Identity

As he hung out the washing on the rigging Ace did his best to eavesdrop on what Fox was doing. It was nowhere near as easy as it sounded: it felt like mentally sidling up to the connection and partly sliding through it, while still balancing enough of himself on the his own side not to fall through completely. Or fall over. Or stop hanging up the clothes. So yeah, not easy. He couldn't even ask Zoro for help because the asura had overdone it rescuing Fox from falling down the stairs and was, so far as Ace could tell, having trouble even walking in a straight line.

He relaxed and backed off a bit when the grief faded into disbelief and then joy before vanishing completely; Fox had probably shut the connection. Reassured that his little brother was going to be okay, Ace went back to hanging out the laundry properly. Unfortunately mindless, menial tasks where what helped him to think and there were a lot of things on his mind. Most importantly, who was he now?

He knew from Garp that 'Ace' had been what his father had wanted him to be called, which was a big part of why he'd taken his mother's surname on top of how she'd saved his life and died for him. So if Roger wasn't even his father by blood anymore, did he have any right to call himself that? Absently he rubbed the spot on his upper arm where his 'ASCE' tattoo had been; Fox had peeled it off a week ago before his growth spurt could deform it any further. She'd also removed all that remained of the crossed bones on his back as they were distorting and stretching. He felt very naked without the tattoos. This morning he had been forced to take his beads off as well as they were more like a choker than a necklace and when he'd looked in the mirror he'd seen a stranger looking back. A vaguely familiar stranger, but still a stranger. He'd piled the beads on top of his hat and the knife one of his big sister's apprentices had brought by –apparently she'd stopped by Impel Down and stolen his effects while the Marines weren't paying attention– and tried not to look at them.

"Ace?"

Ace looked down and realised he'd finished hanging up the washing. "What is it Marco?"

"Are you alright, yoi?" It was weird to have Marco looking up at him. The flame Logia sat down heavily and fisted his hands in his hair.

"Who am I Marco?"

"You're our Ace, our brother and a Whitebeard Pirate, yoi," Marco said promptly.

"Am I?" Ace asked morosely. "Ace was what my former father wanted me to be called and I don't share any blood with him at all now. I don't have Pops' mark on my back anymore either."

"You're still our brother," Marco said firmly, "no matter what you end up calling yourself. You're Pops' blood now and he would be delighted to know how things turned out, yoi."

"I'm still Luffy's brother too," Ace reminded himself out loud. "I'm also Fox'… well whatever I am to her. Oh, and Zoro, too. That's still so weird to try and articulate. Spitfire's not going to let me get away either, or any of the others."

"Yes, tell me about your big sisters," Marco said teasingly, "the ones you never thought to mention, yoi."

Marco had met Spitfire before; she'd boarded the Moby Dick once, shortly after he'd joined, and demanded to know where they'd hidden her baby brother. Whitebeard had been greatly amused. Ace had been less so, but he's secretly loved the way she'd asked him all those concerned questions and then threatened Pops with grievous bodily harm if he didn't look after her little brother properly. He'd never been the younger brother before and it had been embarrassing but still nice. That Spitfire still kinda reminded him of an older, smarter female version of Luffy was a bit strange, but it made her easy to understand. Then she'd introduced the Whitebeard Pirates to Runt, which had inspired a stunned moment of 'Oh-My-God-It's-Too-Big!' and casually mentioned she'd been fully prepared to sink the Moby Dick if it turned out they'd been keeping Ace prisoner. Whitebeard had found her utter confidence in herself amusing, but Ace had noticed that Marco had been more than just a bit wary at being threatened by a massive mermaid who commanded a Sea King as large as a good-sized island. He'd been bombarded with questions afterwards, but he'd snarled or thrown fire at most of the askers and all Thatch had got out of him was, "She's my half-sister, okay? I only met her recently" which had been deemed answer enough for the Forth Division Commander to take action and get the questioners to back off.

"I don't talk about then because they've got families, Marco," he grumbled quietly. "Families and kids; little kids some of them." Ace was paranoid about keeping his nieces and nephews safe despite never having met most of them. He'd had a shitty upbringing really, though he was grateful to Dadan for what she'd done for him, and he never wanted any of his relatives to go through that.

"You've got nieces and nephews, yoi?" Marco asked, looking rather surprised.

"I don't know if Spitfire's got kids –she's never mentioned any– but Ama's got two girls and Seishelle's got a toddler," Ace admitted quietly, making sure there was nobody else within hearing.

"Seishelle? Crown Princess Seishelle on Fishman, yoi?" Marco said, raising a startled eyebrow. "Well I understand why you never said anything; potential for all kinds of nastiness there."

Oh yes. A daughter of the Pirate King eventually becoming queen of an actual island by marrying into the succession? The World Government would have kittens.

"Not to mention my two fully human siblings, neither of whom has any greater ambition than running a good bar or raising a large family," Ace went on angrily, wisps of greenish fire dancing over his hands. "The Government would destroy them for no better reason than their mothers spent the night with the wrong pirate and got left a souvenir. Bastard Marines."

"Hey, calm down," Marco said, "Don't set the ship on fire, yoi."

Ace looked down and saw his legs were starting to scorch the deck. "Oops," he said guiltily, bringing the fire under control again. He couldn't really extinguish it anymore, just crush it down inside so it didn't dance over his skin. Sometimes he suspected that since being brought back his body thought it was fire that had somehow become a human being rather than the other way around.

"That's another thing," he went on gloomily. "I feel like I've got a whole different Devil Fruit now; it's nothing like it used to be. Hell, I don't think anybody would believe them if I told them I was Ace. I'm eighteen inches taller than I was at Marineford, my hair's gone blue, my eyes have changed, my body's changing shape and my face isn't quite the same either! I don't even have my tattoos! Most of my brothers still think I'm dead and if they saw me now they'd think I was part of Shanks' crew."

Marco studied him more closely. "You do seem to be getting Pops' nose," he agreed. "And you're right; a lot of them won't recognise you. Certainly none of the allies; the people who know you better will though, given time, yoi."

Ace hung his head. "I'm not sure I even want to give them time, Marco," he whispered. "I, I don't feel the same and I know I'm not going to be able to fight for months while I get used to the changes and get back in shape. I think Portgas D. Ace is going to have to stay dead."

"What, yoi?" Marco sounded more dangerous than surprised.

"Hear me out, okay? I look different, I sound different, I move differently and even my Devil Fruit reacts differently. I'm different down to my bones, Marco! My damn blood type changed! I'm not who I was and I want, no I need time to find out who I am now. Other than Pops' kid and Luffy's brother." He ran a hand over his face. "Please Marco? Let me give who I was a proper funeral. I don't want to come back and have everyone going on about me being the son of the Pirate King when I'm really, really not."

"So long as you promise to actually come back, yoi," Marco said evenly.

"Like I'd abandon my family," Ace grumbled, glaring at him. He was going to say something else when an odd sense of trepidation danced across his connection to Fox. The flame Logia's eyes went blank as he focussed inwards, seeking what had disconcerted her. She was with Luffy, who had just…

He blinked. Did Fox not like doctors? He hadn't known that. No, it wasn't dislike: she was wary of doctors, like a person who's been savaged by a dog might be wary of all dogs thereafter. Fox knew that doctors could inflict terrible pain and suffering just as easily as they could offer relief and healing.

"You in there, yoi?"

Ace surfaced, frowning. "Yeah. I just found out something I wasn't expecting, that's all."

"Is Fox alright, yoi?" Marco asked.

"Yeah, she's fine; I just found out why she's been distracting us every time we try to bring up the subject of getting a doctor to examine her properly." Ace glanced over to meet his brother's eyes. "Turns out she's had some bad experiences; she's reacting like being a doctor is similar to being an assassin and instinctively treats them the same. She's meeting a doctor now and she's doing that incredibly strange to watch thing where she respects them, doesn't really want to be in arms' reach –but will because that would be showing weakness– and messes with their head a bit just to see if they can catch her doing it, in between being actually friendly and helpful. Kinda like her version of me beating someone bloody in a fight to work out where I stand with them."

Marco frowned. "I know what you mean about the messing with heads for the hell of it; I didn't realise it was to do with her recognising things in the people she did it to. I thought she was just being difficult, yoi."

"Sometimes she is," Ace agreed, "like sometimes I'm just spoiling for a fight. But when you see something in someone that could be a threat, you want to know where you stand."

"But she's letting this doctor look at her, yoi?" Marco asked.

"Yep; you know Fox is weird about orders sometimes?" It was a little scary to watch when Fox got like that. When she was in that kind of mood you had to be really careful what you said, because she would do it. Taboo words never to be spoken in her hearing were "you wouldn't dare!" or phrases to that effect. Because she would, and generally did just to prove you wrong.

"Yes, yoi?" Marco said cautiously.

"It turns out my little brother is one of the people she automatically defers to," Ace said, slightly amused in spite of the seriousness of the situation. "He asked her if the baby was okay, she confessed she hadn't had a check-up and he decided the doctor whose been looking after him should look at her. And she just went with it."

"No complaint? No evasions? No, 'I can sort it out later, you don't need to worry'? Nothing, yoi?" Marco asked incredulously. "Does your brother have any idea how rare that is? Hell, does he understand how much power he's got there?"

"I don't know," Ace admitted. "He did introduce her as 'my assassin' so he might, but I'm not sure he knows what it means to have an assassin. It certainly isn't like having any other kind of crew-mate."

Ace, Marco and the other Division Commanders had gotten a crash course in assassin etiquette –care and feeding of your professional killer– in the first year that Fox had started sticking around more often. The important thing to remember was that assassins, unlike pirates, were supposed to be tools. So they were trained to be instinctively obedient to their masters rather than argue when they didn't like what they were hearing. Fox didn't have a master, but she recognised Jinbe and Marco –particularly Marco– as 'carers', which meant she mostly did as they told her to unless it went against her personal code. This had initially included not even joining in the fun when the crew were messing around unless she had verbal permission. Ace didn't get it, but recognised that it was intrinsic to Fox and let it lie. She'd gotten better over time, but odd things still surfaced from time to time and tripped you up.

"She said Luffy was her captain," Ace articulated slowly, feeling his way through the minefield. "She's put off joining Shanks for years even though he'd love to have her and almost sees her like his own kid. Pops would have loved to have her too but she always said no to him as well. She could have hand-picked her own crew and raised hell. She never did. But then she meets my little brother, lets him drag her into his crew and gets a bounty poster after years of being careful. Then she lets him outright tell people she's his assassin." He swallowed. "You know, I think Luffy really will make it to One Piece. Fox won't let anything stop him short of that now she's got his goal in mind."

Marco stilled. "You're right, that really is scary, yoi." He smiled. "But your brother's a good kid. He'll take care of her and won't take advantage, yoi."

"True." Ace brightened. His little brother was an idiot at times, but he was a good-hearted idiot who loved his crew like family. He wouldn't ever deliberately ask Fox to do anything that might hurt her and if he did by accident the rest of the crew would loudly make sure he recognised his mistake before it got anywhere.

"You gonna be joining your brother then, yoi?"

"I don't think so; I certainly won't any time soon," Ace said absently. "I've got to train first. Get my act together and work out what's changed. Then... well, we'll see."

Ace is having serious identity issues, as expected. Plus a little insight into Fox' attitude.