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Baby 5’s joy at her engagement buoys her through the first day of Dressrosa’s recovery; her darling lets her sleep next to him at the palace, his scent comforting musk and sweat.
It isn’t until Violet finds her and escorts her to her former quarters to retrieve anything she cares to take into her new, married life, that the weight of everything that has happened in the last two days crashes in on her.
Everything except her clothes is broken or splintered, covered in a fine layer of dust. It’s no surprise given what Pica-sama had done to the palace and landscape in the battle, and most of it is of no importance, is no great loss, with a husband-to-be and a life beyond Dressrosa now.
Most of it is no great loss. It’s the tea set that breaks her. It is shattered, the beak-spout of the flamingo tea pot nothing more than powder and the rest of it in a thousand pieces; the matching cups are less thoroughly destroyed but they’re all broken too.
Doffy had given her that tea set when she was just a child. Had taught her the manners of a tea host, had—had made Corazon sit with them without lashing out at her and Buffalo and, later, Law. Corazon, the traitor, who had been his brother. Corazon, the traitor, who had corrupted Law into betraying them too.
She had wept when Law had shown his true colours at Punk Hazard, had made it clear he would never return to them, would never assume the Heart seat that should have been his.
She’d never understood how Law could leave them, had been bewildered that he could turn on their master, and now… now she’s turned on Doffy just as certainly as Law has. She wonders now if it had hurt Law to slice her and Buffalo apart, if his heart had ached later when he’d had time to reflect. She wonders what she would say to him, now. She wonders what he would say to her.
Baby 5 has no idea how long she sits on the floor cradling the largest pieces of the least damaged cup, weeping over the tea set, over the life she gave up, over Doflamingo and the fact that he will hate her now as much as he had hated Corazon. For all that she’d screamed her fury at Joker, when he’d killed her previous fiancés, she has never doubted he does care about her. Doffy has been safety and refuge ever since she had looked up at him, just six years old, and asked if he needed her.
He will never be safety again.
Her darling lays a hand on her shoulder. “Did it mean so much?” he asks her. She’s not sure when he came in and sat down next to her but she leans into his touch gratefully, turning to press her cheek against his hand and tries to find her voice.
“It—he gave it to me,” Baby 5 says, her voice a wreck and hopes she hasn’t terrified her fiancé with her ugly tear tracks and cracking voice—she is no picture of a good wife, right now. “I love you, darling!” she rushes to assure him. “I won’t abandon you. I couldn’t—he won’t forgive me. Anymore than he forgave Corazon, or Law. But Doffy was… the first person who needed me.”
Somehow it hurts even more, having said it out loud. Sai’s hand on her shoulder tightens a little as she cries harder. “He didn’t deserve you,” he says fiercely. “If he had, he’d have told you have it all wrong.”
Baby 5 sniffles, biting her tongue. She shouldn’t contradict her husband-to-be. “Whatever you say, darling,” she says as sweetly as she can, the lie bitter on her tongue. “It’s just… this tea set had a lot of memories. I wish I could’ve saved part of it.”
Sai lets go of her shoulder and tucks one of his hands under hers where she’s still holding the damaged remains of one of the cups. “That one could be repaired with black lacquer,” he says.
“Repair it?” Baby 5 says, blinking through her tears. It hadn’t even occurred to her to try.
“If it means so much, you shouldn’t throw it away,” her darling says. “It won’t be the same, but—it would be beautiful, still.”
“Do you really think so?” Baby 5 asks, sniffling. “You—you wouldn’t mind, darling? Even though he gave it to me?”
Baby 5 flinches away as Sai sighs in exasperation at her, but he doesn’t snarl when he speaks. “I don’t understand you at all, woman, and of course I don’t like the people who made you so fucking weird,” he says. “But you don’t have to pretend your past didn’t happen.”
“Thank you,” Baby 5 says sincerely, cradling the shards of a life she’d given up without thinking at all to her chest. Sai looks at her strangely but he only shakes his head and smiles after a moment.
Violet clears her throat from the door. “I’ve packed a bag of your clothes,” she says, nudging a small duffel by her feet. “You’ll want to wash them before you wear anything, it was all covered in dust too. There’s an apron on top you could wrap the pieces in.”
Sai gets up and hands Baby 5 the apron before he picks up the bag and leaves to presumably take it back to the common area all the pirates rescued from Sugar’s spell who had aided the Strawhats have been recovering in.
“He seems like a good man,” Violet says softly.
Baby 5 bites back a snarl, as she wraps the pieces of the tea cup in the apron. Violet betrayed Doffy first but she did too, in the end, and it is Violet’s kindness that she has anything at all to remember her childhood by. “My fiancé is the kindest, best man I’ve ever met,” Baby 5 says, agreeably.
“I suspect that is absolutely true,” Violet says, wrapping her hands around her middle defensively. “I’m happy for you.”
Baby 5 looks up at the other woman and wonders why she’s still here.
“It’s—I’ll miss him, too,” Violet says miserably. “I hated him. I hated him, he tried to kill me, he tried to kill everyone, but I’m still going to miss him and I can’t even say that to anyone else; you’re the only one who might understand.”
Baby 5 doesn’t think she understands Violet at all. She had betrayed Doffy without thinking about the consequences, had only wanted to be needed by the man who’d flirted so kindly with her; Violet had done so entirely knowing. “Law might,” she says, though, a peace offering to the other woman who clearly does have at least some lingering fondness for their former master too.
Violet laughs bitterly. “I don’t think so. I don’t think he’ll miss Doffy at all,” she says tiredly, before producing a slip of paper with a den den mushi number scrawled on it. “I really am happy for you, even if I kind of hate you for being able to leave this mess behind. Stay in touch, please? I’d like to know you’re okay. I… I need to know someone else got out of this madhouse.”
Baby 5 curls her free hand around the number. “Okay, Violet,” she says, warmer than usual at being needed, not for something she can do but just for herself. She doesn’t think her darling Sai will object.
The other woman stares at her for a long moment. “I suppose you of all people can still call me that,” she says, before she throws her arms around Baby 5 in an embrace, an intimacy Baby 5 has no context at all for from another woman. “Go, be happy. Be free.”
“You… too?” she says uncertainly. Violet makes a noise somewhere between a laugh and a sob before she lets go of Baby 5, and excuses herself with a transparent lie.
Baby 5 watches her leave, bemused, before wrapping the den den mushi number in the apron with the shards of the broken tea cup carefully. She finds a basin to wash her face in, and goes to find her darling. Sai lets her curl up against his hip and even puts an arm around her, his hand heavy and warm against her side.
Baby 5 thinks her life with Sai will be different than she’d always thought married life would be, but she’s sure she can make her darling happy, can bring him contentment in a way she’d never been able to bring Doffy.