Ace was scared of being rejected.
No… scared wasn't a big enough word to describe it… terrified seemed more right.
Every time he saw someone he set himself up to be rejected, so it wouldn't hurt, but even then when they did reject him it hurt so badly…
He was so, so stupid. Why should he care what they thought? Sabo constantly told him that it was stupid, that they were stupid, and Ace knew that, knew that Sabo and Luffy and Makino and the old man and Dadan and anyone who mattered cared, cared about Ace, but…
He was so weak, so stupid that just one word could bring him down….
Freak. Stupid. Traitor. Monster. Failure.
And then all the other thoughts just broke through…
You deserve to die.
You don't deserve to life.
You shouldn't have been born.
Everyone would be better off without you.
It hurt, hurt so badly, but even when he tried to remind himself that those stupid thugs didn't matter, even when he screamed in fury and punched them and tried to channel all his anger out…
Even when the anger faded…
There was an empty, painful hole in Ace's chest. It just sat there, like a stone, unmovable, and he tried to act different, tried to make someone just notice that it hurt so badly, but nobody ever noticed…
Maybe that was what really hurt.
But then he met Sabo. Luffy. Whitebeard. Everyone…
And suddenly, it felt like it was okay.
Like it didn't hurt so much anymore.
Like the stone was pulled out of his chest.
And it was in those precious, warm moments that Ace thought, Who cares what others think? And even though it hurt so much, and sometime he was so terrified of being rejected that he could barely breath, it was alright, because when his brain was being irrational, he could go to someone who would be rational.
There were people who cared about Ace, and that was all that mattered.
A/N: Um, this was really… really badly written. My excuse is that this wasn't actually meant for you guys at all. I actually wrote this for myself, to channel my emotions, but then someone told me to post it, so I did, and… hope you enjoyed it? Sorry that it's so unclear and stuff… I wasn't really thinking when I wrote this.
