Work Text:
Marco wasn't usually one to cry. In fact, he couldn't remember a single occasion after becoming part of oyaji's crew when he had lost himself to that degree. Crying didn't lead anywhere – it was almost as stupid as running off in hot blood, chasing revenge.
Crying wouldn't lead anywhere today either. But today, the number of people aboard this ship who didn't cry was small indeed.
What was left of the Whitebeard Pirates and their allies had anchored their stolen Marine ship in the shadow of a small cliff island, barely more than a rock jutting up from the sea. Wounds were being tended, food was being prepared, but it was done grimly, almost reluctantly, as if all meaning had been lost from working to stay alive. Many strong fighters found themselves unable to act at all, curling up sobbing on the deck, and Marco couldn't say that he didn't understand them. Still, he kept himself together, barking out orders to anyone who was able to listen, trying to make himself useful and refrain from dwelling on their losses.
They had been forced to leave without the old man. They had had no chance to retrieve his body, which probably lay crushed under the sea together with the rubble of what had once been Marinford. It was almost impossible to imagine that he was gone, that he wasn't sitting somewhere on the deck – this unfamiliar deck – giving comforting words and pats on the head for those who needed it most. Marco refused to count himself among them. He was alright.
Besides, the old man was dead. Pointlessly, needlessly, unnecessarily dead. Despite the damage he had done to the Marine Headquarters, there was nothing in that that could even start to count as a victory. They had all given their everything to save a son – a brother – and they had failed.
Marco's eyes were drawn almost reluctantly to the corner of the deck where Ace's corpse had been laid out. That, at least, they had been able to recover. Ace's little brother was laid out beside him, bandaged and – Marco had to look closer to verify – still breathing, but almost as deathly pale as his older brother. No one had know just what to do with him, as he hadn't moved or regained consciousness since Ace's death, but taking him away from Ace at this point had seemed unnecessarily cruel, so he was left where he was.
Dragging his legs over there in spite of himself, Marco allowed himself to finally slump, losing a bit of the composure he had been holding on to so hard.
"Ace, you little brat," he murmured. "Why did you have to get yourself killed like that? Think a little, for once!"
Ace's face, frozen in an oddly contented smile, seemed to mock Marco's grief. He felt compelled to give his dead friend a piece of his mind.
"Did you see what all of us went through for your sake? Did you see Oars go down? Did you see the Moby Dick burn? Did you see the battle at all? Did you see your little brother getting sliced up and drugging himself to be able to fight on? Hell, did you see oyaji..." Marco's voice broke for a moment. "Did you see oyaji sacrificing himself for our escape? For your escape? We did it all for you, and you know it. You couldn't not have known."
Marco barely registered himself at what point his eyes started to fill with tears, but once they did, there was no stopping them. "We wanted you to live."
Ace strange smile didn't change, and his dead body made no attempt at explaining itself.
"It's not fair of you to die like that." And now Marco was being unreasonable – he knew it, but he couldn't stop, just like he couldn't stop the tears dripping down his face, splashing down on Ace's horribly mangled chest. "We did everything to save you and you... you just had to..." He couldn't find the words to express what he felt, but the tears continued to fall, even though he hadn't meant to cry at all. "We miss you."
Somewhere in the corner of his mind Marco noticed that he wasn't alone with Ace's body any longer, but his eyes were too blurred with tears to pay it any attention. He thought he caught an amazed murmur around him – maybe they were staring because they had never seen Marco cry before, but let them, then.
It wasn't until he seemed to catch a movement from somewhere – somewhere that shouldn't be moving? – that he managed to blink enough tears away to clear his sight. Maybe it was just his imagination, but somehow the fatal wound through Ace's chest didn't seem nearly as horrible as it had. In fact, his chest almost seemed to be... rising and falling?
"Phoenix tears..." someone murmured behind him.
"I never thought it could..." someone else replied.
Marco didn't say a thing. He stared.
Ace's eyelids flickered for a moment, and then he opened his eyes. Burning, living eyes.
"What," he said, voice barely more than a whisper, but seemingly reverberating throughout the world, filling the void in Marco's heart. "Have you been crying?"