Summary: Sabo is haunted by his brother's ghost, but it doesn't hurt as much as he thinks it should.

(Or, in which the Revolutionaries think Sabo is slightly unhinged, but they're wrong (this time, at least)).

Sabo had been…different. It was just little things at first—slight differences in personality, in his daily routine, in the way he dressed. It was a natural response to suddenly regaining his memories, and it really wasn't that big a deal, so nobody had said anything about it.

Now, though, some of the Revolutionaries were starting to wonder if Sabo's meltdown had actually been the beginning of a mental break.

He had been fine before Dressrosa. At least, they had thought he'd been fine.

But now he was talking non-stop about a guy everyone knew was dead—someone who had been dead for over two years—as if he were right there with them.

"He's gone crazy," the junior members would whisper impudently while the more senior members would shake their heads sadly at the fate of a young man who had so much potential.

But none of them were actually brave enough to confront their Chief of Staff about it.

oOo

"Sabo-kun," Koala hesitantly calls as she finally manages to force herself to knock on his door. There's chattering coming from the other side of the door even though she knows no one else is in his room (she tries to convince herself he's talking to someone on a den den mushi, but she knows he's not), but it stops rather abruptly at the sound of her voice.

There's an almost sad-sounding sigh from the other side of the door before he tells her to come in.

He's sitting cross-legged on top of his desk when she comes in. The room is as empty as she expected it to be. "Who were you talking to, Sabo-kun?"

He gives her that face that says she should know who he was talking to, which is fair because she does, but he answers anyway. "Ace."

Knowing the answer doesn't make hearing it any less painful, though.

She forces a smile (something she's more than used to doing) and asks, "So where is he?" She feels bad for asking, feels like she's pushing too far. If this is how Sabo deals with his grief, why not leave him be? There are much more destructive ways to deal with this kind of pain, and he's not hurting anyone. It's not her place to tell him that it's impossible for him to be talking to his brother because his brother is dead.

Surprisingly, though, she is answered with an amused smile. "He hid," Sabo explains, "when you knocked on the door. I don't think he's ready to meet anyone yet. He's actually really shy." He winks. "Especially around cute girls."

Honestly, she probably would've gotten flustered at the statement if it wasn't for Sabo suddenly jerking forward in his chair distracting her. She watches, worried, as he slowly sits back up, wincing.

The worry only increases when she hears him whine, "Aaaceee, what was that for?" He's looking to the side now, gaze so intensely focused that if she couldn't see with her own eyes that there was nothing there, she might've actually believed he was looking at someone.

It's cowardly, and she knows it, but she forces a smile onto her face anyways and says, "Well, then, sorry for interrupting you. Good night, Sabo-kun!" She's out the door before he has a chance to say anything.

Ace is hovering over his shoulder, not even bothering to hide his snicker as they watch her go.

oOo

The first time Sabo met him was in a dream. He hadn't been lucid enough in the moment to realize that the dream was, in fact, a dream (that was something that hit him later, hard and fast like the punch he had received from dream-Ace).

He had to admit that he was taken off-guard when the very first thing dream-Ace did was slam his fist into his face.

Sabo slowly sat up, rubbing his cheek gingerly. He opened his mouth, about to demand, "What was that for?", but the words died on his tongue.

Ace was crying.

All he was able to do was gape up at his best friend, his brother.

"We thought you were dead." The words were harsh, but choked. They were angry, but soaked with enough sorrow to send Sabo clambering up to reach for his brother.

But he could never close the distance between them because Ace only drifted farther away as the world around them slowly cracked and faded.

"Sabo-kun!"

oOo

"Sabo-kun!"

He jerked awake, cringing when he turned his head only to see tears filling Koala's eyes.

"We thought you were going to die!" she cried.

Sabo turned his confused gaze towards Hack, who was standing behind the distraught girl, trusting him to explain since Koala did not.

"You were out for three days. You were running a high fever; we were worried you weren't going to make it."

Sabo tried to squash the surge of panic that arose at hearing how bad his condition had been, instead trying to give them a smile. "Oh, come on. Like I could just die and leave the Revolution behind when there's so much to be done."

"What happened?" Hack asked, and the smile fell off Sabo's face and his features darkened as he recalled what had triggered this whole thing.

He stared down at the white sheets and finally managed to whisper, "My brother..."

Which wasn't an explanation, not at all, but he could always count on Koala to understand more than what was said.

"You got your memory back?" Her question was soft and hesitant, like she was afraid of hearing the answer even though she already knew it.

He nodded. His hands tightened around the sheets. Ace was dead.

The dream suddenly became infinitely more painful.

"Does this mean you're leaving us?"

He looked up at her, allowing himself to be momentarily distracted by her tears. He couldn't think about Ace right now.

"Of course not. I already told you I couldn't leave behind the Revolution. My place is here."

Ace had thought he was dead. Ace had died thinking Sabo was dead.

"But there's something I have to do."

He couldn't let Luffy suffer the same fate.

I'm marking this complete, but I will likely write more some day (because I really like the idea, and didn't really have as much Sabo interacting with his ghost bro as I wanted to write because it was more of an explanation of how this fits into the canon/how the revs react).

Explanation (just in case): the last two parts (where it switches to past tense) are based off after Sabo reads the newspaper and gets his memory back (a scene while he's in the coma of him meeting ghost Ace for the first time (though he thinks it's just a dream) and then of him waking up in the medical room). The scene with Koala is after Dressrosa. He meets ghost Ace after getting his memory back because as he said, he believes that Ace is the one who gave him back his memory, but Ace can only meet him in dreams at that point. After eating the mera mera no mi, ghost Ace pretty much just starts haunting Sabo.