Chapter 7: Practice Makes Penitent

"And you didn't see what set him off?"

Thatch shook his head. "I tried to ask him about it, but he shut down. I thought I'd get a chance to press him on it after breakfast, you know, get a minute alone, but since he went with Vista…" he let the sentence trail off.

Marco, sitting behind his desk, glasses perched on the end of his nose, sighed and rubbed his temples. "We're missing something big."

"Yeah." Thatch squeezed the back of the chair he was standing behind. He was too keyed up to sit down. Between Ace's behavior that morning, his abrupt departure, and the storm battering the damaged Moby Dick right now, he couldn't find a way to relax. "I just would've expected him to, I don't know, say something about it. Talk to us."

"That's never been his strong suit."

"He got better after he took the mark."

"Did he get better-yoi, or did we just stop asking?"

Thatch chewed on that, brows furrowing. It was true, in a way. The worst of Ace's issues had seemed to just…melt away after he joined the crew. He was brighter, happier, quicker to smile, maybe a little too quick to talk about his little brother—and while his anger was still there, it wasn't nearly as volatile. Thatch, like everyone else, had considered his issues basically solved, and…

"I stopped asking."

The floor tilted. Thatch braced himself against the subsequent lurch as the Moby Dick slid down the back of a massive wave. Marco grabbed a pen before it could roll off his desk. One of the lamps nailed into the wall flickered.

"He's still wearing the sea stone, too," Thatch muttered when the ship stabilized.

"That may be my fault-yoi."

"It's not just that he's being careful about burning the ship again." Thatch frowned at the floor, waiting out a roll of thunder before he continued. "You can see it in his eyes, Marco. He's scared of something. He doesn't trust himself anymore." The wood near his fingers cracked, and Thatch hastily let go. "Sorry. It's just—it's Ace. Ever since he took Pops' mark, he's been the most steadfast guy I know. I don't understand why that changed so quickly."

The ship rocked again. "All we can do is keep an eye—"

Footsteps thundered down the hallway, and then the door to Marco's office banged open. Vista, soaking wet and breathing hard, stood on the threshold. His clothes were singed and slashed, his beloved cape in tatters in a way no lightning strike could justify.

"It's Ace," he said.

Thatch's eyes darted to Marco's before they both focused on Vista.

"Explain," Marco ordered.

Vista laid out the bones of what had happened on Toraburu Island: removing the bracelet, patrolling the streets, confronting the men in the bar, and Ace's devil fruit going out of control once again.

"Did you see what triggered it?" asked Thatch.

"All I saw was the bartender attempt to stab him from behind, but his attack just went straight through."

"Did Ace say anything?"

"No, and he was unconscious from the moment I got the sea stone on him."

Thatch and Marco exchanged another look. In Ace's original episode, his flames had gone out and he'd presumably been unconscious well before he hit the water.

Marco set his glasses down. "Where is Ace now?"

"I had my men take him to the infirmary."

"He's injured?"

"Not visibly. Not more, at least. But I figured it was best to be safe; he might've opened something up again."

Marco's lips thinned. "Good call." He drew a quick breath and stood straight. "I'm glad you made it back in one piece. If you and your men are able, assist with the storm efforts as best you can. We can't afford to take on much more water than we already have. I'll join you shortly once I record what you said about the marines' new tactics in our territory. Thatch, check on Ace before you head up. If he's awake, make sure he stays in the infirmary."

"On it."

They split up. Per Marco's request, Thatch's first stop was the infirmary. Ignoring a rather foreboding surge of déjà vu, he pushed open the door and headed through. "Tasuka? Hello? Any nurses in here?"

No response. Thatch rode the rolling of the ship on his way to Ace's bedside. He was close to the door and the nurse's station by the entrance. Someone had put him there with the foresight to know the storm would be tossing the Moby Dick around; special rigging meant that the bed would, to some extent, tilt to stay level. It was better than what his original private room had offered and more comfortable for the injured than a hammock.

Ace…wasn't looking so hot. His face was washed out, his freckles stark against his skin. Sweat beaded on his brow as he tensed and mumbled incoherent pleas. He'd already twisted up all the sheets under him. The only good thing was that his wounds didn't look to have reopened.

Thatch pursed his lips. Was all of this his doing? Ace had been fine that morning until something put him on edge. Was it a relapse? Could something in the food—

"No!" Ace abruptly cried, making Thatch jump. He thrashed on his bed, features screwed up in fear. "Luffy, move! Luffy!"

Luffy? Ace's kid brother? He shook his head. That didn't matter; Ace was going to hurt himself like this. He reached out to grab Ace's arm, maybe jostle him awake.

Only to end up on the floor, a knee in his gut and a fist inches away from his face. He reacted on reflex, deflecting Ace's punch and catching his other hand.

"Ace!" he grunted, "it's me! Thatch!"

Ace's eyes were dark and full of roiling fury. "Get away from my brother," he snarled.

"Brother?" Thatch jerked his head to one side to avoid Ace's next punch and grabbed that hand too. "Wake up! I'm not whoever you think I am!" He winced as Ace strained against him. He wasn't as physically strong as Ace, and whatever nightmare had his brother in its thrall was giving him strength his injuries shouldn't have allowed.

Right as Thatch's grip was slipping, another wave rocked the ship. Ace lost his balance, giving Thatch the window he needed to shove his knees up against Ace's center and knock him over. Rolling with the motion, Thatch wound up on top. He pinned Ace's wrists and used his legs to lock Ace's down. Ace bucked against the hold like a wild animal, and to Thatch's horror, actually threatened to break free.

There was no time to think of a better way. Apologizing silently, Thatch rammed his forehead into Ace's with a growled, "Wake. UP!"

The floorboards under Ace's head splintered. Ace choked, his struggles ceasing. Thatch, breathing hard, readied himself for another.

"Ow," Ace croaked.

Thatch released him immediately. "Ace? Are you finally awake?"

He had his eyes screwed shut. "That depends. Are you real?"

They weren't going all the way back to this, were they? "I certainly like to think so."

Ace cracked one eye open. "You…headbutted me."

"You weren't listening to much else."

"Oh." His eye closed again. "Sorry."

"It's okay. No harm done." Except to the floorboards, but that wasn't important. And his pompadour, which was. "Come on, let's get you back on the bed."

"Mm."

Trying not to think about just how out of it Ace still was, Thatch got an arm under him and lifted him up. Ace tried to help, but he couldn't manage much. He passed right back out the moment Thatch laid him down.

Better than more nightmares. Probably.

He was fixing his hair and considering his next move when the door to the infirmary opened again. Tasuka walked through, a metal tray in one hand. She stopped upon seeing Thatch. "Did you need something, commander?"

"He was having a nightmare."

Tasuka nodded, setting her tray down on the nurse station counter. "I was preparing a sedative for him to make sure he didn't aggravate his wounds."

"He…definitely just did that. I had to hold him down."

Her eyes widened and she swiftly grabbed the syringe and small bottle off the tray. "Make sure he stays still. Did you see any signs of bleeding?"

Ace didn't stir this time when Thatch held down his arm. He didn't even twitch when Tasuka put the needle in. "No, none. He wasn't himself."

As the drug began to take effect, all of the tension left Ace's body. The deep furrow in his brow smoothed out. Tasuka stood straight, expertly flicking the used needle into a nearby waste container. "I'm sure there's a whole story behind what happened, but for now"—she stumbled as the ship rocked, then scowled as the tray tumbled off the counter—"he needs rest. I'll make sure he gets it. You're probably needed on deck."

"Right." Thatch shot one last concerned look at his brother. "Can you keep visitors out, or get some other nurses to move him back to that other room? We don't need everyone to see him like this."

Nor did they need him attacking anyone who just wanted to wish him well.

Ace didn't wake up so much as claw his way back to consciousness. His eyelids had weights attached to them and his whole body felt like it was being sucked back down towards the abyss. He fought against that pull until it finally released him, at which point he sat up with a gasp.

And then winced, his middle protesting with cramps and lancing pain. He didn't remember it being so sensitive before.

"You went and aggravated your injuries," Tasuka called from his left. He glanced over and saw her writing something down by the door. She had bags under her eyes. "You've been out since yesterday."

Blinking, Ace tried to get a sense of what time it was, but the window was just dark.

Wait. The window. The weird standing desk thing by the door. Tasuka. He was back in that infirmary room. "What time is it?"

"Three in the morning."

"Did you drug me?" It sure felt like it.

"It was the only way to make sure you didn't hurt yourself more." She sighed and tapped a stack of papers into order. "Commander Marco wanted me to let him know when you woke up. I'll be right back. Try not to hurt yourself in the meantime; I've been up too long to have steady hands."

He swallowed. "Right."

With Tasuka gone, he was alone. The disjointed pieces of how he'd gotten here began to fall into place: breakfast, seeing Teach, begging Vista for a way out—

God, he'd been so desperate. How low was he going to go? He'd have to confront Teach eventually.

After that…they'd gone to the island. Vista had removed the bracelet. He checked his wrist; it was back on. Clearly, something had happened, but everything after his conversation with the old man in the bar was a blur.

He closed his eyes and leaned back against the wall with a sigh. Hopefully, Vista hadn't gotten in trouble for letting him tag along. Try as he might, he couldn't remember what happened after the old man left. Something about the bartender, a tattoo. Probably a fight, too, with how things had been going. Was that it?

A knock at the door. "Come in," Ace responded reflexively. It wasn't like this was his room.

Tasuka entered with Marco a step behind.

"Two weeks' bedrest," she said without preamble. Ace gaped. "You can choose to either spend it here under supervision or in your room with three daily checkups and food delivered."

He looked to Marco but found no sympathy. "Why?" he managed.

Tasuka crossed her arms. "Clearly that bracelet needs to stay on, and I didn't realize how much it was impacting your recovery. Since you took the first opportunity to get into trouble, I'm not giving you another chance until I know you can handle it. Marco agrees."

"Marco…?"

"She's right."

His head fell.

"So, which is it?"

"My room," he mumbled. At the very least, it would give him a little privacy to think things over, and—more importantly—Teach couldn't just walk on in.

Marco pulled over a nearby stool. "How are you feeling?"

"Worn out."

"Hm. Do you remember what happened?"

"Not really. Why?" A flicker of fear curled in his stomach. "What did I do?"

Marco held up a hand. "You didn't seriously hurt anyone-yoi. Some marines and the bar got burned. According to Vista, you were stabbed in the back and lost control of your fire again. Fortunately, he was close enough to get that sea stone on you before it went too far."

Ace looked down at himself while relief pooled in his gut. It didn't look like he'd been—

Oh. Devil fruit. He frowned. "But why would that make me lose control again?"

"I'd like to know the answer to that too," Marco said dryly. "Especially since, whatever it was, it had you riled up enough to attack Thatch when he tried to wake you."

Ace froze. "I did what?"

"He claims you weren't actually awake." Marco's expression was inscrutable, but his half-lidded stare didn't waver. "Were you?"

"N-no, Marco, of course not. I wouldn't—" but he had. He bit his lip.

His immediate denial, though, appeared to put Marco at ease. "I didn't think so, but I had to make sure."

Ace's worries, however, weren't so easily assuaged. More details of the bar fight were trickling in, and they weren't good. First he nearly destroyed the Moby Dick. Then he put Vista and everyone on one of their protected islands at risk. And then he attacked the guy he was trying to save. His head fell further, his hair hanging limp over his face. Son of the devil indeed. He'd come back to make things better? Rich. He was just making everything worse.

A hand on his shoulder pulled him from his spiraling thoughts. He blinked up at Marco.

"You know you can talk to us, Ace."

He bit his lip. Marco squeezed lightly.

"Please talk to us."

"It's just—"

"Just what?"

He curled his hands into fists, frustration with himself curdling into something sour and heavy. "It's my fault. I'm the one who keeps losing control and getting people hurt. It's what I did"—he cut himself off before he could say at Marineford—"on the island and before that, too. I'm dangerous, Marco."

"You've been dangerous for far longer than you've been part of this crew-yoi." He softened his voice. "We can't help you if you don't give us a way to do it."

Ace chewed his lip.

"Do you really not remember anything?"

He closed his eyes. Marco was reading him like a book. "Everything was fine until the fight started. I saw fire." In his chest, trailing the edges of a fist coming through. In that instant, he'd looked past that to see a phantom Luffy with magma dripping down his face. His scars ached. "I don't remember anything after that."

Marco leaned back in his seat. "It was your own powers and not something else that triggered it-yoi?"

"Kind of. Maybe. It's complicated." He drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly, fighting against the pain in his chest the whole way, then gave Marco a crooked smile. "Maybe you should just drop me off on a deserted island for a few days until I figure it out."

Marco didn't return his smile. If anything, he became even more stern. "We're not doing that."

Ace looked away. "It was a bad joke. Sorry."

"When you first ate your devil fruit, did you have this kind of problem?"

"No. I accidentally set a lot of stuff on fire, but I never exploded."

"Do you think this is something that practice can solve?"

"I don't know."

"Ace, we can't do nothing. As your brother, I can't do nothing, and we both know how Pops would feel about leaving you on your own-yoi."

"You know, that kind of sounds like a threat." It was another attempt at a joke that fell painfully flat. He swallowed. "Practice might help." He thumbed the bracelet. "I think."

In truth, he didn't know. Looking down and seeing that—well, Marco said Vista saw him get stabbed, but in Ace's memories, there was no knife. And seeing Luffy…Everything had just been too much. He hadn't been able to breathe, that horrifying numbness he'd felt pulling him down in Marineford spreading like lightning through his body.

Maybe his fire had been an automatic defense, a way to burn out the numbness that he hadn't been strong enough to fight when he'd been dying. He didn't remember. If just seeing his own flames was enough to set off that reflex, then he was a danger to himself and to others.

Marco snapped his fingers two inches from Ace's face. Ace jumped, then whipped a glare at the first division commander. "What was that for?"

"You were spacing out." He stood and took a few steps back. "Come on."

"Why?"

"Just get over here."

After a glance at Tasuka, who nodded permission, Ace gingerly joined Marco cross-legged on the floor.

"Does it hurt to sit like this?" asked Marco. "You can lean against your bed if that hurts less."

"I'm fine. What are we doing?"

"Meditation."

Ace blinked, then peered at Marco with a frown. "You…meditate?"

"We'll use it as a way for you to practice your powers," Marco continued right over him. "I'll supervise and have the sea stone on hand just in case. I figured the floor would be less flammable than your bedsheets."

Ace glanced back at the messy blankets. "You're probably right."

"So, how would you like to begin? Fingers? Toes?" His lips twitched toward a smile. "Hair?"

"I mean, you're the one who actually knows how to meditate. I've never really done it before. I don't know how to start."

"The goal is to close your eyes and relax as much as you can. Focusing on yourself and what you can feel of the world around you can help you get away from distracting thoughts. Once you're calm, you can start drawing on your fire in a small way."

"Right, I think I get it." Ace shifted a little and closed his eyes, hands loosely clasped in his lap. He stayed still and silent for barely a second before giving up. "Marco, doing this without focusing on this"—he gestured to his chest—"isn't possible."

In truth, he was stalling. What if he lost control again? It was a childish fear, something he'd never really felt before. When he was younger, lashing out whenever he needed to was just what he did. It was how he'd developed such a reputation with Dadan and her bandits. He'd mostly stopped around Luffy just because the kid had somehow kept Ace from reaching those levels of static with his presence alone. By the time he got his devil fruit, he could focus his rage enough that collateral wasn't an issue.

Now, though? Now his episodes got other people hurt even when he didn't mean it. He wasn't used to feeling so out of control, and he didn't want Marco to see him this…this scared. This pathetic. It was his own head. He should be able to handle it.

But Marco just regarded him with his half-lidded eyes and inscrutable expression. There was sympathy in there only when Ace squinted. "If you've fought while injured, you can meditate while injured."

So much for that excuse. Ace drew in a deep breath around the pain in his chest and closed his eyes again.

As he did, a memory surfaced: the night that Marco had told him about the relationship between Pops and his crew, his family. What it really meant to accept Whitebeard's mark.

Ace had been a wreck that night, which was almost reassuring to reflect on now. A hundred days of trying to kill Whitebeard and failing miserably, haunted by the loss of his crew, unable to see Whitebeard's mark as anything but the death of his own dreams and the idea of anyone claiming to be his father as anything but a slap in the face. That Marco had been able to get through to him at all was almost a miracle.

Really, by this point, Marco had seen him at his worst. His opinions on Ace weren't going to change just based on this, right? It had to take more than that. Plus…At Marineford, he'd put his life on the line for Ace's even after finding out who Ace really was. Those feelings hadn't come out of nowhere, and they weren't the type to be swayed easily.

Marco wanted to help. Ace just had to let him.

"Okay," Ace muttered, shifting again. His eyes were still closed. "What now?"

"We need to take off the bracelet."

Ace opened his eyes, a bit of color flushing his cheeks. Right. He'd forgotten about that. "I don't think I have the key—"

"I do. Here."

When the bracelet came off, Ace braced himself for the worst, only to realize that Marco hadn't actually removed it. Instead, he had his gaze fixed on Ace's face.

"Were you afraid when Vista removed it?" he asked.

"I was trying to keep it contained."

"Then do that again."

Ace pursed his lips and muttered, "Easy for you to say." Still, he tried to center himself the way he had on Vista's ship and keep his fire deep down in his core.

"Remember," Marco added, "I'm right here."

"Right." Ace bit his lip. "I think I'm ready."

The bracelet came off and Ace felt like he could breathe again. And, as though they had never once raged out of control, his flames stayed exactly where he wanted them to: tightly bound under his skin.

He nodded at Marco and then closed his eyes.

"My earlier question stands-yoi. What do you want to start with? The smaller the better."

"My hand, I guess."

"Right or left?"

He hadn't gotten that far yet. He used his right for his hiken attack…probably best to avoid accidentally setting that off on any scale. "Left. Am I just supposed to turn it to fire?"

"More or less."

Ace cracked an eye open and frowned. That wasn't exactly clear instruction. Then again, it was about as helpful as the things Gramps had yelled in his face during "training" back when he was a kid. Ace had, eventually, picked up the fine art of creative interpretation.

Closing his eyes once more, he tried to even out his breathing. Then he paused. "How am I supposed to see if my hand's on fire if I'm not looking at it?"

"Can you not feel it? I can tell when I use my devil fruit."

"Oh. Right."

One more time. He treated his fire gingerly, unspooling it from that knot in his core down through his arm and into his hand. The shift was easy, deceptively so, like it had always been. Most of Ace's training had been figuring out how not to turn into fire, rather than the other way around.

The feeling of trading flesh for flame wasn't one easily described. The nearest thing Ace had was what it felt like to put his hand in water that was about the temperature of his skin. There was the confusion of knowing that something had changed without being able to pinpoint what. Beyond that, it was impossible. The few times he'd been asked, all he had been able to say was that it was warm. The fire was a limb that shifted its form endlessly, and though it lacked nerves, he held awareness of it all the same.

So, after all that time spent building awareness of that feeling so he could stop doing it by accident, he knew that he'd shifted his hand to fire now.

"Keep your eyes closed," Marco said before Ace could think to open them and glance down at the flame in his lap. "How does it feel?"

Of course he immediately asked the impossible question. After chewing on a response for a few seconds, Ace just said, "Normal."

"Do you feel in control of it?"

Ace pursed his lips and then started manipulating the fire. Without seeing it, he went by experience to make it grow, shrink, and dance before letting it settle once more. "Yeah."

Marco was silent for long enough that Ace nearly prodded him, but his next order came just before that point: "Open your eyes. Look only at me."

Furrowing his brows at the latter half, Ace nonetheless complied. He could see the flickering of his own flames in the lower part of his vision and their warm light on Marco's clothes, but he resolutely kept his own gaze high. "What now?"

"How do you feel?"

"You know, you're asking me that a lot." Ace sighed. "Sore and tired, but fine. He leaned forward, making a point of not looking down. "Is there a reason for this? I thought meditation was about having your eyes closed."

Marco didn't rise to the bait, not that Ace had expected him to. Instead, he called upon his own devil fruit. Blue and gold flames flickered to life along his shoulders and down his chest. "And now?"

The purpose behind it all finally clicked. Marco was checking with him every single step of the way to try to pinpoint what kept setting Ace off. Ace swallowed, chills racing down his spine at the prospect of triggering another loss of control. He hoped Marco didn't notice. "Yeah. Still fine."

Marco's flames died. "Try looking at your own fire."

A simple enough command, but Ace hesitated. Sure, his subconscious wasn't throwing up any warning signals, but his own memories of the bar on Toraburu were clear enough to turn those chills into a full-on cold sweat.

And, of course, Marco picked up on that instantly. "You don't have to," he said.

"No, it's—" Ace clenched his other hand into a fist. He was being ridiculous. It was his fire. He was the second division commander of the Whitebeard Pirates with a price on his head so high that most bounty hunters gave up on the spot. He wasn't going to freak out about seeing his own fire. Fuck, his name was Fire Fist Ace. "Never mind."

He looked down before Marco could say anything else.

For a second, he could believe everything was fine. He could lift his hand, flex his fingers, watch the familiar red, orange, and yellow tones of his flames trail between them. He could think that Toraburu was just some kind of freak accident.

And then the smell came. His relieved smile fell away as it trailed up from his hand and circled his head like an invisible gag. Warm. Cloying. Sickly sweet. His stomach lurched. He brought his free hand up to his nose, but it just made things worse.

Oh, god. His hand was smoking. He stared in numb fascination as the wisps grew thicker and darker, then remembered where he was. He swallowed down his nausea.

"The smoke is new," he said for Marco's benefit. The smell probably went without saying; Marco had been around him plenty of times when Ace had used his powers, and he'd never commented on anything like that before.

"Smoke? There's no smoke."

Ace furrowed his brow. "I'm looking right at it."

Its smell was just getting stronger. He barely held back a gag while he leaned away. And then something else clicked: for there to be smoke, something had to be burning—and the only thing on fire was his own hand.

Pain hit him like a cannonball. The nerves in his hand screamed, their agony racing up his arm as his flames broke from his control. Behind that pain was crippling nothing, that numbness that haunted him spreading like a web through his core. No amount of fire could burn it out. He couldn't tear his eyes from his hand even as his flames roared up around him. In the flickering light, he could see his skin bubbling and blistering, some of it melting away as though coated in magma.

The numbness took his lungs. He couldn't breathe. The more he tried, the worse it got, and there was a storm in his head tearing everything apart—

A hand broke through the inferno to clasp around his wrist. With that touch came a surge of ice that swept through Ace's body. His fire went out like a doused torch, the storm broke up, and he could breathe again.

As he bent over and sucked in air, he caught a glimpse of Marco's blue and gold flames wreathing around his retracted hand before blinking out.

"I'm fine," Marco said before Ace could get a word out. He rotated his healed arm with a wry twist to his mouth. "It takes more than that to keep me down."

Something like sea stone cuffs. Ace looked down at the one once more wrapped around his wrist and gritted his teeth against the wave of undiluted frustration that swept through him. He gripped the bracelet hard enough to turn his knuckles white.

His hand was fine. No burns at all, like they had never happened—and, he realized with a twist in his chest, they hadn't. He squeezed his eyes shut. The smell remained, but it was weaker now and fading by the second. "Marco—"

"If you say anything about being too dangerous to stay on this ship, I'll take it as an insult-yoi." Ace scowled and opened his eyes, but Marco just took that as a sign to keep going. "I can open up some time in my schedule most nights except," he paused, glanced at the ceiling, and continued, "Tuesdays and Fridays. For now, I'll go to you. Once you're done with your house arrest, knock on my office door around eight p.m." When Ace just stared, Marco raised an eyebrow. "Something the matter?"

"I—" where did he even start? He fell back on politeness just to say something. "I don't want to impose."

Marco gave him a strange look. "Accepting help freely offered isn't imposing." He climbed to his feet and then held out a hand to help Ace up, but he didn't let go right away. Instead, he squeezed lightly until Ace met his gaze. "We're here for you, Ace. Don't forget that." He glanced at Tasuka. "Can I take him to his room?"

"Go for it. I'll be seeing you in the morning, Ace."

He managed a tired smile he didn't feel as Marco helped him sling one arm around his shoulders. "Can't wait."

On the walk back to Ace's quarters, the silence was suffocating and made worse by Ace knowing it was his fault. Marco was trying hard to help, but Ace was holding hostage the information that would let him help the most. He didn't have a choice; the truth was too absurd. After how he'd apparently acted during his recovery, Marco would probably think he was relapsing, and then they wouldn't believe anything he said. As much as he was struggling to make progress now, it would be far harder if he was marked insane and put under guard.

At the same time, that decision to say nothing at all was eating at him. Marco wasn't family like Luffy, but he was still Ace's brother. He was doing all this to help and getting repaid in lies. It wasn't right.

When they reached Ace's room, Marco paused in the open doorway. "What happened?"

Ace followed his gaze to the shards of his mirror still lying all over the floor. The ship rolling on the waves must've scattered them even more.

"Accident," Ace said. Lied.

Again.

Marco surveyed the extent of the mess for a moment before he picked a relatively clear path to Ace's bed. After he set Ace down, he carefully picked his way back to the doorway in an effort to avoid grinding any larger pieces into fragments.

"I'll have someone get you a broom," he said, one foot in the hallway. Ace's thanks got stuck in his throat and then the guilt twisted it into something entirely new.

"Marco, I—" he hesitated, but Marco was turning back and he couldn't just stop now, so: "I…got myself into trouble. And my family and my little brother came to get me out of it, he put everything on the line to get me out of it, but I—I didn't listen to him when it counted the most."

If he'd just ignored Akainu, if he'd just kept going, how would it have ended?

Under Marco's even gaze, he drew in a ragged breath, dug his nails into his palms, and exhaled slowly. "I ruined everything. Made everyone's sacrifices mean nothing."

Pops. Pops. He hadn't even dared to think about that yet, but his father had been dying for his sake on the battlefield, and Ace had wasted that for the sake of defending his name against a man who didn't care about his response at all. Even as every other member of his crew ignored Akainu's words and retreated, Ace had taken it upon himself to fall for juvenile taunts.

Some great pirate he was. He might as well have spat in Pops's face.

"It was my fault," he whispered, composure crumbling under the weight of exactly what he'd done that day. His eyes burned at the memory of Sengoku's announcement to the world. The words that, to the world, erased Whitebeard status as Ace's true father. "Everything was my fault."

The door closed with a soft click. Marco rested a hand against it for a beat before facing Ace again. "I don't know what happened," he said carefully, "but you have a habit of taking the blame and carrying everything yourself. Are you sure it was all your fault?"

"Yeah." He squeezed his hands into fists, then put his head in his hands. His throat, too, burned. "Yeah, it was."

"How long ago did it happen?"

He swallowed. "It still feels like yesterday."

"So it's done. You can't change it." Although Marco's tone was gentle, it brooked no argument. "You have a right to mourn, but wallowing in your regrets isn't the way forward."

Wallowing in his regrets. He bit the inside of his cheek to stop a broken chuckle. That was exactly what he was doing, wasn't it? Regretting the actions of a future that hadn't even happened yet. Just one more broken promise to add to the pile.

"Is that what set you off three weeks ago?" Marco prodded.

Ace didn't lift his face from his hands. He couldn't lie; Marco would see right through it. His voice came out strained. "Something like that."

"I see." The pause was an invitation, but Ace stayed silent. "I'll stop by tomorrow at around eight-yoi. Sleep well."

"You too," Ace mumbled.

He stayed still until long after Marco's footsteps had disappeared down the hall. And then, once he was sure he was alone, he gave into the tide swelling up from his chest. His breathing hitched, the burning in his eyes broke up into tears, and he dug his fingers into his scalp hard enough to hurt.

In the moment, using his last words to thank everyone had been all he could think to do. An apology instead of gratitude meant regrets, and if there was one promise he had been trying to keep, it was the one that would let Luffy move on as painlessly as possible.

He wasn't in the moment anymore, and the weight of everything he'd been losing or lost, even if none of that desolation existed anymore, drove the stifled sobs shaking his shoulders.