Setting: Before and after the Donquixote takeover of Dressrosa, ten years in total.
Warning: Dark! Dark! Dark!
Notes: Minor canon divergence due to writing Viola as a more active character, something I had Serious Gripes with during the Dressrosa arc. Though I've characterized Doflamingo as a genuinely awful person here, it's mostly to do with Oda's frivolous comment that I prefaced this fic with below. I'm sorry if anyone gets uncomfortable with his characterization! There's lots of switching between Viola and Violet; pay attention.

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[ Q: Why do Doflamingo and Violet call each other "Doffy" and "Viola"?

Oda: Actually there is a profound setting about it, but I'm afraid I can't tell you. I told my editor about it, though. Considering One Piece is a shounen manga, I'd like to hide it since the reason is for adult audience. Dressrosa is a nation of passion, indeed!

- One Piece Volume 83 SBS ]

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Viola knows she's forgetting something. There's a word on the tip of her tongue.

"Carrots, lettuce, tomatoes." She runs through her mental shopping list. "I swear something's missing."

"You'll remember soon enough," Scarlett assures, glossy red hair sweeping over her shoulder. Viola has never seen her happier than when she's striding about her little cottage. Her honorable sister, the former Crown Princess of Dressrosa, has taken to domesticity like a bee to honey drizzled all over Kyros' watermelon-sized biceps. It's sickening.

"Have you started dagger-training with Kyros yet?" Scarlett sings, fluttering about the kitchen. "He mentioned something about that a few days ago."

"I've been busy," Viola says evasively, licking sticky sweet jam off her thumb. "Diplomacy classes are a drag."

"Remember what mother used to say?" her dearly departed sister goes on serenely. "She wanted her firstborn for the crown, and her second child for the sword. Two siblings who can lead and protect. Now that I've abdicated the throne, you must be a Queen who can do both."

"Mm-hm. You're legally dead, by the way. I feel weird taking advice from a zombie."

"I know you're still a child, but one day you're going to lead this country." Scarlett tucks a lock of hair behind Viola's ear. "You're going to be a magnificent warrior, just like Father. You're going to be fearless and fearsome."

Something deeply uncomfortable lodges in her chest. Viola shrugs, all of fourteen. She isn't really interested in this talk, in violence. It's boring. She would much rather dance into the streets, clapping her hands and clicking her heels in the noisy crowds.

"It will happen, one day." A shadow crosses Scarlett's face in the sunny kitchen. "A day when you must use your powers to fight, propriety be damned."

"And when will that be?"

"I don't know. But when it happens, I hope you'll know what to do. Someday," Scarlett waves solemnly at her tiny cottage with her gurgling baby, which did not exactly inspire awe, "this will all be yours to protect."

This is all manner of pompous for a woman who faked her own death to elope with the beefiest hottie in Dressrosa. Viola decides Scarlett is spending too much time with her husband and he's turning her into a paranoid ex-convict just like him. She yells that she's going to the market, gives her sister a big sloppy kiss on the forehead, and scampers away into the field before Scarlett can ask her to throw away Rebecca's poopy diaper.

In the end, she doesn't remember what she needed to buy. Viola supposes it wasn't that important anyway.

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Strolling through the labyrinthine hallways of the palace, she stumbles upon a painting—a painting of her, dancing the flamenco, her dress afire around her tanned legs. She knows these brushstrokes. Only one maid in the entire palace smelled like linseed oil and turpentine.

"Do you often watch me dance? Have I become your muse, dear maidservant?" Viola titters coyly, because she is nineteen and a fully-grown woman, and Monet is twenty, which is nowhere near how old Kyros was when Scarlett eloped with him.

"You're wanted in the dining hall. Dinner is ready." Monet was always good at ignoring her. It's unfair that anyone could be so impeccably enigmatic.

"I could always read your mind, you know," Viola teases. "In fact, I already have."

"You're a good girl, Your Highness," Monet says, her gaze focused on something out the window. Viola pouts.

The ground rumbles. It's so slight she misses it; she is enraptured by the shift of light across Monet's face as she presses closer. This is highly untoward of a maidservant, but Monet is mysterious and beautiful with green hair softer than pillow down, and when she presses Viola up against the wall everything about courtly manners absconds from her mind.

"You're a good girl, so I'll tell you a secret," Monet breathes, clasping a hand over Viola's mouth. "If you want to stay alive, cast away your father and serve the new king."

Her skin tastes like snow.

The palace doors creak open. Flames spill out, then screams.

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The palace is unnaturally silent. After a long night, the riots have been put to bed and the remaining soldiers loyal to King Riku Dold have been executed.

Scarlett is dead. Her little girl will soon follow, once Doflamingo's forces capture her. She had been so happy in that cottage, raising Rebecca all on her own. Even having a child out of wedlock, mourning the deceased father, faking her death and living in self-exile, none of that ever stopped her. Viola's beautiful big sister. The crown princess. Another dead mother.

Her voice is quiet, shaking in the throne room. "My father… King Riku Dold the Third… has committed violent atrocities to Dressrosa. And I…"

The words bunch up in her throat. Her head spins, bile rising in her throat. She can't. She would rather die.

Someday, this will all be yours to protect. Dressrosa is crying.

"—I approve of his dethronement, and the return of the Donquixote rule."

(Maybe she is simply a coward.)

Monet is standing by her captain's side. Her maidservant, Monet. Monet the pirate. "Her powers will be useful," she says, "for sniffing out liars and traitors."

"If only it had been," Viola whispers before she can stop herself.

Doflamingo twirls a glass of wine—a vintage from the cellar—in his fingers. He is sprawled across her father's throne, his smirk stretching ear-to-ear. "Any more party tricks up your sleeves?"

"…Pardon?"

"What else can you do besides reading minds?" he continues impatiently. Her reflection stares back in his sunglasses, withered and grey, a trampled flower, princess of nothing. "The powers of your Fruit are legendary. The last user of the Giro Giro no Mi took down an entire country alone."

Viola cannot respond. She is nineteen years old. She has been the owner of the Giro Giro no Mi for almost a decade. Ten years of potential, lost.

"She doesn't use her Devil Fruit," Monet says quietly. "I doubt she can do much more than see memories."

Doflamingo crooks one eyebrow. "Pity. You may as well have been blind, Princess."

Viola is gripped with the need to grab the soldiers' guns and bury all of its bullets into these pirates. She needs to kill them, then throw herself off the nearest tower. She needs to see her sister again.

"We need a different name for you. No sense in letting the people of Dressrosa know their only princess is still alive and working for me." The false king taps the wine glass to his chin, then decides, "Violet. I like that name."

Three shadows standing beside the throne lean forward into the light. Pica, Trebol, and—

"Now," says Diamante, her sister's killer, "what do you say to your new king?"

(Viola sinks.

She descends deep, deep into the garden of herself, and buries her body in the dirt.)

Violet raises her head, wiped blank, an empty slate. "Thank you, Your Majesty."

Doflamingo lazily waves his hand. "No need for formalities. We're family now."

(The soil grows dark flowers, glowing with purple embers.)

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Violet wears ruffled dresses and flowers in her hair. Violet never had a sister, or lived in a palace, or ran around the sunflower fields chasing after her little niece. Violet wears too much lipstick and perfume, and joins a troupe of other women who wear too much lipstick and perfume. Violet twirls in her dress that reveals too much shoulder and takes care to wing her eyeliner a little too high and pluck her brows into a thin, harsh arch.

Sometimes she pauses at a mirror, startled. She barely recognizes herself.

But then, that is the whole point.

In Lover's Alley, she dances until her satin shoes turn black at the heel, from scuffing the ground so hard it burns away the sole. She claps her hands and stomps her feet until her eyes sting and water. She spins and spins until she thinks she's about to catch fire. She learns to scream without opening her mouth.

Monet catches a show. The fucking bitch.

"You were beautiful up there," she says afterwards. "You could always dance."

Violet avoids looking her in the eye. Just because she works for them now doesn't mean she has to force herself to participate in conversation.

"I told Sugar to come join me, but she refuses to leave the palace. Practically agoraphobic."

"How wonderful that you still have your sister," Viola says dully, before Violet can stuff her back inside.

Monet bars her from walking away by leaning against the brick wall of the shitty little side-street they're in. Her amber gaze lingers on Violet's collarbones, before focusing on her strained face. "There is nothing I can say that can make you hate me less."

I will rip the head off your goddamn neck if it's the last thing I do, Viola snarls. (Homicide is a new, strange feeling.)

"I don't hate you," Violet replies calmly, for she's never mourned a sister.

Monet surveys her with patient eyes. "Good. You might survive yet."

She tucks a strand of Violet's hair behind her ear, leaving a trail of snowflakes.

Monet's gaze catches something and she stops, looks down. Violet's hand is curled at her side, a bruised swollen mess. (Viola had broken it this morning, punching the wall until she could no longer feel her own hand. Silly girl.)

The sun sets over Dressrosa in sweeping purples and pinks. Viola has never minded the color violet. It is a blush away from the richness of indigo; a shade darker it is the hue of a cloudless night. Violet is the color of kings, back when only kings could afford it.

Monet lifts Violet's wrist, running bittercold fingers along the dried blood. Then she gracefully dips her neck and brushes her lips across the knuckle.

But now, Violet's life is an endless stretch of monotone purple. Thistle, the color of when you choke on your own breath. Mauve, the color of a trembling glass flute on the cusp of shattering. Violet, the color of violence, of sick, festering rot, of a garden of putrefaction.

Violet, the color of a silent, open-mouthed scream.

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Dressrosa is a big country. Monet didn't know Scarlett had a daughter, so neither did Doflamingo. It is Viola's last hope. She tries looking for Rebecca, but wherever she is now, she's hidden herself too well. Perhaps she sailed away with the few loyal soldiers left in the country. She grasps onto the thought like a lifeline.

Her father had slipped away from under the Donquixote's eyes. She wishes he made it out of Dressrosa alive with Rebecca. She wishes, selfishly, he is still there, watching over her. Watching her silent, invisible fight.

(It's lonely.)

One day, when Violet is working in Carta, she crosses paths with Diamante.

(Viola pounds against the cage, screaming, you murdering bastard sister-killer son of a—)

She sends countless SOS messages to the Marine branches around Dressrosa. Smuggling untraceable Den Den Mushis with the help of rebels who still want to fight, who still remember the kindness of her father, the true king. Begging the marines until she loses her voice. It's always the same damn response.

He is a Warlord, and the World Government won't touch him.

Doflamingo hears about it soon enough, and he makes the rebels fight to death in the Corrida Coliseum. His threads hold Violet still, forcing her to watch.

(It gets lonelier by the day.)

Monet lets Violet stab her. Doesn't do damage anyway, the snow flurries around and falls uselessly—

But the stabbing helps. The knife, the angry sweltering clench of her fist on the handle, the motion of her arm swinging back, plunging into the unnervingly calm expression on Monet's face, and pretending, pretending, pretending—

"I'll kill you in front of your little sister," Violet hisses. "How would you like that?"

"You can't even hurt me, Viola," Monet returns, brows lifted in disdain.

She sticks her dagger through the heart. Snow reforms into skin. Monet spreads her arms over Violet's back, holding her gently. She wants to bleed, but Monet never fights back. Her tears are hot, she is burning up through her heels and spilling over with rage all the time, but Monet is cold and numbing and probably what death feels like. Maybe that's why Violet lets her call her by her true name, maybe that's why she keeps going back to her.

The years pass. She is twenty, a flamenco dancer intercepting secret messages and delivering them to Doflamingo. Twenty-one, in a country where no one knows her name anymore and believes she is another dead Riku princess. Twenty-two, performing her first assassination in the name of the Donquixote Pirates. (Another rebel plotting against Doflamingo. She reads his mind and watches his memories. She is the master of the art of unforgetting.)

Monet watches. Voyeuristic harpy.

(Viola closes her eyes.)

Violet keeps both eyes open, for they have already been damned.

A long time ago, taking someone's life would've broken her. But she's already cried enough for a thousand years, and only fixes her hair, reapplies her lipstick, and methodically wipes the blood off her dagger with her black dress as she walks out of the alleyway.

"You did well," Monet tells her, having kept watch from afar. "Far better than my first time. I threw up all over Doffy's shoes."

"Why do you all call him that?" Violet mutters. "He's a king. I would assume pet names were beneath him."

She doesn't properly answer her question. She never does. "You should try it sometime. Call him Doffy. I think it'd make him happy."

"Never," Violet spits, outraged and horrified. Never never never ever ever—

Monet shrugs as she saunters away, without looking back to see if she'd follow. "If he ever lets you call him that, that means you're family. Real family."

After another year of spilling blood and dancing on strings for Doflamingo, she finally gains some semi-trust. The Family assigns her to Trebol's Army and lets her in on a Donquixote secret: Sugar's powers. The toys were previously human, and no one can remember them. Vanished from memories, turned into slave labor.

It occurs to her that she doesn't remember her sister's… husband? Lover? Rebecca's father. Had it always been that way? No, it couldn't be. She couldn't recall anything about who Scarlett had the affair with—an affair? Born out of wedlock? Was that something she had always known, or something her own mind made up?

She's forgetting something. There's a name on the tip of her tongue that she can't remember, and it's making her fucking crazy.

Instead, she writes down the names she does know.

Doflamingo, for desecrating her country. Diamante, for killing her sister. Monet, for betraying her trust. Sugar, for enslaving her people.

She goes through them all, list by list, bullet by fucking bullet.

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"Why Doflamingo?" Violet whispers one night, in the cover of darkness. "Out of all the pirate crews, why did you have to join his?"

The bed rustles and Monet turns around. The crack of moonlight hits one amber eye and illuminates the crinkle of her secret smile. "He saved me. He saved all of us."

Violet watches as Monet leans over her. Every time her cold lips brush skin, she flinches. "Why do you always open the door when I knock?"

"So many questions," she sighs. "Why are you knocking in the first place, Viola?"

Violet turns away. The delicate, scarred skin of her lip breaks again as she chews.

After a long silence, Monet presses a kiss to the back of her neck. "Because you are beautiful. And painful, and I have forgotten for a long time what it feels like to be fragile."

"I don't understand."

"I know, Viola." It's softer than a breath. They are so close she could sink into Monet's skin, her sharp ridges pressed flush against Violet's back. Her voice sends snowflakes fluttering against her ear: "When the day comes that you do, you don't have to forgive me."

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When Violet is twenty-five, she comes across a toy soldier.

She is passing through the outskirts of some empty market in Acacia, another useless day of dancing and spying done with, hurrying through the rain—she registers it briefly in the corner of her eye, a flicker, a toy soldier with one leg. She passes by toys on a daily basis, all the time, always with bottled grief, so this is no different than usual—

"Princess Viola."

The wind-up toy soldier glistens in the rain, one hand grasping a plastic rifle. A small, stout wooden thing with a black hat as tall as he was, hopping up and down on one leg.

She must have heard wrong. No, she's sure she heard wrong. "My name is Violet," she says carefully. "Who are you?"

He adjusts his hat. "My daughter calls me Soldier-san."

"…And before Sugar turned you into a toy?"

"Kyros."

"Kyros," Violet repeats. (Viola's brain hurts, someone is knocking on a door that she can't see.)

The toy soldier stops hopping. The painted eyes stare out creepily, without moving. After a lengthy pause, he shakes himself. "Forgive me. It has been so very long since I've heard my name spoken by someone else."

Toys cannot emote. He may have been weeping.

Violet pins him down and raises her hand to her eye, touching her index finger to her thumb.

Violet sees his memories.

Viola remembers.

Her palms hit the ground. Over and over again. She repeats his name like a prayer. Viola can hardly breathe through her tears. Scarlett—oh, Scarlett! Rebecca! She grabs the toy soldier—Kyros—and presses her face into his wooden shoulder. What a small, delicate thing. So small, not even a third of the man he used to be. It makes her sob harder.

"Why did you wait this long?" Viola weeps. "You knew my powers—why didn't you come find me?"

"Forgive me, Your Highness." His face is completely wooden. As though attempting to express himself, he starts hopping again. "I've heard rumors you were dead, but then one day I saw you as a Donquixote officer and I—I did not know what to think, after that."

The horror makes her choke. "It was the only way to save Father. The only way to learn what they're planning with our country. Rebecca, is she—"

"She's safe," Kyros says, and a weight as heavy as a mountain lifts from Viola. "She's twelve this year and can already cut a tree in half."

A surprised, strangled noise of awe escapes her.

"Yes, Your Highness," he says with pride, "I've been training her to fight."

"The same way I never let you train me?" Viola laughs weakly. A lifetime ago, Kyros offered her dagger lessons after seeing how she eyed the flashing knives. She always came up with some silly excuse.

He pats her on the head. "You've been fighting so long on your own. That sort of strength can't be learned."

The brief tenderness makes her remember the big teddy bear he used to be. Scarlett and Rebecca were his girls, but Kyros had always loved her, too. "Tell me," Viola urges, "what I need to do to kill him."

"We can't kill Doflamingo yet. There will be another to take his place. Trebol, Pica, Diamante. A hydra has many heads."

"Then we kill them all. We will gather an army, make our final stand—"

"At the risk of how many lives? No, we're still unprepared."

Viola scrambles for an answer and comes to nothing. She sits at a loss, mud streaked down her legs. "Then… then what do we do?"

"Wait until the opportune moment," Kyros says sadly. "Bide our time and rally our strength."

She wants a hot bath and her mother's warm chicken soup. She wants picnics on sunlit days with her sister. Six years in the Donquixote Pirates. How much longer must she dance?

Viola drags herself to her feet and pulls her hood back over her head. "Keep Rebecca safe. This will likely be the only contact we'll have for a long time, Kyros." She reaches for his tiny, stiff hand. "But I remember you. My country's strongest gladiator. My sister's husband. I remember and I won't forget again."

The toy soldier looks down at their hands, a quiet pact in the rain. "I'm sorry. I know I'm very cold." A dry crackling sound leaves his wooden mouth, like a tired laugh. "I'm not the same man I used to be."

She thinks of Monet. "I've touched colder."

Kyros looks up, droplets streaking down his cheeks. "Thank you, Princess Viola."

"Violet," she replies, smiling through the thick veil of tears. "It's Violet now."

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For the next year, she keeps watch over Rebecca, who joins the Corrida Coliseum and trains as a gladiator. Kyros is always by her side, her own father, and she doesn't even know it.

Violet keeps her distance. She keeps quiet. She performs perfunctory duties. She dances in Lover's Alley, twirls her skirts, winks at men, and pretends nothing is wrong.

When she turns twenty-six, she goes to a bar. (Well, first she stumbles past Monet as she leaves the other woman's bed and tells her plainly, "If you so much as touch me today, I'll fucking kill you. If I see Diamante or Doflamingo, I will strap a dozen bombs to myself and run at them.")

Heavy liquor at three pm. Day-drinking for idiots.

"What's the celebration?" the bartender asks.

Viola has not emerged in a year. She has been dormant, silently tending the garden.

She slips out for a moment, and raises her glass. "Today, I'm older than my big sister."

As she downs the drink in one go, the bartender refills her glass. "On the house."

She can recite by memory the placements and schedules of every Donquixote officer at any moment of any day of the week. Diamante, Pica, Trebol. Jora and Dellinger. Lao-G, Baby 5, Buffalo. Sugar and the guards placed outside her room. Doflamingo slinking around her palace as though he could ever truly own it. Monet and her calm observance over Viola's capital.

One slit across the throat. Pink feathers drenched in blood. Soon.

"A toast," Violet says, "to murdered families."

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Violet is first aware that something is wrong when Doflamingo attends a match in the Coliseum, a match that coincidentally stars Rebecca.

Her niece wins without a scratch, huge broadsword flashing like a wildfire all across the arena, a testament to Kyros' training. Violet returns, nervous, to the palace and enters the courtyard. The pretend-king is lounging on a royal chaise, a fantastic assortment of fruits in bowls surrounding him. He lifts his head at her entrance and she thinks perhaps it's alright, they're still safe—

"She has her mother's eyes," he says in greeting.

Viola comes out of the soil, half-dead and shaking.

"Let her stay as a gladiator," she pleads, "I've been good to you. I've been good."

Doflamingo smiles benevolently as he throws a bowl of grapes over his shoulder and gets up. "How long have you known?"

"I didn't—I didn't know anything, Doffy." Doffy, she calls him as the rest of his family members do, Doffy for have mercy. "I swear it. I don't even know where my own sister is buried."

"She isn't your sister anymore, is she?"

Viola freezes.

Violet corrects her face, turns it smooth as a rock.

"You," Doflamingo says softly, "are a Donquixote now."

"I've been good," she repeats. Do not hurt her daughter.

"You've been very good. I haven't thanked you for that. You're twenty-six now, aren't you? We've known each other for seven years. I hope you think of me as a friend now, Viola." He touches the edge of her chin, lifts her face up. "How much do you love her?"

Before she can respond, Doflamingo kisses her. The man who took away her country, who took away her name—he kisses her. She is plunged feet-first into the icy depths of horror. Body cold, head numb. Drowning.

Viola hears the ghost of her sister weeping as she parts her mouth.

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Was this her father's bed? The sheets must be different; they're silken and heavier than the sheets in her memories, of when she and Scarlett used to climb up and sleep between their parents.

Her breasts, the backs of her knees, her feet, her stomach—are not hers anymore. Viola imagines growing flowers out of her ribcage. Viola cannot speak. She cannot do anything but stare at the ceiling. Violet reaches inward, into the garden, and shushes her gently, smooths her hair down, whispers, let me do this. I have no family, no throne. Rest.

Violet sits up, wrapping the sheet around her bare chest.

"Stay away from her," she says. "Do you hear me? You stay the fuck away from her."

He sprawls like an overgrown cat beside her, him and his dark shades and dark smile. "I will. You have my word."

"Good."

"But I'm not done with you," Doflamingo murmurs into her throat, and his hands are on her waist again.

The sunset pours its guts through the window and all over the bed, ultraviolent.

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She is sure the rest of the Family knows. Trebol stops her the other day to compliment her dancing (a subtle backhand from the world's loudest booger), and her subordinates are taking extra caution not to annoy her (fucking pansy ass wimps, the lot of them). Jora offers to do her nails and gossip over tea. Even the three brats stop blatantly jeering at her and keep their whispering over breakfast to a minimum, choosing instead to stare as she chugs her coffee.

She wants to erase Doflamingo from the back of her eyelids, which meant Monet. Which meant fucking Monet. Which meant realizing that fucking Monet doesn't help at all.

A pale arm drapes over her stomach. "Who's a better lay, me or Doffy?"

Violet shuts her eyes. "I am not talking about that."

She can hear the dry smirk in Monet's laugh. "Why don't you come with me to Punk Hazard? It'll be like a year-long holiday. You could get away from all of… this. If I promise to keep a close eye on you, Doffy might say yes."

Her heart thuds, angry. "Are you truly asking me that?"

"You could be Violet for real." Monet traces a finger along the length of her spine. "Dressrosa doesn't have to be Violet's country. Violet can be anything… a pirate, a traveling dancer…"

Violet rolls around in the sheets, throws her legs over Monet's ice-cold body until she's straddling her. "You opened the palace gates that night. Your own sister turned my people into toy slaves. How dare you think I could ever abandon Dressrosa for you."

Her amber eyes glint. "Aren't you tired of acting heroic all the time? You make a far better assassin than you do a princess."

"You're wrong. Dressrosa is suffering. And I'll remain here, I'll fucking die here, because I have a duty to suffer with her."

Monet reaches up and digs their foreheads together. "But think of how happy you could be if you let go," she whispers, and everything in Violet liquefies. "You'll miss me, Viola."

Viola bites down hard on Monet's shoulder, and she lets her with a soft hiss, refusing to turn into snow to savor the fucked-up pain. Their knees lock together and she grabs fistfuls of green hair and Monet's hands dig into the curve of her hip. The Dressrosan night is humid and cloying, and Viola presses between Monet's legs until she cries out and for a brief flash all that snow melts between Viola's fingers. Neither of them speak; she feels mad with all the years twisting together, like thread in a tapestry. She doesn't know where to begin to untangle them.

When Violet wakes up in the early morning, her hand searches instinctively towards Monet's side of the bed. The sheets are cold and empty. She did not leave behind a trace of warmth.

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When Violet is twenty-seven, she descends into the Coliseum's waiting room and, for the first time in almost a decade, comes within feet of Rebecca.

The armored girl sits in the darkness, quietly polishing a broadsword. Her shoulders wink with metal plates. They call her the Undefeated Woman, and then, quieter, the Untouchable. If any man tries to lay a hand on her, his hand will be gone.

Rebecca has scars running down her arms, and her red knees are chafed and fleshy. A long braid curls over her shoulder, stubbornly pink. She is perfect.

"I know you," the warrior says, looking up. "You're a Donquixote officer."

Violet nods. She's staring, taking her in, every angle, every little thing.

Rebecca shifts. "Have… we met before?"

"No," Violet says. It is not a lie.

"Ah. In that case…" Rebecca's mouth slides into an impossibly familiar grin. Scarlett. "Did you come for an autograph?"

Viola inhales sharply, her eyes bright and blinking, her head spinning as though just waking up from a deep slumber. But there are too many years to dust off, and her shoulders are too heavy to stand up straight anymore; Violet shrinks back into the darkness, her voice quiet, "Take care. It'll be a death match."

"It always is," Rebecca replies, going back to polishing her sword.

Violet leaves.

(Viola rushes back and takes Rebecca's calloused hands in her own. She presses a fervent kiss to her fingers, and whispers with a shaking rattling gasp: "You are my niece, the daughter of my sister Scarlett and the soldier Kyros. You are my father the King's granddaughter. My name is Riku Viola, the Crown Princess of Dressrosa. Remember me, for I am prepared for a long dance with death.")

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Violet takes as many lovers as she does assassin targets. The only men she will kiss, she decides, are those who will die by her hand.

She pays mercenaries to kill him. She drips poison between his lips when he sleeps beside her. She carries knives beneath her skirts and tries to cut his throat when his mouth is between her legs. She tries suffocation. She tries strangling. One reckless attempt involves shoving him out the window. It always ends with angry red lines on his skin and teeth marks along his throat and her tangled in his bedsheets. He thinks of it as foreplay.

Doflamingo is amicable with the people he likes. That's clear enough when he's around family. They'll tease him and he never snaps back, not really. A few weeks a year, he fucks off to do some 'Shichibukai' business and always brings back gifts.

The next time Violet lunges at him with a knife as they've failed to get dressed for the third time in his chambers, he grabs her by the wrist and deftly slides on heavy golden bangles.

"Your passion knows no bounds, does it?" he laughs, snarling grin wide. Violet struggles, beating his chest with her fist. Doflamingo twirls her around and dips her. "Dance for me, Viola."

He says her name like Monet said it. Like something secret, something that only the two of them know about.

"My name is Violet," she snaps through gritted teeth. "Call me by the thing you named me, Doflamingo."

"You will always be Viola to me. Her Royal Highness Princess Viola of Dressrosa. Admit it. Doesn't someone saying your true name make you happy? Doesn't it remind you of how you were almost queen?"

"If you think that makes me fucking happy—"

"You could still have the throne," Doflamingo murmurs, spreading his huge, broad palm over her stomach. "I could plant a seed in you, Viola. A Riku and Donquixote child. None would question it's right to rule. And when I create the next Dressrosan dynasty, Mariejois will be forced to see the blunder they made by casting me aside—"

His voice rings hot, hot, hot, fuel and oil and fire. Violet stumbles back until she hits the pillows. Scarlett, Viola thinks, help me, for I have to be strong now.

Doflamingo rests beside her. "How is that niece of yours?"

Her back stiffens.

"I gave you my word I wouldn't lay a finger on her, and I kept it."

Violet stares blankly. Doflamingo stares back—or at least she thinks he does, he doesn't take his sunglasses off even during sex. Fucking weirdo.

"But she is a Riku, too," he says.

She doesn't know if it's a bluff, if Doflamingo suddenly developed a propensity for fifteen-year-old girls. But Viola needs no other reason to bind her own fate, there in the bedroom that was once her father's, chains coalescing around her as heavy as the golden cuffs on her wrists.

"I told you I'd give you a new family," he says, afterwards. Violet is counting the patterns on the wall, but maybe it's due to all these years of knowing him that she hears the slight question in his voice. Monet's voice trails through her memories like snowflakes. If he ever lets you call him that… Yes, she is the master of the art of unforgetting.

"Doffy," she whispers. He strokes her long black hair like the way one nuzzles a cat for good behavior.

.

.

.

When Violet turns twenty-nine, Doflamingo sends her a bouquet of roses. Ten beautiful fat white things, each as big as her head. Ten, for every year they've known each other. The stems still glitter with morning dew. He must've had someone buy them fresh at the market.

It snaps easily under her palms. Dewdrops run down her fingers, leaving them slick and wet.

After throwing up in the toilet, she crushes a flower for every year of her life she'll never have back.

.

.

.

Monet is dead, and a storm is coming.

Sugar is inconsolable. She snaps off the heads of an entire collection of dolls, her grief shaking the palace walls. Doflamingo locks himself in his room, uncharacteristically silent. A ghost is sailing to Dressrosa—a lost son, a heart missing from his throne, and a crew of famous rookies in tow. The city will soon be a battleground.

Violet goes to Monet's old room in the palace. It's eerily large and dusty, grey light filtering through a crack between the heavy curtains.

She digs out the old oil paintings and throws off the lace covers, staring at the portraits of dancing women.

In one sweep, she rakes her fingers across a painting, paint flecks digging underneath her nails. She rips off her shoe and throws it at a collection of ballerinas, a couple dancing the paso doble, and hurls paintings straight at the floor until they crack in half. She savages them with her bare hands.

Then she comes across a painting of herself. One that Monet painted all those years ago. Dancing, smiling, frozen in time.

She understands, suddenly.

How beautiful, Monet. How painful.

Viola presses her head to the painting and cries. She cries because Monet's death, and Dressrosa, and her family, and the young girl in the painting had all been taken from her. Been ripped from her hands.

The anguish slowly subsides into exhaustion. Wiping her eyes on her shoulders, she traces the painting. The soft black brushstrokes of the girl's short hair, the dash of red in her round cheeks. The swirl of the dress, caught in motion as she danced the flamenco—oh, she forgot there had been a time when she genuinely loved it.

I have forgotten what it is like to feel fragile.

But Viola wants to remember.

.

.

.

Violet remembers so much. Her shoulders are heavy with memories.

"The Tontatta are ready," she commands in her most queenly voice. It's a bit rusty. "Take out Sugar first, then the fight is ours."

The dark man nods. He has come a long way to kill Doflamingo.

"One moment," Trafalgar says briefly. "Is it his?"

Violet touches her stomach. It's still early and she isn't showing much, but it figures a doctor could tell. "Unfortunately."

"I'm sorry," the pirate offers, his lean, harsh mouth softening around the edges. "What you must have gone through the past ten years…"

"I did it for my people." She does not want pity.

Violet opens her all-seeing eyes.

In the garden, Viola finishes sharpening her shears.

.

.

.

The war nearly breaks Dressrosa in half. The Straw Hat's swordsman defeats Pica. Rebecca and Kyros cut through Diamante. Trebol has been laid to waste on the palace rooftop. All the King's men, all the King's horses. Now all that's left is the King himself.

She races over the rubble, ripping her long, clumsy skirts away from her legs, baring her knees. Tontatta dwarves point the way, and Violet reaches the center of the birdcage. Straw Hat and Trafalgar struggle to their feet, bleeding ragged.

The feathery giant trembles as she approaches, tearing the rose from her hair and drawing out the hidden blade.

"All those years! Wasted!" Doflamingo roars. "I thought you were better than this, Viola! I gave you everything! I took you into my family!"

The dagger flashes around her fingertips. Ten years of training. Ten years of practiced expertise. For this moment. "I already have a family, Doffy."

Doflamingo shudders at the audacity of that name from the mouth of a traitor, his hands curling into claws.

Violet slips away.

"So go to hell, you pink bastard."

Viola blazes forth.

She dodges the threads from his fingertips. Her godlike eyes flare. She can see every movement, every twitch of his muscle. She knows where he'll step before he does.

"This," Doflamingo snarls, "is what you wanted. You wanted it. You begged me."

"Fuck you," Viola shakes with fury, the true and rightful heir of Dressrosa, "I want my country back!"

The Straw Hat boy slams his fist into Doflamingo's face. Viola grabs her dagger and she can feel Scarlett right there with her, her deathless rage wrapping over Viola's fingers. Hand in hand, the two sisters tear the blade through Haki-fortified flesh. Trafalgar is behind him, waiting, and draws his sword.

Doflamingo lets out a worldshaking howl, and falls.

(finally

finally

finally—)

Viola screams, standing over his body in the ruined capital of her homeland. She pounds the bloody dagger against her chest and screams in victory, and in rage, and in jubilation. She screams loud enough and long enough for ten whole fucking years, and then—

(i am reborn)

.

.

.

What do you do after you've had so much of your life stolen from you?

After a quiet contemplation among the ruins of her palace, the courtyard where she used to play, the garden where she and Scarlett once star-gazed from, Viola decides to find Trafalgar. He gives her medicine, and tells her to call his ship if she's in too much pain. He pauses, then politely inquires if she'd like to talk to anyone. Viola thanks him, but her mind is made up. She is tired. She has been tired for so long.

Rebecca holds her hand all the way through it. Viola tells her about the past decade—the parts that she's ready to tell, her words all tumbling over themselves, until it gets dark and Kyros lights candles all over the room. Rebecca—oh, Rebecca, you are your mother's daughter—lays Viola's head on her lap and listens with tears in her eyes. When it is done, Viola holds her stomach and sobs in relief. She is in her own body again, her own skin, every part of it hers and her own. Doflamingo will never be a part of her life again. Rebecca strokes her brow and her father wipes her cheeks very softly, and they are quiet.

She spends a week recovering from the procedure, then another week recovering from her battle wounds. She will spend the rest of her life recovering from the Donquixote Pirates.

It hurts to walk at first, so Kyros makes her a cane. Viola drums her fingers, listening to Rebecca sing quietly as she lights the stove for dinner. Maybe, Viola considers, she might try to dance again. Not today, but someday.

When her father announces he will not be sitting on the throne again—he is old, burdened by disgrace, and Rebecca has no wish for a crown—Viola immediately shakes her head.

"It can't be me. I've been a Donquixote for the last decade." She has been another woman entirely for the last decade. "I've forgotten so much about how to rule—well, never did quite pay attention in the first place—"

Rebecca grabs her hands, big blue eyes honest. "You have stood strong for ten years on your own. You, Aunt Viola, more than anyone, can guide us on the road of rebuilding. Dressrosa needs you. We need a leader who knows this country's darkness but stands tall in spite of it. Who is fearless and fearsome, and there is no one better than you. Who cares if you've forgotten? You can learn again."

The wind brushes across her forehead, and she thinks of Scarlett pressing a kiss to her brow.

We can learn together, Violet hums, and returns to minding the garden.

Viola takes a deep breath.

The coronation ceremony takes place on the palace steps. Her father lowers the crown to her head and says, "Riku Viola, I crown thee Queen of Dressrosa, Commander of All Martial Forces, and Steadfast Friend to the Tontatta Tribe."

Queen Viola stands before her city, her country; her people she vows to protect. She sees Rebecca and Kyros in the crowd, horribly disguised under brown cloaks and clapping wildly. Manshelley flits about her face, pressing sweet kisses to her hair.

Viola smiles.

She can still hear Violet, sometimes. In the rustle of taffeta dresses, in the tapping of flamenco heels. Violet watches the crowd with cold, cruel observation, and keeps one dagger strapped to Viola's thigh and a pistol at her waist. It is Violet who still dreams of Monet's cold kisses down her spine, and Violet who rewinds the memory of a knife in Doflamingo's chest that plays over and over in Viola's mind like a daydream that won't end.

The hot spikes of rage she feels when Kyros laughs too loud and Rebecca accidentally bangs the fork against her plate are Violet, and so is the dark gnawing dread in the dead of night, when she can't sleep. She has no more reason to fear, and yet it haunts her like an apparition—the whisper of a dagger and the slow drip of belladonna poison.

But Viola can live with it. She can carry the weight of her ghosts as Rebecca carries her broadsword. One day, when Violet is needed again, Viola will let her come. She will open the garden gate, kill men with the tears from her eyes, and stomp her heels in a dance of destruction.

But that is not today.

Today, all that matters is packing a picnic basket. A word is on the tip of her tongue. Carrots, lettuce, tomatoes…

"Olives," Viola says suddenly, and laughs to herself. "That's what I forgot."

Rebecca helps pack the picnic basket with sandwiches, tea, and fruit. She takes the basket and Viola follows her down the cottage path, joining Kyros and her father. Her niece remembers the hidden groves of the sunflower fields in a way that Viola never had.

The sun is warmer here, and the clouds part to shine a halo of light on the secret tallgrass and balsamroot. Rebecca walks on, surefooted, shimmering pink braid swishing over the sea of sunflowers, until they reach a wooden cross.

"Mom! We're all here!"

Viola is unbearably light; she grows lighter with every step as she runs. The years flow backwards; she is fourteen again, wandering the sunflower fields to find the cottage her sister picked to live with her new husband and baby. Time ebbs, dissolves entirely.

The flowers part and Scarlett steps forth, welcoming her family home.

fin