Chapter 19

Ace

"Your friend is alive."

Ace yanked his head up. He'd been dozing, kind of, and hadn't heard the man walk up to the cell bars. "What?"

"Your friend. Marco."

Sparks flew under Ace's skin. He was wide awake. "Where is he?"

The man stood outside the cell. "His situation is delicate. I'm afraid I cannot tell you more details."

The sparks turned hot. "What?"

"Calm down, Portgas. Do not let the devil control you again."

That alone was enough to send ice through Ace's veins. How was he supposed to know when his anger was his, and his alone?

The man left, and Ace bowed his head. He stared at the stone in front of his knees, eyes wide, mind spinning. Marco was alive. Marco was alive. Ace hadn't failed. He hadn't—

He swallowed around the lump in his throat. His vision turned cloudy from the evaporating tears unable to fall from his eyes.


The next time Ace woke up, his hands weren't above his head. Muddled by sleep, Ace blinked a few times until he looked down at his lap, where his hands rested against his legs. The manacles were still there—two separated cuffs around his wrists, no chain connecting them—but they weren't attached to anything. The weakness they created remained.

Ace experimented for a few minutes with trying to get the cuffs off, but they were rock-solid, and he had nothing he could use to pick the lock. Besides, he suspected that what would happen if he did get them off would not be pleasant.

Footsteps caught his attention and he glanced up to see the familiar jumpsuit of his most frequent, and only, visitor.

"Why?" Ace asked, holding up his wrists.

Jumpsuit man stayed outside of the cell once more. "You have demonstrated a desire to avoid any violent or unreasonable behavior. The chains were no longer necessary to keep you contained. I will be keeping the cuffs on, though."

"Of course," Ace muttered. "What even are they?"

"Kairoseki. Think of it as sea stone. It carries the sea inside of it, and Devil Fruits have a strange weakness to it. It's not as much of an issue in space, I suppose, but I've found that having a supply on hand is not a mistake."

Ace clinked the cuffs together. His wrists were still raw, but the oozing blood had stopped. He was probably going to scar.

Ace slowly climbed to his feet, sore and aching muscles protesting every step. At least his wounds from the explosion had healed, though he had no idea how. Standing, he was almost the same height as the other man. He slowly shuffled up to the bars. When he reached them, he pressed his forehead against them, and then as much of his body as he could. His body was so heavy. Once he had some energy back, Ace looked into the man's faceless, opaque helmet. "Who are you?"

The man tipped his head. Ace got the distinct impression that he was smiling. "You may call me the Assistant."

"The hell kind of name is that?" Ace asked, but the Assistant didn't reply. He was checking his wrist monitor, and he abruptly turned on his heel and left. "Hey. Hey!"

He didn't turn. Ace strained his ears and heard the quiet sound of a door opening and closing. With a sigh, he slouched fully against the bars, turned, and slid down until he was sitting with his back to the hallway.

As tight-lipped as the Assistant was when it came to Ace's location, Ace had a few guesses. He knew that he'd landed on Bovekk and come into contact with the Devil Fruit then. Anything after that was a blur, but the Assistant had mentioned his operation picking up unusual activity from Bovekk. That meant there was a monitoring station close enough to notice—one close enough to be noticed if anyone else took a look. No one on Oceana gave a shit about a lava-covered moon, and most of the IPEC monitoring stations were pointed at far more interesting space rocks. Not that the IPEC would care enough to send three separate teams out to the moon just to deal with some odd readings.

The only planet close to Bovekk was the one it orbited: Farrow. A barren wasteland good only for automated mining and with so little human life on it that even the UBMC didn't consider actually claiming it to be worth the paperwork. Farrow's storms, as Marco had pointed out, completely obscured planet-side activity from space-based scans. It was the perfect hideaway if you could build a sturdy enough base. And the only organization that really needed to keep to the shadows in this day and age was the Revolutionary Army.

Ace tipped his head back and rested it against the bar running straight up his back. They'd probably picked him up on Bovekk because too many more wild fluctuations would attract the attention of the IPEC, or worse, the UBMC. Ace was most likely in their base on Farrow, or one of their bases, because he was willing to bet they had several. Or, if not that, a local moon. Farrow had three, and Eos and Ios, while lacking any real atmosphere, could definitely hold a base, even if it would be cramped.

There were, he supposed, worse places to end up. A UBMC prison, for one. An execution platform, for another. He would've preferred an IPEC base, or ship, or anything that would allow him to move, but the devil inside of him meant that anything would be dangerous. It meant that he would be dangerous to anything that found him. He was lucky, in a way, to have been found by the Revolutionaries. They had the supplies and resources needed to keep him contained. The question was how long they were planning on doing it for. Surely even they wouldn't hold him indefinitely. Either he died or joined them. Even if the Assistant hadn't said anything like that, that was how organizations like this worked.

Ace closed his eyes.

"Fuck."


Ace pressed his forehead into the stone floor. The fire roared, coiled under his skin, a devil wanting out. Ace curled his hands into fists and slammed his right hand against the floor. The shock of pain made the fire flinch back, just for a second.

"You won't break me," Ace growled. "You. Won't."

This was hell, but there was much worse waiting for him if he gave in. And he would not give in. The fire whipped and whirled in his muscles, his bones, his blood, but it didn't get out. Ace wouldn't let it. The fire was his, now, not the devil's. Never again the devil's.

As though sensing his thoughts, the fire raged. Concentration breaking, Ace felt his body breaking apart into flames. He stretched out a hand, fear consuming the focus, until the Assistant slapped the Kairoseki cuff back on his wrist.

The fire faded and Ace collapsed, limp, onto his stomach. His breath came out harsh and labored. He closed his eyes and tried to catch his breath.

"I think that went well," the Assistant said

Ace, still breathless, turned his head just enough to glare in the general direction of the Assistant's face. "Fuck you."

After a week of practice—in which they had begun experimenting with removing just one cuff—Ace was finally moving up to removing both cuffs. They remained in the cell, and the Assistant was ready and waiting to restrain Ace the second it appeared that he was losing control.

"You lasted longer this time," the Assistant said. "Surely you feel good about that."

Ace pushed himself into a kneeling position. He leaned back to sit on his heels, tipping his head back and letting gravity pull everything down. "I'll feel good when I can do it as long as I want."

"Baby steps, Portgas."

Ace brought his head back to neutral. "Screw that. Unlock me again."

"Again? You just—"

"I can handle it." Ace lifted his right arm. With just one manacle, he could feel the devil, could hear it whisper, but he could also get used to fighting it constantly. "Do it."

The Assistant hesitated. But, when Ace didn't move, he sighed and slid the key into the lock.


Ace roared. It was all he could do. Shouting, yelling, screaming in defiance against the devil trying to swallow him whole.

His voice cut out and he folded, knees and elbows against the ground, sweat dripping to the stone floor, shadows of the prison bars splitting his vision in four. It would be…so easy…to burn. To light the shadows. To erase them. To paint everything in fire and leave nothing behind.

Someone said a name. His name. Ace pressed his nails into his palms.

"I've got this," he bit out.

He did. He would. He just. He just had to remember. His anchor.

"Luffy," Ace hissed. The thought alone of his kid brother finding out that Ace died in space, died to the marines, died with regrets—that alone was enough to keep him steady. He laid a hand flat on the floor, stone glowing from the heat of his palm. He dug his nails into that stone as the fire tried to burn it all away. He squeezed his eyes shut. "You can't erase me. You won't."

Pain mixed with fire mixed with fury, and in that instant Ace understood.

It wasn't about erasure. It wasn't about him at all. The fire was furious and the devil was fury; it roared and howled against the cold void that had imprisoned it for so long. Ace shuddered, his own mind, his very sense of self, quivering under the onslaught of demonic rage.

But anger wasn't new to him. Rage wasn't new to him. Hell, he'd lived half his life with two lifetime's worth of fury simmering under his skin, and this fire might hurt worse physically, but it was a damned shadow to the mental shitshow that had been Ace's brain for almost a decade. Revenge for a crime he didn't commit but a need to see it through anyway, a burning need to find proof of some kind, of any kind, that he was human and wanted and loved.

So this devil, for all its howling fury, was nothing more than that. And Ace? Ace had learned. He had grown.

"You're mad," he whispered, closing his eyes and pressing his forehead to the floor. "I get that. God knows I'm angry too."

The fire flickered along his skin.

"But guess what? There's more to any of this than fury."

A rejection, violent, that wracked him to his core.

"Ace," the Assistant said.

"I'm handling it," Ace snapped. "I just need to talk to it."

"To the devil? Ace—"

It burned like a whip across his heart and he couldn't explain why but the rage rose anew. "Don't call me that!"

The Assistant scrambled back as a wall of flames pressed him up against the bars. The Assistant's hand blurred, and then there was a staff there. Ace kept his hand up. The devil, maybe, had felt that too, because the fire cooled a second later.

"Wait," Ace said. "Please."

"You have ten seconds."

"Please."

The fire on the floor, lacking anything to burn, finally died. The Assistant lowered his staff so that the butt end rested on the floor. "Fine."

Ace, panting, closed his eyes, turning his attention inward once more. "C'mon. C'mon, you piece of shit space fruit. You wanna burn shit? So do I. Everything should burn."

Agreement, so fast and violent that Ace gasped. Fire surged but Ace held it back, crackling, in his bones.

"Not everything. That's you. That's—that's what you want. But I have things. People. I—there are things I value. Things I need. People I can't live without. People I love." He could feel the stone pressing against his skin again, a sensation he hadn't even realized he'd been missing. "I can't lose them. I—if we're stuck with each other. If there's really—if there's really no way out—because I can't die, not yet, I won't—then we work together. We fight together.

"And maybe—maybe you can't burn everything. But I'll use you. You can still burn, to protect those people, those things."

Denial. Dismissal. Rage. Ace pressed his head harder into the ground. His skull ached from the war being waged inside it.

"Stop, stop," Ace growled. He wasn't even sure what he was saying anymore, but some of it was getting through, so he kept going. "Stop. It's—listen. I die. What then? You get stuck on some backwater planet or moon or whatever and wait for thousands of years until the next unlucky bastard finds you. And then they burn out, because I can bet I'm the first guy in a while to not bite the bullet immediately. So this is as good as it gets."

Another wave of anger.

Ace chuckled. "That all you got? I've been angry all my life. You're nothing new to me. I'm not going anywhere. And it's about damn time you understood that."

No response. Nothing. Ace opened his eyes. Lifted his head. No manacles on his wrists, but his body—it was his.

"Portgas?"

Ace swallowed. He pressed his palms into the floor and pushed himself up.

"I need a verbal response."

He let his shoulders drop. "I'm here," he said, hardly believing it himself. "I'm—I'm okay."

With one hand braced against the floor, Ace got a foot under himself and slowly got to his feet. Standing straight, looking at the Assistant and seeing his own warped reflection in the mask, Ace wanted to laugh. He put a hand over his eyes and then dragged it down his face. Giddiness urged his lips into an exhausted smile.

"I look like shit."

The Assistant extended an arm as though to touch but never completed the gesture. His hand dropped back down to his side. "I cannot argue with that. How do you feel?"

Ace looked down at himself. Everything…everything felt normal. But he didn't know if his normal had shifted. "I…fine. Good."

"And the fire?"

Ace lifted his palm. When he flexed his fingers, they felt like they always had. He could see the tendons in his wrists shifting. He reached for the fire, and the fire leapt at his call.

His hand burst into flame. Ace jumped, flinched, cursed all in one instant and then, when the panic slipped, he realized it didn't hurt. And his hand wasn't on fire—it was fire. Ace stared at the flames, hypnotized. The devil stirred, expecting more, but Ace cut it off. The fire went out. Ace looked up at the Assistant and grinned.

"Mine."


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