Sabo wakes, body alive with searing pain and screams throbbing through his skull; for a handful of endless seconds he believes he is still on that tiny boat, desperately trying to smother the flames threatening to sink him, a second cannon ball hurtling through the air and this one will kill him, he's so sure-

Then Sabo comes back to himself, realizing the soft, lumpy thing cradling his head is a pillow. He can hear the low groaning of old wood as the room rocks without rhythm, which can only mean he's on another boat, a proper one this time. The air is tangy with salt. Open sea, then. The steady movement of the ship is calming. He may have lived on land his whole life, but he's been dreaming of sailing just as long.

…Unless, of course, he's been captured by the nobles who tried to kill him.

Abruptly fully awake, Sabo pushes himself up on his elbows, only to immediately collapse again as agony lances across his neck and chest and down his spine. His vision blurs, and he spends the next several minutes just breathing, blinking the static from his sight and failing miserably to reorient himself.

Burns, Sabo thinks. That he'd survived the explosion was a miracle in and of itself, but he hadn't escaped without severe injuries. He is swathed with bandages, absolutely drowning in them, bloodstained in some places and loose where his thrashing has begun to unravel them. There's nothing for it – he can't do anything but lay here and wait to find out who saved him, if he's been saved at all. Hobbling down the hallway won't get him very far.

Not that he won't take his chances if things go south. He'll never go down without a fight.

Sabo shuts his eyes, mind wandering to the island he's left behind, the people. He thinks of twin heads of unruly black hair and brown eyes and bright smiles – will his brothers be alright? Of course. Of course they will, as long as they have each other, and he can't even begin to imagine Ace leaving Luffy for anything less than death. They'll watch each other's backs. They'll survive. The three of them always were awfully good at that.

It hits Sabo that he's by himself on an mysterious ship headed god knows where. He isn't sure who picked him up and what they intend to do to him. He isn't even sure how extensive his injuries are, or if he'll ever recover.

He feels all of his ten years, small and alone and very, very far from the only two people who'd ever given a damn about him. Tears sting his eyes, and Sabo bites viciously at his lips to keep them from falling. He'd left because Goa was killing him slowly, poisoning everything around it with its corruption, uncaring of the lives it destroyed so the rich could continue on in luxury.

Shuddering with disgust, Sabo remembers a father's careless cruelty and guns aimed at the only things he loved – the reason he left Goa in the first place, why he hadn't simply run away from home again, returned to his old life, together with the boys he'd accepted as family.

Mind full of that particularly unpleasant memory, Sabo forces himself to calm down. He'd left to keep his brothers safe, to keep them alive, and will not regret it now or ever, no matter how terrible his current situation turns out to be.

Footsteps echo along the hallway outside, tread long and light – an adult, one who knows how to walk quietly – and coming closer. Sabo braces for the coming confrontation. Even if this isn't the noble ship, whoever plucked a dying child out of the water must have some sort of reason, something they want. He has nothing anymore, not even the freedom he craved like a starving man.

But whatever happens now, his brothers will live. That's the important thing.

The door swings open with a chilling sense of anticipation and-

Sabo slumps further into his pillow, limp with relief and giddy disbelief because he knows this man. Hood pulled low, obscuring his face but for the red tattoo sweeping across his cheek, tufts of long black hair escaping the heavy material…this is the man who kneeled with him in the streets as he sobbed with grief the night Goa burned everything outside its walls. Tears rise again, and Sabo struggles not to cry because this man is just like him.

The man observes him in silence for a moment, mouth pressed in a hard line and eyes unreadable in the shadow of his hood, but then he says, "You're awake. Excellent," and everything about him softens, just a little. His hard mouth smiles.

"How did you find me?" Sabo croaks, throat dry and raw. The man strides over to a table tucked against the far wall, pouring a glass of water from an iced pitcher Sabo had ignored, with no hope of getting up and reaching it on his own. The glass is cool when the man hands it to him, clean and refreshing. "You…weren't you gone?"

"Indeed I was." The man watches Sabo take tiny sips, afraid of coughing. "But we docked at a nearby island to resupply. You happened to float past on the wreckage of your boat."

"Thank you," Sabo says, and the man waves his gratitude aside, as though unnecessary.

"I'm assuming you attempted to leave Goa and ran into the Tenryuubito as they arrived." His voice is tired, frustrated, and tight with fury. "No one else would bother shooting a boy out of the water." Sabo nodded, agreeing with his assessment of Sabo's botched escape.

"What now?" he asks, secure in the knowledge that the man will not keep him here against his will; he really was very lucky, spectacularly so. But, aware of what the man stands for…does he want to leave?

Sabo dreamed of being a pirate. Maybe it was time to follow a different path.

"We'll take you wherever you like." The man smirks. "Goa?" Sabo shakes his head emphatically as the man chuckles. He's never going back. "Or, if you wish it, remain with me. I'll train you – to fight, to speak and have others listen. To dream, but I believe you're an expert at that already."

Sabo closes his eyes, thinks of Ace and Luffy and their huge, huge dreams, and laughs gently. "I learned from the best."

The man cocks his head to the side, as if expecting Sabo to say something, but Sabo holds his brothers near to his heart; he isn't ready to share them just yet. When Sabo keeps quiet, the man continues. "Stay, and help me remake the broken system. You've had the rare opportunity to live on both sides, the high and the low, a noble one day and a boy digging through trash just to stay alive the next. I could use someone who experienced the corruption from the inside."

And it's true; Sabo once called both sides of Goa's dividing wall home. He's slept on the softest feather beds and tucked under tree roots on cold winter nights, curled up in nests of ragged blankets inside a home he helped build with his own hands. His fingers had been scratched and bleeding and the three of them flushed with exhausted satisfaction.

Sabo looks at the man, really looks, and remembers the carelessness of Goa's nobles, their willingness to lay back and watch lives – his friends, his family – burn to protect their reputation of purity.

The nobility is far from pure.

"I can't allow those things to continue," Sabo says, half a promise himself, half in answer to the man's request. The man nods, pleased, and tells him to rest. They'll begin as soon as he's recovered.

"Wait!" Sabo calls after him. "What's your name?"

"Dragon." The man grins, wide and wild and full of teeth, and it's like a blow to the stomach because that is Luffy's grin. "Monkey D. Dragon."

He leaves as Sabo laughs and laughs and laugh.

Pirates and revolutionaries aren't so different, after all.

Ten years later, Sabo is almost lightheaded with joy, yellowed paper clutched between his calloused fingers, gently so as not to wrinkle it. He very nearly can't believe it's finally happened just as he always knew it would, but here's the proof, Luffy's grin jumping huge and ridiculous from the smooth surface.

Ace's own first wanted poster, three years prior, had been a similar cause for celebration, but this feels like even more of an achievement. Luffy was their little brother, younger and weaker than them both. But not, perhaps, any longer.

Sabo bounces back onto the ship, waving cheerfully at everyone who greets them, not stopping to explain what has him so excited. There'll be a chance for that later, time to pass the poster around and share his pride with the men and women he's spent half of his life sailing with. Maybe he should feel silly for getting worked up over two people he hasn't seen in a decade, but it doesn't matter how much time passes – Ace and Luffy still take up most of the space in his heart. Sabo won't have it any other way.

He slams open the door to Dragon's office, all of Sabo's usual reserved respect stripped away by his eagerness. It's nice to know there's at least one man on this ship who will understand just how much this means to him. Dragon looks up from the stack of papers he's flipping through, expression blank with boredom, eyebrow quirked at Sabo's sudden appearance. Sabo waves the wanted poster in his direction several times before actually letting Dragon take it.

His leader's face breaks out into a grin virtually identical to the one on the page, but sharper, a little more dangerous and worn with age. He stares down at his son's bounty for a moment before laughing, long and loud.

"Do you think," Dragon smirks, handing the poster back, "he'll catch up to me?"

Ordinarily, Sabo would shake his head at the impossibility. The bounty on Dragon's head is matched only by that of a dead man. He is, after all, the most wanted man in the world. But, in this case…"Give him a few years. He'll get into trouble with all the wrong people, knowing Luffy."

Sabo has no bounty only because he works in deep cover. He's never been caught, and without any crimes to tie to his name – or even a name to match his face – there can be no bounty set. His anonymity makes him a particularly effective agent, but Sabo wonders, ruefully, what it would be like to have a bounty to play comparison with when the three of them inevitably meet again. Ace's own is climbing very high very fast, but that's only to be expected of the son of the most wanted man in history.

"Luffy hasn't even made it to the Grand Line yet," Sabo says, a fierce bust of pride warming his chest. It's rare for pirates to earn a bounty before even leaving the Blues. "He'll be arriving at Loguetown shortly."

Deviousness flashes through Dragon's dark eyes. "Maybe I should pay my son a visit."

There's nothing quite like watching Luffy's bounty continue to rise and his infamy grow right along with it; the Straw Hat pirates are well known, now, in the first half of the Grand Line - his little brother is a Supernova, one of the top newbies, and that makes Sabo dizzy with elation. He imagines Ace having much the same reaction, smiling and laughing and throwing parties with his adopted crew whenever news arrives. For all that Sabo couldn't quite believe that Ace, the most stubborn of the three of them, would join someone else's crew, especially one captained by his father's greatest rival, he's glad that Ace has found a safe place for himself, where he can relax and stop worrying about living in the Pirate King's shadow. Luffy is going to fight Whitebeard, eventually - their goals are the same, after all - and Sabo wonders what Ace will do when that day comes, but for now, everything is going well for his brothers.

Until, suddenly, it isn't.

It doesn't even register, when the news first starts spreading. Fire Fist Ace: captured and soon to be executed.

His brother - strong, stubborn Ace - has been captured by the government and thrown into the only prison no one has ever escaped.

And Sabo can do nothing but wait.

Wait and hope.

The floor is cold and hard as Sabo lays back and shuts his eyes, squeezed tight against the sobs threaten to rip themselves from his body. Beside him, dirty and crumpled and torn, is the newspaper that delivered the headline straight from Sabo's nightmares – Portgas D. Ace, son of the Pirate King, dead at the hands of Marine Admiral Akainu.

He started shivering some time ago and still hasn't stopped. He doesn't think it will ever stop, the shaking; maybe he'll spend the rest his life trembling and grief stricken, feeling as though his ribs have collapsed inwards, crushing his heart and lungs and making it impossible to breathe.

It's not simply Ace's death that rips at him, but the circumstances surrounding it. Luffy had been so close, Ace free of his chains and glad to be alive.

And suddenly he was bleeding out in Luffy's arms.

Sabo never saw either of his brothers again. Ace died believing Sabo dead and he'll never, ever forgive himself for it. But more than that – Ace is dead. Ace is dead and he wasn't there.

He knows it's foolish to think he alone would have been enough to change the tide of the battle. But if he'd just been able to turn aside the attack that ended Ace's life…

It doesn't matter. He'll never know, because he wasn't there.

Just as bad is the lack of information about Luffy. He doesn't know where his litter brother is, what condition he's in or if Luffy has – the thought makes him feel sick right down to his bones – succumbed to his wounds. Every bit of rational thought Sabo possesses is telling him that Luffy isn't the sort of person who'll just lay down and die. But rational thought means nothing to him. Not now.

His little brother is somewhere out there, injured and, in all probability, unconscious. He prays Luffy is unconscious, because it's better than being awake and suffering pain that can't be alleviated by anything. If he's very lucky – as lucky as he was that day ten years ago – Luffy won't wake up until his crew comes for him.

Sabo's stomach sinks when he remembers Luffy's crew hadn't been there either. Too many unknowns – it's driving him mad. The door swings open and Sabo cannot even summon the strength to raise his head. He wants to be left alone.

Dragon is standing in the doorway, and the tense set of his shoulders, apparent since they'd first learned Luffy had thrown himself into hell trying to rescue Ace, has eased significantly.

"Ivankov reported in. Luffy is alive." He smiles, just a tiny quirk of his lips, barely there. "I thought you'd like to know."

Sabo nods weakly, grateful, and when the doors whispers closed, the tears he's been holding back begin to fall in earnest. Luffy will be alright, physically. He sets his little brother aside - just for the day, just one day - and lets the full weight of what he's lost overwhelm him.

Two years pass.

Sabo trains harder than he ever has, fierce and unforgiving. He pushes until his body breaks and still keeps on.

His haki makes an appearance halfway through, and Dragon takes him aside for personal training. This isn't something just anyone can do, and part of Sabo is overjoyed to finally share in his brothers' power. Both of them have (had) haki – Luffy's is special even among the haki users, and it's just another thing to be glad for – as well as Devil Fruit abilities. Sabo has been normal until now. Relatively normal, at least.

When Luffy emerges from wherever he's been hiding away these last two years, he's become incredible. Sabo pins Luffy's new wanted poster to the wall, right next to the huge collection of articles written about his adventures.

They're both stronger now, and though Sabo has nightmares about it still not being enough, he's also absolutely certain that neither of them will lose anyone they love ever again. They won't allow it.

It's Ace that brings them together again. He should have known; even if he's gone physically, there'll always be bits and pieces of his life scattered across the world, as proof of his existence. His Devil Fruit is one of those pieces, a big one, and its led him straight to their little brother.

Luffy looks ridiculous, but the scar on his chest gives Sabo pause, and he lingers a moment, just watching. Maybe there really wasn't anything he could have done, maybe he'd have died alongside Ace and truly left Luffy alone. Still, the reminder that Luffy suffered alone…

He owes Luffy an explanation, a longer one than he can afford right now. When this is over and Ace's fruit is safely in his hands, they can talk. For days, if they feel like it.

For now...

They both have work to do.

(Luffy's familiar crying face, the warmth in his arms, is worth every second spent apart. Sabo will never know if Ace could have been saved, but this - this is more than enough.)