I should mention, for reference, that in my mind, Ace, Luffy, and pretty much everybody else from Fuchsia has a thick Irish accent. I'm not sure why, but something about them just really reminds me of the country, and I'm certain there's all manner of symbolism to be found in both the revolutionary and piratic history of the place. Don't even get me started on Grace O'Malley.

Day 83

His heart beat thuggishly in his chest and his head felt like it was slowly spinning. His chest no longer had that sharp pain whenever he took a breath, but replacing it was a dull, always-present ache. Ace could not express how badly he just wanted to lie still and not move at all. If he could get by without breathing and agitating the spot where he knew he'd been shot, he would. Alas, no such luck. At least lying down didn't really require much blood flow, so he could breathe very shallowly and avoid the worst of the pain without too much trouble.

The one sensation Ace couldn't puzzle out without going through the trouble of opening his eyes was the warmth all along his left side. There was something large and soft enveloping his left hand, and he just couldn't concentrate enough to discern what the texture reminded him of. He cracked an eye wearily. It was a sign of how out of it he was (most likely doped halfway to Narnia on pain medication) that he didn't recognise Marco's wild patch of blond hair for a few seconds. The older man looked to have fallen asleep, clutching the hand of his downed friend. Ace smiled softly and closed his eyes again.

He heard a soft knock on the door, then the tiny squeak of the hinges as it opened.

"Marco? You awake? I brought you some breakfast," a voice said in a whisper. There was no reply, then a shifting of cloth. Ace could visualise the owner of the voice shaking Marco softly to wake him up. There was still no answer, followed by a heaved sigh.

Ace opened his eyes slightly again, just to identify who it was. A shock of black, exceedingly curly hair clued him in.

"Nick?" he asked, wincing as his voice came out a scratchy croak.

Nick's head jerked up, surprised. "Ace? You're awake already?" Ace nodded slightly, trying to crack a smile. "You feeling okay? You had a pretty shitty night, I hear."

"Eh, I'm okay," he said. "I don't remember much, anyway. Has Marco been here all this time?" He already knew the answer, but he still wanted to hear it from someone else.

Nick gave him a fond smile. "He hasn't left you once since about noon yesterday. Well, he had to leave the room when they were cutting you up, but soon as he got the okay, he scurried back. The man's been worrying himself sick."

Ace frowned. "He didn't need to do that. He should be sleeping in his own bed, at the very least."

"Eh, he's fond o' you. We all are, you know." Ace coloured and looked away. "We're also under orders to keep you lucid if you wake up, and since you're up, anyway…" Nick found a chair in the corner and swung it around, sitting in it backwards and setting the plate of food on the foot of the bed.

"So, when me 'n' Mikhail were hauling you to the infirmary, I heard Marco talking to you. Something about a little brother?"

"Yeah," Ace said, "Luffy."

Nick's face morphed into a massive grin. "Me too. Little sister, too, in-fact. Gwen and Myles. Gwen's still a toddler, but Myles is already 9 and more than my folks can handle. The kid doesn't seem to understand the whole concept of what is and what's not acceptable in public. Or private. Or at all. Doesn't seem to understand 'danger', either."

Ace began to laugh, but stopped when it really hurt. "Luffy's the same. He's 14 – uh, er, 15 now, actually. He just had a birthday a couple of days ago. It's going to take some getting used to."

"They get old so damn fast, huh?"

"No shit."

Nick wrapped his arms around the back of the chair and rested his chin on them. "So, tell me about him. What's he like? I bet you miss him."

"I do at that," Ace said. "See, Luffy's the kind of guy you can't hope to explain well, but I can try. You might not believe me until you actually meet him, and then you'll see I was right, you know? Well, first things first, he's got this straw hat of his that he never lets go of, and I mean never. I touched it once (just once!) and he actually yelled at me. And this is the sort of guy who you could stick a gun in his mouth, fire, and he'd still forgive you, mostly because he'd be fine, anyway. I touched his hat just once and he didn't talk to me for a week…"

It was about two in the afternoon by the time Marco woke up to the noises of muted conversation. He suddenly jerked to full wakefulness at the sound of one familiar voice in particular.

"…and so me 'n' Sabo are busy trying to get him out of the croc's throat before he gets swallowed and digested, right? He's laughing his arse off in there and I can't figure out why, when –"

"Ace!" Marco yelped. "Since when did you…?"

"Bit behind the curve, aren't you, Taichou?" Nick said from his chair on Ace's other side. "Well, at least you're up-to-date on your beauty sleep."

"How long was I out?" Marco muttered, rubbing his face with a hand.

"I don't rightly know," Nick said. "I came in with your breakfast-" he nodded to the plate at the corner of the bed that looked like it had already been somewhat ravaged "- and you were already out cold at the time."

"And I wasn't awake for much longer before that. But honestly, you needed your sleep. I wasn't about to wake you up," Ace said.

"Well, you should have. I was supposed to be keeping an eye on you."

"And half-kill yourself in the process? I thought you were smarter than that, Marco. You need to take care of your own body, and if you weren't going to do it, somebody had to," Ace said.

"But you're the one who got fucking shot here! Who was taking care of you?" Marco whined.

Nick cut in. "You may not have noticed, but he's well and truly taken care of. I've been here since about 10 this morning, Selma's been in to check up on him, and she said all's well and good. He should be fine so long as he doesn't go bouncing around the deck for two weeks or so."

"Two weeks?" Marco frowned. He'd thought it would take much longer than that.

"Yeah," Ace grumbled. "Would've taken less time, but the bitch used hollow-point rounds."

"H-hollow point rounds?" Marco asked weakly. "How in the hell are you still alive?"

"You've never had Selma operate on you before, huh?" Nick asked. "The woman could sew your head back on and you'd be right as rain in a month's time. You just never found out because your powers normally keep you from being hurt, same as Ace here."

"I didn't think you could use Sea Stone in bullets, myself. Normally, the pressure cracks it, doesn't it?"

"That's probably why she used an alloy. She must've mixed it with something to keep it from busting when she fired."

"Add in hollow point rounds and you have yourself nine kinds of overkill."

"So what happened to her, anyway? I blacked out pretty fast and don't remember much."

Marco stiffened. "I don't know and I don't much care."

"I'm with Marco on this one," Nick said. "She fucked with you, and that's enough reason for me to shoot her right between her beady little eyes. Oyaji already chucked her and hers into the ocean, though. I haven't seen him that pissed in a while."

"…Really? He did that… for me?" Ace said, quiet as a breath of wind.

"He surely did. The rest of us would've done it, too. Much as you try to hide it, you're a really good guy, and we get no satisfaction out of seeing you hurt, especially for no reason at all. The bitch was just trying to kill someone to fuck with Oyaji, and that's no reason to riddle a kid with holes."

"All I can say is thank goodness only one hit you. She wasn't really aiming, anyway. I think the other went over your head," Marco muttered.

"That could've been bad…" Ace said. "My head is right where I like it to be at present."

"God won't let you die just yet," Nick said confidently. "Know why? 'Cause you are so. Very. Pretty." He leaned over with a grin and ruffled Ace's hair, pushing himself up from the chair. "Well, now that Marco's up, I gotta go do my job. It's past lunch, but do either of you want anything?" They shook their heads. "All right, then. Hope you feel better, Ace!" And with that, he left.

For a while, neither Ace nor Marco said anything, and they didn't meet each other's eyes.

"You should have gone to get something to eat," Ace finally said.

"Didn't much feel like it," Marco said.

"But when did you last eat?"

"…Sometime yesterday, probably."

"Damn it, Marco, you need to eat. Hell; you need to get out of this room. You've been here since God-knows-when. I appreciate it – you have no idea how much – but please just get some bloody air."

"But what about you?"

Ace tossed him a wan smile. "I'll be fine. Please. Go."

Marco stood up, hesitantly at first. He walked very slowly towards the door, then paused as his hand was on the handle. "If you need anyth-"

"I'm fine. Go."

He grinned slightly, then left. As the door shut behind him, Ace heaved out the breath he'd been holding.

He couldn't understand it. Not any of it. Why? Why would any of them go to such lengths for him? Marco and Thatch were downright pleasant to him, yes, and everyone else normally just accepted that he was there and went along with whatever the flow happened to be. He would share a joke or two occasionally, maybe a song if someone had managed to get him to drink to the point where he'd be willing to inflict his voice upon others… but this was madness. Marco stayed by his side for what, twenty-four hours? At least? He hadn't eaten or slept until by accident. The idea that anyone would do that for Ace was… unthinkable. The only person he could think of who might do that would be Luffy. Not even his old crew would do something like that. They hadn't even stayed a full day when he'd been beaten by Whitebeard for the first time. Some part of him was certainly surprised, yes, and shocked, but not as much with Marco as he was with Nick. He'd barely spoken to the man more than a dozen times, and then, not for very long. Somehow, he'd managed to earn his favour even so. That protective tone in his voice had been hard to miss, and the admission that any one of the crew would most likely feel the same way… It put things in perspective. He had shared his life with Nick, even if it was only a small portion of it, and it had felt bloody fantastic. The idea that these people liked him (though for the life of him, he couldn't puzzle out why) gave birth to an even warmer feeling. Even Whitebeard had protected him, the man who had been trying to kill him for over 80 straight days. None of it made any sense.

What was worse was that he was starting to think it did.

Maybe the crew wasn't crazy.

Maybe Ace was.

(A/N): And here we have a turning point. Don't worry! Even when I hit the end of the 100 days, I told you guys I wasn't going to do this in a necessarily chronological order, so I might go back and fill in the gaps I left. The angst-ridden first month I might skip a little, but… yeah. I dunno. The plot bunnies are still breeding. Have no fear.

It's good to be home with family this Thanksgiving. A lot of Ace's emotions are somewhat coming from how I'm feeling. God, I missed my folks. And my cats. There aren't any adorable cats to snuggle back in the dorm and it makes me depressed.