Wʀᴏɴɢ Tᴜʀɴ || revolutionarydragonboy & condemnedbysunset
The agony was something old now, a more remembered pain than anything truly lasting or physically harming by this point. Still, it was almost annoying how quickly new habits had developed, including the way in which his hand drifted as if with a mind of it’s own to brush digits over the now faded red of scar tissue across his chest. The edges were the worst, smooth skin shifting from a freckled tan to harsh jagged edges where molten lava had torn the flesh apart. Past that point was where the unease continuously crept along the back of his mind, a prickle of wrongness Ace felt as if he would never grow used to. After all, it was a little weird to know that he was touching his own skin yet be unable of feeling anything there.
A nervous habit at it’s root, he only found himself doing so when there was a sickening reminder of Marineford or the loss that came along with. It was more common than he’d like when he found ashen gaze skimming over the fresh newspaper delivered to him by a nervous newscoo, desperate for any glimmer of information on his family, whether it be about his brother or his crew.
What he was NOT expecting to find was a small article in world affairs and an even smaller picture of pale curls and a bright grin that had his attention rip back to the piece once more and hesitate at the mention of a home he had long abandoned.
He hadn’t been there since he left, nearly four years back now -- an island that held just as many happy memories as bittersweet, thoughts briefly flickering from Dadan and the rest of the bandits to Foosha village and the now likely overgrown tree house he had called home for so many countless years. Home and prison both; that mountain too filled with both beauty and danger drew a small smile to freckled features that went completely unnoticed for the moment, the article itself ignored before a hesitant coo had the former commander’s attention flickering briefly back to the newscoo that still stubbornly awaited payment.
A halfhearted flick of a beli behind his shoulder and Ace grumbled before resuming his reading, boredly skimming over the article that he would have otherwise ignored if not for the nostalgic pang in his chest. Just a stupid engagement announcement, some noble family finally marrying into that stuck up royal family apparently. It was enough to drag a harsh scoff from his lips before his eyes actually landed on the family name itself.
The pang turned sharper, a twist of his insides capable of dragging out a soft, barely audible gasp into the air and his gaze flickered back to the picture once more, denial something FIERCE in his chest, a grating pain that laced through his veins to drum at the back of his thoughts.
He knew that name even if it didn’t hit him at first. It was a name his brother had SPAT out like venom with more hatred than he thought possible for a youth to hold and yet, it was THAT name that spelled out before him, the bastard family that stole away the future of a boy too young, the family just as responsible for a death as he felt himself, equally guilty for not having gone after him. And so it MUST be a brother ( a cousin maybe ), but he had seen Stelly in those later years ( ‘fondly’ refereed to as Smelly after the one time Ace tried to beat his face in ) and the light colored haired stranger in the picture wasn’t Stelly. No, the curls were too familar, the facial features, blurred as they were in the black and white image, were far too similar in a way that had the breath hitch somewhere at the back of his throat and his grip on the paper crinkle along the edge, threatening to rip the OFFENDING paper to shreds.
In a moment he was on his feet, expression unreadable and a flicker of angry fire quick to flicker across his shoulder. Because the man in the picture looked like SABO and now... Now he had a boat to catch.