Chapter Text
Baterilla was a normal island village with one unusual resident. At the top of the highest cliff stood a house where Portgas D. Rouge waited to give birth. She sat by the window, watching the sea while her son from the future chopped firewood outside.
Portgas D. Ace, or now, Portgas D. Stray, had arrived three months ago.
He told her everything.
About Roger’s execution. About the world’s hatred. About how Rouge would die after giving birth, and how Garp would take her baby away to be raised by mountain bandits in East Blue. About the anger that festered inside him, the years he spent believing he should never have been born.
Stray told her how, as a child, he would sneak into bars just to ask drunk men one question: ”What if Roger had a son?” And when they spat curses, when they said such a child deserved to die, he would nod to himself, because it only proved what he already knew.
Rouge remembered that night. Not the words, not the explanations, just her son, this boy who had lived and died and somehow come back to her, sobbing into her lap like the child he never got to be and screaming that he was sorry, so sorry for wasting the life she’d fought to give him.
Nineteen years old. A lifetime of rage and grief spilling out of him.
Rouge hadn’t cried when he told her. She had simply held him, running fingers through his tangled hair, humming lullabies to a son who’d come back to her far too broken.
My son. My brave, beautiful son.
That was the moment she’d truly understood - she would have these few stolen months to love him properly.
Stray had thrown himself into helping in every way he could, like he was trying to earn every second he’d been given. He cooked breakfast each morning—badly, at first, until Rouge gently guided him through chopping herbs and not burning the porridge.
He swept the little house so often she sometimes had to hide the broom to get him to rest. When she napped, he read aloud from old sea journals or newspapers, sometimes even her own worn books, making up voices for each character just to make her laugh. Other times, he’d sit with her in silence, tracing idle circles on her wrist or simply resting nearby, as if the act of being close could hold the world at bay.
She could still see the ghost of that broken boy in him sometimes. In the way he hesitated before smiling, in the way he sometimes touched his stomach where the hole from Akainu’s fist should have been. But he was healing. Slowly. And every time he called her “Mum” without flinching, every time he laughed at something stupid, every time he pressed his ear to her belly just to listen to his younger self kick, Rouge felt like she was stitching together something that had been torn apart long before she ever had the chance to hold it.
｡･::･ﾟ★,｡･::･ﾟ☆
Rouge told Stray about her first ship. It was a rickety thing held together with rope and a stubborn will. She told him about the time her crew tried to outdrink a Mink and ended up hung from the mast in shame, and about storms and sea kings and maps scrawled on napkins.
Rouge spoke of the stars and of the places she and her friends had chased just to say they’d been there.
Stray listened with the hungry silence of someone who’d never had these kinds of memories handed down to him. Every so often, he’d ask something small, what was your ship’s name, what colour was the sail, who told the worst jokes, and she’d smile and answer.
Rouge told Stray how Roger and she met. It was a mess of smoke and swagger.
Roger had bargained for her life with nothing but a smile and a sword. He made her laugh. He would always pick the loudest tavern and the softest spot beside her at night.
She talked about how Roger cried when she told him she was pregnant. He had picked out books and toys and painted the nursery himself (badly). She said Roger had wanted to teach the baby to navigate by the stars, while she insisted the baby would learn to fight after he could read.
｡･::･ﾟ★,｡･::･ﾟ☆
Rouge shifted in her chair, wincing as the weight of her stomach pulled at her aching back. Twenty months. Twenty months of carrying, of hiding, of pressing her hands to her belly and whispering, Hold on, my love, just a little longer.
A blanket settled over her shoulders.
“You’re supposed to be resting,” came the familiar grumble.
She didn’t need to look up to know the expression on his face—that stubborn set of his jaw, the way his brows pinched together when he was worried.
Rouge tugged the blanket tighter around herself and smiled. “Since when do you mother me, Stray?”
He scowled—but it was half-hearted, the way all his protests were these days. “Mum, you’re gonna catch a cold, and then what? I’m not delivering a baby and playing nurse.”
“You’d figure it out,” she said lightly.
He huffed, but she didn’t miss the way his gaze dropped to her stomach, lingering there with something unbearably tender.
The baby kicked.
Stray reached out without thinking, pressing his palm against the swell. Another kick, stronger this time, and his face did something complicated, like he was trying to swallow down a sob.
“Hey,” he whispered, voice rough. “None of that. You’re gonna wear Mum out.”
Rouge watched him, her chest aching.
He’d taken to talking to her belly like this, telling stories and warnings and nonsense as if the baby could hear him. As if he was already his brother’s keeper.
(She wondered, sometimes, if he was trying to make up for lost time. If this was his way of saying all the things he’d never gotten to say to his own mother.)
“You spoil him,” she murmured.
Stray snorted. “Someone’s gotta. Kid’s gonna have the worst temper if you’re the only one influencing him.”
“Oh? And you’re the picture of patience?”
He grinned, that sharp, bright thing that was all Roger, and opened his mouth to retort, but Rouge gasped as a sudden, sharp pain lanced through her abdomen.
Stray went rigid. “Mum?”
She pressed a hand to her stomach, breathing through the contraction. “It’s fine,” she managed. “Just… ah… just practice.”
Stray flinched, like he wanted to do something, anything, but didn’t know what. His hand hovered in the air before settling on the back of the chair, gripping it tight.
“You sure?” he asked, quieter this time. “I mean... it felt like a real one.”
Rouge nodded through clenched teeth, then exhaled slowly. “They’ve been like that all week. Stronger now, but not... not yet.”
He hesitated. Not in panic, he’d stopped panicking after the first few times, but in that way of his, like he was turning over a thought he’d held back too long.
“You don’t have to keep doing this,” he said gently. “Holding on like this. If it’s too much, I mean… there’s time to do it safely. We could...”
Rouge looked at him. And Stray stopped talking.
“I’ve held him this long,” she said, soft but certain. “I can hold him a little longer.”
For a second, he looked like he wanted to argue. But then his eyes dropped, and all that stubborn tension in his shoulders eased. He gave her a little nod, then crouched beside her, his cheek resting carefully against the side of her belly.
“Okay,” he murmured, half to her, half to the baby. “Okay. Guess that settles it.”
And just like that, the storm passed.
He stayed there for a long moment, quiet, warm, steady—and when he spoke again, it was lighter.
“Alright, Ace,” he said with a little smile. “You’re not allowed to eat raw meat off the ground. I don’t care how hungry you are. And if you ever meet a guy named Dadan, uh, no, wait. If you meet a lady named Dadan—”
Rouge raised a brow. “Lady?”
“Technicality,” Stray said with a smirk, then kept going. “If you meet her, be nice, but maybe don’t steal from her pantry. I learned that one the hard way.”
Rouge laughed, tired and real. And Stray just kept going, easy and bright, like the weight had never been there at all.
“And you’re gonna meet a kid named Luffy. He’s annoying and loud. He eats everything. He’ll drive you nuts. But... stick with him, okay? He’s worth it. And Sabo… Sabo’s gonna act like he’s smarter than both of you, but he’s not. Not really.”
Rouge didn’t interrupt. She just watched him, this boy of hers with the firelight dancing in his eyes.
“I once tried to fish with my bare hands and ended up falling into the river. Sabo laughed so hard he forgot to pull me out. Luffy cried the whole time because he thought I was eaten by a crocodile.” He grinned. “I bet you’ll do something just as stupid.”
Rouge chuckled under her breath.
“Here’s lesson number one: Don’t eat anything Luffy hands you unless you want your tongue to swell. I made that mistake one day. I couldn’t talk for two days. It was peaceful. Sabo said it was the best week of his life.”
He snuck a glance up at her then, like he was checking if she was still listening. She was. Every word. His smile softened. “Y’know, I used to think there was something wrong with me. Like I was born broken. But they… they made it all make sense. The three of us in that little clearing, swearing to be brothers... it was the first time I thought maybe I could be something.”
Rouge brushed a hand through his hair again, like she had that first night. He closed his eyes at the touch.
“Even when I messed up, they never gave up on me. Luffy especially. That idiot would’ve chased me into the afterlife if I hadn’t... well. He almost did, didn’t he?”
Rouge didn’t answer. She just held him closer.
Stray let out a soft breath. “I hope you meet them too. I hope you get all the things I didn’t. The sun, the sea, stupid friends and freedom. And when you fall, ‘cause you will, trust me, you’ll get up. And keep going.”
Outside, the wind rattled the old shutters again. Rain was coming.
The sky was still only half-shadowed, the faintest blush of night beginning to stretch overhead. The sun hadn’t gone fully yet, but already the world felt like it was waiting for something. Or someone.
Stray laughed as he spoke, telling the baby about a time Luffy had accidentally punched a bear in the nose because it looked at him funny. About the week he and Sabo tried to build a raft and ended up sinking it within minutes. About the first time he ever felt proud to be alive.
Rouge listened to all of it with her eyes half-closed. It was warm in the room, and her body ached, and her heart ached even more.
She had to believe she could hold on just a little longer.
She hoped it would be before sunrise.
She hoped, with everything she had left, that her child would be born while she was still there to hold him. That the first arms to welcome him would be hers, not shaking with grief but full of light. But if she couldn’t, if the dawn came and she was already gone, then at least... at least he would still have him.
Stray.
Ace.
Her son, twice over.
She felt the ticking of time in every breath. Every stir of wind through the shutters. The rain had begun, light and steady. And her heart... her heart cracked open, slow and silent.
She didn’t say anything or point out how the air felt thinner now, how the pressure in her body was growing sharper, deeper, more real with every passing moment.
There wasn’t enough time. She knew it, but oh, how she wanted there to be. She wanted another hour like this. Just one. To keep listening. To let him keep talking. To memorise the sound of his laugh, the curve of his nose, the way he gestured with his hands when he got too into a story. To stay here, in this impossible miracle of a moment, with her grown-up son leaning against her like he belonged there. Because he did.
She wanted to tell him a hundred things. Maybe a thousand. But all of them were too big for words, too heavy to speak aloud. So instead, she just let her hand find his again and gave it a gentle squeeze.
Rouge closed her eyes.
She didn’t want to let go.
Not yet.
Not when everything felt so whole for the first time.
She remembered all the things she’d dreamed of teaching this child. The toys Roger had brought back, clumsily carved and painted. The lullabies she’d sung under her breath when no one was listening. The stories they’d imagined, of pirate ships and open skies, of wild laughter and a home full of noise and love.
Stray would give him all of that.
He would.
She didn’t need him to promise.
Rouge’s chest pulled tight. Not from pain. Not from fear. But from the unbearable weight of love. There was no space in the world for it. Not enough hours, not enough words, but she hoped—God, she hoped—he felt it anyway.
“Ace,” she said softly.
Rouge knew what he called himself now, Stray, like some cast-off thing that had never belonged. But he wasn’t that. He was her son. Her Ace. No amount of death, time, or heartbreak could take that name from him. So when she said it, she said it like a truth carved into stone like a vow.
He glanced at her, then smiled like nothing was wrong at all.
“Keep going,” she said. “Tell him another one.”