Chapter Text
As the toy cowered before Donquixote Doflamingo’s throne, the mended cracks in the creature’s arm gleamed gold.
The king of Dressrosa regarded the toy in stony silence, displeased. He did not spend his time on the toys, most days. They served their purpose in his kingdom; he preferred they served it out of sight. But in the matter of the golden cracks, he had felt the need for personal supervision...and yet, no matter how many of the creature’s limbs Doflamingo pulled off with a flick of twisted strings, the toy would not tell him where the gold had come from.
The toy whimpered, and begged, and cried for mercy, but it gave up nothing but screams.
This was not the first toy who had appeared in Dressrosa with golden lacquer sealing its wounds shut. It was not the first toy Doflamingo had tortured to death, either. The first record of a gold-mended toy had been written many months prior, when a toy had fallen and shattered a joint working at the docks one night. It limped away when dawn broke. Those in charge assumed it would soon be consigned to the scrap pile.
When it appeared the next day whole and hale, mended with gold overnight, reports suggested this was a fluke. A mistake. A one-off event not worth noticing. The full nature of Sugar’s power (or even the existence of it) wasn’t fully understood by mere lackeys, after all.
Thus, filtered through the ranks of unimportant cogs, the preponderance of gold-mended toys came to the notice of Doflamingo’s officers slowly, like a pot coming to a boil over low heat. Once dozens of toys repaired with gold filled the ranks of the underground dock, and the reports suggested a pattern in lieu of random happenstance, the phenomenon could not longer remain ignored.
Inquires were made with Sugar, first. Did she have something to do with the toys being repaired with gold? Could her powers patch the very creatures she created? Apparently not. She met the matter with a shrug. Once she created a toy, she dismissed it from her sight, never to trouble her again. She had no power to mend the toys once they came to harm, and she was certainly no goldsmith.
A troubling answer. If not mended by Sugar’s power, then by what other means?
Not that Doflamingo particularly cared how the toys were being mended. Typically when a toy (so breakable, so pathetic) reached the end of its material usefulness, he ordered them tossed aside as scrap without mercy. The thought of mending toys had never occurred to him. They were not worth the time it took to repair their cracked limbs or frayed hems. They were easily replaced, after all. A single touch from Sugar created a substitution in a breath. The toys were expendable. The toys were slaves. They were not worth the gold that filled their cracks.
No. The question was not “how.” The question was “why.” Why would someone go to the trouble of fixing such sacrificeable creatures in the first place?
The toys ranked low on Doflamingo’s list of priorities...but the toys played an important role in his larger, grand design. Anyone interfering in their work, anyone getting too close to their source, was a problem to be dealt with. And since his inquisitors’ investigations had proven unsuccessful, Doflamingo elected to get his hands dirty and torture a few toys himself.
Call it stress relief, perhaps. Plucking the wings off a fly had always calmed him.
Just as he reduced the gold-mended toy lying quivering before him to so much rubbish, Monet entered the room. Maids followed. At Doflamingo’s wave, they whisked away the toy’s broken body, but not before he plucked one severed tin arm off the floor with an invisible string. He held the thing — so tiny compared to his large hand — between his fingertips, turning it over once, then twice. The gold gleamed in the light from the nearby window, warm to the eye, cold to the touch. Beyond the window, women splashed in the outdoor pool, laughter and merriment and faint music perfuming the air like the fragrant flowers swaying over that sunlit grotto.
“My research indicates the toys are being repaired by a process known as kintsugi,” Monet said. “A technique hailing from Wano Country.”
Doflamingo already knew that, of course. His mother had once received a gift of kintsugi, before that chapter of his life had come to a horrific end. The bowl had been plain, but the cracks webbed across its surface had been made rich with gold — something his mother took pleasure in, but he was not intrigued. Why not just get a new bowl? That practice of repair made little sense in his eyes.
It hardly mattered now, so many years later. All that mattered was that he recognized the technique on sight. He already knew the “how.” But it led him no closer at all to the “why.”
“To our knowledge, no one from Wano Country currently abides in Dressrosa.” Monet flipped a paper on the clipboard she held. “We will investigate any artisans who have recently traveled — ”
Her plan was sound. Doflamingo listened with only half an ear, still studying the broken arm lying motionless on his massive palm. Gold used to repair mere tin...a waste of resources, if you asked him. But the fact that the toy would not give up the identity of the artisan who had mended it? The fact that many toys had been tortured and broken beyond repair (both by him and his subordinates) but stayed firm in their silence all the while? Dedicated themselves to protecting the one who had mended them, even at the cost of their own lives? That spoke of loyalty — loyalty to someone other than Doflamingo. And that was troubling indeed.
Even more important than “why,” that loyalty begged the question of “Who?” And this was the most important question of all.
But Monet could handle this. The low-ranking henchmen who had let the gold-mended toys go unquestioned for so long (the reports stretched back a few years, apparently) had been dealt with appropriately. Now the officers themselves would take care of this matter. Doflamingo had every faith his chosen family would find the responsible party in short order.
His faith proved unfounded, however. But not due to any ineptitude on their part.
Not a handful of weeks later, in a twist of fate befitting Doflamingo’s god-granted station, tribute from a wealthy Dressrosa family arrived on Doflamingo’s doorstep. The chest of treasure contained, among other priceless items, a kintsugi-mended bowl...and when emissaries from the king of Dressrosa demanded to know its origin, the family was eager to provide to their beloved king the name of the artisan who’d crafted it.
Isabella Saffron, these would-be nobles told him.
That was the name of the woman who mended toys with gold, and she lived at the foot of the King’s Plateau.