The gentle strum of guitar on a warm, summer night.

The swirl of small, yellow sunflower petals in the cooling breeze on a hot day.

Waiting anxiously for the right beat to sound in flamenco garb, and the thrill that comes with stomping down hard and fast, and back again.

All ruined with red, the jarring colour of crimson red against sunflower yellow.

Is there revolution? Are mothers crying out as their babies are taken from their bosoms? The sunflowers, have they been mowed down? Are maidens still maidens? Do the cities still stand? Are the men fighting in the streets, resisting and dying for their efforts?

There's an old saying in Dressrosa, about mothers. They say that the shadows under their eyes are there to hold back the flood of tears.

Viola has not let herself cry once since that night. In the dark room, devoid of light, and in the bigger world out there devoid of Scarlett, Viola has not let herself see, terrified of what she would see beyond her four walls of solitude. She is not a mother, but her heart always beats for the blood of the kingdom, and is that not what motherhood is?

The voice of their blood, once stirring and excited, shed on fields of green and dried to dull reds, right next to where Viola had vomited up so much that she was expecting her insides to come up too. She doesn't have to see to imagine.

She doesn't need a mirror, or any light, to know there are ugly bags under her eyes that stop the tears from coming. The single comfort she has is knowing that she isn't broken.

She wonders how long that will last.

She wonders, longer, how long she has been in her cage. Maybe a day or two. She hasn't slept at all - if she has, she doesn't know. They've brought in food three times now. They haven't shackled her, no sea stone. Not like she could do anything anyway.

Her back hurts. She doesn't know how much longer she can sit like this, hunched over in a way that used to scare her of developing a hunchback, the back of her neck sore and stiff.

She has to stay calm.

She has to stay strong.

She has to not wish that there's something in this room she can use to kill herself, because that would mean she is willing to kill her father.

She cannot let herself become a laughing stock that Doflamingo jokes about every now and then, of a naive, little girl who tried to be strong, and then killed herself because she wasn't.