Like a Flame
Chapter 6: The Downside

"A year." She suddenly says urgently. "What?" I reply, not understanding what she's trying to tell me. "Wait a year before you bring the person back." She sighs as she lets go of my hand, ignoring my confusedness as she continues. "The person you bring back will be healed of whatever caused their death and they get granted the rest of their lifetime, until they die again. You, however... you will lose your right of that." My eyes widen. I try saying something, but somehow I cannot fully comprehend what has just been said.

"You will only get the time they have been dead, but a year is the maximum you will be able to obtain." She looks me straight in the eyes and her next words speak of real honesty. "I'm truly sorry it's like that... I wish I could tell you something good instead." She lightly touches my shoulder with her hand in a comforting meant gesture. "I thought that's something only you should know."

A weak smile finds its way onto my lips. "Thank you." I say quietly before I proceed to turn around to leave her place for good. Somehow my head is spinning, without being able to truly grasp one of the many thoughts on my mind right now. As I leave, I barely hear her wishing me 'good luck'.

Outside, Shanks is already waiting for me. "Something wrong?" He asks. "No." I reply. "She just wanted to wish me good luck. That's all."

"I see." He says and somehow I'm sure he knows there's actually more to it, but just like all the times before, he says nothing about it. "So what do you think?" He asks.

"I don't know." I reply truthfully, because I really do not know what to do with the information I had just obtained. Bringing someone back to life? That still sounded like it was all just a dream. A lie. Something that couldn't be true.

And then there's also what she had just told me. I would only get a year. Only one year. Or maybe it was at least a year. Because trading a life for a life was just the most plausible trade that could be possible, right? Because being able to randomly bring people back just wouldn't be good after all... But only a year...

I wonder if I could be that selfish. Didn't I have responsibilities towards the Whitebeard Pirates? What would they do if I was gone, how would they be able to go on? How would Ace react if I brought him back... only to then leave him alone myself? How would that make him feel? Just thinking about how I was feeling this whole time now... and then making him suffer in the same way... it just... wasn't fair. Could I really do that? Just how selfish had I become, really?

"...arco. Hey, Marco!" I flinch. "Ah, y-yes?" I wonder for how long Shanks has been calling me. I was so lost in my own thoughts that I hadn't even noticed that we were already going back into the direction of the ship, let alone noticed that someone had tried to talk to me. "Isn't this awesome?" He says and my heart throbs upon hearing his words. But he doesn't know, I tell myself. Of course, without that tiny detail she had added, it would have been exactly that: awesome. "You'll be able to bring him back after all. You'll be able to save him now!" He continues. I turn away from him. "I won't." I say, nearly whispering. But of course he heard it.

"What do you mean 'you won't'? This is your chance! You can undo it, Marco. I thought you would be happy."

I stop. This is too much. How could I be happy? I'll only get a year. I'll have to leave him behind. He'll be alone, he'll be in the same exact position I'm now in. I don't want that... "I'm not happy about it though. You should have never brought me to her in the first place, yoi!" I can't help but be angry. Get mad at him. It's his fault. I never wanted to know all of this.

"Calm down, Marco." He says, sighing. "You just need some time to think about it. I understand this is a lot to take in. You'd also need Ace's devil fruit first, so it's not like you could do it right away anyway."

I nod. I don't want to argue with him. It's not like he'd understand.

"Let's go back to the ship first." I nod again and for the rest of the way, we don't speak a single word.

Shortly before we reach the ship, Shanks stops me for a moment. "I'll leave it to you whether you want to tell your crew about this or not." He says, his voice sounding serious. I don't come around to think that it's not my crew. But I don't say a word about it. "We also got an extra ship here on this island. Which was another reason why I wanted us to come here. I'll borrow you that ship, because yours was destroyed after all. But we should talk about this later. First of all... I think it's time you talked to your people."

"Thank you for your help, Shanks..." I say truthfully. "I know I might not have acted like it, but I really appreciate it that you helped us... the whole thing just... isn't really easy for me."

"I understand that, don't worry about it too much." He says, with a bright smile on his face and just for that moment, I manage to give him a weak smile of myself in return. Even if that man has been acting like an idiot and talked me into doing something I didn't want to do, I can't deny all the things he has done for us. And even the thing about my devil fruit was just him trying to help me after all. I don't believe he had anything bad in mind when he came up with that idea. It's not like he could have foreseen the outcome of it all.

A little while later, after I had time to sort out some of the things that had been on my mind and after I'd been able to push the whole resurrection-topic out of my mind for a little bit, I find myself standing in front of the entire – or nearly entire assembled Whitebeard Pirates. Shanks is right. It was time I finally talked to them, told them what we were going to do from now on. And so I do. I tell them how hard it is for all of us to have lost this many of our brothers and to have lost our father. I tell them that we will never forget those that died and that we will continue living as the Whitebeard Pirates and that we will continue to proudly wear his sign on our bodies, doing what he had wanted us to do. To be free, to do what we want, as a family.

I tell them that what had happened hadn't been in vain, because standing up for what we believe would never be pointless. I tell them all the things I believe in for our future and even things I don't believe. I give them hope. Hope I don't completely have myself. I wonder when I started to be able to tell lies so convincingly. It's true that I want to do what pops would have wanted me to do, but somehow I feel myself to be unable to completely believe in it myself.

And then, I also don't tell them where I went today. I feel like I'm lying by not saying a word about it. I wish I could tell them I found a way to bring at least one of the people we lost back to life. I wish I could tell them we didn't fail to save the one of our brothers we wanted to save... but I find myself unable to do so. I can't tell them. I can't even make my own mind up about it. Who's supposed to carry the burden of deciding about something like that, if not me? How could I tell them I could bring Ace back, but in exchange they would lose their captain in two years of time?

That woman had told me I have to wait a year before I should even do it. But will a year be enough to come up with a decision? Do I want Ace back at my side so badly that I would give up so much for it? Could I want it so much that I would burden him with having to be left alone again? No. No, No...

I don't want this. I don't want to know about it. I don't want to make this decision.

Sorry it's a short chapter, but there'll be a time skip after this one.

Oh, poor Marco. So there was more to the whole thing after all :[. Told you this wasn't going to be a happy story. Just sacrificing his devil fruit really wouldn't have been enough after all!

What would you do in his place? You'll find out about his final decision in the next chapter, so I'm really curious!

Alena