This story is the continuation I had mentioned for my other story 'For Those We Love'. In here, we will explore Ace's life growing up with his mother and the Whitebeard Pirates. You can understand this story without having read the other first, but I'd recommend that you read the other, or you'll be missing some information.

This also doubles as my contribution for Day 8 of the unusually long Whitebeard Crew Week, for the prompt AU :)

Beta-read by Aerle :)

Baby Care 101

There was a very common and widely spread belief —an unfair one, in Marco's opinion— that said pirates were illiterate brutes who didn't care for the more delicate aspects of life. Maybe most of them would be defined as brutes by common standards, and some might be illiterate, but, as far as the Whitebeard Pirates were concerned, they did care.

Proof of it was the interest the entire crew had put into Rouge's pregnancy, worrying about her comfort and wellbeing to the point of exasperating her and making her snap at more than one person to just let her breathe for a while. The concern about how they would act and what they should do once the baby was born had resulted into a search for information about babies. It had started with Rouge's baby books being passed around —and Marco might have been the first one to ask her for them, but that was something no one was stupid enough to tease him about— and had evolved into people buying even more books whenever they weren't satisfied with an explanation.

Now, a week after Gol D. Ace had been born, it was easy to see at least two or three people reviewing one of those books at any given time to make sure they really had their information right.

Rouge had always heard about how babies were a handful that completely ruined their parents' chances for more than two or three hours of uninterrupted sleep, but had dismissed them as an exaggeration. Not anymore. Two weeks into her motherhood, and she had started to fear the dark circles under her eyes would never disappear.

She had felt bad, at first, when Thatch had suggested that someone else could take care of Ace some nights so she could catch up on her sleep, but she had felt so rested the morning after Thatch had watched over Ace that the guilt she had been feeling had diminished. Until she had seen Thatch's miserable and exhausted face at breakfast. Still, he had assured her that it was fine, and the next day, it had been Vista who had offered to look after Ace.

Before she realized it, there was a schedule for Ace's nights, in which nobody spent more than one night in a row looking after him —except, occasionally, Marco, who had the crew's most heartfelt resentment for not showing any kind of negative effects after spending various nights awake. Rouge noticed, though she didn't say it out loud, that the shifts were limited to those people she had developed most confidence with in the months she had spent in the crew. She thanked Thatch silently for it. She might like the atmosphere in the crew, and find the people nice, but she didn't want to leave her son with anybody she couldn't be one hundred percent certain that she could trust.

"I feel a little bad about this," Rouge said, observing the large group of people gathered around Ace from her perch on the stairs. She could hear Ace's delighted laughter in between the cheers and jeers of the crew.

"Don't. Just think of all the work you'll be free from," Vista, who was sitting next to her and grooming his moustache while occasionally joining in on the cheers, advised her.

"Eugh, FUCK!" someone whose voice Rouge couldn't identify amongst the laughter yelled.

"Yes, but still, I feel it's my job. And this is a waste of money."

Vista chuckled.

"We can spend it, don't worry about that.

A dirty, balled up diaper joined the growing pile of used, clean ones on the floor. It seemed Ace had decided to use this one.

"Okay, you got it. NEXT!" Thatch yelled, and the next 'student' stepped forward for a practical class of diaper-changing.

"Okay, I think I've got it this time!" Thatch announced, holding the bottle up triumphantly.

"Really? Let me see," Rouge said, extending her hand.

Thatch passed her the bottle and watched as she tipped it slowly so a drop would fall on the back of her palm before nodding her approval. She walked up to Ace to feed him —he had eaten not so long ago, but Ace would spend all his time awake eating if they let him.

Then he noticed Marco's little smirk.

"What?" Thatch asked, eyes narrowed.

"It took you an hour to get it right."

"So?"

"You're a chef."

Instead of answering —because, yes, it was frustrating that an accomplished chef such as himself had needed an hour to get the bottle of baby milk up to Rouge's standards— he threw a dishtowel at Marco.

"Shut up and come try it," he grumbled.

It had taken them far too long to realize that it wasn't fair Rouge had to prepare all of Ace's considerable amount of bottles of milk for the day, and had decided it was about time other people learned how to do it as well.

It hadn't taken long for the crew to realize that Ace loved to be outside when he was awake. He slept a lot, that was true, and had the bad habit of waking up every two hours wailing for food, but when he was calm, he loved to be outside. Especially at night. He would stare up at the stars, giggle and wave his arms around.

So Marco had settled for spending his nights of watching him —at least the warm ones— somewhere on deck. He would sit with his back against a wall somewhere with a nice view, and tell Ace a story while he tried in vain to reach the stars. Sometimes Marco told him about a silly adventure of the crew —even if Ace wouldn't remember, he made a point of talking about their meetings with Roger, because Rouge had made clear how important it was that he knew about his father— and others he told the myth behind the name of a certain star or constellation.

Ace always fell asleep halfway through the stories, but another thing they had realized was that it calmed him to hear people talk. And Marco found that it was relaxing to be able to talk without having to worry about the other person's reaction, or about maintaining a conversation.

Sometimes, Marco talked about personal and private things, because Ace couldn't tell them to anyone. And Marco was sure he wouldn't, anyway, even when he grew old enough to remember what he had heard.

I admit my knowledge of children, and babies in particular, is very limited, but I hope I didn't mess up too horribly here.

If you have any ideas or suggestions you'd like to make for this story, I'd love to hear them. I don't promise everything will be written, but knowing what you'd like to see happen here would help me a lot :)