So this is it. Strays is finished.
I'm so incredibly grateful to everybody and anybody who stopped to read this, and especially to those who have favourited, followed, reviewed, drawn art, left suggestions and – a special few like Zoe (the best author and friend ever, an amazing person! ily zoe seriously thank you so so much), Ari (the best older sister ever) and Ty (absolutely incredible brother) – have become really amazing friends to me. It's been an amazing journey, and it's sad to see it end, but hopefully you all enjoyed! I'll be back on with a new fic before I know it, I'm sure (hint hint: asl!centric, futuristic wings!au, angst and fluff!)
So thank you thank you thank you for reading! I love all of you! Enjoy this final chapter, and please leave a review on your way out. I have a few outtakes, extra scenes and explanations in my files. If anybody wants to see them, let me know - they'll be on the strays-fic tumblr, just like everything else! i really hope you like the ending i settled on!
hopefully this chapter manages to sum up what this fic is really about :)
Epilogue - How We're Made
Two years later.
Ace's eyes slip open onto the dimly-lit ceiling above and he stares blankly for a second, blinking the darkness of sleep from his eyes. The sheets beneath him feel rough and in need of a wash, but familiar. For a minute or so, he feels utterly disorientated. Slowly, feeling a yawn rise in his throat, he sits up and stretches. His room is lit by the new dawn outside the window, grey streaked with orange and red. Limbs sated by sleep, he reaches across to the bedside table and snaps open the pouch with his meds, taking the recommended dose dry.
It's early, maybe six or seven, and the room is cold - not uncomfortably so, but cold nonetheless. Sabo is still asleep, and his presence feels closer to Ace than it has in a long time. Ace is glad. It just reminds him of what's in store for the next few days, and excitement bubbles in his chest.
He stands after a few minutes, rubbing his eyes and holding back another yawn, slipping his clothes on with half an eye on the rising sun outside. The beads around his wrist feel cold but the rest of him is warm, soothed by the sunlight and the calmness of the day. Lacing up his boots, Ace catches movement across the room and his head snaps up. Marco waves from the doorway, blonde hair slightly mussed by sleep.
'Awake?' he signs, smiling, and Ace replies with a nod and a smile as he stands and moves to his friend's side.
'Today's the day,' As Ace signs back. His hands flow and move with ease. He's been doing this for nearly two years now, and is pretty much fluent by now.
Marco crosses his arms and says something, lips moving too fast for Ace to interpret, before nodding. Both leader and second-in-command start down the corridor, light flashing past every few seconds as they pass by window after window, the walls illuminated by golden light as the sun peaks over the horizon. It's hard to believe that a mere two years ago, this corridor was nothing but rubble. Feeling a lick of panic rise up even past the anxiety meds, Ace fiddles with the beads on his wrist, tracing the 'J' carved into one of them. His eyes are downcast, and Marco doesn't attempt to communicate. They walk in comfortable silence and inactivity.
Things are messed up. Ace acknowledges this fully. They have been for a long time - the whole world has been for a very, very long time - but they have been especially for the last two years. They still are now, and though Ace is learning to live with everything that's changed, it's hard. It's really hard.
The explosion took a lot from the revolutionaries. It took a lot from Ace, too. While the revolutionaries tried to rebuild, mourned for even more dead, Ace woke up in a hospital bed with broken ribs and two extraordinarily worried brothers. They cried his name as he woke, relieved and overwhelming and moving too quickly for Ace's eyes to process, and they only silenced abruptly when he honest-to-god screamed.
The explosion took a lot from them, and it took the most from Ace.
And not being able to hear... It sucks. It does. Ace is more than willing to admit it. But for the last few years, everybody has been so nice about it that it hurts. Marco, Scarlet, Jake, Sabo and Luffy all learned sign language, and Ace wanted to tell them that they didn't have to but his heart was so full that he couldn't get the words out. Some are more fluent than others. While Marco is completely fluid in his communication, Luffy is jerky and slow. But it still means so much, and Ace would never complain, especially to his younger brother. It's astounding that they even bothered in the first place.
He's still a revolutionary, proud to be a brother of liberty, and they're rebuilding the world from the bottom up. It's just a lot harder now than it ever has been, and Ace wonders sometimes if he's even worthy of being one of them (no matter how much Sabo tries to tell him that he is). The new generation of revs, fourteen and fifteen year olds so painfully young that it's scary, look up to Ace like he's a hero. Ace is twenty. If somebody would have told fourteen-year old him that he would still be alive at twenty, he probably would have laughed.
The world is hopeful, Sabo likes to think. It's most definitely broken in many ways, but it's regrowing. Ace doesn't know if he agrees, but he doesn't argue.
And the bond is still strong, of course. While Luffy is out chasing the wind with his wild crew, birthing the next generation of pirates in his wake, Sabo has a very different take on the world. Ace is proud of him, especially every time he gets a report that the newly-formed AANGEL and its new leader have freed another western town from anarchists, or overthrown another Hyumangoddo stronghold. Sabo is a good leader, and AANGEL respect him just as they did his father. Luffy is a good captain, too, and Ace loves laughing with Marco about all the crazy stuff he gets up to. Marco thinks that a pirating era is on the horizon, and Ace privately agrees.
And today is the day that most of the more responsible revolutionaries have been dreading. The day that comes around every few months, when the three destructive brothers come together to share stories, sake and most likely some wild shenanigans. Having the leader of AANGEL, the second-in-command of the Revolutionary Army and the newly-dubbed Pirate Kind all together never spells good news, and Ace loves it.
'You're smiling. Should I be worried?' Marco signs with a small grin.
Ace nods resolutely. They enter the main hall laughing, as they do every morning, and heads snap up to look at them and smile as they pass. It's a typical routine. The chief and the right hand of the revs are good friends, and everybody knows it. They cross the hall, Ace still smiling. When the pair reach the commanders' table, Ace slips in next to Izo, who shoots him a small smile and offers him a slice of toast.
"You're smiling. What's going on?" Jozu asks suspiciously. He never learnt sign language, but speaks slowly enough for Ace to be able to read his lips.
Ace signs, 'This is the day.' Marco translates for the rest of the commanders, and Scarlet's face breaks into a look of horror. She says something quickly to the other commanders, looking distinctly scared, and similar looks erupt around the table. Ace feels his own grin grow.
'We're all going to die,' Scarlet signs, looking despairing. Across the table, Jake - the newly designated vice first-division commander, under Ace himself while Scarlet takes over the second division - grimaces.
'Sorry for having to tell you this, Ace, but she is right,' he signs rapidly. 'The last time they were here, Sabo killed a cat and Luffy nearly burned down HQ. I am slightly scared.'
Ace laughs boisterously and tucks into his toast, exchanging a smile with Izo, while Marco explains to the other commanders that the other two members of ASL should be here within an hour. Ace doesn't need hearing to know that they're all groaning, and he smirks into his cup of coffee.
'Knowing Sabo, he's already here,' he signs. Marco translates, and Scarlet drops her head against the table with a hopeless look on her face. Ace snickers.
What's that about me? Sabo's voice asks in his head, suddenly feeling incredibly close, and before Ace can react, he's on the floor. He yelps, hands moving to defend himself, but freezes when he catches sight of the blonde hair, scarred face and wide grin of his brother. Sabo sits on his chest, laughing hard. The commanders are half-raised from their seats with wide eyes, but once Ace starts laughing too, they sit back down with sighs of exasperation and fond smiles in equal measure.
Sabo! Ace roars joyfully, shoving the blonde off him with a playful growl and pinning him down. They wrestle for a few seconds, laughter infectious, before standing. Sabo only waits a second or so before pulling Ace into a rough hug, smiling into his shoulder. Ace returns the hug wholeheartedly, not caring about the eyes on them, and a gleeful laugh escapes his throat.
After a few moments, they release each other. Ace looks the other up down, hands on his shoulders. Sabo is practically glowing, the scars on his face more faded than ever, a constant reminder that even now, nobody knows just how he got them. His hair is pulled into a low ponytail, a few curly blonde locks framing his face, and his skin is tanned and clear. The silver of his eyes shines with affection. He looks so alive, extraordinarily so.
Not many people in the Revolutionary Army know about Sabo and Ace's connection, so it must look strange when they walk off together, laughing and smiling at random intervals, not signing once. Ace decides that he doesn't care. He glances over his shoulder to wave goodbye to the commanders, planning to bring Sabo to the roof, and catches sight of AANGEL huddled in the doorway. Unlike two years ago, they smile at the revs and are welcomed warmly. Ace spots Koala standing in their small crowd, looking distinctly ticked off that Sabo has just left them, and laughs silently. At her side stands Haley, glowing with contentment, holding hands with a girl in a blue dress. She smiles across at Ace, and he smiles back before turning back to Sabo.
When they finally reach the wide roof, the pair sit down and look out over the ocean, eyes peeled for any sign of the Thousand Sunny as they catch up. At some point, Sabo ends up wearing Ace's hat and Ace ends up holding Sabo's, its surprising weight anchoring in his hand.
Ace stares hard at the rippling waves, trying to spot any hint of a shadow below the silvery curtain, but the stranger doesn't break the surface. After a few seconds, though, something dark blue and rounded floats limply to the surface ten feet or so away from where Ace stands, and before he knows what he's doing, Ace tears off his shirt and dives into the water.
The cold is like a stab in the chest. For a few seconds Ace is paralysed, unable to breathe, before he takes a strong breath in and tries to kick to the surface. Salty water fills his mouth and throat before he hits the open air, coughing helplessly. After a few seconds of spluttering and struggling, he manages to get air back into his lungs and push towards the navy-blue object, long ropes of seaweed licking at his legs from below the surface.
Ace manages to get to the strange object and treads water for a second, examining it. He knows immediately that it isn't the stowaway – it's too small and light, and is cylindrical in shape. Salty water blurs and stings his eyes, and as a shiver rakes up his spine, Ace turns back toward his small alcove, swimming as hard as he can towards the shore with the sopping wet object clutched in his hand.
Clambering onto the concrete ledge in front of the alcove, Ace rolls over and coughs out a few mouthfuls of seawater, pulling on his abandoned shirt as quickly as he can as shivers rack his frame. Once he's gotten his bearings back, the black-haired boy looks down at the blue item on the ground beside him, and-
"I'd appreciate it if you gave that back."
Ace shakes himself out of his memories as Sabo whoops, grabbing his arm and pointing out over the distant ocean, where a very familiar ship has just emerged from the mist.
"It amazes me that they're able to be this happy, yoi," Marco murmurs. "After everything that's happened..."
"Yeah, I know," the second mate of the Strawhat Pirates replies. Her voice is sad. She's the second mate, as far as Marco knows, because the place of first mate cannot be replaced even two years later. "Especially Ace. God, to lose your hearing like that... Not to mention the scars..."
"We try not to mention them," says Marco quickly. "Your captain being here helps, yoi. A lot. He still needs to take his meds, and it's still disastrous when he forgets, but we never see him as happy as he is when his brothers are visiting."
There's a second of silence. Nami picks at some dirt at the corner of her fingernail and asks, "How's business with the army?"
Marco sighs. "Tough. But at least we're getting by. The alliance with AANGEL helped a lot, and we're progressing. Of course, the mad weather isn't helping..."
Nami makes a frustrated noise, curling her legs up. They sit on a grassy bank, watching the brothers run around like mad things twenty feet away. The rest of the strawhats are having fun too, picnicking without a care across the field, but they give the trio their space. It's almost as if the ASL brothers are living in their own little bubble, and it's enchanting to watch.
"The weather. Fuck, where do I even begin with the weather."
"You're a navigator, yoi, so I'm guessing that like all the other navigators I know, you have no idea what's happening?"
"An unfortunate series of events?" Nami laughs sadly. "Yeah, I have no clue. None of us do. The volcanic activity in the south is next to impossible. If it's really butterflies flapping their wings that cause hurricanes, there aren't enough in the world to cause the destruction in the west. Don't even get me started on the east."
"The storms up here are..."
"Unusual at best, fatal at worse, yeah." Nami stands, shaking her head. "It's been good to talk to you, Marco-san, but I need to get back to my family now."
She turns away, but before she can walk away Marco calls. "Wait, one more thing-"
"What is it?"
Marco points towards Luffy. The seventeen-year old has his arms thrown up into the air and he's spinning, around and around like a top, laughing at the top of his lungs. His overgrown, messy hair hangs around his face. There are two scars on his face, one uniform and curved, one wide and jagged. Marco knows simply from Ace's stories that both of those scars have very different origins. There's a new addition to the skin around his left collarbone, too.
"What does that tattoo mean, yoi?"
HAPPY, it reads, with a triangle replacing the 'A'. It draws Marco's eyes like a corpse - something you don't want to look at but can't stop yourself from wanting to examine.
Nami's face softens. From the eyes of an eighteen-year old girl, a scarred and seasoned sailor shines for a second.
"It's a tribute to his brothers. All three of them." She turns away for good. There's something hopeless in the set of her shoulders, now.
She walks back towards her crew. They smile at her, waving her over. The girl with blue hair and burn scars covering her arms has eyes filled with something that goes beyond love, somehow, as she looks at Nami. There's a distinct gap between the cook and the sniper, as if somebody else is meant to be there. Marco wonders, but doesn't feel like he should ask.
"Goodbye, Marco-san," Nami calls over her shoulder. Her red hair, a shaggy, sea-ruffled pixie cut, catches the sunlight.
"Yeah... Yes, goodbye, Nami," Marco replies. She doesn't hear him.
I love my brothers, Ace wants to yell, they're amazing! He wants to scream it off the rooftops, but now that he can't hear his own voice, he holds himself back. Instead, he just waves as Sabo and Luffy's ships disappear over the horizon, a wide grin on his face.
Are you sure you don't want us to stay, Ace? Sabo asks. He stands at the bow of his ship like a centry standing guard, eyes locked on his brother's. He asks the same thing every time, and the answer is always the same.
Go change the world! Ace yells back, waving until his arms ache. Goodbye, Sabo!
When they're gone, a familiar emptiness settles into the hollow of his stomach, but he ignores it. They're free, and happy. Each of them is doing what they want to do in life.
And that's all that matters, right?
'The world is going to destroy itself! And it's all your fucking fault!'
Eyes snapping open, Ace jolts upwards so sharply that he almost falls off the bed. For a second, all he can feel is his ragged breathing. The ice in his chest burns like fire, like it always does when his nonexistent heart is beating wildly. The nightmare plays through over and over in his mind, flashing and flickering like a broken television, its severe clarity never fading.
Ace forces himself to stand, bare feet hitting the cold floorboards as he crosses the room to stand by the windowsill. For a second, with his brothers gone, a staggering rush of almost panic-inducing loneliness rushes over Ace. He considers going to Marco, who is sure to still be awake even at this hour, but decides against it a second later. He causes enough trouble for the man without running to him like a child with every nightmare. He's not fourteen anymore. He tries to open the window, but his fingers are trembling too much for him to be able to flick open the lock.
Exhaling sharply and trying to ground himself, Ace moves for the door, barely registering where his feet are taking him. His head spins with the darkness of the world around him. It's at times like this when it's the worst - when not only his hearing is gone, but his sight to boot. It seems ridiculous for Portgas D. Ace to be afraid of the dark after everything that he's been through but somehow, it really happened.
In the back of his mind, Ace feels Sabo stir slightly and murmur, You're panicking. What can I do to help? After a second, sounding more awake, he adds, try to breathe, okay?
I'm alright, Ace replies, feeling an intense sensation of deja vu. I will be, anyway. In the morning.
You always are, Sabo's voice slurs. You say you are. Breathe. Breathe. We love you, Ace. You know that, right? Luffy loves you. The revs love you. I love you.
I love you, too, Ace says. Now go back to sleep.
Alright. Sabo yawns, presence dulling as he slips back into sleep, and Ace tries to slow his breathing and raging heartbeat in order to make it easier for him. He holds back the usual thoughts about how to not true, thoughts that rise on impulse by now, until he's sure that Sabo is sleeping deeply.
By the time his heartbeat has slowed to a normal rate, he's standing on the roof, staring into the inky blackness of a starless night. The night is utterly still, windless for the first time in months. Sometimes, it's so stormy up here that they have to block off the entrance. Nowadays, the weather's always going nuts.
And that's the thing, isn't it?
Ace sits, crossing his legs under him as the anxiety subsides to a low, unsettling hum in the pit of his stomach. He doesn't want to get sucked into his thoughts right now. It never means anything good. But he can't help it - the same cycle of thoughts begin to rage through his mind. He can feel the routine slipping into place and braces for it.
The weather has been more than just 'nuts' for months now; Ace knows that for certain. Everybody knows it, but nobody talks about it. He's known about it since it first started, but he only ever started to wonder what it meant when the dreams started.
They always consist of the same course of events. Ace wakes up in a darkened room, hands tied. Flames rage just outside of the single window. In the upper left corner of the room, in a shaft of light, a butterfly flutters through the air at a lazy pace. Just like Ace, it's trapped. With every flap of its wings, the room shakes.
A voice starts up, quiet at first and growing with volume as it speaks. It's anger intensifies with every word, and soon, it grows so loud that the words are distorted and inhuman. Ace can't raise his hands to his ears. He's forced to live through the all-too-real dream in its entirety until the words are burned into his mind for good.
'The world is going to destroy itself! And it's all your fucking fault!'
It makes sense.
When the dreams began, so clear and repetitive, Ace didn't know what to think. His mind scrambled for some kind of reasonable explanation - he tried to sketch them out, write about them, even tried to interact with the dreams when he was experiencing them. Nothing changed. The words stayed them, and the strange, destructive weather patterns got worse. Today, they're worse than ever. Magma bursts from cracks in the earth in the south. Hurricanes and desert storms, viscous enough to kill hundreds, terrorise the west. The East lives under the constant tyrannical rule of tsunamis and water tornadoes - or, at least, what's left of it.
It makes sense.
"We're not taking into account one thing – the Butterfly Effect," Leo's voice whispers into his ear.
It makes sense.
The butterfly effect - the concept that a butterfly flapping its wings on the southern Fringe can create a viscous storm off the northern mainland. One tiny change can impact the world itself.
As the dreams got worse, Ace grew more paranoid. His anxiety got worse. On some days, his brain was so muddled that he couldn't even sign properly. Marco wondered - Ace could see it in his eyes - but didn't ask; nobody did. And slowly, entirely on his own, Ace came to a conclusion that terrified him to the core.
The prophecy was always meant to come true.
Roger knew that the timeline was out of the window when he said it, he knew that things had changed. But he still recited it. He must have known that, somehow, it was destined to come true in the end.
As the dreams grew longer, more intense, more revealing, Ace spent hours every night wracking his brains as to what they could mean - how they could be pulled together into an answer. There was only one (relatively) logical conclusion he could come to, and that in itself was the last thing he wanted. After all this, it was the last thing he could have wanted or expected.
Roger's sons were still going to bring the world to its knees. But instead of Ace and Sabo, it was going to be Luffy.
The timeline is broken. This, Ace knows for sure. The fabric of time itself was torn, a hole made in it for Luffy and Shanks to reside in, and it's tearing further every day as Luffy and his crew make history. The world is changing irreparably.
With a shudder, Ace finally lets it all go. Fuck all of these secrets. Fuck keeping it close to his chest. He can't take it anymore.
Sabo? Sabo, wake up, please wake up. Please, please, please wake up.
Slowly, the ever-present consciousness at the back of Ace's mind stirs once more. A tired, familiar, concerned voice asks, Ace?
Ace steels himself and says, Sabo, please come back.
Sabo's presence flares - with worry, with hope, with an unconditional kind of selflessness that Ace has never had - and he replies immediately, okay. I'll bring Luffy. We'll be there before dawn. Hang in there, Ace. Whatever this is, we're going to stop it.
God, Sabo. Tears prick at Ace's eyes. He's so stupidly detirmined, so brave that it hurts. War-hardened and weary, Ace could never imagine being like that. Not now, anyway - not anymore. The worst part is, there is no way to stop it. Sabo, I- thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you thank you thank you. Thank you for loving me.
We couldn't stop ourselves from loving you if we tried, Ace. We're your brothers.
A ten-tonne weight unclenching from around his heart, Ace sits back, crosses his arms over his face and waits.
Outside, slowly, it has begun to rain.
'Ace,' Luffy signs, head burrowed into his shoulder. 'Ace, we love you. We do. And we don't care if the world is ending - we're still gonna be together, even if it does.'
Sabo nods, sitting on his other side, his top hat sitting heavy on Ace's head. What he said, he says. Ace's bed creaks beneath them.
Marco was concerned when Sabo and Luffy ran into the main hall at 3AM, out of breath and panicked, but didn't ask when Ace just told him that the three of them needed to talk. Ace is thankful for that, at least. Now, they sit in Ace's room. It's dimly lit, but the light of a slow dawn will soon fill the sky, and for now, they don't need much light. Ace is just content to sit here and talk. It feels so good to finally get it out, it's surreal. And Sabo and Luffy are taking it surprisingly well.
'I'm sorry,' he signs.
You don't need to be. Almost as if he's trying to change the subject, Sabo looks up and his eyes zero in on a small notebook on Ace's bedside. What is that?
Ah, yeah. That's-
Ace stands suddenly, walking across the room to pick up the small diary and flicking open the first page. The words wink up at him like a curse - 'My name is Portgas D. Ace, and I'm broken.' He can see the gruesome scars that cover his hands as they hold open the book, and winces. It's not often that he remembers what the explosion took aside from his hearing.
Without hesitation, he walks back across the room and, under his brothers' watchful eyes, throws the diary out of the window. It disappears into the darkness for good.
It's something stupid, he settles on.
Luffy shoots him a curious look but says nothing as he sandwiches himself back in between them.
'You two were right,' Ace signs eventually. He hugs Luffy closer to his side, and accepts Sabo's comforting, grounding affection. A hand clenches around the rough, scarred surface of his own. For a second, everything feels the way it should.
'About what?' Luffy asks.
Ace smiles. 'Even if the world is going to end,' he says, 'Just living for today with you two is enough. Just having today is enough.'
It really is. They're together. There will always be shadows in the night - there always have been, there always will be. The world is broken, ugly, heartbreaking. But it's the world where the three of them are together, and in Ace's mind, that's the best way it could possibly be. If fate is so adamant that they must not be together that she's willing to tear apart everything they know, then so be it. For now, with the world burning outside their window, it's enough. Ace loves his brothers, they love him. It's the world that he wants to live in the most, even if it is terrifying, even if it does want him dead.
Because god knows there are far worse worlds to live in.
thank you for reading! i love you, i love you, i love you!
