Chapter Text
Snow fell the night that Rosinante would always remember as the happiest in his life.
Not gentle snow.
North Blue snow. Heavy. Suffocating. The kind that buries things and pretends they never existed.
Never had Rosinante expected he would be in this situation.
He was eighteen and shaking.
Not from cold.
From fear.
He had seen executions, Torture, Kingdoms crumble under his brother’s laughter.
But he had never seen something this small.
Something this innocent.
The baby did not cry at first.
She simply blinked up at him with wide, quiet eyes.
Dark like his.
Bright like something else entirely.
“Eli.. She’s supposed to cry, why isn’t she crying? Is there something wrong with her?” he frantically asked the woman in the bed next to him.
Elina (or Eli as Rosinante called her) was pale, exhausted, smiling with that calm that had always infuriated and steadied him at the same time.
“She’s breathing, just watching her daddy, nothing to worry about” Elina said softly looking down on the daughter in her arms.
Maris D. Elina, the girl he had met at fifteen.
Working as a marine he often got hurt but Elina was always there to patch him up.
The first time they met was about a year after Gol D. Roger’s death. A lot of people thought that with the old king gone and a legacy left behind, they would try their luck as pirates.
Rosinante had a mission to an island near the entrance of the grand line in the North Blue. Somehow he managed to find some so called “pirates” in a bar bragging about how they were “going to the grand line to get the greatest treasure of them all”. He managed to take out all the 14 men but not without a knife in the shoulder.
Seeing as he had only gone there alone without any medical staff on the tiny boat, he asked a local market clerk for the direction of the nearest marine quarters.
Half an hour later he sat in an infirmary with the prettiest girl he had ever seen.
Medium long pearly white hair, calculating light pink eyes with a faint silvery eyeshadow, her mouth moving as if it was begging Rosinante to press his lip to them and breathe in the scent of vanilla surrounding the girl.
“..ou okay?” She asked looking in his eyes with that calculating look.
“Oh sorry I wasn’t paying attention.. could you repeat that?”
“I was asking you how old you are, we seem quite near in age”
“I’m 15, turning 16 in a few months” he answered.
“No way I just turned 16” She said with a smile while finishing up the last stitches on his shoulder.
“You should probably eat something, I’m giving you antibiotics because the knife seemed to be quite dirty” she said grimacing, ”Don’t want you to get an infection”
“Thank you.. Miss Maris was it?” He asked unsure how to address her.
“You can call me by my first name, we’re the same age, no need to be formal with each other” She said, cleaning up the supplies she had used. “I can show you the dining hall, I’m going there too” She told him as he put his coat back on.
“Thank you miss mar..Ehh Elina”
“No need to call me miss either, Rosi,” she said, teasing him with a nickname.
Rosinante didn’t have a permanent marine base that he was supposed to stay at so as they walked towards the dining hall he asked where the supervisor’s office was so he could discuss where he should be staying.
After this encounter, and the bond they created during the weeks Rosinante had spent at the marine base waiting for a new mission. He asked to be placed at that location as his base when not on missions.
After a particularly unlucky situation on a mission where Rosinante had accidentally started a fire and burned his forearm without a medic with him, Elina was assigned to go with Rosinante on his missions (Sengoku might be a little protective of Rosinante, not that either would admit it).
Their relationship bloomed especially with all the time they had with only each other as company.
Rosinante fell first but Elina fell harder.
He loved her for her gentleness, her ability to always make him feel better even after he told her about his family. He loved her shiny hair and how she always smelled like vanilla.
I took a few more months for Elina to realize her feelings. She had always noticed that Rosi was handsome and caring even though he was a marine. She never thought she would love a marine but she noticed things about Rosinante that she hast seen in others. He flinched at cruelty, helped where he could even tho he didn’t need to. She saw how he carried guilt too heavy for a teen to bear, she knew about his family, she couldn’t say she wasn’t a bit scared when she got told about Rosinante's brother. She could see how much Doflamingo's crimes hurt Rosi, but he was her Corazon, her heart and her love. She did everything to help him realize that his brother’s actions shouldn’t burden him, that even though they are brothers, Rosi isn’t responsible for doflamingo’s behavior and the darkness he spreads.
“You don’t belong in the darkness you’re standing in, let me be your guiding light”
After a year or so of knowing each other, Elina started getting sick in the mornings, on an especially nasty morning she had enough. Careful not to wake Rosinante, she got up from the bed and went into the bathroom. Taking out a pregnancy test from a cupboard she sat down, doing her business and then waiting.
Rosinante woke up hearing the toilet flush, turning around in the bed trying to fall back asleep when he heard the bathroom door open, he scootshed to the side so Elina could lay back and cuddle with him. When he didn't feel her weight on the bed he turned towards her wondering what she was doing.
“Rosi I..I'm pregnant” Said Eli, holding a small stick in her hand.
“Wh..what” he stared at the test “No way, are you serious!” he said looking up at Elina. That’s when he noticed her tears. “Hey no it’s okay don’t cry honey” He pulled her onto the bed and in a hug.
“I..I’m sorry Rosi I know we’re both only seventeen a..and we hadn’t planned this” she sniffed. Not usually one for crying but this was one of the few moments where she couldn’t help it.
“It’s okay we have lots of options whether we wanna keep it or not” he said looking into her eyes trying to sound as confident as possible.
“What do you wanna do? I’ve always wanted to be a mother but I didn’t think it would be so soon… But if you don’t want part of it i understand, you could live your life and meet someone els..”
“Hey no stop I’m not leaving you no matter what we choose, I would love to be a dad, it might be hard and complicated at times but we’ll get through it” he said looking down at his girlfriends belly. “Although I’m scared to bring something so innocent to this world, there’s so much danger and what if we can’t protect the little one..” he said looking back up into Eli’s eyes.
“ We can’t choose how the world works but we can choose to bring more light into it” she told him, gently leaning into a kiss
That brings us back to how Rosinante ended up on a cold island in the North Blue, with a tiny baby in front of him in her mothers arms.
“What are we gonna call her? We should have decided on a name before..” He said, chewing on his lips, accidentally smearing his lipstick.
“I think Liora would suit our little princess perfectly,” Elina said with a warmth in her voice that could melt the snow outside the window.
Liora..
Light..
A perfect name for the perfect girl
“I don't think she should have any of our last names tho... especially not yours, it would only place a target on her back” Elina whispered trying not to wake the now sleeping baby.
“You’re right my love.. what should her name be though..”
“Corazon, so she always has her daddy with her” she said, taking her eyes of her sleeping daughter and looking into her husband's eyes.
He felt his vision get a bit blurry watching his lover say it with such intensity and love that he could practically feel it.
“Th..that sounds perfect” he said, voice a bit shaky.
Elina gently passed the child to Rosinante who took the child in his arms like he expected her to break.
Instead, she gripped his finger with startling strength.
A tiny fist.
A stubborn will.
He laughed. A messy, awkward sound.
“She’s strong.”
Elina smiled faintly. “She has to be.”
The baby finally made a noise then.
Not a cry.
A small, sharp exhale.
Almost defiant.
Rosinante felt something split open inside his chest.
Not pain.
Not fear.
Something brighter.
“Corazon D. Liora,” he said quietly.
He didn’t ask permission to give her the D.
He didn’t need to.
The Will of D. did not wait for approval.
It simply appeared.
Years later, Liora would not remember this night.
She would not remember the snow.
She would not remember the way her father looked at her like she was salvation.
But she would grow up knowing two truths:
Her father loved her more than his own life.
And the world they lived in would never allow that to be simple.
Outside, somewhere in the underworld’s web of whispers, Donquixote Doflamingo already knew his younger brother had a daughter.
Nothing escaped him.
Doflamingo needed a plan. He wouldn't let his brother keep his niece from him. He needed to meet the next generation of the donquixote bloodline. Hes really good at pulling strings afterall,