Disclaimer: One Piece not mine.
Summary: There is always one instant when the nightmare bleeds into reality. Marineford, slight Alabasta, CP9 arc spoilers.
Anchor Fall
There is always one instant when the nightmare bleeds into reality. For Luffy, it is the clenched mass of magma drilling through the centre of a chest.
And after seventeen years of dreaming, Monkey D. Luffy finally wakes. There is no One Piece, no Pirate King. Only the reality of his brother's heart dripping from a steaming fist.
Years from now, when he is finally brave enough, Luffy will relive this moment and use the shards of its details to slice away at himself. He will brand himself with unspeakable names and know that each breath he draws belongs to Ace. Thief. Murderer. Kinslayer. No enemy, past or future, will ever hate him with such perfect, boundless vitriol.
In this moment, however, there is nothing for Luffy to do but disbelieve. He promised me. Big brothers don't die. These two facts are his North and his South and now he is in free fall.
Now he is lost. This brother of his (standing so tall he blotted out the sun) is on his knees, and to Luffy, the whole sky collapses with him. The gratitude Ace shapes through bloodied lips pierces him more effectively than Crocodile's hook or Lucci's Shigan ever did.
By the time his hands are empty, by the time his brother is smiling against cold stone, Monkey D. Luffy is already finished.