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chinahatbeach · 1 year

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Thoughts for Today

Brrr…. a cold morning and I had to turn up the heat. I let my house be a tad bit chilly for nighttime sleep but this morning, it’s cold and I need warmth. Coffee is doing it’s job but I need sunny and 75 degree weather. And that ain’t happening.

I post my blog on various sites and I find some of the responses to what I write about interesting. Yesterday, I wrote from the heart and one of the responses made me think, ponder, and hope for this soul.

The person wrote that ‘not all people need your Jesus’. Hmm…. I do believe there are many people who don’t have a personal relationship with Jesus and wonder why some of us who do, love Him. This dear person believes that we give credit to an unseen being and that we feel good allowing that unseen being charge over our lives. And here is my thought…..

John 3:17 says, “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” By sacrificing himself for us on the cross, he took the punishment for all of our sins at once.

The greatest history book ever, The Bible, shows us the facts of God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. Sixty-six books in the Bible written by people. There are 40 authors of the books of the Bible. Most of them we know, but there are anonymous writers too. Some of the authors wrote one book, some wrote several.

I know a lot of folks like to look at science and wonder about stuff. I don’t downplay that scientist do help in the way medicine is made and various other facts. But the big bang theory is not sound and as we well know, scientist also fail. God doesn’t fail. And if you want to argue with me…….. well, don’t. You won’t change my mind. Try looking at the Bible and all that is written in it.

I do find it interesting that people will call out to God when they are dying or hurt badly. If you don’t believe in that ‘unseen being’, then why would people like you call out to Him when you are near death or hurt?

I got up this morning to see the sunrise, to see the beauty of my little squirrel in the bird feeder, birds, my chickens, the weather…….. all living. You can’t look at life and not see God. You can discount Him. You are alive, you came into being in your mother’s womb, you are a perfectly made human being (warts and all), and you have air in your lungs, your heart beats, and you are blessed. You are not a science experiment that just happened.

You can dismiss God but how can you go outside and see the blue sky and not wonder? The clouds, the ocean, the plants and animals and the soil underneath your feet.

I don’t have all the answers to many things but I know that I trust in Jesus for my daily air, heartbeat, and my good life. Not all things are perfect in my life. I choose joy over sadness and loving God. First, loving God requires knowing Him, and that knowledge begins with His Word. It may sound glib, but to know Him is to love Him.

To love God is to put Him first. The number-one commandment is to love God “with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30). It’s an undivided love. God is our priority. If we love God with all our hearts, souls, minds, and strength, then we won’t allow other things to crowd in. Our love for God is manifested by loving people (Mark 12:31), but we do not love the things of the world. “Earth has nothing I desire besides you” (Psalm 73:25). We cannot love this present world and God at the same time (1 John 2:15); love for what the world offers can lead us astray (2 Timothy 4:10).

I suppose you must find a Bible, look at it and read it. You need to ask God to show you what it means. Simple steps in learning more about what God is all about.

Funny thing was that when I got up this morning and thought about what to write here, I was a tad bit sad. Yesterday is a hard day for me with the loss of Dennis. Time doesn’t heal that wound but there are reasons for all things and life and death are part of them. And there are many other ‘things’ that pull me to sadness but I must look past them and look to the greatness of life that I have in Jesus. My world is far from perfect. I do have health. My critters are healthy. My son is healthy. I must look at the positives and not the negatives.

Sure, I would love to live on 5 acres and have chickens (lots of chickens). Well, it might happen…..someday. I can just see me at 80 years of age out there feeding the birds in my boots and pj’s. Yes, I feed my chickens in my pj’s and muck boots!

Well, time to make the bacon and eggs. I plan on making a batch of bread and cinnamon rolls. I see my one client tomorrow and I love to take her treats. And the baking of goodies makes my house smell great and warms up the house on these cold days.

May your week be blessed. And your Sunday find you well……

And that’s the way it is…………

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why-this-kolaveri-machi · 3 years

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whumptober day 10: bleeding out

spn time!

i think i’ve come to the realisation that i just can’t write whump--i get too distracted with the weird stuff.

summary: set during 15.19. there’s one final roadtrip that sam and dean have to take with michael and jack before they figure out a way to outsmart god.

warnings: spoilers for 15.19. AU, somewhat. non-graphic description of major injuries. not much whump per se, more weirdness.

i was thinking of @katsidhe while writing this! i hope to write more fics set during this time in canon.

bleeding out

The drive from Hastings to Lebanon would usually take about ten hours, give or take an hour depending on traffic and how long they stopped for refreshment. For someone who’s lived on the road their whole life, it’s quite average as journeys go. Sam-as-a-kid would’ve counted the distance with chapters of the book he was reading; teenage Sam with songs on his beat-up walkman; post-Stanford Sam, burning and raw, with nightmares and breathing exercises.

It’s different after the Cage--time’s different. He can go on for ages before its passage starts to wear on him. If anything, he prefers being on the road to the weeks spent in the Bunker; at least on the outside, he can ground himself in the passage of day and night. It’s easier, too, now to fill the silence between too-loud rock music and too-glib banter: Sam disappears inside himself while Dean…

Well. That’s what he spends time inside of himself to try not to think about.

This is all to say that when the world ends one last time, and they have to make the journey from Hastings to Lebanon as the very last living beings on Earth, Sam expects the journey to be quick, or to at least feel that way. Jack and Michael sit in the back--determinedly not looking at each other--while Sam and Dean sit in the front, silent and utterly out of platitudes. It’s all familiar to the point of comfort.

It’s just that when they actually get on the highway, the road is filled with vehicles. It’s not the apocalyptic scenes that Sam was imagining: cars careening into each other and exploding into giant fireballs as their drivers disappeared, planes falling out of the sky, the lesser disaster of a billion cups of coffee all falling to the ground all at once. Instead, the cars are parked in neat lines, doors closed, as though their drivers decided all at once to just… stop, step out, and disappear forever. Sam thinks it’s the eeriest goddamned thing he’s ever seen as Dean slowly navigates the Impala through this maze of vehicles.

“This is His mercy,” Michael says, out-of-the-blue. His voice breaks the utter stillness of the world around them and makes Sam jump a little. “After everything, He’s given humanity a way back to what they were.”

“Shut up,” Dean growls, and pours on some more speed.

“He hasn’t destroyed life, though He well could have; merely suspended it until He sees what He wants to see from us--”

“Did I stutter? Shut it.” They’ve reached a relatively vacant stretch of the road, and the car goes faster. “Chuck never has a deeper plan. All he wants to do is sit back and literally watch the world burn.” Dean grits his teeth. “Not this time--”

He makes a sharp turn, just in time to see a gigantic eighteen-wheeler stopped haphazardly across the width of the road. Dean slams the breaks and turns to avoid crashing into the truck--Michael and Jack make concerned noises while Sam braces himself against the body of the car--it skids and teeters nauseatingly before Sam is thrown forward--his head hits the dashboard with a sickening thunk and then he knows no more.

Sam wakes to a clear blue sky and Michael sitting next to him, humming… an old pop song?

“Adam’s favourite,” Michael says without a pause to let Sam take stock of what was happening. “Annoying little ditty to have to hear for centuries, but… catchy.” There’s a sudden cold menace to his voice that would’ve taken Sam aback had he been able to form more than one coherent thought. “Good at drowning out your screaming, at any rate.”

“Dean,” Sam tries to say, gurgling it through a mouthful of blood.

Michael casts a disinterested look at somewhere beyond Sam. “The spawn’s taking care of him.” He tilts his head. “He’s alive. I think.”

“I--” Sam tries to move. His chest lights on fire almost immediately, but he’s able to curl the fingers of one hand and that’s--that’s earth. He’s on the ground, out of the car. Which means--

“I pulled you out. Well--” Michael gives an amused huff. “Most of you, anyway.”

Well if that doesn’t sound terrifying as fuck. Sam takes a quick inventory of his own body--scrapes, cuts, burns, broken bones, nothing he hasn’t dealt with a million times before--then realises that he can’t feel anything below his right elbow. There’s a warm puddle of blood that’s quickly gathering underneath him.

Sam opens his mouth to ask for help. Realises there’s none to ask for, none to give. Sinks back into the ground.

Michael’s pulled his knees to his chest, resting his chin on his arm, and is staring at the sun dipping under the horizon. “If He thinks you have a purpose, he’ll bring you back.” He smiles, and it’s sharp and bitter. “How many ever times it takes to prove His point.”

(i’ll just bring you back, sam.)

“Sammy!” At least Dean sounds ok. That’s good. Wouldn’t do for half of the world’s remaining population to go down together.

“Keep… keep singing,” Sam says.

For the first time, Michael looks startled, but he obliges and begins humming again. Sam closes his eyes--to the music, to the sky over this silent, frozen world, and to the snake tongue whispering in his ear.

#supernatural #season 15 #my fic #sam winchester #samndean #michael

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zoekravitz88 · 6 years

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The interview for The Style: Sitting opposite Zoë Kravitz is like looking directly into the sun. On set in Paris, the 29-year-old model-actress-singer is in full promo mode, rattling through all the beautiful products she likes to use on her beautiful face: YSL Beauté Couture Brow on her eyebrows, YSL highlighter over her cheekbones, YSL Touche Eclat around her eyes, though nothing on the cluster of freckles over her nose, which look as if they have been hand-painted by tiny elves. Was there ever going to be another genetic outcome for the only child of Lisa Bonet and Lenny Kravitz, one of the most absurdly good-looking couples of the late 1980s? For a few bright, shining years, they rolled around town dressed up like a pair of fabulous vagabond art teachers: Lenny with his soul patch and polonecks, Lisa in her top hats and micro-sunglasses. In 1987, when they eloped to Las Vegas on Lisa’s 20th birthday, Lenny was still a struggling musician known professionally as Romeo Blue (then later, unofficially, as “Lenny the Loin”), but Lisa was one of the most famous women on the planet, thanks to her role as Denise Huxtable in The Cosby Show. “I guess my mom taught me how to use make-up,” Kravitz says in her surfer-bro drawl. “She wears very light make-up — she would teach me stuff.” She doesn’t flinch when asked about her parents for possibly the thousandth time in her career. In fact, in person she is pretty much exactly what you’d expect if you put Lisa Bonet and Lenny Kravitz in a blender: half bohemian Californian wood nymph, half sassy showman. Kravitz has been acting since her late teens, nailing the box-office hits (X-Men, the Divergent series, Mad Max, Fantastic Beasts), picking some good indies (the critically acclaimed Dope), and most recently starring in the A-list foie gras that was Big Little Lies on HBO. And ever since accompanying her dad on the odd front row as a teenager, it’s the fashion world that has been obsessed with her. She has been signed up for ad campaigns for Coach, Calvin Klein, Alexander Wang and Tiffany, and now she is an ambassador for YSL Beauté. She gets the rigmarole of it all (conversation veers between make-up tips and the benefits of a Trump news diet), but she is engaged and articulate. Minus the occasional slip into LA therapy speak (a lot of talk later about “energy” and “community”). To be fair, she grew up in the patchouli-scented enclave of Venice Beach, before moving to Miami to live with Lenny at the age of 11. Her parents split up when she was two. “It was kind of hard having to go, you know, months without seeing one parent. I actually think it would have been great to be in a situation where you can see someone at the weekend,” she shrugs. “But the grass is always greener, I guess.” Ah yes, the Lenny the Loin years. For a time, there was a revolving door of A-list girlfriends — Vanessa Paradis, Natalie Imbruglia and Kylie Minogue, and brief engagements to Nicole Kidman and Adriana Lima. But there’s no squirming or glibness about it from Kravitz. She is cheerfully self-aware of her parents’ colourful pasts. When a TV host asked what it was like to be reunited with almost-stepmom Kidman on Big Little Lies (“She was always so, so nice to me — I hadn’t seen her since I was 13”), she whooped with delight at the presenter’s suggestion that her father was the perfect rebound after a marriage to Tom Cruise. She has even had a laugh about #penisgate — that moment in an otherwise uneventful (probably?) summer in 2015 when Lenny ruptured his tight-tight leather trousers on stage in Stockholm and momentarily broke the internet. Kravitz uploaded a screenshot to Instagram of a conversation with rocker Steven Tyler’s daughter, Chelsea, and a withering monkey-covering-its-face emoji. Father and daughter are clearly very close: she joined Lenny on tour for a year when she was 13, which sounds like a unique experience for a teenage girl, I say. “It was definitely an experience. I was the only kid [on tour], so, um, being surrounded by nothing but adults as a kid is always kind of a bizarre thing.” In Miami, she attended a top private school, where she was one of the only black girls in her class. She rattles off the memory: “It was pretty hard for me just because, you know, I wasn’t comfortable in my own skin, and I hadn’t found like-minded people, so I felt like a freak.” Meanwhile, the house had drop-in guests including Stevie Wonder, Mick Jagger, Tyler and her godmother, the actress Marisa Tomei. Kravitz and I meet in January, a few weeks after the Golden Globes, when the first wave of Time’s Up activism has kicked into gear. She signed her name on the official petition and wore black in solidarity (strapless Saint Laurent). The elephant in the room is that the projects she will be promoting this autumn both have some pretty clanging #MeToo moments, as both Johnny Depp, her co-star in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, and James Franco, who stars in the indie sci-fi thriller Kin, have faced criticism. How does all this sit with her? Does she feel the need to research people before she says yes to things now? “Of course, but that has always been the case. Now it’s different because we have more information. Like, I didn’t know about A, B and C before, and now I do.” She stops to think. “But I do believe in second chances, depending on who it is — obviously someone like Harvey, no, never again — but you know, there are people who make mistakes and, not that it’s excusable, I don’t want to feel like there’s a separation between men and women.” She sighs. “I don’t know, man, like, I hope that no one is wrongly accused, but a rich white man in America being wrongly accused, welcome to the club. You know how many black and Latino people are wrongly accused and put in jail all the f****** time? So,” she gives a bitter laugh, “that’s life.” Speaking of proper, non-famous life: she has spoken candidly before about her teenage struggles with anorexia and bulimia that lasted well into her twenties. Where is she at now? “I went to therapists, I took all kinds of stuff, but what really made me stop was just being tired of being sick and having this secret, and all of that. It’s exhausting, that need for control or going to throw up, and I felt it in my body.” What does recovery look like for her now? “I definitely still have moments of, ‘Oh my God, I look fat, I gained 4lb.’ I do that to myself and it’s so stressful…” She trails off. “The struggle continues for me. It’s not like I’m completely cured and never think about my weight at all. It’s just about perspective, it’s, like, I want to be happy. Being thin doesn’t make me happy, being hungry doesn’t make me happy, compulsively checking my weight doesn’t make me happy.” So, what does make her happy? “My friends, my family, food makes me happy, that’s the thing, I love cooking so much,” she laughs. “I’m not an organised cook. I have no idea what I’m doing and it’s a mess. My dad was saying the other day, ‘You don’t know what you’re doing, but you put love into the food, and you can tell.’ ” Her parents seem to have nailed the Gwyneth-and-Chris model of post-divorce equanimity: Lenny still describes his ex-wife as his “best friend”. Lisa has been with Game of Thrones actor Jason Momoa since 2007, with whom she has two children. They’re all one big, blended family, appearing on red carpets together and sharing family selfies on Instagram — Lisa and Lenny attended the Met Ball together in 2015. Zoe and Momoa even have matching tattoos, and she named her band, Lolawolf, after her two half-siblings. She now lives with her boyfriend of 18 months, the actor Karl Glusman, who was in Tom Ford’s Nocturnal Animals. Is it the first time she has moved in with a boyfriend? “It’s not. It’s the second time,” she giggles. “It didn’t work out the first time, so…” (That would be with Penn Badgley from Gossip Girl.) “But it’s great.” The couple live in Brooklyn, of course, and hang out with a group of fellow Very Cool Indie Types — Alia Shawkat of Arrested Development/Search Party fame and Ilana Glazer of Broad City are two of Kravitz’s best friends. Filming on Big Little Lies will continue through summer, then she is “leaving things open” after the show. She reclines on the sofa on set and gets going on another good speech: “The whole idea of celebrity is bizarre, but I think what it can do is remind people they’re not alone in the world. You know, being alive is scary, so I just want to be a reflection of another being out there, figuring it out too.” Zoë Kravitz is the make-up face of YSL Beauté

#zoë kravitz #zoe kravitz #zoekravitzmyhero #zoekravitz #zoe isabella kravitz

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missmungoe · 7 years

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ASL - Narwhal + Jellyfish (kill me)

CROOKED RETROSPECTION // Ace, Sabo, Luffy // Narwhal; keep coming back to the same place + Jellyfish; a thousand little stings

He has the dream again, the one where he almost makes it in time – the one where he’s not too late remembering, but still too late to change it.

He’s been here before, in this place that’s not quite Marineford but almost – a hundred images and impressions pieced together with sloppy, uneven stitches, collected over the course of two long years, from scouring newspaper after newspaper, from classified Government documents, from second-hand recounts. It’s a half-scrambled mish-mash of memories that aren’t his own, but it seems fitting, somehow, since for so long he had so few of those.

It’s not quite right, Sabo knows – the plaza looks a little skewed, and everything is a little blurry, like shadows of what they’re supposed to be, shattered rocks and ice and upended ships littered like a careless child’s discarded playthings. And if he doesn’t focus on them, it’s okay. It’s when he looks, when he tries to see that he’ll realise it’s not the way it should be. The jagged corners of the rocks aren’t sharp enough, and the ships are indistinguishable from each other. The ice isn’t white enough, or it’s too white, or too blue. It’s not cold enough, or it is but his breath isn’t fogging like it should.

And, of course, there’s his brother.

“You could have imagined me a little more ripped,” Ace says, arms crossed over his chest. His gaze drops, to do an unimpressed sweep over himself, before lifting back to Sabo, his brows quirking, along with the corner of his mouth. “I know I was in prison and all, but I wasn’t this skinny when I died.”

“Shut up,” Sabo says, but it sounds half-hearted even to his own ears. But he’s had this conversation too many times – or variants of it, anyway, and he’s too tired to be angry; is exhausted from reliving this hell over and over.

But when he looks at Ace next he looks – different, like his mind has adjusted, or at least tried to. Now he stands a little taller, a little broader over the shoulders. Sabo doesn’t know if it’s any closer to how he’d been; all the pictures he’d seen from the papers had been from awkward angles, and in the records from Impel Down he’d been gaunt, drawn and sallow-skinned and nothing like the boy Sabo remembers, who’d worn the sun on his skin, brown with thick clusters of freckles.

Of course, that boy hadn’t been a boy when he’d died.

“Okay,” Ace sighs, rolling his shoulders, as though getting ready. “Let’s do this again.”

He walks across the broken ground of not-quite-Marineford, and Sabo watches as the scene sets, other voices filling the air, a clamour of weapons clashing and the screams of the dying, pirates and marines alike. And there’s Luffy, and Akainu. And he’s relived this scene so many times he’s almost convinced himself that he was there. Like the memories are really his, and not just half-assed constructs that he’s pieced together from scraps.

And part of him knows it’s futile – he knows, because he’s done this so many fucking times, and he’s tired, and hurt, like each dream has left a bruise he can’t see, a cut that doesn’t bleed but that he still feels, a whole collection’s worth, ten, fifty, a hundred, a thousand little wounds that amass to something Sabo is surprised he can live with.

But he does live. Ironic, that.

And he should just stop trying, but the second Akainu moves his body jerks into action, and he can’t just stop, can’t let this go because it’s the last thing he has of the brother he’d lost, and so with a shout clawing, tearing up his throat, Sabo lunges–

It doesn’t work this time, either.

When it’s over, Ace gets up and dusts himself off. There’s a gaping hole in his chest, and Sabo can’t look away from it. He’s breathing so hard it sounds like he’s sobbing. Then again, he probably is.

“Yeah, that’s not gonna work,” Ace says, with a decisive nod – like they’re ten years old and they’re looking up at the treehouse and he’s decided that the steps in the ladder are too far apart; Luffy might not have a problem, but they don’t all have limbs that stretch forever. “You coming in at that angle? He’d take my head off instead, and to be honest, I’d rather have the sucking hole in my chest.” He points to his face. “And this would be a true loss.”

Sabo glares. “Do you need to be like this every time?”

The grin Ace flashes is wide, and full of hard, self-deprecating cheer. “Be like what?”

“So fucking casual about being dead,” Sabo snaps, running a hand through his hair, like he wants to tear some of it loose.

Ace shrugs. Through the hole in his chest, Sabo glimpses part of the broken plaza. “I am dead,” Ace says, matter of fact, and Sabo wants to punch him.

He sits down instead – drops onto his ass on the broken ground, and presses the heels of his palms to his eyes, hoping it’ll shove him into wakefulness.

It doesn’t, but then maybe he isn’t really trying as hard as he pretends to.

“I could have changed it,” Sabo says, with a ragged breath. “I know I could have.”

Ace gives another shrug. “I could have joined a travelling troupe, but that didn’t happen.”

Sabo cuts him a look for that. “I’m not appreciating the glibness.”

Ace just grins, and quips, “It comes with the whole being dead gig. I call it ‘post-gallows humour’. Which is pretty literal in my case.”

There’s a hysteric laugh bubbling up his throat that he can’t stop, and Sabo buries his head in his hands. “God. Shut up.”

“I’m in your head, Sabo,” Ace says. “I don’t call the shots here. This is all on you.”

Sabo thinks he might have flipped him off, if he hadn’t been so tired. Instead he does nothing, but then what else is new?

His brother takes a seat beside him then – uncompelled, although maybe Sabo had brought the action about without realising. And dream or not, he doesn’t tell Ace to shove off – can’t, even if it’s not his brother. Not as had been, anyway. Not as he should be, either, which would be alive.

“And ripped,” Ace supplies, with another look. “You’re still holding back with that. What’s the matter? Afraid I’ll make you feel inadequate?”

Sabo surprises himself by almost smiling. “You wish.”

There’s another lull. Above, a hard sun bears down, glittering off the ice and the surface of the water, a white so bright it hurts his eyes to look directly at it, and frost vapours have crept in along the broken shore, shrouding everything in a damp veil that should make his hair curl but doesn’t. Of course, it’s not real.

Around them, the sounds of fighting have died back down, leaving a hush, like actors gone for their break between rehearsals. It’s just the two of them now, and the ice that doesn’t melt. Not-quite-Marineford blurs at the corners of his eyes, an unimportant backdrop to an event that is anything but that.

A glance to his left finds Ace staring up at the too-blue sky. His hair is streaked grey with ash, thick clumps of it sticking together with sweat and dirt, and the dried blood looks brown on his skin. It’s almost impossible to tell it apart from the freckles.

There’s still a gaping hole in his chest, but it’s not bleeding. Sabo doesn’t know if it should – if wounds made by a fire that hot would bleed at all, or just cauterize the flesh in one fell swoop.

“Dude,” Ace says, with a short laugh. “That’s morbid. And a little disgusting. I’m almost proud.”

Sabo just looks at the hole. “You’re dead, Ace.”

“Yeah,” Ace says, and with a wry look, “And you’re kidding yourself if you think you can pull off long hair. Very few people have the face for it.” He gestures to his own. “Case in point.”

“Better a bad hairdo than being six feet under,” Sabo says, before he can stop himself.

Ace shrugs, smiling. “Fair enough.”

“I could have changed it,” Sabo says again. His voice sounds hoarse, like he’s been screaming the words, over and over.

Ace hums. “The six-feet-under bit?” He shrugs. “Maybe. I always thought a burial at sea sounded cool, but I didn’t really have a say in the matter, so in the ground I went. Not that I don’t appreciate the big-ass headstone. The old man always said Red-Hair was too dramatic for his own good, but damn if he can’t put on a decent funeral.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Sabo snaps, angry now. “I meant–”

“Luffy doesn’t,” Ace says, before he can finish.

Brows drawing together, his first remark is still halfway off his tongue, but he discards it, and, “Luffy doesn’t what?” Sabo asks instead.

Ace smiles – a small, proud thing. “He doesn’t dwell on it anymore. He’s moved forward.” He lifts his eyes to Sabo. “Why haven’t you?”

Sabo just stares at him, and Ace waves to not-quite-Marineford. “This?” he asks. “Why are you still here? My execution was two years ago. I know you were late to the party and all, but come on.”

“Were you this insufferable when you were alive?” Sabo asks.

Ace just looks at him, smile a little odd. “There’s a way you could find out.” He looks at the plaza again. “Not this way, though.”

He has a response ready, but it dies along with his anger, and so he shuts his mouth instead. And it’s so much easier, being angry – at himself, for doing nothing. At the world, for being what it is. It’s worse, the silence that comes when the anger doesn’t have any more kindling left to burn.

Resignation, Sabo thinks, and he’s never been good at resigning himself to anything.

“I’m afraid I’ll forget,” he blurts then, the words like something uncoiling within him, a tightly kept secret, but Ace only looks at him. “I did it, once. And even now I’ve…got all these memories that I didn’t before, but none of them are of you. Not like you were, when – when you died. If I just put it behind me, what the hell does that leave me with?”

“There’s a difference between forgetting and moving on,” Ace says.

Sabo looks at the ground. “Yeah?”

His brother is quiet a moment. Then, “I never forgot,” Ace says, and Sabo looks up. “When you died, moving on was hard, but I did it. We both did.” A small smile. “Luffy cried a lot.”

The laugh that leaves him is wet. “Yeah, well. He cried when I met up with him, too.” The smile that finds him is a little too fond to be appropriately deprecating. “He always was the strongest,” Sabo says. “Bawled like the whole world was ending, but then he’d dust himself off and move forward.”

Ace says nothing to that, but that small smile stays, like the hole in his chest.

Sabo looks out at the plaza, and not-quite-Marineford. He tries to imagine what it felt like, being caught up in that hell. His own hell had been different – is different, this pathetic substitute of a battlefield he’d never even set foot on, with a dead brother who refuses to stay that way. Or maybe it’s just Sabo who refuses to let him, remembering the wrong things, in lieu of having nothing.

“I could have changed it,” Sabo says, but it’s not regret that roots the truth out from where he’s been storing it, like a dearly held keepsake placed on the wrong shelf. Instead it’s realisation that plucks the words down from their perch, to push them off his tongue. He could have done a lot of things.

“Maybe,” Ace says.

“But I didn’t change it.”

“You didn’t.”

“I can’t change it now.”

“Nope.”

A rush of breath, “And it’s not my fault that I didn’t change it,” Sabo says. Admits.

Ace smiles. “There you go.”

Sabo breathes, and – and breathes, like he’s just been told how. Like he hasn’t remembered how until this moment.

“I used to wonder what would have happened, if we’d stopped you from leaving that time,” Ace says then, and Sabo looks up, surprised. Ace shrugs. “Maybe we could have changed things, maybe we couldn’t have, but we still moved on. And I died without any memories of you as you are now, but that didn’t mean I’d forgotten. There are other ways of remembering.”

When Sabo just looks at him, Ace arches a brow. “I tattooed your initial on my arm. Do you know how many people have asked me if it’s a typo?”

Despite himself – or maybe it’s not in spite of anything, but because they are who they are, now as surely as any other time – Sabo grins. “To be fair, you were never the best at spelling.”

“Hey,” Ace says, but he’s grinning, too. “Don’t speak ill of the dead.”

The laugh tears loose of him with a sob, and his chest hurts like he’s the one with the gaping wound, but it’s not, it never is, but this dream isn’t the same as the one he usually has.

And it hurts like hell, but he’s suffered enough injuries in his life to know the difference between the kind of hurt that kills and the kind that heals, and even if one isn’t necessarily any kinder than the other, the difference is significant. Is everything.

“Fuck you for dying,” Sabo laughs, sobbing, and Ace grins.

“Right back at you.”

And they’re still sitting there, in the middle of the rubble that probably wasn’t arranged quite this way, and maybe his brother had been broader over the shoulders, or had fewer freckles than Sabo gives him now. Maybe he’d talked differently, or held himself differently, but that’s not what matters; it’s not in appearance or mannerisms that he’s been remembering him wrong.

A long pause has stretched under the too-blue sky, but then, with a quick, crooked smile –

“I’m not tattooing your initial on my arm,” Sabo says, and Ace sticks his tongue out.

“Suit yourself. Bet you don’t have the arms for it, anyway.”

Sabo shoves him, and Ace falls over, laughing. And they’ve never done it this way before – he’s never laughing when he goes down, knees scabbed and the smell of burning flesh clogging the air. And the hole in his chest is still there, and all of Sabo’s little, invisible wounds, but it’s better than it should be – even if none of it is real, it’s a whole lot better than anything has been, in a long time.

—

He wakes to find Koala staring into his face, and he’s yelling before he’s even had time to draw breath, a shout startled loose with an oath.

She pinches his nose shut, and strangles the word before it’s had the chance to leap off his tongue.

“Language,” she says, pertly. “Seriously, Sabo-kun.”

He’s glaring up at her, rubbing at his nose now that she’s released it, but instead of sticking her tongue out Koala just tilts her head, expression softening a bit.

“Bad dream?” she asks, with a look that knows, even before she adds, as though she needs to explain, as though he doesn’t already know that she knows him better than most, “You were mumbling in your sleep. Something about tattoos.”

Sabo surprises himself by laughing, and her brows quirk up, before her smile follows, a gentle curve at the corners. “No,” he says, his own smile not as soft, but more than it would have been, on a different morning and with the dying echo of not-quite-Marineford ringing through his head. “Not this time.”

She wants to ask, he can tell, and resolves to tell her later, when he’s a little more clear-headed. But first, he has something he needs to do.

“Hey,” Sabo says. “Could you bring me the Den Den Mushi?”

Koala blinks, curiosity coming to settle in the slight purse of her mouth, but she complies without question, sliding off the bunk to hunt down the snail across the room.

He’s sitting up on the mattress when she brings it back, still in his shirtsleeves and with his hair a spectacular mess, at least going by the smile she’s doing a truly terrible job of hiding. But he doesn’t have a mind to spare how he looks, or that he hasn’t had breakfast yet, because then he’s dialling the number, the one he knows by heart, the receiver steady in his hand. He’s just now coming fully out of sleep, the last remnants of the dream lingering, loud laughter and that too-blue sky, and too many freckles on his brother’s skin.

There’s a lull where the snail stares back, gaze blank and emitting that droning, vacant hum, before the call connects, jerking it into awareness, and, “Hellooo? This is Luffy,” chirps his brother’s voice, and the snail’s eyes go round and owlish, followed by the matter-of-fact declaration, “the man who’s going to become the Pirate King.”

Sabo grins. “Hey, Luffy.”

“Ah – Sabo!” the snail laughs, delight brightening the sound of his name, loud where it spills over the line. And he doesn’t ask why he’s calling, like someone else might have done, as though the call itself is what matters, not the reason behind it. Sabo doesn’t doubt that Luffy would have been happy if all he’d done was call to say hello.

But he does have a reason for calling, and, “Would you tell me?” Sabo asks then, and thinks about the brother who may or may not have had so many freckles, who might have been a little broader over the shoulders, and who might not have been so glib. Or maybe he had been. The thing is, Sabo wants to know.

“Tell you what?” Luffy asks, voice curious, and Sabo smiles. And maybe they’re not his memories, the ones he’s asking for now, but he’d rather have them than the ones he has, the patchwork of what-ifs and could-have-beens that doesn’t do his memory justice; Ace, who’d never lived by regrets. That’s not the way he wants to remember his brother.

“About Ace.”

#one piece #asl brothers #asl #portgas d. ace #sabo #monkey d. luffy #koala #opfanfic #opfanfiction #one piece fanfiction #my fic #under the sea prompts #mungoe writes #mello3jay #thank you for the prompt!

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