Author's Note: This fic will contain SPOILERS for the latest chapters of the manga, so ye be warned now! Also, this takes place after my short-story "The Last Chapter". Parts may not make sense without having read it first.
"THE GREAT AGE OF DREAMS WILL NEVER END!"
The words rang in his ears. His chest was on fire...couldn't breathe, couldn't see...
"Luffy?"
Then...it stopped, almost as suddenly as it had come. He felt lighter, somehow, as if he had been under a heavy weight that was gone now.
"It's time to wake now, Luffy."
For some reason it was a great effort to open his eyes, lids slowly parting before he blinked a few times. There was nothing to see, though, but a warm whiteness above him...or what he assumed was above him as he imagined himself to be laying down. This certainly wasn't where he had just left from...not Loguetown on a wooden platform with his nakama.
'My nakama!'
He sat bolt upright, looking around franticly. Where were his nakama? But around him was more whiteness...and an odd-looking woman who sat before him with crossed legs and a warm smile.
"Ah, there we are, hello Luffy!" she spoke, clapping her hands together lightly. "I was wondering how long you were gonna lay there."
Luffy blinked at her, for the moment distracted from his worries. She wasn't quite as strange as some of the people he had met in his journey, but her hair was both red and gold at the same time...he wasn't sure how that was possible, but it shifted between the two. Lightly tanned skin, a splattering of freckles over her cheeks and nose, and atop her head was a pearly extended a hand toward him eagerly.
"My name is Nalim," she explained. "It's a pleasure to meet you."
He shook her hand with a somewhat confused expression as his gaze wandered to the seemingly endless white all around them.
"This is a weird place..." he concluded, looking to the woman again.
"It always seems so when you first arrive," Nalim giggled. "But it will clear up when you're ready."
"Ready?" Luffy blinked dumbly.
Nalim gave him back his hand with a nod.
"Yes, for you see...this is the Afterworld. Everyone goes through similar things when they arrive. For example, when you first wake, a special Soul-Guide is assigned to you to aid in your transition from the Living to here."
'The...Afterworld.'
"So I did die, then, huh?"
"Mmhm, that's right. And I am your Soul-Guide."
"What about...where are my nakama? My crew?"
She chuckled, shaking her head. "Specificly, I cannot say for sure, but they are here in the After as well. Do not worry, for you will see them again. But first we need to get you settled in. The first step is to take you back to where your soul's great journey began...there are some others who want to see you."
Luffy scratched his head, still trying to really grasp the situation. Either this was a dream-a very complicated and weird dream-or...
"It is no dream, I promise." she assured him with a knowing smile.
A few moments would pass, the pirate captain letting the situation wash over him. It wasn't some vivid nightmare, the execution...he was dead, as was the rest of his crew. His heart ached to see them, so he would do whatever it took to get to them...in this case, it meant listening to this strange woman with three orange-red-gold eyes.
'Three...eyes?'
"Uuuwhooaaaah! Why do you have three eyes?" it seemed that it took Luffy that long to notice that Nalim, in fact, had a third eye in the center of her forehead, flipped vertically. She laughed bemusedly, standing and offered her hand to him.
"It is a trait of my kind, the Soul-Guides," she explained, the whiteness around them beginning to fade away as if it were fog when the bewildered pirate took her hand.
"Sugeeeeeeeeee~!" his eyes seemed to light up with stars.
As if it were being painted in on a blank canvas, a beach and the wide blue ocean appeared, joined by a inward rush of smells and sounds and warm sunlight that stole his breath for a moment. He could feel the nothingness become sand beneath his feet, hear the lapping waves, the cry of a seagull, feel the warm rays on his skin and the wind in his hair. It was all at once very familiar...
"This is..." he breathed, hardly able to believe it. He whirled around to gaze into the distance and he grinned infectiously. "This is the beach right by Windmill village! Dawn Island!"
"That's right," Nalim affirmed with a smile. "You see, the After is much like a mirror, able to take people's memories and dreams and fashion them into existence. So, it is both like and completely unlike the Living-world."
Luffy seemed eager to go explore the village before turning back to Nalim with a confused expression.
"You said there were people who wanted to see me before I can go to my nakama?"
"Mm, and the first should be there," Nalim pointed down the shoreline toward the docks. "You recall...that is where your journey began."
"Yeah! When I turned 17, that's where I set sail from!" he eagerly took off down the beach to get to it. Nalim watched him go with a light chuckle before fading away.
Luffy clambered his way up onto the dock, brushing his shorts off before giving his surroundings a good looking-over. It certainly was nostalgic and he smiled at all his fond memories growing up in this kingdom...running through the dangerous forests around Mount Colbo and fighting against all the beasts, causing chaos in the streets of Edge Town and stealing meals, Paty's Bar...
His brothers...
'It was a great time, just me, Ace, and...'
"About time you showed up, I was about to leave without you."
Luffy blinked, turning his gaze down the dock toward the sea. A figure stood there between two docked ships he swore one looked very familiar. Certainly, the one to the right was the tiny rowboat he had set sail on, but the other was a bit larger and even had a sail and pirate flag.
The man looked Luffy over with a wide grin-a single tooth missing-and crossed his arms over his bare chest. The green cravat around his neck fluttered in the breeze as he finally met the pirate king's eyes. Luffy frowned...this guy, like the boat, was familiar too. But where had he met this man before? It took a moment, but he paused as the top hat atop the stranger's head drew his attention. It was odd that a little gold halo floated over it, but beside that, he recognized it: a bit beat-up, black, and wrapped around it was a pair of gold-framed goggles. Luffy's eyes went wide in disbelief and filled with tears, causing the other to grin even more.
"S-Sabo?"
Sabo laughed heartily as his little brother gaped at him, eyes wide as saucers.
"Yep, it's me!" his green eye bright. "But I bet it took a second to recognize me, the last time I saw you I was ten and you were just a little seven-year-old brat!"
Luffy blinked a few times before bursting into bright laughter, launching himself at Sabo and hugged him so tight that if they were in the land of the living, he may have broken some bones.
"You look older!" he said in an amazed tone, backing up to look at him again with tears streaming down his cheeks. It was true; beside his trademark looks, Sabo's body was that of a 20-something.
"Well of course I do, you cry-baby!" Sabo snorted with a good-humored roll of his eyes. "Here in the After, you can look like whatever you want, so why would I still want to look like a little ten-year-old?"
It made sense enough for Luffy, so he nodded, still grinning so hard it was making his cheeks ache while he sniffed and wiped his tears away.
"Hey! Does everyone here have one of those?" he poined to the halo over Sabo's hat. "They're so cool, I want one too!"
"Oi, you already have one, you idiot!" the other snickered. "Didn't you notice?"
"Sugeeeee~!" he gaped at his reflection while leaning out over the dock precariously before windmilling his arms and stumbling back a few steps. "Agh! I almost fell in!"
"Heh, well that's the thing, Luffy! You can't drown here in the After, you're already dead!"
Luffy blinked, gaping at his brother again. He hadn't really had a chance to think much about it, but that made sense too...so he could swim again? But what about..? He leaned his shoulder back, hand on his upper arm as he wound up before throwing his fist forward, letting out a happy guffaw as it stretched far out past the dock and almost knocked Sabo's hat off.
"I'm still rubber!" he cheered.
"Watch the hat!" Sabo growled, adjusting it with a smirk. "And it's like I said, you can be whatever you want here, devil's fruit powers included!"
"Wahoo!" Luffy's arm snapped back and he grinned. "This is great! So you've been here ever since you were ten, huh?"
"Yep, and I got to have my own adventures and keep an eye on my brothers, too."
"You were watching us?" a pang of guilt tugged at Luffy's heart, realizing that while he had been out realizing his dream, Sabo had been in the After. But the other only smiled more and nodded.
"It was great. I was jealous at first, yeah, but then I decided that I would be the first one to sail -this- ocean!" he gestured to the calm blue beyond the dock. "The After-Sea is even greater than I could have imagined because it's made up of the memories and dreams of everyone who's ever lived! But while I was, I always made sure I kept watch over what my brothers were up to."
"Uwhoaaaa! I can't wait to see it, too!" he cheered, the pang forgotten as quickly as it had come. "Can I?"
"Yeah! But first, you're going to need your Key."
"My Key?"
Sabo nodded, his smile taking on a more serious note as he took off his hat, looking it over reverently. "Your Key, is an object that represents your time in the living world and isn't something that you have with you when you first get here. When you get it, you are able to travel freely beyond the specific locations of your past. Each Key is unique..this is mine."
"My hat!" Luffy gasped, franticly reaching around and patting for it on his back, then the top of his head, fingers finding only the fabric of his red vest and strands of messy black hair. "Where's my hat?"
"I bet that's your Key," the bemused Sabo concluded. "In which case, you'll get it from someone special here."
"Is that how it works?"
"Mmhm, at least that's what your Soul-Guide told me when I came to meet you. You see, if in your lifetime you had people who were very special to you, they come to greet your soul when you first arrive in the After," Sabo put his hat back on, his smile somewhat sad. "My Soul-Guide was the one who gave me my Key because my important people were still alive."
Luffy nodded a bit, putting his hand on his older brother's shoulder and gave a slight squeeze. To see him again filled the pirate king's heart to almost bursting.
"Well!" the older subtly brushed at his nose with a finger to hide the tears in his eyes. "No sense sitting around here, huh? You've got someone else to meet with before you get your Key!"
"Right!" Luffy cheered, instinctively hopping down off the dock and into the tiny rowboat. Sabo laughed at him and climbed aboard his own boat, the fishing boat he had stolen when he had fatefully set out from Goa City.
"You took that out to sea when you left to be a pirate?" the elder mocked with a raised brow.
"Hey! It was a good boat!" Luffy huffed, red-faced.
"Until you got it stuck in a whirlpool!" Sabo laughed.
The pair set off, laughing loudly with their fists in the air, exchanging idle chatter as Dawn Island faded into the distance behind them, the rest of the After-Sea before them.