Capítulo 117: Book 4: Chapter 29 – Thank You
Although the morale in the Rohault camp was high, there was hardly anyone wandering around at this time.
If everything went to plan, tomorrow would be the day when they conquered Redwin city, the first official piece of territory taken from the overlords that are the O'Brien Empire since their formation. As such, almost everyone was getting their heads down, ensuring they were fully rested.
Although things had gone pretty smoothly till this point, the O'Brien Empire wasn't a force that one could ever afford to underestimate.
Even though most of the soldiers were resting for the big day, there was a dark-haired youth lying down under the night sky, looking up at the stars absentmindedly.
"You know you have an army-issue bed of your own, right?" Amira said as she approached her classmate, calmly sitting beside him. "Surely lying on that would be more comfortable than the cold hard ground."
"It's easier to clear my head out here," Ace replied softly. "What about you? Tomorrow's a big day for your Empire; why aren't you in your tent resting up?"
"It's easier to clear my head out here," Amira answered, using Ace's own words against him.
Ace smiled but ultimately said nothing as he turned his head up to look blankly at the stars hanging in the sky above him.
For the next five minutes, the pair lay there in silence, but Ace could feel Amira staring a hole in the side of his head the whole time.
"What is it?" Ace asked.
"Are you ever going to tell me what's wrong?" Amira asked, a hint of worry seeping into her voice.
Tonight wasn't the first night she'd caught Ace like this. In fact, every night since they'd arrived, he'd do the same thing.
If he were meditating or training, she wouldn't think much of it, but he wasn't. He would just lay there blankly. Between that and the bloodlust she felt from him whenever he took the life of an O'Brien soldier…
During their training expedition in the mountain range of magical beasts, she had seen Ace take the life of others on several different occasions, be it human or beast, but this was different. Now, it was almost like he revelled in it.
"What do you mean?" Ace asked back, caught off guard by the sudden line of questioning.
"Ever since you arrived in the Rohault Empire, I could tell there was something bothering you; I just don't know what it is," Amira replied seriously. "It's like you're carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders, and I want to know why."
Ace opened his mouth to answer, but Amira's following sentence forced him to close it and rethink.
"And don't you dare try to lie to me!"
Turning to look at her face, Ace could sense how serious she was being. Still, his problems weren't so easy to speak about. It was as if he were scared that saying it aloud would somehow make it even more real.
"Please," Amira voiced as she crawled behind him, holding his cheeks in her small soft palms. "Please let me in."
Mira's face was upside down above his as she stared down into his eyes, but what caught him by surprise was the sight of the tears welling up in her eyes.
Over the years since they met, Ace had seen a myriad of different emotions appear on Amira's face. Happiness, frustration, resentment, unwillingness, and even fear, but this was different. This wasn't an expression he recognised, but it was one that managed to melt his heart.
He didn't understand it, but there was something inside him that prevented him from doing wrong by Amira and seeing her like that kicked that 'something' into overdrive, forcing him to reveal far more than he really needed to.
"Do you believe in reincarnation?" Ace asked, catching Amira off guard.
"Reincarnation?" Amira asked back, not understanding where Ace was going. "I don't know, I've never thought about it."
"I hadn't either," Ace smiled. "Until it happened to me!"
Ace looked up at the shock on Amira's face, still hanging over his, before closing his eyes, thinking back to the scenes from his previous life.
"Hard to believe, isn't it?" Ace sighed. "But it's true.
I'm not sure how or why, but somehow, I reincarnated into this world from a world that couldn't have been any more different…"
Amira forced herself to suppress her shock so she could take in Ace's tale of his last life, as farfetched as it was.
A world where pirates ran amok and magical fruits that granted the person who ate them magical powers…
Ace told her everything, from how his mother selflessly gave her life to carry him for an additional nine months to deceive the world of his connection to his father. How he met his two sworn brothers, how he met the only man he ever truly saw as a father, to how he died in his little brother's arms.
The whole thing couldn't have sounded any more preposterous, and yet she didn't doubt him for even a second, especially upon seeing the varying emotions flashing across his face.
"… And then, when I woke up, I found myself in the body of a newborn baby in this world," Ace sighed.
"Wow," Amira said as she processed everything Ace told her before her brows suddenly furrowed. "As shocking as all that is, it doesn't explain your sudden change in demeanour."
Hearing that, Ace suddenly hesitated; although the scars from the traumas of his first life were still there, enough time had passed for them to scab over, whereas everything with Milianna was still fresh, making it harder to talk about.
Still, looking up into Amira's eyes seemed to magically put him at ease, albeit only slightly, but enough to continue. "Not long after you left to return home, Linley's little brother arrived at the Pavilion…"
Even though she believed him, Amira was able to stay calm when listening to the tale of Ace's first life because, as thrilling as it was, she didn't know anything or anyone from that world other than Ace himself, but this was different.
As her senior martial sister and Ace's mother, Milianna was someone she knew very well, so hearing about how she suffered because of Kenyon and more so when finding out the truth about her past, it was impossible to stay calm, but hearing the tone of Ace's voice and the look on his face, her heart panged with pain.
Ace was completely and utterly emotionless, but she understood that it wasn't personal. It was only by suppressing all of his emotions that he could get through his retelling of what transpired without succumbing to his emotions.
"… And that was when Kong suggested coming here to the battlefield to vent," Ace said as he looked back up at the stars, his eyes vacant and his emotions too chaotic to make sense of.
"Two lives and two worlds," Ace muttered softly as tears began to well up in his eyes. "Both times, I was conceived by amazing women any child would be lucky to call mother but a father that could only be described as a monster. Doesn't that make me a monster too?"
Hearing that, things started to fall into place in her head. It was obvious and understandable that Ace was angry over what had happened to Milianna, but it wasn't that simple.
Amira could sense the darkness that was starting to envelop Ace, and she could feel that it was getting more and more intense by the day.
Right now, he was able to suppress it and act as usual in front of other people. Still, unless he managed to find a way to overcome this darkness, there would come a day when it swallowed him completely, not too dissimilar to the problems both Lina Baruch and Milianna were facing as former pure souls.
Most would believe that it all stemmed from Ace's anger and protectiveness of his mother, but Amira knew there was more to it, and that was his father issues.
Ace genuinely believed that whether it was this life or his last one, both his biological fathers were monsters, and as their offspring, he must be too. It was why he was allowing himself to revel in the death of his enemies more and more.
"First of all, no, it doesn't. We are not our parents." Amira stated matter-of-factly. "But more importantly, from everything you told me about your first father, he didn't sound like a monster. He just sounded like a man who wanted to live freely without being told what to do by others he didn't agree with.
From the sounds of it, most of the negative rumours spread about him were just propaganda spread by his enemies. Just think about it, two of the men you respected most in your life knew him well, and despite standing on opposite sides to him, both of them seemed to hold a great deal of respect for him.
Do you really think Whitebeard and Garp would've respected him so much if he were that much of an evil monster?
And most importantly, for all his flaws, the one thing I am absolutely sure of is that he loved you."
Everything Amira said seemed to strike a chord in him, but it was her last words that really stirred his emotions.
"You think so?" Ace asked hesitantly.
Even though he'd never said it aloud or even admitted it to himself, the real reason Ace hated Roger so much was because he felt abandoned. It wasn't logical, and he knew it, but he hated that his father left him to grow up in a world that hated him instead of staying by his side to teach him how to manoeuvre through it.
"I really do!" Amira nodded sincerely. "The easy option would've been to ask one of his crew to look after you and raise you, but instead, he asked a man who saw him as a rival and enemy, a man that spent a lot of his life trying to arrest him.
The only reason for him to do that was to give you, his only son, a better chance at living happily without inheriting his sins."
"But I still inherited them," Ace clenched his fists unwillingly.
"But that was through choice," Amira said straightforwardly, ignoring the shock it brought Ace. "When you were born, no one knew that you were the son of the king of the pirates; as such, no one hated you for the deeds of your father. On the contrary, it was you who actively went out of your way to take on that burden.
O'Brien's a piece of trash who deserves a fate worse than death, but Gol D. Roger sounded like a man who would've done anything for his son."
As he heard that, something seemed to click in Ace as he suddenly sat up. A weight that had been weighing down on him for the better part of two lives, like magic, suddenly vanished!
He felt lighter today than he ever had in the past, and the girl in front of him was the reason.
"Amira," Ace said sincerely, stroking her cheek before taking her in his arms. "Thank you!"
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Book 6: Chapter 18 – Empress & Emperor
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