Big fan of moss

Artist, Convenient pronouns / ey/eir/eirs Carrd link

[ri5k]

the replacement of websites with apps sounds so backwards when you actually describe it. like hmm you have to download an entire program onto your device each time you want access to a portal, where it takes up storage indefinitely. somebody should invent an app where you can "browse" any portal just by typing in its address... 🥴

[ooo-silly-worms]

Pottery sounds terrifying to me. Every post I see is like "Here's this awesome art I made!! Pray for me that it survives The Kiln™ :')" I don't think I could cope with making art that could quite easily blow up and I have no way of controlling that. You guys are true heroes.

[dragongirlbunny]

[bootleg-nessie]

I FUCKING LOVE INFORMATION!!! I WANT TO LEARN EVERYTHING AND KNOW EVERYTHING!!!!! I WANT TO UNDERSTAND EVERYTHING ABOUT LIFE, THE UNIVERSE, AND EVERYTHING!!!!!! I AM UTTERLY CONSUMED BY MY THIRST FOR KNOWLEDGE!!!!!!!!!!!!

[friccahacked]

fuck it. kafcake

[redavexat]

[lenbryant]

Women in Shakespeare

[orangebitters]

Also like to point out that when her mother says “I was your mother much upon these years that you are now a maid,” (translation: I had you when I was your age) you have to remember her father’s words: “earth hath swallowed all my hopes but she,” (translation: all the other children died.)  The whole plot point of Juliet being an only child is explained by her mother being a Margaret Beaufort type who had her first child too young and it damaged her past the point of being able to bear more children.

[beatrice-otter]

Margaret Beaufort died in 1509. She was a major player in the Wars of the Roses, the swirling on-again-off-again civil wars that consumed England from 1455-1487. Romeo and Juliet was written and first performed in the early 1590s. Your average English person of Shakespeare’s day would probably have had at least a vague understanding of who she was and what happened to her, because she was a key figure in recent history and was still getting passed around as a cautionary tale.

There are two great problems with what happened to Margaret (and that her parents are trying to do to Juliet). One is easy for modern people to spot (but was also a common response back in her own day). And that’s the moral implications of what was done to her. She was too young to be married, and it was horrifying that she was forced into it so young. Every one of the adults around her either acted immorally or failed to protect her. They were wrong. This is what modern people see, and it’s important to remember that people back in her day mostly agreed with it. You’re supposed to think it’s fucked up! When girls were married that young (and it didn’t happen often!) it was a formality 99% of the time. It was for dynastic or financial reasons (the girl has lots of money and/or land and/or a title that her husband wants), but the “couple” don’t consummate their marriage for years. And it’s not just that they would have separate bedrooms. They might not even live in the same country until the girl was in her late teens and physically and mentally mature enough to bear and raise kids. Hell, a lot of times they didn’t even meet until the girl was older! They had this thing called “proxy marriage” where you would have two separate ceremonies, in two separate places, with each party saying their vows separately, one in one city and the other in a different one. So, yeah, sure, the girl was technically married at 12, but she didn’t actually meet her “husband” in person until she was 17 and they didn’t start sleeping together until she was 20. That was a thing they did.

The other problem, the one that modern people don’t notice, is dynastic. See, marriage wasn’t generally because you loved someone. It was because you had the resources to support a family, and you or your family wanted to pool those resources with someone. It’s about “our family has these resources, and we want that to continue.” It’s about continuity across generations. It’s about making sure that your children and grandchildren have the best possible resources to survive and thrive, whether those resources are land or a trade or a title or money or whatever. In order for this to work, you have to have kids! The family and the family’s resources depend on the married couple having children. If the couple doesn’t have children, the marriage is a failure. And that failure affects not only the couple, but both families. This is a really big problem. And you can’t have just one kid to pass on the family name, because half of all kids die in early childhood. If you want to be safe, you need several kids, to be sure at least one will survive to adulthood (when they can marry and pass on the family name and resources.

You know what happens when a girl has her first pregnancy too young? She is very likely to either die in childbirth, or have complications that destroy her future fertility. Just like Margaret Beaufort. Just like Juliet’s mother. In other words, the marriage is a failure, not just for her, but also for her family, and her husband (who can’t divorce her, it’s not allowed except in extremely rare circumstances), and her husband’s family. So even the people who didn’t have a moral problem with adult men having sex with pubescent girls had a practical problem with girls married too young because you are very likely to destroy the entire purpose of the marriage by doing it. As Shakespeare reminds us in the play through Juliet’s mother having been married too young and only having one child.

Shakespeare is telling us “yeah, this is fucked up. but even if you’re the kind of awful person who doesn’t think girls marrying too young is morally wrong, it’s also a problem for practical and dynastic reasons, don’t forget that by doing this wrong thing you are very likely to destroy what you most want out of it.”

[stalker-among-the-stars]

Interesting

[i-fear-neither-death-nor-pain]

It bears repeating:

don’t forget that by doing this wrong thing you are very likely to destroy what you most want out of it.”

[sarahthecoat]

yes, excellent discussion!

another thing i noticed, the year my local community shakespeare theater did r&j, and i made the costumes so i got to watch the show every night: part of why capulet is telling paris, take your time, get to know each other, no rush, is that he still has his nephew tybalt as his heir. as long as tybalt is in the picture, there is no pressure on juliet to go further with paris, than get acquainted. once tybalt is killed, then suddenly capulet needs an heir, he needs a husband for juliet, now, this week. (the role of capulet is best given to the actor in the company that can do over the top apoplexy, you need to believe his urgency comes at least in part by how clearly he could drop dead any moment from giving himself a stroke)

i feel like this play is often taught in middle schools as if it was somehow relevant to, or about, teen hormone storms. really it's got more to do with the social structures around family and inheritance. leaving that context out makes it confusing, why is capulet suddenly flipping from nice dad to evil dad?

art history matters.

[rowanhorserider]

I've been thinking about this play a lot lately. I really wanna highlight that Lord Capulet asks Paris to wait and get to know her, and to woo her, while Tybalt lives. While Tybalt is alive, Juliet has something of a reprieve, and her wellbeing as his only child matters more to Capulet. But once Tybalt has died, the gloves come off. Lord Capulet was worried about his daughter's wellbeing when he felt he had the space to care, but as soon as his dynasty is at stake, as soon as this becomes larger than Juliet's happiness, his consideration for her health and mental wellbeing get thrown away. Which also is due in part to the fact that Capulet's family is implicated in a brawl that has left several dead after the Prince's family EXPLICITLY told the Capulets and Montagues to stop fighting or face dire consequences, AND Capulet is trying to align himself with the Prince's family by marrying Juliet off to County Paris, a relative of the Prince. So to Lord Capulet, it is now less important that Juliet is happy, and more important than he reminds the Prince of his loyalty via this marriage and aligns his family with the Prince's before it's too late. And he believes this must be done, at any cost...until Juliet kills herself. And that's when he realises the devastating cost of treating his family as chess pieces. He realises his wrongdoing far too late.

Seriously Romeo and Juliet is HEAVY on the dynastic politics, and I think you can't fully understand the play without understanding how that all works, especially because the impact of dynastic marriages on women and girls is like. THE POINT of the play

[bacteriumphage]

You guys are so close to getting it

[loredwy]

I cant believe this tweet is how I find out

[would-you-punt-them]

now all the things you guys have told me about american high schools are starting to make sense

[jeaninelatragedia]

holy shit.

[frustratedasatruar]

You're not really supposed to say it this way, because its considered crass, but here in the US children are culturally and legally considered essentially the property of their parents.

Note that its considered more crass to point this out than it is to treat children as property in the first place.

[kazterboro]

Here's the link for anyone who wants to read more on the convention itself:

Entry into force: 2 September 1990, in accordance with article 49 Preamble The States Parties to the present Convention, Considering that, i

[carnelianfoxx]

linus takes a trip to the nether. birthday gift to my sister

[unconventiononthelawofthesea]

after my last concussion I had this weird thing for a few weeks where I like, didn't want to get hurt? like if I thought I might get hurt doing something that made me not want to do it. has anyone else ever experienced this?

[neatlymanifolded]

[lioness7829]

Cry, Little Dragon

What if Doflamingo realized what was happening five minutes earlier?

In canon, eight-year-old Doflamingo stood silent and furious while his father renounced their Celestial Dragon status, too proud and too angry to see the disgust on the elders' faces until it was too late. The family fell. His mother died. He killed his father and tried to crawl back, and the Holy Land rejected him anyway.In this world, Doflamingo sees the sneer. He sees the cold eyes. He sees the Holy Knights shifting their weight, ready to escort them out, and he understands—with the sharp, animal clarity of a child who refuses to die—that his father has just made them all disposable.

So he does the one thing no one expects.

He bursts into tears.

OR: In canon, Doflamingo was too proud to cry. He lost everything.In this AU, he cries like his life depends on it. Because it does.

OR: An eight-year-old commits emotional terrorism against the Five Elders, his mother helps, and Homing Donquixote never stood a chance.

###

The Hall of the Five Elders was not a place for children.

It was a place for power, for incense and old stone, for the five men who sat at the apex of the world and had not raised their voices in centuries because they had never needed to. The ceilings vanished into shadow. The floors gleamed with the polish of eight hundred years of footsteps—Celestial Dragons, Holy Knights, the occasional slave who crawled in to clean and was never seen again. Candles burned in iron sconces. The air tasted of wax and antiquity and the particular stillness that precedes a verdict.

At the edges of the room, half-hidden in the shadows of the great pillars, the Holy Knights stood at attention. Their armor was white and gold, their faces obscured by helmets that had been forged before the Void Century. They did not move. They did not speak. They were the sword arm of the Celestial Dragons, and they were here to bear witness.

Standing in the center of it all, his voice trembling with the earnest conviction of a man who believed goodness would protect him, was Homing Donquixote.He had just finished speaking.

The words still hung in the air, settling like dust after an explosion. Renounce. Leave. Live among the commoners. Raise our sons as humans, not as gods.Behind him, three figures stood in the shadow of his idealism.

The Lady Donquixote—beautiful, pale, golden-haired—swayed slightly where she stood. Her hand was in her husband's grip, but her fingers were limp. Her eyes, usually bright with the cold fire of her bloodline, were glassy and unfocused. She had been ill for days now—a cold that had settled in her chest, a weakness that the slave-doctors could not touch because she would not let them. No filthy mortal hands on her skin. No commoner fingers probing her throat. She was a Celestial Dragon. She would endure.

She was enduring.Barely.Beside her, Rosinante—six years old, clutching a stuffed animal that had been loved into abstraction—was already crying. He didn't understand what was happening. He understood that his mother had been coughing all morning and his father had been speaking in that strange, fervent voice and his big brother had been very, very quiet.

Doflamingo was eight years old.

He was wearing a tiny suit, because his mother had dressed him that morning with the same trembling care she always did, her cool fingers smoothing his blond hair, adjusting his miniature cravat. He looked like a doll. A very expensive, very still, very watchful doll.

He was not crying.

He was listening.

He had heard this speech before.

He had heard it at dinner, three weeks ago, when his father had first floated the idea between bites of roasted pheasant. What if we lived among them? What if we showed them we were not so different? His mother had pressed a handkerchief to her mouth and said nothing. Her silence had been louder than any argument.

He had heard it in the garden, a week later, when his father had knelt in front of him and Rosi and explained—in gentle, patient, unbearable tones—what it meant to renounce. We would give up the slaves. Give up the palace. Give up the title. We would live as ordinary people do.

Rosinante had asked what "renounce" meant. Father had smiled and said it meant "freedom."

Doflamingo knew what it meant.It meant giving up everything.

He had thought it was a phase. A strange, incomprehensible phase, like the time his father had insisted on eating food prepared without slave labor—food that had tasted ordinary and common and wrong. Phases passed. Phases ended. Father would come to his senses.

But Father was not coming to his senses.

The first thing Doflamingo noticed in the Hall of the Five Elders was the silence.

Not the respectful silence that followed a Celestial Dragon's decree. Not the thoughtful silence of men considering a proposal. This was a different kind of silence. The kind that happened when something disgusting crawled onto the dinner table and everyone was too horrified to acknowledge it.

The second thing he noticed was the faces.

The Five Elders sat in a line, their ancient bodies draped in robes that had witnessed the birth and death of empires. The man on the far left—the one with the white hair and the scar that bisected his face like a crack in marble—had not moved. His eyes were cold. Not angry. Cold. As if Homing Donquixote had just ceased to exist in a way that mattered.

The man beside him—shorter, broader, with a beard that covered half his chest—was gripping the arm of his chair. His knuckles were white. Not with tension, Doflamingo realized. With contempt.

The man in the center—the oldest, the greyest, the one whose presence seemed to bend the light around him—had not looked away from Homing once. But his expression was not interest. It was the expression of a man watching an insect crawl across his dinner plate, waiting for someone to crush it.

The other two were already murmuring to each other. Quiet words. Brief words. Doflamingo couldn't hear them, but he didn't need to.

They're not going to argue with him.

The realization came not as a lightning bolt but as a slow, cold pressure in his chest.

They're not going to argue. They're not going to stop him. They're not even going to try.

He looked at his father. Homing was still talking—something about humanity, about compassion, about the beauty of common life. His voice was earnest and trembling and utterly, catastrophically oblivious. He didn't see the cold eyes. He didn't see the white knuckles. He didn't see the two elders murmuring to each other, already dismissing him.

He doesn't know, Doflamingo realized. He doesn't know what he's doing. He thinks they're just disagreeing. He thinks they'll come around. He thinks—He thinks this will end well.

Doflamingo's hands curled into fists.

___

He was eight years old. He didn't have the vocabulary for political calculation. He didn't have a master plan. What he had was an instinct—sharp and animal and utterly focused—that told him: Something is wrong. Something is very wrong. Father is walking us off a cliff, and no one is going to stop him, and I have to do something.

He looked at his mother.

The Lady Donquixote was beautiful. She had always been beautiful—one of the finest pure-blooded maidens of her generation, her cheekbones high and delicate, her hair like spun gold, her skin pale as moonlight. She had been a prize. A treasure. His father had been lucky to marry her, and everyone knew it. Even the other Celestial Dragons, who were not generous with compliments, admitted that the Lady Donquixote was a jewel of the bloodline.

She had borne two healthy children—a minor miracle given her physical frailty—and the elder women had praised her for it. A pure-blooded Celestial Dragon who could produce strong heirs was a treasure beyond price.

But she was also fragile.

Not weak. A Celestial Dragon was never weak. But her body was a thing of glass and silk and breath that caught too easily. She had been sick for days now—a cold, nothing more, but enough to make her pale and unsteady, enough to make her cling to her husband's arm not out of devotion but out of necessity.

Doflamingo had seen her that morning, before they came to the hall. She had been sitting at her vanity, staring at her reflection with eyes that barely seemed to register what they were seeing. She had been arguing with Homing for weeks about his plan—not shouting, not screaming, but arguing with the quiet, desperate intensity of a woman who knew she was losing. Her voice never rose. It couldn't. Her lungs were too delicate, her breath too shallow. Every time she tried to push past Homing's interruptions, her words would dissolve into coughing fits, and Homing—oblivious, earnest, infuriating Homing—would pat her hand and tell her she was working herself up over nothing.

She told him, Doflamingo thought. She told him she didn't want to go. I heard her. She said she wanted to stay. She said this was our home.

And Homing had smiled and said she would understand, in time.Now she stood in the Hall of the Five Elders, swaying slightly, her hand limp in her husband's grip. She had not spoken since they entered. She had not looked at anyone. Her eyes were fixed on some point in the middle distance, glassy and unfocused, and Doflamingo realized with a jolt of cold clarity that she was barely present.

She's sick, he thought. She's really sick. She's been sick all morning and she's been trying to hide it because she doesn't want the slaves to touch her and she doesn't want to admit weakness in front of—

In front of the elders.

In front of the Holy Knights.

In front of her own children.

She's been so focused on staying upright that she hasn't heard a word Father said.

For a moment—just a moment—he was angry at her. How could she not be listening? How could she not be fighting? This was their life. This was everything. And she was standing there like a ghost, like a doll, like something already half-dead.

Then he looked at her again, really looked—at the faint sheen of sweat on her brow, at the tremor in her fingers, at the way her chest rose and fell in shallow, careful breaths—and the anger curdled into something else.

She can't fight, he realized. She wants to. She's been trying to for weeks. But she can't. Her body won't let her. Father won't let her. Every time she tries to speak, he talks over her. Every time she tries to stand her ground, he calls her hysterical—Homing had never called his wife hysterical. Not in those words. He was too gentle, too loving, too genuinely decent to use language like that. But he didn't need to. The effect was the same. He listened to her objections with a patient, pitying smile and then proceeded to ignore them entirely, because he knew what was best, because he was the head of the family, because his wife was delicate and emotional and didn't understand the beauty of what he was trying to do.

She told him she didn't want to leave, Doflamingo thought. And he didn't listen. He never listens.

She had been arguing with his father for weeks.

Not loudly. His mother never argued loudly. Her lungs could not sustain the kind of prolonged debate that Homing favored. Her voice, when raised, tended to give out after a few sentences, trailing into breathlessness that she covered with a cough and a wave of her hand. But she had been arguing nonetheless—in the quiet way of a woman who had been raised to believe she was a goddess, and who could not comprehend why her husband wanted to live among mortals.

You cannot do this, she had said, her voice barely above a whisper, her hand pressed to her chest. You cannot take my sons and turn them into commoners. They are Donquixote. They are Celestial Dragons. They are not—And Homing had interrupted her. Not cruelly. Not intentionally. But with the oblivious momentum of a man who had convinced himself he was righteous and had stopped listening to anyone who disagreed. They are children, he had said. They will adapt. They will be happier. You will see.She had not argued further. Not because she agreed. But because she had run out of air.

Doflamingo had watched all of this. He was eight years old, and he had watched his father talk over his mother, had watched his mother's fragile body refuse to cooperate with her fierce will, had watched the cold settle into her lungs and take root. He had filed every detail away in the back of his mind, not knowing when or how he would use it.

He was about to find out.

His father had said, "They need to see. They need to understand that this is my choice, and my family stands with me."

Doflamingo had not understood what that meant until now.

Now, standing in the shadow of his father's shoulder, watching the faces of the elders as his father spoke words that made no sense—words like humility and common humanity and living among the mortals as mortals do—Doflamingo understood.

His father was insane.

They think he's insane.

Not insane in the way some of the older Celestial Dragons were insane, with their twitching hands and their screaming tantrums and their habit of collecting tongues in jars. That was acceptable. That was normal. His father was insane in a different way. A quiet way. A way that made the other Celestial Dragons stop sneering and start staring with something else entirely.

And they're going to let him go—and us with him.

He looked at his mother.

She was swaying. Almost imperceptibly. Her face was still the frozen mask of celestial composure, but her hand had tightened on Rosi's shoulder, and her breath was coming in short, shallow sips. She was fighting to stay upright. Fighting to stay present. Fighting—But not winning.

She can't stop him either, Doflamingo thought. She's been trying for weeks, and she can't stop him, because her body won't let her. Because every time she tries to speak, he talks over her. Because she's too delicate and he's too stubborn and—

And she was going to collapse. Maybe not now. Maybe not in front of the Five Elders, with the Holy Knights watching and the weight of eight centuries pressing down. But soon. The cold in her chest, the weeks of arguing, the stress of this moment—it was building. Doflamingo could see it building. And when it broke, when she finally crumpled, it would be too late. Homing would have already signed their lives away. 

No, Doflamingo thought.

The word was not a protest. It was a decision.

____

He let go of his mother's skirt.

She didn't notice. She was too focused on staying upright, on breathing, on the distant rumble of the Elders' silence. Rosinante noticed—Rosi always noticed when Doflamingo moved away from him—but Rosi was six and confused and on the verge of tears, and one sharp look from his older brother was enough to keep him quiet.

Doflamingo stepped forward.

Not toward his father. Toward the dais. Toward the five ancient figures who sat in judgment, their shadows stretching across the marble floor like the fingers of a closing hand.

The Elder on the left—the one with the long beard and the scar that cut across his temple like a frozen lightning strike—noticed him first.

"Boy," the Elder said. His voice was flat. Dismissive. The voice of a man who had been interrupted by something beneath his notice. "This is not a place for—"

Doflamingo burst into tears.

It was not hard. The tears had been waiting, building behind his eyes since the moment he saw the sneer on the Elder's face, since the moment he understood that his father was serious, that this was real, that everything he knew was about to be taken away. He just had to let them fall.

He let them."I don't—" His voice cracked. He let it. "I don't want to go. Please. Please, I don't want to go. Father says we have to live with the commoners, and I don't want to, I want to stay here, I want to—"

He grabbed the edge of the Elder's robe.

The fabric was silk, heavy and cool. The Elder looked down at him—looked down at the small, trembling child clinging to his robes, tears streaming down his face, every inch the picture of a frightened little boy whose father had lost his mind.

But Doflamingo was not finished.

He had been watching. He had been listening. He had been filing details away for weeks, months, his entire short life. And now he was going to use them.

"She told him she didn't want to leave."

His voice was barely a whisper. It cut through the room like a blade.

"My mother. She told Father. I heard her. She said she wanted to stay. She said this was our home. And Father—" He hiccupped. A perfect, shuddering, childish hiccup. "Father said she was being hysterical."

The lie landed like a stone in still water.

Homing had never called his wife hysterical. Homing was too gentle, too naive, too genuinely loving to use a word like that. But Homing was also the only person in the room who knew it was a lie, and Homing was no longer a credible witness. The Elders were already looking at him differently—not with the cold dismissal of before, but with something sharper. Something more dangerous.

Something that believed."She's been sick," Doflamingo continued, the words tumbling out between sobs. "She's been sick for days, and Father keeps saying we have to leave, and she can't—she can't even breathe properly, and he won't listen to her, he never listens to her, and she's scared, she's so scared, she doesn't want to go but she can't—she can't stop him because—"

He pressed his face into the silk robe and sobbed.

Behind him, he heard Rosinante start to cry. Rosinante always cried when Doflamingo cried. It was a younger sibling reflex, automatic and reliable, and Doflamingo had never been more grateful for it.

Homing's face had gone pale. "That's not—I never—"

"She's been sick for days," Doflamingo continued, his voice muffled by the elder's robe. "She caught a chill and she can barely breathe and Father made her come here anyway. He said the family had to present a united front. He said it was important that everyone saw us together. But she's sick. She's really sick. And he won't let her rest."

He lifted his head, turning to look at his mother.

She was staring at him.Her eyes, which had been unfocused and distant, were suddenly sharp. Clear. Watching him with an expression that was not surprise—not quite—but something closer to recognition.

She understood.

Later, Doflamingo would think about this moment and realize that his mother had always been the smart one. His father had ideals and dreams and a heart full of love for a humanity that would never love him back. His mother had a mind like a blade. She simply had never been able to use it—not against Homing, not against her own fragile body, not against a world that saw her as a beautiful, delicate, fertile prize and nothing more.

But now her son had given her an opening.

She took it.

Her hand flew to her chest. Her breath escaped in a soft, terrible gasp—the sound of someone whose lungs had finally, completely given up. Her other hand, still on Homing's arm, tightened convulsively.

And then she collapsed.

It was a beautiful collapse. Perfect. The kind of collapse that would have looked rehearsed if it hadn't been so utterly convincing. Her knees buckled first, then her torso, then her whole body crumpling like a flower in a drought, her golden hair spilling across the marble floor in a cascade of pale silk.

The sound she made when she hit the ground was soft. Almost gentle. The sound of something precious breaking.

For one frozen moment, no one moved.

Then Rosinante screamed.

"MAMA!"

He threw himself toward their mother's crumpled form. His stuffed bear hit the floor. His small hands grabbed at her dress, her hair, her unmoving shoulder. "Mama, wake up! Mama!"

Doflamingo stayed where he was.

His face was wet with tears—real tears, not the performance tears he had been manufacturing a moment ago. He hadn't expected the collapse to feel like this. He hadn't expected the sound she made, or the way Rosinante's scream echoed off the marble walls, or the way his own heart was suddenly pounding so hard he could feel it in his teeth.

But he didn't move.

Because the elders were moving now. The Holy Knights were moving. The silence had shattered, and in its place was a low murmur of voices—concerned, alarmed, furious—and Doflamingo knew, with the cold, clear certainty of a child who had just discovered what he was capable of, that he had won."She needs a physician," the scarred elder said. His voice was sharp, cutting through the murmur. "Now."

Homing was kneeling beside his wife, his face ashen, his hands hovering uselessly over her body. "I didn't—she was fine this morning, she said she was fine—"

"She is clearly not fine." The elder's lip curled. "You brought a woman who can barely breathe into a formal proceeding and made her stand for the better part of an hour. For what? So she could witness your noble renunciation?"

"She wanted to be here—"

"She is catatonic." The elder's voice was flat. Final. "Look at her. She hasn't spoken a word since she entered this hall. She's been swaying on her feet for ten minutes. And you didn't notice. You were too busy lecturing us about the beauty of common life to notice that your own wife was collapsing in front of you."

Homing opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

No sound came out.

From the floor, a thin, trembling voice rose.

"—not... with him..."The hall went silent.

Doflamingo's mother had lifted her head. Just barely. Just enough to speak. Her face was white as bone, her lips bloodless, her breath rattling in her chest. But her eyes—her beautiful, cold, pale eyes—were fixed on the elders with an intensity that belied her fragile body.

"Not with him," she repeated. Each word was a battle. Each syllable a victory. "Don't... agree. Don't... want to leave. My sons... my home... he... doesn't... speak for me.""Darling—" Homing started.

"I am a Celestial Dragon." Her voice cracked, but it didn't break. "I am a daughter of the twenty families. I bore two healthy sons for this bloodline. I did my duty. I have always done my duty. And I will not—" She gasped, her hand pressing harder against her chest. "I will not be dragged into exile by a man who has lost his mind."

The words hung in the air like a blade.

Doflamingo stared at his mother—his delicate, fragile, glass-boned mother, who could barely breathe, who could barely stand, who had not said a single word in her own defense for weeks—and felt something that might have been pride.

The scarred elder turned to the center. The ancient one with the parchment skin. "The law is clear. A man may renounce his own status. He cannot renounce his family's without their consent. The mother has spoken. The children—"

"The children are in distress," another elder said. The one with the white beard, whose eyes were no longer half-closed. "The older boy has been clinging to Lord V. Nasujuro's robes for the past five minutes. The younger one is on the floor with his mother. This is not a family making a free choice. This is a man dragging his dependents into a decision they clearly oppose."

"She's not of sound mind," Homing tried. "She's ill, she doesn't know what she's saying—"

"She knows exactly what she's saying." The scarred elder—Nasujuro, Doflamingo filed the name away—cut him off. "She is a pure-blooded Celestial Dragon. She has more right to speak in this hall than you do at this moment."

Doflamingo pressed his face back into the silk robe and let his shoulders shake.

It was over.

___

The deliberation took less than an hour.

Doflamingo, Rosinante, and their mother were escorted to an antechamber—smaller than the main hall, but still vast by any reasonable standard. Medical slaves were summoned. The mother was laid on a velvet chaise, her hand still pressed to her chest, her breath still shallow, but her eyes were open now. Clear. Watching.

Rosinante was curled up against her side, his face buried in her shoulder, his tears slowly subsiding into hiccups. He didn't understand what had happened. He only knew that Mother was awake now, and Mother was stroking his hair, and Mother was murmuring something soft and soothing that he couldn't quite hear.

Doflamingo stood by the window.

The clouds stretched out below them, white and endless, the red line of the Grand Continent visible in the distance. He was still trembling—a faint, involuntary tremor that he couldn't quite suppress. The tears had dried on his face. His throat was raw.

He didn't feel triumphant.

He felt like he had been holding his breath for an hour and had only just remembered how to exhale.

I did it, he thought. I did it. I saved us. Father was going to destroy us, and I stopped him.

The cold feeling in his chest didn't go away.

Behind him, he heard his mother's voice—thin, fragile, but steady. "Doflamingo."He turned.

She was looking at him. Her eyes, still too bright in her pale face, were fixed on his with an intensity that made him want to look away.

"Come here," she said.

He went.

She reached up—slowly, painfully, as if the movement cost her—and cupped his cheek with her palm. Her skin was cool. Her touch was light. But her grip, when it tightened, was surprisingly firm.

"You are your mother's son," she said quietly. "Not your father's. Remember that."

Doflamingo swallowed. "I know."

"No. You don't. Not yet. But you will." She released his cheek and let her hand fall back to her side. "I couldn't stop him. I tried. My body wouldn't let me. But you—" She paused, her breath catching. "You saw what needed to be done and you did it. You are eight years old, and you did what I could not."

"You helped," Doflamingo said. "At the end. You—"

"You gave me an opening." Her lips curved—not quite a smile, but something close. "You gave me a chance to speak. I took it. That's what family does. That's what blood does. We protect each other. Even when it's hard. Even when it hurts."

She closed her eyes. Her breathing was still too fast, too shallow, but the tension in her face had eased. She looked almost peaceful.

"When they come back," she murmured, "they will tell us that your father has been exiled. They will tell us that we are to remain. And you will not cry. Do you understand?"

His mother opened her eyes one more time. They were cold and clear and utterly, perfectly Celestial Dragon.

"Good boy," she said.

____

When the doors opened, the scarred elder was standing there.

His expression was unreadable. Behind him, the Holy Knights had dispersed, their white cloaks vanishing into the shadows of the great hall. The incense had burned down to ash. The candles were guttering.

"Homing Donquixote's renunciation has been accepted," the elder said. His voice was flat. Official. "He is no longer a Celestial Dragon. He has been escorted from the Holy Land."

Doflamingo's mother did not react. Her face was smooth, serene, the face of a woman who had never doubted the outcome.

"However, in light of the testimony provided by his wife and the clear distress of his children, the Council has determined that Lady Donquixote and her sons retain their status. They will remain in the Holy Land under the protection of the Donquixote family's senior branch."

"Thank you," Doflamingo's mother said. Her voice was still thin, but it carried. "You have been just."

The elder inclined his head—a fractional movement, barely perceptible. "Your husband asked to see the children before he left. I told him the decision was not mine to make."

Doflamingo's mother looked at her sons. Rosinante, still clinging to her side. Doflamingo, standing straight and still, his face perfectly composed.

"No," she said. "He has done enough damage for one lifetime."

The elder nodded. The door closed.

And Doflamingo stood in the silence of the antechamber, his mother's hand resting on his shoulder, his brother's breathing slowly evening into sleep, and watched the last traces of his father's existence disappear into the shadows of the holy city.

He did not cry.

He had learned, in the space of a single afternoon, that tears were a weapon. And weapons should never be wasted.

That night, he lay in a bed that was not his own—a bed in the senior Donquixote estate, with silk sheets and a canopy and a window that looked out over the clouds.

Rosinante was asleep in the next room. Their mother was in the room after that, attended by the best physicians the holy city could provide. She would recover. She always recovered. Her body was glass, but glass, properly cared for, could last forever.

Doflamingo stared at the ceiling.I am a Celestial Dragon. I am a Donquixote. I am my mother's son.

The words were a mantra. A shield. A promise.

I will never be weak. I will never be naive. I will never love something that can be taken away from me.

He closed his eyes.

Somewhere beyond the walls, his father was walking into a world that would hate him. Somewhere beyond the clouds, the commoners were waiting with their torches and their pitchforks and their centuries of justified rage. Somewhere beyond the holy city, the future was unfolding like a flower made of knives.

But here, in the darkness, in the silence, in the cold, perfect heart of Mariejois, Doflamingo falls asleep.

[lioness7829]

Cry, Little Dragon

What if Doflamingo realized what was happening five minutes earlier?

In canon, eight-year-old Doflamingo stood silent and furious while his father renounced their Celestial Dragon status, too proud and too angry to see the disgust on the elders' faces until it was too late. The family fell. His mother died. He killed his father and tried to crawl back, and the Holy Land rejected him anyway.In this world, Doflamingo sees the sneer. He sees the cold eyes. He sees the Holy Knights shifting their weight, ready to escort them out, and he understands—with the sharp, animal clarity of a child who refuses to die—that his father has just made them all disposable.

So he does the one thing no one expects.

He bursts into tears.

OR: In canon, Doflamingo was too proud to cry. He lost everything.In this AU, he cries like his life depends on it. Because it does.

OR: An eight-year-old commits emotional terrorism against the Five Elders, his mother helps, and Homing Donquixote never stood a chance.

###

The Hall of the Five Elders was not a place for children.

It was a place for power, for incense and old stone, for the five men who sat at the apex of the world and had not raised their voices in centuries because they had never needed to. The ceilings vanished into shadow. The floors gleamed with the polish of eight hundred years of footsteps—Celestial Dragons, Holy Knights, the occasional slave who crawled in to clean and was never seen again. Candles burned in iron sconces. The air tasted of wax and antiquity and the particular stillness that precedes a verdict.

At the edges of the room, half-hidden in the shadows of the great pillars, the Holy Knights stood at attention. Their armor was white and gold, their faces obscured by helmets that had been forged before the Void Century. They did not move. They did not speak. They were the sword arm of the Celestial Dragons, and they were here to bear witness.

Standing in the center of it all, his voice trembling with the earnest conviction of a man who believed goodness would protect him, was Homing Donquixote.He had just finished speaking.

The words still hung in the air, settling like dust after an explosion. Renounce. Leave. Live among the commoners. Raise our sons as humans, not as gods.Behind him, three figures stood in the shadow of his idealism.

The Lady Donquixote—beautiful, pale, golden-haired—swayed slightly where she stood. Her hand was in her husband's grip, but her fingers were limp. Her eyes, usually bright with the cold fire of her bloodline, were glassy and unfocused. She had been ill for days now—a cold that had settled in her chest, a weakness that the slave-doctors could not touch because she would not let them. No filthy mortal hands on her skin. No commoner fingers probing her throat. She was a Celestial Dragon. She would endure.

She was enduring.Barely.Beside her, Rosinante—six years old, clutching a stuffed animal that had been loved into abstraction—was already crying. He didn't understand what was happening. He understood that his mother had been coughing all morning and his father had been speaking in that strange, fervent voice and his big brother had been very, very quiet.

Doflamingo was eight years old.

He was wearing a tiny suit, because his mother had dressed him that morning with the same trembling care she always did, her cool fingers smoothing his blond hair, adjusting his miniature cravat. He looked like a doll. A very expensive, very still, very watchful doll.

He was not crying.

He was listening.

He had heard this speech before.

He had heard it at dinner, three weeks ago, when his father had first floated the idea between bites of roasted pheasant. What if we lived among them? What if we showed them we were not so different? His mother had pressed a handkerchief to her mouth and said nothing. Her silence had been louder than any argument.

He had heard it in the garden, a week later, when his father had knelt in front of him and Rosi and explained—in gentle, patient, unbearable tones—what it meant to renounce. We would give up the slaves. Give up the palace. Give up the title. We would live as ordinary people do.

Rosinante had asked what "renounce" meant. Father had smiled and said it meant "freedom."

Doflamingo knew what it meant.It meant giving up everything.

He had thought it was a phase. A strange, incomprehensible phase, like the time his father had insisted on eating food prepared without slave labor—food that had tasted ordinary and common and wrong. Phases passed. Phases ended. Father would come to his senses.

But Father was not coming to his senses.

The first thing Doflamingo noticed in the Hall of the Five Elders was the silence.

Not the respectful silence that followed a Celestial Dragon's decree. Not the thoughtful silence of men considering a proposal. This was a different kind of silence. The kind that happened when something disgusting crawled onto the dinner table and everyone was too horrified to acknowledge it.

The second thing he noticed was the faces.

The Five Elders sat in a line, their ancient bodies draped in robes that had witnessed the birth and death of empires. The man on the far left—the one with the white hair and the scar that bisected his face like a crack in marble—had not moved. His eyes were cold. Not angry. Cold. As if Homing Donquixote had just ceased to exist in a way that mattered.

The man beside him—shorter, broader, with a beard that covered half his chest—was gripping the arm of his chair. His knuckles were white. Not with tension, Doflamingo realized. With contempt.

The man in the center—the oldest, the greyest, the one whose presence seemed to bend the light around him—had not looked away from Homing once. But his expression was not interest. It was the expression of a man watching an insect crawl across his dinner plate, waiting for someone to crush it.

The other two were already murmuring to each other. Quiet words. Brief words. Doflamingo couldn't hear them, but he didn't need to.

They're not going to argue with him.

The realization came not as a lightning bolt but as a slow, cold pressure in his chest.

They're not going to argue. They're not going to stop him. They're not even going to try.

He looked at his father. Homing was still talking—something about humanity, about compassion, about the beauty of common life. His voice was earnest and trembling and utterly, catastrophically oblivious. He didn't see the cold eyes. He didn't see the white knuckles. He didn't see the two elders murmuring to each other, already dismissing him.

He doesn't know, Doflamingo realized. He doesn't know what he's doing. He thinks they're just disagreeing. He thinks they'll come around. He thinks—He thinks this will end well.

Doflamingo's hands curled into fists.

___

He was eight years old. He didn't have the vocabulary for political calculation. He didn't have a master plan. What he had was an instinct—sharp and animal and utterly focused—that told him: Something is wrong. Something is very wrong. Father is walking us off a cliff, and no one is going to stop him, and I have to do something.

He looked at his mother.

The Lady Donquixote was beautiful. She had always been beautiful—one of the finest pure-blooded maidens of her generation, her cheekbones high and delicate, her hair like spun gold, her skin pale as moonlight. She had been a prize. A treasure. His father had been lucky to marry her, and everyone knew it. Even the other Celestial Dragons, who were not generous with compliments, admitted that the Lady Donquixote was a jewel of the bloodline.

She had borne two healthy children—a minor miracle given her physical frailty—and the elder women had praised her for it. A pure-blooded Celestial Dragon who could produce strong heirs was a treasure beyond price.

But she was also fragile.

Not weak. A Celestial Dragon was never weak. But her body was a thing of glass and silk and breath that caught too easily. She had been sick for days now—a cold, nothing more, but enough to make her pale and unsteady, enough to make her cling to her husband's arm not out of devotion but out of necessity.

Doflamingo had seen her that morning, before they came to the hall. She had been sitting at her vanity, staring at her reflection with eyes that barely seemed to register what they were seeing. She had been arguing with Homing for weeks about his plan—not shouting, not screaming, but arguing with the quiet, desperate intensity of a woman who knew she was losing. Her voice never rose. It couldn't. Her lungs were too delicate, her breath too shallow. Every time she tried to push past Homing's interruptions, her words would dissolve into coughing fits, and Homing—oblivious, earnest, infuriating Homing—would pat her hand and tell her she was working herself up over nothing.

She told him, Doflamingo thought. She told him she didn't want to go. I heard her. She said she wanted to stay. She said this was our home.

And Homing had smiled and said she would understand, in time.Now she stood in the Hall of the Five Elders, swaying slightly, her hand limp in her husband's grip. She had not spoken since they entered. She had not looked at anyone. Her eyes were fixed on some point in the middle distance, glassy and unfocused, and Doflamingo realized with a jolt of cold clarity that she was barely present.

She's sick, he thought. She's really sick. She's been sick all morning and she's been trying to hide it because she doesn't want the slaves to touch her and she doesn't want to admit weakness in front of—

In front of the elders.

In front of the Holy Knights.

In front of her own children.

She's been so focused on staying upright that she hasn't heard a word Father said.

For a moment—just a moment—he was angry at her. How could she not be listening? How could she not be fighting? This was their life. This was everything. And she was standing there like a ghost, like a doll, like something already half-dead.

Then he looked at her again, really looked—at the faint sheen of sweat on her brow, at the tremor in her fingers, at the way her chest rose and fell in shallow, careful breaths—and the anger curdled into something else.

She can't fight, he realized. She wants to. She's been trying to for weeks. But she can't. Her body won't let her. Father won't let her. Every time she tries to speak, he talks over her. Every time she tries to stand her ground, he calls her hysterical—Homing had never called his wife hysterical. Not in those words. He was too gentle, too loving, too genuinely decent to use language like that. But he didn't need to. The effect was the same. He listened to her objections with a patient, pitying smile and then proceeded to ignore them entirely, because he knew what was best, because he was the head of the family, because his wife was delicate and emotional and didn't understand the beauty of what he was trying to do.

She told him she didn't want to leave, Doflamingo thought. And he didn't listen. He never listens.

She had been arguing with his father for weeks.

Not loudly. His mother never argued loudly. Her lungs could not sustain the kind of prolonged debate that Homing favored. Her voice, when raised, tended to give out after a few sentences, trailing into breathlessness that she covered with a cough and a wave of her hand. But she had been arguing nonetheless—in the quiet way of a woman who had been raised to believe she was a goddess, and who could not comprehend why her husband wanted to live among mortals.

You cannot do this, she had said, her voice barely above a whisper, her hand pressed to her chest. You cannot take my sons and turn them into commoners. They are Donquixote. They are Celestial Dragons. They are not—And Homing had interrupted her. Not cruelly. Not intentionally. But with the oblivious momentum of a man who had convinced himself he was righteous and had stopped listening to anyone who disagreed. They are children, he had said. They will adapt. They will be happier. You will see.She had not argued further. Not because she agreed. But because she had run out of air.

Doflamingo had watched all of this. He was eight years old, and he had watched his father talk over his mother, had watched his mother's fragile body refuse to cooperate with her fierce will, had watched the cold settle into her lungs and take root. He had filed every detail away in the back of his mind, not knowing when or how he would use it.

He was about to find out.

His father had said, "They need to see. They need to understand that this is my choice, and my family stands with me."

Doflamingo had not understood what that meant until now.

Now, standing in the shadow of his father's shoulder, watching the faces of the elders as his father spoke words that made no sense—words like humility and common humanity and living among the mortals as mortals do—Doflamingo understood.

His father was insane.

They think he's insane.

Not insane in the way some of the older Celestial Dragons were insane, with their twitching hands and their screaming tantrums and their habit of collecting tongues in jars. That was acceptable. That was normal. His father was insane in a different way. A quiet way. A way that made the other Celestial Dragons stop sneering and start staring with something else entirely.

And they're going to let him go—and us with him.

He looked at his mother.

She was swaying. Almost imperceptibly. Her face was still the frozen mask of celestial composure, but her hand had tightened on Rosi's shoulder, and her breath was coming in short, shallow sips. She was fighting to stay upright. Fighting to stay present. Fighting—But not winning.

She can't stop him either, Doflamingo thought. She's been trying for weeks, and she can't stop him, because her body won't let her. Because every time she tries to speak, he talks over her. Because she's too delicate and he's too stubborn and—

And she was going to collapse. Maybe not now. Maybe not in front of the Five Elders, with the Holy Knights watching and the weight of eight centuries pressing down. But soon. The cold in her chest, the weeks of arguing, the stress of this moment—it was building. Doflamingo could see it building. And when it broke, when she finally crumpled, it would be too late. Homing would have already signed their lives away. 

No, Doflamingo thought.

The word was not a protest. It was a decision.

____

He let go of his mother's skirt.

She didn't notice. She was too focused on staying upright, on breathing, on the distant rumble of the Elders' silence. Rosinante noticed—Rosi always noticed when Doflamingo moved away from him—but Rosi was six and confused and on the verge of tears, and one sharp look from his older brother was enough to keep him quiet.

Doflamingo stepped forward.

Not toward his father. Toward the dais. Toward the five ancient figures who sat in judgment, their shadows stretching across the marble floor like the fingers of a closing hand.

The Elder on the left—the one with the long beard and the scar that cut across his temple like a frozen lightning strike—noticed him first.

"Boy," the Elder said. His voice was flat. Dismissive. The voice of a man who had been interrupted by something beneath his notice. "This is not a place for—"

Doflamingo burst into tears.

It was not hard. The tears had been waiting, building behind his eyes since the moment he saw the sneer on the Elder's face, since the moment he understood that his father was serious, that this was real, that everything he knew was about to be taken away. He just had to let them fall.

He let them."I don't—" His voice cracked. He let it. "I don't want to go. Please. Please, I don't want to go. Father says we have to live with the commoners, and I don't want to, I want to stay here, I want to—"

He grabbed the edge of the Elder's robe.

The fabric was silk, heavy and cool. The Elder looked down at him—looked down at the small, trembling child clinging to his robes, tears streaming down his face, every inch the picture of a frightened little boy whose father had lost his mind.

But Doflamingo was not finished.

He had been watching. He had been listening. He had been filing details away for weeks, months, his entire short life. And now he was going to use them.

"She told him she didn't want to leave."

His voice was barely a whisper. It cut through the room like a blade.

"My mother. She told Father. I heard her. She said she wanted to stay. She said this was our home. And Father—" He hiccupped. A perfect, shuddering, childish hiccup. "Father said she was being hysterical."

The lie landed like a stone in still water.

Homing had never called his wife hysterical. Homing was too gentle, too naive, too genuinely loving to use a word like that. But Homing was also the only person in the room who knew it was a lie, and Homing was no longer a credible witness. The Elders were already looking at him differently—not with the cold dismissal of before, but with something sharper. Something more dangerous.

Something that believed."She's been sick," Doflamingo continued, the words tumbling out between sobs. "She's been sick for days, and Father keeps saying we have to leave, and she can't—she can't even breathe properly, and he won't listen to her, he never listens to her, and she's scared, she's so scared, she doesn't want to go but she can't—she can't stop him because—"

He pressed his face into the silk robe and sobbed.

Behind him, he heard Rosinante start to cry. Rosinante always cried when Doflamingo cried. It was a younger sibling reflex, automatic and reliable, and Doflamingo had never been more grateful for it.

Homing's face had gone pale. "That's not—I never—"

"She's been sick for days," Doflamingo continued, his voice muffled by the elder's robe. "She caught a chill and she can barely breathe and Father made her come here anyway. He said the family had to present a united front. He said it was important that everyone saw us together. But she's sick. She's really sick. And he won't let her rest."

He lifted his head, turning to look at his mother.

She was staring at him.Her eyes, which had been unfocused and distant, were suddenly sharp. Clear. Watching him with an expression that was not surprise—not quite—but something closer to recognition.

She understood.

Later, Doflamingo would think about this moment and realize that his mother had always been the smart one. His father had ideals and dreams and a heart full of love for a humanity that would never love him back. His mother had a mind like a blade. She simply had never been able to use it—not against Homing, not against her own fragile body, not against a world that saw her as a beautiful, delicate, fertile prize and nothing more.

But now her son had given her an opening.

She took it.

Her hand flew to her chest. Her breath escaped in a soft, terrible gasp—the sound of someone whose lungs had finally, completely given up. Her other hand, still on Homing's arm, tightened convulsively.

And then she collapsed.

It was a beautiful collapse. Perfect. The kind of collapse that would have looked rehearsed if it hadn't been so utterly convincing. Her knees buckled first, then her torso, then her whole body crumpling like a flower in a drought, her golden hair spilling across the marble floor in a cascade of pale silk.

The sound she made when she hit the ground was soft. Almost gentle. The sound of something precious breaking.

For one frozen moment, no one moved.

Then Rosinante screamed.

"MAMA!"

He threw himself toward their mother's crumpled form. His stuffed bear hit the floor. His small hands grabbed at her dress, her hair, her unmoving shoulder. "Mama, wake up! Mama!"

Doflamingo stayed where he was.

His face was wet with tears—real tears, not the performance tears he had been manufacturing a moment ago. He hadn't expected the collapse to feel like this. He hadn't expected the sound she made, or the way Rosinante's scream echoed off the marble walls, or the way his own heart was suddenly pounding so hard he could feel it in his teeth.

But he didn't move.

Because the elders were moving now. The Holy Knights were moving. The silence had shattered, and in its place was a low murmur of voices—concerned, alarmed, furious—and Doflamingo knew, with the cold, clear certainty of a child who had just discovered what he was capable of, that he had won."She needs a physician," the scarred elder said. His voice was sharp, cutting through the murmur. "Now."

Homing was kneeling beside his wife, his face ashen, his hands hovering uselessly over her body. "I didn't—she was fine this morning, she said she was fine—"

"She is clearly not fine." The elder's lip curled. "You brought a woman who can barely breathe into a formal proceeding and made her stand for the better part of an hour. For what? So she could witness your noble renunciation?"

"She wanted to be here—"

"She is catatonic." The elder's voice was flat. Final. "Look at her. She hasn't spoken a word since she entered this hall. She's been swaying on her feet for ten minutes. And you didn't notice. You were too busy lecturing us about the beauty of common life to notice that your own wife was collapsing in front of you."

Homing opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

No sound came out.

From the floor, a thin, trembling voice rose.

"—not... with him..."The hall went silent.

Doflamingo's mother had lifted her head. Just barely. Just enough to speak. Her face was white as bone, her lips bloodless, her breath rattling in her chest. But her eyes—her beautiful, cold, pale eyes—were fixed on the elders with an intensity that belied her fragile body.

"Not with him," she repeated. Each word was a battle. Each syllable a victory. "Don't... agree. Don't... want to leave. My sons... my home... he... doesn't... speak for me.""Darling—" Homing started.

"I am a Celestial Dragon." Her voice cracked, but it didn't break. "I am a daughter of the twenty families. I bore two healthy sons for this bloodline. I did my duty. I have always done my duty. And I will not—" She gasped, her hand pressing harder against her chest. "I will not be dragged into exile by a man who has lost his mind."

The words hung in the air like a blade.

Doflamingo stared at his mother—his delicate, fragile, glass-boned mother, who could barely breathe, who could barely stand, who had not said a single word in her own defense for weeks—and felt something that might have been pride.

The scarred elder turned to the center. The ancient one with the parchment skin. "The law is clear. A man may renounce his own status. He cannot renounce his family's without their consent. The mother has spoken. The children—"

"The children are in distress," another elder said. The one with the white beard, whose eyes were no longer half-closed. "The older boy has been clinging to Lord V. Nasujuro's robes for the past five minutes. The younger one is on the floor with his mother. This is not a family making a free choice. This is a man dragging his dependents into a decision they clearly oppose."

"She's not of sound mind," Homing tried. "She's ill, she doesn't know what she's saying—"

"She knows exactly what she's saying." The scarred elder—Nasujuro, Doflamingo filed the name away—cut him off. "She is a pure-blooded Celestial Dragon. She has more right to speak in this hall than you do at this moment."

Doflamingo pressed his face back into the silk robe and let his shoulders shake.

It was over.

___

The deliberation took less than an hour.

Doflamingo, Rosinante, and their mother were escorted to an antechamber—smaller than the main hall, but still vast by any reasonable standard. Medical slaves were summoned. The mother was laid on a velvet chaise, her hand still pressed to her chest, her breath still shallow, but her eyes were open now. Clear. Watching.

Rosinante was curled up against her side, his face buried in her shoulder, his tears slowly subsiding into hiccups. He didn't understand what had happened. He only knew that Mother was awake now, and Mother was stroking his hair, and Mother was murmuring something soft and soothing that he couldn't quite hear.

Doflamingo stood by the window.

The clouds stretched out below them, white and endless, the red line of the Grand Continent visible in the distance. He was still trembling—a faint, involuntary tremor that he couldn't quite suppress. The tears had dried on his face. His throat was raw.

He didn't feel triumphant.

He felt like he had been holding his breath for an hour and had only just remembered how to exhale.

I did it, he thought. I did it. I saved us. Father was going to destroy us, and I stopped him.

The cold feeling in his chest didn't go away.

Behind him, he heard his mother's voice—thin, fragile, but steady. "Doflamingo."He turned.

She was looking at him. Her eyes, still too bright in her pale face, were fixed on his with an intensity that made him want to look away.

"Come here," she said.

He went.

She reached up—slowly, painfully, as if the movement cost her—and cupped his cheek with her palm. Her skin was cool. Her touch was light. But her grip, when it tightened, was surprisingly firm.

"You are your mother's son," she said quietly. "Not your father's. Remember that."

Doflamingo swallowed. "I know."

"No. You don't. Not yet. But you will." She released his cheek and let her hand fall back to her side. "I couldn't stop him. I tried. My body wouldn't let me. But you—" She paused, her breath catching. "You saw what needed to be done and you did it. You are eight years old, and you did what I could not."

"You helped," Doflamingo said. "At the end. You—"

"You gave me an opening." Her lips curved—not quite a smile, but something close. "You gave me a chance to speak. I took it. That's what family does. That's what blood does. We protect each other. Even when it's hard. Even when it hurts."

She closed her eyes. Her breathing was still too fast, too shallow, but the tension in her face had eased. She looked almost peaceful.

"When they come back," she murmured, "they will tell us that your father has been exiled. They will tell us that we are to remain. And you will not cry. Do you understand?"

His mother opened her eyes one more time. They were cold and clear and utterly, perfectly Celestial Dragon.

"Good boy," she said.

____

When the doors opened, the scarred elder was standing there.

His expression was unreadable. Behind him, the Holy Knights had dispersed, their white cloaks vanishing into the shadows of the great hall. The incense had burned down to ash. The candles were guttering.

"Homing Donquixote's renunciation has been accepted," the elder said. His voice was flat. Official. "He is no longer a Celestial Dragon. He has been escorted from the Holy Land."

Doflamingo's mother did not react. Her face was smooth, serene, the face of a woman who had never doubted the outcome.

"However, in light of the testimony provided by his wife and the clear distress of his children, the Council has determined that Lady Donquixote and her sons retain their status. They will remain in the Holy Land under the protection of the Donquixote family's senior branch."

"Thank you," Doflamingo's mother said. Her voice was still thin, but it carried. "You have been just."

The elder inclined his head—a fractional movement, barely perceptible. "Your husband asked to see the children before he left. I told him the decision was not mine to make."

Doflamingo's mother looked at her sons. Rosinante, still clinging to her side. Doflamingo, standing straight and still, his face perfectly composed.

"No," she said. "He has done enough damage for one lifetime."

The elder nodded. The door closed.

And Doflamingo stood in the silence of the antechamber, his mother's hand resting on his shoulder, his brother's breathing slowly evening into sleep, and watched the last traces of his father's existence disappear into the shadows of the holy city.

He did not cry.

He had learned, in the space of a single afternoon, that tears were a weapon. And weapons should never be wasted.

That night, he lay in a bed that was not his own—a bed in the senior Donquixote estate, with silk sheets and a canopy and a window that looked out over the clouds.

Rosinante was asleep in the next room. Their mother was in the room after that, attended by the best physicians the holy city could provide. She would recover. She always recovered. Her body was glass, but glass, properly cared for, could last forever.

Doflamingo stared at the ceiling.I am a Celestial Dragon. I am a Donquixote. I am my mother's son.

The words were a mantra. A shield. A promise.

I will never be weak. I will never be naive. I will never love something that can be taken away from me.

He closed his eyes.

Somewhere beyond the walls, his father was walking into a world that would hate him. Somewhere beyond the clouds, the commoners were waiting with their torches and their pitchforks and their centuries of justified rage. Somewhere beyond the holy city, the future was unfolding like a flower made of knives.

But here, in the darkness, in the silence, in the cold, perfect heart of Mariejois, Doflamingo falls asleep.

[ubamon]

Doflamingo is such funny guy.

He basically never lies, unless its maneuver to pull wool over opponents eyes and he is so pissed that he begins to tell stuff to support people worst opinions of him.

Like that we got such masterpieces as him telling Rosi that he will use Law like pig for slaughter (he took in Law because he is Doffy's mini me and immediately given position of heir, future "third corazon" on same level as his beloved brother) and spitting in Law face that he never cared about his brother and killing him was just a breakfast to him and didnt affect him at all and Rosi deserved it (he felt Rosi was only person who would love him for him because they are family and Rosi is from time before Doffy life dependent on ability to perform being a ruthless king, and Doffy loved him so much he turned other way on all evidence of Rosinante betrayal and his brothers execution is one of few times he hesitates before attacking and somber whole time).

Man lying out his ass!!!

[rambrandt-the-painter]

I've invented a cognito hazard for lizard therians (tattoo idea I had)

[rambrandt-the-painter]

Ngl the idea of painting this on myself is driving me a little nuts... why have I never tried body art

[kytober]

The first time I had scales painted on me for anthrocon, I was SO reluctant to wash them off. If you have the opportunity, paint some on the back of your hand so you can see them move with your skin. It's unreal.

[rambrandt-the-painter]

I won't lie, I haven't even done it yet and I already feel like my life has changed

[galileosballs]

Also, please do not listen to how people talk about cover letters on this site. Cover letters are important, and in many industries you can be damn sure they'll be read. And no, they're not 'fanfic about working in your office', or just re-stating the resume contents in a fancier guise. If you treat them like that, then of course they're not doing much for you. That makes you sound like a syncophantic windbag, and it's not doing anything else to help.

I was trained in the dark arts of the cover letter by my mother, who is a hiring manager. And her training has paid off: I've been consistently told my cover letters are excellent. Let me pass on the wisdom.

The job of a cover letter is to give a prospective employer strictly more information than is on the resume. This is where you take the resume contents and put them into context. You look at the job requirements (you are looking at the job requirements before applying, right?) and look at your resume and ask the question (in your head) "why would a person think this candidate would be good for this job?" and your cover letter is the answer to that question. If you don't answer that question, the hiring manager is going to have to do it themselves, and you have way more information to work with than they do.

This is especially important if you're moving from one industry to another, because then the relevant connections aren't obvious. It's also very important if you're overqualified, because then you can use the letter to say "I know it looks like this job would be too entry-level for me, but I'm interested to pursue it for reasons x, y, and z". You can also use this space to explain away something that might otherwise be disqualifying, like job-hopping or a long break in employment. The tone to strike here is always matter-of-fact and constrained to topic - don't go into detail about health stuff or personal tragedy, just tell them what they need to hear: that this period of your resume was affected by [bad thing] but that it's now in the past and you're looking forward to the next chapter. Remember, one of the things they're trying to learn is whether you'd be content in this role, or whether you'd be miserable and leave after 2 months, which would force them to do all the work of hiring again. You're trying to establish that you will fit right in and not cause problems. Knowing what drew you to this job in particular (and don't just say 'money', that's true for everyone) helps with that.

And the other mistake? Everyone writes cover letters that are too long. One page is fine. Two is the absolute maximum, and that's if you have a lot of specific things to say. It's a waste of your time and theirs to pad it out with fluff. Of my two most recent successful cover letters (i.e. jobs for which I was interviewed) one was 390 words and the other was 550. That's the length of this post. How long did it take me to write this post? About 15 minutes to write, 5 to proof and edit. That's how long you should be spending on a cover letter, maximum.

[bonesbeetle]

my favorite thing on mouse/rat subreddits are people going "is my pet pregnant??" & then posting the most pregnant rodent you've seen in your life. yeah i think it might be.

your mouse looks like a lightbulb. congrats on the babies