I Order You Not to Die. "So, do you understand now? We have no reason to lie to a prisoner on death's door, do we?"
Ace crouched down in pity, his knuckles lightly tapping Jace's long-since broken shoulder.
In the conference room, the afterglow of the setting sun fell between them, stretching their shadows long, like two paths that should have overlapped but had been forcibly torn apart by fate.
"If Garp had arrived one day earlier back then, or if Pops had arrived one day later, the life you have now would have been my life."
Ace's voice was very soft, yet every word struck Jace in the chest.
"So I'm very grateful to Pops. Not just grateful that he saved my mother, but grateful that because of him, I didn't have to shoulder this fate of yours."
"Why... why did it have to be me?"
There was bleak sorrow in Jace's voice.
If all of this had been arranged from the very beginning...
Then were the feelings he had once cherished with his whole heart also just a script the World Government had drawn up for him?
Perhaps even the birth of those feelings themselves had come from some unseen hand manipulating things from behind the curtain.
Since they could silently stuff memories into his mind, then was his sense of self real, or fake?
Could every thought churning through his mind right now also be fake?
Jace did not know.
He did not dare know, nor did he want to know.
Fake. Everything was fake!
"If you want to blame someone, blame Garp. And blame the fact that you look too much like Roger."
Ace paused, his voice rarely tinged with complexity and hesitation.
"No... actually, Roger's blood really does flow in you."
"At a time like