Chapter 4
Sabo's leg bounced.
He didn't know what to do.
The S.H.I.E.L.D agency had debriefed him on a lot of what had gone on in the world since he was put under ice. Then they had given him an apartment and left him alone for a while to process it all.
This world may be where he lived at the moment but it wasn't his home. He couldn't bring himself to care about any of the things that changed.
Instead the only thing that filled his head was his brothers.
What would've happened to them?
When he went under Ace had been the age they promised to leave Dawn, and now......now 70 years had passed. Luffy would have left only a couple years after Ace.
He wondered what they had decided to do. He wondered if Luffy had achieved his dream, to keep his promise, become the Pirate King, and be the man with the most freedom in the world. He wondered if Luffy had grown old, maybe holed up on an island he claimed as his territory and taught someone younger than himself how to be strong. Maybe Luffy had made a more than amazing crew, and they were there with him. Or maybe Luffy was still sailing the seas, at such an old age.
And then there was his older brother, Ace. Ace had wanted to become a great pirate. Someone that wouldn't be trapped under his father's shadow, someone that could stand face to face with the world's hate and laugh because he finally understood that he was his own person, and it didn't matter where he came from. Someone that could stay alive and free while everyone still knew his heritage. Because that was what Sabo had hoped Ace would have come to see.
Maybe Ace had become one of the greatest pirates in the world, with his own loyal crew, and great stories to tell of his many adventures on the seas. Maybe had fallen for someone, someone who could show Ace how much they loved him, wouldn't care about his heritage, and was strong enough to stand by his brother's side.
Who knows, maybe the grandchildren, or even great-grandchildren, of Gol D. Roger had already been born. Or maybe not, who knew what Ace would decide in those regards.
He had to swallow hard when worse possibilities whispered to him. What if one of them had died? Had stood up to someone that turned out to be too powerful? What if the World Government found out about Ace's heritage before he was strong enough to laugh at their attempts to kill him? What if Luffy had been killed before he could even build a crew? Or at his first island in the Grand Line?
What then?
He couldn't bear the thought of either of his brothers becoming another body buried in the waves.
He just couldn't.
Sabo didn't know what to do with himself, either.
He had always followed Howard Stark's commands because the man had promised to not destroy the machine that could take him home if he did so. And now Howard was dead and who knows what had happened to the machine.
He had no way of going home. The only thing he wanted for himself in his life anymore.
He'd never be able to go home. He'd never be able to find out the fate of his brothers. He'd never be able to see them again. Young, old, or a memorial.
He'd never see his brothers again.
He cried.