differently. You have one outfit and it’s a good outfit and you like it. Why would you want to wear something else? It would be such a pain to try and find something you like as much as what you usually have on.

And getting new clothes is always so annoying. You end up realizing they aren’t as comfortable as they felt in the shop, or the fabric will start to itch after a few hours, or you’ll find out whoever made it fucked up the seams so that it limits your mobility too much to be practical or rides up in awkward places and the list just goes on.

But you’re a spy and sacrifices must be made, so as much as you dislike it, you’re practiced at quickly acquiring and putting together disguises when circumstances demand it.

Alabastan fashion is something of a mixed bag. On the one hand, it’s easy to get something that covers most of your body without being suspicious, which is always nice. On the other hand, you like your clothes to be tight and well-fitted, which is the antithesis of most of what’s on offer here.

And unless you want to boil in the heat, you’ll need to follow that trend.

What you end up with isn’t completely awful, but you’d still rather be wearing your normal clothes.

Once you’re dressed, you meet back up with Ace in order to look for Luffy.

You spend a bit wandering from stall to stall with him while he shows vendors Luffy’s wanted poster and asks if they’ve seen him before one recommends you try asking at a local restaurant instead. Since neither of you have eaten yet, you decide to follow his advice.

You and Ace chat idly about various nothings, too mindful of the restaurateur and other patrons to get into any discussions with actual substance, and then Ace abruptly faceplants into his food.

You look around, but you can’t see anyone who might have attacked him among the panicking civilians, and you aren’t picking anything up with haki either.

Was he drugged…? You sniff the chunk of meat still on his fork, but you can’t detect anything amiss. There’s plenty of odorless poisons out there, of course, but the restaurateur’s panic seems genuine and you’re still coming up empty on who could have even engineered this in the first place.

It’s possible that the vendor who recommended this place to you was luring you here for someone to poison Ace, but the complete absence of anyone coming up to take advantage of his unconscious state is throwing you off. 

The other patrons start freaking out and assuming he’s dead, suggesting he must have eaten something poisonous in the desert. In hopes of ferreting out anyone who might know the actual cause of this, you don’t tell them that a) he’s just unconscious, you can literally see him breathing, and b) you came from the port, not the desert, and this is the first time either of you have eaten since you arrived.

Then, abruptly, he sits up and goes back to eating like nothing happened at all.

“What the fuck.” You say.

He has the gall to look confused. “What?”

“What do you mean, “what”? You just collapsed! Why aren’t you freaking out?” You ask.

The bystanders echo your sentiment. Ace rolls his eyes at them, but when he turns back to you he’s instead wearing a guilty smile. “Sorry.” He says. “I forgot you don’t know.”

Ah. 

So he was expecting this, then. In that case, it probably wasn’t poison at all.

Some sort of condition, then? You’ve been trying not to ask when you stumble on things you used to know about him but don’t anymore, but if he’s liable to go around fainting regularly, that’s not something you can ignore. “Does this happen often?”

“I have narcolepsy.” He tells you. “It’s, uh-“

“I know what narcolepsy is.” You say, your panic finally draining. “So nothing’s wrong?”

He smiles. “No, nothing’s wrong. I’ve just been-“ He waves a hand. “Stress makes it worse, is all. I’ve kind of had a lot going on lately.”

That’s an understatement.

You’re still in a public place, for all the crowd dispersed once he explained, so you guess he’s talking around it. “And you’ve had it since you were a kid?” 

You ask because he expected you to know, but he shakes his head. “No, it was- after. I just tend to forget not everyone knows, since I’ve had it so long.”

So it wasn’t something you knew and forgot, it was something you never had the opportunity to learn because you died.

That… doesn’t actually make you feel better. 

Thankfully, you’re quickly distracted from the looming spectre of your own emotions by a marine walking in and picking a fight with Ace.

That guy is… Captain Smoker, you think? He’s not high enough ranked for you to know a ton about him, but the RA makes an effort to keep track of people who have the potential to become threats, and you vaguely remember reading a dossier on this guy at some point.

He’s… a smoke logia? Yeah, that sounds right. So it won’t be practical to fight him without haki, which stands out too much this early into the grand line for you to feel comfortable pulling it out unless it’s truly necessary.

And Ace is a logia too, so it’s not like Smoker will be able to do anything to him. You’d have recognized him a lot quicker if he knew haki. Logias competent at haki are rare enough to be worth remembering.

In accordance with that logic, when Smoker turns to you and asks, “And who are you? I don’t recognize you. Are you an associate of Fire-Fist?” You give him a placating gesture and say,

“I’m not wanted by the government,” By your real face or name, at least, “So I’d rather not get involved in this.”

“Oi, you’re just hanging me out to dry?” Ace asks, but it’s easy to tell he’s just playing up his offense as a tease.

You’re just about to offer a witty comeback when both Smoker and Ace are abruptly sent flying through what sounds like at least ten walls by-

Holy shit, that’s Strawhat Luffy.

He doesn’t seem to have noticed either you or the immense amount of property damage he just caused from the yelling of the restauranteur, so you duck your face just low enough to be out of his sight and continue eating.

You’d rather not confront him without Ace. You have no idea what you’d say. Especially when you're mostly only planning to reveal yourself to him out of a vague sense of moral obligation anyway.

As an amnesiac, you don't really have a personal stake in this situation. 

Better to just stay out of things for now. 

–

As you chase Smoker (and, by extension, Luffy) through the town, you try to figure out what you’re going to say when you catch up.

You probably should have come up with something last night. You would have had more than enough time, given you were awake for most of it. Your insomnia always gets worse when you’re stressed.

You didn’t want to, though, so you didn’t!

Sabo probably thinks your narcolepsy is acting up because of him, and you’re happy to let him. As much as you dislike the thought of him blaming himself for it, you dislike the thought of explaining what’s actually been eating you lately a lot more.

He really doesn’t need to know how little time you have left to live.

In that sense, the amnesia is almost a relief, if you ignore the way that thinking about it too long still makes you want to fall apart like an overextended jenga tower. He won’t have to worry about the ticking clock because he doesn’t know about it anymore, and he won’t have to grieve you when you die because he doesn’t remember why he’d even care.

…

…Yeah, all of those emotions can go in the box. Time to think about literally anything else!

You should really pay more attention to the chase, anyway. Barring something completely out of left field, there’s absolutely no way Luffy’s equipped to deal with logias yet, so he’ll definitely need your help!

Thankfully, you catch up with him just in time to cover his and his crew’s retreat. You haven’t caught sight of Sabo since getting knocked through a dozen walls by Luffy, but he’ll probably show up once the fighting is over.

Sabo not wanting to be seen with you is still- not your favorite. But at least you know he has a reason for it now. Besides, it’s not like you need him to handle anything here, and he obviously knows that.

You wonder what he’d do if you actually did need help.

…That’s not going to happen anytime soon. Put it in the box!

If you were ever in a truly desperate situation, it would probably be because of your blood, anyway. You don’t want him getting dragged into that.

Better for him to just go back to forgetting you after this.

………That can also go in the box. 

Man, you’re being so maudlin today! You should focus on what’s in front of you! Look how much taller Luffy’s gotten! Look at all his crewmates! Is that Roronoa Zoro? Huh, yeah, that’s… one, two, three swords. Did he seriously recruit a pirate hunter for his pirate crew? That’s such a Luffy move. You’re so proud.

You and Smoker waste each other’s time for a bit before you judge that Luffy and his crew are probably far enough away to disengage. 

When you catch up to Luffy, he’s alone, completely lost, and not even slightly concerned by this. He really hasn’t changed at all in three years, has he?

You’re grinning like a loon, but thankfully that’s your default state and he won’t notice how mushy you’re feeling. Some mooks try to jump you (always hilarious) and you watch him fight in between taking out enough of them to maintain your brotherly superiority. He doesn’t fuck up the rebound on his punches and send himself flying even once!

Watching him like this, it’s obvious how much he’s grown into his powers, and how much he’s grown up.

He’s still the same old Luffy as he’s ever been, but you can see the shadow of real maturity underneath his usual… Luffyness, and you’re so fucking proud of your baby brother it hurts.

He’s been an arrogant little shit since the day you met, but back then he was a child shaped ball of insecurities with a paper thin shell of ego slapped on top. (…..not that you’re one to talk) 

Now, though, he walks with the confidence of someone who knows his own capabilities and really, genuinely believes in his ability to handle whatever comes his way, and it’s absolutely amazing to see.

He’s finally come into himself. How could you not be proud of him, in the face of that?

You watch him launch himself back to his ship with a smile before grabbing the Striker to catch up.

As you hitch the Striker to his ship, you hear him asking, “Who’s that guy?”

So Sabo made it. That’s. Good.

You really aren’t looking forward to Luffy’s reaction when he finds out.

One of his crewmates (you have. Absolutely no idea who any of them are except Roronoa but it’s one of the girls) answers, “He said he’s with Ace.”

“Oh! Are you one of Ace’s nakama?” Luffy asks excitedly. You wince.

If Sabo winces with you, there's no sign of it in his voice as he says, "I'm not one of Ace's crewmates."

It's a very diplomatic answer that completely dodges the actual question despite seeming to answer it. He was always good at those.

You're done tying the Striker to Luffy's ship, so you jump up onto the railing and brace yourself for a conversation you really don't want to have. 

"So, not to kill the mood, but there's something important I need to tell you."

–

Sabo is alive. 

That's what Ace says, crouching on Merry's rail. Sabo is alive and he doesn't remember you anymore. 

The blond stranger smiles at you, and he's guilty and uncomfortable like he has to tell someone their dog got shot.

There's a big scar on his face. It curls around his eye like flames. 

He only has one eyebrow. That's funny, but you don't really feel like laughing right now so you just stare at it instead. 

Ace is sad but he's pretending to be happy. You hate when he does that. 

You tell him, "Stop smiling if you don't mean it." 

It wasn't a very good smile anyway. Hesitant and shaky and fake. When he drops it he's sad and worried underneath. 

He says, "Luffy…"

Why start a sentence if he's not going to finish it? Your mouth is a flat line under the shadow of your hat. 

You look at the stranger again. He's just standing there like he's not sure what he's supposed to do. Sabo always knew the right thing to say.

So he can't be-

But he feels like Sabo, underneath the fake-polite face he's wearing and the eyes that look at you as a stranger. 

He doesn't recognize you at all. You can tell. He just knows you by your wanted poster. 

So he can't-

Ace wouldn't lie. You let the shadow stop covering your eyes, even though they're wide and you're biting your lip to stop it from wobbling. You ask, small, "It's really Sabo?"

Ace nods. "Yeah, Luffy. It's him."

You're glad he didn't put the smile back to say that. He wanted to. Maybe his new nakama let him get away with it, but you won't. You can't. 

Sabo shuffles his feet awkwardly. "Sorry. I know this isn't the kind of reunion you would have hoped for."

You say, flat. "I'm not a kid anymore. Why would I hope to meet someone who's dead? What's the point?"

Dead people don't come back. They're just gone. Sabo taught you that. 

But he's-

“Are you a ghost?” You ask.

When you look at him, it feels like you’re the ghost. Like someone picked up the whole world and tilted it and you’re the only one who noticed. It’s a really bad feeling. You hope it goes away soon.

He says, “I’m not a ghost.” But he’s lying. He still lies the same way.

It’s funny because it’s true, isn’t it? He’s telling the truth. But that’s his lying face. He doesn’t even believe himself.

You feel like being mean, so you tell him that. “I know what your lying face looks like.”

He flinches and you go back to feeling bad. Ace flinches too and you feel worse. But it’s not fair of him, coming here with that face when he doesn’t even know you. 

It’s not fair.

You don’t tell Sabo to put his smile away because if he says no you’ll probably cry and you can’t do that.

If you cry, Sabo won’t know what to do about it anymore. He won’t tease you and call you a crybaby and complain when you blow your nose in his throat napkin while never actually trying all that hard to shove you off him. 

You don’t know what he’d do now. Probably just keep standing there like a stranger.

He says, “Sorry.” Again. And then, “I’m not really the person you’re looking for, am I? I just have his face. I think that’s about as close as you can get to being a ghost without actually dying.”

You can see Zoro behind him having an emotion about that. You ignore him.

“Will Sabo’s memories come back?” You ask. Will Sabo come back?

His smile is sad and unyielding. “I don’t know. Probably not.”

You say, “Okay.”

He’s still just standing there. He doesn’t know what to say to you. He’s trying to find the right mask to put on to make everything better even though he knows there isn’t one.

Ace is still crouching on Merry’s rail. He puts his smile back, but just a little bit and he needs it right now so you let him. “At least he’s alive, right?” He asks you. “And he’s doing well for himself.”

You ask, “Is he?”

Sabo says, “Definitely. I have a good job and good nakama, and now I have answers about my past too. I’m not someone you have to worry about.”

Ace wants to worry about him. Sabo isn’t letting him close enough to.

You’ve never been the type, personally.

This is sad and hard and you still don’t like looking at this new Sabo’s face and watching him not recognize you properly, but feeling bad about it won’t change anything so there’s no point.

Instead, you smile at Sabo, big and bold and bright like the sun, and say, “I’m glad that Sabo is here, even though he’s different now.” And that’s something true, and he should hear it. 

You tell him, just to make sure he knows, “Even if Sabo doesn’t remember, we’ll always be brothers.”

Notes:

didn’t describe sabo’s disguise because i’m planning to draw it at some point. also because i haven’t decided anything about how it looks other than it probably involving a turban.

edit: have now in fact drawn sabo’s disguise. i put in an image description for folks with screen readers also, like i’ve been doing with all the art in this fic. decided to do it in full color for funsies.

i’m going to beat that shot dog metaphor into the ground and none of you can stop me

this chapter was hard to write because i didn’t really want to rehash canon but i also had to acknowledge it enough to show how sabo being there effects things. i mean in this case his only effect is emotional i have made absolutely no changes to the plot (yet) aside from him Being here but you know what i mean.

i’ve decided the only strawhat ace immediately recognizes is zoro because like. everyone seems to recognize zoro? idk when zoro started bounty hunting but if it was before ace got to the grand line i feel like there’s a solid chance he’d have heard of him. he doesn’t recognize vivi because i can only assume given her successfully infiltrating baroque works for years that she’s just not very recognizable outside of alabasta

luffy pov is so fun to write… i went back and forth a lot on how i wanted him to sound but i’m pretty satisfied with how he came out here. he ping-pongs a lot in canon between being about as observant as a dead rat and being borderline telepathic so i’m choosing to read him here as having had observation haki since he was really young but also having just absolutely no awareness of this and not having the training to use it in combat until the timeskip

he’s interesting because he’s not a big thinker and he usually doesn’t bother to think but he’s also like. not nearly as stupid as he lets people believe, you know? like i’m pretty sure at least half the time he’s actively playing it up to be a troll

basically i’m writing him as papyrus undertale but like. three steps to the left. they’re the same brand of guy imo

anyway uhhhh. next chapter should be marineford so look forward to that

Chapter 4: But if it’s All the Same…

Notes:

oh god this is so long why does this keep happening

It should be hard for you to keep time, waiting in your lonely little cell in the bowels of Marineford for them to drag you to the execution stand, but the guards tell you every time another hour ticks down on the clock.

They’re so blank and professional about it that it’s hard to tell whether it’s pure sadism on their parts, orders from the top, or them trying to treat you with some small measure of humanity.

The motive doesn’t really matter. You don’t care.

It’s hard to care about much of anything, right now. You’re going to die in a little over three hours.

The cell is cold and they haven’t offered you either a blanket or a shirt to combat it. You haven’t felt cold in three years, but between this and Impel Down you’ve had no shortage of time to get reaccustomed to the sensation.

Cold leeches into your feet through the bare stone floor. They took your boots.

They tell you it’s time to get up, and you stand without protest. A pair of black slippers are placed on the ground a few feet in front of you. You step into them.

You pause for a moment at the sheer size of the staircase out, but a guard prods you so you start walking.

They’re probably expecting you to fight back, but this far in, what’s even the point? You can walk or be dragged. At least the first one hurts a little less.

You’ve been fighting this fate for twenty years. You’re tired. There’s nothing left to do.

This is the end of the line.

You’ve been in chains for weeks, between Teach delivering you to the marines and waiting for your execution in Impel Down, and it’s left you out of shape enough for your muscles to burn as you climb the endless steps.

You don’t let it show. Your dignity is the only thing they haven’t been able to take from you, though not for lack of trying.

The soft shoes they gave you are comfortable and perfectly fitted. It’s somehow more insulting than if they’d left you barefoot.

You’re so fucking tired. You just want to lay down. 

It’s over. You’ve lost. Can’t you rest yet?

Three more hours.

For all that the sun is shining, it’s not any warmer on the scaffold than it was in the cell. Not that that’s surprising, this early in the morning.

You don’t let yourself shiver as your knees hit the icy metal.

Today is the last day. You promised, years ago, to live without regrets, partly because you’ve known this was coming as long as you’ve understood what death even is. 

You’ve had a good life, haven’t you? You sailed the seas as a pirate, both under your own flag and under Pops. You’ve seen the world. You’ve found people you love and who love you. 

That’s all you’ve ever wanted, isn’t it?

Still, it’s hard to be satisfied with a death like this. Especially now, of all times.

You failed to avenge Thatch, and you’ll never get another chance to try. You’ll never see Luffy become pirate king, or even find out if he survived charging into Impel Down after you like an idiot. You’ll never get to reconnect with Sabo, or find out if he’ll ever remember anything.

At least he’s far away from here.

You’ve accepted, at this point, that Pops is going to come for you no matter how much you don’t want him to, and that he’s going to bring the crew with him. And a lot of them are probably going to die failing to save you.

God only knows what’s happening to Luffy right now, but he’ll keep trying to come until he’s no longer physically able to.

Jinbei lost his position and was sent to Impel Down because of you. He’s lost his freedom over you, and the greater consequences that’s going to have for fishmen as a whole are impossible to predict but indisputably inevitable.

All of these people are suffering because of you. People are going to die today because of you.

In the face of that… It’s a relief that Sabo doesn’t care about you anymore. That he’s forgotten you and moved on to make a life you’re not involved in.

At least then there’s one person you love who you can trust to stay out of this clusterfuck and just let you die.

So in the end, you can’t truly say you’re dying without regrets. Not when you’re going to take so many of the people you love with you. 

Especially when you’re dying like this.

A platform overlooking the island, on your knees, two swords at your throat. They’re really just treating you like a clone of that man, aren’t they?

You’ve spent your whole life trying to carve out a legacy separate from him, and in one move they’re wiping it all out. You’ll only ever be a footnote in history. Gold Roger’s son, executed at Marineford as a message to all pirates who’d dare to aim for the top that not only will they be hunted until the day they die, the government won’t be satisfied until the very last drop of their tainted blood has been washed clean from the Earth.

Bastards.

They didn’t even grab anyone important for it. All of the high ranked marines are in position to fight the battle they’re waiting for with Pops. They evidently had no big names to spare for doing the dirty work of actually taking your head.

A flash of blond hair in one corner of your vision and brown in the other, two nameless, faceless, irrelevant soldiers who the world will forget just as surely as it forgot the names and faces of the soldiers who executed the pirate king before you were born.

They’re going to kill you, and even you can’t be bothered to care about them as individuals because they’re just another extension of the many armed chimera the World Government calls to heel. 

They’re not the ones killing you, really. They’re the weapons, just as much as the blades they wield.

Footsteps sound behind you, and Fleet Admiral Sengoku orders the executioners to set their swords aside for a moment.

You know what’s coming, but you can’t stop the way your eyes widen, the way your hands shake behind your back.

Tick, tock.

Time’s up, Gol D. Ace.

Pay the piper.

And you’re not ready, and you’d never be ready in a million years, but Sengoku turns to you and asks, “Who is your father?”

You tell him the only name that will ever pass your lips as an answer to that question, but he barely even seems to hear it. He just looks at you with those smooth, faintly disdainful eyes, and asks again.

If he’s trying to get you to say it yourself, he should know that’s never going to happen. Pops is the only father you’ll acknowledge. The other man… He doesn’t deserve the title.

But what you acknowledge doesn’t matter here. Your death was ordained two years before you were born, and you’ve run out of road.

So Sengoku speaks of Baterilla and Roger and Portgas D. Rouge daring to believe she could defy fate with no power greater than that which was vested in her own two hands, and he says it.

“Ace, your father was…” You choke on nothing but your own abject despair. “…The king of the pirates, Gold Roger.”

He could at least say the fucking name right.

“If you waste all of your fear on the dead, you’ll have none left for the living.” Says an unfamiliar voice from-

Holy shit, he’s right behind you. Who the hell is this? How long has he been here?

By the way Sengoku scrambles, he’s as startled as you are, which is… Isn’t that guy supposed to outclass the fucking admirals? Who the hell has the ability to sneak up on someone that strong?

The wind kicks up, gone from stiller than death to howling in an instant. The same voice says, “You should worry less about winning your war against a dead man, and more about winning your war against me.”

Sengoku says, “Monkey D. Dragon. What are you doing here?”

Monkey D. fucking who?

What.

You’re so busy reeling that you barely notice your executioners as they start to move, the brown haired one turning away to do something you can’t see as the blond silently places his sword down on the scaffold to fiddle with something under his coat.

“What does it look like?” Asks Dragon’s implacable voice. “The Revolutionary Army is making a stand against injustice.”

The wind continues to howl as the blond executioner turns around, allowing you to see his face as he holds a key out towards you.

Sabo places a finger to his lips as if there’s even a single thing you could think of to say right now. You’ve been struck entirely dumb. You don’t think you could put together a rational sentence right now to literally save your life.

He’s not supposed to be here.

He was supposed to be safe.

He came to save you but he’s supposed to be safe because he’s not supposed to care anymore but he’s. Here.

He’s here.

He came for you.

Sengoku yells something invective in Gramps’ general direction that you lose over the howling wind and your own distraction as Sabo reaches behind you and the key he’s holding clicks in the lock of your cuffs and they fall open and you finally stop feeling so goddamned fucking cold.

And he’s looking at you with worry and unbearable fondness and absolutely no trace of the stranger you met in a bar on the way to Alabasta as he whispers, so quiet that only you can hear it over the wind, “Hey, Ace. Sorry I’m late.” And you know somewhere deep down in your fucking soul that he’s not talking about crashing your execution. “I got a little lost for a while, but I-“

His voice cracks along with his smile. “I’m here now.”

And he is. After all these years, here he is.

You think. You think, just maybe- you might not die today, after all.

—

For all you part ways from Ace and Luffy in Alabasta without making any plans to reunite, you’ll be surprised if you don’t encounter them again at some point in the future. Neither of them seem like the kind of people to ever really leave someone’s life once they’ve decided to enter it.

Especially given the whole amnesiac presumed dead brother thing.

You’re… surprisingly okay with that, actually. For all that spending time with them is a constant reminder of what you’ve lost (for them even more than for you), neither of them make you feel like they’re trying to force you to fit in the whole your other self left behind.

Both of them seem to genuinely just… want you to be happy and free and alive, regardless of whether or not that involves you being the brother they remember or even much of a brother at all.

You’re hardly going to reorder your entire life around them now that you know they exist, but they don’t expect you to, and that…

…Means a surprising amount to you. So for the sake of both the connection your old self had with them and the fondness the you of today discovered over the few days you spent with them, you decide to keep tabs on the both of them for the foreseeable future.

You aren’t going to go out of your way for them or anything, but if you happen to be on a mission or passing through somewhere and hear they’re nearby, maybe you’ll pop in just to say hello.

But you’re a busy guy, so things never quite end up aligning over the next few months, and you find yourself watching them from a distance instead, listening to reports as they come in from the RA’s expansive spy network.

You haven’t diverted any RA resources in order to track them - that would be an abuse of power, and somewhat pointless besides, given how frequently and unpredictably they move around. 

Rather, you’ve just sent out orders to relay any information on Ace and Luffy that the network happens to come across directly to your desk, adding them to an already existing and fairly expansive list of POIs who are passively watched but don’t have anyone specifically assigned to stalk them or infiltrate their lives.

(Ace was actually already on the list, you just adjusted things a bit so that you’re the one assigned to keep track of reports related to him rather than the person usually in charge of analyzing the Whitebeards’ movements)

It’s not even suspicious for you to do this, given that by the time you made it back to Baltigo after meeting Ace and Luffy, the Strawhats had just finished defeating Crocodile and taking back control of Alabasta for the Nefertari family. Despite how new he is to the Grand Line, Luffy has already proven himself to be the kind of person who makes waves wherever he goes.

Especially given how immediately after successfully deposing a warlord, Luffy recruits Nico fucking Robin to his crew, aka the woman the RA has been unsuccessfully trying to recruit for about as long as you’ve been alive.

Is it weird to feel a little proud of him despite him being essentially a stranger to you? It’s probably weird. The feeling persists regardless.

To be fair, he does a lot to feel proud of. Seriously, destroying Enies Lobby? Punching a celestial dragon? At this point, you’re half-tempted to try and recruit him.

You don’t think he’d agree to it, though, with how vocal he is about his life goals. Besides, Monkey D. Luffy isn’t the kind of person who’d ever be satisfied working from the shadows. 

One day, you get a call.

“Hello, I was told that this is the number I’m supposed to call with any news about Fire-Fist Ace?”

By the hesitant voice and the snail’s anxious expression, you’re probably speaking to a rookie. You say, “Yes, that’s correct.”

“Um, alright.” They say. “So I was in this bar and some marines came in- Uh, I’m not normally an informant, but I’m on leave and I just happened to end up near them, so-“

Ah, so this person has absolutely no idea what they’re doing and probably even less of an idea who they’re currently talking to. You offer a reassuring smile to the snail and tell them, “I understand. For the future, I’ll note that you don’t have to describe all of the details of how you heard something unless it’s directly relevant to the credibility of the information. What did they say?”

It’s probably something fairly significant if they were able to get your number to call in the first place. If they just overheard someone talking about Ace’s movements or something then whoever they initially contacted would have simply passed it on to you themselves.

“They said, um- they were celebrating and they got pretty drunk, and one of them said, uh- and his captain got mad at him for it, so it’s probably true?”

This probably isn’t the time to explain that one of the most common tactics for spreading false information is to have someone say it in a crowded place and then pretend to get in trouble for it. You ask, patiently, “What did he say?”

“He said that Fire-Fist and Blackbeard fought on Banaro island, and then- uh.”

You already know about the fight on Banaro, as well as about the fact that Ace supposedly lost it. No one’s been able to tell you what happened afterwards. 

Patience, Sabo. Don’t agitate the poor nervous rookie. No matter how terrible they are at getting to the point. “I heard about that. Did they say anything else?”

“Yeah, they. Uh. It’s why I- I knew I had to call it in, even though I’m just a grunt. He said-“ The rookie stutters, again, and you decide your best bet is probably just to wait for them to spit it out on their own. “He said Blackbeard captured Fire-Fist, and traded him to the marines in exchange for becoming a warlord.”

Somewhere, a dam begins to crack.

You freeze. “What.”

“Do you- uh. Should I say it again?”

Your voice comes out flat, your congenial mask left dead on the floor as you say, icy, “I heard you the first time. What else did they say.”

A bead of sweat rolls off the snail. “Sorry! Um- he said they were taking him to Impel Down. Then his captain got mad at him and he changed the subject. That’s all I know!”

“…Right.” You say, voice still flat. “Thank you for informing me. I’ll ensure that you get a commendation for going out of your way.”

“It’s- this is big, then?” They ask.

“Very.”

Mechanically, you ask them for their name so that you can track them down later to give them both the promised commendation and a mandatory course on giving reports to superiors.

Then you hang up and make a few more calls, to check whether the information is reliable. 

It is.

You stand up and walk to Dragon’s office.

Knock twice.

Wait.

He says, “Enter.”

You do that. Then you close and lock the door behind you, and say, “We need to disrupt the execution of Fire-Fist Ace.”

Dragon blinks. “The what?”

You have a headache. It pulses at your temples, low and insistent. “I just received word that Blackbeard traded him to the marines in exchange for Crocodile’s old position.”

Dragon’s face is never really all that readable. It’s especially difficult right now. You’re having trouble staying focused. “And you believe they’re going to execute him? It would make more sense for them to use him as a bargaining chip against Whitebeard.”

To bargain with Whitebeard there’d have to be any possibility of the marines willingly giving Ace up once they have him. 

Wait, but why wouldn’t they-? God, your head is pounding. “No.” You say, feeling like you’re speaking through a long tunnel. “They’re going to execute him. It’s not in doubt.”

Dragon is still looking at you. Your whole body feels hot. Are you sick? “I’m aware of your personal connection to him.” He says slowly, eyes pinning you like a bug, like a code he’s halfway to deciphering, “But I fail to see what business the Revolutionary Army has with a war between Whitebeard and the marines.”

You told him yourself about meeting Ace, back after Alabasta. He gave you an uncharacteristically gentle smile and a pat on the shoulder and told you he was glad you’d found your answers.

He thinks this is a personal whim…?

No, of course, why wouldn’t he, why else would you be here in his office halfway out of your mind. It should be a personal whim, shouldn’t it? There’s no reason why the revolutionaries should interfere in this, is there?

Your entire body is soaked in sweat and you feel nauseous and you say, “They aren’t going to kill him because they want a war with Whitebeard. They’re going to decide that’s an acceptable cost to pay for killing him.”

You barely understand the words coming out of your own mouth. You feel like you’re losing your mind. You say, “They’d pay any price to kill him.”

It’s a mark of how physically and mentally unwell you must look right now that Dragon is visibly concerned as he leans forward and asks, “Sabo?”

“They have to kill him.” You say, distantly. “It’s the only way they can make up for the shame.”

Dragon says, “Sit down before you fall.” And you collapse into the lone chair in front of his desk like a sack of gravel.

It feels like you’re in the middle of a hurricane localized entirely to the inside of your skull. Wind and rain battering your eyes and ears and nose from the inside, an endless groaning pressure as something too big to fit inside you claws its way out.

But don’t you know? There’s peace in that kind of storm, too. In the eye of a hurricane, the very air itself lies dead and still.

Like sunlight breaking through the clouds, clarity strikes you with all the force of a haki empowered fist. (And you remember what those feel like, don’t you? Don’t you?)

“They’re going to kill Ace,” You say, “Because he’s the son of Gol D. Roger.”

Dragon’s eyes go sharp.

“He told me.” You say. “When we were kids. He thought I’d want to kill him for it. Everyone’s always wanted to kill him for it. How could I have forgotten? How could I-?”

You feel like you’re drowning. But you have to- you can’t collapse yet, even if you feel like you’re boiling alive in your own sweat, flashes of alternating hot and cold running up and down your body without respite or reprieve, but you have to make Dragon understand-

“They’re trying to mulligan the botched execution that started the great pirate era.” You tell him. “The publicity will be- it’s an ideological warhead. It’s not that I can’t let him die. I can’t, but that’s not why- if they get away with this, it’ll set us back years.”

You remember- you. God. You remember.

It’s not all there. Your head is a jumbled maze of new and old connections and sense memories and vague impressions and feelings all thrown together without regard for your ability to parse them, but.

The important parts, Ace and Luffy, the blood of the first pirate king and the boy who will become the second come hell or high water, Grey Terminal and the forest and the treehouse-

Dragon says, “I see. Is there anything else? If not, I’m taking you to the medical ward.”

You can’t think of anything, to the extent that you can think at all right now. Just to be sure, you ask, “So you agree? You’ll help me save him?”

It’s hard to read Dragon at the best of times. Even moreso when you’re so out of your mind you can barely string a coherent thought together. You’re halfway to full-on collapsing like a puppet on cut strings. Your vision is swimming. 

But you have to be sure. You have to know whether you’ve gotten through to him, whether any of what’s coming out of your mouth right now even makes sense.

You have to know whether he’s coming with you or you’re going alone. 

As if he knows the fears keeping you upright, Dragon smirks, and says, “It’s been a while since the Revolutionary Army reminded the government of why they should fear us. It wouldn’t do to let them become complacent.”

—

Mere moments after you reassure him, Sabo falls unconscious, sheer willpower evidently having been the only force keeping him upright.

It’s… unnerving. You rarely see him so passionate, these days. Hopefully the stress of having regained (Some of? All of?) his memories won’t exacerbate the symptoms of his brain injury too severely. He’ll never forgive you if you have to bench him from this mission, medically necessary or not.

Carefully, you gather him into your arms and carry him toward the medical ward. Hopefully they’ll have some idea of what’s happening to him and how to soothe the most violent effects.

While you walk, you consider recent revelations.

Months ago, when Sabo called you saying he needed a few days off, you’d been surprised. You’re aware that regular vacations help to create a more productive workplace, and you’ve instituted policies to that effect in the Revolutionary Army, but you and Sabo have always been cut from the same cloth in that regard.

Koala calls you workaholics. She… isn’t wrong to do so.

After his return, Sabo explained the reason for his uncharacteristic vacation, which assuaged your confusion on that front but brought up several more quandaries that followed you for the months to come.

It was distinctly gladdening to hear that he’d found people he knew prior to his amnesia, and that they were both good to him and readily willing to provide him the answers he’s been seeking as long as you’ve known him.

It was distinctly baffling to discover that you’ve somehow managed to adopt the brother of your son entirely by accident. 

Genuinely, the odds of that… they’re beyond your ability to calculate.

You’ve never spoken of Luffy to him, and that didn’t change after you discovered they’d known each other prior to Sabo’s amnesia. What would you say? It’s not as if you’re any kind of figure in Luffy’s life.

Ah, perhaps you could have brought it up as a commonality between you and Sabo?

Then again, that might be rude. He had no choice in the matter, after all, which is hardly analogous to your own situation.

Regardless, you’re glad that Sabo managed to find his brothers. He’s always struggled to form meaningful interpersonal relationships, barring a few notable exceptions, and while those in glass houses should take care in throwing stones, it’s not a trait you would prefer he have in common with you.

He’s much better at congeniality than you, so it’s less noticeable on him, but you raised him from the age of ten. You know full well that despite his friendly attitude, the list of people he truly lets his guard down with can be counted on one hand.

In light of that, it should be no surprise that the prospect of him reconnecting with his brothers and adding another two names to that short list is something you wish to encourage.

If he’s truly regained his memories, you’re happier for him than words can express. 

…Not that that’s an especially high bar, with you. Expressing much of anything has never been your strong suit.

Regardless, even the possibility of it would be enough to bring a rare smile to your face if not for the circumstances.

Back there, in your office… he looked as if his mind and body were ripping each other apart. Even now, his dead weight in your arms is sweaty and feverish, and you can’t help but worry for him.

The information that was so important for him to push through all of that, just to make sure you heard him and knew to help…

Those revelations, too, are ones you must ponder.

How is it, truly, that your father of all people came to be the guardian of the children of the two most wanted men in the world? A marine vice admiral, a man of duty as long as you’ve known him, and yet he went out of his way to protect a child his superiors would order dead without a thought not once but twice.

Luffy, perhaps, could be dismissed as mere sentiment, your father taking responsibility for his own blood. After all, were he to believe a blood relation to you a sin, he would have to criminalize himself long before he could do so to Luffy.

He did create you, after all. If one holds a responsibility for the crimes of their blood, should it not lie with the father before it lies with the son? 

This was the logic that led you to believe Luffy would be safe with him, all those years ago. That your father must be a man who understands the sins blood does and does not carry, or he would have taken the axe to his own neck years ago.

You do not share your father’s morals or even fully understand them, but his willingness to apply them with an even hand regardless of whether it benefits him is something you hold no doubt in.

It’s something you’ve always admired about him, for all that it inevitably leaves you opposed.

To learn that your father did the same thing for Roger’s son as for yours, years before Luffy was even born, is… warming.

It’s a reminder that at the end of the day, despite your differences, he truly is a man unafraid to stand by his principles, even if that should leave him in conflict with the organization he serves. That he didn’t just take in Luffy because Luffy is his grandson, but because he genuinely believed, as you did and do, that a child should not be held responsible for their parents.

You wonder, then, how he feels now, as the twenty year stay of execution he bought for Roger’s son finally reaches its end. There’s no doubt that he’ll be ordered to attend it. Sengoku will likely force him as a way of preserving his reputation, to prevent your father from being punished for hiding Ace by proving that he’s still a loyal government dog despite his transgression.

You wonder if he’d be more willing to see your side of things now. You asked him, once, before you began the revolution, if he’d ever consider leaving the marines. His answer back then was no surprise, but you wonder. 

If you asked again now, with him facing the execution of his adopted grandson for no crime greater than that of being born… would that answer change?

In the meantime, you need to prepare. You start making calls the moment Sabo is safely ensconced in the medical ward.

First to verify Sabo’s information, because as much as he would never deliberately lie to you he was also very blatantly not in his right mind during your most recent conversation, and you haven’t made it this far by being careless.

Soon enough, you know for certain that what he told you was both true and actionable, and you move to the next step.

Whitebeard is surprised to hear from you, and deeply unhappy with the news you provide him. He’s evidently aware of Ace’s parentage, though he’s reluctant to consider coordinating with you until you mention your indirect familial connection to Ace and your desire not to see either your blood son or the son you’ve raised be forced to grieve their brother’s death.

He does call you an upstart brat, but that’s par for the course when dealing with those from your father’s generation. 

A few days later, Sabo still hasn’t woken up, though your doctors assure you that his life isn’t in danger to any extent greater than the risks inherent to entering a coma of any length, and that he likely just needs time to reassimilate his lost memories.

You’re still worried. Unfortunately, no amount of handwringing will get him to wake up any faster, so you fill the time with more preparation.

A time and location for Ace’s execution is announced, allowing you to make a proper assault plan with Whitebeard, as well as put other things in motion to both distract the marines and to take advantage of the fact that they’re concentrating almost their entire forces at Marineford.

Since you won’t be bringing a large force to the main event, both to avoid possibly upstaging Whitebeard and to allow you to take advantage of your greater stealth capabilities relative to his forces, you’re free to launch a number of Revolutionary Army operations in places that are normally too well-guarded to be worth the losses you’d receive from attempting to either assault or infiltrate them.

Perhaps you’ll even be able to convince Vegapunk to finally let you spirit him away… or then again, perhaps not. He is rather fond of his government funding.

Along with launching operations of your own, you also contact Kaido and Big Mom to inform each of them of a few areas of interest that will be left wide open while the marines are concentrated at Marineford.

As much as you dislike encouraging them to wreak havoc, this at least allows you some marginal ability to steer them away from creating issues for you or Whitebeard, which will allow the both of you more freedom in concentrating your own forces.

With the sheer amount of marine firepower that’s going to be present at Marineford, you’ll need every advantage you can get. Even you aren’t entirely comfortable going up against all three admirals, Sengoku, your father, and the seven warlords all at the same time, even with Whitebeard there.

Though from the sound of things, only six warlords are likely to actually be available, given that Jinbei was apparently recently imprisoned in Impel Down for refusing to take part in the execution. 

And the allegiances of the remaining six aren’t necessarily predictable from day to day either. Boa Hancock alone is liable to be as dangerous to her marine allies as she will be to their enemies, to say nothing of the rest of them.

Unfortunately, you won’t be able to call upon Kuma, given what Vegapunk has passed onto you about his recent modifications.

Truly, the World Government's depravity knows no bounds.

Regardless, Marineford is likely to be a mess no matter what you do, so it’s important to concentrate as much overwhelming allied force there as you can.

When you call Shanks, he informs you that he was actually already planning to show up, barring any nonsense from Big Mom or Kaido. He seems amused to hear that you’ve taken the liberty of distracting them already.

He also asks you why you’re involved in this, to which you give him half an answer. Ace’s parentage, after all, isn’t your secret to reveal, for all that it coming out is inevitable. Instead, you merely tell him that Ace’s brother is your son and fail to specify which brother you’re speaking of.

The rest of your preparations wait for Sabo to regain consciousness.

—

What is justice?

Most days, it’s an easy question to answer. Justice is what’s right and what’s fair, in accordance with law and morality and the oaths you’ve sworn. Justice is the duty of the marines.

Some days, you have a harder time with it, watching Senny slowly crumble under the weight of every devil’s bargain and awful compromise between justice and reality he’s forced to make.

And that’s just life, right? Things aren’t always clear cut and easy. Sometimes you have to make sacrifices, and sometimes what you have to sacrifice is your own soul. There’s a lot of situations out there in the world where there just aren’t any good answers.

What was that old thought experiment again…? The train problem? No, right, the trolley problem, that was it. It’s something every marine faces, sooner or later, a situation where you have to sacrifice the few to save the many and refusing to choose for the sake of keeping your own moral high ground just means everyone dies.

You don’t last as a marine if you don’t understand triage. You can’t save everyone, so you have to concentrate on saving whoever you can, and sometimes you’ve gotta do some awful shit to manage it.

Senny’s always been good at triage.

You… not so much. It’s just not how you think. And thinking how you do is useful enough of the time that you don’t see a reason to change it. Why be a clone of Senny? You’ve already got one of him. It’d be a crime against humanity to have more than one person in the world wearing that dumbass bird hat. Better to just be yourself!

The marines are a force for justice. That’s something you truly believe. 

The World Government… ehhhhh. They’re a bunch of entitled asswipes who don’t know or care what it’s like for people on the ground, and they’ll demand blood over any damn thing. There’s a reason you’ve never accepted any promotions past vice-admiral. Fuck those guys!

Overall, you think the marines do good, despite the occasional fantastically evil bullshit the dickwipes on high order Senny to enable. There’s a lot of crime in the world, and someone has to keep order. That’s your job.

Your son asked you if you’d ever leave, once, like he didn’t realize how much you’re needed here. How much more bullshit would happen if there weren’t someone like you here, keeping the younger generation honest?

There’s a lot of corrupt marines out there, and a lot of shitty pirates. Who else is going to deal with them, if not you? Senny’s not a bad guy. but he’s on too tight a leash to solve most of it.

Sure, you could run off and join your son’s little army, but what then? If every good person in the marines jumps ship, who’s going to keep brats like Akainu in line? Someone needs to keep that sort in check.

Life’s all about compromises. If you’ve managed to shelter your son from that reality… well, good for him. The same goes for your grandsons.

It’s the duty of the older generation to safeguard the youth. If you’ve managed to make a world for them where they don’t have to think about this shit, you’ll count your life as a success.

Of course, with your brats’ fathers being who they are, you were never going to be able to shelter them forever. 

Your older brat got caught up in a fight he couldn’t win and got captured. Your younger brat decided to chase him into Impel Down because he has all the good sense God gave a rock.

…Wonder where he gets that from. Such a mystery!

 Anyway, it sucks. It just does! And there’s nothing you can do to make it suck less, with the whole world after your brats’ heads. You kept them safe as long as you could, but the second they decided to run off and become pirates was the second you lost any ability to protect them.

You wish you could, but you can’t, so there’s no point wringing your damned hands about it.

So you stand on the sidelines and watch as your brat is dragged onto the execution platform in chains. Senny asked you earlier if you were going to interfere, and you told him the truth.

You’ve already done all you can. This brat especially is a man now, and that means he has to take responsibility for his own life. You can’t save him from this.

You hope Newgate can.

Your brat’s found a good bunch to join up with, as pirates go. Newgate’s not the type to abandon one of his sons, and aging or not he’s never been a slouch. He’ll come, and he’ll bring everything he’s got with him.

It might not be enough to save Ace, or it might be more than enough! No way to know which way the dice’ll fall before they’re cast.

Senny gets as far as mentioning Roger before things stop going how you expect.

Why is your son here? His brat’s still in Impel Down, as far as you know. You’d expect him to worry about that first, especially when he’s got no connection to Ace.

Then one of Ace’s executioners turns around to unlock his chains and you figure it out.

So you’ve still got three brats after all, then. Your son must’ve picked him up somehow. Silly of you to buy that he was dead without seeing the body!

The fuck was he doing for the last ten years that he couldn’t even tell the other brats he was alive, though. He’d better have a damn good excuse. Your son, too. He should know better than to let shit like that fly.

You don’t bother telling Senny that your brats are getting away while he’s distracted with your son. He’ll figure it out on his own eventually!

Ideally once they’re out of grabbing range.

They launch off the platform with a massive explosion of flames that could be your brat trying to disguise their angle but is probably just him showing off because he’s a shit like that.

Newgate finally decides to show up, ships surfacing in the middle of the bay, and wow did your son actually coordinate with him? Did he finally figure out how to cooperate with people instead of just ordering them around? You’re so proud! 

Your brats fly clear across the island to land behind Newgate, safe behind someone strong enough to defend them, and you relax a little. 

Senny finally catches on and starts shouting orders, but you mostly tune him out. He’s not dumb enough to expect you to do much here anyway. Your job today is to stand around and look intimidating!

There’s some nonsense with the bay getting frozen and suchlike, assorted upstarts trying to kill each other, nothing really unusual for this sort of get-together.

Then the red haired brat arrives and Senny gives up. A hundred thousand marines or not, two emperors and your son is just too much for anyone to be expected to handle! 

Besides, your brat’s already escaped, and no one wants to fight Newgate to try and get him back.

So Senny just grits his teeth and says, “Garp.”

You grin at him. “What?”

“I fucking hate your entire family.”

And at that point, there’s really nothing to do but laugh.

Notes:

originally this was just going to be ace and sabo pov i have no idea where dragon and garp came from. no regrets though i had way too much fun with both of them.

i have so many garp opinions… complex and flawed characters who are trying their best but objectively just kind of suck my beloved…

dragon was hard at first bc he has so little screentime that you basically have to build him a personality from scratch but then i just gave him anxiety and the social skills of a dead worm and from there he just kinda flowed

can’t believe i’m almost done with this fic… i’ve never written this much this quickly in my life. the asl brainrot is simply too powerful…

Chapter 5: Let’s Share Tomorrow

Notes:

This chapter fought me so hard, you guys have no idea.
Mostly because I didn't realize until halfway through writing Ace's section that it actually needed to go before Luffy's instead of after.

I'm not even going to start on how long it is. We all know it's long. I've given up on any part of this fic not managing to be longer than I thought it would be. It's the final chapter anyway so fuck it. I'm free now.

anyway this is the chapter where asl’s olympic level repression skills finally fail them and they cry and hug so. enjoy that

Ace is safe.

It’s good that he is. You’re glad. If you went to all this trouble and he still died, only days after you’ve finally remembered him - haha. That would break you, you think.

It’s just.

It’s just that a week ago, you wouldn’t have really cared.

And it’s all you can think about, as he leaps from the execution platform to Whitebeard’s ship carrying you in his arms in an explosion of fire that makes you instinctively screw your eyes shut and raise your hands to guard your face, as you land behind Whitebeard and the battle lasts about another five minutes before Shanks shows up and ends it, and the whole time you’re just-

You’re so glad he’s alive, okay. You are. He’s your brother, for fucks sake. 

It's just.

Fuck. Again?

You're a different person again?

You've been changed again?

It's funny, isn't it? You were so fucking afraid of this for ten years and then you met Ace again and the fear actually went away for a while, you know? You thought maybe you weren't that different from yourself, after all.

And you weren't entirely happy about that, because that's its own kind of bitter pill, isn't it, to think you hadn't changed at all despite thinking you had, but it was reassuring too because it meant you didn't have to be afraid of your memories anymore, if they were just more you.

Well, you've got your memories now.

You spent three days in a coma after that desperate talk with Dragon, and when you woke up you remembered everything.

There wasn't really time to think about it, beyond being glad it happened in time to actually do something about it.

(Hah, imagine if you'd gotten them after, in some darker world where you never met Ace in that bar and Whitebeard's forces weren't enough on their own. You don't know if you would have survived that!)

But now he's safe, and you're left facing down a new face in the mirror again.

Our memories make us who we are.

So who are you, Sabo? Who are you, after losing them for ten years, rebuilding yourself out of the ashes, and then getting it all back at once? Who are you?

Outlook Sabo, runaway noble twice over? Revolutionary Sabo, second in command to the most wanted man in the world? Just Sabo, no title or surname, a kid running through the woods with a pipe and a grin and a pair of brothers he'd give the world for?

Ace made it sound like you hadn't changed at all, beyond forgetting him and Luffy. You should have realized there'd be more to it. You should have realized how much of a difference even just that one thing makes.

It could be worse. You were only ten. There's only so much you can be changed by the person you were at ten.

On the other hand, you were a pretty fucking opiniated ten year-old. You had a solid idea of who you were and who you were going to become, and it's not one that's necessarily compatible with who you were a week ago, or even who you are now, whatever amalgamation of your old and older self you are today.

It's not that you woke up in Baltigo's medical ward a few days ago as a completely different person, or something. You didn't even manage to do that the first time.

But you didn't wake up unaltered, either. How could you have?

A week ago, you knew who you were. You knew what you wanted and what your priorities were. Revolutionary Sabo, Dragon's second in command, a man with no past and the drive to make a future. Someone who could sacrifice everything for the Revolution if he had to. Someone who would do exactly that without a thought.

And it's not that you've stopped being that Sabo. You haven't lost anything. You've gotten things back instead, which should be unambiguously a good thing, right, surely, but it's left you feeling almost as adrift and untethered as you did waking up with nothing but your name on Dragon's boat ten years ago.

You wanted to be a pirate as a kid. That one's easy to let go of - it was less that you wanted piracy specifically in the first place so much as a life free from your birth family, far enough from them that they could never reach you and strong enough that they couldn't hurt you even if they did, and you have that.

You wanted to be an author. Do you still want that? Probably. Again, it wasn't about writing a book so much as the idea of creating something that could touch people like your favorite stories touched you, those beautiful fantasies you'd escape into as a child in the Outlook library, the same ones that gave you the idea to run away in the first place.

A book about your adventures, like you'd planned then, is definitely off the table. Almost all of your adventures are classified. But you could try your hand at fiction, maybe, could touch on the underlying structure of your life, the themes and lessons, and let the truth of the details fall to the wayside.

So that's a way you're different again, isn't it? You never would have thought about that without your memories back.

It's small and simple and harmless, and if it were the only thing there'd be no problem, but when is it ever just one thing?

Writing a book, becoming a pirate, escaping your blood family, the thousand other little things you thought about as a child… none of it changes you much on its own, but taken all together in the aggregate it's impossible to ignore.

And all of that, of course, is overshadowed by the thing you cared about most of all back then, the thing so big that even just the shadow of its memory sent you running to Dragon, begging him to help you win someone else's war.

You've been a man who would sacrifice anything for the Revolution. Who would make any devil's bargain, pull any fucking trolley switch, make any awful choice you had to for that cause.

And no one asked you to be that person. Even Dragon didn't, despite how useful you being that person is to him. You know he worries that you're turning into him, and you know that's not the life he ever hoped you'd lead.

So maybe it should be a good thing, right, if you woke up from that coma and abruptly realized that you can't be that Sabo anymore, but it's-

You would do anything for your brothers. You love them more than anything in the world. They've moved straight to the top of your priority list and they're going to be there for the rest of your life because they're your brothers and that's how you three always were, all the way from the start, that terrifying codependency you all fell into over triplet cups of sake and never looked back from, and.

And you didn't. Ask. To be that Sabo again.

To be their Sabo again.

You fell asleep and woke up as someone else. Again. And you don't regret it, necessarily- you just-

You just wish you'd had the choice.

Either time.

But that's just life, isn’t it? It happens to you and it keeps happening to you until you die, and it changes you whether you want it to or not. And sometimes that change is slow and gradual and mostly voluntary, and sometimes it's instant and violent and utterly irreversible, and either way you’re stuck with it. 

No one can ever go back to yesterday, let alone to a week or ten years ago. Time only moves one way.

At least you already know you can survive this kind of change. That's something, right?

A bittersweet something, but something nonetheless.

Ace is still holding you. He picked you up to get the both of you off the execution platform and then just never put you down again after you landed. Through the haze of your instinctive reaction to his fire and your own ignored emotions rising up to drown you, you never made him put you down.

That's a little embarrassing. You've just been letting him cart you around like a little kid? Fuck, and the fact that you didn't even notice it for this long-

You're kind of. Not doing so hot right now, are you?

Yikes. Get it together, Sabo. You aren't out of the woods yet. Collapse later, when two emperors and Dragon and Ace aren't watching, hell.

You say, with an easy grin that’s not really easy at all, "So are you just planning to carry me around all day, or-?"

He tells you, "Shut up, Sabo."

So that's a nonstarter. "Ace, seriously, you can't just-"

"Watch me." He interrupts you, almost growling it, and you remember abruptly that, of the people currently present, you are not actually the one who should be freaking out most right now.

You put your smile away and let him see your concern. "Ace."

"Shut up." He says again. "You were supposed to be safe, you asshole. I didn't- you were the only fucking person I trusted to stay out of this."

Because you didn't care. You wriggle your way out of his grip, using a touch of observation haki to dodge him trying to stop you so that you can face him properly. 

You put a hand on his shoulder and say, letting more intensity into your voice than you usually would, "Don't call me an asshole and then say that, you piece of shit. You can't just-" This asshole. "You can't just tell me to my fucking face you were hoping I'd leave you to die, Ace, that's-"

You've spoken to him once in the last ten years and it was without any memory of him and he thinks you should've fucking. Left him? 

He jerks away from you, crossing his arms in a gesture that's visibly more hugging himself than warding you off. "Well, what was I supposed to hope for? It's not like I could've hoped for you to actually show up, you were-" He bites off the sentence without finishing it. He doesn't need to finish it. "So I thought "hey, at least one fucking person I care about is staying the fuck away from here" because I can't- there's nothing I could do to stop Pops showing up, and Jinbei got put in the cell right fucking next to me, and Luffy is in Impel fucking Down right now and- shit. Shit. Luffy."

"Luffy is where." You say, voice flat.

Ace turns to Whitebeard, (who has in fact been right fucking there this entire time, you've been ignoring him and everyone else for the sake of your sanity) and says, "Pops. Pops, Luffy is in Impel Down. I need to-"

"If you're about to tell him you need to go off on your own I'm going to fucking kill you, Ace." You say.

He blinks, takes a second to recalibrate, visibly remembers that you aren't an amnesiac anymore and therefore have exactly as much reason to go after Luffy as he does, and starts to correct himself "Okay, we need to-"

This time, it's not you who interrupts him. "Do you seriously think we're going to let you run off to Impel Down immediately after we rescued you from being executed, you brainless idiot." Says Marco the Phoenix.

Ace bristles. "I'm not going to just leave him!"

Whitebeard's first mate sighs and buries his face in his hands before saying, in a tone of absolute exasperation, "Pops, please. I can't deal with this right now, yoi."

It's probably better if they don't let Ace go. If it's just you, you have a good chance of being able to infiltrate Impel Down and get to Luffy unmolested, but Ace would definitely ruin any chance at stealth. 

(Why is Luffy even in Impel Down? Fuck, whatever, not important right now)

Koala might also insist on coming, since she's here, but you're used to working with her. She's always a good asset for stealth missions of any kind.

And then Ace can stay here, with his crew, far away from the many, many people who currently want him dead. You're definitely a fan of that scenario.

Unfortunately there's just absolutely no world where Ace stays here without being physically tied down. With seastone. Ideally unconscious.

But Whitebeard just laughs. "I would never ask you to leave your brother in danger, Ace!" He says. "And Marineford was barely even a battle, so everyone is still full of energy!"

He's not seriously going to-

No, he definitely is. Because he's an Emperor and the kind of sheer terrifying power that allows someone to assault Impel Down on a whim is a prerequisite for the title. 

"My sons!" Whitebeard calls. "Set course for Impel Down!"

Shanks is also still here, lounging casually against a railing with a bottle in hand while his ship follows the Moby Dick. He raises the hand in question like he’s about to make a toast. "Oh, we're rescuing Anchor? I'll tag along, then."

Out of sheer morbid curiosity, you turn to Dragon, who's been lurking in a corner with Koala flanking him so that it looks like he's being cool and mysterious instead of just awkward.

He smirks. "I'll lend my aid as well. It would be poor form to do otherwise, given that I'm Luffy's father."

If Impel Down still exists after today, you're going to be genuinely surprised.

The marines, in trying to execute Ace and mulligan Roger's execution while simultaneously taking out an Emperor, have managed to engineer the perfect circumstances to create an alliance between two Emperors and the Revolutionary Army. This is…

This is worldshaking. There's not going to be any coming back from this.

The fact that all of this is, at least to some degree, happening as a direct result of you regaining your memories…

It settles you, some. If helping Ace and Luffy helps the Revolution, you don't have to be as afraid of being torn between them.

Because you don’t know, right now, that’s the real issue at the heart of the whole thing- that if it came down to a choice between your brothers and your cause, you don’t actually know which one you’d pick.

And that’s terrifying, right, because the Sabo of last week has been following that one cause utterly with every part of himself for the last ten years, and the Sabo of ten years ago wouldn’t have even considered the thought of something more important than his brothers, wouldn’t have been able to even comprehend the idea of it.

And the Sabo of today-

You just don’t know.

But if they’re the same, if helping one helps the other, if you can be both parts of yourself without having to pick a piece of your soul to strangle and suffocate until it gives up and stops thrashing-

Maybe then, you can just be yourself, and not have to worry about spending the rest of your life denying one of the core parts of yourself, equally important as they are. Maybe they aren’t entirely mutually exclusive.

(Maybe then, you can be Sabo the Revolutionary and Sabo the brother, a smooth fusion of those disparate halves rather than a shambling amalgamation who wants both and can’t be satisfied by either)

Actually, hold up, wait a fucking second, Dragon is what-?

“Back up.” You say to your boss. “You’re Luffy’s what.”

Ace is practically vibrating. “I also have questions about that. Like- I know Sengoku called you Monkey D. but. You’re his dad?”

The unspoken question from both of you being, of course: If you’re Luffy’s dad, where the hell were you for his entire life?

Ace looks about ready to set him on fire if he gets an answer he doesn’t like, and you’re not surprised. Now, of all times, with Ace’s parentage more relevant than ever- and he’s always hated Roger, but Roger at least has the excuse of being too dead to be a parent.

You… aren’t as angry. After about five seconds of thinking about it, you can guess the answer.

And predictably enough, Dragon says, “Luffy is my son. I gave him to my father to raise-“ You and Ace share a Look as you’re simultaneously forced to face the reality of Gramps being Dragon’s dad. (because you knew he had a kid, Luffy had to come from somewhere, but holy shit no wonder he was always so on you about becoming marines. No fucking wonder) “-Because I wanted him to be able to choose his own path in life, rather than grow up trapped in my shadow and locked away from a world that would kill him for no sin greater than the blood in his veins.”

Ace flinches.

Then he pauses. Thinks for a moment. “Wait. You’re saying- Is Gramps just fucking- Two different people decided giving that guy their secret kid to raise was a good idea?”

“In my defense,” Dragon says, “He is my father. I can’t comment on what led Gol D. Roger to that course of action. I wasn’t aware of your parentage until Sabo informed me.”

“Maybe he was just insane.” Ace says, dry and a little fatalistic. “That’s what I always assumed.”

Shanks, still leaning against the railing, makes… some kind of face. It sure is A Face. “If you want to know the actual reason…” He shakes his head. “You don’t seem to like him much, so no pressure, but I did kind of know the guy.”

Shanks being the pirate king’s ex-cabin boy isn’t common knowledge, but he’s an Emperor, so you’re well versed on his history. Most of it is pretty easy to find, if you actually look.

Ace has very obviously never looked, given the face he’s making. You’d describe his expression as… horrified, curious against his will, and completely blindsided. Like he’s pretty sure he just stepped on a dead body but he hasn’t worked up the courage to look down and confirm it yet. He’s going to have to get used to people who knew Roger mentioning him to Ace, now that it’s public knowledge.

He gets himself together enough to say “…Maybe later.”

Shanks says, “Yeah, fair enough.” And goes back to draining Whitebeard’s alcohol supply, albeit at a noticeably faster rate.

It feels odd, being confronted with the humanity of an Emperor like this. Shanks is a larger than life figure and has been for most of your life, but looking at him now… he grew up on the Oro Jackson, didn’t he? This must be… It’s difficult to imagine how he feels right now, discovering that the man who raised him had a child twenty years too late for him to do anything about it.

Discovering that said child wants absolutely nothing to do with anything connected to his blood father’s legacy.

Ace’s issues with Roger are something he’s never wanted to resolve, as far as you know. He’s going to have to now. If you could find someone dumb enough to bet against it, you’d put down money on his next wanted poster calling him Gol D.

Your eyes catch on Dragon again, still unmoved from his corner. That legacy will be coming out too, won’t it? There’s no chance of the marines staying silent on it, not when Luffy is so quickly proving himself just as dangerous to the world order as his father.

(Jesus, his father. Imagining Luffy with a dad of any sort, no matter his identity, breaks your brain a little. Remembering that the dad in question is Dragon breaks your brain even more. Does Luffy even know?)

You take a moment to consider that you and Dragon have the same weakness and have to choke back an entirely inappropriate bout of hysterical laughter.

All that fear, and for what? He’s in the same damn boat you are. Literally, at the moment- you’ve both chased the people you’re compromised for directly onto an Emperor’s ship, you chasing Ace and him chasing you and the both of you chasing Luffy.

Just for today, you decide to stop worrying about being selfish. This tangled web of attachments you’ve stumbled into, pulling you a dozen directions at once and doing its damndest to choke off your circulation with every move you make-

You’ll figure it out later. You have a brother to save.

—

There’s a weird kind of cognitive dissonance in surviving your own execution.

Because you’d accepted it, right? Not easily or all that gracefully, but you’d made your peace as best you could with everything.

After all, even if the exact circumstances left a lot to be desired, you’ve been waiting for this… as long as you’ve understood what death even is, really.

It’s like there’s- fucking… you don’t know, like a sword hanging over you in the form of your birth name, suspended by a really shitty rope that’s so frayed it’s basically just one loose thread holding it up, and you know it’s going to snap at some point but it’s impossible to know when, and when that happens you die.

And then it did, and you got… metaphorically tackled out of the way, or something, and now you don’t know what to do.

Because it’s still there, isn’t it, sitting on the floor, waiting for someone to pick it up and take your head off with it. It’s never going to go away- it can’t.

But now everyone can see it. It’s sitting out there in the open and everyone knows why it’s there. You’re never going to be just some random asshole ever again, for the rest of your life.

Everyone’s going to look at you and see that man’s son.

Fuck, your next wanted poster definitely isn’t to say Portgas, is it. It’ll probably be a hefty bounty increase too, which you’d be happy about in literally any circumstance other than this.

But right here, right now- you’re alive. And you’re not sure what to do with that.

You weren’t ever supposed to live long enough to have to face a reality where you’re publicly carrying his blood. The world government was supposed to end you before that ever became your problem to deal with.

No one has said anything yet, but when you’re away from Marineford and Shanks and Dragon and it’s just your crew on the Moby again…

That’s when you’ll find out who hates you for it. That’s when you’ll know which of your nakama won’t be able to forgive you for being the pirate king’s spawn.

It won’t be all of them, obviously. A lot won’t even care. Pops didn’t, and most of the old guard will follow his lead on that, you’re pretty sure, though some of them might be iffy about you for a while until you prove yourself again.

(Which- you don’t want to have to do, you don’t want to have to spend the rest of your life defining yourself in opposition to your blood because it’s that or be seen as nothing but a mirror of it, but. It’s fine. It’s fine, alright? You’ll manage)

But you know- you know, deep in your soul, that some of your nakama will hate you for this. And you won’t know which ones until they lash out.

And almost as bad as the ones who’ll hate you or even attack you over this are the people who’ll idolize you for it instead, who’ll look at you and see some kind of… successor, some fucking heir to that legacy you’ve never once wanted or tried to live up to.

People who will look at you, Pops’ second division commander, and see a contender for that man’s throne, assume Pops is grooming you for it, even, and completely ignore that you don’t want- that you’ve never wanted-

You don’t even really want to ever be a captain again, honestly. It was fun while it lasted, running with the Spades, and you’re still close with them, but you’re happy under Pops. When Pops retires, inevitably, whenever his health finally gets too bad for him to keep leading, you’ll be happy under Marco. The second division is more than enough responsibility for you.

But who cares what you want, right. Or about the person you actually are. His blood overshadows everything else about you.

You cannot fucking believe Dragon is Luffy’s dad. Fuck. Of course he’s in the same damn boat you are and just didn’t know it. Of course he won’t even care.

…No one ever told you Shanks knew that man. 

It’s funny how alarmed you are about that. How betrayed. It’s not his fault, right, that he knew the pirate king. Lots of folks did. It’s not his fault that he can mention the man who created you with a kind of soft and grieved but undeniably fond tone, when all you can summon is fear and hate and more fear.

(It’s not his fault that he knew Gol D. Roger, and you didn’t and don’t and never can)

Maybe it’s just that you already like Shanks, and that makes it harder. You can’t write him off and make a note to avoid him like with Rayleigh and the rest because he’s already important to you for entirely unrelated reasons.

Shanks is the man who gave up an arm for Luffy’s life and gave him the dream that’s defined him as long as you’ve known each other, and he’s that to you long before he’s someone who knew that man. You know Shanks, if only a little, both from Luffy’s stories and from that meeting on a snow covered mountain, years back, and you don’t think he’s the kind of person to look at you and only see the ghost of someone long dead.

Maybe that’s it, really. You trust him.

And if you trust him, then… his offer is actually a little bit tempting.

Because gramps told you some stuff about- him. But gramps only knows so much, and he was on the opposite side most of the time. Ditto for Pops. They weren’t… anything they can tell you about that man is through the lens of their own relationships with him, and both of those relationships were mostly antagonistic at the end of the day, as much as they might have found some camaraderie with him in between it all.

They knew Gol D. Roger the captain and Gol D. Roger the pirate king, not Gol D. Roger the man, and the man is the one you have issues with, at the end of the day. 

You’ll never be able to ask him about the shadow his blood left hanging over you your whole life. You’ll never be able to ask him why he decided to go and die instead of being your dad, why he left your mom to die alone and unprotected without him, forced to kill herself to keep you alive because no one was there to protect her while she gave everything to protect you.

You’ll never be able to ask him why you’re an orphan.

But. If Shanks knows.

…You can’t do this right now. There’s too much- everything, really, for you to be able to handle unpacking your daddy issues right this second.

But. Later, maybe. When all this has blown over, and you’ve had some time to come to terms with- everything… You could ask.

It feels wrong to be thinking about later. You aren’t supposed to have a later.

Right now, you should be- it hasn’t even been three hours yet. It hasn’t even been one. You should still be on that scaffold, waiting for the hourglass to finally run out of sand.

But you’re not. You’re here, back on the Moby with Pops and everyone, with Sabo and Shanks and Dragon and your whole crew, everyone who came for you when you wanted absolutely nothing in the world more than you wanted them to just… stay away.

You’re alive. 

…You never considered the possibility of actually surviving this. You gave up and accepted the inevitable, the denouement that was always going to come for you eventually, and then it just. Didn’t.

You didn’t die.

You were supposed to die, and you didn’t, and you’re alive.

That’s a good thing, right? You didn’t want to die. Luffy would cry. It’d be fucking tragic for him to lose another brother, wouldn’t it? So you didn’t want to die. 

But you were always going to. It was inescapable. There was nothing you or anyone could do to stop it. They’d just get themselves killed trying, and it would be yet more blood on your hands, even more people dead for daring to protest against the crime of your existence.

But someone did stop it, and you’re alive. Marineford had less bloodshed than the skirmishes the Spades used to get into. You’re actively on the way to Marineford to save Luffy, and there’s no way you’re just going to leave Jinbei there if you’re already going, so even he’s going to-

And it’s not okay, there’ll still be consequences, god only knows what’s going to happen to fishman island after this, god only knows what’s happening to Luffy right now- 

Put that in the box, actually. If you think about Luffy right now it might actually kill you. He’s okay. He has to be okay. There’s no other possibility worth considering.

But, fuck.

You’re alive. You don’t know how to handle it. How do you live after accepting death? You gave up but you’re still here, and you feel like a fucking ghost.

Hah, you feel like a ghost, but you’re staring at one, too, because Sabo is right here, right in front of you, and he-

It's him. Not the ghost with his face who doesn't know you, the one you'd resigned yourself to seeing once and never again because you were almost dead yourself at that point, but him.

And he came to save you.

You didn't want him to, but he did. And it worked. And you're alive.

The clock's been ticking since two years before you were born. The hourglass ran out of sand. 

But two emperors of the sea and Dragon the revolutionary and your brothers dared to set themselves against the tide of fate, to oppose the will of the gods and save the son of the devil, and they did it. 

It worked.

And-

And you think. You might even-

You might even manage to be grateful, for that.

—

By the time you get to Ace, everything is already over.

The big gates in front of Marineford open when you get there and everyone is really confused about it. At first you think it’s because of Buggy, since he says it is, but underneath he’s just as surprised as everyone else so you guess not.

At first it’s really foggy on the other side, but then the wind gets really strong and all the fog blows away. You still can’t see Ace after, though. There’s a bunch of ships in the way.

You keep sailing towards them for a couple minutes and they all start moving to the sides like they’re letting you through.

Buggy says that’s because of him, too, but he’s surprised again so you guess he’s still lying.

Iva-chan says there’s no way all the ships would move for you, and there’s probably some other reason they’re doing it.

You make a face at him, but a big ship that looks like a whale appears in the space the other ships moved out of, sailing straight towards you, so you guess he’s right.

Ace is on that ship. 

You don’t realize it at first, but when you get close enough you can see him on the deck, along with a bunch of other people you mostly don’t care about.

(Only mostly. Sabo is there! And Shanks. You shouldn’t see Shanks yet, you haven’t become the pirate king, but Ace is more important than your promise)

When you see Ace, you immediately gomu gomu no rocket to the ship. Everyone yells at you (from both ships! It’s really funny) but you don’t care.

“Ace!” You shout when you land, pivoting towards him to give him a hug.

He catches you when you jump into his arms, just like always. “Luffy-? Weren’t you in Impel Down?”

He has his smile on, but he’s really worried. You give him your best grin. “I broke out! I had to save you.”

Ace’s smile cracks and falls off. “You idiot.” He says. “I didn’t want you to save me.”

Of course he didn’t, he’s stupid. You tell him. “That doesn’t matter. We’re brothers. I’d always come save you.”

He’s frustrated. “Of course you’d say that too.” Someone else said it? Oh, his nakama. (Sabo wouldn’t, you think. Not with how he is now) “I didn’t need you to save me, then. Look, I got out fine. There was barely even a battle. You shouldn’t have come.”

This time, it hits home. Your grin falters a little before you can get it back up. “I had to come.” You say.

Even if he doesn’t need you, you still-

You couldn’t just not come.

“No, you didn’t.” Ace says. “Lu, you’re- you haven’t even hit the New World yet. You’ve been a pirate for less than a year. You’re not strong enough to be getting in the middle of stuff like this.”

“I’m strong.” You say.

“Not enough.” Ace snarls at you. “Not for this. You could’ve- what if you got hurt, idiot? What if you died? You would’ve just been a liability for everyone else to protect.”

You already got hurt, and sort of died a little. (Ten years is only a little, right?) He doesn’t know that. You flinch.

He goes all soft and guilty for a second, but then he drags the anger back up. “Don’t give me that look, Luffy. You can’t do shit like this. You’ll get yourself killed if you keep charging into things this far out of your league, and what the fuck am I supposed to do then?”

Your smile drops. “Ace promised he wouldn’t die.”

He jerks like you’ve hit him, and lets the anger go. When he meets your eyes, he looks like he’s barely holding himself together, like everything tying him to himself is coming loose. “Well, I didn’t.” He says. “I didn’t die, okay? I’m right here.”

It’s like he thinks he can hide from you. Stupid. He doesn’t have a shirt, so it’s your vest that your hands curl into balls holding, knuckles only stopped from going white by the fact that they haven’t been able to since you were six. You say, “Ace thought he would die.”

Everyone is watching, because you’re still in the middle of the deck. Most of them flinch, but no one seems really surprised. 

They shouldn’t be. It’s obvious. Ace isn’t subtle, even when he thinks he is.

His mouth wobbles, but he forces it straight again. “That doesn’t change anything.” He says. “Of course I thought I’d die, dumbass, I’ve been on borrowed time my whole life. You still shouldn’t have-“

Ace exhales, long and slow. Inhales again. Says, “Luffy.” 

You just look at him.

“If you- got hurt. Trying to save me.” He says, slow and careful like he’s trying not to choke on it, “I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself for it. I’m your older brother. I’m supposed to keep you safe. I’d rather climb that scaffold a thousand times than have you-“

You did get hurt, though. You don’t say that.

He breathes again. “You can’t get yourself killed over me. You can’t. I wouldn’t survive it.”

Sabo snaps, off to the side, “You gave him what?” In a voice harsh enough that you and Ace both turn to look.

He’s talking with Iva-chan, who must have caught up at some point while you and Ace were talking.

Iva-chan says, “He would have died if I hadn’t.” And you know he’s talking about you.

“Shit.” Sabo says, one hand’s fingers anxiously picking at the edges of his scar while the other sits at his side, littlest finger rhythmically moving up and down against its neighbor. (He didn’t have a scar to pick at, before, but the other motion- he used to do that. Back when Sabo was yours, and not-) “Shit. How is he standing, then?”

Iva-chan pokes his fingers together guiltily. “Ah…”

“What did you give him?” Sabo demands, angry. (Why is he angry? It can’t be for you. He’s a stranger now) 

“Just an adrenaline shot!” Iva-chan says, leaning away from Sabo’s expression. “Nothing more dangerous than what he’s already survived.”

“Iva-san-“ Sabo growls, and you-

Why does he-

“Why do you care?” You ask, baffled.

Sabo freezes. Realizes you and Ace have been listening. Turns toward you.

And he looks-

Gutted.

Like someone shot a dog, right in front of him, and he only just realized it was his.

Like he was the dog, and you shot him.

“I.” He starts. Stops again. “Luffy-“

“Why are you looking at me like that.” You say, numb. “Sabo doesn’t care, anymore. Why do you care?”

Why does he look like you’ve hurt him, when you just. You just said how things are, now.

He says, “Luffy.” Again, looking lost and hurting and alone and it doesn’t make sense-

“Why are you even here?” You ask.

Ace is a knot of tension, still holding you while Sabo stands apart, separate and distant because he’s gone. He’s gone, even if he’s here now, the Sabo who loved you, and you still love him, but he doesn’t-

He’s gone. 

He puts on his smile, but it’s cracked right through the middle, his mouth wobbling like he’s going to cry, and he says, “It’s like you said. I had to come.”

A hand raises up, fiddling with his throat napkin just like he always did when he was- when he-

But the old Sabo is gone.

He says, “I heard when he got captured, and I. I knew I had to come. I didn’t even remember until I was already- I got halfway through justifying it to Dragon before I even realized-“

“Sabo,” Says Iva-chan, amazed. “Did you get your memories back?”

Your hands, still fisted in your vest, flex. Open and shut. You decide not to think about what your face is doing.

Whatever it is, it hasn’t gotten rid of that wounded expression on Sabo’s face even as he bites his lip and nods once, sharply.

…You untangle yourself from Ace. 

Let go of the hands clenched in your vest and let your arms unwind once, twice, three times around him until they snap back to their unstretched length at your sides.

Walk towards Sabo, steps stuttering and stumbling like a toddler while he stands there, utterly still, watching you like he doesn’t know how to look away. Like there’s nothing else in the world worth seeing.

Pitch towards him, let yourself fall into his chest, grab his throat napkin with both hands and thrust your face into it, even though you haven’t started crying yet.

Hesitantly, delicately, like you’re the most precious and fragile thing in the world, Sabo’s arms raise up to hold you. 

A warm, heavy weight settles against them as Ace follows you, sandwiching you between them, both of them holding you so tight you can barely breathe, crushing you between them until your whole world is just this, just you pressed in between your big brothers as you all hold on to each other like you’ll die if you let go.

It makes you feel like a little kid again, and finally, your breath hitches and you sniffle and you start to cry.

“I thought I was gonna-“ You sob. “I thought Ace was gonna die, and Sabo wasn’t gonna remember, and I was gonna be all alo-one!”

“I’m here.” Sabo says, even as his voice cracks. “I’m here. I came.”

“We’re all here.” Says Ace.

And you are. Finally. 

You’re together again.

Notes:

YEAH BABY I FUCKING DID IT! FIC OVER! FINISHED IT!

Cannot believe I wrote over 20k in the span of a month... completely insane for me. I've never written this much this fast in my entire life.

Had to actively fight myself to keep Shanks a minor character. He wanted the spotlight so badly. Maybe at some point I'll make this a series just to write a continuation where Shanks and Ace talk about Roger. Don't bet on it though.

Anyway uhhh. Yup! Cool! Fic over! I'm gonna go stare at a wall for a while until I'm sane again!

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 1 of And I’d Know Your Face if I Was Drunk and Blind and Dead