#so i checked and i shouldve ended where i wanted to last time hah

[dhdhhehdndbdbd]

oh. just kind of realized that i didn't love like you i shouldve. looking back at those texts; i am everything to you; you are just a burden to me. thats a harsh way of saying it. but i didnt love you like you deserved.. get hurt so much you eventually turn into the red flag, i guess..

i dont blame myself for pursuing it at the beginning. i think i was so tired of being hurt, so tired of being the one led on, so tired of being the one to be crushed, so tired of being used and hurt. i wanted nothing to hurt me again.

so when i found you, i guess i went searching for someone i knew wouldn't hurt me. even if it meant i wasnt all the way in, even if it meant that i didnt reciprocate what i had to. i was tired of being the one hurt.

i hurt you.

i needed a reminder that someone could love me; that someone out there was good, and could be good to me. even if it meant that im now the one hurting others.

maybe it wasn't right of me. maybe i shouldnt have continued it... but i couldn't stop. i mean, it was only 3 months. i know you will be sad and i know it will hurt but at least i didnt take up more of your time. we didnt spend real money, we didn't make any real decisions for each other. we're not married, there's no kids, etc. there's still a lot of hope out there for us.

its not right to expect you to be sitting there whenever i want to call. just because im lonely and i miss you. its not right to you. of course id like to check up on you and see how you're doing but i also need to respect you. (although, ive made it clear to him that if he needs space, i will go away. i think for now hes okay with keeping contact because there's the chance we will get back together).

ive been thinking, maybe this is how cam felt? of course, its not really comparable, since he was selfish and treated me badly, but wanting to continue contact afterwards? yeah, he mustve lost feelings for me but still wanted me around. well, i will not repeat what you've done. hunter has the right to slam that door the moment he feels like it, as i did with you. slam the door and don't look back. leave me here - i am full of love for you, and i always will be, but i must find my own place as well. dont we both deserve to find the ones for us?

im not an evil person. im not a bad person. i think i was hurt and just wanted to try something. i felt love, full and ready, and i wanted to drown in it, because i felt like id been starved. i just went through shit, repeated cycles, self-sabotaged, self-harmed. i wasnt ready to date when we dated. did you heal me? i think in little ways, yes. your love distracted me from the pain and reminded me of what pure, unconditional love felt like. and that i was enough. that someone would stick around for me... why? im not sure why. you really liked me, i guess.

we might. we might go on a date in the fall. maybe he'll come over to my dorm and we'll finally cook and i'll show you my new room. maybe i'll see how it feels then.

but for now its the end. the end of this, the end of us.

ive loved you, hunter. maybe it was not as full and real as it should've, because you were all in for me. (so fast? really?). but even so it meant so much to me. it impacted me so deeply. your love reached an ache, and for a moment, things were quiet. but that moment dissipated as soon as it came, and id be back to questioning if i should be with you. you deserve someone who is as sure as you. i loved you but not enough. i wasnt in love. it was comfortable, it was nice, it was reliable.

hah, thats what you said the last time you saw me. "it was nice".

it was. i hope you heal and i hope you find where you belong one day.

[cheswirls]

it’s your extension (let me extend) 5/6

ace runs.

he runs as fast as he can. overhead, the comet soars, moving a million miles faster than he is.

he meets kidd at the factory. the powerplant. the entire village’s electrical grid. comes to a stop, slamming into the chainlink, still panting, when he rolls up on his motorbike.

“he says sorry about your bike,” ace calls. kidd cuts the engine.

“who says?”

“i do!” ace corrects.

kidd throws his duffel to the ground, takes out a pair of heavy-duty pliers. “you’re sure about this, ace?” he questions, one last time, a hard glint in his eyes. “that thing’s really coming down?” he points to the comet with the tool.

ace nods fervently. “saw it myself,” he swears.

kidd cackles. “you did, huh? alright, fine.” he steps forward, positions the pliers around the chain lock. “get ready!” he clips it and it falls to the ground, slack. “this means we’re criminals now!”

“you still have to convince your dad!” kidd calls back, loud over the bike’s engine. ace tightens his grip, nodding.

“yeah, i know!” he cocks his head back. “think that thing’s really gonna blow?”

“i sure hope so!” kidd yells. right as he finishes, an explosion echoes from behind them. ace screams, lunges forward, and kidd laughs, steadying his trembling hands on the handles of the motorbike. “whaddya know! dad taught me well, huh!”

“you’re crazy!” ace screams.

“says the guy who came up with this scheme!” kidd screams back.

he skids to a stop when they reach stairs, not risking going down them. ace jumps off, but kidd waits an extra second, caught with the bike’s momentum. ace stumbles on the stairs, glances back. “kidd!” he calls in panic, but kidd’s rolling to a stand too, the bike upturned behind him. 

“good, good!” he gasps, grabbing ace’s arm to pull him forward. “c’mon! let’s go, let’s go!”

the power cuts out. all the bombs he and kidd had set at the plant had blown, shot the circuits to bits. ace takes a deep breath as they round the corner into the festival square, booths no longer lit. no comet. not yet. they wouldn’t go for it. he had to settle for something more realistic.

“forest fire!” kidd calls, just as the emergency sirens begin ringing out. “there’s a fire, we have to evacuate! hurry!”

“this is fuusha city council. due to the explosive at the power plant, there’s been a warning of forest fires and other explosions. if you live in the following districts, please evacuate immediately to fuusha high school.”

“fire!” ace calls, sprinting after kidd. “please evacuate! there’s a fire coming!”

he can see it’s not working. the people look confused, and the sirens have them on edge, but they’re not moving. lami’s voice rings out, perfect calm even though she must be terrified. she reminds him so much of-

ace stops dead in his tracks.

kidd whips around. “this isn’t working. we really do need city council to-” his face screws up. “ace, what’s wrong?”

ace doesn’t cry. he doesn’t cry unless things are very emotional, like when dragon left, or when he met sabo for the first time, tonight. he’s not the crier. he doesn’t cry.

he’s crying.

“his name!” he blabs, frantic. “i can’t remember his name!”

kidd’s expression darkens. “are you fucking kidding me!” he yells. his hands wrap around ace’s shoulders. “ace! forget about that! we have bigger problems here, right?!”

ace’s body shakes with effort as he works to keep his sobs contained. “but-! but-” he shakes his head. then he pushes kidd’s hands off, roughly. he slaps his own face hard, twice, thrice. “sorry!” he shouts. “i’ll go, i’m going!” he starts running. kidd takes off in the opposite direction. “i’ll make it!” he promises. “i promise!”

“you better!” kidd calls.

-

“hey! what do you think you’re doing in the broadcast room?”

lami cuts off with a scream, panicking. “i- uh- i-” three teachers storm in. one councilman grabs her wrist. another turns the broadcast off.

“seriously, trafalgar,” one of the teachers huffs, marching her down the hall. “what were you thinking? do you have any idea of the consequences-”

lami walks between them, tears streaming down her face, audibly crying. “s-sorry,” she says, but it’s not to them. “sorry, ace,” she chokes. “i’m sorry!”

-

kidd glances up and his heart stops. “it’s really splitting,” he mutters. and not just in half. there were dozens of little comets, meteorites, lighting up the sky now. 

“kidd!”

he comes to a full stop, wincing. he cocks his head over, and his dad is coming to meet him down a set of stairs. a couple of his workers are behind him.

“sorry, ace,” he mutters. “this is it for me.”

-

the broadcast cuts out and ace curses. “no! shit! lami!” he cries. please be okay!

he tears down the street, taking the higher ground, knowing the path to the council building by heart, whether he wanted to or not. he passes by a railing, where the ground jutts, and glances up. the comet! how much ti-

no!

he looks up to a meteor shower. they were almost out of time.

he speeds up, but his foot catches on the uneven ground, and he trips, tumbles. he lands on the ground hard, air knocked from him, and then rolls downhill, until he hits another jutt, flips, crashes to the ground.

he lies there, trying to remember to breathe again. his head spins. his hands are in front of him.

he curls into himself. he was too late anyway, right? it wouldn’t work, right? he couldn’t outspeed a bunch of falling rocks. the plan didn’t work none of it worked-

“so we don’t forget our names when we wake up.”

ace breathes out, slow. he uncups his hand. that was right. his name was right-

he stares.

his name isn’t written on ace’s hand.

his lips tremble. “idiot!” he gasps. 

i love you is written in marker.

ace fists his hand, sobs into the gravel. “how am i supposed to remember your name with this!” he cries out, impossibly loud. he lies there for another moment, another, another.

then he pushes himself to his knees, lips stretched into a smile. he wails, laughs, comes to a stand. 

“okay!” he calls out, starting to run again.

“fine!”

“i’ll do it!”

“i’m going to LIVE!”

-

“dad!” ace calls, slamming dragon’s door open. luffy perks up from the couch, clambering to his feet. garp looks over as well.

from behind his desk, dragon stands. “ace!” he growls. “listen, i don’t have time for-”

ace sets his face, stalks closer, and dragon shuts up.

“no. you are going to listen to me,” ace shouts. “for once in your goddamn life! because i’m not dying again!”

-

the meteor still crashes.

the nucleus of the comet hits right behind ace’s house, near the torii gate that leads further into the side of the mountain. 

the ground breaks. wood from whole tree trunks flies everywhere. the lake water evaporates into steam, and then crumbles under the weight of multiple little meteors that had broken off of the nucleus.

sabo wakes up.

sabo wakes up on top of a mountain.

he sits up. the sun is shining behind him. the water from the twin lakes down far, far below glitters.

he looks down at his palm, where a streak of ink was left. he squints.

“where am i?” he mumbles.

-

five years later

“what’s with the suit? party’s not til tonight.”

sabo pauses right inside the doorway, hand still holding it half closed. he deadpans, resists the reply he wants to say. “i’m not wearing this to the party,” he says instead, finally shutting the front door. shanks’ expression still doesn’t change, seeking an answer, and after shuffling off his shoes sabo sighs and supplies him with one. “i had a job interview today.”

“oh?” shanks steps aside to allow sabo access to the rest of the apartment, but then immediately follows at his heels. “how’d that go?”

sabo stops, resisting the urge to fidget, and shanks barely avoids crashing into him. they stand still in the middle of the hall for a couple moments.

“newspaper market is more competitive than i thought,” he finally mutters. 

shanks hunkers down, shoulders shaking in an attempt to contain his laughter. “and-” he pauses as he catches sabo’s eye, the blond turning his head to gaze down at his former guardian. “koala has-”

“two offers,” sabo grunts. he rolls his eyes. “just say she’s better than me. i know you want to.” he pauses again at the entrance to the kitchen, gaze falling to the empty table. “makino’s not here?”

“ah, no. she’s meeting us there.” shanks passes him by, finally, patting him on the shoulder as he went. “i actually have a couple things to do before tonight, so i’m heading out. i’ll call you on my way back, grab lunch. be ready by six, okay? party’s at seven.”

“right.” sabo’s only half listening at this point, tugging his bedroom door open.

well. his former-

it’s been a while. since he graduated high school and moved out. since he’s been back here.

sabo lets the door slide shut behind him. the curtains are open; his bed is made -makino, probably. 

he moves over to the bookshelf and his fingers run over the spines of twenty marked notebooks, holding all his daily logs from his time spent with makino and shanks.

they pause at number three, and he pulls it out before he can think much of it, flipping through to the back, where he finds the pages more crumpled, like he’d been looking for something and grew frustrated when he couldn’t find it.

sabo reads a page out of interest and pauses when he gets to a familiar name.

he’s never remembered why he woke up on the side of that mountain, the sight of fuusha, still in ruins, far below. it still puzzles him sometimes, when he takes a moment to recall. he’d been with koala and robin, but they had gone back to goa before him. he doesn’t know the reason. did they fight? did they have to be back earlier than he did?

he’d been on notebook nine at that point, but he hadn’t had it with him, so nothing of his little country travel got logged. 

he does remember being obsessed with fuusha, at one point.

he puts the notebook back and slides open a desk drawer, frown forming on his face as he catches sight of all the articles still stashed there.

eight years ago. when the comet crashed. he can remember, faintly, watching it from the roof of the apartment building. seeing it split. watching in fascination as hundreds of little meteors grew closer and closer to the surface.

and then. crashed.

it was on the news for days. fuusha, left decimated. he remembers watching everything, saving every scrap of information, evident by all the papers in the desk drawer. something about it had him fascinated.

he couldn’t, for the life of him, recall what.

the comet crashed on the south side of the lake fuusha had formed around. the shockwaves carried the destruction all the way across, rumbling the ground even at the evacuation point.

thankfully, the town had been performing an emergency drill at the time. everyone had been moved out to the high school, out of reach of the comet’s impact. 

they’d had to relocate, their home left in ruins, but at least they were all alive.

that had been it. miran comet had come, left as half its size, and formed a newer, smaller crater in the ruins of an old mountain village. 

sabo, for the life of him, couldn’t figure why he was so interested.

he shuts the desk drawer.

-

shanks brings home yakisoba. sabo picks the mushrooms out, using the brief silence to address the topic from earlier.

“so, remind me. who’s the party for?”

“ah, an old friend of makino’s,” shanks mumbles around his food. thankfully, he washes it down with water before speaking again. “don’t ask me his name.” he waves off sabo’s look. “some old guy. his grandson’s graduating today. that’s what this all’s for.”

“lots of people?”

shanks quirks a brow, stabbing more noodles. “matter much? not like you have anywhere to be, mister unemployed.”

sabo huffs, picking out the last of the mushrooms. “i said i’d come, didn’t i?”

several hours later, he might be regretting those words.

the house of makino’s friend was huge. certainly bigger than he was expecting. the family had some wealth, that was for sure. 

the head of the house was an older man with a loud laugh. could hit hard, too, his friendly slap on the back still leaving sabo in shivers if he thought about it too long. he hadn’t seen the man of the hour, but he’d heard of him in passing several times, oh he’s gone to do this or got caught before that could happen or just saw him doing something he shouldn’t.

reckless, was his first impression.

as the night wore on, he’d grown too weary to care anymore. now he was camped out on a small balcony, shielded somewhat from the chatter and attention inside. makino had found him and shanks not long after they’d arrived, and gone around introducing them to more people than sabo could ever hope to remember.

he shivers, moving his shoulders more inward. he’d dressed more down for the night than he had that morning, but his sweater wasn’t quite thick enough to keep out the breeze that had picked up. he shifts, leaning more on the low railing, and gazes out at the cityscape. inside, voices raise as a small commotion picks up. he doesn’t pay it mind.

“twilight,” he mutters, gaze caught on the setting sun sliding just beneath the horizon line, bathing the sky in a dim glow.

“half-light,” a voice behind him corrects.

sabo blinks, turns his head back.

there’s someone standing in the doorway, hand on one of the banisters. the backglow from inside the house makes their features hard to place, but the last of the sun’s light puts it into focus. he seemed familiar, but sabo can’t put his finger on it. then it clicks -he looks like makino’s friend.

“you’re not luffy,” he states. if anything, he looked closer to sabo’s age. 

the guy blinks back, a flicker of surprise coating his expression. “i sure hope not,” he answers back, rolling his eyes as an audible shout from back inside reached them.

sabo frowns. “hm.”

he steps forward just as sabo encounters another roaming thought, leaning against the railing a couple feet away, and sabo lets his gaze fall back to the city as he asks. “what’s half-light?”

the guy chuckles, a short, breathy thing that has sabo’s hairs raising. “local dialect,” he answers. “something i picked up back home. it means the same thing.”

sabo blinks, lips closing as his unasked question gets answered. not local to here, he meant to say, but he changes the words now. “what are you here for?”

the color of the sky fades from bright to a deeper blue, and the moon’s glow begins to set in. it catches on his companion’s face as he turns to sabo again, bathes his silver eyes in wan light, bright enough for sabo to catch the confusion before it slips away, like he’s missed something, like he’s asked the wrong question. in another moment it’s gone, and he casually leans against the railing, a smile playing on his lips.

“school, at first,” he hums. “that’s over with now. it’s strange, though. i’ve always dreamed of coming to goa, of getting away from that life.” he shrugs. “i didn’t think i’d be bringing my entire family along, though.”

it’s an offhand gesture, next, that catches sabo’s attention. a wave of a hand, back to the house, and his mind feels open. it could mean different. he could be referring to more of the guests. somehow sabo doubts this, and he latches on to the suspicion. his eyes narrow. “are you sure you’re not luffy?” he asks again, because shanks had only ever mentioned one grandson, and he didn’t appreciate being strung along-

laughing snaps him out of that thought before he can finish it. it’s certainly a different reaction than before, and sabo prepares himself, ready to have the rug ripped from under him, yeah, i was messing with you, i am.

instead, his expectations are ripped to shreds. again.

“no,” the guy insists, laugh petering off. “i’m his older brother.”

before sabo can think much on that, he tips his head, eyes glinting. “and you? never seen you around before. who’d you come with?” he pauses for a moment, eyes going wide, and stifles another laugh with a hand over his mouth. “more like, who drug you here?”

sabo huffs before he can help it. “i came willingly,” he insists. when the guy doesn’t budge, he deigns him an answer. “makino. and shanks.”

the guy’s expression brightens. “oh, makino!” he says, and his tone is entirely different now. brighter. happier. “right, i saw her awhile ago. i didn’t know shanks was here, though, haven’t seen him yet-” he cuts himself off, blinking, as if he had just realized something. “wait. they brought you? no offense, but that seems kinda odd, if you didn’t even know . .” he trails off. “how do you know them?”

sabo hesitates. he hadn’t realized shanks was formally familiar with the family as well, leaving him the outsider in the mix. he’d assumed it was just makino, and that they were both there with her. guess he was wrong. guess- “i lived with them for a bit,” sabo admits.

he purses his lips, relenting as he sees the statement was getting nowhere, his companion still trying to piece it together. “for . . a long time, actually. since i was a kid.” he raises his hands at the alarmed expression across from him. “it wasn’t anything like what you’re thinking,” he says. “it was . . well, they looked after me, and i appreciate them, but they weren’t like my parents or anything.” he shrugs. “they kinda have their own kid now, right? it was similar, but it wasn’t the same.”

“oh. okay.” the guy blinks again, then turns around. he stares at the city for a while, at all the flashing lights, like he had expected different. like he was surprised that the moon was out. he turns back to sabo again. “you don’t know much about us, do you?”

it’s sabo’s turn to look away. kinda obvious at this point, considering he didn’t know there was a second grandson. and yet, instead of defending himself, he felt like admitting. “i didn’t even know your family existed until earlier today. this party was kinda . . sprung on me.”

he blinks, and then turns back to the even gaze of silver eyes. “you said ‘back home’, earlier. where is that?” 

“ah.” he rubs at his head. “well, don’ go around saying that,” he mumbles. “not something i like to admit, that i still consider it . .” his lips screw up; sabo squints as he catches it. they even out as his gaze lifts again, looking back into sabo’s eyes. “you’ve heard of fuusha, right?”

sabo’s lips part, but he stumbles on his reply. he shivers through his sweater. his gaze whites out for a moment, and he blinks it away, desperate to hold on yet feeling like he was missing something, like it was finally right there, on the edge of his consciousness. there’s a roaring in his head, blocking everything out, and when garp’s grandson steps forward, says something out of concern, sabo can’t hear a word over the noise.

he doesn’t hear, frozen stiff, until hands lay on his arms, near his shoulders, and he’s being shaken, just a little. “hey, you’re kinda scaring me here,” sabo hears, and then he blinks, and he’s snapped back to the present, silver eyes right in front of him, cast with concern. he lets his mouth finally fall shut. his gaze shifts away.

“sorry,” he mutters. 

the hands fall. the warmth where they once were lingers, just for a moment. “you good? you sure?”

“fuusha,” sabo says instead of answering, still feeling weird, off, and wanting to draw the topic away from himself. “so you’ve been here five years.”

the guy blinks. “give or take. about.” he moves his hands from hovering in the air, as if sabo would have another fit and pitch forward, to down by his side. sabo’s gaze catches on his wrist, where a red band was looped around. he recalls one of the articles he glanced at earlier in the day, and then nods to it. 

“that’s a braided cord, right?”

a hand wraps around the cord, shielding it from view, before slowly moving away. he lifts it up for sabo to see more clearly, the ends fading from red to yellow to blue, slightly frayed at the edges. “yeah. my mom made it for me.”

-

right as he says that, ace has a startling realization. one that casts him away from the conversation for a moment, that puts perspective into a different light.

the blond reminded him of his mother.

maybe that’s why the interest was there. 

rouge had light hair. it was stringy, most of the time, like she barely bothered taking care of it, instead of meticulously doing so only for the wind that day to blow it out of proportion. though every picture they had left of her had her smiling, he remembered her sunny smiles as rare; she had an array of expressions, and she liked to cast things into doubt, questioning at every turn, much to his grandfather’s annoyance. 

she smiled when ace did, though. just like the blond was now, lips quirking up almost in response to ace’s smile, born there from reminiscing about her.

the moonlight was heavy, now, and ace can see his face clear. his fair skin, something he hadn’t picked up from rouge, and was thankful for, whenever she would come home red and blotchy, a sunburn welling up easily from being out for too long. he remembers her crying to dragon until he offered to rub lotion onto her shoulders, and screaming as luffy came up after and climbed into her arms, rough handprints harming the sensitive skin.

she was stubborn as all hell, and was always willing to get into it with anyone that rubbed her the wrong way. the scourge of fuusha, they called her. and they weren’t wrong, no matter how well she had charmed gramps and dragon into believing otherwise. ace remembers, starkly, her coming in late one night, cupping a bruise on her face, and wincing when she saw ace had caught sight of it.

he blinks, and then she fades into the blond, looking disgruntled, and the bump above his eyebrow put into full view as his bangs are swiped out of the way, evidence of the scuffle he’d gotten into put on display.

ace tugs on the knot tying the cord to his wrist, loosening it. he unravels it and holds it out, between the two of them. “you can look at it, if you want,” he offers, eyes flicking from the cord to the blond.

slowly, he reaches out to take it from ace, fascination shown on his face. “it’s well-made,” he notes, loosely taking it up and holding it closer.

rouge was cunning and smart. she could talk her way out of any situation, from what ace had seen. when she couldn’t, well, she knew how to get away if she couldn’t win in a fight, sporting bruises but still holding a victory overall.

she taught ace how to scrap, but he never really used it. that was more luffy’s thing, when he grew older.

but she taught ace more than how to use his fists. ace hadn’t entered primary school until she’d passed, stubbornly insisting that he was too good for an institution, that she could school him just fine, at home. she’d been good at it, too, despite the deceptive intentions she had, her reasoning more on the lines of having ace all to herself, instead of believing whatever she had spouted about fuusha schools being corrupt.

she taught him how to weave and braid thread. she taught him how to write, how to spell. she taught him the laws of fuusha no one talked about aloud, the silent expectations everyone held. she taught him how to charm gramps into doing whatever he wanted. she taught him how to get away with messing up.

she taught him what love was.

and. he remembers.

as his hand slips back down to his side, wrist bare.

sabo, studious. always complaining at ace for leaving him without homework to turn in, or slacking on class notes and making him stumble on a test. to waking up with his arms covered in ink, angry rant sprawled onto his skin. 

sabo, eyes rimmed red from staying up late to study, leaving ace to drag him from the bed far too early, refreshed mind doing nothing when the body he was controlling was bone tired. 

he remembers angrily taking a marker to sabo’s skin on days like those, scribbling notes in almost illegible handwriting for him to take care of yourself and go to sleep at reasonable times and, his favorite, get your shit together!

he’d write that one over and over, big and bold, across his arms and down his legs, all over his face, so he’d be forced to see it and reevaluate how he treated his body.

sabo, who was quick-witted and scrappy, but too late to throw a punch. ace couldn’t count the number of times he’d woken up in the blond’s body with a split lip or nasty cut or yellowing bruise. then he’d drag himself to school and get yelled at by koala for being reckless again and making everyone worry again. he’d go home and cover it and ignore makino’s worried eyes the best he could.

that was right. makino and shanks. he lets sabo’s earlier words play back and can’t help but think differently, from what he’d experienced. so they had a baby, a real child, now. it didn’t change the fact that they cared about sabo.

sabo, meticulous. writing notes to ace with a careful script, detailing each event that had transpired while he was in ace’s body. excelling at classwork with knowledge three years ahead of ace’s own. pissing off old man crocus with smarty replies, the exact answer he didn’t expect to each of his tough questions to things ace shouldn’t have learned yet. managing to do all this, yet never getting ace’s hairstyle right, and tangling his cord, and messing his speech, and attempting to flirt with people he definitely shouldn’t be attempting to flirt with.

sabo, teasing kidd and lami, living ace’s life for him, all those months splitting a body with a guy he had never met. scribbling in thick, crisp font reminders for ace before he went to sleep and woke up in his own body. making sure ace took care of himself. fretting when he didn’t. writing off his own worries and trying to figure why ace was unhappy with life, even as the people around him, ace included, insist he care for himself for a change.

sabo, who wrote and wrote and wrote, detailing his life so that he’d never forget again, like he’d forgotten most of his life before makino and shanks. 

sabo, who reminded him so much of his mother, not just in appearance, but in everything ace had learned and cherished and forgotten, all those years ago.

sabo, who taught him so many things. who taught him, just like his mother, how to love, how to hold dear, how to forgive, how to remember.

“it’s nice,” sabo mutters, then holds the cord back out for ace to take.

his breath catches. but. bu-

so he really didn’t remember?

ace shuts his eyes for a moment. works on breathing again. he opens them and reaches for the cord, trying not to let his frustration show. before he can grab hold, though, a voice startles the pair of them.

“sabo, there you are! we’re ready to leave now. coming?” shanks is smiling, eyes only for the blond, who flinches back at the noise, and ace’s hand catches onto air as the cord is moved away. he furrows his brow, but doesn’t reach out again.

that’s when shanks seems to notice him. “oh! hey, kid, haven’t seen you in a while!” shanks steps forward to wrap ace in a hug that quickly turns into a mock chokehold, and ace forgoes the cord entirely in favor of latching to shanks’ arm, trying to pry it off.

“yeah, it’s been real nice,” he rasps. “not having to see your ugly mug-”

“ah come on now!” shanks whines. “you don’t really mean that!”

a call of his name has him settling down, and he releases ace when he remembers he was on a time crunch. “right, well, good to see you again. gotta head out now, i’ll stick around longer next time.” he winks and ace does his best exasperated expression, the luffy you are being ridiculous to extreme lengths and i am on my last straw look, but it breaks when shanks turns away, and he has to smile with his back turned, a little glad he’d gotten to see the redhead again after all this time.

“ready, sabo?” shanks asks. sabo only has time to nod before shanks flashes him a thumbs-up. “great! meet you at the car.” he’s gone after that, skipping back inside, leaving sabo to furrow his brows in confusion.

“car?” he mutters.

“makino drove,” ace tells him, and his attention snaps back up.

“oh.” he nods. his hands tighten into fists. then he realizes. “oh! here’s -this, back.”

he reaches out again, but ace waves him off, turning slightly away. “keep it.”

sabo’s brows raise. “isn’t it important?”

this meeting is important, he thinks. “give it back the next time you see me,” he says instead, because he’s not willing to give up.

sabo blinks, unsure of how to respond, but another call of his name reaches them before he can decide. so, instead of a proper answer, he holds out the band again to ace, and his bare wrist with the other. “tie it for me, then,” he says, and ace feels a grin forming as he steps forward, because it’d been a long time since he’d heard words so daring coming from the blond.