Chapter Text
The first time Ace thought of Whitebeard as his father, it was in defeat.
The deck was hot under his back, and every bruise he had throbbed in time to his heartbeat. Whitebeard had already stopped paying attention to him, returning to his talk with one of his crew members whose name Ace couldn’t remember. He didn’t merit Whitebeard’s attention beyond being swatted down like a troublesome fly, and Ace hated it.
He wanted more. Wanted to know why Whitebeard smiling at him made him feel flustered and happy, wanted to know what it would be like to have Whitebeard’s attention for more than the three seconds of a failed attempt at killing the old man. Ace wanted to know what Marco felt when Whitebeard’s hand rested across his shoulders, and he wanted to know why Thatch was happy when Whitebeard teased him.
Inch by inch, Whitebeard was winning a war that he wasn’t fighting. Ace wasn’t being defeated, but he was losing all the same.
Ace’s contemplation was interrupted by a giant hand held out to help him up, and Whitebeard’s concern. He got to his feet without any help to prove some point that didn’t need proving, leaden with grief that had no cause.
Whitebeard drew back, giving Ace space that he didn’t want, smiling at Ace with a gentleness that made him wonder what parents were like. Ace walked away, hoping Whitebeard would call him back.
Father was a part of Ace that had been burnt to the ground and sown with salt, but Whitebeard had settled into it without Ace noticing, bringing back the stupid, childish dreams that Ace had thrown away a long, long time ago.
Ace gritted his teeth and ignored the part of him that pointed out how easy it would be to have a father. He wasn’t giving up. Not yet.
The first time Ace called Whitebeard his father, he was begging.
“You aren’t happy,” Whitebeard told Ace, and to his credit he sounded genuinely regretful. “As disappointed as I am, I think it’s for the best that you follow your own path.”
Ace stopped eating, confused and suddenly worried. It was the first time Whitebeard had spoken to him in two weeks, since Ace had quietly stopped trying to kill him and started trying to figure out how to ask if he could be Whitebeard’s son. “What?”
“If you’re willing to promise that you’ll make no more attempts on my life or my crew, I’ll let you and your crew off at Ricker’s Island,” Whitebeard continued, and he looked so sad and disappointed that Ace’s heart plummeted. He was going to leave Ace in the same place that he’d found him, like they’d never even met?
“I wouldn’t,” Ace said, struggling for words to tell Whitebeard that he didn’t want him dead anymore and couldn’t he please stay?
“I know,” Whitebeard said, and he rested the edge of his hand on Ace’s shoulder. It was exactly as wonderful as Ace had suspected it would be. “You’re a good boy, just not meant to be mine,” he said, and his sorrow was palatable.
Ace was struck mute, terrified to even ask what he’d done to make Whitebeard not want him, holding still out of hope that Whitebeard wouldn’t move his hand.
“We’ll arrive tomorrow,” Whitebeard said, and he let Ace go.
All Ace had was a spoon and he whipped it at Whitebeard because trying to kill Whitebeard had made Ace interesting enough to keep. Whitebeard knocked it aside and thumped Ace into the deck, then left without another word.
“Pops,” Ace said, trying out the word once Whitebeard was long out of earshot. It sounded like Sabo’s name--the meaning behind it one-sided and unreturnable.
The first time Whitebeard call him son, Ace was crying.
Ace watched until the Moby Dick was hidden behind the horizon before he accepted that Whitebeard wasn’t coming back. It was like salt in a raw wound, but Ace could handle it. If he could survive not being important enough to live for, he could survive not being good enough to keep.
His crew tried to gather his attention, but Ace couldn’t think enough to respond. He’d missed them, obviously, but his broken dream was seeping through him like an oil slick, coating him from head to toe with loss of something he’d only had a chance at.
Eventually, he woke up enough to realize that he was in his cabin, on his ship. He didn’t remember leaving the dock.
Jack sat across from him, reading the same book he’d been reading before Jinbe. He jumped when Ace moved, dropping his book and losing his place. “Ace!”
He nodded acknowledgement because he didn’t know what to say. Or because he didn’t have anything to say. Ace wasn’t sure if there was a difference.
“Are you feeling better?” Jack asked. “What did they do?” he added, and he was so worried that Ace desperately wanted to reassure him.
“Nothing,” Ace said, because that was true, wasn’t it? Whitebeard had given Ace exactly what he wanted. He hadn’t had to break Ace’s heart--Ace had handled that all on his own. “They didn’t do anything.”
Thatch had waved and Marco had nodded as Ace walked off the ship. No one else had come to say goodbye. Five months of living with them, and only two men from a crew of sixteen hundred had cared that he was leaving. Whitebeard hadn’t even come out on deck.
Ace let his head sink into his pillow and sighed. “They didn’t do anything,” he repeated, and it made sense, didn’t it? He’d hate anyone who tried to kill Whitebeard, too. It had been dumb of Ace, trying to take on Whitebeard. Stupid of him to keep doing it after he stopped wanting the old man dead. If he’d just tried to get along instead of being so stupid, maybe they would have kept him.
Jack pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to him, patting Ace’s back awkwardly. Ace buried his face into his blanket, sneezed from the dust, and promptly fell asleep.
***
When he woke up, it was dark out. Jack was snoring in his armchair, book fallen into his lap, a round circle of moonlight from the single porthole turning his face ghostly.
Ace felt better. Not happy, but a lot less like he was dying and more than a little guilty for ignoring his crew after seeing them for the first time in five months. He yawned silently, then slipped out of bed, dropping his favorite red-and-orange-striped blanket over Jack’s lap in silent apology for being such a self-absorbed berk.
Jack shifted restlessly, then fell still. Ace smiled, watching his first mate sleep with something close to the melancholy side of contentment. He really had missed Jack.
His door didn’t creak. It used to, before Jinbe. Ace snuck out, barefoot and shirtless--where had his shirt gone, anyway?--taking in the polished floors and scrubbed-clean walls. His room didn’t look like it’d been touched since he’d left it last, but the rest of the ship looked better than it had before. The Spade crew had been kind of terrible at cleaning, probably because Ace hated it.
He found Anise fast asleep in the meeting room, sprawled on one of their ratty couches, her hair spread over her face like a shroud. Ace considered waking her, but decided against it. There was always tomorrow, after all.
Deux and Sinque were in the kitchen, drinking from steaming mugs as they talked in low voices about Whitebeard’s crew. Ace snuck past them, heading toward the deck. He’d say hi in the morning.
The stairs didn’t creak either. Ace ignored the oddness of that, and crawled out of the hatch, onto the deck. His deck. Arguably, he owned the entire ship. Funny how he really wanted to be on a different one.
They were docked at the same pier, in the same harbor, in the same town as before Whitebeard. Nothing had changed.
High above, in the crowsnest, Eight was keeping watch. He waved when Ace looked up, and started down the ladder.
Ace waved back and barely resisted the urge to sneak off the ship while Eight wasn’t looking.
“Hey,” he said, soft so as not to wake the ship.
Eight grinned at him, then lunged forward and hugged him. He let go before Ace could return the hug, stepping back and tilting his head inquisitively, then looked around the empty deck.
“Just going for a walk,” Ace told him, feeling better already. “How are you? Was it...okay?” He’d worried about Eight the most. Not that Eight couldn’t take care of himself, but people were absolute dicks to him for no reason. Marco had eventually gotten Jack to write Ace a letter reassuring him that the Spades were okay, but it hadn’t mentioned Eight.
Ace had read the letter so many times that it had fallen apart, trying to figure out what acquiesce meant from context. He hadn’t asked anyone, too afraid of looking stupid. Thatch had spent way too much time teasing him for Ace to give him any ammo.
A twitch of Eight’s shoulder and a smile told Ace that it had been fine. A quick glance at the hatch to below deck said that his crew had taken care of each other in Ace’s absence.
“I’m glad,” Ace said. “I was really worried about you.”
Eight raised his eyebrow, looking Ace over skeptically.
“I was fine,” Ace replied, looking away uncomfortably. “Look, I’m kind of stir-crazy right now. Not sure if they ever let you guys off ship, but I got herded below deck every time we docked.”
A light touch to his arm drew his attention back to Eight. The sniper flicked his hand toward Ricker’s Island, then nodded at Ace. After a second, he pointed toward the eastern horizon.
“Yeah, I’ll be back by morning,” Ace said. He smiled and jumped down to the dock below before Eight could react. “See you!”
***
Ricker’s Island was the site of an old marine prison, the New World version of Impel Down, fallen into long disuse after Whitebeard claimed the land. The outer walls were three feet thick and thirty feet high, watchtowers built fifty feet apart, bristling with spikes. The entire thing was set on the highest point of the island. A five-story tower stood in the middle, half-fallen into the sea.
Five months ago, the locals had told Ace that the place was haunted by the ghosts of pirates who’d been tortured to death in the cells below. He’d planned on investigating the day that Jinbe had challenged him.
The sliver of moon barely lit the ruins, and the shadows were deep enough that Ace’s torch didn’t light them. The massive iron gate hung half-way off its hinges, torn off by Whitebeard’s fist in the battle that had seen the marines defeated. Ace ignored the ridiculous surge of homesickness that the caved-in dent in the gate gave him, running up the weed-laced cobblestone road, enjoying the opportunity to stretch his legs.
The cobbles inside the abandoned prison felt strange under his shoes--a chill that rose through them, freezing after the warm ground outside. Ace crouched, inspecting the strangely cold stones. Spirals of frost glittered orange and gold in the light of his torch, spun delicately across the flagstone paved courtyard. Ace pressed his hand to the centre of a stone out of curiosity. A deep chill sank into his bones, but the frost didn’t melt from the heat of his hand, the edges as crisp as they were before he’d touched them.
“That frost hasn’t melted since I killed Admiral Winters.”
Ace yelped in surprise, dropping his torch and flinching away from it before he remembered that fire couldn’t hurt him any more. “Whitebeard?”
The towering shadow at the edge of the courtyard that Ace had thought was a building shifted, and it was far too dark to see him, but Ace didn’t think it was possible to forget Whitebeard’s voice. “Were you expecting someone else?” Whitebeard chuckled, quiet and warm and exactly what Ace wanted from him.
“I wasn’t expecting anyone,” Ace said truthfully, squinting into the darkness. His torch was dying, ice forming around the base in a slow progression, killing the flames. “Why are you here?” He didn’t approach the shadow, frozen to the spot by nerves.
“Sharing a drink with an old friend,” Whitebeard answered, and he raised his hand high enough that Ace could see his sake cup outlined against the moon-bleached tower. “Admiral Winters was the last fire logia, you know. A brilliant woman, and a merciless enemy.” He sounded far too wistful to be talking about an enemy, but Gramps had done the same talking about old, dead pirates.
“Oh,” Ace said. He licked his lips, casting about for something to say, but came up empty.
“Why did you come up here?” Whitebeard asked, leaning forward. One edge of his moustache left the shadows, a bone-white hook in the moonlight. “So late at night, too.”
“I--” Ace shrugged. “I was just exploring.” He glanced up at the tower, feeling uncomfortably stupid. “And--” He clicked his tongue and shook his head. “I’ll go. I didn’t know.”
“No need to leave,” Whitebeard said. “I won’t take you again.”
Ace flinched, cut nearly to the bone by that truth. “I know,” he said, dipping down to grab his torch. It was bitterly cold, and he couldn’t get it to relight. “It’s really cold. I should be getting back to my ship.”
“Ace, come here,” Whitebeard ordered, casual like he hadn’t thrown Ace away, like he had the right to tell him what to do.
Because he was weak and desperate, Ace shuffled toward the much older pirate, looking anywhere but the patch of shadow concealing Whitebeard. There was nothing alive in the courtyard--no plants, no bugs, nothing breathing but Ace and Whitebeard. Ace’s shoes clicked against the frozen stones, echoing and re-echoing until he sounded like an army.
The smell of ashes filled his nose and mouth, then faded abruptly. “This place really is haunted, isn’t it?” Ace asked, stopping just short of the shadows that hid Whitebeard.
“Yes. She never left, and perhaps never will. Before...” Whitebeard sighed heavily, and Ace heard something being poured--from the smell, more sake. “She found out what the marines had been doing here only hours before I attacked. Perhaps I should have given her more time to handle the matter, but I was so very angry...”
“They did such horrible things,” Ace said, and his voice was too low to be his own, tight and pained with knowledge that he didn’t have. “I didn’t know, Edward. I swear on my grave that I didn’t. I loved him too, you know that.” Ace swayed, his breath catching. Whitebeard’s real name was Edward, but why would he call him--
“Haru,” Whitebeard spoke, and Ace looked up, finding Whitebeard’s face through the shadows. It felt like someone calling his name, the same startled recognition and attention. “Is that you?”
Ace opened his mouth to say no and said, “Yes.”
“What are you doing inside that boy?” Whitebeard was stern, almost scolding, and Ace would have sunk back and broken eye contact, would have offered a stumbling apology, but his back was stiff and straight, his body settling into postures that would make Gramps proud.
“He’s Garps’?” Ace asked, and he sounded startled. Speaking felt normal, natural, and yet the words weren’t his. “You killed me,” he added after a beat of silence, and Ace wrestled his hand up to cover his mouth and try to silence himself.
“Ace?”
“I saw what they did to our son, Edward, I would stopped it had I known. Why didn’t you tell me?” Ace said plaintively, his body betraying him, talking, moving, walking toward Whitebeard like Ace wasn’t even inside it.
“Stop this, Haru,” Whitebeard said, and Ace shuddered under the weight of Haki in Whitebeard’s voice, but reached out to touch his hand all the same.
“Please.” Ace dropped to his knees and peered up at Edward. He blinked, and it was of his own will, a shred of control returned to him.
The ground was only cool now, not freezing. Ace took in a shaking breath, curled his fingers to see if he could. He hadn’t felt a presence, hadn’t felt anything foreign or forced. His body had been like a ship where he couldn’t move the rudder, moved by forces he didn’t control.
The giant hand reaching down for him made Ace flinch away, five months of being hit by it taking their toll. “Is that you, Ace?”
He nodded. “Yeah. They’re...backing off a bit, I think.” His feet wouldn’t move when he tried to stand, forcing him to stay on his knees like a penitent petitioner. “I can’t move my legs,” he told Whitebeard, feeling surprisingly unanxious about it.
“She should be gone. It’s been twenty years since she died.” A popping crackle accompanied Whitebeard kneeling in front of Ace, his joints sounding like damp wood thrown into a fire. “Is it alright if I pick you up, Ace?”
“Yes,” Ace answered, not quite able to suppress the hope in his voice. Whitebeard lifted his sons and sat them on his knee when he was particularly pleased with them, and Ace knew--he did, he wasn’t stupid--he knew that this wasn’t the same, but he’d been desperately jealous of anyone receiving that privilege for nearly two months. He’d wanted so badly for Whitebeard to like him, and this didn’t mean that he did, but Ace would take what he could get.
Whitebeard scooped him up and set Ace against his chest, then started for the gates. Ace was stiff and motionless, not because there was a ghost inside him (though there was), but because he didn’t want to risk doing anything that might make Whitebeard let go.
Let me use you to speak, I beg of you, Ace heard her voice echoing between his ears, startlingly clear.
"Yeah, okay," Ace agreed, figuring why not. She sounded as though she had something important to get off her chest, and Ace knew how much that sucked.
Whitebeard hesitated mid-stride, the pause echoing through his body into Ace’s. “Who are you talking to, Ace?"
"The ghost,” Ace told him. “She wants--<i>I need to talk to you, you idiot.</i>”
“That’s up to Ace, my dear,” Whitebeard said, ducking under the entrance arch and exiting the courtyard.
It was like cobwebs dissolving around him, freeing him from a yoke he hadn’t felt descend. Ace grasped a fold of Whitebeard’s shirt, breathed in the scent of leather and rum that wrapped around Whitebeard like a cloak. “Who was that? Who was she?”
“Admiral Winters,” Whitebeard answered, setting Ace on the road. Ace let go of his shirt before Whitebeard straightened, sorely disappointed at being let go and doing his best not to show it. “A determined woman even after death, it seems.”
“Oh.” Ace peered around Whitebeard’s leg, looking at the ruins for a long second before making a decision based more on Whitebeard not leaving yet than on anything sensible. “Did you want to talk to her? I don’t mind.”
“Truthfully?” Whitebeard asked, resting the tip of his finger on Ace’s shoulder like a smaller man might place his hand. “Because as much as I would like to speak to her, there is no need to put yourself in danger. We’ll speak again soon enough.”
“It wasn’t that bad,” Ace lied, giving a tiny shrug that wouldn’t dislodge Whitebeard’s finger. “I’m kind of curious, now.”
Whitebeard pulled away, rising to his full height. “If you are certain--”
A surge of presence slid under Ace’s skin, taking over with an ease that made him regret agreeing. Stream poured out of his mouth with his words, his body chilled right down to his lungs. “Edward, I’m sorry, I love you, I didn’t know--”
“Ace--?”
Ace’s cheeks burned with embarrassment, but he couldn’t control himself, couldn’t control his mouth. “He’s in my office, you can take him home, Edward, just please stop killing my men. It was Jorges, not them. They didn’t know, I swear--”
“Haru, both you and your men have been dead for twenty years. It’s over, and has been for a long time,” Whitebeard said, and Ace had no idea what he was thinking. There was a wealth of emotion hidden in his voice, but it was too muddled to interpret. “You should move on.”
“You killed them? You killed me,” Haru said, and Ace could feel her agony, her betrayal at the thought. “We didn’t do anything wrong! Eddie was dying before my ship even docked--I couldn’t save him. I couldn’t.” His throat tightened, and Ace’s eyes prickled with tears that weren’t his.
“I know. I found out after. For what it's worth, I'm sorry.” Whitebeard sighed heavily, looking at Ace like he loved him. “He lived, Haru. He was never the same--ran away when he was fourteen to follow in your footsteps--but our son is alive.” Whitebeard bowed his head for a moment, an unfamiliar heaviness to the movement. “I’ve kept an eye out for him. He’s doing fine.”
Haru processed that slowly. “He didn’t die?”
“No. It was a very close thing, but he lived. He is well and alive--a captain in the Marines. He doesn’t go by Eddie anymore--he never did forgive me--but you didn’t kill him. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have...” Whitebeard trailed off, his hand reaching out toward Ace--toward Haru.
“I thought he hated me. He wasn’t there, so I came back to look for him, but he wasn’t here either--I thought he hated me.” Her hope rose up through Ace like cotton seeds caught by the wind.
“No. He doesn’t hate you.” Whitebeard smiled, and Ace knew it wasn’t directed at him--knew it was meant for a woman who’d died before he’d even been born--and he was painfully jealous. “Why don’t you move on? Go on to whatever’s next. I’ll meet you there soon, and Eddie will follow someday.”
Haru laughed with Ace’s mouth, and smiled at Whitebeard. “How many children will we have by then, hmmm?”
“Just a few more,” Whitebeard said, his smile soft and affectionate and not for Ace at all. “There are so many children in need of a good home--it’s a tragedy to let them go unloved.”
“Edward Soft-Heart,” she said affectionately, and she strode out of Ace’s body, a shimmering ghost nearly three times his height. “If Eddie isn’t stuck here, I think I’ll move on,” said Haru, patting his cheek with a hand made of moonlight and frost. Haru--Admiral Winters turned, looking back at Ace, and her chest was a cavern of emptiness, a wound no one could have survived. She smiled at him, and disappeared.
“...wow,” Ace said, for lack of anything better. He felt...weird. Filled to the brim with fire and energy, like he could burn the ocean down to the seabed and still be ready to fight. “You have a kid?”
“I have many children,” Whitebeard answered. He walked into the courtyard of melting frost and retrieved a jug of rum as large as Ace was. The gate gave up the ghost and fell to the ground with a loud clang when Whitebeard passed through it, and Whitebeard paused, studying Ace for longer than was really comfortable. “Will you walk with me back to town?” he asked.
“I--yeah, sure,” Ace said, trying not to seem too eager. He had to jog to keep up with Whitebeard, legs longer than he was tall outpacing him quickly. In the darkness of the forest path, hidden from the moonlight with no one watching, it was easier. Less of Ace’s pride depended on the answer. “Whitebeard?” Ace asked, calling for his attention.
“Ace?” Whitebeard replied. He didn’t pause, slow, or speed up, and it was better that way. It let Ace pretend that he was just asking an idle question.
“What did I do?”
“What do you mean?” The slosh of rum inside his jug echoed through the quiet forest, and Ace nearly didn’t answer him.
“Why did you decide to--” Ace hesitated on how to describe it, “--get rid of me?” he said, then frowned at how weak he sounded. The darkness didn’t hide pathetic.
Whitebeard slowed down, slow enough that Ace could walk and keep up. “Do you mean why I let you go yesterday?”
It was funny how words could mean the same thing, but be completely different. “Yeah,” Ace said, watching the road, the leaf-lace shadows that played over the gravel, the mottled moonlight that made everything seem unreal.
“Marco came to me last week and told me that I had to release you or I’d break you.”
Ace tripped, landing on his knees hard enough that he thought they were probably bleeding. Scraped knees were the least of his worries when Whitebeard stopped and offered him a hand. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Ace demanded, angry for reasons he couldn’t quite put into words. He shoved himself to his feet, ignoring Whitebeard’s offered hand. “I’m strong enough to--”
“Destroy yourself rather than give in,” Whitebeard interrupted, turning away from him and striding down the path. “I didn’t notice. I’m sorry for that. I’d hoped that you were happy, and ignored the signs.”
“What signs?” Ace asked, running to catch up. “What are you talking about?” His voice was sharp and strident, but Ace couldn’t bring it under control. To find out that it’d been for such a bullshit reason--
“You stopped trying to kill me,” Whitebeard said. “You stopped talking to people. You stopped reacting when Thatch teased you. You were...resigned.”
“I wasn’t!” Ace snapped, even though he maybe had been, but it wasn’t for someone else to decide.
“I didn’t want to own you. I wanted you to be my son.”
Ace stopped, his chest aching. Whitebeard didn’t stop. Kept moving. Left him. “What did I do?” he asked, the words falling into the space between them. The buzz of energy he’d got from the ghost was gone, dead as she was.
Whitebeard stopped where the trees ended, looked back at him, a marble statue in the moonlight. Ace tried to breathe around the knot in his throat, but it came out as a sob. “Are you coming, Ace?”
He could disappear into the forest, hide between the trees that were too closely packed for Whitebeard to pass through. He could light the island on fire and burn it until the rock melted and the beaches turned to glass. He could walk away.
Ace trudged toward Whitebeard, incapable of giving up even when he was staring his failures in the eye. There was always a chance.
“You couldn’t be mine and be yourself, Ace,” Whitebeard said, apparently intent on rubbing salt into it. “I’d rather let you go free than have you burn the ties between us.”
“I don’t--I wouldn’t leave,” Ace said. He’d have stayed if Whitebeard had let him.
“Your knees are bleeding.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” Ace demanded, annoyed enough that his eyes stopped prickling with tears. “I’m fine.”
Whitebeard was at his side in a second, kneeling so he was only a few feet taller than Ace’s eye level. “Forgive an old man,” he murmured, corralling Ace with one hand and wiping up the trickles of blood on his shins with the other. It left a dark stain of the cuff of his jacket, a smear that would be red in daylight.
Ace didn’t understand why that made him start crying. He bit his lip to keep silent, dropping his head so Whitebeard wouldn’t see how weak he was.
“This was supposed to make you happy,” Whitebeard told him.
“How could it possibly make me happy?” Ace asked, looking up. He grit his teeth and straightened his shoulders to keep from sobbing, and stared Whitebeard in the eye, determined to be brave if he couldn’t be strong.
Whitebeard rummaged through his pockets until he found an enormous paisley handkerchief, as large as a tablecloth, and handed it to him. “You wanted to be free.”
Ace wasn’t sure when that had stopped being true, but he knew it wasn’t. As much. He wanted to be free, but-- “Can’t I be free and...” Whitebeard didn’t keep his crew chained. They were free, weren’t they?
“And what?” Whitebeard asked, taking a corner of the handkerchief that Ace was holding and very carefully drying his face with it. Ace froze until he was done, unwilling to make any move that might make Whitebeard stop.
“And...” Ace couldn’t ask. Couldn’t risk the no. “And--” There wasn’t going to be a second chance, but Ace couldn’t make his mouth make the words.
“What is it that you want?” Whitebeard asked.
“I didn’t want to leave,” Ace said, his voice hoarse and wavering. Whitebeard wasn’t mean, Ace knew that, but Ace had never been so scared in his life. If he didn’t relax his grip, he was going to rip Whitebeard’s handkerchief in half.
Whitebeard tilted his head, thoughtful and silent, then eased himself down to the ground and sat cross-legged in front of Ace. “You didn’t want to leave my ship?” he asked. He sounded gentle, like Ace was a little kid, and Ace’s pride would have made him do something to fix that but Ace strangled it down with both hands.
Ace nodded.
“You didn’t want to leave my crew?”
Ace hesitated before nodding again, uncomfortable with admitting even that. It felt like being exposed, leaving himself open to attack on an island crawling with enemies.
“Did you want to join my crew?” Whitebeard asked.
“Yeah,” Ace muttered, breaking eye contact to glare at the gravel road. His eyes were dripping still, and he probably looked like an idiot, an impression he didn't particularly want to give.
Whitebeard gave a sigh, and Ace thought it sounded relieved. “Do you want to be my son?”
Selfishly, Ace wished Whitebeard hadn’t given him a choice. It would have made it so much easier.
“I won’t be mad if you say no,” Whitebeard reassured him, and Ace’s stupid pride flared up, insisting that Ace would never be afraid.
Boneheaded contrariness made Ace fight down the nameless terror at the thought of being told no, look Whitebeard in the eye, raise his chin, and say, “Yes.”
Whitebeard’s solemn expression cracked into a grin. “My son?”
It hit him like a punch to the gut. Ace heard the sound of fabric ripping between his hands as his knees turned to water and he collapsed, falling asleep with utterly imperfect timing.
It worked out alright.
Ace woke up when Whitebeard picked him up, thrashing until he figured out that it was a hand and not seaweed. “Whitebeard!” he yelped, as soon as he recognized him.
“Did you hit your head?” Whitebeard asked, moving Ace until the light of the moon was glaring into his eyes. “Are you dizzy?”
“What? No!” Ace said, stuck half-way to heart-attack, his blood vibrating in his veins. “I--”
Whitebeard had called him his son. Ace’s lungs suddenly couldn’t get enough air, pairing with his racing heart to make Ace desperate to run until the frantic, panicked energy fizzing through his nerves was spent. “You called me your son!”
“Should I not have?” Whitebeard set him on the ground, stepping away carefully.
“No!” Ace answered. “Wait, yes,” he corrected himself, staggering a bit as his body decided to send another surge of energy through him. His hair burst into white-hot flames, casting the road in front of them and the forest behind into stark relief. “I wanted you to!”
“That’s good, then.” Whitebeard squinted down at him. “Are you alright?”
Ace shook from restraining the fire under his skin, crackling with power that he hadn’t had ten minutes ago, and wondered where the hell it’d come from. “I’m burning,” he said, then cursed because that didn’t make any sense at all.
Haki crashed over him like a cresting wave, wrapped around and cloaked him in a silence that calmed the flood of fire rising from his bones. Ace fell back, landed on his ass, and felt utterly safe. His fire turned back into hair, settling in static-laden strands across his face.
Ace stared at the darkness, blinded by sudden end to the brilliant white light. “Pops,” he said, tasting the word, an utterly silly grin crossing his face.
“Son,” Whitebeard answered, and his smile was goofy as all hell, too, what Ace could see of it. “What was that?”
“A goodbye present,” Ace’s mouth answered. “Couldn’t leave our son half-powered, now could I?” Ace didn’t have a chance to resist before she laughed and died for good, pouring out of him and sailing toward the third star to the right, straight on ‘til morning. His body rocked with another wave of fire, his controlled sparks of power fanned into an incandescent inferno that could burn through the ocean itself.
“Holy shit!” Ace gasped, blinking up at Whitebeard in shock.
Whitebeard looked grief-stricken, and he wasn’t supposed to be. “Was any of that you?” he asked, holding Ace out like he was going to put him down, and that was completely unfair.
“No!” Ace half-shouted, the fire still buzzing through him. “No take-backs! You said I was yours, so I am!” He was being ridiculous--Ace was quite aware of that, but he wouldn’t allow Whitebeard to take it back. He belonged to Whitebeard, and Whitebeard was shit out of luck if he didn’t like that.
Whitebeard laughed and drew Ace back into the circle of his arms, his hand resting in the middle of Ace’s back exactly how it did when he hugged Marco, and it was a thousand times better than Ace had imagined. “If you insist, my son.”