Chapter Text
The Strawhat Pirates were just a scrappy, rag-tag little thing when Ace met them in Alabasta. An odd mess of bold colors and chaotic sounds competing for the eye and ear's attention. This tangle of personalities shouldn’t have worked together, but it did. Somehow, some impossible way, the crew sang and moved in perfect harmony.
They took after their captain, Ace supposed. His baby brother. Loud and brash and selfish and magnetic. So impossible in every way, but perhaps most of all in his audacity and his kindness.
Ace saw that look on the crew’s faces, too. He saw it written in every lingering gaze, every shouted insult, every time they grabbed their captain’s stupid rubbery arm and dragged him away from whatever shenanigan he was about to get into. It was a look he recognized all too well. A look that told Ace that each of these new friends had a different-but-maybe-not-so-different story. That Luffy had saved them in every possible way. That they’d do anything for him. That each of them knew deep in their bones—witnessed it for themselves, even—that Luffy was capable of things no one ever imagined. Things people wouldn’t believe even if they saw them. They understood Luffy’s specialness as a truth, as universal and unquestioned as “the ocean is wet,” or “the sun is bright.”
Ace knew that look, because he’d been there.
He, and Sabo, too.
He’d seen that light on Shank’s face when they met. Sometimes, he swore he could see it in Makino or even Dadan’s eyes, if he squinted. He’d seen it so many times in so many people. And it was unmistakable here, in Luffy’s new friends. Something warm and glowing from deep inside their hearts, practically radiating off their skin.
In another universe, that’d be enough.
Ace would relax in the certainty that these friends would take good care of his silly, wonderful brother. Luffy needed to live his life without regrets. To go on adventures without an overbearing brother breathing down his neck. In that universe, Ace would toss his vivre card at Luffy and never look back.
In this universe, though, things went differently.
In this universe, he looked back.
He was a few hundred feet away when he glanced over his shoulder. And there stood Luffy with his gaggle of misfits, so colorful against the endless beige sand. And dammit, there was Luffy’s stupid smile, outshining the dessert sun.
That was all it took.
One glance.
Ace knew it was a bad idea. He'd talked himself through it a dozen times, all the reasons he shouldn’t have Luffy’s vivre card.
He saw exactly how it’d play out—like Water Seven’s Sea Train speeding toward it's inevitable collision with the giant frog parked on its track. The chaos of the Grand Line mixed with the much bigger chaos of Monkey D. Luffy could only ever result in the most glorious, anxiety provoking series of disasters and miracles.
Ace had a job to do right now. A crewmate killer to catch. If he carried around a card that caught fire whenever Luffy was in danger, he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from running to him at the first hint of a spark. He’d never get anything done. Ace knew that.
He also knew that his life was never more colorful than when Luffy was in it. That he spent seven years of his childhood keeping that stupid smile alive and dammit, he couldn’t let that hard work go to waste now, could he? No regrets. And losing Luffy would be his worst regret, were it to happen.
Ace sighed. Sabo, give me the strength not to loose my shit when this goes wrong, he thought, and turned around. He marched right back through the desert toward his shitty little brother.
Sabo would’ve done the same thing.
In fact, Sabo would never have considered not carrying a piece of Luffy’s vivre card. He’d try to convince Ace the whole way to Alabasta that he needed to take a piece, too. He’d be rolling his eyes right now at how easily Ace folded.
Ace wasn’t even halfway back to Luffy when the gremlin launched himself through the air. “AAACE!”
“Oof!” Ace rocked back as he caught a bundle of skinny limbs and tangled Alabastan robes.
Luffy pressed his forehead into Ace’s. He rubbed their noses together, giggling, “Shishishi.” The best sound in the world. “You’re gonna join my crew after all!”
“Of course not,” Ace scoffed. “Why would I want a crybaby captain? I just came for this.” He plucked a hair off Luffy’s head.
“OW!” Luffy shouted. He didn’t pull away though. He kept his arms and legs wrapped around Ace. “What was that for? Ace is mean!”
“Let go, now, Lu,” he pushed at Luffy’s limbs. He didn’t budge. “I’ve gotta do something. I’ll be right back.”
“Theif! Give me my hair back!”
“I can’t put it back in your head, dumbass!”
By this point, the rest of the crew had caught up to their captain. The minute Luffy yelled “ow,” Sanji coiled, ready to attack, but Zoro put a hand on his arm to stop him. Nami laughed, which Ace assumed meant she had a sibling, and understood such shenanigans.
“Zoro! Ace stole my hair!”
“What do you want me to do about it?”
“Cut him with your swords!”
Zoro just scoffed.
“Why’d you come back?” Princess Vivi asked, “Did you need something?”
“Unfortunately, I do,” Ace said. He shoved much harder this time, knocking Luffy off him. He landed in the sand with a pathetic thud, still pouting up at Ace.
Sanji was by his captain in seconds, pulling Luffy to his feet. He scowled at Ace. “What the hell was that for?! You hurt him!”
“He’s fine,” Zoro said. “He’s survived worse.”
“I’ll be right back,” Ace repeated.
As he marched off toward the Striker, he heard: "Sanji, make Ace give me my hair back!”
“What do want me to do? He can’t put it back in your head, dumbass!”
“Nami!”
“Oh give it a rest, Luffy.”
***
When Ace returned from making Luffy’s vivre card, he tore a section off for himself and handed the rest to Nami, who—as far as he could tell—was the one in charge of actually running the ship. (He’d thought she was surprisingly normal when he first met the crew. He’d thought this for all of ten seconds, before she stole 20 berries from his pocket).
“Another paper?” She asked.
Luffy stood, arms crossed, still surly. “Why does Nami get a bigger paper than me?”
“Because then she can find you when you wander off. I gave you mine, so you can find me.”
“So…” Nami said, slowly, “It’s a magic paper that lets you find people?”
“Basically,” Ace said. “It always points toward the person it was made from. You can tear off pieces and give it to people. See?” He pulled his piece of Luffy’s card from his pocket and held it palm up in his hand. It jerked gently in Luffy’s direction. “And if the piece burns and shrinks, that means Luffy’s hurt.”
“Oh wow,” Nami said, crouching for a closer look, as if she could find its inner workings that way. “It’s like a compass but for finding people!”
Ace shrugged. “Sure.”
He kind of expected more questions. The crew had none, though. Instead, every head swiveled in unison toward Zoro.
Sanji’s cigarette nearly dropped from his mouth. “We need one for mosshead.”
“We need one for Zoro,” Nami repeated under her breath.
Suddenly, little Chopper—possibly the weirdest (adorable??) creature Ace had ever seen in his life—stood at his ankles, staring up at him with big wet eyes. “You mean we can just always know where Zoro is? With a piece of paper?”
“Well, not this paper. This one’s for Luffy but—”
“Oh, thank you!” Ussop dropped melodramatically to his knees at Ace’s feet, tears choking his voice. “You don’t know the horrors we’ve been through! The horrors!”
Chopper copied him by falling to his knees too. “Horrors!”
Luffy cackled in delight.
Not the reaction Ace had been expecting. “Uh...”
“Seriously?” Zoro snapped. “You guys are the ones who keep getting lost.”
This earned him a thump on the head from Nami.
“We’ll save so much time,” Vivi whispered, almost too soft to hear.
Ace cleared his throat. “I...uh... guess I can make one for Zoro?”
Ussop grabbed Ace’s shin, sobbing. “You’re a life saver! I was about to develop, if-Zoro-gets-lost-one-more-time-I’ll-die disease!”
That couldn’t possibly be a real illness, but Chopper—the doctor—grabbed Ace’s other leg, also sobbing. “What a horrible disease!”
“I can...make one for all of you? If you’d like?”
“Might as well,” Nami said.
“If it’s not too much trouble,” Sanji added.
“And if it is too much trouble,” Nami said, “Then could you just make one for Zoro?”
“We need one for Zoro.” Vivi agreed.
“Please,” Chopper sobbed. “I don’t want Ussop to die.”
“He’s not gonna die,” Nami informed Ace, as if he might also be vulnerable to Ussop’s many spectacular displays of pathological lying. “But it would be a big help.”
Zoro rolled his eyes, “You’re all so dramatic.”
Luffy leaned forward and whispered to Ace, like it was a secret. “Zoro doesn’t know that the South is warm and the North is cold, so he keeps getting lost.”
“Luffy, for the millionth time, that’s not how directions work!” Ace pinched his nose. He was too young to feel this old. “Yeah, okay. Fuck it. I’m making vivre cards for all of you shitheads.”
This crew would do amazing things someday. Impossible things that even the most hardened Grand Line veterans would never see coming. Ace knew that. But, they had to stay alive long enough to do it. He was starting to have serious doubts about their ability to do so without intervention.
So, he made vivre cards for all of them—including the actual Princess of Alabasta. He still wasn’t sure why she was here, looking to all the world like part of Luffy’s crew. Or, for that matter, how Luffy managed to recruit Pirate Hunter Zoro, of East Blue renown, as the loyal first mate for his pirate crew. Or, where the hell he found whatever Chopper was. Or Ussop, who looked and moved suspiciously like the Red Haired Pirate’s sniper, and had a suspiciously similar name.
The Luffy Factor, was all Ace could assume. It was explanation enough, honestly.
Ace kept a small piece of each card for himself, and gave the full sheets to the Nami, so she could divide them amongst the crew as she saw fit. Then, after one more hug from Luffy, he returned to the Striker to continue his search for Blackbeard.
***
It was naive of Ace to hope that he could at least get to the next island before the panic attacks began.
(One island. Was that really too much to ask?)
(Yes. Yes it was).
Being a fire Logia, Ace felt the sparks sizzle on Luffy’s vivre card before he saw them.
His stomach dropped.
Heavy with dread, he grabbed Luffy's card from his pocket just in time to see the ghastly hole erupt in the center. It spread and spread. For horrible moment, he thought the card would burn up entirely. It stopped millimeters from the edges.
The Striker never made a u-turn so fast in her life. The ocean beneath Ace boiled.
How long would it take to get back to Alabasta? How far out had he gotten?
The next hours were agonizing. Dizzying. Ace watched as Luffy’s card healed, just a bit, before shriveling up and drying, like the water had been sucked from it. He didn't even know vivre cards could do that. He didn't have time to process it, either, before it sprung back to life, and then a second, smaller hole erupted, this time with a sickly green tinge coating the edges. He also watched as Luffy’s crewmate’s vivre cards burned, one by one. Those little cards were all he could see through the steam roiling off the ocean under his barely controlled heat as he shot across the sea.
He couldn’t look away. He couldn’t breathe.
He feared he’d watch his brother and his entire crew disappear, die before his eyes.
He didn't have to, though. Because Luffy was Luffy, and he was a resilient little shit. He always made it, so really there was never a need to worry.
(...Ace always worried anyways.)
***
Ace never could have imagined the sight when he finally arrived at the capital of Alabasta.
Rain.
Pouring rain.
Thousands of people standing in the open plaza, sobbing, cheering.
A group of laughing children ran down the street with buckets over their heads. More buckets lined the sidewalk, full of water. A man with sandpaper-rough skin sunk to his knees in a puddle, tears mixing with the rain, falling into his open mouth and cupped hands. One young woman just laid on her back, soaking wet, staring at the sky like she wasn't sure it was real. People hardly seemed to care about the broken buildings or the lingering signs of an almost-war.
Somewhere in the distance bells chimed. People sang. It sounded a lot like freedom.
Luffy’s vivre card pointed toward the palace. It wasn’t burning anymore. Some of the edges had started to heal, even, but Ace wouldn’t feel okay until he saw his brother with his own eyes.
There was something about this rain. Every droplet felt magical and light and warm and free in a way that Ace only knew when he was around Luffy. Which just absurd, just not fucking possible—even for Luffy. Even for all the things Ace had seen his brother pull off. How on earth could his brother and his silly rubber fruit end a years long drought that nearly caused a civil war?
But the sky was bright blue, and not at all the kind of grey a rain this thick normally brought. And Ace saw the sun breaking through the clouds.
The rain has to be from Luffy, then, was all he could think. It has to be Luffy, if the sun’s here.
That thought didn’t make sense. He didn’t care, though. It didn’t have to make sense. Because Ace felt at that moment like he’d never seen rain before in his life.
Like maybe he’d never even known what rain was.