A/n: Ehehe...hey all, it's been a minute. I don't have much to say except that it was a combination of writer's block, work and personal health issues. Life got in the way in short. But I'm back now and the final chapter won't take another half year again promise.
If you're still following along (and bless you), hope you enjoy!
law: in rupe - "on a cliff"
So he went back, did he?
xxx
(As the boat surged out to sea, Baby Five recited the instructions in her mind.
The butterfly-knotted scroll was for Trebol and the pretty rose she was to give to that Marine lady Tsuru. Baby's stomach squirmed. The Young Master was trusting her though and she wanted to be counted on. Wanted him to always think she was a brave and strong girl.
The boat dipped. Baby squeaked and the panel of lights around the steering wheel glittered. She was not to touch anything though, so she folded herself tighter on the ground. The dark footwell glared out at her. The cabin was cramped and noisy, but Vergo-san's blood made everything on deck smell and she felt guilty when she looked at Dory and thought about what she had to do.
"The Marines will search for you," the Young Master had said, gripping the rail after spitting another bloody glob into the sea. Baby curled her arms around his knee, the fabric crimping beneath her nails. When he'd straightened again, she saw more strings ream his wounds. The Young Master thumbed off the corners of his mouth.
"Abandon Spider Miles. Change hideouts every few weeks and split our stashes evenly. We're a family after all."
He peeled her off, grip too rough in his urgency.
"Are you listening?"
Baby nodded. She hadn't liked discussing money and splitting stashes and abandoning things though. She'd wanted him to come with her. He said he'd find them again eventually, but how would he?
The Young Master knelt down. He took her hands, both their fingers stained, pink feathers slipping out of her sleeves ("Odd girl, what do you have those for?").
"Good." The scrolls landed in her palms. "Remember what I said."
A soft pull of silk. Her ribbon fell into his hand.
Baby Five rubbed a lock of hair, ice-flecked between index and thumb. Her bangs hung in her face.
"Look that way."
Minion slipped over the edge of the world.)
xxx
"What'll you do now?"
A blossom fell loose from the willow vine, spinning like a winged seed. It landed an inch from his brother's ankle.
"Probably what I've always done," Doffy said, picking it off the grass, "Reassess, take my crew back and make another plan. The marines really got a load of me this year. Sengoku won't let the next few be easy."
Rosinante's eyes slanted with a hint of derision, and Doffy scoffed.
"Your flagrant pleasure is noted."
"I hope he'll have that kind of energy. He's a great man. Wish you could've known him the way I had."
"Hn," said Doffy, unenthused. The surrounding grass billowed in green swathes. Rosinante tried to remember the sound. He tried to hold it inside him.
"Are you going to keep hurting people?"
"You know I won't touch the boy," his brother said, "Or the kingdom. You fought hard. They are yours."
"And everything else?"
The willow blossom lifted without gravity on the tip of his brother's finger. It spun like a languid top upon his nail and his ensuing silence was more an answer than any words could've been. Rosinante sighed. He flopped the side of his face against the grass. What could he do now though.
"You're fucking hopeless, Doffy."
The little silhouette dropped his hand, blossom fluttering into the grass. "A bit, yes."
There was another stint of silence. Doffy draped an arm over his knee.
"I see you've finally grown out of your pointless exercises in self-torment."
Rosinante huffed, though with some fondness. "You sound like the kid," he said, "It was pointless though, wasn't it. If you didn't want to change, then you wouldn't have changed. No one ever was able to make you do anything."
He breathed into the sun-washed wind.
"It's just kinda depressing is all. I don't know why she expected so much out of me."
"You were only six. You hardly understood what was being expected of you."
Rosinante traced the clouds instead of answering. They appeared normal again, like the ones he'd seen on the real Rubeck. He'd sat beneath that willow for hours to watch them, listening to the isle sleep, the whirl of distant water and air full of shining dust.
Their mother had done that too once upon a time. That window sill had been her favorite place first—rickety and glass-less, dirty and barren, on an old island of butterflies and cold rain. They always found her there and in one way or another, they had continued looking for her there all their lives.
On that ledge, she had practiced her mending and watched the sun rise. Measured their heights every two weeks along the ripples in the grain.
And she had sat Rosinante in her lap there one morning, half a year before she died, and told him Doffy was to be his sole purpose in life. That his brother could not navigate the dark alone. That Rosinante had to serve that role for them both.
Not in so many words and never with the precise, uncompromising and crippling intention the effect of her request would create in him, but that was what had happened. A little poison.
"She always could see it in me," Doffy mused, "They were quite worried we'd end up separating. We never did have much in common."
Rosinante snorted, tapering off into a wheeze. He was right though. You and your brother, their parents had said endlessly, tirelessly, until it was twisted into the synapses and melded into identity, until all they could think of each other was, You and me. You and me.
"And here we are." Doffy chuckled, shiny teeth on display. His strings swam in the space around him. "Ah Rosi, we were fucked from the start."
Rosinante's shrug was difficult and feeble. "They were out of their depth. They did whatever they thought had been right."
Phantom sunlight collected in his palm, spilling through his stiffening blue fingers.
"But yeah, we were fucked."
xxx
I arrived in Dressrosa on the fourteenth of summer and crossed the galley from the western side of Acacia. On the handsome dock, the waters were beautiful and the shipwrights hummed shanties as they cut aluminum sheets. They asked if I was visiting and sketched maps for me of Carta and Sebio, the eastern and southern port towns. Their wives came with afternoon porchettas and fretted over how skinny I was. It was such a friendly country. Word clearly hadn't travelled far enough yet.
Instead of wasting beri on the carriage, I walked to Sebio. The town was a quieter and cheaper place than Acacia. The walls were wrapped in sunflower murals. Despite the itch in my throat, I ordered a single malt liquor at the tavern. The barkeep hadn't heard anything either when I questioned him. He asked if I was joking.
I was halfway to the inn, before I realized they'd followed me.
We argued right there on the cobblestone street, complaint against retort against order, until the wobbly eyes and sniffling was whipped out. I don't know why they're like this. Why they didn't listen. People were already staring though, so I caved and took them along.
Even between the four of us, we barely afforded a dusty room with one bed. They sat seiza on the rug and bristled up at me, angry that I took off in the middle of the night.
"I left a note." The ensuing glares were fair, I suppose, since that note was also the vaguest message ever composed. I didn't know how else to explain myself though. I wasn't expecting to see them again.
"What'd you come here for?" they asked.
xxx
("Ma'am, something's coming this way."
The Vice Admiral turned as Mio raised the spyglass. The speck on the horizon had turned into a sleek-finned boat, bearing the shocking colors of their emblem.
"One of yours, Captain?" Mio asked and Hoshi shook his head, equal in their confusion. Unease swept across the deck. Aside from their group and the Fleet Admiral's, no other vessels should've been roaming the triangle tonight.
"Could've been hijacked," Hoshi said and racked his slides. Several other guns followed suit, barrels lifting. Mio peered at the boat, veins starting to thrum. She lifted her own gun as the boat drew closer, its prow and frame solidifying. A solitary shape stood at the rail.
"Hold fire." The Vice Admiral materialized beside her.
Mio lowered her gun and swiped her hand at the cadets, who relaxed their grips as well. They stared, hushed, as the boat drew up in a carpet of foam.
The last time Mio had seen the girl, she'd been playing in the shadows of pirates and running into the arms of the Donquixote brothers.
She'd gotten taller and her hair was longer. The ribbon was also missing. But that small, lovely face was the same.
Baby Five.
"Inform headquarters." The Vice Admiral's fists closed. "He must've sunk Skiff Two."
Mio went cold in her stomach.
The child lifted her arm and the flesh morphed. The length of a muzzle gleamed beneath the stars, everything to the elbow encased in metal.
A cadet said, "What is that, a bazooka?"
The Vice Admiral strode past her and stepped to the taffrail against Hoshi's hissed protests. She folded her arms. Wind flapped through their coats and swung the riggings and sails.
"What are you doing here, girl?"
She pinned Baby Five with a look that made her pale. The bazooka did not falter though. With her other hand, she tugged something close to her. It took a moment for them to realize it was another child—a brown-haired boy slumped over unconscious.
"That the sick one?" Hoshi whispered and Mio shook her head, furiously scanning the rest of the deck. Even if it looked empty, the lot of them remained rigid, expecting Doflamingo to spring out at a second's notice, unfurling from the boat like an evil spirit. It didn't happen though. He was nowhere to be seen.
Baby Five shifted the boy's body, leaning him gently against the rail. She touched his head with concern, before pointing at them, then him, then them again.
"Wants us to take him?" one of the cadets said and they glanced at the Vice Admiral.
Without hesitation, she gestured for them to proceed. In hindsight, perhaps that'd been what Doflamingo had banked on. Vice Admiral Tsuru had always held such deep remorse for the orphans of North Blue.
Nothing was quite like boarding a skiff with a bazooka trained upon one's head. The girl was how old? Eleven at the most? Mio tried not to look at the launcher, sweat pilling down her nape.
The deck of the vessel was sprayed with blood. It was to their shock that they found Vice Admiral Vergo aboard as well, barely alive, body torn to shreds.
"Well, that explains who the boat belongs to," Hoshi muttered, as he and three cadets lugged him back to the ship. Baby Five didn't stop them, sporting a curious flicker in her eyes as they passed. She had blood over the front of her wool skirt and shoe buckles too.
Mio scooped up the boy and raced to follow.
Aside from a goose egg swelling from his skull, he wasn't as injured as they'd been dreading. Virtually unmarred, save an old scar on his chin.
"Mio?"
"He looks alright, ma'am," she said, setting the boy on a gurney.
The Vice Admiral nodded without turning around. The waters bucketed beneath them, full of noise in the still night air.
"Where is your captain?" the Vice Admiral asked.
Baby Five hesitated. She peered behind her at the vast black sea, small feet shuffling her weight back and forth, and the Vice Admiral's lips pursed. Mio thought she might attempt to convince the girl to come with them again, but she didn't.
"What has he done with Rosinante?"
Baby Five's eyes widened at the name and narrowed again a second later. She reached down for something on the bench.
The bottle tumbled through the air and landed on their deck, rolling to a halt at the Vice Admiral's feet. Hoshi rushed forward to pick it up, but the Vice Admiral stopped him. She stared at Baby Five, who lowered her gaze eventually, before uncorking the bottle herself.
The scroll that slid out had been tied together with a giant elaborate knot, a stunning construction of swooping whorls and artful braids. The cadets murmured, wisps of enchantment in their gazes. Mio couldn't help a moment of admiration as well. From where she stood, it resembled a rose.
The Vice Admiral had never looked so unamused. She undid the scroll without comment, dropping the decorative knot on a crate. The parchment had just been unrolled when one of the corpsmen tapped Mio's shoulder.
"Lieutenant, I think there's something under here."
The boy had been turned onto his side. The corpsman pushed his hair back and a glint shined beneath the collar of his jacket, looped around his neck. Something coiled into thin strands. Wires? Mio touched the boy's shoulder hurriedly, fearing a concealed weapon. She pulled the collar down.
Nothing.
She flipped the hood back and checked his sleeves. Nothing again. Something had been there though, she'd seen it. Mio was about to ease the child up and pat him down too when the corpsman spoke.
"...Lieutenant?"
The man had his gun out.
In slow, jerky motions, he lifted the gun, his grip so violent that his knuckles had split. His arm was bent at an unnatural angle. He jammed the barrel beneath his own chin. Mio was frozen.
"What the hell are you doing, marine?"
"I-It's not me! I can't move—"
She lunged forward to grab him. Something coiled around her arms and stopped her, cinching enough to bruise. Mio tried to step back. She couldn't. The air glinted metallic, winking like eyes and it suddenly struck her what she was seeing.
Strings.
They wrapped around her fingers, her legs, beneath her boots and around her toes. Her hand was puppeteered to her holster.
How?
Where were they coming from?
"Lieutenant Mio?" The cadets shuffled over to the gurney. A string cinched her throat, strangling her warning. Her pistol rattled in her quaking hand as it was pulled out.)
xxx
(Tsuru-san,
The boy's name is Diez Drake, fruit of your wayward comrade's loins. Recently orphaned, I'm afraid.
The little vagrant will certainly thrive with your flock. You have our gratitude for letting him aboard.
My family now if you please.)
xxx
("Get away from that boy!"
The cadets jolted backwards, some of them stumbling a few feet from the gurney. It was too late though. Mio had her own gun pressed to her temple. The bone-pale corpsman beside her was in a similar state. The cadets were only free-moving for another second, before they were ensnared as well.
Surprised yelps punctuated the air. (Where are you aiming that thing, it's not me, I can't move, I can't move.)
Rifles lifted, cadet aiming at cadet. Tsuru swore softly to herself.
"The hell's going on?" Hoshi spun on his heel. "Mio, what're you doing?" He skidded to a halt when Tsuru blocked him with a hand.
"Stay here, Captain." She read the rest of the letter quickly.
(Parasite strings are infused with a fragment of my consciousness. You will not be fast enough, no matter what you try.
The terms are simple. My crew for yours.
I will slaughter every last person on that ship, madam. You know I will.
I'd rather not upset you so.)
Tsuru lowered the scroll. The strings glittered in and out of view with the breeze. By that point, all her subordinates had been ensnared, their bodies swaying like marionettes. The girls had steeled their expressions, but their wet-lashed eyes and their terror bled through. The strings cut deeper into their skin the more they struggled. On the opposing boat, Baby Five watched with her dark head cocked.
"Ma'am? What do we—" Hoshi jumped as Tsuru slammed the message down on a crate. The parchment crinkled beneath her glove. That insufferable, wicked boy.
"It's alright, girls," she bit out and nodded at Hoshi, "Bring them.")
xxx
One-hundred forty kilometers away, Doflamingo rushed up the incline onto the first steppe. He'd no idea how much longer Rosi had left. It couldn't have been much.
As he made his way through the line of trees, the Ito Ito vibrated beneath his skin, signaling the movement of his distant feelers. The snare he'd planted on the Diez brat must've activated. What a peculiar stroke of luck encountering that boy had been.
"You should rest easier, Barrels. Your progeny has served me and mine exceedingly. Perhaps you will be remembered for something after all."
Nothing but silent air replied. Doflamingo chuckled regardless as he plodded through another snowdrift. Now that he was reflecting, he had set up quite an operation, hadn't he? The tribute he'd gathered, the territories he'd seized. They had all submitted to him. He would miss these days of putting fools in their places. To be alive had been a lovely feeling sometimes.
And yet you climb to your death
Doflamingo side-stepped a protruded root. He brushed the intrusive little thought aside.
xxx
(Ten minutes later, Tsuru watched with dispassion as the bewildered Family trundled onto Baby's boat. A thread disentangled from Mio's arm and glided forward. It swept across each member as they passed the gunwale.
Counting them, Tsuru realized. For all her frustration, the sight still gave her pause. She'd only half-thought Doflamingo would return for them at all.
"I'd advise him to think carefully on your next course of action," she said, voice carved from ice as Senor Pink passed, following behind a gleeful Trebol.
The man didn't reply, staring at the thread as it swept past his shoulder. There were no words between any of them in fact, the only sound being their footsteps as they plodded onto the ramp. Baby Five reformed her arms and pressed into the skirt of Jora's coat. The devotion she showed that crew. In all the years following, no marine would ever coax her from them again.
When Machvise surfaced last carrying Lao G—shattered leg already set and half-drugged to the gills—the gangplank retracted and the vessels parted ways. Fifty meters were quickly gained, then a hundred. Two hundred. They disappeared through her grasp, the most notorious pirate crew of the North Blue. Would Sabaody ever be off her back again after a botch such as this? She would have to begin drafting her case.
"Ma'am, they're not letting go," Hoshi said, sweat trickling down his crew cut.
His gaze was wild on the parasite strings, the strands momentarily visible with each blow of the wind. They hadn't released when the Family escaped the direct range of the long nines. Hadn't released when they had faded into an uneven cluster of shadows on the horizon.
"Jesus..." Hoshi twisted around. "I knew we shouldn't have..." He tried to rush to Mio again, freezing when the cadets began to move. Their stiff limbs turned and some of them whimpered as their guns realigned on the lieutenant. Hoshi's eyes bugged.
"You piece of—I'll—"
Hammers were thumbed back.
"Ma'am!"
"Are you one to renege on your word, Doflamingo?" Tsuru mused, and the strings glittered around her cadets like merry eyes.
The rose knot fell off the crate and rolled to her feet of its own volition. Tsuru watched it unravel, the loose strings reweaving themselves, forming golden hair, glasses, and eventually a bony grinning face.
Doflamingo's disembodied head floated up, supported on trailing spools of thread. It chuckled.
"Only a joke."
With a soft swish, Parasite released. Guns skidded across the metal floor as the girls fell onto the deck, jumbled into a pile. Mio hacked and sucked in lungfuls of air as Hoshi ran to her and clutched her shoulders. The wound on her throat would scar, Tsuru observed, but she'd be fine otherwise.
The head regarded her with a measure of reflection. "Always astute in your decisions," it said and the tone held surprising clarity, no longer intoxicated by rage. Tsuru unfolded her arms, cautious.
"Open the cage, boy. Whatever's happened, we can—"
"We cannot." Minion shifted in his glasses. "It's all too late. It's over."
"What do you mean," Tsuru said, though the swirl of ice in her veins whispered that she knew already what he meant, "Where's the child, Doflamingo? The one Rosinante took with him."
"Sent off. Naturally, he didn't exactly share with me where. There's only so many places you can go in the triangle though, so I don't imagine far." The strings composing his hair began to unravel. "You won't find him."
"We'll see about that."
"You won't. He's a terribly clever brat and he has no affection for the government or marines. Two out of four kiddies, I'm afraid. You'll have to settle for it."
Tsuru looked at him, white and livid, but for the first time Doflamingo did not grin back. His temples frayed into loose string, disintegrating, and soon Tsuru's brows fell. She bowed her head, squeezing her eyes shut with a sigh. In the swimming darkness behind her lids, a golden-haired child asked for help tying together a stack of letters. Tsuru looked back up.
"Where was your mercy," she said, "He loved you with all his heart. He was your brother. How could you do it?"
Doflamingo stared at her.
"On a cliff, Tsuru-san."
The clone collapsed into strings. Broken segments fluttered to the ground around her and swirled off deck when the wind snatched them up. They climbed the breeze, fiercely, desperately, before spinning into the sea.)
xxx
"Is it 'cos of what the Archipelago's been saying?" Their voices were hushed. "About him?"
I picked up my malt. Realized I'd already drained it. I set it back down too hard.
"They're only rumors, you know."
But they're not.
They're not. I know it.
"Can't you explain then?" they said, dripping worry.
I couldn't though. Couldn't explain one fucking iota of any of it, because that would require me to understand Doflamingo, of which I never did.
xxx
(The willowy island of Rubeck surfaced in the curve of the spyglass. Sailors exchanged shouted instructions from the crow's nest and quarterdeck. A cadet noted that it was strange. Rubeck was reported to be barren.
Sengoku couldn't have cared less if he'd tried. The two bleached rocks of his fists were stiff at his sides as the ship passed Rubeck's shore. He had lost his composure quite a while ago.
Twenty-five minutes left on the Den Den's clock. Twenty-five on the dial inching by one merciless grain at a time. He'd reach Minion a quarter before dawn and Sengoku's heart dipped and leaped beneath his ribs like a despairing fish.
"Please," he said, a supplication towards nothing. Everything.
Swallow emerged on the east.)
xxx
(He woke with his heart and a scream and the withers of a name on his tongue.
"Cora-sa—"
A ceiling bashed into his skull and Law cried out, clutching his head. The darkness was so thick he couldn't make out his own knees. In a panic, Law raised his arms to beat the lid of the chest. He struck the coarse wood until his fists smarted, swears tumbling in his mouth as he heard waves slosh outside the keyhole. The air that flowed in was warmer than Minion's. Earth and citrus. Where was he?
Retracting his hands, Law's fingers scrambled along the lid's perimeter until he felt the rusted outline of the hinges and latch. Then he laid down, angled his foot to the weakest point and kicked as hard as he could.
The lid popped open and he shoved it backwards, filling his vision with the salt-sprayed sky. Law clambered out of the chest. Tufts of black spilled after him and when he glanced down, feathers blew past his knees.
Water surrounded him on all sides, stretching out forever. The boy gathered his ripped cloak and hurried to the cabin. It was as broken and empty as the rest of the vessel. He stared at the giant motionless wheel and the cracked screens. He raced onto the deck again.
There was a crust of land on the horizon now that he was standing at the stern. A silver-blue sheet of clouds encircled above it. The cage was a pearl in the seam of an oyster shell. Like he could just reach out and pinch it between his fingers.
Law breathed a small, petrified breath. How was he moving?
The answer didn't become clear until he glanced over the rail. A coil of Nagi Nagi threads were wrapped around the propeller. They glowed steadily, a smudge of blue, as they absorbed the sounds of the sea and pushed the vessel forward. Law bent over the rail and tried to reach for them blindly.
"Cora-san?"
The boat struck land. He yelped as the hull grinded into a sandy shore and scraped an elbow as he was flung off his feet. When he looked up, a towering jungle of trees spread in the pools of his eyes—burly and grand, older than any of the saplings he'd witnessed on Rubeck.
Then Law knew where he was.
Beyond the forests was a mountainside and from the beach he saw the rock shaped like a beak at the northernmost end—a pointed tip facing heavenward—and the ridged granite of folded wings disappearing into the foliage.
Out of the thicket of leaves, birds trilled to him softly.)
xxx
The wind grew stronger on the second steppe. It flushed over his body with fractals of ice, wracking his frame in trembles and aches. The acute sensation was startling. He certainly hadn't experienced any of this when he'd been wandering the mountain earlier. Funny the things you noticed on your second time.
He stepped onto a ledge. It was slick with ice and he stumbled, but kept his balance (not the clumsy one). He needed a moment to rise though.
A stream of wind dipped and scraped the top of his hair. It flooded through his pores, the curves of his sclera. It carved a place beneath his innards and gripped his organs tight. It was difficult to breathe.
It hurt.
Doflamingo coughed a few times. What are you doing? He squinted at the wreckage of the quarry town, which was more akin to a heap of debris now. They'd destroyed almost every edifice that'd been standing.
His brother always had packed more punch than he'd given himself credit for.
What do you hope to find?
He'd better appreciate this.
xxx
"'s cold, Doffy."
His brother gave a faint nod, watching the sunlight evaporate on the willow's bark. The bleeding cuts on his starved face were even more savage at an angle.
Rosinante was in the middle of measuring the jagged, hideous one across his forehead when the shades reappeared. Their emaciated heads loomed behind the cloud cover, expectant and unyielding. They beared down on his prostrated body.
Grass crinkled and blackened around his ears. The stench of winter and blood spread.
"Shit." Rosinante tried to shift around, icy sweat rolling from his hair. He couldn't move.
Time was almost up and he couldn't—
He was—
"Rosi." His brother appeared in his vision and blocked the clouds from his sight again. Blood webbed from his cuts, viscous as ink on parchment and he was no more human up close than the shades were, but Rosinante felt his pulse slowing. Somewhere among the terror was the warmth of familiarity, that old meaning of safety. Oh, a child's voice echoed in him, it's brother.
"You look worse than I do," Rosinante murmured after a while and Doffy didn't comment. He crossed his legs, careful to shield him from the clouds.
"Keep your eyes on me."
Rosinante didn't need to be told twice. His hand slid against Doffy's ragged sleeve and managed to clutch onto a worn corner of the fabric, miniscule and insubstantial between his fingertips. He held onto it shakily.
His brother regarded him with a glimmer of distress. A small bony hand flattened in the milkweeds.
"I still might come back, you know," he said, "I always did."
Rosinante smiled, a shallow listless curve. "I think things are a little different this time."
"Are they?"
"Why would you? I was a liar and a traitor. I ruined you. There's nothing left tethering us together."
In retrospect, Doffy must've also thought he'd spared his life. Maybe expected Rosinante to drag himself out of here on one of Barrels' dinghies, and be on his merry way. He wondered how many years would pass before his brother learned what became of him, if he ever would.
"Stop it."
The charred grass crunched as the child crushed the blades in his fist. Flakes of carbon dusted his knuckles. He looked aggravated, though that was really just a pretense for dismay and Rosinante shifted, hair sliding across his face.
"It's alright, Doffy. You've probably bled across half of Minion by now. This shouldn't be where you die." His brother should meet his end somewhere beneath the sun, somewhere the world could bear witness, whether it'd be upon a dais or a chopping block.
"How about you have some faith," Doffy said stiffly, "I'll come back."
"I just said you shouldn't."
"Wait for me."
Stubborn jackass. Rosinante sighed and struggled to adjust his position. Something was digging into his back. His face did soften though.
"...You know...about Trebol's joke..."
"Trebol is the last person in existence I want to discuss right now."
He made an immediate mistake in laughing. Hot pain stabbed through his chest, spreading and bursting like a firecracker in his shoulder. Rosinante croaked, air escaping in a thin rasp. He had to ride through the wave with his eyes squeezed tight.
By the time he opened them again, Doffy was simply watching him, shoulders slumped. Black blood glided over the tendons of his throat. A pale blue eye peeked over his right lens.
Rosinante breathed carefully, trying to calm the shuddering, before he continued.
"He said I was your cage. That I've chained you to the ground all your life. And that the moment I'm gone will be when you finally have your freedom."
Rosinante swallowed, the slick of oily bile re-gathering in his throat.
"I know how much all things want to be free, Doffy. Believe me." The sky grayed in his faded vision. "So consider yourself released. We were supposed to be brothers, not each other's burdens. I'm telling you it's alright."
The strings along the white willow's boughs snapped and there was a wooden moan as the massive tree leaned sideways. The trunk sickened to ash and the blossoms withered on the vines.
Doffy looked downtrodden and confused, like he didn't know what to do with these words Rosinante had presented him with. The cuts across his face spread.
"But...you want me to come back, don't you?" he said and a piece of his forehead chipped off and fell into the black grass. Rosinante's eyes widened only minutely.
"You follow your nature," he said and for the first time ever, the cut of those words had dulled, "And I'm not gonna hope for it. I can't believe it. I'm too tired. You understand."
"I do," the shadow said.
xxx
The stitches on his chest and shoulders blades popped on the third steppe. The seven on his torso stretched dangerously with each shift of his muscles. Doflamingo's mouth flattened.
He traveled through the rolling blue hills and found himself back in the clearing. Overheat had torn up the ground in great sinewy strips. The rest was pockmarked from grenades. Trees laid like spilled bones.
He bumped into them several times, despite pointedly moving around them. Seeing double then. And quite light-headed. Naturally, he supposed, with how much blood he must've lost by now.
He thought about his brother on that cliff. His cold gray skin, his stiff, suffocated body. Was that what was waiting for him up there? What was he going for then—
His legs gave out.
Doflamingo's eyes widened and he shot out his hand, planting it in the snow. There was a sound to his left, heavy like meat dragging on the ground. Doflamingo was still, before looking down at himself.
He stared at his left hand—the blue-violet cuticles ringed with cyanosis, the purplish-black of gangrene.
He looked away again.
xxx
(Twenty-three minutes to dawn, Senor Pink took out his last surviving cigarette. The stick was crumpled and damp from their fleeting stay in the naval brig, with a lingering taste of mildew and unwashed bodies. Pink lit up.
Near the cabin, Jora scrubbed the blood off Baby Five, sudsing her from elbow to fingertips, while Gladius and Machvise talked circles about returning to Minion, prodding a twitchy Diamante for input. Pica made a flat stool with his fruit and elevated Lao G's leg. He peered in Diamante's direction only once, trying to catch his eye, and then at the dripping bulk positioned at the stern with something like contempt. Also fear.
Trebol didn't notice him. His head was craned back in admiration.
"Look at it, Pink," he said, "The size of that thing. How far away are we even? How can we still see it? Imagine what'll happen once he unleashes such power on Dressrosa. Whole place would be ours in a day and a half, I bet. A night even."
Dressrosa? Pink had some recollection of that kingdom. They'd ported there once for all of six hours, before the Young Master was ordering them off again, agitated with the place. Trebol didn't honestly think he would oblige the idea of returning, did he? It was starting to seem like a real point of conflation for the man—his own desires with the Young Master's.
"We should head to Swallow until he comes back. There'll be a better angle with less reefs for us to—"
"Yes, yes." Trebol's oily robes stuck to the metal floor as he turned. "Not necessary though."
He held a rolled scroll in his hand, pleased as punch. Pink stared. His cigarette inched toward the filter and he perched it between his lips, attempting to process whether Trebol had just insinuated abandoning their captain.
"...What the fuck do you mean not—"
"We're leaving the triangle and lying low for a couple years." The scroll was waved. "Doffy's orders."
It disappeared into the recesses of Trebol's sleeve, the intricate knot swallowed like a butterfly down a gullet. Baby hadn't let any of them so much as touch that message, resolutely delivering it to Trebol alone.
"Behehe, questioning your executives again." Trebol tutted. "You know Doffy might not be in a good mood for a long while after this. I'd rethink all this newfound inquisitiveness if I was you."
Pink watched him coolly back, bonnet ruffling in the breeze.
He sighed through his nose, hands tucking into his pockets, before he nodded.
"If they are his orders then fine."
He turned for the cabin without waiting for Trebol's reaction, all too eager for different company. It'd be a while before they reached the main body of the North Blue again. He'd have to sit everyone down and come up with a plan until their captain could rejoin them. Pink took the quarter of a step, before Trebol called to him again.
"Ne, by the way, what do you suppose he's thinking?" The man was rubbing his chin when he glanced back again, reluctant. "If he knew we got taken, then surely he also knows Minion's about to get swarmed. It doesn't make sense that he didn't leave with Baby."
It was said with a note of genuine puzzlement. Pink's brow cocked. He twisted a loop in his necklace with his free hand, Gimlet's pacifier swinging along the end of Russian's bootlace.
None of it made sense. The Young Master was always reminding them to be realistic about their chances in a fight. He knew he was too injured to pick one with Sengoku and yet...
"I'm assumin' he still has business left on that island."
"Like what?"
Pink looked past Trebol's face. "He could be buryin' Corazon."
Blood was still blood, all things considered. Maybe the Young Master wouldn't have wished the marines to take his brother's body.
He always hated sharing his thoughts with Trebol.
The man burst out laughing and collapsed against the taffrail. Mucous slung down the bars in watery-gray strands.
"Ah, you might be onto something there actually." He shifted from one side to the other. "Burying him. Discarding him. The inconsequential carcass of that inconsequential failure. Ten years from now, do you wonder, will Doffy still care to recall his face?"
Pink stared at him, how his shoulders heaved up and down from the force of his mirth, loud enough that Machvise and Gladius halted in their bickering to glance across deck. The puff of cigarette smoke in his mouth spread in a rancid cloud.
"It's not funny, Trebol."
"Behe, says you." Trebol leaned against his cane, wiping a mock tear. "He thought he could win against nature, against the course of absolute destiny. That ridiculous fool with his delusional dreams. The gods laugh at him plenty."
Senor Pink didn't deem to reply again. Trebol scoffed upon catching his gaze.
"Oh never mind, you're just along for the ride. What's the point of saying any of this to you?" He turned to the ocean. "I promised my king long ago that he would bathe the world in flames. And not a thing left in creation will make a liar out of me twice."
There was a tug on his cuff link. Baby Five stared up at him, hair musked over her eyes. She was slightly hard to look at without her ribbon, a little feral-seeming. Pink dropped his cigarette and gestured her away.
When he strode into the cabin, Jora, Gladius and Machvise peered after him through the threshold. The coordinates the Young Master had written down belonged to a smaller hideout, several islands off from Spider Miles. He really meant it then. They were to disappear. Pink leaned back a moment, before reaching for the panel.
He ignored the alarm of the other members as he readjusted the throttle. The boat engine revved. It was as he took hold of the wheel that Pink glanced down at Baby again. Her head was turned back to the cage. She wasn't crying or anything, but he patted her head. It wasn't acknowledged.
The Family fled into the Grand Line.
At the stern, the Club executive spread his arms wide, manacles clinking.
"Make it a swift return, Doffy! The world awaits!"
"God," Gladius muttered, "What's the matter with Trebol lately?")
xxx
Rosi is far away. Far, far, far away.
Rosi is already dead.
No.
He is.
Maybe.
Maybe but if there's even a chance...
There's no one left up there. Nothing holding on for you. You'll merely perish.
What a disgraceful way.
xxx
("Vice Admiral, let me go after them." Mio brushed off Hoshi's hand and straightened, heels clicking. "It's my fault. I brought that boy onboard. I should've known there'd be a trap."
"Mio," Hoshi warned.
"They haven't left the triangle yet, I can still catch them if I take one of the skiffs. Let me go, ma'am, I can—" She had to suppress a wince, stopping herself from reflexively touching the bandages around her throat.
"Take it easy," Hoshi muttered, "You should sit down."
Mio smacked his hand off this time with impatience. "With all due respect Captain, please piss off—"
"We're not going after them, Mio." They whipped to her, Mio's mouth already parted half-way to argue and Tsuru shook her head. "Baby Five's artillery power outsizes every weapon we pack on the skiffs. You are injured, unsteady, unfocused. She will sink you easily."
Blush warmed Mio's face. She managed to button her lip though, despite her bristled frame. Tsuru let the stiff salute slide. They watched in silence as two corpsmen finished a more thorough sweep of young Diez Drake, before wheeling him below deck to the medical bay. Vice Admiral Vergo was already situated there. She'd have several questions waiting for that man, if he survived. Why he was in North Blue, for starters.
"Ma'am," a cadet ventured, "how should we respond to the Fleet Admiral?" She held a tray with a resting transponder snail, its screen lit with a message from Sengoku's ship. Tsuru's eyes fell. She picked up the creature and inputted a short reply. This was no way to tell him. He would need her there in person.
"Turn us back to Minion," she said to them, "We'll be disembarking soon."
"Onto Minion?" Hoshi blinked across the sea. "But what about the cage?"
"It won't be there for much longer." Doflamingo would certainly be gone by the time they reached the island. He'd take his crew into hiding and likely not surface again until his warlord position was formalized. That ill-fated child...for a moment she'd almost had hope in him. She had misjudged.
"The fallout from this," Mio said quietly as the frigate turned, "At least let me take the blame."
"You are absurd," Tsuru said and set the Den Den back in its tray.
A crash resounded in the distance.)
xxx
(Swallow's sand sunk beneath his feet. Law fought to regain his position, hands against the marine boat. It was immovable, but he struggled and struggled, trying to push it back into the tide. Sand slopped into his socks.
Finally, Law pressed his forehead to the metal, spent and panting for breath. His chin was wrinkled and his nose was running. Droplets of heat splashed against his forearm.
He remembered lying crumpled on the floor of that chest, staring through the keyhole as the boat had pushed to open water, that lanky singular form on the rocky bank. There was a hand ruffling his hair and tugging down his hat. He was getting placed in the chest, being hugged a long time, he was watching the last person who loved him walk back into a white and endless cage.
Law drifted to the stern of the boat and stared at the Nagi Nagi threads. They were only half-submerged now, but continued pushing the boat with mindless energy.
The boy squatted and collected them in his hands. Seawater numbed his skin. The threads glowed and dripped blue between his fingers. Law hugged them.
The crash from Minion was a ruffle in the night.)
xxx
You know, there's been actual studies done on Doflamingo. They have these academy classes, I'm told, at the Sabaody headquarters. Armchair columns in rags, the tell-all covers.
He was a subject of fascination to the masses. Me too, for some time. He was a lot of things in general to a kid like me then, given how old I was, where I'd come from. He'd meant something to me. As my captain, and my mentor and...well, all the rest of it. I'm not going to insult your intelligence pretending otherwise.
But I'll tell you what I think now.
People to him just weren't...in his mind, people were like these funny little toys. He enjoyed them and collected them and might've even appreciated them, but remembering it now, there was always this point. This threshold he never stepped over. This haze he couldn't see through. Cora-san seemed to have thought he tried.
Maybe he did. What the fuck does that matter.
xxx
He was on the fourth steppe when it began to snow.
At the clearing in front of an ancient chalet, Doflamingo gripped a wooden post hard enough to splinter it. He dragged himself up, teeth bared to reveal bloodless gums, peeled back from equally bloodless lips. His wounds gaped. Red coin-sized puddles tailed behind him for numberless winding kilometers.
He limped past the chalet. The two fallen cage bars had demolished the roof, part of the rock shelf and an entire line of trees. More high-pitched grating reverberated louder from overhead as well. It set his hair on end—an unpleasant and surreal experience. These strings were no longer a part of him. No longer recognized him. When they fell, they would land wherever they pleased.
He glowered at such disobedience, before focusing forward again. One final incline lay ahead of him. It led up to the cliff where he had left his little brother. He was almost, he would…
You'll what, hm?
Whispers floated out of the cracks in the earth. Tendrils of smoke carrying rows of jagged teeth.
He's already dead
You saw him lying there
Heart failure
You murdered your own brother
The falling snow flowed with the wind, gentle as a curtain.
Do you not understand? it said, You're free
His vision was blurring. Doflamingo shook his head to clear it.
The incline seemed to shrink the more he tried to move towards it. It stretched beyond miles, as though extending towards the heavens themselves.
Where are you going, he thought, how am I to follow you that way?
xxx
"This is goodbye, Rosi." The shadow's face was more fractures than flesh. His collarbone and chest had split down the middle, unveiling a cavernous hole. Rosinante nodded. The tears had formed against his will, clinging to the corners of his eyes. After an immense moment, he released the shadow's sleeve. He wasn't afraid.
"Goodbye, brother," he said weakly, this was what he'd asked for, wasn't it? He didn't want his brother to die here. He loved him. He didn't want him to die here, this was no place to die. He'd already put on a tough face. Talked a big game. It'd be selfish. He wasn't afraid.
Rosinante repeated this to himself over and over again. Doffy sat back. In the sky, the arms of the shades elongated and crept out from behind his brother's form, steadily diminishing him. Rosinante could not stop looking at those arms. Rubeck crumbled. The white willow dusted. The world receded.
And Rosinante was afraid.
"Come back," he said, a choked sob stripped bare, "Please come back, please, I'm not ready—not alone—"
A hand touched his temple. "Think of somewhere warm," the shadow said, "Somewhere good." He gave him one final defeated look. "I'm sorry."
And then he broke apart. There was no other way to describe it. Just shattered as though he'd been composed of nothing but fabric and glass. A pile of shards, dripping and black-bright, no trace of his brother left in them.
The shades surged forward, taloned hands out-stretched, and Rosinante didn't have time to scream.
He gasped awake on Minion Island with snow twirling down on him in lazy spirals, flakes melting in his hair. The silence shivered with his hoarse, desperate wheezes, veins in his left eye bursting.
He heard his mother even as his body began to give in, collapsing like a faulty net. She was abrupt and frank, as she had been that day on the sill twenty years ago.
Your brother was born a little broken. Without you, he will never find his way out the dark again. He will follow the path fated to him.
Pray for the world, my heart.
xxx
The voices thundered around his feet. They showered on him from above and he could not keep all of them straight. Could barely discern where one of the words ended and another began.
Escape now….there's time...you could still make it...you've survived banishment and beatings and death over and over again...you've clung to life with all your might…why let it amount to nothing…
Look up there...you can fly out...Look...
Doflamingo, finally just to silence them, did.
A gap in the cage beamed down at him, left behind from the two fallen bars. A clear hole of stars among the snow clouds. An existence without Rosi.
Rosi, who was dead anyway.
He staggered forward.
This world's taken everything from you now...It's always been because of this world
This disgusting, putrid place
These insolent slaves
He had to stop to rest against a tree, breaths so raw that each pull was like a crushed bottle in his throat. Pain had finally punched a sizzling hole through the steel trap of his mind and now immolated every cell, every molecule. He had one thousand arrows in his eye. He was slowly turning to dust.
It hurt so horribly. So ridiculously. Why was this happening to him?
Burn it all
Until Mariejois tumbles down
Buried in the sea
He looked back and suddenly couldn't find the incline anymore. Doflamingo blinked and glanced behind him, around him. Snow fluttered at his feet. Everywhere was sweeping darkness, the chalet and the mountain, the path to his brother gone.
Only that hole in the cage remained.
You are a king
A god
Doflamingo stopped. He lifted his head again, up to the stars. Snow landed on his face, dripping past an empty blind eye.
You could live
xxx
(At quarter to dawn, the ship of Fleet Admiral Sengoku reached the southern island of the North Blue triangle. The young cadets formed a gaggle at the starboard side, astonished by the breadth and height of the cage.
A second later and they were shoved aside by an old lieutenant. Barely in time as the Fleet Admiral charged past them and leapt off the bow, his arms at seven times their normal size and encased in blinding yellow light. His hat went flying, his white coat fell off his shoulders.
In a voice torn open, he yelled an unfamiliar name that shook through the waves and the coastline.)
xxx
They wanted to ask about Cora-san.
I could tell and I waited, but the question never came. Never would have either of course. They were decent souls with thoughtful hearts. I retied the knot of my nodachi. It was so quiet you could hear Kikoku strumming at my waist. She swam gleefully in the river of my pulse.
I've got too much to say about Cora-san and also nothing at all. He's been dead ten years now and I still don't know how to reconcile all this shit he's left inside of me.
But he was a good person. Messed up, sure, and probably depressed, but he had a lot of love in him. He thought everything deserved its chance.
He was often determined to save people not worth saving.
Why was he such a fool? I'll never know.
xxx
(Sengoku's fists glowed with piercing holy light.
He saw a face woven through the stars—those crimson glasses, the eternal grin. I'll kill him, Sengoku thought then, with reverently soft ease, because the truth was you were what you were. It was your shadow and you could not leave it, no matter how far you tried to run.
He swung towards the side of the cage.
And the cage broke first.)
xxx
(In a few years time, the young cadets of Sengoku's ship would be dazzling new recruits with retellings of the sight—the Heavenly Demon's Ito Ito no Mi, how it folded inward, all the bars snapping, before their Fleet Admiral could even touch it, crashing into the earth and shallows.
With dining hall cartons and bottles, they would reconstruct the hurried traipse onto the frozen lands of Minion Island, the corpses of the decimated Barrels Pirates strewn across the isle like litter, forty-three of them decapitated. How they had to cut down Diez Barrels from his lofty grave. How they found bodies even on the neighboring Rubeck, one knifed and the other, upon autopsy, with a heart that had been crushed into a johnny cake.
They would say Minion had soaked in so much blood that night that its snow would forever come down pink.
So it went.)
xxx
Five minutes past quarter to dawn, the Nagi Nagi fruit ceased to be.
Its threads dissolved in his palms and left him, blue dust in the wind. A freed Minion sat faded on the horizon.
Feathers floated past him and one caught on the collar of his cloak. The boy didn't notice it. The black tip wavered against his chin. It dabbed his pale, wet face. He didn't notice that either.
There was nothing left in the world for him then. No sky. No Swallow. No sea. No Trafalgar D. Water Law.
He was only his own heartbeat.
His own cold and shattered grief.