Taking a Siesta

A/N: So… here's a one-shot. Let your imaginations tell you where the story goes after this. I was mostly just concerned with the notion of Ace falling asleep at this exact moment.

I do apologize for the lack of updates for A Leader in Peril. Please rest assured that I'm working on it. I'm not a huge fan of what I've written for the next chapter so I'm lacking a bit of motivation to work on it. I'll likely have to restart from scratch but maybe I can finagle something out of the mess I've written. I have a good bit of free time coming up soon in my life so maybe? Can't promise a publish date for it but just know that it will happen eventually.

Summary: Up until now, Ace's narcolepsy has been a grand source of humor and an infrequent source of frustration or danger. Never again will Luffy or the Whitebeard pirates make fun of Ace for falling asleep mid-sentence or meal. Now, they will forever be grateful for his strange and inconvenient quirk. One-shot. A quick silly thing that popped into my head randomly.

Word Count: 1,032

Publish Date: April 12, 2019

Disclaimer: Is it even necessary to tell you that I don't own One Piece? If I'm here and I'm not a native Japanese speaker and my name isn't Eiichiro Oda, I think it's pretty obvious.

Follow up note: I did not rewatch/read this episode/chapter before spitting this out (read: The author is too much of a lazy ass to boot up the digital copy of the episode housed in the files of this very computer). The order of events in the first couple of paragraphs are from memory alone. Please excuse any glaring chronological errors.

Please enjoy this nonsense I've written!

Luffy watched helplessly as Ace turned back around to face Akainu. He felt a wave of vertigo wash over him and his vision blacked out for a moment. When he was aware again, he was on his hands and knees on the frozen ocean surface. He heard Ace and Akainu shouting at each other distantly and could barely comprehend the words being thrown about. He did understand the shout of pain Ace gave and looked up in time to see him clutching his burning arm.

That's… strange, was all Luffy could think through the haze in his mind. Akainu said a few more words and began to charge again. This time, he was headed straight for Luffy himself and he heard Ace's frantic wordless scream. A part of Luffy told him to move out of the way but his body would not respond and he still was having trouble understanding what was happening. He received a split second of clarity as Akainu's molten fist drew closer and Luffy saw Ace just a couple of steps closer to him than the admiral, sheer panic on his face.

Suddenly, Ace was blocking his vision and his mind screamed out NO! as he finally put it all together. But, the next thing that happened was not Ace receiving a molten hand through his back. No, the next thing Luffy knew, Ace's eyes rolled up and he fell forward on top of Luffy, knocking them both to the ground as Luffy's rubber body slipped and slid a little ways on the icy surface. Akainu's red-hot fist punched through the ice where Luffy had been mere moments ago, now a few feet away.

Akainu looked utterly bewildered as he stared at the limp body of the Second Division Commander sprawled across the young pirate captain and letting out a massive snore. He stood in surprise long enough for a masterful fist to the abdomen to knock him back as the hulking blue figure of Jimbei stood between him and the two brothers. A small host of Whitebeard pirates converged on the two raven-haired boys and, before Luffy could say anything, they were both hauled up and away from Akainu and the former Shichibukai.

If Luffy were later asked what happened next, he wouldn't be able to accurately describe it. The main thing he was aware of was lots and lots of shouting and that he and Ace changed hands multiple times as the group surrounding them ran back toward the open ocean. Ace regained consciousness a few minutes after they had been whirled away, but the pineapple guy running alongside his rescuer only let him get out a confused, "Whaaa?" before swiftly bringing his fist down on the freckled head and knocking him back into unconsciousness. Normally, Luffy would be indignant at the rough treatment of his brother but he felt grateful to the man for preventing Ace from behaving so stupidly again.

Luffy must have slipped unconscious as well because the last thing he remembered was the frantic running from the surrounding Marines across the frozen sea. The next time he was aware, he was lying in a room on a bed, hooked up to machines he'd never seen before. It took a moment for him to get his bearings, but he felt the tell-tale shifting of the sea around him and felt peace at the knowledge that he was at sea once more. He looked around his room and saw a few empty beds surrounding him. Before he could get too worked up about Ace's whereabouts, the door opened, letting in a stream of daylight as the man himself walked in.

Ace looked considerably better than the last time Luffy had seen him. The circles under his eyes had almost disappeared and the cuts and bruises had almost completely vanished.

"Shihihihi," Luffy laughed with a big smile, happy to see his older brother in one piece.

"Lu!" Ace shouted and ran quickly to his bedside. "You're awake! It's about damn time."

"Shihihi. Sorry, Ace. You okay?"

"Idiot," Ace mumbled, bowing his head. "I'm fine, Luffy. Had a hell of a headache when I woke up, thanks to Marco, but I'm fine. You were injured a lot worse than me."

"I'm okay, Ace."

"You will be," Ace countered with a hint of anger in his voice. "But we need to talk about what you did to get yourself so injured in the first place. Doc says you'll be back to normal in a couple weeks but Emporio Ivankov told me about what you did, Lu." Ace's voice was dark as he said this.

Luffy laughed nervously. "Haaa, well, I had to do it, Ace. Iva-chan was helping me and I didn't really have a choice."

"You would have had a choice if you hadn't –!" Ace shouted before cutting himself off and turning away. A brief moment passed.

"Ace?"

"Listen, Luffy," Ace said through clenched teeth, "I do appreciate what you did for me. Everything you did. But, dammit, Lu… that was reckless. You can't… you can't do that again, okay?" He turned back around and met Luffy's eyes. "You got lucky this time and so did I. If I hadn't fallen asleep when I did… well, I'm not sure what would've happened to either of us."

"But it did happen," Luffy said. "We can't live by what-ifs, Ace. We promised we wouldn't. And you promised you'd never die so it just makes sense that you fell asleep then."

Ace inhaled sharply. "Luffy, that promise… you know I made that promise as a kid, long before I knew what I was promising you. Sabo had just… and you were crying. I will die one day, Luffy. Nobody can live forever."

"I know that, Ace," Luffy said, his voice uncharacteristically serious. "But you aren't ready to die yet so you have to keep on living. And if there's a chance I can save you, I will, no matter what."

Ace lightly punched his head. "Idiot. I don't need you to save me. Aren't I the older brother?"

"Shihihihi. Yup, you are. But I've never listened to you anyway."

Ace laughed loudly. "I guess you're right, at that."

Here, enjoy the drivel I've written. It was meant to be about 10 times more humorous than it turned out. Please leave a review as it makes me very happy and more likely to write more things like this, if that's what you want.