secretum nostrum - "our secret"
Something you didn't know.
xxx
In the month after they picked up Machvise, Doffy pulled him aside for a trip. "Need to check on another base," he said, using string to steer the tugboat, unraveling coarse knots of rope with a few bends of a finger.
The moon had been an ivory wound in the flesh of the night. Curved like a nail against skin. "Come on, Rosi," he said, and stretched out a hand to help him on board. Rosinante stared at him from the dock. He took the hand, all calloused palm and cruel lines.
"What about the ship?" he asked, folding down beside Doffy as the sails unfurled.
"It'll stay here for the next few weeks."
"The executives too?"
Doffy chuckled. "Why? Are you dying for their company?"
Rosinante wrinkled his nose. He didn't manage to deliver his opinion on that matter however, before Doffy leaned back, their shoulders almost bumping.
"Just us this time."
The boat turned, the waves folding and cradling the sides. They drifted from shore and towards the eye of the moon. Doffy looked at him and almost smiled.
"You and me, right, little brother?"
Rosinante shifted his arm and closed the space in between.
"You and me," he agreed softly.
xxx
He took Rosi through a shortcut—one narrow, shale-stone channel leading from the Grand Line into North Blue—where the water was so rippling clear they saw the wreckage of old ships resting along the bottom.
"They fought the current," Doflamingo explained, hearing the question in Rosi's eyes, "It's quiet here, but unrelenting, and these fools tried to take control and chart their own course. Goes without saying they'd pay the price." His brother leaned over the boat's side, gazing into the water.
"…they were fools, Doffy?"
He shrugged. "Only fools try to fight something so pointless."
And then Rosi turned to him and Doflamingo gazed into the full profile of his face, so palpably sad he could feel it tremble in the air around them. His eyes widened.
"What's wrong?"
His brother sighed.
"I don't know. Sometimes, I just wonder if maybe…if we're also…" he trailed off and though Doflamingo waited, he never picked up the thought again. Rosi's shoulders fell. He shook his head.
"It's nothing."
Doflamingo gave a slow nod, even though it didn't seem like nothing and that look on Rosi's face remained. He'd no taste for it. Never had. Never would. Even if he was no expert on making it go away either.
But he tried.
He tried. He tried. He tried.
"Here." Doflamingo reached into his pocket, pulling out the small silken pouch. "I got these for you."
Rosi blinked as the sash was untied, spilling dried plums into his palm, each golden-brown like a piece of amber. He stared at Doflamingo, who stared back with a hint of unease.
"You…do still like them, right?"
And he didn't understand why that question, of all things, made Rosi smile again. Made his shoulders loosen, as if eased of some invisible weight. His brother lifted the pouch, eyes soft as a handful of dust.
"Split 'em with me."
xxx
Rubeck Island was seventy percent highlands and thirty percent ruins. In that spring, it smelled peculiarly of earth and mud, even along the beach, woven tight with the clean breath of the sea.
Strings dragged the boat onto the sand, leaving long grooves. "This way," Doffy said and passed him by, the frigid tides drenching the lean columns of their legs.
He led them down a path of brown twisted weeds, under a crack-riddled archway of pillars that resembled the fossilized ribs of a whale. Croft houses were keeled over on their left and right, as if victims of grievous poisoning. The entire area was devoid of plant life. Everything in the ground withered or reduced to husks.
"Not as delicately soft as it looks. Try not to fall."
"What happened here?" Rosinante's gaze was low. Rampant shadows loomed around them. "Doffy, everything's dead."
His brother stopped abruptly. "Are you afraid, Rosi?"
He blinked. "What?"
"Because I'd never let anything happen to you."
"I'm not—"
"I promised, didn't I?" His brother was frowning. He was suddenly upset. "I promised. Have I ever broken my promises before?"
Rosinante's face softened. "No."
"Then you ought to believe me."
"I do believe you," Rosinante said, hand hesitating before it lifted. He touched his brother's shoulder. "Are we even still talking about the same thing?"
For a second, Doffy stared back at him, as if he wasn't entirely sure either.
But then he shook his head and stepped out of Rosinante's grip. "Never mind," he said, "Hurry up, we're going."
xxx
Stay here Rosi
Doflamingo heard his own voice whisper, echoing all around in that desolate place.
in the dark with me
Rosi, don't be afraid.
He locked it up. Hid it away. Stifled it, smothered it. None of these words were right. They weren't what he meant.
They weren't right.
xxx
You
xxx
There was an abandoned tower on the island, a giant eroded affair built straight into the rock-face. The Family had taken it over in a previous year, remodeled it as a bunker and storage.
Scraps of their presence lay in the hollowed rooms. A hanger of Lao G's belt buckles. Rusted swords and discarded guns. A box of spooled threads on a bench Jora must've left behind.
Rosinante bent to peer at the odd, saccharine colors, while his brother sighed.
"I told them not to leave their shit everywhere."
With a shake of his head, Doffy strolled away, towards a giant black chest in the corner about the length of two tables.
There was a stone window about ten feet apart from it, pooling in a square of the moon. Its columned light grazed against a giant row of chairs hugging the adjacent wall. Four in total. The crests carved into the suites of a deck. Diamonds. Spades. Clubs.
Rosinante stared at the final one. The cushion blood-red, the back curved into a spindle-thin heart.
"Tacky, I know," his brother said from behind him, sounding exasperated, "Trebol insisted."
"I'm not sitting in that, Doffy. Stop laughing, I'm serious."
"Oh, but he put so much effort into it."
"He can go to hell." Rosinante's eyes narrowed. "And take this shit with him."
His brother snorted. "How cold," he said, without much admonishment, and straightened, pulling something at last from the chest.
"But you can rest easy. They have been collecting dust here for a reason."
The coat unfurled in Doffy's broad hands. Obsidian feathers floated between them. Rosinante had barely time to blink, before his brother was in front of him, tossing the coat over his shoulders. It was warmer than it looked, heavier too. An off-color twin.
"Jora was feeling inspired," Doffy said, adjusting the sleeves, "I think the weight might be able to help with your balance."
"I balance just fine."
A scoff. "Right."
"I do!"
"Hm."
Rosinante scowled indignantly as his brother fussed with the coat, twitching when Doffy finally surveyed him—red smeary lipstick, a blue painted star, patterns of hearts on shirt and hood—and burst out laughing.
"You look like a clown." Doffy released him. "Or a mess."
"Maybe Jora wanted us to match."
His brother swatted at his head. "Don't even joke, Rosi." He posed, theatrical, enormous, pink feathers rustling. "We already know I make this work far better."
Rosinante rolled his eyes. But his lips did curve, ever faintly.
xxx
Rosi's balance didn't improve of course. He still fell on his ass more than twenty times per day.
But he kept the coat. Wore it all the time. He liked it.
Strange, that Doflamingo would feel more accomplished then than conquering any sea.
xxx
The sun-lit days were hypnotic.
Doffy was waiting for the full moon. He wouldn't explain why, no matter how Rosinante pried.
But as a result, they spent much of that time just lazing around. Reading the papers or blowing smoke rings, casting out idle comments to each other like yellowed messages in fragile bottles.
There was a hideous joke about bananawanis at some point, which Doffy laughed at and then clearly hated himself for, and Rosinante tried to wrest a pledge out of him to drink a little less, failing when Doffy expected an equal one about his smokes.
They played dramatic games of chess on an old checkered tarp and Doffy built for him a ten-storey house of cards.
In certain ways, his brother hadn't changed. Easy and familiar to speak to. Or listen to, since he still prattled on enough for two when he got going.
He had the same habits, the same good and bad moments. He still found Rosinante's clumsiness part-tedious, part-hilarious. He still told the best stories.
Rosinante had really…really fucking missed him. Every stupid little thing. He did not see the monster which leered from the front pages then. All he saw was his brother.
It's not good for you, Sengoku had said, just before he'd left. Son, you need to let go.
"How?"
Doffy tilted his head from his book, their backs against each other. Feathers and gold pressed tight. "Rosi?"
Rosinante stared at the water-mottled ceiling, inhaling hard on his cigarette. Smoke drenched his cavity and streaked his vision, made it hazy gray like a cloud. After another moment of silence, his brother shrugged and flipped another page.
xxx
There was a moment where they measured each other's shoe sizes, the width of their palms. Doflamingo didn't remember how they really got into it. ("No way." "Face the truth, Doffy." "There's no way we're the same size. Look at you. Puny carnival man, I'm at least three heads taller—" "No, asshole, you're really not—")
But it escalated and then Rosi had flattened his spiked hair to make some banal point about conditioning, as if he knew shit-all about it, and Doflamingo had retaliated by knocking off his hat.
They about froze after that, startled by what they saw.
Rosi had foregone the face-paint that day and Doflamingo had never quite understood what anyone had ever said about them regarding their looks until that moment.
The only glaring differences being his glasses and their eyes. The varied places of their scars.
Like they were a box set of toys constructed to match. Doflamingo tilted his head.
xxx
"Who use to say that?" His brother's cocky expression had melted off, left his gold-framed face in a more peculiar light.
"Say what?"
"That we matched. Didn't someone use to say that?"
A beat skipped in Rosinante's chest. His mouth became a white line.
"…Our mother."
His brother was still. The minute which passed was nigh unbearable.
"Oh."
Rosinante stared at the wall behind his head, arms resting limply in his lap.
"You don't remember her."
It was small and tired. A hint accusatory beyond the control of his intention. Doffy wasn't angry though. Rosinante could feel his gaze even obscured by the glasses. Hard and strange.
"Yes, I do, Rosi," he said, "Trust me."
xxx
He hadn't lied.
It was true that at some point, she had fallen through the cracks of his mind. Her features faded and stripped from his memory, replaced by shadows of something wistful and quiet. He could not have told Rosi even the color of her eyes.
Doflamingo had no good understanding of why it happened. He had never meant it to.
But he hadn't lied.
He remembered what mattered. And he remembered enough.
xxx
and
xxx
Doffy seemed incapable of sleeping naturally. He caught catnaps in a chair, a book fanned over his eyes. Either that or he'd get black-out drunk on the tower's cache.
Rosinante released a terse breath, rolling the empty bottles away with his shoe. "C'mon," he said, leaning towards the chair, hovering above his squinting and disoriented sibling. "Get up."
Doffy made some half-hearted attempt to stand. Failed miserably. Rosinante rubbed his temple, closed his eyes and re-opened them.
It was with considerable struggle that he managed to lift Doffy, dragging him into the bunk-room and depositing him on one of the beds.
Sometimes, his brother was heavier than anything that could exist in the world. More than anchors or bricks or stones. Or all of Mariejois crumbling out of the sky.
He slid a sick bucket over and took off Doffy's glasses. The scarred lines appeared nearly fresh sometimes. Rosinante was tracing them with his eyes, before he managed to catch himself.
xxx
A nightmare came.
He stood in a gray-washed wasteland, barren of everything save tinder and animal bones. The sky was piercingly bare.
He left me. A boy's voice hissed, cracking across that fallow plain. I asked him to wait. Only to wait. And he didn't even think I was worth
The world splintered. Everything quivering. A chasm split across the middle of the land, fresh as a wound. The kindling fell in. The bones. Parts and pieces of the bare-blue sky.
"I don't care," Doflamingo said, standing amongst the destruction.
Heh, but you do.
"He's here now."
But where'd he go?
"It doesn't matter."
It does it does. The voice whispered. Why are you lying even to yourself?
xxx
Rosinante woke at dawn to an empty room.
It took him several minutes of searching to find his brother again, sitting at a window ledge, long legs bent and propped against the frame.
"Doffy?"
His brother didn't turn around. Didn't say anything.
Rosinante stood there a moment, before walking over. He caught only a glimpse of Doffy's face before his brother turned around further. It was gray though, a bead of sweat running from temple to chin.
His eyes widened, arm reaching out. He tried to touch his brother's shoulder, when Doffy suddenly spoke.
"Go away."
It was sharp and harsh, a splinter which startled Rosinante into silence. Doffy too, for several beats, like he was confused about where that had come from. Then the light shifted across his face and he added more softly, "I'm fine, Rosi. Just go away for a while."
Rosinante stared. He bit his lip slightly, expression falling. Then he turned and walked out.
Five minutes passed before he came back, black coat on his shoulders, the pink one in hand. He tossed it onto Doffy's lap.
"'s freezing in the mornings," Rosinante said and plopped on the ground beneath his brother's perch, cigarette lit. The smoke wafted and rose over their heads towards the ceiling. Rosinante didn't look at his brother at all. He posed no questions and said absolutely nothing. They sat there for a stint that could've stretched into hours.
The hand came over eventually. Palm touching his head, fingers resting light against his bangs.
"Stubborn little shit," Doffy noted, all sharpness gone. Rosinante remained quiet.
What else can I be? was the thought though, rising up from somewhere within him. Too simple, too honest.
weak
xxx
Doflamingo didn't ask.
He would not inquire then upon where his brother had been for the last fourteen years and he never ever would.
Even if the pieces lay everywhere in between. The strength and discipline. The insane breadth of his stamina, moreso than any member of the Family. The scars. The secret in his eyes.
All of this, Doflamingo threw into the depths of his mind and locked away, left them wriggling and swimming in the dark.
xxx
me
xxx
Doffy mapped out the constellations for him. Scar-riddled fingertips webbed across the sky, connecting scintillated dots.
Polaris, the brightest one. And Ursa Minor alone. Pretty things on rare nights like blue-white Rigel of the Orion.
"The people here swore all our paths were already fixed in the sky," he said as they sat on the upturned boulders of the ruins. A liquor bottle sloshed in his hand, which Rosinante glared at. He'd made several failed attempts already to take it away.
"You never told me about them."
"Them?"
"Whoever lived here before," Rosinante said and cast his glance over the shattered sun-dials and spider-nested monoliths. The sticky, poison-dark veins in the earth. "What happened?"
Doffy propped his chin with a hand. "It's not the type of story you'd enjoy. No happy ending, you know."
"I can't just live my whole life needing every story to be a happy ending."
Doffy chuckled without humor. "True enough."
xxx
Rubeck, he explained, once had its own tribe. An indigenous group that worshiped the sea kings and could hear the whispers of the stars. They divined their own fate even, before the Celestial Dragons had taken fancy to a new type of slave. Went into chains quietly and perished of disease.
"The Dragons bled the underground springs dry too and chopped down every rare tree." Doflamingo waved at the cracks. "You can see what it did to this place."
Rosi looked, hands curling.
"And they gave it up? Just like that?"
"It was going to happen. I suppose they thought a struggle would've been futile. Not worth the effort of saving."
"Not worth it?" Anger was there, tucked like a shard of hot flint. His brother turned on the boulder, shoes scraping sharply on the ground. Wind ruffled his coat and trailed glossy ripples across his spine.
"Rosi?"
"This was their life. Why didn't they fight back?"
Doflamingo was quiet a moment. "I told you it wasn't a happy ending." Rosi didn't seem to hear him. He looked out into the dark island, knuckles white, brows half-crumpled.
"So what if their chances were low? Even if every voice in the world said it was futile, I'd still have..."
His hands opened and shut. A minute spider barely skirted Rosi's leg as he hunched forward, elbows on knees. He took a sullen drag and blew the thin cloud across the ruins. "It was still there. It was there. They could've saved it." His eyes were lost down the withered path. "Guess I don't understand."
He was not alone in that. Doflamingo stared at his brother. Something had flown so far over his head then that he could not have made it out, no matter how he scrutinized. He knew enough to know that.
Fix it. The age-old instinct whispered to him. Fix it anyway.
xxx
It was a day later, when Rosinante was chain-smoking and trying to banish Rubeck's tale from his memory, that his brother sauntered in, hands dirtied with soil and smelling like wet leaves.
Rosinante leaned against the tower wall, watching him run his hands beneath a spout. It took all of five seconds to wash them clean. Not like blood, Doffy murmured, which took scrubbing and scrubbing, and drained away in a soppy crimson puddle.
"Where'd you go?" Rosinante said, for the sake of hearing no more of that. His brother made a noncommittal noise and shook his hands dry.
"I didn't end up telling you the whole story about Rubeck last night."
A blink. "What?"
"There's more." Doffy rose, both their shadows stretching to twice their lengths against the evening sun. "See, what happened with the tribe, that was centuries ago. The spring's going to replenish in time, probably fully in four more years. Then everything will grow back and it won't look like this anymore."
His brother turned to him and Rosinante thought he caught the glimpse of his eye, blue and deep.
"So it's actually…a happy ending, Rosi. Ultimately." An almost-smile. "Right?"
xxx
Rosi did not speak for a very long time. His chest still and his eyes, as Doflamingo studied them more closely, an alarming and rapidly watery red. Like he was on the edge of crying and Doflamingo was instantly confused.
Had he made a mistake? Misread what his brother wanted perhaps. The thought was not without disappointment.
And then Rosi laughed.
A real one that rang clear between them and echoed against the steep, rocky hills. Doflamingo practically startled. The last time he'd heard Rosi laugh, they'd been…eight and six respectively. Sixteen years.
His brother clapped his shoulder, smile rippling and weak. "Yeah, Doffy," he said, grip so hard it almost shook, "You're right."
xxx
will never
xxx
On the quarter moon, Rosinante saw a lump of an island taking shape in the distance.
"Ah, that one," his brother said, walking with him down to the beach. At the water's edge, Rosinante could make out the island a lot better, saw the end of its craggy tail and the tip of its jagged beak.
"A bird," he murmured and Doffy nodded.
"Swallow Island." He pointed at the sky. "There's actually three islands in close proximity in this area. If you face the moon while on the water and keep it in your center, then Swallow will always be to the west. Rubeck to the east."
Rosinante leaned his head back. A whole spray of stars swam towards him in the dark.
"What about the third one?"
"In the south." Doffy gestured but it was only a sea-swept blackness that Rosinante saw, swirling and alive, in spite of the moonlight. "Not my favorite place. It's winter all year long there. Always snowing."
"What's the name?"
"Minion."
It was inexplicable and sudden, the wayward shiver which snaked down Rosinante's spine. He turned to his brother, who looked startled as well. Like the same shudder had rattled through them both.
"I'm sick of the cold," Rosinante muttered eventually, and though the words made little sense alone, his brother hummed as if they did.
"I know."
xxx
Minion's outline was just visible on the horizon. Crouched low. As if some creature prowling the lip of its cave. Doflamingo frowned.
"I'm sick of it too."
xxx
be
xxx
When the full moon arrived at last, Doffy took him to an open bluff that was earth-cracked and arid, where the moon greeted them readily and all the harsh winds had settled.
"What are we doing here?" Rosinante asked, sitting cross-legged on the ground, facing his brother. They were both muted of color beneath the rangy lunar beams, bathed in pale blue light, turning by degrees as the clouds inched forth into silhouettes of black and indigo.
"I needed the moon to see it properly," Doffy said, "I didn't want to risk trying during the day."
"Trying what?"
His brother gave him a pointed look.
"Your Devil Fruit, Rosi."
Silence.
Rosinante regarded his brother for an expressionless beat.
"You thought it was pretty useless the first time I showed you," he said, crossing his arms.
"Hm, I did just a bit. Makes sense that it'd be the one lying around for anyone to eat. Not my point though, don't give me that look." Doffy flicked his forehead to get him to stop glaring.
"There's a general rule I follow with the Devil Fruits. Whatever power it gives you doesn't actually matter. Only your measure of creativity. Understand?"
Rosinante rubbed his forehead, disgruntled, but a pinch curious. He supposed he didn't use the fruit for much even beyond Doffy's knowledge. There'd only ever been one purpose for him choosing it after all. To be an asset during a fight wasn't it.
"I guess."
"Good." Chiseled teeth glinted at him. "Then show me."
So he did.
xxx
The sea-blue orb of the silent sphere leapt from Rosi's snapped fingers. Doflamingo observed the curious field of light, having questions right away. How large could the field be stretched? And could he adjust it once released? How many spheres could be made at a time?
Rosi didn't know or care to know the answers to most of these. Doflamingo found him tragic. He was glad he'd had his brother show him the Devil Fruit again, because the potential was most assuredly real. Sparks of ideas were already leaping at him from the grate.
He'd have to make sure Rosi would milk this power for all it was worth.
"Are we done yet?" his brother muttered, having summoned and extinguished the sphere over forty times, "Doffy, you're not even looking anymore."
Doflamingo glanced back over. "We're done," he said and before his brother could get too relieved, added, "For today anyway. Get use to summoning that thing, because we'll be seeing it a lot in the next few days."
A groan. Rosi stood, dusting his pants, and stormed up next to him. His side-glance was peeved and half-annoyed and something crumpled very hard and sudden in Doflamingo that he couldn't even pinpoint.
"Rosi," he said, as his brother flicked open his lighter, giving him a curious glance, "I really am—"
Fire sprouted up his brother's shoulder, swelling into an inferno in the second it took them both to blink.
"Oh," Rosi said, blankly, and Doflamingo was too busy thereafter clawing off his brother's coat and stomping out the flames.
xxx
here
xxx
Doffy was relentless. By the end, Rosinante had learned more uses for the fruit than he ever thought existed. He had bruises over bruises from running from Doffy's strings and had come a hair's breadth from a broken nose over a hundred times.
There was cursing and laughing and Doffy was so proud and Rosinante so annoyed and there wasn't a single part of him that wanted this to end ever ever ever.
Which only meant, of course, that it would.
And it did.
xxx
Doflamingo had lost track of time. He'd barely realized an entire month had gone by when Trebol contacted him, jabbering about how other pirate crews were starting to pay them tribute just to cross over their territory. His attention was needed, Trebol urged, and he had to return. Doflamingo knew he was right.
Yet for a long while afterwards, he could only stand in the sand, staring at the boat they'd arrived in. He did not know why, but he was reluctant to go. Even with such interesting prospects apparently waiting. He did not know why.
But the strings slithered out eventually, pushing the vessel into the cold, murky tides.
"C'mon, Rosi," he said over his shoulder, to where his brother stood even further back along the beach, head turned towards the tower.
Like a sad child being wrenched out of his home. Doflamingo gave a noiseless sigh. He'd have to make note to bring Rosi back again someday. Maybe in another few years, when all the plants and trees were back. It would make him happy, he was certain this time.
Doflamingo opened his mouth to say as much. Rosi spoke first.
"Doffy, come with me."
The world went still.
The waves, the sea, the pulses of their heartbeats.
Doflamingo turned fully.
"...What?"
Rosi's hands were in fists again. He looked at him. "We could leave all of this behind. Start over again together, like it was suppose to be. We could go."
"Go?"
The boat swayed, jostling and banging into a protruding rock. The sound echoed.
"Go where?"
"Anywhere," his brother said, "anywhere."
xxx
Sengoku would've boxed his ears, probably yelled until his face went puce and then had another conniption on top of that. He'd advised Rosinante against this mission since the beginning, warned that he was going to become compromised. A decades' worth of planning all over in a breaths-worth of sentiment.
But Rosinante could not even think then of the consequences. Of what may happen to him or otherwise. He regretted speaking the moment he had spoken, but it was not out of fear that he did.
For he'd seen the answer in Doffy's face long before he heard it, before his brother shied a step back, before he started laughing blankly.
"I can't go, Rosi," he said, "I have a crew. A family. How am I supposed to go?"
He kept laughing, shaking his head. Rosinante said nothing.
"What are you even talking about anyway, hm? We must've stayed here too long. The air is making you loopy."
A spidery hand ghosted to the boat and Rosinante knew that was it. This period of their lives was over, a book shut and bound tight.
Doffy's teeth gleamed. "It's a pity, but we've got places to be," he said, "Come along, little brother."
He obeyed silently. The small candle of hope in him had not died then. He'd been nursing it all his life and today was not the day it was destined to die.
So they parted from shore and left the past behind.
xxx
again.