Chapter 27: Fragile Minds

"Boss! Boss Dadan!"

Her dream of lifting a hefty purse off an idiot merchant who wandered too close to the forest broke up to the sight of Dogra and Magra standing over her, fear in their eyes. Past them, the weak sunlight bleeding through the windows told her it was barely past dawn.

"What?" she groused, throwing off the comfortable blanket and sitting up from her futon. She'd forgotten how those idiot boys never failed to shatter the peace she usually found once she laid down to rest. "What the hell is it?"

"It's Sabo!" Magra whimpered. "He, he—"

"He won't wake up!" Dogra finished, clutching his dictionary like a lifeline.

"What?"

Dadan scrambled to her feet and didn't bother changing out of her nightgown before crossing the hideout and throwing aside the curtain partitioning off the room Sabo and Ace had claimed.

There was Ace, kneeling with his head bent over Sabo cradled in his lap, and there was Sabo, held and unmoving.

Ace looked up. There was panic scratching at the frayed edges of his composure and shining in his eyes. "He won't wake up. Dadan, he—he won't wake up."

He'd never looked at her like that. Not even when he was hauling her out of the burning Gray Terminal or tending to her wounds in the tree hollow where they'd sheltered from the guards hunting survivors. Then, he'd been worried, but determined, and trying to mask it all under bravado and anger. What he wore now was a dangerous look: a helpless and cornered animal one wrong move away from lashing out.

She tried to placate him. "We had a big dinner last night and you two were running around the forest all day. He's probably just exhausted."

Wrong move. "No! This isn't that. I shook him, I slapped him, and he's still asleep! He wasn't like this before. If I sneezed on watch he'd wake up even if I was on the other end of the ship. Something's wrong. He—fuck, I don't know!" He tried shaking Sabo again to no avail. His panic ratcheted up another notch. "He needs a doctor."

"We don't have a doctor," Dadan snapped. "We're bandits, not—"

"Then get a FUCKING doctor!" Ace roared, fire blazing in his hair, down his arms, even leaping as embers from his mouth. Dadan's throat went dry. She stepped back. They all stepped back.

Ace bit his lip, glanced down at Sabo, and then squeezed his eyes shut. His fire went out.

Then he did something Dadan never, not once in her life, expected to see him do: he set Sabo aside, got down on his hands and knees, and pressed his forehead into the floor.

"Please," he forced out, voice cracking.

Dadan's heart went right up into her throat and then crashed back down into her stomach in a way that left her feeling singularly awful. She gestured to Magra. "Take three with you to Foosha—it's closer than Edge Town and more trustworthy anyway. Ask Makino first. Go!"

They rushed from the room. When Dadan looked back at Ace, he was adjusting Sabo so the man was comfortable on his futon once again.

"He'll be okay, Ace."

He didn't even look at her.

In the evening, the doctor came. The doctor was useless. There was, in his words, nothing wrong with Sabo; he was in peak health, in fact, scars aside. He tried a couple of medicines to encourage him to wake up and only succeeded in inducing nightmares, for which Ace tried to strangle him. It took the combined strength of Dadan, Dogra, and Magra to hold him off just long enough for the doctor to escape, and she suspected that was only because Ace didn't want to hurt them.

With the doctor gone, Ace resumed his vigil at Sabo's side and refused to move. He didn't come out for dinner. He didn't sleep. He just sat there, eyes fixed on Sabo, waiting.

By the evening of the third day, the whole hideout was walking on eggshells. No one wanted to go in that room. On the second day, someone trying to bring Ace a small lunch had tripped, spilling the platter on Sabo. The resulting explosion of violence had taken out a wall and left that bandit with a broken limb and burns.

It was as bad as when he was a kid. Before Luffy, maybe even before Sabo. The only difference was that he wasn't moving from Sabo's side, wasn't dropping off dead beasts and taking the meat he deserved when they were prepared, wasn't waiting in the woods to ambush any bandit stupid enough to go looking for him. He was staying in that room, and as long as they were careful, they wouldn't suffer the fury that lurked as intermittent blue flames around his shoulders.

Dadan's heart hurt to see him regress so easily. He fronted well, but when his reserves dried up, he fell back on the one thing that had kept him going through the worst moments of his life: rage.

As a child, Ace had been plenty dangerous when the anger took him. As an adult, he was lethal. Dadan doubted he even had the capacity to care about the bandit he'd injured right now. It was Sabo and no one else.

Seas, but she wished Luffy were here. Or that Sabo would wake up. Those two were the only ones capable of pulling Ace out of one of his black moods.

She couldn't manage that, but she could sure as hell manage something else. Ignoring the worried looks of her merry band, she headed for the curtain.

When she got there, she paused. Ace had permitted them to put up tarps where the destroyed wall had been, and the entire time they were working, he hadn't moved. He still hadn't moved. He was exactly where he'd been ever since the doctor left: sitting against the wall, eyes fixed on his brother's face, waiting.

Dadan wasn't fooled. She knew Ace knew she was there.

"Brat, you need to eat."

"Sabo isn't eating. Neither am I."

She sighed. Left.

Five minutes later, she was back with a full platter of food. She thunked it down next to Ace while she took a seat by Sabo's feet, snagging one of the meat-laden bones as she went.

Annoyed, Ace shot her a glare that chilled her to the bone. "I said—"

"I heard you." She ignored the cold fear the same way she ignored the sweat caused by the heat pouring off Ace; she was the boss of this mountain, and dangerous pirate or not, Ace was part of her family. If she had to take risks to get him to take care, so be it. She finished her portion and pointed the cleaned-off bone at Sabo. "Starving yourself doesn't help him. What do you think he'll do when he hears about it?"

Ace winced. Sabo—the one Dadan remembered, at least—would smack him and call him an idiot. This one…would probably do the same, actually, from what she'd witnessed. And probably offer a lecture about how Ace would make a shitty guard when he was distracted by his growling stomach.

Not looking at Dadan, he snagged one of the loaves of bread on the edge of the platter. She was smart enough to not say anything about his capitulation.

In the back of her mind, she hoped the smell of food so close by would rouse Sabo.

It didn't.

This was his fault. Ace didn't know how, but it had to be. He was the one who'd dragged Sabo back to Dawn Island and then pulled him around to every relevant corner of the place even when Sabo obviously wasn't feeling well.

You keep giving me headaches.

He curled up even tighter against the wall, arm wrapping around his knees, which were pressing into his chest. His other hand was knotted in his hair.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, staring out at Sabo through the grease-tangled strands. "It's my fault. I'm sorry."

He shouldn't have pushed it. Shouldn't have gotten on Sabo's ship. Shouldn't have taken him back to Dawn. Shouldn't have guided him through every piece of the life he'd left behind. Shouldn't have chased the ghost.

What had he been hoping for? All that had been was a tour of all of his regrets.

Here's where we used to live.

Here's where you never lived again.

Here's where we used to train.

Here's where you never trained again.

Here's where we used to run wild.

Here's where we lost you.

Here's where I missed you.

Here's where I missed you.

Here's where I missed you.

"I didn't mean it," he told Sabo's sleeping form. "I wanted you back, I did, but I—you deserve to be free. I didn't mean to tie you down with what you lost. I'm sorry." Sabo's chest rose and fell under his blanket, but that was the only sign of life. Ace buried his forehead in his knees. His stomach, long empty of the meal Dadan had brought hours and hours ago, was an aching hollow. Just one more discomfort to add to the vice squeezing his heart.

Everything he touched, he ruined. Sabo, letting his parents take him. Luffy, dragging him to Impel Down and Marineford. Pops, making his sacrifice meaningless in the end.

A small part of him pushed back on those swirling thoughts, and it did so with familiar voices: Sabo, captaining their treehouse; Luffy, waving to him as he set out to sea at seventeen; Pops, smiling wide with unmitigated pride when he saw the mark on Ace's back; Thatch, fishing him out of the water after a prank gone wrong.

That part was a candle in a hurricane, though, and it blew out as Ace's thoughts spiraled farther and farther down to the black core that never ever went away, only got buried deeper.

A shift in the light beyond his eyelids and the quiet creak of floorboards told him someone else was in the room. His fire reared up and he crammed it back down; he wasn't burning down his childhood home, for fuck's sake. He'd already hurt someone who didn't deserve it. A few blue flickers escaped, but that was it. That was the price of packing it down like that: whatever got out was nearly as condensed as what he'd used to spear Akainu.

"Now, now, you need to change your bandages, Ace."

Magra.

"Go away."

He did, but not before setting something down next to Ace. When Ace confirmed he was alone again with a pulse of haki, he lifted his head enough to see Magra had set down a small basket of medical supplies: bandages and salves. His gaze slid to his arm, where the three-day-old bandages smelled of sweat and soured old salve, and then beyond, to where Sabo lay unaware of the world around him.

He pressed his forehead back into his knees.

Though he didn't want to, he slept. It snuck up on him when he let his guard down, grabbing five, ten, twenty minutes at a time before he realized what was happening and snapped awake. It was in one of these lapses as the third night bled into the fourth morning that something changed.

When Ace jerked awake, cracking his head against the wall behind him, Sabo flinched at the noise. Ace fell still as Sabo squeezed his eyes tighter shut, then—with a defeated sigh—sat up and pulled them open, the blanket pooling around his waist.

"What time is it?" he mumbled, rubbing at his eyes.

"Sabo?"

He pushed his hair out of his face and blinked at Ace. He squinted. One more blink and his eyes were filling with tears. "Ace?"

He didn't need to say it; the truth was laid bare on his face and dripping down his cheeks.

Ace launched himself off the wall, yanked Sabo close, and wrapped him in a bone-crushing hug. Sabo's air left him in a surprised whuff. Ace could feel his brother's lungs fighting to expand, his heart pounding away, his muscles tensing in preparation to resist. He pulled him in tighter.

"You bastard," he gasped into Sabo's shoulder, and Sabo hesitated. Tears Ace couldn't fight back any longer fell freely and turned his voice thick with emotion. "I'm so glad you're alive."

It was such an inadequate way to relay the unmitigated relief and joy washing through him in ever grander waves. Sabo. Alive. Sabo. Remembering.

Sabo's arms wrapped around him in turn—as much as they could when his biceps were pinned—and squeezed just as hard. "Ace," he choked out. "I—I should've, I didn't mean—"

"Shut up."

He did. For a minute, Ace held him, basking in the joy of his brother's return. From the tears hitting the side of Ace's head, the feeling was mutual.

How many times had he dreamed this moment? How many times had he, on that one day a year, poured out a second dish of sake and toasted the man he'd thought he'd only ever know as a memory?

For each of those days, he counted out another second of holding his brother tight.

When the moment began to ease towards its end, he shoved Sabo away, cocked back his fist, and punched him clean in the face. Sabo reeled back with a cry, clutching his bleeding nose while he glared at Ace over his hands. "What the hell?"

"That was for forgetting us. And this," he lunged, avoided Sabo's reflexive kick that was weak on account of him still being on his ass, and whacked him over the head, "is for making me worry the last three days! Don't ever do it again!"

Sabo scowled and kicked Ace's foot out from under him. Ace stumbled backwards and fell, just in time for Sabo to clock him in the jaw with a punch of his own.

"Ow! What was that for?"

Shaking out his fist and still plugging his bleeding nose with the other hand, Sabo declared, "For being a secretive bastard for weeks instead of just telling me the truth!"

"You would've thought I was crazy!"

"I already thought you were crazy! What kind of pirate gets on a ship with a total stranger? Never mind one of Whitebeard's. You're as reckless as you ever were!"

"Real funny coming from you! You're acting like you didn't challenge the—"

"Don't you dare even start! You've got twenty stupid choices for every one of mine!"

"The hell I do!"

In hindsight, Ace wouldn't remember who threw the first real punch. What mattered was that they were mid-brawl when Dadan, still in her nightgown, swept aside the cloth in the doorway and hollered, "KNOCK IT OFF, YOU NOISY BRATS! IT'S TOO DAMN EARLY FOR THIS!"

Ace and Sabo froze. She also froze, taking in the tableau of Ace underneath Sabo, one of his hands in Sabo's face—and one finger up Sabo's nose, another yanking at Sabo's cheek from inside his mouth—his other hand grappling with Sabo's left, while Sabo tried to pin down Ace's legs with his own and his free hand was tangled up in Ace's hair.

"Sabo's awake?" Magra asked from over Dadan's shoulder.

"Sabo's awake!" Dogra confirmed.

"Sabo's awake!" cheered the bandits woken by the commotion. Several, trying to peer around Dadan's bulk, broke out in tears at the sight of the two brothers tussling.

Reddening from the embarrassment of the scene, Ace pulled his hand away from Sabo's face and tried to compose himself. Sabo did the same, albeit with a pointed huff and adjustment of his unbuttoned shirt. Dadan, meanwhile, was yelling about a celebratory feast.

When the bandits didn't move, she whacked the nearest two over the head and dragged them out.

"Give them some privacy, you nosy fools," she snapped.

The curtain fell back into place over the doorway, leaving Ace and Sabo in as close to privacy as they were going to get without going into the woods. Ace, the urge to fight having faded, shifted on his knees to face Sabo.

"What happened? You were complaining about a headache, then just…wouldn't wake up."

"Was I really asleep for three days?"

"Yeah."

"What happened to the wall?"

"Accident."

Sabo chewed his lip and started pulling on the clothes the doctor had stripped off that first day. One of the bandits had washed and returned them at some point; Ace didn't even remember that happening. "I don't…I did have a headache, and when I went to sleep, I just…started reliving all of it. Kind of out of order, I think, but all of it. If you think about it, three days for all those years is pretty good, right?"

"Maybe."

"C'mon, don't be mad. I'm here now."

Ace snorted. "Yeah, fine. 'Cause I'm nice like that." Something else occurred to him. "You called me a secretive bastard, but you refused to tell me anything about all that revolutionary crap. What's up with that? What happened to piracy?"

Shame flickered across Sabo's face, and his gaze went to the tattoo on Ace's arm. "I…I never meant to give up on our dream."

"Hey, hold on. I didn't mean it like that. Obviously, stuff happened, I'm not mad at you for it." He put a hand over the crossed-out S. "This isn't blaming you. I…I wanted to honor you somehow, and this felt right."

Sabo's voice was thick, but that could've been from his bloody nose as much as anything else. "I feel like I've…Like I'm wasting all that time you spent grieving. Spitting on it."

Ace was shaking his head before Sabo even finished. "Doesn't matter. I'm proud to have your mark on my skin, alive or not, pirate or not. You seem pretty happy with what you're doing, and if it involves giving the Celestial Dragons bloody noses, I'm all for it. Just as long as you're happy. At least this way you won't have to worry about Luffy demanding you join his crew."

Blinking and wiping at his eyes, Sabo managed to say, "I'm pretty sure he'll do it anyway."

"Yeah, knowing him."

While the bandits' voices drifted through the doorway, most of them excited for the coming feast, Sabo rubbed at some of the dried blood on his clothes. His nose had stopped bleeding, but he'd need a damp cloth to clean off the blood already clotting on his face.

"I'm not sure how much there is to tell," he admitted. "I don't think I need to tell you that, however bad you think the World Government is, they're worse." Ace nodded. "I've spent years being a thorn in their side, trying to learn all I can about what they really intend for the world, but so much is still a mystery. You caught me on one of my best days—actually being on the ground, helping the people who need it."

"That was a good day?"

"Sometimes I can't afford to make a move." He curled one hand into a fist. "Having to watch, knowing it's for the greater good…I hate it, I really do. But I have to do it."

Ace tried to understand, but he knew this was a place he and Sabo sharply diverged. He couldn't watch. He couldn't stand aside. Just waiting for Teach to make a move, even when Teach wasn't actively hurting anyone, had been singularly awful. Even if it meant greater good down the line, rare was the day Ace could comfortably put off doing nothing right now.

"Well," he finally said, "if there's anyone I believe can turn the world on its head, it's you."

Genuinely touched, Sabo blinked and wiped his eyes. "When'd you get so good at this?"

"I've had some practice spilling my guts."

Sabo chuckled. "I guess so." He stopped, frowning, and Ace followed his gaze to the basket of medical supplies. "What's this for?" His eyes snapped to Ace's arm, which Ace was too slow to hide behind his back. Sabo grabbed for it and succeeded on the second attempt, dragging Ace's arm out and examining it critically. "You didn't clean it."

"I had more important things to do."

"Ugh, this is going to scar even worse now. I told you how to treat a bad burn! You have to give it attention! And you should've been letting this breathe for days now!"

"Ow! You don't have to hit me for it!"

"Take better care of yourself! You might not care but Luffy and I do. Now sit still and don't move."

Red-faced and pressing his lips tight together, he sat cross-legged while Sabo unwound the old bandages, cleaned the burn, and applied fresh salve. When he was done, Sabo's touch lingered, and Ace—composure mostly restored after a few minutes of easy silence—raised a questioning eyebrow.

"You really accepted Whitebeard's mark, huh?"

"I did." Ace drew himself up a little straighter. "He's my father, no one else."

"I hear you loud and clear." Sabo smiled at him, and even though the gap in his teeth was gone, it was every inch the smile of that boy from the Gray Terminal. "I'm glad you found a crew that makes you happy, Ace."

Ace's heart did a weird little flip in his chest and heat rushed into his face. He rubbed at the back of his head, unable to stop a nervous smile. "They found me, more like. I spent months trying to take Whitebeard's head after he dragged me onto his ship."

Sabo barked out a laugh. "Okay, that sounds much more like you. I was about to say, it seemed too easy."

Ace scowled at him, which Sabo just took as a challenge.

"Remind me, how did you treat Luffy when you first met?"

"Doesn't count, I was a kid back then."

"I'm pretty sure that makes it worse, actually."

They fell into easy bickering for a while until a bandit poked his head into the room to announce the food was ready, at which point Ace dragged Sabo off-balance by his neck napkin and ran to snag the best cuts of meat for himself.

Sabo, naturally, caught up and managed to loop Ace's belt around a hook on the wall in the ensuing scuffle.

"That's what you get for having way too much left hanging!" he crowed as he went for the platter. In retaliation, Ace turned to flame to escape and caught Sabo in a tackle from behind.

"I'll show you too much," he growled, fighting to get a grip on Sabo's coat. Sabo, in turn, was nearly poking Ace's eye out.

And then Dadan was shoving cuts of meat into both their mouths. "Knock it off, you brats, we're supposed to be celebrating!"

They separated, blinking, and swallowed down their respective portions. A moment later, all the bandits who wanted to say hello descended upon them, kicking out all thoughts of getting even for their dirty tricks.

"Hey, Ace?"

Though he was currently sprawled out with his back kind of to Sabo, Ace was way too full and tired to roll over and face the guy. The party had gone on for the entire day and now a crescent moon was barely giving him any light to see by in their shared room. "What?"

"Earlier, I said I didn't want to go to the capital."

"Yeah, I remember."

"I think I changed my mind."

That was worth rolling over for. "Why?"

Sabo was already facing him, his eyes just glimmers in the dark. "What do you say? A jaunt through High Town for old time's sake. Besides," as though he needed to sweeten the deal further, "we don't have a hoard built up here like we used to, but we need to finance the trip back to your family somehow, right?"

Ace grinned from ear to ear.