safe space | One Piece

Luffy

"Do you plan to change anything?" Sabo asked, hushed as the air settled around them in a tentative peace. Luffy didn't dare breathe, in fear of what might escape his lips. It would be easy to express it all; his worries, his grief and the despair of the future. His brothers' presence, beside him, was warm and enticing, in the sense that he didn't want to leave them ever again. He wanted to spill every little detail he could scrounge up from the crevices of his mind, yet, his lips remained sealed.

Ace hummed, using the sharp edge of his blade to carve at the surface of a stick. A spear for a trap of sorts, he explained moments before. Luffy recalled many of those in his childhood, and distantly, he wondered if his hands could do the same ministrations with the ease with which Ace did so. It had been so long since he had made traps to catch the smaller prey, ones which galloped with haste like that of Kizaru. "What could he change?" Ace questioned, biting his teeth as he tested the formation of a tip at the end. It wasn't as cutting as he wished it to be, so he returned to carving.

Sabo shrugged, "Anything, I mean, the future... you have to have some regrets, right?" Sabo regarded Luffy then, his eyes a burning blue. And perhaps Ace and Sabo had always been destined for the Mera Mera no Mi, in their own ways.

Regret, Luffy mulled the word over his tongue; fiddled with it in his mind. Regret, a simple word that encompassed so much. In another life—maybe if he had—all familiar thoughts but blurry to him now. He thought of Jinbei and his words,"What's gone is gone! But ask yourself this, what remains?" Then, it had been his crew. But left in the past, with ghosts that sit beside them, whole and with beating hearts, he wasn't so sure, now.

"I don't have regrets," he said in place of anything risky. He danced around it, avoiding lying because frankly, he hadn't grown out of his nasty lying skills. "I made a promise, years ago, to live a life with no regrets." He didn't mention the who, or why, only that it happened and he intended on living by it like a code of honour. He owed his brother that much.

Ace was watching him now, expression contorted into something like a sneer, but not quite. Like he couldn't grasp the emotion that filled him. Luffy wondered how he had never noticed the miniscule twitches of Ace's expressions, during their shared childhood. "You're a pirate?" Ace leaned forward, squinting his eyes, the freckles along his brow crinkling with the action. "What's that like?"

Luffy blinked, a grin overtaking his face. "Fun! My crew is strong," this, he can do. This is familiar; talking about his crew and their adventures. "And super cool! Our arch—olly—gist? Grave robber, or whatever, she has a Devil Fruit! She can grow her body from anywhere!" Sabo grinned, the gap in his teeth evident with how wide his lips spread. His hair was growing longer, but not to the extent it was when Sabo had—died? No, that can't be right, Sabo was alive. But Luffy supposed Sabo had died, in a way, all those years ago.

The brother he met in the future, was vastly different to the one he talked to now. Not that he minded—his brothers would be his until the end, there was no escaping the sake that bound them the same as the blood of the womb.

Sabo was the first to move away from the triangle they had unconsciously formed, his eyes taking a brisk glance around the surrounding clearing and woods. He sighed, "I feel like I'm being watched." Luffy jumped to action, risking a peek into the growth of the forest where he knew his grandfather remained, shrouded by the extensive population of leaves. That his presence would be so obvious, even in the face of a Sabo with no Haki—it made Luffy snort a laugh.

"What is it?" Ace grumbled, offering him a glare. His black eyes were glinting, however, like the sound of Luffy's laughter was pleasant and amusing. Luffy smiled, blowing his tongue in a manner that never quite escaped him. Old habits die hard and all that.