He isn't sure why, but Mother is the first thing he thinks of when shaken awake by the transponder snail from flame-filled dreams. His eyes snap back and forth, the room around him foreign. Sweat clings cold to his skin, taut ropes dig into his wrists. Everything seems wrong. But he recognizes it - it is the nightmare that is almost real - but no, no, of course it isn't.
He shakes his head once, twice, fighting down a scream. The flashing images are linked to an awful memory – a bleak, gray memory, the day Mother had died due to a traitor's negligence. Homing. His father's negligence. Why had he thought of her when waking up, again?
He notices the barrel on its side, knocked over when he had jolted awake. Something rings in his ears – not the transponder snail – as he adjusts himself and his surroundings, still sweating through his shirt. A soft voice, warm and melodic, almost singing.
Shhh, don't cry, Dofy. Mother's here…
Ah, right. Mother had comforted him after nightmares as a child, he remembers. Yes, that was why he had thought of her.
My Dofy, handsome as a prince. Shall I tell you about Dressrosa again...?
A voice echoing from the past, years dead. Hands running through his hair, soothing him, regaling him with tales of the kingdom she would never see. A lush, vivid place, more beautiful even than Mariejois...but they could not return. Then his own laughter - a child's laughter, at peace with the nightmare - knowing he would rule when his time came. Mother always said it was just a story - that a king should rule with compassion as well - but he had chosen to let those details sail over his head. All that mattered was the courage Mother's story had instilled.
He reaches for the bottle next to his chair, tips it back, swallows the remedy down until he thinks his stomach might burst. Then he flings the piece of glass into the corner, watches it shatter like the dishes he had thrown to the ground twenty years ago, trying to get his father to do something for their ailing mother. Anything. Any kind of action would have been better than watching her shrivel away. It makes him want to spit, it makes him want to fly into a sharp fit of rage, to rip apart everything weak and pathetic and useless in the world.
And it is that anger that keeps him going. Every time. He nods to himself as he drapes his feather coat over his shoulders, hands calming as they settle glasses down over his nose. The nightmares are nothing compared to his goal. Retake Dressrosa, retake his stolen heritage. Maybe not for Mother, exactly, but because of her. At least that is how he justifies it to himself.
As he stands up, another voice speaks, a deeper one, as if in answer to his mother: Memento mori. Remember that you are mortal. Something his traitor father had spouted during home lessons, something even Rocinante used to repeat.
Well. In any case. He has his own response.
I will not die...! No matter what you do to me, I will survive...!
In the past, he hangs above the crowd, unable to look down on those torturing him. Powerless. In the present, he strides across the room, the heat of the flames already forgotten.
And I will kill you all...one by one...
Donquixote Doflamingo smiles. His temples no longer ache. He remembers that he is a king.
...Until not a single one of you is left alive!
He reaches for the ringing transponder snail, completely himself once more.
Thank you, Mother.
Next: Giolla