The attack comes out of nowhere.

Thatch is moving before he's fully aware, arm up as his hand blindly moves to find some weapon, any weapon, except the world is hot and bright and he's being slammed back into his bed, fingers grappling at the hand around his throat, he moves his knee and smashes it against the arm holding him down but it doesn't budge, just a grunt, and he can't—

Then, suddenly, the pressure is gone, and Portgas D. Ace is sitting at the foot of his bed, dying embers of flame fading on his shoulders, black smoke swirling around him like he's some demon from the underworld, eyes blazing as he says, almost accusatorially, "You said that you could handle it."

Thatch stares.

Gasps for air a bit.

"What the fuck?" he demands.

"You said," Ace says, steel and brimstone and fire in his voice, "That you could handle it. That it would be fine. That you were strong enough."

He remembers their conversation at the beginning, hairs raising, and they do, now, everything about the boy in front of him screaming dangerous.

"Why did you do that?" Thatch demands, "Did you just try to kill me?"

Ace shakes his head. He looks unhappy, "Don't you keep any weapons around you?"

Thatch shakes his head, "I don't— I don't need to. That's the point. I'm on a ship full of brothers and—"

"And what if one of those brothers betrays you?" Ace demands sharply, cutting in. "What if one of those brothers decides to kill you in your sleep?"

Thatch stares. Narrows his eyes. "Look, kid," he runs his fingers through his hair, "I don't know what you've been through, what's happened in the past. But the Whitebeards, we're a family, okay? We trust each other. And I don't see why you're so caught up over me, specifically, anyway. Did you attack Marco, too? He's promoted now, you know, first division commander and everything. Are you going to attack everyone or—"

"You have a duty," Ace says quietly, "To protect your division."

Thatch squirms.

"If you can't even protect yourself," Ace's fingers blaze, golden sparks trailing up his arms, "How are you going to protect those important to you?"

Thatch sighs. Tips his head back. "I'll be fine, kid."

"You won't," Ace shakes his head, "Not if you stay like this."

Thatch grounds his teeth, "Look, kid, I don't know what you want me to say. Maybe it doesn't mean anything to you, but I'm a division commander, I'm strong, and—"

"Strong enough to beat me?"

"I—what?"

"Strong enough to beat me?" Ace raises his chin, "Ten minutes to prepare, then we spar."

"I—what?"

"I'll be waiting in the mess hall."

"I—wait! What time is it? It's still dark out! I need to sleep—Ace? Ace!"

Marco is decidedly unimpressed.

"So you," he jabs his fork at Ace, "didn't think that Thatch was strong enough."

Ace winces a bit.

"And so then," Marco resists the urge to massage his temples, "You decided to fight him, to prove this?"

"It made sense," Ace mumbles, like they had not caused a giant spectacle, as though he hadn't thrown Thatch through three walls and subsequently bruised the majority of Thatch's back to prove a stupid point that didn't even need to be proved.

Marco grounds his teeth.

Tries to stay calm.

"Why," he asks.

"Thatch isn't strong enough," Ace plays with his fingers, like a guilty child who can't look their caretaker in the face, "Maybe in a fair fight. Maybe in a straightforward one. Maybe when he's got enough warning. But I ambushed him, this morning, and if I had wanted to kill him, I could have."

"Do you want to kill him?" Marco demands.

"No," Ace answers sulkily, like this is a question he has been asked before.

"Then why is this a problem?"

"What if someone else wants to kill him?" Ace sets his jaw, "Then he could die super easily! He doesn't have a devil fruit, he specializes in weapons but he doesn't keep them near him, it doesn't make sense. He trusts everyone in this crew to have his back."

"And you don't think he should?"

"There are over 1500 people in this crew," Ace meets Marco's eyes, "Do you trust every one of them, to have your back no matter what? To be willing to give their lives for yours? To be loyal to you, to Oyaji, with their dying breath?"

It's a battle, to keep his breath steady, to keep staring at Ace like he is assured of everything in the world, confident and at ease. "No," Marco answers, quietly, honestly. "But I have been given no reason to distrust them."

"It would be too late, then," Ace shakes his head, chair scraping back as he stands, shoving his hands into his pockets, "You're accepting. You have a big crew. And that's great, it is. But there are setbacks to that. You don't know every face, you don't know every name, how can you know every man and every loyalty?"

"Ace," Marco narrows his eyes, "Do you know of someone who might betray this crew?"

Ace stares at him. Tilts his head to the side, like he's trying to figure out Marco. Like he's disassembling him, and putting him back together. "I joined the crew a few days ago," He raises an eyebrow, "If I told you that someone you personally knew was a traitor, wouldn't you attack me, thinking I was trying to break the crew apart?"

Marco's stomach turns, "What are you trying to do?" he demands.

Ace scuffs the ground with his shoes. Closes his eyes and groans, loudly, "This would be so much easier if you were my Marco. You'd know. Or, even if you were from before…"

"What are you talking about?"

"I told you," Ace's eyes bore through Marco, "I'm from the future." There is a beat, a moment of silence, and then Ace inclines his head. "I'm hungry. You going to come?"

Ace makes him uneasy.

Marco isn't sure if, maybe he isn't trying to turn him against the rest of the crew or something like that.

But sitting across from Ace as he's cheerfully told about Ace's little brother, heart heavy, he finds it hard to believe that.

So he's left, here, unsure of what to do.

Ace finds him in the middle of the night, touch so soft that Whitebeard can barely make it out before he wakes, arm instinctively striking out and Ace ducking down as though he had known that it would come.

He wakes quickly after that, tilting his head to the side as he asks, "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," Ace mumbles, "Just… I don't know. It's stupid. Just a little scared."

Worry flickers in his chest. "What's wrong, son?" He asks quietly, patting the spot beside him.

"I know that it's fine, it's just," Ace chews on his lower lip, "I ate Jozu's ice cream by accident."

Whitebeard snorts.

Jozu's ice cream is famous for being both disgusting (it's raw horse flesh flavoured) and untouchable (once Thatch ate it on a dare and Jozu sent him overboard for it).

"How's your stomach feeling?" he asks.

"Fine," Ace scrunches up his nose, "But I can still taste it in my mouth."

Whitebeard hums, both amused and relieved that it wasn't something more serious, "Who told you about Jozu's ice cream?"

"You did," Ace rests his head on Whitebeard's arm, "in the future."

It's strange. Ace doesn't have that cheeky, crooked grin he always has when he makes this joke. He's quiet, solemn, and it doesn't fit with him joking like this.

"Brat," Whitebeard ruffles Ace's hair, instead of addressing that topic, "Trying to keep your secrets?"

Ace closes his eyes against Whitebeard's arm, "Mind if I stay here tonight?" he asks in lieu of answer.

"Of course," Whitebeard says, knowing now that the question, perhaps, should have been what kept Ace up this late, eating half the crew's ice cream.

(Oddly enough, when he asks around the next day, nobody knows who might have told Ace the story of Jozu's ice cream. Hm. Well, a thought for another day.)

Portgas D. Ace, Haruta declares, slamming her hand onto the table, is a mystery that needed to be solved yesterday.

Marco, for once, doesn't sigh loudly and disagree, instead opting to stay silent, brows furrowed, as though he's trying to figure something out, which is why Namur follows suit and doesn't immediately end this, even when Haruta raises idea after absurd idea and Jiru gets more and more caught in this ridiculousness, being gullible as he is.

Ace isn't met with hostility, really, it's difficult, with a personality like his, to dislike him, but he's certainly met with suspicion, which his personality also doesn't really help.

Cue: Ace walking into their meeting, smiling brightly at the cork board and excitedly asking, "Ooh, am I the subject of a conspiracy theory?"

Namur fights the urge to face plant.

"Yes," Haruta says, narrowing her eyes, "Plan to tell us what's up?"

Ace grins, the edges of his eyes crinkling and teeth bared, "I'm from the future!"

Haruta groans and tips her head back. "Great. Thanks. I understand everything now."

Ace blinks, surprised, "Really? Wow, that's great! So I can go kill Teach now?"

Namur's heart skips a beat. "What."

"What?" Marco demands, all but flying up, chair skittering behind him.

"Wait," Thatch says, blinking, "No."

Haruta stares in incredulous disbelief.

"No?" Ace tilts his head to the side, looking confused.

Why.

"But you said that you understood," he says to Haruta, crossing his arms over his chest and pouting, "Why can't I?"

"Why can't you kill one of our brothers?" Haruta demands, "Dude! That's a no-no."

Ace groans loudly, falls to the floor in a cross legged position, "I don't get it," he mumbles, "You said that you got it."

And, ridiculously, absurdly, this makes sense.

"You're from the future, you mean?" Namur asks.

Ace rolls his eyes, "Duh."

Marco glances at Namur, as if to say what do we do.

And Namur would say that Ace is crazy, except…

Except Ace asking when Marco's going to become first division commander, before anyone else should have known.

Except Ace knowing one of Izou's favourite foods that nobody else knew, and requesting it specially for his birthday, which Izou liked to keep hush-hush and only celebrated with those close to him.

Except Ace quietly pointing out the flaws in one of their plans, and them narrowly avoiding what could have been a huge disaster in an attack.

Except.

Except.

Except.

So many exceptions.

And somehow it makes sense.

"Holy shit," Namur mumbles, "Why do you want to kill Teach?"

"He kills Thatch," Ace answers quickly, steadily, like it's fact, and there's no lie in his words, in his face or the beat of his heart.

"How?"

"Dagger."

"When?"

Ace twists his lips to the side. Lowers his eyes, shrugs a bit, "I can't remember. Days on the Grand Line—" he flutters his fingers, "They melt together."

They do. "Why?"

"A devil fruit."

Namur leans back, "We would have given it to him if he'd just asked."

"It's the Yami no Mi. He wants to kill Oyaji."

There's something steady, calm, to those words, that makes Namur look up. Narrow his eyes.

"You can't honestly believe this," Izou says quietly from Namur's side.

Namur glances at Izou.

Peers at Ace.

"How can you prove that what you're saying is real?"

"I can't," Ace turns his head to the side, lifting a shoulder in a shrug. "But it's true."

"Diana," Thatch says, suddenly.

Namur stares, "Who?"

"Diana, fourth division," Marco says, like he's rattling something off of a statistics report, "Has a fruit that forces someone to tell the truth."

Ace brightens, "That's so cool!"

What a weirdo.

"If it makes you feel any better," Ace says, sitting down next to Haruta, "You were alive, last I saw you."

"But Oyaji died," Haruta swipes angrily at her face. She doesn't want to be crying right now. She hates this, has always preferred broken bones to tears.

"He won't," Ace answers.

Calm.

Certain.

Haruta wishes she could have that, right now, when the world feels like it's tilting. "Teach is being interrogated."

Ace inclines his head, the answer in his movement.

So he knows.

Haruta's throat burns, a bit. "Spar with me?"

Ace swings his leg forward. Back. "You aren't a fighter," he says, sounding surprised.

"I'm a pirate," Haruta answers, lifting her chin. "C'mon. You scared?"

A roguish grin lights Ace's face, "No. Come at me."

And she does, rapier light and steady in her hands, and Ace jumps, legs turning to flame even as she coats her blade with Haki, smoothly sliding away.

He jumps over railings and around people and he knocks things over and Ace fights dirty, but she likes it, and it calms her, the adrenaline of the run and the fight and the weirdo from the future who needs to stand still so she can beat him already.

"Can't catch me!" Ace crows from where he's crawled up on Oyaji's shoulder.

"Cheater!" Haruta bellows, putting away her rapier to start climbing Oyaji's legs, to reach Ace.

Oyaji laughs, and this is ridiculous, they've just found a traitor in their crew, they've been told the worst case scenario, and yet, somehow, there is something light in Haruta's chest, and the world, imperfect as it may be, is perfect in this moment.