onepieceyaoi100 | Who wears furs coat in a desert anyway, really

Title: Pride Comes Before the Fall
Topic: Vanity
Rating: PG
Pairing: Crocodile centric (also has a pairing but you’ll have to read)
Word Count: 401

Ok I went a little overboard (like by 100 words) but the idea wouldn’t leave me alone. I’m kinda playing on the Vanity-Pride being interchangeable when you consider them as part of the Seven Deadly Sins...or something like that.

I had such a hard time figuring out an ending, hope it works well enough.

He’s never really thought of himself as vain. Not at the time anyway. It had simply been a mater of status. He was a Sea Knight, a champion to the people, he had to look the part.

The part that required the finest tailored clothes Alabasta could offer. The fur coats he had imported from a winter island, rather impracticable in the desert heat, but they certainly made an impression. Precious stones had adorned perfectly manicured fingers. Every strand of hair had been marvelously slicked back. And of course there was the custom made gold plated hook.

It was all for the part...not vanity.

But they had taken all that away. The boy had taken it away first. The Marines who hauled him off to this seastone lined cell had just been the one’s to physically take it. Striped down and shoved in dingy prison grab. They’s even taken his hook, leaving only the gold base attached to his hand because the couldn’t figure a way to remove it that didn’t involved a bonesaw.

He missed it, his precious things, his power, his life of luxury. With nothing to do all day but stare at the ceiling of his cell was else could he do.

It wasn’t vanity...it was pride. The pride that kept him alive these endless months. Cold, weak from the seastone, choking down the gruel they served him.

The same pride they wouldn’t allow him to accept help from the man standing outside his cell now. The man who’s eagle gaze was boring into him from the tiny window in his cell door.

“I don’t need your help Mihawk. I still have my pride.”

A sigh from the other side of the door, then blinding light as the stone was sliced in two. He didn’t have enough strength to fight back when the man pulled him into his arms.

“Your pride be damned Crocodile. I’m not leaving you to rot.”

The body he pressed against was warm, the coat the man wrapped around him soft. He reminded him of what he’d lost, what he wanted to get back.

He would never be able to get in back locked in a cell.

“Fine...but this is not a rescue.”

“Of course not. I was just bored and thought breaking you out of prison sounded interesting.”

It was a lie but Crocodile didn’t care anymore.

He’d get his pride back someday.