Knowing someone was waiting staved off the loneliness. Becoming Whitebeard's son had been the best decision of his life. Yet tonight, he has no desire to disturb the sentries or wake a crew member for company.

A glossy black crow lands on the rail within easy reach. It cocks its head at him, warbling low in the back of its throat. Ace narrows his eyes at it, staring until the crow shrinks back, feather ruffling. This was the bird that had almost hit the back of his head, he's sure of it.

It looks almost sheepish at it places a little bag on the rail between them.

When he doesn't pick it up right away, the bird pushes it closer with one delicate claw, bobbing its head.

He picks it up slowly, keeping an eye on the bird. It tilts its head back and forth, clicking in the back of its throat. It takes him a moment to catch it in the dim light: the reflection of your Eye in the black marble of the crow's.

A grin showing teeth makes its way across his face.

"Hey," he said.

"Hi." Sound comes out of the crow's open beak like there is a microphone in its throat, like there's a snail in its belly. It doesn't move in synchrony with the words, but in an unsettling sort of pantomime.

Your voice is made ragged by the crow, but even with one word he knows it is yours. His grin goes lopsided and he weighs the pouch in his hand.

"Fancy seeing you here, pretty bird" he says.

The crow makes a hacking sort of cough he knows to be its version of your scoff coming from its mouth, but the bird rubs its beak against the gleaming wood of the ship, as though to take the sting from the sound.

"I do occasionally have good timing," it says with your voice.

He leans his head on his arms and looks directly at the bird. His gaze cuts through the animal in front of him and to you on the other side. One side of his bangs falls across his eye.

He has some idea of what you do, but not exactly. He knows it's dangerous, for a certain value of dangerous. You go to places he hasn't seen yet.

When he asks you where you are, you tell him about places you've been, never where you recently were. You don't relent even when he pries, whining low in his throat at your typical evasiveness. The crow speaks the rusted over name of some island he's never heard of.

When he asks you how training is going, the bird does some funny little movements that require it to over-correct when it nearly falls off the rail and imitates the sounds of bo staffs colliding.

The sentry peeks down from a higher level. Ace waves them off, feeling suddenly defensive. He wants to keep this moment a secret.

The bird freezes, looking up from where it's hunched over in an all too human kind of expression that reminds him of the last time you were a guest of the Whitebeard pirates and you'd raided the kitchens with him, sneaking around with unnecessary stealth, pressing back as if to hide him from every passing shadow until he was giggling into your shoulder, you scents mingling as you sweated under the hot atmosphere of a nearby volcanic island.

He snickers as the bird shakes its feathers flat again, giving an experimental little croak and finally straightening up when the noise doesn't immediately bring the sentry back running, looking out for his crewmate. The bird bumps his hand, as if to draw attention to it, and Ace draws his fingers through the soft, smooth feathers.

When you creakily ask him about his own recent adventures, you offer tidbits from the news to get him started, and it warms him in a very strange way to think you've been keeping an eye on him.

Eventually, the late night catches up and a comfortable quiet settles around the two of you.

Ace listens to the crow's low gargly kkqrk as it moves on its perch. He smirks to himself at the sight of the shining black bird shifting against the star scattered, velvet night.

"Are you going to open it?" you, finally ask. The bird pecks emphatically at the rail by the velvety bag.

All of the bird's expressive hopping and pecking for excited emphasis is so very un-human. It amuses him to imagine you puppetting the creature, instructing it to dip and flap for his benefit, even though he knows it is more akin to the bird itself interpreting your emotions.

Even so when the bird, looks at him, he can almost see the pleading look only you can pull off. Truly and delightfully uncanny.

He sighs as if it is all a chore, bobbing the pouch up and down on the string wound around his fingers. The crow follows with the movement with its beak and then its whole body.

"Should I?" he muses. "Suppose I save it-"

The bird all but stamps its little grey scaled foot in expressing your impatience and he laughs at you, at the odd humanity of the motion, as he finally does open the bag, drawstrings tangled in his fingers.

The contents of the pouch glitters, even in the starlight.

"How nice," he says, opening the mouth of the bag wide to reveal an array of crystals inside. "A good bit of shine."

All pirates of course liked things that gleamed. As did crows. The bird tilts its head between his face and the bits of rock in his hand.

He shifts them around in the bag. There are many colors.

"You should try one," it - you - says, shifting its weight. The bird stayed almost perfectly still, head tilted as it took in his incredulous expression.

"I am not dumb enough to eat rocks."

"I know."

The bird, peers up at him, blankly expectant.

Ace looks back in the bag and eventually plucks one of the crystals out. It's orange bleeding into purple like a storm ridden twilight and edged like the inside of a geode.

He glances once more at the bird, at you, but the creature just shuffles its wings to sit more primly against its body. Ace has never been very good at backing down from a dare.

Still he bites down very very carefully.

The crystal cracks apart under his teeth and spills sweetness on his tongue - plum and passion fruit, tart and bright and dark again, like the last touch of a setting sun. The outside is hard and cool like stone, but falls away to jelly by the time his bite sinks to the center.

He cannot help the way his eyes go slightly wide.

"Where are these from?" he asks.

"I made them," your voice slips from the bird's parted beak, almost shy. "The King of Kettles taught me," you add fondly.

He nibbles on more of the crystal, candy he now knows. Rock candy, he thinks as he grins to himself. He's not sure when the last time someone brought him candy of all things. Sugar is expensive no matter its source, and sometimes hard to find among the islands. Even syrups made from fruit would take a long time to make.

"Make sure to brush your teeth!" The crow interrupts his thoughts with a trumpeting, too loud, cackling sort of caw.

He stuffs a corner of the crystal into the crow's beak, interrupting the sound with a choking, fluttering, sputtering.

One thing about birds is that regardless of interpretation, they are sometimes not very good at managing their volume.

The crow hunches over, sending Ace as dirty a look as it can manage. You consider having it play dead, just to get back at him, but the shuffling attention of the sentries has you, the crow, freezing in his shadow.

You are reminded, somewhat guiltily, that your welcome on Whitebeard's territory does not give you unrestricted access, even for stolen moments like this.

But again, Ace waves off the inquisitive sentries, and they go, because he is the commander of the second division.

Ace can tell that they're curious, but this is for him, for now. In the morning if they or anyone asks, he will tell and laugh and tease. And it will be real.

This is real too. He feels protective of this moment, even if it is only a crow with your Eye as a glossy, curved reflection. It's his little secret.

It's not in his nature to keep secrets. Not for long. But for a while, he wants to keep this one. Not out of shame, not like the other, but because this one is warm like a glowing coal.

It is his, to follow the direction of a falling star and have a bird deliver him a gift and a conversation. You can't tell him where you are or where you're going, but you have frequent, funny little names that are familiar enough that you can tell him stories and he knows of whom you speak. The King of Kettles, Catfish, the Forlorn Maiden - all of them people he has never and likely will never meet.

Do you have a secret name for him, do you tell people about him? Something meant to safeguard him from the world?

Will there ever be a time when he isn't the secret? When that secret doesn't drag a darkness along behind it to cover those who know?

Another flash of light goes across the sky - blink and you'll miss it.

He sees it, you don't, going in the same direction as before. It flies away into the night.

Slowly, through the odd technicolor vision of the crow, you see a closed off, thoughtful expression take the place of the easy smile from before.

"What are you thinking of?"

The crow's hissed approximation of a whisper should be unsettling but it isn't.

Ace leans his arm on the railing and looks over at you, at the crow. The corner of his mouth lifts up, but he can't put enough of his heart into it to cover the melancholy.

He finds himself wishing for your scent. Sending a bird is one thing, but if he had not seen the Eye, he wouldn't have even been able to tell you it was you there, and not some well trained pet.

"I wish you were here," he sighs, reaching out to run a finger over the bird's smooth head feathers.

The bird ruffles its wings and says nothing. There is a long moment of nothing, long enough that Ace thinks of going back to bed. Sleep is finally reaching for him, he can feel the chill of it on his skin.

It's through the quiet of the dark that it finds him, a dull sound, almost at the edge of hearing.

He reaches out with his awareness, scanning the sea for any creature stupid enough to attack one of Whitebeard's fleet. A Sea King would be a bit of bedtime fun. Or it might be the distant sound of canons, although intuition tells him that isn't it.

The sound gets closer. It is not canons or the writhing movements of a deep water monster. It is more like someone shaking out sheets, but as regular as a sleeper's heart - the flap of wings.

He sees a shape, black on black, in the distance. It vanishes between one blink and the other, melting into the night. Another shimmer of light falls overhead while the wingbeats suddenly disappear.

Ace remembers owls and the way they hunt, swooping silently down upon their prey. He looks up to see if the watch is at all disturbed, and then to his left. The crow is gone.

The wingbeats return, now soft and so close. Right below him. He looks over the rail and a familiar face rises up to meet him.

This crow upon which you sit is longer than him if he were to lay down, feet and fingers pointed as far as they would go. It drifts upon the shallow eddy stirred up by the ship, drifting alongside.

"Hello," you say. You're smiling. Teasing snatches of scent get caught in the sea breeze.

From behind, the crow that had been your mouthpiece swoops down upon your shoulder.

"Willful thing," you say to it.

It croaks, head bobbing cheekily.

"Hi," he says. His heart feels like it's soaring, light alongside you, every whoosh of blood a wingbeat.

"I heard you," you say, nudging the crow's chest with your finger.

"You do occasionally have good timing," he says, grinning wide.

The enormous bird flaps a few times, slowly, up to the level of the rail.

He catches you when you slide over the side of the ship and step onto the deck. He never feels the flames when they come from him, but your palm sliding over his makes him feel like he's burning.

"I think I'm going to be in trouble with your Father," you say, shrugging a shoulder, "for the bird."

It croaks again, and then caws, as if to prove a point. The both of you wince.

"I'll tell him you came for me," Ace replies. He doesn't bother to keep quiet now, but that's alright. The bag of sweets you brought him dangles around his wrist like a charm.

You're a little breathless when you look at him. He can see stars reflected in your eyes.