There's no need to scroll down for every single foreign word, as it's mostly understandable in context. For those who still are curious, I did add translations in the end AN.

2.

-Nurtured-

My perception of time was hazy at best.

The only certainty in this strange place was the warm bundle next to me, so I scuttled closer and slept.

Life as a baby was aggravating, to say the least: I couldn't see; couldn't eat by myself; couldn't walk (and that meant nappies—the reusable kind, which would be fine if only whoever was changing them knew how to wash them properly. The incessant can'ts and don'ts piled up to an unbearable weight that slowly squashed my patience. Add that to the fact everything was too loud, too blurry, too frustrating... they got a very unhappy baby.

Things eventually improved when I got the hang on rolling around. My muscles were finally strong enough for two or three push-ups… 'Wait a minute. Push-ups are supposed to make you stronger, right? And strength means walking. Walking means no nappies... ooh yeah.'

One, two, three, four, five, six, CRAMP!

...thus, I spent the rest of the week moaning in distress, clutching my poor neck. Little bro noticed something was wrong and we performed a most magnificent duet of doom. Ah, screaming my lungs out was therapeutic.

I'm so blaming my baby brain for that.

I didn't really notice it at first (probably due to a still developing hearing), but as months went by, it got steadily harder to ignore: the adults spoke gibberish. The only words I could pick out from the strange sounds were Ace and Ann.

As far as names went, those weren't bad. Unless...

I do hope I'm 'Ann'.

For some reason, I always knew what Ace wanted. I suspect he could do the same. 'Maybe it is a twin thing?' (Nope, that was just constant exposure.)

The language was still a mystery, but I needed to communicate–okay, wanted to complain (Same thing, right? Right.) to someone who, instead of nodding indulgently, could actually understand. So, I kicked common sense out of the window (common sense? What's that?) and started training my pronunciation. A frustratingly hard feat for the untrained muscles of a baby's tongue.

So I did it. In my native language–er, language from the previous life.

Pre-native tongue?

Little Ace didn't like being excluded, so he copied whatever I did. Months went by and the two of us could speak Portuguese fluently.

The adults were understandably perplexed.

We could walk by ourselves and even sprint for a few seconds.

We could doodle, sing nursery rhymes (that no one else could understand), count and talk to each other. We could do a lot of things we shouldn't, but any form of communication with adults was completely ignored.

Sometimes, I'd catch worried expressions focused on us. Whenever that happened, Ace would frown uneasily, so I tried my best to distract him.

One day, our caretakers got fed up with the situation.

This is how Rune, a petite young woman started tutoring us (well, compared to grandfather, most people were small). She'd point to objects and say their names, and every time we repeated after her, she'd pat our heads and give us an eye-crinkling smile. Soon, Ace grew irritated with the woman's condescending attitude and turned to me, 'Será que ela acha que nós somos cachorros?'

Dogs, huh?

I grinned at him and barked. He grinned back and we started running in circles. Yipping, barking, growling and rolling around soon evolved to a tickling war. The poor woman tried to separate us and failed miserably. I stopped for a moment, and, as if on cue, we both charged straight at her.

A startled cry jolted us into pausing. She was crouched on the floor, round face contorted in a wide-eyed panic and shaky arms raised in an attempt at defending from some invisible assailant.

The following silence, despite her heavy breathing, was thicker than Ace's skull and mine combined.

I hadn't noticed at first, but the adults were always absent whenever our 'fessora' (that was Ace's butchering of the word 'professora') visited. The one time she saw Gramps in his uniform, she'd flinched and looked away.

"Rune," she said, waving a hand in her direction. Then her right hand touched my shoulder, "Ann." "Ace," she pointed at brother.

"Rum," we looked at her, "Ann and Ace."

The young woman surprised us by closing her hazel eyes and throwing her dark brown hair back, laughing in a slightly unhinged way. She smirked, as if to say, "Close enough."

From that day on, we reached an understanding and started dedicated ourselves to studying... but mostly goofing around and driving the adults nuts.

That's how I found out our full names. And with that, where I had been reborn.

If the events from One Piece were true (and considering what happened so far), that means Ace will die.

"Then again, I shouldn't exist... And look where I am now."

"B com a vira ba."

I nodded and asked, "Então, b com e vira...?"

"Be!" Ace exclaimed, tracing the letters on our practice notebook. Before I could continue, he proudly added, "B mais a vira ba. A, e, i, o, u. Ba, be, bi, bo, bu!"

"Isso mesmo!" I praised him, before pulling the pencil from his hand and writing some words.

"So, what are you doing?" A soft voice startled us from the writing lessons.

"Ah, Miss Rune! We are doing word-letters things!" Ace happily proclaimed before I could stop him.

"Word letter things? You mean writing?" Rune frowned. "I don't recognize these letters, though. What are them?"

Seeing no point in hiding, I handed her our notebook. She read through Ace's blocky roman script and my neat cursive with a strange glint in her eyes, right hand absently brushing her stomach. I got the unsettling impression she actually understood them. When our teacher flipped to a blank page, she blinked and said, "These are very beautiful. Where did you learn them, Ann?"

Ace, who had been scribbling on a scrapped page, tilted his head. "What do you mean? Ann's always knew that."

Miss Rune was momentarily taken aback, but recovered quickly. "I see. Well, you are a very clever girl, aren't you? The both of you are very special kids." She gently combed her fingers through our hairs. "Don't change, okay?"

I could swear her smile was a bit sad, but she couldn't possibly know of our parentage, right?

We ate quietly that night, not sure what that strange conversation was about.

Rune didn't come back on the next day. As days turned into months, we resigned ourselves to the fact she wasn't coming back.

Dadan told us she'd eloped; Ace's skeptical look went unnoticed by most.

Miss Rune's house was coated in a thick layer of dust and cobwebs. To tell the truth, house was an overstatement–it was a small one-room cabin lined with shelves and a packed dirt path that led to a small toilet on the outside.

I examined the piles of books and other possessions she had left behind with interest, trying to decipher the mysterious symbols on the covers. It then occurred to me we still hadn't learned how to read in Common, the official language of the World Government.

And it really irked me-knowledge was power, after all. So, when I returned home, I grabbed a book, went to gramps and asked, "Teach me?"

Needless to say, brother sat down by my side with a determined expression.

I didn't know whether to be proud or depressed that Ace could keep up with my academic pursuits. 'Maybe this is all I have to do to keep him alive?'

In the end, I settled for a combination of both.

Months later, after we had finally gotten over her sudden departure, the two of us paid a visit to her old cabin again. That's how I found it, tucked under a battered pillow. 'Conquering The New World', read the cover of the book, in a startlingly familiar language. On the first page, there was a hastily scrawled message, in English:

I have three things to tell you: first, you're not alone; second, I'm really sorry for leaving without warning; third, we'll meet again. –Love, Rune. PS: I leave my cabin and everything inside it to you.

…what exactly did she mean by 'not alone'?

Some questions were answered by the book; others, not really. But mostly, each answer only generated a dozen more questions.

I decided not to dwell much on them.

After cleaning everything and sorting the books, the shelves were covered with bed sheets to protect them from the dust.

Out of sight, out of mind... and thus, as time went on, I simply forgot that had ever happened.

Leaf on the river,

Its tiny ripples, unseen…

Keep getting bigger.

It would be years before I even remembered. By then...

Nurtured end_

Monozygotic twins of different genders could happen in theory, although the only way Ann would turn out healthy would be if Ace was a non-Klinefelter XXY and her genes mutated to XX. So, it's, like, a lot more feasible than IRL devil fruits. And Rouge's pregnancy was really really really irregular in the first place, so what's one more impossibility? (flails)

Did I get all the Biology terms right...?

Trivia: Bilingual raised children often mix languages as they speak. It's kind of cute. Especially when they mesh words together.
I didn't do that to Ace's speech because it would be annoying. Totally not lazy here. *blatant lie*

In later chapters, it'll be implied they aren't talking in Common (I didn't make them learn a language just for the sake of it), but I won't write more Portuguese parts and translate at the end, since it could disrupt the flow (even more than my chopped writing). orz

Translations:

'Será que ela acha que nós somos cachorros?'
Does she think we're dogs?

"B com a vira ba."
b and a read /ba/ (do English speakers learn like that too? I didn't find an English wikipedia entry, but here's the French equivalent:
wiki/b.a.-ba)

"Então, b com e vira...?"
So, b and e read...?

"B mais a vira ba. A, e, i, o, u. Ba, be, bi, bo, bu!"
(that's self-explanatory)

"Isso mesmo!"
That's right!