30 smoke

To think that his mission would bring him to Marineford... That, by some stroke of misfortune, he got to see — and clearly recognize — Rosinante in his marine whites...

The man was about Rosinante's age, he estimated. In his early twenties.

It was a pity that he had to die.

But Rosinante couldn't sabotage his own mission before it even had a chance to begin.

It would be kinder to give him no warning, Rosinante thought, and was milliseconds away from pressing the trigger when the Corazon started speaking.

"You're-"

Rosinante didn't let him finish, shooting him in the center of his chest.

The Corazon stumbled back slightly, one hand moving towards his chest while the other still held on to his ridiculously-oversized sword.

He seemed baffled. Shocked, even, as if he hadn't expected Rosinante to attack him.

"Room," he breathed out, a small blue globe — eerily similar to the effects of Rosinante's own Devil Fruit — appeared at his fingertips, plunging into his chest.

Within moments, the wound stopped bleeding, the bullet popping out into Corazon's hand just before the hole mended entirely.

Rosinante stared at the display, his eyes wide-opened and stinging. He wasn't familiar with which Fruit could have done that — the Heart Executive wasn't supposed to have a Devil Fruit at all — but if it made him respond so casually to getting shot point-blank-

The Corazon glanced down at the bullet held in his grasp, jaw tightening before he dropped it on the ground.

"I... Suppose that's fair," the man said, straightening up to look up at him. Rosinante shifted his aim, now pointing between his eyes. See him recover from that. "Please don't shoot me again, Cora-san."

Rosinante flinched at the name. Corazon, in turn, flinched at his flinch, eyes flickering down to his finger resting on the trigger.

...At least he considered Rosinante's gun a threat, as little as it might actually do against him.

"Don't call me that," he grunted out, itching for a cigarette. The Corazon's lips twitched, as if he was repressing a smile. As if he knew. "Why would you call me that?"

Any signs of amusement fell off the Corazon's face, his eyebrows scrunching as he took Rosinante in properly.

"...I was wondering why you looked the same," he mused. "But, no, that's not even- You're younger, aren't you? Younger than 26, than 23, before-"

"Get to the point, pirate, or I'll finish it for you."

"What year is it, C-uh. Sir?"

Rosinante blinked. "Time travel?" He raised an eyebrow. "That's what you're going with?"

The Corazon didn't seem happy about that, either.

"I'll eat my hat if this wasn't Mugiwara-ya's fault," he muttered, looking off to the side. "Him and his goddamn Gear 5-"

The nonsensical words were a code-word of sorts, Rosinante supposed. There's no other explanation for why the Corazon's form suddenly started flickering, red lighting zipping across his skin seemingly without his permission.

"I love you, too," the man pushed out quickly, forcing his mouth into a wide grin which his face was clearly unaccustomed to expressing, his free hand raising in a V gesture. "You never let me say it back-"

He faded out of existence, leaving Rosinante too confused to do much of anything.

This was... The weirdest thing that had ever happened to him. To the point where Rosinante doubted if it had ever even happened.

Just a hallucination, he guessed. The stress of preparing for his mission was clearly getting to him.

He jolted when his Den Den Mushi started ringing, his father's voice calling him for another meeting.

Hurrying to his office, Rosinante did his best to push that peculiar encounter out of his mind, never noticing the bullet still resting on the ground. 

It made no sense.

No sense at all.

(It would only be years later, after closing the lid to the chest now hosting his greatest treasure, that Rosinante understood what the words meant.)

(He spent the last moments of his life happy to know that Law would clearly make it to adulthood, tears forcing their way through his eyelids as he tried to remember every detail.)