Chapter Text
Devils do walk the earth and scour the seas.
Not in religious texts passed down from believer to believer.
Nor in the form of magical fruits that grants magical powers.
The devil comes as everything you’ve ever wished for.
And for Rosinante, all he ever wanted was a brother.
Twelve years had passed since his father’s death at the hands of his brother. Despite everything, he didn’t fear blood, didn’t shy away from guns, and surprisingly, he still loved his brother. Love and longing really. Which was why he decided to agree to go on this mission, not that he’d admit it. He’d taken this assignment as a marine with a duty to protect the people from evil pirates, plain and simple. The fact that the man he was against had the same blood as his was of no importance. For all he was concerned, his brother died the moment their mother died. All his kindness and love gone as they buried their mother. He lost his brother to the harsh and unforgiving world of man. He had mourned and moved on.
Of course he was wrong. Despite everything, and despite what he kept telling himself, Rosinante still loved his brother.
And no amount of marine training could have prepared him for seeing how thin his brother was.
Thin, gaunt, and ghastly. A sneering ghost wearing his brother’s flesh as a mask, taunting him, as if to say his brother really was dead and what he saw was an illusion.
It took a grand total of ten minutes for his brother to watch him walk into the bar, hit his head on the doorframe, and tripped on air twice, before he sat down in front of him. Eyes studying him from behind his glasses, face nearing his own until their foreheads almost touch.
His brother had always had bad eyesight. And weird taste in clothes.
Also he looked exactly like the poster and pictures in the file, so Rosinante definitely had the right guy.
He felt a hand removing his sunglasses and another squeezing his face, the strength within the scrawny hand removed any suspicion of weakness. The hand forced him to look at the other man. At his big brother.
“Rosi?”
He sounded way too young and naive despite the strength held inside his body.
Rosinante felt his throat close and dry up. He couldn’t say anything.
“You still look so much like mom”
There was a tremble in the older man’s voice. A fond softness that his big brother had always reserved only for him. And Rosinante burst into tears right then and there.
This was still his big brother, he did not change, he just got older.
What pleasant bliss it is to live inside one’s head. To fantasize about an ideal world where the pain and evil of the world did not consume the one you loved most. Where you could live together as a family.
Rosinante was pulled into a hug. Both men holding way too tight in fear of losing the other again.
“Where the fuck have you been?”
He sobbed harder. His brother’s sunglasses were askew from the hug and he could see part of his left eye. White and blind as it has always been, lids now marked with wrinkles that appeared twenty years too early. Tired eyes glistening with tears that have yet to fall. Tired, half blind, and drunk, yet he still recognized his little brother inside a dim, dingy bar in the middle of nowhere.
He’d recognize me anywhere.
He’s my brother.
He knew it was probably because of his brother’s haki. Or the fact that Rosinante had taken after his mother, the only person his brother had genuinely loved in his world.
He only loved me because he’s my brother.
His throat was still painfully dry and his voice was gone. He tried to reach his drink at the table, only to notice how violent his hands have been shaking. His brother noticed this, as his hand took his. With his other hand, he gestured to the barkeep and who Rosinante assumed were members of his crew for something to write with. He was then given a tiny memo pad and an equally tiny pen.
“You don’t have to talk if you don’t want to. I still remember how you are, you know,” he laughed as handed the memo pad over. His brother’s laugh did not change either. Low, giggly, haughty, he never thought he’d heard it again.
He took the memo pad and scribbled ‘lost, fell into a crate, loaded onto ship, worked as a cabin boy, dock worker, odd jobs, island hopping’, which was all a lie, because being sincere and genuine with his brother now would mean signing his own death warrant.
“After all I am you’re brother.” This was ended with a stupidly boyish smile that Rosinante almost believed it was sincere. The navy had been keeping close tabs on his brother, and all officers who came across him noted how he was a sadistic bastard who did not think of human beings as any different from toys. Who knew that Rosinante’s presence was the one thing capable of bringing this monster’s humanity back.
As he handed the memo pad back, he could not help but wonder, what would happen to his brother’s compassion should he find out about how Rosinante was only there to put him in jail, by the orders of the very government he despised.
:.
The marines he asked did not lie about his brother’s sadistic nature.
Seeing how relaxed and nonchalant his brother was about killing, torturing, and flattening entire towns was a great reminder of Rosinante’s mission. His euphoria of getting back together with his brother all but dissipated the second the strings and gun came out. His brother was gone, and this man in front of him right now was just a ghost wearing his flesh as a feather coat.
I need to stop him.
Because he’s my brother.
Flashes of blood, brain matter, and the smoking end of a gilded flintlock terrorized his mind every time his brother fought (or rather, massacre) those who dare oppose him. Rosinante was no stranger to violence and murder, but his brother was on another level. It was as if human lives held no weight in his world.
I love him because he’s my brother.
Because he’s my brother I have to stop him.
Mom would want me to.
He kept quiet around his brother and his new “family”. Maybe because he did not want his cover to be blown. Or because he was so distraught by how far gone his brother was in the head, and how his family enabled his insanity. Either way, he was not too keen on talking to any of them, dear brother included.
So, he kept his silence, he reported their moves to headquarters, he did his job in secret, and once again he made his peace with the world. His only cope being cheap cigarettes and cheap daydreams of a more merciful world where his brother could still be saved. Where they could be a family. One that doesn’t kill people on a whim. One that doesn’t sell arms to slave traders. One that doesn’t sell drugs to children. A proper family.
Rosinante did his job quietly and secretly. He bit his tongue and did what he was told.
To the marines, he was a tool to bring down a dangerous pirate. To his brother, he was a memento of their mother. He was not human. He had accepted his fate and moved on.