Just a little something I wanted to try my hand at. Dedicated to Venere Veritas, who made me actually do it. I hope you'll have fun reading as much as I had writing!
He wore his hair shorter now than a few years back, but not yet quite as cropped like in a few years to come. He had ditched the black shirts for something that he thought suited his personality more, but he hadn't quite reached the stage where he didn't even bother with buttoning them up. The coat, however, was the same.
He was 31 when they accepted him into the Shichibukai, and he burst out in dangerous laughter.
"What a party!" he boomed when he entered the conference room at HQ for the first time. "I am so flattered, you have no idea. To think I would one day come in here, a welcomed guest, putting the shackles on other people on your behalf instead of being dragged away to the hole myself." Sengoku's weary look only made him laugh some more. He knew he was salt in everyone's wounds, and he loved it. They had no other choice, had they; with him stealing the Heavenly Tribute and being so very untouchable, almost like he was still a World Noble. Oh he quite enjoyed pulling the strings, literally as ever.
Taking back Dressrosa would be child's play from here on out. And there was nothing they could do, because he would be a hero.
When he wanted to leave, Tsuru was on the veranda. He halted, squatting on the window sill. If she had noticed him—and he was certain she had—she didn't let it show. Her back straight, she sat on a bench, a teapot and cup on a small table next to her. She was folding something, and when Doflamingo tried to crane his neck to see, she looked up. He frowned behind the sunglasses, feeling caught.
"Paper cranes," she said.
"Wow," he answered, voice cold. "How exciting."
"This is not about excitement, Doflamingo," she said, looking down to her work again. "It's about devotion."
Doflamingo grimaced. "So what?" She didn't answer, and so he sat for a while, watching her. Each paper crane, about the size of the palm of her hand—so tiny compared to his, so weak—was folded with much care and love. She laid out each fold neatly, all corners aligned. She ran the nail of her thumb over the fold, neatly pressing it. Time and time again. It drove him nuts. And when she finished one, she put it over to the others, all white like snow. Slowly but steady, there were ten, then fifteen. Nothing else happened. Doflamingo started to wobble with his leg.
"Are you gonna be done soon? How many are you gonna make?" he asked with an annoyed tone to his voice.
"Eventually, one thousand," was what she answered. He laughed; pure mockery and disbelief.
"You have never been a subtle man," she said without looking up as she took a break and poured herself a fresh cup of tea. "No wonder you don't understand."
His laughter ceased and he frowned at her. "How would you know?" he asked as he hopped down from the window sill and walked over to her, hands in his pockets and head lowered down, peering at the tiny, fragile creature in front of him.
He had tried to dig up dirt on her, like he did with everyone who had the balls to oppose him—and balls she had, he had to give that to her; she had never been afraid of him and while it was troublesome, he found himself thinking it was rather endearing. But there was nothing he had on her. He remembered sitting in his cabin at sea, filing through the papers of Vergo's intel at night. He remembered staring down at a photo of her, it looked ancient, frayed at the edges and colors faded. There was a young woman staring back at him, her hair in a bun just as strict as it was today, and still with those earrings dangling and looking more bothersome than practical. She wasn't smiling—did she ever, he wondered—but nevertheless he couldn't help but think of Monet when he looked at her, and it confused him.
"I've known you since you were a boy, Doflamingo," she said, interrupting his thoughts as she brought the cup of tea to her mouth, blowing gently to make it cool. "You had the good fortune to never get caught. Nevertheless, there is nobody in the marines who knows you as well as I do."
He pulled up a chair, sitting down on the backrest and his feet on the seat, and put his chin in his hand. The feathers of his coat bristled a little in a warm breeze. It was a nice day, and still there were enough clouds in the sky for him to get back to the family without problems.
"I never thought we both would end up like this, but apparently we will be working together from now on," she continued as she sat the saucer down again. "At least now we have some control over you."
He chuckled a little. "How cute that you would think that," he said. But then he gestured towards the paper cranes on the table. "Seriously, what's with your OCD folding?"
She looked over to the cranes with a look he thought was wistful. "They say that when you fold one thousand paper cranes, you'll get a wish fulfilled."
He startled at that and lifted his chin from his hand. It was such a sentimental notion to come from a woman he thought of as entirely practical that he found himself baffled and at a loss for words for just long enough for her to crack a faint smile. So she could smile, he thought, and it struck a chord, and he told himself he hated it.
He snorted through his nose. "And you believe that?"
"Who knows?" she replied gently, pouring herself a last cup of tea before she sat the empty teapot aside. He found her expression hard to read. "Good things come to those who wait. At least I'll have something to do with my hands until I get them on the keys for your shackles, and can finally lock you away in the deepest level of Impel Down."
"Aw, now you jinxed it," he scoffed, and he wasn't superstitious, but her words still made him frown.
She smiled. "I'm not saying this is my wish, Doflamingo," she said and put down her cup to get up. He jumped to his feet as well, just because he felt so on edge with her around. "I'm just saying it will keep me busy, and remind me that your time will come. Maybe not by my hands, maybe not even by any of the Marines, but there will be a day that you wake as a free man in the morning and go to sleep stripped of everything you have."
He made a face. "You keep telling yourself that, granny," he said, and bowed down to her until he was at her height. He reached out, and grabbed one of the paper cranes from the table. Bringing it up to their faces, he held the fragile figure carefully between thumb and index finger. "I'll be taking this," he said. "To make sure you'll never truly be able to fulfill your vow. The last crane will always be with me, and you can either have one too many or one too few, and your wish will not come true."
She said nothing when he straightened his back again and indeed crammed the paper crane into the pocket of his coat, with too much force, like he was trying to make a point.
It ended up on his night table in Dressrosa, the paper thin and yellowing at the edges after all these years. The neck and wings had been crumpled when he had pushed it into his pocket, and he had cautiously tried to fix the fragile thing as best as he could before putting it down. Sometimes he wondered how many Tsuru had made since their encounter on the veranda. Was she done, had she really folded all these little paper cranes? How many were one thousand, anyway? Were they all over her living room, and kitchen, and bedroom, or safely stored away in a box? Would she hang them up by strings, swaying in the breeze? Had she indeed made nine hundred ninety-nine more? Was his the one-thousandth? Was the one he had one of a flock, or an outcast?
Either way, it was still there sitting silently on his night table the morning the Straw Hats arrived at Dressrosa.