ficlet: What Now?
Jan. 20th, 2011 09:00 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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onepieceyaoi100No pairing in this one, so it’s out of the running for the challenge.
Title: What Now?
Topic: Ace
Character: Ace
Pairing: none
Word Count: 281
Rating: G
Spoilers/setting: Set in an AU where the Marineford war ended more happily for the Whiteboard Pirates. Let’s say Blackbeard was delayed and Shanks arrived about 15 minutes earlier. A fix-it ficlet, I suppose.
His feet seem so light as he returns to the fleet, as if hardly touching the deck. As if he’s as fleeting and light as a shadow.
(Don’t think so much, Marco tells him, just relax and be here with us. Watch the clouds and have another drink.)
Oars is dead, so many others are dead, but he’s nto supposed to think about that. He’s not supposed to worry about Whitebeard’s wounds that don’t seem to get better as the days pass.
(They all worry, anyway, but nobody says anything.)
He does his job as well as he can, keeping everyone under his command tallied, helps relieving the shipdoctors of their other duties, sending out parties to get the crew moe medicine. He takes care of stray Marine ships and foolhardy pirate challengers.
But he still feels light and shadowy. As if he’s not truly there.
Keeping watch one starry night, a great weight hits him and he sinks down on the planks of the crow’s nest, his hands gripping the railing tight.
What do I do now? What I am here for?
Because he knows now: he set out to sea to see if he could be a person worthy of living. To see if anone out in the great world could love him.
He got his answer. It’s the one he’d hoped for, but it still shakes him, knowing it for sure.
In these still, gray days, as the Whitebeard pirates huddle together to start healing, as the life of their Captain slowly leaks out through far too many wounds, Ace wonders what his goals should be now, and if he still needs to be a pirate at all.
Title: What Now?
Topic: Ace
Character: Ace
Pairing: none
Word Count: 281
Rating: G
Spoilers/setting: Set in an AU where the Marineford war ended more happily for the Whiteboard Pirates. Let’s say Blackbeard was delayed and Shanks arrived about 15 minutes earlier. A fix-it ficlet, I suppose.
His feet seem so light as he returns to the fleet, as if hardly touching the deck. As if he’s as fleeting and light as a shadow.
(Don’t think so much, Marco tells him, just relax and be here with us. Watch the clouds and have another drink.)
Oars is dead, so many others are dead, but he’s nto supposed to think about that. He’s not supposed to worry about Whitebeard’s wounds that don’t seem to get better as the days pass.
(They all worry, anyway, but nobody says anything.)
He does his job as well as he can, keeping everyone under his command tallied, helps relieving the shipdoctors of their other duties, sending out parties to get the crew moe medicine. He takes care of stray Marine ships and foolhardy pirate challengers.
But he still feels light and shadowy. As if he’s not truly there.
Keeping watch one starry night, a great weight hits him and he sinks down on the planks of the crow’s nest, his hands gripping the railing tight.
What do I do now? What I am here for?
Because he knows now: he set out to sea to see if he could be a person worthy of living. To see if anone out in the great world could love him.
He got his answer. It’s the one he’d hoped for, but it still shakes him, knowing it for sure.
In these still, gray days, as the Whitebeard pirates huddle together to start healing, as the life of their Captain slowly leaks out through far too many wounds, Ace wonders what his goals should be now, and if he still needs to be a pirate at all.
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Date: 2011-01-21 01:05 pm (UTC)(I never wrote divergent AUs before Marineford, but now...)