A.N: Spoiler warning! If you've caught up with the manga you'll have nothing to worry about tough. And the anime has hinted this quite clearly already, too.
Hatch 12: Christmas Story
Young Sabo entered the library of revolution army's HQ, wanting to find something to ease his boredom. He didn't want to study anything tough; he was not in the mood for that right now.
"But I don't think they have story books here... but maybe I can find something that's actually happened and seems like a good story" the twelve year old boy thought. He went through different books, but nothing seemed to fit his current mood.
"What's this?" he wondered as a certain book caught his eye. It was titled "Traditions and history of Christmas."
"Mistletoes, Christmas trees... candles... legends- huh? " Sabo paused at this, going back a few pages. It had a story of why people celebrated Christmas.
"Interesting..." Sabo thought, starting to read the story.
There was a man from poor family in a small village who was always kind to everyone and always helping everyone. No one ever saw him angry. To the villagers he was like an angel and everyone were happy until one day a man, priest to be exact, from the town came to visit. He heard about the gentle man but, because of being from a ruthless town, didn´t believe a word and decided to prove he was right. He "accidentally" stepped on the man´s foot once, but the man only said it was his own fault for being in the wrong place in the wrong time. The priest shook this off by thinking that the man had a good day and stepping on other person´s foot isn´t a big deal anyway. He did more similar things, but the gentle man always answered the similar way. That´s when the priest decided to do something worse. He "accidentally" pushed the man´s friend down from a cliff. She didn´t die, but got severe injuries. But the gentle man still didn´t blame him, just said it was his own fault for not looking after his friend. And on top of all that, the gentle man got the woman convinced it wasn´t the priest´s fault. The priest was forgiven, but he could see the hatred in the woman´s eyes. The priest found the fact that the man still hadn´t seemed angry really disturbing, but believed that it was because the damage hadn´t come to the man himself. So the priest´s next step was violent; he hired a bandit to chop the man´s arm off when he was walking back home with his friend. But, once again, the man said it was his own fault for being in the wrong place the wrong time. This convinced the priest that the man was a devil, only waiting for a chance to destroy the world. The priest left, only to return with an army from the town. He made them arrest the gentle man, ignoring the protests of the villagers. They tied him in to a tree on a hill, saying that he should stay there for a month and he´d be freed and if he didn´t he´d be executed. Naturally he did what he was told. He was there for four days without food and then it happened. The villagers, friends of the gentle man, attacked the priest at a frozen lake near the hill. The priest fell through the ice to the lake, and only then did they realize that the priest couldn´t swim. The gentle man, without hesitation, broke orders and ran down the hill to save the drowning priest. In the process the gentle man got a big, deadly wound to his side from ice. The villagers tried to help him, but there was nothing they could have done. In his final moments the gentle man turned to the priest and said his last words: "It wasn´t your fault." Those words alone made the priest understand that he had been wrong. He left the village, never to return again, but both the villagers and the priest started to respect the death day of the gentle man and called it the day of peace. That day was 24th of December.
"It doesn't say why it's called Christmas, tough" Sabo thought with a frown. It seemed like a children's story anyway; there were no people like that. Putting the book away Sabo decided to try to find something else.
A.N: The story Sabo reads is something I wrote a few years ago for a one piece one shot, in case someone has a feeling they've heard it before. I thought I could use it again, but in a different situation.