Chapter 4: Marco/Ace: Near Death Experiences
There is rebirth in the air.
Notes: For you Lerya. It's angst!
Breathing was hard. His respiratory muscles screamed trying to lift, to inflate. To allow his exhausted lungs to push air into his blood, to flow into his heart. Marco could feel his devil fruit powers attempting to activate. Attempt to renew him. He pushed them away.
He was old now. Very old. If he relaxed, he would be young again. But he did not want it. Did not want to be reborn. Did not want to start over. To begin again.
Because then he would truly lose Ace. After all these long, long years. In this cycle, he, Marco was Ace's soulmate. Bound by an unknowable force. Ace's physical loss was catastrophic, it still pained them, was still horrifically raw and oozing if he poked at it. Marco stared upward at the ceiling in his small hut on Pop's home island, chest aching. The village had grown in the near 60 years he'd been here. Marriages, births, deaths. Through roiling waves of sickness and incredible heights of prosperity, he had been here.
Watching the rise and fall of two more Pirate Kings, of multiple governments clashing and burning. Sixty damn years of fallout and strife from the event that changed Marco's life forever.
"You've gotta let me go, Marco, before you really die." Ace whispered in his head. The only place Ace still lived. The little bit of his soul still clinging to Marco, the bit that had fled his dying body to live a half life. A desperate, last act. A selfish act on Marco's part.
"You know what…will…happen if I…do that," he breathed out slowly, exhaustedly. The blue flames tried to flicker and again Marco denied them.
"I'll die, at last, like I should have ages ago. You know I didn't want this for you, to curse you like this," Ace twinged in his chest.
"You were never a curse Ace!" An argument they had had a thousand times. Hard on them both, shared soul raging, uncomfortable in its divided state. The room dimmed, blackness pulling at the edges of Marco's vision. The flames tried again, Marco barely stopping them in time.
"Marco…" No! To be without his soulmate or… worse, having another one was an unbearable thought. He would rather die. He didn't regret calling Ace's soul into his body. Didn't regret a moment of it.
"...Am I so selfish for wanting you to live?" Ace asked, his sadness rippling through Marco's old and battered body, across ancient bullet wounds and gashes, claw marks and burns. All things that would be erased if Marco let the flames have their way. How many times had he been here, at the end of one life? A hundred? A thousand? And not once had he ever let his rebirth stop.
But Marco had only found his soulmate this time, this cycle. Such a silly thing, a simple thing. Being a part of another so intimately that death is preferable to separation. Preferable to another thousand years, to another chance at love.
Starting over took so much after all, didn't it?
"We…wanted you to live, Ace," Marco whispered through paper thin lips. A feeling of resigned regret, old regret undulated through his skin. Ace never had forgiven himself, not for Pop's death, not for Oar's death, not for the demise of so many of their brothers. A ghost, a poltergeist to himself, but never to Marco.
"Yeah. So. I won't let you make the same mistake then," Ace smiled gently. A warmth began to spread across Marco's skin. Then a coldness. An emptiness. Ace was leaving him! Here, at the end. "Be free of me at last, live a long life. Thank you for loving me."
Oh ho, Ace thought he could leave with that cliche?! How long had he been waiting to use that one?! Twenty years, thirty?! All the things Marco had done for him, shared his body with him, let him take control of Marco's physical vessel for years at a time, and the bastard, the idiot, the fool, the hot head was going to leave him?! Had he learned nothing all these years?!
He was ready to die, he wanted to go. No more restarts. No more longing, wishing, hurting. He could see Pops again. Vista. Izou. Marco closed his eyes, grasping onto the half of his soul that was warm and bright, the part that was Ace. The flames rippled, blue and bright and painful.
Ace opened his eyes, body young, new, weak and frail. Black hair instead of blonde. Freckles instead of a deep tan. "Marco?" he whispered. Ace's soul beat steadily with his heartbeat, but there was no answer. Only a tug toward the west.
Marco was gone. And now… Ace had to begin again.
Notes: So this is actually kind of a fun idea I might explore later, souls being able to merge with other souls and share one body. But also Ace having to navigate a new world.