#mingos

quick doodle minos w thigh highs

The WHOLE budget!

THE WHOLE BUDGET WENT TO THIS SCENE!

... THERE IS NO MORE MONEY! LOL

NOT TODAY, DEATH!

　　　roci, 

it’s your birthday. 

are you surprised i remembered? did you remember? i waited all week for you to request something special of me, but you never said a word. surely it’s because you forgot and not because you didn’t think it would matter to me.

if your reason is the latter, i wouldn’t deny being a bit sad. just a bit. because, in fourteen years, i’ve never not remembered your birthday. i might have treated it like a lot of things – like a vigil, or an excuse to drink – but i still remembered. i never got much sleep on those nights. i hope the same wasn’t true for you. i hope, wherever you ended up, you spent those nights in places that were safe and warm. i hope you slept well. i hope mother visited your dreams – maybe that would explain why she never visits mine. .

speaking of mother: you might be too young to remember this clearly, but on your 6th birthday – before she even started getting sick – she wanted us to find you something special to eat while she kept you distracted. i broke into a nearby farm and ripped a head of lettuce straight out of the ground, with the trade-off of getting a nasty welt on the back of my head from a rock. father found some plums, and we had one apple left. then she had me take you outside to play and, while we were gone, she took that food and arranged them into a smile.

i tried my best to recreate it from memory. i don’t know why, it was just the first gift i could think of. i have others for you, too – but you’ll have to come see me for those. how about after dinner, on the balcony? i have a bottle of wine we could share while the sun sets, and maybe we could watch the stars for a while. if you want.

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　- doffy

❣︎ | Unprompted :: Happy Birthday, Corazón ! |

He stared for a long time after he'd brought the dish back to his desk - a bizarre staring contest with a face made of fruit, or with his own small, distorted reflection gazing forlornly back at him in the margins of Doflamingo's fancy tableware. The smell of fresh produce - crisp, clean, alive - still lingered in the room even though he'd removed the cloche ages ago. He did remember, though perhaps not as sharply as he should: a lot of his early memories were sort of blended together into one pain-inducing sequence, alternately blurry and viscerally sharp - difficult to wrap his mind around, to understand that he was there in them. All that stuff happened, written on mind and body with a sharp edge. Doffy was older, maybe that was why he could see all this so clearly, like in this letter.

Guilt coiled itself around his heart as he reread the portions of this that seemed particularly genuine, for what if it was ? What if there was some remnant of a heart rattling around inside his brother's ribcage, and here he was betraying his last blood relative, lying to him, because he was too weak of will to believe that he could get better ? What kind of brother did that make him ? Or, was what he was doing for his brother's own good like he usually tried to tell himself when he felt poorly ? Scarred hands curled themselves into fists in his hair as Rocinante mentally prepared himself to try and explain this to Sengoku. What could he say - that Doffy could be rehabilitated after all, and that his primary evidence of this was a lettuce with a face on it ? It was entirely possible that this was done this way specifically because his brother could still read him so well, could see his bleeding, sentimental heart even though he did his best to hide it. That was what Sengoku would say, if he were to call him. Really there was nowhere to go.

The sensation of tears tracking from the planes of his face to the edges of the bowl was itchy, made his vision blur a little as he picked through its contents to browse a little. The plums, his favourite, were really good.