Author's note: Fair warning that there is a substantial amount of cursing in this story and that it only gets worse with each chapter. I know I include a lot of profanity in my fics, but this one especially. So if that's something that bothers you, just be aware and maybe click off. (Because it really does only get worse)


"Rise and shine, Sleeping Beauty!"

Rosinante groaned and drew his pillow away from his face. His mouth was dry and tasted of old cigarettes, his chest was absolutely on fire, and there was a horrible kink in his lower back from where he passed out the night before with his legs still draped over the side of the bed.

"Get up you brat before I shove my foot so far up your ass that you'll be tasting my toes 'til Christmas!"

Rosinante yelped and sat up, just about throwing his neck out in the process.

Someone was in the apartment.

Shit, shit, shit!

Not good. Not good at all.

He must have forgotten to lock his door again and assuming he made it out of this alive, Sengoku was going to absolutely slaughter him for being so forgetful.

Rosinante blinked a dozen times until the four white walls of his bedroom came into focus and waited with bated breath for the inevitable moment when a head of blond hair accompanied by a fluffy pink coat came into focus.

Only it didn't.

"Garp," Rosinante croaked.

The familiar face of Monkey D. Garp came into focus, all silver hair, massive shoulders, with a scar across his eyebrow to match.

He had his arms crossed and grinned from ear to ear at where Rosinante was still sitting in bed and staring at the man, completely and utterly dumbfounded.

"You didn't lock the door, Punk. What if that crazy brother of yours found you? You'd be ripped into so many pieces that we wouldn't be able to identify the remains!" he barked.

Rosinante rubbed a hand over his sweaty face and gave a heavy sigh.

"Right," he said breathlessly. "Sorry."

"Don't apologize to me. If you're gonna apologize to someone for being a careless fool then it'd better be Sengoku," he said.

Garp's eyes fell away from Rosinante's face and instead flickered across the scarred and mottled flesh of his chest and abdomen. Rosinante didn't bother looking down because he knew it was bad.

Thirteen years ago his torso had been stamped with a constellation of deep purple and red bruises, all of which had been accompanied by harsh streaks of burst blood vessels, ripped, shiny flesh that was healing, and deep scars from countless incisions where a cardiothoracic surgeon frantically tried to save his life.

Over a decade later and the constellation of bruises may have disappeared, but the scars did not and his body was still a mess of uneven, warped, pale skin.

Garp's brows knit together and his lips pursed into a tight line. There was no effort on his part to try and hide the scrutiny in his gaze and Rosinante sighed.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, sitting up straighter and cracking his back in the process.

"What am I doing here?" Garp repeated. He narrowed his eyes and reached forward to smack Rosinante upside the head hard enough to give him an instant headache. "I'm here to escort you to the office, you little punk!"

Rosinante winced and rubbed the back of his head. It was a monumental task to bite back the comment on the top of his lungs that desperately wanted to remind Garp he was not a little punk anymore and was, in fact, one year shy of goddamn forty, but he managed.

"What time is it?"

"Time for you to get your ass up and get ready! Let's go! I've seen dead grandmothers move faster than you!"

Realization dawned on him, but Rosinante glowered and snapped into action anyway, years of FBI training taking over for him.

He shouldered his way around Garp and headed toward the bathroom.

The inner-city apartment he'd been forced into was small. It was only a few hundred square feet of creaky wooden floors, smoked stained ceilings, and ugly beige walls.

There was hardly any separation between rooms either. The bedroom was separated from the living room by a narrow doorway he could hardly fit through, the bathroom was adjacent to the bedroom, and the kitchen wasn't separated from the living room at all. It was simply an extension that had different flooring.

Rosinante could probably cross the entire apartment in only five or six strides.

And it took him even fewer strides to reach the bathroom and lock himself inside.

That phantom sting was in his chest again, a sharp reminder of what was to come. He winced and rubbed his sternum as he pressed his bare back into the cool wooden door.

It wasn't real. It wasn't wasn't—

"Let's go!" Garp shouted from the other side of the door.

Rosinante sucked a sharp breath in through his nose and straightened up. He made his way over to the shower, ducked into the stream of lukewarm water, washing his body, face, and hair as quickly as he could without slipping and snapping his damn neck.

Only two more days until it was over. All the waiting, looking over his shoulder, holding his breath and ducking into alleyways when he thought he saw glimpses of a blond man in pink clothing.

Just two more days.

He could do anything for two days.

When he was done with his shower he went through the motions of towel drying his hair and getting dressed, only stumbling once when he stepped into his pants, and finally reemerged in a pair of light slacks and a button-down.

"It's about damn time," Garp grunted from where he sat on the small brown sofa in the middle of Rosinante's living room (if you could even call it that).

"Yeah, yeah," Rosinante said. He brushed his blond hair away from his eyes, stepped into a pair of shoes by the front door, and nodded at Garp. "Let's go. The sooner this is over the better."

They got to Garp's car (which was parked illegally on Rosinante's street by the way, not that the old man seemed to give a shit) and Rosinante wasted no time in digging out his cigarettes and lighting up the instant his hands started to tremble.

"Should you really be smoking with the state of your lungs?" Garp asked, abruptly pulling out and cutting someone off behind him.

Rosinante looked in the side mirror at where the driver of the car behind them honked and flipped their middle finger.

"My lungs are fine," Rosinante said. He cracked the window and watched the trails of white smoke escape the vehicle.

"Oh yeah? Funny. For some reason, I distinctly remember several surgeons telling you that your lungs might never recover and…"

The trembling in Rosinante's hands wouldn't stop.

He bit down on his cigarette and clenched them in and out of fists multiple times. That usually helped when the nicotine didn't.

He unfurled his fingers and watched as his scarred hands continued to shake.

He took a hard drag of the cigarette and curled his fingers back in towards his palms.

"Hey! You listenin' to me?" Garp pressed.

"Huh?" Rosinante muttered, looking away from his hands.

Garp shot him a look from the driver's seat. Corner of his lips tugged down, shoulders pulled taut, and brows knit together in… What was that? Sympathy? No, that wasn't quite right. Maybe it was concern or pity.

Probably pity.

"You're gonna burn yourself," Garp said.

There was a softness in the man's voice, one that blunted its usual harsh edge and one that, for some reason, made Rosinante hate himself just a little bit more.

Despite Garp's warning, Rosinante failed to notice the accumulating ash at the end of his cigarette. He'd been too caught up in trying to decipher that look on Garp's face and the quivering in his hands.

And by the time he thought to pull the cigarette from his mouth and tap the excess ash off, it was too late and sure enough, the smoking pile of embers landed right on top of his left hand, searing it with a glow.

"Goddamnit!"


16 years ago

"Idiot," Doffy muttered under his breath after Rosinante just burned himself yet again on the ash from his cigarette. Rosinante cursed and shook the embers from his hand in a fit. He then rubbed the burned patch of skin against his chest.

The sound of giggles from the other end of the card room filled his ears. He shot a glance down the dimly lit room to see Baby 5 and Buffalo attempting to stifle their snickers as they served drinks to Trebol and Diamante.

It had been just over one year since Rosinante joined the Donquixote Family as an undercover agent and he still had a hard time accepting his brother's decision to bring children into the Family.

Even Sengoku had been surprised when Rosinante told him. Though the only guidance on the subject the man offered was to do everything in his power to prevent the little brats from staying.

And Rosinante tried, okay? He really did.

As much as it pained him, he shouted at the kids, glared daggers at them, kicked them when they were in his way, and went as far as to beat them when they were training. He did all he could to make their lives absolute living hells so they would leave before it was too late.

And a lot of good it did him.

All it did was earn him the reputation as someone who despised kids, and Rosinante was fairly certain Trebol noticed and that was the reason why he brought even more children into the hellscape that was the Family.

Because not long after Baby 5 and Buffalo showed up, an actual fucking baby was brought to the clubhouse.

Dellinger. A little thing that wasn't even a year old with a head of straw blond hair and a bottle in his mouth.

And Sengoku be damned because Rosinante couldn't beat a fucking baby, okay? He wouldn't. It wasn't the kid's fault he ended up there.

Beating Baby 5 and Buffalo had been hard enough. Buffalo didn't usually tear up until the beating ended and he was out of sight. But Baby 5 cried the entire time and apologized and promised to make herself more useful so she wouldn't get beat again.

It made Rosinante sick to his stomach. So much so that after the first time, he drank such an excessive amount of bourbon that he puked his guts up into the powder room sink at 3 am.

So when Doffy came back to the clubhouse one day with little baby Dellinger in tow? He just gritted his teeth and didn't say a word on the matter.

Besides, there had been no point in giving Trebol more ammunition. The sick fuck already had more than enough of that to use against him.

"Corazón," Doffy said. "I have a job for you."

Rosinante's eyes flickered to his brother's glasses.

"All right," he said after a sip of bourbon, pain in his hand forgotten.

"Ibusu down South, the one that moves the guns. You know him, right?" Doffy asked. Rosinante indicated that he did and let his brother continue. "Well, he supposedly lost an entire fucking shipment."

Rosinante's eyes caught the way Doffy's fingers clenched around his wine glass.

"How?" he asked, crossing one leg over the other.

"He says that the cops caught him but I have sources that say otherwise, sources that say he's stealing from me."

Rosinante tucked his face into the rim of his glass and continued to sip on his bourbon.

"As I'm sure you know, that's a problem. So I need you to go see him. Make sure everything is in order and make sure he understands the nature of our agreement," Doffy took a sip of wine and his long fingers curled into the armrest of his chair. "Make sure he understands what exactly he's done wrong."

Ah.

So Doffy was pissed off and wanted Rosinante to go be the muscle.

Not the first time he was given such an assignment. Certainly not the last either.

He was fine with it, mainly because there was some sick part of Rosinante that liked the fighting. He tried to tell himself it was because the fights made him feel like all that FBI training wasn't going to waste, made him feel like he was actually using those skills, and he swore that it wasn't because there was some burning anger deep in his gut.

Tried to at least.

But for now, he could live with being the muscle.

And that was stupid, and Rosinante knew that was stupid because "being the muscle" was a slippery slope and soon his brother would expect him to come home with more than just blood on his knuckles.

Soon, his brother would expect him to come home with blood on his hands.

Rosinante took another sip of bourbon and nodded along with his brother's words. He then cleared his throat and said a calm, "I can do that."

That trademark nasty grin spread across his brother's face and he inclined his head just enough that the muted light from the lamp reflected off his glasses.

"Perfect. Oh, and make sure he knows there are consequences."

Rosinante nodded again and chose to not say anything because he knew his brother wasn't quite finished. There would be one more line. There was always one more line. One more comment to add to the gravitas of the situation because that was Doffy's style. Bloodthirsty and over the top.

"And make sure those consequences are paid."

Rosinante did.

He traveled down South where Ibusu conducted his business out of a warehouse converted into a garage and got right to the point. The man was obviously surprised to see an executive of the Donquixote Family and tried his best to hide it, though he wasn't very good at it.

"You look so much like Joker, what with your fair coloring and how tall you both are," Ibusu remarked with a smile as sweat beaded on his forehead. "I don't suppose you two are related. Are you, Corazón?"

Rosinante didn't answer him. If Ibusu couldn't put two and two together then that was his problem.

"Will Señor Pink be joining us? He's usually the one who comes to pick up the goods," Ibusu asked when Rosinante just stared at him.

Rosinante didn't take his eyes off Ibusu. He put a cigarette to his lips and took his time lighting it, carefully wrapping himself in the cloak of the persona that was Corazón and abandoning Rosinante.

"No," he drawled.

Ibusu paled.

Corazón breathed in smoke and looked around the warehouse-made-garage with an appreciative gesture of his hand.

"Nice place you got," he said.

A bead of sweat slid down Ibusu's temple and dripped off his chin.

"Thank you. Joker helped convert the space himself."

Corazón just smirked. He took lazy strides around the space, outwardly admiring the high ceilings, the concrete floor, and some of the cars that were parked within it.

There was a brand new Cadillac Escalade that caught his eye. A black one with sparkling rims that shined in the overhead white lights.

Corazón leaned his back against the driver's door and nodded at Ibusu.

"Tell me about this run in you had with the cops," he said.

Ibusu cleared his throat and his eyes flashed over the Escalade Corazón leaned against.

"Which one?"

"The one that ended with an entire shipment of guns being confiscated," Corazón deadpanned, smirk immediately fading into a cold stare.

He listened as Ibusu strung some rehearsed story together. He feigned interest at first, but when the man stumbled over his words and started backtracking about how the reason he wasn't arrested was because the cops "only wanted the guns and not the transporters", he tuned out the rest of the frantic explanation and pushed himself away from the Escalade.

He flicked cigarette ash onto the hood of the car as Ibusu dug himself a deeper hole. He then casually walked over to a standing red toolbox against the wall and dug through the drawers until he found a monkey wrench.

"Corazón, um. What are you—"

Corazón calmly walked right back to the Escalade, pulled the arm with the monkey wrench over his shoulder and brought it down so the wrench went straight into the car's windshield.

The entire thing shattered, cracks splintering out in spiderwebs from the place of impact all the way over to the passenger's side.

When Corazón pulled the wrench out, chunks of glass came out with it. They glimmered in the light and tumbled down the front of the windshield.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing!" Ibusu shouted, face ashen and eyes the size of coins.

"Stop bullshittin' me," Corazón said with his cigarette between his teeth. He pointed the wrench at Ibusu and said, "you stole those guns from Joker."

He watched Ibusu's Adam's apple bob as he swallowed.

"I wouldn't… I would never steal from Joker," he stammered.

Corazón's eyebrows arched.

"You know what happens to people who get on his bad side, don't you?"

He could see the exact moment the gravity of the situation dawned on Ibusu. Another bead of sweat dripped off the man's chin, he licked his chapped lips, and his pupils dilated until the irises disappeared completely.

"If you could just give me a second chance. I swear I won't—"

Corazón didn't give him a chance to finish his sentence. He strolled right up to him, pulled his arm back a second time, and swung the wrench down so it connected with the side of Ibusu's left knee.

A yelp escaped the back of his throat, and he crumpled into a ball on the floor while he twitched in pain.

Corazón turned away just long enough to throw the wrench back at the Escalade and watch it shatter the driver's window. He then turned back to Ibusu and gripped his collar in his scarred hands.

"You stole from Joker and then you lied to me when I asked about it. You're gonna have to pay for that," he said in a low voice. Cigarette ash and flecks of spit flew in Ibusu's horrified face and the man whimpered.

"Please—"

Corazón didn't let him finish.

He pulled one hand back into a fist and started whaling on him.

Bone connected with flesh and cartilage. Blood coated his knuckles and made the skin slick. Cries for mercy echoed from the ceiling.

Corazón only saw a haze of red with each swing, his vision blurred while he acted on some primal instinct.

And then his cigarette fell from between his teeth and it was over.

Ibusu was a half-conscious, whimpering mess beneath him and the job was done.

Corazón straightened up and wiped something wet from his cheek with the back of his hand.

"Joker is happy to give you another chance after today's lesson. Understood?" he asked, though the voice sounded foreign to him. Almost sounded like it came from someone else's throat.

Ibusu made some sort of gasp or moan or cry, but he managed to give a weak nod before he rested his head back on the floor.

And just like that, the job was done and Rosinante stripped away the Corazón persona and took brisk steps out of the garage.

There was a metallic taste on his tongue, something sharp that reminded him of copper.

It made him wince, so he put a fresh cigarette between his lips and smoked an entire pack on his way back to the Donquixote Family clubhouse.

It was less than a day's drive back, but it was well after dark when he arrived and by then, the pain in Rosinante's bruised knuckles started to register and there was an overwhelming desire to shower so he could rid himself of the blood. He also desperately wanted to brush his damn teeth so he wouldn't have to endure the taste of metal and nicotine on his tongue any longer.

So yeah. It was safe to say he was in a piss poor mood when he arrived at the clubhouse.

"Move it, Brat," Rosinante grunted as he gave Buffalo a half-hearted kick in the ribs when he greeted him at the door.

"Cora is back!" a child's voice—Baby 5's voice—announced loud enough that the entire fucking Family probably heard it.

A headache appeared in his temples and he was pretty sure he actually growled when someone called his name from the card room.

Unfortunately, Rosinante failed to identify who exactly called for him, and on the off chance that it was Doffy, he had to go. It wasn't like he could ignore his brother without risk of great bodily harm.

He cursed under his breath and lit up another cigarette, sauntering down the hall into the card room.

"What?" he snapped between breaths of tobacco.

The card room was filled with too many fucking people. Doffy, Trebol, Diamante, Pica, Jora, all the fucking kids, and anyone else with a goddamn pulse. The card room was big enough. It was wide and long and filled with enough couches and tables and other necessities, but it felt cramped with all the bodies filling the space.

He heard a chorus of laughter from the higher-ups and Rosinante took such a harsh drag from his cigarette that he had half the mind to think he already burned the thing down to the filter.

"I told you to teach the guy a lesson, Corazón. Not kill him," Doffy said with amused laughter. When he laughed, everyone did.

Everyone except Rosinante.

"I handled it," was all Rosinante grunted, sucking on his cigarette fast enough to leave him only moments away from needing a fresh one.

"I can see that," Doffy said. He grinned and waved Rosinante forward.

Oh yeah. He definitely needed that second cigarette.

Only when he reached for it, he found that his box was empty.

"Fuck," he hissed as he walked deeper into the room.

"Baby 5, get Corazón a cigarette," Doffy said.

At the sound of an order, the little girl's entire disposition lifted and she grinned from ear to ear, damn near bouncing up and down on her way out.

Rosinante collapsed on the velvet chaise beside Doffy and sucked on his cigarette until there was nothing left to burn and the embers fell to the floor in rapid succession.

"Don't set my clubhouse on fire," Doffy remarked. His hand shot out and plucked the cigarette filter right from Rosinante's lips.

Rosinante just looked at his brother and proceeded to grind his foot into the embers that charred the floor.

"What do you need?" he asked. He ignored everyone else in the room and focused only on his brother.

"I've got another job for you," Doffy started.

A small figure with a head of black hair then materialized in Rosinante's peripheral vision and he looked down at Baby 5.

She had a great big smile on her face, one that could light up the whole clubhouse.

It broke his heart.

"Here you go, Cora!" she said. She held up a silver platter with a cigarette, ashtray, and lighter on it. And she was positively giddy with delight.

He wanted to pat her on the head or straighten the ribbon in her hair. He wanted to thank her with a kind smile. He wanted to give her at least some of the parental affection she so obviously craved.

But he couldn't.

He couldn't do something that encouraged her to stay.

So instead, he shot her a glare that had her shrinking back from him with eyes that widened in fear once he snatched everything from the tray.

He looked away from her, intending on giving Doffy his undivided attention but immediately lost focus when his eyes landed on a new, unfamiliar figure.

A small thing like Baby 5.

A sickly thin kid with a white hat and hollow eyes.

Rosinante couldn't help it when he scoffed and looked back at his brother.

"What the fuck is it with all the goddamn kids, Doffy? What is this? A fucking daycare? A fucking orphanage? Are we just taking in any fucking kid that looks in our direction?" he demanded. He looked back at the kid standing against the wall with Baby 5 and Buffalo. "You think this is fun, Brat? Get the fuck out of here before I throw you out myself!"

There was another chorus of laughter from Doffy and his stupid fucking followers, and Rosinante saw red again.

"Relax!" Doffy said with a grin that Rosinante could hear. He chuckled and reached an arm out, gesturing for the kid to join them.

He did, although it was clearly the last thing he wanted to do.

The boy stood beside Doffy, just beneath the standing lamp that cast a warm light on him and filled the empty space above his head with dust specks.

"This here is Law. He's going to be particularly useful to us one day. Why don't you tell Corazón what you told me?"

There was a beat of hesitation. And then, "…I want to kill them all. Everyone. Towns, houses, people. I hate them all."

Rosinante stared at the kid, cigarette forgotten at the hateful words.

He was too skinny and his eyes were so, so tired. Too tired for a child's.

But it wasn't the kid's eyes that grabbed the bulk of Rosinante's attention. It was the pale blotches that peppered his arms and top of his chest. They were clearly from some sort of disease, and judging from the brat's complete and utter lack of any body fat at all, it was wreaking absolute havoc on his system.

Wow.

His brother, in all his useless fucking wisdom, brought a sick, dying child into the Family all because he was filled with the same type of rage and hatred that filled Doffy at that age? All because he shared a rage that Doffy still harbored as an adult?

His brother really was a monster, wasn't he?

The dust specks floated around Law's head while they sized each other up and that was when Rosinante decided he had enough for one night because he was too goddamn close to snapping and ruining everything.

"I'm going to take a shower," Rosinante deadpanned.

"Corazón, come on now," Doffy said with a chuckle.

Rosinante decided that Doffy was in a good enough mood that he could get away with ignoring him, so he went to make his exit.

But not before his hand shot out to give Law a forceful shove in the center of his chest, a shove that resulted in the kid stumbling backward into the lamp and falling to the floor, taking the lamp with him and shattering the lightbulb.

More laughter.

Rosinante ignored the way it rang in his ears and headed straight for the showers to wash the blood from his knuckles.


Author's note:

I'm trying something new with the italics. I think it was too much to italicize the entire flashbacks (especially because they get increasingly longer).

Drop any and all feedback with a review please and thank you!