tenebrae - "darkness"

He'd read once that a day in the world was a hundred years in Hell. Doflamingo supposed that must've been true.

Because it took only ten days to reach the North Blue and each one was a black and burning century.

Someone must pay. A boy whispered in the planes of his dreams, wreathed in smoke and soaked in tears. The arrow still stuck in the left eye. Anyone. Everyone.

Don't let this lie.

xxx

He drank wine. He rifled for sleeping pills in the med-bay. He smoked more cartons than Rosi and Senor Pink combined.

He tried. He tried. He tried.

xxx

Doflamingo remembered the mob. Funny that the things he didn't particularly want to forget slipped through him like water and sieve, while the mob weighed at the bottom effortlessly, as if debris that long-festered and never broke down.

Some of the faces he could draw out in his mind's eye with inexplicable detail. This one with the balding top, that one covered in moles, this one with a narrow mouth, that one missing two of his front teeth. A woman had stood exactly six feet away, while his father screamed for mercy and damn near strangled him in his grip. She'd had a frayed shawl and green eyes and dirty nails that clutched a rusted sword.

When the blindfolds had been tied on, he remembered the sounds and when the cacophony had risen to a deafening height, he remembered the stenches. This one with the sob story of sons plugged full of lead and that one whose hands stunk of a barn as they slammed him into the wall and strung him up in the air.

All of them peasants, garbage, refuse.

Paying no price.

Getting away.

xxx

The vessels in his right eye burst immediately after a third night without sleep. It had never looked so grisly before. Doflamingo stared into his mirror, picked at his nails and waited for the sun to rise.

xxx

He use to be fascinated with fire as a child. The altering colors, the roar and swelter, how it could reduce even the biggest, most unbelievable things in existence to crumbling brown soot. One of his father's more impressive colleagues, Saint Blackwood, had bought him a toy soldier once, jeweled with rubies and opals, holding a torch and saber. A gas switch on the back could be flipped, igniting the torch with real flames.

"A god must embrace his power," Saint Blackwood had said, quietly, just between the two of them when his father's back was turned, "Because a thing not oft used will fade."

Doflamingo hardly understood what he meant, but the toy was a blast. He set fire to the flowers in the garden, the curtains of his room and the long braid of a slave's hair, before his mother took it away. She would not return it no matter how he screamed or stomped his feet. It was the last he'd seen of the thing. Maybe he would've fixated longer, but then Rosi started stringing coherent sentences together and wobbling around after him and he got preoccupied.

He'd forgotten all about the toy and Saint Blackwood until the moment his face had been shoved within a lick of an open flame years later. Voices shouted over him that they were going to burn out his eyes, melt his nose and incinerate all his golden, rich boy hair. Then Doflamingo remembered.

And not only did he remember, he understood.

"None of you embraced it."

Rosi arched a brow, set down a glass of water for him. "What are you talking about?"

He picked at his nails, looked at the glass.

"I didn't ask for water."

"I'm not getting you any more wine. You're dehydrated."

More silence.

"It's not fair."

Rosi knelt down in front of his chair. "What are you talking about, Doffy?" he said again, softer. Worried.

Doflamingo frowned. "It wasn't my fault."

"What wasn't? Your hands are shaking again, are you getting enough sleep?"

"Rosi," Doflamingo said, tilting his gaze, "Do you remember Saint Blackwood?"

He didn't think his brother would. Rosi had been so young that Mariejois was probably a smear of sunlight in his memory. Doflamingo had no expectations of him and yet still felt bottomlessly disappointed when Rosi stared and shook his head. He pulled Doflamingo's hands apart and pressed the water glass into them instead.

"No, and neither should you."

As if it were so easy.

xxx

He smashed his mirror on the fourth night, after fumbling awake and mistaking his own reflection for a swinging crowbar.

Doflamingo stood amongst the carpet of shards, gasping for breath, sweat icing down his neck and temples. Seven years of bad luck, he thought absurdly, seven years or seven seconds or seven hours or seven centuries. Blood plipped from his wrist onto the floor. Law would follow him around everywhere the next day until he let him bandage it.

You, a voice whispered from the corners of his room, cannot change.

You cannot hope to change.

So why try?

xxx

There was someone who'd worn plastic sandals. He remembered that. Despite the blindfold and his dangling legs and the pandemonium of bawling and shrieking and whooping as they hung on display like meat for sacrifice, there was the distinctive sound of heels slapping against stone. Someone rushing around in noisy shoes.

Click click click Click

"I got this for the runts," Senor Pink said on the fifth day, returned from the town market where they were restocking, "Just an old trinket I thought they'd like. Russian has one at home for Gimlet."

He held it up for Doflamingo to stare at. Baby Five and Buffalo clambered onto the chair for a better look, while Law stood more sedately at his knee.

The music box was a size fit for a child's hand, ornately painted landscapes of moors, turtle doves and cranes lined the lid and sides. There was a latch inside with a plated screen beneath, where the revolving cylinder could be seen turning, the pins plucking teeth along the rolling steel comb. It was a pretty song, a lilting hymn about the benign waters of the Calm Belt, which lasted about three and a half minutes. Then the cylinder slowed down, needed rewinding as it stuttered to a halt on a slightly corroded spring.

Click click Click

Doflamingo watched Baby Five throw herself onto Senor Pink's waist, hugging him tightly while Buffalo and even Law looked entranced. He watched them sit around listening to the box in their spare time that day and heard it bang against his skull that night.

His fists trembled. Doflamingo didn't recall leaving his room or entering the lounge where the toy sat on a table, silhouetted under a filtered beam of moonlight. It wasn't running, but he could hear it as if it were.

click Click Click

(He hadn't meant to break it.)

But it broke with horrendous ease. Wood splintered, glass cracked, the metallic innards spilled out and pieces rolling under the couch. Doflamingo stared at the mess for a long beat, before casting out his strings, gathering the mangled parts and tossing them into the ocean.

Baby Five cried for literal hours come morning, sobbing into Jora's lap while Buffalo threw crazed accusations at Law for the box's disappearance until Law began shouting back. It was ear-shattering ruckus and Doflamingo was nursing a migraine by the end, but he would rather Baby Five cry herself blind and a thousand migraines than listen to that spring stutter and 'click' one more time.

And whose shoes were those anyway?

Didn't matter.

They were getting away.

xxx

"You're going to rip out your nails," Rosi said and pulled down his hand, inspecting the bloodied fingers with care. "Doffy, what have you been doing?"

What do you think? Doflamingo shrugged and watched his brother fret and spill too much disinfectant on them.

"Stay here. I'll get Law."

This is your fault, isn't it?

"Doffy?" Rosi was hovering over his chair again. "Did you hear me?"

He wouldn't leave until Doflamingo nodded and even then he lingered, looking concerned and completely confused.

"Stay here," he repeated and hurried off.

Doflamingo stared after him and thought, blankly and suddenly, How could you do this to me?

xxx

He never asked for this. Not any of it.

He came from a place where pearls bobbed in the fountains, where streets were paved in gold. He was a god for the sole reason of the ambrosia in his veins.

He didn't want to leave. He had no desire to learn. He didn't know how to change and why should he have?

What had his father hoped to accomplish down here, following his thrice-damned notion of "living like a human?" To this day, Doflamingo saw red when he thought about it. Whatever world his father had been pursuing didn't exist. There was no other conclusion. Twenty years he'd endured in this hell hole and he'd yet to find a shred of the peace his father had promised or the fulfillment. The man had brought them down here to suffer and Doflamingo couldn't stop HATING HIM HATING HIM HATING HIM.

And sometimes, in these particular moments when his mind fizzled from lack of sleep and he thought himself into corners, it really annoyed him that Rosi didn't.

He wanted more and more in the past six days to grab his brother by the shoulders and shake the sense into him. He wanted to shout at Rosi to wake up, that nothing was sacred - not life, not innocence and certainly not the words of their naive and foolish father.

Because that must be why Rosi was doing this to him right?

Because he was so enamored with Father's moronic ideals. The same ones that made Doflamingo so obliteratingly angry he couldn't see straight.

But he wouldn't blame Rosi. His little brother didn't know any better. He'd always been impressionable, trusting, soft, weak and Doflamingo knew he mustn't be mad at him. It wasn't his fault. Rosi didn't know better.

So why listen?

xxx

"Nene, why the long face, Corazón?"

Trebol loomed deliberately, casting a shadow as his bare feet left a splattered trail behind him. He'd managed to cram a velvet fedora onto his head, stretching the delicate brim like a melon about to burst. Rosinante recognized it suddenly as the one he'd been wearing when they'd first encountered him all those years ago and his skin began to crawl.

The man had received Doffy's orders on sparing the island with unnerving tranquility, barely uttering a word despite how Diamante and even Pica voiced their confusion. He spent the entire meeting staring at Rosinante and then half the journey stalking him about the ship, oozing after him like an unwanted shadow. It was inexplicable, not to mention creepy, but Rosinante honestly couldn't have cared less. Better him than the kids. Or Doffy, who'd gotten really quiet and haggard over the past few days and was worrying him.

"Get lost," he said, lit cigarette smoldering.

"Behehe, you really are so ill-bred." Trebol smiled. "Interesting that Doffy spent those fourteen years climbing to the top of the pirate world, while you were apparently baying at the moon. Oh, what scary, scary eyes. Did I hit a nerve? Do I need correction? Where did you spend them then?"

Rosinante took a slow drag from his cigarette, leaning back against the wall. He ignored the questions and Trebol's face suddenly darkened, the smile dripping off.

"You think you know him?" he growled, "You haven't a clue."

Rosinante released a cloud of smoke. He didn't bat an eye.

"Neither, as it seems, do you."

He watched Trebol's knuckles whiten, curled around the jeweled head of his cane. Four more days, he thought. Let this be done.

xxx

("I knew we should've killed him."

Diamante and Pica trailed their gazes to Trebol, who hunkered in his seat, fingers laced and eyes hooded behind coke-bottle glasses.

"When Doffy had gone to Mariejois and he was alone. Should have strangled the little shit and left the body in a ditch somewhere. Blamed it on the mob."

"How about you relax," Diamante hissed, gaze swinging to the closed door, the walls, like he expected Doflamingo to come exploding through either one at any second, "Yeah, the fucker's a buzz kill, but he's also...well, I'm not gonna touch him now, Trebol. Not for anything. Doffy would...ugh, gives me fucking chills to think about."

They paused, unable to avoid that wayward shudder that swept through the room, red-tinted by a gutted sky. The ship swayed and dipped. The floors rattled.

Trebol smoothed away fear with indignation, snuffling, "He's been ruining Doffy for years. Ruining us. He shouldn't be here."

"Doffy makes the rules," Pica said, the rusted nail pitch of his voice dragging through the air, "If it's a fair deal he wants, we bring him the money. If it's a hit, we bring him the blood. Corazón makes no difference. He wants him here, so he's here. I've got no quarrel with that."

"You should." Trebol leaned against his cane. "Blood doesn't make you loyal."

The pause was twice as tense this time. Diamante's head jerked again towards the door. His slit eyes narrowed further.

"...what do you mean?"

But it was only the pretense of a question. None of them were expecting Trebol to reply. They could get away with a lot as family executives, but accusations of that kind, particularly without basis...Doflamingo had no tolerance for. Trebol knew this well. He was the one after all who'd planted the seed in his head as a boy, who'd buried it deep, deep somewhere in the flaming abyss of Doflamingo's mind. Betrayal's cost was a pound of flesh. Forgiveness the kiss of death.

So Trebol would not utter the words now either, not even with just the shadows to hear them.

He had a feeling the stars were on his side anyway. Corazón had forfeited every right to his brother the day he'd gone off and vanished.

And Trebol still knew his king. He had seen it for himself - the hunger, the fury, the giant black beautiful pit in his heart that Trebol sought to insure no light would ever reach.

He'd never forgotten that day, now almost eighteen years past, when Doflamingo had took the mirror from his hand and could only laugh at what reflected back at him - the filthy, blood-matted boy devoid of home, family or eye. He'd never forgotten that sound, like stars shattering and worlds ending - that glimpse of true greatness (and madness, though the terms hardly bore a difference) which made Trebol certain he would never follow anyone else again.

A creation like Doflamingo rarely needed steering. Sometimes Trebol gave him a nudge forward, sometimes others pulled him back, but he never failed to return to the wrecked and withered path all on his own. In this, Trebol saw destiny.)

xxx

He dreamed of fleeing through the rain. The pound of his parents' footsteps behind him, the distant echo of the mob further down. His lungs burned. His legs trembled. He tripped and fell in the mud. Sticky and gloppy and reeking, caked up his front, smeared on his knees and his hands.

beneath his glasses under his nails over his neck in his ears in his shoes in his hair in his nerves in his heart

His brother crouched in front of him. Eyes wide, little mouth quivering.

"Brother?" he choked and Doflamingo pulled away.

"You mustn't touch, Rosi."

Rosi bit his lip. He shook his head hard, chin wrinkled. He reached for him and took his arms in shaking hands. He tugged and strained, but the mud wouldn't budge, encasing Doflamingo up to his waist.

"Let's go," Rosi whimpered, as the darkness gathered around them, "Come with me, please."

Please.

xxx

"Doffy."

Doflamingo tugged at his newly bandaged fingers, gaze drifting from the moonlit waves to the cabin doorway.

"Hm, I was wondering where you'd gone off to," he murmured, when he saw the lurching figure standing there, blocking out the entire threshold, "Finally come to complain?"

Trebol snickered and slithering over to the rail. He placed his hands on the bars where Law had perched more than a week ago and within seconds covered them with slime.

"Not at all. You aren't going to change your mind anyway, are you?"

Doflamingo looked down at his hands, fidgeted for a second, before he stuffed them into his pockets. He turned back to the dark horizon, where mountains sat hulking like fallen giants.

He said softly, "No."

Trebol nodded. "For your brother. I understand."

"Do you?"

"Behe, well, you already know he's not my favorite person in the world." Trebol pulled his cane up, resting it in front of him and against the metal. "But you want to make him happy. As expected of a king to be both mighty and generous."

Doflamingo stared, feeling faintly surprised and borderline comforted. The edge of his lips curved just a bit and he leaned more casually against the rail. They stood in silence for several minutes.

Then Trebol said, "Ne, why do you want to please him so badly, Doffy? If I may ask."

Doflamingo tilted his head. "Why? Because he's my brother." The answer could not have been simpler.

"Yes, but why? Does it fill you up somehow? Does it make you happy?"

A scowl wormed his face. His hands fisted in his pockets.

"...Do I need a reason like that?"

"Well, if you're going to such lengths...but never mind, I'll let you decide." Trebol shifted, the manacles on his ankles clinking. "To be honest, I've been thinking about Corazón recently. I'm afraid I might have been a liiittle harsh in my initial opinion. He is an unfortunate fellow. I recognize that now. It really is something to be pitied."

Beneath his glasses, Doflamingo's right eye slid towards Trebol.

"What is?"

"His lot. You were chosen by the stars, blessed with the most powerful haki known to man, while Corazón can't walk in a straight line on a good day. And what a meek boy he was, if I recall. Hard to imagine how he would've fared without you back then."

Doflamingo scoffed tiredly, imagining all the ways Rosi could've gotten himself killed as a child on his own. He'd been so small, so easy.

"Only one of those things has changed, hasn't it?"

Trebol sidled closer and Doflamingo blinked, feeling a little dazed. He hadn't even realized he'd spoken the thought out loud.

"He'll never open his eyes and he'll never recognize this place for what it is. All his decisions, everything he asks, will always be foolish. Blind in some capacity. He isn't like you, Doffy, and he doesn't have a chance in the world. Wouldn't you agree?"

At some point, Doflamingo had pulled out his hands again. He scratched at the bandages, lips pursing for a beat, before whispering, "Just like Father."

"Poor, ill-fated thing," Trebol said and Doflamingo's chest swelled with an odd mix of dread and fury.

"What am I supposed to do? It's who he is."

"Behe, good question. How do you keep a bird from flying amuck and bashing its own head in on something?" For a moment, Trebol went quiet and Doflamingo almost flared up with agitation, before he spoke again.

"I suppose you keep it caged, don't you? And ignore its twittering."

xxx

He dreamed of revenge. Arcs of red that stained the clouds. Smoke so staggering and tall it choked apart Heaven.

Low-grade trash screamed and thrashed (this one with the balding top, that one covered in moles.) They died and died and he felt whole. Complete for the first time in his life.

Don't let this lie. The boy turned, black glasses gleaming, butterfly snatched between two fingers and a spider web looming behind him. The threads grew long and rangy, pushed upwards into a vast dome and extended down into rods. Don't let this lie.

xxx

"Young Master, are you okay?"

Doflamingo jolted when the small hand touched his. Baby Five leaned against his thigh, reached to touch his face.

"You're sweating."

He stood up. The girl yelped, almost knocked to the floor. Doflamingo stared down at her, unsure of when she'd entered the room. "I'm okay, Baby."

Beads of moisture fell from his chin. She did not look like she believed him.

"Should I get Cora-san?"

"No." Doflamingo took a single step in front of her, blocking the path to the door. "No, no, no, silly girl, don't do that."

Baby Five shrunk slightly, wide eyes startled and Doflamingo forced himself to soften his voice.

"It's okay. Really." He squatted down, tucked the hair out of the child's face, and when her forehead creased and she seemed uneasy, he said, "I'm feeling a little parched right now. Would you mind getting me some tea?"

Baby Five's expression lit up, bright as a firecracker.

"Of course, Young Master!" she said and Doflamingo smiled back, standing to let her scamper out. Her hair was tied with a new satin ribbon, he noticed, just before she disappeared from view. It was yellow as sunlight. Gold as the bars of a cage.

This one.

He stood in a square of bodies. The boy had stepped between sprawled limbs, bending down to examine each face. He pointed at a particular man, unconscious on his back. The features were unremarkable - brown hair, thin mustache, sunken eyes.

This one.

A bow lay a few inches from his hand. A quiver of spilled arrows strapped to the man's shoulder.

This one.

xxx

At dawn on the ninth day, Vergo called. Doflamingo listened quietly.

Law walked in an hour after they'd hung up. Boy just didn't knock. Never would.

"What are you doing?"

Doflamingo leaned back in his chair and raised his hand over his face. The strings running from his palm glimmered, crossing each other in a lattice and elongating into vertical coils as he crooked his fingers. He smiled thinly.

"A little experimenting."

Law stared for a second, holding the edge of the jamb, before shuffling over. He walked around the desk, stood in front of Doflamingo with flinty eyes. His head was barely level with Doflamingo's knee. There was a white spot developing on his left cheek.

"You tore through your bandages."

Doflamingo cast a minute glance at his hand, saw it was so.

"It's fine."

"No, it isn't." There was a 'clack' as Law set a med-kit down on the desk. His face was pinched. "Give me your hand."

He didn't wait and reached out for it himself. Doflamingo had to quickly snap apart the flesh-shearing threads, before the child could try to curtain them aside. Law re-wrapped his fingertips with strange care, his brows scrunched into knots of concentration. Doflamingo stared at the top of his hat, wordless, and it was Law who broke the silence first. Suddenly and bluntly.

"Did something happen on that island?"

Doflamingo's eyes narrowed. "What gave you that idea?"

"Cora-san keeps avoiding the subject whenever I ask. Either that, or he tries to deny it. He's a terrible liar if you know what to look for," Law muttered, lifting his head to stare at him, "And you've been acting weird. Weirder."

"And you're a lot less cute than you use to-"

"I don't want to go."

The boy wrapped up the remaining gauze and packed it into the kit, buckling the clasps neatly. Doflamingo's glare smoothed out.

"...What?"

"I don't want to go," Law said, "If something happened there, if it's gonna change things, then I'd rather just die."

They stared at each other. It must've been the first time Law had ever voiced his desires on anything and Doflamingo tilted his head. Some feeling was trying to grope its desperate way to the surface of him. It failed, grew lost in the dark and perished. Doflamingo's expression faded from bewilderment, his mouth flattening.

"You're not making sense, boy," he said and stood. Law was too surprised to utter a word, when Doflamingo picked him up and deposited him in the hallway.

xxx

Some things cannot be changed. You realize that now, at last.

Not the sun or the moon. Not the inclination of the stars. Not the past. Not time.

xxx

On the tenth day, they arrived on the island. Twenty years had not helped it flourish. It was still cracked earth and makeshift hovels, crusty hills and slabs of uneven road. A bit more greenery adorned the landscape than before, more trees and healthier grass, less dried brush and landfill, as if the town had exerted a half-hearted effort at some point to make itself presentable but failed. There was still no dock so they anchored near the rocky shore, the ship swaying behind a massive outcropping.

Doflamingo pointed out the route which his brother should take and the cave where the fruit had supposedly been buried.

"I'll wait here with the rest," he told Rosi, "Head hurts."

"Don't drink," his brother said, not even trying to hide his concern anymore, "I'm serious, Doffy."

He flapped his hand. They stood there for a moment though, together in the sand, the wind and dust sifting through their coats, ghosts sinking teeth into throbbing old scars.

An errant chuckle slipped through Doflamingo.

"Home sweet home."

Rosi gave him a hard look.

"You're not funny," he said and walked away from him, heading down the inland trail.

xxx

There was one final moment where he tried.

Doflamingo strolled down the craggy beach - Diamante, Pica and Trebol several feet behind, waxing their own nostalgia. The ship was close enough that he could hear Gladius yelling at Baby Five and Buffalo to settle down and swab the floors like they were suppose to. He thought he could see the dark skinny form of Law on the quarterdeck, staring at him.

The island had felt almost deserted. Perhaps if Doflamingo had not encountered the man when he had, he would've felt it hadn't been worth it after all. Perhaps he would've gone back to the ship and waited for his brother's return like he'd promised.

Perhaps and yet...

"Not from around here, are ya?"

The hair was no longer a single strand of brown, but a shade of deep and thorough white. The mustache was gone, but the eyes were still sunken. A quiver of arrows hung off a shoulder, the bow across an old and shriveled chest. There was a boy clinging to his robe, head craned towards Doflamingo in blatant awe.

He turned fully. They both flinched in shock at the size of him, how his shadow spread across them like a cloak. The old man's hand went grasping for his bow.

"I...I've seen yer ship's flag before. Recognized it from the news. This is just a poor island town. What business could yer kind have with us?"

Doflamingo was silent. His lips parted, curling back to show straight pearly teeth and bright red gums. He did something then he'd never do again and took off his glasses under the broad daylight. There was a sharp inhale of breath from the man and child, a sound that got caught in the back of their mouths, as if they couldn't have helped themselves.

"God, son, your eye," the old man whispered, horror plain in the lines of his face, "What happened to your eye?"

xxx

And not monsters.