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missmungoe · 7 years ago

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ASL - Narwhal + Jellyfish (kill me)

CROOKED RETROSPECTION // Ace, Sabo, Luffy // Narwhal; keep coming back to the same place + Jellyfish; a thousand little stings

He has the dream again, the one where he almost makes it in time – the one where he’s not too late remembering, but still too late to change it.

He’s been here before, in this place that’s not quite Marineford but almost – a hundred images and impressions pieced together with sloppy, uneven stitches, collected over the course of two long years, from scouring newspaper after newspaper, from classified Government documents, from second-hand recounts. It’s a half-scrambled mish-mash of memories that aren’t his own, but it seems fitting, somehow, since for so long he had so few of those.

It’s not quite right, Sabo knows – the plaza looks a little skewed, and everything is a little blurry, like shadows of what they’re supposed to be, shattered rocks and ice and upended ships littered like a careless child’s discarded playthings. And if he doesn’t focus on them, it’s okay. It’s when he looks, when he tries to see that he’ll realise it’s not the way it should be. The jagged corners of the rocks aren’t sharp enough, and the ships are indistinguishable from each other. The ice isn’t white enough, or it’s too white, or too blue. It’s not cold enough, or it is but his breath isn’t fogging like it should.

And, of course, there’s his brother.

“You could have imagined me a little more ripped,” Ace says, arms crossed over his chest. His gaze drops, to do an unimpressed sweep over himself, before lifting back to Sabo, his brows quirking, along with the corner of his mouth. “I know I was in prison and all, but I wasn’t this skinny when I died.”

“Shut up,” Sabo says, but it sounds half-hearted even to his own ears. But he’s had this conversation too many times – or variants of it, anyway, and he’s too tired to be angry; is exhausted from reliving this hell over and over.

But when he looks at Ace next he looks – different, like his mind has adjusted, or at least tried to. Now he stands a little taller, a little broader over the shoulders. Sabo doesn’t know if it’s any closer to how he’d been; all the pictures he’d seen from the papers had been from awkward angles, and in the records from Impel Down he’d been gaunt, drawn and sallow-skinned and nothing like the boy Sabo remembers, who’d worn the sun on his skin, brown with thick clusters of freckles.

Of course, that boy hadn’t been a boy when he’d died.

“Okay,” Ace sighs, rolling his shoulders, as though getting ready. “Let’s do this again.”

He walks across the broken ground of not-quite-Marineford, and Sabo watches as the scene sets, other voices filling the air, a clamour of weapons clashing and the screams of the dying, pirates and marines alike. And there’s Luffy, and Akainu. And he’s relived this scene so many times he’s almost convinced himself that he was there. Like the memories are really his, and not just half-assed constructs that he’s pieced together from scraps.

And part of him knows it’s futile – he knows, because he’s done this so many fucking times, and he’s tired, and hurt, like each dream has left a bruise he can’t see, a cut that doesn’t bleed but that he still feels, a whole collection’s worth, ten, fifty, a hundred, a thousand little wounds that amass to something Sabo is surprised he can live with.

But he does live. Ironic, that.

And he should just stop trying, but the second Akainu moves his body jerks into action, and he can’t just stop, can’t let this go because it’s the last thing he has of the brother he’d lost, and so with a shout clawing, tearing up his throat, Sabo lunges–

It doesn’t work this time, either.

When it’s over, Ace gets up and dusts himself off. There’s a gaping hole in his chest, and Sabo can’t look away from it. He’s breathing so hard it sounds like he’s sobbing. Then again, he probably is.

“Yeah, that’s not gonna work,” Ace says, with a decisive nod – like they’re ten years old and they’re looking up at the treehouse and he’s decided that the steps in the ladder are too far apart; Luffy might not have a problem, but they don’t all have limbs that stretch forever. “You coming in at that angle? He’d take my head off instead, and to be honest, I’d rather have the sucking hole in my chest.” He points to his face. “And this would be a true loss.”

Sabo glares. “Do you need to be like this every time?”

The grin Ace flashes is wide, and full of hard, self-deprecating cheer. “Be like what?”

“So fucking casual about being dead,” Sabo snaps, running a hand through his hair, like he wants to tear some of it loose.

Ace shrugs. Through the hole in his chest, Sabo glimpses part of the broken plaza. “I am dead,” Ace says, matter of fact, and Sabo wants to punch him.

He sits down instead – drops onto his ass on the broken ground, and presses the heels of his palms to his eyes, hoping it’ll shove him into wakefulness.

It doesn’t, but then maybe he isn’t really trying as hard as he pretends to.

“I could have changed it,” Sabo says, with a ragged breath. “I know I could have.”

Ace gives another shrug. “I could have joined a travelling troupe, but that didn’t happen.”

Sabo cuts him a look for that. “I’m not appreciating the glibness.”

Ace just grins, and quips, “It comes with the whole being dead gig. I call it ‘post-gallows humour’. Which is pretty literal in my case.”

There’s a hysteric laugh bubbling up his throat that he can’t stop, and Sabo buries his head in his hands. “God. Shut up.”

“I’m in your head, Sabo,” Ace says. “I don’t call the shots here. This is all on you.”

Sabo thinks he might have flipped him off, if he hadn’t been so tired. Instead he does nothing, but then what else is new?

His brother takes a seat beside him then – uncompelled, although maybe Sabo had brought the action about without realising. And dream or not, he doesn’t tell Ace to shove off – can’t, even if it’s not his brother. Not as had been, anyway. Not as he should be, either, which would be alive.

“And ripped,” Ace supplies, with another look. “You’re still holding back with that. What’s the matter? Afraid I’ll make you feel inadequate?”

Sabo surprises himself by almost smiling. “You wish.”

There’s another lull. Above, a hard sun bears down, glittering off the ice and the surface of the water, a white so bright it hurts his eyes to look directly at it, and frost vapours have crept in along the broken shore, shrouding everything in a damp veil that should make his hair curl but doesn’t. Of course, it’s not real.

Around them, the sounds of fighting have died back down, leaving a hush, like actors gone for their break between rehearsals. It’s just the two of them now, and the ice that doesn’t melt. Not-quite-Marineford blurs at the corners of his eyes, an unimportant backdrop to an event that is anything but that.

A glance to his left finds Ace staring up at the too-blue sky. His hair is streaked grey with ash, thick clumps of it sticking together with sweat and dirt, and the dried blood looks brown on his skin. It’s almost impossible to tell it apart from the freckles.

There’s still a gaping hole in his chest, but it’s not bleeding. Sabo doesn’t know if it should – if wounds made by a fire that hot would bleed at all, or just cauterize the flesh in one fell swoop.

“Dude,” Ace says, with a short laugh. “That’s morbid. And a little disgusting. I’m almost proud.”

Sabo just looks at the hole. “You’re dead, Ace.”

“Yeah,” Ace says, and with a wry look, “And you’re kidding yourself if you think you can pull off long hair. Very few people have the face for it.” He gestures to his own. “Case in point.”

“Better a bad hairdo than being six feet under,” Sabo says, before he can stop himself.

Ace shrugs, smiling. “Fair enough.”

“I could have changed it,” Sabo says again. His voice sounds hoarse, like he’s been screaming the words, over and over.

Ace hums. “The six-feet-under bit?” He shrugs. “Maybe. I always thought a burial at sea sounded cool, but I didn’t really have a say in the matter, so in the ground I went. Not that I don’t appreciate the big-ass headstone. The old man always said Red-Hair was too dramatic for his own good, but damn if he can’t put on a decent funeral.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Sabo snaps, angry now. “I meant–”

“Luffy doesn’t,” Ace says, before he can finish.

Brows drawing together, his first remark is still halfway off his tongue, but he discards it, and, “Luffy doesn’t what?” Sabo asks instead.

Ace smiles – a small, proud thing. “He doesn’t dwell on it anymore. He’s moved forward.” He lifts his eyes to Sabo. “Why haven’t you?”

Sabo just stares at him, and Ace waves to not-quite-Marineford. “This?” he asks. “Why are you still here? My execution was two years ago. I know you were late to the party and all, but come on.”

“Were you this insufferable when you were alive?” Sabo asks.

Ace just looks at him, smile a little odd. “There’s a way you could find out.” He looks at the plaza again. “Not this way, though.”

He has a response ready, but it dies along with his anger, and so he shuts his mouth instead. And it’s so much easier, being angry – at himself, for doing nothing. At the world, for being what it is. It’s worse, the silence that comes when the anger doesn’t have any more kindling left to burn.

Resignation, Sabo thinks, and he’s never been good at resigning himself to anything.

“I’m afraid I’ll forget,” he blurts then, the words like something uncoiling within him, a tightly kept secret, but Ace only looks at him. “I did it, once. And even now I’ve…got all these memories that I didn’t before, but none of them are of you. Not like you were, when – when you died. If I just put it behind me, what the hell does that leave me with?”

“There’s a difference between forgetting and moving on,” Ace says.

Sabo looks at the ground. “Yeah?”

His brother is quiet a moment. Then, “I never forgot,” Ace says, and Sabo looks up. “When you died, moving on was hard, but I did it. We both did.” A small smile. “Luffy cried a lot.”

The laugh that leaves him is wet. “Yeah, well. He cried when I met up with him, too.” The smile that finds him is a little too fond to be appropriately deprecating. “He always was the strongest,” Sabo says. “Bawled like the whole world was ending, but then he’d dust himself off and move forward.”

Ace says nothing to that, but that small smile stays, like the hole in his chest.

Sabo looks out at the plaza, and not-quite-Marineford. He tries to imagine what it felt like, being caught up in that hell. His own hell had been different – is different, this pathetic substitute of a battlefield he’d never even set foot on, with a dead brother who refuses to stay that way. Or maybe it’s just Sabo who refuses to let him, remembering the wrong things, in lieu of having nothing.

“I could have changed it,” Sabo says, but it’s not regret that roots the truth out from where he’s been storing it, like a dearly held keepsake placed on the wrong shelf. Instead it’s realisation that plucks the words down from their perch, to push them off his tongue. He could have done a lot of things.

“Maybe,” Ace says.

“But I didn’t change it.”

“You didn’t.”

“I can’t change it now.”

“Nope.”

A rush of breath, “And it’s not my fault that I didn’t change it,” Sabo says. Admits.

Ace smiles. “There you go.”

Sabo breathes, and – and breathes, like he’s just been told how. Like he hasn’t remembered how until this moment.

“I used to wonder what would have happened, if we’d stopped you from leaving that time,” Ace says then, and Sabo looks up, surprised. Ace shrugs. “Maybe we could have changed things, maybe we couldn’t have, but we still moved on. And I died without any memories of you as you are now, but that didn’t mean I’d forgotten. There are other ways of remembering.”

When Sabo just looks at him, Ace arches a brow. “I tattooed your initial on my arm. Do you know how many people have asked me if it’s a typo?”

Despite himself – or maybe it’s not in spite of anything, but because they are who they are, now as surely as any other time – Sabo grins. “To be fair, you were never the best at spelling.”

“Hey,” Ace says, but he’s grinning, too. “Don’t speak ill of the dead.”

The laugh tears loose of him with a sob, and his chest hurts like he’s the one with the gaping wound, but it’s not, it never is, but this dream isn’t the same as the one he usually has.

And it hurts like hell, but he’s suffered enough injuries in his life to know the difference between the kind of hurt that kills and the kind that heals, and even if one isn’t necessarily any kinder than the other, the difference is significant. Is everything.

“Fuck you for dying,” Sabo laughs, sobbing, and Ace grins.

“Right back at you.”

And they’re still sitting there, in the middle of the rubble that probably wasn’t arranged quite this way, and maybe his brother had been broader over the shoulders, or had fewer freckles than Sabo gives him now. Maybe he’d talked differently, or held himself differently, but that’s not what matters; it’s not in appearance or mannerisms that he’s been remembering him wrong.

A long pause has stretched under the too-blue sky, but then, with a quick, crooked smile –

“I’m not tattooing your initial on my arm,” Sabo says, and Ace sticks his tongue out.

“Suit yourself. Bet you don’t have the arms for it, anyway.”

Sabo shoves him, and Ace falls over, laughing. And they’ve never done it this way before – he’s never laughing when he goes down, knees scabbed and the smell of burning flesh clogging the air. And the hole in his chest is still there, and all of Sabo’s little, invisible wounds, but it’s better than it should be – even if none of it is real, it’s a whole lot better than anything has been, in a long time.

—

He wakes to find Koala staring into his face, and he’s yelling before he’s even had time to draw breath, a shout startled loose with an oath.

She pinches his nose shut, and strangles the word before it’s had the chance to leap off his tongue.

“Language,” she says, pertly. “Seriously, Sabo-kun.”

He’s glaring up at her, rubbing at his nose now that she’s released it, but instead of sticking her tongue out Koala just tilts her head, expression softening a bit.

“Bad dream?” she asks, with a look that knows, even before she adds, as though she needs to explain, as though he doesn’t already know that she knows him better than most, “You were mumbling in your sleep. Something about tattoos.”

Sabo surprises himself by laughing, and her brows quirk up, before her smile follows, a gentle curve at the corners. “No,” he says, his own smile not as soft, but more than it would have been, on a different morning and with the dying echo of not-quite-Marineford ringing through his head. “Not this time.”

She wants to ask, he can tell, and resolves to tell her later, when he’s a little more clear-headed. But first, he has something he needs to do.

“Hey,” Sabo says. “Could you bring me the Den Den Mushi?”

Koala blinks, curiosity coming to settle in the slight purse of her mouth, but she complies without question, sliding off the bunk to hunt down the snail across the room.

He’s sitting up on the mattress when she brings it back, still in his shirtsleeves and with his hair a spectacular mess, at least going by the smile she’s doing a truly terrible job of hiding. But he doesn’t have a mind to spare how he looks, or that he hasn’t had breakfast yet, because then he’s dialling the number, the one he knows by heart, the receiver steady in his hand. He’s just now coming fully out of sleep, the last remnants of the dream lingering, loud laughter and that too-blue sky, and too many freckles on his brother’s skin.

There’s a lull where the snail stares back, gaze blank and emitting that droning, vacant hum, before the call connects, jerking it into awareness, and, “Hellooo? This is Luffy,” chirps his brother’s voice, and the snail’s eyes go round and owlish, followed by the matter-of-fact declaration, “the man who’s going to become the Pirate King.”

Sabo grins. “Hey, Luffy.”

“Ah – Sabo!” the snail laughs, delight brightening the sound of his name, loud where it spills over the line. And he doesn’t ask why he’s calling, like someone else might have done, as though the call itself is what matters, not the reason behind it. Sabo doesn’t doubt that Luffy would have been happy if all he’d done was call to say hello.

But he does have a reason for calling, and, “Would you tell me?” Sabo asks then, and thinks about the brother who may or may not have had so many freckles, who might have been a little broader over the shoulders, and who might not have been so glib. Or maybe he had been. The thing is, Sabo wants to know.

“Tell you what?” Luffy asks, voice curious, and Sabo smiles. And maybe they’re not his memories, the ones he’s asking for now, but he’d rather have them than the ones he has, the patchwork of what-ifs and could-have-beens that doesn’t do his memory justice; Ace, who’d never lived by regrets. That’s not the way he wants to remember his brother.

“About Ace.”

#one piece #asl brothers #asl #portgas d. ace #sabo #monkey d. luffy #koala #opfanfic #opfanfiction #one piece fanfiction #my fic #under the sea prompts #mungoe writes #mello3jay #thank you for the prompt!

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