No one, not even Ace, has said anything yet.

Dogra is still wheezing, chest heaving from his rush to find the boys. Both younger brothers have gone so still Sabo isn't entirely sure if either are breathing.

Was this what it was like when they thought I had died?

He averted his eyes.

He's forced to snap back to attention at a loud crash, blinking rapidly as tossed up dirt scatters everywhere. Ace has Dogra pinned to the ground.. His fists are clenched so tightly in his shirt that they rip into the fabric.

"That's a lie!" Ace says, and Sabo cant help but quickly look away again. I cant watch this why did I have to dream this of all things. "Sabo— sabo wouldn't just—" Ace choked and shook Dogra violently. "Sabo went home!"

Dogra grit his teeth against the rough handling, hands tight around Ace's own in a futile attempt to calm him down. "I saw it with my own eyes," he argued. "He set sail, and was shot down! His ship is nothing but cinders!"

"Sabo was happy," Luffy tries desperately, but his fingers tremble where they grip tightly at the fraying ridge of his hat. He can't seem to look up from the floor even to look at Ace.

"If he was happy, why would he set sail?!"

Sabo wished he wasn't here.

Everything was rapidly falling apart right in front of him. I want to wake up now, please.

Ace inhaled sharply, stumbling back from Dogra as if burned. Curling in on himself, he yanks at his hair and makes a quiet, pained sound.

No one says a word. Sabo just watches ace wrestle with himself, visibly shaking with restraint. Dream or not, he was just frozen in place, watching everything and yet processing almost none of it. I really want to wake up now, please.

With a choked off shout, Ace suddenly uncurled and sprung forward. Sabo would never raise a hand to his brother, but haki raced down his torso at the glint of a knife; only to stare at his ropes go slack. He blinked down at his freed hands.

Ace's breath whistled through grit teeth as he threw the knife aside. The violent flick of his wrist impaled it brutally into a tree.

"Fight me." Sabo can only stare uncomprehendingly. He doesn't flinch when Ace stoops to snatch his pipe off the dirt, watching numbly as he slams it against the ground. "Fight me!" He screams. The little boy is starting to pant, sweat running down his face. His hands won't stop shaking. "You know how to fight," he snarls, "we saw you! So why —" Sabo's haki screamed to dodge as Ace lunged.

"— Won't —"

Sabo moves instinctively to the side, barely avoiding the pipe now lodged firmly in the wood where his head was.

"— You —"

He jumps to his feet and launches upward to perch on a tall root as Ace rips the weapon free only to swing wildly at him.

"— Fight me?!"

Theres something raw and horrible edging Ace's voice, something Sabo instinctively hates . His brother, his dead, little-not-little brother, who has tears in his eyes.

Sabo dropped back down to the ground.

Ace immediately lunged but Sabo doesn't dodge this time. Haki hardens his arms into solid steel. He readily blocks every single hit, eyes never leaving Ace's. Ace hits with as much force as he can, enough to push Sabo back an inch or two with each swing– but Ace is a kid raised in a jungle in the East Blue and no amount of unnatural strength he has would be enough to crack Sabo's willpower.

it takes over an hour before Ace eventually tires out.

The pipe clatters loudly to the forest floor. Ace collapses just as violently, choking on his own gasps for air. His trembling little hands clutch desperately at the dirt. There's nothing else for him to hold on to as he falls apart right in front of Sabo.

"Why?!" He cried, voice breaking, and Sabo feels something cold and raw in him scream at the sight. "Why— why did you save us?!"

Luffy sobs loudly behind Sabo, but he cannot spare a moment to turn and comfort his little-littler brother right now.

Cannot look away from Ace.

"You're just— just some revolutionary guy aren't you?! You're just a stranger! And yet you saved us—" A hiccuping sob wrenches out of Ace's tiny form.

He's so, so small, curled painfully tiny, smeared with dirt and blood and burns and bruises.

"—but you didn't save Sabo!"

Sabo swallows thickly, struggling to keep his composure. Ace's fingers dig into the soil, gouging out chunks that stick under his nails. "He— he was unhappy!" He shouts, almost hysterically. "He hated it there! He wasn't free!" Luffy is crying uncontrollably, and Sabo twitches when he feels a little fist close around his tailcoat. His smallest brother doesn't seem to notice, seeking comfort the only way he can as he soaks tears and snot into Sabo's clothes.

Ace pounds a shaking fist against the dirt. "He wasn't happy," he whispers, voice hoarse, and Sabo can't think to do anything else but kneel.

He sweeps both boys— his brothers, his small and fragile little monsters of brothers, who accepted him, who grieved for him, and he never even knew them anymore — into his arms and ignores the aborted little attempts Ace makes to push him away just to cling to him tighter.

There are words in his throat that would do better swallowed. Words that Koala would smack him for if she could see his dreams too. Words that someone like him should know better than to think about, words people like the Chief Staff of the Revolutionary Army should be more careful with.

Careful be damned. They were not born to be careful, and they never would.

"He's alive," Sabo says.

Both boys freeze up in his arms and he grips them tighter.

"Sabo is alive."

Immediately the two start wiggling, fighting to look up at him from where they are pinned to his chest. "What the hell—" Ace is starting, Luffy shouting wordless nonsense as he scrabbles at Sabo's arms. Sabo releases them just enough to meet both their eyes, and throws every plan and caution to the fires still smoldering far behind them.

"Sabo isn't dead. He's alive, I can promise you he is—" and Ace looks ready to pick his pipe right back up again.

"HOW COULD YOU KNOW—" his big-little-dead brother snarls, his brother who died before Sabo could see him ever again outside of this tiny body, who nevercame and found him because he thought Sabo was dead, and sabo has had it—

"Because he's ME!" He screams, and for the third time today, everything freezes.

Both brothers are staring at him, eyes huge. Dogra has long since scrambled out of the way to avoid Ace's breakdown, likely retreating back to the hideout to get help. But Sabo only has eyes for the two boys, his boys, his brothers , who are staring at him like he is insane.

"W-What," Ace stutters. Luffy is staring Sabo down closely, still holding his hat in one hand, the other in a death grip on Sabo's coat.

"Sabo can't be you! You're so old...!"

"I'm from the future," Sabo blurts out. He resists the urge to slap himself. Koala was going to be pissed at him, wherever she was— especially once she finds out he's most likely dead, his body buried in the rubble of a secret government human experiment facility. "I'm an older version, but your brother all the same," and Ace is shaking his head in dubious silence but Luffy's eyes are shining. His smallest brother still hasn't released him.

Ace scrambles back onto his feet and lunges at Sabo. He ignores Luffy's muffled "Oof!" and Sabo's startled "Hey!" As the momentum throws them all back against the dirt in order to grab a handful of Sabo's shirt, his other hand tight around the blond's jaw.

Sabo falls quiet. He watches Ace inspect him, patiently allowing the boy to turn his head however he wants as he carefully stares him down. Wary grey eyes trace over his features much more insistently than before, clearly searching.

They pause on his eyes, on the slope of his nose and the furrow of his brow and the goggles perched on his ever present top hat only to narrow further. Sabo makes a sound of protest when rough fingers pull on his hair but Ace's expression is completely serious and contemplative. He rubs Sabo's cravat between his fingers, glancing over his clothing slowly before returning to stare at his face.

Sabo takes it all in stride, remaining as still as possible under the scrutiny.

Luffy, still at his side, scampers closer to shove his hands into sabos hair and snatch his top hat, clearly not wanting to be left out. Despite the attentions his expression has long since become open and trusting. Sabo pouts at the blatant thievery, and the expression only further makes Ace's brow furrow uncertainly.

They've reached some sort of impasse. Sabo with a lapful of his two impossibly younger brothers, and Ace and Luffy in the easy unguarded reached of someone who by all intents and purposes should be a stranger but somehow isn't.

It's only when Luffy wraps his arms tightly around him, face set and determined, and says "If you're Sabo as an adult, from the future, that means our Sabo is alive" that the mutual silence breaks off.

Ace is already shaking his head, is saying it can't be true, it can't, Dogra saw everything— but he's hesitating, and his hands shake where he has unconsciously anchored himself around Sabo's lapels.

Because the longer he looks, the more he sees a familiar shade of blue in this— this stranger's eyes, the easily recognizable blond curls, the shape of his eyes, the curve of his nose, even the fucking goggles on his hat —

Ace presses his forehead tight to Sabo's chest and asks, quietly; "Are you really him?"

Sabo, breath finally slowing, shakily brushes a hand through both their hair. "yeah. Yeah, I am."

They both look up at him and he's set, firm. "I am, and that means he's alive, that he survived, and we need to find him right now. "

Because Dragon has him.

Dragon has his younger counterpart, and while he trusts the man with his life he cannot let what happened in his future happen here, not with Ace alive and right in front of him.

Not with his brothers, both of them suddenly so small, so fragile, so alone, grieving in front of him.

He stands and they let him, rubbing furiously at their eyes with a hand subconsciously twisting into his coat, and they move.