Chapter 1: Together Again
Luffy didn’t know that even before Ace died, Luffy was the only one keeping their dream alive.
Even though Sabo— thought dead— was yet alive, he had lost his memory and with it all trace of his own dreams.
Even though Ace had still walked the earth, all scrap of ambition had been beaten out of his body, which bore instead the mark of another man’s dreams.
Luffy’s older brothers had had their fires snuffed out, each in turn.
But even ashes could reignite.
Ace didn’t know that when he fell, it would be the kindling of a new inferno.
Sabo wasn’t sure when he had started feeling off, but at some point his chest had started to ache. When it hit him, he sank to his knees and clutched at his chest, worried for a moment that something was terribly wrong. That he was dying. That there was something he had to remember.
But a soothing warmth seemed to fill him after the pain faded and he felt like someone was reassuring him that it would be alright. He still felt like there was something that he was forgetting, but that was often the case. He was sure that it wasn’t anything he wanted to remember.
He was almost sure.
Koala had gone through the day with one eye on Sabo and an ever mounting series of questions.
Sabo had always been a bit of an odd duck. Amnesiac, flamboyantly reckless, and relentlessly charming even with his sometimes infuriating attitude— but all day he’d beenmuch odder than normal as they prepared for another intelligence gathering expedition on the mainland. It was their specialty together after all. She’d spent the day bustling about the ship, checking black transponder snails, compiling reports and the survey squad’s intelligence. But Sabo was off his game, and she wasn’t sure it was all just distraction. Eventually she couldn’t take the curiosity any longer.
After their shared dinner and a bit of whispered information back and forth, she sat back with her drink and puffed out her cheeks with a sigh. “…so with all that said, I think we should investigate the ports tomorrow, Sabo.”
Sabo was rubbing his chest, frowning when he looked up at her. HIs dark eyes looked distant and unfocused. “Hmm? Sorry— I didn’t catch that.”
As much as Koala gave him a hard time— he was usually sharp, and didn’t often ignore her. If he had been the type to do that, they wouldn’t have been as close as they were. Seeing him like this was concerning.
Her brow furrowed under her hat, and she nervously reached up to adjust her goggles.
“You’re acting really weird today, Sabo. I was talking to you about tomorrow’s mission. The smuggling operations? Remember? You seem like you’re a thousand miles away right now.”
He smiled softly at her with a trace of embarrassment, and she saw him rub his chest again, but then put his hands in his lap, as if self-conscious. “Sorry about that, Koala. You’re right, I feel a thousand miles away. Thanks for dragging me back to earth before you needed to chokeslam me back to it.”
“Normally I’d think about it, just to clear your head,” she pouted with a nervous cross of her arms. “But you look like a stiff breeze is about to keel you over— you keep rubbing your chest, are you having heart trouble? Should I get the doc?”
They bantered all the time, Sabo would do something dumb, she’d whack him on the back of the head or kick him in the ass; playfully, never enough to really hurt. It was their routine ever since they began working together.
A couple of weird runaways who found themselves in the care of the Revolutionary Army. A former slave and a man without a past. They’d been paired up fairly early, and despite her rough manner and tendency to tease and cajole him— Koala had long felt soft, affectionate feelings for the man.
She cared about him deeply. As far more than a friend and a comrade in the cause. They’d fallen into a routine together, and into each other’s’ arms years ago. They had never exactly put a name on their relationship, though other people did plenty, teasing them about dating or calling them married. But they were just… together. Sabo and Koala.
If something was wrong with him, she deserved to know about it.
But he held up his hands and shook his head. “It’s fine. My chest just kind of hurt earlier. But I’ve been keeping an eye on it. I think it might have just been indigestion. ”
“Indigestion,” Koala said incredulously. “Sabo, you’re a revolutionary agent. I’ve never seen you so distracted you barely listen to me from indigestion before. And I know your eating habits!”
She pointed a finger at him. “…what kind of pain?”
By now the other officers who had been lingering around the table had departed, the very last stragglers apparently deciding it was a good idea to give the two of them space to do whatever they were going to do (probably have an argument.) Sabo didn’t even look like he’d noticed yet.
“Uh. I don’t know? It could have been heartburn.”
“Heartburn,” she repeated slowly. “…alright, so you’ve got heartburn. Really distracting heartburn. I think the doc has something for that, you know.”
She didn’t exactly believe him. In fact, her worry was growing even stronger. The slightly confused, ‘dodging the question’ sort of way he was talking was starting to make her worry he was about to drop dead from some kind of mysterious malady or something.
“You’ve been out of it this whole planning session, Sabo. I don’t even know if you remember what we’re doing in the morning.”
Sabo smiled insistently and shifted to put his arm around her shoulders.
“I was just distracted, Koala. Come on, let’s really dig into this planning thing. The smuggling. It— it is a smuggling thing, right?”
Koala held back on her twitch response to elbow him lightly in the ribs for forgetting, and instead thumped her shoulder against him in a cuddle. “…I said that about two minutes ago, but yeah. It’s a smuggling thing. Remember anything else?”
It was more than a smuggling thing. Someone was moving supplies from Paradise into the New World through Saboady…Devil Fruits, weapons…and slaves.
He leaned his chin on his hand and smiled at her, his golden curls framing his face. “Bring me up to speed again? And you can beat me with a spoon if you want for not listening. Maybe you can beat the ache out of my chest.”
Koala huffed, flushing gently as she looked up at him. He really did have a handsome smile. A very handsome smile for a handsome man. Ever since they’d met as teenagers they’d been attached at the hip— and that stupid handsome smile of his hadn’t changed a bit.
She did grab a spoon and whapped him on the arm for good measure though. He kind of deserved it— and maybe it’d distract him from whatever was plaguing his chest.
“There! But geeze, Sabo…you’re hopeless. Remember that whole thing in Saboady? The one where a bunch of the Worst Generation took down the Human Auction House and caused a huge incident? Remember how it caused a huge destabilization in the slave and underground goods trade there, giving us a good opening to hopefully find a lead to some of the people behind it before it burrows back underground?”
Sabo was more attentive now, and whatever was bothering him— whether it was really his chest or something else— seemed to have subsided. Koala was pleased to discover that he hadn’t actually missed most of the important bits even despite his distraction, and they quickly managed to make up for lost time in their discussion of the planning.
Once they’d agreed to break for the evening, he kissed her cheek. “I hope I didn’t upset you too much.”
Koala’s expression softened as she looped both arms around him in a hug he always teased was ‘a lot like her namesake’, smiling warmly at him.
“I wasn’t exactly upset, Sabo. I’m just worried. You worry me sometimes, you know.”
“Me?” He gave her a mock scandalized look as he peered teasingly back. “I can’t imagine why I’d worry anybody.”
He rested his chin on the top of her head— an infuriating (nearly) ten inches taller than her and always making use of it.
He was a beanpole of a man, and she always threatened…one day she’d have another inexplicable growth spurt and rest her chin on HIS head.
Of course she knew it wasn’t really going to happen. She nuzzled his chest with a snort. “It’s because of that attitude that you worry everybody, Sabo. Dummy.”
“Oh now it’s not just you that’s worried it’s everybody, hmm?” He wrapped his arms around her in return, rocking her gently from side to side.
“I’m just the one who pokes you about it, because I care so much.” She nuzzled her nose against him with a half smile. “But I’ve had to listen to like…a dozen lectures to ‘keep Sabo out of trouble’, and you still haven’t made it easy for me.”
Sabo tugged the curling bottoms of the locks of her hair as he often did. “That many, huh? I guess I should stay out of trouble just to make sure you don’t have to hear them.”
She was only mildly exaggerating, of course. It was a common ‘tease’ for people to put her in charge of keeping an eye on the Revolutionary Army’s wildcard number two officer. Lots of ‘you’re basically married anyway’ jokes layered on top of a genuine request to just… be there for him.
She would have been there anyway, even without them harping on about it. She squeezed him a little tighter, bumping her head against his chest.
“I think if you started staying out of trouble I’d start to worry it wasn’t you,” she teased. “So I’ll keep dealing with you as you are…my big pain in the butt.”
He cupped her chin with his gloved hand. “I’m lucky to have you watching out for me.”
The next morning over breakfast as everyone filtered in for the reports and briefings before heading out, all anyone was chatting about the news from Marineford.
Koala had awoken as a woman on a mission— she’d gotten up early to do a last check of the supplies she’d need to set off towards land with Sabo, she’d gotten a little work in on the punching bag before Hack had even gotten up, and she’d grabbed Sabo and gotten to the canteen for coffee just in time for the first cups to be handed out.
It was one of the days where she felt ready for anything— ready to make a difference. But as the morning wore on, and the more of her comrades she chattered with, the more she heard about the recent event that rocked the world.
The execution in Marineford was on everyone’s lips. Every new detail heard from co-commanders and away-team operatives like herself, was more horrifying and shocking than the last.
“They say they saw Iva there!” was a sting of hope, followed by “they deployed weapons that looked like Kuma… just like him I swear”.
It was a travesty, a sign of the World Government’s sickening injustice, one she checked as soon as she could snatch a paper for herself. The execution of a young man, ‘Ace’, a captain of Whitebeard’s crew, was front page news, blown up into a humiliating circus that devolved into an all out, world shaking war. All because of the boy’s blood.
She felt sick when she read the details, the pointless death, and the actions taken by the Admirals and their superiors. She had handed the paper off to the next person to return to her coffee with a muttering of the injustice inherent to the World Government’s system.
Even the Warlords were involved.
When she turned to ask Sabo what he thought she saw him holding the paper so tightly that he looked like he was about to tear it in half. He was white as a sheet.
“…..” Koala nearly fell out of her chair in her rush to her feet, hopping over to him and grabbing him by the shoulders “Sabo? Sabo what’s the matter?”
It was like he couldn’t hear her at all.
Then a horrible noise ripped from his throat.
Sabo had mostly shaken off the strange sense of unease from the day before when he held the paper in his hands.
Everything went quiet around him as he locked eyes with the face on the front page.
It would only be in hindsight that he remembered what people were talking about.
That they were talking about Ace.
In the moment there was only Ace’s smile on the page, and the sudden knowledge that he was dead, and the sudden knowledge that he had been alive— that he had been important.
And the feeling like something had punched a hole through his chest.
My brother!
The world went white for a moment.
Sabo made a strangled noise.
His knees gave out.
My brother!
Ace made a strangled noise.
The world went black.
Koala sat by Sabo’s bedside as other visitors came and went. His breathing was shallow, but regular, like he was asleep. Only no one had been able to wake him. Not for hours and hours.
Her heart hadn’t slowed since the moment he crumpled to the ground in the galley. She sat by his bedside, checking his temperature— too high!— at regular intervals when she wasn’t twisting and squeezing the fabric of her hat in her lap, or freshening the damp cloth on his forehead.
The first hour she’d cried, cried in terror and confusion with each failed attempt to wake him up.
The second hour she’d resolved to stay RIGHT THERE by his side until he woke up. Damn the mission…; damn everything except him.
The third hour she’d gotten worried. She’d started to think. What drove him into the depths of sleep? Was it a coma? Was it that ‘chest pain’ from yesterday? Or was it whatever specter he’d seen in the paper— he’d only started freaking out when he’d seen the front page, right?
But as far as she knew he didn’t know anyone involved. How could he? Sabo hadn’t had a memory of anything past the day he was picked up by the Revolutionary Army.
“Oh Sabo…” she whispered as she twisted her hat in her hands again. “…If you don’t wake up, I’ll bop you!”
The halfhearted threat, as expected, didn’t work. And instead she let her head drop on his chest with a low whine. “Please don’t die.”
He dreamed two dreams, and remembered two lives that were lived apart.
When he woke it was with two thoughts in his mind.
Ace is dead! // Sabo is alive!
For a moment he struggled to untangle the dream from the memory— which was the life he had lived and which was the one he imagined for his brother.
Ace was dead.
Ace was dead, so that meant he had to be Sabo, right?
That seemed to follow.
He let his eyes open and blinked rapidly for a moment, trying to determine where he was.
Koala was already halfway on top of him, he discovered as he felt her weight. She was babbling something about him leaving, and he found himself reassuring her that he would not.
Sabo was alive. For some reason that thought had equal weight in his mind as the fact that Ace was dead. Both left him reeling. It must have been the fact that all of a sudden he realized that Ace and Luffy must have thought that he was dead.
Ace must have died thinking that Sabo was already dead. That soon they’d be together again.
We are together again.
Sabo didn’t understand where the thought came from as he choked back a sob while Koala embraced him.