Hi, this is that story you guys voted on! It's only the prologue right now, as I've only done a couple chapters. I'm only putting this here to see your thoughts and what should be changed (as a forewarning, as of this moment, this is the most dramatic chapter). It'll be a while before I finish the rest to show you guys, but I will definitely post it as soon as I'm done. So, with that out of the way, here we go!

Prologue:

He took a swig of the drink sitting before him. It should've been Zoro drinking the alcoholic beverage. Should've been Nami tending to her tangerine trees. Franky filling Sunny with cola. Usopp making stories. Chopper bandaging his wounds. Sanji making delicious meals. Brook playing amazing music. Robin reading the open books in the observatory. Jimbe finally walking on the deck of the Thousand Sunny.

It should've been Luffy who died instead of them. They deserved so much better.

"Everything I touch just dies, doesn't it", Luffy laughed bitterly as he laid on the bench. His scenery changed again, the normal for him now, as he stood and dropped the bottle, the glass breaking before disappearing. That was around the moment he died, so it wasn't too unexpected.

He sighed. Gonna start again. Beginning to end. End to beginning. He just didn't care anymore. He laid back down as everything reappeared. Which person's life was he gonna see this time? He couldn't find it in himself to care who it was, he just wanted to sleep his drunken haze away and to just forget everything that happened.

The bystander effect was a sad thing. He couldn't do anything as he watched person after person after person just crumble to dust and wither away to nothingness. Everything died. Nothing would stay forever.

He often times had to remind himself of who he was, so he wouldn't lose himself to the jumble of memories roaring in his mind. He reminded himself by looking at his scars and writing notes of his life on his body with his nails to keep from losing it all.

He often wondered if there was a way out of this torture. And he often thought that, no, there was no way. He would've found it long ago, if so.

Except, several people appeared in front of him. All very familiar, though, with the next life playing in his mind, it was hard to recall. He looked at his notes and found a section on each crewmate, words of each littering his back.

Luffy wondered why he could see them if this wasn't the right timeframe for them to live in yet. The nine of them smiled warmly at the Strawhat captain, he felt he didn't deserve their warmth. They each put a hand on him one by one, some giving hugs, and he realized his body was starting to fade away. Luffy idly wondered where he would go this time, if anywhere. Maybe he was just hallucinating again. He hoped not. That was never fun.

"Captain", he heard before vanishing completely. "You deserve so much better than this" Luffy faintly noticed tears go down his cheek, falling onto his hands and a small sob tore through his throat before finally disappearing.

Luffy awoke to a distorted view of trees, broken wood, and a vaguely worried... Ace? He didn't remember this moment. At all. And that's saying something. He's memorized every life he has seen, due to the sheer amount of times he had seen each one. He still didn't remember seeing a worried Ace hovering over him with a broken roof under a canopy of trees. Though, the fact he could try to recall something meant he wasn't watching someone's life at that moment, which he was grateful to know.

"Ace..." Tears sprang to his eyes as he sat up and slowly touched Ace's confused and slightly worried face. It wasn't one of the memories. He could feel his big brother's face. Could smell the molded wood around them. The tears fell as he held his confused and increasingly worried brother's face in his hands.

"L-Luffy?" Luffy jumped a bit at hearing his voice, but wound up just pulling his big brother close and holding onto him for dear life. He was worried that it all just might disappear if he let go of Ace. He didn't want it to. He was desperate to know that Ace was real, that he wasn't just dreaming (not that he could sleep when he was in where ever he was), and the ability to feel told him that it was all real. He openly cried in joy.

Ace, still confused and worried, pushed away from the crying twelve year old, holding him at arms length. It was terrifying seeing the normally cheerful Luffy suddenly fall out of a tree and start crying over him. He didn't know how to react. Luffy was always weird and spontaneous, but this was new.

"Ace", Luffy cried as he pulled his brother into a, surprisingly strong, hug.

"Luffy!" Ace bopped him on the head, still worried, but confused and angry as well. Luffy sniffled and looked up. Ace saw his eyes, they looked aged somehow. "Don't suddenly go and fall out of trees, moron", he bopped him one more time. The anger left, but he was still worried and confused. Luffy had some explaning to do. He decided to ask. 'Now or never', he thought.

"Luffy... what the hell's going on?" Ace knew something was off and he was going to figure it out.

Luffy didn't know whether to tell him the truth or not. Maybe if he ignored the question, Ace would forget he asked? He sighed miserably; that never works. Still, Luffy couldn't find the words to explain the hell he just went through and he didn't know if he really wanted to find said words. It'd probably just worry Ace more.

Though, Ace would beg to differ. His worried frown and the impatient glare told Luffy as much. How do you explain to your over protective big brother that you died at some point, ended up seeing every life on earth's history, and then try to explain something you don't even understand yourself? Luffy had no clue what to say, but he'd have to try anyway.

"I died", Luffy said. Well, it wasn't wrong. He had died. Even though it was clear to Luffy, Ace had the most confused expression the young Monkey had ever seen in any life.

"Ah. Wait, I died then I came back to life. That sounds about right."

"What? Can you explain that just a bit better, Luffy", Ace pinched the bridge of his nose in exasperation, trying to be a bit patient for his... slower baby brother.

"I ran out of meat. Then I woke up here", Luffy said, purposefully vague. In all honesty, Luffy didn't really wanna talk about what happened in between. Or any of it really. It wasn't much fun thinking of the end of the world. Ace had his sneaking suspicions that something had happened, though, and Luffy hoped he wouldn't find out anytime soon.

Ace sighed, realizing he wasn't gonna get much out of his bumbling kid brother unless he wanted to tell him.

It was nearing dinner and the two decided to head to back to Dadan's hideout with the alligator Luffy realized Ace had in hand. He chanted "food" the entire way after realizing he hadn't had food in... who know's how long anymore. The longer he stayed in that place, the more time he lost. He couldn't keep track and gave up on time after the third round of memories. All he knew now, though, was that he was starving and couldn't wait for dinner.

Dinner seemed to go by fast, Luffy's feeling of nostalgia pushed aside for the moment for food. After dinner, Ace pulled him to the barrel of water they used for baths. It had been far too long since Luffy had a bath, Ace decided when he could smell the younger from across the room. The two got undressed, Luffy seemingly more excited for baths than usual. That was when he noticed them.

"Luffy... what...?"

He saw his baby brother's scars. Every last one. There were words written all over the tiny body, but, the one that felt most ominous, was the big x shaped scar burned into his chest. Ace didn't know why, but he felt as if the x was his fault in some way. In reality, he felt that all of those scars were his fault for not taking better care of their idiotic baby brother.

He had to get Luffy to tell him what happened. Luffy looked a bit apprehensive, though, and Ace didn't know what to ask. Well, that wasn't entirely true, he was just a bit hesitant as Luffy hadn't had those earlier.

"Luffy, what really happened?" Ace was more concerned than when Luffy suddenly fell from the tree. He didn't know what happened, but he needed to. That feeling in his gut that told him it was his fault only grew tighter with Luffy's unnaturally pained look.

"Like I said before, I died and I came back", he stated. Ace's anger flared a bit at the purposeful vagueness that was so unlike his baby brother. Luffy bit his lip and walked off, skipping the bath, and headed straight to bed. He really didn't want Ace to know.

Later that night, Ace finally went back to the small room above Dadan's, only to find Luffy was actually awake. Though it was dark, he could see his brother shivering under a blanket in the moonlight, whispering something.

"Where am I", Ace heard as he got closer to the tiny bundle. It made him freeze. He thought he felt his heart stop at those words.

"What's going on? Where is everyone? Pa?" The tiny bundle turned around and faced Ace. Upon seeing him, Luffy froze, scared. "Who're you? ...I'm sorry! Please don't hurt me!" His eyes were glazed over with tears, and Ace thought he could hear his own heart shatter.

"Luffy..."

"Who... who's Lu-", Luffy started, confused and scared, before collapsing on his side, asleep. Ace was almost crying-he couldn't let himself cry, that's what babies did-, scared for his little brother.

"What happened, Luffy?"

The next morning, Luffy woke up with Ace staring at him in worry. 'What happened to make Ace so worried? Did I do something in my sleep? Did I eat Ace's pillow?!', Luffy thought, slightly worried he stole a pillow thinking it was food. He didn't taste anything different in his mouth, though, so he dismissed the possibility. He stared at Ace, owl-eyed with curiosity. He was finally back, but he kept making his big brother worry. He's a terrible little brother.

"Lu-Luffy", Ace hesitantly asked.

Luffy tilted his head to the side a bit. "Yeah, Ace?" Ace sighed and collapsed in relief. "Ace?!"

"I'm fine, Luffy." He bopped him on the head. "Don't go scaring me like that, you idiot!"

"Like what", Luffy asked, clutching his head, not that he needed to. He wasn't hurt, after all. "Ace?"

"You didn't know who you were last night and freaked out", he mumbled. Luffy looked slightly taken aback at that then put two and two together. It was a nightmare from one of the people.

He thought he was finished with reliving other people's lives. He thought he wasfree from it. Why can't things ever go right? Luffy sighed. He figured he had no choice but to tell him, Ace wouldn't relax without an explanation now.

"I lost my crew to an admiral and, a few months later, a bastard took the most dangerous weapons in the world and everyone died. I survived that, but I didn't last long without any food." Luffy slowly looked back up at Ace's confused, but worried face, his own fear growing. He didn't want to speak about that place. It couldn't have been the afterlife, Brook said something else happened there. It wasn't a nice place at all. It was lonely and cold.

"When I woke up, it was pitch black and cold. I didn't know what happened or where I was, but I knew I was alone." He saw his brother's eyes widen. Luffy's greatest fear was of being alone and, in there, he was alone.

"I... I don't even have the right words to describe it. I could see... everything? I don't know how or why, but I kept reliving people's lives and, everytime another person's life came up, I couldn't remember who I was or what happened to me. I wrote it down so I wouldn't lose my memory again." Ace looked at the words littering his little brother's rubbery body and realized they were descriptions. He saw his own on Luffy's stomach, though he didn't read more than his name, not wanting to know what happened to himself in the future.

"I don't know how, but I wound up back here and I could feel things again", Luffy choked back a sob as tears started to pour down his face. "I could remember things and see with my own eyes, instead of some dead person's. I could touch stuff, like the moldy wood and the blanket and Ace's warm face." Luffy couldn't stop crying, he was so happy and so sad, but he didn't want to cry.

Ace realized now why Luffy held his face for so long. Ace was real and warm and Luffy had been cold and unable to feel for so long. It broke his heart to learn this. It sort of explained Luffy's behavior last night as well. He was probably trapped in a dream of one of the people. If he had seen 'everything' then that would make some sense.

He held his baby brother close, realizing that he needed to feel a real, warm person more than anything right now. Luffy just cried, unable to stop himself. He was so happy to be out of that place, but so sad that he still wasn't free of it. He wasn't sure what to do anymore, but he wanted to fix things. He wanted his crew back and he wanted to keep them safe this time. He wanted to keep his brothers safe, too, and he'd do anything to make sure that that happened. His crew and his brothers were the most precious people in his life. He didn't want to lose them again.

He wouldn't lose them again.

Thanks for reading!