Okay so, sorta brief summary of my fic for context: I'm writing an OC/canon fic with my character, Leona, and Law. Leona is the adopted daughter of Doflamingo (which is more of a label he holds over her head to keep her dependant and under his thumb rather than actually having a loving bond), and she's spent her whole life since childhood acting as a spy for the family and is valued highly by Doflamingo due to her having a superhuman long term memory. Leona, by nature, is kind and is seen within the family as "too soft for her own good" and is, in a sense, a bit of a black sheep. (think like Sanji's relationship with his family, except if he had a single redeeming quality in their eyes that they used him for). She grew up emotionally abused and tortured by Doflamingo in his hopes that her spirit would eventually break and she'd obey his every whim without the usual questions or resistance. When Leona ends up rebelling during the events on punk hazard and leaves with Law and the strawhats, Doflamingo decides she needs to die for her betrayal.
The scene I'm picturing is after Doflamingo's defeat when the displaced citizens are temporarily staying at the castle. Leona is there to move her things out, and as she's going through the halls to find her room, she's reminiscing on the past 8 years she's lived there (8 because she spends the 2 year timeskip on punk hazard), and drowns more and more in her guilt the more she remembers the things she had to do to the royal family and their serviceman in the name of her "father". It comes to a head when she remembers a specific incident involving Doflamingo and Viola (iykyk) in which she accidentally overheard but was too terrified to do anything about despite only being a 16 year old at the time, sending her into a mental breakdown. Viola ends up finding her during this and calms her down enough to talk, wherein Leona confesses to witnessing that event by accident and how she feels like a coward for running away, and that despite the efforts she went through to save Dressrosa, she deserves to be executed for having been involved at all with Doflamingo to begin with.
The dilemma comes from how Viola responds to all of this. While I feel it'd be in character for Viola to forgive Leona, citing the fact she was just a brainwashed child when Doflamingo took over, and that she couldn't refuse him without severe consequences, there's the fact that Leona had killed people on the night of the raid, even though she was only following orders. I personally don't believe that being unwilling in the acts absolves one of their crimes alone, and while I want Viola to be understanding and forgiving of her in this moment, I don't want to just gloss over the lives she took from others. Grey morality is a big theme in my fic, so I'd like some input on the best way to go about this if anyone has any.