Thank you lovely Aori for beta-ing~
This fic is in a series. It comes right after "walk the line", so please read that before this or it'll get confusing.
Warnings (containing spoilers) on the bottom.
Rosinante sat on the bed facing the window, gazing absentmindedly outside as waves crashed against the cliff side, imperceptibly whittling it away piece by piece. For the first time in months – years, even –, his mind was clear. There was no more indecision, no more desperate justifications to himself or to others.
He pressed a hand to his chest to still the heart within.
By now, Law, Baby 5, Buffalo and Dillenger should have long arrived in Water 7, an island that was two weeks away from the Donquixote Family's Headquarter. The kids were so happy to finally be given permission to perform a mission by themselves that they hadn't even questioned being sent so far away.
Except Law, Rosinante thought, aching a little as he thought of the child whom he came to care for like his own son. (Not brother, no. To Rosinante, that title was too loaded with implications for him to associate it with Law, his light at the end of the tunnel.)
"Cora-san, is everything alright?" Law had asked, hesitating at the door after the rest of the kids had left to prepare for the trip to Water 7. Rosinante cursed his inability from before to resist looking over and memorizing the kids' features, despite knowing that it might rouse suspicion in someone as perceptive as Law.
Rosinante somehow found it within him to dredge up a smile. "Law, what makes you ask that?" he asked, knowing the answer was because he was sending the kids so far away despite being notoriously protective, because he had looked over the kids like one side of them would never see the light of day again and Rosinante would die before he ever let that side be the kids.
Who would have thought that he would have grown fond of the child who had first arrived with cold, cold eyes and disease-whiteness slowly infesting his body like a parasite, and then all the other lost children that followed?
(Except it wasn't that much of a surprise, was it, a part of Rosinante thought, he did always have a soft spot for lost causes).
"Because you don't like this Family," Law said, right into the heart of the matter, and Rosinante involuntarily drew a breath. "I mean, you protect the people in it, but you really actually don't like how it's run, do you, Cora-san?"
Cora-san, Law had said. Corazon.
Doflamingo's idea of a sick, sick joke. The Iron Heart and the Bleeding Heart.
The title chained Rosinante to the Donquixote Family, reminding him why he was there. He was there because he was Corazon, because he loved Doflamingo, loved the kids. He started the Donquixote Family for Doffy. He stayed as its Don for the kids. The title Corazon, Don of the Donquixote Family, gave weight to his words, his actions.
Enough to protect a couple of orphaned kids. Enough to prevent more kids from being orphaned.
Enough to shackle him down.
Rosinante wondered when his reason for starting and staying in the Donquixote Family began to diverge.
"Law, Doffy and I have different opinions on how the Family run," Rosinante said, going for the truth because he hated lying, especially to Law. Besides, it would take a fool to not notice the tension between Rosinante and Doflamingo that plagued them for the past few weeks.
Rosinante almost smiled at the way Law's face scrunched up at Doffy's nickname among the upper echelon of the Family. Almost.
Doffy. Such a soft, endearing nickname for a hard, ruthless man destined from birth and in his name to shake the world in its very foundation.
Doflamingo Donquixote. His dear, younger brother.
Rosinante clasped a hand to the back of Law's neck, ruffling the hair that poked out beneath his hat. Law's face scrunched up even more, but whereas it was from distaste before, it was now with exasperation edged with contentment.
"Whatever issue I have with Doffy is between us," Rosinante murmured, "so don't worry about it, Law. It will be resolved soon enough."
"I don't understand how you could stand him," Law said, hushing when Rosinante's hand stilled.
There were many ways Rosinante could have replied to that, but in the end, they all boiled down to the same answer. The only one that mattered.
Rosinante rested his hand lightly against his chest. "He's my brother, Law."
Law narrowed his eyes at that motion, resulting in an expression that Rosinante thought was quite severe on the adolescent, and crossed his arms. His sword clanked lightly against his elbow."That's no excuse. You know I'm right."
"That's for me to think upon," Rosinante said. "Right now, don't you have a mission to prepare for?"
"You're trying to get rid of me," Law accused. Rosinante merely gazed at him pointedly, even though it shakened him a little that Law's wild hit managed to land right on target, and Law glanced away. Rosinante was so rarely stern. (Just when the topic happened to be about Doflamingo.) "Fine, then," Law said. "I'll go pack now and talk to you when I come back."
Law no longer said it like a question, like he was wondering if he had a place back with Rosinante. Rosinante was glad for that, because Law should know that he'd always have a place with Rosinante, and because he didn't want to have to lie about the near future, the one time that Rosinante wouldn't be there when Law get back.
Rosinante knew the exact moment when Doflamingo arrived, and turned to meet his brother.
His eyes were so cold.
Rosinante always wondered how he could sense Doflamingo when his Calm Calm Fruit had the ability to silence his own presence, making others unable to sense him through Observation Haki, but then again, Rosinante and Doflamingo always did have an unfair advantage over each other in all matters.
He watched Doflamingo stalk in, his movements graceful but stilted, and Rosinante was reminded of a wounded hound putting up a front despite being cornered.
In any other situation, it would have been laughable for Rosinante to think of Doflamingo as the cornered one when he was the one who stalked in and put Rosinante's back to the wall, but they were both aware that Rosinante made the first move. He was the first to strike.
And the first to draw blood, Rosinante thought, the heart in his chest pulsing with hurt as biological brothers stared at each other from opposite ends.
Finally, Doflamingo spoke and in the end, it was always him, wasn't it? Doflamingo was always the brave one, the one who always did what needed to be doing without flinching, while Rosinante just ran away.
"You left me," Doffy said, three simple words, and it couldn't have hurt more if Doflamingo pulled out a knife and gutted him. Doflamingo's voice was hoarse and rough, as though he hadn't spoken or drank in days, and his tone was palpable with hurt and disbelief. Sharp pain pierced his heart and for a second, Rosinante regret. He regretted that it came down to this, regretted that he had hurt his brother and would knowingly do so again. If there was any other way, he would have taken it, but -
There was no other way.
Rosinante might have been the first to make his move, the first to draw blood, but Doflamingo pushed for years, silently daring him to push back, and took miles when he promised to only take an inch.
Rosinante made his choice, he pushed back, and Doflamingo would never forgive him now. His little brother would never forgive him for this betrayal of the cruelest kind, nor would he ever forget. After all, Rosinante broke his promise.
"Roci, no! Don't go, I beg you! Don't leave me!"
Rosinante forced himself to meet his younger brother's stormy eyes. They looked ready to sweep everything away from their path.
Rosinante's lips parted.
"How long did it take you to find the String Double?" he asked, and then they were on different playing fields. A week away from today, Rosinante left the Donquixote Headquarters, leaving behind only a String Double in his place. The String Double looked and acted like him, but anyone who knew him well would be able to tell that it wasn't him. For one, it was made of strings and for two, it couldn't speak.
Rosinante sent the kids away not only for their safety, but because he knew they would expose it. They knew him too well, talked to him too often.
Rosinante wondered at what point he was so estranged from his brother that Doflamingo couldn't even tell a String Double from Rosinante.
Doflamingo's face became pained. "Brother," he started, but Rosinante shook his head.
"Five days, Doffy, five days," Rosinante said, his throat tight. His heart hurt so much and judging from Doflamingo's expression, so did his. Rosinante rubbed the corner of his eyes with his sleeve, and shook his head again. "You have no right to talk about brothers or promises, Doffy."
Doflamingo's jaws tightened, and his voice and heart hardened to something cold. "I'm here now, aren't I?" he asked. "I'm here to bring you back."
Rosinante felt a shiver roll down his spine as Doflamingo took a step forward with a hound's grace ready to strike. Gone was the vulnerability, the sorrow, the pain. He only had one goal in mind now, and that was to drag him home. Owner or prey, willing or not, it didn't matter.
It scared Rosinante, this side of Doflamingo which he knew existed but which was never turned on him before.
"I want to go back, Doffy," Rosinante said, and that was the truth. Despite everything, the Donquixote Family was his home for many years. His and Doffy's home.
Inches away from his hand, Doflamingo stopped short of grabbing him.
"You'll come back?" Doffy asked, his face so boyishly hopeful that looking at it, Rosinante almost couldn't imagine or remember all the horrors he'd committed.
But the ones he would commit...
"I'll come back with you, Doffy," Rosinante said, his heart undoubtedly beating a staccato rhythm, "if you promise not to commence with Dressrosa."
Doflamingo froze at those words, and before letting out a laugh. "So in the end, it's about that again. Brother, would your bleeding heart ever change?"
"Don't hurt any more people, Doffy," Rosinante said, pleaded.
Doflamingo wrapped his arms around Rosinante and pulled him close. Rosinante let him and closed his eyes as his brother's warmth and smell enveloped him. "They don't deserve your concern," Doflamingo murmured, breath washing over Rosinante's face. "Come back to me, Brother. Come back."
Holding Rosinante's gaze, Doflamingo slowly began to lower himself to his knees, and Rosinante knew how this would end. Like a ritual, he would reverently kiss Rosinante's bullet scar, the only one which Rosinante had received and which bid them together for nearly as long and as completely as the blood that ran through their veins. It would serve to remind them of hound and owner, leashes and pulls, compromises and clashes of wills.
Then, Doflamingo would take him, love him, and whittle at him until Rosinante was trembling and pliable in his arms. And Doflamingo would tell him not to worry, that he would do all the dirty work, and Rosinante could just sit there on his throne at the head of the Donquixote Family and wait for Doflamingo to return to him. That there was nothing to worry and Doflamingo would handle everything and -
There was no sunglasses to hide the vicious gleam in Doffy's eyes this time, no barrier to pretend Rosinante was ignorant of what Doflamingo got up to behind his back.
Rosinante thought of the circumstance of his scar, thought of the boy-turned-man that he had watched over all his life, and gently closed his eyes.
- Rosinante couldn't do that anymore.
He had people that he wanted to protect, lines that he couldn't let be crossed, and a conscience that could no longer stand turning a blind eye to the atrocities committed by the Donquixote Family under his brother's command.
Rosinante took a gamble this time. He left behind a String Double that can easily be used to trace back to him, which served as a warning that Rosinante could easily and simply vanish without a trace next time. It was an invitation for Doflamingo to choose.
"I'll come back with you, Doffy," Rosinante had said, "if you promise not to commence with Dressrosa."
His ambition or Rosinante.
"They don't deserve your concern," Doflamingo replied. "Come back to me, Brother. Come back."
It wasn't a promise.
His brother was always the type to think he could have his cake and eat it too.
Rosinante lost his gamble.
Doflamingo pulled his lips from Rosinante's bullet scar, and it felt like Doflamingo was pulling Rosinante's lifeforce along with it.
Doflamingo didn't forgive betrayals, not even by his dear brother.
A hound that made no promise about not turning onto its owner, had bared its teeth once, in fact, Rosinante recalled, and could easily do so a second time.
He would keep him alive, Rosinante knew, Doflamingo love him too much to ever consider killing him, but Rosinante doubt he would ever see the light of day again. Doflamingo would make up some reason for why Rosinante can't leave , and everyone would believe him, and maybe with time, even Rosinante himself. He would confine him to his wing of the Headquarter, and allow only selected members of the Donquixote Family to see and serve him.
After this time's escape, Doflamingo would make sure that Rosinante wouldn't ever consider that again, would ensure that Rosinante could only solely rely on Doflamingo and cannot live without him. Rosinante could easily imagine Doflamingo enticing him to be on his best behavior so that he might even occasionally allow Law and the kids to visit him. Doflamingo would keep him like a caged bird, and there wouldn't be anything Rosinante could do to help himself or the thousands of others that would suffer at Doflamingo's hands when his plans unraveled into existence and take root in reality.
"Doffy," Rosinante said, his voice small, and Doflamingo looked up from where his teeth were nipping at his skin, not enough to break through but enough to sting. Rosinante gently tugged up at Doflamingo and he went, always weak against Rosinante small and needing him.
Their lips met, and Rosinante wondered if his amoral intimacy with Doflamingo played part in leading him down the wrong path. He knew he should have refused his brother the first time he approached him, but Rosinante back then had yet to learn to deny his brother of anything, and when Doffy reached for him, Rosinante didn't push him away.
Rosinante wound his arms around Doflamingo and held tight.
Rosinante knew he should probably regret it, but couldn't bring himself to. In many ways, Rosinante was Doffy's and Doffy was Rosinante's. Their bodies were just among the many things they'd given the other, and Rosinante couldn't resent the times that they found solace in each other's arms.
"Doffy, I knew you would come. I knew you would come for me," Rosinante said against Doflamingo's ear, fingers held fast in the back of his clothes, pulling his brother so tightly against him that he could barely breath. Their hearts, separated by two chest and yet closer than ever, beat against one another. "While I was waiting, I briefly wondered which one you would have come for: me or your heart."
Within Rosinante's chest, Doflamingo's heart beat loudly. Doflamingo began to pull away to speak, but Rosinante didn't let him.
"Shh, Doffy, shh," Rosinante said, still holding tightly onto his brother so he couldn't slip away. He trailed a circle on the back of Doflamingo, directly above where he knew his own heart lied in his brother, and slanted his fingertip against Doflamingo's back so they pointed to the left. "It doesn't matter now that you're here."
Doflamingo was actively trying to move away from Rosinante by now, but Rosinante had wound his strings around them both. He was always a fan of practicing his moves until he could do them effortlessly with no one wiser.
Doflamingo couldn't get away.
"I love you, Doffy," Rosinante said. "I really do, my dear little brother."
Then, he propelled String Bullets from his hand, one from each finger. They were right on target. All five of them pierced through Doflamingo's back, ripped through Rosinante's heart, and then proceeded out Doflamingo's back to pierce through Rosinante's chest, into Doflamingo's heart, and through Rosinante's back to embedded into the wall behind him.
Rosinante knew when he planned this that he probably had to go through with it, but the pain of having to do so hurt so much more than even when the bullets physically ripped through his heart.
"Y...ou," Doflamingo gasped out as they both slammed onto the ground, and that hurt too, the look of betrayal, disbelief, anger and hurt. The feeling of blood pooling around them, the sight of light slowly slipping out of his brother's eyes, and the knowledge that he put both of them there. "Ros...in...ate."
Rosinante let go of the string binding them both together, but continued clinging onto his brother even after he knew there was no need to, that the deed was done. His brother, Doffy, Doffy, oh Doffy, scrabbled against him, trying to push him away, rejecting him, and that hurt too, but Rosinante clung on.
It was too much, to see Doffy's pain, to sense it batter at Doffy's heart in his chest, to physically feel the damage. It was all too much, but Rosinante held on and he held onto his brother in his arms as his struggles gradually weakened trickle by trickle.
And when Doffy finally faded away, Rosinante followed.
Warnings: Major Character Death, Canon-Typical Violence, Implied/Referenced Incest, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Tragedy
So, I wanted let them have their semi-happy ending from "walk the line" that we all know won't last but we can at least have the comfort of knowing that the tragedy happened off-screen, but then a scene came to me. The most heart-wrenching, cruel scene came into my mind, and since you guys finished reading, I'm pretty sure you know what scene I'm talking about.
I knew that writing Rosinante shooting and killing them both would break my heart, but I didn't foresee just how much when my eyes started getting teary as I wrote the aftermath, the moment when everything was laid out in the open and it was too late to change this damn tragedy. What's sadder is that I just finished marathoning BBC's Merlin around two weeks ago and as I was writing this, I couldn't help but think (spoiler) of Merlin and Morgana's reaction after he poisoned her. I saw on tumblr the gifs of those moments and they really got to me, and were what I imagined as I wrote the Roci & Doffy aftermath scene. Cue my tears.
The heart swapping thing was a last minute thought, but basically, Doffy and Roci swapped hearts after Law got his Op Op Fruit, because Doffy went out on the field more and Roci worried about him dying. The idea was that if Doffy was ever shot in the heart, it would be Roci's heart that was actually shot and as long as they managed to get Doffy back to Roci in time, they could swap the hearts back so Doffy wouldn't die because he would still have a whole heart even if his body was a little damaged. Law didn't like it, but Roci was insistent and Doffy didn't care for Roci dying, but he liked the idea of having Roci's heart in his chest and vice versa. Unlike in canon where swapping hearts equals to swapping bodies, here, it just means that Doffy would feel Roci's heart as though it was his own. Both Roci and Doffy used their swapped hearts to gauge each other's emotions and well-being.
So yeah, I unexpectedly got too invested in this verse and I guess this is the result. Shout out to SiZodiac for telling me about the theory that the Calm-Calm Fruit could possibly be the ultimate counter to Observation Haki; this little fun fact ended up making a short appearance in the story. Many thanks for reading and if you're interested, I'm going to write one more fic for this verse featuring Sengoku to show the behind the scene and aftermath of this fic, and to finally wrap everything up.