Chapter Text
Doflamingo considers it a worthy sort of revenge to invest in the slave trade of the North Blue. It's quite illegal here, of course, which means it's also quite profitable.
Apparently, he's given them too much leeway, if they think they can poach his crew.
He's not sure how it happened, exactly. Buffalo has been less than helpful, half-panicked and jittery as he is, but the gist of it is clear: Baby 5 was scooped up while the two of them were playing in the trash heaps. The perpetrators were prepared to deal with a Devil Fruit, even one as versatile as Baby's. They were less ready to handle Buffalo, who'd taken to the air as soon as he'd realized what was going on. He'd managed to see enough to recognize the insignia on their shirts and jackets as belonging to one of the groups the Donquixote Family has had dealings with in the past. Which means this was deliberate. This was planned. They were targeting Baby 5 intentionally.
Of course they were. A young girl with a valuable Devil Fruit-- yes, she'd be valuable indeed, to the right buyers.
Unfortunately for them, she already belongs to Doflamingo, and he does not take kindly to a bunch of presumptuous, power-hungry, over-reaching humans toying with those he has claimed as his own.
Time to remind them who they're dealing with.
He so rarely gets to really let loose. This ought to be fun.
-----
This is a disaster.
A hundred disparate aches and pains have joined forces to leave Rocinante in a haze of agony. His back oozes with blood. The slightest movement tears open another half-healed lesion. He can't get comfortable. He can't even really stay still, with the rocking ship and tossing waves. The best he can do is brace himself in a corner and hope that they forget about him, at least for long enough that some of his wounds scab over.
He should have known better that to hope for anything, with his luck.
There are footsteps on the stairs. Rocinante's blood runs cold. He sits up, but keeps his head drooped, bangs hopefully shading his eyes and disguising his watchful gaze. He's half-fearful, half-hoping-- he hasn't seen any of his squad since they were captured. If any of them are still alive, maybe they're here.
He'd been serving on a small patrol vessel, crewed by rookies and trainers. When they'd run afoul of a couple of slaver ships making a trade, they hadn't had a chance. Rocinante barely remembers the fight. He knows he'd fought, though. He knows he'd killed men. He knows that's why he's hurting so much now. All his fighting had been met with punishment. Punishment or revenge, perhaps. He's not sure. Either way, they'd taken their pound of flesh.
He can't quite keep his thoughts clear. Can't focus on anything for more than a few minutes.
The captured Marines had been divvied up between the slavers, like any other score from a raid would be, with bickering about who was getting the better deal and all. Then Rocinante and the others with him had been transferred somewhere on land-- a warehouse? All of them had been branded there, like cattle for the slaughter. Not with the hoof of the Dragons, yet-- oh, what a fucking irony that was going to be-- but with the slavers' insignia. Marking their products, so no other crew could take credit for the sale.
The wound is raw and red on Rocinante's shoulder. He's managed to get it infected, he thinks. Doesn't help that they keep dumping buckets of seawater on him to keep him from using his Devil Fruit.
Then Rocinante and what remained of his crew had been split up again, dragged onto different ships and sent off. He doesn't know what the logic of any of it is-- except, perhaps, to prevent pursuit, as much as possible. To stop the Marines from collecting their lost rookies.
It'll work. The Marines don't have the manpower to properly take down the illegal slavery operations in the North Blue. More importantly, they don't have the support from the higher-ups. No matter how many crimes the slavers commit, the fact remains that the Celestial Dragons want slavery to continue, and so it does.
The best chance Rocinante has of escape is if they throw one of his crew in this cell with him. If that happened, the two of them might just have a chance of escape.
But no such luck. When the footsteps reach his cell, and Rocinante risks looking up just enough get a good look, he sees one of the men who'd captured him holding a young girl. Extremely young; Rocinante would wager she's four or five. Disgust and bile raise in his throat, but he doesn't let himself move as the man opens the door and shoves the girl in with him. She yelps, stumbling, but doesn't fall. She's less chained up than him, with only cuffs around her wrists-- but when Rocinante looks at them more carefully, he sees the telltale grey glitter of seastone.
The man doesn't make any mocking remarks or dirty comments. He doesn't even look at them. Just slams the door behind the girl and then is gone.
Rocinante does not like kids. He is not good with kids. It would not be a stretch to say that Rocinante is afraid of children. Children are small and curious and thoughtful, fragile and clever and completely lacking in self-preservation skills. Children terrify Rocinante, and he has done his level best to avoid them at all costs.
So it is with no small amount of awkwardness that he sits up, clears his throat, and says, "Um-- are you alright?"
Then winces, because no, obviously she is not alright!
The girl blinks at him with wide, guileless eyes. Not tear-filled, thank goodness. He wouldn't know the first thing about comforting a crying child even if he wasn't chained to a wall and beaten to a bloody pulp.
"I'm okay," she says, carefully. "You're not."
Aha. See, this is that thing he doesn't like, about kids being clever.
Well, that's not fair. She's probably just using basic observation skills to notice that he is, in fact, covered in blood.
"I'll be alright," Rocinante promises, lying like a rug. "Can you tell me your name?"
She sniffs. "Baby 5."
That's her name? That's her name? Holy shit, what is wrong with this kid's parents? He isn't jumping to conclusions about what's going on yet, but things do not look good here.
"Right," he says. "I'm Rocinante."
"That's a pretty name."
"Thank you. I think so too." Rocinante hadn't thought his name was pretty since he was a child listening to his mother talk about the importance of family names. His comes from his great-great-uncle, he's pretty sure. But he's going to sit here and agree very politely with this kid while he prays that she has the self-possession she seems to and doesn't start crying. "Um. Do you know why you're here?"
Oh, wow. He must be concussed. Great job! That'll start her crying for sure!
Miracle of miracles, she doesn't start crying. Instead she nods, very solemnly, which is wholly unexpected. "I'm a pirate," she explains, "and I have a Devil Fruit. So I'm valuable." She pronounces that last world in the very precise way of a child parroting something they've heard and understand only in context.
"Ah," Rocinante says, heart sinking like a stone. "Do they--" he points up, hoping she understands he's talking about the slavers "--know that?"
"Yes."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes." The girl-- Baby 5, hell, does he have to call her that?-- looks mortally offended. "They work with my captain sometimes."
So her captain is the sort of pirate scum who works with slavers and has toddlers on their crew. Rocinante hates them already.
The thought has already occurred to Rocinante that it's possible, even probable, that this girl's captain was the one to sell her. Hell, even her name might be evidence of that, if her captain was the one to give it to her. Rocinante can just imagine the scheme: a pirate crew collecting young children, giving them Devil Fruits, training them up, and then selling them to slavers.
He hopes none of his sick, sinking horror shows on his face. "Your captain," he says carefully, "did they try to keep you from getting-- taken?"
She looks thoughtful. "I don't think he knows," she says finally. "He'll probably come rescue me, though. He's rescued me before. He's the best captain. The best pirate! He's going to be King of the Pirates, you know."
"Oh," Rocinante says with a nod. "Tell me more about him?"
She brightens, and begins to tell the most harrowing story Rocinante has ever heard. His opinion of the girl's captain is sinking rapidly. Who takes a kid this young on a raid of a weapon smuggler's warehouse?!?
-----
It's a beautiful day, with a bright, cloudless sky, and Doflamingo's smile is stretched so wide that it hurts.
Without any clouds in the sky, he can't scope ahead and scout out the slaver's ship. But they're getting closer, that's certain.
He's had excellent luck catching up to them. A couple crews of North Blue slavers made the fantastic mistake of targeting a Marine ship, and the Government is cracking down on all the slavers in the area as a result. Financially, it would be a disaster for Doflamingo if it had happened at any other time. But right now, he wants to see nothing more than the utter ruin of everyone who thought they could target his crew. Seems like all the slavers in the North have gotten too cocky: best to let the Marines wipe them all out, and start over again with whoever moves in afterwards.
It's odd, though. He wouldn't have expected the Marine response to be this ferocious. They're positively shredding the slavers responsible, with a vicious focus that normally the Marines aren't permitted to unleash on the slave trade. He wonders if someone important was on board.
Whatever the reason, it's a benefit for Doflamingo. He just has to listen in on a couple of Marine calls, and he has a pretty good grasp on the movements of the crew he's targeting. He had to make a guess about which of the crew's ships to go after first, but one of the calls he listened to mentioned that there's a ship that seems to be reserved for "precious cargo," that none of the Marines have been able to pin down yet.
That seems right. If they wanted any chance of avoiding Doflamingo's wrath, they'd keep his belongings on their fastest, best guarded ship.
He leans into the wind and takes a breath of the sea air. They're catching up. And those bastards will regret the day they so much as looked at Doflamingo's crew.
-----
Rocinante is half-asleep when they come for Baby 5. It's the best rest he's had in days, and for a moment he's irritated to be awake again.
Then the words from the slavers register, and Rocinante wakes up with the shock and terror of being plunged into the sea. They're talking about the kid-- the girl-- Baby 5. Talking about testing her Devil Fruit, seeing if it's really all that special.
"She's made of guns, they say!" one of the men warns.
"Aye, but will her gunpowder still light if she's doused in seawater?" another replies, and they all roar with drunken laughter.
Rocinante looks over at Baby 5. She's pale, eyes wide, and rigid with fear. She doesn't move, except to glance about the room, eyes darting as if an escape will present itself.
The men unlock the door, fumbling with the keys. Rocinante rolls his shoulders, trying to shake off the stiffness of keeping still for too long. One of the men reaches for Baby 5-- reaching past Rocinante, as Baby 5 flinches away, pressing against the back wall of their cell.
Rocinante lunges.
His arms are chained to the wall, and his ankles are cuffed together, but he's been placid and compliant enough that none of the slavers have noticed how much slack is in the chains. Nor have any of them considered, apparently, that Rocinante is hardly unarmed, so long as he can bite.
Blood is hot in his mouth. He sinks his teeth in, and feels something break underneath. There's screaming, distantly, but Rocinante doesn't pay that any mind.
Instinctively, the man pulls away. Rocinante could have told him that was a bad idea if his mouth wasn't full. Flesh rends, bones tearing and sinews shredding. The man screams again, in incandescent horror this time, holding his bloody hand to his chest.
Rocinante spits out a lump of muscle and a finger. He grins, and blood drips down his chin.
"You--!" one of the uninjured men shouts, and strikes Rocinante across the face. He wears a heavy ring that catches Rocinante in the temple. It hits as hard as brass knuckles. Rocinante reels, vision blurring, and can't manage more than a vague snarl when the man grabs him.
"You'll pay for that!" the injured man shouts. He's looking pale.
The room spins. Rocinante can feel himself being dragged out of the cell. He tries to get his feet under him and is unceremoniously dropped to the floor. The breath knocked out of him, he feels his tenuous grasp on consciousness starting to slip. But he forces himself to look behind, to focus, as he hears the door to the cell slam shut.
Baby 5 is still in there, eyes wide. Alone, all the slavers' malevolent interest turned on Rocinante instead.
Good.
-----
Dead men litter the the ship, but Doflamingo doesn't care about them. His crew will deal with the mess. He stalks across a deck wet with blood and viscera and stalks down the stairs to the lower deck.
This is a small ship, meant to carry single, valuable specimens, rather than hoards of potential sales. Most of its small cells are empty. One has the quarry Doflamingo is hunting.
"Baby 5," he barks, hearing his voice echo down the hall.
There's a tiny gasp, around a corner. "Captain!"
He follows the sound, long strides eating the distance, and tears through the cell bars with a claw of strings. When he tries to slice through her cuffs, his strings flicker and break against the metal.
Seastone. Damned seastone.
"Corazon, to me!" he orders, trusting Vergo to hear him.
While he waits, he examines Baby 5 more closely. She seems fine, but there's blood on the hem of her dress and the floor of the cell. "Did they hurt you?" he asks sharply. "Don't cry. Just tell me."
She shakes her head, biting her lip and sniffing. He's fairly certain the tears are an act. "They didn't, really. I think they were going to, but the other man stopped them."
Doflamingo's eyebrows raise. "Other man?"
"He was nice," Baby 5 says. "I think he was scared, but he didn't cry, so I didn't either. He bit the people when they came for me."
Doflamingo looks at the pool of blood on the floor. "He bit them?"
"Mm-hm." Baby 5 nods. "He bit off the man's finger."
Well, well. How interesting. "Where is he now?" Doflamingo would like to acquire this man, who protected Doflamingo's crewmate without any hope of reward. Especially given how utterly vicious Baby 5's protector seems to be.
"I don't know," Baby 5 says. "They took him away." She sniffs again, and this time it's certainly fake, because she fixes him with a wide-eyed, pleading look. "Can you rescue Mr. Rocinante too? Please?"
It's like a stone thrown through ice. Cracks spread out in all directions, leaving Doflamingo on suddenly unsteady footing.
His hands go cold. Heart turns glacial in his chest. It's an old, visceral reaction. Hope-fear-disbelief-rage. It couldn't be. It's not a common name, but it's not unique, either. It can't be Roci. It can't be.
"Young Master?" Vergo, just behind him.
Doflamingo half-turns. "Deal with her cuffs," he orders. His voice feels like it comes from a distance. He's not smiling. "I have something else to take care of."
"Would you like backup?" Vergo asks.
"No." No, Doflamingo doesn't want anyone else. None of them know. None of them could understand.
There's no one else on this level of the ship. He has to go one lower, into the darker, colder deck below the waterline. The rooms here are metal, without even wooden floors for comfort. Rust creeps along the floors and walls, eating ever further into the ship, aided by the thin layer of water underfoot.
If these walls could talk, they would scream, Doflamingo is sure. There have been horrors aplenty here.
Most of the doors hang open, swinging on their hinges with every rock of the waves. The symphony of creaks gives the impression that the ship could fall apart at any moment. Doflamingo kicks open the few doors stuck shut, looking for any sign of life, but they're all empty.
Until he gets to the end of the hall, and finds a door not only shut, but locked from the outside. Another set of strings tears apart the metal, and the door collapses with a thunderous cacophony.
The body in the middle of the room doesn't even twitch.
Doflamingo steps over the threshold and into an even deeper pool of water. It's murky; brown with rust or blood or both. He scowls down, but keeps walking, each step leaving ripples.
The room isn't large, but it's still bigger than any of the cells on the level above. Big enough to be shared by a few people standing together. There are no gratuitous tables of torture devices or racks of knives; the room needs no such showmanship. The oppressive weight of the air is more than enough to promise pain and fear for any cargo unlucky enough to find themself brought here.
Doflamingo crouches over the body in the center of the room. To his surprise, the man is still breathing, though shallow and ragged. It's a miracle he hasn't drowned, left curled on his side in filthy water as he is.
His skin is a wreck of bruises and weeping lesions. The marks on his back are clearly lashes from a whip, deep and furious enough to take chunks of flesh with them. A slice of strings is enough to peel off the man's shirt, pulling threads out of deep cuts, to get a better look at his torso. Bootprints on his chest. Cracked ribs, almost certainly. And broken fingers on one of his hands to match. There's an awful device cutting into the skin of his face-- a muzzle, Doflamingo realizes. To keep him from biting again.
His hair, if it weren't soaked with blood, might be blond.
Doflamingo finds the catch of the muzzle and releases it. He has to peel it off the man's face, undoubtedly reopening the places where it has cut into the nose and cheeks. There's a gag built into the thing, he realizes with a grimace. A metal bar, saliva and blood clinging to its surface. He lets the whole device drop into the water, and looks down at the face of the man.
Bloody and bruised and filthy, but unmistakable. The sharp, aquiline nose. The low brows and deep-set eyes. Wide, unhappy mouth. A face Doflamingo knows. So similar to the face he sees in the mirror. He lifts shut lids, just to check, and finds dim red eyes, unresponsive.
Doflamingo gathers his brother's body into his arms. He takes a slow, shuddering breath, then exhales. Terror, then fury. Blood, and blood, and blood.
When he comes up on deck, several of his crewmembers step back, stumbling. Only then, does he realize the way his Conqueror's Haki is lashing out. He reins it in. It's an effort.
Baby 5 comes stumbling forward. "Is that Mr. Rocinante?" she gasps.
"Yes," Doflamingo grits out. He's not used to not unleashing Conqueror's. It roils under his skin like the angry waves of a storm at sea.
Trebol makes a faint noise. "Young Master--"
Blessedly, Vergo steps forward, cutting him off. "I'll send for the doctor to meet us on Spider Miles," he says. Doflamingo thinks that Vergo is going to offer to take Rocinante to the Numancia, but a glance up at Doflamingo's face and he steps back again.
Unlike Vergo, Diamante apparently can't read the room. "Young Master, are you sure--"
With a sweep of strings, Doflamingo takes to the air, carrying himself and Rocinante over to his ship. He refuses to listen to anyone's attempts to question his judgment.
If his brother dies-- if Doflamingo loses him again-- the world will burn.
-----
It's warm, somehow. The world is vague and unreachable, but warm. Rocinante feels like he's caught under the weight of . . . snow, perhaps, but without the chill. Something heavy, but not as smothering as blankets. Deep, dark waters, or layers of clouds. Things that shouldn't be nearly so warm.
There's someone combing a hand through his hair. It's nice. Rocinante tries to tip his head towards the sensation, but can't. He's too tired. The water is too deep.
A low, soothing voice at the periphery of his hearing says something gentle, promising quiet and peace. Rocinante slips down again, towards the drowning warmth. It's easier, he thinks. He has a feeling that opening his eyes is going to hurt.
-----
Roci stills again, but Doflamingo continues to pet his hair.
The fever is going down, finally, but the infection persists. Too many injuries left too long uncleaned: the doctor said it was half a miracle Rocinante was alive at all. Doflamingo would have garotted him for that if he hadn't still needed the man alive. Roci is a miracle, a whole one, bright and pure and real. Impossibly real.
At least the nightmares seem to have subsided. For nearly two days, Roci had been caught in uneasy dreams, whimpering and crying out incoherently in his sleep. He'd woken twice, neither time lucid. The first, he'd flinched away from Doflamingo's touch and trembled like a leaf, like hurt was an inevitability. The second, he'd bitten Doflamingo.
He'd broken skin. Doflamingo was impressed.
As his temperature drops, Roci seems to sleep easier. No more half-strangled sobs or broken cries. He relaxes, the lines of pain in his face smoothing. He looks younger again, softer and sweeter. He rests.
In the quiet, Doflamingo can think again.
The slavers had attacked a Marine ship; Doflamingo had already known that. And Roci's clothes, wrecked as they were, had the distinct style of a Marine uniform. That was one part of the mystery squared away: Roci is a Marine, poor thing. Some presumptuous fool must have managed to convince Roci that he was lowly enough to be a mere soldier. Doflamingo will have to learn who that was.
But that leaves a thousand other questions. Where did Roci go? How did he survive? Why didn't he wait for Doflamingo? All the things he's spent night after night asking himself for the past decade.
It opens new questions too, though, and those are more important. Chief among them: why was Rocinante on that ship?
The coincidence alone-- that Roci would be on the same ship as Baby 5-- Doflamingo can overlook. That the universe would bend to bring back Doflamingo's little brother is only expected. The surprise is that it didn't happen sooner. They're gods: the world is meant to bend to their needs. But the question of why the slavers put Roci on that ship in particular lingers. It bothers him.
A ship for special cargo. That's why Doflamingo had targeted it. Fast, well guarded, and designed to handle a fight. So why had Rocinante been there? He can't be a high-ranked Marine. Too young, and they hadn't bothered to put him in seastone.
They might have known. Known Roci was a Celestial Dragon by birth and by right, and decided-- like those rats in that tiny town all those years ago-- to try to take a petty revenge.
It galls Doflamingo even to think of it. And it burns to know he'd failed his brother again.
-----
Rocinante wakes up.
He blinks at a ceiling panelled with boards that must have been painted blue once, but now are faded to a melancholy grey. It's an effort to turn his head, but he manages it. There's an IV in his left arm, leading up to a bag on a stand. When he tries to focus on his body, the sensations slip away. It's a familiar feeling, sort of. He's had enough injuries to know what it feels like when the doctors decide that the heavy-duty pain meds are necessary. It should be almost reassuring. He's safe. He's in a Marine hospital room. Sengoku will be here to check on him any minute.
Except that this definitely isn't a Marine hospital room. The faded ceiling alone is a dead giveaway, but as he looks around, he sees distinctly non-hospital furniture. Furniture that looks rich, well-made, expensive.
He remembers the attack on his ship. He remembers being captured by slavers. He even remembers meeting Baby 5, and trying to keep the slavers from paying her too much attention. And now, he's woken up in a place clearly owned by someone with money to spare, drugged with something he can't identify and in different clothes than he remembers wearing.
He needs to get out.
Despite the exhaustion weighing him down, Rocinante manages to reach over and pull out the IV. A bead of blood wells up, but he ignores it and tries to sit up.
It hurts. He grits his teeth as all the pains the drugs must have been keeping down explode in symphony. His back screams like it's one open wound. There's a dull ache in his mouth and jaw, and he can feel something hot and infected on the roof of his mouth. Every breath hurts; it's sort of reassuring to be able to identify that as just being cracked ribs.
Okay. He can do this. He's had worse.
He stands up. His vision whites out around the edges, but he doesn't pass out, so it's fine. He holds himself upright using the wall, and forces himself to walk to the door. He stops.
It's hard to focus on his Observation while pain is screaming at him, but the pain is not louder than Garp, so he manages. He can't muster up much range, but he can pick up that he's in a building rather than on a ship. Larger than a house, smaller than a Marine base. No apparent guard presence that he can sense: there isn't the cluster of intent, watchful presences he would expect of guards at a potential exit. In fact, there aren't many people here at all. Seven-- maybe eight?
One of them is coming this way. Rocinante stumbles backwards, cursing himself. Too late to run. No weapons to hand. Rocinante picks up a bottle of wine by the door and braces himself.
-----
It is only Doflamingo's superior reflexes and innate awareness of his surroundings that allows himself to dodge when a full bottle is nearly smashed over his head. Furious, he lashes out with strings to immobilize the attacker-- the attacker in his brother's room, hell, how could this have happened, how could he have left Roci alone again--
The attacker is Roci.
Doflamingo can only blink for a moment, staring in shock. Then he banishes his strings and reaches out to catch Roci before he can fall. Sure enough, Roci stumbles with the sudden release of the strings he'd been fighting against, and it's only Doflamingo's hands that keep him up.
But then Roci pulls away, staggering, and hefts the wine bottle again. "Who-- what do you want with me-- I swear, I'll--"
"Roci," Doflamingo says, keeping his tone low and careful, "it's me."
Roci looks at him, then shakes his head. Slowly, at first, and then with a fury Doflamingo can't quite understand. "No-- no, bullshit, I don't know who you think you are--"
"For mother's sake, put down the wine," Doflamingo says, exasperated. "It was very expensive, and frankly I don't think you're steady enough on your feet to knock me down. At best, you're likely to pull your stitches."
Roci lowers the bottle, slowly. Watching Doflamingo with cautious eyes.
Doflamingo carefully takes off his glasses and watches Roci's eyes widen. He steps forward, slowly and carefully. Catches the bottle of wine with a few strings when it slips from Roci's hands.
He pulls his little brother into a tight hug. Roci trembles, and doesn't hug him back for a moment. Then, he suddenly lets his head fall against Doflamingo's shoulder and makes a quiet, strange noise. Halfway between relief and profound sorrow.
"I found you, Roci," Doflamingo says, triumphant. "Sorry I was so late."