#dadan and ace have burn scars you can’t change my mind

[buff-muffin]

I like the idea that Ace has always had a sort of affiliation or connection to fire well before he got his fruit. He’s seen all sides of fire and all the ways it can be harnessed. From a young age under the bandits care he would watch fire cook his foods. Then when it came to surviving on his own, a fire was probably one of the first things Garp taught Ace and was the first step to his premature independence. Then there were the bond fires shared with his brothers. Shadow puppets shows, bickering fights and laughter so big it made his stomach ache

The grey terminal fires that threatened his and his younger brothers lives. The fires he helped create that almost took the lives of hundreds, that left his and his mother figures skin scarred. The fire that claimed his brother’s boat and killed him just as he set out to sea. He had seen all sides to fire and what it was capable of.

So when Ace ate the flame flame fruit. There was an immediate understanding of the danger his flames held. His flames would not be the same as the ones that ravaged the terminal. His flames would be controlled and protective like the candle light Sabo used to read to Luffy. Like the flames of a bond fire providing warmth and safety. His flames would always protect those he wished to. The spade pirates. Whitebeard. Luffy. He would protect them like a bondfire

[empresswrites]

@saboace-week Day Six: Monster

I had help by my friend Bunbo (from discord) since it plays off their Addams Sabo! Hope you all enjoyed~!!

After reading the letter, Ace had gone to the cliff and screeched his heart out in disbelief. Sabo had promised to wait until seventeen, where they would practically sail out together for being so close in age. The forest wouldn’t be the same anymore without Sabo to linger, and though Ace knew to take care of Luffy, it felt like someone ripped part of his heart from his chest, like a gaping bleeding wound. More screams to the sea left him, cursing the celestial dragons, cursing the sea for swallowing up his friend, cursing himself for not being there.

The venting left him raw in the throat, with red eyes, and dry tear streaks on his cheeks. Nothing else could leave him, never wanting to reach this point in his life so soon. It was too soon, it wasn’t ever supposed to happen like this, not like a sudden hurricane—streamlining and ruining his last amount of innocence he felt he had left. They were to sail the seas, make a name for themselves and only let the Maiden take control over their lives after setting sail. Living day by day when out on the sea, not before they were seventeen. Sabo had promised to wait, and he broke that because of the pressure and Ace deeply blamed himself for letting it happen. He should have gone to Sabo, he should have tried harder, he should have killed his father when he could.

A startle reaches Ace at the suddenly purely dark thought. Trying to calm his racing mind, he can’t help but notice he enjoyed that idea more than he first thought. It jolted to mind with no issue and blared through his mind like a mantra, pressing down to his shoulders. The blame for letting his friend die and not trying harder, it harbored down on him like the heaviest thing he could ever come across—more than the beasts in the jungle.

From then on, Ace couldn’t bring himself to turn away from those dark thoughts, especially when Magra found Sabo’s body on shore days later. It was a catalyst of breaking Ace down more. At the sight of and when the body was buried--the smell, it was engraved into him. He would never forget it. The words from people in town began to weigh down more—how they said he was the son of a monster. It made him grow more vigorous and vicious in his training—his fighting style. There were times that Ace glanced with a lingering amount of care to Luffy, but otherwise his heart was being consumed. If they thought Roger was a monster, then they were going to be in for a rude surprise when he reached out to the world.

Luffy grew a little distant, acting as himself, but one time he had admitted that Ace was starting to turn into someone else—not his Ace. It left a burning ache in Ace’s chest, but at the same he couldn’t understand how Luffy wouldn’t admit to things that he had seen to the general public. The nobles and their disgusting ways, people with their sneering and dirty tricks, not to mention the celestial dragons that took away his Sabo. Though through it all, Ace still carried a protectiveness for his little brother and knew he would do near anything to protect what he had left.

The only one that was able to quell his hatred for his father, to give him a reason to live in this damned world, and the one to seek him through everything—someone who he had even admitting to who his father was—was now dead. Sabo understood him like no one else, not even Dadan quite brought herself to his level to understand all his thoughts. The older he got, the darker the thoughts became, and Ace knew it was because he lost his last standing light—a simple glow lingering from Luffy not being enough. Once losing it, his life started to dim and his view upon everything began to become more and more dangerous.

When he finally turned seventeen and sailed away, the gathering was few and he kept it that way. Dadan was there with a few others, Makino, and of course Luffy. They were the only ones that he tolerated anyways, so he didn’t mind as he sailed off with black hat donned on his head and an orange belt that his little brother gave him as a parting gift. Ace thought of doing something to remember Sabo, but he never knew what he could do to fully giving the feeling and meaning behind it, so instead he kept the goggles found with the wreckage that had washed up.

The Grand Line was not prepared for Ace, ruthless with his dagger and fists at first. No mercy lied within his gaze, anyone standing in his way was taken out to never bother him again. They always claimed that if Roger ever had a child it would be a monster, and here he was fulfilling something that they caused all on their own. Packing up with gunpowder, filling to the brim, before setting it off with Sabo’s death. Nothing mattered, he knew Luffy could handle himself, he would have to as they were miles apart, with no way to get back to his little brother quickly or otherwise.

Ace became darkness, the devil fruit calling to him when he found it in the chest at a raid they did on an island full of bandits. The fruit was consumed after reading the notations of what it was, and he couldn’t help himself, his crew leaving him to do as he wanted. As his power become known to the world, figuring out how to gain other abilities and gaining fire, they easily named him ‘Shadowfire Ace’. The bounty set was high, and even his crew knew better than to interrupt anything he would do.

Then everything changed…

They approached the town at night. Ace liked the view along the streets when it was dark, feeling himself at home when people slept. The quiet, serenity of no one to speak, to stare, to breathe. It was something he desired once in a great while, as he had become used to his crew being themselves and even faked a fleeting smile like he was opening up every once in a while, but it was a beautiful show—Ace could hear applauds filling his mind when playing well.

Heels clicking the ground makes him groan in frustration, as he had been enjoying the peace and quiet of the night. Pulling his shadows from the path more to not make his darkness linger so long, he tries to pretend as if he isn't a dark force of nature and fire- even if that is mostly all he is these days. Dragging his gaze forward and along sleek black-heeled boots moving with ease along the stone path, clacking sharply as the other approaches, Ace slowly drags his gaze upwards. Legs are exposed from just below the knee to show scarred skin on the left side of the leg—though Ace is not sure how much by the distance and lingering night—then to shorts that are just above mid-thigh. Ace allows his eyes to trail further up—pausing as he views more of the button up shirt, where he sees that of a dark flower resting, while also seeming to be wilting. Suspenders go along the stark difference with the white shirt and not many can pull off the look, but this man did easily. Though, as he reaches the face—Ace finds that is where he feels his chest tighten as he swallows thickly.

“Ace…?” The voice lingers. The clicking has stopped and Ace can’t help but stare at curious dark eyes—not able to tell the color in the current lighting.

Sabo? His mind races at the view of what would have been an older version of Sabo. The scarring almost matched of what his Sabo had been left with when they found him along the shore and had haunted him into his dreams. Though only one arm shows from the short sleeves to have scarring, unlike what his Sabo had—as if he was trying to stay afloat on a burning plank that had engulfed both arms and most of his face and neck. 

“For, alas! alas with me!” The Sabo-lookalike’s hands shift out in a display to his words, feet shifting to slowly saunter closer. “The light of Life is o’er! No more—no more—no more—!” The scrapping of metal heels against the ground brings a shiver through Ace and he can’t find it in himself to move as he finds himself entranced by the slow approach. “And all my days are trances,” the voice is almost haunting now, but seeing a small tilt of the head and wicked gleam in his eyes, Ace can’t pull his own eyes away. “And all my nightly dreams- are where thy grey eye glances,” words tickle along Ace’s ears as he views upon a sinister smile that brings an alluring tone to everything. The other male’s legs still shift slowly to place his feet against the road while he draws himself closer to where Ace stands. “And where thy footstep gleams—In what ethereal dances,” pale lips shift in a way that pulls his attention there before a small sliver of a blade is in a hand, trailing along a chin as those eyes almost sparkle in macabre emotions, showing even in the dark a dance. It was something dragging, causing Ace to shift a small step before a stretched grin shows—within it a darkness Ace has never felt—almost looming over him. “By what eternal streams…”

The knife flickering in the moonlight is soon gone, hidden in the chest where the man’s heart lays. An overwhelming panic and fear settles in Ace at the blossoming blood along the white shirt, the man only a few arms length away from him yet reminding him so much of his best friend it’s painful to see this. It was clear that he was bleeding, but that sedated smirk confused him. Was Ace hallucinating? Did he even want to see such a sight? One with Sabo being the one to die before him in such a manner?

As this man before him like another version of Sabo that could have existed had he survived shifts, Ace jerks to get darkness to catch him and is befuddled on how to react. This man couldn’t be his Sabo, he had buried his Sabo years ago, causing him to change into a whole different person. It was something he enjoyed—changing, not burying Sabo—but it was no doubt that the body is real and not a mere illusion. As Ace removed the knife before consuming the man within his shadows, so many questions plague him. In the end, however, he had time to think over questions in the darkest depths of the forest connected to the town.

Oh how Ace had not realized how much his life would turn out with this man now within it.