Chapter Text
The key dug into Luffy’s palm every time his hand tightened.
Which was often.
The battlefield seemed determined to throw new obstacles in front of him every few seconds. Marines surged forward in waves. Pirates crashed against them. Cannon fire split the air overhead while Whitebeard’s earthquakes shook the bay hard enough to throw people off their feet.
Luffy ignored all of it.
Most of it, anyway.
The giant crack in the ice opening directly beneath him was admittedly difficult to ignore.
He jumped.
His sandals barely cleared the gap before the frozen surface collapsed entirely, seawater surging upward in a spray of ice and foam. The impact jarred his knees when he landed on the other side, but he barely noticed.
The platform.
Ace.
Still there.
Good.
Keep moving.
A Marine captain lunged toward him. Luffy dodged automatically, grabbed the man’s arm, and hurled him into three of his comrades without breaking stride.
His chest burned.
That wasn’t new.
Everything burned these days.
His muscles.
His lungs.
The old poison still lurking somewhere inside him.
The injuries he’d accumulated since arriving at Impel Down.
There was so much pain that his body had stopped bothering to distinguish between them.
Luffy didn’t think about it.
Pain was simple.
Pain meant he was still moving.
The platform was getting closer.
That was what mattered.
Somewhere above him, Ace was watching.
Luffy knew it.
Every now and then he caught glimpses of him between bursts of smoke and flashes of light.
And every time he did, relief settled briefly in his chest before the urgency returned.
Still there.
Still alive.
Not too late.
Yet.
The word slipped into his thoughts before he could stop it.
Yet.
Luffy shoved it away immediately.
No.
No thinking about that.
He’d spent too much of the journey to Marineford thinking about that.
Too many nights wondering if Ace was already dead.
Too many moments running through Impel Down convinced he was seconds away from failure.
The empty cell on Level Six flashed through his memory.
Luffy stumbled.
Only for a second.
His foot caught on broken ice and his balance wavered.
A second later he recovered and kept running.
But the memory remained.
The cell.
Empty.
The cold feeling that had swallowed him whole when he’d realized he’d missed Ace.
Too late.
The fear had never really gone away.
It had simply changed shape.
Now it sat in the back of his mind every time he looked toward the scaffold.
Waiting.
Ace noticed it too.
Not the stumble.
The expression.
The way Luffy’s eyes snapped toward the platform every few moments as though reassuring himself that Ace was still there.
Ace knew that look.
Knew it far too well.
Luffy had looked exactly the same after Sabo died.
Not immediately.
Immediately after, there had only been shock.
The fear came later.
The desperate need to keep checking.
To make sure Ace was still there.
To make sure he hadn’t disappeared too.
Ace closed his eyes briefly.
Damn it.
He shouldn’t be here.
None of this should be happening.
Luffy should be with his crew.
Laughing.
Causing trouble.
Chasing whatever insane dream he’d set his sights on next.
Instead he was fighting his way through a battlefield full of monsters because Ace had made one stupid decision after another.
The guilt sat heavy in his chest.
Almost heavier than the cuffs.
Below, Whitebeard watched Straw Hat launch himself directly at a group of Vice Admirals.
The old pirate wasn’t entirely sure what he expected anymore.
The boy’s actions had long since stopped making sense.
Not tactically, anyway.
Most fighters conserved energy.
They picked battles carefully.
Measured risks.
Straw Hat seemed physically incapable of doing any of those things.
The kid saw an obstacle and threw himself through it.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Whitebeard had spent decades commanding pirates.
He knew determination when he saw it.
This wasn’t determination.
Not entirely.
Determination implied choice.
The boy didn’t seem to believe he had one.
The distinction bothered him more than he cared to admit.
Ace had talked about his brother often.
Mostly complaints.
Usually involving property damage.
Occasionally involving wild animals.
There had been one story involving a crocodile that Whitebeard was reasonably sure had been exaggerated.
Reasonably.
Now he found himself wondering how much of it had actually been true.
The kid looked young.
Not in the way rookies usually looked young.
Young in the way some of his newer crew members had looked when they first joined.
Before the New World had gotten its claws into them.
Before they’d learned what the world was capable of taking away.
And yet here he was.
Running straight through hell for family.
Whitebeard knew exactly where that road ended.
Which was perhaps why he couldn’t stop watching.
Marco landed beside him with a thump.
“Still keeping an eye on Straw Hat?”
Whitebeard grunted.
Marco followed his gaze.
Neither of them spoke for a moment.
Below, Luffy had somehow managed to draw the attention of another warlord.
Because apparently Mihawk hadn’t been enough excitement for one day.
“He’s going to get himself killed,” Marco muttered.
The words sounded more frustrated than worried.
Whitebeard wasn’t fooled.
Marco worried about everyone.
It was one of the reasons Whitebeard trusted him.
“Maybe,” Whitebeard said.
Marco snorted.
“That’s not reassuring.”
“No.”
It wasn’t.
Because Whitebeard wasn’t entirely sure it was wrong.
The kid was burning himself alive.
The frightening part was that he seemed aware of it.
And didn’t care.
Not as long as Ace was still on that platform.