Ace would never forgive himself for how god damn normal that day had seemed. The morning had been so painfully, blissfully average that, as he grew, he'd have trouble remembering what exactly the beginning of the end had been filled with.Ā
Maybe they spent the early morning hours scavenging around the grey terminal for treasures before the bums and drunks of the kingdom had woken up. Maybe they spent it beating away those keen early birds and still-awake night owls who had the same idea. Maybe they had hunted, maybe they had nabbed a fancy meal from one of the restaurants in High Town, maybe they'd nabbed a meal from the bandits or even got fed by Makino. Maybe they had just run amok through the forest until Luffy was calm enough to talk like a person.Ā
It didn't entirely matter. Whatever they'd done, they were happy. They were together. The day felt exactly as exuberant as the last, and the day before that, and the day before that.Ā
How innocently stupid they were to assume that was a good thing.
> note to self: insert some stuff here thatās not narration. Dialogue, showing Ace and Sabo in their fight.Ā
It had been over a year since the Demon Trio of Dawn had become brothers. One year of growing for the young boys; growing taller, growing older, andāmost importantly to themāgrowing stronger. A few more months, and they'd have fought over fifty thousand battles between the three of them. It was the closest thing the wild children had to a routine, their matches: one hundred battles between the three of them, every single day, rain or shine, injured or tired or even sick.
Were a stranger to hear about their ambitions, theyād rightfully assume the boys were insane. Wrongly, theyād pity them. Ace, Sabo, and Luffy didnāt push themselves so hard out of desperation or ignorance, they pushed themselves to learn. They learned how to adapt. They learned how to stand through pain, how to adapt to hindrances; they learned their limits and how to break them.Ā
Every move was remembered, every failure was measured, and every victory was meticulously kept track of (thanks mostly to Sabo).
Ace, almost twelve, was proudly in the lead at the time, with Sabo just barely behind him in both age and victories. Luffy was eight, and when the daily fighting began that cursed day, he had only a zero to show for his efforts. The same score heād held since they first fought. The flatline of a record heād break only once.Ā
Nearly fifty thousand fights between the three of them, and Luffy was eight before he won even once.Ā
Truth be told, Ace had seen it coming. Heād dreaded it, and heād bite anyone who tried to get him to admit it, but Luffy was growing exponentially faster than he and Sabo were.Ā
Sabo had chalked it up to him being younger and therefore having further to go, trying to explain some math equation about āasymptotic convergenceā or whatever the fuck to Ace with curves on charts. Ace didnāt even pretend to understand the specifics. Sabo pretended for him.Ā
For his part, Ace had just denied it outright for as long as he could. Part of that was his required older-brother-jealously, part of it was a petty attempt to hide his pride for his little brother, but a sliver of it came from an emotion almost like mourning. It was so difficult to look at this manic, immense child and see the same dependent little crybaby heād pledged brotherhood with over stolen sake.Ā
Ace still loved him, obviously. He was so proud of his maturing little brother who woke up with the sun everyday, who never frowned anymore, who never got cold and laughed as if his very existence was the greatest gift imaginable. Luffy was happy. It was infinitely better than seeing him sob, broken and bloodied and *tortured,* but only begging to not be left alone. Ace would give anything to never see him like that again. Even so, some selfish part of himā(and it HAD to be a selfish part, because who could want to diminish a kidās inner sunlight and be called good?)ālonged for Luffy to whine again, just once in a while.Ā
Heād gotten his rotten, selfish, demonās-blood-born wish when Luffy landed a āgum-gum pistolā directly into Aceās chest.
