Chapter Text
Rosinante was startled from sleep by a loud crash and banging on the other side of the barn door. It's raucous, and the people on the other side are yelling. Rosinante looks around, trying to find somewhere to hide. There's not much, but there are a few boxes. Maybe if he climbs in between them, they'll miss him. He's pretty small.
“It'll take me a while, but I need you to wait right here for me, okay, Rosi?”
Just as he settles into his hiding spot, the doors bang open. There's shouting and someone is laughing. Somehow they knew he'd be here, but that can't be. Doffy said it was safe. Doffy said no one would know he was here, so how do they know?!
“I'll block the door on the outside, that way no one will think anyone's inside.”
Things are being flipped, broken, and turned over. Someone was digging around in the pile of hay he had been sleeping on a moment ago. They're looking for him. He places his hands over his mouth as the tears start to fall. He can't risk making a sound. He told Doffy he'd wait for him. Sure, it's been longer than he thought—a few days—but there had been an old bag of horse feed inside the barn and a water trough that refills when it rains, so it was okay. Even if the oats were old and the water had an odd taste, it wasn't worse than anything he'd found in the trash before. It kept his stomach quiet and his mouth from feeling like cotton.
“I'll be back before you know it.”
The boxes above him were tossed aside, and then a man started at Rosinante with a wicked smile. Soon, everyone was closing in, and though Rosi tried to run, he didn't get far. He screamed and dug his nails into the ground. He has to wait here for his brother! He'll be back any day now. Rosinante has to be patient! Someone hit him over the head, causing his head to spin, before they picked him up. They started talking about how much they would get out of him. He screamed for his brother as he grabbed onto the door, refusing to let go, no matter how hard they hit him.
So they broke his hands to get him to let go. Rosi's blood stained the door.
He screamed the entire way back to their ship. When he was taken below deck, to what seemed like a brig, he saw lots of people in chains. Rosi cried louder, calling out for his brother as he kicked his legs. He didn't understand anything that was happening, but he knew he didn't want to be anywhere near those chains. He must have hit something sensitive on the man holding him because he cursed as they fell to the floor. Flailing harder caused the man more pain, but then someone else showed up and started hitting him with some kind of metal stick.
Afterward, when he was curled up in a ball and in too much pain to move, they put chains on his wrists and neck and threw him into the brig that held two women and an old man with grey hair.
Rosinante scooted to the far corner of the cell, away from the others, and cried as people shouted above them about setting sail. An hour or two passed before two men arrived outside the cell he was in, one of whom had a doctor's bag. The man with the bag approached him, ignoring his flinch as he began to check his hands before wrapping them in bandages. Three of his fingers had what the supposed doctor called buddy splints, where each of his broken fingers was taped to non-broken ones.
“How long do they need to stay like that?” asked the man standing at the cell door. He had purple hair and a scar that started at his cheek and ended at his chin, crossing over his mouth. An irritated look was on his face as he looked at Rosinante's now bandaged hands. Rosi vaguely remembered him being the one to break them.
“The duration of the voyage,” the supposed doctor, a man with a hooked nose and pale eyes, replied. “He won't be healed completely, won't have full use of them until 4 months down the line, but he won't need the splints for that long.”
Nothing else was said after that, and after hooking the chains on his wrists to the wall above his head, they left.
I'm scared, Doffy. Where are you?
It has been… quite the week for Doflamingo. His plan didn't work out as he thought, and because of that, it took him far longer than it should have to return to Rosi. And now Trebol was telling him that his little brother was missing? No. Doffy had blocked the door, the windows were sealed, and the hole in the roof was too high for Rosi to reach; there was no way he could break out.
“Behehe! Marines had stopped by for a few days after you left. A cargo ship as well. Maybe someone let him out after he called for help?”
No. Rosi wouldn't do that. He's never called out for help to strangers. He's only ever called out for the family, and that family said that they would come back for him. He told Trebol as much and said that he would go to the barn whether Trebol was with him or not. The man stared at him for a moment before nodding. They went together, and when they got there, he saw that Trebol was right about one thing: the barn door was open and the blockade removed.
But everything else was wrong.
Doflamingo ran to the door, seeing red splattered along the side. There was a crack in the door as well, just under the red. Doffy stared at it before turning to look inside. Everything was out of place and scattered as if people were looking for something. For someone. The hay was no longer neatly piled, the horse feed had been spilled, and the water trough had been overturned. The wooden barrels were broken apart, the boxes no longer stacked, and the abandoned farm equipment and horse saddles tossed aside.
Worst of all, there was blood on the ground where there hadn't been any before. And a lot of it.
A rock settled in his stomach as pain bloomed in his chest. Doffy tried to ignore it.
“See? Empty, like I said. I know you care for your baby brother, but-”
“No,” Doflamingo interrupted him. Trebol didn't know. How could he? He didn't know what the barn looked like on the inside before it was broken into. He couldn't have known everything had been neatly organized and free of blood.
He noticed it then, the small grooves in the dirt, that started not far from the boxes and just before the blood. Walking towards it, he saw that the grooves weren't just lines someone had dug into the ground to play some sort of sick joke. They were small and irregular. He'd seen it before when someone had ripped Rosi out of their mother's arms. He had dug his fingers into the ground and tried to claw his way back to her before Doffy hit the man over the head with a stick that had been as wide as his arm.
He followed the grooves until they disappeared; someone must have picked up his little brother and tried carrying him out.
The door.
Doffy ran back to Trebol and looked at the door again. The blood stain is at the right height for someone who was being carried under another person's arm to grab. Doffy's arm was shaking as he touched the stain, the rock in his stomach growing heavier. Rosi tried to stay in the barn, and they hurt him for it. Doffy briefly wonders what they did to cause his brother to lose so much blood. When that didn't work, his baby brother tried to hold onto the door, and they broke his hands. Those bastards hit too hard; no one bleeds that much just from smashing their hands.
That pain in his chest was beginning to become unbearable, squeezing his insides in a way that was so much worse than the pain he felt when he lost his mother to an unknown illness.
“Rosi didn't call for help,” he told Trebol, who made a confused sound behind him. “The barn didn't look like this when I left Rosi here.” Doflamingo tried to make his body move to look at Trebol, but he couldn't look away from the stain left by his brother's blood. “You checked every morning and night, right?”
“Of course, Doffy. Every time the sun rose and fell.”
“What day was the barn open?” he demanded. And after a moment, added, “And were there any Marines in town that day?”
“It was two days ago when I checked at sunrise. The Marines had left the day before at noon, and a new ship was in the harbor. It looked like a merchant ship.” Trebol answered and remained quiet as Doflamingo stared at the stain, still unable to look away. The Marines had left, and that might have been why his brother was hurt. You can't kidnap a child without Marines looking at you funny. Surely they would have done something, and that's why the town waited until they left. He has a hard time believing Marines wouldn't look the other way, but it wouldn't be the first time the people of Downs waited until they left before attacking his family.
“Neh, Doffy?” Trebol began after some time had passed, his voice quiet, low.
Doflamingo's entire body began to shake, anger slowly growing alongside the immense pain he felt in his chest. Saints, it hurts so much. “Rosi was taken,” he growled out, and somehow saying it out loud made the pain worse. “Those bastards broke in at night, dragged him from the barn, and took him away. That blood, the blood on this door, is my baby brother's.”
Finally turning away from the door, Doflamingo looked at Trebol. The man was frowning. Good. He finally understands that Rosi was taken against his will. “I will find out who took my baby brother. And when I do, I won't just kill them; I'll make them suffer until they beg for death.”
“Of course! The others and I will help you wherever you need us, Doffy. No one will stand in your way! We'll level this town if you so desire! Behehe!”
Trebol was smiling at the promise of violence, so Doflamingo smiled through the pain. He would find his brother. And if he couldn't… then the people of this town would pay in blood.
Two months later, Rosinante is sold to a Celestial Dragon, who brings him back to Mariejois with a smug smile and a spring in her step. Saint Silene, the First Lady of Saint Camael, boasts to the other Saints about how she stumbled upon the Donquixote human at an auction and was immediately captivated by his tears. None of her other pets cried as prettily as he did, though she would have to find a way to cancel out the noise since it was getting rather annoying.
Rosi fears he may never see his brother again, and the thought leaves a hole in his heart that will only grow the longer he remains a slave.
A few weeks later, Trebol receives two suitcases full of money from an unknown man. Doflamingo doesn't see this happen, and none of the others ask about it. It wasn't their business, and it wasn't unusual for Trebol to receive money for unknown reasons. The following day, Doflamingo and his found family make the town's streets run with blood before setting it aflame for the wrong its people had committed against Doflamingo and his lost baby brother.
Doffy feared his brother had died the night he was taken from the barn, and the thought leaves a hole in his heart that his new family cannot fill, no matter how hard they try.