Title: Through the Flame and Fire
Universe: One Piece
Theme/Topic: N/A
Rating: PG
Character/Pairing/s: Ace, Luffy, Garp (mentions of Dragon, and Roger)
Warnings/Spoilers: Spoilers through chapter I want to say 478.
Word Count: 1,240
Summary: Ace isn't sure about what family is until Luffy.
Dedication: tokki_chan's birthday fic! Again late, but slightly less late than some of my other friends'. SEE I'M GETTING CLOSER.
A/N: I've never been comfortable with writing Ace at all, but I certainly did my best.
Disclaimer: No harm or infringement intended.

The reputation is a gift from his father.

Ace isn't sure why anyone would be afraid of him when he is so small, but apparently it is because people consider the things that are inside of him—the things that are lurking deep in his blood— to be much bigger than he is himself. He isn't grateful for it; he wishes Garp had never told him about why— wherever he goes— people always glare sideways at him when they think he isn't looking or why they quickly turn away from him the moment he does.

"Roger never wanted you to inherit his sins," Garp had told him, when he'd been called the dirty child of a horrible criminal and turned away from his first school for fighting. "He tried to distance himself from you even before your were born, but it didn't take. But it was the best he could do."

He shouldn't have sinned at all then, is what Ace wants to say, but he knows that's unfair, especially when he wants to sin himself sometimes, when he looks at all the stupid faces of the people who think he is nothing more than his lousy father reincarnated, a terrible monster lurking inside the body of a five-year-old little boy.

Ace does not want to be his father. He thinks he would have been better off not knowing who his father is at all. If he didn't know, then maybe he wouldn't have to face all the same questions that the townsfolk do, wondering if there is something sinister sleeping inside him that will burst out without warning one day, terrorizing and destroying everything in his path.

If he didn't know he thinks he wouldn't hate everything so much, that the loneliness he feels would just be loneliness without any of the anger that is inevitably attached to it whenever he thinks of Gol D. Roger.

Garp just gives him long, tired looks whenever he starts to boil under the collar about it, and grumpily tells him to stop being rash, because if he doesn't, he really will be his father's son after all.

Ace takes deep, gulping breaths when he hears that and tells himself not to be mad at Garp ojiisan for saying the one thing that makes him angrier than anything else. It is simply the truth.

Instead, he feels mad at himself, for not being strong enough to endure this alone.

At night, when he's curled up in bed, Ace imagines what his father would tell him, if he were still alive.

Is a dream really worth dying for?

He wonders if he'll ever know.

The name is a gift from his mother.

Ace isn't sure why someone would leave a gift behind for the person who essentially killed them. Most of all he isn't grateful for it; he wishes Garp had never told him why she wanted him to be the best card in the deck, her one and only trump over everyone else. A flashy name like Ace is why the other children on the island are more disdainful of him than they normally would have been from just knowing that he is the Pirate King's son. "With a name like that, he obviously thinks he's better than everyone else," they reason darkly.

"She wanted to make sure you knew what you meant to her, even after she was gone," Garp had told him, when he'd gotten kicked out of another school for beating the other boys up. "It was the best she could do."

She could have not died, is what Ace wants to say, but he knows that's unfair; he's the one who killed her after all.

Not that he ever wanted to be born in the first place. She could have not had him and lived and Ace thinks the world would be better for it. There wouldn't be an island full of scared villagers and kids who wish their parents were famous too, or that they had done something amazing in their lives at all. There wouldn't be people throwing rocks at him in the street or telling him he's the offspring of filth and that by default makes him filth as well. There wouldn't be any chants of, "Ace the Disgrace!"

There'd just be her, and no him, and no terrible loneliness as he sits apart from the entire world both in birth and name.

Garp just gives him long, tired looks whenever he starts to get hot under the collar about it, and grumpily tells him to calm down; there aren't that many schools left in East Blue.

Ace takes deep, gulping breaths and tells himself he shouldn't hate Garp ojiisan either, for saying hurtful things like that. He's just telling the truth.

Instead, he just feels mad at himself, for missing someone who he's never even met and never will.

At night, when he's in bed staring at the ceiling, Ace imagines what it would be like to have a mom.

Is a child really worth dying for?

He wonders if he'll ever know.

The freedom is a gift from Luffy.

Ace isn't sure how a kid this dopey and stupid looking could belong to someone as terrifying and powerful as Dragon, but when he arrives, the kids in town give Luffy even darker looks than they give Ace. Luffy doesn't seem to mind it; he doesn't ask Garp any questions about it or seem to care very much at all, even when the kids pick on him and call him names.

"His name is Luffy," Garp tells Ace when he drags the idiot into the house one day, and says, "I promised I'd take him in too. It's all I can do."

He's not like me at all, Ace wants to say, but knows that's unfair. He can't pretend what he's got is worse than what this kid has got simply because the kid is too stupid to notice his problems himself.

"I'm Luffy!" Luffy says, like he hadn't been listening to Garp ojiisan at all just now. "Who are you?"

"Ace," Ace answers warily, and adds, "I'm Gol D. Roger's son," to see how the idiot reacts.

Luffy blinks. "Cool," he says eventually, then sticks his finger up his nose. "I'm hungry."

Ace blinks; Garp gives them both a long, confused look, and then grumpily tells Luffy to suck it up, because dinner isn't served until 1800 hours sharp and they operate on marine schedules in this household.

Luffy takes a long, gulping breath when he hears that there won't be food for another four hours at least, but somehow manages not to hold it against Garp ojiisan because he realizes it's just how they do things here (Luffy does decide that he'll never, ever, ever become a marine though).

Instead, he takes Ace by the arm, declares that it's warmer than anyone else's hand that he's ever touched before in his whole life, and asks if they can go play on the beach until dinnertime.

That evening, when they're on the beach and Luffy is bringing him back every shiny, interesting shell that he can find without a single sideways look and without a hint of fear or accusation for what the future might bring, Ace imagines that this is how a family would be, if he knew what families were.

Are they something worth dying for?

He wonders if he'll ever know.

END