frater - "brother"
Rosinante asked a lot from his brother when they were children. He had only a basic comprehension then that the things he asked for should not have been considered a lot—that it would not have been a lot for anyone else, be it their parents or himself or most people of the world.
It was only that Doffy was not like most people. He was not like their parents and he most certainly was not like Rosinante.
He used to imagine a hole inside Doffy somewhere, one just large enough for a vital piece to have fallen out. So his brother could look and speak and act like any other person, even while his blood blackened, his eyes shriveled to dust and his mind ticked to a careful, reptilian beat.
Rosinante must've spent half his childhood trying to find that missing piece of Doffy's. He had scoured the plains of his big brother's heart for that glimpse of color, that flash of affection and mercy.
(Doffy, please)
Let the bird go.
We're okay now.
No, no, don't talk to them. Don't talk to him.
(Please, Doffy)
Can't you do this for me?
In hindsight, maybe it was worse that Doffy tried. Whether it was from instinct or obligation, his brother had always tried and tried and tried to make him happy, even if his ideas left something to be desired.
And Rosinante was soft. Rosinante was weak. He couldn't turn away. Couldn't do it. Never been able to.
It's why he's still here to this day, wandering through that thick and treacherous darkness, screaming his brother's name.
xxx
Rosi did not smile anymore.
There was no brightness in his eyes. He's a jumble of bruises and scrapes and sullen indifference that ill-matched the softness of his memory. Doflamingo took him aboard regardless, cleaning him up, feeding him, getting him into some decent clothes.
"What happened to you?"
No reply. There were new scars along the back of his neck and shoulders, slicing across the flat blade of the bones. Staring at it made Doflamingo's eye twinge. His heart was drumming, but he couldn't understand why.
His first blank thought was to shake Rosi until he said something. His second was to beat him black and blue for leaving.
Neither of these seemed advisable.
Diamante and Pica couldn't figure out how he was even here. They only stopped trying to conjure theories when Doflamingo told them quite plainly to shut the fuck up. At least Trebol was silent, though he hovered near Doflamingo's quarters like an overgrown fly even after the door was slammed in his face.
"I thought you were dead," Doflamingo said softly, as he dabbed ointment on the little cuts his brother had accumulated while trying to follow him below deck. Their knees were an inch apart and even though they were hundreds of miles out to sea and surrounded by the shimmer of the captain's cabin, the past breathed between them like a living thing.
He's certain Rosi felt it too, because once he's finished, his little brother flinched away, the long hard body caging inward. Doflamingo let him be.
He couldn't get over the fact that Rosi wasn't tiny anymore. That he had muscle now. That he had scars.
Nothing like the eight year old boy he'd been seeing on loop for almost six and a half years.
His head was starting to hurt.
Doflamingo walked over to his desk and took a swig of wine.
"You know I searched years for you," he said, into the still air, "I can't believe you survived."
The bed groaned as Rosi stood and walked up next to him, shoulders aligned. He was staring at Caesar's wine bottle and picked it up slowly.
"Ah, I wouldn't recommend that," Doflamingo cautioned, "Tastes like shit."
Rosi gave him a very flat look. Rosi did. This was surreal. Doflamingo thought he'd been getting better, but maybe he'd just snapped completely instead. Maybe this was the grandest, most elaborate hallucination his brain had doled out yet.
God, his head hurt.
With a wince, Doflamingo rubbed at a temple and turned his face to the shadows on reflex. He pushed up his glasses and massaged the knot of pain thrumming between his brows. It didn't do much. A migraine was coming.
"A room will be prepared for you," he said, "And then you can decide tomorrow what your next step will be."
He didn't say, Stay with me.
He didn't say, Don't leave.
A hand stopped him before he could replace his glasses again. Somehow, Rosi had gotten in front of him and nudged him back into the light.
Doflamingo grimaced in pain, squinting slightly while his vision adjusted. The right eye stung and was strangely raw. A couple of blood vessels may have broken again based on his brother's expression, which was wide-eyed and full of startled concern.
"It's okay. It happens sometimes."
He tried to pull away but Rosi held on, gripping his wrist. They hadn't seen each other in fourteen years and his palms were rough with calluses, but the touch wasn't intrusive. It was the same gentle, but insistent pressure. The same cool and clammy skin.
And this really wasn't a dream, was it? Not a hallucination or a nightmare or another withered ghost. It was Rosi. It was real.
His chest twisted. It ached strangely. Where the fuck did you go? he wanted to ask and didn't.
Rosi's free hand rose up and ran a thumb over the tired crease of his working eye. It traced the jagged scarred line of his blind one. Rosi really did look troubled, almost to a surprising degree.
A guilty one.
He should've studied this more, or heeded the cold, speculative whisper at the back of his thoughts. He should've pursued this moment of suspicion with all the savage diligence he'd become renowned for.
Instead, Doflamingo asked, "Will you stay?"
xxx
Doffy had lost the left eye after all. It hung at the center like a lost moon, opaque as sea stone, cold as death. The right one looked into him, bloodshot and lined, heavy with black rings.
Rosinante's heart trembled and shuddered. He held his older brother's face in his hands.
He didn't know it would be like this.
Doffy paid none of it any mind. That smile which had so frightened Rosinante in those bygone days was swimming on his lips. He looked hungry and hopeful and weirdly young.
"Will you stay?"
Maybe it was amazing enough that Doffy posed it like a question and thought to give him a choice at all. Rosinante could never keep track of what he should be expecting from him. He both understood Doffy too much and too little. It was exhausting sometimes.
Rosinante let his hands fall, his brother waiting with barely concealed impatience. He should just nod. Nod and move on with the rest of the plan. It was so simple a thing and maybe it all would've been a lot simpler between them if he had.
(But what had been the last thing he'd ever said to Doffy, all those years ago? How could any of that be what was left to lie?)
Rosinante was soft and Rosinante was weak.
He could not close his heart. He could not turn away.
xxx
"Yes," Rosi said, voice scratchy and low, "I'll stay."