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It takes Rocinante a moment to realize the hits have stopped coming.
To force his head up, and blink past the blood now spilling down his face.
Yes, there is still the sound of a beating taking place; no, the hits aren’t landing upon himself, or Law, half-tucked underneath where Roci curled around him after collapsing.
There’s one more ugly wet impact, followed by a hideous gurgle, and just when Rocinante starts to think they might make it out of this debacle after all, the figure that’s just finished smashing Vergo into a pulp straightens.
Red hair.
Bright, blood-red, longer than he remembers, partially braided from temple to ear. It looks nice. Not a traditional Marie Geoise style by any means, but- suits him, nonetheless. The clothes are both the same and different too, all elegance and understated wealth, tall boots and thick gloves and a sword at his belt, embroidered in such a way with gleaming thread that draws the eye along a broad chest, wide shoulders.
His eyes, too. The same but not. Same color that Roci remembers peering at him over a small grin and plate of pilfered pastries.
The furious rage looks more like something suited to Doffy.
Saint Figarland Shamrock takes three long strides back to where Roci is staring at him, and smoothly kneels, one hand seizing his upper arm, the other reaching to hover over what’s probably a long cut in Roci’s forehead. Whether or not Shamrock actually intends to prod at the wound becomes a moot point; Law abruptly lunges, and only Roci catching and hugging the boy to his chest keeps the brat from biting that gloved hand.
“Don’t touch him,” the kid snarls.
Shamrock arches a brow.
“S’okay,” Rocinante hastily says, the words coming out in a wheeze at first. “It’s okay, it’s fine, we’re fine-”
“No.” Dark eyes narrow, eyes that used to look so delighted when Roci managed to slip away from his lessons to come play Knights in the garden area between the Figarland and Donquixote estates. Now, instead, Shamrock looks like he’s ready to commit murder. Has committed it, in fact, considering Vergo is definitely not breathing anymore, laying prone in the snow surrounded by a lot more blood than Roci and Law. “But you will be.”
That isn’t said with the confidence of a pirate captain. Nor the conviction of a marine officer.
There is a Knight of God kneeling next to Rocinante and his kid, and it’s a coin toss whether to melt with relief, or start shaking from fear.
(Whether he and Law have been saved, or are about to enter a whole new nightmare.)
The child is amusing, Shamrock will grant him that. Snapping and snarling like a wild animal, ferocious if not for the fact of his diminutive size and utter lack of proper weaponry. Allowing himself to display the odd indulgent expression only drives the vicious little thing to greater heights of protective seething - a kitten puffing out its fur and hissing with every spare scrap of breath.
Rocinante is clearly only doing the bare minimum to reign his pet in, too stunned to otherwise handle much of anything. It’s not as if Shamrock can blame him; even discounting the injuries inflicted by that audacious insect, this is almost certainly the first time in nearly twenty years that Rocinante is surrounded by the bare minimum standard of proper civilization. As soon as Shamrock realized he would not simply be able to take a divine circle back to the Holy Land, Ope-Ope Fruit in hand, he ordered the marine detachment under his command to set course for the nearest port where a more suitable vessel might be procured, to personally bring Rocinante home.
And his friend’s pet, too. Although something will need to be done before the child has a chance to encounter Shamrock’s father; Garling is far less tolerant of unruly pets.
At the moment, the child looks downright harmless. Tucked into the crook of Rocinante’s elbow and carefully cradled against the man’s side, both of them asleep in the modest bed of this ‘luxury’ yacht Shamrock took possession of. Technically, this being the finest suite aboard the ship, it should be his own to use, but...
But.
It’s the least Rocinante deserves, after being deprived so long, trapped with lesser beings, forced to pretend to be nothing more than a marine, and then to add insult to injury, to hide in plain sight as a filthy pirate.
He should have returned to the Holy Land years ago. Nothing Shamrock could have done as a child, when that fool Donquixote Homing decided to pack up his family and leave. And it wasn’t until a full decade later, during his Knightly training, an opportunity to check records revealed Homing and his wife’s deaths, Doflamingo being refused re-entry, Rocinante outright vanishing until he turned up on Marineford in the ‘care’ of a Vice Admiral.
Shamrock has never been able to do anything to get his best friend back.
Until now.
Until the moment he paused in his circuit of Minion Island, searching for the missing Fruit, and belatedly realized the distant figure fallen to the ground and being beaten by a marine wore a coat of black feathers, the documented opposite of his brother’s pink monstrosity.
And after that, well.
No one has yet asked how that particular marine died, and Shamrock sees no reason to bother lying if they did.
(Just as he also sees no reason not to take a seat at Rocinante’s bedside, to better watch over his old friend, and wait until morning.)