Chapter Text
The air on the remote island was thick with smoke and silence. The remains of a village lay scattered across the hillside — collapsed roofs, blackened timbers, and the faint scent of salt, ash, and the rotting dead.
Doflamingo stood in the middle of it all, pink feathers brushing softly in the wind, his grin unusually subdued. Behind him, his crew waited in wary silence. Even the ever-smirking Trebol didn’t dare interrupt.
Because in the center of the wreckage, half-hidden behind an overturned cart loaded with now-rotting apples, was a child.
A young girl who couldn’t have been older than five or six. Dirt and ash clung to her hair and face; the small dress she wore was torn and stained — barely more than scraps at this point.
Her wide ocean-blue eyes stared out from the shadows — not in fear, nor even in pain. Just emptiness. Numbness.
Doflamingo crouched, elbows resting on his knees as he regarded her. His sunglasses glinted, but his expression was oddly curious. “Well, well… what do we have here?”
She flinched when he reached out, but his long fingers didn’t grab her — not yet. He simply tilted the young girl’s chin up with the edge of a gloved knuckle.
“Your parents?” he asked lazily, glancing around at the ruins, wrinkling his nose slightly at the smell.
She shook her head slowly.
His grin widened — not cruel this time, but eerily wicked. “Then it seems you’re mine now.” The statement didn’t make a difference to her awareness. She didn’t speak or even acknowledge the large man in the pink coat — just continued to stare out into nothingness.
From behind him, footsteps approached — uneven and deliberate. Corazon stopped a few paces away, towering and silent, cigarette burning between his fingers. His black-feathered coat fluttered in the breeze, and though his expression stayed comically vacant, his eyes told a different story.
They flicked from the girl trembling in the dirt to his brother’s hand as it reached out.
No, he thought. Not another one.
But he couldn’t say it. Not out loud.
When Doflamingo’s gloved hand brushed the child’s cheek, Corazon flinched. The girl didn’t. It was as if her body and soul were already lost. The world around her just a haze of blood, pain, and tears.
But she didn’t understand yet — what that hand meant. How quickly warmth could turn into ownership with his brother.
Doflamingo smiled as he scooped her up, ignoring the soot that smeared against his suit. She weighed nothing in his arms — small enough that he could carry her with one hand.
“Don’t be afraid,” he murmured, adjusting his glasses as he turned toward the ship waiting on the shore. “Come, little dove. You’ll die here if you stay.”
Rosinante frowned as he watched the way Doflamingo drew the girl closer into his arms, brushing dirt from her face as if polishing a treasure he’d just claimed.
“From now on,” Doflamingo murmured, his grin widening, “you belong to me. Do you understand, little dove?”
Seraphina didn’t understand what that meant — not yet. So she stayed motionless, staring out at her ruined village. Everyone was gone. Nothing was left. What did it matter where she belonged? She just wanted to disappear like the rest — burn to ashes and let the pain finally finish her off.
Her stomach twisted painfully with hunger, but she couldn’t care about that anymore. Both fear and pain tangled together — she was used to it now.
Most of all, she was filled with a sense of emptiness. That nothing really mattered anymore anyway.
Everyone was gone. Her mama was gone. Everyone had left her.
“So, little one,” the tall man with the pink feathered coat asked softly, “do you have a name?”
“Seraphina,” she answered, almost in a whisper. It had been so long since she’d used her voice — longer still since she’d thought about her own name.
Doflamingo’s grin widened as he walked ahead. “A beautiful name indeed.”
But behind him, Corazon froze.
The cigarette nearly slipped from his fingers. His heart stuttered in his chest as the sound of her name rang in his ears like a gunshot.
Seraphina.
That name.
No — it couldn’t be.
Panic flooded through him as the pieces fell together in cruel, inevitable clarity. The little girl, the age, the hair color beneath the soot — ocean-blue eyes that were the same shade as a certain woman’s he’d once helped escape years ago.
Six years ago, to be exact, when her mother had come to him — desperate, trembling, carrying the secret life growing inside her — he’d sworn to protect her. To help her disappear before Doflamingo realized she was pregnant.
He’d done everything. Arranged safe passage. Called in old favors with the Navy. Found a quiet island where no one would ever think to look.
And yet—
Here she was.
Corazon’s throat tightened as he watched Doflamingo carry her, brushing ash from her hair with frightening tenderness. The girl’s tiny hands clutched at the pink feathers on his coat, unaware of the monster holding her.
Fate, it seemed, had a cruel sense of humor.
No… this can’t be happening.
He could feel the panic crawling up his spine, cold and sharp. He needed to think. Needed to act before Doflamingo pieced it together — before his brother realized the truth. That the child in his arms wasn’t just some orphaned stray.
She was his daughter.
And if Doflamingo ever discovered that…
Corazon’s hands trembled as he drew in a shaky breath. He forced his face back into its usual vacant expression, shoving the cigarette between his lips to steady himself.
He couldn’t let his brother know. Not yet. Not ever.
As Doflamingo walked toward the ship, humming softly to himself, Corazon followed — his steps heavy, his heart pounding.
He glanced once more at the child — his niece — nestled safely, obliviously, against her father’s chest.
The village was gone. Her mother was gone.
And now, the only thing standing between Seraphina and the monster she called Papa…
was him.
Corazon lowered his gaze, the weight of his silent promise burning in his chest.
He’d save her again — somehow.