Chapter Text
i.
Luffy understands from a young age that he is different. Other children do not sit and stare at the sea and listen to its stories. Other children do not run wild in the streets to laugh with the wind. Other children do not close their eyes and dream of memories that he has not experienced. There is something older, something wiser, that slumbers in his chest, and it makes the people around him wary whenever they see flashes of Luffy’s heart, so he learns to smile big, speaking in loud and simple ways to ease their instinctive fears, as if he were soothing wild animals.
In the humble dust and dirt of the earth, Luffy walks with a step lighter than air. He traces the edges of the sunset with his eyes and warms himself with the feeling of being bigger than himself, not quite fitting right in his own skin. It is a strange sensation, but it is all he has ever known (in this life). He does not want to be feared, not in the way that he instinctively understands he could be.
He wants to be free. Luffy stretches his hands to the horizon and aches to know what it would feel like under his fingertips.
When he meets Shanks, Luffy can see his power draped around him like a robe and thinks this is a man who is free. He wants to be like him, so confident and self-assured, but Luffy is young and with too many emotions to handle. When the bandits come, when their leader breaks the bottle over Shanks’ head, Luffy doesn’t understand why such a strong and powerful man allows himself to be humiliated and laughs it off- can he not turn and vanish his enemy with a single swing of his sword? Why does he demean himself in this way? He is free, why does he not put this freedom to good use?
When he eats the gomu-gomu fruit, something sparks to life. Luffy looks at his hands and sees the divinity lying in wait beneath his skin. It feels like freedom. (It feels like coming home.) Power breathes under his skin and he feels invincible.
Shanks is precious to him. He will not allow this insult to go unpunished.
Caught up in the seeds of godhood that are sprouting, Luffy is overconfident. He believes himself untouchable. He throws himself into a fight that, divine powers or not, he cannot win.
It is from Shanks, the first one to look at Luffy and see him, see the way the sun reflects off of Luffy’s hair in a shining blaze of light that looks like a circlet of fire, that Luffy learns his first Rules.
Always be prepared to put your life on the line. Not every fight is worth it. Protecting the ones you love is more important than saving face.
Shanks loses his arm. Luffy reaches for the powers just beyond his reach and cries over his inability to change this, because Shanks loses his arm, for Luffy.
Luffy should have been stronger. Fire lives in his veins and a storm rages in his soul, but young as he is he does not know how to use them and he should have been stronger.
ii.
There is something about Ace that makes Luffy feel so profoundly sad. He spits at Luffy's attempts at friendship and spurns him at every step, doing his best to push Luffy away and abandon him in the forest. Loneliness hurts, Luffy can hear the way Ace's soul cries out for companionship, begging for answers to know if he should have been born.
Yes, Luffy wants to scream, yes, you are wonderful. I can see your heart and you are beautiful, a treasure of this world, I want you to be mine, I want to protect you and show you that you deserve your life, your blood means nothing- because if you weren't meant to be born, then what does that mean for me?
But he does not. He smiles and struggles with the power at his fingertips and the powers just beyond his reach, waiting, and chases after Ace. Ace kicks him down ten times, but he gets up eleven, twelve, thirteen times- and finally, Ace accepts him, snapping and snarling but Luffy can see the way his soul ruffles and tries not to be pleased.
(Though Ace does not know it, is the kindest thing he could have taught Luffy. Some people are worth fighting for, you just have to have the will to do so.)
One becomes three- or rather, two become three, Ace-and-Sabo folding Luffy into their duo to become Ace-and-Sabo-and-Luffy. Luffy runs faster, lighter, fights harder to keep up at their sides and pretends not to see the way Ace and Sabo look at him like a puzzle, like he's something to figure out.
That's fine. Half of the days, Luffy isn't sure that he knows the answer to whatever question they might ask and the other half he spends feeling like he'll split apart at the seams from how much knowledge burns and scrapes at his mind. It's easiest to just let himself ignore it all, smile and run and bask in the feeling of not being alone anymore.
iii.
Luffy is a weird fucking kid. Ace knew it from the moment he laid eyes on him, something in his angry heart going quiet and still the first time their eyes met. It left him shaking, unnerved- the force of Luffy's smile felt like staring into the sun.
He does his best to spurn Luffy's offers of friendship. He and Sabo have each other and that's all they need, they'll build up their treasure hoard and get off this shitty island and become pirates and be free.
But Luffy doesn't stop. Again and again, he determinedly trails after Ace- and no matter what Ace does, tossing him to the gators and abandoning him in the ravine and outpacing him in the forest, each day Luffy is there again to try again, smiling with that stupid hat on his head.
(Later, when they have become brothers, Ace will sit and look at his Luffy sleep and offer a silent prayer to a god he does not believe in that Luffy was the more stubborn of the two of them. He was a stupid idiot to turn this up, to turn his back on Luffy.)
Somehow, though, Ace stops seeing Luffy as a tagalong. There is something jagged in his emotions that Luffy smooths over, a hard point that catches between his ribs and makes it so fucking hard to breathe sometime but Luffy is there whenever it happens, taking his hand and distracting him or leaning against his shoulder or putting food in his hands and how does he always know-?
"Ace," Sabo says quietly, one afternoon as they rest on the floor of their treehouse home, "do you ever wonder if there's something… not quite right with Luffy?"
It's obvious, what he means. Luffy walks like his feet aren't beholden to the ground. He looks at the sea like an old friend, even though he would drown in its depths in an instant. His eyes go far away and he knows things he shouldn't, his skill growing at a rapid pace that is quickly threatening Ace and Sabo's own strength. Sometimes he sits with his head tilted back, just feeling the warmth of the sun, and that wouldn't be so strange if it weren't for the way Ace would swear that Luffy glows in the light-
"No," Ace decides. "Luffy is Luffy. That's all that matters."
Sabo nods and that is that, nothing more needs to be said. If Luffy hugs them extra-hard that night, neither of them think anything of it.
iv.
Okay, maybe it does matter, Sabo thinks to himself as the sake goes down like fire, burning and blazing in his stomach, because Luffy is radiating joy with such force that their surroundings are faintly illuminated.
"Brothers," Ace coughs, slamming his cup down.
"Brothers," Sabo echoes, setting his down lightly.
"Brothers!" Luffy cheers, tossing his cup into the air and flinging himself at Ace and Sabo, pulling them both into one big, tight hug. "That means you're both mine!"
"Oi, oi," Ace raps his knuckles against the side of Luffy's head, scowling. "We're the older brothers, that means you're ours, idiot!"
"Duh." Luffy snuggles closer, a warm blanket that lies over both of them. "I'm Ace's and Sabo is Ace's; I'm Sabo's and Ace is Sabo's; but you're both mine."
His words are weighty in a way that make the hairs on Sabo's neck raise, intense and possessive and the sake in his belly burns, rising up into his chest, and Sabo's eyes are watering. Heat blooms over the back of his left hand, pins-and-needles like his arm has fallen asleep, and Ace hisses in alarm, squirming.
"Luffy?" Sabo gasps, heart pounding, and Luffy sits up in a flash, grabbing both of his brothers by the wrist to stare at their hands. On the back of each of Ace's and Sabo's left hands is a blazing sun, a mark of gold and orange that radiates warmth.
Ace sucks in a sharp breath. "Lu, your eyes…"
Luffy looks up at them. His black eyes have changed, irises shimmering and shining like they've been dipped in molten gold.
"You're mine," Luffy says faintly, hoarsely. His hair is shifting, stirring and floating about his head without any wind to move it. "My brothers."
"...yeah, Lu," Sabo whispers. "Yours." He can feel a deep bond, thrumming between the three of them, vibrating in his chest like a song.
The smile on Luffy's face is as bright as the morning sun.
v.
"Sabo isn't dead."
The words are a lightning strike in a dry forest, fuel to the flame of Ace's grief. "Luffy, don't you dare-"
"He isn't," Luffy insists, his eyes wild but his expression set with a sureity that makes Ace want to hit him. He does hit him and Luffy twists with the punch, but snaps back into place in a heartbeat, grabbing Ace's wrist. "He isn't! Listen to me, Ace!"
"He's gone," Ace hisses, choking on his own words, thick and clogging his throat. "He's dead, Luffy, those bastards killed him, you heard what Dadan said-"
"I can hear him." A weight is pressing down over their clearing, invisible but the heaviest thing Ace has ever felt, making his legs shake. Luffy doesn't look away, face shaded with the rim of his hat as he holds Ace's stare.
He's hallucinating, is Ace's first thought. He's in denial, is the second.
Luffy's never been normal, is his third and that's the one that makes him choke out, "what do you mean?"
Luffy's hand shifts and Ace watches numbly as Luffy's palm curls over the blazing sun mark on the back of his hand, Luffy's other hand coming to rest on his own chest. "I hear you, here. I heard Sabo, too- and if Sabo were dead, I wouldn't hear him anymore. But I hear him. He's muffled and strange, but he's alive, Ace."
Ace falls to his knees, shaking. The tears come hard and fast and the oppressive atmosphere vanishes, Luffy dropping down to hug Ace tightly. They cry together, brothers huddled to shield each other from their misplaced grief, and in no time at all Luffy is bawling and Ace is holding him tight.
"I was so scared, Ace-" Luffy whines, Ace's cute little brother once more. "His voice vanished and I was so sure he was dead, but I can hear him again so he's not dead but I was so scared!"
It's a struggle to choke through his raging emotions, but Ace manages it because Luffy, his strange and powerful little brother, who Ace is pretty sure isn't exactly human, needs him. Luffy needs him. "Hey- Hey, Lu, come on- you think Sabo would die from something as lame as a Celestial Dragon being an asshole? He's our brother. It'll take more than that to get him down!"
"Y-yeah!" Luffy sniffles, rubs at his face, and beams, grabbing Ace's hand and dragging him to his feet. "I'm sure he'll be back and we can go hunting and eat lots of meat together!"
"Right!"
vi.
(Sabo never comes back. Luffy doesn't like hearing Ace angrily, silently cry to himself at night, so he drags himself into Ace's bed and curls with him, hugging him and letting Ace pretend that he's not crying. People always treat Luffy like an idiot, but he's not stupid.)
(This is a lesson that Sabo's absence teaches him: some things, Luffy cannot fix by himself.)
Luffy and Ace train harder and harder, pushing each other to be stronger. Ace looks at the way Luffy laughs and flings himself into danger, his wounds healing quickly, always coming back up swinging, and though Luffy never does manage to beat Ace in a fight, many times Ace doesn't want to admit just how close it was.
Somewhere, Ace becomes the one fighting tooth-and-nail to stay ahead of Luffy, easy wins become close wins, and close wins become wins wrenched from the jaws of defeat.
On Ace's 17th birthday, he makes a promise to Luffy that he'll track down their idiot brother and find out why he didn't return. (He doesn't have the heart to suggest that maybe Sabo decided he didn't want to be their brother after all.)
Luffy sits at the dock and watches Ace's boat vanish over the horizon. Sabo's voice is nothing more than the barest of murmurs, of sighs and whispers, and Luffy cannot help but hope that Ace will find him soon.
vii.
The years without either of his brothers are strange years. Luffy is more alone than he's ever been, but he is also somehow more free. He runs along the shoreline and listens to the ocean, racing against the sunbeams as he pushes himself to reach deeper, harder, faster for the light that burns him up from inside.
First Shanks, then Sabo. Luffy has failed his important people twice, he will never let it happen again.
It is only the anchors of Ace and Sabo's voices that keep him steady- Makino does her best to give him company, but she cannot compare to the bond the brothers had. Luffy rises with the sun and burns just as bright, a supernova growing that he struggles to control, and when he goes into town, people hide their unease behind smiles.
He likes smiling. How someone responds to his cheer tells him a lot about a person, he likes that too.
The mountain that challenged him so deeply as a young child is his playground, now. There is nothing there that could endanger him anymore, and it leaves him restless, eager to set sail and find new places to roam and challenge himself.
He's trapped by his promise with Ace until his 17th birthday. He wants to be free. The wind and sky aren't meant to be contained, every day is one day closer to the release of his self-made shackles.
The night before his birthday, Luffy sits on the cliffside and stares at the ocean and something deep in his soul stirs.
Tomorrow, he thinks to himself.
Tomorrow, the wind whispers.
Tomorrow, the ocean agrees.
Tomorrow, I will be free.