When Shukaku the ichibi was sealed inside the gedo statue, Gaara died, and in a far away dimension Portgas D Ace was born.
When Ace first opened his eyes, it was to the sight of a beautiful woman with strawberry blonde hair. The woman was looking at him with such a loving yet heartbroken gaze and suddenly Ace felt a sense of Deja Vu.
"I'm sorry my poor baby for having to leave you alone as soon as you were brought into this world, I hope you can forgive me, and know that your father and I did everything we could to keep you safe because we love you, Ace" - The woman told him.
Ace was confused, he remembered his life as Gaara, and he was pretty sure that he died. He never was referred as Ace in his past life, if you exclude that he was the ace of the village because he was the jinjuriki of the ichibi.
For some weird reason he felt attached to the woman in front of him, and he could feel his stomach churning with dread, and the imminent urge to cry. He could feel her life force getting dimmer and fading, could tell that she was using every single drop of strength she had left to stay awake and speak to him, and he didn't even knew what he did to deserve it.
"Gol D Ace, don't let the world tell you who you are, decide for yourself... my beautiful baby" - the woman said before closing her eyes for the last time, she had a smile on her face.
And that was the moment when Gaara realized that he had been reborn, His name was no longer Gaara, but Gol D Ace.
He fell asleep not too long after she took her last breath, somehow hoping that this life would be better than the last one.
His life was a blur for the first two to three years. Between eating, sleeping (and wasn't that a blessing), to learning how to walk and formulate words again, it was pretty monotonous if you exclude that he was being raised by mountain bandits.
Ace is pretty sure he remembers an old man when he first woke up in this new life, he too remembers said old man muttering something about taking care of him, so imagine his surprise when he discovers that said *taking care of him* means to drop him at the hands of some mountain bandits on the home island of the old man. He took pity on the poor bandits and tried to not cause them much trouble.
At least now he knows that the old man is already senile, because there is no way that a normal child would become a marine if he was raised by criminals. And while he was no normal kid, but one that had knowledge of a past life, he preferred to see the world for himself first and decide his profession after, even if he would forever remain a Shinobi in soul.
Right now, at three years and half of age, he could be found wandering through the jungle. He knew of the dangers that lay in it, but he knew how to detect them before it was too late, so he couldn't care less about them, even if most animals could be considered a summon judging by their size alone.
He was looking for something to hunt, since his appetite was enormous, compared to his past life, he eats thrice the amount he used to eat as an adult, when he was Gaara, per meal, and he's only three, meaning that the small meals that the bandits give him are no longer enough and leaves him hungry.
And since he doesn't want to burden the bandits any more than he already is, he decided to fend for himself and hunt his own food. He set traps all around the jungle surrounding the cabin of the bandits, but made sure that they were far enough from the bandits routes.
Ace knew that he wasn't strong enough yet to fight the animals, but he knew that it wouldn't be too long before he did, maybe one or two more years and he could try to hunt them face to face. But for now setting traps and making weapons out of fallen branches could be considered good training for his small body.
He armed himself with a crossbow and headed to one of the closest traps to the cabin, hoping that an animal fell in the trap, and luckily, there was a deer stuck in it. The deer was trying to get free, but a quick arrow to the head with the crossbow, and it dropped dead to the ground.
He carried the deer back to the cabin and then left it a few feet to the side of the door. He could feel the old man inside the bandits home, so it was probably one of the rare times he dropped by to make sure that the bandits took proper care of him.
Ace went into the dining room soundlessly, and jumped into the old man's lap when he was less expecting it. He relished in the startled expression of the ones present in the room, especially in the one of the old man, and thus he couldn't suppress an amused and mischievous smirk, letting them all know that it was clearly intentional.
"Well, I guess that this solves the problem of not knowing where Ace was" - the old man said in a gruff voice.
Dadan, the leader of the mountain bandits and a sort of mother figure to Ace, flinched at the implications of that statement, but it wasn't her fault that Ace had been a ninja in his past life, and thus could sneak around without making a sound. The fact that he has not spoken a single word since he reincarnated doesn't help her case, but that was more Gaara's side wanting to mess with them into making them think that he was mute.
Ace just slapped the chest of the old man and sent him a quick look of disdain, clearly discontent with the way that he treated her. Then he opted for snuggling into the old man's lap, because since he insisted on being a sort of grandpa figure to him, then he sure as hell was going to act like a grandson to him, a grandson that would like to be spoiled rotten, something that he never got in his past life.
Ace stared intently at the old man and Dadan, patiently waiting for his stomach to do it's work and and loudly complain about his need of food, but for now he relished in the confusion and small panic that he could feel growing in intensity on his poor victims, he really enjoyed messing with them.
When his stomach finally proclaimed his need, Dadan sighed in relief and exasperation, while his grandpa just stayed still from shock, not yet processing what just happened.
"Did you bring anything this time?" - Dadan asked him, getting a feeling that she already knew the answer.
Ace just pointed a little to the right of where the outside door was.
Dadan got up and went to order her men to skin and cook whatever animal he hunted, while his grandpa finally got out of his shock and turned to look at him with a new light in his eyes. Ace got goosebumps just by seeing it, it somehow felt similar to the look he used to give to any of his subordinates when he thought that he had already finished his paperwork only for them to dump another pile in front of him.
It meant endurance and survival training in the part of the desert where there roamed the biggest, wildest and stronger beasts, and Ace didn't wanted to be a victim to that look, so he decided that he was going to disappear as soon as he ate his fill.
Later, when the remains of the deer were only a pile of bones, Ace completely erased his presence from existence and disappeared without a trace, successfully having evaded getting thrown into a ravine by his senile grandpa. If he had slept inside the trunk of a tree that night to avoid being sighted, it was only his business and no one else.
His grandpa stayed for a few more days, and everytime he tried to drag him to his self proclaimed *training* at every opportunity he got, but Ace could detect the signs before he was ultimately dragged away, and thus successfully escaped each time.
Unfortunately there was only one time when he was distracted enough to notice his grandfather presence, and he got grabbed by the collar of his shirt and dragged away only to be thrown at the bottom of a pit and got told that he should get back to the bandits hut some time between the next seven days.
The event was the cataclist for his chakra core to be unlocked, he never imagined the pain he would feel when his chakra paths began to carve themselves to the rest of his body from his chakra core, it was excruciatingly painful and tiring, but he supposed that it was the price of unlocking something that his body wasn't originally born with, unlike in the elemental nations where everyone developed them even before they were born into the world.
It took him two days to finally be able to move somewhat normally without his nerves and muscles twitching and aching at every single movement, so that was enough for him to start climbing the way out of the pit.
Another three days before he was finally out of that damn pit, Ace would have believed that it was endless if he hadn't come from the bottom of it. And a day and half were spent sleeping in a hollow trunk of a tree and going back to the bandits hut.
He didn't even notice when instead of a wooden arrow, he threw a sand one at the first animal that entered his sight range. When he did noticed the change, was when he snapped at the old man the moment that he stepped too close to him, he instinctively flicked his hand and trapped him in a sand cocoon, and he blinked multiple times when he noticed that this time the man indeed was wrapped in sand, unlike the other times when it had been just the flicker of his hand with nothing happening.
Ace just kept on staring at his hand for a few more minutes, processing what just happened. He never expected for his kekei genkai to have followed him to this new life, but he wasn't going to complain about it, on the contrary, he was going to treasure it and cling to the only thing that he had from his life as Gaara.
He completely ignored any word that came from the old man's mouth, not even sparing him a glance as he went to drop his hunt with the bandits, and with just a glare from him, they scrambled to cook it. He was hungry, and he wanted a full meal after almost a week with only some herbs and insects that he found while climbing his way out and that he knew were edible and not going to make him throw his organs out.
"Hey brat, when did you dye your hair?" - Dadan, the only bandit that dare to approach him while he was grumpy, asked him.
Ace just stared at her in confusion, tilting his head to the side and blinking multiple times, not getting what she meant.
"You have a red strand of hair on the left side of your head" - she told him while touching her own hair where the strand would be if it was him.
Ace stared at her, searching for any hint of her lying, but found none, so he went to the closest reflective surface, which happened to be a knife, and looked at his reflection. He did had a strand of red hair, it was behind his bangs, and that was probably the reason why he didn't noticed it before, but now he couldn't hide his happiness, he even released the old man from his sand cocoon, but not before he ate deliberately slowly and savoured every single bite in front of him, he knew how to hold a grudge.
No one mentioned how his eyes were brighter every time he looked at his reflection after that day, neither how they sometimes would find him playing with sand and making sculptures of people that only he knew, even if he supposedly never went out of the forest.
Meanwhile Ace was glad and happier than ever now that he had some sort of connection to his past life besides his memories of it, and the fact that this time he didn't have an asshole of a father that sends assassins after him, because his existence was supposedly a mistake and should have never been born.
In the old man's next visit, he would question his past thoughts, but at least he knew that his sperm donor was a questionable decent human, because there was no other way that his mother in this life, who was a beautiful and kindhearted woman, would have fallen for him and sacrificed her life just to make sure he was born in a relatively safe environment.
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I suppose that this tell's you which are my favorite characters on both animes. And I just couldn't help but notice the similarities between them both.
For starters... They both have an awful view of their sperm donor, are angry at the world and feel the need to do something to prove their existence, (for Gaara was mass murder, and for Ace was to defeat the strongest of the world). Someone showed them what love was like (Naruto/Luffy and later Whitebeard), but before that they tried to kill said person. And I'm pretty sure that there are even more similarities that I have noticed but forgot them at the moment.
Gaara is my first and one of my only three husbands (I'm really loyal and hard to charm, but Ace, Chuuya and Dazai are slowly getting there), so I had to make my own crossover fanfics because I can barely find some with him as the main character.
Updates are gonna be sporadic, as I work 9 hours daily from Monday to Friday in a daycare, have around 2 hours of rest and then I have 2 hours of school.
I hope you can bare with me, and the sporadic schedule that I'll have for this and any future fanfic or story that I may publish.
oh, and before I forget, this is a completely different fanfic from "Ace's adopted son", so you can still expect seeing that fanfic in the future.
See you in the comments :D
Pdst: if any of you are willing to draw an adult Ace with a child Gaara posing for a camera, and allow me to use the image for free, I would be really thankful.
Because for some reason I can draw kid Ace, but not adult Ace. And it infuriates me, because usually it's the other way around, me being unable to draw kids, while adults come naturally to me.
You can find me on insta under the same username as here ( Gaaraiu111 ), just the image is different, since It's another one of my husbands, his name is Yuto and originates from the anime Yu-Gi-Oh Arc-V (I have a few posts, but their years old, so don't mind them).