Chapter Text
As entertaining as the war had promised to be from the very beginning, nothing could have prepared Doflamingo for the falling warship of Impel Down escapees that rained over the battlefield of Marinefort. Between Crocodile, the Okama Queen and the shrieking clown, it was hard to figure out who the mastermind of the escape had been, but what caught his attention was the boy, falling from the sky and yelling for his brother for the entire world to hear, pirates and marines alike.
Monkey D. Luffy.
The pup was weak, that much Doflamingo could tell from the distance. Thin and spindly, not even properly into adulthood, barely showing anything for himself in comparison to the feats that the newspapers had blasted about him so far. Yelling for his older brother, screaming his conviction to get him free as if that alone would be enough to change the tides of the war - as if little brothers didn't die just as easily when you took your eyes off them, something that would not doubt happen to the pup if he continued running around more in this war.
Already he was faltering; Doflamingo didn't need to be close to him, to see the exhaustion set in his body, the wounds and burns littering his form. One bad step and he would fall and that would be it. It wasn't even worth trying to toy with him; he could see Moria cackling to himself, aiming to intercept the brat, even Hawkeyes swinging Yoru and attempting to come closer, only to be stopped in his tracks, first by the shrieking clown and then by Crocodile.
A waste - Doflamingo was more interested in fighting Whitebeard's commanders, perhaps even Whitebeard himself. See them brought to the ground at his feet. He didn't have time to waste with a dying runt.
Still, he supposed the scene was amusing, if nothing else. Whatever came his way, the brat didn't stay down. Or at least not for long. Doflamingo saw him staggering, falling to the ground, limbs giving up under him until Ivankov shot him with his devil fruit. Desperate, determined, his Will bowling across the battlefield, a wave of untrained haki still strong enough to bring the weaker marines down.
A King's disposition. Interesting.
"Fufufu, now that's interesting. Perhaps it would be fun to play with him a little."
It was easy to let the string fly when the pup was finally over the barricade, after Kizaru kicked him mid air - foolish child did he even think he could take on all three of the admirals? Akainu alone wanted to burn him alive simply for existing and there he was placing himself as the perfect target.
Dragging him away was a curiosity of sorts, a game perhaps for Doflamingo's own entertainment. There was something about the pup that made him interesting and the warlord wanted to know what - not his parentage, he couldn't care less he was the Revolutionary's child. Dragon was a pest, at most, a coward that fought from the shadows. Doflamingo had no care for him.
It was something else, something Doflamingo was missing.
"Oi! Let me go! I gotta get to Ace, lemme go!"
Doflamingo couldn't help but laugh. Even trapped and being dragged away, the boy's only concern was getting to his brother, saving him.
How naive. And pointless.
Something nagged at the back of his mind.
Roci strung up, crying and yet calling for him, wanting to know his big brother was still there. The resemblance was jarring and Doflamingo pushed it down.
The boy turned to look at him, gaze furious peeking through sweaty matted hair that fell over his eyes and it was only then that Doflamingo noticed their color. Red, a brown-red so familiar he almost lost hold of his strings.
The same shape, the same colour, the same anger in them when something went wrong.
That single moment of distraction was enough for the pup to break free. To go back to running for his brother, running for that damned scaffold protected by three admirals and people much stronger than him. Crying out his brother's name as if it was the only truth he knew in this world and without him everything would come crumbling to dust.
Doflamingo knew the feeling.
A decade away in an island of snow and Rosinante's corpse cooling at his feet, Vergo grinning in pride.
He couldn't let the kid go. Not when those eyes were so familiar, when that gaze could be a mirror of his baby brother's. Not when it was possible...
Rocinante drunk on his liquor in Spider Miles, weeping for a child he had lost. Doflamingo thought the child to be dead and yet what if he had simply been left behind.
"LUFFY WATCH OUT!"
Fire first cried out in fear and everything started happening in slow motion. A gun shot, a terrified marine holding a rifle with shaking hands and
... The kid going down in the sand, blood pooling underneath him hit with a seastone bullet.
Doflamingo didn't expect the kid to get up. Blood pooled under him and for a moment he could see a different time and a different scene, Rosinante lying on too white snow tainted crimson, unmoving, a puppet with his strings cut.
Vergo had been proud, so proud. Just as the marine who shot the kid down probably was now.
And yet; before Doflamingo had the chance to act, to paint Marinefort red with the blood of the marine who shot the pup, to make everyone drop to their knees in utter submission because he had been willing to play their game before - before the pup looked at him with too familiar eyes, before his little brother's specter came hunting him from the grave - the boy staggers back to his feet, bloodied and reeking of pain and desperation even from the distance, the bullet wound in his body bleeding as the seastone snapped at his strength.
And even so he was preparing to rush back to his brother.
The powers of his devil fruit sang in his veins; his Awakening was a secret known only to the Family, but he might need to reveal it now, intervene in a way he hadn't planned to. For a moment he shifted his attention to Fire Fist, to his kneeling body on the scaffold, to his eyes watching Rosinante's pup with fear and anguish.
Normally, Doflamingo wouldn't have cared about him. Just another pawn in a game, a bargaining chip between powers that be. He would had watched him die without blinking.
But not now. Now the pup was killing himself to get to Fire Fist. Leaving behind a trail of blood as he staggered and ran to make it back to the scaffold, something metallic clutched desperately in his hand. A key that he must have gotten from someone else.
All of his allies scattered everywhere else and Akainu turning his attention on him again. Something that couldn't be allowed.
Doflamingo wasn't sure what ended up being the breaking point.
The pup on the ledge fighting his grandfather while he was bleeding - wasting - dying, body trembling so hard it looked like he was about to come undone and Garp blustering and wasting time.
( Doflamingo remembered Homing. The weakness that his father brought on them, the squalor their mother died in, the utter destruction of their family. Unsurprisingly the pup is cursed with a pathetic grandparent from his bearer as well. )
Sengoku turning in his Buddha form just as the pup finally manages to release Fire fist, as the blood loss caught up to him and he slumped in his brother's arms, the fire logia jumping from the scaffold with a look of utter terror on his face, clutching his little brother to his chest.
Or perhaps the newcomer pinging at the edge of Doflamingo's Observation field, Law's presence just the tip of the iceberg that made everything come down.
He didn't stop to think. Didn't need to because things were already evolving in ways they should not be and Doflamingo was not going to allow them to go down that path. He could see Akainu closing in on Firefist, Whitebeard's commanders as useless as they had been the entire war, always too far to intervene or help.
( It took a half dead child to free Firefist where an Emperor and his crew failed. It would have been amusing if it wasn't for the fact the child was Roci's and Whitebeard's weakness could have been his death. Will not be simply because Doflamingo has decreed it so. )
The magma logia roared something that made the boy flinch, almost freeze, a half aborted attempt to turn around before he realized his brother was still unconscious in his arms. A moment of hesitation that gave Akainu the time to step even close and that could not, would not be allowed.
The crumbled wall behind him turned to strings, thousands wrapping around the admiral's body, taking him by surprise and flinging him in the half collapsed scaffold.
( One day Doflamingo will sever his hands for trying to put them on the pup, but not now. )
He continued following Law's rapid approach at the back of his mind, an even that was not wanted, but neither was it unwelcome. Doflamingo wasn't sure why Law was foolish enough to risk running in a war, but it would become convenient enough as soon as he had him as far away from the battlefield as possible.
Law was going to make sure Strawhat survived.
As for Fire Fist, he would be needed too. No reason to risk the pup getting distraught if the brother he had gone through hell to save is not there.
Marinefort rippled under his powers. Doflamingo didn't know it as well as Dressrosa - there was nothing in Dressrosa that wasn't his after all, no rock, stone or building, no person or soul alive - but it didn't matter. He didn't need finesse here, he needed power and power was something Doflamingo had spent this whole life gathering.
The ground under Firefist came alive, strings lifting him in the air, coiling around his body, around the pup in his arms, tight enough to restrain any movement, to make sure no accidents could happen. From there on it was easy to yank them away from their position, merely a flick of his fingers, light burning where they had been moments ago, Kizaru coming to a stunned halt.
There were enough clouds in the sky, the weather on the cusp between sunny and rainy. Enough to take him away, for the Numancia Flamingo to follow suit, to make sure nothing and no one follows them.
But first there was one last pup he needs to pick up. Law needed to come home too, after all, and Doflamingo had been kind enough to allow his little rebellion until now for so long. Even let him pretend at being his own captain. He needed him home now; not just to take his place on the Heart seat, but to treat the boy still bleeding in Fire Fist's arms.
As for his little friends; if Law played nice Doflamingo might be benevolent enough to let them join him.
As soon as Doflamingo brought both Firefirst and Strawhat closer, dangling them in strings pulled taught, the link to Rosinante was undeniable.
The pup had an undercurrent of his scent, smoke and chocolate and spun sugar, sweet and bitter at the same time, mixed with other scents - petrichor and ozone from his bearer and something else, something familiar although Doflamingo couldn't place it right now, steel and salt water and the bearest hint of dew on freshly grown grass.
Fire first was holding him even closer, hissing at Doflamingo and trying to break free, futile of course - he couldn't use his logia without hurting his brother and he wouldn't risk his brother to break free. He was trying still, perhaps to get to his allies, to his disgrace of an adopted father who wasn't even able to save him.
An Emperor? No. A farce.
Not that Doflamingo had any reason to hurt either of them even thought he could understand why Gol D. Ace would be apprehensive.
It didn't matter. A few minutes more and Law would be close enough. A few minutes and he would be able to bring all of them home. Where they would be protected, where they couldn't die.
They didn't need to like the situation now. They would learn it was necessary in due time.