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A son can’t help but love his mother. Her voice is the first thing he hears in life, the safety and warmth in her arms that he craves in moments of fear. To hold him and tell him in that most familiar voice, that everything will be alright. From the moment he is born, a boy’s mother will be his home. And even as the years pass, as the boy grows into a man, as he creates his own family and his own home, this part will never leave him completely. The knowledge of love and warmth and safety…it will stay with him for the rest of his life.
That’s how it should be.
The girl’s voice is poison. He can’t even blame her. She’s trying to survive, after all. And she isn’t lying. He knew from the start that this was the likely outcome of his gamble. The cake isn’t here. No amount of searching or sniffing or screaming can make it magically appear. He knew that. His lies bought them some time, but now the game is up.
The cake isn’t here.
Perospero has lied.
And like she promised, Mama will kill him for it.
Riding on Prometheus, Mama turns on him like a raging fire goddess, away from the little pirate brigantine, allowing the Straw Hat pirates to disappear toward the horizon. Huge yellow eyes, crazed by hunger and fury and deep-seated betrayal zero in on him. Perospero had known since boyhood, that his mother’s love is only ever performative. He expected the fury. And he expected his own fear. But it does hurt. Having to fear his mother will never stop hurting.
“PEROSPERO!”
She spits his name like a curse. Half a whisper, half a shout. As if his lie genuinely hurt her. As if his betrayal robbed her of her voice.
Perospero did lie. But he never betrayed her. Not his mother. Never his mother. For the last fifty years of his life, he only ever aimed to please her, to stay in her good graces, and to earn her love. He only tried to protect his family—her family, her children—and his home—the nation she’d built.
“You lied to me!?” Her voice cracks.
“Perorin…”
Perospero glances back. The shore isn’t far. They didn’t follow the Straw Hat ship far before Mama noticed that the wedding cake he promised wasn’t on that ship. He can…maybe make it back to shore. And then what? Might it not be easier to face her here and disappear into the ocean waves? But then what? He still has to protect his home. Crazed as she was, hungry and furious, she would merely continue her rampage after his death. She’ll kill his siblings and the people of this nation. Maybe he could buy enough time to calm her down. Unlikely. He bites his tongue in frustration. In all that time Mama chased after the Straw Hats she hadn’t calmed down at all. Can he, maybe, stall her enough to allow his siblings—at least—to escape?
At least, he will be rid of the agony in his bloody stump.
Mama charges.
“Mama! Sto—” He hears Daifuku cry from afar. Perospero called him useless just a few minutes ago, but he still tries to help. Not that there’s anything Daifuku could do. Not even if he was close enough. It’s better that way, in any case; then only Peropsero has to die. As it was intended. It is the duty of an older brother to protect his siblings, even the useless ones. And even more so, if their mother wouldn’t.
From a very young age, Charlotte Perospero, oldest son of the Yonkou Big Mom, understood that that is his duty, his reason for why he exists on this earth.
Somehow, he evades Mama’s charge. The ocean is ablaze, but his candy wave carries him securely. It’s melting fast, falling apart, he can barely keep it stable and carrying him in the onslaught of heat. But all he has to do is make it to shore. And he’s reasonably fast.
But Mama is faster.
He’s almost there, just as one of her attacks grazes him. He stumbles in knee-high water. Mama lands on top of him.
His head is dunked under. Icy ocean waves close over him, swallow him. He can’t breathe, he can barely move. He’s going to drown!
Maybe it’s mercy. Maybe it’s sadism. That peculiar rush he has inherited from her, that makes him want to drag out his opponent's suffering, especially those who’ve wronged him and his family. Maybe she hates him enough that she wants him to suffer.
He’s grateful, regardless, when she snatches him by the ankle and throws him toward the tree line. Heaving and gagging up mouthfuls of saltwater, he crawls onto dry land. His body hurts. There’s sand and salt in his open wounds.
Curse you, Pedro! For doing this to me! But he won’t have to feel that pain and anger for much longer.
“WEDDING CAKE!” Behind him, Mama is falling into a blind rage. She stomps towards him, splashing and boiling water, Prometheus growing with her fury.
“Mama, please!” Perospero has trouble standing up. It’s the best he can do to sit. He hurt his hip or back in the fall. His body isn’t cooperating. “Mama, please stop. It’s me.”
“WEDDING CAKE! Where is my Wedding cake!”
She says it like it’s all she cares about, the only words she knows. As if it was his last chance for redemption. If he could pull a suitable cake out of his ass… But how should he do that? Perospero is a tall man, but thin. There is nowhere he could possibly hide a cake in his clothes. She’d see that if she’d be thinking clearly. “It’s gone.” Now, he said it. No turning back. Maybe, if he’d just hid it from her, withheld it for some unknown, asinine reason, maybe she would even look past his transgressions—though they’d be much worse, truly, than his desperate lies—as at the very least, he could still bribe her with cake. It’s all she cares for. But he doesn’t have it. No one does. The Straw Hats, that traitor Capone, they destroyed it. If Chiffon betrayed them with her husband, Perospero wouldn’t even know how they’d begin to remake it. This is reality, and it is a reality, Mama will have to learn to live with or else she’ll destroy everything Perospero holds dear.
Mama will kill him for a cake.
“It’s destroyed. The Straw Hats—”
Mama screams. She rages. She burns. He threw up a shield of candy, but it melts so fast. Perospero feels his skin boil.
“LIAR! LIAR!”
“Mama, please!”
He scrambles backward for every step she goes toward him. Closer to the trees, as if he hoped he could hide there. Of course, he never stands a chance. Mama is faster, and her Haki is stronger. If by some miracle, he would escape, she would find him everywhere. Even if not, she would merely continue her rampage. She’d start with this island, kill all the people on it, turn every stone until not a soul would still draw breath, and then she would move to the next one. No one, not even his brother Katakuri would be able to stand in her way.
“CAKE!”
There’s no talking to her. “There is no cake!”
His back hits the trunk of a tree. Perospero looks back, looking for an escape. It’s this second, enough for Mama to be upon him. Looming over his broken, bloody form, she frowns down at him as if he’s the enemy, not her oldest child.
“Life or WEDDING CAKE!”
Don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid!
Mama never was above using her powers against her children. But it happens rarely. Perospero thinks of Moscato. His little brother…from whom she stole 40 years in a second.
Don’t be afraid.
If he doesn’t show fear, she can’t harm him. The mantra is a lie. Perospero is afraid. Of course, he is. If she won’t claim his soul, she’ll simply kill him outright. Of course, she can harm him. That she’s going to kill him is already decided. Mama told him she would. This way may be preferable, he tries to reason. This way, he may be able to buy time. Taking a soul takes longer than squashing his head. He tries to reason it to himself and tries to encourage himself to keep fighting. But the truth is, he doesn’t have an option.
Perospero is terrified. He knows this woman. Knows her better than anyone. He knows her maybe better than he does himself. He knows what she’s capable of. There was a time, far, far in the past when it was just the two of them. He was still a baby then, and truly can’t remember any of it, but sometimes he thinks that terror, that lonely fear…it never quite left him. Even surrounded by siblings and underlings, citizens, and a never-ending string of stepfathers, there’s always that part of him that instinctively like it’s ingrained into his soul, trembles in fear at this very thought: Being alone in front of her. Knowing there will be nothing and no one standing between him and her power. No father, no siblings, no motherly love.
“Mama…It’s me, Perospero.”
“Life or Cake?”
She gives him the choice she gives everyone. Life or treat. The choice she gave his younger brother, whom he failed to protect. He didn’t even see it happen. Poor Moscato.
“The cake is gone.”
She swipes at him. He knows that feeling, as she rips through his soul, cuts his lifespan short.
The first time she took years off his life, he had been twelve years old and foolishly trying to protect his father. Not his…true father. Just one in the endless line of husbands she kept parading in front of him, married, then quickly divorced or murdered. Twelve years old, with as many stepfathers: Kings and Princes, Pirate Captains, last survivors of some extinct people, warriors, and the like. They would come into his life and then leave again, most of them leaving very little behind, apart from his ever-growing number of siblings. Every single one, a small weight on the oldest boy’s shoulders, knowing he must keep them safe. Perospero cares for his siblings. But there’s been a time when he’d craved more than that. A parent to take some of that weight off him. The man had been Mont d’Or’s father, and he’d been one of the very few stepfathers he’d grown incredibly fond of. Big Mom had shaved five years off Perospero for it. A fair warning.
Today it hurts worse. It feels like a cold knife through the heart.
Gasping, Perospero falls against the tree. He’s still alive. That’s something.
“That was 10 years, boy.”
Then he probably has a few more years left.
“Perorin…” he whimpers.
“Now, where is my WEDDING CAKE?”
Does she think he’s hiding it from her?
“Mama. Please, calm down, perorin.”
“Life or Treat.”
No. Nono.
“Mama.” He’s pathetic. He turtles. Perospero has little fight left in him. He’s learned how to handle his mother in the fifty years of his life, yet now that his life depends on it, and that of his siblings, all he can do is beg her for mercy and hope for just the smallest spark of love or care. “Mama, please, I’m your son. I did not destroy your cake.”
“Where is my wedding cake?”
She takes another ten years off him. Tired and in pain, Perospero’s eyes fall shut, but he blinks them open. Tries to stay awake.
“You’re going to destroy this island, if you don’t calm down.”
“WEDDING CAKE!”
Is this her version of torture? Will she ask him for the cake endlessly, and as he’ll never be able to provide it, she’ll shave decade after decade off his lifespan, until he’ll crumble to dust?
He tries to evade her. He tries to get out from where he’s stuck against the tree. Like a worm, his broken body squeezes around it. Her huge fist grabs him by the knee. She twists his leg.
“I told you! Perospero. You lied to me.”
“Only to protect the family.” Why can’t she see that? Why is he stuck with a mother who cares more for her treats than her children? And a mother with such power, no less. Perospero is not weak himself, but against her, he’s a bug. He can only cry out, as she twists his leg further. “I’m on your side. Mama, please. Mama!”
“Where is my cake!?”
Tiredly, terrified, he looks up at her. Giant yellow eyes and an angry frown. She’s running out of patience with him. As if she truly thought, he could still provide her with that cake, and she only had to scare him to spit out his secrets. He has nothing left to tell her, so he falls into old patterns. “The Straw Hats…they—”
“LIAR!” She roars, and the fist of her massive hand presses him into the floor, as she cuts his soul apart.
Don’t fall unconscious. Don’t fall asleep. Don’t die yet!
He still has things to protect. Daifuku saw their mother turn her anger against her child. He would know what to do, Perospero has to trust in that. Daifuku will have told their family to run. Run as fast and as far as they can. Get on the ship and evacuate the island. There is little they can do, in this situation, to protect the citizens of Totto Land. Their home always was most vulnerable to an attack from their ruling Yonkou tyrant. Foolishly, Perospero thought for years, he could keep her in check.
He will pay for that hybris.
“We can…make a new cake.”
How would they do that? Without Chiffon, without possibly Pudding? In a short enough time to satisfy Mama. No chance.
Perospero is out of options. He’s never been so out of options. He blinks his eyes open, staring into the forest. All he sees is colorful shapes. His sight is blurred, the world a patchwork of blues and greens, and the giant pink spot that is his mother.
“I want it NOW!”
“Mama. I can barely see.” Perospero doesn’t know why he says it. It won’t be what she wants to hear, it won’t calm her down or quench her wrath. Neither will she do as he craves. She’s not going to take him in her arms, hold him tight, and promise that it’s going to be alright, that his lack of sight is merely a product of stress and exhaustion, and not a result of her shaving decades off his life, and him not being the youngest man to begin with. “I can’t see! Mama!”
“The CAKE. Where is my wedding cake.”
That stupid question. That stupid, stupid question. She’s like a broken record. He doesn’t have her stupid cake. It’s gone. GONE. “I DON’T HAVE IT!”
“Oh?” He cringes back at the disapproval in her voice. How could he dare yell at her like that? She slaps him.
It’s just that. Her flat palm against the side of his face. But she has enough power to send him flying, to explode her eardrum, and cause a persistent ringing in his head. He crashes through trees and undergrowth, until his body comes to rest under the green canopy, turning his blurred world into one of browns and greens. And somehow, against hope, he thinks he’s gotten away from her.
There’s not much positive in it. He can’t move. His body isn’t listening. It takes the use of his Devil Fruit and full concentration to move just a meter away from where he landed, only so he could roll up under a broken tree trunk, knowing Mama will certainly find him there. But he can’t go any further. Every twitch of muscle hurts. Even just breathing hurts. He wants to drift into unconsciousness. Maybe then he won’t have to witness his own mother taking the last of his soul and killing him fully. It’s not something he wishes to see with his mind fully awake.
“Pero…” he hears her voice. Shrill. Different somehow. But he’s too confused to place her tone. His head is not working right. His mind feels detached from reality. He thinks of his early childhood years when he thought being strong, he might please her. Taking the duties of the man in a family of a hundred absent or dead fathers might please her. Becoming a feared pirate, administrating her nation, leading an island for her, amassing powers, following through with her plans… He thinks of a time when he still hoped there would be a future in which he would be powerful and beloved enough, so he wouldn’t have to fear her anymore.
She will kill him. For trying to protect what she built.
“Pero…” She whispers into his ear. There’s a tuck on his body, on his sleeve. It’s surprisingly gentle, but it transfers enough force through his clothes, that his maimed stump is jostled. Perospero gasps in pain. “Oh, Big Brother Peros.”
Huh?
He forces his eyes open, but he can’t see much. Can’t see her. There’s a bit of purple and grey and green next to him but he’s missing the mountain of pink that is Mama.
“Come. We have to go.”
“We…?” His voice cracks. Perospero narrows his eyes, but it doesn’t help him see better. The world is only splotches of color, and it’s narrowing to a very small area that he can pay attention to. He’s staring at purple and grey, and he tries to place that voice, which is clearly not Mama.
“Run.” He whimpers to a sister he can’t recognize. Not her face that he can’t see. And not her voice over the ringing in his ears. “You…evacuate.”
“How much did she—”
“WEDDING CAKE!?” Mama’s voice interrupts his sister’s concerned inquiry. Perospero shudders, and he thinks he sees the purple and grey shift and shrink in on itself. A wave of maleficent Haki comes upon them. The Color of the Conqueror. He’s too weak to do anything against it.
His body, his soul…something finally gives.
He is surrounded by red. Perospero blinks his eyes open, but there is nothing but red. Different shades of it. Purple, magenta, lilac, wine. On the ceiling, the walls—surrounding him. Is he dreaming? Is this the afterlife? Some strange type of hell? Is this what happens to souls fully consumed by Mama? He’s never thought about it, about what happened to the consciousnesses of the souls sacrificed to her. If this is the place Souls went, can he find Moscato here? Or the many stepfathers she destroyed?
His body sluggishly catches up to his mind. It moves very slowly. Feeling returns even slower. He’s in pain. A whole hell of pain. His arm is still missing. He’d hoped to at least be rid of that problem. That death would take care of it.
He feels, all in all, he decides after a moment of readjustment, too miserable to accept this as the afterlife or a mere dream. It is either Mama’s Devil Fruit or…
There are voices in the distance. He stares hard into the direction they come from, and he thinks there’s movement there, but his eyes can’t see so far. He cannot even see his hand clearly in front of him. There’s a certain distance about half his arm's length away from his face, where he can see clear enough to make out his fingers. Closer than that and beyond that point, it’s just shapeless colors. Still further beyond, only red haze.
“Brulee.” His voice is raspy, weak, and strange. It’s not his own. It sounds withered and brittle. “Brulee?”
If she won’t answer, if she’s not here, then he may truly be stuck in Mama’s belly. His own personal hell.
“Brulee, sister…” Please answer. Please, be here.
He hears movement further than his eyesight. Shuffling steps. “Brother Peros,” she answers. “Big Brother Peros.”
So, it was her. A wave of relief floods him. It’s aching in his chest. She’s come for him. She’s picked him up from the forest where his Mama would’ve killed him. Suddenly, the relief freezes in his heart and turns into cold dread. “Why am I here?”
“She would’ve killed you, big brother.”
“No. No…” Nonono. “She will come after me. You have to run and evacuate. You have to get the family together and leave the island. I will stay and stall her.” Maybe she’ll be satisfied with just killing him.
“Everyone’s already inside the Mirror World. Everyone’s safe. You did enough, big brother.”
“Everyone is…” But that doesn’t change the first part. “She’ll come after me. She won’t stop. Mama promised.” He can’t hide the rest of his life in the Mirror World. And he can’t go anywhere else. He’d rather just end it here. To stay alive will just put his siblings in danger. What if Mama pressured Brulee to hand him over, and took another of their siblings hostage to threaten them? They may be able to hide here for a while, but no food grows in the Mirror World, there are no rivers, and no candy stores. They will have to leave this place sooner rather than later. “You shouldn’t have…why did you…?” Perospero coughs and clears his throat. “I need to go back.” He touches his throat. “What’s with my voice?” It isn’t his own. And it’s not because of the injuries or exhaustion either. There’s something decidedly strange about his voice.
The splotch of color that is Brulee shifts.
Her lack of a reply frustrates him. “What’s with my voice?” he hisses.
“How many years has she taken off you?”
He doesn’t know. Ten years, the first time. Did Mama steal a decade of his life with every attack? Thirty? Forty? “Why?” But he doesn’t need to ask. She took a lot from him. His voice…aged. He’s going blind. He realizes then that whether he hides here, runs, or faces her, it will not make much of a difference. He will not have many more years left.
He thinks of the mink Pedro again, blowing Perospero’s arm off and dying in the process. A young man, already at the end of his lifespan. It feels like a fucking joke.
All the more reason for him not to hide and put his siblings in more danger. “Brulee…”
“Don’t pressure her, Big Brother.” Katakuri’s voice. Perospero sees only a bit of black in all the reds.
“Katakuri?”
“Yes?”
“Is that you?”
There’s a pause. The black spot moves. “Perospero…?”
“I can’t see. Brother, I can’t see!” The two spots of color around him freeze. Brulee, greys and purples and greens, and Katakuri in black.
“Oh no,” Brulee whispers.
Suddenly, there’s a hand on his shoulder and another clasping his. He stops still, then he relaxes.
“Don’t worry, Big Brother.” Katakuri’s voice is calm and reassuring. “It will be alright. We’re here for you, all together.”
This is it, he thinks. This is what he might have hoped his mother would do. To hold him, to reassure him, to tell him things would be alright. Just once in his life.
He squeezes Brulee’s fingers tightly.
“The second cake is almost done.”
Perospero blinks in surprise. “Second cake?”
“Chiffon, Pudding and Vinsmoke Sanji. They’ve made a second cake.”
A second…wedding cake. Then…He shudders. They could…save them all. The family, his siblings, his home, and the people of the islands. Mama. His heart seizes painfully. Chiffon and Pudding…his baby sisters.
“Our sisters are putting the last touch to it. It…”
“We took longer than expected.” Chiffon’s voice. She sounds shy and unsure. Perospero tries to maintain a good relationship with all his siblings. But with over eighty people…it’s hard. He barely knows Chiffon. Maybe that’s why it surprises him that she’s still here. Maybe, with her having turned traitor, he thought too lowly of her. A traitor against the family. But she’s stayed to save his home. “I wanted to be done sooner, but it had to be perfect.” She’s justifying herself. Perospero’s just glad she’s here at all. He tries to get out of bed, but Katakuri and Brulee keep him down, and it’s probably for the best. Chiffon never comes close enough for him to see her. “I’m sorry, it took so long. I didn’t…want this to happen—"
“Chiffon,” he rasps. “Thank you. Thank you, for saving us all.”
There was a short pause, then, “Pudding and I are part of this family.” Another pause. “But you must see now, brother, why I have to leave? Mother…What she did to you.” He doesn’t know if there’s a reproach in her voice or a question. “I can’t stay here. I won’t have my Baby Pez grow up surrounded by such cruelty.”
What is he to say to that? That he understands her betrayal, that’s part of why he’s now in this situation. But the truth is…He does. There’s not a Charlotte alive, he thinks, who’s not at least thought about running away. Even Mama. Her constant parties and weddings and terrible family events are only a means of escape.
“I hope you will let us sail away when the cake is ready. My son, me, my husband, and his crew.” He can’t promise her that. He’s not in a position to stop anyone from pursuit. “Perospero. This is not a family. It’s hell. The best you can do for the people you care about is leave this place.”
Perospero stares into the red nothing where Chiffon is hiding. Big, plump Chiffon. He’s so blind, she’s completely invisible to him. Mama could stand in front of him, and he wouldn’t know. Perospero has Haki, but it’s not as good as Katakuri’s, nowhere near as good as Mama’s. It won’t replace his eyes.
“She’s my mother.” He feels silly as he says it. She’s all of their mother. She’s the mother of nearly a hundred people. And while Perospero is sure she was at least fond of some of them for a time, he knows she never truly loved any of them. She’s Chiffon’s mother, and clearly, Chiffon can just go away and leave them all behind. So, why can’t he?
“I know.” He’s glad she doesn’t call him out, doesn’t tell him he’s not making sense. “But you deserve better than her. We all do.”
He knows that. Has always known that. Ever since his first siblings were born, he knew he would have to compensate for all how they deserved better in ways Mama could not provide. They deserved better. And maybe, so did he.