Orange and Red
By: Liete
Disclaimer: I do not own One Piece or any of the characters portrayed.
A/N: This is a (platonic) soulmate AU, going off the concept where you can see colors once you meet your soulmate.
It became clear not long after he was accepted into the protection of the Revolutionary Army that Sabo didn't see the world the ways others did. He would comment on the appearance of something, only to be met with confusion and off-handed dismissal.
It was Dragon who introduced him to the concept of color, and that only people who had met their soulmates could see it.
"So I've met my soulmate then?"
He wasn't sure if the look Dragon gave him was sympathy or empathy.
Occasionally he would feel a twinge, an ache, a something out of nowhere that he couldn't describe, much less explain.
Hey…
On the furthest edges of his memory there would be a flash of something that would make him stop in his tracks, trying to cling to it and find the rest.
"You're so weird, Sabo," Koala said on such occasions and hit him over the head, pulling him back to the task at hand.
Then he was Sabo of the Revolutionary Army again, proving his worth and moving up the ranks, seeing the world in color when his closest partners didn't.
He'd tried before to explain it to Koala and Hack—the concept of color—but they hadn't yet met their soulmates, so they didn't…couldn't understand.
Not that he really understood it either, not when he didn't remember a world without it.
Orange and red, as he came to know them as, were the brightest and most brilliant colors he saw, until one day the orange began to dim.
He hadn't thought much of it, not until it shown so brightly for a moment that it hurt, just before it faded to the level of every other color but red and he felt a sense of loss so great it actually winded him. He didn't even register the requisite knock to the head he received from Koala.
The following day the news about the War of the Best had come in. They'd been concerned about Ivankov, of course, but it was the deceased that caught his attention.
"…and Fire Fist Ace!"
Hey, did you…
The face on the paper grinned up at him, even with the headline that he was dead. The paper shook in his hands as that face became a much younger one vowing to be a pirate one day. As that vow repeated over and over in his head those thoughts on the edge of his memory ripped through him, reminding him of a world without color, a world without the love he craved, and a world where he met…
Hey, did you guys know?
As he fell to his knees, screaming in agony, he clearly remembered the day his world exploded into beautiful, brilliant color where red and orange were the brightest. More importantly, more painfully, he remembered the reason why it happened. Why the orange faded, but the red remained.
He didn't just have a soulmate. He'd had two of them.
If we exchange cups of sake we can become brothers!
And now he only had one.