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He woke up wrong.
He lay still and focused on breathing, ignoring the acidic taste on his tongue.
His hand moved to his stomach by instinct and he felt the familiar weight of thirty-seven weeks. The child shifted under his palm.
Still alive. Still fine.
He turned his head.
The lamp in the corner was on. Doflamingo was in the chair beneath it. In his hands was a book with a pale blue cover.
Care of newborns.
On the small table beside him was another book that was closed. Rosinante recognised it from the sheer thickness. Dr. Tegata had pushed it into his hands on one of his visits.
Rosinante had read twelve pages before losing interest and leaving it somewhere.
The spine was worn now. Pages dog-eared and tabbed in several places with strips of paper.
Rosinante looked at it for a long moment.
"It's five in the morning," Doflamingo said, without looking up.
He turned a page. "Go back to sleep."
The wrongness didn't leave. It was only growing quietly.
He lay still and said nothing and watched Doflamingo read.
Doflamingo felt it two minutes later.
He set the book down before rising and crossing to the balcony. Opened the doors and stepped out, looking down at the docks.
A large Marine ship.
He felt the significant Haki of whoever had arrived on it and his mouth curved upwards.
Doflamingo turned to find Rosinante already watching. Their eyes met from across the room.
"Stay here," Doflamingo ordered. He was already moving. Coat off the hook, pink feathers sweeping across his shoulders.
The door closed behind him.
Rosinante lay still for exactly three seconds. Then he rolled himself upright, wobbled, got his feet under him and made it to the balcony.
He looked down at the docks.
Rosinante swallowed.
He knew that ship. There was only one person in the world who would come to Dressrosa at dawn without asking.
He was out the door before he'd decided to move.
The corridors were quiet and emptied out. The staff and most of the guards were already moving toward the dock.
The ones stationed outside his rooms moved to intercept him. Rosinante pushed past them, desperate to get through.
They didn't dare stop him.
He moved as fast as he could, which was very slow. With the weight of the pregnancy he could only move with one hand on the wall.
He tripped over the rug at the end of the east corridor. Caught himself and kept moving.
He'd been thinking about this conversation for months.
He had never once imagined this version of it.
Sengoku at the door and two weeks to his due date and everything still unsaid.
Rosinante heard the laughter all the way from the corridor, before he could even reach the doors.
His throat went sour and goosebumps started to form along his skin.
"Doflamingo."
Behind Sengoku stood a wall of men. His strongest. Faces Doflamingo recognised, faces Trebol had flagged before.
Doflamingo's eyes moved across them once.
"Fleet Admiral." He smiled. The full, unsettling smile, the one that showed every tooth.
"Or is it just Admiral now? I don't keep track."
"We're not here for pleasantries." Sengoku frowned.
"No." He tilted his head. "You've come to my island, uninvited, at dawn. That's not pleasantries, now is it?"
"We're here to retrieve one of our personnel," Sengoku said. "We have reason to believe he's been held here against his will."
Doflamingo said nothing for a moment. The smile didn't move.
"Your personnel," he said. "On my island."
His smile widened with genuine amusement, eyebrows lifting as if he were almost impressed.
“And who would that be?”
Sengoku met his eyes. "Commander Rosinante. He's been dark for months. We know he's being held here."
The smile stayed.
Something underneath it did not.
"Rosinante," Doflamingo muttered, the name tasting like poison on his tongue. "My little brother."
He stood very still.
And then he laughed.
It started small. A soft sound scratching the back of his throat. Then it opened up into a booming laughter that had nothing to do with anything being funny.
And underneath it, everything arrived all at once.
Shipments intercepted. Contacts blown. Deals that collapsed. Marines that appeared out of nowhere with timing that had been, in retrospect, too perfect.
He had written them off as bad luck. The cost of operating at a large scale. The inevitable friction of the Underworld.
He had never thought to look inside his own walls.
Inside his own bedroom.
He thought about the day Rosinante had come back to him. He hadn't questioned it. Hadn't asked where he'd been or why he'd returned or what he wanted.
He had simply accepted it.
The way he accepted what was his when it came back to him.
He should have looked.
His strings spread, moving through the air around him.
Rosinante reached the base of the stairs in front of the main doors and stopped. He could see Doflamingo's back, the strings, Sengoku standing with his men.
"Rosinante." He didn't turn around. His voice came out pleasant. "No—Commander Rosinante. The Marines think you're being held here."
Sengoku's eyes moved past him and found Rosinante at the base of the stairs.
"Doflamingo," Sengoku warned. "Release him immediately."
Rosinante stepped forward. Out the doors and onto the dock, into the dim early morning light.
He watched Sengoku see him. The open robe and the bulging stomach of thirty-seven weeks.
He watched the emotions move through Sengoku's face.
Shock. Confusion. Grief.
"Doflamingo." Sengoku's voice had lost some of its register. "What have you done to him?"
"He hasn't done anything to me." Rosinante's voice came out steadier than he felt. "I stayed. I chose to stay."
Doflamingo turned around to face him. The smile was gone.
Leaving only the wrath that had been hiding beneath it.
"The Ope Ope no Mi. The moment it disappeared, I should have known it was you."
Then the smile came back.
"Only you would have given a damn about that brat. So he didn't actually run away."
He looked at Rosinante, nodding thoughtfully.
"You've outsmarted me, little brother."
"Doffy—" Rosinante's hand moved to his stomach.
Something was wrong.
The stairs, the running, the child. He felt his stomach tightening. "Doffy, I'm—"
Doflamingo's eyes dropped to his stomach.
"Is the child mine?"
Rosinante's mouth opened, but his words were lost when a sharp pain twisted through his stomach.
He clutched it and concentrated on breathing.
"Rosinante." Sengoku pleaded. "You don't have to stay. Come back. You're safe with us."
Rosinante's chest tightened.
He thought about being eight years old.
Hiding in an alley alone because his brother had told him to stay put. Doflamingo had walked off with their father’s bloody head in his hands.
He followed Doflamingo's instructions. Had waited for days, starving and cold.
Sengoku had found him. Had crouched to his level to pick him up. Had given him food and taken him somewhere warm.
Had trained him and trusted him.
Had sent him somewhere terrible because he believed he was the right person for it.
"Sengoku." Rosinante's eyes began to sting. "I'm sorry. I can't leave."
"You can—"
"I can't."
The tears came and he let them fall.
"I love him. I can't leave. I'm sorry."
Doflamingo's hands closed into fists at his sides until his knuckles went white. He stared past Rosinante's shoulder with his jaw set.
"Leave, Sengoku." The tightening was getting worse now. The colour was leaving his face and he could feel his vision tilting.
"Ro—"
"The Ope Ope no Mi is on the way to the base. Law will receive it soon. He'll recover."
"No. I'm not leaving without you, Rosi."
His nickname. He’d been hearing it since he was eight. Since Sengoku had taken him in and raised him as a son.
Rosinante's chest began to heave. He brought a hand over his mouth, forcing himself to take deep breaths before he spoke again.
"Please leave." His voice cracked. "Please, Sengoku. I'm begging you."
Sengoku looked at him and understood.
"You chose this," Sengoku said. A confirmation more than a question.
"Yes."
"Alright then. I shall respect your decision."
They looked at each other for a long moment, neither of them speaking. Then Sengoku turned to his men, his somber expression hardening into absolute authority.
"By order of the Marines, Commander Rosinante is hereby considered a defector. We have no further business here."
He turned back to Rosinante and looked at him one last time, as if committing the sight of him to memory.
"You've always been a fool." Sengoku breathed, shaking his head. Underneath the harsh words, Rosinante could only hear the genuine tenderness. "Take care of yourself, Rosi."
Rosinante covered his mouth as a sob broke through him.
Sengoku left and his men followed.
Minutes passed.
Doflamingo hadn’t moved. He was standing stiffly with his fists still at his sides. Eyes fixed on the ground and refusing to look at Rosinante.
Rosinante waited. He watched Sengoku’s ship clear the harbour mouth before he took a step towards Doflamingo.
Then another.
He was almost there when Doflamingo finally looked up.
He looked at Rosinante’s face first. Then his gaze went down.
Clear and red, running down his legs and pooling at his feet.
“Doffy—” A slight sway. “I’m sorry—”
His knees gave way.
Doflamingo caught him.
He came back in pieces.
First the motion. The feeling of being carried. The coat around him.
Then the sound of footsteps moving fast through corridors, faster than Rosinante had ever heard him move.
He opened his eyes.
Doflamingo was looking straight ahead.
Rosinante looked at his face and slowly lifted his hand. He got it most of the way there, close enough that his fingers almost reached his jaw.
“Stop,” Doflamingo warned without even looking down. “Don’t touch me.”
Rosinante’s hand dropped.
“Doffy.” His voice came out thin. “I’m sorry. I’m so—”
The darkness came back.
The next time he opened his eyes the light was different.
He was on his back. Something was happening at his stomach.
Everything was still hazy. He couldn't quite make sense of it.
He turned his head and saw Dr. Tegata with a nurse beside him.
Then he felt it. Needle and thread, pulling his skin together.
He ignored the pain and looked for Doflamingo, who stood at the far side of the room.
The nurse moved towards him with a tiny wrapped bundle.
The loud crying was breaking through Rosinante's haze.
She stepped closer, extending the bundle toward Doflamingo. He didn't take it.
The nurse tried to hand the baby over again.
Doflamingo didn't move a muscle.
Caught between the crying baby and the King of Dressrosa, the nurse turned back.
She tried soothing the baby, rocking gently and murmuring softly to it.
The crying eased, just barely.
Then the baby turned and looked at Doflamingo.
Doflamingo went very still before his arms suddenly reached out and took the baby.
"Rosinante, you're awake." Dr. Tegata finished the last stitch. "Congratulations. It's a girl."
"Is she okay?" He remembered the blood on the dock. The tightening that had started long before it should have.
"She's two weeks early," Dr. Tegata said. "She’ll need warmth and skin-to-skin contact with you. As much as possible, as soon as possible. It’s important."
Rosinante looked at Doflamingo.
Doflamingo walked over. He looked down at Rosinante in the bed and then at the baby in his arms.
"You can see her," he said. "But you can't touch her."
Dr. Tegata cleared his throat. "The baby needs skin contact with her mother. Or in this case, father."
"How long?" Doflamingo asked, without looking at Rosinante.
He turned to Dr. Tegata. "How long does she need this skin contact?"
"As much as possible in the first weeks. Especially these first few days."
Doflamingo looked at the baby one more time.
He handed her to the nurse and left the room.
Rosinante slept a lot.
The blood loss had taken more than he’d realised. His body was collecting the debt now, pulling him under at intervals.
The baby slept in the bassinet beside him.
Every time he woke, he reached over first. Before anything else, just to feel her there.
When he was awake, he held her.
She was so small. She fit against his chest perfectly, like she had been made for exactly that purpose.
Her face pressed against his warm skin, her breathing falling into a slow, even rhythm.
We should be naming her together. Right now. He should be here with me.
He cried silently as he held her and looked at her face.
His brother’s eyes stared back at him.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I don’t think you’ll get to know me.”
Doflamingo didn’t come.
The first day passed. Then the second.
On the morning of the third day, Dr. Tegata came in, checked both Rosinante and the baby, and told him it was safe for them to go home.
Not safe, Rosinante thought. It’s not safe. Maybe for her. But not for me.
His room was exactly as he’d left it.
The bed unmade. The pillow arrangement still half-dismantled from the morning everything happened. His glass of half-drunk tea on the nightstand.
The book Doffy had been reading was still there, face-down on the table.
Untouched. All of it.
Except for the cot.
Gold. Ornate. Carved and set with precious stones.
Rosinante looked at it.
In another time, he might have smiled.
“Of course,” he whispered to the baby in his arms. “Of course your father would commission a cot like this.”
He crossed to it and placed her down. She fussed slightly at the transfer.
He waited until she settled, before moving to sit on the edge of his bed.
“Cora-san.”
Baby 5 stood in the doorway, peeking in. “Rest well. I’ll be just down the hall if you need anything.”
He nodded. She gave him a small smile before leaving.
Then, Rosinante felt the heavy footsteps before he heard them.
Doflamingo came through the door.
He didn’t look at Rosinante as he walked directly to the cot.
The baby was awake, eyes open and making small sounds.
Doflamingo reached down and slowly caressed her face.
Rosinante opened his mouth.
There were things he needed to say.
Not about their relationship or their daughter.
About everything before it. The two years. The years before that as a marine. All of it still sitting between them, unaddressed.
He didn’t know how to start.
He closed his mouth.
Doflamingo lifted the baby.
He turned toward the light coming through the window and held her up slightly, adjusting the angle.
The afternoon sun caught her eyes.
Pale red, almost pink. The exact shade of his own.
He looked at her for a long moment.
Satisfaction moved briefly across his face.
The child was his.
He stood there with her in the light.
She looked back at him and didn’t cry.
Doflamingo turned to place her back in the cot, adjusting the blanket over her before he straightened.
“You have two weeks of skin contact with her."
He spat the words and walked out of the room without waiting for a response.
Rosinante sat on the edge of the bed and didn't move.
He listened to the footsteps disappear and thought about what would come after two weeks.