[Luffy's not sure how he got here; he has a general concept that the world has gone awfully strange lately, things and people appearing and disappearing, but he was there and now he's here and he's not bothering to waste much effort on trying to figure out the whys and wherefores behind what is evident: he's not where he was.
Instead, he moves forward, looking for -- something, not sure what, but driven by a restless nagging sense of incompleteness that he naturally associates with hunger. Instinct tells him there is something here that is important, that he needs, and Luffy has always been a creature of instinct, so he follows it, drawn to wander with a purposeful directionlessness, seeking and searching until he sees two figures up ahead. In the dimness of night, he hesitates, pauses, squints through the darkness to see them clearly, feeling that tug that tells him this is important...
And suddenly, abruptly, he's anchorless, his head spinning worse than any maelstrom, and his whole body feels light, as though there's no ground under his feet, like he's been disconnected from the earth and loosed from gravity and he's just floating--
(he's running, flinging himself forward with a mad rush)
-- until he crashes face-first into his brother's chest, a sound that is both a sob and a scream tearing itself out of his throat because it hurts, it hurts, the feelings inside of him are too much and too big, they're more than he can hold, they're going to crush him, tear him apart with their sheer mass, he can't even tell what he's feeling because he's feeling everything but most importantly what he's feeling is warmth, is the beat of a heart and the push-pull of breathing and the ripple of muscles and it's Ace.
It's Ace and Luffy can only cling to him and press his face into that solidity that has been irrevocably, irretrievably lost to him for the past two years of forever, because forever is over and Ace is here.]
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Instead, he moves forward, looking for -- something, not sure what, but driven by a restless nagging sense of incompleteness that he naturally associates with hunger. Instinct tells him there is something here that is important, that he needs, and Luffy has always been a creature of instinct, so he follows it, drawn to wander with a purposeful directionlessness, seeking and searching until he sees two figures up ahead. In the dimness of night, he hesitates, pauses, squints through the darkness to see them clearly, feeling that tug that tells him this is important...
And suddenly, abruptly, he's anchorless, his head spinning worse than any maelstrom, and his whole body feels light, as though there's no ground under his feet, like he's been disconnected from the earth and loosed from gravity and he's just floating--
(he's running, flinging himself forward with a mad rush)
-- until he crashes face-first into his brother's chest, a sound that is both a sob and a scream tearing itself out of his throat because it hurts, it hurts, the feelings inside of him are too much and too big, they're more than he can hold, they're going to crush him, tear him apart with their sheer mass, he can't even tell what he's feeling because he's feeling everything but most importantly what he's feeling is warmth, is the beat of a heart and the push-pull of breathing and the ripple of muscles and it's Ace.
It's Ace and Luffy can only cling to him and press his face into that solidity that has been irrevocably, irretrievably lost to him for the past two years of forever, because forever is over and Ace is here.]