Ace didn’t exactly end things on great terms. His rage toward Blackbeard blinded him, and while you were grieving over Thatch, Ace was plotting. Worst part is, he didn’t even tell you about his plans; you caught him with his bag in hand, trying to step out of the room as quietly as possible. It didn’t take long until you were both shouting things you didn’t mean, and that was it. Ace slammed the door and left you weeping in his bed.

it was almost a full year of him being gone when Marco sent you a letter while you were away on a mission. When you heard the news, you and your squad while quick to meet back up with the crew at Marine Headquarters.

You knew Ace was gone the moment he stopped running along side you. It hasn’t even been five minutes since your tense reunion of unsteady eyes and trembling lips and he’s falling for his impulses. Your pleas to leave mixed in with gunshots and war cries and the incessant voice that made Ace freeze in the first place. You pulled on his arm, looking past his shoulder to the bodies littered over the battlefield and the towering fortress behind that.

In the blink of an eye, Ace was running back into the heat of battle, flaming fist colliding with Akainu’s molten one, fire smashing against magma. Then Luffy was gone too, chasing after his older brother like the game of tag they’d play as kids. You tried to pull him back, but you couldn’t keep up with them.

In the time that you were steadying yourself on your hands and knees, you looked back up to see Akainu standing tall, victorious, and Luffy on the ground, holding a limp Ace in his bloodied hands and begging him to stand up, stand up stand up—

You think you screamed, and after that was a blur. You remember Marco coming up and helping you to your feet, barking orders in your ear to help him drag Ace away. You blacked out the rest of it.

Marco caught you up after you woke up three days after in your own bed on the ship. Your body was sore, bandages and gauze wrapped around gashes you couldn’t remember getting. Marco explained what happened, telling you what you wanted to hear last. He knew you well enough to know you were gonna book it out the room and towards Ace’s as soon as the doctor said ‘he’s alright.’

Ignoring Marco’s scolds, your legs ached beneath you as you stumbled to Ace’s cabin, tears in your eyes for what you were prepared to see. You chose not to knock; you didn’t want to accidentally wake him up.

You peeked your head in the room—furniture surfaces dusty after he left to kill Blackbeard—and there he was. Sitting upright on the edge of the bed with gauze wrapped around his torso, hints of red bleeding through the bandages.

He stared back, studying all the things that’s changed about you since he left months ago.

His lips parted and shut—twice, you counted—and his eyes wandered from you to the bed sheets around him.

“Listen, I’m…” the words were hardly audible, and he cut himself off before he could get to say that word you’ve been waiting for since he left.