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apollojupiter · 3 days ago

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Beyond The Veil

finally got round to finishing this piece :^P Enjoy my take on Ace meeting his parents in the afterlife!

Ace had been sitting at the edge of this shoreline for hours.

Maybe- that’s how it felt, but he wasn’t sure time even existed here.

Then again maybe it did, because he hadn’t thought the reaper existed until he found himself sitting across from them on a small rowboat.

He stuck his hands in the damp sand, focusing on the crush of the grain against his palm as he recalled the conversation.

“Who are you?” he asked.

The figure cloaked in red didn't scare him, in fact it seemed to radiate a quiet comfort. Their very visage a condolence.

They were tall, looking almost comical towering over him and rowing through thick, dark water.

Their eyes were soft and glittering, darting down to his torso.

Ace followed their gaze, one hand reaching up to the border of a gaping wound.

“... Oh.”

They nodded solemnly, their head turning to the side.

“I’m um… dead then, huh?” he chuckled, but it was both bitter and sad. “S’ funny I uh… I finally… I wanted to live, y’know.”

“Most do.”

Their voice was a booming, yet distant thunder. It was a soft whisper and a sorrowed wail altogether.

Ace swallowed, trying to ignore the blood that came away stained on his fingers. His hand curled into a fist.

“Are you death? Like, the grim reaper, from all the stories?”

Their eyes addressed him again. Ancient, the smoldering glint of every known grief.

And he didn't know how he knew, but they were smiling.

“I am. Call me what you wish.”

He nodded.

A quiet moment passed, then he suddenly straightened with a sharp breath in.

Ace didn't want to be rude, but something occurred to him that had him sitting up straight and leaning forward.

“Is he here?! My brother, his name is Sabo, is he here?”

Death looked at him, regarding him for a long moment of silence he could barely stand, and they were still smiling.

“No, Ace. He’s not here.”

They didn't say sorry, it wasn’t something to be sorry for. He wasn't here, and that could only mean one thing- Sabo was alive.

Ace almost stood, and the boat rocked as he moved excitedly. His brother was alive. He laughed, the sound full and overjoyed.

Sabo was alive and Ace was-

He stopped, the light in his eyes dimming in tune to the fall of his grin.

“He’s been alive all this time?”

Death nodded.

“And I’m…”

The quiet had never been so loud. That was twice now. Twice, he wasn’t able to say goodbye.

And this time it was forever.

“Don’t blame yourself, Ace. Don’t do that to yourself.”

“But-”

“You’ve been doing that all your life. Leave it behind.”

Ace stared at them, a broiling pit in his stomach, a hole in his chest and tears blurring his vision. Leaving things behind wasn’t a strong suit of his. It never was.

How to let everything go? How could he even begin?

He blinked, pressed his lips together and wiped his cheek against his shoulder.

“... Why’s your boat so small?”

Death laughed.

Ace watched the froth and water swallow his ankles, dark eyes trained on the infinite distance of the sea.

Where it touched and held to the sky on the horizon, cupping tall billows of sunlit clouds.

It was all very beautiful, but he couldn't enjoy it. He was alone. There was no one else here and he met that with bitter acceptance.

Death had arrived on this shore in a small rowboat, but they’d left in a grand, otherworldly ship that sunk into the deep, and then they were gone.

“I’ve sailed many kinds of vessels across this sea. I’ve found that each one represents how the dead see themself. You sail as you think you deserve.”

Ace studied the small row boat incredulously, one brow raised.

“Hey, I can’t say I’m a big fan of myself, but this… I mean, seriously, I’m pretty sure this is a- yeah,” he pointed at a wide crack in the floor of the boat. “It's a big ass hole.”

The two stared at each other, then Death burst into peals of laughter as Ace’s mouth fell open.

“That's not what I meant!”

“You bring me joy,�� Death said, their amusement clear and their voidal, glittery eyes somehow beaming.

“I’m glad you think this is funny,” Ace huffed, gesturing to the railing. “Look at this, the wood’s chipped- you don’t even fit on it!”

“I often find the humble in the small, weathered ones. You’re dead now.”

“Giant hole in my chest gave it away, didn’t it?” he was deflecting now, trying not to show how it felt to see a visual representation of his own self-worth. “I’m not humble.”

“I know where you’re going. I’ve moored some of the most grand, opulent vessels on shores that your worst nightmares couldn't possibly conceive,” Death leaned over, closer to him.

He saw, for a moment, the face of time itself. Infinity, beyond the word, their skin an ever-changing shimmer.

“You think so little of yourself, and yet you’ve given so much to others. Care, compassion, hope. This boat is small, and yet I sit here, comfortable. There is room for me.”

Ace’s hands came together, fiddling. He looked away.

“You are hurt, you are angry. The chips in the wood. The hole in the floor, the squeak of the rowlock. All these things are here because you are here.”

Death leaned back, and continued to row.

“And mind you, I had to take the oars from you before you woke.”

Ace hadn’t responded to that. He didn't know how. Didn't really understand what that meant.

He stood, shuffling slowly into the waves until he was waist deep. If he was alive, this would’ve rendered him limp and useless.

Suppose he doesn't have to worry about that now.

He took a breath in, let it out. Put a hand against what was once a gaping wound.

Ace was unsure when it had turned into a sprawling scar, but he guessed it was during the time Death pointedly took his hand and led him through the water to the beach.

They were a kinder being than he thought.

“Can I ask you something? Before you go?”

Death paused, their tall back to him. They knew his question. “You may.”

“Do… do you think I deserved to be born?”

A strange question to ask death itself, but if anyone should know the answer, it had to be them.

Death gave a quiet chuckle, the sound like wind through wheat stalks. “No one has to earn birth.”

Ace was silent. It didn't answer his question, not really. But it was, in a way, a bit comforting.

He decided to let that be his answer.

“Now then!” Death clapped. They never turned back to look at him, but they waved.

“Goodbye, Ace. I love you.”

And that had floored him.

Did Death say that to everyone?

He’d never know but it was something to think about. He had all the time in the world now.

Alone.

It began quietly. It wasn’t like his worse moments in the dead of night, quick and like a punch to the face- it was a slow spark burning cold in his nose, the sharp, aching lump in his throat.

And the tears were searing, it was the first in a long time that Ace even noticed the heat of something.

“I don’t…” his voice broke, faltering into a terrified, whispered inhale. “I don't want t’ be alone…”

His quiet beg was soaked up in the wash and roll of the ocean, frigid as he began to sink.

The worst part- oh god the worst part was not knowing.

Not knowing if he managed to actually save Luffy. He took that hit. He would do it again, if he had to. If it meant Luffy would live, without question.

But he didn't know what happened after that, and he won’t.

Left to sit and be and think.

“This sucks,” Ace laughed, but it was trembling and fell into a sob a moment later. He put the palms of his hands against his eyes, and he cried.

A little boy in some back alley way, angry, unwanted and pretending that didn't destroy him.

I don't want to be alone.

“If Roger had a son, he’d just as rotten as his father!”

I don’t want to be alone.

“If they find he does, they should kill the little bastard. No sense in letting evil like that spread.”

Ace opened his eyes when a large, warm hand gripped his shoulder, turning with a startled breath.

A person? Someone else was here?

Relief flooded him, only to drain entirely into a stunned, horrified silence when he registered the man’s face.

His veins pumped pure lightning as their eyes met, his teeth gritting. Unable to grasp the wild run of emotion that detonated in his chest within seconds.

It was him.

Roger, king of the pirates, the man he refused to call his father.

And he looked so happy, it put a sour burn in the back of Ace’s mouth at the overjoyed grin on his face.

“I can’t believe it’s really you!”

He’d never heard his voice, never wanted to- hearing it only made him angry. So angry.

“You…”

The water around him sloshed with his movement backward, his face hardening into a glare.

Roger’s grin fell. He didn't move for a moment, made no attempt to stop Ace as he trudged through the water toward the beach.

He followed him after a moment, desperate for the right words to say. He wanted to meet his son, he never got to even say hello, much less goodbye.

Or sorry. For everything. For not being there, for all the times there should’ve been a pair of arms for Ace to run into and there wasn’t.

“Do y’ know who I am?” Roger asked, eyes falling to the large scar on the young man’s back.

He flinched. His upper lip twitched and pressed down against the lower, anxiously watching him pause.

“No. N’ I don’t want to. Stop following me,” Ace snapped, barely turning over his shoulder to respond. Looking at that man hurt.

It burned him.

“Ace, m’ boy, y-”

“Don’t you fucking call me that!” he spun on his heel, lip curled into an angry snarl.

Roger stilled, stunned and speechless.

“I’m not your boy, I'm not your son!” Ace shouted, hands curling into tight fists. “I never was!”

“That’s not true!” Roger exclaimed, crossing the distance between them. He was horrified. Mortified. “I wanted to be yer father, I wanted t’ be there-”

“You weren’t!”

Ace’s scream was like the crack of lightning, and was punctuated with a vicious shove to the older man’s torso.

Roger let the force drive him back, silent. His son was crying. And it was the first time he’d ever heard it.

Ace’s breath became heavy, the sound of it strained and thin. He wiped at his tears furiously, reeling back and blindly connecting his fist to the body in front of him.

“Just go away, I don't want you here!”

Roger said nothing, and that infuriated him even more- as that was all he ever got from this man. Silence and a repute that had permanently stained him.

And so he hit him again.

He kept hitting him.

A shove, a punch, a hook, whatever he could think of for every time he ever eyed a blade or a ledge.

For every time he stared in the mirror and hated what stared back, for the first time he was told his father was a cold-blooded demon.

Shove.

“Everything wrong with me is because of you!”

For the first time he realized that meant he had to be evil too, because any child of that man was devil-spawn.

Punch.

“I hate you! Y’ never did anything but ruin my life!”

For every single time he wondered why he was even born. If he even deserved to be here, the boy with the ugly blood.

“Leave me alone!”

Roger let him. He took every hit, because deep down he knew he’d chosen wrong.

This was his son, the best of anything he’d ever had a hand in making, but the name of Roger D. Gol had poisoned his life. It had taken his life.

He asked his friend to protect him, and he didn’t. He’d chosen wrong and he couldn't be more sorry for it.

Ace backed away, wiping a hand over his face. It was useless to try and hide how distraught he was.

“Why are you even here?” his voice broke, he looked away with a grimace. “Why did they bring me here?”

Death had to have known. But they should've known he would never want this, why?

Why?

Roger didn't speak for a moment, he wasn't capable. There was a raw, ugly sob in his chest and he forced it down with a dry swallow.

His lips parted, as he looked down to the sand beneath his feet. At the footprints, before tears blurred his vision.

“I’m… I’m sorry, son-” he stopped, shaking his head.

“It’s my fault.”

Ace glared at him, dark eyes reddened and glassy. He hated how much of himself he saw in this man’s face. But something kept him where he stood. He wasn't sure what, by all rights he should walk- run away.

Maybe it was the quiet fear in those words, or the fact that he’d secretly always wondered what he could possibly have to say to him, if anything.

“I don’t know what kind of person y’ think I am,” Roger tentatively began, nudging at his nose to rid it of that awful sting. It didn’t work. “And I won’t blame ya. They’d never’ve…”

It was such a terrible thing he could hardly bear it.

The boy had barely lived. And worse of it, the fact was he was killed to prove a point.

Not killed, murdered.

Roger’s legacy, king of the pirates. And all he managed to leave behind for his son was a warrant by blood.

It wasn't supposed to be this way.

“Y’ wouldn't be ‘ere if it weren’t fer me,” he continued.

“They’d love that,” Ace muttered, his voice like the crunch of gravel. Torn. Tired.

He didn't look at him.

The sun began to douse everything in vivid oranges, reds and pinks as it sunk further into the horizon. The only sound was the slight whistle of wind, and the ever-turn of waves.

The silence broke upon a small, sharp inhale, followed by a muffled sound.

Then Ace looked up at him finally, wondering if he’d continue or if this exchange was over- and when he did, he was overcome with alarmed confusion.

Roger was crying. And not lightly, his hand clamped over his mouth, dark eyes filled with a kind of horror Ace had never seen before.

His hand ripped away and he briefly turned to the side, feet shuffling. Distraught.

Ace wanted to feel angry. He wanted to be repulsed at this, how dare he cry?

But just as he hesitantly parted his lips to demand an explanation, unsure of why he was finding it so suddenly difficult- Roger faced him, and he looked so genuinely crushed.

“They murdered my boy,” he whispered, clasping his hands and putting them to his mouth, if only to quell the trembling of his breath.

Then he looked at Ace, pressing his lips together. His thick mustache was soaked in tears, the wily strands stuck to dampened skin.

It struck the young man, his mind suddenly conjuring the image of him when he first turned around.

Bright as day, he looked so happy to see him. A wide grin, full of teeth and excitement.

And look at him now. It was such a stark contrast, how his shoulders hung low, how his eyes were two deep wells of anguish. And it poured out of him, seemingly endless.

“When Rouge told me-” Roger spoke, his voice so small for a man of his stature. It broke and he looked down at his roughed hands. “I loved you from th’ moment I knew. N’ ever since.”

He knew as well, that the world had chewed his boy up and spit him out, only because he was his boy. It tore him apart, shred him to pieces with a heinous viciousness.

"I thought if I turned m'self in they- but- I thought it better n... it wasn't."

Ace could barely breathe around the lump in his throat. He spent his whole, entire life hating this man, loathing his blood in his veins.

Chasing the border of the shadow cast over him from birth, disowning him, replacing him.

He didn't regret calling Whitebeard his father- never.

But while Ace hated him, with dedicated fury, Roger spent the rest of his life, and his death, loving him. And he stood there, not appearing like the king of the pirates, the legend who saw it all, the terror of all four seas- just a man.

He didn't know how to feel. It was like his whole world had spun and changed around him. It struck him that he didn’t even know Roger.

So here Ace was, stiff and mentally scrambling to catch up.

Moments ago, he would've sneered at him and met his tears with some scathing insult.

But now? He couldn’t, it wasn’t there anymore. Like it had eroded into a whisper and vanished altogether.

Ace crossed his arms, frowning. His eyes ached, his nose burned and he definitely wasn’t happy- but he wasn't angry now either.

Just confused and uncomfortable.

“I’m sorry,” Roger murmured. “Whatever it’s worth, I truly am.”

There was a moment of silence between them then, leaving the wind and the crash of waves mingling among cicadas and crickets.

In life, there were moments that Ace would never admit he spent wishing to hear those words. Wondering if he even would apologize, and if he’d mean it.

With his lips pressed together, brow furrowing, he hesitantly responded. “... I’ll consider that.”

He needed time.

However long it took to process that he was dead, and his biological father was here and wasn’t the evil tyrant he thought he was.

And whether or not to forgive him- something he would’ve never thought he’d be considering.

His words seemed to be enough for Roger, a bit of light coming back to his eyes.

“It’s a start,” he grinned and while it was watery, it shone with a blooming hope.

-----

“I told you I needed time, old man- that doesn't mean draggin’ me through the forest!”

Ace yanked against Roger’s grip, but the man was bound and determined with whatever it was this ‘surprise’ was.

It had dawned on him a while ago- Roger could have definitely beat the ghostly tar out of him earlier on the beach, but he didn't.

Now, however, the tall brute had a grip of steel around Ace’s wrist and was pulling him through thick shrub and ferns.

He dodged a low hanging branch as it swept back, grunting and fixing the back of Roger’s head with a glare.

“Trust me, m' boy, you won’t regret following me! I promise!” Roger said, his tone giddy and hurried.

Ace scoffed, garbled slightly as he stumbled on a rock. “Who’s following you?! I’m bein’ manhandled back here!”

The torturous path ended when Roger broke the treeline into a wide clearing, and he was practically giggling with excitement.

Ace wasn't sure why he was doing all this, it was definitely getting on his nerves which were already raw to begin with.

“Are you gonna explain yourself?” he snapped, finally managing to wrench his wrist from the giant meat cuff that was Roger’s hand.

“Yer hand is so sweaty,” he made a face at the damp sheen on his arm, one brow raising in mild disgust.

“Ace?”

He looked up with a frown, confused as to why Roger suddenly sounded like a woman.

But Roger hadn't said anything, in fact he was standing to the side, grinning ear to ear.

Ace wasn't paying him much mind though- his focus was on the lady standing halfway across the clearing, staring at him.

He didn't know her, but for some odd reason, her face was so familiar to him.

And he couldn’t place it, he knew he’d never seen her before, he knew that and yet, her face made his chest tighten and his heart ache, warmth bubbling over his eyelids.

She was blonde, her wide eyes a brilliant shade of red. Tall with sun kissed skin, covered in freckles. Suddenly, two and two began to put itself together in his mind.

If his… father, was here, then surely, this was his mother?

Ace took his hat off, holding it anxiously at his torso. Her gaze was watery, her brow pinching when it darted to his torso.

He rose his hat an inch subconsciously, his eyes falling to the side as his face began to burn.

“Is this him, dear?” she looked to Roger with a visible sense of anxiety. Her hands clasped together at her mouth, but it did nothing to hide their trembling.

He nodded in response, laughing loudly.

“It’s our son!”

She let out a sound, a mix between a gasp and a sob as she launched forward and gave Ace no time to brace.

Her arms gathered him up and for the second time since he arrived here- he was a little boy. But this time, there were no alley-ways, no coarse voices sneering derision, no spiral into doubt.

It was all warmth and comfort, it was the safest he’d ever felt. A soft dawning of relief in his chest.

His mother. His mother was right here.

Ace was floored, unable to speak or do anything more than breathe as she pulled back and cupped his face in her hands.

“Oh look at you!” she grinned, her eyes glittering with tears as she laughed in disbelief. “My little boy!”

He studied her, mute. He could barely believe it. That he got to meet her, that he got to go to the same place she was in the afterlife.

“My god, you’ve grown,” she grabbed his hands, over the moon to be seeing her son again. She blinked away tears that kept coming, counting the small scars that were scattered over his skin.

And the one big one.

Rouge had so much anger about the circumstance of him being here, but she wasn't about to let it show right now. She was trying, at least, though her hands trembled with it.

Ace slowly curled his fingers, gripping her hands.

“Yer… my mom?”

“Yes!” she grinned and nodded, her eyes bright and her nose crinkling the same way his did when he smiled.

He had her smile.

His lip trembled, eyebrows turning up as his head bent forward and settled against her collarbone. His arms finally moved, wrapping around her and hugging her with everything he had.

And he cried- really, truly cried, from the base of his lungs and without restraint.

He’d dreamed of meeting his mom- wondered what she looked like, what kind of person she was.

If she’d want to know him, if she’d even like him.

“I’m so proud of you,” her voice was a soft murmur, cracking the last word as her throat seized up. “

Ace cried harder- it was all he could do.

“You had so many friends,” she laid her cheek against the top of his head, beginning to sway- a gentle rock side to side. “And you tried lots of different kinds of food, you saw so many places! You had such a good adventure.”

“But-”

“Don’t ‘but’ me,” she chided, though it held no real bite, just a quiet firmness that left no room for debate. “You did very good, y’hear me? I am so proud of you.”

Ace just nodded, blinking away hot tears and sniffling. He turned his head, settling his ear against the beat of her heart. It was funny- that was the thing he remembered most about her. He didn’t know why, but her heartbeat was the pattern he’d tap to himself to soothe what hurt him.

Anguish, anger, loneliness, he could wash it away even if for only a moment, using the beat that was ingrained in his very being from the start.

“We’re both proud a’ ya, son!”

Suddenly, Ace was compressed, squeezed against his mother as two large arms scooped them both up.

Rouge yelped, then let out a loud belt of laughter that Roger joined her in.

“Dear we can’t breathe!”

“Lemme go, old man!”

#This had me crying on company time #It's so beautifully written #Ace will always be so loved #I'm literally obsessed with this I'll sure be re-reading when my shift is done

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