thank you's to these old friends making a sudden and dramatic reappearance: NewCanvas, Alexel, WastinTimeWatchinGrass, Lucinda M. H. Cheshir, Leynadoodles, Ninja Warrior Master Of The Sky Burn You With My Laser Beam Eyes, LurkingFish, WelmishWyvren, ansegiel, shethoughts, TaintedLetter, minty, Meno Melissa, tabi404, luffys, wise whale, AeAe, read a rainbow, and guests!
ninja warrior: you understand that i thank people who comment at the top of every chapter and you are using that to your fullest advantage. respect.
notes. hello! welcome to another addition of what the heck is going on! by the way, i cross-post all my fics to ao3 (i'm still razbliuto on there!), with the addition of fanart/gift art. i know we literally JUST hit 1000 reviews (WOW THANK YOU), and it pains me to say this, but i highly recommend you start following mnp on ao3 instead of here. i don't want the chapter error debacle to happen again.
but i'll still be thanking people at the top of every chapter on ffn. i started it from the very beginning and it'll feel wrong not to see it through to mnp's end. :)
—
methyl nitrate pineapples
hypothesis #38
between your fingers, perihelion
—
Hardly a day would go by where Sophie didn't think about the innkeeper of Pantano Town, Crawfish Island. Passing thoughts, wondering if she could see something flying in the clouds if she watched close enough. It started feeling like a dream, somewhere along the way, after all her adventures.
But Nellie was right here. Right in front of her. In the New World.
"Look at you, a goddamn pirate! Where's your parrot and peg leg, Alchemist?"
"That is s-such a lazy stereotype and you should be ashamed, oh my god, I thought you died, I th-thought you were dead—"
"Me, dead? You ever seen a dead woman look this gorgeou—oof."
Sophie flung her arms around Nellie again. Her wavy brown hair was cut tight to her ears. Her unpainted nails were blunt and dirty, and her forearms looked stronger than Sophie remembered. Instead of a dark, witchy dress, she wore a dirty tunic shirt and worker jeans. But she smelled the same. Like pipe smoke, burning swamp flowers. And her lipstick was as vibrantly red as ever.
Sophie's heart felt like it was going to explode into a million pieces. Joy. Disbelief. Happiness. It broke over her in waves of sheer exhilaration, multi-colored, sparkling gunpowder and rainbow nitroglycerin; oh, she felt. She felt, she felt, she felt. The numbness shattered. She felt so much it was like she dying. Resurfacing from the ocean, gulping in air, blinded by sunlight.
And then it hit her: what she had almost done. What Marco had saved her from. Her legs buckled, and the sheer desperate stupidity of it made her want to scream. But she didn't, because Nellie held her upright, murmuring, "Hush, it's okay, you alright?" Once, Sophie'd woken up with panic and her hand stinging, and Nellie wincing with a bright red cheek, and she'd learned the horror of accidentally hurting someone you cared about when you weren't careful.
The tide washed over their ankles as Sophie nodded, pulling away and wiping her face. She felt cold now, even as she smiled back at Nellie. Her insides felt queasy and soupy all over again, and she struggled to make sure it didn't appear on her face.
Nellie's attention was thankfully diverted as Marco walked over to them. He was carrying her book and Sen, and handed them over with an amused look. Sophie meekly accepted.
"Is it true?" Nellie asked. "Is he really…" She trailed off, and sighed as Marco nodded. "The people will want to pay their respects."
Marco indicated at the small island behind them in the sea. "You'll be among good company."
"What happens now to Whitebeard's territories?" Nellie stood taller, a completely average woman in farmer's clothes giving Marco the Phoenix a stern frown, and it struck Sophie how much she looked like a leader. "You in charge, then? Will our tribute price change?"
"Tribute?" Sophie asked abruptly, thinking of President Ursa and Big Mom and chocolate.
"We pay these folks in sunflowers. Not in gold, nor people. We have more than enough to spare." Nellie's frown deepened. "Whitebeard was good to us."
"An Emperor has died, but his crew still survives," Marco said, and with that commanding tone Sophie almost forgot about the dark shadows under his eyes and the leanness of his cheeks. "I'll be speaking to all the emissaries later, if you care to join us."
"I care very much, thank you." With that, Nellie crooked her arm through Sophie's and led her away up a trail overgrown with beach grass, which twined up towards the outskirts of the city, Anatole. She peered at Sophie's face, her brow dipping in concern, and ruffled those yellow curls. "Did you cut your hair yourself? Honey child, this is a hot mess. I'll take care of it."
"Wait—um—" Sophie glanced back at Marco.
"Go on, yoi. Don't want to interrupt two friends catching up." He scratched his chin. "And stay away from high ledges, yeah?"
She flushed. Marco turned to the sea, and her eyes followed the aqua streak as it flew back to the island of funeral flowers. Apolleon was going to be overrun by visitors soon. Curious ships were starting to sail over to the island that appeared as if by magic from the sky.
"How'd you get caught up in the war?" Nellie pressed, glancing around as if suddenly realizing there wasn't a yellow submarine nearby. "Where's those Heart boys? Tell me everything."
—
Sophie did not, of course, tell her everything.
She lied with great cheer, describing how yucky Impel Down's cafeteria food was. ("I knew it," Nellie said gravely. "That's a prison haircut if I ever saw one.") Then Marineford, which she spent even less time on, and Ace, who she only mentioned once in passing.
Nellie showed her around the city, which gave Sophie an excuse to be distracted. Red-shingled roofs slanted into the sky. Lightning rods and weathervanes dotted every house. Everyone looked healthy and windswept and suntanned, even Romarin, who poked her wrinkled little face out a window when Nellie hollered at her mother to look who was back, and grumped, "Oh, it's you."
Sid yelled when he saw her and gave Sophie a great big hug. He was with a group of fishermen who were running to the ocean with large nets, shouting to hurry and catch all the Blue Sea fish they could. "Sky fish ain't that bad," Nellie admitted, "but we all miss shrimp and crab and proper snappers. Gotta load up on our stores before we fly off again."
The city felt… happy.
A normal-happy. Ordinary. After the forty-foot-tall waves of grief and heartache that the Whitebeard pirates gave off, this was a relief. It was quiet in the back of her mind again.
It occurred to Sophie that she should've seen the palace by now. Then, with a shocked jolt, she realized the palace was gone. In its place was this small street of cottages they were standing on, sprawling with vegetable gardens, fields of grass, and the occasional bits of rubble that kids were playing on. It ended at a sharp cliff. Accidentally flew too high once and a meteor nicked them, Nellie breezily explained. Carved a crater right on the island.
It was there on the grassy cliff where they stopped. Sophie eyed it, remembering Marco's words. Well, she wasn't going to hurl herself to her doom in front of someone she knew. That'd be way too traumatic for Nellie. But something else quickly drew her attention: a tall, rickety tower, which was the only thing left of the palace that was still standing. There was an obscenely, ridiculously enormous lightning rod on top, which definitely wasn't there before. And so was a small cottage beneath the tower, with a red roof and flowers growing up the stone walls.
Inside, Nellie sat her down in the kitchen and found a pair of scissors. It was as lovely as a fairytale. Warm sunlight spilling in from the windows, an open doorway at the back that connected to the bottom of the tower's spiral staircase. She remembered rain-slicked stairs, dirt beneath her fingernails, killing a saint. Here, today, the staircase was wreathed with ivy and looked like it was swept daily with the broom lying beside the door.
As Nellie got to work trimming her badly cropped hair, Sophie turned her attention to the kitchen. On the table, beside a small cup of sprouting green onions, was a lamp shaped like a translucent conch shell.
She almost leaned forward before remembering there was something sharp at her neck. She settled for pointing. "Is that a Dial?"
"Sure is. You know what they are?"
"I researched them on Machinastein. The whole city's powered by solar Dial energy. They make chocolate using Dials, too."
"We have hundreds more. I'll show you later."
As it turned out, Nellie's adventures could rival Sophie's. And Sophie was happy to sit back and listen, gasping when appropriate. The mechanisms of the automaton Apolleon was powered by electricity and wind. The only way to remain in the sky, flying unseen by the World Government in the Blue Sea below, was to hunt for thunder. The islanders became storm chasers.
The city of lightning rods could harvest hundreds of bolts in a good storm, and that would keep the island flying for a week or two before it ran out of power. "We are quite literally going wherever the wind takes us," Nellie chuckled as she snip-snipped around the nape of Sophie's neck. "Living storm to storm, hoping we find one before we fall outta the sky. Best fun I ever had."
"Pretty lucky to be on the Grand Line," Sophie murmured. "The wild weather patterns."
"It saves our asses all the time. Once we weren't so lucky and almost fell on top of the Moby Dick. Never met an Emperor before in my life! Nearly peed myself. We got a big boost of fuel from the last supercell we ran into. A big one made by a Dressrosan plume—all this warm air rising and making nasty thunderstorms—"
She startled. "You were above Dressrosa?"
Nellie laughed. She went over to a shelf and brought back a photograph. "I've been just about everywhere above the Grand Line."
Sophie looked down at it. Two women, slightly blurry with movement, were lifting pumpkins, white clouds and an endless blue sky in the background. One had long black hair, smoking a cigarette and wearing fabric that looked like deerskin. The other was fair and blond and wearing a pink dress. They both had small white wings on their backs.
"Conis and Laki. Taught me how to navigate the White Sea. They run a pumpkin café on a sky island."
"Wow," Sophie whispered reverently. "Fabulous as always, Nellie-san."
"Why thank you, baby." Nellie brushed off the hair from Sophie's shoulders and checked to make sure both sides were even. "There."
In a chipped mirror, she investigated herself, running her fingers through her short curls. Her hair did look better. And with the effect from her hair looking less like shit, her face also looked less like shit, despite the bruises. She had a jawline. A neck. Two ears. A face that was fully… there. Colorless lips and exhausted, shadowed eyes without hair or a gas mask to hide behind. It had some kind of effect, though she didn't know what.
His calloused hands lifted her chin, gentle despite the heavy chains weighing them down. A chaste kiss pressed to her brow.
You have really great hair.
Sophie shut her eyes. She opened them again, desperately blinking away spots. "Thanks." She clasped her shaking hands together beneath the table. "Got a-any cigarettes?"
Nellie was putting the scissors away. "Sorry, honey, I don't smoke anymore. Hard enough to breathe at the high altitudes we fly in."
"Oh," Sophie said. "Good for you. Very healthy." She fidgeted. "Got any beer?"
Nellie came back with a bottle of whiskey and two wooden cups. Sophie thanked her heartily and poured herself a cup. She downed it and poured herself another cup. She downed that one, and Nellie nudged aside the bottle before she could reach for it again. Sophie slouched in her seat, hiccupping like a doleful toad.
"So." Nellie sat across from her at the table, her long legs crossed. "When are we leaving?"
"…Eh?"
"You said your crew's still in Paradise. You'll need a ride over there, yeah? It'll have to be after I finish speaking to the Whitebeard Pirates. Shouldn't take too long, I expect. No more than a day or two."
Sophie opened her mouth to reply. Nothing came out, except another hiccup.
"Unless you don't want to go back?"
Silence.
Nellie took a tranquil sip of her whiskey. "I don't particularly care if it's true, for the record. What they're saying about you."
"…What are they saying?"
A flicker of hesitation. "Just something about the… Blackbeard fella, and… you."
"Okay," someone else's voice said from Sophie's mouth. Someone capable of sounding composed and indifferent. She reached over and took the bottle and poured herself another cup until amber whiskey spilled over from the top. She knocked it back, and said, "I messed up."
"You messed up?"
"At least part of it is true. You were in Whitebeard's protection. You have every right to be furious with me." She stared hard at the cup, digging her nail into the wood grain, her voice flat. "I'm not, like, some nice innocent girl caught up in a bad situation. Nellie, you don't really know me. I'm a pirate, and before that, I was a government scientist who made chemical weapons. I am an objectively bad person. It didn't matter that someone else pulled the trigger. I gave Blackbeard the gun. I watched Whitebeard and Fire Fist die. I watched him—"
Ace's eyes crinkled when he smiled. Catch you on the flipside, Curls.
The warm light from the kitchen window became unbearable all of a sudden. Sophie buried her head in her arms, a stinging pain behind her eyes. Her insides felt all numb and cold again. "I don't think I'm worth saying 'welcome home' to."
"I'll be the first one to say that you could make a life anywhere," Nellie drawled, mellow and mature and effortlessly cool, one arm slung around the back of her chair like a rancher relaxing on the porch of her homestead. "But no doors will open for you if you don't knock. And your crew can't say welcome home if they don't have anyone to say it to."
She whispered into her elbows, "I'm afraid."
"Of what?"
Of everything, Sophie thought, and remembered how the rush of wind felt as she stepped off that cliff.
She took a deep breath and pushed herself upright. "We can go whenever you're ready," she said, her voice coming out more decisive than she felt. At least this was doing something. "Are you, um, sure flying back to Paradise won't be an inconvenience?"
"No one's forgotten how the Heart Pirates helped us." Nellie smiled, and it was the warmest thing she'd seen in a long while. "Consider it a favor from a grateful country."
—
Yasopp eyed her suspiciously, as if she was a bomb about to explode.
Sophie, her sleeves rolled up and her too-large blouse tucked into a pair of jeans Nellie had let her borrow, stood across the worktable. Around them, blacksmiths hammered red-hot iron over anvils and metalsmiths filed delicate pieces of steel. The semi-enclosed forge was a hot, sweaty furnace bustling with movement. The smiths were kind enough to let her have her own working station (after she begged repeatedly and sobbed on the ground for a few minutes).
Pirates were exploring the city; mostly Whitebeards, but a few others as well. It was easy to find the smooth baritone boasting about his sharpshooting skills to an awed crowd. She had dragged Yasopp over by his belt. Now the gunslinger was leaning against her worktable, muscled arms crossed and trying to look grumpily disinterested in her project. He was doing a pretty bad job.
"Just buy a new gun," Yasopp said gruffly. "The hassle ain't worth it. It's too hot in here, anyway. I won't catch you if ya pass out."
Sophie looked at him expectantly as she put on her big metalworking gloves.
Yasopp squinted back at her, then at Arsenic on the table. He shifted his feet, and then furiously scratched his head. "Fine! Damn it. What d'you need?"
A long, flat piece of metal, about fifteen inches. Tongs. A hammer.
Nervous, Sophie pondered the tools.
It was probably more out of wanting her anxious humming and tapping to stop, but Yasopp sighed and took the metal off her hands. He stuck it in the forge, waiting for it to heat up without even wearing gloves. Then he found another hammer, rested the wrought-iron on the anvil, and started beating it into shape. His hits followed a swift rhythm, easy with years of practice.
"You can't rush it." Sparks flew past him, the bright, white-hot glow reflecting in his focused eyes. "Hit too hard and the metal thins. A thin barrel wears down quick. Might crack when you shoot."
"You really know your stuff," Sophie appreciated. "Thank you. I'll start on the second barrel." Her voice turned singsong. "Is there nothing the world's greatest sniper can't do?"
Yasopp seemed to wrestle internally with himself. "Don't try to smooth talk me." He was scowling despite the pleased tint of color on his ears. "I'm only here because I don't have anything better to do. Come on, this broken piece of shit won't fix itself."
Sophie studied his movements and copied them as well as she could. It was going better than expected when her side throbbed. She winced and almost dropped her hammer on her foot. Yasopp told her to be careful, too quick to hide his concern. She checked to make sure none of her very fresh, fragile scars had reopened.
She hefted her bar of wrought-iron in the forge again. The fire crackled, hot red on black coal. It seemed like anything could remind her of Ace now, because grief was a nuisance. In an effort to distract herself, she asked the Yasopp if he would ever eat a Devil Fruit. It was something she wondered about. Red-Haired Shanks was the only Emperor without a Fruit, and his crew seemed to be the same.
Yasopp would not. "I love the ocean too much. My wife and I got married in it, right on the beach. It's where we made our boy through sweet, sweet—"
"Ohmygodokay," she squeaked, flapping the mental image away. Yasopp shrugged, cool and ruggedly detached with his dusty-yellow locs falling across his face as he hammered. Jeez, Shanks's crew was filled with nasty old men. His poor wife. She tried again, "It's the same for me, loving the ocean. But in Impel Down, when I fought Magellan—"
"A shrimp like you versus Magellan? Shit, wish I could've seen that."
Thinking of the prisoners who had saved her as they died from the poison, Sophie lifted the glowing iron out of the fire and dropped it back on the anvil. "It was terrifying," she remarked, sweat dripping down her nose. Her arms strained, the muscle shaking and taut. "All I could do was use Haki to protect myself. Couldn't even touch Magellan. Doesn't it ever frustrate you? Fighting against Devil Fruit users?"
"The more of them the better."
"Why?"
"I like showing them I'm stronger," Yasopp said in a dark, gleaming voice, and she could see why his sweetheart might've fallen head-over-heels for him.
She wondered if she could be that confident, one day.
While three newly-forged barrels were annealing under hot cinders, Sophie went to cool off outside. A community well was nearby, and she brought over two buckets of clean, cold water for her and Yasopp. He accepted, and instead of drinking it, poured the entire bucket over himself. They stood in the lamplit darkness of the street, a blanket of stars overhead and the heat of the forge at their backs.
She squatted down on her knees and opened up her bag. Inside, colorful shells of varying sizes shone. The civilians here had more than they knew what to do with, and they gratefully gave them away when she asked.
"Dials?" Yasopp asked as he wiped his brow with his tattooed shoulder.
The shells were smooth and glossy, some with little bits of cloud fluff sticking to them. The roofs of Machinastein were lined with translucent citrine Dials, powering the whole city with solar energy. She studied Chocolate Dial technology in the lab of the great stone university, investigating the structure of their molecules, the strange mechanisms of how these small shells could store so much power.
"I swear I felt Sen breathe," she said quietly, cradling a shell in her hands, soot smeared in ashy lines around her eyes. "I remembered what you said on Lunetuktu. About breathing. And violence. And having many songs, if you listen close."
She clicked the Breath Dial and felt a puff of cool wind against her face. For a second, she was dreaming again. Ace was shapeshifting Arsenic with nothing but well-oiled muscles and a firm smack of a wrench, and they were soaring through the sky beneath a pod of galactic whales that she saw in his memories.
Yasopp understood. "This isn't about repair. This is about invention."
She looked up at the stars, feet flat on the earth. "I can't take any credit. It wasn't my idea."
—
Fire blazed, so hot the heat rippled the air.
Molten metal poured into sand casting, to make parts for a new bolt-action.
Then case-hardening. Charcoal, bone, and charred leather poured over the metal parts in a crucible, and heated in the forge. The surface of the iron absorbs carbon, Yasopp told her, and will be converted into steel, but the body retains the resilience of wrought-iron.
Then linseed oil to coat every piece of metal, to protect it from wear. (She discreetly sniffed the jar. Law used the same oil for sword maintenance, and it smelled like Kikoku.)
Then finagling with Dials. A lot of finagling.
Well, she once created a cure for a nerve gas agent. How hard could this be?
Sophie had no idea what she was doing, but somehow it ended up with Yasopp being knocked off his stool by a blast of wind. By then, Beckman had spotted them from the street and joined them at their worktable. She was apologizing, shifting the bolt-action of her rifle like the gears of a mechanical contraption. The wind died down. Yasopp was being extremely overdramatic about nearly dying.
Beckman puffed on a cigarette. "You look like you're having fun, Yasopp."
"Look at that," he snapped, pointing at the gun in Sophie's hands. "She invented that damn thing herself. Of course this is fun. I'm havin' the time of my goddamn life here."
To Sophie, Beckman said, "Glad to see you up."
She offered him a tiny smile, her cheeks already too warm from Yasopp's praise. She was glad to be up.
When she was about to weld the three new barrels onto Sen, Beckman stopped her. He took off his pearl earrings, snapped the pearls off so only the gold hooks remained, and dropped them into the crucible. The thin gold chain around his neck followed. When they melted down into pure liquid sunlight, he took the crucible and Arsenic. And when he was done with his work, steam hissing as he dunked it in a bucket of water to cool, Beckman passed it to her.
A tiny sliver of gold ringed the barrels where Mihawk had sliced it, marking where the old metal was welded to the new. It winked at her, stunningly pretty.
"There," Beckman rumbled. "Now it's a part of history."
Yasopp approved. "This ain't just a rifle anymore, kid."
Sophie appraised Arsenic with a look that glowed so brightly it was as if the fire from the forge was now lit inside her. Three barrels, one for bullets, one for wind, and one for something else—she wasn't sure yet. But that was okay; she'd figure it out.
And just in time. Nellie said they were going to leave in the morning.
—
She craned her neck up, appreciating the majesty of the gravestones. It was the first time she'd been this close.
A mop of dark yellow hair appeared by the bottom of Whitebeard's grave, among white lilies and pink carnations and blue delphiniums. Sophie stopped a polite distance away from the solitary figure, and asked, "May I sit?"
Marco didn't look up as he gestured at the grassy spot beside him. No doubt he had already felt her presence as she was walking up the hill. Sophie set down a clutch of sunflowers and then sat cross-legged in front of Ace's grave. Portgas D. Ace, the stone read in clean lines, glowing bluish-silver in the evening gloam. Perched on top of the grave, above the sprawl of hibiscus flowers, were his curved knife and cowboy hat.
Her chest felt cold and queasy again. She wanted to run, but forced herself to stay right where she was.
Hey, she thought.
The cowboy hat fluttered in the breeze, as if waving hello.
Sophie felt a stupid sting in her eyes. "He talked my ears off about you, in prison. About all his brothers." A beat. "Wouldn't shut up, really."
Marco laughed. The sound startled her. He had a nice smile. "Of course. I figured. Sorry about that."
"No, no, I m-mean—not in a bad way! It was nice to listen to."
He made everything bearable, she wanted to say. Fire Fist Ace was good at that.
"Look, what happened with everything…" Marco began, and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Wait, yoi, wait, let me try again. Right. Pirates are… you know, supposed to have enemies. Rivals. Et cetera. My crew doesn't like you a whole lot, but that's okay. You know what I mean? They're not angry at you, not really. It's just… rage is easier than grief, sometimes."
"I know," she said, deciding she liked Marco very much. He was so honest, and he never blamed her once. "It's the same for me. But I can handle it. I'm good at being disliked."
"Tough skin."
"Yeah." She touched her hands, the rough, wrinkled sandpaper texture, countless old burns stacked on top of each other. Ah. Perhaps this was one of those moments when you looked back and realized your whole life may have been preparing you for this. "How's the Whirlpool Spider?"
"Squard?" Marco looked at her in surprise. "…He'll be alright. Eventually."
"I hope you guys aren't too hard on him. I bumped into him at the funeral. He told me everything was his fault, not mine. Sound familiar?"
Marco rubbed his neck, vaguely self-conscious. "He's still one of Pops' sons. Still family, at the end of the day. We're looking after him."
It reminded her of something. Maybe she should've kept it to herself, but she thought Marco might want to know, so: "Teach… knew it was a trick. He didn't believe all that stuff Squard was yelling about, how Whitebeard struck a deal with the Marines. When I was on his ship—"
"What?"
Ah, right. Sophie told him about hitching a ride on Teach's ship from Impel Down to Marineford. She covered the important bits, leaving out minor details like puking into a fruit bowl and getting assaulted by the world's greasiest pile of sludge. When she was done, Marco was staring at her.
Finally, he said, "You've been through some shit, huh."
She shrugged. "So has everyone."
"Ha." Marco cracked a grin. "Sure, fair point. Strangways Sophie. Of what island?"
"No island. Ocean child."
"Ah." He nodded as if he suddenly understood something. "They say kids found on the ocean are supposed to be a blessing. The sea loves them as her own children. They bring good fortune wherever they go."
She looked up at Ace's gravestone. She couldn't help but smile at the bad generalization, which in no way applied to her. "I've heard that before."
It was then that she noticed Marco's big bottle of rum. As in, she stared at Marco as he downed it like water. Wah. He kept chugging, his shoulders all hunched up like he was trying to drown himself. Wah! She couldn't be liable for yet another Whitebeard pirate death! That just wouldn't be right! Leaning over, she stammered that it wasn't her place, but maybe he should, like, take it easy?
Marco's head swayed in a plaintive ode to a sober nod, an alcohol flush creeping up the back of his neck. He said roughly, the words slipping together, "I know, I know. Stoppin' after this bottle. Don't wanna end up like Silvers."
"Is—is that some sort of pirate pun I should know about?"
"Silvers Rayleigh turned into a raging drunk after Roger died. Last I heard of him, he was haunting Sabaody's gambling parlors, dirt-broke and selling his clothes to pay back his debts." Snorting, he shook his head. "I gotta get my shit together. Tomorrow. I'll do it t'morrow."
Sophie hadn't even known Silvers Rayleigh was still alive. She watched Marco nervously. He was the de facto Whitebeard captain now, and she supposed it would be inappropriate to tackle him, roll him down the hill like a firebird snowball, and shove him into the nearest bathroom to dry out.
"Stop lookin' at me like that, yoi."
"I'm just worried about your liver, Marco-san."
"I'm not old enough to find that flattering."
"Oh."
"Besides, I can heal from any liver damage. Well. Not any." He shook the bottle, a bitter note of self-loathing in his voice. "But small stuff like this is fine. My Fruit is amazing, isn't it."
Sophie hastened to agree. She saw it firsthand, after all, teal flames forming bone and muscle and skin. "Yes, incredibly." She paused. "A little sad, too."
"Sad?"
"It's always sad to be left behind."
Marco wasn't smiling wryly anymore. He might've had all the powers of a demigod, and she might've been her, but right now they were just two people sitting in front of gravestones in the blue evening. White petals floating through the air caught on Marco's shoulders and hair and looked like dewdrops. The long sleeves of Edward Newgate's coat fluttered, and the bull medallion on Ace's hat knocked lightly against its perch.
"What are you gonna do about Teach?" Sophie asked, changing the subject.
Marco ruefully inspected his bottle of rum, then took one last mouthful and wiped his chin. "I'm going to make a grand war for him. I'm going to make him beg for death."
"He said he was… indebted to me." She chewed on her lip. "For life."
Marco angled his head to look at her fully. He looked… concerned. "For life? Those were his own words?"
"He thinks we're, like… bound together. By fate or something." And perhaps they were. A thread the color of shadow attached to both their pinkies, linking them together. It made Sophie want to hurl. But that's what Teach had done to her, wasn't it? He had tied the thread himself. Her hand twisted around her left pinky, shaking a little. "When the time comes… if you're alright with me fighting beside you… I would also like to see him suffer."
"I'll remember that," Marco vowed. "It won't be for a while, not until I take care of some other problems. Our territories are being overrun."
"Shit," Sophie said, the swear strange and knife-like on her tongue. "What are you going to do?"
"I won't hand them over. Any pirate that wants a bite of Pops' islands will have to rip them out of my hands." His voice was quiet and cold, and it brought shivers up her spine. It was gone in a split-second, and he returned to his easy posture. "So don't worry about your friends. So long as they're flying our flag, I'll take care of them."
"I have full confidence in you," Sophie said sincerely.
Marco thanked her with a small chuckle, and then asked if she was returning to her crew. She hesitated too long to respond, but he took it as an affirmative anyway, because what sort of idiot wouldn't want to go back home? He remembered the yellow submarine that rose out of the sea, and soon he was joking about the Heart captain's excellent timing. That turned into Sophie recounting her Impel Down adventures with Ace and Jinbe.
Marco threw his head back, laughing. "You swallowed a knife? And Aokiji didn't even notice? Wait, was it that knife you threw at Kizaru?"
Marco, it turned out, had seen that little show of Armament. Her Haki, wild and hot, arcing through the air. Shattering into a million pieces by the Admiral's light.
"I know it's silly, but I miss her," Sophie said wistfully, her fingers curled like she was holding the handle of Kirkira Iska. "Do you think tools can have personalities? It felt like she was always there for me." She clenched her hand. "And all I could do was say sorry at the end."
Marco looked at her for a moment longer. Then he stood up. He went over to Ace's grave, and came back to kneel down in front of her. In his outstretched hands was a big curved knife, the sheathe forest-green and the smooth handle lacquered-brown.
"Take it," he invited.
There were not enough words in the dictionary to describe all the ways Sophie attempted to say, "Absolutely not!"
She protested and scoffed and pretended not to hear him and also called him crazy; Marco waited patiently for her to run out of steam, then took her hand and set Ace's heavy knife in her palm. "Eight inches of fine steel forged by the scrappers of Dawn Island. It'll keep you steady wherever you go."
"You keep it," Sophie said in horror, cringing back as though she was being burned. Marco didn't let go of her.
"I don't have a use for it."
"Then give it to s-someone who will!"
"Don't you apply?"
"You're drunk," she spluttered.
"Already sobered up."
"I… I can't. Jozu and Vista and the rest of your crew… they'll be furious at you for this. At me."
"They will, for a little while," he agreed. "But I'm their brother, and it's my job to remind them of all that you've done for Ace. And you're a pirate. You can withstand a few of the strongest men on the ocean loathing you." His grin was lazy, a little smirky, even. "You're used to it, right?"
"Why are you going this far?" Sophie retorted, clenching her hands tight beside her.
"It'll just be rusting here. This knife, and Ace's hat, and Pops' coat, and Murakumogiri. They'll be nothing but rust and dust one day." Something frantic came over Marco and he pressed tighter on her hands, his eyes feverishly bright, burning with sparks of gold and aqua. "Take it far away from here. Take it to cities and storms and the sun, and use it whenever you can. Keep it alive. Ace called it Peri. Short for Perihelion."
Half-stunned, half-electrified, Sophie forced herself to shake her head. "What about Whitebeard's naginata? Why don't you take that with you?"
"It's too heavy for me."
She pushed Ace's knife back into his hands. "Then you should keep this, at the very least."
"This," Marco said quietly, "is also too heavy."
It was true how grief showed itself in a myriad of different ways.
The pirate seized her new knife. "It's m-m-mine now!" she stammered. "No takebacks. I'm gonna run away with this bad boy, and there ain't n-nothin' you can do about it, unless you kill me, which you might, but—"
Marco, rightly flabbergasted, reminded her he was giving it to her.
"Nothin'!" She backed away, waving the knife threateningly. "He's mine. This is a grave robbery! Mark my words, you'll regret it!"
"Kid, I don't think you understand half the words you're saying."
"I'm armed and dangerous!" Sophie yelled, and ran off into the night, and managed to get quite a distance down the hill before abruptly turning back. She ran past Marco and skidded to a stop in front of Ace's grave where sea hibiscus bloomed in spots of candle-bright color. Stretching up on her tiptoes, she pressed a small kiss on top of the cowboy hat, and whispered, "Catch you on the flip side, Habanero-kun."
—
"You promised you'd be cleverer than me one day," Beckman reminded, when it was time go.
The taste of the screw was metallic and sharp. It poked out between her teeth as she tightened the Solar Dial in her gun, shining in the center of Yasopp's golden star on the wooden stock, small aluminum wires connecting it to the other Dials stored inside. Sophie only looked up when she heard the grizzled pirate's voice.
She spat the screw out into her hand and said, "I intend to keep that promise. But being clever is quite difficult, you know." She shielded her mouth and stage-whispered, "There's a reason why not a lot of people are."
Sophie uncrossed her legs and stretched them off the crate she was sitting on, right by the beachside entrance of the city with a view of the ocean. She could've worked inside Nellie's cottage, but it was nice to be out in the sunlight. Besides, she wanted to catch the Red Hair Pirates before they left.
She hopped up, slinging Arsenic over her shoulder, her thick eyebrows wiggling. "Your cabin must be pretty lonely now, huh?"
"It's quieter," Beckman said diplomatically as they walked the sandy trail to the pier.
"I've hardly been myself since waking up," Sophie confided, matching her pace to his languid stroll. She had to hurry; his legs were long. "I'm still trying to find her, whoever she is. I'm sorry I've been such a nuisance, and I'm glad you have your solitude back. Oh? What's that Old Guy Face for? You look like you're gonna tell me a story with a very obvious metaphor in it, like a lesson. Is it an etiquette lesson? I'm good at those."
The old guy considered. "What sort of metaphor would you like?"
"Hm. Something about flowers. Flowers that grow in the north."
"There are less and less the further north you go," Beckman said. "Unless you know where to look. The blossom of the plum tree awakens when the snow is highest. Vibrant against a bleak landscape, a herald of spring, a reminder of perseverance. Do you know what we call the flowers that bloom even in the coldest, harshest, most unforgiveable winters?"
"Something cheesy like 'the most beautiful'?"
He stopped, and Sophie did too, and she looked up as he brushed a short, stray curl across her forehead. "That's right. The most beautiful."
She took his hand before he could pull away. Beckman pointedly did not remove the cigarette from his mouth, brow raised, vaguely reprimanding. Motioning for him to lean down, she stood on her tiptoes, pushed back some of that long grey hair, and pecked the x-shaped scar on his brow. He accepted it with a sort of rumbly, heavy-lidded hm from deep inside his chest.
"I like that story," she said in his ear. "And I feel bad you ruined your pretty earrings for me. I hope this makes up for it."
As Sophie stepped back and waved at the Red Hair Pirates, who were milling about the pier where the Red Force was docked, Beckman looked down at his hand. A pair of girlishly small heart earrings rested in his broad palm.
Sophie stopped in front of Shanks, Yasopp and Lucky Roux and the rest of them on-guard in case there was another histrionic breakdown. She bowed deeply at the Emperor's crew, hands pressed to her knees. "Thank you for everything. You are wonderful pirates and I will appreciate you for as long as I live."
"Can you get the hell outta here already?" Yasopp called.
"Even you, Greatest Sniper," she added.
Yasopp scoffed. Then he hit Beckman on the chest, who couldn't defend because he was fastening something to his ear. "You heard that, right?"
"Now that you've successfully pitted two of my best men against each other," Shanks said, shooting them a wry look, "safe travels, kid."
Sophie never liked long goodbyes. She spun around, about to run off to the city of lightning rods and weathervanes and red-shingled roofs, then halted. She looked back at Shanks. "I think you were right," she told him. "About everything."
The one-armed, scar-eyed man winked. "I usually am."
—
Nellie asked if she was nervous, which was a ridiculous question.
Sophie clutched the pillar like a cat sinking its claws into the nearest stable surface. "The l-last time this h-happened, I nearly d-d-died."
"Then there's no reason to worry!" Nellie said brightly. "Can't get much worse than that!"
She was, as always, spot-on.
A hundred thousand mechanisms shifted into place. Mysterious glyphs were carved into the stone tower and the strange pedestal in the middle of it, and Nellie moved around, switching knobs and pulling switches. She didn't know what any of it meant, of course. Figuring out how to steer a giant flying automaton took a lot of trial and error. When Sophie told her about the Poneglyphs, the words written on a stone tablet in an Omiramban lake, the secret history behind Apolleon, Nellie pressed her fingers to her lips. And then she just laughed.
She checked her barometers and wind-measuring instruments and star maps, and hollered into a Den Den Mushi that was connected to loudspeakers in the city that they were lifting off. It reminded Sophie of the Polar Tang's control room. A submarine in the sky. It wasn't so scary when she thought about it that way.
The wind rose.
Far below, the flowers on the island waved bon voyage.
—
Sophie swung her legs over her rifle, as if sitting astride a horse. Or a magic broomstick.
Conditions were excellent for a first flight. It was windier this high up, which was no surprise, and colder, too. Around her were magnificent clouds, each the size of castles, puffy and candy-floss gorgeous as Apolleon soared through them. It was a little nerve-wracking. She wasn't a phoenix, didn't have a Devil Fruit. She could only trust the quality of something she'd made with her own two hands.
She readied her hips and dug her bare feet into the ground. "Okay, Sen 2.0, let's see what you're made of."
She yanked the bolt-action.
Arsenic jerked forward and shot her face-first into a puddle of mud.
…Aaaand scene. Ego salvaging time.
She hobbled inside the cottage, opened a cabinet with a 'Turbulence: Careful!' sign taped to it, and took out two glass cups for morning coffee. Nellie was already at the sink; she had descended the spiral staircase with the island cruising in clear weather. A yellow beak at the window tapped, and she sprung open the latch in excitement.
"Oh, a News Coo! Excellent, we rarely get newspapers up here. Poor guy, would you like a drink?" The gull was violently gasping for breath. She filled up a bowl with water, glancing at a very muddy Sophie waiting for the sink. "Sooo how's the flying going?"
"It's a work in progress."
Nellie tucked a coin in the News Coo's pouch. "You can ask our friend here for tips."
Sophie looked at it. The bird hit her with its wing in its haste to get to the water. Then it squawked at her, and she was pretty sure it just called her an idiot.
"I'm gonna let that slide because you're cute," she muttered from the side of her mouth, "but I know you're just jealous of my opposable thumbs."
Sophie splashed water on her face and wiped herself off with a towel. The coffee was gurgling and the News Coo took off out the window after hitting her over the head one last time, but underneath it she could've sworn she heard Nellie mutter, "Oh my god, you're on the front page."
"Sorry, what? Who is?" Sophie turned around, still distracted by flight calculations and mean News Coos and checking that Perihelion was still fastened on her belt, and—
She finally registered Nellie's expression.
"You. There are photos of you at Marineford, along with the Straw Hat boy and Fire Fist and…"
Sophie didn't hear anything else. The floor had just dropped out from under her feet. "Photos?" The word was like a stone in her mouth. Photos, plural. She heard herself laughing, high-pitched. "No one took any ph-photos."
"They did." Nellie waved the newspaper. "Right here."
During the war? How did they find time to photograph anything, that was just ridiculous— "When?"
"When you were in front of the marines. With Blackbeard."
She supposed all unexpected bad news started like this: on an average day, with the world built solidly around you in straight lines that made sense.
She took the newspaper when Nellie offered it to her, and opened it with shaking hands.
The world crumbled to ash.
Below a photo of Ace and Luffy fighting side-by-side in the war was a photo of her and Blackbeard. There was another photo of her on the next page. And the next. It was like she had fallen into a bad dream, staring at herself through the eyes of someone else. Her face, her eyes, her mouth, no mask to hide behind. Teach was laughing, holding her like a dead deer, her stupid, shocked face frozen forever, encased in monochrome amber. A photo of her throwing off her jacket with a savage expression, clouds of dust rising around her. Legs. Stomach. Skin. So much skin.
They shouldn't have published these. It wasn't right. They put in shots of Teach touching her, as if they were friends, as if they were chummy. It didn't matter that she was a criminal, or more specifically a wanted arsonist/pirate who most of the world feared/hated—this was sensationalist scandal-mongering and it wasn't right.
Finally, she registered the words.
Alchemist Sophie, who may have been pivotal in Whitebeard and Fire Fist Ace's deaths—
In a shocking declaration, Blackbeard confirmed he received her help in what is now known as the Banaro Incident—
—not only a World Government defector, but also seems to be in allegiance with more than one pirate crew—
—and an aversion to propriety, as shown by her wanton outfit of choice, or lack thereof—
The article went on and on. She couldn't read anymore. Nellie was saying that she looked very cool and murderous in the photos, and Sophie heard herself replying yes, thank you, I try. She flipped to the front page again and dread consumed her completely. This wasn't some local island paper. This was the World Economic Journal. A newspaper owned by the World Government and was currently being distributed throughout the entire ocean.
—
There were only so many ways you could tell yourself things were fine before crashing into a tree, but Sophie didn't think it would happen so literally for her.
She got up, picked up Arsenic, and tried again.
She smashed into the berry bushes next.
Face-planted into the pumpkin patch in Nellie's vegetable garden.
Accidentally disturbed a beehive.
Fended off a swarm of angry bees for a good half-hour.
Gave Nellie a thumbs-up through the window, rubbing a sore sting on her butt.
And through it all, she could still feel Teach's wiry beard. The stench of sour rum. His smile from across the table, telling her to eat. His hand squeezing her throat, and the dark simper of his voice rotting in her ear. My sweet Fortuna, my own Lady Luck. From today until the end times, I will repay your gift.
She crashed off Sen again, rolling across the grass. She must've disturbed some fox's den because she heard a pathetic animal keen of distress, but when she lifted herself up on her elbows she couldn't see anyone else around. She was still hearing it, that awful noise, like something was dying. Even stranger was the stuff running down her chin, except the source of that became clearer as she started puking.
Food poisoning perhaps, but that didn't quite make sense seeing as how she was running on bread and coffee (everything turned stale and bitter in her mouth anyway, no matter how well it was cooked). She investigated the contents. Well, that was just largely bile. Nothing to worry about.
Sophie hobbled to her feet, found a shovel, and spent the rest of the afternoon fixing the tulip beds.
—
Here's something about space-time, Marco. If we consider time as a linear line, then somewhere on that line, Ace is still twenty and he's still alive. Somewhere on that line, you're meeting his stupid handsome face for the first time, and neither of you know each other, and you have no idea how much you're going to love him. Isn't science wonderful?
Sometimes she hated her own writing.
Sophie closed the book and tossed it aside, not caring that the ink would smudge. Nobody would ever read it besides her, anyway.
She picked up the newspaper (again) and read the article about the Marineford War (again), even though she told herself (for the millionth time) to stop. Straw Hat, Ace, and the Whitebeards covered most of it, with a huge section dedicated to Ace being Gold Roger's biological son (ugh, lame). Then there was a lot about what Teach said, being the strongest pirate ever, world domination, the name of this era is Blackbeard, blah blah blah. Law's name came up near the end as the Polar Tang swooped in to save the day. She drew hearts all around that column.
Also, though it had no bearing on the war, the article sure obsessed a lot over what Sophie wore, instead of talking about her Haki or gunmanship. It was like the journalists couldn't decide whether she was some random floozy Blackbeard had picked up off the street, or a megalomaniac who was going to destroy the world by the power of the seductive rips in her granny panties. They had pictures of the cherries, too. They called her a witch seven separate times in the article, but there wasn't a single word about how she went head-to-head with the Blackbeard Pirates.
Irritated, Sophie tossed it back on the table, knowing she'd pick it up again in five minutes.
Spread out on the kitchen table was her beat-up leather journal, the pages crudely taped back together, and a Den Den Mushi. she spent the evening dialing the Polar Tang's snail over and over—she'd written the number down in her book, because, yes, she learned her lesson from Sabo—but only heard static. Perhaps they were too far away. Probably best to try again after passing over the Red Line.
Still, she dialed one last time, because she didn't have anything better to do. Behind her was a pile of blankets on a squishy couch she was meant to sleep on, if she could sleep. Listening to the monotonous puru-puru-puru, she went back to coating Arsenic with linseed oil, carefully going over the thin circle of gold around its barrels. Her precious golden scar.
"I know this is hurting you more than it's hurting me," she mumbled. "I know you don't like it either. It'll take a while to get used to your new bones. But it can work. You can fly, I'll show you. Don't give up on me."
Sen glimmered, soft and stubborn like her wielder.
"Heyo."
In the middle of polishing her gun, Sophie looked up. She frowned at the tired-looking snail, who was glaring back at her in mild rebuke at being kept awake so late. Had she imagined that?
No, she hadn't.
Because Anko continued, "This ain't a pizza delivery. Speak up, bitch."
Sophie was on her feet in an instant, seizing the receiver. "Anko?"
A pause.
His voice—god, she missed the sound of it—crackled with disbelief. "Shit. Sophie?"
"Oh my god." She clasped both hands over the receiver, as if in prayer. "Oh my god, you're alive. How—are you all okay—where are you?"
Static, and then: "…waiting for… how worried we are?" She tried asking again, but he talked over her as if he couldn't hear. "We're… you nearby? Are you on a ship? Soph, do you… hello? Guys, I'm talkin' to her, shut… can you hear… Cap!"
"Anko. Anko!" Sophie held her breath. "Anko?"
More static.
Her burned hand ringed the tattooed heart on her wrist. Sophie summoned the courage to say, "…Law?"
"…Lily, got it?" came Law's crackly voice, sounding so painfully distant. "Amazon Lily…"
Static ensnared his voice, and then the line went dead. The Den Den Mushi yawned and its eyes drooped and it started snoring, leaving Sophie standing immobile in the kitchen, her pounding heartbeat the only evidence of her rising terror.
—
The next morning, she was halfway out the door when Nellie asked if they were still heading to Sabaody. Sophie remembered seeing Amazon Lily scrawled on one of Nellie's star maps. Somewhere in the Calm Belt, beneath the constellation of the crane and the nine sisters.
"Right," she confirmed, yanking open the door. "Sabaody."
Sabaody Archipelago would give her time to work up the courage to go back to the Hearts. But… what if the people on Sabaody recognized her? It was a populated island. What if they knew who she was, what if they plastered up papers with her photos on them?
I'm not going to think about it.
Sophie started off her day right by ping-ponging between trees and eating a healthy breakfast of dirt.
As she picked herself up for the millionth time, she wondered if she could ever show her face anywhere in the world again. Could she pass by normal people on the street and not wonder how much of her they had seen? Could she go back to her crew and not be consumed with anxiety over how secretly suspicious they might be of her? Maybe Law had realized how she was a ticking time bomb and it would only be a matter of time before she blew up them as well.
Stop thinking about it.
Well, she couldn't go back to the Polar Tang immediately. She needed to mentally prepare herself, figure out what she was gonna say. They were going to ask about Teach, Ace, and Impel Down. They were going to ask why she was a goddamn idiot who kept trying to make things right, when all she had done was make them worse.
When Sophie crashed again, she rolled over, coughing and heaving up nothing but spit. Perihelion had slipped out of its sheathe. She picked it up, and it reflected back at her the three-eyed Ma Reets as she murmured, "Strange mislaid thing, blood of flotsam wreckage. Nothing-girl. Yet a chime of destiny. Stolen from gods or devils, surely."
Destiny. Right. Made sense. She was destined for mistakes forever.
Stop it.
Sophie stuck Peri on her hip, biting back furious words at herself. She should be grateful for what she still had. Her life, for one. All her limbs and eyeballs. Lying in a pool of her own misery wasn't going to solve anything. It just made her more pathetic.
"Oh, stop feeling sorry for yourself," she muttered heatedly, getting up. "Nothing that bad happened to you. You were tortured in prison—so what? Lots of people are, all the time. What, a stinky guy forced a kiss on you? Who cares. Just forget it. Move on. Move past it. Stop letting it control your life."
That was when she noticed a large shadow had fallen over her.
A song floated through the sky.
Caelum whales, Ace had said. I saw them just after crossing into the New World…
A pod of sky whales was swimming through the clouds above her, backlit by the sun and casting great shadows across the flying island. They moved with ethereal grace, blue fins and long majestic tails, and they were singing hymns that carried across the sky.
Obstinate, the something-girl braced her feet on the ground.
She lifted off, a few nervous inches above the ground, the grass rustling in the wake of her flight. She wasn't going too fast, about the same speed if she was riding a bicycle. She kept her gaze on the sky whales, trying to keep up with them as she gripped her rifle in sweaty hands. She leaned forward, and Sen sped up, and she started to grin, small and nervous but thinking I can do this.
Her eyes snapped forward and Sophie saw the cliff just ahead.
And then she saw Blackbeard shoving mouth over hers—
Ace's chin resting on her shoulder, still warm—
tipping over the edge
wind rushing against her
i'm done with everything
"STOP IT!" She stuck her feet into the grass to stop her momentum, and in that instant Sophie knew she would never be able to fly. Dirt sprayed behind her, the friction burning the skin of her heels. She wanted off, off, OFF—Sen bucked against her and she was flung to the ground, tumbling across a grassy slope like a ragdoll. Arsenic careened away and rolled to a joyless stop at the edge of the cliff.
…What a wipe-out.
Her ankle hurt. Her elbows were skinned raw. She laid sprawled over the ground, blood trickling out of her nose, looking dully up into the sky. The caelum whales had disappeared into the clouds, and she could no longer hear their song.
It would be easy to say something funny to cheer herself up. Whatever fruits that could make her laugh. That's what she always did best. Laughing. How to swear in pineapples. Good times only, positive mood whiplash, nothing was ever that bad if you didn't take it so seriously. Laugh, Laugh, Laugh Tale.
A small sob caught in her throat. She flung an arm over her eyes and whispered, "Stop. Please fucking stop."
The only laughter here was the wind howling.
—
That night, she dreamed of fire.
Sophie opened her eyes slowly. Warm white sand. Cerulean tide rolling in.
Her footprints indented the sand as she walked across the beach of Idyll Island, approaching a grove of palm trees where a hammock swayed lazily. A young man lounged inside, bare-chested as always, hands laced behind his head with a hat over his face. He might've been sleeping, but she knew he wasn't. She knew he was waiting for her.
"You're late," Sophie informed, arms crossed as she stopped at the hammock's side. "But I get it, you had to visit all your brothers first."
The cowboy hat lifted. Under its brim, Ace grinned up at her, freckled and sun-brown. "Did you like my gift?"
He pointed at the knife at her waist.
She patted Perihelion. "Marco gave it to me."
"Was it Marco?" Ace retorted, and then he popped up behind Sophie's shoulder, wiggling his fingers. "Or was it me, through spooooky intervention?"
She wasn't going to giggle. She was definitely, absolutely not going to giggle. Sophie flicked the orange brim of his hat and sniffed, "How are you still so weird even when you're dead?"
"We have to talk about your haircut," Ace said, proving her point. She couldn't help how her ears reddened. "A heartbroken girl chops all her hair off 'cause of me?" He sighed. "Wow. This is so flattering."
Sophie gave him a flat stare. "Are you finished stroking your own ego?"
"I really had an effect on you, didn't I?" he returned sympathetically, dark-eyed and smooth-voiced.
How dare he try making her flustered. Ace had put her through way too much emotional turmoil to get off scot-free just by being a little cute. She snorted indifferently and pushed against his chest, which just made Ace laugh. He laughed like a kid, too bright and too loud and stretching his arms up around his messy hair.
She looked at his chest again—his unburned, unscarred chest, and she saw him bleeding all over Straw Hat Luffy in the middle of Marineford, burning up from the inside. It made her ask, "How much did it hurt? Dying?"
"Dying's easy," Ace replied. "The hard part is saying goodbye."
A sad, brittle feeling shivered up her spine.
"You didn't tell me you were the son of Gold Roger," Sophie blurted out, and clasped a hand over her mouth. She cringed so hard. "Not that you had to. It's your own information to share. But." Ah, here it was. The wish that he had felt as close to her as she had felt to him. "But you could've told me," she mumbled, digging her toes in the sand and feeling inanely jealous about being left out.
Ace shot her an enigmatic smile. "It's the least interesting thing about me."
"B-but," she stammered, a little struck by his response, "but wasn't that why you thought your life was… meaningless?"
He started walking along the tide. "Does bloodline matter to you?"
Sophie gaped at his tattooed back, before running to catch up. She leapt in front of Ace's path, nostrils flaring and arms raised like a grizzly bear on the attack. "What matters to me is that you had the audacity to die by fire! And here I was calling you 'hot stuff'!" She started smacking his chest. "You were supposed to be the spiciest of them all! How dare you!"
"I can't control how my Fruit responds to magma!" Ace yelped. "Ow! Are you hitting me or feeling me up?"
She poked his abdomen muscles. "Excuses, excuses!"
He caught her hands in his own and leaned forward, eyes glittering. "My life wasn't meaningless. I lived. Same as Thatch, same as my mom. I died with my father and I died protecting my little brother. But dying meant I lived. I'm gonna kick Sabo's ass when he gets here. And I hope that won't be for a very long time."
Ace looked beyond Sophie, opening his arms to the sky.
"Look at these stars," he said softly. "They're so bright tonight."
The sand and ocean and Idyll Island were no more. Around them were only stars, big and small and sparkling like neon lights against pitch-black, as they stood in the middle of the universe. She spun around in Ace's dream, pointed at a distant nebula, and said, "Is that where you're growing ghost peppers?"
"Hey, nice eye." Ace shoved his hands in his pockets, looking around at all his stars, at the infinite possibilities for him. "I miss swimming. I think I'll try that again."
He was about to turn around, but Sophie sprung after him in a panic, slipping on air. "Wait!"
Ace easily caught her in his arms. "It's time for you to go, Curls," he said, though with the way his mouth curved he didn't seem to mind.
He was too kind, too beautiful for death, and it made her despair all over again. "I'm sorry," she snarled weepily, angrily, "I'm—I'm so sorry."
"I'm sorry about what happened with Teach," Ace replied, calm and gentle and somber, tracing his thumb on her jaw. "If I had known he was also at Marineford, I would've saved some fire for him."
"You have nothing to be sorry about, you didn't have anything to do with—"
"I'm sorry," he said, "because you're hurting."
"I'll get over it," Sophie insisted. "I'll be fine."
Something flashed across Ace's face. Something disappointed and knowing, a little big brotherly. "The more you pretend what you and I went through… and what you're going through right now, alone, is something you can just get over… the harder it'll be to live with it. And you have to live with it. I won't accept the alternative."
His words pierced her chest like a dagger. He had seen, hadn't he? Even though this wasn't real—just a figment of her imagination, just a dream—she confessed in a rush, "For a moment, when I almost stepped off that cliff, everything went still. I felt nothing. At the time, I thought it was a relief, but looking back—no, it wasn't, it was horrible. I've spent my whole life feeling numb. Why would I choose that at the end? Dying over nothing?"
"You stayed with me at the end," he reminded. "You and Jinbe. You saved me from eight days of loneliness. You've always been that sort of person."
Ace was great at that. Around him, she found ways to like herself.
Sophie was determined not to waste time on any more tears. "You missed out, buddy." She took his hands and settled one on her waist. He let her take the lead. "If you had met me earlier, I totally would've run away with you."
"Ha!" Ace crowed, delighted. "This is my fault? I only left Dawn Island when I was seventeen." His freckled nose crinkled as he grinned in mischief, and he demanded, "Why aren't we in our thirties, Curls? Why haven't we had a decade together where I try to tempt you away from your crew and you pretend to ignore me while secretly writing me adoring fan letters that you'll never send?"
"Please," Sophie huffed, as they danced across galaxies. "If I ever wrote you a passionate letter, you can bet I'd have you open it in front of me so I can watch you blush."
Ace stammered, and then let out his breath in a low whistle. "That sounds great. Promise you'll dream it for me. Dream of me when you find yourself on the edge of a cliff again, thinking the only direction you can go in is down."
Sophie stopped them on a pinwheel nebula, wreathed in incandescent stardust. She pressed her cheek against the slope of his shoulder and whispered, "I'm afraid. I don't remember how to not be afraid."
"I know it hurts. I know it feels like it hurts more than death." Ace gripped her and pulled her back, so he could look her fiercely in the eye. "But you can't let this kill you. The only thing worse than being killed is letting the bastards think they've won. Stop repenting. Your shackles are gone. I free you." He snapped his fingers. "Ta-da. Magic."
"That's not how this works," she protested helplessly.
"Says who?"
"Says… r-r-rules!"
"Pirates only obey one rule." Ace gave her a little twirl and dipped her. And for a moment it seemed like it wasn't just Ace speaking to her; it was the trees of Mt. Colubo, the wind of East Blue pushing the ship of the Spade Pirates onward, the sun. "Live as you will."
The future was waiting.
Solar wind blew through his hair, and the depths of his eyes lit up in starbursts of color as Ace smiled. He was crossing over again, back to the far shore. Sophie wondered briefly whether or not this was really all in her imagination, but supposed it didn't matter in the end.
She squeezed his hands, or what little that was left of them. "Can I see you again?"
"Whenever you want. I'm right here." He pressed his forehead to hers, his eyes bright, his body vanishing into cosmic dust, star-touched. "Go back to your crew. Keep researching your science. Sail beyond the furthest reaches of the sea. Remember your courage. Remember me."
He had been the warlock and the wizard and the magician all along; he had cast a spell on her and the whole world. He had written himself into the sky, burning forever in an endless comet. There would be no forgetting Fire Fist Ace.
"…Be fruitful, Sophie."
—
The instant she woke up, she tore off the blanket and jumped to her feet, grabbing Arsenic, which had been absorbing sunlight on the windowsill, along the way. Nellie shrieked in surprise as Sophie blew past her, her footsteps thundering down the hallway.
The window that overlooked the cliff of Cat's Eye Island opened with a terrific bang! and she clambered onto the ledge, shouting behind her, "Please chart a course to Amazon Lily!" and then vaulted off, out of the cottage, over the cliff with nothing but her rifle in hand.
Nellie bolted over and watched Sophie, still in her sleeping gown, tumble into the white clouds below and vanish without a trace.
"Oh my god!" Hanging halfway out, Nellie screamed down at the clouds, "Oh my god, Sophie, are you crazy!?"
But the words barely left her mouth before a speeding blur shot upwards so fast the force of its vertical flight almost stripped the windowpanes from their hinges. Nellie jerked back before her nose could get shorn off, and she leaned out, peering up with an open mouth.
In the sky, there was something flying. It was flying vertically, moving unnaturally fast, a shooting star in reverse. Sophie didn't know how high she was going. If she looked down she might've frozen up in fear, but her eyes were focused stubbornly upwards at the dots of blue sky between clouds.
She spiraled up into the heavens, holding tight, knees tucked in. Sen was heating up. The bolt-action shook, but it did not break.
She burst from the sea of clouds, flying so high she could see the curve of the white horizon that marked the turn of the planet. Her yell was louder than the wind, roaring and victorious, a cry so soaring it could've lifted her clean through the atmosphere. With the wind at her back and her body unbound from gravity, Sophie outstretched her hand to the sun, peering between the gaps of her fingers at the dazzling light.
Oh.
True to his word, Ace was right there.
to be continued
notes. i know there are a few of you who like reading meta, so i wanted to talk about sophie and ace's relationship for a minute. her journey with ace is meant to parallel us as readers. i think there's something so fascinating about people who adored ace in the very brief span of time he's appeared, and writing her as someone who's followed ace in the newspapers, who knows about him mainly through stories and rumors and his fame. is something a lot of us can relate to, i think, having people we admire from a distance who have passed on. but also, like, celebrating their complexity and showing that there are so many things that we'll never know about them, but it doesn't matter because their time with us still meant something wonderful! …is what i wanted to convey.
anyway, to sum it up: however sophie sees ace at the end is however you still see those who have passed on too soon and too young.
catch ya next time. (look forward to law pov scenes and amazon lily!)
trivia
kintsugi: repairing something broken with gold
perihelion: in astronomy, the point in the orbit of a planet/asteroid/comet at which it is closest to the sun