Chapter Twenty Nine: The Long Way Home

"I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts."
― Herman Melville

It was times like these that I questioned where my home truly was. Was it back in Ynis Witrin? Or in Loguetown in that little shop where Mia and I were slowly making a name for ourselves? Was it on the Moby Dick, with Marco and Ace and the rest of the crew?

Or somewhere out there, on the horizon, past where the sun met the sea, be it north, south, east or west; waiting to be found and recognized as a home that would forever hold an open bed to anymore that had searched long enough for it?

It was times like these, when Ace was off doing Second Division Commander tasks, which I wondered what I would do with my free time. My job as seamstress seemed to no longer be a job but just a random hobby that I indulged in whenever someone need a fresh new outfit or some stitches made into some frayed cuts. I did a tolerable job as navigator, but they had more highly skilled pirates for that. I simply let them use my maps, and swap notes, but I definitely couldn't steer a ship. I just lounged around the ship now, chatting briefly with any former Spades that I had made friends with, such as Hank and Ratch, taking in the Grandline sun and what warmth it offered to me.

Warmth, which reminded me of Ace, and light which also happen to remind me of Ace.

"Thinking about me, darling?"

I open one eye, and the only thing that I see is the silhouette of a freckled-face pirate and his stupid orange hat that is covering my sun. I was laid out in an old pair of pants that I had cut the legs off of and hemmed to make a pair of shorts, and a thin flimsy top with no straps that clung to my torso from the tight strings I had tied up. My skin was a healthy peachy glow now, full of the sun's rays and little, tiny sparkles of the salt water spraying up as the ship cut through waves.

"No," I answer simply, but my smile gives me away.

"I see how you're going to be," he jokes, and with this mighty pirate strength lifts me up and tosses me over his shoulder. We laugh, because that is the thing that feels right, and we smiled and held onto each other because we were secretly too scared to ever let go again.

Ace carried me around the ship, going about his commander duties as if he had a sack of potatoes over his shoulder and not me. I would just smile and wave at the crew, laughing along with their snide comments and cat calls. But soon, when his shoulder began to rub a raw spot on my abdomen, I pinched his under-arm and he quickly let me down, but just grabbed my hand instead and pulled me around the ship.

Lorenzo had been evicted from the ship four days ago, taking Siren with him. She had thanked me for my attempt at freeing her, but that's all it was. Just an attempt. A failed one. Jura and the others had been dropped off on an island with a Marine outpost, because I knew they would want to go home to their families more than anything. Who knew how long they had been missing. Vevan hugged me, thanked me for giving her hope in the Callaghan family, and went on her way to call her husband, my brother.

Jura, who pulled me aside, hesitantly reminded me of her warning after her latest vision, the one right before we helped the girls escape from Obadiah, who I believe was sitting in a holding cell on his way to the World Government to go to a trial for his charge of kidnapping over thirty women. I looked forward to that sentencing.

"There is a man on this ship that will take your lover from you. He will do something unspeakable. You must not allow Ace to leave the ship to go after him, no matter the cost, or else he will die. Do you understand, Faye?"

Marco looked at us lazily from his spot near Whitebeard, but just closed his eyes and continued to interact in the conversation that the old man and his crew were having, doing so with lazy eyes and a ghost of a smile.

"Miss Faye! How goes about you today?" asks Jozu.

"I'm latched to a time bomb, how do you think it goes?"

Ace glared at me, but with a large smile and quick kiss on the cheek we were running around the ship, I with one hand tucked in close and the other holding on tight to the brim of Ace's orange hat.

"Faye!" He yells, weaving past the working crew and the crates pushed in his way as I continue to run, finding my way up to the quarter deck where Whitebeard and the others pause, without our notice, to watch as I hide behind Marco, using him as my human shield as Ace comes barreling toward us. However, when he realizes that Marco isn't going to move, nor lift a finger to fight him off for me, Ace skids to a stop, and tumbles over himself, falling at Marco's feet.

The laugh that comes bubbling out of my chest spreads through the rest, and I pile the orange hat on top of my black hair. Crawling down to lay on the wood, it warms my belly, and with Ace I just watch as he grumbles to himself and slowly lifts his head off the deck to look up at me.

"You didn't hurt yourself did you?" I ask teasingly, blowing his hair from his face. His nose scrunches up, wiggling the freckles around on his face.

"No, but I'm about to hurt you." He lunges forward, grabbing at my sides and pinning me down with one arm as the other titillates my stomach. I laugh again, but it's more of a forced laugh from over stimulated nerve points. We were being watched, mostly given away from the other laughs that joined in with my own, and soon Ace's was too as he watched my face scrunch from the tickles.

"You ass," I curse at him, finally getting his hands off of me so to scoot out from under him, glaring at him before lifting up my shirt to watch as the sore spots make the beginnings of bruises. "You were too rough! I'm gonna have bruises now."

It earns him a punch in the arm, but hurts me more than him. His skin is almost bullet proof, almost, but there are still the stray scars that cover his body from our relentless tasks of finding more Devil's Fruit and us just being the outlaws that we are.

"You sure do deserve them, along with some scars of your own!"

He grabs me around the waist and pulls me to his chest, where I find a comfortable position sitting between his legs. Ace jumps into the reanimated conversation that the men drawled into, and the warmth of his skin and the sun on my arms and legs was refreshing. He has stolen his hat back, but just keeps it hanging around his neck, taking in the sun on his own skin, causing more freckles to form.

It was there that we sat for hours, listening to the wind ripple the sails and the waves crash against the ship that carried us far, far away.

OF MEMOIRS AND MAPS

"Miss Callow!"

Faye jumped in her chair, still not use to the alias, looking at the middle aged woman in front of her. She had her blonde hair pulled into a messy bun and her apron was covered in flour and olive oil. In her arms, however, was a rambunctious Anne who wiggled to free herself from the woman.

"Oh, Miss Winterberg, did Anne get into you r bakery again?"

"Yes, and she ate three of my honey biscuits! You still owe me for the other five from last week, also."

"Yes, Miss Winterberg. I promise I will pay you at the end of the week after I finish this last batch of orders."

The middle aged woman huffed and dropped Anne into Faye's lap, who quickly removed the fabric and pins from it, holding her small child still as Miss Winterberg exited the shop and went two stores down to her quaint little bakery.

Faye sighed before glaring at her young daughter. "Anne, what have I told you about stealing food?"

"But it's na' stealin' if you pays for it!"

"Mama can't keep paying for all the honey biscuits you keep eating, sweetie. I told you we could make our own."

"But hers are better!"

"I know sweetie, but mama doesn't make enough Beli to make them just like Miss Winterberg."

"Why can'ts you work fa' her 'stead here? Then we's can eat all the honey's we wanna!"

Faye sighed again and rubbed at her forehead. Anne wiggled out of her lap and went running around the counter Faye at behind. "Anne, sweetie, I can't understand you when you talk like the village boys. Please speak like I taught you."

Anne huffs out in her high-pitched little girl voice, and shakes her head. She crosses her arms over her chest and plops down in the middle of the shop. It had been slower than Faye had wished since the washer on the other side of town opened. They offered much lower prices, but Faye couldn't afford to lower the cost of her services and had to depend on loyalty and the kind heart of someone wanting to help a single mother.

"Nah uh! This isa how I ta'k now!"

"Anne," Faye said, warning in her voice, but the little girl continued to object, and Faye couldn't deal with the rude mouth on her child. "That's it, young lady, you're going in the corner."

Faye spent the next five minutes or so, chasing her daughter around the small shop until she was able to grab the feisty girl by the waist and haul her into the corner of the room near the large pot that she washed clothes in.

"Now, you're going to sit here and think about what you've done wrong. Mama has three more loads to wash, and after I have them hung up, we'll go home, okay?"

Anne refuses to look at her mother, and just stares at the corner where two walls meet. Faye purses her lips and almost goes as far to spank her child, but doesn't find the strength for it.

The two stood in silence, Faye's hands drying and cracking from the soaps she uses while Anne just stubbornly stands with knees locked and feet slowly falling asleep. Faye lets her eyes wander over to her daughter every few minutes, worried for her, but too stubborn to say anything to Anne until Faye calls her, ready to head for home.

OF MEMOIRS AND MAPS

"You're such a baby, Ace. Man up and take it like a pirate!" I tease the freckled-face fire tamer, watching as he bites down into a leather belt and glares at me. There are tears in his eyes, like there have been for the last two hours, and I know he's spouting out every curse known to man behind those clenched teeth. Marco stands behind him, watching the man as he etches the dark purple ink into Ace's back, using black and white to accent the two main aesthetics of the tattoo.

"I wasn't expecting it to be so... big, eh."

I laugh at my uncle and keep my seat in front of Ace, but I take his clenched hands in mine and he does his best not to crush the bones in my knuckles as he grips them.

"Stop being so tense. He's hitting muscle and that's why it hurts so much. If you relax the muscle won't be so tight and he'll just be hitting fat."

I can tell he's trying to relax, but there isn't much he can really do with the thick needle going in and out of his skin, filling the top layers of his skin with ink. I knew the feeling, fondly remembering my own chance at the chair and the feeling of the buzz vibrating against my shoulder blade, but Ace's was much, much bigger than my little fairy wing that had, thankfully, healed almost perfectly, thanks to Pops' nurses.

"Easy for you to say," he grits out from between his teeth, resting his sweaty forehead against his arms that were folded across the top of the chair.

"It would probably help if you stopped flexing too, dumby. Your muscles are connected. Here."

I motion for the guy to pause for just a minute so I can pull a chair up in front of Ace's. He watches me with half-lidded eyes as I unfold his arms and pull my chair close enough to let his hands rest in my lap. His shoulders relax almost instantly and I can see the skin-poker sigh in relief as, I'm guessing, his back muscles also relax. "See, was that so hard, ya big baby?" I tease him again as the tattooist starts one more time and Ace only gives a small wince. His hands tighten around mine, but relax after a few moments.

"Shut it," he grumbles, resting his head against the small cushion on the chair and closes his eyes. Letting go of one of his hands, I run my fingers through his black hair, and up and down the back of his neck, looking over his shoulder as I watched the artist work, trying to finish filling in one of the cross bones. The skull and the white crescent moon mustache had long been finished, and now two and a half of the cross bones were fully filled in. The one he was currently working on and one more were left. After he picked up the needle to fill it with more ink, I could see little orange flames flicker over Ace's skin, healing the tattoo the instant it was done. At least the only pain he had to deal with was this one.

My fingers went from his hair and neck to his shoulder, and then down to his relaxed bicep to trace over the four letters he had on his left arm, flicking my finger nail with the edges of the letters as if my skin was a paint brush decorating him with the letters for the first time.

Those two hours blended into three hours, and then a fourth was upon us when the artist stopped his needle for the last time and looked upon the piece he had just completed.

"Well, there you go. I'm guessing I don't have to go over after care since you've already healed, damn devil fruit users..." the man grumbled the last part of his sentence, causing Marco and me to chuckle, but Ace was still half-asleep with his head lulled to the side and little beads of sweat crawling down his freckled nose.

"He says thank you," I say, shaking the artist's hand once he pulls off his little rubber gloves and then bend down to pull Ace's arm over my shoulders and pull him off. He balances on his feet but slowly drags himself out of the shop. Marco pays the man and thanks him for his services, yet again. He is the trusted artist for the Whitebeard pirates. He checks on Marco's own chest piece, making sure no scratches have made the ink fade, but as a phoenix that can never die, Marco just waves off the man's worry and says goodbye.

"Asshole, you better wake up," I grumble, passing through the small crowds of people on the small island surrounded by Whitebeard's many ships. The residents greeted us all quite happily, glad that they were protected by Whitebeard's Jolly Roger from the countless other pirates and Marines that roamed the seas.

The Moby Dick was docked close by, and the deck was filled with the crew laughing with old and new friends, as well as others doing their afternoon duties of making sure the cargo was inventoried and treasure was accounted for. Each crew member got their own fair share of the treasure, those who fought for it themselves got a majority of it while those who had not only got a small amount. Whitebeard sat in his large cushioned chair, surrounded by his nurses and, once again, hooked up to the many tubes they had connected to his war-torn body.

I deposited Ace on his usual crate that he used as a chair when on deck, and he slowly began to wake up. I rolled my eyes at him and went to walk away so to grab my bag and book, wanting to document the new island, but Ace grabbed my hand and pulled me between his legs. His warm head rested against the small of my back and his hot skin was making me sweat even more than I already was from the beating sun taking no mercy on us.

Ace could handle the heat, but between him and the sun, I was going to be a piece of toast before much longer.

"Ace, it's too hot for you to hang off of me like that," I tell him, turning slowly so that his head is against my stomach instead of my sweaty back. It had become so hot, in fact, that I had taken to putting on bandeau like top instead of my usual sleeved one, and left my jacket in the closet of our quarters. His hands let go of my wrists and he wraps his arms around my waist like he usually does in the middle of the night, using my stomach as his pillow. Because of the spell put on me when under Obadiah's hold, my large scar was gone from sight, but could still be felt as if it had never left.

"It's July thirty-first," he tells me, and I tilt my head, pulling his messy black hair up into a little pony tail and playing for the soft ends of it.

"My birthday is in about three months," I mumble, having forgotten that my birthday wasn't as far as I remembered it had been.

Ace looks up at me, a blank expression. His eyes are dull, not the usually light brown I'm use to looking at me.

"It's been twenty-two years..." He mumbles, his eyes down casted from my face to the skin above my navel.

"Twenty-two years?" I ask him, but he doesn't answer, just let's his thumbs softly brush over my skin. His eyes close, and for some reason, the whole world gets strangely quiet.

"Faye," he says, and it's the first time in a long time that I've heard him say my name. Usually it's a little nickname or a 'hey you', because it's just something that we quietly agreed on. We didn't like pet names, we didn't like cute-sy couple stuff that girls read about in novels because we weren't the usual couple. There was no label to brand us with. We were a couple of outlaws who just happened to like each other. A lot.

"Yeah?"

He doesn't look me in the eye like he usually does, but I know this is a serious topic from the way he carefully picks out the words he wants to use.

"Do you think I..."

He pauses, pressing his lips back together, and his face scrunches as he looks for the words again. However, this time, he looks up at me, finally, and finished the question.

"Do you think it's good that I was born?"

The flashing memory of Ace's parents comes back, along with the realization that it's been twenty-two years since Roger's death. It had been twenty two years since Rouge and Roger found themselves with a baby on their hands.

Twenty-two years was a long time.

"Of course, you idiot," I say bluntly, and lean down to kiss him briefly. "If it wasn't for you I'd probably be sitting back in Loguetown bored out of my mind as Mia flirted with all my customers."

I laugh lightly at my own short-joke but Ace just keeps looking at me, seeing through the facade I had put on, because the thought of Mia still hurts and he can tell when my voice cracks just saying her name. I barely notice that I do it.

"I love you," he says, which is a real feat and I just smile, pecking his lips again, before dragging his hands off of me and slipping away to escape into the shade of the lower deck, going to the quarters that Ace has claimed as his own after become the Second Division Commander. Inside was the large bed that we shared every night, along with his desk that I had taken over whenever drawing out sketches for new designs or just looking over maps.

His bright orange hat was sitting on the edge where he had left it the night before. As soon as we had awoken up and fed Ace enough food that would have supplied the whole Marine army for at least a month, we were whisked off to town for Ace to go under Johan's needle. Not long after I had walked into our room, Ace was dragging himself in and went straight to the bed where he fell on top, most of his legs still hanging off, too tired to move another farther than to open his eyes and watch me trying to scrub soot off his hat with a steel-wire brush. I was getting more orange dye off than anything else.

"Hey, isn't that guy's birthday coming up? Eh, what's his name. Really fat, dark hair, missing teeth?"

"You mean Teach?"

"Yeah, yeah, him. He seems like a nice guy. He knows how to party. Why don't we throw a little celebration for him on the ship tonight?"

"How in the world do you know Teach's birthday?"

I laugh, shaking my head at that being the one question he asks.

"I was doing some filing for Pops' nurses and I got bored so I started reading the crews' files and there's some interesting stuff in there. Did you know that Jozu has an extra toe on his left foot? Apparently it got infected one day and-"

I'm too distracted by my trivia that I don't notice Ace picking himself up off the bed and coming over to silence my ramblings. He sits in the little cushioned chair behind his desk and pulls me into his lap. I just rest my back against his chest and continue scrubbing at the soot on his hat. My random facts of the crew members then continue.

"I mean, Marco's receding hairline is already kind of obvious but I think he lies about it and tells everyone that he shaves it. But then that guy, uh, Thomma? Yeah, Thomma, he's got three testicles, which I thought was weird and there was a picture and the third one is, like, huge compared to the others and-"

"Okay, okay! That's enough about other guy's balls," Ace quickly sits up and pushes me out of his lap so he can stand up. I look at him with a slightly confused expression but then grin when I see his face a slight shade of pink.

"I'm sorry, I just thought it was weird."

I kiss his cheek, but when I pull my lips away he tilts his head just enough to kiss me and it's such a fabulous kiss that I don't let him pull back after a few moments. I place his hat back on the desk and let my hands slide up his bare arms to his shoulders and then around to play with the little hairs on the back of his neck. I feel his gooseflesh and then his arms wrap around my waist, pulling me closely to him.

Every kiss gets better and better with the passing days.

Finally, when I know my lips are going to be red and my cheeks flushed pink, I pull away, much to his apparent dismay. "So is that a yes to the party?"

Ace just laughs and shakes his head, only answering with a kiss on the cheek. "I'll ask Pops and see what he says."

"Yep, that's a yes."

"Alright, little miss cheeky, don't get too confident."

Ace pulls at my cheek, breaking my smirk, and I pull at his own cheek, only getting teeth in return when he makes me let go.

"Did you just bite me?" The look on my face made him laugh.

"Oh, c'mon, Faye, you enjoyed it the other night." The slight sing-song tune in his voice makes me blush again and I shove him away, grabbing his hat and the scrub brush. Ace just stands there, hands on hips, laughing as I plop down onto the corner of the bed and just pout, hoping the pink on my face will disappear like I'm hoping these soot stains will.

"It's just so easy to get under your skin, scallywag," Ace teases me, sitting beside me and wrapping his arm around my waist as he watches me scrub and scrub.

"And I'm about to get under your skin with my bare hands if you don't take your hands off me."

Ace laughs again, but pulls his arm away. Suddenly, however, a bright shiny red apple appears in his hand in front of my face. I don't even waste a second before dropping Ace's hat and grabbing at the fruit, biting into it to savor the juicy flavor.

"I thought they didn't grow on this side of the Grandline?" I question Ace, mouth full of apple and the juice dripping off my chin. I wipe it away with the side of my hand but now more of my skin is going to be sticky. Ace rolls his eyes and leans over to take his own bite from the sweet treat for a hot day.

"They don't, but Thatch and Izo found a vendor who grows them in West Blue and brings them over certain times during the year. We've got a whole sack of them hidden in the pantry. I knew you'd like to have them, since they're you're favorite."

"No, you're my favorite for getting them for me." I kiss him with a mouth full of apple, and grin when he rubs off the juice that had been on my chin, now on his.

"Ha, I'm going to have to remember that one next time you hit me."

I glare at him, ready to hit him for saying such a thing, but refrain. "Go ask Pops about the party, or I am going to hit you."

"I'm going, I'm going!" Ace jumps up when I show my balled fist, and hurries out of our quarters, leaving the door open and me on the bed with a half-eaten apple on its way to my mouth to be devoured more.

As I'm munching on the crunchy fruit, it is then that I realize the answer to my own vague question. This was my home. Right here, on this bed in this little room on this big sea in this vast, endless sea that stretched on farther than the eye could ever hope to see. This was my home, and I shared it with so many fantastic people. I shared it with Whitebeard, and Marco, and Ace.

This was my home, right here. I didn't have to keep searching for it.

I took one last bite of my apple and threw it out the small porthole that hung over the head of our bed, listening for the plop as it would hit the water but the sound was drowned out by laughter and waves and sudden cannon fire that rocked the ship, sending our home straight into a war zone.

The ship rocked and there was yelling, muffled yells and orders and I could hear the creak of the wood as some broke off and fell into the harbor. I felt sick to my stomach, and vile came bubbling up my throat like hot acid.

GASP. Another update. Whoo. I specifically centered this around Faye and Ace's relationship because for how much I write that they're in love, there is barely any evidence of it in earlier chapters. Which is why I'm editing a lot of them. A few of the very first chapters have already been edited, but it's not all too much. If you want to go back and reread the whole story, be my guest!

And, omg, this is the 30th chapter! (and also the longest of the chapters for this story.)

I've been writing this story since December of 2009, half way through my freshman year of high school. I just completed my freshman year of college. My writing style has changed drastically over the last four and a half years. So please, be patient with me if you do reread. I'm trying to fix things. The Faye I had originally envisioned has morphed into this Faye, and it's taken me almost five years to do so. I still have a good twenty more chapters planned out, but I may go beyond my originally estimated total of fifty. Which is good for yall, cause more story! Whoo!

Keep a look out for new chapters. Expect them every week/two weeks, and I'm going to try and edit at least half of the chapters before I update again.

Stay golden, you yellow-bellied landlubbers! (which means review. Cuz reviews are awesome.)

xx. Bri.