Time [Ace x Reader]

chapter 17 / Shantital

Ace's POV

Where is that stupid elf?
I had finally mastered the new move Y/N had taught me and was itching to show her. She had promised that when I got down this final move she would finally teach me that special technique she had been baiting me with.
"Vooooooiiiiiicee!"
Nothing. Where could she have gone? I've looked literally everywhere. Maybe she went to bathe?
I blushed slightly as that thought crossed my mind. Although Y/N seemed to have long forgiven me for accidentally spying on her attempt to bathe in the sea I was still incredibly flustered when I thought about it.
Dammit Makino. I know I asked you to teach me manners but why did guilt have to come as a consequence of breaking them? It's not like I saw her naked. She had underwear on. Girls run around in tinier bathing suits all the time.
Now that I thought about it I had never seen Y/N in a bathing suit.
I wonder does she always swim naked?
I shook my head trying to clear it from the unwanted thoughts.
Stop this Ace. This is not very gentleman like.

I came to a skidding halt when I ran past the kitchen for the third time. Inside I could hear Lou working on today's lunch.
Maybe she's hiding in there?
I halted for a second weighing wether I wanted to risk recieving the fairy's wrath for entering her holy kitchen. Then I opened the door and slipped inside.
Delicious smells immediately filled my lungs as I observed Lou twirling from pot to pan, seasoning what looked like a delicious steak and creamy soup.
Y/N was nowhere to be seen. I turned to sneak back out again when Lou's voice chimed through the room.
"Do you need something pirate boy?"
I turned to her with an expression of someone who had been caught red handed.

"Ah yes, I'm sorry to interrupt your cooking mam but I'm searching for Voice- I mean Y/N have you seen her?" I looked at her with a scared expression hoping good manners could save me for once.

"Oh, you won't find Y/N here. She has important business to attend to and therefore won't be at home for a few days."

"A few days?!"
Noooo, my special technique!
"But Voice hasn't left the island once since I've come here. Why didn't she send out shadow clones as she always does?"

"It's a family meeting."

"A family meeting? I looked at the fairy with curiousity but she seemingly wasn't willing to talk anymore about it.

I'm not letting her of that quickly.
"Couldn't we have come with her?"

"Elves don't tolerate outsiders, Ace. Y/N is already an outcast. We don't have to make things harder for her than they already are."

"Huh? I've never heard of that. Voice is an outcast?" I couldn't believe it. Why would any community cast such a strong, funny, kind and intelligent individual aside? Although she was scary at times.

"Those people have sticks up their arses. They turn up their nose at anything different. They are cowards." I had never heard that fairy speak of anyone with such spite in her voice.

"Elves are cowards? Why? From what Y/N has told me they should be incredibly strong. They command powers others can only achieve with devil fruits."

"Trauma can turn the most ferocious monster into a scared little kitten."

Lou's eyes where distant, as if she was recalling the memory of something from a long time ago.
Lou must have had a few unpleasant encounters with the elves if she dispises them so.

"These are Y/N's private concerns so please don't continue to question me about it."

With that Lou threw me out of the kitchen. I stood in the hallway for a few seconds and then turned to gaze out of a window looking out to the sea.
"They turn up their nose at anything different. They are cowards."
Lou's harsh words kept repeating themselves in my mind.
I thought Y/N was an elf too. What in the world makes her so different that her own kind can't tolerate her?
I opened the window and leaped out. I no longer could fly like I could when fire was there to hold me, to catch me, to move at my very command. However the few seconds spend in the air before my feet were forced to touch the ground gave me back that feeling. A feeling of excitement, of freedom. Like there was only me, fire and the sky. My feet landed on the grass and I was ripped back into reality.
I had forgotten my concerns for Y/N. At least for now.

Y/N's POV

The sun was about to set when I finally reached Shantital. On the outside the island looked rather unexciting. A desert island without any towns, people or resources travelers yearn for. Maybe that is why noone ever set foot on the island.
Oh, if only they knew what really lies behind this suffocating sand.
Swiftly I walked through the hills of sand, covering the island. A few dry plants, a skeleton of a poor bird that had made the mistake of staying a little to long on the island, there truly was nothing to suggest this place could harbor any life.
"Their disguise is as perfect as ever," I said to myself as I neared a couple of boulders lying midst the dry hills.
There it was. The entrance to the real Shantital. A few more steps, an outstretched arm and I would be in my clans save haven. I however stopped a few metres from the gate so many desired to be behind and closed my eyes. I wasn't mistaken. He was here.
"You can come out now."

"Ha, you're as sharp as ever aren't you."

A figure jumped from the shadows and embraced me in a big and warm hug. I looked up and smiled.
"You really shouldn't be waiting in this dry wasteland. You know I would've come to visit you anyways." I watched the face of the person dearest to my heart in the hellhole they called home. I loved how his nose and eyes crinkled up in a smile when he was laughing, loved how his eyes glowed with an adventurous soul. To be honest he was probably the only reason I even came back to this place. He and maybe my parents. It depended on which direction my mother's mood swings had taken.
Gently I broke out of my little brothers embrace.

"How's Bapa and Mama?" I asked, noticing h trying to avoid my eyes.

"They're okay I guess. I don't live with them so I can't say for sure but I think Mama is back in her low phase."

I nodded, sadness speeding in my heart.
"I'll go see them anyways."

"How's (S/N)?"

I shook my head at the mention of my little sister.
"I'm not sure. I haven't heard from her in ages. All that I know of is that she has locked herself away in her laboratory. Then again Nana's clan isn't very talkative."
My sister had chosen to join my grandmother's clan after she had discovered her grand talent in their arts. Healing was a talent you had to be born with and she was overflowing with it. It would have been a waste if she had stayed in Shantital.
My brother was the opposite. His talent had always been my father's clans. Music, soul-connecting he had always dreamt of following me out to sea but in the end I guess his destiny remained behind this sandy facade.
I wonder where I would be now if I was like them.
In my case my grandfather's genes had come through strong. Fishmen genes, the heritage my mother desperately tried to deny and the other elves looked down upon.
The grief in her eyes whenever she gave me a bath as a child was burned deeply into my soul. The first scar I had ever received.
I was the only one who'd grow a tail when coming in contact with water. My siblings had a few scales, sure, but that was something you could hide. A tail was something different. I remember all the times I had hated myself for it, wished for it to go away. I had even gone as far as to use my healing talent to control my cells to stop it from forming. It worked. I had control over my tail but I felt caged. And it still wasn't enough. I had scales scattered across my body even when I was dry. They weren't many but enough that I always had to remain covered when other elves where around.
I clenched my teeth at the degrading memories. It was only when I couldn't take it anymore and went out to sea, when I saw the world, when I found my grandmother that I learned to embrace my heritage.

"Are you coming or what?"

My brother's booming voice brought me back to reality.
It's so much deeper than when we were children.
I smiled at him and he took the lead. Pressing his hand in a dent of one of the boulders he began to sing.