„You're a hero, right?"
That's what the sad little creature had asked him, full of hope and a glint of naive innocence in its eyes that would haunt him ever since. He felt something crack back then. Somewhere deep inside, a heavy lock he himself placed there to close a long forgotten chapter of his life, it had cracked, and came tumbling down along with the rancid door it kept in place.
He was no hero. He cannot ever be a hero; he flew a red flag, his hands were stained with the blood of hundreds of undeserving and innocent people. It was the thing that defined him, the Red Flag.
A hero... a hero was something he wished to be, once upon a time. But times change. People change. He saw what some of those "heroes" were capable of. Heroes like his father, they tainted that word in the same ugly red that he bathed in day by day. Hero was a word that held no meaning anymore. None, none at all, and yet... hearing that, it just hurt so bad.
It was a hot surge of helpless hanger, of greatest shame and stifled sorrow, it was the sting of a wish that escaped somewhere, never to return, just to catch its twinkle once more.
He thought he would die on the spot.
„You saved my life."
He claimed, with the shadow of wonder and many other suppressed emotions on his face, a face that had long forgotten how to express many of these. The young man, the one who bore the power all those people died for on that fateful day, the one who haunted him ever since he first appeared in the newspapers, the one who partook in exposing Doflamingo at Dressrosa, said that he was the was the one to allow it all, he was the only reason of his survival on that one day, way back in the North. Him.
But what did he even do? He just ran, ran and never looked back. Everyone he was with at the time, they died there, he never gave them a second thought; his legs were faster than any thought. It was the most cowardly thing to do, yet he, this man, he claimed, that he'd saved him. By running. By making that tyrant believe, that the young man, the boy that boarded the marine ships was the one he was looking for. By covering on Tsuru's vessel, one of the few that the criminal would not dare to defy. By chance, by mere chance, he saved a single person, without trying to, without wanting to.
He still haunts him, that man, but for another reason entirely. There was much work he had done; there was much work he himself had to do. His words of gratitude would stay with him for a long time, they would scrape the rusty lock until the sad heap of rotten wood and cold kiln it once covered would catch fire. So much to do, indeed.