Chapter Text
The brain was the first organ to show any sign of activity deep down in the darkness, six feet below the gentle breeze rolling over the grass. A tiny spark of electricity, a signal pulsing from neuron to neuron. Not quite life - not much of anything - but it was something. A mark that things were beginning to happen.
Spark after spark, first minuscule but gradually building, commenced over the hours of naught. Ischemia and necrosis began to reverse approximately 12 hours after that first flash of activity, cells long dead beginning to rejuvenate, to regress from necrotic to healthy slowly, so agonisingly slowly. The rest of the body remained laying dormant, dead, not a breath passing into the lungs, not a single beat of the heart, not a conscious thought or an inkling that the impossible was happening, that the very certain death it had suffered was being undone like a knitted sweater being unpicked.
But the impulses were there, shivering along neurons with a progressive, building strength, flickers of revival in an otherwise silent, still tomb.
The heart began next. The heart, which had narrowly avoided total destruction, followed the same pattern as the brain did. Tissue revived little by little, the blackness of death brightening, filling out, giving way to healthy red over the course of a day, battling with the brain for favored cell rebirth.
But now the slowly reviving body faced a challenge. How was the heart supposed to function with the gaping wound punctured through the chest? The spine was severed, rendering the body functionally immobile. The lungs were damaged and ripped, the trachea destroyed, the ribs splintered, the liver beyond function. The blood couldn’t be allowed to start moving, the skin would have to wait to be restored, and the brain would not increase activity to the point of conscious life until the rest was ready.
So it went about it’s difficult, trialling diversion, the cells of the body not only being reborn in the most unnatural sense of the word, but having to work at division, producing more of themselves as they would have during their natural life cycle - but this time, they had to speed up.
It took a solid fifteen days of working ceaselessly, no part spared in the literal miracle that was occurring under the earth on the coast of Sphinx. The spinal cord went first, encased in it’s protective vertebrae and surrounded by a web of nerves, deemed in the grand scheme of things as being the top priority once the brain and heart were sufficiently salvaged; getting the body moving would ensure success in this endeavour. Next came the central nervous system. The organs followed - the liver, the lungs, the pancreas - before the arteries, veins, nerves, and bones outside of the spine followed suit, weaving and connecting to link with their other halves that they had crudely been separated from, empty chasms where the magma had burned away parts of them growing, dividing, creating.
A further five days saw the skin of the body entirely refreshed, scar tissue knitting tight across hard muscle at the chest and the back, obscuring the tattoo that had been ruined. The healing process did not care for the ink that had laid in the dermis, the reproduction of the design not even up for debate as far as it was concerned.
The capillaries mended next. The blood that pooled in the back of the body had life breathed into it by the process, oxygenated again for the first time in months. Bruising reduced, receding. Hemoglobin fell back into place, leaving the muscle and fat tissues. Cells restored, the heart pumped, and blood began to move again. Slowly at first, the central muscle weak after so long of being, well, dead. It was almost tentative in its initial beats, finding itself again, not unlike a child returning to school again after the summer holidays and finding they had forgotten how to even hold a pencil correctly.
But it gathered steam, each beat becoming more powerful, and the brain in the highest point of the body was suddenly awash with blood delivered from the carotid arteries.
That low, basic level of electrical impulses ramped up.
Higher brain function returned.
Thoughts began to move.
The body convulsed, alive, finally truly alive again and on the verge of remembering something instinctual, something desperately important to continued survival—
Silver-gray eyes flew open.
Fetid, damp air was pulled deep into lungs that had forgotten how to breathe.
And Ace choked on the dank air, alive once more.
Alive, but very much buried under six feet of solid earth in complete blackness.
Once Ace had calmed down enough to stifle the panic attack, he found that his powers were gone. The fire was out within him, missing from inside himself as if Akainu’s fist had tore it from him. He felt weak, pitifully mortal and trapped more completely than he could ever recall being in his life.
Survival eclipsed all other thoughts, all traces of how the fuck am I alive, and why am I back pushed to the back of his mind as desperation set in. Without his fire he had no means of escape, no feasible way of getting out of his prison.
He clawed at the ceiling of his coffin, only dimly aware of the fact that he was lucky it was wooden. Wooden and damp with the soil above, easily breakable with the right application of strength. Ace kicked, willing himself not to panic again, not to use up the oxygen that he had, because this was his only shot, and he would be damned yet again if he let himself die a second time.
He had to get out. He had to get out and find Pops, his crew, his brave, stupid, blessed brother. He had to make things right, somehow, had to use this miracle for the best and live on through this one single regret he had.
He was drawing blanks on how the hell this even happened, his every thought focused on pulling soil into the coffin from the breach once he had kicked a hole in the wood, packing it down and loosening what was still above him. One name pervaded his consciousness over and over, memories of blue, of feathers, of Marco, Marco, Marco, as the only explanation for what had happened.
Marco the Phoenix. Ace’s phoenix.
But it couldn’t be his power. He wasn’t here, and Ace knew at some fundamental level of recall that Marco’s ability to heal others did not extend as far as reviving them from the dead and fixing up the level of damage that Ace had sustained.
It didn’t make sense, and yet there was something unmistakably Marco-ish about literally being reborn from death.
And Ace’s suspicions were further affirmed by the blue light that flickered into life as he stood, grunting with effort against the strain of the weight he pushed through.
A faint, quivering blue flame danced in the very center of his fresh, huge scar on his chest; Ace could only see it in his periphery, surrounded so completely by dirt as he was that he was unable to look down at it, hands scrabbling above himself as he felt the sea breeze cascade through his fingers. Yet he knew it was there, verified the light of it on squinting his eyes the barest inch open, feeling its familiar warmth radiating from within him.
With a burst of energy that came from the absolute terror of death buried like a zombie, Ace dragged himself free of what was supposed to be his final resting place, heaving and shaking once his shoulders were free. Fingernails dug into dirt to pull himself out entirely, retching as the beautifully fresh air filled his lungs, the putrid poison of the grave coughed away. He shook where he knelt, gasping for breath for several minutes and clutching at his upper arms to hold on to something real, grounding himself back into reality.
He wasn’t dead, even though he had died. He had died, he remembered it, remembered the pain and the misery and the feel of Luffy holding him in those final moments.
But he was here. He was breathing. He could hear the sound of his own voice moaning in shock, confusion, at his impossible situation.
Ace sat where he was for a long time - how long, he could only guess - looking down the rolling hill of green grass that led to what looked like a little village tucked away in the sloping valleys of the small island. He shivered violently, mind reeling, trying to figure things out.
His first priority had to be getting back to his crew. He had to see Pops, tell him how absurdly sorry he was, that he loved him, all of them, what it had meant to him to see them all there for his sake. No one could fake love like that. No one would have been prepared to spend their own lives in order to free his if they hadn’t loved him beyond measure. He wanted his brothers around him, to see their faces, to tell them he loved each of them beyond words.
He would find a way to make contact with Luffy once he had broken down before his father and captain. He hoped his brother was safe with his beloved crew, at the very least. He didn’t think he would ever be able to sum up his gratitude for his baby brother, quite certain that to see him face to face again would lead to tears.
And he would get to see Marco again…
Marco—
Ace looked down at his chest quickly, but the little blue flame had gone out. He knew without a doubt that it had been there, illuminating the soil around him, shining bright and cyan just like Marco did as the phoenix.
Ace ached for him, longing to understand the how and the why and the what the fuck.
But his attention was whipped away from his partner as the direction of the breeze changed suddenly, blowing his filthy hair backwards and causing something behind him to flap in the wind.
Something big, from the sounds of it.
Ace turned on the spot, having no idea how he would defend himself if it was something unfriendly.
But it was so much worse than he had been expecting.
His hat, necklace and dagger hung on top of his own grave, a sight in itself that he had never expected to see. But beside it stood the towering figure of Whitebeard’s grave, a sight that Ace had never wanted to see, let alone expected. His captain’s coat fluttered in the breeze, held aloft by his mammoth bisento.
It took a while to process what he was seeing. Perhaps a part of his brain hadn’t healed back correctly.
Or perhaps what he was looking at was simply too much for any one person to process.
And so Ace broke down at the foot of Whitebeard’s grave, sobbing into his hands with an inhuman whine of heart-wrenching pain as guilt threatened to drown him, pull him under and never let him surface. It was his fault. His fault. His father had died because of his stupidity, his short-sightedness, his mistakes and his shortcomings.
He couldn’t go back to the crew.
He couldn’t go back to Marco.
He would hide, try and think of a plan about what to do now. Change his appearance as best he could, never bare his back with blinding pride to show off whose man he was anymore, because now the world would only see him as Roger’s.
But for now, today, at least, he would mourn his true father, Edward Newgate, lamenting his own rebirth and praying for it to be taken from him and bestowed to the giant who slept below the son he had given his life for.
It was a damn shame for Ace that many, many miles away, Marco stopped mid conversation with Vista on deck of one of Whitebeard’s fleet, gasping in pain as what felt like a knife shoved deep into his heart.
He knew that feeling. He had felt it wrenched from within him that moment that Ace died right in front of him at Marineford all those months ago.
Logic told him that his instincts were wrong, that no matter what the evidence pointed at, there was no possible way it could be right.
But he knew.
Somehow, without a doubt, Ace was alive.
And Marco would find him.