It's Been Years Since Ace's Death And Yet I Still Cry Everytime...

It's been years since Ace's death and yet I still cry everytime...

The real tragedy of portgas D. Ace, his imposter syndrome, and how he died hating himself.

I feel like Portgas D. Ace is one of One Piece’s most tragic figures. Both for the way he died and the way he lived.

This child should’ve grown in a house of love, with a father that defied illness and a mother that defied fate. His birth was should’ve been something to be celebrated, yet he grew being hated for the crime of being born. 

Ace grew internalising the hate directed his way. They were right, he thought, and why wouldn’t he? No one in his life told him otherwise. With no communication between his caregivers, both absent in some way, both thinking the other will fill their shortcoming, and Ace grew hollow.

Sabo gave him something, a dream. To be a pirate, to be free to do what you want and be who you want.

To have my name reverberate louder and higher than anyone. To wipe the existence that gave me my existence, so that I might start anew.

Then came Luffy, who gave him nothing short of a reason to live . Someone needs it, this life of his. This thing that he never wanted nor asked for.

So he gave it to Luffy. it’s always been Luffy’s.   

Ace grew, but he never moved on. He still remembers what Dadan said, tired and drunk and out of her depth. He probably remembers what Deuce said as well, when they met the first time :

“—if your dad was the King of the Pirates, I’d understand why you’d worry, y’know? Because that guy’s the worst. I mean, I’d want to kill myself if that were the case.”

Deuce leanred not to mention it again, he learned how much it hurt Ace. But all the apologies in the world can’t take these words back. 

But Deuce loved him, all of them did, and the more crew members flocked to Ace like the sun, the more he thought :

This isn’t right. why are they here? Why do they follow me? 

They’re not following the real me, no one will. I’m just a fake, I’ve tricked all of them. 

This isn’t me. 

But it can be. 

I’ll just have to eclipse it. Erase it. Be bigger, and brighter, and burn it all away.

The more Ace was loved, by the spades then by the whitebeards, his desire to break the chains of his blood grew, and the more he couldn’t (the more his bounty rose and rose and rose so much for nothing) the more he hated himself, and felt like a fake.

Then his father opened his arms for all of him. And he found some comfort.

Even if everyone in the world hates him. He still has them, his father and his brother.

Then Thatch dies, and it’s his fault. Of course it is, why wouldn’t he think that? Never mind that no one knew the real Teach, not even his own father. 

Ace, so used to shouldering mistakes that are not his own, shouldered this as well.

His blood carries all the crimes of Roger. What’s one more? 

This was his fault too. It will always be his fault. 

So he has to fix it.

To Ace, his life was a never ending series of mistakes that began with his birth. That’s why he was so happy, so happy that people wanted him to live, that his family wanted him even after everything.

Portgas D. Ace spent the last seconds of his life consoling his baby brother, that he regrets nothing (not Sabo, not Thatch, not this war.) That he believes in him, and that he’s thankful. He was so happy that someone could love the one thing never could, and never will.

Himself. 

And the greatest tragedy of them all? For someone who so desperately wanted to escape, followed endlessly by the shadow of the man who ruined his life, to end up buried as another one of his father’s legacies. To die because of his first crime.

Being born.  

In twenty years. The world world will not remember the second division commander nor the captain of the spades.

They will remember Portgas D. Ace

The son of the pirate king.