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#:D OUCH
ziireaux · 6 months
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choked up
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maybe this is the sad angsty drama-loving lil guy in me but I hope Tristamp brings in some of the “this man is an interdimensional horror beyond human comprehension” goodness from Trimax mmmmmmm yes yummy
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dotted-clouds · 22 days
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Replaced.
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luffypeach · 2 months
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imagine if during the final war luffy will lose his gear 5 state momentarily when akainu appears bc he won’t be able to tap into his inner joy and freedom in front of the man who killed his brother
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supernova351 · 1 month
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How I think Vash got some of his major scars! I obviously will be talking about violent topics so general warning for that. I’m mainly going to be going off of these three panels.
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The serrated scar around his left bicep is pretty obvious: someone tried to cut his arm off. Someone who wasn’t knives, as the wound would be much cleaner. I think they probably got a good amount, it looks like it had to be stitched together.
The scratchs on Vashs abdomen and shoulder d imply that he was probably cut up by an animal, but I don’t think that’s the case. The only two native animals we see on No Man’s Land are the Thomas’s and the Sand worms. But Thomas don’t have three clawed feet.
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They have two talons per foot, so it likely wasn’t a Thomas. Considering the weapons on NML I’d assume it was probably clawed gloves. Frankly it looks like he was gored
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I like to think the metal lattice on the sides of his ribcage and the bolts on his hips are probably combined as some sort of internal brace, maybe a back injury or spinal fusion. Probably someone shooting or stabbing to close to the spine.
The large scar across his clavicle and the ones on his legs look like stylized whipping scars. I’d put a picture, but if you want to know look it up yourself.
And the waffle titty my beloved. I think it’s there to protect his heart.
If you have any headcanons on how Vash got his scars drop em i want to see
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beanghostprincess · 3 months
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kid asl + kid sanji + sabosan
ace and sabo being sweet to luffy in their own kid way and sanji seeing it and being like "oh :] ( :[ )"
but very quickly having that kindness extended to him (especially by sabo)
the brothers hunt the food and sanji cooks it
sabosan bonding over horrible noble families
This is so sweet,, My sweet boys :( I don't care if it doesn't make sense with the timeline or whatever, but Sanji ends up meeting them when they're kids. I always use this plot, but-- The Orbit gets stranded in Goa and of course, the kids find out because they're always waiting for pirates. So ASL finds Sanji and they won't stop asking questions about piracy and his life and telling him how excited they are to become pirates. Sanji is- Saying overwhelmed would be an understatement because imagine a kid like him hanging out with THEM. But he has so much fun, too, because it's been so long ever since he saw somebody his age and he's not used to hanging out with them but they welcome him with open arms. They tell him that they're brothers (Ace and Sabo fighting over who's the oldest, as usual) and explain to him the basics: Where they live, how they hunt for food, their training... And Sanji is just there, staring at them with eyes wide open, and asking how the hell they manage to live like this. Sanji has a bit of an attitude now in comparison to when he was with his family, but he's still a bit of a sweet crybaby who isn't used to the outside world and has the biggest heart in the world. The brothers find him so sweet,,, It makes Luffy kind of angry because "Why's he allowed to cry but when I do you call me a crybaby???" and Ace and Sabo always go "Because if you wanna be a pirate you gotta be strong! He's a cook. It's not the same" (cool way of saying 'we don't laugh at the pretty boy because we want to kiss the pretty boy, Luffy') and Sanji wants to prove them wrong and show that he's brave like them but doing what they do is just a big no-no. They always end by saying "Everybody has their strengths!!! We don't even know how to boil water" and Sanji feels all proud of himself whenever they compliment him like that.
Basically, they tell him to stay with them for as long as his ship is stranded there, and he accepts right away because they look fun and sweet and like friends, finally. And maybe they're the people Reiju was talking about when she said he'd find better people someday. So ASL hunts and Sanji cooks with the abilities he used to have when he was a kid, which are better now that he has a bit of experience, and the kids fall for him so quick. So damn quick. They taste Sanji's food and now you have Ace and Sabo experiencing their first ever crush ("first" for Sabo, because Ace's first crush was Makino and I will always find that so cute). Luffy is more focused on the food, though, but the three of them still fight over Sanji's attention. So-- I think this would be really funny. Sanji stays with them and is completely oblivious to Ace and Sabo falling for him, even if they're constantly trying to show off their abilities to get his attention. Sanji is a bit busy trying to get used to all of these emotions. Every day is fun and a bit dangerous and he does cry a lot, and the only one who can calm him down is Luffy because he knows how it feels to be scared. They play together and show him around. They introduce him to Dadan (who's about to have a heart attack because she can't deal with more kids) and she actually ends up loving him because!! The kid knows how to cook!! That is a win for them.
It's a bit weird for Sanji, to see them like that. Because he has never had any interaction with other siblings and they act so... Differently from his. Okay, yes, they fight a lot, but it's never serious. They always end up laughing. They're rough with each other but when it matters they're always using tender touches and language with each other. They calm Luffy down when he gets angry, know how to react if Ace is feeling stressed, and constantly say they miss Sabo when he isn't with them. Sanji doubts his brothers would've ever acted like that with him, so it hurts. He doesn't quite know if it's jealousy? Envy? Frustration? But Sanji knows it breaks his heart a little knowing he wasn't worthy of being loved like this. But they show him that he is worthy and he was never the problem to begin with. Because they start showering him with love too! Sanji doesn't want to be a bother, so he never asks for things and instead always tries to be useful. To sort of thank them for letting him have a place to stay. ASL just wants him to be a kid like them. They compliment his food, respect his personal space, let him participate in everything he wants, and they're so, so protective of him. Sanji might not train with them, but he's always there when they do, and if there are dangers near he knows they'll look after him without even having to ask. He wonders why they do that most of the time, and they always end up telling him "Because we don't want you to get hurt, dummy. We thought that was obvious?" and it breaks his heart a little.
They bond over so many different things. Luffy loves Sanji's cooking and won't stop asking him every day if he'll be his cook once he becomes a pirate (Sanji is always telling the three of them he has yet to decide), and he's always the one calming Sanji down whenever something's wrong. Luffy tells him in private that he knows feeling weak and scared sucks, but it isn't that bad when they're together, right? "Alone we aren't really strong, but together we are unstoppable! So stay with us, okay? That way you'll never have to cry again. I don't cry anymore because I'm all brave and a pirate, so it's my job to make sure you're always smiling!" and that melts his heart completely (and adds a new, painful meaning to Whole Cake Island. I wanna d word a little).
On the other hand, there's Ace... Ace is a complicated kid, obviously. He tries so hard to be cool and seem strong. At first, it makes Sanji admire him a lot, but then he finds out the kid is actually stupid and reckless and has to be looked after a lot too. Sanji loves being with him because he feels protected, but he's always worried Ace might get hurt. To be fair, it happens with Luffy too. However, there's just something about him... Like he's more mature than them. Like he has grown up too fast. And he hasn't talked about his past, so Sanji isn't sure why he's this way. Ace doesn't like Sanji seeing him this way, he figures, because he always pretends to be okay when Sanji knows he isn't. Until one day they have the "Should I have been born?" talk, and it's the first time somebody tells Ace "I think about that a lot too" instead of the usual "I don't know" or just a plain "Yes". They get each other so well. Ace wants to make a name for himself because his father has determined his whole future, and Sanji doesn't want to have anything to do with his father and just wants to be a normal person, but they both feel like they are a mistake, while the other keeps saying he's happy the other is alive.
And then there's Sabo. Now, Sabosan is the endgame ship here because I say so. I was just using Acesan as plot device because it's sweet and funny. Sabo, the one who always tries to be more mature and calm and cold-headed because the other two are even more chaotic than him (imagine how chaotic they are because Sabo is already... Something else), loses it the moment he meets Sanji. He's,,, He's so pretty. He's cute and knows how to cook and he's so so sweet and nice and has the biggest heart in the world. And Sabo has only seen pain and torture in the world. Living isn't just living, it's survival and escaping the pain he has to deal with his family every day. Sanji feels like living. Like, actually enjoying life when they're together. Sabo might be chaotic and he might fight a lot with Ace and Luffy for Sanji's attention, but at the end of the day, he is the gentle brother who takes more care of Sanji and is always looking after him. He brings him books from his house because he knows Sanji likes reading. He often even writes stuff for him because Sabo is a writer, and feels the need to show his art to Sanji. He lends him clothes and he's always the first one to offer to cook with him, even if he's awful at it. They're still kids so Sabo isn't quite sure what love feels like, but this is close enough, he thinks. Every time Sanji laughs? Smiles? When he speaks about the All Blue? It makes Sabo's heart do backflips. It makes him want to keep fighting and training. And Sanji sees the pain and responsibility Sabo feels in his eyes. He feels protected when he's around and it's always so much fun to be together. He likes how passionate Sabo is about writing and becoming a pirate, and he loves the way he takes care of Luffy too. Sanji ends up realizing he always puts a little bit more effort into Sabo's food... And he doesn't know what love is, but he's a bit shy around Sabo now that he knows he feels different about him.
Just imagine Makino coming to see them and meeting Sanji! She'd love him! The kid is so polite and smart and she just wants to kiss his cutie face and hug him tight. Her personality is kind of like his mom's, so it hurts a little to meet her, but she's just so sweet that Sanji can't help but grow attached to her. And God, just imagine Sabo and Sanji interacting in front of her. Sanji blushing and Sabo eating his food happily and always being so, so close to him. That woman knows what's going on, but if she asks Sabo she knows he's gonna go "What?! Sanji?! No! I don't like him! I mean- I do like him. But... But it's not that way..." / "Are you sure about that, darling? You know you can like, like him, right? It's okay. You can tell me" / ".... Do you think he likes me back? What do I do for him to like me back? What if he goes away and never finds out?!" / "I don't think you have to worry about that now, sweetie". But Makino is also a bit of a tease, so she goes to Sanji one day and says "Hey, Sanji? What do you think of Sabo?" / "..... He's really nice to me" / "He is, isn't he? He isn't that nice to everybody. Maybe you're special for him?" / "What?! I am not, how- How could I be? He's just... He just looks after me because I can't do it. I'm a burden" / "Don't say that, honey. He looks after you because he cares for you" / "He looks after Luffy too" / "It's different with you, I think. But well, he also looks after Luffy because that's what brothers do" / "Do they?" / "What, sweetie?" / "Nothing. Sorry. Sabo always asks to cook with me" / "Mmm. I wonder why".
Sanji doesn't make any promises because he has three different boys asking him if he wants to be their cook once they're captains, so he just says he wants to find the All Blue. That's enough for him. So now he has Ace, Sabo, and Luffy fighting over who will be the one taking Sanji to the All Blue. For now, Sanji just says he's everybody's cook. That's cool with them.
I think all of this could go hand in hand with the AU of Sanji and Sabo seeing each other first in a meeting between their families. So when Sanji ends up in the Goa Kingdom, Sabo already knows him and that's why they accept him into their little family so quickly. He thought Sanji was dead, so when they see each other again, Sanji is the happiest boy in the whole world. He's so protective of him. He won't stop saying how much he hates his family and Sanji. But they're alright now. They're okay.
But they're not. Because then, Sabo "dies". And the day after, Sanji has to leave with his crew. And then you have Ace and Luffy on their own, with a dead brother and Sanji promising they'll see each other again. But he's so heartbroken he doesn't know how he'll be able to keep going. He wants to find the All Blue for Sabo. He knows Sabo would've hated it if he had given up. Then the whole story goes on, yadda yadda Zeff yadda yadda Baratie yadda yadda Luffy and Sanji meet again yadda yadda Sanji joins the Strawhats yadda yadda they find Ace in Alabasta (and he's actually a bit jealous Luffy was the one who ended up with Sanji as his cook, but he's obviously happy for them). And maybe. Maybe something happens between Ace and Sanji. Maybe they kiss or something but I don't think they do anything else? Ace feels it is disrespectful to Sabo. He confesses he had a crush on Sanji when they were kids, and he's gorgeous now and he would love to be with him in some way, but it just feels wrong. Ace always knew Sabo and Sanji were meant to be, anyway, and Sanjii doesn't even want anything to happen, either. Yadda yadda yadda, Dressrosa. Oh, and isn't it hilarious how Sanji isn't even there. when it happens? Luffy meets Sabo. Everything follows canon. Except that Luffy has time to talk to him instead of Sabo running away quickly. And somebody mentions Sanji. Robin, maybe, and Sabo instantly goes "You did not take him with you!" but he's smiling when he says it. He wants to see him so bad. So, so bad. So he promises to visit the crew when he can. He promises he will see Sanji.
And then the end kind of follows the post I tagged about the other AU? Except that Luffy doesn't tell Sanji that Sabo is alive because he thinks he'll be happier if Sabo tells him himself when he pays a visit to them!!!
I just love childhood friends AUs,,, This is incredible. Awesome idea. I love Sabosan so much I might cry.
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sentientstump · 10 months
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he's going through it
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whumpster-dumpster · 1 year
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Whump tip: changing bandages is a big painful bummer when the gauze is basically glued to the wound by dried blood
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petralkaaz · 1 year
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whoever started the headcanon that post trimax vash picks up smoking so he can feel like wolfwoods still there, i just wanna talk 😭
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dawnthefluffyduck · 13 days
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Dess from the Deltarune comic Looking Glasses by @ferronickel, I loved her design at first sight so here's the promised fanart; check out the original comic! It's very much worth the read :D
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moodysnowflake · 1 year
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This scene is shattering my soul into li'l pieces which are eroding into ashes.
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Vash is so distraught; after one century and a half, he didn't get used to the horror, the pain, and the violence. He was quick to pick up all the guilt and all the blame thrown at him. But the tragedy of humanity remains still fresh, it keeps braking him, time, and time, and time again.
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He's poisoned by guilt, a guilt that thrusts him through unspeakable nightmares. That closes his stomach for days. That mercilessly drapes his body in scars. Demanding his misery, strangling him in grief.
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The price will never be payed completely, his atonement will never reach an end, because he won't forgive himself. Ever. He believes he's just...not worthy.
This is his cursed doom. He's prisoner of the worst captor; his mind.
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He accepts the hate, the rage, surrendering without so much of a blinking. Pain is an old friend. He understands the agony of losing loved ones, he knows that that bullet will never make him hurt as much as the policeman is, but that's the only thing he can do to expiate.
If getting shot can bring even a ounce of relief, then so be it.
Stand.
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Surrender.
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Suffer.
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He gets shot. We clearly hear the hit. But nothing else. He doesn't even whimper.
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taizi · 8 months
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If you're taking prompts and like this one might I request Sabo's pov on 'if I go I'm going on fire?'
That fic absolutely floored me it was so incredibly good. I just had to lie there and process it. But I can't stop thinking about how afraid Sabo must be that Ace will be angry but it would never stop him from going to try to help Ace, who doesn't even know he's not the last of the three...regardless if you want to write this I just had to tell you how much I loved it!
quite the keeper of you
read on ao3
x
When Sabo was fished up out of the sea as a child, all he had to his name were the clothes on his back and an ancient monocular telescope tucked safely away in his inner coat pocket. And that was all he had. And when he woke up initially, he was half out of his mind, hysterical, begging not to go back to wherever he’d come from. So for all he knew, he wasn’t leaving anything worthwhile behind. 
It’s a sick joke. He’s waiting for someone to pull the curtain back and laugh, to let him in on it. 
“You’re my brother!” Straw Hat screams, claiming Portgas D. Ace for the whole world to hear, plunging headlong into a war like it didn’t make sense for him to be anywhere else. The broadcast is shaky, grainy, but Sabo can still see the way Fire Fist’s face crumples in terror and anger and something specific to older siblings—something Sabo’s heart recognizes in that split-second.
Did you know? If you share a cup of sake, that makes you—
Sabo stands frozen, his brain on fire, the rest of his body encased in ice. Images were crowding forward; a rainforest with rich, colorful foliage and giant beasts, a bandit hut that was always waiting for them when they decided to give into the elements and slink inside for the night, a junkyard they picked through for treasures, though it took forever nowadays, because one of them always had to look after the little crybaby and make sure he didn’t drag something stupid home. 
A kingdom square, unkind faces looking down on them. A treehouse where they could see for miles. A tiny body crawling under his blanket during a storm, and the automatic way Sabo put his arm around them, mumbling without waking up all the way, “This is the last time, Lu.”
For a moment, in the footage, it looks like they’ll get away. They’re running to the wharf, backed on all sides by allies, and Sabo finds himself holding his breath. Straw Hat is beginning to flag, but Fire Fist has a firm hand wrapped around his arm, is pulling him resolutely towards the sea. 
Then for some reason, he stops. He whirls to face Akainu, face distended in a snarl. 
No, no, no, you idiot, Sabo thinks with a fury that nearly blinds him. What are you doing, keep running, freedom is right behind you! 
You idiot, come on!
When there’s an enemy in front of me, I won’t run. 
When it happens, Ace is seconds too slow to stop it, an arm’s length away, his face the picture of horror. All around Sabo, the air goes out of the room with an audible sound, everyone sucking in a short, pained breath. 
“Oh, no,” Koala whispers, putting her hand on his wrist. “Sabo, I know you really liked him. I’m sorry.”
Her sympathy is genuine and meaningful—she liked that rookie pirate, too. It’s impossible not to like him. His devil-may-care, take-no-shit attitude, how daring and reckless and joyful he was as he threw himself into each new corner of the world. Sabo always found himself gravitating towards Straw Hat’s Wanted posters the same way he did Fire Fist’s. He always lingered to look at their faces an extra second. He never knew why.
And now Straw Hat is—
This means that from now on, the three of us will always be—
The broadcast starts to shake. The transponder snail is curling and shriveling away from what must be an intense heat. A Devil Fruit awakens on Marineford, broadcast to the world, as Fire Fist Ace lights up like a supernova and cremates everything in front of him. The man who killed his brother dies in seconds. His own allies are pushed far away, back and back and back. No one is able to reach him. 
And he’s screaming. When the transmission ends abruptly, Sabo can still hear him screaming. 
He’s weak, and a crybaby, but he’s still our little brother. Look after him for me. 
##
When Sabo boards the Moby Dick, he’s alone. He sailed in a straight line from Baltigo to intercept the Whitebeards without waiting for approval or permission from anyone. He didn’t even requisition the cutter, he just took it.
Less than two weeks after the Summit War, it’s a grave-faced group that greets him on the ship. Sabo doesn’t see the gargantuan figure of their captain abovedeck, so he casts around reflexively with observation haki and deduces that he must be resting in his quarters. 
“What business does a Revolutionary have here?” Marco the Phoenix asks, with as much veiled threat as Sabo expected, though decidedly less than he deserves. 
“Fire Fist,” Sabo says. All around him, hackles go up. “I’m here to speak with him.”
“He’s not exactly seeing visitors at the moment,” Marco grits out. 
“He’ll see me,” Sabo replies, as steady and solid as a rock face that the ocean crashes against. He speaks as if his hands aren’t shaking, as if there isn’t a pit in his stomach that it’s hard to breathe around, as if he feels anything else but cold.
It takes four minutes for Portgas D. Ace to appear. He walks like a puppet, something recently brought to life that is still figuring out its autonomy. His eyes are dark and endless and if there’s a spark left in them at all, Sabo can’t see it from where he’s standing. Ace turns his head and picks Sabo from the crowd as the outlier remarkably fast, hardly needing haki to do it. 
It takes four seconds for confusion to surface through the apathy, hints of it touching Ace’s face; the narrowing of his eyes, the downward turn of his mouth. And then it’s six seconds after that for understanding to set in, a swift river rush of it, followed by a tiny little silverfish dart of wonder. And then grief and rage trample over everything else, hand-in-hand. 
Ace is on top of him an instant later. It’s a full-body tackle, and they go rolling across the deck in the type of knockdown, drag-out brawl that Sabo only just remembers from another life. It was like learning how to swim by jumping in the deep end—the wild boy from the forest had taught Sabo how to fight as if his life was on the line. They skipped things like how to tuck in your elbows and untuck your thumbs. Ace’s lessons involved finding the soft underbelly of your opponent and digging into it with tooth and nail. 
The accident at sea that stole his memories away took those lessons, too, but his body remembered them. And while formal training with the Army was much different than wrestling with his brother in the woods, Sabo always had a bit of a nasty streak his teachers despaired over.
“You don’t have to bite,” he remembers Hack saying with measured patience. “This is a class, not life-or-death.”
Of course it is, Sabo had found himself on the verge of snapping. If I don’t fight for my life, someone else will take it. If we don’t fight for each other, no one else will. 
But he didn’t know where the thought had come from. And he was discomfited by the way his instructors were watching him, and the way Koala stared at him, at the smear of blood left on the corner of his mouth, like she suddenly saw something in his face that she recognized in herself. So he didn’t say anything at all.
Now he knows. Ace showed him how to protect himself in a brutal, bloody, final way, because Ace loved him enough to want him to exist at any cost. Live, those lessons taught him. Survive. 
Voices cry out and feet stamp around like people are trying to get close enough to tear them apart—but Ace’s fire shoves his crewmates back, a wall of snapping, snarling teeth that towers above Sabo from all sides. 
It licks against him without burning. Ace’s hands are another story. He’s hitting to hurt.
Sabo absorbs every blow, and even when his face is tender and swelling and his lip is bleeding, it still doesn’t feel like enough. 
Ace clutches the front of his waistcoat and hauls him half upright, expression twisted into something bleak and hateful. It’s the way he looked at Sabo when they were children and still strangers to each other. The first time they were strangers to each other.
“If you were going to come back from the dead, it should have been for him,” Ace snarls. “What the fuck are you doing here? What’s the fucking point now?”
I should have been there is on the tip of Sabo’s tongue, but it seems a waste of breath to say something everyone already knows. I’m sorry surfaces next, is the obvious right thing, but what he actually says is, “I had to come.”
His voice is just barely more than a whisper. Ace’s face only screws up more. 
Ten years ago, it would have gone without saying. Maybe they wouldn’t have needed to speak at all. The only person in the world who really understood Sabo, who could look him in the eye and practically read his mind, was his best friend. His twin brother. 
But now he’s staring at Sabo like he’s never seen any creature like him before. 
“I had to,” Sabo chokes out. “Ace, I had to.”
Even if you hate me, he doesn’t say. You’re my brother. I’ll always come for you. 
Ace drops him. Sabo’s head hits the deck with a solid knock, his brain ringing inside his skull like a gong. He’s still waiting for his double vision to clear when Ace lays down next to him. Their shoulders are touching, and even when Sabo’s starts to shake with the force of his sobbing, Ace stays pressed against his side. 
Their shoulders are touching, and the fire, when it finally closes in, still doesn’t burn. 
##
“I’m stepping down,” Ace says suddenly. “From the Whitebeards.”
Sabo rolls his head to the side to look at him. Ace goes on staring up at the sky and doesn’t look back. They’re still sprawled on the deck. Ace’s crewmates have been giving the brothers a wide berth since they stopped seemingly trying to kill each other but a wary few of them are still lingering nearby. If they’re close enough to overhear, they don’t give any indication. 
“The Straw Hats,” Ace says, “Luffy’s people. They’re monsters, like us. They love the way monsters love. They’re gonna drag as much of the World Government down to hell with them as they can. I’m going, too.”
He lifts his hand, holding it out above him. It ignites, merry orange flames crackling from his skin, sending shadows flickering across his blank face. Then all the color bleeds away until it’s a ghostly thing, shock white with hints of blue, and the packed heat becomes searing and uncomfortable. It superheats the air like a flash fire; Sabo can feel it in his lungs, but he doesn’t move away. 
Luffy burned. His last breath was agony, choked with smoke. There isn’t a force on this planet that could hurt Sabo as much as knowing that. If the fire in Ace’s hand leaped over and caught him and he went up like rice paper, it wouldn’t even come close. 
“Don’t want my name attached to Pops anymore,” Ace goes on. “Don’t want him claiming the consequences for my choices this time.”
Sabo asks, “What did he say?”
“Called me a stupid kid,” Ace recounts like it’s something that happened to someone else. “Said I could go as far away as I wanted for as long as I wanted and my family would be still waiting for me when I decided to come back home.”
There’s a quirk at the corner of his mouth, not quite a smile. It’s some distant cousin of wry humor but not the real thing. Sabo gets the joke—“come back home.” As if that’s a place that exists anymore. 
“I told my boss the same thing,” he offers, “more or less.”
His conversation with Dragon was less a conversation and more the total destruction of the communications room. Sabo doesn’t remember all of it. He does remember the rawness of his throat, the leftover ache of screaming, “Why weren’t you there? Why weren’t we there?” and the splinters in his hands from the broken furniture he’d hurled at the walls. 
“I’m on sabbatical,” Sabo says mildly.
Ace finally turns to look at him. He’s different from Sabo’s recovered memories of him. He’s different from his Wanted posters, even. Gone is that proud, angry little boy, and that devilishly grinning pirate. He was a big brother before he was anything else, and now he isn’t that anymore. It’s carved a hole into him, scooping out the golden, shining parts that it took years to cultivate. All that’s left is the burnt remains of something once wild and beautiful. 
He could be all those things again, Sabo thinks. If he tried. If he leaned on the support and love of his crew. If he let himself hurt and then let himself heal. If Sabo were a better person, he would make Ace try. 
But he isn’t. Sabo is burnt remains, too. 
“Pops told Luffy’s monsters it was suicide,” Ace says. “He says there’s no way we can accomplish what we want to do. He doesn’t get it.”
“No,” Sabo agrees, not unkindly. “But he will.”
Life is a series of lessons. 
Sabo taught his brothers how to steal, how to be cunning—how to slip through High Town in their ratty shoes and dirty clothes like they were invisible, the way he learned to maneuver the mansion his parents lived in. Ace taught them how to fight bigger, stronger people—how to go for the soft, unguarded places, how to dig in with your teeth until you won. 
Luffy taught them, too. Every single day. How to be silly. How to laugh at themselves. How to face the day like it was an adventure instead of a challenge. How to pry open the guarded cages of their hearts so that it became possible for other people to sneak in there down the road. How to dream huge, impossible dreams, and go on dreaming them even when no one believed in you but you. 
This, their stubborn little brother showed them, day after day after day, grin stretching beneath a straw hat that Sabo would never get to watch him grow into, hands always open and reaching for them, is what you fight for. 
And the Marines thought they had any right to touch him. To take him. To drive a fist through the heart of the one purely good thing in this world. The audacity leaves Sabo breathless. 
“There are battles we have to lose,” Dragon had said, sitting in the middle of a ruined room like he’d been chiseled from stone, the beginnings of a terrible, pitch-black storm in his eyes, “in order to win the war.”
But there was no such thing as winning now. Not for Sabo, or Ace, or the Straw Hats. There was only taking as many of those people down as they possibly could, and making it bloody, and making it brutal, and leaving behind something that it would be impossible to ever forget. Something historians would discuss only in whispers for the next hundred years. 
They’ll remember him, Sabo thinks, eyes roaming away from Ace, back towards the sky. Maybe there are stars up there tonight, maybe the moon is full and beautiful. All he sees is the blackness in between, the empty space. We’ll make them remember. We’ll teach them what it means to do what they’ve done. 
And then they would finally see their little brother again, and they would tell him all about it. 
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keeps-ache · 4 months
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1) i'm bad at games 2) i'm scared of people
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robotapricot · 7 months
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drew my faves because summit war made me sad
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cattimeswithjellie · 9 months
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Barely seven minutes into Doc's new Hermitcraft video and he's already coming for Impulse's head. "This is what happens when you don't hire the best people!" Man's a savage, truly.
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ghoulgeists · 2 years
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think not of the future
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rainsoms · 1 year
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HE’S SO GREEN!! HE’S SO EVIL!!
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