Nuvo awoke to the familiar darkness of her cell. It was night, judging by the chill in the room. Her head throbbed and her injured back scraped horribly against the floor as she tested her ability to move her arm. She could still bring it to her waist; the guards either hadn't noticed the extra links or didn't think it mattered since they had no idea she could unlock herself.
Her key must have still been in the chamber pot compartment. After a lot of careful fenagling and severe protest from her back, she was able to wedge her arm between her body and the floor, then down into the hole to feel for the key. It took longer than usual, but she did find it, and eventually managed to draw her arm back around the front and unlock herself. She pushed the chains away gently and very slowly sat up.
The small amount of scabbing that had accumulated on her lashes ripped apart as she sat up, and a groan came from her lips as she felt the fresh blood soak into her shirt. They had given her a new one after the whipping, but it did little to protect her wounds. She could summon bandages, but there was no way she had the energy or reach to apply them herself and, even if she could, come bath-day the guards would wonder where the treatment had come from. She would just have to let the wounds heal on their own as best they could.
Suddenly overcome with despair, Nuvo let hot tears fall down her face. She was exactly where she had started a year ago. Arguably worse off than before. She wasn't sure how long she'd been knocked out or how long she'd been away from Impel Down, but the story of her whipping had doubtlessly been published in the news by now. She had defied the World Nobles and now they'd made an example of her. For all she knew, they'd whip her again every year just to remind everyone of their place. She'd been a fool to think they would allow the world to forget her name. An utter fucking fool.
"I swear to you now I have nothing to lose
So can I please get a good bottle of booze?"
A brown bottle appeared in front of her, and she gingerly reached for it. Summoning a bottle had been stupid; she'd have to shatter it in her chamber pot later and hope the guards didn't notice. But as she uncorked the bottle and took a long swig, and then another, she didn't give a shit. So what if they saw it. What more could they do?
"Did you enjoy your trip?"
Joker's voice rolled over her in a sweet wave.
"Oh yeah," she choked out, and gulped down more of the booze. It burned all the way down. "Top-notch vacation. Excellent view from the room. Got a lot of great pictures. I'll have to show you sometime."
He didn't laugh.
"You don't sound well."
She had no decent reply. She guzzled more drink. She was nearly through a third of the bottle already.
"You were gone for over a week."
"They took me to Mariejois."
This time he had no reply. Finally, he spoke again.
"Are you injured very badly?"
"Yes, but unfortunately I think I'm going to live."
He didn't laugh that time either.
"Can't you sing yourself well?"
She froze mid sip. If he believed she was only capable of conjuring foods with her gift, there would have been no need to ask such a question.
"I can only summon food." She tested. "How could that help?"
"You're lying."
Damn.
"Celestial Dragons all have personal chefs. As disliked as they are, do you honestly think people haven't tried to poison their food before? They won't eat anything not prepared by a trained chef of their own choosing. You may have told the truth about poisoning five of them to get yourself in here, but you didn't do it with food."
Double damn.
"My sources told me about the killings in Harmelude. I found the whole story quite enticing. The newly discovered kingdom of song. An entire island destroyed under unexplainable circumstances. A Princess the tragic sole survivor, or the evil mastermind behind Harmelude's demise, depending on the paper you read. Then, merely a week after the story broke, you were here, singing to me in the dark. It wasn't hard to put the puzzle together. So, why don't you show me what you can really do, Nuvovniya?"
Her name was beautiful in his mouth.
Maybe it was because she was tipsy.
"How ungentlemanly of you, Joker, to know so much of me when I'm allowed to know so little of you."
"Did you receive news from the rest of the world in Harmelude?"
"Of course."
"Then you know more than you realize."
She didn't understand. "Who are you?"
He was silent for a long time. He'd been avoiding telling her, worried that she might abandon him once she knew. He was not typically the type of man to be flustered by the prospect of a woman's rejection, but these were not ordinary circumstances, and this woman had more than proven herself worthy of his friendship. The thought of losing that connection made him hurt. The days she'd been gone had driven him half mad. She had brought him laughter in hell, and that had earned her his respect. It was out of this respect that he finally admitted the truth.
"The kingdom I ruled is called Dressrosa."
She had read about the events at Dressrosa; about the King who'd been forced to cut down his own people, about the Tontatta dwarves forced into slavery, about the citizens turned into toys and forgotten by their families. The pirates behind it all, the Donquixote family, composed of multiple incredibly strong fighters and lead by a rejected Celestial Dragon turned underworld broker. Joker was his codename on the black market, Nuvo remembered, but his real name…
It clicked. How had the pink feather coat story not been the giveaway? Her voice was barely above a whisper as she breathed his name aloud for the first time.
"Doflamingo…"
He said nothing.
She gathered all the strength she could muster and forced herself to stand. She swayed on her feet, the result of the booze, the blood loss, or a mixture of the two. The recorked bottle in one hand and the key in the other, she staggered over to the left wall of her cell and braced herself against the cold stone.
"I have no more strength for rhymes today.
I need a path to his cell.
Give me a fucking door."
Her badly written song did the trick none the less, and a rough stone door appeared in front of her. If she hadn't been half drunk, she probably would have had the good sense to place it next to herself rather than directly in front of herself. But it was too late, and since she was leaning against the wall before it became a door, her weight propelled the door open, and so Nuvo landed flat on her face in Doflamingo's cell.
He inhaled sharply at the sudden appearance of the pale girl in a heap on the floor. There was a large red spot on the back of her shirt, less than a shade away from the hue of her hair, ringlets of which were currently scattered in every direction around her head. She groaned, then lifted her head to look at one of her hands.
"At least the booze survived." She laughed, then turned the bottle on its side and placed it on the floor. "Catch." She rolled the bottle toward Doflamingo and it stopped at his side, clinking against his chains. As she had hoped, his chain system was set up in the exact same way hers had been, except that his wrists and ankles had bands around them, separate from the other shackles and made of a different material. Sea prism stone.
She tried to stand up again, but her strength failed and she felt faint. "I think I have to crawl the rest of the way. It might take a moment."
"Don't rush," he said gently. "I'm not going anywhere."
It took an embarrassingly long time, but eventually she managed to drag herself over to the center of the floor where he lay. Panting, she pushed herself into a lounging sort of position, the lower half of her body on the ground and the upper half against the chains at his waist. She presented the key and slid it into the padlock; miraculously, it worked.
"I'm sorry I didn't do that sooner." she sighed as he removed himself from his chains. "I wasn't sure I could trust you."
"And you trust me now?" he asked, standing up and stretching his arms above his head, causing his striped shirt to rise and reveal the abdominal muscles in his lower stomach. She recalled her concern about the negative impact prison might've had on his body and dismissed it. His physique was just fucking fine.
"Not really, but what's to fear? I would consider strangling me a kindness."
She snatched the bottle back up and tossed the cork aside. She offered it to Doflamingo and he took a large gulp, welcoming the burning sensation in his esophagus.
"Why haven't you escaped?" he asked.
"I was waiting for the press to die down. I thought if I was patient, people would forget about me, and it would be easier to get out and start fresh somewhere else. It turns out people don't forget you when you melt five celestial assholes together."
He grinned, and for the first time Nuvo allowed herself to really look at him. Tan, blonde, and bespectacled with red lensed sunshades, he looked ready for a beach outing minus the striped prisoners' uniform. How in the world had he been allowed to keep his glasses or managed the tan? she wondered. He was freakishly tall; close to ten feet, easily towering over her five feet and stray inches. Now she knew why no one had dared comment on his ostentatious clothing choices before. She snickered at the thought and her shoulders lifted, shooting pangs of fresh pain through her spine. Doflamingo noticed her grimace.
"Let me look."
It didn't sound like a request, and Nuvo probably wouldn't have declined if it was, anyway. She turned her battered back to him and tried to lift her shirt, but every which way she moved her arms to lift caused further agitation to her wounds. She was ready to summon a dagger to slash the damn thing when she felt his breath directly behind her ear.
"Nuvovniya, you're only making it worse."
She'd been too occupied with the shirt to notice him sit down behind her. He handed her the bottle over her shoulder. She took it back gratefully and tossed back another swallow.
"You can just say Nuvo. It's what everyone called me…before…"
Her words died off as he gripped her shirt hem and started to lift, careful not to touch the lashes any more than necessary. His hands brushed against the unmarred skin on the sides of her stomach and ribcage as he lifted, and Nuvo had to suppress the shiver. It would be both mortifying and painful at the moment. She couldn't help but enjoy the feel of his touch. It had been ages since someone had touched her with any sort of humanity.
Doflamingo was also attempting to keep his pleasure hidden. She was a beautiful woman, but she was also half his age and seriously injured. Now was definitely not the time to let his thoughts linger over the softness of her flesh or the beauty of her figure, noticeable even through all the blood.
After gently tugging the shirt to her shoulders, Nuvo surprised him by gradually lifting her arms above her head, indicating that he should remove the piece of clothing entirely. He didn't hesitate to slip the thing over her head. After throwing it to the side, he placed his fingers at her neck, smoothing her hair over her shoulder to the front side of her body so that her bare back was in full view. She couldn't contain the shiver this time, but Doflamingo hardly noticed, too distracted by the sight of the whip's damage. There must have been nearly twenty long slices in Nuvo's back.
"This is serious. You should call up some medicine for yourself."
She shook the bottle, half gone now.
"Way ahead of you."
"Some real medicine. A disinfectant at least. Gangrene in wounds this deep could be fatal."
"The guards will notice if I'm treated."
"I doubt it. You'll still be in the bloodstained shirt and the next bath-day isn't for five days. It would make sense that you'd healed at least a little in that time. And if your baths are anything like mine, they spray you so hard that any dried blood on you would be gone in seconds anyway. The wounds may even reopen. They'd never know the difference."
She considered it, then decided that she didn't care whether or not the guards noticed anymore. She just wanted him to keep touching her. She blamed the booze for making her so reckless. She slurred some choppy lyrics and managed to summon a bowl of water, a rag, and a jar of antibacterial salve. He dipped the rag into the water and began to softly pat her back, cleaning the wounds as comfortably as possible.
"So, what can I call you?" she asked, wanting to focus on something other than her wounds. "There must be something shorter than Doflamingo. DO-FLA-MIN-GO. It's four syllables. That's ridiculous."
He chortled. "Your name is four syllables."
"Yeah, that's why I was called Nuvo instead."
"My crew called me Doffy."
She snorted. "Doffy? That's so…cute. It makes you sound like a duckling. A pink one, I'd wager."
He chuckled and started applying the salve, the pleasant feeling of his hands massaging in the medication silencing her teasing. "I'm only letting you get away with saying something so degrading because you're drunk."
"I deserve to be drunk." she whispered, scared that anything louder would give away how sensual this was for her. The booze had numbed most of the pain by now, and every place that his fingers glided over left a trail of goosebumps along her skin. He finished with the salve too soon for Nuvo's liking, but her back felt much better than it had when she'd first crawled in here. He grabbed the bloody shirt from the floor and helped slide it over her head again. She winced as it came down and grazed her back.
"It'll scar terribly." she grumbled. A permanent physical reminder of all the horrible things that the Celestial Dragons had done to her. She felt very drunk now, and she knew that pondering on those things in her state would only result in tears, and she didn't want that. Doffy had polished off the bottle after finishing her treatment, and was a bit more than tipsy himself.
"Don't worry." he said, still sitting behind her, breathing his words against her neck. "You could be mangled all the way to your toes, and you'd still be one of the most beautiful women in the New World."
If she hadn't been so smashed, she might've been embarrassed by his flattery. Instead she turned to face him and rose up from the floor to her knees, inching herself forward. She stared into his face, wondering what color his eyes were behind those glasses. She inched closer still, her nose only inches from his. Blushing like mad, she flung herself forward and wrapped her arms around his neck, the rest of her body toppling forward and slamming into his.
"Thank you for being my friend." she mumbled.
She felt immeasurably childish, but Doffy arranged his arms around her hips, returning the embrace as best he could without touching her back. It had been years since someone had hugged him, and more time than that since someone had hugged him out of friendship.
"And you for being mine, songbird."
Nuvo's mind was made up. She no longer cared about the amplified risks of being recently broadcast to the public. She was going to let her back heal, and then she was leaving Impel Down. And she was taking Doffy with her. Once they were out and safe, they could go their separate ways and start over. Or maybe, a tiny voice from the back of her head peeped, you could start over someplace new, together. Nuvo mentally shushed the voice. They would look even more suspicious together and just because they were friends who were sharing a drunken hug didn't mean that shacking up was in their future. Friend or not, she still couldn't be sure that he was completely trustworthy, so she decided to keep quiet about her decision to bring him along for now.
Pulling away from the embrace, Nuvo pretended to ignore the fact that she was straddling him. "I should get back to my cell. I need to rechain you for now, because of the guards, but I swear I'll come unchain you again tomorrow after the food comes." After resituating him and gathering the bowl, rag, salve jar, and bottle, she turned and stumbled back to the crude door. She leaned in the doorway. "Goodnight, Doflamingo. Thank you, again."
"Pleasure's all mine, Nuvovniya. Sleep well."
She closed the door and tried to make it vanish, but to no avail. Luckily, the door was so badly constructed that it blended rather well with the wall. Reminiscent of an entrance to a secret passageway, you could only really see it if you were looking for it. She had taken the bowl, jar, and bottle and wrapped them in the soiled rag, then stomped it. After dumping the glass pieces into the chamber pot, she shredded the rag and did the same with it. It wasn't like the guards were going to sift through the contents of her chamber pot, so she wasn't worried about the items being discovered anymore. She rechained herself and dropped the key into its usual hiding place.
The stone floor grated against her sensitive back, but as long as she didn't wriggle around too much, it wasn't awful. Wasted and laying in the dark, she couldn't keep her mind from replaying scenes from Mariejois. Every twisted detail her memory could bring forth, it did. The overwhelming volume of the crowd, the whip splitting her skin apart, the faces of the Nobles she'd ended. Then she was back at the Harmelude docks, watching what was left of her world melt into history. She remembered the salt of the sea mixing with the scent of death while her parent's eyes liquified and bubbled in their sockets at her feet. Nuvo tried to make her head stop spinning. The last thing she needed was to puke all over herself while bound like this.
With some controlled breathing and a little patience, the harsh memories slunk back to their own corner of her mind, and she calmed down. There was no point in letting the sadness of her past direct her thoughts; she couldn't change anything and turning into a grieving mess was not an option. She had to focus her energy on getting well and figuring out exactly how she was going to get them out of here.
She'd made her choice to set him free, but she wanted to exercise caution. Whether he was her true friend or not, she knew that Doflamingo was deranged, at least on some level. His actions at Dressrosa were beyond corrupt and she felt a need to hold him accountable for them, but judging him for those choices felt hypocritical. Yet she detected a certain difference in the morality of their crimes. In a moment of madness, she had totally lost control of herself and mass murdered her abusers along with the innocent inhabitants of her kingdom. He had used ambition and violence to meticulously take over a kingdom and manipulate its citizens over the course of several years, whilst simultaneously working as a warlord of the sea and an underground arms dealer. She understood that he couldn't change his past either, even if he desired too. And though she hated to admit something so evil, she couldn't help but respect the amount of work that he had put into gaining his power. On top of brute strength, it took an extremely intelligent mind to do what he'd done so successfully before his defeat, and Nuvo didn't want to make the mistake of underestimating him. She couldn't ignore the possibility of him lying to her about their friendship and assisting her tonight only because he realized that she had the potential to help him escape.
Disliking the bitter taste that questioning the validity of her only friendship was leaving in her mouth, Nuvo let her thoughts drift to simpler things, and soon she was asleep.