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Chapter Text

Sabo was welcomed into the home of the informant, Talhah, through a staircase dug into the ground. Talhah explained that this sort of entranceway was meant to shield their houses from the sands that swept in even through the port city, a natural barrier being created by the ground itself. The sand often got caught in the pit created right outside of their front door, but did not escape into their sublevel foyers. Talhah very graciously spelled the name of these entryways for Sabo in his own language while the revolutionary recorded it into a small blue notebook.

Talhah’s sister, Shireen, frowned at them from the kitchen of their open-concept second-floor. Sabo continued to ask about the tiling patterns on their walls (called zellij), and the unique sort of pot on the stove (a cezve, used for coffee), and the leafy tea (bi nana, a mint tea) , until Shireen was finished steeping the tea and brought it over to the coffee table in the living room for them both. 

She set the tray, laden with the teapot and three cups, down, but did not sit herself. Instead, she craned her scarved head over Sabo’s shoulder to see his chicken-scratch notes, and very fairly asked; “What does all this have to do with the arms dealing, exactly?”

“It is instrumental to the arms dealing,” Sabo lied, closing his book so fast it made a loud cracking sound which shocked both Shireen and Talhah back a few inches. He cleared his throat, apologized, and then asked the siblings to recount exactly what they had seen that day which caused them to call in.

Talhah and Shireen ended up as revolutionary informants due to a few key factors: their family owned the most popular restaurant in the port of Nanohana, meaning that at least one person in their family had met most people who came through the entry point of Alabasta; both of them were inclined against monarchy as a concept, though they preferred any violent revolution to take place in the capital Alubarna rather than their own city; and both were bored twenty-somethings currently out of education or employment, save for picking up shifts at Spice Bean over the summer

Talhah said that, apparently, a big group of men wearing “tough guy clothing”— which he clarified as being the style of dress more common throughout the seas, but not in Alabasta save for twenteenagers who saw it as rebellion against the older generation— pushed some tables together at the back corner of the restaurant where most of the more rough and tumble customers tended to prefer to sit. Paranoid people liked having their backs to the wall and eyes on every exit, especially when they had reason to be paranoid, so Sabo was inclined to believe these “tough guys,” were at least out to cause trouble. The men had a whispered conversation about some shipment they had to sail out to receive at a neighboring island. Since they weren’t nearly as careful around waitstaff as they should have been, Talhah was able to overhear the vague location of their ship, and had Shireen follow them under the guise (and apparent truth) of going shopping for counterfeit handbags at the shadier edge of the port. 

“I’m a good haggler,” Shireen explained, pulling her own little notebook out of a dusky leather bag with gold hardware. “They didn’t notice me hiding because I wasn’t, really. Their ship happened to be right next to one of the blankets the sellers lay out, which was really like a sign from god in my opinion. I saw them trade these big burlap sacks with some guy for a big duffel bag— full of cash, I assume— and then load that on board. Only issue was when one of the guys knocked a bag on the way off the ship and some green shit came out instead.”

“Hm,” Sabo said, instead of standing up and shouting Dance powder! Dance powder! Dance powder! Part of being Sabo, Chief of Staff of the Revolutionary Army, meant he had to be all cool and mysterious all of the time. But this was possibly the most damning evidence of foul play to come out of their contacts in awhile; the whole conflict in Alabasta was supposedly centered around the belief that King Cobra had been using dance powder to steal all the rain in the country for the capital city, so why would the rebels be trading with it? What the fuck was going on in Alabasta?

Shireen went on to describe how a small scuffle broke out after that, thinking that the smugglers had learned they’d been fleeced— Sabo corrected in his own notes that the guy with the money had obviously felt robbed for part of his product having fallen on the ground. The money had already been turned over, though, and the “tough guys” only needed two of them to hold the old man’s arms and kick him around a bit before he gave in, taking whatever was left in a wheelbarrow somewhere south. The thing that made Shireen and Talhah call the RA instead of just sending in a report at the end of the month was what Shireen overheard when the guys checked the bags; that with that cash, they’d be able to get enough firepower to never need to do this again. 

“Tell him about the weird thing,” Talhah interrupted, lightly hitting the back of his own upper arm. Shireen glared at him, rolled her eyes, and turned her notebook around for Sabo to see.

Drawn on the left page was a skull, crossed by two rapiers and backlit by a set of wings with the word “purple” written in them, likely for lack of a purple implement. It was the Baroque Works’ symbol.

“Most of the guys had these tattooed on their arms,” Shireen explained, hitting the same spot on herself that Talhah had. “It was weird because I didn’t think the rebels wore that symbol, or, like, any symbol yet? That’s the sort of thing we’d see in the pro-war graffiti around town. Plus, it looks more like a pirate flag than anything else. We just thought it was weird.”

“Jolly Rodgers,” Sabo corrected, some part of him unwilling to let Shireen by using improper verbiage. “And yes, that is strange. I’m glad you called us in on this; good job, you two.”

Like most civvies dipping their toes into illicit activities, they seemed thrilled just to be a part of the action; though obviously hungry for more. Talhah kept nodding, as if Sabo was going to continue to give him next steps, and Shireen’s eyes had an excited sheen. He was about to let them know that what they needed to do now was lie low and keep watching, and that following those missives was absolutely instrumental to the success of their mission (which it wasn’t, beyond that should the siblings act out and draw attention to themselves they would probably end up dead and with both the rebels and this third party on high-alert) when a boom resounded from a few buildings down.

Now, they were in a bustling port city, and loud noises sounded all the time in places like these; crashes, shipments unloading, random shit falling from high-storied buildings. What set the three anti-conspirators brows to furrowing was that the houses and commercial buildings up and down this block of the city were all owned by the same family— Talhah and Shireen’s— and their nation was very presciently threatening war. 

Talhah’s face scrunched up, staring in anxious confusion at the wall whose direction the boom came from. Shireen stood higher from the bend she took to show Sabo her notebook, and said; “Was that the restaurant?”

Talhah seemed to relax a bit at that, likely because the kitchen faced the row of houses that belonged to their family, and there were often unexplained loud noises coming from such places; popping ovens, dropped pots, minor propane explosions on gas grills, etc. Just because they were meeting with a revolutionary didn’t mean the revolution had otherwise come to their front door.

Sabo remained tense, staring at the wall. 

Another boom rang out, and then more in quick succession, each getting closer. It was so fast that neither Talhah or Shireen could react to move very far, Talhah only just tripping over himself to get out of the way before a hole was blown in the wall they’d been watching, and through it fell two men. Those two men continued to move with the force of the initial blow, through two more walls and into the neighbors house to land smack in the middle of Talhah and Shireen’s aunt’s living room.

Sabo quickly rolled to the side, out of view, behind the wall closest to the potential hostiles. He peered over the hole to see who had been thrown, and Talhah and Shireen copied him to hide behind the wall on the other side of the hole.

One of the strangers was very clearly Marine Captain Smoker— an up-and-comer logia whose body turned into smoke, and who was a notorious hunter of pirates. He didn’t care too much about any other marine activity, such as sucking off celestial dragons or hunting runaway slaves, so Sabo had never had to care about the guy more than just to be aware of him; really, Smoker’d probably be better suited to bounty hunting, but, although Sabo could and would judge him for choosing to uphold an oppressive regime, he could not say he knew enough about Smoker’s life to unconditionally dunk on him. The guy simply wasn’t important enough to the RA for Sabo to be all up in his past like that.

Captain Smoker being who he was, it wasn’t surprising that the young man he’d gone careening after was a pirate. It was sort-of surprising to see this specific pirate so far back at the beginning of the Grand Line; the commander of the second division of the Whitebeard Pirates, a fire logia, and another notorious figure despite being around Sabo’s age (not that Sabo wasn’t notorious himself, in a way), Portgas D. Ace. 

For whatever reason, Smoker got up in a hurry and ran his ass back to the restaurant without bothering to take too long a look at the houses he’d just bulldozed through. Marines never did seem to care all that much about property damage. For whatever even more surprising reason, the pirate stood up and promptly bowed to Shireen and Talhah’s aunt, who Sabo could see standing slack-jawed in front of her plaster-dusted couch. 

“Sorry for the intrusion!” Portgas apologized, cheerily showing up the WG’s finest, not bothering to wait for a response before hopping over the rubble into the mess of Shireen and Talhah’s house. Portgas seemed confused not to see anyone, before turning around and spotting the three of them perched in their obvious snooping positions.

“Ah,” Portgas nodded to them, scratching his head. He bowed again, looking first to the siblings and then to Sabo. “Sorry for scaring you, and for the damage to your home… wait a fucking minute.”

Sabo did his level best to look really natural, as if being stuck against the wall like a gecko was a position he’d been in since before Portgas and Smoker’s cannonball impression and not a symptom of being a nosy child and an adult spy. Talhah and Shireen noticed Portgas’s gaze hone in on Sabo, and slowly started retreating away along their own wall— smart kids, those were. Less smart for having been involved in all this in the first place, but they had good instincts in a fight or flight situation.

Maybe Sabo should look afraid, too? Would that, like, civillian-ify him? To be fair, Sabo’s usual application of spycraft was more in sneaking than acting, so this sort of situation was an epic nightmare. It wasn’t like Sabo could claim he was here for some insignificant reason; despite this being the port city, and so home to the most diversity in Alabasta, white, blonde boys in top hats weren’t exactly common around here. For Sabo to look this weird and be in the sights of a pirate with observation haki would mean something to Portgas. Sabo’s cover, and likely the siblings’ safety, depended on if Portgas decided to give a shit and be curious about Sabo’s being here or not. Or if he would believe Sabo’s answer, which was only not an issue in the case that a high ranking pirate like Portgas turned out to be a total, clinical idiot. 

Portgas then cocked his head not unlike a puppy and proceeded to ask the most terrifying question you could ask an undercover agent; “Do I know you? You look really familiar.”

Sabo tried to summon back the blood he could feel draining from his face, already shaking his head. There was literally no reason for Portgas D. Ace to have ever laid eyes on Lastname-blank Middlename-blank Sabo. He didn’t have any sort of wanted poster with his likeness on it yet— if he did, he was sure Koala would have gotten ahold of him somehow to let him know, even if Sabo mostly ignored her calls if he didn’t suspect they might have booty in them. “No, I don’t think so. Probably just one of those top-hats.”

Portgas stepped closer, crouching in front of Sabo so they were eye-level even with Sabo’s increasingly uncomfortable sneaky pose. Portgas looked Sabo up-and-down, but really seemed to be looking beyond him, into his soul. “Hmm. No, I must have met you before. What’s your name?”

“Obas,” Sabo lied.

Portgas’s narrowed eyes widened. He then waved his index finger around, spelling out the alias, and then spelling it in reverse. Sabo watched this and wondered if he should pop the cyanide pill hidden in his teeth now, or wait for the dramatic reveal before dying, but it was too late when Portgas froze and fixed him with a terrified stare; “Sabo?”

Holy shit. “No,” Sabo lied, way too quickly to be believed. Portgas clearly took that as the confirmation it was, but just continued to look upon Sabo with a horror that left him confused and unwilling to pull the trigger on the cyanide just yet, even if his getting captured and interrogated would mean the ruin of the RA.

Shireen and Talhah, who had not been given any name upon Sabo’s arrival, looked to each other; Talhah muttering, “So, just his name but backwards?”

“Not as cool as the stories,” Shireen disdained, shaking her head.

Sabo felt the sweat build up on his forehead as Ace leant in further, eyes darting around his body. It was strange and awkward and Sabo realized this was because he was looking at the whites of Ace’s eyes as he was again non-sexually checked out by the pirate, this time with special attention paid to the scarring on his face and body. Luckily, Sabo remembered he was a super-spy, and rolled to the left to escape.

“Hey!” Portgas called, but it was too late, Sabo was an incredibly skilled RA member. He would not get got. He dodged Ace around the siblings’ lush carpet, coffee table, mis-matched furniture likely donated from other family members, and made it to the other “room” in the open-concept plan closest to the new “exit” Ace and Smoker had created.

One foot out the hole that Ace had just come in through, Sabo heard Shireen call out; “Wait! You dropped this!”

Sabo turned— like a fucking idiot, it had been so long since he’d been on a mission as solo agent and he’d forgotten the level of caution needed to survive it— to see his notebook in Shireen’s hand only briefly. Portgas was closer by, and so plucked it out of her hand and opened it, visibly skimming through its contents. Sabo’s stomach dropped out of his ass. He was effectively frozen in embarrassment, watching Portgas comb through his heart and soul.

“Khobz, maakouda, tagine… are you researching food?” Portgas asked, face jumping away from the notebook like he had discovered something great.

There was the blood that was supposed to be in Sabo’s face, he had been missing it. Faced with Portgas, he was just so alternatively embarrassed and infuriated that it was hard to remember he should be killing himself for the cause. “It’s not only food! I’ve just been hungry!”

“What have you been doing then, for real?” Shireen asked, clearly not as impressed by gastrology as Portgas, who was still flipping through Sabo’s doodles and notes (which admittedly did feature enough Alabastan cuisine to fill a cookbook, if only because Sabo’s informants put the family in Alabasta’s most famous family restaurant). Sabo stood corrected; Shireen had the self-preservation instincts of a fucking sunfish, and he was resolved to be not that sad when it got her incinerated by an annoyed pirate commander. 

“It’s for a book,” Sabo admitted, embarrassed to have stumbled onto such a true, clutch, dumb cover story. “I’m an author, or I will be soon— I haven’t published anything yet.”

Talhah’s mouth opened in an ‘O’ shape, and he nudged Shireen and nodded at Sabo until hers opened too, and then both of them were looking at him with regained admiration for his super-spy skills. Portgas looked even more enthused, hugging the notebook to his tits, eyes shiny with— tears? Was the second division commander of the great Whitebeard Pirates crying? 

“That’s amazing, Sabo!” Ace cheered, quickly pressing the notebook back into Sabo’s eager hands. “You’re following your dream! Just like you always wanted! I mean, it’s not piracy or anything actually for real cool, but if you like it I love it.”

Sabo tucked his notebook back into the inner pocket of his coat with a too-desperate speed and, realizing how this made him look like a scavenger animal caught with someone’s leftovers, coughed and straightened. “Uh, yeah. Back at you?”

Besides the overall discordance of this interaction, the always bit was very, very disturbing. The only person in the entire world who should have been in-the-know about Sabo’s childish dream was Koala, and the both of them had agreed to let their personal dreams be— not forgotten, but— second-fiddle to the overall much more important goal of freeing the entire world from the tyranny of the World Government. Afterwards, Sabo was totally going to write a based-on-real-events fiction book/travel narrative about a spy named Sloth, and he and Koala would reap the royalties while sipping cocktails on some beach in an above-sea-level Fishman Island. 

Portgas didn’t seem to care about this impossibility though. He was caught up in some awkward hesitance between his teary eyes and half-outstretched hands. Did he want to hug Sabo? To hurt him? “This is so— How are you here? I mean, it has to be you; I know it is, but—“

“Maybe we should talk about this somewhere else?” Sabo offered, though he didn’t know exactly what he’d do with Portgas even if he got the guy safely away from the siblings. Talhah and Shireen pouted, but said nothing as Sabo’s eyebrow rose in challenge of their zero combat experience and knowledge of this strange pirate or his intentions. He turned his eyes back to Portgas, who probably noticed the nonverbal communication but didn’t seem to care about anything but Sabo. “How does ‘far away from the angry marine’ sound?”

Portgas scoffed, spell broken. He tossed his hand as if to bat Sabo’s bullshit away. “Don’t be boring, man. I could take that guy blindfolded and with my dick cut off.”

“I mean, yeah, but that’s sort of stupid,” Sabo admitted, because no duh. Sabo didn’t know where the dick or lack-thereof was supposed to feature (did Portgas want to bone the marine?) but there was no contest that Whitebeard’s second-division commander could take a captain who had only just crossed into the Grand Line, even if the guy was also a logia. The “big” players over on this end of the sea didn’t even know about haki yet, and would typically die horrible deaths before they could ever find out about it. But the ease at which Portgas could wreck Smoker wasn’t what Sabo was concerned with, “Don’t you have better things to do besides destroy civilian homes and livelihoods?”

For Sabo, personally, it was way more boring to fight a meaningless battle than not to fight it; and way more dangerous too. He was too strong to lose to a greenie, but if he did not kill all the witnesses to that fact then he risked gaining notoriety. Sabo didn’t even like killing people even when it was, like, super deserved, so he really preferred to avoid that sort of thing. The people in the RA who were fine with murder and such had their own jobs— Sabo’s, as COS, was partially to make sure that their killers were pointed in the right direction; doing the rightest things, albeit ruthlessly. The RA fought for absolute freedom for absolutely everyone and so absolutely needed cutthroat motherfuckers, but they also needed to leave the world better than they found it. That second part was Sabo’s dominion.

Sabo was inclined to like Portgas D. Ace. He tended to like Ds, or at least he liked the stories about them and what they stood for. The Whitebeards were also generally problematic to the WG, which Sabo obviously approved of, and they did a lot of good work across the seas. He was a particular fan of that crew’s presence in Fishman Island, since so was Koala and many of his Fishman officers. Sabo hoped Portgas was the kind of guy who had better things to do than dunk on greenies just to let them know what was what. 

“Sure I do,” Portgas agreed, looking a bit annoyed that Sabo had implied it might be otherwise— but for real, what good reason did Portgas have to be in Alabasta, and what better things did he have to do that would lead him to Weaklingville, AB? “But that marine is about to beat on our little brother.”

“Ah,” Sabo nodded, squinting. Portgas looked sorta serious about this, beyond even his overpowered swagger. He assumed it was a Whitebeard thing, them all being family or whatever, and he didn’t know enough about those sorts of things to stick his neck out in the middle of it. “Alright then, I guess it can’t be helped.”

Portgas grinned and then, instead of going off to go take care of business himself like Sabo had been expecting him to, grabbed Sabo by the arm. “Glad you agree!”

Sabo looked down at the hand, then back to Portgas’s face. He pointed to himself, and Portgas nodded. Bad news.

Sabo tried to put up his ungrabbed arm between them, hand palm up as he shook his head, letting Portgas take the fight for himself, but it was no use. The room, and more importantly Sabo’s arm, got way too hot, and suddenly he was flying through the air back through the restaurant and into the streets of Nanohana. He could hardly process the journey before he was falling, rolling with the impact on the sandy ground.

The first thing Sabo did was grab his hat to make sure it was still on his head. The second thing he did was to survey the area and the already-fleeing shopkeepers and tourists to make sure those people weren’t in danger of stray fire. The third thing he did was to look up at the sky and the tower of flames that reshaped itself before his eyes into a laughing Portgas, and then flip him off. 

“Ah? C’mon,” Portgas smiled, all in good humor despite burning the shit out of Sabo’s arm with his devil fruit and friction-burning the rest of him with the sudden fall. “I had to make sure you were real, yeah?”

“What is that logic!” Sabo scream-asked, but since he could, unbelievably, follow the stream of idiocy that Portgas’s brain must have gone down, he addressed that too; “Most people just pinch themselves! Or, like, touch the thing! Things don’t become real by throwing them and seeing if they break!”

Portgas shrugged. “Yeah, but most things I hallucinate really are dead; not alive and just letting me mourn them for ten years for no reason. I think I’ve decided to be angry about that!”

Holy shit? Sabo was actually slack-jawed at this, context hitting his brain like a freight train. Obviously, Sabo knew he was an amnesiac, and that he had probably had a past, but he hadn’t given it any serious thought for a long time now. He had also assumed that those first ten years of life weren’t that important? No one he knew ever started a conversation with ‘when I was seven,’ likely because that shit would be followed by some of the saddest stuff on the planet. According to Koala, that portion of her life had sucked the worst of any time she had been alive ever. Sabo had just figured that since he’d clearly been trying to leave somewhere when the RA had found him, he was leaving behind shit better left unremembered. He had not ever considered that anyone had known him, or that those people could still be around. 

What the fuck had child-him been up to, to have made such an impression on Portgas D. Ace? 

Turning the corner onto their street was a huge white cloud of cigar smoke chasing a laughing teenage boy in a straw hat. Sabo had seen weirder things. That straw hat kid was running while fruitlessly punching up into the cloud, but was somehow still dodging Smoker’s hits. So the kid was dumb and didn’t have haki yet, but wasn’t actually hopeless. 

“Having trouble down there?” Portgas called down from his hover, and the straw hat kid jumped eight feet in the air. He looked around like a dog searching for the postman, head swerving this-way-and-that except, like, uncanny-valley style. His neck should not have been able to move like it was doing. 

This became even more wild when the kid’s neck extended, twirling like a straw until it got close enough to Portgas to really take him in. Then he screeched, “Ace!”

Portgas laughed, and the kid proceeded to forget Smoker and lose his fucking mind. He was rattling off a thousand words a minute, separating from Smoker to run up directly underneath Portgas to better assault him with his words, which mostly seemed to be food items Sabo had recently written about. Smoker, for his credit, stood back in his own cloudy hover and surveyed the situation, assessing it for danger like an actual professional.

Sabo was supposed to be one of those too, actually. He stepped back between two abandoned stalls, tipped his hat down, and tried to hide out in the shadows.

“Luffy, let me lose this guy for you,” Portgas offered, nodding to Smoker. “I’ll catch up in a block or two. Can you take this guy for me?”

The second time Ace said ‘this guy,’ he pointed to Sabo in the corner. Sabo shook his head at Luffy, who only laughed and said “Sure! Let’s go!”

Sabo really was more than willing to believe these two were brothers, because the very next thing that happened was a hand wrapping around his new hand-shaped burn and pulling, and then he was whipping down the streets with the the happiest teenager he had ever seen in his fucking life. 

Chapter Text

The kid could run fast, like, so fast, even while dragging someone who was making a semi-serious effort to not be dragged. When Sabo dug his heels in, Luffy’s arm pulled him along, when Sabo tried to turn in any opposite direction, Luffy’s arm simply extended and yanked him back. Their path could be tracked in the skid marks left by Luffy’s handling of him, even if Smoker was somehow deaf to the ringing sound of Luffy’s laughter. This extendo-limb shit was wild though; Sabo could take nonsense in stride as well as the next guy, but it was a lot to be so confronted with a wacky power like that and have no explanation.

“What are you? Some kinda rubber-man?” Sabo yelled, the title coming to him from somewhere. 

Luffy laughed. “It’s ‘cause I’m a rubber-man— oh wait, you already said that!” Luffy stopped for a second, looking back at Sabo in awe. “Wow, for such a weird looking guy, you’re really smart!”

Stupider by the minute, to be spending time with this guy. 

“I think we’ve lost the marine,” Sabo noted, not smelling any fire or smoke. Luffy looked back at the direction they’d come from and laughed some, which seemed like agreement, so Sabo gratefully extricated himself from Luffy’s grasp and massaged the burn-bruise just to feel the damage. Whatever. He had armament, this was just a lesson in learning to use it at all times.

“Hey, weirdo!” Luffy called, as if he didn’t already have all of Sabo’s attention. “How do you know Ace? Are you guys pirates together?”

Sabo couldn’t exactly explain how he knew Ace before he knew how Ace knew him, so he decided only to answer the question that was asked. “Nope.” 

“Okay, so you’re boring then.” Luffy decided, already picking his nose and looking around the abandoned street corner they’d ended up in. “Hey, what’s over there?”

What was over there was an alley, and inside the alley was a heap of discarded metal, as well as the Alabastan equivalent of a raccoon. Every island Sabo had been on had had some equivalent of a raccoon, some trash-eating vermit, and they all fucking hated him. Sabo, who was drawn to trash for some unnatural reason, fucking hated them back. The battles were endless. 

Luffy and Sabo experienced this together when the former lifted up a sheet of metal and a yowling creature jumped out. In the infinite wisdom these sorts of creatures tended to have, it ignored the actual pirate breaking-and-entering its shelter and instead landed claws-first on Sabo’s face. He was glad he’d already started passively channeling armament, because holy shit.

“Not the hat!” Sabo yelled, grabbing the creature by its own face and tugging it off him. Unluckily, the raccoon-thing had gotten the fabric of his top hat stuck in its claws, and Sabo’s hands were already occupied. “Let that go!”

The raccoon-thing fucking smirked at him and shook the hat as if to say, you mean this thing? No way. Sabo growled.

Luffy’s laughter was by now just incredibly pleasant background noise, but he was losing his mind over there. Sabo risked taking his eyes off his enemy to side-eye Luffy’s position and found him doubled over, covered in small raccoon-babies that were also laughing at him in their annoying, chittering way. Fucking pirates. 

“Ah, no,” Luffy wiped his eyes, catching his breath as he stood up and walked over to Sabo and the creature. He grabbed Sabo’s hat out of the thing’s hands, placing it back on Sabo’s head. “Be nice. Hats are important.”

The raccoon looked actually cowed by this. Sabo quickly dropped it, giving it the freedom to skitter over to its hellspawn and nose over them, checking that the mini weapons of Sabo’s destruction were undamaged. 

“Aw, see. It’s just a mama protecting its babies,” Luffy snickered. Luffy could laugh it up all he wanted, since he seemed to have some psychic connection with Sabo’s worst enemy.

Sabo glared as he adjusted his hat and bangs back into place. “Yeah, protecting them from you! I didn’t do anything!”

Luffy laughed again and Sabo sighed, giving the lost cause up for what it was. “Well, I should really be going—“

“No way,” said Portgas, materializing mid-air between them. Sabo jumped back and cursed himself for not also continuing to channel observation haki. Even in the early-days areas of the Grand Line, that shit came in handy. 

“Ace!” Luffy screeched in delight, Sabo actually winced at the volume. Portgas descended at the same time as Luffy held his hands up like a baby might for “uppies,” and so was indulged only briefly as Portgas lowered himself down to the floor. 

Luffy and Portgas continued to talk about fuckass nonsense that Sabo already knew; the local food scene, Portgas’s position as one of Whitebeard’s commanders, Luffy’s being a pirate, whatever. Sabo took this moment to scrounge around the scrap metal away from the monster’s den, quickly coming up with his favorite item found in trash-heaps all around the globe; a lead pipe. Koala called it his ‘security blanket’ and Sabo called her an asshole, but it was sort of true. It was just so useful to have on hand, and very easy to obtain once lost.

As Sabo sighed in full-body relief— Koala was kind of on to something, as she always was— and turned around, he was met with Portgas and Luffy’s identical squints. 

“What,” Sabo deadpanned, not defensively at all.

Luffy just leaned his head in on his stretchy neck, eyeing Sabo like a newly-interesting toy. “Huh. Do I know you?”

“No,” said Sabo, at the very same time that Portgas said, “Luffy, you are never going to fucking believe this.” But neither of these had any impact on the kid.

Instead, the stretchy neck snapped back to Luffy’s shoulders and his eyes opened so wide that Sabo could watch the teardrops form before they fell. “Is that… Sabo?”

“Uh,” said Sabo. “Yes,” said Ace. 

Why it was the fucking pipe that did it, Sabo didn’t know, but it didn’t stand in the way of Luffy’s immediate barrel-hug knocking them both to the sand-covered cobblestone. Again, activate that fucking observation next time, maybe he could be dodging instead of making the entire RA look like fools out here against rookie pirates. 

“I shuba known fom da waccooms” gushed Luffy around his tears. “Sabo haides waccooms.”

Portgas laughed from somewhere behind Luffy’s massive head; Sabo flipped him off, but it only made Portgas laugh harder. Sick of this but, like, sort of unwilling to beat on a kid while he was actively crying into his chest, Sabo tapped Luffy’s back around ten times until the kid got the message. Luffy eventually straightened, still crying, and brought Sabo up with him. 

“How?” Luffy asked, big eyes full of broken hope. Sabo looked down at him and found only dread. He had no answer for Luffy or for Portgas, none besides the truth, and he wasn’t about to tell these strangers anything incriminating. The only thing Sabo knew about his past was that he had desperately wanted to leave it behind. The reckless emoting of two strange pirates were not his burdens to bear.

Luckily, Portgas seemed willing to answer for him; if that willingness was tinged with blatant aggression. “He’s been alive all this time, apparently just going around doing research for a book, as if we weren’t back home waiting for him.”

“A book?” Luffy cocked his head, before tearfully smiling. “That’s great! Sabo always wanted to write a book! Even if that is super lame.”

Well, there you go; Sabo had two more supporters in his quest to be an old, lame retiree. Honestly, living m through endless war with the RA reset his priorities for the amount of epic activities he wanted to get up to in life. Being able to be lame would mean that they had succeeded, and that the WG wouldn’t be able to hurt anyone ever again. Sabo wanted nothing more than for the ability to be absolutely boring in an absolutely free world. 

Portgas was not as forgiving. “Uh, yeah, but also; he has just been alive all this time. You know? While we were grieving? You cried for days! Dadan tied me to a tree!”

Sabo blinked. What the fuck sort of reaction to a child’s grief was tying him to a tree? Was Portgas the cause of his supposed death, or something?

Luffy squinted up at Portgas. “Ace is being weird. Did he want Sabo to be dead?”

“What?” And now Ace looked actually angry, instead of just the sad burning stuff he’d been doing at Sabo. “Of course not! What the fuck, Lu?” 

Well, that was more reassuring. Sabo relaxed some; Portgas probably still wanted him alive now, and being unharmed was part of the implication of that. Or at least it seemed to be in this context; either way, Sabo still had that cyanide pill if shit really got hairy.

“Well then, I don’t know what you’re mad about!” Luffy stomped his foot down, puffing out his cheeks. He was sort of adorable, in the way a molerat could be; the way that was also sort of ugly. “We thought Sabo was gone, and that sucks, but right now I’m just so glad he’s alive I don’t care about any of that! It’s Sabo!”

Ace blanched, and then turned to Sabo. Sabo could see it clear as day, the physical toppling of the emotional walls that kept Ace from taking Sabo’s presence as good news. He relaxed into a slouch, dark eyes warm and open. “Yeah, Lu, you’re right. Silly me.”

“Silly, Ace!” Luffy agreed. “Now come on! You’ve gotta meet my crew!”

“Ah, cool, you guys can go do that—“

“You’re coming too,” Portgas and Luffy stated at the same time, violence in their tones. Sabo could probably run, but that would lead to a fight he would rather avoid (even though he was mostly sure he’d win it), so he sighed and succumbed to the combined forces of Luffy’s rubber-enhanced movement and Portgas’s flying flames.

Chapter Text

Apparently, Luffy’s ship had actually been docked and waiting for him by the port. However, his crew must have mutinied by the time they got over there, because it absolutely wasn’t anymore. Knowing the kid for all of twenty minutes, Sabo could not say this was of any particular surprise. 

“Bummer,” he said, gazing out at the pleasant horizon. “Well, if that’s all—“

Luffy squinted at the diminishing form of his ship in the distance, then grinned and wound up his left arm. In a blink, he was stretching across the surface and pulling himself onto that far-out speck, leaving Portgas and Sabo behind. Sabo made a “huh,” noise at the method, but since it got him one bodyguard closer to freedom he wasn’t actually going to complain about being left behind. 

“That kid’s as inconsiderate as ever,” Portgas smirked, eyes towards the big ships that were chasing Luffy’s farther away from the docks. “C’mon, let’s handle that for him.”

Sabo had been really hoping to avoid fighting, actually. Alabasta’s political situation was volatile enough without him throwing his pipe into the inner workings of a shady revolution. He was only there to gather information, and only because he had desperately needed to get the fuck away from his desk before he was tempted to eat it just to be rid of it. Termite-termite was not the devil fruit that would tempt him. Plus, again, beating up weak nobodies was boring and way more trouble than it was worth.

Obviously, instead of explaining any of this, Sabo shrugged and rubbed the hair at the base of his neck where it curled in sweat under the Alabastan climate. “Ah, but I'm just a humble author. I'm afraid I won't be of any use there.”

Portgas eyed the lead pipe Sabo was still white-knuckling and raised his eyebrow. “No shot you actually got lame. You’re coming with me, I’ve gotta see it for myself.”

Well, shit. Alright then. All Sabo had to do was prove that he was fucking lame. Unfortunately, with all the mental reminders he’d been setting about his haki usage, that was not to be. Most of combat was instinct, or at least it was for him, and once he tapped into the muscle memory of it his thinking brain tended to tap out. Portgas got them over there on his skiff— which was honestly dope, had to admit— and then threw Sabo on one of the ships like a grenade. And Sabo tried to lose, he really did, but when so many guys— all with Baroque Works tattoos, he noticed— were dead set on breaking themselves and their weaponry against his armament it was honestly easier just to knock them out with a leaden lovetap and move on. Whether or not they would ever recover from that lovetap was a later problem.

The whole encounter took, at most, fifteen minutes. This largely because Portgas was going through and sinking the ships from his sick ride— neatly taking care of the bodies Sabo left behind, thank the seas. Portgas stunt jumped up and over the last ship— undoubtedly having used haki to tell there were no enemies left standing— grabbed Sabo, and then took them both to Luffy’s ship at speeds that would never have been possible on a normal vessel.

“I have got to get me one of those,” Sabo said when they landed, gazing lovingly over the railing where Portgas’s skiff was hitched to the ship. Sabo’s hands twitched towards the breast pocket wherein he kept his notebook. “Where did you get it?”

“Don’t even try,” Portgas smirked. “It runs on my fire power, and you’re never going to have my devil fruit, so yours would never be as cool anyways.”

At that, Sabo could only do the most mature thing possible, so he poked Portgas in the boob with two fingertips of armament haki. Portgas squawked and tried to be fire, but it was no use; haki beat a devil fruit any day. 

“Your bad for being naked,” Sabo admonished, leveling his smile of malicious glee into a prim and proper line. “It’s utterly indecent. I understand your daddy issues have incited a sort of bad-boy aesthetic—“

“My daddy issues?” Portgas incensed, flickers of flame licking off of him. “You wanna talk about my daddy issues? I swear to fuck I’ll—“

“Oh come on, all the Whitebeard pirates have fucking daddy issues. Why else would you join?” And also, had Portgas looked in a mirror recently? Barely dressed, misspelled tattoos, huge back piece, and the sort of ride that a grim reaper could reliably go fishing by— it reeked of a boy who had a complicated relationship with fatherhood. 

“The old man is the best thing that ever happened to me,” Portgas continued, as if his geriatric pirate captain was at all the point. “Don’t you dare say a fucking word against him!“

Sabo did understand the concept of chosen and adoptive families; likely better than he understood blood families. For one, Iva had spent way more time explaining the okama ideas of mothers and houses than anyone had ever spent telling Sabo about what ‘normal’ children’s lives looked like. It was just that, even with his eclectic education, he himself had never had a family. Sabo was and had always been a soldier in an army, which was an entirely different thing even if that army had been very kind to him growing up. He too could technically be considered fatherless, but he dressed nice and had good manners, so shit didn’t really apply to him. Also, ‘child soldier’ was a completely other kind of baggage that resulted in a completely different kind of freakism; not that Portgas would know that. 

Sabo held out one hand palm-up in surrender to Portgas’s point; Whitebeard’s crew were stupidly defensive of their captain-dad, so he really should know better than to poke that bear, but he continued poking it. “Plus, you so want to bone that marine captain. That sort of authoritative old-man crush doesn’t happen unless you have something serious going on in the mental.”

At that point, there were mercifully reminded of just whose ship this actually was by a familiar laugh and a light voice. “Oh, Ace likes Smokey? Good for him. Smokey’s a good guy.”

Portgas and Sabo’s heads whipped back to see not only Luffy, but a host of other strangers with crazy dye jobs and genetic anomalies, ranging in height, danger, nose length, and proximity to humanity. It seemed as though Luffy had amassed an interesting pirate crew after all, one that probably hadn’t actually deserted him. 

Portgas was busy looking between Luffy and Sabo and choking on his fury, but before the red tinge on his brown skin could bubble over into an actual-for-real explosion, Sabo remembered his manners. He bent at the waist, tipping his top hat off of his head, and said; “Thank you for having us. Your captain invited us onboard your lovely ship, but I’m afraid we both got a bit hot-blooded while taking out your pursuers. I hope you can forgive us for our rudeness and foul conversation.”

By the time Sabo had righted himself and his hat, the crew had chorused an almost involuntary response. “Oh, don’t worry. It’s fine. Welcome aboard!” 

Portgas stared deep into the side of Sabo’s head. He did not give Portgas the satisfaction of turning to face him, but he could feel his eyes burn. 

“Witchcraft,” Portgas accused under his breath— but that really didn’t make much sense, so Sabo ignored him. Sure, he had carefully worded his apology to highlight what they’d done for the crew, and thanked them at first so their instincts would be to humbly accept whatever Sabo said after, but that was basic shit. Anyone could manipulate a situation like that; especially with a pirate crew that were clearly starved for polite conversation, having Luffy as their captain.

Portgas shook his head though, and then bowed himself. “Thank you all for taking care of Luffy.”  

At the crew’s apparent confusion, Portgas laughed and stood back up. “I want to be mad he didn’t tell you about us, but I’m not surprised, the little shit. He’s our little brother, so we know he can be a handful. Thank you for being there for him while we couldn’t.”

Sabo felt his face turn white. 

“Oh, it’s no trouble,” chorused the crew. Then their eyes went all big and bug-like. The long-nosed guy looked particularly buggy, glancing back and forth between Sabo and Portgas. “Wait, you guys are Luffy’s older brothers?”

Sabo was shocked too, but made very careful efforts to not let this show on his face. Had he been a former Whitebeard pirate or something? It didn’t make much sense, since he’d been found in the East Blue, and Whitebeard had literally never been seen there in Sabo’s lifetime, but also Sabo had absolutely no clue what he’d been doing before the age of ten. Anything was possible. 

Sabo looked to Portgas, who wasn’t even looking at him— busy trying to get a read on Luffy’s crew, probably. The announcement seemed to have been of no consequence for him to make, just a statement of fact that could be dropped in favor of chatting up the ginger. Sabo turned to the long nose guy and nodded.

“How? You’re like,” Long-nose did some weird movement with his body that meant absolutely nothing, “and they’re like,” Long-nose did another, sorta opposite movement, “ya know?”

Sabo did not know, so he just smiled politely and tilted his head. 

The green-haired guy with three swords strapped to his waist looked between them and scoffed. “Ussop’s asking you why you’re white.”

“No I’m— you can’t just ask someone why they’re white! Idiot!” Ussop screeched.

“Ahhh, I see,” said Sabo. He was also wondering that a little. He could buy that Portgas and Luffy were related, if more like cousins than brothers, from their hair and skin coloring, but Sabo was definitely an odd one out between them. If they three were brothers, it was in one of those other ways that Iva had talked about. 

“We swore an oath on cups of sake,” Luffy explained, literally butting his head into their conversation by hopping up next to Ussop and apparently scaring the shit out of him. Portgas was busy pulling maps out of pockets that did not seem large enough to hold them and showing them off to the appreciative red-head, so he was of no help there. “That’s how we became brothers.”

“Ah, makes sense,” said the swordsman. Sabo was glad at least one person thought so.

The crew was swiftly introduced; Ussop (obvious), Zoro (swordsman), Nami (ginger), and Chopper (the raccoon-thing giving Sabo the evil eye from the corner). Luffy seemed confused that it ended there. 

“Huh? Where’s Sanji and Viví?”

“They’re in the kitchen,” Nami explained. “We’ve actually got some other guests.”

Out of a side door came a hot blonde guy with a weird eyebrow and scene bangs, a very tall duck, a camel with weirdly pretty eyelashes, and honest-to-goodness princess Nefertari Vivi. And then, before Sabo could really process that, came Talhah and Shireen.

Etiquette could only withstand so much. Sabo looked at them with no emotion in his eyes, which was a legit interrogation technique to be fair, and they looked back at him like they’d been caught with their hands in a cookie jar which had also been rigged to explode. 

Talhah, the more cowardly of the two, immediately threw his hands up. “We didn’t mean to, promise!”

Shireen did the same, but only since it was demonstrated for her. “Yeah, we’re only here because we were following you back to the restaurant! And then after, when we found out that this guy was a pirate who ran off on his tab,” she said, pointing at Luffy with her thumb. 

“You wanted to track down a pirate who dined-and-dashed,” Sabo deadpanned.

“Uhuh, so we tracked your trail as far as we could and then just headed to the docks since we knew the ship would probably be there anyway. Then we started talking about food, and Sanji here invited us aboard—” this Sanji guy being the hot blonde, who nodded at his name— “and we just kind of got stuck here. He made me beignets though.

“And didn’t give me any,” Talhah grumbled, glaring at the back of Sanji’s head. “Even after talking desserts with him for an hour.”

“I’ll make you something later, Talhah. I want to try out those recipes,” Sanji said, not pointing out that in no possible way had it been an hour. Actually, had it been? So much had been happening that Sabo might genuinely have lost track. Good on Talhah for keeping a strict timeline. “It was simply that your lovely sister looked a bit peckish, and I couldn’t stand to let her waste away on my watch. The food I make for ladies is forbidden to be eaten by any man.”

“Oh, good,” said Sabo, who was hungry. “May I have some?”

Sanji squinted at Sabo as if trying to determine what planet he was from. Sabo smiled back. Shireen, who sometimes knew what was good for her, handed him the plate she was carting around before Sanji could interfere, and at the rate Sabo tended to eat the plate was clean in the next blink.

“He is definitely Luffy’s brother,” Nami muttered in disgust. 

Sanji also seemed disgusted, but his was to the point of fury. “What did I just say about men eating my food!”

“I heard it,” Sabo agreed, licking powdered sugar on his fingers. Those were honestly the best beignets he had ever had in his life, so they made up for the crazy gendering. “I am simply not a man.”

Sanji’s jaw dropped as he reassessed Sabo. Obviously finding no signs of femininity, he responded with an angry “What?” but Sabo wasn’t about to explain the intricacies of his gender identity to a career-cook. That was just not the demographic of person that was going to be able to understand him and all of his feelings about the binary. Instead, he shrugged and pointed at the siblings— which was a rude gesture, but they sorta deserved it for their idiocy. “You two need to get off this boat. Now.”

“Well, like, we would have, but Baroque Works was fucking chasing us!” Shireen yelled. Sabo shook his head.

“No, they were chasing her,” he said, nodding to the princess. Then Sabo remembered all over again why he was here, the significance of Baroque Works, and the actual issue at hand outside of the weird pirates he’d been running into. He stared at the princess, trying to take in more observations than project via glare the distaste he felt towards those that called themselves nobility. For the princess’s part, she hardly broke a sweat, though she was likely just used to the heat. “What are you doing on a pirate ship, Princess Nefertari Vivi? What business does Baroque Works have with you?”

Shireen and Talhah had no doubt been starstruck by seeing their nation’s beloved princess, but they did turn to look at her with suspicion once Sabo had been so kind as to bring it up. 

“Yeah, you have been gone for years,” Talhah noted. “Were you just trying to wait out the rumors about your father? What’s going on?”

Shireen pointed to Talhah, as if to second what he said. They both looked to the princess expectantly, who wilted under their stares. 

Monarchy was a weird system. Sabo was inclined to dislike any and all involved; in fact, he did dislike princess Vivi for her position. But she had never asked to be born, so the dislike was a bit illogical when he directed it towards a girl as young as she was. Maybe he could properly hate her in her twenties, or maybe his continuing distance from her age would always infantilize her in his mind, but for right now the idea that she should be able to come up with accountability for accusations against her family (which had not been leveled against her herself) was an overreach. If she was properly educated and intelligently thinking about the state of her country, then she could be judged for her lack of action, but she had not actively done anything to harm the country. It was just as likely she had had no choice in her own movements, anyway. If she was not informed, and had in fact been hidden from the fallout, then all Sabo could hate her for was her being kind of dumb and that she had been granted the privilege of oblivion when her people had not been. 

Still, he could not summon any sympathy for her even as she cowed under the pressure of her people. Lucky for her, Nami could.

“Lay off!” The navigator snapped, walking up to their group. Portgas, who she had just left in her dust, was double-fisting two rolled up maps and peering over the commotion to give Sabo a questioning look. Sabo did his best to communicate via eye-contact that he was in the right in this particular instance. Portgas seemed content with the pointed expression, at least so long as Luffy was standing by with his hat casting a shade over his face, doing nothing about the unfolding conflict on his ship. 

“All that Vivi’s been through during her years away has been for your sake!” Nami insisted, coming to stand at the princess’s side. Lesbionically close, at that. “Don’t stand there and accuse her of shit when you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Talhah looked Nami— a foreigner in his country accusing him, who had lived there his whole life, of not knowing shit— up and down and breathed deeply in an impressive show of self-control. Shireen, on the other hand, was coiled tight like a compressed spring and probably would have snapped up towards some violent, escalating action had Vivi not stepped forwards.

“Thank you, Nami, but they are right to question me,” Vivi said, not looking back at her beau. “My absence has been suspicious in that way, but that was our intent. I did not want to let on to our enemies what I was up to, and at the time I had no idea who our enemies were.”

“What does that mean?” Shireen asked, still kind-of sneering up at the princess, but having relaxed from her imminent bitchslapping. Talhah was not relaxed, but he didn’t accuse again either, building a well of silence for Vivi to empty her story into. And so Vivi did. 

Apparently, she had understood the anger of her people and the helplessness of her father against this, even as a younger teen. She did not know at the time if her father was guilty or not, she said, but that she could not look him in the eyes and ask without crumbling. Instead, she sought answers out herself, taking only her companion, Karoo and her father’s former advisor, Igaram. Their search for answers lead them to discover Baroque Works’s infiltration of both the Alabastan military and the rebel army. In order to figure out what was really going on, she and Igaram went undercover and joined Baroque Works, moving up the ranks until they found out who was in charge. Igaram died in the process, and the Strawhats had committed to helping Vivi in his place. 

“I don’t wish to put you in any more danger than you’re already in, so I will not say his name— but rest assured we have figured out who is responsible and I am back in Alabasta to put an end to his power,” Vivi explained. “I want nothing more than to help our people from dying needlessly over a war that has been sown by outside interference.”

“A powerful outsider... So, Crocodile? Hero of Alabasta, Crocodile?” Shireen mused. Vivi’s jaw dropped, which Sabo thought was a bit dramatic, but she did seem genuinely horrified. So Shireen was right, then. A warlord was involved, which would mean that the failed systems of the WG were working against the people rather than for them; exactly the sort of shit Sabo needed to be all over. 

“Shh! You shouldn’t say that out loud!” Vivi urged, hands out as if to cover Shireen’s mouth. She looked up at the sky, scanning for something, but must have come up with nothing because she looked back at Sabo, Talhah, and Shirren with wide eyes. “You need to be careful. If they know you know, they will hunt you to the ends of the oceans. Should I fail, I would wish you to live as peacefully as possible; not in danger because of your involvement with me.”

Then she did a double-take. “Oh, you’re definitely not from Alabasta. Who are you, again?”

Sabo wanted to insist that he was, actually, just to make her squirm, but decided against it. She had actually handled that address admirably.

“I am just an aspiring author, traveling through the Grand Line for inspiration,” Sabo sang. “But I do freelance journalism for extra Beri. If you’re telling the truth, princess, then I think we could help each other here.”

Vivi did not seem comforted by this. Sanji, from behind them, sneered. It wasn’t actually that plausible of a cover story, but it was ridiculous enough to happen on the Grand Line and Vivi needed a good write-up of her version of events ready to sell to the public if she wanted anyone to believe her. Big News Morgan was the type to publish sensationalized headlines, so trusting the coverage entirely to his omniscient news network very well could make things worse for her. She was largely loved by her people, despite her suspicious absence, but they would not forgive her father without due effort. It was also true that, in revolutions, love could turn to excessive violence; particularly against pretty young women. 

She was a deep thinker, Sabo could see it on her face, but she was very much between a hard place and a harder one. She met Sabo’s eyes and gave him a firm, distrustful nod. 

“Yes!” Luffy cheered, unleashed by her decision. “Sabo is coming with us!”

“Luffy, we kidnapped him. Of course he’s coming with us,” Ace chided. 

“Oh, right!” Luffy laughed. His crew decided to have a conniption at that, but it seemed to be more a ‘stop doing this kinda bullshit’ than genuine surprise at Luffy’s being a kidnapper. 

“Where are you taking us, anyway?” Talhah asked Luffy. Talhah still hadn’t actually given Vivi a response that acknowledged her story for better or for worse, and Sabo was absolutely taking note of that killer instinct. So was Vivi, by the nervous way she still looked at him— she was still a teenager for all that she was also a princess, and acceptance was a basic need for that species of adolescent. The uncomfortable position they were putting her in, driven by guilt and duty to her people, would absolutely help them get more information out of her in the future. Sabo bit down his morals around protecting civilians and allowed the people who had involved themselves in RA affairs to continue enjoying the consequences of their actions.

“We’re heading for.. uh, Yuca?”

“No, Luffy. Yuba,” Vivi sighed. “You’re thinking of food again.”

“Oh, yeah…” Luffy nodded, then clearly had a eureka moment as he stretched his arms and wrapped them around Sanji. Sanji, for his part, only struggled enough to get his cigarette away from any of Luffy’s burnable skin. “Sanji! Dinner!”

“It’ll be ready in twenty minutes, dumbass! Get offa me!” 

Sabo couldn’t stop himself from pouting. “Oh, that long? I haven’t even had lunch…”

Portgas and Luffy’s heads snapped towards him in horror. Sanji’s hot face got all scrumply and complicated even while smushed by Luffy’s rubber limbs.

“No way!” Luffy gasped. “Sanji, you have to fix it! Don’t let him starve!”

“Yeah, with the way we are, that’s a medical concern,” Portgas worried. Sabo was touched; his own people tended to treat him like a burden for his impossible food intake. “He might actually die. Again.”

Luffy gasped, horrified, and jumped from Sanji to Sabo. The crew lost their shit again, this time with Talhah and Shireen caught up in the confusion. Social disaster accomplished, Portgas winced at Sabo’s position— ie; being smothered to death by a crying teenager— but left with Sanji as he made a hurried exit to the kitchen. Lucky bastard, he’d probably get to eat the scraps. Sabo was never allowed to eat the scraps, and apparently he had died, so why should Portgas get to?

Instead, Sabo held the sniffling boy who was apparently his little brother and found that he had no idea what to do. 

“I’m here, Luffy,” he said, hesitant and awkward. He let his hands come up and rub Luffy’s back, and Luffy ducked his head deeper into Sabo’s shoulder. 

“Stay?” Luffy asked, muted by the fabric of Sabo’s waistcoat. 

Sabo thought about Baroque Works, about Princess Vivi, about Crocodile, about the rumored rebel encampment in Yuba. He thought about the two pirates he’d apparently been family with, and how little family had ever mattered to him. 

It felt like a betrayal of something sacred, but he tightened his arms around Luffy. “Of course. We’re brothers, aren’t we?”

Dinner could not come fast enough. He really was hungry.