Those Who Favour Fire

A One Piece Fanfiction

By: Sanjuno Shori Niko

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(In which Portgas D Ace wakes up.)

Portgas D Ace had never expected to open his eyes again. The infamous D luck had finally run out for him. All of his crimes and failures catching up to him at last in the form of a magma fist through his torso. His only lingering regret was that Luffy would carry the memory of Ace's death. Ace would rather have spared his precious baby brother that pain.

A flicker of gold light, like a single candle flame striving to drive back the cursed darkness.

Ace did not remember opening his eyes, but he reached out for that tiny flame despite his disorientation. It responded eagerly to his will, just like every other flame since Ace had discovered and eaten the Mera Mera no Mi. The flame grew, and spread, blanketing the surface of the dark, rippling sea that rose and fell in gentle swells under his bare feet with a thousand licks of fire. The light raced over the water, like dawn raced the stars, clinging and climbing over sand-crusted bare feet and skirts that swirled like sea foam.

She wore seashells in her wavy hair, skin tanned dark by the sun and teeth salt white against a crimson smile. She was his mother and his mistress, his first and forever love. The Goddess of the Sea frowned in unfeigned disappointment, eying the cut-short string that hung limp from Ace's ring finger. Fate ignored her sister-goddess' displeasure as she packed away her golden shears. A flame coloured thread was pulled loose from another nearby weave and offered up for consideration. Ace swallowed, caught between a new destiny and the deep blue sea. His string of fate was ragged and grey, his flame flickering lower with every swiftly passing eternity. He was dead, yes, but he was a D, and nothing could deny the true will of D. Not even death.

"YOU PROMISED! ACE!"

In the end, it was the chance to see his brother again that helped Ace make his final choice. Decided, Ace reached out and plucked the fruit from the Goddess' hands.

It burned like embers against his lips, and tasted like freedom on his tongue.

/.../

Ace licked the juice from his lips, tasting fish oil and salt, and had to fight back a surge of nausea. He forced his eyes open with a frown, gaze skittering around the circular room he both did and did not recognize. It was the tree house from his childhood, only not, and large enough for an adult to stand in. Ace slid out of bed, limbs weak and shaky as hunger clawed at his guts.

A sniffle and a choked whimper pulled Ace over to the door. He thought he was ready for what lay on the other side of the canvas drape. Eventually the Universe would tire of proving all his preconceptions wrong. (Probably. Maybe. Never.)

'Tiny.' Was Ace's first, stunned thought. 'Too thin.' Was the second. Ace's mouth was dry, his lips cracked. The flame logia was uniquely familiar with the symptoms of dehydration, but the way every movement ground tiny glass shards into his muscles and bones was a new and highly unpleasant experience.

"Lu... Luffy?" Ace's knees hit the rough wood planks hard enough to leave bruises. The straw hat adorned head whipped around, wide black eyes full of tears and shocked desperation as they locked on Ace's freckled face.

"Ace? Ace!" His little brother's rubbery body rocketed into his chest, fresh tears smearing over the raw, open mess of badly-bandaged wounds. Ace shoved the pain into a far corner of his mind to deal with later. Later, because right now Luffy's voice was cracked and broken and wrong as Ace clamped his arms around his baby brother, wrapping the younger D up in a protective hold as Luffy wailed. "I thought Niichan was dead! I thought I'd be alone again forever! Ace, I was so scared!"

"Oi, Luffy, oi… c'mon, don't cry. I promised you, ne? I'll never die." Ace did not know how it was possible, but Luffy was seven again. The same age he had been when Garp forced the younger of his grandsons into Dadan's resentful care. It was like travelling through time, because Ace was still in his twenty-one year old body, and Luffy hardly weighed anything at all even with the weakness in Ace's limbs. "It's gonna be okay, little brother. Niichan's right here."

Ace let Luffy cry himself out without commenting on it. This led to Ace holding a sleeping Luffy in his arms, staring up through the branches at the stars above Dawn Island while Luffy sniffled and dozed. There were clumsy bandages wrapped around Luffy's chest. A match for the cloth binding the wounds Ace could feel pulling in his torso as he carried the little boy back into the tree house. Ace frowned at the damage he could see staining the wraps on his younger brother. The older D had his own share of aches and pains. Not the least of which was the ragged sunburst of burned tissue that tunneled through Ace's chest.

'Sakazuki.' Ace's lips twisted into a snarl that no small number of corrupted Marines and Blackguard pirates would run screaming at the sight of.

Things were wrong. Luffy was so young, and Ace was too old to still be in East Blue (eleven years too young, four years too old) but Ace knew where his new scar had come from. Luffy's madcap scramble to rescue Ace from execution had left its own marks on the rubber boy, and somehow this smaller Luffy had acquired the same wounds. At least superficially. The Luffy that Ace had died to protect had pushed himself so far over the edge he had gone hurtling over brand new ones. Hopefully this tinier (weaker, more fragile) Luffy had not gone quite that crazy.

'Conqueror's Haki.' Ace mused, smoothing antibiotic cream over the deep gouges that crossed over each other to form a giant X on Luffy's chest. The wounds went from the boy's collarbone to the bottom of his ribcage on the opposite side, almost perfectly symmetrical. Ace pulled a fresh roll of bandages out of the over-sized (D sized) first aid kit Makino had put together for Luffy (and Ace and Sabo) and refreshed every time she came to visit. Shaking his head to knock unwelcome thoughts loose, Ace wrapped Luffy's now-cleaned wounds properly. The logia user scowled at the amount of skin covered by sterile white. Luffy was in bad shape. Not quite bad enough for Ace to panic and hunt down a real doctor like a rabid hellhound, but bad enough that Ace was going to rip anyone who looked cross-eyed at his brother (his tiny, adorable, squishy little baby brother) into shreds and them cremate the pieces. The over-protective big-brother reflex Ace had on a normal day was bad enough (Smoker was damned lucky he was as honest and honorable as his reputation labeled him. Otherwise Ace would have smashed him into paste for hunting his brother.) After seeing Luffy almost die for him, having memories of Sabo's death dragged up, and now with Luffy so small and vulnerable...

Ace knew his own issues well enough to anticipate how savage he was going to be for a while. Ace would get over it eventually. Probably. Maybe. He would be able to hide it better by the time Luffy turned seventeen again at least. Which brought Ace's thoughts circling around to the main point again as he treated his own wounds. (Worse than Luffy's, borderline-actually fatal, but he could feel the power of his logia erasing the heat damage and burns even as he cleaned them out.) Ace watched Luffy sleeping peacefully in the flickering light of a single lamp. 'Luffy can use Conqueror's Haki. I'm going to have to train him.'

Conqueror's Haki was not as rare as the Marines wanted to believe. Ace could use it. So could Marco, Whitebeard, Shanks, and a few of the stronger Shichibukai. Sighing quietly, a pang of sorrow wrenched at Ace's bruised and scalded heart at the thought of Whitebeard and his crew. Ace had not gathered enough courage to check, but he had the feeling that his back was bare of Whitebeard's mark. (So strange to have his logia abilities in East Blue but not his tattoos. Sabo's memorial was the same, but he had gotten that one done before leaving home.) Luffy had not been surprised by Ace's age in contrast to his own, which meant that Luffy was expecting Ace to be so much older than him. 'This isn't the world I'm used to. I died back there and now... I've truly lost everything… everyone… except Luffy... this Luffy. My Luffy is gone now too...'

Scoffing at his own dramatic melancholy, Ace slid into the pallet next to his snoring baby brother and curled defensively around Luffy's so-much smaller form. 'If Luffy's seven, then he's just eaten his fruit this year. That means Shanks is on his way back to the New World to stay, once he recovers from losing his arm. Of course, that's assuming that Luffy's timeline hasn't been changed. There's so much I don't understand...'

Why was Luffy so young? How had they been injured so badly on Dawn Island? Ace and Luffy had reached the top of the local food chain before they hit puberty. How was Ace still alive? (Alive again, maybe?) Exhausted by the questions whirling around and around in his head without answers, Ace snuffed out the lantern without moving. Thoughts a confused jumble of trailing threads, Ace looked at the tiny flame he had drawn over to his palm. Sleep had never looked more attractive. Ace closed his fist, dousing the flame. He shut his eyes, determined to sleep and avoid thinking for a while no matter what his chronic insomnia had to say about it.

/.../

(Marines? What the fuck are Marines doing here? Kuso-jiji is the only one who bothers to come this far East of the main shipping lines and he was just here a few months ago. Whatever, at least it's not my job to deal with them. Poor old Whoop-slap.)

It's my fault...

(What the fuck? Why? Why the hell would they shoot Whoop-slap? He hates us! Hates bandits and pirates and fuck, I know he was a rude old bastard to everyone but that wasn't a reason to kill him! Oh shit. Shit! LUFFY!)

They died because of me...

(Quiet, Luffy. You have to stay quiet. For Niichan, okay? I know you're worried about Makino-san, but if the Marine's know we're here they'll hurt more people. They'll hurt Makino-san for not being on their team. You don't want Makino-san to get in trouble, right? So just stay here and be super quiet, okay?)

Just because I was born...

(No. No! Let him go! He's not important, just some brat who follows me around. Wants to be a forester, so I let him tag along when I go hunting. I don't even know who his parents are.)

Luffy, I'm so sorry...

(Yeah. I'll go quietly.)

I never should have trusted them...

(Everyone. They killed everyone. Why? Why? None of them knew who my father was! Fuck you, you jackass, I'm just a fur trader! I want nothing to do with my fucking father or his fucking legacy! You shitheads are worse than the fucking pirates! At least they'll admit to being goddamned murderers!)

Whoop-slap. Dadan. Makino... just because I was here. Luffy... why didn't you run?

(No. No, no, NO! Not Luffy! GET AWAY FROM HIM!)

... Thank you for loving me, little brother...

/.../

Ace looked up at the shadowy figure looming over him, edges barely illuminated by starlight. A few absentminded sparks made the picture clearer, but no less confusing than his dream (nightmare.) Younger by three or four years (seventeen. He was, had been, only seventeen.) Paler from a life spent under a canopy of trees rather than years on the deck of a ship. Different scars. A few inches shorter and a dozen pounds of muscle lighter. No tattoos except for Sabo's memorial. No hat. They eyes and the freckles and the burning anger at the world's bullshit, though... that much was still the same.

"So, are you why I'm here?" Ace sat up and stared at his ghostly doppelganger. "Or are you just here for Luffy?"

"It was my fault." The specter looked pained in a way that had nothing to do with the bloody ruin of his chest, his grey eyes locked on the little boy curled into Ace's hip. "If I'd left on my birthday like I promised Sabo... if I hadn't stayed..."

"The Marines want to kill Luffy for who his father is too, you know." Ace's smile was more of a grimace. "If you hadn't been there you know that the little idiot would've started screaming about being the Pirate King. Combine that with being Revolutionary Dragon's son and I don't think even Gramps could've kept them issuing the kill order."

The ghost blinked in surprise, then looked at Luffy with refreshed worry. "So that's why they looked for him. I thought it was me, but... I can't protect him anymore."

"That's why I'm here, isn't it?" Ace grinned with all the fierce joy had had learned from Luffy as a child, from his ship-brothers and crew and Oyaji's lessons as a free man of the ocean. "To do what you can't. I'm a pirate, kiddo. I've been to the New World and I've almost mastered Haki. Just watch, I'll turn the brat into a monster that will terrify the world."

"I was offered a choice." The faint smile was outlined in silver, and Ace could see that his counterpart had lived a far sadder life than he had. This kid had died long before he realized that he had the right to live and be happy about being alive. "I chose Luffy. I will always choose Luffy... and you understand that. You're stronger than me. Happier. You'll be able to help him reach his dream. I was too angry. Too blinded by the poison in other people's words. You were able to overcome that legacy of hate so... I made a trade."

Ace saw the sorrow, the love, the barely checked violence born in anger and hopelessness. "You would've done fine if you'd stuck around and had the chance to grow up a little. Luffy loves you, and that's all the proof you need."

"Luffy didn't… he doesn't have the time to wait for me to get my shit together. So. I traded my life, and made a gamble with Fate." The younger Ace swallowed, fresh pain in his eyes as he reached for his little brother and was unable to touch him, fingertips blurring into mist against the bandages. "My life, in exchange for your power. My memories, to bind your mind to my body. I'm sorry in advance about the nightmares but there are worse prices we could have paid for your resurrection."

"I'm used to bad nights, don't worry about it." Ace sighed and pulled the threadbare blanket up higher around Luffy's shoulders. "So are you going to be sticking around, or...?"

The spirit shrugged. "I can't move on while my body's alive. I thought I'd just... sleep. Until it's our time again."

"Stick around." Ace knew the grin he was wearing was more than a little mad and terrifying, but this was awesome. "Two heads are better than one, and four eyes are better than two. Especially with a little brother like Luffy to look after. You want to see him grow up, ne? You can help me, since our memories are different."

"You want me to haunt you?" The ghost looked confused, but his eyes drifted back to Luffy again, and his gaze softened. "... He is a handful, isn't he? Alright. I'll stick around to help. I don't know what you think I'll be able to do, but I'll stay."

"Awesome." Ace yawned and lay back down. "Keep watch, would you, brother? We'll plan some more in the morning."

The ghost's laugh was bitter and joyless and hurt to hear. "Go to sleep, idiot."

'Gonna have to fix that.' Ace yawned and rolled over to curl around Luffy. 'Brothers aren't supposed to leave brothers hurting like that...'

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So this is my take on "Ace survives Marineford." It's probably nothing like what you were expecting.