et pater - "and father"
The flesh had blotched and sagged by the third day. Oddly, since the lips had long rescinded over the teeth. It made at least two women faint and a priest gasp an exorcism at him, before he started carrying the thing in a sack. The stench was growing fouler. He wasn't nearly as bothered by it though, as he was with the smile.
Rictus and eternal. All it had ever known how to do. He lugged it to Heaven's gates, thoughts turning on and off like a faulty light switch.
My father is dead. He loved the world below. Wanted to be human. Wanted to live in a way not meant for him. He destroyed us forever. He betrayed me. He left us here.
I have no father anymore.
xxx
It rained. Doflamingo sat against the window and watched the skies weep. Baby Five hummed, her voice ghostly and echoing in the shadowed room, broken by the occasional giggle as he idly braided her hair. She was a mite jealous of the time he'd been spending with Law and seemed clingier than usual. Kids were funny creatures that way.
"Look, look, Young Master," she said and raised three white roses, bound together in a crimson ribbon, "Me and Buffalo bought them in town today." Her voice faded. "They're for Miss Russian."
He blinked, recalling for a moment that fortnight ago, when Senor Pink had staggered back to base in the twilight, soused and reeking of mud. The child was dead. His wife following suit. He collapsed before Doflamingo's feet and asked dully for a few more weeks-the most that doctors predicted she'd last. ("Hm, you didn't listen to me." "I'm sorry, Young Master." "Oh, I don't reckon you were, Senor. Not then." An aspirin bottle clattered, rolled over to the man by a pointed shoe. "But I know you are now.")
Baby Five held the bouquet close to her face, inhaling its sweet aroma. She glanced over her shoulder at him, flowers tickling beneath her chin. "Do you like them?"
Doflamingo made a noncommittal noise. His hand fell out of her hair and traced the rose petals with the edge of a nail. Mother's favorite, he thought briefly. Vividly. Sad, pretty things.
"Of course, Baby."
She smiled, drew her legs up to perch on his knee while her tiny pale toes settled on his thigh. They were quiet a moment, before she chewed her lip.
"...Senor Pink was wearing the bonnet again yesterday. The one Gimlet had before."
"Oh?"
"He said it was for Miss Russian. 'Cause it made her happy. But when he comes back, he doesn't take it off. He wears it all day. Sometimes the pacifier too. And they laugh at him. Diamante-san and Trebol-san. Why does he keep wearing it when they laugh at him?"
Doflamingo hardly assumed Pink gave a fuck what Diamante and Trebol thought of him. It did sound however, like something had gotten twisted inside the man. Fractured. A ripple of annoyance threatened the edges of Doflamingo's mind. This was why he hated sharing. Nothing was ever returned to him in the careful condition they'd been preserved.
"Some people just have no clue what's good for them."
The impatience seeped in. He hadn't meant it to, but it was suddenly apparent, even to Baby, that he wasn't referring to Senor Pink anymore. Her expression fell.
"Don't be sad, Young Master." She touched his hand, which only made him scowl out the window, because what was she talking about? He wasn't sad. He didn't identify this all-consuming frustration as sadness. He was pissed off, yes, and more than confused, but that was the extent of it far as he was concerned.
A soft field of white opened in his vision, derailing the train of thought. He had to startle back an inch before it reconfigured into the whorls of a rose. Baby Five offered the flower with dark, solemn eyes.
"Here," she said, "For you."
xxx
They left Mariejois in the spring.
The day of the announcement, Father called him into his study-a cavernous room with two floors connected by spiraling marble staircases. Giant arched windows stretched across the east and west walls, where clouds crept by and sunlight spilled without abate. Catacombs of books and scrolls lined jewel-encrusted shelves. A silver telescope sat mounted on a pedestal. The space was wood-dust and papyrus and roses.
Doflamingo knew more than half of everything in here was Mother's, that Father still had to pretend they were his when guests visited, lest it be "inappropriate" otherwise, though Doflamingo still couldn't understand how. Seemed more idiotic than inappropriate.
"My big boy's growing too fast," Father said, laughing as he heaved him into his lap, "You'll end up a titan at this rate." He almost stuttered mid-word, mustache twitching when he glanced at Doflamingo's hands, where a blob of blood had welled beneath the nail of his left ring finger. Doflamingo was staring at it too. He tried not to pick at his nails so much anymore, for how it upset his brother. Didn't mean the urge ever left him.
Father took the bleeding hand in his own larger one. "Now Doffy, you must stop this. It's very silly to keep hurting yourself."
Doflamingo blinked slowly behind his shades. It did not hurt though. Most of the time, he could barely feel it at all. And whatever pain that could be summoned was invariably muted, a dull pinprick registered at the back of his brain. It was weird. Kind of fascinating. He had the vague notion it wasn't normal either, but it seemed like a waste of breath to share. Father did not often hear what he didn't want to hear.
He pulled his hand free.
"You asked to see me?"
Something wounded passed Father's eyes, before he smiled.
"...Ah, yes, yes," he turned in his seat, pulling over the terrestrial globe, which rocked gently in its mounting, "Tell me, son, I've mentioned a few times now about us moving below, haven't I? How much do you know of the lower world?"
He shrugged. "Not much. There's the four Blues and the Grand Line. Paradise on one half and the New World on the other. The cretins sort them into their own little kingdoms."
Father sighed, shook his head with an exasperated smile. "Oh, Doffy, don't call them that."
"Why not? Everyone else does."
"Well, we shouldn't care what everyone else does," Father chided, and pointed at a ridge along the north coast of the Red Line, "See this spot? A hamlet's recently been built there. It's at the corner of a vibrant market, settled in a valley where the air and rivers are fresh and clear. There'd be plenty of space and sunlight for you and Rosi to play. Your mother could grow her favorite roses in the window box. Doesn't that sound wonderful?"
Doflamingo looked. He couldn't imagine the lower world in any other context besides the pictures he'd seen in Mariejois's storybooks. And nothing was particularly wonderful about those pictures (they made Rosi cry, Mother had banished them from the house), nor did they remotely resemble the scene Father was painting.
"Imagine seeing that first real dawn. Or breathing in a crisp autumn night. Imagine feeling wind from the mountains beneath your clothes."
"I can't feel anything."
Father laughed. It's what he did. Years later, Doflamingo would recall that Father had gazed upon him oddly too. It was a different sort from Mother's. For while she worried endlessly about the pieces of him that didn't seem to work, Father simply reconstructed him until they did.
Even if the son he ended up seeing was hardly the one he would know.
xxx
"Why won't you talk to him?"
Rosinante didn't turn around. He heard the tap of Baby Five's shoes as she pattered closer.
"Cora-san?"
He was silent, cigarette dangling between his lips. Baby Five folded her arms, the note in her voice reproachful.
"You're making the Young Master so sad."
Rosinante wished she'd leave now. He sucked up another lungful of smoke, ignoring the ridiculous lurch of guilt in his chest. Doffy wasn't sad. He was annoyed probably, and angry. He wasn't sad.
Didn't know the meaning.
xxx
Spring was almost over.
There were some nights, if he drank hard enough, that Rosi would materialize before him. Ten or twelve steps apart, close enough to bridge the gap or split it wide. His hooded eyes stared at Doflamingo, incredulous and sickened. Wasn't real obviously. His Rosi had locked himself away, caged himself off, wouldn't speak wouldn't look at him (and what if, Doflamingo was starting to think, what if he never did again? it'd been almost three months. it'd never been almost three months before. what had he done? Doflamingo couldn't even remember in certain moments. what had he done?)
The gusts on the cliff side were dry and piercing. Doflamingo teetered along the edge, bottle in one hand and the other hanging above the sea. Sometimes, if he stumbled, Rosi's fingers would twitch. But it was just a hallucination, so he never moved beyond that.
Doflamingo huffed out a laugh. His gaze swept the slate black waters, the heaps of nails and rust and stinking smears of exhaust and bio-fuel. There never failed to be corpses getting washed back ashore on Spider Miles, putrefying along some serrated outcropping. Too many animals. Too little knowledge of how the damn tides worked.
...to be human, Doffy. And to live down there in the real world, it'll be an experience Mariejois could never offer you.
He turned the bottle, holding it loosely between his fingertips. When it struck a particular angle of the moon, he could mistake it for the old globe in his father's study, spinning and spinning still.
Doesn't that sound wonderful?
Veins gnarled his neck and temples.
"Heh, wonderful," he muttered, and then flung the bottle off the cliff with such violence it popped like a balloon upon contact with the water.
Wonderful.
Fucking wonderful.
"It's like you think I wanted it this way," Doflamingo said, because he'd been scrounging after an explanation for this weird, mangled pain inside of him, "You little idiot. You should be mad at him. Miserable old man messed up your mind with his sunshine, shit-filled ideals. And you waste all those tears on him, when I was the one who was trying to get us home. You leave me when I was just trying to fix what he broke. You're unbelievable. He ruined our lives. He killed our mother. Look at yourself. Look at me. I was a god. What the fuck am I now?"
Doflamingo's fingers rose, scraping against a star-flooded sky.
"I'm this, because of him."
xxx
The stars were out, winking awake two by two in the plain of indigo and bruise-blue. Rosinante waited for the moon, smoking methodically until he saw it hang down like a bulb on a night-black cord. Then he stood, stuffed his cigarette into the overflowing ashtray and drifted out the door.
The ship was deathly still, only the cavities groaning as it swayed. He couldn't stand the sound. Hated it. Haunted his sleep.
It began with the desk. Files spread loose, contracts skimmed, giant maps and sea charts untied for a trace of a marking on where the Ope Ope's location could be.
He was clinical in his search. Doffy's main logbook was full of illegible words and numbers, mashed together in some chaotic fashion that only made sense to him. Rosinante didn't relent though, rifling and checking through all the inches and corners of the cabin, emptying drawers and shelves. There had to be a clue here somewhere. A reference, a name.
The first few times he would freeze at every noise, the muscles along his spine taut. It took him almost five minutes to relax after he realized it was the wind or the gulls, their wings flapping outside as they landed on the masting. The Family and crew had unloaded onto Spider Miles, crowding into the base or motels, eager to sleep again on solid ground. The entire ship had essentially been deserted for months and it felt like he was a ghost sometimes, drifting through the halls, pursuing something he couldn't find.
He had no time to sit around and stew though. Certainly none to waste on trailing his drunk-off-his-ass, half-blind, unable-to-swim brother up another crumbling bluff.
Yet he was here.
His brother didn't even move the first time he saw him. He'd stopped pleading with Rosinante months ago, and squinted at him thereafter like he thought he was a dream. That suited fine. What was there left to say.
"...I'm this," Doffy hissed, "because of him."
Rosinante's fists squeezed.
You're this, because of you, he thought faintly.
Because of me, his heart couldn't help adding.
xxx
The crimson edge of summer was peeking when he received another call from Vergo. Barrels had been in contact again, demanding a rendezvous with the Marines in about six months at a persistently secret location.
"Apparently he requires time to set other accounts straight. The Marines don't have much leverage, so they were forced to accept. He was a former officer anyway. Pointless to bluff. We'll have to wait."
Doflamingo stared holes into the Den Den Mushi. He didn't want to wait anymore. He had a boy to cure, a right-hand man to raise. He thought about it entirely too much these days, fixated for lack of anything else pleasant to think about, and now Barrels was trifling with him. Itching for that final coffin nail it seemed. Doflamingo was going to make his death excruciating-
"Doffy? Are you still there?" The snail's head leaned forward. "Doffy, the connection."
The speaker's metal case crunched in Doflamingo's grip. A warped edge punctured his skin and Doflamingo didn't so much feel it as see it, staring as the blood sluiced hot down his knuckles. Still took him a moment to loosen his hold, and an additional beat to switch hands. There was a blank silence.
"I want that fruit, Vergo."
The snail nodded slowly.
"I'll find him." Its eyes were narrowing. "Tell me what's wrong."
"I just did."
"Not that. You sound stressed. Something else is troubling you. What is it you need?"
My brother to speak to me.
Doflamingo trapped the words inside with a concentrated effort, but it seemed to make little difference. Vergo spoke as if he'd plucked them straight out of his head. "Is it Rosinante?"
He didn't answer. Vergo hummed as if he had.
"...You know it's been a long time, Doffy. How about I come around?"
xxx
Vergo must've been close by, because he somehow arrived within three hours, features set in stolid countenance. His white trench coat fluttered against the draft as he shut the door behind him. He'd sneaked into Doflamingo's room like a thief. There was a book of matches stuck to his face.
"You look like shit," he said and strode towards the window, gait heavy and purposeful. His sideburns were still sharp and well-trimmed. Nothing about him ever changed.
Doflamingo rolled his eyes, legs stretched against the sill. He'd never appreciated that nagging tone of Vergo's, though he supposed it was all that dragged him through those first years alone, when he couldn't yet convince himself Rosi was gone. Eat this, Doffy. Sit down. You're bleeding. Forget him. He isn't family. Family is loyal to you. Stays by your side. Family doesn't betray you. He isn't family, we are.
"Shut up."
Vergo didn't. "You haven't been sleeping. Look at your hands."
Without warning, he took one of them and shoved it under Doflamingo's gaze. It was quivering and welted. He'd been peeling the skin off the fingers again. The wound from earlier had scabbed over and it made Doflamingo snicker.
"Weird shape."
"What?"
"Like a dead fish."
Vergo stared at him, glanced at his hand again. There was a pause.
"Hm. A little."
"That's where he should've gone, you know," Doflamingo whispered and tugged out of Vergo's grip before snatching his trim Marine-issued collar. "To the fishes."
"Yes," Vergo said, like he knew exactly what he was talking about, and didn't resist being towed forward. "He was to blame."
"I killed an entire island, Vergo."
"I heard. The Marines are trying to have your immunity removed."
"Heh." Doflamingo's mouth twitched. "There was fire everywhere. They all died screaming. I enjoyed it immensely. I felt absolutely nothing." He halted, the distance between them scant centimeters. "...What does that make me?"
"Better than them."
Doflamingo pulled the matchbook from his face. Vergo didn't even acknowledge it. His own hands had moved, hovering on both sides of Doflamingo's jaw. His lust was palpable, but he waited for permission. Always waiting for permission. A bloodied index finger rose.
"Greater."
String looped the door handle. The lock clicked in place.
"A king."
xxx
(Doffy's hair awed him. It was an inconceivable shade of gold, brighter and yellower than the sun. Vergo swore it glowed. Almost everything about Doffy glowed. His teeth, his blood, the cunning blue of his right eye and the waxen ivory of his left. The ridged scar, which Vergo still remembered fresh and contorted in the chilly air. He was stunning to behold and never wouldn't be.
And yet...
Doffy tossed his glasses from the bed, face turning in the dark where Vergo reclined. He straddled him, the teasing, clever, half-ruined hands drifting south of his abdomen. There were stress lines and circles so deep beneath his eyes they looked embedded. The air was saturated with wine. Blood trickled with sluggish intermittance from the many random little cuts on Doffy's fingers.
Pain flickered in his expression and that was unacceptable. When he'd left the ship five years prior, Doffy was still grinning, weaving his strings to strangle the world. He was fury and flame and untouchable. Vergo could've slaughtered empires for him. Scooped the moon out of a canyon. Presented enemy heads on ten-foot pikes just for him to admire.
He'd been laid so low. Trebol was right. Doffy was being ruined.
And it was Rosinante's fault.
"What are you planning to do?" he asked, when they were both trembling and soaked in sweat, the mattress springs vibrating beneath their legs. "With your brother that is. If the boy is to take his place."
Doffy was quiet for an exceedingly long time. Slammed cards echoed through the vents. Hauled crates and children giggling. Vergo watched the back of his head, almost thought he'd fallen asleep, before he spoke. "Keep him with me."
Vergo lifted his head, jaw tight. "Why?"
"It's my job."
"What job, Doffy?" Vergo said, and propped himself up further, touching Doffy's shoulder. The "job" had wandered in and out of their lives like a malignant disease. Doffy didn't forget it no matter how much time passed. It was etched into his brain. Shackled him down. He couldn't escape it and Vergo's blood boiled at the thought that anyone had ever thought to bind Doffy to the godforsaken rube that was his brother. "You don't serve anyone. There is no job. You're paying beyond his worth."
"I don't care." Doffy's voice sounded childish and slurred. A low flat mumble, like Vergo's words had made no sense at all. "He's mine."
His hand was shrugged off. It was apparent this kind of talk wasn't welcome, but for the first time Vergo found himself reluctant to obey. He couldn't abide by Rosinante, who'd given his brother up, who'd ran and still wouldn't let Doffy be free of him. Vergo swallowed. He stared at the golden hair.
"...You know Sengoku tried to send an evacuation notice."
Silence.
"It was about ten days before you arrived on the island. I got a man to intercept it. Disposed of him under a botched mission. Sengoku knew where you were headed, Doffy. Tell me how that's possible."
The air felt heavier. Oppressive. Doffy wasn't moving.
"He'd wanted you to spare them, hadn't he? Rosinante, I mean."
"Stop..."
"It isn't a coincidence. You know it isn't-"
Doffy sat up. Ghost-quiet and with a fluidity that stopped even the bed from groaning. The broad, scarred slab of his back faced him, columned ridges of spine visible with each silent pull of air. Danger loomed, bright and mirthless in its poisonous skin.
"Get out."
Vergo rose. He slung his trench coat over his shoulders without a word and gathered the remnants of his clothing. He had pushed it, but kept fear far from his mind. There was but one purpose in his life. Vergo would not permit anyone taking it away.
"I'll be in the area," he said, and softly shut the door. Doffy never looked back.)
xxx
The Marines.
His mind turned, interlocking gears cycling and shifting with dispassion towards a new destination. Doflamingo jammed a crowbar in right away. He had no desire to go.
He leaned over the sill, breathing carefully, and cracked the paneling from the force he'd used shoving up the frame. The acrylic jar Baby had found for the flower crashed off a shelf and smashed in half. White petals spilled out in a puddle of water. It was almost silver in the moonlight, parts indigo and lavender in the dappling shadows.
Doflamingo could barely see. There was red flaring from all corners of his vision. He picked up the rose, caging it in a loose, shivering fist. His teeth ground back and forth.
The Marines.
xxx
Barrels. It carried a familiar ring, but Rosinante couldn't explain how as he skimmed through the rest of the document. It seemed his brother had hijacked a trade-off between the man and a group of black marketeers for the Ope Ope map. A thieving mind could hold a mean grudge and Barrels returning the favor didn't seem too off mark. Especially when his brother had clearly been pissed at the man for at least something, slashing the name over and over again across the page and tearing several holes through the ink-splattered paper. A fit of unsoothed anger he'd never learned to manage. One among a plethora haunting the halls of their childhood. Rosinante sighed.
At times, he could not wrap his head around how his parents hadn't thought to get his brother help immediately. Back when it would've made a difference. Or dealt with it in any way aside from chaining Rosinante to him and hoping he'd soothe the beast in time. Never mind that they'd had no means to understand each other. Never mind that they were never going to understand each other and all he'd ever had for a shield was the meaning of his blood.
But Rosinante wasn't bitter. Twined forever with a monster, why should he be? And he wasn't tired either. Not at all.
A crash rocketed through the ship.
With a startled swear, Rosinante grabbed the desk, nearly stumbling over his own legs as the floorboards jittered beneath his soles. For a second, his mind flashed to cannon-fire, before a series of violent thuds followed from within the ship, as if something huge was bumping into the walls. Rosinante's heart near-rammed through his rib cage when he heard the familiar muttering of his brother. His footsteps wove unevenly down the hall, closer and closer, until pausing thirty feet or so away. Whatever he was saying was slurred and beneath the breath. A door swung open as Rosinante sweated, pinpointing it to a nearby bathroom. Shit, what was he doing here?
Stupid question. Rosinante cursed himself out as he rushed to gather papers and clean the mess he'd made. His brother hadn't returned to the ship in so long that he'd gotten sloppy. Lax. If he was found here...
Doffy started retching.
Rosinante froze. There was a groan. Something scraped against the floor. Doffy hurled again and Rosinante forgot about the mess.
Had he been drinking?
No. Rosinante shook his head. No, no, it didn't matter. If his brother was preoccupied, then he could continue searching. He still didn't know where Barrels had taken the fruit, or if he was even planning to keep it. And the creature out in the hall was a monster. A murderer full of empty promises. He didn't have time for it, no matter how in pain it sounded. Rosinante's lips pursed and he returned to the table.
He read and processed nothing for four and a half minutes, while his brother's pants echoed in his ears. He stopped trying when the breaths softened, and stood there straining to hear movement.
And when Doffy went still and the silence descended, Rosinante's nerves scattered like dust into the wind. The papers dropped out of his hands, littering in a ring on the floor. His body was moving ahead before his brain could command it to. Miles ahead.
"Doffy?" He ran into the hallway, where he was greeted with a gaping hole in a porthole window and a carpet of shattered glass. The moon peered inside, wan-faced, like it had watched the whole sorry sight. Rosinante shoved into the bathroom. "Doffy?"
The sink was broken too, part of the basin smashed. White flecks littered the floor and Rosinante almost thought he was hallucinating when he realized they were flower petals. Wha...
He brushed it aside for now, crouching and struggling to lift his slumped brother off the tiles. Doffy didn't smell nearly drunk enough for this to be overindulgence. With a measure of awkwardness, Rosinante twisted his body, trying to get a look at his brother's face. The glasses were gone. Doffy's right eye brimmed with so much blood the pupil was almost submerged.
Migraine, he realized, blankly, and was shoved aside a second later as Doffy vomited for a third time into the toilet bowl. Rosinante watched him dry-heave for several seconds, turning cold inside when the choked noises eventually warped into pitchy laughter.
"They wanna fuck with me? Want a demon so badly? I'll show them..."
Doffy lurched to his feet, wandering right past and stepping through the porcelain shards and petals. Rosinante remembered how to move again and hurried after him, hair prickled on his arms, unsure of what he'd just heard but unable to get his mind to focus on it. His brother was going to fall.
"No, come here." He snatched Doffy by the elbow to steer him into the closest bunk-room. "Lie down."
Doffy stumbled, snickering, as Rosinante all but carried him the last few feet to a cot. It didn't seem to be processing in him that anyone else was there. There was only one dim bulb inside, but even that made Doffy wince. Rosinante shaded his brother's much-abused eyes with one hand while he groped for the switch with the other. When darkness flooded the room, Doffy's hand suddenly flew to his wrist and Rosinante flinched as the fingers tightened.
"...Rosi?" The eyes blinked sightlessly up at him. The grip didn't relinquish when Rosinante tugged at his arm.
He sighed and settled on the floor. "Just go to sleep."
"Is this real?"
Silence.
"...You've been ignoring me."
He kept quiet.
"'s not very nice, you bastard."
"You deserve a lot worse than being ignored," Rosinante snapped.
Doffy tilted his head. He sounded too dazed for his temper to rise. Rosinante doubted he'd recall any of this come morning. "Why're you so angry?"
"Wha-you know why. Are you going to pretend to my face like you don't?"
Doffy went quiet and Rosinante resented the guilt he felt then. It wasn't fair. What reason did he have for guilt? Why was he the only one who ever seemed crushed by this weight?
"...They had to die. For what they did."
"And what did they do?" Rosinante couldn't understand. "Just one man took your eye-"
Doffy chuckled, derisive and delirious in turn. The fingers around his wrist were going slack. "My eye? Always making me laugh, little brother."
Rosinante stared. "...What?"
But there was no further elaboration. Doffy was fading.
"I told you before," he slurred, "that everything ends. Don't make it hurt more than it should."
And his hand fell, sliding off to rest on the sheet. Rosinante sat there for a beat further, eyes on the opposite wall as his brother's breaths steadied into slumber. He stood eventually and returned to the bathroom, soaked a hand-towel in the cracked sink and wrung it hard. He was draping it over his brother's eyes when he saw the flower, pulverized beyond reckoning in Doffy's other hand.
A white rose. Rosinante extracted it gently. He remembered the petals in the bathroom. Their mother had loved white roses.
The head was mangled. The stem fractured. Doffy had destroyed it, because that was all he knew how to do. He couldn't change. Rosinante lifted his gaze, took in the motionless form of his brother.
xxx
Evil waited at a fork in the road.
xxx
"Going somewhere, Corazón?"
The scrap of Barrels' last known coordinates were stuffed in his pocket when he left the ship. He didn't go back to Doffy's office to rifle for a location. He needed a smoke and a break. He needed a lot of things, but not one of them was meeting Trebol again on that cold, dark wharf.
Or Vergo.
"It's been a while, hasn't it?" The hands were folded behind his back, elbows bent at ninety degrees. The face was expressionless, flat as black ice. "Such a handsome man now. Certainly the spitting image of your older brother."
The tone shivered with malice. Rosinante's eyes narrowed. He hadn't seen a shred of Vergo since returning to Doffy, only managing to gather he'd departed for a mission prior to Rosinante's arrival. At the time, he'd assumed it'd been for underworld operations and resigned himself to leaving it alone. He'd been too preoccupied with Doffy in the daytime to worry about Joker at night.
"Get out of my way."
"Behehe, still no manners I see. And we were so eager to wax nostalgia with you. Nene, Vergo, remember the first time we met Doffy and Corazón? It was a crossroads too, wasn't it?"
"Yes," Vergo said, without glancing at Trebol, even as the man encroached upon him. "I remember quite well."
Rosinante's lip curled with disgust. "I said get out of my way."
"We will, we will," Trebol said, grinning, and ambled forward. The sound of chains rattled in the silence. "That's the last thing we want to be, right? Nuisances that get in the way. Oh, look how he glares at me, Vergo. Maybe we shouldn't give him any information on the Ope Ope after all."
Rosinante kept his face neutral with a vicious effort, ignoring the several beats his heart skipped in a line. "What are you talking about?" Trebol cackled, tapping his chin with a damp finger.
"Well..."
And he shared something terrible about the Ope Ope no Mi, which rendered all of Sengoku's attempts to find it with stark clarity. Rosinante failed to wipe the shock from his face. He had never heard of a Devil Fruit capable of the power and consequences Trebol claimed.
"It's called the Perennial Youth Surgery. Behe, you should be grateful. Doffy wanted me to keep it a secret, you know. But since you're so fond of little Law, I thought you might need the time to prepare yourself."
Rosinante shook his head. "No. He wants Law as his right-hand man. It wouldn't make sense."
"Ehhh? Makes perfect sense to us. Sure, maybe the fruit cures him and he becomes Doffy's right-hand man, or maybe it doesn't. Two roads can lead to the same place. Sooner or later, he's gonna make Doffy immortal and then-"
"Shut up," Rosinante said, so abruptly that Trebol did, caught off-guard, "You're a lying sack of shit. Never been anything more. There's no reason to believe you."
He turned as Trebol's jaw dropped, and began stalking back to the ship on numb feet, fully intending to rouse his brother and wrest the actual truth from him. The island had been one thing, but this, the kid was-
"It's interesting you presume knowledge of someone you gave up years ago."
Rosinante continued walking, annoyed at himself for even faltering at Vergo's words.
"But Doffy has been keeping secrets from you for a long time, Rosinante. And so many. You can take my word on that."
Don't stop. Don't look back.
"Starting," Vergo said, "with your father."
Rosinante stopped. He looked back.
xxx
(It'd been for his king.
Vergo whispered this to himself, even as he spoke, rearranging the narrative, inserting pieces out of order and conjuring others out of the air. They'd presented options, provided a vehicle for vengeance. The gun. ("Don't you recognize it, Rosinante?")
Even Trebol was staring at him. Unnerved and slightly beaded with sweat. For all his scheming, the man would never have gone so far. Wouldn't have dared, in the face of what horrors Doffy could inflict if discovered. That was the difference, Vergo thought, between the other executives and himself. In the end, they were worried foremost about their own hides.
Vergo had a better sense of priority.
And he was either going to fix the Rosinante problem now or eliminate it entirely.
"You don't find it so hard to believe, do you?" he said, "He loathed your father by the end. Could barely speak his name. Justifiable, after such suffering. And Doffy's not like you, Rosinante. Hindered by your cheap, simpering, ruinous weaknesses. He demands collection in full. Always. As you've seen."
He received no response. A glassy film had appeared over Rosinante's eyes, rendered them opaque and unseeing. He had paled to such a degree that when the moon fled behind the cloud cover, he was almost translucent.
"To tell the truth, I think you've been afraid to examine it from the beginning," Vergo said, unfolding his hands to brush a piece of lint off his breast pocket, "I think, deep down, you already knew it to be true."
Rosinante walked away. Aimlessly. He wandered past the ship and towards the cliffsides. Perhaps he was going to throw himself off and dash his head apart on the rocks. One could only dream. Trebol was muttering to him, a facade of glee over fear. Vergo didn't hear a single word. The sole phrase that circled his head then would remain there for the rest of his days.
It'd been for his king.)
xxx
What had his brother said, that final night?
I wish you would die.
I wish you would die.
xxx
(Cora-san was on the beach. He was standing so still and looking out to sea. Given how thick the night was, Baby wasn't sure what he could've seen. Seawater had drenched his shoes, soaked the cuffs of his pants almost to the ankles, as if he'd allowed the tides to slosh and recede over him for some time.
"Is that Cora-san?" Buffalo murmured, while Law tilted his head. Worry flashed for the briefest of seconds in his eyes. He scowled and pulled ahead of them without a word. Baby didn't know why he was acting like something was wrong. She couldn't believe Cora-san was outside at all!
Maybe he was finally ready to stop fighting with the Young Master. She really hoped so. Nothing had seemed right since they'd left that island behind. Baby Five was despondent for change.
"Let's go," she said to Buffalo, and they followed Law down to the beach. In the dark, the rowboat wasn't noticeable until they were barely seven feet away, bobbing minutely with the snow-capped waves. Law was staring up at Cora-san, one hand around his feathered coat. Cora-san hadn't moved. He didn't acknowledge when Baby Five bounded up and hugged his leg either.
In a slow voice, as if it were swimming through molasses, he said, "Get in. We're going now."
"What?" Law said, but Cora-san had already picked him up, set him protesting into the rowboat. Baby Five exchanged glances with Buffalo for a beat, before he shrugged and scrabbled in as well, asking if there'd be food. Baby was edging towards the prow quickly now, alarmed at being left behind. She tiptoed around the swirling waters, hesitating as she glanced at Cora-san again.
"Where are we going?"
Cora-san picked her up too. Deposited her on a bench, before stepping in himself. He didn't answer her question until he'd already broken the line tying the boat to shore, and the sail had unfurled with a noisy snap.
"Away.")
xxx
"You hurt me first," he had whispered in that bunkroom, "You've been hurting me all my life. You don't mean to, but it's the truth. I know of all the terrible things you've done, the thoughts that fester in your mind...I'm the one who has to know you, Doffy, and it's never done anything for me but break my heart...I'm just so fucking tired, so sick..."
He breathed, wet and shuddering.
"I can't bear to know you anymore."