Chapter 3 (Yup, you guessed it, still mildly AU. Ace's back-story has been changed completely. So has Sabo's. Thanks to those of you who reviewed, it's really helped to motivate me into writing this chapter. Reviews really do help me, even if they're only a sentence or two, or even just one word. Reviews let me know if anyone besides me is actually interested in what I'm saying. There's going to be swearing and violence. The violence gets upped in this chapter, so you have been warned.)
Ace was still. He was in a large, dark room. Well. He assumed it was large. He couldn't see the walls, ceiling, or floor. There were no windows or lamps or candles or anything, so the darkness was absolute. Ace tentatively looked around him, but there was no break in the blackness. He tried to move from where he was standing, but found he couldn't, that something was tightly holding him there. It was tangled all about his limbs, preventing nearly all movement. Ace's brow furrowed in confusion. How did he get here again? He thought deeply for several moments, but truly could not remember what led to his apparent imprisonment here.
The dark unnerved Ace, but what he found the most disturbing was what the room sounded like. The room was completely and utterly silent. Nothing stirred, there weren't even the occasional scritchings of mice or rats from behind the walls. Nothing moved, and no one spoke. Ace shivered. The dark, the silence, the inability to move…Ace was creeped out. All his senses were on high alert for even the slightest bit of sensory input, but there was truly nothing to be sensed. Just this endless void. Ace felt the beginnings of panic setting in, and tried to steady his heightened breathing. I must not fear, fear is the mind-killer. I will face my fear and I will stand against it and it will pass through me. Then there will be nothing left, only I will remain. Ace repeated this in his mind as a kind of mantra, and he began to overcome the sickening dread that had been rising up inside him. But that's when it started.
The screaming.
Ace's entire body grew tense and he felt himself go cold. He still couldn't see anything, but from all around him, seemingly from the darkness itself, came a single, agonized scream.
And it was a voice Ace recognized.
"No…" It came out as a whisper, almost a whimper. He searched the room desperately, trying to find the source of the noise. His eyes still registered nothing but darkness. The scream, if possible, intensified even further.
Ace's search grew more and more desperate, and he himself finally called out.
"SABO! SABO, WHERE ARE YOU?" The screams continued with no break, longer than one would think the human lungs had air capacity for. Ace surged against whatever was holding him, still shouting Sabo's name, hoping for some response. The bonds hardly twitched, and didn't loosen.
Ace struggled desperately, throwing himself against the bonds with all his strength, but to no avail. The screaming continued around him, and now it not only came from all around him, but echoed inside his own head, endless and deafening. Ace's legs gave out beneath him, and he collapsed against his bonds, his head hanging down in front of him. He was crying, desperate to help his agonized brother but unable to do anything. Just like the first time. "Sabo…" The name came out between sobs, but much weaker, no longer a shout but a hoarse whimper. And then something happened that cut Ace deeper than even the screams had.
The silence returned.
Ace's eyes widened. No…nononononononononono don't let this be real…this can't be happening. Don't be dead. You can't be dead.
There was a creaking sound, as if a door with old, unoiled hinges was being opened. A white light shone from in front of Ace, forming the silhouette of an opened door. Ace raised his tear-stained face to look at the now opened blackness. Salvation…? Ace thought. Or just some new form of hell? And then a figure came striding through the doorway, holding something in its left hand. Ace could see both the man and what he was holding clearly, despite the fact that they should have been indistinct due to the harsh backlighting.
He would rather they were indistinct.
The man now striding towards him was none other than Edward Hare. In his right hand he held a blood covered surgical scalpel. His face was pulled into a cruel mockery of a smile, the corners of his mouth pulled beyond human capacity into something completely insane, and pure white, perfectly straight teeth filled the mouth. The ends of the smile were held in this position by a single cross stitch through each corner, and the thread of the one on the right hung loosely between the stitch and the two-and-a-half-foot-long sewing needle impaling Hare's head. Hare's one present eye was wide, the whites showing all around the iris and filled with the same madness, and the other hung gorily from his face by its optic nerves. Clotted, congealed blood was being pumped sluggishly from the socket, and it was staining the teeth on that side a sickening red-brown.
In Hare's left hand he held Sabo's face. He had peeled all the skin off of Sabo's head without damaging any of the features or getting it covered in blood. In the space where the eye was supposed to go, there was just a black hole, as if the sockets were still present, except filled with darkness and stretched farther back through the face than the real eye sockets would have. They also stretched far wider than the human eyelids could have, and formed perfect circles. The face hung slack in Hare's hand, and yet still it felt as though those black sockets were staring at Ace.
And Hare strode closer still. Ace was terrified of this nightmare image before him and now threw himself backwards against the restraints that kept him from fleeing.
And still Hare walked, blood dripping from the raised scalpel, smile as wide as pain stitched into his face. Closer. Closer. Closer.
Step drip.
Step drip.
Step drip.
Hare was less than two yards away from the desperately struggling Ace.
Step drip.
Step drip.
Step drip.
Ace's struggling grew even more frenzied. He realized it was hands holding him down, and this was good. Hands can be killed or cut off.
Step drip.
Step drip.
Step drip.
Hare was less than a yard away now. He raised Sabo's face so it was directly in front of Ace's. It hung loosely for a moment, but then seemed to re-animate and lost its limpness. The mouth shut and it turned itself to face Ace more fully. Ace stared at it in abject horror. The black holes of its eyes seemed to meet Ace's own.
"Good morning." When it spoke, it was not in the voice that Ace remembered Sabo having. It spoke with Ace's voice. And then Ace was being dragged forward, into the never-ending darkness of this thing's eyes. He bucked and strained wildly against the hands, shoving against them with the strength that only true panic can properly fuel. He tried to turn himself so as to kill whoever it was that was holding him there, but still that depth, that absence of anything resembling humanity grew closer, closer, closer, closer-
He threw himself in one last gargantuan effort against the restraining hands and felt them give. He spun around, grasping the hilt of a knife and had the hands pushed up against a wall, with the knife pressed tightly against their throat, about to deal death and then escape this monstrosity-
And met Marco's usually half-lidded blue eyes, now wide with shock and a little bit of fear. The knife, still poised at Marco's throat, ready to kill, had drawn a small trail of blood. Ace took a small step back, dropping the knife. It embedded itself neatly into the floorboards, a couple inches away from the hilt.
Ace ran to the window of his small room, threw it open, and threw up over the side of the ship. Marco was still looking at him like some kind of wounded animal, unpredictable and vicious. After Ace was finished, he wiped his mouth, turned around and collapsed against the wall, sinking down into a sitting position on the floor. He brought his hands up to his face and was surprised to find it wet with tears. He wiped them off, then stared at his hands. They were shaking terribly, and he closed them into fists, traces of his nightmare still replaying themselves in his mind. His breathing was unsteady, and came close to panting. He shut his eyes tightly and tried to chase the memories out of his mind.
"Ace…?" Marco said tentatively. Ace made no response. Marco stepped away from the wall where he had been pushed and began slowly walking towards Ace, regarding him with real concern. After a short silence, save Ace's uneven breathing, he reached the spot where Ace was sitting and slowly lowered himself into a sitting position beside him.
"What was that? A nightmare?" Marco said it gently, pressing his shoulder reassuringly against Ace's own. Ace gave a mirthless laugh, but kept his face lowered.
"My life's been one big fucking nightmare. And yet now my subconscious has found ways to make it even worse." Ace's voice sounded hollow, wrung out.
"Want to talk about it?" Marco was still speaking gently, doing what he could to try to comfort Ace. Ace was silent for a couple moments.
"How's your neck?" Marco raised a hand to inspect the small cut on his neck. It was thin, and not deep at all. So long as Ace hadn't poisoned the blade with those weird plants of his, it should heal over and be gone in a couple days. It sucked that he couldn't just use his devil fruit ability to heal it, but that particular knife was a special one that Ace kept strapped to the underside of his bed. The blade was coated in a very fine powder made of crushed sea-stone, and when it cut a devil fruit user it left enough of a residue to rob them of their powers for the next two days. Damn smart idea, and it had come in handy more than once in combat.
"It's nothing. It looks worse than it is." Marco said it nonchalantly, although he mentally shivered, remembering Ace holding him against that wall. It was pure chance that he hadn't actually killed Marco. If Ace had come to his senses a moment later, Marco's windpipe and jugular vein would have been sliced wide. Marco regarded Ace worriedly. Ace seemed to be recovering from the dream, but every few minutes he would give a violent shudder, as the details came back to haunt him in vivid clarity.
"How did you get in here, anyway? I didn't know you even knew about this place." Ace said it quietly, it was almost a mumble really, but Marco responded readily, trying to get Ace's mind off of whatever it was he had seen.
"Serpent told me where the door mechanism was. She said that you were still awake, though. When I came in you were all twisted up in your blankets, covered in sweat. I saw you struggling and tried to wake you, but you just grew more frenzied. At one point it was a struggle just to hold you down. Then, at the very end, you actually threw me off and after that…well, you woke up." Marco lowered his head further to try to look Ace in the eye. "That must have been one hell of a dream."
Ace sighed, raising his head. He leaned it back against the wall, running his fingers through his hair, eyes still closed. If there was one thing you could count on Marco for, it was his prudence. He had said nothing about Ace's tears, or the fact that he had probably cried out in his sleep. He knew Ace would talk if he truly wanted to share, and if he didn't, it would simply be destructive to force it out of him. Ace looked at Marco. He knew he was probably curious, but there are some things you don't share. Even with the closest of friends. Even with family.
Ace sighed and gave a weak smile. "I'm all right now, Marco. It's probably some absurd hour of the night and you'll be wanting to get some rest before you force yourself to wake up at some disgustingly early hour. I can take it from here. You go get some rest." Marco smiled and stood. As he walked towards the door he stopped and spoke.
"You sure you're alright?"
Ace made the smile wider and nodded. Marco started walking again. He pushed the small wall panel that would open the door and moved to shut it behind him. He paused halfway through the door.
"Are you going to be okay fo-"
"Marco. Go get some sleep. You need it more than anyone else on this damn boat. I'm fine, it was just a dream." Ace's voice took on a mildly scolding tone, and with a chuckle Marco finished shutting the door behind himself. Ace didn't move after Marco had left.
The smile faded from Ace's features. He turned to look up at the moon through his open window. After staring at it, hypnotized, for several moments, he stood. He looked at his bed and snorted. Like there's even a chance in hell I'm going to be getting any more sleep tonight. So instead, Ace shook himself and turned towards his still overly-crowded desk. He sat down in his desk-chair and began sorting through the paperwork heaped untidily on it. Some of it was reports from other 2nd division members, some was designs or sketches of new inventions Ace had come up with, and some was old notes he had taken from various written sources. While digging through there he found a letter he had meant to send weeks earlier before it had mysteriously disappeared, and laughed at himself for his own disorganization.
With a last chuckle he shook his head and began sorting and filing away all the various documents. Nothing like menial work to take your mind off anything at all. Occasionally, however, Ace would falter in his work, his eyes growing distant as he remember the horrific picture his subconscious had painted for him that night. It would be easier to forget… Ace thought,
…If part of it weren't the truth.
(A/N Wow this is long. This, like, doubles the word count of the whole story. Sorry if I bored you all out of your minds ^ ^; Chapter 4 will be out whenever I feel inspired/motivated to write it. Like it? Spend, like, 5 seconds writing me a 2-word review and even that'll help me get it out faster. Longer reviews are better of course, but anything helps! Let me know what you like/dislike! I'm still open to suggestions, but just know I already have the plot mostly planned out. Still, just because I have an idea doesn't mean it's the best one out there, so send me yours and I'll take them into consideration. Like I said, anything helps. Thank you all for being amazing, even if you don't bother to actually read this!)