Chapter Text
It was luck that they found the baby. Sengoku wasn’t even looking, really; his Observation was a constant hum in the back of his mind, but he wasn’t focused on it. By all rights, he shouldn’t have noticed the little prick of life right on the edges of his awareness.
He paused in the street, frowning. Around him, his men stopped. Some of them, the newer of them, looked at him quizzically. Others put their hands on their weapons.
“Sir?” the commander asked. “Is something wrong?”
It took Sengoku a long moment to answer. “I don’t know,” he admitted. He narrowed his eyes, trying to focus his Haki further. He couldn’t quite figure out what he was sensing. “There’s something on the edge of my Observation. I’m going to check it out.”
A few men volunteered to accompany him, and they quickly split off from the rest of the group.
The odd sense led them to a junkyard with heaps of trash piled as high as Sengoku was tall. There was abandoned rubble from old buildings and what looked like dilapidated structures that must have at one point been occupied. They were empty now and likely had been for some time, probably since the borders of the junkyard grew outwards and swallowed up the homes that used to surround it.
The odd Haki signature led them to a pile of garbage. Sengoku paused in front of it, looking for the source. His eyes caught on blue cloth half-hidden beneath what looked like old curtains. Frowning, he carefully moved them.
It was a onesie, damp with rain. For a moment Sengoku thought it belonged to a broken doll thrown haphazardly in the trash. Then he saw the rise and fall of its chest, breathing unsteady gasps. It was alive; a baby.
He had no idea how old it was. Its limbs were twisted awkwardly where it landed on its side. Its thin blonde hair was a mess. Most concerning was its ghostly pale complexion and the blue tinge to its lips. Hypothermia, maybe a lack of oxygen.
“Oh seas,” somebody said. “Is it alive?”
The question snapped Sengoku out of his shock. “Yes,” he said.
He pulled off his coat and stepped onto the pile. The medics might be furious at him for moving it but he couldn’t bear the thought of waiting. Very carefully, he picked the baby up. It was so cold in his arms, its skin like ice. He held it close, bundled in his coat.
“We need to go. Alert medical,” he ordered.
The soldiers scrambled. Sengoku had seen some of them remain more calm under fire than they were now, trying to explain that they found a baby to the medical team back on the ship.
He carefully climbed down, keeping the baby cradled in his arms.
It might have been old enough to be a toddler, actually. He remembered Dragon’s birth, vaguely, and Tsubame’s a few years after. They were both far smaller then. Still, Sengoku wasn’t familiar enough with children to be able to pinpoint this one’s age. All he knew was that it was far too young to die like this, abandoned and alone in a dump.
The trek back to the ship felt longer than it was. Sengoku pressed the baby against his chest, hoping his body heat might warm it up. The cold was a dangerous thing for someone so little; he remembered that much.
“Sir, one of the medics says there’s a clinic on the island but no real pediatrician. The doctor said she can’t do anything if the baby is as sick as we described and recommended we take it to the hospital a few islands over,” the commander said as they approached the docks. The baby kept breathing its unsteady breaths. “Navigation is already preparing our course.”
Somebody must have run all the way to the clinic to have reached it already. Sengoku found himself profoundly grateful.
The medical team met them at the gangplank with a mess of pediatric-sized supplies apparently given to them by the local clinic. They didn’t bother speaking to Sengoku, simply taking the baby from him and whisking it away towards the medical bay, talking over each other as they went. Sengoku stared after them for a long moment before boarding.
He nodded to the captain, muttering orders to depart as soon as possible, and then followed them down. By the time he arrived, the medical team was already hard at work, having cut off the sodden onesie to reveal a soiled diaper and several partially healed burns that covered the baby’s legs. There was no evidence of infection. Somebody must have taken very good care of them.
It took several tries to correctly insert the IV and hook it up to the heated saline. Sengoku didn’t think he had ever seen a needle so small, and dehydration probably didn’t help with the baby’s tiny veins. By then, they had discovered that the baby was a boy. One of the medics used warm water to clean the fluids sticking to the boy’s skin from the diaper.
The ship didn’t have the supplies for a patient so small. What the clinic gave them helped, but they couldn’t intubate him despite his unsteady breaths, and even their smallest oxygen mask was far too large. They used it anyway. Even if only some of the air made it into his lungs, it would be better than nothing.
The boy was limp when the doctor checked his reflexes and didn’t wake at their jostling or activity. Even pain only resulted in the minimum responses: a wheezing whine and an attempt to shift away from the source. The doctor shone a light into his eyes, and then gently felt across his skull.
“The symptoms are similar to a brain injury but can’t find any signs of one,” he said. “Not even a contusion.”
“Could it be anoxic instead of traumatic?” one of the medics asked.
“It’s possible but unlikely. He doesn’t show any signs of drowning or asphyxiation," the doctor said. “How long until we reach the hospital?”
“Three or four hours,” another of the medics said.
He let out a breath. “Let’s hope he makes it that long. Keep up on the humidified air and warm saline. The best we can do for now is keep him warm and hydrated. We’ll keep an eye on his pulse. If it seems to be weakening, push vasopressors and we’ll see if it helps.”
“How old is he?” Sengoku asked, speaking up for the first time.
The doctor glanced at him. “Less than two, I’d guess, but it’s hard to say. He’s malnourished, and I’m not an expert in children. He might’ve come from a home with too many mouths to feed. That isn’t uncommon in these parts.”
It wasn’t uncommon in general. Everywhere Sengoku went there were desperate families and starving children. The navy recruited people as young as thirteen from situations just like that, desperate children who needed a way of supporting themselves or their families.
It was easy to dismiss the home this baby came from as terrible. Why else would he have been left to die? But the burns were treated. Injuries like that required constant care over an extended period. Why bother with it only to abandon him later?
There were too many questions and no way to get answers, at least not yet. Maybe in a few days, Sengoku could return to the island and ask around. Somebody must have known something.
For now, Sengoku went to the little boy’s side. He looked even worse laid out on the table. The medics piled warmed blankets around him to create a sort of bed. A much smaller blanket covered his body, its edges rough where it was cut from a larger piece.
Another of the medics stood nearby, cutting up the remainder of the spare blanket into smaller pieces. When Sengoku looked at her, she flushed.
“I used to take care of my sister’s kids. I learned how to fold diapers from cloth; figured we don’t have any on board, so.” She shrugged.
Diapers. Yet another thing he never thought he would need on a navy ship.
Sengoku looked back at the boy. One of his little hands was peaking out from beneath the blanket, his fingers curled into a fist. Sengoku couldn’t help adjusting the blanket to cover it, just like he couldn’t help reaching out to smooth the boy’s blonde hair.
“You’ll be okay, little one,” he said. “We’ll get you the help you need, and you’ll grow up big and strong, just wait and see. This won’t hold you back, and whatever happens, you’ll grow up somewhere you’re loved and wanted.”
The hospital was quiet except for the sounds of the little boy’s breathing. Sengoku sat beside him, marveling at how small he was, how fragile, made even more so by the wires and tubes that ran from his body to various monitors and machines. At least he was breathing on his own now. It took almost a week intubated to get to that point. Sometimes he even moved, shifting in his crib through the sedation, his eyes fluttering but not yet opening.
The doctors here agreed that he was around 20 months old. He was malnourished and dehydrated, though Sengoku’s medical team managed to solve the latter before they arrived. More concerning was the brain injury. With no visible wound, the pediatrician’s best theory was that somebody shook him violently and, upon realizing what they did, panicked. It wouldn’t have been the first time a child was left abandoned like that. Privately, Sengoku couldn’t imagine it. Who could just leave this poor boy in the garbage like he was nothing? It was hard enough leaving him in the hospital.
Sighing, Sengoku reached through the bars of the crib to run a finger over the boy’s cheek. It made him feel a little bit closer, like a silent promise that it was okay, that somebody was here now. He wished he could say it out loud, but Sengoku knew better. He was a Vice Admiral. Already he was loitering here much longer than he should have. Eventually, he would have to return to Marineford, no matter how unconscionable it felt to go.
“You can hold him, you know,” somebody said, and Sengoku jumped, pulling his hand away from the boy. He looked up to find one of the doctors standing in the doorway, smiling softly at him. It had been a long time since somebody snuck up on him, let alone accidentally.
“Sorry?” Sengoku said.
“You can hold him,” she repeated. “He’s stable enough to be moved now, as long as you’re gentle. You’ll have to support his head more than you usually would for somebody his age and be mindful of the IV, but it won’t hurt him.”
Sengoku looked back down at the boy. Did he even want to hold him? He’d held children before; he even held this boy during the trek from the junkyard to the ship, but that was because there were no other options. Sengoku was not a gentle man. His hands weren’t meant to hold something so precious.
Still, when the doctor motioned him to sit, he did, watching as she lowered one side of the crib. She unhooked some monitors and organized some lines. Then she picked the boy up.
“Come on. There you go; I’ve got you,” she told the boy. She turned, holding him the way somebody might hold a newborn. “Well?” she asked, slowly rocking her arms.
Sengoku swallowed dryly. He copied her arms, and she carefully placed the boy into his hold.
Logically, Sengoku knew that 20-month-olds weren’t that small, at least not compared to infants, but in his arms, the boy seemed so tiny. Tiny, frail, and so badly hurt.
“Oh,” Sengoku said. His voice sounded choked. “Hello there.”
The doctor laughed behind her hand. “You can hold him whenever you want, just ask one of us for help. We don’t mind. It’s good for them, but we don’t always have the time,” she said. “I can even make sure there’s a rocking chair in here for you.”
Admittedly, Sengoku wasn’t paying much attention to her. His eyes were locked on the boy who yawned and squirmed a little, settling more comfortably in his arms.
“Oooh, I think he likes you,” the doctor cooed.
Sengoku’s chest clenched at the words. He didn’t know what to say. The boy shouldn’t be so content sleeping in his arms.
He didn’t want to put the boy down. There was something soothing about holding a baby. Maybe it just reminded him of why he became a Marine in the first place; his duty to protect those vulnerable. Too often, it felt like wading through sand, a perpetual cycle. Defeat one pirate and another popped up. It was easy to forget the real people they helped. This was evidence of that. Or maybe Sengoku just felt a measure of responsibility. He was the one to find him, after all.
Whatever the reason, Sengoku cradled the boy close, watching as he slept.
He heard the wailing before he reached the boy’s room. Sengoku shoved the door open. It banged off the wall, as loud as his heart pounding in his chest. Several medical staff surrounding the crib jumped, though they quickly turned their attention back to their attempts at placating the screaming child.
The boy was awake—truly awake, instead of merely opening his eyes from brief glimpses of time, still too dazed to understand the world around him. Judging by the sound of his tears, there was no lingering damage to his breathing.
Sengoku pushed past the gathered nurses until he met eyes with the boy’s main physician. “Give him to me, please,” he said, and while it was unbecoming of a Vice Admiral to beg, he couldn’t deny that he was doing exactly that. The sound of the boy’s sobs tore at his heart, making it feel like it was leaking blood into his chest; the tightness ached like a vice.
The doctor looked at him for a moment before nodding. Her mouth was set into a firm line as she directed the nurses to unclip the monitors. When the boy was free of all but the IV, Sengoku picked him up. His little body was tense enough on one side to likely hurt, while the other lacked muscle tone. The doctors had worried about that, likely a result of the brain injury. Hopefully with him being so young it was something that would ease with time.
“Okay, it’s okay, I’ve got you,” Sengoku said. One of the nurses pulled up the rocking chair for him, and Sengoku nodded gratefully. He sat, holding the boy to his chest and rubbing the small, trembling back. “Shhh, it’s okay. I know it’s scary, but you’re safe.”
The boy kept screaming unperturbed. Sengoku continued rubbing his back, rocking back and forth and speaking quietly. One of his hands curled into Sengoku’s shirt as he screamed. The sound was shrill, but Sengoku had spent time on battlefields. It was no worse than bullets raining down on them.
The sobs came and went in waves. It took several minutes for the boy’s cries to calm enough for him to form words.
“Doffy!” the baby wailed. He tugged on Sengoku’s shirt. “Doffy! Doffy!”
“What’s he saying?” one of the nurses asked. “Daddy?”
That earned an ever louder cry, and the boy repeated the same word again.
“Is that a name?” the doctor mused. “It sounds like ‘Doffy.’”
“Is that right?” Sengoku asked him. “Are you calling for Doffy?”
The boy’s breath was high and sharp, bordering on hyperventilating the way children sometimes did when they cried too hard to breathe. He let out a whimper and a nod before continuing to cry.
“Doffy,” Sengoku repeated. “Okay, okay. We’ll look for Doffy, alright? We’ll try our best to find him for you.”
Just who was Doffy, he wondered. The person who cared for the boy’s burns? The one who lovingly sewed the little onesie he was found in, with its old fabric and lopsided stitches? A family member? A caretaker? Was it this ‘Doffy’ who left him in the trash to die, or someone else? There were too many questions, and the only way to find answers was currently crying his little heart out in Sengoku’s arms.
Sengoku was already planning to send a few Marines back to the island. Child abandonment was a crime, though not one often pursued. Most of the time, those children simply disappeared. Into piracy, into slavery, or death. It wouldn’t be too hard for them to ask around about somebody named Doffy while they were there.
Eventually, the tears petered out into exhausted sniffles. Sengoku shifted the boy into the crook of his arm, letting one of the nurses clean the boy’s face with a damp cloth. When they pulled away, the boy opened his watery eyes to stare up at Sengoku, his lip wobbling.
“Hello,” Sengoku said, smiling softly. “I’m glad to finally meet you. My name is Sengoku. Can you tell me yours?”
The boy didn’t immediately speak. The doctor and nurses exchanged worried looks. After a moment, he seemed to come to some sort of decision. “Rosi,” he said. And then, with the deliberate cadence of somebody who was repeating what he heard, said, “Rosi. Rosi-nan-te.”
Rosinante.
“That’s a lovely name. I’m glad to meet you, Rosinante,” Sengoku said.
Rosinante closed his eyes and half hid his face against Sengoku’s side. “Doffy,” he repeated, petulant and clearly still upset.
“We’ll look for him,” Sengoku promised.
Rosinante sniffled, which once again turned into tears, though they were quieter this time than the last. It must have hurt to cry so much. Sengoku rocked him through it, muttering soft words and feeling Rosinante’s tiny body trembling, so filled with grief.
Eventually, when the last of Rosinante’s energy faded, he fell asleep. For a long moment, Sengoku didn’t dare move. Then, as carefully as possible, he brushed away the tears that were still wet on Rosinante’s cheeks.
“Poor thing; must be all tuckered out,” one of the nurses muttered. To Sengoku she said, “We’ve put his name down on his chart and we’ll make sure to update the rest of the care team. We can finally start calling him by his name instead of Baby Marine. Isn’t that right, Rosinante?”
There was an odd swoop in Sengoku’s stomach. “Baby Marine?” he asked, looking up at her.
She laughed. “The Marines brought him in and you all care so much about him. It just seemed like it fit.”
His crew did care about the boy. The ship’s medical team gave all the information possible to the doctors here when they arrived and still visited to see how he was doing, though the hospital was trying to keep contact to a minimum while he was still so vulnerable to sickness. Whenever Sengoku forced himself to return to the ship in the evenings, the rest of the crew bombarded him with questions.
Would it be the same if he brought Rosinante back to Marineford? It was similar when Dragon was young, trailing after Garp. Tsubame too, though Tsuru was better at balancing work and home; her children rarely had to visit HQ with her.
Neither of them were as highly ranked as they were now when they had their children. Tsuru was able to take an entire year off with each. Sengoku was already bordering on trouble for staying this long after his mission was complete. He would never be able to take months of leave.
It was an inane idea. A fantasy that could never happen. Sengoku couldn’t take care of a toddler, especially one who would undoubtedly need much more help than the average child. And why would he even want to? There was a reason Sengoku was unmarried. He had no desire for a family. His work, his Justice always came first.
Even knowing all that, the thought remained, a whisper in the back of his mind.
“Here, I’ll take him back,” the nurse said. Sengoku reluctantly let Rosinante go. He didn’t stir in the nurses arms, or when she put him back into the crib and began reattaching the monitors.
The crib looked so bare. That was fine when Rosinante was in such a critical state, but now, Sengoku wondered if there wasn’t some way to give him comfort. A plushie, maybe, or a blanket. He would have to ask if Rosinante was allowed anything, though Sengoku didn’t have the first idea of how to go about acquiring such things.
Not for the first time, Sengoku considered calling Tsuru, or even Garp, but doing so would mean explaining the situation. Sengoku still didn’t know how to explain it to himself.
“Sengo!” Rosinante cried when Sengoku entered the hospital room. He was sitting on a large rug in front of the window. His physical therapist sat behind him, helping keep him upright while he played with colourfully painted blocks.
Sengoku laughed, taking off his jacket and folding it over the back of a chair.
“Good morning, Rosi, Anna,” he said. “Sorry, am I interrupting?"
Anna smiled. “Not at all, we’re almost done here. Rosi, why don’t you show Vice Admiral Sengoku what you built?”
“Look!” Rosinante said when Sengoku came over. He pointed to a lopsided tower of blocks built.
“Very pretty,” Sengoku said, nodding.
“And which hand did you use?” Anna asked.
Rosinante held up his left hand. It, like his entire left side, was weaker than the right. “This!”
“Good job!” Sengoku said with more enthusiasm than he felt toward world saving missions. Some days, he thought Rosinante worked harder than most Marines, even if the work was disguised as playing. Someday soon, Sengoku was sure that Rosinante would be a little terror, running them ragged.
Rosinante beamed at the praise, his eyes bright behind his blonde waves.
“Do you want to go with Sengoku now?” Anna asked. When Rosinante nodded, she passed him to Sengoku and started cleaning up the blocks.
There was a routine to Rosinante’s care and Sengoku’s visits. In the mornings, the nurses woke Rosinante to check his vitals and neurological status. Rosinante was usually irritable and grumpy for the first hour or so, but that eased sometime after breakfast. Soft foods while his occupational therapist helped with his swallowing. Then came physical therapy. Sengoku tried to arrive after that on days when he didn’t spend the previous night in the hospital room. It was too hard to accomplish anything when Rosinante was always distracted by asking the same question.
“Doffy?” he asked when Sengoku sat in the chair beside his bed.
Sengoku sighed. He settled Rosinante in his arms. “I’m sorry. We haven’t found him.” They looked. They were still looking, but there was little to go on after the town was destroyed by a pirate. If Doffy lived there, chances were that he was gone, even if he survived the attack.
Next came the pouting. Sometimes there were tears and tantrums, but today Rosinante only grew sullen and silent. It wasn’t any better. All Sengoku could do was hold him and wait. Rosinante wouldn’t engage with anything until the disappointment passed, but he didn’t push away from Sengoku.
It ached to go through this every morning. Sengoku wanted nothing more than to tell Rosinante that they found Doffy, to see Rosinante’s big smile and excited wiggling. Instead, every morning, they went through the same sadness.
How long, he wondered, until Rosinante stopped asking entirely? Already the question was delayed, no longer the first thing he asked the nurses and doctors upon waking, or even upon seeing Sengoku. Would it be worse for Rosinante to give up and lose this little sliver of his past? Remembering was painful, but would forgetting be worse? Sengoku didn’t know. He wished he wouldn’t have to find out.
“I know, I’m sorry,” Sengoku repeated, rubbing Rosinante’s back. At least Rosinante was a healthier weight now. It no longer felt like Sengoku might break him just by holding too hard. Being well fed made Rosinante feel better too, Sengoku could tell. He was less fussy than he used to be, for one.
They were quiet for a time as Sengoku waited, wishing that Rosinante wasn’t hurting so deeply.
“Is Doffy dead?” Rosinante eventually asked.
The question took Sengoku aback. “I don’t know,” he said honestly.
Rosinante looked up at him with wide eyes. “Doffy says daddy is dead.” He said it simply, like it was a matter of fact instead of something to grieve over.
Sengoku had assumed that whatever happened, it was Rosinante’s parents that left him in that dump, but Rosinante had never once mentioned a mother. If his father was dead, that narrowed people down sharply. Maybe it was Doffy, who, if he was Rosinante’s brother like Sengoku was beginning to suspect, probably wasn’t that old himself. No matter how much somebody might love their sibling, caring for a child was hard.
He swallowed around the lump in his throat. “I’m very sorry,” he said.
“You too?” Rosinante asked.
Sengoku frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Daddy dead. Doffy dead. You?”
Suddenly, Sengoku found it very difficult to breathe. He understood what Rosinante was asking now. A child so young had a limited understanding of death. To Rosinante, death meant leaving him behind.
“No,” Sengoku said before he could regret it, hugging Rosinante close. “I’m here. I promise I won’t leave you.”
How could he when Rosinante clung back so tightly? It would be unimaginably cruel to tear this away now. Sengoku was too entrenched, too important to Rosinante. And, he was forced to admit, Rosinante was too important to him. It wouldn’t be easy, but few things in life were. Sengoku would make it work. He would have to.
“How about we do some reading?” Sengoku asked, because he might suffocate if he didn’t think of something other than the crushing weight of love for this little boy, because that’s what it was, really. Sengoku couldn’t deny it anymore.
Rosinante sniffled and nodded, so Sengoku pulled out one of the books that he picked up over the weeks. He held Rosinante in one arm and the book in the other, angling both so that Rosinante could see the pictures as Sengoku read it out loud. It was a story about talking animals. Sengoku suspected the author had never heard of minks before, or they would have probably written them differently. Still, Rosinante liked it, his eyes taking in the colourful drawings.
Sengoku really would do anything for him.