Green hills fill the world, their gentle slopes lolling by as the cart makes its way across the fields. High above them the cerulean blue of the summer's sky envelops the space beyond the earth, a haven for birds and clouds.
A small girl is laying on her back, gazing up at the endless expanse, focusing on a point just beyond sight where a couple of swallows are engaged in their eternal dance. Her arms are folded behind her head and her feet propped up against her sister, snoozing in the hay. The straws brush against her, itching and scratching but still soft and familiar at the same time. The air is filled with the comforting notes of warm earth and wood, the fresh growth of the forest a darker undertone weaving through the golden smell of pure sunlight.
It would be quicker to walk, she knows. But it is nicer to get a lift and this way she can look at the birds. She would love to fly one day, but she knows people are not meant for such feats. People belong on the ground, the vicar had said once, listening to the song of the birds who get close to the Mother and the Father in the sky above. People would not know what to make of the infinite wisdom of the Mother or the love of the Father. The birds share their messages, and it is for this reason only birds can fly.
But sometimes the girl dreams of flying. Of soaring high above the fields and seeing the end of the world.
It is a slow summer's day with cicadas singing in the warm, quiet light and the girl is happy. There were countless such days behind her and even more stretching in front of her, before the harvest and the winter and then the next spring and summer, with new swallows and new messages from the Mother and the Father.
Her sister shifts in her sleep, a book falling out of her limp grasp, disappearing into the hay beneath. She gives a small grunt, before her breath evens out once more, hands now curled around nothing.
The Mother reminds her of her sister, with an unending thirst for knowledge and a well-spring of wisdom. The girl has always liked the Mother better. She is wise and kind and beautiful. The Father is stern and scary, at least in the picture they have hanging on the wall back home. They say his love is endless, but the girl can't really believe it. His love seems so conditional: if you go to church, he will love you more. If you obey the rules of fasting and prayer, his love grows. They say his love is endless and that you should love others like the Father, but the girl doesn't know how. Sometimes she just nods when her sister tries to reassure her by telling her it'll come later.
No, the girl prefers the Mother. While the Father's brow is furrowed and mouth is strict, the Mother is all kind smile and gentle eyes and forgiveness and peace. Sometimes it is easier to believe in compassion and forgiveness than love, the girl thinks, heavy-lidded eyes tracing the swallows' loops and thrills before they disappear behind the side boards of the cart, only to reappear a moment later.
The Father is the search for new lands and new trading and new people to love, but the Mother is knowledge and memory. She is all that came before and all that they learn today. The Father is the ideas of tomorrow while the Mother is the history of whence they came.
When the swallows swoop down beneath the trees and disappear from her sight a final time, the girl dozes off, her nostrils filled with the smell of summer and hay and her ears of the distant trilling of the birds and her heart of her wise bigger sister, sleeping by her side.
The girl doesn't know how long she's been asleep but suddenly the world lurches, abruptly throwing her into the land of the awake. A horrible moment of confusion and then the ground rises up to meet her and she and her sister tumble down the slope of the dike and something scrapes against her side and then she is coughing up muddy water, half-drowned and suffocating under her sister who has landed straight on top of her.
She tries to get up, but her sister clamps a cold hand over her mouth, watching the road with wild eyes. Through the high grass, the little girl only sees the boot of the carter, twitching in the dust. His spasming kicks up motes to play in the sunlight but then she hears the scream, and she realises it is the horse and she swallows all her protests as her sister gestures for her to be quiet and follow.
Everything is the same yet horribly different. The clear blue of the sky has softened into a pastel violet, heralding dusk, but then she notices whisps of smoke smudging the clear sky. The warmth of the earth is cooling down, the familiar smells of forest and meadow now filled with undertones of smoke and blood and iron. No birds are singing in the distance anymore, the screams of the dying horse the only sound filling the world around them.
They crawl away under the cover of the thick hazel lining the dike and the horse's screams follow them, echoing between the trees in the forest. And there is a dark undercurrent of drunken laughter mingling with the howls, a horrible harmony to the treble of the dying animal.
When the horse stops a horrifying quiet fills the void left behind.
The girls stumble through the undergrowth and then they are at the church, tumbling out from the brambles. The world is burning and she doesn't know anything but the blaze of the pyre consuming all she knows and all she loves as they drag open the heavy door to the church, age-hardened oak moving as slow as if all the years it's been standing there are pressing against it, weighing it down.
And she is small, too small to do anything and then her sister pushes her down the cellar behind the chapel. Everything is hard and cold and dark, and she can hear the squealing of rats, trying to hide from the heat burning through even the thick stone walls.
When an eternity and an oblivion have passed, when the walls have cooled and the rats dare appear again, the sisters gather enough nerve and bravery to go out.
The girl has never heard the world so silent. There has always been something; the birds circling in the sky or the deer moving through the woods or the laughter of their neighbours or the wind. But now everything is silent and hot and dark.
The wooden church has disappeared. A heap of charred beams lies where it once stood, timeless and beautiful dressed in oaken slats and intricate carvings. The clocktower is the only thing still standing, built of stone only last year. She remembers how the men huffed and swore when the large boulders were pushed and dragged and shifted into place with rope and makeshift wooden structures. When the tower stood proud and tall, a new home for the old bell, the feast had been grander than anything she had seen before. She had red ribbons in her hair and the food had been full of flavour and the birds had warbled a symphony of tinkling trills and sibilant sopranos.
But now their home is gone, and the tower is all that's left.
The girls stand there, staring at the glowing embers painting such hauntingly beautiful patterns on the tower.
Neither of them notices the strangers, cloaked by the smoke, before it is too late.
Her screams only make them laugh harder.
The girl knows the Mother guards them. The certainty is hewn into her heart, imprinted on her soul with every visit to church. Whatever happens, she knows it is part of the Father's plan. But she also knows, knows with a certainty steadfast as the ground beneath her, the Mother will never let her children suffer unjustly.
But then the ground beneath her crumbles and it is hard to keep those words pure and true when she realises what they do with her sister.
She can understand that the Father would want to punish her; she has been a bad girl. Their parents always sighed when she came back from the forest, her dress torn once more, now more patches than original cloth. If you could be more like your sister and keep calm with a book. You know what happens to girls who don't listen to her parents.
And she knew. She knew she should have listened better and given Betty's red ribbon back after the clock tower feast. Such wickedness should be punished, that is only just and right.
But her sister is only sweet stories and a kind heart and does not deserve what the men do to her. She should be punished, but never her sister. She fights and manages to cut one of them, but they merely laugh at her spirit as they truss her up against a tree. She pleads with them to punish only her, not her big sister, not her sweet sister, but the men don't listen, only laugh harder as they carelessly throw her down on the dirt, their dark words promising even darker deeds as rough hands leave bright purple marks.
Afterwards, her sister is silent, but the girl can see how her hands clench into tight, white knots, sinews taut under her soft skin, marred by bruises and softly weeping wounds. Her dress is even more torn now and the girl sees something shatter inside her, leaving only shards behind. She sees the edges in her sister's bowed back and limp hair that shields her face. Her curious, considerate sister, painted with soft brushes and pastel tones, has disappeared somewhere; the girl sees the loss in how she flinches with every unexpected shift, drawing closer in on herself with every sudden sound.
In the evening, they are securely tied up against a large beech, next to the marauder's campsite. They can still smell the smouldering buildings back in the village, but the robbers are content; near enough to plunder but far enough to avoid the worst of the stench of death.
The brigands, drunk on the poteen they found in the copse behind old Morgan's place, don't see when judgment arrives. Stumbling around the merrily flickering fire in some sort of drunken dance, they don't notice the gentle steps approaching. Leering at her sister, twisting her hair and forcing her to look up at them, they don't hear the soft laugh before it hovers a breath behind their shoulders.
And at first they deny it. When they realise they have company, their laugh becomes louder: what can four men do against them? The raiders, the horde of barbarians, who have just had their fill of other people's life and are drunk on both stolen booze and blood-stained power, on the cries of a girl who had held her heart in her hands, turning pages like a prayer?
There is a tall man with hair as light as the sun, clad in black and with the broadest, nicest smile the little girl has ever seen. He seems important because the other people are following a few steps behind him. He leads them, in a way not even the vicar managed to do. His smile dissipates and mouth turns down when he spots the girls and then he does something and she can feel the ropes fall around her. But she can think of that later; now all that matters is her sister who falls with the ropes, crumpled in a small heap of green hair and bloodied pinafore. Even though she is so much older, so much wiser, she is also small and broken. But then her shaking arms wrap around her, and she is there. Her sister is wrapped around her, warm and present and not going anywhere. Although she is older, so much older, her embrace feels brittle and small.
Their touch is grounding, like they are tethered together. If one of them lets go, they'll never find each other again; never find a place to call their own now their home has disappeared into the night, burned down for the amusement of strangers.
The marauders' laugh is strangled when their leader's head fall clean of his shoulders, his body slumping to the ground, his blood soaking into the crumbling ground around them.
A mountain of moving mucus envelops a whole bunch o them at once, while the rock itself seems to open a great maw behind the pack. A tall man whips out a sword and the man next in line is suddenly missing an arm and half his leg.
Their screams echo, long after the girls are gone in a flurry of pink feathers.
"Aren't you the sweetest thing," the old woman croons, nails –talons, really, nothing that sharp and red can be human– scraping across her cheek. "Sweet as a little sugar lump." A halo of red and yellow crowns the apparition, crouched over the little girl. She smells cloying and sweet, like the rose bushes growing in the graveyard.
The girl is certain now. That is no woman.
It is a hag, or maybe a crone. Her sister has told her all about them: the wicked, scary witches who lived in cottages all alone in the forest, in the unseen and unheeded places where only wolves roam. Crones (or maybe hags; she's a bit unsure about the difference) are clad in garish clothes and have warts the size of blueberries. But they also have the power to make themselves more beautiful than any picture, than any painting she has ever seen. More beautiful than the Mother, depicted in broken and coloured shards of glass in the chapel back where they can never go again.
When she was littler than she is now, she wanted to become a crone.
In the dark of night, it had almost sounded pleasant. No-one would dare to pinch her cheek or pick her up as they pleased. Even grown men would fear her, and other old witches would cover when she walked, she'd make sure of it.
"My little pumpkin! What is it?" the crone/hag shrieks, hands covering her gaudily painted cheeks, eyes crinkled in sudden concern. Her bright hair, teased into a tottering pile, sways from side to side as she clatters around them.
The girl didn't even notice the wetness of her cheeks before the hag (or crone) clasps her hands to her large chest and then her sister kneels beside her and dries her eyes with a corner of her gown.
She can't help the tears. They keep rolling down her cheeks like large, fat fish, escaping from her aching eyes.
She doesn't know where they come from. Maybe it is because the warm light in the large room they are in reminds her of the crackling sparkle from the fire back home. Maybe it is because of the realisation that they can never go back. That something inside her has broken as completely as the picture of the Mother, made up of a thousand coloured pieces of glass. The Mother, so beautiful when the morning light shone through her, painting the pews in all the colours of the rainbow, wrecked on the ground, beyond the help of either human or god.
She grasps her sister's dress and hides in her folds, her warmth enveloping her like a summer's day, when they were dozing in the back of a hay-wagon.
The hag has found a handkerchief from somewhere and is drying her cheeks. A small boy totters up to them and offers her his milk bottle with a sombre face and a solemn nod of his head, blond curls bouncing. She wonders fleetingly if he's related to the tall, kind man with hair a similar shade, but decides that it doesn't matter. The hag-cum-crone titters and totters, and suddenly they are plied with cocoa and crackers appearing from nowhere, like magic, with warm blankets enveloping them.
The girl knows that although she is younger, she is braver. So she blows her nose and offers a watery smile as thanks, accepting the proffered drink.
The hag croons and then there are buttery biscuits and some sort of fruit and the round, violet berries are called grapes and they are the best thing she has ever tasted.
Maybe there was a place for her. For them, for both her and her shy sister, a hand still securely wrapped around hers.
"My name is Giolla," the hag-crone says when they've eaten their fill and the towhead tot is snoring in her lap. "What are you called, dearies?"
The girl is feeling better with food filling her stomach. The warmth of the room has thawed her frozen bones and poured healing balsam into the cracks of her soul. They are still there, but she can feel them start to close.
A sideways glance at her sister makes her worry, however. They have let go of each other in the reach for another warm cup, for one more biscuit, and now she sees how her sister folds in on herself, arms wrapping around her middle, the weight of the broken shards of her soul bowing her spine.
Although she has new, fresh clothes and has taken a bath (and a shower) she knows her sister can still smell burning wood and feel the sting of poteen. Can feel grabbing hands and the hot breath of marauders on her young cheek.
She knows, because she still feels them herself, cloying and wrapped around her and tangled in her hair. She feels the blood that dripped down her leg when she cut the first thief, before they managed to catch her and tie her up.
But when her sister is shy and broken, she must be brave and strong.
"My sister is called Monet," she says in her church tones, sure and clear. The vicar used to praise her voice and how she could pronounce even the longest and hardest words (she practiced, practiced, practiced with Monet) in the Hymn to the Mother.
She doesn't know if her sister listens; Monet sits silent, wrapped in the remains of herself.
"And my name is Sugar."
It takes a year for Monet to gather herself, to piece herself back from the pieces left by the marauders.
The Family gives them space. Giolla is always around, fussing like a mother hen. Sugar quite likes it, the way she wraps them up in kind words and insists on having their favourite foods at least once a week and Sugar is never without grapes, ever. The old man introduced as Gladius is a bit scary, but when he takes of his mask he also has a kind smile and dancing eyes. He shows her how to make a peashooter and they both run away giggling when she manages to hit Diamante's hat. Dellinger becomes her shadow, or maybe she becomes his, and they find the best hiding places, where they can listen in on the Executives and trip up Buffalo when he lumbers past. Baby 5 is just a year or two older than Sugar and they huddle together in front of the merrily crackling fire in the evenings, sharing secrets and whispering about what's out there, beyond the wine-dark sea.
For a year, Sugar pieces back her heart and Monet gathers the shards of her soul, building back into something sharper, something more deadly. Although she still wraps herself around her sister in the dark of night, clinging on to her like a woman drowning, there is a coldness in her embrace and a stiffness in her arms. Even her sleep is piecemeal with shivers racking her thin frame, her breathing shallow and superficial.
And then Doffy gives the best birthday present and takes their hearts for now and for ever.
He gives Monet a Devil's fruit. And suddenly everything is all right again.
It takes Monet a year to gather herself.
But when she does, she is ferocious.
She is hoarfrost on the windows and the crisp morning air in the depth of winter. She is the flurry of snow in the dark of night and the depth of névé in the valleys carved by glaciers. She is both a blizzard and an onding. Sugar sees her in skift of feather-thin graupel, lightly covering the ground in a blanket of soft hail that soon melts into water.
She is the frozen bodies of traitors and overheard secrets, whispered in a whiteout. She flits from sleet to slush, before suddenly pelting a shrieking Sugar with snowballs.
And the world is white and so is Doffy's smile and Sugar's laugh echoes in the space between Monet's snowflakes, no two alike.
For her own birthday Doffy gives her the second best present ever and now she can also help the family, be a real part of it. Although the weird fruit tastes like old and wet cardboard, she eats all of it, savouring every bite.
She smiles when she makes her first toy, a lovely rag doll with a blue pinafore.
And then she laughs when she tears the doll's arm off.
Sugar can bear many burdens and shoulder too much for her little self. She can turn anyone into any sort of plaything, can mend her dresses better than Baby 5 and she is quicker than Dellinger. She reads voraciously, whenever she gets her hand on a book because that is what Monet does and these days Sugar does everything her sister does.
And Sugar aches when Monet is sent away that first time.
She can feel her soul crumble and break into pieces each and every passing day her sister is away. She counts the sunsets and sunrises in a little notebook her sister gave her. She writes down her feelings and then tears the pages out, throwing them in the fire. She sulks and hides from Dellinger and snaps at Giolla and is both a concentration of pain and a ball of anger. She turns all the soldiers she finds into toys and when Doffy finds the broken remains, she is placed under Trebol's watchful eye, to 'give her a better outlet for her frustration', whatever that means. She snarls as she turns yet another meaningless nobody into a stuffed bear, casting them aside before turning to the next in line.
But then Monet sends word and the Family prepares for movement.
After many a long year, the king is coming home.
And Sugar will be with Monet again.
Sugar loves Dressrosa.
The midday heat and silent hours of the siesta matched her internal clock perfectly. Grapes can be grown year-round and the tinkling fountains spread around the capital remind her of the hidden brooks in her forests back home. Birds, although different from the ones she is used to, circles the castle she now calls home (a new home a different home) and relay messages from the Mother and Father directly to her heart.
And Sugar can feel her cheeks get wet when she sees the Mother smiling down on her from a high window set in the thick castle wall. She is wearing even finer clothes than back at home, but the kind smile and gentle eyes are the same. Sugar ignores the brooding Father, placed on the opposite wall, as she drags her bed across the room, pushing it into position just under the fractal painting. Her sleep is once more guarded by a gentle smile and all the colours of the rainbow.
But more than the grapes and the Mother and the heat and the high cliffs diving into the ocean, Sugar loves Dressrosa because Doffy loves it. Dressrosa suits Doffy and that makes everything right in her book.
From the moment Sugar set eyes on Doffy, she knew he was important. She didn't know why and how, but she knew it in her heart of hearts. Next to the importance of the Mother and the Father, Doffy had his own place now. He saved her and her sister and now Monet was back and they could be together again in the Family's new home in the palace.
Sugar explores their new country, flitting from shop to shop, giving people shy smiles and accepting their kindness and small gifts; an apple here, a flower there. A rumour, overheard by small ears or a clandestine meeting, witnessed by curious eyes.
She listens to the songs sung in the squares: tales about betrayal and persecution and the rightful return of the long-lost king. Whispers about salacious plots and the sudden death of first the crown princess and then the queen and how the previous king went mad after that. About how the younger princess disappeared during the night of horrors, probably killed by her mad father in his bloodlust.
Sugar doesn't care about past royalty or disappearing princesses. Sugar cares about Dellinger and Giolla. And also about Trebol and Diamante and Pica, as well as Baby 5 and Buffalo and Gladius and Lao G, of course.
But most of all she cares about Monet and Doffy.
Sugar loves her sister, never leaving her side if she can avoid it. She badgers her until Monet acquiesces with a laugh, grabs a book and joins her and Trebol down in the bowels below the palace. In the evenings, Sugar curls up in her lap, soothed into sleep by murmured stories or soft hands combing through her hair and creating intricate braids.
Sugar loves Monet. But these days her heart is a shared common.
Because Sugar might love Monet, but she also adores Doffy.
She knew from the start that he was someone important and it is only natural that Doffy now is a proper king.
She is full to bursting with pride when he gives a lazy wave in the Colosseum, starting the gladiator games. She runs to tell him all she sees and hears in the city and squeals with laughter when he sometimes hoists her into the air, his broad, blinding smile promising he'll never let her down.
The first time Doffy takes her flying, Sugar is terrified and she is wrapped around him as tightly as she can, his laughter reverberating through her panicked sobs.
The next time, Sugar loves it and her laughter echoes through the open skies, bouncing of clouds and weaving through stars.
She always knew it; she is made to fly.
Sometimes Doffy disappears for days or even weeks at a time. Monet tells her it's something to do with his status as a shi-chi-bu-kai, a title Sugar never learns to pronounce, and when he returns, he brings presents and that makes everything all right again.
For a while life goes on and the heat in Dressrosa never lets up.
One day Doffy disappears again. And then he's back and things change.
When he introduces her to Violet, a dark-haired woman who looks about Monet's age, Sugar offers her a bland smile. He ruffles her green hair with a laugh as he lopes off with that funny walk he has, leaving her with this Violet-woman.
When she realises the woman has been given the impossible task of educating her and Dellinger and Baby 5, she grabs her little brother and hides in the deepest, darkest cellar of the whole castle.
Baby 5 is not a problem and Sugar doubts if she could ever make her one: she almost vibrates with excitement and a manic willingness to please. She is unable to disappoint the strange woman and sits quietly in her allotted place.
So Sugar grabs Dellinger and disappears.
The woman finds them in about five minutes.
No matter where Sugar hides or how cunningly they trick the guards, the woman always find them. She never raises her voice, merely an eyebrow and something hooks behind Sugar's spine at the disappointment evident in her face. And so she sulks as she and Dellinger trot back to the library to join Baby 5 once more, Violet softly threading behind them, but she still sits down at the high wooden table, prepared to accept some smidgeon of learning.
After a while, Sugar realises Violet has the powers of the giro giro no mi.
"I thought you knew?" No-one can look as innocently surprised as Monet, all wide-open eyes and raised eyebrows, hands clasped in front of her. "That's why Doffy wants her to join us. Those powers are incredibly valuable."
"That's so unfair!" Sugar can't help the whine in her voice. "We'll never be able to hide from that!"
"And why would you want to hide from education? I thought you liked learning?"
"But it's so boring," Sugar cries, throwing up her arms in exasperation. "It's just history and language and nothing useful!"
"You don't think it's useful to know the native tongue of your new home?" Now the tilt to Monet's eyebrow is sardonic. "Or understand what made the people here so happy to have a new ruler, or what will make Dressrosa flourish in the future, while it is so very backwards and under-developed right now?"
"Well, yes," Sugar admits, shoulders slumping. She knows there's a reason behind everything Doffy asks her to do but she can't help the restless legs she's born with. She might read because Monet does it, but Monet is not here and books without her sister are boring. Monet was always the bookish one. If Monet was made to read the longest books and understand the twists and turns of human history, Sugar was made to run in the fields and climb the tallest trees in the forest. Sugar was made to fly.
"Little sugar lump, go back to you lessons," her sister laughs before disappearing into the soft pastel colours of dusk, another of Doffy's little tasks to execute.
Sugar contemplates turning Violet into a toy, just to get back at her for the endless hours of tutoring, but refrains with clenched fists and a pursed mouth.
Doffy has said she might become part of the Family soon and people like that are to be treated with respect. And that means not turning them into toys, she knows.
But she accepts her education after that, not bothering trying to hide anymore.
There's no point, after all.
It takes a while for her to notice that something is wrong.
Deeply, unsettlingly, horribly wrong.
It's a day like any other, except it's her birthday. And the girl who stares back at her in the mirror looks exactly like she did a year ago, when she ate the fruit.
Since the day she ate the hobi hobi no mi, she hasn't aged.
The sun rises and the sun sets, but Sugar doesn't change.
And most days, it's fine.
It's nice to be small and taken care of and being able to give people a sad smile and wrap their hearts around her little fingers.
But some nights, when Baby 5 starts crying about boys and how Doffy takes care of her more unsuitable suitors, she wonders. What if she never ages, never grows?
Will she die?
She sees how her sister grows up, features turning sharper as the years pass and the last of her youthful padding melts away. She sees how Giolla becomes plumper with the years, her dresses growing in girth as her hair turns from red to yellow to turquoise to red again and crow's feet appear around her eyes. Lao G has his whole own thing going on, one day the essence of muscular combatant and a wizened curmudgeon the next. Gladius grows a few inches more, the spikes of his hair sharpening into needlepoints. Señors Pink and Machvise turn to the cornucopia of delights presented each night at dinner, gorging on paella and pizza, showering it all down with wine and beer and sweet, sweet port.
She watches Baby 5 become a woman, all power and devotion, and then Dellinger grows taller than her, tall as the trees, until he smirks down from above and ruffles her hair.
The Executives are already old and set in their ways but of the four of them, Doffy is maybe the one to change the most. The dark suits that made such an impression all those years ago are exchanged for gimcrack colours that still somehow suit him and his hair isn't kept in immaculate spikes anymore but rather a manageable crop. The tie is lost along the way, and he takes to wearing his shirts open in the heat of their new home. He still has his pink feathered coat, and he still smiles as wide as ever, but he grows a bit in width as faint lines start appearing around his mouth and at the corners of his eyes, barely noticeable behind his glasses.
That is when Sugar decides to take care of them all. When they are old and feeble, she will still be young and energetic and she will manage.
She knows she is strong. She has the hobi hobi-powers. But she can always become stronger.
And so she trains. She trains her powers and she trains herself. She does push-ups and squats and manages to do a ten-minute plank one day, longer than even Lao G who falls asleep in the middle of their game, crumpling like an old sock.
Except she still has the drawbacks of a ten-year old. She doesn't really follow along when the Family discusses strategies in their weekly meetings. She isn't any good at organizing and planning things, always forgetting this and that. She has a temper, but she learns when to keep it in check and when to give free reign to her emotions. Sugar is good at remembering things, but she doesn't see the patterns that the others do. She can recite the old kings and queens of Dressrosa by heart but struggles to keep up when Baby 5 and Violet discuss the underlying reasons for power shifts.
Sugar doesn't understand when Baby 5 starts getting snippy, creating drama from everything and nothing. She tries to console and help Dellinger when a morose mood descends upon him, making him scratch at his scales and try to claw his way out of his skin, whining about his fish-man features. He even runs away at one point, because no-one wants him so what's the point, but he stops in his tracks, dorsal fin drooping, when Sugar and Baby 5 meet him at the gate, sent there by the all-seeing eyes of Violet. They all sit down at the fountain in the smaller plaza and enjoy a shared scoop of sun-kissed mangoes while Sugar and Baby 5 take turns in reminding the boy of all his good qualities and how they all like him very, very much.
However, she's also cheerful and fun-oriented, carefree with few fears. Her family is important, even though they are so much older than her, and she finds solace in their company. She is eager to please and hopelessly devoted to them all.
And one night, after finding Baby 5 crying in the toilets, curled up in a little ball of pain and anguish, Sugar is really, really happy that she will never experience the horror of menstruation.
One night, a few years after they arrive at Dressrosa, she takes the long way up to her rooms and walks down the wrong corridor at the wrong time.
Sugar is about seventeen then, counted in lived years. She has found her way to the more salacious parts of the castle library ages ago, although no-one will know of her late-night excursions, or the books she brings with her to her rooms.
She has also started to realise that there are some things grown-ups can do with great enthusiasm that younger children aren't even to know exist.
Sugar is not a child anymore, not if you think about how long she has lived.
But no-one seems to remember that, not when her body is stuck at ten and her mind oscillates between the knowledge gathered along the way and the biological framework her brain and body is stuck in.
The unmistakeable blond of Doffy's hair clashes with the dark locks of Violet, his arms wrapped around her as she's pressed against the castle wall. Sugar sees a slip of skin as Violet's dress rides up her thigh, her hand slipping under his light shirt. A soft moan echoes down the corridor and Sugar flees.
It's only when she gets to her rooms that she realises she's still clutching her latest book against her chest.
After this, she keeps a closer eye on the pair. She notes how his hand lingers at the small of her back and how she passes by quite close by him, even in the wide castle corridors. How Violet takes to wearing her hair down in flowing dark waves when Doffy is at home but ties it up in intricate coils when he's gone, baring her slender neck. How he sometimes smells like jasmine, although he usually smells like the forest in spring.
Sugar has realised a long time ago that she loves Doffy. She loves him like the sun and the moon, like the sea and sky. She loves him like she loves Monet.
Sugar is nothing without Doffy and without Monet and the family.
So she vows to end Violet if she hurts Doffy.
Just like she'll end anyone who dares to hurt her family.
"It's so unfair," Sugar whines, draping herself over Dellinger's armchair.
"It's your own fault," he sing-songs, brushing his golden locks in front of his vanity. When he lets his hair grow, it curls at the ends and Giolla croons and refuses to cut it until Doffy sighs, rubs the bridge of his nose and asks her to please help Dellinger keep his personal hygiene in check. Blood does stain blond hair in such a gory fashion.
"It's not."
"It so is."
"Well, why didn't you eat it?" she says, a pout tugging her mouth down, arms folded in front of her. Her pose makes her pout even harder: nothing to think about there; no breasts to wonder about or be inconvenienced by.
"Because he offered it to you, little sugar lump," comes the answer, carelessly thrown with an accompanying smile. "And because I like swimming too much to quit just for a Devil's fruit."
"But it's unfair," she says, circling back to the beginning once more. "I want to grow up."
"You are grown up," Dellinger says, raising an eyebrow. "You are six years older than I am."
"And look six years younger," Sugar says. "I want to flirt and fall in love and be an adult and all that."
"You can do that," her brother says with a wicked wiggle of his eyebrows. "Just go–"
"You are horrible!" Sugar stomps her little foot in exasperation. "You know what happened to those poor bastards who whistled after me last month."
Although her mind has continued to develop, nourished by the last dozen years of active Donquixote living, her body is stuck at ten. The lack of hormones won't let either her body or her brain develop past the age she ate her Devil's fruit.
"I just wanted to help the family," she sighs, draping an arm over her eyes like the heroine on the cover of Heed the Siren's Call, her latest literary obsession. "Not be a ten-year old forever."
She's read through the family's surprisingly extensive medical collections enough of times to have the key texts memorised by heart: no matter what she does, she won't grow up.
She's stuck as a somewhat grown woman in a ten-year old's body.
And that was all fine and dandy, until Monet fell in love.
Whatever Doffy had going on with Violet was bad enough, but that Monet would abandon her like this? For a nobody, a boy from the markets?
It is unacceptable.
When she found out, Sugar went down to the Colosseum and turned a whole pen of cripples into wooden nut-crackers, combining them two and three in her rage.
Gladius had given an impressed whistle when he came to collect her and even Sugar had been surprised. She didn't know she could fold different people into the same toy.
But Trebol said she just needed practice and practice helped her forget her horrible sister who only thought of love…
Not long after her power-related realisation, she's stuck with Violet.
Alone.
Baby 5 no longer needs lessons and she's taken over managing the castle staff. Dellinger is also being phased out since he's such a great asset at the Colosseum and so she's the only one left, which in Sugar's opinion is deeply unfair. She's always been a quicker study than either of the others and just because she's physically stuck at ten doesn't mean she needs more education than the others.
But Doffy keeps insisting that she practice systems thinking and blue ocean strategy and whatever else that means. She knows she's not as good as the others at grasping the big picture, so she merely sighs and submits to his wishes.
The day is long, the books are dry and boring, and yet she's happy to be sequestered away in the library with its thick stone walls keeping the worst of the midday heat out. It is summer and although Sugar likes heat, the scorching temperatures of high noon become too much, even for her.
Not that she'll ever let Violet know.
"Are you happy?"
And with that, Sugar stops, quill poised above paper, a droplet of ink slowly forming at the end.
"Why do you ask?"
Violet leans against the wall, arms folded in front of her. Her hair is done in an elaborate braid that looks to weave through itself and a blood-red carnation rests above her ear.
"Because I want to know."
"Why?"
Violet looks at her. It's a nice gaze, Sugar reflects: it feels like someone sees her. It doesn't show pity (Baby 5) or adoration (Giolla) or amusement (Dellinger) – it's an unbiased yet evaluating scrutiny, Violet's amber eyes a neutral slate, offering neither grace nor forgiveness nor judgment.
Something in her bursts.
And she throws her quill as hard as she can, watching with a twisted sort of pleasure as it breaks against a tapestry hanging on the wall, leaving a wide ink smear in its wake.
Her outburst doesn't faze Violet the least. She merely nods and stays silent.
"I hate it," she admits.
"What do you hate?"
"Everything!" she wails, burying her small face in her hands. Great wet tears roll down her cheeks, leaving damp trails in their wake as she sobs. She doesn't notice when Violet moves to stand beside her, accepting a handkerchief that appears in front of her. "I hate not growing up! I hate not following along when we have family meetings and I hate that Dellinger is taller than me now!"
The tears leave wide trails along her cheeks as she blows her nose, the sound muffled by the tuffets and tapestries and heavy curtains in the library.
"And I hate that everyone just keep talking about how great my powers are and how much I can do! Because I like it, I really do. I like helping." Her tears are drying up and she gives a sad sniffle, drying her runny nose on the back of her hand. "But I also want to have what everyone else have. I want to grow up!"
Violet just sits there, neither censoring nor consoling.
For a moment everything is still, her outburst hanging between them in the unmoving library air, framed by the bookcases and marked by a large ink-stain on one of the tapestries.
And then a tired sigh breaks the stillness into a myriad skittering pieces as Violet seats herself beside Sugar on the sofa, her dress rustling against the velvet.
"Your feelings are your own. If that's what you feel, that's totally valid."
Sugar starts, wide eyes searching for, for… anything. Anything to explain the unexpected, the surprising.
Doffy praises her powers and efforts.
Trebol tells her to work on her technique and speed.
Dellinger just laughs and dances around the topic when she tries to discuss it with him, content in his role as a fighter and a star of the Colosseum.
But no-one has said she's valid. That her feelings matter, only her actions.
"I had a sister once." Violet's voice is so soft Sugar first thinks she imagined it. But then she sees the faraway look in the older woman's eyes, and she waits for her to continue in silence. For a breath it looks like Violet has gotten lost in her thoughts, but a deep breath anchors her to reality as she continues.
"But she died a long time ago. And after that, I had to grow up too fast. My parents… had expectations." Sugar hears the hesitation and wonders what sort of family Violet had. A hazy memory untangles itself from the shadows of her mind; a young woman, led in an arm lock by Monet…oh yes, the previous princess.
Sugar has read enough novels to know what sort of expectations a crown-princess would have to bear, however slender her shoulders. She knows that books aren't the same as reality, but sometimes it's nice to pretend that life is as black and white and easily solved as those presented in fiction.
Violet gives a wry smile, brushing a stray lock of hair behind her ear. "Believe me; I hated it. Hated having to work for something I never expected but now had to bear. Or rather, something I wanted to bear but never thought I could or would. And all anyone ever told me was to praise my efforts or work on my presentation. No-one told me my hesitation, my fear, my anger, was welcomed. Or was even relevant."
Sugar's heart stutters. Somebody else knew…?
"But whatever expectations you face, you are still important." Violet pokes Sugar's cheek, smiling at the indignant squeak produced. "As are your feelings." Violet says quietly, her amber eyes lost in some hidden part of herself. "It took me too long to learn it. I hope you do it quicker."
But then she gives a quick smile and gives Sugar a one-armed hug, drawing her into her side. At first Sugar tenses up at the sudden contact, but then she relents, leaning into Violet's side. She smells nice, like jasmine and petrichor and she is warm. After Monet ate her fruit, she's been so cold and her hugs are not the same anymore.
And she melts into her warmth and wraps her arms around Violet's midriff, ignoring the small gasp her action elicits.
And she decides that Violet isn't so bad, after all.
It was hard when Monet was gone last time, but now Sugar has realised she'll be back. She's always back.
After that first mission to Dressrosa, Monet gets sent on different assignments. Sometimes alone, sometimes with Baby 5 or with Violet or with Gladius.
But Sugar learns that her sister disappears sometimes, for a week or two, and then she'll be back.
Still, this mission doesn't sound like the most entertaining one so far.
This mission is longer, so much longer than normal, but she knows her sister will be back, as she has before.
"Punk Hazard?" Sugar makes a face. "Sounds weird. Isn't that where Doffy has his labratry?"
"Lab-o-ratory," her sister corrects her with a gentle smile. "And yes, I'll be there. Doffy thinks the head scientist might need some… administrative help."
Sugar smiles at that, a nasty little grin.
She knows what usually happens to people who get help from the family.
But then the grin falls from her face. "Do you have to be gone for so long?"
"I'll see if I can come home for a weekend every now and then," Monet says. "But I will probably be needed there for quite a while, especially in the beginning."
The mission is long, but Monet will be back and then they will be together again until her next assignment, wherever that will take her.
"You won't forget me?"
"Little sugar lump," her sister smiles, ruffling her hair. The old nickname has stuck, like the sticky residue after a half-melted chocolate. "I'll never forget you. And to make sure you have something to look forward to, I promise to take you out shopping and for a fancy meal out, just the two of us, when I get back."
"Promise?"
"Promise."
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