Rocinante was clutched in his father's arms.
He remembered that clearly.
The man was sobbing in his hair, holding him so tightly to his chest that Rocinante couldn't breathe. He didn't struggle though. He was too afraid to. He had seen his brother's face, Doflamingo's sneer of utter hatred for their father had shocked him.
Doflamingo had blamed their father. Had blamed him for their fall from heaven. Blamed him for forcing them to live amongst humans. Blamed him for their poverty. Blamed them for their mother's death.
Blamed him for the hollow of his and Rocinante's stomachs.
Rocinante cried and he couldn't stop. Tears were his only words because his voice refused to start again.
He hadn't spoken since that night.
Since the night the townspeople had stringed him up and tossed things at him and his family. Since he felt that close brush with death. Since Doflamingo had saved them.
Yet here they were.
Doflamingo's angry words, his accusations, his venomous hatred.
He wasn't right.
Rocinante knew that.
He had always been aware of his brother's less-than-normal temperament. He was used to it. It was just he way his brother was.
And Rocinante loved his older brother.
He looked over his father's shoulders, seeing the raised gun and Rocinante found his voice again.
"Brother stop! Please!"
But there was a sound.
A loud crash that had Rocinante shrieking. A bang that wrecked through his body. A noise that was followed by the wet drip of something warm falling on Rocinante's head.
He looked up.
His father looked down at him. His eyes wide and unfocused, grey material oozing out of the gaping wound in his forehead.
His blood dribbled down, splashing on Rocinante's face.
He stopped crying.
His father fell away from him, landing on his side and Rocinante stared at him, not knowing what had happened.
He looked to his brother, to the smoking gun in his hand. To the wild grin on his face. To the blood splattered across his teeth and glasses and hair.
Rocinante felt himself step towards him, his hand reaching out, his brows furrowed in question, his small mouth pursing around words that would never come forward.
Doflamingo tossed the gun to the side, reaching out and taking Rocinante's face in his hands, smearing the blood and mixing it with the fluid that was already on himself.
"It's okay, Rocinante. We'll go back home. We'll leave this disgusting land and take back our rightful place amongst the gods. We're gods, Rocinante, we should never have come here."
Rocinante raises his tiny hands to hold his brother's slightly larger ones, his lips trembling as he stared into his brother's glasses. He turned his wide gaze to their father, where he lay motionless in the mud.
He reached a hand towards him before Doflamingo snatches it away, roughly forcing Rocinante to look at him.
"He's dead, Rocinante! Everything is his fault! He tried to ruin us - we're not meant for this grotesque land! Listen to me," Doflamingo pulled Rocinante's face closer to his own, pressing their foreheads together harshly. "We're better off without him. Trust me?"
Rocinante didn't reply, staring up at his brother, at the blood on his childish face and the contempt he displayed for the man who loved them more than his own life.
He looked back to their father.
Doflamingo snarled, pushing Rocinante away.
"He's nothing to us, Roci! Look at him! He's a human now. A disgusting maggot who should have groveled beneath us. That's what he wanted to turn us into: maggots!" Doflamingo sloshed through the mud to get to their father.
Falling to his knees and pulling a knife from the waistband of his pants.
Rocinante didn't comprehend what was happening at first, not until the first slice against his father's throat split the skin.
He tried to scream, but nothing came out, his tongue refusing to repeat their earlier activities of twisting to form words. He ran forward, tripping and landing in the mud, crawling to his brother's side and tugging at his arm.
Doflamingo lashes out, the knife swinging and barely missing Rocinante.
"Don't get in my way, Roci. I'm doing this for us."
Sobbing, Rocinante clung to his brother, his body shaking with each jerk that separated his father's head from his body. He wailed silently, the rain drenching them all and the his father's body laying impossibly still and impossibly pale, no blood following the knife's edge as there was no flow in his veins, no pump in his heart.
Rocinante cried into his brother's back as the other boy stripped what little dignity their father had left.
He watched as Doflamingo cut around the bone first, slicing to the bone before hacking at it to sever his neck.
When it was over, when it was done, Doflamingo grasped their father's head in his fist by his hair, standing up and kicking away his body without a care.
He gripped Rocinante's arm, trying to drag him up from the mud, but Rocinante refused to move. He sat limply, his hand wrapped around his father's sleeve.
"Get up, Roci, we're going home."
Rocinante didn't consider, didn't hesitate, just shook his head, pulling his arm from Doflamingo's grip.
He snarled again, the sound not even shaking Rocinante anymore.
He felt too numb. Too cold.
"We don't belong here, Roci. You'll be killed if you don't come with me. Those filth will find you and slaughter you - come with me. I'll get us back into the place we belong."
Rocinante stared blankly at their father, body shivering in the cold rain.
"Fine, stay here. I'll come back for you." Rocinante wondered if he meant it, if Doflamingo really would.
He hoped he didn't.
Doflamingo finally walked away. Head hanging from his hand, swinging lightly.
Rocinante didn't see him look back, but he also didn't look away form his father.
He crawled closer to him, gripping his shoulders with his small, weak arms and tried to pull the body in his lap.
He felt tears slide down his face again, but he didn't feel anything anymore.
Rocinante didn't know how long he sat there. He had fallen asleep at some point and when he woke up, the rain had stopped.
He gripped his father's headless body closer, pushing his face into it before letting go.
He stood up on unsteady feet, his legs feeling like jelly.
Rocinante stood there and stared down at the ground until he heard footsteps approaching him.
He looked up, watching as men with guns marched towards him.
He shrank in on himself, arms wrapping tightly around his tiny body in fear as if doing so could protect him.
One man raised his arm, halting the other's.
He had no weapons yet he appeared to be in command.
"Are you alright?"
Rocinante didn't respond, couldn't respond.
He stared at the man distrustfully, eyeing both the man and his army of gun-toting soldiers.
The man watched him back, surveying the body on the ground and its lack of head.
"Do you want to come with me?" The man suddenly asked.
Rocinante's head whipped to look at him. Shock written on his face.
"We heard some rumors about what happened here." He looked at the body again before turning back to the boy. "We can protect you from the people who want to hurt you."
Rocinante wanted to believe him.
He wanted to believe the man so badly.
He bit his lip, tears filling his eyes at the emotions that ran through him.
Before he could think about it, he was running forward, throwing himself at the other's legs as he sobbed openly, not caring anymore.
He wanted comfort, he wanted protection, he wanted someone to hold him.
The man paused before reaching down, patting Rocinante's back unsurely.
His hesitation was somehow comforting.
He continued to try and soothe the boy, his hand growing firmer and his other hand combing through his blond curls.
Perhaps humans weren't so bad after all.
He would take them over his brother - that angel who had ripped their father's head off with gleeful abandonment.
He clutched the man's legs closer to his chest and cried again.
He wasn't going to stay here.
He wasn't going to wait for his brother to return for him.
He wasn't going to lose his humanity.