Author's note:
Warning for mild gore, emotional turmoil, implied panic attacks, and at least slightly traumatizing events.
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—
There are things they don't tell you about dead bodies.
The utter stillness and pallor she knows (she's seen it, even in her past life-) but the sharp smell of shit and piss as the body relaxes, the splatter of meat and blood and brain and flecks of bone from a gunshot to the jaw and the head-
And, perhaps worst of all, the quiet sigh of a soul passing into dust. The hiss of a drop of rain fading into eternity.
She finishes retching, stomach clenching and hunched over, gagging, and at her side Ilirya is whispering reassurances, holding her hair back carefully.
"-s okay, it's okay, it's okay-"
(-sounds like a mantra Ilirya is repeating as much for his sake as for her own-)
"Thanks, Ilirya," Valentine rasps, straightening up, offbalance and hemmed in (small, too small, everything is wrong), and Ilirya scrambles to get back. He's in orangutan shape - unusual for him, he doesn't like humanoid forms - and it becomes quickly clear that he's shorter than her full height (could only reach her hair because she was leaning down), because as soon as she's standing, his tufted orange head only hits her ribcage.
As she fully straightens, he shifts to a bird, flits up to her shoulder, and immediately following is shaped like a mink winding himself reassuringly around her neck. He doesn't speak.
Valentine swallows. Her mouth tastes terrible. "Thanks," she repeats, and then:
"That. Happened." she tries it out carefully, then again. "That happened," she says, more firmly, and shudders. Her fingers clench and she realizes she's still holding the pistol-
She drops it as if burned, flinching as it clatters to the dirty ground. Not even cocked, there's no way it'd go off again, so why is she flinching? Get it together, she thinks to herself, winds her arms around her own torso in a parody of a hug. Get it together…
"-ave to find Luffy and Ace. Valentine? Valen-"
"I got it," she interrupts sharply, then calms, struggling to keep her breathing even. "I got it. Just. One moment." Her tone is mellower, forced, even.
Ilirya goes silent again, curls closer, soft fur against the sweaty nape of her neck. She takes her moment.
She closes her eyes, even if she knows it's a stupid idea, because Ilirya's watching and he's basically her second set, anyway, and he'd warn her in time if somebody approaches. She counts in her head - one, two, three- all the way to ten, until her lungs strain and they can't inhale any more cold air, and then she releases even slower, exhaling through her mouth, lips pursed.
She does this several times.
When she feels- well, not great, but not prone to shattering at the next vaguely hostile gust of wind - she opens her eyes again.
In the next moment, they narrow.
She's in the Gray Terminal.
That in itself isn't surprising, but she actually- she recognizes her surroundings. This is a path she and the boys (her heart gives a pang) often travel, closer to the wall separating the terminal and Edge Town than it is to the forest's edge: a narrow path, quicker than most and hemmed in by high walls of garbage on either side. Relatively few know about it (which may explain why she hasn't seen anyone since she's regained consciousness).
If she runs, she knows she could get to the wall in maybe eight minutes.
"I know where we are," she murmurs to Ilirya, and there's blood still running down her face and her hand hurts and she just killed a man and she feels awful. She just wants to stop, to not keep going in the most visceral way, but if she really loves her newfound family then she needs to fight to keep them.
That though puts things in perspective.
She remembers her battle calm. (Killing calm.) So she replicates it, gently and slowly, folding all her emotions into a heavy lump and then a speck as small as they'll go, condensing them smaller and smaller until she can shove them somewhere in a back corner of her mind, out of the way for later.
—
The high pitched grating of Ilirya's whine filters through, distant, to her brain.
Her eyes shoot open, glancing instinctually down, and Ilirya's a stumbling puppy half-lain over one of her boots (when did that happen?). He looks-
"It's okay," she rasps, echoing him, reaches down and picks him up in finely trembling hands and strokes his ears because she can't just leave him like that, whimpering and sorrowful on the ground. "It's not forever. Just until it's safe to let it go."
He doesn't respond. Just stays quiet and breathes in her arms, tiny ribcage rising and falling, eyes open but unfocused, small ears lain flat against his skull.
(She remembers him as an elephant, a rhinoceros, that burst of lifesaving strength and power. He could never do that, now, she realizes, not with her head all twisted up from this. If she wants Ilirya to be okay, she'll have to- process this.
Great.
Well, she can hate herself for being so high maintenance, but she could never hate Ilirya. Ilirya - her soul, her otherself, her second half - is always doing his absolute, complete best, which means that if he's like this, there's no other way he could possibly be.)
"Think you could shift to a snake and hide in my shirt?" she cajoles, stroking along one velvety ear. "Just like old times, yeah?"
Before can finish her last sentence, the soft fur under her fingertips is melding to rippling scales. She blinks and Ilirya is a serpent (scales patterned black and red and white, is he poisonous?) sliding under her neckline and into her shirt, coiling up on her chest, bigger than the slender garden snakes she remembers.
(Well, it's a good thing she's wearing long-sleeves. Not so good that it's one of her favorites, maybe, since there's a glaringly obvious patch of red - undeniably blood - stained somewhere just below her collar, but it doesn't really matter. She has plenty of shirts.)
Ilirya is silent and still, curled over her heart, but he's still breathing. Still warm.
Her expression tightens. What more is there to say? She starts to run.
The longer she spends conscious and running, the clearer her head feels, and the more difficult it gets to ignore the clamor of feelings welling up in her. Later, she tells herself, later, because there's no time. No time to cry or scream because Ace and Luffy could still be-
She keeps her breathing even, runs as fast as she can, darts through the winding paths with the ease of absolute familiarity, and stifles the cold prickles of panic trying to creep over her. Ace and Luffy have to be fine. Don't think about Sabo don't think about Sabo don't think about him at all-
She catches sight of blood and black wavy hair as she turns around the bend and her heart almost stops in her chest.
Ace is snarling with red running down his face and he has his pipe raised to Bluejam (who's laughing as he swings his sabre, parrying with ease) and all the other lackeys are unconscious, foaming at the mouth, and Luffy is curled around Ran and bleeding on the ground-
She darts in, leans down as she sprints to catch hold of her pipe where it lays on the earth, and in a twist of deadly movement she sends a vicious smash flying at Bluejam's knees.
The lobster in the tank on Bluejam's chest thrashes and she barely catches the bony edge of his calf as he jerks back - hears a soft crunch - and Bluejam curses as Valentine comes shoulder to shoulder with Ace.
"Valentine," Ace says, and his voice is more strained than she's ever heard from him before, raw and close to the surface but it's such a relief to hear it that her knees nearly give way. Ace isn't running on fumes (from her second-long glance he has a small head wound, some faint scratches from near misses, not much else) but he's stressed, panicked, Sabo's gone (taken taken taken) and god, he's eleven. He shouldn't have to stay strong for this, even though he is.
"I'm okay," she says, firm, reassuring, feeling the warmth of his shoulder against hers, because now it's impossibly easy to keep it together, to hold onto her cracked pieces with an iron grip. How can she fall apart while Ace is trying to hold on? Being strong for his sake, for Luffy, is the easiest decision she's made since she woke up.
"Sabo's- they took him," Ace chokes out, rage and helplessness leaking out and thickening his voice into something despairing, and she can't look away from Bluejam (standing back, observing them with a sharp eye), but she wants so badly to look at his face, comfort him in what little ways she knows how, even if she knows he'd refuse it. His dæmon- Aurelia must be small, hiding and curled up like Ilirya, because she's not out and fighting, and Valentine knows that she would be if she could. Just like her human. "I-"
"We'll get him back," she promises, cutting him off, vicious and low. They will.
Bluejam laughs, raucous and unrestrained (isn't even keeping his eyes on them) and she dearly wants to charge him and smash her pipe into his face, but something tells her to wait. (Then she notices his dæmon - the lobster - clicking its claws and facing forward in its tank, undoubtedly a second - if poor - set of eyes, and shit. That's not good.)
"Your brother is gone," Bluejam rumbles, sick grin creeping over his face, and fuck him he looks amused. Valentine feels her rage swell, come close to bursting, because Ace twitches at that, at the word Luffy and Sabo have been adopting but that he hasn't quite dared to, not yet.
He will get the chance.
"Funny," she says, sharp, tone colder than ice. She feels Ace shift fractionally at her voice, surprised or taken aback or frightened. Hopefully not that last one. "The last person who laughed like that was laughing 'til I killed him."
Her head is rushing and her stomach churns again. Ilirya coils in her shirt, agitated sliding of slick scales, and Ace tenses beside her, but doesn't shift away. Bluejam's laughter trails off almost immediately, fading into a considering, interested look, while his lobster is completely still, almost lifeless looking, floating in its tank.
"You killed Porchemy, little girl?" Bluejam says, and she's getting damn tired of the 'little girl' moniker, from him and from everyone fucking else in this godforsaken terminal. "Well," Bluejam grins mirthlessly, "in that case, you did me a favor! If he got beat by a little half-dead brat like you, he's better off feed for the rats."
A ripple of indescribable feeling whispers through Ace and Valentine.
"He's- he was your nakama," Ace snarls, clutching his pipe tighter, and-
There's that word. She's learned to ignore it, to slot it into the crew/family niche in her head (all the scraps of languages floating around in there could outnumber the legs on a centipede), but sometimes it's too oddly used and notable to automatically understand. Nakama. A promise of trust, belonging, and reliance. Unique to this world, filled with pirates and wonders and death, a place where people desperately search for somewhere to belong.
Bluejam doesn't even laugh this time. His grin simply widens. "Only the strong and the cowardly survive in this world, brat. If Porchemy didn't run, then he's weak. And I have no need for the useless or the cowardly in my crew."
"Dunno what that makes these guys, then," Valentine says, offhand (tenseness belying her easy words), keeping her eyes on Bluejam, still, nudging one of the downed fodder pirates with the tip of her boot. He's grungy and utterly unconscious - flecks of foam trail from the corners of his mouth, and his eyes are rolled back in his sockets so only the bloodshot whites can be seen - and it's a disquieting sight, with his unidentifiable furred, long-tailed, sharp-toothed dæmon unconscious and curled up on his chest. (She has a hunch why they're all downed but she won't verbalize it, not now.)
"They'll all die as soon as I get the chance to dispose of them," Bluejam states, lobster drifting in its tank, serene, and even Valentine can't help the reflexive tensing of her muscles, the emotion that flits over her face. "So thanks for saving me the inconvenience of killing Porchemy me'self," he adds, smiling wide at her with all his ground-down teeth on display, and her stomach lurches.
"Dispose of them…?" Ace sounds as offbalance as she feels.
"They're weak. Useless." He waves a dismissive hand. "Trash. Now, you kids…" Bluejam shifts forward (Valentine's eyes laser focus on the leg she grazed, and he's favoring it, not quite a limp but slowed, hampered) and he offers an outstretched hand. "You kids are strong. Join my crew, eh?"
"I'd rather smash your head in myself," Valentine replies smartly, raising her pipe, before Ace can say anything. Her expression has no give to it whatsoever. Holding her weapon, her combat abilities multiply by about five, and with Ace at her side she's not afraid of him, not afraid of him at all.
How can she bear to be afraid when she has Luffy to protect?
"Drop dead," Ace adds, barely a second of delay before he speaks. He sounds hesitant - for reasons she can't place - though she doubts anyone else would be able to read it in his voice. But with the both of them up and fighting, nobody but Bluejam in front of them, Luffy behind them, they're not willing to run. They can't.
"Valentine," Ace mumbles to her, yanking her out of her tunnelvisioning, voice low and hurried, nudging her side, and she carefully listens even as she doesn't take her eyes off Bluejam's still standing, grinning form. "If things go badly- " Ace's voice breaks. "Duck out and take Luffy back to Dadan's. I'll keep Bluejam distra-"
"Shut up, just. Stop talking." She cuts in harshly, incredulously, and takes her eyes off Bluejam for one precious second to look at Ace's face, freckled and grim and facing forward, determined. "I'm never, ever leaving you guys behind. Any of you. That includes you, idiot. If you died, what the hell do you think I'd do with the rest of my life?"
Ace looks like he's barely breathing. "Valentine-"
"No. We'll talk about this later. Just- let's take care of this guy and get Luffy out of here, alright?"
Ace swallows. "Yeah."
She flicks her gaze forward.
Bluejam has being doing them the service of allowing (or ignoring) their byplay. How kind of him. "Ready to fight?" Bluejam hawks, spits on the ground, raises his sabre like he's raising a glass. "When I win, you'll join me."
"Over my dead body," Valentine spits out, perhaps too honestly, and then her and Ace are both lunging forward.
Valentine's on fire, hot with rage and bottom-of-the-barrel strength. Never, the thinks with each swing of her pipe, I'll never let you get to them. Never.
Ace, similarly, is fighting with a lethal cocktail of focus and seriousness she's never seen from him before, gaze sharp and deadly as a blade. She knows he's fast, but she's never seen him like this: everything put on the line, eking out every last drop of strength to protect what's his, strikes vicious and crushing with not a single movement intentionally wasted.
She's never fought in tandem with just Ace like this, and at first it's a little strange, a little unwieldy, but they're of one kind (protect Luffy, beat Bluejam, protect Luffy-) and they slot into place fast enough that neither of them gets stabbed for the oversight, Bluejam moving stronger but slower (maybe because of the heavy tank on his chest, housing his dæmon? but he's not nearly slow enough to relax, almost faster than them, catching them off guard and slicing too fast to see with his sword, even with the damn leg she knows she grazed-).
Ace is faster than her, stronger and more well practiced, but even with the imbalance they work, Valentine viciously following up on his straight-on, powerful smashes with crippling shots to the knees, head, shoulder, groin. Ace's fighting style can seem too straightforward, sometimes, but when he has her to cover him, Bluejam doesn't have a single second to breathe or do anything other than dodge dodge dodge, doesn't have barely any chances to capitalize on that strength of his, because any possible gaps Ace leaves for counterstrikes are almost immediately covered by Valentine. She uses her sharp eye and knowledge and skill to match Ace's style; and, to his credit, Ace matches her too. He leaves room for her to move, lunges from the side or above so she can move from the opposite direction to split attention, creates opportunities for her to strike and cripple, and by the end of it-
Bluejam is on the ground with a badly broken wrist and what are sure to be multitudes of ugly bruises covering his thick torso (not anywhere the tank rests, and they know for a fact it's practically impenetrable, because their blows have glanced off the thick glass more than once, tougher and heavier by far than Bluejam's own loose, open shirt and thin pants). Both of their pipes are pressed to his wide bare (vulnerable) throat and his sabre is knocked out of his hand, sent spinning to the ground mere seconds before, a side smash from Valentine finally breaking his guard after Ace stole his attention by striking from above and diagonal. They've been at this dance for an hour, now, and abruptly, it-
Stops.
For a moment, the three of them just breathe, sweating and panting. They've been fighting for so long, how can they stop, and it's so fucking hard to get her brain out of battle mode, to convince her twitching fingers not to raise her pipe, smash down, maybe on the tank once and for all, erase the threat-
"Leave," Ace says, voice clear, freckled and bloody hand trembling on his pipe. "Leave and never return."
(And why do you think they're alive to slander his name? it's the song of a voice she's never heard, an echo that clamors through her head like the low groan of a creaking ship, the tang of salt, the crackling of a fire. He let them go.)
...This is why, she thinks to herself, trying desperately not to let her hands tremble, I need people. Good people. Because I don't think that I… I don't think that I can be a good person. Not anymore. Not when I have to protect them.
(Sabo, the thinks, and her heart throbs, it hurts. Sabo.)
"Shame," says Bluejam, spitting out a fat gob of blood (she sees a hint of pale enamel through the thick red and that must be a tooth). "I think we could've come to an agreement."
"...What the hell d'you mean?" Ace sounds cautious, suspicious, breath taken out of him from a long hour, but they have the upper hand. What can he possibly offer them?
"Nobility," Bluejam coaxes, cajoling, voice syrupy and low. "Riches, power-"
"Knock him out," Valentine says sharply, not trusting herself to carry out the order.
"-I could give you a place to belong, boy. And after this, you're gonna need one. Not gonna be anything left of this place by tomorrow night-"
"Nothing left?" Obviously, Bluejam has no clue where they actually live - a misconception that Ace (if he's anything like her, if she knows him at all) probably wants to maintain - and Ace's pipe doesn't waver from its place at Bluejam's throat. "What do you mean?"
"There's gonna be a fire," Bluejam rumbles, eyes crazed. "And at the end, everyone with me will ascend to nobility- riches and power, more than you can imagine-"
"Fire?" Ace is mumbling, attention drifting, eyes hazing. "But why? What do you have to g-"
Bluejam twitches or lunges and Valentine brings her pipe down on his temple with a sharp crack.
It's a glancing blow - nowhere near the straight-on face smash she was aiming for as Bluejam fruitlessly tries to jerk out of its path - but it gets the job done and Bluejam drops like a stone, thumping heavily to the ground. Ace, takes a quick, involuntary step back.
There's a beat of silence.
"Luffy," Valentine rasps out, priorities rapidly reorienting, one-word explanation enough as she turns to stride towards his downed form on the ground. She pushes past the quiet, and she won't look at Ace, can't see the expression on his face-
"No, what- what the hell?" She's forced to look at him as he grabs her shoulder, forcibly turns her around, and his expression is unmoored (grey eyes sharp and freckled face grungy with dirt and blood, mouth still stuck in a half-snarl like it doesn't know another way to be) but his grip is bruisingly tight, almost desperate. "You killed Porchemy?"
Behind his question is a bigger question: the why, because Ace heard her threatening (boasting to) Bluejam about Porchemy's death. He saw her desperate and snarling and half-dead as she fought for the last hour, saw her bring her pipe down on the prone Bluejam's head when he may not have been moving at all, and he's seeing her like this, now, stricken and lost-
"Yes." She looks him in the eyes, won't flinch, even when Ace does. Not away from her, thank god, she thinks that would put a big fucking crack in the stone cold persona she's been projecting. But his face twitches in- something. The rearranging of perception, maybe.
"...Okay," he says, hands falling from her shoulders, expression notching down in sheer conviction as it relaxes, his shoulders releasing their tension by a fraction, and she breathes out slow, controlled. It's almost worse that he doesn't press her, that he's giving her space and not- not judging her for being the first to make a kill. She doesn't- she doesn't deserve this-
"Let's just get Luffy and get the hell out of here," Ace says, and as she snaps back to the present she sees his expression is distant. And fuck, this isn't even over, there's Sabo-
Not the time. Later.
"Yeah," she says, echoing their interaction earlier but in reverse, and in one mind, they turn to Luffy.
He's undeniably unconscious, still, a distance away, but as they pace rapidly closer and more of him comes into view, she realizes that he's (and the relief is immense, crushing and liberating all at once) not really all that hurt.
She kneels in the dirt at his side and sees that he has a deep slice on his bicep - explaining the blood she saw earlier, in her split-second absorption of the scene - but despite his arm being painted red it's not as bad as she'd feared, and it's nowhere near the worst she's seen him get, not by far. His eyes are closed, curled with knees tucked up around rabbit-form Ran (she thinks back to a white hare with black tipped ears and her heart lurches), his expression is far removed from his usual during sleep, face dirty and exhausted.
Luffy doesn't look troubled, exactly, but it's not the lackadaisical snoozing she's come to expect from him, slackjawed and drooling and murmuring his way through dreamland. His eyebrows are lightly furrowed, mouth closed, and - perhaps most importantly - he's totally, completely silent.
"What happened?" she asks carefully, reaching out without thinking to brush some of Luffy's hair away from his forehead. Her fingertips skim his skin, and his temperature is perfectly normal, no different than usual.
Ace is still beside her, gazing at Luffy, wearing an expression she can't see from the shadowed angle of his face. She gives him a few precious seconds (he deserves all the time in the world, but they don't have that) to pull on the memories, shuffle them into the picture he wants to tell.
"Earlier," Ace finally rasps, popping the quiet from where he's kneeling beside her. "There was this- I don't know. It was when you were being- when Porchemy covered your mouth." She nods tightly in acknowledgment. "Something happened. I don't know what. I couldn't move, I didn't do anything, but everyone just sort of…" he gestures, frustrated, at the open air. "Fell. Except for everyone important. Porchemy was still standing. And Bluejam." Ace laughs, but there's no humor in it. "I was so desperate."
There's things raw and unsaid in the admittance, but he quickly reels it in, reorients, expression firming, even in the tiny space of observation a split second of glancing over gives her. She focuses her eyes on Luffy again.
"But in the end, it made things even worse." His tone is bleak. "The dæmons holding Aurelia and the people holding me - and Luffy - fell, but so did Ran." It takes her a second to parse the name coming out of his mouth - Ran, Luffy's dæmon - but a flood of understanding rushes through her, and she inhales sharply. "Yeah. She just- made this sound, shifted, and dropped. Luffy went right down after her, and then Porchemy said he was taking you away." Ace's voice is thick with helplessness. "I tried to stop him, but Bluejam wouldn't let me get past, and then he tried to get to Luffy, too… Aurelia was so tired. She's always silent, you know, but this was-" Ace shakes his head. "She's a mouse in my pocket right now."
There's a beat of silence, and Valentine stays quiet, mind whirring and gears turning too loudly to hear. "And then I attacked him," Ace says with an air of finality, noticeably skipping what must be a cascade of rationale, experiences, and likely panicked/solo decision making. "You were gone for a while, but you came back."
(There are multitudes contained within that single sentence. You came back.)
"...And then were here for the rest of it," Ace finishes, shifting restlessly. She can't help but notice the hand he has in his pocket.
And her heart is beating in her throat, sweat prickling at the nape of her neck, bile rising again as she creates and discards things to say faster than she can consider them. Because- because-
She knows what this is.
She- it so, so rarely comes into play. Knowing things she has no way of knowing. But she knows, here, and there's no possible way for her to have found out. Out of all the dull and muddied memories, sensations and flashes of feeling and color, she acutely recalls this.
Does she tell him?
(Ace sighs.
It's not meant to be heard, not meant to be noticed, he never lets any of them see him weak, but it's a tiny, defeated thing, and her fingers twitch on Luffy's brow. She's never heard Ace like that, so shaken, so small, and-
How could she not tell him?)
All her fears get forcibly shoved to the not important zone in her mind, the deal with this later, think of the people important to you right the fuck now zone. "I think I know what you did," she says, expression blank, so, so careful, still looking at Luffy's unconscious form.
She feels his attention shift to her, almost a tangible weight.
"I mean- I'm almost sure. I just don't know why it affected Luffy."
Truth.
"What? How- how do you know? Do you have it too?" there's a damning hint of hope (so rare for him) as he peers over at her, eyes wide, and that's the worst part of it. Her heart clenches.
"No," she says, watches his expression subtly fall.
"Then how do you know?"
"I read about it," she says.
Truth.
Ace laughs, and it's the truest she's heard from him since this whole day went to shit, rough but entirely honest. "Hell, I've gotta start reading if you get to knowing 'bout things like that. You and Sabo-"
The reminder is grim.
Ace cuts himself off, jaw clenching, silent. Valentine isn't much better, the reflexive sting of tears rising familiar in her eyes, but she stifles it.
(She shoves the issue of Conqueror's Haki aside for later.)
"We'll get him back," she repeats, a mantra. The more she says it, the truer it'll be.
Ace laughs again but it's nothing like the last one. It's the laugh of a boy peering into an endless, irreplaceable chasm. "Yeah fucking right. You didn't even see who took him. His chichi-ue and a whole cartload of gas-mask Hightown soldiers."
"Doesn't matter. We'll get him back."
"Stop lying," Ace hisses, except by the end it's more of a choked scream. He's standing, now, Valentine peering up at him, surprised, from where she's kneeling by Luffy.
"Stop lying," Ace repeats, quieter but not softer, wild expression fading into something less close-to-the-surface as his clenched fists release. "He's gone and he's not coming back. If he even wants to, he'll come himself."
Valentine feels her mouth twist. Her words are raw as they tear themselves from her throat. "What if he can't?"
"Sabo can do anything if he puts his mind to it." Ace's arms are crossed, conviction childish and absolute, and for all the things he's been through, all the things he's done, will do, Ace really is eleven years old, ignorant of so many of the world's vast unkindnesses. "He snuck past those damn nobles once. And anyways…" Ace's voice shifts into something more bitter, lower, as he turns away. Distant. "What makes you think he even wants to come back?"
"Of course he does." Valentine's tone brooks no argument. "Sabo doesn't give a damn about all that hightown stuff. They had to take him by force."
But she doesn't actually know about that for sure - didn't see it happen - and Ace gazes at her pityingly, confirms her ignorance as her heart sinks. From the look in his eyes, she can't tell if he's sorrier for her, for Sabo, or for all of them. "They didn't. He walked away with them of his own free will."
The roar of denial is as fierce as it is instinctual. "Yeah fucking right," she says, echoing her thoughts, for once, with absolute, brutal honesty. Ace blinks. "They probably blackmailed him or something. If everything Sabo's said is true, you can't start to trust a noble any farther than you could throw one."
"What does he even have for them to blackmail him about?"
The answer is obvious. "Us."
For the split second Ace makes eye contact with her, she can see the doubt painting his brow.
Then he looks away and it's gone. "Come on. One of our dæmons is gonna have to get big so they can carry Ran back."
(Gazing at his expression, the curve of his frown and the slant of his eyebrows, the angry dimple carved into his face (moving on from any possibility), denial, she quietly accepts that she'll be getting Sabo back herself.)
She briskly inhales, exhales, and actually considers for a moment what he's said aloud. "Uh." She puts a hand over her chest, and- yup. Ilirya is still very immobile in her shirt. "I don't think that's gonna happen for me."
"...Shit." She glances over as Ace spits the curse out, his hands - again - buried in his pockets. "Aurelia isn't responding. Dammit."
But for Valentine, knelt by Luffy's side, focus turned to the boy in front of her, the core of her attention has shifted.
She isn't listening to him anymore.
Valentine cradles the side of Luffy's face, pushing dark strands of hair back delicately, gentle as touching spun glass. A treatment that Luffy doesn't need, maybe, but that he certainly deserves.
"Come on, love," she whispers, tender, and she hears Ace's breath hitch as her hand drifts down she strokes over the soft fur of Ran's side, impossibly gently.
"What are you doing," Ace whispers harshly, and he sounds - if Ace could every truly sound the word - scandalized. Taken aback.
What she's doing is technically taboo.
But that doesn't mean people don't do it.
(See, the thing is-
This isn't the first time she's touched Ran.)
"Wake up, Ran," she murmurs softly, stroking along the velvety nose, the soft spot just between the ears, the sensation both entirely foreign and utterly familiar, something gold fluttering in her throat, smaller and fainter than a moth. "It's safe. You can wake up now."
Luffy's nose twitches.
And then, all at once, he's awake.
"Ace!" Luffy yelps, sitting bolt upright (and only her quick reflexes have her jerking back to avoid what would have been a very painful headbutt to the nose), sending Ran tumbling with an indignant, sleepy squeak. "Sabo! Val! What's-" he trails off, blinking at Valentine's face. "What's…"
He blinks at her.
"You're alive!" he shrieks, then flings himself at her, all limbs like an octopus.
"Luffy- ow," she hisses, tenderness faded from her voice like morning dew at the sight of the sun, and the sensation of him pressing down on her aches and bruises isn't a pleasant one.
But he pulls back just as quick (leaving her oddly bereft), rockets to his feet, and gives Ace the same treatment.
Ace is so out of sorts that he lets Luffy hug him, and seconds later, his arms are coming up to wrap around the smaller boy, fierce and desperate. And for a moment, all that fills the air is that relief - Ace and Valentine completely, utterly on the same page - and the familiar sound of Luffy's chatter, happiness even brighter at Ace hugging him back, the voice that's undeniably Luffy ringing through the cold, Gray Terminal air.
And then-
Luffy's frowning, peering around anxiously, and her heart sinks.
"Where's Sabo?"
Ace carries Luffy back to Dadan's.
Half because he won his and Valentine's nonverbal argument (held entirely through microexpressions and pointed eye-contact) and half because she thinks he needs it more than her. The reassuring weight of Luffy on your back is not something to be underestimated, but this time, she's not entirely sure she deserves it. So.
Sabo's absence weighs heavy on them. Luffy's immediate resistance to the thought that Sabo might be gone for good (no, Sabo will come back, I know it!) hasn't subsided, exactly, but it's calmed into a somewhat sullen tenacity in the face of Ace's mulish, overbearing stubbornness. Ran's a stag beetle on Luffy's shoulder, and Ace (like her) is probably so glad to see her moving and reacting that he doesn't even put up much of a fuss, just says it is what it is, Luffy, countenance tired, eyes leagues more exhausted than he's letting on.
Valentine doesn't say anything as they trace their way through their well-worn forest paths, trudging back to Dadan's (and more importantly, Magra, Dadan's medic) at the fastest pace their damaged selves can muster. What's left for her to say?
The next bit of everything is something of a blur.
Valentine expects to break down as soon as they get somewhere safe. But she doesn't. She can't cry, can't even summon the tears now, eyes dry and mind hazy. She can hardly pay attention as the bandits fuss over them (concern fostered over the year like a tiny sprout, grown bright and green), as they wash up and Magra bandages their wounds, as Ace tells the harsh truth of it, cutting sharp through the maelstrom of people and dæmons around them: Sabo's gone.
They sleep upstairs, where their old bedroom has been turned into a storeroom and the bandits shove boxes of patterned pants and polearms out of the way to clear a space. She's so- so tired, Luffy curled up on her front as she lies on her back (he's still small enough to do this, only seven), and when Ace tries to get as much distance as he can - barely a foot away, back against the boxes, but the meaning is clear - her response is as involuntary as it is strong. "Hell no," she rasps, the acrid taste of vomit long cleaned out of her mouth, replaced with mint, but it's funny, she thinks she can still taste it. "Ace."
Just his name will do. And - as he makes eye-contact with her across the dim foot of floorspace, clean from the blood and the dirt and plastered with white bandages - she thinks that even free of dirt and blood, he doesn't look at all different than how he looked in the Gray Terminal. Bereft.
He grunts noncommittally in response, and it sparks irritation at the fact that she'll have to spell it out after all. "Ace. Get over here."
"Get the crybaby to stop crying, then." His tone is sullen, eyes averted to avoid looking at the still-weeping Luffy on her shirt. Irritation sparks brighter.
"You know I won't," she reminds him, sharply, arms wrapping around Luffy tighter. He hiccups, whimpers and sobs, and of course he's getting snot and drool and saltwater all over her shirt, but Sabo's gone. "Luffy needs some comfort. There's nothing wrong with that."
Nothing wrong with wanting that, she adds, silently, intending the implication to reach further. By the stiffening of his shoulders, Ace understands what she means.
She sees him opening his mouth, brow furrowed but the rest of his face impossible to read in the dark, prepared to argue-
"Please," she hears herself say, and is that really her? Her voice is almost unrecognizable. "Come over here. We need this."
I need this.
There's a pause in which her panic roars over her - what if he leaves, what if he's been tolerating me and this is the point of no return, what if this is when he finally goes - but her tension breaks from her in a great, rushing exhale as Ace scoots closer on his side, closing the distance between her and him on the blanket covered floor.
"Better?" Ace asks, but he sounds tired, weary. His arm comes around to cover Luffy (over her stomach), settling closer until his front is pressed against her side and his face is buried in the free part of her shoulder. It's the closest - most honest - he's ever held onto her, but more importantly, it's the most vulnerable he's ever let her see him, arm gentle around Luffy and exhalations soft against her skin. She can't see his face anymore (so he still has plausible deniability), but seeing as that's only true because he's hiding it against her, well. The set of his shoulders is telling her so much more than he'd ever say aloud.
She doesn't say anything. Just lets Luffy's tears be swallowed up by the dark and the clean fabric of her shirt, tucks her arm around Ace to pull the warm, reassuring weight of someone else shouldering the burden closer.
—
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Notes:
So. Thoughts? :,D
You might've noticed this chapter was shorter than usual. I had more written (trying to push it to that nebulous 10k mark), but the end here was too good of a stopping point. Dragging it on past that felt like was trying to cram too much in.
And wow. Lots of plot in this one, huh? It was hard to write, seeing as it was mostly just one long scene for the whole thing. I really do love character dynamics above all else, and angst is neither my favorite nor my forte, but I feel satisfied with this chapter nonetheless.
Then again, I suppose it's not up to me to decide that. :p
Thank you to all you wonderful commenters. This chapter is dedicated to you, for keeping me going.
(And, if you wanna read up some more on dæmons, I'd highly recommend checking the wiki page! It's super informative.
...I'd link y'all, but is eating my links. :T)