I can't believe no one wrote something like this before o.o

This is an idea that's been bothering me for months now, and I decided to write it, ignoring the fact that I should be studying.

Just my vision of how this meeting would have been, with some of my headcanons thrown in :)

Beta'd by Dearshul ^^ I really need to stop throwing sudden ideas at you without warning xDD

Disclaimer: nopes, still not mine. I don't get money from writing this.

The ones left behind

After returning from Rusukaina, where Luffy still had another half year of training before coming back to Sabaody and reuniting with his crew, Silvers Rayleigh barely spent a week there before setting sail again.

There was a place he had to go to. Had wanted to go for a year and half now.

Finding the island was relatively easy: after their captain's death and the battle at Marineford, the Whitebeard Pirated hadn't been in a position to defend most of their territories from other pirates, wouldn't have even if they hadn't had wounds to heal. Now they protected only a small handful of islands, and from those islands, Rayleigh knew only of one that wasn't inhabited.

He may have not been the smartest man around, but he knew how to put two and two together.

The travel to the island was fairly easy and uneventful, apart from some pirate crew that tried to attack him, and his small boat miraculously resisted.

Once he reached the coast, he pulled the boat into the sand of a small beach and walked into the island, easily spotting the flag, long bisento and coat, now battered by time and weather, overlooking the sea. As he approached, he could make more details of the two graves there.

Rayleigh smiled ruefully, his gaze remaining on the smaller of the two tombstones, topped by a wooden cross from which hung an orange cowboy hat, a necklace made of red beads, an orange belt and a knife.

Portgas D. Ace… or Gol D. Ace, as his birth name must have been, rested here, next to the man who he had called father, the man who had been his biological father's enemy.

Life was so ironic sometimes.

Stopping in front of the graves, Rayleigh sat down and left the bag he'd brought with him on the floor at his side.

He didn't say a word, not really knowing what to say to the men resting here. But perhaps, to the one walking the same path he'd taken just now…

Rayleigh had expected the island to be guarded, and wasn't surprised when he felt that certain presence there. It had been a long time, but there were people in this world one could recognize anywhere.

He wasn't surprised, he would do the same if it was Roger's grave. He would do the same if Roger had a grave to be protected in the first place.

"It's been a long time, Marco." He greeted, not taking his eyes from the stones before him.

"Yeah, it has." Marco agreed, sitting down next to him.

They stayed silent for a long time, both of them looking ahead and lost in their own thoughts.

Then Rayleigh spoke. It was something he hadn't told anybody, not even Luffy or Shakky, but needed to share. He felt the man next to him would understand.

"You know, he never told me he would be having a kid."

'I would've been there, if I had known' was left unsaid, there was no need for those words.

"He was as reckless as his father, though he would have denied any resemblance."

Rayleigh let out a short laugh, and next to him Marco chuckled.

Opening the bag he'd brought, the older man took out four cups, one significantly bigger that the others, and a bottle of sake. He placed the bigger cup in front of Edward Newgate's grave, and put the others before the three remnant ones there. Then he filled them and lifted his.

"To those who have already left."

Marco lifted his cup as both of them drank.

The end

As you can guess, these are my heacanons for this story:

1- Rayleigh didn't know about Ace, I believe he would have done something if he had, at least want to meet him, if not going to save him.

2- Marco knew about Roger being Ace's father. Some people made the connection, and I think he would be one of them.

3- In the past, just as Whitebeard fought Roger, it was Marco who fought Rayleigh, so they would have a relationship not too different from that of their captains :)