Chapter 10: The Weight of Reality
A week later they were laying together in another rented room on, ironically of all islands, Dressrosa. They were there neither for sightseeing, nor for Revolutionary Army business, but rather because it was the last large island with any ties to the world government. Beyond the waters of Dressrosa the rest of the Grand Line was firmly the territory of the Emperors, and that was a problem.
It was a serious problem because legal merchant ships did not sail into Emperor territory. Almost nobody sailed into Emperor territory except for their allies and vassals sailing at their bidding and doing business with their islands. Aside from those smugglers bringing goods at the behest of their pirate lords, nobody sailed in or out of those waters aside from crazy rookie pirates looking for Roger’s treasure at the end of the Grand Line.
Which meant that now that they’d arrived in Dressrosa, they were at a standstill. Because everyone had told them— it was no secret— Shanks’ ship was headed to a little island deep in Whitebeard’s territory.
Barring a miracle, or a stroke of genius, getting there was going to be next to impossible.
It was a serious problem.
But it was also a ‘tomorrow’ problem.
For now Sabo and Ace put it out of their mind as they lay together, curled around Koala. A gentle night breeze from the window cut through the balmy Dressrosan air, caressing them comfortably as they lay there, skin to skin under the filmy linen sheet.
Koala had fallen asleep perhaps fifteen minutes before, and now the brothers lay there dozing, enjoying the comfortable repose and the soft sound of her breath as they chatted silently between themselves.
“This is so nice,” Ace murmured, toying with a stray lock of Koala’s ginger hair. “I can’t believe she actually likes me.”
Sabo bumped up against him in their mindspace, leaning his chin on Ace’s shoulder. “Of course she likes you. I think she probably loves you, Ace, for many of the same reasons I do.”
“Because you’re an idiot?” Ace teased back. “It’s the honeymoon phase. I’m sure she’ll get fed up with me sooner or later.”
“Koala gets fed up with me every other day and we’ve never fallen out of this ‘honeymoon phase’.” Sabo chuckled. He stroked his thumb down Koala’s jaw as if it was Ace’s, too. “Besides, I get fed up with you and I still love you.”
“Because you’re an idiot… like me.”
The two of them laughed and took a long slow breath, feeling the delicious sensation of their shared chest swelling against Koala’s back as they lay curled around her.
After a long, pleasant moment, Ace sighed, not unhappily, but longingly. “I’m sorry I missed so much of this. If I’d known you were out there, I would have come after you in a heartbeat. Maybe Deuce and I could have been Revolutionaries. Maybe you two could have been pirates.”
Sabo sighed, too, pulling their body closer to Koala’s. “I wish I’d ever had a wanted poster. Some way you could have seen my face. You’d have known me, even if I didn’t know you.”
Regret and could-have-beens filled the soft silence of the room.
“It’s a small bed,” Sabo continued quietly. It was true– their two bodies filled almost the whole available space. “But I still wish we were struggling to squeeze your stupid ass into it with us.”
“It’d be a real tight fit. I got pretty big, Sabo.”
“Oh now you’re bragging.” he laughed, but he felt hot tears leaking down their shared cheek.
In the space of their mind, Ace kissed him, and they pressed their lips against the back of Koala’s neck.
Distantly beyond the window, someone in the quiet of the night picked away a melancholy tune on the strings of a flamenco guitar.
Koala stirred against them, arching against them with a sleepy murmur. Maybe it was the music drifting in the window or maybe the contact of them against her, but she roused enough from sleep to smile under the messy tangle of her bangs with an unintelligible murmur.
They kissed her gently again, and resolved to settle into sleep.
They were having breakfast at a little Dressrosan open-air cafe near the docks the next morning when the miracle happened. It happened while they were chattering quietly over two large cups of dark, richly brewed coffee and steamed milk and thick slices of sweet toasted bread. The topic, of course, was what the hell they were going to do about getting through the further end of the Grand Line.
“Man, I never really thought about how hard it would be if you just wanted to travel to an island in the old man’s territory,” Ace grumbled, nibbling his toast.
Ace of course, had had free reign of it– but that didn’t matter one lick now that he was in Sabo’s body, and without a crew or a ship, or an anything.
Koala stirred her coffee again, glancing up at him with a bounce of her puffy red cap as she looked up at Sabo’s eyes. “I bet—I mean, I can imagine you could go pretty much anywhere in it before. But if you’re not one of his, it’s basically a big wall. The Revolutionary Army’s had a lot of issues trying to get agents deeper inside the Emperor’s territories like—forever.”
“Yeah,” he scratched his head thoughtfully. “Sabo said you didn’t have any real useful contacts for this. I don’t know what we’re gonna do. What can we do, like, find a ship and a crew and sail it ourselves?”
It was not the kind of strike of genius he’d been hoping for. Sure, they could theoretically put together the funds for it but it would take a hell of a lot of time– and by that time Deuce might have left!
Koala took a long sip of her coffee, before she leaned on her hand.
“I mean—I suppose we could, but we’d have to get REAL lucky, real fast. This isn’t an official job so–it’s not like we’ve got the funds on hand you know? At that point maybe we should just hope one of the underground’s smuggling ships is in need of two able bodied recruits on a ship headed straight for Deuce’s location.”
“Yeah but even if they were, we’d have to… convince… them….”
Ace’s train of thought was completely derailed by something Sabo, watching from the ‘passenger seat’ of their shared mind, didn’t immediately understand. Ace had been watching the crowd coming and going along the street to the dock, and their gaze had fallen on a burly man with a quite distinctive braided beard with a bow at the end.
While Sabo supposed it was eye catching, he wasn’t quite sure what about the man had short circuited his brother.
Koala’s foot brushed against Sabo and Ace’s as she tilted her head. He’d suddenly gone rictus, captivated by the crowd—but she couldn’t see anything of real note. Just your average flamboyantly dressed citizens of Dressrosa and some various visitors—likely pirates.
Still she leaned half over the table. “Are you alright? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Her smile took on a teasing edge at the little pun, before she followed his line of sight and shifted in her seat to get a better look.
“Sorry, hold on!” Ace huffed breathlessly. He lept up from their chair and ran past her across the street, waving his arms. “Ribbon! Ribbon Hargrave!”
The old man with the ribbon in his beard stopped what he was doing and turned toward the oncoming charge.
Koala stumbled out of her seat, nearly spilling her coffee as Ace burst up from the table. Her hat fell down over her eyes with the weight of her goggles, obscuring her view for only a moment as she pushed her hat back up and bolted after him. “…huh??”
By the time she was in ear shot the two were in an animated conversation.
Ace turned and grinned to her through Sabo’s face. “Koala! This is Ribbon Hargrave! I know him— ah, through my brother Ace!”
Koala looked up at the man for a long moment, and then back at Ace with a questioning look.
This man was undoubtedly a pirate—and connected to Ace himself. The thoughts coalesced as a broad smile crossed her face. A pirate connected to Ace could possibly offer them a ride into the depths of the Grand Line!
More than that, it suddenly hit her as he was talking with the man, if Ace actually knew him that meant that they had already confirmed what they’d set out to discover without even yet finding Deuce.
If Ace knew this man, it meant that there was a ghost in Sabo’s body.
Now it was Koala’s turn to look like she saw a ghost—she doubted Ace and Sabo even realized it yet—but it was because she really had.
Ace was real.
This man, who clearly was familiar with him despite talking to someone he thought was Ace’s ‘brother’—had provided undeniable proof that the dead could linger on.
Not twenty minutes later Ace had, on the strength of his fond reminiscence with the old man on behalf of his ‘brother’, negotiated them space on the pirate’s smuggling ship directly into Whitebeard’s territory. Hargrave had business in Dressrosa, but instructed them to be at the dock at dawn the next morning before he left them.
Koala was still reeling. Ace hadn’t seemed to have put the circumstances together yet. She was sure that the way she’d fallen quieter and contemplative that he’d notice sooner or later that at least something was up with her—at which she’d pass along the good news.
As the man wandered off, Koala draped her arms around his shoulders and leaned against him from behind with a murmur of. “Well, that was lucky wasn’t it?”
“Practically a miracle!” Ace declared, beaming. He put his arm around her. “Come on, let’s finish our coffee. I guess we don’t have any reason to hurry but might as well not let it get cold.”
Koala nuzzled her head against him as she flashed a lopsided smile. “Yeah, I think you’re gonna need that coffee in a minute, handsome.”
He walked back arm in arm with her to their little table under its cheerful umbrella and he cocked his head doggishly. “Huh?”
Koala gently pushed him into his seat before pushing his coffee towards him, sitting down with one leg crossed over the other and a playful laugh.
“—congratulations, Ace. You’re as real as they come. You’re not a figment of Sabo’s imagination. I know this for certain now.”
Ace toppled into the chair and stared up at her with Sabo’s eyes, big and wide as it finally dawned on him. “Oh– oh. Koala I wasn’t even thinking…”
His mouth slowly fell open, and his manner changed— Sabo. “Holy shit.”
Koala leaned over the table. “I told him that he’d need the coffee, Sabo. He went right up to a stranger— a guy you and I never met, and knew enough about him that he was able to get us passage on a ship. A guy who knew him back, and was willing to help his brother out.”
Sabo sat up and adjusted his hat— he looked thunderstruck. “I. My goodness. That. He really did. He really did. He was so far in front of me while it was happening I didn’t even process it.”
He scooped up his coffee and Koala could see that his fingers were shaking.
Koala reached out and grabbed his hand, feeling the warmth of the coffee just underneath it as she looked into his eyes. “You have your answer now—you’ve really got your brother in there with you.”
Sabo’s dark eyes were filled to the brim with fat tears, glistening and threatening to spill over at any moment. His voice had a hoarse, slightly fragile quality to it. “He’s real. My brother…”
Koala knew it had to be a lot for them to realize at once. That tenuous ‘what if’ that they’d all been hanging on had finally collapsed. For the better, towards the answer that she’d been expecting—and hoping for, in a way—but the one that was undoubtedly far, far more emotional than the other for Sabo and Ace.
She could only imagine what they were saying internally—all she knew was Sabo looked ready to cry.
Her eyes looked deep into his, as she reached out to instead brush her fingers just under his eyes.
“He is—and that’s a good thing, isn’t it? I’m glad he’s real too.” She kept her voice soft and soothing, matching the small and sympathetic smile on her face “should we go somewhere quiet for a little bit? Or …what do you need?”
He nodded, throat bobbing as he swallowed. “Let’s… let’s go back to the room. I’m sorry, I think I need to lie down.”
She’d expected he might—the way it seemed to have taken them both out at the knees spoke to that much. She squeezed his hand as she helped him up from the chair and left the money on the table.
No matter what—through all of this—she was going to remind them that she was there to support them every step of the way.
Sabo held tightly to Koala’s hand the whole short way back to their rented room, afraid that without it he’d simply fall to his knees under the enormous weight of his own confusion and relief. Inside their shared mindspace he hadn’t let go of Ace yet— and wouldn’t for quite some time.
Real. It was all real.
That was immeasurably better, and immeasurably worse. All the grief and pain and regret he had felt from Ace in those dreams, in his mind these past weeks, all real.
“Sabo it’s okay,” Ace insisted quietly, holding him. “It’s not like your life has been any easier.”
“That’s not the point!”
When they arrived back at the room, Sabo simply took off their jacket and their hat and layed down on the bed, grabbing Koala tightly as soon as she settled down next to them.
Koala wrapped her arms around him just as tightly, and held him firm in her arms. She was warm, and almost seemed to be trying to ground him with her presence. “Sabo–?” she murmured.
He took deep breaths, letting her presence, as well as Ace’s, sooth him. Ace was there, he was real.
He had his brother back, even if he had died. Sabo hadn’t been able to get to him but he still had him there, even if it was in this strange and impossible way.
He squeezed Koala back. “I’m here. I. I didn’t want to let myself believe it. I didn’t want to hope.”
“I know, Sabo—” she whispered quietly as she let her fingers trail down his back. “It would have hurt worse to believe it and find out it wasn’t true—but it is. He’s really there with you.”
“How do you feel about that?” he asked, hesitantly. Ace had, a couple of times during the last week when they’d all gotten closer, expressed a minor worry that Koala was only as comfortable as she was with him, because she believed that he was just another part of Sabo.
Koala pulled back enough to meet his eyes with a smile that he could tell she was trying to keep subdued. She shifted against them, and looped an arm around his shoulder before she finally answered.
“Fantastic, honestly. I think it’s absolutely fantastic. I mean—Ace,” she flushed a little “Ace is a charming man, and fantastic company. I’d have supported you if he were—you know, a part of you too. All the way, but I admit I’m—I’m kind of happy that he’s not? Sorry, I know you’re dealing with a lot as it is.”
He shook his head. “Hear that helps. It helps a lot, Koala. And so does dealing with this together– as a trio?”
As Sabo hesitantly offered the description of the three of them, he felt the swell of Ace’s warmth and excitement to be included. His love, it was real. It wasn’t just a hope, or a memory, or a regret. Ace was real and he was there with him.
Their spirits clung desperately to one another. If death couldn’t keep them apart then nothing could.
Koala’s subdued smile bloomed into the wide and affectionate look he was so used to from her as she nodded her head. “As a trio—we’ll figure it out and deal with all of this. Together. Just know I’m gonna be right there with you guys, supporting you the whole way, got it?”
They each grabbed one of her hands with one of theirs. “We insist!”
Their hands were warm around hers, and somewhere in her mind it tried to trick her into thinking it was somehow warmer than usual—that there was the combined heat of two bodies or perhaps that fire that Ace had been famous for in it.
But it was the same temperature as always, even if Koala felt herself heat into a flush of her own as she squeezed both hands as if they belonged to separate men—which in the moment she supposed they did.
“Then it’s settled. I’m glad, you know? I’m glad for the three of us, and I’m glad to have gotten to know Ace as more than just a name on the wanted posters or in my intel. And I’m GLAD you two are back together, even if it’s a bit odd.”
They squeezed her hands, and nuzzled their head against her neck gently, and affectionately. As they spoke, their voice wobbled in and out of each other’s register. “It’s so odd. But you’re amazing, Koala. Thank you for… for being willing to put up with this.”
It was odd, the way their voices seemed to fade back and forth—but they were both real, provably and definitively real— that strange vocal cadence was just a part of it all, wasn’t it? It was a reminder that two people were sharing that space…and they were two people she’d—
It was amazing to say this, especially with how fast it came over her. Maybe the ease of knowing his closeness to Sabo helped. Maybe it was just his easy charm and the intimacies they shared— but they were two people she’d come to care for. Love, even.
She laughed, squeezed his left hand before using it to lightly bop himself on the chest. “Of course I’m ‘willing’ to ‘put up with it’ you idiots—I’m happy to put up with it. You’re both stuck with me!”
They rested their forehead against theirs. “We’re stuck together.”
Ace’s voice came through more strongly and teasing. “Apparently there’s no fucking getting rid of me, so.”
She lightly punched him again, unable to stop a quiet giggle.
“You do seem to have a way of sticking around, Ace. Good—after all, if you weren’t here you’d miss out on your—what was it you said?” She leaned closer with an impish purr. “Equal share of the treasure?”
Ace laughed and their face turned red, and he wiped their teary eyes with the back of their arm and leaned closer in toward her. “That’s right, my equal share. I wouldn’t want to miss out.”
“It’d be a shame—and honestly dreadfully unpirate behavior if you did,” she looped her arms around his waist with a flush of heat.
It was weird, it was—honestly like nothing on the Grand Line she’d ever heard of outside of the occasional sordid 1 berry novel, or ghost stories—but it was real. And she was smack in the middle of it with them. And if she could tease him a little about being a shared treasure? She was damn well going to do it!
“I wouldn’t want to be un-pirate!” He laughed. “Especially when we’re going to be on a pirate ship tomorrow. Actually, um…”
His brow furrowed slightly at some thought that had caught him.
Koala tilted her head to the side with a curious ‘hmmm?’
“What is it, Ace?”
“Well, I guess we need to talk about Deuce.” He laughed, a little nervously. “Technically speaking we don’t need to go after him now, since this whole thing started to confirm I was real.”
Koala nodded thoughtfully, it was true that hunting down Deuce was originally part of the idea to confirm if Ace was real—which they’d now done pretty handily—but she had to imagine that Ace would still want to see the man, right?
“And we did figure out that you were, so—we’re still going after him, right?”
“I was hoping you’d say that!” His expression brightened considerably. He let go of her hands and stroked his fingers down her shoulders instead. “Uh, I think we’ve gotten to the stage in our… uh… relationship— we have a relationship right? That’s what we’ve been talking about?”
“That’s right, Ace,” Koala stuck out her tongue as she leaned into his touch, her arms still around his waist. “I’d say we’ve got a relationship alright. So we’ve gotten to the stage in our relationship ….”
He laughed nervously again. “Well…”
Sabo broke through with a great, heaving sigh and shook his head. “He’s being ridiculous, Koala. He’s trying to explain that he and Deuce were lovers. As though that wasn’t plainly obvious.”
“Oh!” Koala put her hands to her lips—she was certain that he’d already insinuated it, hadn’t he? Or maybe she’d just read between the lines. “I’m afraid to say to him that I ah, already assumed that. From the way he talked about him, if nothing else!”
Sabo laughed and shook his head. “He can’t remember if he ever actually said it or not, and he didn’t want things to be awkward if he hadn’t. And he got embarrassed. Despite the fact that he already knows the kind of relationship you and I have. For a pirate, he certainly grew up to be shy.”
Koala laughed with him.
“I’d say! though—I dunno, that’s actually kind of adorable.” She sidled her way closer, looking up at him with a grin as she settled into his lap. “But it’s not exactly a surprise that he and this Deuce fellow were lovers. So I’m sure as hell not going to deny him his reunion!”
“He’s relieved,” Sabo chuckled. “Of course he seems to think that getting Deuce to believe all this will be both difficult, and funny.”
It’d be way harder than convincing her, she could only imagine. She’d kind of gotten the build up to it, the soft edges that eased their descent into the weirdest relationship she’d ever had— Deuce was likely just off sad somewhere, not expecting the absolute weirdness that was about to crash at his feet.
“It will be a bit funny, won’t it?”
After a week at sea on the ship of Emperor Shanks, Deuce found himself standing in front of the fresh grave of Fire Fist Ace. He had, without any input from Deuce, been buried right next to the old man.
It writhed in his chest, seething and twisting as he stood before the graves. Hot tears fell like rain upon the few remnants of his captain—his best friend—his beloved that there still were in the world.
His hat and his dagger adorned the X that stood dwarfed under the fluttering coat and looming grave of the damned old man.
Deuce’s fingers clenched tight enough to cut half moons into his palms, his breath catching. His whole world, the man who he’d once called his very sun—was extinguished, and smothered in the shadow of the man who’d torn that sun from the sky and made him think he was hardly more than a candle’s flame.
Why did nobody ask me? The roiling anger hissed as his shoulders began to shake don’t they know that he deserves, at least, to be his own man in death?
Nobody asked him because he didn’t matter. Deuce wasn’t even his first mate anymore—hadn’t been for some time. He was the old man’s second favorite doctor—he was another soul bound to Whitebeard.
So of course they made Ace’s final resting place all about HIM.
His mask slipped down his face somewhat as he took a sharp and shaky intake of breath, tears pattering down upon the smiling ornament on Ace’s hat. “I’m sorry, Ace.” he whimpered “I couldn’t do better for you. I couldn’t do shit. I couldn’t even finish my stupid novel—I…”
He placed the flowers crushed in his shaking hand down before the grave and knelt in the freshly filled in dirt. “Love you, partner. I love you.”
As Deuce knelt in the dirt before the grave, the thought of joining him in the soil loomed large in his mind.